Oh my gosh it's been forever. I've kind of been on a hiatus from life because CRPS comes straight from the deepest circle of Hell. Fun times. But anyway SAMMY IS BACK AND READY TO BE AWESOME.

ALSO HAMILTON CHAPTER TITLE BECAUSE I AM STILL JAMMING TO THE SOUNDTRACK AND I DON'T KNOW WHAT LIFE WAS BEFORE LMM GAVE MY LIFE MEANING.

ALSO ALEXANDER HAMILTON IS BAE.

WITH HIS BLESSING YOU MAY NOW ENJOY THE REST OF THIS CHAPTER.

"When did he get here," Lincoln asked one of his most trusted assistants as he pushed his way down the hall of the White House, shrugging on a jacket over his half-buttoned shirt and rubbing sleep out of his eyes.

"Only about an hour ago, sir," the assistant replied.

"Why did no one wake me earlier?"

"Sir, we…" The assistant faltered as his face clouded when a memory came to the forefront of his mind.

"You what?"

"To be completely honest… We weren't entirely sure that it was him until a short time ago."

Lincoln scoffed at the young man that half walked, half sprinted down the hall along next to him. "How could you not be sure it was him?"

The assistant stopped beside the door at the very end of the hallway. "Sir, I think you can see for yourself."

Lincoln's face darkened, but he nodded to his assistant and turned the doorknob, then pushed the door open.

He stopped short in the middle of the doorway and stared into the room, his jaw slack. Slowly he raised a hand to his face, half in shock and half to mask the smell. He allowed himself three seconds to take the scene in front of him in before he stepped into the room.

The room was swarming with doctors, nurses, and the like, all covered in blood or tossing bloody bandages and sheets into the corner. Either no one paid any attention to the President, or they simply didn't notice him at all.

At the far end of the room was a simple bed surrounded by people and carts covered in silver instruments and clean bandages. In that bed at the center of the sea of chaos lay Alfred, and he looked like death warmed over. He was stripped down to nothing with only a sheet over his hips. He was bruised and swollen to the point that he was nearly unrecognizable. Sweat and blood from reopened wounds mixed together and soaked through the sheets and into the mattress. The smell of infection was thick in the air, and it was nearly enough to make Lincoln gag. Someone called for two splints to be brought up, and that was when Lincoln noticed the disgusting state of Alfred's legs. Someone threw two splints made of sticks which were more-or-less straight into the corner along with the bloody rags. Once the splints were removed, Alfred's legs could be fully seen. The flesh where his bones broke through was shredded and looked nearly dead. Lincoln didn't have to have a medical degree to tell that the smell was coming mostly, if not entirely, from Alfred's legs.

Someone finally noticed that Lincoln was in the room and took the head doctor to talk with him. The two men left the room and stood out in the hall.

Lincoln leaned against the wall and pinched the bridge of his nose. "You really have your work cut out for you."

The doctor, a short and plump man of about sixty, nodded his head in agreement. "Alfred is in a bind, but he's not nearly as bad as he could, or really should, be. When we got ahold of him tonight, he had standard battlefield dressings on his wounds from the doctors in the camp that treated him first. What really surprised me was that they weren't the first people to get to him."

Lincoln looked up and frowned. "They weren't?"

"No," the doctor replied, "Alfred just showed up at the camp a week ago out of the blue two days after he had been discovered missing with both his wounds and shoddy dressings and splints. I'm convinced that those dressings and whoever cleaned his wounds are what saved his life."

Lincoln thought for a moment, perplexed. "Who could–"

"Who could have gotten ahold of him? Your guess is as good as mine. Alfred will have to tell you who helped him out, and what all happened while he went missing."

"So you're saying that he'll be alright?"

"Alfred is strong," the doctor said. "With a watchful eye and regular wound care, his body should be fine. However," he added, "something bad happened out there. You might do well to keep an eye on him for a while until everything surrounding this comes out into the open."

-x-x-x-

"He's lost his mind," Georgia mused. "I mean, how could he just do that?"

The Confederate states all looked at each other, at a loss as for what Samuel had done. No one had any answers as for why, or what to do with him now.

"That idiot, he deserves nothing less than a flogging, I say," Texas yelled as he pounded his fist on the table. The force of his fist shook the wine decanter near his hand, and he quickly steadied it before the red wine spilled.

"Now let's not get ahead of ourselves," North Carolina said sweetly. She placed a hand on Texas' arm and drew him back into his chair. Texas grumbled and leaned back in his chair. If looks could kill, everyone around the table would have dropped dead from his gaze.

"She's right," Virginia nodded in North Carolina's direction. North Carolina smiled back at her sister warmly and let Virginia continue. "We have to handle this with a certain measure of prudence. If we act too rashly then we may make a grievous error."

"But how can you explain such an obvious act of treason?" Texas boomed. "He's a no-good piece of crap that needs to be put in his place. Too much free thought, I say. We need to show him what happens when he crosses us so openly. Put your foot down hard enough that he won't soon forget it, and you don't have a problem in the future. That's what you do with a dog. At this point, he's no different."

"Say that one more time!" Marion screeched from the other end of the table. Her knuckles were wrapped around the edge of the table, white as paper.

"I said," Texas spat, "Samuel is nothing more than a dog. Kick him once, and he won't bite the hand that feeds him again. In the very least, he'll think twice before he does."

"He's not one of your cattle dogs, Texas! He's a…" Marion paused before she said the word that weighed so heavily on her mind. "He's a person!"

"Person, my foot! He's the personification of our nation, and it's about time that he acted like it!"

The room went silent. Everyone knew Texas was right. Samuel had to be punished. The question was how.

Ideas were thrown around about different means of teaching Samuel a lesson, but no one could agree on anything other than the fact that the punishment had to be severe enough to burn into Samuel's memory that he had no business swapping sides and harboring sentiments for the Union. Also, Samuel had to be pulled from the battlefield immediately, possibly permanently.

The states stayed up at the table bickering and shouting and mulling over their predicament until the sun broke the horizon the following morning. Weary and with dark circles under all of their eyes, they had finally reached a consensus. No one liked it in the least, except for Texas, but they all had to agree that it would speak their message loudly and clearly to Samuel.

Marion held her tears in until she was alone in the back washroom. She was thoroughly disgusted with herself.

-x-x-x-

A week later, Samuel's boots could be heard stomping up the steps of the personification of Virginia's plantation house outside of Richmond. He threw the front door open and slung his bag of gear down off of his shoulder and onto the floor inside. Through the hall to his left, he could see all of his states standing in the parlor. None of them were smiling, and the grin on Samuel's own face died when he laid eyes on them. He cleared his throat awkwardly before he spoke.

"Well I'm here now. What..." He swallowed a nervous knot that suddenly started to choke him. "What did you call me back for?" He knew exactly why they had recalled him, but he figured he might as well stall for time if he could.

Everyone in the parlor remained silent. Many of the female states averted their eyes and found a newfound interest in the rug or in the sweating tea glasses in their hands. Texas sauntered forward, a smirk pulling at one side of his lips. A thin wooden toothpick jutted out from between his teeth. Samuel met his gaze with a steely look.

"We heard about the stunt you pulled with Alfred Jones." Texas' voice was disgustingly smooth, and the toothpick danced up and down with each syllable. "Needless to say, we were less than pleased when we heard."

Samuel didn't respond. He simply clenched his jaw.

"You do understand Samuel, that we can't have you kissing the enemies wounds and stealing from your own men for a Yankee's benefit. To be completely honest, we were quite shocked to hear this kind of nonsense coming from you." His smirk leveled into a straight and hard lip. "We will not stand for it."

Footsteps came from behind Samuel's back, but before he could turn to face who was behind him, a heavy boot kicked him behind the right knee and sent him to the floor with a grunt. Two sets of arms jerked his own sharply behind his back, and a hand shoved his head down so he stared down at the floor. He tried to fight the men who held him fast, but stopped when a pair of shiny black dress shoes stepped into his view.

Texas.

He reached down and jerked Samuel's head up by the hair so their faces were mere inches away. Texas' lip was curled into a sneer around his toothpick, and his words reeked of booze.

"Act like an insubordinate slave, and we'll treat you like one."

Samuel's sea foam-green eyes met Texas' chocolate ones, and he held his gaze for one, two, three seconds, before he spit in his face.

Texas responded with a powerful punch in the jaw that was strong enough to make Samuel see stars. He could already feel a bruise hurriedly forming under his skin. His eyes watered from the force of the fist, and his head lolled against his chest as he groaned.

"Get him outside," Texas growled.

The arms behind him pushed Samuel to his feet and half dragged him through the parlor and outside. In the back of his mind he could hear strangled women's voices and feet following him, but it didn't register in his brain. He vaguely thought that someone was crying, but it seemed more as if the sound were drifting aimlessly along on the wind rather than rattling in his ears.

As his boots shuffled over the sunburnt grass, he was only aware of a handful of things. Firstly, the sun's warmth stretched only to the tops of the trees and couldn't make its way down to kiss his freckled cheeks. Secondly, a buzzard black as death sat hunched in the oak tree over his right shoulder, eyeing his journey across the open grass. Thirdly, he was undeniably headed straight for the most dreaded and hated place on the entire plantation.

The whipping post.

They meant to flog him.

Samuel hardened his face and clenched his fists. Never in a thousand years would he have imagined that his own states would do such a thing to him, and yet here he was, staring down the bloodstained wooden post and metal shackles before him. There in front of him gathered his states. Marion stood directly in front of his line of sight.

That was when he made up his mind to not let them win.

Just short of the post, Samuel shrugged off the arms gripping him. He stared ahead and locked his cold eyes with Marion's teary ones as he whipped his shirt off over his head, exposing his tan and scar-riddled skin. He flung the shirt to the side and onto the dirt. He stepped forward and defiantly shoved his arms forward for someone he didn't see to shackle his wrists to the cruel post. His muscular frame stood erect as a young sapling while his frozen glare bore into Marion, and he waited.

He heard Texas shrug off his jacket, roll up his sleeves, and grasp the leather whip, which he arrogantly cracked against the dirt at Samuel's feet. Marion and her sister, North Carolina, to whom Marion clutched tightly, jumped severely and cried out. Samuel didn't move a muscle.

"This is for your treachery…" Texas spat, "And for your downright stupidity."

Samuel took a breath and braced himself for the sting of the whip. Marion couldn't tear her eyes away from his.

The blows came slowly, deliberately. With every tear of flesh and drip of blood, Marion's sorrow and disgust grew inside of her.

What have we become, she thought. Are we nothing more than savages?

Samuel's face remained like granite. His lip curled in the slightest grimace with each crack of the whip against his back. His fingers were balled up so tight into fists that his skin was white. By the tenth crack, his body surged forward and collided with the post. He fought with everything he had inside of him to remain standing, but his legs gave out under his weight at the seventeenth blow. His knees buckled and slammed into the dirt, but his eyes never left Marion's for an instant.

When he fell, Marion caught a glimpse of a single silver tear that slithered down his cheek, followed by another. His face was solid, but his eyes told a different story, one of betrayal and of pain.

She refused to watch any more of the torture. She turned and strode into the house, chased by the stomach-churning sounds of the pain that she had agreed to.

Before she shut the door of the house behind her, she heard Samuel's lonely and pain-stricken cry ring out through the air.

-x-x-x-

Samuel received thirty-nine lashes that day. When he was peeled off of the post, nearly unconscious, he wore a hauntingly empty smile on his face.

He knew that he had done the right thing, and these states would have to come down much harder on him if they wanted to convince him otherwise.

-x-x-x-

One month later, Alfred sat opposite Lincoln in the Oval Office. They had been talking for the past hour about any effects that Lincoln's preliminary Emancipation Proclamation had had on the Confederacy as of yet. There was still a month and a half left until the Proclamation would go into effect if the South didn't cease their rebellion by the start of the new year. All signs read that the South had heard Lincoln's warning and done nothing more than laugh. Conversation had slowed once lunch was brought in for the President and Alfred snatched a sandwich and a glass of wine from the platter for himself. Ever since his time with Samuel, he had steered clear of whiskey.

Lincoln had only talked to Alfred about what had happened once, when he first came back to the White House and was strong enough to talk, and after that the subject had been dropped. For that, Alfred was grateful, and now that he was nearly completely healed and only showed a rather heavy limp when he walked, he was ready to put the incident behind him and move on. Lincoln only had one thing to address before he would allow it to be let go however.

"Alfred," Lincoln said, "Have you thought about what happened after you were left at the camp in Maryland?"

Alfred eyed his wine uneasily. Really, Lincoln? Really? I thought that this was dropped. "No," he lied, "not really."

Lincoln continued, having seen straight through Alfred's sham. He half thought that he should drop the conversation, but went on with it anyway. "Samuel was recalled to Richmond immediately when the States found out about what he did for you."

Alfred shrugged and swirled his wine in its crystal glass, suddenly extremely interested in its color. Just shut up already, he thought, but he replied with a simple, "So?"

"So," Lincoln added slowly, "They've confined him to Richmond and tied his hands. He's completely cut off from the rest of the world. The only human contact he has is with his states and Jefferson Davis. Intelligence indicates that they have no plans to give him any slack."

Alfred stiffened in his chair. He threw the wine back and swallowed it in one gulp, cleared his throat, and said, "Why should I care about that miserable piece of crap?"

"Because 'that miserable piece of crap' refuses to apologize for letting you go."

There was a pregnant pause between the two men. Alfred chewed on his lip, irritated. "What are you saying?"

"I'm saying that he stuck his neck out for you." Lincoln sat back in his chair and picked up a pen and a stack of papers. "What exactly you do with that information, my friend, is up to you."

Alfred absentmindedly rubbed at his chest over his thick and jagged pink scar. Flashes of what happened on that dark night flooded his mind. Darkness and blood muddled with pain, but a freckled face was there the whole time. It wore a concerned and guilt-ridden expression, something that looked foreign considering who the face belonged to.

Alfred still didn't know what to think, but he did know that he needed to mull over these things alone. He picked up the cane that he had been using since he was able to get on his feet and pushed himself up to take his leave from the President.

Just before he left, he grabbed the glass of wine that was originally for Lincoln. The President let him have it. He figured Alfred needed it more than he did anyway.

AHHHHH things are changing between Sammy and Alfred and I am so ready.

ALSO IF YOU LIVE IN TEXAS I AM SO SORRY. I HAVE BEEN TO TEXAS AND I LOVE IT VERY MUCH PLEASE DON'T HATE ME.

Also Amanda and I can't stop obsessing over a long-since-dead Founding Father. And my mom bought me a bunch of miniature busts of US presidents and strangely none of them are wearing shirts. I call it my Presidential Stripper Squad and I am very proud of this. Lincoln looks exceptional if I do say so myself.

Thanks for reading and for hanging on through my issues that keep me from writing. Review if you feel so inclined!

Love,

Harley and Amanda