I accused him there with his tortured lamb

[fooloftheking]

WHO: Bobo Del Rey
WHERE: Butcher Shop, South village
WHEN: Throughout November
OPEN TO: All
WARNINGS: Talk of animal death and slaughter

---

There was a time when most of Bobo's life wasn't taken up with drinking and herding revenant cats and general being a fairly psychotic bastard. It's a time over a century in the past, and until coming to this place, he's been glad to leave it in the past, as buried as the man that had caused the curse that had changed everything for Bobo. This place though, it's like a damn time capsule in many ways, and it is finding a way to get under his skin and stir up memories of a man long dead though his body continues on.

He had once been a man who helped, whose entire life was devoted to another, to doing what he could for his town and for a hundred plus years he has lamented that being that man had caused him not only to die - that he was prepared for - but to be cursed and damned for it. People paid for that, yet now in this place, that all feels like someone distant, just as Robert Svane has felt to Bobo for so long.

Here in this place, everything has changed and much as he might deny it, Bobo is changing with it. Including needing to do more than cause hate and discontent. A talk with Margaery at the inn led him to spending a few days hunting and trekking through the areas to the north, away from others for the most part. Trying to clear his mind, to remember who he is, not was. Except even that didn't work. That man who died apparently wasn't nearly as gone and forgotten as Bobo likes to believe. In the end he ended up at the butcher shop with his coat hung on a nail, water brought up from the river and set to work scrubbing the place down.

Taking more time than he had so far with the house since poisoning the village is not acceptable. Working hard, harder than he has in a long while, using the soap left there on the counter and rags he made from those damn walking blanket things. It takes several days, leaving the doors and windows open to air the place out as he goes. Going so far that the first night he just curls up with his coat, not wanting to make the hike back to the North village.

By the end of the first week, the place is clean enough you could eat off the floor. Or at the very least eat what is killed and slaughtered there and likely not die. Maybe killing things isn't the best therapy for the aggression he still feels, the nature of the beast as it were, but he figures it isn't hurting people so, for now, it will work. Both for his own kills and, if others bring them in, butchering items for others in the village as well.

Eventually he can be found there most of the daylight hours slaughtering those creature he kills. Using that space to butcher them, and to cure and tan the hides. Some of the meat and fish he takes over to the Inn. Some of it he starts processing with red salt, hoping it will do the same as the salt curing he'd done before. Some he puts out on racks to dry, thinking he can turn it into pemmican for the winter.

Some days he can be found scrounging wood, looking to build a smoking shed out back to use on the salted meat when it's ready, knowing he's starting too late in the season to hold them all through the winter, but he doesn't care. He cares that some of the oppressive weight of hatred and loathing is lifted from his shoulders while he works, and for now that is enough.

Comments

Before the Event

[imareporter]

Venom paced inside his house most nights. Their House. Eddie's house. The first night it was a mess, clawing at the walls and doors - but Eddie had left food out for him so he ate and slept and was...frustrated. His host couldn't keep up with him in the nights. He needed to sleep.

So Venom cradled Eddie like the pictures he had seen in his mind. A smaller human in a human female's arms being held warm...safe...

I didn't know you cared.

Pussy. This weakness can't be tolerated. We are soldiers! Protectors! Good guys!

Not a whole lot for us to protect people from Eddie's inner voice yawned and Venom resisted the urge to feel fond, Are you okay? You didn't break our door too bad did you? I don't want to have to explain it to stark tomorrow. He doesn't know you...got out.

It is fine. and it was. Delicacy. He could be delicate. For instance...

He can see creatures frolicking in the glass near one of the houses. Crouching like a cat he leaps for it and shoves the creature in his mouth before losing his balance and- knocking into the side of a house.

Woops.

...Everything okay out there?

Fine. Venom stares at the house and sniffs.

[fooloftheking]

The issue with butchering is the smell. Blood and earth and bowels and the tallow and fat rendering that leaves a distinctive stench that he tries to keep to working on at night. Saving the bones so they can be boiled down for broth that he realizes will hold for a long time for meals as well so this is truly striking him as the best choice he can do.

Even with the smell, though living as long as he has, he's lived in a time when everything else smells worse, and there's a pay off to this that he enjoys.

Now with room to work, he's trying to finish off a pair of geese, and a badger he caught in traps and now taking them down and apart one by one. It's late, but he doesn't care. There's a comfort to the work that he doesn't want to think about, and a promise of keeping his house, and some others, well through the winter. That's what matters.

And not wanting to attack people because of pent up aggression.

So he comes out, axe in hand. It isn't long before one of the geese is dead, blood soaking into the ground though one day he might start saving that as well.

[imareporter]

The smell.

Venom's tongue lolls out. A few drops of saliva stain the grass and there's a claw in the dirt and grass. Something is there. Something is moving out in the darkness.

One living, one dead. Eddie is asleep. Good. Perhaps if he eats tonight, Eddie won't be so stricken. Whatever this place is has pushed them together and Venom finds itself...caring. Caring about his host.

There are stories of caring about hosts. It is an old way, an attempt to change from the way of the Klyntar. Stories, bedtime stories.

Those weren't words he should have known, but if he eats...

Eddie will be able to be sane.

There is a hulking shape in the darkness frozen. standing there. Staring- watching from a reasonable distance.

[fooloftheking]

Tossing the head aside, if only to see how little brain he'd get from it for use in tanning. Careful not to cut too deep, Bobo proceeded to yank feathers from the breast of the bird, just enough to let him open it and clean it out.

He would get quicker with time, but he wasn't bad at it. Memories even after decades seem to come back to him, and now that analogy about riding bikes made him thing people weren't just being smart asses about it.

After he'd cleared the bird, Bobo moved to hang it from a small frame he'd made to let them drain into a dug space. Making sure the inverted bird was secure, on the other side of the building from the living animals, Bobo headed back inside to give it time.

[imareporter]

Damn.

Eddie would be angry if they ate one of their new colleagues however. Disappointed, Venom shakes it off before sliding around towards the dead bird, teeth bared in anticipation.

That and a live creature perhaps? Perhaps. Now that I understand how this place has affected our bond I can take better care of him.

One claw drags along the ground and hits the foundation. Venom wonders if his scent can be caught by anything living yet - something strange and alien, but for now he contents himself in reaching for the plucked fresh creature.

A pity it wasn't living.

[fooloftheking]

Bobo isn't even aware there's anything afoot. Mostly in that he has let his guard down in this place, worrying about many things but not the fear of creatures within the city. Or anyone that would steal from him rather than asking. That's what he gets for trusting. You would think he'd learn his lesson on that.

So when he comes out, to check and make sure the goose was secure, something doesn't seem right.

Dark shadows and movement that shouldn't be there.

"Whose there?"

[imareporter]

Venom sits, squatting in the darkness. Easy to leap, to grab the man, drag him off into the darkness. Pathetic. These beings...even without his strength or skill he is still strong, still better...isn't he?

Faint bits of light may gleam off his fangs and he tilts his head to the side. What would Eddie do? Eddie is asleep. He can't ask. He'd be angry and it would jeopardize the two them being here. An alien voice oozes out of the darkness.

Nothing. Going to take your food and eat it. Go away

[fooloftheking]

Bobo's gaze darts around, noting the missing goose with a snarl, lip curling even before that voice, whoever the hell that is.

"Are you fucking kidding me? I am willing to share, but that doesn't mean I am cool with thieves. Fucking knew better than to trust this place. Fuck off and find your own food," he growls, suddenly not quite as generous as he's been feeling. "No one is putting up with thieves around here."

He has a knife in his hand, more for work than defense and the truth is, he's pissed. All he's been practically reverting back to the man he was before, but this brings up that aggression he's been trying to control for so long with killing and skinning. Now though it's right there at the surface.

[imareporter]

Venom understands that rage. That aggression. That anger. It's swirling in him constantly and he can't control it and it's hurting Eddie. This is the worst part of it.

So it steps out of the darkness. Almost 8 feet of black overly muscled monster with more teeth in it's mouth then anyone has ever thought possible. A long tongue snakes out of it's mouth.

We could eat you instead. But our other would be angry. The word is...pissed off.

Yes. It likes that word.

We don't want to make them angry.

[ataashihunter]

Bull goes looking for him after a few days. Bobo had quickly become one of Bull's people so the big Qunari feels responsible for him. It is mostly luck that has him glancing inside an open door and seeing Bobo cleaning in there. He smiles slightly as he moves closer, not stepping inside but rather knocking on the door.

"Finding a new place to move in?"

[fooloftheking]

He's been busy, and the place smells of soap and water and when he pauses, glancing up, the hem of his scrub pants are wet and his shirt spotted. Rag in hand as he glances up. Taking a moment as he slowly pushes to his feet, tossing the cloth aside with a grin.

"Well hey there." He glances around, considering. "Actually kind of taking up as butcher, I think," he admits. "It's been a long time since I've had to do something to be a productive member of society, and I figure playing to my strengths is a good choice. How are you doing?"

[ataashihunter]

Bull smiles slightly. This is a smell he likes. Being clean is something they value greatly. "That is a good idea. That is more than I know, that is for sure. And the whole curing meats and all that? Going to be really handy." He smiles. "I am doing alright. Dorian is here. He's someone I know from home. And the beer is coming along really good. I think we can try the first batch fairly soon."

[fooloftheking]

"A long time ago, when I was what passes as a young man, doing this was often useful to know and it seems to be coming back to me pretty well. I was a bachelor back then, so I had to take care of it all myself," he says, chuckling. "Before this place it felt like the lifetimes it was before. Here it feels sometimes like yesterday."

Which is odd for him, but not in the worst kind of way.

"Someone you want here from home, I take it? Not like what happened to me?"

[ataashihunter]

"Well that is not such a bad thing is it. Feeling young again. And maybe that is because you have to use those skills again. It is something I have heard old warriors say. " He smiles fondly.

"Yeah he is. We work for the same organization and we got a whole friends with benefits thing going on." But there is the whole little bit of Dorian not having magic here. "When you say it feels like yesterday, does that mean there feels like something is missing?"

[fooloftheking]

"No, not a bad thing. Confusing sometimes, but not bad," he says, though he's never sure about that line between feeling like a human and a demon. That is a line this place blurs so often in his head since coming to this place.

"You're good on that friends with benefits thing," he notes with a smirk, liking benefiting from that as well.

He falls quiet a moment and then nods. "They took things from me," he admits. "And I miss it. I miss knowing where I stand too, because who do you ask about what all they've done? And not dying to find out."

[ataashihunter]

"That I am. Though it's complicated with Dorian. I think he wants more. And I don't think I am the right person for that." He admits.

"Hm, you're not the first person to say that. Some sort of power right? Magic or something like it?"

[fooloftheking]

Bobo falls silent at that, folding his arms over his chest and leaning back against the counter, considering. "I don't think anyone is the right person for it. Just depends on if you want it too. I didn't for a lot of years, but found the right person. Or thought she was."

Except she had betrayed him just as her ancestor had and she's dead now. Which is why he's perfectly fine with friends with benefits because he really wants to protect himself from falling into that again.

"A power, yeah. Least that's the part I know but it's completely gone," he says, lip curling. "Unless I want to beg some machine for it back."

Scrounging Wood

[alittlelonger]

Rinoa's starting to settle in, but it's still too strange to feel right. She keeps expecting the earth to move under her feet and for this all to be some hallucination or a trick. It's elaborate, for something the sorceress would do, but she is paranoid about it anyway. Still, she tries her best to make her time every day count. She cleans the house, she makes certain they have food or access to food, she walks in the safer parts of town and greets strangers with a smile. It's so far from the SeeD it might as well be another universe, and it is. Another universe.

There's too much time to dwell, and Rinoa hates dwelling, but when she walks quietly by herself it happens. So when she sees a man scrounging around, obviously part of the village, she decides to approach him. He's very tall and normally she really should be aware of Stranger Danger, but everyone's been nice so far and no one's put out a warning about a dangerous person. Only dangerous animals. "Hello," she calls out to him, brushing dark hair over her shoulder. She's a willowy teenager with a naive air about her. "Are you collecting that for firewood?"

[fooloftheking]

The likelihood of finishing a smoking shed this season isn't likely and Bobo knows it. He needs to get something to lug things back and try and check out the treehouses that someone told him about and see if he can steal lumber from there.

Until then, he's had some ideas about pit smoking things, at least to try and get him and the roommates through the winter. Which means having the woods to line a pit and hoping that he doesn't end up ruining the meat he's already hunted.

Others come out this way, but someone trying to get his attention is not something that Bobo expects, so he pauses as he rises, all red scrub pants and long fur coat and stares at the girl for a long moment before he gives her a nod.

"Mostly for a pit to try and smoke some meats and fish," he admits, shrugging. "Not something I've done before but in theory I think it should work. Why? You need firewood?"

Like hunting, gathering firewood is part of his own personal therapy against his aggression and in the end he's already ending up with a lot.

[alittlelonger]

"I'm going to show my ignorance here and ask if smoking them is normal cooking, or is it another kind?" Rinoa comes from a sheltered upbringing. It sometimes makes her feel bad, knowing that growing up in a rich family with their own cook was so far beyond what her orphaned friends knew. It also makes her feel a little useless in this situation, since she's never learned how to take care of herself. It's been growing in her mind that she has to learn how.

She thinks about the offer. "I don't think so, my boyfriend did some of that. I'm just making conversation." Rinoa is also pretty honest and up front. There's a vulnerability to that, she knows, but she also holds onto it. She doesn't want her bad experiences to take pieces of her away. "Sorry if I'm bothering you, I don't know a lot of people here yet. I really like your coat." She steps a little closer to him, running her hands together. "Is there something I can help you with at least?"

[fooloftheking]

"It's different. It's the smoke that preserves the meat and not heat. Don't ask me the science on it, but less likely to spoil as soon. Part of it is salt, the rest I don't know but would be useful to the rest of us to get through this place come winter. Can't hurt trying, at least."

Which is an attitude he hasn't felt in a long time, and it's kind of nerve-wracking though he doesn't let it slow him down.

"Naw, you're not bothering. If you were bothering, I'm not good at hiding how I feel. You'd know," he admitted. "And if that changes, check between the trees over that way. Apparently some guy has a tree chopping fetish or something and leaves wood around for others," he admits, considering something else she said. "How many you know from here? I ended up with someone I know, but definitely no one I want close. Seems the opposite for others."

Not wanting to acknowledge it's because he's not entirely been the most social of men before this place.

"And thanks. Found it one of my early days here and been glad for it. Just a comfort thing," he says with a shrug. "Only a fool says no to help, and while I've been a fool? That's not why. You wanna break down those pieces over there? I want to line this with them, and then wet leaves. See if I can make this work with something smaller first."

[alittlelonger]

Rinoa listens intently, because she really likes learning new things. "Oh yeah, that will definitely come in handy in the winter. That's nice of you, to do that with other people in mind." She smiles warmly up at him. It continues her belief that this place is full of pretty considerate people, on the whole. They've all been willing to share and explain things to her, and she takes none of that for granted.

She turns her head in the direction he must be talking about, noting it in her head for later. It would save Squall some trouble for sure. She isn't sure either of them really knows how to survive in these conditions, but they'll do their best. The Garden had all of those things taken care of for them too. "Thank you, I'll let him know." She looks back at him. "My boyfriend Squall is the only person here that I know from our world. You'll know him if you see him. Tall, dark hair, scar on his face from here to here." She gestures from just above the eyebrow across the face in a slash. "If he doesn't say more than a handful of words to you, don't take offense. He's one of those strong silent types." A deep contrast to the friendly girl he fell in love with, but they made it work.

"You don't like the person you know here? That would be tough, it's not like there's a lot of ways to avoid someone here." The village isn't giant. She thinks about if there's anyone she wouldn't want to be around, but outside of the sorceress herself, not really. She'd even take Seifer at this point, although Squall would hate that.

She brightens when he offers her a task, because she loves feeling useful. She immediately moves over to the pieces he recommended and gets to work. She's efficient and stronger than she looks. "Everyone's foolish at one time or another. Try being a teenager surrounded by teenagers in close quarters, we were foolish a lot." She grins at him, able to laugh at herself and her friends good-naturedly.

[fooloftheking]

Doing the things he is in the village, Bobo hasn't let himself think about why he's doing it. Nor how he feels about it. So to have someone tell him that he's nice is almost painful in that it's not words he's heard for decades, and the man he was when he did is so much different than he's become.

"It's kind of weird. I hadn't thought about it that way. It started out as something to help me here." Which might not sound all that good considering he's talking about killing and skinning animals, but it did help and is something that not everyone has experience with, he knows. So it's turned into help for others, and now nice. "But thanks."

Again, words that aren't entirely comfortable to him, unused for so long in the life he's led. He had spent over a century not thinking about how much of that man he hasn't been, until he finds hints of him creeping out in the things he does, and says.

A brow arches when she speaks of the scar, head canting slightly, watching her with narrowed eyes. "Sounds like an interesting fight in his past. And it it's something lame like him falling into a window, don't tell me. I like the idea in my head better," he says, and there's a hint of a smile, finding that as well. A hint to humor that isn't just sarcasm to deflect from everything else.

"You got lucky though. The one from my world, she's..." He pauses, considering how to word this without being that dick and starting World War III with Wynonna because someone tells her what he'd said. Though it could get worse." But if Holliday shows up, he's moving further out than the North village. "We've called a truce though, and manage to avoid on another mostly." Sure he harassed her at the party, but he hadn't known it was her at first.

It's nice having those that come in and help, so used to herding cats as it was with revenants, and so he gets back to work in lining it so that it will hold in the heat. "I can't remember when I was even a teenager," he admits, making a face as he looks at her, considering that he hasn't thought of that in years. "Good thing you'll still have those moments here then too."

[alittlelonger]

Rinoa smiles at him, the edges of her dark eyes crinkling. "You could have kept it as only something for yourself, and you chose to instead think about others and put in the extra work. Not everyone does that, you know." She can't help but see the best in people, even strangers. Especially in strangers. In some ways she knows she has to get tougher and less trusting, but she also doesn't want to entirely change just because of bad experiences in the past few months. The sorceresses already took too much from her.

She chuckles and clasps her hands, rolling to the tips of her toes and back to her heels as she considers what to say. "Oh it was an interesting fight, from what I've heard, but he is a terrible story teller. It was technically during a training match, but he and Seifer rile each other up so easily. "They were the two best sword fighters in the Garden. A training match with them is a duel to the death for anyone else." The two of them competed in so many ways, but they never really did over her, and she's glad. She hates the idea of being a prize of some kind. "Seifer used magic to cheat and they have parallel permanent slashes on their faces. That sounds less exciting spelled out, but I was assured it was very intense at the time."

Rinoa's head tilts curiously at his pause, but she's not going to press either. Obviously there's some history. She's not likely to assume anything on one person's word alone. She's naive, but not stupid. Still, maybe it's just a difference in opinion. "I'm glad you called a truce! There's enough about being in a new world that's difficult, having fights would make it worse." She doesn't follow up with a 'we're all in this together' cheer, although she's very much thinking about it in her head.

She watches what he does on top of bringing him the wood, hoping to learn something in the process. She laughs though, shaking her head. "Oh you're not that old, come on. Are you one of those people who turn forty and think the world is over?" She's gently teasing, which she knows you're not supposed to do with strangers, it's impolite, but she likes him and hopes he won't take offense.

[fooloftheking]

She's true, and he can't argue that, but it is also a reminder of the past. A time that had never ended well, and which Bobo hadn't thought of in too long. Being a good man hadn't been important as a revenant, and there is nothing to be done in helping more than keeping them herded. At least it's what he's told himself for years, told himself instead of trying to be a better man. Suddenly, finding himself away from them all, he's trying once more. Letting himself think about it though is unsettling. Having another acknowledge that is a bit nervewracking in ways he doesn't want to share.

"Yeah, I guess I could. When you're trapped together, all you can do is band together." Which is how it should be, but not how he's done so much of the years of his life. It's easy though to do such things when you're not thinking about it, but the moment someone brings it up, trying to do the right thing feels so much harder.

So he focuses on her story about this friend of hers and the scar he bears.

"No, it sounds exciting, and fucked up," he admits, chuckling ruefully. "Did it end up duplicated on both of them because of him cheating? Does it work like that to stop cheaters?" It's how it sounds but he's not sure if it's that much karma or not.

He hears that cheer though, and much as his trying to do something in this place might say the same thing, he's not nearly cheerful enough for that. And glad she isn't entirely either. Even if he suspects her cheer in general will be infectious in this city.

Glancing sidelong at her as he works, Bobo chuckles at that. "Kind of, though it was slightly past forty," he admits, being honest without going into the details. "And some people are older than they look."