Disclaimer: I do not own nor do I claim to own any characters or concepts related to Megamind. This is a nonprofit work of fanfiction.
Thanks are once more due Rawles for her work as betareader and for her patience as I tore at my clothing in despair. This chapter would be a wreck without her and I owe her a great deal for so willingly going through this.
Thanks as well to everyone who read the first chapter, to everyone who commented or added this to their favorites or their alerts. I hope I won't disappoint you. :)
Our Beautiful Tomorrow
Chapter Two.
Roxanne folded her hands and rested them in her lap. The wall clock ticked steadily on. Stripped to her undershirt, nevertheless she perspired. A faint layer of sweat glimmered inside her wrists.
At the door: a knock. Roxanne straightened. She unclasped her hands, wiping them on her knees.
Doctor Tham Nghiem ducked into the room, fresh chart in hand. She smiled abstractly and took the swiveling chair across from the bed.
"So," Roxanne said. "Is it good news or bad news, or more of a mixed bag?"
Nghiem pushed off, riding the chair to Roxanne's side. She flipped the chart open and touched a corner of her glasses. Roxanne shifted just so, crossing her legs so that she might lean over and eye the report upside down.
"I won't have a full report from the lab until tomorrow at the very earliest, you understand," Nghiem said. "But from these preliminary results, I honestly can't say why you would need to see me."
She turned the chart over to show Roxanne, who leaned quickly away.
"See, here? Your metabolic panel is remarkable, and it looks as if that mild anemia, you remember? That's cleared." Nghiem shrugged. "Frankly you're in much better health than you were when I saw you a few months ago. I can ask the lab to run a few more tests if you like, but I expect your comprehensive and lipid panels will come back as good as these."
Roxanne worried at her shoulder, ghosting her fingers across the top of the shoulder blade. "What about my shoulder?"
Nghiem closed the chart. She half-rose, touching her thumb to the sore spot. Roxanne flinched, but it hardly hurt.
"An insect bite, non-toxic. See? It's already going down."
Nghiem sank onto her chair. She slipped a pen out of her breast pocket and clicked it.
"You've pulled the muscle, but it's only a mild strain. Use a cool compress on it tonight and if it hurts again, and take care not to overwork your arm for the next few days. You are running a low fever, but this is as much from the strain and the excitement as anything else. Aside from this?" She shrugged. "You're fine."
Roxanne sat back, frowning. Disquiet knotted her gut. It didn't make sense; she'd felt the blow.
"I can see you'd rather I had something more exciting to tell you," Nghiem said drily. She patted Roxanne's knee. "Perhaps the urine analysis will reveal sudden catastrophic kidney failure."
"We can always hope," Roxanne said. She sighed. "I'm sorry. Thank you. It's just been a little hectic today."
Nghiem pursed her lips. "I've told you, you should rest. Take a few days off and go visit the lakes or something."
Roxanne laughed and reached for her shirt. "Oh, but how can I rest when Metro City needs me?"
"What Metro City needs is someone with a spine," Nghiem retorted. "Preferably several someones. Maybe with big guns." She mimed hefting a bazooka to her shoulder.
"The last thing we need is martial law," Roxanne said. "I don't want them turning Metro City into a war zone."
Nghiem snorted. "It already is. Do you know, the E.R. doctors are pulling double shifts? Megamind may be evil, but he wasn't the only such evil Metro Man fought."
Roxanne held her jacket in her hands. The cloth bunched, folding into long lines. A small, neat hole showed in the shoulder; she fitted her finger into it.
"I know," she said. "When we lost Metro Man the entire city lost its way." She swung her jacket around her back and shrugged into the sleeves.
"Perhaps," Nghiem said thoughtfully, "we should have been less complacent. I think maybe we expected too much of Metro Man."
"I know I expect too much of you," Roxanne said. She clasped Nghiem's arms. "Thanks for getting me in on such short notice, Tham."
Nghiem smiled. "I expect another interview. Primetime," she added.
Roxanne hitched her mouth cartoonishly. "I'm not a miracle worker."
"Then what use are you?" Nghiem asked, crooking her brow.
Roxanne laughed and thumped Nghiem's arm. Briskly, Nghiem embraced her. She squeezed Roxanne roughly about the shoulders.
"Drive safely," she murmured. "And don't overdo it." She released Roxanne. "Call tomorrow for the rest of your results, okay?"
Roxanne rolled her shoulder, grimacing. "Believe me, I won't forget. Tell Lucy and the boys I said hi."
"Yes, of course," Nghiem said. She fluttered her fingers, waving Roxanne out; already, Nghiem was drawn back to the chart.
Roxanne closed the door gently at her back. A nurse swept past her, his head bent over a laden clipboard; she pressed her back to the door to make room for his onward charge.
The smell of smoke surrounded her, wafting from her jacket's collar. She made a face and started down the hall. Maybe she should have showered then come to the hospital. But of course, she thought, she only felt that way now after Tham had taken her worries and thrown them away.
She thumbed the elevator call button and hunched her shoulders, sniffing. Still, she stank. Roxanne looked to the list of floors above the elevator and fluttered one breast of her jacket, airing it out. She liked this jacket, too. Just another one of Megamind's many crimes.
The elevator dinged; the doors opened for her. Roxanne squeezed in past the row of nurses, an older woman in a hospital gown and a wheelchair, and a tall, broad man in a tailored suit. He smiled at her. Roxanne offered him a cool smile in response and looked away to the fore of the elevator. The man shifted, and she felt inside her jacket for her phone.
No reception naturally, not in an elevator and not in the hospital. Tham complained of the thickness of the walls and the inconvenience of landlines often enough. Roxanne made a show of snapping her phone open and clicking through the folders. Three messages from her editor she hadn't read, one from Hal, none from Bernard: she closed her inbox and scrolled through her contacts.
The man in the suit pushed out of the elevator on the third floor and the nurses disembarked on the second, leaving Roxanne with the older woman, who asked sotto voce, "Nosy, wasn't he?"
"A little bit," Roxanne said, and she shared a wry, resigned smile with the woman.
The elevator stopped at the ground floor and Roxanne stepped off into the lobby. Fishing her car keys out of her pocket, she set off for the revolving doors and beyond, the late afternoon falling warm and golden over Metro City. The station first, she thought, then home; she needed to pick her laptop up and talk with her editor.
Halfway to her car, her jacket buzzed, vibrating against her breast. She felt for her phone, stuffed back into the inside pocket. Whitman, Bernard showed on the display. Smiling down at it, Roxanne flipped her phone open and set it to her ear.
"Hello, Bernard?"
"Roxanne!" he said, then more calmly: "Roxanne. Hello. Are you busy? Am I bothering you? Should I call back later? Can I call back later?"
"Bernard," she said, laughing, "Bernard, it's fine. I just got out of the doctor's office. You don't have to call back."
"Oh, thank you," he said with an enormous, bone-deep sigh. "I don't entirely understand this whole phone thing. There's so many buttons. Did you say you just got out from the doctor's?"
"Yep!" she said. She unlocked her car and popped the driver's door open. "And I have a clean bill of health, so no need to worry about me. I'm glad you called, though." She smoothed her hand down the steering wheel and smiled.
"Oh," he said. "Yes. I mean, me too. I'm glad I called."
He was quiet a moment. In that transitory silence, his breath a distant suggestion in her ear, she found her heart fluttering. Roxanne switched the phone to her other ear and started the car.
"So everything is completely normal," he ventured. "Nothing out of the ordinary, like say, the spontaneous development of laser vision, as an off-the-cuff example. Just everyday Roxanne."
"Don't sound too excited," she said drily. "If it makes you feel better, they're still running some tests. I might keel over at any moment."
"No, you're right," he said quickly. "I'm sorry. You're right. I'm—" He hesitated, and when he spoke again he did so carefully, as if the sentiment were strange. "I'm very glad to hear you're alive and not horrifically mutated."
Roxanne laughed helplessly; then Bernard, too, laughed. She looked to the sky, blue beyond her windshield. The sun shone off the car parked before her.
"I mean it, though," he insisted.
"Well, thank you," she told him. She rolled her shoulder, testing it. "It's probably just another one of Megamind's grand failures."
"Failure is such a strong word," Bernard demurred. "I prefer 'educational setback.'"
"I prefer to call a spade a spade," she countered.
Diplomatically he said, "Obviously we have philosophical differences."
"Philosophical differences are good," she said. "A challenge is good." Roxanne checked the mirrors and began pulling out of the space.
"Oh, I agree," he said. "Far worse to stagnate, without intellectual stimulation. I myself enjoy the occasional rousing match of wits. One worldview matched against another—"
"A good old-fashioned debate," she continued, "between two people who respect each other."
"Yes!" he said. "Respect! A willingness to if not entertain the possibility that one's foe's argument may be grounded in truth, then to listen!"
Roxanne flicked her turn signal on and paused at the intersection. The yellow light changed to red. She flexed her hand on the wheel, her knuckles whitening then relaxing.
"We should do that sometime," she said.
"Respect each other?"
She looked to her hand, her thumb tapping an erratic rhythm on the wheel. She stilled it.
"I was thinking more we could meet for coffee," she said. "Go over the photos I took in Megamind's lair and maybe discuss some of our philosophical differences. But respect would be nice, too."
"Oh," he said. "Yes. Yes. Coffee. Sure, that would be— I would love that. Like that. When were you thinking? Not," he added hurriedly, "to rush you, or— Any time is fine with me."
The light changed, green blooming bright and fresh. Roxanne depressed the accelerator and turned into the intersection.
"I'll give you a call tomorrow." She smiled as she finished her loop.
"That'd be great." Wonder wrought him breathless. "I'll be here."
Her smile spilled over, and she fought to straighten it out. "Okay, so: tomorrow. Thanks again for calling, Bernard."
"Of course," he said, then, "Thank you."
"'Bye," she said, and he echoed her.
She clicked her phone shut and tossed it onto the passenger seat. Her shoulder twinged, but only just. Roxanne grinned and set her foot down on the gas.
"You smell like a fire hazard," her editor said, eyeing her critically. Then Edith turned away. "So long as you have your report filmed and turned in by Thursday next week, we can go ahead with the weekend schedule as planned."
"Thanks," Roxanne said. "I'll get it set up."
"And throw that jacket out!" Edith shouted after her.
She'd sequestered her laptop alongside the camera in her bag and her keys out again as she cut through the department to the elevator, when Hal caught up to her.
"Roxie!" he gasped. He fell against the wall beside her, boxing her in. "Hey, Roxie, did you get my text? Or my voicemail?"
Roxanne threw a smile on. "I'm sorry, Hal. I really haven't had much time to check any—"
"It's no big deal," he said, cutting in. "Just wanted to see how you're doing. What was up with that Bernard guy?" He laughed, then fixed her with an intense stare. "If he's the reason why you got hurt, I could totally talk to him for you. You know, show him who's boss."
"Well, that's very generous of you," she said, "but it wasn't Bernard's fault Megamind shot me."
"Still," Hal said, "I mean, if I'd gone in with you, no way Megamind would've ever got his hands on you."
Roxanne looked to the elevator, which hummed, still rising to meet her.
"Look," she said. "Hal. I've had a really long day. I need some space."
"Oh, sure," he said immediately. He pushed off the wall, nearing her, and Roxanne leaned away. "I'll just talk to you later, okay?"
She smiled, thin-lipped, and made a noncommital noise as he walked backwards from her, firing two clumsy fingerguns.
The elevator opened, empty, before her. Roxanne adjusted her bag and stepped in. She thumbed the doors closed button before she retreated to the side. She leaned her head against the metal paneling, cool and welcome on her skin, and breathed out. Her neck itched, and the stink of smoke rose around her. Roxanne closed her eyes.
The bell rang; the elevator slowed. She straightened and made space for those who boarded. A floor later, she stepped off.
"Good afternoon, Carlos!" she said as she passed through the lobby.
"Evening, Miss Ritchi." He waved at her from his desk. He'd the paper opened to the crossword puzzle, and a mug of fresh coffee steamed near his hand.
"Anything interesting to report?" he called.
"Not yet," she said, smiling. "But the night's still young."
"Yes, it is," Carlos said with satisfaction. He jabbed his pencil at the paper.
Roxanne took the elevator up to her floor.
In the entryway of her apartment she kicked off her sneakers. The heel of one had scorch marks, dark and fuzzy at the edges.
Roxanne ducked into the bathroom and turned the water on for a warm bath: not hot, not cool, but a nice compromise between the two. Her reflection crouched with her, a woman with heavy hips and thighs, her dark hair twisted up into careless, dirty curls. She tested the water: still chill. Shaking her fingers, she rose.
Her jacket she shed in her bedroom; she left it there on the floor as she shrugged quickly out of her shirt and wiggled out of her jeans. She doubted she could rehabilitate the jacket, but still, she didn't want to just throw it out. Waste not, want not, her father liked to intone. Naked but for underthings, she checked her dresser, gathering fresh undergarments and a set of unfashionable pajamas. She slipped back into the bathroom.
The water still ran cool. She sat on the edge of the tub and rolled her head back, stretching her neck. A dry burn waited behind her eyes, and her bones ached. In the quiet sanctity of her apartment Roxanne allowed herself exhaustion.
Water poured into the tub, gurgling as it spouted from the faucet. She slid her fingers into the rising water and wafted them as she took her day and began, as she did every night, to break it down into its parts, to take from it what she needed, and to set the rest aside to reference again.
Idly she massaged her shoulder. A tiny bump stood out, but that was all. Whatever had struck her hadn't left much of a mark.
Bernard fell through her thoughts then. Roxanne opened her eyes. The ceiling was white, featureless. He'd been very brave, standing up to Megamind as he did. She smiled.
"Spontaneous laser vision," he'd said, off the cuff.
Roxanne screwed up her nose. She squinted at the ceiling and as a joke thought, Burn, baby, burn.
The burn at the back of her eyes flared violently; her vision reddened. In the flittering span of half a heartbeat, she saw two precise holes bore deep into her ceiling.
Roxanne cried out and fell backwards into the tub. She clapped her hands to her eyes, still hot. The water lapped over her, soaking through her panties. Her heart thundered, and the faucet poured cool water on her.
She sat there a moment in the cold water as it rose to touch her breasts. Then she took a breath and lowered her hands to her mouth.
Smoke twisted in two delicate, wisping tails from the holes burnt black into her bathroom ceiling.
Roxanne staggered upright, standing in the tub. Water sloshed against her calves. She squeezed her eyes shut, hard so her vision spotted, then she looked up again. The holes remained.
"This is crazy," she said. "This isn't happening. There is no way I just— burned holes in my ceiling by staring at it; no one can just—"
She thought of Metro Man, his eyes glowing, red light spilling forth in two tight and burning beams.
Roxanne sat back down in the water.
"Megamind," she breathed.