It is too easy to fall into despair. Burr is shocked silent, when Hamilton brushes him aside. As though Burr is nothing, a child, and what right does Burr have to be taken aback, after what has happened? What he allowed to happen.

In the study, stomach churning, he sits through long convulsions, hurling up that burning poison into a basin near the fire. Someone is knocking at the door, lightly, and he is shaking too much, heart beating too fast, a feral thrum-rush of fear and sickness, to hear them.

Hamilton is--he's going to get himself killed. And he doesn't--Alexander, his husband, doesn't care if it should mean Burr lives or dies. And their children--

He can feel their family splintering, a deeper, more pervasive terror taking root, which truly has been there since--

He can't make it to the writing desk. He has to crawl, and pull himself into the chair, and what he writes is shaky and uneven and hardly legible. A short note, to Ned and Washington. One to save who can be, if it is too late. One to talk them out of it, if it is not.

The large coin purse in the lock box in the desk, for an emergency urgent express. The rider will pound on their doors until he is received, regardless of the hour. And it is another matter for Burr to make it to the door, to force only some modicum of composure to face Theo there, leaning against the opposite wall with her face a knot of worry.

She doesn't question the letters. She has always know when urgency is required, trained in practicality and reason. Moreso than most young men he knows. Than he himself was, at her age.

Dispatched, he returns to the study, locks the door again.