mercy/cytherea 39 for prompt :3
39. Doing Crimes Together (Mercy/Cyth)
For the Fluffy Prompts Ask Game Here (Currently working through the ones in my inbox… and also accepting more on an ongoing basis - this is fun!)
“I need your help.” That was a rare enough request coming from Mercymorn that Cytherea immediately looked up from her book, huge blue eyes widening a touch with curiosity. It was still early in their tenure on the Mithraeum (a few hundred years, give or take), and the Seventh Saint was still utterly gluttonous when it came to seizing opportunities to prove her own utility. Their work had been slow of late, and the pallid brunette was eager for action—in any form.
“What’s that?” she asked, innocent as a lamb frolicking in the paddock behind the abattoir.
Mercy sucked her teeth. “I refuse to believe any pulpy, filthy house-penned romance is engaging enough to supersede your hearing.”
“Oh, I heard you,” Cyth smiled cheekily, “It’s only that I didn’t enjoy the request enough the first time. Say it again, and this time ask politely, please. I’d like to relish it.”
“Nevermind!” Mercy huffed, turning on her heel.
“Mercy!” Cyth called after her, “Oh, Mercy, no. You know I was only teasing. It’s all out of my system now. I’ll be very good,” she gushed indulgently.
“Why should we lie to ourselves? You’ll be insufferable!”
“I can only promise to be myself, and as you’ve come to me in particular, you can’t fault me for assuming that might be a good thing.”
“That is your problem,” Mercy huffed, “You assume.”
Cytherea held her gaze a moment, shrugged her boney shoulders, and went back to her book. For a few moments, there was only silence. Cyth read. Mercy waited.
And waited.
When the silence became unbearable, Mercy produced a shrill “Hello!!” Cytherea licked one fingertip and turned a page.
“I suppose what I’m wondering,” Cyth asked mildly, not bothering to glance up from the page, “Is what’s in it for me?”
“It will be worth your while.”
“Will it?” the ringleted lyctor replied, sighing softly through her nose. “I’m not sure it will. You see, I haven’t been feeling very well, and—”
“It will be worth your while.”
“You’re very tense. Did you know?”
“I will choke you.” “Oh, do you promise?” At that, Cytherea put the book aside, stood up, took Mercy’s hands in her own, and kissed her sister lyctor right on the nose. “You weren’t this horribly bound up last night. Or is that what you need help with?”
“Regretfully, I’ve misplaced something of value. I would like to retrieve it without attracting attention,” Mercy explained, her voice low.
“What is it, and where is it?” Cyth asked at full volume.
“Let’s say that it is a dress and that it is in the closet of Cyrus the First.”
“What were you wearing last night? You know, I can’t even remember.”
“You are a rude woman. You have always been a rude woman.” “You weren’t wearing it very long. I didn’t think you cared very much about dresses anyway. How did it end up with Cyrus?”
“I took it off. He put it on.”
“Have you considered asking for it back?”
“I cannot. I will not.”
Cytherea hummed a curious little hum, then tipped her head to one side like a puppy, eyes narrowing with a mix of curiosity and amusement. “What aren’t you telling me?”
This time it was Mercy’s turn to stand silently - though Mercy was, evidently, incompatible with the concept of silence. She was producing an odd, throaty noise as she appeared to peel off her entire fingernail.
“Mercy—”
“Cyrus is currently sharing his bed with The Saint of Patience.”
“And, what? Are you having another row? It can’t be that serious.”
“Cytherea.” Mercy inhaled noisily as she shut her eyes. “I left her beads in the pocket.”
Cytherea’s affect shifted all at once. She pursed her lips quite seriously and nodded, small and quick. She’d seen those beads many times before. They weren’t originally Mercy’s.
Mercymorn had convinced herself that she despised Loveday—that she’d always despised Loveday—but they were both aware it was more complicated than that. Certainly, Cytherea’s cavalier had been morose and devoted, and many thought her anti-social and a bit impulsive, but her broody beloved had adored Cristabel. Oct was one of the few humans alive who could talk Loveday down when she was in a bad way. There was some shared language between them; some understanding that even Cytherea couldn’t comprehend. Once upon a time, they’d been good for one another.
No, Loveday’s social awkwardness and abundantly permissive nature had not been a crime. Getting invited to participate in Cristabel’s public act of martyrdom and refusing the invitation, however?
Loveday Heptane’s only crime had been surviving what Mercy believed was the end of the world.
She’d sacrificed herself on her own terms not long after. Against her better judgment, the stormy-eyed, newly-born lyctor had watched their final goodbye, listened to their final vows, and had wept so fiercely that Cyth still heard the sound of the woman’s unhinged, bitter keening in her nightmares.
Even so, if Cytherea had come to Mercy because she’d misplaced a dress that had something of Loveday’s in the pocket? Well, Cytherea likely wouldn’t go to Mercy about it. She’d knock on Cyrus’s door and politely ask for it back. She wasn’t proud in quite the same way that Mercy was proud. But in the event that she couldn’t and had to go to her sister lyctor for assistance? Mercy would grumble and bitch and probably cry like a child, but she’d help. They were good for one another, too.
“What would you like me to do?” she asked.
Mercy’s plan was quite clear, at least in her own mind. Not a soul was to know she’d been negligent. She did not trust anyone else to retrieve the correct dress from within Valancy’s bountiful wardrobe, so she needed Cytherea to lure Cyrus and Augustine into a common area and create a diversion long enough to:
1. Allow Mercy to pick apart Cyrus’s lazy blood wards, and
2. Find the dress, confirm the rosary was in the pocket, steal it back, and maintain plausible deniability.
“And how would you like me to do that?” Cytherea had asked.
“Don’t be dense. In the usual way,” Mercy responded with a wave of her arms, an edge of frustration to her voice, as if it were plainly obvious and Cytherea was merely thick. “Make it abhorrent. If you are successful, I should smell bleach!”
Well, Cytherea knew what her duty was.
“Very well! I will put on a show for you,” the sprightly adept decided, “But only because the dress has pockets.”
And it began.
The common area was nearly empty when Cytherea rolled herself in. Despite her cavalier’s sacrifice, a great deal of thalergy went into maintaining a functional baseline, health-wise. She was far more ambulatory than she’d been back at Canaan House, but the debt always came due. Today was not that sort of day, but anyone who spied her wheelchair would assume she was running on empty, and it wasn’t like they could check.
Cassiopeia was sat at the dining table, all manner of books and charts spread out before her. She enjoyed systems and rotas, mostly because she, personally, would forget what day it was without them. Everyone else enjoyed ignoring them. Still, she persevered—meal planning, task managing, and trying to divide eternity into manageable, bite-sized segments so she didn’t get lost in the abyss.
“Hiya,” she greeted with a grin, glancing up from her intimidating pile.
Poor, poor Cassy. She was a perfect unknowing accomplice.
Cytherea smiled back, a treacly, full-mouthed thing, and summarily vomited a viscous stream of very bright red blood directly down her front and into her lap.
“Oh,” Cassy said. “Oh, dear.” She stood up. She sat down.
“Oops,” Cytherea giggled. She giggled until she choked on the hot, sticky homebrewed visceral goo in her throat… and kept right on choking.
“Should I—? I should…” Cassiopeia floundered, her eyes moving rapidly. She was up again, then down again, then up. She was no flesh magician, and her interests veered as far from the matters of the body as one could get and still rightly call themselves a necromancer. “Please hold,” she said decisively, as she stood, going toward the living quarters, “I’ll fetch—ah. Mercymorn? Mercymorn.”
Perhaps Cytherea should have predicted she’d have handed her off to the ship’s most competent anatomist. Alas, she hadn’t.
“Oh, please don’t,” she begged, her voice rough and breathy. She paused for just a moment to hack up something slimy and pulsing, which may or may not have contained an entire eyeball. She swallowed, gasping as she held the jiggling, vaguely hairy abomination in her open palm. “Not Mercy. She’s cross with me. We had a falling—a falling—” she stuttered as another cascade of fresh, bloody sludge oozed from between her lips, painting them a bright, alluring red. “A falling out.”
Cassy was, unfortunately, an inherently curious creature. The throbbing something in Cytherea’s open palm was as fascinating as it was repellant. Unfortunately, she stepped close enough to take a look. When she gagged, it involved a whole-body convulsion. By the time she recovered, a tense, forced, try hard’s smile on her lips, she was paler than the Seventh Saint.
She managed to holler “JOHN,” before she half-fell into the kitchen to throw up everything she’d ever eaten.
“Are you alright?” Cyth called to her, her voice a gravelly mess. “Should I come and—?”
“NO,” Cassy gasped, unseen on the kitchen floor. “I am all set! Very comfortable,” she insisted pleasantly as she heaved.
When The Necrolord Prime finally appeared at the head of the hallway, he didn’t look much better than the girls (which is to say, he looked about as well-coiffed as usual, tablet in hand). He opened his mouth as if to speak, only to be met with the nostalgic sound of retching. “That doesn’t sound great,” he remarked.
And then he appeared to notice Cytherea for the first time. “Ah,” he said.
“I’m afraid I’m not feeling very well,” she explained, “And neither is Cassiopoeia.”
“How can I help?” he asked, eyeing the throbbing viscera she’d continued holding in her open palm as if it were merely an awkward handful of melting skittles.
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” she spoke, licking her bloody lips with the pointed tip of her bloody tongue. She got up, shaking as she pushed to standing, allowing the whole mess to drop to the ground at his feet with a disturbing, very wet splat. “You know you’ve helped me very much over the years, John. Well. As much as you can,” she smiled sweetly.
For a flicker of a moment, John looked down at his shoes.
“But,” Cyth continued, “Cyrus is a very elegant flesh magician, and—oh, dear,” she stumbled, reaching out for John with both trembling, blood-covered hands. He held her upright as she grinned her vermillion grin. He did nothing as she slowly made her way to the ground, leaning on her forearms as she released another ample gush of bile and sanguine fluid. Spent, she had no choice but to lay in it, as if preparing to make a very macabre snow angel.
“Cyrus, I think,” she reiterated. “Oh, and Augustine.” “Augustine?” John asked, “He wouldn’t be my first choice for elegant flesh magic.”
“I wish it could be Loveday,” she smiled sadly, looking right into those dark, vacuous eyes, “But, alas.”
“Right,” John said, “Alas.” He coughed. “You don’t mind paging them, do you? Both of them? And you don’t need to say it’s an emergency, John, because it isn’t one, is it? Not really. Let them take their time. I’ll be just fine like this for a long, long time.”
He got them there in under ten minutes, both pleasantly mussed. She was having such a nice time she’d half forgotten about Mercymorn.
“To what do we owe this—well, hell, Cyth, what have you gone and done to yourself?”
“Oh, it’s you,” she beamed from her aesthetic blood puddle, “I was just telling John—wasn’t I, John?”
“She was,” John replied from his spot in the corner, where he was attempting to not look especially interested or especially disinterested.
“I was only just saying it’s nice to have your older brother there when you’re feeling a touch under the weather. Would you mind? The floor is very cold, you see.” She tapped the ground beside her, then reached out to him.
“Come on, Chick. You can’t expect me to—”
“Oh,” Cyth said before he could finish. “Oh, of course. I would never. I only thought—” she trailed off, her face flooding with the uncharacteristic weight of devastation. “I suppose those pajamas must mean very much to you. Am who am I? Just your sibling. Your silly little sister. It’s just fine, Augustine.” Augustine sat.
Cyrus was not half so bold. He remained a good foot away from the splash zone, leaning forward to take in the crime scene. “Did all of this come out of your body?” he asked, a touch skeptically.
“I can confirm!” Cassy called out from her hiding spot on the kitchen floor.
“Hello, Cassy!” Augustine called out.
“Hi! Will you let me know when it’s alright for me to come out?”
“Sure thing, Doll,” he called back.
“Thanks!”
Cyrus, who had been balancing on his haunches, stood. “What do you need from me, precisely?”
“Oh,” Cytherea giggled, half sprawled in Augustine’s lap, “I seem to be experiencing some… let’s call it pulmonary disintegration,” she explained, “And I’m very tired at the moment. Cassiopeia thought she should get somebody for me. I wonder why she wanted to do that? Anyway, I requested you, Cyrus, because everything you touch is beautiful.” “I know,” Cyrus preened. “Are you saying you need a lung? Two?” he asked, “It’ll take some time. I have a process.”
Cyth sighed. The sigh was an accident. She covered it with a coughing fit. She was beginning to lose interest.
“Will you explain the process again, Cyrus?” she asked. Someone else could perform for a time. She really was getting tired now.
Before Cyrus the First could launch into a purple treatise on organ formation, they all turned at the sound of bitter clacking coming from down the hall. When Mercy arrived, it was to the sight of a blood-covered John in the corner with his tablet, Augustine sitting delicately in a puddle of crimson ichor, Cyrus standing on a dining chair preparing to declaim, and Cassy reluctantly crawling into the room on hands and knees, eyes shut tight.
From among the clotting cruor, Cytherea produced a tiny, delicate burp.
“Oh! Excuse me!” she exclaimed, “Must’ve been gas!” and with that, she pushed herself to stand, reclaimed her abandoned wheelchair, and propelled herself away from the scene of the crime. Mercy turned on her heel and followed, leaving the others with the mess, only mildly baffled.
“Well?” Cytherea asked when they were a significant enough distance away from the hullabaloo.
“It is done,” Mercy said. And then, “Thank you.”
They walked and rolled in silence for a moment before Cytherea said softly, “Loveday thought she’d hung the stars, and Loveday didn’t like anyone.”
“Don’t you dare,” Mercy threatened.
“She would have liked what we just did. She would have found it funny.” “You will not put words in her mouth!”
“Loveday wouldn’t have liked it, though. She wouldn’t have spoken to me for two days.”
Mercy only sighed as loud as she could make herself sigh. Luckily, they had arrived at Cytherea’s door.
“I do believe you said you’d make it worth my while?” Cytherea reminded her as the blood dried into red shadows on her chin and neck.
“Did you not enjoy yourself?” Mercy asked. “Congratulations! It was worth your while, sweetheart!” And she continued down the hall, opened her door, fell on her bed, held the beads to her chest, and wept.
