Well…the short chapter didn't happen.
Re-took the exam last weekend. (Got a 73 the first time, need a 75 to pass.) Went to Dashcon two months ago, cosplayed Megamind, got recognized by a kid in an elevator and a family all the way across a parking lot, which was pretty rewarding.
Thank you to KarenBJones, who is the best beta ever. And thank you to all of you folks who have stuck with this story for so long! It's winding down now, and I anticipate maybe four or five more chapters, six at the most. And then onward to the next installment in the series!
But seriously, thank you so much for reading and reviewing, or not reviewing and just reading. You are all seriously awesome and amazing people, and I love you very much. ^^
Chapter 18
The shower upstairs is still going ten minutes later, and Linda can't sleep. It's no trouble for her to sleep through the noise, but going to sleep with it on is another story entirely—so she sighs and reaches out to turn on the lamp. She may as well read for a while.
She's proud of her bedroom, all dark wood and peach-beige upholstery. It's a shame that the large bed is so often half-empty, but Linda has never minded having her privacy. Orson is always only a phone call away when she needs him, and they're both wildly independent people.
When he gets home tomorrow, she's thinking of asking him to bring her comfortable chair in from the living room, so she won't have to go as far to have a place to sit that isn't a bed. Maybe she'll look into getting a wheelchair one of these days. Or a hip replacement. Both of her knees are made of steel now, so why not do the hips as well?
She props herself up against the headboard with a pillow behind her back, then settles in to read. But she's only just managed to get lost in the pages when someone knocks on the door. Two soft taps. She looks up, over the tops of her glasses. The shower hasn't stopped going, and she doubts it's Drew. This is going to be interesting. "Yes," she says.
The knob turns, and a thin blue hand pushes the door open a few inches, and then Megamind's venom-green eye peeks in through the crack. It blinks when he sees her sitting up, awake. Awkwardly, he pushes the door open a little farther, then hovers in the doorway, apparently unable to decide whether to scowl or look nervous.
He shuffles a little. "Um…hi. Can I, um. Can I talk to you?"
She raises her eyebrows, peers at him over the tops of her bifocals. "I don't know. Can you?" That irritates him, she can tell. She's hit a nerve with that one. Granted, it's a silly, petty response. "What?"
"I don't think anyone's said that to me in…" He pauses. "Nineteen years? Eighteen? Something like that."
"English teacher?" she guesses. He nods. "What did you say?"
Megamind glances down at his bandaged feet. "I, ah…I threatened him. A lot. 'Can' does have a secondary modal form as a verbal modifier asking for permission."
Linda can't help chuckling. "Did you often threaten your teachers?"
He shrugs and avoids a direct answer. "I never did appreciate being corrected when my English was actually right." He looks up. "They weren't usually big threats. I just sort of metaphorically rubbed my giant brain in his face, I guess. I try not to do that anymore. It's rude."
"But you still think you're smarter than everyone else."
"I am smarter than everyone else, by most metrics. There's no sense denying it." He smiles to himself with self-depreciating humor. "But, as Roxanne frequently reminds me, I can be a complete idiot in other ways, so it probably evens out." He looks around what he can see of the room from the doorway without opening the door any further, his eyes wide open and curious.
Linda sighs and shoves her bookmark in the pages to hold her place. "You may as well come in." And get this over with, she doesn't add, because whether Roxanne believes her or not, she would like to at least attempt civility.
Megamind balks, suddenly looking like a deer in the headlights. "A-actually, you know what, I think I'm okay where I am," he says nervously.
Civility can wait. "Get in here and sit down before your feet start bleeding again," Linda snaps.
He jumps a little. "Yes ma'am," he says, and steps hurriedly inside.
Linda isn't in the mood to wait for him to dither very much longer, so she just points at the foot of her bed. It's really the only place to sit, and she highly doubts he'll do it of his own accord. He hesitates visibly, but sits stiffly down a moment later. She hadn't noticed before, but he's holding a small notebook in one hand. He also seems to be having a hard time looking at her, but she had noticed that.
"Why are you even still awake? What do you want," she asks.
"I. Um." He flips through the notebook until he finds the page he wants, then hands it to her. A moment later, the reason he's tongue-tied becomes more or less clear—he's showing her a drawing of a ring. A woman's ring, asymmetrical, organic. Two large round stones in a kind of infinity loop, clustered and ringed with smaller stones and loops of metal.
The fact that it's a really good drawing doesn't make this any easier, either. She presses her lips together. Ah.
"I don't have a physical prototype yet," Megamind says quietly, still without looking at her. She doesn't look at him, either. "But…that's the one I'm leaning towards."
She flips back a few pages, glancing at other designs. Some are more extravagant, others less so. Occasionally she finds a page scrawled over with notes in various languages—she recognizes some of the alphabets. She knows he speaks Russian, she'd heard him do it earlier, but there are others, too. Of course he would be a polyglot.
"你說中國話," she observes. Megamind nearly jumps out of his skin.
"I…是," he replies, startled. "But n-not very well. I write better than I speak."
"Hm."
He takes a deep breath. At this point, he looks supremely uncomfortable. "Lin…Mrs. Ritchi. I, I don't know when I'll…no, hazhk, I'm going out of order." He backtracks hurriedly. "What I mean to say is, I love her. Roxanne. Your daughter. I love her very much, and…I want to spend the rest of my life with her. I want…I want to marry her, if, if she'll have me." He's actually stammering, stumbling over his words, and when Linda glances up at him she notes that he's gone a little bit pale. He still hasn't looked at her; he's alternating between staring down at his hands and looking wildly around the room. "And... I think she will. I don't know why she's with me," he blurts, "but she is. And she seems to be happy—with me. W-we get along well, and…she says she loves me too."
"She's the only person you've ever dated, is that correct?" Linda says, in what she hopes is a non-confrontational monotone. Megamind nods. "And you're sure she's the one for you, without trying other options first?"
Megamind stares at the wall, then down at the quilt he's sitting on. He nods wordlessly, emphatic.
"And not just because you think nobody else will want you?" His head snaps up and he looks at her then, and she snorts. "It's a big world. I'm sure there's got to be at least one other person."
He clears his throat, shrugging, nodding. "Maybe, but no. She's amazing. She…even if there was somebody else, she…" He shrugs again, looks back down at his hands. Swallows. "I'm happy."
Linda watches him for a moment. He's trying to sit still, but that's honestly impossible for this guy. After only a few seconds he focuses in on the quilt, a moment later he reaches down and runs the pads of his fingers across the stitching.
For such a low bed, it's very soft. It's not a wire-spring mattress. Probably fairly new, maybe ten years old at the most. But the quilt on top of it is incongruously old. Its colors have faded, the edges have started to fray away from each other. Roxanne has mentioned quilting to him before, in conversation, so he knows that this one is probably handmade but the whole idea is kind of beyond Megamind's grasp—why anyone would devote so much time just to create a glorified blanket is just mindboggling to him. But it's something to look at while he tries to remember to breathe.
He puts a hand down and touches it. Soft, he thinks.
"My mother made it."
Startled, he looks up at Linda. To his surprise, she doesn't look actively upset with him. She looks…puzzled, maybe? He's having a hard time reading her.
She shrugs, leans back against the pillow that's between her and the headboard. "My grandmother quilted, and my mother. I'm afraid I never really had the patience for it."
He scrambles for words. "It's a…a family thing, then?" he asks. Where did this conversation come from why are we talking about this what's going on what's she doing. "T-tradition?"
"Something like that." Mostly she's just watching him. He swallows again, harder this time, unable to shake the feeling that he has a stone in his throat.
"I don't understand…family things," he murmurs. "The dynamic is so different."
"Minion's not your family?"
The way his whole face relaxes and softens when she mentions his friend is just incredible. "Minion's never really had a choice," he admits softly. "He loves me. And I'd do anything for him. But it's his job. His sole purpose in life is to look after me."
The shower cuts off. "Megamind," Linda says in the sudden quiet, "look at me."
He does.
"My job is to look after my children," she tells him. "I chose to have children, but I didn't choose what children I got. They didn't choose me, either. That's what family is."
He frowns. "But Roxanne—"
"She isn't choosing you." The sudden wounded expression that crosses Megamind's face would have been comical, but Linda isn't actually feeling particularly friendly towards him at the moment. She hopes he hasn't noticed that. "No, listen. These kinds of relationships, they're not about choosing somebody. They're about finding somebody and then building something with them." She settles back, tucks an imaginary strand of hair behind her ear for something to do with her hands. "You can choose whether to go or to stay—that's true in any relationship, even when people are related by blood—but the finding happens on its own."
This is my family. I found it all on my own. It's little and broken, but still good.
I may not like you, and you may not like me, but I think we understand one another and we certainly can't get rid of each other, and we wouldn't if we could. As far as I'm concerned, that makes us family.
He frowns. That makes a startling amount of sense.
"I don't want you in my family," Linda says, out of the silence. "I don't think I ever will."
Megamind looks at her, sits up a little straighter. He doesn't seem at all surprised to hear this. "I know. I don't expect you to—"
"However," she continues, as though he hadn't said anything. I know Drew wants you here, and I think Orson wouldn't mind, she doesn't say. "I know you—you both are going to do it, whether you have my approval or not."
He hesitates, then starts to say, "It would mean a lot to us if…" but he trails off at the look on her face.
"Megamind. I am grateful for what you did today." Her mouth turns down at the corners; she's finding this unexpectedly difficult to say. "But what happened today happened because of you."
He recoils. "You can't blame me for what Vitre did," he protests.
"No. It's not about blame. I blame Vitre. I blame the…the David Bowie impersonator." She shakes her head. "This is an observation," she stresses, "and it's one I think you can understand." She pauses, but Megamind surprises her by not saying anything and waiting for her to speak.
So she does. "If you had never focused on Roxanne as your kidnappee, she wouldn't be a recognizable target," she says flatly. "If she wasn't dating you, Vitre probably wouldn't have bothered with her. If you weren't here, my home wouldn't have been broken into. If you hadn't come here, Fake David Bowie would not have almost murdered my son." She looks him dead in the eye. "If Roxanne wasn't somebody you so obviously cared about, Titan wouldn't have tied her to a building and tried to drop her half a mile."
"I—I know," he says, looking like she slapped him. "I know, but I just…"
"She is in danger. Maybe not from you, but still because of her association with you." She spreads her hands, frustrated. "I can't give you my blessing on this. I can't just wave and smile as my daughter drives merrily off into the sunset with a supervillain whose mere presence in her life puts her life at risk. I can't."
He stares at her unhappily but doesn't say anything.
Linda has to blink a few times, but the tears are more out of frustration than anything else. "I won't forbid you to marry her," she says thickly. "And I won't forbid you to visit. If you're going to be in her life, then you're going to be in my life. But I can't approve of this. I think it's an awful idea, I think you are revolting in every possible sense of the word, and if something like today happens again and she dies, I will find you and I will wring your skinny neck."
"He reaches out and plucks the notebook out of her hands. In a wobbly voice, he manages to say, "I was really just in here to get your opinion about what ring she'd prefer. Sorry to have bothered you about... the rest." He gets to his feet stiffly and the door closes behind him before Linda can say anything else.
He's lying, of course, and they both know it.
0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0
Megamind spends the next few minutes on his knees on the living room floor, with the bottle of hydrogen peroxide in one hand and a ratty old towel in the other, alternating between pouring the clear liquid on the carpet and blotting it with the towel that's slowly turning pink with his blood.
His long blue hand clenches in the rag, pressing it mechanically into the carpet, pulling up red. It'll take him ages to get the smell out from under his nails.
She's wrong, he thinks angrily. She's wrong, she's wrong. Remember how Roxanne dealt with Anderson? She's stronger than that. Linda's just worried. That's all.
But if not for him, Vitre wouldn't have kidnapped her. None of today would have happened. She never would have been in danger. That's true. She's right about that one.
He shakes his head hard—he honestly isn't sure whether he's angrier at himself or Linda or Vitre. Right now, probably himself. Enough, he thinks. We've been down this road before.
It's Roxanne's choice to stay or go, and he can't make it for her. He wants to be with her. She wants to be with him. There you go, end of story, that's all there is to it.
But is that the right thing? Or is it just selfish? Is being selfish the right thing?
She doesn't need me to save her! he insists savagely, willing himself to please stop thinking about this. It doesn't help. Focus on something else, anything else.
Focus on his hands. The peroxide is alcohol-based and he should really be wearing gloves to handle it this way, but he doesn't have any so the skin on his hands is getting drier and more chapped by the minute. A couple of the knuckles on his left hand are already cracked and bleeding, and he glances down at the peroxide fizzing in the cuts.
His left hand is also the one with the small, round scars on the heel of his palm and the back near his thumb and wrist. Old scars. Burns always took the longest to heal.
The skin on a third knuckle pulls open, a sharp tingling pinprick when the peroxide gets in. He doesn't even mind the pain. It's something physical to focus on, and that's honestly kind of addictive, and he shakes himself away from that line of thinking, too. This is also a familiar road. Why can't I ever just think about something harmless and fun? Fun things that start with H. Hamsters. Hugs. Higgs Bosons.
What's he even worrying about? He'll be fine. He's always fine. He's dealt with all this before.
Yes, he's dealt with this before, and he'd give just about anything not to have to go back. But she's worth it, right? Roxanne is worth it. He's older and stronger now, and he'll be okay this time, he knows. Slightly more okay than he was last time, at least. But the knowledge doesn't stop the fear from clenching in his stomach, and it doesn't stop the tears from coming when his restless gaze falls on the edge of the black album of accidental deaths, which is half-hidden under some magazines on the credenza under the window.
He doesn't deserve this. Any of it. Quiet house, wind outside, sleeping family all around him. People like him are the scum of the earth—people were dying, and he didn't stop; Roxanne was hurting and scared and crying after kidnappings, and he didn't stop; selfish, selfish, selfish.
She almost died today. That fact keeps rearing its ugly head in the midst of his tumultuous thoughts, which doesn't help at all.
And the shower stopped running ages ago, and Roxanne hasn't come to find him, and he also keeps coming back to the way she'd said she didn't want him to touch her. She almost died, and she was freaking out, and he'd been useless. As usual. And she didn't want him to touch her.
She just didn't want to be touched, he tries to tell himself. It wasn't personal, it wasn't, it wasn't…
She almost died, I almost lost her, because I wasn't fast enough, because I couldn't just shoot him with the de-gun and be done with it.
He hasn't had one of these episodes in a while. He'd been hoping that he was past them entirely, but apparently that isn't the case, and he just keeps coming back to various conclusions that he's incompetent, useless, and a nuisance at best, and frankly, he's getting really sick of all this. There's a prickling urge to move crawling down his spine—get outside, run in circles around the house, do something, anything, to break the pattern. In prison he would have started a fight, at home he would throw himself into his work, but he's twenty-three hundred miles from any of his projects and planning isn't going to cut it right now.
Something's got to give.
He gets to his feet, wincing. The blood is mostly cleaned up; he'll make a solvent to get it the rest of the way clean tomorrow. Right now, he's going to go and do something that he never thought he would ever do.
Nothing wrong with me. Nothing wrong with me.
He passes the partially shattered front door—the storm door in front of it is doing its best to work overtime—and goes upstairs on pincushion feet, where he pushes open the door to Roxanne's room. She's already lying in bed. The only source of light is the lamp on his nightstand. She'd left it on for him. "Roxanne," he whispers loudly, fighting to keep his voice even. "Roxanne, I'm freaking out. H-help."
She doesn't move. She's asleep. Biting his lips, he crawls into bed and he's about to huddle close next to her when he remembers that she'd said she didn't want to be touched. Two months ago he would have rolled away from her and tried to handle it on his own. He stifles the urge. "Roxanne. Wake up."
She stirs. "Meg'mind?" she mumbles, then looks over her shoulder and sees him lying there. "Oh good, yaaay." She rolls over with a happy little hum, shoves her head under his arm and rests her ear on his chest, her arm squeezing his waist.
He fights it, not wanting to disturb her, thinking, See, she still likes cuddles, it's okay she's okay you're okay, but when his chest hitches she seems to wake up a little. "Hmm?" She lifts her head up, peers at his face in the pale light coming in through the window, wakes up more. "Whoa, hang on, no, what's wrong?"
He shakes his head. "I don't—I don't know, I'm. Being stupid. Again." His thoughts are easy enough, this is easy enough to think through by himself, but putting it into words? Words are so much harder.
"Nooooo no no," she says, wiggling closer to him. "No, it's okay, just tell me. Was it 'cause I said not to touch me? I didn't mean not ever again. And I would've said it to anybody. Really, I—"
"Only partly," he mumbles. "Mostly it's…" He struggles for a moment, then blurts, "You know what happened today was because you're with me, right?"
She's quiet for a long minute, and then she sighs. "Yeah," she says. "Yeah, I know. But I knew the risks when I signed up."
"Yes, you've said, but…" He's still fumbling for words. Dammit. Eventually he gives up on forming a complete sentence and decides that as long as the words are there, the punctuation doesn't really matter. So he bites out, "But you almost died. And I'm. Kind of actually freaking out now." Roxanne makes a sympathetic noise and puts a hand on his face, which is right about when he realizes that his teeth might be chattering a little bit. "The, um, the shock's wearing off? And. It's not going to stop as long as you're with me, and I've been trying not to think about that, I have," he adds quickly, "I really really have! But. I can't do anything about it. About a lot of things. People wanting to hurt—us. Also you being upset. I can't help you with that because of the not touching."
This isn't working. For one thing, he's losing coherency and he knows it; for another, he still wants to move. He wants to run somewhere. Anywhere. He's been staring around the darkened room as he speaks, and that's when he happens to glance out the window, at the distant ocean. The moon is lighting a whitish path of water that seems to lead right to him.
The next thing Roxanne knows, Megamind sits bolt upright and throws the covers off. "Swimming," he says abruptly. "I want to go swimming. I bet I could swim ten miles out and back. You wanna find out? Let's find out. I'm…"
She sits up, too. She's doing her best not to let it show, but she's deeply alarmed by all this—he'd sounded earlier like he was handling everything really well, but then, he's always been surprisingly good at bottling things up. It's easy to forget, since he wears his heart on his sleeve otherwise. She puts a hand on his arm, rubs the other up and down his back, trying not to sound worried. "Megamind. Breathe."
"I am breathing," he snaps.
"And don't wake up my folks," she adds automatically. She isn't expecting his brief bark of laughter.
"Your mother's nowhere near asleep yet," he says, and wow, he sounds bitter.
Ah.
There are a few things Roxanne can think to say. One is, you went and talked to her, didn't you? Another might be, Why? What did she say to you? A particularly tempting question is have you lost your mind? but she suspects that would only do more harm than good.
Eventually she decides to ignore it. Linda might have something to do with his current state of mind or she might not, but either way, the thoughts are his and those are what's really got him upset like this. "Megamind, hey, c'mon."
"Swimming," he says again, more quietly this time.
"You'll get sand in your feet, and salt."
"I don't care," he says, and stands up. Then he sits back down again. "Ow."
"Also, I'll get hypothermia if I go in there," she tells him.
"Then don't come."
She snorts. "You're not swimming alone at night like this." She pokes him. "If you go in the water, I go in the water. If you go in the bed, I go in the bed. I'm following you around for the rest of the night, Megs, whether you like it or not."
"I'm not going to hurt myself—"
"I know that, stupid," she says, wondering where the hell that came from. She hopes it's not because he was actually thinking of doing just that. "I'm going to follow you around because I love you and I want to be close to you, and I know all this only gets worse when you're alone, so you're not going to be alone because I am here and would you please just look at me, Megamind, my God."
He's silent.
After a few seconds, Roxanne lowers her voice a little. "Do you really want to swim, or do you just want to run away from this?" Even as dark as it is, she can still see when he swallows. Good, he's listening. "Because it's only going to follow you, and you know it." At the risk of seeming overly cliché, she touches his jaw and tips his head to face her. "You have to kill it here."
He looks at her for a second, then pulls his head away. "I know," he says hoarsely. "I just. Roxanne, it's…we've been over this before. It's all just the same old shit." And then he leans forward, hugging his legs, face between his knees. "I wish I could move on and be done," he gasps, sounding muffled. "I just want to be done with all this. I don't like this, I don't want this. I don't want to be this. It's—it's all this repetitive nonsense, over and over and over again in my head, and it gets better for a while and then this happens."
Roxanne bites her lip. "To be fair, it…wouldn't have happened this hard if my mom didn't say stuff to you, right?"
"Wouldn't have happened if I didn't go talk to her," he mumbles.
She cocks her head. "Why are you always so eager to blame yourself?"
In the ensuing pause, she decides to risk a quiet little prayer that this will maybe get him thinking. It's something she only picked up on fairly recently, but it's true: he always finds a way to put the blame back on him. It's bizarre.
"Because it's true," Megamind says eventually. "And I'm not eager to blame myself."
"But what I said was true, too, though," Roxanne counters. "Mom said stuff to you. Stuff that made you freak out. Right? You didn't have to turn it around so you're suddenly the bad guy."
"But I started it."
She gives him a frank look, which he doesn't see because his head is still resting on his knees. "By talking," she clarifies, making it sound as stupid as she can.
"By talking to someone who I know doesn't like me."
"Were you antagonizing her?" She waits for an answer, but none is forthcoming, so after a few seconds she just shrugs and continues, "Look, hon, talking calmly and civilly with someone isn't license for them to poke you in the insecurities whether they like you or not. Just talking to someone doesn't mean they get a free pass for trying to hurt you."
Megamind sits up. "She wasn't trying to—"
The snort escapes before Roxanne can stop it. "Yeah she was. I pretty much told her how, back in August." When he looks confused, she sighs. "After that thing with the projectors, I went home and returned a couple missed calls. Mom has a background in psychology—couples counseling—and I wanted her input. I didn't tell her it was you," she adds. She's felt bad about this for a while. "So, yes. She absolutely knows the fundamentals of how to hurt you."
Megamind draws a shaky breath. "That doesn't mean she's completely wrong, though." Haltingly, he tells Roxanne what Linda had said. He paraphrases somewhat, and doesn't mention rings.
To his surprise, Roxanne does not pitch a huge fit and march downstairs to have it out with her mother in the middle of the night. Instead, she sighs and shakes her head. "Oh, good lord. Okay. Megs, you're not thinking about the bigger picture. In a world where you didn't exist…" She trails off, trying to figure out a good example. "That group of villains who tried to move into Metro City a few years back." She grins a little at the memory of a man with an orange road cone on his head. "You mentioned them earlier, I think?"
"Called themselves the Doom Syndicate."
"Yeah, them." She shrugs. "If you didn't run them out of town like you said, they'd probably still be there. Metro City wouldn't be nearly as safe as it is. And, hey, I wouldn't be where I am today either, career-wise. Or personally," she adds. "I was living with Chad when you started kidnapping me, remember?"
He presses his lips together. "What's your point," he says, although he can kind of see where she's going with this.
"My point is, you made a difference," she tells him. "You changed my life. You changed a lot of lives, and sure, you did hurt a lot of people. But." She reaches for him, nudges him to lie back down, and she's relieved when he follows her prompting. "You made my life better. You might even have saved my life, I don't know. And I know Wayne's glad to have you in his life. My brother. That kid you saved back in October. And you keep the streets safe with the brainbots and I know you've been doing that for years." She cuddles into his side, hums when he wraps his arms around her. "Without you…life in Metro would be so different. You mediate between the Dukes and you make sure everybody follows the rules." She yawns. "About…about not messing with kids, and keeping conflict in the Danger Zones, and everything. Minimizing civilian casualties."
Megamind swallows. She's right. He knows she's right, but it's so strange because at the same time he still feels like everything he's ever done could only have been bad. Protecting your home isn't good, it's necessary.
But if the outcome is good…isn't that all that matters, in the end? Besides, he'd told himself for years that he was evil. It was part of how he'd managed to reconcile with himself. He is evil. He is Good At Bad. Conversely, he's only been thinking of himself as a force for good—well, not good, but definitely the good end of the spectrum—for a few months. Less than a year. He supposes it makes sense that he's having a tough time believing it sometimes.
It makes sense, but it's still annoying.
Roxanne, who'd laid her head on his chest and who Megamind had thought was going to sleep, suddenly stirs. "Oh, I remembered what I was going to say."
"Didn't know you'd forgotten it."
"The other thing. Was." She yawns again, hugely, and shakes her head until Megamind reaches up to brush her bangs out of her eyes. Then she settles back down again. "I worry about you, too. That was the other thing."
He blinks, unsure of both the subject and the segue. "What?"
"Well, this is partly because you're worried about me being in danger because of who you are, right?" She squeezes him.
Megamind hesitates, then nods slowly, staring up at the crack in the ceiling and wishing vaguely that he'd wadded up the pillow behind his neck instead of putting it under his head. He could move to do that, but doing so would involve letting go of Roxanne. He stays where he is. "Yes. That's the crux of it."
Roxanne nods, too. "Okay, well, I might be in danger. But so are you, for being who you are. Every day. From rival villains, from heroes, from humans who don't understand you. You're in danger every day, all the time. And there's nothing I can do about it."
"But I don't have a choice." He shifts around a bit, uncomfortable with this topic of conversation. It's not Roxanne's fault—she's actually doing really well. Usually she's much more vehement about this subject, and while he definitely prefers this calm discussion, he's still reluctant to talk about it at all. "You do have a choice. You could—leave. You don't have to stay with me."
Seeing her today…it wasn't that he's territorial, although he is. It wasn't even the knowledge that she was dangling above an acid vat, because he knew Vitre had messed it up and he knew he'd be able to get to her in time because of course it was a trap and she was only the bait.
No, what really bothers him is the knowledge that someday this might be real—the acid might be proper hydrofluoric, the victim might be more than bait, he might not be able to reach her in time. Or she wouldn't be able to reach him. And when the building came down around his ears, when everything was collapsing and creaking and crashing, all he could think was, did she make it out? Where is she? Is she okay?
And she didn't have to be there in the first place. She didn't have to put herself in the position where Vitre, or anyone else, would try to use her to get to him. She was only there because of him. And it will happen again. It will keep happening so long as they're both alive, and he doesn't want to even think of that eventuality.
As if her thoughts echoed his own, she says, "You're right. I do have a choice and I really don't want to be your helpless damsel anymore. I don't want to be kidnapped and used for bait. I don't want villains to think I'm an easy target to hit just to hurt you."
His throat works as he tries to swallow the lump suddenly lodged there. "You're having second thoughts about us?"
"No, idiot." She sounds flat, but there's still an odd combination of amusement and exasperation in her tone. "If I have to be a damsel I guess I want to be your damsel, but I don't want to be one at all. And why do you always jump to the conclusion that I want to break up with you? I'm just saying that I don't want to be some weak, helpless girl you have to guard and rescue and keep safe. I want to be able to take care of myself. I'd rather if I were never the target of a villain trying to get to you, but I know that's not realistic so long as we're together—and I do not want to ever give up being with you. So, don't even start on that.
"It's like with Minion. He'd be easy prey under the right circumstances and you'd be devastated if you lost him. But he's not actually in much danger because you've made sure he isn't ever helpless. He's got that gorilla suit, the brainbots watching his back, and he can use any of your weapons and machines if he needs to. It's not a sure thing, but he's not a sitting duck like I am half the time. I want to be more like Minion."
"You want me to build you a gorilla exosuit?" He turns that idea over in his head. "I…suppose I could do that—"
Roxanne snorts. She tries not to, but she has a sudden vision of herself in a getup like Minion's and it's almost too funny for words. "No. I'm good on the hoverboard, thanks. I want to be able to defend myself and I want to be capable of mounting a rescue for you if necessary. When it comes to dealing with villains and people who want to hurt us, I want to be your partner, like Minion is." She bites her lip and asks him something she's been wondering about for a while. "Can we…do you think you could teach me? When we go back home, could you teach me to do that thing you did with the guy at the gas station or what you did to Ulrich?"
He stares up at the ceiling, baffled. "Your solution to the problem is for me to teach you how to fight?" Well, it's certainly an alternative to running away…
She nods. "Megamind, I am bait right now and we both know it. Sooner or later one of us will get killed by some psycho who doesn't play by your gentlemen's rules of the game. Either you won't get there in time to save me, or you'll fall right into a trap that I lured you into." She takes a deep breath, fighting down sudden frustrated tears and hoping to whatever god will listen that he doesn't notice. "I can't do that, baby. Next time some jerk wants to kidnap me, I want to be able to kick his ass. Or at least sic the brainbots on him."
He frowns. "Uh. D-don't. Call me baby. Please."
Roxanne pauses. "Jo calls you that all the time."
Megamind shakes his head as much as he can while lying on his back with no neck support. "Nnn. With you it's different."
At this point in their relationship, Roxanne is pretty sure she can read him loud and clear. Only half of it is the words he's using; the rest is written in the tension of his shoulders, the set of his mouth in the dim moonlight: he doesn't want to associate her with this. "What's wrong with…"
"It's nothing," he says swiftly. "My point is, you could just leave me." Roxanne groans and puts her forehead back down on his chest, mumbling something muffled into his pajama top. Sounds like, Why? Why me? Still, Megamind presses onwards, pointing out, "Then you wouldn't have to kick anyone's ass."
Roxanne lifts her head and looks at him. "I could leave," she agrees without protesting, for probably the first time ever, "or I could stay right where I am and lick your neck until you pass out from endorphins," she continues with an audible grin. "Which would you prefer? 'Cause I sure know which one I would pick."
Megamind gapes up at the ceiling, distracted for the moment. "W-well, when you put it like that," he stammers.
"Uh-huh, that's what I thought." She snorts. Happy to have changed the subject. "Also, you are seriously the single most cuddly person ever and I'm not giving up this for anything."
"How on Earth am I cuddly?" He wrinkles his nose at her, bewildered. "I'm all angles and lines. At least you're soft."
"Don't ask me how you defy the laws of physics. You just do."
Right now, he wants to hug her and he doesn't ever want to stop. That's really all there is to it; it's a pretty uncomplicated emotion. He loves her. He loves her.
And she loves him back, he's pretty sure. "Roxanne," he says, sounding distant, "do you…how often do you look at me and remember me like I used to be?"
She recoils. "What? How did you know that's why I…"
"It was kind of obvious."
"More often than you'd think." She shrugs, trying to ignore the way he stiffens at that. "When I do it's not a problem. Today was only different because of Vitre."
"'Not a problem,'" he echoes. He lets his head roll to the side so he can scowl out at the distant ocean. The urge to run is fading. "How is it not a problem?"
She props herself up on her elbows so she can look at his face. "Megamind, today it was only a problem because I was scared. But usually it's intentional."
He focuses on her, half-amazed, half-outraged. "You try to remember me that way? Why would you—"
"Because I want to remember you that way?" she says, making it a question. "Because I like remembering you as a supervillain?"
"But all those years, when it was a game for me," he protests, "it was making you cry." His heart twists as he says the last part; he knows it's true and he'd never wanted that. He'd wanted screams of terror, he'd wanted fear, but tears?
It sounds so ridiculous now, that he could ever have thought there could be one without the other, but what he'd really been looking for was someone who would play the game. Because it was a game, one he'd wrought partly to hide behind and partly because he'd been good at it, and he'd forgotten sometimes that to everybody else it wasn't a game. It was a cackling madman in a cape with a gun.
Her expression softens and she rolls over onto her back, grabbing his hand in hers. He follows her onto his side. "It wasn't all the time," she tells him. "Only at first. The first few years."
"It was still too long," he insists. "I can't believe you like remembering all that."
She laughs. "I like remembering you."
"But why?" he wants to know. "I'm sorry, it just doesn't make sense to me."
Roxanne presses her lips together and looks at him. At Megamind. Lying next to her, lying in her bed, after this absolute hell of a day.
She's known for ages that he was fond of her. She's always known he had some kind of feelings for her, even if she'd never been entirely sure what those feelings were. For a long time, she'd thought it was creepy. It was creepy, but it was also reasonably harmless. And anyway, she'd thought about him in…certain ways, too. Fair's fair, after all.
But she'd never thought they might actually be compatible. She hadn't asked to fall in love with him, hadn't tried to fall for him, had never even wanted to love him.
It just…happened. And that's why it's so special, really—that juxtaposition, the fact that he's a supervillain and she isn't. They aren't supposed to be together this way. This isn't supposed to work at all, let alone as well as it does!
How is she supposed to put that into words?
Green eyes flick nervously to the side. "Um. Roxanne?" he says, and she realizes she's been staring for nearly a minute.
She squeezes his hand, reaches for him. "Because," she says. "Because of this. Because back then, I had no idea who you really were, and now I do. Because how I feel about you now is so wildly different from the way I felt back then. Because…because I still remember hating you, and being afraid of you, even. And now I love you so much I almost can't stand it."
He wrinkles his face at her. This still isn't making sense.
She groans. "I don't know how to explain it," she complains. "It's…it's because when I look back, I can't believe I never just reached out and touched you. You were there, the whole time…this you was there and I can see it, looking back, you were always there. In the little ways you used to look at me, the way you'd phrase something. Knowing what I do now, what happened then doesn't seem so scary. Even the stuff that used to make me cry." She strokes her thumb over the planes of his face, stares at his eyes, the set of his mouth. His face is so familiar and still so new. "It's because…it's because the girl isn't supposed to get the bad guy. But I did. And it rocks. Because it's you."
Megamind sighs. "I'm still sorry," he says. "It never even occurred to me to think about your family. My family, if you'd call a handful of convicts a family, never really worried about me when I was in danger. They knew I could handle myself."
She snorts at that. "Don't think Mom ever got the memo. But…Drew figured it out pretty early on. And Dad believed me eventually, once I figured it out."
"Stop trying to make me feel better. I was a horrible person and you know it," he pouts miserably.
"Fine. You were horrible. You were The Master of All Villainy. You were what parents in Metro City told their children about at night, you were Evil with a capital E." She shakes her head at him. "Is that what you want me to say?"
"A year ago, I would have loved to hear you say that," he tells her. "It's what I deserved."
"You're a disturbed individual," she says, but there's no real disapproval in her voice. She's remembering a time she asked him—like this, in bed with him, petting the overlord—she'd asked if he thought he deserved to be hated. It's possible, he'd said, and it's still possible that some part of him has trouble believing otherwise.
"It wasn't even that long ago," he says, "and…you shouldn't want to touch me, you really shouldn't."
She reaches a hand up to stroke the side of his face again, moves so he can look at her. He's avoiding her gaze, but she's used to that; Megamind has never been particularly good with eye contact. "Maybe not," she tells him. "But I do want to. I want to touch you everywhere. Is that so wrong?"
He lets out an awkward chuckle. "Yes. It is. That's my point. Being with me…you shouldn't want to be lying next to me like this. I told you before, our whole dynamic was built on a power imbalance."
"I know. But it isn't now." Since they've been together, he's never tried to order her around unless there's a good reason. He's never tried to force her to do something just because he wanted her to do it. He's never tried to dominate her; he listens to her. "You respect me."
"I used you," he says, but there's no conviction behind it.
"Are you using me now?" she demands. He shakes his head. "Then I don't see a problem."
He turns his head, quickly kisses her cheek, but she shoves him up and then grabs his face in both hands and drags him down, presses her lips to his. She hooks a leg under his hips and wraps around him, rubbing her hands up and over his skull, down his neck. "I love you," she says in his ear. "I love you because you are kind, you're warm, you're a good man, you're my good man."
He shuts his eyes, gulps when she brushes her lips down his jaw to his throat.
"You're patient and considerate. You have so much joy. I never thought I'd find all these things in you…but here we are." She continues to pet him gently, stroking her hands down his back, then suddenly slipping them into his underwear and squeezing his butt. "Here we are, with my hands down your pants."
He snorts. Laughs into her hair, and she smiles and gives another little squeeze before resuming petting up and down his back under his pajama shirt. "And I'm so sorry I told you not to touch me before. Really I am."
"It's okay," he says. "Everybody copes differently, and I don't want to push you like that ever."
"Still. I'm sorry. I didn't mean not ever again."
"Roxanne, I know that." He wraps his arms around her and forces himself to relax, half in the moment and half remembering how he'd felt all those years ago. The walls he'd crafted, barricades made of the shards of his shattered childish hopes about a normal life—he'd taken his anger and resentment and built himself a suit of armor out of them.
But now his normal life is here, the gatekeeper is lying in his arms, and part of him still shrinks from it, expecting to get burned.
He sighs, stares up at the crack in the ceiling, and wishes he had his brain a little bit more together than he does. "I'm going to cling tonight," he warns, ignoring the fact that he's already clinging pretty tightly. He probably isn't going to get a lot of sleep, either. And not just because of how she'd reacted earlier, either—most of it is because of how very close he did come to losing her tonight.
She brought good things out of him. He would have found them on his own, eventually, but she saw where he'd squashed them down and hidden them away, and she pushed past all his defenses and dragged the good things into the light so he could see what she saw. She did that. She did that for him.
"You are stuck with me. Too late to do anything about it now," she says, curling up against him and hugging one arm over his shoulders, the other under his neck and curled up around his head so her nose is in his shoulder. She squirms her legs until he lets her hook their knees together; she's dead set on going to sleep hugging him tonight. "And I'm going to cling right back, because seriously, Megamind, I almost watched you die today. And it just about killed me."
Which about sums it up for him, too, and he's wondering if he shouldn't just give up and have himself a refreshing little cry. Downstairs, they hear the screen door creak open and bang shut again. Footsteps clomp through the entryway and directly up the stairs. They pause for a moment outside Roxanne's room, then a thump and a rustle of fabric can be heard as something is dropped outside their door. Then the footsteps retreat across the hallway to enter Drew's room. Some shuffling around is heard, then the mattress creaks and a radio is switched on. Classic rock hums quietly through the air, obscuring any further sounds from across the hall.
Drew's arrival home reminds Roxanne of something else that Megamind might enjoy knowing, but she'd better get it out quickly or she's going to be too embarrassed to tell him the whole story. "So…the reason my brother teased me about secretly liking you all those years? Was because of this one time back in '07 when I got really drunk, I mean seriously plastered, and I was Skyping with him and I just, you know, kind of mentioned that I wished one of these days you'd kidnap me and take me back to your place to just hang out because I was so bored and no one had asked me out for months and you were marginally interesting and Minion was nice and we could wander around the Lair laughing at all the wreckage and reminiscing about that time you tried to use electric eels except you got the wrong shipment and ended up with a tank full of guppies instead. Like actual literal guppies. God, I died, remember? And you kept trying to convince me they were poisonous? And then, to make it worse I might, just possibly, hypothetically, have told Drew something inappropriately speculative about you and how the brain is said to be the body's largest sex organ."
Megamind wrinkles his face, delighted. 2007? Really? She was having fond memories and inappropriate speculations about him as long ago as 2007? "I love you," he tells her. "I love you, I love you. I should have told you years ago."
She squeezes him, and he squeezes back and wriggles even closer, mashing their bodies comfortably together and basking in how unbelievably warm she is. "I love you," she says. "And you were wrong, before. When you said I didn't need you." He shuts his eyes, jumps when she touches foreheads but then nuzzles hungrily forward and cards his hand into her hair. She cuddles closer into his chest, quickly kisses his mouth, puts her nose in his neck. "The more I get to know you, the more I look at you…" She trails off and yawns, finishes, "I'll always need you."
After a while, after her breathing evens out and slows into sleep, he raises his head and studies his hand where it's curled around hers in the sheets. Alien skin against human. He's constantly aware of the differences in their bodies, and even their brains are vastly different. There's a lot he isn't even sure how to express in thought, let alone voice; no human language is precise enough and his command of his native tongue is limited. He's alien to the marrow of his bones.
But in all the ways that matter, he's still compatible with her.
He glances around her room. Rocking chair in the corner, afghan blanket thrown over the back. Mirror sitting on the dresser. Low bookshelves. Lamp in another corner. Windows. Moonlight. Roxanne.
There's a reason he makes sure to always wake up before her. Once, very early in their relationship, she'd gone to sleep in the Lair—in his arms—and in the morning when Megamind woke up, she was gone. She'd had an early meeting and hadn't wanted to wake him up.
And he'd honestly thought he had been dreaming. Or maybe that wasn't it, maybe it's that he was simply so used to being solitary and the idea that anything else was pretty much unthinkable that he didn't even question waking up alone. He'd just dragged himself out of the cold bed like he usually did, and he was halfway through getting dressed when his phone on the side table buzzed with a text from her. Complaining how the meeting was dragging on at a snail's pace and she should have just stayed in bed. With him. Winking smiley face. Good morning, love, how are you? Don't forget to eat breakfast.
He's still embarrassed every time he remembers how hard he'd cried at that. He'd needed to sit back down.
This is still so surreal to him. Strange house, strange bed. A warm body in his arms. This is so far from anything he's ever envisioned for himself, and so close to everything he's ever wanted, that sometimes thinking about it makes him feel like he's about to break in half. He can still remember waking up that first day—Roxanne lying on the other side of the bed, asleep and holding his hand. He's pretty sure his heart actually stopped. It's like he'd fallen into the most amazing dream he's ever had, and if he is dreaming, he never wants to wake up.
He closes his eyes and sighs, curls his body more snugly around hers. It's beautiful and terrible and he doesn't know what to do with himself half the time anymore, but he wouldn't trade this gorgeous uncertainty for any absolute in the world.
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Far away to the north and east of them there's a man leaning on a windowsill, bracing his long legs on the floor of the room inside and the window open at his back even though it's December in Michigan and well below freezing. In one corner of his mouth there's a cigarette; in the other corner he has a toothpick.
When the cigarette flares the light shows in his eyes, all four of them, and when he pulls his lips back to spit out the butt he shows his teeth, two hundred needle-sharp with red between them.
"Fuckin' tired, Lanc. 'S all it is."
"Maaan don't spit that shit on the floor," Lancaster complains, leaning back against the headboard of his bed. "That's how fires start. And y'know, if you'd just tell me what's up…" His tone says they've had this conversation before. Several times. He reaches up and rubs one of the deep scratches in the headboard. "But no, you just come in and tear my bed to pieces like some psychotic house cat. Asshole." It's old, some kind of hardwood, and Sundown often uses it to sharpen his talons. Not that Lancaster minds the company, even if it is from the weirdest sonuvagun he's ever met. What he minds is the splinters.
Sundown grimaces and groans—if you can call it groaning. Sounds more like a whiffling rattle. "Love to. Can't. Whole city'll go up and this winter goes nuclear." He stretches out a bare foot and grinds the still-glowing cigarette butt into the floorboards without any apparent discomfort, then nods at the knife on the nightstand. "Gimme."
Lancaster flicks it over at him and Sundown catches it, starts cleaning under his talons, heedless of the freezing wind ruffling his mane. One of the nice things about the Duke of Lancaster is how eternally nonplussed he always is. That, and he's all business, no frills or velvet draperies or big fancy dogs with big fancy teeth who whine and slink away from him, licking their noses, when he passes. Not like York. No, Lancaster has a room and a fridge and a sofa and a bed and that's enough for him. If Sundown was an indoor person, he would have a room and a bed and that's all he'd ever need.
"Shave yer back," Lancaster finally mutters, and Sundown gives him a rare smile. It's not quite right, but then it never is; he learned to smile late in life and he always pulls his mouth a little too wide in all directions.
"Naw. Keeps me warm."
"Yeah, sure." Lancaster huffs a laugh. "How's York?"
Sundown hums low in his chest, thinking about that. "What's the phrase…? He has a stick in his ass."
Lancaster's grin flares white in his dark face. "Same as always, then. C'mere, I'm 'bout to freeze with that window open."
Sundown rolls his eyes at him but shoves off the sill and pads across the room anyway, claws catching on the floor. He leaves the window yawning wide—there is an unspoken rule that he doesn't ever come inside without leaving himself a way out. But he hops up on the bed and sprawls on top of Lancaster, stretching out with a burbling growl and further abusing the headboard.
Lancaster works his hands into the wire scruff on Sundown's shoulder blades. "Gonna get splinters in my pillow. Again."
"Mehhhh," Sundown sighs, blinking his eyes and glancing down at him with the left pair, "You'll live."
He can hear Lancaster's hidden grin when he says, "Only 'cause you won't let do anything else."
"You're more useful to me alive than dead," Sundown replies flatly. It's the truth. If it wasn't the truth, Lancaster would be dead twice—once for his kidneys and twice for the virus in his blood. It's not kindness, it's fact. Of course the human would read into it, though. Humans always do. Humans. Baffling at every turn. At least Nibs has no illusions.
"If you're tired, you could always let me die," Lancaster points out, but Sundown makes several of the hoarse barks that he uses to mean he's laughing.
"Yeah, and the boy's'll follow me for sure," he chortles. "And that wouldn't make Mente go sniffing 'round the edges. Don't be stupid. Can't let you stop running for at least another month." Then he cranes his head around, slits his left pair of eyes open at Lancaster again—in full color like this, relaxed as he is, they're full-on orange. "But better hope you keep being useful," he growls, needle-teeth showing with every word, translucent spines in dangerous hues flickering in and out of visibility on his shoulders and back, "or I'll eat your liver while you watch with open eyes. 'Ware the Ides of February."
Lancaster ignores him and stays away from the here-again there-again spines; they look like they might be poisonous. "Yeah, yeah. 'Til then I'mma keep takin' advantage of your good graces. York's valuable too, huh? You let him pet you?"
Sundown glares. "Only reason I let you is 'cause I dunno how to make you stop for good without taking your hands off. And you gonna need those."
Lancaster chuckles. "At least kill me when you're done, willya? Don't just leave me to the crows." The animal in his bed cracks its neck, then unhinges its jaw and bares all its teeth in a lazy yawn, then blinks slowly at him. The orange flap of skin under his chin folds back against his neck—it had extended somewhat when he yawned.
"You are fuckin' weird, you know that. Fine." He wouldn't have agreed if Lancaster asked for the bow, but if the man is willing to let him have some fun, who's he to argue?
There's a long silence, but eventually the wind picks up outside and Lancaster finally shoves Sundown off. "Aight, get out. I'm freezing to death even with you being my creepy-crazy blanket. You crazy." He'd been going to have Sundown explain what a 'borogove' is—he'd mentioned them once when they'd last met up, and it sounded important—but hell with that, it's cold.
Sundown snorts and picks himself up off the floor, dusts himself off, blinks two pale eyes, grins with thirty-two teeth. Shrugs into his stained flannel shirt, and then hops out the window without saying goodbye and leaps seventy feet to the building across the street, whiffles up the fire escape to the roof and disappears to wherever it is he sleeps these days.
"Crazy bastard," Lancaster mutters, shaking the bits of claw sheath and wood out of his pillow. The window falls shut with a bang—without Sundown's will holding it open anymore, what other choice does it have?
Well, he's stocked up on snow shovels and his boys are stockpiling canned goods per the beast's cryptic recommendation. Word from York's side of town is they don't know what's going on either, but he's got them setting aside blankets and winter coats.
Lancaster's never seen him so distracted. The teeth are nothing new—neither are the claws on his hands and feet, he's seen those before—but Sundown's only had his eyes and mane out a few times that he knows of, and Lancaster hasn't ever seen the dewlap or dorsal spines before. Usually Sundown is pretty focused on keeping his spectacularly inhuman bits more or less under wraps.
Lancaster asked him about that once, and apparently it's not so much an illusion as just forcing people to see what he wants them to see. Sundown had done his best to explain it, but there were too many integrals and factoring for Lancaster to get his head around. Too much extradimensional imaginary figuring. All he was able to make out is Sundown follows different laws, mathematically speaking. And that carries through to most of the physical laws, as well.
He pulls the blankets closer. It's warming up in his room now the window's closed, but there's a hell of a storm coming.
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By the time Orson finally pulls into the driveway, it's close to three AM, but he can see that there's something wrong with the front door even from the street. But there's a note he has to put his glasses on to read taped to the storm door—Everything's fine. Nobody got hurt. Ice cream in freezer if you want any. –D.
Huh. Okay. It's an odd way to break a door, though—most of it's fine, except that the upper right section from just below where the doorknob used to be up to the top is gone, leaving ragged edges. Smashed in, by the look of it, though how somebody managed to shatter only part of a door and leave the rest is beyond him.
There's also a jetpack leaning against the wall just inside.
Bewildered, he turns on the lights. The living room carpet is discolored in odd patches, and the ficus in the corner appears to be shimmering. Upon closer inspection, it turns out to be made completely of glass, which answers most of Orson's questions. Looks like he wasn't the only one who had an exciting day.
Linda is dead to the world and snoring quietly, and Orson knows better than to wake her up just to ask what happened when he can just as easily find out in the morning. Come to that, he's pretty tired, himself.
He undresses quietly and crawls under the covers with a groan. Linda mumbles something that sounds like 'snafflbafflngoaway,' which makes him grin. Interesting times on all fronts, for sure, but at least things at home are still familiar.