[ Something less than a smile but more than a grimance glances off the line of Mercy's mouth like shrapnel. She takes a half-step towards her that happens to align with another look shot to the lighthouse, a coincidental closing in. ]

It's rotten work.

[ Mercy never felt any particular collegiality with the Third baby when she was alive, and certain that the babies would soon not be, if there was any fairness left to be found in universe. It's a little funny, even to her, that only in her abrupt retirement that she finds the slightest thing in common with Ianthe Tridentarius. ]

I filled the gaps with projects...but I hardly need to instruct you in maintaining a side venture.

[ It's barbed, angled toward a sardonic note closer to Patience than she'd care to have pointed out. They know what projects Mercy set herself; she knows the girl-creature knows that Mercy suspects that there was something Ianthe was working on in her spare hours. She simply hadn't cared. She still doesn't, really. Everyone should have a lab of their own.

Then, carelessly indifferent: ]

So Patience, too, then?