Kino

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Created by Archivesofourown.org writer, InkEngineCompany.

There was a light drizzle outside. It was the residue of the rainstorm from earlier. The drops pattered against the widows and trickled through the ceiling, calming, gentle. Something like that was simple enough to lull the others to sleep, but there he was still lying awake. Resting on his belly, staring at the grain of the floor, Richtofen was everything except for sleepy. Oh, he was exhausted, no doubt about that, but he was too much so. His mind was in a million places, too many places for him to stop and rest and dream.

Huffing quietly, he rolled onto his back and took to staring at the ceiling. Pale moonlight trickled through the cracks and eaves of the building and made its way to him. The entire room was washed in an ethereal blue, static with dust particles that danced in and out of the light that caught them. At least the night was peaceful, or something close to that. If you tried hard and just forgot what was going on in the world outside, you could pretend. Richtofen was partial to pretending.

The demon of Faust beamed down at him from a film poster on the wall. The doctor contemplated smiling back. Instead, he sat up and stood lightly on his feet. His three foreign company were none the wiser, all still quiet and heavy with sleep. It was odd, usually they had at least one person stay up for a few hours in the night to scout for any dawdling zombies left from the day’s horde, but everyone had been too tired to care much about that. Richtofen sighed,whatever, he had an easier time to leave the room this way. Soon, he was dancing lightly from foot to foot across the creaking floorboards and around the sleeping bodies of his comrades. He wasn’t really being quiet out of courtesy, no, he just rather that he wasn’t followed in his retreat to thought.

His footsteps were muffled by the carpeting in the main hall, at least here he was able to relax a bit. He dared not follow into the theatre room for fear of stirring a wave of Nova’s. (If he were to be the catalyst of anything here, it sure as hell wasn’t going to be that.) Distantly, the whole place reminded him of times long past. When they had first arrived there, every room he went into was like a stitched together nightmare of his memories. Bits of things he thought he’d forgotten, things of his childhood, Maxis, people he used to know and care about, they all came rushing back to him in a reverent cry of anger. On the inside, he’d been crying all day, taking out his anguish on his teammates and surges of an undead army. Now, he was alone, alone with his thoughts, something he hardly could bear. He wanted to scream because he couldn’t sleep, even though he knew he’d be having nightmares just the same.

When he had time for some much needed introspective thinking, it always turned to the negative side of things. That was his problem. It was, as Richtofen found, that a painfully charismatic and optimistic attitude wasn’t nearly enough to doctor him out of his miserable stupor. Even he had to admit, most, if not, all of what he was feeling right then was self-righteous pity, but he did genuinely feel that he had dug himself into a hole he couldn’t get out of. He was used to feeling like that and he could handle it well. This particular night, however, trained a sinking feeling with it, like someone was filling the hole with water and he knew he’d drown soon.

Ah, what a vicious cycle. Every sleepless night, he found himself doing something to this effect. He’d vow to stop and never do it again when he was exhausted in the morning, but it never failed to happen. First he’d reminisce, then he’d wallow and do the routine of every ‘woe is me’ he could think of, and then came the daunting source of it all…his own ambitions. The list of things he needed to do in order to get what he truly wanted was a mighty thing, and though it was satisfying as each action was completed, his impatience outweighed the little rewards. Already, he and his allies had been at this for weeks now and it felt as though they were heading at a snail’s pace. He knew what he wanted, what was awaiting him, and he wanted it as quickly as he could get it. If he ever made the mistake of voicing his frustration in front of his allies, he’d usually receive the ‘me, me, me’ speech from Dempsey, who articulated to him that he was a “self-centered, obnoxious kraut”. Of course, none of whatany of his allies said held merit to him, but he couldn’t ignore the fact that his wishes were being plainly overlooked by his friendlies.

Sighing, he stood in the middle of the hall and tilted back his head to stare at the ceiling. Through holes in the structure, the white face of the moon peaked in from the night. Clouds from the earlier rain had thinned, leaving an open sky to set stage for the lunar object. The doctor exhaled quietly, relishing the silence in spite of his faint heartbeat heard in his ears. The moment for him was an ethereal connection on a spiritual level. Just shy of a quarter of a million miles away lay his destiny on a silver platter called Griffin Station. It was tantalizingly close, held under his nose, waiting for him to seize it when he was ready.

He was meant to become a god, maybe even god himself, while the original shut himself in heaven in fear of his successor. Yes, that was what this was all for. All his hard work and the scheming and planning and sleepless nights such as this one, they were all going to be worth it. The doctor let himself smile at this revelation. He’d kiss himself if he could because of how well rounded he was in the practice of self-reassurance. All he had to do now was collect himself and reestablish his dominance above his unwanted thoughts and emotions. That would be easy. Then, after all that’s done, maybe then he could sleep. He was most nearly satisfied with himself at this point and remained standing in the hall, humming quietly to himself a wordless soliloquy. Rainwater pattered distantly, collecting in pools outside and singing its own song into the night. It was a simple reminder that the world was still going on, undeterred by imposing Armageddon.

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