A/N: So I finally had an urge to write again, after nearly 9 months of lackluster inspiration. The words just refused to come to me for this chapter, regardless of how many times I picked it up and put it back down. So to put things simply, this chapter was a challenge. Not certain if I'm entirely satisfied with it just yet, but I think I finally got it to a point of being reasonable for posting. Not great, but at least it's something. Hopefully future chapters for this story won't challenge me as much as this one did, because I'd still very much like to complete it. The story itself is something I still think about often. And I'm trying to get back into a habit of writing a little bit each weekend, if not each day. Sadly, life is much less forgiving in that department though. So for the time being, take what you will from this quick upload, granted any of my readers are still present and waiting to see this story finished one day. Even I don't know what the future might hold, but all I can do for now is take one step at a time towards completing it. Hopefully it will pay off one day. Lots of love to any lingering readers. 3

-Pat

ZADR Orange Chapter 206

Warnings: Extreme OOCness

Rating: M for later chapters

Disclaimer: We do not own Invader Zim, nor any of the characters from it. We do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Zim: Notgonnadie

Dib: Me

Enjoy. =3

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Studying his mate's downtrodden features in the moments following his somber proposition, Zim discharged a sigh that was altogether dismal before shaking his head in opposition to that idea. "We couldn't wipe that many memories all at once." he replied. "He might die in the process if we did." he explained, hoping that beyond a shadow of a doubt Dib didn't intend to take things quite THAT far in dealing with this.

"What are we going to do then!?" Dib demanded on a note of desperation that practically begged for a solution that didn't exist. They couldn't do anything that would cause harm to the professor, but at the same time, he didn't wish to be a fugitive in his own hometown. They were already virtually hiding from the ever present threat of the Irken Empire, and while it was true Zim's escape from the clutches of death had gone essentially unnoticed, they couldn't completely rule out the possibility of one day encountering the ones responsible for his imprisonment again. The very thought had Dib pulling his knees in close and hiding his face in the confines of his arms. "...If we let him go, there's no telling what he might do...But if we keep him locked up, someone will be bound to notice and report it to the police..." he murmured despairingly. Without a doubt, they were once again being faced with a predicament that could very well jeopardize everything they'd fought so hard to preserve. And once again, Dib felt perilously close to losing the one thing that was holding everything together for him.

Watching in discreet solicitude as the hybrid lost himself to the severity of his thoughts, Zim echoed a recurrent sigh and reached to trace a hand through the subtle nest of cowlicks that escaped Dib's hair in half coils. "Well...Let's just see what happens when he wakes up..." he advised in a voice less unsettled than he realistically felt in that moment.

Lifting his head by just a fraction of an inch so that his eyes were the only facet of his face visible to the Irken, Dib then nodded his head passively before returning to his hiding place with a rueful whisper of compliance. "...Okay..." he agreed without protest, though his antennae remained limp against the surface of his scalp.

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After reaching a consensus that the retrieval of Tak's ship would be better left for another day, each respective couple dispersed from each other's presence to go about their business as usual. While Tak and Gaz took to the kitchen for a late morning breakfast, Dib meanwhile, sat motionless on the living room sofa, simply staring into the cage that detained his immobilized father. Although Zim had perched himself directly next to the hybrid, as could be expected, he knew the other's attention remained engrossed in a sea of conundrums that no physical contact or words of comfort could penetrate. He hated feeling so useless to answer even a single one of the teen's spiraling questions, but as things stood at the moment, none of them could know how things would unfold from here. Questions of his own ran rampant through his mind, and all he could do to quell the foreign frenzy was maintain the dead silence that had descended into the atmosphere.

As a handful of hours ticked by in the interlude that separated chaos from the unknown, Dib's eyes remained intense in their surveillance of the unconscious Professor Membrane. He hadn't spoken a single word for what felt like an eternity now but had simply drifted through that time in search of a clue that might unravel the future for him. No such hint presented itself to him though, and before his thoughts could take him to square one once again, he finally broke the deafening silence with a single, simple statement. "...I hate him..." the words sprouted from his lips faster than he could stop them. Regardless of how he tried, there could be no envisioning a future that wouldn't fill his mind with nightmares.

Although the statement was faint in its delivery, Zim couldn't help but jolt at the outburst. With heavy eyes and a great deal of mental exhaustion to boot, he nodded his head slowly in acknowledgment of those words while all the while fighting the urge he had to chance a glance in the hybrid's general direction. "I know you do..." he answered back in nearly as lifeless a manner as Dib had stated his verdict.

"Do you...Do you think I'm a bad person for saying something like that...?" Dib then asked, never once taking his eyes off of the man he'd once referred to as his father. The thought occurred to him that he'd never truly hated his father prior to the incident that had resulted in his eviction from the house. Rather, he'd spent countless hours, days, and even years trying to prove his worth to the man, all so he could gain even a shred of the respect that had time and again eluded him. Parental affection was something he'd learned to live without in the years following his mother's death, but the thought of being respected, if nothing else, had nearly consumed his existence entirely. Perhaps that was why it had been so hard for him to accept Zim's desire for intimacy at the start of their relationship. Even now, he felt at a loss over how useless a goal it had been to strive towards. With an uncomfortable shifting of his weight, he then pulled his knees in to cement them as close to his chest as his large belly would permit.

Sensing Dib's restlessness as though primed to detect it in even the faintest of motions, Zim finally turned his face to scan the hybrid warily. In the time they'd been together, he'd formed his own opinions on the matter. Taking a deep breath to center himself, he then answered the other's query with a tightly-controlled sentiment. "No...He did wrong to you...but...being he doesn't remember the incident...maybe you should give him another chance..." Zim prompted gingerly, only to be met with a look that quickly derailed his bid to make peace.

"WHAT!?" Dib bristled at the suggestion, his antennae shooting upwards with an automatic leap before eyes alight with resentment fixed their gaze on Zim incredulously. "Are you crazy, Zim!? What do you suppose might happen should he use that as an opportunity to strap you to an autopsy table!? It's bad enough he's figured out I'm pregnant! You couldn't possibly believe someone like HIM would keep our secret hidden! Besides...H-He...He doesn't deserve another chance! And he had no right to say what he said to us!" Dib's voice rose sharply as he returned his gaze to Membrane and clutched at the sofa's edge with hands that were shaking. Despite how he'd attempted to forget them, the sting of the man's words from that day still intruded his thoughts often and whipped at his conscience as fiercely as that of a physical blow. Returning his face to his knees, Dib then exhaled a shaky breath that conveyed more grief than fury.

Retiring his objective opinion on the matter to once again soothe his mate's sorrow, Zim reached to pull Dib in close to him and gave the hybrid a reassuring squeeze. "Dib...Oh, Dib...Shhh...It's okay. I've got you. He's locked up now. It's okay." he murmured in faint whispers to the other, though the ruckus was starting to rouse the unconscious professor.

"I feel so stupid for having ever tried to gain his respect!" Dib continued in a whimper that was strained with emotion. "For so long, even after my mom had died, I looked up to him! I...I just wanted to make him proud...But all he ever cared about was "REAL" science! I tried to make him see what I saw! I wanted him to love me for who I am and not what he wanted me to be! But he just never cared...And if I had realized that sooner, I never would have wasted all that time trying to please him..." Dib's antennae shivered with the same anguish his words were already reflecting. "...I would have left sooner if I had known he hadn't wanted us around to distract him..." his voice then fell to a detached remoteness that no words of solace could alleviate. As the "failed" offspring of the one and only PROFESSOR MEMBRANE, it seemed only natural their father would want nothing to do with them. He was far from the heir to his father's scientific legacy that Membrane had wanted him to be, and he doubted his sister was any closer to that role than he. So of course it made sense that the man's words that day had been of the disowning variety.

"Th-that's not true..." Membrane suddenly interjected from his spot within the caged enclosure. The immediate throb of an ensuing headache was the first thing to register with him as he sat up in his spot; then the memory of his previous discoveries just moments before he'd blacked out on them. Taking a moment to reestablish his bearings, he then took a deep breath before continuing on in a weary voice. "You weren't a distraction...You were all I had left of your mother." he said as an automatic hand came up to cradle his head against the temporary spinning that still held his vision hostage.

Dib tensed at the sound of his father's voice. He hadn't been aware Membrane was awake and listening. Needing a moment to steady his own voice, Dib clutched at Zim's uniform by the hem nearest to him and slicked his antennae back to press defiantly against his head. "Th-That's all we ever were to you though...Just something to remember her by...That was the only reason you wanted us around...And if you couldn't have that, there was no point in us even being there...You said so yourself! We weren't something that you wanted! We were just something that she wanted!" he argued back bitterly, infuriated by the man's divergence from what he had stated prior.

At hearing that, Membrane could only cast his son a look of utter confusion. He had never said that...had he? "No, Dib. I love you and your sister. I just...get so caught up in work sometimes...You both remind me of her a lot...It hurt being around you; so I buried myself in my work." he countered flimsily, all the while aiming an uncertain glance towards Zim. "I didn't know this would be the result..." he then muttered to himself and smoothed a hand over the curvature of his hair. Although the other sat in full exposure to his priorly-stated identity, Membrane still couldn't fully rule out the possibility of this being a dream. Could aliens really exist? he asked himself again. And if so, why was it only now he was questioning the credibility of such a speculation? Hadn't his son brought him countless sources of proof over the years? He angled a brief glimpse to Dib's fully rounded stomach again. No, this wasn't a dream. He was as awake now as he'd been before.

Refusing to meet the professor's gaze even after Membrane had denied his beliefs on the matter, Dib swallowed yet another wave of lingering resentment before snapping back at the man in a tone that was as much dismayed as it was critical. "How can you expect me to believe that!? Your words when we left were, 'I loved your mother. All she ever wanted was children. Why would I not have given her what she wanted?' You then went on to say that you didn't see what she ever saw in us!" Dib curled in on himself even more, the memory of that altercation tearing open old wounds he'd months ago attempted to rid himself of.

Confusion once again took hold of the professor. He had no memory of saying anything so harsh, though the words themselves seemed to stir something inside him. "I...I don't understand. When did I say any of this?" he inquired helplessly, his hands meanwhile performing a gesture that could only be described as stumped.

"It was right before we left the house." Gaz spoke up before anyone else could intervene.

Spotting his daughter leaning against a door frame on the other side of the room from them, Membrane couldn't help but feel his stomach muscles tighten in response to her sudden appearance. He stared at her with a near palpable affection she'd seen only a handful of times in her life. "Gaz..." he began to say but was swiftly interrupted.

"Save it. Memory or no memory, you DID say those words." Gaz confirmed her brother's assertion before passing her eyes over Membrane to look elsewhere in the room.

"Well, I don't see why I would have." Membrane persisted firmly, never once altering his gaze from the spot where his daughter stood.

"THAT'S BECAUSE YOU DIDN'T WANT TO ANSWER TO WHY YOU NEVER PAY ANY ATTENTION TO US! Why you always ignore us! Why you never believe a word we have to say! Why you DON'T want to believe a word we say, even when the proof is standing right in front of you!" Dib suddenly exploded, his head finally lifting to glare daggers at Membrane. "You never listened! And when we tried to make you, you kicked us out!" his voice nearly broke as he unloaded years worth of frustration in only a few strained exclamations.

A remorse the likes of which he'd never experienced before impaled Membrane's conscience with a contrasting sense of accountability. "I'm...sorry, son...I just..." Membrane tried to find the words that would best express his desire to make things right. "No...I'm just sorry...But please, son...I'm listening now." he insisted humbly, hoping to salvage what he could of their clearly tattered relationship.

A little caught off guard by the intensity of his father's stare, Dib recoiled from the man's directness by shifting his attention back to his lap. His antennae hung limp at the sides of his face and an interval of silence preceded his next response. "I...just don't know that I have anything more to say to you at this point...What more could I say that hasn't been said twenty million times in the past already...? What more could you possibly want to hear from me? That I'm gay? That I'm in love with an alien? That he's shown me more love in the past 7 months than you ever did in 16 years of my life?" Dib's voice faltered a bit, causing Zim to reach out and take his hand in an effort to help steady him.

Membrane looked away again as a portion of his resolve to fix things vacated his defenses. "...I'm sorry..." he said again, waiting a tentative number of seconds before transitioning his apology to the offensive. "I'm sorry I let myself get so caught up in work sometimes. I'm sorry that I haven't spent any time with you. And..." he risked a glance in Zim's direction again. "...I'm sorry I didn't believe you for all these years." he amended the presumptions he'd held tight to whenever his son came looking to him for backing on.

Fingering the engagement ring Zim had given him with the thumb of his opposing hand, Dib appeared about ready to break down completely, his nervous fidgeting very quickly giving way to cracks in his indignation. The control he'd so carefully barricaded his feelings around was now hovering dangerously close to vulnerability. He wanted to stay mad at the man but suddenly wasn't sure whether to reject his apology or not. After everything they'd been put through, it seemed only logical to dismiss it at face value. He wasn't the only one hurting though. Eyeing the small diamond nested at the center of his ring, he then flashed Gaz a look that only she could easily decipher. The look she returned to him had Dib taking in a deep breath. " ...For so long, I just wanted things to change..." Dib's voice trembled but sustained a touch of composure. "I wanted mom to be alive again. I wanted us to be a family. But now...Now I don't know what I want..." his antennae drooped to the near lifeless weariness he'd exhibited earlier in the day.

"I know, Dib...And I tried. You have no idea the number of times I tried to bring her back. I didn't know how to take care of children. I didn't know how to be a parent. And its clear for me to see, you both know that already..." the professor sighed at the admittance of his own shortcomings. The truth of the matter was, he'd known all this long before his kids were born. He'd known it long before he'd met his wife. But when she came to him, so young and loving and full of life, he just couldn't turn down her request for children. She'd been everything to him, his absolute purpose for living at the time. So how could he have foreseen a future without her? He'd never imagined that shortly after Gaz's birth, he'd be left reeling through the darkness with two young children to raise on his own.

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A/N: And there you have it for Chapter 206. Until next time~