5x the locked tomb fic recs

[kimaracretak]

Yknow this started out as a rec post for ambiguous relationship/'secret third thing' relationship fics and then I realised how much Locked Tomb fic was on the list and I want to post this in a uhhh reasonable amount of time, so lets just go with these ones to start! They're not all necessarily tagged as some sort of ambiguous, but they (and the canon relationships) all have that same vibe. In alphabetical order. I would apologise for the Overwatch icon but unfortunately the Mercy-Mercymorn parallels are never not preoccupying a minimum of 10% of my brainspace.

'it's two thousand years old, it's essentially public property'. abigail & mercy. 1.7k words, not rated. by KaiserJo

Mercy is at her wit's end with the new lyctors, but Abigail Pent won't stop rifling through old letters for the sake of 'history'.

Abigail the First meets Mercymorn the First, and their grief is not at all compatible, but that won't stop them from colliding anyway.

dead flowers in the sand. cytherea/loveday, cythera & john. 2.7k words, rated t. by glasslilies

Driven to insanity after trying to plant a bomb on a Resurrection Beast, Cytherea recovers on the Mithraeum and reminisces about Loveday.

What it means for a Lyctor to see a Resurrection Beast, and what it means for her to love her cavalier and hate her god. A really excellently fragmented capture of Cytherea's mind.

glassware may be hot to the touch. augustine/mercy. 3.9k words, rated e. by transversely

There was a mark on the shoulder of her robe where someone had bitten the epaulet clean off; it explained to distasteful precision the sequins he’d extracted from his teeth in the last hours.

Augustine contemplates the perils of embodiment in the aftermath of Dios Apate Major, and also lets Mercy fuck him about it. One of those fics where the weight of every day that makes up their ten thousand years is so deeply, profoundly felt, and also one that leans real hard into this relationship is not nameable because it could never be named.

overgrown. cytherea/mercy, cytherea/loveday. 692w, rated m. by covertly

Cytherea requests Mercy's help with a particular affliction.

Hanahaki-as-body-horror of the 'what if you're stuck like this because the person you love is the person you killed and ate, and she's inside your soul now but you will never be free because you hate yourself for what you did to her' sort, aka the best sort.

poor old sisyphus, poor old us. augustine/mercy, augustine & alfred, cristabel & mercy. 8.1k words, rated m. by chemicalpixie

the morning after their cavaliers die, mercymorn and augustine wake up to find them alive again. and again. and again.

On the horror of inevitability, and repetition, and being known, and knowing what you have to do, and (what else) hating God about all of it. I think the end of the loop is predictable, from the reader's standpoint, but wow it does not make it less of a gut-punch.

to show my love was endless. mercy~dulcinea~abigail. 496w, rated t. by hollowbolding

Mercy dies and, indignity of indignities, it is not the end.

In a River bubble there are the waves, and the bits of your cavalier's soul stuck in your teeth, and kissing. Gorgeous liminal-spaces fic.

Comments

[lucymonster]

Ughhh I’m not touching these yet because (presumably) spoilers but just from your initial description I am SALIVATING. Can’t wait to dive in once I’ve finished the novels!

[kimaracretak]

HMMMMM yeah I read HtN first, got very very Normal about Mercymorn, and then went looking for fic, so these are probably all spoilery ('it's two thousand years old...' the least so, maybe, but it will read better knowing All of Mercy's whole Thing).

[kore]

NICE //bookmarks

[kimaracretak]

What TLT fandom lacks as far as quantity of fic I'm interested in they fully make up for in terms of 'oh wow when they get it right they get it REALLY right'.