Chapter Text
Your life began on the day the storm came in. The English coast may have been on the tail end of spring, but cold storms still tossed the waves despite the flowers that bloomed bright in your garden.
You had lived in Cornwall since birth, raised by your mother and father. They had each been taken away from you–your father had died in the war, and your mother a little later of typhoid. They hadn’t left you with much. Just the house, Miriam–the maid that had practically raised you and was basically a second tenant at this point–and a meager life’s savings. But your pride and joy since before you had been on your own was the bookshop. Your mother had established it herself when your father went away to war as a way to fill the space that seemed too empty in your two story home.
She was gone now too, but your love for books remained. There was nothing you loved more than waking up in the morning and opening your shop, organizing the shelves and sitting behind the counter with a fresh (second-hand) book.
Your home was on one of the highest hills in the village. Fortunately, this saved you from flooding when bad storms like this one rolled around, but it did nothing against the water that seeped in through the beams of your thin roof.
You awoke the morning after the storm, pushing back the covers with a slight shiver from the draft that always seemed to blow through your home. Droplets of water plopped softly into the bucket next to your bed, and you looked at the ceiling with a grimace at the darkened water spot.
Oh well , you sighed to yourself, a problem for another day .
You pulled yourself out of bed and tied your dressing gown around your waist. Miriam was in the kitchen; you could smell the breakfast she was cooking the second you opened the door.
“You’re up late!” She called.
“I sleep too well with the noise of the storm,” you said as you glanced over her shoulder at the potatoes she had over the flame, “I was dead to the world.”
“You’ve got that right. I’ve been banging pans all morning.”
“Didn’t hear a thing!”
You strode to the stairs and pulled on a pair of boots. Miriam glanced over her shoulder at you and gave an irritated scoff.
“Where d’you think you’re going?”
“For a walk, Mir. I’ll be back soon, promise.”
“You better be,” she muttered as you descended the stairs, “I’m not opening the shop for you.”
---
A few minutes later you were walking along the shore of the beach, dressing gown pulled tight around your chest as the early morning winds hit your body. The rain had brought the tide further in than usual, and you carried your boots by their laces in one hand as you walked barefoot in the damp sand.
You took a deep breath in of the salty sea air and let the sound of the waves course over you. The beach was always so beautiful in the mornings; seagulls picking in the sand for breakfast, the rising sun turning the water a golden orange, a body laying in the sand–
A what?
You stopped in your tracks as your brain caught up to what your eyes were seeing. You hoped you were hallucinating, or maybe you hadn’t even woken up that morning and everything you were seeing right now was some terribly realistic dream. Tentatively, you took another step forward towards what was most definitely the body of some unfortunate soul face-down on the beach.
Oh shit. I’m not prepared for this.
Your brain went into overdrive as you began to run towards the body.
I don’t want to call the police. What if they think I murdered someone? Who’s going to run the shop if I’m in jail?
You were beside it now, and from this distance you could tell it was a man. He was dressed in fine clothes for someone washed up like a piece of seaweed on the shore–dress slacks and a white collared shirt. Nothing in any of the books you had read in your 25 years of life had prepared you for finding a man washed up on the shore outside your house.
Steeling yourself, you knelt down and took hold of his shoulders, rolling him over onto his back. You took a sharp breath through your teeth. He was young– probably around the same age as you, if not a little older, with auburn hair and delicate features. He was attractive, though you felt bad thinking that about a man who was laying, possibly dead, in front of you.
Your hand shook as you put two fingers to his neck, and to your great relief, you felt a weak pulse. You considered trying to wake him before you glanced down at his feet and saw that one was bare, bent at an angle that made your stomach turn. Even if he woke now, he was in no shape to make the climb back up to your home. You would have to call Dr. Mead.
---
The sun was high in the sky by the time the man had been brought up from the beach and Mead had finished examining him. His ankle was broken–the poor soul would have to spend a good few weeks in bed before he could even think about putting any weight on it. You had offered up the spare room in your house for him to stay and recover, to which Miriam had rolled her eyes and began preparing the space for a long term visitor.
The room had been yours growing up, before your parents had both died and you had moved into theirs. The wallpaper was a faded green, and the some of your older belongings still sat on the bedside table and the windowsill.
You stood for a while after Mead and Miriam had left, taking in the man as he laid under the covers. Maybe you were imagining it, but he looked more peaceful, relaxed, now that he was cleaned up and in a bed than he had when you first found him on the beach. His ankle was his only pressing injury, but he had a few bruises and scrapes on his face that must have come from being washed out at sea in the middle of a storm. Dr. Mead had said that it was lucky that he had escaped without a concussion or something more drastic–the man was truly lucky to be alive.
What is he like? You wondered as you looked at him. He must have a fire for life if he fought so hard against the waves that you knew could sweep even the most experienced fishermen out of their boats and into the depths.
You had been caught in those waves once when you were out swimming with your mother and father–before he had been drafted and life was just your little cove and the town you could see from your window.
“Don’t go out too deep!” Your mother had called as you stomped around in the waves.
You were 6 at the time, but you had known how to swim since before you could remember. You had nodded back at her, waving as you squinted through the rays that the noon sun cast in your eyes. The water was impossibly clear and you had seen a seashell that glinted with a transfixing iridescence just out of your reach. You waded deeper into the waves until you were up to your torso and bent down to retrieve the shell to add to the collection you kept on your windowsill.
At that moment, a wave crescendoed in front of you, knocking you off balance and leaving you to the mercy of the undertow. You would never forget the way the air was knocked completely out of you as you tumbled under water, unsure of which way was up despite having felt the cool sand beneath your feet only moments before.
Before you knew it, you felt the strong hands of your father grasp your armpits, and you were pulled, sputtering, from the water. His eyes had searched your face worriedly as he held you, and you felt hot tears begin to roll down your cheeks.
“Not so far, next time, eh?” He had muttered to you as he held you against his shoulder, carrying you back to the dry sand where your mother stood waiting with a towel.
A soft groan from the bed in front of you pulled you from the memory. The man had woken up. He rubbed his face softly before taking in the room around him. His eyes widened as he realized he didn’t recognize his surroundings, pushing himself up further in the bed.
“It’s alright,” you said, stepping forward quickly and showing him your palms, “You’re safe, but you mustn’t move too much right now.”
His gaze finally fell on you, and his eyebrows raised in surprise before furrowing in confusion.
“Gdzie ja jestem? ”
Either you were suffering an aneurysm from the stress of the day, or the man had just spoken to you in a language that was certainly not one you were familiar with.
“Kim jesteś? ” He questioned again when you didn’t respond, gesturing vaguely at you.
“I’m sorry, I can’t understand you,” you said as you moved closer, as though you being out of earshot was the issue here.
“Boże! ”
He brought a hand to his forehead, and you glanced around the room for something you could use to communicate with him.
“You were on the beach,” you said slowly, pointing out the window at the shoreline. He craned his neck to see out of the window before turning back to you, brows furrowed. “The beach. And you were hurt.”
You could tell it was futile as he shook his head at you still.
“Kim jesteś? ” He repeated.
“Your ankle,” you continued, walking over to the end of the bed and pointing at his hurt leg. “You hurt your ankle. Ouch!”
After a moment, he seemed to piece together beach and the way you mimicked being in pain when you pointed at his ankle, because he gave a tentative nod.
“There we go,” you muttered to yourself, letting your shoulders relax a little. “So you don’t know any English at all?”
He looked apologetically at you, no glint of recognition in his eyes at your words. Unfortunately, English was the only language you had any more than a beginner’s grasp of. You let out a long sigh, running a hand across your face.
“Przepraszam .”
“I don’t–I’m sorry.”
Well, if this man from some unknown country was going to be staying in your house for the foreseeable future, you could at least learn his name. That was probably the easiest thing to communicate, anyway.
You introduced yourself after a moment, just your first name so as not to complicate his comprehension with more than one word he might not even understand. You repeated it, pointed a finger at your own chest emphatically.
To your relief, he nodded, and his face broke out in a smile for the first time. He seemed to take a moment to try your name on his tongue, his mouth forming around the syllables before he pronounced it in full back to you.
“Andrea. Andrea Marowski,” he said, pointing to himself like you had done.
“Andrea,” you repeated with a smile of your own.
He extended a hand, and after a moment you laughed and shook it, nodding your head.
“Przyjemność .”
“I don’t know what you just said, but it’s a pleasure to meet you, Andrea.”
---
After you left Andrea in his room, you walked down to your bookshop, scanning the shelf for any books on translation that you could use to find a common language. Your mother had taken most of your schooling upon herself before her death, teaching you French and German among other subjects that she had been taught as a child. She had come from a wealthy family, but had left them behind and moved to Cornwall when she met your father.
You knew a good deal more about the classics and literature than many of your schoolmates did when you finally entered the local school after her death when you were twelve. Your love for literature had stayed, but your knowledge of other languages had unfortunately faded to the background.
After a few minutes of searching, you had the translation dictionaries of French and German in your arms as you started back up the stairs to Andrea’s room. You were fairly certain you could carry a simple conversation in either, but the books would be helpful given that the last time you had spoken them was over ten years prior.
You knocked on the door, opening it a crack after you heard a hum from Andrea inside. He lay where you had left him on the bed, perking up a little at your entrance.
You greeted him quietly before entering the room, sitting on the trunk that sat at the end of the bed frame. He gestured at the books you held, his brow furrowed but a faint smile on his face.
“Languages,” you explained, holding up the French one. “Parlez-vous français ?”
He seemed to recognize that you had switched languages, if not what you were saying, because he shrugged his shoulders with a grimace.
“Alright, then,” you muttered, putting the book down. “What about German? Sprichst du Deutsch ?”
His eyes lit up at that, and you felt yourself let out a relieved laugh in response.
“Ja! Können Sie mir sagen, wo ich bin? ” He continued in rapid-fire German, “Was ist passiert–Wie schlimm ist– ”
“Halt ,” you interrupted. He was going too fast; there was no way you could keep up with him with the limited grasp you had on the language.
He stopped talking at your words, eyes wide and looking at you expectantly for an answer.
“Mein Deutsch ist schlect, ” you said slowly, “Langsam sprechen. Bitte .”
My German is bad, please speak slowly.
He nodded and repeated what he had said before, enunciating each word. There were a few you didn’t know the meaning of, but when he saw your confused expression, he beckoned you closer. You stood from the trunk and sat next to him on the edge of the bed, taking care not to nudge him too much for fear of disturbing his ankle.
He reached forward and took the book from your hands, flipping the pages quickly to the words you hadn’t understood and pointing them out to you. When you understood as well as you could, you explained to him in what must have been utterly shameful German the extent of what you knew had happened to him.
He sat in silence for a moment after you finished, his gaze far away. You had seen a shadow cross his face when you had mentioned the storm and the shipwreck, and you wanted to give him the space to piece together what you had told him with what he remembered had happened.
“Warum hast du mich gerettet? ”
Why did you save me?
Your eyebrows flew up as you let out a long sigh through pursed lips. There was an abundance of answers you could give him, less than half of which you would actually be able to communicate. But as he looked at you expectantly, his brown eyes full of trust despite only having known you less than a day, you knew exactly what to you wanted to tell him.
“Du bist in Schwierigkeiten. Ich will helfen. Warum nicht? ”
You were in trouble. I want to help. Why not?
After a moment he nodded. “Danke shön .”
He took a hold of your hand as he thanked you, inclining his head with a smile. He was even more attractive when he smiled–it crinkled the corners of his eyes and turned his cheeks a rosy red. You gave him a genuine smile in return, placing your free hand on top of his.
“Gern geshehen .”
My pleasure .