#MOLLYS CHOIR PRACTICE IS THE GREATEST THING I NEED TO SEE HIM PLAYING THE HERO IN ANIMATED NEIN RIGHT NOW IMMEDIATELY

[dent-de-leon]

Absolutely ruined by this one panel of Molly telling Yasha about his “choir practice.” The way he just looks so soft and melancholy. A glimpse behind the curtain, a painful vulnerability amidst all the joy and color he revels in. Confessing that he can't bear to watch someone else just suffer in silence; he can't just do nothing when there's someone hurting. “The truth is...how do I put this...The world is harsh and cruel, and I can't seem to be able to just walk on by. You see a wrong? You fix it.”

“I know what the other others think, but—” The twins gossiping whenever Molly takes off in the dead of night. And Molly letting them presume, think what they like, because the reality is something he doesn’t want anyone else to see. “Not sure why he's so embarrassed though...” This is something just for him, just for his own shattered shard of a spirit. A chance to protect another lost soul. To fix a bit of this broken world.

So compassionate, so protective--always getting so easily caught up and invested, ruled by reckless impulse and a bleeding heart. Playing at the hero. (He never knew Lucien loved putting on a performance too, that he was always cast as the villain; warm memories of song and dance and little plays on the roadside. Choking on the ash and smoke of a burning caravan--)

Molly pulling up the hood of his cloak and darting away under the safety of Sehanine's shadows. Running off to risk his life for complete strangers, for people who may never thank him, for a world that may always hate him. “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.” The way this resonates with everything Taliesin said about how the whole point of Molly's blood magic is sacrifice, how his powers stem from his desire to be a protector, to be good—

“[Molly’s power] was about sacrifice. It’s the giving of himself to give to others. Giving of himself to be a protector.” 

“His very nature is to appear to be many things that he is not. His power looks one way--it looks damaging and looks broken and unhealthy--but, in the end, it’s all about a desire to be a good friend and a good family member.” 

Mollymauk waking with faint echoes of haunting memories and nightmares of too many eyes and screaming minds, desperately trying to outrun the chilling legacy that Lucien left behind. Trying so hard to do better, to be better, to prove that he's not the monster he's so terrified a part of him once was. “Whatever it was, it doesn't feel good when I-- the moment when something creeps through, I don't like it. I don't want anything to do with it. I was happy!”

“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.”

The fact that Molly runs headlong into danger for others all the time, yet he's still so taken by surprise that Yasha would do the same for him--