There's a bunch of blood and injury in this chapter! If you're sensitive to injuries and surgery, maybe give the first chapter of this one a pass.

Chapter 1

The explosion shakes two of Roxanne's fillings loose when it slams into her, throwing her backwards and tumble-rolling her away across the floor onto her side. Later, she'll realize her eyebrows have been mostly singed off and her bangs are totally destroyed; right now, all she knows is her ears are ringing, her teeth hurt, spots are dazzling in front of her eyes, and she has no idea what's going on. Her ears come back before her vision does; she's saying something, repeating, "I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine." Which she is, really. Really. Everything hurts, but she's fine. Toes wiggling, fingers wiggling? She's okay. She'll be okay.

And she hears—Megamind's voice, high, panicky, somewhere off to her left. Crunching footsteps, then a shout, something anguished. Metro Man says something that sounds like "how dare" but she can't be sure of much beyond that, and then—a scream—fading away? And then there's no more sound, and she knows he's hauled Megamind away. Which is. Fine. Roxanne is fine. Just sort of tied up on the floor and in a lot of pain and maybe also probably concussed, that's all. Metro Man is an idiot.

But that's actually sort of reassuringly normal. Nothing else feels normal, right now.

Groaning, Roxanne rolls over and then carefully, slowly shoves herself up to sitting with her hands still tied behind her back. She doesn't get any dizzier as she sits up; that's probably a good sign. She blinks as light comes back in shifting colors, until her vision settles on—okay. Evil Lair, the floor blast-blackened and scattered with debris. Chunks of charred metal and glass. Yes. That's expected.

She coughs, looks around.

And.

Oh. Okay. She wasn't the only one thrown by that blast. Minion's suit is lying sort of between where her chair was and the thing Metro Man cut into used to be. For a crazy second she thinks oh my god, he's bleeding—before she remembers it's just a machine. The fluid is too dark for blood, so, some kind of oil, then?—either way, it isn't moving, and there's—

—oh. Right. Glass. The glass, on the floor.

And Minion. Minion is also on the floor, probably.

Shit. She sucks in a breath and promptly inhales a drifting piece of ash, which sends her into a fit of coughing, but she's already staggering to her feet with her hands still bound even though it makes her head spin. Pain shoots through her right knee when she takes a step. Minion is—where is—

Minion is lying several feet from his suit with broken glass everywhere around him. Roxanne slips in oil-slick water and falls, cuts her left shin open on a curved piece of shattered dome, but her teeth are already gritted so tightly she doesn't swear out loud. She just hisses through bared teeth and twists to pick up the glass shard with her bound hands.

Cutting her wrists free without slicing her fingers open takes a few seconds. Each one feels like half an hour.

"Minion," she says, as she finally pulls her hands loose and scrambles over to him. Wow, her voice sounds loud. "Minion," she says, and no no no oh god he's bleeding for real, oh god there's blood on the floor, oh god there's glass sticking out of him. Glass embedded in his belly, just a few inches from his trailing tendrils. Just one piece, but. it's. not small. Actually pretty large. That's going to need stitches, unless he's—unless he's already—

Is he breathing? Is he—

Oh, he has no gills, she realizes; oh, oh fuck, she has no way to know if he's breathing. She freezes, dismayed, trying to think of something else, anything else, some sign of life she can look for other than the blood still oozing from around the edges of the glass. Oozing blood is good, right? He has a heartbeat if it's oozing, right? Is that how that works? Is that just with spurting?

But then a fin twitches and he slits an eye open at her, and she has her answer. "Hey," she croaks, panicked joy at signs of life sending her into dazed laughter. "Hey, Minion, you…what do you need, what do you…what, how can I help?"

His eye rolls back, slips shut. "No," Roxanne says, hovering uselessly over him, "nononono, Minion, stay with me, stay, stay—"

There's a crack behind her, then a clatter, and she twists so fast it makes her vision tilt and spin. When it settles, she sees a silver table, brainbots pushing it to the middle of the floor; a glass tank full of water on a low, wheeled stand, and tubes, something that's probably a pump or an air compressor…

Whatever. Whatever. Brainbots aren't important right now; right now the important thing is Minion is badly hurt and somebody needs to do something about that. There's blood on the floor and Minion has glass in him and someone has to do something, but—there's nobody here but the brainbots. There's nobody here. What, did Metro Man not even notice…?

Roxanne blinks, stares. Bewildered worry clenches in her stomach as she watches the little cyborgs zip hither and yon, fetching odds and ends, setting up…lighting? Around the table? Oh, that's…huh. Can they do field medicine? They're capable little creatures and it sure looks like that's what they're prepping, but…that seems like a bit of a stretch. They're awfully sharp. Like, physically. How would they move Minion? Fish are fragile.

Then again, he has no gills, so…well, so he isn't quite a fish. But the skin around the glass shard looks pale and papery-thin. Fishy. Fragile.

One of the brainbots flits over to Roxanne and bowgs at her. She stares back, waiting.

It isn't picking Minion up. It should be picking Minion up. On—on a stretcher, or something; he needs help; he needs medical attention. He's hurt.

The brainbot aims its eyestalk at Minion, then looks back up at her and bowgs again.

He needs help. He's hurt. And there's nobody here but the brainbots.

Or, but. Oh.

That's. Not quite accurate. Is it.

Acid rises in the back of Roxanne's throat and her chest fills with panic. Her ears are still ringing and everything is too bright, too bright.

But. She's the only one here.

She shoves the panic away, pushes it down. It will keep. She turns towards Minion and breathes, then carefully, gingerly, slips her fingers under his slimy boxy body. She gets her feet under her—which is surprisingly difficult; her right leg especially doesn't want to cooperate—and lifts both herself and Minion up, steady, slowly, until they're vertical, until they're standing. Her legs feel unsteady and Minion is much heavier than she anticipated, but she does manage to limp them both to the table without falling over or jostling Minion too badly. That's…something. That's something.

She puts Minion on the table. There's a softer-looking pad at one end of it; she lays him down there. The pad is pale-pale green. So is Minion. So is she, probably.

She leans on the table, keeping her weight on her left leg instead of her right, and grits her teeth against the pain, and tries to breathe deeply and think.

(Breathe. Breathe. In for the count of four, hold for four, out on four. Hold again. In for four. Repeat.)

How much time has passed since the explosion? Not more than a couple minutes, surely. Two minutes? Four? Where is Megamind? Why did Metro Man take him away before checking to see if he needed to stay? Megamind should be doing this. Megamind should be here.

"I don't know how," she tells a brainbot as it opens a slim plastic case of what she assumes are surgical tools. It places the case, open, next to her fist—both her hands are white-knuckled on the table's flat steel surface.

"I've never tried," she says to a different brainbot. Her voice sounds shaky and distant even to her own ears. She forces her hands to relax, forces both palms flat, presses down. Gravity eludes her. She's dreaming. This is a dream. Her knee isn't even part of her body, anymore, so this must be a dream, except—

—except there's blood on her hands, blood in her nose, blood between her teeth; Roxanne is not floating above herself. This is not a dream. This is not a dream. This is not a dream; this is real, and she needs to be a real person with real hands, or Minion is very likely going to die. And then he will be dead. And then she will want to be dead. And Megamind—

Roxanne sucks her breath between her teeth and bites down very hard on that thought. She is not going to think about Megamind right now. She is going to swallow the scream bursting inside her, and she is going to be a real person with real hands, and Minion is not going to die, he is not, he is not. And Roxanne will never need to know what Megamind will do without Minion, and she won't have to think about how she'll feel if Minion dies, and—

"You'll be fine," she whispers through her teeth. "You're going to be—just fine, you hear me? I've got you. I've got you."

A brainbot offers her something wet and white and she follows its motions—the moisture must be a sterilizing agent because these are hand-washing, arm-washing motions. Also because it stings badly when it gets in the few scrapes on her hands and arms.

(where is Metro Man)

(why is this suddenly Roxanne's job)

She jumps when something passes in front of her vision—it's a surgical mask, the same pale-pale green as the spongy pad on which Minion is resting. As if she wasn't freaked-out enough about this already.

(how are the brainbots even setting all this up for her)

(what is happening)

Gloves are given to her; she stretches them over her hands, feeling sick. On the other side of the table, two brainbots are setting up some kind of hose structure connected to a smaller tank of water than the one she'd noted before. And then there's…okay…there's a sort of…bag? with a tube going in one side and another tube coming out the other side, and some soft flaps in the middle, and…rather a lot of significant gesticulations happening on the part of the brainbots.

"What?" Roxanne says, feeling blank and trying not to feel like she's about to cease existing altogether. "What? I don't…"

It's almost a full fifteen seconds before she understands that Minion's dangling structures—whatever they are—are supposed to go through the soft flaps and into the water-sloshy interior of the bag. Ah. And this is what the pump was for, also.

"I really hope one of you guys is in charge of the anesthesia," she mumbles, "because I'm sure not. Is that what this is?"

If she gets an answer, it isn't one she understands. She settles for just hoping that she's being sufficiently gentle with Minion's…whatevers. She is trying to be careful, she's doing her best, but it's hard to tell if she's succeeding or not. There's…kind of a lot of blood going on. And a lot of adrenaline. Roxanne has her panic clenched tight behind her teeth, right behind the waiting scream from earlier, but she can feel the adrenaline and she doesn't want to be poking Minion too hard without realizing it.

At least her hands aren't shaking too much. Small miracles.

A brainbot points at a plastic oblong thing with NYLON on the side in block letters—suture, that's the word, rhymes with future. Which is something Minion definitely has. Definitely, for sure. Okay, but what about needles? Aren't needles supposed to come into sutures somewhere?

Roxanne gulps, breathes deep, prays the brainbots know what they're doing because she really thinks an adhesive would be better on Minion than stitches, and picks up the NYLON.

One brainbot shines a light. Another brainbot holds up a tablet computer showing—Roxanne feels relief like an electric shock—a YouTube video, paused on an image of two gloved hands holding a pair of blunt scissors in the right hand and a pair of forceps with hooked tips in the left. Oh, thank everything, okay, so she isn't expected to completely bullshit her way through this.

The scissors and forceps are located easily enough, but a brainbot points at the glass piece sticking out of Minion's stomach before Roxanne can get much further than that.

Oh. Yes, right.

This still doesn't feel real. Only a couple minutes ago she was in the chair and everything was great, everything was normal—and then Metro Man decided to open up his laser vision. And everything was still great and normal, right up until it wasn't. Usually there's a little bit of warning before everything goes belly-up, but—oh wow, hey, that's not a colloquialism she wants to use right now! Yikes.

(where is Metro Man, anyway)

(he should have been back, by now)

Roxanne grits her teeth and pulls the glass out with a different pair of tweezers. It comes without a fuss, luckily, but blood comes with it, too much blood, too much blood. Following another brainbot's helpfully-pointing claw, she spritzes the wound with the contents of a purple plastic bottle, and the blood slows immediately.

The brainbot holding the computer jiggles it, and Roxanne gulps hard and picks up the scissors and forceps, mimicking the way they're held on the screen. "Okay," she says again. Her voice sounds small, even in her own ears. Scared. "Okay. I'm. Ready when you are."

On the table, Minion is frighteningly pale and limp.

"Hold the needle holder in the palm of your dominant hand, with your index finger extended," a voice says, and a circle appears around the blunt scissors. Excellent; Roxanne is already doing so. Ahead of the game. Off to a good start. And hey, this is just stitches, right? She'll be fine. She'll be fine and so will Minion. And she is not going to panic. "Hold the forceps in your non-dominant hand, the way you would hold a pencil," yeah, sure, holding a pencil in her non-dominant hand is something Roxanne does every day.

But maybe awkward and wrong are how it's supposed to feel. Who knows? Who cares? And apparently the needle is in the NYLON box; it comes pre-attached to the thread. Aha! So, that's one mystery solved.

She's pretty sure there's something that has to happen before all this—sterilization of the wound area? Minion's body is covered with soot and grit. Was that what the purple bottle was for?

Trust the brainbots, Roxanne thinks, numbly following the instructions on the screen. They've done this before. Probably. She hopes.

Actually, no. No, she doesn't hope; if they've done this before, then that means this has happened before: Minion has been hurt before and Roxanne has had no idea, and that's just—the worst thing she can think of. He's been hurt badly and she didn't send a card or good wishes or flowers or anything.

Fuck. This. Is. Nothing like anything she's ever done. Minion's skin doesn't tear but it still seems impossibly delicate, nothing like the sturdy human dermis in the example video the brainbots are showing her. And the video shows laceration repair, not body cavity repair. Are they different? How are they different? This only looks like skin; is this—does he have—muscles she should be looking for? She's probably getting everything wrong without even knowing it. She could be killing him, for all she knows.

She grits her teeth tighter still and follows along as best she can, but she can feel herself trembling as she tries to keep her hands gentle and steady, and there are tears on her cheeks and welling up in her eyes by the time she's finished tying the last stitch off.

But. She was careful. She followed the video. The edges of Minion's skin are together and the edges fold up, not down. She tied four knots per stitch, a little to one side of the wound. She started in the middle. Her hands were mostly steady, which still feels like a miracle.

Hopefully it's enough.

Following the brainbots' gentle gestures, she disentangles Minion's tendrils from their presumably-numbing bath, moves him carefully into the waiting tank of water, and releases him. And then her right knee buckles, and her left leg refuses to hold her weight, and Roxanne sinks down next to the tank with her eyes on Minion as he unconsciously rights himself. And he does right himself, thank heavens. He's listing a little to one side, but he isn't sideways or upside-down, and—well, he isn't a fish, exactly, but—hopefully this is a good sign.

It's just stitches. Just stitches. But there were seven of them, and Minion isn't big. Seven seems like a lot.

At least the glass didn't go too deep. At least his organs were whole—what Roxanne could see of them—and she could see far too much of them for comfort, but not enough to be sure if—

There's a cr-crunch behind her as Metro Man lands, and a voice saying, "Hey, Roxie, sorry that took so long; you okay?" and Roxanne—just—

—just straight-up fucking snaps.

She didn't tell her body to move but she's twisting, and she didn't tell her voice to do anything but she's screaming screaming screaming, and she's breaking her nails on the floor of the Lair like she's digging for traction—like she's about to launch herself at Metro Man from the ground—like she isn't still wearing fucking surgical gloves covered in blood. It isn't panic, this time; it isn't fear, either; it's rage, rage, rage, and it feels like bloody broken glass and needles in her throat and it tastes like a million copper knives and she keeps on screaming until she runs out of air.

She wants to kill something. This isn't right. Everything about this is wrong.

Huh, maybe it is panic. Can it be both? Can it also be rage? Whatever it is, there's too much of it; she's going to explode. The floating feeling from before is gone and now Roxanne feels like she's about to burst out of her skin. There's—too much going on in her head—panic and rage and she's so, so scared—what happened? Not enough air; she isn't getting enough air through the mask—she scrabbles at the front of her face and rips the mask off. And then she's screaming again, air or no air, but it doesn't feel half as galvanizing as it did the first time.

Metro Man stares at her as she rakes in a breath. "Uh," he says, thrown. "What's—wait, so he wasn't—so Minion actually is—?"

She flings the mask at him and he jumps. "GET OUT," she shrieks. "Get OUT! This is YOUR FAULT! If he dies it's YOUR FAULT!" She scrambles up, staggers onto her feet—hey, her legs are sort of back! that's good. "And I will tell EVERYONE you took Megamind away SCREAMING—" Tears are stinging in an abrasion on her cheek, dripping from her chin. "Something was WRONG—something was wrong and you TOOK HIM AWAY—if Minion dies I will KILL YOU—" Fuck, fuck, she can't get the gloves off no matter how she tears at them. She gives up and shoves her face into her blood-sticky palms anyway, heaves in one sobbing breath, then another.

Metro Man's eyes are wide, his hands up, placating. "Come on, Roxie. Hey, it's okay. Deep breaths. Come on."

"Deep breaths?" She snatches her hands away from her face and goggles at him in outrage, then stumbles when he starts towards her. "Don't you fucking come anywhere near me! Get out! Get out of here!"

He jerks back, startled, but then he stops. He doesn't actually retreat. "Roxie, I…I gotta take you home," he says. "You can't…"

"FUCK you," she snarls. "Minion almost died, I had to give him stitches, he might still die!"

"I know, I know, I get it! I just…you…oh, fishcakes, you're bleeding."

She looks down. The cut on her shin has opened up again. Or maybe it never closed in the first place? It's funny, it doesn't even hurt; not the way her knee hurts, anyway. But her shoes are both ruined and there's blood all down her leg, soaking the remains of her pantyhose. "I'm fine," she snarls, in spite of this. "I'm conscious, aren't I?"

"You need a hospital—"

"Well I'm not going to a hospital!" She clenches her fists, digs her nails into her palms in spite of the gloves, feels angry tears start in her eyes again. "I'm staying here. I'm staying right here! I can take care of myself. They clearly have the supplies!" She gestures wildly at the table and the audience of brainbots, then fists her hands again so they don't shake. "I am not leaving Minion here alone. I won't."

He starts towards her. "Roxanne, we're going to see a doctor," he says, and she spits her trump card at him.

"If you touch me I will personally ensure your secret weakness is on this evening's news broadcast." She's glaring from under her eyebrows, her head lowered like a wolf's, her eyes glittering. Metro Man freezes, staring at her.

"You wouldn't," he says, but he sounds uncertain. "I—it's the right thing to do! Roxanne, you're hurt."

He's right, she knows he's right. She also doesn't give a flying fuck, because: "You. Took Megamind away. Didn't even stop to see if we were okay. And you think you get to talk about what's right?"

"I—Roxie! You said, you said you were fine!"

"I was dazed, I didn't want him to worry, I didn't want you to KILL HIM," she chants. She isn't even sure what the real reason is. Probably a combination of the three. "Last time it all fell apart wasn't nearly this bad and you threw him through a cinderblock wall."

That looks like it sets him back, but only for a second and then he sets his jaw. "Listen. We gotta go. Seriously, that leg's probably gonna need stitches, I dunno if—"

"Then go get Megamind!" Roxanne screams, shrill, fuck fuck fuck she's going to cry. This is not okay. Nothing is okay. Nothing is okay and everything hurts and she can't breathe, she can't breathe. "Go get him! Right now! Break him out of jail and bring him back because I'm not leaving Minion alone like this! No no NO I said DON'T TOUCH ME!"

Metro Man stares down at her, huge shoulders slumping as he drops his hands back to his side. "Okay, okay. But—"

"Pollen," Roxanne spits, bringing her voice down with an effort. Wow, she's shaking really hard right now. And maybe this wasn't the best-conceived idea in the world, but it's worth it, because Metro Man blanches. Roxanne nods and backs unsteadily away from him, trembling, still nodding slowly as she insists, "There. Are. Going to be real, life-altering consequences. If you touch me. I swear to god. Evening news. Pollen. Everything. I swear to god."

He actually drifts back a couple feet and lands. "What," he says, uneven, staring at her. "How did you even…"

"I'm not leaving," she says, for the third time. "I'm staying here. I'm not leaving. You can't make me leave."

He gapes at her for a moment, then snaps his mouth shut and jerks his head in a nod. "Okay. You're…staying here. I guess." He shoves a hand through his hair, still staring at her, and doesn't appear to even notice that he's just ruined both his hair and his glove. "Do you, uh. Need? Anything?"

Roxanne is hugging her elbows, she isn't sure when that started. "My pajamas. My toothbrush. Um." She sniffs. Can't sit down, can't sit down, not yet. "A couple changes of clothes. And. My laptop."

He nods again, just once, and blurs out of the visible spectrum. Roxanne sniffs again, swallows hard, gulps down a huge breath of air.

Then another. And then another. She finally has to put her lip between her teeth and bite down in order to stop heaving in air, but then she's screwed, again, because she can't breathe enough through her nose with how badly her heart is racing. She turns and limps back across the floor to Minion's rolling tank, where she stands for a minute, hugging herself and crying and struggling to breathe normally and not feel like she's about to die, staring down into the rippling water.

The tank has no ornamentation. It's empty except for Minion, a small bubbler, and something hooked on one edge that she assumes is some kind of filter.

She forces herself to let go of her own arms so she can finally manage to get her hands out of the wet latex gloves—it's not easy, with how badly her fingers are shaking now—and then she accepts another sterile cloth from a brainbot and starts scrubbing again at her hands and arms (blood on her elbows where she was hugging herself, blood on her shirt).

Someday she'll be able to breathe again. Not today, maybe, but someday.

Probably should see a doctor. Probably definitely concussed.

There's a whooshing noise behind her and the feeling that her ears just popped. Metro Man sounds awkward. "I, uh, grabbed your shampoo, too. Figured there wouldn't be any here. And your deodorant. Some shoes. And, and I got, um…Mars."

Roxanne doesn't turn around. "Thank you," she says, quiet, between breaths. "You didn't. Have to do all that."

"Kinda got me over a barrel, here, Roxie," he replies.

She shakes her head. Nobody found out in the last three years, and nobody's going to find out in the next few days, but fuck if she can say that right now. "I won't tell," she finally says.

There's a pause. Then, "Okay, thanks, but—"

"I could have died," she says. "We all could have died. Because. You were careless."

There's no reply. When she turns around, he's gone. He's left her day bag open on the floor, stuffed with clothing and other small items—

He is her friend, really. He doesn't mean to do half the things he gets wrong. He means well, he just…forgets, sometimes.

She's still angry and she's still freaking all the way out, but at least she can let go and let herself cry now that she's alone.

She sniffs furiously, then grips Minion's cart as a couple of brainbots pick up her bag. "I want a shower," she snaps, white-knuckling the cart so she can pretend her hands aren't shaking. "I need a shower. Take me there. Now."

0-0-0-0-0-0

She can't take Minion into the shower with her, but he can wait right outside the bathroom door. He's Minion, he's a gentleman, he won't care. The shower is offset from the door; it's not like he can look in and see her if he wakes up. And the bathroom door is open so the brainbots can come in and out. It's fine.

It's not fine.

It's not fine; she can't relax. Megamind's shower is lovely—the tub is entirely separate and there's no curtain or door, only a low place in the tile with a drain, a scoop in the wall for sitting and a huge showerhead that offers the feeling of standing in warm heavy rain—but Roxanne can't switch off the way she usually does in the shower. This is probably the fastest shower she's ever taken in her life, hair-body-rinse-rinse, more to get the blood off than to really get clean.

Minion is still unconscious when she turns the water off and pokes her head out to check on him.

She dresses without remembering she's doing it; at least she'd had the presence of mind to snag her nightgown out of her bag and bring it into the bathroom with her. The gown is long but loose-fitting; easy to change into without stretching too much. Wayne got that one small thing right today, but Roxanne can't find the energy to be grateful.

The brainbot she's privately calling Needles, the one who gave her the NYLON, pulls open a drawer next to the sink, takes out a box of butterfly bandages, and offers them to her, bowging softly. She uses the bandages to close the cut on her shin, as well as another on her shoulder she hadn't noticed earlier. She has a truly impressive number of even more impressive bruises blossoming under her skin, but none of those seem to hurt very much. Everything feels…pretty numb, honestly.

Maybe this is what shock feels like. Maybe she should eat something?

No, scratch that. She's going to puke.

Yes. Okay. There's a toilet. Vomiting now. Everything spinning for a while after. Megamind's bathroom floor is unexpectedly clean; there aren't even any water spots. Who cleans all this tile? Minion? The brainbots? She can't really picture Megamind down on his knees with a scrub brush.

Wait. Yes, she can. But the image doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

Oh hey, Needles is back. Needles brought a glass of water. Thanks, Needles. And—Flash? Roxanne is pretty sure this other brainbot's name is Flash. Oh, Flash brought an energy bar.

Roxanne sits for a while, eating the energy bar in slow, careful bites and thinking about nothing in particular. When the bar is gone, she rests her forehead on her knee with a groan, wondering if she's going to throw up again. There's a soft, mechanical muttering, and a warm dome nudges against her temple, rubs in a small circle there. It must be Flash; Needles settles down into her lap and presses itself to her chest a moment later.

"Thanks," she whispers, breathing slowly and deeply through parted lips. "'s nice."

She sits like that for a while, with Flash massaging her temple and Needles wrapped in one arm against her chest. Eventually, when she feels reasonably certain she won't throw up again, she turns and pulls herself to her feet using the bathroom counter as a chin-up bar. Her balance isn't too awful despite the vertigo, so she reels over to the doorway to check on Minion again.

As far as she can tell, there's been no change. So she wheels him back out into the—huh.

Bedroom.

She hadn't noticed that on her way in, but then, she hasn't gone very far. The bathroom is close to the hallway and she was wholly focused on finding a shower, earlier. And she's pretty out of it, in general, right now.

But sure enough, it's a bedroom, and it must be Megamind's. It has to be; gloves are scattered everywhere—on the rug, on the bed frame, on the dresser, on his nightstand, draped over his mirror with one of his capes, almost totally obscuring the glass—and nobody else wears gloves like those. Most of his other clothes are put away but apparently the man never hangs up his gloves. Huh.

The brainbots have put Roxanne's bag on the bed, which is unmade, the bedclothes all tossed aside. Looks like she'll be staying here, then. Well, that's a little weird, but Roxanne is too tired to think of figuring out something else to do and even in her somewhat-loopy state, she knows better than to wonder if the Master of All Villainy has a guest room. And she is exhausted.

She doesn't want to jostle Minion more than she has to, so she parks him next to the head of the bed where she'll be able to keep an eye on him. Getting herself up into bed, now…that takes some maneuvering. She doesn't want to re-open the cut on her shin, but bending her knee isn't really something she wants to try right now. Roxanne finally perches on the edge of the mattress and lifts one leg up with her hands, then rolls until her other leg follows. That seems to work well enough.

Then she scoots up next to Minion's tank, shoves most of Megamind's pillows out of the way—he has entirely too many pillows for any one person, but at least this makes finding one with her preferred degree of squish relatively easy—and drags her bag towards her and digs around until she finds Mars, the old stuffed dog she's slept with since before she could walk.

Hopefully, Megamind will forgive all these intrusions into his privacy. This should probably all feel a lot weirder than it does, but…everything is too tired and slow and cold to feel much of anything. And it hurts too much. The brainbots only made confused little whirring noises when she asked about Advil and Ibuprofen.

She isn't planning on going to sleep, but she desperately wants to be horizontal. She lies down and drags the blankets up to her chest, and then slowly—very slowly, biting her lip the whole time to keep from whimpering—half-curls, half-stretches out on her side, facing Minion and hugging Mars. "Ow," she whispers, and sighs, and shuts her eyes. Dimly, she registers the heavy warmth of Needles and Flash settling in at her back.

The sound of Minion's bubbler fills her ears.