amrev_intrigues | This is Fine Alternative Denouement

Ned holds Burr's hand, for a moment, grasping him as he presses the cravat into Ned's hands.

"Remember: it is not only that he will take comfort in you, but that you take comfort in him. He has a responsibility to care for you that he takes very seriously."

He squeezes Burr's hand, and releases him.

"I'll ask the servants," slaves, "not to disturb you."

Later, Hamilton awakens still in a partial daze, smelling his husband, though the smell is wrong, and faint -- and he starts weeping, over Burr's absence, over the distance he can imagine creeping into their bond, over his simple exhaustion and pain. Ned rubs his back, and Hamilton presses his face into the cravat, like it will close some unutterably agonizing gap within him.

On the other side of the wall, Burr weeps too. Silent tears, unmoving, staring at the grain of the wood in the wall. And unlike Hamilton--he doesn't know why he weeps. He is numb. Distant. And though he promised Ned, he does not go to Hamilton. He needs to be alone. For how long, he doesn't know.

He thinks he is fevered, when he finally sleeps. His body aching and his stomach roiling. And somewhere there in the half space of dream and wakefulness he is sure, if there is a way to be sure, that beyond all hope he is pregnant. Something latching on inextricably, draining life and leaving behind petrification.

"Now, why is Mr. Burr-Hamilton in one of my sitting rooms, on his own, weeping so piteously?"

The voice is low, not just in volume but in pitch: a rumble felt in the pit of the chest. It is Washington who laboriously steps inside. He is still feeling some of the injuries that Hamilton inflicted on him, in his frenzy, and it makes him move with deliberation.

Or maybe it's his latest hemorrhoids.

"I think," says Washington, "that, perhaps, he is being foolish. But I decided to ask him, before I pass judgment." He takes a seat across from the chaise where Burr has slept, and offers a handkerchief, ever the gentleman.

Any tears Burr has now are a result only of his nightmares and disturbed dreams. He is only half sleeping, when Washington enters, and he shifts to a kind of half-sitting up against the wall, when Washington sits, then slides to sit up fully, when his brain catches up. President and general.

He has his own handkerchief, refuses Washington's, dabs off sweat and damp.

"Sir, I apologize for not asking. I needed only some rest from the excitement of last night--" Hamilton's excitement, not Burr's "--I will return to Alexander if I but have a moment to gather myself."

This is easier, pulling himself together to be Colonel Burr, whom has not been ravished, and who is not heat sick. Who is not fighting nausea, and who does not need to take more abortifacient.

He doesn't want to return to Alexander. He feels sick at the thought of seeing him. But he also can't bear the guilt at being away. Everyone has to do what they don't wish to, when the occasion comes. He has a duty. Even as his eyes burn and his head pounds.

"Excitement... that is one word for it, I suppose."

Washington's eyes are sympathetic.

"You don't need to stand on formality. I consider you and Alexander to be like sons -- and Theo to be like a granddaughter. You both are welcome here."

He seems unfathomably old, suddenly. Pained. He looks away. (He is thinking that he is glad Jefferson's doctor has set up his sickbed elsewhere -- though he is conscious it will still have the appearance of playing favorites. He is thinking that he hopes the Union survives this disaster. He is thinking that he needs James Madison on his side.)

"At least take a bed-chamber," he suggests. "If an old man can offer some comfort to one who has been so wounded, perhaps it can be that."

"I am not so wounded," Burr is quick to say. "I'll be recovered in a day or two. I worry more for Alexander." What Alexander thinks, will think, and how he'll cope. Burr's been wounded worse before, during the war. They'd thought him lost, after the battle of Monmouth, and he'd still never really recovered. Sensitive to the temperature in a way not dissimilar to how Alexander was sensitive to the seasons. "He can't challenge Jefferson like that again, but I fear he will be beyond reason." He doesn't see a way they can go on in their current positions, he means. Even this most recent convulsion had the potential to dissolve the union beyond repair. Anything else would be--

"I thank you, I shall ask a room to be prepared," Burr says. "You should to your own rest as well," Burr says. "I can see already how Hamilton's struggles have injured you," and Washington already was not in the best health, before. He doesn't know to what extent Hamilton has been restrained. But he feels that guilt keenly--to be the center of such an upset, and to have called on Washington to resolve it, aware even of Washington's recent fragility.

Maybe the guilt shows. But it is better that than shame.

Edited 2022-11-18 10:06 (UTC)

"Mrs. Washington is already at work," he says. "You know she is so fond of you. I would have attended to it earlier, but I had assumed..." That he would want to be with his husband.

A hint of a smile.

"You are very strong," he says, "but I cannot forget a young omega, mere days after childbirth, insisting he could ride a horse. That he must ride a horse, to go and find his mate." There is something like fondness, in this memory. "Whenever you are under threat, Alexander does something foolish... Ah, but it had to be me. He is a headstrong man." He sighs. A headstrong man -- that's an understatement. Alexander does not submit to authority. "Yours are narrow shoulders for our Atlas -- but I fear the weight of the union will rest upon you, in the days to come."

"I should think it more likely to fall onto Mr. Madison's shoulders," Burr says. Slighter even than himself, but no less broad. Stockier is perhaps the word for it. But Madison was, despite his height, the more able of them. As cool as he was dignified, in any setting Burr had seen him, if not prime to fits of extreme agitation in his personal affairs. When he had been younger.

Washington is right, though. Burr, who would at risk of his own death, ride to attempt to rescue Hamilton. And Hamilton, who would at risk of his own death and Burr's, ride out to avenge his own dignity.

He doesn't think there will be a way to mend the gap between them. But Hamilton needs him now, and Washington is tired. So Burr excuses himself, and knocks tentatively at the door to that sick room, light enough to be nearly unheard.

If he is granted entry--he will hit a wall of scents. Bad, desperate ones, that wrap around him like led. His face will pale, and he will be shaking, when he takes that seat again at Hamilton's side and offers his hand. And is Hamilton is feverish it will burn to the exclusion of Burr's own. One heat lost in another. And Burr won't have anything to say. But offer himself, in this little capacity he can. Because Burr's body is not his own. Because Hamilton has been so defrauded.

Edited 2022-11-19 20:04 (UTC)

"In matters of public outcry, I am rarely wrong," is all Washington says to that. He parts from Burr with a squeeze of his shoulder, a murmured word of support.

Hamilton is asleep when Burr enters. He is curled up, on his side, hands cupped in front of him and nose buried in the cravat. He seems small, this powerful man, this leader of the Federalists. He is small.

The touch of Burr's hand rouses Hamilton enough to nose against Burr's wrist, to brush his lips at Burr's palm. He looks up bleary, confused from the drugs. "Oh," he says, like he's recognized something strange in Burr's face. "I love you," like a revelation, like a surprise. A tear runs down his cheekbone, touches the corner of his mouth. He doesn't seem to notice. He just breathes the smell of Burr's skin.

Maybe this is the pain--the wanting and needing and loving something despite one's self. Maybe that is why Hamilton weeps, why he breaks so completely, comes apart so piteously on seeing Burr. He does not want to love Burr anymore. Maybe he can't stop himself anyway.

Burr doesn't do anything he didn't do before--sits there and brushes his hands over Hamilton's face scents him with what lingers on his wrists, let's Hamilton take from that small portion of his body, as Burr watches him, blank.

He doesn't know how to make Hamilton better. To undo what he's done, or fix any of this. To make himself feel more--more. It's been only part half a day, since Burr came home, and already they are broken.

"I'm sorry," Burr says, hardly more than a whisper. He's watching Hamilton still, petting. Slow, soothing strokes, leaning forward in his chair with his elbows on his thighs, knees brushing the bed. He won't join him. He can't. And he doesn't think Hamilton would be able to stop himself--from marking and covering and needing. Like when Burr came home, and Hamilton had sunk teeth into throat and then left Burr there, let him collapse into the floor. Left.

"You need to rest," Burr says, soothes. He needs to rest, so that Burr can rest too. So that the endless parade of people needing things from Burr can finally stop. So that Hamilton can feel better. Be himself. Burr needs--he needs Hamilton to be himself.

Edited 2022-11-20 07:23 (UTC)

"Come here," Hamilton says, "why won't you come here," because he wants to groom Burr and scent him and Burr is so far away. Burr is far away on purpose, and he won't come closer. He is rejecting Hamilton. Slow, petting strokes just feel like another way to create distance. Hamilton is not comforted.

His mind whirls: not a frenzy, but something like it, digging up the nasty, painful things in the chasms in his heart, the places where he buried everything before New York.

He pushes Burr's hands away. He never wanted you, it was always a sham, it was desperation, it was the pregnancy. "You don't want me," he accuses. That's why he went to Jefferson, because you're not good enough. "Don't touch me -- don't touch me that way. Am I so repulsive?" You are disgusting, and he knows it. "If you want to go, then go."

And they're just words. Just a few careless words, but--whatever there was left of Burr after all of it--whatever tissue-paper thick composure he had pulled over himself since, it rips away to nothing in an instant. Hamilton pushes his away, and Burr isn't--he's not doing enough, then Burr doesn't love him enough, and Burr isn't enough. Maybe it shows on his face. More likely it doesn't. That's how it's always been, when he feared for the life of his children, or even lesser occasions, when insult was offered him; his face shutters, and his sits back, cold. But it isn't complete. There is damp there, when he stands, mechanically, and goes to the door.

He can't handle--he can't. And he hurts. He aches still, fevered and bleeding and--but this is worse. And he feels wronged. More wronged even than--

He doesn't know what to do. There's something happening inside him. A cascade of sick and hormones and need. He needs someone to care for him. He needs his mate. His mate? And he's suddenly confused, disoriented and--he just needs someone. To tell him he's good. And no one will do that. No one will do that. And he's alone. And he's not where he needs to be. And that's why no one will take care of him. He's not being good. He needs to be good. He needs his--his mate?

So Burr goes. Quietly and quickly. Winds down dark streets. He needs to find his mate. He needs to find Jefferson.

Thomas Jefferson is not in the most pain of his life. No, the multiple attempts to set his wrist bones in Paris were probably more painful. He has had worse fevers -- certainly as a child. If his wound does not go putrid, he will, in fact, be perfectly fine.

But, at the moment, he is certainly suffering.

He should not have opened the door.

"Is he mad?" he remembers asking, wide-eyed, at the slave who announced that Hamilton was demanding his presence outside. Withdrawing and pretending at stone-faced indifference when every plea from outdoors set his heart racing. He thought to explain himself, once Washington had Hamilton suitably restrained, the diminutive loudmouth for once silenced. Washington's prodigious strength has declined so much in recent years -- but he smells as much of alpha as ever, and Jefferson had believed that, only that, was why Hamilton let Washington take him. He opened the door, and at first thought he had stumbled, or that someone had seized him by the shoulder -- unacceptable, even for one as trusted as Jupiter -- and then he... then he felt the blood. He felt the blood trickle, before even the pain.

He should not have opened the door.

Burr should not have tempted him, that way; Jefferson did not start the evening planning to ravish the husband of another alpha. Burr should have been more careful. And Burr welcomed it, anyway. The punishment is far outsized for the crime.

He shifts restlessly on his bed, hurting, hurting, hurting, with every heartbeat.

He is awakened by one of the Hemmingses, telling him he has a visitor. "I'm seeing no one," Jefferson orders. "Turn him away."

"But--I need to be here," Burr says, and perhaps it is the fever, but his silver tongue is leaden, thoughts moving slow, sluggish. "I--tell him that--" who? "I've been turned out. He'll know--" He'll know the rest. And Burr is listing now, shaking visibly, so he goes to sit on the step, too-warm, mouth rushing with saliva, but he ends up more collapsed than anything, rolling warm skin against cool iron.

He needs to be let in. He can't be--they can't turn him away. He's meant to be here, isn't he? There's that pain there--more acute than that running through his body. He took the scent reducers and the other potions, but--

He's confused. He doesn't understand what's happening, or really where he is. He just needs to be here. He has to be here.

Edited 2022-11-23 00:49 (UTC)

He has no willpower for this. "Surely even Hamilton cannot be so--" But he stops, because, if anyone could turn out a distressed and sick mate after being the cause of such a brutal attack, Hamilton could.

Jefferson turns away.

It is a slave whom Burr finds lifting him to his feet, and guiding him indoors. To where the smell of Jefferson is everywhere, and the violent metal smell of his blood threads through it like a flaw in weave.

Jefferson does not even sit up. He is pale, wan. His scent is of wound, weakness. "You cannot be here," he says, "you must go to your husband."

Burr is not wholly sensible to the movement, to the space, where he is and who is with him. But he recognizes the smell. A good, wonderful smell. Yes, yes, this is where he needs to be, even as it is undercut by a feeling of sick wrongness. But--maybe that is the smell of the wound. Of suffering.

Burr drops to his knees immediately, trembling to the side of the bed Jefferson reclines on. There is still something lingering here, faintly. Too faint for anyone to notice but his own--heat, stale beneath sick. He ducks his head, presses it against Jefferson's outstretched hand, a show of submission. A plea.

He remembers--he was told to go. He needed to be with his mate. He was told to be with his mate.

"He won't have me," Burr says, a little broken sound. "I have to--he said--I need to be with my mate." Confusion there, beneath fever.

"Then go be with him," Jefferson says, pulling his hand away. It's enough to inspire pity in anyone's heart, but he cannot, if only for the purposes of preserving his own flesh against a traitorous madman. He cannot summon forth any sort of purr, any sort of reassuring croon, and he is upset -- he does not want disharmony in his household, nor in his personal life, and this occasion has ruined his careful peace so quickly. Burr must have returned home and immediately confessed. Blamed it on Jefferson. Looked piteous. Maybe they both planned this! Nothing would be beyond Hamilton's constant scheming.

"Of course he will have you," says Jefferson, trying to be soothing. "He cannot spurn someone as lovely as you."

And Burr is confused, but his distress ebbs for being in such a place, among such smells. But Jefferson is rejecting him, just as--nobody wants him. No one will--

And he is crying then. Those omega smells. The please and the protect me, take care of me smells that one might expect in one unattached, or attached but alone.

"But I am," Burr says, and he doesn't understand. "I don't--you don't want me?" And he isn't acting like himself. But everything is wrong and he doesn't understand. "I need my mate, he told me to go to my mate," and he reaches out for Jefferson's hand again, bares his throat.

Jefferson flinches from the smells. He is aware, uneasily, that he bears some fault for this utter distress, this heat-sickness. He devoted himself to toppling Mr. Burr-Hamilton from his pedestal, and now he looks wary upon the man brought low.

"Your husband is responsible for you," says Jefferson, shortly. "It has nothing to do with what I want." Though there isn't much to want, right now. Burr's graceful charm is nowhere in this tortured form. Was it truly such a crime to want to capture some of that charm? Hold it, even if just for a moment or two?

He should not waste his time arguing. Burr is insensible of the fine distinctions.

"Your mate is Alexander Hamilton," he emphasizes, though his voice is weak, his breath short, from the intensifying pain. "Not me." He has no mate. His mate is gone.

He has to try and catch his breath, from the strain. "He cannot be seen this way," he manages, to Jupiter. "Provide him an escort back to Mr. Hamilton."

With this second denial, this refusal, this inability to sate the heat-sickness which has been growing since Hamilton left him collapsed on the floor of their home, Burr shatters completely.

There are no loud sobs, but his frame shakes, and those omega sounds spill from his regardless. He gives up. There is nothing to do, nowhere to go. Where his life had been the morning before, everything is lost in ruin. There will be no peace for him, even unto death. He gives up.

He doesn't fight when the slave carries him from the room, because to fight or even assist would mean he is working under any power of his own. He thinks, if he is left in the street he will stay there. Find some dark place to lay until he never moves again.

He is not thinking of his children, or Hamilton. It is all lostnand confused beneath a muddy mess of hormones and a pain which stretches to the core of him, which will not be soothed by anything which holds the power to soothe.

Edited 2022-11-24 02:44 (UTC)

"Wait!"

The call comes from a diminutive, portly man, instantly recognizable as James Madison, come to pay a call on his ill friend, diverted by the emergency in front of him. What could Burr-Hamilton be doing here? Could it be that this was truly a crime of adultery and not ravishment?

The poor omega is ill and insensate, not responding when Madison calls his name. "Mr. Hamilton... Mr. Burr." He looks to the slave. "Lay him out on the sopha."

"Mr. Jefferson has instructed me to bring him to the Hamilton residence..."

"Then lay him out in the carriage. Let the poor man down." Madison sends his own carriage ahead and climbs in after Burr. The only place he can lay properly is on the floor, and Madison lowers himself next to Burr, projecting as soothing a scent as he can manage. Presses his wrist against Burr's lips, so that one of his scent glands can be close to Burr's nose. It would ordinarily be unthinkable to take such liberties with pheromonic manipulation, but he believes the extraordinary measure is called-for.

"Hush, now," he murmurs: "You'll be home soon."

Burr doesn't know where he is. His eyes are open, but they roll unseeing in his head. Has an omega yet died of heat sickness? If he were sensible to know, he would feel like dying. His skin burns, and the jolts of the carriage shoot through his joints like lighting. He is making sounds--sounds he doesn't wholly recognize, and his face is wet, and--he is shivering. Shaking apart, and he must be bleeding still.

He is far away, lost in an endless sea of things unfulfilled. He was used to that, once. Disappointments without end, tossed about like the last crust of moldy bread. He was used to being discarded, once. When had that changed? He sees his uncle, he thinks, sitting on the seat near his head, and he shrinks away.

A disappointment, a slut, a whore, spreading your legs for some Irish bastard, some island whoreson, I never want to see you again, would that you were born a man, and Burr tries to plug his ears with hands that won't cooperate.

But there's the smell--cutting through delerium, and it lights in him like something burning, wet wood cracking and splitting and popping. He latches on, drags that smell closer, and he's sobbing for all he's not sure he makes a sound. He thinks--is Montgomery there? They've been away so long. But no, not Montgomery, but--Hamilton. His mate. His love. Not his mate. No, not--he has no mate. There is no one. No one, but--

He latches on anyway. One solid point in a storm with no end. A man who can focus on only one thing for sanity, in a nightmare without end.

"Hush, now." Madison strokes Burr's throat, where there are signs of a fresh bite. (Thomas couldn't have -- he couldn't have.) Burr leans against his thigh, and Madison sits, awkwardly, with his legs half-bent in front of him, braced against the carriage's walls. Sets his cane aside, and begins to rub Burr's back. "There. I'll have you back to your husband."

But, as it turns out, Hamilton is not at his home. Theodosia directs them towards the President's house, her lips pressed thin in what Madison can only assume is anger. He remembers the months working with Hamilton on the Federalist Papers, Theodosia underfoot, curious and sharp and dazzlingly witty. How different, that time, from this one -- cold words and colder silences. She does not want to see Burr like this, and Madison cannot find any fault in that.

The slave wants to leave Burr and return home; it takes all the authority Madison can bring to bear to have him go on.

The carriage jostles unpleasantly, almost bruisingly, as Madison tries to comfort the insensible omega. The smell is almost too much for him, overwhelming in its distress.

--

"Where is Aaron?"

Hamilton is shaky but conscious, now; he has little to dull the pain of a tearing heart. He turns from Ned, turns from Ned's question. "He would hardly touch me," and Hamilton shudders. "He would hardly look at me."

"Where," Ned enunciates, slower, "is Aaron?"

Burr doesn't really come to his senses until he is being carried inside. Even then, there are only half snatches of reality. Dark wood walls wheeling and pitching sickeningly. He is put in a bed, and he has hardly been set down before he is retching, awful and painful and choking over the side.

His head pounds, and his eyes are watering, and he can feel his heart beating too-fast, clenching and cramping as he sucks air through a space that seems too tight.

There is someone on the bed, kneeling over him, caressing his face, cool water, and he thinks--

He is breathing slower, and maybe it will be fine after all. But then he smells it--catches a whiff of something, of--someone he can't--and then he is leaning over and retching something horrible again. Spots in his eyes.

He thinks he might die. He will die. There exists more than one thing can contain, a limit to pain or--and he smells Ned, Ned, and Ned is--Ned is good, and Burr reaches for him, wraps himself in his, shivering and shuddering and wracked with pain.

Edited 2022-11-25 04:38 (UTC)

"Let me," cries Hamilton, "let me--" And Ned shuts the door on him, no matter how Hamilton bleeds out the scent of mate, distress, need, because Burr's reaction is dramatically out of character from what Ned knows of him: there are always rumors of Burr wandering from the marriage bed, but never of rejecting the bond between Hamilton and himself.

And so Ned presses cool cloths to Burr's fevered forehead, has him drink water and fortifying wine, sends for gruel. And Hamilton is left curled outside, at the door, exhausted from the strain and panic from the brief and frenzied search. He has to stop himself from whining like a dog.

"Well," comes a soft voice, "this is a bit pathetic, even for you."

Hamilton turns his enervated gaze on Madison. His eyes flood with tears; he hurts, hurts from the pit of his chest, like a bullet took him straight to the spine. He accepts the proffered handkerchief, and curls so his back is against the wall, instead of his side. His leg is numb. He is, perhaps, too old for this shit.

"He made his way to Thomas's residence," Madison tells him. "He was seriously ill when I found him. Thomas sent him back here."

"Why." It is a whisper, but it is anguished. Why would Burr go. Why would Burr go there. Why didn't Burr let Hamilton comfort him, care for him? He wants to be a good mate. A good husband.

"I don't know. It is an unexpected betrayal, if he was more than heatstruck. Thomas can be very persuasive. Very... seductive. It isn't his style to employ ill treatment, which I think must be a reason Burr found his way there."

The tears come again. Hamilton weeps quietly, in heartbreak.

"Will this leave you a broken man?"

It is a question and a challenge, both. An appeal to his pride, though he feels as though it has all been stolen away. Yes, it might have left him a broken man -- at least, before the question was asked.

He breathes in, shakily.

"The Union is in your hands, and mine," says Madison. "Call upon me when you want to save it. Take up your pistol again if you would see it destroyed."

After this, Madison goes, and Hamilton waits, in the hall, for a long time.

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