Title: Scapegoat
Fandom: Hamlet
Rating: G
Length: 800 words
Pairings, Characters: Hamlet/Ophelia (implied), Laertes
Content notes: violence, grief/coping with death of a parent, canon-typical sadness
Author notes: A different version of their shared past.
Summary: Ophelia and Laertes' mother is dead. Neither of them have great coping mechanisms.


The house goes quiet after the death of their mother. Polonius and Laertes shut themselves off at opposite ends of it and leave Ophelia in between. She knows why they've stopped looking her in the eye, but neither of them has asked her what it's like to be the one who needs to look at her mother's face every time she passes a mirror.

Hamlet, over in the castle, is lonely too, and it draws them together, two hollow creatures who play children's games because that's what they've always done. He makes her laugh, and more importantly, he makes eye contact.

She misses her brother like a limb, but she reminds herself that it was his choice, not hers, to cut the thread between them.

***

Laertes goes to Hamlet too, but for different reasons. They fence, because that's what they've always done, but there is a bitterness underneath Laertes' movements now, fueled by the thought that Hamlet still has both his parents, and even if they die, he will not lose really, because he will be king, and he will still, always, have more and be better at everything than Laertes ever can be.

He parries each of Hamlet's blows with more force than is strictly required, blade zipping through the air too fast to see, and he only stops when Hamlet cries out.

There's a cut on Hamlet's cheek, blood trickling out like red tears. Laertes stares, mesmerised, as Hamlet covers it with his hand and smears blood across his face. He looks at Laertes as though he's a stranger all of a sudden.

Laertes drops his gaze and his blade and walks off into the changing room without another look or word. He can't say he's sorry, because he isn't, and he's not okay, *she* is missing, how dare she.
His kit hits the floor piece by piece as he strips down. He gets down to the vest and wishes he could take off one more layer, his skin is too hot for him and too tight and carries too many memories he can't shoulder.

The shower is hot and unrelenting and brings marginal relief. It burns the worst of it, numbs it for a while, just enough for him to feel something other than a gaping hole inside himself.

It's not good, but it's okay, better than anything has been in the last few weeks, and he stays until the hot water runs out and he has to leave, has to dry off and get dressed and face the rest of the day and the day after that. Age will wear him down, like it did his father, he thinks, he will start accepting things simply because the alternative is too exhausting.

Hamlet is gone by the time he gets out of the shower and Laertes doesn't know if that's good or bad. It's good, because he can just get going, but it's bad because he'll have to face him again some time and he'll have to carry around whatever it is that made him cut Hamlet, and it's not something he ever cared for in the first place.

He can't be alone right now, he hates his own company. Ophelia always had a knack for fixing things like this, and probably he should go to her, maybe somehow these two weak creatures they are can dredge up strength from somewhere and be something, anything, that amounts to something.

He finds her not at home. There's a place he knows she could be, a place she probably is in right now, having fun, laughing and God knows what else. He can't let himself think about it too much or he'll be torn apart.

She finds him slumped next to her door with bloody knuckles and teary streaks on his face.

She can't say she's sorry, because she isn't, and what she sees in his eyes when he looks up at her terrifies her. There are words she can say, but she gets a locked door between them before she even contemplates the thought of speaking to him.

She can't get any sense out of him, no matter how she tries.

***

He can't speak, can't say anything to her. He can't even yell because she's his sister and he loves her more than anything; still, even, after all of that. He listens to her voice through her door - she's afraid of him now and there's nothing he can do about that, because she's right. He takes his anger out on the floor, on the wall, until his bones start aching more than he can bear.

"I'm leaving," he finally says, and he means it; he is meant to leave in a week or two but he'll take himself away before that, contain himself somehow, until he can get to be somewhere else; anywhere but here.

***

Ophelia breathes a sigh of relief when she finally hears him leave. Something is happening to him that is not in her power to fix.

***

He thought he couldn't carry this around but as he limps away to his own room, he feels he was mistaken. He can carry all this and a great deal more.

He says goodbye to no one on the morning of his departure.