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I am alive, that means also
you are alive, because you hear me,
you are here with me.
- Louise Glück, “A Myth of Devotion”
Denunciation. Mirroring. Tarnished.
Every day, Kingsley tries to study three new words. It’s not that hard. He likes learning them. Rote memorization, Caleb calls it. Remembering for the sake of remembering. Kingsley isn’t entirely sure what that means, but it makes Jester smile when he manages his daily goal.
<Not bad. Especially considering you’re nothing but a torn-off piece of myself.>
Sometimes, there are odd thoughts in Kingsley’s head. Opinions that aren’t his, or tastes that he’s never even heard of before. He passes over the basket of strange, circular red fruit in favor of reaching for a banana.
<Hey. Torn-off piece or not, I like pomegranates. Not my problem neither of you plebeians have had the pleasure of eating it before.>
Kingsley pushes the strange thoughts away. They’re not his. He doesn’t care where they came from. He smiles at Jester and lets her chatter on, her voice fading into nothing in his ears. It’s alright to do that with her. She knows what it’s like not to have enough words for what she needs to say. It’s why she draws all her pictures.
He has a sketchbook of his own too. A gift from Jester, hidden beneath his mattress below deck. She said it might help while he's still gathering up his words.
It doesn’t. The sketchbook is a nightmare. Kingsley can’t stand to look at it, but neither can he bring himself to throw it away. He’s never shown it to anyone. It’s filled cover to cover with incomprehensible scribbles. Large scratches of ink, like a clawed hand rending the pages from top to bottom. One page is nothing but red eyes. Kingsley, unsure if he’s more horrified or fascinated, counts them carefully. Words, he can manage, but numbers are a struggle. He tries his best anyway: one-two-three-vier-five-seven-six-eight—nein, no, that’s wrong, it’s all wrong, stop it, stop—
Recollect. Voltaic. Echo.
There are some days where Kingsley has strange flesh-memories lingering in his head. Sensations ghosting against his skin. The crackling tingle of static. The taste of triumph on his tongue. Thunderous applause ringing in his ears. The exhilarating buzz from a lack of oxygen, all the blood pooling in his head from where he’s suspended upside down. His arms bound in silk, his legs spread wide in a one hundred-eighty-degree split.
<That one’s mine, darling.>
<Lies. How can you call anything your own? You aren’t anyone. Neither of you are. Castoffs, that’s what you both are, without even a face of your own to wear that doesn’t belong to me.>
Kingsley’s heart is pounding, but he forces himself to ignore it. No point panicking over the nonsense he’s hearing in his dreams.
Yasha had shared a secret with him once before: in moments of doubt, name five things that are absolutely, unquestionably real. After all, she knows better than anyone what it’s like to have voices in her head that aren’t hers. But at this ungodly hour, Kingsley doesn’t want to think about numbers. Only one thing matters, anyway. Yasha is real. His only anchor between the world outside and the endless sniping in his head.
He rolls over and curls closer to her, letting the scent of wildflowers wash over the white noise his skull can barely contain. This is the present. This is his.
Outside, the rain falls in a steady tap-tap-tap on the window, quieting him just enough to slip back into a restless doze.
Torpor. Revolt. Hairtrigger.
Once, Kingsley finds Caleb fast asleep on the couch in the salon, a book dangling from his fingers and a fey cat curled up on his chest.
He had a real cat named Frumpkin once, a long time ago. He’d had a different name then. Kingsley chews on this for a while. Rolls the odd syllables of it around in his mouth, the words foreign and unfamiliar. Bren Aldric Ermendrud. Kingsley wonders how many people Caleb has been before he became the man he is now. Then he tries to imagine the familiar that had once belonged to Caleb: a fey being that had taken on the name and appearance of the old Frumpkin. He had comforted Caleb, and loved him when no one else did. And after some time, Caleb had set him free.
It all honestly confuses Kingsley a little. But he thinks he understands how it feels to have a half-remembered sense-memory lodged in his brain, a longing for the simple comfort of warmth and softness, even if he doesn’t quite comprehend what it means to love something so much that it becomes next to impossible to let it go.
Kingsley brushes a lock of red hair from Caleb’s forehead. He’s very careful not to wake Caleb. Startle him, and a fireball will be summoned out of nowhere and thrown directly into Kingsley’s face if he doesn’t duck fast enough.
<Pretty, isn’t he? A sharp tongue, too. I liked that.>
<Can’t believe I’m agreeing with you, but I am. First time for everything, I guess.>
“Shut up,” Kingsley mutters to no one in particular. There's an image of Caleb in his head: grimy and sour-faced, unable to hold eye contact for longer than a second, arms wrapped in ragged bandages from elbow to knuckle. Kingsley doesn’t know where it came from, and it doesn’t matter in the least. That’s not this Caleb. Not anymore.
More than anything, he envies Caleb this: the occasional nights of blissful, uninterrupted slumber. Kingsley wants that. Just eight hours of dreamless sleep. He's had his own death interrupted so many times that he no longer remembers what proper rest is.
Facade. Starboard. Disclose.
Captain Tusktooth, that’s what the crew calls him. Kingsley watches him out of the corner of his eye. So much about Fjord seems so honest. So assured of himself and the world. It takes Kingsley much longer to realize what kind of price has to be paid for putting up such a convincing front. There are a lot of things about Fjord that he likes, but he isn’t sure this is one of them.
<I knew it. I fucking knew it. Can you believe how long I shared a bed with him? And all that time he was fucking lying about who he was?>
<As if you never did the same. As if you never manipulated anyone for your own ends.>
<Listen. I'm an open book. I was only ever myself. I never lied to them.>
<A lie by omission, then. To have pretended to be a person who was whole, when you didn't even have a self to call your own.>
<You're so full of bullshit for someone who does nothing but talk to himself all day.>
“Pipe down,” Kingsley says under his breath. Fjord’s trying to teach him about something called latitudes and longitudes, and all the numbers are starting to make his head ache. Now is not the time for an existential crisis.
Fjord glances up from the maps, his brow furrowing. “Everything alright over there, King?”
“Yeah.” Kingsley scrubs his face. This isn’t something he wants to lie about, not even if Fjord has no idea how much noise there is in Kingsley’s mind all the time. “No. I… I’m working on it. It’s fine.”
Shatter. Repository. Incise.
<Put on another shirt, it’s freezing.>
<Cold is good. Don’t listen to him—>
Shut up, Kingsley screams without sound, burying his head beneath the bedclothes, shut up, shut up shut up shut up, why the fuck are you always here? Who are you?
<Darling, don’t you know who we are?>
<Who I am?>
Fucking voices in my head, Kingsley thinks desperately. I can’t get a moment’s peace in here.
<Mollymauk Tealeaf, at your service.>
<You don’t deserve a name—>
<Well, it’s a good thing that isn’t up to you.>
What the hell is happening. Molly died. Molly died, then Lucien happened.
<’Lucien happened’, as if you aren’t occupying my body at this very moment.>
<Technically we’re all occupying this body, aren’t we?>
I need Caduceus. Jester. Anything to get this endless babbling to stop—
<Hey.> One of the voices in Kingsley’s head is much softer now. <You’re freaking out. Don’t.>
I’m going insane. I’m going fucking insane.
<No, you’re not. Look, just take a deep breath, alright? I’m going to show you something.>
<For fuck’s sake, not this again—>
<Stop complaining, this worked just fine when you were the one freaking out.>
Before Kingsley can object again, warmth surrounds him on all sides, as though he’s been wrapped in a blanket that’s been toasting before the fire. It melts away the tension in his body, easing his sore muscles. Just like one of Yasha’s very best hugs. The scent of something floral fills his lungs, and the flavor of a fragrant tea spreads across his tongue, hot and sweet.
<Lovely, isn’t it? Like drinking sunlight.>
Too much honey, Kingsley mumbles silently, and hates with all his might that everything about this memory soothes him to the bone.
A sigh of relief. <Finally, someone else around here has opinions that are actually correct.>
Experiment. Porcelain. Deviated.
Kingsley doesn’t know what to make of Veth sometimes. Once, she walked him through the entire process of making one of those bombs that she and Jester love so much, and then in the same breath, scolded him for being so fascinated by something so dangerous. As though Kingsley doesn’t have a couple of scimitars strapped to his body at all times. As though his body isn’t littered in scars. As though he doesn’t have blood-magic thrumming in his veins, just beneath the surface of his skin.
<Getting a little worked up there, aren’t you?>
<Leave off, Luci. I’d be pissed off too.>
<Stop calling me that.>
<Now who's getting all worked up?>
“You know,” Kingsley says to Veth, ignoring both of them, “I know we all joke about how I’m only like, ten months old, but I’m not actually a child.”
“I never thought that,” she says, raising an eyebrow.
“I don't know what it was like for Molly,” he continues. “I don’t know how much of himself was there when Yasha found him.”
Veth pauses. Takes this in. Sometimes, Kingsley thinks, Veth doesn’t know what to make of him either.
“Molly was just Molly,” she says carefully. “Nothing like Lucien. Nothing like you.”
<But you are me. Both of you. That's what she doesn't understand. None of them do.>
Look, first of all, it's a lot more complicated than that, Kingsley thinks wearily.
<We’re all each other.>
Closer, Kingsley concedes. But do you see what I mean? It's hard enough for us to wrap our heads around it. I don't know how the hell I'm ever going to be able to make it make sense to anyone else.
<Maybe it doesn't have to.>
<Why even bother with an explanation?>
“Well. I dunno,” Kingsley says, half to Veth, half to himself. He sighs. “I think Molly lost a lot of who he used to be. But it isn’t the same for me.” He reaches up and taps his temple. “Most of it is still rattling around in here. Maybe not all of it. I wouldn’t really know. But… it’s here.”
Veth stills. “What do you mean?”
“I get what you're trying to do,” Kingsley says. “But there’s nothing you can do to make me more like Molly, or less like Lucien. I'm just me.”
Transplant. Solace. Retrieval.
Gardens aren’t Kingsley’s thing. He feels so much more at home when he’s surrounded by the vastness of the sea, the constant push and pull of the waves rocking him back and forth. He picks up a bit of dry loam and crumbles it between his fingers. The grainy texture makes him shudder.
“You don’t actually have to help out when you’re here, you know,” Caduceus says. “We’re happy just to have you come and visit.”
His placidity grates on Kingsley’s nerves sometimes. Or maybe it’s Luci’s irritation seeping through.
<I told you to stop calling me that.>
He and Molly have grown quieter these days. Their bickering isn’t anywhere near as bad as it used to be. Sometimes, the silence is even more unsettling than the noise.
<Aww, do you miss us, King? We’re still around.>
Kingsley exhales. It’s a comfort not being alone. Even if they’re only in his head.
“It’s not that I don’t like gardening,” he says to Caduceus. “Honestly, I feel like I should like it more than I do. My thanks to the Wildmother, and all that.”
Caduceus thinks for a moment, then hums. “Oh, I dunno. I think she’d understand.”
Kingsley looks down at his soiled hands. “Why’d you even try to bring me back?”
“You know, I don’t think I have a real answer to that,” Caduceus says after a pause. “It didn’t sit right with me, I guess. We all got another chance; why shouldn’t you?”
Kingsley shakes his head. “Why did any of you get to decide whether I lived or died?” Luci’s anger is flooding into him, staining his blood with adrenaline. Give him an inch, and he’ll take a mile. Kingsley knows that, and he lets Luci do it anyway. “Are you gods, that you get to choose my fate?”
“Well, to be fair, I only opened the door for you,” Caduceus says, shrugging. “Reached through, as it were, with the Wildmother’s help. And you took my hand. So weren’t you the one who made that decision, in the end?”
<King. Luci. That’s enough.> Molly sounds tired. There’s a ghost-sensation of a hand gripping his shoulder. <It’s not Caduceus’ fault, and you know it.>
“I know,” Kingsley says through gritted teeth. “Stop lecturing me.”
“Hey. Come on.” Caduceus kneels beside him and hands him a cup. “I'm not trying to lecture you, Kingsley.”
“You didn’t even know for sure who’d come back if you brought me back to life. And you risked it anyway,” Kingsley says to the cup. He drinks from it, feeling like a wilful child; ashamed, but not ashamed enough to stop being annoyed. But the water is cool and refreshing, soothing his fraying nerves.
Caduceus smiles a little. “Well. I always knew whoever came back would be you. Lucien, or Molly, or Kingsley—what matters is that it was the part of you that still wanted to live.”
Yearning. Embed. Steadfast.
<I’m tired, King. Go to sleep already.>
I’m doing my fucking best here, Moll, alright?
<Luci. Come on. I'm running out. It’s your turn.>
Kingsley waits for the stinging retort—no one’s tongue bites as sharply as Luci’s—but to his surprise, it doesn’t come. Instead, all he gets is a sigh. A sense-memory of being held, of being nearly crushed in an embrace that is all warmth and affection and soft black fur.
<Oh. Is this—>
Luci’s voice is barely even a whisper. <Shut up. Just… shut up, Mollymauk.>
Kingsley’s chest has grown painfully tight. A staggering, nameless grief, worse than anything he’s ever known, tears him wide open and leaves him gasping. One sob pushes its way out of his throat, then another and another, until his pillow grows damp with tears that aren’t entirely his own.
Penumbra. Visualization. Assimilate.
The inside of a pomegranate looks just like a heart. Individual chambers filled with glistening red. Kingsley stares at the two broken halves for a long moment, marveling.
“Eat of my fruit,” he says, presenting one half to Beau with an extravagant wave of his arm.
She doesn’t take it. She only stares at him, wearing an expression like she’s been clubbed over the head.
“What?” Kingsley says, puzzled. “If you don’t want it, just say so.”
Beau takes it. Stares down at the fruit for a long moment without saying anything. She’s blinking rapidly for some reason.
“Hey, you alright?” Kingsley says cautiously.
She nods. Then she clears her throat. “You, uh. You sounded exactly like Molly for a second there.”
Huh. Kingsley hadn’t really been thinking about it, but she’s right. Moll had said that once, a long time ago. Called himself king. Kingsley has to stifle a smile. The irony of it all.
<A peacock in every sense of the word. I still loathe this tattoo, by the way.>
The low rumble of Moll’s chuckle echoes in Kingsley’s head. But that’s all the response they get.
“Sorry,” Kingsley says to Beau.
“Don’t be,” she says. She wipes her eyes with the back of her hand roughly, then looks up at him. “I know you’re you, King. But it makes me feel a little like I still have him, you know? Don’t get me wrong, he was an asshole, but... ugh, you get what I’m trying to say.”
Kingsley moves closer, just so their shoulders are brushing together. “I know exactly what you mean,” he says, and nudges her with his elbow just to see her grin.
Weave. Interminable. Submerge.
These days, Kingsley’s nights are filled with silence more often than not. Moll had only ever had two years—he’d made every fucking day count, but two years is only twenty-four months. Seven hundred thirty days. In hours, that’s seventeen thousand… seventeen thousand, five hundred…
<Twenty. Good effort, though.>
Moll, who’s nothing but a drowsing presence in Kingsley’s mind these days, stirs. <A compliment from Luci. Will wonders never cease.>
<Don’t get used to it.>
Kingsley laughs aloud, more relieved that he can say. Hey, Moll. Stay a little while this time, won't you?
The silence stretches so long that even Luci shifts, his uneasiness bleeding into Kingsley's mind.
Moll. Come on, this isn't funny. Mollymauk, are you there?
Still no response.
Kingsley squeezes his eyes shut, willing himself not to panic, or weep. He swallows hard. Tell me about something else, Luci. I—I don’t want to dream about the flesh city again.
The sigh he gets in answer is exhausted. Worn thin. <Haven’t got much left to tell. You know all of it by now, don’t you?>
Kingsley hadn’t known that this is what it would mean to be whole. That the more Moll and Luci gave him, the less of them there would be. Maybe if he’d known that this is what it would cost, he might have chosen to remain fractured at the soul all the rest of his days. He can’t stand the deafening silence filling his head.
Not yet, Kingsley pleads. Don’t leave me, Luci. Please.
A quiet chuckle. <Couldn’t even if I tried, King. I’m you, aren’t I?>
But he obliges Kingsley anyway. Gives him a few hours’ worth of a childhood spent in Shadycreek Run. A little tiefling child dressed all in black, a hood pulled up over his head. A child kept hidden from sight during the day and permitted to leave the house only at night. Tolerated at best, shunned at worst. It is, in a word, horrible.
I’m sorry, Kingsley says at last.
<For what?>
I dunno. That you had to live like that for so long.
<Yeah, well. It’s your childhood too, isn’t it? Besides, it got a little better after we all got out of that shithole.>
Images follow in quick succession. Otis and Zoran and Tyffial. Jurrell, the first the Tombtakers had lost. And… Cree. All of them, a ragged group of teenagers banding together to leave Shadycreek Run for the first time. The grief that fills Kingsley is familiar by now, but this time, it’s warmer. Holding him together instead of ripping him apart at the seams.
<They were good to me.> Luci’s voice is very soft now. <I wonder sometimes if they could have saved me, if I hadn’t pulled them into hell with me first.>
Steadfast. Unspool. Leavetaking.
“Kingsley. Kingsley.”
Essek’s voice shakes him out of his dreams at last—he sits bolt upright, damp with sweat and trembling violently.
“Sorry,” he gasps out. “Sorry, I—”
“Hush. Do not apologize.” A warm blanket is draped over Kingsley, its heavy weight grounding him. “What do you need?”
Kingsley scrubs at his face, wiping away the tears before Essek can see. He clears his throat, trying to keep his voice steady. “Some tea would be great, actually.”
The cup that Essek places into his hands is hot to the touch, the steaming tea smelling of flowers. When he sips, the honey on his tongue is just enough to balance out the bitterness.
He’s abruptly grateful once again that Essek allows him to trail around the house after him like one of the cats, napping on whatever flat surface or cushion is available, on the rare occasions that Kingsley is ashore and Essek is visiting. It’s nice to drift off when someone else is in the room, even if the peace doesn’t last very long. Kingsley hadn’t imagined Essek could be so patient after endless interruptions to his studying or his spellwork.
Maybe Kingsley can stand to push his luck a little more.
“Hey, hot boi. Any chance you and Caleb are heading back to Aeor anytime soon?”
Essek raises an eyebrow over his own cup of tea. “Well. There are no immediate plans, but I certainly would not say no to another expedition. Why do you ask?”
“This is going to sound weird, I know, and the last thing I want is to intrude on one of your weird wizard dates, but… can I come?”
A long silence. “Were you dreaming of Cognouza again?”
“No,” Kingsley says honestly. “Not this time.”
“Then why in the world would you want to do that?”
Kingsley has to take another drink to calm himself. Then another. His throat has grown tight. He isn’t entirely sure how consecution works, but he wonders if it might also be something like this. Dying and being reborn, losing a few pieces, gaining a few more. Kingsley had given up part of himself, perhaps, to be able to continue carrying what of Moll and Luci he could keep with him. But it would have been infinitely lonelier to have never had them at all.
“Think we left behind a few people who I’d like to give a proper burial,” Kingsley says, the words scraping out of his throat, “if it’s all the same to you and Caleb.”
Essek has the decency to look down and drink his tea while Kingsley tries his godsdamned best to pull himself together. Then, to his immense surprise, a small gloved hand settles tentatively on his shoulder. It’s a lot for Essek, who both shies away from and leans into physical comfort when offered by other people, but never initiates it himself.
“We can talk about it when Caleb gets home,” he says quietly.
When he says that, there’s a flicker in Kingsley’s head of something like shock, something like grief, something like affection. Kingsley presses his lips together, desperate to hear Luci’s voice one more time. Just one more time. Luci, please—
Luci's presence is already fading before Kingsley can call him back. But the echo of his gratitude lingers, warm and aching, in Kingsley's chest.
Unfurl. Fundamentals. Repose.
There are a few empty spots on Kingsley’s body that were once occupied by eyes redder than his own. He has to hand it to Moll—needles fucking hurt. How did he manage to stand having this whole peacock tattooed on him? Thank the gods that this is the last one.
Well. Second to the last.
“Ow, for fuck’s sake, Veth—”
“Stop squirming so much, and maybe it’ll hurt a little less!”
Kingsley takes quick stock of himself and his new tattoos, all in varying degrees of healing and success. One: a couple of little white flowers. Two: a green dick. Three: a rather misshapen anchor. Four: a tiny caricature of a spotted orange cat. Five: a dried leaf. Six: a handful of stars. Seven: an outline of a fist extended triumphantly in the air. Eight, currently in progress: a bright yellow button.
He fills in the last one by himself late at night. In the silence of the deck, he gives himself one more tattoo. A closed eye, right over his heart.
Thought it might be poetic or whatever, he thinks to himself, smiling a little. Buried treasure. X marks the spot.
Kingsley doesn't get an answer, but that's alright. It's been a long, long while since there were any voices in his head but his own. He stretches out on the sun-bleached, salt-stained wood of the ship's deck and stares up at the moons. One is bright and full; the other reddish, hidden in perpetual shadow.
He presses a hand lightly over his chest: here, he carries all of what remains of the people he used to be, nestled close to his heart. Even the parts that make him want to scream. He'll bear them until the day the ocean takes him away in a shroud of saltwater to rest. Then it will no longer matter where Kingsley ends, and where Mollymauk and Lucien begin.
Good night, darlings, Kingsley says in Moll's voice, Luci's smile lingering on his lips. Out in the open sea, there's no sound but the ebb and flow of the tides. He shuts his eyes and lets the waves rock him to sleep.