Red Queen One-Shots

Marecal Modern AU - Roman Holiday

A/N: A modern AU, a sequel to the ones I wrote before. They're also to be found in "Red Queen One-Shots", please check them out!^^ I wanted to place this in Paris at first, but then I thought I should rather write about a place where I've been to – although my memories aren't that perfect^^° I'm sorry for eventual inaccuracies.

Mare POV

It's eleven in the evening when I can call it a day on christmas eve. I put away my apron and slip into my coat and scarf and step outside of the café and onto the streets of Rome, bright with lights, filled with people, bells sounding over me.

Astounding that I hardly need the coat, despite the time and season. But this is a warm place, making it even more of a magnet for tourists coming to flee the winter or to experience christmas surrounded by supposedly more holiness than at home, wherever it is.

I'm not sure whether I should call myself one of them. I'm still a foreigner like them, frequently overwhelmed by Rome's grandeur and age and visiting its endless sights. But then again, I make my living by serving tourists currently.

Four months into my gap year, I'm spending the winter in Italy, working as a help or assistant in various institutions, first in the cheaper countryside, now in the capital. I was tempted to see the festive spectacle, to be honest, that I'm putting up the higher costs of coming here. Fortunately, my room is affordable enough, but nothing I'd like to stay in for longer than a few days for that price. I knew what I was getting into, I guess, so I'm here to make an experience of it.

Truly, it is one. The ancientness of the city, the marks of history and art everywhere, often pull at my suspension of disbelief until I can take it for real. The more I stay, I'm starting to wonder if I'll normalize the marvels one moment, no longer able to take it all in as much as it deserves. But I don't intend to stay that long. I'm here to travel and see the world, and my next stations are waiting. Because for all its greatness, Rome's also tiring, exhausting me.

There's a price for a year of travelling, and that is hard, ever-shifting, and often boring work. It isn't difficult to find jobs when you're a native English and Spanish speaker in places full of tourists. Interpreters are good to have and I've a talent for languages, so my Italian improves by the day. The café I currently work at seems to have mostly foreign customers talking English, but to encounter the barriers of languages, from one foreigner to another, leaves a strange impression. Words get jumbled and guesses have to be made all the time and I try to smile away the stress. I hope that eases the work as well as raise my tips.

Although I've understood the processes of applying and have some reserves at hand by now, a consequence of the gap year is a constant worry of having nothing when I wake up next. It can eat at you no matter what, having to rely on yourself alone this much, but then again, it's also the freedom I've craved. Whatever I do, I achieve it by myself. I can be proud of that. Doesn't that mean I can manage everything?

Yet, it also means that often, I'm terribly alone. To be here, I've left behind my home, my friends, and my family. Now I'm meeting strangers every day, of whom each might become a new friend if I gave them the chance. It's hard, the enduring newness of people and everything else. I can't open myself up to them all the time, re-introduce myself and every part of me, can't bring up the energy to translate all of their conversations in my head to take part in them. Thus, I frequently fall into myself and rest alone at the end of a long day full of work.

Tonight is such a time, or could be. It's still christmas, but the loud and lively shift has destroyed pretty much of my festive mood. This is nothing like my little girl christmases and their inherent childhood magic. This is noise and exhaustion and unfamiliarity. It's a feeling pulling me off the ground and I'm not willing to give in to it.