First Burn • Hamilton

Chapter Four: First Burn

a/n: long chapters ahead, I hope you enjoy! Sorry it took bit, it was a busy weekend!

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Eliza sat in the kitchen, watching the door close behind her eldest children. She stood slowly, holding onto the table for support as she angrily edged to the stairs. She was heavily pregnant, her water could break at any moment. She creeped up the stairs, her shifting weight creaked the wood below her acing feet, the back of her mind wishing for Alexander to be there to help her. But she pushed it away. She still loved him, but she couldn't handle him. He was so much.

She walked down the hall to her and Alexander's shared room, she threw the covers off their bed, pulling off the pillows cases, hers was warm, while Alexander's was freezing cold. She tore it off, almost ripping the fabric. 

Then she stripped the bed, taking the sheets and blankets off, putting those they always slept with in a pile in the corner to scrub every fibre of Maria Reynold's DNA out of. The sheets she'd throw out, rip to shreds. She wasn't going to give birth on them, no way in hell would she do that.

Her mind was on Alexander, How could he do this? Why? What did she do to make him do that? Who pushed him off the ledge? The thoughts swarmed her head like bees. They stung constantly over and over again-so they were more like wasps.

Wasn't she his? Wasn't he hers? So why did he leave her?

Eliza continued to remake the bed, unfolding her clean sheets and tucking them under the mattress. Her mind was wandering, trying to wrap her head around what her husband had done. God only knows how he could've done that in the first place. He had no limits. Never had, never will. That was the first thing she accepted.

Eliza put the spread back on the bed, putting her hands on her hips and looking at the hallway. She turned to the bed, going to the table on her side and took the letter she saved from Alexander into her hands, looking at it. She started to read it, his impeccable use of words flooded her senses. He wrote letters like this to that girl, she started to rip it apart.

She walked down the hall, going into his home office. She went into his shelves, finding the box of letters that he had written to her in the office, she took the box and brought it down the stairs, going to the fireplace in the parlor, starting the flame and fueling it with the first torn letter she had. 

Letter after letter she read and read, from when she had first fallen in love, to when they wrote every day, to when she thought he was dead, when he came back and forth from battles and wars. The time in the harbor when Washington took him as his. She ripped most of them up, apart from very little. She threw them all into the fire in front of her, watching the palaces, the cathedrals, the world he made for her, burn to the ground. It was his fault after all, he was the one who left her for others.

It wasn't just Maria, and Eliza knew that. Men and Women, they all fell for him. She of course knew why, his charm was astounding and hooked you like a fish from the sea. Eliza knew he was in love with her, but he was never just there. He was other places as well, maybe even in men's pants. 

Eliza couldn't stand the thought of him coming home, how he'd try and charm her into loving him again. He was manipulative like that. She threw her love into the fire, it flew right out at her, she'd always love him, and that'd never change.

He wouldn't be in her sight, not until she wanted him to. She tried to remember her sister's face, it wasn't normal. She thought she'd be angered, but no. She was pitiful, why on earth would she be pitiful? Eliza's mind went to the far corners, remembering they had exchanged letters too.

Maybe he had an affair with her too, they looked at each other in such a way.

Eliza sighed, standing up once more, putting the last few letters into the box, and bringing it back upstairs. She could practically hear him screaming as he wrote that pamphlet. She knew it was the product of distrust and someone pushing him. A rumor, a bloody rumor was the reason why her heart was being torn to pieces over the man she loved so dearly.

She looked down at her stomach, holding it in her arms as she went into the nursery her and Peggy and painted while Angelica was away. It was a light blue, the crib was the same John had used five years ago. She sighed and look around, remembering rocking Philip to sleep so many times.

"William, I'm sorry for your father." She said, looking at her very pregnant stomach. She decided she wouldn't leave unless she had to. She wanted to fall off the face of the world. If her husband wanted a legacy, she wouldn't be a part of it anymore. He'll never understand that they were the reason his name would live on in the people who knew him.

He wasn't hers anymore, and she didn't really want him to be, not in that moment anyway.

She went over to the crib, holding on as her stomach hurt a lot. She realized she had dropped since the day before. She sighed, folding the blanket she had sewn and hanging  it over the edge, knowing she'd swaddle him in it once he was born. The baby would take her mind away from Alexander. But Alexander had to see his son eventually, didn't he?

Eliza concluded that if he cared he'd come and see him, and maybe just father his children. As he promised, considering the fact that his father was never there she couldn't understand how she couldn't be around for his children.

She didn't want him in her bed, she didn't want to look at him. Not right now. He tore her apart, the fire inside of her was growing and growling at him. She knew he'd be scared, she just wanted to cry in his arms but she was so mad. He'd never learn, would he?

Whenever she wanted him to come home, she knew he'd come home because her children would tell him to. He wouldn't be there for her, he wouldn't be hers, so she wouldn't be his. No manipulation with him, not anymore. If he was so busy putting his love into other people, why couldn't he put his love into the person he decided to love his whole life?

She may have not been as smart as her husband, not as witty or as good with words. But when it came to the heart she knew much more than him. It wasn't his fault, he raised himself. He was lucky he was alive, but he took it for granted all the time. She sighed at the thought, realizing she wanted him dead for a second. A tear screamed and cried as it fell out of her eye and dripped onto her chest.

She didn't want him dead, she just wanted him to love her completely for once.

Angelica was right, he always did what he did to survive as that's what he did all his life, he didn't know any better. The legacy he was leaving he didn't even know. It was his children, it was what he put into the world. He never ruined it, he just ruined the present. 

The people he made love with, whomever it was, male or female, tore Eliza, she thought and thought and thought and understood in some standard how it was to be in her husband's mind to think constantly and not know what he thought five seconds before as the train never stopped. But in that moment she could;t understand how he could do this to her. Especially, without telling her.

Eliza sat in the rocking chair, the thoughts consuming her as she went back and forth in the present, going back to the past to when he loved her and kept asking herself;

When did he stop loving her?