He felt... empty. Empty the way he did when he watched from a pod as his planet was pummeled with broken debris that was the remnants of Krypton, empty the way he felt watching, frozen as he was but fully aware as decades turned into centuries turned into millennia stuck in the phantom zone with his only companions being those abandoned by the Kryptonians to rot eternally. Empty the way he had been when he was left alone in the Legion’s ship, his fear and anger slipping from him until nothing was left to be angry or scared about.
Staring up at the ceiling of his room felt a lot like that. The news played on his television, streaks of red and blue and green and yellow passed by the screen, fires glowed, people screamed, people died, and Lar felt nothing. Something was wrong with him, or maybe he had just finally broken. He could feel Brainiac’s eyes on him. They were concerned, he could feel it in the way they tapped anxiously at their thigh as they passed and hesitated before walking away only to make another trip outside his room, and another, and another, and another. He turned, finally, catching their eye and feeling, for the first time since they had met, nothing when he saw them. He focused on their face, their large eyes and the downturn of the mouth. A day ago he was sure he would have been filled with affection, overwhelmed with affection for the being they had come to see as their sibling, as their best friend, but now he only wanted them to leave, not out of annoyance, but because it would be easier than trying to explain the hole he felt was growing in the essence of his being minute by minute.
“Just say what you need to say, Brainiac,” he said, monotone and muffled as he turned his face away from them, “and then leave me.”
@brxinixc5
