First Burn • Hamilton

Chapter Two: Hurricane

a/n: I hope you guys like this story, The musical I believe just flies through this, but I decided to write and in depth fic about.

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Where to start? Alexander fiddled with his quill, his mind going to a proclamation. His hand started to jitter fast, going to the top of the page. He'd write the title later, after his hand would start and his head would follow. Writing unable to stop until everything that his mind needed out into the world was on paper.

He looked up before he started, fidgeting, his imaginary Laurens raised an eyebrow at him in the chair. Alexander glared back. Lauren's sighed. As if he were really there, Alexander made eye contact with the air in front of him, sighing.

"Dearest, Laurens, why must you stare? I understand I'm dashing but your look says otherwise." Alexander simulated, Laurens rolled his eyes and glared at the parchment and up and Hamilton, pointing at himself. Alex understood, looking out the window.

"I know, I'll visit you soon darling, I have to write these first." Hamilton said, Laurens stared.

"What?" He asked, the air in front of him showed nothing but an empty chair, but talking to himself would be the only thing that he could necessarily get him to write however many pages he would.

Laurens pointed to the hall, then at himself. Eliza was home with the children, but she didn't know that Alexander was screaming to himself in Philadelphia. Alex took this as a 'be quiet notion' from the dead man, but Laurens meant was to take care of his wife before going to him. Hamilton knew this, but he didn't pay attention to it.

"I know, it'll be fine." Hamilton said, Laurens shook his head, standing up.

"It won't be, not until you fix it." He whispered, Alexander became stone-faced until the false Laurens disappeared. He looked down at the paper in front of him, his quit lightly dripping ink onto the paper.

He knew what to write.

I owe perhaps to my friends an apology for condescending to give a public explanation. A just pride with reluctance stoops to a formal vindication against so despicable a contrivance and is inclined rather to oppose to it the uniform evidence of an upright character.

Hamilton looked up, Laurens was gone, a sudden rain pattered against the window. The wind hitting along with it. Hamilton's mind went back to his past when he was a late teenager. He froze in his chair, the winds outside seemed to swirl counter-clockwise to him. Imagining the walls of the eye surround him, the eye never giving him the break he'd needed.

His mind flashed back to his small hut, a younger Alexander with knees to his chest. Rocking back and forth as the wind almost tore his walls down. A thin blanket wrapped over him. Scraps of the food that he had left beside him. The winds were louder and louder, a scream erupting from his mouth in reality. His eyes clammed shut.

An image of his mother holding him came through his mind. She held him in the moment, Laurens went to fetch her for him. His mother just held him, his mind going back to when he was twelve, half dead in the bed with her. 

His mind came back to reality, alone still. He looked down at the paper in front of him, growling at the anger of his past. Laurens sat in front of him once more. He looked up at him, tears now in Alexander's eyes. Laurens put his imaginary hand atop of Alexander's. Alexander's eye narrowed. He went and picked his quill. Thinking about what he'd done.

He prayed Eliza wouldn't legally separate from him by the end of it all. 

His anger took forth, writing so briskly and hoarsely that his s's looked like f's. Burr was at the front of his mind, Jefferson second. Maria and John Reynolds took over once he let out page after page as formally as he could. Words he hadn't used since the island were thrown onto the paper. His own mind bringing the best of him.

He had to publish it, he knew he had to. He had to preserve his name, the name he took so long and fought so hard to keep. No man would stand in his way. The anger taking full advantage of him, he couldn't think rationally. The constitution, his lost job, the affair, the letters, the court dates, cabinet meetings, votes, elections, conventions. It all flashed through his head, date after date. Hour after hour, time after time he picked up his quill to write so much more than anyone intended.

He didn't even think about Eliza until he had to. The woman he loved, cult tripped over him, ready for him to fall into it after he'd publish what was written.

The ghost of Laurens sat patiently as hours flew by, watching Alexander write and write and write all through that night. A total of Ninety Eight pages, ending with staggering words and cursive so forcefully written the quill had dented every word in the last twenty pages.

To unfold more clearly the malicious intent, by which the present revival of the affair must have been influenced—I shall annex an affidavit of Mr. Webster tending to confirm my declaration of the utter falsehood of the assertion, that a menace of publishing the papers which have been published had arrested the progress of an attempt to hold me up as a candidate for the office of President. Does this editor imagine that he will escape the just odium which awaits him by the miserable subterfuge of saying that he had the information from a respectable citizen of New-York? Till he names the author the inevitable inference must be that he has fabricated the tale.

He signed his name, taking a final piece of parchment and writing out a lengthy title, looking out the window and realizing how the sun was barely taking the sky out of it's midnight darkness. He looked at what he had concluded in front of him, realizing Laurens' spirit was probably still present. When his mother passed he pretended she was there until his cousin died, even when that happened he whispered under his breath as he worked.

"Satisfied, darling?" Alexander asked the empty chair in front of him.

"Like you'd ever be." A thought and or response came. The sex wasn't apparent in the voice, he couldn't tell who it was. It was either Angelica or John, no finger could be put on a single name though. Two people he had loved beside his wife. Two people he chose not to be apparent with. Laurens more than Angelica of course, even though Eliza knows nothing about what really happened between the men, she isn't as naïve as her sister. She knows the faces they make at each other, the flirtatious glances. Silence stays with her on that dared subject to this day. At the end of this however, she might as well be screaming about it to him in front of their children.

Alexander put his quill and the single piece of parchment he had left back into his desk drawer, picking up his stack of papers and taking them into his kitchen as he took a swig of water and buckled his shoes. Tying his hair, and running outside, all the way to downtown Philadelphia and wandering into an editorial. Throwing his papers on the publisher's desk and handing the money. No second thoughts or actions, he should've thought. He should've calmed himself down. 

He should've kept the papers to himself, but alas he never did.

 Now, all he could do was run, going back to his apartment. People stared but didn't care for too long. They had other matters to attend to. By the next morning however the first political intercourse scandal would have been published and Alexander's life would have been changed forever. He carefully made tea and sipped it out of a cup, not touching any of the food he had in his kitchen as he wasn't hungry. Little did he know that was what his stomach told him when he was actually hungry.

Alexander stayed inside the rest of that day, talking to the air in front of him, writing letters, which as he hadn't decided to really pay attention to Lauren's death as he couldn't bare the sight of it years ago, he decided to continue the forever mourning of the man. Writing letters upon letters of what he'd say to him. One-sided conversations to the man  who was dead. 

A good two hundred miles up the coast in New York, Eliza was with Angelica in Alexander's real home. The older kids taking care of the younger, gathering around for a well-made breakfast. Everyone learning that it would be another day without Alexander there once more, but not knowing what they'd be reading tomorrow that would be left on their doorstep.