Two Closet Scenes
May. 6th, 2019 05:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ernestTitle: Two Closet Scenes
Fandom: Hamlet
Verse: Changeling AU
Characters: Hamlet, Ophelia, Gertrude
Summary: Hamlet, lost, visits his girlfriend's bedroom. Hamlet, angry, visits his mother's.
Word Count: 793
Fandom: Hamlet
Verse: Changeling AU
Characters: Hamlet, Ophelia, Gertrude
Summary: Hamlet, lost, visits his girlfriend's bedroom. Hamlet, angry, visits his mother's.
Word Count: 793
Hamlet arrives at her door with his shirt inside out and backwards; no wonder he looks so lost. She hasn’t heard from him since she stopped writing letters at her father’s behest, and she figured he didn’t find her worth his time if he had to put even a little work of his own into the courtship. Now, though, it becomes clear that he’s had bigger issues on his mind. In trying to ward off someone *else, he’s mostly succeeded at sending himself down the twisting alleyways of his mind. And she knows from their endless talks that they are a complex labyrinth even when his thoughts are on his own side.
Just before he disappears, he throws a handful of salt on the threshold and runs around the corner. If she wants to follow she’d have to count every grain first. Ophelia returns to her sewing; she has better things to do.
Moved to mercy, she raises her hand to his collar, intending to smooth it down and maybe offer some peace of mind to a mind in pieces. He looks down at her hand like he would at a bug — and not the kind that can serve their folk — and grips it in a vice she’s truly afraid will break her fingers. He traces her veins and freckles and little tufts of down while she squirms under his scrutiny. He’s clearly seeing something else when he looks at her arm: the next bridge he plans to burn, probably. The silence is dreadful but not nearly as bad as the sigh that follows. It would end his being if he were mortal and she doesn’t have the heart to remind him that his flesh cannot melt because they’re both air already.
The silence returns then, more oppressive for the echo of despair still hanging between them. Hamlet staggers back without needing the use of his eyes. The clothes must know the way.
The silence returns then, more oppressive for the echo of despair still hanging between them. Hamlet staggers back without needing the use of his eyes. The clothes must know the way.
Just before he disappears, he throws a handful of salt on the threshold and runs around the corner. If she wants to follow she’d have to count every grain first. Ophelia returns to her sewing; she has better things to do.
Hamlet grabs the chain around his mother’s neck and tugs until he reaches the locket he knows will be there. “Look at this king,” he says, indicating the image that has never left its place near his heart in all this time. “Now look at *this king,” he snarls, tugging on the picture she keeps, so she can see it herself. The metal will dig into the back of her neck, but Hamlet can’t bring himself to care. It can’t hurt as much as that man has hurt him since stealing the throne.
“I’m looking,” sobs Gertrude, “I see them! Why are you doing this?”
“Two paintings could not be more like. You would think the same person had been the model for each.” He shakes them in her face. “But look deeper, even a scratch beyond the surface, and it comes clear how one shines and the other rots. Under my father each hour knew its place and even the darkness could be beautiful for the world it was a part of. But mine uncle is like spring come early or fall come late — oh he speaks very prettily, but so does a siren.”
His words are solid and true enough to form a summoning circle, and from the dusty carpets and mildewed curtains arise a king of shreds and patches. Gertrude does not seem to notice this visitation at all, but the worst of it is that Hamlet can’t even tell whose spectral visage is turned on him. True, the devil may speak fair, and he is wont to look for pleasing shapes in a quite unpleasant land, but that hardly answers the question.
This figure is nobility itself, twisted by death into something which encourages Hamlet to work against his own best interests. Or else it is that demon which yet lives and which could never properly pretend to be innocuous, much less good. For all his talk about the clear differences between them, he can’t figure out which of the brothers appears before him until it speaks, which this thing refuses to do.
What matters now is that the queen cannot see what he sees, whether it’s the king or the usurper-king, the second husband or the first. Maybe she thinks him mad for this but he cannot defend his reputation when what she needs now is to be comforted. The shade nods approvingly and Hamlet glows with pride to have the recognition he always craved from his father but constantly fell short of deserving. Or his uncle-father approves of him, whispers the worm of doubt at the back of his head, and it makes him squirm to think he could be doing Claudius would find commendable. He doesn’t know, he doesn’t know, and filled with scorpions is his mind!
Someone cries out help!
“I’m looking,” sobs Gertrude, “I see them! Why are you doing this?”
“Two paintings could not be more like. You would think the same person had been the model for each.” He shakes them in her face. “But look deeper, even a scratch beyond the surface, and it comes clear how one shines and the other rots. Under my father each hour knew its place and even the darkness could be beautiful for the world it was a part of. But mine uncle is like spring come early or fall come late — oh he speaks very prettily, but so does a siren.”
His words are solid and true enough to form a summoning circle, and from the dusty carpets and mildewed curtains arise a king of shreds and patches. Gertrude does not seem to notice this visitation at all, but the worst of it is that Hamlet can’t even tell whose spectral visage is turned on him. True, the devil may speak fair, and he is wont to look for pleasing shapes in a quite unpleasant land, but that hardly answers the question.
This figure is nobility itself, twisted by death into something which encourages Hamlet to work against his own best interests. Or else it is that demon which yet lives and which could never properly pretend to be innocuous, much less good. For all his talk about the clear differences between them, he can’t figure out which of the brothers appears before him until it speaks, which this thing refuses to do.
What matters now is that the queen cannot see what he sees, whether it’s the king or the usurper-king, the second husband or the first. Maybe she thinks him mad for this but he cannot defend his reputation when what she needs now is to be comforted. The shade nods approvingly and Hamlet glows with pride to have the recognition he always craved from his father but constantly fell short of deserving. Or his uncle-father approves of him, whispers the worm of doubt at the back of his head, and it makes him squirm to think he could be doing Claudius would find commendable. He doesn’t know, he doesn’t know, and filled with scorpions is his mind!
Someone cries out help!