Horatio Week 49: CMOA

Sorry for the late posting, everyone. Letting go is hard.

I'll see you next week for the last installment.

The New Adventures of Horatio
Week 49: CMOA

The throne room at Elsinore. It looks much nicer than when we last saw it. All signs of the carnage that ended Hamlet have been long since cleaned up, and Fortinbras has decorated the place with some plants and tapestries. A crown rests on a cushion on the throne.

Music plays, maybe LCD Soundsystem, maybe Talking Heads, maybe MIA. Enter Horatio and Fortinbras on opposite sides of the room, eyes locked, the throne between them.

Horatio begins to dance. It starts with some simple footwork, then a there's a swaying of the hips, then the arms come into motion, whirling, signaling, seeming to multiply like a Hindu god's.

Fortinbras counters with a twist that becomes a ballet twirl.

Horatio breaks out the bee's knees, then a Russo-Irish jig.

Fortinbras unleashes an intimidating tap solo.

Horatio breakdances.

They come together in a salsa step, then spring into ballroom, throwing, lifting and twirling each other.

Maybe Fortinbras claps to change the music with each new style.

They split again. Fortinbras flashdances and high-kicks.

Horatio escalates to David Byrne performance art moves. He does the worm. He moonwalks. He stands in place and sends his spastic body in spirals like a tin soldier on a countertop during an earthquake. He mimes running, shopping, lawn sprinkling. He falls to his side and runs in circles on the ground.

Fortinbras has stopped dancing and sat down to stare at him in fascination and horror. She claps and the music ends.

FORTINBRAS
Stop. Just... stop.

Horatio sits up.

FORTINBRAS
Why would you even... where did you learn all that?

HORATIO
Study and invention. Years of wingmanning in the Copenhagen clubs. You either talk with Helga about her moth collection, or take her where the bass is thumping too loud to talk and dance until dawn.

FORTINBRAS
I've seen things on the battlefield, but those moves... those will haunt me.

HORATIO
So. Uncle?

FORTINBRAS
Uncle.

HORATIO
War's over, then.

Fortinbras takes out a blackberry, fiddles with it.

FORTINBRAS
Ordering the troop withdrawals now.

HORATIO
And your abdication?

FORTINBRAS
Got my speechwriters working on it when you issued the challenge.

Never expected to go out in a dance-off.

HORATIO
We can tell them we had a sword fight or something.

FORTINBRAS
Sure, that'll sell.

HORATIO
But when you think about it, that's how we got into all this. Hamlet's father killed your father resolving a territorial dispute.

FORTINBRAS
And if they could settle that with single combat-

HORATIO
No reason we can't do the same thing.

FORTINBRAS
Minus the combat.

HORATIO
Yeah. Well, I thought it was a neat idea.

FORTINBRAS
"Seizing the enemy without fighting is the most skillful."

HORATIO
Sun Tzu, I know.

FORTINBRAS
It'll be good to get back to Norway. Try my hand at domestic reform, maybe. Arts subsidies. That web show Shakespeare did about you, that gummed up the works here like you wouldn't believe.

HORATIO
That was the plan.

FORTINBRAS
Sanctions, sit-ins...someone left a box by the palace gates yesterday and when we figured out it wasn't a bomb we looked inside and found these.

She takes out several oversized black shirts on which a stylized portrait of Horatio is laid out in red and white rhinestones.

FORTINBRAS
They sell 'em downtown for twenty bucks. I'm going to keep one.

You're the one guy I could never outstrategize, because I never knew what you were thinking or what you were going to do next.

HORATIO
I didn't know myself, usually.

FORTINBRAS
We'll see if I can't figure you out. For next time.

She starts to leave.

HORATIO
Fortinbras. Who's in charge now.

FORTINBRAS
You are.

HORATIO
What? No. What about the...the advisers, and the, Thing, the Parliament-?

FORTINBRAS
Sent 'em to Greenland. You're King of Denmark by right of conquest.

HORATIO
I wasn't coronated!

FORTINBRAS
Technically you're the provisional authority until special elections can be held. But really. The crown's right there. Put it on. You're who they want.

She waves her T-shirt at him.

HORATIO
No. No, that's not what I had in mind. I was going to see if I could get my old apartment back. Start dating again. Maybe do some writing.

FORTINBRAS
Give yourself something to do, anyway. Don't turn back into that sad bastard who moped around Elsinore for years.

She turns again to go.

HORATIO
I didn't say you could leave.

FORTINBRAS (Without slowing.)
That's true.

HORATIO
Want to walk back to Norway, with no escort, past a population that wants to kill you? I've got a question.

Fortinbras waits.

HORATIO
How many supernatural contracts do you have on me and my friends?

FORTINBRAS
A few. I'll call them off when I'm back in Norway.

HORATIO
Don't bother. Osric- remember Osric? Sure you do, he worked here, always wore this stupid fedora. Before you had Grendel rip his head off, he brought me a ledger with all the faery chieftains you're working with. The ones you've got going after my parents, Shakespeare, Kelly Kelly, all of 'em. I especially liked the plot where you were going to replace Kelly with a changeling. He had the dropoff times and locations for all the bread and cakes you delivered as payment.

FORTINBRAS
Okay. So you can call them off yourself. What do you want from me.

HORATIO
Turns out a lot of the bakers and truck drivers love the Horatio webisodes. I got in touch with them and had them fill the bread with iron nails, the cakes with horseshoes, the cookies with rosary beads. Every one of those winged fanatics is going to bite into a big old fuck you sandwich, and they're going to think it came from Fortinbras. Strange, vengeful people, faeries. Very big on personal relationships, on following certain rules.

You don't have the tiniest conception of the quality of the people you've taken from me. Can you name all the men Grendel killed in that bar? Because they were standing on the ramparts protecting this throne since before either of us could walk. You put my best living friend in the hospital with a pool cue in his lung. You extorted my mother. You had me exiled and hunted across three continents. And one of your men killed a sixteen-year-old girl to intimidate me. She was going to go to film school.

So you're going to go back to your castle in Norway and think about the two dozen magical flying killing machines who are going to be out for your blood. Think about the way they hide in cobwebs and shadows and mirrors. Think about the spells and the tortures they devise in their black halls under the hills. And the girl. Chris. Think about her.

That's what I want from you.

FORTINBRAS
Some pacifist.

HORATIO
I am. They're not.

I believe you know the way out.

Exit Fortinbras.

HAMLET
And you didn't think a dance-off would work.

Enter the ghost of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.

HORATIO
I'm not saying I'm suspicious of your plans as a rule, I'm saying this is the first one in a while that hasn't culminated in a pile of dead royals.

HAMLET
How you holding up there, chief?

Horatio lets out a long breath, sinks to his knees, puts his forehead against the cold marble.

HORATIO
Fuuuuuuuuck. I'm alive. I'm here. I'm alive. Right?

HAMLET
You are. You did it.

HORATIO
And Marcellus, he's going to be okay. We're okay. Shit.

HAMLET
Yeah.

HORATIO
We did it. We lived through that. We're home.

HAMLET
I do kinda like how she feng-shuied the throne room.

At least pick it up, dude. You owe yourself that.

Horatio walks to the throne and picks up the crown.

HAMLET
Eh?

HORATIO
You should be holding this now, not me. I'm sorry.

HAMLET
I'd get crown hair, anyway. Throw off my game.

I think you should go for it.

HORATIO
This again.

HAMLET
This isn't me being vicarious. You'd be legitimately good.

Look, they're out there protesting and sabotaging and calling your name in the streets. They saw the webisodes and the speech you did at Comic-Con and they know you're someone they can trust. Someone who listens and who can tell them what they don't want to hear.

They want you to be their king because they know what I've known for years.

HORATIO
You could advise me. I know it was supposed to be the other way around. But other than that it'd be like we talked about at Wittenberg. You and me, running the country, taking all that philosophy and putting it to work. Improve the schools.

HAMLET
Beef up social services.

HORATIO
Push through that international ear poison ban.

HAMLET
Are we doing this?

HORATIO
I think we're doing this.

Horatio puts on the crown. Hamlet's phone rings.

HORATIO
Who even has your number?

Hamlet takes the call.

HAMLET
Hello? Yes, sir. Yes. As a matter of fact, he did.

...

Just like that? Does that mean-? Yes. Oh my God. Thank you. Thank you so much. I lo- Okay. I'll see you soon.

Hamlet hangs up and puts his phone away.

HAMLET
My father forgives me.

HORATIO
He forgives you.

HAMLET
Now that Norway's out of Denmark, now that a Dane we trust is on the throne again, he forgives me. We're golden.

HORATIO
But you all have to forgive each other right, to, to leave...I mean you're not leaving...

HAMLET
Mom and I had a breakthrough over the summer, so we're good now. And Claudius has been straight-up plastered since April, so now he forgives us all every other day.

HORATIO
Everyone's forgiven everyone?

HAMLET
Everyone's forgiven everyone.

Which means.

A glorious light shines in from offstage, accompanied by an angelic chorus with voices raised in praise of heaven's mysteries.

HORATIO
Wait.

HAMLET
We can leave Purgatory. We can rest or whatever. We can go to the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns. For real, this time.

I think this is it for me.

HORATIO
Wait!

Hamlet begins to walk towards the light.

HAMLET
That whole first year I was dead, I watched you to make sure you wouldn't try to kill yourself again. And look at you now. Look at everything you've done. You're gonna be a great king.

HORATIO
No I'm not! I don't know what I'm doing! Hold up! We were going to pick out a new favorite bar, right? Trivia nights! We were going to go out for trivia nights! Do you have to go right this second?

HAMLET
Make me proud.

He walks into the light and is gone. The angelic chorus fades, to be replaced by a distant chant of "Long live the king!" There is a flourish of trumpets and a spotlight falls on Horatio.

HORATIO
Ummmm. Hi.

Resounding cheers. Ticker tape falls directly onto Horatio like a downpour from a personal raincloud. He looks miserable.

The End