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~ I Loved Him Then, I Love Him Still ~
Harrowhark had lost the thread of the conversation a while ago, and when she tuned back in, the first thing she heard made her want to tune right back out.
"You use a little too much teeth one time and suddenly everyone's all 'Don't ask Mercy to blow you or she'll bite your dick off.' And-"
Augustine winced and put forth, "Time for a different subject?"
"Yes," John latched onto that suggestion. "Let's not talk about that in front of the children."
"Is that the cue for us to leave?" Harrow whispered to Ianthe, desperately hoping that the answer would be yes.
Ianthe leaned forward, putting her elbows on the table, and said, "But I want to hear about the time the Saint of Joy bit someone's dick off."
"You would," Harrow said, scowling.
"It's not like I bit it completely off," Mercymorn continued, heedless of the Saint of Patience and God's attempts to stop her. "I just broke the skin a little! It healed up right away, and Cyrus wasn't even mad about it." Here she paused and took a sip from her wine glass. Then, gazing off into the middle-distance, she said in a melancholy tone, "I miss him. I wish he was here."
There followed a somewhat awkward silence, during which Mercy finished off the contents of her glass. Augustine immediately moved to refill it. John frowned disapprovingly at him, but this did nothing to deter him.
Mercy absentmindedly thanked her beloathed nemesis, but did not drink from the glass. She rolled the stem between her fingers as she said, "You know, Cyrus asked me to pose for one of his wretched paintings. I said no the first time."
Which implied that there was also a time when she had not refused. Which meant-
"A naked portrait of you... exists somewhere?" John inquired, sounding equal parts shocked and intrigued by the revelation.
"Well..." Mercy said, frowning. "I don't know that it necessarily exists anymore. I made him promise not to display it publicly before I agreed to model for him. And that was nine thousand years ago. I have no idea what he did with it after it was finished."
"If it's anywhere on the Mithraeum, then it's probably hidden in the Third House quarters somewhere," Ianthe piped up.
All of the old people looked at her like they'd forgotten she was there, or perhaps they were looking at her that way because she had explicitly referred to Cyrus's former residence as belonging to the Third House. Which she might have remembered not to do if she'd been any less sloshed.
"Shall we go look for it?" Augustine put forth.
"Of course you'd want to see it, you fucking pervert," Mercy said.
"Oh, please. I know what you look like naked. I want to see if you're lying."
"Why would I lie about-"
"Yes, let's go look for the painting!" Ianthe said, clapping her hands. "This will be so much fun!"
And then everyone was up and filing out of the room, none of them entirely steady on their feet due to the large amount of alcohol they had all consumed.
Harrowhark was the last person to leave her chair, and Ianthe hung back to tell her, "Yes, that was the signal. Don't follow us. Go do your thing."
It turned out that Mercymorn was not lying.
There was a painting, which did still exist. It was done on a canvas half the size of the paintings displayed on the walls of the room, and they found it in the back of the closet behind some other items that no one wanted to examine too closely. ("I wondered where that one went," Augustine commented about one of those items, and everyone else dutifully pretended not to have heard this comment.)
Mercy was not entirely nude in the painting - and, perhaps more surprisingly, she was not alone. Two figures were cuddled up together in a clear depiction of post-coital bliss. The man in the painting - who Ianthe immediately recognized as Cyrus thanks to the other paintings of him which she saw on a daily basis - was laying on his back. Mercymorn was curled against his side with her head on his chest. A sheet of golden satin covered them from the waist down, preserving Mercy's modesty. The artist, however, had obviously had no such concern for his own modesty, as proven by the lovingly rendered outline of his dick against the sheet.
Within seconds of viewing the painting, Mercy burst into tears. She dropped to her knees, covered her face with her hands, and sobbed.
John and Augustine glanced at each other. Augustine started to reach for her, but Mercy slapped his hand away before he could touch her.
He looked at John and shrugged in a way that clearly communicated I tried, and therefore no one should criticize me.
John just kept standing there awkwardly, looking very much like he wished someone else would do something about the situation, and when it became clear that he wasn't going to do anything about it himself, Ianthe knelt beside Mercymorn and put her arms around her.
She wasn't sure that her efforts would be any more appreciated than Augustine's had, but Mercy turned and threw her arms around Ianthe, burying her face against her neck.
Gross... she's getting snot in my hair.
Ianthe could hear John and Augustine saying something to each other, but she couldn't make out the words over the sound of Mercymorn's weeping.
"I miss Cyrus," Mercy choked out between sobs. "I loved him so much."
Ianthe had no idea whether this was all an act as part of the plan to keep God distracted or if Mercymorn had forgotten what exactly was depicted in the painting and her emotional reaction to seeing it was genuine. Either way, Ianthe found it disturbing and wished someone better qualified to comfort the Saint of Joy would step in.
She did not get her wish, however, as a moment later some kind of alarm started going off and God said, "You two stay here," as he and Augustine rushed to investigate.
~end~