A huge thank-you to my brilliant beta, HaydenXCharm. Any remaining errors are my own!

Bernard

Roxanne woke up in the lair, with her head in... Bernard's lap. Okay wow, that was weird. She groaned and raised a hand to her head.

"Roxanne? Are you all right?"

"I'm... fine. Okay, so. Seven days."

His eyes widened. "Where did- I mean, what happened?!"

Roxanne rolled her eyes and pushed herself upright. Megamind put his hands gently on her shoulders, supporting her. It was kind of touching. It was kind of creepy. She was kind of pissed.

She got up and rubbed at her neck. When she looked around, aiming for a view of anything but Megamind's peachy-pink clone of Bernard's face, she caught Minion looking out at her from behind a ladder. She raised a finger to her lips. Not yet.

"I don't know, Bernard. What happened to you?"

He blinked and looked suspiciously innocent. "I don't know what you mean by that, Roxanne."

"Oh, spare me the lies. What did you build that for?"

"Me? Me, build that? But we're in Megamind's Evil Lair."

"Ugh. I know it's you. Come on, Megamind."

His eyes widened. "Roxanne?!"

"I just spent a week back in high school."

He raised a wondering hand to his lips, before gasping dramatically, pointing at her. "The week you stalked that dweeb! I remember! I mean, what?! Why?!"

She put her hands on her hips. "That dweeb was Bernard. I thought he was you. Could you... could you take that off, now? It's weird, talking to you like this."

Megamind looked completely surprised. He raised a tentative hand to his wrist. "How did you know?"

She couldn't hold back a smirk. "You honestly think you could hide your winning personality with a suit and a new colour palette?"

He snorted and twisted something. His watch face. An electric light flashed, like it was re-drawing reality, and then Megamind was standing there before her. "I guess it was a bit of a giveaway that I never changed my clothes."

"A bit," she said. She was never going to tell him that she'd been too busy looking at his eyes to even notice that. "So, you owe me. Why did you build that thing?"

"When I was eight days old, my home planet was destroyed. My parents placed me in an escape pod with Minion. As far as I can tell, we were the only two who made it off my planet alive."

Eight days. Oh god, eight days. She'd thought that was a very specific length of time. "It worked?"

He shrugged, and tried to be nonchalant. "I'm honestly not sure if it was a good idea for a boy on the cusp of adulthood to lie powerless in his own feces as he watched his entire species perish."

"So they were pretty nice people, then," she said. "Your parents."

His eyes looked a bit wet. "They were incredible."

"It sounds like it." What was she, an idiot? He hadn't said anything about them.

"So, you don't hate me, then?" He was trying to change the topic. All right, fair enough. She wasn't really ready to re-hash the week she'd had, herself. Some things were best left in the past, after all.

"I'm not trying to change the topic," he said, "but we do have a reservation."

She took a few steps back. "Ohhh no, mister."

"But, you saw me back then! You liked me!" He sounded offended, upset, as if one of his dearest friends had turned on him. Which, okay, point made. But she'd only had moments. He'd had years.

"You lied to me! You kidnapped me! You threatened my life, you killed Metro Man! I'm afraid it's going to take me more than five minutes to deal with the rest of it."

He had flinched away when she'd raised her voice, but he moved towards her, curious, at her last words. "Rest of it?"

She sighed, and crossed her arms. "Well, Wayne was an asshole. And looking back, yeah(,) I can see how everything escalated. Why you've made the choices you have."

She thought about it. He was listening, which was a nice change. It gave her the space to think some more.

"That short time, when I was trying to be there for Bernard, and he wasn't you, that was hell for me. I can't imagine what it was like for you, to get out of prison, go to Prom, and have me suddenly not know you."

"It was still you," he said, but his eyes were wide, and his mouth was open. "I... missed you, for all these years, and I didn't even know why."

She sighed and ran her fingers through her bangs. "This is fucked up. You should really put some kind of I don't know, cover, on that thing. Get rid of it. Destroy it."

"I'll do that," he said, voice thick in his throat. "Right away. Do you want Minion to drive you home?"

"Oh, no, no, no, no! That's not what I meant, when I said I didn't want to go to dinner. I meant, we can't really talk like this, out there. I wouldn't be talking to you."

His eyebrows were very expressive. Kicked puppy is what she'd have called it, if she was in a better mood. Some mix of hope and pain and disbelief.

"We could maybe, order pizza?"

She smiled, and her heart lightened when he tentatively smiled back. "Sure, I'd like that."

She felt a little shaky, honestly, like she'd been sucked through a wormhole, which was close to the truth. She let Minion show her to a couch, while Megamind used his... Bernard's? A phone, to call and order some pizza. He sat down beside her, nodding though the store obviously couldn't hear a gesture, and that made her think, wow. How had he looked when on the phone with her? Some kind of adorable, she was sure. Goofy.

"Supreme okay?"

"Huh?" She blinked. "Yeah, fine."

"Two supremes and a garlic bread. Pickup." He hung up, flipped the phone shut, grinned at her.

"Is that even your phone?"

He shrugged. "Evil," he explained.

"Where is Bernard, anyway?" He frowned, and dug around in his... wait, his body suit had pockets? No. Okay. Utility belt. A pouch. Phew. She'd been very confused by that. He pulled out a bright blue cube, and held it aloft between two long fingers.

"Oh, you didn't." She laughed, she had to. Poor Bernard. Oh, but he was probably happier as a cube than dealing with guests at the museum. Which did not exist anymore, because Megamind had blown it up.

He laughed with her, but as her horror grew, she could see it reflected in his eyes, too.

"I can't believe you haven't left," he said.

"Well, I've had a few days to get used to the idea, of all this. You being you. It's going to be really weird, but it's also going to be okay."

"Sir? Miss Ritchi? I'll just be going for the pizza."

Roxanne twisted around to see. What disguise Minion would use. So she'd know if she saw him on the street.

He... wasn't wearing a watch. He had strapped a fanny pack around his waist, and from it, he pulled out a fabulously long brown wig, and a pair of aviator sunglasses, which he looped over two protruding grid vents in his bowl, that were not really at eye-level.

"That," she said, "is your disguise?"

"I know, it's amazing, isn't it?" Megamind put a hand on her shoulder. "He's got a real way with costumes."

"Back in a few." Minion bobbed in his bowl and hopped into the car.

Roxanne settled back down in the couch. "You don't honestly think he'll pass unnoticed like that, do you?"

Megamind gasped. "Roxanne! I'll have you know, I have every faith in Minion's abilities. Also, the car is invisible, and the staff at the local pizza place are college students. They're probably on drugs or thinking about their mid-terms."

"I can never tell if you're joking or being painfully sincere."

"Get to know me better, and maybe you'll find out." He smiled, and it was the smile she'd seen a thousand times on Bernard's face, but it looked different on his. A little colder, a little sharper. Older and less naïve. It made butterflies dance in her stomach.

"Well that is the idea, what with me not running screaming and all, yes." She had to look at his eyes, to make sure he'd got the joke. Oh, it was so awkward. But he was laughing, and looking more at ease with every second. She knew how to talk to him. They'd been practically dating, right? Still were, she supposed. She wasn't sure if it counted.

"To be honest, I'm not sure that I want to see anyone running from me, or screaming, in the near future. I'm beginning to seriously re-think what it all means."

Everything began falling into place. It was pretty huge. The days in the library. That first night at the museum. What was a villain, without a hero? All this time, he'd been trying to figure it out.

"What does it mean?" She glanced at his wall of notes.

"Well, I thought, perhaps. I might need a new hero. Someone to fill the void that Metro Mahn had left in my life. Now, I'm not so sure. Sometimes, I think the whole thing was a sham. Being evil. An excuse, to justify trying to score points against an old schoolyard bully. I never saw that I had become the bully instead."

"You weren't a bully."

The expression on his face was so serious, so offended, she choked on her laughter.

"You weren't, though! It was more like, like..." Like what? She felt very strongly about it, but she hadn't read half of Bernard's books on Megamind's life, and she couldn't put her finger on it.

"Like I was seeking attention? Like I was just casting myself as a villain to fit into society, in some strange way? I sure as hell wasn't doing it to make Metro Mahn more heroic, no matter what that dweeb in the turtleneck thought!"

"Oh, we don't like Bernard, then, do we? I was going to say, it was more like you were trying to show off for me. Re-enacting that day at school, the way that everyone else saw it. Waiting for me to stop it, to tell everyone what had really happened, and when I didn't, you got lost in it..."

He wouldn't meet her eyes. "I decided to be the Bad Guy long before I met you," he said.

"Yeah. And I decided to be a hairdresser in elementary school. Also a Dino Rider."

He laughed, but turned a little towards her again. "You don't hate me for being evil all these years?"

"I like you. Don't pretend you don't know that."

He ducked his head, the tips of his ears glowed a little redder. "Okay."

"As for who you are now? I can't tell you that. I was there. I don't think you knew about the copper. I don't think either of us thought it was real when he died. I think that better men than you have killed innocents, and I'd never think twice about the ethics of it. But it's you, and it was Metro Man..."

He sighed. "We travelled together, the sole survivors of our civilizations, our species. We were both sent here, to this city. I hated him, truly hated him. The mere fact that he looked just like you humans put him at such an advantage, but now… I feel like I've committed genocide. I feel like I've lost my reason for living. We were the only ones… the only ones," he trailed off.

Roxanne couldn't do anything other than put an arm around his shoulders. It was surprisingly easy, to match her body alongside his, to touch his skin with her fingertips.

"You have Minion, and you have me," she said. He nodded. He brushed his leather gloved fingers across the back of her hand on his shoulder. "You've gotten yourself a library card. You've learned to ride a bike. You've gone to the park. Life keeps going on, in small doses. You'll get through this."

He swallowed tightly. "You've lost someone too, then," he said.

"Both my parents. A car accident."

He held her hand, tightly. "It must hurt more, if you knew them. If they raised you, for so long."

She wasn't sure that it did. "Maybe. Nothing hurt more than meeting the most amazing guy on the planet, falling for him, and then discovering that he was an evil genius who wanted to bring my entire city to ruin."

He nodded. "Okay, you got me." His voice sounded broken, dead.

"Hey," she squeezed him, hugged him a little tighter. "I didn't say that you weren't still the most amazing guy on the planet."