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I am Brainiac 8. I am your destruction.

Right now, Roy, when you're dying from suffocation, when the panic has begun to set in, this is the part when you remember... This is all your fault.

I killed Donna Troy to save the future. I suffered humiliation as that sweet, innocent robotic idiot.

No... You will not finish me. I have not crawled across centuries... Millennia... To be hobbled by a gaggle of half-ape mutations. You creatures of flesh! You will feel the fire inside those meat husks you call bodies!

Listening to those words, watching the destruction Brainiac 8 wrought, the pain she was bringing to her friends... Indigo almost can't make it through. She'd read enough on her omnicom about the Sensoriums to guess they might be able to do something like this, show her what should have happened. Stacy had confirmed it for her. But, really, coming out and watching it... It was a mistake.

But she had to do it. She couldn't bear the thought of hurting her friends. Of hurting Shift. But she had, and now she knew the size of it. Indigo hiccups a bit, watching the horror unfold in front of her, and tries to blink away the tears forming in her eyes as she watches Brainiac, Brainiac 8, Luthor, and Superboy tear into the collected Teen Titans and Outsiders. She ignores Superboy's private drama with Wonder Girl, it's not what she wants to know about. It's not her place to know about it.

She flinches with each energy blast thrown, with every punch that connects. The pair of Brainiacs are a fearsome team, she doesn't believe the Outsiders have a very good chance of winning. Indigo doesn't believe her body is that powerful, the true owner must have kept many abilities to herself. Still, she can't help but smile a little as she watches the others gain what seems to be the upper hand, for all of five seconds before Brainiac 8 unleashes some kind of sonic attack. Her face crumples as she watches that, and as the illusory Shift attacks the Brainiac, she covers her mouth with her hands.

"No. Nonono. Not him." She listens to 'herself' take over, begging Shift to kill her. It's like being punched in the gut, Indigo knows that this would hurt him. She makes a tiny, strangled noise as he turns 'her' into flesh, watching his own reaction to it. The way his face crumples as he holds 'her' to him.

"...Turn it off." Her voice is choked, tears welling up in her eyes. She can't help but think about how much that must have hurt Shift. Killing her. As the recording of another reality fades around her, she sinks to her knees. "I can't... Turn it off." Indigo runs a hand through her hair, grasping a handfull of it, and swallows. Hard. She's not used to feeling like this. She wasn't supposed to be feeling like this. How did people handle it?

In this one moment, she's probably more off-guard than she ever will be again.

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Dani had come into the Sensorium to see someone crying. She had no idea what or why, but she didn't think it was good to just leave her there. So, even though she didn't know her, she walked over.

"Hey, are you okay?"

It takes Indigo a moment to reply, she's wrestling with her emotions and shoving them into a tight little space so that her voice doesn't waver or crack when she responds. When she says "I'm fine," it comes out as a little too blank, too hollow. "I just need a moment."

Dani frowned at that, looking more worried. "No, you're not," she said and reached out to touch her shoulder. "I don't know what happened...but if there anything I can do to help?"

"I'm fine," she repeats, wiping at her eyes. "It's just... Something that didn't happen. That's all." Something that didn't happen being her attacking her team, overridden by the genocidal owner of her body, but Indigo's been known to understate things in the past.

Dani's look of worry didn't vanish. "....would talking about it help?"

"I don't imagine that it would." Indigo's not so good at discussing these kinds of things. Not in any emotional sense, that is. She looks at Dani and raises an eyebrow. "Would you like to talk about it?" Somehow, she manages to say it without sounding like she's accusing Dani of being nosy.

Even if she had sounded accusing, Dani would have missed it entirely. She was still getting to know how to read people. "Well, if it might help, I could. If not...well, is there something else we could do that might help?"

Well, with Indigo's habit of striking a pose, freezing like that for a few minutes, then moving to another, she's probably more difficult to read than some. She considers for a moment, then shrugs, letting her arms drop to her sides. "I don't believe so." She's tempted to apologize to the girl, Dani's obviously concerned, but she's not sure how she'd say what needs to be said.

Dani was silent for a few moments and smiled sheepishly. "Sorry, I really don't know how to comfort people...but if you do think of something, I'd like to help. I'm Dani."

Indigo pats her shoulder and shakes her head again. "Don't worry about it. I don't need comforting." She smiles gently. "I'm only an android, after all."

Dani frowned. "What does being an android have to do with anything?" She asked. "Just cause you're made of machine parts doesn't mean you don't need comforting if you're sad."

She laughs, a short laugh that cuts off almost too quickly. "It seems that I lose that little gamble." She'd been hoping that Dani would be too unused to thinking about androids to be particularly concerned about their emotions. It worked very well for her when she needed a certain reaction from the other Outsiders. "Just trust me. I am fine. I just needed a bit of time to... Vent. A bit."

Dani frowned. "You don't have one of those complexes where you don't think you're human, do you?" She asked. She didn't like the idea of anyone getting that into their head.

Especially when she already knew someone who was machine who was very human.

She studied Indigo for several moments. "...you're sure?"

Indigo raises an eyebrow. "It's not a complex. I'm not human." Her lips twist, she's trying not to smile and not doing very well at it. "I am an android from space. That's about as far from homo sapiens as you can get, wouldn't you say?"

She nods firmly. "It was a shock. A passing thing. That is all." It's not exactly the truth, but she doesn't want other people flailing over her.

Dani frowned. "That's not what I meant! I mean...you know...like a sentient thing! Whose got emotions and stuff like that! Not just a machine," she said. Okay, Brainiac 5 put how to say that a lot better than she did, but she was working with it.

"What was the shock?"

Indigo holds up a finger, making a negative noise. "It wouldn't be correct to say that I had no emotions. I feel happiness, love, anger, and sorrow just like anyone else." She pauses. "But I'm still not human."

She pauses for a moment, then speaks. "That I was a cover personality for a now-deleted genocidal intelligence, and I would be pushed aside in order for her to ensure that her race would be able to conquer the universe."

"I don't mean human as in homo sapien. I mean...you know...um...I don't know how to describe it! Whatever Brainiac 5 was even though he was a robot from space, he was like the definition of human that's good and alive and stuff!" Dani declared, waving a hand in the air. She was bad at describing the metaphorical.

Dani pauses. Then blinks. "...well, they're deleted now. So now you can be just you and not be used," she said, her tone a bit more sympathetic than one might expect. "It's not right to be used, so it's good they can't."

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