This coffee shop was, objectively, a terrible place to have important meetings, Annabeth decided. Too much sun, too echoey, too cute and cosmopolitan.
She'd been the one to set the meeting, but that was neither here nor there. This meeting was objectively terrible in itself, but she'd known that would be the case.
But she shifted slightly in her seat in the sunny just-below-street-level cafe that she hoped was far away enough from the Hill that she wouldn't be recognized, and took a sip of her fine-enough-but-too-expensive-for-what-it-was iced latte.
Finally, the bell above the door jingled, and Annabeth did her best to channel her inner Drew Tanaka and look bored as the sandy-haired congressman from Tennessee sat down at her table.
"Annabeth. Good to see you." Luke flashed a smile, picture-perfect white canines gleaming in the late January light. "How long has it been?"
"Since you quit your job, switched parties, and ran against every principle you've represented your entire life?" Annabeth replied coolly. "A while, Luke. Or should I say, Representative Castellan? I never did formally congratulate you."
"That's okay, I got the President's form letter when I was sworn in." A muscle in Luke's cheek twitched. "That stung, you know. Years of working for him, years of clerking and working on the Hill, and all I got was a form letter."
"I'm sure you got lots of personal notes and congratulatory messages from your new party." Annabeth crossed her arms. "I'd ask why you left, but…"
"You shouldn't have to." Luke shook his head. The twist of his mouth was somewhere between reproachful and bitter, but the look in his eyes was just… sad. But maybe Annabeth was imagining that. It seemed she'd just imagined so many things about him, after all.
"You were one of us." Annabeth shook her head.
"No." Luke set a hand on the table with enough force to make the ice cubes in Annabeth's latte clink together. "I wasn't. Neither of us were. Maybe now… maybe you've all found a camaraderie since. But it's always been Chiron Brunner's house and we happened to work there. It's always been promises of policy and no actual changes. Promises and promises that just never get kept. I said as much and was told to shut up and keep writing speeches."
"Writing words you didn't believe in and putting them in the President's mouth. I remember."
"I didn't realize you'd heard that." The confusion in Luke's voice sounded genuine.
"It was like I was invisible to you, those last few weeks." Annabeth shook her head. "Remember when we first started on Brunner's team, and you told me that workplace would be like a family?"
"I remember." Luke gave her a strange look. "Are you telling me it hasn't turned out to be that, and you're ready to consider another point of view?"
Annabeth stirred her coffee with a paper straw that was slowly going limp. "I'm telling you that I want to understand. How you got from where we started to where you are now. That… I don't want to believe that it happened as quickly as it seemed."
Luke sighed. "Beth, you know where we both started. Back at Duke, when we both just wanted to change the world… the policies were broken, the government wasn't fixing them, so we went and backed a guy we thought would do well."
"Right." Annabeth took a sip of her coffee.
"We did everything right." Luke's hand, still on the table, clenched into a fist. "And it's never been good enough. It's never been enough. My mom can't get a job because she'll lose her disability insurance. Kids still get shot in schools because our laws aren't enough to protect them. Our personal data isn't secure because companies on other continents own the things we write and make and we don't have alternatives made here. Our sense of national pride…"
"It's a broken system, Luke. Doing it right— it takes time, it takes bipartisan work, it takes…" Annabeth swallowed down all of the hundred things that came to mind. "Not the point. We had something good. We were working towards something good. And you really think switching parties— to the party that's been working against improvement to the system in every category you just said you care about— was going to be any better?"
"I don't want to overhaul the system, Beth. I want to make a new system— a better one." Gone was the too-bright politician's smile, gone was the perpetual dimple that flashed in his cheek. Luke was gravely serious, a tiny twang of fervency tightening his words as they came out of his mouth. "Don't you see? We could build something so much better. Like we used to talk about."
"Like you used to talk about. You don't care who you hurt in the process, do you?" Annabeth thought of Silena, of the press leaks, of her own fevered panic when the news of improper relationships in the White House had broken. "Me, Silena, Beckendorf. God, even Reyna— you don't care what happens to any of us, do you? The people who have been working so hard to fix the system you used to say you believed in?"
"Look, I didn't want to be a politician." Luke ran a hand through his hair, mussing the perfectly neat strands. There was gray at his temples now, Annabeth noticed. That was new. "I'm a good guy. I've always been a good guy. You know that. But… John's vision— the idea I want to work toward, the system this country could have— it doesn't pay to be the kind of good guy we thought we were, back then."
"John. John Kronos?" Annabeth crossed her arms. "I didn't want to believe it, you know."
"Believe what? That he thinks he'd be a better leader than Brunner?" Luke scoffed. "Please."
"Luke…"
"We did everything this system ever asked of us, Annabeth. And not a damn thing changes. So when he had ideas for a better way to do things— when he told me he could topple the leadership and make way for a new kind of America— of course I listened. You would have, too."
"You really still think I'll switch sides and join you, don't you." Annabeth swallowed hard at the lump that rose unexpectedly in her throat. "Even after… I got shot, Luke. I almost died. Because you and your vision of a new system saw to it that a bullet came flying towards me and the President. Has it occurred to you for a second that any form of new leadership that comes along with bankrolling white supremacists and shooting people might not be a good starting point?"
Luke's voice shifted, now almost a plea. "Come on, Beth. We used to talk about the kind of America we could shape. You can't make an omelet without cracking a few eggs— think about the early days of this country. There were growing pains— kicking out the people who were here first, burning down the forests, brother killing brother less than a hundred years later."
"And you think doing more of that is a good idea?" Annabeth shook her head in disbelief. "Oh, right. John Kronos thinks it's a good idea. I swear— does he have something on you? How the hell do you end up working with him to wire money to an offshore account to then pass it along to members of the White Aryan Resistance? How the hell does that happen?"
"So the Secret Service or the Pentagon or whoever has that on tape, huh." That muscle in Luke's cheek twitched again. "Fine. Won't stop the pieces that are all in motion— the revolution's already begun?"
"By revolution, you mean the violent overthrow of our government?" Annabeth raised both eyebrows. "Orchestrated by a sitting member of Congress."
"I am sorry you got hurt." Luke reached towards her, like he was trying to take her hand in his.
Annabeth yanked it back. "Maybe chew on that while you're working with Kronos. And consider taking responsibility for it— you're not 'sorry I got hurt' if you're not sorry that YOU hurt me. You paid the guy to be there. You as good as pulled the trigger yourself."
That pleading note in his voice was back. "I loved you, Beth. I still love you."
"I loved you, too." Annabeth stood up and slid her chair back. "Too bad now the sight of you makes me sick."
As she walked away, she hit STOP on the small wearable recorder that she'd tucked in her pocket the moment she'd sat down at the coffee shop.
Can you tell I like the musical and the Luke/Percy foils? Always have, somewhat suspect I always will. Anyway, don't take steps to overthrow the government, folks.
In other news- I've got most of the remainder of this fic plotted and/or written, so keep an eye out over the next 2-3 weeks, as I'll be wrapping it up. As always, I love love love to hear your thoughts, so please don't hesitate to leave a comment or two as you read! ~GT