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Benvolio rushed a bleeding Mercutio off the streets and into a nearby alley. Helping Mercutio to the ground, he begged “Just stay here, I’ll get a surgeon,”
Mercutio grasped Benvolio’s arm, his grip as strong as the crocodiles’ jaw. “No! Stay. Please,” he looked up at Benvolio, “please.”
Benvolio’s heart skipped a beat. How was it he could never tell him no? Even when Mercutio was basically asking to let him die. If only he hadn’t engaged in Tybalt’s uncivil and frivolous banter. Still, what was done was done. So he knelt down, facing Mercutio. “I need to get you a surgeon, I’m not letting you die.”
“I’ll be alright.” Mercutio grabbed Benvolio’s hand and massaged its knuckles.
“Mercutio, please”
Mercutio leaned his head into Benvolio’s so their foreheads made contact. “Kiss me Benvolio, a dying man’s wish, kiss me.” Mercutio’s voice was soft and quiet.
Benvolio glanced down at Mercutio’s red soaked shirt, then at his lips. Within a moment, they were locked with his.
Time became a concept foreign to him. Everything became foreign to him. Everything but Mercutio’s devilish lips in his.
When they finally pulled apart, Benvolio took note of how flushed Mercutio’s face was. So full of….life.
Benvolio looked down at Mercutio’s wound and quickly pulled back the shirt to reveal his chest completely intact. Bevolio couldn’t help but laugh. “All of that to get me to kiss you,”
“All of that to be with the one I love.”Mercutio smiled one of his mischievous grins. “Go back. Tell them I’m dead. By the end of next week, you’ll have fallen ill and lose your life as well. Tragedy for all, except us.” Mercutio took off a silver ring with Olivine and Rose Quartz gemstones wrapping around it and placed it into Benvolio’s palm. “I will see you once again in Vicenza,”
Benvolio nodded and placed the ring on his finger. He wondered if this was how Romeo felt about his dear Rosaline. Heart made like one of Archimedes’ machines, ever going, till it inevitably flies too close to the sun.
Benvolio stood and looked down at a not so injured Mercutio. He couldn’t believe he ever thought Mercutio was dying. Like that was something the stars could choose. Who could live in a world without Mercutio? Certainly not Benvolio.
So he turned and rushed back to the street he’d last seen Mercutio and Tybalt at each other’s throats, only stopping once at a butcher to get some pigs’ blood on his hands.
He skidded his feet around the street corner and was met with a terrified Romeo grabbing his arms, nearly cutting off circulation.
How was he going to do this? It became a lot harder once he realized who exactly he was lying to. Romeo, Mercutio’s best friend, sometimes the only one who was truly there. Benvoilo was reminded that Mercutio did not only belong to him, but to Romeo as well. Still, the ring on his finger chanted Mercutio’s words. “Tragedy for all, except us. ”
So Benvolio took a deep breath and spoke those painful words, “He’s dead, Romeo. Good Mercutio is dead.”
The scream that came next hurt more than vipers’ bite, more than a knife to the heart. It was a scream of pure pain, a scream of a broken heart.
He wanted to take it back, but he couldn’t. Not without telling his cousin why he lied.
Not without telling him what he was.
What Mercutio was.
They would be banished, exiled, or worse, hung by their necks till their heads snapped away from their spines.
So he stood there.
Then he followed the enraged Romeo to Tybalt.
And watched as he killed the innocent man.
He fiddled with the ring on his finger as the Prince declared Romeo’s exile.
Then he kissed it as he followed his cousin’s cold dead body into the Montague vault.
“Tragedy for all, except us.”
So with the ring on his finger. And the lingering memory of Mercutio’s lips.
He rode off to Vicenza, unwell and heart sunk, yearning for a kiss from above to forgive their sins and allow them the love they sacrificed everything for.