15-minute fic (Romeo and Juliet)
Written for Word #156 at 15_minute_fic.
Title: "Peace, peace!"
Prompt: peace
Fandom: Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare)
Characters: Mercutio
Rating: G
Word count: 223
"Peace, peace, Mercutio, peace!"
He's heard it before, too many times to count. Peace: an injunction, a command for silence: more polite than "shut up thy face." But if you really think about it--and Mercutio is always thinking about words and their meanings, if only the better to construct puns with--it's strange, isn't it? That peace should mean a lack of sound and noise and words and speech, when it also means a lack of hostility, a lack of turbulent emotion, a state of good will between persons.
What Romeo doesn't realize as the word passes easily from his lips--he's never been guilty of thinking too hard about things--is that Mercutio never feels more at peace than among sound and words and talking. He's much less confused by an elaborate conversation than by the complicated language of looks and meaningful silences. His mind is never clearer than when he's set it to improvise a long speech like this one. And he loves the easy peace between himself and Romeo in the thick of their verbal fencing matches--which are, after all, full of good will and free of any real hostility.
So when Romeo continues "Thou talk'st of nothing!" he thinks about that too hard, too, and reckons that it's true--but talking is how he's always found peace.
Title: "Peace, peace!"
Prompt: peace
Fandom: Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare)
Characters: Mercutio
Rating: G
Word count: 223
"Peace, peace, Mercutio, peace!"
He's heard it before, too many times to count. Peace: an injunction, a command for silence: more polite than "shut up thy face." But if you really think about it--and Mercutio is always thinking about words and their meanings, if only the better to construct puns with--it's strange, isn't it? That peace should mean a lack of sound and noise and words and speech, when it also means a lack of hostility, a lack of turbulent emotion, a state of good will between persons.
What Romeo doesn't realize as the word passes easily from his lips--he's never been guilty of thinking too hard about things--is that Mercutio never feels more at peace than among sound and words and talking. He's much less confused by an elaborate conversation than by the complicated language of looks and meaningful silences. His mind is never clearer than when he's set it to improvise a long speech like this one. And he loves the easy peace between himself and Romeo in the thick of their verbal fencing matches--which are, after all, full of good will and free of any real hostility.
So when Romeo continues "Thou talk'st of nothing!" he thinks about that too hard, too, and reckons that it's true--but talking is how he's always found peace.