"I rather think you've been doing that for quite a bit longer, John," she says, with teeth. And oh Lord, is this what another eternity with her in another dimension is going to be like? — the gloves have come off, with simpering worship traded in for extremely passive-aggressive barbs. Each one searching for soft flesh like a cat flexing its claws, almost matter of habit.
But as if to show that it's also not a real problem (Mercy has experience working alongside someone she both hates and loves, after all), she claps her hands together: brisk, efficient.
"Let go and hand over a few of them to me. Let's say... six." And as if she's not standing there vulnerable and half-naked and looking like a drowned rat tangled in a towel, she starts to reach out for the crewmen with her own ever-burning thanergy. Mercymorn the First is a flesh magician; she can puppet meat well enough. While she noses at their rubbery muscles, she adds, offhand, "And are there any more clothes in that captain's cabin? I'll wear men's."
There is something jarring and terrifically sad about seeing Mercy snap at him without restraint. There's an incredible honesty to it, he supposes, a new intimacy between them. A final layer of polish scrubbed off, and now what they have is so ancient and worn that it can only be exactly what it is.
What it is might be still angry, for anyone keeping score. But here on unfamiliar waters, they have only each other, and John isn't past leaning on that. He will never be past loving her, no matter what she does to him and what he'll do to her in return.
She goes poking at his puppeted sailors, half-frowning past the water still dripping off her chin, and it is both a little funny and very Mercy. John relinquishes control, splays his hands like defeat.
"Knock yourself out," he says. "I'll find you something good and pirate-y to wear."
He steps away to find a humorously oversized ruffled shirt, and leaves her on his deck among the dead.
While he's off scrounging for clothing, Mercymorn climbs the steps to take position up on the quarter deck, to get a clear view of what she's working with. She presses her hands against the railing and leans forward, her attention intent on controlling the crew. Not a captain herself (that role is decidedly taken), but perhaps— a first mate.
And there's a withering kind of derisive amusement in the thought. Apparently she is destined to become his fingers and hands, over and over. At least Augustine isn't here to claim first position all over again and relegate her to second mate. Time seems to be cyclical. Everything that has happened will always happen again.
When John eventually comes up to rejoin her, she's lost in those thoughts — death and rebirth makes you contemplative, apparently — while she sends crewmates up and down lines, pulling on rope, catching some of that stormy salt breeze to start turning the ship back towards what she thinks is shore.
As God approaches her again, she lets him come in from her blind side without bristling. If he's going to stab her in the back, might as well get it over with; fretting over anything else feels like a waste of energy.
Her next question comes sideways, perhaps a little unexpected: "Were you a squid too?"
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
But as if to show that it's also not a real problem (Mercy has experience working alongside someone she both hates and loves, after all), she claps her hands together: brisk, efficient.
"Let go and hand over a few of them to me. Let's say... six." And as if she's not standing there vulnerable and half-naked and looking like a drowned rat tangled in a towel, she starts to reach out for the crewmen with her own ever-burning thanergy. Mercymorn the First is a flesh magician; she can puppet meat well enough. While she noses at their rubbery muscles, she adds, offhand, "And are there any more clothes in that captain's cabin? I'll wear men's."
no subject
What it is might be still angry, for anyone keeping score. But here on unfamiliar waters, they have only each other, and John isn't past leaning on that. He will never be past loving her, no matter what she does to him and what he'll do to her in return.
She goes poking at his puppeted sailors, half-frowning past the water still dripping off her chin, and it is both a little funny and very Mercy. John relinquishes control, splays his hands like defeat.
"Knock yourself out," he says. "I'll find you something good and pirate-y to wear."
He steps away to find a humorously oversized ruffled shirt, and leaves her on his deck among the dead.
no subject
And there's a withering kind of derisive amusement in the thought. Apparently she is destined to become his fingers and hands, over and over. At least Augustine isn't here to claim first position all over again and relegate her to second mate. Time seems to be cyclical. Everything that has happened will always happen again.
When John eventually comes up to rejoin her, she's lost in those thoughts — death and rebirth makes you contemplative, apparently — while she sends crewmates up and down lines, pulling on rope, catching some of that stormy salt breeze to start turning the ship back towards what she thinks is shore.
As God approaches her again, she lets him come in from her blind side without bristling. If he's going to stab her in the back, might as well get it over with; fretting over anything else feels like a waste of energy.
Her next question comes sideways, perhaps a little unexpected: "Were you a squid too?"