Work Text:
“Hi, I’m Daja, here with Tris and Briar for another episode of ‘Take Advantage of the Law Until They Close the Loopholes’ and today we’re actually going to take you back to the basics a little bit and talk about pensions.”
“Now, I know that most of you are more like T and I than Daja here, and a pension is pretty much as likely to happen to you as a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but the girls have actually broken down the history and the math a little so that once you’ve unionized and seized the means of production you’ll have an idea of what to demand.”
-click-
The man stops the track and raises an eyebrow. “Well, Miss Fa Toren,” he says, doing a terrible job of hiding the triumphant gleam in his eye, “it sure sounds to me like your wife and platonic life partners are spreading some very un-American ideals. One might almost call them… communist.”
Sandry suppresses a sigh. Please. She’d dealt with worse at fourteen, when all anyone wanted to know about American politics was what the president’s niece thought she was doing sharing a wing in the White House with three other people, two of whom were girls. (Nevermind that the close contact was necessary after being kidnapped by pirates and getting lucky enough to escape minutes before they were going to kill Tris for kicking a man.)
“Senator Fa Toren, actually.” She says, making sure that her smile is detached and just on the right side of condescending. “And my partners are openly supportive of encouraging a grassroots socialist movement across the country, as anyone who follows either Tris or Briar on social media knows.” Thank god we use a pseudonym whenever I’m in the studio so there’s at least some kind of plausible deniability, she thinks. Sandry’s aware of exactly how much she has to mislead right now but if Tris sees this interview she will be in deep shit at home. “And while I think that some of their wording might be a little… aggressive, I don’t personally have anything against unions or pensions. In fact, as a firefighter, my wife has both. Granted,” Sandry pauses to smile with teeth, “by the time she’s ready to retire, she’ll likely not be physically capable of any kind of work anymore.”
Most of the leeway that she’s granted through name recognition and pedigree is used up by the fact that she’s not only has a wife, but her wife is also black. Sandry can be progressive but not too progressive, smart but not too clever, and she needs to save the verbal eviscerations for when she really needs them instead of whenever a reporter annoys her. It's a pity she can't get away with biting people anymore, though.
“Besides,” Sandry smiles. “I’m happy to let them dig for loopholes in our system so that I can focus on actually closing the ones that get people like Jeff Bezos out of paying taxes. No further comments.” The reporter opens his mouth but she tunes him out and turns away. She has work to do. Afrer all, if Briar, Tris and Daja actually manage to spark a revolution via Spotify, it won’t go very far unless someone has already laid the groundwork and can root out at least some of what’s rotten underground.