At first disguised by hollow warmth

[fooloftheking]

WHO: Bobo Del Rey
WHERE: North Village
WHEN: Middle of January
OPEN TO: All
WARNINGS: Will update as needed

---

Words echo in Bobo's head. Things that Willa said to him, that Vasquez has said, Bull, Wynonna, voices he hasn't heard in over a century. It's easy to ignore those words in your head when you're busy keeping nearly a hundred revenants from getting out of control and killing everyone in the Ghost River Triangle. It's another trying to quiet them when you're in a place where you're seen as a peer and a friend and not merely some hellspawn to be killed to break a curse.

Which only makes it that much harder.

Having spent so much time in the south village, Bobo decided to give a week to getting things ready where he lives in hopes that if winter descends, they'll all make it.

So he spends more time working on converting the police station into a barn for the kirin, chickens and whatever else the cowboys decide to bring home. Clearing out much of the walls that aren't load bearing, and even tearing up the floor in parts of it, to use making a pen to one end for the chick where they can be held and have ground to scratch at.

He takes time seeing that the forge is in working order, hoping to find and mine enough to fashion horse shoes for the kirin. They were keeping their hooves trimmed back, but shoes would make things better for them, to see to them a they grow and may one day become mounts for them.

Most afternoons he can be found on the front porch of their house by the forge, his lap covered in a piece of hide from something he first killed and cured, and working to use one rock to shear bits from another rock. The ledge of the porch rail is lined with his experiments, dangerously sharp arrowheads and larger "blades" that didn't go quite right but show progress in knapping the stone just right into a blade. His hands too show the work, cuts in various degrees of healing marking his knuckles and palms.

It's sitting on that porch that he's approached, in a way, one day by a creature he well knows. A moose that meanders through the "front yard", pausing to sniff at this or that as is makes its way through the village. It's a familiar enough sight to Purgatory, especially back when Robert Svane made a homestead so far North, that Bobo finds himself nearly giggling, then laughing until he has to set aside the things he's working on, digging the heels of his hands against his eyes and staunching tears that he would swear had everything to do with the laughter and nothing else.

All around the house he's chosen show signs of the things he's working on, from boards with pelts stretched over them, to sinew drawn tight between sticks and drying, and several long staff looking saplings in various degrees of drying that he plans to eventually split for bows. So much of it is trial and error, being aware of the basics of how to assemble and make all of it, but also having been a being a fucking mouse in velvet and glasses. The practical experience isn't there, even if the knowledge is, and Bobo is playing off all of it to try and ensure that he and the roommates, those he also considers his people, can make it in this place and thrive.

All the while trying to ignore the voices in his head, the things that others have said to him, and that voice that he barely recognizes from a man that gave up his life for a town that condemned him for a eternity, not yet realizing how soon that forever existence might end.

Comments

[clouded_heart]

Matt looks like everyone else.

So does Luke, or Jessica. "Yeah. We have super heroes. And otherwise powered individuals who don't indulge in super heroics or vigilanteism." He can't deny that.

"Someone in particular?"

[fooloftheking]

"Can't blame them for that either. You get dragged into something you didn't chose, and who wants to deal with that all their lives?" Arching a brow as he puts that in words, head canting and dipping slightly.

"And yes, in particular. Both of us into a life we didn't chose, and not living an entirely normal, as you call it, baseline life," he says, gesturing broadly with his hands as if there's nothing to do be done about it.

[clouded_heart]

Foggy's expression briefly shows a flash of genuine pain and grief before he smooths it over. "Did I tell you my family didn't want me going into law?"

[fooloftheking]

He wants to ask about it, but he's not sure that if he pushes things, then Foggy won't try and block him out.

"You mentioned you were raised in butchery but you're a lawyer now. I might guess they should be proud of that?"

[clouded_heart]

"You'd think," he says softly. "But they want me to quit my high paying, crippling debt accumulated to get job and come and work in the shop with my brother."

[fooloftheking]

"They want, as in present day? I mean, you don't look exactly young," he says, waving one hand at him in a slow circle. "So unless you started school late, they're still harping on that?"

[clouded_heart]

"Studying to be a lawyer? Takes eight years," Foggy states. "Plus apprenticeships, passing the bar, and that's assuming you can do it full time. I was thirty when I was able to start working at an internship."

Yeah. It's that fucking bad.

[fooloftheking]

"And they're still not over it?" He rolls his eyes, shaking his head. "Your family is strange. Even in my day, lawyers were still considered a good catch."

[clouded_heart]

"... no. My little brother, Theo, he's the good son. Joined the family business, took over the shop. And yeah, most families would be pretty over the soon to have a successful, highly paid lawyer in the family."

He gives Bobo a smile. "I mean, they love me, they're proud of me, I have a good family, it's not like anything bad. They saw me through some tough times during high school. Being a pasty, fat kid who likes girls and boys was not an easy thing."

[fooloftheking]

That gets another face, nose wrinkling and shaking his head. "Family rarely makes sense, Foggy," he says, shaking his head once more.

Arching a brow at that. "Figured that out then, did you? Took death for me to seek out all the pleasures I wanted," he admits, shrugging, dismissive because, in the end, it's just one more thing that death gave him.

[clouded_heart]

"I knew from like, six or something. I never actually came out to my family because I never really hid it? I just sort of grew up being open about it, which I realise is not necessarily typical."

Foggy offers out his finger with salt on it to the salamander, smiling when it licked it up.

[fooloftheking]

"Definitely wasn't typical in the mid eighteen hundreds," he notes with a smirk. "Not sure much of even now, at least in Purgatory. A few gave Waverly hell when she and Haught became a thing."

And some had paid for that. Shame how that works in a town run by revenants.

[clouded_heart]

"Well, no."

Foggy had been bullied, like a lot of kids.

"New York's not bad. It's a pretty liberal city, all things considered. My boss, Jeri, she's been married twice, I think, both times to women."

[fooloftheking]

"It's not as if things have changed. I mean, many enjoyed either way or both, but talking about it..." He chuckles. "It's very open here though. I find that interesting."

And has indulged in it as much as he can. It's easier spending time with men than being intimate with women right now, after Willa.

[clouded_heart]

"I think everyone's too busy trying to survive to really have the time or space to make a fuss over that. Or they're enjoying the liberal standpoints and feelings like you are."

[fooloftheking]

"You would think. I keep waiting for people to form factions, to think they can survive better here if they exclude others."

Yet he's made it clear the way he sees the world, and the things he considers about others in this world. In any world, people can become like that.

[clouded_heart]

"They might have filtered people based on that. I mean, if we wipe ourselves out, there's no more... whatever this place is. Try to keep the aggression tempered with a sense of community and charity."

[fooloftheking]

He shakes his head, settling in and watching Foggy and the salamander. "If they had done that, there's no way they would have brought me," he says, trying to sound casual about it.

[clouded_heart]

"I don't know, you seem to have a fairly strong sense of community to me." Given... everything he's experienced about Bobo. "You said you were who you had to be to keep the others in line back home as well. Which is still community."

[fooloftheking]

"And what I did was destroy people," he says, almost cheerfully but it's the same false tones he puts on so much when he's coping and dealing with things that he isn't facing directly.

"I can tell you how I see it, but I can also tell you how Wynonna would describe me and the others. I've killed a lot of people in my days."

[clouded_heart]

"Which isn't inherently anti-community. A lot of military people kill for their communities. To protect them, or other wise." Frank is a very community minded mass murderer.

"I don't know if you're trying to fool you or me with that cheerful stuff, but it won't work on me. I'm prepared to pretend, but, don't think I'm actually that naive. Okay?"

[fooloftheking]

He shrugs. "Force of habit? Knowing what makes things easier so maybe I live another day," he admits. "You don't live this long, longer than any other revenant, unless you know how to play the game. As for the games and community? I'm a monster. I know that. Without me there would be no humans left in the Ghost River Triangle, and there would never be a way to break the curse because the Earps would be long dead," he says. "Now there's no way left to break it. That ended too. So this is the community I've got, I guess."

But it's more than that, but putting it in words is harder than he can imagine.

[clouded_heart]

Foggy looks at Bobo, stands carefully and comes over to hug him. It's not the drunken thing of before, but it's slow, letting Bobo avoid it if he wants.

But Foggy thinks he needs a hug.

[fooloftheking]

Maybe had it been anyone else, there would be a sensation of a threat to the gesture. Instead though he holds still a moment before moving in to return the hug.

Not dying alone was something Robert needed. He has friends here, and he has lovers. This was a generous hug, being kind, and he is still uncertain about that.

"You have no self preservation instinct, do you?" Sounding fond though even as he says it.

[clouded_heart]

"Totally debatable. I think I have quite a good one." It's not a lingering hug, just a firm, heartfelt one. "But I did sort of step between fighting gang members once and talk them down. Oh, and that time I went into a bikie strong hold to find information."