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“What?” John rasps, the breath required for a fully-formed exclamation caught in his chest.
The room tilts on a diagonal. He grasps onto the edges of his seat so tightly that he feels his knuckles pop. The hues and shapes of the room muddy and swirl before his eyes. The only sight that remains constant and defined is John’s father and the cruel, smug smirk on his stupid face.
“Alexander Hamilton will be executed in the morning,” he repeats, seeming to take even more pleasure in the reprise.
John just stares at him, willing the world to stop spinning. Willing his thoughts to order themselves into something coherent.
“Lieutenant Hamilton was already sentenced.” John hears his own voice, tastes the words on his leaden tongue, but is not conscious of saying them. There’s a fog in his brain that won’t clear. He feels disconnected from his thoughts and he feels disconnected from his body.
What is he if neither the physical nor the cerebral aspect of John? Just some metaphysical vapor with no will or determination of its own? Just a spark of human life seconds away from being smothered?
“…stripped of military rank,” he hears from beyond the haze, past the ringing in his ears. “He—"
“He was already sentenced,” John repeats, cutting the muddled, droning sound off. “By an imperial court martial. You cannot overturn—”
“Excuse me?” his father’s voice sends a chill into the air. “Have you forgotten whom you are speaking to?” John hasn’t—how could he?—but his father still gestures to the royal emblem on his chest to illustrate the point. “I am the king. I can amend any sentence as I see fit. And if you were not the crown prince, you would be on the scaffold next to him.”
The menacing words are like an iron vice around John’s lungs. At once, he’s dragged back to those first days after his capture. Stripped down to his breeches and undershirt. Cold, heavy manacles locked around his ankles. Wrists bound together so tightly that the rope cut into his flesh—the tether tied to a metal ring in the ground, keeping him kneeling. Subservient. Trapped. And in this position, bound and gagged and helpless, his father had whirled around him like a cyclone. He had ranted and raved and called down every insult and curse upon John and his dead mother that could conceive. Had spat on him, hurled objects at his head, slapped him across the face and kicked him in the ribs. And over and over, the promise on his father’s lips had been death death death.
The king’s rage had cooled after a few days, but his ice-cold fury was little better than the branding hot one. His new approach involved withholding sustenance from John—placing food and drink just outside his reach, close enough to torment him without providing any relief. And then, when John was weak and fuzzy-headed, he’d been chained to a desk and told to sign an abdication order.
John hadn’t done it. If only to spite his father.
Eventually that scheme had also fallen by the wayside. For all his talk of ultimate power and control, it seemed his father still needed to appease the burgesses. Even fueled by anger and vengeance as he was, disposing of his son and heir was an act too difficult for the king justify. The burgesses’ defense of John was surely more practical than merciful; he knows they will not put up the same resistance for a deposed lieutenant with no surname of dignity.
“He already has a life sentence,” John says quietly, somehow slipping into the old habit of trying to placate his father. As if that will change anything. “He has lost both his rank and his freedom. Is that not punishment enough?”
The king scoffs. “Punishment enough for an officer of the King’s Guard guilty of such gross crimes? If he was let off so lightly, what kind of example would that set? How would the people trust their government to give them protection or justice if we let open treason go unpunished?”
Justice. Treason. Those words stoke the fire within John back to life. Alexander poses absolutely no threat to South Carolina. Who has been hurt by his supposed crimes? Only the king’s pride has suffered; that is nothing worth losing a life over. His father is stubborn and ill-tempered, but surely John can get him to see reason…
“And I am no fool, boy,” the king adds, taking a step back towards the door. “I know full well that his life sentence is void when I die. In ten, twenty years he would be free to corrupt you all over again. I will make certain he never, ever has that chance.”
John sees red.
A furious growl rips its way out of his chest and throat. He lunges across the room. He’s going to tear his father limb from limb with his bare hands, the flames inside him erupting in a violent inferno. His fist is a pace’s length from the king’s face—just a little bit closer—when John’s leg gets yanked from under him. He hits the floor with a breathless yelp as the air is knocked from his lungs. He’s painfully conscious, now, of the fetter still locked around his ankle. There’s enough chain for him to reach either the desk or the toilet from either side of a bed in the middle, but not the door. Not his father, whose expression is caught between disdain and amusement when John can finally raise his head to look properly.
“You bastard!” he shouts when he gets his breath back. “You heartless villain!” John is livid at himself for being addled enough to think he could reason with this demon. Because there is no reason here. His father doesn’t give a toss about justice or honor or whatever lofty ideal he feigns protecting. This isn’t about Alexander at all. It never was. “You’re going to kill him to break me, is that it? You know damn well that it was my plan! Lieutenant Hamilton tried to talk me out of it, but I refused to be swayed!”
“Then it’s you who has killed him.”
The accusation is a bolt straight to John’s heart. He feels it spreading cold, consuming guilt throughout his body.
He had known. He had known from the time his father burned the books Alexander gave him. From the time Alexander had hidden for an hour in the closet because the king had come to John’s chambers unexpectedly. From the first time John had showed Alexander his hand-drawn map and explained his plan for escape. This is defection, Alexander had grinned. His hands had been shaking.
Alexander had been in danger every moment he stayed by John’s side. And instead of letting him go or heeding his cautions, John had put the executioner’s blade right into his father’s hands.
John forces down the sobs that he knows will erode him away if he lets them loose. “I want to see him.” He hopes the demand sounds more forceful to his father’s ears than his own.
Another scoff. “Out of the question.”
“Then I’ll always remember him as he was,” John’s brain works frantically, desperately to weave a snare he prays will be strong enough. “Strong and beautiful and perfect. I’ll worship him as a martyr and one day, when I sit on the throne of South Carolina, I’ll rule in his memory instead of yours.”
John sees his father’s lip curl and eyes flash bright and knows he’s struck a weak point. “You filthy cur,” he snarls. “Fine! Go down there and tell him he’s to die in the morning. Bear the brunt of his fear and hatred for all I care! And since you’re so keen on seeing him, you will be witness at the execution tomorrow. And if you look away when the blade comes down, I’ll mount his head on a pike outside your window and that will be how you remember him.”
John trembles with equal parts fear and anger. The victory he’s won is so small—not nearly good enough—but his heart clings to it selfishly. So instead of striking back, he nods and keeps his mouth shut, not trusting himself to refrain from saying something that will change his father’s mind.
His father must know that the sudden obedience is feigned. His grunt of displeasure proves it. “You will be the next king of South Carolina, John. Neither you nor I can alter that, for all our wishing. You cannot afford to be weak and whimsical forever. I pray for your sake that this incident will be the end to your childishness.” He knocks for the door to be opened and mentions disinterestedly to the guards, “Prince John wishes to see the condemned prisoner,” before strutting away, casting the matter completely beyond his interest.
John seethes. He wouldn’t even give Alexander the dignity of his name.
One guard kneels to release the shackle from John’s ankle while the other watches him warily, hand on his sword, presumably to prevent John from doing something foolish. It’s laughable, that they think he has any power like this. When the cuff falls away, he jumps to his feet, paying no mind to the dull ache in his ankle or the swollen, discolored skin. None of that matters compared to seeing Alexander.
The guards lead him into the lower part of the fortress. It gets darker and damper. Colder. Alexander has always hated the cold.
John’s heart feels sick.
Finally, they arrive at a cell secured by two more soldiers. The guards all murmur among themselves before a tall, broad-shouldered one nods and unlocks the door with one of a dozen keys on his belt. “Be quick, Your Highness,” he whispers to John, who barely hears the warning as he pushes through them into the cell.
John realizes too late that the guard’s words were intended as a kindness, not a reprimand. It takes a shameful amount of courage not to turn and run from the room as soon as he enters.
Alexander is hanging from the ceiling by his wrists with not enough slack to rest completely flat-footed on the ground. His feet and calves are bare and he is completely naked from the waist up. Angry red lash marks wrap around his shoulders and torso, implying there are more such injuries on his back. It must be a trick of the light that renders Alexander’s skin translucent, but John swears he can still see the man’s ribs. He doesn’t look like he’s been fed at all since their capture. His lips are tinged blue and he keeps shivering and moaning.
John never wanted to see his Alexander this way: not this picture of deprivation and misery. For a moment he regrets coming. But then Alexander looks up. His storm-colored eyes focus. His cracked lips part and a single raspy word falls out.
“John?”
He’s crossed the room in an instant. His hands fly to Alexander’s cheeks and he lets loose the torrent of sobs he’s kept dammed up. “Alexander…Alexander…Please, Alexander…My dearest Alexander...Please forgive me…For the love of god, forgive me!”
Alexander’s expression is blank for a moment. John wonders if he even understands. Then his eyes soften and the corners of his lips twitch in an attempted smile. “Let me stand on your feet awhile and I may consider it.”
John’s cheeks heat with shame. His hands circle Alexander’s thin waist, mindful of the lacerations, and lift him long enough to slip his feet under Alexander’s smaller ones. Once he’s shifted into a more secure and comfortable position, Alexander’s arms relax in their bonds and he lets out a sigh of relief. The tension in his upper body releases and he takes many full breaths, the first he must have had in a long time.
John’s heart aches. Alexander must be in so much pain, and he can do little to alleviate it.
“I am so sorry, Alexander,” he cannot stop himself from weeping. “I should have…I should have listened to you. You said the plan was too dangerous. If I had only listened to you…”
Alexander hushes him. “I was only worried about the danger to you, my prince. But you were still resolute, even after knowing the risks. You did not force me to do anything contrary to my own wishes. I wanted to go north with you.”
His words are meant to comfort, but they make John feel even more undeserving. “Would that we had never met,” he says mournfully to the ground. He waits for Alexander to concur, to rue the day he laid eyes on John, but the assent never comes. He finally looks up into Alexander’s face and startles at the look of deep hurt he finds. “No! That’s not what I…that is to say…Oh, damnit Alexander!” He learns forward and presses a kiss to Alexander’s lips.
The days he’d spent with Alexander—reading and writing, playing duets, sneaking into the town square to dance and debate with the locals, watching the golden sunrises and the crimson sunsets from atop the palace walls—were the happiest of his life. He would give away his kingdom and everything he possessed to live forever in a perfect, unchanging painting of those times. Tears fall from his eyes and slide down Alexander’s pale cheeks. “I only wish…If you had never met me, you would not be suffering so cruelly now! It’s my fault you are in such pain! My fault that you are going to…going to…”
He wishes he had looked away in that moment when Alexander understands. His lover is brilliant—brilliant enough to discern the unspeakable cause of John’s distress. Likely clever enough, also, to deduce the strategy behind it. It would be better for Alexander to scream and cry and curse his fate. The calm acceptance that settles into his eyes is infinitely worse.
“I want you to do something for me,” Alexander whispers. “A request…”
“Anything!” John croaks, his desire to comfort Alexander in any small way overtaking his grief in accepting a final request from his lover of twenty and six.
Alexander swallows, skin pulling taut around his Adam’s apple. He inhales through his nose and it sounds more like a whimper than a breath. But when he locks eyes with John, his expression is firm. Resolute. “I want you to forget me.”
John’s heart misses several beats. It would be a mercy if it stopped completely. He gapes at Alexander like a fish out of water. “How…how can you even ask that?” He could sooner cut off his limbs or forget how to talk. “No. No, no! I will not!”
“Please, John!” Alexander’s plea sounds high and strained. “I can go with peace to my fate if I know that you will live and be happy again.”
“I will never be—”
“You will.” Alexander manages to smile this time, though it keeps wavering. John thinks he sees something glittering in the corners of his beautiful eyes. “You can be happy again. You can love again. I know you can. But you have to let me go.” John makes a strangled sound; Alexander presses on, refusing to let John’s despair be the victor. He’s always hated losing. “When you leave this fortress, forget me. Never speak my name. Never visit my grave. Become king and make this world as true and good as you. You have to do it, for both of us.”
John shakes his head in anguish, curls and tears both flying in every direction. “I can’t. I can’t. My heart is yours. You are my heart! There will be nothing left of it when you are gone!”
“No.” Alexander’s voice is firm and there’s an edge to it. “You must not be him.”
John is stunned. He nearly has to ask Alexander what he means. But he understands; at least he thinks he does. He feels so humble and unprepared in the face of his lover’s grace. “I won’t.” He strokes Alexander’s cheek with the back of his hand. “I will be a good king. I swear it.”
“I know you will be…” Alexander’s lungs seize up and John lifts him so he can get an easier breath. When the air has cycled through his body Alexander pushes his lips forward, seeking another kiss. John quickly complies, molding his lips against Alexander’s and crafting a sweet, loving kiss. He threads his fingers through Alexander’s dark hair and wishes he could feel arms around him. He realizes that he will never embrace Alexander again and the tears begin anew.
Alexander hushes him again, nuzzling his nose against John’s cheek. “One day, you and I will meet in a better world, with all this pain forgotten and behind us. And then we will have nothing but joy.”
John weeps. He presses kisses all over Alexander’s face. On his forehead, his cheeks, his nose. He looks into Alexander’s eyes and imagines that he can see all the flecks of color that show themselves in the sunlight. “Forgive me,” he begs tearfully.
“There is nothing to forgive.” Suddenly Alexander’s strong expression falters and he shows a glimmer of fear for the first time. “Will you be there when I…when it happens?”
John nods emphatically. It will be agony, but he could not bear to let his Alexander die alone. “I will stay with you until the end.”
Alexander tenses for a moment, bites his lip. He takes a shuddering breath, then smiles. His cheeks look wet. “Then I need nothing more.”
It’s a kind lie. Alexander needs so much from John that was never his to give.
“Your Highness.” A firm hand grabs John by the shoulder. “You really must leave.” He pulls John towards the door, despite the prince’s struggles and protests. He just isn’t physically strong enough to fight him off.
“I love you!” he shouts to Alexander. He has to know; there’s nothing in the world more important than Alexander knowing. “I love you, Alexander!”
“I love you, my prince!” he hears just before the cell door closes shut. “I’ll love you forever!”