sixthiterationlogs | I accused him there with his tortured lamb

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I accused him there with his tortured lamb

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.

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"That's my experience too. People might not last out here long if they don't." Rinoa figures it would never get that far. If someone wanted to isolate themselves, surely people would still try to get to them. She would try to get to them. But it's much easier when everyone is on the same page. "We're not just trapped here, we're kidnapped, and I hear they cause strange things sometimes?" Rinoa's brand new so she hasn't really seen it herself. She's heard a few harmless ones that don't sound too bad, but that doesn't mean they'll stay that way.

Rinoa shakes her head. "Oh, no, it's like ... let me show you." She starts miming it out. "Seifer used fire," putting out her hand, boom, "Squall was thrown off. And then Seifer went slash." She pretends to bring a sword down, and then lines up the mark on her face exactly how Squall's was. "So then Squall put his sword on the ground and whooshed it up at him, and cut Seifer the same way. Just a different angle." She doesn't seem to care that she probably seems a little silly at the moment putting on a show for him.

In truth ... forty sounds old to her. Her father is in his 40s. A lot of the people there look that age. He doesn't really, but he is tall and intimidating and maybe she can't read the age well. Edea and Cid were in their 40s, probably. She squints at him thoughtfully. "Are you talking about yourself?"

"And we wouldn't know who hasn't," he points out, in a much too cheerful voice. "If they wandered off, there's a dozen ways they could die and none of us would ever know. Cliffs. Drowning. Who knows what large animals are out there," he adds, ever so cheerful about it. Not rudely so but not bothered by the idea either.

"I haven't been here long enough to know for sure, and what is a kidnapping to many? It was a rescue for me," he admits, shrugging. "But for Halloween, we got new clothes which somehow turned into costumes when we got into the horror movie corn maze. So if that's the worst they do..." He's really all kinds of okay with it.

Bobo goes still, watching the show, and how it happened. Better than magical twin wounds from cheating but... He winces nonethelesss. "Okay then. That's both better than I thought and damn, what the hell were they thinking?" Chuckling as he shakes his head. "Also, people in your world just use fire a lot?"

He's hearing about it more and more, and not as if he hasn't had an ability of his own either. "As for the old people thing, yeah. Definitely talking about me, though I'm not the only one I've heard of."

"That's a little bleak ----" Rinoa's eyes widen. "I was just going to say that's a little bleak, your name, and I realize I haven't even asked. Oh I would be in so much trouble for being so impolite!" Her father was strict and she ignored him in many ways, but politeness was something ingrained in her schooling too. She knows her mother would have given her a look. Her hand reaches unconsciously for the necklace that should be hanging around her throat, and feels a pang of sadness when it's not there. "I'm Rinoa."

Her expression turns a little confused. "A rescue for you? Were you in danger?" She does know that some people were happy to be there, she's heard a few stories and read the books. This isn't the first time she's been kidnapped, so she's mostly just glad she's awake this time. And able to control her own limbs. "New clothes doesn't sound bad." But also the tip of the iceberg, so to speak.

Rinoa rolls her eyes. "They weren't thinking, they were being stupid competitive boys." Teenagers, like she said. She is one too, but she tries her best to be more mature. Most of the time she manages. "They could have easily killed one another in what was supposed to be an innocent spar." They seemed to get that was the wrong thing afterward. If she'd been there she could have stopped them, but also she didn't know Squall at that point so he wouldn't have listened to her anyway. "Oh, yeah, magic can be used. You store it by drawing it from creatures we fight ... I'm not sure how to explain it better than that, and I can't show you here." She pauses. "There's a natural form of magic but ... it's rare." She bites her lip. She had it.

She looks at him, fascinated. "So like ... how old is that?"

It is bleak, and Bobo knows his view can be that way, but when she explains what brought her to that moment, he can't help but chuckle. "I promise not to tell on you," he says, smiling a bit more warmly than most get. "Most just call me Bobo. Since it's really the only name I give. Pleasure to meet you, Rinoa." Since she's possibly worried about manners and all.

"I was likely going to die," he admits, shrugging as he works, dismissing it as nothing. Even if it's anything but. "I was wounded, and betrayed, and have since learned the person I was with was killed moments after I arrived here, so I can only assume I'm next." Again that shrug. Nope, nothing really. "So this place is kind of a godsend."

"Was it innocent for them? I mean, there's a possibility there was more to it than that. Seen it enough times," he admits, knowing true motives weren't always revealed. Though when she talks about how the magic works, his head cants, watching her. "And from one another? I mean, that could be why an innocent spar could turn," he points out, not trying to stir trouble, but curious.

He turns back to working for a bit, considering that answer instead of dismissing it entirely. Some know. One knows all of it, not counting Wynonna. "I was nearly forty when I died," he says, waving his hand to indicate time. "That was over a century ago though."

Some don't believe him, and he accepts that. He's been assured he's not the only one here living on extra years though.

Rinoa laughs, feeding on that warmth from him like she's a flower soaking up sunlight. She enjoys making other people smile or laugh, and she also has a tendency to seek approval from parental figures. But really, he seems like someone who should smile more! And she is an expert on making those types bend to her warmth eventually. "Hello Bobo, nice to meet you too. I'd curtsy, but I don't have a dress on." She usually wears pants now, so it's mostly a joke, and then she gives him an extravagant bow instead.

This of course immediately made her gasp, putting a hand to her mouth. "Oh no! I'm so sorry." Rinoa steps closer to him just so she can pat him comfortingly on his arm. He's much taller than her, so she can't pat his shoulder, so it's the elbow instead. Her eyes are full of empathy and sadness for him. She thought her problem with Squall missing years is bad, but this is so much worse. "And your friend died too? Oh Bobo, that's awful." She may or may not feel like crying for him right here and now, which was absolutely ridiculous so she didn't do it.

Rinoa doesn't question what he's saying. If that's how old he is, that's how old he is. If he didn't seem to hesitate telling her the number, she might have assume he was some long lived other race that only looked human. Which would've been fine. "So ...." She blinks a few times. "So you died but then you lived for another century but then you maybe died again?" She thinks she might have that right, but it's confusing. "How did you live so long?"

It's easy to joke, and often it's easy to even make light of what he's been through, but today with her reaction, it's a little bit harder. So Bobo falls quiet for a moment before making it all clear.

"She died. I found out. After I ended up in this place." Murdered not dead, but that's a whole other story and if Wynonna hasn't ratted him out, he's not turning tables on her either.

"I died, a hundred and fifty years before I found myself on my back from a grenade blast," he says, touching the faint scars on the side of his face, and hearing her leaving me behind," he says, speaking carefully to make it all sound as if it was nothing at all. Even if that is the biggest lie he'd ever told. "It was about a hundred and fifty years," he says, shrugging.

"But that's the kind of thing I enjoy telling others for shock value," he admits, canting his head and gesturing as if to dismiss it. "Not used to getting sympathy, so thank you."

He's not used to it but that doesn't make him appreciate it any less. "Come on. Let's get going on the smokehouse. If nothing else, it means we don't starve this winter. Don't know about you, but I'm kind of for that side of things."

Because distraction is easier than genuine emotions. Both directed at him, and from him.

Rinoa wanted to say more, but she also could take a hint. Maybe they could talk more about it another time. She smiled and nodded. "Yes! I want to see how you do this."

[and scene]

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