Title: If You Will Not Have Me, You May Let Me Go by Lady Paperclip
Fandom: Hamlet
Pairing: Fortinbras/Horatio [past Horatio/Laertes]
Categories: Aftermath, Angst
Length: 4780
Warning: Canonical character death and one rather messy execution
Rating: PG-13

Author on LJ: Lady Paperclip's Second-Hand Bookshop

Summary: Denmark's clean start; only it's rotting in a different way, and Horatio thinks perhaps he's the only one who can see it.

Review: Was Hamlet really doing a kindness when he persuaded Horatio not to kill himself? This story suggests that he was not. Here we have a lost, heartbroken Horatio surviving into the reign of King Fortinbras, valued by him as a councillor and eventually, almost without Horatio's consent, ending up as his bed partner. It is difficult to see what, other than a simple mechanical release, either party would have to gain from such an arrangement, although Fortinbras as we see him here is manipulative and self-centred and would be quite capable of wanting Horatio just to prevent anyone else from having him. Fortunately, Horatio's emotions are not engaged. In fact, he seems quite numb to feelings of all sorts - although not, as in many Hamlet stories, because he was in love with his doomed Prince. No, this Horatio was involved with Laertes - who, in the end, is just as dead, and also bearing a measure of disgrace as the instrument of Hamlet's death.

This is a bleak little story, giving a very clear and painful picture of Horatio's inner emptiness. He is the ultimate survivor, of course, and as such the bearer of the ultimate survivor's guilt; psychologically he is damaged beyond repair, and it is not really possible to imagine him making any sort of a life for himself afterwards. There is certainly no future for him with Fortinbras, a decision he comes to only belatedly; when he finally rides away from Elsinore he is acting selfishly for perhaps the first time in his life - abandoning Denmark to its own devices and saving himself, for once. I like to think Hamlet would have approved.

Stylistically this is written in reverse chronological order and therefore in the present tense throughout. This is not intrusive, although it is not always as smooth as it might be, and mercifully the writer has stayed clear of the cod-Shakespearean dialogue which ruins so many lesser efforts of this kind. She has settled for a simple, quasi-formal English which works very much better.

Whichever version of Hamlet one is most familiar with, this story should work well. Personally I had no difficulty imagining a depressed Nicholas Farrell with a manipulative Rufus Sewell (although past antics with Michael Maloney were not quite so easy to conjure up). Different combinations of actors will obviously have different results, meaning that this story is open to a most intriguing variety of interpretations. That, in my opinion, makes it necessary reading for anyone who likes their slash fiction to be challenging and intelligent, and who is looking for more from a story than just a quick and dirty fix of mansex.

Link: If You Will Not Have Me, You May Let Me Go