#something something tealeaf quite literally being the Fool

[dent-de-leon]

the way Tealeaf falls for Caleb again immediately--and how he keeps saying everything feels like the very first time. His first drink. His first time seeing the sea. How Caleb is both terribly familiar, and also his first crush.

Caleb knowing he'd be Kingsley's first partner, his first experience with love; always being especially careful and tender with him because he wants King's first ever relationship to be one that never hurts him--

[mnemememory]

boom

Caleb literally trips over the answer to his dreams. On par with the rest of his life, it gives him a concussion.

(or; time travel - recommended for treatment of ongoing trauma)

 fine part one on ao3 here and on tumblr here 

Caleb literally trips over the answer to his dreams. On par with the rest of his life, it gives him a concussion.

Nott scrambles up from where she’s pouring acid into a vial. It sprays across the wooden floorboards and promptly begins to dissolve its way towards the first floor. Nott pays this very little mind, sprinting across the room at a breakneck pace and dropping to her knees next to Caleb’s still body.

“Caleb,” she says, pinching desperately at his cheeks. He groans, but refuses to open his eyes. Nott squeezes harder. There will be bruises, later. Very oddly shaped bruises.

“I don’t think –” Fjord begins to say, and then cuts himself off as Nott turns her wrathful gaze onto him.

“Go. Get. Jester.”

Fjord nods and hurries out of the room, trying to look as though the reason he’s rushing is because he’s worried about his friend. The homicidal, slightly manic look in Nott’s eyes does not bode well.

(Neither does the growing hole in their floor).

Nott turns her attention back to where Caleb is still on the ground, still groaning but not opening his eyes, still breathing (but for how long?). Nott presses her ear to his chest and listens to his heartbeat, her own sounding a little unsteady as blood roars through her ears.

Jester barges into the room, spells sparking pink on her fingertips, face a mask of blind panic.

“What happened?” she says, crouching next to Caleb and slapping him non-too gently in the face. The only reason Nott moves it because Jester is a healer, and also maybe because she could (theoretically) smack Nott by accident and send her flying into the wall. Jester tended to get a little…overenthusiastic, when she actually deigned someone bed off enough to be in need of her healing. It had happened before.

Nott points with a low hiss at the offending object – the dodecahedron, sitting out of Jester’s pink backpack, glowing faintly in the dim lighting. Caleb had taken it out to study, but had gotten frustrated halfway through and started pacing. Nott hadn’t been paying too much attention at that point, but now she wishes she had been.

From where Nott is sitting, it looks unbearably smug with the situation – insomuch as an inanimate (probably inanimate, Nott is onto it) object can express emotion. She kind of wants to grab it and throw it down the stairs. 

Just as Jester is about to shock a spell into Caleb’s body, he gives a low gasp and lurches forward, eyes flying open. In his rush, he headbutts Jester, and is immediately knocked back onto the ground in a daze. Jester, unbalanced by the unexpectedness of the attack, falls onto her butt.

“I can see it,” Caleb rasps, reaching out to grab Jester’s wrist in a vice-like grip. “I can see it all. There’s – there’s so much of it, Jester, there’s –”

“FUCK!” someone yells, downstairs, as acid drips onto their head.

There are still only three cups.

“I thought I had more time,” Caduces says, mouth quirked slyly as he picks up his own cup of tea to take a long drink from it. They’re all piled outside his house in the cemetery, overgrown canopy dappling the sunlight green and grey. Most of them have found indifferent purchase on the graves, except for Molly, who is sitting on the ground. “I didn’t know when you would show up.”

Caleb’s smile is unbearably fond. “Never change,” he says.

Caduces gives them all a proper grin, teeth showing and eyes lazy. “Oh, I doubt that will be a problem,” he says. He looks at Molly. “And who is this? Your friend?”

“Your friend, too, now,” Nott says. She’s bundled herself next to Caduces to ward off the slight chill in the air, foregoing the tea in favour or something heavier.

“Of course,” Caduces says, face unchanging.

“Mollymauk Tealeaf, a pleasure to be at your acquaintance,” Molly says. He starts to get up, but Yasha just grabs the back of his ridiculous coat and pulls him back to the ground.

“Don’t bother,” she says, taking a small sip of tea. She passes the cup to Molly.

“Mr. Clay,” Caduces introduces himself, nodding his head in a slight bow. “This is just delightful. I’ve heard so much about you.”

“And I’ve certainly heard a lot about you,” Molly says, which isn’t exactly a lie per say, but they hadn’t really gone out of their way to explain…well, Caduces to him. Yasha had taken a tiny bit of savage glee in the jealousy generated from the pink mohawk. “Though I would certainly love to know just how you met my wonderful travelling companions. Everyone certainly seems very comfortable with each other.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Beau says through a yawn, basking in the sunlight. She had balanced herself between two graves – the names chipped clean, though the words “I TOLD YOU I WAS –” could be vaguely made out beneath the ivy – and was lying back with the kind of peace that can only be found in a graveyard, surrounded by friends. “I only met you a month ago.”

Molly squints at her suspiciously.

“I’ve heard only good things,” Caduces reassures him.

“…likewise,” Molly says, after a long moment. He drags out a showman smile, bigger than life and twice as wide. “When did you say the last time you left this place was, again?”

“It’s been – hmm – twenty seasons, now? Eighteen?”

“Okay, what the –”

Yasha leaves, as Yasha is want to do.

“I’ll be back in a month,” she says, the storm an intense backdrop to the glare she gives them all. “Don’t get into any trouble while I’m gone.”

“We’ll try not to!” Nott says, giving her a quick hug. Molly has stopped reacting to these open displays of affection now, but Yasha can tell it still startles him in the moment. She has never been an overly affectionate person – that has always been Molly’s bit. Despite her own…slight…overprotectiveness of him, she’s managed to keep it together well enough to fool composure. If Yasha is anything, she is an actor.

(Somewhere along the way, she’s become something so much more).

Yasha crosses her arms and stares them down, daring any of them to even get a scratch while she’s gone. Then she turns to Molly.

“if you die,” she says, enunciating the words very clearly. “I will kill you.”

He arches an eyebrow and twists out a smirk. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he says, and reaches up to press a kiss to her cheek. “Like I would ever do that to you.”

Yasha looks back at the group, who all – to varying degrees – look as though they’ve been sucker-punched straight to the gut. What a dick, she thinks.

“If any of you die,” she begins.”

Beau rolls her eyes and shoves her forward, darting in front of her to brush a quick kiss over her lips. It’s over before Yasha has time to react.

“Get going, already,” she says. “We’ll still be around when you get back.”

Yasha goes.

(They’re still there when she gets back).

“Keg!”

“What the fuck?”

Keg jumps back a good fives paces as two overly enthusiastic (and five less enthusiastic but still present) bodies surround her. She’s tired, she hasn’t slept in a good two days, and she’s run out of booze. Today probably isn’t a good day to antagonise her.

“Oh, Keg,” Nott says, latching onto her arm and hugging her.

Keg stares down at the little halfling (is this a halfling? Keg can’t tell, the creepy mask is blocking pretty much everything) with undisguised horror. “What the fuck,” she says, again.

“It’s been so long!” Beau says, sweeping both Keg and Nott up with an impressive show of strength. Keg grunts and tries to wriggle out of their grasp, but despite getting in a good kick to the kidney, Beau doesn’t let go.

“Who are you?” Keg yells.

“I’m so glad this isn’t just me,” someone tall and purple says off to the corner of her peripheral. Keg chooses to ignore that, because she has more pressing concerns. Namely, what the actual fuck.

They pick up someone who can turn into a horse, because of course they do.

Keg doesn’t even know if she’s supposed to be surprised by anything anymore. Honestly, it’s all just one massive alcohol-fuelled blur at this point.  

“And what do you think you’re doing?”

Molly turns slowly to face Yasha, who is looking at him with the kind of crazy eyes he’s been seeing more and more often the longer they stay with this group of rabid maniacs. No offense intended – he enjoys the odd rabid maniac as much as the next person (probably more, if he’s going to be honest) – but Molly isn’t sure he’s enjoying just how much Yasha is being dragged in. He’s used to the almost claustrophobic (but not quite) closeness that she radiates simply by being in the same room; warmth, really. Molly has had so little warmth.

This does seem a bit excessive, though.

“Into the house?” he says, gesturing vaguely with his sword. On the other side of the compound, Nott is murdering a set of guards with the kind of stealth Beau wishes that she possessed.

“I don’t think so,” Yasha says.

“What? Why?”

“Yasha points to a log. “Sit. Stay.”

Molly gapes at her. “I most certainly will not!”

“Shh,” Fjord says, off to the side. “We are trying to be sneaky.”

“You as well,” Yasha says. She hasn’t stopped pointing.

“Nice try, Yasha.”

Yasha shrugs and then goes back to glaring at Molly, which is almost a reflex these days. Molly still isn’t sure what he did to warrant such an extreme reaction, but as soon as he figures it out he’s going to fix it.

He still isn’t entirely sure how they ended up here, anyway. They had met the delightful Keg on their way back from Shady Creek Run with Caduces ambling along with them, only to immediately turn heel and start back towards the (veritable) hellhole as soon as they met up with Keg. Almost certainly planned, Molly thinks darkly – or he would, if Keg didn’t exist in such an obvious and perpetual state of confusion.

“If I told you,” Fjord says with an easy kind of confidence. “That this was a one-off, trauma-based paranoia, and we would never, ever ask you to sit out of a fight like this again – would you concede to staying behind?”

“Absolutely not,” Molly says. “The only way you’re keeping me out of this is if you tie me to a tree.”

They tie him to a tree.

“You shouldn’t worry so much about it,” Caduces says, when they’re heading back (for real, this time) and their shared watch drags long. “They’re – well – they’re only worried about you, you know. It’s almost endearing.”

Molly bares his teeth and lashes out his tail, frustration building hot. “I’m not helpless,” he says.

“No,” Caduces agrees.

Molly flicks him a narrow look. “But you agree with them.”

“In this case, yes,” Caduces says. “But, well, only because they would have been very distracted with you there. You have noticed that, right? That you’re very distracting?”

“I am aware,” Molly says. It’s a struggle to keep a smile fixed in place, but that’s nothing new. At every turn, his new travelling companions are finding new and impossible ways to dazzle him with their bullshit. It’s an impressive feat, since he finds them so delightful that he doesn’t even mind it half the time.

“It won’t happen again,” Caduces says. “I’ll, well – I’d better talk to them about it. It is getting a little silly.”

“Just a bit,” Molly says.

They sit together in warm, companionable silence, watching over their sleeping friends and waiting for morning to come.

They’re thrown out of the inn.

It isn’t one they frequent very often, which is probably why Nott’s little “accident” comes as such a surprise. Anywhere they stay at for more than a week is bound to take at least some wear and tear – something that usually comes out of their shared budget. A lot of their regular holes are just charging upfront for damages, now, which is probably for the best.

“So what do we did we lean from this?” Fjord says. He still looks slightly stunned from the ferocity of their departure. The managed had actually come down from his office and loudly counted “one, two, three, four…” outside of their doors as they had scrambled to gather everything together, culminating in a shouting “YOUR FIVE MINUTES ARE UP!” and a swift boot to the backside. Nominating Jester to be the one to smooth things over had, in hindsight, been a bad idea.

“Absolutely nothing,” Caduces says, looking a little disgruntled at hanging been working up so rudely. Naps always did wonders for his composure, and a lack of sleep was an unfortunate necessity while travelling on the roads that had lead to this town.

“I need to get some things,” Caleb says, visibly dazed. There’s an ugly bruise forming high on his temple, and his eyes gleam with a frenzied sheen that seems to have very little to do with his recent (possibly ongoing?) concussion. “We should – go buy some – I should go and –”

Someone clears their throat pointedly behind them.

Caleb turns around to see Beau glaring at the group, leading Yasha forward by the hand. She looks simultaneously unimpressed and unsurprised.

“We’ve only been here three hours,” she says.

Her presence seems to have snapped Caleb out of his state of confusion, only for mania to take hold. “I have so much work to do!” he shouts, waving his arms around like a crazy person. Then he runs off.

They all stare after him for a long second.

“Not it,” Beau says, finger on her nose.

“You can’t be –”

“NOT IT!” Jester yells.

“Not it.”

“Not it.”

“I’ll go find him,” Nott huffs, storming after Caleb without a backwards glance.

Here’s the thing: on his knees on the floor of their (new) shared inn room, his friends curled up in unconscious grumpy balls along the wall, Caleb has no idea what he’s doing.

Somehow, it works out anyway.

[dent-de-leon]

I'm so sorry to hear about Molly! I never followed crit role besides your updates and the fanart of him you reblogged; he seemed very nice! if it's okay (because I don't know where to go to get this info) , may I ask you more about molly? what does he do? what's he like? and how'd he... ya know...

asjsdsfkdl thanks that’s very nice of you!! ;; And sure of course I love talking about Molly!! His full name’s Mollymauk Tealeaf and he’s played by VA Taliesin Jaffe. He’s this really charismatic, charming tiefling. His backstroy is really shrouded in mystery, but  here’s what we know–“Molly” has only existed for two years. Before that, he was another person entirely, and went by Lucien. Lucien was a blood hunter–a homebrew class that can track and kill monsters with a kind of blood magic. He was the leader of a group of members with similar abilities, and they were trying to achieve some kind of miracle. We’re not really sure what, but I think it might have something to do with–ironically–cheating death. At the very least, that ended up being a side effect of it.

They performed some kind of ritual, and Lucien died in the process. When he next awoke, he had no memory of his former life, and he was buried alive. He had to claw his way out of the ground and ended up roaming aimlessly until he was picked up by a traveling circus. Molly was catatonic at the time, he was completely out of it and would only repeat the word “Empty.” One of the people who took him in gave him the name Mollymauk Tealeaf, and overtime, he gradually grew more aware and started speaking again. He’s said that he genuinely enjoyed the circus and he was happy there. “Molly” was a completely new persona he had developed, his own separate person–and he wanted nothing to do with Lucien. He considered himself completely different than whoever had his body before, and he wanted nothing to do with that life. He despises any situation where he’s forced to confront his past and wants it to disappear forever. 

The intro Taliesin gave for his character is, “A lavender tiefling with red eyes and very curled, extremely pierced, ostentatious horns that are pierced with little gems and little baubles. He’s got a tattoo that seems to be running up the side of his face, a peacock tattoo that goes off into his very ostentatious, ridiculous, overblown robes that he wears. And his two swords and pouch dangling at the sides of his hips. Yeah, he’s very, very broad in his dress.” “So literal and figurative peacock?” “Oh, yes.” 

Molly’s very much an entertainer. He’s a performer with a flair for the dramatic. He reads fortunes with his cards, juggles swords, and can do a bit of fancy acrobatics. There are times when he’s done a trick to cheer up passing children and little things like that. There’s no actual divination to his fortunes, but he’s good at reading others, and tries to use the cards to give them advice based on his observations. He sees the cards as more or less a means of just conveying whatever advice he thinks will be helpful to that particular person. 

He’s someone very friendly and familiar with others, even strangers. When he first meets another tiefling in the party, he says, “My friends call me Molly. And we’re friends now, aren’t we?” He often uses endearments like darling, sweetheart, ect. He’s kissed one of his teammates on the forehead while calming them during a panic attack, and has casually kissed others in greeting. He’s very much comfortable being tactile. He can also be a bit mischievous and chaotic for the fun of it. He enjoys some playful teasing and poking fun at his teammates every now and again. Loves fun, luxury, and interesting adventures. Doesn’t believe in judging others for their past and really wants everyone on the Mighty Nein to be a team that’s all in this together. Also, and I just have to mention this–he’s pan, which of course is pretty cool to me, since I’m a bi guy. He’s also incredibly charming and I love him dearly,,

Some iconic Molly quotes:

“I don’t know anything. It’s part of my charm.”

“Let me make this abundantly clear—my name is Molly. That person is dead and not me. It’s just a person who had this body. They abandoned it, it’s mine now.”

After being asked why he was in a circus with such weird people: “BECAUSE I’M WEIRD!”

“I’m always ready to make a fool of myself.” 

“Be the chaos you want to see in the world.”

“That sounds terrible. I don’t want to remember anything, I don’t want anybody else’s baggage in my head, I don’t want anybody else’s problems, thoughts, ideas… I like this person—[this person] right now, is a good person, is a fine person, is a happy person.”

“I spent two years before I met you all cajoling people, occasionally ripping them off, occasionally doing a good turn here or there. Never trust the truth. The truth is vicious, the truth thinks that you owe it something… None of that. I like my bullshit. It’s good, it’s happy, it makes other people happy.” 

“I may be a liar, but I’m never a betrayer. I’m honest in my work, and I believe in doing a good turn…I’ve stayed with that circus for two years, and I know how people treat each other. It’s important…I don’t care where you’ve been, I don’t care what terrible things any of you have done. You’re here now. That’s how it works.”

After being asked if he was a good person during a spell where he cannot lie: “I’d like to think so.”

When asked if he could really read fortunes under the truth spell, “I use fortunes to tell people what I see in them. But sometimes, sometimes I feel like maybe there’s something that tickles that back of my head, I will admit…I always try to be helpful when I turn cards for people…I’ll tell you, and this is true—I did my best every town I went to and every town I left, no matter how they treated me, and a lot of them treated me with deep disrespect. I left every town better than I found it.”

While wearing nothing but a gaudy dragon tapestry and eating off a fancy fruit platter, “I am a god! Long may I reign!”

“Don’t you dare have fun without us!”

Taliesin was given the option for Molly to say some last words to his killer. But instead, he just said, “I’m going to spit in his face, with blood,” which was very true to character. And when Molly died, he added, “[My] Eyes never shut.” 

It’s really quite unfortunate, but my understanding is, Molly had some bad rolls and the team had lost their cleric at the time. He knocked himself unconscious using his own blood magic (again, terrible rolls), and his attacker decided to finish him as an example. I didn’t get the chance to watch the stream so I’ve yet to see the full episode, but I saw a clip of how he died and I was pretty upset ;; I’m heartbroken just thinking about it to be honest. Maybe they’ll find a higher level cleric soon and be able to revive him, but even then…there’s no telling whether he’ll come back as Molly, as Lucien, or…be catatonic like before. But the risk of losing Molly as his own person is pretty high, and I’m…really worried for him ;;