sixthiterationlogs | At first disguised by hollow warmth

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Necessary is in the eye of the beholder," he points out, not noting the point where he admits it wasn't entirely. "I know about stepping in where you have to, where you think you have no choice to save others. I also know about bleeding out alone on a floor," he says. "So trust I know what it's like and how it ends, Foggy."

"I'm not the one who was bleeding out," Foggy murmurs. "Both times I got injured, I was somewhere that should have been perfectly safe."

"And when you are?" He holds up his hands. " Ignore me. I hate seeing people walking down the same path I did so they don't end up like I did."

"I was in a very safe job. Big firm, good clients, not running around taking on the most dangerous charity cases I can find... My old partner liked danger. A lot."

Bobo bit back a growl, shaking his head. "And the men I followed went down in history as two of the greatest gun fighters in history. I was defending an entire town, Foggy, and..."

He sighs, taking a breath and pinching the bridge of his nose. "You'll do what you want, but watching someone else making the same mistakes is not easy. I know I would have talked the same way then."

"I'm not making those mistakes. The only person I would follow into danger is gone from my life. I was too much of a liability."

He looks away as soon as he's said it, because that's not true. "No, I'm sorry, forget that. It wasn't that. We just... it ended. The friendship. That was my bitterness speaking. I was the one who ended the partnership. Oh, hey, do you want some more, buddy?"

His fingertip goes back into the salt and is offered out to the salamander.

"So that's it? They're completely out of your life? And not just because you're in this place?"

Because he can imagine it's easy to cut people off when they're not around, after all.

"I didn't face either of mine again for a century. It helps to not give in to them when they're not around, isn't it?"

Foggy should shut up.

"No. He's here. We barely saw each other back in New York, but now we're both here and he needs me."

Dammit, Franklin, that is not shutting up.

Bobo groans, pinching the bridge of his nose as he sinks back to sit on the arm of the couch. "So what you're telling me is that the person that is horrific and toxic in your life and that you're kicked out of your life is actually still in your life and needs you?"

He drops his hand, staring at Foggy for the longest time, entirely deadpan when he speaks.

"Well at least when you end up cursed, I won't end up alone for eternity."

"I never said he was horrific or toxic!" Foggy's indignant about it, he can't help it, he will never not protect Matt. "We just ended up taking on some cases that were less than ideal because he wanted to. I said, going to the bikies was my call, and the gang members was to de-escalate a situation. He just... let me down a few times and I had to call it quits. But it's not the same here. At all."

He pushes his hands through his hair. "Just forget it. I'm not making sense."

Bobo holds up both hands in surrender. "Fine. He's not Wyatt Earp. Got it," he says, trying to sound as if he is truly surrendering. Except he's positive he's looking at Robert Svane in Foggy, and he knows how that ends.

"If you say it's different, it's different, and you won't end up tortured for decades so all good."

At first disguised by hollow warmth

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