Title: Have You Got The Map?
Fandom: Hamlet
Rating: G
Word Count: 440
Characters/Ships: Horatio& Ophelia
Notes: Ophelia lives! AU Counting towards Diary/Together/Confession.
Summary: Horatio and Ophelia talk.



Horatio had always kept a diary, but he'd never thought that one day, it would contain something of the history of Denmark. Much of his earlier diaries had been taken up with hormonal teenage confessions that morphed into the realisation of his sexuality, and then once university started, the entries became shorter as time was precious and essays didn't write themselves.

Hamlet made an appearance late in the diary, and then proceeded to take up every single line of it.

He felt exposed, naked almost, as he handed the battered notebook to Ophelia. He had managed to hide her from the Queen's spies and she was calm now, although still clearly grieving for her father's loss.

He felt he owed it to her to explain how he had entered this story in the first place, but he was too exhausted to explain, so he thought the diary would do just as well. He sat with her in silence while she read.

"You must love him very much," she said eventually, and Horatio could but nod.
"I never knew how to be without him either," she said and put a hand on his forearm.
"I'm sorry," he said and didn't quite know what he was apologising for. Not doing enough, not protecting Hamlet enough, maybe being here in the first place.

"He's lost to us now." It sounded pretentious and overdramatic to him, but at the same time it felt true: Hamlet had been sent halfway around the world; out of the way, and there was nothing either of them could do about it.

They both felt it then: the hole at the centre of their lives, the unravelling of the fabric they had woven around it.

"I've texted my brother," Ophelia said. "But I don't think I want to be here when he comes." She leaned against his shoulder.

Horatio sighed and nodded. Even with Hamlet gone, he still picked up after him.

"Shall we walk off then?" he asked. He meant it only half in jest but Ophelia took him seriously.

"Yes. Even just a little; so far we can tell ourselves we're far enough away now."

Horatio rose and held his hand out for her to pull herself up. They made their way out of the castle, down the path and across the meadow into the woods.

He'd get lost, he thought vaguely, but then he looked at Ophelia and thought that they were both so lost already, a few convoluted forest paths would not be able to harm them. Maybe being lost together meant they'd be able to find some new way forward after all.