TLG "Happy New Year" Fic Challenge (Due: Jan. 1st 2008).
As per the theme: What Switch thought of Trinity.
My Sister and My Friend
She’s never been my boss.
Oh, she’s my superior officer, and I’ll take orders from her willingly enough, but she’s never been my ‘boss’. We’ve never been like that - never senior and subordinate, always equals. Always.
On a ship as small as the Neb, everyone ends up family sooner or later, but she was the one who took care of me when I first unplugged, generous with her time and her patience in ways that I don’t think I could ever be, she helped me adjust to life in the real world, and so I think of her as my sister.
On a ship full of men, she’s the one person who actually understands why I get weirdly weepy for one day every five-and-a-half weeks. She’s never once taken offense when I prickled over some little thing that got under my skin... We don’t really talk about our lives inside the Matrix (what is there to talk about? None of it was real), but I wonder, sometimes, if she was ever as lonely and defensive as I was - as I still am. I wonder if that’s why she understands me so well. I wonder if that’s why she’s been such a friend to me all these years.
Something not many people - outside of the crew, at any rate - know: Once or twice, a long time ago, she was my lover. That didn’t very last long - we made better comrades than bed mates, it turned out - probably for the best. I've got Apoc now and, ha, she's got Neo - or will, pretty soon, if I’m any judge. It amuses me to no end that she thinks she’s being subtle, that she believes she’s managing to hide her feelings for him.
(“Be nice,” Apoc tells me, with a crooked smile, one night in my cabin. “She put up with you mooning over me.”
“‘Mooning’?” I smirk. “Hardly.”
He kisses me, and I can’t help smiling, feeling the heat in my cheeks even still.
“You’re doing it now,” he points out, and kisses me again).
All I can say is that it’s a good thing I know how to hide a smile, or she’d be very embarrassed and, probably, very irritated with me.
She’s never been my boss.
Not at the beginning, and never after.
At the end - crouched on the floor of that dingy repair shop, with the digital lie of his body - the truth of his death - under my hands, I turn my eyes to her and see, not my Fearless Leader - though, trying to talk Cypher down, she might seem that way to some - I see my sister and my friend, as shocked as I am. As horrified as I am. As terrified as I am.
“Not like this,” I murmur, as much to her as to myself, even though I know the chance for choices is long gone now.
I feel a sharp pain at the base of my skull, a sudden numbness, and then--
*~*~*~*~*
Thoughts? Comments? Something? :-)
My Sister and My Friend
She’s never been my boss.
Oh, she’s my superior officer, and I’ll take orders from her willingly enough, but she’s never been my ‘boss’. We’ve never been like that - never senior and subordinate, always equals. Always.
On a ship as small as the Neb, everyone ends up family sooner or later, but she was the one who took care of me when I first unplugged, generous with her time and her patience in ways that I don’t think I could ever be, she helped me adjust to life in the real world, and so I think of her as my sister.
On a ship full of men, she’s the one person who actually understands why I get weirdly weepy for one day every five-and-a-half weeks. She’s never once taken offense when I prickled over some little thing that got under my skin... We don’t really talk about our lives inside the Matrix (what is there to talk about? None of it was real), but I wonder, sometimes, if she was ever as lonely and defensive as I was - as I still am. I wonder if that’s why she understands me so well. I wonder if that’s why she’s been such a friend to me all these years.
Something not many people - outside of the crew, at any rate - know: Once or twice, a long time ago, she was my lover. That didn’t very last long - we made better comrades than bed mates, it turned out - probably for the best. I've got Apoc now and, ha, she's got Neo - or will, pretty soon, if I’m any judge. It amuses me to no end that she thinks she’s being subtle, that she believes she’s managing to hide her feelings for him.
(“Be nice,” Apoc tells me, with a crooked smile, one night in my cabin. “She put up with you mooning over me.”
“‘Mooning’?” I smirk. “Hardly.”
He kisses me, and I can’t help smiling, feeling the heat in my cheeks even still.
“You’re doing it now,” he points out, and kisses me again).
All I can say is that it’s a good thing I know how to hide a smile, or she’d be very embarrassed and, probably, very irritated with me.
She’s never been my boss.
Not at the beginning, and never after.
At the end - crouched on the floor of that dingy repair shop, with the digital lie of his body - the truth of his death - under my hands, I turn my eyes to her and see, not my Fearless Leader - though, trying to talk Cypher down, she might seem that way to some - I see my sister and my friend, as shocked as I am. As horrified as I am. As terrified as I am.
“Not like this,” I murmur, as much to her as to myself, even though I know the chance for choices is long gone now.
I feel a sharp pain at the base of my skull, a sudden numbness, and then--
*~*~*~*~*
Thoughts? Comments? Something? :-)