Another chapter! I own nothing but I love you guys!
Oh and the songs aren't perfect matches for the chapters or anything, they're just songs that I listened to while writing that seemed to fit the tone/themes a bit. :)
(this chapter has been slightly edited from its original version because the italics were killing me)
Chapter 2
Annabelle - Dessa
Walking with someone on your shoulders is harder work than it seems at first, and by the time Roxanne gets home, Megamind is shivering violently and Roxanne is staggering. She's going to feel this tomorrow, but stopping isn't an option. She has to go in the back way so nobody sees her, and then she has to walk up the stairs to the third floor, poking her head in at every landing, before she has an empty path to the elevator. Thank heaven, at least her own floor is clear when the elevator doors open. This really isn't something she wants to explain to her neighbors.
And he's her friend, but she'd also rather not deal with Metro Man right now. When Megamind wakes up—whenever that will be—the presence of his arch-nemesis might not be a good idea, and Roxanne isn't willing to risk it. Also, finders keepers. Roxanne doesn't want Metro Man insisting Megamind stay somewhere other than at the apartment; she'd much prefer to be able to keep an eye on him. Especially now that she has an inkling of what's going on.
She dumps Megamind unceremoniously onto her couch, then collapses into her armchair (an orange wingback she'd bought on sale from IKEA. It's as comfortable as it is ugly, and it is as ugly as sin itself. Sitting in it is bliss) and just. Breathes. Does not hyperventilate. And tries to come up with some kind of mental list of everything she'll need to do once she's got her breath back.
She'll need to text Metro Man, at least. That's easy, she can do that now. She sends him, Found Megamind. Seeing you probably not a good idea. Will keep you posted.
Okay, that's one thing taken care of. What else?
Megamind will need dry clothes. That's fine, he can borrow one of her shirts and some pajama pants for now. Maybe tomorrow she'll hit Goodwill, or something.
He'll need food. What does he eat? If she remembers correctly, she's only seen him eat…mostly sugar. What about allergies? Will she be able to get him to eat at all? She decides not to focus on this problem for now; it can wait until he's awake.
He'll need somewhere to sleep. Now, that's something she can work with. She pushes herself back up to standing, stretches with a grimace, then heads to the walk-in closet she uses for storage.
Most overnight guests sleep on her sofa, but that tends not to be suitable for longer visits. It's not hard for Roxanne to throw together her usual 'long-term guest bedroom'—the old collapsible bed frame and rolled-up futon mattress she'd slept on in college are in the very back of the closet, along with a folding screen. The bed goes along the wall of windows by the deck with the curtains half-closed and the screen goes up next to the bed for privacy, and voila! Guest 'room.' She's tucking in the blankets and sheet when she hears a groan from the direction of the couch, and she pokes her head around the screen.
Megamind is sitting up, but he's slumped forward and is slowly massaging his temples with the tips of his fingers. "Headache?" Roxanne says, tentative. He nods. "All I've got is Motrin, can you take that?"
Another nod. After a moment, he holds up three fingers, then goes back to rubbing the sides of his head.
"Okay, hold on." She gets the Motrin, taps out three of the orange pills, and swings by the kitchenette to grab a glass of water, too. Then she heads back out, trying not to feel nervous. Why should she be nervous? It's only Megamind. Only the supervillain who's terrorized the city for the past several years. He's only sitting with his knees pulled up to his chest and his eyes squeezed shut, pressing the heels of both hands to either side of his head.
"Hey," Roxanne says. "I'm okay with feet on the couch, but maybe take off your shoes first."
He blinks up at her, then stirs and moves a hand to pick at the laces, which are horribly knotted. Roxanne stands with the pills and water, feeling awkward, but Megamind doesn't seem to notice that she's waiting. He gets his shoes off, then looks around for the painkillers. One thing at a time.
(Since when does he do one thing at a time?)
Roxanne gives him the Motrin and then retreats to the safety of her chair. Megamind isn't wearing any socks, and the skin on his toes looks white and very cold; who knows how long he's been wearing those wet shoes. Not my business to worry, Roxanne thinks, but it doesn't change the facts. "Do you…do you want me to call someone?" she asks. Megamind shakes his head. Presses his lips together. "Is Minion sick? Can you tell me where he is so I can bring him here?"
Megamind's whole face scrunches up before he manages to pull it flat again, but his eyes are too wide, his mouth too thin, and some part of Roxanne had already known the answer anyway. "Minion's dead, isn't he?" she asks, and Megamind nods jerkily.
Then he swallows hard. "I can't," he rasps, "I can't go back. It's too…I can't sleep there."
If he's talking, Roxanne is loath to make him stop, but that's where he breaks off. His thin chest billows once, twice, his eyes dart everywhere. He's blinking like crazy. "If. I could have a moment," he manages. "Please."
It takes her a second to figure out that he wants her to leave him alone, but she supposes it makes sense. Megamind is secretive and he's always been proud in spite of the way he usually clowns around. He's probably kicking himself for letting her see him cry earlier, and since Roxanne doesn't want to intrude on him again…
"I'll go get you some dry clothes," she says, but she sets a box of Kleenex by his knee before she goes into the bedroom, hoping he'll take it as a signal that she's not going to judge if there are tears.
She takes her time looking for things that will fit him. She pulls out a thick pair of wool socks, first thing, because they're easy and he obviously needs socks, and then she turns her attention to the rest of the problem. The zipper on his hoodie hadn't escaped her notice; any pullover shirt she gives him will need a wide neck, so she opts for a stretchy navy-blue sweater with a vee neck. It's very long, intended to be worn with leggings, but she'd had a particular pair of drawstring lounge pants in mind for him. She'd outgrown them years ago but she's been optimistically holding onto them anyway.
She hesitates. Would leggings be more comfortable for him? He wears an awful lot of spandex, and the jeans he has on look awfully snug…she grabs a pair of compression pants from her drawer; it's worth a shot, and it's not like she'll need them for running now that it's summer.
He's on his own as far as underwear is concerned; Roxanne's not touching that little issue right now. She gets some towels out of her linen cupboard, puts them next to hers on the rack. Pulls a spare toothbrush out from under her bathroom sink and wiggles it out of its little cardboard box, sets it in the stand next to hers. There. That's the best she can do.
Anything else?
She pauses, turning to gaze contemplatively at her shower. After a long moment of hesitation, she takes her razor and moves it to her bedroom, hiding it in the drawer of her nightstand. Megamind's beard is an absolute mess but Roxanne has no idea what kind of mental state he might be in. Better safe than sorry. He can trim it with scissors if he needs to; his face is stubble-free except for that odd little stripe on his chin.
That done, she gathers up the clothes, squares her shoulders, takes a deep breath, and heads back out to the living room. She's not really expecting Megamind to have composed himself after saying something like Minion is gone, so she's not surprised to see him sit up quickly when he hears the door open, his shoulders hitching.
Oh, screw this. Roxanne bites her lip and walks over to the couch, puts the folded clothing in a heap on the coffee table, and sits down next to the shuddering alien. "Megamind. If you need to cry, do it. You'll give yourself a hernia, keeping it bottled up like that."
"Ih-it's been muh-months," he chokes out, squeezing his hands into helpless fists. "I'm tuh-tired of crying. I just want it to st-stop hurting."
Roxanne grabs a fist and peels his fingers open so she can net them with hers and squeeze. She's not sure what else to do. "Can you tell me what happened?"
"No! That's the w-worst part!" Megamind exclaims, pulling away and wiping his eyes on his sleeve. Roxanne reaches around him to get the tissues, wordlessly hands him a Kleenex. He blinks at it, looking momentarily confused, then blows his nose in it. Roxanne scoots her little trash can over to him. "I don't know what huh-happened. If I knew, I could do something about it."
Slowly, painfully, the story unfolds. Megamind had been working on a gun, no surprises there. Something about disrupting objects in three-dimensional space, scattering them or something. Minion had come into the room and startled Megamind, whose shout had, in turn, startled Minion—they both jumped a little—and the gun went off, hitting the upper half of Minion's gorilla suit with a blast from an unfinished matter-disruptor.
"And he was gone," Megamind finishes, "he was…he was just gone, just like that. From the knees up. I tried everything to get him back. At first I th-thought maybe it sent him somewhere, but when I shot a target with it, the target exploded. I don't know what happened. I tried everything."
Roxanne is staring at him, wide-eyed. It looks like Megamind does make mistakes, then, sometimes. "Did you take the gun apart?" she asks. "Maybe some wires got crossed, or…"
But he's already shaking his head. "No. No. I couldn't. If I changed the calibration, there would be n-no way." Roxanne figures she'll go with his word on that one. Megamind slumps again, forehead in his hands, tears dripping from open eyes onto his knees. "I don't know what happened, I don't know what to do," he whispers. "I can't go home. I can't go to the prison. I've been staying underground, but I'm…I'm so tired, I just want to sleep."
"No, of…of course you can't go back underground," Roxanne stammers, still trying to wrap her head around all this. "No, I already set up your bed, you can stay here." At that, Megamind sits up a little and looks at her for what's really the first time all night, but Roxanne doesn't give him any time to slip back into his grief. "Here are some clothes—they should fit, I couldn't find any zipper shirts, but I think you'll be able to get that on. And, and I wasn't really sure what kind of pants you would…anyway, you know where the bathroom is, I'm going to heat up some soup for dinner. Are you allergic to anything?" He just blinks at her and doesn't reply. She'll take that as a 'no.' "If," she says, backing away slowly, "if you want to take a shower, I put some towels on the rack for you, they're purple. Sorry. A-and your toothbrush is the red one."
Stunned, Megamind picks up the clothes and stares at Roxanne's retreating back. Stay? He can stay? Here?
It's not in his nature to reach out. Reaching out ends in being slapped away. But now, things are being given to him—a dry place to sleep, food, clothing, something that might even resemble sympathy—and he doesn't know what to do about that.
After a long minute, he stands up and goes into the bathroom, where he strips off his wet clothes in a sort of daze. It doesn't matter where he is now, or what he has. Minion is gone. The only fixed point in Megamind's messed-up world is gone and he's lost at sea.
A glance in the mirror shows him the grubby mess of beard tangling down from its stripe on his chin—the only place it's ever grown—shows him smudges of dirt on his face and neck and arms—shows hollows under his collar- and cheekbones, shadows under the line of his jaw and his mussed-up eyebrows. For a moment, he tries vaguely to care about his appearance, but that doesn't really work so he switches to trying to care about muddying the clothes Roxanne lent him, instead. That's a little easier, so he forces himself to turn on the shower and step in without thinking too hard about it. He does most things without thinking, now; it hurts less.
He leaves the water as hot as he can stand and rubs soap over his skin on autopilot, combs his fingers through his beard until he can't find any more tangles, then settles to the floor of the shower and loses himself for a while in the curling steam.
Roxanne's water heater is bigger than he's used to, so it takes pruny hands and his skin blotching purple from the heat to tell him it's time to get out of the shower. When he eventually does turn the water off and climb out of the tub, he claims the lavender towels Roxanne had said he should use, dries off, and hangs them back up the way he'd found them. Then he turns his fractured attention to the clothes she'd given him.
There are white stars on the sweater. He stares at these for an interminable amount of time, thinking about nothing in particular, before he remembers that he's supposed to be getting dressed.
The material isn't stretchy enough to get it over his head without breaking the elastic, so he pulls it up over his narrow waist and wiggles into it that way, instead. He opts for the leggings first in a half-hearted try for familiarity, but without much luck; Roxanne's hips are far too wide for them to fit him. The drawstring trousers, on the other hand, are loose, but they stay up.
When did Roxanne find out that he liked fluffy socks?
It doesn't matter. He can't summon the energy to figure out how to remove the wispy disaster on his chin, but he's clean and he has dry clothes and a place to sleep. He suspects Roxanne may be messing with him, but at this point, Megamind is simply too burned-out to care. He's been kicked when he was down before; that's nothing new. The trick to not being disappointed is not to hope for much.
It seems Roxanne's apartment has the washer and dryer in the bathroom. Megamind piles his wet clothes in the dryer so they won't be on the floor, but he doesn't turn the machine on. He just looks at the useless leggings for a while, then leaves them in a heap on the back of the toilet. It seems like a clean enough surface.
Once he's done everything he can to delay leaving the bathroom, he turns and studies the door.
Minion would know where to go from here. Minion always knew where to go from here. It's hard for Megamind to start things without Minion ticking gently away in the back of his mind, hard for him to remember to keep doing things, hard for him to even see where to begin, let alone how. If Minion were here, Megamind's hands would know their work, but as it is…
What is he supposed to do now?
0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0
Roxanne turns when she hears her bedroom door squeak open. Her clothes are terribly baggy on Megamind and the collar of his sweater keeps slipping to the side and down, showing too-sharp collarbones and the lines of Megamind's sternum under his skin.
"Hey," Roxanne says. "Here, come eat." She's only just sat down, herself; she goes back to the stove and pours some chicken soup into a second bowl. She'd figured chicken would be innocuous enough. "You have any allergies? You didn't really tell me earlier."
Megamind shakes his head as he approaches, stops when he gets to the hard floor of the kitchen. "Where…?"
"Just at the island, pick a chair," Roxanne tells him, pulling a spoon out of a drawer. "Here."
He balks. Just pick one? There are four. Roxanne's chair is one in from the end. Is he supposed to sit directly next to her? On which side? Should he leave an empty chair between them? Minion would know.
Roxanne turns, holding a bowl, and sees him still locked at the edge of the carpeting, green eyes flicking between the three available seats like he doesn't know what to do with himself. "Which hand do you eat with?" she asks.
He jumps and looks at her. "Uh—m-my left."
"Okay," Roxanne says slowly. "That rules out the chair to my immediate right, or we'll be bumping elbows all night. I'm gonna go ahead and guess you probably do better with some space, anyway, so it looks like you're on the end." She sets his bowl down, grabs him a spoon, then realizes he still hasn't moved. "What is it?"
He glances at the floor. "Shoes. I…hard floors…my lab space…"
Oh, he is really out of it. He won't walk on hard floors without shoes? Then what he'd said about lab space sinks in and she realizes it's probably to do with his particular line of work. "You aren't in your lab," she reminds him. "You're in my kitchen. Lab safety rules don't apply here."
Megamind nods and walks carefully to his chair, clenching and unclenching his hands as he moves.
Wow. Roxanne returns to her own seat and does her best to act normal, but there's nothing normal about having dinner with the shadowy husk of the guy who used to be one of the biggest spitfires you knew. And, okay, she can sort of understand his issues with shoes, but what's with him not being able to just pick a damn chair?
Roxanne eats for a minute, then pauses and looks over at him. He's just sitting there, staring at his bowl. "It's gonna get cold," she says quietly.
Megamind nods again and picks up his spoon, slowly eats two bites. That's encouraging, but his second swallow is more of a stuttered gulp, and Roxanne looks over again just in time to see his face pinch before he turns away. He sets his spoon down.
She'd been wondering if that would happen. Eating is the last thing she ever wants to do when she's upset; it's too grounding. When everything feels like the world is coming down around your ears, the last thing you want is to be reminded that life goes on regardless. Grief, in particular, is difficult to chew through. Grief flavors everything like ash.
Lord knows if that's Megamind's headspace, but it doesn't seem like much of a stretch. Roxanne reaches out and leans over to put her hand on his back, but Megamind jumps and shivers away, twisting to stare at her, momentarily startled out of his funk. Roxanne hesitates, then carefully touches his arm instead, cautiously rubs up and down a couple times before returning to her own space.
"You gotta eat," she tells him, and he blinks his shocked-green stare back down at his soup. Then he wilts a little.
"Not hungry," he murmurs.
"Okay, well, you look like you're about to blow away." Roxanne knocks a gentle fist against his shoulder and returns to her own dinner. "Eat."
Megamind sits still for another few seconds, then huffs a quiet sigh and picks his spoon up again. He only finishes a little more than half the bowl before he goes back to the couch and curls up into a ball in the far corner, but he does eat, and Roxanne rolls her eyes at the ceiling and sends up a little thanks to who or whatever might be listening. God willing, Megamind will not starve to death on her watch.
Minion. This changes everything. Roxanne's world has just shifted several degrees.
She finishes eating and rinses her dishes, covers Megamind's uneaten portion with saran wrap and puts it in the fridge in case he wants it later, then goes to her living area. She bites her lip and looks at Megamind, whose face is hidden in the curve of the leg that's tucked under him. His other foot is braced on the cushion so his sharp knee shields his side, and his hands are netted over the back of his neck again.
Roxanne doesn't touch him; he looks like he'll pull something if he's in that position and he jumps like he did the last couple times. Instead, she sits down on the opposite end of the couch and turns on the television, flicking through channels until she finds a movie. It's an older western flick, Clint Eastwood doing his squinty, stoic thing. Fun with cowboys, guns, and not too much dialogue. Yeah.
She knows Megamind is grieving. She also knows that whatever happened, happened almost a year ago. So—she'll support him where she can, give him a safe place to sleep, give him some company. Feed him. Do what she can.
But she'll mourn Minion in her own way, in her own time. She's got her life to live, and maybe if she lives her life, Megamind will live it with her and get back on his feet that way.
She might not be doing this much if she'd found him last fall, but Metro Man had been deeply worried after the first big snow this past winter. More worried than she ever would have thought he'd be, honestly; but then he'd started telling her things about Megamind he'd never told anyone else.
"Roxie, trust me, if he wanted to kill me, I'd be dead," he'd said. "But I think it's more like…we're kinda like business partners, you know? I'm the hero, he's the villain. It works. He knows I'm not gonna try and take him out permanently, and I know he's not gonna let anybody else start pushing our city around…it works. With him gone, I'm pulling double shifts trying to keep other villains from moving in. And that's not the half of it…"
Roxanne had listen with narrowed eyes.
When multiple disasters hit the city at the same time—not an unusual occurrence in a metropolitan area as large as Metro—and Metro Man couldn't cover all of them, Megamind would send flights of brainbots in stealth mode to the locations Metro Man couldn't make it to. And the decrease in crime over the past decade or so hasn't been entirely Metro Man's doing; a lot of it was Megamind working to keep the balance. Including tips to the media on local scandals and business dealings. And more than half of the Scott family's annual "anonymous" donation to the city's public-school system has come from Megamind for at least the last five years, and possibly even before that. More than half.
"This is why we gotta find him, Roxie," Metro Man had said. "I can't do this job alone. Not well, anyway."
"Wait, back up the truck," Roxanne replied, waving her hands. "You're saying he even knows you're really Wayne Scott."
"Oh, he's probably known that since we were kids," Metro Man scoffed. "But he only approached me about using my family's name to hide his contributions about…oh, four, five years ago?"
"And he uses this information to help the schools?" She'd had a tough time wrapping her head around that one.
Metro Man shrugged. "He's a genius. Not surprising he'd value education." He'd sighed, shaken his head. "Roxie, what I'm saying is, he's a major force for good in this city."
"I thought you always said he's an evil little maniac."
"Yeah, and I've got enough respect for his reputation not to ruin it for him. You've never noticed? Really?"
She had. She'd never wanted to admit it, for fear of sounding absolutely off her rocker, but…
He's never threatened her, not really, not once. And the way he's acted with the brainbots, and with Minion, and when he's not thinking, with her…
Mind the size of a planet, and he always seemed to genuinely enjoy verbally sparring with her. She didn't have to hide a thing from him, when she was in his chair; he'd look at her just the same, with stars in his eyes and a grin on his lips.
Now she glances sideways at the aforementioned evil little maniac, who's currently in a sad little ball on her sofa, and sighs. Well, if he's going to be living with her…
"Okay, house rules," she says. "No drugs, no stealing, and if you make a mess, you clean it up. Oh, and no hanging out on top of the fridge in the middle of the night. Other than that…estás en tu casa. Help yourself to food and whatever else."
After a second, Megamind slowly raises his head, looking baffled. "What…the fridge…?"
"Hey, it happens once, you learn to be careful," Roxanne says flatly, hoping he'll smile. "I guess it's not a major thing, but one of my former roommates liked to climb on top of the refrigerator at night and just…perch there. It was deeply creepy." She grins at him. "I don't want to come out to get a midnight snack and find you up on top of the fridge like some weird bird in the middle of the night."
He stares at her for another long moment, then puts his head back down again.
"And this other guy," Roxanne continues, because it's a commercial and that seemed to get Megamind's attention even if it didn't get a smile, "stayed with me for a while because he was my roommate's brother but she was out of town and…anyway, he took pictures of my feet." She pauses, but doesn't get a response from Megamind. "Lots of pictures, without my knowledge."
Megamind uncurls a little.
"Yep," she continues, "I only found out because he accidentally texted one to a mutual friend who let me know. Turns out this guy had fifty or so pictures of just my feet and my lower legs. I had no idea he was even taking them—you know how people stand when they're texting, right? Head down, phone camera pointed at the floor?" She laughs a little. "That was still less weird than Fridge Roomie."
There's a pause, and then Megamind mumbles, "I won't. Do that. Take pictures of you."
Roxanne laughs again, but it comes out forced. "Thanks," she says. "I appreciate that. I mean, I'd have been fine if he'd just asked first, but…"
Another pause. Then she says, "We worried you wouldn't survive the winter. Metro Man assumed you'd gone someplace warm, but you didn't, did you? You stayed here in Metro City."
Silence. Then he says, "It's my home."
"We would've known if you'd visited any of the shelters," Roxanne says, gently prompting. "Or gone back to the jail."
"Storm drains," Megamind says into the couch. "It's…warm enough underground. I found a place. Higher than the rest. Dry. I could sleep there."
"Warm enough," she repeats, amazed. She remembers reading somewhere that caves stay the same temperature all year, but a drain is hardly a cave. "Warm enough to keep from freezing to death, maybe, but…"
Megamind shifts, almost shrugs. "I'm alive."
"I guess," Roxanne says, after a pause. He doesn't look terribly alive; he looks like he's starving to death. Gaunt, tired. "Where did you get food?" she asks, but it seems Megamind's brief talkative spell has dried up; he doesn't answer.
"Never mind," she says, feeling abruptly bad for questioning him when he's so clearly out of it. Answers can wait; they aren't important, anyway. "That's okay, you don't have to talk if you don't want to."
She watches TV for a while, scrolling idly through Facebook on her phone at the same time. She doesn't know half the people she's friends with; she gets new friend requests every day and she tends to accept all of them just so she doesn't have to think about it. Every now and then some stranger will share something newsworthy to her timeline, so it has its upsides.
Megamind doesn't speak again, or move, but eventually Roxanne has to nudge him. "You should brush your teeth." He twists out of his pretzel and looks at her, blankly puzzled. "I'm going to bed, soon," she says, "and the ignoramus who designed this apartment decided to put the only bathroom inside the bedroom." It works well enough when she's alone, but it does make having overnight guests somewhat difficult.
Megamind gets to his feet like an ironing board unfolding, then walks away without a word and without stretching. A second later, Roxanne hears the bathroom door click shut. At least the bathroom is immediately inside her bedroom, so guests don't have to go too far into her room to use it. You'd think her apartment would have a more thoughtful layout, with what she pays for the place. Oh, well.
This is much earlier than she normally turns in, but interacting with Megamind feels awkward and strange in a way she isn't sure she can deal with, right now. She can't just sit here and pretend like he isn't in some kind of shock, but she also doesn't dare reach out the way she wishes she could. For one thing, he keeps flinching every time she touches him, but mostly…
Well, it's Megamind. They just don't have that kind of relationship.
Yes, he'd let her out of a kidnapping one time for a family emergency. He'd even driven her to the hospital. And yes, there was the time he'd come to kidnap her and found her sick with the flu, and he'd apologized and left—and two hours later, Minion showed up with a container of soup and a carton of orange juice. And it's been years since he'd kidnapped her in the middle of anything truly pressing; Roxanne suspects he keeps an eye on her schedule, though she isn't sure why. And what about the time her grandmother passed away, and Megamind sent a sympathy card? She's inclined to think that was probably Minion's idea, but the signature was genuine.
But Megamind being as courteous as possible during his kidnappings doesn't change the fact that they are kidnappings. She knows he doesn't mean her any harm, and that's what counts, but they haven't had the chance to really build any kind of extra-curricular rapport.
And yes, Roxanne has never felt truly threatened, but she's always had to wonder. Like the times when Megamind would lean in close, baring his teeth in a wild smile that reached all the way to his eyes. Or when he cackled with laughter as he skipped and danced around bursts of laser-fire from Metro Man's eyes, showing no regard whatsoever for his personal well-being. That wasn't an act; Minion's face always gave it away whenever Megamind had a close call, so—Megamind was a villain and there was real danger there, whether he intended harm or not.
And now he's brushing his teeth in Roxanne's bathroom, and she's sitting out here hoping he'll be okay. What the hell.
"I've lost my mind," she mutters.
When Megamind comes back out, blinking owlishly at her, she stands. "Your bed's over there, behind the screen," she tells him. "I'll…figure something out about other clothes for you tomorrow."
For a moment, he looks like he's about to say something, but then he swallows whatever words were on his tongue and just nods, instead. And disappears behind the screen.
"God, give me strength," Roxanne whispers, and goes to brush her own teeth and get ready for bed.
She doesn't think to check her phone until she's already lying down. There are four new texts from Metro Man:
Thank god. He okay?
Hellooooo?
Ground control to major tom helloooo is he okay
Should I come over?
She smiles in spite of herself and responds, Sorry, got caught up. Don't come over, he's asleep and I'm going to bed. He seems
—She pauses, wanting to type "depressed," but she's not sure yet if that's accurate.
He seems pretty shaken up. That's correct, she knows. Minion's dead.
She sends the text and puts her phone on the nightstand to charge, then rolls onto her back with a sigh. She's fully intending to go to sleep, but she winds up staring at the ceiling for a long time.
Is that what depression looks like? It's been a long time since any of her immediate friends were grappling with it, but she's sure she'd never seen them go blank like that. They'd never lost track of their words. The way Megamind is acting…it looks like depression, but it also looks like some of his pain might be physical; he keeps clutching the back of his neck just under the curve of his skull, he keeps his eyes closed.
What would depression even look like in Megamind? He's an alien, after all, and his brain is vastly different from her own, as well as different from the only other alien Roxanne is friendly with. Could this be something else—just grief, maybe? It's been a long time since the accident, but…his distress while he'd been telling her what had happened…that would point more to grief than depression, wouldn't it?
And should she keep worrying about how small he is? He's always been thin and right now he's skinnier than usual, but she's not sure at what point Megamind will qualify as "dangerously underweight" versus just "visibly malnourished."
He passed out earlier, so something must be deeply wrong. She has to wonder, again, if Minion and Megamind had had some kind of mental link going on. She'd never noticed them doing anything that looked like telepathy, but they'd always operated as a perfect team in spite of Megamind's constant complaining; is it possible that their cohesiveness was the result of more than just years of practice? That would definitely complicate things, grieving-process-wise. Possibly physically as well, but it doesn't seem like the kind of thing she can just ask about.
To be fair, if Megamind winds up staying for a while, she'll probably find out eventually, either way. She groans and rolls over, closes her eyes, and wills herself to sleep, but it's a long time coming.
