Author's Note: This story takes place during the early part of the epilogue to Getting Away From It All. It won't be as long a story (my Muse keeps telling me that, and I'm trusting her to be honest). Part of its purpose is to set up what will be a more serious (and probably longer) story to follow, tentatively titled "Legacy." As I'm still working on getting my arm better (yes, it is improving) and putting together the ebook verision of GAFIT, this story may be updated a bit erratically, so please bear with me.

A last note that is something of a caution: I readily admit that the subject discussed during the drive home is something that is extremely significant to me, as it's something I've had to deal with in my own life. It addresses a prejudice I hadn't realized even existed until after I myself was married and had to face it, year after year. I fear that this is going to be an unpopular development with many readers, who have their own views and their own beliefs as to how life - for both themselves and characters they love - should go. Look at this, if you will, as another possibility. There will be other events, choices, and possible paths to come in my personal vision of these characters' lives that may surprise you, if not in this story, then in the next. And with all that said, I hope you enjoy it!

Even in slight things the experience of the new
is rarely without some stirring of foreboding.

Eric Hoffer

Chapter One

"Well, do you suppose anyone missed us?" Megamind asked distractedly as he turned Roxanne's currently invisible Corvette onto the last maze of roads that would bring them to the hopefully still secret Lair — to home. After being gone from it for a full month — a very full month, as it had included not only long days of relaxing and restoring vacation, but dealings with a criminal madman, and, most important of all, both their engagement and their wedding — the place had a more distinct and special feel of home to it, the place they would return to at the end of the day, the place they would share and where they would build a life together, as a family. Whether that family would ever include more than themselves and Minion was not important; what was important was that they were a family, both emotionally and legally. There was a nice sense of solidity to that awareness, and even without discussing it, they knew they were in full agreement.

It was now the evening of the day before Labor Day, which as always fell on the first Monday of September. Late last night, Wayne had brought home Minion and their extraneous luggage, along with the rented SUV and the two brainbots that had stayed with them at the lake house in Sister Bay after the wedding. Afterward, he had picked up the newlyweds along with Roxanne's Corvette, and under cover of darkness had taken them to his mother's summer home in Traverse Bay, so that they could drive themselves home at a decent hour today. Lady Scott had left for her mansion in Metro City several days before, and she'd been surprisingly amenable to the notion of letting them use the place for the one night. They were Wayne's friends, after all, and the new owners of the house she'd been planning to sell across the lake in Wisconsin. To have the whole deal done and settled without any fuss on her part was enough to endear anyone to her.

Privately, both Megamind and Roxanne wondered if Lady Scott wasn't getting more than a touch dotty in her old age. Or if Wayne just hadn't bothered to mention who his "friends" happened to be.

Either way was fine with them, since it saved them the need for either a very long drive home or getting up before the crack of dawn, for the sake of maintaining Wayne's cover. The drive from Traverse City to Metro City wasn't terribly long, less than two hours at worst, so they felt perfectly justified in taking their good natured time getting up in the morning, getting ready to leave, and finally making the actual drive.

Roxanne had taken the wheel when they left Lady Scott's rather tastelessly overdecorated "summer house" on Traverse Bay. After they passed Ludington — the very mention of which still gave Megamind nervous twitches — she turned the driving over to her new husband. They had agreed that it would be a good idea to go into Metro City a day earlier than planned and in stealth mode, to avoid any potential paparazzi who might have gotten wind of what had happened during their vacation and wanted to be the first to pounce upon the newlyweds, for good or ill.

On Friday night, during a routine check via their link with the security systems at home they had already been warned that the city's brainbot patrols had spotted camera crews and lurking freelancers on many of the streets leading to and from the peninsula on which the Lair was situated, waiting to catch any glimpse of the newlyweds returning home. The news had prompted Wayne's suggestion to drop them off a day early at his mother's place to the north, thus keeping the chance of anyone spotting him to the one trip with Minion and the extra gear. None of them wanted to give away for certain the location of the Lair, nor did they want to risk revealing the truth of Wayne's "condition" before he could do so in the planned interview with Roxanne. The newshounds lying in wait would be worst on the day they were supposed to be returning, so coming back early might at least minimize the risks. As Megamind had vastly more experience when it came to driving invisibly in potentially heavy traffic, they had decided he should be the one to drive the last leg of their journey.

It turned out to be a wise precaution. Though none of the staked-out journalists and photographers had homed in on the exact location of the Lair, several would have spotted them well before they reached it, had they been visible. That would have necessitated either a mad dash to get to safety before they could be followed back to the Lair, or leading the would-be reporters on a chase until they were lost. Going invisibly was the most sensible idea all around, and it worked very well. When he'd modified the Corvette to give it a stealth mode, Megamind had gone all out, since it was his Roxanne who would be protected by it. To the invisibility he'd added the sound dampening systems he'd used for years in the Lair's music room to keep from annoying Minion (and to hide some of his embarrassing novice efforts at various instruments that intrigued him). Together, the car ran almost totally silent and out of sight, and thus they rolled right past several groups staked out in the old industrial area, hoping to catch sight of them if they did indeed live in this part of town.

Roxanne watched the largest group thus far totally miss their passage as the ex-villain asked his question, and she smiled crookedly. "Oh, I'd say they missed us," she quipped, nodding toward the group now behind them. "In more ways than one. I have this awful feeling that going to work on Tuesday is not going to be easy — or fun."

Megamind grinned in a charmingly wicked way as he took the car on the most circuitous route possible rather than head straight for the Lair, just in case someone had managed to pick them up on infrared or some such. "What, you don't think that everyone at the station won't be absolutely thrilled to see you again?"

The blue eyes rolled most expressively. "I'm sure they will be — and they'll hound me to death for every little gory detail. The women will either want to know all about the wedding or they'll want to know if I was out of my mind, and the men will want to hear all about Mitchell and the shooting or they'll want to know if I was out of my mind. I know that gang like the back of my hand, and one way or another, it'll be miserable."

"Well, if it's any consolation, I don't think my day will be much better. I've got a meeting with the Mayor and the chiefs of emergency services on Tuesday afternoon, and I just know they're going to whine about not being consulted first."

Now, Roxanne gave him a strange look somewhere in the no man's land between skepticism and disgust. "About us getting married? Why should they whine about that? It's none of their business!"

She was working up to a rant worthy of the former Evil Overlord himself; he smiled and patted her knee consolingly. "It isn't," he agreed, "not any more than it's your boss's business, but you want to bet he'll ask why you didn't talk it over with him first, so he could work out all the exclusive media coverage and break the news even before there were any rumors flying around?"

The reporter harrumphed. "No bet, I know he will, that's one of the things I'm dreading. Tomorrow, we're going to sit down and pick exactly which pictures and footage the station will get, decide if KMCP will get an interview with us, when it will be, and who will handle it, and come up with a statement for the rest of the press. But why should the Mayor or the Chief of Police think you should've consulted them first?"

Now, the blue hero sighed. "Because they think they own me. And in a sense, they do. I'm still not an entirely free man. I have some pardons, but not all, and I have all the luggage from my past still there. I'm the only Defender they've got, and because I have a rotten past and I don't have Wayne's superpowers, they think they can control me in ways they never dared with him. Getting married is something they might see as a threat to that control. What if one day we decide we want to have a family, and I choose to hang up the cape and quit the hero biz for good?"

Roxanne couldn't stop the snort of laughter that escaped her. "I can't quite picture that, you settling down to become a regular family man. For that matter, I can't quite picture it for myself, either. I know we haven't really talked about it, but even if it's possible, I don't know that having children is something I want. I enjoy my career, and with the kind of parenting role models I've had, I think I'd be a lousy mother. I'd be so terrified of making the mistakes my parents did, I'd go overboard in the opposite direction and probably wind up making a whole new set of horrible mistakes. And even if that didn't happen... I like kids, but I've never really felt my biological clock ticking that way. I think I'd rather be an 'aunt' to other people's children than a mother to my own."

To her surprise, Megamind nodded without hesitation. "Same here. I've thought about the possibilities, and while genetically speaking it is possible, I just don't think I'm cut out to be a father. You had divorced parents, I had no parents, and the thought of making mistakes that could ruin the life of my own child...!" He shook his head. "I don't want to risk it. I would if you wanted a family, but I'd never be able to get rid of the worries."

Roxanne considered her new husband curiously. "You mean you don't feel some biological imperative to carry on your race?"

It was his turn to snort. "Oh, right, like that could ever happen! No matter what, any kids we might have would be half-bloods, and with only Earth humans as potential mates, every subsequent generation would have less and less of my race in 'em. Even if my racial traits were dominant, it would still wind up as a token gesture in the long run. And that possibility scares me even more. Being the father of a small group of people who would always be in a tiny minority and would always be obviously different from just about everyone else on the planet?" His shudder was eloquent. "It wouldn't be perpetuating my people; it would be creating targets for prejudice. I couldn't do it, I just...couldn't." His green eyes flicked to his wife, desperate for her to understand his feelings on this subject they hadn't ever broached so deeply.

To his relief, she didn't appear disappointed. "I have to admit, I'd never thought of it from that angle," she said after taking a few moments to digest what he'd said. "You're right, though. I'd like to think that humanity as a whole has grown up enough to accept people of different races unconditionally, but it's not even true with the races that are native to Earth. It isn't just exceptional nut cases who have trouble accepting you because you're so different. I've even talked to people who like you who figure that because you're one of a kind, when you're gone, you'll be an interesting footnote in the history of the planet, and that will be the end of the story. I've always had the feeling that for some of 'em, they wouldn't be so accepting if they thought you might have children like you. That's an awful burden to place on any child, knowing that they would be singled out and treated differently just because they exist."

"Exactly. Oh, if you wanted a family, I'd try to find some way to make it work, some way for all of us to be happy, but the more I've thought about it, the more I've started to realize that sometimes, the difficult choice is the right one. It would be easy to say screw the world, we're going to do what we want, but we're not talking about just us. A child isn't a thing you make and own; you have to consider the consequences of bringing a new life into the world. And I'm just not strong enough to inflict those consequences on someone because I might want the selfish pleasure of creating a child with you. It would be easy to choose to be selfish, especially if it's something that would make you happy. But..."

Now, Roxanne reached over to touch him, soothingly. "It's all right, sweetie, I understand. You know, we live in a baby crazy country. People forget that not having children is a perfectly acceptable choice, and that for some couples, it's the best choice, the right choice. Unless part of what you want from life has always included children and the job of caring for them, having them just because other people say you should is wrong, just as wrong as expecting your children to fulfill your hopes and dreams."

Her chuckle was soft and rueful. "You never met my parents — frankly, I kinda hope you never do. My mother leaned on me to follow her into the nursing profession, but she really wanted me to become a doctor, because she couldn't make the cut in medical school. My father wanted me to be a good little housewife and mother to a dozen sons because that's what he wanted from his wife and didn't get. I was an only child because when I was just a baby, both he and I caught the mumps, and after that, he was sterile. They tried to make me be everything they didn't get out of life. That's an awful thing to lay on any kid."

Megamind saw her point. "Yes, at least my parents just gave me a chance to live. Being an orphan was better than being a pawn." He hesitated, slowing the car as they finally approached the old abandoned power plant that housed the Lair. "So are you saying you don't want to have a family?"

"I already have a family, Mykaal: you and Minion, and our friends. But family as in kids of our own?" Roxanne considered her answer carefully. "I think what I'm saying is that I don't want to rush into anything until we've both considered it very thoroughly. If I had to choose right now, I think I'd say no, I don't want to have a family. I like my career, I like where it's going, I like where it could go. I also like where things are going for you, and for both of us together. If children never entered the picture, I'd be okay with it — relieved, actually. Because I'm just as afraid as you are of making mistakes that can't be unmade. I'd rather choose not to have kids now than jump into it and find out it was the wrong choice after it's too late. Besides, if we do decide we might want to, we could always try fostering children first to see how we handle having them in our lives. That's a big part of the whole question, whether or not we can make being who we are and what we want to be mesh with the needs of children who would be our responsibility."

"That's true. I suppose we're rushing things as it is, even thinking about this now. We haven't even been married for two weeks!"

She agreed. "It may not be possible, anyway," she pointed out. "We've been intimate for over a year, we've never bothered with precautions and contraceptives, and so far, nothing, not even one late period. I know that the sterility thing with the mumps only affects men, but it's possible I have fertility issues of my own. It did run on my mother's side of the family."

Her husband made an odd sound as they passed through the disguised door to the Lair's garage. "I suppose, but there may be other inhibiting factors."

She arched one eyebrow. "Oh? Like what?"

"Like I could be infertile, or... I'm not actually sure about it, yet, I've been looking into it for a while, but I haven't quite finished the research. Too much work, too little time. I'd rather know for sure before I say anything more. Is that okay?"

The reporter considered it. "As long as you're not trying to hide something important from me — like you're dying or have some awful disease — yeah, it's fine."

"No, it's nothing like that!" the ex-villain hastened to assure her. "It's just... potentially embarrassing."

"For you or me?"

He flushed. "Mostly for me, I think. More 'I've been a juvenile for way too many years' stuff."

Roxanne laughed, but kindly. "You know that really doesn't make any difference to me. Just as long as you never lose your joie de vivre — joy in life, the excitement of living," she translated when he gave her the strangest look, as if she'd been making up words just to tease him. "Some people call it the sense of wonder, the inner child. Just never lose that part of you, and I'm good, even if you need a hundred years to finish 'growing up.' It'll keep both of us young."

"It's a promise," he answered with an abashed smile, then sighed as he put the car in park and turned off the engine. "Well, we're back. Let's see how much things changed while we were away."

From the windows of Roxanne's now visible car, nothing seemed at all out of the ordinary. As they opened the doors and stepped out, all was as it had been for years. The same old garage, the same old work areas, piles of stuff to be used as raw materials in Megamind's various inventions, shelves full of boxes full of the same, tools of all kinds, the big curtain that separated the blue hero's thinking area from the rest of the work space, the same old grungy windows, kept grungy to discourage the curious, a herd of several hundred brainbots headed straight for them, the heaps of—

"BowgbowgBOWGBOWGBOWGBOWGBOWGBOWG!"

"BowgBOWGbowgbowg?"

"BOWGBOWGBOWG narfbowg BOWGBOWG zort BOWGBOWGBOWG!"

"AAAAGGGGGGGHHHHH!"

Both Megamind and Roxanne had experienced the dubious pleasure of enthusiastic brainbot welcomes on a fairly regular basis, but never had they been pounced on by quite so many all at once, all seemingly bent on being the one to greet them most energetically. With Pinky, Blinkie, and the bots who had been brought up to Sister Bay to help with both the wedding and its preparations in the fore, it didn't take a supergenius to understand what had them so excited: after too many years of denial, evasion, and avoidance of the truth, Daddy had finally given them a real Mommy.

It was difficult to tell just which of them was their primary target for a lot of puppy-like happy dance celebratory behavior; the bots were just as thrilled to have both of them back home again after such a long time away. Some were so carried away with excitement, they latched onto their ersatz "parents" as they might to rescue a citizen in danger, pulling them off their feet and up into the "protective" cloud of happy brainbot "children."

"No, let go!" Megamind protested when he felt himself hauled off his feet, then let loose a horrified bellow when the bots obeyed, coming within inches of hitting the concrete floor rather painfully before other bots grabbed hold of him to prevent it.

Amid the various happy noises now augmented with scolding bowgs as the bots who'd almost let Daddy get hurt were chewed out, he heard Roxanne's laughter. "You might as well let them get it out of their systems, hon," she suggested, though there was a tiny edge of hysteria to her amused tone when the bots almost dropped her as well.

The ex-villain hardly saw the wisdom of that idea. "But Roxanne, they could — aAAaaaaAAAaaGgh!" His shrill multi-octave spanning howl was prompted by the overeager yapping of one of the toothier bots accidentally nipping him in the butt.

Amid the clamor of bowging and the bouncing and whirling and bumping and jumping of the glowing little robot bodies, the sound of heavier footsteps were almost but not quite lost, followed by a firm command of, "Stop that right now! I mean it! Put them down — gently! — or every last one of you will be shut down for permanent overhaul!"

Minion's strident yell had a more authoritative effect on the misbehaving brainbots, since he hadn't been gone for a whole month and they weren't all excited and happy to see him again, with their new Mommy. He was still using his human-like backup cybersuit, and its intentional similarity to the retired Metro Man no doubt had some additional effect on them, at least in terms of physique.

A few of the brainbots still tended to snap and snarl at Wayne, but many had come to accept him as a new friend of Daddy and Minion, while even more were intimidated by memories of the days when the arrival of Metro Man on the scene meant a lot of hurt for poor bots was coming. Minion was careful to choose clothing that wouldn't stir up those memories when using this robotic body, but some of the brainbots had long memories and a lot of remembered fear. Those in this group that did went scuttling off at once, some backed off quickly, like errant puppies with their tails between their legs, and the rest had enough sense to make sure Daddy and Mommy were set back on their feet safely, some even going so far as to make small apologetic whimpering sounds.

Minion came striding up, a contrite look on his own fishy face. "I'm sorry, sir, Mrs. Roxanne, I was upstairs and couldn't move fast enough to stop them when the security system pinged your arrival. I thought some of 'em might pull something like this, I should've kept a closer eye out..."

"It's okay, Minion," Roxanne assured him as she straightened her disheveled clothes. "They were just excited, and there's no harm done."

"Speak for yourself," Megamind grumbled, rubbing his butt where the careless bot had bitten him. "When I find out which one did this..." Both his tone and expression promised dire consequences for the culprit.

His new wife smirked as she gently patted his abused behind. "Don't make such a fuss, sweetie, I'll check later to make sure there's no permanent damage."

Her promise brought a happy smile to his face and encouraged him to let go of his complaints at once. "Hmm, well, I suppose it was just an accident, but it couldn't hurt to have you check a little more closely, just to be sure there's no serious damage."

"Oh, I can help with that, sir," Minion began in his usual obliging manner as he went about collecting the small pieces of luggage from the Corvette, only to choke to a halt at the green-eyed glare that threatened to send the water in his habitat to a full boil in two seconds flat. He coughed, fins flittering in a piscine version of a blush. "Or... maybe not. Sorry, sir, I forgot you're still sort of on your honeymoon. Are you sure you didn't want to stay at the lake house for another week or two? Or go somewhere more traditionally romantic, the Caribbean or Europe...?"

Megamind's answer was a succinct, "Pfffft," accompanied by a wave of one hand. "Over-priced, overrated, and still out of the question for me without a passport. No, no, we've discussed it already, and we'll take some time next month, when half of Metrocity isn't chumping on the beet for us to return on shedual."

"It's 'champing at the bit,' hon," Roxanne corrected, smiling. "If I didn't know better, Minion, I'd think you weren't happy to see us home again."

The ichthyoid chuckled, just a bit nervously. "Oh, no, Mrs. Roxanne, it's not that at all. I just think it's a shame that you and Sir didn't get a proper honeymoon like you deserve, especially when the people you're delaying it for don't give half a real hoot about your happiness. When I got back yesterday, there were already messages from your boss and the Mayor and half the other city officials, reminding you of meetings and appointments and things like that for both of you. I wanted to call all of 'em and tell them that you were held up and won't be home for another week, just to pay them back for being so impatient and annoying."

"That's an excellent thought," the blue hero commended brightly, then sagged and sighed. "But I suspect there's nothing to be gained by putting it off. The longer they wait, the more ridiculous the rumors they'll come up with."

Now, Roxanne snorted as they headed for the elevator to the living quarters. "Kinda hard to imagine, considering some of the things we've heard from the gossip rags so far. Half a dozen terrorists with Uzis at the reception, a diamond studded nose piercing for an engagement ring, the bride wore black, you came in sequins, I was tied up and dragged to the altar for old time's sake, there was raw meat and blood served for dinner..."

Megamind rubbed the blue skin between his eyes, groaning. "Where do they come up with some of this garbage? I've been the city's defender for over two years, and they still have these ideas that I'm some kind of barbarian!"

The reporter sympathized. "Well, that was the biggest reason to come back now, to put a stop to this before it gets completely out of hand. Always the best cure for ridiculous rumors, a good dose of solid truth."

"I hope so," Minion agreed as he hustled into the lift with their bags. "I've never understood why, but I think some of these so-called reporters really enjoy making up junk like that! I mean, why else would they come up with stories that make Sir sound like a vampire? I'm the one with the nasty teeth, and nobody says stuff like that about me!"

"I don't think some of them have ever really grasped the concept that you're actually a fish," was Megamind's opinion. "They think you are a gorilla — and wasn't there at least one person who thought that you'd been killed because none of the pictures of the wedding that leaked out had a gorilla in 'em?"

"Didi Benton, WTMC Daily News," Roxanne confirmed. "The half-watt light of local tabloid TV. She was sure you were behind every murder in the Midwest before you gave up the life of crime, and she still thinks that you did kill Wayne and replaced him with a powerless clone to get yourself off the hook. She's a big reason I'm glad Wayne wants to do an exposé on himself — so to speak. I don't know what her problem is, it's almost like she has a personal grudge against you and wants to see you back behind bars, even if she has to invent charges."

Her husband's groan turned to a heavy sigh. "She does have a personal grudge against me — but not for the reasons you might think, nothing criminal or such. About six years ago, she started sending letters to me in prison..."

The blue eyes widened as the lift stopped and the doors opened onto the living floor. "Oh?" she said in an innocent tone that was anything but.

He sighed yet again. "Not those of kinds of letters," he hastened to assure her, well aware of what she was thinking. He had gotten letters of that kind, from supposedly love-struck women he'd never met, and had always tossed them in the trash without a second glance. They might have bolstered his vanity, confirming his claim of incredible handsomeness, but beyond that, they were either disturbing or repugnant. Once he had fallen for Roxanne, there was literally no other woman in the world for him. He could appreciate beautiful women in an abstract, objective way, like works of art, or befriend women who were interesting and amiable, but he felt not even the slightest hint of romantic or even mere sexual attraction to any woman but Roxanne.

Megamind sometimes wondered if this was just him or a trait of his race — something else his research was trying to determine — but now was not the time to get into that. "She'd just moved into town, looking for work as a stringer with one of the local papers, and she'd heard all about you and how your career took off after Metro Man picked you as his reporter of choice for all interviews and such. She said she found it tragic that no one had ever tried to give me equal time, so she volunteered to be my Roxanne Ritchi — she even said it that way, which I found utterly appalling. Needless to say, I was not interested, and she took it as a personal rejection, which I suppose it was."

Thinking back to their past — in particular the biggest reason Megamind had first kidnapped her, wanting a chance to tell people his side of the conflict with Metro Man after she'd had her first exclusive interview with the hero — Roxanne was a bit befuddled. "Wait a second, I thought you wanted equal time. And when Didi offered to give it to you, you said no? Why?"

Megamind's answering smile was enigmatic. "Oh, I had my reasons. For one thing, you know very well that I've always considered you the smartest person in Metrocity — second only to myself, of course. Didi might've been more aptly named 'Dodo.' I can't say that I was terribly impressed by the letters of a supposed reporter whose spelling was more atrocious than my pronunciation!"

Roxanne half-winced, half-giggled. "Oooh, I didn't know that about her."

The blue nose wrinkled. "Yes, I'm sure that's why she went into television rather than print journalism — no offense intended to you, my love, I've always considered you to be the pinnacle of wit and intelligence to which everyone in your profession should aspire. At any rate, she was an idiot and was obviously attempting to create a career for herself by using me; she didn't even have a job in journalism, at the time. When I finally got through to her that no meant no, she essentially vowed revenge. I imagine that this time, she means for people to believe that I killed Minion."

"Then she is a total moron," Roxanne declared with a disgusted curl of her lip. "You aren't dead, Minion, are you?"

"No, ma'am!" the fish replied cheerfully, forging on ahead of the couple to deposit the bags in their room. "Not the last time I looked. Am I floating belly up? Are my scales falling off? I can't tell..."

The brunette laughed at his little joke; his ward made a mildly grumpy face. "We'll have to see about rebuilding your usual cybersuit soon, ASAP. These mindless drones just aren't capable of dealing with change."

Minion sadly agreed, but Roxanne sniffed. "Then I shudder to think how they're going to deal with the proof that we did get married!"

The ex-villain made a sound that defied description. "My dear, I'm afraid that 'shudder' will only be the beginning."

To be continued...