Some days after the events of Malicious Concoction...
A heavy footstep followed by a light one, a hobble, a limp. The swelling around the eyes had gone down, and thus he could see, and the hives across his skin had faded. In the six fingered hand, a large bottle of dark liquid, in the five fingered right is another that doesn't match. But...a bottle is a bottle all the same.
"So tired..." He says to himself. He's not sure why. No one will hear it.
He had asked for this little room, across the stables from the back exit of The Prancing Pony kitchen. Secluded, alone, all he needed was a key and a door that locked. It's not late by any means. If it were later in the day he could medicate through the comfort of someone close. Someone who was there. Someone who knew and understood him better than all.
Even though at times like this he had wished she didn't have to.
Off comes the cork, and the first bottle is treated like a necessary medication. Gulp after gulp with only a pause to breath. Down the hatch goes the sickening liquid. He sputters. Why did it taste worse now? Will everything always taste worse now?
He takes the key in hand and locks the door. After a moment of pause, he throws it at a wall. It bounces and flies around the room until it gets lost somewhere. He doesn't look for it. The point was to contain himself.
Off comes the next cork, so it can be over, if just for a while.
He feels the pain of his maiming, the wounds that need time now to heal. He frowns and closes his eyelids, squeezing moisture to a droplet as he whispers to someone who isn't there, "Forgive me..."
He'll be better, he decides, as he starts on the second bottle just as the effects of the first kick in. . . . . . He has to be.
