"My stomach hurts."

Marie wheeled around in her chair to find Doctor Stein, looking paler than usual in his patchwork pajamas. It was late and Marie had been deep in paperwork for the DWMA. She should have expected Stein to intrude at least once, especially since they were rooming together and the good doctor kept unusual hours. He once was up at four in the morning, testing electrical currents on cactus while playing opera.

But Stein was not playing mad scientist tonight. He looked absolutely sickly. Was it the madness, the strange affliction which had him off the front lines and out of the classroom since the Brew incident? It was always an underlying problem, although some days were better than others. It was why Marie and Stein were now sharing the same abode; she was the only one trusted by Lord Death to look after the man and make sure he doesn't pose a threat to himself - or to others.

Then again, maybe Stein ate a bad sausage link. Who knew in his state? Honestly, some of the food Marie had found while cleaning out Doctor Stein's pantry gave her serious pause. The man clearly didn't pay attention to expiration dates - or didn't eat what he bought.

With a medical eye, Marie quickly assessed Stein's condition. He was pale and sweaty, moisture rolling off his face in a faint sheen. His posture was bad, but that wasn't new. He was definitely weaker than usual.

"Your stomach hurts?" Marie repeated. "Do you want some stomach medicine?"

Stein grumbled something unintelligible. His eyes shifted downwards, not meeting Marie's gaze.

She sighed. "Very well, then. Let's get you back to bed and then I'll get you something for your stomach." Leaving her piles of paperwork for later, Marie managed to grasp Stein's arm and lead him back to his bedroom without any argument from the sickly doctor.

As they walked through the labyrinthine hallways of Stein's home, Marie could not help but remember the first time she had stepped into his home, his lab. At one point, she had been scared of Stein. Most DWMA staff were; he was a meister without a weapon, who delighted in strange experiments and doing everything possible to not do his job. Or so it seemed. Plus, the whole "operates on himself" thing, which put off a lot of folks, even though one of their colleagues, Sid, was now a zombie so such things should have been above their average shock level.

Marie had been afraid, once. Stein was certainly an off-putting person. But he cared about his students. He cared whether they lived or died and if they reached their full potential. She saw that in the way he dealt with the studious neurotic Maka, with the boisterous Black Star, even with Lord Death's own son, Death the Kid. He may have seemed apathetic on the surface, but Stein put more effort into teaching his students practical weapon/meister skills than most others in his field.

And yet here he was, reduced to stumbling around his own house, black blood pounding in his head, a wicked gift from Medusa. Medusa, who had deceived everyone with her stint as a nurse in DWMA, only to infest Stein with the same terrible darkness that birthed her only child. The very thought of Medusa and her forked snake tongue was enough to send Marie's blood boiling. This woman had hurt Stein so deeply and it was unsure whether or not Stein would fully recover.

If Medusa had heard the horrific, maddening laughter that had escaped Stein's pain-wracked body as Stein and Marie emerged from Brew's magnetic field, she would've been assured that her plan had worked. Stein was deep in the black that the slithering witch had planted in his heart. If she had the chance, Marie would make Medusa pay for every single stitch on Stein's body that had been tainted. She would spill all the dark blood that flowed through Medusa's body and make it burn to ashes.

Stein coughed. His lungs sounded like they were rattling in his chest. Marie tightened her grip and soon had him in his room. The smell of sweat sent her nose into a permanent wrinkle. Stein's bedspread and sheets were soaked in the stuff. His clothes were thrown about haphazardly, lab coats falling one over the other on a broken table. A window was the only source of light, moonlight streaming through the glass so strongly that artificial light wasn't needed.

Marie grimaced, her mouth set in a hard line. "Stein, just sit here. I'm going to clean up a bit before you get back into bed, okay?" He did not visibly protest as she led him into a nearby chair which was thankfully clean and empty.

She quickly made short business of Stein's bed, stripping it of sheets and blankets with a skilled hand that would make an ER nurse jealous. The long abandoned hamper quickly filled with dirty laundry, which she exiled to the hallway so the smell would stop permeating the walls. The bed was quickly wiped down and made again with fresh sheets and a duvet that did not smell like sick and was not dripping wet.

"Stein-" Marie turned around to find Doctor Stein slumped in his chair, eyes glassy. He was absentmindedly playing with the skull-shaped buttons on his pajamas, constantly doing and undoing the top two buttons. His left foot kept tapping out an uneven, nervous beat against the wood floor. "Stein?"

Stein's foot paused in mid tap. His fingers rested in a crooked angle against his collar. The silence that followed was off-putting. "Yes?" At least he was back to full words and sentences, short as it was. No more grunting, thank goodness.

"It's time to get back in bed, okay? You need your rest." Marie offered up a tired smile, as if she had been more than happy to play nurse to his sick self.

"Do I?"

Marie sighed. "Yes. Stein, please. You're not feeling well. If you get back into bed, I can give you your medicine. Okay?" She knew there was a bottle of extra strength bismuth subsalicylate in one of Stein's cabinets, the bottle with the cartoon stomach on the label because Stein did better with symbols than words at a moment's notice. It should be enough to treat Stein's upset stomach. Everything else - well, that was for another day. His madness couldn't be cured by an antacid.

"You'll still be here?"

The weakness in Stein's voice left Marie lost for a moment. "Y-yes, of course, Stein, I won't be going anywhere." Not again, she thought. Not again.

With that, Stein allowed himself to be carried into bed and under the thick blanket, the fabric crossed over and over with long elaborately placed stitches like on Stein's body. His eyes followed Marie out of the room as she went to fetch the medicine. She came back with the appropriate dose in a coffee cup to find Stein with the blankets pulled up to his chin, eyes rolling around in his socket. In the moonlight, they looked as if they were glowing

"Stein!" Her hands instantly tightened around the coffee cup, not wanting to let fear drop the one thing Marie had to offer Stein in his moment of need.

Stein's eyes rolled back into their proper place. "I was trying to look at my own brain," he said half-apologetic, words slightly slurred by no sleep. "It didn't work," he added with a small shrug.

Marie crossed over to Stein's bed side and sat down on the duvet. She watched carefully as Stein downed the cup's contents, following the slug of medicine drop through his gullet with an audible gulp, and it satisfied her. She took the cup from Stein's outreached hands and placed it on the bedside table, far enough that it couldn't be knocked over in his sleep.

"Feeling any better?" she asked, knowing full well the medicine would take longer than a second to go into effect.

"No," Stein said, voice flat. "But I will. Some day." He laughed but it had none of the insanity or life that it did from the Brew incident.

Marie's hands covered Stein's without thinking. They felt cold. "Stein, I know you don't feel like it's possible, but you have to stay strong. Medusa can't hurt you anymore. We're going to help you."

"You can't, can you?" Stein looked at Marie, his eyes suddenly sharp. "That witch has put her claws in me completely. I'm mad. I'm gone. I'm lost. I am. I am. I am?"

"Stein..."

"Marie." For a second, Stein looked like the man Marie first met. He looked normal. Then he slowly crept back into his current state of mind. "What's happening to me?"

Marie's hands began to glow. "I'm sorry." Stein blinked then slumped forward, unconscious. She quickly withdrew her hands, no longer glowing, and set him back into his bed with eyes closed. She had reached out with her wavelength and quietly tapped him into a state of slumber. The medicine would do its work while Stein slept, although she knew it would not be the full restful sleep that the doctor deserved.

She stood and watched Stein's chest rise and fall with each breath. The moonlight lit every remaining drop of sweat on his face, the strands of silver hair fallen against his cheek. Even her healing wavelength wasn't enough to cure Stein, but at least it could alleviate some of the pain for the night. That would have to be enough.

Damn you, Medusa. Give me back my Stein.

Marie quietly closed the bedroom door behind her and returned to the kitchen to brew another pot of coffee, with the special beans that Joe Buttataki had mailed her. The paperwork would not take care of itself.