Anything for you, Laurens. Soooo…I know you wanted fluff…we’re not doing that.  I don’t actually know if Laurens was in Washington’s camp for this, but we’re going to assume history is flexible because extensive googling did not produce an actual date or shit for this battle (besides ‘between September 1777 and June 1778’), which was hardly a battle at all.  Also technically Lee sent a letter but whatever, we’re doing Some Shit with history anyway, might as well go hard.

to see our glory

The message from Lee was greeted by a long beat of silence.

“My sympathies, Your Excellency,” Lee said, doing a poor job of imitating poise as his shirtsleeves dripped steadily on the ground.  The word simper drifted through John’s mind at the sound of Lee’s voice.

“Yes,” General Washington said flatly, both hands braced on the table that had been serving duty as a tactical map minutes before. John couldn’t bring himself to look away from where the general’s little finger had pushed aside the marker of a British fort, one that he and Alexander had been bickering over not a day past. “Thank you for informing me, Major General.  You are dismissed.”

Lee left, and the tent was deathly silent, the general still standing over the table with his head down, John still fixed in place where he stood near the far corner of the table, the handful of other men in the tent stony.

“Gentlemen,” General Washington said, his voice perfectly controlled.  “Please send for the Marquis, he will want to know.  If my aides would stay, it would be appreciated.  The rest of you are dismissed.”

The officers started to move, and the spell of peace over the tent shattered like glass under a stone.  John was dimly aware of the room breaking into factions, the officers heading for the door with polite murmurs of condolences while the handful of aides-de-camp present remained behind, but there seemed to be a thick layer of water between himself and the rest of the room.  His hands trembled faintly by his sides and there was a numb and ringing silence in his ears untroubled by the noise around him. Someone—Washington, he thought distantly—was sweeping an angry hand over the table and sending an assortment of items flying, an inkwell crashing to the ground with its pen.

“Lieutenant Colonol?  Laurens?” a voice was saying insistently, somewhere by his shoulder. “John.”  He couldn’t seem to force his head to turn toward them.

“Mon ami,” a new voice said, soft and heavily accented.  Hands closed around John’s arm and turned him forcibly until he was blinking at the Marquis de Lafayette, the younger man’s steady dark eyes on his.  He wondered when the Frenchman had arrived—surely it had only been a few heartbeats since Lee’s news.  Perhaps John’s heart was unwilling to beat properly.  “Sit down, bon?” John allowed himself to be steered, letting Lafayette push him down into a chair and press a cup of something strong and astringent into his hands.  “What has happened?” he asked the room at large.  “Is John well?  Where is Monsieur Hamilton?”

John took a drink of the indeterminate alcohol in his hand to excuse himself from having to answer, and the general let out a slow breath.

“I am sorry, Lafayette,” Washington said quietly. “Lee’s men were caught by the British during a mission of sabotage across the Schuylkill.  During their escape, it appears that Hamilton was killed. I know you were close friends, I thought you should be informed.”

“Non,” Lafayette breathed, and looked back to John, as if hoping that he would smile and say that it was all right, it was all a joke, just meant to scare him. “Ce n’est pas vrai.  John, mon ami, tell me this is not true.”

John’s hand tightened around the cup until his knuckles were white and his fingertips ached, and he managed to force himself to speak.  “It’s true,” he said, and his voice was raw from the alcohol, cracked through every word. “I heard the report from Lee myself. His body was lost–”  John’s voice ceased to work for a long moment, as if his throat had been slit and his lungs emptied of air in exchange for blood.  He swallowed another mouthful of alcohol, feeling it burn all the way down into his chest, and said, somewhat steadier, “He was lost in the river.”

Saying the words out loud brought the numbness to a crashing end, and John immediately missed it.  Surely anything, anything at all, was better than this.  

Lafayette lowered himself slowly into a chair that had been helpfully provided and claimed his own glass of what John was beginning to recognize as whiskey strong enough to strip paint.  The usually cheerful Frenchman was paper-white, with wide and glistening eyes, and his expressive face was twisted sharply.  Washington reached out and gripped Lafayette’s shoulder, a rare glimpse of the man’s paternal side in the safety of the aides’ company, and Lafayette leaned into the touch, like a child lost in the forest.  It was easy to forget how young Lafayette was, behind his tactically brilliant mind and charming personality, but he had been nineteen and reckless when he joined the war not long ago.  He had only just noted his twentieth birthday.

He was just a handful of months younger than Alexander, John remembered, vague.  He should do something for Lafayette, offer him some sort of comfort or solidarity, but he was afraid that if he moved he would shatter into a thousand pieces.

John Laurens had known grief.  His mother had died just a handful of years back, little Jemmy’s death last year had been his fault and his father had never missed an opportunity to mention it.  Even before that, he knew what it meant to lose a friend.

This living, physical pain was another thing entirely.

It felt like someone had gone through his body and, considering mere removal of his heart to be insufficient, had opted to take a blade to every vein and artery, and cut it carefully from its shell of skin.  The hollow ache in his chest was unbearable, as if his ribs were being crushed inward to fill the void.  

Alexander was not here.  Alexander would not ever be here again.  Alexander was at the bottom of the Hudson river, his quick tongue still and his brilliant mind dark, and there was nothing to be done.

Around John, the tent was settling into the familiar rut of mourning, drinks going around and the silence giving way to murmured remembrances.  Even the general took the whiskey, drained a glass, and poured himself a second, at odds with his standard abstentious policy.

“To Alexander Hamilton,” the general said, raising his glass, and waited for the words to be repeated before he sat down heavily in his chair.

John remembered Alexander’s favorite toast, usually shouted cheerfully over whatever he was supposed to be toasting—to freedom!—and gestured abstractly with his drink before taking another mouthful.

Alexander would never raise his glass to freedom again, John realized, the thought coming with the steady and terrible advance of a warship.

Alexander would never complain that Washington didn’t give him enough interesting work, nor threaten to dismember someone slowly and painfully when they attempted to join him in criticizing the man.  He would never volley French back at Lafayette, never allow John and Lafayette to pry him away from his work to go drinking, never work himself into a fever as he did over the winter.  He would never get into a fight with someone who insulted his origins, never stay up all night with John building essays and arguments in favor of abolition, never come crashing back into their tent like an ill-tempered hurricane with stories of Lee’s idiocy.  

Alexander would never grin at John again, teeth bared like something hungry and eyes alight with humor.  John would never hear his voice again, swinging from angry shouting to a fond my Laurens in a heartbeat.  

Alexander would never see what this war produced, the country they were all fighting for.  John would be alone there, without him, and even if all their dreams came true, slaves freed left and right, travelers welcomed with open arms, cultures crossed and learned and reshaped, it would be a nightmare.  One of the quiet nightmares, subtle, the kind that woke the sleeper with inconsolable tears rather than screams, and settled in the back of the mind like a chain.

It wouldn’t be worth seeing.  None of it would be worth anything anymore.

Lafayette’s hand landing on his wrist made John startle, and he looked over.

“Mon ami,” Lafayette said quietly, low enough that his voice was almost lost in the rising murmurs in the tent. There were a few drying tear marks on his cheeks and his normally neat hair was wild around his face.  “I think perhaps you had better stay with me tonight.”

“I’m fine,” John said, starting to tug away.  “I’m fine.  I’ll—I have work to do tonight.  I just have to write something–”

“Laurens,” Lafayette said, stern.  “Alexander would never forgive me if I allowed you to wander off in this state and possibly come to harm.  You will remain with me.”  John looked at him for a moment, but when Lafayette was feeling stubborn he could rival Alexander, so he inclined his head in agreement and took another drink.

“John, son,” the general said, leaning forward.  His voice, low and powerful, drew a moment of quiet behind it, the noise in the tent ebbing, but when the others had confirmed that he wasn’t calling for their attention the hubbub rose again.  “Your duties for tomorrow can be given to someone else. Take the day to recover from this.” Time with Hamilton had sharpened Washington’s perception of when he was about to be the object of an argument, because he cut John off before he could speak.  “Please.”

There was no turning the general down when he said please, his eyes solemn and steady and kind.  John nodded again.

It was some half an hour before the commotion rose outside the tentflap, an annoyed voice, rough with exhaustion, arguing with the guards posted there.

“You will let me into this tent or so help me God I will let myself in!” the voice finally shouted, and the tent went silent as the general strode forward like a man on a mission. He threw open the tent and the speaker stalked inside, dripping even more water than Lee and shivering.  His black hair was plastered to his neck and his perpetually sun-darkened skin was unnaturally pale, with high smears of color on his cheeks.

“Was there a funeral that Lee failed to inform us of?” Alexander Hamilton asked, cocking his head in his birdlike way at the sight of the aides, drinking and grief-stricken.

“Hamilton,” the general rumbled, half a growl, and Alexander looked almost alarmed when the man marched up to him and gripped both his shoulders tightly, halfway to pulling the wayward aide into a hug.  Washington wasn’t given to physical affection as a rule, and it was obvious that Alexander knew it.

“Sir, is everything all right?” he asked, frozen.

“Son–”

“Don’t call me son–”

“Son,” Washington repeated sharply. “You were reported dead in this very tent not two hours past.  I will call you whatever I please for the next few days, as you owe all of us several years back on our lives.  What happened?”

“Lee said I was dead?” Alexander shook his head, sending water flying.  “I was swept away by the current a bit, but I am unhurt.”

Washington nodded, weary, and gave Alexander’s shoulders a firm squeeze before releasing him to be pounced on by six feet and three inches of French nobleman.

“Mon cher ami, I have never been so glad to see you in all my life!” Lafayette cried, folding himself around Alexander’s smaller frame and curling over to bury his face in Alexander’s shoulder with no apparent concern for the water still drizzling from his clothes.  There was a burst of rapid French that went well over John’s head—his French was rudimentary at best—and Alexander gave a brief laugh. Lafayette echoed the sound, his voice tear-damp again, but he was smiling when he pulled away from Alexander and gave him a friendly shake.

Looking bemused, Alexander allowed himself to be handed off between the dozen aides present, and although most didn’t hug him—Lafayette’s clothes were drenched all along his front—they all grabbed some part of him and expressed their sincere relief.  Most of them filed out, exhausted by grief and catharsis, drinks still in hand, leaving John, Lafayette, and Washington alone with their baffled friend.

“If I had known I had caused such grief, I might have hurried more on the march back from the river,” Alexander finally offered with a crooked smile. He looked over at John, who had been too uncertain of his welcome to stand and greet him, and threw out his arms cheerfully.  “What, Laurens, no words of relief to see your Hamilton back from the dead?”

“Alexander,” John said, and if his voice had been raw before now it was ravaged, and he reeled gracelessly to his feet and into the man in front of him. Alexander gave a small huff of surprise as John pressed his head to his shoulder and wrapped his arms around him. “Do not ever do that again,” John muttered, and there was icy river water soaking into his shirt and his skin and he didn’t give a damn.  “Do not.”

“Ah, well, I’ve survived this long,” Alexander said, cajoling, and John tightened his grip until his arms ached.  To Alexander’s credit, he didn’t protest.  “I am sorry, Jack,” he said quietly.  John didn’t grace that with a response, but released Alexander after a few more moments and wiped some of the water off his face with a sleeve of his ruined shirt.  If there were tears mixed in with the river water, that was John’s business.

“Laurens,” the general said at last.  “Please ensure that Hamilton is given dry clothes and a warm bed, insofar as such a thing can be found, and that I do not see him working tomorrow, through any means necessary.  I need to have a word with the good captain about keeping better count of his men.”  John nodded and sketched a salute, closing a fist on Alexander’s sleeve.  “And son,” Washington continued, and Alexander, for the first time since John had met him, didn’t bristle at the address.  “I sincerely hope this experience has sufficiently impressed upon you the place you hold in this camp.  I expect you to take measures to ensure that I do not have to declare you dead a second time.”

“Yes, Your Excellency,” Alexander said, and despite his shivers he offered a much better salute than John had, before being physically hauled out of the tent.