A Road to Somewhere
Life was life, Steve thought to himself as he huffed to clear the powder off his face. There were good and bad turns to be sure, and there were also just extraordinarily rude people. That was thought with some malice looking over his shoulder for the person responsible for getting him to drop face first into the musk root powder of the merchant stall he’d been browsing. It wasn’t dangerous stuff by any means but it was stomach turningly potent. Steve could feel his stomach rolling on him already.
The man who’d bumped into him hadn’t so much as glanced after the fact. Instead he was leaning into some poor girl’s way and looking half-crazed with how wide he was smiling. He had a long red cloak attached to one shoulder piece that had once had a crest engraved. But the face of the engraving had been scratched and pitted away to be unrecognizable now. His hair was dark and short, hint of curl at the ends against his neck. Thin nose, slightly wide mouth (or the smile distorted it), and blue eyes. Not to mention the air of someone completely oblivious to the trouble they caused and never being held accountable for it.
Or perhaps Steve was so caught in the pretentious air that had to go hand in hand with a golden suit of armor.
Unsurprisingly the girl slipped away leaving the man behind with a forlorn sigh.
“You might try a little exercise in observation.” Steve heard himself grouse in a tone that Bucky and Sam so happily deemed his grumpy, old guy voice. But he was hardly old, not by the standards of any magic-kin. A paltry century under his belt was nothing but time to loose milk teeth in a fair few circles. Tall and terribly thin he didn’t cut an imposing figure in his worn robes. The edges of his sleeves beginning to go threadbare but comfortable as a second skin.
For a beat the man stared at him confused.
“She was interested from the beginning.”
The man looked in the general direction the girl had gone then back to Steve. “While I’d like to say I’m not that dense, it wasn’t about anything like that.” Though he did frown some looking off away into the crowd of the market once more.
“Yeah, right.” Steve’s tone was painfully flat while his eyes drifted back to the stalls for ingredients he needed. He still hd work to do rude people or not. “Pay more attention or you’ll get the wrong person angry around here.” Steve waved a hand around to mean any of the various spell casters or able apothecaries of less than amiable repute.
“Yeah...know that.”
It was the way the man had said it that got Steve to look up again - as if he knew first hand. It wasn’t a stretch to see the man landing himself into trouble but the kind that set his shoulders to droop and his expression to grow somber weren’t quite in line with Steve’s expectations. An jilted lover, seemed more likely.
“You might also apologize when you bump into people.” It was more a change in topic than anything else. Steve hardly expected an apology.
The low expression turned to something more bemused. “Huh?”
Resisting the impulse to roll his eyes Steve pointed at himself. “You bumped into me.” Not that he was hurt, in body or spirit, but he was a little miffed about it. His temper always had been short-fused.
“I did?” The man seemed to be uncertain one way or the other. “When?”
“Just now when you went by to harass that poor girl. Was by the stall.”
“I wasn’t harassing her.” Was the quick defense but there was a dawning moment on his face when he seemed to realize. “I hit you? I thought I just tapped against one of the bushels on display.” And the stranger was so earnestly surprised about it Steve found himself believing him.
Steve eyed him a moment. “Well?”
Cringing a bit the man shook off his confusion, and the preoccupied air about him, to look contrite. “I am sorry I didn’t realize or I’d have done it before, I swear.” He held his hands up in front of himself like that did much good against anyone who could toss fireballs on a spiteful word.
Just like that Steve found his ire cooling rapidly. He’d thrown it a little out of proportion. Men like this stranger often hadn’t seen reason to apologize for far worse things and he might have seen them in this one.
But before Steve could admit to his own fault in the situation the stranger perked up.
“You’re a wizard too?”
Caught off guard Steve nodded to the question. Even more startled when the stranger took the two wide strides up to him and classed his hands between his own. The way the man was looking down at him was so hopeful and relieved Steve wondered how that girl had gotten away unscathed.
“Please help me.”
“..help you?” Steve asked lamely. He was still a little caught on the hand-holding business which seemed very unnecessary. Though the man was wearing gloves it seemed and he wasn’t broaching every rule of ethics when meeting a strange magic-abled person.
One of the ten cardinal rule being no physical contact with an unknown magical entity upon danger of threat, dismemberment, or death. But most concisely known as - look but don’t touch. Skin-to-skin (on fur, paw, claw, ect.) was the worst of this offense so the gloves spared the man a few points but not nearly enough.
“Please?” The man tried again some of that sad desperation reaching to his face again. It was plain that he was very much pleading. Might have dropped to his knees if Steve demanded it, not that he would.
But one of the cardinal rules of being magically abled involved not agreeing to anything until you knew the finer details. Breach of contract could be painful to work out and Steve had seen a few of those messes.
Steve pulled his hands free and took a step back to get himself some distance. Desperate was never a good look on a customer. His mother had been in the healing arts and Steve had seen the face of lunacy from denial and desperation before. He’d learned to be wary of anyone too willing to pay any price for a solution or too inclined to believe magic could remedy anything. He’d seen less of it himself but Steve had taken on far less prestigious work than his mother had. His jobs were small and generally simple. He took on things others didn’t want to due and didn’t flinch away from hard work.
“Look you need to understand how this trade works if you need help that badly...”
“Tony.” The stranger, or Tony it turned out, provided as Steve’s pause. It was a common name after the birth of the crowned prince, a tiding of good luck or some such.
“You need to be realistic and stop harassing anyone who happens to practice magic around here. You’ll get yourself barred from any service that way and land yourself in a worse position. You should try one of the reputable potion houses or the upper-crust apothecaries toward the trading ports. You’ll have better luck there than even here in the slums of the capital.” It was all factual. Steve knew the rates of serious cases in areas like theirs.
Tony’s expression fell slowly once more. His hands hanging at his sides and his brow creased. “I’ve tried that already. The good ones and they can’t help me.”
That meant one of two things - Tony was asking for something that was impossible or asking for something they could not do for him. There were rules and regulations in place for a multitude of reasons, but there were tenets of magic that could not be disobeyed without nature demanding her own recourse.
“No one here is going to be able to help you.” The chance a slim Steve was wrong about this. One had better chances of opening a unicorn farm, something that had never panned out for anyone in history.
Somehow that didn’t seem to deter Tony. Instead where he’d looked crestfallen before he seemed to have regained his good humor. There was an inkling of a smile, though it was still tinged with sadness. “I was told I could find what I needed here.”
Or option three - Tony was stark raving mad.
“Who told you that?” Steve asked with all the humoring in his tone to someone talking to a child or someone extraordinarily dull-witted.
The tone seemed to offer offense because Tony’s wan smile became a far more pronounced frown. He drew up to his full height, making Steve only just then aware he’d been leaning toward him before, to regain some of his dignity. “I trust them. They wouldn’t have sent me here if they didn’t believe what they told me. He’s not a bad guy even if he doesn’t have a fun bone in his body.”
Why he’d asked Steve wasn’t sure, his mind was made up already.
“Good luck with that.” And he was on his way to go, away from this madness before he became any more involved than he already was.
