Happy anniversary! Short chapter for what will be a short fic. This is the result of an idea Ramendobe posted on Tumblr, and this is ultimately what broke me out of my writer's block. The original prompt can be found here: .com (slash) post (slash) 116636620765 (slash) megamind (dash) fanfiction (dash) idea.

This fic is somewhat less angsty than the actual prompt, mostly because I struggle to write emotions as raw as the ones Ramendobe described, but I think the essence is there. :) And I figure, hey, might as well start posting it for the anniversary, right? Good lord, has it really been five years? *raises glass* HERE'S TO YOU GUYS. AND HERE'S TO FIVE MORE FANTABULOUS YEARS.

(& yes, I'm still working on Twelve Days! :) I've got about half the next chapter done, no se preocupen, amigos 333)

Chapter 1

In the Early Morning Rain – Peter, Paul & Mary

Roxanne puts her tablet down on her lap and turns to look out the glass balcony doors of her apartment at the spring evening. It's been one of the nicest days Metro City has seen so far, this year—temperatures in the low seventies, big fluffy clouds, warm sun, cool wind—and she can't stop worrying.

It's too quiet. She sighs, twirling her stylus absently between her fingers as she stares at the sunset-fire lighting up the windows of the building across the street.

"Where are you?" she wonders, but there's no answer. There never is, anymore.

Shaking her head, she shoves her concerns to the back of her mind—a feat which is getting increasingly difficult—and stands up to make dinner. Dinner, and then she'll read for a bit or maybe watch a movie, and then she'll sleep. Then wake up, breakfast, work, lunch, work, home, read, dinner again, and—this is how Roxanne's life goes now: an absence of kidnappings, a lack of lasers, a dearth of spikes, and nervousness gnawing the base of her spine.

If Megamind doesn't want to kidnap her anymore, fine; she'd like to know the villain is alive, at least. Nobody's heard anything from him in months.

Well, tomorrow's Wednesday, so she'll be meeting up with Metro Man for lunch. That'll be a break in the monotony, and who knows? He might have some news for her.

She's not holding her breath, though; nobody's heard anything from Megamind since last July. It's already May again, unseasonably warm and unreasonably calm.

She's starting to miss the bad old days.

0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0

"I gotta say, Roxie," Metro Man says the next day, as lunch is winding down, "off the record? I'm starting to get really concerned, here."

She knows how he feels. The sick-worry feeling in the pit of her stomach hasn't left her alone in a while. "Me too. I think you'd better widen your search."

"Yeah?" He raises his eyebrows. "I was thinking about calling it off."

Roxanne stares at him. "You can't be serious."

Metro Man grimaces, but he doesn't look like he was joking. "I don't like it, either, but it's been months. Maybe it's time we tried something different."

He isn't wrong. Nearly ten months have passed since they started looking, but nobody Roxanne has asked has seen either Megamind or Minion. She's asked everyone she can think of—some people more than once—and her list of contacts isn't short. Even her friends on the less-than-legal side of things are beginning to sound unsettled.

Something's wrong. They know Megamind isn't holed up working on a doozy of a plan this time because Metro Man lost his patience a while back and broke into the Lair—he's known where it is for ages, though he's always disavowed all knowledge when asked—and he'd found it standing empty, with dust settling in the corners and darkened brainbots lying scattered on the floor. Neither of his nemeses were anywhere to be seen, and judging by the remains of what was in Megamind's refrigerator, the Lair had been sitting vacant for some time.

That was before winter had set in, and now it's almost summer. Who knows what the Lair looks like now?

The worst part is that Roxanne hadn't even been able to act surprised when Metro Man told her what he'd found. She'd known there was something wrong long before that; she could feel it in her bones. Hearing that the Lair was abandoned only made her worry more, especially when the mercury fell below zero and stayed there.

But what can she do but keep asking? She's been looking, too, and all her best efforts have turned up diddly squat. Megamind hides his tracks well; even Metro Man's x-ray vision and super-hearing haven't turned up much. ("It's not a generalized thing, Roxie," he'd explained. "I need to know where to listen and what to listen for. If you wanted to know if he was in the Sachs building, I could tell you, but I can't just listen for a heartbeat across the whole city.")

(Megamind had not been in the Sachs building.)

(Roxanne had asked.)

Now she stares at the hero across from her, incredulous. "So, it's been months, so what?" she says. "We can't just stop looking. We can't leave them out there. You just said you were worried, how can you—"

"Roxie, you know those guys." Metro Man has both his massive hands wrapped around a latte like he's got a chill, never mind the warm weather. "If they don't want to be found, they won't be."

"Okay, that's…true, I guess. But your big solution is for us to give up?"

"No, not give up," he replies quickly, "just…stop looking. Kinda. They probably know we're searching for them, so they're being careful…but maybe if we stop looking so hard, one of them will relax a little." He shrugs, accidentally bumping his shoulder into someone carrying a tray past their table, and then he has to hyper-accelerate and reposition the drinks on the tray to keep them from falling. Being big is not always an advantage.

Roxanne's smirking at him when he slows back down again. "Nice save, clumsy."

"Nothing spilled," he protests, then returns to the subject at hand. "My point is, maybe they'll make a mistake and we'll get a lead. False sense of security, you know?"

Roxanne shakes her head. "You are serious. I don't believe it."

"You got a better idea?" Metro Man stares at her, challenging, finally letting some of his frustration show. "I'd love to hear it, if you do. Nothing else has worked."

"W—Metro Man, what if Megamind is hurt?" she asks sharply, and he looks away. "What if he's sick? You know this wasn't a good winter for the homeless population; what if Minion froze out there somewhere? I'd at least like to know they're not dead."

Metro Man's lips are thin, but he's still shaking his head. "He wouldn't endanger Minion like that. No, they must've hidden somewhere warm, I'm not…too worried about that. I just…" He sighs. "I dunno what else to do, Roxie. Nothing's worked and I'm out of ideas."

Roxanne bites her lip and settles back in the booth, stares out the window at the bustling lunch-hour street. She doesn't like it, but…

"And I've got a job to do," Metro Man adds, more quietly. "And it's, like, four times harder without him running backup behind the scenes. Doing all that and looking for him, too, it's—I'm—I'm going outta my mind, here."

It's Roxanne's turn to sigh. She knows he's been working overtime, and he'd already been on-call twenty-four seven when this whole mess started. "Okay. It's…worth trying, I guess. I'll let the others know." She offers him a half-smile. "You're looking better, by the way."

He grins, but it doesn't look particularly genuine. "I got new under-eye concealer. Use Cle de Peau under the regular goop, blend it all in, and poof." He twirls his wrists like a magician. "Adios, dark circles."

Roxanne almost chokes on her water. "Are you serious? After all that crap you gave me about how—how 'Narcs' or whatever is the best brand ever, you're switching?"

"Yeah, I know, I'm the Hero of Hypocrite City." He rolls his eyes. "I'll get you a tube so you can try."

She snorts, but thanks him. Metro Man has spent his whole life in front of the camera and he knows what he's doing. He also doesn't care about budgets. Makeup isn't a valid work expense, according to her boss, so if her friend wants to buy her new face goop…well, that's fine by her.

She looks away again, out at the daylight street.

Megamind and Minion have to be out there, somewhere. They'd never leave Metro City without telling her. She honestly believes that, even if she isn't sure why.

They should keep looking. She wants to keep looking. But Metro Man is right: nothing else has worked, and if they stop, then maybe—just maybe—Megamind will come out long enough that someone will see him. It's the best they can hope for, even though what she didn't tell Metro Man is that Megamind doesn't make mistakes, not really, not when it matters.

All she can think is that he's hurt or sick somewhere. Maybe Minion took him someplace to recover from a battle wound. Maybe they pissed off the wrong people and had to go into hiding? She doesn't know.

And she shouldn't even care, really, but Megamind has been such a presence in her life for such a long time that he's become…well, sortof a friend, when push came to shove. He'd helped her out of a couple tight spots and Roxanne had helped him with his reputation in return, and she'd thought maybe they were coming to a kind of understanding. She'd even quietly hoped they might someday have a relationship like the one she has with Metro Man, because on the rare occasions when Megamind wasn't bouncing off the walls and cackling, he'd been…nice. Fun to talk to. Witty with a sense of humor. He's certainly someone she wouldn't mind being better friends with. Even when he was bouncing around, he'd been fun.

But now he's gone. Vanished into thin air, as far as anyone knows. Megamind has been missing for almost a year and Roxanne sometimes wonders whether she's entirely sane, worrying herself sick over a guy she barely knows who used to regularly kidnap and threaten her. Sure, it was all for show, but…

Anyway. Life goes on, and lunch is over, and she and Metro Man both have jobs to get back to.

She's almost all the way to the newsroom when her cell phone rings. It's her boss, telling her to get her ass into the office pronto so they can get her over to cover a house fire across town. They've already got most of the crew on the way over. "I'm coming down Lime right now, I'll be there in five," Roxanne promises, breaking into a jog. This is why I wear flats…

"Be there in two," Carl tells her, and hangs up.

"Dick," she mutters, and shoves her phone back into her purse.

Luckily, a news van pulls up a minute later and rolls down its passenger side window. "Hey, Roxaroo, where's the fire?" Hal calls, grinning.

Roxanne rolls her eyes and hops into the van before it's even fully stopped moving without breaking stride. "Thanks, Hal, you're a lifesaver."

She's been working with Hal since November, when Paula quit to spend more time with her kids. Hal's a little weird but a good cameraman all the same, and it's a harmless sort of weird. The sort that makes 'where's the fire' jokes about possible arson.

"Yup," Hal says happily. "Hang on tight!" He spins the wheel and they pull away.

Roxanne is willing to overlook Hal's off-color humor in favor of the fact that he drives like the mad offspring of an immortal taxicab driver and the kind of speed demon that is literally on speed. It's terrifying, but they haven't gotten in any accidents so far and it can be really useful when they're running behind and still want to arrive before anyone else from their channel. Which they do. Ha, ha, bite me, Carl, Roxanne thinks.

"How do I look? No spinach in my teeth?" She turns to Hal and smiles.

"Total bombshell, as always," he tells her, barely glancing over.

It would be less weird if he didn't sound quiteso sincere all the time. Oh, well.

0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0

Next week's lunch date is canceled because Roxanne is swamped at work, but the following Wednesday finds her and Metro Man discussing the city's missing supervillain over breakfast at sunrise in a diner in midtown. "Anything?" Roxanne asks.

"Nope. Give it time, Roxie," he says, shifting uncomfortably in the narrow booth.

"It's been ten months," she replies. "It's almost June!"

"You know what I mean. Let him get his bearings, let him relax a little."

She folds her arms over her chest and stares at him. "How are you so certain that he's even out there?" she says.

Metro Man shrugs, careful this time not to upset any waiters. "Dunno. Just a hunch, I guess."

"Ugh, fine," Roxanne mutters. She's grumpy because it's early, not because she's worried. She shouldn't be worried. Why would she be worried?

Where are you?

0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0

Her answer, as it turns out, comes the very next day.

Morning dawns prettily enough, though the clouds are a little flatter than they've been for the past few days. Roxanne walks to work since the weather's nice, but by the time she gets out that evening, those clouds have turned low and angry gray and it's raining like there's no tomorrow. That's great, just fantastic, because this is Metro City in the rain; Roxanne can't catch a cab for love or money. And she hadn't brought her umbrella with her this morning, just her windbreaker. At least it has a hood.

She takes her usual rainy shortcut home. It involves a lot of alleys, but that's what mace is for, right? It's not like she's never taken a self-defense class. And the alleys in midtown Metro are reasonably safe. Honestly, she's just lucky she lives close enough to the office that walking is even a viable option.

So she's walking down one of the back roads, skirting puddles and potholes, trying to stay close to the sides of buildings. Her hood is up and her hands are in her pockets—one on her knife, the other on her can of pepper spray—and she's keeping an eye out in front of her, squinting and blinking through raindrops, when she sees a manhole cover in the middle of the next block shift up and sideways.

She squints. What the…?

At least, she thinks it's a manhole cover, but it's far away and early evening and the rain is making everything gray, and she knows (from a fluff piece involving ducklings and firefighters at the beginning of her career) those covers are heavy. She stops walking and peers through the drops, and then her eyebrows fly up, because the person hauling themselves up to street level has a silhouette she recognizes even from this distance, even in the rain.

She freezes. Megamind, she thinks, but no, it can't be. It's been almost a year, and now, two weeks after they've stopped searching, now he shows up? No way.

"Megamind?" She half-jumps at the sound of her own voice. She hadn't meant to say anything; luckily, it doesn't seem like he's heard her. He just…walks over to the back of the café he's next to and disappears into shadows and mist.

"No," Roxanne mutters, already running. He can't just vanish again, he can't, she won't let him—

He's sitting on the back step. She hadn't seen him because he'd sat down so quickly, dropped out of sight behind a dumpster that was obscuring her view.

Roxanne slows and stops, then stands for a moment and stares at him. It is him; he's unmistakable even sitting with his forehead on his knees like that, but Roxanne has never seen him out of uniform like this. He's wearing a grubby zip-up hoodie and jeans over a pair of battered high-top sneakers that already look soaking wet. His customary gloves are missing and his knuckles are cut and bleeding where his long hands are netted over the back of his neck. Everything about him looks tired.

"Megamind," Roxanne says again, and Megamind nearly startles out of his skin, jerking back and staring up at her in shock. Not just tired, she realizes, equally surprised, miserable. There are heavy shadows under his eyes and in his cheeks, and the lines around his mouth are deeper than she's ever seen. Has he stopped eating?

She stares. This is way worse than she'd expected. She'd halfway thought that when they found Megamind, if they found him, he'd laugh at them for ever being the least bit concerned and then he'd try to blow Metro Man off the face of the earth and everything would go back to normal. It's clear enough, that's not what's going to happen.

She wants to say, where have you been? but what comes out instead is, "What's wrong?"

For a moment, all Megamind does is stare at her, big green eyes stutter-blinking against the rain coming hard and fast and turning his hoodie water-dark, his mouth a thin line over clenched teeth. Then he says, slowly, "Miss Ritchi. I…" He stops, struggling. "It's…"

She looks around. "Where's Minion? We figured he'd be with you."

Megamind lets out a sob. Just one and then he clenches his jaw shut, but it's enough to make Roxanne's heart skip a beat and then drop all the way to her shoes. I should have known. Minion would never let him look like this. "Is…is he going to be okay?"

Megamind bares his teeth, squeezes his eyes closed, and then, when it's already painfully clear that he's crying now and there's nothing he can do about it, he presses both hands to his eyes and curls back into a ball so she won't see his face.

Roxanne shrugs her purse onto the step, heedless of safety and wet weather, and doesn't even stop to think before crouching down to put her arms around him. Wow, he's even thinner than she'd thought. "Megamind, oh lord. Megamind, hey. Hey. It's okay, you just…you just let it out, okay? Just…" Oh, great, now she's half-crying, too. Minionis the one who's hurt? This whole time, she'd only thought of Minion a few times, never seriously, because of course Minion is okay. He has to be okay. He's Minion, he's a rock, he's unbreakable.

But…yes, something happening to Minion is pretty much the only thing she can think of that could render Megamind this incoherent or push him this far into hiding. This…actually explains quite a bit. She swallows desperately against the stone in her throat. "Megamind, it's okay, I've got you."

He heaves in a ragged breath, lets it out in a muffled keening noise that he chokes off halfway through, gulping back, holding his breath—so he doesn't make noise, is the only reason she can think of; but that's even worse: not that he's like this, but the sense that he can't stand to be heard like this. Roxanne squeezes him. "No, it's okay, it's okay," she says, trying to keep her voice as even as possible as the alien in her arms starts to rock back and forth. "Breathe, it's okay, just breathe."

What happened? And when? Has he been alone this whole time? He would have started by trying to fix whatever it was—he would have run himself absolutely ragged, would have driven himself into the ground trying to fix it. How does grief go? Denial, anger, bargaining… Somehow, Roxanne is pretty sure Megamind hasn't made it too far, but it's been months.

Eventually, Megamind stops rocking, but that appears to be because he's hyperventilated himself all the way into unconsciousness. Which…hadn't exactly been what she'd meant when she'd told him to breathe. It's worrying, of course, but also helpful, because it gives Roxanne a chance to quickly try and process some things.

I've found Megamind. He seems unharmed, but upset. Something happened to Minion but I don't know what.

(is minion dead? minion can't be dead. he can't be. do they have a mental thing? is that why megamind is so…

wrecked?)

One fact rises above the multitude of questions. She can think about the questions later, but for now…I can't leave him out here like this.

If she leaves to find help, she has no guarantee Megamind will still be here when she returns. Also, the rain hasn't let up yet. It's spring, so the nights are still cool in northern Michigan and God only knows what his immune system is like. No. If Roxanne wants to help him, then she needs to find a way to bring him home with her now.

She slings her purse over her shoulder and then bends, crouches low, and puts her other shoulder in Megamind's stomach. Then she wraps her arm up around his waist and holds his legs steady with her other hand. After that, it's just a matter of standing up. It's a good thing his torso is so long and narrow, she thinks, or this would be really difficult. "Up we go," she mutters. "Ooof you weigh, like, a thousand pounds. Okay."

Home isn't far, now, and Roxanne grits her teeth and thinks wistfully of the big plush blanket thrown over the end of her bed. That's where she wants to be right now. Under that blanket. Not thinking about Minion being hurt or sick or dead, not thinking about Megamind thrown over her shoulder.

Tonight is a hide-from-the-world night. The rain seems all too happy to assist her, and it only takes a few seconds before Roxanne and Megamind are out of sight.