Angels on the Moon -IZ-

Every year the list grew longer.

Every morning, Dib ran through the names.

The names were a long story... a long story that twisted like latticework on the inside of his heart, construction and destruction of everything he was and everything he had ever been. To begin with, Dib never believed in an afterlife. You had one chance and if you blew it, then that was your problem and no one else's. His father had raised him that way, and some things you just can't fight. Sometimes he wished that all his supernatural dabbling had convinced him otherwise, that he'd found proof—something—to show God existed. Ghosts didn't count.

But it never turned up.

So early in life - before third grade, even, sitting outside in the summer heat as his mother stared off into the distance - he asked himself, in a world where there's no apparent deity looking after your immortal soul, how do you achieve immortality? He pondered it for half a year before stumbling across an answer. It came to him in the midst of an English assignment, in an unexpected flash of insight.

The worksheet was old, very old, at least twenty years old. Budget cuts. But even though—or more likely because—it was so out of date, it spoke to him, and a phrase suspended itself in his mind.

"Literary Immortality"

A flare burst. Man could live on. If not in the religious sense, then in the minds and spirits of people he left behind. A memory can serve as a soul, the reassurance that life isn't lived for nothing, and the promise of a place in whatever string of tomorrows follow afterwards.

So on that cold morning, as he struggled inside with his jacket half buttoned despite snow flurries on either side of the door, Dib vowed himself one thing: to never forget.

The morning after the final news arrived, he woke with a word already formed on his lips. It lifted off and sailed away like a prayer, carried on soft-feathered wings.

Janet

She died on a March morning at the age of nine, biting off her tongue when she fell from the jungle gym. They said she choked to death. They said it was a freak accident. They said she was unlucky. They said all sorts of things, as if any of them could dull the pain of losing a best friend. His only friend.

He had told her before that it wasn't safe, but she just punched him in the arm and reminded him that he'd been up a hundred times.

"Yeah," he'd frowned, "But I'm not a girl."

"That's what I'm sayin'," she laughed, "If you can make it, so can I."

It wasn't long after that Dib sunk into his paranormal research, taking refuge in the world of extraordinary occurrences. His father never understood. None of the kids understood. No one understood. He just needed to know that there was more out there. There had to be something beyond a live and die existence, something mysterious and bigger than humans. Bigger than the empty seat by the window, and bigger than the revolving commercials with his father's face plastered all over them.

The next year he'd come home from school to find a note on the computer in his dad's messy, unconcerned handwriting.

Your mother died this afternoon. The funeral is in two days.

He had stared at the note for a long time. Maybe an hour. It was written in English, but he couldn't understand what it said. His mother? She was perfectly healthy! Maybe she was a little pale, a little distant, but nothing that would kill her. She'd always been like that—at least he thought so. It was hard to remember.

It had to be a joke. A sick, stupid joke. Maybe Gaz. For an eight-year-old, she could be horrible sometimes.

But it wasn't a joke, and Gaz had looked at him with wide eyes when he showed her the note, and then she closed them and punched the computer's screen in. Plastic clattered to the floor and the wires sparked. Buzzes and futile flashes of light.

She never really opened her eyes again.

The next morning, there were two names swishing in his mouth.

It was his aunt next, hit by a drunk driver. He hadn't known her very well, but she'd always acted interested in his 'spooky stuff', as she called it. He added her name to the list.

Fourteen months later, Zim arrived, with his loud mouth and ignorant swagger. Infuriating. Idiot. Threat. Villain. Mastermind of all the little dramas that meant nothing and everything in the shadow of greater, silent tragedies.

Zim was a distraction. More than that, he was the beginning of a new life. The human's loved ones were fading one by one, and with the world turned against him, a new direction was in order.

Dib 2.0

And Zim was just the place to start. He could remodel himself with Zim as the template, because insane or not, Dib was beginning to see that the alien knew a thing or two about perseverance. It took him a while to realize it, and he hardly knew what had happened until the change was well underway.

"Hey, Zim!"

"What, Dib-stink?"

"…What was the homework in Science class?"

He started with little things, following his three step plan: know your enemy, then move in with your enemy, then wear your enemy's clothes….

Become your enemy, essentially.

They fought over everything from the local nuclear plant to the class mascot, turning every inch of their lives into a battle ground, until he woke up one day and realized that not only had he forgotten to submit a single paranormal report in months, but he had somehow found himself caught up in his own fool proof plan, unsure of exactly where he'd intended to go in the first place. And unsure, also, of when he began to partner up with Zim by his own choice, or why he did it when he'd made a commitment of remaining alone since the day of Janet's funeral.

When he was thirteen, his father died in a freak laboratory incident. Logistically, it had only been a matter of time. The whole world wore black to mark his tragic passing, but for reasons that even he didn't completely comprehend, Dib borrowed Zim's extra uniform and came in blinding pink amongst the mourner's gray. After all, his father had been less of a father than his old goldfish Herman. And Herman had eaten his eggs.

"Hey, Zim!"

"What, Dib-beast?"

"You wanna go to this concert thing Saturday? All the other kids are going, and we should be there if we want to look normal."

But Professor Membrane's name wormed its way onto his list despite that, and now he was up to five every morning.

He went on living in the same house as always, surprisingly untouched by the theoretical change in his world. It wasn't as if his father came home often, and the rest of the world seemed to believe Dib and his sister were the dearly departed Prof. Membrain's mourning roommates. So he carried on, as always. Zim came bursting through his window one morning, sometime after, while he knelt beside his bed listing the names. The alien held a robotic chicken in one hand and a remote control in the other.

"What are you doing, Earthworm? Zim did not know you were religious."

By that point, Zim had learned more or less everything he needed to know about Earth. As it turned out, they both believed in 'know thine enemy'—sometimes to the point where the lines in between blurred.

"I'm not," Dib replied, creaking to his feet. "I'm listing names of people I know who've died."

Zim nodded, tossing the remote onto Dib's bed. "For an Earthenoid, you're pretty… eh… smart."

"…I am? I mean, well, yeah I am."

The invader hopped onto the bed next to Dib, smiling maniacally when the springs popped. The alien loved that sound, for some reason.

"Do not take such a tone. You should learn to treasure complements from Zim! They are worth their weight in chocolate to your unworthy head."

Dib didn't even bother trying to make sense out of that. "Right. But why, exactly, am I smart?"

"Because you think almost like an Irken. Oh what a glorious invader you would make!" Zim shook a fist and grinned like he had just handed Dib a king's ransom in chocolate. "In the military, you see, there is a similar practice."

"They list too?"

"Cease your mouth noises, Zim is explaining things. We recite the names and numbers of all fallen comrades daily, in a brilliantly simple but highly gratifying ritual of remembrance—LONG LIVE THE TALLESTS!"

Zim had a tendency to scream that phrase whenever he felt particularly patriotic. At times, Dib envied that sense of pride.

"How many names do you have?" the human inquired, curious to the extent of alien warfare.

"566," the Invader replied. "But I slacked off a bit after the mega-robot incident. I was banished to Foodcourtia before I could really get any names."

"Oh. So… why are you in my room?"

"…I… don't know."

It seemed like every day, something new was uncovered linking Zim to Dib and back. In the beginning, he resented the symmetry, but after a while he found himself proud of it. He'd never been like someone else before.

Then a girl named Gretchen was diagnosed with a new strain of cancer. It spread more quickly that any documented before, unresponsive to new treatments or even old-fashioned chemo. If Prof. Membrane had been alive, he could've worked out a cure… but he was more than a year gone.

She had been in his class since second grade, and he remembered the way she'd brought him valentine meats every year, when the other children shunned him with fervor. She'd heaped them on, in fact, as if she could somehow make up for the emptiness of his desk by herself.

When she died, he added her name to the list.

At fifteen years old, Dib was an orphan living alone with his sister on celebrity compensation. He spent his spare time in the company of one particular Irken, bickering and fighting and generally enjoying any time they had together. They spent a lot of time on his roof, staring up at the sky and listening to music. Zim constantly complained about his 'backwards, primitive monkey chatter', but he never turned the YUpod off, and never refused the earphones.

It made Dib smile.

"Zim… do you ever look up and wonder what's out there?"

"I don't wonder, Dib-thing, I know."

"Oh."

"Zim knows all about space. Zim is the master of space! But I do look at you and wonder what's… in there."

"…It's probably the same thing in you."

"Zim would like that, actually."

The closer he got to Zim, though, the further he slid from Gaz. They had never been close, but lately, it seemed like she was in a whole other world—simply a ghostly image of a girl whisked away into the night.

She came home late. She said less than usual. She threw out her video games and wore only purple. She came home with shopping bags that she wouldn't let Dib anywhere near. Once, he caught her behind the school with a boy at least two years older—his age—talking in low voices and shooting looks into the fading afternoon.

And then, sharp as a shot, she was dead too.

There were no tears when the news reached him, but Dib choked on his breath for the rest of the night. Gang wars. She'd been caught in the crossfire, they said. He knew better.

He should have seen it coming.

His eyes burned as he plodded down the street, nails digging bloody rings in his palms. He was supposed to protect her, he was supposed to be the big brother, he was supposed to… he should have…

He should have seen it coming.

He threw himself against Zim's door, tumbling in when Gir finally opened it. An eternity later, the alien found him curled up on his floor, shaking with dry sobs.

"…Dib?"

"She's dead, Zim. She's dead."

"Who is dead, Dib?"

Even Zim, distractible as he was, knew that this was not the time for insults—even as shallow as they had become.

"Gaz. Gaz is dead. Some gangster shot her."

Zim looked at him, awkward and unsure. Sympathy was so foreign to him, like all human things. But it rested there, in the tightness of his shoulders and the moment of softness in his eyes, waiting to be dealt with.

"I am not sure," the alien began, "what to do. BUT! The mighty Zim has a plan. I have seen Earthlings do this…"

He dropped to the floor and scooted closer to Dib, eyes half closed in concentration. He tossed one arm around the human's waist and the other came up to meet it, drawing them close together.

A hug.

More of an embrace, really. Dib had rarely been hugged before, certainly not since his mother died. It was… nice. It was really nice. And suddenly, it was alright for him to cry… so he did, tears dripping and blurring till everything was a timeless haze.

He knew that he must have fallen asleep at some point, because he woke up the next morning with Zim still wrapped around him, eyes closed and PAK lights dulled. Hibernation: the closest thing Irkens had to sleep.

Zim had imitated sleep for him. And this despite the fact that they were enemies, or that Zim hated sleep, or that there was no good reason for staying here on the floor all night long except that Dib needed somebody. He was flattered, but he didn't dare say anything.

At the funeral, Zim and Dib stood side-by-side in the back, barely glimpsing the coffin past most of Gaz's class. These days, for most people, death was fairly unusual and funerals had a high turnout. They were all the same to Dib—he'd seen too many—the only difference between them was the body inside the casket.

Time passed, because time stops for nothing. Dib's list was now six names long. He spent most of his time at Zim's house, playing video games and trying to keep a handle on Gir. He moved on, because what choice did he have? Gaz was dead—his whole family was dead, but they weren't really gone. And Zim was here, now, filling a space that had never really been filled before, by his side and fulfilling that promise he'd made years ago. I will shake your world, Dib-thing.

When he turned sixteen, he got a rubber piggy and a trip into outer space. As he blew out the candles on the soap and bacon cake, only one thing seemed worth wishing for.

Don't let me lose this.

At some point—Dib never could put a finger on when—all Zim's schemes had turned from diabolical and world-threatening to a sort of game for the two of them. Living in the same house, his average nights were interspersed with surprise attacks of flying alien body slams. They played havoc with his sleeping patterns, but he never minded.

It was just Zim's way of saying, "I'm glad you're here."

Wake up. Recite six names. Walk to school with Zim. Zone through the morning classes. Wreak havoc with the cafeteria kids. Zone through afternoon classes. Walk to the candy store. Come home. Fight with Zim.

Somehow, even though it was down to the two of them alone, he'd never been happier.

"Are you glad that I came to live with you?"

"Eh?"

"I mean, you want me here, right?"

"Zim wants nothing of Earthlings!"

"…"

"…But Zim does like the Dib."

They were close. Like brothers. Like best friends. Like… something. Dib had trouble putting it in words, but it was special.

And then the call came.

His Tallests crackled onto the long unused screen, fidgeting nervously and chewing away at sprinkle-covered bagels. Zim and Dib had been in the midst of an argument over the color of Earth's sky.

"Hey… Zim… how's it goin'?" Asked the purple one, blinking nervously.

Zim blinked as well, astonished. "My Tallests! I thought you had forbidden me from calling you!"

"Well," The red one pushed his companion violently off-screen, "this time we called you."

"Ah. So what's up in the Armada? Are they still holding parties in my honor?" Zim asked, turning to Dib. "They used to do that, you know."

"Er… no. This isn't a social call, Zim. Send your pet human out so we can talk."

That ticked Dib off, but Zim beat him to the punch line.

"He's not a pet, my Tallests. I've taken him on as a second in command, since my SIR unit as kind of… stupid."

A complete lie, but a good one. Zim had gotten better at it over the years.

"Whatever. We're ordering you back to the front. We're having problems on Meekrob, and we need every invader we can get. Even decommissioned ones like you. If you do well, we'll reinstate your invader title."

The alien's pink eyes went impossibly wide, and Dib's heart sank.

In the end, patriotism won out. Even after years of living banished and forbidden from contacting the empire, Zim's love for the home world burned as strong as ever. Once, high on adrenalin and lack of rest, Zim had woven stories of how the pink skies burned in his veins, the memories of command and military precision branded all his thoughts. Nothing could keep him away for long.

Dib argued with him for days. He reminded Zim of all the indignities he'd suffered at the Tallests' hands, of all the taunting they'd leveled at him. But none of it swayed him, and he simply screamed until his voice went dull and then locked himself underground.

A ship took off the next morning.

So here he lay, on the floor of an empty alien base, gazing out past the boards on Zim's window. Eyes leveled on the sky as it faded from azure to cobalt blue, as clouds gave way to stars, as the sun clocked out and the moon clocked in.

Still he laid, arms loosely at his sides, staring doggedly out the window.

Another name. Another name on the goddamn list. It was war, and people don't come back from wars. Not even Zim. No matter how self-assured he was, no matter how he boasted, the little green invader from Irk was mortal.

And he was going to die out there.

He was going to lie on a battlefield, tens of thousands of light-years from Earth, all alone and bleeding till there was nothing left. He was going to fall to the planet's surface, ripped to shreds, with no one to comfort him or so much as hold his hand.

Alone in that silent, glowing house, the only thing worse than Zim's departure was that he hadn't taken Dib with him.

His mind tortured him with images of those gem-like eyes growing dull, of thick pink blood staining the surface of some far-away planet. If he had to go, why hadn't Zim taken him too? Zim was the last thing he had, even GIR was gone now!

How could he live alone?

To his credit, Dib tried. The next morning, he attended school. The day was flat and the lessons were meaningless. He walked into town for an ice cream.

He felt sick and blasphemous.

Every store front, every square of pavement was a slap, burning his eyes.

Janet. Mom. Aunt Stacy. Dad. Gretchen. Gaz. Zim.

How do you mourn the living, though? The people he passed on the sidewalk were dead too, he could feel it. There was a whole new awareness in him, a dark sonar bouncing through the city. The entire town was lifeless. As good as buried, simply waiting for the coffin maker to build something their size. He felt as if he had moved into a whole new plane of existence, somewhere between sheer memory and the mechanics of his breathing, bleeding body.

Every flash of green sent his heart leaping; every 'Z' that drifted towards him was a shot of adrenalin. And every crash was worse than the last.

Had there ever been someone more alone than he? Had a man ever longed this much to see one face? Had a man ever lost the last chunk of his heart so cruelly?

Had he ever been so melodramatic before?

Pitiful, he thought to himself. So you're alone. You've been alone before. Has anyone ever really been there for you?

Janet was too young, too brief, Aunt Stacy had never been around, Gretchen never did anything at all, his father was a failure… and he hadn't even been good enough to keep his mother from suicide.

Who'd ever cared about him, besides Zim, and even that disfunctional at best? He'd gotten spoiled, these last few years. Having someone there had completely stripped him of his resilience.

Weak fucking excuse for a savior.

So he kept the routine up for a week, then two, then a month. The days trickled past like honey, but nothing so sweet. The rooftops were empty but for him, and the school was hollow. He was lonely—more than lonely, really. His arms felt empty; his bed felt cold, his list felt like a prayer. Dib slept on the floor beneath the boarded window, eyes on the moon until weariness forced them closed.

One night, staring at the stars, he had an epiphany.

He loved Zim.

As if the last piece of a puzzle dropped into place, finally, he could see the whole picture. Love was that thing he'd searched for since he was old enough to search, love was that thing he'd finally found between bouts of bumper-spaceships and impromptu firefights.

And he'd gone and lost it before he even knew it was there.

Zim was gone more than a month, by then, and Dib knew full well his chances of returning. The Irken Armada recruited for life, and it would run you till there was none left to give.

That morning, when he listed the names again, big, stupid tears rolled down his face. Everyone he ever cared about left too goddamn soon. And they never took him along.

He finished tenth grade in May, the smiling crowd outside the gates empty of friends or family. Maybe he should have made new ones, but the hole in his chest was too jagged—he knew that nothing would ever fit there again.

He didn't think that he wanted anything to.

In the lonely months, the human perfected the art of emptiness. If he drained out the feelings of joy or hate or sadness, the jagged hole bled less. The wounds dried a little.

But on a clear summer night, the sky past the wooden planks felt a little less painful, and some of the emptiness filled in. He smiled, albeit sadly, for the first time in a long time.

"I love you. I'm alive, and you aren't, but I remember you and I still love you."

He slipped into sleep, dreaming of angels on the moon, with eyes like fire and blood and bodies like the canopy of a forest.

More days passed. The pain faded, slowly but surely. Ventures out into the daylight became regular, and he even snapped a couple photos of a haunted house outside town. In August, Dib got his drivers license, more than a year late.

Dreams continued to reach him, and in them he would sit on the surface of the moon with Zim by his side, and stare out into space, looking down on the beauty of his own home planet. It was beautiful, make no mistake. Just the two of them, he would wrap his arms around his knees and try to forget that Zim was dead. He would ask the Irken if this was what it always looked like from space, and Zim would scoff.

"No, Dib-worm," he would reply, "it looks a lot emptier. And... Zim wishes you were there."

And he would take Zim's hand, tighter than he'd ever held onto anything before, and try not to remember that he would, as always, wake up again with the sun. For those brief moments in the night, it was only the moon, and the whirling expanse of space, and Zim's bright red eyes.

But in late August, as he lay half dreaming, a shadow in the hall caught his eye. No one had ever broken in before. He couldn't bring himself to move, didn't see the point.

"Don't wake me," he called out, voice creaky from disuse, "'Cause I'm dreaming."

"Of what?"

"Angels," he answered in a whisper, lids closing again. "Angels on the moon."

"There are no angels on the moon, Dib," the shadow pointed out. "Just rocks, and some filthy moon-dust."

Dib's eyes flew wide open.

"Come out of the shadows," he ordered, voice shaking.

"Very well," the shadow replied, sounding almost amused. And into the room stepped a dull green figure, brilliant pink eyes catching the moonlight. Dib could make out no more, because his own eyes were hazed with sudden tears.

"Am I still dreaming?" he demanded, fists clenched. "You have to tell me. I can't take waking up from this. I'll die! You think I'm exaggerating, but I'm not. I'm… not."

Zim crouched down in front of the human. His alien face softened, and he took Dib's hand. "You are not dreaming, Dib-thing. Did you miss Zim?"

Breaking into something between a sob and a laugh, the teen took his other claw. He could see the moon out the window, bright and white and perfect, and he could feel the fabric of Zim's gloves and the steady thrum of blood beneath them. Months melted away. Time melted away. Zim was alive, and home, and oh god…

"Miss you? Fuck, Zim, I thought you were dead. I added your name to the list."

"Silly human," the Irken pulled him into an awkward hug, "no one can kill Zim. Especially not when he has a human and a base waiting for him back home."

Dib noticed the use of 'home', and he wondered what had happened to Zim out there in battle. He seemed… mellower, now. Why did he come back? How did he come back? Who had won the war?

He longed to ask Zim all those questions and more. He ached to learn every moment of their time apart, to own that part of Zim. To see what he saw. But he simply pulled the invader down to the floor and embraced him properly, cheeks soaked with tears.

There would be time enough for that later. The rest of his life, if he had anything to say about it. All that mattered now was that Zim understood how much he meant, how much Dib cared about him.

"I missed you so much."

"Psh. Pathetic Earthinoid."

"Idiot alien."

"…Zim missed the Dib as well."

"I love you. You know that? I really love you."

"Really? I mean—of course you do! None can resist Zim's charm!"

"Don't start."

"Heh."

" But if you ever take off like that again, I'll shoot you myself."

End.

Don't tell me if I'm dying, cause I don't wanna know;

if I can't see the sun, maybe... I should go.

And don't wake me cause I'm dreaming of angels on the moon,

where everyone you know never leaves too soon.

You can tell me all your thoughts, about the stars that fill polluted skies,

and show me where you run to when no one's left to take your side.

But don't tell me where the road ends, cause I just don't wanna know,

No... I don't wanna know.

-Thriving Ivory, "Angels on the Moon''