And we forge bravely on. It is really interesting to look back at old writing.
To be fair, he was trying to be nice and cut the technical jibber-jabber out of his descriptions of his work, but she couldn't get any specifics if he simplified everything this much. 'I can assemble and empty the mag of an AK-47 faster than most people tie their shoelaces,' wasn't exactly something you could shout, especially when you were trying to maintain a cover of a high school principal.
One of the young interns whose voice was cracking had brought her a Capri sun pouch and a bag of pretzels, apologizing about the lack of better snacks. Leo was showing her around during her break from grading history papers for a teacher that was supposedly out on maternity leave. (Where on Earth had Annabeth found 50 3-page essays about European Vs American imperialism? And she had to actually pretend to grade them. Surely no one else put in this much work for a cover that was boring enough to be rock-solid.)
Memorizing designs for stealth choppers while holding a conversation was difficult.
"How come you have to grade all these papers instead of someone in the department?" he asked.
Yeah, how come? "A leader steps up." She shrugged. "And it's an advanced class, so finding a long term sub is taking a while. Anyway, about these helicopters. The cloaking is great, but what about flying low?"
Leo puffed up with pride that she had noticed that. "That was a hard one. I ran some stuff by Jason, he's been a big help with the aerodynamics side of things. He volunteered to test the prototypes last year." He continued about the angles of the blades while she tried to flip through the designs as nonchalantly as possible while considering whether Jason could be an accomplice or whether he just wanted to fly anything that would stay in the air.
"Why are there weapons decks?" she asked, wondering how he wasn't suspicious yet.
"Because I go above and beyond. And I get paid to do so" he joked.
"That's a little scary, you know. Having mounted guns on a helicopter you can't see. Who needs this kind of stuff?"
He looked a little offended. "I'm not selling them to the Taliban, for God's sake." He set both hands on the table in front of them and looked at her very seriously. "They work for the government. I checked it out and everything. I didn't want to ask too many questions; I could get in trouble. So I did the work."
Why, why did people think a Facebook and google search constituted 'checking out?' "I didn't think you were. It's just that sometimes I get paranoid about high tech weapons. I've seen them in the wrong hands, and they do a lot of damage." She rubbed her side. "Still got a piece of lead in here from back in the day."
"Is that a real bullet wound? From Afghanistan?" he asked, wincing but curious.
Monaco. A frag grenade. A grand prix driver with nicotine- yellow teeth. "Just a little souvenir." She turned to a different sheet filled with designs and studied it closely. "Let's talk about something else." This was getting exhausting, faking all these feelings to get information so painfully slowly when she could have just knocked him out and broken in a long time ago. But it was too late for that now, you couldn't take out someone when they had once made you an Almond-Butter-Dorito sandwich.
Leo was racking his brains for a good way to handle this. Organic life forms, especially female ones, were not quite his forte. "Right. So, um, glasses with infrared backscatter. Works through doors and stuff, so you can tell if someone or something is on the other side. It works in the dark, too." Of course he had to jump straight back to machines. She had seen something similar to this one once; she had seen a woman in the corner of a beauty parlor in Shanghai clutching a pair of shears, she had seen the unfair numbers, seen the knife in her own leg.
Reyna turned to look at Leo with a mixture of apprehension and incredulity. Here was a man who could make weapons and tools that were more advanced and more dangerous than anything she had ever seen, and yet he had no idea of their destructive potential. His talent was impossible to ignore. Suddenly she understood Lupa's thought process: Agent Royal's job had never been just to blaze through the shell companies Kronos owned and take Leo out of the equation. Any pawn on the chessboard could have done that, but that wasn't enough. That was leaving useful things on the table, and Lupa didn't believe in wastefulness. Leo was a useful thing, one she would not waste in a body bag or safe-house. Agent Royal worked without anyone knowing about it. Agent Royal's job was to control who used Leo Valdez's skills – without him having a clue.
Leo, unfortunately, had wildly misread the situation. "Hey, we can do something else, we can grab more snacks or something." Reyna decided to roll with the punches and followed him to a minifridge. He handed her a cup of frozen yogurt and took one for himself. "Listen, if I offended you or scared you, I didn't mean to. I'm sorry."
"Little things set me off sometimes. It's silly." She gave him a thin smile, ripping the foil off the cup.
"It's not silly. Bad things happen to people, and some stuff reminds you of those things." He said firmly. "Tell me what I gotta steer clear of, and I'll do it." His brown eyes were wide and earnest, this mattered to him. She mattered to him. That was new. That was strange, that was exciting.
That was the job.
"It's fine, really." She muttered, attacking the yogurt, not willing to admit why she was agitated. "I've got to face it at some point."
"That's my girl." The words slipped out of his mouth before he could stop them. She froze for a second, but changed subjects quickly to basketball. Leo looked relieved at the return to a lighter topic of conversation
"You have Jason. I love Piper, but the girl cannot shoot hoops." he complained half-heartedly. He was focused on Reyna's hand, and the fact that even the table next to him seemed to be telling him to go for it. There was a sort of rhythm to her – she stood tall, she broke down, she bounced back, and she insisted on buying him kolaches after kicking his butt at basketball. She was brave and unshakeable and human and hurting and he wanted to help her, he was falling for her, he was –
Spacing out. "I could beat you without Jason." She countered, grinning.
"I'd like to see you try." Jason called out, walking through the door in full pilot uniform. "Guess who hasn't slept in almost three days?"
"Then why are you here?" Leo tossed back. "Hit the hay, Grace. You've earned it."
"We need to settle an order of business before I go into hibernation." The bags under his eyes were enormous; long distance flights took a toll on him.
"Yes, I bought four gallons of orange juice. They were half off and you'll probably finish it in a week. Sue me." Leo confessed. Reyna gave him a 'really?' sort of look.
"I don't care about the orange juice, you weirdo." Jason laughed, shaking his head. "I was just thinking we should throw a birthday party for Piper. Her birthday is this coming Monday."
"A surprise party?" Reyna asked. "Won't that be hard considering she's over at your place so often?"
"We could ask Hazel if we could throw it in the café." Leo offered. "She's going to be there anyway." Jason nodded enthusiastically, fighting off a yawn. Leo grinned.
"I have a meeting with some lawyers this weekend." Reyna said. "I'm, uh, I have to help see to my abuela's will and some family land back home." The boys gave her sympathetic looks. "I'll be back for work on Monday, obviously, and I'll help where I can, but the weekend is booked."
(It was booked. Her trips were rarely on weekends, but a storm would be hitting the Ivory Coast just then, perfect timing for a fisherman who smuggled mercenaries to die tragically at sea.)
"I'll make a group-chat or something." Leo promised. "Go sleep, meathead." Jason didn't really want to argue.
Reyna made to leave after him, telling Leo she had to pack for Friday's trip. "I'll see you at breakfast." She said pleasantly, halfway out the door.
"Hey, so last time you did this, I mean, saw your abuela, your, uh, coping skills were kind of alcohol-dependent." He hesitated.
"I'm not gonna drink myself to death. I'll save that for Piper's birthday." She joked.
"I want to meet your abuela when she's better." Leo said, completely serious. "And I want to beat you at hoops when you are back. Sober."
"It's under control." She promised.
"No, it's not." His voice was harsher than he had meant for it to be. A foster father, a homeless woman, hell, even he himself (once) had tried to wash down grief with alcohol, tried to swallow the guilt and helplessness that went with it, and yet it always came back up the next morning with vomiting and headaches. "It is not under your control, and you have to live with it." He was almost shouting at her.
"I am under control." Reyna told him in a tight voice. She would have given anything to have not read a file, to not know why he felt so strongly about this. She didn't want him to be gentle with her, to lead her to believe she could afford to grieve, to heal. She didn't want to say the next words. "What would you know?"
"More than you think." He seemed aflame for a minute before he quieted. "I know how it is to feel it should have been you."
Reyna couldn't help it, that got under her skin. Lightning flashed in her eyes and she wanted to shake him and tell him she knew more dead people than living ones. She pulled the neck of her shirt down to just above her sternum. "See?" Her skin was unmarred.
Leo stood in stunned silence, cursing himself for being an idiot. He had met his share of former servicemen and women, he had said he wasn't going to trigger her, he should have realized Reyna had lived through loss too. "There's no bullet there." He managed to get out.
"That's because it's in someone else's skull, six feet under." She drew a sharp breath and spoke through gritted teeth "A good woman."
Leo watched as she strode to her car.
Reyna was always glad to hear from Clarisse, but especially now when Annabeth was making her go through the plan yet again. It wasn't going to be rocket science, she was to grab the Greek, codename Krios, from the wedding. She was to use his retinal scan to get into the Parliament building and scan their classified security footage to trace Kronos's patterns. Gwen had been posing as some sort of secretary there, and they would get the NIS to send one of their operatives to DC with them to stop Kronos in time. (This was Reyna's idea – the CIA couldn't technically operate domestically, but they could certainly oversee a foreign country's ops.)
Annabeth would use the stolen access codes to locate the aircraft carrier that had 'disappeared.' On board were the men and women from old money who had some things to say about modern western democracy – Clarisse would be taking them to the acropolis. (The bunker under it. For a friendly chat about their leader, his whereabouts, and the details of the expected attack on American soil.)
First, though, she had to land a helicopter with as much secrecy as possible while getting ready to crash a wedding. Annabeth didn't like running comms remotely, and she was being vocal about it as she wrestled Reyna's hair into an updo as the pilot herself tried to keep the chopper right side up in the wind.
"You always get to crash the parties." She griped. "I stabbed that guy in the foot one time and I'm stuck in desk duty." Reyna reminded her she'd technically be working from the chopper – she did not say that Annabeth's old partner, Luke, was an officer on the Princess Andromeda and no one wanted a repeat of the foot-stabbing incident. Besides, Clarisse was much better suited to storming an aircraft carrier.
"I pass for Mediterranean much better than you." She said smoothly. "And you're gonna have plenty of things to shoot in DC."
"I don't want to shoot up the Smithsonian. Or the Capitol Building. Or any of the monuments."
"Buildings can be rebuilt." Reyna said reassuringly. "Architecture and symbolic meaning aside, you can lay bricks again."
"They're not bricks. They're the bedrock of our political system, where the modern republic meets the democratic ideal." Annabeth's voice was passionate. She loved architecture, Reyna had heard her lectures on several missions and knew there was nothing she could say back. The helicopter landed quietly and Clarisse's jeep was next to it in an instant.
"You look very fetching, Miss Ramirez." She affected a high singsong voice, giving her formally-dressed friend a hand to climb down. Her mock-chivalry was met with a glare; this dress had seen combat in Islamabad and held up well.
"Shove it." Reyna faintly wondered if she had ever had a polite exchange with the woman.
"See if you can grab us some snacks from the wedding." Clarisse elbowed her in the rib.
"I'm sure we can eat somewhere after we stop the collapse of western society." Reyna returned drily. "Get busy, agents. Make contact with Thalia after you've finished and crossed the border."
"I CANNOT BELIEVE YOU!" Thalia roared as they sat packed together in the most non-descript car they could steal, trying to keep a towel pressed on Gwen's bleeding shoulder without jostling Clarisse's sprained ankle. "You are so goddamn lucky to be alive. You almost blew up the damn Acropolis!"
Clarisse was denying it was her fault and she would have been fine with a human backup team, sans dynamite – she wasn't scared to die, she only wanted them to get the information if she did. Reyna was loudly pointing out that 'hotfoot' meant to get there fast, and knocking out the Greek Intelligence officer and stealing a motorcycle to get from the beach to the center of Athens was technically Gwen's idea. Gwen's defense was that they could use the fact that Kronos technically could be a foreign enemy if they changed just a few things in his file so they didn't really need the NIS in the way. Annabeth was still trying to wrap her head around the fact that her teammates almost blew up her favorite monument while she had to hover overhead in the chopper to scramble a flight for them out of a country that was pretty anti -US (in a language she was largely pulling from google translate.) Thalia was enraged and yet strangely proud that they had changed the plan on the fly to help a (currently swearing for her acute need for an ice pack) team member.
"Why do you still have a dynamite stick in your bra after what happened in Melbourne?!" Gwen exclaimed.
"What happened in Melbourne is that I survived what could have been a suicide mission and took out a racist serial killer!" Reyna shot back, twisting around in the shotgun seat. "And I only put it down, I didn't light it. It would have been fine if that weird electric spear actually worked."
"For the last time, it works!" Clarisse shouted. "It just can't account for careless placement of explosives!"
"Would you shut up? I'm the only one that actually felt any exploding!" Gwen's voice was tight. Thalia tossed a pack to the backseat and Annabeth went to work with the first aid kit.
"Ladies, you gotta start putting more effort into staying alive." Thalia ordered, her voice tired. "If I have to make a next-of-kin visit for any of you idiots, I'll bring you back to life just to kill you myself." Reyna and Clarisse, both snarling angrily with (poorly disguised) worry and post-op adrenaline were about to make sharp replies when both of them remembered that Thalia had made two such visits recently.
Zoe's adopted parents had been told their daughter died in the line of duty and she hadn't felt pain – they were not informed about Reyna being captured and almost executed by Somalian human traffickers, and how Zoe had traded her life for the split second distraction it would take for Reyna to free herself and leave the place burning.
Bianca's younger brother had been told some story about bravery and sacrifice, and he hadn't bothered to listen, he had pointed at the marine liaison officer whose arm Annabeth was bandaging. Percy Jackson had worked with them again since then, but he rarely said 'semper fi' anymore for fear of breaking his word.
"I don't want to make a next-of-kin visit for you either." Annabeth told Thalia in a brusque voice. "Your mom is a real pain in the butt."
"Oh, don't bother telling her." Thalia laughed, a little bitter. "I've got no other living kin to notify, so there you are"
Reyna shot Annabeth a look in the rearview mirror. No one knew what had become of him – but Thalia had had a brother.
I wonder if its noticeable that I used to watch a lot of action/spy movies.