A/N: This is by far the strangest pairing I have ever shipped. Blame it all on Guille van Cartier's wonderful work on deviantART. This chapter is dedicated to Kia, my honorary muse.

She'd known he was alive

Her family didn't think so, or at least that's what they claimed. There had been an explosion, after all, and so what if they hadn't found a trace of his remains in the wreckage? It wasn't too much of a stretch to guess that his body—what was left of it, anyway—had been incinerated. So her family was content to believe he was dead and gone and done playing games with their lives.

Violet, though—she wondered. Of course she didn't voice her suspicions aloud; on top of being a quiet girl, she knew they would dismiss her concerns. And really, what did it matter as long as he didn't bother them? But Violet was a smart girl, and the more she thought about it the less sense it made for him to have died. He was a villain that prided himself on brain power; surely he could have found a way to slip away unscathed and unnoticed, staging his death to plot his revenge unmolested. And she had listened to her parents' and Lucius' stories of the old days, and knew that defeated foes had a nasty tendency of proving impervious to certain-death situations.

Some days she even admitted that she didn't want to accept a role in a man's death, no matter how slight a role or how evil a man.

So Violet had never really abandoned her conviction that he was alive.

And if he was alive, he would have been a complete imbecile not to know that she was alive.

Even so, both of them were rather surprised to see each other.

It had been a few years since—well, since everything. 18 years old, Vi had jumped at the opportunity to go to college and get a break from her beloved, if sometimes smothering, family. Helen had understood her need for independence, and when Violet confessed the location of her dream college had convinced a reluctant Bob that a few hundred miles' distance would be good for their daughter. So Violet went off to school, and learned things, and met new people, and fought crime on the side (when she didn't have too much homework, that is).

Crime fighting had nothing to do with what she was doing now, though. What she was doing now was walking to lunch after class with a few friends. It was perfectly normal. She'd done it dozens of times before. It was even normal for her to glance at the engineering building as they passed by it.

What was not normal was, instead of skimming over some hum-drum old professor or party-hardy student, her eyes locked on a thickly built man with a strong jaw, blazing hair, and piercing blue eyes who was striding through the doors.

Her double-take was a matter of disbelief, not a problem of recognition. Even without the mask and costume there was no mistaking him, just as she knew beyond a doubt that he recognized her. Although that last might have had something to do with how his eyes widened and his mouth gaped a little as they stared at one another. She supposed her expression must be much the same.

She snapped out of it as her friends began calling her to hurry up. Both of them had frozen in place upon discovery: her on the sidewalk, him on the flight of steps leading down from the doors. Now she turned to catch up with her friends, glancing back just once, uneasily, to make sure she hadn't imagined the whole thing.

X X X

She was distracted for the next few days. She tried to concentrate in class, but somehow the sudden reappearance of a psychopath that had tried to kill her family seemed a bit more important than a lecture on linear algebra.

There was a knot of tension in her stomach that made eating difficult. Why was he here? It had to be more than a coincidence. He must be planning something, trying to pick her off while she was separated from the rest of her family, or to use her as leverage against her father. The thought of being shadowed by him, her first experience with a villain, filled her with fear at the same time it filled her with indignant anger that he thought she would be an easy target.

But then there was that part of her, the part that had known he was alive, that questioned her assumption. If he had been tracking her, why had he seemed so stunned to see her?

Either way, the next time she was ready for him.

Again she was out with her friends, this time spending an afternoon chatting in a coffee shop. She'd just glanced up from her conversation and there he was, sitting solitarily a few tables away…watching her. As she made eye contact with him, he raised a challenging eyebrow, smirked—and stood up.

Violet was suddenly filled with panic. He wouldn't really approach her in public like this, would he? While she was with her friends? Did he even know her real name?

Thinking quickly, she stood up, hoping that maybe she could lead him away from her friends, maybe keep them out of danger if she moved fast enough.

No such luck.

"Hey Vi, what's up with you?" one girl, short and redheaded, demanded in protest to her friend's abrupt movement.

"I, uh… I have to…"

And Violet hesitated, scrambling to think of an excuse, and then it was too late.

"Not leaving already are you, Miss Parr?"

He looked almost normal, she noted, wearing a plain black t-shirt and jeans. Except there was still a trace of that maniacal, cocky glint in his eyes, eager to see how she would react to him.

Obviously she couldn't play to his expectations.

"Nice haircut," she countered, and was not disappointed when he frowned at her unfazed drawl.

He'd opened his mouth, presumably to issue a comeback (or a defense of his shorter, semi-ordinary hair) when her companions recovered from the surprise of being approached by this older, boyishly attractive man.

"Aren't you gonna introduce us, Vi?" one asked, a demand that was soon taken up by the other two.

Violet winced at the thought of him knowing who they all were, and his smirk returned in full force. The worst part was that she didn't really even have a choice.

With a sigh, she turned to the group. "Lydia, Dana, Kitty, this is…er, Buddy. He's, um…he's an old family friend," she lied pointedly, fixing him with a glare that said he'd better go along with it if he knew what was good for him. He, however, seemed delighted at her little fib.

"Oh, yeah, her dad and I go way back," he agreed with a sinister, ironic smile. "Tell me, how is Mr. Inc—"

"Hey, Buddy," Violet interrupted loudly before he could let the name slip. Speaking quickly, a fake smile plastered across her face, she grabbed his arm and started tugging him towards the exit, for the moment heedless of exactly who she was towing. "Why don't you and I go catch up over dinner? Sorry to ditch you guys, but I haven't seen Buddy in ages and I'd really like to hear what's going on with him, so I'll see you tomorrow, okay?"

Bewildered, the three girls could only stare in their wake.

X X X

Although it was only early spring, the late afternoon sunshine was still blinding. Violet suspected that it was mocking her.

It did, however, seem to match Buddy's—Syndrome's—mood rather well.

"Oh man, did I hear you right?" he inquired with a thrilled grin, voice full of barely restrained laughter. "Invisigirl is taking me to dinner? I mean, talk about unexpected!"

Violet rolled her eyes at his (hopefully) deliberate misinterpretation. She began to walk and wasn't sure whether to be glad that he followed. "My name's Violet," she informed him flatly. "Some of us have secret identities to protect, you know."

"Hey, fine, I get it," he replied, holding his hands up defensively. "No supers here." She glanced at him sharply at that, knowing better than to just take his words at face value, Meeting his suspiciously bland gaze, she finally gave a mental shrug and turned her attention back to walking.

Now the sick feeling that had been plaguing her for the past week returned. This was crazy. She couldn't trust him. Her father would have a heart attack if he ever found out she had done this. How did she know that he didn't have fifteen henchmen lurking in some alley, ready to kidnap her? How did she know that he wouldn't slip something in her soda while she wasn't looking? She didn't, and she wasn't sure that she could handle him if he chose to turn aggressive.

Finally, after two excruciating blocks, Violet was pulling open the door to the cheapest burger place on campus. She could sense his amusement as he glanced around the restaurant, assessing it. She ignored this while she placed her order, and didn't wait for him as she took her food to a table in the very center of the restaurant.

"Now this is what I call romantic," he proclaimed sardonically as he sat down across from her and picked up his burger.

"Uh huh," she returned, equally sarcastic, "because I always make sure to have candle-lit dinners with the men that try to kill my family."

"You just had to go and bring that up, didn't you?" he asked, sobering slightly. "Really, though, I'm surprised you haven't called in dear old dad yet. What, you think that since you haven't heard from me for three years I'm not a threat anymore? Think it's nice and safe for you to sit back and scarf down fries? Well, you can dream on, sister, cause—"

"Please," Violet interrupted, swallowing a bite of cheeseburger. "I just didn't want you announcing my dad's secret to the whole coffee shop." It was a partial truth; she also didn't want him anywhere near her friends, but she knew better than to let him know that. It was something he could use against her far too easily. "Besides, if you were really going to do something to me, you've known I was here for a week already. I figure I'm about as safe here as I am anywhere on campus."

Syndrome—Buddy—she wasn't sure what to call him—avoided answering immediately by way of having his mouth full, but still gave her a measuring, very unnerving stare.

"So," he began slowly, "Violet's here without the rest of her super-dee-duper family, is she?" The predatory look on his face made her lean back in her chair instinctively. "And the since the rest of your family is not here, that means that I'm not the only one who hasn't done anything yet."

Violet shrugged. "You looked so normal, I had to make sure it was really you first." She ignored his now disgruntled expression and brandished a french fry at him. "You are supposed to be dead, you know."

"Now we're getting somewhere," he declared, sitting back smugly. "You want to know how I survived, don't you?"

"Well, since you obviously want to tell me…" the young super drawled, raising a pointed eyebrow. He, predictably, chose to ignore her sarcasm.

"Zero point energy can be very useful, you know," he began. "I couldn't stop the explosion, of course, once my cape got caught in the turbine, but hey, nothing's perfect. And thanks to that lovely explosion, I was in no shape to escape the authorities, and there was no way your darling father would let it go if he thought I was alive, so I figured, hey, why not let them think I'm still dead? Only problem is, dead people can't access bank accounts, and being a full-time villain costs boku bucks. So here I am, stuck lying low directing university research projects of all inane things until I have enough resources to stop worrying about what happens when the government realizes I'm still around. Man, have the great fallen… And you, little girl, are not going to tell anyone about any of this, by the way."

"Oh really?" Violet asked, leaning back and crossing her arms over her chest.

"Yes, really," Syndrome informed her, leaning forward in a mirror of her motion. "Because I happen to know that you don't want Dana, Lydia, or Kitty to have any…unfortunate accidents anytime soon."

Their gazes locked for a few tense seconds in which Violet had no witty comebacks, and he was too busy being intimidating to say anything. Then, of course, the mood was broken as he reclined once again and nonchalantly crumpled the wrapper to his burger into a ball (an absurd part of her mind wondered when he'd had time to finish his burger what with all that monologuing).

"As enlightening as this little tête-à-tête has been," he concluded, standing up, "I really do have better things to do than sit around chatting. So if you'll excuse me?" He gave her a mocking half-bow, and then he was gone.

Violet let out a deep breath, blowing an errant lock of hair away from her eyes. Well, she was still alive, at least. For now.

One thing was for sure. She would be keeping a very careful eye on the engineering building for a while.