Fic: 'Every Phone in Dublin' (8/25)
Title: Every Phone in Dublin
Fandom: The Matrix
Characters: Mouse/Zephyr (OC)
Word Count: 945
Prompt: From fanfic25, 5/17: 'Find'.
Notes: None
Summary: "It is later that night, when every other topic has been exhausted, that Mouse asks Zephyr where he was from."
Every Phone in Dublin
It is later that night, when every other topic has been exhausted, that Mouse asks Zephyr where he was from. He's raised himself lazily on one elbow to ask the question, noting with a pang of amusement that Zephyr mimics his posture; their noses almost touching, Zephyr's voice a low but perfectly clear murmur.
"Ireland," he says, casting a downward glance that Mouse is sure means he hasn't thought of being back in the Matrix in a long time. "I lived... if you could call it that, living... I lived in Dublin."
Mouse stretches out, wrapping his arm over Zephyr's chest. "Was Dublin worse than the Philemon, then?" he asks, and Zephyr thinks for a while before answering that one. Dublin had been like a prison towards the end, especially once he'd known what was going on; that there was a world beyond this one that had pressed against his senses, like he was living his entire life with his face against a window, watching the traffic from his hostel room. The Philemon hadn't been what he'd expected, either: a ship that seemed less constructed so much as cobbled together. The way they'd contacted him, he'd assumed there would be gleaming white ships, hovering majestically over the wrecks of cities. Instead, he was faced with a world more grey than the one he'd left.
"I memorised a bit of a novel when I was at university," he says, wondering if Mouse wants a simple answer or a story. Judging by the way Mouse smiles and plants a gentle kiss just below Zephyr's ear, 'a story' is the right answer. "It's from a book called 'In a Network of Lines that Enlace'." He pauses, looks down at Mouse and smiles slightly at the expression on his face, then begins.
"'When I am out in the streets, and I hear telephones ring in strange houses; even when I am in strange cities, in cities where my presence is unknown to anyone, even then, hearing a ring, my first thought every time for a fraction of a second is that the telephone is calling me, and in the following fraction of a second there is the relief of knowing myself excluded for the moment from every call, unattainable, safe, but this relief also lasts a mere fraction of a second, because immediately afterward I think that it is not only that strange telephone that is ringing; many kilometres away, hundreds, thousands of kilometres, there is also the telephone in my house, which certainly at the same moment is ringing repeatedly in the deserted rooms, and again I am torn between the necessity and impossibility of answering.'"
He stops there, gathering his breath, and Mouse looks impressed; it may be, he thinks, that Mouse knows the book, and knows it isn't quite the book he attributes it to, or possibly it could be that Mouse wasn't expecting a sentence that long. While he tried to figure that one out, he keeps talking.
"Maybe that was how Beta got in touch with me - he knew that I knew the passage, knew the book. One night I was awake in my hostel, reading, occasionally looking out over the city and wondering if they were out there that night. I got an email, this little 'bing' that, I don't know, maybe woke me up; I might have been dozing. It said... well, all it said was that I should reclaim my tokens because the number I'd called had shown no signs of life.
"For a second I didn't recognise the line, but then I thought back to another book by the same writer, and how the book was set in a train station where the phone booth didn't work. The nearest station was the Grand Canal one; I hadn't been there in ages. I called Aaron-"
"Aaron?" Mouse interrupts sleepily.
Zephyr hesitates. "My... my boyfriend. He knew his way around the city better than I did."
"You had a boyfriend in the Matrix?" Mouse sounds almost nonchalant, but there's a jealous edge to his voice that he can't conceal. Or maybe he isn't trying to.
"Kinda. Anyway, I met him a few blocks away from the station, and we went down together. And when we got there, all the phones were ringing. This whole bank of phone boxes, every single one of them going off. You would've thought every phone in Dublin was going off."
He swallows, and Mouse curls up next to him. "So you answered one," he says.
"No, Aaron did. Someone on the other end told him that the fourth platform had a train waiting at it, and it was the one that Aaron and I wanted to be on. So we ran, across the tracks, and suddenly there... there was someone shooting at us. A guy in a suit."
"An Agent."
"Yeah. I ducked, and Aaron stumbled, and suddenly he was down across the tracks. And, these lights streaked across him, and the Agent stopped shooting."
"Why?" Mouse is rapt, his eyes wide.
"Because he didn't need to any more. Another train came in, and Aaron couldn't get up in time."
The silence grows between them now, until Zephyr breaks it falteringly. "I ran to the train, and Beta was there, but none of that's important."
Mouse looks at him for a while. "You loved him, didn't you?"
"Aaron? Yeah, but it doesn't matter."
"Why not?"
Zephyr presses his hand gently against Mouse's. "Because it wasn't real. And because I'm still finding things. I found Aaron, and Aaron found the station. I found Beta, Aaron didn't. And because he didn't, I found you."