Chapter Text
Horatio had been grieving Hamlet from the day they met.
The moment he looked into those eyes, an incessant voice in his head began to gnash at his brain stem.
“He won’t stick around.”
“This will never last.”
“You’re going to lose this.”
And Horatio knew it was right. He could see a thousand ends before it even began. Hamlet would lose interest, or grow to hate him, or circumstances would tear them apart. He felt the pain of each of these imagined losses like a razor blade in his core.
Even as he and Hamlet grew closer, spending long hours in the library, or wandering the campus in those dark German nights, the grief was there. A sword of Damocles hanging over every beautiful moment.
A flash of a crooked grin.
“You can’t hold him forever.”
The high chirping of his laugh, the real one, the one that only Horatio got to hear.
“The end is coming.”
A kiss under the stars, feeling the bite of the cold winter air and the warmth of Hamlet’s breath on his face.
“Enjoy this while it lasts.”
~~~
When he watched the train roll out of the station, carrying his love far away from Wittenberg, far away from him, the voice crowed its vindication.
“I told you so.”
Horatio wanted to crumble, wanted to curl into a ball under the weight of the loss that he had always known was coming. The son of a king had greater concerns than some pathetic, pining schoolboy. For Hamlet, Wittenberg was a diversion, his time with Horatio, a brief dalliance. Now he would return to Denmark, and no doubt assume the crown he had been born into, leaving the past months far behind him.
“You have been discarded. You are being forgotten. You will be alone.”
The grief embraced him like an old friend.
Alone…
Hamlet was alone.
He had let him get on that train, eyes distant, shoulders slumped under the unbearable weight of loss and responsibility, and Horatio had let him go alone.
No.
Hamlet needed him. Hamlet loved him. How cruel to place these masks of indifference and disdain upon his love, when the prince’s words had only ever professed sincerity and devotion.
Horatio shook off the mantle of despair that had settled on him. The end would come, yes, but he would not sit idly by and accept its advance.
The moment he could scrounge together the money, he bought a train ticket to Elsinore.
~~~
“He doesn’t want to see you.”
Horatio strode towards the banquet hall with Marcellus and Barnardo, ignoring the hiss of his worst fears with every step.
It doesn’t matter. I want to see him. I need to see him.
But as the stately doors swung open, his self-doubts crescendoed into a cacophonous din that he couldn’t ignore.
“He doesn’t remember you. You’re nothing to him.”
Yet as Hamlet looked up, his tear-filled eyes sparkled with light. Not just the light of recognition, but the light of joy, of gratitude.
Of love.
“Hail to your lordship.” The practiced words fell out weakly.
Hamlet was in Horatio’s arms before he could finish his sentence.
“I am glad to see you well, Horatio.” The prince whispered the words between strained breaths, before observing that they were not alone and painfully extricating himself from Horatio’s embrace. “Or I do forget myself.”
The conversation continued, but Horatio’s mind was focused on the warmth of Hamlet’s body still lingering on his skin.
Whatever ends may come, this is real. This is now.
The call came quietly.
“You’re going to lose him.”
Horatio didn’t listen.
~~~
Hamlet was in his arms again, but there was no warmth.
The prince lay limp in his grasp and Horatio just stared.
He waited for the voice to sing victorious in his mind.
But for the first time in over a year:
Horatio’s mind was silent.