#2 inspired by a "last lines" fic challenge.
The people on this ship make him feel so old, sometimes. Not a one of them but what he couldn't be their father age-wise, and maybe even grandfather to the youngest of them. Not that he'd ever married. And it's not just the years making him feel this way. They're so young, so intense, most of them. They don't really appreciate how experience can change a person. Even the ones who've been through trauma have mostly, it seems to him, come out not so much different as focused, as though their essential natures shone through what had been obscuring them.
The only exceptions are, oddly, the ones who've had the worst reactions to his presence. The captain for reasons of his own, and River for reasons possibly not even her own. It's hard to tell with her, considering what she's been through.
He knows they don't quite understand him, don't understand how he got to be where he is today. He doesn't need them to. He knows, and he believes.
"God understands what I am."