Hey guys! Swordmouse here. Just letting you know I'm not dead. I know, I've been gone for a long time. I've been SO busy. And sadly I will continue to be busy and absent for a long time. HOWEVER, I am working on a roleplay with someone, a which we intend to make into a fic, and I promise you when we get that up it will have been worth the wait, I promise. If you want to get a look at it now send me a private message and I'll link you to our in-progress rps.

Now, about this current fic;

I know, I should be working on Prisoner of Nightmares. I will, eventually. But this idea was buzzing in my head and I had to write it out. I may do one or two more one-shots soon. i'm finding them easier then continuations at the moment.

Also, my last chapter of Reality Problems got no reviews whatsoever so I'm assuming you all hated it and I'll have to re-do it. I'm not happy with it at all either. It was much too rushed.

Now, this story does not have character death but is heavily centered around an almost-suicide. Just as a warning. I don't know what counts as a 'trigger' so be warned.

~•~•~

"Dib, you have a visitor."

There was a long, empty moment before the young human even reacted. The thin teen's body slowly uncurled, the pale face peering over the covers as he sat up, leaned back against his pillows. Eyes that were once the most vibrant and fiery amber-gold when he was just a few years younger, now stared at the blurry figure of the nurse in the doorway showing almost no feeling at all. He looked dead. The most emotion he displayed was a hint of confusion.

"A visitor?" He had to check to make sure he'd heard right, his voice small and mumbled.

"That's right dear, should I bring him in?"

"Oh, uh, s-sure..."

Dib looked away, reaching out to fumble around on his nightstand for his glasses, and the white-coated lady nodded and turned to leave.

"I'll bring him in then."

And he was left alone for the moment.

A visitor? Who? A visitor to see HIM? Surely there had been a mistake? He could think of only three people who would so much as notice if he died, and he almost had. And now three days later, two of them, his own father and sister, his own family, had not bothered to check up on him.

And now he had a visitor?

It had been three days since he'd almost lost his life and his family had not called, or even left flowers or a note for him.

He had been left to recover in a hospital room, shut off from the world, and not even one person had sent any sign that they remembered him.

The door slammed open and Dib's heart leapt up with it. He knew from that action alone who he was about to see, and he knew the moment he saw the look on his visitor's face that he was about to be yelled at. Dib had no idea why that made him feel so very, very happy.

But Zim didn't yell at him.

He marched towards Dib with a look of hatred that the human was used to seeing Zim give him but the alien didn't make a sound. Dib frowned slightly, forbiddingly but resigned, just watching to see what would transpire. The meds he was on had zapped what little will of mind he could usually conjure up. He was nearly unresponsive until Zim reached the side of his bed and grabbed his forearm.

With a gasp and a horrible sick feeling Dib pulled away and curled into himself, around his hands, protectively, shying away from Zim with a shame strong enough to be painful. Now Zim yelled at him.

"LET ME SEE IT."

He didn't even call Dib a funny name like 'pig' or 'stink.' He only screamed his demand that frightened Dib worse then anything else he could have done. The human felt he should have expected this but for some reason he couldn't bear to show the sign of what had transpired.

But Zim was strong. Easily he overpowered the human's undernourished body, as Dib had been eating less and less over the past few months. His black claws sunk into the earthling's left arm as he pulled it out to look at. Only his black gloves and Dib's white hospital gown sleeves prevented the talons from puncturing skin in his merciless grip.

Dib wished they actually would cut him. He wished they'd cut him and that he'd bleed out right there. He wished the alien would just finish what he'd tried to do.

The Irken was his last hope of someone who might understand him in some way, or at least try to understand instead of stamping a label on him and then avoiding him like the plague.

He looked up to see the alien's expression, and Zim looked absolutely disgusted with him. He cringed away, his eyes averted, stinging, and wet with the start of tears.

Zim's disguised eyes stared at the thick bandages over Dib's wrist, and the human tried to at least hide his other hand behind his back, but the Irken had already seen it was in a similar shape.

Zim let go of his arm looking at Dib as if he felt simply lost, and as if he'd been betrayed in some way. Dib hugged himself around the middle and pulled his knees up to his chest, neither defending himself nor pleading for forgiveness. He rocked back and forth several times before recognizing and stopping the subconscious attempt to comfort himself.

They were all right. He really was insane.

"W-why would you?"

Dib didn't think he'd ever heard Zim stutter before. He looked up at him from under his brow with loathing for what was surely to come, daring the alien to tease him or poke fun but he said nothing. In fact judging by his expression Dib didn't think Zim even understood what had gone on. Or at least, he seemed to understand what had happened, but the idea had struck him as so completely strange that he didn't seem capable of believing it.

Importantly, Zim thumped himself down to sit on the edge of the hospital bed, looking at Dib with his eyes narrowed as if the human was an extremely difficult 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle.

"YOU didn't do that, right? It was someone else, someone else attacked you and cut you right? Who was-"

Dib shook his head.

Zim was indeed in disbelief. The human wouldn't lie to him about this though.

"It was me."

His voice was hardly more then a whisper. Zim stared some more and then shook his head no as if Dib had simply answered him wrong. But he seemed to know what the truth was now, and Dib watched something about Zim deflate when the alien finally seemed to catch on.

"So you actually did try to... Why? Why would you try to do that?"

It was the second time he'd asked now.

That was a question Dib didn't want to answer but he would answer anyway, if only to make sure Zim would stay with him a little longer. He had to keep some interaction going, back and forth. if he missed a beat it might be over and Zim might leave and he'd be all alone again. Even if the Irken hated him, at least he was there. At least Dib had attention. At least he was noticed, not forgotten. He'd learned long ago not to hope for anything more caring then that.

"Because it wouldn't matter." His voice was barely above a whisper. He paused, opened his mouth to say something more, then closed it. That was really the core of every reason he had to give. Of course there was pain and horrible sadness involved, neglect, abuse, bullying, constant crushed hopes and dreams, but that wasn't Zim's fault, not necessarily, no. Dib couldn't trouble him with that. Zim had actually been the source of the greatest happinesses he'd known over the past few years. Zim was exciting and alive.

But he was not Dib's friend.

It just... Wasn't... Enough.

The biggest reason why Dib had done what he had was because no one cared. Because no one cared Dib was always standing alone as he took every hit life and humanity threw at him, and because of that he felt no responsibility to stay around for anyone. His passing would end his own hurt and would hurt no one else, he had thought.

But then, on the other side of the coin, he hadn't been thinking. He hadn't been thinking at all. He'd lost it. He couldn't even remember doing it. He'd been pushed too far and he'd snapped.

He was insane.

But that he could not bear to say. Everyone already acted as though he was worthless enough. If he showed himself to be any more damaged surely Zim would just leave, and never want to see him again. Would he even consider Dib worthy to be an adversary? Would he be willing to show kindness and finish what the earthling had tried to do?

He'd tried to commit suicide. Because he was in too much pain, he'd lost his mind, and he didn't think it would matter.

The sudden slap across the face that he received wasn't entirely unexpected, but it made him grimace all the same, and he raised a hand to cover his stinging cheek. Lowering his head further, Dib could not bring himself to look up at the Irken as Zim now began to scream at him, but the shock of the meaning of his first sentence forced him to look up.

"IS ZIM WORTH SO LITTLE THEN?"

The slightly smaller, and much greener being shook with rage, glaring at Dib and baring his sharp teeth.

"YOU HOLD MEANING WITH ZIM! DO YOU DARE TO SUGGEST THAT ISN'T GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU, YOU FILTHY PIG?!"

"I don't know." Dib mumbled, half apologetically and half panicked and tearful sounding.

Zim made him sound selfish but was it really selfish to be so hurt? He didn't ask for that. Was it selfish to be in agony because not one person wanted him? Was it selfish to be upset that he didn't have a friend in the world? Often enough the kids at school had suggested he'd be better off dead, words like, 'why don't you just kill yourself' would ring in his ears all day and no one would stop them.

Not even Zim. Zim had stopped fighting him recently. Even Zim had seemed to loose interest in him. Not even Zim had seemed to care anymore. That had pushed him over the edge.

"I thought... I thought you might be happy if I wasn't around to bother you any more."

It was true. He had thought that.

But Zim's long strain of snarled Irken curses lifted Dib's heart enough to hope that maybe that assumption had been wrong.

"YOU'RE THE ONLY ONE WHO BOTHERS ME AND THE ONLY ONE ZIM CAN BOTHER! YOU'RE NOT ALLOWED TO 'LEAVE' IN ANY WAY, SHAPE, OR FORM, TO ANY PLACE I CANNOT BOTHER YOU, WITHOUT ZIM'S CONSENT! IF YOU DIE IT WILL BE ZIM WHO KILLS YOU."

For the first time in weeks Dib smiled. He almost even chuckled softly.

He wasn't sure if it was because he thought Zim's statement was funny or because he was so unutterably happy to hear the words of control that showed he was noticed and maybe even cared about. It made him feel better then he had in... longer then he cared to remember.

"DO NOT LAUGH AT ZIM!"

The Irken slapped him again but physical strikes had long ago lost their effect on Dib, and he barely even stopped smiling. He just tried to stutter out a sincere, "Sorry."

"YOU'D BETTER BE." The Irken huffed.

Then they both went quiet again. Dib let out a long, slow breath and laid back against his pillows, watching Zim silently, feeling somehow relaxed. The lively presence beside him flared his hope and for the moment everything didn't look so dark.

The Irken was staring off to the side, appearing troubled and saying nothing.

Finally he gave Dib a harsh push in the side. "Move over." The human hesitantly did so, though it pained him to move too much.

The doctors had him on a LOT of psychotic disorder medications and they made him very sluggish and sore and even more depressed then he normally was. Having to sit in a hospital bed for days until he was deemed okay to go home, with nothing to distract him but the TV on the wall, had been sheer torture.

Surely three days was more then long enough. Surely he could have been allowed home before now?

Zim wasn't satisfied until he had two thirds of the bed to himself, leaving Dib unhappily crammed into the last, though he didn't complain.

"So, Zim has been lead to understand from talking to the filthy medical humans, that your parental unit has not come to pick you up yet, or returned their calls."

Dib glared down at his unblemished sheets.

"He's always busy." The statement was not to defend his father but to attack him. "He's always too busy for... Anything."

"Yes, Zim knows, he is a horrible stink pig and even an Irken could be a better parent then him, and we do not even raise our young as they are self-sufficient when they hatch."

Puffing himself up the alien proudly examined his claws.

"Anyway, Zim found it in his amazing cardiac muscle or 'heart' as you call it, to let you come home with me."

Zim went on to half-yell about how Dib would have to live under his rules then, and how he would torture him if he stepped out of line but the boy wasn't listening. He was just staring with very wide eyes, his mouth falling open slightly, not hearing a word as if it had all been blotted out by a sudden ringing in his ears.

He must have... He must have heard wrong...

"It took forever to break in, even at night." Zim was saying. "And when I finally managed to get in the papers I made up to say you'd come home with my 'parents,' in other words me, I still couldn't get up to see you apparently because I wasn't listed as family and there were too many people around. The doctors said only 'immediate family' could visit you. Idiots. Apparently they thought I might try to kill you, which I might have had every right to do- what you did was very stupid and illogical by the way-"

"You're taking me t-to your house?" Dib's voice was barely more then a squeak of hope, as he gaped at the Irken.

Zim looked over at him as if offended.

"Come ON human, I know you're not THAT slow! Catch up already. But as I was saying-"

That was a yes then. That sounded like a yes.

Dib was struck dumb. He didn't even know how to FEEL about this. The most he was getting was a 'butterflies in stomach' feeling.

He was going to live with Zim?

The alien stated it so matter-of-factly.

Should he fight it?

He did not want to. Right now he was tired of fighting and of complications. He was happy enough to just let his future be laid out for him and to watch it happen.

He would be with Zim. There was nothing he could want more then that.

He stared at the alien, the only thing that stood firm and solid and recognized that they existed on the same dimensional plane. Dib stared at Zim longingly.

Zim had expressed that he cared, in his subtle, unemotional way. But Dib wished, as he had done a million times, that he could have more emotional support.

But he'd take whatever he got and this seemed wonderful.

He listened to Zim talk on about whatever he wanted to say, often implying how amazing he was. And for once Dib felt he couldn't agree more.

It was already late. Soon the nurse returned and told Zim he'd have to leave. Zim was begrudging and complained about it plenty, but he eventually did have to leave. Dib called a meek 'goodbye' after him as he marched away and Zim returned it with a very unenthusiastic backwards wave.

Then the door closed and he was alone again. Alone for hours. No one else came to see him, and he didn't expect anyone to.

Dib cried himself to sleep that night, as he had the previous night as well. Even now that he had Zim to look forward to time went so slow and the here and now was so empty and quiet and dark. He couldn't even talk to himself like he always used to for fear of being put on more awful medications.

But, even if it went wretchedly slow, time did pass. And Zim spent every second waiting anxiously until finally a doctor came.

"Someone's here to pick you up kid."

Thank god... Thank god...

Zim was in his voot cruiser, which he'd disguised as a funny rounded car. It was hot pink but Dib didn't even consider that this might be embarrassing. It was the most welcome thing he'd seen in ages. He climbed into the passenger seat as Zim vaguely instructed, never saying a word as they lifted off as soon as no one was watching, and flew to the irken's base.

Zim didn't speak to him either which made Dib very uncomfortable.

They landed in the ship hanger-attic, the disguise disappearing and the windshield opening to let them climb out. Zim began to do so, Dib followed suit. His feet had just hit the floor when he heard Zim's voice, finally addressing him.

"Hey, Dib."

It wasn't angry or even demanding, just words. Dib looked up just as Zim walked up to him, pressed up to him, wrapped his arms around him and held him tightly.

"You'll be okay now, alright?"

What...?

This was Zim... And he... This was so unlike him... Dib couldn't process it for several long minutes.

Then weights dropped in his chest. His knees weakened and his eyes burned. This unexplained, unbelievable act broke down the floodgates and his barred down emotions flooded out.

His head fell into Zim's shoulder as he started to cry. He lifted his hands with intense nervousness and hesitance, as if he might shatter the alien's presence, and hugged Zim back. As much as he feared he'd be shoved away for crying, for showing weakness, he was too desperate for this not to hug Zim back, as close and as tightly as he could.

Zim was not doing this for himself, but purely for Dib. This was a human thing that Zim knew would make the human happy, and he apparently wanted Dib to be happy.

He wanted Dib to be happy.

The human lost himself sobbing into the warm body holding him, and he was not pushed away. He was not pushed away.

Zim cared.

Nothing else that could possibly happen seemed to matter anymore.