Chapter 2: Filth and Lies

Three Weeks, Four Days, Two Hours Post Incident.

Moist senselessly wiped the perspiration from his brow. He'd forgotten to wear a sweatband to keep his excessive sogginess from blurring up his eyes; not that digging through six feet of dirt in near pitch black is challenging enough. He wanted to get out of there, ASAP. This was a cemetery. He was trespassing. He was grave digging for Pete's sake! There were many things Moist was not opposed to when it came to living a life of crime. Stealing candy from babies, tripping old ladies, the occasional pick-pocketing—but grave robbing? Once was enough, thank you, and even that was just…evil.

And to top it off his natural wetness was beginning to turn the ground muddy.

Moist groaned. This was going to take forever and it might not even be worth it! Sure, he wanted to trust the Doc, but Moist didn't exactly think he was in the rightest state of mind upon planning all this. Neither of them knew for sure if this was going to work. Well, that's not true. Moist doubted that this plan would work—as any sane person should. The Doc trusted it wholeheartedly.

"Doc, listen to me. You don't even know if it's going to work!" Moist pleaded with his old friend. How long had it been since they lost saw one another? Five, six years, and the first thing the Doctor wanted to do after his old sidekick's plane landed was return to his lab to discuss the 'plan'.

"Don't touch that," Dr Horrible mumbled as he caught Moist tinkering with beaker filled with a strange smelling, gooey liquid. The latter withdrew his damp hand immediately, but couldn't help dip his nose closer to the murky substance below. The scent assaulted his nostrils mercilessly. Was that cumin?

The Doc flattened an aged sheet of paper—scribbled with equations and formulas—over an empty workbench. "These are the basic plans from…before," he spoke more to himself than to his assistant.

"Before?" Moist repeated, fully aware of the meaning behind the simple word.

"I just need to make a few adjustments, rewrite the steps for you to understand, maybe laminate it…" the blond man went on without hearing his friend.

"Doc," Moist gently patted the Doctor's shoulder. His head snapped up—arm twitching from the shock of human contact—and looked Moist in the eye for the first time since leaving La Guardia. "Before, the first time, it was a failure," he was trying to be as tender as possible. He was starting to wonder just how far off the deep end the Doc had jumped this time, "You said so yourself."

Dr. Horrible shrugged away Moist's hand—though not before a watermark could be left in its wake. His blue eyes shied downward, watching the shuffling of his own feet. They blinked uncontrollably.

"I'm sorry, Doc," Moist apologized, "I didn't mean to bring up—"

"Yeeaaahhh," the Doctor inhaled deep, something in his drawn out tone reminded Moist of the aspiring villain he once knew. The corner of his lip curved up slightly as he ground his teeth together. It wasn't a smile, more like a thinking grimace. Doc's eyes were no longer glued to the floor, but now roaming the ceiling in hopes to find his next choice of words floating above, "I may have…I wasn't…that's not…that's not exactly the whole truth."

"Whadda you mean?"

Again that nervous, crooked, grin of a grimace crossed his face. His mouth opened—but then froze—the words still hadn't come to him. He closed his lips and swallowed before reattempting speech, "It…wasn't…" Dr. Horrible struggled painfully to hiss out his one sentence, "It wasn't a failure."

He lied. His best friend, the Doctor, had lied to him six years ago. The experiment wasn't a failure. She was alive…again. Those gross weeks of work weren't for nothing. Dr. Horrible had succeeded. He defied the laws of life and death. Penny was alive. But he lied. That ticked Moist. He was Dr. Horrible's loyal sidekick, his best friend! How could he not have trusted Moist to keep that a secret?

"What?! Are you serious?! Where is she?!" Moist had plenty questions that needed answering on the subject of his friend's dishonesty, but that was the first significant one to pop out of his mouth.

Doc explained though. It was for Moist's own protection. (It still got Moist peeved) but it was for her, for everybody's own protection if the League assumed Dr. Horrible's most audacious project had been a hopeless wreck. It was bad enough that their little secret had been discovered by Bad Horse and the others. Bad Horse doesn't like it when his underlings keep secrets. So off Doc went; sent far away to the opposite coast forbidden to ever contact the henchman that aided this unauthorized scientific venture ever again. Ever. Moist knew they had both gotten off easy (although he was expelled from the official Henchmen's Union). He wasn't sure how his buddy had done it, why Bad Horse even bothered to reason and spare them a fate worse than death, or what the League did with Doc afterward. When Moist answered the phone a few weeks ago he had been happy enough just to know the Doctor was still alive.

The Doctor's shoulders sagged, his eyes found the floor again, "I don't know," he said softly.

Now not so much; alive that is, or happy.

Moist's shovel collided with something firm and very wood sounding.

This better work, he thought. The Doc had showed him Bad Horse's 'Ultimate Plan'. Even an exiled henchman agreed it was a bit much.

He really did hope it worked. For the good of everything.

Yes I know, another short chapter, boo hoo. Just bare with me.