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When the other Querl’s essence had dispelled into a fine mist of pixels, Brainy felt no more at ease than when he had first received the news some hours ago.
He turned at once, pacing restlessly from one side of the control room to the other, thoughts racing, all twelve tracks working on overdrive, poring over every plan Querl had sent to him via their shared connection. Each one ended just as his counterpart had alluded. With a great big brick wall and absolutely no leeway for an alternative solution.
He couldn’t accept this. How could he accept this? Moreover, how could his counterpart accept defeat so easily? After all they had been through, how could he not understand what was at stake here? Had had never loved so ardently? Had he never felt with such fervent need to hold onto the people that he cared for the most?
Had he ever loved at all?
Brainy’s eyes burned, but he refused to cry. Not now, not when every second he wasted was one closer to his predetermined termination. In that moment, all he wanted was someone who might understand his plight. Selfishly, he wished for Nia, but the last thing he wanted was to burden her with this before he had a means to extract himself from his people’s heartless calculation.
Because he would find a way. He just needed someone to hear him, who would fight just as hard for this as he. He needed--
He hadn’t meant to summon her, not really. Perhaps it hadn’t been a conscious decision at all.
Not that it mattered. After all, the sudden warmth that spread through his left side didn’t lie.
She couldn’t hug him in her non-corporeal state, but the way her projector prickled beneath his suit told him quite clearly that it had been her intention to do so.
Brainy didn’t dare turn to look at her, didn’t dare to hope. Instead, he froze to the spot, jerking his hand towards his chest, twisting his ring so hard that his finger burned.
“I know you want a different answer from me,” Director Dox said into the silence that had all but swallowed the ship. “But, I cannot give it to you.”
Regrettably, lowering his expectations had done nothing to stop his female counterpart’s response from stinging.
Brainy’s lips twisted into a bitter smile. “Are you not afraid?”
“The Big Brain is not something to be feared, Querl.”
Brainy bared his teeth. “I don’t mean it like that.” He did turn to her then, holding his chin high, ignoring the sympathy that lingered in her expression the moment that their eyes finally met. “Where I go, you go. If I give up my existence for this-” he twirled his finger fruitlessly about his head, “then so will you, so will every part of you. Including… including the people that you hold within you.”
Director Dox’s eyes widened in understanding. She eased herself back, folding her arms. “You are referring to my wife.”
Brainy lowered his head in affirmation. He wiped quickly at his eyes, gesturing towards her. “You keep her alive within you, right? With our shared connection to both the Big Brain and our essences. What happens when that essence is no longer our own?”
“I have made my peace with death,” Director Dox said calmly. “I did so from the moment I gave you my projector.” Her eyes gleamed brightly. “Nothing is constant, Querl, our people know this better than most.”
Brainy flinched, the hollowness in his chest seeming to pit itself into a bottomless chasm. “So, that makes it okay?” he shot back, hating the pleading note that crackled through his voice. When his counterpart only continued to watch him, he sneered at her, stepping forward. “How can you be so accepting of this? You told me that to love was the most important thing in the world—you told me to remove my inhibitors for this!” He dragged his hand across his forehead, pressing his fingers against his skin hard enough to bruise. His eyes clouded at the sharpness of that pain, the first of his tears tumbling down his face. “And now I have to give up everything their removal opened up to me. I have to abandon her—” he gasped around a broken sob, shaking his head desperately, chest hitching for air that just wouldn’t come, “and I—I—”
Director Dox’s image flickered, disappearing for an instant only to burst back into the visual field just inches from Brainy’s face. She cupped her hands around his, urging them back towards his centre.
Wordlessly, Brainy did just that, and the weight pushing against his diaphragm unlocked all at once. He breathed out, staring numbly at his counterpart’s desperate attempt to provide comfort.
He couldn’t feel her, not exactly, but that didn’t make her intentions any less real. Her fingers may have only been there in the visible sense, but Brainy could feel the sudden weight of her projector, tethering him to the spot, calming him from the inside.
Director Dox smiled weakly, running her thumb idly over his hand in superfluous circles. “Removing your inhibitors gave you full access to the Big Brain, that is true,” she agreed solemnly, “but with it, you have felt connected, correct? More-so than ever before?”
Brainy tried to blink through his tears. He sniffed. “Y-yes.”
Director Dox nodded along. “You feel them even when you sleep?”
Brainy shuddered. It was still so new to him, but at times when he allowed himself proper rest, he couldn’t deny that it felt like he was housing more than just his doppelgangers from within. “Sometimes,” he muttered.
“Do you remember what it felt like as a child?” Director Dox prompted, her projector warming again, chasing away the ache that had begun to settle behind his ribcage. “To share the thoughts of your people, even in slumber?”
Mutely, Brainy shook his head.
“We are a people who have always been made stronger by our shared mind,” Director Dox said firmly. “And that mind calls out to you now. Through the cosmos, through time and space, asking you to help it.” She offered him a gentle smile, her eyes glistening with unshed tears. “Do you think it would really strip you of everything that you are in place of it?”
Brainy huffed out a croaky laugh. “They do not value what I have been given here, otherwise they would not ask for me to leave it all behind.”
“But you won’t.” Tentatively, Director Dox raised her hand, pressing the heel of her palm across Brainy’s chest, over her own projector. Brainy’s eyes fluttered shut, feeling her mind probing against his own, teetering on the cusp of her own consciousness and the shared state of the Big Brain that lay beyond. “A part of them will always remain with you,” she continued. “You forget, Querl, the Big Brain may be a collective of minds, sure, but that collective shares a piece of each and every Coluan who has transcended to meet its ranks. You will take with you your family, and the person you love the most, and you will feel the shared experiences of innumerable Coluan minds in kind. They cannot take what you love away from you, only expand upon it.”
“A piece of her is only memory,” Brainy gritted out. He opened his eyes, meeting his doppelganger’s with total honesty. He knew she could feel his hopelessness, just as certainly as he knew she’d shared it once upon a time. His lips trembled. “Here, she will be alone.”
“It isn’t perfect,” Director Dox conceded, curling her hand tighter around her projector, causing its soft light to eke through the spaces between her fingers. “And, it will hurt.” She bowed her head, trying to disguise the sadness of her smile. “Time is always more limited than we would want. There are still a handful of moments you might share before then. Will you take them?”
Brainy’s heart lurched painfully. “I’ll take anything.”
Director Dox nodded. “Then, go to her. Please. And… make the most of the time you have left.” She lifted her free hand suddenly, cupping his face.
Even though he couldn’t feel her, Brainy found himself leaning into that ghostly touch, swallowing down another sob.
“Your emotions are a good thing, Querl,” Director Dox said softly. “Don’t go through this alone. Share this with Nia.”
It wasn’t the answer he had longed for, Director Dox had been right about that. But… as Brainy watched her silhouette disappear back into a digital cloud, he realised with something of a finality that he would not be getting anything better.
He backed himself against the pilot’s chair in silence, clutching his doppelganger’s projector, at the residual heat that burned against his fingertips.
He had done great things in his time with the Legion, that was true, things that some may have thought impossible, and never once had he given up hope.
Hope, after all, had been the very ground the Legion had been built upon.
Maybe today was the day his hope ran out.
And if it did… if this was it… Brainy knew exactly where he needed to go.
Time was precious, after all. And he didn’t want to spend a single moment of his final days without Nia Nal.