Title: Tied Together
Fandom: Hamlet
Rating: G
Length: 800 words
Content Notes: Horatio & Ophelia
Author Notes: I always wish productions connected these two more, so here's a version of how that might go.
Summary: Horatio tries to look after Ophelia.



Horatio tried his best to look after Ophelia after he'd seen her wandering the halls after her father's death, wailing and beating her fists against the walls, powerless against the utter injustice of it all.

She would not be touched, at first, flinched away from him even as he offered a comforting hand, a shoulder to lean on. It was difficult; yet he couldn't blame her - he was Hamlet's friend, tainted by that tie to the man who had killed her father, not as impartial as he wished he could be for her. But she needed a friend, and badly too - the queen's response to Horatio's suggestion that Ophelia might tell others what had happened, might expose the royal shambles that was Elsinore at this moment, had frightened him.

He watched her walk into the fields, eerily calm and firm of purpose. She plucked flowers up from the roots, returned to the king and queen. Shut out of the throne room, Horatio half heard the exchange between the king and queen, Ophelia and her brother. His agitation grew as it went on. He had hoped that Laertes' presence might be enough, that he might be able to bring her back to her senses. He listened to the exchange with growing incredulity - all so busy with their own grief that no one so much as spoke a kind word to Ophelia.

When he saw her reappear in the hall, he wasn't sure whether the guards had thrown her out of the room at the king's behest or if she had chosen to go of her own volition (insofar as she still had that). She walked along the hall. There was no indication that she even noticed his presence.

"Sweet lady Ophelia," he tried to get her attention. She turned her head and blinked a few times as one who wakes from a dream. He couldn't tell how lucid she was, but he didn't have the luxury of time to work it out. He needed to get her somewhere safe, before the queen got to her. Yet where was safety to be found when the very castle of Elsinore had become a den of thieves?

"Sweet lady, I pray you, come with me." He extended a hand again; slowly, carefully, as though attempting to coax a frightened child. She didn't respond, so he went on, "I am to watch over you. It should have been your brother's office but he is too distract. Come with me."

It was a lie, and he inwardly winced at it, yet he fervently hoped it would work. He had been with Hamlet in the prince's darker moods, but in her grief Ophelia had fallen further than he'd ever seen Hamlet, even at the worst.

He almost flinched when she accepted his hand. He squeezed hers gently and she let herself be led. She was quiet now, which was almost more unsettling than her babbling from before. She seemed a ghostly presence as she walked alongside him.

Out of doors, he thought, away from this place. He conjured up the landscape in his mind, tried to remember if there was a building somewhere, a house where they might go; anywhere at all.

Then he looked at the strong arm alongside his own, the unstable gait; felt the grip of her hand already slipping. There were too many dangers out of doors.

He led her to his own chamber, locked it and sat down by his desk. She bounced on his bed, started singing a children's song. He sighed and looked at her.

They'd both loved the prince, they both still did far as he could tell. It tied the three of them together in a messy triangle. Horatio had always known that ultimately, his love wouldn't be requited, but Ophelia, who'd had every hope in the world of becoming the next queen of Denmark, had been served a much crueller deal at the hands of fate.

He looked at her lying on the bed, her long hair flowing over its edge and spilling onto the floor, and was struck by a thought. What if he told the king and queen that she had done a desperate thing, had already done to herself what they had no doubt intended?

He straightened.

"Be quiet until I return," he said. "Can you be quiet?"

She nodded, though he wasn't sure she had actually understood.

It might just work, he thought. It might.

He returned much later to find his room empty, with no trace that she had ever been there.