ACT I

Penny opened her eyes to a blurred field of vision with large red blob in the center. Eventually everything came into focus, and she saw that leaning over her was a man in a red science coat with goggles resting on his forehead.

"Where -?" she started

"Don't try to sit up," said the man. She felt pressure on her shoulder as he laid a hand on her to hold her down. "You've been through a lot. Just rest."

She turned her head, trying to take in her soundings. There were tubes and wires everywhere, some of them hooked to machines, some of them hooked up to her. Vials bubbled with strange liquids. There was an IV in her arm filled with one of those liquids - light green in color. She was lying on a long metal table.

"What's the last thing you remember?" asked the man.

"I was …" She tried to focus, her mind foggy. She turned her head to look up at the figure leaning over her and realized she recognized him. But from where…?

"Dr. Horrible!" she cried. He'd been there at some function … some event … Captain Hammer had been there too, trying to stop him. She shook her head, unable to remember it all, but it didn't matter. She knew enough to know she was in danger. She tried to back away from him, off the table, but he held her down.

"It's okay!" he told her. "It's okay!"

She continued struggling. "You –! You –!" She didn't know what she was trying to accuse him of. She just wanted him to let her go.

"It's all right!" he insisted. "Just - look! Look!" He started disconnecting her from the machines. "I'm going to let go," he told her gently as he held her with one hand and flipped switches and pulled wires with the other. "You have to promise not to move until I've disconnected you from everything, okay? I don't want you to hurt yourself."

She nodded slowly. Why were there so many machines? What had he been doing to her? She wasn't sure she wanted to know.

He removed his hands from her, holding them in the air to show he meant her no harm. Then he turned off the last of the machines and removed the IV from her arm.

She backed away from him so quickly she knocked over some equipment, sending it crashing to the floor. The moment she stood, her head swam. She dropped to the floor and cowered against a cabinet, clutching her elbow where she had rammed the equipment. What would she do? Where would she go? If she couldn't stand … would she be trapped with him forever? What did he want with her?

"Penny." He knelt next to her. "It's okay." He reached toward her but she jerked back. "It's okay."

And then, as she looked up at him, into his face, she had the strangest feeling they had sat like this before – her on the ground, looking up at him as he knelt beside her… She realized that it had been at the opening of the new homeless shelter. Captain Hammer had been there. Dr. Horrible had appeared, and his death ray had exploded. She'd been hit by debris.

Penny felt her chest and her stomach, searching for wounds, but there were none, though she could feel rough scars underneath the hospital gown she wore.

"It's okay," said the man again. "You've been healed. You're all right."

She looked up into his face, remembering how she'd felt that day when she'd seen him leaning over her: relief and some happiness. But she hadn't seen Dr. Horrible then, she'd seen someone else. "B-Billy?" That couldn't be right. This man couldn't be both her friend Billy from the laundromat and Dr. Horrible. She was so confused. Why couldn't she make sense of things?

The man nodded at her and smiled. "It's all right," he said again. "Here." He pulled the goggles from his head, revealing his whole face. He was looking more and more like the guy she'd known. He held out his gloved hands to her. "It's all right." Tentatively, she put her hands in his. "Come on." He stood, gently pulling her up with him.

She looked around her. The cabinet she'd taken shelter against was the beginnings of a kitchen. But to the left of that was the strange gathering of vials and machines and the metal table. There were strange equations and sketches on a dry erase board on the far wall, none of which made any sense to her, though she caught her name written in the middle of one. Immediately to her left was a desk upon which sat a computer and a web cam. The desk was cluttered with papers and odd gadgets. Above it was a pin board covered in newspaper clippings.

"Where are we?" she asked.

"This?" he said. "This … is my home." He stepped to the wall, leaving her side for a moment to draw a curtain, hiding the vials and machines and dry erase board from view. He stepped back to her, took her arm, and turned her around. "See?"

She could view the kitchen more fully now, along with the small dining table within. There was a sliding glass door behind it that led out onto a balcony. To the right was a door, presumably leading to a bedroom. Continuing her gaze, she found the bathroom – its door being open. There was the living area with a loveseat and television. It was just a normal apartment.

But then… she turned to look at the man beside her. She couldn't reconcile the apartment with the science lab she knew hid behind the curtain any more than she could reconcile Billy the laundry buddy with Dr. Horrible.

"Oh!" he said, as though he had heard her thoughts. "Here." He shucked off the black rubber gloves on his hands. Then he unbuttoned the science coat and threw it off, revealing a t-shirt and jeans underneath. "There." He smiled.

Now, there could be no confusion. "Billy?"

"Yeah," he nodded, still smiling.

She threw her arms around him, surprising both of them by the gesture. It was so good to see him, even if she couldn't understand why. Something horrible had happened to her at the shelter opening … something she didn't understand. But she knew Billy was somehow tied up in it.

She pulled away from him. "What happened to me?"

His smile faded. "You-uh … you were …" He looked anywhere but at her face.

"Billy," she insisted.

He took a deep breath, then grimaced. "What do you remember?"

She pressed a hand to her head. It was hard to make sense of things.

"Maybe try talking it out," he suggested.

She took a deep breath and then turned from him to pace the room. He reached for her as though worried she wasn't ready for that much physical activity, but her legs didn't falter and her head didn't swim.

"I was at the opening for the homeless shelter," she told him. "Captain Hammer was making a speech." One that had offended her, she remembered. "Then Dr. Horrible appeared." She turned to look at him, her eyes going to the science coat on the floor. Dr. Horrible's outfit had been white, not red. But those goggles…

She shook her head and resumed pacing. She needed to remember. "He had a ray gun of some sort and he started firing it and singing –" Something about the song had unnerved her … something he had said, but she couldn't think of what. "He was going to kill Captain Hammer, but then Captain Hammer overpowered him and – and when he fired the gun, it…"

It had exploded, bits of it flying. She felt again for the wounds that weren't there. And then the image came to her again of Billy leaning over her… At least, she thought it had been Billy. Part of her was sure it had been, but her mind held the image of Dr. Horrible. Had Billy been beside her and then Dr. Horrible had pushed him out of the way?

She looked at Billy again and the coat on the floor. No, there was something else … something in the song Dr. Horrible had sung… He had said, "Billy Buddy," her nickname for him.

"You are Dr. Horrible?" she asked. The thought sounded crazy. But it was rattling in her head, and she needed to get it out. At most, she hoped he'd dismiss it. But the coat and the lab…

He didn't dismiss it. Instead he rocked on his feet and cleared his throat. "Is … is that what you remember?"

"I don't know what I remember!" she told him, putting her hands to her face. Nothing made sense. But then she thought of something. She lowered her hands and stepped forward, pushing aside Billy's arms as he had come to comfort her. She crossed the room to the desk where she gazed at the newspaper clippings above it.

At last she found what she was looking for – a clipping with an image of Dr. Horrible. He was wearing the white lab coat, the goggles, and Billy's face.

Somehow, having the clipping in her hands made it more real. This was a picture someone had taken. This was more certain than her confused mind that brought up foggy images she wasn't sure of.

"It is you," she told him, terrified for the first time since waking up on that table. "What do you want? What do you want with me?"

"Penny," he said, raising his hands, his palms open in peace. He took a step toward her.

"Leave me alone!" she shouted at him, throwing down the clipping. He continued advancing toward her, and she backed up into the wall against a dresser where she dropped to the floor and cowered beside it. "Leave me alone! What do you want with me?" Her thoughts turned to the lab, to those machines and vials, and tears formed in her eyes. "What did you do to me? What did you do?" She cried into her arms, blocking the image of him as he came closer.

She was trapped here, trapped forever, she was sure of it. He would keep her to use in his vile experiments. That must have been why he'd befriended her at the laundromat – he'd been looking for someone to lure in, someone he could take home and experiment on, someone no one would miss. She fit the profile perfectly … all except for Captain Hammer. But he hadn't come, he hadn't saved her. Maybe he didn't know where she was. Maybe Dr. Horrible had defeated him.

She rocked back and forth. She wouldn't stay here. She wouldn't be a lab rat. She'd fight him. She'd escape. But she knew that was just wishful thinking. What could she do against a super villain? He'd have his way with her, and when she was no longer useful, he'd kill her. She'd seen the cruelty of the world, and that was how it worked. She couldn't fight against it on her own. No one could.

Eventually, she felt a tapping on her arm and she looked up to see, not a weapon he would use to kill her or a needle to sedate her, but a box of tissues.

She took it, surprised, unsure whether or not to say thank you. She dabbed at her eyes and blew her nose while Billy – Dr. Horrible – whoever the hell he was – well, he looked like Billy at the moment in those clothes – sat in the chair at his desk. He swiveled it to face her. He had a collection of newspaper clippings in his hands. "You okay?"

She didn't know what to tell him. Of course she wasn't okay. She'd just realized her best friend was a super villain. Yet, he hadn't tied her to the table, and he hadn't tried to kill her or knock her out. So she supposed, for the moment, she was fine. She gave a nod of her head.

"Good." He gave a sigh, then swung his chair a little. "You should … you should read these." He handed her the first of the clippings in his hands.

It was titled "Country Mourns Whats-Her-Name" and had a picture of her face. The article went on to talk about her work at the shelter, her relationship with Captain Hammer, and the night she had died.

She looked at him. "The whole country thinks I'm dead?" she asked him. "What, you –? You took my body away, and healed me in secret, and now everyone thinks I'm dead?"

Billy shook his head and handed her the second article. It was her obituary with the date and location of her open-casket viewing and burial.

"I don't understand," she told him.

"You were dead," he said. "You died." He stood from the chair and handed her the rest of the articles.

She shuffled through them. There were ones on Dr. Horrible joining the Evil League of Evil, on the ELE's attempts to take over the city, on Captain Hammer's mysterious disappearance. The articles were dated weeks, even months, after her supposed "death."

How could she possibly have died? She was alive now, wasn't she? Dead people didn't just come back to life. The image of the machines and the vials nagged at her.

"The night you died," said Billy, taking up the area where she had paced and doing the same. "I got everything I ever wanted, but in doing so … I lost the thing I care about most." He paused and looked at her. There was such sadness in his eyes.

He resumed pacing again. "I couldn't eat. I couldn't sleep. I went through each day like I was dreaming through it." He waved at the clippings in her hands. "You saw the headlines. No one cared what happened to you. They didn't even know your name. I … I couldn't let them burry you like that, around people who didn't care. So, I switch your body with a dummy. And I brought you back here."

He paced a few turns before speaking again. "I didn't really have a plan. I thought maybe I'd give you a proper send off. Say some nice words and then burry you myself. I told myself I needed time to find the right thing to say, so I hooked you up to those machines, closed your wounds, kept your blood flowing, your organs going. And then it just … it became something else."

He paused, then sighed. He stepped into the next room, the wall blocking him from her vision. Then he returned with a rolled newspaper in his hand. "That's today's," he said, handing it to her.

She dropped the clippings, then removed the rubber band from the paper and unrolled it. The date on it was two years and three months after her death.

Two years …

Could it be possible? Could she have been dead all that time? It didn't make sense. How could he have possibly brought her back to life? No, it was more likely she'd been sedated all that time, forced to sleep for forever… wasn't it? But then, what motivation would he have to do such a thing? Why make up a story about bringing her back from the dead if it wasn't true? Was it some ploy to keep her cooperative? Did he think she'd be more willing to his experiments if she thought they would be done to keep her alive? ... It seemed too convoluted a plot. Yet, the alternative...

She looked up at him as he sat back down in the desk chair. "I didn't plan on trying to … bring you back. I'd made progress toward it before I realized I'd made the decision." He let out a breath of laughter and smiled. "It is so good to see you again."

She stared at him. So he'd befriended her because he'd actually liked her? And then, once she'd died... All of this sounded too crazy to believe. She could not have been brought back from the dead. It wasn't medically possible. But before she could express her doubts, his phone rang with a catchy little jingle.

Billy stood quickly and answered it, striding to the other side of the apartment so she could overhear the voice on the other end of the line. "This is he," said Billy. "Yes… Yes, but I… I understand… Yes. I'll be right there." He ended the call.

He stepped to the lab coat he had left on the floor and picked it up, along with his gloves and goggles. He started putting the outfit on over his normal clothes.

"Billy –" she started, unsure of what she meant to say.

"I'll be back," he said, pulling his arm through a sleeve of the coat. "I've got to do something first." He pulled on a glove and started for the door.

Penny pushed herself up from the floor and headed after him. "Are you going to hurt someone?"

He paused at the door, and looked back at her. "I'll be back," he said again. "Just … just wait here. I have to go." He adjusted the goggles on his head with one hand, then pulled the door open and stepped outside.

The door closed behind him, leaving her alone in nothing but a hospital gown, in the strange apartment of a man she barely knew, and in a city that had forgotten her existence over two years ago.