Hello everyone! This is my first Invader Zim fiction; I'm posting it under an alternate account because if anybody from real life finds me, I will get strange looks. lol

This fic just suddenly occurred to me as I was washing some dishes. I'm not usually this morbid, lol, but I had to get this out of my system. I've written this all in one take, so if there's any mistakes, that's why. Also, this is told entirely in Gaz's point of view - so hopefully if it's confusing to you, it means it's confusing to Gaz as well. :-)

Please review and tell me what you think, especially if I have anyone completely out of character. I'm always looking for tips to improve my writing. Review and you can have an e-Taco!

Disclaimer: I don't own Invader Zim. DUH.

She walked in the door, randomly tossed her GameSlave 3 on a couch, went to the kitchen and started washing the dishes. Below, in the basement, she could hear the sounds of her father performing yet another of his endless experiments. She unconsciously blocked the noise and scrubbed harder. It didn't matter that he couldn't care less whether she was home or not. Nothing mattered. Nothing had mattered for as long as she could remember. Even her video games were meaningless.

She was seventeen now, but she hadn't changed much. She still wore the same style of clothes she had when she was twelve, the same necklace, the same hair. She still projected an attitude of disdain and anger - but for the last few years it had been undermined by something far more terrifying. Cold apathy. She still brought her game console to school, filling every second with the empty satisfaction of sending innocent pixellized pigs into oblivion. She had known for a while now that it was just a shell, a mask. Once she had used the games as a way to escape her pain. Now they were a habit kept long after the pain itself had disappeared into indifference.

A terrible piece of burnt-on food stared stubbornly at her from the bottom of a cooking pot. She reached for the cupboard and took out a shiny razor blade, using it to scrape off the offending piece.

Zim still came to skool every day. She watched him at lunch, sometimes. Dib still ranted on to her about how he was trying to destroy the earth. She'd seen Zim without his disguise plenty of times; she knew that what Dib told her was true. She simply didn't care. Let the earth be destroyed. It was a pointless place anyway.

She would have felt sorry for Zim, if she thought herself capable of feeling. He wore a mask just as she did. She knew that he hated the Earth, that its people and creatures caused nothing but discomfort for him. She could tell, as she watched him stare sullenly at a tray of cafeteria food, that he'd give anything to be back on his own planet. And she knew he wouldn't leave until his mission was over.

Thus began her obsession as one day she felt strangely compelled to take a different way home, one that led by Zim's house. Every day after that she followed him home, from a distance. She didn't try to do anything else. She just suddenly felt a need to watch him as much as possible. Suddenly he began to seem like a tiny island of sanity in a pointless world.

She walked in the door and threw her GameSlave 3 on the table. Today Zim had looked at her. She was watching him at lunch again when he'd suddenly jerked his head up to meet her eyes. He stared quizzically for a few seconds, while she sat unable to move; then he'd returned to glaring at his tray of food. She'd wanted so much to say something to him - anything - tell him that they were alike. But she had stopped herself forcefully. She'd decided not to feel any more a long time ago. No reason to break the pledge now. She'd returned to eating her lunch, composed and blank as always.

Now she made her way to the kitchen. The sink was full of dishes again; her father and Dib never bothered to wash them. Before she reached the sink she could see that there was need of the razor blade. She sighed inwardly, but her face showed nothing. She took out the razor and began to scrape.

She could tell right away that something was wrong, that morning. Zim seemed to have lost all of his arrogance, all of his confidence. He didn't bother pretending to eat his hideous lunch; he just threw it into the trash and sat down to sulk. Dib moved in on him right away.

"What's the matter, Zim? Your latest plan to destroy the earth collapse around you?" He laughed derisively.

Zim sighed and glared up at his arch-enemy. "You don't have to worry about your pitiful planet any more, Dib-human."

"Why? Did you finally give up? I was just too good, huh?"

"No!"

"Then what's going on, Zim?"

Zim glowered for a second longer, then stood up and stormed out. She waited until Dib wasn't looking at her to follow him.

He walked home, just like always. She followed him closer this time, still trying to escape detection. He entered the door of his base, knocking the head off one of the robo-parents with a fist, then slammed it. She waited for about five minutes until he re-emerged, Gir beside him asking gibberish questions. He started walking purposefully towards the park. She followed again.

Something was different, but it took her a couple minutes to figure it out. He wasn't wearing his disguise. Neither was Gir.

Zim walked until he came to the bridge over the river, in the middle of the park. The area was deserted. He sat down on the edge, looking broken and faraway. She'd never seen him look like this before. She hid in some bushes to watch him.

Gir sat down next to Zim, subdued for once at his master's sudden quietness. "What's goin' on?" he asked in his cheery voice.

"The mission's over, Gir." She'd never heard him sound so depressed.

"Yay!" Gir got up and started to dance.

"That's not good, Gir."

"Oh." He sat back down again. "We gonna go home now?"

"No, Gir. We're not welcome on Irk."

"We gonna stay here? I like it here!"

Zim looked over at Gir with sadness, and what might almost be sympathy. "Come here, Gir."

Gir complied. "Master need a hug?"

Zim took Gir's arm and pulled the little robot into his tight grip. "Goodbye, Gir." He started to reach for the deactivation switch.

Gir began to plead. "Master, no! I loves you! No no no! What about the taquitos? I loves them..."

Her eyes widened the tiniest bit as Gir died. She stared in morbid fascination as Zim held onto the little robot's shell, as if unwilling to let it go. She watched as he finally dropped the cold metal into the river.

Zim stood up on the very edge of the bridge, on the wrong side of the railing. She watched, captivated, as he uncovered the self-destruct button hidden in his glove. He turned his huge red eyes to a fixed point in the afternoon sky - the direction of Irk, she imagined. He gazed for a second, and then he pressed the button.

His PAK worked fast. The deactivation spread throughout his body within ten seconds. From her spot in the bushes she saw his eyes leave the point in the sky, to gaze lifelessly into the water he'd hated so much for one moment before his limp body fell into the cold and murky river.

She walked home along the same path she'd taken for days - this time she was dazed and numbed, but outwardly she looked like the same apathetic person she'd been a month ago. When she passed the place where his base used to be, she was greeted by a pile of tiny, burnt debris - completely unrecognizable. He must have set some sort of bomb before he left. She passed it by without more than a glance.

She walked in the front door and dropped her GameSlave 3 on the floor, then walked to the kitchen. She had loved him. She, who'd sworn never to love again - who'd thought herself incapable of love. She'd fallen in love with someone who wasn't even human - maybe that was even the reason. And it had taken his death for her to realize that he was all she had.

The sink was full of dishes. She walked over and began to wash them. Dib had burnt yet another breakfast, and the remains were stuck to the bottom of the pan. She sighed, reached for the cupboard and removed the razor blade, rusty now. She stared at it for a long moment, then slowly and methodically slit her wrists, the blank expression on her face never changing.