I’d like to think that Caduceus still makes a grave for Molly. Because Molly is dead. He’s gone, Caduceus knows this. And his friends deserve to mourn that.
They avoid the grave at first. They’re weird about it. But surprisingly, Beau’s the first to break. She brings a bottle of liquor, the strong stuff, sits down on the gravestone itself and gets dead drunk, ranting and raving about what a dick Dairon can be, about how she hates working a fucking nine to five, how Molly would rip her apart for it if he ever saw her in uniform. Caduceus doesn’t watch her, but he comes and gets her when the sun goes down. Brings her inside, gives her a bed. She doesn’t explain herself in the morning. She doesn’t have to.
The others trickle in slowly. Caleb visits the most frequently, teleporting over the grave itself and doing his work there some days. Essek accompanies him on occasion. He never says anything, save for a quiet thank you before he turns to leave. Veth tells him about the kids at camp, which ones he’d love and which one’s he’d want to throw into the lake. Fjord and Jester don’t get to make many visits, what with all their travelling, but their’s are the most lively. They treat it like a picnic, bickering and bantering and trading off the role of narrator as they regale their latest adventures. Yasha always visits with flowers, sitting by the grave for hours, telling Molly about every bit of her life since the last time she saw him. He was the talker between them, but he always loved to listen to her quiet stories.
It takes a long time for Kingsley to visit. He shows up with a handful of slightly wilted flowers in one hand, the other shoved in his pocket, not quite looking at Kingsley. He’s silent as Caduceus leads him to the gravestone. Stays silent for a while longer.
Eventually, he talks. Well, he complains. About the horn piercings, because Kingsley finds the rattling of the piercings annoying but it looks weird without them in. About the size and garishness of Molly’s tattoos, the literal fucking peacock that stretches all the way up to his face. About all the scars on his chest, which is a seriously dumb place to cut yourself repeatedly, seriously man, just use your finger or something, what if your hand slipped and you hit vitals, isn’t that how you died in the first place?
Eventually, he comes back into the house. Apologizes, a little sheepish, for being immature. Confesses that he wasn’t sure what do to do, but Jester and Fjord insisted that he visited and he hadn’t been planning on saying anything but he got there and it all just spilled out and Gods, now he’s embarrassed—
And Caduceus, who’s grown up in this grove, with brothers and sisters and all the atrocities that they have to offer, just laughs, long and loud, and says, “Well, I mean. That’s just kind of how siblings are.”
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