Title: Unwritten
Fandom: Hamlet
Rating: PG
Length: ~350 words
Content notes: Horatio, afterwards.
Author notes: n/a
Summary: Horatio, at the moment when his friend's story becomes history.



History is always written by the winners; or, more accurately, by the winners’ scribes, by those left alive after the battles have been fought.

The prince’s death, that last, desparate brush of lips, is still raw and fresh within Horatio when Fortinbras sends him to clear Hamlet’s rooms.

It’s not like Horatio hasn’t been here before – in this room, in this bed – but it’s different now. He's walked into what remains of the life of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, and it’s up to Horatio which parts of it make it to the history books.

It's silent here now, and cold. The fire went out some time ago and no one has replenished it. Horatio wraps his coat tighter around himself and lights a candle.

It's not a job he wishes on anyone, but it's the least he can do for Hamlet, now that it's too late for anything else. He doesn't plan on staying here tonight, but he wants to at least make a start; survey the territory, as it were.

He sets the candle down near a corner of Hamlet's desk and sighs as he sits down in front of it.

Hamlet has never been one to keep anything in order, in his head or outside of it, and so his desk is buried under a mountain of paper.

It feels wrong reading Hamlet's letters, a line he would never have crossed during Hamlet's lifetime. They're not personal documents any more, they're a means of constructing Hamlet's story. He's tasked Horatio with this himself, and Horatio considers himself bound in love and duty, but now he is leafing through page after page, he's not sure he can do this.

It's one thing feeling like the ground is forever shifting, and that if you only hold on to him tightly enough, for long enough, it'll stop doing that and things will be certain. It's quite another to find this is how he always was - with Ophelia, with Laertes, with his mother.

He ends up lighting a fire. After all, he is the one writing this story.