With my Freeze Ray I will Stop: Chapter 3
This one was harder to write. Bernard, especially, in this AU, was hard to write. I can't tell you much about his character, but I can tell you he must be less of a jackass than he seems or he wouldn't end up with Wayne (who is picky as hell about who he dates, even though he doesn't seem like he would be). That's a thing that happens in this 'verse.
Chapter 3
Nearly a month goes by before Megamind bothers to snatch Bernard from a street fair at the corner of Eleventh and Main. He actually considers going with the invisible car in the visible spectrum-because really, what is even the point of all this-but Minion puts his foot down and insists they stick to their usual MO.
Bernard is not what he had expected. To be fair, he’s not really sure what he had expected, but he’s fairly certain that Bernard is not it.
He’s bumbling. Fearless, yes-had Roxanne warned him this might happen, warned him Megamind might come for him? Had she told him what to expect?-but bumbling. He doesn’t hesitate before speaking but doesn’t speak immediately, either; when he does, his observations are simple and his responses obvious at best. Megamind gave him no fewer than four particularly blunt lead-ins to some quality banter, and the best he could come up with in reply was, “That’s nice. Does it work?”
Not exactly a rapier wit.
But the public’s response to him has been positive. Confused, but overall positive despite the glaring questions that nobody but Bernard is hesitating to ask: What happened to Roxanne? Why is she refusing to comment? Is she jealous? Has she been expecting this? As far as anyone can tell, it had come out of the clear blue sky. Even Metro Man sends Megamind an odd, searching look when he comes to rescue the skinny blondish man.
Bernard doesn’t ask any of those questions. He doesn’t even seem that invested in what happens during the course of the two initial kidnappings. But his eyes are bright and his gaze is darting here-there-everywhere all around the Lair as soon as the bag is removed both times, which rather ruins his disinterested aura.
Megamind doesn’t pay too much attention to him, throwing himself into his work with a will instead. He’s proud of his next invention, inspired partly by the success with reviving Roxanne, though he’ll never admit that: a horde of swirling nanites designed to attack Metro Man’s respiratory system. They do make him cough a bit. Megamind is billed as the loser, but in his own mind he marks it a small success. Success is the goal, after all, although victory would be nice.
But that’s not the point. The point is that even this small success leaves him feeling empty and restless. Roxanne would have gasped and looked as horrified as possible when Metro Man had slowed and hiccoughed a bit, then congratulated Megamind afterwards, but Bernard just waits patiently in his chair. Roxanne would have enjoyed it. She would have understood the tiny microscopic drills, the irritating spikes, the elegant artistry that had gone into the nanites’ design. Bernard, however, simply blinks at him and says, “Doesn’t that seem a little too overdone? You’re trying too hard. You should scale it back a bit.”
Megamind grits his teeth and introduces him to the Spinny Sharp Wheel, taking some mean pleasure in his poorly-hidden nervousness. Bernard just doesn’t get it.
But he is nice to Minion. There's that, at least. When the fish comes in with coffee in tow-it’s a morning kidnapping and early yet, only the third with Bernard so far but Megamind is getting desperate and sick of waiting for things to somehow magically return to something resembling normal-he says, “Oh, hullo. You’re Minion, right? I was wondering when you’d show up. Listen, can I ask, I’ve got this saltwater tank at home and the heater just won’t cooperate and my anemones are starting to get really upset with me, I was wondering if there was a particular kind of heater you use. This is the third I’ve tried from this brand and I just don’t know what else to try. I hope that’s not too forward.”
Minion blinks at him and says, “I’m exothermic, actually, Mr. Browning. Warm-blooded. I don’t use a heater.”
“Oh. I see.” The young man radiates disappointment. “Not even in winter? Not even sometimes?”
“I’m sorry, I can’t help you.”
It’s a testament to how bored Megamind really is that he doesn’t cut the conversation off. He catches himself twiddling his thumbs and is appalled.
What Minion says next catches his attention, though. “I’m sure I could try to make you a better one. It isn’t as though we don’t have time.”
Megamind turns, alarmed at this. “What? Yes it is.”
Minion scowls at him and thrusts the coffee forward with startling force. “No, Sir. It isn’t. And it might actually be sort of fun. Build the man his stupid heater and let him go, you don’t even have anything today.”
“I am trying,” Megamind says stiffly, brushing beads of lukewarm liquid off the lightning bolt on his chest and trying to ignore Minion's you instead of we, “to build my reputation as a dangerous and unpredictable criminal. I am not required to have a plan. I am perfectly allowed to perform routine kidnappings if I want to-”
“I’ll just go rustle up some heating coils,” Minion says with forced cheer, and disappears, leaving Bernard and Megamind alone.
He looks at Bernard for a moment, then down at his coffee. He slumps. “Do you want one?”
Bernard is still peering around the room at the monitors. “Want one what?”
“A coffee. Do you want a coffee. The pot’s probably still pretty full, Minion’s only just brewed a new one.”
He is now peering at Megamind. “Are you offering to get me a drink?”
Megamind starts to lose his temper. “Okay, so are you truly this slow, or is it an act? I’m really starting to wonder. I honestly can't tell.”
Bernard grins. “Coffee would be nice. Thank you.”
Still grumbling under his breath, Megamind sets the brainbots on guard and leaves.
He doesn’t see Minion come in and untie Bernard, doesn't hear them talking in low voices. He doesn’t see Bernard put something behind the monitors. And he doesn’t see the cameraman in the van outside; he doesn’t even bother to look.
Maybe it’s a mistake. An oversight. Later, he will claim that it was merely carelessness on his part and the media and public will accept this explanation and move on, but those who know him will know better and understand the true reason for his lack of caution: he simply does not care.
He doesn’t care at all anymore. And he’s tired. He’s been tired for a long time, since even before the mistake with the kidnapping spray, but now he’s really feeling it. Roxanne hadn’t made him feel tired; she’d made him feel like it was all worthwhile, she’d made everything bright and new and exciting again (especially after that godawful mistake, stupid, stupid) and when they had laughed together it was as though the world had lit up around him and was his alone to play with. Theirs alone to play with. He hasn’t felt like that since his early twenties.
Bernard isn’t Roxanne: that’s the whole problem.
He breaks the first mug he gets from the cupboard and has to go back for another.
0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0
“So you said this is just routine,” Bernard says when Megamind returns with the coffee. The blue alien hands him his drink and sits down in his usual chair, legs drawn up to his chest, green eyes deceptively interested. “How so?”
“Oh, you know how it goes,” Megamind flaps a hand dismissively.
“I don’t, actually,” Bernard replies with startling candor. “Will you explain?”
Oddly enough, that little quirk of language sends an unfamiliar flicker of respect through Megamind. Will you explain. Not can or would you care to. ‘Will you explain’ is not a natural-sounding question and is probably deliberate; ordinarily, he would respond to such a deliberate question with a bright and flippant No. Short, to the point, and frustrating. It would have worked on Roxanne, but then, Roxanne knows better than to ask such deliberate questions-so he wilts.
“Oh, why not,” he says. “I may as well just tell you what you’re getting into here.” He takes a breath.
“I’m going to kidnap you sometimes for no apparent reason. Feel free to make this as public as you want to; it helps my reputation. I’m also going to devise instruments of evil, some of which will be directed at destroying portions of the city while others will be aimed at destroying Metro Man. I’m going to be threatening you in most, but not all, of these cases-the ones that involve Metro Man almost always, the others only sometimes. I’ll be using you as bait. You won’t actually be harmed, but I’d appreciate it if you screamed a bit.
“In return for your assistance,” he continues, dropping a toe to the floor and squeaking his chair back and forth, trying not to acknowledge that he’s bored nearly out of his mind right now, “I will help you in your career. I will give you invaluable experience and so much publicity that by the time I’m done with you, your name will be known across this if not several other countries. Bear in mind that none of what I do is personal. It’s just policy, really.”
He lists this off in an expressionless voice, then stops at the look that has suddenly twisted Bernard’s face. “What?” he asks, caught slightly off his guard.
“What are you doing?” Bernard demands, aghast. “Telling me all this. You shouldn’t be doing this.”
Megamind stares at him, irritated. “Well, what should I be doing?”
“You should be waving that gun over there-no, that one, with the blinking lights, do you see me pointing?-waving that gun in my face and ranting about what it and you will do to me until I crap myself, and then you should beat me across the head and leave me to be found in some alley uptown. It will leave me with a headache, some honest fear, and some respect. And news of it will spread like wildfire, especially when I try to cover it up. This city loves to gossip.” Bernard’s lip curls and he shakes his head. “Sitting me down, giving me coffee. You’re discussing this like it’s a business venture.” He spits these last two words with obvious distaste. “Policy.”
“Well it is a business venture, and it is policy,” Megamind tells him flatly. “You may be an unwilling participant, but that is the truth and I don’t see any point pretending otherwise.”
“But telling me?” Bernard shakes his head. “That’s just wrong. You aren’t behaving at all like she said you would.”
That makes him go still. “Like who said I would?”
“Oh, who do you think? You’re a genius, take a guess.” It’s the sharpest thing he’s said to Megamind, but he stops abruptly and gives him a long, deep look. “Are you feeling all right?”
Megamind blinks. “I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine," Bernard tells him, still eyeing him with that weirdly penetrating stare. "And you sure don’t sound fine.”
Half his mouth lifts into a wry smile. “How,” he says, “do I sound?”
The stare turns frank. “You sound really sad.”
That sends the little smile away, sends it packing and running for the hills. Huh. A hand on his face, the first, the only. That’s sad. For the first time in his life, Megamind finds he has nothing to say.
Bernard is still talking. “You sound bored. The shadows under your eyes are a lot deeper than they usually are, you sound tired. Bored and tired and sad.” He presses his lips together and nods a little bit, stating all this like he’s discussing the weather. “You sound old. How old are you, twenty-seven? Twenty-eight? Early thirties, tops.” He shakes his head and doesn’t wait for a reply. “Your eyes are older than that. And you’re talking about this like it’s all just business, like there’s no joy in it. You know what she told me?” He lifts his eyebrows. “She said, ‘Pretend to be afraid. He likes it. This game is sort of his baby, you know, it’s what he does and he’s really good at it, so play along, for his sake.’ Well, Mr. Mind," he says with a shrug and a little laugh, "I’ve been trying to play along, but you sound to me like a guy who’s stopped playing his own game. And you sound like a guy who’s stuck in the joyless game he invented because he can’t tell what his next move is. You sound to me like a guy whose heart’s been broken before he’s even had a chance to really use it.
“That’s what you sound like.”
Megamind stares at him. It takes him nearly half a minute to find his voice, which is something like a small eternity because of the way his mind races. Bernard waits without speaking. So he’s not slow. He’s articulate. He sees things and makes opinions, but takes time to voice them. Megamind makes the note and feels his opinion of the man begin to turn.
Roxanne’s wit is like a sword, slashing and straight and responsive. Bernard is a stone in deep water that has just hit Megamind squarely in the temple. No wit, only bloody, painful truth.
“You’re very observant.”
Bernard flutters an odd bow from the waist without getting up from his seat. “Observing things is…sort of what I do. I thought you realized that the last few times you brought me here.”
“No.”
“Was I wrong?” He tilts his head. “You haven’t told me if I was wrong.”
Megamind gives him a thin, brittle smile. He’s earned it. “Do I look like you were wrong?”
Bernard nods, satisfied. “Ritchi told me not to do that, you know,” he says. “She said you’d react badly.”
He blinks at the sudden change of subject. “Do what?”
“Show you who you are. She said it was incredibly rude and that I only saw the who and not the why. The why is more important than the who, apparently. She said that getting to know your subject was the best thing you could do.” He pauses, frowns. "She really is incredibly bossy, isn't she?"
The world, hazy and uninteresting until now, sharpens to a point. Color and sound flood in from all sides. Megamind’s head comes up like a wolf’s. “Really. She said that.”
“What, the getting to know people thing? Yeah.” Bernard scoffs and shakes his head. “Said it makes things unutterably complicated sometimes, since it's really easy to like people you understand, but that it was worth it. Worth every minute.” He tilts his head, his gaze suddenly narrow. “Did she 'understand' you?”
The lump that pulls in his throat is sudden and unwelcome. He swallows it. “I dared to hope. I won’t make that mistake again.”
“I don’t think it was a mistake,” Bernard tells him. “I think it was good. Hope is good. Hope is a thing with wings.”
“Hope is the thing with feathers,” Megamind corrects automatically, and Bernard gives him a broad smile.
“I didn’t know you read Dickinson.”
“I read a lot,” Megamind says, and Bernard’s smile turns sly.
“Now, that I did know. See, here’s the thing,” he begins, looking at his nails, and Megamind decides that he doesn’t like him even if he does grudgingly respect him. He’s too arrogant for someone in his position. “A couple months ago she ended up in the hospital with a severe case of hypothermia. She hasn’t been the same since. She’s been sort of seeing this guy named John, right? Not often. And even he can tell her heart’s not in it. She smiles for him and she laughs for him, but she doesn’t mean it.”
“That is extremely presump-toos of you,” Megamind tells him. There’s ice in his voice, hiding under a thin veneer of flippancy. “You don’t know her at all.”
“Yeah, but trust me. I’m a reporter, I can tell.” Bernard’s smile is sharp as steel, hard as iron. “But you know, you’re right, I don’t know her. You do, though.” He leans forward in his chair and puts his coffee down on the floor. “John doesn’t know her. Metro Man doesn’t know her. George didn’t know her. She’s remarkably secretive. But you know her,” he says with a conspiratorial smirk, stabbing his finger at Megamind with the last few words, and Megamind blinks. “You know how to make her choke on laughter when she’s live on TV. Do you know how hard that is?”
“Yes,” he replies, because he does. Roxanne’s laughter comes easily, but only when you know how to draw it out. It took him years to complete that little puzzle.
“Do you love her?” Bernard suddenly sounds merely curious. Megamind looks at him, blinks, and bursts out laughing.
“You know I do,” he chokes, shaking his head. He takes a few swigs of coffee to try to calm back down. “What the heck kind of a question was that? Look, what are you trying to make me do?” He grins at the younger man. “I know you want something. This whole talk reeks of manip-oolation.”
“It's manipulation, and I don’t want anything. This is a routine kidnapping and we’re having a conversation.” Bernard smiles, open now and guileless and far, far too overconfident. “And as long as we’re on the subject, she’s been offered a position in management. I think she’s going to take it.”
“What?” Megamind is still smiling, but now he’s more than a little bit baffled. “She’ll be miserable in management. That was the whole point of our arrangement.”
“Really?” Bernard raises an eyebrow. “Because she’s been vying for this position for a while. A long while.”
“That’s just what it seems like,” Megamind explains earnestly, but even as he speaks he feels a pang of doubt. And after that, a surprisingly painful stab of hope. If she really does want to move higher, she might have been using her supposed reluctance as an excuse to see him. It sounds totally implausible. It sounds insane.
He wants it to be true so badly it hurts. And with that, he’s done playing.
Megamind has never responded well to people trying to toy with him. He’s intelligent and he knows when someone is making a valid point no matter how irritating they may be, but above all else, he knows how to play games and he's through playing Bernard’s.
He begins another, more dangerous one of his own devising. “So, Mr. Browning.” He smiles a bright and broken smile, humorless and full of teeth. “What did you tell Roxanne to make her call you rude? What did you tell her that made her tell you that why is more important than who? She must have been angry, to say a thing like that. It isn’t something she’d usually say.”
“Heavens yes,” Bernard laughs. “She was furious.”
“Hell hath no fury like Roxanne Ritchi on a bad day.” Megamind’s new smile is sharper than Bernard’s and harder. He has spent more time crafting it. His is better. “So tell me, what did you talk to her about? Was it the news, was it her?” Green eyes glitter, blue hands clench, white teeth flare in an angrier smile. “Was it me?”
Bernard stands and stretches. “It was, as a matter of fact.” He starts to step away from his chair, his restless gaze on one of the monitors. “I told her-”
“Sit down,” Megamind snarls. The ring of command in his voice is so complete that Bernard stumbles and sits right where he is. He misses the chair almost entirely and lands with a thump, a wince, and possibly a bruised coccyx. Megamind does not laugh as he comes to his feet.
“She’s right, you know. You see the who. You do not see the why. You are a small man, so settled in your skin; you think you can twist me and turn me and show me myself. You think you know how to make me dance.” Megamind turns in a fluid motion that makes his cape swirl behind him. His quiet voice spins quieter malice. “Tell me where the camera is.”
Bernard blinks up at him. He looks puzzled and obvious again, but it’s too late; Megamind has already seen the bright-eyed man behind the mask. “Camera?”
“Yes,” he says, showing more teeth in a lunatic grin. If it’s masks they’re playing, it’s a mask Bernard will get. “The camera. Tell me where it is.”
Bernard tells him.
“Thank you.” He lunges, lashes out and around with the side of his fist and Bernard collapses to the side.
Megamind turns and draws himself up and gives his best showman’s smile to the not-actually-very-well-hidden camera. He shrugs his shoulders a few times, shaking out the tension that's been gathering in his neck and upper back for the past few months.
He feels surprisingly calm now that he’s decided. It’s easy, really: this is the point of no return. This is the line in the sand, the line he and Roxanne have been waltzing around for months, the line he has never dared cross, ever, for fear of what might lie on the other side. There will be no going back, but he’s not afraid anymore. He’s falling without a parachute, but he has no fear at all. Not after all this. He’s flying.
He steps carefully over the metaphorical line. Looks around and takes a breath of clear air. Lets it out.
“Ollo,” he says brightly. “Gentle citizens of…Metro City.” He lifts a hand to his throat, unclasps the cape and shoulder array and holds away from him at arms’ length, then drops it. His crooked smile grows broader. “I quit!”
Then he laughs, long and loud, twirls around with his head thrown back and his arms thrown out to the sides. He’s flying. Because he is finally-after all these years-he is finally free.
He drops his arms to his sides, still laughing helplessly. It feels so good to just stand and laugh. He sinks back into his chair and looks at the camera again, breathing easily for the first time in years. “I quit.”
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Chapter 3
Nearly a month goes by before Megamind bothers to snatch Bernard from a street fair at the corner of Eleventh and Main. He actually considers going with the invisible car in the visible spectrum-because really, what is even the point of all this-but Minion puts his foot down and insists they stick to their usual MO.
Bernard is not what he had expected. To be fair, he’s not really sure what he had expected, but he’s fairly certain that Bernard is not it.
He’s bumbling. Fearless, yes-had Roxanne warned him this might happen, warned him Megamind might come for him? Had she told him what to expect?-but bumbling. He doesn’t hesitate before speaking but doesn’t speak immediately, either; when he does, his observations are simple and his responses obvious at best. Megamind gave him no fewer than four particularly blunt lead-ins to some quality banter, and the best he could come up with in reply was, “That’s nice. Does it work?”
Not exactly a rapier wit.
But the public’s response to him has been positive. Confused, but overall positive despite the glaring questions that nobody but Bernard is hesitating to ask: What happened to Roxanne? Why is she refusing to comment? Is she jealous? Has she been expecting this? As far as anyone can tell, it had come out of the clear blue sky. Even Metro Man sends Megamind an odd, searching look when he comes to rescue the skinny blondish man.
Bernard doesn’t ask any of those questions. He doesn’t even seem that invested in what happens during the course of the two initial kidnappings. But his eyes are bright and his gaze is darting here-there-everywhere all around the Lair as soon as the bag is removed both times, which rather ruins his disinterested aura.
Megamind doesn’t pay too much attention to him, throwing himself into his work with a will instead. He’s proud of his next invention, inspired partly by the success with reviving Roxanne, though he’ll never admit that: a horde of swirling nanites designed to attack Metro Man’s respiratory system. They do make him cough a bit. Megamind is billed as the loser, but in his own mind he marks it a small success. Success is the goal, after all, although victory would be nice.
But that’s not the point. The point is that even this small success leaves him feeling empty and restless. Roxanne would have gasped and looked as horrified as possible when Metro Man had slowed and hiccoughed a bit, then congratulated Megamind afterwards, but Bernard just waits patiently in his chair. Roxanne would have enjoyed it. She would have understood the tiny microscopic drills, the irritating spikes, the elegant artistry that had gone into the nanites’ design. Bernard, however, simply blinks at him and says, “Doesn’t that seem a little too overdone? You’re trying too hard. You should scale it back a bit.”
Megamind grits his teeth and introduces him to the Spinny Sharp Wheel, taking some mean pleasure in his poorly-hidden nervousness. Bernard just doesn’t get it.
But he is nice to Minion. There's that, at least. When the fish comes in with coffee in tow-it’s a morning kidnapping and early yet, only the third with Bernard so far but Megamind is getting desperate and sick of waiting for things to somehow magically return to something resembling normal-he says, “Oh, hullo. You’re Minion, right? I was wondering when you’d show up. Listen, can I ask, I’ve got this saltwater tank at home and the heater just won’t cooperate and my anemones are starting to get really upset with me, I was wondering if there was a particular kind of heater you use. This is the third I’ve tried from this brand and I just don’t know what else to try. I hope that’s not too forward.”
Minion blinks at him and says, “I’m exothermic, actually, Mr. Browning. Warm-blooded. I don’t use a heater.”
“Oh. I see.” The young man radiates disappointment. “Not even in winter? Not even sometimes?”
“I’m sorry, I can’t help you.”
It’s a testament to how bored Megamind really is that he doesn’t cut the conversation off. He catches himself twiddling his thumbs and is appalled.
What Minion says next catches his attention, though. “I’m sure I could try to make you a better one. It isn’t as though we don’t have time.”
Megamind turns, alarmed at this. “What? Yes it is.”
Minion scowls at him and thrusts the coffee forward with startling force. “No, Sir. It isn’t. And it might actually be sort of fun. Build the man his stupid heater and let him go, you don’t even have anything today.”
“I am trying,” Megamind says stiffly, brushing beads of lukewarm liquid off the lightning bolt on his chest and trying to ignore Minion's you instead of we, “to build my reputation as a dangerous and unpredictable criminal. I am not required to have a plan. I am perfectly allowed to perform routine kidnappings if I want to-”
“I’ll just go rustle up some heating coils,” Minion says with forced cheer, and disappears, leaving Bernard and Megamind alone.
He looks at Bernard for a moment, then down at his coffee. He slumps. “Do you want one?”
Bernard is still peering around the room at the monitors. “Want one what?”
“A coffee. Do you want a coffee. The pot’s probably still pretty full, Minion’s only just brewed a new one.”
He is now peering at Megamind. “Are you offering to get me a drink?”
Megamind starts to lose his temper. “Okay, so are you truly this slow, or is it an act? I’m really starting to wonder. I honestly can't tell.”
Bernard grins. “Coffee would be nice. Thank you.”
Still grumbling under his breath, Megamind sets the brainbots on guard and leaves.
He doesn’t see Minion come in and untie Bernard, doesn't hear them talking in low voices. He doesn’t see Bernard put something behind the monitors. And he doesn’t see the cameraman in the van outside; he doesn’t even bother to look.
Maybe it’s a mistake. An oversight. Later, he will claim that it was merely carelessness on his part and the media and public will accept this explanation and move on, but those who know him will know better and understand the true reason for his lack of caution: he simply does not care.
He doesn’t care at all anymore. And he’s tired. He’s been tired for a long time, since even before the mistake with the kidnapping spray, but now he’s really feeling it. Roxanne hadn’t made him feel tired; she’d made him feel like it was all worthwhile, she’d made everything bright and new and exciting again (especially after that godawful mistake, stupid, stupid) and when they had laughed together it was as though the world had lit up around him and was his alone to play with. Theirs alone to play with. He hasn’t felt like that since his early twenties.
Bernard isn’t Roxanne: that’s the whole problem.
He breaks the first mug he gets from the cupboard and has to go back for another.
0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0
“So you said this is just routine,” Bernard says when Megamind returns with the coffee. The blue alien hands him his drink and sits down in his usual chair, legs drawn up to his chest, green eyes deceptively interested. “How so?”
“Oh, you know how it goes,” Megamind flaps a hand dismissively.
“I don’t, actually,” Bernard replies with startling candor. “Will you explain?”
Oddly enough, that little quirk of language sends an unfamiliar flicker of respect through Megamind. Will you explain. Not can or would you care to. ‘Will you explain’ is not a natural-sounding question and is probably deliberate; ordinarily, he would respond to such a deliberate question with a bright and flippant No. Short, to the point, and frustrating. It would have worked on Roxanne, but then, Roxanne knows better than to ask such deliberate questions-so he wilts.
“Oh, why not,” he says. “I may as well just tell you what you’re getting into here.” He takes a breath.
“I’m going to kidnap you sometimes for no apparent reason. Feel free to make this as public as you want to; it helps my reputation. I’m also going to devise instruments of evil, some of which will be directed at destroying portions of the city while others will be aimed at destroying Metro Man. I’m going to be threatening you in most, but not all, of these cases-the ones that involve Metro Man almost always, the others only sometimes. I’ll be using you as bait. You won’t actually be harmed, but I’d appreciate it if you screamed a bit.
“In return for your assistance,” he continues, dropping a toe to the floor and squeaking his chair back and forth, trying not to acknowledge that he’s bored nearly out of his mind right now, “I will help you in your career. I will give you invaluable experience and so much publicity that by the time I’m done with you, your name will be known across this if not several other countries. Bear in mind that none of what I do is personal. It’s just policy, really.”
He lists this off in an expressionless voice, then stops at the look that has suddenly twisted Bernard’s face. “What?” he asks, caught slightly off his guard.
“What are you doing?” Bernard demands, aghast. “Telling me all this. You shouldn’t be doing this.”
Megamind stares at him, irritated. “Well, what should I be doing?”
“You should be waving that gun over there-no, that one, with the blinking lights, do you see me pointing?-waving that gun in my face and ranting about what it and you will do to me until I crap myself, and then you should beat me across the head and leave me to be found in some alley uptown. It will leave me with a headache, some honest fear, and some respect. And news of it will spread like wildfire, especially when I try to cover it up. This city loves to gossip.” Bernard’s lip curls and he shakes his head. “Sitting me down, giving me coffee. You’re discussing this like it’s a business venture.” He spits these last two words with obvious distaste. “Policy.”
“Well it is a business venture, and it is policy,” Megamind tells him flatly. “You may be an unwilling participant, but that is the truth and I don’t see any point pretending otherwise.”
“But telling me?” Bernard shakes his head. “That’s just wrong. You aren’t behaving at all like she said you would.”
That makes him go still. “Like who said I would?”
“Oh, who do you think? You’re a genius, take a guess.” It’s the sharpest thing he’s said to Megamind, but he stops abruptly and gives him a long, deep look. “Are you feeling all right?”
Megamind blinks. “I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine," Bernard tells him, still eyeing him with that weirdly penetrating stare. "And you sure don’t sound fine.”
Half his mouth lifts into a wry smile. “How,” he says, “do I sound?”
The stare turns frank. “You sound really sad.”
That sends the little smile away, sends it packing and running for the hills. Huh. A hand on his face, the first, the only. That’s sad. For the first time in his life, Megamind finds he has nothing to say.
Bernard is still talking. “You sound bored. The shadows under your eyes are a lot deeper than they usually are, you sound tired. Bored and tired and sad.” He presses his lips together and nods a little bit, stating all this like he’s discussing the weather. “You sound old. How old are you, twenty-seven? Twenty-eight? Early thirties, tops.” He shakes his head and doesn’t wait for a reply. “Your eyes are older than that. And you’re talking about this like it’s all just business, like there’s no joy in it. You know what she told me?” He lifts his eyebrows. “She said, ‘Pretend to be afraid. He likes it. This game is sort of his baby, you know, it’s what he does and he’s really good at it, so play along, for his sake.’ Well, Mr. Mind," he says with a shrug and a little laugh, "I’ve been trying to play along, but you sound to me like a guy who’s stopped playing his own game. And you sound like a guy who’s stuck in the joyless game he invented because he can’t tell what his next move is. You sound to me like a guy whose heart’s been broken before he’s even had a chance to really use it.
“That’s what you sound like.”
Megamind stares at him. It takes him nearly half a minute to find his voice, which is something like a small eternity because of the way his mind races. Bernard waits without speaking. So he’s not slow. He’s articulate. He sees things and makes opinions, but takes time to voice them. Megamind makes the note and feels his opinion of the man begin to turn.
Roxanne’s wit is like a sword, slashing and straight and responsive. Bernard is a stone in deep water that has just hit Megamind squarely in the temple. No wit, only bloody, painful truth.
“You’re very observant.”
Bernard flutters an odd bow from the waist without getting up from his seat. “Observing things is…sort of what I do. I thought you realized that the last few times you brought me here.”
“No.”
“Was I wrong?” He tilts his head. “You haven’t told me if I was wrong.”
Megamind gives him a thin, brittle smile. He’s earned it. “Do I look like you were wrong?”
Bernard nods, satisfied. “Ritchi told me not to do that, you know,” he says. “She said you’d react badly.”
He blinks at the sudden change of subject. “Do what?”
“Show you who you are. She said it was incredibly rude and that I only saw the who and not the why. The why is more important than the who, apparently. She said that getting to know your subject was the best thing you could do.” He pauses, frowns. "She really is incredibly bossy, isn't she?"
The world, hazy and uninteresting until now, sharpens to a point. Color and sound flood in from all sides. Megamind’s head comes up like a wolf’s. “Really. She said that.”
“What, the getting to know people thing? Yeah.” Bernard scoffs and shakes his head. “Said it makes things unutterably complicated sometimes, since it's really easy to like people you understand, but that it was worth it. Worth every minute.” He tilts his head, his gaze suddenly narrow. “Did she 'understand' you?”
The lump that pulls in his throat is sudden and unwelcome. He swallows it. “I dared to hope. I won’t make that mistake again.”
“I don’t think it was a mistake,” Bernard tells him. “I think it was good. Hope is good. Hope is a thing with wings.”
“Hope is the thing with feathers,” Megamind corrects automatically, and Bernard gives him a broad smile.
“I didn’t know you read Dickinson.”
“I read a lot,” Megamind says, and Bernard’s smile turns sly.
“Now, that I did know. See, here’s the thing,” he begins, looking at his nails, and Megamind decides that he doesn’t like him even if he does grudgingly respect him. He’s too arrogant for someone in his position. “A couple months ago she ended up in the hospital with a severe case of hypothermia. She hasn’t been the same since. She’s been sort of seeing this guy named John, right? Not often. And even he can tell her heart’s not in it. She smiles for him and she laughs for him, but she doesn’t mean it.”
“That is extremely presump-toos of you,” Megamind tells him. There’s ice in his voice, hiding under a thin veneer of flippancy. “You don’t know her at all.”
“Yeah, but trust me. I’m a reporter, I can tell.” Bernard’s smile is sharp as steel, hard as iron. “But you know, you’re right, I don’t know her. You do, though.” He leans forward in his chair and puts his coffee down on the floor. “John doesn’t know her. Metro Man doesn’t know her. George didn’t know her. She’s remarkably secretive. But you know her,” he says with a conspiratorial smirk, stabbing his finger at Megamind with the last few words, and Megamind blinks. “You know how to make her choke on laughter when she’s live on TV. Do you know how hard that is?”
“Yes,” he replies, because he does. Roxanne’s laughter comes easily, but only when you know how to draw it out. It took him years to complete that little puzzle.
“Do you love her?” Bernard suddenly sounds merely curious. Megamind looks at him, blinks, and bursts out laughing.
“You know I do,” he chokes, shaking his head. He takes a few swigs of coffee to try to calm back down. “What the heck kind of a question was that? Look, what are you trying to make me do?” He grins at the younger man. “I know you want something. This whole talk reeks of manip-oolation.”
“It's manipulation, and I don’t want anything. This is a routine kidnapping and we’re having a conversation.” Bernard smiles, open now and guileless and far, far too overconfident. “And as long as we’re on the subject, she’s been offered a position in management. I think she’s going to take it.”
“What?” Megamind is still smiling, but now he’s more than a little bit baffled. “She’ll be miserable in management. That was the whole point of our arrangement.”
“Really?” Bernard raises an eyebrow. “Because she’s been vying for this position for a while. A long while.”
“That’s just what it seems like,” Megamind explains earnestly, but even as he speaks he feels a pang of doubt. And after that, a surprisingly painful stab of hope. If she really does want to move higher, she might have been using her supposed reluctance as an excuse to see him. It sounds totally implausible. It sounds insane.
He wants it to be true so badly it hurts. And with that, he’s done playing.
Megamind has never responded well to people trying to toy with him. He’s intelligent and he knows when someone is making a valid point no matter how irritating they may be, but above all else, he knows how to play games and he's through playing Bernard’s.
He begins another, more dangerous one of his own devising. “So, Mr. Browning.” He smiles a bright and broken smile, humorless and full of teeth. “What did you tell Roxanne to make her call you rude? What did you tell her that made her tell you that why is more important than who? She must have been angry, to say a thing like that. It isn’t something she’d usually say.”
“Heavens yes,” Bernard laughs. “She was furious.”
“Hell hath no fury like Roxanne Ritchi on a bad day.” Megamind’s new smile is sharper than Bernard’s and harder. He has spent more time crafting it. His is better. “So tell me, what did you talk to her about? Was it the news, was it her?” Green eyes glitter, blue hands clench, white teeth flare in an angrier smile. “Was it me?”
Bernard stands and stretches. “It was, as a matter of fact.” He starts to step away from his chair, his restless gaze on one of the monitors. “I told her-”
“Sit down,” Megamind snarls. The ring of command in his voice is so complete that Bernard stumbles and sits right where he is. He misses the chair almost entirely and lands with a thump, a wince, and possibly a bruised coccyx. Megamind does not laugh as he comes to his feet.
“She’s right, you know. You see the who. You do not see the why. You are a small man, so settled in your skin; you think you can twist me and turn me and show me myself. You think you know how to make me dance.” Megamind turns in a fluid motion that makes his cape swirl behind him. His quiet voice spins quieter malice. “Tell me where the camera is.”
Bernard blinks up at him. He looks puzzled and obvious again, but it’s too late; Megamind has already seen the bright-eyed man behind the mask. “Camera?”
“Yes,” he says, showing more teeth in a lunatic grin. If it’s masks they’re playing, it’s a mask Bernard will get. “The camera. Tell me where it is.”
Bernard tells him.
“Thank you.” He lunges, lashes out and around with the side of his fist and Bernard collapses to the side.
Megamind turns and draws himself up and gives his best showman’s smile to the not-actually-very-well-hidden camera. He shrugs his shoulders a few times, shaking out the tension that's been gathering in his neck and upper back for the past few months.
He feels surprisingly calm now that he’s decided. It’s easy, really: this is the point of no return. This is the line in the sand, the line he and Roxanne have been waltzing around for months, the line he has never dared cross, ever, for fear of what might lie on the other side. There will be no going back, but he’s not afraid anymore. He’s falling without a parachute, but he has no fear at all. Not after all this. He’s flying.
He steps carefully over the metaphorical line. Looks around and takes a breath of clear air. Lets it out.
“Ollo,” he says brightly. “Gentle citizens of…Metro City.” He lifts a hand to his throat, unclasps the cape and shoulder array and holds away from him at arms’ length, then drops it. His crooked smile grows broader. “I quit!”
Then he laughs, long and loud, twirls around with his head thrown back and his arms thrown out to the sides. He’s flying. Because he is finally-after all these years-he is finally free.
He drops his arms to his sides, still laughing helplessly. It feels so good to just stand and laugh. He sinks back into his chair and looks at the camera again, breathing easily for the first time in years. “I quit.”
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