Chapter Text
Hamilton groaned. He’d stayed up all night writing. Always writing.
As Eliza always told him, he wrote as though his life depended on it. But she didn’t understand. She had never felt the urge to do more. She was happy with her life.
He, on the other hand, would never be satisfied with what he had. He sighed. Outside, the moonlight shone through his window and he eased his pen away from his paper, if only for a moment, to look outside. His hand ached. As did his heart.
For all the things he’d done wrong.
For Phillip.
At the thought of his son, his hand shook and he crushed the delicate quill and knocked over the inkwell. And his heart cracked. Bit by bit.
He laughed to himself bitterly, crumpling the paper he’d spent all night on, now blotted with ink stains, and pressed a new, clean sheet onto his desk. He refilled his inkwell and drew a fresh quill from his bag.
He began again. The silence was suffocating. The only sound was of the scratching of the quill. Scritch. Scratch. Ssscritch. “The Union is the rock of our political salvation,” he wrote, his handwriting tight and furious. He focused on the ink, desperate to drown out the phantom sound of a pistol shot in Weehawken. He had to save the republic. If he could just find the perfect sequence of words, he could convince the public, defeat Jefferson’s ideals, and fix the fractured nation.
If he could just… There were so many things to fix and so little time. He scrawled faster, his handwriting curling and twisting in angry, sharp lines that looked like slanted eyebrows with beady little eyes. They looked at him and shook their heads.
“A failure,” they seemed to say. “A disappointment.”
Soft footsteps echoed through the room behind him. It was Elizabeth. She placed a warm hand on his shoulder. “Alexander, come back to bed. You’ve been writing long enough.” He didn’t turn around. He didn’t dare. If he looked her in the face, he would only see Phillip’s eyes in hers.
“Soon Betsy,” he lied, pen never pausing, “Just one more page.” She sighed, catching the lie in every word. “Soon.” She repeated. A tiny, broken smile curled on her lips. “Alexander, you cannot lie to me.” Hamilton sighed, steeling himself, and turned to face her. However much he tried to prepare himself, he still took a sharp intake of breath and gripped the seat harder when he saw those eyes. Those eyes. The ones that are now closed under mounds of dirt…forever.
And it’s my fault. Mine. I told him. I told him not to shoot. A tear slid down Hamilton’s face. Just one.
He didn’t want anyone to see him grieve. He’d bury it. Under his legacy. Under the work of what he’d done for a nation. But Elizabeth saw. She understood. She crouched down, next to his chair. “He’s gone, Alexander.” Her voice cracked and she paused, swallowing. “Writing cannot bring him back. Defeating Jefferson won’t bring him back either. He’s gone.” Hamilton closed his eyes. He wanted to knock over the inkwell again. He wanted to tear all his essays to shreds. He wanted to yell and scream and kick. But he knew it wouldn’t help.
He opened his eyes again. “Eliza, I have to protect what’s left. Phillip’s sacrifice… can’t mean nothing… I must finish this.” Elizabeth let out a long, drawn-out sigh. “I understand, Alexander… but… please. Come back to bed. I can’t stop the pain either. I can’t keep out the storm. All I can do is at least offer you an anchor. Hold on to it. Come back to bed.”
He looked back at the paper. Then he looked at Elizabeth. “One more page. Then I’ll come.” This time he meant it. There was no lie. And Elizabeth felt it.
She smiled and after kissing him lightly on the cheek, she walked out of the room, whispering, “One page.” Instead of continuing where he left off, he grabbed another fresh sheet of paper and wrote a letter.
Dearest Eliza, I know you don’t always understand me. Instead, you see a man driven by ambition. A man who throws himself into the storm because he loves chaos. But it is not love, Eliza. It is terror. I am terrified that if I stop running, if I stop writing, the quiet will consume me. And in the quiet, I hear the music stop. I hear the shot. I see our boy. I know you don’t get it. But I know you feel pain too. I know you also scream in your head at night, trying to block out the gunshots and blood-stained fields. And I know. I get it. But you’re strong. You’ve always been strong. You’ve handled this better than me. You’ve always been able to lend me a quiet space to take a break. You’re the one who pieces me together so I'm not so broken inside anymore.
Alexander stopped. He hadn’t finished the page. Not yet. There was another time when this needed to be given and this wasn’t it. He would wait. He would be patient. In the meantime, he turned off the lamp in the room, folded the paper into an envelope marked IMPORTANT- DO NOT OPEN, and went back to bed.