Purple

Superheroes come in primary colors. Traditionally, they dressed in royal blue, blood red, canary yellow and vibrant green. They wanted to stand out, on the pages of comic books, on the streets. Captain Hammer's logo was yellow, of course. But hey, Batman dressed in black.

Barney wore charcoal suits and purple shirts and thin, burned-orange ties. Sometimes he wore nut-brown suits with Windsor-knotted ties, sometimes no tie at all. He often wondered if super-villains were supposed to dress in the secondary color pallet. He wondered if a suit was a kind of costume.

Being a retired super-villain came at a price - intense boredom. Oh, there was the occasional request from the E.L.E. But mostly Barney was left to himself, left to find something, anything, to occupy his not-inconsiderable mind. He found ways - invented feuds with the guy in the office in the skyscraper opposite his building, suggested imaginary building projects, created conference calls that were actually drinking sessions with his buddies.

Barney drank. A lot.

It was one of the things that numbed him, forced him to slow down a little, took his mind of the stream of diabolical inventions that marched across his cortex every day.

The one good thing about New York (one of the many good things) was that Barney wasn't reminded very often of his past. New Yorkers were a cynical bunch, less prone to celebrity worship than the drones that inhabited Dr Horrible's old stomping ground of Los Angeles. Super-villains were disappearing back into the shadows, into the background where they belonged. Their star was waning. Barney fully expected not to hear from E.L.E. for at least another year.

That's why it was such a surprise when Howard Wolowicz turned up at the GNB building and asked to see him.

*--*--*

A lot had happened in the four years since he'd last seen Moist - sorry, Howard. Barney still had trouble using his real name. At the height of Dr Horrible's reign of terror, he had once asked Moist if there was something he could give him. A present, one thing to reward his most highly valued, most trusted henchman.

Moist had looked at him sadly and said just one word. "Freedom."

At the time, Barney hadn't understood. He'd thought, in the way he usually did, that Moist was talking about his "little problem" - his useless superpower. Of course, Dr Horrible had got right on the it, devising a device that would balance Moist's... moisture... to the correct (i.e. normal) levels.

No more laminating everything, Dr Horrible had told his best friend. No more slipping and falling all the time. You'll even be able to snap your fingers again, he told him.

Moist hadn't looked that excited. He didn't seem to be suitably grateful for the incredible gift that he was about to be given.
"Doc?" Moist asked him hesitantly, as he was being hooked up to the machine. "Are you sure this is gonna work?"

The bad Doctor was attaching a set of electrodes and wires to his own body. "Of course!" He'd beamed. "I'm using myself as a template. You should be as dry as I am in about... thirty seconds!"

Amazingly, the device had worked first time. It had dried out Moist permanently and with incredible efficiency.

However, it has also done a good deal more to the poor guy. It had transferred some of Barney's own self into his friend.

*--*--*

Moist- sorry, Howard- was hitting on a secretary when Barney came to meet him. "Wow," was all he could say. Howard was dressed like... well, someone from The Monkees or something, in painfully tight purple jeans, a bright green slogan t-shirt and a belt buckle so large and shiny that you could have used it as a satellite dish.

Barney was pretty sure that Moist's new dress sense hadn't come from whatever part of his own personality had been accidentally transplanted into his ex-henchman.

"Hey M- Howard!" He said, reluctantly sticking out his hand, only to find it clasped by cool, dry fingers. It was disconcerting. Old habits were hard to shake, he supposed.

"Hey Doc!" Moist said, brightly, brazenly.

"How's, er, Caltech?" Barney asked him.

Where else was a transplanted engineering genius going to work, once he'd retired from the Henchmen's Union? Of course, Dr Horrible had faked his qualifications (Masters degree at MIT etc) and got him a job that he could really enjoy. But it was just too creepy to watch Moist walking around with some of Dr Horrible's smarts.

With a lot of Dr Horrible's smarts.

And also, a lot of Dr Horrible's lecherous nature.

As Moist, Howard hadn't had a great deal of luck with the ladies. But once he's been freeze-dried, the guy couldn't get enough of his new-found ability to... well... pursue the fairer sex without fear of damp patches. At least not unintentional damp patches. Barney flashed him a grin. Howard Wolowicz didn't see to have that much more luck with the ladies than Moist had. But, bless him, he was trying real hard.

"It's good," Howard said, winking at the secretary, who was studiously ignoring him. "Lots of hot chicks - like you wouldn't believe, man. And I'm working on the ISS. That's the International Space Station. "

"Sounds awesome," Barney said, smoothly guiding Howard towards the elevator. "It's... good to see you." As soon as the doors closed behind them he said "So, Time Science Blood Cloud helping you out on that one?"

Howard grinned a sly grin and tapped his nose. "That's on a need to know basis, Doc."

"And I don't need to know?" Barney raised an eyebrow and took a breath. "Why are you here Moist?"

Howard narrowed his eyes. "Now, is that the way to greet an old friend. Let's do lunch and we'll rap?"

Barney shook his head. "I have plans. Meeting with Scherbatsky."

Howard shrugged. "Bring him along. Or don't your new... friends know about your dirty past?"

Barney smirked. "Robin's a she. And yeah, she knows!"

But Howard barely seemed to hear him. "Oh really?" He smiled, showing his teeth. "She hot?"

"Like you wouldn't believe," Barney laughed, as they made their way to his office.

*--*--*

Barney blinked and looked into the mirror, massaging the bags under his eyes. His tan was fading. He had a lot more lines than he'd had four years ago. He looked a wreck.

Still, at least he wasn't beat up.

Dr Horrible used to get beat up, a lot.

Many was the time when he'd come back home (how was a secret lab, always a secret lab) and looked in the mirror to see a ghostly face with bruises - those secondary colors again - purple, brown, a smudge of yellow.

Captain Hammer packed a punch.

He remembered the broken wrist, the twisted ankle, the dislocated shoulder. Oh yes, Barney remembered each and every injury. He'd also invented an array of rays - painkillers, tissue regeneration, bone mending. When he'd been knocked down by the bus, it was a simple matter of getting them all out of storage.

His rapid recovery was no miracle. Rather, it was the product of years of expectations, of abuse, of being defeated again and again.

The papers always said his gaze was deathly - that Dr Horrible had a terrifying stare. But they never saw his eyes. His eyes, two chips of ice, they were always hidden behind goggles with smoky lenses.

Since the day when Barney had finally removed the goggles for the last time, he'd had to find away to look once more into his own eyes for more than a minute without looking away.

With all the magic he knew how to do, it had still taken him six months to learn that trick.

*--*--*

Barney returned from the restroom to find Robin practically simpering and Moist giving her his most greasy of smiles. Moist leaned over and whispered something in her ear and was rewarded with a throaty chuckle.

"Hey!" Robin said, when Barney slid into the booth to join them. "Howard was just telling me about this party you guys once went to at the you-know-where!" She grinned and winked. Robin still treated the whole used-to-be-an-actual-super-villain thing as a big joke. "You guys sounded like you had some wild times!"

Barney wracked his brain to try and think about what Moist could have possibly have told her but his usually reliable intellect had gone for a cigarette break at that exact same second.

Meanwhile, Robin was ruffling Moist's hair. His stupid, pudding-basin hair. "You can totally tell that he's your friend, Barney." She laughed. "He's actually kind of sweet!"

"Sweet?" Barney replied, incredulously. "How is he sweet?" How could she not know what Moist was? An opportunistic creep of a bottom feeder - just like Barney used to be back in LA. Maybe that's all he was, even now.

But Robin liked that, he realised. Robin liked him. She liked over-the-top sleazy guys with a quick wit and a kind heart. She hung out with him all the time.

Moist turned to him and behind Robin's back he raised an eyebrow and mouthed "I am so in!"

Barney shook his head. If Marshall were here right now... Hell, if any of the others were in right now... then they'd probably fall for Moist's charms too! But Marshall should have been there, that was the point. Suddenly Barney's cell started to ring. It was way too noisy in the bar to hear so, with an apologetic shrug he quickly left and headed up the steps and out into the street above the Bar.

However, he never got a chance to answer the call, because the moment he opened his mouth, a fist came out of nowhere and connected with his face, sending him back through the air and down onto the sidewalk.

Barney got one good look of his assailant before a boot connected with his head.

There was no yellow logo emblazoned on his overly-muscled chest. But the lantern jaw and sickeningly righteous grin was the same.

"Oh f-" Barney managed to say before he blacked out.