Author's Note: Sorry I've been procrastinating. School started last week and I haven't had much free time between homework, collabs, commissions, a book(yes, I'm writing a book; no, you can't read it yet), other fandoms, and basic life-sustaining activities.
But enough excuses. On with the story!
Invader Zim belongs to Nickelodeon. You know this already, but I just want to be sure.
Flamers can suck it.
=== DOOM ===
It's been two days already, and I'm starting to feel like Dib and I are playing chess against Zim with half of our pieces missing. Which is bad, I'm presuming: I don't know much about chess, except that's where the term "checkmate" comes from and the white pieces go first.
The stress is eating away at me, I can feel it. Darkbooty has come up with a few charts and suspicious coordinate estimations, but nothing ground-breaking or that will give us an upper hand. There hasn't been any bombings since Moscow. Zim's taking his time. And I haven't figured out how he's bombing from the outer edge of the atmosphere, which is very important if we're going to stop him.
I glare at my computer screen, ready to smash my foot through it in exasperation, and because I feel the intense need to destroy something. The time in the far bottom right corner reads 9:21 PM. Raemi should be getting to bed soon.
Needing something to do other than try to will my laptop aflame via scowling, I get up and stumble out of my room, still in the pajamas I was in a few nights ago. Locking yourself in your bedroom for fifty-two hours requires little clothing changes. I glance around the hallway. It's illuminated by my silbings' rooms' light. I hear my step-brother playing with his plastic light saber, pretending to be a sith lord or Darth Vader or whatever. My step-sisters are arguing in their bedroom about who's getting the top bunk tonight. Raemi's playing alone in her room with her new tea set.
The bathroom is empty. Good.
I grab a towel from the linen closet inside the bathroom and start a hot shower. My hair is greasy from going so long without washing and my hands and feet feel dusty. I undress and hop under the steaming stream of water. I like my showers nice and hot, even during the summer.
The scalding water soothes my stiff neck muscles, and after I rinse the shampoo from my hair I just stand there and allow the water to assault my body, making my shoulders and legs red with the heat. It stings a bit, but it clears my mind and calms my lightning-fast thoughts to a more managable speed.
It's a bit humbling, knowing Dib and I are the only people on Earth who know and care enough to save it. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I'm not hero material. I can't speak in front of a large assembly without hyperventalating and almost fainting. I don't have a proper family, not from any noble birth or whatever it is that heros come from. I'm not even pretty.
And because of my paranoia, I'm stuck in something that's so much bigger than I am, I feel as though it'll swallow me whole.
I'll admit it; I'm afraid. Not just for me, though. I'm afraid that I'm wrong, that I'll be ridiculed for my false deductions. I'm also afraid that I'm right, and by the time we're able to do something, it'll be too late and my dream would come true.
My dream. Oh, how much that makes sense now. I still refuse to tell Dib about it. I'm convinced he'll think of it as some sort of prophecy or something, not to mention how he might react to the kiss part. It makes me dizzy thinking about it.
I'm ripped out of my reverie by a knocking on the bathroom door. "Hey, don't use all the hot water! I still gotta shower, too!" comes one of my step-sisters' voices through the wooden barrier.
"You'll have plenty, you wuss!" I call back. She uses the cold more than the hot anyway.
Speaking of hot. I should probably get out of the shower about now anyway, my shoulders and back are beginning to burn. I shut off the water and wrap my towel around my chest, tucking in the corner beneath my armpit and gathering my clothes in my arms.
Steam billows out of the bathroom as I walk out, probably as red as a lobster, and pad my way into my room. I keep my back to the open window as I dry off and change into another, cleaner pair of pajamas. My dripping hair clings to my cheeks and neck, soaking the collar of my shirt. It waves and curls as it drips, but it will be straight again when it dries. I tuck a few stray locks behind my ear and sit on my windowseat.
The stars blink and twinkle brightly at me in the violet night sky through the window glass, and it reassures me somehow. I stare at the brightest as it glows all alone in the center of my visionary field of the sky. When I was younger, my father and I would sit on the roof of our old house with his telescope and stargaze until the sun came up. He taught me the constellations and direction based on the stars, how to tell the difference between a star and a planet, how to clean a telescope. After he married my step-mother, we gradually grew apart and stopped stargazing together. Sometime between the marriage and the move, the kids had broken his telescope. So now I gaze alone, unless Dib's with me.
I wonder if Zim's bomber is visible from where I am. I quickly decide no- if it were, I would see the anomaly.
A ping on my computer alerts me to an instant message. I get up and bring the laptop to the windowseat. Dib has messaged me:
hay r u alright?
I smile a bit and type a quick response:
Not really but thnx for asking
It's a moment before he replies back.
wats wrong?
I take a minute or so to ponder my words.
Im not used to saving the world Dib. Im a little scared
do u want me 2 come ovr?
No its ok. My parents would get mad if you came over at this hour
so ill come in thru ur window
Really Dib. You dont have to go thru the truble
its no trubl :) ill b there in 5 min
The little window flashes from green to grey, telling me he'd gone offline. I sigh in reluctant surrender. I pull up a YouTube tab and play Lindsey Stirling and Pentatonix to pass the short minutes between our conversation and Dib tapping on my window to get my attention.
He tumbles inside my room when I open my window. I peer out for a second to see how he got up here. A ladder is propped up against the wall beside my window.
"So, you said something about nerves?" Dib asks as he straightens out his clothes. I shut my window.
"Yeah, I guess so," I say. "I mean... it just bothers me a bit, knowing all that attention is gonna be brought to us. You know I don't like the spotlight."
"Oh, trust me. They won't even realize what's going on, let alone that we're saving them from it. It's happened to me dozens of times," Dib brushes it off.
I give a noncommitical chuckle. "I doubt it'll turn out that way. This is too... elaborate. It feels bigger than what it looks like. You know what I'm saying?" I try to explain.
"Not really," Dib shrugs.
My shoulders sag a bit and I look at my laptop sitting on the windowseat facing us. YouTube is still open, my playlist still playing music softly into the awkward silence that's fallen between Dib and I. "I don't know if I want this, Dib," I whisper, not facing him. "I don't think I want to be responsible for this. If something happens, if we mess up..."
"We won't."
"But what if we do-"
"We won't, Tia. You wouldn't let yourself do that."
I turn my eyes back to Dib. He's staring at me severely, scolding me with his eyes for being so paranoid and a worribody. I face away, my cheeks warming up. "We still don't have a plan, or any idea what Zim's plan is," I murmur. "For all we know, we could be too late already."
"You don't believe that," Dib says. It's almost a demand, a request. And he's right. I don't believe that. My eyes drift to the sky beyond my window. I don't think I've ever wished that Mom was alive more than this moment.
"What happened to your mom?" I ask suddenly, surprising myself.
"Huh?" I've caught Dib off guard.
"You never talk about her. Neither does Gaz, or your dad. What happened to her?" I say. I look at him with pleading eyes. "I told you what happened to my mom. It's only fair," I add.
Now Dib turns his gaze away from me in either thought or shame, which one I'm not sure. I sit on the edge of my bed, waiting for the story.
Dib leans against the bedpost and gnaws on his bottom lip. "I'll be honest, I don't remember her much. She disappeared when I was four," he explains. "When I got to be a little older, I tried to do some research on Mom. I wanted to know more about her, but Dad got really mad with me. He still grounds me when I try to research her."
"How come?" I inquire.
"I think maybe he's embarrassed. I mean, he's the smartest man in the world, and he couldn't find his own wife when she was... I dunno, kidnapped, I guess? Maybe that's why he works so much. He didn't always. He used to be home all the time before Mom was gone, I remember that." Dib starts to ramble to himself, so I break his train of thought before he treads into dangerous territory.
"D'you think she's still alive, out there somewhere?" I know I'd rather live with the possibility of Mom being alive in China or something.
"Maybe. She was a smart person. She could make it on her own," Dib says.
"Do you have dreams about her?" I ask before I can stop myself. He looks at me, his golden eyes sparkling in the light of my lamp. My cheeks tingle as blood rushes to them.
"Sometimes, yeah. Do you have dreams about your mom?" he returns.
"Almost every night," I reply. We just look at each other for the longest time. It feels like an eternity and a half when he finally averts his eyes in another direction. My head buzzes with everything we didn't say. Or maybe that's all the blood that has drained into my face.
I'm not quite sure what happens next- one of us yawns and after a childish argument we both slide underneath my covers, I know that much. My lamp has been turned off and my laptop closed. My family has calmed down for the night, so there's minimal outside noise. I hear a cricket chirp somewhere, probably outside. I rest my temple on Dib's shoulder but my eyes don't close.
I go over the outline of his face, the glint of his glasses in the dim light of the crescent moon hanging low in my window. My eyes linger on the shape of his lips a bit too long. What do they feel like, I wonder, taste like? I banished any feeling from my dream that came with the kiss, so I don't even have what my imagination came up with.
My bottom lip slips between my teeth and I push the thoughts from my head. I can't just start randomly kissing him. He'd certainly freak out then.
He gazes at me silently, intently, his caramel-gold eyes soft and deep. I feel like I could just fall into those eyes, drown in caramel and die happy. He's warm and his breath slow and even. An arm slides underneath my neck, providing needed support, and his hand rests on my shoulder, holding me closer to him.
I shiver, not from cold but from something else I can't really name. My tense mind relaxes and I ease into slumber slowly, listening to the sound of Dib's heartbeat thrumming against my ear.
When I wake, it's morning. Dib's gone, and my curtains have been pulled back to let in enough light to wake me up.
I groan as I sit up in bed and rub the sleep out of my eyes. It must be nearly ten o'clock. Stretching and popping my shoulders, I get out of bed and open my laptop.
I check the clock first thing. 10:48 AM. I slept in later than I thought. Then my eyes drift over to my email alert bar.
There is a red letter icon, which stands for an unopened email. Thinking it's spam, I click on it after I start one of my YouTube playlists. It turns out to be from Darkbooty. It reads:
Here's something I found this morning. Hope it helps.
-Darkbooty.
A link is attached to it. I click it, expecting another chart or something equally as dull. Instead, I'm greeted with a map of the world, and several little colored blips that drag across it. One dark green blip is listed on the bottom of the page as Unidentified Object Z42. I recognize the name quickly from Darkbooty's other emails.
Zim. And he's right above the Atlantic Ocean.
The page looks to be live, if not an estimated path. I wonder if NASA has it under watch or something. Being the paranoid nut I am, I decide not to screw around with the information. Besides, Z42 sounds a bit cooler than 'Zim', like a code name or something.
Don't judge me: I need to find something to look forward to in all this save the world crap.
My lips twitch into a smile. If this is live, like I think it is, then Dib and I can track Zim's movements. We can use whatever estimations to our advantage, certainly, but nothing beats a map showing you where the enemy is. It's as effective as livestreaming.
Someone knocks on my door. "Tia? You awake?"
Dad.
"Yeah!" I call to him.
"Hey, get dressed. You and me are gonna go for a drive."
I freeze. Oh dear Lord.
=== DOOM ===
Yeah, hate me if you want.
Sorry for the length. And the pointless squishiness. And the cliffhanger. It would've been better if I weren't half-asleep right now.
Reviews are love! So love me! *hugs*