Posted a new H5O story today

[nell65]

"In the Breathless Night"

Can be found at my AO3 page: http://archiveofourown.org/works/944159

It's a tiny snippet of Adam and Kono on the run, because I love their doomed romance so. And there are not a lot of us! The Adam/Kono tag over there had all of 12 stories listed, and (having clicked on all 12), in many of those they are together only off screen, don't even have an in-fic conversation. !! So, small increase in the number has a big impact percentage wise. ;-)

I wanted to write them a longer story, but alas, it never raised it's head.

And - as always - a huge shout out and thanks to Ms_Artisan, who provided a lovely beta even in her week of laptop disaster. Yay Ms Artisan!

Comments

[nell65.livejournal.com]

Conversation Three, part 1:



Doris looked up as Kono came stomping into the small kitchen yard. After watching her pick up and set down about a dozen small utensils, all the while sporting a glower strong enough to power an electrical storm, she sighed. Kids. What are you going to do? “Sit down,” she said, pointing to a small stool. “I’ll make some tea.”

“I don’t want tea.”

“Yes. You do.” Doris picked up the kettle and filled it from the filtered water dispenser. “You also want to tell me what’s wrong.”

“No! I don’t!” Kono exclaimed, loudly. Then she seemed to hear herself, and grinned shamefacedly. “Okay.” She sat down. “I do. Want to tell you.”

Doris prepared the tea, and waited for Kono to begin. Something she was obviously having trouble with, fidgeting on the stool, biting her lip, playing with her folding knife.

Doris waited for the water to heat, and said nothing.

When she finally drew up a stool to sit near Kono and the tea tray, Kono shook herself out of the reverie she’d fallen in to and accepted the cup Doris offered.

After blowing on her tea and taking a small sip, she began. “Growing up, I always thought of the women’s movement, of feminism, as a white lady thing. A haole thing.” She offered Doris a mildly apologetic shrug. “Something that didn’t have much of anything to do with me.”

“Fair enough. It’s a reasonable, accurate, and long-standing, criticism of the movement. Especially in the U.S.”

“And, I was born in the eighties, you know? Women could vote, go to college, get whatever jobs they wanted. Be cops, doctors, soldiers,” she shot Doris a wicked look, “spies. Whatever. It was all done, right?”

Doris shook her head, but didn’t try to hide her smile. “Young women, especially the pretty and successful ones, often think that. There’s an obvious explanation, if you want it.”

“Yeah.” Kono grimaced. “I think I’m already working that out for myself, thanks.”

After a moment she went on, “But it wasn’t done. Isn’t done. At all.”

“No.” Doris agreed. “It isn’t. Several millennia of cultural and political practices and assumptions can’t be undone and redone in a generation or three. Not even by pretty, privileged white ladies. Who carry their own baggage and wear their own blinders, just like everyone else.”

“Hmmph.” Kono scowled.

“So,” Doris asked, “What’s got you re-thinking your assumptions about feminism?”

“Adam. This,” Kono waved around the kitchen yard, but Doris was sure that she meant far more than this little village in (Cambodia?).

Doris waited.

“The first few times we let people assume Adam and I were married, it was no big deal. Right? A cover that made things easier.”

“Yes.”

“But when I insisted we try without it, shit got hard. Real hard.”

Doris, vividly remembering the bar-brawl that had resulted from one of those experiments, nodded and made an affirming murmur. At least they had all learned that Adam had wonderfully quick instincts as a knife fighter, and she had been working with him to hone those ever since.