“I’m sorry about Onkel,” Irina said as she leaned against the railing and looked out towards Connecticut.
Hamlet was standing next to her, but he could have been a thousand miles away. He was gazing towards Connecticut as well, but it was moving northeast towards Boston, Cambridge, and Andover. Another world, a better one where Senior wasn’t dead.
“He was a real man,” Irina continued as her hair fluttered in the breeze.
“Hyperion to a satyr,” Hamlet replied.
He felt the breeze, too, but it wasn’t playing with him the way it did with his cousin. It didn’t lift his sleeves and reveal a marble-like skin or the too short skirt she wore.
“Let’s go downstairs,” he said.
He went down first, but stopped himself at the door and held it for her. The breeze was becoming something greater now. As soon as Irina was through and he let go of the handle, the door slammed behind him with a loud bang.
“Thor is riding in his chariot today,” Irina said as she walked down the stairs.
“Maybe,” Hamlet said following. “Or it could be my father. Horatio told me the most bizarre story a few days ago.”
“Oh?” Irina said. They were in the living room now and she had made herself at home on the living room.
“Supposedly, there’s a ghost that looks my father,” Hamlet said taking the couch opposite her. “It comes almost every night.”
“Does it say anything?” Irina asked.
“No,” Hamlet said.
“Nothing?”
“It just looks at my friends and disappears.”
“How do you know this isn’t a joke?”
“I don’t.”
“Then how do you know that they’re not hallucinating?”
“I’m not a psychiatrist.”
“Then why do you care?”
Wasn’t it obvious? Hadn’t she mentioned Senior a few moments ago on that roof? Was she as forgetful as everyone else was? Was he the only one who remembered amidst all of this revelry?
Hamlet shifted on the couch and gazed at Irina. She was the perfect model and a photographer’s dream. Yet he knew better than to see her for what she was and not who she was. One of a hundred people that wanted to see the American branch of Norden fall so that they could take its money and take what rightfully belonged to him.
“It’s just a story,” he said.
“A story that you thought was important enough to mention to me.”
“A tale told by an idiot,” Hamlet said. “Full of sound and fury. Probably signifying nothing.”
Irina rose from her place, sat down next to him, and placed her hand on his shoulder.  “Maybe,” she said gently. “Or it could mean everything.”
Bruce stood near the bar wondering when a good time would be to leave. He was trying not to be too judgmental but the atmosphere made him uncomfortable. Gertrude’s late husband had always reminded him in an odd way of his mother. It had made him respect him but he’d also never found it in him to like him. Though it was difficult to not feel some sympathy for the dead man seeing how this fundraiser was panning out.Â
“Not a fan either?” He asked only to pause as he looked him over. “You’re Hamlet aren’t you?” Well that explained the comment at least. Maybe he’d stay a little longer, to try and work out some of what this family’s secrets.Â
“The one and only,” Hamlet replied.
He looked at the other man. He knew his face, but he couldn’t really place it. He was a lot older than his classmates at Andover and Harvard had been, but he carried himself like one of them and he looked like he came from old money, too,.Â
Realizing that he was probably talking to someone important. Hamlet’s face became more solemn now.Â
                        You get to be Batman
            Independent and Selective Roleplay Blog for BatmanÂ
                        Heavily Headcanon Based
                            Written by Lee
// Senior was the kind of man whose mere presence demanded respect. Once he entered a board room or even his own offices, the atmosphere always became a little bit more chilly and a little bit more solemn. Senior allowed joking and humor in his presence, but within good reason. He had no time for pointless or useless jokes, still less those that were at his expense.
The family shipping business, Norden, reached its zenith during Senior’s long reign. The American branch consistently outperformed its European cousins during that time and brought in the lion’s share of the revenue. As the years and decades passed, Senior was able to invest his money in magazines, newspapers, and internet platforms as well. Even though he never owned any of these concerns outright, he owned enough shares so that he could bend the boards and the companies’ executives to his own will if he was so inclined.
Senior’s own tireless expansion of the business ceased after his death. Claudius never really had a head for business and left the company in the hands of Senior’s trusted advisers. Essentially, this hands off approach has resulted in a slump in revenue and increased competition from bigger companies in Europe and China as well as the company’s own Scandinavian branches.
Hamlet sat at the bar and watched as Claudius and Gertrude made the rounds, shook hands, and thanked everyone for coming as a swing band played Glenn Miller. Even though this was a fundraiser, it felt more like a wedding reception. The only thing that was missing was the bride wearing white and the groom’s best man standing there and making off color jokes.
My father isn’t even cold in the ground and they’re making merry, he thought as he reached for a Scotch. It’s almost as if they don’t care.
And why should they? Senior had been the one thing that had been blocking Gertrude and Claudius’s current marital happiness and now that he had been sent to the other world, they could do as they well pleased.
Hamlet shook his head in disgust and downed another drink. He lifted his glass to a man standing nearby. “Cheers,” he said sarcastically. “To the happy couple.”
// Hamlet’s favorite places to spend his down time at a coffee shop on the Upper West Side called Rendezvous near the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. It’s a place with art on the walls, overstuffed couches, and people sitting there working, reading, playing a game of chess, eating, drinking, or just taking in the day. At night, the waiters bring out the candles and the place is transformed into one where the possibilities are seemingly endless.
Hamlet can spend hours in a place like this just watching the people, overhearing their conversations, and reading a thick book. Sometimes, he talks with the people on the couches nearby, but, mostly, he just keeps to himself and takes in the view.
He has brought Ophelia here several times, but the place doesn’t really work well with her character. She cannot really imagine why anyone would want to spend a day sitting in someone else’s living room and watching them live their lives, but it’s one of those things that Hamlet cannot really explain to her. It’s just a part of who he is.
// For years, Hamlet has been running his own blog at the url “ham.net.” In the beginning, he used it to anonymously rant and make fun of some of his more snobbish classmates at Andover who would get on his nerves. Later, it evolved into an online journal where he would write about the various events in his life, post outlines of papers that he needed to write for his classes at Harvard, and, sometimes, love letters to Ophelia that he didn’t want his parents or her father to intercept.Â
Ophelia is the blog’s only real visitor these days since she knows the author’s real identity, while the rest are people that come upon the URL in their Google searches when looking for other things and are surprised to find themselves on a blog rather than on a site that sells ham.Â
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