I commissioned the super talented @cyanide-chicken for a Willa and Bobo piece today and she delivered it this evening! I can’t get over how good and how fast she is. Thank you for this lovely piece!
Interesting thing I noticed while gif making today.... but it looks like Bobo was wearing Willa’s necklace while saving her from the attack on the Homestead in 1.11
Summary: Bobo Del Rey has been stuck in that well for quite a while now and he isn't sure if his sanity has finally snapped or if she's really there.
It had been raining. He assumed it was rain. It had sounded against the wooden door to his stone cage, and the water dripped down steadily for hours. He found himself counting the drops at one point. Drip drip drip drip. Tap tap tap tap tap. One, two, three, four five, six, eight… no. Start again. Something had distracted him between two numbers and that ruined the whole game. He could start again. He had time.
A chill ran up his spine and Bobo shivered against it, his fingers twitching and flexing stiffly against the cold that was settling in around him. Cold and damp, the direct opposite from hell. He liked this weather. Well, he did when the rain didn't drip down with aggravating consistency onto the ground so that he couldn't even sleep without hearing it. Not that he slept much. He tilted his head back so that he would have been staring at the slab of wood over the well had his eyes not slipped closed.
Bobo had lost track of how long it'd been since Holliday had thrown him down the well. The wounds in his chest were long-since healed, even if the blood had stained the front of his formerly white straight jacket. It wasn't so white anymore. Between dirt and the blood and general filth at the bottom of the well, it was hard to tell it ever had been. It was dingy and dirty, the edges and the straps that had once bound his arms were frayed. His hair was growing out, longer than he'd kept it in decades now. Matted and filthy, he could feel it clinging to the back of his neck with the thick, wet air all around him.
He was on his feet instantly, a growl leaving his throat the moment that one of the drips had shifted through the slats and had landed cold and wet against his upturned face.
"Are you planning to fight it?"
The Revenant spun, startled by the voice and finding the well just as it had been all the days he'd been in it: completely empty save for him.
"It doesn't look very steady. Maybe if you're patient enough the rain will rot it out."
He spun again, certain the voice had come from the other directly, but there was nothing.
"But then at least you wouldn't have to waste any energy on it."
Bobo snarled as he lashed out towards the sound of the voice, but he stopped mid-blow, frozen and staring at a pair of amused hazel eyes, that little smirk on familiar lips that said she was teasing him, waiting to rile him.
"Breathe, Robert. You're not dead yet."
"But you are," he choked out, slamming back against the wall that was just as unyielding that day as it had been when he'd nearly beaten his fists raw against it after the first few weeks trapped with all of his options for escape exhausted.
Willa's smile didn't fade. In fact, it grew a little, the amusement dancing in her eyes as she tilted her head and watched him, his fingers digging into the rough rocks behind him like he might be able to claw his way out. She wasn't real. She couldn't be. Wynonna had killed her and she was gone.
But she'd killed him too. Maybe she wasn't.
"I am," she confirmed, that smile remaining. "You must be truly lonely to be willing to face my ghost for a little company. Who's next? Wyatt?"
A feral sound left him, low and rough and it would have terrified anyone else, but not her. Never her.
She wasn't there. Or at least she wasn't alive. Did he believe in ghosts? He'd never seen one. He hadn't seen a demon before Bulshar Clootie though. Demons, angels, who was to say that ghosts couldn't haunt?
"Hey."
He turned, spinning so fast that he stumbled across the well, finding that she'd disappeared and reappeared. "Why are you here?"
"You tell me."
His teeth clicked together loudly and the water dripped down on his head again. He loosed a frustrated howl, the sound directed at the rain above, and Willa laughed at him.
He spun on her and everything flashed red. "It's funny, is it?"
She didn't answer and when his vision cleared enough he saw that he was alone again. Maybe he always had been.
The rain finally stopped, but not until after the well had flooded to the point that there hadn't been a dry place left to sit. After standing - and pacing and leaning and hopping up and down while howling his curses at the uncaring prison - for four straight days he had finally given up, the stamina that came with demondom eventually failing him. He sat heavily in the puddle, his breath showing in the chill.
"They're not coming for you."
He yelped, halfway to his feet again before one knee gave way and he found himself face down in the filthy water.
No laughter followed the time, and as he pulled himself up he saw Willa merely staring at him. "My master will come," he answered automatically, his voice raspy from the endless hours of screaming at the rain, and her gaze turned a little sad.
"Is that what you want? For Bulshar to come for you? The Demon Clootie?"
He growled at her, the question making his head ache. Yes. No. No. Don't question it. Don't think about it.
"Or are you hoping for someone else?"
She was watching him expectedly. They're not coming for you, she said. They. He cut the thought off before the pounding in his head increased. "Ain't nobody else."
"There's not," she said plainly, and he couldn't meet her eyes. "There never has been. You know what you get when you try to trust an Earp."
The summer heat left the well stifling. Some days he had trouble breathing through it, but at least the puddles dried quicker. He'd learned to hate the rain as it flooded his cage. He'd learned to hate the chill that came with it. Give the heat time, though, and he'd remember that he hated that too.
"Aren't you hungry?"
He didn't flinch at her voice anymore, no matter how long it was between. He'd finally just accepted it. It wasn't like anyone else was there to talk to. Not her either, really, but apparently his mind decides it liked torturing him. "Conistantly."
"They haven't even come by. Do you think they've forgotten you're here?"
Bobo reached up to massage the bridge of his nose. "Who?"
"Take your pick."
He pushed a long breath out through his nose. She could have meant anyone. Clootie, the Earps…. He was a little surprised Holliday hadn't come to gloat. He was a bastard. Maybe he hadn't told Wynonna that he'd stored the Revenant in his old stomping grounds. That'd be just about right. Leave him down there to rot. Everyone did. It wasn't overly surprising that Doc Holliday joined each generation of Earp that had screwed him over in one way or another.
"What happens if they never come? Can Revenants starve?"
Bobo shrugged, squatting down on the sticky ground and drawing a long finger through the mud. "Haven't yet."
Willa looked up, her gaze curious as she studied the cage door. "Would you even know if they looked in? Maybe they're watching." She was quiet for a long moment and he finally looked over at her to find her gaze fixed on him. "Or maybe you're not worth remembering."
"Bingo," he huffed and she snorted a mirthless laugh. Bobo stood, but he didn't straighten. Instead he remained half bent over, shoulders hunched and he held her gaze. She looked so real. "What 'bout you, Willa? Do you remember me?"
"Robert," she said, her voice sad and she raised a hand like she might touch his face. He moved towards it, the desperate feeling sudden and clawing, but as he reached out for her she faded, her words echoing without a form to be spoken from. "I'm not here."
He didn't see her for a long time after that. How long, he wasn't sure. The days melted together too badly, folding in and clinging to each other until hours had no real meaning anymore. There was just this moment and that moment. The painful clawing at his mind as something - someone, he wasn't a fool - worked at him to completely and utterly shatter him through and through. He swayed back and forth from wild screaming to silent stretches where he did nothing but curl up on the hard, rocky floor of his cell and try to decide if there was anything left of himself worth fighting for.
The chill had set in… sometime ago, leaving him curled into himself. Revenants always ran warm, but without his coat he could see the tips of his fingers turning blue, snow piling on his wood cage door above, and there was nowhere to go for warmth. He was dying. He thought he might be dying, even if it didn't stick. He just wished Wynonna would come and get it over with.
He'd taken to talking to Willa these days, even if she didn't answer anymore. He talked and talked and talked, anything to take his mind off of the cold and the constant intrusion into his mind. The solitude he was used to. That was fine. He was pretty sure that was fine.
"I miss you," he rasped one night into the darkness of his cage.
"Do you miss me or the thought of me?"
Bobo's lungs burned as he drew in a sharp breath from his place huddled in one corner. He couldn't see her in the darkness, but he could almost feel her. If she was there or not didn't really matter anymore. He just wanted to believe that she was.
"Both," he said at last.
"What do you miss about me?"
He swallowed hard, folding his arms a little closer into his body. "Miss the way your laugh reached your eyes," he managed, feeling more exhausted in that moment than he had since he'd been thrown in. "Your voice when you read and the way you told me we'd get out. The way you reminded me it was worth fightin'."
"You've fought a long time, Robert. No one would blame you for giving in."
He pushed a breath out through his nose and it was so cold it burned. "You did."
Silence followed and he thought he'd run her off again. After a long moment he heard his ghost sigh and instead of a chill as he felt her move past, he felt warmth. He could feel that warmth settle in next to him and he was drawn to it. She didn't say anything as he tilted over, and he was half surprised to find her solid as he laid his head down in her lap, her hand stroking his long hair.
"I would have given anything for you," he managed after a long moment, his voice trembling more than he would have expected.
"Everyone has their limit to what they can take," Willa answered softly.
A mirthless chuckle huffed out of him. "Yeah, 'cept me. Even when I reach it, I can't get out. I got no choice but to keep goin'. Even now…. If I let go I'll be back a few minutes later and it starts again. I don't get to go to where you're at."
"Would you want to?"
He squeezed his eyes closed and he felt something warm and wet slip free. It didn't stay warm for long in the freezing cold. "I wanna hate you."
"No one holds a grudge quite like you," she teased him softly and he turned to look at her, squinting up in the dark.
"I tried to save you, Willa, and I couldn't."
"That wasn't your fault."
"I loved you, and I couldn't save you."
She leaned down and he felt that warmth spread through him as she kissed him. His Willa. His love. Nothing about this life was fair, not for either of them. Maybe she was right. Maybe everyone had their limits, even him.
Bobo felt the warmth swallowed him up, her fingers working through his hair as he let himself drift.
He woke some time later alone, light flooding the well so that it blinded him and his dead love's name was on his lips.
"Wrong Earp," a voice said from above.
He looked up, shielding his eyes from the too-bright sun as he squinted at the familiar face staring down at him. A wild smile tugged at his lips as he recognized Wynonna Earp. He was getting out, one way or the other.
Notes: I started this when that awesome photo of Mikey's new hair was released and finally came back to it today. Poor Bobo. I hope he gets out of the well pretty quickly.
Set in the treehouse years and fulfilling an Angst/Fluff prompt from Tumblr: #86: “Don’t be scared, I’m right here.”
Most people had an idea of what hell would be like, if they believed in it or not. Robert Svane had believed in it without reservation, but he never could have wrapped his mind around exactly what that meant. The pain didn't stop. There was no relief to the flames or the way that they ripped at him, tearing and clawing away skin and muscle straight down to the bone before he blinked and it began again, somehow reaching another level of pain every time. He could feel it tearing at his very soul, burning away what he had been, and every time that he thought it had burned the last shred away, it found something more. There had to be a limit, even in the afterlife, but each time he thought he reached it his screams had grown a little louder, his throat a little more raw.
There was no escaping it. No corner to hide in or place to seek even momentary relief. When the flames relented, that's when the ghosts approached. They weren't real. There was a part of his mind that knew that. His father, his mother, brother and sister and their descendants. Some he knew personally, others from a distance, but they didn't belong here. That didn't stop their judgement that weighed against him like stones piled on his chest until they crushed him. He couldn't breathe, could barely think, but he could hear them and all the disappointment that they heaped on him. Shovels of dirt to bury him alive. He choked and sputtered and even cried. Everyone had their breaking point, even Bobo Del Rey.
And then there was the one he was certain was an illusion cooked up to cause him the most pain. He knew the footsteps even as he curled into himself on the hard ground, exposed no matter how he turned. They echoed and sounded in the emptiness that had chosen to surround him where he lay in that particular moment, finally coming to a stop next to him. Bobo didn't turn. He knew who stood over him, and it wasn't until a steel-toed boot dug into one of his many wounds, cracked bones shifting at the pressure, that he risked a look around.
The face was familiar, yet not. He knew it well enough to see the subtle differences in the way his lips tugged down and there was something around the eyes that sent a chill through him even as his flesh burned. He tried to focus on the creature that had taken Wyatt Earp's face and spoke with Wyatt Earp's voice, but his vision pulsed in and out, leaving him feeling sick.
"You're exactly where you belong," not-Wyatt old him. "Ain't no mistake. Ain't something you don't deserve. You've earned your place here tenfold."
Fire ripped through him and Bobo's back arched as a scream tore from him, Wyatt's name escaping chapped lips on a breath and it was the last one in his lungs. Any attempt to pull air back in to replace it left him gasping and sputtering.
"Robert?"
He twitched and convulsed against it, a pained whimper all he could manage as he heard not-Wyatt detail out each and every sin he had committed. Every life that had been taken directly or indirectly, every Heir that he'd failed to protect. One by one the names were listed off with gruesome details as if Bobo didn't recall each one of Wyatt's descendants that had been strung up after they had been killed. The Seven hadn't been able to make it on the Earp land, but they'd tossed the rope over the entrance and tied Josiah, Edwin, and Ward up. Trophies for them, reminders for him, of a promise he'd never quite been able to keep to himself.
Liar.
Murderer.
Traitor.
The list went on and on, all in Wyatt's voice. All true.
"Robert."
Blue eyes met Wyatt's own hazel ones and he found only disappointment there. "You became one of them. Our enemies."
"What would you have had me do?" the Revenant finally choked out. "What? What would you have done in my place?"
"I never would have been in your place."
"Robert, wake up!"
He jolted hard, eyes snapping open and suddenly he was looking at a wooden roof above him, barely distinguishable in the dim light. The air around him was chilled, not burning. Every muscle in his body was tensed and aching, fingers clawing at bed sheets, and his knees were bent like he had been kicking at an unseen enemy, the quilt he had been sleeping under piled at the end of the bed.
"Robert?"
Blue eyes moved immediately to the source of the question and the world tinged red as a snarl left him, deep and dangerous to warn any enemy exactly what he was capable of.
It hadn't been an enemy though. Instead his sharp gaze landed on Willa Earp who sat on the bed with him, her expression part worried and part wary.
"It's dangerous to wake me up from a nightmare," he grumbled, doing his best to ease his muscles and the red faded from his vision. His back still burned against the sheets, though, and he wondered how he didn't set them on fire.
"It was a bad one," she said quietly.
He huffed. "Even more dangerous then."
Willa loosed a long breath from her nose and he felt her shift in the bed next to him. Slowly, carefully, she eased back down and he realized why he had been sleeping on his back as she returned to her place against his chest. She settled in there, one arm draped across his middle, and he felt her fingers reach for his at his side. "Tell me about it?"
"No."
There was a pause and he knew the word had been too rough. He couldn't help it. He was still reeling from his mind's determination to drag him back to hell all over again.
"It might help."
"It won't."
Her fingers were playing over the rough skin across his knuckles now, the touch gentle and he focused on it. It helped ground him in where they were rather than where he had been. Where he might eventually have to go back to.
"You don't have to do it on your own," she said softly. "I know I can't… take it away anymore than you can take mine away, but it helps. I promise it does."
"What?"
"Not fighting it alone."
Bobo thought of the times when it had been Willa that had woken with her screams. It had taken a while, but eventually she had trusted him enough to share the fears that had been drowning her. Now she was asking him to do the same.
"I was in hell," he managed, and his throat felt dryer than it should have, like a few of those flames had followed him out of the nightmare. He felt her hand flatten against his, her fingers curling under his palm and he cleared his throat. "Wyatt was there. Not Wyatt, but looked like him."
"How do you know it wasn't Wyatt?"
Bobo opened his mouth to respond, but snapped his jaw shut. Because Wyatt wouldn't be in hell. "Just did."
Willa hummed softly and snuggled in closer to him. He could feel her breath on his bare chest and the way her fingers moved against his palm. It was soothing, and for just a moment he dared to let his eyes drift closed again.
Immediately he saw fire and he tensed.
"Robert? Robert, open your eyes."
Bobo did as instructed and found himself in the treehouse once more, Willa half sitting up and leaning over him. She bent down, her long hair ticking skin, and her lips pressed against his for a long moment. "You don't have to be afraid," she whispered against him. "I'm right here." She squeezed his hand before releasing it, bringing it up to his face and she held his gaze. "And you're never going to have to go back. I'm going to make sure of it. You're not alone anymore."
He stared up at her, the words working through him and the truth of it settling in. For the first time in over a century he had someone both willing and capable of standing beside him. Someone that he could trust and that trusted him in return. "I'm not very good at not being alone," he managed, his voice rough and pained and more honest than it could be anywhere else.
It pulled a soft smile from her. "I know. Guess we figure that out together, huh?"
"Guess so." He lifted a hand, long fingers tucking a strand of blonde hair back behind her ear. After hell, he hadn't been sure he would ever be capable of truly loving someone, but there she was and he had been powerless to fight against it. He didn't want to.
Willa eased back down, nestling into the crook of his shoulder and her hand found his. "Get some sleep, Robert. I'm right here."
He felt his own lips tug into a small smile and kissed the top of her head before letting his eyes slip closed again. As he drifted back to sleep, even with hell's flames having been at his heels, she kept him safe and as close to peace as he'd been in over a hundred years.
