Kingsley Tealeaf, waking up confused in a garden, surrounded by people who allude him, but he knows they are safe and so he is safe.
Kingsley Tealeaf, who was not the person those people wanted and expected, he was someone else, a stranger, and yet they treated him with kindness nonetheless.
Kingsley Tealeaf, hearing from these people about the friend they lost, the friend they expected to return, the friend whose place he took, after all the struggles they went through to bring him back. He’s odd, and an asshole, and interesting, and kind. And Kingsley decides to honour him as a brother. For these people he never met before, and maybe for himself too. He was only just born in the garden, it would feel good to have some family.
Kingsley taking off to sea, trying to run away from the two men who had his body before, from the sad eyes of these people who loved his brother and now love him, people whose feelings for he doesn’t know. Does he love them, or are these remains of the brother whose body became his?
Slowly but surely, he embraces it. His feelings and memories both. He remembers Molly. He is Molly. Except he also isn’t. He is different, so far from that walking, broken fragment his friends knew before. Mollymauk truly was a fragment, a shard of a person trying to fill the void with pain and pleasure alike. Sacrificing himself in every fight, with every rite, because he’s living on borrowed time either way. Living every day to the fullest because every day could be his last.
He remembers being born in a shallow grave. How different was Mollymauk’s birth, all alone in the night, having to claw his way out of the earth and stumble away, unable to speak or understand. How sad and painful. How scary. How different from how he himself was born, to love and sunlight and familiarity he couldn’t place.
He pities Mollymauk for his pain. For the terrifying hollowness he was fighting every day.
He admires Mollymauk for his kindness. For how despite the pain, he found the heart to care for his loved ones. It was only this kindness that allowed Kingsley to be born.
He comes back ashore, and makes sure to visit his friends. He teases Veth playfully, bringing little Luc gifts from overseas, small trinkets from his travels.
He smiled at Jester and Fjord whenever they manage to cross paths, jokingly salutes at captain Tusktooth and bows to the Sapphire of the Sea, regaling them with tales, some even true.
He gives Yasha the biggest hugs he can manage, gifting her with flowers and jewellery in all different shades, bringing her seeds to plant in her garden.
Beau he pokes and prods at, bringing her interesting booze or a book he found somewhere, playing cards together.
He flirts with Caleb and Essek, gifting them with whatever magic he runs across in his journeys, but more often than not with gentle earrings for the elf, and whatever funny little trinket he could find for the magic man he remembered so differently. The smile on his face was never this bright before, and he wanted to see it more.
He gifts Caduceus with stories and company and interesting musical instruments, building a relationship with the one he didn’t know. Someone who apparently made the earth remember him. Remember them. Someone who called out to his goddess to put him back, to return a stranger home, because his friends were hurting and he wanted them to be happy. Because he thought they deserved a second chance.
Lucien could only accept love in obsession. Mollymauk treated it like a drug to escape the emptiness. But Kingsley was born out of love, and he lived his life full of it.