Live Truly, My Heart: Pt. 24
This is Trinity's story - Still definitely AU. Enjoy!
Note: Mouse still hasn't joined the crew of the Nebuchadnezzar.
Part One: Real
Part Two: Search and Rescue
Part Three: The Oracle Speaks
Part Four: Revelations
Part Five: Half of Her Heart
Part Six: Batteries
Part Seven: Life Goes On
Part Eight: Shattered Flight
Part Nine: Truth Be Told
Part Ten: Goodbye, My Friend
Part Eleven: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back
Part Twelve: Negotiations
Part Thirteen: Out of Order
Part Fourteen: Getting In
Part Fifteen: Getting Out
Part Sixteen: Breathe
Part Seventeen: Walls and Doorways
Part Eighteen: Know Thyself
Part Nineteen: Hope and Dread
Part Twenty: Come Together
Part Twenty One: Fire, Water, Earth
Part Twenty Two: Afterglow
Part Twenty-Three: Different Kinds of Trust
Title: Live Truly, My Heart
Fandom: The Matrix
Characters: Trinity, Switch, Apoc, Morpheus, Cypher, Dozer, Tank, Fox (OC), Agents, Mention of the Oracle.
Pairing: Trinity/Switch, (Trinity/Apoc, Switch/Apoc)
Rating: PG (or maybe a little higher) for violence.
Outfoxed
Back on the Neb we resume the routine - sleeping when we can, and working to keep busy when we can’t. A week goes by spent patching the ship, washing down the med room with Dozer, sparring in the construct, playing cards with Switch and Cypher in the Mess. I watch the matrix feed, marvelling that anyone can do this without having had the ability downloaded into their brain, keeping an eye on Fox. She’s a quick one, finding our subtle trail of breadcrumbs and following our lead. She has already started asking the right questions, and the answers she’s getting are keeping her interest piqued. Soon, far sooner than I expected, she is asking the most important question of all.
Morpheus visits the Oracle early in our second week - it worries me that it takes us that long to find a secure enough broadcast point, but find it, we do.
He takes Cypher with him, someone to watch his back. When they return to us, they are both quiet, pensive.
I leave them alone. The Oracle tends to have that effect on people and, besides, whatever she said was for them, alone.
Despite knowing this, I’m still curious about what the Oracle had to say.
“Someone’s looking for us, Trinity.”
I turn away from the feed, the holographics that are scanning the area for sentinels.
“What?”
Morpheus sits down beside me.
“That is what the Oracle had to tell me.”
“You don’t mean Agents, do you?”
He smiles.
“No, Trinity, I do not.”
“Who?” Has he told anyone else? Cypher? Dozer? He can’t just confide in me, can he?
“I think… I hope that, just as we are looking for the One, the One is looking for us.”
I blink.
“Are you sure?”
“Very little in this world is sure,” he answers. “But... yes. I believe this may be the case.”
Alone in my cot - who’d have thought I’d ever be sleeping alone again, but Switch and Apoc need time to themselves, and with each other, too - I consider what Morpheus has told me.
The One.
Ha. At this point, saying that is like saying “the sky” or “the moon”. They’re just as unattainable, just as distant.
But, still, I can’t help thinking about it, thinking about what the Oracle told me the first time I saw her. I will know we have found the One because I’ll be in love.
But I’m already in love.
With someone who will die when the One is found.
God.
Things can’t ever just be simple, can they?
I would, I think, have stewed over this a little more if it weren’t for the fact that more pressing issues are, very quickly, at hand. We’ve been shipboard for not quite a month when Morpheus calls me up to the Main Deck to tell me we have a problem.
“They’ve found her,” he informs me, indicating the feed screen. I look at what’s happening, the endless rain of code translating in my minds eye, becoming a windowless room, three men in conservative suits and dark glasses, an angry, frightened teenager with fire-engine hair, a file folder that’s already an inch thick.
“Oh, no.”
“I’m afraid so,” he intones.
Agents. I watch her trying to scream with no voice, watch her clawing at the men who hold her down, force her onto the table, tear open her clothes.
I watch her struggle, her terror, with my heart in my mouth, as the angry, hungry program forces its way inside of her.
“Can we do anything?”
“We can try,” he answers. “There’s a way to get that thing out of her again. Are you volunteering to go in?”
How can I do nothing after watching that?
I swallow, nodding.
“Yes.”
A day later, we are gathered around the Mess table, all but Tank and Dozer who are tracking our target and piloting the ship, respectively. The small room has been converted into an impromptu meeting hall.
“Cypher and I will wait at the hardline,” Morpheus is explaining. “We’ll get things as close to ready as we can.”
There are nods around the table. I understand that, if it weren’t for the bug, we’d be able to track Fox’s location from the safety of the Neb, we’d have time to narrow it down before anyone went in to offer her the choice to stay or to be free.
Right now, we don’t have that luxury.
“Are you sure you know how to use the trap?” Cypher asks, looking at Switch.
The bug trap... a program that shows up Inside looking like a weird combination of a grab-the-toy machine, a breast-pump and a motherboard. Tank downloaded it from the archives of another ship - I’ve never seen anything like it.
Switch nods, looking tense.
“I’ll be fine,” she tells him, though I know she’s never seen anything like it, either.
In less than two hours, we are driving through the Matrix, away from the hotel that serves as our hard line, towards the location of our target. In the seat next to me, Apoc is calling out directions, following his hand-held tracker.
“Turn right here,” he tells me. “Just down this alley.”
I park behind a club called Babylon, and get out of the car.
“Give me ten minutes?” I suggest, as Apoc slides into the driver’s seat.
He nods as, behind me, Switch steps into the night air, pulling her Browning out of its holster.
I am too aware of the P99 inside my own jacket, of what my role in this is going to be.
“See you soon,” I tell them, heading for the street.
“Hello, Fox.”
A child, passing herself off as a grown up, the girl with the chemical-red hair blows a stream of smoke past my ear.
“And you know that name, how?”
“I know a lot more than your name, Fox,” I answer. “I’m Trinity.”
She blinks.
“IRS database Trinity?”
My mouth quirks. Does everybody know about that?
She smirks, conspiratorially, at my nod.
“Knew you were really a girl,” she says.
“Yeah,” I say, needing to get to the point. “Listen,” I continue. “We don’t have a lot of time. You’re still being watched.”
“What?” for an instant, the too-cool woman is gone and I see, instead, a little girl, afraid of being hurt. “What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean,” I say, gently. “The men who took you, yesterday?”
I see her blanch, watch the walls of denial rising, rapidly, behind her eyes.
“That didn’t really-”
“It did,” I answer, bluntly. “You know it did. And I think you know it wasn’t because you tried to hack into the Cortechs mainframe.”
“The Matrix,” she murmurs, holding my eyes. “Is this about the Matrix?”
“Yes,” I answer, feeling the seconds speeding by. “Come with me,” I urge. “I’ll take you to someone who can answer your questions. But we have to move fast.”
She hesitates for a moment longer, and I find myself wondering what - who - she’ll be leaving behind if she takes our little, red pill.
“Okay,” she answers, making her choice at last.
I pull open the back passenger door, as Apoc fires the engine.
“Hop in,” I tell her, open my own door. Across from me, Switch is already climbing into the back.
I turn in my seat, as Apoc guides the car out of the ally, and do something I never thought I’d do: level a gun at the head of a harmless child.
“What are you doing??” I can hear the panic in her voice, see it in her eyes.
I catch Switch, gritting her teeth, out of the corner of my eye.
“It’s necessary,” she explains, her voice shaded with impatience. “Once we get that thing out of you, you’ll be less of a danger to us-”
“To you?”
“Yeah.” She hoists the bug trap into her lap. “Get your shirt up.”
“What?”
Switch glances at me, irritation writ large on her face.
“We don’t have time to baby you,” she informs Fox, all business. “Get it up, or I’ll get it up for you.”
You’d think I’d have realized that she could be this harsh, but it still comes as a shock to hear her talking like this to a kid who’s barely into her teens and scared out of her mind.
Fox turns her eyes to me - she looks like she’s about to cry.
When I nod - subtle advice to do what she’s told - she glances at the gun in my hand.
I can’t pretend to be the Nice One, not now.
She lowers her eyes, giving up, lifting her shirt away from the pale skin of her belly.
Apoc plugs the trap into the car’s cigarette lighter. Whoever designed this thing must have really known what they had to work with.
When Switch turns on the trap, and the anchors prick Fox’s skin, the girl panics - writhing and whimpering, trying to push the machine away -
“Dammit,” Switch spits, “Hold still!”
I react without thinking, pressing the barrel of my gun hard against the little girl’s forehead.
At the touch, she goes unnaturally still, her eyes wide, staring at me.
“It’ll be over soon,” I promise, my voice at odds with the hell I’m putting her through.
Fox is a room away from us, now, listening to what Morpheus has to say. If it’s anything like what he told me, it’ll be just enough to make her want to come, and not nearly enough to tell her what she’s in for.
Poor kid.
Given what she’s been through in the past day and a half... I know I’d be more than ready to get the hell out of this world, if I’d gone through all that.
“Ready?” Apoc asks Cypher.
“Patch is done," he answers. "Should be online in... two minutes?”
Apoc nods, taking position at another work station.
I’ve never seen it done like this. More equipment than we need when we do it from the Neb but, then again, on the Neb, all the programs are inside. Now we’re inside, too.
“Trin,” Switch gets my attention, nodding towards another station. “You’re over there. Keep an eye on her heart - If she decides to come, I mean - the program could send her into arrest.”
“Okay.”
The seconds slip by, turning into minutes. How much time do we have until we get noticed? Will Fox say ‘yes’ or ‘no’? Did we put her through all that for nothing?
For now, I can only wait and hope.
We did it.
Oh, god, we did it.
I feel the pin slip out of my head, open my eyes, with relief, to the Neb’s familiar interior.
Morpheus is already back in control, zeroing in on the little girl’s unplugged body. I help Dozer get the others unplugged.
“We find her?” Cypher asks.
Dozer nods, already heading for the ladder and, eventually, the hatch in the bottom of the ship.
“Let’s go see what the dog dragged in,” Cypher suggests.
The three of us follow him out of the Core.
Later.
Hours later, after Fox has been wrapped in a blanket and carried to the Med room by Dozer, after we've eaten our tasteless meal, sitting around the Mess table, swallowing our rations in silence, after I've spent another six hours working myself to deliberate exhaustion, focusing on a repair job on one of the upper pads, I drag myself back to my cabin, hoping that I won't have to dream.
When the knock comes at my door, I'm not really surprised.
"Trin?"
"Hey."
I motion for her to join me, and she slips into the tiny room, pulling the door shut behind her.
"So?" She sits down on the bed, and lifts her eyebrows at me. "Talk," she says. "What's on your mind?"
I laugh, weakly.
"How do you always know?"
She looks at me like I've just asked the most obvious question ever, her mouth quirks.
"Let's just say you're not that subtle when something's bothering you."
I sigh.
Well, that's true enough.
"I saw what they did to her," I explain. My knees are pulled up under my chin, and she's got her arm around my shoulder. It's comforting. Maybe more so than I deserve.
"Not much of a stretch, is it," Switch comments, "To see something else going on?"
I look at my knees.
"Yeah."
Her arm tightens around me.
"I know." She gives me a long look. "So. How does this figure into our car-ride with her?"
I sigh.
"I put a gun to her head," I point out. "She was just a scared little kid, and all I did was scare her even more."
Switch shakes her head.
"The Agents knew exactly where she was," she reminds me. "If they'd realized what she was with, they wouldn't have waited to take her over."
"I know."
"So?"
"She doesn't know that."
She squeezes my shoulder.
"She will," she says, gently. "When she finds out what the Agents are, what they can do, she'll understand."
I pull her into my arms.
"Good thing that didn't happen."
"God, yeah," she answers, her relief audible. She leans into my embrace. "Tell you what," she suggests, pulling back just far enough to meet my eyes. "If that happens again, you can work the bug trap, and I'll be the gun-slinging Bad Guy, deal?"
I laugh.
"Deal." I kiss her, gently. "Thanks for making me talk about this."
She smiles, kisses me, lightly.
"No problem."
*~*~*~*~*
Part Twenty Five: Enter the Seeker
Comments are, of course, always appreciated. :-)
Note: Mouse still hasn't joined the crew of the Nebuchadnezzar.
Part One: Real
Part Two: Search and Rescue
Part Three: The Oracle Speaks
Part Four: Revelations
Part Five: Half of Her Heart
Part Six: Batteries
Part Seven: Life Goes On
Part Eight: Shattered Flight
Part Nine: Truth Be Told
Part Ten: Goodbye, My Friend
Part Eleven: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back
Part Twelve: Negotiations
Part Thirteen: Out of Order
Part Fourteen: Getting In
Part Fifteen: Getting Out
Part Sixteen: Breathe
Part Seventeen: Walls and Doorways
Part Eighteen: Know Thyself
Part Nineteen: Hope and Dread
Part Twenty: Come Together
Part Twenty One: Fire, Water, Earth
Part Twenty Two: Afterglow
Part Twenty-Three: Different Kinds of Trust
Title: Live Truly, My Heart
Fandom: The Matrix
Characters: Trinity, Switch, Apoc, Morpheus, Cypher, Dozer, Tank, Fox (OC), Agents, Mention of the Oracle.
Pairing: Trinity/Switch, (Trinity/Apoc, Switch/Apoc)
Rating: PG (or maybe a little higher) for violence.
Outfoxed
Back on the Neb we resume the routine - sleeping when we can, and working to keep busy when we can’t. A week goes by spent patching the ship, washing down the med room with Dozer, sparring in the construct, playing cards with Switch and Cypher in the Mess. I watch the matrix feed, marvelling that anyone can do this without having had the ability downloaded into their brain, keeping an eye on Fox. She’s a quick one, finding our subtle trail of breadcrumbs and following our lead. She has already started asking the right questions, and the answers she’s getting are keeping her interest piqued. Soon, far sooner than I expected, she is asking the most important question of all.
Morpheus visits the Oracle early in our second week - it worries me that it takes us that long to find a secure enough broadcast point, but find it, we do.
He takes Cypher with him, someone to watch his back. When they return to us, they are both quiet, pensive.
I leave them alone. The Oracle tends to have that effect on people and, besides, whatever she said was for them, alone.
Despite knowing this, I’m still curious about what the Oracle had to say.
“Someone’s looking for us, Trinity.”
I turn away from the feed, the holographics that are scanning the area for sentinels.
“What?”
Morpheus sits down beside me.
“That is what the Oracle had to tell me.”
“You don’t mean Agents, do you?”
He smiles.
“No, Trinity, I do not.”
“Who?” Has he told anyone else? Cypher? Dozer? He can’t just confide in me, can he?
“I think… I hope that, just as we are looking for the One, the One is looking for us.”
I blink.
“Are you sure?”
“Very little in this world is sure,” he answers. “But... yes. I believe this may be the case.”
Alone in my cot - who’d have thought I’d ever be sleeping alone again, but Switch and Apoc need time to themselves, and with each other, too - I consider what Morpheus has told me.
The One.
Ha. At this point, saying that is like saying “the sky” or “the moon”. They’re just as unattainable, just as distant.
But, still, I can’t help thinking about it, thinking about what the Oracle told me the first time I saw her. I will know we have found the One because I’ll be in love.
But I’m already in love.
With someone who will die when the One is found.
God.
Things can’t ever just be simple, can they?
I would, I think, have stewed over this a little more if it weren’t for the fact that more pressing issues are, very quickly, at hand. We’ve been shipboard for not quite a month when Morpheus calls me up to the Main Deck to tell me we have a problem.
“They’ve found her,” he informs me, indicating the feed screen. I look at what’s happening, the endless rain of code translating in my minds eye, becoming a windowless room, three men in conservative suits and dark glasses, an angry, frightened teenager with fire-engine hair, a file folder that’s already an inch thick.
“Oh, no.”
“I’m afraid so,” he intones.
Agents. I watch her trying to scream with no voice, watch her clawing at the men who hold her down, force her onto the table, tear open her clothes.
I watch her struggle, her terror, with my heart in my mouth, as the angry, hungry program forces its way inside of her.
“Can we do anything?”
“We can try,” he answers. “There’s a way to get that thing out of her again. Are you volunteering to go in?”
How can I do nothing after watching that?
I swallow, nodding.
“Yes.”
A day later, we are gathered around the Mess table, all but Tank and Dozer who are tracking our target and piloting the ship, respectively. The small room has been converted into an impromptu meeting hall.
“Cypher and I will wait at the hardline,” Morpheus is explaining. “We’ll get things as close to ready as we can.”
There are nods around the table. I understand that, if it weren’t for the bug, we’d be able to track Fox’s location from the safety of the Neb, we’d have time to narrow it down before anyone went in to offer her the choice to stay or to be free.
Right now, we don’t have that luxury.
“Are you sure you know how to use the trap?” Cypher asks, looking at Switch.
The bug trap... a program that shows up Inside looking like a weird combination of a grab-the-toy machine, a breast-pump and a motherboard. Tank downloaded it from the archives of another ship - I’ve never seen anything like it.
Switch nods, looking tense.
“I’ll be fine,” she tells him, though I know she’s never seen anything like it, either.
In less than two hours, we are driving through the Matrix, away from the hotel that serves as our hard line, towards the location of our target. In the seat next to me, Apoc is calling out directions, following his hand-held tracker.
“Turn right here,” he tells me. “Just down this alley.”
I park behind a club called Babylon, and get out of the car.
“Give me ten minutes?” I suggest, as Apoc slides into the driver’s seat.
He nods as, behind me, Switch steps into the night air, pulling her Browning out of its holster.
I am too aware of the P99 inside my own jacket, of what my role in this is going to be.
“See you soon,” I tell them, heading for the street.
“Hello, Fox.”
A child, passing herself off as a grown up, the girl with the chemical-red hair blows a stream of smoke past my ear.
“And you know that name, how?”
“I know a lot more than your name, Fox,” I answer. “I’m Trinity.”
She blinks.
“IRS database Trinity?”
My mouth quirks. Does everybody know about that?
She smirks, conspiratorially, at my nod.
“Knew you were really a girl,” she says.
“Yeah,” I say, needing to get to the point. “Listen,” I continue. “We don’t have a lot of time. You’re still being watched.”
“What?” for an instant, the too-cool woman is gone and I see, instead, a little girl, afraid of being hurt. “What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean,” I say, gently. “The men who took you, yesterday?”
I see her blanch, watch the walls of denial rising, rapidly, behind her eyes.
“That didn’t really-”
“It did,” I answer, bluntly. “You know it did. And I think you know it wasn’t because you tried to hack into the Cortechs mainframe.”
“The Matrix,” she murmurs, holding my eyes. “Is this about the Matrix?”
“Yes,” I answer, feeling the seconds speeding by. “Come with me,” I urge. “I’ll take you to someone who can answer your questions. But we have to move fast.”
She hesitates for a moment longer, and I find myself wondering what - who - she’ll be leaving behind if she takes our little, red pill.
“Okay,” she answers, making her choice at last.
I pull open the back passenger door, as Apoc fires the engine.
“Hop in,” I tell her, open my own door. Across from me, Switch is already climbing into the back.
I turn in my seat, as Apoc guides the car out of the ally, and do something I never thought I’d do: level a gun at the head of a harmless child.
“What are you doing??” I can hear the panic in her voice, see it in her eyes.
I catch Switch, gritting her teeth, out of the corner of my eye.
“It’s necessary,” she explains, her voice shaded with impatience. “Once we get that thing out of you, you’ll be less of a danger to us-”
“To you?”
“Yeah.” She hoists the bug trap into her lap. “Get your shirt up.”
“What?”
Switch glances at me, irritation writ large on her face.
“We don’t have time to baby you,” she informs Fox, all business. “Get it up, or I’ll get it up for you.”
You’d think I’d have realized that she could be this harsh, but it still comes as a shock to hear her talking like this to a kid who’s barely into her teens and scared out of her mind.
Fox turns her eyes to me - she looks like she’s about to cry.
When I nod - subtle advice to do what she’s told - she glances at the gun in my hand.
I can’t pretend to be the Nice One, not now.
She lowers her eyes, giving up, lifting her shirt away from the pale skin of her belly.
Apoc plugs the trap into the car’s cigarette lighter. Whoever designed this thing must have really known what they had to work with.
When Switch turns on the trap, and the anchors prick Fox’s skin, the girl panics - writhing and whimpering, trying to push the machine away -
“Dammit,” Switch spits, “Hold still!”
I react without thinking, pressing the barrel of my gun hard against the little girl’s forehead.
At the touch, she goes unnaturally still, her eyes wide, staring at me.
“It’ll be over soon,” I promise, my voice at odds with the hell I’m putting her through.
Fox is a room away from us, now, listening to what Morpheus has to say. If it’s anything like what he told me, it’ll be just enough to make her want to come, and not nearly enough to tell her what she’s in for.
Poor kid.
Given what she’s been through in the past day and a half... I know I’d be more than ready to get the hell out of this world, if I’d gone through all that.
“Ready?” Apoc asks Cypher.
“Patch is done," he answers. "Should be online in... two minutes?”
Apoc nods, taking position at another work station.
I’ve never seen it done like this. More equipment than we need when we do it from the Neb but, then again, on the Neb, all the programs are inside. Now we’re inside, too.
“Trin,” Switch gets my attention, nodding towards another station. “You’re over there. Keep an eye on her heart - If she decides to come, I mean - the program could send her into arrest.”
“Okay.”
The seconds slip by, turning into minutes. How much time do we have until we get noticed? Will Fox say ‘yes’ or ‘no’? Did we put her through all that for nothing?
For now, I can only wait and hope.
We did it.
Oh, god, we did it.
I feel the pin slip out of my head, open my eyes, with relief, to the Neb’s familiar interior.
Morpheus is already back in control, zeroing in on the little girl’s unplugged body. I help Dozer get the others unplugged.
“We find her?” Cypher asks.
Dozer nods, already heading for the ladder and, eventually, the hatch in the bottom of the ship.
“Let’s go see what the dog dragged in,” Cypher suggests.
The three of us follow him out of the Core.
Later.
Hours later, after Fox has been wrapped in a blanket and carried to the Med room by Dozer, after we've eaten our tasteless meal, sitting around the Mess table, swallowing our rations in silence, after I've spent another six hours working myself to deliberate exhaustion, focusing on a repair job on one of the upper pads, I drag myself back to my cabin, hoping that I won't have to dream.
When the knock comes at my door, I'm not really surprised.
"Trin?"
"Hey."
I motion for her to join me, and she slips into the tiny room, pulling the door shut behind her.
"So?" She sits down on the bed, and lifts her eyebrows at me. "Talk," she says. "What's on your mind?"
I laugh, weakly.
"How do you always know?"
She looks at me like I've just asked the most obvious question ever, her mouth quirks.
"Let's just say you're not that subtle when something's bothering you."
I sigh.
Well, that's true enough.
"I saw what they did to her," I explain. My knees are pulled up under my chin, and she's got her arm around my shoulder. It's comforting. Maybe more so than I deserve.
"Not much of a stretch, is it," Switch comments, "To see something else going on?"
I look at my knees.
"Yeah."
Her arm tightens around me.
"I know." She gives me a long look. "So. How does this figure into our car-ride with her?"
I sigh.
"I put a gun to her head," I point out. "She was just a scared little kid, and all I did was scare her even more."
Switch shakes her head.
"The Agents knew exactly where she was," she reminds me. "If they'd realized what she was with, they wouldn't have waited to take her over."
"I know."
"So?"
"She doesn't know that."
She squeezes my shoulder.
"She will," she says, gently. "When she finds out what the Agents are, what they can do, she'll understand."
I pull her into my arms.
"Good thing that didn't happen."
"God, yeah," she answers, her relief audible. She leans into my embrace. "Tell you what," she suggests, pulling back just far enough to meet my eyes. "If that happens again, you can work the bug trap, and I'll be the gun-slinging Bad Guy, deal?"
I laugh.
"Deal." I kiss her, gently. "Thanks for making me talk about this."
She smiles, kisses me, lightly.
"No problem."
*~*~*~*~*
Part Twenty Five: Enter the Seeker
Comments are, of course, always appreciated. :-)