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Chapter Text

The wine is rich tonight.

Heavy and fragrant, nearly black in the goblet. It smells faintly of roses, cloves, and some expensive imported spice no one can name but everyone pretends to recognize. It tastes like a century-old promise, and glides down like betrayal.

The kind of wine you serve at a victory banquet—not just to celebrate, but to remind everyone present exactly who won.

The ballroom glows with curated opulence. Every inch is candlelight and deception.
Crystal chandeliers hang like stars above the scene, casting golden tremors across pale skin and powdered hair. Nobles press close along the banquet table, their laughter warm and mirthless, as practiced as the flick of a wrist drawing a hidden blade.

The knives flash in and out of quail meat. No one’s touched the bread. The silence between courses is full of danger.

And at the head of it all stands Alexander Hamilton.

His coat is so sharply cut it looks like treason.
Navy and silver, lined in ambition. His cravat is crisp, not for fashion but for battlefield control. The only untidy part of him is his hair, tied back in a satin ribbon that is already losing the war.

He’s speaking again. Words like barbs, curling lazily from his mouth.

Something about maritime trade routes. Something biting. Something brilliant.

Someone near the Queen laughs too loudly. Someone else stares down at their plate like they’re afraid of the fish.

John Laurens watches from the far end of the table, his goblet mostly full. He’s pretending to drink. Pretending not to stare. Slouched just enough to look bored.

He’s not.

He never is, when Hamilton looks like this. When he’s all spitfire and sharp teeth.
Too alive. Too much. A single match in a room full of powder.

John feels something in his chest tighten—reflexive, familiar.

Dangerous.

And then Hamilton lifts his glass.

“To partnerships,” he says, and there’s that half-smile again. The one that means war.

He raises the goblet to his lips.

And drinks.

One sip.
Then another.

Slow. Measured. Not indulgent—intentional.

His throat bobs as he swallows.

John watches it happen.

The wine is so dark it leaves a near-black ring on the rim of the goblet.

Hamilton holds the glass a second longer than he should, as if gauging its weight.

He lowers it.

Breathes in.

Freezes.

A pause.

Not dramatic. Not theatrical. Not anything yet.

Just a moment—a shift in light. A flutter.

He blinks once, slowly, like something’s not quite sitting right behind his eyes.
His shoulders stiffen, ever so slightly. A twitch, a ripple beneath the skin of the room.

He lifts a hand. Fingertips brushing along his throat.

Almost curious.

His other hand rests too delicately on the stem of the glass. White-knuckled.

John’s brow furrows.
He tilts his head just enough to get a clearer look.

Hamilton swallows.

And this time, it catches.

His throat tightens with effort.
A flicker of something in his face—frustration? Pain? Surprise?

His lips part. His jaw shifts. His tongue works behind his teeth.

He’s trying to speak.

And then he coughs.

Once.

A short, sharp exhale that barely disrupts the conversation. It doesn’t even echo.
It’s small. Contained.

Only John seems to notice the way Hamilton stiffens after.
Like something inside him just—shifted.

Another cough.
A little deeper. Rattling now.

Hamilton turns his head slightly, away from the table.

He raises a napkin to his mouth—slow, precise, careful.

He breathes in, but the air doesn’t seem to go down.

And then he coughs again.

This one is wet.

And something dark hits the linen.

.

He freezes. Eyes fixed on the white cloth in his hands.

He lowers it—slowly. Just a fraction.

He stares.

And then he brings trembling fingers to his mouth.

Smears something red.

Stares again.

It is blood.

The goblet slips.

It doesn’t crash at first. It bumps the edge of the table—rolls once—then shatters against the marble floor. Shards skitter beneath chairs.

A servant gasps. Someone screams.

Hamilton stumbles back, legs folding beneath him like something snapped.
He reaches out for balance, finds none.

And collapses.

His knees hit the floor hard. His hand smears red across the cream tablecloth as he falls.

His head jerks forward. A cough shreds out of him—raw and retching—and this time, he vomits.

Blood.

Thick. Flooding. Splattering red over white tile, red across the front of his coat, red blooming on his chin like a wound.

It keeps coming.

The room erupts.

Chairs scrape. Glass shatters. People leap to their feet. The Queen’s goblet goes tumbling from her grip.

But John is already moving.

His chair clatters behind him, toppling as he vaults the long banquet table in two strides.

Nobles shout. A guard reaches for him. He shoves them aside with a snarl and drops to his knees just as Hamilton convulses again.

Blood pours from his mouth. His body jerks, spine arching, like every breath is fighting to kill him.

“Alexander— Alexander —hey, look at me!”

He grabs him. Hauls him up. Tries to prop him upright.

Hamilton slumps into him, too heavy, too hot. His coat is soaked through. His breath—if you can call it that—is shallow, hitching, thin as silk.

His head rolls on his neck.

Eyes wide. Staring, blinking—but not really seeing .

There’s blood on his lips. A smear across his cheek. A line trailing down his throat.

“Hey. Hey! ”

John cradles his face in both hands, desperate now.

Hamilton shivers.

His mouth moves. One word makes it out, broken and thin:

“John—”

“I’ve got you.” John’s voice shakes. “You’re okay. You’re going to be okay—”

Another cough. Worse than before. He jerks violently.

And blood hits John’s face.

Hot.

Sticky.

Real.

John flinches—but not away. He leans in harder. Wraps an arm behind Hamilton’s shoulders. Pulls him closer.

“Medic!” he roars. “ Get a medic—NOW— ”

Behind them, people are running. The court physician is already sprinting, but John doesn’t see him.

He sees only him.

Only Alexander.

Hamilton’s hand reaches for him—fingers slipping along the lapel of John’s coat. Clutching, weak and shaking.

He pulls himself closer. Breathes into John’s ear.

“Promise me—”

John’s grip tightens. “No. Don’t do this. You’re going to be fine—”

Hamilton exhales a shuddering laugh. His voice is barely audible.

“Promise you’ll cry.”

“What the fuck—?”

“Just one tear,” Hamilton whispers, mouth twitching into a bloody smirk. “Be tasteful. ”

John’s eyes burn. “Stop talking.”

Hamilton blinks slowly.

“Tell Elizabeth…” He coughs again. Winces. “Tell her I want marble. ”

His hand slips.

His head falls.

His breath stops.

“Alexander?”
Nothing.

John shakes him. “Hey—no, come on—Hamilton—”

He checks the pulse.

Once.

Twice.

Harder.

Nothing.

“NO—”

He curls over him, arms shaking.

The silence around them is enormous.

It takes a long time before John breathes again.
When he does, it’s not steady.

He leans forward. Presses his forehead to the curve of Hamilton’s skull. Inhales.

The scent is still there.

Wine. Clove. Blood.
Alexander.

“Please,” John says, voice breaking. “Please. I wasn’t ready yet.”

Alexander Hamilton is dead.
And the ballroom has fallen silent around his name.

--- 

John Laurens does not cry at Alexander Hamilton’s funeral.

He wakes before the bell.

Before the light, before the knock at his door, before the world can remind him of what day it is. His eyes open into darkness and stay that way, focused on the crack in the ceiling where rain always leaks in spring.

He stares at it for an hour.

He doesn't move until the servants arrive, and even then, only to wave them away.
He dresses himself.

The coat is stiff—ceremonial black, lined in silk, cut with a precision he doesn’t deserve. The cravat fights him at the throat. He tightens it anyway. A blade doesn’t get to be uncomfortable in its sheath.

The gloves come last.

He smooths them down over shaking fingers.

Then straightens.

Stills.

Leaves.

The ride to the cathedral is quiet.

No escort. No companion. The driver knows better than to speak.

Outside the window, the city swells with grief like a balloon full of smoke—pressed in, hollow, loud in the wrong ways. People crowd the streets to catch a glimpse of the procession. Mourning banners hang like bruises across every arch and tower. Even the bells sound tired.

John ignores it all.

He watches the grey sky roll past. Counts breath in, breath out.

In. Out.
In. Out.
In—
Out.

The carriage slows.

He steps out before anyone can open the door for him.

The courtyard is full.

Not just full— packed. Nobility, military, scholars, foreign dignitaries. People who never once spoke to Alexander now wear mourning pins like sacred heirlooms. Their grief is expensive and public and polished to a sheen.

They part for John without speaking.

He doesn’t acknowledge them.

His eyes scan the crowd only once—Eliza, pale but upright; the Queen, black silk rustling like wings; a few generals stiff with ceremonial discomfort.

The coffin has not yet arrived.

Good.

He stands with his hands behind his back and pretends not to feel the silence orbiting him like a curse. No one dares approach. Not even Eliza. Not yet.

Someone coughs. A bird calls. A child whimpers, far down the hill.

The air smells like rain and iron and lilies. Overpowering.

He breathes it in.

And waits.

When the procession arrives, it is soundless.

Six horses. Twelve guards. One casket.

Marble white. Silver-handled. Too small.

John’s throat tightens, but he doesn’t blink.

The coffin glides past him like a boat on a black lake.
He does not look at it.
He does not move.

They bring it into the cathedral.

And the world goes quiet.

The service is long.

The Queen speaks first—three careful sentences, brittle with restraint.

Then Eliza. She keeps her voice steady, though she never once looks up from the paper in her hands. There’s a tremor near the end—barely a wobble.

John hears it.

Then comes General Livingston, all laurels and legacy and ten years too late in his praise.

Then the priest.

Then the silence.

John does not speak.

He was offered the chance. Eliza asked. The Queen encouraged. Someone even drafted something for him—some overwrought, bloodless tribute.

He didn’t read it.

When the priest gestures gently toward him now, John only inclines his head.
A refusal. Calm. Absolute.

The priest doesn’t press.

The bell tolls.

The coffin lowers.

Outside, the wind picks up.

The cemetery is quiet except for the rustle of coats and the shifting of weight on wet grass.

The stone is already there—smooth, pale, unweathered. Still wrapped in floral wreaths and royal ribbon.

Alexander Hamilton, Duke of Elmont. Scholar, General, Orator, Martyr.

John stares at the words.

Reads them three times. Four.
Waits for them to feel true.

They don’t.

The casket settles into the earth.

The priest murmurs Latin.

The guards lift their rifles and fire a salute.
Too sharp. Too loud. Someone gasps.

John does not flinch.

The first handful of dirt is cast.

The second.

The third.

The sound it makes—thud, thud, thud—is so familiar it makes his stomach turn.

The same sound as a musket ball falling into the chamber.

The same sound as boots on a dock after dusk.

The same sound as Hamilton’s knees hitting the floor, that night.

Thud.
Thud.
Thud.

He doesn’t breathe.

Someone sobs behind him.

Eliza’s hand finds his. Her fingers thread into his gloves.

He lets her. Doesn’t squeeze. Doesn’t pull away.

She doesn’t speak.

She doesn’t expect him to.

One by one, the mourners drift back toward their carriages.

Some try to look at him. Most don’t.

No one says his name.

When the crowd thins, Eliza leans close. Touches his shoulder.

“I’ll wait,” she says. “As long as you need.”

He nods once.
But doesn’t move.

Eventually, even she walks away.

And John stays.

Alone, at last.

The wind lifts his coattails. Mud streaks his boots. He still hasn’t moved.

He stares at the grave.

Long enough for the sun to break through the clouds, for it to start raining again, then stop.

Then he kneels.

One knee in the dirt. One hand bracing himself against the carved name.

The marble is damp beneath his glove.

He presses his palm flat against it.

And lets out one breath.

The only thing he’s said all day:

“ Grass better not get taller than this. ”

He stays like that for a long time.

Long enough for the air to chill. For birds to return. For the grave to stop looking new.

Then he stands.

Brushes off the mud. Straightens his coat.

And leaves.

Eyes dry. Back straight.

Jaw clenched so tightly it aches.

Chapter Text

There is a moment, just before waking, when Alexander Hamilton thinks he’s in heaven.

It’s quiet.
Warm.
His body floats somewhere far below him—numb, weightless, vast.

Then sensation rushes back like a tide:
Heavy lungs.
A dry mouth.
The faint, unmistakable sting of crushed mint and iron.

The moment after that, he remembers everything.

The toast.
The wine.
The cough.
John’s arms around him.
The blood.
The whisper— “Promise me you’ll cry.”

The final, practiced breath.

He should be dead.

He should be a legend.

He opens his eyes.

The ceiling above him is rough stone. Low. Grey. Stained with soot.
A candle guttering near his head casts long shadows across the wall.
There’s a basin nearby that smells faintly of panic.

Hamilton blinks once.

Twice.

Then smiles.

It worked.

Across the room, someone shifts. A boot scrapes the floor.

“Sir?” a voice says. Soft. Wary. “Sir, he’s awake.”

Another set of steps. Then:
“Hamilton.”

He turns his head. Slowly. Reverently.

Mulligan stands in the doorway, looking like he’s aged a decade. His shirt is half-unbuttoned, hair a mess, hands red from washing something that definitely bled.

Hamilton tries to sit up.

Immediately regrets it.

“Ah,” he croaks, and presses a hand to his chest. His ribs ache like he’s been stepped on by a horse.

Mulligan’s already there. “Lie back. Don’t be stupid.”

Hamilton does not lie back. He grits his teeth through the dramatics like a man with a vision.

“How long?” he rasps.

“Six hours,” Mulligan says, voice flat.

Hamilton brightens. “Really?”

“You stopped breathing for two of them.”

He waves that off. “But did it look good? ”

Mulligan stares.

“The death,” Hamilton explains, as if it should be obvious. “Was it convincing? Did they scream? ”

“There was chaos. You spewed blood on a diplomat.”

“Perfect.”

“You stained John’s lap.”

“Even better. ”

Mulligan makes a pained sound in the back of his throat.

Hamilton licks his lips—wincing at the taste of clove and copper—and grins.

“Tell me,” he says. “Tell me everything. Was there gasping? Screaming? Fainting? Did John catch me? ”

Mulligan sighs. “Yes. He caught you.”

Hamilton slams his palm on the cot, immediately regrets it. “YES. Good. Go on.”

“He screamed your name. Called for a medic. Held you.”

Hamilton exhales like he’s heard a love poem.

“Did I say anything?” he asks, eyes shining.

“You said ‘Promise me you’ll cry.’ Then something about marble.”

“Tragic. Tasteful.”

“Then you passed out. For real.”

Hamilton waves him on. “And then— and then what did John do? ”

Mulligan hesitates.

Hamilton freezes.

“Mulligan,” he says, voice suddenly dangerous, “what did he do?”

“He… checked your pulse.”

“Yes?”

“Then he got quiet.”

“...Okay. Quiet how?”

“Just—quiet. He didn’t speak.”

“No shaking me and whispering ‘don’t go’ ?”

“No.”

“No forehead kiss?”

Mulligan says nothing.

Hamilton’s brow furrows.

“Did he at least cry?”

Silence.

Hamilton’s breath catches.

“Mulligan,” he whispers.

Mulligan rubs his eyes. “He didn’t cry.”

Hamilton lies very still.

He stares at the ceiling. At the flickering candlelight. At the faint red stain on the sleeve of his shirt.

He whispers, disbelieving:

“He didn’t cry.”

“I’m sorry,” Mulligan offers.

“He didn’t cry. ”

“You almost died, sir.”

“I planned that death for six weeks. I collapsed in his arms. I bled on his collar. I whispered last words. ”

“I’m aware—”

“I asked him to promise he’d cry!”

“I don’t think grief works on demand.”

Hamilton sits bolt upright, blood rushing in his ears. “I almost died, and he didn’t even flinch! ”

“He flinched.”

“DID HE SOB?”

“No.”

“DID HE RIP OPEN HIS COAT IN AGONY?”

“No.”

“DID HE EVEN LOOK FAINTLY RUINED?”

“I—he looked… quiet.”

Hamilton stares at nothing.

Then, slowly, with deadly calm:

“What did he say at the grave?”

Mulligan winces.

“I asked the groundskeeper. He stayed after everyone left.”

“Yes. And?”

“He knelt beside your headstone.”

Hamilton leans forward, heart pounding.

“And?”

Mulligan sighs. “‘Grass better not get taller than this.’”

Hamilton stares at him.

Blankly.

Dead-eyed.

“That’s not mourning,” he says at last.

“No,” Mulligan agrees.

“That’s— horticultural critique. ”

“Mm.”

Hamilton sags back against the wall like a deflated opera ghost. His hair is matted. His shirt is soaked. His lungs ache from the fake death that nearly wasn’t fake.

And John Laurens didn’t cry.

Not a single tear.

Not even a welling.

“…Unbelievable,” Hamilton mutters. “I staged a tragedy. I composed an ending. I bled like Caesar.”

Mulligan’s silence is almost gentle.

“I whispered my final breath into his shoulder,” Hamilton hisses. “I died with meaning. ”

He turns. Eyes blazing.

“I’m going to fake it again.”

“No.”

“Just one more death.”

“You are not doing this again.”

“Different method. Cleaner lines. No blood this time, just eyes wide and a single trembling hand.”

“Your lungs can’t take another collapse—”

“Maybe I’ll haunt him. Appearing dramatically in mirrors. Whispering poetry through windows.”

“Sir.”

“Maybe I’ll seduce him in disguise and then vanish. Then he’ll cry.”

“Please go to sleep.”

“I CAN’T SLEEP,” Hamilton roars, tearing the bloody cravat from his neck. “HE DIDN’T CRY.”

---

The Laurens estate sits on a hill above the river.

It’s beautiful, technically. Wide windows, red stone, ivy curling down like veins. The kind of estate poets write about when they’ve never been cold.

But tonight, it’s wrong.

Too big. Too quiet. Too clean.

The gates groan as they open. The gravel crunches under the wheels. The carriage stops, and John steps out into the cold like a man preparing for execution. The wind moves through the trees but doesn’t touch him.

The servants wait on the steps. They bow as one.

Someone—he doesn’t register who—moves forward, mouth open, voice soft with something like grief.

John lifts a hand.

The words die in the air.

He walks inside.

No one follows.

The entry hall is cathedral-dark and echoing. The chandelier above him sparkles like ice, and every sound he makes—boots, breath, bones—comes back louder than it should.

He shrugs off his coat. It hits the floor with a whisper of silk and wool. He doesn’t pick it up.

His cravat is next. Then his gloves. Each tug is careful, mechanical, like he’s peeling off a skin that never fit.

He drops them all beside the door.

No one stops him.

There are fourteen rooms in the house.

He doesn’t turn on a single lamp.

Just wanders.

The study is first. The fire is out. He doesn’t light it.

He goes to the decanter and pours two fingers of something old, expensive, and violent. The glass clinks against the bottle as he tips it. His hand barely trembles.

He drinks it fast.

It burns like a warning. He drinks again.

There’s a faint red stain on his left cuff. Hamilton’s blood. It’s dried now. Flaked at the edges.

He presses his thumb to it.

It doesn’t smudge.

He ends up in the music room, eventually. Not out of desire—just momentum.

The piano waits in the corner, keys white as bone. Someone has dusted it recently.

He stares at it for a long time.

Thinks of Hamilton’s hands, always fidgeting. Always tapping out strange little rhythms on the edge of the table. He never played, never sang, but he was always making noise.

Always.

John turns away.

He doesn’t touch a key.

The corridors stretch longer than he remembers. He walks them like a ghost. The portraits watch him pass. His own face hangs on a wall near the library—painted when he was twenty-three, smiling with his mouth closed, stiff in a coat he never liked.

Hamilton had hated the painting. Called it “haunting in a polite way.”

John stops in front of it.

Looks at himself.

Then keeps walking.

By the time he reaches his bedroom, the moon is high and sharp outside the windows. The stars don’t feel holy. They just feel cold.

He lies down. Doesn’t undress. Doesn’t pull back the covers.

Just stares at the ceiling.

Counting the seconds by his heartbeat. Trying not to blink too loud.

At some awful hour—three? four?—he rolls over. Not to sleep.

Just… to move.

His hand slips beneath the pillow and finds something soft, crumpled.

He pulls it out.

A handkerchief.

It’s faintly red.

He doesn’t remember putting it there.

It’s the one Hamilton bled on—wet and warm in his palm, right before the pulse faded, before the silence settled.

He folds his fingers around it like a prayer.

Doesn’t cry.

Days pass like smoke.

The world does not end.

The Queen does not abdicate. The sky doesn’t fall. Parliament meets. Nobles whisper. Dinners are held.

John attends none of it.

He’s not absent, but he’s not present, either. He nods when spoken to. Signs papers without reading them. Holds conversations where he says nothing of value.

His sword hangs untouched in the corner. He hasn’t drawn it since the funeral.

Sometimes he forgets to eat.

Once, he wakes up in the hallway, back pressed to the wall, head tilted against the window. He doesn’t remember how he got there.

Every evening, just before sundown, he walks to the cemetery.

Alone. Always alone.

He waits until the mourners have gone, until even the gravediggers have packed up their shovels and the candles have burned down to waxy puddles.

He kneels by the grave.

Brushes dirt off the headstone.

Traces the letters— Alexander Hamilton, Duke of Elmont. Scholar, General, Orator, Martyr.

He hates it.

Hates the finality. The pomp. The way it makes Hamilton sound finished.

Sometimes he says things. Quiet, careless things. Like—

“Still can’t believe you got marble.”

Or—

“I hope the afterlife lets you lecture people.”

Or, one night, after too many hours alone:

“The grass better not get taller than this.”

That one echoes.

He doesn’t speak again.

He stays until the stars are bright enough to hurt.

Then he goes home.

Back in the house, he doesn’t go to bed. Just walks the rooms again. Turns over books he doesn’t read. Touches doorknobs without opening them.

He passes the mirror in the front hall and startles.

His own face looks unfamiliar.

He touches the glass.

Steps back.

Stares at himself.

And for a moment—a single, impossible, aching second—he almost expects to see Hamilton standing just behind him.

He doesn’t.

He turns away.

Goes upstairs.

Sleeps with the bloody handkerchief clutched to his chest.

No dreams.

No tears.

No peace.

Just waiting.

Always waiting.

Chapter Text

Hamilton has taken to asking one question after every mission.

Not about encrypted letters or intercepted royal correspondence. Not about whether Benedict the Vegetable Man has been arrested again for juggling knives on palace grounds. (He has. Twice.) Not even about the gunpowder supply crisis brought on by the now-infamous swan blockade in the southern canal.

No—Hamilton, Duke of Elmont (presumed dead; absolutely not acting like it), has different priorities.

“Did Laurens cry today?”

The first time he asks, it’s so sudden the debriefing stutters to a halt.

Agent March blinks, mid-sentence. Agent Greene lowers his quill like it's a loaded weapon. Agent Wren—new, underpaid, and visibly two days from defecting to the enemy—presses their knuckles to their forehead in silent despair.

“Pardon?” says March.

Hamilton, seated cross-legged atop the war table, doesn’t even glance up from the fake report he’s pretending to read. “John Laurens. Tall. Frowns like it’s a sport. Hair like a romantic tragedy. I hear he visits my grave every day. Did he cry?”

There’s silence.

Then Greene, carefully: “…Sir, we were monitoring diplomatic signals from the Austrian envoy.”

“And I appreciate that,” Hamilton replies, flipping a page upside down, “but I’m assigning you something more vital to the war effort. Find out if my ex—my friend—with aggressive emotional tension—is weeping at my grave.”

March’s brow furrows. “You want us to emotionally surveil a diplomat.”

“He’s not just a diplomat,” Hamilton says brightly. “He’s mine.”

Wren sighs audibly. “You faked your own death three weeks ago.”

“I died with panache,” Hamilton corrects, tossing down the papers. “There was blood.”

“You ingested a poison strong enough to stop your breathing for two hours.”

“And vomited. Everywhere,” Mulligan adds from the corner. “You scared Lafayette so badly he almost punched a priest.”

“The visuals were important!” Hamilton says. “I needed him to think it was real.”

“He held you in his arms and screamed,” Wren mutters. “You traumatized your entire squad.”

“I died for the republic. And for pathos.”

“You died for attention,” March says.

Hamilton points a finger at her, triumphant. “And now I want to know if it worked.”

It becomes routine.

After every drop, every coded message, every back-alley duel, Hamilton rips off his disguise, downs half a bottle of wine, and corners the nearest agent with that same breathless, haunted urgency.

“Did he cry today?”

Agent March starts pretending to sob at the start of every debriefing just to speed things up.
Agent Greene considers requesting a transfer to Siberia.
Agent Wren, whose job now apparently includes emotional espionage on behalf of a possibly suicidal nobleman, begins documenting their descent into madness in a notebook titled: Cemetery Reports: For My Sins.

“He lingered,” Greene says one evening, exhausted. “At the grave. For almost seven minutes.”

Hamilton leans forward. “Did he whisper my name?”

“No.”

“Did he press a hand to the marble? Did he shake?”

“He scratched his nose.”

“Did it look like a stifled sob?”

“No.”

“Did he… look constipated with grief?”

“He adjusted a flower pot.”

Hamilton slumps across the nearest surface. “He grieves like a civil servant.”

Then finally—finally—someone breaks.

It’s Wren.

After being posted in the cemetery three nights in a row, soaked to the skin, rained on by both weather and pigeons, and nearly arrested by an actual mourner for “lurking suspiciously behind the angel statue,” they return to the safehouse with blood on their boot (not theirs), a twig in their coat, and murder in their eyes.

Hamilton, perched like a vulture on the stair rail, perks up immediately. “Did he cry?”

Wren drops their satchel.

Straightens.

And says, voice level as a guillotine: “Yes.”

Hamilton freezes. “Wait. Really?”

“Every night,” Wren lies, beautifully. “He weeps. He kneels. He recites your name to the stone. There’s a candle. The wind howls.”

Hamilton gasps, wide-eyed.

Wren continues with the deadened fervor of a soldier giving a false confession. “Last night, he brought a handkerchief. Embroidered. Trembled like a man ruined.”

A reverent silence falls.

Hamilton beams. “He’s destroyed . I knew it. I knew he couldn’t live without me.”

Mulligan, who has witnessed five assassination attempts and two of Hamilton’s nervous breakdowns, puts a cushion over his face and screams into it.

Two days after his last mission—a mission that involved a firefight with a Bavarian agent, a poisoned pocket watch, and a minor Prussian noble who bled all over the cipher key before giving it up—Hamilton emerges victorious, bandaged, limping, and unbearably pleased with himself.

He’d been stabbed (again), but in the arm this time, which he considered character-building.

Elated, high on the taste of success and laudanum, he decides the time has come to reward himself with the most self-indulgent pursuit of all: live grief surveillance.

The plan is flawless. A quiet trip. A quick disguise. Just enough time crouched in the shrubbery to bask in the raw, undiluted devastation of one John Laurens.

He prepares accordingly.

By midnight, he’s disguised as a man who’s lost both a bar fight and a bet with God. His wig, askew and matted with soot, was borrowed from the costume bin of a failed theater production. The coat is too long in the sleeves and smells like moldy bread. His face is blotched with smudged ash, artfully applied in a way he’s sure reads “cripplingly sad dockworker” and not “rat that fell in an ink pot.”

He sneaks out of the safehouse, ducks through the alleyways of South Briar, and walks the five miles to the royal cemetery under cover of cloud and fog. By the time he reaches the gate, he’s shivering, exhausted, and looks like a Dickensian gremlin.

The groundskeeper eyes him with deep suspicion until Hamilton pulls a tarnished antique ring from his coat and offers it with the solemnity of a dying man passing on a family heirloom.

“Paid my respects to me brother,” he croaks. “’E was a hero, ‘e was. Very posh. Marble and everythin’.”

The man, already tired of ghosts and aristocrats and people talking to statues, lets him in without a word.

Hamilton makes his way to his own grave and wedges himself into a prickly hedge just ten paces behind the tombstone. The branches scratch at his face. A root pokes his lower spine. A spider runs across his knee and he nearly screams.

But he holds firm.

This was the moment. The performance. The final act in his carefully orchestrated masterpiece.

John would arrive. John would collapse. John would whisper his name and finally, finally , sob into the grass like a widower in an opera.

It was going to be exquisite.

He waits.

And waits.

And waits.

By the hour mark, his legs have gone numb. His mustache has slipped. The cold has begun to settle in the joints of his fingers like old sorrow, and the damp in his boots is now biblical. He chews on a biscuit he finds in his pocket and contemplates the nobility of suffering.

Then—footsteps.

Hamilton freezes.

Laurens appears at the edge of the path, coat pulled tight against the wind, head bowed. The lamplight from the cemetery gate halos him in pale gold, casting shadows across the marble. He looks tired. Grave. Resolute.

Hamilton watches from behind the hedge, barely breathing. This was it. This was the reward. He could already picture the scene: the shudder, the gasp, the murmured "Alexander." Perhaps even a broken “Why?”

Laurens knelt with one hand against the gravestone, fingers curled lightly over the etched marble. He didn’t say anything—not at first. Just stared at the words. At the neat carved name. At the dates. At the lie.

And then Laurens exhaled, stood with a grunt, and muttered, “Gonna have to remind the groundskeeper again. It’s already getting too long.”

Hamilton blinked.

Surely he misheard. Surely that wasn’t—

The grass?

No. Absolutely not. That was not the line. That was not in the script. That wasn’t anywhere near the script.

He reeled out of the hedge with all the subtlety of a man emerging from a bear trap, dust in his wig and fury in his heart. He stumbled sideways onto the path, threw his shoulders back with drunken bravado, and launched into the worst accent he could conjure.

“Oi!” he slurred. “Fancy stone, that one. Looks expensive.”

Laurens turned. His expression was neutral in the way a closed steel trap is neutral—calm, unreadable, and very likely lethal.

Hamilton forged ahead. “Marble like that don’t come cheap. Must’ve been someone real high-born, eh? Bet he spent all his time prancin’ about, tellin’ people to call him somethin’ ridiculous like—what—‘His Radiance’? ‘Lord Tremblethighs’? Somethin’ pompous.”

Laurens raised an eyebrow. He said nothing.

Hamilton pressed on, wobbling theatrically. “Bet he was a right piece of work. Loud, too. One of those types who talks like he’s tryin’ to win a debate with the wind. Always smirkin’, always scribblin’. Probably had a face you’d never get tired of slappin’.”

Laurens crossed his arms.

“Couldn’t shut up for five minutes,” Hamilton went on, stumbling a bit. “Probably the kind who makes everything a bloody manifesto. Oh, I bet he wrote love letters like treatises. Bet he’d declare war on a breakfast.”

Nothing. No recognition. Not even a twitch.

“And he died loud, too, I heard,” Hamilton added. “Flung himself dramatically across a cathedral floor, blood everywhere, moanin’ about liberty or legacy or somethin’—like the nation was supposed to swoon over his raggedy corpse. Right embarrassing, if you ask me.”

Laurens blinked once. His hand drifted to his hip.

Hamilton, still unaware that the line between “disguise” and “pissing off a trained duelist” was thinning by the second, kept going.

“Truth be told,” he sighed, “I reckon people are better off with him gone. Probably made every room louder just by breathin’. The kind of bastard who’d fake his own death just to see who cried—if anyone even bothered.”

A pause.

Then, very softly, Laurens said, “You should leave.”

Hamilton blinked. “Beg pardon?”

“I said,” Laurens repeated, voice like a blade sliding from a sheath, “you should leave. Before I do something I won’t regret.”

Hamilton, still deep in character, let out a disbelieving huff. “What, ‘cause I insulted the posh git in the dirt? You knew ‘im or somethin’? Was he family? Friend? Bit of a crush, maybe?”

Laurens stepped forward.

Hamilton stepped back.

“You think you can show up here, piss-drunk and rambling, and insult him to my face?” Laurens asked, voice low and deadly calm. “You think I won’t stain this cemetery with your blood just because it’s already got one dead idiot buried in it?”

“Whoa,” Hamilton said quickly, backpedaling, hands raised. “Alright, alright, I’m goin’. No need for knives. God save the Queen!”

He spun on his heel—slipped on wet moss—and nearly brained himself on a decorative urn before staggering off into the trees like a disgraced raccoon, muttering, “Bloody grass. Ungrateful sod. Try to offer one honest eulogy and they pull steel on you—”

Behind him, Laurens watched the strange drunk disappear into the darkness, jaw clenched, eyes sharp.

Then he turned back to the grave.

Stared at it.

And for the first time in weeks, his expression shifted.

Just slightly.

But it shifted.

And behind the hedges, Hamilton, sprawled on the forest floor and covered in twigs, didn’t see it. He was too busy gagging on a pine needle and wondering if his mustache was still attached.

John didn’t say a word on the way back.

The carriage rocked steadily over uneven cobblestones, the sound of hooves muffled by the late spring fog. Lanterns threw a faint gold glow over the windows, washing his reflection in candlelight. He didn’t look at it.

His gloves were still damp from kneeling at the grave.

He hated that he noticed.

Across from him, his sword leaned gently against the padded seat, catching the light every time they passed a lamp. He’d meant to leave it behind, but after that… incident —he’d found himself gripping the hilt tighter than usual.

God, what a bizarre interaction.

Some drunk idiot, clearly—probably someone from the docks, wandered too far inland. He’d reeked of smoke and stale ale, with the gait of a man trying too hard to stagger. John had seen the type before: gutter poets, barroom philosophers, too clever for their own good. Best ignored. Most harmless.

But the voice .

There’d been a rhythm to it. A deliberate mockery beneath the slur. It grated at him, irritatingly sharp, like a pebble in his boot he couldn’t quite shake loose. Too theatrical to be a true drunk. Too cutting to be accidental.

And the things he said—God. He’d nearly run him through, just on instinct. Something about the way the man had spat that name— Your Nobleness , like it was half a joke and half a plea.

John let out a long breath through his nose. Stared at the opposite window.

No. It couldn’t be. He was being ridiculous. Sleep-deprived. Rattled. He wasn’t sleeping much lately, and he certainly wasn’t mourning properly , whatever the hell that meant.

Still. His hand curled around the folded handkerchief in his coat pocket. Unwashed. Red-stained. Familiar.

The carriage turned. Wheels creaked. Lanternlight flickered.

Dead men didn’t sneak around their own graveyards in poorly glued mustaches. They didn’t heckle mourners. They didn’t crawl through hedges like goblins and run from confrontation like cowards.

They didn’t speak with the same cadence. The same clipped vowels. The same too-fast sentences that used to rattle out mid-argument and always ended in something breathless and unsaid.

No. No. No .

John shut his eyes. Let the jostling of the carriage lull him back to sense.

He was being paranoid. He was tired . That was all.

People didn’t come back from that kind of death. Hamilton had stopped breathing. Hamilton had bled into his lap. Hamilton had gone still in his arms.

He wasn’t alive.

He wasn’t.

The voice was a trick of grief. The tone, a cruel coincidence. The smell—well, Hamilton never smelled like damp wool and cheap beer, so that was proof enough.

Still.

John sat straighter. Rubbed his temple. Tried not to imagine the way the man’s mouth had curled around the word posh , like he hated the grave and missed it all at once.

He wasn’t thinking about it. He wasn’t going to dwell.

He just—

He’d have to remind the groundskeeper again. The grass was getting too long.

And the hedges were rustling suspiciously these days. Might’ve been squirrels.

Or something else.

But no. Surely not.

He was imagining things.

Probably.