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It was just an accepted fact that those lost to Project Freelancer would die alone, and would remain that way.
Agent Carolina never anticipated that she would have to face one of her fallen comrades. How could she? Her squad was picked away one by one, their armour and bodies destroyed, leaving only herself and Agent Washington. She could count on one hand how many nights she and Wash discussed what they knew to piece together the story for each of their teammates. It was Wash who destroyed York's armor. There was nothing left of him, as mandated by the Freelancer Protocol, and yet the remaining soldiers stood over a headstone clearly marked "Agent New York."
"Why is this here? Who would do this?" She demanded, though Washington couldn't provide the answers any more than she could. Whether or not York was there, placed in the earth, beneath their feet or not didn't concern Carolina, but the marking for it did.
Washington sighed, which indicated that this weighed on him just as it did on her. "Something isn't right. We should leave." The wary edge to his voice mirrored Carolina's apprehensiveness. "Carolina?" Wash asked when she didn't respond, "Look, I don't like it either, all the more reason to leave." Despite his suggestion, Wash didn't move from Carolina's side.
Then it occurred to him that Carolina never got a final goodbye.
"I'm going to look around, see what I can find," he said quietly. Washington hovered a moment longer before he reluctantly left Carolina alone.
The face of the stone was worn, as if it were centuries old, and the name marked on it was barely scratched into the surface, but there was no mistaking what it said. How did it get here, Carolina wondered, so far from where York actually died? Wash was on to something when he said this wasn't right. It was more than just visiting the place where York died and finding something of his amongst the rubble, this was wrong. Carolina knelt down, and brushed the over the letters with her fingertips. They were meant to find this. But what purpose did it serve?
Suspicion ebbed momentarily, which allowed for a brief moment where Carolina let herself feel deep melancholy, which she often put aside. She let it slip into her lungs, fill her mouth, invade her head, and sink it's claws into her heart. The sorrowful beast had tested her silently time and time again, it took it's time, and waited for the moment when she couldn't fight it off. Never did she expect to voluntarily allow herself to mourn in this way. This was her past, her darkness, her failures. Rather than be focused on her wrongdoings, Carolina tried to be better, to do better every day. She wouldn't abandon her past, but she wouldn't live in it either. That was a dangerous thing to do. However, Carolina forgot something very important in her quest to do better.
There was also loss.
"Carolina!" Wash's voice called out for her and hit her like a wave of cold water. Carolina didn't look back as she sprinted away from the stone- there were more important things than someone she loved. She wouldn't fail anyone else. She wouldn't love again and she wouldn't lose someone she cared for. Not Wash, not the Reds, not the Blues. So Carolina didn't look back.
Silence fell over the cemetery whose population was one.
Around the headstone, sprouts poked through the dirt and reached for the heavens. Petals formed and slowly fell open. One by one, the flowers filled the small space of the cemetery until there was nowhere left for them to grow. A garden of poppies flourished, mysteriously, in the square plot of land. The name on the stone faded and the stone crumbled into dust. Where it left a patch bare in the garden of poppies, grew a single rose.