A/N: Well now, look at that. I bet you all thought this story was dead, didn't you? X) I never gave up on it, though I've contemplated it several times as there's a lot I'm not happy with. I don't see any point in letting it die though. All your reviews have given me so much inspiration and drive to keep going, so I want to thank you all for helping my poor, sick little story stumble along. :')

Without further ado, I give you Chapter 14. :dramatic flourish:

I hope it's enjoyable :3

There were far better ways to wake up than this.

Even the Irken, who didn't have many pleasant memories of waking up himself, had to admit that.

He lay numbly on the hard floor, blood and spent fear hormones swirling in his head.

It took him a few seconds to recall the muscle sequence for thinking.

It took him half a second longer to realise that the act of thinking generally wasn't perceived to have a muscle sequence.

Now testing his other muscles, the alien jolted himself painfully upright, hoping to shake off what seemed to be a temporary stupor. This didn't go down so well after all, as a rush of sensations almost instantly crowded in to replace the numbness, his battered PAK unable to process them all at once. He growled softly, world spinning, 'spooch churning uncomfortably. Upon opening his eyes, which he found to be a bit of a struggle as they seemed to have gummed over, the light hit them like a Viral Tank's bullet and became a mess of sickly colours. Was this like what the humans called being 'hanged-above'? Who cared. It was something like that, anyway…

He gave himself a mental check-over quickly, noting that there was dull pain in his right side (felt like he'd been thrown onto a floor, for some reason), his senses seemed to be somehow misted; fogged over – but his antennae perked at attention, and were practically buzzing with a million high-frequency outputs from whatever the Irk might be his surroundings. He grunted and reached up instinctively with one clawed hand to rub the feeling away, and wound up wobbling dangerously from the loss of support. In addition to the pain, there was something yet more disturbing. A kind of burnt-off, exhausted, yet wary sort of feeling. Like he'd recently been attacked? Threatened? A sharp scent somewhere in close proximity was making his belly turn somersaults, and the strain on his lekku intensify. Whining lightly, he laid his antennae flat and compensated by flicking his tongue out – it too was met with an acrid flavour. It was about this time that his logic center, initially a little sluggish to catch up, decided that perhaps Zim should figure out what the source might be.

Colours separated and his surroundings merged into focus with an unpleasant crash.

The appearance of the human boy happened a little too suddenly for Zim, and logic thrust aside, his back arched instinctively in alarm, lips pulling back to display the rather nasty set of teeth at the creature's disposal. This was not an action he ever remembered performing or having learned, but such cryptic thoughts were the last on his mind. At the same time he tried to back himself onto his haunches, only to be greeted by a spike of resistance – or rather, explosive pain all over his skin that all but evoked a scream from the Irken. He grunted instead and collapsed onto the ground ungracefully, receiving another good dose of pain for the movement.

"Ughhh…" He shivered mildly, wondering what could possibly have driven his body to betray him so. Realising his tongue was protruding and about to be sliced in two by his teeth, he quickly withdrew it, running it around his mouth which was almost equally dry.

A soft inhalation had his attention. Oh of course, the human. He growled and pushed into the ground, lifting his head to focus on the other being in the room. With some relief, he realised he was now able to remember who the chemical scent belonged to. Huh. The Dib… he vaguely remembered… oh yes. Was Zim in danger? No, he thought not. Zim had rescued the little stink-weevil, hadn't he? He was sure he had, he had beaten back the horrible clutches of poisoned Earth water and rescued the Dib! It had gone something like that…

With a heroic bit of effort and not a little discomfort, Zim made the movement from lying prone on the floor to sitting up. Dib watched, but was silent, seemingly poised at the brink of a ledge, judging from his expression. Zim's train of thought was headed in a similar direction. Where had the hurt come from? Was this what a over-hangerer felt like, and what the heck was that cursed word, anyway? Surely the human would have answers for him.

"Human, your stink of terrified feelings is sickening Zim to his very core." Making a repulsed face, Zim stated what was truly foremost on his mind. It had come out of nowhere.

Dib started at this. He appeared to be somehow torn, and addressed this by replying with an indecipherable muddle of half-words, none of which served to communicated either side of whatever feelings he might've been having. Soon, however, he found his tongue. "Are you feeling well?"

Zim blinked, at both the question and the thunderstruck expression of the human. It seemed to all too closely tied in with the traces of that unidentifiable feeling he'd noticed before in himself, that hiding-in-the-dark-after-an-attack feeling. Unable to put a claw on it, though, he tried to put it out of his mind for now and found himself happy to focus on a different set of troubles than his own (what he refused to call) weaknesses.

He grunted. "Zim is fine. Only small aches." Finding his voice to rattle oddly, he swallowed, making a face at the stale taste.

Dib only narrowed his eyes at this.

"Then what was all that screaming, and," he made scratching gestures in the air, "clawing me?"

Most confused, Zim frowned back at the teen. Surely he'd have noticed if he was putting harm on the human. He was fond of keeping track of his battles and scuffles. Though if he'd done what Dib recounted, it might explain all that spent energy in his system. He crossed his sore arms with a grimace.

"I remember no such thing, human."

"You were asleep, so that makes sense. But you must have been feeling something, surely?"

Zim didn't move, and a quick search in his short term memory revealed nothing. The last thing he could remember was the sight of rushing water, and perhaps a dark period and a jumble of feelings that he couldn't quite place. He shook his head slowly. "How does Zim know it is not your fragile human mind imagining things?"

Dib shuffled a little closer, and Zim stiffened, taken by surprise as the boy lifted his shirt a little. "Is that proof enough for you?" He said flatly.

The alien stared at the thin grooves etched into Dib's skin. They were crisscrossed and messy, blurred with drying blood, but as Zim put a claw forward to examine more closely, he could see a definite match between the marks and his own talons. With a small bemused noise, he then brought his own hand up to his face to stare detachedly at. Without really thinking he flexed his claws as though to make sure they were his own, before scenting them closely and taking a whiff of blood. Huh.

Returning his gaze to the human, who was now staring at him with a face almost as disconcerted as the one he'd woken up to, he waved a hand in front of the boy's face. "Eh…" He was unsure what to make of any of this.

A/N: I'm so sorry for the shortness of this chapter D: I was keen to get something up after slacking off for the past months, plus there's another perspective change after this, so I hope this does alright for now. I have several more chapters in progress, so I'm hoping to update a little more frequently than I have been. With any luck I'll have chapter fifteen done tomorrow, but it's not certain. Also, some of the confusion in this chapter should make sense a little later on. Thanks again for the support with this story ^^