Title : Fathers and Sons, Chapter 11

Author : Dani Kin

Genre: Drama

Rating: PG-13

Summary : Being a parent is never easy and family relationships never run smooth. Chapter 11 - The warden finally reaches out to get some help

Beta: Sharelle. My wine friend. My wine pen pal.

Special Therapy Consultant : Jentle55, who patiently answered my questions about being a therapist (with the caveat that this all fictional, and shouldn't be taken as therapeutic advice, etc). If you have never read her fic On The Couch, where Megamind gets therapy, you really really should. It's great and you can get to it from my favorites.

Author's Note : "The Cave" and "Little Lion Man" by Mumford and Sons are the soundtrack to this chapter. They are great songs and you should listen to them.

~~~~~~~~~~~~M~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It had been so goddamn humiliating.

Beatrice had rushed into his office after hearing the window shatter, and she at least had the good sense to call 911 when she saw him fall on the floor, clutching his chest. That was when things got fuzzy.
The warden had spotty memories of being taken to the hospital. He did remember being sure he was having some kind of heart attack. He was admitted to Metro City General feeling weak but his vitals were strong. Hours of waiting and a battery of tests returned the final result.

His heart was just fine. He'd had a panic attack.

The state launched an official investigation into this particular escape, and eventually the warden was cleared of any legal charges in helping the boy escape. However it left a permanent black mark on his shining career and lingering doubts as to if he should even be in the job. Now he wasn't just the guy that couldn't keep Megamind in, but he was the guy whose gross incompetence helped him get out.

The investigative team assumed Megamind had done something to him – slipped him a mind controlling gas or threatened him in some way. The warden didn't bother to correct that assumption since he was praying to get out of this with his pension intact at least. A part of him chaffed at throwing the boy under the bus to save his career.

A bigger part of him was too angry to give a shit.

There had been noise about replacing him, sending him out to pasture at some white-collar resort prison upstate. But fact was, no one else wanted this job. Well, no one sane. The few people who seemed interested were all showboat types with personnel files thicker than the Bible looking to make a name for themselves off Megamind. And it was hard to hold the warden too responsible given the fact that he had been carried away on an ambulance in the aftermath.

In the end the state had kindly agreed to retain him, but they made it clear he was on one hell of a tight leash.

And the first time he walked back into his office? He had to steel himself to stand the sight of that window, and the thick metal bars that covered the brand new pane of glass. Looking at it was enough to make him seriously consider early retirement.

And the stress didn't help his insomnia.

He lay awake most nights in his tiny apartment, wanting nothing more than to forget, but he couldn't stop obsessing over the events of that day. Megamind had said all the right things - exactly what the warden wanted to hear. He kicked himself for not knowing it was a con job all along.

Still, he forced himself to relive it over and over again as days turned into weeks and into months, as though rehashing it in his mind would change the way it had all played out. As though he would tweak a moment in his memories and that would magically make it all have been real. But it never worked.

The hug became the hardest of it to bear. More than the lies and the words. He couldn't stop replaying the feeling of wrapping his baby boy in his arms and actually believing that it could have been okay. He hadn't held him in so long, and that had been real. The words had been a crock, but the believing had been real. He shuddered and forced himself to stare at the ceiling.

He would not cry. No, he would not. Bad enough to be awake until four or five when he had to get up at seven. He refused to add tears to the mix.

Instead he would stare at the ceiling, trying to get lost in the patterns in the cracks. He would lay there until the exhaustion finally claimed him.

~~~~~~~~~~~~M~~~~~~~~~~~~

"So why don't you fill me in on what happened this week?" Lynne asked, in a tone that was both compassionate and professional.

"Well, uh, I didn't spend time with him at all," the warden said, looking past her shoulder to the framed diplomas on her wall. A bit of a lie, but he continued. "He was only in for three days it turned out. I told the guards to tell him I was away on business. He asked for me every day. I think he knew they were lying."

Oh, the warden knew that Megamind knew. The warden knew that Megamind knew because he had botched the entire thing himself.

The boy kept weird hours and it wasn't unusual for him to be awake deep into the night or sleep most of the day. And despite all that had happened, the warden still hated to go home when Megamind was within the facility. Just in case, he told himself. Hell, he could lie awake there just as well as he could at home.

But he had gotten a new couch in his office and he hated it. He could feel every spring in that old brown leather monstrosity but at least it was familiar. This new modular gray thing was simply not comfortable at all.

So at 4:39am, on the boy's second night, the warden had finally padded down to the familiar dome.

Megamind happened to be sleeping in the chair and the warden had stood at the porthole watching him. Just watching. He looked so normal when he was sleeping. No affected mannerisms, no egotistical rants, no emotional manipulations, or wacky escape plans. Nothing the warden had to police or distrust. Watching him sleep drained his anger. Megamind looked like he had as a little boy – simple and so full of potential.

Standing there pulled at his heartstrings on this evening more than usual, and made his eyes overfull and swimming. But he was very aware of the night guard at the monitoring station watching him, as well as Megamind's tendency to awaken with little or no warning. So he turned back towards his office before he could embarrass himself. As he did, his shoe had squeaked against the floor.

"Warden? Is that you?" the boy had called out. The warden ducked quickly around the side of the dome and hit the button on the control panel that closed the window. Then he trudged back to his office where he had collapsed into a heap for an hour or two before had to be up and ready for a 8am meeting.

But the warden didn't tell his therapist any of this.

He just stared slightly over her shoulder at the numerous degrees and credentials lining her walls. Better to let her think he had stayed away than for her to know how weak he had been.

"And how did not spending time with him at all work out for you?" Lynne asked, in the calm evenhanded tone in which she asked most of her questions. He was almost tempted to tell her the truth but still he held back and just shrugged instead.

"Well, you said I should create boundaries," he replied testily.

"I'm hearing from your tone that it was difficult for you." It was a statement but she made it sound like a question he needed to answer.

He sighed and rubbed his forehead with one hand. "I don't know. Yes. But I don't know if that matters."

Lynne didn't say anything and he felt like she was waiting for him to elaborate. So he continued.

"It was hard and it didn't feel right. But nothing about this ever seems right so... I don't know." He shrugged. She nodded.

"I saw in the paper that he was out again," she prompted. "How are you feeling about that?"

"It's a relief... but then... He's out, he's in…. I don't know," he trailed off. Oh he knew. He knew that he felt enormously guilty for not even trying this time. But even after two months of seeing this woman once a week, he still felt like he had to keep some things guarded. Keep them safe.

It wasn't that he made a habit of lying to Lynne, just sometimes it just took him a while to tell the whole truth.

At the first appointment, he had just mumbled out something about not sleeping well. The reality was he'd been to three different doctors who had tried him on a half dozen prescriptions of sleeping pills, none of which seemed to work. Each had suggested that his problems were mental, not physical.

He hadn't even told his therapist about Megamind until his third visit. He had dropped vague hints about problems with his kid just to see how she would react. When he finally did spill the beans about the boy her only response was a gentle, "Sounds like he might be tough to deal with."

The warden had been relieved for a moment and then even more on edge. If she wasn't going to be judgmental, did that mean he would have to talk about it? He had no idea how to do that. Perhaps that was something he had in common with the boy after all. After a lifetime of keeping things in it was not easy to let them out.

Hence the half-truths. He was trying, but it was just awkward and he was used to covering awkwardness with a tough, no-nonsense gruffness that usually put people off.

"It seems like you're always on edge because you never know when he'll be in or out." Lynne's statement pulled him back into the present moment and the warden snorted.

"Well, it's not like I have any control over his comings and goings."

The warden tried to appear nonchalant, crossing his legs and trying to calm his fidgeting fingers. God, he never knew what to do with his hands during these sessions.

"It must be hard to not have any control over him," she parroted his own words back at him.

"My God, yes! It's so frustrating. Sometimes I just want to shake him and make him behave. I know he can. He's smart enough to do anything he sets his mind to."

"That must be very frustrating."

"It is!" He threw his hands up.

And hard and difficult and painful, the warden thought. But it was easier to talk about being irritated with the boy than being heartbroken by him. The warden had told Lynne about Megamind manipulating him with promises of leaving villainy behind, including the painful details – how he had held him and how much it had hurt when the boy had sardonically called him daddy. He might hold some things back, but he was somewhat proud of himself with being square with her on that count.

"I sometimes wonder…" the warden took a breath before going on. "I wonder if it would have been different if I would have found another family for him. A real one. A backyard and a dog you know? If he wouldn't have ended up like this if I would have just acted like a real parent from the beginning and done what was best for him…. Given him to someone who would have been…. better." Even saying it out loud make him feel a little sick.

"Let me see if I'm following you. I hear you saying that you don't see yourself as a real parent?" Lynne ventured.

"Hey, I was a real parent," he countered, a bit defensively. "I really did change his diapers and take of him when he was sick and try to do what was in his best interest. He was just a defenseless kid. Sometimes I just wish that people knew that, you know? Everyone looks at him and they see a monster, a supervillian. But he was a kid who loved his binkie and playing in the snow or drawing for hours and…..."

He let out a shaky exhale before he continued.

"And he was mine. He wasn't a monster. He was just a kid. My kid. And that was real."

Wow, that had gotten unexpectedly intense. He took a moment. Lynne, to her credit, seemed to know that he needed time to compose himself and didn't push him any further. Once he had his bearings he tried desperately to regain control of himself in this conversation.

"But you know, it's better that people don't know. I already blame myself enough, I don't need other people to help," the warden sneered.

"Do you think other people would blame you?"

He rolled his eyes dismissively. "Of course they would. He's a goddamn mess and I'm sure they'd say it was because I didn't tell him that I loved him enough or something".

"Do you think you told him that you loved him enough?" she asked.

He gave her a long look. "Talk is cheap, Lynne. You and I can both appreciate it. What I said or didn't say… I did the best I could for him. All the time. A man can say all sorts of things, but you judge him based on his actions. Or at least that's how it was done in my day."

"Was that how your parents were with you?" Her abrupt change of the subject actually pushed through his defenses and he pursed his lips for a moment before answering.

"My dad died when I was four, a dockworkers accident. I barely remember him. My mother remarried when I was in high school, but then she died right after I proposed to Madge. Ovarian cancer. And um, she told me she loved me a lot. I… um…. yeah," he stammered, not really sure what else to say about her.

"Are you still in contact with your step-father?" Lynne inquired.

"Sometimes I get a Christmas card," the warden shrugged again. "He moved out to Phoenix right before Blue came. I never even told him that I adopted a kid, much less an alien one. I didn't know what I would say so I just…. didn't. There's not really a roadmap for that kinda thing."

"Sounds like you didn't have a lot of good roadmaps for being a single parent to an alien child."

The warden shrugged. "It wasn't a problem. I mean, sometimes it would be confusing, but isn't that normal? Don't all parents feel overwhelmed and confused at times?"

"Can you give me an example of something that was overwhelming and confusing?"

He lolled his head back against the back of the chair. "Well, there was always the daddy thing." Lynne nodded at him and he continued.

"He would only call me daddy when he was really upset about something. Maybe it was a comfort thing? I think he was a little confused by the whole daddy concept, honestly. And he stopped doing it after the catastrophe at the school, so it never seemed... I don't know..." The warden shrugged.

"It never seemed what?" Lynne pressed.

"Important to fix. It..." Goddamn it, she was staring at him so intensely. "It was kinda nice actually. When he would call me daddy. At least until this last time. Until he spat it back in my face."

"I remember, that was difficult for you."

He shrugged and looked at the floor unsure how to respond to that, then continued as though she hadn't said anything. "I tried to make it really clear that I wasn't trying to replace his real father, you know? But it was nice. To be appreciated. When he would call me that even though he didn't really understand it."

"I'm hearing that you don't see yourself as his father?"

He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. "In the beginning, no, I was trying not to get… attached. I didn't know if someone was going to, I don't know, confiscate him as part of a government experiment. Or send a spaceship from the sky to take him home or something. It wasn't until he got old enough to really talk and explain the situation with the black hole... That was when I stopped worrying that someone was going to come."

"And take him from you?" she asked.

"Yeah. And then the more I got used to having him here….. Something changed." He shook his head and allowed himself the small indulgence of remembering one of Blue's wide-eyed little baby smiles or the way his head would droop to the warden's shoulder at naptime. Then he thought better of it, and stopped before he hurt himself too much.

"You know, no one would believe me if I told them now, but he was such an easy baby. He was so sweet and affectionate. I guess... I just thought that it would last forever." The warden looked down again. "That even when things were tough, that we had a good foundation. I never thought..." He stopped and changed gears to explain.

"We used to play this game when he was little. Superheroes and supervillians. I never thought he was taking it seriously. He usually wanted to be the hero anyway."

She was doing it again. Looking at him now, intensely. Like she was looking at him to finish that thought.

"Even when he was a teenager and he was a mouthy little shit... I was sure he would be fine somehow. I just knew it. He just needed time to figure himself out. I knew it. He's so smart, but he's just so stubborn once he digs his heels in. And I didn't understand why he was being so goddamn stupid." He took a breath and then let out a bitter little laugh. "I guess I was the stupid one."

"I don't think it's stupid to want what is best for your child. That's part of being a parent," she replied sympathetically to him. He fidgeted in the chair for a moment.

"This isn't…. the life I wanted for him. He's so smart. People just don't know. He could do anything. The things he builds, these ridiculous robots and harebrained plots, that's just the tip of the iceberg." He looked Lynne right in the eye for the next part.

"People look at him and see this evil alien threat but they just don't know. I kept trying to convince him that he could have a normal life, but he's had to put up with people taking one look at him and assuming the worst at every turn. Maybe if people on this planet had been a little nicer he might be trying to help this city instead of trying to take it over."

"Could you tell me a little more about times that people could have been nicer to him?" And she raised her pen to take notes.

"Well, it could have started with Wayne Scott not beating the crap out of him with dodgeballs," the warden snarked bitterly.

"I tried other schools," he continued, "but most of them wouldn't even consider it once they found out he'd been expelled from 'Lil Gifted Kids, like the idea of giving an eight-year old a second chance was absolutely crazy to ask for. So I got him tutors, you know? Mostly university kids. And you would think young, smart, open-minded right? Nope. We had one guy come out - a fucking post-doc in physics, mind you - and Blue was so excited. Well, the guy took one look at him and just turned around and walked out without saying a word. Blue was 12. The kid swore up and down to me it was fine, but one of the night guards told me he cried himself to sleep. Who the hell does that to a child? And he was a good kid - so damn enthusiastic about science and learning. He would have been the best student that asshole ever had."

"We eventually found a couple tutors that were good fits, but he never warmed up to them, or to anyone after that. He never even gave them a chance to get to know him, the real him. Not the way I did."

"It seems to me like you know Megamind in a way that no one else does." Her sympathetic tone inadvertently made him feel uncomfortable.

"Yeah well, I used to think so. I thought I did. Believing….. Stupid. Even with him rampaging through the streets on a spider robot, I still trusted him. Just so goddamn stupid." He looked back up at the diplomas, staring intently as he spoke.

"I thought even if I wasn't perfect or if the world was hard on him, that my best was good enough. And it wasn't. Clearly." He crossed his arms defensively across his stomach and let out an angry exhale. Lynne seemed to study his response carefully before proceeding.

"James, you let him into your life and you loved him. You never judged him by the color of his skin and that's something to be proud of. That's more than most people ever did for him. These issues are complex and difficult, but continuing to punish yourself can't be a part of your program."

He scoffed and turned his head to stare briefly towards the door. "So what do you think should be a part of my program? What the hell is the program for this?" He knew he was being rude and that this woman didn't deserve his ire.

But he had been in free fall for so long. Maybe someone could tell him what to do, what he should be doing. Maybe someone else could fix it.

"I think we need to start with this," Lynne said gently. "You're already taking good first steps by coming in and talking about it."

"And you think that's gonna solve all my problems?" he challenged her bitterly.

"If you want it to. Therapy is about you. It's about how much you want to get out of it, and how much you're willing to put in," her voice wasn't cold, but it was clear and the warden appreciated that she was at least willing to shoot straight with him. He leaned forward as he listened.

"The goal here is not for you to find a way to change him. It's for you to make changes in your life if you want to. I can already tell that you're a very private man who doesn't open up easily. I am here to offer a listening ear and an objective opinion. Together maybe we can look at some of the things that are troubling you and reach a solution. But you have to be the one ready to do the work and deal with the consequences. This is your life. Not mine."

His instinct was to roll his eyes and say something shirty about that last statement, but he refrained. He wasn't entirely sold, but she wasn't wrong. Lashing out at her for trying to help wasn't any better than what the boy did to him. And it might be nice to have someone who could just listen.

"I don't really have anyone like that," he said lamely. "Mostly I just work."

"You work seems very important to you."

He licked his lips and nodded. "Important. But it's hard…." He stopped then restarted that sentence. "I'm the top administrator, so it's not like I can just chat about my problems with people there."

"That sounds very isolating," she said with a sympathetic nod.

He just sat quietly and took that statement in. He wasn't a fool. He knew he worked too hard. He had known that before the boy even came along, before Madge even left. He ventured a bit of a confession.

"I don't really have anything in my life besides work. And him. Even when he's being awful and I can't trust a word he says."

"Would you be interested in trying to connect with other parents who are having similar troubles?" Lynne asked.

Now that did make him roll his eyes. "With all due respect, ma'am, my child is so dangerous that they have to put him in a specially designed cell like he's some kind of goddamn zoo animal. I don't think there is anyone else on this planet with 'similar troubles'," the warden scoffed.

"Your situation is unique, but you're not the only parent struggling with their adult child. There is a group; it meets every third Wednesday at the Southwest Community Center on Broadview." She scrawled some information on the back of one of her business cards and handed it to him. "It'll be up to you if you want to talk, but you can just sit and listen if you want."

~~~~~~~~~~M~~~~~~~~~~

The warden didn't even know why he went. Just to torture himself, he supposed. All these people. Getting up and talking about how their kid was a crack addict or something. How their son had lied to them and couldn't hold a job or how their daughter refused to leave the man that beat her. He didn't know what he was doing there.

He'd gone to the meetings for three weeks in a row and never said anything besides his name. What would he say? "Hi my name is James and my kid is a megalomaniacal supervillian with a distinctly blue complexion that tries to kill Metro Man on a regular basis and no matter how much he spits in my face I can't stop thinking of him as my little boy?" Yeah, no, no way. Better to just sit silently.

So he sat and listened to all these other parents and their sob stories. Grievance stories, the facilitator called them. The same guy ran a group for victims of super-powered crime. But the warden wasn't quite that masochistic.

Going to group didn't make him feel any better. It didn't make him feel any worse. It just made him feel less lonely. It made him wonder how long it had been since he regularly spent time with anyone besides his co-workers or the boy.

And it made him realize how much of his life he had put on hold. He listened to a dark-haired woman talk about her daughter and furrowed his brow. If he continued to do what he had always done, he would keep getting what he always got.

He had already removed the photo of him and Blue on the first day of school from his desk, at Lynne's suggestion. She thought it would be better to put up a photo of a happy time so he wouldn't beat himself up every time he looked at it. As a result he had spent a long Saturday afternoon sorting and organizing the assortment of snapshots he had dumped into the file box along with the boy's childhood toys until he found the perfect one.

It was a simple candid shot and the warden was pretty sure Leroy had taken it. In the photo the warden was smiling and cradling a small blue infant that was happily trying to chew on his own hand. However he didn't put the frame back out on the desk. Instead he put it in one of the drawers, on top of some assorted office supplies. Then it was there in case he needed it.

And Lynne was right. It was better. It wasn't going to fix everything, but it was something he could do besides rerunning his failures in his mind.

The support group wrapped up without him saying a word, and he silently ducked out of the room before any of the other parents could corner him into anxiety-inducing small talk. He walked from the community center to his car, parked a few blocks away on a side street. His hands slid into the pockets of his old wool coat against the unexpected chill in the air.

It'll be winter soon, the warden thought as cars whizzed past on the darkened street. Winter always meant the boy's birthday.

He sighed as he put one foot in front of the other. He needed to start building a life for himself that didn't revolve around Megamind. The very idea bordered on impossible, since giving up worrying about him would feel like abandoning him completely. The warden had no idea how to go about doing it, but he knew it needed to be done.