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Chapter Text

(This is what it feels like to be Alexander Hamilton:

Ink flits between crimson notebook lines in the candlelight, its whisper against the paper quickening (like I’m running out of time) as the vestiges of alcohol fade from your blood. Dawn approaches; your knuckles burn with a rage (rage, against the dying of the light) and passion that surges in every fiber (every cell) of your being. You’re not a fool (I’m not stupid); you know you ought not to be awake, let alone scrawling notes and polemic in the darkness, but your eyes are sharp in the gloom, sharper than in any memory, and your mind is whirling (burning, bleeding ink), swifter than the pen, more lithe yet infinitely more focused (and brilliant) than the flame. You are alive: you flicker from thought to thought and word to word; from poetry to economics and refugees to song.

You can’t sleep. You can’t: you’d dream of looming faces and soil crushing your chest.

You can’t sleep.

You write.

Your phone, filled with economic treatises, next to your wrist and books you spent half the night perusing stacked in alphabetical order beside you, you write.

You write until dawn.)

Monday, September 28, 2015

Tires screech; horns blare. Technicolor throngs of pedestrians, some homeless, some businesspeople, press onward through the warm September weather. It’s not the first time Alexander Hamilton has strolled twenty-first century New York City, but it’s the first time he has walked these modern streets as an employee.

There’s something profound to the experience: although, as a government worker, he’s hardly proletarian, he’s living as one of the people who revere and sometimes scorn him. But no one sees a Founding Father in the suit-clad little man.

He’s not an Avenger. His job is nine to five, and the greatest challenge he’ll face is paperwork—paper-cuts if he’s as unlucky as usual.

History isn’t watching.

Alexander tells himself he doesn’t care. He walks onward. He’ll make a life for himself in other ways. He’s spent the past two weeks using Youtube, textbooks, and Darcy Lewis’s pop culture curriculum to brief himself on the state of the world and its culture. He spends his wait at Starbucks listening to The Decemberists with wireless Starkbuds and mentally drafting economically-friendly policies to address climate change. He can be ‘Alex Faucette.’

But Alexander still purchases his frappucino—medication for his sleepless night—with a $10 bill and smirks when his barista gapes at the portrait, at the Sharpie’d word “Alex” on his cup, and at him. She’ll shake herself of the superstition, certainly: his smug grin surely isn’t enough confirmation of the impossible.

He takes his drink and waltzes out the door, savoring each sip, the drip of condensation slipping down, cooling his wrist and fingertips, and the sunbeams on his shoulders.

Impossible be damned. He’s lost everything, but he’s alive right now.

darthmithrandir

HAHAHA OMG THIS DUDE LOOKS JUST LIKE ALEXANDER HAMILTON ON THE 10 https://www.instagram.com/p/ALH1PDTnEvi/

7 notes

ASCENT’s administrative campus has the feel of a New York park: there’s an abundance of green growing and the sound of fountains gurgling between the glass and steel, like the city’s remembering who it used to be and still daring—itself; others—to be new. The Carter Center, the complex’s cynosure, is a crescent-shaped architectural marvel blending the New Athenian with the dramatic slopes and elegance of the modern.

Inside, the air conditioner is broken, the musk of new paint fills the cylindrical foyer, orange cones and yellow tape mark off most of the floor, and a torn tarp over an oil painting flutters in hot, hissing artificial airflow, half-revealing the face of Peggy Carter. Brow furrowed, Alexander gazes up, up, up, until he’s dizzied, to see men on cranes, silhouettes against a stained-glass rotunda, scraping loud machines against the ventilation.

“Want help?” asks a Scottish voice. She’s petite, with a cool brown complexion and dreadlocks in an impeccable up-do, and she’s clutching a clipboard to her chest. She gestures to the construction and says, “The building’s not finished yet, so it can be confusing.”

“Nah,” Alexander replies. “I can find my way. But thank you.” Her eyes say, your funeral, but she nods, turns, and struts toward one of a half-dozen half-lit hallways.

Then his eyebrows knit as he realizes he knows only “Floor 8, Lobby.” Alexander fumbles for his phone and for FRIDAY. “Hi, could you – ?”

“The schematics of this building change almost daily,” the AI replies. “I could hack the federal government and the mainframe. I could also launch the world’s nuclear arsenal.”

Alexander snorts—and then freezes.

“I don’t plan to,” FRIDAY says wryly. “Sorry, boss. But I’ll let you know if you’re retracing your steps.”

“That would be nice.”

The elevators, encased in massive glass Greek pillars in a room adjacent to the atrium, will be impressive once operational; half of the stairwells are locked; a few hallways are completely dark, too reminiscent of his grave-filled nightmares for him to walk in comfort. At nine o’clock, Alexander finds himself pacing, fingers burrowing in sweat-moistened hair.

“You’re retracing your steps,” FRIDAY informs him.

“Shut up; I’m thinking.”

Alexander Hamilton:  Ms. Lewis, might your schedule permit you to render assistance?
yr. humble & obdt. srvnt. A. Ham

AH:  Ms. Lewis the need is urgent
yr. humble & ect. A. Ham

AH:  (I presume you realize Ive determined texts arent customarily signed or punctuated & I shant persist in penning these so formally if the amusement has waned)

AH:  Darcy?

AH:  Darcy? honestly I need help

AH:  although I believed your tremendous efforts too obvious to stand in need of it, I might enumerate and describe the myriad advantages and warm feelings which your curriculum and friendship have accorded to me

AH:  this is the seventh message Ive sent without reply. have I offended you?

AH:  I’m not blind to my own audacity; I’m abrasive. I humbly seek forgiveness if Ive injured you.

AH:  DARCY

Darcy Lewis:  WOT

DL:  (and im not mad at u :))

AH:  why didnt you respond to my inquiry?

DL:  i hadnt checked phone

AH:  That defeats the purpose of “instant” messaging.

DL: its been 5 min

AH: oh

DL:  wot do u need help wth

AH: I can’t find the stairs to the linguistics department. I’m now 6 minutes late.

DL:  OH SHIT

DL: when erik lehnsherr challenges u to a duel plz say no =p

AH:  ◔_◔

AH has sent a gif .

AH:  Directions, please.

The man, tall, handsome, and clad in a suit enhancing his powerful frame, leans against the half-wall behind the empty receptionist desk and stares off into space, either waiting for someone to step off the elevator into the lobby or pointedly ignoring the world’s existence.

“Pardon me, are you Erik Lehnsherr?”

He peers imperiously down at Alexander.

“Sir?” Hamilton amends.

“Yes,” says Erik. Then he straightens, uncrossing his arms to stand at something more like attention. “What can I do for you?”

“I was told you’re the director of the Department of Linguistics, Xenolinguistics, and Cryptography. I – ”

“And you are?”

“I’m Alexander Hamilton, I’m – ”

“Ah, yes, that’s right,” says Erik. “You’ve been assigned here.” He nods, glancing down at his watch. “I’ve been waiting.” He says the word waiting like Burr might’ve said acting.

“I’ve been looking for you,” Alexander returns.

Erik’s expression darkens. “You could’ve asked for directions.”

“I—yes,” he says. “I did; the response was… delayed.”

“But you didn’t ask before you arrived?”

“No.”

“Why?” Erik raises an eyebrow. “You must have known you wouldn’t know the building’s layout, so why?”

“I—I thought I could find my own way.”

“It’s alright; all’s forgiven.” There’s a certain sharpness to Erik’s smile: a hint that this man keeps long lists. “I think these hallways are confusing on purpose. Makes sense, doesn’t it? Make the building a maze and suddenly an invasion is harder. Everyone gets lost here on their first day. But don’t make a habit of it.” He adds, “And maybe learn when you’re ignorant and need to ask for help.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ll show you around.”

Alexander smiles. (He can keep a long list, too.) “Okay.”

Erik leads him past the lobby to a room partitioned by thin grey borders—and over half-empty of people. “The language departments of SHIELD were among the most infiltrated. We’ve transferred as much personnel from the CIA and NSA as they can spare, but it’s slow work nevertheless. It’s thrilling to have a new specialist on board.”

“Specialist?” Alexander repeats. Erik steers them past a trio of car-sized machines at whose function Hamilton can only guess toward a marble and steel hallway with massive mirrors, mahogany doors, and a staggering view of the campus—from here, Alexander can see it looks like a clock.

“Yes. Did Director Fury not inform you?”

“He didn’t.”

“You shouldn’t be surprised; your experience in Washington’s cyphers is indispensable and inimitable, which means management will keep you happy. You’ll only work in the cubicles—you probably don’t know that word—in the grey-things for a few weeks while we renovate.” Erik fiddles with a key at the last door for several seconds, then scowls and flicks his wrist. The handle turns, springing the door open into a white, more plastic-looking hallway.

“Automation…?”

“I’m a mutant,” says Erik crisply, hands folded behind his back in a presidential stance. “Is that going to be a problem?”

Alexander shakes his head. “Not at all, sir.”

“Right. Charles said as much. Excellent. Follow me.”

superwatch   darthmithrandir 

  darthmithrandir:

HAHAHA OMG THIS DUDE LOOKS JUST LIKE ALEXANDER HAMILTON ON THE 10 https://www.instagram.com/p/ALH1PDTnEvi/

The mods here think that’s Alex Faucette ! He helped the Avengers defeat the vampiress Catalina de Barçelona about a week ago. Steve Rogers (Captain America) mentions him in this interview and Secret Service  pulled him away from CNN reporters after the showdown in this clip

240 notes

There’s a clang that echoes in the hush, and the vault doors slide open with a hydraulic hiss. Alexander, Erik, and Maria step out of the artificial light and into cold gloom. The doors slide shut behind them, and after a few moments of grey void and afterimages, blackness surrenders to dim emerald glow.

“We believe this is the fragment,” says Maria Hill as they approach the pedestal. “Do you recognize this?”

It thrums as Alexander approaches; his heart pounds and his blood feels thick in his veins. The magic swirls around him, bubbling almost tangibly. Silent, warm, exuding ancientness, it purrs beneath his skin, like it once recognized the general, and like it now recognizes him.

“Mr. Hamilton?” asks Maria.

“Yes,” Alexander says, gazing down at the emerald ring, inscribed with the Masonic symbols of the Blazing Star. “I… yeah, this belonged to Washington. Against nonmagical foes, he employed its aegis but not its wrath, but he wielded it as a weapon against Hydra when necessary. And while I’ve no specifics on how he acquired it, he channeled its power to circumvent the ancestral curse which doomed his father, brother, grandfather to early deaths—he said it was Providence providing for him, and his destiny.

“But the ring, while not ‘let’s take this shit to Mordor’ perilous, wasn’t safe. Even I concurred, though… I had, um, reservations regarding its retirement. His Excellency hid the thing during his presidency. I suggested he continue to extend his life, but—he said it was time; he said he’d played his part, and that—that he looked forward to retreating from the stage into history. The curse… it took him very soon after.”

Alexander smiles grimly. “At least, unlike Catalina, the ring stayed hidden.”

“We already knew or surmised all of that,” Erik says.

Alexander narrows his eyes. “First, that’s categorically untrue; both Nick Fury and you, Maria, reacted with shock when I informed you of Washington’s magical nature, and surprise so infrequently adorns your faces that I doubt you could feign it easily – ”

“Nomenclature isn’t significant,” says Erik. “Analytics revealed the handwriting’s author; we knew Washington penned a prophecy; how does the word ‘warlock’ change anything?”

“Second, if it is true that you know everything, Mr. Lehnsherr, then why, pray tell, am I here?” Alexander retorts. “And why am I a ‘specialist’ whose experience is ‘inimitable’? Furthermore, that Washington was a warlock significantly alters your history – ”

“My history? I’m not even American – ”

“’Tis a figure of speech, and not a moment ago you claimed nomenclature lacked significance – ”

Maria shoots a look at both of them saying behave; they quiet and listen. “About a year ago, Erik decoded documents that the Ten Rings found at Mt. Vernon, and that Coulson smuggled to Fury.”

“Pigpen cypher, easy enough,” brags Erik.

“Very easy,” agrees Alexander. “Hercules taught them to me in an afternoon between Gaelic lessons.”

“Gaelic? A bheil Gàidhlig agat?”

“Um… tá, beagán?”

“That’s Irish. I thought you were Scottish.”

“I am, but Hamilton neglected to confer the language to me, and when I learned the smattering I know, it was from a Mulligan – ”

Hill glares, silencing them again, and continues briskly, “Half of them revealed the location of the ring—a secret chamber at Mt. Vernon—and the other half of the ones we’ve decoded are the apocalyptic warning, not prophecy; Washington said very clearly that the events only could happen. This, Hamilton, is where you come in. Washington said the ring draws its power from a different stone, one he thought was too dangerous to carry with him. He wrote it’s the stone the Mandarin would use to destroy the world—and that he regretted hiding it where he had, because in his final hours, he had no way to make sure it was safe. Do you know anything about the other stone?”

Alexander nods, a lump in his throat as he remembers the general’s final letter, devoid of any word warning Washington knew he’d drop dead in days.

He says, “Yeah. I’ve met the Mandarin. And I’ve glimpsed the stone, too.” Touched it, even, but ASCENT, whose curiosity seems to outweigh its sense of morality, doesn’t need to know he survived that.

“Do you know where it is?” asks Erik.

“Do you think it’s an infinity stone?” asks Maria.

“No,” Alexander replies, “I don’t have a clue where Washington hid it. And I don’t know how he procured it, either.” He remembers the power surging at his fingertips; he remembers the all-consuming cold eating at him from within, cold like Valley Forge, cold like the chills that took his mother from him, cold like standing at his own grave—cold like he was already dead.

“But, having seen the power of this ring alone, and having skimmed research on the power of the Aether, the Mind Stone, and the Tesseract… the artifact is the Time Stone. I’ve not a doubt.”

Maria and Erik exchange a look.

“Then we don’t have a minute to lose,” Erik says finally. “I’ll show you the documents.”

Alexander pauses. Then he says, “Okay.” He grins. “Let’s go.”

queerplatonicplatypus   agirlwithfracturedskeletonhats

…  

The mods here think that’s Alex Faucette ! He helped the Avengers defeat the vampiress Catalina de Barçelona about a week ago. Steve Rogers (Captain America) mentions him in this interview and Secret Service pulled him away from CNN reporters after the showdown in this clip

but srsly are we not going to talk about how faucette is hamiltons mothers  name

289 notes

Alexander spends the majority of his Monday training with Naomi Mitchell, the woman he met in the atrium, texting Tony Stark—who’s on his way to LA, bored out of his mind—about the general strangeness of this office environment, and learning how to operate the compulsory government operating system, which is so godawful it makes Alexander Hamilton question for a moment whether the federal government has gone too far.

“They’d probably make you fill out of form to ask that question,” says Jefferson Ulysses Sinclair V ‘but you can call me Vee,’ the over-middle-aged white male Libertarian who’s quick to announce that while his parents were proud Confederates, he was born in Canada and there purged of the ‘Republican establishment filth.’ “They’re in our pocketbooks, They’re in our computers, They’re dictating what they can and can’t do in our bedrooms and bathrooms, They’re spying on my poodle. They need us divided, because if we don’t hate each other, They lose power—Democrats and Republicans. They feed on our division. Federal government is the real f-word. It should be abolished.”

“Uh-huh,” says Alexander, again feeling like a Federalist. He raises an eyebrow. “You do realize we work for the federal government, yes? Furthermore – ”

Eventually, Naomi drags Hamilton away from Vee, knocking Alexander into Gregor McGregor, who’s too busy picking his nose to keep his balance and stumbles into Santiago José Manuel García Ramírez, who rushes to his cubicle to lather himself in hand-sanitizer. Meanwhile, Rebecca Levine darts to inform Erik of the incident; Flavien Laclére, hearing Alexander’s cry of “Merde!”, enthuses tactilely about having another native French speaker in the office, which is nice until he leers at Alexander, Alexander’s flirting instincts kick in as a defense mechanism, and bilingual innuendoes spew everywhere; and Latika Kumar proselytizes about how the office has sinned and must now collectively accept Jesus Christ as its Lord and Savior lest it go to Hell.

This is before the printer breaks.

Although five o’clock approaches with the hurry of a snail riding a sloth, the day was a whirlwind in hindsight; Alexander returns to Avengers Tower’s loft clutching, with bandaid-ridden fingers, a massive stack of correspondence between Washington and Franklin. Dissatisfied with his progress during the day, Alexander grabs an orange, Post-It notes, and a family-size bag of Cheetos. He takes a seat at the kitchen table.

As Alexander peels the orange, plucks off the bandaids (the cuts, like all the injuries he has sustained since the resurrection have already healed, but Ramírez insisted for sanitary reasons), and begins decoding the Mason’s Cypher, the other residents pour into the adjacent living room. Steve carries in no less than a dozen boxes of pizza, and Tony chortles: “But did you see his face when I exploded the poodle?”

Steve sets the pizza on the counter with a heavy sigh. “Is everything a joke to you? I thought you’d killed a puppy!”

Tony shoots him a look of disbelief. “But you knew the werewolves were actually robots,” he says. “Why would you think Sir Bolts-a-Lot’s poodle wasn’t a robot?”

“You had know way of knowing the dog was a robot, Tony,” Steve says seriously.

“Of course I knew.”

“You could’ve killed a puppy.”

“But I didn’t.”

“But you could’ve.”

“No, I couldn’t have, I knew it wasn’t a puppy, its eyes were shooting lasers.”

“It really was kind of reckless, Tony,” says Rhodey. “It wasn’t a puppy, but it could have been rigged to cause a bigger explosion.”

Sam pulls out his phone and starts snap-chatting the scene. As the argument escalates, Vision becomes increasingly confused, asking a sunburnt Clint questions about the nature of humanity. Meanwhile, Natasha sneaks three plates of pizza, one carried on top of her head, and waltzes to the kitchen table, beckoning a lost-looking Wanda to the table. Once seated, she slides the plates to Alexander and Wanda, and puts the plate on her head in front of her.

“So,” says Alexander, brow furrowed as he attempts to decipher the debate and decide his side. “How was LA?”

“LA was sunny,” Wanda says. Her eyes glow red, and a paper napkin floats from a drawer to her lap.

“We stopped Eduardo Giovanni from destroying the Golden Gate Bridge with werewolf-robots,” Natasha replies.

“Huh,” Alexander says. “And… everyone’s unharmed?”

“Clint is still suffering from the vampire bite,” answers Wanda. “The sun burned him during the showdown on the beach.”

Alexander glances to Clint, who grimaces as he shifts uncomfortably under Vision’s philosophical inquisition. While severe, the sunburns at least look less than supernatural. “Have you tried lavender, coconut oil, honey, and aloe vera?”

“Just aloe,” Natasha says.

Alexander nods. “I’d recommend coconut oil and honey.”

“All-in-all,” Wanda pronounces, as though trying the phrase for the first time, “it was a normal Monday.” She shrugs, and she asks, “How was your first day?”

Alexander pauses. “Um,” he says, scrambling for a saga worth sharing. “The printer broke and smudged the ink on one of Benjamin Franklin’s letters, which Morgan was attempting to copy. Becca’s a historian first, linguist second, and, um. She was much displeased. I was only able to take home half of the correspondence I intended to decode tonight. I could’ve pressed to take the originals, but – ” He holds up a hand lightly powdered with orange dust. “In all candor, I’d no desire to forsake my Cheetos,” he finishes lamely.

Wanda blinks. “That sounds… fascinating.”

“Yeah, not really,” says Alexander. He glances at the pizza Natasha brought and compares the prospect of joining the fray around the island counter.

A few minutes later, Alexander is standing on top of said island counter orating, pizza slice in one hand and wine glass in the other, about the specter of uncertainty in ethical dilemmas. Rhodey and Tony come to an agreement, but Steve protests—until he grabs his sketchpad and charcoal and furiously drafts the scene of Hamilton haranguing on a table.

“I was always jealous of Trumbull and Peale,” Steve says. “It’s a patriotic artist’s dream, that’s all.”

“From the draft,” Alexander replies, “I can see you’re a talented artist—I think you might’ve actually managed to capture my nose—and this is the sort of artwork I’d have paid for in my era, but, um… you don’t need me to stand here for eight hours, do you?”

He doesn’t: Steve has an iPhone photo. The argument fades. Conversation begins. Eventually, they all sit, and dinner proceeds with a mixture of boisterous laughter, worries that Alexander has eaten two entire bags of Cheetos, and Vision’s philosophical inquiries until Darcy enters the kitchen.

In a glum tone that doesn’t suit her, she announces, “I’ve got some news from Manila.”

The room stiffens.

“What is it?” asks Steve—or, rather, Captain America, Alexander observes, by his soldier’s countenance and command, now manifest: his shoulders are more square; his posture is more dignified; the ungodly tightness of his shirt about him reveals the physique of a brazen god.

Darcy says, “You know the Stark Industry weapons factory that Tony supposedly shut down?”

“‘Supposedly,’” Rhodey echoes. “I’m not liking this ‘supposedly.’”

Darcy grimaces. “Yeah, it’s still open. In the Stark Industries name.”

“Shit,” says Tony.

“Language!” the captain chides.

“Bullshit,” says Alexander.

“Language,” the captain chides dolefully, pinching the bridge of his nose.

Natasha adds, “And usually, ‘bullshit’ isn’t used for displeasure, but for – ”

“I know,” Alexander interrupts; Natasha sulks. He continues, “I’m calling bullshit. Considering the all-pervasive media’s splenetic disposition, that a Stark weapons manufactory might remain open proceeding Tony’s conversion to pacifism without commencing international scandal, opprobrium, and censure is ludicrous—it’s bullshit.”

“But it’s what’s happening,” Darcy reminds him.

“I believe the pith of Alexander’s argument,” says Vision, “is thus: it’s probable that a lucrative conspiracy is at play. It would explain the media’s silence.”

“Exactly,” Alexander says.

“Duh.” Tony nods. “And it must’ve been reopened recently.” He glares at the ceiling. “Hey, FRIDAY, can you…?”

“Already on it, boss,” she answers. “I’ll let you know when I’ve hacked the records.”

“Cool,” he says. “Transfer it to the workshop when you’re done.”

A moment later, Wanda asks, “Do we know what the factory is manufacturing?”

“An excellent question,” Vision tells her.

“No idea,” Darcy answers.

“So we have no idea what we’ll be up against. Wonderful,” says Natasha sarcastically. She pauses. “We are going on a mission, right?”

“Actually, you, Sam, and Wanda are staying here,” Darcy answers. “Maria called. She said she wants competent help taking down a Hydra-linked human trafficking ring, and the new recruits just aren’t cutting it.”

Human trafficking. Alexander frowns. “Slavery,” he says in disbelief. “Not only are organizations such as the Klan and the ECCC extant, but that—calamitous, morally bankrupt and economically fatal institution lingers here, in New York—and lingers so tenaciously that honest-to-God superheroes must involve themselves to stop it?”

Sam’s expression is a mixture of wariness, weariness, and sympathy. “It’s very illegal.”

“And unconstitutional, for God’s sake; precisely,” Alexander says. “Shouldn’t this be dealt with by police?”

“It should be,” Sam agrees. “It’s just that sometimes, crime’s hard to see.”

“Especially when Hydra’s involved,” Captain America adds.

Alexander pauses, and then he nods. He understands that this world of marvels is not a utopia. Stryker, the former general who used his televangelism to launch a presidential campaign, Trump, the ostensibly human acid bath, and the xenophobic groundswell behind them is proof enough of that. But to glean the persistent shadows of old dystopia infecting even this little bastion of diversity, culture, and commerce, his New York City—it stings, stings like resurfacing lungs and throat, raw from those first gulps of cold air.

“Okay, back to Manila,” says Darcy. “Since we don’t really know what we’re dealing with, Fury’s sending a big team. Probably overkill, but better safe than sorry. Steve, Rhodey, Vision, Tony, Clint—you’re all going.”

“I’m retired,” Clint whines. “Why do you keep sending me on missions?”

Natasha raises an eyebrow. “Why do you keep staying at the Tower and showing up for breakfast?”

Clint frowns. “Touché.”

“I’d be more than happy to step up, if I may be of service,” says Alexander.  

“Just keep working on the decryption, I guess,” says Darcy, shrugging.

fandom8mysoulandsoldit2crowley   f-yeah-i-ship-founding-fathers

…  

but srsly are we not going to talk about how faucette is alex’s mother’s name

… 

ok i have a video of faucette and captain america singing at elizas grave 

i think this proves something

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUuKu41LmAo

…  

ive been listening to the ORC obsessively and im actually trying not to think hes hamilton rn

srsly even the way he walks in that video omg its just like lin in the show (NO I CANT GET U TICKETS BUT I SAW IT PLZ DONT KILL ME)

…  

THIS IS AS REAL AS DOCTOR WHO. 

and lbr a second: the avengers have had weirder shit happen

FANDOM IS LIFE. LIFE IS FANDOM. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.

540 notes

Chapter Text

Thursday, October 1, 2015

“Alexander?”

It’s like a jolt of electricity; Alexander jumps, scrambles to steady himself in the swivel chair, and turns to Erik with as much eighteenth century gentility as he can muster—he needs it to maintain his dignity. 

“Erik,” he says, leaping up to stand at attention. “May I be of service?”

“When can I expect those decryptions?”

“I’ve finished.” Alexander takes the three stacks of paper, all immaculately hole-punched and bracketed, from beside his computer; he catches himself dipping at the waist as he presents them to his boss. You’re not a sycophant, Alex, he tells himself. Stop acting like it. 

“One’s the actual decryption requested,” says Alexander, and he straightens. “The second’s instructions on decrypting this kind of cypher. The last is a form-request for a letter seemingly referenced in the ones I’ve translated, probably concerning the Stone’s location.” He says: “I’d have asked for more to do earlier or at least deposited these in your inbox, but you were on a phone call, and, sir, I didn’t want to – ”

“Thank you,” Erik says. He takes the stacks, presses them vertically against the desk, and bangs them—gently enough to not harm them, hard enough that his jacket sleeve slips down and reveals an Apple Watch—into even more perfect alignment.

Alexander says, “I’ve also prepared a ten page summary of the information – ”

“I’d prefer to read it in full.”

“… alright.” He smiles tightly. “What’s next?”

Next is a tome Alexander knows to be George Washington’s spell-book. It’s printed but covered in handwritten notes. With Latika Kumar’s assistance, he scans the pages one-by-one, careful not to fray the venerable thing and marveling at the drawings—chakras, hieroglyphs, cosmologies—on the yellowed pages, this time without John or Lafayette teasing him for his complete inability to learn an iota of magic or futilely trying to make the other aides-de-camp stop calling him “Hammie.” (He almost misses the teasing, now; when did he become his distinguished mask, too dignified to mock?)

With permission, once the book has been copied, Alexander assembles the available office denizens and explains the decryption procedure as briefly as he can manage, if far from as briefly as possible.

It’s quick work: they decrypt the whole of it in two hours, and while it’s not particularly intellectually engaging, Vee provides a steady stream of unintentional entertainment with his increasingly absurd conspiracy theories; between debunking the bullshit, defending the federal government's existence in the face of bureaucracy, and translating the book, Alexander occupies himself with mental outlines for three essays and a timetable for studying philosophy.

It’s important, Good work, too: the tome is filled to the brim with information on the otherwise unnamed “Stone”, which brings them an inch closer to saving the world.

But when Alexander returns to the Tower to find Sam, Wanda, and Natasha huddled around a weeping Latina woman on a living room ottoman, the former of the trio assuring her, “Hey, it’s okay, they have programs for trafficking victims, you’re going to get immigration relief and legal services, it’s okay, you’re not going to be taken from your daughter, it’s okay”—when Alexander returns to that, he finds himself feeling a little less important and significantly less Good.

Tears shine in her eyes; with French and Latin on his side, he might have understood an inkling of the Spanish were it not broken by sobs. Natasha puts a hand on the woman’s shoulder and murmurs something that sounds comforting. The other woman shakes her head and cuts Natasha off with an acerbic, “No! No.” She wipes the tears from her eyes and meets Alexander’s gaze sharply. “Who is this?”

“Um,” says Alexander, glancing to Natasha, who shakes her head. “I’m Alex Faucette?” he lies. The words have yet to feel anything short of acrid. “I work with ASCENT; I live here for convenience.”

She stands and extends a handshake. “I am Génesis Rubio. Your friends are listening to my story.” After that, Alexander listens too, wanting nothing more than to explain the million ways the Avengers will make everything okay—but he’s increasingly aware of his paucity of useful knowledge. He lets Sam talk instead, and he listens with a sort of brutal curiosity that devours things he doesn’t really want to know.

It’s the same brutal curiosity that, an hour later, sends Alexander stumbling out of the shower into the cold and billowing steam to inspect, with hands shaking and surfaced in soapsuds, the tags of every article of clothing he owns—Made in Pakistan, Made in Pakistan, Made in Indonesia.…

It’s the same brutal curiosity that fumbles for his laptop, for Google, for the stories he’s known existed but wasn’t quite ready to face. It’s the same curiosity that scatters a thin layer of soap and water across the keys—predatory loans; the Trail of Tears; child labor and exploitation; Triangle Fire; Japanese internment.

Hiroshima, Nagasaki:

Skin melting like wax in the firestorm; Death on a mount of cursed, unholy light; children reduced to dust and shadows; the survivors: shambling skeletons in the wastelands with maggot-ridden rags for flesh. The Americans rain bullets on the helpless.

Alexander has known, in the abstract, the power of nuclear bombs, there are no words for this. He should have known; he should have guessed; he should have stopped it, somehow: all of it.

He sits, legs crossed on his mattress, rivulets running down his back and plashing against the comforter, and thinks distantly that he should continue—search for McCarthyism; the Vietnam War—but he finds himself shivering in the cold, a bone-deep emptiness burning away muscles, sinew, and his strongest foundations of belief—like radiation; like a firestorm—until he can hardly move.

… not war; annihilation and great dishonor…

… but was there ever a difference…?

There’s a buzzing pressure between his ears—I did this; I made this—but his eyes don’t burn. Hair sticks against his brow, cold water streaming from the locks and slipping down his cheeks. It feels like crying, but colder.

He thinks: They’re gone. They’re dead.

He thinks: I made this. This is mine.

Alexander washes the soap from his hands, his hair. He doesn’t cry. The tears are never right on time. When he’s in public or otherwise being scrutinized, it only takes a silent notion of her name to bring despair and uncontrollable anger. It reminds him of that nonsense physics thought experiment that sent him floundering back to the comparatively safe and concrete world of economics, which, while unpredictable, at least makes sense. Alexander thinks he’s like the tree that fell in the forest, like Schrödinger’s Cat: when history isn’t watching him, is he really alive at all? He doesn’t seem to feel anything with a name—except silence.

There’s an absurd urge to scrub vigorously, until his skin reddens and he feels something, something other than empty and unclean; filthy and quiet. Emptiness blossoms in his gut. He sinks to his knees, leans his head against the back wall, lets water wash his face, and imagines these are finally, finally tears.

It’s not enough.

From: Alex Faucette <[email protected]> (draft)
To: [none] 
Subject: [none]

My beloved Eliza,

It has come to my attention that the letters which Mr. Pendleton delivered to you were woefully inadequate; words cannot convey the depth of my love when the accompanying conduct is selfish and ill-conceived. I’ll not find my absolution in words written, and I therefore maintain a correspondence with the departed.

Though it costs me a great deal to be absent from your affections, causing extreme gloom which I assume will persist for some time, it is a source of some comfort to me that you’re no longer bound to this Earth. I have discovered a source of destruction greater than a hurricane, my Betsy; its names are missile, firestorm, and nuclear winter, and its sources are the violent convulsions and merciless creativity of fallen Man.…

Friday, October 2, 2015

Alexander discovers something else in researching nuclear weapons.

He arrives at ASCENT headquarters early for the unwanted therapy appointment, and when he spies Nick Fury in the courtyard, he rushes to block his path on the sidewalk, arms crossed.

Fury raises his eyebrow.

“You nuked New York,” Alexander accuses.

Fury blinks—a very subdued moment of uh-oh. “Well, no. New York is still here.”

“You authorized the launch of a nuclear missile, its destination: my New York City.”

Fury huffs. “First of all, it’s not yours.”

“You nuked it!”

“To save the world.”

“You had other options, as evidenced by the fact that New York and Earth are both still here—yet you chose the course that would leave millions vaporized or worse, half-melted and wailing, betrayed by the government which exists to protect them.”

“It was the right thing to do.”

“You assured me you’d never do that. You lied.”

“Yeah. I did. And I’m proud of that. Because that was the right thing to do, too. I got you into the car, so we could use your expertise to save the world. Again.”

“But – !”

“This is not a democracy,” the director warns. “And it’s not a republic or a commonwealth or anything else you’re about to snark. It’s an absolute-fucking-monarchy where my word is law and I don’t wanna hear it, so let it be written, so let it be done.” He gestures to the side, a silent request for Alexander to move out of the way.

Hamilton glares, and Fury glares right back, his expression rigid, immovable determination. “I made my decision, and I’d make it again if I had to,” says Fury. “Are we clear?”

“Crystal,” Alexander says sharply.

Alexander Hamilton: Having perused the details of the Chitauri Invasion of New York, I’ve learned you saved my city
AH: and I feel a great obligation to thank you.
AH: My god I don't think I could've managed if I'd awoken in a world without New York

Tony Stark: im hiding in a dumpster from a sea monster rn

AH: ???
AH: Okay first of all HOW THE HELL

TS: IT INVADED MANILA

AH: DO YOU MANAGE TO HAVE LUCK *AT LEAST* ON PAR WITH MINE??
AH: second, why are you in a dumpster? 0.o

TS: im rigging a bomb in the dumpster bc theres poisonous gas outside the dumpster

AH: I… Im actually entirely bereft of words
AH: wow

TS: wow is a word

AH: shut up

TS: ur not ‘entirely bereft of words’ (oxymoron much?)

AH: I made America, Q.E.D.

TS: thats a fallacy
TS: but ur welcome for NY

AH: May I be of service??

TS: not rly sorry
TS: wait
TS: yes u can
TS sent an image.
TS: get erik to translate this and text it to cap fridays having trouble

AH: Would you mind translating this?
AH sent an image.

Erik Lehnsherr: Not a problem. It appears to be Atlantean. We’ve already a database available.
EL: Is there a reason?

AH: Atlantis is a thing? Why was I not informed that Atlantis is a thing?
AH: Yes—Avengers fighting a sea monster. It’s urgent.

EL: …
EL: I have no words for that insanity.
EL: I’m working on it.

AH: Text it to Steve when you’ve finished.

“Good morning, Mr Hamilton,” says Dr. Kwan. “How are you?”

“My friends” (friends?) “are fighting to stay alive, right now, amid a sea monster’s rage and toxic breath, but… there’s nothing I can do about that.” Alexander manages an almost cheery, “I’m alive.”

“I’m so glad, too.” Dr. Kwan rolls her swivel chair toward him. He stiffens, wishing abruptly that he could likewise maneuver his seat on the sofa around the room. He expects her to ask questions, but she says nothing; she merely sits there, within grabbing distance of him, and he swallows as he listens to the clock.

He is wasting his life – 

But he agreed to therapy in exchange for the position here. This is necessary; it is merely the most degrading portion of his career.

The clock ticks.

“I don’t know why I’m here,” Alexander admits eventually. The words I don’t know burn like acid on his tongue, so he adds, “other than to review the test results.”

“Ah, yes, the test results! We didn’t have enough time to go over them last time.” Dr. Kwan retreats to her desk to withdraw the papers. Ceasefire. Alexander breathes. He steels himself for her return. This is necessary.

“Before we start to go over these,” she says, turning around, and meeting his eyes, “I need you to understand that… this is about you, now, your present, and your future. I promise I will help you in whatever way you need, if you will give me your honesty, and, more importantly, your trust. Can you do that?”

“I don’t have a choice, do I?” he snaps.

“There’s always a choice.”

“Vague rubbish never fixed anyone.”

“‘Fixed’?” Dr. Kwan repeats. She tilts her head; she blinks, and Alexander has the distinct impression of an owl. “I’ve heard you’re good with words – ”

“I wrote The Federalist; don’t patronize me.”

“Then you know that fixed implies broken. Did you intend that?”

Alexander swallows. “I don’t know.” This time, there’s nothing to add; it stings.

Dr. Kwan’s smile has a hint of grimness to it as she tells him, “Based on your answers to these questions, it’s very likely you have an anxiety disorder… as well as bipolar I disorder.”

“Shit,” Alexander hisses, fingers curling into fists so tight his right hand, still stiff from so much typing and scrawling, aches. Then: “Sorry,” he says, an instant before he remembers bipolar cycling often accompanies a decline in cognitive function, and he snarls, “God-fucking-dammit,” very viciously, nails biting at his palms. “Then why persist in this? There’s no cure.”

“But it is manageable with medication and strategy. In fact, if you were any other patient, this is the part where I would say, ‘Alexander Hamilton is believed to have had bipolar disorder, and he turned out okay.’”

He wants to protest the ‘turned out okay’ part, but instead, he nods, rigid—trembling, a bit, in a sudden frustration that buzzes like a billion beetles in his blood. Dr. Kwan observes his discomfort and points him to ‘Anger Bear’, a crimson Care Bear which, at her prompting, he hurls across the room. Its soft huff against the wall and then the floor is strangely satisfying. “And Alexander,” says Dr. Kwan gently as he retrieves the toy and sits back on the couch. “Can you give me your trust?”

Alexander meets her eyes as guilelessly as he can manage, fingers burrowed in polyester fur. “It was said of me that I died of an excess of candor; I’ll give you my honesty.” He squeezes Anger Bear a little tighter. And Alexander finds he likes Anger Bear even better when he’s hugging it, not throwing it: it feels like he’s the one protecting something tiny and helpless, instead of like he’s the helpless one being protected.

He says, “I’ll attempt the trust.”

Alexander Hamilton: Are you okay? I’ve spent the last hour worrying
AH: is everyone alive/unharmed/accounted for?
AH: Tony??
AH: the attack is all over my news alerts but CNN has no idea about the Avengers
AH: ARE YOU OK? 

TS: This is Steve. Tony is drunk and I have his phone.
TS: The factory evacuated during the attack. We don’t know who was behind opening it.
TS: But yes, we’re okay. Unfortunately the airways are closed but we should be back by Sunday morning.

“So none of us are originally from America,” Alexander observes, glancing between Naomi Mitchell and Morgan McCormick. They’re gathered around the car-sized copier to finish printing the translated version of Washington’s spell-book. “Huh. Immigrants: we get the job done.” Alexander finds himself smirking.

“Yep,” says Morgan in his very posh British voice. “You’re the only one here from America, I guess.”

“I—I just said we,” says Alexander, for the fifth time today resisting the urge to harangue the office idiot into sanity.

“He’s from the Caribbean, Morgan,” Naomi says gently. Her brow furrows. “I read a little about you when I heard you’d be working here, but I—St. Croix, right?”

“Nevis,” Alexander corrects, on instinct. To his mild surprise, he doesn’t wince. He asks, “What about Erik? Is he German? If so, his English and accent are perfect, albeit perhaps only to my untrained ears – ”

Naomi’s expression darkens, and Alexander stops. After glancing around, she says quietly, “Afghan.”

His eyes widen. “Afghan? But—‘Lehnsherr.’”

Her gaze softens to sympathy, but the darkness lingers. “I know. Confused me, too. His father was a Sokovian Soviet soldier, but he deserted during the war for a woman—shit, speak of the devil. Here he comes.” Erik storms from the lavish hallway into the sea of cubicles, his expression stony, which could mean anything from a minor annoyance to an impending tirade to, presumably, murderous rage.

Naomi hisses, “Do not ask him about it.”

“Mr. Hamilton,” says Erik, gesturing. He turns, and he walks away.

Oh shit, thinks Alexander. “Yes, sir,” says Alexander, and he follows.

“I’ve good news,” Erik says when they’re sitting in his office, which is full of bookshelves and positively reeking of efficiency. “And bad news. Two pieces of good news, though, so I’ll start with good news number one—unless you’ve any objections?”

“No, sir.”

“Good news: you’ve done very well,” Erik says. “You’ve been working non-stop, and you’ve done good work. We’re glad to have you.” Here, he pauses.

It takes Alexander two seconds longer than it should to realize what Erik wants him to say. “Thank you, sir.”

“Bad news,” Erik continues. “We do not have the letter you requested, which, according to these translations, should have information on the location of the Time Stone.”

“And the good news?” asks Alexander. “Sir?”

“We know who does have the letter,” he replies. “The historian: Ron Chernow.”

What?

“You’re joking.”

“Not at all.” Erik slides a business card across the desk. “Here is his address and email address. Let him know we’re from the government and we’ll be there this afternoon.”

From: Alex Faucette <[email protected]>
To: Ron Chernow <****@****>
BCC: Charles Xavier <[email protected]>, Erik Lehnsherr <[email protected]>
Subject: Letters of George Washington unearthed –– Please Respond

Dear Sir,

ASCENT has recently unearthed a source of previously undiscovered and encrypted epistles of George Washington. Our department is confident as to authenticity: Script, linguistic patterns, & etc. pretty much confirm the author.

It has come to our attention that one letter is missing. A code is probably written in a special and supernatural sort of unseen Ink on the reverse of the pages. Specifically, my agency seeks access to the letter sent from George Washington to Benjamin Franklin on January 2, 1781, which we understand is in your possession.

Our database indicates you are currently researching at Columbia University. With your permission, I would like to visit this afternoon with two of my colleagues at whatever time might be most convenient to you. We are prepared to offer pecuniary renumeration for your time and, if it seems prudent, the document itself.

If you have doubts as to this message’s veracity, you can ask Professor Charles Xavier with the genetics Department at your institution. He will confirm our predicament. You can reach him here, or you can contact me with the number provided; I would be happy to provide clarifications.

Very respectfully,

Alex Faucette
ASCENT Cryptography Specialist
[email protected]
www.ascent.gov
555-111-1755

It’s a noble statue and a decent imitation, but Alexander is beginning to detest statues of himself: they make him acutely aware of how small he is, especially when he’s walking alongside Erik (taller than Jefferson) and Wanda (his height in half-inch heels).

She points. “Is that – ?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Quietly, Alexander tells her, “I went to school here.”

“Oh,” says Wanda, nodding as they enter the building. “In East Sokovia, we have chocolate busts of Lenin. So it is like with Lenin, except for capitalism?”

“Yes,” Erik says.

“I… suppose,” Alexander answers, distinctly uncomfortable with being compared to the populist, naïve autocrat.

“Although, Washington is more Lenin. As Washington’s right-hand man, Hamilton would be Stalin,” Erik tells her, and this may be Alexander’s least-favorite comparison ever.

I did this. This is mine – 

No.

He cannot blame himself for all of his nation’s actions. He shakes himself, and walks onward –

And then finds himself alone. Alexander glances around.

“Stairs are this way!” says Wanda from behind. She points to a door.

He simmers silently for a few moments as they climb, reach the top, and enter the hallway, but for him, there’s always a certain futility in attempting to keep mum. “But unlike Stalin, I—Alexander Hamilton,” he corrects, glancing around at the few students around, “didn’t construct a superpower whose very foundations were endless, senseless carnage and the destruction of his citizens’ lives.”

“Slavery.” Erik gives him a pointed look. “Worse than communism.”

“That wasn't real communism,” Wanda interjects. “Real communism is a very good thing.”

Alexander ignores Wanda’s assertion (for now) and instead argues: “Hamilton opposes… opposed slavery; he viewed it as a wicked institution. This is one of the reasons the university still honors him.”

“Yes. But he tolerated it, and profited from it,” Erik replies cooly. “Didn’t he?”

They halt: this is the door to Chernow's office, if the database is right. The guilt is mounting, and Alexander decides to shut down this conversation. His eyes narrow, snapping to the watch on his superior’s wrist. “Take off that watch.”

“What,” says Erik flatly.

“Have you any idea where that was manufactured?” asks Alexander quietly.

Erik frowns. “I’d assume China.”

“Have you any idea what price humanity, to say nothing of America’s working class, has paid for goods so cheap?”

Wanda glances between the two of them, pauses, and knocks.

“I’m an advocate for globalization,” Alexander says, “and a well-wisher for this era of global democracy and advocacy for human rights—that is, an advocate for the UN and this comparatively peaceful era. But I’m too attached to the liberties of mankind not to see the very great threat this age poses to itself—the way an absence of certain essential regulations, sprung from the illiberal, turbulent, ungovernable, self-perpetuating spirit persisting amid certain sectarians, points toward demagogues, exploited workers, a scorched Earth, and poisoned seas.”

Erik crosses his arms. “You, of all people, have no right to – ”

“All I’m saying is, that watch is a symptom of a much bigger problem – ”

The door swings open, revealing a white-haired man with rectangular glasses and a very wide grin. He stares at them.

Ron Chernow is staring at him. Shit.

For God’s sake, his pseudonym is Alex Faucette.

He already pissed off Nick Fury today:  Alexander is going to be murdered in his sleep.

Erik says, “Mr. Chernow?” 

“Yes, yes, that would be me,” says Chernow. “Come in, come in, gentlemen!—and lady.” He eyes them with curiosity that quickly becomes incredulity, and then he takes a step back, gaping. “Are you?—but you couldn’t be.”

Alexander freezes.

Ron Chernow breathes, “Scarlet Witch?”

“Yes,” Wanda says. She sounds glum. Alexander knows it isn’t the first time someone has been afraid of her.

“Incredible, simply incredible,” says Chernow, shaking her hand in both of his. “I’ve done a great deal of Research on the Avengers, from a historical perspective, you see, observing how future generations might revere your spectacular entourage, and I’ve concluded your legacies are quite secure. Why, you are the founders of a new age!” He adds, “And it’s a very great privilege to meet a piece of living history. Come in, do come in!”

Chernow ushers them into the office. He exchanges introductions with the non-living-historical-figure and the undercover-historical-figure, whom he takes little interest in. Once Chernow has taken a selfie (or three) with Wanda, explaining all-the while how fascinating the concept of a selfie is, the historian sits them down, starts the coffee maker in the corner, and asks for their credentials, which don’t impress him nearly as much as Wanda’s existence.

Eventually, Erik demands, “Do you have the letter?”

“Yes, yes, it’s over here,” Chernow responds, opening a drawer. He pulls out an orange envelope and sets it on the desk, sliding it across to them. Alexander and Erik exchange glances; the former of the two takes it, and carefully withdraws the His Excellency’s plastic-protected letter.

“But, in my Research, I read this letter multiple times,” says Chernow. “There is no… ‘encryption.’”

“It’s magical,” Wanda tells him.

Chernow’s eyes sparkle. “Magical, dear?”

“Our department believes George Washington involved himself in the old magicks,” says Alexander. “His Excellency called himself a warlock.”

Chernow frowns. “But I haven’t discovered this in my Research!”

Erik shrugs. “It’s classified.” He shoots a glare in Alexander’s direction.

Chernow’s eyes light up again. “Was… was Alexander Hamilton involved in the old magicks?”

“I—Alexander Hamilton,” says Alexander. “Was not. Involved, in the old magicks. May I continue, Erik?”

Erik nods. “It isn’t classified. Yet.”

Alexander says, “Although John Laurens possessed some talent, to his father’s dismay—probably, based upon what history has preserved of their strained relationship—and Lafayette, Marquis de Lafayette, studied as the general’s apprentice, Hamilton expressed, in, um, recently discovered writings, disdain at his own inability to acquire the skill.”

“But this must be why Washington denied Hamilton a command! How… fascinating,” Chernow murmurs. “I can only assume this fostered feelings of inferiority in Hamilton, which would have contributed to his constant need to appear as a gentleman, to say nothing of some of his more, shall we say, reckless behavior during the war.”

Alexander shuffles uncomfortably in his chair. Chernow clears his throat. “But I’m getting ahead of myself,” he says. “Hamilton remains obscure, and he’s going to be taken off the ten, despite my efforts.” Alexander had a very long and not entirely civil conversation about this with Fraser and Smith. Ultimately, it came to this: living persons are by-law forbidden from appearing on U.S. currency, and therefore the $10 portrait must be given to someone else. He could have made the argument that he might be something like a copy of the ‘real’ Hamilton, but his identity, his very soul, didn't seem worth his place on the ten.

That doesn’t mean Alexander isn’t bitter about it.

So when Chernow says, “I doubt you know enough about him to care,” Alexander says, “Try me.”

Erik’s glare becomes a glower. The only reason you’re here, say his eyebrows, or maybe Alexander’s conscience, is to learn how to do this. This is not how to do this.

“Okay,” the historian replies. “Do you know Hamilton's mother’s maiden name?”

“Faucette,” says Alexander. “Rachel Faucette. I’m aware of the connection between us. And no, it is assuredly not familial.”

“Hm. A pity. But who was Hamilton’s father?”

The trivia-duel continues from the basic into the obscure and tangentially related: what was Hamilton’s relationship with Peggy? what were the names of his children? which of his children betrayed his legacy and abolished the federal banks? The last one hurts, but Alexander answers correctly.

Why? is Alexander's own unspoken question, but he thinks he knows the answer to this, too.

James. I’m sorry.

Chernow finally stumps him with, “How did Hamilton become friends with Talleyrand?”

To which Alexander answers truthfully, “To be honest, I've no idea.” Amoral, Machiavellian, lovable piece-of-shit-who-steals-your-shit Talleyrand, who stole his favorite portrait and never returned the original—Alexander’s unsure whether he’ll miss him. Chernow rattles off psychoanalysis that sounds plausible, and Alexander yields.

“Look, I don’t mean to be rude,” says Erik, rudely. “But Hamilton has nothing to do with any of this. Can we please look at the letter now?”

Alexander passes the letter to Wanda. She uses her nail to peel off the plastic, and Chernow strangles a cry as she presses her hands (“oil! oil! no!”) against the yellowed paper. Wanda closes her eyes, and crimson swirls eddy about her fingers. Then the magic twists into geometric shapes, like clockwork or floating runes; she stands, and walks, as though pulled by an invisible string, toward the desk; and the papers in her hands arrange themselves, flipping face forward, their blank backs facing up. Red light surges from the crack between her eyelids. A Russian voice whispers and reverberates—Wanda’s thoughts, made magic and light.

“He knew,” says Wanda, amid the echoes. Her hair blows and billows, and a wind emanates from her so powerfully that papers begin to blow and a frantic Chernow tries in vain to assemble his papers and keep them in order, like Wanda is the eye of a hurricane—but her voice is startlingly small. “I think Washington knew.”

“And why would you think that, Wanda?” asks Erik.

She opens her eyes. Her irises, volcanic embers, glow vermillion and bathe the room in scarlet; it’s like the whole office has been washed with blood. Red light emerges in the seams between the pages; they merge, as ink bleeds from the center of the paper, and a series of symbols that look like hieroglyphs—hieroglyphs in the shape of a strange map—emerge from the page.

Then Wanda turns to Erik, craning her neck, hands still resting above the papers as the symbols appear. In the glow, she looks like an avenging angel, or a queen of Hell.

The light dies, and with it the wind. Her eyes fade to blue.

“Because that’s what he told me,” Wanda tells them shakily. She shakes her head in disbelief.

“I think I heard him!”

Alexander's eyes widen. It's a potentially perilous specter of hope, but he clings to it with all the fervor of Luke Skywalker hearing the words, Run, Luke, run!  “What did His Excellency say?” His eyes glide to Chernow, who is too busy counting his papers in the corner to notice the uniquely Hamiltonian honorific.

“He said…” Wanda's brows knit. “He said ‘decryption will fail, but I look forward to meeting you at Urmia’s basin.’ What could that mean?”

“Nothing,” says Erik. “Must’ve been your imagination. There’s nothing I can’t decrypt.”

Alexander isn’t so sure.

Ron Chernow, emerging from his cowering position in the corner, wrings his hands and huffs. He says, “That’s nice, young lady. But remember, next time: don’t touch old papers! You'll ruin them!”

Alexander Hamilton @publiusesquire
@realDonaldTrump devoid of principle and erudition. Being gracious, I’ll provide a copy of the Constitution for you & @Will_St_Ryker (50/?)

Alexander Hamilton @publiusesquire
@realDonaldTrump because it's evident to me & the sane populace that *neither of you have read it.* http://bit.ly/JhZIQH (51/51)

Saturday, October 3, 2015

“What happened to a ‘need to know’ basis?” demands Natasha.

“It’s a parody account,” says Alexander. “That I am parodying myself, or rather Mr. Miranda’s interpretation of me, is mere coincidence.”

She glowers.

“Not even the ineptly named ‘History’ Channel would propose something so preposterous as a Founding Father’s resurrection, therefore I’m endangering neither secrecy nor national security in my online exploits. And I’ve already provided a bit-dot-L-Y link to the Constitution. Read the first amendment, then attempt to silence me, and join a long line of those who’ve tried, and –  ”

His mouth falls open.

“Mr. Miranda retweeted me!” He checks again to ensure his sanity then points excitedly at the tweet extolling immigration's benefits.

Natasha sighs. “Okay. Fine. You’re not technically breaking any rules. But Fury will kill you.”

“FRIDAY has ensured he can’t trace the account to me.”

“I don’t think he has to.”

Alexander frowns.

“So Génesis gave us enough info that we’re fairly confident we can take these assholes down,” says Natasha. “But we still won’t be back until late. Text me, if you go anywhere other than ASCENT headquarters, understand? Between vanishing factories and human traffickers, we’ve got enough shit to deal with, and we do not want a missing Founder on our hands.”

imdemisexyandiknowit        undertheinfluenceoffeminism

… 

okAY BUT *reynolds pamphlet voice* HAVE YOU READ THIS?! 

alexander hamilton is back u guys. that twitter just confirms it

712 notes

It’s Saturday: Alexander doesn’t need to work.

He does, nevertheless: it’s a matter of determination.

Alexander plops a stack of papers on Erik’s desk. Erik looks up at him, and he says, “This is all the information I have on Revolutionary cryptography.”

Erik smiles. He is not, Alexander notes, wearing the Apple Watch. “Then let’s get started.”

The truth is, as much as he and Erik can’t seem to exist in the same room together without some sort of Dispute, they’re fundamentally the same in one crucial respect: they don’t stop. They walk to the beat of their own drums. They’re satisfied by nothing less than brutal efficiency. When the world around them slows, they still dance a lively sort of polka and blaspheme those who dare suggest they slow to a minuet.

Today, they work, in silence and in furious, irrelevant clashes over everything from ethics to political science, late into the afternoon. When labor over the mysterious map yields nothing, they persist early into the morning.

It’s late enough, when an immensely frustrated Alexander Hamilton returns to the Tower, that FRIDAY unlocks the doors and lights the hallways in a cascade, so that he’s standing in isles of light, surrounded by darkness. It’s a good metaphor, he decides, one striking a resonant chord of anger somewhere in his chest.

He hates his ignorance. He hates the fruitless labor ignorance awarded, even as he inwardly hopes they'll fail and learn, instead, that Washington indeed spoke to Wanda. He thinks he hates that hope, too. And when he arrives at the dimly-lit Penthouse to find Natasha, Wanda, Sam, and Maria sprawled across the living room sofas, Alexander distantly hates the voice of his therapist explaining that a regular sleep cycle is among the most essential bulwarks against mania.

But it’s silent.

They’re gone. They’re dead. I made this. This is mine.

It’s silent.

He doesn’t want to dream about his grave. He doesn’t want to dream about the accusations Erik has leveled against him. He doesn’t want to dream about the accusations he has leveled against himself.

It’s silent, and in the silence he will stand on the right side of history.

Quietly, Alexander heats himself green tea with citrus, pulls his laptop from his satchel and a pad of sticky-notes from the drawer, takes his seat on the unoccupied ottoman, and begins to write.

From: Alex Faucette <[email protected]> (draft)
To: Barack Obama <****@****.gov>
Subject: Discourse on the subject of Energy & Arabian entanglements

Sunday, October 4, 2015

Mr. President,

The expediency of unmanned aerial vehicle strikes in Arabia and elsewhere, which was deemed very questionable by your Party during the previous administration, appears at this time to be pretty generally agreed upon. The incidents of civilian casualties, which once led to serious reflections on the necessity of conquest in the name of Oil and national welfare, have been consigned to oblivion in eminent spheres of political discourse: That aerial strikes result fewer horrors than traditional warfare ostensibly justifies a full indemnification for any disadvantages.

I confess I am, Sir, in my perhaps superannuated notions of Honor in combat, unfriendly to the very notion of unseen, silent machines used oft wantonly without reasonable limitations, which fulfill the purpose of base Assassins. These feelings notwithstanding, the obligation of oil and consequent geopolitical bondage to Despots, whose gloomy specter legitimizes DISHONORABLE WARFARE, itself appears superannuated and without substantiation upon cogent argument or fact: Energy and Industry have surpassed oil: as China acquires lithium mines and expediates technological progress, insuring its intrinsick strong claim to future pre-eminence and remaining un-entangled from conflicts which its entanglement would exacerbate, the national policy of the United States remains actuated from sources decades antiquated when not wholly disproved, commencing bloodshed, terror, and violent convulsions in pursuit of an unsustainable resource whose merit perpetually diminishes, hereafter threatening the vibrancy of the Union.…

(This is what it feels like to be Alexander Hamilton, right now:

Drones cast darkness across the desert (outgunned, outmanned); republics crumble with time and tide (oceans rise, empires fall); lightning strikes sow glass gardens (you never get to see): your mind flickers quicker than a quill between each tick of the clock, circling between lyrics, essays, and the nature of time (it doesn’t discriminate – it takes, and it takes, and it takes, and – ).

You are many things. You’re quite a few contradictions. You’re a collection of whirling Rubik’s cubes made symmetrical Penrose steps by sheer force of will. But you are not Aaron Burr.

Sometimes, perhaps arrogantly, you fancy yourself not a pamphleteer, but a storyteller, a bard from whose lips soar the most ancient of poetry. Arguments are logic, that timeworn art, the magnificent edifice of civilization and civilization’s dawn, and you speak logic; you are a new—now old—republican prophet amongst the pantheons of Aristotle and Socrates. 

I made this. This is mine. And your little garden is not some glass menagerie, too fragile to be touched. It’s more like Legos, really. America can be changed. Civilization can be shifted to safety. Your words can stand as a parapet against the ancient forces of tides, time, and ignorance, the unholy, triune scourge of civilization; your arguments can be a bastion of sanity, a beacon-torch like the one in the bay, should you only have the will to structure them, as you have the will to structure yourself.

Liberty will endure (and maybe, just maybe, so too will peace).

You write, and you stand at a vantage point at which empires become small, and the forces of chaos (in an isolated system, entropy can only increase) and the razor's edge between tyranny and anarchy becomes sharp, abundantly clear, so frightful; your enemy is chaos, your enemy is apparent, and you will make them see – 

But sometimes, reality—the living room, the fact that your sip of tea is lukewarm and bitter—coalesces around you. Your eyes grow weak. Your fingers ache and fumble across the keys, marring the missive. You write, nevertheless. You wrote your way out of hell (I wrote my way to revolution); you’ll learn to conquer QWERTY, the damnable thing. You certainly won’t be bested by a need to sleep. 

(I will stand on the right side of history; I will make them see)

You write.

You write because it’s the greatest love you have left.)

Chapter Text

Alexander Hamilton: Hey, could I get some computer help?

Tony Stark: nope sorry cant talk

AH: I know you’re still pissed that I destroyed you in Cards Against Humanity last night. But honestly I need help.

TS: not about CAH
TS: why would it be about CAH u lost monopoly in 5 turns how do u even do that

AH: ok but WE AGREED TO NEVER MENTION THAT AGAIN

TS: fridays in overload some sort of power surge

AH: oh shit
AH: Is she alright???

TS: shes ok. def not in danger of a fatal error. but im a little worried. shes like a kid to me

AH: Blame Washington

TS: what is that your version of “thanks obama”

AH: No that was not our “thanks Obama”
AH: such a pert and impudent comment would probably provoke a “NEVER INSULT ALBUS DUMBLEDORE IN FRONT OF ME” response from listeners

TS: 1. pert and impudent mean the same thing 2. when did u read the books 3. whats ur hogwarts house 4. whats your point

AH: 1. I like the way the words sound together, and Im texting. It cant be The Federalist 24/7. 2. I saw the movies this week, will read books after I finish Nietzsche and Kierkegaard and The Last Airbender. 3. Ive taken the test ten times to analyze it. Slytherin 4 / Ravenclaw 3 / Gryffindor 2. Hufflepuff 1 which does. not. count. However I suspect my detailed analysis makes me a Ravenclaw
AH: 4. To my point. We’re trying to decrypt a thing. Erik managed to copy a glyph from the thing. Then the thing started glowing. It changed itself then erased all copies of the original thing, including digital copies of the thing apparently

TS: wtf
TS: that shouldnt be possible

AH: Welcome to magic.
AH: Srsly Ive a near photographic memory but I cant remember ANY of the glyphs when I try to write them. Its honestly terrifying. Like Im losing my mind. 
AH: Anyway Erik wants you to try your hand at recovering the digital info

TS: its not just corrupted, its like it was never there
TS: lets see so it changes itself and erases even memories of it when it changes

TS: idea:
TS: describe it to me and ill draw my own version
TS: i wont have seen it and it wont technically be a copy
TS: and then i could describe it to steve and he could draw it
TS: and then we could memorize THAT one

AH: It just seems like Washington thought of everything

TS: idk it just seems like washington couldnt possibly think of everything
TS: heh pressed send at same tiem

AH: And if it isn’t precise, Erik can’t decode it.

TS: oh yeah good point :/
TS: have u ever seen something like this befoer

AH: Sure I mean some magical cyphers changed if you took too long. we used a magical tool to make it go faster. but Ive never seen a cypher that couldnt be decoded by hand too

TS: any idea what the tool was called
TS: maybe shield has one

AH: *had
AH: shield is no longer an extant thing.

TS: stahp.
TS: every1 calls ascent shield and u know it.
TS: so stop being a grammar nazi.
TS: u know we kill nazis right

AH: Hey, I won’t judge.
AH: I sometimes err subtly in my spelling to see if people notice.

TS: … fuck
TS: are u trying to send me into an existential crisis over the spelling of "subtly"

AH: ;P
AH: I'll ask around for a magic decoding thingy

Friday, October 9, 2015

“With all due respect, director, if you honestly think that’s a good idea, you’re out of your mind,” Alexander snaps.

Fury’s eyebrow lists skyward, and Hamilton pauses to regain composure. You wanted a mission, he reminds himself, glancing out the window. They’re in an Avengers Tower board room, and somehow seeing the ground far below, cars roving across the streets like drunken, colorful ants, relieves some of the irrational anger. With effort, Alexander rearranges his features into a more neutral expression.

It’s harder than it should be. He’s tired; he’s weak. His therapist lectured him this morning. He hasn’t slept—not really, not purposely—in weeks. It’s a matter of sanity, she told him seriously.

But there’s so much work to do.

He says, “Sir, surely you know the consequences such a thing might incur…? Should we fail, which is highly probable given my general inexperience in espionage…—heck, even if we succeed but the Iranians are cleverer than anticipated—the geopolitical backlash would be immense, making this a fundamentally flawed idea, and, well. If I’m lucky, they’ll send my head to you in a basket.”

Fury scowls. “No one,” he says, hands clasped beneath his chin as he leans across the polished mahogany table, “knows who you are. Which is exactly why we want to send you.”

“And actually,” adds Natasha, “they’d be more likely to torture you.”

“Not helping, Romanoff,” Fury shoots back. She shrugs, reclines in her chair, and resumes sharpening a dagger while Wanda surreptitiously snatches a handful of M&Ms from a bowl on the table.

“I’m aware of that,” says Alexander, “which is why I said ‘if I’m lucky.’ If they think I’m an ASCENT agent, they’ll torture me; if they realize who I actually am and what that means… well, they might torture me regardless, but they love to chant ‘death to America’ so much I’d anticipate an emotional reaction.”

Erik shakes his head. “No. The people of Iran are pro-American compared to the rest of the Middle East. Many hate their government. And since the JPOA, relations with the government have improved somewhat.”

“Yeah,” says Alexander. He can’t simply deny it: Erik is something of a self-taught scholar on Greater Middle Eastern affairs, and Hamilton needs a moment to construct a substantive counterargument. It comes to him a moment later: “And did you know that we used to have cordial relations with Iran, even after their Revolution, until we sent—what were they again? Oh, yeah.” He pauses dramatically. “Spies.”

“You’re not spies!” bellows Fury: incredibly, without actually raising his voice.

“No, just thieves,” Alexander retorts.

“Do you have a better idea?” says Erik.

“Yes, actually,” he answers. “You said it yourself: Iran is not openly hostile to the United States. It might be prudent to negotiate candidly. This is counterterrorism at its root, yeah? Perhaps we ought to negotiate a counter-terror agreement with Tehran to avoid an international incident comparable with the one that destroyed US-Iranian relations in the first place.”

“But the JPOA took years to come to fruition,” Erik reasons. “The prophecy I decrypted placed a potential apocalypse at the end of 2016. We don’t have time for a counter-terror deal, and more importantly, we can’t let the Mandarin know what we know, or he might act sooner.”

“He’s right,” Natasha says. Then she quiets, and the stone humas against her blade. When everyone turns to stare at her, she shrugs and continues, “I’ve been briefed. It wasn’t a prophecy, it was a warning. There’s no reason it couldn’t happen sooner if we misstep.”

“Exactly,” says Erik.

Alexander sighs. “Okay, fine. I’m not opposed to the mission. It’s a bad idea, yes, but the means aren’t so horrible as to lack indemnification in their ends.”

“You mean ‘the ends justify the means,’” says Natasha.

“No I don’t,” he returns. “I mean these ends justify these means, but not—look, the path to hell is paved with good intentions; a freedom fighter is a terrorist if he fails, in the judgement of history. Probability of success must be factored into the morality of dubiously ethical actions, else we’ll be worse than Nazis by morning.”

Natasha doesn’t contest this. She doesn’t agree, either. She sharpens the blade. Hamilton fights down another surge of annoyance that wishes she’d take a stand on one side or the other. 

“So let me get this straight.” Alexander meets Fury’s eyes: steel against steel. “You want to dispatch me, a very prominent American symbol with no experience in subterfuge, to Iran. Iran. To pretend to be Indiana Jones and steal a magical artifact that apparently we loaned to Iran during the Cold War, now in the depths of Lake Urmia.”

Fury shrugs. “It’s not very deep now, actually. Climate change and all that.”

Alexander narrows his eyes. “You harassed me for involving myself with a mere vampire – ”

“And a biochemical weapon,” says Fury sharply.

“But this mission, the one that could screw over geopolitics for another four decades, is somehow the one you approve? This doesn’t make sense.”

“We’ll need your experience in cyphers to secure the artifact,” Erik argues. “To my knowledge—and do correct me if I’m wrong—we have no other employees who could tell it from something worthless.”

Wanda corrects, “You have me. I could probably tell.” 

“You’re not an employee, you’re an Avenger,” says Erik.

“Don’t tell that to USCIS. If I wasn’t an employee, they’d deport me.”

Erik huffs. “You know what I meant.” He glances between Alexander and Wanda, then tells Fury, “Mr. Hamilton’s experience and Ms. Maximoff’s magic would be invaluable to this mission. Can I assume I’ve approval?”

“Absolutely,” Fury says. “Wanda will disguise herself, and she’ll act as the combat specialist should you need one, and I’ve assigned Natasha – ” he gestures; she nods “ – to train you and Mr. Hamilton in basic self-defense in the meantime.”

“Sounds fun,” says Natasha, grinning wickedly, smile sharp as the knife.

Fury shoots another warning glance in her direction. “Assuming, of course, that they agree,” he says.

“Oh.” She glances to her dagger, flips it in the air twice, and holsters it at her waist.”

“I’d be happy to help,” says Wanda. “I think I’m supposed to go.” Throughout the week, as Erik and Alexander labored over the map without success, she insisted that they focus on following the voice she heard while revealing the glyphs. Erik is annoyed; Alexander is skeptical of both of them, but she did say ‘Urmia’s basin’ in Chernow's office—she must have seen or heard something.  

“And Mr. Hamilton?” says Fury.

Alexander pauses. His presence on this mission still doesn’t make sense, unless – 

This is a gambit, isn’t it?

“Honestly,” says Fury, eyes gleaming. “I thought a patriot like you would be happy to serve your country.”

Yeah, this is a gambit. And it won’t work. “I’m sorry,” says Alexander. “What?” He delivers it flatly, but sneers with his eyebrows. Fury’s gaze hardens, and Alexander answers, “I’m not particularly inclined to dignify your insinuation with a response, but, if I may beg your pardon, sir, I’m too sensible of my own defects and your bullshit – ”

“Watch it,” Fury warns.

“I seek to avoid a more violent confrontation at a later date, director, and to this end I’ll not censor myself in answering the challenge – ”

“Answer the challenge? The way to do that is go to Iran. You were begging me to send you on a mission less than a month ago. This is your shot, don’t throw – ”

“First, don’t quote the musical at me,” says Alexander, index-finger playing both symbol for ‘first’ and accusatory pointer. “Second, and more importantly: I can’t yet pass for a man of the twenty-first century. And yet you want me to participate in a high-risk mission, meddling in the middle of a diplomatic mess, which depends on extensive technical knowledge. That’s absurd. And third.”

He leans a little closer. “Third, I am onto you. I know exactly what this is. You want me to decline so you’ll have an excuse to bar me from anything dangerous in the future. Or, you want me to accept and, to use a modern term, get my ass kicked, so you’ll have a different excuse to do the same thing. Either way, you win.”

Fury doesn’t deny it.

“False equivalence,” says Alexander. “That doesn’t work. See, I want to serve my country and this world, not fail them in a quest—for which I’m clearly unqualified—in pursuit of invisible glory.”

“Ah,” says Fury. “‘Invisible glory.’ So that’s what this is about. You don’t want to do something when you’re not going to get credit for it. Your patriotism only extends to where it’ll bring glory and personal gain.”

Well, yeah, thinks about half of his brain. “No,” Alexander says instead.

“But you do want me to authorize a press conference revealing you to the public.”

“Yes!”

“Hamilton,” says Nick Fury, “no.”

“Hamilton, yes,” snarks Alexander.

“Prove it, then,” Fury says. “Prove your honor.”

He glances from Natasha, to Erik, to Wanda, and back to the director. Shit. Alexander doesn’t think he could decline a challenge like that even in the dark. In front of colleagues, it's impossible.

“Okay,” he says finally. “Despite centuries of allegations, I’m not just whoring myself to fame, sir. And your history books do mention I’m not a coward, either. I’ll go.” Alexander adds, more darkly, “I’ll play in your game, but I won’t be your pawn.”

Fury pauses. He says, “What you fail to realize is you’d be more of a pawn if they knew who you were.” Before Alexander can fully process this, Fury is saying, “It’s decided then. Lehnsherr, Hamilton, and Maximoff will go to Iran. Romanoff, you’ll work with them on self-defense. Are we clear?”

The question is met with silence, which Fury seems to regard as a resounding ‘yes’; the director even nods enthusiastically, as though they’ve replied. “We’ll reconvene in Monday morning at headquarters to discuss mission details. Nine o’clock sharp. Be there. Dismissed.”

On his way out, Alexander snatches a handful of M&Ms from the table and plops them in his mouth –

It’s a mouthful of candy corn, chemicals, staggeringly sour citrus, peanut butter, and only a hint of the expected chocolate. Hand clasped over his mouth, he manages to choke back the hodgepodge of flavors in two pained gulps.

Nick Fury grins evilly.

“Are you trying to poison me?” says Alexander with faux-seriousness, emotions settling somewhere between ‘I ate what?’, amusement, and bone-deep, bloodcurdling betrayal.

“He does that to everyone at some point,” Wanda tells him, taking another handful. “Except I kind of like it.” Meanwhile, Natasha is chuckling, and Erik pinches the bridge of his nose with an expression that clearly reads: I am surrounded by idiots.

(It’s strange, muses Hamilton, to see someone else wearing that look.)

“Don’t worry,” says the director seriously.  “Only the purple ones are cyanide.”

“Wha – !” Of course not, supplies his brain an instant after the survival instinct kicks in. Alexander blushes, takes a deep breath, and crosses his arms. “Oh, ha-ha,” he says. “You are a monster.”

Fury smiles. “I know.”

From: Barack Obama <****@****.gov>
To: Alex Faucette <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Discourse on the subject of Energy & Arabian entanglements

Saturday, October 10, 2015

Mr. Hamilton…

… there will be no changes to our drone program in the foreseeable future. Thanks again for taking the time to contact me.

Sincerely,

Barack Obama
President of the United States

(This is how it feels to be Alexander Hamilton, for now:

You didn’t sleep. You have too much to learn. Too much work to do.

You finish studying Nietzsche’s twisted wisdom in the approaching dawn.

It doesn’t coddle or encourage like the words of John Stuart Mill (good laws under a free government); it doesn’t challenge your patience like the works of Ayn Rand (how does she not get it?); it doesn’t try your sanity like the musings of Carl Jung (no beat, no melody). It’s more like the works of H.P. Lovecraft, ripping aside your reality’s veneer of sanity like a patch of skin, revealing the viscera and absurdities beneath: That which now calls itself democracy differs from older forms of government solely in that it drives with new horses: the streets are still the same old streets, and the wheels are likewise the same old wheels…

You disagree at times. “Common good” is not an oxymoron (I will lay down my life if it sets us free). War (endless cycle of death) is not the goal of peace. But reading the madman’s words feels too much like a conversation, where in places you agree, and at the same time too little like one—like this might be a mental dialogue with a denied piece of self (that will do what it takes to survive).

Brain still buzzing with challenges to your notions of morality, you spend the morning composing a response to the president. His dismissive response is bullshit: you made America (wrote financial systems into existence); you shouldn’t have to holler to be heard. Did he not realize this isn’t purely about humanitarian concerns, children fearing the sky, but America’s short-sighted geopolitical positioning as a whole? Have politics, impossibly, slowed down in the past centuries? You write. You'll write until something changes.

And so it goes.

Around noon, you join the Avengers on their rare day off to watch The Martian in theatre. It’s not like Interstellar; it’s every bit as adventurous, but it lacks the metaphysical component. Honestly, you’re grateful. You don’t want to think about those things. You’re grieving and everything is broken, but you know, on an intellectual level, it’s lucky you’re alive right now: The world needs you. So you let the thoughts subside, watch the movie, and enjoy the candy, the soda, the popcorn.

“Was this fantasy?” you quietly ask Tony, who’s sitting on the other side of Steve, once the story’s winding down. “How much of this can humanity actually accomplish?”

“Martian storms aren’t strong enough to do what they did at the beginning,” he replies. Someone behind aggressively shushes the both of you, but Tony continues, “But we could pretty much do all of this.”

“So why haven’t we?”

He shrugs. “People terrible at cooperating.”

… there will be no changes to our drone program in the foreseeable future…

“In any century,” you agree.

On the screen, Mark Watney says, “The other question I get most frequently is. When I was up there stranded by myself, did I think I was gonna die? Yes, absolutely. And that’s one you need to know, going in, because it’s gonna happen to you. This is space. It does not cooperate.”

Even in a world with safe water summoned in a hand-wave and machines that soar across the Atlantic in hours, people don’t cooperate either. People don’t become better as technology does. But it is the same with man as with the tree. The more he seeks to rise into the height and light, the more vigorously do his roots struggle earthward, downward, into the dark, the deep—into evil.

(It’s more than a matter of time.) “It’s weird,” you say. “People being people shouldn’t be weird, and it’s weirder because it is… weird, because it’s the future—while I’m of the past, for you. Does that make any sense?”

“Yes,” Steve whispers, glaring back and forth between both of you. “Now shhhhh. I don’t wanna get in trouble.”

“Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,” says a person behind.

“We won’t get in trouble,” Tony says. “I’m rich. The staff will just want selfies with us.”

“SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH,” say the people around you, including the other Avengers. The chorus lasts a good five seconds; you join in for fun and then grab a handful of buttery kernels and crushed popcorn.

And so it goes.

You spend the afternoon playing piano with Wanda, and then, once you’ve been sufficiently Pestered, singing Be Prepared, maybe too in-character. You perform Pippin’s Song when they ask for something more ‘folk-music-ish,’ because although that isn’t strictly speaking what they wanted, the -ish means it’s technically what they asked for.

Somehow, this becomes a debate over whether Star Wars is better than Lord of the Rings (answer: yes), with Tony taking the side of Tolkien. You intend to win. It isn’t difficult –

“For good to triumph over evil in Tolkien’s stories is for things to remain the same. To remain a quixotic vision of an actually brutal era ruled by the sword. His happy endings are a ‘return of the king,’ in both The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. And are we to deny that the fire and ashes of Mordor parallel science and industrialism, the impoverished orcs daring to rise up above an oppressive conservative regime? Middle Earth is illiberal and reactionary. Meanwhile, the prequels at least have a cogent and appreciable political message—Hell, it was one I gave, like, a billion times in The Federalist—about the rise of charismatic demagogues, however clumsily delivered it was.”

You glare at Tony from your seat on the piano bench. “So there. Star Wars is about freedom. Lord of the Rings is a love-letter to the dark enlightenment. Ergo, Star Wars is better than Lord of the Rings, and that includes the prequels, Q.E.D., fight me.”

A collective groan sounds around the room. Steve asks, “Alex, does everything have to be political?” (answer: also yes), and then Tony, to your surprise, takes up the gauntlet.

“Tolkien acknowledges that all things change and that this is a good thing,” he concludes. “It’s the orcs that are fighting to stop the incoming Age of Men. So Middle Earth isn’t reactionary.”

“It is.”

“No it isn’t.”

“Yes it is.”

“No it fucking isn’t.”

“Yeah it fucking is, because furthermore – ”

And so it goes.

It takes you awhile, once the sun is setting (over my New York City), the argument has died, and you’re standing out on the terrace, one hand curled around a cold beer, one hand fiddling with a bottle of pills. It takes you awhile, in the silence, in the quiet you used to like before, to realize what this is.

This is a good day.

You still hurt like hell, but this is a good day. 

It may be the weirdest thing about the twenty-first century, but you know what? You'll take it.

So when you’re staring at the bottle of pills you’re supposed to take, it doesn’t occur to you that you’re not exactly an expert in psychology.

It doesn’t occur to you that maybe a philosopher who suffered a nervous breakdown at the end of his life and inspired the rise of the Third Reich probably isn’t the best authority on mental health.

When you’re staring at the bottle of pills, it doesn’t occur to you that grief doesn't lift so quickly.

It doesn’t occur to you that maybe, just maybe, your heart's beating a little quicker than it should.

It does occur to you that the most common side-effect of lithium is a sort of zombification: A loss of happiness and sadness; of personality and passion. The last time you let yourself fall into that lethargy, the last time you stopped non-stop, the last time you threw away your shot, you died.

Be careful, Nietzsche, another dead man still breathing in his legacy, warns. And you listen, from one dead man to another. Be careful, lest in casting out your demon you exorcise the best thing in you.

You won’t be a dead man walking.)

Depression fades.

The pills: shoved somewhere in a drawer.

Grief: it goes, too. It goes somewhere under.

Sunday morning, a pulse races a little too fast. A mind quickens into a blur. Hypomania, under mania; over sanity, Overman. A flight of thoughts and a bit of nonsense, a little madness in joy—a little chaos to give birth to a dancing star. And so it goes: A man who isn’t quite Alexander Hamilton wakes to a world bright and buzzing.

Chapter Text

Monday, October 12, 2015

(This is mania, at first:

Like a freight train in a wasteland, rattling dead things and dry bones. Like whistling bullets and atomic bombs. Like Sisyphus. Like a Möbius strip. Like a dog chasing his tail. Like a never-ending wheel. So many thoughts.

Endless.

Too much.

It was better last night, singing songs while she played piano. She’s still mourning her brother, but nothing makes you happier than seeing an expression other than confusion on her face.

But now it’s quiet here and that God-damned song is on mental repeat. She takes his hand. It’s quiet uptown.

It’s too loud.

It’s too much.

And not enough.

Like a freight train in a storage closet, like a gun in a knife fight and burning in a firestorm. Not like Sisyphus, like Tantalus. Not like Tantalus. Like Tantalus if he gorged himself until he vomited, starved himself with his own glutton. Thoughts. Endless. Like catching a train that’s left the station. Not enough time.

You have no control – )

“Watch out!” Erik commands.

They duck behind the pillar.

POP!POP!POP!

Natasha’s bullets sail; they hit the back wall; the impacts spew concrete. There’s rubble in Alexander’s hair and now it’s sticking to the blood on his forehead. It stings. Dust and ash and something foul-tasting coats his lips.

This feels real. He coughs, glancing toward the exit, six pillars away. We won’t make it. His heart pounds against its cage. His mind pounds against its cage, too. It’s a simulated parking garage. It feels more like a coffin. His hands tremble. He clenches his jaw and curls those shaking hands into fists.

Why has his body betrayed him? This isn’t even real.

He hates guns. He detests them. Why do we have to do this?

Panic is irrational, and so he makes it rage. Alexander’s hand closes around his pistol.

“Don’t you dare,” warns Erik, glancing toward Natasha’s approaching shadow. “Wait – !”

This isn’t real. It isn’t even realistic. In real life, they’ll have Wanda. He closes his eyes, counts to three, and listens until he thinks he knows where she is—knows where she is well enough to fire. Then he steps out, points the gun – 

BANG!

There’s enough time to register a stuttering heart, a scowling Natasha Romanoff, and an eruption in his chest. Blood. There’s blood and a faintly shocked expression on his face. He crumples.

Then there’s void: void with thought.

It’s not like death. It’s emptiness, but there’s a mind to observe it.

Then, for the sixth time today, Alexander Hamilton groans back into being in a virtual reality room at the New Avengers Facility. He cracks his eyes open to horrible, harsh florescent light. Every muscle in his body burns. He’s not sure how the electrodes are still on his skull with all this sweat. His abdomen is starting to ache from laying here on his stomach. He grits his teeth as needles—too small to really feel; too noisy to hear and not shudder—withdraw from his spine.

But there isn’t a bullet in his chest.

“Welcome back, Mr. Hamilton,” says FRIDAY’s voice. “Your heart rate remains elevated.”

“I was shot,” Alexander retorts.

“That was ten percent the pain of a real gunshot. You should be functioning perfectly.”

“Hmph.”

“You’re not still in pain, are you, boss?”

“No,” but he’s lying. It’s a memory so strong it feels like death, redoubled now seven times over, churning over and over with that goddamned song.

“I’ll restart the sim when you’re ready.”

Two doors slide open in front of him. “Don’t,” says Natasha, arms crossed, head and hair still speckled with tape and electrodes. “No more sims.”

“Understood,” says FRIDAY.  He grips the side of the cot, pushes himself into a kneeling position, and then tentatively steps off. Alexander stumbles forward like he really has been shot again, the world spinning; Natasha catches him by either shoulder and holds him steady until he’s stable on two feet.

“Should’ve warned you. The serum does that. You okay?”

He stares at her for a second—just a millisecond. Alexander has seen her before, but he didn’t really look. There was a reason he didn’t. Whatever that reason was, it seems silly now. So he stares. It really can’t be helped, not while he feels her fingers through this thin, half-soaked fabric: those green eyes aren’t guileless; they’re murky, filled with secrets. He thinks pain might be one of them and wonders if she ever needs someone to catch her. Even without a painted face, her lips look softer than rose petals.

And “That’s unimportant,” Alexander says, resting a hand on her shoulder. “I tried to shoot you—are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” says Natasha. She covers his hand with hers—and then plucks it off of her, leaving him frowning. “You never pulled the trigger.”

“Ah. Makes sense.” He grins. “I think this goes without saying, but you’re an excellent markswoman. It takes great skill to hit the heart.”

Natasha blinks. Then she smiles weakly. He’s about to say something else when she tells him, “Showers are down the hallway. We’ll finish with hand-to-hand combat and target practice in twenty minutes. I need to wake up Erik.”

The water is never quite cold enough. Some hedonist muse Alexander can’t quiet keeps singing of touch and pleasure. Anything warmer than ice makes him think of blood. And that song, that song—it’s going to ruin him: he staggers backwards, while he’s donning exercise clothes, when he sees himself. He’s not nineteen—he can tell that even with fog on the glass. But for an instant, he sees Philip.

Philip as he should have been.

And that’s the cold he needed: rage. Wordless, thoughtless, icy rage encrusts his skull and freezes time to crawl. Alexander gulps down half a water bottle in the hope that it’ll clear his head somehow. It doesn’t.

Alexander knows he’s being irrational. He hates it. He despises it. His loathing buzzes under his skin. He scowls at his reflection. He looks less like Philip that way. Philip is always smiling. Philip is always small, except when he’s dead and they’re standing above his unmarked grave, Eliza flinching away from her husband’s touch, the children holding each other, Alexander realizing that his career is all he had, and he ruined it, and that he might as well be dead to them—that they deserve someone better: someone lust, or greed, or vanity can never take away; a legacy; a ghost.

“But that’s puerile. That is absurd and that is stupid,” he hisses to his reflection. “You wanted John, not a memory. You wanted Philip, not agony. Have you lost your mind? Or—shit, I’m talking to myself, have I lost mine?” Alexander balls one fist against his forehead as if he can massage away the anger, muttering, “No, no, no,” and then there’s ice water spraying in his face, a crushed water bottle in his hand. Alexander hisses, “Dammit,” and he’s so lost in memory and that goddamn song that it’s almost satisfying.

Almost satisfying, because his eyes are closed, and he’s still crushing the bottle, wishing the water was warm to complete the illusion of crushing George Eaker’s neck, slowly, slowly – 

“No,” he snarls, tossing the thing in the waste-bin. He will not fantasize about torture. That isn’t him. He will not, no matter how much Eacker deserves – 

“No,” he says again. “No,” says Alexander. “This isn’t – ” This is exactly you. He shakes his head. “This isn’t me.”

Who am I?

The soul of man is immortal and imperishable, argues Plato.

Thus says a child, scoffs Nietzsche.

Atheism, snaps Plato, is a disease of the soul.

“No!” Alexander repeats. “No.” He doesn’t want long-dead philosophers joining the cacophony in his brain. He can make up his mind without figments of his imagination ranting in his skull. He’ll learn who he is himself.

Alexander looks up at the mirror. A frightened pair of eyes stare back. He says, “You aren’t me.”

He isn’t a dishonorable assassin and he certainly isn’t a grieving little animal. He straightens himself into a martial stance and watches as he carefully, carefully spools the rage back onto the whirring thoughts behind his eyes.

He is a soldier. Alexander Hamilton is a general. He watches his expression harden.

Erik meets him at the entrance to the indoor range. Alexander tries to walk around him and avoid that irritatingly dark stare, but Erik steps in front of him, blocking the path. “We would’ve finished this by now if you’d listened to me.”

Alexander scoffs. “You cannot possibly claim to know that.”

“Actually, yes. I can.”

“What,” he says flatly, and Alexander’s glad he took time to calm himself earlier. Annoyance boils beneath his skin. “Have you some heretofore unmentioned gift of prophecy? A sight into parallel universes? Because you know anything could’ve happened, Erik.”

Erik scowls. “You were an idiot, and then we lost. Simple as that.”

Alexander hates being shorter than everyone. He despises that Erik is not only as pretty as Natasha, but also tall: it’s a challenge to look up with contempt. He manages. Then he smiles sweetly: pure sugar, laced with arsenic and palpable contempt, oozes from his every pore. “Your conceit is genuinely astounding.”

“So is yours!”

“My conceit’s astounding? Maybe to an idiot. I understand it pretty well.” He tells the linguist, “When one is surrounded by fools, one becomes accustomed to being the most intelligent in the room. It’s pleasant once you get past the boredom.”

“You know it’s your fault we’re still here. Why can’t you admit to one mistake?!”

“You must’ve known we couldn’t have made it. The simulations are engineered as such, very evidently if you’re paying attention,” Alexander says. “As usual, I figured it out first, but listen: we weren’t supposed to win.”

Erik’s eyes flash dangerously. “The last thing I need is – ”

“Good to see you’re both on time,” says Natasha loudly. She glares daggers at both of them as she marches down the hall. They both step back to let her pass as she waltzes into the training room. “We’ll start with stretches,” she announces. “Sims can be hard on the body.”

Revival gave Alexander health—he doesn’t struggle with kidney pain day in and day out—but resurrection not flexibility. He struggles to reach for his toes, let alone actually grab them. Erik manages. Natasha twists herself in and out of pretzel shapes. And that song, that godawful song, now mixed with the yammering introspections of dead philosophers, twists through his head like a bowlegged ballerina twirling razor wire.

After the stretches, they practice shooting, which Alexander is good at. Natasha says he could learn to snipe; Erik grudgingly agrees. Then they practice hand-to-hand combat, which Hamilton is decidedly bad at. Erik manages to knock Natasha over; she pushes herself back up to kick him squarely in the stomach, but she’s pleased he managed to get that far.

Alexander can’t stand against her for more than five seconds.

“I need you to focus,” Natasha says, arms crossed, after she’s knocked him down for the fourth time.

“It’s not that hard,” Erik says from the corner.

From the hour of their birth, some are marked out for subjection, others for rule says Aristotle, joining the fray of philosophers and painful lyrics. You well know which you are, little Creole.

Alexander’s cheeks burn. He knows Aristotle was wrong. While government is essential, all have natural liberties; anything less is fatal to ethics. He also believes Nature erred. She should never have endowed such a pitiful frame with Alexander’s commanding soul.

But Nature did. That much is indisputable. So he’ll defeat Nature if he has to. He will overcome himself. Alexander stands, ignoring the way his muscles burn, shifting rigidly like rubber made vulcanite. “Focus,” he mutters to himself. He rolls his shoulders; his spine creaks. “Focus.”

Natasha nods. “That’s right.”

“Talking to oneself is a sign of focus?” says Erik incredulously.

“It’s a sign of trying,” she says pointedly. “And that’s what’s important. Practice makes perfect.”

“No it’s not, and no it doesn’t,” Erik retorts. “Perfect practice makes perfect. If he’s doing it wrong, he’ll learn it wrong, and then we’ll all die.”

“This is why you’re not a coach,” Natasha says.

“No, he’s right,” Alexander says. Erik’s eyes widen. They exchange a brief look, something like a truce, and Hamilton turns back to Natasha. “‘Do or do not. There is no try.’”

“Oh my God.” Natasha rubs her forehead. “I can’t coach a nerd with this much negativity.”

“I’m a former soldier. I’m not a nerd,” says Alexander Hamilton seriously.

She looks up at him and sighs. “Let’s go again. Remember, I am stronger than you. Stay on the defensive, and you can do this.”

Paces.

Focus.

They face each other from opposite sides of the training room. Natasha raises an eyebrow. “Ready?” she says.

Alexander nods.

She nods back. Then she charges. He blocks the first punch and leaps back from the kick. While her back’s half turned, Alexander yanks her ponytail back and traps her in a headlock. She tries and fails to grapple her way out, and then Natasha rams her elbow into his jaw. He stumbles backward. Her foot connects with his abdomen, and he crashes to the mat, groaning.

Alexander glares up at the world through harsh light. It reminds him of the damned sun on the blamed river that godforsaken day. He remembers: “My vision is indistinct.” He doesn’t realize until a moment later he’s spoken aloud. Then there’s an outstretched hand in front of him. Alexander squints through the blur to see Natasha looming above.

“I don’t think I hit your eyes?” says Natasha.

“You didn’t,” he snaps. “That was a memory.”

“… okay,” says Natasha. She crosses her arms. “Anyway. That was better.”

He scowls. “I lost.”

“And you always will,” she answers. “Unless you lose a few hundred thousand more times. I’ve been doing this since I was three.”

He frowns.

“But that was better,” she assures him. “Now—again.”

Natasha extends her hand. This time, Alexander takes it.

f-yeah-merthur-is-canon       darthmithrandir

past-lives-and-quantum-kittens:

…

He may be a non-local astral emanation of the original Hamilton’s unfulfilled potentiality or perhaps his intrinsic self lingering because it never transcended pride to attain self-knowledge

… what. i thought this was a joke. we’re not seriously considering this  right

His fingers glide across faux-ivory keys. He isn’t as skilled as Wanda, who’s left the piano for the kitchen after a duet of Titanium—and he’s fully aware of the irony. But he needs the songs to drone out the sounds of the stage he hasn’t seen, of ancient philosophies dueling in his skull, of a twelve-point plan to revitalize America’s economy and preserve the middle class.

It’s too loud in his head. It’s all turned up to maximum. He can’t focus.

He can’t win.

Nietzsche would scoff. Aristotle would say that makes him subhuman. Adams would say it’s proof of his inferiority, and Alexander would probably bash him over the head with Jane Eyre, the deplorable book. Even if society doesn’t care anymore, his wrath, like his vanity and lust, is the perfect portrait of Creole instability, isn’t it?

It’s far, far too loud in his head.

But when Alexander plays the piano, he controls the music. He is in command. He is the architect of these sounds, and he creates what he chooses. It’s something no one can can ever take away. He comes to the conclusion of the song with a mind that’s a little quieter. He sighs; he breathes; he enjoys an almost spiritual moment.

And then the noise returns: memories; emotions; words.

He holds his head in his hands. His psyche is flawed. Even a doctor of the mind told him so. Alexander really is just like Bertha Mason, isn’t he?

Is he destined to be the madman in the attic?

“Do you want tea?”

He jolts. Then he turns. Wanda is behind him, again appearing unannounced. This time she’s carrying two mugs with her, both steaming. “I looked up some recipes,” she says. “These are supposed to be calming.”

“You’re stealthy, aren’t you?” says Alexander. He realizes, not for the first time, that his heartbeat has been quickened for awhile. Something like infinite adrenaline burns under his skin. His chest is tight. His every muscle is tight; coiled; ready to strike. Ready to kill.

She shrugs. “You just have to be quiet,” she says, but he hears a challenge to his honor.

“Are you implying something?” he demands.

She only looks confused. “No.”

“Oh. Of course not. My apologies,” says Alexander. “I assumed that to be an imputation of excessive talkativeness upon me, a challenge I frequently encountered in the colonies—and a fault of mine, I know, I know. That unfortunately aggravates the injury to my pride upon the insult, though. Have you ever encountered something like that, like when people assume you’re a Marxist because you’re Eastern European, but you are a Marxist, and that exacerbates the embarrassment? Speaking of which, I read the Manifesto as you requested. I’m honestly shocked you recommended it. Marx enjoys such a peremptory disdain for the laws of practicality that the treatise’s ability to mislead anyone is actually astounding.”

Alexander babbles on long past when he knows he should stop. He babbles on past Wanda saying “Aleksandr,” and then pressing “Sasha,” and then quickly correcting “Alex.”

There’s this pressure that’s been building at the back of his skull, that’s still building at the back of his skull. It’s like the words are rebelling against his resistance by short-circuiting. Now they’re spewing everywhere. He can’t stop them. Of course not, they’re electric: if he stopped them, he’d burn.

“Don’t mistake me for Ayn Rand—laissez-faire is stupid, regulation is crucial for workers’ rights, and I’m a better writer than her—I wish history hadn’t consigned to oblivion my short stories: whatever our differing political leanings, I think you would’ve liked them, and it would have proven my superiority to that – ”

A coughing fit interrupts the vaguely coherent rant. When Alexander breathes again, a wheezing, panicked gasp, Wanda is looking at him with a strange mixture of concern and hurt.

“Are you o – ”

“I’m fine,” he replies. “I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m – ” He halts himself with a deep, shuddering breath, and closes his eyes as he exhales. Then he looks back at her and says, “I’m sorry. I assure you, my intention wasn’t—I didn’t mean to—I just couldn’t stop – ”

“Slow down,” Wanda orders. When he takes another deep breath, she confesses, “I couldn’t catch half of what you said.”

“Really,” Hamilton drawls. No. “No sarcasm intended,” he says—says too harshly. “Truly.” He’s about to correct himself again before he realizes that will make the situation worse.

“Well,” says Wanda, sighing, “this is my second language.” She smiles sadly. “I may not know it as well as I think I do. But I’m still worried. Maybe it’s a side effect of the ‘simulation serum’?”

“It may be stress, sweetheart,” he says gently. “Erik was a proper asshole today.”

Wanda eyes him warily. “I see.”

Alexander swallows. “And I see,” he says, “you brought tea.”

“Um. Yes.” She nods. “Valerian root. With lemon. Honey.”

He stands to take the mug. “That will work,” says Alexander, taking a seat on the ottoman. When Wanda doesn’t move, he adds, “That’s very nice of you,” and takes a long sip of his drink.

“It was the least I could do after you were so nice to me,” says Wanda quietly. She pauses. Then she says: “Aleksandr.”

He swings around on the ottoman to face her. “Hm?”

“Take your tea. I’m taking you to Mr. Stark. Now.” She meets his eyes and stares beyond them, like she’s trying to reach someone behind, within— someone somehow masked. “Dr. Banner invented the serum, but he’s not here. Tony knows more about it than anyone else here…”

“Why?” You know why, he tells himself. He does know why. And so Hamilton laughs bitterly, setting his tea on the floor beside him. “You think there’s something wrong with me.” Because I’m a Creole, he doesn’t say, because that’s irrational. No one here cares. But Wanda doesn’t say anything either. He glares. She shrinks into herself, slumping like an ice-sculpture under the sun.

Then Alexander jumps to his feet, rattling the tea, and surges toward her. “You think,” he says, “that I’m going insane. I am not.”

“I just don’t think you’re acting normal.”

“What, because I’m having an emotion?”

“You just don’t seem like you.”

“This is exactly me.” When he smiles, it feels more like barring his teeth. Something is wrong. “So very sorry – ” something is very wrong “ – if it disappoints you.”

(He misses the quiet from before.)

Chapter Text

Some time later

Alexander tries to focus. He tries. But time jolts in disjointed moments, like ketchup dripping from a bottle. There are weird globs of blurry, angry fast-forward, and happy moments of slow, sensual euphoria, and he’s starting to suspect that something really is wrong with him.

But he tries to focus nevertheless. Alexander and Clint compete to make increasingly terrible “dad jokes” at breakfast, to no one’s amusement but their own. His jaw drops when he discovers that archeologists uncovered further information on the civilizations preceding the Greek city states, and he spends hours scouring Wikipedia to fill in the gaps in his historical knowledge. He teaches his coworkers how to decipher simple documents from the Revolution. After work, he creates a Reddit account, becomes outraged at a title on the front page, and attempts to post in the comments only to discover that it was submitted by a robot in “SubredditSimulator.” He finds online courses for Spanish and the updated versions of logic and calculus.

And, of course, he writes.

He knows he’s being an asshole to everyone when he can’t quietly demur to join them in their post-saving-the-world-for-the-fifth-time-this-month board game: Alexander has to rant and rave in great detail why it’s a waste of his precious time. He storms to another room and writes an article on world federalism, the future of the United Nations, and surviving the anthropocene without a dark enlightenment.

The anger simmers off, but his heart keeps pounding. He feels like he’s running. He feels like he’s on the battlefield, everything at once so slow and languid and fast, with all the walls caving in, with a torrent of water drowning the cries for help he keeps forgetting to make.

“Alex. Tumblr is onto you,” Darcy tells Alexander when she finds him huddled over a laptop on the couch, pecking the letters with incredible speed, confidence, and use of the backspace.

“Is it,” says Alexander. “Hm. I hadn’t thought much of the power of a nascent fandom.”

Darcy snorts. “It’s not ‘nascent.’” She sits beside him, knees tugged up onto the sofa, and pulls up a few images on her phone, which she passes to him. He scrolls through: Hamilton, Laurens, and Lafayette at Valley Forge; Hamilton dueling Burr; Hamilton discovering his fandom on Tumblr; Hamilton as a kitty. “That last one – ” Darcy points “ – is from, like, 2013. You’ve had a fandom since, like, forever. It’s just getting bigger now that there’s a musical.”

Alexander looks down at the picture of his cartoon self. He flicks to the next picture.

“Wait!” she cries. “Don’t – ”

He blinks. He blinks again. The image is not blurry, and his eyes are not deceiving him. “… I’m sorry, what is this?”

“Um,” says Darcy. “It’s called shipping. Um, ‘ship’ as in ‘relationship’ – ”

“I know what shipping is, as does anyone possessed of sufficient intellectual  curiosity who has spent a half hour on Tumblr.” His lip seems to be curling of its own will. “But why do people ship me and—and Jefferson?”

She snatches her phone back. “Probably the same reason everyone around here ships Erik and Charles.”

“I was not aware that was a ‘thing,’” says Alexander. “Huh.” Those would make perfect sense, now that he considers it, even without having seen them in the same room, but he doesn’t understand how that relates to himself and Jefferson. “And that’s not an answer.”

“No one ships you with John Adams if it’s any consolation.”

“Still not an answer.”

“Actually you have some pretty great chemistry on I Made America. That’s a webseries – ”

He blushes. “Definitely not an answer.”

“The point is,” Darcy tells him seriously, tapping his screen, “that Nick Fury will murder you. It’s just so obviously you, that—that Tumblr will figure it out, like, you know? So I dunno if I’d publish it.”

“The sane world is too accustomed to the falsity of conspiracy theories to fall for such a ludicrous notion, whatever the truth may be,” Alexander replies. “And Nick Fury won’t murder me. It would dissuade Congress of his qualifications, a fact of which he’s all too aware. Furthermore – ”

He rants until he runs out of breath. Darcy can talk as loud and fast as he can, but she can’t dissuade him. In the end, he has no choice. It’s a broken house. There were always flaws in the foundation, but now that the cracks are widening, Alexander believes the landlords have a responsibility to heed the intellect of its architect. Instead, they listen with disdain for even the most academic dissent—when they aren’t putting fingers in their ears, thumbing their noses, blowing raspberries, shooting the bird.

No matter: Alexander will await the turn of the political tide with anticipation and the unsurpassed euphoria of being right. He can’t be wrong. He has spent the last week churning out essays, devouring political treatises, analyzing economic trends, familiarizing himself with philosophy, science, mathematics, etc., and reacquainting himself with the arts of warfare. He even succeeds in leading Erik to victory in one of the simulations, although Erik, for some reason Alexander cannot fathom, seems to think that Hamilton was only in the way.

He is too smart to be wrong.

Alexander publishes the article. The next afternoon he finds three NuMedia outlets have messaged him, asking whether he’d like an outlet. Alexander despises the idea of standing for something in return for pecuniary compensation, but he isn’t so naïve as to believe he won’t need money to effect change in the world. And journalism is another quiet but important glory that, surely, Fury wouldn’t deny him; he tells them he’ll think about it. He publishes a second post on the inefficacy and immorality of drone strikes, and he begins a new one on the necessity of government regulation in combating income inequality, the decline of republicanism, and China’s rising eminence.

Bernie Sanders, scourge of Wall Street, retweets that second one.

The human embodiment of capitalism wonders if he did something wrong.

The Avengers leave on Wednesday. Vision, Tony, and Wanda go to Addis Ababa to investigate and take down a mutant extremist group; the others leave to stop an extraterrestrial in Taipei. Being alone in the Tower is both a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing, because he can pace the halls freely, letting words bounce from the walls. It’s a curse, because when every breeze, every shaft of hair, every thought has become sex that isn’t or isn’t enough, when everything is fire and hunger, there’s no one to stop him from stealing Wanda’s migraine pills. Triptans fail Wanda: oxycontin is the billionaire’s friend’s prescription for the worst pain.

Two pills, crushed in water.

Better safe than sorry, says his brain.

Two pills, not taken.

“Better safe than sorry,” he murmurs.

He might need the pills later.

Alexander rations them out in a little plastic bag on his desk. He returns the pill bottle to its cabinet and promises himself he won’t take them unless he really needs them. “Better safe than sorry,” he repeats. “Better safe… than sorry. Better safe… than sorry – ”

He distracts himself with other things—writing, reading, learning, planning, spamming the president’s inbox with emails. He goes on a shopping spree, in a moment of blurred time. Charcoal, pencils, watercolors, oil paints, brushes, canvasses, two sketchpads, an artist’s tablet, suits, ties, hair gel, lotions, colognes, new socks, new shoes, sneakers, a pair of high-end headphones, a laptop case, a textbook on differential calculus, a textbook on physics, three notebooks, two dozen gel pens, a coffee machine, orange peels, chocolate truffles, a display of watches, and a printed pair of Hamilton tickets for next month, all bought that day, stand in a perfect shrine to aesthetic efficiency—and hedonism he can’t really afford, especially considering the clothes aren’t really his style—amongst his other things by nine o’clock Friday night.

Alexander hunches over a notebook at the desk in his bedroom. Hair: newly clipped, still styled. Suit: tailored, 3D printed in Tony’s workshop downstairs; classy.

Brain: a brilliant mess.

He hums to himself; it’s a nonsense blur of lyrics and several melodies. God, I hope you’re satisfied. It’s no secret that the both of us are running out of time. He shakes his head. With one hand, he sips a sixth cup of coffee, the tang of oranges Alexander settled for once he’d exhausted the stash of ice-cream bars mingling in the starburst of flavor. With the other, he hovers a finger over a button to publish another essay on Medium.

Hamilton may not be as studied as Iron Man, as beloved as Captain America, as pretty as Black Widow, or as powerful as Nick Fury, but he is and will always be a force to be reckoned with. He just has to work harder and faster than all of them combined, that’s all. He’ll outrun and outlast them all.

He publishes the blog and scribbles another essay. His paper-cut finger stings against the pen, and Alexander thinks maybe the spill of citrus juice isn’t helping. His brain wanders. Lafayette, chasing a butterfly on a bet that he wouldn’t embarrass himself like that; Laurens and Mulligan, red-faced with laughter; Hamilton distracted by Kitty Livingston until Lafayette charged and knocked Alexander over.

“Relax, Hammie,” said John Laurens, helping him scrub the dirt from his hair as he huffed, puffed, glared at the ground.

“But Jack, I must – ”

“You need to take a break,” says his dead friend, but the dead philosophers disagree. Frederick Nietzsche rambles something about the Overman. John Stuart Mills preaches utilitarianism. Cicero raves about constitutionalism. Caesar harangues about the blessings of power and ambition. In the meantime Alexander raises a glass to himself, drains the coffee, and scribbles the story of that night, because if Nietzsche and Mills and Cicero and Caesar and Hamilton are in concurrence, it cannot possibly be wrong.

His lips move with the words, his hand outpacing the whispered speech until it reaches the end of the story. FRIDAY converts the scribbles to text; he pastes it into a Word document: Memoirs.

One day, he will publish it. It will transform him into a damn celebrity and forever redeem his legacy. Alexander has read Orson Scott Card, taken into consideration Ender’s epiphanies. How could anyone hate him if they truly knew him? He only wants the best, even if it runs contrary to popular opinion.

There’s a knock at the door. “Aleksandr?” says Wanda’s voice.

Alexander freezes.

When did they return?

It doesn’t matter. He slides the bag of untaken pills into a desk drawer. Then he shoves the chair back from the desk, lets it revolve once, enjoys the sensation of air against his face. “Come in.”

Wanda does.

“It’s the middle of the night,” says Alexander.

“It’s only nine thirty, and your light was on. Americans stay up later than sunset today, yes? So do Sokovians, but, um, it is commoner here in United States.”

“Hm. Regardless, that wasn’t an accusation.”

Wanda raises an eyebrow and murmurs something like, “It sounded like one.”

Alexander brandishes his coffee mug. “Coffee?  Strawberries? Oranges…? Chocolate?—they’re Godiva truffles, Ms. Maximoff, they’re quite fantastic, filled with salt and caramel and coco-nut, I positively adore coco-nut, and—oh! I’ve some salami-wrapped Cheetos, too, I promise they’re better than they sound…” Wanda hasn’t budged. “… no?”

Tony walks through the door.

Vision walks through a wall.

Alexander bolts to his feet. “What is this?”

“It’s an intervention,” Tony announces.

“It’s concern for your wellbeing,” says the android.

Vision would tower over Hamilton standing, and with the android looming above the ground, the little man feels like a dwarf. Alexander grits his teeth, curls his upper lip, and very stubbornly does not shrink into himself. “I’ve neither need nor want of your concern.”

Tony stares. “That’s why it’s called an intervention. We intervene. I think that’s Latin. That’s Latin, right?” He looks up at the ceiling.

“Yes, boss,” FRIDAY says. “It means – ”

“Nah, I don’t need to know,” says Tony, waving his hand. “Point is, it’s not optional. Intervention. That’s final. Rules of the Tower.”

“Constitution of the Tower,” adds FRIDAY helpfully.

Alexander says, measuredly, “I don’t need a goddamn intervention. I’m alright. I’m grieving, yes, but really, truly, in the highest degree of candor I can possibly convey, I am alright, happier than I’ve been in a very, very long time—and then you betray my trust? You should have asked, not backed me into a corner, put me into a position where you can easily overpower me, you rascals. You damn cowards.”

Wanda purses her lips, swallows audibly. “We really are worried about you.”

“I don’t want your worry.” Alexander sits. He rolls back to his desk, picks up a thin plastic pen, clicks a few times it in the thickening silence. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have so much work to do, all of which is far more pressing than this… unsubstantiated drivel. Good day—night.” The general waves a hand. “Whichever. I wouldn’t have time for this anyway.” Hamilton presses the nub against the page, blood surging in his ears, his cheeks, scrawls, My Dearest, Angelica – 

“You just seem off, somehow,” Wanda says.

“Off—how?!” he demands, and the pen snaps in his grip, spraying ink, as he whirls in his chair.

“I did some research on the internet,” Wanda tells him.

“Yeah, and I’m not an idiot,” says Tony. “FRIDAY, why don’t you – ?”

“Your visible symptoms are highly correlated with mania or hypomania,” says FRIDAY.

Alexander scowls and glares up at the ceiling. “Et tu, Brutè?”—then fall, Caesar, but Hamilton is better than that: raise a glass to freedom… “I thought you were programmed to respect my privacy.”

“And I thought you were programmed to respect your friends,” the AI retorts.

Tony gives her two thumbs up. Alexander scowls.

FRIDAY continues, “Alex, it’s just not normal to get less than two hours of sleep a night.”

“Wait, wait, wait.” Tony gapes. He grimaces at the ceiling. “Really?”

“Yes, boss. That’s one of five billion reasons I’d recommend a psychologist.” Tony flushes red. Before he manages a word, she continues, “Alex, you’re demonstrating abnormal levels of energy and impulsivity, you’ve spent almost your entire bank account – ”

“And you stole Wanda’s oxycontin pills!” Tony snaps. He’s maybe two inches taller than Alexander, but as he advances, it makes all the difference. “Like, do you have any clue. How dangerous that is. Any at all? That was stupid. You were alone. You could’ve overdosed and you could’ve died. You can’t just—just waltz into our lives just to kill yourself!”

“I didn’t even take one,” Alexander counters.

“But if you’d had, like, some sort of psychotic break or whatever the hell it is – ”

Alexander clenches a pair of fists at his sides. “If you’re going to slander not just my honor but my sanity, my mind, my brain, the veracity of the sensations and expressions in my very soul—you had best be prepared to cite a specific grievance – ”

“Mr. Hamilton, we have cited a specific grievance,” Vision interjects. “Numerous grievances, in fact. Shall I cite three more? Ten? Thirty?”

“ – the next time I’d have seen you eye-to-eye would’ve been at ten paces for that insinuation of madness and stupidity, Anthony Stark – ”

“You know what?” Tony snaps.

The temperature plummets.

“You stole shit,” says Tony. “You’re a thief. So sure.”

“Really,” says Alexander. He advances.

The billionaire mirrors him. “Yeah, I’d go right now – ”

There’s a red hand on both of their chests. Vision says, “No.” With his index fingers, without visible effort,  the android shoves them apart hard enough to make them stumble. Baby blue eyes blink. “Between Colonels Burr and Rhodes, you share a history of goading your friends into ‘taking a shot.’”

They wince.

They spy each other’s winces and exchange incredulous looks.

They turn back to Vision.

“In lieu of a repeat tragedy, I suggest carrying on with the intervention,” the android instructs. “I will confirm FRIDAY’s diagnosis.”

It takes several seconds longer than it ought to for Alexander to realize what the android intends, but the understanding hits him like a sledgehammer. He shakes his head. “No. No, no, no.” He stumbles back and only stops shaking his head to look back when he knocks his swivel chair into the wall. “No, you can’t. You mustn’t. That’s—I don’t—that is an unpardonable offense, to harness another’s body, I—the unforgivable transgressions, in Rowling’s world as well as ours: torture, slavery, murder, and rape if I may add another mortal sin—so what then is the usurpation of personhood and the mind…?”

“I am sorry.” Vision strides forward. Alexander puts up a hand to block him; Vision flickers through his arms. Then the android places two metallic fingers on either of Alexander’s temples and leans his cold brow against the littler man’s skull. The gem digs into Hamilton’s flesh.

“Relax,” says Vision. “I will not harm you.”

Alexander chokes, “Don’t – ”

“I will not coerce you, either, and I will not invade your thoughts where I can help it. I am looking at emotions only. Is this alright?”

In Alexander’s periphery, Tony nods his head vigorously. Wanda gives an encouraging smile. His lips are trembling with fear and rage and muttered words he isn’t consciously controlling, so Alexander thinks SURE, WHAT THE HELL. He thinks it loudly enough that any telepath should hear it, in his admittedly-not-at-all-humble opinion, and he gives a small bob of the head.

There’s a flash of light.

One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three Mississippi.

It never thunders.

Alexander blinks at the android, shifts his eyes over to the witch and the billionaire. He looks at the ceiling too, either because he’s annoyed or because he’s still angry with FRIDAY; he can’t tell which. He doesn’t feel the sharp ice of a mechanical mind inside his own, like in D.C. when Vision confirmed his identity. He doesn’t feel anything, except the discomfort of a gem that’s warming and now approaching the border of ouch against his skin.

Vision pulls away, shaking his head. Alexander rubs his brow and wonders if there’s a red mark. “Forgive me,” says the android. “I’m afraid fixing this is beyond my skill.”

“V. You’ve got an Infinity Gem in your skull,” says Tony in disbelief.

FRIDAY says, “Untrained humans aren’t supposed to have mental barriers that can resist that, let alone block it for more than a nanosecond.”

“He doesn’t have mental barriers, and that’s the problem. He has an unguarded fault line. I don’t want to break Mr. Hamilton’s mind,” Vision replies.

Alexander cocks his head. “Fault line,” he repeats, tasting the phrase, the context. It’s a new phrase, even in its basic definition, but it conjures images. California. San Andreas. Catastrophe. “A weakness in my psyche?” Aristotle has something to say about weakness and Freud say something about oral retentiveness and a conspicuously missing superego; Alexander tells them to shut up, shut up, shut up, and he finds his lips are moving again.

“Yes,” says Vision, startling the man. “A small one. It was there in D.C., but it’s on the surface now. I am, frankly, too powerful—yet not precise enough—to avoid it. A single misstep could drive you to violent psychosis.”

“Ah.”

“Or you could find healing. It’s impossible to know. Something to explore on your own, perhaps. Either way,” says the android, turning to look over his shoulder, “I’d be more comfortable taking him to Charles.”

Alexander bristles at the third person.

“Tonight?” says Tony.

“Yes,” says Vision.

“I’m right here!” says Alexander. “I’m not dead, you know. And I find it very insulting when you act as—wait, you want to go now? You’ve still yet to enumerate any real, demonstrable, compelling reasons to – ”

He rambles on for another minute and a half at an accelerating pace while Wanda texts the Columbia professor, finds out he’s helping some famous neuroscientist with research, and inputs the medical lab into Google Maps.

Vision says, “Shall we walk or drive?”

“Or fly!” Tony blurts. “We could fly. I have a flying car ready to test drive… test fly… test pilot. Whatever. But we could fly – !”

“Boss, that’s not legal yet,” FRIDAY chides.

Tony grunts his disapproval.

“It’s only a twenty minute walk,” says Wanda. “Let’s go.”

“Lovely,” says Alexander. “Let’s go in the morning, or better yet, not at all—you have no proof, nothing, and am I not innocent until proven guilty? Is that not Blackstone’s Principle and the legal system I’ve been so lauded for establishing – ”

It takes the whole trip downstairs for Alexander to stop barking. His volume descends with the elevator, and when they step out onto the first floor, his lips are moving silently again, jumping along with his jumbled thoughts.

They walk past half-empty roads and toward Broadway, past a trio of weed-smoking businessmen yakking about the evils of leftism, past a one-armed construction worker, past a raincoat-clad old woman with milky eyes, sitting on the sidewalk, singing a lonely, soulful song; Hamilton drops his only Franklin in her rusted can, earning wide-eyes from Tony and a shady-looking passerby.

Alexander glares at his phone, still murmuring to himself, as they press into a thicker pack of pedestrians. Times Square teems with dreadlocks, pigtails, ponytails, bed-heads, gold teeth, silver teeth, pearly whites, chipped yellows, T-shirts, suits, jackets, jeans, sweatpants, sarees, hijabs, dastaars, coifs—even bare skin: near-naked performers stand on the sidewalk, painted in red, white, and blue, clad only in underwear, enticing tourists into photos.

Bumping shoulders just to move, Alexander sees everything, feels a strange connection with every cell, every molecule of this city. He built this, didn’t he?

Alexander doesn’t know why they think there’s something wrong with him. His brain is functioning at its optimum, and he revels in the pride and the rush. He needs to write. The world deserves that brilliance. Alexander looks down at his phone to scrawl a note—and he remembers the task at hand. He curses and scrolls down to the latest of the thirty-seven tabs he’s opened: a WebMD page.

It confirms his suspicions. “Hyperthyroidism!” he announces.

“Vhat?” Wanda stops, and Tony stops beside her, eyebrow arched skyward; the traffic jammers mumble and shove around them. Vision stops; he goes insubstantial. The walkers march through him. Maybe half notice, gape, and turn on their heels to snap a picture; the rest press through, staring at their electronic devices or their shuffling feet.

“What?” Wanda repeats.

Alexander has to think, and he can’t think—not with the trains running in his head non-stop, the conductor refused a ticket. “Hyperthyroidism,” repeats Hamilton when he remembers. He might sneer, a little, because he wouldn’t have had to scramble if they had listened to him the first time. They ought to listen. He’s brilliant; he deserves an audience.

Hyperthyroidism, he recalls. How did he forget? Alexander clears his throat. “The symptoms you’ve enumerated may indicate a condition called hyperthyroidism, wherein the thyroid gland becomes overactive, thereby causing hyperactivity, irritability, aggression, mood swings, irrationality, etcetera. This is infinitely more likely than any sort of defect in my brain, which, as you should know by now, is top-notch  – ”

A hulking, tattooed man with a blue mohawk smacks past Alexander’s shoulder, making the little man stumble forward.

“Bastard,” hisses Hamilton.

“Uh,” says Tony. “Alex – ”

The man halts, stares with contempt. The muscles rippling in his chorded neck and bare, shining biceps are attractive enough, but they don’t outweigh the repulsion from his potato face and neckbeard.

“Hey there, little cuck,” drawls the man with the mohawk. “Why don’t you fuck the fucking fuck off right now!”

“Why don’t you fuck off?” Tony snaps.

The man with the mohawk's eyes wheel—from Alexander, to Iron Man, to Scarlet Witch, and to the Vision. Another camera flashes. The blond’s jaw drops. He closes his mouth. His jaw drops again. He closes his mouth, gulps, and stammers a stream of half-audible cuss words and utterly unintelligible noises that sound like a rodent cornered by a cat. The crowd begins to murmur.

Alexander narrows his eyes. He’s pretty sure the tall man has reached the Schwarzschild radius of mind-numbing stupidity. He’s half-seriously waiting for a singularity of stupid to form when he sees the frog pin and the swastika between the man's pierced eyebrows, almost innocuous among all the other tattoos.

There’s a flash of light. Someone has a camera.

“Will you sign my doll?” asks a little girl, proffering a plastic likeness of Wanda to the witch herself.

“Omigod it’s the Avengers!” shrieks one person.

“MY DREAMS ARE COMING TRUE!” shrieks a second.

“AYEEEEEEEEEEK!” shrieks another.

The shrieks become less coherent from there. And in the meantime, Alexander Hamilton becomes more and more aware that he is face-to-face with a Nazi.

The Nazi turns, muttering, “Morons.”

Alexander starts forward to clobber him – 

Vision puts a hand on his chest. “He’s not worth it,” says the android softly.

“Mr. Stark! Mr. Stark!” cries someone. “Will you sign my phone?!”

“Will you sign my shirt?”

“Yo, can I get the robot’s autograph?”

“Wait, it has an autograph?”

“Hey Scarlet! Sign my ass!”

Wanda exchanges disgusted looks with her companions, but she levitates several sharpies out of her bag. She hands one to Iron Man, and they begin signing everything except the creep’s derrière.

Vision is still staring cooly at Alexander.

Hamilton blurts “He’s a Nazi!” and jabs a finger in the stranger’s direction. Alexander sees redemption, penance for his silence, or a sliver of it. He won’t tacitly renege on his principles again. He starts forward – 

Vision squeezes his shoulder. “If you strike now, you may cause a fight, and there will be collateral damage,” says the android, as if speaking to a petulant child.

And like a petulant child, Alexander juts his chin out and crosses his arms. “Steve would knock the shit out of him.”

“Mr. Rogers would not—not unless the man was a verified member of Hydra or actively harming an innocent,” says the android. “As it is, he is only a hateful individual.”

“Only?” Alexander repeats in disbelief. “Nazis and other scum of their ilk are incompatible with liberty, morality, and civil society. Any scruples about purging their ideology can only be born from ignorance of the depths of their wickedness, an ignorance which is the banality of evil in itself: it allows such despicable knaves to persist and radicalize – ”

A little girl with beaded, braided pigtails looks up at Vision with wide brown eyes. The android kneels and smiles with a tenderness Hamilton didn’t expect. “I’m sorry, Mr. Hamilton,” says Vision; “I’d love to continue this discussion, but may I – ?”

Alexander swallows. Another girl asks Wanda for an autograph. Somewhere, Machiavellian wisdom clicks with Hamiltonian ethics, and so he nods like the scorned and scolded little brat whose father thought Le Prince was a waste of time. “I understand,” he lies.

Vision begins signing an extravagant John Hancock that puts John Hancock to shame—on a T-shirt, a doll, a poster, an outstretched arm. The Avengers aren’t watching. The Nazi stands at the edge of Times Square. Alexander doesn’t have time to wait for it.

Cameras are flashing. It’s like lightning.

One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three Mississippi.

Alexander bolts for the Nazi.

Threading the crowd, stumbling into a rabbi, a furred mutant, a drag queen, Alexander makes it to the other side before he has to pause for breath. From there, he can see the Richard Rogers Theatre, his name displayed proudly above it. He smiles. The Church of Scientology across from it. He scowls. When he catches up to the man with the Nazi, about three blocks past the theatre in an abandoned alley, he skips the gloating, the monologue, the drama.

Alexander doesn’t say a word.

He kicks the Nazi square in the back.

The tall man staggers. He curses and turns.

Alexander hits him. Hard. Blood splatters. The Nazi splutters. Hamilton’s knuckles pulse. It feels like power. He kicks the man again, strikes right between his ribs. The Nazi wheezes and doubles over.

And Hamilton just can’t resist taunting, just a little: “Hey, Shitface von Bumblefuck! How’re those ‘superior genes’ working out for you?”

The hunching man glares. Blood dribbles down his chin. His eyes narrow. He sneers. Alexander echoes the expression.

Then he realizes that the Nazi has seen his face, and he never planned to disengage. Alexander can’t kill a man in cold blood on the streets of New York, nor does he want to. His other options are flight and beating the man into unconsciousness; neither is honorable.

I’ll talk my way out, decides a calmer voice in his head, an oration bubbling on his tongue –  

Nails slice down his cheeks.

Fabric rips.

Breath hisses down his neck.

A cold, cold arm wraps around it.

Alexander’s toes brush the ground. Crystalline hands press him into frigid stone behind. “Emma, you should see his face, boss!” chortles the Nazi. “Stupid Jewish cuck thinks he’s superior, boss.”

The Nazi guffaws. Alexander wants to remind him that Jewish cuck should be an oxymoron within the alt-right’s skull-numbingly lunatic ideology, but the grip loosens and suddenly feels like flesh. Alexander scrambles. He slips – 

The Nazi clocks him on the jaw.

The other assailant grips his throat. The Nazi swings. Alexander tries to dodge; the fist slams into his cheek. Emma squeezes. Hamilton chokes. He claws at Emma’s hand. The Nazi spews curses. He kicks. Alexander bites the arm holding him and stumbles free.

Emma grabs, yanks, and twists his arm. It doesn’t hurt like it should. Alexander’s jaw doesn’t sting; he doesn’t taste blood. But the grip is strong. He scrambles to no avail.

“Pathetic, isn’t he?” hisses Emma.

The Nazi roars with laughter. “You tell him, boss!”

“Zane’s harmless,” she says. “Too stupid to properly puppet, but harmless. Speaking of puppets… you wouldn’t happen to work for Nick Fury?”

Alexander clenches his teeth.

“Oh, so you do. Sorry, Alex, but I need that information.”

He frowns. Alexander never gave his name. But without a word, Emma answers his question: she presses two fingers to his temple.

He inhales sharply.

Emma is a telepath.

A single misstep could drive you to violent psychosis.

She has no regard for his life.

Alexander wants to fight. He wants to argue. He wants to make demands, offers, and reparations. The words die on his lips, and numbness washes his jaw. He goes slack in her arms and feels his eyes shut, palaces of unspoken paragraphs burning against his eyelids.

“On the count of three,” says Emma, as if from a distance.

One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three –

(It feels like this:

This may hurt just a little.

Quoi…? (this may hurt just a little) No, no, get out.

Silence.

Descendre aux enfers, go to hell.

I’m reading your mind; no need to translate.

Alors fous le camp et retourner à la pute qui t’a accouchée, enculé de filou.

Shut up.

I shan’t be shut up (shut up)—ta gueule! I will not be silenced. Perhaps outwardly, with considerable effort, my voice might be constricted. But not here. Not within the confines of my very self. No one controls my mind.

You included?

(least of all me) Of course I control my mind.

Liar. Goodbye, Alexander.

What right have you to violate the sanctity of my soul? By what vile metric are my personhood and divinely appointed rights to self-determination rendered

Silence!

—Where now, oh! vile worm, is all thy boasted fortitude and resolution? What is become of thine arrogance and self sufficiency? Why dost thou tremble and stand aghast? How humble, how helpless, how contemptible you now appear—

Silence.

What’s your name?

alexander hamilton.

Do you trust me?

yes.

Tell me everything.

There’s copper and fire and the cold street, fire wrapped around your spine, and ice, creeping down your arms, so cold, too cold; your fingers will snap off. Yet you’re burning. You’re tangled in strings, and you need to escape. She will not take your freedom. You writhe; your head hits concrete. Pain rings through your skull, freedom like the liberty that cracked the bell. Hollow. Hollow. Everything is hollow.

Who is this? A metal man?

A pair of them. Metal men.

Go away, go away, go away.

Metal hand against your forehead. A voice. “Alexander?”

Silence and flashes of light. “Where are you?”

The River Phlegethon. Hades. Hell.

You burn here. Surely you cannot burn forever. Someone will release you again. Because you’ve been here before, haven’t you? Isn’t that why you never saw Eliza?

There are metal arms and wind and flight.

“Stay with me, Mr. Hamilton.”

You’re not leaving. Why doesn’t he understand?

You’re not leaving. The world is fading. The world is fading.

The world is fading.

“Looks like a TBI. Let’s – ”

“No.”

“What? Who’s the doctor here?”

“Strange, just listen to me. It’s psychic shock. Give him some air and let me focus!”

Hands on your temples.

No, no, never again!

Metal sings. Louder than the crack in the bell. Your head must have hit something. What? Thrashing, slipping. Sliding from the gurney.

He catches you. Hands on your temples. Holds you still.

not again. plus jamais. ne me touchez jamais.

Relax, Alexander.

alright.

You’re safe.

i’m safe.

Don’t think. You’ll hurt yourself.

Let me help you.)

(This is how it feels to be Alexander Hamilton again:

Consciousness coalesces before self, first cloistered in silence. Self converges from the howling like a sea of candles, ideas, notions, beliefs, convictions, traumas, memories, hopes, fears, aspirations all shining atop the unshakable structures which are your core self, and when the flames touch, they sing. You are fire.

But you know your own wrath.

(The Wrath of Peleus’ Son, the direful Spring

Of all the Grecian Woes, O Goddess, sing!

That Wrath which hurl'd to Pluto's gloomy Reign

The Souls of mighty Chiefs untimely slain – )

It all converges. You peruse the structures of your own mind. You want to know what you know. You know the treachery the Praetorian guards, of Didius Julian, of Maximin, and you know the Roman civil wars that proceeded. You know the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. You know Aristotle and Plato and Cicero and Machiavelli and Voltaire and Mills and Jung and Freud.

You might as well have known Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen; Comet and Cupid and Donner and Blitzen for all the good it did you.

“Welcome back,” says Charles Xavier.

You’re curled in a ball on a couch in a flickering florescent white room, back flush against it, knees hugged to your chest. Your head is pounding like the drums of Moria, but otherwise it feels clearer than it’s felt in weeks. Months, even, when you consider the cognitive rigor of youth.

Mania.

Damn.

You stretch (“Alex, please be careful,” Charles warns, “you were just in severe psychic shock – !”) and look around. Vision, Wanda, Tony, Erik, and a man with a white lab coat who manages to look both handsome and extraterrestrial stand behind the couch, expressions ranging from blank (Vision) to relieved (Wanda) to faintly annoyed (Erik) to exasperated (the handsome alien). (Tony is somewhere in-between.)

Charles sits beside you, reaching out, two fingers still pressed to your temple. If you focus, you can feel him in your mind. If your thoughts are a stream of water, there’s a rock that isn’t usually there, making little fissures where you’re quite sure it’s not you.

It doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t annoy. Perhaps you’re inured to it after that hell-spawned witch knocked you senseless. Either way, it makes you embarrassed.

Because God—what were you thinking?

How did you engineer blog posts informing of human trafficking, exhorting the United States to abandon its brutal quest for oil and invest in lithium, arc reactors, & etc., analyzing the inefficacy of economic libertarianism while you were being an ass to Wanda, to Erik, to Darcy, to—everyone, really.

(Forests are easy, young man. Trees are harder.)

The room blurs. Your eyes sting. Your lips are parched. There’s the taste of copper on your tongue. You taste vomit at the back of your throat. You press your lips together, wet them a little.

“I punched a Nazi.” What happened to your everlasting pragmatism? Hell, what happened to your voice? It hurts to talk.

“Clobbered,” Tony corrects between fake-coughs. You glare at him. Weakly. Your blood is stone in your veins. Your eyes are on fire. Oh, and you just vomited in the street, so your breath stinks, too.

“Alex…” warns Charles, or maybe it’s meant to be comforting.

You look down. “I am an idiot.” You wring your wrists, twiddle your thumbs. “Shut up, Erik.”

“I said nothing!” Erik protests.

“Sure,” you concede, “but I can hear you smirking.”

“You are not an idiot,” Charles says seriously. “I can see how your mind works, and you’re actually highly intelligent – ” His eyebrows quirk in annoyance, and he flicks a glare at everyone behind you. “I will not name names, but Tony. Erik. Stephen.” Tony, Erik, and the man with the lab-coat shuffle uncomfortably. “There are multiple geniuses on this planet, and multiple types of intelligence. And no, I will not measure. There’s not even an objective way to do that.”

There’s a pause. Charles is staring at you like Troi from Star Trek. He wants you to talk, you realize; you wonder if he’s puppeteering you. “I clobbered a Nazi,” you reiterate.

And you got yourself called an “idealist” multiple times, all the while trying to prove to yourself that you can speak five languages (you can’t), understand science (you don’t), and doubting the existence of a Divinity (you’re still not sure, and it’s shaking the foundations of your ethics). Who in the Hell are you turning into?

“And I’m pretty sure there were moments where I thought myself…” You are not going to say Thomas Jefferson. “… some sort of demigod, when I was actually being stupid.”

Charles smiles, darkly. You think he might be amused, which would irk you, if you weren’t so damned exhausted. “Grandiosity. It’s common. You were high on too much dopamine—that’s the euphoria, the psychosis – ”

“Psychosis?! I’m not—I’m not psychotic, I’m not mad – ”

“ – no, you’re not,” says Charles, nodding, “but yes, psychosis; it’s most often feelings of inflated self-image or worthlessness, not what Hollywood pretends it is—you were high on too much dopamine, and on too much norepinephrine—that’s the being pissed at everything, because your body is in a constant state of fight-or-flight. I can’t actually alter your brain chemistry, so I’ve tricked your consciousness into pretending those chemical levels are in the normal range. It’s temporary, but this should be, roughly, what baseline feels like to you.”

It’s a gut-punch. This is normal? This is normal? There’s a not insignificant part of you that wants to lie here forever (and a more substantial part would  prove you wrong, would leap from the couch and churn out a fifty-nine page polemic eviscerating Milton Friedman and all the other anarcho-capitalists). Your lungs are stone. Your family is gone. You want to recoil from your own flesh, and your whole body aches with the effort. This cannot be normal.

Charles notices; he frowns. “I think. I’m actually not sure. You may be in the dysthymic range if you’d like me to simulate a higher level of serotonin. It would only be temporary, but it’s better than – ”

“No. No. I’m alright.” You try to smile without letting water spill over your cheeks. You could scarcely manage public emotion in a world where it was acceptable, and you don’t want to try it now. But you despise untruth, especially when Charles must know you’re being nothing less than mendacious. The smile falters. You hang your head in your hands, exhale, “Shit” –

– and your shoulders shake.

You don't want to cry. You hold your breath. 

One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three Mississippi.

When the tears finally spill over, you’re helpless to stop them.)

Chapter Text

Sunday, October 25, 2015: Just Past Midnight

When the ice finally shatters, Alexander doesn’t know if he’s the Titanic, a hapless worker in the boiler room, a writer too full of himself and his metaphors, or the goddamned iceberg. He only knows he’s shivering and drenched in saltwater, eyes lit up like he’s sobbing gasoline over a furnace. He cries like he’d retch, arms clenched around his middle. Bile roils like in his gut. His head throbs. His cheeks burn. In his humiliation, Alexander’s almost relieved when he chokes back vomit and the abruptly clueless man in the lab coat stutters out directions to the nearest restroom—past the little workers’ kitchen, down the hall.

Alone, he fumbles for words and returns with shapeless lips and question marks, but his body, weak as it is with its hands on faux porcelain and knees grinding against the filthy tile, seems to know what to do. He lets go of himself for just a moment and finds strange solace in the disconnect. He’s not vomiting on all fours; he’s hovering above the animal doing that. He’s not puffy-eyed, pathetic, and keening; he’s the puppet-master controlling that frail and vile thing. Alexander Hamilton is not the drowning man chained at the bottom of a frosted pool; he’s the numinous reflection gazing down with disdain.

The nausea passes. He grooms in the mirror, avoiding his eyes. Hugging himself, wayward emotions bundled in an invisible rucksack crushing down on his shoulders, Alexander staggers into the hall, head like a balloon: far above himself, though not breaching the surface of the frozen waves. He supposes it might be bouncing against the ice—it would explain the headache.

In the lounge, Fox News plays in the waiting room through a wall, horns blare outside, and the florescent lights buzz—all sounds that should be alien, but have become as familiar as breathing; otherwise, there is hush. The Avengers, the mutants, and the man in the lab coat sit idly. With grave faces, they twiddle thumbs, flip through magazines, play games on tablets. Erik, alone in quiet vigilance, sees Alexander first. He lifts a hand in greeting.

The man in the lab coat sees the wave, starts, and leaps from the couch. He advances. “Mr. Faucette!”

He hasn’t clearance, Alexander notes.

The man tugs at his collar. “I’m Doctor Stephen Strange; I’m a neurosurgeon.” He claps his hands together and extends one; they exchange a handshake. “Okay. So—”

Tony moves toward Alexander, shakes his hand, embraces him, slaps his back, pulls away. He hears snippets of the definition of a bro-hug as Wanda informs him she’s here to help. Vision touches his shoulder. The android’s lips move. He hears the name Tennyson, and a quote, maybe. I sometimes hold it half a sin to put in words the grief I feel: for words, like Nature, half reveal and half conceal the Soul within. It’s well-meaning, he’s sure, but for all the books he’s ever read, he doesn’t think he’s garnered an inkling of practical wisdom. Charles touches his forehead. The attacker switched his mood, and without psychic interference it would be a mixed-affective state, says the telepath. Charles can mitigate it, so long as he’s in close proximity, so long as Alexander focuses on staying calm.

Focus on staying calm, as though he’s not bearing the weight of a mountain. Voices overlap and before long Alexander can’t hear at all through the buzz of shame swaddling him like a wet blanket and the shit-storm staining the room with well-intentioned sentimentality, not while he’s struggling to stay in control with the metric ton of emotions on his back, just waiting to slip and detonate like a megaton fission bomb.

Alexander wants to sit down.

He wants to sit down. He wants a glass of water, or failing that, hot tea. He doesn’t want to hear Bill O’Reilly lionize Thomas Jefferson; he wants Fox News off the TV. He wants quiet. Is that alright?

It is alright. Dr. Stephen Strange is a practicing neurosurgeon—a neuroscientist, in fact, now conducting an anonymous study on psychic talents’ effects on the brain, hence Charles’ and Erik’s presences, “and, to the point,” says Strange, “I can prescribe psychiatric medicine. So, if you’ll answer a few questions, we can get you sorted out without admitting you to a psych ward.”

There’s a frightened note in Alexander’s throat. He strangles it before it can form a real cry, and Charles says sternly, “Psych wards aren’t Bedlam, Alex.” Psych wards are not Bedlam. Right. Psych wards are not Bedlam. Alexander will not be reduced to destitution and squalor, prodded for pennies—like stupid animals, not even as valuable as cattle or slaves—by gawking Londoners. He nods in agreement, but the lump in his throat swells and threatens to strangle him. Alexander assaulted someone (deserving, adds his sense of justice) on a whim, nearly killing himself in the pursuit, all because of a nightmarish glitch in his brain—and good God: what if he had pursued the wrong man?

Vision blurs into motion. An instant later, he presses a cold glass of water into Alexander’s hands. “Drink,” says the android. He complies, gulps down half the cup, and lets the android guide him the squeaky sofa. He leans back, almost yearning for these ocean-blue cushions to swallow him like the sea.

Stephen takes a seat across from him. “I have less than two hours until I’m on call, so excuse my bedside manner.”

Alexander shrugs, and tightens his grip around himself. He survived Nevis. He endured Valley Forge. He’s managed the perplexities of resurrection. He’s  strong enough to bear brusqueness.

The conversation is swift: “Have you been formally diagnosed?” Yes, very recently. “Do you have allergies to any medications?” No. “Have you been prescribed any medication?” Yes, but he didn’t take it. “Why?” Mania is a helluva drug. And moreover, why would he want to take something that would likely dull his faculties?

“Do you want bipolar to eat your brain like Alzheimer’s?” Strange asks sharply.

Alexander shakes his head.

“Because untreated, that’s what it does.” 

They continue: “How long do your episodes typically last?” Lately, between four and six weeks with little time in-between. They were once significantly longer and less intense. “Do you have any idea what might have triggered this episode?”

Alexander pauses. He proceeds to explain that Alex Faucette lost his family in a car wreck. Considering that the loss of his boyfriend to the war in Afghanistan also brought on a particularly severe bout of mania and then depression, Alexander suspects a correlation.

The half-lie about Laurens awards him twin looks of shock from Tony and Erik. Alexander ducks his head and shuffles uncomfortably. His recent losses seem to have rubbed the old wound raw, or maybe they’ve torn away a scab that never fully healed, and either way, the depression has rubbed in salt, piss, and vinegar.

“I’m very sorry for your loss,” Strange mutters, scrawling on his clipboard.

Alexander grimaces. To be sure, empathy hurts more than apathy, but apathy is not welcome, either.

“Yeah, so, last three questions. Do you have frequent thoughts of death or dying?”

I imagine death so much it feels more like a memory. Alexander snorts, despite himself, but when the doctor’s eyes narrow, he swallows hard. They said you died of candor, my man, he reminds himself, and so he inclines his head. He’ll maintain transparency now—

“Do you have thoughts of self harm, or have you ever tried to hurt yourself?”

—or perhaps he won’t. He wets his lips. “That’s two questions.”

“Answer them.”

He remembers in flashes: a shard of glass, after Maman; a blade, after Mr. Lytton; a pistol—never fired—after John… Alexander presses his lips together, nails biting the edge of the sofa. Everyone stares at with a mixture of horror and more poisonous pity. He wants to explain himself, but the words evade him.

“O-kay, I’ll take that as a yes.” Strange writes something and then appears to circle and underline it. “Just one more question. Yes or no, suicidal thoughts?”

– if I could trade his life for mine – 

Alexander screws his eyes shut.

– to reserve and throw away my first fire –

Lyrics and memories are fusing behind them.

– why, soldiers, why? – 

He stood in the path of a moving train and, unflinching, sang a song.

– what if this bullet is my legacy? – 

He never bothered to step off the tracks.

– wait! –

It seems inevitable, in retrospect; nothing more than common sense: he died because he wanted to, didn’t he? Masochistic vainglory surges like acid in his blood. The problem of Alexander Hamilton and his unsustainable existence had but one solution, because he’s the only one he ever seems to lose to. He was always destined to die by his own hand, and he died because he’d lost the will to suffer.

“I think I did more than ponder suicide, doctor,” Alexander manages. He despises the horror in the gasps from the people around him—he hates to cause pain—and relishes in his own guilt: excellent, I deserve guilt—good God, I’m being pathetic—yes; ’tis only justice—

Strange interrupts the emotional nosedive: “When was this?”

“A little over a month ago. Essentially I put myself in mortal peril. Decided not to dodge a bullet… so to speak, I couldn’t have literally—”

“Yeah. As a doctor, I know human reaction times. So you—”

Alexander registers his gasp before the impact, the impact before the warmth, and the warmth before the person. Wanda has managed to close the distance in a blink, and now she’s on the sofa, hugging him. He flounders; he squeezes, pats, and pulls away, hands still on her shoulders. Her eyes shine.

Pietro. He also died standing in the path of a bullet, and Alexander’s not the only one who’s lost. “Hey,” he says. “You alright?”

“I am.”

“Promise.”

“Yes.” She frowns, shrugs his hands off of her, and jabs a finger at his chest. “You,” says Wanda, somewhere between accusing and empathetic. “You listen to me.”

A specter surfaces from the depths of his mind and thrashes a wordless tumult, and when the words do begin to churn in that maelstrom, they’re tomes and paragraphs inked in hatred he doesn’t feel. He looks around: Tony gapes, Charles furrows his brow in concentration, Strange stares with steely eyes, Erik politely glances away. Vision nods.

Here is the pith of the matter: Wanda plays piano. She lost her brother. She reminds him of his daughter. So Alexander trusts her blindly, foolishly, like a drowning man trusts a branch adrift without hesitation—but he trusts her nonetheless. He doesn’t trust his emotions. He certainly doesn’t trust his voice. He bobs his head, and she squeezes his hand.

“You read Communist Manifesto, even though Mr. Capitalism made feelings very clear.” Wanda’s tone is teasing, but when he fails to smile in return, her grin dies in an instant. Gently—almost gently enough to make Alexander’s pride bristle—she continues, “And so I thought I owed you, ah, reading something you like, for my practice reading English? And I found something. You,” she repeats, pushing her phone into his hands. “Read this.” She unlocks it and taps the screen; he glares down at the text. It warps. 

Oh, damn, am I crying again?

“I’m afraid that will have to wait,” booms a voice.

Nick Fury thunders into the room with crossed arms, sporting blood and bruises and raw stitches on his skyward eyebrow. It isn’t raised high enough to indicate real anger, but if the rest of them are a battalion, that eyebrow alone is Mt. Everest, and none of them are Apache helicopters: they halt in reverence to the mountain.

“Did one of you have a run-in with a telepath?” asks the director, once they’re standing in an impromptu circle.

Alexander ducks his head and raises his hand. “Yes sir,” he says. “Sorry sir.”

“Mr. Faucette was attacked,” Vision explains.

Nick Fury harrumphs and shakes his head, muttering something like “some luck.” Then he says, “The telepath took Mr. Faucette’s PIN and broke into the linguistics department. Stole all the information we’ve got on that artifact. Tried to scratch open the vault and take Washington’s ring.”

Alexander jolts. “Did she succeed?”

Fury scowls. “Why do you think I’m bleeding? No.” He withdraws a black box from his coat, proffers it, and puts it back in his pocket. “Got it in containment right here. NATO intel suggests she transmitted the info to the Mutant Brotherhood—”

“No,” breathes Wanda.

“—and it leaked to HYDRA—”

“Damn,” says Charles.

“—and someone in al-Qaeda already got ahold of it—”

“Shit,” says Erik.

“—and a mole in al-Qaeda transmitted it to the Ten Rings—”

“Fuck,” says Tony.

“—and China’s new program, ZODIAC, seems to have intercepted it—”

“What?” splutters Alexander. “Goddamn it! What more proof does the president need to see that the wars and anti-humanitarian shit in the Middle East—over oil, oil; it’s on the way out, for fuck’s sake, as much as agriculture was in my day, just look at Tony’s arc reactors—has distracted from the urgency of research, should we desire to keep pace with China and preserve the stable post-War—”

Fury looks at him.

Alexander clears his throat. “My apologies.”

“Accepted. Your mission is compromised,” Fury informs them. “If you leave Wednesday morning, at best you’ll find nothing, at worst you’ll find a trap. And considering Alex managed to get himself attacked on a late night stroll, I’m expecting the worst.”

“So we leave early,” suggests Wanda.

Vision rushes to her side, aghast. “You could be in danger.”

“He’s right,” Erik tells her. “Everything we’ve planned depends on leaving Wednesday. We don’t even have fake passports yet.”

Tony hums a note and marches to the center of the impromptu circle. “I’ve got an Idea,” he announces.

“But we don’t need an Idea. We need a Plan,” argues Erik. “And we don’t have—”

“Let’s hear him out,” Alexander interrupts. “Certain, um… moments of inexorable caprice… notwithstanding, I’m not one to underestimate the importance of an exhaustive Plan, but expecting perfection from imperfect man will ever ensure no Plan is ever effected at all. Like, honestly, the only place for such rhetoric is in obstructing things. We have to start somewhere.”

“Never expect imperfect work from an imperfect man,” Vision muses.

“Yes! Precisely!” Alexander exclaims. He frowns. “Oh, shit, I wrote that, didn’t I?” The android nods. “Ah. Well. Then I’m glad I persuaded you to agree with me.”

“You haven’t, and I don’t,” says Vision.

Alexander frowns. “Then I’m glad you found my quote worth repeating.”

“So why do you expect perfection from yourself?” asks Wanda quietly.

Alexander’s heart drops.

“Not now,” Charles chides. “And I agree,” he says. “Let’s hear it.”

“‘Kay,” Tony says. “So I know this guy named Silas Solanki. British-Indian billionaire; he runs DHARMA. Big manufacturing empire, wants his hands on next-gen StarkTech. Anyway, Pepper’s meeting him tomorrow for a deal. So-o… Genosha’s off the coast of the Arabian Peninsula, right?”

Everyone nods.

“Say we meet them in Genosha, for… some reason, I dunno. We can think of an excuse. We hang out for the business deal… and then we get to Iran,” Tony finishes lamely. “I think he’s got a summer home there, if that helps.”

“Does he have a private jet?” asks Alexander.

“Yeah,” Tony says.

“Wanda will accompany you as a fellow Avenger,” Alexander says. “Erik and I will don the regalia of ASCENT field officers and claim to have an unduly long wait for another flight. We stay with you for convenience. You persuade Solanki to offer a tour of said Iranian summer home—”

“You stow away,” says Tony, “and slip in undetected—”

“—without a need for completed fake passports, precisely. Stay at his mansion until we return, and then we leave with you as well.” Alexander looks at Erik, remembers his direct supervisor has no real say, and turns to Fury. “Is this to your satisfaction, sir?”

Fury pauses, mouth curved in a mindful frown, and puzzles for a moment. He draws in a long breath and exhales, as though the argument is a cigarette, his impending verdict a plume of smoke. “I’ll okay the mission,” says the director.

“That’s stupid!” says Erik.

Fury looks at him.

Erik surrenders. “Apologies, director.”

“Accepted.”

“But how are we going to find the artifact in time?” he says. “We’ve been compromised. We don’t know what we’re walking into. If it takes too long, we’ll have to fight our way out of there.”

“Then we’ll fight, if we must,” Alexander insists. Then he pauses. There is a method to finding magical artifacts. With a cracked talisman and without a warlock as industrious as Washington, it’s risky, but everything he’s read in Ben Franklin’s decoded spellbooks suggests it should still work. “Further, there’s a reason the woman attempted to take Washington’s ring. When wielded, it glows in the presence of powerful magicks.”

Erik retorts, “Because it’s radioactive.”

“Only when touched. Wanda wouldn’t have to touch it,” Alexander responds. “Any magic running through it triggers the effect. And after decoding dozens of spellbooks, I bet even Mr. No himself could talk her through it.” He takes a break in his habit of courtroom theatrics. 

Wanda whispers to Vision, “Which one is Mr. No again?”

The android replies, “I have no idea.”

Alexander ignores them. “Thus, the danger is minimal.”

“Bullshit,” says Erik.

“You say that, but would you rather risk—”

“Gentlemen,” Fury interjects.

They hush.

“I’ve made my decision,” the director says. “Stark, you have a jet in town?”

“Pepper has one, the rest of the Avengers have the other,” says Tony.

“I can’t get you a military craft in time. Get plane tickets. Leave immediately,” he commands. “And you will bring that ring.”

A scoreboard dings in Alexander’s head: Fury—4; Hamilton—1.

Erik scowls. (Lehnsherr—0.)

Fury continues, “Lehnsherr, come with me to headquarters. I’ll get you a new ID.” He turns to Alexander. “And since you were compromised, I’ve already got a new badge and PIN for you, Ham—” Fury cuts himself off and lets out a low whistle. “Doctor Strange?”

Oh, shit. Alexander had forgotten.

The man without security clearance is waving his hands in the air. He puts them down and folds them. “You’re gonna kill me when this is over, aren’t you,” says Strange, glaring at everyone.

Fury huffs. “You didn’t hear anything. Literally. And if you did, I’ve got a telepath.”

“I’m not even your employee,” Charles whines. “I’m just a severely underpaid professor who—”

“Mr. Faucette,” Strange cuts in. “Professor Xavier. Come with me, we need to talk about treatment.”

“Treatment?” questions Fury.

“HIPAA.” The doctor shrugs. “I don’t have permission to say. You coming?”

Stephen Strange leads Charles and Alexander out of the room. As they turn into the hall, Vision takes Wanda’s hands in his, whispers, “I want you safe,” and holds her to him, a certain gleam of adoration in his bright blue eyes that stuns Alexander; he blinks and forcibly reminds himself that she is not actually his daughter. The doctor leads them into a white chamber with a cot and three chairs that the Founding Father vaguely recognizes as an examination room. Strange clicks the door shut.

The trio sits, and the doctor demands of Alexander, “Do you really need to be on the mission?”

Alexander doesn’t hesitate: “Yeah.” Even Fury’s gambit notwithstanding, Wanda may need his help operating the ring.

“Okay. Then I’m not prescribing lithium,” Strange says. “We’ll get you on that eventually, but we’ll need to do blood tests we can’t do while you’re overseas. I’m prescribing lamictal and seroquel. And ativan as a rescue drug, which means you only take it for panic attacks, got it?”

“Yes, but…?” Alexander prompts.

“Here’s the rub,” says Strange. “Medicine won’t work for about three weeks. And—”

“I can’t ward off your illness while you’re across the Atlantic Ocean,” the telepath confesses.

“You mean I’ll have to endure both depression and mania while defending the Earth,” guesses Alexander, digging his nails into folded elbows. A poisonous sliver of ancient wisdom knots in his gut: Gn ō thi seauton, know thyself. However useless all his erudition has ultimately proved, Alexander knows he will, in the throes of depressive hysteria, seek out danger. I’m to die, he understands suddenly.

Charles shakes his head.

Alexander glares. Whatever you’re doing to keep me sane notwithstanding, get out of my mind.

“Sorry,” the telepath mouths.

“There’s another option,” Strange says, either oblivious to or pointedly ignoring the silent exchange. “I might be able to make the mania and depression go away just like—” he snaps “—that. But considering your reaction to the words ‘psych ward,’ you’re not going to like it.”

“I’ll do as I must. What is it?”

“Electroconvulsive therapy,” says the doctor.

His brow knits. “Excuse me, what?”

“Electroconvulsive therapy,” Strange repeats. “ECT. You might know it as electroshock—”

“No!” Even a half-recollection of the definition is enough to leech the blood from his face. “No. Not that—that positively medieval—they still use that? I thought it was for horror movies—I’m not—I’m not really that hopeless, am I?”

“Alex,” says Charles, touching his arm; Alexander recoils. Stricken, the telepath continues, “We’re just trying to help!”

“And it’s not like that anymore,” Strange adds. “With sedation, it’s painless.”

“Doesn’t it make people stupid,” says Alexander. “I don’t want to be stupid.”

“Sort of,” the doctor says.

“Then I’m not doing it,” Alexander says. “End of conversation.”

“Specifically it makes you drowsy and easily disoriented for like, one day to a week,” says Strange. “But by day fifteen, studies show you’ll be operating at a higher cognitive level than you are right now, since you won’t be depressed or manic—”

“If you be bullshitting, I swear to God I’ll—”

“I’m not lying,” says Strange, exasperated. “First, do no harm, right?” Alexander mutters something very unflattering about the American healthcare system, and before it can crescendo into a tirade, the doctor growls, “Jesus Christ, would you just listen?

“Look,” the doctor says. “I get it.”

“Do you?” Alexander sneers. “Somehow I don’t think so.”

Strange glares. “I don’t like to push ECT except as a last resort because one, stigma, two, slight risk of memory loss, and three, I can only do one session. But A, national security, B—” he nods to Charles “—world’s most powerful telepath, and C… world’s most powerful telepath. We can make our one hour session pretty effective. Probably.”

The doctor runs his fingers through his hair and sighs heavily. Alexander grits his teeth; he doesn’t like a nervous physician.

“I’ll be honest, Mr. Faucette,” says Strange. “This is experimental. And possibly illegal. But based on everything I’ve seen—the acute manias I’ve treated, the way Xavier’s mutation works… hell, I don’t even know if I need a machine, he could induce a seizure—”

Alexander hisses an inhale.

“No,” Charles answers cooly. “No, I could not. That would cause psychic shock. If we do this, we will do it with… minimal improvisation. He’s not a lab-rat, Strange.”

The doctor scowls at the implication of greed, a sharpness in the motion that suggests a sliver of truth in Charles’ accusation. Alexander massages his chin and chews this new information carefully. Strange isn’t gripped by an all-consuming, illogical empathy. Strange is acting out of self-interest. Self-interest is like politics: easier for a Founding Father to interpret than twenty-first century medical science. If Strange is competent—and Charles’ comments and the doctor’s demeanor suggest intellect, which Alexander considers a natural companion of competence—as well as self-interested, then he mustn’t see a considerable risk of the sort that could incur a lawsuit.

Alexander clears his throat. “It causes a seizure?”

“Yeah,” Strange says. “The seizure reboots your brain.”

“How in God’s name does a seizure do that?”

“We don’t actually know.”

“And there are risks to my memory.”

“It’s probably only going to affect your ability to retain memory immediately after the procedure. It’s possible everything in the last six weeks could become blurry, but any more than that is… not impossible, but it’s incredibly rare.”

“Have we got another option?”

“Yes. I could inject you with a shitton of antipsychotics and anticonvulsants,” says Strange. “But that would make you just as drowsy, and it probably wouldn’t stop the mania until the mission was over.”

“And what is the probability of your curiosity yielding no improvement?”

“With Charles? There’s a twenty percent chance of failure… maybe twenty five…”

Alexander says, “So in sum you wanna invade my brain and ‘reboot’ it.”

Strange says, “Yes.”

Alexander shuts his eyes tight. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori, he reminds himself, wringing his hands with quickened breath. Laurens took a bullet for this country. Madison took multiple seizures. And they’re asking him to do this on behalf of international stability.

“Okay,” he says. He blinks, offers the same dazed Stepford smile that made Burr stagger forward to be ushered away. “Let’s go.”

(This is how it feels to lose yourself again:

One: Harsh florescent light makes you reconsider opening your eyes the moment it filters through your eyelashes. You groan. Charles Xavier says your name and you turn to stare at him, reviewing your life alongside European history with your mouth in a soft o. You think you must want to say something, but you’ve half-forgotten why you were afraid to forget, let alone whatever words you were reaching for. Charles asks successful? “I dunno.”

Two: You’re riding a subway, standing sandwiched between a woman in a niqab and a drag queen. With narrowed eyes you skim replies to a series of tweets you don’t remember writing—

Three: Where are you? You’re riding a subway, standing sandwiched between a woman in a niqab and a drag queen. You ask Tony whether the treatment is over yet before you consider the foolishness of the query and duck your head, feeling stupid. You just need to sleep, Alex. Yeah. You do. You hold your head in your hands. Strange said these are just the initial symptoms. They’ll be over soon. “You’ve gone and screwed yourself over again, haven’t you?” Uh… you talking to me or yourself? You didn’t mean to say it aloud, but now you’re laughing.

Four: You’re gazing with furrowed brows at an old, inoperable Iron Man suit while Tony steals equipment from the Avengers Museum on the second floor of the Tower. It’s dark, and you can’t remember why you’re here, not packing. You ought to hurry. “Come on, man. Come on. Come on, we’re going to be late!”  You usher your friends into the elevator.

Five: With Wanda staring over your shoulder, you’re standing with a backpack slung over your shoulder and a suitcase handle in hand, staring at all of the impulse purchases you never would have made with Eliza to supervise you and your finances—but she’s gone now, you remember. For the first time this month it feels true. All these supplies, never to be used: you know you’ll never be an artist like Steve, and you’ll never be an artist like John. You aren’t bad at whittling and engraving wood, perhaps—after Lafayette gently mocked the awkwardly proportioned unicorn on your powder horn, you made it a personal mission to make your etchings passable as an amateur’s work. You take a knife and a block of wood, set it atop your clothes, and zip the suitcase.

Six: “Are we going to do the treatment now?” you ask Wanda. 

Seven: “You must be exaggerating,” you say, lucid again while you’re “checking” your luggage. “Surely American airport security is not that inefficient. The federal government may be unduly bureaucratic at times, but what you’re describing is nothing short of ludicrous.”

Eight: You will never forget forgetting what’s going on in the middle of a pat-down.

Nine: When you meet Erik at the “gate,” your face is still lit up from the bottom of your cheeks to the tips of your ears, and when you offer to buy everyone McDonald’s to get away from the teasing, you remember not only everyone’s orders, but also the name of the Hamilton song you’re humming under your breath when the woman next to you asks about it.

She’s brilliant, black-eyed, and pretty, a loyal fan of the musical already. She apparently picked up the Chernow biography at the airport bookstore and is currently quizzing you on Hamilton’s childhood. You compliment her knowledge and impress her with a bit of trivia, hoping she isn’t a member of the truly deranged parts of Tumblr. Smiling, she calls you smart and asks you about the duel, but they call your order number and you don’t have time to remember the details, let alone respond. It’s only then you realize that she was flirting, and you were flirting back.

She looks like Eliza, you register dimly, as you carry the fries, pancakes, McMuffins, & etc. back to the gate. She’s Southeast Asian, Filipino maybe, with darker skin and shorter hair, but her eyes, lips, cheekbones, jaw—dear God, she’s the very image of Eliza, burned into your brain.

Have you forgotten her?

Have you forgotten Burr?

Have you forgotten the fight?

Everything in the last six weeks could become blurry.

Goddamn it, no. Halt time’s pendulum and rewind—

(Neuf:) “This is a mortal wound, doctor.” You smiled to bear your disgrace, because look at what you’d done: your friend was ruined, and you were a dead man; Burr staggered forward—(rewind—)

(Huit:) You crushed your mouth against hers and held her frame to you tight as you whispered sweet nothings in your beloved woman’s ear. It was nothing like the comfortable silence of apologies already spoken, hands already held, a life of love already lived as you’d lain together on the grass with a picnic basket not a week before, tracing palms, and verses, and constellations—(rewind—)

(Sept:) —as you once traced John’s body in the dark. He read Plutarch by invisible witchlight only he could see and murmured its wisdom like a serenade in your ear; you perused every mark, callous, angle, and contour of his shape, like his the portends of your destiny were written on his skin—(no, too far (remember that night—))

(Six:) “—sept huit neuf,” counted the beaming orphan boy your family had taken in, and you swelled with pride as he counted to one hundred and back down to one.

“Good,” you said when he had finished the exercise. “And you remember the Lord’s Prayer?” He nodded eagerly; you took his hands. “Let’s say it together. Notre Père qui es aux cieux, que ton nom soit sanctifié—(remember that fight—)

(Cinq:) —délivre-nous du Mal, you prayed as the first rays of dawn glittered against the water. The sunrise shrouded Burr’s silhouette; the amoral knave that had subsumed your friend looked like an avenging demon in the obscuring light. Did he have regrets, or had he become too much of a monster (too much like you)? You couldn’t see him. Pendleton counted; you hushed him and donned your spectacles to see whether Burr still intended to kill. “Present!” You took your stance and prayed again: deliver us from evil. (You can’t wait to see her again—)

(Quatre:) —Eliza’s pen scratches against parchment. Her bloodshot eyes meet your gaze. She’s looking through you, isn’t she? Seeing the flesh and bones you’ll be by morning? Or is she staring through the failing flesh to the words and worlds you’re creating in your mind? You squeeze her hand and say, “If they break this union, they will break my heart.” Dying is hard, and death will be hell. Your voice, a weak rasp from numbing lips, abandons you swifter than your mind, but you need them to hear; you need them to listen. This union is your legacy. You can’t take another heartbreak—(rewind—)

(Trois:) —not after you cradled your beloved boy in your arms as he muttered feverish apologies and warbled a lonely tune with his mother. If you could’ve, you’d have given your life for him between heartbeats—(rewind—)

(Deux:) —like your mother the sorceress who gave her life—(remember that night—)

(Un): —for the bastard who stumbled down the stormy beach to plead with the man who probably wasn’t his real father, for the little boy who’d brave the hurricane, for the writer who would fight a war. And now you’d throw away your shot?

Ladies and gentlemen, prepare for departure.

It’s dim. The plane accelerates and, rattling, shoves you against the back of your seat. Did you hear me? Tony. You stare. “What?” Take the pills and sleep, Alex, he says. You down a glass of water, lamictal, seroquel, and mournfully try to remember why you taste salty fried potatoes. You press your forehead against the cold, dusty glass and stare at the runway lights, then the airport lights, then the bright lights of the greatest city in the world. The radiance blurs together in the shadow and coalesces, in your mind’s eye, into galaxies as you whirl into the dark.

(Zero: Falling—))

When the ice shatters, Alexander doesn’t know if he’s being pulled to stable ground—he doubts it; it feels like an earthquake—or straight into the fire. He only knows he’s falling through empty space, freezing and burning, fingers clammy against each other—

Oh. Bright reflects off clouds beside them. It’s midday on a plane. Tony just shook him awake.

“Oh,” he says aloud, voice raspy, feeling like a muscleless skeleton. Alexander inhales the scent of coffee like it’s sacred incense, and once he’s received the tray and a cup of it from the attendant with the thick French accent, he inhales the espresso itself. It’s scalding, and so, grappling with exhausted, noncooperative fingers, he chugs his orange juice.

The attendant is taking an order from Wanda across the aisle. “Mademoiselle,” calls Alexander, and he orders not one but two more espressos and another cup of juice. It’s only once Alexander has taken another shot of coffee that, staring down at his mini-baguettes, cheeses, and saucisson and turkey slices, he observes aloud: “This isn’t breakfast.”

Tony snorts. He sits with a laptop on his tray table. An animated Napoleon harasses him on the display, but Tony seems unperturbed. “Good afternoon,” he says. “We’ll be landing in Paris in an hour. It’s lunchtime there—er, here—so…”

Alexander splutters. “Paris?”

“Yep.”

“Already?”

“Welcome to the twenty-first century.”

“I thought we were going to Genosha.”

“We are,” Tony says, “but we got a five minute layover. Literally, it’s like, seven minutes. Next flight’s at a different terminal. Once we’re at the jetway we gotta run.”

Alexander leans back and blinks. Hamilton never set foot in Europe, said biographers, not inaccurately, of every stripe, and he takes peculiar vindictive pleasure in defying history. He stares down at his fingers, flexes, and balls them, and with a glance he confirms that Europe is literally under his boots and fist. Alexander has changed, now, not in the abstract, but empirically. He’s in command of his narrative and his new legacy. A thrill shoots down his spine, and he doesn’t know: Is it fear or excitement? Depression or mania?

But those lofty thoughts dissipate easily: lunch looks increasingly succulent, and hunger supplants emotional analysis. It also overrides a most potent exhaustion. If someone told him he was a stringless marionette, he would probably believe them, but he still musters the energy to devour half the plate in under a minute.

“Hey, erm, uh.” Tony clears his throat. “Alex.”

He peers up from his orange juice, guzzles the rest, and says, “Yes?”

“How are you feeling?”

“Like I was hit by a train and starved,” Alexander deadpans, if it can be called deadpanning when one isn’t joking. He takes his third shot of caffeine and clarifies, “Shitty.”

“I meant ‘how’re you doing with your mood states.’”

“I don’t know. I haven’t been awake and… coherent… for very long.”

Tony snorts again. “Oh, you were more than ‘coherent’ last night.”

“I don’t remember.”

“Bossy as hell. You were—” he affects a horribly fake accent “—‘a proper British prat,’” he teases.

Alexander rolls his eyes. He smirks, glowers, and jokingly demands, “British? What do you mean, British? Have you been talking to John Adams? Because I’ve heard less anti-charismatic conspiracy theories from Alex Jones.” Alex Jones, Alexander Pierce, Lex Luthor, Zane the Nazi, he muses.

Are there any other Alexanders who aren’t mentally ill?

His shoulders sag as he recalls—and realizes that the most resilient prejudice he retains is the prejudice against people like himself.

“Yeah, but you spell ‘color’ with a ‘u,’” Tony joshes, perhaps seeing the change in Alexander’s mood. “People who spell ‘color’ with a ‘u’ hate freedom. Duh.”

“Nope.”

“That is a fact.”

“Not at all. Rather, people who disdain those exercising the liberty to spell ‘colour’ with a ‘u’ hate freedom. Which means I’m right.” He smiles weakly.

Before Tony can add anything else, Alexander says, “And I think the fact that I’m neither resisting the urge to strangle you for teasing me nor… crying like a scorned toddler, or whatever it was I did last night suggests I’m alright. Thank you, by the way, for…” He wavers. “For taking care of me. I can’t imagine what you thought, when you heard the words ‘electroconvulsive therapy.’”

“Nah, I knew about ECT,” Tony replies. “Carrie Fisher has used it.”

“Princess Leia?”

“Yeah.”

“For depression.”

“And mania; she has bipolar.”

“Princess Leia has bipolar,” Alexander repeats. He hums contentedly before he can wonder whether it’s awful to find solace and a bit of courage in someone else’s misfortune. “Regardless, I can’t imagine that was pleasant, particularly after, ah… that thing I did. That thing that was unforgivably rude.”

“When you explained that we were a waste of your precious time,” says Tony bluntly.

Alexander wilts. “I’m sorry. I… God-damn, I wish I could be more specific, I don’t even remember what I said or why. I am so sorry…”

“Dude, I get it—”

“No!” he blurts. “No. Please don’t ‘get it.’ I don’t want permission to be an asshole. If I do that again, please, please don’t let me hurt anyone…”

“No, no. Just listen. Uh. So, um,” Tony says, gesticulating more wildly than those words warrant.

“Yes?” Alexander prompts.

“Uh…” Tony paws and scratches at the back of his head, ruffling his already disheveled mop of hair. Then he meets Alexander’s gaze and tells him in a hushed voice: “I have PTSD.”

Alexander is about to ask What’s that? but his brain parses the acronym from a snitch of memory as post-traumatic stress disorder, and it summons images of terror-, guilt-, and nightmare-ridden veterans. “I’m sorry,” he says, unsure of how else to respond. “That must be awful.”

“Yeah, it sucks, but it’s whatever.” Tony shrugs. “Not looking for empathy.”

“So why are you telling me this?” Alexander asks, yawning, and then he winces, half-hearing Lin-Manuel Miranda’s voice over his.

Tony, oblivious, says, “Just being honest. I, like, erm.” He yawns in reply, cursing Alexander for spreading the contagion, and for several moments he stares out the window into the passing clouds. “You ever have those moments, where the words don’t…?”

Alexander’s throat seems to be closing. “Yes.”

“How do you deal?”

“I pick up a pen and damn the consequences.”

Tony nods. “Makes sense.”

And then he launches into a tirade: “PTSD isn’t the same as bipolar. They both screw with the amygdala, and serotonin and dopamine and noep-whatev-rine. But I don’t get mania, and I don’t get depression—well. I probably do have depression. But it’s not like, random depression, it’s depression because of life shit. Or is that just depression? I dunno, I guess that’s just depression.

“But I don’t have to deal with all the shit you do, and you don’t have to deal with all the shit I do. But I’m telling you this because even though most people aren’t trying to be douchebags, people don’t get it. They’ll try, but they don’t. They can’t, or won’t.

“It’s only the twenty-first century, I guess is what I’m trying to say. Right-wing dipshits call people ‘triggered.’ Left-wing assholes call right-wing dipshits  ‘triggered.’ Pissing contest ad nauseum. And nobody really gets it. Nobody gets what ‘triggered’ is. And ‘maniac.’ Pretty universally an insult.”

Tony clumsily claps his shoulder, and Alexander starts, but then relaxes into the touch. “I get it. Maybe not the whole mania and depression schtick, but definitely the… the…” He waves his free hand, then clenches it and puts it down when the words don’t comply. “Yeah.”

“Yeah,” Alexander responds, smiling sadly. “I get it, too.”

They cooperatively play the animated Napoleon game, which turns out to be a world domination game (“Actually there are five victory paths in Civ—” “C’mon, man, world domination!”), Alexander and Tony teaching each other economics and physics respectively between turns, until the plane lands and they’re ready to race like they're running out of time.

Chapter Text

Sunday, October 25, 2015

(Is this exhaustion?

With your lips as dry as scorched parchment—taking words from your cotton-candied brain only half as well—and a baffling weight tugging at your aching shoulders and curiously alien arms as you wait for the airport train to elsewhere, standing in what feels like a sea of maple syrup, surely this must be exhaustion. With the sunlight, diffused to an awful glare through too much haze and too much glass, quickly becoming an item of your loathing; with your woolen head managing to throb with every heartbeat, this must be the depths of fatigue.

The doors slide open. When did the train arrive? Is this even the right train? You’d rather get lost than languish here in boredom another minute. You step on. Erik and Tony and Wanda follow you; this must be the right train. You see the handrail, and your hands grasp for it, fumbling through empty air with blurry eyes until you touch the cold metal—and something sticky. Gum, you note with disgust, how obnoxious; but you can hardly be bothered to adjust your grip. The train lurches and moves your hand for you so that only the top of your nail brushes the stuff. That’s close enough. It’s too warm to move here, and you’re too cold. You hurt. Even your fingers hurt, your whole index finger still covered in paper-cuts (why haven’t they healed?) and throbbing. There’s too much sunlight. It’s so much better with your eyes closed.

Is it still Sunday? What time is it? Where are you going? When will you arrive in Genosha? What’s the Plan? You’re bored and numb yet hurting, and you’d pinch yourself to see if you’re asleep, but moving is so damn hard, and you doubt your mind could conjure something so thoroughly uninteresting. Why does (did) Thomas Jefferson like it here?

“Alex,” says Tony, touching your shoulder.

You moan, mumble an apology, and shamble into the terminal, struggling to keep pace with the others. Has the resurrection finally gone wrong? Are you a zombie now? When you reach the gate, you collapse into one of the chairs and shut your eyes with a shuddering sigh. Then the loudspeakers announce it’s time for first class to board, and you join the masses of other lost souls condemned to hours here in hell.

The airport clamor becomes a hush and a low murmur. A chill inches down your spine, the beginnings of adrenaline humming at your fingertips. Footsteps clack behind, loud and overlapping: they march in tandem; they must be soldiers. What is this? Are your friends in danger? What is going on? You fear to turn at first—you’re more useful as an inconspicuous member of the crowd—but a young woman beside you is the first to swivel, and there is no gunshot. No blood blossoms on her pink sweater.

“Mister Stark!” cries a woman’s voice. “Mister Stark!”

“What?” Tony says.

You finally turn. Three men and three women of varying hues flank a tall, uniformed woman with honey-brown skin and silver front teeth. She advances and stammers out a half-coherent English sentence, biting her lip and wringing her hands with obvious embarrassment. “Je peux parler français,” you say. She straightens and introduces herself as général de brigade Valérie Duchenne, commander of Groupe d’intervention de la Gendarmerie nationale, or GIGN, and explains the situation.

A group of radical anarchists have taken hostages in the Paris Métro. They have a biochemical weapon, which they have threatened to use if their impossible demands—the president’s and prime minister’s dead bodies—are unmet. The first GIGN squad she sent perished to the strange device, and she now requests the Avengers’ aid lest the terrorists force officials to evacuate the entirety of Paris.

You haven’t even fully interpreted when Tony says, “FRIDAY,” and holds out his palm. Within half a minute, metal suit-pieces rocket down the hallway, evading wide-eyed civilians, and armor him. Wanda glows with red light. Duchenne smiles, pleased.

Erik says, “Général, j’ai servi comme traducteur militaire en Afghanistan. Si je peux être utile, mon expérience—”

You interrupt and sharply lie that, like Erik, you served as a military interpreter in Afghanistan among US forces, and you would be happy to be of service—

“Alex,” says Iron Man seriously. “No.”

He must be Josephus Rex. But this is not a laughing matter, and lo! you find yourself drawn into Argument with a half-fried brain and less than five hours of sleep—in the last four days. “‘No’? What do you mean, ‘no’? Don’t say no, you don’t get to say no! Paris is endangered, and I’m more than proficient in this particular—”

“You’d get in the way,” Erik interjects.

“Yeah, you say that now, but despite my fuzzy memory, I distinctly recall you felt differently when you and Director Fury insisted I accompany you on a mission whose mangling would result in an international mess and for which I’ve fewer qualifications, lest I bereave myself of honor—”

Wanda says, “We need you to identify artifact and handle ring. You’re sick right now. It’s too much risk. We’ll drop you at a café, okay? Save your strength. Stay alive.”

They’re right, of course; it’s only pragmatic. But you don’t like it.

You sprint alongside them. Adrenaline hits your veins and blood rushes to your head. You run alongside Erik. Your muscles coil and spring, hands swinging at your side, brain surging back into its usual rigor and the mode of combat.

This isn’t true exhaustion, then. And unlike your friends, you consider ruefully, you won’t learn what is.)

CNN Breaking News @cnnbrk
Terrorists claim to have chemical weapons that will “make Paris air lethal” cnn.it/0hHsH1t

Superwatch @SuperNewsNetwork
The #Avengers spotted in Paris! / Les #Avengers vu à Paris! http://bit.ly/H4mBASh

Steve Rogers @realCaptainAmerica
@Iron_Man @TheScarlettWitch Godspeed. Wishing you the best from across the Pond. 

#ParisCrisis #PrayForParis

CNN Breaking News @cnnbrk
Paris attackers deliver ultimatum: “Give us president and prime minister or you will be exterminated” cnn.it/mUc5w0w

FRIDAY @tgif_ai
Hello. I am FRIDAY, @Iron_Man ’s friendly AI. Tweet updates on the crisis in Paris to @tgif_ai . #ParisCrisis

FRIDAY @tgif_ai
Bonjour. Je suis FRIDAY, AI amical de @Iron_Man . Tweetez actualités à jour sur la crise en Paris pour @tgif_ai . #ParisCrisis #CriseDeParis

Audrey Aveline @audreyaveline
@tgif_ai THIS IS AMERICA. SPEAK ENGLISH #MAGA

Audrey Aveline @audreyaveline
INB4 “Mohammed el-Mohammed’s motives remain unclear” bc MSM rejects reality when it doesn’t suit there narrative #ParisCrisis #MAGA

mohammed al-hashmi @hashtheflash
@audreyaveline *their. maybe learn english before telling ppl in other countries to. ;)

Industrial smoke engulfs the scion of Monticello’s venerated Paris. The swirling miasma’s arch over the sky is the city’s real Arc de Triomphe, a tribute to the revolution which shaped the world—its economies, its environment, its destiny—more than the radicals and their reign of terror ever could, and the thickly shrouded Eiffel Tower stands like a proud middle finger to the agrarian oligarch and his detestation of the age of fire and steel. But as the murk creeps down the acid-rain washed, car-clotted roads on toxic haunches, its ghastly fingers grasping cobbled paths and vine-veiled shops, Alexander Hamilton gags, eighteenth-century lungs seizing under the strain, and prays the Divinity’s forgiveness for this filth.

He chokes on his water (he has despaired of the efficacy of coffee and orange juice), and  when he breathes, he coughs, gripping the glass and metal-wicker table. Fellow cafe-goers stare. He blushes, but can’t do anything to stem the fit or the embarrassment. The anarchists have either constructed or obtained a weapon that will convert the area’s pollution to something lethal, but already his windpipe refuses the air as though it’s poison. When Alexander recaptures his treacherous body from the impulse to sputter, he takes a few cautious breaths, aching fist still pressed to his lips.

He sits back from Tony’s laptop—on which Alexander is presently withdrawing a portion of his invasion force from France after Communist George Washington backstabbed and invaded his nation—and listens. A few feet below ground and to the east, his friends are fighting for their lives and the fate of Paris. Amid honking horns, wheels against wet pavement, chirping birds, and all the other sounds native to the city, there’s chatter of Twitter, murmurs of possible evacuation, and a few excited gasps of “Les Avengers!”. But Alexander hears nothing to indicate an ongoing battle—save the disheartening sound of losing scores of units to a nuclear weapon on his game.

His phone vibrates.

Darcy Lewis: Hey, Alex. I heard about what happened with the telepath. How are you feeling? Are you ok? FRIDAY keeps this line secure so if you need to talk just let me know. Stay safe in Paris! – Darcy

Alexander Hamilton: Hey Darcy, thanks for asking: your concern means a great deal to me. Im alright, seemingly no depression/mania/godawful admixture, tho Im exhausted and my brain feels like cotton shrouded in wool; consecuently the avengers wont accept my assistance
AH: *consequently. Gadzoods

DL: ?

AH: ??

DL: ‘gadzoods’?

AH: aye you wouldnt know that one. Tis a mild oath, minced “God’s wounds”; it means something like present-day “dammit” in an era where “dammit” was more like a modern “fuck”
AH: Anyway Ive faith the Avengers shall succeed but theres nothing I can do to help. Presently Im awaiting news at a café downtown and occupying myself with something called Civilization 5.

DL: love that game. which civ?

AH: Is it not obvious? Alexander the Great =P

DL: stupid question haha XDD

AH: hey, I don’t believe in stupid questions

DL: “If Obama was actually Kenyan, could he constitutionally carry the Ring to Mustafar?”

AH: … 
AH: I see I was mistaken.
AH: (incidentally yes, assuming it’s necessary and proper)

DL: speaking of star wars, youve had a busy week. have u seen new force awakens trailer? came out this week

AH: what.
AH: no.
AH: I was on twitter and reddit this whole time. How did I miss this.

DL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGbxmsDFVnE
DL: enjoy. hope it makes u feel better

CNN Breaking News @cnnbrk
French authorities call for evacuation of downtown Paris: cnn.it/B1gBo0m

Alexander Hamilton: Oh no. Good God no. Han Solo is going to die.

Darcy Lewis: what
DL: no no he isnt

AH: Think about it.

DL: ???????????

AH: 1. Han is the only one of the main three prominently featured on the poster and in any other promotional material, and in the trailer, he’s the one explaining the Force. Thus, he’s very probably the mentor of this trilogy, which implies he is to die in the first movie. Luke and Leia will likely take up his torch as mentor, and die also as the series progresses.
AH: It’s like poetry. It rhymes.
AH: 2. Doesn’t Harrison Ford hate the role?

DL: NOOOOOOOOOO
DL: ur right that makes too much sense
DL: ARRGH

AH: I wonder what the new political system of the Republic is and whether Leia remains a prominent founding figure. Further the government needs to be significantly more federalized

There’s a FLASH! of light and a CLAP! of thunder; the WHOOSH! of an explosion. Alexander jumps from his seat: a mass of smoke rises from a gaping crevasse in the road, belching sparks and inky clouds.

Thunderstorm.

Alexander clenches his hands. There are moans. There are bodies and charred pieces of bodies lying in piles of ash and blood. A child wails. These are facts. But he will not panic.

Succour the miserable and lay up a treasure in Heaven.

Erik lies prostrated in a pile of rubble; the cloud engulfs him. Alexander vaults out of the patio into the street, rushes toward the groaning interpreter, and tugs him from the mist—

Lightning sings; green meets crimson.

Beads and beams of fire and light growl and crisscross, brighter than the sun, hotter than any summer. Alexander springs back from the seared scent of blood and thunder before he feels flames shriek from shoulder to wrist.

After checking Erik’s pulse—it’s steady—with his good hand, he peeks up behind him. Wanda stands near the edge of the firestorm, red threads curling in a dome around the lightning and flames and plasma from her raised fingertips. Iron Man, one arm around a squinting Duchenne and the other around an unconscious soldier, stands untouched outside the dome.

“You alright?” Iron Man says; it’s a shout over the screech of electricity.

“I’m—I’m okay,” the witch stammers.

“Good. That gets out, it’ll vaporize Paris. And don’t look at it,” he instructs. “It releases UV rays—you will get sunburns on your eyes. Y’know I had that from welding once, it’s exactly as bad as it sounds.”

Grimacing, Alexander turns away. He tries to exhale his panic, but his traitor lungs gasp for more breath, and he can’t manage a steady sigh. It sounds more like music than a thunderstorm, he thinks. The Avengers will stop this. You don’t have to be afraid.

Anguish blazes again in his arm. He can’t stop himself from looking. His heart flops. His stomach knots. His mouth goes dry. From shoulder to hand, the flesh is unnaturally red and leathery. The fingers already swell with blisters.

You’ve seen burns, Alex, he tells himself. Don’t you vomit again. Don’t you dare. His body trembles, though; it truly is a vile thing. He’d recoil from himself if he could. Stop. Stop it. You’re alright, man, you’re alright.

“The hostages got out safely?” says Tony to Duchenne. Alexander translates with shaking lips, and she nods, to which Iron Man responds, “Good, because it’s the surface of the sun in there.” He gestures to the blinding half-sphere. “Alex, was anyone standing there before the explosion?”

Alexander reexamines the dome. Where has his near eidetic genius gone? He doesn’t remember. His fuzzy brain recalls images of a man, woman, and presumably their child walking there, but he glances behind and sees them huddling, the woman tugging the screaming boy’s hoodie down over his eyes.

“No,” Alexander says at last, his voice a rasp. He can hardly speak with his rebel lungs. You gave Seabury a mouthful, Alex. C’mon, man, you can do this. “There were cars which may have been occupied, so I cannot say for certain, but there were no people visible.” Then he pauses. “Surface of the sun,” he repeats, and he gestures to his wound. “Why am I not dead?”

After Tony’s inevitable “Good question” there’s a small chorus of variations on “holy shit that’s a bad burn”, to which Alexander responds, “I’ve noticed, thanks” in French and English. Erik moans, barks a gruff “Get off me” which precedes begrudging gratitude when he stands and sees the awful charred flesh. He thanks Alexander for his sacrifice.

His sacrifice? What sacrifice? It wasn’t sacrifice; it was instinct. In the chaos, he didn’t give thought to his own life, and as such he was hardly so noble as to consider sacrificing it. Alexander doesn’t think Erik needs to know any of this, but he feels he ought to respond.

Wanda saves him from having to when she hisses, “Please.”

Anxiety does not preclude the instinct to aid a fellow being. Alexander tries to stand, but his feet are numb and the attempt dizzies him. He crouches. “Please what? How may we be of service?”

She bites out, “I need to focus—”

The storm brightens. Her eyes glow. An effort rends a battlecry from her lips, and in a burst of light she falls to her knees and presses a palm against the ash-dusted road. The witch trembles. She shrugs as if to reposition some great burden.

“Wanda,” says Erik. “Do you need—”

The dome flickers.

Erik bounds forward. He thrusts out his palm.

Electricity shrieks. Thunder roars.

There’s another CRACK! and for a moment Alexander thinks the sound must have split his skull. The blaze subsumes all. He can’t see. He closes his eyes. The shine flares.

Erik cries out—

And the light dims.

The snarling fades to a low hum, and then vanishes completely. When Alexander opens his eyes, Erik staggers toward them, Wanda’s dome behind him. It’s empty; it wards away only ash and molten metal.

FRIDAY @tgif_ai 
Paris threat has been neutralized. No hostage casualties. Thank you to all who tweeted information. #ParisCrisis

Sky News @SkyNews
GIGN (Groupe d’intervention de la Gendarmerie nationale) reports #ParisCrisis ended with no civilian casualties. 

Superwatch @SuperNewsNetwork
Alex Faucette and Erik Lehnsherr spotted with Avengers in Paris bit.ly/W0hDud3

a-jedi-in-ba-sing-se    fucknobronymisogynism

…

im on vacation in paris and i got a selfie with alex faucette and erik lehnsherr and the avengers near the explosion alex saved erik and erik saved the city and alex really does look like the guy on the 10$ bill

Ok, maybe the history nerds here think it’s funny to just say “hahaha Alex Faucette is totally Hamilton” but seriously who is this guy. He just showed up one day and started hanging with the Avengers. HOW??? who’d he have to kill? who was he before that??? and WHERE ARE THE AVENGERS GOING? thoughts? @superwatch @fuckyeahavengers @super-speculations

Alexander Hamilton: Been in paris two hours & second/third degree elwctrival burns on dominant hand ~(>_<~) getting antibacteral treamen & dressing @ hospital then  to genosha

Darcy Lewis: omg
DL: plz stop getting hurt
DL: r u ok?

AH: I mean  my pain receptors are functional

DL: will u be ok?

AH: Tis healiing with supernatu ral rapidty but seems toll my energy. As a consequence of seroquel & lamictal &, you know, a goddam seizure already Im in great want of sleep & cant write easly .  ¯\_( ツ )_/¯  I think Ill be alright thans for the concern it means a gr eat deal to me

DL: tbh i was worried about u when u were dead so
DL: concern is automatic so
DL: Take care of yourself. get well soon

AH: I shall try (;-‸-)o 尸

For Alexander, the panic—and its lurid, visceral world where footfalls are thunder and clouds are hurricanes—shifts to agony and exhaustion. But even as they board the second plane, Tony trembles. It’s a subtle, skillfully masked anxiety, but Alexander can’t help but note the way the billionaire’s hands quaver as he accepts the glass from the flustered flight attendant. Tony downs the spirit like medicine.

Alexander raises a hand, wincing when his bandages shift. At this rate, the wound will probably be fully healed by tomorrow, but at the moment, the skin stings.

“Quoi?” says the attendant.

“Je prends—”

Tony gulps and slams the glass on his tray. “No alcohol.”

“What?” Alexander splutters.

“One, Strange said it could be a mania or depression trigger,” says Tony. “Two, alcohol’s bad with seroquel, it’s bad with lamictal, it’s bad with bipolar, and it’s very, very bad with all three of them.”

“But—” Take care of yourself. “Thé chaud, s’il vous plaît.”

“Oui, monsieur,” says the flight attendant.

“Is that alcoholic?” demands Tony.

“It’s hot tea,” Alexander responds, prompting another round of teasing about his Britishness and a grin from Wanda across the aisle. Once the plane is in the skies, Tony introduces Alexander to Avatar: The Last Airbender. It’s a children’s show, but Tony is horrified when he discovers it’s not on Darcy’s list of necessities. The first season is compelling enough to keep Alexander and Tony awake (or maybe that’s Erik’s snoring) and sway Wanda to lean across the aisle, crane her neck, and watch.

When the season finale is over, Alexander asks, “Was this adapted into a movie? A live-action edition, lacking the initial stigma of ‘children’s show,’ could be both lucrative and sublime.”

Wanda yawns. She stretches. “I think? There’s a movie Avatar.”

Tony blanches. “James Cameron, yeah, that’s different. But,” he says in a faux growl, “there has never been a Last Airbender movie.”

Alexander quirks an eyebrow. “Something tells me there has been.”

“Nope,” Tony says.

Erik snorts loudly enough to elicit cries of surprise from passengers, jolts himself into the plane window, and rubs his forehead. Wanda elbows his ribs, and he sighs back into sleep.

“Okay, man, but if you don’t wanna be candid, I’m just gonna ask FRIDAY,” Alexander warns.

“Rules of the Tower.” Glancing back and forth between them, Tony stage-whispers, “That movie doesn’t exist.”

super-speculations    a-jedi-in-ba-sing-se

…

Ok, maybe the history fangirls here think it’s funny to just say “hahaha Alex Faucette is totally Hamilton” but seriously who is this guy. He just showed up one day and started hanging with the Avengers. HOW??? who’d he have to kill? who was he before that??? and WHERE ARE THE AVENGERS GOING? thoughts? @superwatch @fuckyeahavengers @super-speculations

Honestly? I think he could be Alexander Hamilton.

I am dead serious. Hear me out.

We’ll start with the obvious. He looks like Alexander Hamilton. Portraits of Hamilton are inconsistent, but there are some features that we know for sure: deep set blue/violet eyes (check), hooded lids (check), sanpaku (check - for those of you who don’t know, this means you can see the lower whites of his eyes, which means according to Japanese superstition, he’ll suffer a tragic fate - like Lincoln, JFK, & Marilyn Monroe), Roman/aquiline nose (check), high cheekbones (check), wide-ish mouth (check), large-ish chin (check), 5’7”-ish (check - he’s about an inch and a half shorter than Tony Stark), Scottish complexion (check), light auburn hair (check).

Be honest: if Alexander Hamilton wasn’t dead, and I asked you, “Is this guy  Alexander Hamilton?”, would you say “yes”?

“But Hamilton is dead,” you protest.

I am not disputing that. But this is where things get interesting.

TL;DR: The Avengers reanimated Alexander Hamilton in order to get the facts on some Nic Cage National Treasure bullshit, “Alex Faucette” is in fact an undead thrall with some apparent level of consciousness, individuality, and will, and I have strong circumstantial evidence to prove it.

Read More

Frosted peaks encircle the roiling foam, the white rim of the white bowl of mist like milk. The plane trawls its shadow, then skims the surface, then sinks and plummets; they’re falling faster now, the clouds less milk, more quicksand. Crystals crawl on the window beyond the ghost of Alexander’s breath. Beneath them, bright lights emerge and glitter in the ice, then crystalize into a city: Tal-Jalid, Genosha. The acropolis built upon the frozen mesa, a relic of Bronze Age high culture in the shadow of fiery Mt. Hamar, where ancient Wakandan pilgrims smelted vibranium idols for temples time forgot, today towers on nature’s primordial pillars, high above the skyscraper sprawl. The mountain range and mesa, their mansions, and their ski resorts dip into palm-speckled foothills, and the metropolitan skyline of Greater Alma-Tariq, population twenty-two million, the African Lion to rival the Four Asian Dragons, frames the harbor beyond.

The plane kisses the ground; the cabin rattles; the wheels squeak. They land at an island airport blanketed by sleet and snow and freezing rain. It’s afternoon in New York, but it’s night here, and even if the sun still shone, Alexander would be ready to sleep. Not even the gelid jetway rouses him. Tony keeps Alexander awake with banter and politics, which is easy: Genosha is an “anarchist state” where the largest companies have a seat in the “government”—or in other words a hopelessly corrupt corporatist plutocracy.

“Laissez-faire is feudalism,” Alexander says harshly, setting his suitcase up to roll, when he finishes chasing his luggage in tired circles around the conveyor belt. “And moreover, it’s neither fair nor sustainable.”

Tony blinks. “You sound like Bernie Sanders.”

“No I don’t! Seriously. Screw liberalism.”

“You mean economic liberalism.”

“Yeah.”

“You mean there should be more state-owned industry and government regulation.”

“I mean exactly that.”

A rolling suitcase in each hand, Wanda says, “Then you sound like Bernie Sanders,” as she passes the pair and strolls toward customs.

Alexander says, “Oh,” and he, Tony, and Erik follow the interpreter.

Once through customs—whose existence Alexander finds ludicrous in a so-called anarchy—they take a series of elevators down to the underground train station. The magnetically suspended, mostly-empty monorail from Tal-Jalid to Alma-Tariq is a sublimely smooth ride, painted and constructed to look like something straight out of Star Wars. While Tony and Alexander geek out over the technology’s utilitarian yet gorgeous design, Erik grips a handrail, stretches, and closes his eyes in apparent rapture.

“Do you and the magnets need a moment?” Tony jokes.

Alexander chortles tiredly. Erik’s expression flickers between amusement, resignation, and rage, but he never really has to choose: when Wanda exclaims “Look, the city!”, they race to the front of the train car to see the great metropolis as they emerge from the tunnel.

From a distance, the conurbation is glass, steel, and prosperity. Bridges meld modern and neoclassical architecture. Cars flit about on brand new freeways. The Genoshan skyrail gleams between the towers. Near the car windows, tropical trees and blossoms paint the world in technicolor. But the train weaves through cardboard villages and junkyard towns. They see, in flickers like photographs, naked urchins and bloodied bands of scavengers who halt and stare. Those desperate eyes are brimstone waiting to be gunpowder. The train squeals into the station, and they step out into the rain-washed, muggy streets of downtown, lavish Alma-Tariq. Alexander inhales the wet city scent of diesel and petrichor, but he can’t forget those eyes. Of course not—he sees them in shop windows and the puddles beneath his feet. Eyes forward, he marches on.

“Tony,” murmurs Erik as they walk. “Alexander. Wanda. I know you were joking but—please. Do not mention my… condition. When the Taliban captured me and my mother, it wasn’t enough to—well. They sent us here. To scientists. And they—it doesn’t matter. But I’ve heard rumors—disappearances—experimentation—”

“You’re with the United States,” Tony interjects. “And you’re with the Avengers, and you’re with me.”

“We all must be careful,” Erik argues. “Wanda’s famous, publicly out of the closet. Wealth and status won’t protect us here.”

Alexander holds his tongue, but he’s very sure Erik is wrong.

A limo and a bearded, friendly driver, holding a sign that reads Stark, await them another block down. Inside, it’s all leather and tinted windows and iced cocktails. Somewhere between the doors closing and the engine’s rumble, Alexander burrows his face against something warm. The something turns out to squirm in protest, and the protests turn out to be from Tony, but Alexander doesn’t care. He mumbles something to the effect of “Dude, I’m from the eighteenth century, this is ‘normal bro stuff,’ just chill” and closes his eyes against the billionaire’s shoulder. Tony awkwardly pats his back, and that’s that.

cicero-esquire    super-speculations

…

Honestly? I think he could be Alexander Hamilton.

I am dead serious. Hear me out.

We’ll start with the obvious. He looks like Alexander Hamilton. Portraits of Hamilton are inconsistent, but there are some features that we know for sure: deep set blue/violet eyes (check), hooded lids (check), sanpaku (check - for those of you who don’t know, this means you can see the lower whites of his eyes, which means according to Japanese superstition, he’ll suffer tragedies from the outside world - like Lincoln, JFK, & Marilyn Monroe), Roman/aquiline nose (check), high cheekbones (check), wide-ish mouth (check), large-ish chin (check), 5’7”-ish (check - he’s about an inch and a half shorter than Tony Stark), light auburn hair (check).

Be honest: if Alexander Hamilton wasn’t dead, and I asked you, “Is this Alexander Hamilton?”, would you say “yes”?

“But Hamilton is dead,” you protest.

I am not disputing that. But this is where things get interesting.

TL;DR: The Avengers reanimated Alexander Hamilton in order to get the facts on some National Treasure bullshit, “Alex Faucette” is in fact an undead thrall with some apparent level of consciousness, individuality, and will, and I have strong circumstantial evidence to prove it.

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This reasoning is problematic. Where do I even start? In fact, were it not so flagrantly misogynist, cisnormative, culturally appropriating, and racist, it would be hilarious, and I hope for the sake of the human race that this is—offensive and horrifically inappropriate—satire. And as a friend of the Avengers? You’re completely wrong. Newsflash: we live in the real world.

First of all, your uses of the word “fangirl” have awful subtext. It’s not just that you assumed our genders. It’s that you bought into the stereotype of the danger and Otherness of female sexuality—the sexist idea that a woman’s sexuality is depraved and fanatic—while at the same time implying that because Hamilton is accomplished, we must want him sexually. This is patriarchy at its worst, and it’s frankly just gross.…

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Monday, October 26, 2015

Alexander rouses with closed eyes in the dark. It must be night, he thinks; he remembers work, groans, and shifts—then starts and bolts upright: these satin sheets are not his own. This is not the Tower. This is not home. He scans for threats, balls his fists, and gasps when his fingers burn. He stares down at the red flesh and swaddled arm, uncomprehending.

It’s morning, he reasons.

He blinks, once, twice, three times.

He should remember by now.

Why can’t he recall—?

The memories return in a blurred trickle that frightens him more than the void—the shocks, dammit, I am ruined—and then in a torrent. Alexander shakes his head and grapples for his phone. He dimly recalls falling asleep on Tony’s shoulder, shuddering awake, stumbling into a bedroom, deciphering Strange’s handwriting, taking medicine. He doesn’t remember drawing the curtains, but his phone says 11:22 a.m., and when he pulls the curtains back, there’s sunlight. He slept twelve hours. Why is he exhausted? Alexander does a quick calculation and supposes it’s the middle of the night in New York, but he thinks his traitor body has had enough sleep.

He takes his phone off airplane mode and awaits the flurry of notifications:

00:15 a.m. [Voicemail - Transcription (High Confidence, Courtesy of FRIDAY)]

555-431-2032: “Hi Alexander, this -- this is Dr. Isabella Kwan, your psychiatrist. You -- missed your appointment -- Friday, and a Dr. Strange called, he explained your situation. If you need to talk between now and your return home, we can set up a video appointment with a HIPAA-compliant service. You can reach me at 555-431-2032. Thank you, bye-bye.”

04:44 a.m.

Darcy Lewis: hey so i hope i’m not bothering you but the super-speculations blog on tumblr got really really close to the truth and the super-speculations blog is really really popular
DL: so i used my blog to dispel the rumors but unfortunately i just realized it might look like a coverup
DL: oops? i accused them of being racist and sexist and heteronormative and transphobic and homophobic and such so hopefully the inevitable tumblr outrage will be enough… it worked to kick John Green off tumblr. But idk, if it gets big the meninists on reddit might get involved, and then buzzfeed will know, then game over :/

10:54 a.m.

Tony Stark: we all slept in. we’re meeting downstairs for brunch at 11:30 if you wanna join but no pressure. instructions for burn on nightstand if you still need it, fyi

Jaw clenched, Alexander peels the dressing from his arm to find the worst of the burn has healed, but bubbles and blisters stipple his fingers. He  squeezes a bead of prescription lotion onto his left palm, tentatively touches the burn to gauge the impending pain, and with a sigh of relief, lathers the cool salve on the wound. Then he finishes his morning routine and steps out of the room. Persian rugs, Olympian statues, golden Buddhas, Arabic calligraphy, Catholic tapestries, a Navajo sandpainting within a wall-clock, things from cultures he can only guess at decorate—borderline clutter—the mansion. Alexander wanders hallways until a flustered servant directs him to a patio overlooking the beach and the bay.

Clear skies stretch to the horizon, but clear skies can be treacherous. Alexander doesn’t trust the ocean. Doppler radar, rationality reminds him. He wrests his eyes from the sea.

The mutants sit at one side of a table overflowing with pastries, and Tony sits near the head beside an arresting strawberry-blonde—a businesswoman Alexander vaguely recognizes as Pepper Potts, the brilliant CEO of Stark Industries and independent California senatorial candidate. Alexander lets his eyes linger long enough to catch her gaze and smile. Then he directs his attention to the man at the head of the table. He’s rotund and swarthy, with blue lipstick, flamboyant golden eyelashes, and inhuman azure eyes: the irises are one solid color; they’re contacts.

“Ah!” The plump man claps his hands. With botox-stiffened lips, he continues in a northern English burr, “Goo-ood morning—can I call you Alex? Goo-ood morning, Alex, did you sleep well? You had one of my absolute favorite bedrooms, dead quiet, easy to sleep late, why, I’ve had guests who aren’t jet-lagged at all sleep past noon.”

Pepper rolls her eyes. Alexander exchanges a conspiratorial look with her, noting she dislikes idle rambling. (He’ll attempt intelligent rambling later; her reaction may determine whether even short-term compatibility is possible.)

“But don’t worry! Brunch was just served. Help yourself. Croissants are delicious, the dates are fantastic, pancakes are pancakes, and if you want more, you know, exotic scran for an American—you are American? Yeah, I think that’s right, welcome to Genosha!—we’ve got hummus, shakshuka, labneh, fit-fit—”

“Shawarma,” Tony interjects, holding up the sandwich. “We got shawarma.”

Alexander nods. “To whom do I owe my thanks, sir?”

“Oh. For-orgive me, that must’ve seemed so rude. My apologies.” He stands and offers a polite bow. “Silas Solanki. Welcome to my humble abode.”

“Alexander Faucette.” Alexander returns the bow. “Thank you for your hospitality.” Then he approaches Pepper Potts and the empty chair beside her. “And you, ma’am?” He takes a moment to genuinely smile. “I haven’t had the pleasure.”

“I’m Pepper. Pepper Potts,” she says.

Alexander offers his hand. Pepper straightens and takes it. He bends low, brushes his lips to her fingers, and, maintaining her gaze, watches her pupils dilate—then he notes Tony’s jealous glower over her shoulder.

Very carefully, Alexander does not start. He uses a simple “I’m Alex; it’s lovely to meet you” and “may I have a seat?” instead of the corny, romantic line on his tongue. He does a double- and triple-take of Tony’s expression as he seats himself, questions and denial brewing in his head.

Seriously?

Surely not.

But Tony is positioned between Pepper and Silas.

Maybe Tony has a crush on her.

But that knowing glance between them—!

No, of course this isn’t a scandal; perhaps they’ve disclosed it, and Alexander hasn’t noticed.

But the press would swarm. Tumblr would fawn and call Pepper a victim of internalized misogyny in equal measure. You’re not quite so unobservant, supplies Alexander’s brain. The relationship must be a secret. It must be purposely concealed. There must be something to hide.

Is there any way this doesn’t look like nepotism?

Are they aware of the potential impending destruction of Pepper’s fledgling political career?

Perhaps she’s wagered her appeal to the right will carry her through the primaries until America forgets, Alexander considers, until he remembers the probability of a moral majority outrage at what would be construed as Pepper’s “whoring.”

Brunch continues. Alexander is too shell-shocked and speculative to flirt properly, but he makes conversation. The food is fine, but the discussion consists of weather, sports, weather, and other things less interesting than a potential sex scandal, and so it’s half out of habit, half out of bored curiosity about Tony’s reaction that Alexander “incidentally” brushes Pepper’s hand when they reach for the same dish—

The blister stings.

He recoils. He hisses. He clutches the burnt hand

“Oh—oh my God,” says Pepper, wide-eyed. She turns to Tony with an accusing look Alexander has seen between spouses. She stammers out, “Did I—I didn’t burn you, did I?—that’s—that shouldn’t happen again—”

“No, no!” Alexander says, a little confused. How would she burn him? He decides to reassure her first and ask later. “It’s my fault; I should have known better: I burned it yesterday in Paris. Stood too close to what might as well have been the sun.”

Wanda says, “He saved Erik.”

Erik adds, “I saved her. And the city.”

Silas leans closer. “Alex, Pep, you should be the same temperature within a few degrees,” he says, uncanny blue contacts shining. “Why would you think that, Pep? I thought you were smarter than your usual blonde.”

Alexander stills. Tony looks ready to clock Silas on the jaw, but Pepper blinks. She puts a hand on Tony’s shoulder, gently pushes him back into his seat, and leans across the table. “Really,” she says flatly. “It’s a long story. I’m sure it’s not worth postponing business. And since you haven’t noticed, I’m a redhead.” Her tone is professional, but her expression says, Pray I don’t fulfill that stereotype.

“Oh,” says Silas. “My apologies. I’m colorblind, you know, and infinitely curious, me—Alex!” Silas claps his hands again. “Might as well have been the sun, you say? That—that must’ve been an awful burn. You hurt yourself quite often?”

“I—yeah, sure,” Alexander answers. “Adventure finds me, and though I try to balance my thirst for it with logic and utilitarianism… where it’s a matter of honor, I simply can’t decline.”

Silas rests his chin on folded palms. He widens his eyes as much as the botox will allow, but the result with those contacts is surreal rather than innocent. “You somehow manage to stay alive, though.”

“Nah, I tend to die. Tragic, really,” he deadpans.

The plump man’s lips tug into a lopsided sickle-shape. “Funny—but tell me about that burn,” he commands. “How’d it heal so very quickly?”

Alexander reels: Silas would ask too many questions about the magic; he hasn’t a Plan, he needs a quick Idea—

“I’m a mutant,” he blurts.

Erik chokes on his drink. Silas’ smile widens from sickle to half-moon. His teeth are paper-white. “Brilliant,” says Silas. “Isn’t that brilliant.” The smile disappears. “But it must be so lonely.”

“Oh.” With a faint smile, Alexander looks from Silas to Wanda to Erik. “No, actually—”

Someone kicks his shin. He winces and looks up. Wanda’s eyes are wide, her mouth firm. Erik is rigid, hands clenched around the edge of the metal table; the dishes vibrate. Oh, shit. Alexander would kick himself, too. And Silas’ chair is empty—

Fingers grip Alexander’s wrist. He recoils, but Silas puts a finger to his lips. Then the plump man lifts Alexander’s hand, scrutinizing it as he murmurs, “Fascinating, simply fascinating.”

“Silas,” Tony warns, but Silas stares at the wound, and brushes his fingers over a sore spot.

Alexander hisses, “Get your hands off me.”

“Silas, seriously,” says Tony. “Not funny. Stop.”

“Oh, are you uncomfortable, love?” Silas puts two fingers under Alexander’s jaw and presses upward; Alexander snarls, blood surging in his temples, adrenaline blazing through his core.

“My God, just let him go,” Pepper snaps.

But Silas doesn’t let him go. He cups his hand to the side of Alexander’s temple and stares, unblinking, into his eyes. “Why so uncomfortable, mate?”

“I told you,” Alexander says, “to get—” he slaps away Silas’ hands “—your hands off me!”

The plump man beams. “Abnormal aggression. Fantastic!”

Alexander bounds to his feet, teeth barred.

“Oh,” says Silas. “Dear me.”

Wanda makes a sound of disgust. “You coward,” she spits.

“Oh, my. Oh, my,” says Silas, shrinking away from the former general—and from a seething Erik. Red-faced and snarling, he leaps up and rants at the wilting fat man, who inches toward the glass doorway as the harangue crescendoes.

“You can’t force us to our knees—we’ll rise up and crush you like insects,” Erik sneers. “It’s mathematics; it’s destiny. Someday soon you’ll see our ascendancy. Our people will claim the Earth. And you. You will get out of our way or be destroyed.”

Silas reaches the door and slides it open. “Yes, yes, yes, dear me, dear me. How very, very rude of me to display curiosity.”

Curiosity? “Fuck off,” Alexander retorts.

“I’m afraid I must humbly beg your forgiveness." Palms pressed together, Silas bows his apology. “Now. Glad we got that sorted. But—but I’m afraid I must go, I’ve too much paperwork. I’m finalizing deals with three businesses today. Y'know, successful man like me. I’ll be quick. I promise. In the meantime, why don’t you go down to the beach?”

He smiles and backs off the patio. “Enjoy the clear skies.”

With that he shuts the door.

Chapter Text

The water is peaceful, but the water abrades. Alexander pauses mid-stroke and brushes bare toes to the sun-dappled tile; his curls billow up, and he shoves them aside to peer at himself. A month of exercise has sinewed his frame with a touch of definition he hasn’t had since the Revolution, he notes; more importantly, his forearm has healed completely. But his hand remains as irritated as blistered as it was this morning; the water stings.

Squinting through the chlorine blur, he springs to the surface below the ping-pong ball. For a moment he treads water and hums; the Bon Jovi beat is irresistible. “We’ll give it a shot!—ohh, we’re halfway there—ohhh-oh! Livin’ on a prayer!” Alexander sings, straining his baritone, although they aren’t: this is decidedly a billionaire’s pool—more than olympic sized, filled with ludicrously lavish floats, surrounded by loungers, electronics, and Tiki refreshment huts. The marble deck descends to crystal waters, made still by barrier islands, white sand, and mangroves.

He grabs the ball and swims back to the floating ping-pong table, where he finds Wanda waiting. “Alright,” says Alexander, paddle in his left hand, lightly gripping the ball in his right one. “I can do this.”

Wanda raises an eyebrow. “That is what you said last eleven times.”

“Have faith.” Alexander tosses the ball. Backhanded, he feigns a hard smack but serves short; Wanda lunges and chops the air, but the ball returns buoyed by light; he swipes and catches it, saying, “Hey! No telekinesis!”

“Where’s that in rulebook?” she teases.

He serves again. They rally, quickening with the crescendo of the guitar solo. Alexander belts out, “Ooh, we gotta hold on, ready or not! You live for the fight when that’s all that—dammit!” The ping-pong ball soars over his head. He hears the splash halfway across the pool and cringes. Wanda whoops in delight.

Erik slow-claps from a floating lounger, raising his slushy in a toast—and then the remote-controlled miniature aircraft-carrier spurts him with water. He lets out an unmanly yelp and scrambles to stay aboard. The carrier, complete with four drink holders, a bowl for watermelons, and a water cannon, has been Tony’s favorite pool toy since he tired of table-tennis, but now it’s Pepper cackling from the pair’s floating cabana. Erik shields his drink and tries—and fails—to divert the thing, muttering “C’mon, you’ve gotta have batteries or wires or something!” as he receives face-full after face-full of water.

“Isn’t water diamagnetic?” Tony calls.

“Yes,” Erik murmurs. “Yes, yes it is!” He outstretches his hand with the solemnity of Michelangelo’s Divinity creating Adam.

The water sprays his eyes.

Erik moans, “By God, science hates me.”

While Alexander and Wanda resume their match, Erik drains his slushy, nosedives from his float, and whirls his arms above the surface of the water, smashing his fist against it periodically, like he expects to intimidate the laws of physics. He kicks, flips, and flails. The water refuses him. Wanda wins two more matches before she turns to Erik. She clicks her tongue and glances to Alexander with a smirk. She slips beneath the water. The witch emerges behind Erik, summons swirls to her fingers, and copies his movements. Alexander squints. The realization wrests a snort from him, and he presses his fist to his smiling lips. In the cabana, Pepper claps a hand over Tony’s mouth.

The water moves; Erik shouts in victory.

“Eureka! I have done it!” he cries as a small wave moves with his push-and-pull. Wanda grins behind him, not at all surreptitiously winking at Alexander, who stifles another snort.

Tony plucks Pepper’s hand from his face, one stubborn finger at a time, and says, very unhelpfully, “I think ‘eureka’ means ‘I have found it,’ not ‘I have done it.’”

“Does it matter?” Erik complains.

“Yeah,” says Tony, “‘cuz it’s wrong. Hey Alex, do you know what—?”

“That would be ‘tetéleka,’” Alexander answers.

Erik scowls. “In ancient Greek, otherwise known as useless Greek, yes. Eureka. I have found it. I have found how to master the seas!” he exclaims. He lifts his outstretched palms, and Wanda mirrors him; the wave mounts, and he speaks: “I will not be defeated, not by those who would harm my people—least of all by water toys!”

He raises his hands.

The wave grows into a wall twice his height.

Erik nods his approval and smiles a scimitar.

Wanda pulls the water toward her.

“What?” says Erik. He thrusts out his hand to push back the water, but with a flick of Wanda’s wrist, it curls until it hangs over him. “No—!”

The wall collapses. The water roars a shockwave; Alexander shields his eyes. The current knocks him backward—it’s a pool, Alex, he reminds himself, for God’s sake you were just willingly underwater without fear—but not off his feet. The plastic cabana crackles. Pepper yells. Tony squeals and says “I did not squeal, I just spilled my beer, that was a completely normal reaction.”

When all is silent, Alexander cracks an eye open. Tony and Pepper struggle to right the capsized cabana. Erik, drenched, whirls to face Wanda.The witch cackles. Erik’s jaw drops. Muscles tense and bulge in his breast. His fists ball; cordage swells his in forearms.

He splashes her.

Wanda stops laughing. She sputters water. Erik laughs wickedly, grabs the edge of his pool float, and kicks. Wanda growls and sloshes water at him. Erik laughs again and kicks harder, and in seconds foam and geysers engulf the duo.

Alexander ducks underwater and swims under the water-dueling pair to help Tony and Pepper right the cabana. It isn’t heavy, but it’s bulky, and Tony, still struggling to keep what’s left of his beer above the water, only has one hand available.

“You should put the bottle down,” Alexander advises, and Tony does so.

Pepper huffs. “That’s literally what I said.” Her voice is thick with resentment.

“No,” says Tony, red-faced and shaking a finger, “you said, ‘why can’t you just put that down?’ like you were going to lecture me again, or, or—”

“That’s the same thing, Tony, and I wasn’t going to lecture you! Why do you always think that? What, can’t you just accept that sometimes I thought of something first?”

Yeah, they’re a couple, Alexander deduces, but he isn’t going to listen to this. He turns to Pepper and points. “Grab that corner,” he instructs. “Tony, take that one. You’re going to push this to the side, and I’ll pull it up from the deck. Ready?”

Once the cabana is upright, Tony goes to get another drink. Alexander and Pepper clamber in and crawl across the squeaky surface to lie opposite each other. The silence crescendoes, and Alexander remembers the splash fight; he glances, and he sees Wanda standing by Erik and manipulating the water while he grits his teeth and copies her movements.

“So,” says Pepper.

Alexander starts.

“Um.” She stares at her lap for a moment, then says, “You’ve studied ancient Greek.”

He grins. “Yeah, I pursued an education in the liberal arts before attending Columbia. I know Latin and French as well.” His phone buzzes.

Tony Stark: Pepper is my girlfriend, fyi. I have faith in her. But it’d probably be good for you to keep that in mind

“That’s cool,” Pepper says. “That’s really cool.” She crosses and uncrosses her ankles. “You know, I took French in college—”

“Vraiment? Allons-nous converser en français?”

“Oh… no. I have at least twelve thousand forty-two things on my brain at all times now and. Well. Bien que je comprends le français, je ne pas… je ne peux pas bien parler.” The phrase is garbled—just comprehensible enough that Alexander wants to correct her, but she saves him by saying, “And that is why I’m learning a language no one speaks.”

Alexander Hamilton: There is no attraction, I assure you. I swear to God I’m merely being friendly.

“Latin?” he guesses.

“Yeah.”

“Willingly?”

She laughs. “Mm-hm. It’s a hobby. I guess I’m a nerd now.”

“Pepper, if you’re a nerd, then nerd should be a compliment earnestly striven for,” Alexander replies, and in the silence after he holds her gaze—dammit, he curses silently. “I meant only to offer encouragement should it be that you’ve no teacher looming over your progress and enforcing your study. The mastery of Latin is trying, but if your interest is genuine, I assure you it’s worth the effort. To peruse the wisdom of the Romans in their native tongue is nothing short of exhilarating.”

“I’ve read Cicero. It’s like history’s talking to you.”

“Cicero mirandus est.”

She glares. “No one speaks Latin.”

“Ego latinum diceo.”

“No one else speaks Latin.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Natasha latinum dicet.”

“Point taken.”

Alexander Hamilton: Do you honestly not trust me?
Tony Stark: I’m sorry.

Alexander winces. Messy thoughts tangle in his intestines and bury thorns there. The pain summons the Stoics to mind. “Cicero mirandus est,” Alexander tells Pepper, “but have you read Aurelius? Although the meditations were penned in Greek, the Latin translation preserves that… that intangible mythic element.”

He takes a breath to don a rhetor’s voice. “Ignominia,” Alexander Hamilton orates, “ignominia te ipse affice, anime!” Self-harm, my soul, you are doing self-harm. Alexander continues in Latin: And you will have no more opportunity for self-respect. Life for each of us is a mere moment, and this life of yours is nearly over, while you show yourself no honor, but you let your own welfare depend on other people’s souls.

“You memorized that?” Pepper queries.

Alexander shrugs. “Yeah.”

Tony Stark: Look, the last flirt I trusted was Aldrich Killian—you might know him as the asshole who made a mutant brainwash Joe Biden. He kidnapped and tortured Pepper. He tried to weaponize her.
TS: Fuck him.
TS: I know you’re not that bastard.
TS: But in my world everything disappears if you turn your back for too long, and sometimes if you don’t.
TS: So. Don’t screw with me on this.

Alexander absorbs the confession. Then he puts his phone back in his pocket. “I memorized the Illiad, too,” he brags, without meaning to. He backpedals, or tries to: “For the liberal arts curriculum. I mean, memorization isn’t hard for me. I’ve been good at it since I was a kid. And though I don’t know the entirety of the Meditations, the principles of Stoicism have always appealed to me.”

“Epictetus is one of my favorite philosophers.”

“Me too!”

“Have you read Mills?” says Pepper.

“Of course. Utilitarianism and its beneficent rationalism is among my favorite philosophies,” says Alexander.

“I’m back,” says Tony’s voice.

Alexander jolts. The billionaire climbs from the deck into the cabana, or tries to: he slips on the wet rubber, and Alexander grabs his wrist and hoists him up. Tony crawls in and wraps an arm around Pepper. “I got a lemonade,” Tony informs her, proffering the unopened can.

Pepper narrows her eyes. “Nonalcoholic.”

“Nonalcoholic.” He nods. “You were right. I should be sober for the meeting with that creep.”

“Of course I was right.” Pepper swats his arm playfully. “Have you figured out how we’re gonna make him take us to Iran?”

“Yep. We’re gonna make him take us to Iran.” She says nothing, but her blink alone manages impressive disdain. “Have I ever not improvised?” Tony defends. “We’ll figure this out. I promise.” He presses his lips to her brow, and Pepper jolts, casting a frantic look at Alexander.

“I already know,” Alexander assures her.

“Oh,” Pepper says. Tony kisses Pepper’s forehead again. She snorts and rolls her eyes. The billionaire frowns. Hand on his chest, she teases, “You missed,” and pecks both corners of mouth; he smiles and rubs her nose with his, and Pepper kisses his lips.

The cabana drifts.

“I memorized Star Wars,” Pepper blurts.

Alexander stares.

She bites her lip. “It’s not as impressive as The Illiad, but—”

“Which episode?” asks Alexander.

“All of them,” Pepper answers, eyes alight.

“Not the prequels,” Tony interjects.

“True,” she concedes. “I paraphrase scenes from the prequels. But I know the originals word-for-word.”

Alexander beams. “That is magnificent!”

Meaningless speculation about the next Star Wars and how it will or will not adhere to the Hero’s Cycle segues into political discourse. Pepper babbles about neo-Keynesianism, economic stability, and her Plans for US fiscal year 2017. Alexander agrees and yaks about centralization, how to fix the European Union, and the possibility of a federal world authority with which to defend the planet within the next century; Pepper asks which model of global vote apportionment he prefers. There is so much consensus that it bores Tony, and he plays devil’s advocate—or rather Alexander hopes Tony plays devil’s advocate, because Potts and Hamilton are so obviously Correct he can’t comprehend how Stark could think them wrong.

Tony says, “Steve would hate this conversation.”

Alexander says, “Steve’s not here.”

Pepper says, “Watch out!”

A tidal wave capsizes the cabana. They splat. Alexander lingers underwater and watches his sigh rise up to the surface. He musters enough air to curse aloud and dive when he sees his fallen, luckily waterproof Starkphone on the floor. When he emerges alongside Tony—who is cursing like a sailor over his spilled lemonade—and Pepper—who stands proud and tall with arms crossed, but who, he notes bitterly, is at least an inch taller than Alexander—waves still lash the walls and splash onto the concrete.

“Tetéleka!” cries Erik. “I have done it!”

Wanda high-fives him.

“See?” says Tony. “I was right. Well, the laws of nature were right. Same thing.”

Pepper strokes her chin. “I wonder if he could rip blood from the body.”

“Hm. Considering blood’s iron content, that sounds plausible,” Alexander muses. He meets her eyes with a smirk and macabre camaraderie.

“Impressive,” drawls a newcomer. A blonde, middle-aged maid, Texan by her voice, stands on the deck, a tray of drinks in one white-gloved hand, a smartphone held up in the other. She frowns in Erik’s general direction. “But I must ask you not to splash so much water outta the pool.”

Erik starts forward—

Wanda grabs his arm. “We’re sorry—we did not think.”

The maid stares at her image in the phone and dabs at an infinitesimal flaw in her ruby lipstick. She shrugs. “Ms. Potts. Mr. Stark. It’s two thirty. Mr. Solanki will be ready in fifteen minutes. Why don’t you take some time to prepare?”

“Oh! Yes,” Pepper says. She looks at Tony. “Ready?”

“Let’s do this, baby.” He takes her hand. She leads him out of the pool. The maid offers drinks and chocolate-covered ice-cream bites, and the remaining trio scrambles ashore. They grab towels and dry quickly. At the threshold of the mansion, Pepper and Tony turn, bid adieu, and disappear inside.

The Associated Press @AP
BREAKING: Powerful earthquake felt in Pakistan’s capital.

The Associated Press @AP
BREAKING: People run out of buildings as strong tremor is felt across northern India.

The Associated Press @AP
The Latest on South Asian quake: 7.7-magnitude earthquake in Afghanistan felt across South Asia: apne.ws/1kH4YAy

Sam Wilson @The_Falc0n
@realCaptainAmerica , @Natashinator , & I are headed to Kabul to assist with humanitarian aid. Stay safe! #SouthAsiaQuake

FRIDAY @tgif_ai
Hello. I am FRIDAY, @Iron_Man ’s friendly AI. Tweet updates on the South Asian quake to @tgif_ai .

Melting fudge and ice-cream dribbles down the side of the drink as Alexander takes his first sip. The flavor is a burst of coconut, kiwi, alcohol, and something so sickening he reconsiders—and promptly spits it onto the concrete, with enough force to nearly knock him into the pool, as the memory floods back to him. No alcohol with seroquel, he remembers.

“Can’t hold your liquor?” asks Erik beside him. They all sit on the edge of the pool, dangling their feet in the water, kicking at it like children intermittently; Wanda reads her phone, periodically announcing interesting headlines on Reddit.

“No,” Alexander says, “I—”

“No, you can’t hold your liquor?”

“This tastes of the maudlin chemicals in Fury’s sadistic smarties and M&Ms.”

Erik smirks. “You mean S&Ms.”

“Ha.” Alexander sighs. “And no, I can’t hold my liquor. It’s incompatible with Dr. Strange’s prescription.”

“Damn,” Erik says, chewing his straw. He stares out at the pool and the mountain over the roof of the courtyard, and he takes another long sip. Alexander is unused to the visceral envy that follows. When he decides he wants something, he’s accustomed to gaining it, if through sweat, blood, tears. But he can’t have the drink. No amount of determination will change that.

“Oh no,” says Wanda.

“What?” chorus Erik and Alexander. They don’t bother to exchange glares.

Wanda wilts. “There was big earthquake in Afghanistan. The Avengers are on their way, but—7.7 magnitude. India felt it. There will be fatalities.” She turns to Erik. “Are you okay?”

He scowls. “Is there a tsunami on its way to Genosha?”

Wanda says, “No.”

“Did it affect Iran?”

“No.”

“Then yes. I’m okay.” Erik huffs and holds up his drink. “Look. The Taliban might kill us for drinking this. If they didn’t kill me for being an atheist.” Alexander starts—‘professed atheist’ meant ‘probable radical anarchist’ to him only a month ago—but says nothing. The world has changed. “Actually,” Erik says, “they’d kill you and me for existing. Alex for blabbing.”

Alexander sounds a wordless protest and opens his mouth. He blinks. He closes his mouth.

Erik says, “Mutants are my people. I used to think the US or Germany could provide a homeland, so I learned English. Spent weeks bargaining for every book and movie and magazine I could get my hands on and signed up to help NATO troops, got American green card eligibility.” He snorts. “‘Land of the free.’ God. Until the Americans prove me wrong, or until mutants have their own society? I have no country.”

He pauses. “But thank you for asking.”

“I’m just…” Wanda purses her lips and grips the edge of the deck. “Just trying to be nice.” She shrugs.

Alexander stares at the contrail of a descending airplane between two mountains, trying to parse the silence and ignore the uncomfortable feeling in his gut. “I’ll prove you wrong,” Alexander declares eventually.

“Humans aren’t all like you,” Erik protests.

“Those humans aren’t Founding Fathers,” he counters.

“You’ve been complaining that Obama’s not listening to you,” Wanda interjects. “Which makes sense? You argued America should weaken military influence—”

“No, I argued the drone program was counterproductive to US influence and based upon a wholly outdated premise, therefore unnecessary, therefore not even Machiavellian, just stupid—”

“We agree with you!” she interrupts, hands waving like flags in surrender, and Alexander manages to hush himself. But Erik makes a face. Wanda frowns at him. She looks back at Alexander and offers a friendly smile. “Well. At least I agree with you. Erik, I thought you—?”

“Would a Jew weep for bickering Nazis?” Erik snaps. “I don’t care if humans sow chaos among themselves. Let them. I don’t care.”

Wanda exhales. “You said counterproductive and stupid. But what president heard,” she argues, “is ‘weaken military.’ It isn’t enough to be ‘right.’ Not when you want to change something. You have to think about what people hear.”

“I will not soften my sentiments for the sake of sensibilities,” Alexander rejoins.

“Then people won’t hear you,” says Wanda. She pauses. Then she shakes her head, stands, and announces, “I’m going to get, um, I think it’s called snow-cone? I saw machine over there. It’s hot out here.” She crosses to the other side of the pool and disappears behind absurdly tall rosebushes and palm trees.

Although the conversation is strange without her quiet presence, they manage to be productive: FRIDAY pulls up the schematics of Silas’ several private jets, and the two men discuss strategies for stowing away aboard each one once Tony gives the signal. But there’s little to say—they won’t know for sure which strategy will be needed until it’s time to board—and they lapse into silence.

After awhile, Alexander asks, “What’s a snow-cone?”

“Crushed ice with syrup and food coloring.”

“How long should it take to make?”

“No idea.”

“Want one?”

“Not really. I had one once. Bad idea. It was cold outside. Ice got stuck in my teeth. It was so cold it stayed there. Minute long brain freeze.”

Alexander winces in sympathy. “It’s not cold out here.”

“Bad memories,” yawns Erik.

“Nevertheless I’d like to try one.” Alexander stands, stretches, and strolls to the other side. Humming a low harmony with Eye of the Tiger, he pours his untouched drink in the rosebushes, and inwardly he preens, a little: he has not only acclimated himself to modern music and Tony’s 80’s playlist, he’s also managed to remember something and take care of himself. When he’s preened a lot, he scans for Wanda through the bushes.

The plastic cup hits the deck.

She isn’t there.

Maybe she’s alright, his brain rationalizes. The cup groans as it rolls toward the pool. Her bikini is the same color as the flowers.

The rest of her isn’t, Alexander retorts.

There’s a little splash—his cup. He ignores the little splash and darts around the plants.

Wanda lies on the concrete, twitching. She’s paper white and looks paper frail, her knees and forearms oozing blood. Alexander kneels and shakes her.  “Wanda!” he says. She moans. Her head jolts toward the pavement. He shuffles around until he can cradle her head against his chest. “Wanda. Wanda. Wanda! Can you wake up?”

“I’m awake,” she rasps. He sees the whites of her eyes.

“Sh, hey, hey. Sh, it’s alright, save your strength,” Alexander says. She murmurs nonsense about coffee, fish, and sunbeams, and he realizes the music has gone silent.

There’s another little splash.

Alexander freezes. On the other side of the pool, Erik lies prone, his cheek against the concrete, his cup bobbing in the water.

Time at once accelerates and stutters to a crawl. The residue of Alexander’s drink—the only one left untouched—feels sticky against his skin; the faint but cloying taste of chemicals claws up his throat.

Poison.

He pushes himself up into a crouch. I’ll fight them off, he decides. He needs a weapon. Tony’s empty beer bottle sits near the edge of the pool. There’s a cooler on the other side, stashed with still-full glasses that could bruise enemy skin—

Modern tactics, he thinks. Hand on his pocketed phone, he whispers, “Hey, FRIDAY.”

There’s no reply. He’s all alone—

Laughter rings over the sound of footsteps. His heart leaps to join the bile in his throat. Alexander peeks around the rosebush. A duo in white coats and the blonde maid, now sporting a lab coat of her own, emerge onto the deck. The shortest of them, a Tamil man with a frazzled mop of black hair, clumsily rolls something like a cooler behind him. How tall is the man? He’s probably five-eight or five-nine, judging by the doorframe. The blonde maid is barely taller than the man in heels, but the Latina woman is big-boned, at least six feet tall, and well-muscled.

Even if Alexander wasn’t concerned a gentleman’s instincts might make him pull his punches, he’d want to swing that beer bottle. “FRIDAY?” he breathes.

But no one answers. Of course not: the music is silent. They’ve lost internet connection. He thinks to text someone—Nick, Maria, Darcy, the president, anyone—and realizes in a flash exactly how much he’s come to depend on all of humanity, a moment away.

“Either of you paying attention?” says the blonde, now unpinning an apparently unsatisfactory piece of her updo.

“Yes,” says the other woman.

“Yes, Dr. Moreau!” says the man.

Not a maid, then, Alexander notes.

“Then get on with it, if you please.” With a soft hum, Moreau re-pins her hair with a saccharine smile and draws a scalpel from her coat, flipping it absentmindedly. She watches while the woman rubs a white cloth and a blue cloth on the nape of Erik’s neck, and the man flips open the cooler with a squeak of disgust. He covers his mouth and dry-heaves twice before turning back to the contents inside.

“Problem, Patel?” says the doctor.

“Not at all, ma’am,” answers Patel hoarsely. The doctor rolls her eyes, and the man draws a glass cylinder from the container. Alexander squints. Blood pounds in his temples. Something like an indigo piece of yarn writhes in the glass, suspended in cloudy liquid. Patel coughs and clears his throat.

“Then why don’t you hurry?” says the doctor. “You ready, Ruiz?”

“Yeah, let’s go?” She nods with an excited grin, but her tone is a question. Patel smiles nervously and joins his colleague beside Erik. “I know it looks scary,” Ruiz says, taking the cylinder from Patel, “but really all you have to do is disinfect, mark pheromones on the target, and—” She unscrews the cap. Alexander holds his breath—and flinches back: something darts, something splashes, something squelches, and there’s blood on Erik’s nape, his skin bulging unnaturally. Erik whimpers. Alexander gags. Patel dry-heaves again, then hurls once, twice, three times in the pool, and Alexander chokes back vomit. “Pop! That’s it, no big deal?” Ruiz says.

Moreau rushes to Patel’s side and steadies him before Alexander’s empathy can escalate to being sick himself. “Are you sure you’re alright, darling?” she asks.

“Yeah,” Patel says. “I’m fine.”

“Sweetie, he’s not human,” Moreau says.

“It’s not that.” He shudders. “I do not like worms.”

Moreau touches his shoulder. “Aw. This must be so difficult. Would you like to sit today out? We wouldn’t miss you.”

“No ma’am,” he splutters. “I can do this.”

“That’s nice.” The doctor smiles and puts a hand on his shoulder; he shivers. Then Moreau glares at Ruiz. “Find the girl.”

Chapter Text

Monday, October 26, 2017

(Is this what it means to be Alexander Hamilton now?

You don’t play dead when the minions round the corner, syringes and parasites in hand, Wanda helpless before the butchers. You don’t let the mental minnow of chivalry stop you from ramming your fist into the white-coat’s gut and punting her into the pool. You don’t laugh hysterically when your brain comes up with the white coats are coming, the white coats are coming (how original; give it a prize) and the other man charges and tries to tackle you, and you don’t land your first punch, but you don’t go down in one blow. You don’t shake the doctor off your foot when she yanks you down, down, downdowndown into the pool, and you’re drowning, you’re drowning, hands holding you down.

You don’t drown.

You kick and you claw like a caged lion and you fight to the surface and you breathe. Your hands on the ledge. You hoist yourself up—

You feel something crawling on your back.)

The world stutters.

Alexander shudders awake—hands unbound, already standing. “The hell…?” he croaks before he can think better of it, but the words scrape up his throat, not louder than a whisper. For a moment, he can only comprehend the jostling world, his jostled stomach, and the chilly fog of sleep. Then the memories flood back. His breath quickens.

The world rocks again. He flexes his fingers against pins and needles and peers into the dark, the skeleton of a five-point plan sparking behind his eyes. 1. Determine threats. 2. Neutralize threats. 3. Determine whereabouts of friends. 4. Conspire. 5. Escape.

It’s a train, with flickering light, nothing but gloom beyond the windows. The air is stale and thick with unwashed flesh and ozone. Alexander steps forward, and the world whirls—he stumbles, head tipping forward like a four-hundred pound bowling ball, and catches himself on the wall, choking back a wave of nausea. He rubs his forehead, murmurs, “Damn it.” Damn it all. Damn the minions, his lack of foresight, his weak stomach.

Soft murmurs echo down the corridor. Alexander looks left; he looks right. In another cabin, the two henchmen chatter about market prices while the blonde woman rearranges her hair and poses for selfies with pouting black lips. Wanda stands a few yards closer to their kidnappers, facing the window, Erik stands beside her, and Alexander very much dislikes the mental equation circling his brain: lab coats—kidnappings—Silas’ prejudice—mutants.

They’re on their way to a lab, then, and very unlikely to be killed before they get there—hell, unlikely to be killed once we get there, he muses. If the scientists really are stupid enough to murder the Avengers, then he’ll be able to outsmart them easily, right? And, Alexander reasons, these scientists will probably do preliminary tests, and when they realize he’s human, they’ll take him somewhere else, and he’ll have the opportunity to plan an escape, be a big damn hero, and get the hell out of the clutches of these—hopefully—they risked pissing off the Avengers, after all—bone-headed dimwits. (Or they’ll kill him, or they’ll realize he has a magical healing factor and proceed with dissection—)

Very quietly, he creeps forward and reaches toward Wanda’s shoulder.

Something squirms in his neck.

It pulsates and wriggles with all the slippery flailing of a drunken make-out session, and he clamps his jaw shut, fists balled, frozen. Fire twists around his spine, the muscles cramped and twitching. The thing flounders and digs toward the nape of his neck. There’s sharp pain and a soft wet scrunch, like a suction cup lined with teeth biting down above his vertebrae.

His first thought: This isn’t happening. It’s like a bullet train through the five stages of grief. When he thinks he’s reached acceptance—after all, he saw what they did to Erik—he fingers the squishy bulge between his shoulder-blades and shudders.

His next thought: Why the hell is there a worm in my neck. Alexander spies the reflection of Wanda’s glassy-eyed expression in the window. For once he wants to be wrong. Uneasily, he touches her shoulder. She doesn’t flinch. She doesn’t even acknowledge him. He exhales and creeps back into the shadows.

Which leaves one last thought: Why am I awake?

Whatever the case may be, Alexander is alone. He hates that. He’ll have to hate it enough to get out of here.

Lights flash; the train skids by them, and then the car rattles to a stop, the worm slurping viciously at Alexander’s vertebrae. There’s chatter on a radio in a language he doesn’t recognize, so fast and nonsensical he wouldn’t be surprised if it was random bursts of static. But the blonde scientist says, “Copy that,” the trio clicks, clacks, stomps toward their captives, and Alexander makes a decision.

They must think he’s neutralized. He can use that. He stays still.

The worm doesn’t. Bile climbs his throat, but Alexander stays still.

Dr. Moreau presses her palm to a glowing green panel and the doors slide open with a low electric whine, revealing a flickering world of rusty pipes and dull gray concrete. “Power’s out,” Patel says, stepping out with Ruiz.

“Mmhm. Emergency power only. Thanks, darling,” Moreau drawls, following.

In the proceeding hush, Erik and Wanda shamble toward the exit, corpselike; and in the same half-dead manner, heart pounding wildly, Alexander trails them. They walk—down the hall, up a shadowy escalator that climbs, climbs, climbs (don’t grip the railing, Alex, don’t move an inch) as the ground shrinks to a pinprick, to a lime green (don’t roll your eyes, Ruiz is staring), stainless-steel monstrosity. He’s unsure, but he thinks it’s supposed to be a door.

Dr. Moreau stares into something that looks like a camera beside it. It’s scanning her irises, the Founding Father notes, and his brain skips forward a few hundred tracks: to escape. Alexander would rather not gouge out a woman’s eyeballs, but there’s a damn worm slithering around his spine, courtesy of this doctor; his fists start to ball before he stops himself. He’s in danger. His friends are in danger. He’ll do as he must.

Click-click-click: the metal door retreats into the ceiling, and a putrid tang rams into them with the force of a cannonball. Noxious, not kind enough to announce its presence with a visible murk, Alexander gets a full whiff of it, and judging by the others’ reactions, he isn’t alone. Patel covers his nose immediately, and Alexander almost does the same, consequences be damned, because it’s the stench of cesspools of piss and stale shit, of a thousand barrels of rotten fruits and fish on the beach after a hurricane. It’s the wet stink of cadavers split open and unwashed bodies caked in blood.

It’s the smell of a slave ship in the harbor.

“God,” says Patel at the threshold.

Ruiz shrugs, but by her posture she’s holding her breath. “Power’s out?” she says, as if that explains everything. Then she wrinkles her nose. “That includes the harvesting division and waste management?”

She strikes a sinister note in the harvesting division. 

The sinister note she strikes in the harvesting division sends a chill down Alexander’s spine—which startles the worm. He shivers, pulse pounding from the trembling tips of his fingers to the chilled shells of his ears. Don’t gag, he prays, they’ll hear you, but the worm twists, nestles, and suckles, and his lip twitches as if to curl. Don’t move Alex. He can’t even screw his eyes shut. Don’t you dare.

But the scientists aren’t watching. Patel mouths, “Oh,” Dr. Moreau brushes by him, saying, “But it doesn’t include Lab 2; let’s go,” and she marches down the corridor, cellphone light in hand, Erik and Wanda trailing behind. Alexander stumbles to follow, but he passes it off—he hopes—he doesn’t like the way Ruiz’s eyes linger—as zombie-like lumbering.

They march onward through the dim hall. For a fortress, it isn’t as much of a labyrinth as he expects: forward to the elevator, down to level B6 - Laboratories, down the hallway, third door on the left—and it’s not even locked. Lab 2, he presumes. He’s congratulating himself on a successful mental map out of here when Dr. Moreau flicks a switch, and Alexander—

Alexander flash-freezes. For a moment he can’t process anything but rage.

It’s a clean, bright room with cream-colored walls. Between the fake plants, tackily-patterned sofas, and walls lined with many-colored vials, it looks half hotel room, half hospital—hospital, sans privacy. And so Alexander can see there are three other people here, all unconscious on gurneys, tubes and wires spilling from arms, necks, noses, foreheads—

(every breath a labor. your hands, stuck full of pins and needles doing heaven-knows-what, were shackled and skeletal; even without the chains you didn’t think you could move. where in the hell were you, and what in god’s name were those quickening shrieks from that glowing metal thing looming above?)

—Alexander exhales the awful memories through his teeth. The lunatics who resurrected him hadn’t been able to keep him more than a week or two (probably, he thinks: the drugs and exhaustion had him in and out of consciousness). He escaped once. He’ll escape again.

But what about the others?

There’s a part of him that wants to leave them and return with the calvary.

A much more potent part of him remembers Jefferson’s but we can’t address a problem if we do not have an answer and at that is ready to murder Moreau with his goddamn fingernails, if necessary—ready to plunge a scalpel into her jugular: right here, right now.

But no, Alexander can’t make the mistake of underestimating these people again. As soon as he sees a good shot at getting out of here, he’ll take it without hesitation. Until then, he’ll have to avoid humming along to Leslie Odom Jr.’s Wait For It, now caught on an infuriating loop in his head, and sit tight.

A clammy hand grips his wrist and he almost winces. Dr. Moreau leads Alexander to an empty gurney. With a glance to Wanda and Erik, now climbing onto the beds beside him, he does his best to mimic the mutants’ mechanical movements and clambers on, lies back on an uncomfortable pillow.

He stares up at a cruddy, drop-tiled ceiling stained with a thousand shades of indeterminate goop while Moreau cleans his left inner elbow with a cold wet-wipe. The ceiling looks, in other words, like a mundane office ceiling, and although Alexander’s trying to distract himself from the needle that will probably follow, the sheer normalcy is enough to send him over the edge, and from there it’s a free-fall to uncontrollable rage.

And then Moreau turns away.

Take the needle, stab her eye, punt her into a tray of bubbling test tubes, roar his instincts. In his brain, Alexander hisses, Just Stay. Fucking. Still.

“Ruiz,” says Moreau.

“Yes, doctor?” says Ruiz. She’s in the corner of his eye; it’s a struggle to keep from glancing in her direction, and Moreau is staring down at him. Alexander blinks twice instead and starts counting dots in the styrofoam.

“If you please,” says the doctor, “could you get me a vibranium needle? This one’s a little tough.”

Alexander’s brows twitch. What?

Moreau’s eyes snap to him. He’s unruffled, face a blank slate. She doesn’t seem to see his fingers trembling.

There’s the sound of rustling, and then a dark cube goes flying across Alexander’s field of vision into Moreau’s waiting hand. He wants to chide them for being stupid enough to toss vibranium around, but then again, if his captors are idiots, all the better. The doctor settles something cold and metallic against Alexander’s elbow; he can’t look, but it feels dense, like something electronic. There’s pressure, then a quick burst of pain, then a few moments of agonized waiting for enough blood to drain away, and then it’s over.

“Hmm.” Dr. Moreau pulls the box into her hands, stares down at it with a jagged half-frown. Alexander can’t help it: he glances to the table beside him, because he’s human, and she’ll find out, and he needs a scalpel, something sharp—“That tensile strength,” says the doctor. “Four times harder than concrete.”

“That’s interesting,” Patel intones, sounding bored.

Moreau doesn’t bother to look at him. “Ruiz,” she says. Why is she smirking?  “This is very, very interesting. Would you like to analyze—”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll do it, I guess?” she answers. “You know I won’t be out of training until February, right.”

“Uh-huh. That’s why I want you to do it,” says Moreau. Alexanders muscles are coiled, fingers so numb he wouldn’t know they were twitching with adrenaline if he  couldn’t feel them, rattling against his thighs—so cold he has a visceral vision of them snapping off like icicles. Stay still, he wants to hiss to his shivering body, just stay fucking still, but Ruiz exhales the exasperated sigh of a long-suffering employee, and it’s so ordinary, so not-at-all monstrous even in twenty-and-fucking-fifteen, Alexander has to bite back a growl.

His teeth are trembling too, he notes idly.

The worm writhes, and Alexander stares at the ceiling.

Ruiz takes the box from her superior. She waltzes out of his field of vision. A few moments later, there’s the infuriating boo-doo! of a Windows malfunction. “What is this,” says Ruiz. A mouse rustles against a mousepad. Infuriated typing follows—then the terrifying BUM! of a critical error.

Moreau snorts. “Need help?”

Keyboard smashing answers, then a few moments of silence. “Ohhhhh?” says Ruiz, mouth agape in realization.

Breathe evenly. In-and-out. Be still, Alex. He calms himself with the thought that these bigots won’t harm a human, least of all one under the aegis of Tony Stark. If they’re intelligent—in other words, a threat—they’ll not change their current strategy.

“That’s not very specific,” says Patel.

Dr. Moreau groans. “No, it’s not very specific at all. What’s wrong?” Ruiz doesn’t answer immediately: something must be wrong. Slowly, Alexander sucks in a long breath. “What?” demands the doctor. “Get on with it.”

“He’s…” The scientist swallows. “He’s not a mutant,” she pronounces.

“That’s not supposed to happen,” Patel observes.

“Yeah, no shit!” Ruiz exclaims. “What the hell. Why would anyone pretend to be a mutant. Oh, and look at this. Look at this? I don’t… that has to be a mistake?”

Hair rises on the nape of Alexander’s neck. That he doesn’t very much appreciate the idea of a ‘mistake’ in his bloodstream floats through his skull and pulses dread from heart to gut. Alexander does not move. He stares at the ceiling. The muscles in his back twitch, twitch, twitch, and something sharp digs into his vertebrae. Alexander tries not to move.

Screw it. He swallows hard and peeks up. The trio of scientists are crowded around a desktop computer. Dr. Moreau leans forward and squints at the monitor. She plucks what turns out to be a scalpel from her updo and spins it over painted fingernails behind her back. Alexander can control his emotions, he thinks. But the parasite pinches, coils; its tail warps his skin from beneath. His shoulder-blades cramp and burn. Either blood or slime trickles down between his shoulders.

Alexander does not move any further. If he can’t control his emotions, he can disentangle them from his muscles.

“It’s not a mistake,” says Dr. Moreau. She straightens. “He’s not human.”

Alexander nearly jolts off the gurney.

“Then—he’s of extraterrestrial origin?” Ruiz questions. She puts her hand to her forehead.

And Alexander—Alexander short-circuits. His brain fizzes out with a sharp static pop he’s certain everyone can hear. Yesterday he was a zombie, and now he’s a goddamned space alien? It’s so funny he could almost laugh.

Ruiz continues, “But… what. Hamilton.” Goddammit, he thinks. She shakes her head. “He was a president, what the shit.”

He stifles a snort—

The trio whirls on him.

He’s staring at the ceiling, lips twitching. Don’t you dare laugh Alex. His heart pounds. His stomach flips. It would make no sense to laugh. Don’t be ridiculous. You can’t laugh. What if you died laughing? Laughing in the face of casualties and sorrow, his brain supplies, and a hysterical giggle rises in his throat as if to spite him.

It’s not very funny. Lots of people think you were president. It’s not funny at all. If you want to live to think past tomorrow, don’t—

The trio turns back to the computer.

Alexander exhales very, very slowly, but his thoughts race full speed ahead. It’s possible the vandals have miscalculated something. After all, Fury’s physicians and geneticists confirmed he was Alexander Hamilton weeks ago—

They claimed.

“Speculate,” Dr. Moreau commands.

“Okay. This, um. This looks kinda like the x-gene? It’s some sort of activation gene?” Ruiz reckons.

“It’s a magic-based genome,” Patel says.

“Don’t help her,” Moreau snaps. Patel throws his hands up. He pulls an e-cigarette out of his lab coat, sticks it in his mouth, and mutters something under his breath.

“But it is a magic-based genome,” says Ruiz, peering down at her superior. “So he was probably human or, um, partially human. Half-human, maybe? But that was dormant until something… maybe whatever brought him back from the dead… changed his DNA and most of his physiology?”

The resurrection, Alexander registers. He swallows hard, a bitter taste on his tongue. If the US government had reasons to doubt his identity when those necromancing lunatics revived him, would they have told him? Or would they have observed and waited for him to stumble?

“Not quite, dearie,” says Dr. Moreau.

Ruiz slumps, pushing her glasses higher up onto her nose. “Oh.”

“The study of magic is new.” The doctor turns and smiles up at the trainee,  staining unnaturally white teeth with blood-red lipstick. “It’s not entirely your fault you know nothing.” The tall woman seems to shrink into herself as her boss continues, “Do you know what species he is?”

Ruiz shakes her head. Moreau glares. Patel plucks out his cigarette and raises a tentative hand, and his boss, huffing, says, “… Yes?”

“He’s an—… well, a, actually.” Moreau noises annoyance, and Patel stutters out, “A demigod. Half-Aesir. Asgardian.”

Alexander’s first thought: Sorry, what?

Alexander’s second thought: Like that Thor fellow? Putain de bordel de merde. There’s a little thought within that realization to the tune of Holy Superiority-Complex Batman, because he already has very low tolerance for human stupidity, and there’s no way being a damned demigod won’t make him racist as all hell (again?) by next month.

Alexander’s third thought: What the fuck. They have to be wrong. If Alexander was half as tough as Thor, he would have curb-stomped this trio of assholes.

“Thanks, sweetie,” Moreau says, still starting at Ruiz. “Magic calls to magic and strengthens magic, and if I had to guess, the necromancers succeeded precisely because he’s not human.”

“Right, so…?” Ruiz shuffles her feet. For a moment, Alexander almost feels sorry for her, but then he remembers the worm in his spine and “What did I get wrong.”

“The body’s new. So’s the DNA and physiology. It never changed, as you said,” Moreau says. Ruiz opens her mouth to retort, but a sharp glance from the doctor sends her eyes to the ground. “I’m not nitpicking,” says Dr. Moreau. “He was human, yes—he died of complications from a gunshot wound, for Pete’s sake.”

“Septic shock, probably,” Patel interjects, and Alexander feels his throat tightening. It hurt like Hell, and there was nothing he could do to console Eliza: she was already grieving, and he was so lonely…— Patel continues, “I don’t think Asgardians can even get sepsis from Earth bacteria, and, erm, speaking of other, um, Asgard-y thingies—”

“Did I ask for your input?” Moreau growls.

“Um, this is kinda important,” Patel says.

“If I was you, I’d be more respectful.” Patel mumbles an apology and jabs his cigarette back between his teeth. “But,” says Moreau, “the magic that rebuilt him did it according to magical blueprints. Which explains…” She whirls and points.  Alexander stares at the ceiling. Don’t move, Alex. Don’t you move a damned inch. “The burned hand Silas mentioned. He was probably reformed from one of those bones, which would still be human, making the magic less effective—”

“Yeah,” Patel says, “and, um, speaking of bones…”

“What is it,” asks Ruiz.

“I didn’t ask for y’all’s input,” snaps Moreau.

“Boss had trouble getting a needle through his skin,” Patel says, chewing the e-cigarette, and Alexander stiffens. Sweat beads on the back of his neck, the worm, which has yet to function as it’s probably supposed to, wriggling furiously under trembling muscles and rising goosebumps. “The…” Patel shudders. “The… um… RC worms… have trouble, erm. Even biting through, y’know. Mutant bone, sometimes. So, um, are we even sure the worm bit through his—”

Patel gags and squeaks out, “Spine?”, but the other scientists have already spun to face their one conscious captive. Ruiz gapes. Moreau snarls. There’s a scalpel on the table beside Alexander, in the corner of his eye. And he feels a wee bit reckless, but he’s past patiently waiting—

Alexander springs.

The instant his fingers coil around the handle, he swings up and over and plunges down, and Patel throws up his arms to block the razor, but it only clips his forearm on its way into his neck. Three voices cry out as hot liquid explodes from his throat and stickies Alexander’s face, hands, lips; for a moment he freezes, tasting blood, but Moreau is bellowing “GET HIM, YOU IDIOTS!” and there’s no time for shock. He kicks the shrieking scientist in the chest, jumping off the bed, and Patel crashes backward into the desk: he topples, moans, and doesn’t rise—

Ruiz shouts: she lunges and Alexander slams his good fist into her nose and glasses; there’s the crunch of snapping celery, and with a colorful stream of bilingual curses the hulking woman grabs his wrist and tackles him backward into the wall, arm pinned above. Snarling, she grapples for the scalpel, pulling it down, down, down toward his skull while Moreau scrambles to the computer and presses something. The lights flicker red. A computer voice shrieks in Genoshan and alarms blare, louder and louder until Alexander can hardly hear Patel’s groans. The former soldier grits his teeth and makes a decision: he lets go of the scalpel—

And ducks out of the way, then elbows Ruiz hard in the back. She wheezes, hissing something like “inhuman scum!”, and Alexander takes the instant to grab the litter; when she whirls with the scalpel, he rams the railed side of it into her stomach. She roars, and while she’s stunned Alexander rams her again with all his strength, this time from the side: she falls—

Her head bounces off a gurney rail. The empty cot rolls backward. She hits the ground, eyes already closed. Alexander plucks the scalpel from her limp fingers and faces the bleeding Patel and the frantically typing Moreau. The doctor breathes heavily, and after a moment she seems to realize the fighting behind her has stopped and goes rigid, catlike, shoulders raised and hands tensed like barred claws.

“You won’t make it out of here alive,” says Dr. Moreau, voice clipped, but trembling. She’s afraid, and Hamilton grins: in the hands of a politician, fear is far more effective than a scalpel.

“If you haven’t noticed, madam, you’re the one with the knowledge to help me and my friends get out of here—and I’m the one with the knife.”

“Don’t threaten me.”

“That’s not up to you.”

The doctor chuckles.

“Look. I don’t have time for this,” Alexander says. “Tell me how to wake up my friends, or you’ll wish I was just threatening you.”

Moreau laughs the deep belly-laugh of a teen who’s just managed a magnificent prank. “Oh, honey. You’re not gonna make me talk. You don’t have the stomach.”

“You don’t know me—”

“You’re too addicted to the idea of being a ‘good man’ to tarnish your legacy and torture an innocent woman.” The doctor faces him with a broad Cheshire cat smile. “Ain’t that right? Well, I’ll let you answer that question later. When I leave this vessel—”

“Wait a sec, wha—”

“—your friends will wake up anyway. We can dissect your cold corpse later.”

Something beeps, loudly.

Moreau’s eyes roll back into her head. For a moment Alexander thinks she’ll fall, but she gasps, catches herself on the desk, and murmurs in a very different voice, “Je suis libre. Mon Dieu, la putain est partie, bordel de merde.” He gapes at her as she chants, “Je suis libre, je suis libre, je suis libre, je suis—”

“Qui es-tu?” Alexander interrupts. Who are you?

She blinks twice and looks up at him. “Ophélie Courvoisier… qu’est-ce que tu veux?!” the new personality—Ophélie?—demands, eyes wide and terrified: what do you want?

“Je ne te blesserai pas. Je promets.” I won’t hurt you. I promise.

“Ce n’est pas une réponse.” That’s not an answer, she responds. The woman blinks again, as though her vision is unfocused, and then she stumbles, barely catching herself on the desk. “Merde,” she hisses, eyes screwing shut.

“Hey—hey, tu vas bien?” ‘Ophélie’ stumbles again; obviously not, he thinks, and he catches her, gently easing her to the ground. She trembles. It’s like Wanda’s convulsions not more than a few hours ago, but within seconds it’s far more violent. His stomach is knotting, Patel is moaning, and only when Wanda groans “Aleksandr? What’s going on?” and he looks away does the woman go still.

“You were drugged and… something else—we’re escaping,” Alexander answers.

He looks back down. The woman’s mouth is agape. Her eyes are open.

“Who’s that?” asks Wanda, voice hoarse. Sheets rustle, and shoes click against the floor as Alexander stares down at the woman in the lab coat. “What happened—is she okay?”

“I don’t know. And I… don’t know. Ophélie.”

Alexander shakes her shoulders gently, which probably isn’t the medical protocol, and he says her name several times, louder and more urgently, but she doesn’t so much as blink. Wanda says “Does she have pulse?” and Alexander says “Oh”, feeling rather foolish. “Ophélie?” he repeats, pressing two fingers to her neck, and he waits several seconds, bowing his head as if in prayer when he feels nothing there.

RC worms, said Patel. (Remote control? Alexander wonders.) Are we even sure the worm bit through his spine?

When I leave this vessel, said Moreau, your friends will wake up.

I’m free. My God, the bitch is gone, said Ophélie.

Alexander reaches around to the back of his neck, probing the squish, squelch, and bulge of the worm under his skin. Could something so small take away even the most basic personal liberties—to breathe, to sigh, to think? Can Moreau, in whatever body she’s probably hopped to, do the same to them? More urgently, is the parasite going to kill the others too if they don’t escape its influence in time?

He jumps to his feet. “We gotta go. Wake Erik,” Alexander commands, and Wanda nods. He glances around at the other occupied hospital beds—one man, two women—just as Erik groans “I’m awake” and hoists himself off the cot.

“Then let’s try to wake up the others,” Alexander says. “There’re prolly soldiers on the way and there’re goddamn parasites in our necks—”

“What?!” Wanda and Erik exclaim.

“—and either will prolly kill us if we don’t get outta here right now, so let’s go!” Alexander darts to the nearest unconscious prisoner: a young woman, maybe nineteen, with cool ebony skin and a mane of shockingly white curls. If she has any IVs, they aren’t immediately obvious, so, although he has no guarantee that she speaks English, he reaches for her shoulder—

And the woman slaps his hand away and bolts upright, electric blue eyes wild. “How dare you—?!”

“Hey, hey, I’m just here to—”

“I don’t care if you’re a janitor or the Genegineer. If you’re with DHARMA, you’re—!”

“I’m with the Avengers!”

“Oh.” She pauses, makes eye contact with Wanda, who’s in the process of rousing the prisoner, and says, “We should go.”

“Yeah,” he agrees. “Do you need help—?”

“I’m Storm.” With that, she slides off the hospital bed.

“Is that an answer, or is that your name…?”

“Yes,” says Storm.

Alexander blinks. “Okay.”

He and Erik give brief introductions; the Scarlett Witch needs none.

“Okay,” says Alexander, “let’s go—”

With a loud smack!, the door bursts open, and at least five voices overlap in variants of “Hands up!” and “Freeze!” Burly black-suited figures pour through the door, guns in hand—

And then a computer smashes into them.

There’s the sound of breaking bone; two men go down immediately. Erik yells, “GET DOWN!” Gunfire sounds—Alexander drops flat against the tile—and an instant later glass shatters: a shower of bullets whizzes by overhead amid a cacophony of shouts and screams, and precariously balanced jars of chemicals explode one by one from their shelves, spraying trails of red, white, and chartreuse clouds and flames across the floor. A cluster of glass shards and scalpels soar toward the gunmen, and the gurneys groan as Erik’s magnetism flings them through the air. Someone cries out, and with a flash, a thunderclap, and the sudden seared scent of ozone, the world goes silent, save the growing crackle of flame.

“Is everyone okay?” says Storm.

“Yeah, I’m alright,” Alexander says, as two other voices chorus the same. He pushes himself up and scans the room. The gunmen lie in a heap near the door, some of them covered in electrical burns, others half-crushed under the computer and beds. The hospital gurney in front of Alexander is bloodstained, its occupant sporting a gushing red hole on his near-temple. If he hadn’t ducked—did I need to duck?—no time, he chides himself. “What was—?”

“I told you,” says Storm wryly. “I’m Storm.” Alexander blinks again, then racks his adrenaline-addled brains for an escape plan. He isn’t particularly keen on gouging Dr. Moreau’s/Ophélie’s eyes out, nor does he think they have time to do it without damaging the irises somewhat (he certainly couldn’t do it, not with his hands trembling with adrenaline), so he jumps up on the only unoccupied hospital gurney still standing, kneels to raise its level, and reaches for the ceiling.

In the corner of his eye, Erik stares at Storm, looking utterly smitten. “That magnetic energy, it was…”

“Do you know the way out of here?” Wanda interrupts.

“Yes,” Alexander says, shoving a tile aside to peer up past the false ceiling. He coughs, waving his hand in front of his face to dispel the smoke. It should work, he tells himself. It works in movies. “Take a right down the hall, ride the elevator to B1, and there’s an great, absurdly green metal door that may be opened only supposing—” he jumps, hoisting himself up on top of the tiles “—you cut out the blonde doctor’s eyeballs, and beyond that is a magnetic train.” He shuffles around to peek down at the circle of mutants. “Though it be inconvenient, it seems we’re obliged to find an alterna—”

“Alex!” says Erik.

“What?”

“Great, absurdly green metal door.”

“Yes.”

Erik says, “Metal door.”

Alexander says, “Oh.” He attempts to scramble out of the hole he’s made in the ceiling, but his legs pop—“dammit!”— through one of the tiles; he grapples for a handhold and finds himself dangling.

Then there’s a cry of surprise and a thud.

There’s a moment of panic before a woman’s voice hisses, “Shit!”

Alexander knows that voice. It echoes, quietly, through the area above the false ceiling, until he’s sure he knows who it belongs to. His brow furrows. “Wanda, Erik… what was that?”

“A woman’s legs fell through the ceiling about two yards behind you, and now she’s dangling,” says Erik.

“How do you know they are a woman?” asks Wanda.

“Well, I suppose they could be a guy… with a very feminine pair of legs…”

There’s the sound of a playful smack, and Erik makes a noise of distress—whether apology or protest Alexander doesn’t know—and before an argument can begin, Alexander calls, “Natasha?” There’s no response. “Is that you?”

Finally the woman exhales a long-suffering sigh and says, “Hi. You looked like you were handling this pretty well, but I thought I’d drop in.”

Storm groans, “I’ll pretend you didn’t say that.”

Wanda asks, “Is something funny?”

And Alexander snorts; the stupid humor—not to mention the presence of an international super-spy—is a relief. “Well, Nat,” he says, “I’d love to hang out, but we really gotta go.” With that, he drops back into the room; Natasha follows suit—Alexander lunges toward her when she falls into the flames, but she soundlessly rolls and punches the fire off of her clothes, then jumps up like nothing happened. They exchange grins and advance toward the door.

“What is funny?” says Wanda on the way out.

“Absolutely nothing,” Storm replies.

“Be careful,” Erik advises, smirking, “if you continue making awful jokes, Storm and I might string you up.”

“There’s no ‘might’ about i—” Storm lets out a gasp of horror. “Not you, too!”

They make it to the elevator without incident, other than another barrage of truly despicable puns, and once there, the button glowing and all, Alexander says quietly to Natasha, “Two things.”

She gives a sharp nod.

“One,” says Alexander. “Did Fury send you to follow us and spy on me, to ensure I don’t turn out to be a malevolent aesir or a villainous shapeshifter or something else generally detrimental to the end of International Prosperity and—”

Natasha cuts him off with a Look. She nods again.

“Okay,” he says. “So this is a test mission. To see whether I’m Alexander Hamilton, or rather whether without known supervision I respond as he—shit, as I would have—would, goddamn, what the hell. Tenses. Pronouns. Ugh. But am I right?”

She shrugs. “We sent a blood and tissue sample to Asgard for final confirmation. You’re here because Erik asked for your help—but yes, it was meant to be a low to mid-risk test.”

“Two—”

“I thought that was two—”

“Fine, then: three.” Alexander Hamilton looks at her solemnly. “Could I lift a tank?”

“What?” she says.

“Well, I mean, Thor can lift a tank and tank a bullet, so, y’know, I was wondering if I could, like—”

“You never ate the apples of immortality,” says Natasha, “which means—”

Three things happen all at once: the elevator doors ding; a legion of footsteps sound behind them; and Natasha shoves Alexander to the ground, finishing with a loud: “Nope!”—

CRACK! TATATATATA!

Bullet shards and dust ricochet from the inside of the elevator; Alexander ducks, the worm squirming in his neck finds himself chanting curses and wishing he’d picked up a gun and—shit, does he have cover, and if so is it good cover? Another shock of adrenaline surges in his wrists and he flips over to look: Wanda stands in the middle of the line of fire, palm forward, a flickering red film blocking dozens of bullets; Natasha barks: “ERIK! RIP THE WIRES FROM THE WALLS!” and a stream of Russian curse words, and then she returns fire—

The elevator dings again. “Shit shit shit shit shit” is the only thing Alexander can say for a moment and then: “Erik! Erik! Hold the elevator!” he shouts, and he can barely hear himself over the sound of gunfire, the crack—BOOM! of something exploding in the laboratory, the THUD! of the plaster walls sparking and crumbling as Erik destroys them, “ERIK!”

Erik finally responds: “YEAH?”

“WHY THE HELL WEREN’T YOU LISTENING?”

“BECAUSE IT’S FUCKING LOUD!” Erik retorts. As if to punctuate his point, Storm releases a lightning bolt, and a thunderclap rings through Alexander’s skull so loudly it drowns out his own thoughts—

The elevator! “HOLD THE ELEVATOR!” he bellows.

“Wha—OH!”

Erik points to the elevator. The doors ding open.

“C’mon,” says Storm, hoisting Alexander up by his wrist. “Let’s go!” she shouts at the others.

“LET’S GO!” Alexander repeats, and they stumble into the lift. Natasha pauses to return fire again, and then she follows them; with a hand-wave Erik slams the doors so hard he dents them—unless that was a bigger bullet—are the elevator doors bullet-proof? Before Alexander can ponder it the elevator shakes, and he grabs the rail to steady himself.

“There will be more of them,” Storm says.

Natasha nods. “Wanda, get ready.”

“Aye-aye,” she responds, and another red field flickers in front of her—

“Let’s pre-empt them,” Erik interrupts when the elevator dings: Level B1.

“What do you mean?” says Natasha, and before he says anything else he thrusts his hands forward with a snarl, and with a BANG! the elevator doors snap from their hinges and fly forward. Someone screams, someone shouts, there’s gunfire—

Erik charges. Alexander and the others follow. Everything and yelling and instinct: get down, break left, run-run-run-run Alex! get your ass back over here! (stay out of the way because they want you to write, not fight—if that) don’t think—the thought gets you killed—

They charge—

And then everything is dust, black powder, blood that isn’t his, and rushing forward toward the absurd green metal monstrosity as Erik roars and forces it open—

They charge—

“GO! GO! GO!” Storm is shouting, and Alexander obeys without a thought, and then he thinks that’s strange, because he’s operating on instinct, and aren’t his instincts from the eighteenth century—? CLACK!—something falls from the ceiling; he breaks left and follows Storm—

They charge—

—down the escalator, down, down, down; “SHIT!” and “FUCK!” are everywhere, and there are more footsteps behind them, and they duck, and Wanda shields them, but Erik cries out in pain, and someone is screaming, and Alexander can barely see through the warm blood that isn’t his, dripping down his forehead: can he make the train work? where was he shot? will he live?

They charge, Erik’s arm slung over Natasha’s shoulder—

—into the station. Erik tears the bullet-train’s doors open, teeth barred and collarbone bleeding, and they stumble into the cabin. Alexander and Natasha try to help the wounded mutant sit down, but he refuses. Shaking his head, he moves his lips, and Alexander’s ears are still ringing with gunfire and he can’t hear a damn thing.

Erik staggers away from them. He sits down, half-lotus style like a monk, closes his eyes, and digs his fists into the floor—

The train rockets away.

Chapter Text

Monday, October 26, 2017

“I said: how do you plan to get off this island?”

Wearily, Alexander looks up from Erik’s shoulder. He presses on the artery and as hard as the mutant can bear on the wound itself, where a bullet fragment punctured a rotator cuff muscle and cracked the clavicle, while Natasha scans for exit wounds and Wanda forages the spy’s equipment for ibuprofen and a suture kit.

Storm alone is both uninjured and unoccupied. It’s been minutes, but adrenaline stretches seconds into lifetimes—it’s been long enough that Alexander’s bones feel like lead, his eyelids as though coated in glue… his insides still tangling with a feral rage at what they’ve seen—and at being lied to. But even with the anger, even smelling the pungent tang of blood that isn’t his and sweat that probably is (he can’t discern the two anymore), and the dark sort of wonder of just how many people did we kill? and how many did I kill?, he wants to sleep.

Good God, he wants to sleep. His mouth is dry, his throat is sore, his stomach aches, and his body is screaming I’m sick loud enough that Alexander knows he’ll have to listen eventually. It’s just a matter of when.

He puts it off for now.

A moment ago Storm was pacing the train’s corridor, scanning the dark caverns outside as though expecting a goblin horde. Now she stands in front of them, her hands on her hips. “You were not there to rescue me,” she intones, with all the finality of a lawyer’s closing statement. “I would’ve believed you were there to take down DHARMA’s operations. But you weren’t. If you knew what you were up against, you wouldn’t have sent the Witch with two rookies. And you wouldn’t have sent them in swimsuits.”

Alexander glances down at himself, at the already healed cuts and scratches on his bare abdomen—and at the barest hint of wiry muscle displayed under his skin— feeling equal parts ridiculous and badass. He wants to ask exactly what they were up against, other than parasites and a stupid number of security guards, but Storm is already continuing: “You were there by mistake. So—how do you plan to get off this island?”

“Pepper Potts is here on a business trip,” Natasha answers. “These guys were planning to stowaway on a plane with her.” She glances between Alexander and Wanda.  “Is that still a go—?”

Head downcast, Erik grunts a labored affirmative, or at least a noncommittal, groaning in pain when what is probably the worm’s tail flicks a bulge between his shoulder-blades.

“Yeah,” Alexander says, looking away before he can shiver and set off the thing clinging to his own spine. “I’d sooner swim the Indian Ocean in typhoon season than spend another minute on this damn island.” His phone is in his back pocket, which means he’s sitting on it and has to scramble to his knees without letting up the pressure on Erik’s artery. His trousers slip twice, because of course his wardrobe is malfunctioning now of all times; Alexander flushes, very stubbornly not making eye contact with anyone as he takes the phone from his pocket. He has cell service again, as well as about a dozen ‘educational’ memes from Darcy—and he also has the time. “It’s only a quarter past five.” It’s been but two hours? “I say we go.”

“I agree,” Wanda says, “unless… something went wrong at the mansion.”

Alexander says, “Oh shit,” because of course something must’ve gone wrong at the mansion. His unburned left hand fumbles even more than usual since his injury—there’s a curious sense of floating outside himself that’s been there since the firefight—but he manages to tap out a text to Tony.

Alexander Hamilton: Hey are you two OK and if so would you or Pepper pick up my suitcase or alternatively just Washington’s Ring?

He stares down at the screen.

The clock reads 5:21.

Wanda finds the suture kit and ibuprofen, calling the latter “morphine” despite an accusatory look from Alexander. Erik gulps down the pills as Natasha irrigates his wound with a syringe full of diluted Betadine.

The train passes out into the sunlight. They wind between jungled mountains. “Sharp right,” says Natasha.

“What?” Erik hisses.

“Sharp right,” she repeats, pointing to the fork in the railway ahead. “That’s the way to the mansion.”

The train begins a long turn. The clock reads 5:22.

“Is Tony typing yet?” asks Wanda.

Solemnly, Alexander shakes his head—“Oh, now he is.”

Tony Stark: yea no prob.

No sooner has Alexander relayed this to the others than his phone vibrates again.

TS: why? FRIDAY said u dropped off radar, u ok? if so we’re leaving in 30 min.

AH: We were kidnappedd but weve escaped. Will rendezvous with you as planned.

TS: what
AH: Erik was right they were interesetd in our DNA

TS: jesus christ

AH: *“they” being individuals seemignly in-collaboration with what corporate semblance of a government exists in genosha and if my intution serves me corrrctly quite probably Silas himself though I cant be certain; Be careful
TS: roger wilco
AH: wilco?

TS: roger, will comply

AH: Roger that. :) Also can FRIDAY fly planes?

The phone gives a low buzz, a sound akin to a growl; Alexander manages not to drop it. “Of course I can fly a plane,” FRIDAY retorts, and Storm makes a startled noise. “What do I look like,” the AI says, “a TI-82?”

“Um,” Alexander says. “Sorry.”

Storm steps back, shakes herself, steps forward. “You look like a Starkphone.” She blinks. “It—she?”

“I identify as female, thank you,” FRIDAY says cheerily, and Natasha snorts something that sounds like God, Tony…

“You look like a Starkphone.” Storm shakes her head. “Stark’s version of Siri can pilot planes.”

“Quite, boss. While simultaneously managing Mr. Stark’s personal hedge fund and miscellaneous stock investments, operating large portions of Stark Industries’ and subsidiaries’ internal networks, and answering stupid questions, like those regarding my gender identity. Of course I can fly a plane—”

Erik bolts to his feet. “Hey! Be still!” Alexander cries, but his hands slip from the wound, coming away slicked in sweat and blood that isn’t his own. “Save your strength, man,” he says, hoisting himself upright.

But to all appearances, Erik is saving his strength: his eyes are closed—for all their similarities, Alexander can’t quite comprehend the level of focus etched on the mutant’s brow—and he only very slowly turns, then, grunting, raises his arm to point at the window in the back of the train.

Eight helicopters buzz over the horizon.

Tension shivers through the car.

“Civilians, or…?” Alexander hates the pleading tone in his voice and trails off.

“No,” says Erik.

“How do you know?” asks Storm.

“It’s an attack helicopter,” Wanda replies.

“And industrial plastic.” Erik growls. “The electricity, I feel, but…”

“Corps de Dieu…” Alexander half-expects someone to rap his knuckles for an expression that profane, but Wanda already is moaning something in Ukrainian, face buried in her palms.

Natasha groans something about where’s Robin Hood when you need him and raises her voice: “Yakshcho tobi doroha tvoya zhyttya ne valyai duraka.” It’s loud, but unnaturally calm for its volume. Alexander doesn’t understand a syllable of it, but it sounds like stop screwing around and do something. Wanda flinches.

“Wanda. Storm. Handle this,” Natasha orders, her voice quieter than the hum of the approaching helicopters blades. They nod, race to the back of the car. Thunder claps and Wanda’s hands glow crimson. “Erik—sit down.”

“But—”

“I need to close this wound.” She kneels behind him.

“And get the bullet out?” Erik gasps out. “I could help—”

“No. It’s nontoxic and resting against your subclavian artery, man,” Alexander says.  Natasha shoots a look at him—you know medicine? He shrugs. “Unless you’re more averse to awkward conversations with the TSA than you are to death itself, it’s not worth it.”

Erik sits criss-cross and clenches his fists so hard the knuckles pop-pop-pop over the crescendo of helicopters and rumbles of thunder, and Natasha kneels beside him. “Alex,” she says, “help me.”

There’s a whistle, a battlecry from the Scarlett Witch, a BOOM! Out the window, something explodes; not flame, but dust and rock and falling boulders from the mountain—cracks spiderweb in the windows, but Wanda laughs in relief.

“Oh,” Alexander says. He sits to help and presses the artery near Erik’s nape. Natasha slides him the suture kit and asks for the scalpel; he obliges and begins threading the needle. 

“Erik,” says Natasha, pressing a scalpel against a piece of ruined flesh; the mutant shudders. “I don’t have a local anesthetic. I’m sorry.”

“Just do what you have to,” Erik bites out.

“If you pass out,” she says, “we all die.”

There’s gunfire outside. There’s rain on the roof. The sky is darkening. There’s a CRASH! of thunder that rattles their bones—sends pieces of glass flying inward—a high-five between Wanda and Storm, and a boom in the distance—a helicopter down.

Alexander can feel Erik flinch under his hand, but he still half suspects he imagined it. “I’ve survived worse,” the mutant mutters. “Pain is in the mind. Blood loss is not. Do what you have to.”

“VEER LEFT!” Storm orders, and Erik obeys: the train tilts, tilts, tilts and then Alexander sees a section of magnetic rail, at least ten yards away, gone; there’s a flash of heat—the train shakes violently and starts to drop—

Erik brings the train back onto the rail.

Natasha cuts. Erik winces again; Alexander’s hand slips, and it comes away sticky, covered in sweat and blood that isn’t his own. There’s a THUD!, and then there’s a dint in the roof. Alexander reapplies pressure to the artery and chooses not to think about that. He says, “Hold still.”

Erik hisses, “Can’t you see I’m trying?”

Alexander says, “We’ve only got one shot—”

“Do you think I’m an idiot?”

“—you cannot let a muscle stray if you want to see tomorrow—”

“Or do you just honestly think you’re the only one who can feel pain?”

“—we got a job to do, man, the whole world is depending on us—”

“Because Alexander Hamilton doesn’t even need empathy, because if something isn’t Alexander Hamilton, it must be wrong, ha!… fucking stupid—”

“I’m not stupid!” Alexander roars—

“Oh my God, shut up, both of you,” Natasha groans. She looks directly at Alexander, doesn’t even wince when there’s another BOOM! and shattering glass, a car ahead of them ruined. “Distract him.”

“With what?”

“Something non-combative.”

“Like what?” Natasha doesn’t answer. Great, he thinks. Their mission (to say nothing of their lives) depends on Alexander Hamilton’s ability to not-argue. Wonderful.

He simmers for a few moments. Then he blurts: “So it turns out I’m half-aesir.”

“Hm, half-ae—what?!” Erik splutters. “How, I—what… aesir—you’re Asgardian?”

“What?!” demands Wanda.

“Keep working,” Natasha tells her, “we’ll tell you later.”

Softly, Alexander agrees, “Evidently.”

Erik shakes his head. “Why didn’t you—!”

“I didn’t know,” he answers, “until our captors’ tests today. Although Natasha has since confessed that Nick Fury knew since I came back, and he deliberately hid it from me. Sent a blood sample to Asgard, I think.” Natasha nods. “He didn’t want to count out the possibility that I was bullshitting everyone.”

There’s another KABABOOM! outside and a cheer from Storm and Wanda; Natasha’s lips twist into a grin. “Make no mi-steak, he means well. He doesn’t lie to a-moos himself.”

Erik blinks. “Were those supposed to be…?”

Ah, Alexander realizes belatedly: ‘cow-nt out’—‘bullshitting’—cow puns. Two can play at that game. “Caution is understanda-bull. But if his goal was to earn my allegiance, anything but candor seems cow-nterproductive and not a little…cowed-bullooded.”

“You,” Erik says, “are ridiculous.” Alexander beams.

Natasha says, “Udder-ly so.”

Erik groans.

“Hay,” she says. “I see a potential pun and grab it by the horns, even if I don’t always hit the bullseye. Alex, could you give me that needle?” He passes it to her, hiding, as best he can, the way the storm—softball-sized ice plummets from the sky, banging little dents into the ceiling; Incessant lightning crackles, and the room flickers shades of white, red, blue, and lilac—sets his muscles trembling.

“Manure horri-bull,” Erik quips back. “If those were supposed to be puns, you butchered them.” He looks at Alexander. “Any guesses on how you’re a damn alien and you didn’t notice?”

“Ah, it was some half-intelligible gammon about magic-based, self-altering DNA or whatever and how my resurrection—side-note: that phrase will never not sound absurd—strengthened magic already present in me, that of an ancestor, perhaps? To be honest I’ve no idea, it didn’t make any sen—”

Another explosion rocks the train sideways until they’re sliding toward the walls. Erik gasps, slams his fist into the floor, and the car rights itself back onto the rail; Alexander has the distinct impression that they’d be dead if the mutant had lost focus. He could panic, but he smiles. “In the meantime, I’m milking these for all the they’re worth, and we’ve but grazed the surface.”

A hailstorm whirls and windows shatter. Shards of glass and ice crash against a red shield (“We don’t need a hurricane!” cries Wanda), and the storm punches dents in the ceiling. The train sways and jolts, but they shoot awful puns back and forth, laughing with some sarcasm at the terrible ones, which are all of them, until the last three helicopters, all smoking and unsteady, wobble to emergency landings.

The clouds overhead give way to warm sunlight—slowly at first, then all at once. Alexander hazards a glance out the remnants of a window: the clouds are unnatural, with the sharpest edges he’s ever seen on a storm, even as blue sky congeals and they dissipate.

“That’s it,” says Natasha, and snip, she cuts the thread.

“So I won’t bleed out,” Erik guesses.

“Hey Alex, could you…?” Alexander takes his hand off the artery and passes the suture kit into Natasha’s outstretched hands, and she tells the mutant with a wry smile, “You could bet your life on it.”

“Ha,” says Erik. He scowls. “That’s not funny.”

“You get to set the bar for humor?” Storm interjects, approaching. She glistens with sweat and blood, but with her arms crossed, she radiates calm—their savior,  the eye of the hurricane, the embodiment of Alexander’s nightmares. “In the last ten minutes, I’ve endured at least fifty-seven cow puns.”

“Puns,” Wanda repeats. “Oh—kalambury—‘puns’…” She blinks. “Fifty-seven puns. About… cows?…”

“I counted,” says Storm solemnly. “And I still managed to save your hides—” Her eyes widen. “I didn’t… I meant…”

Alexander smirks, Natasha snorts, and Erik actually giggles, which leaves all of them in—oh. Oh. It takes a good ten seconds to compose himself enough to deliver that one: “Careful,” Alexander wheezes, “you don’t want to leave all of us in stitches.” Storm roars in dismay, but Erik playfully socks him in the arm (“Gah!” cries Erik, slumping to cradle his wounded shoulder) and Natasha offers a fist-bump.

The train begins a slow descent. Ten minutes later, they squeak to a stop in a florescent underground beneath a mountain, painted cheerily: an empty subway station. Once Erik has torn the jammed doors off their hinges, they step outside. The spy says, “I followed you here.” She points to a staircase up a flight of stairs. “There’s an elevator up there that leads to Silas’ office.” She looks at Wanda. “Should we expect company?”

Alexander says, “Always expect company.”

“Unless you have a telepath,” Natasha replies. “Then always ask the telepath if you should expect company.”

Wanda frowns. “Yes, I think so? Seven minds. They feel like they’re waiting for something. Most of them think they’re confident, but they’re nervous.” She shakes her head. “They don’t want to be here, they’re terrified of Silas, of losing their employment and their homes and their—”

“Do we need to know that?” Alexander interrupts, shifting uncomfortably at the thought of Wanda picking through someone’s brain—of the blonde telepath in the alley.

“There is no need to kill them!” Wanda exclaims. “This time, we are surprising them. When we will get closer, I could—”

“What,” says Alexander, “break their minds and impose your will? It’s because they’re—they’re something like slavers that we’re opposed to them at all, but we’d put their very souls under the yoke of a master?”

“They deserve worse,” Erik says. Storm nods her agreement.

“When get closer, I put them to sleep,” Wanda says, sounding exasperated. “It’s like knocking them over the head. Is that bad?”

For a long, bitter instant, Alexander says nothing. Wanda turns to Natasha, redirecting the question. Natasha shrugs and looks back at Alexander. “No,” he concedes. “It’s not.”

The elevator is offline. Erik huffs and flings open the doors to reveal an empty elevator shaft. At that, he pulls a face and closes his eyes, and Alexander stares, still baffled by that level of concentration. And, he thinks, it’s strange to see someone obviously exerting so much energy while visibly doing nothing.

After a few seconds, Erik says, “We have a problem.”

Alexander demands, “What.”

Natasha hmms.

Wanda asks, “You need help?”

With a sardonic smile, Erik replies, “We don’t have an elevator.”

“Huh.” Alexander blinks. That’s one way to stop an electromaniac. “Well, shit.”

Natasha says, “Then we’ll climb.”

In Alexander’s opinion, the one saving grace of this damnable endeavor is that the elevator shaft has a ladder. He takes the lead—in Natasha’s words, she needs “time to catch whoever screws up”, and he’s most likely to—with the ladies behind him, Erik obnoxiously floating like a Force ghost. That he’s expected to scale some twenty-odd floors is bad enough, but with Alexander’s injured hand, ergo only three limbs really usable, it’s near impossible.

When voices sound below, even Storm, the woman who’s been unconscious for God knows how long, starts howling for him to hurry up. Alexander points out his burned hand, and Erik offers to carry him. Alexander scoffs, but Erik demands, “Is your pride more important than our lives?!” An unbidden voice answers Yes at the back of Alexander’s mind. But he shakes his head, because it isn’t, and he’s very sure he doesn’t think so, either; Alexander grips Erik’s outstretched forearm and manages not to yelp when the other man yanks him off the ladder and rockets skyward.

“Okay,” Alexander manages when Erik deposits him on the ladder under the elevator doors, “what in the hell was that about.”

“I have a bullet in my shoulder-blade,” says Erik. Sufficiently chastised, Alexander lifts his chin and prepares to defend himself from one accusation about his ego or another, but Erik clarifies, “I couldn’t have carried you any longer.” Minutes later, Wanda knocks out the guards with her brain powers, Erik pries the doors open, and they clamber inside.

“There are cameras throughout the mansion,” says FRIDAY. Her voice is from Silas’ desktop computer. “And as you can see,” she says with no small hint of smugness, “the security here is rather lacking.”

“Then how do we get to the runway?” asks Natasha.

Silas’ private runway, FRIDAY explains as she guides them through the mansion’s most desolate hallways, is on a plateau near the top of the mountain adjacent to his residence. There are no elevators to the top: at a comfortable pace (for an athlete, Alexander thinks snidely) it’s an hour’s hike, and the fastest way is by car.

To Alexander, the choice is obvious: they can either be miserable, or steal a Ferrari. “Anybody up for a heist?” he says, but Storm is already diving off the nearest balcony. She floats upward before Alexander can lunge after her, although he’s mid-stride and close enough to the railing that Storm quirks an eyebrow at his obvious concern. Do you think I’m an idiot? says that eyebrow, and Alexander smiles nervously, face flushed to the tips of his ears. Wanda levitates after Storm, red vortexes glowing between her fingers; Erik crosses his arms and follows them into open air. Natasha takes Wanda’s hand, and the two follow Storm. Alexander opens his mouth to protest—

The wind howls.

And knocks Alexander into open air.

(Is this what it is to be an Avenger?

You fall and fall and fall and fall, and heaven itself is screaming: it moans, its touch abrades, and its fingers tangle furious in your hair like a scorned and possessive lover—and your blood roars in your ears, heart in your throat, adrenaline in every vein—how do you fall? how do you stand? how many bones must you break to land on your feet?—because you refuse to be helpless (you will do what it takes to survive)—

But the wind catches you.

There’s vomit in your mouth, and you gag it back, but the wind catches you—

Of course—you understand (you’re not stupid). You’re flying.

Flying.

You look up. Wanda and Natasha and Storm, even Erik—dear Christ, they look unmortal, they look like angels, and your nerves don’t quiet (not for a moment), but the sky is glorious, and you’re drunk on adrenaline, high on heroism (so close to the sun)—and you don’t care that your very brain is a fuck-up in the eyes of modern medicine, you don’t care that your goddamn anxiety of storms twists knives in your belly, you don’t care that a worm is writhing around your spine, because you’re awake, aware, alive—you’re flying! Damn your body, damn your fear, damn the defects of your brain. Courage froths in your veins; the danger, the mystery feels like glee. You smile, you laugh, hysterical (and—certifiably—mad), and wonder which emotion (there’s a whole fucking hurricane of them whirling in your chest) stings at your eyes, or if that’s just the dust.

You rise up, rise up, rise up, rise up, and you’re on the runway now, you see a massive jet and Pepper (her eyes up) and Tony and Silas.

Silas. Silas’ stomach speared, skull smashed, spine snapped—his guts smear across your mind’s eye, and you’re not yet satisfied, you won’t be—and God Almighty, your mother’s slaves could’ve killed you where you stood, how didn’t they? because this isn’t rage, isn’t hate—it’s older than that. Older than you. Like seeing a snake. Threat. Danger. (Run. Hide.) Kill.

Your hands tremble. The injured fingers rattle against each other and burn, but you shiver: (you’ve been sweating—) you’re flying!(—and you’re cold).

Storm reaches the runway first. She stretches out her arms (some saint on an invisible crucifix, hair a halo in the sunlight), and hovers in place. She turns to the others. Her lips move(—what is she saying?—she must know you can’t hear her—why hasn’t she brought you closer?—)and Erik and Wanda nod, and Natasha dangles from her grip around the witch’s shoulders(—because you don’t need to know—you have no control).

She descends.

Wind blasts across the runway. The dust is everywhere. Silas looks up.

Storm smiles. She says something.

Silas stumbles backwards. Tony wraps his arm around Pepper’s waist. Alexander catches a gesture behind her. The Iron Man suit. Tony is calling for the Iron Man suit. Silas is still stumbling. There’s a flash of red and fire—

And the suit closes around Storm.

She raises a hand toward Pepper.

And then Silas isn’t standing.

The suit unwraps from Storm—Tony throws a punch, shouting something; Storm ducks—and folds itself neatly into a suitcase beside him, and in the midst of all that, you realize abruptly, you’re descending.

It’s worse than the climb. It’s more like falling.

Your feet brush the ground, and you stumble forward as Natasha and Wanda and Erik rush past you. Tony is looking bewildered and cursing up a storm, something you half-hear, like “the fucking shit you goddamn asshole you fucking threaten her again I’ll—” and Pepper says “Tony, Tony,” her hand on his shoulder, “I can yell at her myself.”

And Pepper squares her shoulders. “What the fuck was that?”

“Plausible deniability,” Storm replies.

“Unless you’d like to deal with the PR after stealing a private jet?” says FRIDAY from Tony’s phone. “And sorry for the scare, boss. I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t have to.” Tony pulls a face, and Pepper nods, but neither look pleased.

Natasha nods to the plane. Erik and Wanda gesture. A velvet-mantled staircase extends from the cabin, and the three bolt up the stairs; Storm moves to follow, but Tony stops her with a Look. “Don’t ever threaten my, uh—” he searches for a word “—Pepper again.” Storm nods, and dashes for the plane.

“‘Your’ Pepper?” Pepper’s eyes are gleaming. Tony looks at her, clears his throat. She kisses his cheek and darts after Storm and the others. You and Tony follow after what you remember is called a bro-hug—which you swiftly rectify into a real hug—and a “what’d I miss” from the billionaire as you step into the plane.

(The sleek paneled walls, plush carpet soft against your bare feet, the crystal tables, the wine cooler across the way, the scent of shrimp and garlic and pasta and spices and cheese and freshly baked bread wafting from elsewhere, the artificial lighting and the fact that this hunk of metal can fly—it will always take your breath away—no time will be enough.)

When you regain control of your senses from your raging thirst and snarling hunger, Natasha has already informed Pepper and Tony of the cow pun debacle, and the latter is churning them out non-stop as FRIDAY commandeers the plane and the cabin rattles—you’re moving, you’re leaving, you’re—

Not safe. “They’ll track us,” you say.

“Uh-uh.” Tony shakes his head. “I got an Idea.” He babbles something scientific you don’t understand—electromagnetic interference that will neutralize the issue with a particular mechanism via a storm-generated power surge thereby allowing an Erik-generated cloaking device—and cloaking device, you understand, thanking the heavens for Darcy Lewis and Gene Roddenberry.

When you begin toward the sky, a storm is brewing, and you think, this must be what it’s like to be an Avenger.

When you reach the sky, you’re aiding Natasha as she slices open Storm’s neck  (“we have to get out the tracking devices,” she says) and wrenches out the writhing, hissing worm, its mouth within another mouth, its mouth a suction cup of a hundred teeth when you take it in your hands and it lunges for Natasha’s neck and you snap it in half—and you think, this must be what it’s like to be an Avenger.

When you reach the storm, the plane’s door is open, and Wanda is struggling to prevent explosive decompression while Tony attaches an bits and bobs from the Iron Man suit to the plane’s exterior, because Natasha didn’t work fast enough and she needs to ensure Erik is able to create the magnetic field, so now you’re the one cutting out the worm from Wanda’s neck—she cries out, you must’ve done something wrong, oh God, you’ve hurt her, but she offers you a determined smile, says “I’m ready,” and you yank the worm out, skewer it on your scalpel, and Wanda’s awake, she’s alive, thank God she stayed alive, they’re all still alive—and you think, this must be what it’s like to be an Avenger.

When you reach the lightning strike, you’re ready. It strikes Tony’s MacGyver’d machination. The light blinds. The thunder shakes wine bottles out of their cooler. A splitting headache smacks through your temples. And Tony shouts in victory, the plane cloaked; the battle won. And when you laugh, half-hysterical, you think, this must be what it’s like to be an Avenger—

—majestic.

—glorious.

—an unending barrage of uncertainty.

—something you won’t ever stop until you’re a part of.)

(—and maybe, just maybe, something satisfying.)

Chapter Text

In Glass Houses

Monday, October 25, 2017

The wind is howling, and Natasha proffers the scalpel. Alexander clenches his teeth, nods, and begins to turn, but she flips the blade and presents the handle.

He blinks, long and hard. “What?”

“You’re strong enough.”

“… to cut skin,” says Alexander, incredulous, even as strange pride begins to flicker beneath his skin. Aesir. Aesir. Yes, he will be racist as all hell again by next Tuesday.

In a low voice, she tells him, “Thor’s is stronger than diamond.”

“Well then.” He preens more than a little, but not more than absolutely necessary, considering the circumstances.  “Will I not dull the blade?”

“No. That’s from golden apples and long term use of magic.”

“Oh… kay.” He firmly resolves not to be disappointed. “Then, do tell, what relevance—”

“But resurrection is enough to jumpstart a magical core. Test results said you’re more durable than Steve and not quite as strong—well, not nearly, considering your lack of muscle mass.” She jabs the scalpel’s handle toward him. “Do you need more explanation, or…?”

He clears his throat, and replies, “Yeah, no, actually I’d like to know why the hell I’m an alien, if that’s not too much to ask.”

“You’re an alien?” Pepper interjects from across the cabin, as she dabs antiseptic ointment on Storm’s wound. “Huh. Are you Planning to take over the world?”

“I’ve Plans, yeah,” he shoots back, “but those are contingencies I’d not much like to implement.”

Natasha is glaring at him. “Cut,” she commands.

After bracing himself as much as possible—which isn’t very much—Alexander obliges. He presses the scalpel, presses harder, barely makes an indent, and says, “This isn’t working.”

“You might have to consciously access that strength, or be running on pure adrenaline.”

“I am running purely on adrenaline; I just escaped fucking modern—” Slavery catches in his throat. The irony isn’t lost on him.

“But you don’t want to. You have to want to.”

“Hm. I don’t want to cut myself. Perhaps you should congratulate me on ‘levelling-up’ my mental health—”

“Alex. Just do it.”

He slices.

Natasha guides his hands, muttering curses and insults and encouragements as he slices through skin and sinew, fingers slippery with his own blood. The worm wriggles, and the squelches sound almost like screaming. His stomach lurches, damn its weakness, and he tips forward, yanking Natasha with him by her wrist. He glances behind: she’s regained her balance, but he thinks he might’ve hurt her more than he’s letting on by the way she cradles her wrist—flinches away from the wound as though burned when he sees.

“My God,” says Alexander, “I’m sorry, sorry, are you—”

She shakes her head. “Let’s just get this over with.”

The worm comes out, silver and hideous. It tries to burrow under his forearm. Alexander balls fists around its head and tail and snaps the damn thing in half with enough force to spray guts in his face, and it tastes like—it tastes like there’s vomit in his mouth.

He scurries off to the nearest toilet, cleans himself off, finds and pops a Tums from the bath-room drawer. Then he goes exploring. The jet is as luxurious as Stark Tower, with a kitchen, a boardroom, a master bed- and bath-room, even more. Tony comes bearing food from the kitchen to the plush theatre/common area, and Alexander eats at least half of the bread and fruit board before inhaling an entire bottle of water and passing out on the sofa.

Myth haunts his dreams. It’s Roman myth, though. For all he loves legends, Alexander knows next to nothing of Yggdrasil. A three-headed puppy slobbers at his feet and cajoles him into rubbing its belly. Peggy greets him with Lucius Junius Brutus, the founder of republican Rome (who looks suspiciously like Jason Isaacs), and offers to take him to Master Yoda.

“You’re rare, but not the first,” Natasha told him during dinner. “We got ahold of Asgard—Asgard said if we were right, you could probably learn æsir magic. But the more you use it, the less ‘mortal’”—she used air-quotes—“less human you’ll become.”

Then sign me the hell up, Alexander wanted to say. He doesn’t remember what he said instead. He was too goddamn tired, damn his body—his humanity too.

Alexander tells Peggy and Lucius yes to Jedi training, on the condition he gets to study under one of the Skywalkers. The green troll is far too reticent and reminds him too much of Madison—or even Burr. Even if Alexander’s and Anakin’s clash of tempers would probably destroy, or quite possibly conquer, the galaxy, he much prefers shouting to riddles, thank you very much. He’s riding the River Styx to Coruscant when AC/DC booms through the Underworld, loud enough it hurts, and when his fingers clench the sides of the boat he clutches wool, not wood—a blanket.

He groans—surely he closed his eyes only a minute ago!—and squints at the fabric beneath him. In his sleep, he’s somehow wedged his nose in the crack between two cushions, and when he raises his head he knocks it into an armrest. The world spins. His neck aches. At least, Alexander recalls dimly, he had enough presence of mind to give Wanda and Storm the bedroom. (God knows they need it—Storm especially. He resolves to thank her more explicitly when he sees her again.)

Tony is spitting out a string of curses. Back in Black lowers to a reasonable volume, and Alexander rolls over onto his side for a slightly better view of the room. There’s a cloudless sky out the windows. Tony is kneeling over a glass coffee table, the damned spine-worms (and two halves of one) floating in a bowl while the billionaire prods them with gloved hands.

“God!” Pepper says, somewhere behind Alexander’s sofa. “You can’t just—”

Tony interrupts: “First off, you don’t have to call me God—”

“—bombard our eardrums without warning!”

Alexander huffs, demands control of his exhausted body, and stretches, spine popping painfully; Pepper and Tony hardly spare him a glance.

“Second—second of all, FRIDAY!” Tony barks. “Your job is to make sure I don’t waste my brain on, say, turning the volume down before I press play… when I could be working on a unification theory or the black hole information paradox—”

Pepper waltzes into Alexander’s tilted, peripheral view, an eyebrow raised. “Well were you working on a unification theory or the black hole information paradox?”

“Way to completely miss the point,” Tony retorts; “the point is that I made JARVIS so I—”  He freezes, and in that moment Alexander can practically see the words wrenched from his tongue. It’s not the first time that Alexander has heard of JARVIS, the Stark AI lost to the Ultron debacle a few months ago, but it’s the first time he’s seen Tony wearing that expression. It’s an expression that’s all too familiar, and strikes exactly the wrong chord in his chest.

“Understood, boss. I’ll implement a new protocol for musical playback during low-bandwidth sessions,” says FRIDAY softly. Tony’s expression disappears before Alexander can remember the awful time he must have worn it himself, and the AI continues, “Shall I override said protocol in the absence of Ms. Potts?”

“You know better. Don’t,” Pepper warns. She shakes her head. Her tone is dark and playful. In her eyes there’s something haunted, and the conversation lulls into a pregnant pause.

Tony finally looks at Alexander. “Oh,” Tony says, “the princess is awake, did somebody kiss him?”

Alexander props himself up. “Not yet.” With a faux-leer, he purrs, “Jealous, Stark, or just offering?” Tony starts, rolls his eyes, and opens his mouth to retort, but Alexander doesn’t give him a chance: he sits upright, back straight; he’ll waste no more time on games. “What’d I miss? Have we got a new Plan?”

“You think there’d be a Plan with Tony in charge?” Pepper asks wryly.

“An excellent point,” Alexander replies. “Why is he in charge?”

“Uh, because I’m a genius and I have a plan.”

“Really,” says Alexander. “Uh-huh. So if you’ve no Plan, what, in the interim, have you actually been doing?” He glances at the ceiling, despite knowing that FRIDAY does not, in fact, reside up there. “Besides listening to AC/DC.”

“Shit that’s more productive than sleeping,” says Tony.

“Fuck off,” Alexander replies, and Pepper casts a similarly offended glance Tony’s way. The pair exchange a moment that probably says she thinks her boyfriend needs to be sleeping more. Tony raises an eyebrow, and Pepper rolls her eyes. Alexander interrupts, “Okay, man, really: what’ve you been doing?”

“Tryna fuck up all Silas’ networks, ‘cuz he’s a bitchass bastard sonovamotherfuckingwhore.”

“Wow,” Alexander says wryly. “How succinct and perspicuous.”

“Fuck you,” Tony replies.

“Oh—” Alexander grins “—with pleasure.”

Pepper snorts, and Tony throws up his hands in defeat, saying “See what I have to deal with?” to either God or FRIDAY, and quite possibly both. “The WiFi here sucks though,” Tony says, more seriously. “And FRIDAY’s good, but she doesn’t know all the tricks and I can only talk her through so much, so I’mma help her screw him over as soon as we’re on the ground. So in the, uh, ‘interim’ , I’ve been looking at these fuckers.”

He gestures to the worms with a wrinkled nose, and Alexander brushes his fingers against the nape of his neck. The skin has healed already, but it feels raw. “Have you learned anything?”

“Yeah,” says Tony, “that Silas is a bitchass motherfucker.”

Pepper shoots a look at him. “We have a working theory,” she tells the Founding Father. “It’s not good.”

“How so?” asks Alexander.

Tony replies, “These fuckers—they’re neurologic annelids.”

Alexander raises an eyebrow, racking his brain. “Spine-worms,” he translates. “Hm.”

“ Interim. Perspicuous ,” Tony retorts. Alexander scowls. “‘Kay, so y’know, the, uh, the training sim things I had you and Nat and Erik do. Remember—right, I dunno how screwed your memory is, but—okay, do you remember—”

Alexander blanches. “Those—demonic—damnable fucking—those were the same things? And you neglected to inform me?”

“Yeah it’s gross but there are trillions and trillions of bacteria crawling on your skin right now and they weren’t mind control devices so shut up. Anyway. Bruce—uh, Dr. Banner, the Strongest Avenger, the green angry dude when he isn’t green or angry—genetically designed the little fuckers, and they’re s’posed to be microscopic and transmit bioelectrical signals—and they’re great for that. Should have a prototype memory-modifier by May—”

“Memory modifier? Why in the hell…?”

“Good question,” Pepper interjects, shooting a pointed look at her boyfriend.

Tony shrugs. “Instantaneous luxury vacations. RPGs. Who knows, it’s cool. These little motherfuckers though. I mean, obviously, they’re bigger. Orders of magnitude bigger. And can do a crapton more than project stimuli, like—like give you selective amnesia, or depression. Mania, hallucinations. PTSD. False memories. DID. They take control of the whole brain.”

Ophélie, thinks Alexander, and then, Merde. “Could they facilitate some form of possession? Allow someone to take possession of another’s body?”

“Huh.” Tony scratches at his head. “The bandwidth would have to be great, imagine lag when you try to move your fingers—”

“Welcome to electroshock therapy,” Alexander interjects.

“—but—yeah, I mean, no, that would prolly cause brain damage to whoever was being possessed, but—sure, if you were a psychopath, you could make somebody your RPG avatar.”

Pepper asks, “Why?”

From her tone of voice, she already has her suspicions. Alexander relays Dr. Moreau’s monologue, Ophélie’s insistence that there had been a demon in her brain, and the woman’s subsequent death. By the time he’s finished, he already has a theory. “Behind the pretense of absolute liberty,” he finds himself concluding, after a short (by his standards) monologue on the danger of ‘insufficient alacrity’ in government, “all hell’s broken loose. It’s pure mayhem and all the shit which invariably comes with that. Between… ‘disposable people’ and spine leeches , I think the well-propertied men—and women of Genosha think they’ve found their ticket to immortality. That’s why Silas has the resources, that’s why the UN hasn’t proposed sanctions and the State Department hasn’t issued travel advisories. That’s why you can’t hack him.”

Tony scoffs, “I can hack him, just gimme two hours and a bottle of vodka—”

“This is conjecture, of course,” continues Alexander, “but I’d bet he’s got the entire corporatocracy behind him.”

Tony stares at him. “Wait.” He holds up a hand. “You think the Genoshan Executive Board is in on this.”

Alexander has scarcely caught up on American politics—he doesn’t know more than the basics of the Genoshan self-proclaimed ‘anarchy.’ “Perhaps,” he says carefully.

“Dude.” Tony crosses his arms. “I’m on the Genoshan Board. I subsidize a couple schools there. You qualify just by investing, like, only a couple hundred mil into the country—”

“Not necessarily the entirety of it,” Alexander interrupts. “I confess I know little of that quote-unquote ‘anarchic state’, not least because of my distaste for it, but I know there is zero regulation in Genosha. No one watches the watchers. I’d expect nothing less than a harbor for various forms of organized crime.”

“… you were a political analyst, then,” Pepper notes. “Were you banished from Asgard for supporting democracy?”

Alexander blinks. “Huh?”

“Whatever you were doing before you moved into the Tower is classified,” she replies, pulling a face. “That means someone won’t tell me. Even if he knows I’ll figure it out.”

Then she didn’t know who he was when she asked if he was an alien? She didn’t know who he was for the entirety of their conversation? Alexander says, “Um,” and thinks, giddly, childishly, dizzily, I made a real friend! There’s a part of him that thinks that isn’t very honorable, but a much bigger part is ecstatic someone absolutely and for-certain sees him, not who they—probably wrongly—think he’s meant to be.

And Tony says, “So,” with a step forward as if to physically interject, “what you’re saying is a bunch of Disney Villain E-vil Billionaires are cool with Murder-Tech Incorporated just because they personally—” Tony stops. His eyes pop, and he turns an almost literal green. “Because they personally benefit.”

Were Pepper not in the room when this happened, Alexander would probably give Tony a bro-hug and remind him, shitty person to shitty person, that he accepted money from Philip Schuyler, knowing exactly what that entailed—and considering the little he knows about the 2007 Stark/Blackwater ‘incident’, Alexander isn’t entirely sure who, between the two of them, needs redemption the most. But Pepper is in the room. So he says, “Yeah. And when you consider they don’t pay for labor, well. You’d need a shitload of laundromats to clean all that dirty money.”

Tony shuffles. He nods, brows guilty, chest puffed out. (Alexander knows badly-hidden insecurity when he sees it.) “Doesn’t explain the Stark Tech. The shit can only be manufactured in my own—” He breaks off, hisses, “Shit. Oh holy— motherfucker.”

“What?”

Pepper and Alexander look at each other and then back at Tony. “Manila,” he snaps, stuttering out a half coherent string of curses.

Pepper frowns. “Was that the one with Atlantis and a sea monster?” Tony doesn’t answer. Red-faced and gesticulating wildly, he makes creative suggestions about Silas Solanki’s penis and ill-advised places to put it.

It takes Alexander a minute, but—“The factory,” he remembers. “It opened without explanation and vanished when you investigated.”

“And…” Pepper shakes her head, eyes wide. “If I’m remembering right. No one ever could contact any employees.”

“They stole my shit! Fucking—they never should’ve been able to—just. Just. The fucking audacity. To touch my tech, mine. Do they have any fucking idea who I am? I swear to Jesus H. motherfucking Christ I will be sipping ice cold mojitos in Hell before they touch what is mine again, ‘cuz tomorrow they’re all registered for bond labor in Cambodia.”

Pepper gives Tony a look. It reeks of Eliza, and Alexander aches.

“Boss, I don’t mean to be rude,” says FRIDAY, “but at the moment I can’t begin to access their bank accounts, let alone…”

“Yeah, well, there’s the p-lan,” says Tony. “I’ll do it later. Happy?”

“A lot of them are Americans, and I’m sure the rest have committed crimes against American citizens,” Pepper reasons. “After you freeze their bank accounts, there’s no reason we can’t see them tried at home.”

“But—c’mon, Cambodia , Peps. It’s karmic.”

“Which is why they’ll spend the rest of their lives in privatized prisons.” From the gleam in her eyes, there should be blood dripping from that innocent smile. Tony looks at Pepper like he’s seen an angel. Alexander doesn’t see Eliza anymore.

Donald J. Trump @realDonald Trump
“@LandmanMarius: @realDonaldTrump AUSTRALIA SUPPORTS DONALD TRUMP. Please immigrate to Australia and make Aussie great as well.” Cute!

in reply to Donald J. Trump
A. Hamilton @publiusesquire
Imbecilic. Isolationism among free states will only effect destabilization & a vacuum for despots—if not extraterrestrials—to fill.

Tuesday, October 26, 2017

Once a mildly snappish Wanda and a baggy-eyed, limping Erik stroll into the living room, Tony closes the blinds, and FRIDAY lowers a projector and screen from the ceiling. During the slower parts of the Last Airbender’s second season, Alexander continues using “ Stark™ X-tremely Secured™” WiFi to catch up on social media and make a damage assessment of his cover story. His manic self apparently had the foresight to post his most blatantly Hamiltonian blogs, if not tweets, under a separate account, @alexfaucette. But the name is obvious, there are a few Tumblr conspiracists already linking to it, and there’s no way Twitter staff won’t notice the identical IP address eventually, if they haven’t already.

“Leaves from the vine,” the old man on the screen sings, voice breaking, “falling so slow…” A lump forms in Alexander’s throat immediately. He wants to know the errant prince’s fate, but he’s glad when the screen goes dark and FRIDAY announces they’re landing at Urmia Airport.

It’s a smooth descent. He wouldn’t notice it if he weren’t peeking out onto the landscape below. Dunes surround the city. Snow-capped mountains line the horizon. The plane kisses the ground, late on a Tuesday morning.

“I thought Arabia was a land of deserts,” Alexander murmurs, a little taken aback at the dry but distinctly autumn air wafting in from the open doorway on the plane’s first floor. He glances out the window: the runway is paved, and the airport itself is glass, steel, concrete.

“This isn’t Arabia.” Erik slides his suitcase to Alexander, frowning. “That’s just the peninsula. This is barely even considered the Middle East.”

“Forgive my misinformed geography, then.”

“And, not to say this is a desert, but…” Erik raises a brow. “You do realize not all deserts are hot…?”

Alexander dismisses Erik with a wave of his hand, hoists both of their suitcases a few inches into the air, and lugs them down the stairs, one step at a time.

Natasha snorts, shaking her head. “Still wanna try to lift a tank, big guy?” She nudges him.

He nudges back. “Before or after your wrist has healed?”

Her hand goes to the injury. “Touché.”

“I’m sorry, I meant not to cause you—”

“’Sokay. Ever told you about that time Clint broke my femur?”

“Ha. You like Clint.”

“That was when I was trying to kill him.” Natasha smiles wryly. “I like him now. I already like you.” At this, Alexander glows more than warranted or necessary, and she looks at him, flickering eyes narrowing for a millisecond—a look of analysis. Has she been psychoanalyzing him, then? Is she being nice as a form of manipulation—to keep him from a perceived breakdown on the horizon?

Does she really see him as that weak? Does she know he knows?

Natasha shrugs, which could mean anything. “Later, Alexander—Erik. See you on the other side of security.”

See you on the other side of the war runs unbidden through his head, and he has a flashback to remembering nothing in the middle of an airport pat-down.

But the trip is uneventful. Tony and Pepper present Nevisian passports (“Yeah, you can by ‘em for cheap, if you invest like, 400k in the country,” Tony explains). Erik, Wanda, and Alexander hand in forged tourist visas, courtesy of ASCENT, and, minor anxiety attack notwithstanding, nothing goes wrong. In the meantime, Natasha somehow ghosts Storm through the airport, probably without once being seen. Agent Romanoff still manages to meet them at the front of the airport, disguised in a fashionable niqab, in the driver’s seat of a lime green Cadillac.

“ Salām, dust â n mæn .” Natasha rests her hand on the open windowsill of the SUV. “ Če xabar? ”

Erik stares at her. “Your pronunciation is impeccable.”

Her grin is hidden by the veil, but her eyes crinkle. “Oh please, that’s not new , that’s old hat. What is new—” she reaches “—is a helluva lot of coffee—” and holds up a cup in either hand like Mufasa held up Simba in the Lion King.

“And kebabs,” pipes up a chewing Storm from the passenger seat, but Alexander’s brain has hitched on coffee , and if the murmured “ alḥamdulillāh ” from Erik and Tony’s lunge forward are anything to go by, he isn’t alone—but Wanda claims the first coffees in a burst of red magic.

“Ladies first,” she chastens them, sipping one. She hands the other to Pepper, and they crawl into the SUV, ripping off their state-mandated hijabs the moment they’re within the tinted glass.

This leaves the three men squished in the back three seats as Natasha takes off onto the road. Tony mutters to Alexander, “Okay, but isn’t that a type of misogyny, I think ladies first is a type of misogyny.”

Pepper retorts, “It’s not misogyny when it’s about mandatory headscarves or coffee.”

Erik makes a noise of disbelief, gesturing to his cramped knees as he glares at Tony. “Oh, you’re complaining—you’re like, what, five eight?!”

And Alexander hisses, “Yeah, yeah, it’s a propagation of, um, of gender-roles we’ve otherwise eschewed, but honestly I’m not the best person to ask about this, and—and regardless I highly suggest you let your girlfriend have the coff—”

Natasha interrupts “Oh—there’s more coffee! Could you—?” and pokes Storm, who passes out the other cups of warm, godly nectar. A few moments later, Natasha says, “But really—who here thinks ladies first is or isn’t sexist?”

What might have otherwise been an all-out war of the sexes over caffeine becomes a conversation: Pepper and Storm have arrays of highly nuanced opinions on this matter and related ones, and Wanda and Erik are more than happy to discuss how their sexist homelands may have influenced their thoughts. Alexander, for the most part, holds his tongue, not least because Tony elbows him in the ribs every time he opens his mouth, even to hiss at Stark, “That was going to be in agreement with Pepper!”

“Her whole point was women don’t need support!”

Alexander isn’t sure, but he thinks this may be an Actually Productive discussion on gender. He tells Darcy as much when she texts to check on him.

Omg! she sends back. ur doing a Unicorn

“Is this—ow—that didn’t hurt, but really —is this an actual idiom,” he asks, “or is this another Darcyism?”

Tony squints at the phone. “Doing a unicorn,” he mouths. “Uh. I don’t fucking know anymore. Ask the linguist?”

“Nope,” says Erik, unbuckling his seatbelt. Alexander stares for a moment. With a glance out the window, he confirms they’ve stopped moving.

They’ve pulled into the parking lot of a large building—Ana Hotel, Tony explains: he doesn’t want to take any chances with potential death traps at Silas Solanki’s private place, now that they know the businessman is something of a supervillain. Tony booked the Presidential Suite.

They don’t bother to work out sleeping arrangements until much later that evening, after shawarma and before the beginning of Jurassic World. The movie is engrossing, but not so much that Alexander doesn’t snatch the wood and knife from his suitcase and attempt to carve a small Stegosaurus.

He’s clumsy and out of practice—he was never as good as Laurens—but it’s relaxing, dammit, and he thinks it might be recognizable when he finishes it. He’s less than halfway there when the movie’s ended and their little group disperses—Storm to the master bedroom (she deserves it, after all she’s been through), Tony and Pepper to another.

“Meet me in the lobby at seven a.m. sharp,” Natasha instructs Alexander and Wanda. Then Natasha lies down on one of the couches. She yanks a blanket over her head.

Erik looks distraught. “Am I not…?”

She pulls the blanket down. “You were shot,” she says. “Yesterday.” Natasha tugs the blanket up.

“I am the most knowledgeable about this mission. You might need me.”

Natasha pulls the blanket down. “Or you might get us killed,” she argues. She pulls the blanket up, this time putting a pillow over her head.

Erik blinks. “Am I really more of a liability than—”

“I am a retired general in the United States Army,” Alexander cuts in. “I am more than capable of handling myself, my man, and I do believe you know that. I also know that was going to be a comment about me, because I know you’re not so stupid as to actually think Natasha and Wanda aren’t more than capable of kicking your ass. So what, pray tell, is your problem with me?”

Erik pulls a face.

Alexander adds, “Maybe we should talk this over before we rely on each other to stay alive, you know.”

Erik doesn’t respond immediately. When he does, it’s in an acrid but almost mournful tone. “Maybe,” he says, “it’s the fact that you—you of all people, white male from the eighteenth century—walk around acting like you know what pain is.”

Alexander stares at him.

“What? You can’t possibly think you’ve hidden it well,” Erik says. “You had a psychotic break and attacked someone. You broke down crying, set us back hours, then convinced Nick Fury it was okay to send you on this mission, even though you have zero experience. All because you wanted to make yourself feel better, all because Alexander Hamilton’s feelings are so much more important than logic or ensuring a mission’s success. God. It’s like you think you’re the only one who’s ever lost something—”

“So you’re allowed to take cheap shots at others’ mental health?” Alexander snaps, jumping to his feet. “You deserve to go on missions when you’ve suffered a fucking gunshot wound, for Chrissakes, because you’re, what.” He scoffs. “The winner of some goddamn suffering Olympics?”

“Suffering Olympics?!” Erik splutters.

Under Natasha’s blanket, a flashlight clicks on. She must be reading.

Erik is very tall, Alexander realizes as the mutant rises to his feet. The table beside them rattles. “Do you have any idea how insulting that is to my people, who’ve been mutilated in the name of science and—and some perverted idea of purity every single day? Do you have any idea how—”

With a low growl, Erik breaks off. Alexander feels the metal strip in his bandages vibrating with Erik’s trembling, clenched fist. “My father was ex-Soviet, and the Taliban wouldn’t stop hunting us,” Erik snarls. “And when they killed him, they sold us out to Genosha. Sulaiman Shah raped and murdered my mother just to trigger my mutation, and you—you do not have any concept of what suffering is—”

“Do you what it is to weigh the sodomite’s circle of hell against the threat of your brother starving,” asks Alexander flatly. And Christ, he never told Jamie, hesitated more to tell John and Eliza.

But it’s so fucking worth it to see the flash of horror in Erik’s eyes. Then they narrow again, and he looks like he wants to say something.

“I’m sure you can figure it out.” Alexander smiles thinly. “I know what pain is, Erik, and I—!”

“Think that justifies your ridiculous selfishness?”

“Like it justifies yours?”

“Stop it!” Wanda shrieks.

They stop.

“Stop it, both of you,” she commands. Wanda rubs her temple above her left eye. “My God. You have no idea what it is like to be an empath in a room like this!” There is a shiver of rage that both Erik and Alexander seem to feel; before they can protest that they are allowed to voice their pain, Wanda continues, “You both hurt, you already hurt, stop hurting each other! I don’t understand , you’re hurting each other, but what does it gain?”

A book slams shut, and a wad of something hits Alexander’s head and crumples to the floor. He picks it up; it’s a blanket.

“What the fuck did siccing the Hulk on a city of innocents gain?” sneers Natasha, sitting up on the couch.

Alexander looks at Wanda in disbelief, and the witch’s eyes go wide. “I—nothing! Nothing! I have apologized!”

Natasha inhales, pulling her head back so that she’s peering down her nose. Then she straightens, and her look isn’t a glare; it’s too dispassionate for that, too dispassionate for any expression. “Your temper tantrum,” she said, “could have killed thousands of people, and you have apologized.”

What?

Alexander can only remember Natasha being nothing but kind to Wanda. The witch seems just as confused. The realization that Natasha has been babysitting tugs at his gut, and Wanda must understand at the same time, because her eyes harden and she says, “Like you’re so innocent, burner of hospitals and seller of whores .”

Natasha doesn’t blink. “The Widow and I did what we did more delusional and dissociated than anyone under your spell.” She snorts. “And don’t pretend to be good people like our resident mind-rapist.”

“I don’t stand by and watch,” Wanda growls, “as people hurt get hurt. I intervene. And I have failed, but I have tried to make this world a better place, and that’s what I’m doing now ,not—not whining over an ex-boyfriend I never had chemistry with!”

“This has nothing to do with Bruce,” Natasha answers.

Natasha and Bruce Banner, the missing Avenger? Alexander had no idea, and he can’t quite fathom it.

“No, no it doesn’t,” Wanda agrees. She jabs a finger at Alexander, who throws his hands up, because there is a gleam of crimson in her eyes. “He wrote something.”

“Umm,” says Alexander. “I wrote quite a very many things—”

Wanda rolls her eyes and glares. “A specific thing.”

“Oh.” He scratches at his head. Damn he is tired. “Okay. That makes sense.”

“It was something you … in song … ” She purses her lips and squints. “He would tie rabble who…”

Alexander blinks. “Heed not the rabble?” he interjects. She nods, and after a probably too-lengthy explanation that the lyric is not actually about the King of England being into bondage and tying up the rabble screaming for revolution, Alexander says, “ The Farmer Refuted ,” and Wanda tells FRIDAY to pull it up on her Starkphone.

“Sure boss,” says the AI, “but wh—oh, I see the abstract connection now. Hm. A bit pretentious, don’t you think?”

“Hmph.” Alexander is still rather proud of that essay—he was very young when he wrote it, and, after all, it launched him on course toward the war and his lifelong foray into politics.

Wanda blushes. “Maybe. But is why I think these idiots will listen.”

“Here.” Pointing at the screen, she clears her throat. “‘The divine rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.’”

There is a pause. “Do you still believe that, Alexander?”

He is still shell-shocked by the revelation of what Wanda did, and he wants to ask a thousand questions, but over the quickly congealing lump in his throat he can only say, “Yes.” It isn’t choked, either; his voice is strong and much more confident than he feels, as if it belongs again to the epicene firebrand who awed that first crowd in Manhattan, his words the spirit of liberty—but of course it doesn’t. He would have much more than a syllable to say.

“These … divine rights,” says Wanda. She smirks at him. “They are why I am a Communist you know and why I will convert you.”

“Good luck,” says Alexander Hamilton. “A mixed-market system is far—”

“But they are from, deried—derived from human dignity, yes? From the worth of human beings?”

“And mutants,” Erik says.

Wanda shoots a look at him. “We are no less human than a human with cancer or heterochromia.” Frowning, she mutters, “Thor,” and amends, “But yes, from worth of people I should say. Freedom they can never take away, no matter what they tell you. Because freedom is divine right, because of the value of people.

“We are all hurt people,” says Wanda, “who have hurt people. But that does not make our value smaller. Our rights come from value and our rights cannot go away, so then our value cannot go away? Does that make sense? I do not care, it is true. Our worth is written as with a sunbeam and can never be erased by any power. Not by Erik’s anger or Aleksandr’s grief or my stupidity or—or Natalia’s lies. You are all valuable. I am valuable. Nothing can take what away. No matter what your pain tells you.”