#dreamerdox

Things always felt clearer when he had the chance to talk them out with Nia Nal, and he desperately sought that clarity now. But Nia’s job was by far the most important if they were to gain any insight for the fight to come, and he could not allow his own feelings get in the way of that.

When the elevator doors finally shuddered open and Brainy stepped foot into the training arena made makeshift den, the sense of wrongness twisting his stomach didn’t lift as anticipated. In fact, it only seemed to intensify.

Nia was sat on the other side of the room, mostly upright on one of J’onn’s scavenged antique armchairs.

Brainy’s lips twitched fondly at the sight.

Over the last few weeks, Nia had been spending more time in the dream realm than she ever had before, so much that she’d become impressively adept at appearing otherwise conscious during her meditations.

Only her soft snores betrayed her now.

Brainy folded his arms, ducking his head with another suppressed smile. As much as it pained him to disturb her dreams, their current circumstances had made it something of a necessity.

“Nia,” he said softly, not yet at her side. Oftentimes, that was all it took to reach through to her. The sound of his voice always found her eventually. No matter how far into the dream realm she may have travelled, that had always been a certainty.

Today, however, something was different.

When Nia didn’t stir after the predicted one minute and fifteen second window Brainy normally left for her, a nervousness began to creep its way into his throat. He swallowed it down quickly, crossing the room towards her.

Even his proximity didn’t appear to dispel her dreams. When he was close enough, Brainy crouched down in front of her, tentatively taking his girlfriend’s arm, attempting to reach her. “Nia Nal?”

Nothing. Nia remained perfectly still, her lips half parted.

Brainy frowned, eyes skirting across her expression, intent on finding anything that might account for this abnormality in her sleep cycle. Nia’s brow was furrowed slightly, as though she was concentrating on something very far away. Her fingers were tense, curled inward, impressing strained lines into the leather armrests.

Most worrisome. The dream realm wasn’t meant to cause such an adverse physical reaction. Nia would often wake from a dream disoriented, the physical embodiment of her astral self coinciding with that of the waking world, but that occurred after the dream had dispelled, not before.

Brainy forced his breathing to still, taking his girlfriend’s shoulders, squeezing her with gentle reassurance. He let his eyes flutter shut, focusing instead on his internal enhancements. He had long ago put buffers in place to match up against Nia’s own energy frequencies, though as her abilities had grown, he’d found himself implementing more to prepare for any variations in which her powers might manifest.

He thought he’d known what to expect, but when his attempt at connecting with her was met with a powerful snap of dream energy that lanced down both his wrists, Brainy jerked his hands away with a hiss, shaking them out.

“Sprock,” he muttered, winding a protective hand around his ring finger where her energy continued to smart. He stared at Nia’s unresponsive posture, wide-eyed, a panic flaring inside of him so fiercely that it took every ounce of his self-control not to grab for her and shake her with all his might. Anything that might wake her.

But it would do not good. Nia was protecting herself from the outside world, her energy posing a physical threat against anything that sought to disturb her focus. A soft blue highlighted her cheeks, her gloves glowing a brilliant but dangerous shade. She'd travelled deeper into the dream realm than he'd ever witnessed, somewhere that even Brainy couldn’t reach through to her.

What had brought on such prowess, Brainy wasn’t sure. Had she found new certainty in her mother’s teachings, or perhaps she was responding to a vengeful trigger set in motion by Nyxly?

Either way, Brainy should have known, should have predicted this. By being attentive to her feelings, by being present at all. He was failing her, and he was failing himself by being unable to focus on probable cause, to outline anything at all with absolute certainty. Not with Alex, not with J’onn, not with this…

It seemed he needed… help.

Brainy nearly recoiled at the notion. He hated that feeling, the vulnerability that came with such uncertainty, but he couldn’t deny it any longer. Something was wrong, and if he was going to figure it out, he needed to alert the rest of the Super Friends to Nia’s current predicament.

He balled his hands together nervously before dipping forward, cupping the side of Nia’s face so that her energy bleached his palm. He sighed, pressing his lips firmly to her forehead, taking comfort in the warmth of her skin, the sweet scent of her shampoo.

“I will return,” Brainy promised her, his voice barely a crackle in her ear.

Nia remained unresponsive throughout, though from the tightness of her expression, Brainy knew her battle raged on elsewhere. He only hoped that wherever she was, she might have heard him. Enough to know that he was not leaving her. That he would be back. He would always be back.