Disclaimer: All I own is The Matrix collector's set. The intellectual property remains in the hands of the distributer who so graciously provided me my collector's set and thereby gave needed nourishment to my phoenix muse.
A/N: The idea for this story came from an observation I made about all the character's names, namely that they all sounded like hacker aliases. All except for Trinity's. This led me to wonder how Trinity's name got to be so ordinary (comparatively) and somehow the humorous piece I was planning turned into this not so funny one-shot. Funny how that happens. I also wanted to provide some more background on the characters that I felt was distinctly lacking from the trilogy. As wonderful and thought-provoking as the story is, the characters are all so one-demsional. Like I already said, this didn't turn out exactly how I'd planned, so I'm not sure how much of my original purpose actually came through. Oh well. I wrote it, now I'm going to post it. If there are any errors, I apologize, but I'm in a hurry to get this out before I send my computer off for repairs. I'll try to fix them later. Please visit my profile for my favorite-ing and correction policies.
Brown Eyes
The first time she saw them was as a fleeting glance across an elementary school playground through a crowd of bullies, but this glance would be enough to sustain her for many years to come.
They were teasing her about her name.
Her parents had meant to name her Holly. A good, stoat name, though in hindsight not perhaps suited for her. Whether or not it was never became an issue however. Her mother died two hours after her daughter's first breath. Her father, in his grief, left out the second L in her name when he filled out her birth certificate. The result: Holy Preacher.
After nearly eight years of being mocked, Holy had learned to accept her name and had a wicked right hook to prove it. Not that that deterred the bullies any.
On this day, they'd come up with a new one and had devoted their recess to making sure she remembered it. She would, but not for the reasons they assumed.
As the chant of the day filled her ears, the circle around her parted for a brief moment and she saw a single form at the end of the playground. Their eyes met, her cerulean eyes melting into his dark chocolate, almost black ones.
Had they been any other eyes, she would have looked away, but they weren't, so she didn't. Unlike the few other spectators she had, these were not filled with pity, nor did it seem as though he was in any hurry to come to her aid.
In the seconds they held each other's gaze, an entire conversation took place. He asked if she wanted his help. She said no, she was perfectly capable of taking care of herself. He could tell. She thanked him. He turned away.
She broke the bully leader's nose.
When she got back from her suspension, the brown-eyed boy was gone. All she had was his name, scavenged by her from the school yearbook, and the memory of his eyes, telling her in a glance that he knew she could take care of herself.
As the months turned into years, the name and the memory became her mantra and her shield. When her father fell into a drunken stupor after drinking away her savings, it was brown eyes that made her dry her own and stand to walk away. When her loneliness assaulted her, it was brown eyes that told her it was okay, that she didn't need friends anyway. When the nights she spent sprawled across her keyboard mounted, it was brown eyes that kept her from ignoring the voice that told her something wasn't right.
And when one day, she was offered the choice between a red pill and a blue, it was brown eyes that made her hesitate before she reached for the red. Her only regret as the mirror consumed her was that she would never get to meet the boy who's name she'd never said aloud and who's eyes she'd never forget.
The years passed. She'd long ago cast off the name her absent father in his machine dream had given her and replaced it with a new one, the one she associated with a playground and brown eyes.
She hadn't forgotten those brown eyes. They continued to haunt her as much as they comforted. They got her through adjusting to life outside the prison of her youth and past the extensive training it took to become a worthy member of a battleship crew, the only ambition she'd ever had. They kept her from staying down, from accepting punches instead of throwing kicks. They made her the best soldier she could be.
She saw them everywhere, yet nowhere. Though she knew it was stupid, she couldn't help but scan every crowd, every new face, for those brown, almost black, eyes. Brown eyes are common in Zion, as they were in the Matrix, and here, like there, her heart would pound in expectation each time her blue ones caught a pair. But here, like there, they were never the ones she was looking for; they were too light, too round, too wrong.
Eventually she forced herself to stop looking.
She cut herself off from them because, if there was one thing she'd learned, it was emotion always got in the way. The only thing she'd ever need was herself; the eyes had taught her that.
She didn't think of the brown eyes again until her twenty-second birthday, when she was taken to the Oracle for the first time.
She'd been transferred from the Jolly Roger to the Nebuchadnezzar under its new captain, Morpheus, just days earlier. Her transfer hadn't been by request, but Morpheus had needed a gunman and she was the best they had.
Morpheus, though only a few years her senior, was legendary. It was said that he was the only man to take on three agents at once and live to tell the tale. He had yet to be beaten in hand-to-hand combat and more than one of his somewhat unorthodox strategies were now part of the standard cadet curriculum.
But it was not his military prowess that made her wary to join his crew; it was his unwavering belief in the ancient prophecy that foretold the coming of The One and the end of the war.
Most, she included, were skeptical, but willing to agree to disagree with the few true believers like Morpheus. There were some, however, that outright denied the existence of The One and labeled Morpheus and his fellows as insane. While politics held little interest for her, she didn't fancy being associated too closely with a man that may be insane.
Nevertheless, orders were orders, so she was the new gunman under Captain Morpheus of the Nebuchadnezzar.
Which was why she found herself in a homey looking kitchen that smelled of fresh cookies being offered a piece of candy by a woman that, had she had a grandmother, would have been exactly what she would have wanted as hers. This was the Oracle and to speak to her was the only order Morpheus said he would ever give that would encroach on her beliefs. She could choose to reject or to accept the Oracle's words, but she had to go.
It was only after she left the cozy apartment filled with children, nibbling as she did so on a homemade cookie, that she realized the full extent of what the Oracle had told her. A flash of familiar brown eyes appeared in her mind. She pushed both the Oracle's words and the eyes viciously away and finished her cookie in silence.
The next time she remembered the eyes, they were described in code, running down the screen like raindrops down a window.
It was a few months after her visit to the Oracle, that, in a fit of boredom on watch at the operator's station, she found herself typing the name she'd tried to force out of her head into the search panel of the Matrix link. She'd spent the rest of her watch reading his actions, spying on him from afar.
It became a habit, watching him while alone on deck. She watched as he graduated from Stanford with a degree in computer science, as he dated then dumped a few girls before swearing them off in favor of his computer. She watched as he grew to hate working in his office as a low-down programmer, as he took refuge in his computer. She watched as he transformed slowly before her eyes, as he became two different people: the office grunt and the rebel hacker. She watched as he searched for the truth, day after day, night after night, and more than anything, she wished she could tell him.
Her habit became an obsession, and her obsession became her purpose. After years of watching him question more and more of the world around him, she could stand it no longer. Her feelings towards him and the man he had become had surpassed idle curiosity and pity into something else, something she couldn't and wouldn't label. All she was sure of anymore was that she couldn't just watch him any longer, so she showed him to Morpheus.
There was something different about him; they both knew it, though they interpreted this knowledge in different ways. To Morpheus, it meant the end of a life-long quest. To her, it meant the end of a reluctant need. It was to these ends that Morpheus decided to break the rules and she decided not to stop him.
The second time she saw them, they were across a crowded club. She knew them immediately. They were the perfect shade of dark brown, almost black, not too light, not too wide. Her heart fluttered in her chest, but she bit it down.
She told herself that she felt nothing now but peace. The boy she'd once seen was gone as surely as Holy was, and with him went the name she'd never say and the memory she'd once treasured could finally be laid to rest.
She lowered her gaze and sauntered up to him, speaking the named he'd chosen in his ear just as easily as she gave her own.
The third time she saw them, she was on the phone with a traitor, having watched two of her comrades die right in front of her. The fourth time was over her commander's body, the man who'd more than earned her loyalty and love.
On both occasions, through a haze of tears she swore she'd never shed, her cerulean orbs of their own volition had sought out the comfort only those brown eyes could bring. They'd met and held and all she could see was brown, almost black, radiating nothing but trust and calm determination. In those moments, something passed between them, an acknowledgement of something neither of them were ready to acknowledge aloud.
She turned away the first time in denial.
She held the second in defiance.
The fifth time, she almost didn't see them at all.
Memories of nights spent crying, of days passed watching, flowed through her mind's eye. She saw children taunting her on playgrounds, her father collapsing unconscious after yelling at her for not being her mother, drill sergeants telling her she wasn't good enough, people spreading rumors about her behind her back. But above all, she saw the brown eyes telling her she could do it, that they trusted her completely. They had never left her, never, even when she'd pushed them away.
Never, until now.
All it took was a heartbeat to realize what she'd always known but never accepted.
And it was a heart beat too late.
The only thing left for her to do was the one thing the brown eyes had made sure she never did and she wasn't about to start now, even if they were gone.
Bending down to whisper in his ear, she told both him and herself the truth for the first time: "Neo, I'm not afraid anymore. The Oracle told me that I would fall in love and that that man... the man that I loved would be The One. So you see, you can't be dead. You can't be... because I love you. You hear me? I love you."
That fifth time she saw his eyes, she knew they were the only ones she wanted to see for the rest of her life.