Marina One Shot (EN) - Part 2

What if...

"No great love story began as a rational one".

Leila Ford - A Family Affair

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Maya was a young woman of twenty-three. She'd been a firefighter for a year; and for a little over a year now she'd been pretending to be a man, because women could be firefighters, but only on a voluntary basis; they couldn't be paid for it, and she refused to do a job she was less passionate about, «just to support herself».

She had entered the Seattle Fire Academy thanks to the identity papers of her brother, who had died of the plague. She had inherited what little her parents had when they died, and so had decided, as she was now alone in the world, to live her life as she saw fit.

She passed her entrance exam and was recruited straight from the academy by Station 19. The captain had found it interesting to recruit the slimmest, smallest firefighter in the academy, so she could squeeze in anywhere.

As her mother had died of cancer, she had recovered her wig and cut it to create a man's hairstyle. This made her look just like a slender, beardless man, a little shorter than average.

Carina was a twenty-four-year-old Italian girl who had decided to flee her country. She had always dreamed of greatness, and on her eighteenth birthday she had applied to be a nurse on a ship crossing the Atlantic, and on arrival had simply decided to stay in America.
She began by working in a New York hospital, then gradually made her way westwards.
She had finally landed in Seattle several months ago, and it wasn't impossible to go further west, but she liked it here and decided to stay for the time being.

She was a nurse at Seattle Grace, the city's most renowned hospital.
She worked there with Taryn, a girl two years younger than herself, whom she had met in New York and who had decided to come with her. They began by living in Chicago for a while, then gradually moved to Seattle in just under five years.

They were two very free women. Carina was a man-pleaser, but she wasn't so easily seduced. She occasionally let herself be taken out on a date, but no one had ever been so serious about her that she wanted to stay in one town for him.

When they arrived in Seattle, they initially lived together, as they did in every other city, but they ended up each taking a small apartment, like a fully-equipped maid's room, in the same building. This way, they had their own independence, and the accommodation they found was less expensive than taking a place for two.

They worked a lot, as they were young and didn't have a partner, or a family life, so they could earn a bit more money, as they liked to go to the theater. They continued to see each other often outside the hospital, despite the fact that they no longer lived together. After all, they lived just a few doors down from each other, so it wasn't as if they lived several blocks away. What's more, they lived fairly close to the hospital, downtown and the future theater.

Tonight they had gone to the Rialto to see a play they both loved. It was a Shakespeare play, and Carina loved it because it reminded her of home, as it was set in Verona, Italy. She wasn't from Verona itself, but it was still home in the broadest sense. Home to her little brother and her parents.

She and her mother often wrote to each other, but the mail sometimes took several long weeks to arrive.

They were in the theater, enjoying the play and the atmosphere. Carina was passionate about love stories, so she recited every word of the lyrics in a whisper.
P
The Rialto, which was the old theater they were currently in, was giving its last performance tonight. They were happy because the future theater was much closer to home.