See, you guys? I told you I would come back : ) Since Chapter 10 I've probably written something like 50 pages of essays, research papers, notes and take-home exams, followed by two straight days of sleeping and eating bagels. I'm all back together now, though, and ready to give you:

Chapter 11: The Truth

Dib wasn't given much opportunity to let the Irken's foreboding words sink into him. The instant Zim crept away and he felt the weight disappear from his limbs, Dib scrambled unsteadily to his feet.

For a brief moment he considered trying to make a run for it - maybe he could pick Gaz up or drag her along behind him - but the knowledge of Zim's speed and brutality discouraged him. The alien would have to be incapacitated somehow for them to have any chance of escape...

From across the room Gaz was glaring levelly at him, with the distinctive twitching left eye that meant she was trying very hard to stay calm. GIR was chewing on the end of one of the straitjacket straps, tethering her in place - but Gaz held herself with the rigidity of a statue and it was difficult to imagine her trying to move at all. Dib tried to smile at her, feeling the corner of his mouth quirk up awkwardly in a way that felt painfully out of place.

"Do not waste your time with foolish attempts to reassure your sister, Dib." Zim stalked over to Gaz's side and Dib felt fear lock his body into place. "I must admit, however, that it is a shame for your species that I must terminate her. She seems to be of good breeding stock."

With three clawed fingers Zim grabbed almost playfully at Gaz's stomach. Her face contorted in something like terror and rage, mouth twisted in a grimace but eyes shining whitely. Between the pizza and the puberty Gaz had gotten a little hippy over the years. She did not take well to having it pointed out.

Dib did not take well to seeing an alien touch his sister.

"Don't you dare! GET OFF HER!" Within an instant Dib had covered the distance between them, locking his fingers around one of Zim's Pak legs just where it erupted from his back. He wrenched the little alien back with all his weight, away from Gaz, boots slipping against the ground as he tried to fight against the biomechanical strength.

To be honest Dib had nearly forgotten that Zim had normal limbs. Most of his focus was on the flailing steel spikes that loaned the alien all of his swiftness and weaponry. So, of course, all of Dib's attention was on Zim's stabbing spider legs when he suddenly felt a small, clawed fist colliding with the underside of his jaw.

Dib fell back, teeth jarred together awkwardly inside his head as he tried not to lose his balance. The room was passing in a downward blur, his arms flailed against the air like the wings of a brain-damaged bird. When smashing his face into the ground seemed its most imminent, something caught him.

Zim wrapped two of his spider legs tightly around Dib's torso, holding his arms rigid against his body and breathing gratingly down the back of the boy's neck. Tepid breath like a winter draft. For as thin as they were the stalks were strong. Dib's struggling only served to tighten Zim's grip around him until his ribs pressed against his lungs until he could scarcely breathe.

Dib panted in tiny, panicked gasps as the edges of his vision began to blur and darken. He lost track of what was going on in the world around him, only dimly heard as Zim dragged a wooden chair over from the corner with his free legs.

There was a part of Dib, exhausted and aching, that wanted very dearly to submit to the darkness spreading around him. To go somewhere away from this screaming hellish madness, even if that place was nothingness.

Out of the corner of his pinholed vision Dib saw a glimmer of violet hair. Gaz would be alone with an alien psychopath if he passed out now.

With a frayed energy Dib kept himself awake, every precious atom of oxygen slipping away by inches as Zim's Pak legs stayed locked around him. His fingers went numb, his legs disappeared, there was nowhere for his brain to hide...

And then with a thump that Dib more heard than felt, Zim slammed his limp body onto a chair and released the metallic grip. Air rushed into Dib's lungs, making him lightheaded as his world expanded outward. He made a few half-assed attempts to move his leaded limbs, but Zim proved much faster. The failed invader was moving rapidly now, wrapping great coils of metal hosing around Dib before he could come totally to his senses.

Chilled steel pressed against his side where Zim had bound him securely to the creaky chair. It was better than being constricted by a pair of spidery Pak legs, but Dib felt a new sense of unease settle over him as he wriggled pointlessly in his seat.

He couldn't move anymore - couldn't distract Zim with a punch, couldn't grab Gaz and run - and the loss of this final scrap of freedom gnawed at him. His only choice now was to bear Zim's merciless retribution. Dib's fate scowled perversely down at him through a single glittering eye, antennae remnants twitching excitedly above the Irken's head.

"You try my patience, earth boy," Zim hissed. "But Invaders are born of patience. It was only that which allowed me to stay sane in that horrid dark tank, while I waited and planned my escape. It was difficult, gathering enough strength to overpower that technician when he dared venture so close. Of course, I learned a great deal from him about where humans feel pain most acutely."

Despite Zim's cryptic ranting, Dib still found his eyes wandering over the alien's shoulder to his sister leaned up against the far wall. For the first time since this ordeal had began, Gaz looked at him as well - her intense amber eyes making him vaguely uneasy - before staring down at her straitjacket.

She sunk very slowly to the ground, curled up into a ball on the floor (Dib panicked for an instant, thinking she'd passed out) and began contorting herself very deliberately. One of the straitjacket sleeves inched over the bottom of her foot, and Dib realized with a tiny burst of pride that Gaz was working her way out of her constraints.

"You dare to ignore ZIM! Look at me, human! Your sister is nothing! You are nothing! EVERY AGONY THAT I HAVE FELT ON YOUR BEHALF WILL BE PAID OVER A THOUSAND-FOLD!" Zim roared, flailing about in midair as his Pak legs supported him. The alien seethed with an anger that seemed to heat the very air around them, enraged that even tied up, completely at his mercy, Dib still had the free will to disregard him.

"You think I wanted for things to turn out that way? I was almost as crazy as you back then. It was wrong what happened to you, Zim. I'll admit that. I'll admit that I was too stupid or delusional to see past what I wanted right then to the bigger picture. It ended up ruining both of us," Dib said, slumping miserably into his chair.

He had to keep Zim distracted. If the alien realized that Gaz was trying to escape, they would both die. But if she was fast, and clever - as Dib knew she was - and he kept talking, a candlelight's worth of hope might remain for them.

"Ruined…both of us? What insanity is this! Tell me, Dib, I would love to hear exactly what inconveniences you endured while I was rotting in a bottle!" Zim barked, some demented sarcasm dripping at his voice.

"Oh, geez, I dunno, going half goddamned insane ought to count! You might not believe this, Zim, but I felt bad about what happened to you. I felt bad that they cut you up. I still do. I felt bad enough that my dad had to keep me drugged up like an animal during all those years I should have been making friends." Dib leaned as far forward in the chair as he could, pushing against his bindings.

"HOW DARE YOU COMPARE MY SUFFERING TO YOURS!" Zim's screeching twanged Dib's eardrums, grating somewhere deep within his chest. "You left me with NOTHING to go back to, Dib. Is there a single cell in that IMMENSE skull of yours that is at all capable of understanding what that means? Do not plead with me about claims of meaningless teenage angst, about absentee fathers and frigid females. My base was destroyed. My mission in ruins. My Tallest incommunicable. It was only the pathetic security of your father's labs that allowed me to recover GIR.

"And through all of this, through every humiliation I tolerated, YOU did not suffer at all. You still stepped upon the dirt of your home planet, Dib. Your sister tended your wounds. You attended that asinine skool. How could I endure this indignity, knowing that the destroyer of an Invader lived a comfortable life, while I was doomed to madness and agony in a dark closet? HOW COULD I ENDURE IT, DIB?" Zim screamed, his face so close to Dib's that he could make out the tiny, popped veins in the Irken's remaining eye.

"I DON'T KNOW. Okay? I don't know. But if you're waiting around to hear me repent and beg for forgiveness, then you're out of luck, space boy. You're a menace, Zim. I might regret that things went down so messily, I regret that we didn't finish things on level ground like human beings. But I don't regret putting an end to your demented mission."

Dib spat his words, exhausting himself as he tried to keep his focus on Zim. A stray glance in her direction might tip Zim off to his sister's escape. From the corner of his eye he could make out Gaz working her way out of the straitjacket. She was nearly free now, stumbling to her feet, arms in front of her but still bound together by the buckled-together sleeves.

"All the better. I certainly don't regret putting an end to so many worthless humans in my attempts to get to you. Did you like my specimens, Dib? The children in the jars? It was most unpleasant trying to keep them still and quiet," Zim said softly, studying Dib's face for a reaction, his antenna twitching excitedly.

Dib felt a little lurch in his stomach at having the specimens in that messed-up lab a thousand years ago brought up again.

"Why kids?" he had to ask, despite the voice in his mind pleading with him that there was no good answer. "Why did you have to mess with kids? Do you have any idea how screwed up that is?"

"Because! Children of your species are naive! They are stupid! And once frightened, very easily controlled! Besides, Dib - don't pretend as if there was ever any love lost between you and your skoolmates. You know children are cruel and pitiless just as I do."

Dib pushed past Zim's words, forcing himself not to think. "That's not what I'm asking, you freak! If you wanted me, why didn't you just come get me? Why'd you need to torture so many people?"

"Can you imagine my disgrace if I got you all the way down here and didn't know the best way to inflict pain? The best way to keep you alive with severe nerve damage? Or how many brain parasites a human can tolerate? I needed to practice first, Dib-filth. Any scholar understands this." Zim spoke softly, evenly, deceptively sane.

"You still didn't need to practice on kids!" Dib pushed against his bindings, back aching as Zim glared smugly down at him. "In case you haven't noticed, I'm not ten anymore, Zim!"

The invader's face darkened, eyes twitching with rage as Dib hit a chord. "A MINOR MISCALCULATION! Besides, that Agent that your little club so helpfully sent after me proved the perfect adult specimen to hone my skills on. Just think, Dib. If it weren't for you, they'd all still be alive. Painless. Carrying out their mundane, pointless existences."

"This isn't my fault, Zim. You're the one who killed all those people! You're the one who wanted to take over the earth in the first place! It's not MY FAULT for trying to protect it!" Dib heard a gasp in his voice, desperate in his justifications.

"It is your fault! If you'd just left well enough alone so long ago, we could have avoided all of this," Zim snarled.

"Shut up!" Dib barked. "Stop acting like you're some...some karmic angel here to restore the proper order to the world by destroying me. You can't pawn all your horrible crimes against humanity off on me!"

He was dimly aware that this was just some mind-game, another of Zim's plans to further undo his mental state. That knowledge brought him little comfort, and he found that he was defending his innocence to himself as much as Zim. The guilt that had nearly driven him mad before was creeping back, sick and warm into the back of his brain. Zim was right. In some vague, messed up way, he was right.

None of them would be in their current state if not for Dib. He could justify his own suffering at the Irken's hands, but no one else's...certainly not Gaz.

In an instant of emotional stupidity, Dib looked passed Zim as his thoughts passed over his sister - he suddenly wanted very badly to see what she was doing. Gaz had crept almost noiselessly up behind the invader, her body tightly tensed like a cat's, evidently with the intention of strangling Zim with the sleeves of her straitjacket.

Zim's single eye roved over Dib's face. The magenta orb glittered, antennae standing bolt upright in realization. With a single glance Dib had doomed them both.

Pivoting on a spiked leg, Zim abandoned his focus on Dib and turned on Gaz, who stood hardly two feet from him. She gaped up at him, lost without the element of surprise and crippled with her still strapped-together sleeves. For a moment she hesitated. And then, with a roar-like battle cry, she threw herself bodily into Zim's delicate-looking form.

Gaz didn't need her hands to fight. She managed to knock Zim to the ground using only her weight, stomping her boots down on Zim's spider legs in an attempt to snap them in half.

Twisting around on top of him, Gaz held the sleeves out tight in front of her. A makeshift enough garrote, to be sure. She bore down on top of Zim, pressing the strap of fabric against his throat while the Irken rasped and struggled beneath her.

"GIR! APREHEND HER!" Zim screeched between gasps.

Dib felt his brief flurry of hope melt into a damp mass at the bottom of his stomach. He'd forgotten about the little robot, who up until now had been playing quietly in the corner with a few toys. With a burst of fire from his feet, GIR rocketed across the room to his master's aid, throwing Gaz off of Zim in a sweep of his metallic arms. Gaz moaned angrily, reduced to a slumped pile of violet hair and twisted canvas.

"Don't you touch me! Don't you fucking touch me! NOT AGAIN."

GIR was already on her. Gaz kicked against him, trying to thrash away, screaming until her voice cracked - but for all his incompetence GIR was still a robot, and he had no muscles to grow tired. There was a rattling of buckles, a handful of swears from Gaz, and soon her arms were strapped back around her as securely as before.

"Excellent, GIR," Zim said approvingly, rubbing his throat where Gaz had nearly throttled him. He the robot off of Gaz, much to GIR's disappointment. And with a single motion that was shocking in its sudden brutality, Zim knelt on his spider legs - grabbing Gaz roughly by the front of her jacket - and slammed her against the wall.

"Contrary to what your people seem to think, an Irken Elite is not a piece of meat to be butchered. However, if it is a piece of meat you want, Dib, then I am more than willing to provide you one. That is all your sister will be once I am finished with her," Zim called over his shoulder.

Beneath his grip Gaz was nearly hyperventilating as she tried to fight against her captor, hair sticking to her face, eyes crazed. With one real hand Zim grabbed a handful of her hair and held her head still.

Dib watched in gape-mouthed horror as Zim positioned one of his spiked legs over Gaz's temple. Not to kill her, Dib realized - Zim was going to lobotomize her. It was a sort of sick and horrific irony that Zim was adopting one of humanity's greatest atrocities. He was going to disconnect part of her brain, enough to make her senseless but not enough that she couldn't feel pain.

Whatever Zim had planned beyond that was more than Dib could comprehend - it was more than his sanity would allow him. He cast about in panicked fervor in his mind, desperate for anything he could do or say to slow the descent of Zim's spider leg.

But what was there? Everything that Dib had used to his advantage in the past was gone. He had no technology at his disposal, no more of the raging ambition or frustrated focus that had spurred him on when he was younger. He was tied down and couldn't fight, and Zim was hardly a being to be reasoned or argued with. Besides, Zim's only concern right now was inflicting suffering on the boy who'd wronged him.

And then Dib realized with a jarring clarity that he had only one thing of value left: himself.

"Wait! You can't do this, Zim. Just listen to me. Please." Dib heard the pleading in his voice, the quavering debasement. Maybe there was a better, stronger man inside of him that resented begging, but the Dib trying to protect his sister felt no such pride. What difference did a little shame make, at this point?

Zim half-turned, the point of his Pak leg still grazing Gaz's temple. "I find it very doubtful that you can concoct any argument which I will find convincing," he said disinterestedly.

Beneath his spiked limb Gaz thrashed wildly against her bindings, eyes angry and unfocused. Dib wasn't even sure if she was listening to them, but he spoke anyway.

"If you let her go - if you don't hurt Gaz - then I'll go quietly. I won't try to fight, I won't try to get away. You've got to admit that I'm pretty smart, and Gaz can be pretty difficult. If you do like I ask you won't have to deal with either of those problems. Gaz doesn't have anything to do with this. She doesn't deserve to get hurt for my mistakes. Please, Zim. Just let her go. You can do whatever you want to me after that."

Dib listened to his voice wavering softly in the room, which had become deafeningly silent. Even GIR seemed to have stopped his normal mewling to listen to Dib's offer, before going back to playing with something in the corner.

Gaz was the first to shatter their meditations. "Dib, you fucking MORON. Why would you say some stupid shit like that?" her voice was a snarl of anger that made Zim jump back a fraction of an inch. Every line of his sister's face was set on edge, her hazel eyes slit and glimmering dangerously.

If Zim was otherwise bothered by Gaz's sudden eruptive outburst, he gave no notice. He'd turned his back to her, in fact, staring at Dib with a strange, half-perplexed expression. The lack of a pupil in Zim's eye made it difficult to tell where exactly he was looking, but the creeping sensation Dib felt at the back of his neck tended not to lie.

"And if I accepted this...bargain, how do I know that your considerably more capable sister would not just wreak her vengeance on me later? She has certainly saved your sorry hide before," Zim said.

"I won't."

Gaz spoke to Zim, her voice flat and featureless. A stone monolith of simplicity and enigma. Both boys shifted their gaze to Dib's stoic, strait-jacketed sister. The idea that Gaz would rescue him had barely entered his mind - he just wanted her to get away, at this most hopeless point - but he was bothered by the finality of her statement.

"You won't? Gaz, you can't mean that. I know things look bad right now, but you can't-"

"No! I won't!" she screamed, suddenly, with a vehemence that seemed to irradiate the air around her. "Take him! I'm sick of spending all my time looking after him! If you want a specimen that doesn't do anything except have emotional breakdowns and talk out of his ass, then by all means - Dib's the one you want."

"W-what?" Dib stuttered out, gears grinding falteringly in his brain as he tried to ascribe a meaning to her words. A meaning that didn't rob every purpose from his meager existence.

"Maybe he'd finally be good at something as an experiment, because he's a goddamn failure at everything else. He's been screwing my life up from day one. I don't give a fuck what you do to him." She turned her face away from both of them, as if the issue was no longer her concern. A skool-yard quarrel between children.

He tried desperately to look into her eyes, to find some spark of regret or trickery, but she ignored his pleading gaze.

Dib had never really been under the illusion that Gaz was overwhelmed with affection for him. He knew that her attention was begrudging - but it was still there. Through so many years of stupid plans, complaints, scuffles, she had never abandoned him. Gaz was always stoically present, somewhere, and he'd come to see her reliability as an abstract form of love. After all, it was more than their father had done.

For her to forsake him now was unthinkable. He'd offered up his life for her. Fought through an asylum that terrified him, survived pain that nearly snapped his sanity, faced Zim - the sadistic embodiment of all his nightmares - all for the sake of keeping her safe. Gaz was the last thing he had left to care about. And his only tie to humanity thought him a load, a burden to be carried, something worthless.

His anger surprised him. It boiled out from behind some long-locked door, a burning energy that seethed and screamed for destruction. Not the righteous, heroic anger of before - there was no desire for justice here. This was the desperately hopeless wrath of a lost cause. Of the realization that all was nothing except for the heart that beat in his chest and the blood that crept down his fingers.

The bindings that pressed him against the chair became unbearable. Every hair disturbed or cell dislodged by the coils was agony. Even the air itself was suddenly thick and itchy, gumming in his lungs and stinging his eyes. His brain was going to fold in on itself into a delirious origami if he didn't move. This time he would have no brain probes to use as an excuse.

Dib kicked against the floor. The wires wore blisters on his arms as he fought, calling on some archaic energy that ignored decency and cared only for survival. His writhing just meant more contact with the aggravating cords that bound him. The feet of the wooden chair rattled noisily against the ground, jarred by Dib's redoubled efforts to thrash his way free.

Zim laughed coldly at him, seeming genuinely amused by his attempted escape. "What is this? Has your sister's cruelty caused some sort of fit? You can fight against those bindings all you want, Dib - Irken built-cables are indestructible!"

Zim was right. The coils were indestructible. But the inferior human chair was not.

With a final spasm, Dib kicked himself over onto his side - bringing the chair crashing down onto the ground with every bit of his weight to aid it. Years rotting in the drafty insane asylum hadn't done the wood any favors, and it disintegrated into splinters with the impact.

Dib breathed in sharply as the coils around him began to loosen, quickly shaking off his bindings and dislodging wood dust from his clothes. Perhaps on a different day his bones would have ached from the collision, or his skin stung from the slivers embedded at odd angles, but today Dib felt only pure adrenaline coursing through his battered body.

He cleared the distance between the chair and the wall at light speed. He saw Gaz's eyes widen in surprise, Zim beginning to snarl. And then Dib pulled back his fist and rammed it into Zim's face. Every muscle in his body contracted and released with an inhuman focus - all of Dib's confusion and guilt and disappointment and rage crammed neatly into a single swing.

Dib felt a sickening rush of satisfaction as a spray of saliva erupted from the Irken's mouth and he collapsed in a mechanical heap on the floor. Momentum still going, body still screaming, Dib threw himself on Zim's squishy organic form. He heard the packing wham of his fists against Zim's exoskull, over and over, the single eye half dislodged and blood from several sources mingling on the floor.

Zim's Pak legs kicked feebly, needing a brain not blinded by pain to control them. Every strike made the steel tendrils spasm. It felt good, this destruction. It felt horrifyingly, eerily good. The Hunter was proud of him.

That's right! It said. Everyone else hates you, even your sister, but you can't punish all of them! So punish him!

Dib felt something choke. His hands suddenly ached and he leaned back on his heels beside Zim's broken body. Some hot, sticky mass had settled itself in his stomach, blocking up his breathing, blurring his vision. He looked down at his fingers and saw that they were shaking violently even rested on his knees. His knuckles were busted open, green and crimson blood mixed together on his hot fingers.

All Dib could hear was the blood pounding in his ears, the rage within him calming like a receding tide and leaving shame and sickness behind. Was this what even ground felt like? Was this any better, giving in to his destructive urges like an animal?

It was too hard a question. Too much for Dib to handle right now, amidst this sweat and blood and his chest heaving for air. Later. Someday. We'll get back to you as soon as we can.

He forced his eyes away from his hands, looking over at Zim's crippled form. The little alien's chest was still for ten seconds. Twenty. Then he saw it rise very slowly and descend. Dib had no idea how he could breathe with a pounded-in face.

Zim's eye stayed closed. Unconscious. Just like old times.

We're not out of the woods yet, kids. Stay tuned. Let me know how you liked this bit, if you're so moved. Otherwise, I hoped you enjoyed it : ) I'm going camping with a few buddies of mine for the next few days, so I'll probably be slow responding to any messages and/or reviews, but just hang in there and I'll be back before you know it. I love you guys! 3