"I like fixing things."
York had told her that once. She had walked into his room, intending to ask the tan freelancer about the training schedule, only to find him fiddling with an ancient looking silver pocket watch. He barely glanced up at her, so focused on his project that he almost missed her inquiry. "It's been in my family for generations." He explained. "Dad gave it to me when I joined the army. But it's still pretty old, so it breaks a lot."
"Why don't you just get a new watch?" she had asked, leaning against the door frame. "I'm sure there's a thousand out there that are much better." York stared at her for a long moment, realizing by the way she tipped her head in bewilderment that she just didn't understand. So he simply sighed and offered her an almost pitying smile.
"Some things are just worth fixing Carolina."
Carolina didn't know why those words stuck with her. During training, on missions, in the halfway point between consciousness and dreams, they would somehow glide into her mind, echoing and wondering and catching on fragments as she tried to make sense of it.
She didn't understand what he'd meant until years later. After Texas showed up, after she fell to number two, after the AI were implanted and everything felt like it was falling apart.
Carolina believed that was why her feet lead her to his room on those nights.
Barely three seconds after she knocked the door would swing open to reveal a rather disheveled Agent New York. She never even had to say anything, he always just lead her inside and wrapped his arms around her, murmuring comforts even as she began to lose herself.
No one could ever call her weak or vulnerable, but now she was. At least when York was holding her, Carolina knew she was safe. When the voices in her head started overpowering her, his words could drown them out. Even as the dark tendrils of fear began latching onto her, dragging her down into the despairs of her own mind, one light always shone through.
She needed him that was true; she could just never understand why he stayed with her all those nights. Why would he stay up to wake her from the nightmares? Why would he listen to her screams and arguments with herself knowing he couldn't fight the offender? Why would he stand over her, begging her to come back to him when the voices had overloaded her brain to the point where she could only stare into the distance and clutch at the bed sheets until her knuckles turned white? For god's sake, she even remembered getting so frustrated that she threw his laptop against the wall and shattered it, yet he still pulled her into his firm embrace, whispering that it was okay.
He still held her hands to keep her from clawing at her skull, watching her with sad eyes that he tried to disguise with a smile. York was always bad at hiding things though.
"Why do you keep doing this?" Carolina whispered to him one night. Her face was buried in his chest, the silent tears spilling from her eyes soaking into his T-shirt. "Why do you keep trying? Everyone else has given up. They all know I-I'm-"
Broken.
York's fingers brushed the hair out of her face, his other hand tracing calming patterns into her back. He pulled the blanket up to cover the shivering girl, tucking her now even-tinier form under his arm. Just as she was beginning to drift off to sleep, he wiped the tears from her face, pressed his lips against hers, and whispered
"You're worth fixing."
