A/N: I am currently in the process of not only doing the twenty drabbles in 'Others Can Say It Better Than I', but I'm also writing up a fishing oneshot and trying to come up with a good full-length story plotline. Because believe me, fellow VR fans, this little obsession of mine is not waning. In fact, it's stirring up quite a lot of ideas, so there should be plenty more to come. I just hope that I'm going to have enough time on the computer to write it all! XD

Okay, so here's the final chapter. Something tells me it's not as good as it could be, but oh well, it's still pretty good. No confessions or kissing in this one, sorry, just adorably sweet comfort and plenty of hints, heehe. Enjoy! :D

.:Shining Silver Trauma:.

It had been so painful, watching Richie go through that whole Brainiac nightmare. Being mind-controlled and having his head and neck covered in metal? It must've been scary, being a host to something like that. Like Brainiac said, Richie saw it all but couldn't do a thing. I don't think I could've been able to handle it. I mean, it was horrible enough to have to deal with my best friend going through it, but it's worse actually having it happen to you. At least I think so.

The second the League left the gas station, Richie murmured that he was going home. At first, I thought nothing of it; he must be totally wiped out, I thought. Even I was, after a battle like that. So I nodded and let him leave before I changed out of my Static clothes and left for home as well. When I got home, Sharon was out and Dad wasn't home yet, so I stewed in the silence and eventually fell asleep.

But when it came time for school the next day, Richie wasn't there. It worried me, because it's not like he caught a virus (sorry, computer pun) in the last day. Worried, I called him with a Shock Vox at lunch by going into the bathrooms and into a private stall.

He didn't answer for a long time. When he finally did, he sounded odd. "Just a cold, Virg. Don't worry 'bout it," he told me.

I knew better. "You always sound congested when you have a cold, and right now you sound pretty clear to me." I lowered my voice an octave just in case someone decided to burst in at the moment I said, "Are you okay, man? It's not from, y'know, what happened yesterday, is it?" Because it was only yesterday that he woke up with a brain not his own and ended up ditching school to go build Brainiac's machines. According to Flash, Richie wasn't even scootering toward the school when he went looking for him.

Richie sighed. "I'll tell you later, when you get back from school," he said.

"Personally, I'd rather ditch and come see what's up right now," I shrugged. I leant back against the side wall of the stall. "You're more important than my geometry test, and I can fake a tummy ache pretty well."

"Do what you want," Richie said nonchalantly, and that's when I knew something was truly wrong. Richie isn't much of a rule-breaker, so to hear him not lecturing me to finish school at least for the test's sake was a huge clue.

I frowned. "I think I'll take you up on that." I paused, quickly forming a plan. "I'll see you in a half, Rich. I'll get Sharon to pick me up, and then I'll sneak out as Static and fly over there."

"You don't have to, I could meet you at the station," he said too quickly. His dad must be home or something. I got the message.

"Alright, the gas station then. See you soon, Rich."

"Mhm," he hummed dully before turning off his Vox with a chzt sound. I stuffed my own Vox in my backpack and headed for the nurse's office.

xXx

In half an hour as promised, I showed up at the station as Static. Sharon hadn't been too worried about me; I guess she knew that I was faking it. She probably thinks the reason is my geo test, but realistically, that was only a bonus reason. The true reason was standing in front of me when I walked in.

Richie was a mess. He was pacing back and forth, and seemed to stray away from all the technology around him. His hair was bedraggled, and so were his clothes. In fact, they were the same ones from yesterday, wrinkled from what I assumed was sleep and not a night on the floor of his bedroom. I figured out pretty fast that he went home, fell asleep, woke up and didn't shower or change before I called.

"Rich…" I began as I tore off my mask and goggles and tossed them down with my jacket. I got rid of the Static shirt and gloves as well, since my normal shirt was under it and I was too hot to be wearing so many layers. I literally threw on everything just so I could fly here without being stopped. After all, flying is fastest, and if I were to fly not dressed as Static I would blow my cover.

"I don't like it, V. Not at all," he said immediately, diving straight into the deep end of the panic pool. "I don't like my head being messed with. It was bad enough when Madelyn had those zombie-puppet powers and peeked into my head and found out that you're Static, but for Brainiac to see everything inside me, know it all, and use it to his advantage…"

All his formulas. Info about where all of Alva's supplies and abandoned warehouses are. My weaknesses to defeat me with. I can barely imagine how that must've felt, because my electric powers saved me from Madelyn's powers and Brainiac's mind-control device that even controlled people as strong as the members of the League.

But something told me that these things weren't the only ones he was referring to. "Like what?" I know that when he stepped out of the shadows, wholly possessed, I realized how much he meant to me, and how I didn't want to lose him, especially not to some alien scumbag. With desperate pleading to get him back, I realized how much I love Richie.

He blinked at me, his expression unreadable. "Nothing," he said hurriedly. "Personal stuff of no importance. Still, I hate my head being poked around in. And now I can't go near Backpack, 'cause I'm afraid that Brainiac's still in there. And I don't want to touch anything else electronic, 'cause I'm afraid he might be lurking in another computer. And it's stupid, because my super-brain tells me that I have PTSD, but I don't want to have post-traumatic stress disorder. It shouldn't bother me this much! I shouldn't be scarred by some alien computer-hacking virus incident, and yet I am. I'm shaking, Virgil. Look." He held out a hand, his fingertips quivering uncontrollably. His cerulean orbs were darting back and forth nervously.

I can still remember how shocked I had been when those eyes were turned into a glowing green, completely absent of Richie. A shudder ran through me. I came in close, and steadied his hand with both of my own. He stared down at the cluster of hands, as if he couldn't feel that his own was between mine. "It's gonna be okay, Rich," I told him earnestly. "Brainiac is gone. J'onn and Batman even made sure of it. He's not in your head, and he's not in Backpack. You're safe," I assured him gently.

He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. Tearing his hand out of mine to run it through his ruffled yellow locks, he said, "I'm not so sure. I had a dream last night in which Brainiac came back, and made me kill you. I had your blood on my hands, and I screamed in my head for Brainiac to stop, but he never did. Seeing that… in the dream, I gave up fighting. I let him take over because I couldn't live with myself any longer, knowing that my body murdered my best friend beyond my control. In the dream, I went totally numb." He was shaking with fiercer quakes. I stood beside him and placed my hand on his shoulder. "I never want to feel that way again. I seriously thought you were going to die, Virgil. When Brainiac trapped you and Batman in those coils, I thought he was going to kill you both while I sat, trapped, unable to do a thing. I heard you calling to me, saw you, but could barely move my head! I was that powerless."

I wrapped both my arms around him, sliding across his back to grip his other shoulder as my opposite hand folded on top of my knuckles. "But I didn't die, Richie. None of us did. We lived through it, and destroyed Brainiac. He's gone for good now, bro. Lost to the depths of the bay where his octopus-wannabe ship sunk. 'S all good now, I swear."

His hands came up to grip my forearm, his fingers clenching tightly. They felt cold. "I want to believe that, V. I really do. But I think the paranoia wins over the logic this time."

Instinctively, I rested my head against the side of his. "Be strong, man. It was pretty trippy, but it's nothing we can't handle, right? We're superheroes."

He bit his lip. The biting looked hard enough to draw blood. "Not me. I'm not cut out for this. Not when…" he drifted off and pulled out of the embrace. "Never mind. Look, maybe I should go home, sleep this off some more. Or eat something; I skipped dinner last night, and breakfast and lunch today."

"You skipped a day's worth a meals?!" I exclaimed. I grabbed his arm. "Get over here." I dug a frozen burrito out of our freezer and shoved it at him. "Hold onto that for a sec." I aimed a beam of electricity at it, exciting the molecules like a microwave until it began to steam in Richie's hands. "Eat that. I'll grab you a root beer."

He unwrapped it, but his face turned into a grimace. "I dunno if I can, V… I feel sick."

"You feel sick 'cause you're overly hungry!" I scolded him as I handed him a cold can of root beer. "So eat it, and drink this. Doctor's orders. Then you're not going to go home until I convince you that everything's fine and you can at least poke one of the machines in here without jumping."

A weird smile briefly made it's way onto his lips. "You're too good to me, Virg."

"Damn straight," I snorted as I sat next to him on the dingy couch we jacked from the junk yard. He ate the burrito with more gusto once he got a taste of it. Then he chugged the soda, burping out the carbonation at the end. He wiped his mouth on his sweatshirt sleeve, and I patted his back twice. "There, see? Don't cha feel some strength comin' back to ya now?"

He laughed weakly. "Yeah, some," he agreed. Then his head hung again as he tossed the burrito wrapper to the floor. He sighed. "Why is this affecting me like this?"

It sounded like Richie already knew the answer, but wanted me to come up with an alternate one, because his own answer was something he didn't like. I try to come up with a logical explanation, knowing that if I pry for whatever he's thinking, he won't tell me. I put a hand to my chin in thought. "Hmm. Well, was super traumatizing. Think about it: you had shining silver parts encasing your body, you had another being rendering you helpless, and had to fight me when you didn't want to. I'd say you'd be inhuman for not reacting like this."

"You went through some of that too, V. Why aren't you bugged by it?" he wanted to know, his gaze turning on me.

I quickly looked away. I clasped my hands together in my lap. "I wasn't the one with the freakizoid in my skull. And…" My voice softened. "And I know that you're safe now, so there's nothing to worry about. It won't happen again."

"You were really worried about me, huh?" he said with that same weird smile.

"Of 'course I was, stupid!" I retorted as I smacked his arm. I didn't like the tone he used; it was a tag smug, as if he was gleeful about the fact that I was scared shitless over him. "I always worry about you! But it's not about me right now. It's about you. We need to fix you, or else my crime-fighting partner is going to be out-of-comish for a while, and everyone's gonna wonder, 'Hey, what happened to Gear?' and I'll be all like, 'Gee, I dunno. He has a run in with an alien computer and suddenly doesn't wanna fight by my side no more. Sorry.' And they'll either be outraged and demand that I get Gear to return, or they'll be all sweet about it, like, 'Oh, it's okay Static, we like you better anyway.'"

"Like hell they like you better," Richie scoffed as he hit me lightly with one of the mangy throw pillows o the couch. "They like us equally. At least, they did according to a poll I posted online. But who knows? Maybe they like me more than you now."

"As if," I huffed. An idea popped into my head about how I can trick him into touching technology again. "Why don't you prove it?"

His chest puffed out. "Alright, I will!" He stood, walked over to the computer, and then froze. He flinched. "On second thought… you can look it up yourself. I'll tell you the URL and –"

"Oh, don't be such a baby," I told the blond as I scooped up his rolling chair and slammed it into him. With an 'uwah!' springing from his mouth, he fell into it and I rolled him across the gas station to the computer. While it booted up, I made sure that he stayed where he was. "Come on, Rich, you have to get over this fear of yours. You're Gear, the technological whiz-kid! You can't be afraid of computers! They're part of who you are."

"There's more to me than that," Richie grunted as he crossed his arms. "Plenty more."

"I know," I replied as I pulled up an extra chair and sat in it backwards. "You're a comic book geek, too, like me. You watch Sci-Fi and Tim Burton movies, no matter how stupid or unpopular they are. You have Invader Zim in your DVD player almost at all times, and stay up late with me on weekends to watch cheesy slasher films, which you make fun of a lot better than I do, because you can scream like a girl better than I can." I smiled warmly at him. "There is a lot to you, more stuff than I can name. I'm not denying that. All I'm saying is, you're stronger than this, and yeah, you are cut out to be a superhero. You've had all the video-game-and-comic-book-based training that I have, and you're just as quick on your feet in a sticky situation. It was you who thought of using Backpack's remote control to stop Brainiac the second time, and an overload of music downloading the first time. You're amazing."

He was flushing profusely while the computer waited with the log-in screen up. "You seriously think all of that stuff?" he murmured softly. I think I flattered him with how much I knew, and the way I said it.

"Yeah, 'course," I shrug. "Why else would I say it?"

Richie glanced up at the log-in screen before timidly moving his fingers across the keyboard to type out his password. "I just didn't notice how well you know me. Like, really know me. It's a little scary," he laughed. I liked hearing his laugh, because it's sturdy tone was a sign that he was getting over his paranoia. "Virg," he said suddenly.

I scooted in closer to him. "What?"

He grinned. "I think I'm over my mild PTSD now. Thanks."

I clamped a hand over Richie's shoulder and squeezed. "No prob, man. I'd do anything for you; I hope you know that."

He blinked once, and dimly I hoped that he didn't catch the full meaning in my words. He smiled again, and then returned his gaze to the computer monitor. "Now then, how 'bout I show you who's boss in my poll?"

"G'head and show me, but I know that it's gonna be me."

He flashed a wicked smirk. "We'll see about that."

I bet he rigged the poll, because as soon as I saw it, I knew there was no way in hell that he had that many more ratings than me.

END