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It is, above all else, surreal to experience his own mind this way. Observing as though from a distance, strange and detached and not quite right. It is his mind—there's no mistaking it for anywhere else—but it's like a story perceived in the wrong format. Imagery that should be music, sound that should be tactile sense, an odor that makes him think of bright colors.
"Sir?" Hamilton's voice settles the worst of the strangeness. Washington no longer feels disoriented and confused.
It's like slipping from half-sleep into a vivid and cohesive dream.
Hamilton is staring at him. There's a furrow between his eyebrows, blatant worry written across the boy's expressive face.
"What's wrong, Alexander?" If this is only a dream, surely there's no reason for such worry.
"Oh thank god." Hamilton breathes the words with obvious relief, though the furrow bisecting his forehead only deepens. "I was starting to think you couldn't hear me at all. Sir, what I'm about to say might not make sense, but I need you to listen. Hear me out. Okay?"
"Relax, my boy." Washington shakes his head and smiles faintly. "You're just a dream. There's nothing to hurt us in here." Washington has nightmares often enough, but this is not one of them.
"I am not a dream," Hamilton retorts with a solidity that draws Washington up short. "You're injured, General. You suffered some kind of psychic attack. You've been unconscious for three hours, maybe longer."
That doesn't sound right. Washington's face scrunches. He does not feel injured. Unconscious, yes, but not wounded as Hamilton is suggesting.
But if this is a dream, why would his boy lie? And if it's not a dream, shouldn't Washington trust him regardless?
"Three hours?" He tries to think, tilting ever-so-slightly out of alignment with his own dreamscape in the process. Everything goes blurry; only Hamilton remains in clear focus.
"Do you remember the citadel?" Hamilton presses cautiously, taking a step toward him. "The console with the massive blue crystal?"
Washington bites at a corner of his lower lip as memory comes grudgingly. "Not a console. An altar."
"There was a complicated mechanism inside. Some kind of boobytrap. Peggy's been trying to figure out how it affected you, but she hasn't been able to revive you."
"How is it you're here?" Washington asks, openly confounded.
Hamilton gives a rueful smile. "Sorry, sir, but that question's way above my pay grade. All I know is Peggy found a way to rig a psi-emitter so I can occupy your neural pathways for a limited time."
"To what end, my boy?" He does not mean to sound exasperated, but he is still perplexed. Never mind the impossible quandary of how; Washington needs to know why Hamilton is here.
"To find you," Hamilton says simply. "And to lead you out."
"Out of my own mind?" Washington's eyes narrow.
"Sort of. You're lost in here. Even after Peggy sent me in, I couldn't find you. I've been searching for… I don't really know how long. Time doesn't seem to be working right. But then, why would it?" Another smile, this one wry and accompanied by a one-shouldered shrug.
"Then I should… follow you?"
"Yeah." And then, even stranger than everything that's come before, Hamilton reaches out and takes his hand. "Try not to let go. I'd hate to lose track of you again."
Washington resists the urge to argue that he is right here at Hamilton's side, that he is not going to vanish without warning. Somehow he can feel the emptiness of such a promise. His surroundings are less and less tangible with every passing moment. A detailed but thinly spun illusion. An amalgam of thought and memory and dream. A moment ago he knew exactly where he was standing; now he can't even recall if he was aboard his ship.
He grasps tighter hold of Hamilton's hand. Warm skin, slim fingers, strength in the answering grip.
"Come on," Hamilton says softly. "I think we go this way."
The journey feels endless. Hamilton is right; time doesn't function properly in the subconscious contours of Washington's mind. Worse, physical space is just as much an illusion. Distance and direction distort constantly, shifting with unnatural agility. Carrying them in the span of a blink from one vivid reality to another. There is no method to this madness, either. Any place Washington has ever been, or studied, or imagined going… All of them twine and shimmer in unpredictable sequence.
Eventually the locations sprout people. Memories solidify the farther they travel, and now he and Hamilton are moving past conversations, experiences, encounters. Some are innocuous, some are less so. Washington witnesses more than one moment he's gone to great lengths trying to forget. Martha's goodbye, the time she really meant it. His official reprimand following a lapse in judgment that nearly started an interstellar war. The day he learned of Lawrence's death and knew he could not return to Earth in time for his only brother's funeral.
He trusts Hamilton completely, but these are memories he would not willingly share.
Neither of them speaks, which is a small blessing. And Hamilton's grip on Washington's hand never falters.
Not everything they see is real. Scattered amid the memories are things he has only imagined. The dozens—perhaps hundreds—of things he never had the guts to say to his mother. The small homestead on Mars he fully intends to retire to if he survives his military career. The upgrades he plans to request next time the Nelson puts in at dry dock for extended maintenance.
He is too distracted to think ahead, too lost in this literal maze of his own ideas and dreams and memories, and so he doesn't realize the danger until it's too late.
Washington freezes in place, and Hamilton falls still beside him.
Darkened quarters surround them. Washington's quarters. Sparse and familiar. Not empty, and not at all silent. There is movement on the bed. An unmistakable breathlessness to hushed words. A rhythmic quality to the slide of skin and fabric in the quiet. Two people occupying the intimate space.
In the dimness it's possible Hamilton won't see clearly enough to recognize—
"Alexander," groans the Washington who is only a figment.
Hamilton's fingers twitch where he still grips Washington's hand, but he doesn't let go.
The moment stretches endlessly. Washington wants to yank free and run. He wants to drag his boy away from this damning display. He wants to evaporate into nothing and pretend this secret is still his own.
Instead he waits. Perfectly motionless. Not even daring to turn his head and look at Hamilton beside him.
Eventually Hamilton must shake out of his stupor, because he gives a tug at Washington's hand and says in a strained voice, "Come on. We're almost there."
Washington swallows hard and lets himself be pulled away from the detailed fantasy. His mouth is dry, and his chest aches. As he follows Hamilton, he does not say a word.