#( thread begin. )

“Nice having a third cleric around,” Molly chirps, tricep pillowed on the table as he gazes absently after Cree. She stands some paces away with an expression he’s come to read as overwhelmed by tiefling-related enthusiasm while Jester gesticulates wildly through a story about a dragon. The way her hands bob and flutter remind him of blue Morphos. “I know you still don’t trust her, but really. She’s been a gem.”

It’s been an odd couple of months of travel, odder still to be with the Nein again in a completely different country. Cree has been an asset in that time, a companion, loyal enough to defy the Gentleman to find him, to take him somewhere he’ll have trouble following.

“I will do what I can to keep us safe, Lucien,” she’d said, digging through her satchel with a clink. “Even if that means calling you Mollymauk.” A river he couldn’t name roared beside them. She pulled out a bundle of leather, unrolled it, pulled out phial after phial caked with blood. She methodically cleaned each, shattered their remains, and threw them into the river.

“Call me Molly,” he murmured after a while; so fresh from the grave, he had no idea how to stifle his relief. She smiled at him with a twitch of whiskers. First night he’d slept peacefully in an age.

“I actually think. Y’know, I think Yash’ will like her,” he continues, flashing Beau a lopsided grin. He finishes off his ale and pushes his tankard away, stretching his arms out across the surface of the table like a large, lazy cat. “How long’s it been since she fucked off again?”

When Molly bursts into their shared tent he looks—well, gleeful, for one, but the type of gleeful that’s dangerously close to tripping headlong into mania with the tightness around his eyes, all his sharp teeth bared.

“Darling,” he declares, twisting quickly to peek through the tent flaps as though paranoid he’s been followed. He wrenches the hangings shut again and twists spiritedly on the balls of his feet, tail practically a hoop around his waist. “Do you remember those toads we snuck into the mayor’s house? Good news. He thinks the bloody place is haunted!”

Molly flutters around the tent, casting quilts off of their traveling trunks to flick them open. He half-disappears inside one while he digs out sundry materials—bundled sage, mostly unused candles, arcane crystals that are certainly blown, dyed glass made to look like arcane crystals. He holds each up and winks an eye shut for inspection, dropping them into a little velvet pouch when he deems them satisfactorily esoteric enough.

“He came round for a reading and I went and pulled the Numinous, told him that there was a, a—” he twirls a hand about as he casts for the words. “—grand force at work, and the great big idiot took it to mean his home is full of ghosts.”

Molly sighs dramatically like this isn’t exactly what he’d wanted, straightening his back in his crouch and finally glancing at Niamh with his most fanged grin.

“So I said I know a clairvoyant that could help me smoke them out. I’m going to need you to don your finest, swishiest, mmm…skirts and shawls and the like, and practice your dramatic pauses. We’ll split the exorcism fees fifty-fifty.”

He bobbles his head back and forth, horn jewelry tinkling. “…Sixty-forty if you’re up for a little, ah, consensual blood-blindness for effect?”

Yuli makes eyes at Jamie from where she kneels, carefully measuring his inseam, and Molly, deeming she’s quite finished (has been for about half a minute now, she’s simply doing her level best to torture the poor boy at this point), plants a booted foot against her side and shoves just enough for her to go toppling sideways with an indignant squawk.

“Molly!”

“Yuli!” he parrots, scooping up the length of measuring tape with his tail. He plucks it free and placidly drapes it over his shoulders like a limp feather boa. “Someone’s gotta keep a sense of propriety.”

She wrinkles her nose at him and flaps a sheaf of paper, “I’ve got his measurements.”

Molly’s lips quirk as he snatches it from her fingertips and holds it over her head. “Fantastic! I’ll finish up then…now be a sweetheart and get lost.”

Her forceful pout is met with a dismissive wave of his hand as he turns back to Jamie, the tent flaps axing back into place. Molly doesn’t bother looking over the scribbles on the sheet, folding it into a series of neat squares while he appraises the young man with a quick head-to-foot scan. He tucks the note away into one of his many pockets, an arm folding high across his abdomen, the other stroking down his throat for the length of a contemplative ‘hmm’. His tail slithers slowly through the air.

Years traveling and Molly’s come to know the fingerprint of his teammates’ magic.

Jester’s fizzes, excited and mischievous, like candy that dissolves on the tongue. There’s a buoyancy to it that energizes Molly after he’s healed, even as it stitches him roughly back together.

Caduceus’s is fresh and dense, cloying in the back of Molly’s mouth in a way that terrified him the first time it sank into his body and wrenched him back to consciousness. It did him no harm, but it reminded him too much of the weight of loam.

Fjord’s is wild with newness. Yasha’s prickles with static. Nott’s shatters and splashes.

And Caleb’s—

Caleb’s was kinetic, Caleb’s stung and sang and felt alive beneath his hands when he pressed against his skin, and Molly hasn’t forgotten the way it crawled like a flame inching down a matchstick. It never healed him. He’d never felt it except on those awful nights Caleb woke up with his nails tearing into the flesh of his forearms, hands alight with the tangerine glow of metal plunged into a furnace. Molly held that magic in his arms, felt it blazing distant underneath his lips, knew the shape of it over him, around him, and Molly—

He hasn’t forgotten.

He twists around and dashes towards the fire, rage combating a dormant hope that resurrects into an unnatural tangle of confusion. Desperation.  

Caleb hides when he fights. So do most casters, his mind supplies, but no, no, Caleb is smarter than most casters, he would, he would—

Molly’s eyes flit from one alcove carved into the stone wall to the next. There is a shape blacker than the shadows, a hand retreating from the direction of the blaze back into the dark. He slices the air with his golden blade and gleaming argent magic sweeps his steps, swallows Molly in a haze that surges him past the stairs and the smoldering, shattered bannister. His ears ring. His breath saws. He sprints past the open archways, one two three—there.

He holds out his hand, his Binding Rite activating with a rip in his own flesh, sending blood cascading from the eye at the back of his neck to trickle down his spine, sponged up by his billowing black shirt. The edges of his spell dig in as he nears, and it’s enough, he thinks, to break the spell caster’s concentration even as he flings the hooks of the Rite aside in surprise, and the connection to Molly’s magic tears like gristle.

Molly doesn’t stop. He snarls and launches himself at the body, impacts like a meteor strike. They hit the flagstones, the pommel of Molly’s sword slamming into the hollow of the caster’s throat, the second held aloft. His braid thumps his back, makes his fresh wound sing. He leans into his knees, digs them into the caster’s thighs.

There’s a semi-distant buzz of beetles, swarming like a plague.

Molly doesn’t hear it.

A bellow that could be Beau releasing her ki with such profundity that an unfamiliar, feminine shriek rends the air.

Molly doesn’t hear that either.

The hood has fallen around the wizard’s head. Darkvision makes his shorn auburn hair charcoal grey. His blue eyes shine like mercury.

“Does it ever go away?” he’d asked Yasha nearly two years ago, voice wretched and torn. The heels of his palms dug so hard into his eyes that starlight burst behind his eyelids. Her hand was a broad stroke down his spine. “Does the hurt ever stop?”

There are temple bells in Molly’s ears. The pulse in his throat so quick his heart may have stopped. His grip slackens. The burn in his muscles dissipates when his arm drops, second blade kissing the floor; it’s shrill as it scrapes the stone.

He wanted her to cleave the pain from his chest. To dispel the raw, clawing ache clean from his body and leave him empty. She only extended her arm, gathered him into hers, and held him tight enough to bruise.

“No,” she said eventually, and when he answered with a hoarse, broken noise, her hand found his curls. “We just…we learn. To walk in it. To…to bear it. Oh, Molly. Mollymauk, I am sorry—”

The wick between his ribs is set alight with familiar magic. It eats the breath from his lungs and the asphyxiation burns so sweetly.

Molly’s voice is a fragile thing that splinters across his name with terrified hope:

The washroom door flies open with such force that it strikes the opposite wall with a bang, announcing Molly's entrance (or re-entrance, rather) to the lounge, draped only in the silver and blue threads of his sumptuous Platinum Dragon tapestry and the scarred skin he came out of his grave in.

“I am your god!” he announces to the room with an air of magnanimity, prismatic blade held aloft; it catches the thin light and sparkles. The two sea glass green bottles clutched in his other fist clink together as he draws them across his bare chest. “Long may I reign!”

With a swipe of his scimitar the heads of both bottles shoot off with a pop! corks zipping somewhere across the room as spumes of pink and gold foam rocket out. They cap, then dribble down over his hand, spatter across the fancy, parquet floor. Jester squeals and applauds. Shakäste chuckles, then joins her, albeit politely.

“You're wasting the booze, Molly,” Beau gripes from where she's sprawled across a truly magnificent carpet. She passes Yasha a massive gourd of a bottle that his barbarian friend is quick to hide her small smile in.

“Good thing none of it's for you,” he shoots back, licking the hills and valleys of his knuckles.

“Where'dya even find that in a place like this?”

Fjord sounds impressed. Molly will take it.

“A lady never gives away her secrets,” he says primly, then turns on Jester with a brilliant smile. “One of these is—” he gives the neck of either bottle a slurp, smacks his lips thoughtfully. “—non-alcoholic, and I believe it's this one.”

She meets him in a hop and a skip and a flutter of battle-worn skirts, then wiggles the golden drink from his grasp with a theatrical pout. “I was hoping it'd be the pink one, you know?”

“Mm, forgive me, dear, I'll do my level best to deliver next time,” he purrs, dropping a kiss to the curl of her horn, much to her delight.

And then everyone's settling back into whatever the hells they were doing, and Molly takes a moment to survey the room with a smile, gaze coal-warm. He's nowhere near well and truly pissed, but there's no time like the present, is there? Which means, well—

He sweeps across the floor, idly twirling his blade and drinking from the neck of his bottle as he beelines for Caleb. Molly's grinning by the time he reaches him, sat away from the group, sad bastard that he is even in this life, and props a hand on his hip for the drama of it all, tail swaying.

“I have never seen a man more in need of a good time,” he declares while wedging his scimitar into the space between the arm of the couch and the last cushion. He promptly invites himself to sprawl across it like he's the famous Ruby of the Sea, half in Caleb's personal bubble. “Thank you for deigning to be our humble host, Mister Caleb. You're a gem. Have a drink, on me.”

His ears flick, flatten, when her pitch takes a turn for shrill. Molly has enough energy in him still to look guilty at least, swiping a palm down his grimy cheek, gaze flicking away. She was, after all, only trying to help, and she had. More than, actually, but it's hard to focus on that—whenever he clenches his teeth he can feel—taste—the grit of loam. There is dirt underneath his claws still. Molly drops his arm, hand trembling against his thigh.

“I'm peachy,” he gusts—except, well, no, he really isn't. He feels vaguely like he's been pestled in some old apothecary's mortar. Molly glances down at his shirt, the old, dried blood crusting it beneath the smears of soil. Gods, he must look like, like...death. He laughs suddenly, which quickly devolves into a hacking cough that squeezes reactionary tears from his eyes. He doubles over, hands perching against his knees, and wheezes. “Sorry, sorry, dear—this is—uh. I was buried in this! I look worse than I am. Perfectly perfect!”

Molly's grin is instantaneous, cavalier, as he scrubs his jaw and leans back, tail swishing. He still feels like horseshit, but patchy as his memory is it's better than nothing, than emptiness. That he can verbalize how terrible he feels is a blessing in itself.

“Well! I can't remember what being dead was like,” he imparts jovially, hand dropping to his collar. His collection of necklaces is gone, lost or looted, he isn't sure, so he's left to trace his clavicle, the bumps and ridges of his scars; his pulse flutters beneath his fingers. That grin softens to a smile at the feel of it. “I think I'll pick up where I left off. Never been one for regrets. Life's too short. What choice would I have, anyway? Dying again?”

He snorts, head tilting lazily towards the firbolg, gaze bright with humor. Molly quite likes him. It's impossible not to, he's so bloody pleasant.

Oh shite.

Her tears blindside him, and they shouldn’t—hadn’t he done this purposefully, seen the bruise of some unnamed pain and pressed his fingers to it, knowing it would hurt her? Isn’t that what their carnival is, at the end of the day? Paint over a bruise, a collection of colorfully painted flotsam and jetsam haphazardly lashed together. Molly spends so much time lying and laughing that he forgets he isn’t the only one skilled at deflection.

“Niamh,” he murmurs, but finds he doesn’t know how to continue. He flounders for a moment where he stands, then sits down next to her, tail curving around her back. It’s a start. She looks so bloody small, curled up the way she is, and for a moment he imagines her coiling in so tight she simply...disappears, and that makes a soft panic-prickle needle the tips of his fingers, the pit of his stomach. Molly touches her hair, strokes down the soft wave of it. She’s seen him at his worst—he realizes with a sickening, sweeping chill that he can’t remember her ever shaking apart like this in front of him.

“Niamh, dear,” he tries again, soft and trembling. His hands land on the arms she’s got wrapped vice-tight around her legs. Molly takes a deep breath, steadies his voice: “Come here.”

He’s not terribly delicate about unfolding her limbs, but he’s effective. Molly doesn’t leave her vulnerable long, drags her forward and half onto his lap to clumsily tuck her head against his shoulder the way they both used to with Toya. It’s been so long. He’s rusty, but he tries, cupping the back of her head, feeling each hitching sob as though it’s raking down his own insides.