Goodnight, my love, I say

[sympathyforblue]

Who: Megamind (sympathyforblue ) and Roxanne (neveryourdamsel )
What: Roxanne has something very important to tell her lover.
When: A few months into their nightly liasons.
Where: City Hall
Warnings: References to mental trauma, torture and abortion (and possibly unusual methods thereof).

Comments

[sympathyforblue]

"I--I don't know, I never had cause to wonder... But I would have thought we would be too incompatible, there's no logical way for our species to be closely related enough for this to be possible..." He sighed heavily, wishing that for once he had erred on the side of optimism and run some basic DNA compatibility checks. It would have saved them all this - saved them from having to think of Roxanne as a lab rat.

Megamind could easily imagine the scene - Roxanne in a room like the one he had spent seven years in, strapped down and examined - tested - constantly by scientists, researches, reports sent to branches of the government that didn't officially exist...

He realised he was beginning to hyperventilate and tried to steady his breathing, but it was impossible to get anywhere near calm. No. No, this couldn't be happening. It was the worst thing that could possibly happen. At least the worst fate Roxanne had faced before had been a bullet - relatively quick and clean and possibly even painless, depending on who was doing the shooting and how good a shot they were.

Now, though? Now she faced torture, nothing less, and the life inside her... Megamind tried to imagine a child going through the tests he had - and from birth, never knowing what life could be like beyond the walls of the facility... And there was no guarantee that he and Roxanne could keep a child safe. Even now, at any moment they might have to flee the city if the situation became dire enough. A baby couldn't run, couldn't keep pace, couldn't be trusted to take cover and avoid fire.

A baby had no place in their lives and Megamind knew, logically, that they should... His brain couldn't come up with a term that didn't disgust him. Terminate and abort sounded far too sickeningly clinical. Get rid of made a new life sound like trash to be disposed of... And the only other term was murder. A mercy kill was still murder, after all, when one got right down to it.

"I can't risk you," he whispered eventually, giving her a look full of guilt. He had done many despicable things in his life, but he had never murdered an innocent - or a child. "I... I just can't. If you were... were taken..."

[neveryourdamsel]

"I...I know," she whispered, voice breaking. She did know - that was the worst part of it. It wasn't so much that she couldn't risk herself - once she had figured out the problem, she had immediately taken the backburner to the life within her, her baby. The little life was what mattered most, now.

If she was taken, tests would be run. Experiments, procedures that she couldn't even think about performed on her baby.

Her hands went to her stomach and she felt sick again.

"I don't...I don't think I can..." Do what I need to do.

"I'm not strong enough."

[sympathyforblue]

Megamind felt the sudden, inexplicable urge to lay a hand on Roxanne's stomach and beat it down until he had mastered it. Stunts like that would do wonders for remaining detatched enough to do what needed to be done.

"I... I find it abhorrent," he agreed, his voice barely more than a murmur. Perhaps if he spoke quietly enough, then later he would be able to pretend to himself that he had said nothing at all. "But... Roxanne, there--there's no other choice!"

He fixed her with a desperate look, willing her to understand that right now her life meant more to him than that of a barely-tangible idea of a child; something almost without form and substance. Even as he thought that, though, he realised that the baby had already rooted itself in his thoughts well enough for him to be rendered unable to dismiss it completely.

A life. An innocent child.

They could protect it, he found himself thinking. The rebels hadn't attacked yet and there was no sign that they would do so in the near future.

But it wasn't just the near future, was it? Nine months of gestation, then it may well be a matter of years before the child could run.

Or perhaps it would be like him; walking, talking and comprehending within weeks.

There were too many variables and absolutely no certainties. It was too dangerous, he knew that. There was no way they could go through with this - it would be selfish to go through with this, knowing the danger the child would be put in. Again, Megamind imagined Steel getting his hands on a small blue baby - his child - and raising him or her as a lab experiment, never seeing the outside world and never knowing there was anything beyond the walls of the facility.

The image made him feel sick.