If there's a reason I'm still alive…
"Wait!" Aaron shouted, staggering backwards with the force of his pistol's recoil. A resounding bang sealed his fate. Another gunshot sounded, an echoing haunting reverberation of his own.
Though his vision was clouded from the gunpowder lazily drifting from the still hot gun, he could still see Alexander, albeit a moment too late. Alexander's arm slowly dropping, releasing its gun to the dewey earth.
Alexander crumpling to the earth with a slight smile on his face as he hit with a resounding thud.
Alexander dead to the world, blood seeping from his rib wound and intermixing with the dirt of Weehawken dueling grounds in the most awful manner.
Burr felt rooted to the ground at that point, tears obscuring his vision as he made the most vain attempt to take a lunge forward. He had to see Hamilton- to say sorry, to say something. Aaron's tail coats whipped with the morning breeze as he ran towards Hamilton's prone body, still lying there untouched. Hamilton's dead lips were still smirking at him, a mockery to the man so renowned for his policy of waiting.
He felt rough hands pull him back sharply as he cried out in protest and anguish. Aaron remained transfixed on the bastard immigrant he'd grown to love and hate in all the wrong ways. He watched as the doctor Hamilton had brought applied fruitless first aid, as they loaded him roughly onto a boat and rowed across the waves of the Hudson river. His boat followed down the murky waters, none of it feeling real.
Sitting, on a barstool in an empty bar, the same one Hamilton had used to frequent. He downed another glass, sharply slamming it onto the table to the shock and disapproval of the bartender. Burr did not care. He had enough to pay for any damage he might cause, aside from the crumpled visage of his friend, his enemy. As he sat shivering, though not from the cold, he laughed bitterly, not knowing what else to fill the stuffy, choked silence.
The same thought that had near dictated his life and mannerism for almost 50 years had floated lazily back into his head as he numbly bought a drink. He looked on outside, at the shocked crowd that had gathered around the fallen treasury secretary, his wife, his sister in law, friends, strangers, everyone grieving in so many different pained ways.
Everyone who loves me has died.