Two to Tango

"God is a DJ, life is a dance floor. It takes two to tango, and here, tonight, Dib thinks about it for the first time."

ZADR, in which dancing is an allegory.

"You really are heartless, aren't you?"

The room spun, spun, and it wasn't just that Dib was turning in ever tighter circles. Nor was it only that he'd voluntarily given up control to his arch-rival, for this night only, for just this night. Walls blurred together, the linoleum tiles became a mass of white under his feet, the faces around him smears of brown. Beats throbbing in the air around him, oddly primal for such a modern occasion. Gymn to jungle to ballroom.

"What would Zim do with such a useless thing as this?" the invader shot back, swinging his partner out and spinning him back against his chest, tilting chin up to rest on Dib's shoulder.

How strange was it to be led by someone a head shorter. By all rights, Dib should be leading, Dib should be directing their movements as Zim growled and spun out biting insults across the twirling floor. There was no choice though--Dib couldn't lead. Dancing? Him? The thought was laughable. Zim, however, with his almost compulsive need to "fit in"...

"Poisoning the chaperone, though?" the human went on, glancing over at the foaming mass that had once been their English teacher.

"She would not yield to Zim's glorious plan," the alien replied, looking mildly offended at the mere thought.

"Which was?"

"Eh. Something about meatballs."

Yes, the room was spinning. Wildly, but Dib was used to a bit of hardship--he was adaptable, he had to be, and this was just another mission. Another night on the job, albeit an unexpected one. This uneasy truce would not last till morning, would not last beyond the last note of the evening. And the night seemed to spin in on itself, in time and space, perhaps endlessly. While the truce would not last till morning, he felt that it might indeed last forever.

Light glanced off the chrome tables at the edge of the room, and the silvery bars over windows, shocking in the dim purple glow. Outside, past the glass, the world was black enough that it seemed to suck at the glinting metal, as if there was no world beyond that room. Even shadows seemed to disappear in it, as it poured in through the window.

In the dimness, Zim's eyes were like lanterns glowing sharply pink, blinding. The alien had a smirk on his lips, matched impeccably by his partner.

"Where did you learn to dance?" The question rises to Dib's lips after laying in wait for this long, and it surprises him a bit. But only a bit. Nothing could really startle him in this dizzied glow, because everything seems to be both impossible and predictable at the same time.

"How does any pig-smelly learn the coordination of feet?" Zim countered. It was funny, really, how he could turn a perfectly acceptable come-back into an awkward rambling phrase.

His sister was somewhere in the crowd, game consol in one hand and her date's arm in the other. The swirling dance had brought them past each other once this evening, and she had looked away from the screen for just long enough to peer at him through limp purple hair, curiosity for just a moment overriding the imaginary world of slasher games. What was there to be curious about?

Zim maneuvered his partner into a controlled fall and caught him, sneering down through the music hazed air. Ah, maybe that was it.

Slowing time, a pause in the course of events as he glared back up at his partner. Zim had always led the dance, since those first days when Dib was but a child and Zim was only a target, a rung on the ladder of paranormal success. Dib, always following, chasing, pushing back where he could but still being led--not that Zim could imagine the path he was dragging the two of them down, no, he didn't have the foresight... not that Dib could imagine either, not that he'd ever bothered to think ahead. Only chasing, only chasing after that chartreuse specter through darkness and bright days that might have been spent in more child-like pursuits.

And here they were, so many years later. Zim still leading thoughtlessly, Dib still chasing after with barely a thought more. It was a dance, a dance indeed, and the room spun around him in the same vague way that the world always had, the only distinct shape remaining Zim. And that was, suddenly, terrifying.

But still more frightening, the thought that tonight he had given Zim control, had given him the lead when he could have turned and left, could have lurked alone in the shadows as Zim carried on that pretense of humanity that even Dib could not manage...

That was why. That was why he had joined the dance--at least here, out here on the floor, there was a semblance of normalcy and it was shared by two people. How much more real was reality when it was experienced by two rather than one? And Dib, without thinking, had thrown himself headfirst into this strange dance when Zim held out one gloved hand and asked "May I have this dance?" in that derisive tone that the human knew so well.

Time jumped from its lag, returning Dib to his enemy's automatic embrace. Back up, breaking air like it was the crest of a wave, alternately floating and beating against the water to keep afloat, spinning through the room.

Ballroom dancing. The latest fad, stolen from the dark corners of history and reborn as if by Frankenstein with modern music and modern class--or lack thereof. Of course Zim would know it. It was so obsolete that he couldn't imagine a more perfectly useless skill for the invader to learn, and of course it would become wildly popular just as Zim was becoming more skilled, more... human.

Going native, aren't you Zim?

And that brought more questions to mind, turning on themselves as the room outside his head turned round and round. How much like Dib was he, really? Did he notice, did he stop to think even as scarcely as he himself did, that the world outside their push and pull dynamic? Would he care at all? Would it scare him to realize how far from home he really was, how different he had become as the years marched past?

"Are you really heartless?" he asked, wondering aloud. Caught within this dance, he felt that there could be no retaliation to his words save in kind, and the only thing he feared was the inevitable end of the pattern, or that Zim might forget to lead and leave them both stranded in the mass of humanity.

And the irken gave him a strange look, the light bouncing off his ruby eyes, and replied, "Zim has no heart."

I think I must be crazy, to see you like I do.

But Dib shook his head and twirled, trench coat flying out behind him. "A soul, then?"

The alien shrugged, pulling his partner back in. "Words, Dib-thing. Meaningless Earth-words."

And then Dib could see a rare moment of clarity lighting his inhuman eyes, and unbidden words rising to his mouth, torn away by the churning air.

"But Zim..." the invader murmured, "...wants things. Needs things. Just as you do. And it is not Zim's place to make names, only to act."

Round and round. The uneasy truce of these short hours bound their hands together, kept them in rotation, caught the dim purple lights and turned them back on their source. And while Dib was not one for introspection, a part of him wondered why he hung on so tightly to those gloved hands, why he allowed himself to be led--only pushing back when first pushed against. And the only reason he could seem to think of was that spinning room, and the sharp-cut figure of Zim just before him.

Pushing the world, dragging it around its axis and forcing the nights into days and days into nights.

After all, it takes two to tango.