Chapter Text
CHAPTER 1:
i.
i keep thinking of Ophelia, singing loudly in empty hallways, to hide the echoes and the loneliness.
trudging determined along the river bottom, weighed down by her aching heart and waterlogged skirts. her mud filled shoes scare the catfish up.
Something inside Horatio breaks when he sees Ophelia dancing around and singing sweet as a lark. She sounds like she is without a care in the world, yet there are tears streaming down her face.
Unable to meet her eyes as she passes, Horatio instead watches her hands. Her hands, which are steady as stone as she hands him flowers.
Her cuticles are bloody, and her nails bitten short; dirt outlines her bone thin fingers. Horatio is used to seeing Ophelia with dirty hands, but her hands have always looked strong if thin and rough around the edges. (It is one of the hazardous inevitabilities of working in the gardens, that one will eventually find the creases of their palms perpetually stained green, and scratches from stubborn thorns on weeds you don’t remember pulling litter like pale crosses upon the backs of hands and wrists). Now her hands just look ragged.
Her tiny, muddy hands shove a bundle of crushed leaves and grass at him, and helpless, he accepts. The bundle is picked and arranged with abandon, delicate roots still clinging stubbornly to clumps of dirt. Now and then some of them break off to shower Horatio’s boots on the castle flagstones. His breath stutters in his chest for a moment, because more likely than not, these are flowers that Ophelia has picked from her own garden, carefully tended to throughout the seasons. To see them handled so carelessly by the very hands that tamped soil gently around their roots in protection- it’s almost blasphemy, if either of them believed in anything even remotely close to a god at this point. These flowers and herbs, tended to with such care are broken and crushed by the very hands that cared for them. If there is any other irony to be found in this situation, Horatio thinks, it would be found in that small detail. Stems are broken, leaves are crushed, and Horatio feels like he can’t breathe; can’t breathe. He can’t breathe.
Horatio tries to catch her gaze, but her eyes hurt to look at. They are empty, broken things, and her cheeks are red and blotchy from her ugly and silent crying. He looks down at his hands, hurting too much to keep meeting her empty eyes. His hands, which are still full of the flowers that O shakily, but firmly and insistently pressed at him: closing her fists over his to wrap his fingers over the stems.
Rue.
For regret.
Oh… Oh.
Horatio looks to the bundle that she is carrying still, as she flits around the room, past the windows, past the wall draperies, but stopping at the people. She curtsies to the furniture and offers to waltz with a severe portrait; and still through it all she remains clutching her bouquet as she makes her rounds. Horatio looks to Ophelia’s remaining bundles, the ones that she has kept for herself, and wonders.
Pansy and Nettle. Rue and Anemone; Cyclamen and Sweet Peas. Traveler’s Joy, Bellflowers, paired with Stock and Hydrangea. Cypress and Snapdragons. Chrysanthemums, Thistles; Gladiolus and Ivy. Daffodils.
oh.
Horatio thinks he might laugh but his throat is too tight to make a sound. His hands are shaking; the tiny leaves and ripped up roots twitch with his suppressed hysterical laughter. Another cascade of dirt showers his boots- tiny pebbles settling against his ankles and between his toes, shoved into his heels- shoved into his soul.
Ophelia is still flitting about the room. She isn’t singing anymore, but she is humming. Broken phrases of tavern songs, improper for a lady of her standing to know, mix in with snatches of verses church hymns and bars of folk songs. Horatio’s eyes are drawn again to Ophelia’s hands as she carefully and methodically strips the leaves and petals from her bundle of flowers- shedding them in a careless and concise manner, probably similar to how she shed her shoes some time ago- until only the stalks are left.
Her hands are steady.