Title: Something Too Much Of This
Fandom: Hamlet
Rating: G
Length: 560 words
Content notes: implied Hamlet/Horatio
Author notes: 1st person, so counting this towards the SBIGTTS Writing badge.
Summary: Horatio reflects on his identity and the nature of his relationship with Hamlet in Wittenberg vs. Elsinore.



When I arrived at the gates to Elsinore Castle, my heart was heavy and I could not shake the feeling that coming here had been a mistake after all. But I took a deep breath and, thus fortified, entered.
Leaving Wittenberg was not easy by any means. For most, their place of study is a transient accomodation; but with me being a scholar and having no other family relations, it had become more than that. Academic life and its quaint ways suited me well, but having to go outside of it in more than a physical sense made me squirm in my skin. I only just knew how to be a scholar; I didn’t know how to be something beyond that. The night before, I had observed a ghostly apparition with the watch, but for if and how to break this news to my friend, I felt utterly out of my depth.

I’d come here to support my friend, I reminded myself – and yet, even in that, there was a seed of doubt. For what friends can a prince, can a king, reasonably have?

Of course, he was a prince in Wittenberg as well as at home, but things were easier there. For one, because our intimacy allowed me the privilege of seeing aspects of him that none other even so much as knew about. Moreover, much as we had come from different directions, we seemed to have neded up in the same position: as outsiders of the wider campus life, too occupied with ourselves and our otherness to even consider being part of it.

There was never a moment where I wasn’t aware of the differences between us when it came to rank and standing in the wider world, and I prided myself on being practical of mind and having no illusions as to the permanence of our relationship. And yet, there had been something about his last letter that had stirred something within me, a part I usually kept under lock and key with great care, and ultimately, this had brought me to the position in which I now found myself.

I made my way through the castle, to Hamlet’s rooms. The earth below me still seemed to roll and sway from side to side, making me feel almost nauseous.

He received me with the great joy that had always characterised our companionship, and yet even as he embraced me, I still felt on unsteady ground. We were being observed, that much was certain, but I had also been translated without my consent from a supportive friend to the bearer of bad, or in the least, ominous, news.

He kissed me on both cheeks, then sat me down and I had to tell my news, much as it went against my nature. I saw him unravel at it, as I had expected, and felt, excruciatingly, a part of myself dissolve in sympathy at what he was losing, never to be regained.

I wanted nothing more than to undo this damage to him, to myself and to us, but this was Elsinore, and I had not the means or opportunity that the locked doors of Wittenberg had afforded us.

I buried the best part of myself when he died, and I have only the bad parts left to live with.