#unfortunately the entirety of this fic is written in zims perspective so you dont get to hear skoodges rambling thoughts

[weakly-skoodge]

Week Twenty Seven!

How many loops have passed, now? How many times has Zim gone out of his way to find him again, alone, sitting on a rock on a desecrated planet. Does it matter? No one is around to watch. No one remembers.

No one but Zim.

He leans his head against the sole seat of his Voot, and stares up, unblinking.

Sometimes, they hold hands, and Zim is struck with the sudden urge to rub his thumb against the palm of Skoodge's. An action far too gentle to be coming from the mighty Zim, but, eh. No one else is around. And no one will remember. So, one loop, when he finds Skoodge's hand in his once more, he gives in to the temptation.

Skoodge cries.

Zim tries not to do it again.

All of it accumulates. Zim learns more about Skoodge than he would ever care to have learned in his entire lifetime. Little things. What makes him cry. What his favorite color is.

He thinks darkmatter donuts taste good. The how and why of anyone liking them ever are completely lost to Zim.

Lost. A familiar sentiment, especially to these current times. Time. Many singular time.

Being in a timeloop gets confusing.

Irrelevant.

Zim shakes his head and slaps his cheeks, pulling himself back to reality.

All of these events and loops are important. They conglomerate and congeal and condense into one mass of thoughts and ideas. Everything. The talking, the hugging, almost the… blech, mouth-pressing, which hasn't happened since the first time fortunately, the petty arguments that escalate into bloody fights. It all brings them, to the here, the now, in the most recent loop.

They're talking.

Again.

About useless, arbitrary things. Nothing that will stick, that hasn't stuck already. Not words, at least. Only impressions of joy, of shared smiles and laughs. Things no irken should share, not unless they have the privilage to. Things that they've both already shared before.

And Zim realizes what he wants.

He wants this.

He wants to be… as much as he hates to admit it, friends.

They used to be. He knows that much.

He has impressions of things before. Some full memories. Holding hands, leading, seeing, laughing, breathing. Out to the side of a cliff, in a trench, out in barren dunes. But mostly feelings.

The talking is familiar. Comforting, in a way nothing else has ever been. Nothing else, not since before.

Before what?

Try as he might, as by Zog he does try, he can't sum it to the forefronts of his mind. It’s all a distant, corrupted memory, now.

"Why did we stop?" he asks Skoodge, upfront and blunt, as usual. There's no point in elaborating. The full-body flinch is enough for Zim to tell that Skoodge knows exactly what he's asking about.

Irkens aren't the best at beating around the bush. Far too impatient. Skoodge is an outlier. He would wait for anything, if he believed the end result would be rewarding in any substantial way.

For crying out loud, he's still sitting here, now, in this loop, basking in Zim's glory.

"You don't know?" He waits. Patient, as always, for a response to his own question, one that won't come, clinging to some way to divert his attention and redirect the conversation. Unfortunately for Skoodge, he has already used this tactic against Zim far too many times for him to fall prey to it anymore.

He turns away in defeat. His claw picks and fiddles at his sleeve and glove.

"I… didn't really… treat you good enough, for you to have any reason to stick around."

That doesn't sound right. Skoodge is treating Zim plenty nice now. The other half is more believable, on it's own. Zim is far too comfortable with abandoning people who could otherwise have been valuable assets to him.

"Is that the truth?"

Skoodge tugs his gloves further up his arms. A useless action. They're already pulled up as high as they can go. "Yes."

Liar.

There's no time to call him out. Already, they've been engulfed, the honks of time-bending creatures completely taking over Zim's senses as he returns to square one.

These creatures could stand to be more courteous towards the guy who, essentially, gave them an entire outhouse-universe, free of charge. Would it kill them to give him a little more time to exist?

It's fine.

He'll just have to ask again. Faster. More efficiently.

It can't be too difficult. It's in an irken's nature to be efficient. He can do it.

If nothing else, he will do it because he is Zim.

That simple fact is explanation enough.

"Are we friends?"

Skoodge takes a moment, to mull it over. Likely, he's going through english vocabulary to figure out what that word even means, again, as he already has many times before. As he already has and hasn't remembered.

"… No." He pauses. Zim thinks, this is where it stops, this is where he backtracks, immediately tries to remedy it, where he looks at Zim with a smile tugging his face and a laugh bubbling in his throat, ready to say gotcha.

No.

In a cruel twist of events, Skoodge instead continues on.

"I don't think we are."

#weekly skoodge #written skoodge #yayyyy #unfortunately the entirety of this fic is written in zims perspective so you dont get to hear skoodges rambling thoughts