You Give Liberty a Bad Name (a Percy Jackson AU)

For Ladies Fight In Other Ways

Georgia: July 1776
    Reyna had been many things in her life, but never a soldier, though it was her dearest desire to join the British army and rout the colonial rebels. Those rabble-rousing traitors cared more about their previous liberty than actual facts. How dare they complain about taxes when they paid less than a Londoner?
Fortunately for Reyna, she was not the only one to support the crown. Many of her neighbors were still undecided and she knew her father cared more about money than the war. He had fought in the French and Indian War. There he had met Bellona and she had given him two children. After Bellona left when Reyna was two, Reyna's father turned bitter. The war had already been on his mind before, but with Bellona gone, his one comfort was lost.
     Reyna reflected on these thoughts while she walked home from the marketplace, glad to have bought the tobacco her father wanted at a good price. The merchant who had sold it to her, Dakota, was a man whose thoughts were more focused on rum than his wallet. He was kind, but his thirst for alcohol kept him from doing the best he could.
      "I hear they declared independence from Britain," Reyna heard someone say.
      She turned around to see a lanky young man with sandy-colored hair. He was grinning. Across from him, a tall, thin man with hair as light as cornsilk snorted, "You support the traitors?"
      "Britain betrayed us, Octavian," the sandy-haired boy said.
       "Oh forget it Ben," Octavian sneered. "If you think Parliament betrayed us, then you're a traitor too. You're as bad as the Sons of Liberty!"
       "They're heroes!" Ben insisted.
      Octavian stepped forward and though Ben was taller, Octavian's demeanor made him more intimidating. He carried himself as if he were Heracles. Reyna has seen him before and never thought much of him, but now he had caught her attention. Her cheeks flushed with excitement as she watched the scene unfold before her.
       "You call destroying property heroism?" Octavian asked. "Those bloody traitors dumped tea into a harbor. They stole goods from the East India Company. They deserved what Britain did to them."
       "Parliament is tyrannical," Ben insisted.
         "I'd rather be ruled by a tyrant than a fool," Octavian said. "The English government has protected us for over a century. Without them, there will be anarchy in North America. The only tyrants here are the rebels."
       "You're a bloody Tory!" Ben screeched, lunging towards Octavian.
     Reyna ran forward without thinking and stuck out one foot. Ben tripped and fell, face forward, into the dusty road. Octavian leered down at him.
       "Not so clever are you?" he sneered. "Even a woman can beat you in a fight."
      "I don't fight women," Ben said, getting to his feet. "No man with honor does. No, I'll fight for my independence. I'll fight the British like a real man."
      Reyna looked at him and thought, and I'll spy for the British like a real woman.