Stumbling Into the Spotlight - Tom Hiddleston FanFic

10 - Tom

The thrill I got hearing her call me her boyfriend was like nothing I'd ever felt before. My head knew it wasn't as if it was an official title, but my heart kept saying 'yet'.

We stopped at several other stalls, though she didn't buy something at all of them. The people here beamed when they saw her and they'd talk for a couple minutes before heading on. Each time she introduced me as her boyfriend and though some seemed to recognize him they didn't get all flustered like most people I met on the street did. It was nice to be treated like a normal person.

What surprised me the most however is the fact that not all the conversations were in English; Chinese, Yiddish, Russian and Korean I was lost on, French and Greek were the only ones I was able to be a part of the conversation. It impressed me that she knew so many languages.

"So why do you speak so many languages?" I ask as we stroll the stalls.

"You're going to laugh at me."

"Please? I think it's pretty awesome that you can do it. I'm a bit jealous since I only know three."

"Fine. Have you ever watched the old tv show I Love Lucy?"

"No not really."

"Well there's an episode where they're traveling abroad in France and Lucy gets in trouble and is arrested. Her husband comes down to figure it out but there's a language barrier, he only spoke Spanish and English. There's a drunk who speaks Spanish and Italian. One cop speaks Italian and French and the head cop speaks only French."

"So they had to go down the row and translate back and forth?"

"Yes. I also grew up in a tourist town, we had people visiting and living from all over and often time's language barriers got in the way. I decided I wanted to be able to help people when others couldn't because of languages."

"Why would I laugh at that? I'm sure the people you've helped appreciate it. Your friends here seem to enjoy being able to speak their native languages with you."

It was an interesting story and showed what kind of person Eliza is. She helps anyone she could and that is a rare thing in today's world. People usually only did enough to sort of help and only if it'd benefit them in some way. It must've taken her years to learn so many languages and for all I knew she knew others than just the ones I'd heard her speak here.

"Most people think it's a waste of my time to have learned so many when I didn't have to. I was offered a job as a translator at the United Nations shortly after I moved here. One of the directors had heard me helping an Irish woman. She'd been lost and her accent was so heavy no one could understand her English."

"So you speak Gaelic too?"

"I wasn't as fluent back then as I am now but yes. I learned it because my paternal great great grandmother was born in Ireland. I'd never dreamed I'd actually need it."

"Why didn't you take the job?"

"I had other aspirations, and also because I didn't want to profit like that from something I had done to help everyday people."

I hear the click of a camera shutter before I saw the man with the camera. I'd known we'd eventually find us but it still irritated me. This one was at least keeping a distance so we could keep talking.

"What other aspirations? Your book shop? And just so you know, we've been found. There's a man at our ten o'clock taking pictures."

She glances where I said and shrugs, clearly as unbothered as I am.

"The book shop was part of it. I don't know if you've looked at the shelves, but most of the books aren't from the big publishing companies. The majority of our books come from smaller companies or self-published works. I know how hard most people have getting their books out there."