Favorable (Jamilton)

41. Jefferson

"Twelve years of looking forward to the end of high school and school, in general, was wasted just to be shoved back into more school that apparently has kidnappings, death, and illegal job rings."

"Hey, Thomas. . ." 

"What?"

"We need to go." 

Thomas rolled over to face his sister. She had the same motherly face that he'd grown up with, but now she looked more exhausted and her cheeks looked almost as tear-stained as Thomas's. 

Almost. 

They'd gotten word that Alex was probably dead. That the cops weren't going to look for him for very much longer because there was more evidence saying he was dead than saying he was alive. The way Thomas saw it, they were taking the easy way out because now that they've got the publicity, they need to give it an ending to make themselves look good. Which meant that the people they couldn't find were probably dead. 

So they were having a ceremony for the ones that got mixed up in all of this and didn't make it out alive. For Samuel Seabury, and for Alexander Hamilton, and for John Laurens. . . and for everyone that was close to them. 

"Thomas? Are you coming?" Jane asked quietly. Thomas knew she wasn't going to force him to go. But he also knew that he needed to. 

It wasn't a funeral. Just a little gathering around the edge of the woods for anyone that wanted to pay their respects to dead people with no bodies. Sounded like a blast to Thomas. He slowly pushed himself up to sit up on his bed. He didn't want to go, but he had to. He knew he had to. Before actually getting off the bed, he glanced sadly at Hamilton's bed--

Former bed. Alex wasn't going to be coming back there, so Thomas would probably get a new dormmate that wasn't Hamilton and he'd probably hate the poor new kid. Not the way he hated Alexander Hamilton, though, that was the kind of hate that was easily changed because there was no real foundation. He'd have a reason to hate whoever they assigned to him because he didn't want a new roommate. He wanted his old one back. 

Before leaving, Thomas grabbed a candle that he bought and pulled on the letterman jacket. He felt around for the paper inside and when he found it, he took a deep breath and followed Jane out of his dorm room and into the hallway. It was pretty empty, probably because it was already snowing out and nobody wanted to be out in it. 

There were maybe ten people standing in front of a small line of framed pictures when Thomas got there, including Lafayette, Mulligan, and Lee. Jane and Mary both walked over and stood with the others while he stayed back for a second. He couldn't see the pictures clearly yet, but he already knew who they showed. 

When he made his way up to the rest of the line, it was pointless to hold back any of the tears. Everyone else was crying, so Thomas figured that nobody was going to say anything. Despite the snow, people were laying candles around the frames. Some of them were put out, but most of them stayed lit.  

Thomas lit his candle and bent down on his knees in front of Alex's picture. He stared at it for a second. He didn't know where they got it, but they definitely chose a good one. The only picture that Jefferson had seen where Alexander was smiling wider was the one of his full family. He set the candle down and stared for one more second. It sunk in that it was the last time that he'd see Alex's face and it wasn't even really him. 

Mary knelt down beside him and leaned her head on his shoulder. She was crying about as much as her brother as she looked at the picture. Jane did the same. Laf and Herc followed and, surprisingly, so did Lee.