A pair of faded blue eyes blinked as the young woman they belonged to watched the screen. Blue and white light danced upon her and the floor, as well as her furniture, as she caught sight of the one thing she was watching for.
Her heartbeat quickened as Megamind's picture flashed on the screen, and slowed when Bernard Ishoeihorpwafas appeared, holding his newest book in hand about the many failures of Megamind. Then Roxanne Ritchi was on the screen, talking and laughing about her most recent kidnapping. Lily narrowed her eyes. Roxanne had no idea how lucky she was. None of them had any idea how lucky they were.
Lily brightened in every way as Megamind came back on the screen—a recording of one of his overlord speeches. She knew that someday Roxanne would open her eyes and see Megamind the way she saw Megamind. How cute he was, how intelligent and handsome and attractive. She knew she had no chance with the man of her dreams.
She also knew Megamind wasn't evil.
She'd stopped telling people, because they didn't believe her when she said that Megamind wasn't really evil. Instead they believed he'd hurt her, brainwashed her, and was trying to get her to start his evil minion follower army. That wasn't true at all.
Megamind didn't even know she existed.
It had been the year before, when she was alone in the University library, studying for her finals. The next week she'd be taking the exams that determined whether or not she received her bachelor's degree, Major in World History, Minor in Metro City History. She was just picking through the shelves to find another book, when the wall exploded, and everything went black.
Lily had opened her eyes to see books being pulled away from her body, blue hands brushing the debris from her face, worried green eyes looking down into hers, sweeping her soul. Megamind had picked her up, and she was limp in his surprisingly strong grip as he lifted her from the wreckage of the library, turned on his jetpack, and in a surreal blur, everything dark and slow and fast, they flew through the sky.
Then Lily had been back on her feet, clinging to Megamind for dear life as the world spun and swerved around her, shaking beneath her feet and blurring in front of her. "Where do you live?" she had heard through her haze, and though she couldn't remember telling him, she must have, for the next thing she recalled, she was back in his arms, then lying on the stoop in front of her door, him standing over her. He said something that she didn't hear, and when she woke again, she was in the hospital.
The doctors had said that if she'd come in any later, she would have died from internal bleeding from the blast. No one believed her when she said it was Megamind who had saved her life. No one believed her when she said he'd stopped to uncover her from the rubble.
They thought it must've been Metro Man, or that Megamind had done so only after brainwashing her or implanting some sort of chip in her so that she would follow his orders. So she'd stopped telling people. She'd stopped talking about Megamind altogether, and started pretending she hated him like everyone else.
"Lily, are you in here?" Lily yelped and fumbled with the remote, pressing the off button as soon as she could find it and leaping up, shoving the remote under the couch cushions.
"Yes, I'm here," she said quietly, pushing down the fear and guilt. "Why?"
"I wanted to know whether you'd rather have meatloaf or spaghetti for dinner tonight," her mother answered.
"Spaghetti," Lily answered in a rush, and after giving her daughter a weird look, Mrs. Monotti nodded and left. Lily breathed a sigh of relief and sat back down, turning her program about Megamind back on. No one believed he wasn't evil, so she'd stopped trying to convince them. She didn't even want them to know when she was watching something about Megamind.
Lily didn't want anyone to know what she thought of Megamind, because they wouldn't believe her. And if anyone found out that she had a crush on Megamind, they'd shun her. But she knew Megamind wasn't evil. If he could save a girl he had never even met from a disaster he had created, he couldn't be evil, and one day everyone would know, because deep inside him, he was something greater.
Deep inside, he was a hero.
