The first time he could have proposed to Carolina was in the Errera.
They first met this night. Where she stole his lighter, he was playing with all night long.
Looking back, York was sure that it had been love on first sight for him. She approached him just as he realized that his friends ditched him. Left without him and he having no ride home or company here. Her hair was red like rubies, falling down over her shoulders and back like a bloody river. Under the ruby red bangs shimmered green eyes. No watery, mixed with a bit of other colors, green eyes. The color was intense and it looked like emeralds. As if someone had taken a crayon and colored these eyes like that. Like someone had replaced her eyes with emeralds as of the intense, green shimmer.
York, or Sean back then, felt like she was looking right through him, seeing in his soul and assessing accurately his abilities and on which level of threat he was for her.
Luckily, she didn't estimate him to be dangerous. Otherwise the following conversation would never had occurred. Because she would have either ignored or beaten him up badly.
Her eyes, as well as her body language, gave away that she was self-confident, exactly knowing her strengths and her abilities. Moreover, said abilities were awesome! Without him even seeing it coming, the woman had snatched his lighter away; Sean had been playing with all night long. Right out of his fucking hands!
While he was staring dumb folded at her, she began to let the lighter wander through the fingers of her right hand, playing with an easiness as if she was doing that already for years. Not imitating Yorks movements of some seconds ago.
She didn't even stop with the play as York tried to get his lighter back. Without really looking at the lighter, she let it dance through her fingers while avoiding York to get it.
She fucking teased him. Always bringing back the lighter to his proximity, and just as he wanted to grab it, it was suddenly gone. Not once interrupting the play of her fingers.
After York gave up trying to snatch the lighter, he then tried it with his jokes and pick up lines. Unlike other women, she didn't react ashamed or embarrassed by them. She just fucking joked back! Sean couldn't help but laugh to her replies, as it was funny and amusing to talk to her. Hours passed by and before they realized it, they got kicked out by the owner of the bar, because it was morning and the bar was closing.
Returning home, York had Carolinas number, but not the lighter. She kept it as pawn, that Sean would really call her and not just say it without doing it – Like most of the men, he included.
But hell, he would never forget to call Carolina! She was way too fascinating. Her face too striking to only call pretty. Her body perfectly trained, and still having some feminine curves what made her incredibly sexy. And her self-confidence and the a bit smug and cocky way to appear made this mix just perfect.
If he could have, he would already have called her up right now. But Sean was tired and they saw each other off just five minutes ago. He would go to sleep and call or text her afterwards.
The second time he could have popped the question was when he got a member of the Freelancers.
Okay, normally the Project finds you, inviting you to join them because they need one of your special abilities or what the fuck ever. However, Sean had turned the game around. After some not so legal actions to find out where Carolina was stationed, he wrote a short mail to the director of this project, offering his abilities for the Freelancers, also noticing that he had been the one breaking into a high security office, hacking the computer and getting back out without setting off the alarm or getting caught.
Instead of a formal invitation, Sean had some special forces in front of his house the next day, dragging him off to a close by building of the secret service. After hours of interrogation, he finally was able to break through to them that he did this stuff only to find out where Carolina was stationed and to get there too because he was madly in love.
It only caused the guys from the secret service to shake their heads in disbelief.
After some more hours, in which Sean was waiting in the small interrogation room, they let him go. Although the secret service didn't want to, he seemed to have someone who had bailed him out of this misery. Someone with more authority than the service. But who could that be?
Arriving home, he saw a soldier standing there in a teal armor. It was a full battle armor, with knives and several guns attached to the hips and the back. As the soldier took off his helmet, Seans mouth fell open as he saw the bloody red hair and the shimmering green emeralds of Carolina appearing from under the helmet.
Blurting out some incoherent sentences, he saw the woman grin mischievously, telling him that the director first was furious about him doing such a shit. However, after some raging, the director gave her the order to go and get this man. He wanted Sean in his rows, rather than knowing him on the enemies' side. He was an expert at picking locks and infiltration, just what they needed as supplement in their team.
As the brown haired man didn't reply, a smug grin appeared on Carolinas lips, asking him if he seriously wanted to reject the offer after going through so much things. Because if it hadn't been for the director bailing him out, he still would be stuck in the interrogation office of the secret service.
Some days later, Sean boarded a flight to the mother of invention, after selling and offering his whole household and canceled the apartment. Arriving at the mother of invention, he met Carolina, Maine, Wyoming, C.T., Georgia, North and South. Later Wash and some other no-name-agents joined. Some left, some died, some became close friends of him.
The third time he could have asked for her hand was when he awoke from a three-days-coma.
A shrapnel hat crushed his helmet and pierced his eye.
Every try to save was useless the eye was irretrievably. He would stay blind on this eye forever. He struggled for weeks, months to get used to the fact that he was partially blind, having a blind spot where friends and foes could sneak up on him without getting noticed by York. There were also problems in assessing the distance and the speed, having problems to assess the position of things in the room. The problem was highest when the object was moving fast. Like in a battle.
So more than not the tan armored soldier was laying in the sick bay, recovering from concussions and broken bones because his friends hit him unfortunately in a sparring match.
He wasn't allowed to go on missions as long as he wasn't good to go. He knew himself that he was far away.
Anyways, after waking up the first thought was how Carolina was doing. Moreover, this thought stuck with him when his love wasn't around. It made him thinking. However, every time when he saw her, he was either too happy and didn't want to destroy the good moments they shared by asking such a dumb question. Or Carolina was too unnerved to deal with such a question when they saw each other.
After York got Delta, his fighting capability got back to almost normal, as the green guy was watching out on his blind side. He was his eye on the left. Getting back on missions, combined with daily training, he soon pushed this thought aside, as there were more important things to worry about. Like joking about Wash when he ran the director over with his skateboard or teasing south until she got a tantrum.
The fourth time he could have proposed to her was when they came back from a failed mission. They all got away more or less with their live just because Tex showed up and saved all their asses in the last minute. Although the new number one showed up, she couldn't avoid it that Carolina got shot. It was a life threatening shot. It went directly through her lung.
Unlike usually, South went to support foursevenniner, whilst Carolina was laying on a stretcher, the medic trying to keep her alive until they were on the Mother of Invention. Arriving there, the teal armored soldier had to undergo a long surgery, the surgeons trying their best to save her.
York had been sitting outside the operating suite, waiting all those hours. He was musing over his relationship to Carolina. What they went through, how they met each other, how they got to love each other, how they managed to keep their relationship up under such difficult circumstances.
He was also thinking about the missed opportunities to ask for her hand up to now. They all were perfect on their own way, but not like perfect-perfect.
While waiting, the others dropped by and left again, only sitting there and keeping him company for some time before the duty called for their attention. However, nobody came to get him. Maybe the director had a heart and let him be there and wait for Carolinas surgery to end.
So he sat there, until the surgeons came out and told him she would get well again. They had managed to save her, getting the wound closed and the blood out of her lungs. She just needed rest and would surely sleep the next week.
York felt a wave of relieve run through his body as he got the news. She would be fine. She only needed some rest.
Sitting by her side whenever he was able to afterwards, he almost impatiently waited for her to wake up.
As she then did, after more than a week after the surgery, he didn't had the guts to ask. She looked so weak and so fragile. Completely opposite of how Carolina looked normally. It just didn't feel right to pop the question now when she was not her normal self. He even feared that he might break her if he did.
The fifth time he could have asked for her hand was after Washs mental breakdown during the implantation of Epsilon.
They were both beside Washs bed after they drugged him up right up his ears. But even though he was sedated, the young Freelancer was sweating and shaking at the same time. Tossing and turning until the medics had to tie him down on the bed to avoid him hurting himself.
His head still was jerking from the right to the left and back. Mumbling things only he understood.
That was the first time York saw Carolina care for someone so much. Wash was to all of them like their kid brother. Not only because of the age, also because of his behavior. And seeing him in such a bad mental state made even Carolina worry about him.
Sitting on the edge of the bed in her civvies, she gently stroked over Washs head what seemed to calm down the frantic tossing of Washs head. But the mumbling and the sweating stayed. Like Carolina and York. They both spent the nights and days by his side when they were able to. Always trying to show him that they were around, that they cared for him.
That he wasn't alone in his misery and that his friends would have his back.
It may sound macabre, but watching Carolina looking after Wash so gently and loving made him imagine how she was looking after a child. After his and her child.
This incident showed York clearly that Carolina would be a great mother. She may be strict, but she had a loving and gentle side, which displayed when someone was so bad off like Wash had been then.
Back then he shut his trap. Out of the times he could have popped the question, this situation was the worst of all. They didn't know if Wash would make it and how his mental state would be afterwards. He didn't want to ask something important and happy if one of his best friends was so bad off. Furthermore, he wanted Wash and the others to be witnesses of his proposal. Even though the possibility existed that Carolina would turn him down.
Shortly after that, Tex went rogue, supported by York and North. That was when he lastly saw her. She had been angry, hurt and disappointed in the Freelancers. Mostly in York. She even gave him his lighter back, what was a sign that she was ending whatever they had until this moment.
Now, he was laying on the ground, head first. His chest hurts and he is asking himself if Carolina felt the same pain as she got shot back then.
He coughed before taking a gurgling breath in. Warm liquid dribbled out of his mouth and nose. The breathing got more difficult with every second passing by. This fucking cockbite of Wyoming got him. He had shot from the left side. Delta hadn't been able to warn York early enough.
The armor-piercing ammunition went right through his body, leaving a huge, gaping, bloody wound. In his armor as well as in his body.
York didn't have illusions. He would die here. And he was sure that he then would meet Carolina again and finally being able to pop the question he had been too much of a coward in this life.
He had seen how the Meta had thrown her off the cliff. He was sure that she already was waiting for him. Somewhere, wearing those freaking fucking hot clothes she wore in Errera back then.
He was sure she would have her hair open, letting it flow over her shoulders like a river of blood. And those shining green emeralds would shimmer with this unique mix of happiness, fondness combined with this smugly, arrogant glint she was always sporting.
Sean was sure. Then, when he would see her again. When he finally would see her again. He would go down on his knee, taking out the ring he was carrying with him since he joined Freelancer, and asking for Carolinas hand.
With a last gurgling breath, York closed his eyes and left for this new place. For this new life together with Carolina.