thinking about Horatio who falls so insanely, truly madly in love with Hamlet at Wittenberg. and he cannot believe himself for doing so — logical, dependable Horatio, the one everyone turns to when they’re in dire straits, daydreaming about his prince like a maiden in a fairy story. but then, how could he have helped it? they’re attached at the hip — they study together, eat together, they jest, they go for long walks and talk about the nature of being and after a few weeks of knowing one another it’s like they’ve read each other’s souls cover to cover. after long nights spent hunched over books Hamlet will sometimes blow the candle out and curl himself around Horatio in bed, and fall asleep like that in his arms. but Horatio knows there’s a girl at Elsinore, and she’s fair and noble and kind, and Hamlet is going to marry her, and that’s just fine. it’s the way things are done. he’s devastated, of course, but blames himself — that’s what happens when you fall in love with a prince. that’s how Horatio is bracing himself to lose him. and then, when he actually does — when Hamlet falls asleep in his arms for the last time, never to wake up again — he realizes he never saw this tragedy coming, but then there it was all along.