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The first time it happens, Aaron is five. He sees his mother back before she got sick, and notices how lively she is, how brilliant. He sneaks back in time to see her throughout his life, and loves something different about her each time. He doesn't know how or why it works; only that this way he can finally know her.
She notices him the third time when he's ten, and she's delighted, greeting him as an old friend. "It worked, then! You're like me."
He has no idea what she's talking about, but it does not seem to deter her. "Listen, my darling. It may seem strange to you, but we do not have much time. I cannot teach you the rules the way my mother did for me. Only know this: you cannot alter the past. Alter your conduct, if you see something that frightens you, a future you do not wish…that is allowed. But you cannot do your deeds over again, so you must do what is right the first time."
Even at the age of ten, Aaron is astute. He sees she does not meet his eyes when she tells him. He wonders what she means when she says it worked. But already she is fading from his view, and try as he might, he cannot find his way back to her.
Aaron is not a good time traveler, as far as he can tell. He has little control over where he lands, and he can never stay for long. The past is easier than the future—he can stay for an entire day, sometimes, and that's how he figures out his mother had lied to him, when he rewrites a case to be sure he has the wording exactly right. Still, even though he can never see into the future for long, he cannot help trying. Cannot help wondering whether his life will matter, and all the loss he's endured will somehow be redeemed through his deeds.
When he's sixteen years old he sees Alexander Hamilton for the first time, aiming a gun at his older self across a killing field, and it frightens him. He does not know this man, but he's struck by how intense his erstwhile opponent is, how focused. He tries to keep himself there, so he can see how it ends, but it is not to be—he ends up back in his body, in his own time, and every time he tries to see it again, there's only darkness.
From this he deduces that the other man must kill him. I have to change it, he thinks. I have to shoot him before he shoots me.
But no, that isn't the right way to do it, is it? Perhaps it is as Grandfather says, and there's no way to avert God's punishment. The only way to be saved is to behave as though you might be.
I will be his friend, decides Aaron. I will be the sort of man whom no one wants to kill. He practices his smile, does his best to threaten no one, to be kind.
He knows he has been given this gift by God, for a reason. He knows he can and must change the future. But because he knows, he decides to be careful. Act in small ways. Never do a thing today which he can put off until tomorrow. The last thing he wants is to waste what he's been given and bring about disaster. He's never forgotten his mother looking away from him.
He meets his daughter for the first time when he's standing outside her mother's door, hesitating over whether to call on her. He knows what he's doing is wrong, in a thousand ways. He knows if they get caught it could ruin her.
He also knows, because he couldn't stop himself from peeking into the future one day, that her redcoat husband dies. He cannot bear to find out if it's his fault. He does not know if he will be able to make himself walk away from her if it is.
"What are you waiting for?" A little girl, not more than ten or twelve, sidles up to him. She looks very much like Theodosia, but Aaron recognizes her dark eyes. He sees them in the mirror every day.
"The right time, I guess," he smiles. He is not surprised to find her here, somehow. It seems as though they've already met. "It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Miss—" But he knows.
"Miss Burr," she says, offering her hand for him to kiss.
"Pleasure to meet you, Miss Burr." A horrible thought occurs to him. "I'm just meeting you, but…you have met me? We…"
Miss Burr wrinkles her nose. "That's a stupid question, Papa. I just saw you this morning. We live together."
"Oh," says Aaron, his chest tightening from the sheer relief of it. "That's…that's good. Are you here to prod me into going into the house, then?" That seems like something a child of his might do, taking no chances regarding her parents' union. Aaron approves, and is charmed.
"No," Miss Burr says. "I was hoping to see Mama, actually, but it doesn't look like she's coming outside today."
That's when Aaron notices the little girl is dressed in mourning. "Oh," he says again, the grief crashing over him. How strange to know the end before he even starts.
Miss Burr looks at him with something approaching pity. "Papa," she says. "Stop waiting for the right time." She kisses his cheek. He can almost feel the pull taking her back to her own time, an echo of the anchor that holds him.
"My dear," he calls after her as she begins to run off. He realizes he does not know his own daughter's name. "Wait."
"Theodosia," she calls back over her shoulder, with a grin. "I have to get home or you'll scold."
"My dear Theodosia," he says. "If you…if you come back, I'll try to bring your mother on walks when I can. So you can see her."
"Oh, thank you, Papa, thank you so much!" And then she's gone in a whirl of light, into the future, and Aaron knocks on Theodosia's door.
Theo is a better time traveler than he's ever been. They talk, sometimes, about their adventures; she ranges farther than he ever did, hundreds of years into the future, and tells him stories Aaron would never have believed had they not come from her lips. While he can only go so far ahead, never beyond a decade or so, and only for an hour or so at a time, for her there are no limits at all. He worries, sometimes, that she just won't come back one day. That she will find a time more congenial to her and stay there.
It is she who first tells him about the play. She's eight when she arrives back, breathless and giggling from a trip into the future.
"Papa!" she says. "You'll never guess what I found out. There's a play about you and Mr. Hamilton, and a Negro plays you!"
"You shouldn't encourage her in these stories," Theodosia says irritably from the other side of the parlor.
"Does the man capture me?" asks Aaron, bemused.
Theo looks at him like he's asked the most absurd question in existence. "I couldn't get tickets, Papa. No one can. The whole world wants to see it!"
"Oh, the whole world?" he asks, genuinely charmed. It's probably nothing, a little masque; but to know that his and Hamilton's names survive into the future; that they're linked…well. Perhaps he has done what he could, after all. Perhaps their hours spent in company and the little pieces of advice Aaron manages to dole out are enough. They could do great things together; of that Aaron is sure.
"Mmm-hmm! But don't worry. She said you and I will get to see it eventually. That it's worth waiting for, until we are together again."
The hairs on the back of Aaron's neck stand up. "She?"
"Grandmama."
"Theodosia!" says her mother. "That is quite enough."
Aaron has many occasions to wish his gift more powerful than it is. Not for himself, but for Theo. He wants to make a world where she can live out her days, instead of taking refuge in more and more frequent trips to a future not her own. All the stature he possesses cannot give her a world in which she's seen as anything more than a potential wife. When his bill in the New York legislature falls through, the one that would have given her the vote, he goes to her.
"You knew it would not pass," he said. "Yet you let me do it anyway."
Theo shrugs. "Well, someone had to try it first, and the history books all say it's you."
Aaron can't help but ask. "When does it succeed?"
Theo makes a face, which tells him enough. Her goodbye kiss tastes of unearned absolution, and he hates it.
It's not until Aaron leaves her that he realizes he's forgotten to ask the pivotal question, about himself and Hamilton. He wants to call after her, but thinks better of it.
When she marries Alston, in large part to cover his debts, Aaron's heart breaks. It's not that there's anything wrong with Alston. He seems all that is amiable in a gentleman. But he's not Theo's equal and partner, the way Theodosia was for him. Theodosia, whom he does not even travel back to catch stolen glimpses of anymore. It's too painful.
"Tell me, my dear," he says. "Are you…are you happy?"
She knows he doesn't mean just now. "Yes, Papa," she says. "I do have a happy marriage. It takes some time and some doing, but I know this to be true." But her smile doesn't quite reach her eyes. She doesn't tell him about her trips anymore, and has become more inscrutable even to him.
As he grows older, he loses what skill he had at navigating time. Rather than hours, he's granted only minutes, and it's like existing in a dream. Nothing he does is effective, until the election.
He cannot bear to look and see the outcome, and no foreknowledge is granted him, but he can't say he's surprised. He'd always known Hamilton would destroy him, after all. More fool him, for trusting his enemy.
In the weeks before the duel, he loses the ability altogether. There is nowhere for him to go, and it makes him sick with terror. He feels a bizarre sort of sympathy with Hamilton for the first time in a long while, then…is this how time has always felt for him, crawling along toward oblivion? Small wonder the man is what he is.
He faces Hamilton across the killing field. Out of the corner of his eye he sees, also, his younger self, eyes wide with horror.
He knows how this must go. He's always known, somehow, that nothing he could ever do would make any difference. He almost lets it happen.
Only…Theo. He has not done enough for her. Has not given her the world he wished to. If he dies here today, she's trapped with no one but Alston for a protector.
There is one way he can change the outcome.
He fires.
Soon after, his Theo is lost at sea, and Aaron goes mad with grief. It was all for nothing, then, all of it. He does not even let himself hope that she somehow jumped to another time, and made a life for herself. He's always been pulled back to his own time. Why would it not be the same for her?
Then he goes through her papers and sees a note in her hand. Hamilton: An American Musical, it says. July 9, 2016.
He laughs. First, because he can barely travel beyond a day, when he's capable at all now. Second, because of course Theo would see it as no object. Third, because of course the play would be named after Hamilton, what else would he expect? There was the poetry, he thinks. He supposes he will be cast as the villain.
But he will see her again. He allows himself to hope she will be old, when he does. That she escaped, and will have more than one last bittersweet moment with him.
He is old when he manages at last. Gradually, the future opens up to him. He sees himself drop into oblivion. Even Hamilton is largely forgotten, and for some reason that pains Aaron even more than his own legacy being ruined. Alex would hate it so much, he thinks, and wonders when he started thinking of Hamilton as Alex again. He laughs bitterly when he sees, by contrast, what history has done with Washington and Jefferson, neither of whom were ever heroes. He has trouble deciding which of them would be more smug about it. Probably Washington—Thomas at least had a sense of humor, a trait the General had never shown the slightest evidence of possessing.
There are decades he can't reach, with no rhyme or reason he can see to the pattern, and then all of a sudden the play bursts into existence, both new and completely inevitable at once, and Aaron can be fully present in a vivid and frightening future.
It's a nightmare getting tickets, even forewarned as he has been, and he has to try several times. He is lucky Theo left him the date, but even so he almost gives up. He is not made for this future, with its cacophony of voices. I am so tired, he thinks. It is so long. I want to see my daughter. Even a glimpse, just for an instant. He knows one instant can reverberate across centuries.
He is curious about the play, in an idle sort of way. He wonders whether it will move him at all, whether he will recognize himself and his compatriots in these strangers' faces.
It turns out he does, more than he ever expected. Leslie Odom, Jr. moves him to tears, and as he exits the theater Aaron feels at peace, for the first time in a long time. How did he know? Aaron wonders. How did Miranda know I did it for her? No one had ever guessed, and he certainly hadn't told anyone.
When the lights go up, he sits still in his seat for a long time. Oddly enough, his first thought is, I can't wait to tell Alex about this. He has little faith left in a heavenly reward, still less in his likelihood of sharing in it. And yet.
Were you aiming for the sky, Hamilton? Even now he has no idea. He would have sworn the man had not been, but he also has to admit it's just the kind of thing Hamilton would do.
She is waiting for him outside, serene and composed in the rain. Even from a distance he can see the silver in her hair, the crow's feet around her eyes, and it's the greatest wonder he's seen on this night of marvels. She wears the outlandish costume typical of women of this time; long trousers and a jacket–a woman of business, he thinks, though she wears a plain gold band on her left hand.
“Can you believe we’re here, on this night of all nights?” Theo asks him.
“It took me seven trips to get the tickets,” Aaron says. “Something about a bot? Whatever that is.”
“Only seven?” she asks. “Sixty-five-year-old me had to coordinate with nineteen-year-old me in ways I don’t understand to get me here. Apparently it will all make sense when I’m older.”
She even speaks like a woman of the period–all brusque, declarative sentences. Aaron wants to offer her his arm, but it would seem like too much of a liberty.
“Did you like the play?” she asks.
“Like is perhaps not the word I would use,” he says.
“Even now you won’t make statements,” she says, smiling at him with such affection he feels his heart overflow.
“Theo, I…”
She holds up a hand, and he is silent. He could listen to her speak forever.
"I thought you should know. We can come here because we're known, you and I. I knew about it and so I knew I could come here and avoid the shipwreck, only I…missed my timing by a decade or so because of that mess with the towers…but never mind. The point is…"
"Theo!" A tall, muscular woman runs up to them and slings her arm around Theo's shoulder, casually possessive. She's brilliant, jubilant, flushed with triumph. She looks, Aaron thinks, a little like Hamilton around the eyes and mouth, or maybe that's just the ferocious energy of her. She kisses Theo full on the mouth, and Theo flushes with pleasure, even as her eyes slide uneasily over to Aaron.
"Honey, c'mon, don't you want to stagedoor, we've been waiting for this for, like, ever…"
"You have no idea," Theo says with the wry smile of hers Aaron loves so well.
Just then there's a roar from the crowd, and Aaron's eyes are drawn upward with the rest of them, to where Miranda stands on the balcony above them. He bows to the man; it's the least he can do.
"Okay, seriously, hon, we gotta go," Theodosia's wife says, for such she must be…the twin of Theodosia's wedding band graces the woman's left hand, and she as good as melts into Theo, as if they're one flesh. His daughter had never let any man touch her so familiarly, not even Alston.
"Oh, no, wait, he's…"
"You go on ahead, my dear," Aaron says firmly, and he knows she can hear what he's not saying: never look back. Stop waiting. Blow them all away. I love you. "Give my compliments to Mr. Odom, if you can." And that…that's a tangle of regret he will never unravel, and never attain absolution for, but he's used to regrets of that sort by now.
She smiles at him, a little wistful, and then she and her lady stride away arm-in-arm like they own New York City. Knowing her, they probably do.
And then he is back in his time, back in his frail, useless body, and there is so much he wants to say to her but he never got the chance, but he is at peace, for at last he understands what she was trying to tell him. He was known to history, enough for Miranda to understand him and Odom to sing him back into their narrative, so that the truest thing about him, his love for his daughter, could bring her to safe harbor. Together they had given Theo the world, and what a world they would make!
It’s enough. What he did is enough.