Chapter Text
Charles hasn’t laughed this hard in a very long time.
It was late August. The gray streets of London were oppressively hot, made worse by the particularly cloudy day, yet the streets and parks teemed with families and children whose sole purpose was to rush at adults and pierce their ears with their screams. Another reason Charles hadn't had children. The only way to find some fresh air was to take refuge in a bar. And so he did, taking a seat at the bar of a pub not far from his home. A bold choice—Charles didn't like mingling with the people who frequented these barbaric places—but now that he wasn't working in his office anymore, he had to be creative with his time. He waited a few minutes before the bartender deigned to come over to him. At first, he didn't even look at her, keeping his sunglasses on and adjusting his watch, muttering his order (the oldest whiskey they had, double). Then he looked up and saw the outline of a woman. He raised his eyebrows and pushed his glasses down to the tip of his nose to get a better look at her.
She was dressed simply, a white apron over a t-shirt and black trousers, her reddish hair in a bun. No make-up. A perfect posture. He met the irritated gaze of two gray irises, as if she'd had a long day and now he'd arrived to give her the final blow.
He knew this woman. He'd read the worst things about her in the past few weeks. He even had a chance to introduce himself at her, at an old meeting, when she was nothing more than a teacher in one of DICOMY schools.
Charles couldn't help but laugh in her face. A little hysterical, perhaps, enough to make a couple of men turn in their direction, but that sight had just shifted this tedious day into a memorable one. In contrast, the now-disgraced Jeanine Rowder looked at a corner of the room, arms folded, lips pressed together, back straight, retaining a shred of dignity. "When you're done making fun of my misery..."
Charles cleared his throat behind his fist with a small “sorry,” then resumed his sniggering.
"Oh, you find that so funny, don't you?" Jeanine suggested, her mouth twisting into a fake snooty smile.
Charles took off his sunglasses and wiped one eye with his index finger and thumb. "How could I not? How the mighty have fallen."
Jeanine rolled her eyes and sighed. "As if you hadn't met the same fate, Mr. Werner."
"I resigned, I wasn’t fired," Charles said as he placed aside his sunglasses and raised a finger in correction. "There's a substantial difference."
Rowder turned as red as a beet.
The end of Minister Rowder's government, as some tabloids had called it, had finished rather tragically. Opposition had grown ever stronger since she had been photographed for what she was—a woman willing to beat up a child just to be right—and although she had made it seem like a personal choice in front of the cameras, Charles knew that either Burton or someone else had ordered her immediate dismissal not long after that. Of course he knew, he'd lost count of how many dismissals he himself had ordered in the past for similar reasons.
Jeanine looked at him. "And yet you're here... So I guess unemployment gives you more time to bounce from bed to bed, right?"
Charles's smile widened. "I don't need anyone else to feel good about myself. Things haven't changed much for me... Besides, who's to say I didn't have time for it before?"
Jeanine grimaced in disgust, looking away. "God, you're all the same..."
Charles rested an arm on the counter and began tapping his index finger on the black marble. "I imagine it's not easy for you right now... How's Harriet?"
Jeanine shrugged. "Who knows? I haven't heard from her since they “banished” us. What's the point?"
"Maybe you gave up too soon." Jeanine raised an eyebrow in an implied question, and Charles continued. "You thought you could do it big and quickly, and you bit off more than you could chew. Looking back, don't you think going there, with your entourage of bodyguards, was a risky move?"
From the look on Jeanine's face, he was sure it was the only thought on her mind before bed. "Someone had to intervene. Harriet just wasted a lot of my time."
"You wanted to intervene yourself, and that was your downfall. A personal vendetta. Anger, Jeanine, is the last thing we lose control of when we're about to lose, so you knew you were in trouble by then."
"What about you?" Jeanine replied, trying to change the subject. "You didn't seem too concerned about your position."
Charles wasn’t fooled. "I only controlled a system. You planned to erase what it had at its roots. Let's just say I landed on a pile of feather pillows, while you fell face-first onto the concrete." He blinked. “I had alternatives, you know? What do you have, instead? A pub?”
Jeanine squinted her eyes and shook her head slightly. “My mother needs an income. Not everyone has what you have. Some have to earn their place.”
"Ah!" Charles exclaimed. "So that's what you wanted, to prove yourself, and in the process avenge your father by taking it out on a man who didn't even know who he was."
Jeanine slammed her fist in front of Charles, startling someone at the other end of the long counter, but he remained impassive. Her teeth bared. "You don't know shit about me or my father, okay?" she hissed.
"And here we go again with the anger," Charles said, disappointed. "To think I was interested in following all that story. How do you think you're going to get back on track if you're affected by a few nasty comments from somebody?"
Jeanine gasped. "I..." She looked at him for a moment, relaxed her face and then nodded. "I see, that's how you did it, right? It's a game for you, since all the money you have isn't enough."
"My social status doesn’t have anything to do with it. You might learn a few things if you calm down for a moment and listen to the advice of those who know more than you do." Charles wet his lips. "Yours was too direct an attack to work. Perhaps your idea was to knock down the pillar, Arthur and his wards, to bring down the palace, the magical community, but it doesn't always work that way. First, you need to make sure your ranks are stable, and I've seen you make quite a bit of progress with many professionals. But then your arrogance got the better of you, and you thought you no longer needed allies. You shouldn't be so angry with someone when you can destroy everything around them with the right alliances."
"Why?" Jeanine asked acidly. "You're about to tell me I have a powerful one right in front of me?"
Charles snorted. "Not me personally... but I have a contact who might interest you, given what you were planning on doing with Lucifer… And while you're at it, could you bring me my drink?"