A/N: I forgot to mention on the prologue that this story is inspired by the unaired episode 'The Trial'. In case anyone hasn't read the transcript or watched the reading online, it's well worth it! I so wish they had made that episode.
Chapter 1
Dib trudged reluctantly along the grubby corridor, boots scuffing on the floor as he dragged his feet. It wasn't so much that he hated school, more the people in it. He found the work easy at least but it was boring that none of it challenged him, and he had no actual interest in any of it. Of course that only made the other students hate him all the more. He was probably the smartest kid in the school but he never got involved in anything that he didn't absolutely have to attend, which estranged him from all the others.
He hadn't changed all that much – his unruly spiked up hair was still the same, just bigger and messier than ever. Gone was the smiley face t shirt – he now wore a blue and black baseball top with a pale grey ghost on the front, black skinny jeans and converse. He still had a trench coat which reached about knee length, but he no longer wore it as obsessively as he had when he was a kid. Wearing it indoors was just dumb after all.
He also still believed in everything paranormal of course, he'd just matured enough to realise that screaming and shouting about it didn't do him any favours. No one had ever listened to him and they weren't going to start now. He'd learnt that the hard way. Life had only got tougher since moving up to high school. No longer did it simply earn him name calling and wedgies - these days it was more likely to be met with a fist to his face.
So he'd learnt to keep his mouth shut, keep to himself and attempt to be as invisible as possible. He had quietly hoped high school would give him the opportunity to make at least one friend, but he seemed to have a talent for repelling people. He just couldn't get past the fact that he saw the world so differently to everyone else. Sometimes he felt like a different species.
Speaking of which, he hadn't seen Zim around today. He felt a lot less animosity towards Zim lately. He'd lost a lot of heart trying and failing to prove to the world that he was right about aliens, and it had eventually taken its toll. He had gradually come to realise that Zim was so incapable that he wasn't really a threat, and suddenly grown up matters seemed more important, like what the hell he was going to do with his life and whether he was going to spend the rest of it alone. He still had to put Zim in his place frequently, and he kept a check on him so that he didn't blow the Earth up by accident or something ridiculous, but they seemed to less and less often end up in those crazy situations these days.
As his burning hatred of the alien diminished along with his youth, it left the fascination for him to focus on. After all Zim WAS an alien, and that was incredible. He was also the only person that ever bothered to even acknowledge his existence. He didn't really understand why Zim still went to school every day, but he just put it down to him being dim in the end. It allowed Dib to keep an eye on him at least.
But today Zim hadn't shown up, and for some reason it was bugging him. It was quite unusual for the Irken to miss a day, and it got him wondering. So after the school bell sounded the end of the day he found himself headed towards that strange green house.
He hadn't been here for a while but he still remembered all the ways he could get in. He had actually gotten very knowledgeable about Irken technology due to Tak's ship still being in his possession. He had even been able to use it to learn the language - after all observing Zim and tinkering with the ship were pretty much his only hobbies, so he'd had plenty of practise.
It proved useful now as he easily slipped past Zim's poor defences and down into the heart of the base. Being down here felt strangely nostalgic, and he wondered idly how long it had actually been since he was last here. Though he never would have admitted it at the time, he really had had a lot of fun foiling Zim's stupid plans. It was probably the only time he'd ever been happy. He often mourned for that childish naivety and simplicity, he had always been able to forget how alone he was when he was chasing Zim. Growing up sucked.
He began to drift out of his musings as he became aware that his intrusion hadn't yet met with manic screaming and fist shaking, and began to really wonder what was going on. Zim should have detected him by now. Eventually he pulled himself into a bigger room with a console and a large screen in front of it, and what he saw there made his stomach flip.
Zim was hanging limply from the ceiling by his pak, which was hooked into the lab by thick menacing looking cables. His body looked so painful hanging at that angle, his feet just grazing the floor but not supporting him, his back to arched over. He didn't move at all.
After a moment of stunned silence, Dib suddenly sprung to action, dashing over to lifeless form.
"Zim! Oh my God, what the hell happened? Zim can you hear me?" Dib gently shook him, but gained no response. He knelt down to look up into Zim's face. His eyes hung half open, staring ahead unfocused and unblinking.
Was he dead? He raised a hand to feel Zim's cheek cautiously – it was quite cool, but not stone cold. Dib's heart pounded in his chest. He couldn't understand why he was feeling so distressed, it wasn't like he liked Zim… did he? He shook his head of the useless thoughts. All he knew was that for whatever reason he couldn't just leave Zim like this. He looked up at the screen before him. Large Irken letters flashed on the screen, and Dib had to take a moment to calm himself before he could translate them.
'PAK MALFUNCTION.' He knew that was bad, Irkens needed their paks to live. He understood them to be like a computer that ran the body as a brain does in humans. He looked around for other clues and saw the scattering of tools on the desk and floor. He had seen Zim tampering with his pak before through his spy bugs, he seemed to do it a lot but he had never understood why. He must have gone wrong somewhere before placing the thing back on his body.
"Idiot." Dib muttered under his breath. He tapped a few keys on the console and discovered that the cables connected to Zim were acting as a life support, so he was still alive – though barely. Dib let out a shaky breath that he hadn't realised he'd been holding. He looked again at the tools near his hands. He had used similar ones before that he had stolen from Zim's lab to use on Tak's ship. He picked a couple up with trembling fingers and moved to stand over Zim's back.
"I can do this." He whispered to himself anxiously. He pressed a panel of the pak that wasn't obscured by cables, and it smoothly slid open. He could feel the mechanics of the device humming softly – he'd have to be careful he didn't electrocute the both of them. He took a deep breath to still his shaking hands, and set himself into work mode. Thankfully it all looked quite similar to the rest of Irken technology, and he began to identify the various parts.
After a while of poking around he felt sure he had discovered where the faults lay, and was starting to feel more confident. It looked like Zim had been too rough with his tools the moron, and there were some parts that looked like they needed replacing. So Dib resolutely set to his task, his hands working deftly. It was awkward work but it was what he did best and he managed to lose himself in his mission. With the help of the computer he managed to find the new parts to replace the damaged ones, and after a couple of hours of work he finally set the tools down, wiping the sweat from his brow.
Nervously he slid the panel closed, and with a slick whoosh everything clicked into place. Instantly he could hear the mechanics firing up as one of the panels started to flash red, and he stepped quickly away as he realised what was going to happen.
"Reactivating" A computerised voice came from the pak, and a violent jolt of energy was sent through Zim's body causing it to straighten out in spasm. After the energy had passed the cables detached themselves from the pak and dumped the poor alien unceremoniously on the floor. At first Zim didn't move, his body lying in a slightly sizzling heap on the ground. Dib began to fear the worst, until he saw Zim's antenna twitch and he shakily began to push himself up from the ground into a sitting position.
Slowly Zim's vision came back, and he blinked his sore eyes furiously from the dryness. He coughed at how raw his throat was too - why did he feel like he'd been resurrected from the dead? His head pounded and his back was throbbing, his hands and feet were numb and he began to shiver with cold.
"What the hell happened," Zim's voice rasped. Movement caught his eye and looked towards the skinny form approaching him apprehensively. "Dib? What… how? Why?" Zim's brain felt like pudding. What was the Dib doing in his base?
Dib warily knelt down next to the pitiful form. He wasn't sure how Zim was going to take this. "You were in quite a bad way when I found you, so I fixed you up. Your pak was broken." He gazed at Zim, waiting for some sort of madness or anger to spark up at his words. For a time Zim's face just remained blank, and Dib could almost hear his mind ticking as it processed this information. Zim's eyes suddenly bugged in realisation.
The veil of fog that hung over his mind parted, and he abruptly remembered everything. The Dib had fixed his precious pak? How was that even possible? His pulse quickened, and his Irken equivalent of a heart began to beat furiously – a sensation he wasn't all too familiar with when not accompanied by a burning rage.
"Help me up," He reached a shaky claw out towards Dib, his voice quiet but urgent. This wasn't at all the reaction Dib had been expecting - just to hear the Irken talk instead of yell was shocking enough. He quickly moved to grab the Irken under his skinny arms and hoisted him up to plop him in the chair before his screen. As soon as he could reach Zim began typing away at the console, and a sleek cable came shooting down from the ceiling to plug into his pak.
"Zim, what the heck happened to you? What's going on?" Dib asked in bewilderment.
'Analysing pak' came up on the screen, and Dib watched as a progress bar slowly filled. Zim ignored him completely, his eyes glued to the screen as the results loaded. 'Analysis complete. Pak at 100% functionality. No errors found.' Zim's mouth hung open.
Everything flooded into him at reading those words, a million thoughts rushing through his head. He was fixed. He was no longer a defective Irken. It was as if all the little scattered pieces of his mind had finally dropped into place and everything made sense for the first time. He understood the whole lot - all the things his delusional mind had been keeping from him.
He wasn't an invader. The Tallest hated him. They hadn't sent him here to conquer Earth – why would they, it was a wasteland. They had sent him here as banishment, just to be as far from them as they could manage. His trial had been an attempt on his life. They didn't answer his calls because they didn't care, they didn't want to see his face anymore. He was a complete disgrace. The humiliation struck him with a wave of nausea. He had been on this planet for years and had nothing to show for it. All the other invaders had only needed a matter of weeks, if not days. Memories of all his stupid mistakes flooded his mind, the horror of all the things he'd done overwhelming him. He screwed his eyes tight shut but the images wouldn't go away.
Dib saw Zim suddenly turn rigid, his hands clenching into fists so tightly that they shook, his teeth grinding together. "Zim… what's wrong?" He gingerly reached out a hand to touch Zim's shoulder. Zim's eyes shot open and his head snapped around. Dib flinched back as Zim's enraged eyes bore into his, and he suddenly felt incredibly vulnerable.
"What the hell are you doing in here?! You stupid human, this is an Irken base!" Zim screamed at Dib, emotion making his voice crack. "I SHOULD KILL YOU FOR INTRUDING!" Zim's spider legs whipped out, rising him out of the chair and towards Dib in a flash. One of the legs darted out, slashing down Dib's front.
Dib moved back just quickly enough to prevent the razor sharp leg from splitting him clean in half, but he could feel the warmth of his blood seeping into his top. He cried out in pain, stumbling backwards against the wall. Adrenaline kicked in and he fled back through the opening he had come through, clutching his front in agony.
Zim's metallic legs retracted and he dropped to his knees, Dib already forgotten as his rage ebbed back into despair.
What was he going to do now? For the first time in his life he was actually capable of being a real invader. On top of that he was a pretty decent height too, tall enough that in a normal scenario he would have been well regarded back on Irk. It was all he had ever wanted, to prove that he could actually do things right and receive respect and adoration from his people.
But he knew it was already too late. He thought again on all the terrible things he'd done, and knew instantly that the Tallest hated him far too much to ever give him a chance to redeem himself. His mind roiled in turmoil, his claws raking against the metal of the ground in frustration. He looked up in surprise as his hand slipped in something wet. He brought his hand up to his face, staring at the crimson liquid on his fingers.
Dib's blood. He gave a shudder as a mixture of horror and guilt washed over him. Why had he done that? Dib had just saved his life, and not just that but actually given him everything he ever wanted. And what had he done? Ripped a hole into the boy's feeble body. Then the penny dropped.
Guilt? Irken's didn't feel guilt. Or horror, or despair. His eyes widened in realisation. This was wrong. So very wrong. He scrambled back over to the screen, hitting the buttons there to bring up the breakdown of his pak analysis, fidgeting impatiently as lines upon lines of data filled the screen. Zim had a hunch about what was going on, the evidence of which was his racing pulse and shaking hands. His eyes zoned straight in on one line.
'Emotional inhibitor inactive.'
All Irken paks were fitted with emotional inhibitors. They were devices which moderate the flow of hormones and other chemicals through their bodies, thereby strictly controlling what emotions they experienced. After all what use are feelings such as guilt, remorse or love to an Irken. They were just obstacles to getting the job done. Standard issue inhibitors created perfect soldiers out of every Irken. In fact Irkens had been using them for so many generations that none of them even remembered what those emotions felt like.
Zims mind whirled, another wave of queasiness causing him to wobble. He lowered himself slowly into his chair. It certainly explained why the last few minutes had been such a rollercoaster for him. He should have realised when he was wallowing in self-pity that if the inhibitor had been active he would have just brushed it off as being in the past and moved on to what he'd do next.
So, he was still defective after all.
He shook his head, trying to clear the gloomy thoughts – they weren't getting him anywhere. He looked again at the screen. '100% functional'. That meant it wasn't broken. He took a deep breath to reassure himself. The Dib must have knocked it when he was poking around in his pak, and managed to disconnect it with his stupid fleshy human fingers. So if it was just dislodged surely it would be easy to fix.
So why was he hesitating? His claws hovered over the key that would bring mechanical arms down to remove his pak so he could rectify the problem.
What was he going to do next? If he went anywhere near the Tallest or Irk they would probably just try to have him killed again, and if he turned the inhibitor back on he'd probably march straight back to them regardless of that fact. Did he really want to be a mindless drone for people who hated him? Some part of him said that this was just the emotions making him question turning it back on.
But still… he hesitated. They were almost intoxicating these strange new feelings, negative or not. He also knew this was a once in a lifetime chance – once he turned it back on there was no way his logical mind would ever turn it back off again. It was a cruel cycle of thought that left his head spinning.
Now he could understand why the humans were all so stupid, how did they ever get anything done with their heads so full of this stuff. He looked at the blood that had started to crust around his claws and felt again that sharp pang of guilt. Strange. He couldn't even really think why he had hated Dib so much before now. After all he was the only human he'd met in all these years that seemed to have an ounce of intelligence. He still couldn't believe he'd been able to fix his pak. Zim then felt his first taste of worry, a particularly unsettling sensation.
His hand lowered back down away from the console. He'd have to make sure that Dib was okay first. For some reason he couldn't get the image of Dib's torn skin out of his mind. It was the least that he could do to repay him after all, and he really didn't trust Earth medicines or procedures one bit. He knew if he turned the inhibitor back on now he wouldn't care anymore, so he could worry about his own situation afterwards.
A/N: Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed the first chapter XD