It’s so interesting to me that Kingsley Tealeaf, unlike any of the previous people in charge of that body, does actually take interest in the past and those who came before him.
Molly used to run away from any mention of the person who had his body before hand. Nothing good ever came out of it, and every interaction with that past was intimidating and unpleasant to him. A reminder of the shaky foundation and loneliness his life started in. The only thing he knows, and needs to know, about that person, is that they died, and got buried in a lonely shallow grave from which he had to crawl, empty and alone.
Lucien, when he came back, didn’t want anything to do with Molly either. He didn’t care for “the speck”, he wanted nothing to do with the full life he lived, with the person he was. That person was nothing. There is only Lucien. Even as he yearned for the things Molly left behind, the warmth and love that the Nein had for this thing he saw as insignificant (yearning enough to consume, to try and pull them into himself and devour them to maybe feel their warmth), he never bothered trying to understand why. He didn’t have to crawl out of the grave probably, he had Cree to help him out, but he was still the man buried once before, not too far from this grave.
But Kingsley? Kingsley Tealeaf was born in the open, surrounded by people he barely recognised, but immediately showed him care and love. He was covered, warmed, held. Even when he found words again (with help and meddling from these people, who had been there for his entire life), even when he tells them “I am not the person you wanted”, they love him anyway. They don’t leave him. They tell him about the past, and he listens. This isn’t him, this person they’re describing with so much love, but… it’s not a stranger. Not an adversary. A brother. Someone he shares some things with, someone he can pay homage to, who came before him and paved some of the way. Who, in death, gave him the gift of a stable foundation, of people he can come back home to, who can tell him about what the world used to be for this body he’s in, and who the person who came before him was, when he’s ready.
And maybe sometimes they get sad. Maybe sometimes they look at him weird, like they are grieving. They are! They are grieving a friend they lost, but they’re not trying to force him to be that person. They help him find out who he is instead. And with that security, the knowledge that he can forge a future without expectation to repeat the past, he can look back and find out who these people who came before him were. Because when he’s confident he’s his own full person, these other people aren’t a risk to his identity, just a facet of the past he gets to explore.
He called his ship the Mollymauk. The vessel that carries him into the future named after the brother who in death left him the foundation of one.
yousharknotpass
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