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

[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."

[ataashihunter]

Bull frowns at that. "I am not sure that makes it better or worse." He sighs. "You feel naked without it or do you like it better?"

Then he shakes his head. "I think he deserves better, or at the very least someone whose people aren't at war with his people. That sort of stuff makes things complicated."

[fooloftheking]

"I feel changed," he admits, but that is a given. "I'm not sure where I stand, given how it came to be." Nearly forty years as a human man, then a hundred and fifty nearly as a demon. What is he now though?

Bobo winces at that, giving a shake of his head. "As someone that has done that, you're right. It's not a good thing, and it's likely going to end bad."

[ataashihunter]

"But we work for the same organization now, or at least did before we came here. But there is so much more than just that." Bull shakes his head. When did this become so fucking complicated? "Have you tried the powers from the machine?"

[fooloftheking]

"And this place is something else. It's not the world you were working on before. You want to see, Bull, then do it. Explore it. Make this place your own," he says, head canting, peering up at Bull as he considers how he's come to this place. Not just a feeling of caring for others, but wanting to help. Even if there's a chance his advice is bad. Its about relationships. There's a good chance it's bad.

"Nope, but they have the one they took from me there. Someone else I know got it and nearly killed himself."

[ataashihunter]

Bull frowns, he hadn't thought about it. Maybe he could. Dorian and him as something more. Something where he allowed himself to feel. For a moment he is lost in his thoughts. He isn't even sure he can. Or if Dorian wants him to, really wants him to. He gets that he is exciting and forbidden, but he is also a broken old Qunari.

He shakes himself out of that. "Maybe I should go check it out."

[fooloftheking]

That is a mental place Bobo knows. It's something he gets caught up in while working in the butcher shop. A place where he can think about what he had with Willa, what they're meant to have, and all that he's lost before this place. He's gained so much in this place, but it came with massive losses for him emotionally and physically.

"Can't hurt to see what it can do for you. Someone told me you can just play with it and it works. So might as well see."

Because that's easier to talk about than emotional things.

[ataashihunter]

"Huh. I don't know. I come from a world where magic is dangerous. Demons can invade your mind that way. I'd rather not just play with it if that is a risk."

[fooloftheking]

Bobo falls silent, moving a few things around as he thinks about that, straightening up instead of speaking straight up.

"That's how demons in your world work, huh? Like a possession?"

[ataashihunter]

"Exactly like that. They can't really enter our world. The Veil between our world and the Fade is too strong for that, but they can possess people. Mages are more susceptible. Something about magic and power. Blood magic would make that stronger."

[fooloftheking]

"Well. That's... terrifying, I guess. Demons and access to the mages magic, I assume."

He's quiet, considering his life and what to say.

"Ever wonder what they're like in other worlds?"

[ataashihunter]

"I had kind of hoped other worlds didn't have them. But I guess other worlds might have different creatures with the same name. Do you have them as well?"

[fooloftheking]

Bobo's quiet for a moment, considering how bad answering this might go. After a moment he gives a nod. "Yeah, we have them. Well, what's called revenants, but best anyone can tell? They're all the same thing, I guess. Long lived. Super powers. Came back from Hell."

He shrugs. "So I guess demons. Maybe. Had them called that."

[ataashihunter]

Bull frowns. "That is too bad, they can be unpleasant to deal with." He shakes his head. "We got spirits too, they do a lot of the same and... Honestly, I am not entirely sure where the line goes between them. I worked with one. Good kid, if creepy. He'd read your thoughts."

[fooloftheking]

"Yeah well... you're likely going to hear it from others," he says, figuring this could go bad but it's better than Bull hearing it from another person Bobo's talked to.

"You know a revenant," he admits, arching a brow. "I was cursed a century and a half ago, then I was tortured in Hell and returned to Earth as one."

[ataashihunter]

Bull freezes when Bobo says that, but he doesn't attack or even pull away. That is a good sign. For a moment a million thoughts race through his head, fear and suspicion one of them. But then he pushes that away. Bobo wouldn't have needed to be this open. And he hasn't shown himself to be dangerous so far. Besides, maybe he is more like Cole.

He takes a breath. "Alright. Is... Is this your body or are you possessing someone?" Can he even? That is an important first thing to establish.

[fooloftheking]

It's the first time he's been hesitant in talking about this. He enjoys Bull's company and Bobo is already bracing himself to lose that because of the truth.

"This is my body. The same body and man I was when I was born, the same body that took a bullet to stop a true demon so he couldn't destroy our town and be loosed on the world. Except, turns out the gun was cursed, and so was I," he says. "Revenants don't possess others. We die and are returned the same, except then only one thing can kill us. Why I was able to take this damage," he says, brushing the scars on the side of his head. "And come here."

[ataashihunter]

Bull things about it, he can sense the tension on Bobo and when the other shows his scars he reaches out to brush a thumb over them. "That sounds very different than the demons of my world, Bobo. Those demons aren't creatures that once were men. It sounds more like someone that was cursed. Which I mean... you were."

He steps closer, reaching out to pull Bobo close. Not forcibly, just showing him he isn't afraid of him.

[fooloftheking]

Bobo doesn't flinch away, though that tension remains as Bull reaches out to him. The scars are a tangle of scars, far more faded than they should be for when they happened. Far less damage than a grenade from that close should have done.

"It was a curse set by two witches and a demon," he admits, letting himself be drawn closer as his hand runs over Bull's chest. "Still a lot see us as a form of demons, though we're called revenants."

Which most have never cared to see how different those things are. Returned from hell, most of them criminals, they're demons.

[ataashihunter]

"You don't sound or act anything like the demons from my world, so I think I will call you revenant." He smiles softly and then leans to kiss Bobo's forehead. "You know, I have known some spirits too, worked with some. They freaked me out in the beginning but I got over it and what they could do is impressive." He pauses and looks down at Bobo. "What I am saying is that you don't have to be worried that I am going to hate you."

[fooloftheking]

It's a tender gesture, one that Bobo is not at all accustomed to. Even in the times before he returned from Hell. Even from Willa herself. It's different, but not unwelcome.

"Well, everything I could do is gone here, but I know I'm not human. Not like I was before," he admits, not having talked about this much with many in this place. "I can feel it here," he says, bringing a hand between them and touching over his heart.