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remix_reduxTitle: Somewhere, Lost In Translation (Dead Before Born Remix)
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
la_folle_allure
Rating: PG
Fandom: Heroes
Summary: Charlie’s always been learning.
Comments: I loved the original story so much that I wrote a semi-prologue for it. Charlie-centric. Thank you tophaballa for the super wicked and VERY speedy beta :D
Original Story: Language Barrier bymarksapelli
Charlie’s always been a little fascinated with Asia. Her granddaddy was in the one that’d strapped the bomb to the Enola Gay way back in ’46, before her momma was even born. Growing up, Charlie always thought it was pretty cool. Whenever she’d climb into her granddaddy’s lap, it was like sitting in history, like she was suddenly a part of it.
That all changed when Ms. McAdams showed her class footage of the bombings for American History and she saw Hiroshima go up in a cloud of smoke. She’d clapped her hands over her mouth and only realized she’d been crying when Ms. McAdams gave her the hall pass to splash some water on her face.
The following semester, she had to do a book report on Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes and almost cut her hands raw trying to fold the small squares of brightly colored origami paper. She hoped if she folded a thousand of her own, she’d get her own wish. Charlie knew she’d never be able to change the past, never be able to make up the sins of her mother’s father, but she was hoping that maybe one day, she would be able to change the world, save it, balance the scales.
She made it to sixty-three cranes before blood from the paper cuts dotted the beaks of all her origami birds.
That summer, she’d gone to work at the Burnt Toast Diner, and crane making was all but pushed out of her mind in favor of trigonometry and cheese-melts. Every now and then, sometimes before her shift or right before bed, she’d pull out a tiny square of paper – purple or orange or pink and white polka-dotted – and she’d take her time, folding the corners tightly, tucking in edges until she’d have a perfect little crane in the palm of her hand that she’d tuck into a shoebox she kept under her bed.
One of these days, she figured, she’d make enough to save the world. Right now, she’d focus on graduating school, getting out of Midland and going off to Dallas or Austin, going to school in a fancy university, getting a degree, then making a difference. Daddy always said she was the smartest little girl he ever did see, and Charlie Andrews was going to make him and momma proud.
But then her momma’d gotten sick – lung cancer from workin’ sixty odd hours in a smoky bar for over twenty years – and Charlie dropped out of school, began working more and more, began folding two or three cranes a day from ripped up diner placemats or odd scraps of blue and white striped loose-leaf.
She made it to three hundred twenty-seven before her momma coughed up a clot of blood the size of a Georgia peach that hit the starched white pillow behind her. Charlie only remembers the monitors and how the sound of the flat line seemed louder and more real in her head than on ER each week.
LuAnna-Belle told her to take as much time as she needed off of work. She stayed up all night crying while her daddy was out at the bar, bunching up wet balls of Kleenex in her fist. She fell asleep sometime after midnight and woke up midway through an old black and white movie that was on TV.
She was about to turn it off when she saw a terribly fake, plastic reptile stomp across a city as a terrified Asian man shouted out, Ets’ Go-zilla! Charlie didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, but since she was already doing one, the other didn’t seem like such a stretch.
She watched all the way to the end, the electric yellow subtitles burning her tear-swollen eyes. That morning, she went out and rented as many Japanese movies as she could – cartoons (anime), comics (manga) – anything and everything her local Blockbuster had.
She picked up a few words here and there, (I’m sorry, was gomen-nasai! You can do it, was ganbatte! Thank you, was arigato gozimus!) but she never could say more than a few words without her thick, Texan drawl distorting them. When she turned eighteen, Charlie’s life started to revolve around the diner. Soon, all the brightly colored, loud videos and books (manga) were shoved under her bed, right along with the four shoeboxes of crumbled cranes.
Charlie hadn’t even realized how long it had been since she folded a paper crane until she tried on her fifteen-minute break. The wings wouldn’t bend and the beak was cylindrical and it would tilt to the left whenever she set it down. A customer breezed past her lopsided crane and the stiff breeze unfolded the entire thing.
Charlie’d all but given up on folding her cranes. But one morning, she woke up and her fingers seemed to have had a mind of their own. She folded six cranes, each more perfect than the last, before her daddy hollered for her to get a move on or she’d be late for work.
Work that day was strange, spooky even. She didn’t once forget an order and started remembering even the smallest pieces of information that was floatin’ around her. (two blue plate specials came to 10.48, paid with a Jackson, change was 9.52, minus her tip came to 7.95).
That night, she read the book that’d been sitting on her nightstand for months, and pestered her daddy silly the next morning, quotin’ large passages from it. She read a few pages from the dictionary that night, and just like the book, she remembered that 'overweening' meant arrogant and presumptuous or immoderate and exaggerated and 'ersatz' meant being a usually artificial and inferior substitute.
She’d been giddy with her new gift, helped out the chief with his crossword, Doris calculate some change when the register went and acted up again and smiled extra wide when she made her way to booth seven and saw the most adorable Japanese man she’d ever laid eyes on.
"Konniciwa! Sukoii desu?" Charlie greeted with a warm smile, hoping that her words weren’t lost in translation.
Author:
la_folle_allureRating: PG
Fandom: Heroes
Summary: Charlie’s always been learning.
Comments: I loved the original story so much that I wrote a semi-prologue for it. Charlie-centric. Thank you to
phaballa for the super wicked and VERY speedy beta :DOriginal Story: Language Barrier by
marksapelliCharlie’s always been a little fascinated with Asia. Her granddaddy was in the one that’d strapped the bomb to the Enola Gay way back in ’46, before her momma was even born. Growing up, Charlie always thought it was pretty cool. Whenever she’d climb into her granddaddy’s lap, it was like sitting in history, like she was suddenly a part of it.
That all changed when Ms. McAdams showed her class footage of the bombings for American History and she saw Hiroshima go up in a cloud of smoke. She’d clapped her hands over her mouth and only realized she’d been crying when Ms. McAdams gave her the hall pass to splash some water on her face.
The following semester, she had to do a book report on Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes and almost cut her hands raw trying to fold the small squares of brightly colored origami paper. She hoped if she folded a thousand of her own, she’d get her own wish. Charlie knew she’d never be able to change the past, never be able to make up the sins of her mother’s father, but she was hoping that maybe one day, she would be able to change the world, save it, balance the scales.
She made it to sixty-three cranes before blood from the paper cuts dotted the beaks of all her origami birds.
That summer, she’d gone to work at the Burnt Toast Diner, and crane making was all but pushed out of her mind in favor of trigonometry and cheese-melts. Every now and then, sometimes before her shift or right before bed, she’d pull out a tiny square of paper – purple or orange or pink and white polka-dotted – and she’d take her time, folding the corners tightly, tucking in edges until she’d have a perfect little crane in the palm of her hand that she’d tuck into a shoebox she kept under her bed.
One of these days, she figured, she’d make enough to save the world. Right now, she’d focus on graduating school, getting out of Midland and going off to Dallas or Austin, going to school in a fancy university, getting a degree, then making a difference. Daddy always said she was the smartest little girl he ever did see, and Charlie Andrews was going to make him and momma proud.
But then her momma’d gotten sick – lung cancer from workin’ sixty odd hours in a smoky bar for over twenty years – and Charlie dropped out of school, began working more and more, began folding two or three cranes a day from ripped up diner placemats or odd scraps of blue and white striped loose-leaf.
She made it to three hundred twenty-seven before her momma coughed up a clot of blood the size of a Georgia peach that hit the starched white pillow behind her. Charlie only remembers the monitors and how the sound of the flat line seemed louder and more real in her head than on ER each week.
LuAnna-Belle told her to take as much time as she needed off of work. She stayed up all night crying while her daddy was out at the bar, bunching up wet balls of Kleenex in her fist. She fell asleep sometime after midnight and woke up midway through an old black and white movie that was on TV.
She was about to turn it off when she saw a terribly fake, plastic reptile stomp across a city as a terrified Asian man shouted out, Ets’ Go-zilla! Charlie didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, but since she was already doing one, the other didn’t seem like such a stretch.
She watched all the way to the end, the electric yellow subtitles burning her tear-swollen eyes. That morning, she went out and rented as many Japanese movies as she could – cartoons (anime), comics (manga) – anything and everything her local Blockbuster had.
She picked up a few words here and there, (I’m sorry, was gomen-nasai! You can do it, was ganbatte! Thank you, was arigato gozimus!) but she never could say more than a few words without her thick, Texan drawl distorting them. When she turned eighteen, Charlie’s life started to revolve around the diner. Soon, all the brightly colored, loud videos and books (manga) were shoved under her bed, right along with the four shoeboxes of crumbled cranes.
Charlie hadn’t even realized how long it had been since she folded a paper crane until she tried on her fifteen-minute break. The wings wouldn’t bend and the beak was cylindrical and it would tilt to the left whenever she set it down. A customer breezed past her lopsided crane and the stiff breeze unfolded the entire thing.
Charlie’d all but given up on folding her cranes. But one morning, she woke up and her fingers seemed to have had a mind of their own. She folded six cranes, each more perfect than the last, before her daddy hollered for her to get a move on or she’d be late for work.
Work that day was strange, spooky even. She didn’t once forget an order and started remembering even the smallest pieces of information that was floatin’ around her. (two blue plate specials came to 10.48, paid with a Jackson, change was 9.52, minus her tip came to 7.95).
That night, she read the book that’d been sitting on her nightstand for months, and pestered her daddy silly the next morning, quotin’ large passages from it. She read a few pages from the dictionary that night, and just like the book, she remembered that 'overweening' meant arrogant and presumptuous or immoderate and exaggerated and 'ersatz' meant being a usually artificial and inferior substitute.
She’d been giddy with her new gift, helped out the chief with his crossword, Doris calculate some change when the register went and acted up again and smiled extra wide when she made her way to booth seven and saw the most adorable Japanese man she’d ever laid eyes on.
"Konniciwa! Sukoii desu?" Charlie greeted with a warm smile, hoping that her words weren’t lost in translation.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-23 02:31 am (UTC)The idea of Charlie being a latent Japanophile works out so well here, especially her being enthralled by the silly Godzilla movies, and the idea of her trying to acquire new material in a small Texas town. The cranes, too, are sweet, and worked really well as a bridge to bring up her emerging powers.
And Charlie talking about her accent making the Japanese unintelligible! It's so true (not that that ever stops Hiro...)
Thank you so much! This really is a wonderful, adorable little fic, and it captures Charlie very well.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-29 07:02 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-23 07:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2007-04-29 07:07 pm (UTC)