Chapter Text
He can see her dead.
Juliet, bleeding from the chest, a dagger embedded in her heart. The details are fuzzy, but he doesn’t need them.
He absolutely cannot accept this.
Day One
Today is not Tybalt’s day.
He wakes with a crushing pounding in his head—he must have drunk himself half to death last night—a feeling of rage that he thinks has never once completely gone away, and one goal in mind:
Kill Romeo Montague.
He throws on his tunic, tying the belt around his waist, repeating that mantra over and over. A knock on the door comes and he grunts an admission to enter.
His aunt strolls in, usual coolness filling her demeanor. He stands taller and opens his mouth to ask what she’s after when she speaks first.
“Tybalt,” she begins, his name measured as always in her voice. “What time is the mass tonight?”
“At half past seven, like every year,” he says, coming to her, “in memory of my father’s untimely death.”
“Good,” she says sharply, pleased with his answer to her fake question. “Everyone will be there, to honor my brother.” Her hand finds its way into his hair, pressing lightly into the side of his face. “We’re all counting on you.”
Maybe it’s the fragments of memory from just before he had woken up, but some strange madness drives his desperation. His hand shakily comes up under her jaw, he leans closer—
—And just as he had expected, but perhaps not hoped, she tips his head down and kisses him on the forehead. She drifts away, then, back into her own little world within the manor.
He shakes his head, willing his confusing feelings gone. He is here, put on God’s green Earth to do one thing, and that is to kill Montagues. Killing the heir of Montague is only natural for the champion of the Capulet family.
He stalks outside, his constantly-narrowed eyes driving off the intruding rays of the sun. Somewhere in this city is Romeo Montague, dawdling around and completely unaware of what Fate has in store for him. Completely unaware that Tybalt will either kill him or die trying.
He does not find Romeo. He does find, however, his two idiot friends, neither of which are in any hurry to give away Romeo’s location. Mercutio is in a sour mood today and won’t let him go without blood being drawn. Fine, then. Tybalt’s not one to turn down a request for a duel. Or a demand, in this case.
That being said, he quickly loses interest when Romeo turns up. He tries his best to refocus his efforts, but Mercutio was never one for losing attention—
—and then Romeo is standing between the two of them, idiot that he is—
—and Tybalt’s sword seeks its vengeance—
—but it is Mercutio who winds up on the end of its point.
Tybalt watches numbly as Mercutio bleeds to death, his little comrades frantic as he laughs his way to the grave. He hadn’t meant to kill Mercutio, not really. But what was done is done, there’s no going back, and he still wants to kill Romeo.
Romeo, though, is not so peaceful anymore.
“Tybalt…Tybalt…” he repeats, his gaze piercing through into nothingness.
He grabs Mercutio’s sword.
“Tybalt!”
Their swordfight is brief and brutal and Tybalt comes out on the losing end of it, pierced through the heart.
That vision of Juliet drifts into his mind again as he dies.
Day Two
Today is not Tybalt’s day.
He wakes with a crushing pounding in his head—he must have drunk himself half to death last night—a feeling of rage that he thinks has never once completely gone away, and one goal in mind:
Kill Romeo Montague.
He proceeds through the rest of the day in a fashion that feels oddly familiar—attempts to kiss his aunt, attempts to find Romeo, attempts to kill Romeo, and fails at just about everything.
Failure is not new in his life.
Neither, he thinks absentmindedly, is the dead Juliet in his mind.
Day Three
“Tybalt…Tybalt…Tybalt!”
Day Nine
Today is not Tybalt’s day.
Wait a second.
Didn’t he think that yesterday?