This is Fine Alternative Denouement

[slowtoanger]

Hamilton is there, when Burr comes home. He's not supposed to be there. Burr learns later: he finished his business early, returned to Philadelphia to surprise Burr. Because he loves Burr. Because he feels pained, when they are apart. But Hamilton arrives and Burr is not there. At dinner, the housekeeper tells him. But then hours pass and Burr still does not come home. Maybe that is not out of the ordinary, for them. Working late, wandering the streets.

But Burr doesn't expect Hamilton to be there, when the door comes open, and Burr stumbles in wrecked and weeping, abortifacient clutched in one hand. His heart stops, when he looks up and sees him. Freezes in the doorway, legs shaking. The smell is wafting off him. Heat, and Jefferson. Burr whimpers.

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[slowtoanger]

Burr does sleep, too. Deeper than Hamilton, pulled under by fever. And he expects to be better when he wakes. Doesn't expect, for it is not so conscious. Rather it is a child's hope, belief--that this is just how things are. You go to bed sick and you are looked after so it must be that when you wake up you are well.

But Burr does not wake up well. He wakes sweat covered and retching, rolling to the side of the bed, though there is nothing to come up, and immediately that old fear slams back into him, and he is heaving himself to his feet and walking unsteady to the desk, delirious, head pounding, casting about for a quill and a scrap of parchment.

He needs to--he should write Van Ness. This can't wait another minute. Burr has--he's ruined everything and unless he deals with this right now it will be too late. It's that old terror. The one that paralyzes one part while leaving the body moving.

Don't think about it, just--the letter. Send the letter. He needs more of the potion. He needs to be sure. And Van Ness would never turn him away.