Archive of Our Own ^beta

Dib looked in the mirror and frowned at what he saw.

Dib was a boy. Or so he'd been told. The label something he'd carried his whole life, a title spoken like fact and truth, defining him by the accident of birth.

Except, he hadn't been an accident. Far from it. Instead, he was a product of the great Professor Membrane, whose long list of accomplishments had not been enough. This world renowned man who had pushed the envelope of science. He'd strained against ethics and legality, working with scientific fervor until he'd succeeded. Or thought he had succeeded.

Dib's read the report. Already obsessed over the ways it listed off, how even as an infant Dib was different, inadequate, a poor copy in comparison to the genuine article. He's already angsted about it, cried fat, angry, miserable tears about it, ranted to Gaz and Zim about it. He's already done the confrontation with the man who had created him...the man who despite never intending on being a father, had raised him and his sister both.

And Dib knows now that the official report left out a lot with its harsh clinicality and need for logical reasoning. He knew now that Membrane was his father, not just because they shared DNA, but because he'd held a tiny baby in his arms and instead of seeing an experiment, he'd seen his child.

The truth was that the experiment was labeled a failure because Dib was NOT an experiment.

Dad had even taken his goggles off for that particular conversation, for the first time in a long time. He revealed eyes the same color, as Gaz's, as what Dib saw in the mirror every day. He'd gripped Dib's shoulder, the way he had a hundred times before, and he spoke again, but it was far from his normal overconfident TV show host voice...instead the Professor was awkward and stilted as he said,

"The ways that we are alike make me proud. But it is our differences, the things that make you who you are, my son, that I love about you."

It was that awkwardness more than anything that made Dib believe it as the Truth. There had been some tears and some hugging, followed by even more awkwardness afterwards. By all means, that should have been the end of it. He should have been able to put it out of sight and mind, content with the knowledge he'd gained of his father's pride and love. 

But, it didn't stop him from looking at the bright red letters marking him a failure and wondering. From noting the ways he was very much not like his dad and what that meant. It was impossible not to notice the ways he potentially failed to live up to the last name given to him, much like the bold capital M on his birth certificate that marked him as Membrane's son.  It made him feel frustrated and claustrophobic without really understanding why. He doesn't narrow in on gender as the cause for a long time.

Because gender seems like one of those things that just is, built into everything but taken for granted as obvious. Rather like a fish not knowing what water is scenario.

 Where some people might describe themselves like ' Becky, 22, female, likes long walks on beaches', for him it was more, 'Dib, 19, Paranormal Investigator, likes chasing aliens & cryptids'. Gender (and/or his sex) was less than an after thought. Sometimes useful, sometimes a nuisance.

Dib had just assumed that was how it was for everyone. Until, finally his inability to not poke and prod at what was scary and confusing got the best of him. Making assumptions was easy. Gathering data was much harder. So he asked Gaz. He waited until she seemed to be in a good mood, full up on pizza.

"Hey, Gaz. Do you...do you like being a girl?" 

A moment of silence between them, except for the clicking of buttons on her console. She shrugged, sounding bored when she answered. "I guess so. Why?"

Dib felt a bit relieved at her answer. "Oh, just gathering data. I uh, I feel the same about being a boy."

His sister raised an eyebrow. "And how do you 'feel' about it, Dib?"

It was his turn to shrug. "Ambivalent."

There was only the sound of Gaz's enemies dying on screen.

"Elaborate." Gaz sounded a little less bored, but Dib wasn't one to pass up the ability to talk when she offered to listen so he continued. Though he felt less confident now. 

"Uh. Like I'm disconnected?" He took her silence as his cue to keep going. "Distant from it. Um. It's heavy and obnoxious, sometimes. Like I'm just carrying around this weight, this thing that doesn't really...belong to me." Actually, when he said it aloud, it sounded a bit more dramatic than he'd meant for it to be.

Much like dad taking off his goggles, when Gaz looked up from her game screen to make eye contact, he knew the conversation was suddenly serious. Dib fought the urge to back peddle now that he had her full attention.

"Yeah, I don't feel any of that." His scary sister confirmed. "Being a girl can suck ass but, I super wouldn't want to be a boy." She tilted her head. "Sounds like you don't want to be one either."

Dib sputtered, crossing his arms, defensively. "I definitely don't want to be a girl." Okay, that had come off pretty strongly. Gaz glared. "Not that there's anything wrong with being one, I just--" He tried to imagine himself as a girl and found it pretty odd to consider, wrong in a different way. Sure, there were parts of the 'girl experience' that he sometimes wished he could explore without the ever present threat of societal mockery but, he didn't wish he was one. Right? Right.

Gaz shook her head, interrupting his painful attempts at gathering his thoughts. "Didn't say that. Just that you don't wanna be a boy." Then she unpaused her game and looked back down like the conversation was over with her diagnosis.

Dib threw his hands in the air. "Then what else is there?"

"You need to get out more." Gaz didn't spare him a glance. "Why don't you ask Zim?"

The alien's name struck him, unexpected in this conversation. "Huh?"

She growled. "Ask the stupid alien you hang out with if he 'likes being a boy' or whatever. Now, be quiet."

No matter what Gaz implied they weren’t friends. He had no idea what they were. Some Frankenstein’s monster of a relationship; built on codependency, intricate rituals and a truce scrawled over napkins. But, he still took her sisterly advice to heart.

"So..." He hesitated, looking over at his former worst mortal enemy. The alien, much like his sister, wasn't paying him much obvious attention. Zim was fiddling distractedly with some complex looking device. 

He started again. “Soooo...do you like being a boy?” Maybe his voice was a bit less casual than he’d like it to be. Zim’s fingers paused in their movements for only a second but Dib couldn’t help but notice.

The expression on the irken’s face was familiar—like Dib was the stupidest creature he’d ever met. “Zim is no ‘boooy’.” He put an unnecessary amount of emphasis on the last word, drawing it out incredulously.

Dib supposed he shouldn’t be surprised. And if he really thought about it, it was stupid to assume Zim would ID with a made up human word.  “Then um…what are you?”

“I am ZIM!” He declared, simply and too loudly. Dib leaned away from the irken with a glower. For some reason though, Zim kept going. “Yanno, humans are one of the only species I've come across that does that.”

“Does what exactly?” Dib barked back, a bit defensive. Though now that they were having the conversation he was feeling rapidly like he was missing something stupidly obvious.

The little device in Zim's hands clicked and whirred as he fiddled with it, though his true focus was now on his ally. “This obsession with binaries. With forcing impossibly complex things into teeny, tiny, itty, bitty boxes.”

Dib shifted, his heart rate picking up, responding to the truth he could sense in the words but he still bit his lip. “It's…not really a choice.” Right? His dad was a man—and Dib was a clone of him. A replica. The world proclaimed him as a boy, and he’d carried that for as long as he’s been alive. Hell, even before it. So…even if it felt restrictive, sometimes suffocating, a straitjacket instead of a gender…well that was just life, right?

“You’re thinking of Membrane, aren’t you?”

Dib jolted, old suspicions about mind reading devices rearing up before he discarded them, remembering their truce which he's pretty sure specifically mentioned mind reading tech at one point. Still he automatically wants to deny it and even says so, “No.” Then a pause as he rethinks. “Yes. How’d you know?”

The alien waves away the question. “You always get that look on your face when its about him.”

Dib isn't sure whats more surprising, that he apparently has a Father-Issues specific facial expression or that Zim had somehow managed to pick up on it. Still, the surprise is enough to make him elaborate, “Gaz told me to talk to you. I asked her the same thing." He looks down at his hands. “It didn’t use to bother me. Being called a boy. Man. And whatever. But now…”  He was unable to shake the feeling of -wrong- that kept coming up. Zim 'hmmmms' a bit too condescendingly, Dib thinks. “What?” He scowls.

“I have read the files about the cloning, Dib-Thing. I was there for your shmoopiness. “ Dib's ears burned thinking of his breakdown. And Zim's reaction to it. “Did you not spend many hours ranting at Zim before you came to the obvious conclusion that you are not your professor-man-dad?”

Dib pursed his lips, eyeing Zim, wondering what his point was. “Yeah.”

The irken nodded. “So do I need to spell it out for you?” Dib opened his mouth but Zim kept going, on a roll now. “Gender is a thing humans invented. And Membrane, as intelligent as he might be, is still absolutely blind. You," He took a hand off the device to point at Dib's nose,  "are better than him or the rest of the pathetic humans on this rock. So DIB, if you do not want to be a ‘boy’ then do not.”

Dib couldn't help the way his eye twitched a bit. “Just like that?”

Zim did his best impression of an eyebrow raise. “Just like that. Besides, to me, pig-smelly, you will always be Dib.” Then he looked back down at his little puzzlebox as if the conversation had never happened.

"Thanks?" Dib wondered.

Despite being incredulous at first, the more he thought about it, the more it made sense.

When in doubt, he’d learned long ago, do your research. Turns out even among humans, gender was wack. Nor was it a new thing to decide that the labels given to you were bogus and needed replacing. Across time and cultures, certain people have always questioned the boxes they were put in.

It made him feel a bit less like a freak.

And knowing, like Zim said, that most other species out there in the great big universe would most likely look at him and not see 'boy' but the true shape of him, well that was appealing. Dib found that he really, really liked thinking of himself beyond the terms of binary gender. Liked thinking of himself in a way that was less connected to his genitals, to the ways he was and wasn't like his progenitor, and more about the essential spark that made him who he was.

After that, gender didn't feel like a straitjacket but more like his trusty trench coat; comfortable, adaptable, and it made him happy.

Dib looked in the mirror and smiled at what he saw.