Author's Note: So yeahhhh I've stopped expecting any sort of Brainia action in the show on a regular basis so at least I'm not disappointed that there wasn't anything in episode 12!
But it did inspire a something, so we'll give it that :)
Summary: Nia worries over Brainy when she hears there's a lockdown at the DEO.
Spoilers: This takes place during episode 12 but I don't know how much it exactly spoils... I recommend the episode anyway.
Nia was worried about Brainy. She didn't like that she was worried about Brainy. Because Brainy had been the reason she'd cried once a day for the past two weeks, and Brainy was the one being gut-wrenchingly cold to her.
But... Brainy was also the person she had been in a pretty deep relationship with fairly recently, and relationships meant worry, even when they were over. So when Alex texted her to not show up at the DEO at her usual report-pre-patrol time because the building was on lockdown, Nia felt her stomach bunch up into nervous snakes that started hissing and writhing and biting her.
Apparently, having nervous snakes for a stomach meant that her legs seemed to move on her own accord, and Nia spent the next twenty minutes pacing up and down the swatch of living room in front of her couch. She had her phone out, and Brainy's contact showing with the little phone icon just begging to be pressed. Nia looked down at it for the 90th time and raised her finger for the 50th time, but then she turned her phone off and chucked it onto the couch. It bounced off the cushions and fell to the ground with an all-too-familiar-sounding thunk, and Nia let out a sigh and left it there.
Because, if she called Brainy, she wouldn't be able to start gasping about worrying about him or whether he was okay or whatever. In reality, Brainy wouldn't pick up the phone. Or he would, and they'd be locked in an awkward conversation where he'd be an emotionless void and she would end up crying twice today instead of just once.
Besides, it had only been twenty minutes since Alex had texted her. Nia highly doubted that whatever was going on had been taken care of, which meant that even if Brainy was okay now, that didn't mean he would be in an hour. And if she called now, she couldn't call later, so she'd keep on being worried, and the call would be useless.
So no calling.
At least not yet.
But the problem was with waiting for something, especially when the general emotion was worry and especially especially when the something in question had to do with a past romantic relationship, time dragged. Nia checked up on social media, she replied to emails, she tried to research an article, and when she looked at the clock she saw it had only been two hours and thought she might rip her hair out.
"Happy medium," she muttered, before picking up her phone and calling J'onn J'onzz. He, most likely, wasn't in the DEO. And J'onn just seemed to know everything, so he was the right choice.
"Hi, Nia," J'onn said, picking up on the third ring. "What's going on?"
"Hi," Nia replied. "Hey, so Alex texted me a little while ago that there was a lockdown at the DEO. Do you know what's going on? Have you heard anything from them?"
"I got that same text," J'onn said. "Alex gave me access to some of the DEO cameras, and so I've been checking them pretty regularly. They're completely dark, though; inactive. It's strange. Either my connection is somehow getting messed with or the cameras aren't working."
"Oh." Nia wasn't sure what to make of that. Brainy took the technology at the DEO very seriously, and she was fairly certain that he wouldn't have just let the cameras break.
Unless something was really bad.
Unless he was in trouble and hadn't even realized the cameras were broken.
"You worried about Brainy?" J'onn asked.
Nia winced. Was she that obvious? "I'm... worried about... everyone," she said lamely.
"Gotcha," J'onn agreed, though he sounded more amused than convinced.
"Fine," Nia gave in, because J'onn was basically a dad and she knew he wouldn't give her too much crap for being concerned about the well-being of her ex-boyfriend. "Yes, I'm worried about Brainy. Which is stupid, because he apparently could not care less about me and probably hasn't spared me a thought in the past two weeks."
J'onn made an argumentative humming noise. "I wouldn't say that," he said. "Brainy may act like he's completely cold, but I've gotten some emotions from him that tell me that he's not doing well."
"Thanks, J'onn," Nia muttered sarcastically. "I really needed to hear that."
J'onn seemed to realize by her response that that was maybe not the right thing to say at just that moment. "Nia," he tried again. "I'm sure that everyone in the DEO is fine. They've got Supergirl, and Alex, and Brainy, and Winn, not to mention every single agent who works in that building! Maybe the protocols have changed since I was last working there, and lockdown automatically disengages the cameras. Who knows. But I bet that everything is perfectly alright and that we'll hear from them soon."
Except... J'onn and Nia didn't hear from their friends soon. It was a full three hours later before Alex texted. "Hey! So sorry I didn't report back sooner. Everything's fine; we just had a lot of cleanup to do. Toyman managed to get himself into the tech at the DEO."
Nia let out a breath of relief at seeing the text, but then all at once she wasn't relieved because did "tech at the DEO" include Brainy? It was an odd thought, to be sure, but she was pretty certain that Brainy would see himself as part of the "tech at the DEO".
Nia bit her lip, overwhelmingly torn. On the one hand, she knew Alex was semi-understanding and would get if Nia asked about Brainy. On the other hand, she would probably get a kick out of Nia wondering if Brainy was considered as DEO tech. Either that or she would go into get-over-your-heartbreak drill-sergeant mode, and call Nia (or worse, actually show up at her apartment) to lecture her on how to move on.
She could text Kara, she supposed. Kara was generally more emotionally sympathetic than her older sister, and she wouldn't torture Nia about asking if Brainy was alright. But Kara had already done so much for her over the past few months, and Nia hated to be any more of a burden after what had probably been a long day. Especially because Winn would be leaving soon, and she probably wanted to spend time with her best friend.
Nia let out a groan and stared at her phone. It was almost 11 at night, she had wasted the entire day obsessing over her ex, and now she was literally making excuses so she could check in on him. She knew, deep down, that Alex wouldn't tease her; that Kara wouldn't think she was a burden. Heck, Winn probably wouldn't even consider it weird if she asked him if everyone was alright.
But she wanted to talk to Brainy. She wasn't sure why she was doing this to herself, because it would only end up hurting her more, but she really did want to.
She had never been good at self-control. Nia decided there was no point in trying and called her ex-boyfriend.
Brainy picked up on the second ring, which honestly threw all of Nia's predictions. She had thought that he'd either pick up on the first ring on instinct (because he knew the instant anyone called him and tended to not keep them waiting), or right before the last ring (because he didn't really want to talk to her and put it off to the last possible second). That was assuming he had picked up the call at all... but none of that mattered, because Brainy was on the other end of the line and Nia wasn't saying anything.
"Hello...?" Brainy asked slowly.
Nia let out the breath she hadn't realized she was holding. "Hi," she replied quietly. "Um... are you okay?"
She realized a moment after she'd spoken that she probably should have explained the reason for her call before just jumping on the concerned-ex-girlfriend train. But Brainy, as smart as he was, figured things out pretty quickly. "I assume you were informed about lockdown," he said.
"Yeah," Nia replied. "I, um... Alex said that all the DEO tech got messed up and I was wondering if that included... you...?"
Wow. That sounded way more stupid now that she was actually saying it aloud.
"You consider me to be included as DEO tech?" Brainy asked, and she could almost hear the eyebrow raise.
Shoot, that meant that he didn't.
"Ummm..." Nia floundered for a second. "No, no, duh, obviously you're not a piece of technology I just know that you... deal with... technology. At the DEO. A lot. And so I was wondering if anything had affected... you, too."
"No," Brainy answered simply, and Nia's heart sank at how coldly he'd just responded to her concern.
She gritted her teeth, starting to feel a little frustrated. "You know I can't just pretend like you meant nothing to me, right?" she burst out after a moment of stiff silence. "Like... I cared about you for over a year. I can't just... shut that off."
"I am not asking you to shut it off," Brainy said rigidly. "But whether you actively take the time to call me or not is a choice independent of caring about me."
"Uh, no it's not," Nia argued. "When I get worried about someone, they're all I can think about. I worry about people I care about, and I want to make sure they're okay. So, yeah, maybe I should have asked Alex. But I just- I didn't want her to scold me about not taking the right strides to move on from you."
"Well, maybe she would have been right in telling you that," Brainy said.
Nia felt anger grip her. "Are you kidding me?" she cried. "You know what? Forget it, Brainy. Forget that I was ever concerned about your well being. I hope that you- that you-"
She could bring herself to say anything more, not wanting to jinx him and actually have him get injured in the field or not be okay one of these times, and promptly hung up.
The Brainy that she knew, Nia realized as she curled up on her couch and cried for the second time that day, was gone. She wished she had never picked up the phone and called him, because at least before she'd had hope that he might come around and just be her Brainy again.
Now, she wasn't sure he ever would.
Author's Note: Y'know, I wasn't originally intending for that to end badly, but I guess there's only so many Cold-Brainy fixits that I can make, right? When it comes down to it, they all have the same ending, where he has to explain the same thing to her and she reacts in the same way.
So now we have a sort of deleted scene in a totally-could-have-happened universe, which is kind of it's own kind of cool in its own right.
SORRY I POSTED TWO DEPRESSING CHAPTERS IN A ROW! Right now I have a lot of lighter chapters started, I just need a liiiittle more inspiration to keep going with them. I'm hoping Sunday will deliver. Who's excited for episode 15 Reality Bytes?!
