Zero Two Three One | John Laurens X Reader [Hamilton]

LI: Sixty-Two Left Alive

❝Tell me a story of deep delight.❞
—Robert Penn Warren

We shouldn't have talked as much as we did while driving there. But we did.

"I admired Lafayette for the longest time," Davidson said. "I looked up to him. Saw him as an ideal soldier."

"Why?"

"Because I thought he was brave. I was assigned under his unit a while after the war — way after he was already a General, and not that long after my first disaster-of-a-mission. I looked up to him then, admiring his willingness to go into dangerous situations. When I was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel, I still admired him. I thought he was pretty clever, and he seemed to have all the right connections with foreign Generals — especially Washington. When they first met, they really hit it off."

"Do you still admire him?"

Davidson gave a long pause, his hands clutching the steering wheel. "A while after I was promoted, someone told me about his first mission. You don't know it, do you?"

I shake my head slowly. "No."

"I'm not surprised. Lafayette doesn't tell anyone about his first mission; not out of shame — I know he doesn't feel shame — but out of not seeing the necessity to."

"What was his first mission?"

The Frenchman takes a deep breath, having to wrangle the knowledge out from his head, tie it up with rope, then force it out of his mouth. It's a challenge, this I know. So I appreciate his willingness to tell me:

"It was a domestic mission — those are rare. There were reports of Russian spies in the country in the city of Lyon, and his small unit was sent up to investigate. They pinpointed a spot of interest, busted into the building, and took everyone in the building captive — him and his unit. They tied them up and locked them into separate rooms — ten civilians. They needed answers, and the only way to get answers was if they spoke. But they refused to speak when asked. Lafayette's General at the time — he's dead now — said someone needed to use force. To torture them a little — that was the only solution, apparently. No one in his unit wanted to do it. No one would volunteer. Except, of course, Lafayette."

"He agreed to torture civilians?"

"Yeah... Sinister, I know. I don't know why he volunteered to do it. The thing is, no one knows what he did exactly. The doors were closed when he did it. And since Lafayette doesn't talk about the day, we may never know what happened. But other soldiers remember the constant sound of screaming and crying from beyond the doors. One guy told me the sounds still haunt him."

"Did... Did Lafayette ever get an answer?"

Davidson emits a sad laugh. "Here's the thing: the ten captives consisted of seven children all under the age of twelve, two women, and a Russian man."

"He didn't focus only on the Russian man?"

"No, strangely not. He tortured everyone equally. And the sad thing is, the Russian man wasn't a spy. He was a refuge who the two women offered shelter for. He was working a low-wage job, sending money back home to his family. He was trying to learn French and trying to assimilate to the culture."

"What did Lafayette do after?"

I watch as Davidson shudders as though a cold breeze swept through the car with its long fingers. "Well, he killed them. All of them."

"What?"

"They said after interrogating each of them, he returned to each room and fired a bullet into each head."