CHAPTER 13

Megamind is exhausted enough that he's pretty sure he won't be able to dream, but—

At twelve-thirty in the morning he gasps and he's out of bed and stumbling on his feet before he even really establishes he's awake. No, he—strange beds; he can't—he—no, this was stupid, this was a dumb idea; he needs to go downstairs.

The house is dark and quiet as he descends the stairs, glad the floors here don't squeak the way some of the upper floors of Evil Lair do. But the tree lights are on in the living room when he gets there, and Dorothy is on the sofa, looking at the tree in the dark.

Megamind halts in the doorway, freezes, but Echo lifts her head with a jingle of tags and Dorothy turns.

She jumps when she sees him, gasps a little. Then she laughs, sounding embarrassed with herself. "Sorry," she says quietly, still laughing. "You—your eyes."

He nods. "Cat's eyes," he says stiffly, backing away. "Sorry. I'll—sorry to disturb you."

"No, no, come sit."

He stops. Roxanne isn't here. What possible—why would she—he snapped at her earlier and if her daughter isn't here to give her a reason to ask him closer then—

Hesitant, full of misgivings, he crosses the living room silently and slides onto the sofa. Dorothy has gone back to staring at the Christmas tree.

After a while, she says, "I come down here sometimes when I can't sleep. Sitting in the dark in bed is so depressing. At least here I can feel like I'm making a choice to be awake." She looks over at him. "What do you do when you're at home?"

"When I can't sleep?" At her nod, he shrugs. "Get up. Go to work. I always have something I'm working on. At least one project." He shakes his head. "Multiple projects, almost always. But at the Lair, I—usually, I stay awake long enough for sleep not to be an issue."

She frowns a little. "That doesn't sound terribly healthy."

He laughs, low. "I am a supervillain," he says, staring into the lights of the tree, brows low over his eyes. "Health is not something I have ever claimed. Physical or otherwise."

They're quiet again. Eventually, Megamind asks, "Why do things need to be just so?"

Dorothy smiles a little, but her face is tired. "You noticed that. That's not a bad way to put it." Megamind doesn't reply, just looks at her with his lamp-flashing eyes, his mouth a thin line. She sighs. "I don't know how to catch myself," she says. "I wish I could. It never seems like such a big thing to me, but Roxanne…well. I…I feel like someone is looking over my shoulder. Judging my work, I suppose. If I don't fix it, or, or at least try, at least say something…" She trails off. "I don't know. I can't let it go. I can't."

Megamind blinks, flickering his stare.

"I try," Dorothy tells him. "I do try. I haven't stopped trying, I—the sheets up there are cotton. She hates polyester, anything with polyester; I don't know why, I think it's great, but—I keep those sheets for her. And I don't say anything when she won't try the cornbread or quinoa or rice. I do try."

He tilts his head. "What happens if you force yourself to let something go?"

"It's hard. It feels…heavy." She sighs again. "It runs around in my head. It doesn't leave me alone, it just gets bigger. Eventually it does go away, but…the meantime is…it feels like something terrible is going to happen, it really does. And, and as soon as I get rid of one worry, I have another. Something is wrong and I have to fix it, I have to at least say something so I can tell myself I tried to fix it, or…or else I…I don't know."

He frowns. "That isn't how the universe works."

"I know that," she says. "I just wish I could catch myself before I say something. I can do it, sometimes. But I'm a worrier; sometimes it gets the best of me."

Then she looks at him. "I was surprised you came to church with us," she says. "I would have assumed you were an atheist."

Megamind shrugs. He is painfully aware of his flannel hazmat pajamas, painfully aware of his lack of anything remotely resembling flare. Painfully aware that she's changing the subject, but unsure what to do about it. "Can't an alien have faith?"

"Well, you are a man of science." Dorothy's voice is dry. "Hard science. The alien thing…I wasn't really thinking about that."

It's not the first time he's heard someone express surprise upon learning Megamind has something like faith. He may not subscribe to a particular religion and he may not have anything that could be called a belief system, but…

"Dr. Carolyn Porco once said, the same spiritual fulfillment people find in religion can be found in science," he says quietly, "by coming to know, if you will, the mind of God." He's silent for a few seconds, and then he says, "I am familiar enough with the universe on a small enough scale to know how it's organized. And it is organized, Mrs. Ritchi. Whether this is because of the inherent nature of mathematics or because some all-powerful entity or entities will it so, I don't know, but…" He shrugs. "I'm not ruling anything out.

"And it's a nice idea," he adds. "Even outside of physics, the whole—grace thing. A loving God who knows what it is, what it means to be a living person. I do like that. It's—it was a good sermon, today. I, I do want—to believe that. I—can believe it, sometimes, I think." He pauses. "I like it much better than the prison chaplain's take on the subject, either way."

"I don't know who Carolyn Porco is," Dorothy says, after a minute.

"One of the Voyager scientists," he says. "Renowned for her work studying planetary rings. She's working on the Cassini–Huygens space-research mission."

"Hm. It's a good quote."

Megamind nods.

"She really loves you, you know," Dorothy says, after a while of sitting in the flickering white light. Megamind swallows hard. "I know my girl. She cares about you a lot."

He presses his lips together. Nods again. He cannot bring himself to say he cares about her, too.

After a while, he says, "She loves you, too." Dorothy looks over at him. "She explained earlier. But…something seeming small to you…it's big to her. It adds up. The small things."

She sighs. "I know," she says. "I should probably talk to someone. It's getting harder, lately, to…well, to let things go. I have to try and fix them, and then I, I have to either trust that I fixed them the best I could or I have to try again, and…" She shakes her head. "It takes a lot of time for me to get things the way I like them. And having guests is difficult." She's quiet. "I don't know if that's normal. I'm much better now than I used to be. But."

Megamind isn't sure how to read between those lines, but he pricks up his ears at it's getting harder. "Humans are social," he says slowly. "Empty house…might make things worse? For you."

"Hm. Not a bad thought," she admits. "I've considered turning this place into a bed and breakfast, or one of those new 'airbnbs,' but…other people in my space?" She shakes her head again, sends him a rueful little smile. "That's a big hurdle."

"I suppose." He has no idea what he's doing. Ten minutes ago he was in the grip of a nightmare; now he's sitting in the dark talking to his kidnappee's mother about her…what, her apparently-pathological need to correct the world? How on earth is he supposed to navigate this conversation?

Then again, he reminds himself for the umpteenth time, he doesn't need her to like him. He'll never see her again.

So he clears his throat. "But. I…what I mean is…family is important. And I know you don't—you don't see why it's a big deal. It's a small deal, to you. But it is a big deal to her. This is true whether you agree or not. You don't have to—to understand—" He scowls, frustrated, trying to figure out how to word this.

"I don't have to understand something before it becomes real," Dorothy says, after a few seconds, and Megamind looks over at her, startled.

Then he glares. "You know that. Good. But then—why?" He shakes his head. "I never had this. I'm—I'm the last. Of me. There aren't any others, won't be any others. And. For me, seeing—this, seeing…it hurts her. She told you, she said, it hurts, please stop, and you—you know you don't have to understand, you know it is real and you keep doing it."

"I told you," she says, "it's hard for me to let things be wrong. It's wrong. It—I know it doesn't always make sense but I don't know how to leave it alone." She shakes her head. "And, like I said, I am better now than I was. I'm happy with who I am."

"The person you're happy with is still hurting Roxanne," Megamind says sharply. "And—you could—learn. To let things go. You could learn; you're human. Intelligent. You have time, you could find someone to teach you. Therapy." He breathes for a moment. "I just—I think—if you talked to someone—it would mean a lot to Roxanne."

Dorothy heaves a sigh. "Yes," she murmurs, sounding mildly contemplative, "it probably would. Something to think about." She stands. "Well," she says, "I'm going to try to get some sleep. Merry Christmas."

She's been upstairs for a good few minutes when Megamind finally pulls himself out of his thoughts and moves to extend the recliner, but—ah. He left his pillow upstairs. He was in too much of a hurry when he rolled out of bed, the last time. Awesome. Well, he'll just…have to go and get it, then; the way his spine is shaped, not having a pillow means he'll wake up with excruciating knots in his neck.

So he creeps back up the stairs, quietly, and moves back into the guest room, quietly, and picks up his pillow—

"Megamind," Roxanne whispers, catching the sleeve of his pajamas before he can move back toward the door. "Wait. Don't go."

Crap.

He sighs, shakes his head. "Unfamiliar beds, Miss Ritchi. I don't—sleep well. On my back is—I can—I can go to sleep but once I move my hands, I—"

"Can you sleep on your side?"

He shakes his head. "Not really, no. Not without a better mattress than this one. Repeatedly getting punched through walls, you know, it…can lead to some…minor spinal issues." He laughs a little, but it comes out forced.

Roxanne swallows. "Can you tell me what you need?" she asks, her voice low. "Maybe I can help?"

Megamind stands for a moment, silent, huge head sort of bowed. Eventually he says, "I need something on me. Something more than a blanket across my chest or my stomach. Echo laid on me on the recliner last night and I thought maybe…"

"Oh," Roxanne says. "Oh, is that—? I can do that. Come here, lie down." He looks over his shoulder at her but doesn't move. She tugs on his sleeve a little. "Please? Let me try. I want to help. A recliner isn't…let me try?"

Megamind straightens his spine, drags his head up. He shouldn't. Especially not now, with his heart pulling itself toward her like she's something magnetic. Hold yourself away, Megamind, this is not for you. Hold yourself away, turn away, don't look back and don't think about how badly it hurts.

He—

"Megamind, please," Roxanne says behind him, "let me try," and really, he can only take so much.

He turns and crawls back into bed.

He crawls back into bed with Roxanne, lets her guide him toward her. Lets her ease him down onto his back. He arranges his pillow behind his head, then looks for her; she's sort of hovering over him with an expression on her face in the dark that—she looks soft, sort of. She looks like she might actually care about him.

He swallows. "Okay," he says. "What—did you have in mind?"

Her face pinches into something he recognizes as some kind of decision, and—she leans down and brushes the fingers of one hand down the side of his face (touching him in the dark in a shared bed, what, what)—and then she scoots down a little on the bed and lies down with him the way she did in the recliner this morning for the movie. She presses herself to his side and rests her ear in the soft place under his clavicle, hugs his narrow body with her arm. Throws her leg over one of his and tangles their feet together.

"This," she says, once she's settled. "Will this work? Or will you be too hot?"

Megamind draws a shivery breath. "No," he says in a low voice, "no, this should work. Are you—" Are you sure about this, he wants to say, but he's noticing Roxanne always says she's sure or she wants to when he questions her. And. He doesn't want to be one of the people who questions her. So instead, he says, "Thank you," and tries not to let his heart climb into his throat and choke him when she tightens her arm around his body, hugging him.

He does allow his own arm to wrap up around her waist, allows his hand to rest on her lovely soft hip, and he loses the fight against his heart and has to squeeze his eyes closed hard when she hums and cuddles into him in response to that.

But today was a lot, and remembering his planet and his people was a lot, and the stars and the vastness of space, the unspeakable void—

Megamind jerks awake again an hour or so later, gasping, with Roxanne rubbing her hand up and down his sternum and murmuring you're okay, you're okay, you're okay.

He blinks up at the ceiling and shakes his head a little bit to clear it, gulps a couple times; his throat is dry.

"Megamind," Roxanne says, still pressing her hand to his chest, "you're okay. You're here in Montana, okay?"

He nods, still trying to find a voice that won't come out as chirps or thrumming.

There's a couple taps on the door, and Roxanne lifts herself up and goes to crack it open. "We're okay," she says, and Megamind hears Rose's low voice for a second or two, and then Roxanne thanking her, and then Roxanne is climbing back into bed and nestling up under the covers next to Megamind, her arm across his body pinning him down, against the mattress, against the earth.

Finally he whispers, "Woke you up. Sorry."

Roxanne shakes her head. "No," she tells him. "No, don't apologize. Do you want some water? Rose brought a cup."

That was kind of her. Megamind sits up, drinks, stares down at the cup in his hands. "It's too quiet, here," he says softly. "Too quiet. Too many stars, and I can't hear the city."

Roxanne blinks, then scoots away over to her nightstand to do something on her phone. "Hang on," she says, "I have a white noise app. I think it has city noises…ah. Yeah, here."

He closes his eyes. "You don't have to," he says.

"Shh. I want to help. And I'm not sleeping well, either; maybe this will help me, too." She plays with the settings for a minute, adjusting the balance of traffic and sirens until she's satisfied. Then she looks up at Megamind. "Good?"

He nods and glances over at her. "Thank you," he says.

She just nods as she comes back over toward him. Megamind sighs and lies back down with his arms around her—one up around her waist, his other hand gripping Roxanne's arm across his chest, the reminder that he's here, he's grounded, he can breathe.

"Megamind," Roxanne murmurs, after a little while, "are you happy? Not right now, obviously, but—in general."

He blinks his eyes open, frowns up into the darkness. "Right now I am very happy," he says, and feels her face move against his chest a little. Smiling?

"I mean as a supervillain," she says, in the same quiet voice as before. "Does that really make you happy?"

And that—oh. Of all the questions she could ask, she—that one isn't—something he wants to think about. He spends fully three-quarters of his waking hours struggling not to think about that, spends one hundred percent of his waking hours working himself hard enough that he can't lie awake at night thinking about it.

"I enjoy it," he says.

Roxanne pauses, then says, slowly, "That's good, but…it isn't what I asked. Is being a supervillain what you want? Are you happy?"

Megamind's expression twists but he knows she can't see it, so he lets it happen, lets himself grimace and grit his teeth. A week ago, four days ago, two days ago, he could have told her yes, he is happy, he loves his job. But now—she laughed with him and she said she loves the brainbots and she—this evening she said she loves him, and he knows she didn't mean it, but—she holds him against her side, kisses him, smiles at him after. She holds him here in the dark, in the warm space under her body, because this is a strange bed and she wants him to sleep well and feel safe and—it is so much more difficult to lie to Roxanne right now than it is to lie to himself.

Still, he swallows hard and takes a breath to say yes, I am happy, I love this and I really don't know why you think I might not—

But the breath he takes is too big for his lungs. It catches there, and what comes out is a choked-off, "No. I'm not," and he can't exhale, his breath won't cooperate, won't leave without choking him and bringing tears with it. "I'm—there are—I, I do enjoy—but—"

"It's okay," she murmurs, but it isn't, it isn't okay at all. Megamind releases a groan of regret/anger/frustration, repeating a double-toned descending hum deep in his chest, clunking miserably in his syrinx. "Megamind, you're okay." Roxanne's hand rubs his chest again, up and down his wide sternum.

He shakes his head. "No," he says, his subvoice still humming with regret and angry tears, "no."

Roxanne pauses for a moment, and then she moves, crawls up his body a little so she can drape her arms up around his head on the pillow.

Maybe things can be different, Megamind thinks, trying for hope. Maybe they can, maybe—the skaters today, they shared their ice with him, watched him kiss Roxanne, didn't say anything about it—and Roxanne's family has been nothing but kind to him—and the people at church, they smiled at him, they shook his hand—

—but it's still too late for him, isn't it? Isn't it, at this point? He's already chosen, he—

Maybe things could have been different. But this is who he is, now. He has spent years crowing his evil from the highest vantages he can find and backing up his words with various weapons of massive destruction. He can't go back, now. He could leave Metro City and build a new name for himself somewhere else, but that would mean leaving Roxanne and he can't, he can't, not now—

"You're okay," she whispers, close to his ear, "Megamind, you're okay, I've got you."

Yes, she has him; yes, she has him for the next sixteen hours, twenty if he's lucky, but tomorrow night he'll be alone in his cold bed in his freezing Lair, too well-rested from this vacation to fall asleep as quickly as he usually does. And he has the brainspace to be incredibly embarrassed about crying on her like this, but since he can't kidnap her anymore—he can't, not for a while at least, not with his sick obsession with her raging in the hollow of his chest—he can at least, at least let himself cling to her and cry his regret and his rage and all his pain into her while she whispers to him and calls him love and sweetling and says I'm here.

She isn't his girlfriend, not really. He could pretend—Megamind is good at pretending; he's only been doing it for most of his life—but there's too much now for him to ignore, too much cognitive dissonance.

He jerks his hands away from her.

"Why," he hisses. "Why are you making me think about this, why are you—why would you ask me—I hate this—"

"Because you aren't happy," she tells him. "And…how are you going to change things without thinking about it?"

"They can't be changed!" He bares his teeth. "This is my lot, Roxanne; I tried to change it before and I failed, I—"

"So try again," she begins, but he cuts her off.

"I did try again! I did try, and then I tried again and again and—you have no idea how hard I—it doesn't work! It never works!" He makes another noise, this one somewhere between a hiss and a moan. "No matter what I do. No matter what I try, I am not—what I try, what I say, what I do doesn't matter; I am wrong for this world, Roxanne. Most humans see that immediately, or within a few minutes of speaking to me." He hisses again, then goes rigid under her. "Stop," he says, irritated, "just stop. Get away from me, stop touching me; I can't—I can't keep—"

He cuts himself off again, then grits his teeth and presses the heels of both hands against his temples. Hesitant, Roxanne strokes one of his delicate wrists.

"I want to stop thinking," he grits out, not relaxing, not looking at her. "That's what happens when I think about this—this shit. I wind up hopeless and angry and wanting to stop thinking."

Roxanne swallows, then puts her hands over his on his head, her fingers resting between his. "Megamind, sweet—"

"Stop," he says again, shoving her hands away. "No one else is here. It's just us. I do not need you to hold me, I do need you to pet me and comfort me and tell me I'm okay, I do not need these things and there's no one else here so you can drop the act, all right? Enough already!"

"Fine," Roxanne says, stung. She sits up, scoots away from him. "Fine. You just run away, then. Run away and keep on running. I'm not stupid, Megamind; I know we're the only two here; I was lying on you because I wanted to, because I care about you and I want you to be able to sleep and I want you to be happy and you aren't. But fine."

He growls and sits up, swings his legs down and grips the mattress like he's about to leave. He even rocks forward. And rocks forward again, shifting his weight, starting to stand.

But after a few seconds of frozen angry silence, he slumps forward and puts his face in his hands, elbows on his knees, shoulders shaking.

Roxanne, sitting cross-legged on the bed behind him, sighs. After a while, she reaches forward and touches his back, and he does actually turn and look at her, his witchlight pupils flashing in the pale moonlight coming in through the window.

She opens her arms, offering. Megamind stares at her for a long few seconds, and then his expression crumples and he nods and crawls back to her, crawls—oh, wow, all the way into her lap, the way he sat at the fire earlier this evening. Roxanne wasn't expecting that. He curls down, ducks away to roll into a ball with his forehead against his thighs and his ear against her chest. Roxanne wraps her arms around him the same way she did earlier, too: one around his back, the other up around his head.

"Okay," she whispers, stroking the gentle curve of his cranium with her fingertips. "Okay. We'll figure it out, Megamind, I promise. Listen, and—just listen, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to upset you."

I love you, she wants to say, I love you, you don't need to love me back but I want you to know that I love you, you're loved, I love you.

"Listen," she murmurs, when his breathing finally slows for a while. "I need to—god, I hope you won't be angry with me, but I need to tell you something. Because I, I sort of already knew you aren't happy."

"Too smart," he mumbles, not moving. "Always were too smart."

She swallows. "Can I try to describe what I think you're probably feeling right now?"

He sighs. Shrugs.

"You feel trapped. You tried to show the people around you that you aren't what they thought of you, but you weren't sure how to show them and you never seemed to get it right. They never seemed to get it; something always went wrong. So after a while, you thought, well, they can't all be wrong about me. Maybe they're right, maybe I am destined to be a supervillain.

"So that's what you did. It isn't all bad, and there are some parts of it you really do like! You love your job! Some days, you can even believe that.

"But you still know that's not right. Not really. You're playing a part that was chosen for you, not a part you wanted. You never really got a chance to figure out what you would want to do, instead; you got into this too early, and now it hurts too much to wonder what else you could have been.

"And now you're angry. Because it wasn't right, and you know that, and it hurts. You're angry at the humans for not seeing you and you're angry at yourself for not fighting harder. And that hurts, too, so you mostly just don't think about it and you focus on the stuff you do enjoy, and you work hard enough not to have time to think about how you're in pain."

Megamind has gone totally still in her arms. "Yes," he says, after a long, shocked pause, and lifts his head. "Yes, that's…how did you…"

"Because it's pretty much exactly the same thing Wayne said when I called him today." Roxanne loosens her arms a little so he can scoot away from her and swipe the cuff of his sleeve across his eyes and stare at her. "I called him while you and Salim were out walking. And we talked, and Megamind, he said if you ever wanted to hang up the cape for good, he would absolutely help you work out a deal with the DA's office. He also volunteered to work on whatever PR campaign I came up with. And I know you don't like him, but he has a lot of clout in Metro; he really could help you."

"What," he whispers.

"And then he told me he isn't happy, either," Roxanne says. "And he explained all the stuff I just said. He is exhausted, Megamind, and he said it took him a long time to figure out why and even longer to come to grips with it, and he'd love to try something else, but Metro City Council says they don't have the budget to pay for a hired hero or auxiliary heroes."

"Well that's a lie," Megamind says, distracted from his confusion and his tentative irritation that she would go behind his back and clear this with his arch-nemesis before even speaking to him about it.

"I suspected it might be," Roxanne says. "But—my point is, if you—Megamind, you are an honest-to-goodness supergenius; villainy is not the only way to use your skills. You can build things for good as well as evil. Things like medical assistive devices that people can actually afford—Rose told me what you offered to do for Panambi's grandma; I think it's a wonderful idea—and, and—helper AIs! Your brainbots! Or, if you wanted to try heroing, Metro Man is already more than willing to help you make that transition. And Metro's government won't be able to walk all over you the way they do with him."

He stares at her in the dark, his breath still shivering behind his ribs but his mind starting to chew on this concept. "Close to half of them can be ousted next election," he murmurs absently, "that's not a problem. Hint at what I have so they don't try to backtalk us in the next few months…"

He's quiet for a while, just looking at her. "I'm sorry," Roxanne finally says, "for not talking to you first. I just…I wanted to be able to give you real options, not just empty assurances. You can do something else, if you want to. You don't—you don't have to do things that—make you unhappy."

It isn't too late. That's what she's saying; she's saying he can still change things. There's still time.

"You don't have to decide right away," Roxanne says, after another long pause. "You can take your time, talk to Minion, think about it."

Megamind clears his throat. "Well," he says, a bit unsteadily, "that…is…something to think about." He swallows, and then—slowly—he slips his arms around her shoulders and tips his head forward, rests it against hers, forehead to forehead. He isn't leaning the full weight of it on her, she's sure of that, but…he lifts a hand to the back of her head and presses their foreheads together like he can't stop himself from doing it. Presses his head to hers, holds her there.

"—Oh," she murmurs, startled but receptive to whatever this is, "um?"

"Please," he grits out, "please, I'm sorry, I just—I need to—"

"Okay, it's okay," she says quickly, "just…sorry, what is this?"

He growls. "Your brain and mine are—of equal import. Equally important. To me."

Equally—

She grips his massive, beautiful head in both hands and pushes back against him, hard, her heart hanging like a stone in her throat. Because that, that expression coming from a man who named himself Megamind, that has to be the absolute highest compliment she's ever received.

"I just," he says again, sounding choked and near to tears, "needed to—tell you."

I love you, I love you, but she can't tell him that now; that's too much. On top of everything else tonight? On top of everything else from today? No.

"Yeah," she whispers, "I…thank you, and…yes, of course, me too. I…come on, sweetheart; come on; let's lie back down, okay?"

He gulps, a soft, mournful noise, but he nods against her and sighs and turns away, slides back under the covers. Roxanne follows him down and pillows her head on his chest again, her arm around his narrow body, her legs tangling with his. She does a thing with her feet for a minute that confuses him until—oh, he realizes, she's using her toes to tug the cuffs of his trousers to his ankles so they aren't rucked up uncomfortably around his knees.

He blinks up into the dark, moisture trickling from the corners of his eyes into his ears as Roxanne settles back in against him with a soft sigh. So maybe she wasn't as freaked out by touching foreheads as he thought when she pulled away? Maybe she really did mean something by it when she seemed to do it back? He—it had felt comforting, to have her hands on his skin like that, warm on his head like that—he would have liked to stay a little longer, long enough to be sure he has the feeling of that fully engraved in his memory. Like a photograph he can look at on his bad days, to remember he had this. For a few seconds, anyway.

She is being so kind to him, and he just—he doesn't know how to—she has never exactly had a choice in how or when she sees him, and now she does have a choice, and she is choosing to hold him in her arms here in the dark so he can sleep.

He wants to stay awake, to hold Roxanne and think about—he has options? now? suddenly the future might not end with him bleeding out on the pavement somewhere?—but he's too tired to feel very hopeful about it. Too tired and too heartsick and too…much. He's too much, again, even for himself. And it is not a good idea to feel good about holding the woman he drugs and kidnaps on a weekly basis—down that road lies madness—and it would be rude to spurn the gift Roxanne is giving him, the gift she is very kindly ignoring her personal space and comfort and sense of safety to give him, so—

He closes his eyes. And gulps his empty heart out of his throat and down into its hollow in his chest where it belongs. And goes to sleep.

He doesn't dream.

MetroImperative: hey
MetroImperative: hey minion you awake?
MetroImperative: sorry but i just got off THE WEIRDEST phone call
FantasticFish: wht's up
MetroImperative: hey sorry roxie's mom just called
FantasticFish: her mOM?
MetroImperative: yeah
MetroImperative: Roxie's mom called and asked what i thought of roxie dating megamind
MetroImperative: she wanted to know how long was this going on, how long have i known about this, all that stuff
FantasticFish: ohhh crap oh jeez oh no oh no
MetroImperative: so i was like "I mean, i dunno, she doesn't tell me everything but they've been together for a while now and they seem really happy"
FantasticFish: AAAA tHANK YOU
FantasticFish: i owe you one
FantasticFish: bullet dodged
MetroImperative: you don't owe me shit
MetroImperative: seriously
FantasticFish: i just don't know when I would have another opportunity to get those two boneheads in the same room long enough for them to figure it out! if this doesn't work i will SCREAM and then lock them in a closet or something
FantasticFish: thank you for covering holy cow
MetroImperative: it was just so weird, man. Roxie's mom is a sweet lady, but…
MetroImperative: i dunno, she can be kinda weird about stuff sometimes? Like, why are you calling me? Do you not trust your kid? You're going to call your kid's EX-BOYFRIEND at ass o'clock in the morning like "so dish me the deets" like excuse me? What?
MetroImperative: anyway sorry to wake you up, i just
MetroImperative: needed a record of this so tomorrow I don't think i hallucinated the whole thing, you know?
FantasticFish: you covered for sir and miss Ritchi you can wake me up anytime you want
MetroImperative: hey i got you fam
FantasticFish: maybe don't say that lmao but thanks
MetroImperative: copy that 10-4 good buddy :) merry xmas
FantasticFish: lol ok goodnight dorkus maximus I am going back to sleep