[OOC] Fic! ... Part one of it!

[retribution]

When he entered the room, it was dark, save for the faint glow coming from the lamp. His mother lay in bed, a cloth tightly bound around her eyes ("Remember, your mother is not most mothers," Camillo whispered in his ear before he pushes him, "Remember that and be grateful for your existence"). He could hear the sound of her breathing as if it was his own and he struggled with his desire to pull the curtains back.

Instead, he walked to her side and bowed, "Lady Volumnia."

She breathed out a query, "Who are you?"

"Tybalt." (it was what a a servant called him, as he brushed against her. "You brave thing, one of the brave few you live. A Tybalt." The name stuck and he decided to keep it, if only to spite Camillo)

"Are your hands warm, Tybalt?" Her voice was so soft, so fragile that her sentences trailed away to nothingness so quickly that he strained his ears to remember it. He looked down at his hands and said, "No. Will they do?"

"Give them to me," and he did, letting her cling onto them, her nails scraping his skin, "Ahh, I know your hands. They were his hands too."

Tybalt, to his credit, does not pull away.

"You're the monster's son," she breathed out, still in love, still in anger, "How he cursed us both!"

"Lady Volumnia..." He should say mother, but Camillo said no, she will kill you at that sound, still his heart ached to say it.

"My son, the devil's son, my only son," she said, rubbing her thumbs over his flesh, "Will you save me?"

No, he thought to himself, we're both beyond saving now. But out loud he said, "Of course Lady Volumnia."

It was a promise of sorts.

---

Camillo always treated him with care. Neglectful of the little details, the simmering remarks that Tybalt hoarded deep within himself, but careful enough to remind Tybalt of his place. It would be so easy to die here, as he eat his dinner at the dining table. Camillo reminded him of that.

"Why are you alive?"

"Because I am your insurance," Tybalt repeated dully. Inside, he seethed.

"Who saw fit to keep you alive?"

"You did." And may it cross your soul, he thought.

Camillo nodded, happy to see such acquiesce, "You are a good boy."

Tybalt said nothing. Later, he smuggled a knife under his clothes.

---

When his mother died, Camillo and he stood together outside her door in a fit of mourning and camaraderie. Camillo told him something petty, saying that he always loved her. Tybalt replied, "If you did, you would have never let her live."

Unable to answer that, Camillo left, shamed. Tybalt pressed his hand against the door, to sense his mother's breathing, but the silence of the house deafened him. In shame, he left too.

---

At fifteen, with his satchel of money and dinner knives he stole every day in Camillo's house, he left.