A/n: Okay, so it has been a very, very long time since this story has updated. Almost three years to be exact. I honestly never thought that I would be continuing it. As strange as it may sound, my stories don't exactly come from me. I mean, they do, ultimately, but still—the characters decide they want their stories to be told. They tell me in their voices what they want to be said and usually will continue to nag my brain until I am unable to think of nothing else until what they want is down on paper. I am assured that this is quite normal amongst the writing community, though mentioning it still makes me think that someone is going to come after me with a white coat and take away my shoelaces. Ha.

But I digress.

2006, the year I stopped updating on this site, was both an amazing and terrible year for me. You see, in 2006 I got engaged to a boy that I had known in elementary school who I had reconnected with the year before after I moved back to my home town to help with a business my family was starting. And then, in October of that year, he died due to a congenital heart disease. I was devastated, and the voices stopped speaking. For the most part. I got a word here or there, but my own story, at that time, was far too painful for me to deal with, never the less worry about anyone else's. So I stopped writing. It took over a year to be able to complete a whole story. And, as much as I missed the fandom and wanted to finish these stories, the voices—at least these voices—just wouldn't come through.

Until today. Today, for some reason, I was sitting at work and the voices didn't speak—they Sang. They would not let these stories—or at least This story—go unfinished. It was going to get told, and damnit, it was going to get started Tonight!

And so here I am, continuing a story that I'm sure everything thought was long since dead, buried, and forgotten about. I can't guarantee how often I'll be updating—I both work and go to school full time as well as have been working on some original stories in an attempt to get Something published…and have acquired a rather unhealthy Warcraft addiction, ha —but I do guarantee that it will, eventually, be finished. I haven't been active on here for so long, I don't even know if any of my FFN "friends" are still around. I hope that they are. I miss them.

But this note has gone on long enough. I have a feeling most just scrolled past it, anyhow. So! On to the next chapter! I'm glad to see you all here. This is all going to be a wild ride.

PS--I did not tell the above story for sympathy, but simply to explain my long absence and hiatus of these stories. As much as I appreciate the sentiment, I have heard more "I'm sorry"s in the past two and a half years than I ever thought the hear in my life. So please, if you review, review the fic, not the a/n. Thank you.

-j

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DISCLAIMER: As always, I don't own Zim. I do own the couple shades of characters that some may remember from YOLT, but anything else? Nope, not mine.

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Somewhere Out There

By: thejennamonster

PART TWO: Meanwhile, Back On Earth…

-

"Hey, Braceface!" Zita's voice stabbed through me thoughts like an icicle. On habit, I ran my tongue over the front of my teeth. Smooth. Straight. I sighed, half in annoyance and half in some kind of subconscious relief. After so many years with a junkyard's worth of metal welded to my gums, there were days when I still felt that this blissful release was nothing more than a Nitrous Oxide hallucination while Dr. Stanley tightened the wires.

I continued my halfhearted dissection of whatever the cafeteria was calling food that day (it looked like it used to be a possum, suspicious tread-like marks marring its surface. Lunchlady Peters claimed they were "grill marks". I was not convinced) as Zita and her pets, Sarah and Jessica claimed the empty seats across from me. I glared at them through my bangs.

"Those seats are taken." I mumbled to the science project that was supposed to be my lunch.

"Are they?" Zita answered, wide eyed. She made a dramatic gesture of looking around the room before turning back to face me, "By who?"

"You know who."

"Ah, yes. Dib," she answered, snapping as if just remembering something important, "So where is your boyfriend, anyhow?" She asked again, leaning her cheek against her palm. Her pets followed suit, perfect copies of whatever magazine Xerox Zita had decided to be that day.

I sighed, "You know I don't know the answer to that, Zita. You ask me almost daily. And he isn't my boyfriend." Which was true. He wasn't. Exactly. In all honesty, I couldn't tell what we really were. Our friendship had formed from the aftermath of potential tragedy, and I could never tell if he actually liked me or was just thankful that someone seemed to give a damn that he was in a coma for three months.

-

It all started with a card.

I had found out about Dib's accident while working in the library over study hall as a TA, folding bluebook folders for the upcoming midterms, while Mrs. Ekhert and Ms. Bradley, the heads of English and Social Science, chattered away over their low-fat, sugar-free fresh fruit yogurt cups.

"He's still unconscious?"

"It seems so. I feel bad for his sister, really. First her mother and now this. Professor Membrane is a genius, but raising children really doesn't seem to be his strong suit. That boy is all she has."

My ears perked up at the name Membrane. It had been no secret throughout the years that I harbored a small, unrequited crush on the world famous professor's son, Dib. Okay, maybe not that small, though I had come a long way from piling his desk full of (unnoticed) meat on Valentine's Day. He fascinated me. He kept insisting that the impossible existed—that these fantastical tales of aliens and Bigfoot and mutant killer hamsters were real—and I loved him for it.

And now…he was…

"I'm sorry," It wasn't like me to interrupt a teacher's conversation, but I had to know, "You're taking about Dib, right? He hasn't been in school for a while. Is…is he okay?"

The two teachers looked at each other, exchanging a glance that I had learned before my parents' divorce was adult speak for 'do we tell her or…'.

Mrs. Ekhert sighed, "There was a freak electrical accident. I'm afraid he's in a coma."

My world turned white. Coma? Did that mean—

"...Is he going to—"

"We don't know," Ms. Bradley continued for her colleague, cutting me off, "He's been unconscious for almost a month, though. It doesn't look good."

My entire body was cold; hands unable to control themselves as I suddenly forgot how to fold. "I…" My mouth moved on its own, though I found myself unable to speak. Something in my body must have been connecting, however, as I found my legs carrying me away from the teachers, out the double doors to the library, down the hall, across the parking lot pavement. The fifteen blocks to the hospital passed in a second and I nearly collapsed inside of the sliding glass door, heart pounding, sweat dripping. I watched myself walk up to the front desk, acquire the necessary room information and take the elevator to the fifth floor.

There was his room.

My senses returned in a rush, and I realized how foolish I was being. I had just walked out of school. In the middle of a conversation. With teachers. And ran halfway across town, for what? What was I doing here? Did I have some kind of soap opera fantasy that I could waltz in there, take his hand, whisper loving words, and he would open his eyes and see me as his savior? The woman to bring him back to the living? Was I really that pathetic?

Mentally chastising myself, I turned to leave, and ran face first into a doctor coming around the corner, causing him to drop the clipboard of papers he held in his hand, along with the blue test booklet that I hadn't realized I was still carrying.

"Oh my god, I am so sorry!" I apologized, instantly crouching to pick up the fallen papers. He bent over as well, gathering the documents. The petite nurse who had been walking beside him sighed and leaned against the wall, as if monitoring our progress.

The doctor chuckled, "Don't worry about it. It's perfectly okay."

"No, really, I'm—"

"Please," his hand was on my shoulder, causing me to look up for the first time from the spilled papers. His smile was warm, genuine, "don't apologize. There's no harm done."

We stood together, and he ran a hand over his bright red hair before seeming to realize something about the papers in his hand, "Oh. I think this one is yours."

He handed me back the blue test booklet. My face was a million degrees. "Uh, thanks."

He smiled again, "Were you going in to visit Dib?"

I hadn't realized that it was possible for my face to get any redder than it already was. "I, uh…no, no, I don't want to disturb him."

The nurse chuckled a bit under her breath, pushing her black rimmed glasses back up on her nose. The doctor shot her a look I couldn't exactly read. She raised her hands in apology, but I noticed out of the corner of my eye that, once he turned back towards me, she stuck her tongue out in his direction.

"You wouldn't be disturbing him, really. It's good for him to have visitors."

"No, really…I should be going." I started to turn to leave before feeling his hand again on my shoulder.

"Maybe leave the card then? So he knows that you were here when he wakes up?"

"….When?" My heart was in my throat, pounding against my esophagus, begging to be let free. I turned back towards him, "So…so there's a chance? He's going to be—"

"There's always a chance," the nurse interrupted me from her spot against the wall, seeming to talk to the air in front of her as raised her arms above her head and arched her back in a stretch, "and Dib, well, he does seem to have a better chance than most." She relaxed, once again, against the wall, "This is the best progress we've seen from…someone in his condition…in a long time. He's got a strong will." She looked me in the eye for the first time, an almost wistful smile on her face, " He'll make it back to you."

"To…to me? No, I…we…we're not—"

She chuckled again under her breath. Another look from the doctor. She rolled her eyes. He sighed.

"So you're going to leave the card?" he asked, pointing to the folder in my hand.

"Oh! I…well this isn't really a…" I stopped myself, taking a breath, "Yes. Yes I will. Can I borrow your pen?"

The doctor smiled, handing it over. There was a demented looking stick figure painted on it. I was beginning to wonder about the staff of this hospital.

I scribbled a short "get well" message on the front, signing the inside. As an afterthought I made a PS about keeping copies of the homework for him so he didn't get too far behind when he woke up. I felt a smell jolt from my stomach as I wrote the words.

I handed both the pen and the 'card' back to the Doctor, who smiled, saying that he would make sure that Dib got it. I thanked him and the nurse before making my way out of the hospital.

-

A little over two months later Dib showed up on my doorstep, my card in his hand. He wanted to know if my promise to help him catch up with the homework was still good. As I led him into my house, I felt that strange, yet familiar jolt. Things were going to be okay.

And then, a year later, well….

-

"Then you shouldn't mind if we—" Zita was still talking, making herself comfortable in the chair across from me. The chair that he sat in every day at lunch before he left, Gaz beside him as Zim sat across from her, the boys shouting half true threats of world domination while Gaz and I rolled our eyes and talked videogames. Zita and her pets were in their seats. I could feel the heat rising from the back of my neck, a familiar clamp pressed against my chest.

"I said those seats are taken!" For some reason, I was standing, my hands slamming into the table with enough force for my 'lunch' to clatter to the floor. The lunchroom grew eerily quiet. I could feel the stare of every pair of eyes in the room as my face grew hot, my blood rushing to the surface. Fantastic. As if people didn't think I was weird enough.

As with all things that draw a teenagers' attention, however, the moment quickly passed, as they grew bored and returned to their own little bubbles of the social strata. Zita stood, Sarah and Jessica quickly following suit. She shook her head, raising her fingers to massage the bridge of her nose as if she had a headache. The silver Tiffany's charm bracelet sparked in the dull lighting of the cafetorium.

"Look, Gretchen. I'm not trying to be a bitch, here. Honest. It's been over six months. Everyone knows that that him and Zim finally ended up killing each other, and Gaz went crazy with grief—"

"That's not what—" I started to protest, my hands tightening on the table. I could feel slivers of the unpainted wood starting to dig under my nails.

"It was in the paper, Gretchen," Sarah interrupted from behind Zita's shoulder.

"The school paper," I retorted, "Which you run. And poorly, I might add."

"Hey! That's not—" Sarah started to protest. Zita cut her off.

"The point is," Zita continued, shooting a glare over her shoulder at Sarah, or seemed to visibly shrink a few inches, "that you're starting to seem as crazy as he was, insisting that he's coming back, that's he's off fighting some war that—"

"But he—"

"—that could possibly doom the universe if the wrong planet wins," Zita finished talking over me.

"That. Is. What. Happened. Zita." Yep, there were definitely splinters under my fingernails. I could feel my fingers screaming an agony as I gripped the table tighter, but they didn't matter in that moment. They were nothing. They didn't even exist. "It may sound crazy, but—"

"Of course it sounds crazy! Because it is, Gretchen! So you can either sit here and pick at your food and pretend that everything's okay and continue to be the laughing stock of the eleventh grade, or you can suck it up, grow a pair, and admit that he's not coming back! I'm even offering you help you do so. Monday, sit with us at lunch." Both Sarah and Jessica's heads jerked towards their leader, their faces identical masks of shock. Zita continued, unfettered, "Sit with us and we'll help you through this."

The adrenalin was starting to fade, the pulsing pain in my fingertips stabbing sharp needles up my arms. I released my grip on the table. "Why should I trust you?"

Zita shrugged, "You probably shouldn't. I don't expect you to, at least. But just think about it for now. We'll see you Monday."

That said, she turned, straightening her Gucci purse over her shoulder, and strutted towards the cafetorium door, her pets on tow. I allowed myself to relax, finally, sinking back into my seat. Though I didn't want to admit it, parts of what they said rang with a type of truth that I was trying desperately to ignore. While I knew that Dib and Zim had not destroyed each other as the rest of the school thought, I hadn't heard anything from him since he showed up on my doorstep that night telling fantastic tales of intergalactic wars and space-based sabotage. He promised that he would find a way to contact me. To let me know he was safe. It had been more than six months, and I had yet to hear a word. I feared the worst.

But I wasn't about to let them see that.

Sighing, I reached down to pick up the remains of my scattered lunch, gasping as my fingertips shouted painful protests up my arms. The roadkill would have to wait.

I needed to go to the nurse.

-

A/n: Okay, I'm gonna end it there. This chapter was a bit more serious than those that came before, but I wanted to establish Gretchen as part of the story, as she'll play a rather large part later on. The next chapter will be rather…amusing at the least, hee.

So, if you're reading, drop a review and let me know. I'm curious to see if anyone from the old days are still around, and I'd love to hear from new people as well. :)