Disclaimer: This particular understanding of Hamlet and Horatio was to a significant extent co-developed by myself and Zallah. Of course, we all know where the characters came from to begin with.
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And then, quite inexplicably, the encounters - the habitual drop-ins, the 'accidental' crossings of paths, the echoes of that ubiquitous laughter trailing around every corner - came to a complete and soundless halt. Without pretext, the prince had all at once stepped back from the table, and Horatio found himself confronted with the sudden stillness of all that had hitherto spun so deftly, so continuously beneath this master's hand. From the shadows, Hamlet was watching, now, and waiting. It dawned upon Horatio that he had never fully grasped the nature of the game until that moment . . . it was his turn.
In one respect, the fact that anything should be so directly put to him was deeply unsettling. As if his ability to deflect had suddenly been denied him, and he stood alone upon an open stage, observed from every angle. He knew what was expected of him: he was supposed to want something, to act according to his will. This, he supposed, was power . . . and though a corner of him was slightly, silently excited at the prospect, it was not natural. He had never known what to do with power. He did not know what he wanted - he sometimes felt that he never had - and now he thought that perhaps he wanted to disappear. He knew however that it would be to no avail: even if he could make himself unknown to all the world, the prince's eyes would find him, seek him out - he was faster, keener, stronger . . . he would not chase him, no, would not hunt him down and pinion him in a corner, but he would see him, and that would be enough: there was no escape.
Yet had he not wanted this . . . ? If only faintly, only from a distance, he had watched, he had waited, he had turned tables of his own almost without noticing himself doing it, falling half-consciously into a trap which he himself had helped to lay . . . and at last it had happened: he had been found. He had been seen, unmistakably. It had not been at all unsettling at the time. Indeed, it had hardly been conscious, hardly any one distinguishable occurrence . . . and yet there was no denying that something irrevocable had been revealed, whereupon Hamlet had seen fit to let him play the next move. What had the prince read, through that glimpse? Surely he had already deducted more regarding his temperament than he, Horatio, had ever dreamed of hazarding himself, and as all deductions were it would at best be only a partial truth. Could he trust Hamlet not to deduce, not to display or investigate this . . . ? He searched himself and found no impulse on which to base an action. He did not want anything - not like that, not like them . . . and then it occurred to him.
He would watch himself. Events would unfold, quite naturally, and he would observe them as ever he had. There need be no problem if he did not acknowledge it: it was that simple. Whatever decision he made, he need not make it with any explicit, commanding intent: he could do it after his own fashion, as with all. Resolved upon the matter, Horatio withdrew once more into a quiet abstraction, and for a moment listened only to the sound of rain tapping against the rooftop. The ghost of a thought brushed his mind, and he smiled at it, quietly, to himself.