#because of the terrible act they committed and its unbearable consequences

[fragmentedblade]

I swear, if they all not get to be deranged and awful and resent each other and kill each other over and over with the bitter aftertaste of love WHAT EVEN IS THE POINT

[hanatriestowrite]

Not Quite Mortal (R&J Fae Mercutio AU)

(An AU Based off of @unlinedpapers‘s fanart of Mercutio that you can see here. Their art is actually amazing, you should go check it out! 

(TW: blood + choking + temporary character death )

Whispers of the fae were nothing new in Verona. Parents would spin tales about these magical creatures and their terrifying ethereal natures. The citizens of Verona used these creatures to create cautionary stories to keep their children away from the wood when the night was nigh, or to keep them from acting out. Very few actually bothered to leave milk or honey out on their doorsteps as offerings. The people of Verona were not one to entertain superstitions, they had other things to be concerned about. Like the feud between the Montagues and the Capulets.

The people of Verona may not have entertained superstitions, but Romeo Montague reveled in the idea of their existence. Perhaps it was his romantic nature which drew him to these fantastical creatures. Romeo was never one to find himself in the library’s in most days, unlike his cousin, but he scoured the entire town for books about the people of the fae. Changelings, elves, sirens, and more, he learned of them all.

In hindsight, he should’ve been able to discover the truth about his best friend armed with this information. The signs had been blaring at his face for years now. He was blindsided by Mercutio’s trickster gambets and charming personality to see what was hidden from him. The aversion to the church and the Friar, only being able to get away with not showing up to mass because he was the Prince’s kinsman. When there were burns along Mercutio’s hands, he would simply laugh it off, telling them that the iron was hot. Romeo didn’t realize at the time that he too had placed his hands on the same iron bar, and it was cold to the touch.

Romeo could have foreseen this, maybe that’s why he found himself hating himself even more for what had happened.

The second Mercutio was struck down, the whole town saw that there was something terribly wrong. As the blood began to pool under his body, inky thunder clouds rolled through the sky, eclipsing the once unbearably sunny day. The crackling thunder roared from the heavens above. A cool breeze swept across the streets, leaving an icy chill in the air. Benvolio kneeled on the ground, Mercutio’s head lying on his lap as he desperately attempted to stop the blood from flowing out of the wound. Tybalt stood frozen, his hands trembled, looking down at his blood-stained hands. His mouth moved wordlessly, his breath visible through the chilling vapors.

Romeo grabbed the rapier from the ground and began to slowly make his way towards Tybalt, white-knuckled. His vision went red and the rage surfaced inside of him. His only intention was a strike down Tybalt, no matter what the consequences may be. In one lifetime, the Prince of Cat might have been struck down by the dreamer of Verona but that is not this lifetime.

Before Romeo could draw his sword against Tybalt, dark chuckle echoed throughout the streets. Romeo felt his throat go dry, the voice was omnipresent, sounding everywhere and nowhere at once. The presence of the voice was suffocating, shaking the population to their very core. If the atmosphere felt cold before, it was completely frozen now. The clattering of metal followed quickly as the Capulets’ swords slipped out of their hands and their eyes were clouded with horror. Romeo turned his head around.

He saw Benvolio, his cousin, backing away on the ground, the blood on his hands already drying. He had one hand raised over his mouth and trembled at the sight before him.

A dark purple aura washed over the street of Verona. It lashed and spread violently, gathering up at one spot. A figure stood before them, silhouetted by the aura. The tendrils of purple flickered, latching onto the figure before tentatively disappearing into wisps in the air. A cloud of thick smog blanketed the area around them, breathing seemed to be near impossible. The deep purple started to fade, giving features to the figure. It was only then that Romeo realized, Mercutio was not lying on Benvolio’s lap, Mercutio was not bleeding out on the ground.

Piercing purple eyes illuminated in the smog, blazing with a form of primal fury. Disheveled dark hair stuck onto their forehead from the sweat. Dirt and grime matted their newly tattered and torn clothes. Crimson red blood dyed his mouth and torso. Their side was exposed to show a skin that was unblemished where there should’ve been a fatal wound. A familiar wicked grin stretched across their face, but it dripped with malice and bloodstained teeth. Romeo’s heart hammered in his chest, as the blood drained from his face. It couldn’t be...

“Mer- Mercutio?”

Romeo flinched as two violet eyes met his. A deep rumble shook the city as, the once dead, Mercutio let out a humorless laugh. “Oh Tybalt,” Mercutio’s voice dripped with mock saccharine, his voice booming. The ever-present nature forcing them to listen. “Did you think that getting rid of me would be that easy? How naive. How mortal of you to think so.”

Mercutio glided gracefully along the streets toward the man who “ended” his life. “To strike me down in such a way. I wonder Tybalt, did you plan to mock me in such a way, I’m hurt.”

Mercutio made his way toward Tybalt, easily towering over his frozen figure. The purple tendrils delicately wrapped around the Capulet’s neck, lifting him up a couple of inches off the ground to meet his eyes.

“Didn’t your mother ever teach you to never enrage a child of the fae?”

Romeo couldn’t hear Tybalt strangled reply, but he could see the terror etched onto his face. Tears flooded his face as he stammered out what Romeo could only determine as apologies. Bile was building its way up Romeo’s throat. Romeo pushed it down with everything he had left. This wasn’t Mercutio. This couldn’t be their friend.

Tybalt’s hands made their way up to his neck as he tried to claw his neck free from the tendrils. The tendrils only tightened around his neck and Mercutio grinned. The Capulet kicked and clawed and squirmed. His face slowly losing its color. His lips turned blue.

Both Capulets and Montagues could do nothing but watch in horror as one of their own was being subjected to an excruciatingly painful death.

“Mercutio, stop it. You’re killing him!”

The tendrils withdrew. Tybalt fell to the ground, gasping to make up for lost air. A couple of Capulets attempted to flock to Tybalt, but Mercutio lifted a hand and a shockwave sent them slamming on the stone road. Mercutio’s eyes flickered from Tybalt to the man who had just spoken.

Romeo found his cousin standing next to him. He couldn’t remember ever seeing Benvolio ever getting up from the ground, but then again he was preoccupied with the scene that was being displayed in front of him. Benvolio was pale, there was dried blood all along his arms and legs. If Romeo didn’t know any better, he would’ve thought that it was his cousin who committed the crime.

“Benvolio, always such a saint aren’t you?” Mercutio hissed.

Benvolio breath hitched. Legs shaking at the sound of his name from Mercutio’s voice. Benvolio closed his eyes. Evened his breath. And one foot in front of the other, he walked up to Mercutio.  

He swallowed thickly. “I’m not,” he rasped, reaching out for Mercutio’s hand, “but hasn’t there been enough bloodshed?”

Mercutio’s face softened for a split second. The smog thinning. But then he scowled, slapping away Benvolio’s hand. “And who’s fault is that?” Mercutio stretched out his arms to gesture to the scene before them. “Both your families’ senseless fighting brought how many people to the ends of their lives? How much blood was shed by both sides? How much blood was shed by people like me, with no stake in the godforsaken feud?” Mercutio screamed, his throat raw. “ And for what? Nobody knows how this goddamn feud even began! Yet you fight and you continue this cycle of violence for generations.”

“Mercutio,” Benvolio tried.

His purple eyes blazed with senseless rage. “My uncle is not the only one who will try to put an end to this feud, nor will he be the last. There was an abundant number of people who slaved to make an end to this feud, but I wonder why they even bothered to try. This is a hopeless cause. Animals, that’s what you have all become. Animals!”

Something inside of Benvolio snapped. “You’ve always been so goddamn arrogant!” Benvolio spat.

Mercutio froze. “Excuse me?”

“What do you plan to do? Execute your own twisted justice on the people of Verona? Don’t make me laugh.” Benvolio grabbed Mercutio by the collar of his shirt. “You speak of how many people have fought for the peace between our two families, but yet you have don’t nothing but fuel the fire between us. You start fights with the Capulets in the name of the Montagues but in honesty. You’re just itching for a fight, aren’t you? Tell me Mercutio how many fights have I tried to talk you out of, and how many of them have you fought anyways. It seems as if you’re the one who is continuing this cycle of violence.” The purple aura was nearly engulfing the two of them, restlessly thrashing out to stretch further out. The foreboding clouds struck bolts of lighting, streaking the sky with a touch of light. The thunder began to rumble louder and violently.

“I confess this feud has caused so much harm to the city that it was birth from, but this isn’t about that, isn’t it” Benvolio continued lowly, “Don’t you dare blame this on the feud when the only reason why you are throwing a tantrum like a child because a mortal was able to kill you.”

Mercutio roared in rage. He grabbed Benvolio’s wrists and ripped them off his collar. The ground around them began to shake under Mercutio command. Benvolio lost his balance and collapsed onto the floor. Mercutio’s eyes began to glow a deeper shade of purple as furious incantations escaped his lips. The sounds of the crashing thunder were near deafening. The smog thickened where Romeo couldn’t see a single thing except for the glowing figure of Mercutio, head hanging low.

“A plague o’ both your houses,” he whispered. He lifted his head up, eyes filled with tears.

“A plague o’ Both your houses!”

And with that, he was gone.

[ruminativerabbi]

Justice in Minnesota / Injustice in Paris

A native of Lod, Rabbi Joshua ben Levi was one of the greatest scholars in the Land of Israel in the first half of the third century BCE. Not too much is known of his family other than that he had a son named Joseph, who later grew up to become a rabbi like his father and to marry the daughter of Rabbi Judah, Patriarch of the Jewish community. But before Joseph grew to adulthood and achieved rabbinic ordination, it once happened that he fell terribly ill and sunk into a kind of coma during which he had vivid hallucinations. It lasted for days, but eventually he came out of it and, when he did, his father asked him what he had seen in the course of those hours spent in hallucinatory delirium. “I saw a topsy-turvy world,” Joseph reported, a crazy place in which things were the opposite of what they really are: “the things that belong on top were all on the bottom and vice versa—the things that belonged down below were all up on high.” Rabbi Joshua listened carefully to his son’s report about the olam hafukh, the topsy-turvy world that had been so prominently featured in his comatose dreamscape. And then he gave his considered, now famous, answer, “My son,” he said, that wasn’t hallucination, it was insight, because there, in your protracted dream, “you saw things as they truly are in this world.”

For twenty centuries, students of Talmud have been discussing what Rabbi Joshua could have meant. But now, just this very week, the secret has finally been revealed: Rabbi Joseph must have been dreaming about France, my new candidate for the most topsy-turvy nation in the world, a place where criminals bear no responsibility for their deeds, where murder is not an actionable crime, where voluntary drug use can relieve even the most vicious criminals of any responsibility for their crimes, and where the fully intentional murder of an elderly Jewish physician, a woman whose entire professional life was devoted to helping others, can be deemed an unfortunate mishap, an inconsequential accident unworthy of adjudication in the courts. These would have constituted a shocking turn of events to consider in the course of any week at all. But coming in the course of the same week in which the American justice system showed itself capable of convicting a veteran police officer who was deemed responsible for the death of a citizen in his custody, it was especially hard to swallow.

I am thinking, of course, of the decision this week by the Court de Cassation, France’s highest appeals court, to accept a lower court’s decision not to try Kobili Traoré, 31, for the 2017 murder of Sarah Halimi. Ordinarily, this would not be a subject for discussion at all. The crime was as horrific as it was brutal. The details themselves, including the identity of the perpetrator, are not in doubt: Traoré, a neighbor of Mme. Halimi, forced his way into her apartment and beat her so severely for a full thirty minutes before shoving her out a window of her third-story apartment that one of the few details that remain unresolved with respect to the crime is whether the victim was already dead when pitched out her own window to crash-land on the street or whether she died upon impact. Nor is the motive for the murder in any sort of doubt: Traoré, an immigrant to France from Mali in West Africa, was motivated, to quote his psychiatric evaluation, by a “frantic outburst of hate” directed towards his victim because of her Jewishness. As she shoved her out the window, he was heard to have called out the Arabic words Allahu akbar (“God is great”) and “I have killed the devil.” More specifically, it seems that Traoré was particularly enraged by the daily sight of the mezuzah affixed to the outer doorway of Mme. Halimi’s apartment, its mute presence reminding him daily that he was forced to live under the same roof as a Jewish woman.

So if neither the details of the crime nor the identity of its perpetrator are in doubt, why would the Court de Cassation have confirmed a lower court’s ruling forbidding the government from putting Kobili Traoré on trial? The answer, they said, is simple: according to French law, “a person is not criminally responsible [for his or her own deeds if those deeds were done while their doer was] suffering at the time of the event from [the kind of] psychic or neuropsychic disturbance that eliminate [the possibility of] discernment or control” and which that person might otherwise have brought to bear to rein in his or her behavior. For Americans, that too sounds like a familiar concept: we too do not put mentally ill people unable to distinguish right from wrong on trial. Indeed, the famous outcome of Durham v. United States in 1954 to the effect that a defendant can avoid conviction if it can be demonstrated convincingly that the “unlawful act was the product of mental disease or mental defect” could hardly be more well known in our country.

But Kobili was not mentally ill in the way the term is normally used. Instead, his mental state—including his rage against his victim because of her ethnicity and faith and his willingness to express that rage brutally and sadistically—had been brought on by himself through his intense use of cannabis. And so the court concluded that Mme. Halimi’s murderer could not stand trial for his deeds because he had self-stupefied before entering his victim’s apartment. The moral of the story: if you are planning to travel to France to murder someone, be sure to pack your bong along with your gun and your ammo!

It has been a difficult decade for the Jews of France. Many will remember the 2012 murder by an Islamic fanatic of three children and a teacher in a Jewish school in Toulouse. And it was just three years later, in 2015, that Amedy Coulibaly entered a kosher supermarket in Paris with the specific intention of murdering the four Jews he killed there because of his hatred of Jewish people. And then, just a year after Mme. Halimi was murdered, a different elderly woman, Mireille Knoll, was also murdered—she was stabbed to death—by a madman who targeted her specifically because of her Jewishness. Those cases, it is true, were duly prosecuted and the defendants found guilty. But, even so, this week’s decision by the Court de Cassation, in effect excusing Mme. Halimi’s murderer from prosecution because of his voluntarily, intentional, and—it turns out—exceptionally well-timed drug use, was something that struck many onlookers as bizarre and more than slightly menacing.

The responses to the court’s decision have been angry. One of the public prosecutors on the case referred to the court’s decision as a gift of “complete impunity” to the murderer. Shimon Samuels, director for international affairs of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, wrote that the court’s decision “potentially creates a precedent for all hate criminals to simply claim insanity or decide to smoke, snort, or inject drugs, or even [just] get drunk, before committing their crimes.” Even Emmanuel Macron, President of the French Republic, got into the act, calling for a swift change to the law to avoid the possibility of murderers going free after claiming that their own intentional drug use rendered them incapable of understanding the gravity or consequences of their own deeds. “Deciding to take narcotics and then going ‘like crazy’ should not in my eyes remove your criminal responsibility,” the President said clearly and unambiguously.

But future changes in the law will come too late to bring Sarah Halimi’s killer to justice. And that too seems to be universally understood by all concerned parties in France and abroad.

There is something logical and just about the basic notion that people unable to understand the consequences of their own actions should be treated kindly and mercifully by the criminal justice system. We treat children differently than adults in that regard, and for the same reason. As well we should, too—I don’t think anyone is arguing against that principle, which pertains not only in the U.S. and in France but in all enlightened countries of the world, nor would any normal person. But to extend that thought to include people who intentionally drug themselves to the point at which they can argue later on that they should not be held responsible for their own actions—that seems to me like the extension of a logical idea into the realm of true craziness. Kobili Traoré murdered Sarah Halimi because he found her existence as a Jewish woman offensive to the point of being unbearable. And, yes, he acted on his deeply anti-Semitic beliefs in a way that he might have not done had he not been high. But to conclude that the man should reasonably escape prosecution, conviction, and punishment because he willingly set himself outside the boundaries of culpability and responsibility through drug use—that seems to me to skate far too close to excusing the basic principle upon which all just criminal laws lies: that people who can tell right from wrong should be obliged to take responsibility for their own actions.

Sarah Halimi will rest in peace because she lived a decent, good life. She was the mother of four and a former physician, an older woman living a peaceful life in retirement. Why shouldn’t she rest in peace? But that her murderer will apparently legally avoid having to take any responsibility for her death—that seems to me to constitute an outcome wholly at variance with the facts of the case under consideration. I believe that justice was done for George Floyd this week in Minneapolis. I wasn’t sure how things would turn out, but the bottom line is that the basic principle that individuals, even police officers, must take responsibility for their own actions was upheld and affirmed. It’s too bad Paris isn’t in Hennepin County, Minnesota!