Chapter Text
Chapter 1: After the Florpus. Introduction.
Several months have passed since the Florpus and Zim's crushing attempt to "conquer" the earth. Conquer is a big word: in the end, all he did was stupidly destroy it. And himself too. Even his own people were ready to annihilate him and the planet, without the slightest hesitation. But everything was back to normal in the most normal of worlds. Everyone agreed that it had been a collective hallucination. A malfunction of Professor Membrane's bracelets, supposedly.
School was back in session, as boring as ever. Everything was perfectly normal. Except for one thing... Zim was gone. He hadn't been to school for several months. All the children seemed to have forgotten all about him. Except Dib, of course. He was deeply disturbed. He knew the human chair trick wouldn't work on him a second time, so this couldn't be it. Zim wasn't so stupid as to implement the same plan twice in a row. So what was he up to now? Dib wasn't complaining, not at all! On the contrary, now he had peace. No more arguments, no more plots to foil, no more insults, no more alien headaches. Absolute, monotonous peace... Boring. At times during lessons, he found himself scribbling it down on a sheet of paper. Only in order to better imagine him on a dissecting table, or to try to get into his head and find the reason why he no longer showed up.
He crumpled his paper into a ball and stuffed it into his schoolbag. This time he had made up his mind! He was going to go to his house and try to observe him and discover his evil plans! The bell rang after what seemed like an eternity, and he was the first to leap from his desk and out of the classroom. He ran to the alien's house and stopped in front of the gates. The garden gnomes were still active, and he'd have to be careful approaching or risk getting a shock. He skipped along the path, ducking behind a tree, and quickly reached the door. About to knock, he stopped himself. He didn't know why he'd hesitated, but in that brief moment of hesitation when he didn't knock, he heard a sob. There was nothing else. No inordinate screaming, Gir's robotic voice or the eternal catastrophic racket at home. Just that little sob from the alien.
He felt his heart skip a beat. He didn't like hearing people cry; it made him uncomfortable. He took a step to the side and approached the window, not realizing that at the same time a garden gnome was also turning towards him. What he saw left him perplexed, with an indescribable feeling. Zim was curled up in the armchair, his arms around his legs and his face between his knees. He looked so... sad. Dib didn't have time to think about what he should do now (drumming on the door to attack him seemed slightly out of proportion) when a garden gnome threw a shock at his back. It knocked him backwards, and he even lost his glasses. He leapt to his feet as all the gnomes approached him, leaped over them and fled the garden blindly. Trying to find his way back with blurred vision.
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"What's up with you? You're weird today. More than usual, I mean." Gaz didn't even look up from his game to address his brother.
With his plate in front of him, now completely cold, Dib fiddled with the small weights on the end of his fork. Lost in thought, he gasped when he heard her speak.
"I... I saw Zim crying today. It was weird."
"You must have made a mistake. I'm sure he doesn't even have tears in him."
"Yeah, well... Certainly."
Dib rose from his chair and cleared his plate before heading for his room without another word. A strange feeling was growing inside him, like anxiety. Pfft. He chuckled to himself as he lay down in bed. Stupid Dib. As if he could be worried about Zim! He'd won and Zim had lost, that was why the alien wasn't well! It was the most obvious and plausible reason the alien had to face! He moved his glasses to put them on his bedside table (Yes, he had several pairs of glasses. With Zim against him, he had to have backups) and closed his eyes, falling fast asleep.
The next day was exactly the same. Zim wasn't at school, and Dib felt a sudden, curious urge to go and see him home. Perhaps to brag about his win. It was a rainy day and he'd packed an umbrella. He never usually thought about it, but this time he had it. He repeated the same combination of moves in Zim's garden; hiding behind the tree, and running to the pavilion. But once again he didn't knock on the door. The house was as silent as ever. He slid to the window and watched. The alien was still in the armchair, not curled up in a ball. Now he was slumped over, his limbs panting and his gaze lost in emptiness. The TV was on and Gir was lying in front of a cartoon even though the volume was turned down. Dib felt an annoyance rising up inside him, without knowing why. He closed his umbrella and threw it on the doorstep. He put his hands in his pocket and walked out of the garden.
"Stupid alien."
He hadn't even noticed that the garden gnomes hadn't moved at the intrusion. When he got home, he didn't say a word to Gaz or his "father" (or rather, to the image of his father through a screen) and locked himself in his room. The whole thing was getting on his nerves. He opened his computer and went to the Swollen Eyeball site. He'd tried so many times to post videos or photos of Zim on it, but each time no one had believed him. Instead, people believed videos with horrible, badly done montages. Ridicul. He stayed on the site, reading each comment one by one, and didn't realize that day was already breaking. He'd spent a sleepless night surfing the site and ranting even more.
He closed his computer and got up from his bed. The whole thing was really getting on his nerves! People's stupidity, his classmates' stupidity and Zim's stupidity! Besides, he wouldn't be going to class today. He didn't feel like seeing anyone except Gaz, but he had to. She was already sitting at the table in front of her bowl of cereal. Eating with one hand, she tapped frantically on the keys of her console with the other. She didn't even look up at him. Just as well. He didn't take the time to eat and left her house. Before he knew it, his footsteps had taken him past the alien's house. It was perfectly normal, after all. He's the one who pisses him off the most and because of whom he's lived through several hells, it was only natural that he should be the first to suffer Dib's fatigue and irritation. He crossed the alley and turned towards a garden gnome. Strange, they weren't attacking him anymore. They even seemed deactivated. No matter. He knocked on the door and didn't have to wait long before Zim, without his disguise, came to open it. There was a moment of silence when Dib bitterly regretted having come.
"What do you want, Dib?"
The alien's lack of insult baffled him for a moment; it wasn't like him at all.
"You... You look terrible."
"Hmpf. You can talk, your head's even uglier than usual."
Ha, an insult. All was well in the end. He glanced quickly at the alien. He had dark circles under his eyes, his complexion was a pale green and his eyes seemed redder than normal. For a second, their eyes met, and the human's unease set in.
"Are you... are you all right?"
Zim looked troubled for a second, before his face tightened again.
"And what do you care, you stupid human, what's wrong with Zim?!"
"I need to know what you're up to to foil your plans and protect my planet, you degenerate alien!"
He thought he saw a slight smile appear briefly on Zim's lips.
"You stinking worm. You'll be no match for the GREAT ZIM! Now get out of my house! Zim's got things to do!"
Before Dib could say anything else, he had the door slammed in his face. Well... That went well in the end. Dib was no longer annoyed, and was even satisfied to have taken his anger out on his enemy. He turned and walked out of the garden as two red eyes watched him through the window.
The next day, at school, he sat down in his usual place. One of his old glasses was on the bench and Zim was back too.