A/N: Hey Matrix fans. This is an assignment I had in my creative writing class, I actually weasled my way into writing fan fiction :) We had to pick three random cards from a hat (well, all we had was a pumpkin), and I got "Due to budget cuts..." "Know Thyself" and "Basic Car Care (the class)" Enjoy.

Still Learning

The two soldiers approached the mail box in simultaneous step, Trinity with the package. Neo, this being his first mission since rescuing Morpheus, was a bit wary of his surroundings, though he had no real reason to be. He couldn't help but notice the people around them, seeing the truth for what it was and watching them live their lives oblivious to any form of freedom. It unnerved him, and she sensed this.

After inserting the letter into the mailbox, she turned her shaded gaze on him. "What's wrong?"

"Everything." He said, in a tone that conveyed to her that he was talking about the Matrix and was still bothered by it, but not so much that it would drastically distract him.

"You get used to it. Whatever you do, don't think of it as a game."

"Why?"

"Because in games, no one dies."

With that, Neo wanted to ask more questions; wanted to know about her past, but knew it not to be the right time. But when would it be?

Just before they could completely disappear into the dark alley they'd come from, they could hear police sirens only blocks away.

"Is that for us?" Neo asked, somewhat passively.

"Even if it isn't, we can't be seen." She replied. She took the phone from her jacket and dialed for the Neb. "Tank, where's our exit?"

Neo waited, watching the street behind them as the sirens got closer. Trinity slammed the phone closed and back open again, the connection apparently having been cut, dialing a second time. He half listened to her voice as Tank answered their call.

"Trinity, the screens are dead, me and Morpheus have to rewire them to another power line."
"Shit. How long will that take?"

"It depends on if the wires are shot or just shocked from the EMP blast. I'll call you when it's fixed, or maybe I'll try to hack in blind."

"Just call us when it's fixed."

"Makes sense."

Trinity hung up. Neo looked at her inquisitively. "The feed screens are dead. We need to stay low until—"

"Hands in the air!" A bright light blurred their vision as an army of police officers began to surround them. Trinity ran, Neo following, though his first instinct was to simply fight them off, they had spare time. She was the experienced one, he figured that she probably avoided any type of authority in the Matrix whenever she could, leaves less of a mess on her already famous police report. Why they don't just send the military to bring her in, he didn't know, or maybe they've already tried. Again, the fact that he knew close to nothing about her plagued his mind, even as they were running for the lives.

Every bullet that was shot at them, Neo stopped and shot right back, intending only to hold them back, not kill them. It wasn't long until he was tired of running and couldn't help but think of this as game. If it were, he'd merely hit the escape button and the window would close. Here, he could grab Trinity and fly into the air as high and as fast as he wanted to. He found it had the same outcome.

When he set her down, they were maybe ten miles away from the police in front of a closed high school. She leaned against the black bars of the fence around the school, taking off her sunglasses and giving Neo a look that read both "I'm extremely impressed" and "You tactless idiot." He shrugged, leaning next to her.

She looked around. "Wow, you found my old high school."

He blinked, glasses off. He had to stop himself from screaming something along the lines of "Finally!" Instead, he remained calm. "Oh, really?"

"Well, I was only in high school the first few weeks or so before I was freed. I was only thirteen at the time. Went from seventh straight into ninth."

"You hacked into the IRS at thirteen?"

"Twelve." She corrected, failing to hide her smile, amused at his astonishment. She was usually annoyed when the only accomplishment anyone cared to remember was her hack into the IRS D-base, but for some reason, it didn't bother her when he mentioned it.

He looked away toward the school, impressed to no end. Through the fence, colorful graffiti on the walls of the school quickly caught his eye. It read, "Know the Destruction."

Trinity noticed it too. "It was a saying. They were cutting all of our extracurricular classes, and we didn't like it. It'd been going on for years before I entered, it was the students against the district. It was like living in the middle of a full blown protest in DC. Every day." She paused. "Morpheus wasn't the one to prove to me that the Matrix can't tell you who you are. They were."

Neo noticed her sudden change in tone brought on by remembering her past. He felt he should apologize, but didn't. Instead, he decided to see where this conversation could go. "Is the past hard for you? To talk about, I mean."

She shook her head. "No, well, yes...it's just, I haven't thought about my life in the Matrix for a long time. Never needed to. It's best not to live in the past."

"But sometimes you need to talk about it." Neo said, not thinking as he spoke "Sometimes the past should be shared. Even if it was in the Matrix, your choices were still your choices."

She paused. "You may be right."

He sensed that there was more she wanted to say, so he remained quiet. She'd done this before, so he assumed that she had much more on her mind then he could possibly imagine. But they had time, nothing could possibly interrupt them now unless Tank called or the police somehow found them, both unlikely, so he waited patiently, swimming in his own thoughts. She was so careful with her actions and words that he didn't know what to make of it. He almost wanted to see her relax, make her relax, if he had such a power; if she was even capable of doing so.

His eyes were now glued to the graffiti. It initially reminded him of the Oracle and the plaque that hung in her kitchen. "Know Thyself." He felt it was the most wise thing he'd ever lived by, and that these kids who were fighting for their classes seemed to know some semblance of that wisdom.

"Neo." Trinity said, getting his attention. She stood from leaning on the fence and motioned for him to follow, so he did. They walked around to the parking lot until she stopped at a wired fence that blocked off what looked like a car repair shop. She jumped the fence and landed like a cat on the other side, waiting for him to do the same. When he was beside her again, they walked into the abandoned and empty shop.

"There's something I want to tell you, but the only way to tell you is to show you."

The statement initially struck his as odd, but he could not possibly deny her, knowing that even though he was the One, more skilled than any soldier ever known to the fleet, he was definitely not the wisest. He had much to learn.

"We were only in the first month of school when I took over the basic car care class." Trinity started, walking into a dusty workshop and opening a door to a dark classroom. The lights did not turn on, but they entered anyway.

"You took over a class?" Neo asked, the dark not at all a problem for him, codes not alters by light.

"Well, my fellow students stopped listening to him and started taking advice from me. By the third week, they were taking notes."

They reached the door across the small room, but it was locked. Trinity cursed, then Neo told her to step aside. The door was metal one with no window, perfect for a lock down. He studies the code and realized that it was open on the opposite side. He scanned to find a weak spot and promptly punched a whole threw the door, reaching threw it and grabbing the handle, opening the door. Trinity briskly walked ahead of him, already used to his abnormal strength. Anyone else would have been reeling from disbelief.

"I was in class fixing a standard radio when I heard a message. It was in a code that I'd created. It was a simple code that I used when I wrote hacking information in places that just anyone might see it. It was for my security and I'd never shared it."

They were walking down a dark hallway, light streaming from windows just ahead.

"The message said, 'Pay phone, now. It's Morpheus.'"

"Really?" Neo was truly interested, having wondered how the fleet contacted red pills before there were cell phones. "So you went to the nearest pay phone?"

"And that was my first talk with Morpheus."

"You'd been looking for him?" Neo said as they approached the light. Trinity stopped there, Neo's eyes remaining on her.

"Just like you, yes. I was looking for him."

For some unknown reason, it was reassuring to here her say that, to know that they did in fact have something in common, something so deeply personal that it only strengthened his adoration of her.

She opened the glass doors and exited into the world of the setting sun where a mountain of collapsed bleachers lay ahead. Yellow tape surrounded the mess, but years of neglect shown through the plastic, the ragged ribbon tossing and turning in the breeze, in the glow of the pink and purple sky. Neo scanned the area with slight shock, the setting having changed so drastically. It looked as if that isolated area of the campus had endured a personal earthquake.

"I thought it was the people I hated." Trinity said, not looking away from the destruction as Neo turned his eyes to her. "But it turned out to be the world. Morpheus thought it best to take me while I was still at school, Agents having been watching me."

"Agents were after you?" Neo asked, wondering why he was surprised as he said it.

"I was a hacker, and a young one. They knew that if any of the resistance fleet got to me, I would be a pain in the ass."

"And proud of it." He half joked.

She paused. "Morpheus got to me too late. By lunch, I was running for my life. A few of the shop students must have thought that they were from the district, wanting me for interfering with the class so frequently. Word got out, and a group of the 'activists' started to defend me." She looked at him then. "You know more than anyone about the laws of the Matrix. Free your mind, and the world opens up."

Neo nodded. She continued.

"And that's just what they did." Trinity looked back at the destruction, her mind caught up in the past, remembering the incident as if it were happening right before them. He didn't want to ask her what happened, she seemed overwhelmed as it was. A moment later, she spoke again. "We are soldiers. Conflict is what we live for and live by most of the time. Death is a part of our constant struggle, but so is progress."

Her phone rang. She picked it up and brought it to her ear.

…

Neo opened his eyes to see the familiar and newly welded roof of the Neb. He looked up to see Tank beside him, promptly feeling the raw sting of the jack being pulled from his skull. He winced, still not used to the feeling.

"Sorry about the wait." Tank said. "Hope you weren't too bored with yourselves."

"We found things to do." Neo said, smirking at the operator while getting up from his chair.

"I bet you did." Tank replied, elbowing Neo.

"Come on. Nothing like that." he said, glancing at Trinity and Morpheus, talking business.

"No really, what'd you do?"

"Well, we had a run in with the police, ran for it, and ended up at her old high school. She told me how she was freed. Well, sort of."

Tank looked at him in confusion. "She never tells that story. Never. She hardly even talks about the past let alone her freeing." Tank continued to stare at Neo, at first shocked, than increasingly impressed. "Wow, man, the One really can do anything."

"Yeah, well..." he glanced back at Trinity, who was now heading for her cabin, suddenly realizing just how important the last hour had been. Trinity rarely opened up to anyone, and now, it seemed, their relationship was speeding to an extreme mental closeness that he doubted her could live without. "I'm still learning."