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“My lord?” Horatio hardly dared utter the words, staring in mute horror at Hamlet. Three bodies lay on the floor around them, and Hamlet too had been injured. Poisoned.
“Horatio…” Hamlet said, stumbling over to Horatio’s side. “I am slain.”
“Don't– Don't say that, my lord,” Horatio said, resting one hand on Hamlet’s shoulder to steady the prince. “You are not dead yet.”
“Laertes is poisoned by the same envenomed blade as I,” Hamlet said. “Mark him, Horatio. I am slain.”
Horatio wrapped both his arms around the prince and slowly sank to the floor, Hamlet’s weight dragging him down. Not deadweight, he couldn't permit himself to consider the prince deadweight.
Horatio rested a hand on Hamlet’s brow, brushing away the hair that had fallen across his face during his sparring match with Laertes. The prince’s skin was flushed and hot, and his eyes had gone hazy. Horatio found within himself an unjust well of rage at Hamlet for having been injured – for not having listened when Horatio warned him.
“We know not that Laertes is dead, my lord,” Horatio said, a little desperately.
“Marry, and I am in good health,” Hamlet replied with a raspy chuckle.
“Surely we have doctors capable of tending to you,” Horatio said.
“Find one, then, my good friend, and save me.” Breathing shallowly, Hamlet reached up to cup Horatio’s face. “I shall miss thee.”
Looking down at the prince – his sweet prince to whom he'd devoted years of his life – Horatio made a decision: Hamlet would not die that day. He had not power to fetch healers, nor money to pay them with, and was nought but a man, not a divinity with dominion o’er life and death, but Horatio would not let Hamlet die. If there was anything he could do, it was to afford him a noble death, not surrounded by the casualties of a horrible battle.
“No,” Horatio said. “No, you shan't. You shall not die, my lord.”
“Horatio,” Hamlet said. His voice was so tender, so patient, and his fingers trembled where they rested on Horatio’s cheek. “If I am to die, I would it were without formalities between us.”
Horatio, who could not bear to look into Hamlet’s pleading, clouded eyes any longer, gently set the prince down on the cold floor. He walked over to Laertes and, with an affected calm, checked his heartbeat. A faint, uneven pounding met him, and Horatio held himself back from crying out with joy. There was hope for Hamlet.
“He is alive,” Horatio said. “Just unconscious. Osric! Make yourself useful and get help.”
Osric, wide eyed and panicked as a hare caught in a trap, scrambled off to do as Horatio instructed. Horatio turned back to Hamlet, taking him back into his arms. He ought to wait for a doctor to arrive, but he needed to get the prince back to his room, out of the mausoleum that was the dining room.
“Laertes is alive?” Hamlet said, voice weak. His eyes were mostly shut, and he'd begun to sweat unnaturally. There was hope for him, but it was slim. “What about my mother?”
Looking at the queen, Horatio could say with certainty she was gone. He was no doctor, but he had seen enough of the dead to know when a person left the living.
“I don't know,” he lied. “I’m sure someone will be able to tell you, my lord.”
“Please, dear Horatio…” Hamlet took a shuddering breath, weak arms wrapping loosely around Horatio’s shoulders as he lifted the prince up into his hold. “Call me friend…”
“Of course,” Horatio said, but didn't obey the prince’s request. It felt too much like the wishes of a dying man, and Horatio refused to let Hamlet be a dying man. There was still vigour in him, and there was still hope for his continued life.
Horatio carefully carried Hamlet to his room and set him down on his bed, wrapping blankets around him. He dragged a chair over to the prince’s bedside, wishing he cared more about customs and rules. He had been fighting back ungodly thoughts for much of his life, and in regards to Hamlet they were particularly strong, but that didn't matter. Usually, Horatio would try to keep as much distance between them as the prince would permit, worried his feelings would concretise into actions, but if Hamlet was to die, Horatio dreaded that he feel isolated.
“I feel poorly, Horatio,” Hamlet said. There was a hint of his usual humorous spirit in his voice, but mainly he looked weary and ill.
“That is to be expected, my lord,” Horatio replied. He was fretting around the prince, checking his temperature and adjusting his blankets.
“Willst thou not let me die?” Hamlet asked tiredly.
“Not before your time.” Hamlet sighed, sinking into the blankets Horatio had clustered around him. “There is no point keeping me alive,” Hamlet confessed. He was staring up at the ceiling, chest rising and falling weakly. “I've done what I needed to do.”
“You had no need to do that, my lord.”
“Yes, I did.” Hamlet fell silent then, and Horatio wondered if he wasn't going to say more if he'd died so simply, with no fanfare or signs of warning. “My father told me to avenge him.”
“Your father could have done no such thing,” Horatio countered, wiping a cloth across Hamlet’s brow. Fear was growing steadily in him and he was wondering if it had really been wise to take the prince out of the dining hall, where he’d had Osric send help. Should he go back and wait to guide someone to Hamlet’s bedside? Should he take the prince back to the dining room? “He has been dead and buried for months now.”
“Dead, aye, but hardly buried,” Hamlet muttered darkly. “They left him to rot under the marriage bed.”
Horatio had known Hamlet for years, and had become uniquely talented at noticing when the prince was speaking in metaphor. There was a certain glint in his eye, a spark of intelligence Horatio would have to chase to its root to understand what the prince really meant. He knew few other people so clever, yet so utterly inept at making sense to a conversation partner. It had taken Horatio months to grasp a proper understanding of Hamlet’s linguistic fashions and quirks, but he viewed himself as the highest of scholars in the matter. In that moment, though, Horatio found nothing but blunt literalism to Hamlet’s words.
“You attended the funeral, my lord,” Horatio said tentatively. “The wedding may have followed short upon, but your father was payed his dues.”
“Swounds, should I have forgotten my own father’s burial?” Hamlet practically wailed. “Am I so distempered?”
“Methinks ’tis the poison, my lord.”
“Oh, mournful spirit,” Hamlet cried, ignoring Horatio. “How I have wronged thee.”
“You have wronged many.”
“Marry, 'twas never my intention. I was to avenge my father, never…”
Hamlet suddenly clapped a shaking hand over his mouth and curled in on himself before rolling to the side of the bed and retching. Horatio himself felt sick in sympathy, watching the prince convulse.
“Horatio,” Hamlet breathed, hardly audible from across the bed. “Horatio, my friend, I am to die. I know thou wouldst it were not so, but to deny the truth is madness.”
“My dear lord,” Horatio protested. “You have yet to even be seen by a doctor—”
“Does a man not know when his time is up?” Hamlet turned over to face Horatio, a pitiful expression on his face. “Laertes hath slain me, and I am to die this day. My purpose is completed; there is no longer reason for me.”
One fair day, in Wittenberg, Hamlet had fallen ill. He’d been flushed and sweaty, his eyes were hazy and he complained of a terrible headache. Horatio, knowing the prince well enough to understand what he wanted, stayed at his side through the worst of the illness. It had been a miserable slog for both Hamlet and himself but the prince, eloquent as ever, had never failed to make Horatio laugh by assuring him that he was to die from a simple fever. In many ways, his poisoned state reminded Horatio of that fever that had gripped him. It was no longer funny though, that Hamlet proclaimed himself a dead man.
There had been too much death, since the late king Hamlet had been murdered. Horatio had never had a personal relationship with death; his family was still alive and well, far away from Elsinore castle and the gruesome tragedy that had unfolded within its walls. King Hamlet’s death had set off a horrible chain of events that, Horatio thought, could have been stopped at any point. If only Hamlet had spoken to him frankly from the start, if only Horatio had realised he ought to step in, if only Claudius hadn't felt such a need to survey his nephew's every move, if only everything had happened differently. There was a world in which Hamlet’s confrontation of his uncle with the Murder of Gonzago was the end of it all. There was even a world in which Claudius’ greed hadn't gotten the better of him, and the late king Hamlet still held the throne.
Horatio held his prince’s trembling hands in his and considered everything he knew of the calamitous turning of Fate’s wheel that had led them there. Maybe it had been inevitable, this grim ending. Hamlet was not one to let things go, nor was he one to address things directly. Thinking over everything Horatio knew, he couldn't imagine Hamlet doing anything else than what he'd done. He felt rage bubble up in him, but pressed it down. It would do no good to get angry at the prince, frustration could not undo what was done.
“Thy purpose was never to kill thy father, Hamlet,” Horatio said softly. Hamlet was going to die, and Horatio understood there was nothing he could do. He could get as many healers into the prince’s room as would fit through the door, he could adjust his blankets until the sun fizzled out, he could check his pulse over and over until his fingers were calloused, none of it would stop Mors from taking what he was owed.
“There is no point debating such matters,” Hamlet said, a smile on his face. “What's done is done.”
“I suppose so.”
“I fear death,” Hamlet confessed. “I find that now that I am dying, I no longer want to die.”
“That is only natural,” Horatio said, holding Hamlet’s hand with careful tenderness. “We, the living, must fear what we cannot know.”
“I have sought to end my life on multiple occasion,” Hamlet said, voice hushed.
“I know,” Horatio replied.
“I don't want to die anymore.”
“I know.”
They lapsed into silence, Horatio taking the moment to observe the prince more carefully. He looked… bad. There were few other words for it. Looking at his prince, usually so lively and keen, lying on his deathbed made Horatio’s stomach turn. He took a deep breath and centered his attention on their connected hands, trying to soothe Hamlet’s shivering. His skin was too warm, yet he still trembled as if he were outside on a crisp night.
“Can I admit something to thee?” Hamlet said. There was something almost tentative in the way he spoke, and a strange look in his eye that Horatio wasn't sure he could solely attribute to the poison.
“Why, of course.”
“I love thee,” Hamlet said simply, and Horatio froze in place. “I love thee more than friend, more than family. I have for years now, and I will until my dying breath.” The ailing prince managed a weak laugh at his small joke, but his face was etched with lines of worry.
“Why art thou telling me this?” Horatio breathed.
“I don't want to die with regrets.”
“That was thy sole regret?”
“I suppose.”
Horatio didn't know how to feel. He'd been repressing feelings similar to those Hamlet was describing for long enough that he wasn't even sure when he'd started to do so. He stared helplessly at the prince, who looked up at him with hazy eyes and an anxious expression.
“I…” Horatio attempted, the words catching in his throat. Hamlet had the benefit of impending doom; anything he said would get taken to the grave with him. Horatio would have to continue to live his life with what happened next weighing on his shoulders. “I don't know what you mean, my lord.”
Hamlet let out a long sigh, his lips curling into a small smile. He pushed himself upwards with a shaking arm and used Horatio’s grip on his hands to pull the pair of them closer together. Hamlet rested his forehead against Horatio’s cheek, breaths thin and worrying. His skin was hot and sweaty, and the touch only made Horatio feel more conflicted. Before he could say anything, the prince pressed a chaste kiss against his cheek before falling back onto the bed, almost panting. He'd used up far too much of his dwindling energy doing that, and all Horatio could do was stare in mute indecision.
“Go get a doctor, wouldst thee, Horatio?” Hamlet said. He then lurched back over the side of the bed, vomiting more onto the cold ground. “I'd rather a medical man confirm my death.”
Horatio nodded hesitantly, stepping out of Hamlet’s room. The sound of the prince’s gasping breaths and retching followed him down the hallway, and the places Hamlet had touched his face seemed to burn. He needed to get help, some kind of doctor. He couldn't just let Hamlet die without having done anything.
When Horatio next stepped into Hamlet’s room, the prince was dead. He didn't cry until well after the funeral. Horatio crouched beside a royal tomb and confessed his reciprocal affections in a hushed tone. It was far too late, of course.