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“You’re doing it wrong.”
Dib sighed, the back of his head baking in the sun as he stared at the disturbed dirt beneath him.
“Zim,” Dib’s tone was as steady as he could make it as he looked up, “I think I know more about gardening than you do.”
“You know nothing about gardening,” Zim’s response was quick, his arms crossed as he stared down at Dib and judged his subpar gardening skills.
“Zim, all I’m doing is picking turnips. You just pull them out of the dirt.” Dib proceeded to yank a turnip out of the ground, the dirt falling in small clumps from the freshly picked root vegetable, “See?”
Zim stared at the turnip for all of two seconds before saying, “You’re doing it wrong.”
“How?”
“First of all,” Zim said, “You’re not supposed to ‘yank them out.’ You’re supposed to use that thing,” Zim pointed at the discarded garden fork, lying sad and forgotten in the withering soil, “And carefully loosen the soil around it so you can gently pull the wretched vegetable from its dirty confines. That’s how you’re supposed to do it.”
Dib stared at Zim and the smug look on his face, his eye twitching as the Irken chuckled under his breath. Dib’s grip on the turnip tightened, and he had half a mind to smack Zim with it, before an even better idea occurred to him.
Dib immediately relaxed, and he could see the confusion flash in Zim’s eyes before he started speaking.
“Yeah, I could do that, or I could also, you know…” Dib dropped the turnip onto the ground and plunged his hand back into the earth, “Use my hands.”
The alarm set in instantly, Zim stepping back.
“Dib—”
But it was too late. Dib was quick, lifting his handful of dirt and chucking it at Zim full force. Zim screeched as the clump hit him square in the chest. He frantically tried to brush the mess off as he began to yell at Dib.
“You disgusting horrible dirt child I’m going to fill your massive head with mud you wretched little—!”
Dib just sat there, kneeling in the garden, laughing hysterically as his alien arch nemesis proceeded to have a meltdown over some dirt.
“Hey!”
The screaming and laughing stopped at once, both human and alien jumping slightly as they turned their attention to the armed guard glowering at them.
“What’s going on over there?”
“Nothing sir, nothing at all!” Dib tried to look as non-confrontational as possible as the guard glared at him. The guard’s eyes then settled on Zim, and it took all of Dib’s willpower not to snap his head in Zim’s direction. Instead, he looked to Zim out of the corner of his eye and prayed that the Irken wouldn’t get him into any more trouble.
“Nothing, sir. Everything’s fine.”
Zim’s tone was smooth and level headed, his hands clasped behind his back in a nonchalant manner.
Dib breathed a quiet sigh of relief, right up until the guard kept talking.
“You ain’t workin’ here, so beat it,” the guard said, and Dib could feel Zim’s tone shift before he even started speaking.
“This is a public space of this normal community, of which I am a part of,” Zim began,” And as a totally normal member of this community, it is my very human right to be here in this space. Being normal.”
Silence, and Dib could plainly see that Zim wasn’t backing down, his arms back to being crossed over the spot he’d marred with dirt.
When they had arrived at the city’s community garden a few hours ago (a place neither had even known existed prior to Dib’s sentencing) it had only taken a few minutes after their arrival for a heated exchange to unfold.
Dib had been told what to do, and had dutifully (though sullenly) gone to get what he needed.
The one thing he had failed to grab, however, were a pair of gardening gloves, something that Zim had taken a high offense to.
“You’re going to mess around in the filthy, dirty earth without protection?”
“Zim, don’t say it like that—”
“Put some gloves on, Dib!”
Zim had thrown a proper fit, and Dib was tempted to forgo the gloves entirely just to get under Zim’s skin. But the complete and utter scene Zim was making had not gone unnoticed, so Dib had begrudgingly thrown on some gloves, much to Zim's approval.
But now he had no way of appeasing Zim’s attitude, and if the little space monster managed to garner him even more service hours, he was going to—
“Fine,” the guard conceded, “But quit making a ruckus.”
Dib relaxed as the guard wandered off, but as Zim now quietly resumed brushing himself off, Dib couldn’t help but feel slightly annoyed that Zim hadn’t gotten kicked out.
Dib resumed his turnip harvesting as he said, “You know, you don’t have to be here.”
“No,” Zim didn’t even bother looking at him as he spoke, too focused on the specks of dirt still clinging to him, “But you do.”
Dib grit his teeth and pulled out another turnip.
“Shut up or I’ll throw more dirt on you.”
That got Zim’s attention, and it brought Dib a crumb of satisfaction when the alien took a couple steps away from him, a small grin flitting across his face at the Irken’s discomfort.
The grin quickly fell away though as the sun continued to bake both Dib and the garden he was slated to tend to for the rest of the day. As annoying as it was tending to subpar vegetables in the blistering heat, the community garden was definitely one of the less horrible places he’d been sent to work at.
It was especially better than being locked away in a maximum security prison, and it was only thanks to his father that he hadn’t suffered a harsher punishment.
Membrane had shaken his head in his typical disappointed fashion.
“My poor insane terrorist son.”
“Dad, it was an accident—”
“Destroying half a hospital is still an act of terrorism, son, whether it was an accident or not.”
Dib would argue that it did matter, especially since the whole hospital fiasco was Zim’s fault. However, considering the fact that his father managed to whittle his sentence down to a mere four hundred and sixty five days of community service, as opposed to life in prison, helped him keep his mouth shut.
But having Zim follow him everywhere was seriously pushing him to his limits.
Every day, without fail, Zim would show up at the place he was slated to work and pester him the entire time. Every day, Zim would be there to tell him that he was doing something wrong, or that something wasn’t clean enough, and that he was going to get more days tacked on to his sentence if he didn’t do a good enough job.
Dib’s only place of refuge were the public bathrooms. They were the only place Zim refused to enter, and Dib honestly couldn’t blame him for that.
At first, Dib had been relieved that Zim insisted on following him around, for the sole reason that if Zim was with him, then he wasn’t off plotting or destroying anything. He didn’t have to worry for a single moment about what Zim was up to during his service hours if Zim was with him the entire time.
Zim being here was a good thing. He just had to keep telling himself that.
“That one wasn’t ready.”
Dib stared at the clearly too small turnip in his hands.
A moment of weakness overtook the young man as he flung the little vegetable right at Zim’s head.
A sharp intake of breath, followed by startled sputtering, and Dib was mentally preparing himself for the onslaught of screaming when—
“Master, look!”
Both Zim and Dib turned to look at Gir, who was standing a little ways away from them in a different garden patch.
“They have cabbages!”
Gir was standing in the cabbage patch and waving his arms around, gesturing excitedly to every single head of cabbage.
“That’s nice, Gir,” Zim said, his tone indifferent, before turning back to Dib and taking on a decidedly snippier attitude, “As for you—”
“I’m gonna eat it!”
Zim whirled around immediately, his full attention on Gir as the little bot plucked a rather large cabbage from the garden.
“Gir, no! Do not eat the city’s filthy cabbages!”
Gir smiled, “But it looks so slimy!”
Zim blanched and shuddered, “They’re not supposed to be slimy, Gir!”
“But I wanna eat it!”
“Gir—!”
Zim quickly left Dib’s side, and the young man watched with a huge smile on his face as Zim failed to reach Gir in time to snatch the rotten vegetable away from him.
Gir bit down into the old cabbage, tearing off large, mushy chunks as he continuously bit into it. Zim gagged, and looked about ready to be sick.
“Gir, please stop…”
Oh yeah, Zim was definitely going to throw up. Dib had to press a dirty glove to his mouth to keep himself from cackling, but all that mirth died the moment Gir pointed at him.
“Dib should eat one too,” Gir said around a mouthful of cabbage, “They’re tasty!”
Zim perked up, looking at Gir’s half eaten cabbage, and the ones still on the ground, slowly rotting and dying in the unrelenting sun.
“Yes Gir, that’s a wonderful idea,” Zim said, a smile creeping onto his face, “But which one should Dib eat?”
Zim slowly walked amongst the cabbage patch, eyeing each and every one as he passed them by. There were still a few heads of cabbage that looked semi-decent, but Dib knew he wasn’t about to get lucky and receive one of those, because for some reason, Zim knew exactly what a good cabbage looked like and immediately sidestepped those ones after a mere glance.
“Make him eat that one,” Gir said, “It’s big, just like his head!”
Both Zim and Dib zeroed in on the cabbage Gir pointed at, and Dib could feel his stomach lurch as Zim’s smile widened.
“An excellent choice, Gir.” Zim walked over to the leafy vegetable, bent to pick it up, then immediately righted himself, grimacing down at it.
“Gir, come pick this up and give it to him.”
“Okay!”
Gir gleefully hopped over and plucked the cabbage up before bounding over to Dib with alarming speed. Dib barely had time to blink before both alien and robot were standing in front of him, cabbage in hand.
Dib looked down at the clearly rotten vegetable, its once green appearance now that of a greyish husk with black spots marring the leaves.
Dib stared at the cabbage, then looked up.
“I’m not eating that.”
“Eat it, Dib, or I’ll scream.”
“I’ll scream too!”
Dib was acutely aware of all the guards within earshot, and even those stationed on the opposite side of the garden would undoubtedly hear the utter cacophony of pure noise the two space creatures in front of him were capable of making.
With a heavy sigh, Dib took the cabbage from Gir. A shiver ran down his spine the moment his fingers sunk into the mushy, rotten vegetable, the moisture easily seeping through his gloved hands. He gave the cabbage a slight sniff, and the only thing he could think to compare the smell to was that time Gir had managed to back up the entire city’s sewage system.
He hesitated, wondering if this was really worth avoiding more community service hours.
No, he thought, but it was definitely worth avoiding prison time, which he knew he was skirting around by an already very thin margin.
Zim knew this, Dib knew this, and that’s why he brought the cabbage up to his mouth and took a tentative bite.
It was horrendously sour, and it took Dib fighting against every cell in his body not to spit it out.
He just barely managed to swallow the small bite he had taken, the cabbage making a horrible squelching sound as he squeezed it in his hands and forced it down his throat.
Dib coughed and spit and desperately wanted to rip his own tongue out. He dropped the horrendous cabbage in the process, the rancid vegetable sinking into the disturbed dirt around the turnips.
“Yay, big head likes it!” Gir clapped, then went and took the cabbage for himself, “I want some too!”
Gir took a bite out of it, happily chomping away at the cabbage as Dib wiped at his mouth.
“Are you happy now?” Dib asked, trying for the life of him not to acknowledge Gir’s existence as his stomach threatened to ascend to heaven.
Zim had the most unbearable grin plastered across his face. He hummed, glancing at Gir before saying, “Gir, save some for the Dib. I don’t think he’s had enough.”
The hairs on the back of Dib’s neck raised, “Zim, I’m not—”
“Unless of course you’d like to sample prison food. Who knows? It may only be semi-rotten.”
Dib snatched the cabbage from Gir and took a massive bite, screwing his eyes shut as the cabbage turned into a pile of mush in his hands as he forced the putrid chunk down.
Opening his eyes, Dib immediately zeroed in on Zim, his rage clawing its way up and out of his throat before any of his stomach contents could do so.
“Happy now, you horrible little space monster? I’m gonna tie you to a garden post and watch you bake in the sun while I shove cabbages down your—!
Zim just continued to stare at him, that grin never faltering on his green, alien face, and the sight only managed to spur Dib’s anger on even further, until—
“Hey!”
Dib instantly clamped his mouth shut, but it was far too late. His gaze snapped over to the guard from before as the man pointed an accusing finger directly at him.
“Are you eating city property?”
A wave of confusion—along with a heavy dose of nausea—rolled over Dib, before his mind snapped to the remnants of the wretched cabbage.
Dib dropped the thing like it was a bomb, waving his hands in a defensive manner, “No, no, no! I wasn’t— I’m not—!”
“You were!” the guard said, having stalked over to the trio as he now pointed at the discarded vegetable. The guard seemed to completely ignore the fact that the thing was rotten beyond redemption as he took a hold of Dib’s arm.
“You’re on bathroom duty! No more free veggies for you, you filthy glutton! You disgust me.”
On a regular day the bathrooms would have been a much needed respite from Zim and his constant pestering. But now, with his stomach full of rotten cabbage and the heat undoubtedly cooking the restrooms like a sauna, Dib’s stomach shoved his rage to the side and took center stage.
“No, please! Not the bathrooms, not the—!”
Zim watched as the guard dragged Dib off to the public restrooms, his smile finally falling as he let out an annoyed little huff.
“Well, that's not the worst thing that could have happened, but Dib still seems pretty upset, so good job Gir!”
“Yay! He’s gonna puke all over the place!”
Zim chuckled, “Yes, yes he is.”
Zim watched the guard shove Dib into the restroom as Gir scooped up the remnants of the cabbage. The little bot stared at it for a few long moments before saying, “You want some?”
“Eh?” Zim turned his attention to Gir and immediately gagged as the cabbage was offered to him.
“No Gir, absolutely not.”
“But Master,” Gir said, “You have to. It’s Cabbage Day. You have to eat cabbage on Cabbage Day!”
“Then I’ll eat a different cabbage!”
“No, you have to eat this one!”
“No Gir, no! I will not— Get that thing away from me!”
Gir was practically shoving the decaying pile of cabbage mush in Zim’s face, and it didn’t take long before Zim was running away from him as fast as he could.
On any other day, Zim would have easily outrun the little robot. He’d had plenty of years to hone that skill. However, on this particular day, the Earth’s sun had decided to be even more wretched than it normally was. It was so bad that Zim had seriously considered staying back at the base the moment he had opened his front door, but the thought of giving Dib even a single day of peace was far more irritating than a bit of heat exposure.
Zim was seriously beginning to regret that decision as the heat was finally catching up with him, feeling as if he would burst into flames any second now.
His legs wobbled, his resolve slipping as the unreasonably high temperatures made his head feel fuzzy. He tripped, and that was the only opening Gir needed.
It didn’t take long for all the screaming to catch the attention of the other guards on duty, who promptly banned them from the local garden for disturbing the peace.