Sublime Awakenings

Sublime Awakenings: Chapter 42

------------------------------Two Days Later----------------------------

Todd groaned in agony as he reached in vain for the remote to the television in his hospital room. It was on an end table, where it had no doubt been left by Letta the previous afternoon, just out of reach. He had barely gotten a wink of sleep the previous night, even with the painkillers, because of his inability to turn the thing off. He had even tried to press the help button, but was beginning to think that it was disconnected because no nurses had come to his aid. Just as he was about to be forced to walk on his burned foot in order to do it himself, the door to his room swung open.

A perky female doctor with a curly frizz of orange hair was followed closely by a still solemn Brian and Letta. “Well, hello again young man. I've decided to let you go home today! Isn't that just great?”

“Urm,” Brian cut in with an abrupt hand gesture. “Actually, Todd won't be going home just yet.” He looked from the doctor to the boy. “I'm sorry, Todd, but we still can't find your parents. Now, don't worry, I'm sure their fine...wherever they are. But you'll be staying with me for a while since your parents signed a form giving me temporary custody a few years back so that I could take you out of the D.H.M.I every now and then. Remember?”

Todd nodded gravely. He had lied to the police yesterday, when they had finally been allowed to interview him, about the whole incident, telling them that he could barely remember any of it. The tranquilizers in his system had been evidence enough to confirm this, and they had let the matter drop. This, of course, also meant that he had lied to Brian and Nny and anyone else who didn't already know the truth, both about Bitters and Zim and about what he did and didn't know about Leon Wian. The truth was a double edged sword. It could cut off your legs just as easily as it could break your shackles. In this particular instance, it could send him back the mental institution and put that kid in a great deal of mortal danger.

The little boy was currently in a room in the children's wing, recovering from having been sedated for such an extended period of time, and Todd knew that the authorities would be having problems finding his parents as well. “What about-”

“The boy? His...,” Brian looked at the floor as if there was a script that could help him with this issue taped to it, “We can't find his parents either. According to the skool, they moved a few months ago, but there is no record of them ever arriving anywhere else.” He didn't want to say it, but this didn't bod well for Todd's parents either. And there was every indication that the little boy's mother and grandfather had actually been fond of him, so they wouldn't just abandon him.

Letta released a deep, worn sigh. “Two months. That's a long time to be missing.”

Brian shot his daughter a stern look. “Yes, thank you, dear. Anyway, Todd, the child seems to be highly attached to you. He's been asking for you nearly as often as he has for his family.” It wasn't an uncommon development in extremely stressful situations for those involved to form unusually strong bonds. “The D.H.M.I has offered to put him up, but since I will already be treating you in my home and he is so attached, it has been decided that he will be released into my custody as well, unless you have an objection to this.”

“I...I guess that's fine with me.” The teen had to repress a shudder at the thought of living with Leon...or Shmee...or some hybrid mixture, and automatically felt bad because of it. It wasn't the kid's fault that he was a freakish alien experiment, possibly gone horribly wrong! Or that his parents were dead. And the kid, or more precisely Shmee, had saved his life.

“Good. I'm sure it will benefit you both to have group therapy for this terrible...circumstance.” The councilor nodded in agreement with his own words, as if assuring himself along with Todd. “It'll do you good, you'll see.”

Todd smiled weakly at the dirty blond-haired man. “Sure.”

“Uh, well, Todd,” the doctor spoke up, “you'll be released after lunch, so just sit tight and enjoy the Jello until then! Gotta go!”

And then she was gone, much to his relief. “I don't want any Jello. And could one of you turn the TV off, please?”

“That bad?” Brian smiled on his way to do so.

“Reality TV almost makes me wish that an asteroid would strike the Earth and put us all out of our misery.” Woah! That had been just a little too blunt. And now Brian was looking at him like he needed more than group therapy. “Umm, I mean I really don't like it.”

Brian adjusted his glasses awkwardly as he switched off the source of his patient's scorn, handing the remote over afterwards. “I'm going to go tell little Leon the good-urm, the news that he'll be staying with us. Are you two going to be alright?”

“Yeah.” The young man forced another smile.

“Of course, Dad. Go on, jeez.” When her dad finally left the room, Letta flopped down onto the end of Squee's bed. “Sorry about the TV.”

“It's fine...except that it kept me up...and gave me weird dreams.”

“You always have weird dreams.” The girl cringed at the memories of her experience with Squee's dreamworld. “And anyway that could've been the meds.”

“The meds made me dream that Johnny had somehow negotiated a contract with some music bigwigs, resulting in an unholy alliance of Happy Noodle Boy and Billy Joel's Greatest Hits?”

“Ummm...maybe that was the TV, because I saw the same thing.” She thought for a moment. “Noodle on Ice, right?”

“Oh, dear God, no...it can't be.”

“Actually, sorry, but yeah. And Johnny called the house this mourning to offer me, you and Dad free tickets to his show. They're box seats and everything. And I think that he's dating some girl named Elise. I heard them arguing in the background over the phone. It was like five in the morning too, so I guess she had stayed over.” Letta grimaced dramatically at the very notion of heterosexual happenings.

Todd let himself fall back onto the pillows a little too heavily. “Ow. I think I've had too much painkillers. Or not enough...not nearly enough.”

“There's no such thing as enough. But at least you didn't have that same dream again.”

“I kinda wish I had. I think it might mean something. The last time there was a book.”

“Squee, with you, when is it not about a book?” Letta stifled a yawn, not having gotten much sleep herself, thanks in part to a certain comic artist. “So, what do ya wanna do when you get out of here?”

“I think I'd like to stop by the library...”

“Told ya. Always about a book.”

“And then maybe get a haircut. And I need to pick up some stuff from my parent's house.” He looked down to the hospital gown that he was currently wearing and then to a chair were Pepito's mother had left him some more borrowed clothes the evening before. But he still didn't have any shoes. “Maybe the house should be first.”

---------------------A few hours after lunch-----------------

Dib sluggishly went through the motions of entering his house: unlock the door, up the stairs, bathroom, bedroom, face down on an already salty pillow. For the second day, he had helped the rescue workers search the rumble that had until recently been his much hated elementary skool building. And for the second day, they had found no signs of life, or even death. Not even a pak belonging to his enemy!

He raised his head to glaze at his sister when she poked her head in through the door. “Not today, Gaz.”

The purple-haired girl rolled her eyes. “I just thought you should know that Squee went home today. He's staying at Brian's now, in case you ever decide to visit him.”

“Thanks, Gaz, but I don't have time to do anything else until I find Zim.” He forced down a knot in his throat at her expression. “He...uh...he really has to pay, you know?”

“Why are you still pretending, Dib? I can hear the fucking tears in you voice, you know.” She paused to let the fact that she wasn't completely stupid stink into his blimp of a head. “And you're never going to find him. There's nothing left of the lowers levels, Dib. Nothing. Just like there's nothing left of his base. Accept it.”

“There's the moon base...”

“Yeah, but we were in the moon base looking for Squee when his Earth base exploded, remember? I stopped the moon base, and us from being blown to little bits as well? Then we took one of his shuttles back to Earth, and now we're stuck with a retarded metal dog that eats Chunk's weight in Mexican food every single day?”

“I remember, Gaz! But, he can't be dead! He's ZIM! And Zim always survives!”

“Don't raise you're annoying voice to me, Dib.” The girl's eyes were mere slits as she entered her brother's room, taking determined steps until she was just in front of him.

The boy scooted back against the wall as she leaned down, eyes shut in waiting. Gaz was probably about to unleash an all new and more horrible form of devastation upon him, but he almost welcomed it. Anything to get those very unwelcome thoughts out of his head: thoughts that said that he missed Zim, that he was worried about Zim...that life might have no meaning without the Irken around to make it interesting.

And then it happened: bodily contact. Her arms were around his neck and she was squeezing. He waited, but he didn't black out. His breathing wasn't even obstructed. “Gaz, I think you're doing it wrong.”

“Shut up, Dib. If you tell anyone about this, you'll be in for a beating.” Her voice was muffled against his shirt as she grit her teeth together at what she was being reduced to.

She was...hugging him. Hugging! That was a very, very bad sign. Gaz wouldn't just do something like that! If she was hugging him, then that meant that this was real. His arms were tentatively raised to her back, his hold growing tighter as salty liquid stung his eyes. “He's gone, isn't he?”

The girl only nodded. She hated it when her brother cried. It made him look so weak, and open and human. It made her feel sick inside. It made her afraid that somewhere, deep down, she might be capable of the same thing.

The hug had only lasted about five minutes and then she had fled back to her room to make some sort of modifications to GIR that probably involved installing some kind of video gaming system. Dib sighed heavily, reaching under his bed to pull out a large scrapbook. There hundreds of pages, all dedicated to a single subject. He flipped through, letting his tears fall freely now.

He and Zim had done so many horrible things to each other over the years, but somehow they had both survived them all. And it was easy to see, as he turned pages like time, that their wars had gotten softer as the years went by. The times that they had worked together, most of which he had secretly documented as best he could, had become more frequent as well. They could almost have been friends...if either of them had been more willing to compromise, to admit that they might need something besides their missions and themselves, if either of them had ever been given a reason to believe in a thing as illusive and unsure as trust.

There was a tapping at his window, but he didn't bother looking up. He never thought he would think such a thing, but whatever paranormal phenomena it was could wait. “I'm sorry, Zim. You were a...a brave warrior...and you'll be missed, even if it is only by the crazy UFO kid.”

A loud thump had Dib finally looking up from his Zim collection to see that a circular hole had been cut in his window, letting a pane of glass fall, unbroken, to his carpet. In the window, there was a brunet woman with matted hair in what appeared to be the ragged and singed remains a house coat. She stepped shakily into the room, looking as if she might collapse at any second.

“You missed me, Dib-worm? How very...magical.”

The voice was different, but the speech pattern was unmistakable. The scrapbook fell to the floor.

Notes:

--I know that there wasn't much of an explanation for some of the possibly confusing stuff in the last ch, but there was too much action for deep thinking. But eventually, Todd will figure some stuff out...maybe slowly and over time...and maybe not all of it. If you want to know something specific about it, ask me questions!

---This story has two main climaxes. This chapter is the resolution of the first climax and the end of part one of the story. If you're a reading for the romances, those should pick up some in part two.

Squee and Invader Zim characters belong to Jhonen Vasquez.