Chapter Text
After the day she’d had, Nia didn’t think anything could’ve surprised her anymore.
As the final rays of sunlight dipped unceremoniously below the horizon, Dreamer walked the streets of National City alone. Everything appeared emptier tonight – a sombre haze ran static in the air, capturing the tallest spires of the city in a still shot while Nia slipped between the multi-layered frames at ground level, totally untouched.
That’s what it felt like, at least.
The truth of it was that she was still getting used to having her own company back. After spending her afternoon wading through a sea of doppelgangers, many of whom shared her boyfriend’s face, well, nothing could’ve been stranger than that. The quiet buzz of the city at the touch of twilight was a well needed change of pace.
Still, someone had to keep up ground patrol. And tonight, that was on Dreamer.
Well, it was actually meant to be on her and Brainy, but she wasn’t exactly counting on him showing up – not that she blamed him. Besides, she could take the city on solo no problem, especially on nights like this where the rate of criminal activity was dwindling in the single digits. Nia liked to think that National City had filled its daily quota for crazy hijinks - that she’d be in for a peaceful, maybe even uneventful, evening.
She remained vigilant though, a part of her ever wary that she might see double, triple – hell – even quadruple at any turn.
Despite that, her head really wasn’t in the game tonight. As much as she tried, Nia couldn’t keep her mind from wandering far away from the task Kara had granted her. She wanted to be in the moment, she was good at being in the moment, but even when a petty thief sprinted past her at breakneck speed with an ugly purse in tow, it wasn’t enough to tear her out of the funk she was stewing in.
Nia sighed loudly, for no one’s benefit other than her own, spinning lazily on her heel. “Hey,” she called out, trying to keep the irritation from her voice, “what’s got you up so late?”
Predictably, this didn’t deter the thief at all. Would’ve made her night a whole lot easier if it had, but hey, she couldn’t afford to be picky over her choice of D-grade criminals. Instead, Nia lifted her hand out in front of her, capturing the thief’s position between her forefinger and her thumb. When she had her shot in sight, she pinched the tip of her tongue between her teeth, throwing her arm back before sending her lasso looping out in front of her. Energy surged and sparked from her palm to the tips of her fingers as the lasso snatched up the thief’s ankle.
One short pulse and a stifled yelp later, and the guy was sprawled out on the ground, groaning and swearing in dramatized pain.
Nia forced a smile as she marched up to the thief, snatching the purse out of his arms. “You know, if you can’t sleep, there’s way better remedies out there than resorting to crime.” She winked behind her mask. “In fact, I know the perfect nightcap.”
One good punch was all it took to put the guy out cold. It hardly felt worth her time - or maybe she was just itching to let some real power fly. Anything that might distract her from, well, being distracted.
Things picked up a little after the purse was returned to its rightful owner. Dreamer broke up a total of two bar brawls that had carried over into the street, and she even got to put a stop to an amateurish attempt at a convenience store robbery. Aside from a meagre adrenaline spike, though, she didn’t even feel out of breath.
Normally, she wouldn’t’ve cared. Normally, she would have had Brainy with her, and she could have bounced jokes off of him in the far too many boring gaps that often strung-out patrol. But Brainy had his own demons to deal with tonight.
There it was, she thought bitterly. The reason for her brain funk served up on a silver platter.
Because… Brainy had asked to be alone while he handled the storage of his evil doppelganger. It was only a temporary solution, at least until they could figure out a way of freeing his planet and all that entailed safely. Nia supposed it was kind of fitting that Brainy had elected to store the bottle at the Fortress of Solitude.
She just wished there was more she could do for him other than… this.
The time would come when he’d want to talk about it, but Nia had a feeling it wasn’t going to be easy for him when it did. However difficult, though, and however much time he needed, she didn’t care. She just wanted to be there for him when he was ready.
He’d been meditatively quiet since removing his inhibitors during the fight, but he’d held her hand the whole ride back to the DEO, squeezing intermittently while, expressively, giving nothing away. Since then, he’d gained two more life projectors on his chest, the bearings of what remained of the doppelgangers who’d worked at his side. He’d seemed lighter after that, his smile a little less subdued, but she knew he was still getting used to himself. She was happy for him, truly, and she couldn’t wait to take this journey with him, to rediscover the Brainy that had been hidden from himself this whole time.
But that yearning to do something, to be there with him, only made it that much harder to focus on literally anything else.
Nia decided to catch a breather in the next alley over. It figured - the worst she’d dealt with so far were a couple of blunt objects being thrown in her general direction plus some really poor punches, but she was actually starting to run out of steam. Maybe she’d thrown too much of herself into these petty scuffles, or maybe the fight from earlier was finally catching up on her. Maybe everything was.
Just as that thought had crossed Nia’s mind, she heard movement from the mouth of the alleyway. She straightened quickly from her lax position against the wall, throwing her hand out in warning.
The well of dream energy defused from her bracelet the second she realised who it was.
With a faint swoop, Brainy touched down elegantly from the shadows, his eyes catching hers immediately with a soft smile. He was lightly tousled from the flight over, his dark hair obscuring the side of his face. He’d changed back into standard black since the fight; a light jacket zipped up to his chin to combat the cold found at higher altitudes. The ring protected him from the worst of it anyway, but she knew he would’ve felt remiss if he didn’t utilise the full DEO get-up when he had the chance.
“Brainy – hey,” Nia said, a little breathlessly. “I didn’t think you’d…” she trailed off, shaking her head. “Did everything go okay at the Fortress?”
Before she could even finish her question, Brainy had already made up the space between them. A playful smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth as he stopped just short of her, the warmth of him an immediate and familiar comfort. “Better than okay,” he said, his voice a mellow hum.
Nia grinned, falling back on his playful tone. “Oh, really?”
“Really.”
Nia gasped the moment she felt Brainy’s hands slip expertly around her waist, drawing them both against the wall. Nia stumbled alongside Brainy’s swifter movements, taking his shoulders subtly to keep from losing her footing. She squeezed appreciatively. “Okay, so this uninhibited you is pretty forward. Good to know.”
Something glittered in Brainy’s eye at that. A twinkle of triumph, maybe, at catching her off guard. Over the last couple months, he’d been closing the gaps where physical intimacy had lacked in the early stages of their relationship, but this felt different from that somehow. Less ardent, more pre-meditated. Nia wasn’t so certain she could trust that.
With their faces so close, she tried to get a read on her boyfriend’s expression, worried that this exaggerated affection was his way of avoiding what he’d just been through. Not that she was opposed to indulging in a distraction or two, she just wanted to make sure he was okay first.
Although, asking pretty much anything was kind of hard right now, especially when Brainy ducked his head, his lips latching to her throat, trailing kisses towards her jaw.
Nia’s eyes fluttered shut, the heat of his breath was like a shock on her skin, prickling across the hairs on the nape of her neck. There was something rougher than usual about Brainy’s lips, and yet there was an articulate precision to every spot his mouth travelled. Each kiss managed to touch just the right nerve, sending pleasant tingles all the way down the side of her face.
Any latent concerns blurred wholly to the back of her mind when Brainy’s lips found hers. Nia gasped into his open mouth, curling her fingers into his hair, scrunching and tugging strands down towards the base of his neck. The adrenaline she’d felt during patrol was nothing compared to this, and it beat a perfect rhythm to Brainy’s own uninhibited enthusiasm. She wound her arms around Brainy’s back, cradling his head in her hands, pushing herself fully against his chest. She’d expected to feel the protrusions of his newly acquired life projectors beneath his jacket, had even curbed her fervour in case they might be tender to the touch, but she felt nothing at all.
A murmur of unease fired somewhere inside her mind. Nia made a soft sound as it struck, struggling to form his name against the sudden bruising force of his lips.
Then, she felt it.
A sharp pain lanced through her gut. At first, she was shot so full of endorphins that she hardly felt it. Slowly, though, the pain began to spread. Nia hissed, jerking her face from his. “Brainy, what the hell---?”
She wavered, a sudden and awful sense of dread hitting her so hard that she nearly buckled. Something warm and wet was flooding alarmingly fast across the front of her suit. The pain throbbed once at her centre, hard enough that she had to stifle an actual scream. Before Nia could make a sound, Brainy’s hand was already over her mouth, pushing painfully into her lips.
Except, it wasn’t Brainy’s hand. Not her Brainy, at least.
A repulsed shudder travelled its way through Nia’s body, causing the knife – because she was pretty damn certain it was a knife – to shift inside of her. She held still despite the vertigo and nausea threatening to take hold, forcing herself to think.
How far had the blade gone? How much blood was she losing? How the hell did she get out of this?
A forced calm crashed over her as she took a shuddering breath. Her eyes burned, but she refused to give this imposter the satisfaction of seeing her cry.
The evil Brainy’s face was still inches from hers, but now she could see him for what he truly was. The cold calculations swarming his eyes as he drank in every second of her terror. The hairs on the back of her neck still stood on end, but now Nia understood them for the warning they’d presented.
The smile on his face wasn’t her Brainy’s. It was twisted and cruel, nothing but a warped reflection.
Brainy’s counterpart made an oversized gesture with his free hand, pressing his finger quick to his lips in the universal signage for silence. Nia’s eyes narrowed. Indulging him, she nodded her head slowly, trying to keep from choking when she felt the knife tug and scrape inside her gut.
When he removed his hand from her mouth, Nia bared her teeth, spitting blood directly into his face.
The evil Brainy’s smile grew to vile proportions. He chuckled in delight, scarlet globules dribbling from his eye and chin. In one swift move, he thrust his arm forward, driving the knife in so deep that Nia saw white.
Beyond the agony screaming inside of her, the blood roaring through her head, she felt the heat of his breath on her face when he hissed, “Now that was unwise, wasn’t it, Nia?”
Nia bit her lip to keep from sobbing, the iron tang intensifying in her mouth. “Wh-what’ve y-you d-d-done?”
“Ah.” He laughed again, a near manic pitch catching in the back of his throat. “I am surprised you didn’t figure that out for yourself, although I imagine with all that blood loss…” His brow furrowed with feigned concern. He twisted the knife again, just to watch her squirm. Nia clenched her teeth hard, a bottled groan tearing at her throat.
The imposter only seemed to revel in it. His eyes shone when he continued: “Your Brainy was weak, Nia. Removing his inhibitors in the middle of a fight was quite negligent, don’t you think? All that emotion flooding in at once, the kindness, the love, the heroics.” His voice dripped with sarcasm. “It was more than enough of a distraction to fool a twelfth level mind into thinking he had succeeded in bottling me alongside those witches.”
Nia trembled, a coldness washing through her bones. She felt numb aside from the near-paralysing pain that spread from her stomach to her back. A whimper nearly broke from her when she realised with harrowing certainty that she could no longer feel her legs.
And still some small part of her brain kept yelling at her. How had she been so stupid to think this Brainy could’ve been hers? How hadn’t she seen it, listened to the signs her body had been screaming at her? Had she really been willing to ignore it all just because she’d missed him? What kind of superhero was she?
The dead kind.
Her throat spasmed, more blood bubbling to her lips as she kept herself from coughing outright. His face was beginning to blur around the edges, but she’d be damned if she let him know that. Instead, she held his eyes unwaveringly. Only her voice threatened to betray her.
“H-h-how?” Nia croaked, teeth clenched tight.
“How else?” His eyes gleamed with that same arrogance she’d at first mistaken for triumph. “Differential calculus. Your Brainy was the only limited version of himself, the only inhibited mind. By using that against him, introducing him to a sea of variants that didn’t share those same restrictions…” He laughed cruelly. “Well, you do the math.”
He’d planned it. This whole thing. Which meant… the witches must’ve known too. Nia, Kara, Brainy, they’d all been playing right into his hand the second they’d barged into that summoning circle.
Nia wanted to scream, she wanted to throw everything she had right into his twisted face and end him for good. But she couldn’t. The frenzied lunacy in this Brainy’s eyes shifted in and out of her focus, overwritten by shadows any time she so much as blinked. Everything was spinning, she was lightheaded and so, so cold…
She had to fight this, because the most important question had yet to be asked. Nia’s lashes fluttered, losing herself to the dark behind her eyes for precious seconds when the pain ruptured to a new crescendo, clinching to the base of her spine, rolling like fire through her pelvis. Her lips peeled back behind bloodstained teeth. “Where—where is he?”
The evil Brainy raised his chin, an indulgent smile shimmering in his eyes. They were watering too, she realised, overflowing with uninhibited maniacal exuberance. “That is none of your concern,” he told her. “In fact, you will find yourself most unburdened by matters of the living very soon.”
With that, he tore the knife from her stomach.
Nia did scream then, there was nothing she could do to stop it. The evil Brainy’s hand closed over her mouth, muffling the sound so that it echoed back inside her own head. Blood trickled over the top of his thumb. She could taste it like acid in her throat; the rest of it, sticky and congealing, itched beneath her suit.
She couldn’t feel much of anything else. Not her legs, not her arms, not even the wound pumping her lifeblood all over the alleyway. Her eyes went dark again and the next think she knew, the ground had come up to meet her and she was lying horizontally on the gravel. Her mouth worked uselessly as she fought for breath, putting every bit of energy she had into craning her head up to the imposter Brainy’s silhouette staring down at her from the mouth of the alley.
He sneered at her, pocketing the bloody knife as though it was the most natural thing in the world. “Don’t take this personally, Nia,” he said, a bead of sweat trickling from his brow. “I simply can’t afford your irritating Naltorian precognition getting in the way of my plans.”
Nia made a guttural sound, clenching her hands into the ground, but there was nothing else she could do. The evil Brainy ran a hand over his face, wiping away blood, sweat and tears in one fell swoop. He studied the red streaks on his fingers as a result, almost in marvel of them, before clenching his hand towards his chest, his own Earth’s Legion ring catching against odd shards of isolated streetlight.
Then, without a word, he backed out into the dark, taking off into the sky.
Nia could feel the cold gravel seeping into her bones. The gash in her stomach had elevated way beyond pain now, holding her like a water weight, pulling her down into the ground.
She wanted to do something. She had to do something. Her vision spiralled from white to black to blue, tantalising her with the promise of sleep. But… she knew the truth of it. She wished she didn’t, God she wished… but she knew exactly where she’d be going if she closed her eyes.
She couldn’t—she couldn’t. She had to fight it. Brainy was counting on her… Brainy needed her.
Matters of the living, that’s what the evil variant had said, right? Which meant that whatever he’d done to her Brainy, he was still out there somewhere, he was still alive…
Which was more than she could say for herself.
A sob and a laugh spasmed out of her throat, spraying blood across her chin.
She couldn’t give up. Not yet. Not yet.
She had to find him.
She… she had to find him.
It was with that thought intact that a dipping sensation tugged urgently at her chest, like a cord snapping from its holster. Nia gasped out, the breath turning molten in her lungs. She felt lighter, suddenly, like she’d left the other side of that broken string dangling somewhere far behind her. Maybe she had… maybe she was…
Maybe… maybe…
She felt no peace when her vision turned blue and the world went out along with it.
When her chest rattled out its final breath, that far away part of her knew there never would be.
Not until her Brainy was safe.