(A/N: So here it is - the final chapter. Sorry it was so long in coming, but my computer crashed and sent what I'd written of several stories, including this one, spiraling into the dark pits of oblivion. It was rather depressing, and I didn't feel like working on any of these stories and rewriting what had been lost after that. I'm glad I finally sat down and finished this, though - it's one of my favorite stories that I've written, and it deserves an ending. Personally, I like this version a lot better than the original. I hope you do too. Thanks to all my reviewers, and especially invader miz9898, for reminding me people still read this.
Disclaimer: I have boogers! But no ownership of Zim. Sorry.)
Chapter Eight
When Zim opened his eyes, he saw rooftops flashing by. Not realizing what they were at first, he watched them in a sort of hypnotic lull, before fulling coming to and realizing something had him around the waist.
"AH! RELEASE THE ALMIGHTY ZIM OR IT SHALL BE YOUR DOOM, uh, DOOM-MAKER!" he commanded, struggling to free himself.
"Zim! You're alive!" Dib cried with relief, stopping on one flat roof and setting him down carefully, leaning him against a metal flue. Zim stopped struggling and was strangely placid, examining Dib carefully.
"Dib?" he ventured; Dib nodded, his relieved smile rising eagerly to see what he'd say next. "What's wrong with your face?" The smile dropped.
"Great," Dib muttered, getting up and throwing his hands in the air. "I save you from my dad, and FIRST thing you do is insult me!"
"Eh? No, no, that's not what I meant," Zim continued, shaking his head, then staring at Dib intently. "I meant you look... concerned." Dib was uncomfortably quiet for a moment.
"Well, yeah," he admitted at last. "I thought you were dead, or in a coma at least."
"Not for lack of trying," Zim grumbled, rubbing an electric burn beneath his shirt. "That HORRIBLE human didn't stop shocking me for a - " He paused, then looked at Dib again with astonishment as his previous words sank in. "Wait... you SAVED me?"
"I... I did," Dib avered, suddenly surprised himself.
"WHY?" Zim demanded, getting to his feet. "You HATE me!"
"You saved me," Dib replied. "I guess I was just returning the favor. You know?"
Zim studied Dib accusingly for a moment, then looked away. "I know," he said at last, in a tone uncharacteristically somber for him. Dib tried to read Zim's expression and guess what it meant, but he'd never seen it on the alien before.
"Zim, what are you - " Before Dib could finish, Zim lunged forth and grabbed him, forcing his own mouth over the other's. Dib felt Zim's long red tongue snaking into his mouth; something in him moved his own tongue to coil around it. The two alien's tongues tied together tightly for one, blissful minute; then Zim's tongue slid free, as Zim himself pulled away.
"Huh - what?" Dib murmured, confused. He felt a stabbing pain in his back before he saw the extension that had come out of Zim's Pak and arched behind him, and realized the extension digging into his back was what causing the pain. While Dib had been distracted by the kiss, Zim had let the extension out and pricked him.
"I just wanted to see what it was like," Zim stated, the extension returning to his Pak as he backed away. His expression was grim. "Congratulations, Dib. It's what you wanted."
"Zim... you jerk!" Dib seethed, clutching his forehead as an unbearable headache overcame him, his vision going blurry as he began to weaken. "You jerk... what did you do... Zim..." But Zim had already extended his spider legs and clambered away, vanishing over the rooftops into the distance. Dib tried to follow him, but was too dizzy and stumbled, sprawling facefirst. "No... come back... how could you do this... you... jerk..." Then unconsciousness swept over him.
Dib awoke, facedown in the gravel of the rooftop. He groaned and pushed to his feet slowly, wincing as he touched the red impressions the gravel had left on his face. Zim was, of course, nowhere to be seen. Groaning more, he realized he couldn't see much of everything; his vision was horribly out of focus. Just like when he wasn't wearing his glasses... as a human.
He looked at his hands. All he saw were pale peach blurs, but they confirmed his suspicions, as did combing his hand over his head and feeling a head of hair and scythe-lock again. He heard something fall off his back; whirling around and seeing fuzzy pink spots on gray, he knew it was his Pak. Getting to his knees, he examined it carefully, but didn't see much more. Not that he would have anyway; his mind was whirling with too many contradicting thoughts to do much in the way of concentrating on external stimuli. On the hand, he should be happy he was human again - shouldn't he? So why did he have this aching feeling of longing in his gut?
"You jerk, Zim," he muttered again, pulling the Pak close to him and holding it tightly. "You jerk."
Life resumed as usual after that. Membrane disregarded any memories of Zim's capture and subsequent torture as hallucinations and continued with his work as though nothing had happened; Gaz beat him repeatedly with an old shoe, but nothing more; and the rest of the world decided the whole alien thing was just a big fat hoax when he turned up at school the next day, bespectacled and human as ever.
"He just did it for the attention," one student muttered to his friends as Dib passed by on his way to Ms. Bitters's class, and they nodded in full agreement.
Dib received a smackdown from Smacky before class started, which the other students participated in gleefully, leaving him with a black eye and several bruises by the time Bitters slithered in and slammed the door shut behind her. The other students immediately fled to their seats, and Dib's black eye twitched as he limped to his. Zim was so late he got whacked with the tardy beaver this time, but he merely adjusted his wig and took out his book, pretending to read it to avoid meeting Dib's gaze, despite it being upside-down. Not a single insane outburst. Dib would have noticed, but he was too busy avoiding the sight of Zim in turn. The next few hours dragged on miserably for Dib, accentuated by the dull thudding of bruises in his side and confusing sorrows in his head. The lunch hour bell was a heavenly trumphet when it rang out at last. Zim let himself be swept away by the flow of students; Dib followed lastly, alone with his thoughts.
Gaz was already sitting at the usual table. Dib sat down at it too, but found himself seated as far from his sibling as possible without falling off the bench. He stared at the mushy gray concoction he'd been served with misery.
"What's the matter?" Gaz asked, more taunting than caring as she pushed buttons on the GameSlave. "Creamed corn is your favorite." She peered at him meaningfully over the screen. "I'll eat it if you don't."
"Here," he said, shoving it toward her. Eyes never lifting from the screen, Gaz dumped the questionable food on her tray in one swift move, quick to return to her button-mashing. Doing his best to ignore the nauseating sound of his sister shoving spoonful after spoonful of corny paste into her mouth, Dib found himself gazing in Zim's direction. Alone as always, the alien only poked at his tray with a spoon half-heartedly.
"This is isn't right," Dib decided to himself after a while. Shoving away from the table, he got up and walked over to Zim's table. Zim's antennae twitched at Dib's arrival, but he didn't look his way.
"What do you want, stink-beast?" Despite his words, Zim's tone had no heart in it.
"I want what you took from me," Dib stated decisively without thinking about it too much.
Zim quirked an eyebrow, still not daring a glance. "What did I take from you?"
"I... I don't know!" Dib's breathing quickened as frustrated desperation rose in him. "But you took something! Ever since last night, I've felt like something was missing. So, whatever it is... give it back, you JERK!" Zim slammed down him spoon, ignoring the little bit of creamed corn that flecked on his face and made the skin sizzle where it touched, and leapt up on the table to glare down at Dib vehemently.
"I'M a 'jerk'?" Zim cried, putting a hand to his chest in melodramatic gesture. "HAH! You wanted to be human, Dib, and I gave it to you! Err... your humanity, I mean! I gave it back! Mother of Irk, did I ever give it back! What more do you want from me?"
"I DON'T KNOW!" Dib screamed, clenching his fists by sides (this was usual; the rest of the cafeteria didn't even look up). "But something I DO know is that when I was an Irken, you treated me differently than you've ever treated me before! You treated me like... like..." He trailed off and shook his head. "Well, you're sure not treating me like it now! What's changed, Zim? Huh? Is it because I'm human?"
"I don't know what you're talking about, Earth-stink," Zim hissed, though his lensed eyes avoided Dib's gaze nervously.
"See? Like that! You didn't called me stuff like Earth-stink and pig-stink and whatever-stink when I was an Irken!" Dib went on. "But now that I'm human, you're doing it again. Just because I'm human! But I'm still the same person, Zim! Except for my species, nothing has changed, only YOUR stupid attitude!"
"SILENCE!" Zim shouted, then hopped back down in his seat and waved Dib away as calmly as he could manage. "Just GET AWAY, Earth-pig... leave Zim alone." It was impossible to miss the note of sorrow in his voice. Dib stood there anyway, panting hard as he tried to make up his mind on what to do.
"Last night, you took something from me," he insisted. "But you gave me something too. And I'm going to give it back." Zim opened his mouth to say something about what NONSENSE Dib was speaking, but Dib stopped him by covering his mouth with his own. This time, Zim's mouth was invaded by an alien tongue, fat and pink, but eager nonetheless. And somehow, Zim found his own tongue wrapping around it possessively. The Dib's saliva was water-based, but somehow, it didn't seem to burn too much; and what burning there was was a pleasant, almost refreshing sort of pain. The kiss continued for so long that some of the other students even started to notice, their jaws dropping incredulously.
When their tongues retracted, Zim wavered a little, almost dazed by this unprecedented sign of affection. Finally, he steadied himself and looked at Dib sharply.
"So what is it you want, Dib?" he demanded. "You wanted to be human... are you saying you want to be an Irken again now?"
"No," Dib answered honestly, shaking his head.
"Then what do you want?" Zim persisted.
"I want to be with you," Dib smiled. "That's all." And Zim smiled too.
Not three months later, the Earth was another planet in the Irken Empire's roster, and the Tallest even got some use out of it, much to their own surprise. And just over 400 light-years away, an Irken and the only surviving Earthenoid honeymooned on a beautiful, grassy planet, while their dog-suited robot chased space bunnies.
THE END.