` ` A Meal to Apologize For ` `
This isn't the first time he has been here.
It takes a moment or two for his nerves to catch up with the rest of his head. His body is slowly waking, one part at a time: first, mind, then his eyes, then
The pain.
It eases over him, sore and suffocating. He cannot help the pitiful sound that escapes him at its introduction, though it's never new: he just forgets, each time, how bad it can be. How it weighs down every limb, nerves aching for a release that rest did not bring. It's worse when he wakes up to it, he thinks, when his brain is bashed out and leaking onto the rocks, trying to dredge up enough strength to come to consciousness.
He wants to try and pinpoint the pain to a single area, some way he can assess the damage, but right now it's a general blanket of ache that leaves him boneless and vulnerable, his body useless, no way of telling the damage.
Nothing new.
None of it feels quite as bad as the ache in his chest, anyways.
He can't count the amount of times he has been here. It always happens, one way or another: his guts stomped out in some nowhere town. Someone on his list of people pissed off at him now feeling better after extinguishing the life of another worthless conman.
Mm.
Machiavelli releases the sigh that has built up in his chest, lacking the energy to wince as the exit burns.
He doesn't know why he should get up this time.
He never really knows why he does.
It's easier to just lay here. To let those men have the satisfaction of his blood on their hands, eradicating the world of one more leech. It isn't like he has anything particularly left to return to... just a cockroach, really, unable to accept the death that keeps being laid at his feet. Maybe the sandworms would at least harbor a good meal from it, if he laid here and let them.
His eyes are heavy.
They're more active at night, anyway. Maybe he will be lucky, and one will swallow him right up, no chewing required. Though, another voice in his head reminds him that they don't come that close to towns, that he's more likely to rot in the sun by morning than anything. Bloat, deflation, decay, dry. Something like that; he remembers reading about it once. Not that'd he know what slow decay looks like.
He presses his cheek more into the sand, letting that thought sit.
His eyes trail over the active night above him, stars at least keeping him company. It's silent out here. He doesn't know if he'd prefer noise right now.
If he looks hard enough, he can pick out shapes in the sky. They're familiar: he used to give them names and voices, when he got lonely enough. He doesn't see anything familiar right now, though maybe that's because, he just now realized, he's been staring upside-down for a while now. He doesn't have the strength yet to fix that, so he just lets the lights blur together as his eyes droop, muddling into watercolors.
It's calm out here, at least. Not a terrible place to die.
...
...
Ah. It's night, right?
He forgot to make dinner.
It's such a stupid thought, he isn't sure why it slinks in. Just something that he forgot to do- that happens quite a bit. It's just... it's just because it's a habit by now, he's sure that's all it is. The moon is up, past whenever that gang had managed to knock him out into the ditch, even farther past when he'd usually be over a fire, three mouths whining at him.
He didn't get anything made for them, tonight.
...
They're probably hungry. They can cook for themselves, but they've gotten so spoiled now he's sure they didn't. Or, if they did, they didn't eat anything good, and he promised them something special tonight. He does that, this day every week: a little ritual thing. He gets complained at when it doesn't happen these days. Spoiled brats... It's his own damn fault, though.
Without him, they didn't eat a decent meal, though.
...His eyes slip closed. A second sigh escapes him.
...
...
And he finally manages to move his arms.
It's a horrible effort, as it always is, to scrape the flattened pieces of himself off the ground, like burnt grit left on a grill. Far more effort than something like him should require, but hey, he's always been necessitous. He has to grit through the winces and cracked sounds escaping him, something shifting and hurting in his gut that tells him one of the ribs were definitely injured. That's a problem for later, he's deciding.
It takes far too much time and by the end his head is spinning, but finally, he manages to pull himself upright. His legs follow, shaking like a newborn as he forces himself up one piece at a time: feet, knees, legs, torso.
It's wobbly and unstable. The others never seemed to mind that, anyway.
He wipes his face, ignoring the smear of blood he feels. Checks his pockets - nothing left, of course, why would he think otherwise - then glances back out towards the sky.
The stars are clearer now. Prettier, from this angle.
...Alright. He lets his head drop. Forces one foot forward, then the next. With a heavy body, he manages to move forward once again, body running on what he's pretty sure is his dumbest reason yet:
He's got a meal to apologize for.
...But oh well. It's something.