The Warden checked his watch for a third time and sighed. Dale had failed to come in for his midnight shift. Again. The Warden looked over his list of on-call officers, but didn't see anyone who he hadn't already called in this week. They were all tired, he knew. So are you, the devil on his shoulder chided in his ear. His mustache twitched as he reached for his relatively fresh cup of coffee. It didn't matter how tired he was, and he knew it. His correctional officers were like family, and he wasn't about to over-tax any one of them. (Except for Dale. He was about ready to fire Dale.) This is gonna be a long night.

The Warden made his way down to solitary confinement, where Dale was supposed to have taken over fifteen minutes ago. He was greeted by a clearly exhausted Terry who was struggling to keep his eyes open. The Warden put a hand on his shoulder. Terry jumped.

"Sir, ah- sorry sir! I was-"

"Calm down, son. You can head home. I'll take it from here," the Warden said in a tone that only his officers (and some of the seasoned prisoners) would know was a soothing one.

"But, I thought- Dale?" Terry asked, looking around quizzically.

"Nope. Just me tonight. But that's alright." The Warden removed his hand from Terry's shoulder and Terry stood, gathering his things from the chair and the control desk in front of him.

"I…" Terry started, turning to face the Warden. "Thank you, sir."

The Warden simply nodded and took another sip of his coffee before sitting in Terry's now vacant seat.

Terry pulled his coat on as he left the room, and the Warden glanced over the dials and lights before him as the iron bars closed behind Terry as he left. The Warden set his coffee mug down on the section of the desk that lacked controls, and tried to sit back and resign himself to staring at the completely closed off cell that held the city's supervillain.

The Warden lasted about five minutes at this. After that, his thoughts turned uncharacteristically bitter. Why did Megamind have to pick today for an evil plot? Couldn't it have been a day when Dale wasn't scheduled to work? Why was he sitting here, even? He knew that if Megamind wanted out, he was going to get out. What was the point?

The Warden didn't have the mental energy or alertness to combat these thoughts with the answers he knew were true. Instead, he found himself slamming the button that opened the closed porthole on the door of the cell and stomping over to it in a tantrum. He didn't know why he expected this to make him feel any better. He knew he was just going to see Megamind awake, as he always seemed to be, pacing around the cell or doing something else that would completely baffle the Warden. If he had really been thinking clearly, he would've realized that opening the porthole and coming to talk to Megamind would've been a green light for banter to the alien; something the Warden did not need at this ungodly hour.

His anger was cut short as soon as Megamind came into view, however. Megamind was not awake and not plotting. He was, instead, curled up in the chair that comprised all of the furniture the cell had - and he was asleep. The Warden didn't believe his eyes. He hadn't seen Megamind sleep, or even show signs of tiredness, since he was small. Granted, he knew he wasn't around Megamind as much anymore, but he tried to be connected to little blue's time at the Metro City Prison.

Little Blue. He hadn't heard that name, much less thought it, in years. The inmates that got close to Megamind used to call him that, and, the Warden was told, still called him that if Megamind passed their cells on his way to solitary. The Warden had never outwardly used that name, but had mentally adopted the nickname for Megamind.

Little Blue fit right now, too. Megamind's head might have grown even bigger (literally and metaphorically), and he may be as tall as the Warden nowadays, and he might have that weird strip of a goatee that the Warden never really understood, but seeing Megamind asleep like - like he was when he was a baby - it was breaking the Warden's heart.

Megamind was curled up, knees to his chest, sitting sideways in his chair, with the same, unreadable expression as he always had when asleep. The Warden could never read his face when Megamind was younger. It was almost wistful, completely soft, and all around… unguarded, the Warden realized. After seeing Megamind day after day, on TV more often than not - and always playing at that game of his - seeing him sleeping, he could finally see it. Megamind was vulnerable.

Oh, he'd hate it if the Warden was realizing this, but that had to be it. The Warden's mustache crinkled and he turned, shaking his head, and reached for his coffee mug. He took a longer drink than normal, and saluted the officer, Mark, he thought, patrolling past the gate to solitary confinement. He pulled the mug away from his face and swished it around, staring into its depths. He still couldn't figure it out, and his brow furrowed. Why would Megamind sleep in solitary now? Now that he thought about it, every report that he could recall without going and searching through records said that Megamind had always been awake for the entirety of his (albeit relatively short) stays, even if they were overnight, and usually he was taunting the officer on duty.

The Warden set his mug down on its spot, and thoughtfully rotated it a quarter turn in place before turning back to the still-open porthole.

That's when his jaw dropped.

Megamind's chair had spun ever so slightly, and now the Warden could see the back of Megamind's neck, and down it was a gash - a horrible, ugly gash - that looked like it continued across his shoulders underneath his prison uniform. It was still oozing, staining the orange suit with black blood.

The Warden had never seen Little Blue hurt, and now a different kind of anger was welling up in him because of it. He set his jaw grimly, blood boiling. He always figured that Megamind had some level of invulnerability, like Metro Man, and that's why the Warden had never seen the blue alien's skin broken. The longer the Warden stared, the more furious he got, and he wasn't sure why - though surely it had something to do with the fact that Megamind's wound looked more like two, upon closer inspection. Two parallel lines, almost close enough together to be from… Metro Man's laser vision.

The Warden couldn't see straight, he was in such a rage. Who did that conceited, camera-loving "superhero" think he was to actually hurt someone who didn't have a chance physically? Nothing Megamind ever did was actually threatening enough to anyone to call for blasting him with laser vision, for crying out loud. Even the Warden could see that. The next thing he knew, he was jabbing an infuriated finger into buttons that would close the porthole and open the door itself, respectively. His other hand was blindly reaching under the control desk, coming back up with exactly what it had been looking for: the first-aid kit.

Here the Warden actually stopped and considered his actions for a moment. He stopped nearly mid-step before going to the door of Megamind's cell, listening for Mark coming by on patrol. After a solid fifteen seconds and a brief session of internal mocking for being so paranoid (it's Megamind. I mean seriously, will anyone around here care if I go in?), he crept toward the door to the prison cell.

The Warden entered, and pulled the door shut as far as it would let him before the magnetic portion of the lock began to engage. Hopefully, between being on the far side of the iron bars and the time of night, Mark wouldn't be paying close enough attention to notice.

The Warden straightened and turned to face Megamind, who was still curled up in his chair, peaceful as ever. The Warden took a deep breath before looking away from Megamind and opening the first-aid kit and digging out gauze, bandages, scissors, and a solvent in a little plastic package that was supposed to help open wounds clot. Megamind wasn't bleeding terribly, probably thanks to the cauterizing property that the Warden would assume laser vision possesses, but it was enough to make him worry.

He set the first-aid case down and moved as silently as possible over to Megamind's chair. As delicately as the Warden could muster, he cut Megamind's orange prisoner suit in the back down from the collar, just enough to see what he was working with.

And for a moment, just a moment, he almost wished he hadn't come to help.

Spreading from the bleeding burn wounds there were tiny, black lines that one might be tempted to mistake for veins, if one wasn't the Warden. But it was the Warden seeing them, and he'd seen them before.

The Warden's vision blurred, with memory or tears, he couldn't be sure. Whatever it was, all he could see was the sobbing pre-teen Megamind that the Warden held what felt like lifetimes ago. It had started as the Warden holding him to pin his arms and try and talk some sense into the boy, because he was furious and thrashing about, but after struggling for an agonizingly long minute, Little Blue had collapsed and broke down in tears.

The Warden hated himself to this day for not noticing what Megamind had been doing all those years ago. It was normal for Megamind to take apart and tinker with whatever he got his hands on; why would a pencil sharpener be any different?

But it was. It was so much worse.

An officer had caught Megamind attempting to conceal a blade when confronted about it, and got the Warden, even though it was just a razor blade from a pencil sharpener. It took the Warden coming into his cell for someone to notice the evidence of failed attempts at self-harm all up and down Megamind's arms. The Warden had tried to talk to him about it, babbling, he was sure, but Megamind began screaming. Some of the worst things the Warden has ever heard Megamind say came from that day. Cruel, demeaning things about every quirk Megamind had ever noticed about the Warden, all in an attempt to push him away - but something in the Warden kept moving toward him. He embraced the alien, causing him to thrash more before giving in and clinging to the Warden.

The lines up and down Megamind's arms from when he was young - they looked the same as the lines now adorning his neck and shoulder blades. The new ones came in patterns, the Warden realized after he furiously blinked back what were now unmistakably tears. He realized, heart sinking, that Megamind had been clawing at the burns, trying to get them to stop itching, and probably causing the bleeding from the edges of the wounds.

Commanding himself not to cry, the Warden began patching Megamind up: first the clotting liquid, which didn't cooperate well with his alien blood, after which he applied gauze to as much of the open wounds as his limited supply would allow. Megamind shuddered in his sleep at the temperature of the gauze, causing the Warden to jump and work faster. His mind was still yelling at him, though. Yelling back what Megamind had said to him on that horrible day.

Megamind had come right for the Warden in a weak spot the Warden himself wasn't even yet aware existed: the distinctly paternal vibe given off by how the Warden cared for Megamind. Megamind hadn't held back anything; he attacked the Warden's lack of children to call his own, his desperation for Megamind to be a son to the Warden that he wasn't, the Warden's over-attachment to all of the officers.

Maybe Megamind was right, the Warden thought as the gauze in the package ran out. He'd obviously failed with Megamind. Maybe the Warden's desperation was out of line. Maybe his lack of children was to the world's benefit. He was better at the tough love thing, anyway… the only time he could remember being soft with a kid was when he'd tried to hug Megamind, and look how that went on to affect things in the grand scheme of it all.

Megamind stirred in his chair, yanking the Warden out of his thoughts and causing him to freeze where he was.

Megamind, still half asleep, looked back at the Warden, then toward his wound before closing his eyes again and returning his head to its resting spot on the back of the chair.

"…cooler now. Thank you, Warden," Megamind murmured, already falling back asleep.

The Warden was shocked. He couldn't have forced a response out of his numb lips if he wanted to. He had been sure, before, that Megamind was only sleeping because of the blood loss. Now… he'd looked directly at the Warden before going back to sleep.

He trusts you, the Warden thought, and something in his heart went soaring. You did something right.

"Sir!" a familiar voice hissed from outside the cell door at about the same time a metal hand reached into the opening and began to pull the door open.

The Warden nearly threw his neck out turning away from the door so fast. The one time he cries outside of his home, and Minion shows up? Really, universe?

"Sir, I saw what happened during the battle, and I-" Minion's voice dropped off abruptly, even though the Warden had heard him step into the cell. "I… uh-"

"The clotting salve I have didn't work," the Warden said, cutting Minion off in his best rock-hard tone.

Minion stood still, completely silent.

The Warden sighed and rubbed his tear-stained face with his free hand before turning to face Minion. "What is it, you need to tie me up or something to make this rescue official enough?" He asked bitterly.

"Um," Minion said, staring for a moment longer before saying, "I mean, I suppose if you're planning on fighting back…?" Minion questioned, treading water in his tank and fiddling with his mechanical hands, unsure of everything.

The Warden looked back at Megamind, at the scratch marks and the peaceful face of the Little Blue he once tried to raise. Without looking back up at Minion, he continued: "Can you help him?"

"Well, yes, I'm sure there's something that Sir has in the medicines he's made up for his genetic makeup that will help."

The Warden nodded. "Take him."

Minion never mentioned the Warden being in Megamind's cell to him, knowing that he probably was too exhausted to remember the incident. The Warden filed an entirely crap-filled report about why he used supplies from the first-aid kit, faked a collected state of mind until the end of his extended shift, and proceeded to break down in his living room as soon as he set his briefcase down in his home. The next time Minion saw the Warden, Minion mouthed a thank you. The Warden never spoke of it again, but thought of the memory nearly every time he saw Megamind in the news and at the prison.

When Megamind became the hero of Metro City, he invited the Warden to give a speech at the private party that was held after the public celebrations.

"Why?" the Warden asked, with an eyebrow raised and his best menacing stare locked on Megamind's green eyes.

Megamind shifted under his stare. He paused for a moment before answering, "Because everything I've ever read suggested a parent do these kinds of things." Megamind looked up and met the Warden's eyes, whose face had shifted, no, contorted in a way Megamind had never seen before. Megamind felt his face go hot, and he began to ramble: "I mean, I know that sounds stupid, I just-"

Megamind went startle still. His muscles stiffened before he could process what was happening, but when he came to his circumstances had not changed: the Warden was hugging him. Megamind had no idea how this had happened, but there they were, the Warden's arms wrapped around Megamind's narrow caped shoulders.

Megamind slowly put his arms up and hugged the Warden back, who let out an incredibly shaky breath as Megamind did so.

"Warden, I…"

"Thank you, Megamind."