sixthiterationlogs | This is why we can not afford to close an empty casket

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This is why we can not afford to close an empty casket

WHO: Bobo Del Rey
WHERE: Butcher shop, open to anywhere around the villages
WHEN: 12/20 - 12/23
OPEN TO: All
WARNINGS: Death. Anger. Rage issues. Thoughts of self harm. Knife wound. Likely violence.

Your breath in this cool room chill - Butcher Shop

The video is not anything Bobo doesn't know. Wynonna told him that day when she arrived, showing herself into his house, and the truce had been made. A truce made by love for a woman that had turned on them both. He hasn't forgotten Willa a single day in this place, but the visions in his mind of those days when she was returned to them, when he had hoped to have his swan back, it was nothing like this.

Of her caught up in coils, of Peacemaker glowing blue, of Willa's face caught up in agony and loss and pain... and none of it for leaving him to die.

Yet as he stumbles back as the bullet slams into her forehead, pierces her brain, watching it begin to loop once more on the device of her there in the dark, the shields that protect the Ghost River Triangle down, and the demon Wynonna had asked him about coming. Coming for his Willa.

He can't get it off his wrist, turning as he stumbles knocking pans off the counter, grabbing up one of the knives he uses to take apart carcasses. For a moment he thinks about it, thinks about taking off the device no matter what it takes. instead he slams it into the cutting block. Again and again. A third time and his hand slides down and the blade cuts into the heel of his hand.

Snarling as he tosses it across the room, grabbing up a rag and gripping it tight with his cut hand. Cursing, snarling out words as so many emotions he's never dealt with well up within him. He's spent months in this place, ignoring the things that had happened just in those moments before he came to in the fountain.

Now they're playing out in front of him, bringing out pain and loss and betrayal, reminding him that the chances he took ended in nothing.

If any of the others helping out in the butcher shop come in they will find blood on the floor, the brain pans and tools on the floor, and fresh blood splattering the edge of the cutting table.

Swans mate for life - The next few days

There's little peace for Bobo to find. He can't help himself, watching it time and again, just to see her face. To see her one last time, to try and see the woman that had said he could stay and die while she went on her own. Trying to make himself see that woman, and not the perfect, wild, deadly beauty that he had kissed one last time, told her to wait for him while he finished off the mice following them.

Mice.

How easy it is for one to go from predator to prey. Could one go back though? He had been prey turned predator, and the returned to prey once more. Nothing more than a mouse left to die after the trap. Now caught in another trap, running their mazes and fighting for the cheese. Trapped. Predator or prey? He isn't sure yet.

Caught up in his thoughts, wandering instead of working as he tries to make sense of any of it. Why show him this now? How had they even gotten this? A vision he hadn't seen, seemingly taken from a camera in the trees between Wynonna and Willa, filming it all.

He wanders into the inn, but rarely takes time to eat. Finds himself down by the water, sitting there on the edge of the water, staring into space and not really seeing much. What would he have one if he had stayed in Purgatory? Never been brought here, but he knows. He knows what came next and he's not sure he cares. What's the point of living without her when he knows she's never coming back. Years wishing for her return, only for her to die just outside the gates, shot by the very weapon she was meant to wield. Neither of them ever finding their freedom. Not truly.

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Karen knows this man in the distant, analytical way she knows too many people in this place — Names on a list, eventually matched with faces but not really known as people beyond passing observances. She remembers his name because it's completely at odds with everything obvious about him, a funny name for someone who seems anything but.

She nearly passes him by where he sits there on the shore, because god knows a man in meditation probably doesn't need her input, not here. It's his fixation on his watch that stops her, remembering Margaery only the day before in a similar state.

"Hey," she quietly says as she approaches, crunching across the snow, hands deep in the pockets of her coat. "You okay?"

Eventually he's going to have no choice but to get over this all. To get past his pain, to let her go and find the anger for her he should have. Instead he's ignored it. All of it since the day he paddled to the edge of the fountain.

Hearing footsteps but not looking up. Maybe he should remember the paranoia that has kept him alive all these years but in this place he's lost some of that edge. Not smart, and deep down he knows it. He's just not caring. Not yet.

Turning his head, looking up at her. Staring for a long moment, realizing he's not sure he has a name to go along with a face he's seen around the village. Lying about such things is easy, just words that come to a person daily. So in the end he just shakes his head, lowering his gaze back to the water.

"Nope, not in the least. You?" As if it's just that casual a conversation.

"I didn't get one," Karen replies, and then after a tick, adds, "yet." Which, she thinks, should be answer enough. Her daily trials and tribulations have not been exacerbated by a trip down Past Trauma Lane.

"Apparently it's a thing going around. The videos. Because, you know," she tilts her head, slides her gaze out over the cold rush of the water. "Worrying about not starving before Spring and the nightmare monsters in the woods apparently isn't emotionally damaging enough."

"I would say lucky you but without knowing why or where they came from, maybe it's not luck," he says, shaking his head almost in the same irritated way that a lion would. "Anybody got any idea how they even got these videos?"

Because that edge of the Ghost River Triangle wasn't really known for security cameras, but that image of her in those last moments had been crystal clear.

"Maybe these aren't that far from nightmares. Least mine wasn't," he admits. "Even if I already knew. If they were hoping to shock me, they failed when they brought the heir here." Because hashing out Willa's death had been the first thing between them when Wynonna arrived. "If I was a more suicidal fellow, I might hope for a monster."

Instead he's fighting down the urge to start destroying things until he found an answer.

Edited 2018-12-28 02:23 (UTC)

"Well, if they could create an entire, functional replica of this place in simulation, maybe they have a way to pull the info from our brains, turn it into something that can be watched," Karen speculates. She's careful about who she talks to about the whole clone thing — Not everybody finds it easy to swallow, which is understandable. But she definitely doesn't think that whatever Bobo has on his video or what Margaery had on hers is actual footage. "They downloaded almost a year's worth of memories into my brain overnight once, so I wouldn't put much part their capabilities."

At the rest, she gently shakes her head. "Sorry, you lost me at the heir."

"That's reassuring," he says, entirely deadpan and his tones hollow. Not that he suspects it's not disturbing for anyone else, but that doesn't make it any more palatable to him.

Turning his head though, eyes narrowing as he stares at her for a long time, silent. Not even sure if he wants to ask, but he knows he will.

"They did what exactly? No one has mentioned shit like that." And damn but he's not sure it would help to know, but he's glad he does now.

"It's me running on," he admits. "But someone from home is here, and she already told me about what happened in the video I got." Not that it prepared him to see her die, which is obvious by the distant demeanor and spaced expression.

"I... went to sleep one night a few months back, and when I woke up, I was in the same place — Same room, same bed, the only time that had passed was from when I would normally go to sleep and wake up. Except it felt like I'd been gone, back home, for close to a year." She sighs, pushes a hand through her hair. It should bother her more, she knows. On some level it does. There are just limits to what she can let herself get upset about anymore.

"Some people have disappeared for a couple of days before and come back through the fountain with new memories. I think I might be the only one with the direct download, though." And she's still not sure if it's better or worse. There's something to be said for avoiding the trauma of the fountain, even if she'd still been massively disoriented.

"At least you knew, I guess," she adds with a motion toward his device. "Better than an unpleasant surprise?"

It's nice having a focus that isn't his own, isn't about the things that are weighing on him and making it hard for him to forget his life before this one. It's been nice pretending he isn't who he is, but seems this place isn't ready to let him forget and leave it all behind.

Having what Karen has been through to focus on is helpful.

"How do you know it wasn't a dream then? If the time was just when you were asleep?" Not trying to be insulting, just confused by so much that happens here.

"You think there's a reason for those memories? Could it be something like how they got these," he says, tapping the wristband. "The one I saw never happened to me, but I know it's true."

He nods at that. "Slightly better, though not much. Never..." He sighs, shaking his head and looking away. "Seeing the woman you love die? Still unpleasant," he says, shoulders slumping slightly. "But at least it wasn't a surprise." And he is glad for that and how bad things might get if he hadn't known.

"Well, at first I couldn't have said 100% for sure, but I can't say any of this is real for 100% sure either. Dreams and memories just feel differently; this was too tangible to be a dream. But then my friend showed up from later on the timeline and confirmed it all." And whether Matt's recollections can be trusted more than anything else here is a level of inception she's not quite ready to fully delve into yet.

"I'm sorry," she adds with a nod to his device, her mouth twitching down into a frown. "The person I talked to who had gotten one of those yesterday, her's didn't really bother her and we were wondering if that was the intent. I guess there's our answer."

"Margaery was telling me about how parts of this weren't real for a while. Always a fun time to constantly find yourself questioning what's reality and what's games being played. Doesn't help if anyone here ever has hallucinations or such." He could only imagine how hard copy with the question of reality could truly come in this place.

After all, what would he have thought about that video if he hadn't already been told enough to know it is real?

"I wouldn't have believed it was real," he admits. "If Wynonna hadn't told me about it happening. I wonder how many say things the same." Not that he suspects it could be any easier. Even if he hadn't believed it.

"Yeah, the simulation," Karen confirms with a slow nod. "Or at least, that's what most people think it was. I don't know how successful you can be applying logic to anything in this place, but we keep trying, and that it was fake is the most logical answer. I was with that group, too, that came out of it."

She sighs, pushing a stray shock of hair behind one chilled ear. "Margaery's the person who got the video that I talked to yesterday. It was kind of a non-reactor for her, but now this—" She glances to Bobo's watch. "It makes me worried, you know? I've never known these people to do something like this just for the sake of it." The chickens always come home to roost eventually.

He glances at her then, curious. Most of who speak of that time, talk about it like a simulation so... "What if you don't apply logic to it? What then? If you had to guess."

Since he knows, in the end, that's all they have. Guesses.

"You and me both," he admits with a shake of his head, long hair and shaggy beard heightening the image as being more animal, shaking off something annoying he can't quite bypass. "I keep trying to come up with a reason for it. Why this? I've done a lot of hateful things, after all, and been through a lot. Why Willa dying?"

He waves a hand. "And not really asking because I know no one knows. Hell, if I don't know, no one does."

"I don't think I could not apply logic to it," Karen admits, and then rolls her eyes skyward. "At least not without something psychotropic to help me along." And even then, knowing her mind and the way it's constantly looking for patterns, order? It would be a crap shoot whether she could let that go.

"That was the exact question Margaery and I were asking yesterday. If they have this technology, why that moment, out of all the possibilities?" She cants her head. "It's a little scary when you start to think about it. I'd like to say the Sword of Damocles metaphor is overly paranoid, but maybe it isn't."

That earns a chuckle, amusement certainly tinging his tones. "Fair enough then.

"More than a little," he admits, pressing at the corner of one eye, trying to forcing himself to focus and not get lost into the thoughts of what he's seen. "If they have this, then what else?"

He can think of worse, and having to see a video of Robert Svane leaving Doc to die, of him dying himself alone on a church floor, all of it is a fear haunting the back of his mind.

"And we're left just waiting to see what else might come."

Blaine enters to the aftermath -- to a mess of tools and trays on the floor of the shop and the blood on the table, that looks like far too fresh a splatter to be from a drained animal. He's instantly on guard, wishing he had a weapon of his own rather than just the cleaver he picks up off the floor for the sake of caution.

"Hello? Bobo? Bueller?" he calls out with the bloody knife in his hand but not raised, just in case. It's a bit too much of a mess to be just a little slip of a blade, that's all.

It's the first wound Bobo has taken in this place, by his own hand or another, and he is mostly cursing himself for the mistake. It's the first time he's had to face that while he might be entirely human here, not entirely, he's certainly going to heal from a slash to his hand before he really has time to be annoyed by it.

Standing outside the backdoor, wrapping his hand tightly with a rag and trying to staunch the bleeding. "Out here," he calls, voice tight and only barely thinking about what mess he had left for the other to walk in on.

The knife is lowered, but still in Blaine's hand as he pokes his head out the back door after the voice to see Bobo there clutching a rag to his hand. No attacker in sight... good. Or not. What the hell happened, man? But Blaine isn't in a position where he can just demand answers, complain about the mess. No, he has to be polite, and actually finds himself oddly concerned. Bobo's one of the few acquaintances here he genuinely likes, on some level.

"Are you gonna be okay there?" Establish that first, then ask what happened.

He looks up, still pale and his eyes a bit too wide for even someone that might well have been attacked. Leaning back against the wall, he shifts as he raises his hand, peeling back the rag to look at his hand.

"Probably. No digits lost, and I don't think I did more than act stupid and my hand slid down off the handle." It's a mistake made by those that work with knives, though most often when the blade strikes something hard. Like wood, or bone. "Might find a sewing kit in the Inn and put a few stitches in. That seems like a fun way to finish off this day."

Not that it's all that long into the day, or that even the wound might warrant the snarling growl in his voice. He glances sidelong at Blaine.

"You get a video message on that damned device this morning?"

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This is why we can not afford to close an empty casket

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butcher shop;

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