Author's Note: Hey-- I'm going back thru and trying to fix things a bit! Hope you like the updated version!!! And in chapter three-- I added some stuff J Read on!!!

I don't know how he got under my skin... But he did, in the end.

Sometimes, I would look back and wonder how it all began; him, the veteran and I, the rookie. Maybe it all started the day when we sparred in the dojo, or when he and I spent that night trapped in the Matrix. But now, as I think about it, maybe it all started the first time he contacted me.

When he told me he knew what I was looking for and that he knew the answer, it was like music to my ears. You know-- like when you're listening to the radio hearing those 'Top 40' over and over again and then suddenly you hear this new song, different from all the garbage those DJs play-- and something in you just goes 'that's me,' like its your own personal theme song. And that's how the message was.

So I trusted him-- and met Morpheus. Morpheus asked me if I really wished for truth and the fateful words slipped past my lips.

I don't really remember what happened after that; I do remember the Red Pill, the liquid silver that burned my digital self away. I remember my sightless eyes, the ports that dotted my skin like a pox; my hairless head. But these are all separate memories; I pieced them together like a swath of patchwork quilt, chunks and snatches of things once whole, torn apart in confusion and then put back together in a mish-mash and bonded haphazardly with fraying thread until you couldn't tell one end from the other. My memories were always like that.

But I do have one clear memory in what seemed like a labyrinth of confusion in my first days on the Nebacanezzer.

It was his face-- just his face, floating above me like a strange flesh toned oval of concern. As I lay on that metal slab, I drifted in and out of coherence-- but each time I came back from that place that was like Nirvana and yet so far from, he would always be there, watching over me. And when those awful needles they stabbed into my flesh bit with electricity, rebuilding my musculature, he always turned a kind eye towards my suffering.

It was some time after that, when I was finally able to stand on my own legs, that I learned his name. He, along with all the others, didn't go by his given name but referred to himself by a strange name-- maybe a hacker alias, or word of a foreign tongue.

At first, he treated me politely enough, making room for me on the table bench in the galley when all the other seats were crowded and things like that. As time went on, I began to grow into my real life-- for I'd never had one before, technically-- but I never got used to losing my shipmates; each time we lost someone I felt like a wound had been ripped open again. I wasn't the only one-- Morpheus, Trinity, Tank, Cypher; even Cypher-- they all scarred and bruised, some more so than others.

We all reflected our losses; most of us prayed more fervently for the one who would come and break us free of our slavery to the Matrix. But, like some of the others, he grew more bitter and drew into himself-- becoming more silent and still with each passing day; he held himself to only the basest of human decencies. He must have cared too much

I would have tried to reach him if I could, but everyone has their own demons-- even me... no, especially me.

I built so many walls around myself that I don't think I could have found my way out on my own. I thought that by shutting everything in, I could deny my emotions-- 'be strong enough and tough enough that no one would have to know how much my soul bled.

Looking back, I wonder how I, or anyone, could live like that, could stand it.

The pattern of skin and bone that decorated the front of his head wasn't what you'd call a face. I don't mean that it was blank, or that it had been wiped from his body by an explosion of intense heat, no. It a mask, a perfect mask that concealed him from all eyes. At least, so he thought.

What is that phrase? ...Yes, I remember now. 'Actions speak louder than words'-- Or lack of action.

A/N: Thanks to all you guys out there who are reading this!! Without you I wouldn't have the strength to go on (grabs tissue)