"No one should be doing more than me," he counters. "And if they are, I'll challenge them too." It's a stupid, petty thing to say. Meaningless.

Why don't you like it. How can he explain? It just hits a place that is tender and bruised, that sometimes grows painfully inflamed.

"I'm no one's son," is what he says, after a moment. It isn't true. James Hamilton is alive and more or less well, still out of debtor's prison. But if he was really someone's son, shouldn't they have cared for him, when he was cast out twice over? Washington works him as hard as any other taskmaster, and though he calls the aides his family, they aren't. Washington is their commander. Their master. It is a temporary thing, made by exigencies of war.

And yet --

In truth, Hamilton hates being called son because he likes being called son.