AUTHOR'S NOTE: So, once upon a time, I had posted about six or so chapters of this story. It had been well-received at the time, but someone got in a dispute with me over whether or not I was stealing content ideas. I was not. Unfortunately, the writer got petty and reported me. This story was summarily killed. But now? I can't even find the writer or the fic this poor tale was deleted over. Thus, I am reposting this dinosaur because I am attached to the concept. Who knows where this'll go beyond after those six pre-written chapters I will slowly post, other than the fact there's plums and Bucky. Read and review?
In Bucharest, Romania, one haunted man is desperately trying to put his broken mind back together while hiding from unwanted eyes that whisper about bones and red-skinned monsters. Yet, he yearns for a connection he barely remembers. In Bucharest, Romania, one very petite woman is living in Romania on a whim and just trying to get by without drowning in secondhand stress. But, being Enhanced and short on friends is a sad state of affairs. She notices the haunted man, and sees somebody that needs help. And, maybe a friend. One morning, a spontaneous act of kindness changes it all.
Chapter One: The Thursday Pound of Plums
I saw the man again at the street market, dressed in the clothes he customarily wore on Wednesdays and Thursdays. He had on black leather gloves despite the pleasant Romanian weather, another habit of his that was never broken. The man's hair was long, brushing his wide shoulders; he must have recently trimmed it. Thankfully, it appeared he had also recently bathed. It was an undeniably good sign. The shadow that lined his jaw was lighter from a morning shave, his indigo cap pulled low enough that an invisible barrier was built between himself and the more antagonistic shoppers. Sometimes he wasn't treated exceptionally well, as the man had off days where he smelled like a homeless drifter and his entire body was essentially a coiled spring. Some days the sellers would be terse with him, paranoid about his height, size, and lingering habit. The man liked to linger.
Today was definitely one of his good days.
Andra was manning her family's produce stall with her mother, as usual. The man looked to be politely talking to her, discussing price over a pound of plums; I only know this because the man never deviated from his norm of purchasing exactly a pound of plums on Thursdays. Andra had been trying to shuffle off her elder brother's hand-me-downs onto the man for two weeks, as if it was a bonus that could come with the plums. She had yet to succeed. His response was always 'o femeie frumoasă nu ar trebui să-și petreacă timpul ei griji peste mine' in smooth Romanian. The comment continually resulted in making the grocer's daughter blush.
I, on the other hand, was always browsing the stalls for fresh bread and silly gadgets in the mornings. Track down a good loaf that just about had me reciting life, liberty, and the pursuit of carbohydrates like an ecstatic mantra, buy a few stupid collectible clocks. Maybe get a pastry, or perhaps cheap bundles of conductor wire. Open street markets were just generally magical to me. I was sifting through Claudiu's inventory of miscellaneous metal parts today, passively noting the man I'd come to see as a fellow regular of the street market across the way. I couldn't help but smile amusedly at the tell-tale blush dusting Andra's cheeks.
"There she goes again," said Claudiu. He was in his late fifties and ever-laughing at Andra's blunders. He spoke this in Romanian; he hated English.
"Well, I cannot quite blame her," I said back in his mother tongue. "He is not ugly, and he really needs to own more than three sets of clothes."
Claudiu smirked, looking back down at the money he earned so far this morning and sorting it into organized piles. "He is handsome," he agreed, "But I do not think Daciana would want her daughter to marry a veteran."
"A veteran? Why would you say that?"
"He walks like a soldier, and on some days like a hunter. I am surprised you have not noticed," Claudiu remarked, clearly surprised.
I will never deny that I am an observant person. It's like second nature. Being a writer made it, perhaps, even worse. What Claudiu deduced was only superficial. I noticed that the man's left arm moved with a robotic seamlessness; something too fluid to be a standard prosthetic, but too clean to be flesh and blood. I could hear its whirring from across the market, could see in my mind's eye how it was built into his body. It strained his frame. I could sense the electricity running through its circuits and wires, the way the plates could open for maintenance. Truthfully, he needed that maintenance. Some wiring was misaligned, threatening to come out from their sockets, and five points on a vital circuit board had not been properly repaired. His elbow joint probably didn't rotate right, as the shoddy repairs effected the sensor programming meant to shift the plates. It was able to translate the neural data his body supplied, but was unable to transform the data into action with reasonable precision… Somebody needed to fix that.
I never really judged people by their gait, unlike Claudiu, because it was something anybody could easily adjust or fake. I know I did it, strolling around as if I was ten feet tall with muscles as thick as a brick wall instead of the petite little woman I really am. I didn't care if the man waltzed about the city like he was out on patrol. I cared to notice how and when he'd tense up as he spent his morning at the street market. The poor fellow was terribly nervous around children or babies, but definitely liked to linger around them and possibly hand out a few of his plums. Mothers and fathers hated it. He was never uncomfortable around anyone over the age of fifty-six or with visible signs of grey hair. Any shopper or vendor who yelled at him or showed their dislike was avoided like the plague, but sometimes he chanced approaching them or passing them. The one time I was standing at Andra's stall at the right place and time, the man didn't react at all. If anything, he moved and operated near me with a strange sort of ease. Shoulders relaxed, eyes calm; like maybe he was used to hang around depressingly short people who were touchy about their size. We've never spoken to each other, but I'd like to believe he knows I habitually go to the street market in the morning for food just like him.
But Claudiu had a point. The man's bad days were both heart-wrenching and disturbing to bear witness to. It was comparable to being in the radius of a rabid dog, but a badly injured rabid dog. You desperately wanted to drown it in cozy blankets, feed it pounds of poultry or dog treats, heal its hurts, and give it all the pets it could ever desire, yet… The animal's eyes are frenzied, glazed, and definitely not as present as they should be, its jittery, and there's a creepy bent to their behavior that screams vicious. The man was all of that on his off days. Andra once tried to sell him his Thursday pound of plums, and he didn't react for a solid five minutes. Apparently his eyes had been dead and his jaw cut in numerous places from an unsteady hand with a razor blade. Then, the man jolted, shook horribly, and sprinted down the street like the devil himself came to personally collect his soul. Andra's mother, Daciana, is the only one allowed to sell him anything on the man's bad days, and courageous enough to firmly tell him to du-te acasă tine soldat prostesc without a trace of fear. And, he listens to her.
"I notice plenty," I said to Claudiu with a firm tone of voice. "But the way a man walks does not determine everything. His bad days are evidence enough that he needs help. And, not everyone with trauma is a veteran. Do not be an ass, Claudiu."
"Ho-hoh!" the elder man expressed, teasing. "Someone is protective. Will I get to fill my mornings with watching you two instead of him and Andra?"
"Maybe you will," I said, "I will break your six month long routine of watching them across the street and ask to help him personally. I'll offer him some tea. It will be good!"
I didn't have many real, honest-to-goodness friends. Strange people needed to stick together, right? A man with an advanced prosthetic arm and a weird little woman like me were cut from similar cloth. And I am a generally lonely individual. Being an ambivert with an inclination towards hiding away inside her house for hours isn't very easy.
"Finish with the scrap metal then, because it looks as though the man has convinced Andra to allow him to pay the real price for the pound of plums."
I turned, realizing the man was right. Dropping the contorted metal part back in the bucket where it belonged, I scurried away from Claudiu's stall without a single goodbye. Behind me, he chuckled.
A voice cried out in high spirits as I neared the produce stall. "Good morning, Șarlotă!"
I laughed at Andra, coming to a stop, noticing the man turn his head in my direction from the corner of my eye. "No, Andra, it's Charlotte!" She had this ability to make me laugh with nothing but her presence.
"I will not pronounce it like an American. I refuse!" Andra declared. She turned to the man, "Which is better? Șarlotă or Charlotte?"
He blinked, almost owlishly, glancing between us. I assume the man expected to be ignored instead of included. His right hand grasped the plastic bag containing the Thursday pound of plums, thumbs fidgeting.
"They are both very beautiful names," he answered diplomatically.
Unlike Andra, I was able to stop myself from blushing. But, I was quietly flattered.
"Do not be a bully, Andra," I berated. "Anyway, do you have any cherries? I know I could buy them at the store a few blocks away, but nothing is better than fresh produce. I keep hoping you will sell them one of these days."
The grocer's daughter rolled her eyes at me. "This is not California. But, I will go ask Father."
She departed from the stall, walking to the car parked off to the side a little ways away. The man stood beside me awkwardly. I felt mildly bad, but my goal had been to get the guy alone enough for me to talk to him. Then again, I felt equally awkward. It was lovely, knowing that you could be just as discomforted with people as a possibly-PTSD-ridden man with a robotic arm was.
"Sorry," I blurted clumsily, "I woke up today craving cherries and I always shop here in the mornings. Andra sometimes gives me a discount out of pity."
I wasn't lying about the morning cherry craving. Back home in the States, my parents had three cherry trees. My sister and I had loved going out and picking them, to the point we'd have five bloated gallon bags worth of black cherries. But, now I'm a few months fresh out of college without a dependable job and she was an intellectual powerhouse that went to international academic conferences. My mother still questioned my logic in deciding to move to Romania for a few years.
The man must have been having a seriously good day, because he actually smiled at me. "It is alright. I am not in a rush."
"Have a thing for plums?" I said, pointing to his bag.
"Prunes," he corrected. "Though I do like them before they become prunes too."
His statement was kind of endearing. I smirked. "It is a warrior's drink," I joked, trying to fake a man's deep voice.
"What?"
Without meaning to, I was disheartened. "Ever watch Star Trek?" I asked with a little hope.
He blinked. "No."
Blasphemy. "Look it up, and you will have watched one of the best science fiction shows ever made. There are five different series in the franchise, and they're in the process of making the sixth. There are also a number of films. I love Star Trek: The Next Generation. Though, I have no idea if you are the kind of person who likes futuristic things."
I could tell by the way his eyes lit up at the words 'science fiction' that the man would definitely be looking it up when he stumbled back to his home. It was also unfair that the man had pretty eyes like that. If I was a competent artist, I would be drawing his eyes endlessly. They were a unique sort of blue-grey, like gunmetal.
"I enjoy reading science fiction books," he said. "I will take your advice." Then, glancing at the loaf tucked under my arm, "I see you found your bread."
I was surprised I could have a comfortably casual conversation with the man like this. He was definitely a nice fellow, contrary to how he dressed and sometimes behaved. And, he managed to maintain the conversation with me longer than a minute.
I smiled when he pointed out my purchased loaf. "So you have noticed! I have an undying love for bread products that probably shouldn't exist. My mother tells me I will get fat, but I have yet to see any sign of that."
"You could say the same about me," he joked, poking his plum bag. I internally winced, sensing and hearing the unhappy grind of elbow plates. He really needed that fixed, pronto.
"Ha! You look like you need every calorie you can get! Muscles like that do not grow on trees."
Before he could answer, which looked to be an upcoming joke, Andra reappeared. "Father swears he will broker a deal with a farmer for cherries because of your insistent hunt for them every other month. Double the average price too, for all the trouble. You will have better luck buying them at the store a few blocks away than bothering Father," Andra spoke, initially grousing.
I made a face. "Your father is such a drama queen. I do not bother him about cherries that often."
Andra turned to the man again, as if he was a fellow sufferer of my presence. Maybe he was; he was still waiting to pay for his Thursday pound of plums. "Do not fall for her charm. She is a Californian, and Californians are trouble."
The man continued to be amused. "How much trouble can she be?" He jokingly looked me up and down, though I personally think he lingered a little too long. Then again, the man liked to linger, which I have long believed to be his attempt at trying to commit visuals to memory. I liked to pretend he was a hobby artist.
"Napoleon was trouble, my nieces are trouble. The small ones are always the ones you need to watch for," Andra groused. I was having a hard time containing my giggling.
"I shall take my trouble elsewhere, then. 'Buy my cherries at that stupid store and go home."
"You did not find anything at Claudiu's stall?" Andra knew my shopping pattern quite well.
"His scrap metal today was not very high quality; made from shit alloys. I also have too many clocks."
One entire wall in my apartment was shelving, packed solid with collectible clocks. My personal favorite was the clock that told you the time in multi-colored binary. Sometimes, I have a moment when I find my self-awareness and question how stable I am psychologically. Who collects clocks, anyway?
Then again, I lived in a world where superheroes were real and I could do things that normally would be considered impossible. Like, for example, my ability to know that the man had a robotic left arm without prior knowledge. Or, my ability to sense that it was in desperate need of repair. Life was strange.
With a few parting words and polite nods of goodbye, I left the produce stand. I didn't manage to actually do what I had set out to do, but the man was too sweet. He was also having what seemed to be his best morning to date. I couldn't rightfully throw that off. It would be an asshole move.
Except, after I walked about a block away from the street market, the man reappeared to my left. I startled a little.
"Jesus!" I said, forgetting to speak in Romanian. Shock did that to a person.
The man was trying to maintain a smile, but he looked more nervous and uncertain than happy. His left hand held his plum bag. The other was shoved into the pocket of his jacket. His wide shoulders were slightly hunched. I was convinced at this point that my friendly stranger would always be a source of secondhand stress for me.
"Sorry," he said. I had to pause for a moment, as I was not used to hearing him speak English. He never had before.
"You know English?" I questioned.
A plain nod was my answer. He seemed to be swiftly turning shy. Or nervous. Or behaving like a spooked deer.
I rushed to rectify this, however poorly. "Well, God, you should have told me! I'm not a native Romanian speaker! Now I can actually use slang and things… or I hope I can. Can you handle American slang?"
His smile seemed a little more genuine. I think I was succeeding. "Yeah."
"Wanna' come with me to the store? It's a little corner place, has just about everything somebody'd need. I've gotta' feed my cherry craving." I felt like I was babbling.
His shoulders eased, and the smile on his face was stress-relieving. "Sure, Ma'am."
I was surprised when he offered an arm. Surprised overall, really. I didn't think my sad attempt at communicating with the man would engender a response. Blinking, I decided to just go with it. If he tried anything funny, I'd probably electrocute him. Not that I would, but I was a very small person walking with a brick wall of a male. With a robotic left arm.
"Cool," I said, almost absently. The muscle I was feeling through his layers of clothes was phenomenal. The man could probably bench press me without breaking a sweat. Definitely cool.
We walked in silence for awhile, the kind of silence that was comfortable and not socially awkward. It was nice that he didn't walk at a very fast pace, being mindful of my petite size. The man was still a little shifty, but it was only his eyes. They looked about, checking the surrounding area. He was patrolling, but passively. I wasn't bothered. Feeling secure or ensuring the security of friends-and-or-loved-ones was good for trauma victims. It also helped among some PTSD cases.
I had a habit of collecting and reading psychology textbooks for novel research purposes.
"Do you want to buy anything at the store while we're there?" I asked. We were just steps away from the sliding door entrance.
He looked down at me with an innocent sort of confusion. The man probably didn't catch the entirety of what I said due to his patrol tendency.
"Food? Cookies? Ya' want any?"
The man just stared blankly at me. Clearly, he didn't see a point.
I sighed, but decided the guy earned a reward for having such a damn good morning. And walking with me. I've been told I can be trying company.
"I'm gonna buy you some of those European knockoff cookies. I feel like you'd love those Nutter Butter fakers."
"You don't have to do that—"
"Life is short; eat dessert first," I quipped, dragging him by our connected arms through the doors and down the aisle I knew had the snacks. We must have been quite the sight to the other shoppers; a 5'1" young woman with a wrapped loaf of bread tucked under one arm towing an (estimated) 5'10" male built like a brick shithouse, carrying a pound of plums. I was faintly disappointed he wasn't resisting.
It took less than a minute for me to locate them, with their bright red packaging and the display box calling them something like 'peanut delights' in Romanian or something along those lines. I picked out a package and offered it to him.
"Nutter Butter fakers. They're basically Nutter Butters, but with a different name and made in Europe."
The poor fellow stared at the small four-cookie packaged snack the way one would if they were having their first positive religious experience with a bible. Did anybody ever deny this man cookies? The thought was bewildering to me. Junk food was much cheaper than fresh produce, and the man didn't exactly buy extremely costly things at the street market. The Thursday pound of plums was the most costly purchase he ever seemed to make.
"You okay there?"
He jerked, almost crushing the cookie package in his hand. Staring at me for a few moments, then glancing down at the cookies, it seemed as though he'd made a ground-breaking decision. "I'm fine," he stated. "Can I have these?"
Of course he could, would I deny him? I already decided I would. The guy was bringing back the second-hand stress. "How many do you want?"
With all the elegance of a bull in a china shop, he put back the partially crushed cookie package and grabbed the entire display box with his non-robotic hand. Yet again, I found him to be bizarrely endearing. I stared.
"Cool. Lemme' get some cherries and we can go pay."
We strolled through the corner store until we located the fruit aisle, where the man got the chance to witness me critically assess every single plastic container full of cherries for sale. I never messed around when it came to cherries.
"Why did I decide to live here again? Romania has shit cherries," I muttered to myself.
A gloved hand shoved a container under my nose.
I looked up at him. He stared at me pointedly. "These are good."
To appease him, despite my skepticism, I checked them. A little part of me died in happiness and shock seconds later. The cherries were just about perfect. Was my homeless stranger a metal detector, except specifically for fruit? The man was a marvel.
"I'm taking you here every time I want cherries." I said without room for argument.
His lips quirked, amused. "If ya' say so, doll."
The man sounded like a Brooklynite for a minute. I blushed. One of my weaknesses was a nice accent. Claudiu wins this round.
Not daring to speak in fear of word vomiting while flustered, we quietly walked to the register. The teller gave us upraised eyebrows at the sight of the entire display case of cookies paired with the small container of cherries, but wisely didn't say anything aloud. The metal-armed man tried to shove money in my hands like he shoved the cherries, but I strong-armed my way to paying by myself. I wasn't about to take a poor man's money. Or anybody's money, really.
The two of us left the store with three bags. The Thursday pound of plums, the cookies, and my cherries. He had two of them. I stuck my bread with the cherries. The man was smiling again, so I counted the shopping trip as a success, even if my bank account was a little more slim than before.
But now I really needed to ask him if I could help him out. The grinding of his elbow plates was driving me mad, and it had to be bad for his body. The weight of the prosthetic was bad enough; did he need a malfunction to make it worse and even more of a strain on his body? I'd been hearing that grinding for months.
It is obvious to any person who has attained friend status with me that I live to make a hobby out of worrying over people. So, like the insensitive mom friend with anxiety and questionable social skills I was, I bluntly spoke what was on my mind.
"Do you need help with your arm?"
The speed by which the man halted and spun on his heels was inhuman. Under the indigo cap, his gunmetal eyes were fearfully wide. I could see the sheer terror in his gaze, the way his pupils were the size of rice pearls. The man's fists were squeezed painfully tight at the handles of his two plastic bags. His flesh hand was shaking infinitesimally. The whirring in his left arm grew louder with his distress. The world narrowed down until there was only a terrified man with a robotic arm and a tiny self-employed Californian woman.
I soundlessly earned the award for being a complete and utter failure at speaking verbally. And, the award for being the cruelest bitch in existence.
This was why I only had three friends and a thousand acquaintances.
"Don't take me back," he spoke, barely raising his voice above a murmur. "Don't take me back, don't take me back," he repeated, the volume rising with his mounting hysteria.
I blinked.
Then, "No, no! Hey!" I said, scrambling. My voice rose higher, squeaky in my desperation to calm the guy. "I'm just offering to repair it, not escape the country. Want to come to my place for tea? A good cup usually fixes most of my problems!"
He just stared.
I glanced around, noticing that we were drawing attention of one or two passerbys. The man hated getting lots of attention, and I really didn't want to bear witness to him working himself up to a worse state.
"Okay, look," I spoke urgently, "I know you don't know me and I don't really know you beyond seeing you at the street market in the mornings, but I can help you with that arm. There are five points on the circuit board built into your humerus structure that were poorly repaired at some point in your life, and six or so wires that are threatening to pop out of their sockets along the elbow and where the ulna would be. Because of the shoddy repair and the stressed wires, you can't move it very well; the plates won't shift accordingly. I'm like you, okay? If you want the cup of tea and a repair, go down about three cross streets from here and look for an apartment building that's painted a sandy brown. I'm in 13C, alright?" A desperate attempt at comfort and instruction filtered into my voice.
He still stared, but his gunmetal eyes were focused enough to somehow convey he had heard me before his flight instincts sent him bolting away like a man possessed. I stood in the street, holding my grocery bag, staring after him.
God, I was such an ass.
