I stood staring into the mirror. I didn't know the girl who stared back at me. A girl who let her hair hang loose around her face, softening normally sharp angles. A girl who wore a dress, and let its fabric hug her body.
I thought this girl had died four years ago.
Yet apparently, she still lived deep inside, resurfacing now. But I saw myself in my eyes, cold and distant, and alone.
I sighed and smoothed my hands over the fabric of the borrowed dress. Borrowed sandals padded against the linoleum of the floor. One more reminder of a dead girl.
It was the last night of training. In the lounge, other recruits and some of the agents were celebrating. I hadn't planned on going... but something had possessed me. The halls were empty and silent as I walked down them. Alone. Always alone.
I stopped at the entrance to the lounge. Warm light and the sound of laughter and conversation spilled out into the dark hallway. I didn't belong in there. But then, I didn't belong anywhere. With a sigh and plenty of doubt, I stepped into the light of the doorway. No going back.
Inside, agents sat in groups, talking, drinking, and enjoying their night. There was a slight stutter in the flow of sound as I walked in. I didn't know or recognize the others beyond their faces. A stranger in a room of strangers. How fitting.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the other recruits sitting off to the side, obviously caught in the middle of a toast, their glasses raised, words frozen on their open lips. I gave them a fleeting glance before moving on. Those people were not friends; they were barely acquaintances.
Moving on, I saw the only person here I could stand to tolerate for the evening. New York sat in a corner, alone, drinking a glass of whiskey and some thick tome. A pair of horn-rimmed glasses rested on his nose as he peered down through them.
"This isn't exactly the best reading room," I said, sliding down into a chair opposite him.
He lifter his head and smiled a bit at me. "Well, isn't this a curiosity," he said still with that half-smile as he closed the book.
"Yes, curiouser and curiouser I suppose..." I felt the heat and crowd of the room begin to press down on me, making it increasingly to difficult to breathe. Needing to calm myself, I reached across the table, and quickly quaffed York's half-finished whiskey.
He picked up the now empty glass and stared at it, as if he didn't understand where it could have gone. "You don't seem like a whiskey drinker."
"Neither do you." I smirked, not a true smile, never a true smile.
"So why did you?"
"Who knows? Maybe just so you didn't have to..." I smirked again at my own ridiculousness.
"Are you in the habit of doing things so others don't have to?" I felt warmer than before, the drink and the crowded room working together against me, thrown by his serious turn of conversation.
"Only when there's no one else to step up," I answered truthfully. I pressed my hand to my temple, and brushed it through my hair, desperately trying to stay calm. I'd forgotten how much crowded spaces unnerved me.
New York noticed my tension, my touch of anxiety, "Carolina?"
"I'm fine." What was one more lie to add to all the others?
He rose quietly, tucking his book under one arm, and came over to me. Gently, he pulled me up from the chair, and guided me from the room, ignoring my refusals and protestations.
"I'm fine."
"You were starting to have a panic attack, in case you hadn't noticed."
I hadn't. I thought I had been at least a little more in control...
"I was fine," I paused, "Crowded spaces...just..." I stopped. There was no need to tell him this.
"Just what?" His voice was so soft. He tried so hard to get me to open up.
Maybe it was the whiskey. Maybe it was the four weeks of his constant presence. Maybe it was temporary insanity.
"Crowded spaces represent nothing more than people grouping together, waiting to die." I slumped against the wall, wishing for it all to end. I rubbed my hands against my eyes, tired of it all, needing to block it out.
"Carolina. Open your eyes." His voice was quiet, yet forceful, and close. Slowly, I opened my eyes, deciding, for just this once, to listen.
"What?" He was crouching on his heels, his face inches from mine.
"Could you just this once let me help?"
"I don't need help."
He paused, stubbornly staring at me.
"Fine," he stood up. I watched him warily, knowing by now he wouldn't just leave.
But then he simply turned and left. What? He had turned his back on me and walked down the hall...
"New York? Where- where are you going?" I stood up, staring after him.
"Well you obviously don't need my help..." he turned his head back, stopping in the middle of the hall. "Although there was something I'd thought you'd like..." he trailed off, slightly shrugging his shoulders before walking off again.
I muttered under my breath, "Damnit New York..." I couldn't explain it, but something inexplicably me to him, made me need to know where he was going.
I strode after him, hanging back a few feet. He pretended not to notice I followed. I appreciated that at least. He took us up flights of stairs, into sections of the compound that were foreign to me. We had to be nearing the top floor. Finally he pushed open a metal door at the top of the stairs and a rush of cold night air met my face.
He had taken us to the roof.
"Look up," he whispered, acknowledging me now.
"Up?" Despite the question, I tilted my head back, looking up to the sky. I gasped quietly.
The sky was a veritable sea of stars and light against the utter blackness and emptiness of space. It went on forever, encompassing us.
"I thought, since you don't like crowds, I'd bring you to their antithesis..." New York had moved to stand by me, and now we stood with our shoulders and arms but hairs' breadths' apart.
I whispered only two words in response as I looked to the stars, rapt in their beauty:
"Thank you."