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Philip never exactly register when was it he breathed his last. Was it muttering the French numbers under his nose, desperately trying not to lose count on seven? Was it after hearing his mother’s scream? Or was it even later, when his father wrapped himself around his body, whispering prayers and curses? Philip really couldn’t tell – the last moments all seemed a blur.
What he could tell though was that the warm light, which surrounded him right after, seemed to almost lift him off the hospital bed, to gently carry him up and heal the throbbing wound. That his eyelids suddenly weren’t heavy at all and that he could speak again, he could think again and move his limbs again.
“Sept,” he muttered, his voice shaking, quiet as ever. “Sept, huit, neuf… Mum!”
He tried sitting up, but ended up plopping back on the hard surface, seized with a coughing fit. Even a whisper burned through his throat, feeling not even painful or straining – simply not right. He lied on the ground for few more long moments, before the source of light above him – for what it was, it could hardly be called the sun – was suddenly obstructed.
“Hey,” someone whispered. “Hey. No sharp movements, kid, at least for the next minute.”
“Who’re you?” Philip could only wheeze out. The man laughed.
“Not all at once. It is going to be hard to take in, and you have only been here for a few seconds.”
“Where’s here?”
“Do you listen to me at all?” he sighed, finally helping Philip sit up and lean against a – tree? He could swear it wasn’t there a moment ago. “First let yourself adjust to the surroundings, and then I will be at your service for satisfying your curiosity.”
“But – Mum! Where is Mum? And Pops, they were just here, I was just with them, in–”
Again, he was interrupted by a coughing fit. The man shook his head and passed him a glass of warm water – okay, that was certainly not around a second prior! – before shutting his eyelids.
“Are you religious?”
“Yes… Yes, Sir,” Philip answered, cautiously sipping the water. It tasted fresh and clear.
“Well, then account this for some kind of Heaven, if that. Or a place where the lingering souls end up, at least – although you are the first I had an honour to meet in a long time.”
“Heaven?” Hamilton exhaled. “Does that mean I… that I…”
“Died,” the man finished for him with a short nod. “Yes. Unfortunately. I am really sorry – how old are you? The physical appearance here is hardly an indication, since I hardly look a day past twenty five.”
“Nineteen,” Philip reported, covering his face. “God, I can’t be– What about Mum? And Auntie? And… God, I hope father will be okay. I can’t just leave them now!”
“Again, I’m sorry,” the stranger sighed. “But there really is nothing I can do. Jesus, nineteen? That’s a whole decade younger than me. When I died that is. Hey, what year is it down there?”
“Eighteen… Eighteen o one, Sir. When did you die?”
“Ah, so it has been a while. Certainly doesn’t feel like it. Eighty second, during the revolution. I would have been forty eight – gosh, doesn’t feel like it at all.”
Both of them went quiet, unsure of what to say next. Philip perked up first.
“So… so what is it you do here? After death? Is there any way to spectate on our world, or the people in it?”
“Not that I know of,” the man sighed, then suddenly straightened his back too. “Oh, forgive me for my rudeness. John Laurens.”
“Philip – wait, John Laurens? Are you my father’s…” he trailed off, not sure of the correct term to use, but in the end settling on “Friend?”
“That depends on who your father is,” Laurens chuckled. “I didn’t get to meet many of my friends’ sons.”
“Alexander Hamilton,” Philip grinned timidly. “Y’know, the Treasury – I mean you were dead by then, God, sorry, Sir – Washington’s aide de camp? I don’t know, what else was he known as in the army?”
He glance at John expectantly after finishing the sentence, but then leaned back slightly – so pale and shocked the man suddenly looked. A few long seconds ticked past in silence before he finally nodded.
“Alexander Hamilton. Little lion. The Tomcat. Washington’s right hand man. The one who is going to fight you regardless of the circumstances. He had many nicknames, you know. Philip Hamilton, then? God, he wrote to me about you. Couldn’t wait for us to meet.”
“I guess we did,” Philip shrugged uncomfortably. “Just… somewhere else. So you are the John Laurens? My honour.”
“The?” he raised his eyebrows. “And what might you mean by that?”
“Well, I heard a lot about you. Not from Pops, no, he doesn’t tend to talk about his griefs, rather everything else instead, but from Mum. She said you were the closest of friends. She said that when he received a letter informing him of your death, he shut himself in his office for days. She said he rereads your letters in the middle of the night, hoping she doesn’t notice him sneaking away from the bed. She said she notices. She– yes, I have heard an awful lot about you, Mr Laurens.”
“Have you now,” the man sighed absently, then shook his head. “Please call me John. Age hardly matters in the afterlife where one could never find a clock.”
“As you wish,” Hamilton nodded. “You know, I tried talking to Pops about you. Only once I managed to get at least something out of him, but it was worth it. We sat on the floor in the fire room, far past midnight, Mum was visiting Mrs Angelica – and he was telling me stories about the war. And whenever he came around to mentioning you – he smiled. You knew him well, right? You know that smile. The one he has whenever he talks about Mum. The one he has when he talks about you, apparently.”
John didn’t answer the question directly, instead choosing to look away to the tree behind him, but something told Philip that he knew exactly what smile is he talking about.
“And what are you implying by that?”
“Nothing at all,” Hamilton grinned, his gaze turning from challenging to simply understanding. “Just saying how happy I am to finally meet you – even under the undesirable circumstances.”
“Yeah.”
They sat in silence for a while afterwards, Philip coming to terms with the light and the absence of a bullet wound in his stomach, John – deep in thought. The latter was, however, the first to speak.
“I absolutely hate to be a pest, but being dead for – was it nineteen years? – has its disadvantages. Absolute ignorance regarding recent events in particular. Not asking you to tell you what happened during all nineteen years of your life, but also, what did?”
Philip snickered to himself, uneasiness lifting its weight of his shoulders ever so slightly. He wasn’t happy to be dead in the slightest, but at least he will have someone at his side.
“Well, firstly, after the war my father became a lawyer…”
––––––––
There was, in fact, no clocks, no calendars and no other potential indication of time. They didn’t need sleep or food, but they could fall asleep or summon a meal by a sheer force of their mind. At times place felt unsettlingly-large, at other times – small and all around familiar, and overall it was safe to safe that the afterlife was not what Philip imagined. He could only feel sorry for John – the man spent nineteen years here without a soul by his side.
They talked, gossiped and shared secrets. Laurens taught him drawing, Hamilton tried giving John piano lessons. Although, yes, it wasn’t great – it wasn’t also particularly terrible. Just a tad boring at times. And that is probably why seeing a sudden bright shimmer just above the ground felt unusually exciting.
“John?” Philip called over to the other man cautiously. “What is that?”
“Whe– Oh.” Laurens stopped a few meters away from the glimmer, staring at it wide-eyed. “I’ve seen that before. Once. Right before you appeared.”
“So that is an indication that – someone else has died?”
“Not just someone,” John shook his head. “It must be a person relevant to us. Not necessarily someone we’ve met, I have never seen you before, but someone who is in some way related. To both of us I would say, seeing how this place chose to keep us unseparated until now.”
“I–” Philip whispered, his voice suddenly trembling with either anticipation or fear. “Not sure about you, but I know of one such person. We don’t have much common acquaintances.”
“He would be forty nine,” John muttered back after a second. “It’s not – it’s not the age to die, unless of course he got into a duel himself, stupid man!”
“That is more likely that I would hope to admit,” Philip remarked. “God, if it is in fact him… We have a strange habit of dying one year before our anniversary.”
This had Laurens in a fit of nervous giggles as he clutched his hands behind his back, pacing across the grass.
“It took you two hours to fully appear – how long do you recon would Alexander grip to his deathbed?”
“If I know Pops well enough, I can bet on far too long,” Philip frowned, his eyes darting between John and the glimmer. “Maybe even half a day – I don’t want to know how must it hurt.”
It takes two days. Sure, they don’t have a watch, but both men are adept enough at counting minutes and can swear that it had been at least thirty eight hours before Alexander’s body in full… flesh, for the lack of better word – he looked around thirty if not younger – appeared on the ground, accompanied by not-stop slurred muttering. It took around two more seconds for it to become legible.
“–and what’s more,” Hamilton whispered. “I don’t believe that Thomas Jefferson– Eliza? Eliza, where– keep writing, I’m still dictating, keep speaking, damn it, Angelica, Eliza, what’s–”
“Pops!”
Philip immediately clasped a hand over his mouth after the exclamation, but it was not to be taken back. Alexander’s words drained out as he tried sitting up, and just as his son all those months – years? – ago collapsed back onto the ground.
“Philip?” Hamilton exhaled, looking directly at the sky. “What… what is happening? I can’t be– You are–”
“I am,” he nodded cautiously. “Dead. A-and so are you, I’m afraid. Heavens above – oh God, this expression is so inappropriate for our current situation – Pops, what happened? Why are you… What happened?”
Silence dragged on for at least a minute, interrupted only by heavy breathing and soft wind flowing across the waves of grass.
“Eliza,” the man whispered finally. “I was talking to Eliza and Angelica, I was bleeding… I was shot. A duel, he challenged me to a duel, I shot to his right, I didn’t want to kill him, I– He did. Oh my God, he actually did!”
“Who?” Philip frowned. “Why would anyone– Scratch that, there are multiple reasons why anyone would, but… Who?”
“Aaron Burr,” Alex laughed weakly. “The Vice-President.”
“Burr?!” John suddenly exclaimed, dashing to them and kneeling beside Alexander. “Wait, are we talking the same Aaron Burr here? The indecisive asshole who could hardly ever state his opinions out loud – he shot you?!”
And then, after a few seconds of silence:
“Gosh, I’m sorry, that was a terrible way to announce my presence – Alexander, dear Lord! I am not happy to meet you here out of all places, the man who determined the very destinies of our country – dead, but I would be lying if I said I am not absolutely ecstatic to see you again, you’ll have to forgive me for my egotism. I didn’t think I’d get to see you ever again, I’m so sorry, I just went on and died, and I didn’t want to, I promised I would come back and meet Philip – well, at least the last part was fulfilled, but–”
“Laurens?” Alexander exhaled, interrupting him. “My Laurens?”
And although they, being mere projections of their physical bodies, were hardly capable of crying, Philip could swear there were tears rolling down John’s cheeks as he helped the man sit up and embraced him, hiding his face in the folds of Alexander’s military coat. And when Philip himself slowly came up to the two, being somehow entangled in a hug, when he heard Laurens sobbing as the older Hamilton whispered some meaningless sentences into his ear, he knew.
He knew they might be dead and they have no idea what comes next. He knew they might have to linger around a while more, waiting for other lost and familiar souls to find their way up here. Or, he knew, they might have to move on to some Other Place, better, worse, that he couldn’t even dare to guess. But he knew something else, too, and that knowledge lifted all the worries off his shoulders.
From now on wherever they go, they go together.
And that would be quite enough.