Chapter Text
Part One:
“Purpose is oft the slave to memory.” – scene two, act one
Months earlier:
Horatio glanced at Hamlet from the corner of his eye. The wind swept over the long fields, touching the prince’s tousled hair with a soft hand, brushing over the crown of orange flowers on his dark head; Hamlet stood with his eyes shut, relaxing into the caress. The dark circles under his eyes were faded by the golden sunset. He almost looked – what was the word? – rested. At peace.
Hamlet opened his eyes and smiled at Horatio, such joy and safety in his eyes that if he could Horatio would have whispered a magic word and frozen the moment, right here: time enough to stand with the prince of denmark on a cliff and breathe in the crashing grace of the sea and the trees and the closeness of each other. But Hamlet looked away, and the moment broke.
“Did you sleep last night, Horatio?”
Horatio bowed his head. “Yes, my Lord.”
Hamlet gazed at him with that eagle eye, and Horatio cleared his throat and amended his statement. “I feel no need of sleep, my dear lord.”
Hamlet let it pass, turning towards the cliffside and the wide boundless sea, burned golden by the setting sun. His face was in shadow again.
Horatio had not slept last night. He had given up on sleep, strangely restless, and was pacing the palace halls when he heard the soft cry from Hamlet's room. None of the guards had heard – was it because he had been straining to hear that very sound? He had dashed to Hamlet’s room, slipped through the door and to the bed where Hamlet thrashed in the tangled sheets.
The sound of begging made Horatio want to die.
It felt like someone was twisting a dagger through his chest, carving out his heart and spilling it onto the floor.
Hamlet clutched at Horatio’s shirt, eyes snapping open in a fervor of desperation. His voice was dry and hollow. “Please, Horatio,” he pleaded, words spilling over each other. “Please, please, please don’t leave me –”
“My lord, I’m here!” Horatio gathered Hamlet into his arms as the prince clung to him. “Sweet lord! Can you hear me? I’m here, I won’t leave, my dear Hamlet, I’m here –”
It felt like a dream; the prince of denmark sobbing wildly into his shoulder, hands slick with terror, the shadows dancing across the royal room. Horatio traced his hands across Hamlet’s back, murmuring nothings into the prince’s ear. I’m here. I’m here. I won’t leave. I’m here. Horatio would have said anything, done anything at all, just to stop the sound of his name being ripped from Hamlet’s throat.
Hamlet grasped his shoulders and looked him straight in the eyes. “Horatio,” he croaked. “I think – I think I’m going mad.”
Horatio looked at him wordlessly, at the frenzied eyes and cracked lips. “My lord,” he whispered. “I’m here.”
I’m here, he had said when Hamlet had raged over his mother’s second marriage. I’m here, he had thought desperately when the prince of Denmark watched his father’s ghost stroll towards the clifftops and laughed, saying I do not set my life at a pin’s fee. I’m here. I’m here. I’m here.
Hamlet looked at him as though seeing him for the first time. “Horatio?” he whispered, his voice cracking. “Please don’t leave me.”
Once, Horatio had overhead a doctor say that the human body only held so much blood. Eventually, it would run out. Bleed dry. Veins empty, heart kissing the soul goodbye.
Now, Horatio knew it was a lie.
You could bleed, and bleed, and never run out.
He was surprised his shirt had not been sodden crimson by Hamlet’s words.
“I’ll stay as long as you want me, lord.”
Hamlet had fallen asleep with his head on Horatio’s shoulder, face peaceful at last in sleep. Horatio had stayed, frozen, the prince of denmark in his arms, watching the slow sunrise creep across the room.
The sun touched Elsinore full of shadows.
Now, on the cliffside, Horatio could see the weary marks beneath his eyes.
Hamlet brushed his hand over the tall flowers, picking them idly. Butterfly weeds, horatio knew; Ophelia had loved the language of flowers as children.
A bell echoed across the meadow. “The farmer calls the royal pigs of Elsinore,” Hamlet commented ironically. “Time for dinner.”
He pushed the crumpled bouquet into Horatio’s hands without making eye contact.
“My lord,” Horatio said softly, “last night…”
Hamlet looked over the fields. “I am haunted by bad dreams.” He glanced at Horatio, a frown creasing his forehead. “But after you came. I slept peacefully.”
Horatio moved to say something – what, he had no idea – but before he could speak Hamlet was already strolling towards the castle, whistling under his breath.
“Come on, Horatio!” he called back. “We must attend the royal sow, my mother!”
Horatio glanced at the orange flowers in his hands. Hamlet’s favorite flowers. He had made them all crown after crown when they were children. The four inseparable spirits: Ophelia and Laertes and Horatio and Hamlet.
Horatio knew what they meant in the little book Ophelia had kept.
Butterfly weed: be warned.
Let me go.
Horatio had never been one to leave.
And now, he was watching Hamlet walk away.
“When sorrows come, they come not single spies. But in battalions!”
afterwards:
First, he was frozen.
Blood, so much blood, Hamlet’s blood slick with need and want and desperate love – the silence ringing in Horatio’s ears, again and again – numb lips tracing the proper replies to fortinbras – his whole body had become a dreadful heartbeat.
He was frozen as he stumbled away; he was frozen as Fortinbras’s men ran over the castle, exclaiming over the bodies; he was frozen as he mumbled some excuse and stumbled a path his mind knew well even if his feet did not.
He lay in Hamlet’s bed, curled beneath the sheets, and tried to breathe.
So damn frozen.
Hamlet hadn’t been frozen, had he? A bonfire! A conflagration! He had raged and laughed and cried and screamed like the cosmos was dying. (his cosmos had been). And Horatio had stood there.
God, he wanted to scream, too. But he had forgotten how.
He rocked back and forth in the empty bed. Hamlet – bright crown of flowers, sudden smile on those hard lips – the tilt of his head thrown back to the wide sky – heart of my heart, Horatio – there was a kind of fighting; there’s a divinity – stop, give me the cup – let me go, let me go, let me go –
“LEAVE ME THEN!” Horatio cried out, the pain in his chest exploding like the meteors he had watched with Hamlet. ‘LEAVE ME! GO! JUST –”
Don’t leave me with the pieces I’m so good at loving. With the warnings I drank down like the sweetest con. With the pain I only know how to hold like a knife. With the knife I only know how to use on myself.
Hamlet died in pieces. But he left pieces behind, too.
First, he was frozen.
Then, he raged.
Would the universe deny him the ghost of Hamlet? Claudius had come back for unfinished business. Was he, Horatio, not that? Flatly unfinished? He raged with the desperate anger of sadness, hating it, hating everything, hating the vase he hurled on the flagstone, hating his hands for breaking it.
Horatio did not break things. He fixed them. In his dreams, he had more chances: he walked beside Hamlet in the graveyard and this time, when the prince admired the graves and whispered to what base uses may we return, Horatio! he shut his eyes and whispered t’were to consider it too curiously…and the prince turned and met his eyes and it was enough, it was enough, because the beat of Horatio’s heart was stronger than the beautiful graves….
The dreams always ended in blood.
It would have been easier if Hamlet had just died. Fizzled out. Left like a bright spark, instead of a volcano. It would have been easier if Horatio’s hands weren’t burned. It would have been easier if Horatio hadn’t seen the fire and greeted the burns like old friends, emblems of a proud crest. It would have been.
Hamlet left ghost after ghost after ghost. They lived everywhere: in the meadow, in the courtyard, in the places he had seen and the world he had not.
And with all these ghosts crowding for company, surely he must have left something. There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow…he had known, Horatio thought feverishly, ripping the prince’s room apart. Something, anything, some sign to show he had not forgotten Horatio even as he reached towards death. Somewhere for the ghosts to live. Something with a purpose. Something to show that loving Horatio had not been an accident. Was there not a providence in the birth, too?
He found the letter in the bedside drawer.
My dear Horatio, it read, and Horatio felt a spark of anger. It was all true. He had carved out his own heart, tucked it in Hamlet’s pocket. He that thou knowest thine – but Horatio had never known. He had hoped. Hoped in the graveyard, hoped on the cliffside, hoped in the meadow and the palace and the bedroom, hoped until he was drunk on the sick chance of his name. And it hadn’t been enough.
My dear Horatio. I hope this finds you well.
He set the letter down, clenching his fists, well? well? Did Hamlet think he was the only one who could not sleep? Did groans haunt Hamlet’s dreams? Did he wake in the night, heart pounding, still hearing the last broken gasp of Horatio’s name? Hamlet hoped he was sleeping better without fearing for the prince of denmark’s dreams, but what of the Horatio who had paced the halls, waiting? And was still waiting. Still hoping.
But there was a way.
Because it was a mistake, wasn’t it? goodnight , sweet prince – but there was a morning, wasn’t there? A sunrise? A second chance.
Horatio knew where the gravediggers sold the skulls of the dead.
It was the off day. He went out, into the bright air and clean sun, past the graves, into the village where he knew the man lived.
He knocked on the door, letter burning in his pocket.
The gravedigger squinted at him. “‘Ello?”
“Good morning,” Horatio said pleasantly. “I’d like to see the necromancer.”