fic: courage (bingo prompt "vulnerability")
title: courage
prompt: vulnerability
summary: aimee godwin rainaut has never thought of herself as particularly brave because she never really had to be, and there's some power to be gained from growing up without fear.
notes: set somewhere in france in late 1943 and i did no historical research whatsoever. none. zero. zip. i accept any and all historical errors. aimee is the second-youngest godwin, which makes her the next oldest sibling to james from last year's nanonovel, and a great-aunt to evie from the previous bingo fic.
Aimee Godwin Rainaut has never considered herself an especially courageous woman, and she is not used to being afraid. Her children are in Geneva, where she believes them to be safe. Her husband and his parents are in Paris. A banker friend helped her move some of the Rainaut money to Switzerland, and her brother Gabriel helped her move some money to the States. Her own personal fortune, the Godwin money she inherited before she married, has been in New York since she turned eighteen, and in New York it will stay.
So she does not worry about her children or her fortune. Her husband is a smart, cautious man and more than capable of looking after himself. It is true that she could have taken her family and gone back to New York before the Germans marched on Paris - for all her French marriage and her French children and her French life, she is still an American citizen and she still carries an American passport - but neither she nor her husband wanted to leave. Aimee will not admit it, but despite her lack of fear and her conviction that heaven is looking out for her, she is superstitious about crossing the ocean, as if her house here will be gone when she returns, or that she will not be able to return at all.
(That is why she sent her son and daughter to Switzerland, rather than England or America. They all still share the same landmass. Her children have left France in safety, and when the war is over they will come safely home.)
And while her husband is in Paris, trying to keep his business in one piece and out of German hands, Aimee is at their country house, looking after the small estate that has belonged to Rainauts for three hundred years. It is not much - it is an old house with just enough farmland to be self-sufficient - but her husband loves it, so she will watch over it and the people who still live on it. The caretaker's mother is rumored to be Jewish, although he himself married a Catholic woman in a Catholic church and raised three Catholic children, and even though Aimee has offered to help him go to Spain, or Switzerland, in order to avoid the fate of Europe's Jews, he has not. Sometimes she worries about him and his wife, but they are cautious and quiet and hard-working, and she will do what she can to protect them.
Aimee is a Godwin, after all, and has always believed that she and hers will inherit the earth, and that she has a right to live the life she wants without fear. She has never thought of herself as particularly brave because she has never really had to be.
But it is late 1943 and she is living in a part of France where her father's name is no kind of armor, and she has learned that the ability to look good and lie with a straight face backed up by an incongruous skill with a firearm will protect her in its stead.
She has always known the power of a good lie. Her brother Con is a champion liar, and when she was little, no one could tell a story like her sister Julia. She knows how to shoot, because her husband likes to hunt. But Aimee learns the power of being a pretty, stylishly-dressed woman with a rifle the day that Germans show up on her front step.
Mme Arnaut, the caretaker's wife, finds her in the kitchen to tell her that the boche - German soldiers - are coming up the walk, and what should she do? What should she tell them?
"I will handle them," Aimee says without even thinking, for this is her house and her property and if anyone has authority to tell people to come or go, it is her. But for a moment, she is worried. She has no doubt that the men approaching her door mean her harm. They might only take the chickens and leave her be, or they might take her caretaker and his wife, and dig up the garden to find the Rainaut silver and some of her art collection, or they might just shoot her and be done with it.
She wipes her hands on a towel, takes off her apron, fixes her hair. She reminds herself who she is and where she came from, and that regardless of what uniform they might be wearing and who might or might not be in power in Paris, these men are trespassing on her land.
Two of Aimee's brothers fought in trenches in the first World War. Her nephews are too young to fight in this one, and her brothers are all too old. She is the only Godwin on foreign soil but she is more than capable of taking care of herself.
One of her husband's hunting rifles is in the kitchen, leaning against the wall by the back door. It is cleaned and oiled and loaded, ready in case of wild dogs or thieves. She unlatches the front door and uses the barrel of the rifle to push it open until she can see the three soldiers on her front steps, and they can see her.
They are not very old, these men, and while they do not look immediately dangerous, they are soldiers in an invading army and she knows better than to trust them. As she pushes the door open and trains the rifle on them, they look taken aback. She knows what they must be seeing - she is a pretty woman and her clothes are stylish and well-tailored, her shoes are unscuffed, her face is delicately powdered, and she knows she looks more out of place here, standing in the front door of her husband's country house, than she would look in her townhouse in Paris. She knows they see a woman at home in Parisian high society, holding a hunting rifle as if she means to use it on them.
They look as if they think she could pull the trigger and shoot any of them in the heart. And in this one moment, even though she has only ever pointed a gun at targets, at birds, or at deer - never another person - Aimee knows they are right.
"I don't care why you're here," she tells them in German. "You are on my land and I want you gone."
When they don't immediately move, she cocks the rifle.
"Now, or I will shoot you in the head."
Time stretches. She does not move. The Germans call her some choice names, but they leave. She waits until they have turned down the road and are out of sight before she closes the door, sags against the wall, and lets out the breath she did not realize she was holding.
What were you thinking? she can hear her husband in her head. They could have killed you!
If he were here, she would tell him that she was never worried they would shoot her. She is a Godwin. The world takes care of people like her, even during wartime, and it always has.
She will admit that she cannot let herself be afraid, for fear might paralyze her and she has too much to do. But for a brief moment, in the time it took for her for push open the front door and see with her own eyes the men in uniform standing on her steps, she was uncharacteristically very, very scared.
Aimee Godwin Rainaut still does not consider herself a particularly brave woman. She considers herself a pragmatic one, and if the best way to get potentially dangerous men off your land is to perplex them with your pretty face and your fashionable dress, and to threaten them with your hunting rifle, then that is what she will do.
But she will not call it courage. It is simply a way of protecting what is hers, propped up by the conviction that she has the right to go through life unmolested, and by the power that comes from growing up unafraid.
prompt: vulnerability
summary: aimee godwin rainaut has never thought of herself as particularly brave because she never really had to be, and there's some power to be gained from growing up without fear.
notes: set somewhere in france in late 1943 and i did no historical research whatsoever. none. zero. zip. i accept any and all historical errors. aimee is the second-youngest godwin, which makes her the next oldest sibling to james from last year's nanonovel, and a great-aunt to evie from the previous bingo fic.
Aimee Godwin Rainaut has never considered herself an especially courageous woman, and she is not used to being afraid. Her children are in Geneva, where she believes them to be safe. Her husband and his parents are in Paris. A banker friend helped her move some of the Rainaut money to Switzerland, and her brother Gabriel helped her move some money to the States. Her own personal fortune, the Godwin money she inherited before she married, has been in New York since she turned eighteen, and in New York it will stay.
So she does not worry about her children or her fortune. Her husband is a smart, cautious man and more than capable of looking after himself. It is true that she could have taken her family and gone back to New York before the Germans marched on Paris - for all her French marriage and her French children and her French life, she is still an American citizen and she still carries an American passport - but neither she nor her husband wanted to leave. Aimee will not admit it, but despite her lack of fear and her conviction that heaven is looking out for her, she is superstitious about crossing the ocean, as if her house here will be gone when she returns, or that she will not be able to return at all.
(That is why she sent her son and daughter to Switzerland, rather than England or America. They all still share the same landmass. Her children have left France in safety, and when the war is over they will come safely home.)
And while her husband is in Paris, trying to keep his business in one piece and out of German hands, Aimee is at their country house, looking after the small estate that has belonged to Rainauts for three hundred years. It is not much - it is an old house with just enough farmland to be self-sufficient - but her husband loves it, so she will watch over it and the people who still live on it. The caretaker's mother is rumored to be Jewish, although he himself married a Catholic woman in a Catholic church and raised three Catholic children, and even though Aimee has offered to help him go to Spain, or Switzerland, in order to avoid the fate of Europe's Jews, he has not. Sometimes she worries about him and his wife, but they are cautious and quiet and hard-working, and she will do what she can to protect them.
Aimee is a Godwin, after all, and has always believed that she and hers will inherit the earth, and that she has a right to live the life she wants without fear. She has never thought of herself as particularly brave because she has never really had to be.
But it is late 1943 and she is living in a part of France where her father's name is no kind of armor, and she has learned that the ability to look good and lie with a straight face backed up by an incongruous skill with a firearm will protect her in its stead.
She has always known the power of a good lie. Her brother Con is a champion liar, and when she was little, no one could tell a story like her sister Julia. She knows how to shoot, because her husband likes to hunt. But Aimee learns the power of being a pretty, stylishly-dressed woman with a rifle the day that Germans show up on her front step.
Mme Arnaut, the caretaker's wife, finds her in the kitchen to tell her that the boche - German soldiers - are coming up the walk, and what should she do? What should she tell them?
"I will handle them," Aimee says without even thinking, for this is her house and her property and if anyone has authority to tell people to come or go, it is her. But for a moment, she is worried. She has no doubt that the men approaching her door mean her harm. They might only take the chickens and leave her be, or they might take her caretaker and his wife, and dig up the garden to find the Rainaut silver and some of her art collection, or they might just shoot her and be done with it.
She wipes her hands on a towel, takes off her apron, fixes her hair. She reminds herself who she is and where she came from, and that regardless of what uniform they might be wearing and who might or might not be in power in Paris, these men are trespassing on her land.
Two of Aimee's brothers fought in trenches in the first World War. Her nephews are too young to fight in this one, and her brothers are all too old. She is the only Godwin on foreign soil but she is more than capable of taking care of herself.
One of her husband's hunting rifles is in the kitchen, leaning against the wall by the back door. It is cleaned and oiled and loaded, ready in case of wild dogs or thieves. She unlatches the front door and uses the barrel of the rifle to push it open until she can see the three soldiers on her front steps, and they can see her.
They are not very old, these men, and while they do not look immediately dangerous, they are soldiers in an invading army and she knows better than to trust them. As she pushes the door open and trains the rifle on them, they look taken aback. She knows what they must be seeing - she is a pretty woman and her clothes are stylish and well-tailored, her shoes are unscuffed, her face is delicately powdered, and she knows she looks more out of place here, standing in the front door of her husband's country house, than she would look in her townhouse in Paris. She knows they see a woman at home in Parisian high society, holding a hunting rifle as if she means to use it on them.
They look as if they think she could pull the trigger and shoot any of them in the heart. And in this one moment, even though she has only ever pointed a gun at targets, at birds, or at deer - never another person - Aimee knows they are right.
"I don't care why you're here," she tells them in German. "You are on my land and I want you gone."
When they don't immediately move, she cocks the rifle.
"Now, or I will shoot you in the head."
Time stretches. She does not move. The Germans call her some choice names, but they leave. She waits until they have turned down the road and are out of sight before she closes the door, sags against the wall, and lets out the breath she did not realize she was holding.
What were you thinking? she can hear her husband in her head. They could have killed you!
If he were here, she would tell him that she was never worried they would shoot her. She is a Godwin. The world takes care of people like her, even during wartime, and it always has.
She will admit that she cannot let herself be afraid, for fear might paralyze her and she has too much to do. But for a brief moment, in the time it took for her for push open the front door and see with her own eyes the men in uniform standing on her steps, she was uncharacteristically very, very scared.
Aimee Godwin Rainaut still does not consider herself a particularly brave woman. She considers herself a pragmatic one, and if the best way to get potentially dangerous men off your land is to perplex them with your pretty face and your fashionable dress, and to threaten them with your hunting rifle, then that is what she will do.
But she will not call it courage. It is simply a way of protecting what is hers, propped up by the conviction that she has the right to go through life unmolested, and by the power that comes from growing up unafraid.