April 2, 1865

Washington, D.C.

Richmond, Virginia was burning, and Alfred Jones was agonizingly, exquisitely alive.

He was in throes of a terrible fever, but it was unlike the many fevers he'd endured since the war began. Fevers were usually the harbinger of prolonged visits by The Other, days or weeks of time where he had no control over his own actions. Usually, they disoriented him beyond comprehension and left him with huge gaps in his memory. There was always shivering, and hallucinating, and fainting, but not this time. This time, he was wide awake and lucid.

He could feel how hot he was, knew it was unnatural. He could feel how dry his body was, even when he should have been sweating. He could taste the delirium on his tongue when he swallowed, hear the blood pulsing in his head, too hot and too fast. He upended a bucket of water over himself and was shocked when it did not steam off of his skin. When he breathed in, he thought he could smell the smoke of the city burning across the Potomac.

The Other was coming to lay claim to him, one last time, and Alfred was going to be wide awake for it. Oh, it was going to hurt, he could tell, but he was determined to make The Other hurt more. He remembered when his other personality had first appeared all the way back in 1860, remembered punching the mirror when it'd happened. He longed for a mirror in this wretched place, just so he could look into the glass and see Andrew's horrible face and smash it to pieces.

As he had the thought, a surging feeling rose up from his gut, through his chest, and up the back of his throat, and suddenly he heard his own voice speaking in a furious southern drawl.

"If I cannot have this city," Andrew snapped, and Alfred gripped his hands, unnerved by the feeling of his own tongue moving without his permission, "Then God in heaven as my witness, neither will you."

"Burn it for all I care," Alfred shot back without hesitation. This confrontation had been years in the making. "Burn it to the ground, burn Richmond, burn Virginia, burn it all, burn whatever you like, because when this is over, you're going to die, and I'm going to rebuild everything you took from me."

"What, you think this will kill me?" Andrew laughed back, cutting Alfred off and seizing their face in a laugh. "I have the entire South. Texas. Tennessee. Even Arkansas. They're all mine, and you're going to have to rout me out of all of them if you want to kill me."

"No," Alfred wrenched back control, feeling their face flush with fever and exertion from tearing control of their mouth away from Andrew's will, "Your heart is in Virginia. You are in Virginia. After I take it, you'll be nothing. You might've survived if you were a real nation, but you never were, you never will be. You're a parasite, nothing more, and I won't suffer you any longer."

"Burn it, then," Andrew yelled back, splittle flying. In the background of their brain, Alfred realized the guards must be listening. There was no telling what they were thinking. He's gone completely mad, they probably thought, not knowing that he was more sane than he'd been in years, even with Andrew sidled right up beside him in this body. "Burn it all!" Andrew's voice rang off the sides of the cell. "Burn Richmond, burn Mount Vernon, burn everything from Chesapeake to Shenandoah! See what happens—I'll burn out your heart before you take it from me!"

"You're burning out your own heart," Alfred taunted, "I didn't set those flames, I didn't tear your capital apart. You wanted to burn the armory, but you burned the whole damn thing in your haste," maybe it was his imagination, but Alfred thoughthe felt a sweat break through the fever. When Andrew did not take control back from him, he added, "look at, it, feel it, I know you can smell it, the smoke, I know you can feel the city crumbling. You thought you were retreating, but you're killing yourself instead."

"You," hissed Andrew, voice quivering, "you ignored me for years. You overlooked my states for years. I was powerful enough to challenge you before you even knew I existed. What makes you think you can cast me off so easily? What gives you the right to claim victory so easily?"

"Because I am the United States of America," Alfred snapped back, flushing from fever and anger, "and I will not endure division any longer. You are no one. You are nothing. You are only me, a part of me, the darkest part of me that desires division above unity. You are a leech, a nightmare, five years of hell sent just to teach me who I am, but no more. Get out. Burn my city. Burn my countryside, I don't care, because when this is all over, I will take it back, I will burn you out, and you will be nothing but a memory to remind me of who I am, and why."

"You will have nothing left to claim," Andrew hissed. "You will leave the South with nothing."

"I will have it all," Alfred insisted. "Whatever you burn I will rebuild better and brighter than you have the capacity to understand. Now leave."

"I am the South, and I will not be controlled by some-"

"You are me," Alfred yelled, louder than Andrew. "You are a whisper in my head, a feeling in my bones, you are one thought among millions, and I do not have to cede control to you any more than I must cede control to any other whim. You took my name, you took my life, you took my land, you took my people. No more. You have been heard, you have been weighed, and you have been found wanting. Get out of my head."

"You will live a hundred years before you see the end of me," Andrew promised.

"I will live a thousand years before you see the end of me," Alfred promised back, louder. "Now get out, and don't you ever come back."

And just like that, his mind fell silent in a way he hadn't known since before he'd met Lincoln. He fell back against the wall and sunk to the floor. He had no idea when he'd made it to this part of the cell, but he could hear himself heaving for breath and savored the sound. Sweat sprouted all across his body, on his chest, beneath his arms, on his forehead. The heat baked him, but he could feel the faintest draft of air cool against his face, and it felt like freedom.

He must've fallen silent for too long, because one of the guards said,

"...Mr. Jones, sir? Would you like some more water?"

"Yes please, Hal," Alfred croaked, in complete control of his own body. He swallowed thickly. He was still quite feverish, but he felt it'd broken. His stomach grumbled at him. "And something to eat, please," he said.

"Already, sir?" said Hal, sounding surprised. "Lunch was naught but two hours ago."

Alfred did not remember it. There was so much he did not remember, all time stolen away by Andrew and whatever ambitions he'd had left. But he saw things clearly now, saw himself not in half but in whole. He didn't know how long they planned on keeping him here in this cell, but God help him, he would live the days as himself, not another. He'd spent too many years eating to feed someone else's anger.

"Please," Alfred told Hal, hungrier and more exhausted and alone than he'd felt in years. It was ecstasy. "I'm starving."

Historical notes:

1. On April 2, 1865, following a long siege against the city staged by the Union, the Confederate forces in Richmond, Virginia, the Capital of the Confederate States of America retreated from the city. As they left, they set fire to the local armories, supply warehouses, as well as many bridges in the city. This is a common strategy when abandoning important cities, but in the case of Richmond, the fires burned out of control and left much of the city in ruins. Because it signaled the effective (though not official) end of the leadership of Virginia to the CSA, the retreat from Richmond was a last gasp of the Confederacy as a whole. As is mentioned here, the CSA would live on in pockets of local armies across the CSA states and would indeed pose continued challenges to the Union army until the war was declared over in 1866, but when Virginia fell, the Confederacy, as an institution, fell. After Virginia was gone, the rest of the CSA really were just states in rebellion—and that's not propaganda, that's reality. The Union was coming, and they were coming to take it all back. The CSA states knew it, some of them just held on longer than others.

2. Aside from the abandonment and burning of Richmond, all the discussion of burning things also ties into the scorched-earth policy adopted by many Union troops in the South, most notably General Sherman and his March to the Sea, which was at this point several months in the past.