The Impossible

            Athena02

            Rating: G

            The Matrix, and all characters related to it contained here are not mine. Sorry to burst your bubble.

            I am a soldier.

            It sounds so stark to say it, as if I were trying to almost be poetic. But I'm not—it is simply the truth. It is what I am.

            I did not know it as the time, but I've been one since before I was 'born'. Instincts, reactions, deadliness….all hidden away somewhere deep inside, just waiting for the rules and chains that bind to fall away.

            Then, when they dissolved in the red liquid of my birth, I learned what it meant to fight, to breathe violence, to be able to break limits by simply believing that the laws and rules were untrue.

            It wasn't as if it were always that easy. Killing is hard when you think about it, but when it's either you or them….I don't even have to think about it anymore.

            It doesn't make life easy.

            Do I wish the war would end? Do I want peace, freedom, the end of the war? Everyone does-it's why we fight. To no linger be afraid of dying, not having to watch your friends and family killed. To stop running and hiding underground.

            But as much as I hope for these things, I do not want them to come. I was born into this war, it's all I've known for as long as I've been in the real world. I sometimes feel like I'm dreading the very things I fight for.

            I have been to Zion a little more than a half-dozen times since my birth. The last human city, emblem of freedom, humanity, and hopeful eventuality. And yet, each time, I was never sad to leave it, almost eager. The occasional stare, the way my plugs—a part of me that I refuse to be ashamed of—set me apart, marking me as a woman of violence.

            A soldier.

            But I would have it no other way.

            I am a warrior. I do not just accept my role. I welcomed it, continuing to embrace it.  I know that that is what I truly am.  I even relish it at times. The unconscious flowing of my body from a defensive position to pressing the attack. The overwhelming speed of a motorcycle underneath me. Soaring through the air, rooftop to rooftop. The way a pair of MAC-10's fit so easily into my hands.

            The way my heart slams in my chest when the spike slides out and I open my eyes to the Real, having just outran that Agent around the corner, his hand already in his coat, pulling out that .50 Desert Eagle with a slow flourish.

            This is what I do, what I was born into.

            It's a simple fact. I don't entertain the lies or try to garnish it. I fight, I survive, I fight.

            I love.

            At first, for one moment, I loved because I'd been expected to…ordered to, in a way. Like a soldier. My heart was cold, unbelieving. How could I love? Here in this place, with no time to stop—who would love me? I was cold, untouchable, lethal rather than inviting.

            Love was impossible.

            But, despite the guard I had put around myself, to deny myself completely, I loved him.

            I did not stop fighting, my fears proven wrong. If anything, I fought harder. Not only for victory, almost so close with the One, but for Neo. I've fought to keep the coppertops and the agents off of him.

            As much as I am fighting for the end of this war, have always been fighting, I am fighting for him.

A/N: This isn't the type of stuff I usually put out, but this one just had to be written.