It's a love story

Four years.

It had been four years since Romeo met Juliet Capulet, and here he was. Still alive, still much more well than he deserved. The girl who had been his wife was fading in his memory, and he wished some part of him didn't see that as a good thing.

He didn't often go to Mass in Japan, but if there were ever a reason for it, this anniversary would serve. The ancient words, the rhythm of it, the incense -- all of it comforted him.

On his way out, he lit two candles: one for Juliet, one for Mercutio.

He hoped somewhere, they had forgiven him.

[OOC: NFB due to distance. Open after he leaves the chapel for phone calls, the girlfriend, etc., if you're willing to deal with a Shakespearean in mourning.]

Romeo dreamed of Juliet often. Sometimes she kissed him tenderly. Sometimes she slapped his face. Always he awakened from these dreams with a melancholy settled over him.

When he first woke up Monday, then, he thought he'd had an unusually long and vivid version of such a dream.

Nay, that wasn't so, he knew, as soon as he sat up. He wouldn't feel so sick were it only a dream. And, distracted by his own life, he'd not heard radio or noticed the other oddities around town.

The truth to him, then, was simple: He'd broken Juliet's heart. She'd come back, against so many odds and across so many months, and he'd been unable to offer her the love he had once promised.

He wasn't leaving his bed.

[OOC: Closed door, open post.]

It had been three hard days of travel, and Romeo had sold near everything save his clothing and his gun to raise the costs of the trip, desperately hoping he would do something that was worth it. He wasn't sure how, but somehow everyone in Italy could tell he was an outsider, and charged him correspondingly higher prices. And then there had been the confusion over who, exactly, he wanted. Montague, it turned out, was French, an Ellis Island change; the family name in Italy was Montecchi.

After all of it, though, Romeo was here at what he assumed had to be his great-great-grandfather's home. He squinted at it; it seemed awfully ... small, smaller than he had imagined, and there was a pen of squealing pigs right next to the stucco farmhouse. Nothing smelled terribly good.

But all greatness starts somewhere, and Romeo had to assume this was where part of his family's story started. Tentatively, he knocked on the wooden front door.

( Cut for preplay )

[OOC: NFB, NFI, and a very special thanks to the_merriest for being my Angelo. OOC = love.]