How Megamind falls in love with Roxanne Ritchi.

pre-movie, canon-compliant, T rating

AO3 | FFN

chapter 1 | chapter 2 | chapter 3 | chapter 4

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“So, Megamind,” Miss Ritchi says, “are you really an alien, then?”

Megamind blinkes in surprise.

“I—was not aware that was ever actually in question,” he says.

“There are some rumors that you’re a superpowered human with a genetic mutation—”

“No,” Megamind says. “I’m not human.”

“And do you have a superpower?”

Megamind opens his mouth to answer, then stops himself.

“I don’t think,” he says, “that I’m going to answer that question, Miss Ritchi.”

“Surely with a nemesis like Metro Man, you must have some sort of power.”

“No comment.”

“Superstrength, telepathy…?”

“Miss Ritchi,” Megamind says, a warning note in his voice.

She flashes him a cheeky smile, then resumes her professional expression.

“What can you tell me about your reasons for becoming a supervillain?”

“Destiny, Miss Ritchi,” he says. “It was destiny.”

“What do you mean by that?” she asks.

“I’m evil,” Megamind says, “I’ve always been evil. I’ve simply decided to put my natural propensity for evil to the best possible use.”

“Do you really think there’s any best possible use for evil?”

Her tone holds no accusation or condemnation, only skepticism and interest, but Megamind still flinches minutely when she says that, and

(for a terrible half second he’s standing on the bridge again, standing there and thinking ‘if the cumulative effect on the world of your continued existence is negative, do you not have a moral duty to remove yourself from it?’ and he’s looking down at the water and—)

Megamind raises his chin.

“Of course there is a use for evil,” Megamind tells Miss Ritchi now, just as he told himself back then. “Evil is necessary. The existence of good requires it. Without evil to balance it, the power of good would grow and spread—more and more regulation and restriction and control, smothering, choking, subjugating everything. Righteousness unopposed is a terrible thing to behold.”

“So your choice to become a supervillain was an ideological one, rather than a personal one?” Miss Ritchi says. “Wanting to destroy Metro Man, destroy Metro City—that isn’t down to some sort of personal grudge?”

“I don’t want to destroy Metrocity,” he says. “What—where did you get the idea that I wanted to destroy it?”

Miss Ritchi pauses a moment, looking as taken aback as he feels.

“I mean—you demanded that Metro Man surrender the city to you,” she says.

“To rule! Not to destroy,” Megamind says. “I will conquer Metrocity and reign over it as Evil Overlord!”

“—I see,” Miss Ritchi says. “Well, thank you for that…clarification. And Metro Man?”

“…do I want to destroy Metro Man?”

“Is your rivalry with him simply a matter of principle, or of him being an obstacle to your goal of ruling the city? Or is it personal?”

Megamind—sort of freezes at the question.

“I—I don’t see how that matters,” he says, and he can hear how stiff he sounds, can see by the way Miss Ritchi’s expression changes that this answer isn’t going to satisfy her.

(fuck fuck fuck; he didn’t think this interview through; he didn’t think this through at all oh god he’s such an idiot)

“Metro Man and I have known each other for quite some time,” he says, and hopes that she’ll let him just leave it at that.

(please let him just leave it at that)

“—ah,” Miss Ritchi says, “so it is personal.”

(of course she won’t let him just leave it at that)

Megamind shrugs, the motion sharp and uncomfortable.

“It was fate, again, Miss Ritchi,” he says. “That’s all. Perhaps it is personal, but it’s not—merely personal. Even without our—history—I would always have been—morally and ide-olo-gic-ally opposed to Metro Man.”

He winces internally, realizing too late that he has mispronounced the word, has put the emphasis in all the wrong places—that he’s gesturing too much, gesturing wrong—quick fluttering motions of his hands, nervous and uncertain instead of controlled and dramatic.

He drops his hands to the edge of the tank and grips it tightly, clenches his teeth in front of his inept, alien tongue, waits for her to laugh, to correct his pronunciation, to—

“What happened?” she asks softly.

Megamind’s breath hisses through his gritted teeth, the shock of unexpected mercy stinging almost as much as the expected insult would have.

Miss Ritchi looks at him, and he feels caught by her gaze, held captive by the—the sympathy he thinks he sees in them, but he’s—he’s imagining that; he’s imagining it, and he needs to—

“Megamind—”

“I don’t wish to speak any more on this subject, Miss Ritchi,” he says, words rapped out hard and fast and forceful.

He tears his gaze from hers, turns his head to the side so that he can’t be tempted to look at her again, tempted to look at her and actually tell her—

There’s a moment of silence.

“All right,” Miss Ritchi says. “Well—would you like to discuss your experiences as an extraterrestrial?”

Megamind forgets he’s trying not to look at her. He turns his head and meets her gaze.

“I…suppose,” he says cautiously.

“You’ve said you’re not human,” she says, “but were you born here on earth?”

“No, I was not,” Megamind says.

“Are there any others like you here on earth?”

“Worried about the prospect of an alien invasion?” Megamind asks, unable to keep the bitterness from his tone. “No. There are no other members of my species here.”

Miss Ritchi tilts her head.

“Should I be worried about the prospect of an alien invasion?” she asks, sounding more curious than alarmed.

Megamind’s lips twist into a humorless, ironic smile.

“Definitely not from my species,” he says. “I wouldn’t know about any others.”

“You’re not in contact with any other aliens?”

Megamind raises his eyebrows. No isn’t exactly a completely honest answer; there’s Minion, of course, and Metro Man. But he knows that’s not really what Miss Ritchi is asking.

“Am I in contact with anyone on another planet or spaceship?” he says, rephrasing the question. “No, I am not.”

“So why are you here on earth?”

“Bad luck,” Megamind says.

Miss Ritchi frowns.

“Were you sent here? Or do you mean you crash-landed?”

“Both,” Megamind says. “I was—sent here as a child, following a—a cataclysmic event on my home planet.”

“You—came here in a spaceship, then?”

“A pod,” Megamind says flatly. “Yes.”

“What was it like?”

Something in her tone surprises him; he tilts his head curiously.

“What was what like?”

Her face looks—softer, somehow. Unguarded. Her lips are parted and she’s leaning towards him, eyes shining.

“Space,” she says, and he realizes what he’s hearing in her voice is longing. “What was it like?”

“—terrifying,” he says, without thinking. “Terrifying and beautiful.”

“In spite of being terrifying?”

“Not in spite of,” Megamind says, shaking his head without looking away from her. “No—it’s—have you ever been alone in the water at night? Far enough out that you can’t touch the bottom and you can’t see the shoreline in the dark? And maybe you can see the city lights and the stars, but they’re both in the distance, and other than that, it’s just the darkness all around you, darkness in every direction, so much darkness you could drown in it. And if you drowned, it wouldn’t care. And it would still be just as beautiful.”

Miss Ritchi swallows, and the longing in her eyes doesn’t fade at all.

“Beautiful because it’s terrifying,” she says.

“Yes,” Megamind says. “Yes, exactly.”

“What was your planet like?”

Megamind’s smile fades, and his fingers tighten on the edge of the glass once more. He looks down at them, at the water beyond them. Miss Ritchi’s hands are entirely submerged, the water a little above her waist now, but she still doesn’t look concerned.

“Water,” he says, in a subdued voice. “There was water everywhere. Waterways and rivers instead of roads, and pools and fountains, and floating gardens. ”

“It sounds beautiful,” Miss Ritchi says softly, and Megamind looks up from his hands, from the water, and into her face.

“It was,” he says, throat tight.

“You must miss it,” she says, and her expression—

There’s—it is sympathy he reads in her eyes; he’s not just imagining it. Sympathy and—there’s also a kind of intensely focused attention in the way she’s holding herself, the way she’s looking at him. It—shines out of her, drawing him in, and he’s aware, distantly, that the cameras are still on, that he’s being watched, but somehow that doesn’t really seem to matter when she’s looking at him like that.

(tell me, her eyes say. tell me everything.)

“—I look up, here,” Megamind says, “and the stars are in the wrong places.”

He hears the soft, uneven breath she takes. She sways in place, sways towards him, her eyes fixed on his face, as if she feels the same kind of pull towards him as he feels towards her.

“What—” she says.

Behind him, the warning alarm in the console goes off, loud and shrill, the indication that Metro Man has defeated the last of his traps, and will shortly be on his way.

The moment shatters.

And the realization of all the things he’s been saying to Miss Ritchi slams into Megamind; oh god; how could he have told her all that, said all that, not just to her, but said it with the cameras on and with everyone watching and—

Megamind steps quickly back from the tank and whirls away, cape swirling around him.

“Once again,” he says, without looking over his shoulder, moving swiftly towards the exit, fleeing not just from the prospect of Metro Man’s arrival, but from her, from the cameras, from the entire situation, “once again it seems that Metro Man will be in time to save you! Your good fortune continues, Miss Ritchi—beware that it may not always do so!”

He ducks through the emergency exit without waiting for her reply, leaps onto the getaway motorcycle he has waiting, and, without being intercepted by Metro Man at all, succeeds in getting to Evil Lair, where he very promptly has a panic attack.

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It’s his own damn fault, he admits to himself, sitting in the bath, his arms wrapped around his knees, shivering in spite of the warmth of the water. Miss Ritchi is very good at her job, but it’s still his fault for being so stupidly susceptible—ask him a few questions, display just the slightest hint of interest, of sympathy, and he just rolls over and spills his guts, so desperate, so pathetic, so—

(I look up, here, and the stars are in the wrong places.)

Megamind gives a low moan of distress and pushes the heels of his hands into his eye sockets. What had possessed him to say something so—so—unguarded and vulnerable and—

—true.

So terribly, terribly true; the stars in this planet’s skies are in the wrong places, like someone gathered up the heavens and shook them and carelessly let them fall and scatter, and it’s a damn good thing that interview was interrupted before Megamind could say that to Miss Ritchi.

He’d give anything to see the sky on M’ega just one more time, to see his own constellations.

(his mother’s hand pointing at the sky, connecting the stars with invisible lines; his father’s voice, telling him the names—this is Alte-re, Queen of the Stars; you see her arms, open to embrace you? you see the guiding star in her hand, to light your way? and there is Ivri-roh beside her, do you see? Ivri-roh, who—)

Megamind pulls his hands from his eyes with a hurt sound and ducks beneath the water.

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Megamind’s interview with Miss Ritchi airs on every channel in the city.

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The next day, Metro Man gives her an interview.

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Miss Ritchi’s interview with Metro Man is nothing like her interview with Megamind—there’s no rising water, no threat of danger. The two of them sit in the tastefully decorated parlor of the Scott family home.

“I just want to be the best superhero possible for Metro City,” Wayne says, sincere, earnest conviction in his voice.

(Wayne believes it; believes what he’s saying, Megamind knows. That’s part of why people find Wayne so charming. And what makes Metro Man so damn dangerous, that—that utter certainty of his own righteousness, that anything he does must be right simply because he’s the one who’s doing it.)

“Megamind has hinted that the two of you have some unpleasant past history,” Miss Ritchi says. “What can you tell me about that?”

“You know, I really wish I knew what he was talking about,” Wayne says, spreading his hands in a gesture of baffled innocence.

Miss Ritchi narrows her eyes.

“But surely you must have some idea,” she says.

An expression of annoyance flickers in Wayne’s face, so quickly covered that it’s almost invisible.

“Well, we knew each other in school,” he says, “and Megamind was always kind of—well, you know, a little jealous of me. And he’s always been kinda unbalanced. I think maybe he’s worked all that up in his mind into some big imagined injury, you know?”

“But—”

Miss Ritchi’s gaze flicks to the side of the screen briefly, as though something behind the camera has caught her eye. For a moment, she looks almost frustrated, but then she presses her lips together, looks back at Metro Man, and smiles.

“I see,” she says.

The interview ends with Wayne demonstrating his accuracy with his eye lasers, shooting at different targets, hitting them all perfectly.

(evidently he has been practicing.)

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The day after the interview with Metro Man, the local tabloids report eyewitness accounts of seeing Miss Ritchi out on a date with Metro Man at one of the city’s most expensive restaurants. There are pictures, grainy and out of focus.

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One week later, every newspaper and magazine in town reports that Roxanne Ritchi is to attend the Metro City Charity Ball as Metro Man’s personal guest.

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…to be continued.

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notes: thank you all for the reviews; I really appreciate getting them so much! Her Majesty The Cat is doing better, now, and I’m gradually getting over my bronchitis, too.

I hope you all enjoyed the new chapter!