Chapter IV: Déjà Vu

Vmmmph! Vmmmph!

Vmmmph! Vmmmph!

Gaz groaned as she swatted at her cell phone; it just had to be sitting on the one edge of the night stand that she couldn't reach.

Vmmmph! Vmmmph!

Ugh.

"Love-pig?" Zim said groggily as he was roused from his slumber—he didn't require it because of his Pak, but he had come to enjoy it while in Gaz's company—by her groaning. "Is something wrong?"

"Phone..." Gaz grumbled from the depths of her pillows—having a cloning machine in one's house was a major payoff sometimes—as she tried to grab her phone without removing her head from the warmth of the bed. "Shut off..."

Chuckling softly, Zim easily reached over her smaller form and deftly claimed the small purple phone from the nightstand. "Silly Gaz," he teased as she rendered him a unique hand gesture that he had learned to be a grave insult on the backwards world he now called home.

Flipping the phone open, Zim quickly skimmed the caller ID list to see who had called her—he did it more to annoy his mate than to see who was calling her at four in the morning. It was Dib.

Shrugging, Zim casually turned the phone off and placed it back on the nightstand with the same ease that he had used to collect it.

He told himself that the reason he had turned the phone off was that he had wanted to silence the infernal device; it had nothing to do with him wanting to silence the equally infernal child calling his mate and disturbing their precious alone time...

"Who was it?" Gaz asked as she rolled over to face her boyfriend. She noticed his features darken before he promptly shut off the cell phone. There was only one person on Earth that could make Zim react like that.

"Dib?" She asked him as he slid back into the bed in Gaz's unofficial "official" room within Zim's home. The thick blankets seemed to surge around him as he molded himself into Gaz's body; the warmth from his body came almost immediately—she loved the fact that Irkens were warm blooded.

Zim merely grunted as he wrapped his arms around Gaz once more and closed his eyes. Gaz, not one to argue and risk Zim removing himself from her—though he would never do such a thing; he liked her far too much—merely shrugged and curled into Zim's warmer body as sleep soon retook her.

"Master?"

Gaz's eyes popped open at the same time as Zim's did. The light brown pair of human eyes locked with the red lenses of the Irken and the two both stopped breathing briefly; though neither noticed it.

"Master?"

And moment gone.

"What?!" Zim demanded as he felt the connecting moment he had been experiencing disconnect and Gaz looked away; her heavenly face as dark red as his ruby eyes.

"The Dib-stink is outside with Invader Tak," the Computer explained as it dropped a display screen down. The screen fizzled briefly before showing Zim a live feed of Dib and Tak standing outside of his front door; Dib was hammering furiously.

Out of instinct, Zim checked the feed to make sure it was only broadcasting to Zim. Luckily it was only displaying the feed as a one way line; Zim sighed in relief. He would have hated to see what would have happened if Dib had seen the state that Zim and Gaz were currently in. Gaz would have probably killed Dib before he could even utter one foul word.

Huh...

"Master?"

"What?!" Zim demanded yet again as he was dragged from the mental image of Gaz ruthlessly beating Dib to a bloody pulp with her bare hands.

"What shall I do with the Dib-stink and Invader Tak?" The Computer asked in it's calm, computerized voice as it withdrew the display screen back up into the depths of the house's attic.

"Let them in," Gaz said wearily as she began to dig her way out of the plush covers that weighed more than twice her entire body mass. "We," Gaz said with a teasing smirk at Zim, "will meet them in the living room."

Zim glared at her.

"Where are they?" Tak complained out loud as she glared at the "transportation tube" inside of Zim's kitchen. The toilet had yet to open up and reveal either Zim or Gaz. Knowing what Dib had to tell his sister only made the waiting worse for Tak. Did the Gaz-stink not realize how badly she was hurting her brother right now?

Dib, for his own part, remained quiet as he sat at the dinner table. His eyes were lifeless as he stared at the toilet; waiting—endlessly waiting it seemed—for his little sister. His world was crumbling by the second and he couldn't even try to save it until his blaster sister finished screwing her retched boyfriend and came upstairs!

The minutes ticked by and Tak saw no sign of movement; she was just about ready to give up on Zim when she saw the first signs of the tube activating. The white ceramic toilet shook barely as the faintest sounds of a lift could be heard.

A few more minutes passed and the toilet stopped it's faint shaking and slid back as Zim and Gaz rose up from the floor.

Zim eyed them as if their very presence was extremely annoying; his eyes were narrowed and his lips were drawn in a thin line as he looked from Dib to Tak, then back to Tak. His gaze asked the unspoken question that Gaz vocalized upon seeing her brother.

"What are you doing here Dib?" Gaz asked expressionlessly as she folded her arms across her chest. She gave a brief nod to Tak—they got along most of the time now; unlike some people...

"Gaz..." Dib began, his voice shaky as he refused to look at his sister. "D...da..." he tried to say before closing his eyes and leaning into his hands as he shook violently. Gaz—for the first time in her life—was slightly alarmed.

"Dib?" Gaz asked as one of her eyebrows rose up in confusion. Dib crying? What had brought this on? If he was here because of her and Zim—which was unlikely considering he already knew about their occasional sleepovers—than he would have been beating—or at least attempting to beat—the tar out of Zim. Instead he was crying.

Why?

What Tak said next caused Gaz to be very grateful towards Zim and his protective arms. They were the only thing that kept her standing.

"Your father's dead Gaz," Tak said solemnly as she saw a variety of emotions register across Gaz's features. Shock, horror, disbelief, pain, and disbelief again. The emotions flashed by in a mere instant, but Tak's eyes caught it all. Gaz didn't believe her.

"The remains of your estate were still burning when we returned to this morning," Tak continued as Dib continued to shake next to her. Her hand found his knee and she gave a comforting squeeze.

"The police think your father's lab's octane reserves ignited during an experiment...the entire house was covered in flames," Tak said; her voice growing quieter as she spoke.

"No one survived..."

The fires were just being put out by the time they arrived; what wasn't burning was a smoking lump of charcoal. Gaz surveyed the rubble before her—the only home she had ever known—and she was mentally surprised that she felt nothing at the sight.

No anger, no remorse, no pity, no shock. She was perfectly okay with her home being burnt to the ground.

Am I really a monster? Gaz wondered briefly as she walked beside Zim past the sidewalk and onto the ruined grass lawn. Firefighters and medical personnel were running all over the area as they put out the remaining fires and tended to the wounded; apparently the fireball the house had made had set several nearby houses on fire and possibly even killed a few people.

"Great Irk," Zim muttered as he looked at the devastation before him. He had fantasied about burning down Gaz's home a dozen times while they had been fighting, but once he had realized his feelings for her, he had never even thought of burning down a blade of grass on her property.

"It was just a house," Gaz said calmly as she surveyed the area in an analyzing manner as she tried to determine if it really had been an accident. She saw nothing.

"Are you the doctor's children?" A man in a fireman's uniform asked as he approached the foursome of teenagers.

"Yes sir," Dib said as he fought back tears; unlike Gaz, he had been effected by the destruction of his family home. Wet tears still stained his face while Tak held his hand tightly as she stood next to him offering her support.

"Your father's remains are being transported for an autopsy, we will have the results in a few days," he informed them as Dib nodded weakly. "Is there somewhere you can stay that we can reach you?" He asked.

Dib nodded and gave him Tak's address and information before turning to ask Gaz if she planned to stay with Zim. As much as he hated the idea of his little sister sharing the same roof as Zim, he knew it was going to happen anyways; he might as well ask her now instead of waiting for her to sneak out later.

To his surprise, she—along with Zim—was gone.

"Where did she-" Dib started to say, only for Tak to interrupt him.

"She needs some alone time, we'll just call them if anything come sup," Tak said softly as she gestured in the general direction of the city park.

Dib nodded and thanked the fire chief before he headed over to stare at the remains of his home while his mind raced. Tak, understanding, simply walked up beside him and gave his hand a squeeze.

"I can't believe he's gone," Gaz said softly as she sat on Zim's lap. The two were sitting on a branch high up in the trees of the city park. Her hands were gently tracing circles on Zim's fingers while the Irken carefully ballanced the two of them by locking onto the tree limb with one arm and holding onto Gaz's abdomen with the other.

"He was just...there...but...not there..." Gaz added as she stared at Zim's hands. She wasn't a very emotional person, but she had started thinking about her father and the few moments she had actually been able to spend with him.

The computer lessons he had given her when she was still in elementary school; the time they had spent fixing up his car, even the failed golfing expedition in Sweden had popped up in her mind as she dragged Zim away from the smoking remains of her home and towards the forest that she had felt so drawn to for some reason.

"I didn't really care for him...but he was still special..." Gaz continued while Zim merely remained quiet and gave her a few comforting hugs with the one arm he had wrapped around her. One of the side effects of his defective "birth" was that he had actually been completely awake when he was born.

As such, he had seen the mechanical arm that had tended to him for the first few seconds of his life; he had become emotionally distraught over being separated from the arm and thus could sympathize with Gaz on missing her parent.

Of course, he hadn't spent as much time with his "parent" as she had, and she had obviously loved him—even if she wouldn't admit it—but Zim still understood the great pain that came with being separated from a beloved caretaker.

"Why'd he have to leave?" Gaz asked in such a quiet voice that Zim nearly missed the words as Gaz spoke them. He pondered the question for a few minutes before answering.

"Because it was his time," he said simply as he brought Gaz closer. "Because life isn't fair," he added with just a slight hint of bitterness. He hadn't really cared at all about the doctor, but he did care about Gaz and the doctor's death had hurt Gaz. Therefore he was in turn hurt by the doctor's death.

Gaz nodded glumly as she closed her eyes briefly to allow the memories to play before her mind. Trips to Bloaties, the store, a few playgrounds, even a pool once; the memories all played before her and she felt both saddened and relieved slightly as she re-experienced all of the special moments with her father.

Once she was content and ready to head home—well, to Zim's home anyways—Gaz opened her eyes. What she saw wasn't what she had been expecting.

"Zim?" She asked as she looked at the sky.

Behind her, Zim, who had been dozing, glanced down at her. "Yes love-pig?" He asked.

"Please tell me those are friends of yours," she said as she pointed towards the sky. Zim followed her gaze and felt his mouth drop open.

"Oh Irk..."

Who had a wonderful Christmas? I hope everybody enjoyed themselves, because the break is over and it is time to return to Fanfiction!

Have fun with the cliff hanger and let me know what you think in a review!