Author's Note: This came to me when all the Brainiac 5s were bullying Brainy for being so slow on the uptake. Let's pretend that it wasn't because Brainy had the inhibitors on... and make it hurt/comforty XP
Okay also Jesse has been posting the different thought processes behind the wardrobes and personalities of the different Brainys in 5x10, and he was talking about how the happy Brainy was like the person that our Brainy has always wanted to be (yknow, kind, charming, genuine, caring and sociable, as Jesse said in his post), and so that kind of inspired this further.
Summary: Brainy feels like he's not enough. Nia could not disagree more
Spoilers: Definitely 5x10. Just not the end. Can we just delete the end (aka what I do with anything in fandom that I don't like/agree with)? Ok, thanks. Oh and ALSO this is kind of au-y because I mention things that didn't actually happen in the episode. Okay THAT'S ALL.
"Nia," Brainy said after a late night of Chinese takeout and getting introduced to the humor of Bad Lip Reading, Seagulls Stop It Now edition. "Am I... enough?"
Nia laughed, giving him a weird look. "Of course you are, genius," she said, reaching over to lightly cup his face before turning back to the soapy water in their sink. Brainy rubbed a bubble off of his nose. "Why do you ask?"
"No reason," Brainy evaded. "Are you... sure?"
Nia set down her dish brush and turned to face him more fully. "Yes," she said, without any sort of decoration or hesitancy. "I'm sure."
Brainy nodded and moved away from her, going to stand by the window. He looked out over the city, feeling the cold seeping through the glass when his skin got to close. His breath fogged up the space in front of him but he took his sleeve and swiped it away. Now the city was blurry, lights from skyscrapers blending together like the headlights of cars going by quickly at night.
Or maybe it was his gaze that was blurry.
Brainy shook his head, looking away from the window. A lot about today had been difficult, but for whatever reason, only two moments were sticking with him. The first was unsurprising. Brainy always hated being the slowest on the uptake, and he made sure he rarely found himself in a position where he was. But today? Surrounded by doppelgängers of himself; doppelgängers that were considerably smarter than him? It basically made him question his whole existence. If he wasn't the smartest in the room, what was the point of keeping him around?
The second moment that stuck with Brainy made less sense to him. Nia had decided that she needed to meet the alternate versions of himself, but before getting attacked by the evil-Brainy, she had met the nice, chipper one with the ponytail and the peppy attitude and the shield-belt.
He had been "delighted to make her acquaintance". He had smiled and charmed and tugged her through an easy conversation. He had made her laugh. And all the while Brainy had watched from across the room, just about dying to get Nia alone so he could just talk to her about all of this, but feeling too bad about himself to try and insert himself into the conversation.
Social situations had never been this thing. Brainy was far better with computers than he was with people- he knew that. All his friends knew that. But Nia had been different. Nia was different. With Nia, he could talk for hours and not feel like he was sounding too stuffy or saying the wrong things or being endlessly confusing. And if he was, Nia would call him out on it with an affectionate smile.
He shouldn't have felt bad watching her and the Brainy-he-wanted-to-be talk. He should have felt proud that he had a girlfriend who was coming around to see what was going on. And he had felt proud, though only when she'd spotted him and come over to grab onto his arm and gush about how weird and cool it was that he was getting to meet his doppelgängers.
Was this what jealousy felt like? Could you be jealous of yourself if the yourself in question was from a different Earth?
Two arms twinned around Brainy's waist and he jumped. "Penny for your thoughts?" Nia asked teasingly, pressing her nose into his shoulder blade.
"I can't do much with a penny," Brainy replied, bantering halfheartedly. He turned around and rested his back against the window instead, putting his arms around Nia's waist and dropping his forehead to her shoulder.
"What's going on?" Nia asked softly, combing a hand through his hair.
Brainy considered opening up to her. He had no doubt that she would understand; Nia always understood. But everything was too jumbled up in his head right now to try and get it into words. "I will... tell you later, alright?" he said instead, nosing his face into her neck. "Tonight I think I would rather just get some sleep."
linebreaker
"Agent Dox, how's finding that alien coming?" Alex asked impatiently as she paced up and down the length of the main room at the DEO. Nia was in her Dreamer costume and was drumming a bored rhythm onto the center table, humming lightly under her breath.
"I am... working on it," Brainy muttered absently, rubbing the back of his head. In reality, he had been "working on it" for the better part of two hours and was still no closer to finding the alien that had attacked downtown that afternoon.
He had been feeling off, lately. Not sick or anything, but... off. His brain hadn't been working right. Puzzles and differential calculous and things like alien-tracking hadn't been coming easily to him like they always did. Brainy was aware that it was probably a placebo, his brain falling into the idea that, no, he wasn't good enough, and just running with it... but even recognizing that it was all in his head didn't help. He should be above things like that.
"Maybe we should take a break?" Nia suggested, walking over to Brainy's chair and taking up her drumming on his shoulders instead of the table.
Alex shook her head. "Take a break from what, Nia? All we've been doing is standing and waiting." She walked briskly over to Brainy. "Agent Dox, if you're unable to find the alien-"
"I can find it!" Brainy cried, batting Nia's hands off of his back and striding away from his desk. He pushed his fingers into his hair, tugging hard and trying to think about the issue from a new angle. A few weeks ago and he would have had this problem figured out in minutes. Why couldn't he do it?
Alex held up her hands in surrender. "Okay. Fine. But I'm going to start working a different possibility, just in case."
Brainy waved her off, the motion almost catching Nia in the face as she was suddenly right next to him. "What's going on with you?" she asked, cocking her head a little.
Even that sentence, though said in a playful, slightly concerned tone, made Brainy feel like burying himself in a hole and lying there to die. "I don't know," he grit out, giving his hair another tug. Nia pulled his hands away from his head, looking displeased. "I can't do it."
"That's okay," Nia replied with a light shrug. "Sometimes we can't do stuff. That's why there's more than one of us on this Team, you know? Maybe your time would be better spent seeing how you can help Alex out than obsessing over the problem you've been trying fruitlessly to solve for two hours."
"You don't understand," Brainy said, his voice cracking. "I would have been able to solve this."
She didn't get the implication behind his words and just gave him a sympathetic look, kissing him on the forehead. "You'll get there. I'm going to see if Alex needs me."
He nodded, letting go of her hands with a deep sigh and then snapping himself back to focus. But he couldn't help but think, as he began puzzling out the alien's location again...
The other Brainiacs would have been able to do this.
linebreaker
Brainy knew that many people were enamored when they met Superman. Winn, for starters, had always loved to rave about the time that he got introduced to Kara's suave, kind, very buff cousin. Reporters and photographers alike loved him.
Brainy did not.
He had nothing against the kryptonian, exactly. Brainy knew that Clark had done some great things in the hero-department. He also wasn't one to get start disliking someone just because they happened to be incredibly attractive and good with people. Or rather, Brainy hadn't been one to do that. But it seemed new-Brainy, post-doppel-Brainy, was a completely different techno-organic. It frustrated him to no end how people hung off of Clark's every word; how women on the street gazed at him even with his pregnant wife holding his hand.
Brainy didn't have to worry about women, at least. He had his Nia, and he would never need anyone more. But Clark Kent was just one of those men that was so appreciated, by everybody. Brainy wanted to be one of those men.
"Why?" Nia complained when he refused her idea of a double date with Lois and Clark. "It'd be so fun! Maybe we could even fight crime after dessert."
"I just don't want to," Brainy replied petulantly, crossing his arms over his chest. "Apologies if I don't wish to get water spilled all over my lap when the server sees the size of Mr. Kent's biceps."
Nia snorted with giggles, looking at him with glee. "Oh my gosh- are you jealous of Clark?" she accused, pointing a finger at him. "That is literally adorable."
Brainy frowned deeply, not understanding what was so "adorable" about the gnawing, frustrating urge to be better than Clark that was permeating his every action that day.
"Aw, honey..." Nia shook her head, still grinning widely, and walked over to rest her arms around his neck. "To me, you are more attractive and brilliant than Clark could ever be. Sure, he's got big arms and a six-pack and a giant heart. But you-" She tapped his forehead. "You've got this bad boy. Brains are sexy, remember?"
Brainy rolled his eyes, but his lips were quirking. The smile faded, however, once Nia was out of sight, distracted with another task. He appreciated the fact that she thought his brains were attractive, but that didn't bode well considering he seemed to be losing them.
Was that really the answer, then? Was the only appealing, useful, worthwhile part of him his brains?
Then what happened if someone was able to top even those?
linebreaker
Trivia night, as stupid as it may have sounded, was the last straw.
He and Nia were on a team together and had been one point away from winning the whole game night. She had trusted him on that last question, knowing he knew more than everyone in the room combined.
He had gotten it wrong.
As Kelly and Alex cheered and clapped fives, Brainy stood up and walked briskly away from the group. His eyes were burning, but it wasn't because he had lost the game. It was because he, Querl Dox, Brainiac 5, had gotten something wrong.
He was losing his brains. And if he lost those, he lost everything that made him worthwhile to the people in his life that he loved.
Brainy found himself in Alex and Kelly's mudroom and looked into the mirror. His hair was unkempt. His nose had an unsightly bump to it. His eyebrows were a strange shape. Tonight, he was just the personification of a failure, in looks and sportsmanship and brains.
He sat down, narrowly missing crushing Alex's favorite pair of combat boots. Brainy didn't exactly want to hide in the mudroom and cry, but apparently his eyes had a different plan and soon he was burying his face into his crossed arms to hide the noises coming out of his throat.
A hand brushed his back. Brainy jolted, looking up with wild eyes to find Nia standing in front of him. "It was just a game, Brainy," Nia said softly. "I'm not upset that we lost."
"it is not that," Brainy spat, wiping furiously at his eyes. "I can't stop messing up, Nia. I just-" He leaned his head back against the wall, banging it back just to feel the pain it brought his skull. "The Brainiacs that we met a few weeks ago would never have gotten that question wrong. Nor would they have failed in finding the alien. Nor would they have even bothered to compare themselves to another man, and even if they had they would have known that the two items were too different to contrast."
"You're still stuck on them?" Nia asked, looking at him with concern. "Brainy... don't tell me that you've been feeling like you're not good enough ever since we ran into your doppelgängers. That was weeks ago. Why didn't you say anything?"
"I tried," Brainy wailed, hitting his head back against the wall again, a little harder this time. Nia flinched but she didn't stop him. "I couldn't- I could never- I don't know how to explain it, Nia, but it's like my brains are failing me and that's the only thing that anyone cares about so if I lose them I don't know what I'm going to do."
"Hey." Nia crouched down in front of him and took his face in between her hands. Brainy wasn't sure if it was to stop him from hitting his head against the wall again or to make sure he was looking at her, but either way, he let her hold him steady. "You mean so much more to me, and to everyone, than just your smarts. Do you need me to list everything I love about you right here in Alex's mudroom?"
Brainy let out a sigh. "You don't have to-"
"No, no, I will," Nia interrupted. She let go of his face in order to dig around in her pocket for her phone, which she brought out and began tapping at. A moment later, Brainy was looking at the comparatively bright screen at a Note that read, '101 things I love about Querl Dox AKA Brainy'
"I did this thinking I'd give it to you for an... anniversary, or a birthday or something," Nia admitted, handing him the phone. "But I think this is the perfect time. Read it."
Brainy did. The list was seemingly endless, including funny things like, "He can call me by my first and last name while not sounding like a disappointed teacher", and, "He has an innate 'Nia Needs Food' sensor that always saves me from having a blood sugar crash".
There were serious items on the list, too. "He has the biggest heart of anyone I've ever met." "When he holds me, he acts like I'm as fragile and precious as sentimental china." "He can always tell when something's bothering me, and.." "...he never fails to know how to make it better."
Brainy finished the last reason ("How easily I can come up with everything on this list") and looked up with Nia with wide, glistening eyes. "I am... the luckiest man in the multiverse to have you by my side," he said softly. "And I say that with a full knowledge of the hundreds of billions who have come before me and exist now."
Coming from most, this comment would have been sweet but mostly just an over-exaggeration. Coming from Brainy... well, he didn't say things like that when he didn't mean them.
Nia reached forward and cupped his face again, pressing her forehead to his. "I love you, Brainy," she whispered. "And, in case that list didn't make it clear enough... I love you for more than just your brains. I love you for everything that you are. Never think that you're not enough, because you couldn't possibly be. At least not to me."
Brainy nodded a little breathlessly, tilting his chin to catch her lips in a kiss. Nia's words, of course, couldn't magically erase every self-doubt he'd had in his entire life, and all the self-doubts he would have in the future.
But they had erased the ones he had right then, and Brainy supposed that that was more than enough.
Author's Note: I... yeah so I don't know how I feel about this. It's wayyy more introspective than I usually write for Brainia, and it's maybe kind of repetitive and boring and-
Welp, it's done now XD Hope it isn't too painful of a read ahaha.
Man... this brings me back though. I did a list of 101 things I loved about my boyfriend and then broke up with him like two weeks later so rip that XD