There were so many times I thought I have died

[fooloftheking]

WHO: Bobo Del Rey
WHERE: Both North and South Village
WHEN: First few weeks of February after returning
OPEN TO: All
WARNINGS: Will update if needed

---

There are so many parts that I have hidden and that I yet lost - Either village, First wk of Feb

Bobo Del Rey is dead. Long live the King.

Much as Bobo rallied himself with the others, almost glad to have found himself with Eddie, Venom and Karen in that hell that passed for a temple - and he's sure there's something in that about religion and belief and faith and facing the truth but fuck all that noise - but just because they're the ones he was with, and therefor cared enough to help, he's caught up in so much more.

Like the fact that he did care about others. It's been so many decades since he's cared, and a lot of torture both given and received, and now he's having to face the truth. He's dead. Except instead of being sucked into Hell for more torture, to be further tormented until the heir died once more as they always did, he is here. There is no return. There is no torture. There's just this, and he's not sure what that means. Not for himself, or the confusion that has been haunting him since this place.

But once they're assured everyone has made it back, and that things are back to normal, Bobo is doing his best to get back to a normal life. When in the southern most village, he works on the butcher shop, trying to pull everything together. Cleaning up the entire shop from top to bottom, turning all of the hides, and working to bottle the ink he'd made from tallow soot, leaving the little bottles on the counter near the soap that Watney made.

When back to the north, he can be found often working on the former police station turned barn where they now houses a myriad of animals, including the new baby groffle that somehow the cowboys had managed to bring back with them after the video. They weren't doing much better than he was, but none of them were talking about it. Instead they kept working.

So he works on splitting logs, and preparing the land to add a pasture to turn them out into until the weather turns and they can take them out further from the village.

There are so many colors that I still try to hide while I paint - Off Color

If Bobo is conflicted over who he is and the man he will be, having a moment of his device going a bit wonky is not going to fix that.

He hasn't bothered himself too much with what the device color means, or about these powers that some speak of possessing. His isn't what he knows as being a revenant, and he's not sure what to think of being given something else, but he knows one thing.

In his mind that change in colors is a possible sign of a weakness that he isn't willing to admit to others. Especially after he finds himself standing in the middle of the butcher shop feeling what he can only describe as sad over the state of the animals in various degrees of death and dismemberment around him.

Ripping up some rag pieces he's kept around into thin strips, he wraps them around is wrists, over the palm of his hand, using them to hide the device, before going about his business. Business that is less the business he's chosen for himself and more spending time seeking out others in the inn. Approaching others if they don't seek him out, quieter and less boisterous than he usually is.

It would seem if the images of his death aren't putting him in mind of his past, and what he might become or refuse to acknowledge, well then the powers that be aren't willing to give him a choice.

Comments

[fooloftheking]

He smiles then, glad for Vasquez. Bobo knows how hard things were for him before this place, with Faraday arriving, and yet they seem to be doing alright. Even after getting lost coming back from the winter vacation to the shrine that no one asked for.

He moves his hands a bit, shrugging. "It's hard to explain. You noticed anything weird going on? Since we got back," he adds, since that was weird enough on its own.

A brow arches then, smirking. "You're just realizing that?"

[quinientos]

"Other than the fact that Faraday hasn't bitched at me so far today?" He's teasing here too, because they always bicker and push, and today's no different. "No," he admits bluntly. "Should I have noticed?" He tries to keep his nose out of other people's business, so maybe he just missed it.

"I've never been in any relationship," he adds, soberly. This isn't a joke, not to him. "I don't know what it looks like."

[imareporter]

Eddie agrees. There are days, when he gets angry or hurt or scared - where he fantasizes about taking it out on Carl Brock. Then he remembers the old man is all he has and Carl is his only family and he-

dismisses it.

Something trickles into the back of his mind as he chuckles, "...Good ole' Carl. I can help you with that. you make your own ink?

Like for writing?"

There's a note of hunger in his voice.

[clouded_heart]

Foggy is very quiet, petting the chick on the top of its little fuzzy head. "I can't. I'm sorry. Not in a way that makes sense. There's secrets involved that aren't mine. I can't give those things away. But... I don't know. I'm a bit messed up by it all."

[fooloftheking]

"Did you do it to watch them fall in ruin? Did you do it to save yourself and let them burn?" He asks it nearly casually as he sets up the kirin in their "stalls", moving to get the cut long grass they had left to cure for their meals.

"It wasn't Karen, was it?" His voice a bit of a growl then, glancing at Foggy as his eyes narrow.

[clouded_heart]

"No, of course not. I just... couldn't do it anymore." He burned out. Or burned up. Something like that.

"No, not Karen. Karen was on the periphery of the whole thing, being as how she worked for me and Matt at the time. It was Matt. Most of my life statements involving someone else will come back to Matt."

[fooloftheking]

"And you think that makes you a bad man?" He turns to face Foggy, moving with slow steps to where he was, head canting, staring at him. "You actually believe that, don't you?" And he looks utterly confused by that. "You think you did something wrong?" He asks it but there's a statement to it as he gestures at him.

"Though I'm glad it's not Karen," he says. "I like you too much to hurt you for that," he says, smirking a bit though it's probably not entirely a joke. With Bobo it's not always easy to know.

[clouded_heart]

"I'm not telling you everything about it. There's a lot of context missing. I told you that." He can't spill Matt's secrets. Or Elektra's.

He sets down the chick he was holding into the pen and goes for another. "I gave up on a friend. Possibly when he needed me most. I won't let myself do that again. And frankly, Karen doesn't need you defending her, she'll do it just fine on her own. I promise." The response could also be a joke. It might not be.

[fooloftheking]

He holds up both in "surrender". "Fine, I'll take your word for it," he says, shaking his head. "You're a monster." So says the monster.

"And I'm not defending her. Please. Trust me," he says, thinking about what he's seen. "She's a fucking bad ass. She's got things handled herself," he says, smirking. "So, want to see the new thing the cowboys brought home?"

[digging]

Karen has to laugh at that, a soft chuff of sound as her chin drops. Just the absurdity of it all, of them. This place.

She doesn't answer how she's been. He knows well enough.

Wordlessly, she holds up the rabbit instead. "I could have taken it straight to the inn, but then I wouldn't have had a conveniently morbid excuse to check on you." 'Convenient' being the operative word there, given how sufficiently morbid their vacation had turned out to be.

"Have you talked to Eddie recently?"

[clouded_heart]

"You know there's middle ground between 'angel' and 'monster', right? Like, not a great guy at times. Or pretty good person who occasionally does shitty stuff. Or person put in goddamn awful situation."

Foggy nods, because Bobo's assessment of Karen is accurate. "Sure! Is it going to try and eat me?"

[fooloftheking]

"I never said you were an angel. I said you were a good man, and you argued with me," he points out. "I know angels. I've known a few in my life. Couple literal. A couple just good kids," he says. Well kid, in the case of Rinoa. "You seemed to want me to see you in a bad light," he says, shrugging as he moves towards the door that separates the sheriff's office from the main jail room.

He opens the door and out ambles a gangly-ish groffle calf, all large nose, and bud horns and clattering hooves as he rambles out.

[clouded_heart]

"I don't feel like a good man. I feel like a self interested one.... oh, that is so cute."

Foggy set down the chick in the pen and turned his attention to the calf, offering out a hand to it. "Hello there, you ridiculous creature. Aren't you wonderfully silly."

[fooloftheking]

That gets him to laugh, smiling at him though he can't help himself. "You sure he isn't sick?" Hey, it's as logical, right?

"Well..." He pauses, considering that, and realizing just how serious he is about it.
"Should you have? Maybe not. I mean, I live with you both, and to me I figured he had it about as bad as you do," he says, shrugging. "But I don't think anyone else would have known."

Though that he can understand. "You two look like you like one another. You look happy. He isn't acting like a total idiot. So I figured you guys were doing good together."

[fooloftheking]

Bobo nods, giving a jerk of his head for Eddie to follow and heading for the back room once more. "There's a bunch here writing plans and stories and keeping notes, I guess," he says, shrugging. "But then they need ink to keep up. I remember my dad doing this when I was a kid and it's working out pretty good."

He glances back. "I also should pull out the first attempts from the smoke house. Some fish in there that might have worked out."

[quinientos]

"I left early, he was tending animals, not much of a chance," he admits, but he's grinning, because he likes the bickering. Bobo should already know that, after all, seeing as he was always most fired up if things were mildly tense.

"We're good, I think," he admits, and he shrugs, because he's not sure he wants to rock the boat when things are going fine so far. "When you were with your Willa, what made it special?"

[fooloftheking]

It seems so easy to try and just be normal. Normal to a time that doesn't exist. Normal to people they won't ever be again. Normal because to act otherwise is like stepping into new space, and no one wants to make the first move.

"I'm glad you did," he says, pausing before adding. "Find a convenient reason to come see me, that is," he adds, figuring she has taken that first step, he could meet her half way.

Pausing though at that question, giving a small shake of his head. "I hadn't ever much talked to Eddie before..." He waves his hand towards the vague general direction of the shrine. "I know Venom though. I just hadn't realized..."

Stopping then, not even sure how to put it. "Seen enough strange in my life, you think there'd stop being things that surprise me, but they keep happening." Giving her a look before gesturing for her to come further into, heading into the back of the shop.

"How are you though?"

[fooloftheking]

"Nothing wrong with that," Bobo says, though of course he feels that way.

He's more than amused though by the calf coming over and snuffling at Foggy's hand.

"The books at the inns talk about them being about like bison or so, but we'll see how it ends up."

[clouded_heart]

Foggy is enthusiastically rubbing and scritching the calf around its nubbins and ears. "So this little fella could be growing into a giant?"

[digging]

It's a small thing, that admission to actually wanting her around, but it feels profound. She's spent too much of her life since Kevin died being pushed away by people she cares about, and whether the reason is selfish or noble, it never fails to feel like shit.

"You know," she answers obliquely of how she is, a diffident lift of one shoulder before she steps over to the counter and drops off the rabbit. "As well as could be expected." She hedges a moment and then blows out a sigh as she cants a hip against the front of the showcase. "When I got back, I had gotten a box. There was a picture of my family inside, from home. So. I don't know what I'm supposed to feel about any of it." Is this some sort of lesson? Cherish what you have while you have it? Because if so, the delivery method could stand some improvement.

"I didn't know Eddie before, either— Or Venom," she corrects, still getting used to the dynamics of that particular relationship despite their mountain jaunt. "Manhattan got half-leveled by an alien invasion while I was living there, though, if that's strange enough for you. It was led by a guy who lives here now, I bet he's super happy to be stuck with the rest of us."

[fooloftheking]

And he is loving it. Tongue lolling, leaning into Foggy eagerly.

"Supposedly. I didn't see them. They touched a fox, I guess? And next thing they knew, they were in the middle of nowhere else, and found him. But the inn has notes on them and they're pretty big."

[clouded_heart]

"Big enough to ride? I'm not thinking for speed, but for dragging loads and the like." Beasts of burden. "Not yet, not for you, you're still just a baby, aren't you?"

Foggy's missing his niece and nephew and baby cousins. A lot.

[fooloftheking]

He pauses, considering that as he watches the pair. The groffle is definitely loving it as he leans hard into Foggy.

"Maybe. I think that may be part of what they've got planned. They got really into this having a farm thing."

[fooloftheking]

Bobo chuckles then, understanding that. "I'm sure he'll track you down eventually. He always does," he points out. Which to Bobo has been pretty telling.

He arches a brow at that. Vasquez is the only one he really talks about her with, and the only one that knows the truth.

"The time we spent together. When she was first given to me, we never spoke. Ever. She wrote notes, but that was it. She was trapped but she had her voice, and she chose not to give that to me. Even before she started talking to me, we shared things. Books. Games. She started giving me her time, and that was more precious than anything. Just knowing her time, her attention, was for me."

[fooloftheking]

Having received a box himself recently, Bobo is a bit confused to hear what it is that Karen received. Facing her with a frown, his head cocking to one side as he gestures with his words, a vague waving of his hand. "Why in the name of all that is holy would they send you that?"

He doesn't feel he needs to ask the rest. Send her that now. Send her that after showing her a vision of her brother's death that they thought fit to share with others.

"Have you ever..." He pauses, considering this, of what to ask her, how to word this. "Have you ever had a moment to say goodbye? To your brother? I mean, I don't know much about all of this. Most of my family is long gone, and I've only ever wanted to mourn one person."

Not that he has, and he hasn't let himself think about it. Even now with what he's seen of himself.

Though he's a bit stunned to learn of her world, of what they had been through. "And now this bastard is here now? And you've all let him live?" Even without the emotions he feels for Karen, he's kind of in a mood to finish another, and this could be kindness for Karen and nothing more. "Wait, the rest of you? How many are here from your world?"