Letting the Days Go By...

And They Don't Stop Coming

It was... quiet.

Somehow too quiet. For Richtofen's liking anyway.

Though among the mess of documents, strewn about diagrams and hastily made scientific journals, The Doctor was fine.

Now, the brain does a lot of functions, including thinking, but at this very moment the German was lost. Of course, absorbing information was one thing but understanding the text – the nuances in the writings, how a formula was developed – it meant very little to his brain at this moment.

What his brain did want however, was food – and not the knowledge-type of food either. Real, tangible, edible food. Or it wouldn't function. Simple as that. At the very least, not as it was intended to for a smart man such as himself.

Thing is, there was food.

Just outside his door. Waiting patiently for him to take.

Takeo had dropped it off as soon as it was made – the sneaky bugger didn't even tell him it was there. Nikolai had been the giveaway.

So, he, and his brain knew there was food. So what? How important was it anyway? He didn't need it! He'd gone without food before! It wasn't as if she'd just appear, breaking into his personal space to hijack his plans again.

He took a deep breath in; There was no point in getting worked up over nothing.

In fairness, he was worried - more paranoid but still, rightfully worried. Worried that if he did open the door he'd find her, as well as his increasingly cooling food, on the other side.

And so his brain hazily worked through its problems. Under the false guise of being given the prospect of food. He was terribly famished.

And it was still... quiet.

An unnatural absence: something was missing.

He felt it before he heard it.

His whole body tensing out of the sheer invasiveness of their visit.

          ...It has been taking you too long. You should have already left by now...

If one had arrived, the rest would soon follow.

          ...He doesn't know where to go. How can he not know where to go? A second spoke, feigning disbelief.

          ...He's an idiot. He doesn't know what to do unless we tell him... A third sneered.

          ...A pitiful human. You don't deserve to ascend... Jibed another.

A mixture of overlapping voices filled his head, some shouting angrily, some merely talking as if he wasn't present in listening to their cruelty. And since he had not eaten, the pain of bouncing voices in his head was worse. Concentration, and his work, had become the bare minimum of his brain's hierarchical functions.

They kept getting louder. Why were they so loud this time?

His head cradled in his hands, fingers digging into his cranium in a hopeless attempt at relieving the pressure on his skull. He couldn't speak let alone yell or scream for them to stop. Between the aching hunger and crippling ache in his head, his body refused to follow through with any other demands.

Then nothing.

Silence.

          ...Are you watching the girl? A single voice called into his ear.

Not this again.

The hushed whispers surrounding the voice had soothed his skull somewhat. It took all his remaining strength to sound both unaffected by his starvation and to properly answer the voice's query.