"I love you, Blue," she whispered, and Megamind froze. She looked up at him expectantly. He swallowed. Cleared his throat. Swallowed again.
"I—I l—I lo—I—you too!" he said at last, but he'd already ruined it. Shontelle stood, hurt welling in her eyes.
"It's OK," she said. Swallowed. Began gathering her things.
"Shontelle, wait!" Megamind said, leaping to his feet and putting up his hands.
"Wait?" Shontelle asked, shoving her shoes on her feet and pausing to look back at him from the door. "Wait? Megamind, I've waited and waited and waited! We've been dating for months, and you won't even kiss me! You act like you're interested, you lead me on, you tell me how great I am with Orion—but you can't even tell me you love me! What is wrong with you, Megamind? Are you gay?"
"No!" Megamind shouted.
"Then tell me what it is! Am I not good enough? Because from what I've heard, no girl is good enough for Mega freaking Mind, the great hero of Metrocity! Well I'll tell you something! If you weren't Metro Man's best friend, no woman would ever want you, because without heroism, you're just a blue freak who can't even lie! I don't even know how you ended up with a son, Megs, because—"
"DON'T YOU EVER CALL ME THAT!" Megamind shouted, grabbing Shontelle roughly by the arm. There were tears in his eyes, and her own became wide. Her lip quivered, and Megamind slowly released, realizing he'd hurt her and backing away. "I'm sorry," he whispered, and his voice quavered. "I'm so, so sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you. I didn't—Shontelle! Wait!"
But she was gone.
By morning, so too would be his reputation.
***Break***
Wayne was there by eight. The rumors were everywhere. Megamind had lain hands on a woman.
The door was still wide open. The curtains were in tatters. The room was trashed. Everything was in a various stage of disrepair, depending on how new it was.
Megamind wasn't in the room.
Wayne drifted lightly to the ground and squeezed through the narrow opening, stepping lightly through the wreckage and across the room. He entered the long, dark hallway, his super hearing leading him to the far right, into the Master Bedroom. This room was trashed, too, but Wayne didn't need super vision to spot the small blue man huddled in on himself under the bed. His eyes were dark purple, his lip stained red from where he'd bitten through.
Wayne hefted the bed, and Megamind looked up shakily.
"Hey Blue," Wayne greeted. Megamind nodded. "Where's Orion?"
"Asleep," Megamind answered, turning his head away and closing his eyes.
"He's missing school."
"He works hard," Megamind replied. "He can use a day to sleep in."
"School attendance is mandatory."
"Have you ever had a son?" Megamind demanded, leaping to his feet and glaring up at his old friend. He was younger than Wayne. He was thirty. There should not have been stress lines in his forehead and crowsfeet near his eyes. There should not have been gray hairs in his beard. He should not have looked ten years older than Wayne.
But he did.
"No," Wayne admitted, setting the bed down.
"Then you don't know how important it is for them to get some goddamned sleep once in a while! They grow in their sleep, and shool is hard! There's peer pressure, and bullies, and fads that you can never keep up with, and teachers who think you should never have any conflicts with shool because shool is the only thing that exists, and classwork, and grades, and homework, and for God's sake, he's blue! You think they aren't going hard on him because we live in the twenty-first century?"
"Calm down, Blue," Wayne insisted. "I'm not going to blow you in for letting the kid miss a day of school."
"But you are going to blow me in for domestic abuse, aren't you?" Megamind asked. Wayne hesitated, and Megamind shook his head, crossing the room to stare into a mirror. "I knew it," he huffed. "So much for friendship. So much for fifteen years of faithful service. So much for racial equality!" He drove his fist into the mirror, and it shattered, broken shards falling to the ground, scattering across the floor. His fist bled, but he didn't care.
"Blue, they're saying you beat her. They're saying—"
"WELL WHAT THEY'RE SAYING ARE LIES!" Megamind screamed, turning back to his only friend in the world. "I barely touched her! She called me—she called me a name, and I grabbed her arm, and that was all!"
"They expect me to bring you in."
"AND EVERYONE EXPECTED YOU TO BE HETEROSEXUAL!" Megamind shouted, spinning around to face the other hero. "EVERYONE EXPECTED YOU TO BE THE ONE THAT ENDED UP WITH ROXANNE! EVERYONE EXPECTED ME TO GET ONE OF HER UGLY FRIENDS, OR BE THE LONELY SIDEKICK THAT NEVER GETS A GIRL!"
"Megamind—" Wayne tried, but Megamind turned away again, hurt streaming down his like-colored cheeks.
"That's why no one understands why it hurt so much. That's why no one understands how I have a son, especially since you don't. That's why no one understands—that's why I can't. And then Minion..."
"What did she call you?" Wayne asked. Megamind's eyes squeezed tight, and he shook his head. "Blue?" A warning tone in Metro Man's voice. Still, the more alien of the two refused to speak. "If you don't tell me I'll be forced to—"
"Megs!" Megamind cried, slamming his head into the wall. "Megs! Shontelle told me she loved me and I couldn't say it back, and she ran, and she was accusing me of so many things, but she called me Megs and I told her not to, and I grabbed her arm, and I'd never hurt her before, and she ran away, and—" Megamind broke down, sliding to the ground and turning his back to the wall, cradling his face in his knees with his hands on his head as he sobbed.
Wayne tried to comfort him as best he could, setting a hand on the blue man's shoulder and speaking small words that had been said so often they meant nothing.
"I just don't understand," Megamind said at last, clenching his jaw. "Why'd she have to die? Why did Roxanne have to die? Why Minion? They never did anything! They never hurt anyone!"
"Some people just die, Blue," Wayne replied. He didn't understand. He never would. He hadn't gone through what Megamind had gone through, and that was a good thing.
"But why them?" Megamind demanded. "Why her?"
But Wayne didn't have an answer. No one did.
And eventually, Wayne left.
And for a long time, Megamind sat alone, letting the pain run down his cheeks and onto his floor, clothes, arms, and knees.
"Daddy?" Orion asked from the doorway, rubbing at his eyes. Megamind looked up, scrubbing at his face with his shirt and standing.
"Orion!" he exclaimed, sniffing loudly and swallowing. "Happy Monday!"
"I'm missing school," Orion stated, pointing at the clock, which was now burried in a heap of clothing.
"Yeah," Megamind replied, walking over and lifting his six-year-old son into his arms. He wiped at one eye and smiled the best he could. "I thought we'd have a Bad Boy's Day Out. You cut shool, and I'll cut work, and we'll go do all the things your classmates can't. How's that sound?"
"Yay!" Orion exclaimed, raising his hands high before throwing them around his father's neck. "I love you Daddy," he said, and Megamind swallowed.
"I love you too, son," he replied, patting the boy's back. His teeth shook, his mouth twitched downward, and a last tear found its way to the floor before the blue man gathered himself together in preparation to take the blue-skinned, blue-eyed, brown-haired boy out for ice cream for breakfast. "I love you, too."
Author Comments:
A little Megamind AU. Minion and Roxanne are about six years dead, and Megamind is trying desperately to move on, if only for the sake of Orion, his son. But when you're Megamind, that can be pretty tough...