Archive of Our Own

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i. 
Reverend Nathaniel Tallmadge tells them all he can, knowing full well they’ll never listen. His eyes are far away as he imparts each warning, seeing only a battlefield that raged long ago and a faces that will never smile again. The boys' eyes are simply full of wonder. Nathaniel doesn’t blame them - they’re only children, after all, secure in the knowledge of their own invincibility. To his sons and their friends who come sit at his feet, his stories hold nothing but wonder.

Nathaniel describes the weight of a gun in your hand, and the children imagine how fine they’d look in a shiny red soldier’s uniform.

He talks about the chaos and confusion of the battlefield, and they think of the glory they’ll one day receive, the crowds that will shout their names.

He talks about the emptiness that follows losing your one-in-particular, fingers unconsciously ghosting over the silver scar on his wrist, and Ben and Caleb only grin at each other and wonder what it would feel like to have a soulmate.
  
There have been soulmates as long as people have been able to love another heart as their own. No one is entirely sure how they originated, and generations of scientists have wasted away trying to explain them, but most people have long since decided it doesn't matter. The bonds are simply a fact of life.

The sky is blue because that’s how God made it. Little boys pull little girls’ pigtails because they haven't yet learnt how to say that they like them. And soulmates exist because some hearts are meant to stand side by side.

To say they’re rare is an understatement. Maybe one in a hundred is able to love another with enough force to develop a bond, and the mark that comes with it. Many children grow up having never seen the tell-tale swirls of black ink on someone’s skin. And as with anything that others don’t understand, they mark such people apart.

High society simply considers the marks unfashionable, but for others, they’re far more dangerous. The bonds develop of their own accord, but always before you are nineteen. And always for life.

They’re outlawed altogether in England, and only grudgingly allowed in the colonies because it’s so rare. The official reason for the law is to protect the Crown’s young citizens from harm, but Nathaniel has a much more cynical view of things. He’s the only man in their village to have been bonded, and wears the tattoo like a badge of honour, never mind that it’s faded to a faint silver.

“Loyalty,” he tells his sons one raging winter night, when Ben is ten and his mother’s empty chair is still and open wound. “The King demands absolute loyalty from his people. Above any commitment to the Lord, or to your family, and certainly above another person. But that’s the thing about soulmates.” The Reverend smiles, the first since they buried his wife. It’s not a kind one. “The King can’t control us. And it terrifies him.”

When Ben looks back, he’ll realise that these are the first truly treasonous words he ever hears. And that maybe, although he couldn’t have known it at the time, they are what inevitably set him on his path.

They’ve been Caleb-and-Ben for as long as anyone can remember. Oh sure, the two are part of a larger group of friends who are generally blamed for any trouble in the little town of  Setauket (although they’re only responsible for about three quarters of it) but that never stops them from becoming their own branch of inseparable. When Caleb falls over running away from the bigger boys, it’s a seven year old Ben who comes back for him. When Ben’s mother dies, it’s Caleb who sits with him all night and picks glass from his bleeding knuckles.

They have their own jokes and their own language, and they know that they’ll stand at each other's’ side for ever and ever.

(They’re children, and they know nothing.)

The summer before Ben’s thirteenth birthday is oppressive. The heat is an ever present force bearing down on them, and more days than not the children are driven into the woods and their promise of shade. It’s one of those days and Thomas Woodhull, hot and restless, dares Anna to kiss Caleb. She does so, complete with disgusting wet noises and comically groping hands. And Ben realises, quite without warning, that it bothers him.

(He doesn't know why, though. Not yet.)

Caleb’s almost a man now, two years his senior and with the beginnings of a beard to prove it. This doesn't stop him blushing a deep scarlet when Anna pulls away and failing to look anyone in the eye for the rest of the day. Especially Ben.

(Ben’s always been the clever one but in this at least, Caleb is much quicker on the uptake.)

It can’t last, of course. The summer comes to an end, and piece by piece, so do their childhoods, though neither boy realises it at the time. Taxes rise, Lucas Brewster’s hands begin to shake, and Caleb starts to wake up in a cold sweat, terrified that the same will happen to him. Thomas goes off to New York to Study. Two years later, Abe goes with him and only one brother comes back.
  
Alexander doesn't learn the word soul-mate until he’s thirteen years old, and doing everything he can to scrape out a life in the humid press of Christiansted, St Croix’s largest trading port. Even then, it’s entirely by accident. He’s in the wrong place at the wrong time, a habit the boy will never quite grow out of, and Alexander simply has the misfortune to be down by the docks when a slave riot breaks out. They’re not uncommon on the island, and he knows that his best chance is to get away and ignore the twist of shame in his gut. But this time the boy is helpless to do anything but watch, transfixed. Because the two leaders of the rebellion fight like nothing he’s ever seen before. It’s like watching a dance, the way they move around each other in perfect symmetry. They’re a man and a woman, no bigger or more imposing than any other, but the dark swirls of ink that decorate their arms seem to pulse with a life and a power of their own.

He’s never seen something so beautiful.

(Alexander slips away when the man falls, tears springing from his eyes unbidden. Within two days, all the slaves involved have either been executed or shipped to plantations. And the woman’s scream of unbridled anguish will echo in his head for as long as he lives.)
  
The letter has been hidden away in a draw for a week now, and Ben can’t bring himself to tell Caleb. He’s always known that he’d outgrow this tiny town at the end of the world, but now the rest of the world is calling and he’s terrified. All he’s ever know are these streets and these fields and a steady pair of chestnut eyes. If he accepts the offer to study at Yale in the fall, he’ll have to leave all that behind. He’ll have to leave Caleb behind. And somehow, the thought is unbearable.

Caleb works it out, of course. Ben’s never been able to keep anything from him, especially not something as huge as leaving, and he’s not surprised when there are four taps on his window a little after midnight. It’s a code they came up with years ago. A specific rhythm to say

‘It’s me, let me in’,

and Ben slides out of bed to open the window without a second thought.

The code may not have changed, but they have, and Caleb realises that bit too late that his grown up frame can no longer slide quite so smoothly through the window. He ends up pitching forward onto the floor with a thump, and Ben doesn't even try to hide his amusement.

“Shut up.”

“Never.”

Caleb climbs to his feet. “You’re leaving.” It’s not a question.

Ben sighs, and sits down on his bed. All this time, and he still has no idea what to say. After a moment, Caleb joins him. He can’t look at him somehow, and just stares ahead. “I didn't know how to tell you. I thought, I don’t know, that maybe you’d be angry, or-“

“What’s there to be angry about? You’re getting out of here, Benny! You’re going off to see the world, and save it while you’re out there, no doubt. It’s… I’m proud of you. Really.”

There’s a lump in Ben’s throat. “Thank you,” he manages eventually.

“Just promise me one thing, would you?” Caleb asks. “One favour. When you go off to your fancy law school and meet all the fancy geniuses and what have you… just, don’t forget about us, yeah?”

He says

us

. He means

me

.

Don’t forget me Ben, please, please, don’t let me be just some fleeting moment in your blazing life.

“Don’t be ridiculous. As if you’re someone I could ever forget about.”

They end up in Ben’s bed, squashed together on the narrow frame like they’ve done a thousand times since childhood. It seems different tonight, somehow. The inches of mattress between them feel like a gulf, growing wider by the second as their separate shores drift apart. Come tomorrow, they’ll be an ocean away from each other. It would be so easy to slide a hand across the mattress and grasp the other’s.

Neither boy does.

“What are you going to do?” Ben asks eventually. “Carry on with the farm?”

“Nah.” He feels rather than hears Caleb’s laugh. ‘I’ll head off, make my own way. Find work at sea, maybe. There’s nothing for me here.”

It’s a lie. He has an uncle who he loves, even if they’re not sure how to talk to each other anymore, and a whole crowd of friends. It’s also the truth.

“I’ll miss you.”

“Me too.”

More than you can imagine.

There’s another reason that soul-mates are banned in England and shunned in the colonies. It’s not one Nathaniel considers worth sharing with his sons, young as they are. To be bonded with someone is a special kind of intimacy, one that not even man and wife can hope to achieve. And the term soul-mate carries far more complex connotations than a child could understand. It’s to look at someone and say  “Yes, you are my mirror, and there’s no one else I’d rather have by my side.”

And for those with hate in their heart, this is simply another evil that must be stamped out from the world.

God forbid, after all, a man ever fall in love with his soul-mate.
  
Henry Laurens is making another long-winded epithet from his place at the head of the dinner table. Something about the inevitable decline of society at the hands of wicked radicals, maybe. His eldest son isn't sure; John stopped listening some time ago, and is now doing his best to appear as invisible as possible. It’s the only way to survive family dinners, he’s discovered over the years. Draw as little attention to himself as possible, do nothing to provoke his father’s ire, and definitely try not to notice how his siblings hang off his every word as if it were gospel.

Three weeks

, he tells himself.

Three weeks and you’ll be away from here and traveling to Europe. You can hold on until then, you’ve been managing it for sixteen years.

“Don’t you agree, Jack?” his father asks, and John looks up sharply.

“Yes, of course.”

He most certainly does not. There’s little the two of them have agreed on for years, be it farm management, the role of the Continental Congress, or the place of soulmates in today’s society. They’ve clashed on issues across the board, although the last few years have been something of a reluctant truce. Not because they’ve learnt to put their differences aside or reached any agreement, but because the two of them have their own personal epiphanies. Henry, that like it or not, it won’t do to alienate his heir, and John that the less resistance he offers, the easier it will be to make his escape.

Because that’s all that matters. There’s a whole world out there, after all. And John’s going to be a part of it if it kills him.
  
ii

Caleb wakes to the sun on his face and a feeling of pure contention. Eyes still closed, he nestles further into warm

something

that surrounds him and lets himself drift halfway back to sleep. For a moment, although he can’t say why, he’s as happy as he’s ever been.

Until that

something

moves and his eyes snap open.

Their gulf has disintegrated in the night. His nose is pressed into Ben’s shoulder, and Ben’s hand is flung lazily across his hip. It’s peaceful, fragile, everything Caleb swears to himself that he doesn't want. And it

hurts

.

Waking up with Ben like this feels like a cruel mockery of something he’ll never have. And yet he’s going to lose it today all the same. That’s not something Caleb can watch happen.

Carefully, so as not to disturb the sleeping boy (

man, Caleb, he’s a man and he’s leaving

), he untangles their limbs and softly slips out of bed. He leaves no note. Anything he would think to say, Ben already knows. Instead, almost as an afterthought, he brushes his lips to his forehead, so faint it can’t even be called a kiss.

“Blow ‘em away, Benny.”

And then he’s gone, leaving the way he came, and sliding the window shut behind him with a resounding thud that sounds far too much like goodbye.
  
(Ben’s been gone two hours by the time Caleb thinks to change his shirt and catches sight of the ink curling around his hip.

It’s not until that night, in an inn halfway to Connecticut, that Ben looks down and near drowns in the bathtub out of pure shock. His fingers tremble as they trace the black mark that now decorates his collarbone, and wonders if there was any sense to the world at all.)
  
Geneva is quiet in a way that John isn’t accustomed to, and one that he’s not quite sure how to cope with. In Carolina their home had been ever alive with people, and in London people spilled out onto the cobbles at all hours of the day. This place has a life of it’s own and one no less intense, but it’s the noise that John misses most. At night he lies with his eyes wide open, kept awake by all the sounds he can’t hear.

It’s as peaceful as it is maddening.

The quiet isn’t the only thing keeping John awake, of course. He has his studies and the chance to become someone in his own right. He has friends. And he has those hours, the ones he daren't even think about in his father’s presence lest the truth somehow spill across his face.

Nights of fumbling fingers and whispered names. Nights when, for a moment at least, he can forget his shame and simply burn with the force of

being

.

It always returns, though. With his head on another’s pillow and sweat still clinging to his skin, John wonders if he’ll always carry this shame, if he’ll learn to live with it, or if one day it will simply crush him.

Here lies John Laurens

, they’ll say.

Broken under the weight of all he failed to be.

Ben is not panicking. Definitively. Absolutely. Not even a little bit.

Why would he be?

He’s only about to start the rest of his life in a place full to bursting with world-changers, and have to spend every day proving he belongs here. He’s only going to have to do it all while hiding the tattoo that decorates his collar-bone. He’s only going to be utterly ruined if anyone finds out he’s a soulmate.

That’s not what he’s thinking about, though. Such concerns barely cross his mind as the cart rolls slowly towards though Connecticut. All Ben can do is turn the fact that this belongs to Caleb over and over in his mind. That much, he’s certain of. There’s certainly no one else it could be, not with Abe and Anna married (although not to each other, something he can never quite believe) and Samuel growing more distant with every year that passes.

(

Belongs

. The word springs into his head, unbidden, and he doesn’t once think to question it.)

On one hand, he shouldn’t be surprised. It wouldn’t be like Caleb to let him go off to college without some sort of fireworks.

But.

But this isn’t the sort of thing that’s supposed to happen. Soulmates are rare, and two in one family is unheard of. And to bond to another man… well. Ben shifts in his seat. It doesn’t

have

to mean anything untoward, he knows. The marks can speak of brotherhood, loyalty, friendship, a hundred things that he associates with Caleb without hesitation. Everyone feel those things. It’s perfectly normal.

(Not everyone feels those things with such intensity that it spreads out from their heart to paint their skin for the whole world to see. )

Shit

.

No, Benjamin Tallmadge is most definitely not panicking.

He’s also a truly terrible liar.

In an ideal world… well, in an ideal world none of this wouldn't be happening, or at least Caleb would be here and they could deal with whatever happens next together, the way they always have, and-

(Get a

grip

, Tallmadge)

In an (almost) ideal world, Ben would have some time to process what was happening and, if necessary, go quietly insane. He doesn’t have that luxury, unfortunately. His father turns to look at him every few minutes with a proud smile that Ben does his best to return. And far too soon, they’re rolling up to a pair of iron gates and a sprawling red-brick building that lies beyond. He stares up at the walls that will be his home, swirling panic forgotten for a brief moment. Maybe, just maybe, he can become something here.

His father turns to him. “Welcome to Yale, son. Are you ready?”

Lord, no.

He climbs down from the cart anyway.

The next hour or so is a whirlwind of corridors and bills and shaking hands with administrators whose names Ben can’t begin to remember. They all look him up and down, as if wondering who on earth he’s pretending to be. Ben wonders that himself, but he makes an effort to meet each gaze evenly. This place may be filled with the sons of great lords and merchants, but he’s got just as much right to be here.

It seems like no time at all before Reverend Tallmadge is readying the horses to depart, and the enormity of being left here on his own hits Ben. He smiles at him, creases around his eyes crinkling, and a lump lodges painfully in his throat. For a moment, Ben considers telling his father everything. He knows how this feels, after all. He opens his mouth to confess, but his father beats him to it.

“I haven’t told you enough, have I? How incredibly proud I am of the man you’ve become?”

And God, he can’t do it.

Nathan Tallmadge drives away and Ben watches him go, the words he couldn’t find hanging in the air. It’s a long, lonely walk up to the room that’s to be his home.
  
“Caleb Brewster doesn’t want to come swimming? What has the world come to?”

“Leave it, Woody.”

“You always want to come swimming.”

“Well maybe I don’t today.”

“What, afraid all the girls’ll see you without your shirt? This might be our last chance of the summer. You know how quickly it gets cold once Autumn hits.”

“You go ahead then.”

“Look, I know you’re upset that Ben’s gone, but you can’t sit around moping all day.”

“I’m not… that’s not what’s happening.” Unconsciously, Caleb’s fingers brush over his hip. “Trust me.”
  
There’s a boy in Ben’s room when he returns. As distracted as Ben is, he doesn’t even notice him until he’s halfway across it, and does his best not to look like he just jumped out of his skin. (He suspects he fails.)

The boy (halfway to being a man, really) is lying on one of the beds, one arm folded behind his head and the other holding a tattered book. His legs would dangle and inch or two over the edge at full stretch and at first, he shows no sign of noticing Ben’s existence. It’s only when Ben clears his throat the he slowly lowers the book enough to look at him over the top of it.

“I suppose we’re to be roommates, then?”

“It certainly looks that way,” Ben replies.

Come on, first impressions.

“I’m Benjamin. Benjamin Tallmadge.”

Over the book, the flint-grey eyes narrow slightly. “Can’t say I’ve heard of you.”

Despite himself, Ben feels his cheeks flair. “You wouldn’t have. My father’s a village preacher.”

A pause, in which something strange flashes across the boy’s face. If not for the fact Ben’s sure he’s having his whole life judged, he’d call it relief. Then without warning, he puts down his book, stands up and strides across the room so fast that Ben takes an automatic step back. It’s only a moment later that he realises he’s holding his hand out.

“Hale.”

And Ben can’t help but stare.

He’s tall, that much had been evident even lying down. Having spent so much time around Caleb, Abe and Anna, Ben’s not use to craning his neck to meet anyone’s eyes, nor is he use to meeting eyes quite so piercing. His face is framed by silver-blonde hair beginning to fall out of it’s queue, and lightly dusted with freckles. All of this, Ben notices later. Right now, it doesn’t so much as register.

Because Hale has his hand held out, causing the sleeves of his shirt to fall a little way down his arm.

And curling around the base of his wrist for the whole world to see is a black tattoo.
  
Nate’s first childhood is perfect. His second is one of whispers and a sense of shame that is never quite voiced, but ever present. He’s too young to understand what’s happening when his father announces he’s being sent away to boarding school across the sea, to understand why his family no longer wants him.

All he knows is that it’s something to do with the marks that appeared on his and Ginny’s skin on their seventh birthday.

His sister is, quite simply, the best thing in his life. They’re inseparable growing up, forever dressing up in each other's clothes and pretending to be one another, or concocting elaborate schemes to steal food from the kitchens. Their mother jokes that that they came into this world holding hands, and that’s the way they’ve stayed.

(Nate sometimes wonders if that’s the way they’ll leave the world, too. He thinks they probably won’t, and he’s right.)

In the weeks leading up to their birthday, the party is all Nate can think of. His world is no bigger than the cake they’ll eat and the toy sword he’s asked for, and whether or not all the children from the village will come. If anything, Ginny is worse than he is, always the wilder of the two and the one most likely to drag him into trouble. Not that he minds, of course. He’d let Ginny drag him into hell itself.

And in a way, that’s exactly what happens.

He wakes up in the morning of their seventh birthday to the sound of screams and a dull tingle in his right arm. The tingle, he barely notices because it’s Ginny who’s screaming, his Ginny who should never have to sound so scared. He’s out of bed in an instant, and when Nate reaches her room, it’s no longer freckles that delicately decorate her face. It’s nothing delicate at all.

Physical separation does nothing to reverse the formation of a bond. Nothing does, but that doesn’t stop their father from trying. He’s desperate, after all. Last night, he had a beautiful young daughter who’d make a good marriage and grow up happy. Now he has a daughter who no man will ever choose, unable to see past the black mass that obscures half her face. And as far as he’s concerned, it’s all Nate’s fault.

He’s sent away the next week. The marks never even slightly fade.

Children, Nate discovers, are cruel when they see you as an ‘other’. At home he had friends. In England, Nathan Hale is only the strange new boy with the tattoo curling around his wrist. The

soulmate

. And they never let him forget it. All these boys with fancy fathers are going to rule the Empire someday, and every day he’s reminded that it’s a world he’ll never be part of. It’s all he can do to build his walls, retreat into his studies and hammer every whisper and taunt into a suit of armour.

(Ginny is sent to a convent. He never finds out where.)

He’s convinced that Yale will be the same. What difference does an ocean make, compared to fundamental human nature? It’s ten years since he last stepped foot in his home country, and Nate does so convinced that he’ll be as alone her as he’s ever been.

Right up until his roommate says that his father’s a preacher, and his face is a battleground between shame and stubborn pride. Maybe, just maybe, he doesn't entirely belong here either. It’s enough that Nate offers his hand, reveals the hateful ink on his wrist. There’s no point hiding it, not if they’re going to be living together. If this Benjamin Tallmadge rejects him for it, he’d rather it happen now before something as fragile as hope can begin to fester. But if, by some senseless miracle he doesn’t…

“Hale.”

Benjamin pauses, eyes on the tattoo. For a moment he doesn't move, and Nate imagines the familiar picture playing out before his eyes. Surprise. Revolution. Drawing away as if burnt, and the same old hate rising to the surface before long. Alone, again. Why did he expect anything different? Why did-?

Benjamin shakes his hand.

Benjamin shakes his hand, and there’s no hate in his eyes. Only a tentative smile. “Good to meet you.”

“Good to meet you too, Benjamin.” And God, it really is. “My name’s Nate.”
  
The journal is the only thing Alexander has left to his name. All else, not that there was much to start with, is gone. Washed away in a torrent of water and wind and screams. The book only survived because he did, which is a miracle in itself.

Years later, he won’t remember much of that night. Only the weight of the small book, clutched to his chest as he squeezes his eyes shut and prays to a God he’s certain has abandoned him.

And when the day comes, when the incalculable damage is somehow calculated and the question of what now hangs like a spectre in the air, he manages to procure a pen and a small pot of ink. Alexander climbs over piles of destruction to the water’s edge. It’s as calm as it’s ever been. And with an hand that refuses to shake, he begins to write.

“You fucker,” Caleb tells the night sky. “You didn’t have to go, you know. None of this would have happened if you’d just stayed here and I’d have never had to imagine how much it would hurt to lose you.”

He doesn’t blame Ben. It would be so easy to, but try as he might, Caleb can’t bring himself to do it.

Not when he’s been in love with the bastard since he was fourteen years old.

There’s no point trying to deny it any more, not with the proof inked on his very skin. He’s entirely, hopelessly, and possibly irreversibly  in love with Benjamin Tallmadge.

The problem is not that Ben’s a man, although that’s certainly what the rest of the world would fixate on if they ever found out the truth. The problem is that Ben is his best friend. And that he will never feel the same way.

Caleb would be lying if he said he’d never hoped Ben might share his feelings. That when his tattoo appeared, amidst the barrage of shock and panic, there wasn’t one glimmer of hope that whispered

maybe he loves you too.

It’s a beautiful thing, hope, in the way that a siren song is beautiful right up until the moment that you’re dragged beneath the waves. Because Ben doesn’t,

can’t

return his feelings, and to wish otherwise would break him.

Ben loves him, that much is obvious by the ink that binds them together. Loves him as a friend and a brother, and if Caleb were any less selfish that would be enough.

He isn’t. It isn’t.

It’s the stupid, selfish self-pity that consumes him for the first three weeks after Ben leaves. He skulls around the woods and the shoreline, ignoring anyone he can and letting his own misery quietly consume him.

On the fourth week, he borrows his Uncle’s horse and leaves at first light.

iii.

They’re not as cruel as the schoolchildren who chanted names, not directly, but there’s a distinct separation between Nate and the other students. He does his best to keep his wrist hidden, but word somehow gets around that he’s marked by the end of the first week. If it were anybody else, he might suspect Benjamin as the source of the rumours, but the idea is simply ludicrous.

Benjamin has stood by his side unfailingly.

Benjamin is well liked because... of course he is. He’s kind and hardworking, and by the time they’ve been at Yale a month even the most high-born snob can’t deny that he deserves to be there. Nate is sure that if Benjamin were only to put some distance between the two of them, he’d be accepted into their inner circle immediately.

Incredibly, that doesn’t happen.

When the whispers follow them down the corridor, Benjamin shoots him a reassuring smile.

When a professor refuses to shake Nate’s hand, Benjamin makes a point of casually touching his arm at every opportunity.

When someone knocks an inkwell onto his almost completed translation, Benjamin stays up for hours to help him rewrite it despite being truly terrible at Greek.

Nate honestly has no idea what he’s done to deserve such immediate and utter loyalty.

(Ben watches with an ever-constant twist of guilt, makes sure not to take his shirt off when Nate’s around, and doesn’t breathe a word about the ink that curls over his own skin. He sees the way the others look at Nate, and somehow, can’t bring himself to reveal that they are just the same.)
  
Johnny hides in the cupboard and watches as they drag his father from the room. He doesn’t scream. He doesn't cry. What he does do is pray, pray that they won’t find him, and that his father will make it out of this alive.

Two unfortunate facts: Neither desperate plea is answered, and this is the last time that the boy will pray in his life.

They find him soon enough, and carry more than drag him down to the basement with the rest of his family and all their servants. His father is lying on the floor, blood flowing freely from a gash in his head.

“Johnny,” he whispers. “Johnny, be strong.” One hand curls out across the floor towards him, and the boy squeezes it. His father falls asleep soon after and never wakes up again.

In many ways, he is the lucky one.

Outside, the Calcuttan summer pulses with a sweaty, sticky heat, but one that never makes it down into the cellar. Jonny is fast learning what the cold feels like. Fast learning a lot of other things as well. All of them about how to make someone hurt.

The thing that stays with him, though, isn’t the cracking of bones or the sizzle of flesh.

It’s the joy in their faces when they realise that two of the maids are soulmates.

They torture one for almost three days. Again, Jonny thinks maybe she’s lucky. Because the hurt in the other’s face, how she struggles to reach her, screams in shared anguish… well, he’ll wake to the sound for years to come.

It doesn’t last forever, but Johnny doesn’t live to see the sun again. Instead, what emerges from that cellar is something darker and not so much broken as it is fractured into a thousand shards, each one as sharp as a knife edge. He certainly never goes by his boyhood nickname again.

Johnny Graves Simcoe is soft, and and maybe thoughtless but not cruel, and he’s left behind forever in that black hole. John is none of those things.
  
Lord, but Ben hates Greek. French is a vital language for commerce and politics alike. Latin lies at the heart of understanding their laws. But Greek? Greek, he’s sure, exists only to torture him personally, one line of incomprehensible text at a time.

He tosses his pen down in frustration and curses as it sends a few stray drops of ink across the page. He’s been at this for hours, and is still no closer to finishing. And to make matters worse, Nate isn’t even here to lend a hand. Which bar his roommate is currently getting inordinately drunk in, Ben’s not sure, but it's certainly one of them. That’s what every student is doing this evening. Every student except him.

Groaning softly, he rolls his shoulders and wonders just how long he’s been sitting here. He’s just about to pick up his pen again when a sharp tap sounds. Ben all but jumps out of his skin.

“Nate?”

It sounds again, followed by three more taps in quick succession.  Ben frowns, and crosses slowly to the window. It can’t be, but the rhythm sounds almost like…

“Caleb?” he chokes.

“Evening, Tall-boy. Couldn’t let me in, could ya?”

Mystified, Ben slides open the window and stands aside so that Caleb can squeeze through. He should probably be concerned about how he reached a 3rd story window, or how Caleb even knew which window was his, but right now it doesn’t matter. Because Caleb’s

here

.

Ben barely gives Caleb time to straighten up before throwing his arms around him. They’ve never really been ones for hugging, but now he can’t quite bring himself to let go.

“I missed you, you damned fool.” Ben whispers. “What are you doing in Connecticut?”

“I’m here for the nutmeg, Tallmadge, what the hell do you think I’m Connecticut? Needed to see you.”

Under different circumstances, Ben might have laughed and called him a girl, or a sap. Now he just hangs on that bit tighter.

He’s not sure how long they stand there, but it’s Caleb who pulls away first. “We’ve got to  talk.”

“I know. The day I left home. Did you get…? I mean, was there…?” Despite the unshakable certainty that Caleb is his soulmate, Ben’s suddenly terrified that he’s got it all wrong. What if they’re not soulmates at all, that he’s bonded to his brother, or some girl he’s got to marry, or Abe of all people, or-

The panic must be writ clear across his face, for Caleb shoots him a soft smile. He shucks of his jacket and lifts his shirt slightly to reveal the ink swirling around his hip.

“Oh.”

Ben can do nothing but stare. The markings aren’t the same as his, not exactly, but there’s something in them that speaks entirely and ineffably of Caleb. He’s seized by a strange desire to touch them, run his fingers over the bold strokes and coils, and barely restrains himself.

(Get it together, Tallmadge. This is

Caleb

.)

He only looks up when Caleb clears his throat with an amused grin. “I’m pretty sure this is the part where you show me yours. Lord, it’s not on your arse or something, is it?”

Ben only shoots him a look. He unbuttons the first few buttons of his shirt and pulls it to one side, exposing his collarbone.

“Well, that’s a relief.”

And if Caleb’s joke rings a little hollow, if something in his voice is stretched, Ben can’t blame him. Because this thing between them? It’s terrifying. It has the potential to ruin them both. But damned if it doesn’t feel real, somehow.

The idiot stole his uncle’s horse, as it turns out, and needs to get back to Setauket by morning before people notice he’s gone. The idea of Caleb riding through the night sits uneasily in Ben’s gut, though not nearly as much as the thought of him riding away. It’s not like they have a choice. Ben can’t leave his studies any more than Caleb can up and move to some strange town. This was always going to be difficult, even before the universe decided to tie them together. Ben had known that, and made the choice to leave anyway.

He can only watch, less than an hour after he got here, as Caleb does the same.

A sharp wind whistles through the window, the one Ben hasn’t bothered to close. It’s childish, but he can’t help thinking that maybe, if he keeps the window open, Caleb might climb back through at any moment. He’s not sure how long he sits there, but the candle on his desk has almost burnt through by the time Nate throws the door open.

“God, it’s freezing in here. You know catching a chill won’t get you out of handing your translation in?”

Nate’s words are far less slurred than Ben would expect after hours at the bar. On another night he might wonder just what his roomate had been up to, if not drinking, but he can’t summon the curiosity. Nate crosses to the window and closes it with a resounding thud. Ben can’t help but wince, and he notices immediately.

“What’s the matter with you, Benjamin? You look as though you’ve seen-”

Nate never finishes the rest of his sentence. His words hang in the air between them, and too late, Ben realises that the window wasn’t the only thing he forgot to close. He follows Nate’s gaze down to his collar bone, exposed by the still-unbuttoned shirt, and the mark of a soulmate that decorates it.

Oh God..

“Nate, I-”

“When?”

“What?”

“When did this happen?” Nate takes a step towards him, hands balled into fists, and it’s difficult to say whether they shake more than his voice. “Tell me that this happened tonight, and you haven't been lying to me this whole time.”

It would be so easy to. Ben could claim that Caleb surprised him with a visit and that his tattoo is brand new, and the hurt behind Nate’s eyes would fade to soft understanding. Instead, he says “The night before term started.”

A laugh. “You bastard. You utter bastard. Weeks, we’ve been here, and you never once thought to tell me we were going through the exact same shit? That maybe I would have liked to know I wasn’t alone?”

“If you just-”

“Or did you just not want the world to know the freak you really are? Christ, that’s it.” Nate runs a hand over his face, voice halfway between laughter and a choked sob. “We

are

freaks, Benjamin, but at least I’m honest about it.  You’re nothing but a coward.”

The worst part is it’s true.

“Nate, wait a minute!”

But it’s too late. Nate storms past him and out the door, slamming it shut in his wake.

Ben sinks back down onto his bed, and wonders how he’s managed to loose the two most important things in his life in one night.
  
Three glasses of wine into the evening, and John wonders what he’s even doing here. The ballroom is full of strangers, every one of them desperately trying to appear as if they are more important that they actually are, and he’s never felt more out of place. If not for the fact that he has precious few friends in London and their host is some old schoolmate of his father's, he’d slink off into the night without a backwards glance.

Instead, John orders another glass.

“Sickening, isn’t it?”

He looks up with a start, not even having noticed a woman move to stand next to him. “I’m sorry?”

“All these people. They despise each other, really, and yet here they are rubbing shoulders and making sure that they’re seen talking to all the right people. This whole city, it’s nothing but a facade.”

“The most beautiful things always are,” he replies. “I don’t believe we’ve been acquainted.”

She shoots him an embarrassed smile. “My apologies, Sir. Miss Martha Manning.”

John takes her hand and does his best not to let his eyebrows rise in surprise. What is the host’s daughter doing lurking in the corner with a nobody like him? “John Laurens, at your service.”
   
“Tallmadge! Oh, thank God!”

Ben looks up from his book. Winter is truly beginning to set in now, and he’s retreated to the dining hall and it’s great roaring fire to work. True, it’s not silent like the library, but silence is something that Ben’s slowly growing to loathe. Three weeks, and Nate has hardly said a word to him. Every attempt to apologise or explain himself has fallen on deaf ears, and he’s slowly starting to despair.

The quiet murmures of other students around him, is somewhat comforting. What he isn’t expecting, though is the frantic shout that turns every head in the room.

Robinson doesn’t seem to even notice the attention as he runs towards him. Ben’s gets on fairly well with the boy, even if they’re not especially close. He’s never been one to look down on Ben’s father or whisper snide comments behind Nate’s back, although he’s never made an effort to stop the ones who do. They’ve helped each other out with essays a little, but one look at Robinson’s face tells Ben that this is a far more serious matter.

“What’s gotten you so flustered?”

He takes a gulping breath. Robinson isn’t the most athletic of teenagers, and by the looks of things he ran the whole way here. “You need to come right now. Woods and some of the others stopped Hale behind the stables… don’t know why picked today to start fighting back, but there were five of them, and-”

“What did they do to him?” An icy panic floods his veins.

“They wouldn’t listen, I told them it was December and they were going to kill him-”

“Dammit, Robinson, what happened?”

“They’re going down to the bay. I think they mean to throw him in.”

Ben’s up without another word. He doesn’t even stop to grab his coat, and the winter air catches in his throat as runs through the college and out into the streets. His shirt isn’t near thick enough, but he barely notices. All Ben can think is

Nate

and

five of them

and they

bay in December

and

Christ, can he even swim?

For one crushing moment, Ben is sure he’s too late. He scans the dock, seeing nothing but the usual bustle of men going about their business.

Oh God.

It’s in a state of fast crescendoing panic that he finally spots a small group of young men standing right by the waters’ edge.

“Get away from him.”

They turn around in surprise. Just as Robinson said, there are five of them, and Ben immediately recognises them as some of the cruelest among the whisperers. But the thing that tips his fear to breaking point is the sight of Nate standing in the middle. He’s not struggling.. It might be because of the hand on his arm, or the beginnings of a bruise blooming around his cheek, but more likely it’s the glint of a blade at his throat.

The. Utter. Bastards.

“Oh look, Hale,” says Woods, and of course he’s the one holding a razor to Nate’s throat right now. “Your dog’s come for you.”

“Just let him go.”

Ben takes a step towards him, and Woods bring’s the blade even closer to Nate’s exposed skin. “Careful there, Tallmadge. We wouldn’t want any accidents, now.”

Oh Jesus, he could kill Nate right now, and there’s not a damned thing Ben could do to stop it. He raises his hands as if calming and animal. “Just think about this, for fucks sake. You don’t want to do something stupid.”

“You know what I really want? I want to see the soulmate swim.”

Quicker than Ben would have thought possible, Woods spins Nate around and gives him a hard shove off the edge of the dock.

There’s a horrible splashing sound. Then silence.

Ben races to the water’s edge. There’s no sign of Nate, no sign of any movement at all.

“My God,” one of the boys says.

Ben doesn’t, can’t, think over the roaring panic. Instead, he simply pulls off his shirt in one smooth motion, takes a deep breath and, ignoring the sudden chorus of panicked shouts, launches himself into the water.

The cold engulfs him immediately, icy and all consuming. He can’t move, he can’t see, oh God he’s going to die like this, and-

Come on, Benny, one thing at a time. Which way’s up?

They’re ten, and only Caleb bloody Brewster would think that going swimming on Christmas Eve is a good idea. Abe manages to get a whole toe in before deciding he’d rather sit this one out, and Anna spends a minute or so paddling around before she joins him. Ben, though, is determined to outlast Caleb. He doesn’t even notice the muscles in his leg cramping up, not until he suddenly can’t move. He’s sure that the icy water and pure helpless panic will be the last thing’s he’ll ever feel. As it turns out, Caleb’s arms wrapping around him and hauling him to safety is one of the best.

“The worst thing you can do is panic,” Caleb will tell him later. “If you panic, you’re dead. Force yourself to think clearly, take things one step at a time. And the first step is working out which way’s up.”

(It’s the first of three times Caleb will save Ben from a lonely death underwater. The second time, he isn’t even there. The third is the worst New Year of Caleb’s life.)
  
Ben will never be sure how exactly he managed to lock his hands around Nate’s arm and pull him back above the surface. He’s not aware of anything much, hardly notices the hands that frantically pull them back onto the dock. It later turns out that Woods disappeared, and it took his friends all of one second after Nate went in to realise their mistake.

“Get them some coats, for God’s sake!” someone shouts above him. Something warm and dry is draped over Ben’s shoulders. All he knows is the weight of Nate’s head in his lap, shivering and icy to the touch but by some miracle still drawing breath.

By the time Ben warms up enough to take notice of his surroundings again, it’s to the realisation that everyone is staring at him in an awed silence. For a moment he thinks it’s merely because he saved Nate, but-

Oh no.

Ben’s shirt lies discarded on the dock beside him. And the borrowed coat does nothing to hide the tattoo. All this, he notices far too late.

They stare at the ink that marks him as a soulmate, and Ben can only wonder how he ever thought this could have been avoided.
  
The shoreline appears above the horizon on the most dreary of mornings. The sky is pregnant with the promise of rain, and a thin mist hangs over the sea. Every sensible person aboard the ship (which in this case means anyone whose name isn’t Alexander) is sheltering safely below deck.

Alexander can only stare, transfixed, as the land grows closer and closer.

America.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

iv.

Leaving Setauket is easier than it has any right to be. This place has been Caleb’s home his whole life, yet saying goodbye comes with none of the pain he’d been expecting. It’s not that he won’t miss the town and his friends. It’s just that he can’t think of a single reason to stay.

“You will be careful out there, won’t you?” Anna says.

It’s the night before he’s due to depart, and she’s watching him pack a bag with surprising soft eyes. There’s not much Caleb feels worth taking with him; Most of the clothes he owns will be useless out on the ocean, and there’s no point in packing more than he can carry. By the time he’s finished, the entirety of his life fits neatly into a small pack.

“Is Anna Strong worried about me?” he asks, raising an eyebrow in mock amusement. “What a day this is.”

“All I’m saying is take a precaution every once in a while. Don’t be so…”

“Me?”

“Exactly.”

Caleb wraps an arm around her shoulders. “I’ll be fine. I always am.”

“You’ve never been on a whaleboat,” she points out. “Men die out there. Are you sure this is what you want to do with your life?

“No.” It’s the truth, after all. “But I’m not going to work out what that is by hanging around. There’s nothing for me in Setauket, not anymore.”

Caleb had meant to keep the last bit to himself, but it creeps out nonetheless. Anna looks at him sharply. She’s always been the smartest of them all, smarter than Ben even, and sure enough, her face soon softens to one of understanding.

“What do... ohh. Oh, Caleb. How long?”

He could deny all. It would, of course, be utterly pointless. “Too long. Maybe forever.”

“Does he know?”

“Benny?” Caleb snorts. “Nah. For a genius, our boy’s really kind of thick.”

“And you never-?”

“What good would it have done? Really?”

Anna watches him for a long moment, and then takes his hand. Caleb lets out a shaky breath. He’s not sure what’s more overwhelming right now, that someone

knows

, or that Anna doesn’t seem to care.

(Of course she doesn’t know everything. She doesn’t know that Ben will be branded with  the evidence of his pathetic love for the rest of his life.)

“Please try not to fall out of too many boats. If you die out there, I’ll make sure you get an awful gravestone.”

“How awful are we talking?”

“I’ll put some of Abe’s poetry on it.”

Caleb, who knows all too well how a teenage Abe’s attempts at romantic sonnets had turned out, snorts. “You’re a cruel woman, Annie. Guess I’d better come back in one piece then.”

“You’d better.”
   
The assumption that Ben and Nate are soulmates is as instant as it is universal. That shouldn’t be a surprise, really. Not after Ben revealed his mark in the quite literal process of risking his life to save Nate’s. When added to the fact that soulmates are supposed to be a rare thing it’s a logical conclusion.

And one neither boy feels the need to correct.

For Nate’s part, the whole thing is simply hilarious. A private joke between them against the rest of the world. He spends three days confined to bed with a chill after Ben pulls him out of the bay, and his forgiveness is so immediate that Ben can’t bring himself to renounce him again.

And even more so, there’s a part of him simply wants to keep Caleb to seperate. Something that’s entirely his.

He’s different somehow, distinct from this life of essays and debate and ever growing tension from across the sea. Because the tension is most definitely growing. You can see it in the faces around college, in the stories coming back from London, in the shouts of the men on their soap-boxes. There’s a promise of something rolling on the horizon, and Ben has no idea how long it will be until it consumes them all. Only that when that happens, he’ll have to decide just how hard he’s willing to fight for what he believes in.

And he’s starting to realise exactly what his answer will be.

It’s terrifying.

In the long nights when it all gets to much, Ben places a hand to his chest and imagines he feels the beat of a different heart in place in his own.
  
Ginny Hale has been waiting all day to give Nate his birthday present. They are  seven (well, eight tomorrow), and waiting isn’t exactly her strong suit. So by the time that Nate finally walks through the door, she launches herself at him.

“I got you something!”

He blinks. “But our birthday isn’t until tomorrow. We don’t get presents until then.”

“This is a special one.”

She opens her fist, and grins in delight. Nate looks down at it, then back up to her face.

“It’s a rock.”

“It’s a special rock. Look!”

She hands it to him, and Nate rubs his fingers over the surface. The stone (more of a pebble, really) has been washed almost smooth by the river that runs past their house, and is the exact shade of green-grey as Nate’s eyes. A  grin spreads across his face as he feels rather than sees the letters scratched into it.

N.H. E.H.

All but invisible, but there none the less.

In London, Nate hides the stone at the back of a draw where the other boys will not find it, and clutches it on the nights can’t sleep.

On a bright morning September morning in 1776, it falls from twitching fingers into the dust of York city.
  
It’s easy to believe, in those hurtling years, that they will be the ones to save the world. They’re young, with ideas to set these colonies aflame and a whole life in which to do it. Between his work, the whispers of an oncoming war, and the constant struggle of watching his roommate's back it’s a shock to discover he’s been at Yale almost three years.

Three years, and he doesn’t see Caleb once.

The first Christmas that Ben comes back to Setauket full of barely contained excitement, only for Anna to tell him that he’s found work with a whaler bound for Greenland. It’s all Ben can do to keep down a wave of disappointment and, illogically, betrayal. He left first, after all, and it had been childish to assume that Caleb would be here waiting for him.

“Do you think he’s okay?” Anna asks, unable to keep the fear out of her voice.

Ben doesn’t think so, not exactly. He

knows

so, a deep rooted certainty that would be impossible to put into words even if he could tell Anna about their bond. It’s not just that his tattoo has stayed as black as the day it appeared. There’s a pull in his blood, and the ever constant presence of someone in the back of his head. He hadn’t noticed straight away, but ever since Caleb had climbed through his dorm room window, it’s been there.

And his father had definitely never mentioned this.

It’s not something as ridiculous as reading Caleb’s mind. Instead, Ben’s left with a series of half-formed impressions.  Right now for example, if he really concentrates, Ben could tell Anna that Caleb’s fine, though he’s in an awfully foul mood about something. But even that much leaves Ben with a splitting headache, and the need to sit down lest he faint altogether. Far more importantly, the tiny glimpses feel like a betrayal of Caleb’s privacy. Caleb didn’t give Ben permission to crack his skull open at any time to just satisfy his own curiosity. For the most part, Ben does his best not to pry, and to stay out of his head all together.

It’s enough to know he’s alive.

(Ben doesn't pry, so Ben never knows about the nights Caleb spends staring up at the stars and aching for a smile that will never be his. He doesn't know about the migraines he gives himself, straining for any trace of Ben. It’s worth it, the days when he has to fight to see through the stabs of pain, to pick up little prickles of happiness from across the ocean and pretend he is the cause of them.)

Three years, and Ben only ever asks about Nate’s soulmate once.

Nate knows all about Caleb, of course. Ben has enough stories about all the trouble Caleb dragged him into to fill a book, and Nate’s more than happy to let him ramble on. About his one-in-particular, however, Nate’s infuriatingly tight lipped. He never volunteers so much as a name, and Ben can never bring himself to ask. There’s a look in Nate’s eyes sometimes, when he catches himself talking about Caleb yet again, something terribly fragile and Ben’s afraid it could shatter at any moment. So afraid, that he swears never to ask.

What he doesn’t count on, is Nate getting him quiet so shockingly drunk.

Ben’s been offering excuses for weeks now, but it’s the night after their exams finish. He’s helpless but to be dragged to the nearest bar and plied with enough alcohol to kill a small battalion. The hours pass in a haze of wine and laughter, and Ben will never know how Nate manages to haul Ben back to their room, considering he’s in almost as bad a state himself.

Carry is probably a more accurate word, and Ben finds himself gripping Nate’s wrist as he dumps him unceremoniously on his bed. His fingers trail across the tattoo, and Nate doesn’t pull away.

“Who is he?”

“She. And it doesn’t matter. She’s long gone.”

“She,” Ben considers in all his wine-soaked glory. “Is that easier?”

“Not at all,” Nate replies, but he has a feeling that Ben’s not just talking about soulmates any more.

“It’s just so stupid! It’s Caleb. Why does it have to be Caleb? And why does that have to be a bad thing?”

Anna once said that a drunken Ben resembled a child throwing a tantrum. If Nate had heard that, he’d have to agree. Because Benjamin’s pouting, for Christ’s sake, and looking at him like Nate has all the answers.

“I don’t know.” He can smell the alcohol on Ben’s breath. His fingers are still touching Nate’s wrist, right over his pulse point, and Nate can feel it’s frantic beating. “Maybe it isn’t.”

Ben stares at him with unfocused, trusting  eyes, and Nate knows two things to be true.

First, that this Caleb of Ben’s must either be a lot stronger than he is, or else incredibly foolish that he could ever walk away from this boy.

And second, that Ben won’t remember any of this come tomorrow morning. Certainly not leaning up to kiss him.

His lips are bitten raw, a habit to cope with the stress of exams, and his breath reeks of wine. Nate doesn’t think he’s ever known something more perfect. He allows Ben to kiss him for a moment longer, before pushing him back onto the bed. “Go to sleep, Benjamin.”

Ben wakes up the next morning with a raging hangover and a groan. Nate hands him a cup of water and keeps the memory close to his chest. It rests there, next to a green-grey stone that hangs around his neck.

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to separation…

It’s a sweltering Thursday morning when the news reaches Yale.

The world will never be the same.

John can’t breathe. The world swims in out of focus and he grips the letter with white knuckles. He blinks sluggishly, and tries to make sense of the words written in a neat hand. They still refuse to rearrange themselves into any order he can comprehend.

This cannot be happening.

He doesn’t love Miss Martha Manning. He barely knows Miss Martha Manning. And yet they’re going to have a child.

She’s a fine woman, certainly. Sensible and strong, with a sense of humour that’s all too rare in the grey streets of London. Her father’s business is prosperous, and he supposes she is really rather beautiful. All the things a man should search for in his wife. And yet to John, the whole thing is nothing more than than an elaborate joke at the hands of the universe. She had meant nothing more to him than a desperate attempt to prove to himself capable of meeting society's expectations.

He’s certainly proved that.

And now he can’t breathe.

What does it say about him, John wonders desperately, that he wants nothing more than to run for the hills?

A month after he receives Martha’s letter, they’re married in a small service in Whitechapel.

Six weeks later, the faint call of revolution sounds from across the sea.

And two weeks after that, he’s standing on the deck of a ship with nothing but the rolling waves for company.
  
When the time comes, it’s not even a choice. His brother has joined up. Nate is joining up. And, when Ben stops to think about it, maybe he made his decision years ago.

The crown denies their rights to self rule, to decide taxation and how they should be spent on their own terms.

It denies Ben’s right to openly declare that his soul and Caleb’s are one and the same.

“The King can’t control us,” Nathaniel Tallmadge says a lifetime ago.” And it terrifies him.”
  
New York is a city on a knife edge when the ship enters the harbour. You can see it everywhere. In the faces of the men who go about their business in a desperate imitation of normality. In the ever multiplying presence of redcoats on the streets who's fingers seem to be inching ever closer to their triggers. In the pamphlets that are nowhere and everywhere at once. Any fool could feel it the moment they stepped out onto the dock.

And he isn’t just any fool.

The man looks for all the world like another loyal servant of the crown. His uniform is immaculate, his curling hair tucked neatly under a hat. You couldn’t blame a passer by for not looking at him twice. His eyes, though, it’s his eyes that would give him away to anyone to anyone really looking.

They speak of a churning purpose, and a flame igniting at the thought of the war to come. And further still, they speak of a black hole. It’s not a memory so much as it is part of him. All he’s suffered, all he’s seen, and all he’s learnt.

If there’s one thing that John Graves Simcoe considers himself an expert on, it’s the art of pain. It’s amazing what you can do to a human body, given time and that little bit of imagination.

Amazing what you can do to the soul, too.

There’s more than one way to make a man hurt.
  
v.

To Caleb’s considerable surprise, not one man on the Whaler cares that he is a soulmate.

It’s impossible to hide, considering the close quarters they all live in. That doesn’t stop him trying desperately for the first few weeks, only changing his shirt in the snatched moments that no-one else is below deck and taking to wrap a bandage around his waist. It’s entirely pointless, and it's not long before Captain McGraw takes him aside.

“So what is it, Brewster? A soulmate tattoo or some hideous skin condition?”

Caleb blinks. “What?”

“We’ve been taking bets, you see, as to which is the reason you’re all modest when it comes to your shirt. Those are the two we’ve narrowed it down to. Of course Winston still thinks you’ve got tits under there, but that’s ‘cus Winston’s an idiot.”

“Soulmate tattoo.” There’s no point denying it now.

The captain narrows his eyes. “Well that is unfortunate, Brewster.” Caleb just has time to panic that he’s about to be thrown of the ship, when he continues “I had a tidy sum of money resting on warts. Stop eyeing the gunwale like you’re about to swim for the coast, will you? We ain’t the British, or those farts lording it up in high society. Do your job and try not to get anyone killed, and you’ll be alright with us.”

And amazingly, he is for the most part. Caleb gets a bit of ribbing the first time he changes in front of the rest of the crew, but it's no worse than they treat anyone else. The things that divide men when they have two feet on solid land matter less out here. When there’s nothing but you and your crew and a hundred miles of uncaring sea all around, these things simply fall away.

I could stay out here, he thinks one night

, when the water is calm and the inky sky is alive with stars.

I could just live out my days on a whaler and leave it all behind.

He almost could, anyway. If not for Ben. He’s out there somewhere, and ocean away and yet in the back of Caleb’s head all at the same time. A constant presence, a reminder that he’s never been able to let Ben go, and he never will. Not really. And before long, he’ll have to go back.

There’s no guarantee that he will make it back, of course. Whaling is dangerous work, and the sea even more so. They lose four men within the first year. Four good men who had been as a good a sailor as any of them, and who will never see America again.

Caleb mourns the dead along with the rest of the crew.

It’s only on the worst of nights that he envies them.
   
“Name?”

“Hamilton, Sir. Alexander Hamilton.”

He does his best not to fiddle with the cuff of his sleeve, although from the looks of the officer in front of him, a good first impression won’t help him out all that much. Whatever he did to get put on admissions duty, Alex has no idea, only that he must have processed close to a hundred new recruits to the Continental Army this morning alone.

“Place of birth?”

It would be all too easy to say New York. But Alex has big plans, and it wouldn’t do to start off his military career with a lie that could be easily enough uncovered somewhere down the line. “Nevis.”

“Nevis?” A single raised eyebrow. “You’re a long way from home.”

“I’m here to fight for my country.” It sounds defensive, even to his ears. But it’s a hard habit to spend, as it turns out, when you’ve spent your whole life on the defence.

“Alright.” He scratches something in his book. “Welcome to the Continental Army, Mr Hamilton. Go and find the quartermaster. He’ll get you sorted with a uniform, or as good as we can manage, in any case.”

Alex nods, and turns to leave, when the man speaks again. “Oh one, more thing. You’re not a soulmate, are you?”

“I’m sorry?”

“A soulmate.”

He isn’t, of course, but he can’t help find the question invasive all the same. “Is that not a personal matter?”

“It’s a matter of strategy, son.”

“Why?”

The officer watches through narrowed eyes for a moment, and when he speaks there’s a strange strand of pity to his voice. “You haven’t heard?”
  
Simcoe knows that his fellow officers don’t like it. They grumble behind his back, using words like seemly and civilisation and unbefitting. Words that stop meaning a fucking thing when there’s a war to fight. Let them disapprove of his methods. The whole royal army relies on his results, and there’s no denying that he gets the information he needs.

Soulmates. Pillars of strength, in theory. A gaping weakness in the heart of Washington’s rebellion, in reality. And it’s a weakness that Simcoe has gotten very skilled at exploiting.

In terms of gathering information, it’s most effective when he has a pair to work with. They’re soldiers and probably brave men, but once he gets to work on them they have no more resolve than the maids who used to work in his father’s house. Anything to save their other half. Including giving up secrets they’ve sworn to protect with their lives. It’s pitiful, truly.

Even if he only has his hands on one of the pair, that desire to save each other can be exploited. Traps can be set, and soulmates make excellent bait.

It’s no surprise when Washington bans them from serving in his upper ranks.

He survives Greenland, and Caleb isn't entirely sure how to feel about that. There’s nowhere else for him to go but home, and so he spends a large portion of his wages on a horse and turns her in the familiar direction of Setauket. He’ll get to see his Uncle again, and Anna and Abe and Sammy. But most of all, every mile brings him closer to Ben. The thought’s an ever present tingle through his veins. Benny will be a man by now, all done with Yale and shaping a new generation of minds like he’d always planned. He’s wanted to be a teacher for as long as Caleb can remember, and he knows that Ben would never want to teach anywhere but at home.

He’s not there.

Abe is though, and bloody grateful to see him. They spend hours talking over the years that have passed, it’s only at the dinner his wife Mary insisted on inviting him to that he dares to ask about Ben.

“Ben’s… not here,” Abe manages finally.

“Well I can see that much for myself. Where the hell is he?”

Abe and Mary share a glance as if about to impart some awful truth. and under different circumstances, Caleb would be sure Ben was dead. Only he knows that’s not the case. He, has the evidence of Ben’s still-beating inked on his skin and humming softly in the back of his mind.

“Connecticut, the last we heard.” Mary chooses her words carefully.

“Connecticut?”

“With the Continental Dragoons.”

A pause.“He enlisted in the rebellion?”

“Him and his soulmate. Some of the first to sign up, about two months ago. He’s leading the second company, if you can believe any gossip coming back from the war.”

Caleb sits back in his chair, mind racing. Mary’s words wash over him, but Caleb can barely hear them over the sound of the world juddering to a standstill.

“His soulmate?” Caleb’s voice is, miraculously, steady.

“Some lord’s son he met a Yale. No doubt he was the one to fill Benjamin’s head full of fantasies about dying for freedom.”

“I wouldn't go around talking about it,” Abe advises. “Those redcoats are giving Setauket enough trouble as it is. You know the bastards have turned Reverend Tallmadge’s church into a garrison?”

“Abraham!”

“He should know what he’s coming back to,” Abe tells his wife, before turning to face Caleb again. “All I’m saying is that they wouldn't have dare tried that if Ben was still around.”

Caleb bids them goodnight not long after that. His muttered goodbye feels all too final, and he spares a single second wondering if he’ll ever see them again before riding into the night.

It’s all he ever feared, Ben going off and forgetting about them entirely. And now it seems he’s cast Caleb away entirely.

Yet somehow, it doesn’t matter.

For wither thou goest, I will go. You could have bloody waited two months.

“Name?”

“Caleb Brewster. I’m here to enlist.”
  
Nate doesn't wait for permission before barreling into Ben’s tent. He paces restlessly, hands twitching and plat coming loose at the back as if he’s forgotten about it all together. That on it’s own doesn't mean anything, though. Nate’s always been terrible at styling his own hair.

“What is it?” Ben asks eventually, out of fear that he’ll wear a hole into the bottom of his tent than anything else.

“You heard about the soulmates in Boston?”

Ben nods with a grimace. He’d been the third captured in as many months. They’re rare enough as it is, and at this rate, there won’t be any more soulmates in the army by the time Christmas comes around. It’s yet another reason that Ben is still here and throwing himself into the fight with every ounce of his being.

“We’ve got to lie,” Nate says distractedly. The cogs and gears of his mind look to be whirling at a mile a minute. “Half the army thinks we’re bonded anyway, and if the enemy thinks the same then that’s even better. They won’t actually be able to use me to hurt you if I’m captured, of course, but if they waste time trying to I won’t be able to give anything important away.”

“Slow down.” Ben sets down his quill and frowns up at Nate. “You have no more chance of getting captured than anyone here. Why are you suddenly-“

“I’m going to New York.”

Time crashes to a halt. Ben takes in a deep breath, and tries to convince himself that he simply misheard. “What?”

“At the end of the month. I’ll slip through the lines and enter the city, take up law studies again.”

“New York’s crawling with Redcoats! It’s their base of operations now, why in the world would you want to…”

Ben trails off. He’s always been able to read Nate that little bit too well. It’s one of the reasons that so many assume they’re bonded, but right now he only feels a deep-seated sense of dread. “You’re spying, aren't you?”

“Washington needs information. Someone has to.”

“Why does that someone have to be you? You know what happens to captured spies! What they do to them!”

Nate sighs. “There’s every chance they’ll do that to me anyway. People are dying, Ben, every damn day. And people like us most of all. The fucking British are targeting soulmates and they’re going to start going after civilians soon. Anyone bonded to a rebel. I can’t allow that.”

Ben swallows and thinks of Caleb, and how it would be all his fault if he were suddenly dragged into this fight. Of Ginny Hale, somewhere out in the world and helpless to the horror that could crash down around her at any moment. And damn Nate to hell, but he understands.

“It’s better this way, honestly,” Nate says. “If they get me, they get me doing something important, and no-one else will get hurt as a result.”

There’s nothing he can say to that. Instead Ben stands, and slowly wraps his arms around him. They stand there, clutching each other as the camp rages on outside.

“Be safe,” he whispers eventually.

Nate isn’t.

The leather strap digs into his shoulder, and Caleb rolls it in discomfort. He’s not stupid, despite what ten-or-so years of teachers tried to tell him, and he’d never expected to find Ben the moment he enlisted in the continental forces. He may have experience with a weapon, but Caleb’s still just a nobody. Ben’s a captain or some such bollocks now, off wearing fancy buttons and rubbing shoulders with big-city generals. The war’s a big place, and there’s no reason why they’d immediately cross paths.

But still. He’d hoped, after four months of yes-sirs and marching and hauling this bloody gun around, that he’d be a little closer.

Caleb’s mind often wanders while they’re marching like this. There’s little else to do while the countryside crawls past at an agonisingly slow pace. He certainly can’t talk to his fellow soldiers, and even if that wouldn't earn him a dressing down, Caleb isn't sure what he’d say to them. These men around him, they all joined up for their ideals. They’re willing to die for the mere hope of a country that doesn't even exist yet. He’s here for one man. Fools, the lot of them as far as Caleb’s concerned, but they’re also braver men than he’ll ever be. They’re brave enough to fight. He’s too cowardly to let Ben go.

His attention is on a pair of sharp grey eyes, somewhere out there in the world, and not on the forest around them. So Caleb doesn't notice the movement behind the tree line. Not until the first musket goes off, and all torrid hell breaks loose.

Nate frowns, and flicks his watch open once again. The man’s late. He glances around at the deserted street and does his best to ignore the twist in his gut, and the sense that anyone could be watching him from the dark. He has a job to do, one that will turn the war in their favour, and he’s not going to back out because the night makes him jumpy. His contact probably just got held up.

He’s been attempting to reach the Sons of Liberty for close to a month now, and tonight could be his big breakthrough. They have the resources to help set up a proper network throughout York City, something that Washington desperately needs. If he can get this to work… well, they’ll be one step closer to true freedom, and Ben will be that little bit safer.

A figure emerges from the darkness, and Nate forces himself to stand his ground.

“Nathan Hale?”

“That’s me.”

“Excellent.” The man’s voice is soft, and it’s only a second after he smiles that Nate realises something is horribly wrong. He’s powerless to stop the blow that comes from behind, and then there's only darkness.

vi

For all his months of searching, and Caleb doesn't even recognise Ben when the two come face to face. In his defence, surviving a British attack not hours before has thrown his head out of the loop, and the only thing he wants to see is a bed. So it’s only his luck, really, when he’s sent to report the ambush to the nearest continental outpost. He isn't given time to clean up or even rest, so he’s covered in mud and dirt blood that may or may not belong to him when he enters the command tent.

It’s a small outpost being run by some Major or other, and all Caleb sees through the veneer of fatigue is a blur of blue and gold topped off with a feathered hat. So it's something of a surprise when the Major grips him by the shoulders so tightly it probably bruises.

“Caleb?”

His head jerks up, and Caleb finds himself staring  into the eyes he’s been picturing for months. God, he hadn't recognised Ben, but caked in grime and in the middle of a war he has no reason to be fighting, Ben knows him in an instant. And despite everything, and all the death he’s witnessed today, he breaks into a smile.

“Hey there, Bennyboy.”

Ben only stares at him, stunned. “What are you doing here?”

I’m here for you, Ben. I love you and I couldn’t let you go. I couldn’t live if you died in this stupid fight for your stupid ideals and I was left behind. This tattoo is a promise and I’ll follow you into hell itself if that’s what it takes to keep you safe.

“I’m reporting for duty.”
 
Things Ben doesn’t say: “Don’t you know people die in this war?

Things Ben doesn’t say: “Thank you, you wonderful, wonderful fool,”

What Ben does say, with a hand awkwardly clasping Caleb’s shoulder in a gesture that he hopes doesn’t betray all that they are to each other: “Your country is very grateful.”
  
“We know who he is. Your soulmate.”

“Good for you,” Nate says, proud of the smile he manages. It’s a shadow of his usual grin, but something they’re yet to take away from him

He’s not sure how long he’s been down here exactly. Time travels strangely in this small room as if cut away from the rest of the world, and drifting in and out of consciousness doesn’t help. What he does know is that he hasn’t given these British bastards a damn thing.

Simcoe (as he’s learnt this bastard in particular is called) doesn’t look impressed. He leans down until he’s eye to eye with Nate, and runs his hands over the tattoo on his wrist. It’s a cruel mirror of the way Ben had held him and Nate tries his hardest not to flinch. “Tell me something, Hale. Did this pretty thing appear before or after you took Benjamin Tallmadge into your bed?”

Nate laughs. He can’t help himself, never mind how much his bruised ribs burn with the effort. Maybe it’s the stupid assumption that sex has anything to do with what a soulmate is. Maybe it’s the idea that Ben could have ever wanted him, Ben whose heart has belonged to another for years.

“Oh, you’re laughing.. That’s nice. I only hope you’re still laughing when I drag Tallmadge in here to visit. Maybe, if I’m very nice, I’ll let you kiss him goodbye before I split his skull.”

“Or maybe he’ll split yours.”

Nate must be the only prisoner in this war to take comfort in the fact that there’s no one coming to save him.
  
Night has long since fallen over the camp, and only the sentries huddle around their lonely fires in wait of the dawn. There’s no one to hear Ben and Caleb’s conversation in the relative sanctuary of the former’s tent. Caleb doesn’t have a tent yet, and were he to apply for one the quartermaster would no doubt put him in with half a dozen men of similar rank. As it turns out, the privacy is crucial for the conversation that Ben wants to have.

“You want me to do what?” he asks, not quite believing Ben’s words.

“Keep it hidden at all costs. No one can know you’re a soulmate, and especially not that you’re mine.”

Caleb carefully ignores the treacherous part of his heart that leaps at the words

you’re mine

in favour of the far more important issues at play. Namely, “Why? And how do you picture us pulling this off, exactly?”

“I’ve got it all worked out. Half the army, command included, thinks that Nathan Hale is my soulmate. It’s better all round if we keep it that way.”

He carefully ignores the jealousy that flares up without warning as well. Nathan Hale is witty and well-born  and everything Ben deserves in a soulmate. Everything that Caleb isn’t.

“You could have just said that I’m an embarrassment,” Caleb says, hoping it sounds like a joke.

“You’re not an embarrassment. I’m just trying to save your sorry life!” Ben immediately winces, clearly regretting shouting. He sighs and scrubs a hand across his face, and Caleb notices suddenly how tired he looks. Whatever this war is doing to Ben, he’s not the boy he grew up with. But when he speaks again, it’s that soft voice that Caleb knows all too well. “ I just don’t know what I’d do if those redcoats came for you.”

And the worst part? Caleb gets it. The idea of hiding what Ben is to him and letting some stranger from Yale claim Ben as his other half grinds against his teeth, but the idea of Ben being hurt because of him is even worse.

“Okay.”
  
John isn’t sure what he’s expecting when he’s assigned to Washington himself. He’s so preoccupied with wandering what the General is like and how he could ever be good enough to do this job,  that he doesn’t even stop to think about his fellow aides. It’s probably for the best. Because he could never have imaged the scene that greets him when he opens the door to their building.

“How can you be so foolish? The whole state’s a fucking death-trap, and sending the regiment will only yield two hundred more corpses!”

John blinks, framed in the doorway. He’s standing on a desk and shouting, hands flying wildly and hair spilling loose from its queue. The target of his rage seems to be a fellow aide, and no one in the room seems to have noticed John’s arrival.

“Hamilton, if you’d only consider-”

“I have considered your proposal, Lee, so you can believe me when I say it’s terrible.”

“Um, hello?” John ventures from the doorway. “Not interrupting, am I?”

Every pair of eyes in the room turns to him, and the next five minutes is a whirlwind of introductions that John’s sure he’ll get wrong later. All except the man, now down from the table, who offers his hand with a sheepish smile.

“Hamilton. Alexander Hamilton. I’m sorry for that display, it was unprofessional, and-”

“John Laurens.” The smile, as it turns out is infectious. “It’s really quite alright.”
  
There’s no acting required when they tell him of Nate’s capture. Ben’s polishing his boots when two of his privates bring the news. They don’t speak immediately, only glance at one other with unease, and Ben realises something’s terribly wrong.

“What is it?”

“Dispatch from York City, Sir. It’s… It’s Corporal Hale.”

Ben takes the letter with trembling fingers. He knows what it says before he so much as opens it, but the words refuse to arrange themselves into any kind of order in his mind. He reads it twice, three times, and can only shake his head softly. No, no, this can’t be right, Nate’s not stupid and he won’t take stupid risks and he never learnt to tie his hair back properly, they’ll never…

“Captain?” The second man asks.

Ben falls to his knees. It’s his heart that feels like its about to be torn from his chest rather than the tattoo that sits just about it, but right now that doesn’t matter in the slightest. It might as well be the tattoo, because this? Ben’s a major in the continental army, not a child, but this hurts more than the day he buried his mother.  He doesn't weep. He doesn't cry out. Ben simply stares at the empty air in front of him and tries to remember what the last thing was that Nate said to him .
  
Things Nathan Hale regrets:

He never said goodbye to Ginny
He never appreciated the thousand colours of autumn in Connecticut
He never had a second chance to learn the taste of Benjamin Tallmadge’s lips
 
Things Nathan Hale doesn’t regret

He has but one life to lose for this country
  
“Concentrate, Virginia!”

The girl scowls, and and picks up another potato from the stack she’s supposed to be peeling. Not that she’s really a girl anymore. Anywhere else in the world she’d be considered an adult at the age of twenty one, but here the sisters have never seen her as such. To the ones who have been in this convent for decades now, she’s nothing but a stupid child who can’t sing or sew and who’s very face is a sign of her sin.

She doesn’t mind working in the kitchens, though. They’re warmer than the rest of the convent now Autumn’s setting in, and she can usually sneak and extra biscuit or two when no-one’s looking. Today, though, she just can’t concentrate.

It’s been like this for close to a week, an ever-present prickling of unease, as if every inch of her skin is that bit too close to an open fire. She’s terrified, although of what she has no idea. Sleeping is simply out of the question, and it’s all she can do to hold herself together.

She reaches for another potato, wondering if she’s even halfway through, and all at once the prickling becomes and inferno. She sinks to the stone floor, gasping for air that refuses to enter her lungs, and clutching the side of her face.

Ginny Hale screams.

She screams.

By the time someone carries her to bed, the pain has faded to a dull roar, and the screams to quiet sobs. No one has to wonder the cause of it. A hundred miles away another traitor has met the crown’s justice, and the side of Ginny's face is covered in a curling ink of perfect silver.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

vii.
“You wanted to see me, Sir?”
Ben has seen the General countless times around camp. There’s no missing him, all trailing cape and stern expression, and Ben half suspects he goes out of his way to be noticed by the men. He must be aware of the effect he has around the camp, and how morale always seems to lift in his presence. Even from afar, the effect is tangible.

Up close, it’s nothing short of terrifying.

Washington is sitting at his desk when Ben enters, but even so he seems to take up all the space in the room through sheer force of presence. He glances up from his work, and Ben swallows.

“Yes, Tallmadge. Close the door behind you, would you?”

Ben does as he’s bid and stands to parade rest, if only to force his nervous hands to still through pure muscle memory and military discipline. He has no idea why he’s suddenly been summoned by the General. Half a hundred possibilities run through his head, none of them good.

“Sit down, would you?” The General gestures to a chair. “This isn’t an interrogation.”

Ben obliges. “Then what is it, Sir? If you don’t mind me asking.”

“To begin, I wished to to convey how terribly sorry I was to hear about Corporal Hale.”

“I…” Ben flounders for a moment, before settling on “That’s very kind.”

“He was a brave man, and his country will forever be grateful for his sacrifice.”

Ben nods, knowing that he should take pride in the words. Nate certainly would, but to Ben they’re strangely hollow. America, if it remembers him at all, will remember the patriot who paid the ultimate price for freedom. No one will ever know the boy freckled lightly in the sun and who cried out for his sister on the worst nights. Nate may not have been his soulmate, but it’s been almost a month since he died, and it's still painful to breathe whenever Ben thinks of him.

“Tallmadge, you’re aware of my policy when it comes to soulmates, I presume? That I don’t hire them for fear of creating weak points for the British to exploit.”

“I am, Sir.”

“Well, then I’m sure you’d agree that it hardly seems logical to extend that policy to one who no longer has a soulmate.”

Ben blinks. “I’m sorry?”

“Corporal Hale died trying to give us any semblance of an effective intelligence network. Without one, we’re as good as blind to the enemy's’ movements, and good men will continue to die. What I’m asking you, major, is whether you’d consider finishing what he started. I’m in dire need of a head of intelligence, and I have a feeling you’re the right man.”

For a moment, Ben can’t speak. He should confess right now, show Washington his tattoo and explain what he’s done, and pray he isn’t sent home in disgrace as a result. It would be the right thing to do, the honest thing.

And it wouldn’t help anyone in the slightest.

He thinks of Caleb, and the king that would see the world’s kindest soul locked away for daring to feel.

He thinks of Nate, and the way his eyes had flared in the half-light of Ben’s tent.

I can’t allow that

, he’d said two months and a lifetime ago.

As it turns out, neither can Ben.

By the end of the day, the continental army has a new head of intelligence, a new Major at that, and Ben has to remind himself to breathe, least the weight of all he’s keeping secret crush him.
  
“I don’t like it.” Simcoe turns the stone over in his fingers. “Three weeks, and not so much as a response from his soulmate.”

“Perhaps your methods are slipping, Colonel.”

John Andre looks unimpressed, although there’s nothing new there. He’s shown Simcoe nothing but disdain since the day they met. There’s  no great mystery as to why. Andre is one of those deluded fools who has to believe in the righteous of the war they’re fighting. It’s laughable, really. The spymaster has more blood on his hands than anyone, more than Simcoe, even, and he still believes that he’s doing the right thing. There is no right thing in war. Simcoe expects that Andre will learn that one day. He’s already halfway there. He may not approve of what Simcoe does to soulmates, he may keep them at arm's length and pretend that they don’t exist, but he understands that they are necessary. That’s why he requested this meeting, after all.

“My methods are perfectly effective.”

“Forgive me if I don’t share your confidence. The Hale affair yielded nothing.”

Simcoe respects the pragmatist in Andre, he really does. That doesn’t stop him wondering just how it would feel to put a knife through that self-righteous face.

“The Hale case was different. He gave us nothing, knowing how much I was hurting his soulmate, and Tallmadge didn’t even attempt a rescue. All that agony, and my scouts assure us his dragoons didn’t so much as stir. It’s almost as if he didn’t…”

“As if he didn’t...?” Andre prompts, but Simcoe barely hears him. His work is unfailingly successful against soulmates, and

only

soulmates. Hale and Tallmadge had acted unlike any pair he’s ever encountered, and his work failed.

“Ohh,” he breathes, because one war is much like another and there’s little he hasn’t already seen, but this? This is entirely new. He has no idea what game Washington is playing here, but it has his attention. Simcoe stands up straight and slips the stone back into his pocket. He’s not going to find the answers he needs in this room, or in this city for that matter.

It shouldn’t be too hard to track down Tallmadge’s family.
  
John’s eyes water from the smoke, blown from the fire by a lazy summer breeze, but he can’t bring himself to move just yet. He’s nowhere else to go but the silence of his own tent. It’s a privilege of his newly earned station, the privacy of not having to share his small living space with anyone else, but John can’t help but hate it. There’s something reassuring in the presence of another person, even if it's simply listening to their steady breathing on the nights he can’t sleep. The relative quiet is more jaring by far. Worse still, it reminds John of Geneva and all the shame he had once clutched so close to his heart..

From across the fire, his fellow aides laugh loudly, and John forces himself to smile along with whatever joke he’s missed. It’s late, and most of the men have retired for the night. Only a small group remains out by the fire, and he wonders what it says about him that it’s his closest friends who are out here ignoring the need for sleep. Admittedly, Tallmage is a rare although welcome addition to the mix. He keeps himself largely to himself, which John supposes says as much about his job as it does the man himself. But there’s no missing the honest kindness and simple desire to see their cause succeed whenever they do spend time together.  Alexander and Lafayette however, are more often than not the last to retire whether it be bent over their work of laughing at each other’s terrible jokes. These brothers of his (and he’s only known them a handful of months but no other word will suffice) seem more real than anything in John’s life has ever been. They certainly feel more real than the child he has never met on the other side of an ocean.

He pushes the thought away. Thinking of Francis only leads to thinking about all the mistakes he’s ever made, and how John is simply too bad a man to regret any of them. This is where John’s decisions of lead him. They may all die tomorrow, and he doesn’t think he’s ever been happier. That much has to be worth any level of heartbreak.

“Laurens!”

Alexander is looking at him with concerned eyes, and he realises too late that he hasn’t been listening to a word of their conversation. There must have been a question directed at him, or some jest he was expected to laugh at and missed entirely.

“Laurens,” he says again. “Are you quite alright?”

“I’m perfectly well,” John promises. “A little tired.”

“And little wonder,” Lafayette says. “It is far past time for me to bid you all goodnight, I am afraid. In fact, I do believe it is far past time for all of us to retire.”

John doesn’t miss the significant look that Alexander shoots in his direction as he puts the fire out. It’s one that promises he doesn’t believe his protestations for a moment, and that they will be having a conversation about it soon. He’s too clever by half, really. It would be madening if he were anyone else in the world.

Soon

turns out to be the moment that their small group parts ways. He’s amused, although not surprised that Alexander hovers outside his tent instead of continuing on to his own, and John only rolls his eyes for effect as he pulls up the fabric to let Alexander inside.

“Are you going to tell me what was really on your mind just now?” Alexander asks, all focus and fire.

“It is as I said. I’m simply tired.”

“Laurens…”

“Many things,” John admits, leaning back against his small desk. “How the war is faring. The life I left behind to see it succeed.” He pauses, and makes sure to lock eyes with the man before saying “How distracting you always look in the firelight.”

It’s worth it to watch Alexander’s expression shift. His mouth falls open slightly, the way it always does when John manages to surprise him like this, and he’s doing his best to look indignant. Unsuccessfully, however, considering the way his eyes darken and he walks slowly towards John.

“You can’t just go saying things like that.”

“Why not? I’ve grown rather fond of the results.”

“Honestly, my dear Laurens.” Alexander reaches up a hand to gently tug at the ribbon securing John’s hair.  “You’re going to be the absolute death of me, you know?”

John could come up with a sharp response if he so desired, but it’s far easier just to lean in and kiss him. Alexander smells of woodsmoke, although it could easily be John’s own hair which he’s succeeded in pulling free from it’s queue. There’s a comfort to his lips, a familiarity. For all John’s heart still pounds every time they breathe the same air, he’s fast beginning to feel like home.

John has never been happier than the two  months spent at war. The war itself is only part of the reason. This thing between him and Alexander, something that exists in the rare pockets of quiet and is far too fragile to even give a name, it’s everything John told himself he didn’t want. And maybe he has to be damned in order to keep it. Maybe the price of Alexander’s lips and fingers and raging star of a mind is to live a life of never being who the world wants him to be. It’s a price that John is more than willing to pay.
  
The bag isn’t a big one, but it doesn’t have to be. There’s not much to carry, after all. A change of clothes, a small grey stone, a handful of coins, and a knife taken from the kitchen when no one was watching. She wonders if anyone will notice it’s missing, and if they’ll think to link it to the girl who vanished on the same night, but it doesn’t really matter.

Ginny’s never coming back.

It’s almost laughably easy to get away from the nunnery that’s served half as a home, half as a prison for most of her life. She knows these walls and the people who live within them as sure as she knows her own thoughts, so it’s no trouble at all to slip through a back door while the building sleeps. She could have done it years ago, yet the thought never once crossed her mind. There was nothing out there for her, not with the stain on her face that would ensure a life of loneliness and her brother gone away across the sea. He’s gone far further than that now.

It’s there, every time Ginny catches sight of her own reflection, a  shock of silver across one side of her face. She can’t look in a mirror without being reminded what was taken away from her, and it’s three days before she snaps.

There’s something waiting outside the nunnery walls for her now. Her brother is dead, and someone is going to answer for it.
  
iix

It doesn’t take an expert to see that he’s is beginning to crack, and if there’s one thing in the world that Caleb considers himself an expert on, it’s Benjamin Tallmadge. Somewhere during the long years of childhood, he’s learnt to read every smile and every frown, every little frustrated eye and twitching finger. There’s a whole language in the movements of a boy who wears his heart on his sleeve (as well as over his collarbone), if only anyone bothered to see it.

Ben isn’t that boy anymore. The years apart and this whole bloody war have changed him in ways that Caleb is still trying to work out. The years have probably changed him as well. It doesn’t matter, though. Caleb may not know every intricacy of Major Benjamin Tallmadge, but he still knows him a damned sight better than anyone else in this camp does.

And what Caleb doesn’t know anymore, he

knows

. Ben will keep his expression painfully smooth as a scout issues his report, and with enough concentration Caleb can pick up the prickles of frustration and fear that he keeps hidden from the world. It’s easier by far than when he was half an ocean away, and he has to remind himself sometimes that he can’t start living in Ben’s head. They’ve never discussed this connection between them. They’ve barely discussed the marks that decorate their skin, and Caleb’s grateful for that. He’s not sure how he could ever talk about the brand of longing that Ben carries with him without revealing his hopelessness where Ben is concerned.

All this to say that Caleb knows Ben, and he recognizes the signs that he’s starting to break under the strain of the failing war effort. If he’s honest with himself, Ben’s been breaking from the moment they told him what happened to Nathan Hale. It’s something Caleb does his best not to think about. He’s not proud enough to deny the ugly twist of jealousy that flares every time someone mentions his name, and he knows that it’s not fair. Hale was a hero. Far more than that, he was Ben’s friend.

His memory is half the reason that Ben is working himself into the ground, desperately trying to construct some semblance of an intelligence network out of nothing, and it’s going to kill him if he doesn’t lay off soon.

(Caleb tries very hard not to hate Hale for that as well.)
  
Anna is checking the inventory of her cellar on the day that Colonel Simcoe rides into town. For all their talk of discipline and civility, the British soldiers sure do seem to get through a lot of wine at any given opportunity. She supposes that she shouldn’t complain, that it’s all good business (or at least it would be if the bastards paid anything close to full price) but it’s hard to feel even a scrap of gratitude that Setauket is crawling with soldiers. The King may be on the other side of an ocean, but she feels his presence with every redocat that enters her husbands tarvan. It’s all that she and Selah can do to keep their heads down on the worst of days.

She’s in the cellar, so she doesn’t hear the arrival of a fresh set of troops on dispatch from York City. She doesn’t see them enter the tavern, nor hear the murmured conversation that drains all the blood from her husband’s face. Anna has no idea that anything is ammise until she emerges to find Selah sitting with Abe an unfamiliar soldier in strained silence.

It’s wrong, this much is immediately obvious. Abe hasn’t set foot in here since… well, since they both married other people and tried their best to pretend that they were okay with that. He’s certainly never spent any time in Selah’s company of his own volition. His eyes meet hers the second she walks in, and in all the years of knowing him, Anna doesn’t think she’s ever seen him look afraid.

“What’s going on?”

The soldier stands and turns to look at her. There’s something altogether off about his gaze, although what it is Anna can’t quite put her finger on. All she knows is that she doesn’t like this, whatever it is, one bit.

“Miss Strong? So happy you could join us.” He pulls out a chair in obvious invitation. “How about you and I have a nice little chat about a mutual friend of ours. Tell me, just how well do you know Benjamin Tallmadge?”
  
She’s all but invisible, and its a novel experience. Ginny has learnt to live with the stares and the naked if often repulsed curiosity of a hundred strangers. It’s been part of her life since she was seven years old and, for all the years she’s spent despising the marks of her own skin, part of her as well.

It’s not even the case that people don’t look at her because the silver ink is less conspicuous than the black had been. If anything, it’s worse. The swirls across her face have something of an otherworldly tinge, as if trying to communicate their wrongness. Perhaps they could be mistaken for burns or scars at a casual glance, but that’s exactly what they are. A part of Ginny has been ripped away and it-

He

.

Nate. Oh crucified Christ, Nate-

(Get it

together

, Hale.)

He’s never coming back. All the childish dreams that she clung to for years of her brother marching through the convent doors to rescue her will never come true. He’s gone. It’s fitting, really, that she should carry the mark of what was done to him for the rest of her days. The mark, that hateful, hateful silver is there every time Ginny catches a glimpse of her own reflection. A promise.

I won’t forget. And neither will you.

It’s not the colour of the ink on her skin that makes Ginny invisible, then. It’s the fact that the people of York City don’t want to see her. They rush by the girl sitting in the mouth of an alleyway without so much as a glance. Here, in a dusty dress and a shawl pulled over her face, Ginny is just another poor soul who has fallen through the cracks of their oh-so-precious civilisation. She’s not part of the world that these people choose to live in, so to all intents and purposes, she does not exist.

Under different circumstances, it would make her blood boil. Now, she is only grateful for the anonymity that an uncaring city is all too anxious to provide. It’s better by far that these monsters never see her coming.

The continental army and all their fancy ideals can carry on waging their war. Nate died for the hope of a future that’s nowhere to be found, but Ginny can’t bring herself to care about any of that. All the King’s men. All the General’s men. They’re one and the same as far as she’s concerned. One side handed her brother a noose, and the other kicked the ground out from under him. It hardly matters which one was which when the end result is a mass of silver ink decorating her face.

“You know that’s not true,”

Nate would say, if he were sitting in the dust next to her.

“Shut up,” Ginny would reply. “You don’t get a say in what happens next.”

Nate doesn’t get a say because he’s not here, and that’s something that demands an answer.

First, Ginny will find every bastard that was responsible for his capture, every single one of them who knew who he was and held him prisoner and lead him out onto the scaffold to die. And then she’ll find the people who sent him there.

Across the street, a young man in a shiny red coat and hat walks into an inn, and she can’t help but smile. The knife, taken from the nunnery kitchens, is a comforting weight in her palm.

This redcoat. Whoever he works for. Whoever Nate worked for. And whichever George happens to cross her path first.
  
“We should tell him.”

“Hmm?” John cranes his head to look at Alexander. It’s  not an easy movement, considering it’s currently resting on Alexander’s chest. A dull grey light shines through the tent canvas, and John knows that they’ll have to move soon. Even this, sharing each other's space in the hour before dawn holds risk enough. It’s unlikely that they’ll be disturbed, but it could happen. An unexpected scout report, an urgent task the General suddenly requires, anything could burn this fragile world they’ve built for themselves down to the ground.

He can’t quite bring himself to move just yet, though. It’s the stolen moments like these that John hoards when Alexander is gone.

“Lafayette. We should tell him.”

John lets a moment pass, but no, that’s still what Alexander has just said. “Are you entirely out of your mind?”

“He’s our friend, John. We have his trust and yet we’re keeping secrets from him”

“They’re secrets for a reason.” John sighs, propping himself up on an elbow to look at Alexander more clearly. “I don’t enjoy keeping him in the dark, he’s my friend as much as yours, but that’s not something we can help.”

“It just doesn’t seem fair.”

“It would be just as unfair to tell him. You know his loyalty to the General, and you know how much he cares for us. We’d be asking him to betray one of those things, either through a keeping his silence or breaking it.”

Alexander is silent, hands curling idly through John’s hair, and he can all but see the cogs of that magnificent mind turning behind the hazel eyes. Alexander is far from a fool, but he’s so very full of fire and it’s terrifying sometimes, to think that he might simply chose to burn it all down one of these days. John’s not worried about getting caught in the flames; It’s the thought of Alexander throwing away all he could one day become in a pointless blur of passion. What they have is worth all John has to give, but it’s nothing could be worth  that.
  
“I’m telling you, we haven’t seen him in a year!”

Anna bites the inside of her cheek and has to physically prevent herself from laying a warning hand on Abe’s arm. He’s getting increasingly agitated with Simcoe’s questions, and getting himself locked away for shouting at a Royal officer won’t help anything. It sure as hell won’t help Ben. Why this officer is so interested in him, she has no idea, but the answer probably isn’t good.

Christ, Tallmadge. What have you gotten yourself into this time?

“You’re sure he hasn’t made any attempts to contact anyone in the town?”

“We’re sure.” Anna says. “He wouldn't risk putting his father in danger, his brother’s dead and we’re his closest friends. There’s no one else he’d talk to.”

Simcoe’s pen scratches as he writes, and the sound grates against the back of her teeth. “No one else he’d be close enough with to form a soul bond, then?”

They all blink, confused.

“Of course not!” Selah says.

Abe only frowns. “He met his soulmate at Yale. Some lords son, something Hale. He’s who you should be talking to.”

If it weren’t such common knowledge, Anna would be horrified that Abe was spilling the secrets of Ben’s life to someone who clearly means him harm. As it is, there’s not a man in town who hasn’t spent nights gossiping about Ben’s soulmate. Simcoe, however, only smiles.

“Nathan Hale, yes. Son of Enoch Hale, if I remember correctly. He was apprehended, tried and hanged as a continental spy a month ago. I’m not interested in Nathan Hale, I’m interested in Benjamin Tallmadge, and whoever else he was close to in this town.”

Anna stares at the table, a sense of foreboding sitting tight in her chest. Because Simcoe’s talking as if this Hale wasn’t Ben’s soulmate at all. And they’re telling the truth that Ben has no more friends in Setauket. But another friend, his best friend, isn’t in Setauket any more.

“Oh Caleb,” she’d asked years ago with a heavy heart as she’d watched his slowly shatter. “ How long?”

“Too long. Maybe forever.”

Oh Ben, you utter bastard.

“Mrs Strong? Anything to share?”

Anna glances up sharply to meet Simcoe’s empty eyes. “No, Sir. Nothing to share.”

She’s sure the evidence of her lie, and of the lie two of her best friends have been keeping must be writ clean across her face, and she does her best to school it into a neutral expression.

Mercifully, Simcoe doesn’t push. He asks a handful more questions about any family Ben may have in other areas of the state, and when he leaves she leans back in her chair with a sigh.

“What do you suppose that was all about?” Selah asks, eyes still on the door.

“Nothing good.”

Outside the Strong tavern, Simcoe takes a deep drag of sea air before gesturing to an aide. “Please send a rider to inform Major Andre that I’ll be staying here for the foreseeable future.” He pauses, deliberating. “And another one to Robert Rodgers. I have a hunt for him.”
 
ix.

Ben pushes back the flaps of the tent, and Caleb barely glances up from the shirt that he’s mending. “Hey there, Tallboy. Ain’t you supposed to be meeting your scouts?”

He doesn’t answer and Caleb looks at him again, this time noticing the expression on Ben’s face, somewhere between shock and a slowly simmering fury. There’s something crumpled in his shaking fist.

“Benny?”

“Fifteen.”

“Benny!”

Ben blinks, as if only now seeing Caleb. He looks at him for a moment, anger falling away to something altogether more vulnerable, and Caleb realises with a pang just how young Ben really is. He walks around this camp in his fancy hat carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders and the fate of the war in his papers, and it’s easy to forget that he’s only twenty two. He should be out being irresponsible somewhere (although Lord knows that Caleb’s done enough of that for the both of them), not here and definitely not looking like this. Ben moves to sit beside him, and it’s all Caleb can do not to take his hand.

“What happened?”

“There…” He swallows. “An ambush at Fairfield. Both the men I sent to scout are dead.”

“Shite.” Caleb says, because it’s all he can think to say. There’s no use in telling Ben he’s sorry, and no truth in telling him it will be okay. Because it really won’t be, not if something doesn’t change. That’s the fourth pair of scouts that Ben’s lost in as many weeks. There’s no way it isn’t a sign of something about to escalate.

Ben’s still not looking at him. “Mullins had a family. Two daughters. And Thorpe was fifteen! Fifteen years old, and I sent him to his death.”

“Hey, you didn’t do this.” Caleb’s hand is running up and down Ben’s arm of its own accord.

“Except I did. They’d still be alive if I hadn’t sent them up there.”

“It’s the redcoat bastards who shot ‘em. They’re the ones who need to answer for this.”

“You’re right.” Ben stands abruptly, jaw clenched. “And I’m going to make them answer.”

He turns and has made it halfway back out the tend before Caleb stands up and catches his arm. “Woah, what do you mean?”

“My dragoons. We can be ready to ride at first light. We’ll go north, track whatever company is cutting off our information flow, and-”

“Without scout reports? You’d be blind at best, and most likely riding straight into a trap.”

“You think I don’t know that?”

“They why in your right mind-?”

“Because what else can I do?”

Ben’s scared, Caleb realises with a jolt. He’s angry, that much is apparent, but underneath that there’s a fear rolling off of him in waves. Caleb isn’t sure if he can hear it in the half-tremor of Ben’s voice or feel it in the back of his mind; The bond and the man who holds it tend to blur into one at this proximity. But it’s definitely there, undeniable. What he can’t work out is why. Ben’s a soldier, and a bloody good one at that. There’s no way he can be afraid of dying in battle, especially not when he’s planning to lead such an idiotic mission that will most likely get him killed.

“What?”

“Seriously, Caleb, I’m asking. My scouts are being directly targeted, and what the hell else am I supposed to do about it? Carry on sending men to their deaths? How am I supposed to provide the information to keep an army safe if I can’t even do the same for my own men?”

Oh.

It’s not himself that Ben’s afraid for. “This is war,” Caleb tries. “People die. It’s not your fault.”

“And what if next time it’s you?”

Ben looks at him, finally, and there’s nothing but an urgent plea in those grey eyes. He grips Caleb’s shoulder, and Caleb tries his hardest to remember how to breathe. “Me? I’m always okay.”

“But what if you’re not? I need you to be safe, and every day that I fail at constructing an intelligence system, I’m putting you at risk.”

“Benny, be sensible. I’m in no more danger than anyone in this camp, and I’m not a good enough reason to go risking our neck on some damned suicide mission. I ain’t worth all that.”

“Not worth it?” Ben laughs, a hollow sound, and takes a step back towards Caleb. The anger is back with full force. “How dare you, Caleb? How fucking dare you?”

“Ben?” Because Ben never swears for the shere point of it, and he’s well use to Caleb’s particular brand of self-deprecation by now. Why he’s suddenly furious, he has no idea.

“Do you still not understand how dangerous this mark is?” Ben fumbles with his cravat for a moment before tugging it free in a smooth motion, and pulling the collar of his shit to bare his tatoo. Caleb can only stare.

“I lied to the General for you, Caleb. I lied to everyone here, and all my friends, and my father. I turned a good man’s memory into a lie, all for you. I’d be ruined if anyone found out.  And the worst thing?” Ben’s face is in inch for his own, eyes narrowed in rage. “The worst thing is I’d do it again in a heartbeat if that’s what it cost to keep you safe. You have no right to decide that you’re not important.”

“I could say the same for you!” It feels like Caleb should apologize, rest a placating hand on Ben’s shoulder and say whatever he needs to say for the anger to drain from his best friend’s eyes. That’s always been his instinct when Ben gets that bit too close for his brain to function, to diffuse the situation before he says something stupid. But Caleb can’t do it, not when Ben is preparing to risk his own life out of some misplaced sense of guilt. Insead, a war’s worth of fear surges out as an anger to meet Ben’s own. “What do you think I’m gonna do if you get yourself killed tomorrow, Ben? Shrug my shoulders and watch my tattoo go silver like it’s nothing?”

“It’s not the same. It’s my fault that men are dying.”

“And who’s fault is it if you die tomorrow? Who am I supposed to blame when they find man I love lying in some ditch with a bullet in his head?”

His words hang between them. There’s a moment of perfect silence, punctuated only by the sound of Ben’s sharp intake of breath. Even that, Caleb can barely hear over the sound of his own pounding heart, and his whole world crumbling around him.

Oh Lord.

Why did he have to go and run his goddam liability of a mouth? Because Ben’s face is unreadable, but any second now his expression will give way to a horrified revolusion. And even if it doesn’t, if Ben is as painfully forgiving as he has been every other time Caleb let him down, things will never be the same between them again. However much it’s hurt to love Ben from a distance, he’s always been the best thing in Caleb’s life, and he’s just thrown it all away.

All this flashes through Caleb’s head in the heartbeat before he turns to leave. Where he’s going, he has no idea, but Ben is too quick for him to find out. He reaches out and grasps Caleb’s wrist, holding him firmly in place.

“What did you just say?”

“Let me go.”

“Say that again.”

Ben’s face, so very close to Caleb’s, is still a mystery, but Caleb has never been able to deny him anything.

He swallows down the last traces of his pride, looks Ben square in those grey eyes, and says “The man I love.”

Another beat of silence.

And then Ben is kissing him, and all Caleb can think is

at last.

Kissing Caleb Brewster, Ben decides, is what chaining yourself to a comet must feel like, all heat and light and the knowledge that you’re going down in flames. The heat is Caleb’s body underneath his fingertips, the lights those that dance behind his eyes, and there’s no way that this will end in anything other than disaster, but what could Ben possible care when the fall feels like this?

Ben had kissed other people before. His friends and no doubt a few of him men poke fun at his blushing inexperience, but the handful of snatched moments have done nothing but make him wonder what exactly the fuss is all about. But perhaps that’s because none of them, not the half-remembered bar maids and dance partners, not even the dusty impression of Nate’s lips that may well have been a dream, can hold a candle to Caleb.

Ben grips the fabric of Caleb’s shirt, knuckles grazing against the tattoo at his hip, and Ben’s sure he can feel it thrumming with energy. The same energy surging through his own soulmark. It might as well be lightning that sparks between them.

“Christ, Ben” Caleb mutters into his mouth, and if he’s still talking, Ben must be doing something wrong. He brings up his other hand to clasp the back of Caleb’s neck and kisses him again, more insistent this time. Caleb’s lips are chapped and bitten and all the more perfect for it. One hand tangles in Ben’s hair, pulling his queue loose, and tugs experimentally. He’s helpless to stop the wine that escapes from his lips; It’s too much and not enough all at once, and this wonderful man may very well be the death of him.

He’s not sure how much time passes before Caleb’s lips move away from his mouth to plant kisses down his neck. Ben tilts his head back to give him a better angle and gasps a breath of air. They should stop and talk about this. They should really, really-

Caleb’s tongue flicks over his soulmark, and any semblance of coherent thought evaporates into the night.
  
It’s almost pitiful how easy it is. The right kind of smile, a certain shift of her hips as she walks away, and the soldier is following Ginny into the cool night air. Never mind that his pistol and sword are sitting on his belt, looped over the back of a chair. Never mind that two of his unit have gone missing without a trace in the last month.

(The second one is far easier than it has any right to be. The first happens just as quickly, but afterwards, Ginny sinks to her knees in a back alley and vomits up the meagre contents of her stomach. It’s only when she regains the presence of mind to scrub the flecks of blood from her hands that she catches sight of her face in the water. Her tatoo is a stark silver, and the second time is easier by far.)

The third time, she has it down to an art. Lead the bastard just far enough into the shadows that no one will ever know what happened to him. Lean back against the wall, smile again, and don’t flinch when he runs his hand up your arm. Wait until he leans in for clumsy kiss, until you can smell the wine on his breath that guarantees he will be caught entirely off guard. Then spin to push him against the wall and bring your knife to his throat.

“Nathan Hale,” she spits. “He was captured trying to make contact with the Sons of Liberty. Who made the arrest?”

“What the fuck are you-” The question ends in a squeak as Ginny pushes the blade that bit closer to his exposed skin.

“Who made the arrest?”

“I… I did.” The soldier manages.

It’s an effort not to end it there and then, in a burst of ugly rage. Instead, she asks “And who’s orders did you arrest him on?”

“Simcoe. Colonel Simcoe. Please, he’s the crazy one, not me. I never wanted to touch no soulmates, he’s the one going after them. I just do what I’m ordered, honest.”

Ginny stills.

Soulmates?

“What did you mean? He was arrested and tried as a spy.”

“Simcoe doesn’t care about that.” The redcoat’s desperate, squirming against her, but he’s had almost a bottle of port and Ginny isn’t about to let him overpower her, not now. “It’s always the soulmates he’s after, thinks he can use them to bring the whole fucking rebellion crashing down. He only wanted to Hale for his soulmate, but Tallmadge never showed so he wasn’t any use. It wasn’t my call to make, I promise, I was just doing what I was told. Just let me go, I won’t tell nobody-”

“Tallmadge?”

“Benjamin Tallmadge. Some big continental major, all close to Washington and running his intelligence. He was Hale’s soulmate. Why-”

The knife moves quickly, and the redcoat crumples. Ginny knows she should move, put as much distance between herself and the body before one of his friends comes to find out if he’s still mid-fuck, but she can’t quite summon the ability to do so, She’d had a plan. Work her way up through the British ranks until she finds the man responsible for Nate’s death. Had the soldier not been a frantically babbling coward, Ginny would already be making plans to find this Colonel Simcoe and make him pay.

But there’s a man out there masquerading as Nate’s soulmate in her place. A man who is in charge of Washington’s intelligence networks. A man who has to have been the reason Nate ever came to York City.

She can go after Simcoe. Or she can find this Benjamin Tallmadge.

Ginny leaves the city at first light.

Ben is seventeen when he wakes find that Caleb has slipped from the bed without a word and vanished, leaving him to face the rest of his life alone. He is twenty two when he does the same.

They’re wildly different circumstances, of course, although as Ben dresses in the half light just before dawn, he wonders if that’s true. Twice now, he’s spent the night with Caleb and woken to find his entire world has shifted on its axis. The, it was the ink on his collarbone. Now, it’s the bruises along his ribcage and the fingerprints on his hips, and the knowledge that another heart beats in time with his own in every way imaginable. It’s almost enough to still the fingers hastily buttoning his waistcoat and climb back into bed.

Almost.

He knows that Caleb won’t understand when he wakes. Ben can only pray that, in time, he’ll forgive him for this.

Caleb can’t understand because he has know way of knowing how it feels to have the safety of a whole army resting on your shoulders, and how it gets that little bit heavier with every life he cannot save. He has a duty to make it right. And that has to come first, however he may feel about the man who snuffles slightly in his sleep.

(Ben can’t, won’t use the word that Caleb did last night. It sits on the back of his tongue, insistent, and he refuses to let it out any further. Not given what he’s about to do.)

If anything, the fact that he… cares about Caleb only strengthens Ben’s certainty that he has to leave  He’ll do whatever it takes to keep Caleb from harm. Including lying to everyone. Including taking his men and riding north until he finds out what happened to his scouts. And itf it kills him? Well, he’s still praying for that future forgiveness.

Ben laces his boots, pulls on his jacket, and there’s really no reason to stay in this tent any longer. There’s every reason to leave at once, in fact, to slip outside before Caleb wakes and tries to stop him, or the camp becomes busy enough that someone is bound to notice. Still, he lingers for a moment  more, drinking in the shere stillness of the scene. Whatever happens today, this at least is a moment that no one can touch.

As silently as he can, he crosses back to rse, but it’s Caleb and lays a gentle hand on his cheek. Caleb stirs but doesn’t wake, and

Lord

, what is it about this crazy, wonderful man that Ben continues to push his luck? He leans down and brushes the faintest of kisses to Caleb’s brow. He has no way of knowing, of course, but it’s exactly the same thing Caleb did the first time their lives changed.

“Blow ‘em away, Benny,” Caleb said, five years and a war ago.

Now, all Ben can think to say is “I’m sorry.”
  
Caleb wakes an hour later to the sun on his face and his fingers closed around empty air. He doesn’t even need to open his eyes. He

knows

.
  
“Scout report, Sir. Small unit heading north along the tree-line, three miles out. I make twenty men.”

“And their commander?”

“Didn’t get a clear look, but it's definitely a major’s uniform. Epaulets and a big helmet and everything.” The man pauses. He’s young and unfamiliar with the moods of their leader, but he’s sure that the slight twitch of his lips means the good news they’ve been waiting for. Perhaps the month that they’ve spent picking of scout patrols two at a time has finally paid off. “Do you think it’s him? Tallmadge, I mean?”

Robert Rodgers allows himself to smile that little bit broader. “Aye. I’m sure of it.”
  
Simcoe’s sitting at his usual table in the corner when Anna returns from the market, and it’s all she can do not to curse at the mere sight of him. Quite why someone who’s clearly so high up some British chain of intelligence has decided to relocate to a sleepy town on Long Island, she has no idea. Only that she wishes he’d turn tail and leave.

He’s here for Ben, that much is clear. There’s a handful of men from the town who have left to fight on both sides of the war, but Ben’s the only one to have ever made a name for himself doing it. She can’t help be proud of him, despite everything. Benjamin Tallmadge, the boy who was never afraid to stand up to boys twice his size and nearly drowned on New Years day, off leading soldiers into battle against the king. And every day that Simcoe’s here, he’s working to bring her friend to harm.

That enough would be enough to make Anna despise the man. Even without his empty eyes and lack of regard for personal space and habit of taking a table in the corner and watching her work.

She’s too slow by far to disappear into the back and pray he hasn’t seen her. “Miss Strong,” Simcoe says, face lighting up into something that bit too twisted to be called a smile. Another drink, if you please.”

She grits her teeth and crosses to his table. He’s drinking wine, which is unusual in itself. All the hours he’s spent in her tavern, and she’s never seen him order anything but water.

“What’s the occasion, Colonel?”

“A received a dispatch this morning. One containing some rather good news concerning our mutual friend. Would you like to know what it is?”

Ben.

Anna swallows, and pours him another cup instead of replying at once. This was bad, whatever it was, although why Simcoe would be telling her…

Oh Lord. He’s watching her carefully, gauging her reaction. Does he somehow thing that she’s Ben’s soulmate? He hadn’t believed what she, Selah and Abe had told him on the first day. What if he thought they were lying to protect  themselves, and that’s why he’s hanging around? Simcoe’s just waiting for one of them to make a mistake.

Good,

Anna thinks viciously. As much as she despises his presence, every day he’s wasting here is one he’s not spending looking for Ben or Caleb. Although, if he’s being truthful about the dispatch, maybe he’s already found them.

“What was the dispatch, Sir?”

“Have you heard of the Queen’s Rangers, Miss Strong? They’re one of our special divisions troop stationed somewhere north of here. Frighteningly competent, if a little unorthodox in their methods. But then, so am I.” He smiles, and Anna represses a shiver. “I’ve had them doing a little favour for me this last month. A fishing trip, of sorts. And today, they’re finally due to make a catch. A rather fine prize it will be too, all shiny and silver and blue. You follow, I presume?”

Anna nods mutley, and Simcoe seizes her wrist. She moves to pull it away, but he only smiles and digs his fingers a little tighter.

“One they bring me Tallmadge, he will tell me what I need to know, one way or another. If there’s anything you may have forgotten to mention, it would be far better for you to tell me before we begin. Far better for him as well. So once again, Miss Strong. Anything to share?”

“Nothing.”

He watches her for a long moment through those awful, empty eyes, and Anna is sure he will strike her. After a heartbeat, he only smiles and releases her. “Then there’s nothing to worry about.”

“If you’ll excuse me, Colonel?”

Anna hurries away, and it’s only when she’s down in the cellar with a solid oak door between her and Simcoe that she allows herself to let out a long, shaky breath. She leans back against the wall. There’s something wet on her face, and it’s only when Anna brings a hand to her cheek that she realises they’re tears.

“Pull yourself together,” she curses in the darkness. There’s no point crying about it, not with Simcoe upstairs and Ben somewhere out in the world, about to walk straight into a trap. Nor is there anything she can do about it.

All Anna can do is pray that Ben’s as smart as she remembers, and a good enough soldier to keep himself and Caleb safe.
  
He isn’t.
 
x.

They’re crossing a stream in the woodland when the first shot sounds. All Ben has time to do is draw his pistol and think

ambush

and

higher ground

and

God Caleb, you were right,

before pain explodes in his shoulder.

He falls backwards into the mud. His gun has fallen from his fingers. He tries to stand up, to find it and lead his men in the fighting, but his body is suddenly so heavy. He blinks, and the distant sky swims in and out of focus. The sounds of the battle, still raging around him seem far away. It’s as if the shouts and gunshots are happening on the other side of a distant valley or from underwater. Why is it so difficult to think?

Ben tries to stand up again, and a fresh burst of pain explodes in his shoulder. Or maybe it’s from the tattoo just below it. The sensations blur into one. It’s as if his soulmark is screaming out for Caleb to come and save him, except there’s no one coming because he left Caleb without a word, and Lord, he’s never going to see him again.

He chokes around blind panic. A word that might have been

sorry

, or even

please

bubbles uselessly around his mouth, but he can’t find air enough to say it.

The world spins around him, and Ben’s last thought before the darkness takes him is that the bullet is in his shoulder instead of his head, but Caleb had been right about the fucking ditch.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

xi.

Come on Ben, get the fuck up, don’t you dare do this to me.

“Caleb?” Ben wants to say, but the voice is so very far away and he can’t summon the energy to open his eyes and see who’s speaking.

Open your eyes. You gotta wake up now, I ain’t playing here.

“Caleb is that you?”

Which way’s up, Benny? You know that’s the first thing you look for. Lose sight of it and you drown, and I’m not around to haul you out of the water this time. Force yourself to think clearly, take things one step at a time. And the first step is-

Open your goddamn eyes, you fool!

There are two Calebs in the dark of Ben’s head, and he can almost see them. One twelve years old and grinning as the water drips from his hair, and the other twenty four and terrified. They’re just beyond his grasp, much as the rest of the world is, and he reaches for them.

Benny, please.

It’s difficult to tell which one is speaking

. I can’t do this without you. For the love of fuck, OPEN YOUR EYES!

The last words are a shout that echo through his head.

Ben opens his eyes.
  
(He runs, and by the time Ben makes his way back to a continental outpost, he’s half delirious with pain and blood loss and the image of his whole damned unit lying unmoving in the mud. He can barely comprehend the row of  guns pointed at his chest on account of his stolen coat, and even if he hadn’t remembered too late that no one was supposed to see his skin, he would have been unable to come up with an excuse not to let the field medic treat his shoulder.)
  
Simcoe spends the next week walking around town in a vicious rage. Anna doesn’t dare to ask him what happened and he offers no information, but she can guess. It’s an effort to restrain an ugly grin every time she walks past.

He got the better of you, you bastard. You underestimated Benjamin Tallmadge and that was your mistake.

His regiment moves out a day later.

There’s only one safe road back towards York city, so it’s not surprising that they pass many different travellers on their way. No one looks twice at the young woman with a scarf wrapped carefully over her head, and a kitchen knife nestled inside her sleeve.
  
“They were waiting for us. They knew where we would be.”

Ben speaks the moment Scott walks into the room, and he’s just as quick to dismiss him.

“They couldn’t have know.”

“They were waiting.” Ben insists.

“How-” Scott turns around, and Ben can see the exact  moment he understands. His eyes are fixed on the tattoo visible above the bandaging and very much black. Eventually they flick up to meet Ben’s eyes.

“What have you done, Benjamin?”

Ben swallows, aware that he’s watching his career and his honour crumble to dust before his eyes. “What I had to.”

Scott stares at him for a moment longer, then turns to one of the men standing behind him.

“Has he given a report?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Then find him a coat, and something to secure his hands with. I want you to leave with Tallmadge at first light.

“I… the Major is under arrest?”

“Sir-” Ben interjects, but that’s as far as he gets before Scott raises a and to silence him.

“This is out of my hands. No one has ever… this is a matter for the General.”
  
Caleb hasn’t slept in two days, not since he woke to find the bed empty and Ben already on the road north. How can he, given the constant fear that his tattoo will turn silver at any moment and the tiny spark of life in the back of his mind will be extinguished forever?

He clings to that spark like a lifeline. It’s his proof that Ben’s still out there somewhere and drawing breath. That his insane plan hasn’t gotten himself killed yet. It’s little comfort, and at the same time the single most important thing in Caleb’s life. Ben’s alive.

He’s alive, but he sure as hell ain’t well.

It’s difficult to pinpoint, but something is seriously wrong with Ben. Caleb can pick up waves of fear and dull pain, and on the second morning a fire tearing through his right shoulder (which he’s trying desperately not to compare to the sensation of a bullet wound), but it’s muted, somehow. He’d tried to reach into Ben’s mind the moment he felt it, but the connection had been tenuous, like trying to talk to Ben from underwater.

He’s doing his best not to imagine what that means. Not to imagine Ben hovering between life and death, or unconscious in a Royal cell, or in so much pain that his thoughts have no coherence. It doesn’t work.

By the time the rumours reach the campfire on the third night, Caleb’s a wreck.

He almost doesn’t hear the conversations going on around him, so wrapped up in his own fear. It’s only when he catches the word

Dragoons

that his head snaps up. The source is immediately obvious, a group of privates sitting a way over and talking animatedly among themselves. Caleb is upon them in an instant.

“What happened?”

One blinks at him. “Who are you?”

“Your talking about the second continental dragoons, aye? Rode out of here three days back? Tell me what the fuck happened!”

They take one look at his face and see how serious he is. The man closest to him stands and places a hand on Caleb’s shoulder, a gesture that’s probably supposed to be comforting, but just makes him want to punch him square in the jaw.

“You knew one of them?” Caleb nods. “Then I’m sorry, truly. They ran straight into the Queen’s Rangers of all fucking things, if you can believe the stories. No survivors.”

“What?” Because that can’t be right. Ben’s alive, he can feel him, he can see his still-beating heart in the ink that laces his skin, he can’t be…

“Just goes to show,” the first man says. “Can’t trust soulmates.”

“Soulmates?”

Oh God, Benny, Oh God-

They all stare at him. “You really haven’t heard, have you?” One of them laughs bitterly, but the standing man merely grimaces. “They were lead by some major who’s soulmate was supposed to have died a hero. Except it turns out that ain’t so true. This guy, Tallmore or something, he’s been lying this whole time. He’s still got a soulmate, he’s been breaking all the General’s rules.”

“I heard he ran straight into a trap to try and save his soulmate the Rangers had got captive and got all his men killed in the process.”

“I heard Washington’s gonna string him up for disobeying orders.”

“Washington?” Caleb seizes on that last point. “The General has him here?”

“That’s right. They rode him in an hour or so ago, all bloodied and bound, and- hey! Where are you going?”

It’s been raining for for close to a week now, a relentless, miserable drizzle that has turned all the roads into muggy quagmires and driven the town indoors whenever possible. Anna supposes she should be grateful. They always have more patrons at the inn in this weather, men seeking to lift their spirits no doubt, and it’s good news for the farmers. Lord knows they need some good news, what with the war continuing to limit supplies. All the same, she can’t help but wish for a reprise. Those poor souls in the Continental army must be up to their knees in mud, and with no way to properly dry.

Her thoughts have been drifting to Caleb and Ben with concerning frequency since Simcoe first asked about them, but she can’t help herself. They’re her friends, for Christ’s sakes, and she’s worried about them. She’s worried about the two of them facing British bayonets. She’s worried about whatever it is Ben has done to attract the focus of such a cruel man. And she’s especially worried about the tattoos she’s sure they must share.

Ben’s always been a believer in liberty, and he grew up hearing his father criticise the crown at any given opportunity. She knows that he’s fighting for more than just the rights of soulmates against an uncaring King, but how much did that make his decision to risk his life and sign up easier? And Lord knows Caleb would follow Ben into anything.

Please be careful, she thinks as she wipes down the bar at the end of the night.

Even if they could hear her, she doubts they’d listen. They never used to.

The combination of constant worry and constant rain has rather drowned her good spirits following Simcoe’s departure. Selah has asked her about it twice now, and she’s brushed off his concerns. “It’s nothing. Just the chill.” She doubts he believes it, though. Her husband is too clever by half, and she’s certainly making no effort to mask her frown as she picks up the bucket of water and goes to throw it outside.

There’s a girl standing on her doorstep.

She has one hand raised as if about to knock, and she’s soaked to the skin. Her clothes - rags, might be more accurate a term- drip steadily onto the doorstep, and her headscarf is plastered to one side of her face. She must be frozen to her very bones.

“I have money,” she says before Anna can even begin to ask what the girl is doing on her doorstep, and her accent is far less rough than her appearance suggests. “Can I come inside?”

It’s long since past closing times, and all their rooms are bilited to Royal officers. Anna doesn’t even have to consider it.

The girl eats her soup as if it's the first meal she’s had in days, and watching from behind the counter, Anna supposes it might well be. Under her shawl she looks painfully thin, and it’s hard to tell how old she is; It could be anywhere between Anna’s own age and just out of childhood. Of course, the silver ink that obscures half her face doesn’t make it any easier to  tell. Anna had managed to hold back her gasp of surprise as the tattoo became visible in the firelight, nor does she comment as she fixes her a meal. Silver ink can only mean one thing. Maybe its trying to imagine Caleb or Ben attempt to go one without the other, but she feels for this girl with a force she can’t quite explain.

“So what should I call you, then?”

The girl blinks, spoon freezing halfway to her mouth. “Does it matter?”

“You’re under my roof, a roof that’s housing several British soldiers, I might add.”

The girl goes to stand, panic welling behind her grey eyes, and Anna grasps her wrist. As if she hadn’t been suspicious as it was. “Which is why,” Anna continues with a significant look, “I’m asking what I should call you, rather than what your name is.”

She freezes, and Anna wonders if she’s going to hit her and make a run for it. Then she says softly “Ginny.”

“Alright, Ginny. What are you doing in Setauket? We’re a little of the beaten track out here, see, and some folks aren’t used to strangers.”

“I’m looking for someone. An old friend of my brother’s.”

“I’m going to need more than that. Who’s the friend?”

“Benjamin Tallmadge.”

“Tallmadge?”

Ginny nods, and Anna lets her go, more to the sudden need to throw hands up in the air than anything else. “Sweet Jesus, Ben, what the hell did you do now?”

“You’ve heard?”

Lafayette only nods grimly and sinks onto Hamilton’s bed. The question, he suspects, is entirely unnecessary.  At least it is if any of the disbelief churning inside him has made its way onto his face. He’d heard the news from a pair of guardsmen, and forced them to repeat it three times before believing them. And then he’d come here. Lafayette isn’t half as strong as he pretends to be, and he needs to be around his friends right now. Laurens is already here, slumped at the table next to Hamilton and Lafayette is inordinately grateful for their simple presence.

“Where are they keeping him?”

“The big house has a cellar. The General always kept free in case we ever had a prisoner of high enough rank.” There’s  no mistaking the bitter twist about Hamilton’s lips. A major is most definitely ranked highly enough to warrant such treatment, but they never expected it would be one of their own locked down there.

“I didn’t want to think it true,” Lafayette admits, fists twisting into the fabric of his coat. “Tallmadge is…”

He falters, not sure how to put it into words. Because he likes the young major, he really does. He’s quick witted and kind and unfailingly, undoubtedly loyal to the cause. Or rather,  his loyalty had been beyond doubt until this evening. Now Lafayette doesn’t know what to believe. Try as he might to banish such thoughts, they whisper away in the back of his mind.

Tallmadge hid the fact that he still has a soulmate. What else could he have been hiding from us?

It’s not that Lafayette begrudges him the tattoo. He’s always viewed soulmates as  the natural expression of a bond that few are lucky enough to experience, and just another reason to struggle against the English crown. What he’s having a much harder time forgiving is the fact that Tallmadge lied about it. Not to Lafayette or to their friends, although the thought does sting, but to Washington. Washington who had put his faith in Tallmadge (as well as a frightening amount of information) and who has been let down so utterly. Who knows what might have happened if the British had gotten hold of the Head of Intelligence’s soulmate?

Neither of his companions speak as Lafayette sorts through the riot of thoughts in his head. They are just as lost as he. Eventually, Lafayette settles on “I just don’t understand why he would not be honest.”

“I do.”

Laurens’ voice is soft. “Soulmates are always in danger. They live every minute looking over their shoulder for the redcoat that will drag them away to a dark room and turn their life into a living hell. And all that to hurt the person who you-” He coughs, and looks down at his shoes. “Who they care about most in the world. Tallmadge has just been  protecting them, whoever they are.”

Hamilton is watching Laurens in the half light, face unreadable. “And that’s worth it?” He asks. “ Putting the life of that one person above your country?”

“Of course not,” Lafayette’s response is instant,  but Laurens only smiles sadly.

“I suppose that would depend on the person.”

They of them lapse into silence, and Lafayette tries to interpret the silent conversation that passes between his friends. He fails, of course. The three of them are as close as any, but there are times when he’s sure that the others must be one mind. The candles on Hamilton’s desk burn another half-inch before he asks “What do you imagine will happen to him?”

“He’ll lose his post for sure. Maybe even be stripped of his commission.”

“Tallmadge will be fortunate if that’s all that’s taken from him.” Lafayette mutters darkly, and the other two look up at him.

“What do you mean?”

“The General’s position is precarious enough as it is. We’ve all heard the whispers, those snakes that say he is unfit for command. Tallmadge’s deception only makes his position weaker. How many people do you suppose need to whisper the word

treason

before there’s pressure to take more permanent action?”

Hamilton’s  face pales. “Washington would never… Tallmadge is one of ours! He’s our brother, for fuck’s sake!”

“I know,

mon petit

. But we are at war, and that may not matter.”

He shouldn’t have spoken, Lafayette realises. Both Hamilton and Laurens are exchanging looks of pure horror to match the sick feeling that twists in his own stomach. There’s every chance that his fears are misfounded, but he doesn’t think that’s the case. All three of them work under Washington, but Lafayette likes to think he has the closest insight into their General’s mind. And he knows full well how much this will have hurt him.

Hamilton stands abruptly. “We have to talk to him, Laurens. Make him see reason-”

Lafayette opens his mouth, but Laurens is faster, standing with a flare of what can only be panic behind his eyes. “Marching into the General’s quarters in the middle of the night will solve nothing. What if Lafayette’s wrong?”

“And what if he isn’t?”

“Alexander…”

“What if we wake up tomorrow and the firing squad has already done it’s work, and we could have saved him? You know we can!”

“Alexander, please just take a moment and think about this!”

“Tallmadge would do the same for us in a heartbeat. And yet you’d keep your silence?”

He shakes his head, a half hysterical laugh around his lips, and Lafayette can only watch his friends shout at one another with the distinct impression that he’s missing something fundamental to the conversation. When he finally speaks, Hamilton’s voice is colder than he’s ever known it. “You’re a coward, John. You’re a fucking coward.”

He marches out into the night, never mind that it’s his own tent he’s storming away from. Laurens watches his go, mouth hanging slightly open.

“I don’t suppose you’d care to tell me what that was about?” Lafayette demands, but Laurens only shakes his head.

“I should go after him, apologize, make sure he doesn’t…” The thought trails off, hanging in the empty air, and Lafayette still has no idea just what it is that Hamilton might do. Something has just shifted dramatically between his two dearest friends, and it’s clearly something they want him to have nothing to do with. Laurens takes a step towards the mouth of the tent, then turns and looks back at Lafayette. “Would you do me one favour?”

“Anything.”

“Whatever happens tonight, please try not to think ill of me.”

Somewhere, water is dripping down the stone walls, and its enough to drive Ben to insanity. It’s not the noise that sets his teeth on edge, it’s the fact that the dripping doesn’t quite form a coherent rhythm. As such, he's constantly waiting for the next drop to sound, and if not for the age of the cellar, he’d expect it was a deliberate ploy to put the prisoners on edge.

Even so, he’d rather listen to the water than the surge of thoughts competing space in his head. There’s the image of all his men, good men, laid out dead in a blood-red river. It’s the sound of bayonetting Thompson’s body. It’s the way the soldier who brought him back to camp refused to look at him, and how the whispers had started before he’d even been ushered into the Big House. Washington hasn’t seen him. He’s up there somewhere, deciding his fate, and Caleb-

Lord, Caleb is right here, and Ben can’t even tell him how sorry he is.

The damp of the cellar does nothing for Ben’s shoulder, and the wound aches every time he moves. They’d done a good enough job of stitching him up, tactfully not mentioning the black ink decorating his skin below the layer of blood, but there's only so much a field doctor can do with a bullet in your shoulder. Under normal circumstances, Ben would be being examined again right now, and no doubt rallying against the news that he’d be on light duty until he healed.

There’s a very real chance he’ll never be on any kind of duty again.

Ben has no idea how long he sits in the cellar with no daylight to count the hours by. He can only watch as the small candle they’ve left him with burns lower and lower, and wonder if anyone will bother to come and light another when it burns out.

As it happens, he never gets the chance to find out. Up above a door opens, and Ben winces at the sudden flood of light that enters the room. He raises his right arm to shield his eyes, or at least tries to, hisses in pain, and raises the other arm instead, but by then the door has closed again. Instead, he finds himself face to face with Washington, expression thunderous in the light of a lantern.

“Sir, I-”

Washington raises a hand. “Tell me, Benjamin. How many men are there in this army?”

Ben winces at the use of his first name. He’s not sure that the General has ever addressed him as such before. “Close to fifty-five thousand.”

“And how many of those men would be directly at risk if the information inside your head made its way to the enemy?”

“I… The majority, I would imagine.”

“I put my confidence in you. And that mistake could have doomed this whole war. Tell me, what was going through your mind when you decided to lie to me and allow me to trust you in that manner? Ambition, treason-” Ben starts in protest at the very accusation, but Washington continues as if he had not heard the interruption, “- or simple foolishness?”

Whatever punishment they can inflict upon him, surely nothing can compare to the flatness of Washington’s voice, and the lack of any emotion in those steely eyes. There’s none of the compassion or wry humour Ben has come to recognise. Even anger would be worse that this… nothingness. It’s as if Washington is addressing a stranger.

He stands as straight as his injury will allow and forces himself to meet Washington’s eyes. “The desire to serve my country.”

“And had you been captured yesterday, would you still desire this? More than protecting your soulmate?”

Ben cannot answer. He knows what he should answer, knows logically that Caleb can’t be worth the life of every man in this army. And yet.

His silence seems to be all the response Washington needs. The General only nods, as if he’d been expecting as much. “Who is it? The truth, this time.”

There’s no point in lying, not anymore. “Caleb Brewster, Sir. He’s-”

“A lieutenant in the second company.”

Ben blinks. “You know who he is?”

“I do, assuming he’s the same Lieutenant Brewster who’s been all but breaking my door down for the last two hours, demanding an audience.”

Ben’s eyes flit to the cellar door without waiting for permission. Not only is Caleb in camp, but he’s in this very building and throwing all caution to the wind to try and get to him. The surge of love (

love? Not now, Tallmadg

e) for the fool of a whaler catches him off guard, and as a result it takes a moment to realise that Washington had known the truth before he’d asked Ben who his soulmate was. Was it his honesty Washington had been testing, or Caleb’s claim? Either way, he can be certain of both now, and Ben should have known he’d never be able to keep the truth from the General forever.

“This wasn’t his fault, Sir. I asked him to lie about being soulmates, ordered him rather. And he’s only a Lieutenant, there’s no rule about low ranking officers being soulmates, and…” Ben’s pitifully aware of the desperation leaking into his voice, but can’t bring himself to care. “Whatever blame is to be had, whatever punishment, I only ask that it be mine to bear alone.”

“You’re a soulmate, Benjamin. I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that you’re incapable of truly bearing anything alone.” Washington turns to leave, and he’s half way up the steps before he turns to look at Ben again. “I’m sorry it has to be this way, if it’s any small comfort. Is there anything else you wish say in your defence?”

“Can I see him? Please?”

The door opens, and Ben doesn’t have time to so much as open his mouth before Caleb’s on him, sweeping him into a crunching hug that would be painful even without the wound to his shoulder. He lets out a grunt of pain, but Caleb only holds him that bit tighter. It’s probably what he deserves. Never mind the fact that Ben can’t quite bring himself to let go either.

It’s a long time before either of them speaks. In a way, there’s nothing to be said that they can’t convey through simple contact and the hum of each other's presence in the back of their minds. Ben, for his part, just buries his head in the crook of Caleb’s neck. It’s so much easier to surround himself with Caleb’s grounding presence and inhale the woodsmoke that clings to his skin than to think about the world beyond the cellar.

It’s Caleb who breaks the illusion, eventually. “You utter bastard,” he whispers into Ben’s hair, and all at once everything that Ben’s done comes crashing down around him.

He reluctantly pulls away to meet Caleb’s eyes. “I’m-”

“Don’t say you’re sorry. You left me, Ben, and you went and got yourself shot.”

With the weight of all that might happen to him, Ben had half forgotten the bullet in his shoulder. “It’s nothing, really.”

“Show me.”

They’ve given him a loose shirt to wear so as not to put pressure on the wound, and he unbuttons it half the way down without sparing a moment for his own modesty. It hardly seems worth it, not when Ben has tasted the cluster of freckles on Caleb’s inner thigh, and they could both be dead come the sunrise. Bandages still cover the worst of the damage, although there’s no missing the stain where he’s bled through his latest wrappings. Caleb goes to touch his broken skin, only seeming to think better of it at the last moment and simply allows his hand to hover in the space between them. He’s staring at the blood with a quiet intensity. Ben has no idea if the anger is for him, or the ones who put a bullet in his shoulder.

“It’s honestly not as bad as it looks,” he tries again. “Caleb, I… There was no way I could hide my tattoo. They know. I had to tell the General about you, about everything.”

“I know that, Benny.”

“Jesus, you were right. We should have come clean when Nate died, or...” He trails off hopelessly. “This is all my fault.”

“Hey.” Caleb brushes his thumb along Ben’s cheek. “I’m furious at you, don’t get me wrong. But this is not your fault. You never asked to be bonded to the local reprobate. It’s the fault of the reprobate for being so hopelessly in love with you.”

It’s the second time Caleb’s said that as if his very words don’t threaten to take Ben’s legs out from under him. A horrible sort of understanding begins to dawn.

“But that tattoos were… Lord, Caleb, we were seventeen. How long have you felt this way?”

(“Too long. Maybe forever.”

“Oh, Caleb.”

Oh, Annie. Look at me now.)

Caleb only smiles sadly. “I can’t remember a time when I didn’t.”

“But… Why the hell didn’t you say something?”

“Oh yes, that would have gone well. Hey there, Bennboy, you know that fancy bit of ink on your skin? It’s because your friend can hardly look at you without wanting to kiss you into the New Year, ain’t that just grand?” He shakes his head. “Like that wouldn’t have made you despise me on the spot.”

“You think I could ever despise you?”

Caleb only shrugs. “It wasn’t worth the risk. Not if there was a chance of losing you.”

And Ben doesn’t know what he’s supposed to say in response to that. He opts for saying nothing at all.

The two of them end up sitting next to each-other on the dusty cellar floor, backs against the wall and staring out into the gloomy room. At some point, Ben holds out his hand, and isn’t too proud to deny the small rush of relief when Caleb takes it.

“What do you think they’re going to do to you?” Caleb asks eventually.

“I have no idea.” It’s the truth. The General is unreadable at the best of times and Ben has never claimed to know his mind, but today? Today, Ben might as well stare into a crystal ball for all the good guessing will do. “I could be reassigned. Or court marshalled. Or taken around the back and shot in the head.” He can feel Caleb tense at the last suggestion. “You know something, though?”

“What?”

“It will have been worth it. Whatever they can do to me, I wouldn’t take a second of it back. Not the tattoo, and certainly not you.”

“You can’t mean that.”

Ben doesn’t say that Soulmarks aren’t one sided, and they wouldn’t be sitting in this cellar if Caleb had been the only one unwilling to live without the other, and that maybe Ben had simply been too blind to realise what he’d always known.

Ben doesn’t say the word that’s come spilling from Caleb’s lips twice now (and possibly uncountable times more, whispered into his skin on his narrow bed.) He still can’t summon it, even knowing this may be his only chance to do so.

Instead, what Ben says is “Do not ask me to regret you.”

Caleb turns to face him, and in the dim light of the cellar Ben doesn’t realise that Caleb’s moving to kiss him until their lips brush. It’s nothing of the fire and desperation of three nights ago. Instead, it’s the gentle pressure of the things neither man can find it in himself to say.

No one comes to retrieve Caleb, and eventually Ben rests his head on his shoulder and lets his eyes close. It’s only in the moment that he drifts into sleep that Ben realises he forgot to mention the voice that saved his life in New Jersey.

“Was that you?” Ben will ask years later. “That day when I was shot. Were you in my head, telling me to wake up, or was it simply my imagination?”

Caleb will find he cannot answer.
  
George Washington doesn’t usually feel his age. Marching around the camp with the constant sense of honour and the thrill of battle, it’s enough to make him feel like a young man again. Filter out all the

Your Excellencies

and awed looks, and he could be back on his first campaign.

He feels the weight of every single one of his years today.

Two floors below him, Benjamin Tallmadge sits and waits for him to decide his fate, and George still has no idea what that will be. Tallmadge is loyal and honest. He’s an damned good soldier, and a brave one too. He’s a good leader.

He’s a traitor.

That’s what they’ll surely be whispering around the campfires and the darkness of infantry tents tonight. Discussing amongst themselves how their General is too weak to spot disobedience among his highest ranks, and too weak to act on it. He could quell such talk in one quell swoop. Only to lose the respect of those who he relies on formost. George is no fool, he recognises the bonds of brotherhood that have formed between his aides. He has encouraged them, even, knowing how such companionship can raise spirit where it matters most and see men through the impossible. It’s highly possible that ordering Tallmadge’s execution would shatter those bonds forever.

Lord, but George needs a drink.

He slumps into his chair, but can no more than reach for his decanter before a comotion sounds outside his door, the sound of raised voices he knows far too well. What could they possibly want from him now?

Sure enough, a moment later the door opens and Hamilton and Laurens march in, expressions defiant. George spares a moment to wonder if he could have conjured his most troublesome aides out of thin air simply by thinking about them. It’s not impossible, given the day he’s having.

“Your Excellency, Sir, apologies for the intrusion,” Hamilton begins, “But there is a matter of great importance that we must-”

“You’re here to plead Tallmadge’s case.” Despite everything, he can’t help but saviour the look of surprise on their faces. “What else could have compelled you to my chambers at such late an hour? I must admit, I’m only surprised that you haven’t dragged the Marquis into this as well.”

“The Marquis is struggling to come to terms with Tallmadge's deception of your own person.” Laurens admits.

“And he has no involvement in what we are about to say. I would ask you to remember that.”

George doesn’t miss the way that Lauren’s eyes flit to Hamilton, full of a fear he does not recognise in the young aide’s eyes. Nor the way that Hamilton grasps Laurens wrists in a gesture that could be either supportive, or an attempt to stop him bolting from the room.

“What is going on here?”

“Excellency, we would ask you to show leniency towards Tallmadge. He has deceived you, yes, but only out of a desire to protect another. He has not done anything to damage the cause, and he has proven himself time and time again to be unflinchingly loyal to his ideals. Such a man does not deserve death nor disgrace, surely?”

George folds his hands on the desk, willing Hamilton to understand what he’s been wrestling with for hours now. “He put us all in danger. Every man in this army would have been at risk had the enemy captured and broken Tallmadge like they have every other soulmate.”

Hamilton meets his eyes. “All Benjamin did was love. Was it so wrong of me to hope that you would not condemn a man for that?”

A pause. George considers reprimanding Hamilton, or confessing that he has no idea what he’s going to do. Instead, he simply sighs and says “Is that all?”

“I- Yes, Sir. Thank you for-”

“It’s not all.”Laurens speaks softly, and Hamilton whips around to face him, confusion and panic vying for position across his face.

“What are you doing?” He whispers.

“You were right, Alexander. Tallmadge would do the same for us.” The two share a look that George cannot decipher, but when Hamilton nods, a single, jerking movement, he’s sure he isn’t going to like whatever is going on. Laurens squares his shoulders, and turns back to George. “Your Excellency, Sir. You cannot dismiss Tallmadge without dismissing us both as well, and we both know that neither your reputation nor the war effort could take the loss of three senior aides in a single night.”

This is ridiculous. “For God’s sake, Laurens, I appreciate that you wish to defend your friend, but resignations will not-”

“You’ll have to dismiss us, because we are guilty of the same crime.”

There is a beat of silence, in which George swears he can feel the foundations of all he has built here fall away to dust. Then, “Show me. Right now.”

They obey, neither man speaking, and George can only watch in an absent sort of horror as Hamilton unrolls his right sleeve and Laurens unbuttons his shirt. As they reveal the intricate swirls of ink that could see them both sent to the gallows. That could bury everything he’s trying to build. The marks they’re they’re displaying with fear but not an ounce of shame.

And damn it all to hell, if underneath the shock and anger and sense of abject betrayal sitting heavy on George’s chest, there wasn’t a tiny spark of pride.

The General comes for them at dawn, and he doesn’t comment on Caleb, still curled up asleep at Ben’s side. All he says, expression resigned and tossing Ben a coat, is “You have good friends.”
  
Ben’s demoted, quietly and with little ceremony. Caleb couldn’t be more thrilled. Not only has Ben, by some miracle, avoided the hangman’s noose or a dishonorable discharge, but the weight of a whole army’s intelligence operations have been lifted from his shoulders.

It doesn’t hurt that Caleb takes to his replacement immediately. Nathaniel Sackett has flyaway grey hair and absolutely no hesitation to speak his mind, and is far more concerned with Ben’s failure to use a proper encryption than he is that he’s a soulmate.

“It’s ridiculous!” Ben complains one day, storming into Caleb’s tent without bothering to knock, and Caleb might object if he hadn’t done the same countless times before. “He’s treating me like a child, dressing me down and ranting about every little mistake.”

“I like him.”

“What?”

“I like him, Benny. He clearly has no clue about the chain of command, and the man will tell Washington himself he’s a fool if that’s what it comes to. Could be the difference between saving lives and writing more letters home to fathers.”

Ben huffs, but its without any real malice. “You only like him because he lets you sit in on meetings and inflates that ridiculous ego of yours.”

“Guilty as charged.”

It’s something Sackett had insisted on from the start, and probably the only reason why Ben still has a job in intelligence at all. The man might be quite possibly insane, but there’s no denying his brilliance, and he has an entirely different perspective to employing soulmates.

“Washington’s all worried that your link will put our agents at risk, Tallmadge. I say there’s no risk of that.”

“There- there’s not?”

“Course not. So long as your boy is one of those agents. You’d never make a foolhardy decision to put him at risk, I would hope?”

Ben had pulled Caleb aside after that, concern writ clear across his face.

“I can’t ask you to do this.”

“You don’t have to.” Caleb smiles softly. “I’m with you, Tallboy.”

Ben’s not happy, he can tell. Caleb clasps his shoulder. It’s not what he wants to do, he wants to take Ben’s hand and never let it go, not until Ben’s convinced that they will never walk away from each other again, but that’s not an option. “This was all to keep you safe.” Ben murmurs. “That was the whole damned point.”

“Maybe I’ll have to keep you safe for a change. God knows you need it.” That earns Caleb a smile, reluctant but real. “Come on. Let’s go win a war, shall we?”

“If we must.”

And so they walk back into Sackett’s tent. And get to work. And when the man suggests trying to get a man on Long Island, there’s only one name that springs to mind. The two of them are in this together. Caleb-and-Ben. But there’s no reason why they have to be alone.

Caleb leaves for an old black-market post the next morning.
  
They don’t talk about it, Ben, Alexander, and John. It’s not just that any mention of the word Soulmate be tantamount to suicide with the rumours that still fly around camp. It’s that the three of them share an understanding, one that goes beyond words, and there is nothing that needs saying. It’s there, in the way that John will smile at Ben across the campfire, and that Ben take Alexander’s arm and murmur “Enough,” when his demands for a command are turned down yet again. It’s in the thousand half-expressions that wouldn’t be out of place among any men who live through a war together.

And it’s in this:

A year and a half after Ben watches his men fall one by one into the New Jersey mud, and Charles Lee marches into command to report the casualties from a simple mission to burn a handful of flour mills, They’re small targets, really. Nothing that anyone deserves to die over, and five men do. Among them, one Alexander Hamilton.

John doesn’t weep. He doesn’t cry out, or curse, or stagger to the nearest chair as his world falls out from under him. What he does is turn on his heal and march out of the room.

Four minutes later and he’s tearing off his coat to show Ben the tattoo above his heart, perfectly, impossibly black.

Ten after that, and the two of them are Washington's study.

Two hours, and they’re riding out for Schuylkill river.

And when John throws his arms around Alexander, bleeding and soaked to the bone but impossibly alive, Ben only nods and thinks that there might just be hope for them all yet. He’s too far away to hear the whispered words of reassurance and threats to Never do that to me again, you fucking bastard, but he recognises the looks they share all the same. If such pockets of happiness can exist amongst the wreckage, maybe all they do is for something after all.

All this happens later.
  
Abe hasn’t changed one bit. He’s all waving hands and foolish, stubborn bravery, and Ben has never been so glad of his friend. He shakes his head when Ben asks the name of his contact and it’s all he can do not to hug him for it. Perhaps it’s cruel of him to test Abe like this, but there’s no better way he can imagine to ensure he can be trusted. If it’s good enough for Washington, demanding Caleb’s name when he already knows it, it’s good enough for him.

He tells Abe that he’s free to go, and Abe makes it halfway out the door before turning around again.

“You gotta come home.”

“You know that’s not an option. You’ve got to tell everyone that-”

“No, not with me now, and not with your shiny hat and all, but…” Abe trails off, running a hand through his sopping hair. “I ain’t saying it’ll be safe. The town’s crawling with redcoats. But it would be worth the risk. There’s someone you gotta talk to who’s working in Anna’s tavern.”

Ben smirks despite himself. This whole system is designed to make sure that there’s no direct contact between his agents and himself, both to protect Abe’s identity and to stop the ring being linked back to him. He can’t imagine a single thing that would warrant his stepping foot in Setauket until the war is won. “And who would that be?”

“Ginny Hale.”

“Stop that,” Caleb’s hiss is accompanied by a playful elbow to the ribs, and Ben glances at him in confusion. They’re waiting for Abe in the small copse of woodland by the bay, and it’s already been long enough that night has fallen, hiding Caleb’s expression in the shadows. Too long by far for Ben’s liking. The first thing he’s doing in the unlikely miracle that they pull this off, is coming up with a better system to arrange meeting times.

“Stop what?”

“Whining about how worried you are.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“But you were thinking it awful loud. Abe’ll show. He’s not one to let us down.”

“I know that.”

And Ben does, knows it in the same way that he’s sure of Caleb’s heartbeat in the darkness besides his own, and that these woods are undoubtedly those of home. Abe would never sell them out. It doesn’t stop that tiny voice though, the one whispering that everything is about to go terribly wrong. What if Abe’s already been captured? Or someone spotted their boat crossing the sound? Or-?

Maybe Caleb has a point. Ben’s a grown man for Christ’s sake, and a soldier at that. There’s no reason that a mission like this should put him so on edge.

It’s another half hour at least before Abe stumbles out of the trees, and as planned Caleb reveals himself first. It’s an unnecessary precaution, given that there’s no question of Abe’s loyalty, but in theory Ben is waiting to act as an unexpected backup if the mission goes south. Instead, he simply lurks in the shadows and listens to their conversation.

Abe is, well, put out to say the least when Caleb tells him about the test, but he’ll get over it. He’ll have to prepare for worse than wounded pride if they want to pull this off. Ben takes a deep breath, ready to step into the clearing and tell him exactly that, but he never gets the chance. He’s barely made it a pace forward when there’s a voice in his ear and the sudden glint of steel at his throat.

“That’s far enough, Capitan.”

He clamps down on the rush of panic. Think, dammit Tallmadge! He can’t call out, not when the whole point of tonight is to avoid discovery. There’s no way he can reach for his pistol, not with a knife this close to his windpipe and no guarantee he’d be quick enough. He can’t do anything but obey when she (definitely a woman) says “Now raise your arms for me, nice and slow.”

“My men are going to notice I’m missing,” Ben warns through gritted teeth. “Whatever your quarrel is with me, I suggest we come to a solution before they”

As if on cue, Caleb’s voice calls out of the darkness “Where have you gotten to, Benny?”, and God bless the beautiful fool for always being right where Ben needs him.

Caleb’s face, when he steps through the trees, passes through half a dozen expressions in the time it takes him to raise his pistol. By the time it’s aimed between his assailants eyes, it has settled into the neutral mask of a trained soldier. Only his eyes betray his terror as they flit to Ben’s. Next to Caleb, Abe lets out an honest to God squeak.

“Lovely evening for it.” Caleb says lightly. “I really don’t want to use this on you, so how about you step the fuck away from my friend there, and maybe I won’t have to?”

“How about you drop the gun, and maybe we won’t find out just how long it takes him to die?”

The hand at his throat is steady. Abe, meanwhile, is the least calm of any of them. “Christ, Ginny, what the hell are you doing?”

Ginny? “You’re Ginny Hale?”

She ignores Ben. “Drop the gun.”

“Like hell. Get off of him, or-”

“Drop the gun, Caleb.” Ben says.

Caleb stares at him. “What?”

“Stand down, that’s an order.”

What Ben doesn’t say is

please

and

trust me

but he knows that Caleb hears them all the same. His gaze his furious, but he does at least lower the pistol to his side, which is probably the best Ben can hope for given the circumstances. Lord knows that if their situations were reversed, Ben wouldn’t manage even that. But if this is Ginny Hale, there has to be some solution that doesn’t end with someone bleeding into the Setauket mud.

“You’re Nate’s sister,” he says, and feels the jerky nod in response. “Please, Miss Hale, let me offer my deepest sympathies-”

That’s as far as Ben gets before she presses the blade closser against his throat. He swallows, unsure if he’s imagining the thin trickle of blood running down his neck. “You don’t get to do that, act all sorry when you’re the one who killed him.”

What? “The British army killed Nate. He was captured in New York-”

“And you sent him there.”

“He sent himself there, Ginny! He knew it was a suicide mission and he went anyway! I begged him to stay, I told him he was a fool, and do you know he said?”

“Enlighten me.”

“That people were dying every day, and he couldn't sit by and let it happen. People like you and me. Soulmates.”

“You have no right to that word. Nate was never yours.”

“No,” Ben agrees. “He was yours. And all he did was to try and keep you safe. So kill me if you want. Enact the revenge you feel so entitled to. I won’t make a move to stop you. But know this much.” Ben looks straight at Caleb, Caleb who’s no longer hiding the horror from his face. “How you felt when the Redcoats took him from you? All that pain and anger and emptiness that threatens to rip right through you? Kill me now, and that’s exactly what your going to do to Caleb here, except you’re going to make him watch his soulmate die.

“And I’m scared right now, Ginny, I really am, but not of you. I’m scared of leaving the man I love alone, and of what he’s going to become if he has to suffer what you did. Because me? I’d burn this whole damned country to ashes. And then all this would never stop. And Nate may not have been my soulmate, but he was my friend, and I’m pretty sure that’s not the future he died for. It’s your choice, Ginny. But he believed we could be better, and so do I.”

There’s nothing left for Ben to say. The world narrows to a pair of hazel eyes. If he is wrong about Ginny Hale, they will be the last thing he ever sees, and there are worst ways to go. Ben’s hardly aware of Abe, staring at him with eyes so wide they threaten to explode. He barely registers Ginny’s breath in his earn giving way to ragged sobs.

The knife falls into the mud.
  
(Ben doesn’t even notice he says it, but Caleb hears “The man I love,” and something inside him leaps in spite of the fear. It may take Ben forever to say it again, but Caleb knows, and he holds that knowledge close to his heart.)

“What do we do with her?” Caleb asks hours later. He knows how to deal with soldiers and spies wanting Ben dead. He has no idea how to react to a skinny girl with tearful eyes who Anna sweeps into a hug, and who held a knife to Ben’s throat. She’s a victim of this war, like so many it’s easier not to see. She’s also a threat. Caleb hates himself, truly, but s

he held a knife to Ben’s throat

and he’s not kidding when he asks “Kill her?”

“No.” Ben has that fire behind his eyes, the one that promises and idea that will most likely screw them all. “I’ve got a better idea. You say you snuck out of York City, Miss Hale?”

She nods.

“Would you be able to sneak back in?”

They return to camp with not one, but two agents recruited. Sackett is so impressed that he forgets to feign disapproval for at least a week.

There will be time to talk about this, later. To discuss how Ben is still a self-sacrificing fool who needs to learn not to put his own life on the line at every opportunity. To discuss the dreams that Caleb wakes from in cold sweat, images of a blade glistening against his neck still fresh behind his eyes. He’s not stupid. This is a war, and men are dying every goddamn day, but Caleb’s always been selfish at heat. Ben will not be one of those men, not if he can help it.

All this, they will discuss later. They’ll talk about it when Ben stumbles home in civilian clothes with another bulletwound. When Caleb’s can barely look at the patchwork of scars across his chest and Ben refuses to consider he’s broken. But now, they have a British captain to kill. It’s not just Abe who made them swear to get Simcoe, but Ginny Hale as well. It’s everyone who has lost their soulmate at the hands of that monster.

(It’s a boy with sandy hair and freckles who never learnt to plat his hair properly, and whom Ben will feel responsible for for the rest of his life.)

“Where did you come from?” Simcoe asks wig askew and blood splattered across his face.

“A little place you might have heard of called Setauket.”