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It had been a little over a year since the duel.
Since Hamlet died.
Horatio had done as he had been asked. He told Hamlet’s story and he moved on.
Except he didn’t do the latter. He hadn’t gone a day without grieving, without missing his dear friend. He grieved not only for Hamlet, but for the now gone opportunity to sing words left unsung.
How he longed to see the prince once more. He longed to see him real and standing before him, not in his dreams, where he dwelled only in memories.
Horatio was sitting in bed. He wasn’t sleeping, even though it was the dead of night. Instead, he was crying.
The grief weighed heavily on him. His throat hurt, his eyes were red and brimming with tears as he silently sobbed all alone in an empty room (save for himself). He missed Hamlet. He missed being by his side, he missed listening to his endless monologues, he missed him . He could still hear his voice and smell his skin sometimes, like an echo of a memory slipping through his fingers.
“Horatio?”
He didn’t look up. He was accustomed to still hearing the prince’s voice when he lay in bed at night, when he was replaying the duel in his head, or wishing for a chance to say how he felt. It haunted him.
“Horatio?” repeated the voice, more persistent this time.
He sighed, giving into his delusions. Horatio peeked his head over his arms, not expecting to see anything other than a dark room.
He certainly did not expect to see Hamlet.
Or at least, the ghost of Hamlet.
“My lord…?” he whispered, voice softer than velvet and quivering with disbelief. He sat up, half-crouched on the bed, and reached out tentatively, as if to touch the prince’s incorporeal body before drawing back.
The Ghost stepped towards him, with an odd sort of delicateness in the likes of a cat. His appearance had changed very little, the only difference being his skin was many shades paler. His face was perhaps more gaunt, his hair thinner, but it was still the man whom Horatio adored.
Horatio gaped at the sight. His eyes were glazed with what could have been sadness, or it could have been joy as he stared at the prince. Not even Horatio himself quite knew.
“Is’t truly thou?” His voice came out a hoarse murmur, his throat raw from silent crying.
Hamlet gave no reply, instead sitting down on the bed next to Horatio. Then, after one too many heartbeats of deafening silence, “Forsooth, Horatio.”
“Art thou a ghost, liketh thine father?”
“Oh, Horatio!” wailed Hamlet. “How I’ve been condemned to an eternity of wandering through the night, trapped in a twisted Limbo! I seek for what I do not know, though I do know that I seek something.”
He looked at Horatio, eyes full of pain.
“What is it that I seek, Horatio?” he pleaded.
Horatio’s heart was filled with sorrow for the price he loved so. He wanted to be able to laugh and cry and be with Hamlet, both of them in the same realm, unseparated by corporeality. And though he would never admit it, a part of him wanted to kiss the prince. He wanted so terribly to sing what was left quiet when the words trailed off on his tongue.
He wasn’t quite sure if he should fear the prince’s ghost, but he didn’t. He could never fear Hamlet, even if he tried.
“I do not know, my lord,” he responded quietly. “Perhaps closure?”
“Of what?”
Horatio shook his head.
“Didst thou grieve my death, Horatio?” he questioned, voice wavering. His eyes bored steely holes into Horatio.
“My lord!” cried Horatio, almost offended at the question. “Not a day hath passed that mine grief for thee hath not weighed like stones in my soul! There hath been many a times wherein mine life hast almost been taken by mine own hands in grief for thee! My lord, how my lov—” He cut himself before saying something that he could regret.
Hamlet gave, yet again, no response. Instead, he stood up and began walking around the room. This time, Horatio could hear him pacing, as if agitated or troubled by something.
“My lord?” Horatio said tentatively.
The prince didn’t respond, instead stopping and staring at him for what felt like an eternity. He murmured something so softly that even if Horatio could hear it, it would sound like a quiet mess of syllables.
“Didst thou love me?” he asked finally.
“Yes, my lord.”
“No, Horatio,” said Hamlet. “In the likeness of how a man loves a woman. Did thou love me in that way?”
It was Horatio’s turn to go silent. He didn’t want to respond.
“Is this what suggestion you attempted at when you said that I desire closure?” pressed the Ghost.
“Yes, my lord…” replied Horatio, refusing to meet his gaze.
“And wert thou correct?”
Horatio shrugged. “Tis not my question to answer.”
“But thine question to answer is whether thou didst love me,” Hamlet contended. “Didst thou?”
Horatio nodded slightly. “I didst, my lord. And I doth still, even in thy death.”
“Tis the closure I sought…” Hamlet whispered. “To know that thou whom I loved loves me so.” He smiled, Horatio mirroring him.
Hamlet glanced out the window and sighed, his sweet breath tainted by wistful longing and a hint of sadness. Horatio followed his gaze and realized that the sun was creeping over the horizon.
“I haven’t much time, Horatio,” he said sadly.
“My lord, might I inquire of something?”
The prince nodded, returning to the bedside to sit by Horatio (this time possibly a hair closer, though who really knew?).
“Why didst thou wait before visiting I?” he asked, almost afraid to hear the Ghost’s answer.
Hamlet shifted slightly, almost as if he was embarrased to answer. “I feared that thou would not know me any longer. That thou wouldst see me as a haunting phantom, or a new imp for the Devil. No longer as your sweet prince, but as a creature of shadow and darkness.”
Horatio let out a small laugh. “My lord, I could ne'er see thou as a monster. Thou art not one, nor any sort of hellspawn thou might claim to be.” He smiled. “Forever shall you be my sweet prince, even in death.”
Hamlet’s smile widened as he turned away, a tinge of rosy red, love’s proper hue, gracing his face. “The sun hath nearly risen,” he noted. Bars of sunlight were peeking through the window, painting the floor with stripes of light.
It would have been beautiful, had it not meant that the prince had to leave.
Hamlet sighed. “I must make haste, Horatio, for my time here hath passed.”
“Wilt thou visit in the morrow, my lord?” asked Horatio, understanding.
“And all the morrows that are to come,” replied Hamlet. He reached out and cupped Horatio’s cheek in his hand (to the best of his ability, even though ghosts are incorporeal).
Horatio nodded, the edges of his lips tugged into a sorrowful smile as the ghost of the prince faded away.
Tis how it must be , Horatio thought to himself. But I fear not, for one day, we shall be reunited, together in death.
For now, though, he would make do with the hopefully nightly visits from the Ghost.