Roxanne goes window shopping on October 28th.
She almost doesn't go; she has to fight with herself to do it. They released her from the hospital three days ago, but she's still feeling a little shaky and fragile.
(still having nightmares about the smell of the purple smoke and turning around to see Megamind, who is—)
It's ridiculous, she tells herself, to feel like this; she's fine, and she faces much more dangerous things on a weekly basis—how many times has she been in a death trap? And she's never felt anything like this afterwards.
But that's the thing, isn't it. Those were all with Megamind, and she's never been in any actual danger with Megamind. If it had been Megamind's evil plot she found herself in the middle of, instead of Psycho Delic's, she never would have been caught in the hallucinogenic purple smoke, never would have ended up at the hospital.
So. Yes. She's a little shaken up. Which is why she makes herself go shopping; it's a way of proving to herself that she's fine.
She already has a costume for Halloween; she's had one for months, actually, has been planning it since August. A starfleet miniskirt uniform in command gold. Megamind always kidnaps her for Halloween; she had smirked to herself, when she bought the costume, thinking of his probable reaction to it.
Roxanne pauses in front of one window and critically regards a mannequin dressed in a witch costume. This costume is especially impressive in its artistic skimpiness.
A cold wind sweeps down the street, making Roxanne shiver.
This would probably have been more fun if she had someone with her. She doesn't really have anyone she could have asked, though. Well—Wayne, maybe. They usually just meet up once a week or so for coffee, aside from the regular weekly Metro Man rescues, but she supposes she could have called and asked him along on this shopping trip.
Having Wayne with her would have pretty much defeated the point of going, though, would have felt too much like protection, hiding behind him. She refuses to do that.
Besides, Wayne isn't really much for Halloween; he's worn the same Elvis costume every year she's known him.
Roxanne takes an absent step forward, letting her gaze fall idly on the next costume in the display. A vampire queen, she thinks, complete with a crown made of sharp silver spikes and black metal filigree like lace.
A cloud goes over the sun; the change of light makes her reflection come up on the storefront window.
It's odd, she thinks, considering how very into Halloween Megamind is, but she's never seen him actually wear a costume. How strange. Why wouldn't he—
The spike crown, her reflection, the thought of Megamind—they coalesce without warning into a memory: his sharp smile and wicked tone, the first time he said—
(won't you let me make you my evil queen, Miss Ritchi?)
And that's—
—it's a ridiculous thought, of course it is. Roxanne already has a costume, and anyway, she's definitely not going to dress up as Megamind's evil queen for Halloween; that would be unbelievably inappropriate! The Halloween evil plots are always televised; she can't let him broadcast her looking like that to the entire city.
Her logic is sound, all the point well-reasoned.
Somehow she still finds herself walking into the shop.
When she gets home, she buries every piece of the new costume she bought in the back of her closet, her face flushed and her heart beating too hard.
Absolute insanity; she can't imagine what possessed her. She's never going to wear it.
There's a costume party at the KCMP office on the night of Halloween. It's a yearly thing; Megamind almost always comes and kidnaps her there.
She wears the starfleet uniform, obviously, and does not even think about opening her closet and getting out the other costume.
"Care for some punch, ensign?" Hal says, leaning against the refreshments table and leering at her.
Roxanne barely represses the urge to upend the punch bowl over him in outrage.
She came all the way over here to get away from him! How can he not realize that? And besides which, there are clearly three bands of gold braid on her sleeves, so she is obviously dressed as a commander, not a goddamn ensign.
Hal is dressed (very unconvincingly) as Indiana Jones, a thing that Roxanne is absolutely certain Harrison Ford never committed a sin dire enough to deserve.
"No thanks, Hal," she says, forcing a smile and holding up her cup, "I've already got one."
Hal laughs a little too loudly.
"Right, right, yeah, of course, Roxy! Hey, why don't you come dance?"
Roxanne freezes as Hal throws his arm over her shoulders and she wishes with sudden viciousness that she had worn the other costume; he would have thought twice about doing that if she'd had spikes on her shoulders—
It's less an accident and more a moment of poor impulse control when Roxanne jerks her hand and splashes her cup of punch all over Hal's face.
Hal splutters, looking comically dismayed and Roxanne barely manages to choke back the laugh that threatens to bubble out of her.
"Oh, Hal, sorry!" she says, with a complete lack of honesty.
She's spilled punch over her own sleeve, too, though, and that she does regret—oh no; she likes this costume—
"Damn it," she says, and shoves a handful of napkins at Hal, who is still spluttering. "I'm gonna go wash this off; excuse me—"
She dodges away from him and weaves her way through the crowd and into the hall.
The women's bathroom is mercifully empty; Roxanne locks herself inside and runs her sleeve under cold water. The stain goes from red to pink, but it doesn't disappear entirely, not even when she scrubs at it with soap and a paper towel.
Damn it. And by the time the kidnapping is over, the stain will probably be set and she'll never get it out.
Roxanne glances up at herself in the mirror. Her mouth is a flat line of dissatisfaction beneath her tastefully muted lipstick and one sleeve of her dress is wet, with a pink stain on the cuff.
Why hasn't Megamind come to get her yet? She's been here for an hour already; he usually comes and picks her up within the first fifteen minutes; it's the only reason she can face the prospect of going to a party that includes Hal.
What can be taking him so long? What—
(—what if something's happened to him, what if he's hurt or—)
oh god no please no
(the smell of purple smoke and she turned around and Megamind was—)
The sound of laughter in the distance, from the party. Roxanne presses her lips together hard and tells herself that she is being ridiculous.
Wayne said—Wayne said that Megamind was—
(alive not dead like he'd been when she turned around in the purple smoke and and saw him and)
—fine; Wayne had said that Megamind was fine, and she needs to stop this.
She runs a hand through her hair and takes a shaky breath.
God, she really doesn't want to go back to this party.
Roxanne turns her head to look at the bathroom door, then makes an involuntary face. She looks back at the mirror and grimaces again.
In the mirror, behind her own reflection, the reflection of the bathroom window catches her attention.
An idea dawns.
Roxanne pivots slowly to face the window.
This is entirely reasonable, Roxanne tells herself as she's climbing out the window. Entirely reasonable. The party was on the second floor of the office building, but there's a sturdy fire escape stair that leads down to the sidewalk. So this is—
—Reasonable. Yes. Entirely.
Okay, so honestly, what it really is? Is fun. Like being sixteen again, sneaking out at night, the deliciously wicked sensation of escaping.
Freedom! she thinks gleefully as she jumps down to land on the sidewalk.
Now to go back to her apartment and prepare to be kidnapped.
Megamind knows where she lives; he can come and get her from there this year.
Roxanne slips off her boots just inside her apartment door, then unzips her dress and takes it off as she walks to the laundry room. She puts stain remover on the sleeve, and then she drapes the dress over the dryer to let it set.
She walks back to the kitchen, pours herself a glass of orange juice to wash away the taste of the cheap red punch, drinks it standing at the kitchen counter in her underwear.
The delightful feeling of getting away with something still persists; she climbs the stairs to her bedroom with a spring in her step and an extra sway in her hips.
She will, of course, be needing to get dressed again. She's certain she'll be able to find her old cat ear headband and tail somewhere…
…or…
She shouldn't, of course she shouldn't; she can't actually wear the evil queen costume—
—but maybe she could just…try it on.
"Uh, Sir—there's a bit of a problem here," Minion's voice comes through the watch clearly.
Megamind, pacing restlessly beside the control panel, stops.
A problem? There's a problem? Oh god.
He shouldn't have sent Minion; he should have gone himself, like he usually does for Halloween. The Halloween kidnappings are some of his favorites; allowing himself to retrieve Roxanne for a kidnapping instead of sending Minion is always a special treat.
This year, though, after last week, after the whole thing with Psycho Delic, after—
(she'd screamed; she'd looked at him and screamed; Megamind had turned her around in the haze of smoke and her eyes had fallen on his face and she'd screamed in terror and)
—well, after all that, Megamind had felt it would be—wiser—to send Minion in his place.
Only now, it seemed, there's a problem.
"What kind of problem?" Megamind bites out, placing his hands on the control panel to steady himself.
"Well, it's—Miss Ritchi—"
Megamind's stomach drops.
(oh god no Roxanne please no)
"What about Miss Ritchi?" Megamind asks, lips numb.
"She's not here, Sir."
"She hasn't arrived yet?"
"No, she—I was discreet, just like you said, Sir; I wore the disguise watch, and I asked around—she was here earlier, everybody said, but she's not here now and nobody saw her leave…"
Megamind feels himself go cold over.
(nobody saw her leave; something's happened; she's been taken; oh god)
"Sir? Sir?"
It's possible that her boyfriend came to pick her up from the party, possible she left to have a private moment with her boyfriend before going to the Scott mansion for the annual Halloween party there.
As always, that thought, the thought of Roxanne with Metro Man, makes Megamind's heart twist in a way that actually feels physically painful, and yet, he hopes that she is with Metro Man right now, because that is so much better than the thought that she might be in danger.
"Stay there," Megamind says, "check the rest of the building, make sure she's not there. Call me if you find her. If not—call me when you finish the search. I'm heading over to her apartment."
"All right, Sir."
He takes the invisible car.
The hoverbike would be faster, but it's not anything like subtle, and if Roxanne really has been taken, then—
His mind races along panicked lines as he starts the car, puts it in gear. Another attempt by a villain to set themselves up as his rival, so soon after the confrontation with Psycho Delic? Had he not been clear enough in demonstrating why that was a bad fucking idea? Had—
—oh god.
Perhaps he had been too clear. Perhaps he'd given away the fact that he—if someone had seen the way he reacted to Roxanne screaming, the way getting her out of harm's way had been his first priority, above dealing with the other drugged and panicked people, above dismantling the smoke generator, above finding Psycho Delic, above everything—
—Megamind had pushed her into Metro Man's arms and demanded that the hero fly her to safety, if somebody saw that—
His mind presents him with a series of horrifying images in quick succession.
Roxanne screaming as she looks at him, Roxanne screaming again but this time in pain, Roxanne hurt and bleeding, Roxanne lying lifeless on the ground with her eyes glazed and unfocused and staring at nothing, Roxanne dead on a morgue table an autopsy knife slicing through her cold flesh and an identification tag on her toe, Roxanne—
Panic blocks out the rest of his thoughts in a white blur.
(he doesn't remember the drive to her apartment, later, recalls it only in little disconnected moments: his hands on the wheel, taking a sharp turn; passing a particular storefront; turning to avoid a group of children in costume, pulling swiftly into the alley behind her apartment building and slamming the car into park.)
He comes to himself a little, then, although most of his mind is still screaming white static. But he recovers his thoughts enough to realize that Minion has the disguise watch; he hasn't gotten around to updating the second communicator watch to include the hard light hologram tech.
Fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCK he should have taken the hoverbike after all; at least with that he could have landed on her balcony; it's no use the car being invisible if he's stuck here on the ground looking like himself.
(call Minion; get the watch—no no no; there isn't time for that; there's no time)
((Roxanne on the morgue table being pushed into the freezer, being pushed into the crematorium furnace, being—))
He's tears off his cape and spiked mantle and exits the car swiftly. The fire escape—there. He jumps, catches hold of it, and then pulls himself up and starts to climb.
It's dark now; if he does this fast enough, he might be able to escape notice.
He'll go to Roxanne's balcony—no, no, not the balcony; if whoever has Roxanne has been watching him, they'll know he usually uses the balcony—
Her bedroom window, then; he'd never use her bedroom window under ordinary circumstances; if they've been watching his interactions with Roxanne, they'll know that, so they won't suspect—
When he reaches the window, he glances inside. There's no one he can see, and there's no sign of a struggle. The door of the closet is only partially closed, but the opening is too small to offer a good view for someone hiding inside with a gun. And when he leans over, so that his body is visible in the window, holds himself there for a long moment, no one shoots.
If they've got her here, they're downstairs.
Megamind jimmies the window open as quickly and quietly as he can, pulls his gun from its holster, and slips into the room. Gun upraised, he begins to move towards the closed bedroom door. He reaches for the handle and—
The door of the closet swings open.
Megamind pivots immediately, aiming the de-gun at the closet door and the person who—
He freezes.
She freezes.
The whole world, actually seems to freeze for a moment, like time has forgotten how to move, because it's—
...to be continued.
Happy Halloween fic! :DD
This story is in four parts; I'm going to post a chapter a day until the 31st (with one day having two chapters posted; I haven't decided which, yet.)
I hope you enjoyed the first chapter!