Title : Fathers and Sons, Chapter 13

Author : Dani Kin

Genre: Drama

Rating: PG-13

Summary : Being a parent is never easy and family relationships never run smooth. Megamind comes home to the prison, quiet and dejected. And the warden has no idea what the hell to do.

Beta : It's a bird! It's a plane! It's sharelle!

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

He made the guard repeat it to him twice. And then a third time for good measure.

Megamind had just walked right off a bus and in through the front gates of prison. He was unarmed, but refused to talk to anyone except to say he needed to see the warden.

This wasn't just bad - this was an event completely without precedent.

The warden tried to take a breath. He put on his strongest mask of professionalism and refused to let himself feel the usual rush of relief that his boy was safe. Not even with everything going on out there, not this time. Instead he walked down to the gated entrance at a deliberate pace, unsure what to expect.

Why the hell would he come here? Megamind had gotten everything he had ever wanted. So what was the game this time? The warden put on his most stern expression as he rounded the corner.

Megamind was standing in front of the doorway, and he advanced towards the warden as soon as he saw him. Frankly, he looked awful. He was still wearing the tattered shreds of a suit that was missing his usual capes and collars. The warden waited for him to say something, to offer either arrogance or explanation, but instead he silently offered up his wrists.

The warden frowned. He was confused yet spellbound by the look of naked vulnerability in Megamind's eyes. It was the look of a child who wanted to be punished and the look of a man who had given up. The warden wasn't sure who the hell he was looking at, but the boy he knew was nowhere to be found.

Clearly something awful had happened to him. The warden had seen the news, same as everyone else in Metro City. Reports had been sketchy but it had started with rumors of a new hero and grainy footage of Megamind engaged in the type of battle he usually waged against Metro Man. But then it seemed like something had gone bizarrely wrong.

Now the television blared that the city's new hero had turned villain. There was talk of evacuations, especially out of the downtown. The warden didn't want to put the prison on full lockdown, but he was monitoring the situation closely in case it came to that.

He was concerned for the city, concerned for the prisoners and staff in his facility…. and, though he felt weak admitting it, concerned for Megamind. The reports made it sound like he had gotten his butt kicked and then just disappeared into thin air right before this Titan guy went completely off the rails. So despite both the warden's attempts to quash his feeling and the hopeless look on the blue alien's face, he had to admit he was a little relieved to see that he was still in one piece.

However the warden certainly wasn't going to let himself to imagine that Megamind's presence here was anything more than a frantic attempt to flee at best, or an elaborate trick at worst. He didn't hesitate to slap a pair of cuffs on the boy.

Megamind had killed Metro Man. Now, more then ever, he belonged in jail. Then the warden accompanied him to intake, where he was searched. The torn costume was removed and exchanged for an orange prison jumpsuit.

The boy was uncomfortably silent throughout the process and the warden couldn't help but stare. Usually this was the part where Megamind muttered about the flaws in his latest invention or bantered theatrically with the guards. Now there was nothing but the sound of their shoes as they moved down the long hallway.

When the door to his dome-shaped cell slid open, Megamind walked straight inside. He obediently allowed the warden to remove the handcuffs, never looking up from the floor. He slumped down in the chair before the portal even closed.

One of the guards made a move towards the monitoring station, but the warden touched the man's shoulder lightly.

"I'll take this one," he said simply.

The warden made himself as comfortable as he could in the thin institutional chair and watched the monitors. Megamind sat, looking down at his hands. He twiddled his thumbs and he sighed. Then he put his head in his hands and stared blankly forward. At one point he bit his lip and the warden actually thought for a second that he might start crying. Instead he rubbed his face and reached for the remote and began flipping channels apathetically.

The more the warden watched, the more he became convinced that this was not an act. The boy's distress was genuine, though he still didn't quite understand the cause. But he had no idea what to do about it. Hell, he didn't know if it even mattered.

Not after everything that had happened in the last few weeks.

He didn't need to call Lynne. She'd called him as soon as the first news reports of Metro Man's death came in. And she had kept calling all day as he had sat bereft on the floor with the little green baby blanket spread over his lap. After the fifth or sixth time, he finally picked up and shook silently as he made a special appointment for first thing in the morning.

The warden had taken a whole week off work. It didn't matter. He'd been banking vacation time forever; he never used it. However he didn't do anything with the time off. He just sat at home, watching the news. Watching that ridiculous press conference, watching coverage of whatever asinine thing the boy was up to on any given day. Bank robbery, sure. Using a trebuchet to hurl a firetruck into a building, why the hell not.

He ate, he slept, he showered, and he watched TV. He dragged himself to and from therapy appointments in a fugue. It felt like sitting shiva, not just for his son, but for some part of himself that had stupidly believed that he had gotten a grip on his own life in the last few years.

And through it all, he wondered darkly if he would ever see him again or what he would do if he did. He wondered when S.W.O.R.D. would show up to take him out and if he would even get a chance to bury the body. Or if they would just bring him to the lab straightaway for dissection.

Then he got up on the eighth day, showered, and cut himself off from everything that wasn't work. He didn't go to group. He watched the news as a dispassionate observer most of the time - though he couldn't help but rankle when Roxanne Ritichie called Megamind a "monster" on the air, even if it was in the context of praising the baffling improvements that were popping up all over the city. He even stopped returning Lynne's phone calls then stopped answering when she called him to remind him to book his next appointment.

The warden spent the last few years trying not to be a workaholic, but once that Death Ray had fired, work was all he had. The rest was just too much.

Now he watched the boy at the monitoring station and everything he'd forced down was coming right back up.

The warden yearned desperately for someone to tell him what the hell was going on here. A super-powered madman was destroying the city. The warden wasn't dumb enough to believe that the boy's presence here was a coincidence, given the state in which he'd been in when he arrived. But why here? Why now? And why that hollow look in his eyes?

He'd seen Megamind defeated more times than he had fingers and toes, but the boy had always gotten back up. The warden had never seen him look like this.

He looked lost.

Broken.

The warden couldn't stop juxtaposing the unfamiliar man in the cell with his memories of Blue as a child and kept coming back to visions of him in tears with tiny arms outstretched needing to be held. But even then the warden knew his baby boy would pick himself right back up and try again.

This man in the cell did not seem capable of that.

It was like Megamind had thoroughly given up. There was a time when the warden would have said that was fine, because he had thought he'd given up on Megamind too.

However now the warden found himself full of churning, contradictory emotions and he had no idea what to do about any of them.

Should he try to say something? Goddamnit. What would he say? What reassurance could he even offer now? He had never been a man who was good with words and it seemed like everything had been said a thousand times. Or not said, but now it was too late.

The warden wanted to shake Megamind and force him to say what was wrong. He wanted to give his boy a hug and tell him that it was going to be alright. He wanted to hunt down whomever had hurt him like this and make that person pay. He wanted to do or say whatever it would take to bring back the light in his eyes, even if it was that glint of evil glee that always made the warden feel like the shittiest parent in the world. It would be better than watching this ghost haunting his boy's room.

But he didn't do any of those things.

Instead the warden gave himself a stern mental lecture about appropriate boundaries . Whatever the boy had gotten himself into was not his business. The boy would do what the boy would do, just like he always did : careen through life, leaving nothing but ash and bone in his wake. The warden didn't need to throw himself into that wake. His job was to monitor his prisoner and he needed to focus on that.

So the warden continued to sit and watch Megamind on the monitors. Megamind channel surfed. He paced. He drummed his fingers against the armrest of the chair. He put his head in his hands. He was perfectly silent.

Which made the sharp click of approaching footsteps impossible to ignore. However the warden never expected to turn and see a perfect copy of himself staring back and holding a rope.

But it still didn't take him long to figure out who was really there.

"Hello, Minion," the warden said nonchalantly after giving himself a moment to process the image that stood in front of him.

"Hello, Warden," the fish replied politely in the warden's own voice.

Goddamn, that was surreal.

"I'm guessing you're here to bust him out." The warden gestured towards the dome.

"Someone has to stop Titan and with Metro Man out of the picture…."

The warden simply nodded. For years he had wanted nothing more than to have the boy safe and home, and there was no part of him that relished the thought of Megamind facing off against a man likely to crush him with his bare hands.

"Yeah. He could do it," the warden said stiffly. "But I can't just open the door and let him walk."

But now, faced with the devastation of the city and the sad stranger in that cell, he knew that Megamind couldn't stay here. He took a long obvious look at the rope in his copycats' hands.

"However, if Megamind's henchfish were to overpower and restrain me, there isn't much anyone could say about it."

"Then I'm sorry, Warden, but I need to tie you up now," Minion said apologetically.

"Okay." And the warden tried to relax in the face of the surreal sight of himself expertly winding the rope around his own midsection.

"Minion?"

"Yes?"

The warden paused. He still had too many thoughts, and so many questions. He didn't even know where he would begin.

"Never mind."

Then the rope was tied tight and Minion nodded at him.

"So how are you going to talk hi-" The warden was cut off mid-sentence by a loud banging coming from the cell.

"Warden! Warden, listen to me, you have to let me go. Titan has to be stopped!" Megamind's voice echoed from inside .

The warden looked up at Minion, still wearing a copy of his face. "You're up."

The hologram stiffened his back and walked to the portal on the door.

"Sorry, Megamind, you still have 88 life sentences to go. Plenty of time to reflect on what you've done."

The warden wrinkled his nose. Did he talk like that? He hoped not as he watched Megamind's response on the monitors in front of him.

"Did you want to hear me say it? I'll say it. Here it is. From the blackest part of my heart." Megamind hammed it up theatrically and flung himself against the portal window. "I. Am. Sorry." The warden watched the boy slide comically down the glass.

"Not buying it," was Minion's taciturn response. The warden nodded to himself. Yeah, that sounded more like him.

Megamind took a few steps back and let out a deep sigh. "Oh. I don't blame you. I've terrorized the city countless times. I created a hero who turned out to be a villain. I lied to Roxanne, and my best friend Minion…. I treated like dirt." The warden arched an eyebrow at that particular piece of information as he listened to the boy continue to speak.

"But please don't make this city," Megamind paused thoughtfully, almost whispering when he resumed. "Don't make Roxanne pay for my wrongdoings."

The warden felt something stir down deep in his gut. He had longed for this kind of self-awareness from the boy for so long, as well as any glimpse of the sweet child he used to be. And now he was getting it.

But not quite.

Because it wasn't him staring into that cell.

"Apology accepted," Minion said sweetly, and turned the face of the watch to become a fish in a robotic gorilla suit once more.

"Oh Minion, you fantastic fish you," Megamind replied, his voice thick with gratitude and relief.

"What are we waiting for? We better get going." Minion chirped.

Megamind stepped out of the cell and his eyes fell immediately upon the warden sitting there, tied to a chair. The grateful smile he had previously shared with Minion faded a bit as he paused just beyond the cell's doorway. The warden kept his expression carefully neutral and held his gaze.

In that moment, something passed between the two men - something that said more than words could: Megamind was making sure he had permission to go. The warden was confirming it.

Just before the boy turned away, the warden noticed something else. A small flicker of that old, familiar light had returned to Megamind's eyes, banishing the stranger who had been occupying his skin. The spark was unmistakable, but something about it was also very different. It wasn't the glint of evil glee that the warden was so accustomed to seeing, but at the same time, it wasn't completely unfamiliar either.

It was something that reminded the warden of a small blue child from so many years ago, playing his favorite game.

And that boy had always insisted on playing the hero.

The pair of aliens moved past the warden and headed towards the exit. He could hear their good-natured laughter echo down the hallway, and the warden knew he'd made the right choice. Megamind was laughing. And it wasn't an evil laugh.

The warden had always been pretty goddamn lousy with words. But as the pair marched off to face their enemy, he felt the need to say something. Frankly, he said the only thing that came to mind.

"Good luck, fellas!" he called down the hall after them.

He thought he heard Megamind say jovially, "We're gonna die!" followed by Minion laughing, then abruptly stopping to say, "Wait, what?". The warden just shrugged. This was shaping up to be a really weird day.

Then they were gone and the thick quiet descended once more.

The warden sat there, tied firmly to the chair, and felt almost overwhelmingly conflicted. Megamind was going to go out and do something… heroic. So he should be happy – right? He'd heard Megaminds words and they seemed genuine enough.

It was fairly obvious to anyone who knew him that Megamind had a secret affection for Roxanne Ritchie. And the warden couldn't deny that it made him swell with pride to see him eager to save her, especially since he was apparently the reason for her plight. It seemed like he might finally be taking responsibility for something…

But this Titan character seemed dangerously unstable. And even if Megamind won, then what? What would that mean? It wouldn't make Wayne Scott any less dead. The warden didn't have the answers and he didn't know if he had any more hope left in him. He took a breath to clear his head.

He'd given the pair a solid head start. Now it was time to start yelling.

If his baby boy was going to face-off against some super powered psycho, then at the very least he was going to need a TV.