She meets his brainbots the fourteenth time they face each other.
Based on the bots' reaction to her, Roxanne is fairly certain that they're cyborgs, as opposed to pure robots. She can't actually make animals do what she wants with her powers, but they always seem to like her an inordinate amount.
Megamind tells the brainbots to attack and instead they just surround her, making excitable mechanical 'bowg' sounds and trying to rub their glass braincases beneath her hands.
They're—
"Yes, yes; you're all very pretty," Roxanne tells them desperately. Good lord, she can't shoot them when they're trying to get her to pet them; that would just be—"No, no; I don't want to play fetch!—I—Roxanne is busy right now, babies!"
Megamind makes a choking noise that she's pretty sure is laughter, and then raises his gun to dehydrate her. Unfortunately for him, the brainbots keep getting in the way.
Roxanne tries to escape, but the brainbots keep hovering around her, impeding her progress. Megamind follows, unable to get a clear shot.
The next hour and a half is spent in the slowest, most ridiculous low-speed chase imaginable.
Megamind tends to use the brainbots sparingly in their battles after that, and he never does quite get them to stop liking her.
Having Megamind for a nemesis is infinitely more difficult than having Metro Man for a nemesis. It requires far, far more effort, and planning, and ingenuity. The first time she wins against him, she is absolutely giddy with triumph and relief.
He comes to the library later that night. Doesn't bring a book, doesn't take a book, doesn't read. He just sits beneath the lighthouse poster, staring at it dully. Roxanne, watching him, feels all of her joy at winning fade.
I'm sorry, she imagines saying, imagines sitting beside him, imagines putting her arms around him, I'm sorry; I'm so sorry. I don't want to be doing this. I'm so sorry.
The twenty-first time the Temptress wins against Megamind, she's declared a Superpowered Threat to Society: Level One, and for the first time since the lab, Roxanne feels like she can breathe.
Relief makes her careless; the next time she faces Megamind, she loses badly, her powers relaxing at the wrong moment, one of the guards she's got in thrall slipping from her control.
Being shot is extremely painful, she decides, as she passes out in Megamind's arms.
When she wakes up, she's in the prison infirmary.
And there's a collar around her neck.
Roxanne screams. She screams for hours, power flowing out, the collar's electricity crackling through her in agony, making her spine arch, making her scream in pain as well as rage and terror, and of course, of course, even if they can't have her; of course she's never really safe not safe never safe.
Her stitches tear, of course, a different kind of agony, and then the pain rises up in a wave of blackness and she loses consciousness.
When she wakes up and Megamind is in the prison infirmary, standing beside her bed, she assumes she's imagining him. There's no reason for him to be there.
She's imagined people before, of course, seen people who weren't really there. Really seen them, not like her pretense of someone
(him)
in the attic with her.
In the lab, when she was being punished with meal restriction and the bright merciless lights that prevented sleep—that was when she really saw. When things were at their worst.
Things seem to be pretty close to at their worst right now.
Megamind's lips are moving as he speaks to someone on the other side of her bed, but she can't really hear what he's saying, which only deepens her conviction that he's not really real.
Maybe she's dying, Roxanne thinks, with a dull kind of hope. It's nice that he's here, while she's dying.
"—what was the power source?" Roxanne mumbles idly.
She's not expecting him to look at her, but he does, his green eyes wide. He looks worried.
"What?"
She hears him that time, which is interesting.
"—power source," she says, voice just a thread. It hurts to talk. "—was it?"
"She's delirious," a voice on the other side of Roxanne says.
She doesn't look in that voice's direction. She's not interested in it.
"Power source," she says, since her hallucination of Megamind still looks confused, "on—the gun. Blueprints—"
She gestures limply, the chain of the handcuff holding her to the bed clinking.
"—doesn't say the power source."
"The—blueprints?" Megamind's eyes widen.
Roxanne feels very tired. Her eyelids keep slipping closed without her permission.
"—never could get the dehydration to work," she whispers, and this time when her eyes close, she cannot make them open again, and she drifts into the darkness.
The next time she wakes up, she's still in the infirmary, but she's slightly more lucid. Apparently she's not going to die.
Not dying, Roxanne thinks, is actually more painful than just being shot.
Someone on the other side of the room is talking in a low, furious voice. With a monumental effort, Roxanne turns her head to look at them.
Megamind is speaking to the prison doctor and the prison warden. The effort of turning her head was too much; she finds herself drifting towards unconsciousness again every time she blinks, every time she closes her eyes.
"—off of her—" Megamind's voice.
"—government agents—" another voice says.
"—not consulted—" says a third voice.
"—ever put it on her again, I will break her out of here myself—" Megamind's voice says, quite distinctly, as her eyes slip closed.
When she wakes up again, there's no one beside her bed except the prison doctor.
But she isn't wearing the collar.
She wanders vaguely in and out of consciousness; at one point, she thinks Megamind is sitting beside her bed, curled up in a plastic chair. The image of him is very vivid; he's even reading a romance novel.
Roxanne must make a sound, because he looks up at her, and uncurls his legs, puts down his book on the bedside table.
"Are you thirsty?" he asks, voice soft. He picks up a styrofoam cup, holds the straw out to her.
Roxanne drinks, relief flooding her body at the sensation of water on her tongue, on her parched throat.
As far as hallucinations go, this one is A-fucking-plus.
Megamind puts the cup back down. He reaches for a black cord he's wearing around his neck and pulls a kind of glowing blue pendant from beneath his sweatshirt, holds it up to show her.
"This is the power source," he says. "You wouldn't be able to figure it out from just the blueprints. It's from my planet; I'm still trying to figure out how to replicate it myself."
The blue pendant glows in a beautiful, casting a soft illumination on Megamind's face.
"I wish I could show you the research," Megamind says, a note of wistfulness in his voice. "Maybe you'd be able to figure out how to replicate it."
Megamind smiles, soft and sweet, far softer than anyone should ever smile at Roxanne.
"Do you want to hold it for a while, Roxanne?" he asks.
(Definitely, definitely not really here. Megamind doesn't use her name like that.)
He pulls the cord over his head and holds the pendant out to her. Roxanne manages to turn her hand over and he puts the pendant in it, closes her fingers over it.
It's cool to the touch, and it glows from between her fingers.
I wish you were real, Roxanne wants to say. I wish you were really here. I wish I was someone else.
"Do you want me to read to you?" Megamind asks.
Roxanne can't answer, lets her eyes slip shut. She hears him pick up the book and open it.
His voice washes over her as he begins to read; she's past being able to understand any of the words, but the sound of his voice is soothing anyway.
...to be continued.