I shot up, gasping for breath. I looked wildly around.

I saw Lafayette laying on a nearby cot, haphazardly bandaged. His skin was seriously burned and crisped. But when I saw that his chest was rising and falling steadily, I breathed a sigh of relief.

And then I felt a sharp pain in the back of my head. I yelped at the sudden pang and touched the back of my head to find that there was a large bandage slung around my own scalp.

I began to take in my surroundings.

I was in some sort of medic tent, as there were a few other sick and wounded people in here as well. The tent material was made out of a rough canvas hastily sewn together with string. The cot I was on had a single pillow with a thin blanket covering my body.

There was a small, stout woman with dark, curly hair spilling out from behind her back with caramel skin tending to another patient. Once she was finished with them, she turned around and saw that I was awake. She rushed over quickly.

"Ah, good, you're awake. How are you feeling?" she asked, feeling my forehead with the back of her hand.

"Painful," I said, rubbing at a spot on my chest that was aching. "Listen, who are you? And where am I?"

She smiled sadly at me. "I'm Peggy Schuyler. And you're in New York City. You and your friend over there--" She jerked her thumb over her shoulder at Lafayette. "--Were found in the wreckage of the Airship Cordelia. You two were the only survivors. Don't worry, by the way. He's okay, he's just on heavy sedatives. His burns are pretty bad, and so I put a salve on them regularly. My sisters, Angelica and Eliza, should be here in a few minutes. They were scavenging for parts."

"Oh," I said, not knowing what else to say.

It was impossible to survive an airship crash. It had never been done before...

"You might notice you're hair is shorter than normal," she called, already walking away to tend to someone else. "It got burned a little, so Angie had to cut it. You look handsome, though. Speaking from a lesbian point of view, that is. I can only imagine how John will react!"

"W-who?"

"John Laurens," she responded, walking over to Lafayette's bedside. "He's my best friend and he's one of the gayest human beings on the planet." She scoffed. "Oh my God, Lizzie," she muttered. "This is not okay anymore, hon. You can't just throw bandages onto people and call it good."

She began to re-apply the bandages on Lafayette's skin, making them more secure and covering more areas.

I suddenly felt the very strong urge to use the bathroom.

"Uh, Peggy, where's the--"

"Bathroom?" she finished for me. "It's down there, at that exit," she said, then pointed past me. I turned my head to see a flap at the end of the tent. She gave me an uncertain look. "But, uh, just... just be careful."

I threw the blankets off of me and froze.

My right leg was gone.

Amputated above the knee. All that was left was a stump covered in bloodied bandages.

My blood ran cold, and a churning feeling made itself known in the pit of my stomach.

"P-Peggy?" I said, my voice shaking madly. "W-what...m-m-my leg... I-It's..."

She sighed, then made her way over to me. "It was too badly mangled to be fixed," she explained gently. "Completely crushed beyond repair. We had to remove it. I-I'm so sorry, honey." She then gave me a quick hug. "What's your name, by the way? We never found out."

"A-Alexander Hamilton," I said, reaching out with tentative fingers to touch the bandages wrapped around the end of what used to be my leg. "M-My friend's name is Lafayette."

She gave me another sad smile. "Thanks, boo. That really helps." She helped me up, grabbing me a pair of crutches. "Here. If you need to get up and walk around, you can use these."

I nodded in thanks, still in shock about the loss of my limb. I slowly made my way over to the bathroom, getting used to the feel of the crutches. I relieved myself and went back and got back onto the cot and watched as Peggy peddled about the tent.

She was a very beautiful woman, and was surprisingly very short, around 4'11". Her hair was a dark brown and was amassed into a very curly ponytail. She had a pair of hazel eyes set into a dark face. She almost looked Hispanic. She had a pair of full lips with a thick-bridged nose.

Her clothes were a combination of ladylike and full-on badass. She wore a short yellow dress with sleeves that ended just above her elbow. The skirt went a little past her knees with a white slip underneath that was only a fraction longer than the actual dress. She wore a yellow corset over-top of her waist that was laced with yellow ribbons. Below her dress, she wore a pair of black leather boots embossed with golden designs. On her hands were a pair of fingerless leather gloves

I hadn't noticed before, but she had a pair of goggles on her forehead made of copper with a leather strap holding them onto her head. The lenses were made of a strange purple glass. She also wore a tool belt around her waist.

"Hey, Alex," she said, standing at a table with a bunch of medical tools on it. "I need to change your bandages in a minute, but, um, when you're all healed up, do you want me to make you a leg?"

I was taken aback by the suddenness of the question. "W-what?"

"Do you want a prosthetic leg?" she explained. "I'm an inventor and a mechanic, as well as a medic, so I could make you a leg. I could get Eliza to use some of her animation magic on it so that you can still walk like normal. Does that sound good?"

"Uh, s-sure," I said, not knowing what else to say. "Thanks...?"

She chuckled. "No problem, man. You sound like a tough guy, so I figured I'd better stay on your good side."

"N-Not really," I admitted, scratching the back of my neck. "I just tried to stay out of the way of everyone."

She gave a small "hmm", then said, "Well, I have a feeling you're gonna fit in just fine here, boo. You look like a fighter. The boys will love you. And I'm fairly certain Washingdad will, too. You can never tell with him, though. His temper's on high right now, what with the attacks on our supplies."

"Washingdad?"

"George Washington," she said, filling a needle with a gooey green syrup from an amber bottle. "We call him Washingdad, though. Just to make him mad. Plus, he's like a dad to a lot of us. Well, to me, at least. My real dad hates me because I'm a lesbian. Same deal with John, but he's not a lesbian."

I laughed a little. "I feel you. My dad was abusive for a while, but then he left when I was 10. Then my mom died two years later, and I was shipped to London to live with my cousin. Peter's a real nice dude. I love him a lot. He sent me here to go to King's College because I got a scholarship there, and the only way on the airship was if I worked as a coal shovel-er. I met Laf when we made a stop in France to pick up some goods, and we've been friends ever since."

"London?" Peggy said, her tone of voice becoming more interested. "What's it like there?"

"Um, well..." I thought back to my home of four years. "It's big, it's crowded, it's filled with lots of inventors and magicians and stuff like that. Um, I lived in this brownstone neighborhood. A lot of people were really nice there--"

"PEGS!" a young woman shouted whilst running in. She had a light complexion framed by wavy black hair that was completed by a set of soft chocolate eyes that were fraught with worry. "Pegs! Maria got caught under a beam! S-She's bleeding really badly, I-I don't know what to do!"

Peggy's face went white as a sheet. She dropped everything and ran out the tent with the woman, grabbing the first-aid kit.

I laid back down, staring up at the ceiling.