there is a Little bit of mercy in mercymorn. she's not kind or nice or in any way compassionate, but when she quickly patches harrow up to avoid "reasonable culpability" she also shakes her pituitary gland like a soda can and tosses in a bunch of calming and pain relieving hormones, and when harrow asks how to never sleep again she answers. she tries to give harrow an artificially quickened death in her sleep and dulls all her nerves. her divine assassination attempt would have given john a last moment of being forgiven and embraced before killing him instantly. it feels to me less like she's trying to be merciful and more like she's a skilled craftswoman who takes pride in her work and Will see to any task as thoroughly and properly as possible. her healthgrades.com page would go crazy.
there's a world where from 2004 to 2012 fox aired a show called saint of joy md
Honestly nearly everything she ever says or does is screaming how much she cares and cannot seem to make herself stop no matter how badly she wants to. She just chooses the worst ways to say things.
She doesn't say "I miss my friends and it hurts that you're here to replace them", she says "you're not as pretty as [Cyrus/Anastasia]". She does say in a stupor of despair "I watched Cassiopeia die" but adds "I remember thinking, Lord, But what will we do with your ceramics collection? There's so much of it." (We never do see Mercy's room. I like to imagine it's the One (1) thing associated with her that isn't tidy at all and that she's kept some of Cassy's ceramics and momentos from everyone, a den of misery and grief, but I digress.) Acid Jail is screaming she never wanted to kill him, she fantasizes about him getting his shit together and thanking her for helping him do it.
Even killing him. "Learning" he lied (even if she and Augustine got the lie almost entirely wrong) was a final straw, but she didn't kill him for personal reasons. Like Cyth, who announced herself as "the vengeance of the 10 billion", Mercy was working with BoE, and had been for it sounds like centuries. They started planning Dios Apate Major around 500 years ago (around the same time Dr. Sex was spouting his theory that thanergy and thalergy saturation in the universe has drastically decreased since the Resurrection; relevant perhaps? 🤔). This was very much about ending the empire, and staying close until they had the chance to. And on top of that moment of forgiveness, it was also coming from a woman whose immediate next plan for herself was to go drop into the nearest sun. She absolutely saw a swift death as an act of Mercy.
...But also.
Lmao yeah, I KEEP TELLING people (especially my friends who don't go to TLT but still) that the fastest way I can describe Mercy is she's the unholy fusion of Steven Universe Pearl and Doctor House. It's beautiful.
