Disclaimer: HnKnA is the property of QuinRose. This is probably for the best.
Ch. 5 Read-throughs and Rewrites
"Boss, couldn't you help out at least once?"
"Grey, just stop. It's impossible."
Alice sat in with the workers amongst the chaos that was the Clock Tower's work room, and she was writing out the last of the many scripts for Hamlet.
"You know, I thought that maybe, just maybe, the lazy caterpillar over here would be kind and thoughtful and do his job. I suppose that was expecting too much."
Grey looked up only momentarily from his work but chose not to say anything, instead allowing the little foreigner to vent. She had ink smudges on her face, her hair was messy and her clothes disheveled. It wasn't the first time she had gone head-to-head with the office machinery. Currently the standing was Copier: 3, Alice: 0. And today was another resounding victory to the Copier Club, if her appearance and generally poor mood were any indication. Grey sighed, stopped working (gasp!) and placed a fatherly hand on her shoulder.
"Are you sure you don't need to take a break?" he said to Alice. "I can pick up where you left off."
"No," she said, shaking her head quickly. "I can do it, you have more than enough work to do. It's just...gosh, I feel like everyone is expecting me to have all this together and worked out already. The twins are no help-"
"-I'm not surprised."
"And Joker, that...creepy...anyway, he's hopeless too."
"Again, not a surprise."
Alice placed her head in her hands and sighed heavily. "This is a hell of a lot more work than I originally thought."
-The day before.
One thing Alice hadn't remembered to consider was the Role Holders' acting abilities. Or lack there-of.
Their first reading bombed marvelously. Nearly everyone (with the exceptions of Blood, Julius, and herself) had difficulty with the language. It seemed no one really understood 16th century English.
Shocker.
Another thing was nearly everyone's complete inability to get into character. Julius nailed Hamlet's general moodiness, but Blood was a very seductive Claudius and Vivaldi a very bold Gertrude (which was odd, considering how few lines she had, and how un-sexy Claudius was). Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were actually perfect, and the twins seemed to enjoy playing the fool.
"But I don't get why he couldn't just go outright and say, 'My sonovabitch brother killed me and stole my whore wife'," Nightmare argued, after the read-through of the first act. Alice tried to calmly explain it to him.
"He's a ghost; he's not really allowed to talk so…directly." And I don't think they would have…approached it quite like that back in the day.
"Why?"
"I don't know. That's how it was written."
"Well that's stupid. I demand a reprint."
"But that would take work, boss," Gray reminded Nightmare, who scowled sourly.
"I don't care. And what the hell is with Ophelia? Why does she kill herself again?"
"Because she feels rejected by Hamlet and is depressed by her father's death." Alice felt like she'd explained this bit of plot line far too many times that day.
"What a stupid bitch," Black Joker replied from the mask.
"She is stupid," White Joker agreed. Alice glared angrily at him (them? him?) before sighing and saying, "Any other issues?"
"Yeah. Why doesn't Ophelia just suck it up and dump Hamlet?" Boris said, playing with one of his piercings. Pierce nodded energetically, earning him a claw in the ear. Ten minutes of calming his tears followed.
"Because if she didn't kill herself," Alice explained…again, "Laertes wouldn't have a reason to fight Hamlet in the final scene."
"I thought he was fighting him caused he killed his father?"
"What?"
"Hamlet kills Polonius, right? That's reason enough, why drag Ophelia into it? Did Shakespeare just hate women or something?"
Alice sighed again, trying to calm herself. "That's not the point."
"I agree," Dee and Dum cried out. "Ophelia doesn't need to die."
Why do I get the feeling this has nothing to do with the play?
"That's just how it was written."
Vivaldi looked around before saying, "As much as we dislike it, we are in agreement with the peons. Ophelia is much too cute to die. We say that it be written so that she doesn't die."
"But that means rewriting the end of the fourth act. And the fifth act altogether."
"That's fine," Blood said. "I have a few ideas on how to spice up the fight scene…"
Alice sighed. There was no reasoning with these people. "Well then who's going to do it?"
"The Clock Tower, of course. All the smart people work there," Dee and Dum replied, chopping their shared script to smithereens with their newest treasure, a pair of steel scissors strong enough to snap bone.
Alice and Gray glanced over at Nightmare, who was asleep with him arms folded over the top of the script. When awoken and told about the rewrite he simply said, "Too much work, I'll need a break," and fell promptly back to sleep.
But he wanted a rewrite too…
Alice sighed. Quite suddenly Joker spoke up. "Why so serious, Alice? This is supposed to be fun." A low, ominous chuckle could be heard from the mask at the ringmaster's waist.
"You're not helping either," she snapped. "Aren't you our self-appointed director? Don't you want to get started on, ya know, directing?"
"This is actually more enjoyable."
Alice rubbed her temples, trying to work away the building migraine. "Okay. Fine. The guys at the Tower and I will work on rewriting the script. Until then, please read the actual play, so that you can at least have an idea on how to act your part."
-Present.
"Hey Julius?"
"What is it?" he said, not looking up from his work. Alice had returned to Julius' end of the Clock Tower after finishing with the rewrites and was now hauling in copies of the script.
"Help me with this? Please?"
Julius put down his work (gasp!) and helped Alice carry in the armloads of paper. After the arduous task was done, Julius returned to his work, putting on the spectacles and picking up a small wrench.
"Do you need anything?" Alice said.
"Just peace and quiet."
"...Right." Alice got ready for bed and when she came back she saw Julius was exactly where she'd left him. After so much time spent living under the same roof as him, this really shouldn't have come to much of a surprise.
"So what did you do today?"
Julius stopped and raised an eyebrow at her. "I fixed clocks."
Alice rolled her eyes. "Did you do anything else?"
"I drank average-grade coffee."
"Hey! You told me I was doing better lately."
"Better. Not great."
Alice pouted for a minute. "Ungrateful, selfish..." she muttered.
"I heard that." Julius continued working in silence for some time before he said, putting down the timepiece he was working on, "What's bothering you?"
But when no answer came Julius turned and saw that Alice had fallen asleep right at the bench, her head cradled in her arms. A small smile (gasp!) graced his lips and he lifted her gently and took her to her room, tucking her in bed before returning to his work room and mounting pile of clocks.
He glanced over at the pile of scripts that sat on the floor and curiosity finally nabbed him. Picking up the first one in the pile, he began to read.
Sorry for the late update, but I'm stuck in perpetual writer's block. Probably because my brain knows school is coming and that means all the creative energy from the summer is winding down. Updates are probably going to be even slower now because of Back-to-School, and I apologize. This wasn't meant to be particularly long in the first place; maybe 7 chapters? I'll try my best.