They had recovered the body.

Some of the boys had gone and looked for him when they began counting their dead, saying they wouldn't leave their brother behind if they could do something about it-

They'd brought him back.

George didn't know what to do.

Put the poor boy to rest? Where? Here? In an unmarked grave?

God, he couldn't, he couldn't do that to him, to Alexander, he couldn't make that decision-

Henry Laurens, his mind supplied.

The man would probably want to claim the body, have his son buried back at their homestead in south carolina on their family plot, but-

"No," Alexander snapped, tired, lifeless eyes cutting from the window to him, and George closed his own eyes to hide the tears that shot to them almost instantly.

It hadn't even been a full twenty-four hours yet, and his son looked dead. Like he hadn't slept in three weeks, the spark in his eyes flushed out by all the tears he'd cried, dark, bruise-like circles around them, lips bloody, cheeks pale and marked by angry red welts matching the ones on his arms, where he had dug his fingernails in until he'd drawn blood.

Lord, his boy–his boys.

You can't take him, too. Please, God, don't take him as well.

George cleared his throat.

"Alexander, dearheart-" he began and forced his eyes back open, but his throat closed up once more when his gaze met that of his son.

There was nothing left in those eyes, not even tears. Just darkness, void, and such an overwhelming sense of hurt, a cut that went deep enough he didn't know if it would ever heal. Perhaps it would close on the surface, but never to the core.

That bullet should have ended George. He would have taken it a hundred times over if he just could have spared his boys like that-

"No," he cut in again, sharp with grief and bitterness. "No, you're not going to hand him off to that man."

It wasn't like he wanted to, but he would have to tell Laurens what happened, and then he would most likely want to collect the body, and- it wasn't like he could just refuse the man.

"He's his father," he said, gentling his voice as much as he could, but Alexander still flinched as though he had screamed the words at him.

"No, he's not," he whispered back and curled up in the little window-nook he'd claimed, drew his knees to his chest and wrapped his arms around them.

George swallowed around the lump in his throat and turned away, rubbed at his brow, pinched the bridge of his nose until the tears subsided.

Thank you. For- for being my dad.

Laurens had never deserved that boy, and he most certainly did not now.

"Pa," Alex spoke up again, quiet and scratchy, and when George raised his gaze to look at him, he was staring blankly off into the middle-distance.

It became harder and harder for him to recognise that empty husk as his son, and George didn't think any other realisation had ever managed to stop and batter and rip his heart apart quite like that one did.

"I- can we-" He closed his eyes and broke off, and against all odds, fresh tears rolled down his raw cheeks; he thought the boy had cried himself dry hours ago. Alex drew a deep, rattling breath and went on, "We have a family plot. He's family."

His shoulders sagged, the weight of the world pressing down on them.

If only it was that easy.

"Alex…" he said, but trailed off. There was nothing he could say. God, he wanted to have his boy taken home to Virginia just as much as Alexander did, but he had no legal claim to him, nothing but a severed connection and the word dad on bloody lips.

His son sobbed, barely audible but heart-wrenching enough it stabbed and twisted in his own chest.

"Please, Papa, I- I already lost him once, don't- don't let that cruel, horrible man take him, please-"

"Alexander, enough," he said, conceived as an order but spoken as a plea. He crossed the room and dropped heavily into the armchair in front of the fireplace, hid his face in his hands, and focused the little energy he still possessed on holding back his tears.

Alex made a choked sound, wounded and wet like the dying breath of a man whose throat had been cut, and cried into his folded arms until he couldn't anymore.

"He wouldn't… God, he wouldn't want Laurens to- he wouldn't want to go with him," his son mumbled, a near whisper that was so muffled by his arms George could barely make it out.

He wished he hadn't.

Whatever was left of his heart splintered again, and the pain hacked through to his bones.

He knew he wouldn't, that his boy would have wanted to stay near Alex or just be left out on the field for the animals to pick apart instead of being damned to an eternity with Henry fucking Laurens of all people, but there was nothing George could do, nothing, nothing, and goddamnit, he was a horrible father to his living children and an even worse one to his dead-

From the corner of his eye, he just caught how Alexander raised his head and faced him, so George followed suit.

Their exhausted shattered sullen crestfallen heartbroken gazes met.

He couldn't take it for long, seeing his son like that; looking at his changed, worn face, into those eyes George had always seen the future in, the eyes that couldn't even see a tomorrow anymore.

"I want to see him," he said, and George was disoriented, like the first split-second after a punch to the face, when one logically knew what had happened, but needed another moment to catch up nonetheless.

He shook his head as he worked to unstick his tongue from the roof of his mouth. "No," he croaked.

Alex's face fell and crumpled into what would have been a sob had he any tears left.

"Please. Please, Papa, you'll let him be taken away, you- you dragged me off yesterday when I wasn't ready yet, I-" He closed his eyes and bit his lip hard–it had been split in so many places already, he wasn't surprised when it came away bloody. "I need to say goodbye. Let me say goodbye, or- or I'll-"

Alex blinked his eyes back open, and his face changed when he saw his expression, eyes wide and frozen in horror, because he knew what that or was going to be, knew in his heart and bones and soul what Alex had meant to say before he'd cut himself off.

Or I'll follow after him.

"Please," he breathed with all the desperation of a man dying of thirst asking for a drink of water. "Papa. Please. You don't even have to come, just let me."

He screwed his eyes shut, tried to find it within himself to deny his son's plea, to find the words he needed to make him realise that this wouldn't help him, that seeing his husband like that would just make it worse for himself.

A person's face changed when the soul left.

They wouldn't even recognize him, and George knew how much that hurt, to look at the face of a loved one and see a stranger.

He had made that mistake before, with his brother, and then his daughter–and it seemed he would be making it again with the boy who had been his son for a too short amount of time.

"I'll go with you," he choked, and Alexander sniffled.

Famous last words, he thought, pushing himself up from his chair.

Someone had cleaned him up.

The mud and blood were gone, and he looked-

Not peaceful. Not like he was just asleep.

He looked dead.

There were no pretty words, no comforting metaphors to make it better.

He was dead.

George took a deep breath and forced his stiff muscles to obey him, raised his hand and gently closed the boy's slightly open–empty lifeless dead–eyes before Alex could see them.

His skin was waxy and cold, and George's fingers twitched with the echo of that single horrible touch when he lowered them back to his side.

Alex made a sound like a silent scream next to him and clapped a hand over his mouth, eyes swimming with tears once again. His whole form trembled, knees shaking violently, and George darted forward and caught him before he had even registered the boy had collapsed.

He carefully lowered both of them to kneel on the ground and drew his son closer, rubbed his back and rocked him as if he had any hope of consoling him.

Alex clung to him in turn, boney fingers digging into his back and arms and ribs hard enough it hurt, and buried his heaving sobs against his sternum; they echoed inside his empty ribcage, reverberated through him until his own tears dripped into Alexander's dark mop of hair.

It took several minutes that might as well have been months for Alex to calm–George wiped his boy's tears before he wiped his own, and then he helped him back to his feet.

The trembling hadn't subsided. He stayed close.

Alex stumbled over to the table they had laid the boy out on and braced himself on the edge, fingers curling around the tabletop until his knuckles turned white as his eyes scanned his husband's face for something, anything, some kind of solace he wouldn't find there.

Another sob shook him, and George wanted to reach out, but he stayed put. Gave him space.

His eyes flitted from that white, expressionless face with the blue-tinted lips to his son's quaking back, but he couldn't stand either of those for too long, so he watched Alex's fingers uncurl from the edge of the table instead; watched them inch up and settle gingerly over that cold, cold hand.

Watched Alexander shake as he shifted to take the stiff, discoloured hand between both of his, gently rubbing at those fingers as though to get some warmth into them, and George cleared his throat to stifle his sob.

It should have been him on that table.

Just a few inches to the right and that bullet would have gone into his stomach, and his boys would be alive and well and together, his son would learn to smile again someday-

"John," Alex said, raw and stuffy, and George flinched and let his eyes close.

He pretended, for just a short moment, that nothing was out of the norm. That this was a night like so many others, when the three of them had been the last to remain in the office, that the boy on that table was silent not because he was gone but because he was lost in thought, that he would snap out of it at the sound of his name and grin up at Alexander, answer 'yes, darling', and that everything was fine.

The moment passed, and he opened his eyes to his son's tears shining in the candlelight and the hand of a corpse clasped between both of his.

Alex bowed his head until his messy hair obscured his face. "He's cold," he said, an obvious tremor to his voice, and clung to that hand hard enough George could almost hear the fond little laugh and the 'careful, darling', and for God's sake, the boy had been twenty-three years old, how was this fair? How was any of this fair?

If it had happened three seconds later, it would have been him, it should have been him- how could he have let this happen, he should have been better, should have protected him like he had promised himself he would-

Alex clenched his jaw, but it wasn't enough to stifle the broken cries that ripped from his throat, and raised a hand to his face to wipe at his tears.

"I love you," he choked past his grief and swallowed thickly, let out a long breath that was cut short by another explosive sob. "I- I love you. S- so much. I love you. Always and forever."

The words rang out into silence; it felt like a stab to the gut.

Alex took another steadying breath and reached up, softly stroked his fingers along the faded freckles high on the boy's cheekbone, and drew his hand back again.

"He promised-" he said, quiet and lost, squeezing the unresponsive hand between his own–the ring on his finger looked dulled, as though the gold had faded when the bond it had symbolised had shattered. "He promised me. He said we would have a life."

Alexander snapped his head up and fixed him with pleading eyes, begging for answers he couldn't give him, answers that didn't exist, and George stood there and let the hot tears slide down his face and draw cracks into his skin.

"He said a whole life. Until- until we're old and wrinkly. He promised."

And what could he possibly say to that? Was he supposed to look his grieving son in the eyes and tell him that the world was a cruel place, and that sometimes it just didn't matter how hard he held on? That he would lose and lose and lose until there was nothing left?

"And he intended to keep that promise, dearheart. You know he did," he said, because there was nothing else he could have said, because it was the one truth he was immovably certain of, and because he needed to remind himself that this boy had wanted to live, that he'd had a whole life ahead of him, and that he'd lost it all just because he'd been with George, at the wrong time and in the wrong place.

Alex pressed his lips together, brow crinkling with the impossible, all-encompassing pain, and gave a last squeeze to the hand in his grasp before he lowered it back down to the table.

"I- I need to go. I can't- I-" He glanced from George to his husband and back, desperate and hurt in a way that reminded him of the way he'd looked as a child after a nightmare.

"I'll be there in just a second," he said, and Alex's shoulders slumped with something like relief.

He touched his fingers to the boy's one last time and turned to leave with palpable reluctance–and a hurry in his step that told George he'd been right, that this had been the wrong thing to do–fresh tears dripping from his chin as he softly closed the door behind himself.

The complete silence was almost worse than his son's heart-breaking cries.

It was heavy and dark and stifling like a thick velvet curtain suffocating him, and now he couldn't take his eyes off him, off the faint afterimage of the boy he had sworn to protect, his boy, his son-

"I'm sorry," he said to the empty room, his voice shaking so bad he wouldn't have understood the words had he not been the one to speak them.

He stepped forward until he was right next to the table and forced himself to look.

"John," he said, but it broke into a sob. He hadn't- he couldn't even think that name most of the time, it was too much, just too much, and he was so weak- "I'm so sorry."

He raised one hand and carefully cupped one of his ice-cold cheeks, stroked his thumb along the very same cluster of freckles his son had caressed earlier, and sobbed.

"I'll look after him. I'll make sure he keeps his promises, don't you worry, love."

George stepped back again, breath hitching, and wished he could see that stupidly endearing ear-to-ear smile just once more.

Wished he could have heard dad from his mouth while he wasn't bleeding out in a puddle of mud.

He took a last look, made a silent promise to remember him as he'd known him–and then, he left.

Hours later, Alex lay passed out on George's bed, curled into himself and burrowed underneath a pile of blankets.

After they had returned to his room, it had been one breakdown after the other; George had held him close and let him cry and scream until he had crashed.

Alex shifted and whimpered in his sleep, and George wished he could give him some peace of mind, but he knew he couldn't; so, he settled on sitting on the edge of the mattress when his son's sleep grew too fitful and stroking his hair until he had calmed a bit.

It wasn't much, but it was everything he could do.

In the meantime, George wrote.

Someone had to inform Henry Laurens of his son's passing, after all.

On tuesday the 27th of August, John Laurens fell in the line of duty during a confrontation with the British. I am sorry to say his body could not be recovered.

George set his quill down and watched his son toss and turn for a moment.

There wasn't much he could do for them now, but he could do this.

John wouldn't be left to a man who'd done nothing but hurt him, again and again–he was family, and they had a family plot for a reason.