So Very Perfect

[outflewtheweb]

Title: So Very Perfect
Word Count: 586
Rating: PG-13 for hints of suicide and etc.
Pairing: Fortinbras/Claudius, Hamlet/Horatio, Claudius/Gertrude.
Fandom: Hamlet, which I don't own.
Author's Notes: This is schmoopy melodramatic crack based off of Hamlet and a discussion of Claudius' real motives whilst in English class. Yes. Really. Actually, if you look at it this way, Hamlet makes a lot more sense.
Beta: masterofmidgets 

            It was dark night, and rain lashed the battlements of Elsinore as usual, when Hamlet Sr. walked in upon what was unquestionably a passionate embrace between his beloved little brother Claudius and the King of Norway, Fortinbras Sr.. Shocked, he flung Fortinbras away from the youth and began to shout as the other man gathered his shed coat and shirt.

            “How dare you take advantage of a teenage boy!” Hamlet shouted. “Your despicable habits were known to me, but I had grown to hope that since the birth of your son you had mended your disgusting ways. I see it was not so! Away, damned abomination!”

            His brother stood up and tried to hold Hamlet’s wildly gesturing arm down, tried to calm him, but Hamlet shook him off, continued to point wildly and thrash, furious that his little brother had been treated so. And Claudius said nothing, didn’t say ‘I, too,’ didn’t stop him as his brother flung his lover out of the castle, and later, didn’t stop the unjustifiable war that began as Hamlet furiously attacked Fortinbras, though it would have been so simple, but he was young. He didn’t say a word, not even when Fortinbras died, but he thought revenge on his brother, desperately trying to hide his guilt and torment from himself, drowning himself in drink as he arranged to revenge Fortinbras’s death.

            It would be perfect, he thought, if even after Hamlet’s death he was tormented. Oh, so perfect. He began to court the Queen, sent her little gifts and flirtatious smiles, walked with her under the walls of Elsinore, rode with her when Hamlet, increasingly frequently, was absorbed with business. Not that he cared for her, not at all – she was a tool, nothing more, except perhaps a friend. But then, he couldn’t have friends, not he, not when Fortinbras’s death was still unavenged, and not even then, for who would want such a sullied wretch as he? Vile, depraved, evil, they called him, and he did not bother to deny it, because he knew it was true, but he wouldn’t stop, not for all of Denmark.

            And it was simple, so simple, he thought, the death in the orchard under the spreading trees, the placement of a snake nearby. He’d done it all himself, purging himself. Then the funeral, and he had cried, cried for the brother he had once had, who played at duels between the trees of the orchard he had died in, who had protected him from all he could when his parents died. He cried, and comforted the widow. Oh, so simple.

            And it was simple, all that followed, deceiving the court and the kingdom. So simple. Even Hamlet was an uncomplicated problem, a tormented youth with delusions of grandeur and a constitutional inability to do anything. That’s what he thought, Claudius, until the end, when he didn’t save the Queen, didn’t try to stay her hand when she drank – so simple, to have knocked the glass from her hand. But he didn’t. So simple, the poisoned blade in and out, and the little lack of air, and the darkness – so simple. It seemed, as it had seemed to Hamlet, that a ghost rose from the floor. The ghost of Hamlet. He regarded the scene sadly, and held his brother’s head as he dropped to the ground.

            I forgive you, Claudius, I forgive you. If only you had told me you loved him… I was hasty, and I forgive you. I love you, little brother.