He takes her home the next morning. He drops her off at her building, watches to make sure she gets inside okay, and then he peels out and races back to Evil Lair, hoping Minion will be awake when he arrives.

He isn't. But that's…that's okay. Roxanne said it didn't look like the glass shard she removed hit any of his organs, and Minion's color is still good, so. That's probably okay.

Megamind's brainbots have already cleared the battle deck of debris and are well underway with repairs, so Megamind just curls himself into his chair and loads up the perimeter and arial bot videos from the day before. Usually he only does this when he wants to analyze what went wrong in his previous plot, or Metro Man's behavior, but in this case…well, he already knows what went wrong and he's still too blisteringly angry at Metro Man to care about his behavior. Megamind wants to see what happened yesterday because he's wildly curious and still halfway out of his mind with worry.

He starts just before the explosion. Metro Man's lasers sliced into the generator he was using, which Megamind absolutely had not anticipated the hero would be stupid enough to attempt. He watches himself realize what's happening and shout a warning, dive for Roxanne, but he's too far away—

Minion isn't. He jumps, too: fires the hydraulics in his legs and leaps clear over Roxanne, flings himself forward into the space between her and the generator just as the thing goes off. Megamind has to watch this again, slowed down, because it happens so quickly—Minion turns when Megamind yells, then leaps, spins in midair like a gymnast and lands on all fours with his back to the generator so his exosuit takes the brunt of the explosion. But there's not enough time for him to stabilize. The blast knocks him forward onto the floor, shatters his dome and sends him tumbling forward through the shards.

Roxanne doesn't take the hit directly, but she still goes flying. The chair auto-dehydrates the way it's supposed to and she rolls away across the floor with her arms still tied behind her. Megamind's gut twists as he watches, but she starts moving almost immediately. He sees her fingers move, her shoes twitch as she wiggles her toes. Hears her voice, rough with smoke and dazed confusion, repeating I'm fine I'm fine I'm fine. Hears his own panicked yell at seeing Minion on the floor, as Metro Man hauls him into the sky.

He watches Roxanne roll over and slowly sit up, hunched over, blinking hard and coughing. Watches her turn towards Minion's collapsed exosuit, blink at it, then blink again and try to crawl up onto her unsteady feet, staring around at the floor until she sees him. She trips, falls, cuts her leg open and takes it in stride—grabs the glass and uses the bloody shard to get her hands free so she can crawl to Minion and crouch over him with her hands out like she wants to pick him up but doesn't dare.

Megamind watches, trembling, one hand pressed hard to his mouth.

Her face lights up when Minion twitches, then falls just as quickly. She looks from Minion to the brainbots setting up their field station, back to Minion, back to the bots.

He can't. He can't watch this. No.

But. He has to. The brainbots were watching; he'll be able to see if Minion—if the glass—

He fast-forwards until he spots the brainbot vantage he needs, staring down over Roxanne's hands as she tugs the glass shard away and slows Minion's bleeding. Megamind has to watch this a couple times to be sure, but—

Okay. Yes. Okay. It doesn't look like the glass cut anything internal that won't be able to heal on its own. They'll have to keep an eye on Minion's blood for a while, and make sure his kidney equivalents are functioning properly, but he should be okay.

Thank everything.

Megamind speeds up the videos again, skipping through watching his kidnapping victim perform halting body cavity repair on his best and only friend, then slows the recordings to normal speed when he sees Minion go into the recovery tank and Roxanne sink to the ground beside him.

And then Metro Man shows up, and Megamind's understanding of Roxanne is blown clear out of the water because she—holy shit, she whips around shrieking at him, her mouth still covered by the surgical mask, her hands still in blood-sticky surgical gloves. She stays low, doesn't rise yet, just spins on her torn knees and grips the floor with her fingers like claws and screams like Megamind has never heard before—what he can see of her face is twisted with terrified fury—she rips her mask off, screams again. Metro Man is making useless stupid surprised noises but Megamind couldn't care less what he's saying because Roxanne is screaming at Metro Man. Not like she's scared, but—Megamind knows that scream; he knows it because it was the same noise he wanted to make when he saw the hero open fire on the generator.

And then she's yelling at him, taking him to task for dragging Megamind away when he did, for his carelessness, demanding he bring Megamind back. She's refusing to leave, refusing to let the hero come anywhere near her, and—

Oh, and she's turning to keep herself between Metro Man and Minion as the hero flits from side to side the way he tends to when he's uncertain; Megamind doubts Roxanne is doing this consciously, but he notices anyway. And he notices—she had said she was fine because, apparently, she was trying to cover for him? For Megamind? So that Metro Man wouldn't hurt him too badly? She had just been thrown thirty feet, bruised, concussed, and her first thought was—

And then she says Metro Man's weakness, just spits it out into the air for the brainbots to pick up, and Megamind's whole brain sort of—flatlines—for a moment. If he had had hair, his eyebrows would have disappeared under it.

He sits back in his chair. There's blood on Roxanne's face now, blood on her arms where she's trying to hold herself up. It's Minion's blood, but Megamind's thoughts are spinning, spinning, far away.

He settles on three main points, three revelations.

One: Roxanne is probably the only reason Minion is alive. In the same vein, Minion is definitely the only reason Roxanne is alive.

Two: He can trust Roxanne with Minion's life. Potentially also with his own life—that remains to be seen—but at least he can trust her with Minion's life, and that's a huge relief.

Three: He now knows Metro Man's weakness.

0-0-0-0

He texts Metro Man. Meet at the usual place. 2:00.

Ten minutes later, his phone pings. OK.

0-0-0-0

The 'usual place' is a hole-in-the-wall family-run Italian restaurant on Megamind's side of the tracks. They have the best cappuccino in the city, and they don't mind looking the other way when Megamind stops in.

He comes in plainclothes, black jeans and untucked shirt buttoned all the way up to his throat. No uniform today; he doesn't want to give anyone the wrong idea, but his usual gun is on his hip and he has a smaller blaster in the waistband of his jeans, under his shirt. The woman behind the counter catches his eye when he walks in five minutes early, raises her eyebrows in a question. He holds up two gloved fingers, and she nods and turns away.

Megamind heads for the back and slides into the booth in the corner where the shadows gather, his back to the wall so he can see when Metro Man arrives.

The hero is right on time, and Megamind already has both hands wrapped around his cappuccino. Metro Man's latte is in a steaming to-go cup on the other side of the table.

Megamind doesn't look up as he lands and slides into the other side of the booth. He just sits, and breathes.

"How's Minion?" Metro Man asks, after a long minute ticks slowly past.

"Alive. For now. No thanks to you." His voice sounds rough, scratchy. He still doesn't look up.

Metro Man swallows. "Good," he says, "good, that's…I'm glad to hear it. If I'd known he was hurt, I wouldn't have—"

"Yes you would," Megamind snarls, both hands curling into fists on either side of his coffee. "You would have taken me to jail all the same. She told you." He wraps his nails into his palms, squeezes so hard his knuckles creak. "I didn't expect you to believe me, but Roxanne told you he was hurt. And she was hurt! Badly! She needed a doctor."

Metro Man spreads his hands in a show of helplessness. "She wouldn't go!"

"She would have!" Megamind snaps. "She would have, if you came and got me from prison. She told you as much. She needed a doctor, and she told youwhat you needed to do before she would think about leaving, and—you left her there! You wouldn't do it! It would have been easy for you! But instead of just—just turning around and coming to fetch me—you could have done it in super-speed! no one would have known—instead of doing that, you abandoned a badly-wounded, heavily-concussed human who you knew needed to go to a hospital. Left her completely unsupervised in my Lair."

"I—"

"Furthermore," Megamind says, his hoarse voice rising, "you let her get hurt. You have semi-transdimensional super-speed. You could have moved her out of the way! You could have moved Minion out of the way! You could have and you didn't!" He reels himself in with an effort, shakes his head. "You're not a hero. You're just an asshole in a fancy cape."

"Look, I'm sorry," Metro Man says flatly. "That explosion caught me by surprise too. I wasn't expecting the thing to go off like that! How was I supposed to know?"

Megamind snatches up his phone, shows him the slowed-down video he had watched earlier: Minion, flinging himself deeper into the blast radius. "He had enough time," he snaps. "Barely. And I have told you before—you don't cut through my power supplies, you cut around them. You know better."

"I didn't realize that was the power supply!"

"Because you came in before I finished explaining what everything was!" Megamind slaps his palm flat on the table, making the napkin-wrapped silverware jump. "You know not to do that! We have a routine! We stick to the routine! No one gets hurt!" His scratchy voice is beginning to shake. "You came in early. You compromised the power supply. You weren't prepared for surprises. You didn't listen to her. You didn't listen to me!" There are tears in his eyes now. "Minion hasn't woken up! He might never wake up! He hit the floor hard and he bounced three times and I wasn't able to get to him for four hours to do damage control even though Roxanne told you to come get me!"

"None of which would have happened if youweren't a villain in the first place!" Metro Man fires back.

"I became a villain to protect myself, as you well know," Megamind hisses. At this point his voice is a harsh stage whisper. "I—" He cuts off and snatches up a napkin to cough into, his thin back heaving.

Metro Man frowns. "What happened to your neck?" The lower half of the smaller alien's throat is a sunset of rosey purples and dark-dark blues, with two ugly-looking scabs in the center of the bruises, just below his larynx.

Megamind touches it with the tips of his gloved fingers, his mouth lifting into a sneer. "This?" he says, voice croaking like a ninety-year-old smoker's. "The blast knocked my mantle's harness askew. My safety slipped when you grabbed me by the collar. Pulled loose about seven seconds into our flight. Don't you remember?"

Metro Man blinks.

(He had heard Megamind choke, heard his scream cut off, heard him gagging as he twisted and clawed at the tasseled glove, scrabbling for purchase, but—he had honestly thought the smaller alien was faking. Metro Man always carries him by his collar. It's standard. Safe. Or so he had thought.)

"This is from the top of my insignia," Megamind says. His breath is rattling in his throat. "Would have been nice if you didn't take those oh-so-heroic detours on the way to the prison.

"So," he continues, before Metro Man can process any of how badly he messed up, "The...seasonal allergy Roxanne mentioned. Oh, relax, I haven't poisoned your coffee. I'm angry, not homicidal."

Metro Man nods slowly. "What are you going to do?"

Megamind glares at him for a moment, then sighs and drops his shoulders a little. "For now…I'm calling a truce," he says, sounding reluctant. "Minion needs time. To recover. I can't be in and out of prison right now."

"Okay." Metro Man nods. "Sure, we can do that. Same deal as last time: you stay in plain clothes, I stay out of your business. You show your face in public in the cape and the spikes, we're gonna have a problem."

Megamind nods.

"And, uh," Metro Man says. "I'm—I'm sorry. About Minion. I messed up—"

"You're fucking right you messed up."

"—and I'm sorry. I've been…out of it, lately." He heaves a sigh. "No excuse, I know. I was. Careless." He looks at Megamind for a moment, sitting across the booth from him with his long hands limp on the table, shoulders rounded, cut badly across the front of his throat, one eye bruised indigo-black and swollen almost shut. "Hey," he says. "Don't you ever get tired? Of this?"

Megamind shakes his head, but it's exhaustion, not negation. "I have been tired of this since I was ten years old," he says.

There's another long pause, and then Metro Man figures in for a penny, in for a pound, and asks, "Protect yourself from what?"

"That's none of your concern."

"If I could protect you from it, would you stop?"

Megamind blinks at him for a moment, then sighs and shakes his head again, holds up a long hand. "While I admit to some level of interest in this conversation," he says, "it needs to wait until I stop wanting to tear you open and put your liver on a spit. Yes?"

Metro Man nods. "Sure. Sounds good. Just…let me know when? Okay? It's just, I'm…I've got a couple bones to pick, okay?" He fidgets. "Could really use some input on a…a problem. I've got."

"And this is somehow my problem because…?"

"Because I don't know how to fix it," Metro Man says, "and you're literally the smartest guy on the planet. I've talked to a couple smarties on the heroic side of things, but…no dice. So. So I, uh."

"Say it," Megamind says, a grim little smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. "Say it, or the answer is no and fuck off."

"So I need your help," Metro Man finally says with an enormous sigh.

Megamind snorts, but nods. "Fine. Okay. But not now, and do not thank me right now," he adds, when Metro Man opens his mouth. "Do not say anything. Wait." He drains the last of his cappuccino, then stands. "What's going to happen now is, I am going to walk out that door. And I am going back to Evil Lair. And you are going to pray Minion wakes up, because if he isn't conscious within the week, I will come for your head and SHUT UP DO NOT SPEAK." He stabs at Metro Man with two very long fingers like a gun. The hero flinches, closes his mouth again. "Until he wakes up, I do not want to hear from you," Megamind hisses, eyes flashing. "I do not want to hear you; I do not want to see you; I want you to stay the fuck away and keep the pigs off my ass and that is all. Capische? Nod or shake your head."

Metro Man nods. Sips his coffee. Is relieved to see a little bit of the fight go out of his villainous counterpart at the gesture.

"Good," Megamind mutters, and throws a few bills down on the table. "That's for the coffee. And—fucking eat something. If you go heroing on an empty stomach again, I will kick your ass from harbor to interstate, truce or no truce."

Metro Man snorts, nods. He's beyond wondering how Megamind can tell he hasn't eaten yet today, so he just flips his open hand from his chin out and away in a silent thank you.

"Shut up," Megamind snaps, "fuck off," but he's the one who leaves, limping slightly as he goes.

Metro Man puts his head down on the table after the door swings closed, and he stays there for a while, breathing, until a plate clinks on the table by his ear and he sits up to discover that the little guy ordered him a high-protein omelette before he left.