Chapter Text
Chapter One: the terrible, horrible, very bad, no-good day
What do you do when you encounter a street fight?
Do you:
(a) run away;
(b) call the police;
(c) try to peacefully negotiate a ceasefire between the hostile entities?
This is not really a situation that Maria Suzuki has ever previously experienced in the almost 25 years of her life. Nor did she ever think to ask herself this question... except for perhaps a silly magazine personality test.
Travelling for work is often exhausting. Maria had been walking back to her hotel after working late. Tired and suffering a migraine, she is so miserable that she missed her turn and ends up in an alley she does not recognize.
"Damn." She curses to herself, rubbing her forehead. Frankly, finding herself in a dead end alley that she does not recognize is not entirely surprising as it's only her second day in Italy. And while Maria is enjoying learning the city and eating the food, her project is already extremely stressful. She scuffs her feet grumpily and kicks a stray stone. She pulls out her work phone and waits for her GPS to load.
What a surprise - of course, her data connection is slow. It figures. As the map finally loads, she hears the soft "oof" and an angry Italian conversation.
Maria rolls her eyes. She may not speak much italian but there is no mistaking a person cursing. She tunes out the noise and she maps her way to the hotel.
Suddenly, there is screaming and loud sounds of fist being exchanged.
Reflexively, as her sense of fight-or-flight is triggered, Maria looks up from her phone to see one man in a suit attempt to stab a man in a much nicer and likely much more expensive suit, who dodges the knife but just barely.
She has always been a very practical girl. She has always been prepared - even carrying a small first aid kit in her purse. Maria likes planning for eventualities.
But this? A street fight?
Maria has never planned for this situation. Maria has never seen this situation coming. She has never expected to be anywhere near anyone fighting.
So, she surprises herself when she does not get away as fast as possible or call the police. Nor does she try to stop the fight.
Instead, Maria mind is blank, and her brain experiences a blue screen of death. Her system has experienced an unrecoverable error and crashed.
For a moment, she does not breathe; she does not think; she does not move. A chill races down to the bottom of her spine. She is frozen.
Her brain reboots.
Then, completely out of character, Maria promptly trips over her own feet and is sent sprawling into the man in the nicer suit, pushing him down just in time for the knife to miss.
For a moment she stares into his eyes, baffled by the situation. His warm brown eyes are beautiful, and she almost loses herself in them. She feels warm as if she just drank a shot of whiskey.
Then she sees the other man dive for them with the knife. Suddenly, her brain overloads, and her sympathetic nervous system sends her adrenaline skyrocketing. Her heart races. The stress of the day catches up to her. She finds herself furious. Completely and utterly furious.
Her day sucked. Work was awful. She has jet lag. She doesn't speak the language. She got lost. Her feet hurt. She hasn’t eaten today.
Keeping positive has been an exhausting trial.
All Maria wants to do is get back to the hotel, crack open a bottle of wine, and sleep.
Instead, she is stuck, hot and hungry, on the dirty ground of a creepy alley with a knife wielding psycho attacking her and halfway across the world from home.
Maria is angry. Her pulse races, and the ancient evolutionary conditioned response screams at her to act.
Instinct takes over.
It is an eruption of a long dormant anger.
A burning fury floods her senses. Then, the next thing she knows, she has tackled the man attempting to attack and is whaling on him. She hits him and hits him and hits him.
Apparently, Maria’s answer to “what do you do when you encounter a street fight?” is a fourth option not included on the personality quiz. Apparently, Maria’s answer is “(d) join the brawl.”
Maria has never been a violent person. While she has taken self defense classes, Maria has never been in a fight nor wanted to be in a fight. Maria has never hit another person for the purpose of harming them. Until now.
Her face tinged red with fury and exhaustion, she moves to hit the man again but an arm catches her elbow. She turns to look at the well-dressed man with the beautiful eyes.
"Puoi fermarti ora." He says gently. He pulls her up away from his attacker. "Grazie per il vostro aiuto."
Maria wordlessly stares at him.
"Stai bene?" He prompts her again.
"Uh-" Maria desperately tries to remember how to say that she doesn't speak Italian, but the Italian words do not want to come. Her shaking and stuttering is interrupted but a crowd of suited men racing into the alley. The psycho is promptly tied up and picked up.
"Capo! Stai bene?" An older man addresses the man with beautiful eyes. "Quello che è successo?"
"Sì sono buono. È una lunga storia."
Maria realizes that her energy and adrenaline has worn off, and she is over the whole situation. Maybe even the whole country.
So while the hoard of suit wearing men are talking in a language that she does not understand, Maria walks past the men and out of the alley.
She drags her body the rest of the way to the hotel. As soon as she is back in the room, she showers, does her skin care routine, and then lays down on the bed.
"What the fuck," Maria mutters to herself.
She stares blankly at the ceiling.
Maria is exhausted and really just wants to be home right now. Curled up on her own bed. Instead, she's stuck in Italy for the next two weeks. She was excited when she was asked to travel for this project, but so far, the trip has not been as she hoped. Only a few days until the weekend, and she could do some tourist activities.
She sighs soundlessly. "I can't believe I have work tomorrow." She needs to set an alarm.
"Shit." She doesn't have her phone. Groaning, after searching to no avail, she uses the hotel phone to call down to the front desk for an early wake up call.
Maria forces herself to calm down and tells herself tomorrow will be a good day despite the slowly creeping ominous feeling deep within her bones. Then, she turns over and tries to sleep.