The Resilience Saga

            She picked her way between her family members and crouched by Dib, shaking him hard. His head wobbled, and his eyes flew open. “Wha…?” She put a finger to his lips, then turned, pointing at Zim.

            Dib blinked, slowly assessing the situation. Grimly, he stood to his feet, walking over to Zim. As he walked, he began talking lowly. “Hey Spaceboy, I’m gonna show the world you’re an alien. I’m gonna take you in to the Eyeball and they’re gonna put you in a little cage.”

            Mikko grabbed his arm, a horrified expression on her face. Dib pulled free. “He needs to hear something familiar right now. Something that will anchor him back. A couple years is nothing to him, the most recent stable familiar thing I’ve got for him is threats, so calm down. Bug-boy, your disguise is slipping! They all see your eyes, is that an antennae? He’s an alien, an alien I tell you!”

            Zim’s groaning softened, calming some as he stilled. His breathing was still erratic, but he seemed to be struggling less. Dib glanced at Mikko. “Keep calm, ok? I’ve dealt with him a lot.” Reaching forward, he put a hand on Zim’s shoulder and yanked him out of his seat, landing a weak blow to his face. “Get up and fight you jerk!”

            Zim’s eyes flew open, and he lunged forward, pinning Dib to the ground, hauling back a fist and slamming it across the boy’s face as hard as he could. “I’ll wreck your planet until there isn’t a single growable grain of dirt on the whole ball of filth you pathetic sack… of…” He blinked, shaking his head. “Dib? What are you…”

            Dib rubbed his jaw gingerly. “Waking you up, jerk. You were having a nightmare.”

            “That’s dangerous, idiot.” Zim pulled back, jerking Dib to his feet.

            “Yeah, I know. I prepped your head a bit, so you were fighting an earth-child and not a vicious beast or some Irken guard.”

            “Well… that was… shockingly intelligent of you.” Zim admitted reluctantly. He glanced aside, catching sight of Mikko.

            “She woke me.” Dib rotated his jaw. “She was worried.”

            Mikko reached forward, taking Zim’s hand carefully, searching his face.

            “I’m fine, smeet.” He mumbled awkwardly. “I’ll just stay up, I can sleep when we get back.”

            She pursed her lips, sitting in the co-pilots seat.

            “Smeet, you don’t have to. Go on back to sleep.”

            She shook her head.

            “You know, Zim,” Dib settled on the ground between the pilot and co-pilot seat. “I know I hacked you before—” He raised his hands defensively against the glare. “And I was wrong… but it’s about the nightmare stuff, yeah? And I guess… we’re on better terms now, right? For the most part. And I wanted to ask you… properly… what happened to you.”

            Zim’s eyes flicked to Mikko. “I’m not sure that’s the best idea.”

            “Hey, idiot.” Zim returned his glare to Dib. “She’s your sister, right? She’s worried about you. It might help her help you to know some of this stuff. Or help her worry less even.”

            Zim looked over to Mikko, who nodded solemnly. Slowly, he sank into the pilot’s seat, pulling his knees up to his chest.

            “I was born too small.” He said shortly. “My only chance was to battle another Irken smeet and prove my right to live. So mere minutes after being hatched from a tube and implanted with a PAK, I had to kill another smeet. But I earned my right to live.”

            “I was immediately enrolled in Invader Training due to my near-instant kill. From there on, we were tested several times a day. I say tested, but…” He took a breath. “Really they just tried to kill us over and over to see who was tough enough to survive, while training us in weaponry and tactics in between. They flooded the barracks with water to see who would get out.”

            “But water burns—”

            “Yes, Dib. That was the point. A third of the class died that day, and the rest of us cleaned up their corpses.” He glanced at Mikko. “Still want to hear more?”

            Mikko reached out, taking his hand again. He sighed. “You make no sense… there was this smeet named Grup. We took care of each other. He alerted me often to danger in advance, and I would cover for him in training. He didn’t have the right temperament for training, he wasn’t willing to do ‘anything’ in order to survive. But I made a mistake, and took him as a friend early on.” He dropped his eyes down. “Understand, I say it was a mistake, because in my world, you do not make friends and survive. I took the fall for his mistakes, and learned every level of punishment there was to be had in training. They beat me. They stuck me in death traps in the middle of deserts. Denied me rations. Deprived me of sleep for two weeks. Had me walk through a room full of acid vapors until I passed out from holding my breath. Hardly any skin left after that one. They’d fix me up in the medbay afterward. The point was the pain.”

            “One day Grup wouldn’t shoot a recruit he’d been ordered to shoot. So they shot him. I lost it, I attacked a trainer. You don’t EVER attack a trainer. They put me in with a morflar.”

            “That’s what Gaz is, right?” Dib was still adjusting to the idea that his sister wasn’t human.

            “Gaz is my species worst nightmare.” He let go of Mikko, clutching his own arms convulsively. “They are natural predators, and they make sport of it. The more we fear them, the better we taste to them. So they drive us mad with terror, and THEN they consume us. Their digestive systems take a very long time, and with our PAKs constantly trying to rebuild our bodies, it takes years to die. It’s the most horrible death we can conceive of.” He lifted his eyes. “And they put me in a room with one of them.”

            Dib looked grim. He’d seem some of this when he’d hacked Zim’s PAK, but at parts he’d had to leave the room to vomit. This sounded like a scene he’d missed. “What… happened? I mean, you’re still here.”

            “It was restrained. If I moved from my place, it could reach me. It toyed with my mind, in the pitch dark, for hours. It told me I was…”

            So delectable, your scent is intoxicating little Irken.

            “I…”

            It’s been hours, little Irken, do you think they will really let you out? I smell the madness rising up in you, ohhhhh delicious little Irken. Come to me, I am starving. You will make me a feast to last decades.

            “I…. I am… I am Zim…”

            “Zim!” He jerked out of his memories, eyes wide. Mikko had him by the shoulders, and was staring into his face.

            He swallowed. “You… said something.”

            Mikko wrapped her arms around him tightly. He buried his face in her shoulder, taking a long, slow breath.

            “How long did all of this go on?” Dib asked, his voice quiet.

            “The first 50 years of my life.” Zim’s voice was also low. “I graduated top of my class, and completely cracked. I managed to land a scientific job while waiting to be deployed, but ran afoul of Red. They put me in Operation Impending Doom 1, but I wiped out quite a bit of my own planet. Then they sent me off to be a food service drone, but I quit when the announced Impending Doom 2, and well, they sent me here. To get rid of me, but I thought it was a mission.” He buried his face harder in Mikko’s shoulder. “I really… really thought…”

            “Their loss.” Dib’s voice was curt, and Zim peeked up over Mikko’s shoulder. “If they’re too stupid to see what they’ve got, it’s Earth’s gain.” Dib leaned back, arms crossed.

            “What… what exactly is it they’re too stupid to see?” Zim’s question shocked Dib in it’s sincerity.

            “You really don’t know, Zim?” He stared at the alien. “Come on, don’t make me compliment you, it’s not in my nature.”

            Mikko threw a glare over her shoulder, and Dib sighed.

            “Zim, you’re…. I’m going to gag on this… you’re brilliant. If you didn’t show up cracked, you’d have taken Earth over in a heartbeat. I’m LUCKY you were cracked, or you probably would have just killed me as soon as you had the chance. As it was, I’m guessing I’m the only one who actually treated you like you were a legit threat, someone to be feared, and you kept me around cause you needed that. Not consciously, of course. Sound about right?”

            Zim’s eyes widened as gears turned in his mind, clicking into place. He nodded slowly.

            “I’m a smart kid Zim, but I’m still a kid. There’s a million times you could have really killed me if you wanted to. But I’m still here. I never really understood why. I kind of do now.”

            Zim nodded again. He glanced at Dib. “For what it’s worth… I’m glad I kept you around. You’re useful sometimes, when you’re not being stupid and smelly.”

            Dib raised an eyebrow. “I’ll take that as the highest form of praise I’ll be getting from you in my life. You gonna go back to sleep?”

            Zim shook his head. “I will continue the nightmare as I sleep again.” He sighed. “Recent events have been… unkind. It will be most nights for awhile. It will be better to be in my room where I can close the door and silence myself and not wake anyone.”