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Well I'll be damned, well I'll be damned...
Alexander Hamilton, when faced with the prospect of endorsing his worst enemy or his best friend, had chosen his worst enemy. And although Thomas Jefferson was delighted - after all, the vote had caused him to win in a landslide - he did have to wonder why.
It wasn't because of the one night that they had spent as something more. Or maybe it was. The last couple of years had shifted Thomas's perception of Hamilton drastically.
Whatever it was, he was happy. And he almost didn't care.
Almost.
You must be out of your goddamn mind!
Alexander had screamed that often. He had screamed it over shitty macaroni and cheese, standing up at the table and slamming a fist down, flatly refusing to vote for Jefferson's new policy or whatever it was.
They had come to a compromise. It was still a miracle.
He had screamed it at everyone who ever considered endorsing France, because although he loved Lafayette more than words could say, the country was too weak to help anyone. Maybe later, they could send some resources and an apology, but not now.
Jefferson was blind. Alexander was on the verge of hitting him practically every time he saw him.
If you see him in the street, walking by himself, talking to himself, have pity...
It was all over the news, and Thomas had to see it every day, but it still took a long time for it to register in his brain.
Philip Hamilton, son of former Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, dies in a duel.
Apparently Hamilton was taking a break from public life. Thomas couldn't blame him.
Not after little Lucy and little Jane, mere babies whom he held in his arms, his beautiful daughters who had died years and years and years before their time.
Thomas wanted to go to Hamilton, to hug him and stroke his hair and comfort him, to tell him that everything was going to be okay.
But they were enemies. And enemies didn't do things like that.
Reluctantly, Thomas sent him a brief letter of sorrow. Hopefully Hamilton wouldn't rip it to shreds.
Washington can't help you now, no more Mr. Nice President.
Washington had resigned. Alexander still couldn't believe it.
Though he would never admit to it on his life, the former president had been to him the father that he had never had and, quite possibly more importantly, one of the main reasons behind his great success. He was still grief-stricken over the sudden development.
And John Adams was even worse than he could have possibly imagined.
They had been members of the same political party once. Alexander didn't know what changed.
But he was racist, and ignorant, and wrong, and awful, and when he had fired him without a second thought, Alexander wasn't able to control himself.
He screamed in anger. And the public screamed in terror.
And with just an opening of his mouth, he had brought himself to borderline ruin.
I couldn't seem to die./ Never gon' be president now...
A seventeen-year-old boy, trapped in the depths of poverty, scribbles poetry in a notebook. It may not be the most advanced of writing skill, but to him, it is enough.
Enough to send to his father and ask for help. Enough to rebuild the home that he knew from the moment he was born.
Enough to get off this island and make him a future.
He cheated on his wife!
A nineteen-year-old boy, new to the country, jumps onto a table and talks of revolution. His friends watch him and encourage him, and although they barely met, they form an instant connection. They will achieve so much, the boy knows. So much.
And published a ninety-five page pamphlet about it!
A twenty-year-old man stares longingly at guns, at battle, at war. He feels as if he was born to prove himself, and he is frustrated when the general shakes his head no.
But he wrote his way out of misery. And he will write his way into revolution.
This is the worst scandal in American history!
A twenty-three-year-old man is in love for the first time. True love, he feels, with the black-eyed, bouncy Eliza Schuyler, not like any of the crushes he had ever experienced growing up. And he uses his power with words to write her letter after letter after letter, reveling in watching her smile as she reads.
He'll never be president!
A thirty-year-old man dreams of being in power. He talks and he talks and he talks about his dream for the new nation, he lays out his plan, he defends the constitution. He works non-stop, and he would not have been able to do it without his writing.
Thank God we don't have to worry about him ruining our nation!
A forty-year-old man is faced with the prospect of scandal. So he does what he always does.
He writes.
We have the check stubs from separate accounts.
Hamilton was out of control. And no matter how much Thomas didn't want to, he, Madison, and Burr were going to destroy him.
He wasn't sure if he wanted to, actually. But no matter what, he was going to. The future of the country came first.
But Hamilton wasn't embezzling funds. He was completely and entirely honest in the eyes of the public.
Only in the eyes of God, and in the eyes of his dearest wife, was he disloyal.
Thomas could do nothing about that. After all, Hamilton had been disloyal twice, though he was only admitting to it once.
So he frowned in disapproval, and he took his friends, and they left. And there were thousands, millions, billions of things left unsaid, but Thomas shook his head and left them alone.
That was all that he could bring himself to do.
...he is working through the unimaginable.
Everything happened in moments.
The smell of smoke coming from his office, and the ashes on the ground, and the realization that Eliza had burned all of the letters that she had written. The silence where there had once been smiles, the cold where there had been warmth, and the sudden destruction of the family that had been better than perfect.
Philip's angry glare when he talked about George Eacker, and the weight of the gun in Alexander's hand as he passed it on to his oldest son. A gunshot, a feminine scream, and a slap on his face.
The ending of the beating of a heart.
More silence, and boxes being packed from one house to another. The silence in the garden, silence except for the sounds of nature, and the tears that he hid when he was around the woman who had once been his wife.
She was still his wife. But sometimes he felt that both of them forgot that.
Two pairs of footsteps as they walked around the city. Whispers, but not their own, and too unclear to make out properly.
And then, after weeks and weeks and weeks, the feeling of a hand in his own and a head on his shoulder. And a gentle murmur, the first that Alexander had heard in a long, long time.
"It's quiet uptown..."
Alexander wept. He wasn't sure why.
I get no satisfaction witnessing his fits of passion...
Disloyal. Arrogant. Annoying. A fucking piece of shit.
All words that Thomas could use to describe Alexander Hamilton.
France deserved their help. If it wasn't for them, then America would still be under control of its oppressors.
But somehow Hamilton didn't understand that. There were too many things that he didn't understand, for someone so high in power.
Maybe if he was knocked down a couple notches, he discussed with Madison and Burr, the country would be a much better place.
Or maybe if he went to Hamilton's house with flowers and called him Alexander, if he brought love and kisses and night-time again, if they were united again, if everything was happy again, again, again...
Thomas shook his head. One night would have to be enough for the both of them.
And so would the papers that he and his friends would dig up.
It's quiet uptown...
Alexander didn't want to be in the public eye again so quickly. He had not even been allowed a mourning period, nor time to help his wife put the pieces back up in their repairing relationship. But now he was getting letter after letter after letter, asking him whom he would choose in the presidential election.
He didn't care. Jefferson was an arrogant piece of shit with wrong beliefs. And Burr had...no beliefs.
But the letters would never stop until he answered. So reluctantly, he released a public statement declaring that he would support his mortal enemy. At least he stood for something.
He just hoped that no one got the wrong idea.
Because their relationship would never move forward again.