Disclaimer: I don't own the characters; they belong to the genius that is Lin-Manuel Miranda. I'm going off the musical cast/lyrics as opposed to actual history...because creative license and I can and that is why it is fanfiction ;)

"Have you read this?" he heard someone whisper as he donned his hat and stepped off the steps leading to his office. He caught their eye and they immediately looked away, pretending to be very interested in the brickwork.

Everyone was staring. Alexander Hamilton could feel their eyes on his back as he made his way home in the fading sun. That's fine, let them stare, he told himself. Everything is out in the open. I have no secrets to hide. Everything has been laid bare. He'd beaten them at their own game.

"Embezzling government funds." Those were the charges leveled against him by Jefferson, Madison, and Burr. Jefferson, in particular, seemed gleeful to the point of manic. "Your career is done!"

It had felt almost cathartic to present the carefully-written records to the three of them.

"I never spent a cent that wasn't mine!" And it was all there, laid out in black and white. Times, dates, amounts, going back years. Every dollar, every cent accounted for in the ledger. He relished the looks on their faces. They thought they'd had him, and then they left his office with nothing.

At least on the embezzlement front.

"Burr, how do I know you won't use this against me?"

"Alexander," Burr had replied in an almost amused tone, studying his fingernails. "Rumors only grow. And we both know what we know…"

No, Burr and certainly not Jefferson or Madison, could be trusted as far as Alexander could throw them. There was every chance this would come out into the open, sooner rather than later. And what had he learned, both in the field and here in the fledgling government? Even at home in the islands? Better to control the information than try to play catch up after the fact. He could write his way out of this. Rather than give the three of them the chance to edit the truth to their own devices, Alexander pulled out a pen the second the door clicked shut behind Aaron Burr and began to do what he did best- write.

And he wrote everything. Included the letter from James Reynolds that had started the whole extortion. Spared no detail. And then printed it in the next morning's edition of the Post.

"-in his own home!" He passed two women crossing the street who didn't even bother to try to hide what they were reading, obviously keen on the gossip. He kept his head down and pushed on, but he had only gotten a few more steps when one of the women said, loud enough to carry,

"His poor wife."

Alexander's foot caught on the curb and he nearly tripped. He willed his body to stay upright and somewhat dignified as he straightened his coat and continued walking, whispers following him the entire way home.

Silence greeted him at the door.

No sounds of the children. No piano from Phillip practicing his lessons. Just…silence.

He passed the clock in the hall, noted the time. It was late. Later than usual, for him. No wonder, he thought as he hung his coat on the hook by the door. The lamps were still lit in the hall and the stairs.

Down the hall, somewhere near the living room, he heard footsteps creak on the floor. Someone was still awake. Quietly, he made his way down the hall, his shoes clicking softly on the hardwood, muted every few feet by the thick rugs. He placed a hand on the doorway to the living room. Firelight danced across the walls of the otherwise darkened room. He shifted his weight to step inside.

A voice, in a firm, but wavering tone, told him, "Don't take another step."

Alexander obliged the voice, setting his foot back down on the floor. He did, however, poke his neck further into the room, looking for his wife, the source of the voice. His eyes found her sitting near the hearth, legs tucked under her, in her nightgown. Eliza's hair was pulled back and she had her shawl resting in the crooks of her elbows. Next to her on the floor, Alex saw a pile of papers. He fished for his glasses in his pocket to read the writing scrawled on them.

My dearest Betsey…the one in her hand read.

He frowned, when he realized what they were. Every letter he'd sent her from the battlefield, penned at the end of long days of writing communications and missives for General Washington. Written in ink that he'd sometimes had to hold over the fire to get it to liquefy enough for him to use. Every word he'd longed to say to her in person that he'd had to resort to committing to paper instead. Years of courtship; even after they'd married, he'd written her from Philadelphia. Sometimes, even from just up the street.

Though, those had been far too infrequent, he realized. "Eliza…" he whispered. "What…what are you-"

"I'm burning the letters you wrote me, Alexander," she said quietly. Her tone was flat, lifeless. The one in her hand caught fire on the corner. She let it burn in her hand for a moment before dropping it into the fireplace. The paper caught quickly, licked the edges and turned them black before consuming it completely. She heard him inhale quickly, but before he could say anything or stop her, she held up her hand. "You can stand over there. I don't know who you are."

Confusion washed over his face. "Betsey, I-"

"I reread every letter," Eliza cut him off. She sifted through the pile, plucked another letter from it. "I saved every single one of them, did you know?" Her eyes flickered down the writing. "You and your words," she whispered, smiling sadly. "Your sentences left me defenseless. You built me palaces out of paragraphs. Cathedrals. You said you were mine."

She set that one alight and moved methodically onto another as her husband watched in anguish. "Do you know what Angelica said, when your first letter arrived from the field?" Eliza didn't wait for an answer. "'Be careful with that one, love,'" she quoted. "'He'll do what it takes to survive.'"

You're like me. I'm never satisfied. There's a million things I haven't done, but just you wait.

"Were your children and I…were we not enough for you?" Eliza mused quietly. Finally, finally, she looked up at him, and Alexander got his first glimpse of the betrayal and heartbreak in the love of his life's eyes. She held up that morning's edition of the Post. There it was. His infidelity, laid out in black and white across several pages. "You told the whole world how you brought this girl-" she spat out the word like it tasted bad- "into our bed. Our home!"

"I had to," Alexander finally found his voice, ignoring his wife's command to stay at the door, crossing the room in three strides to sink down beside her. "Her husband-I was confronted. Jefferson, they came to my office. Accused me of embezzlement. I refused to let that stand. If I hadn't…Burr, h-he might have-" Normally so eloquent and rapid fire with his words…Alexander was very nearly at a loss. He grabbed for his wife's hand-

"I can read," Eliza cut him off with a hiss, jerking her hand away, leaving his stranded in midair. "Perhaps not as quickly as you, but that only means it had longer to sink in," she said. "Heaven forbid someone whisper that you're part of some scheme." She dropped another letter into the flames. "Your enemy whispers, so you have to scream." Her voice rose on the word scream, and the two waited, both praying that the children would sleep through this.

But they wouldn't sleep forever. Eventually, Alexander realized, the oldest ones would hear it at school. The youngest ones would wonder.

Eliza laid it out for him. "In clearing your name, you have ruined our lives," she said. "You and your words, obsessed with your legacy. Your sentences border on senseless, and you are paranoid in every paragraph about how they'll perceive you!" She turned, and pushed him away. "You. You?!" Each word was met with a blow to his chest. Tears were falling now, both of them were in tears, Alexander sitting awkwardly on the floor, his eyes never leaving his wife or the stack of memories of happier, loving times.

"Please," he whispered, his voice catching.

She shook her head, swallowed, and chose another letter from the stack. "I know about whispers," she said, dropping her voice to a lower octave so as not to wake the children. "Do you think I haven't heard them in the street? His poor wife. Did she know?" She looked up at him from under her eyelashes. "I'm not naïve. I've seen how you look at my sister."

My dearest, Angelica…

Whatever words Alexander had for his defense died on his tongue.

Eliza picked up the stack of letters. "These letters might have redeemed you. Not anymore. I'm erasing myself from your narrative," she told him, finding her voice once more. "Let them wonder how Eliza reacted when you broke her heart! The world has no right to my heart. The world has no place in our bed. They don't get to know what I said!"

She looked up at her husband, made him look at her when he wanted to look away. "You forfeit all rights to my heart. You forfeit your place in our bed. You'll sleep in your office instead. And when the time comes, you'll be the one to explain to the children the pain and embarrassment you put their mother through."

He was crying now, sobbing silently as his wife destroyed him with her words, as she let go of his chin with her fingers. Words brought on by your own words, Alexander Hamilton…"When will you learn, Alexander?" she asked him. "That they are our legacy….we are your legacy? Not your financial plan. Not your wartime exploits, and certainly not your sordid affair with this Maria Reynolds. Us," she reminded him.

Eliza stood. She dropped the entire stack of letters into the fireplace, the flames leaping to consume them, and her broken heart along with them. Her husband stared into the flames, face streaked with tears. She took a step until she was even with his shoulder, looked down at the top of his head. "I hope that you burn, too."

His shoulders shook as he buried his head in his hands.

And Eliza walked out of Alexander's life.

Author's Note: First and foremost, I bat Hamliza and will forever. Lin and Pippa kill those roles and they're my Hamilton fandom OTP. But (and yes, I know I'm slow on the uptake), I discovered the "First Burn" Hamildrop recently, and have wanted so bad to combine the lyrics from both that and "Burn" into one story. There was a lot of emotion in this, and that's not something I usually am good at, so I hope I did it justice. I know everybody's got a "Burn/First Burn" fic out there, this is just me throwing my own hat into the ring.

Also, no this is not complete :) Because when I get time I really want to turn this into a 3-shot with "Stay Alive (Reprise)" and "It's Quiet Uptown." So throw it on alert and hopefully it happens.