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Alexander tasted mud and blood.
There was a heavy weight on top of him, and the sound of the gunshot echoed in his ears.
Beside him he heard General Washington's voice giving orders to find where the shot had come from, and the last few seconds clicked.
Gunshot.
Someone had shot at them.
In camp?
The weight lifted, and he rolled over.
It was Ben, Ben who had thrown him to the ground just in time. Beside him, O'Conner, one of the General's lifeguards, was attempting to keep him down until they were sure the assassin was gone.
Ben's own hands were forcing him down, not that he was planning on getting up while there was a gun trained on him. He didn't necessarily worry; he wasn't the target. Why shoot at an aide when the General was right there?
There was worry in Ben's eyes, right until the guards returned saying they'd found the weapon but no-one with it footprints in the mud leading back into the camp but no clues as to who it may have been.
The threat had passed, for now.
"We need to get you inside, Sir, there could be a second shooter."
"Find this assassin, Major. Colonel Hamilton, are you alright?"
"Yes sir." he wiped at his mouth, getting rid of some of the mud and blood, and followed them to the main house.
Gunshots went off all the time, but the reaction of those who'd seen or been near enough had triggered something through the whole camp. From the second the shot had sounded, the camp had gone onto alert, and there were simultaneously too many and enough people around him. If there was a shooter, it would be hard for them to kill their General with a line of sight so obscured by the crowd, but if the assassin was in the masses around them, with a knife or some other near range weapon, there was huge risk.
As soon as they were inside, his father let the fearless façade drop.
"Hamilton, you're bleeding."
There were still people in the room who didn't know the truth about them, so obviously he couldn't drop it completely, but he was allowed to be worried for himself and Alexander in private.
"I bit my lip when I went down, sir, I'm fine. I can't believe someone actually took a shot at you, sir, for all the assassination plots, this was bold."
"We will find them, sir."
"Do we have suspects, Major?"
"Nothing yet sir."
"I'm not changing my routine if I can help it, for the sake of morale, we need to keep things going."
"Theres no way to hide this, sir, half the damn camp saw it happen."
"I know, Major, I know, but we cannot be weak. We must be careful, I know, but we must also protect our cause."
"Sir, with respect, protecting you is a large part of protecting the cause."
Benjamin was right, protecting their General protected them. If he was caught or killed, it was the end, and still he wanted to go out there for strength's sake.
And his father thought he was careless with his own life.
.
.
.
Eventually Alexander had retreated to his desk. His father and Benjamin and most of the other higher-ranking people in the camp, including several visiting generals, were working out some sort of plan to add protections and find the traitors.
But mostly they were milling around, hoping they'd get something to work with, that the guards would catch someone or find some evidence.
Alexander couldn't do that. It wasn't in his nature. He was stressed and worried and someone had tried to kill his father and all together that was far too much energy for him to just stand around and do nothing, so he'd sat himself down and started on the next batch of paperwork he'd needed to go through.
Someone had tried to kill his father, out in the open, in camp, right next to him.
Hell, the shot had been close enough to hit him, had Ben not pulled him down. Alexander tried to tell himself that because the shot had been so close to him it at least meant the assassin was a bad shot, but he couldn't get past the worry that it was a fluke and that next time they wouldn't miss.
He remembered what his father had said about his being in danger from assassins if the British learnt about him, about how much danger he would be in, how they could get people into camp.
He hadn't really thought about it.
He knew it had happened before, Ben had been distraught when Mr Sackett, his mentor, had been murdered and still woke up from nightmares about it, but really, he hadn't taken the thought too seriously.
Besides, this was different, this wasn't a British assassin pretending to defect to them in order to get a chance at killing someone important, this was someone in their own camp. Someone they trusted.
Weirdly, it wasn't the first time someone had tried to kill his father, when he was a child several people had tried to kill James Hamilton Sr for various reasons. Alexander had never really cared, not beyond the fiscal ramifications. Hell, once when he'd been 14, he'd stood aside and let them go after him on the docks. It was the first time he'd seen the man since he left four years prior and Alexander had been angry enough not to care if he lived or died, even without knowing the truth.
Alexander had bumped into the man an hour prior to the men who wanted him dead showing up, and of all things offered him a job, acting as though he'd never rejected them at all. But when Alex had refused, the man had knocked him to the floor and said things Alexander would never dare repeat aloud but found himself repeating all too often in his head. They weren't even that rude, or vulgar or vile, just soul-crushing and worst of all, honest. Not that Alexander hadn't said his share, blaming the man for his Maman's death, for abandoning them, for not showing up when she was sick, even when Alex had written and begged.
He had survived, but Alexander hadn't seen him since, and there was a dark part of him that hoped someone had succeeded. No-one could ever know that, though.
But here, he was actually worried.
He finished and moved the stack of papers and moved onto the next.
This was his father, his real father. This was family he wanted and who wanted him.
He couldn't lose that.
He couldn't lose them.
He didn't look up when the door opened, or when it closed. That was probably a stupid thing to do when there was an assassin in the camp, but they had no reason to attack an Aide and the building was heavily guarded.
"Alexander, let me look at your lip."
Alex put down his quill and let his father check him over, probing the tender area slightly before stroking his cheek.
"It doesn't look bad. Are you alright?"
Was it bad that the genuine concern still surprised him when he heard it?
"I'm fine, pa, it's just sore. What about you? You were the one they took a shot at."
"They missed, by quite a lot if Ben's right, and he usually is. Though I'm not particularly enjoying being stuck in here, nor having most of my advisors telling me it's safer to stay where it will be harder for an assassin to get to me."
"Did you consider they might be right?"
"I'm a General, my job is to lead from the front. I can't hide."
"Would you like some paperwork to do while you wait?"
Alex gestured at the papers with a grin, doing his best to mask at the wince pulling at the lip caused.
"Don't be cheeky. And no, because not everyone processes their worry by working themselves to death, Alexander. Did you even notice the sun set?"
The sun had set?
Alex was almost ashamed at his whipping around to look out the window and see that it was indeed dark outside. The window was small and north facing so the room was typically lit by candles anyway.
His father sighed, and squeezed his shoulder.
"You need to rest, Alexander."
He did, and he shocked himself with how weary he sounded when he next spoke.
"They've never been so bold before."
His father's hand squeezed his shoulder and he let his head drop backwards.
"No, they haven't. But it might mean they're getting desperate, that they know they're going to lose if they don't do something drastic."
"Or it means they want the war over now. Maybe they have another spy they want to put into place as Commander-in-Chief with you dead. They have people in the camp and... and they want you dead, pa. They shot at you... what if they...?"
"You doubt Benjamin?"
"I fear men like Robert Rogers. Like John André. Like Gamble or Bradford. I fear that they have turned one of ours against us. I fear..."
He cut himself off. He couldn't appear weak. He wasn't a small child who needed to hide behind his father's legs wrapped into his cloak. He'd never had that before; he didn't need it now.
His father started moving his work, and capped the ink bottle.
"We will weather this, Alexander, we will."
He sank into the offered hug.
"Get some sleep, Alexander. We'll approach this again tomorrow."
He didn't protest, just bade his father goodnight and let his exhaustion take him as soon as he found his bed.
Oops?
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Please R+R.