“Hal,” Falstaff asks of you one night. You’re sitting side by side, knees nearly knocking into each other, passing the bottle back and forth between you. “How many are there of you?”
You don’t know what he means; and yet, you do. It’s harder to hide under one mask while drunk - you must be doing it under at least two, maybe three. You can’t remember all the details. You can’t even really always tell if there is or isn’t one piece of you. Sometimes it all feels gelatinous, like a boiled hoof. There’s a boy inside you, and a rake, and maybe a prince, and sometimes you’re catching yourself staring longingly at your friends’ mouths and yet other times you the thought of being touched by anyone at all is galling. You still ruin plenty of maidens anyways, run through women like water, or more aptly, wine. There’s a voice in you that sometimes wishes you were them, and another part that feels exactly fine the way you are. You can’t always remember. Sometimes you’re so deep in despair and you don’t even know why. So you put the bottle to your lips and fade away a little and someone else seems to come out, their laugh rumbling in your bird boned chest. It all works out just fine.
If your father knew anything about this, he’d probably blame your time with Richard, who mixed up fashions and the royal ‘We’ with a boyish ‘I,’ whose mood sometimes turned like the tide. Sometimes it was like you were talking to a different person, back when it was you and him, the father that he sent away a shadow on your wall. Henry understands us.
You’re sure that this started before your father’s exile, mostly because you always remember being a bit fuzzy around the edges, as if moving your body was more like two people running a three-legged race. When sometimes, playing pretend felt a little too real, and part of you was all too sure that you really were some ancient legend wedded to a boy’s body against your-and-his will, stuck inside something far too small than your spirit had ever inhabited before.
But Richard — ah, there’s the rub, isn’t there? When they told you Richard died, it felt like a part of you screamed, muscles shrieking in agony, no, no, I’m alive, I swear!
When your father compares you to that skipping king, part of you sits right up.
The voice in the back of your head, narrating your actions from time to time, a comfort, a curse, retribution for dethroning the true king: Harry’s really different these days, isn’t he, Henry?
You’re not quite sure who is who is anymore. Not in those moments. You hope whatever part of him that still lives in you isn’t reflected back in your eyes. If your father sees that Richard never truly died, you’re not sure what he’ll do.
(You are sure, the voice says. I am sure. We are sure.
We died, didn’t we?
Or, he tried to kill us.
Or—)
“Not nearly as many as there are tonnes of you,” you say back to Falstaff’s question, and you tilt your head back, you put your lips to the bottle.