(no subject)

[iniquiticity]

Anonymous asked
I'd die for something greenhouses AU from Hamiltons perspective.

i couldn’t figure out whether this needed a greenhouses #spoiler warning or if i had ever spoiled stuff before so i just figured i’d put it under a cut anyway because #spoilers.





the bedroom he’d been assigned to faced west, and as a result the bedroom was always brilliant in the evenings, like some kind of reminder of the things he had been given - forced onto him, really. forced to have a bedroom twice the size of the one he’d had in the schuyler mansion, large enough for a good-sized desk. forced to be given an additional study, and a library pre-stacked with books. Some of the books were even interesting. He could have given or taken the books on dirt, the sky, rain, plants, glass, heat storage and transfer, and pests. Let it be said if nothing else that Washington was miles above any other garden hobbyist. Phillip had introduced him to other families who had greenhouses that the presented only for status symbols. Washington tended to his with the pure affection of a lover.

The thought stung. He shoved it down. There was no need to consider the man such a way. He had a hobby and he attended to it. It was all perfectly unworthy of his attention.

What was worth of his attention was the puzzle of Lafayette. He needed to know. Lafayette was – unkind terms – profoundly weird. Hamilton knew servants. He had known slaves, even if there was no such thing here. He had known errand boys of every level, because anyone with status or station would never be caught dead with a bastard orphan like him. He’d known poor farmers and cobblers and whores, because these were the kind of people who enlisted in the army. (As if anyone like Washington - or Angelica Schuyler, for that matter – enlisted. Angelica and Washington suffered. He did not deny it. But at least they occasionally ate.)

Lafayette was none of those people. Lafayette was not a servant or a soldier or a cobbler or some nobody. Lafayette carried himself the way Washington carried himself, livery be damned. Lafayette was a noble. His charade was good. Excellent, even. But he had come from a different place than Hamilton had. He spoke their language with an accent Hamilton knew to be from their mainland, and even if Hamilton had never been there he could not imagine their printmakers and artisans carried themselves like Lafayette did. Oh, sure, Lafayette could make himself smaller. He could shrink into servantry if he liked. He could appear and disappear in the way servants naturally had to be able to. But such was not his default, was the key. His default was to be noticed - to be attended to - to be cared for. To be the center of attention. Lafayette had been important, in the way status made you important. Lafayette was exactly what Hamilton knew he was not. They were more alike than different. They pretended to be something different than the core of their being, than their upbringing.

And Lafayette would not tell him. Lafayette would say I am from the war, Lord Hamilton. That was his answer, to those questions. Hamilton had never been at General Washington’s side, where Lafayette seemed to have always been. He had not known Lafayette from the war.

Lafayette was loyal in the way people were not. Lafayette was wholly and utterly devoted to Washington in the most fairy-tale of manners. No sensible person, who had to fight for food or argue about pottery, would have ever been like Lafayette was. Lafayette needed to be tended to, before he could put himself so completely in the service of another. And no servant, steward or otherwise, would have been tended to. No blacksmith or shopkeep would have ever been forged in a way that would permit him to be as he was now.

So. That lead him to. What?

He would need the assistance of his people, if Washington’s people failed. Despite Lafayette’s attempts, there were surely people who knew him.

The beginnings of an idea.

Plenty of people had fought in the war. Washington had had aides and servants galore. He would have had cooks and tailors and all sorts of Hamilton’s people. They might also know Lafayette from the war. And they might like to talk about him, because certainly the thing was limited, now. Families and generals did not like to hear of the gruesome horrors of wars gone by; Washington was unique in that he welcomed soldiers to speak their concerns to him, and memories of past horrors, and their restless dead friends.

(Of course Washington would take the burdens of the enlisted onto himself. That was what made him the man that he was. And of course, Washington suffered in his own way. Hamilton knew. Washington might have done well, to have a General Washington to write a letter to. Hamilton knew it would be a horrible letter to read, and to remember, and to put to pen. It would not be horrible in the way his letter would be horrible, but it would still be horrible.)

It was not so hard to convince such soldiers to talk. He need only pose as a concerned entity, occasionally but not often an unknown uncle or grandparent, to inquire. Have you known about a foreign advisor of the general’s? Elegant, younger? It is for a piece I am writing, about heroes.

Some did not respond and others thought he mad. But others did say. Oh! The prince! And some said Gilbert! What has happened to him? He was good, and kind, but he has disappeared. If you see him, please tell him hello.

And Gilbert, and the prince, was in no history. They spoke about Gilbert and the prince and it fell very neatly into inconsistencies in manuscripts. General Greene could not have been in these two battles at once, and then a letter regarding the prince’s heroism in the latter, and the soldier’s anger it had been given to someone else. She had fought to have the prince given the honor he deserved and been rejected.

A person like him would have never done such a thing. Only a person like Washington, or a person like Lafayette, would have ever made an effort to deny such a mark on their name.

It was all very Lafayette, to have written himself out of history. And why? He at first thought Lafayette had been a criminal, or another bastard son, or some orphan Washington had a promise to take of. But he read the letters and he knew.

Lafayette had done this because he was the worst of all: a coward.

He could not bear the burdens Washington bore. Washington took them on willingly. Washington would have permitted himself to be crushed from stone to sand. But Lafayette was a coward, and he saw the burdens and he fled. He thought the lives of cobblers were simple and uncomplicated and he longed for them because he was spoiled and foolish. And because he was a man who had been tended to in a way that allowed him to believe he could pursue his passions with his whole self and never need a bit of him to search for food or money, and because he was the sort of person who was loyal in the way that he was loyal, and because he saw in Washington what he could never be himself, he had faked his own death and become a new person.

Hamilton put down the most recent letter he had gotten. This one had been discussing Gilbert - he was Gilbert here, and Hamilton had arranged the letters in order of the memories included, and this one had been at the end, with Gilbert acting strange, and the writer - a doctor - did not know why. But Hamilton knew why. Gilbert thought that war was an excuse to maintain normal duties and a way to shirk his princely responsibilities, and he dreaded the regular life - where he was fed when he was hungry and never wanted for any material thing - he lead. Perhaps Lafayette had already made the plan to flee his duty and enjoy the quaint desire to manage accounting and pour wine.

And Washington had accepted this coward.

Well. Washington had accepted him. And if Washington accepted him, then by all means he could accept this coward. Washington pretended to be stone but he was human, and he had weaknesses, like the ability to see past the horrific cowardice of Lafayette, especially when it had been given with his loyalty.

Then there was Emissary Adrienne du Noalles. Nominally Lafayette’s wife. When Angelica had written to him about how Adrienne loathed Washington because she blamed him for Lafayette’s death, he had burst into laughter. The woman was completely right and she simply did not know how ridiculous it all ways. Hamilton liked her.

Adrienne had denied Washington’s request. Hamilton had found out about all of this through Angelica, who felt bad about her attempts to ruin his relationship and as such fed him all this information. He thought it was ridiculous Washington had tried, although of course he had tried.

But Adrienne could not deny Lafayette. Or rather. The prince. She could not deny her prince. Well, she might. But it was much less likely than her denying Washington.

He did not know if that disgusting coward would accept the task. He would have to have responsibilities, if he did. Perhaps Washington had rubbed off on him.

He folded all the letters up and set them in their places. There was a stack of Lafayette letters and a stack of Angelica letters.

He looked out into the fading sunlight of his window and called for a servant. This all considered, there were other things. He needed coffee because he still had several pamphlets to write about the ships and the nature of knowing what you built and what it would be used for. He, at least, was not a horrible coward, and knew what had to be done.