Roxanne has an understanding with Megamind.

It's not something they talk about.

She does her part; he does his. It's all little things. The kinds of things that can blend into a routine, the kind of thing nobody would find remarkable enough to comment on. She has a routine. She goes to work; she comes home. Gets kidnapped, at least a few times a month.

She keeps a half-brick in her purse, but she doesn't swing it at Megamind or Minion. Anymore.

She attends a certain number of stiff, high-class social events as Metro Man's plus-one. She never wears shoes that fall off easily; she's learned her lesson from that one time with the alligators. She always wears pants on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

They have a system, and it seems to be working fairly well so far. Really, there's not much to discuss. Why bring it up at all, unless something goes wrong, or unless there's a new way to improve it?

So. They don't talk about it.

There's a lot of things that Roxanne Ritchi does not talk about.

When she's waiting in line at the grocery store and sees some tabloid-headlines about the recent kidnapping of the Mayor's daughter in NYC, for example, she knows she'll probably never get the chance to vent about it to anyone. It's not like she had a huge pack of friends to gossip with, and anyway, why should anyone care what she thinks about a 21-year-old college student being thrust into the public eye, with magazines promising lurid details and Pictures Inside in between the latest update on drunken pop-stars and movie-star divorces?

It's not like her opinion matters to anyone.

Roxanne shook her head at the tabloids as she considered the relevant details of the case. Stacy Madison, a student at Columbia University, was the daughter of Mayor Madison of New York City. She'd been held hostage by Puzzler, and Princess Amazon had saved her from being dropped off the side of a skyscraper.

Unfortunately, while Stacy Madison was being dangled off the side of the building, the wind flipped her skirt up.

Worse yet: there were pictures.

It was the sort of thing that gave journalism a bad name. A whole world out there, full of crime, corruption, natural disasters, and even people trying to improve things…. And yet, some people still decided to publish damaging, exploitative reports about a young woman's displaced skirts. Because apparently, the public thought it had a right to know whether there was lace, or cotton.

The line moved forward. Roxanne exchanged the necessary pleasantries with the clerk as she paid for her gallon of milk and took her receipt. It was neither the time nor the place to speak her mind, and so she kept her thoughts and her rage behind her teeth, smiling politely.

Who exactly was she supposed to talk to about this kind of stuff, anyway? Metro Man had too much on his plate as it was without worrying about villains and damsels outside his jurisdiction. Coworkers? No way in hell was she discussing potentially sensitive subject matter with her fellow nosy reporters.

She wasn't stupid.

She headed out the automatic doors, into the parking lot. The evening sun made her shadow stretch long.

Yes, she had her secrets, but wouldn't it be nice to have someone in her life she could trust enough to tell?

It was so hard to balance a social life with a career these days. So hard to find friends; harder still to keep them. Everyone in her circle was too emotionally disconnected to confide in, or too geographically distant to understand certain issues unique to Metro City.

No wonder she didn't talk about things.

She found her car, unlocked the door, and slung her purse and grocery-bag into the passenger-seat. Some would probably say that she should talk to Wayne about this stuff. She had enough blackmail material on him to afford opening up a little.

In theory.

She slid into the driver's seat and slammed the door behind her.

The reality was that, as an invulnerable superhero, Wayne often swung between relying on majority consensus to assess danger, and moving through the world like he'd never heard of consequences. If she tried to explain the… professional courtesy that Megamind granted her, Wayne would either tell her she was crazy to trust a Supervillain, or start treating it like a game.

Newsflash: courteous or not, mutual respect or no, the "game" would never be fair, because Megamind wasn't invulnerable!

She locked the door and buckled her seat-belt.

Courtesy went both ways. Metro Man didn't need to know.

Roxanne started the car, and left the parking lot, taking a conscious moment to admire the city at sunset as she went. There were mental-wellness articles saying that it was important to breathe deeply and be mindful of the beauty around you, especially on bad days.

Slanting shafts of light painted the city in shades of orange and gold. The sun was behind her, so she could enjoy the effects without squinting against the brightness. Glass walls and sidewalk puddles reflected molten gold by the evening light….

Dark shadows stretched out before her, contrast to and result of the sunset's blaze of glory.

Roxanne kept her eyes on the road as the late rush hour traffic finally started moving fast enough to make her focus on driving, instead of appreciating the moment. Maybe those wellness articles were onto something, there. She was feeling much calmer.

She turned on the radio.

*kzzch*-after her revealing involvement in the Puzzler's latest battle of wits against Princess Amazon, some people are wondering if the Madison family really holds to Mayor Madison's "Family Values" platform. With pictures of Miss Stacy Madison showing off that scrap of black lace at the skyscraper, I can't blame the-*ktch*

Radio off.

Aaaaand, there's another red light.

Wonderful.

She just felt like she should be more jaded about it all by now. Jaded about the traffic, which happened every day, and jaded about the media-storms, which happened every time.

Every. Single. Time.

It'd been the same way when that actress, Gwendolynne Giles, had that unfortunate encounter with Dr. Despair's piranha tank. White fabric is transparent when wet. Captain Justice had been able to save her from the blood-thirsty fish, but not from the equally bloodthirsty paparazzi.

The light turned green, and Roxanne faced forwards. There were reasons for the mutually beneficial agreement she had with Megamind. They weren't doing anything wrong. It was all little things. Preventative measures.

She wore pants on Tuesdays and Thursdays; he guaranteed that hostage set-ups in which pants might be necessary only occured on those days. When conditions were cold and/or wet, Roxanne's restraints always covered her entire torso, collar-bone down: data showed that the viewing public tended to be easily distracted by certain things, and Megamind hated to cede the spotlight. A half-dozen other, similar policies prevented wardrobe malfunctions of an embarrassing nature. Because the data clearly showed that such policies were very, very necessary.

It was a matter of practicality.

For Roxanne, a wardrobe malfunction during a kidnapping could deal substantial damage to her reputation, her career, and her life in general. She could lose her job. As a female public figure, she knew that an army of creeps, weirdos, and wannabe stalkers coming out of the woodwork and trying to contact her was less a possibility than it was a certainty.

From that perspective, arranging things with Megamind was for safety reasons. Arguably, Roxanne was getting the better end of the deal by a long shot.

Of course, Megamind always did enjoy an argument.

For Megamind, that sort of incident could lead to being snapped in half (literally or metaphorically) before you could say "This isn't what it looks like!"

Better all around to just avoid the situation in the first place..

It wasn't worth mentioning. To anyone.

The fact that Megamind had- on eight separate occasions- turned off the cameras and immediately lent her his own cape when things went wrong? That wasn't worth mentioning, either.

Roxanne never breathed a word to anyone about the fact that she still had one of Megamind's capes hidden away in her apartment.

Red light.

There were a lot of things that Roxanne Ritchi didn't talk about.

The understanding she shared with Megamind was one of them.