A/N: Chapter 2 is here! This is most likely the shortest amount of time between updates that will occur. Again, please write reviews for this story; I would really like to hear what you think of it.

Chapter 2: Letter (Alexander)

I would have given just about anything to make finishing the letter lying on the desk before me—the letter I hadn't had the heart to complete when I began to write it almost a week before—an unnecessary task. However much I wished for this, however, it was too late for the letter's completion to be anything other than a necessity, as the words on this page would be my last to my wife in the event that I did not return from the in—meeting alive.

It is a meeting, Alexander. Nothing less, nothing more.

Even as I said this to myself, I knew full well that my words were a lie. The word meeting brings to mind people sitting around a table arguing about what steps to take next, or possibly working toward some sort of compromise, much like the time fourteen years ago, when Jefferson hosted a meeting between myself and Madison—I never thought of them with any sort of honorific attached to their names, most likely due to the fact that I was initially on friendly terms with the both of them before our various disagreements got in the way of that—to decide on an acceptable compromise as I was attempting to get my debt plan approved by Congress. That had ended with Madison agreeing to cast his vote in favor of the plan in exchange for my cooperation in advocating for the capital's eventual relocation to a spot on the banks of the Potomac River.

What I was about to enter into was nothing like that. This was, quite literally, a matter of life and death.

One may believe that this wouldn't frighten me one bit; after all, I had been involved in some way in several—ten? Eleven?—interviews before, and as one of the principals in most of these. However, none of them that I had been involved in as a principal had ever reached their final stage on the dueling ground. None of them, that is, until today.

I turned my attention back to the letter I still had yet to complete.

If these are to be my final words before I take my leave, I thought, it would be a terrible shame to leave them unfinished.

With that, I took a deep breath and began to write.

It hadn't been longer than a minute since I returned to the letter when I heard quiet footsteps outside my study. When they ceased, I looked up to find my wife standing in the open doorway, the candle in her right hand clearly illuminating her pale, tired face.

"Alexander," Betsey asked, "why are you already awake at this hour?"

"I have an early meeting this morning," I replied as I turned back to the page and hid it from her view.

"Surely the meeting can't be this early. Look outside; it isn't even light yet."

"I know it isn't. I only need to write this down before I forget to do so entirely." As I spoke, I continued writing the letter. It gave me something to do, something that would allow for my inability to look my dear Eliza in the eye.

"You always keep writing like you think there isn't another tomorrow."

Little does she know—

I shook my head slightly, as if to shake that particular thought out of my mind.

My wife continued to speak: "Why don't you stop for a bit, come back to bed perhaps?"

I opened my mouth to tell her that yes, I would do so in a moment before remembering that no, tonight I did not have that luxury.

"I'll return before you even know I left."

"Surely you can afford to sleep a bit longer before you depart."

"I cannot. I need to be at the meeting place by dawn."

"...By dawn?" Betsey repeated my last two words in the form of a question, in a voice that held a hint of...worry? Surprise? Confusion? A bit of all three?

Damn it. Now she knows something's wrong.

"That's an unusual hour for a meeting." My wife's voice still held the same worried edge.

"Yes, it is," I agreed as I signed my initials at the end of the now-complete letter, "but that was the requested time."

I hadn't noticed that my Betsey had come closer to my desk until she stood next to me, her long dark hair falling over her face as she bent down slightly, candle still in hand, over what I had written.

Hide the letter, my mind commanded my hands to do. Put it away before Eliza finishes reading. You can't let her know any part of what's to come.

My hands did absolutely nothing, choosing instead to stay in the exact same location and position.

A tense, uneasy silence filled the room, heavy and thick and suffocating, as my Eliza read the letter that I had fervently prayed she would never need to see. After an interminable span of time, in which I could neither move nor speak, she finally straightened back up, clearly finished reading.

I looked up at her then; at the half-used candle wobbling dangerously in her trembling hand; at her face, now turned white as a sheet; at her dark eyes, wide with terror at the suddenly very real prospect of part of our family's history repeating itself to the same disastrous end.

Betsey's voice shook as she uttered her next words: "This is no ordinary meeting, is it?"