Private Coincidences and Terror

[Mercy]

Fiviune
Aftermath of Blood for Blood
Eurydice

The aftermath of Nefaron's plot to destroy the Sith intelligence apparatus had been messy. There was a siege to break, insurgents to mop up, damage to survey and Quinn's disappointment to withstand.

The Princess had desired for Nefaron's head after all. Even with the siege broken and a horde of undead cleaved apart didn't quite reach that height.

Eventually Mercy walked back into the structure, aiming to study the temple of Malum's killers and trying to see if she could find any hint of where Nefaron had run off too.

You didn't run off unless you had a place to run towards.

But it didn't seem like the rogue Sith had left any clues for Mercy to track. For a while she was disappointed, the great hunt ended before it ever even began.

Until she heard the whimper.

Mercy didn't think, she simply acted, her body blurring into motion.

One moment her hand was empty, the next she was holding a young girl by her robe in the air.

"And what do we have here?" Mercy asked incredulous. "A survivor perhaps?" As if to get an answer out of her, she shook her in the air.

"But a survivor of which side. Pray tell?"

 

[Eurydice]

Eurydice blinked. The motion only sent plaster dust further into her eyes, which hurt.

Everything had happened almost too quickly to follow. One moment, she was harvesting information from the Tsis'Kaar archives, the next, she was buried beneath layers of tomes and shelving. As she wavered in and out of consciousness, someone gripped the collar of her robes and yanked the girl back into the open air.

And shook her.

A hacking cough dislodged from her chest, coating Mercy's face in a layer of gritty dust.

Eurydice squinted at the mountain of a woman through burning eyes. She was tall, and very muscular. The Force moved around her thick and slow, imposing in how it effortlessly weighed into the air around them.

"I'm-" she gasped, choking on her own spit. Who was this again? She seemed familiar, faintly so, if only by description. The Seer couldn't tell if being found by her was a boon, or if this was about to become a very, very sore bane.

Eurydice drew in a deep, desperate breath, which only set off another grisly coughing fit. Where was Nefaron in all this?

When she recovered, she finally managed to rasp an answer.

"Li…brarian?"

Mercy

 

[Mercy]

Eurydice

Mercy squinted up at the dangling creature in her hand.

"Librarian?" She thought about that for a moment and then shook her in her hand again. "Do you take me for a fucking moron, girl? Everyone knows librarians are old, bend and wear glasses. You are at most just out of the academy and you don't wear glasses either." Mercy said pointedly with such utter confidence that it seemed to twist the atmosphere around them.

A side note: Mercy had never actually entered a library before. Such places were as anathema to her as churches were to vampires.

A soft sigh and Mercy pinched the bridge of her nose.

"Okay, let's try this one more time. Who are you? If I think you are bullshitting me, I will throw you out of the window and that's gonna be a very big fall."

Already beginning to walk them to towards... well, it wasn't a window. It was a hole in the wall, caused by Helix 's orbital bombardment, but that was just a minor detail.

Hole or window, it would do just fine to throw an acolyte out of it.

 

[Eurydice]

Eurydice covered her mouth with one hand to stifle the nausea stirred after being shaken so violently. Though dazed, she retained enough sense to raise a brow at the Mountain's assumptions regarding - what she assumed to be - holotoon librarians.

"W-wait!"

Instead of trying to convince the muscled woman that librarians could indeed be young, have decent posture and uninhibited eyesight, Eurydice squeaked as she was dangled over the precipice of what would most certainly be a deadly, deadly fall.

As if to affirm her worries, her squirming feet knocked a stone loose from the cratered wall. It fell, and fell, and fell, and fell, until….

Clank.

The girl's already pale visage paled even further.

"N-Nefaron," she choked. "I serve Darth Nefaron!"

Eurydice didn't know which side this woman was on. Her pulse roared in her ears, heart jackhammering at warp speed as she awaited judgement.

Was her answer the correct one?

Mercy

 

[Mercy]

Eurydice

Perhaps the reason she finally spilled was because she could feel the tension in Mercy's wrist. That sudden slack that would have been immediately followed by falling down and then crashing into the ground below.

Instead she spoke true and Mercy pulled her back from the window. There she deposited her on the ground in front of her.

"See? That wasn't that hard, was it?" Then she gently patted Eurydice's head if allowed. "Now, tell me what a soft child such as yourself is doing serving a half-decaying corpse like Darth Nefaron ?" In truth Mercy didn't have much against Nef. Sure, he was a man, but at least he was a dead one.

The fact that he was still walking around was just a momentary lapse of judgement.

It was only his cowardice that truly riled her up. Coming to this world with flame and sword, but then beating a hasty retreat. She had visualized tearing his head off multiple times during the duel.

Sadly it was not to be.

 

[Eurydice]

Eurydice squeezed her eyes shut and scrunched her shoulders, waiting to feel the weightless embrace of cool air rush around her as she plummeted, unceremoniously, to her death.

Instead, her feet came to rest on solid ground. The girl remained still for a long moment before her eyes slivered open, peering cautiously up at Mercy.

She blinked as her head was patted, more than stupefied by the gesture.

Why?

For all of the studying she'd done, for all of the knowledge she'd begun to absorb - which, really, was only a minuscule amount compared to the endless swaths of information that seemed to blanket the galaxy around her - the girl found herself paralyzed by such simple question.

"Wh-what do you mean?"

No one had ever asked her why she'd done anything. On Ukatis, she served as a Seer because that was what she'd been told to do. On Anoat, she served as Nefaron's apprentice because he'd deemed it so.

"I serve him because…that was what he decided to do with me."

Mercy

 

[Mercy]

Eurydice

"Oh, sweetpea." Mercy said with a tone dripping in empathy, again patting her head softly. "The Galaxy truly is not kind to soft gentle things, is it? Dragging them around, forcing them to do things they do not wish."

Sympathy as she studied the woman in front of her.

If Mercy was a good person she would have offered her an out. It would have been easy, simple, really. She was here, Darth Nefaron was gone with the wind, all that Mercy had to do was offer a safe haven. But Mercy was not good. Once upon a time she had been a girl, not really anything similar to Eurydice, but a girl nonetheless.

Forced to obey parents, Masters, Lords.

It had taken her own strength of will and brashness to rip herself away from it. She would not steal that from Eurydice. You could not become strong by being given strength.

"What would you like to do, sweetheart? Do you want me to drop you off to... well, wherever Nefaron went? He left you here, you know. Tucked his tail between his legs and ran, forgetting all about you."

Again that tone of sympathy.

A far cry from the girl's assumption she'd be killed if Mercy found out she worked for Nefaron.