Almost, at times, a Fool

[ernest]

 Title: Almost, at times, a Fool
Fandom: Hamlet
Verse: Ohtori AU
Characters: Fortinbras, Hamlet
Summary: Fortinbras, in the Confession Elevator, takes what is offered to him, and then he takes what is not.
Word Count: 302
Warnings: violence, suicidal ideation, manipulation

And would it have been worth it after all?

     Fortinbras spins the black ring with the rose seal around and around his finger until its blur matches the elevator descending among one hundred coffins. It’s time to decide what world he will leave behind him.

     He recalls how the Rose Bride serves him tea and cake and ices, and he knows how easily that ice can melt into the water which drowns. He knows, too, the names of the poisons which are harder to detect under an overwhelming and unbearable sweetness. But if he makes Ophelia his own, at least he’d be safe from her maneuvering, he thinks. She might continue to despise him but under the rules of the game she’d have less room to act on that feeling, and isn’t that akin to safety in a place like this?

     Ohtori is in crisis already, so he’d hardly be pushing the moment at all, but seizing it for himself. It’s what he deserves and what his father deserves, and why shouldn’t he do what Hamlet’s always done?

     You are not Prince Hamlet, nor were meant to be, whispers the voice in his head that always sounds disturbingly similar to Chairman Dansker’s.

     No, but he could have been, he thinks. When he’s done sobbing he stands up so quickly that the chair he’s been in falls over, its clang echoing too loudly in the confessional booth silence. It’s time to revolutionize the world.

     The prince paces before him with no mind to any audience he might have, and goes back and forth on whether he has the strength to his quietus make. The question that throbs at the skull of Fortinbras now is “Do I dare? and do I dare?” He finds his answer in the blade he pulls from Hamlet’s chest.

Comments

[little_lady_d]

daaaaamn son.

this is such a great, great imagining of the confessional elevator, and of course you wound it through with the perfect prufrock quotes, and at this point i feel like you are producing content just for me but i don't mind.

i like how the first part is the decision, the justification, the strength (after tea and cake and ices) to force a moment to its crisis -- and so it sneaks into the story, that fortinbras was was sobbing in his chair the whole time, just a bereaved, pitiful boy with no choice but to revolutionize the world. i can hear that chair clattering.

[ernest]

eeeeeeeee, thank you!! honestly i sometimes think i do write content primarily with you in mind, but you know what, i'm okay with that! you're a really great fan to have and make my day all the time <333

fortinbras and hamlet are really so similar, but because forti's hardly on stage at all the audience so rarely sees that similarity. so yeah, he's sobbing, and he deserves to be bereaved and force the moment! ahhhh, thank you again for your kind, insightful words!

[little_lady_d]

i was trying to find the word for what hamlet does when he thinks about fortinbras, because it’s not quite projecting, it’s more like splitting. because hamlet’s down on himself for not doing what needs to be done, so he builds up fortinbras into this strong, active archetype who always does what needs to be done, including quarreling over an eggshell when honor’s at the stake. but none of that has to do with what fortinbras is actually like or how he feels, and what if — consider — fortinbras and hamlet are more alike than different? i like that this fic gave forti a chance to be on stage, and feel things, which in a way is what the black rose arc is all about.

[ernest]

ooh, I think you will like this little moment I wrote and then forgot about, but it *must* have been in relation to this fic:

Hamlet doesn’t know how to act around the transfer student. His father killed Fortinbras’ father on the very day that Hamlet was born, and by the accepted conventions of the world, that ought to mean something, right? They should be rivals, friendly or not, or there should be a connection between them that neither can explain, or Fortinbras is vying for the social position that Hamlet inhabits. But when he looks at this fellow Prince, he feels nothing at all, not the barest scrap of antipathy.

[little_lady_d]

you were right, i like it a lot! the sense that there should be some destined connection between them -- seriously, the very day hamlet was born, those're some high destiny circumstances -- but there's not, not even a little.