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He stared stupidly for a moment at the blood staining his chest, his gaze flickering from one horrified face to another, finally coming to rest on Romeo, frozen where he stood.
"Rom..." he tried to say but suddenly his mouth was full of hot salt blood and pain rolled over him in waves. He felt warm arms surround him, supporting him and leant into Romeo's embrace.
"I'm hurt..." he said incredulously as though by saying it he could deny it but the pain rippling through his body would not let him. With failing strength he lifted a heavy hand and caressed Romeo's face. "A plague on both your houses," he cursed harshly, his words at odds with the tenderness of the gesture and then, feeling his knees buckle, his slid through the younger man's embrace to the cold ground.
Romeo dropped to his knees beside him and gathered Mercutio back into his arms, easing him up against his shoulder as the wounded man began to choke on his own blood.
"It's not such a hurt, is it?" he pleaded, desperately wanting to hear Mercutio deny it.
Mercutio rested his head against the younger man's arm for a moment, eyes closed, fighting for breath. "It's neither as deep as a well, nor as wide as a church door - but it is enough," he said finally, ironically, opening his eyes and seeing the knowledge mirrored on the other face. They had both seen enough death wounds to know that Tybalt's thrust had been all too accurate. "Ask for me tomorrow and you shall find me a grave man!" he quipped with an attempt at his usual dark, bitter humour but the effect was spoiled by the trickle of blood creeping from his mouth. "Why did you come between us? I was hurt under your arm!" he accused suddenly, bitter anger flowing through him at the unfairness of it all. The futility.
He had been incensed at Romeo's refusal to fight Tybalt, to avenge the insults that only yesterday would have inflamed the younger man, deriding as they did their most personal feelings for each other. Seeing in it Juliet's influence. Juliet, daughter of Capulet, who by all rights should have been Romeo's mortal enemy but was instead his beloved. Met but a few days hence, already she had taken Romeo's heart by storm, eclipsing all other affections. So Mercutio had deliberately provoked Tybalt, trying to assuage the anger he felt at all of them in a fight with her cousin.
The anger and the jealousy. And the knowledge that, no matter what he did, he had already lost Romeo to her irrevocably.
Romeo flinched. "I was trying to help," he said hopelessly, trying to still the quiver in his voice with little success.
Mercutio turned his head away from the look, anger warring with understanding, with the need to reassure Romeo that everything was alright. That he was not to blame.
But everything wasn't alright. He was dying. And Romeo was to blame.
He pushed himself away from the familiar comfort of Romeo's arms, sheer will power forcing him to his feet. "Benvolio." He reached out for his oldest friend, hovering helplessly in the background not wanting to intrude between the other two, seizing his arm as pain clutched at his body, a curtain of fog obscuring his vision. "Take me into the house," he pleaded, feeling his breath rattle in his chest. He didn't want to die in the street like a dog with the crowd gawking on.
And Romeo... Though anger tried to quench it, he still found enough caring in his heart to want to spare his friend the sight of his death. Bad enough that Romeo would have to live with the knowledge that his actions had caused it.
As Benvolio supported him towards the nearest house, Mercutio turned back momentarily, almost against his will, for a final look at Romeo standing frozen where he had left him, a look of hurt despair on his beautiful face. He felt his anger die then to be replaced by an all encompassing ache that closed his throat and made his eyes burn. Perhaps seeing something in his face, Romeo took a hasty step forward, one hand outstretched.
"A plague on both your houses!" Mercutio choked out again, the desperate, hoarse curse stopping Romeo in his tracks. No, please, I don't want you to see me die. "They have killed me." He saw understanding blossom on the other man's face.
You have killed me. Damn you for making me choose sides. For making me love you more than honour, more than life.
I hope she's worth the price...
Oh Juliet, what have I done? What have you turned me into?
I promised you that there would be peace between our houses, that I'd quarrel no more with your family but it is barely an hour since we wed and already that promise has cost me dear. More than I would ever willingly have given. Mercutio, dear Mercutio...
"Brave Mercutio is dead." Benvolio's words fell into silence, tearing through Romeo's thoughts.
"Nooo!" It was a scream of pain, torn from a soul in mortal agony. Romeo span away from the older man's restraining hand, wildly spinning and searching the street for sight of his quarry.
"Tybalt!" he cried, his voice ringing through the silenced onlookers.
"There." Benvolio clutched his arm again but Romeo, spotting Tybalt in the same instant, shook him off once more, giving chase as the other man took to his heels. "Mercutio is dead. Stand and face me," he demanded, anger and grief lacing his voice. "And I swear one of us - both! - will follow him."
Tybalt, brought to bay, turned. "Then it will be you, faggot," he spat. "You were never parted before."
"Damn you." Romeo charged at him, all finesse forgotten in the haze of grief and guilt, needing only to wipe the sneer from his face and erase the hateful words. To kill the man who had taken so much from him.
The two men circled each other, blades flashing in the bright sunlight, the clash of metal ringing in the air. Thrust, parry, counter-thrust, the grim battle flowing back and forth through the streets as each strove for advantage, for the opening that would end it. For the killing thrust.
For both men knew that this was a fight to the death. The quarrel between Montague and Capulet, rumbling for so long, had come to its inevitable head with the murder of Mercutio. Mercutio, who was neither Montague nor Capulet, but had chosen Romeo and, therefore, allied himself with Montague, forsaking the neutrality that his own family, as princes of Verona, had always held. The choice had cost him his life.
Tybalt had never considered Romeo a particularly brilliant swordsman but, fuelled with blind anger and passion, there was nothing predictable about his attack and Tybalt, taken aback by the ferocity, found himself retreating, barely deflecting the flurry of thrusts with his own blade.
Romeo advanced inexorably, his own panting breath harsh in his ears as he pushed forward, barely noticing the trickle of blood seeping from the wound that Tybalt had inflicted in his arm. He was aware vaguely of the market day crowd scattering around them but didn't allow it to distract him from his target. Nothing mattered except the man facing him.
Trapped in a small courtyard, his back to a flight of stairs, Tybalt stumbled and Romeo saw his opening. Beating aside the other man's sword, he lunged forward, his blade sinking deep into the unprotected flesh below the ribcage. For a long moment Tybalt stared at him with a look of pained disbelief on his face and then he sank back, dead before he touched the ground.
Romeo stared down at the body sprawled limply on the steps, sword dangling at his side in a leaden hand, his anger suddenly spent but it wasn't Tybalt's body he saw, it was Mercutio's. Brave, beloved Mercutio whose blood stained his hands crimson.
Vaguely he was aware of someone - Benvolio? - shaking him, urging him to flee but he ignored the voice. What did he care about the Prince's men? What did anything matter now that the finest man he had ever known was dead? Mercutio, his companion through a thousand escapades and brawls, was dead. His friend. His lover. And he had killed him as surely as though he'd struck the blow himself.
And Mercutio, in his dying words, had known it.
"I am fortune's fool!" he cried to the heavens, wishing that they would open and swallow him up and take away the knowledge of what he had done. What he had lost in his blind, childish infatuation for Juliet.
His mind echoing with his lover's dying curse, Romeo stumbled away. Blinded by hot tears that refused to fall and uncaring where he went, he found himself back in the square again, outside the house where Mercutio's body lay. Drawn by a force he was unable and unwilling to resist, he shouldered past the still gawking crowd, wanting only to see his beloved once again.
Someone had laid Mercutio on a low settle and but for the telltale blood on his doublet, he looked so peaceful that for one, brief, joyous moment Romeo thought he was merely asleep but then reality came crashing down. Mercutio in life had never been that tranquil. Awake he had been like quicksilver, never still, never silent, vibrating with life and joy. And even in sleep, the restless spirit had peeked through.
He fell to his knees beside the settle, gathering Mercutio up and holding him tight against his body, his face buried in the hollow of neck and shoulder. Rocking in a haze of grief, his face twisted in a ghastly parody of passion, Romeo felt the sobs begin, racking through him and leaving desolation in their wake.
"'Cutio, 'Cutio," he murmured over and over again, lips whispering over rapidly cooling cheeks. His mind, barely able yet to truly comprehend the enormity of loss, retreated to happier times. To a balmy summer day a few years past when first they had together discovered the joys of manhood. To a day when their forbidden desire for each other had finally been given free reign, overcoming all sense...
... And how later, lying close together in the fading afterglow of spent passion, he had turned to Mercutio and whispered, "Forgive me," suddenly ashamed of the lust that had overcome him, the need that had condemned both their souls to eternal damnation.
And how Mercutio, sprawled wantonly across the bed had looked at him with a contented smile. "Why? For taking what both of us have craved? Or for making me love you?" he questioned softly, adoration shining out of his dark, beautiful eyes, piercing for one brief, vulnerable moment the mask of bright cynicism that, young as he was, was already settling into place. "There is nothing to forgive, sweet Romeo. I would give my life for you. And my soul? Romeo, without you, I am in hell's fire already." And he had drawn Romeo back down into his arms, burning away all of the younger man's doubts and fears in a fire of lust and love...
"Forgive me," he whispered into the unheeding ear, repeating the words that echoed through his memory. "I never meant it to come to this. Oh, Mercutio, why did you do it? I would never have let her come between us. Did you love me so much that you would rather die than see me happy with someone else? Or was it hate? Did you hate me because I loved her, too? I'm sorry! I'm so sorry."
He took Mercutio's face between his hands and leant down to lay a gentle kiss on the unresponsive lips, desperate for one taste of his lover but there was nothing there, everything that was Mercutio was gone, fled with his life's blood. Romeo smothered a sob, resting his head against the still breast.
"I love you, Mercutio," he whispered. "I have loved you since the day we met but I love her, too. And even though you are gone, I still have her. It is enough," he said resolutely, raising his head, as though trying to convince himself as well as the spirit he addressed. "It has to be. Without you, she's all I've got. She's my life now."
He would remember those words later as he stood over Juliet's tomb, looking down at the still, beautiful face. He had nothing left to live for now. Not hesitating to think, he held the apothecary's vial he had brought with him to his lips, welcoming the bitter taste of the poison as it swept through his body, dulling the agony in his soul. Soon all his pain would be gone and, if God were good, he would be re-united with the person he loved more than life itself.
His sight was dimming now and he closed his eyes. Immediately he was somewhere else. The darkness was gone and out of the distance a figure approached, bathed with soft light. As the figure came closer, he realised who it was and felt a great outpouring of love and warmth that was met and returned by the other, until they could barely tell where one ended and the other began. It was as it always should have been.
He smiled with joy. Mercutio.
He didn't feel his body hit the ground.