trans_9 | Tethered [Closed]

Brenda knew in the back of the back of her mind that it hadn't always been like this.

Somewhere at the blackening edge of her conscious awareness she knew that there'd been a time when she'd been happy and content, a time when everything hadn't been so sterile, so cold, so rigorous and exhausting and infuriating...

She may have been too numb and defeated to act on it, but her inaction did nothing to quell her rage. It boiled up from the very core of her, building blistering pressure beneath her skin day by day as the pressure of merely existing pressed in to counter it. She often felt as if she spent every waking moment in this limbo of rebellion and resignation.

Ever so occasionally something took a crack at her careful balance, pitching her into utter despair or frustrated rage depending on the direction she was pushed. Being there to see Danny when he was brought in had left her mute for days, slow to task like moving through a fog until one too many harsh words brought her temper back to form.

Today it was the collar.

The thin strips of electrodes strapped across her calves and forearms were no heavier than a stick-on bandage. The skin grafts itched but the strapping didn't impede her too much. The collar was another story altogether. It sat like a yoke over her collarbones, at least a quarter of a pound of metal and wire, the little green diode at it's center glowing soft and steady as she went about her tasks. She was never unaware of it, constantly feeling it jangle against her neck, it's weight pressing into her skin.

She knew it's limits inside and out, memorized them rigorously for very clear personal benefit. Stay inside the invisible fence or you get a shock, like teaching a dog to stick close by jabbing them with a goddamn cattle prod...

He'd hollered for some thing or another which was what got her moving, dodging down an aisle of the lab storage to hunt up more of the power sources he'd be going through like candy, and then out of nowhere the orange warning light flickered on. She hadn't been watching for it and came up against the results of the red-light five seconds later when she slammed into the outer limits of her containment.

Fire shot through every limb and she crumpled to the floor mid-stride. She landed unprotected, cheekbone cracking off the tile, body skidding with her momentum, as her arms were busy convulsing uselessly everywhere BUT in front of her face. She screamed as she curled up on herself, a howl of pain, confusion and sheer fury. When the shock stopped she gasped for breath before cursing at the top of her lungs.

"Son of a BITCH!"

She struggled to take herself back the way she'd come, creeping across the floor between rounds of crippling muscle electrocution, taking three more strikes from the circuit before she made it back safely within the perimeter. Slumping against the shelving at the end of the row she let her body quiver as her muscles spasmed with little aftershocks. What the HELL? Had he moved after calling to her? No, he'd been glued to his workstation all day. He only could have...

A moment later when his glowering shadow fell over her she met his eyes with fire blazing in her own.

"You shortened my radius." she snarled, venom dripping from every word.

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"That's insipid sentimentality speaking and nothing more."

He stormed away from her and went back to where he had his scanners, and immediately starting scanning himself, started looking at scans of his own brain.

"I'm free of emotion--finally free of it--from its complications, from its confusion, free from pain..."

He was getting increasingly irritated, and eventually lost his temper, smashing a console, tears still streaming down his face.

"I won't allow it to come back. I won't. I'm better this way! I am a Brainiac!"

Edited 2011-10-10 04:08 (UTC)

Brenda slid to the floor as he stormed back to the panels, curling into a ball to sob for a long few minutes before she could get herself together and follow him.

The concrete knowledge that some small part of him was still too attached to her to harm her burned at the center of her chest, painfully bright after the bleakness she had felt up until now.

She stopped, hovering in the door to his workroom, eyes flickering over the smashed console and his tense shoulders, the hands wiping at his face. She opened her mouth then shut it again, unsure quite what to say.

Eventually, he sank down into a chair and sat, trembling.

Looking up at her, his expression interminable, he said, "I'm not going to harm you." He paused. "It seems I'm incapable."

She slunk a little closer, biting back a faint smile.

"I know." she said quietly, stopping just outside his reach. Instinct screamed at her to put her arms around him, to try to calm his trembling, but she knew well enough from before that it was better to tuck her arms close against herself.

"Do you remember why?"

"I once had an emotional attachment to you."

Confusion was etched in every line of his face--and there were lines. All that pain had aged him.

There was a little click of his tongue.

"Your father used to harm you. When I still had emotions, I abhorred the very idea of you ever having to face such violence again, never mind facing it from myself. I remember, even if I feel nothing for you now. I remember everything I've ever experienced."

Brainiac got up and started pacing, hands clasped behind his back.

"During my torture, I must have put a subconscious mental block in place to prevent myself from causing you any truly grievous harm."

Edited 2011-10-12 04:16 (UTC)

Brenda let her weight sink against the console, leaning on it as she watched him pace. Her eyes followed him but her head stayed still, her hand laid against the front of her throat on a nervous protective instinct.

"Yeah, well, you were still pretty smart back when you had all those pesky emotions, weren't you?"

Suddenly, the sound of metal shattering rang out.

"SHIT!" Danny shouted. He'd probably already been heard, there was no sense in trying to keep quiet anymore. Quickly, he started working on the last two power dampening cuffs, alternating between heating them and freezing them so that he could break them in his weakened state.

Brainiac immediately floated into air and zipped back in the direction of his main lab. Brenda would have to try her best to keep up.

"Oh for fu-"

Brenda snarled, cutting her cursing short to start running after him.

"Come on, comeonnn." Danny ground out, trying to hurry it up. Finally, the leg cuffs broke under the accelerated wear-and-tear, and Danny slipped off the table just as Brainy entered. The halfa leaped for the back wall, phasing through it at the last possible second.

The Coluan wasn't angered or upset by the escape of his subject only because he couldn't feel those emotions.

"He can't get far. We're too deep inside the ship and Stacy's walls have phase-blocking."

Brainiac suddenly froze in place and then turned to the table where Daniel had been secured.

Several of the restraints were broken, but one was completely intact.

"I did this. I left one of his restraints unsecured."

Brenda, slumped panting in the doorway, stared first at the unbroken shackle, then up across the table at Brainiac and the shifting expression of disbelief and frustration on his face.

Her heart skipped hard, a rush of hope jolting its rhythm. He was in there. He was in there! Somewhere underneath that cold face and those dead eyes he was still THERE...

For a moment, he looked completely dazed. Lost. As if some great shift was starting to happen in that head of his.

His legs nearly gave out from under him, and he had to sit down.

"I am a Brainiac. I feel nothing, nothing at all."

Brenda took a cautious few steps closer to him, swallowing hard.

"But you remember what it was like to feel, so of course your emotions are still there when you think back on things, right? Doesn't that make sense?"

"Yes. Regardless, it is irrelevant to my current situation. Those memories are irrelevant."

"No they aren't. They're strong enough to disrupt your actions now so they must mean something."

"They mean nothing."

His eyes got that blank, glossy look once more.

"I have to get back to work. I'll build a means of tracking my subject. You will assist me."

Brenda swallowed thickly, letting her head drop as his eyes unfocused again. Exhaustion, physical and mental weighed heavy on her shoulders. He was slipping under the water again and she just didn't have it in her to go in after him again. He'd logic her to pieces...

There was a long moment of silence before the required "Yes sir" left her lips.

Tethered [Closed]

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