Author's Note: This is a strange little piece that just sort of wouldn't leave me alone. I wasn't planning on writing it, but it just begged to be put on paper. I've never written in this style, but somehow this was the only way it felt right. This piece came partially out of reading other fill-in fics for the gap between the first movie and Reloaded, and feeling that none of them were quite right, and partially from reading Neuromancer, and wondering just how much like Molly the Wachowski Brothers intended Trinity to be. And this is what happened. I don't know if it'll be continued, seeing as how I didn't intend to write it in the first place. Let me know if you want more, since I know this is a highly overdone type of fic.

I suppose this could be considered to have spoilers for the first movie...but then, if you haven't seen it, I really have no idea why you'd read this...

Obviously, I don't own these characters. They just invade my brain at extremely inopportune moments.

The Space Between

The ceremony is short and emotionless. The bodies of the fallen are wrapped in linen—the rags of old and not so old uniforms donated by the living, though there are never any to spare—and jettisoned into the service tunnels that lead to the surface. It seems crude and dated to all, but there is no choice, and it has become custom among the Resistance. They are soldiers. A proper funeral is one of the common courtesies they gave up at the moment of their decision to join the fight. Everyone knows this, and still it hurts.

The days after the ceremony are filled with numbness. The ship needs to be repaired, and there is danger all around. Morpheus is not yet willing to return to Zion, not ready to subject Neo to the scrutiny and skepticism of the Council, though everyone desperately needs a rest. He has not been the same since his capture by the Agents. He refuses to take a rest, though Trinity orders him off duty and takes the pilot's chair. Morpheus stands silently behind her, staring blindly at the viewscreen as she navigates skillfully through the tunnels. She does not speak to Neo anymore unless it is absolutely necessary. It has been three weeks since that blind kiss in the dark shattered core, and neither one of them has spoken another word about it. It is as if it has never even happened. Tank neglects himself, lost in grief for his brother. He stops eating, stops cleaning his wounds. He comes down with a high fever and violent chills, and still he does nothing. He simply does not care anymore.

Neo wanders the innards of the crippled ship in a daze, feeling out of place among all this grief. He does not want to admit it, but he is utterly terrified by the events of his last experience in the Matrix. He feels rude and presumptuous thinking only of himself in the midst of everyone's grief, but try as he might, he cannot find it in himself to grieve for these people he barely knew. Even to do so feels wrong. He does not belong here. This is not his world, and never will be. He will never truly fit in.

He does not sleep, but instead wanders the dark corridors of the ship by night, thinking that he can feel it breathing beneath his feet as he walks along through the narrow tunnels, staring up through the grated ceiling at the core above his head. It is like a living thing, somehow, so much more alive than anything he has ever felt in the world of the Matrix, and this terrifies him.

One night—he has lost track of time in this place, and does not know how long it has been anymore—he finds himself standing at the doorway of the engine room, and is shocked to see her here too. Neo stands paralyzed at the sight of her, staring though he knows he should not be. She must want to be left alone, and yet he cannot bring himself to leave. She is sitting on the ground, her back to the wall, knees drawn up to her chest and encircled by her whippet-thin arms. She has shed her customary gray sweater and is shivering in her sleeveless black undershirt, though it is warmer here than anywhere else on the ship. She is barefoot. Instinctively, she looks up at him, strange, pale blue eyes obscured by tendrils of dark hair and ringed by dark circles of exhaustion. For the first time, he is struck by just how young she is. She has always seemed so intense, so confident, so fierce that he has never before noticed the sadness in her face. Before he has time to think about what he is doing, he goes over and sits beside her, a few feet away.

"Can't sleep either?" he asks, slightly startled by the sound of his own voice. No one talks much anymore either.

She shakes her head at him, but surprisingly does not seem angry at his intrusion.

"I never sleep if I can help it. Not since I got…here."

"When was that?" The questions come in a flood, threatening to overwhelm him as he suddenly realizes he knows nothing about her. The only thing he knows is the burning desire, the need to be close to her—the need that for one sparkling glorious moment all those weeks ago he thought she shared. But this is the first time since then that she has managed to look him in the eye, to talk to him as anything other than an officer under her command, and now the crushed hope begins to bubble up again.

"Twelve years ago," she answers without hesitation, eyes flicking down to something on the floor. Neo looks up to see a rather large cockroach skittering across the deck. He is surprised, though he has been told they are the only species of animal life still in existence outside of the programs in the Matrix. "I was sixteen."

The words come as a shock. He knows he is vastly older than most newly-freed, and yet he cannot imagine trying to fathom all of this at such a young age. He knows deep down that it is a good thing he was so hard to find. He could not have been as strong as they all have been.

"Weren't you homesick?"

Trinity shakes her head, another lock of dark hair falling across her eyes. She does not bother to brush it away anymore.

"No. Morpheus didn't take me away from home. I left there when I was twelve. Couldn't stand it anymore. My mother died when I was too young to remember, and my father never let me forget the fact that he had wanted a boy." She laughs a little, darkly. "Appropriate, isn't it? When I finally managed to make a name for myself, everyone assumed I had to be a guy. Daddy would be so proud."

Neo laughs a little himself, though what he really feels is shock and outrage. He cannot imagine anyone forcing her to such extreme measures.

"Where did you go?"

She shrugs.

"Hung around the city. Learned to defend myself as best I could. Had the luck to stumble into a ring of organized crime, got picked up by a druglord. That's where I learned to hack. And where Morpheus found me."

Neo shakes his head. He cannot imagine doing such a thing.

"Jesus," is all he can find to say. The train of thought finished, he realizes suddenly that she is still shivering, more violently now. He scoots over along the floor and puts and arm around her shoulders. She does not move. "You okay?"

Trinity nods, very slowly. Her eyes stare straight ahead, but he knows she is not seeing this room full of cobbled-together equipment. Her voice is flat as she speaks now, controlled to a perfectly practiced monotone.

"My first crew was like the family I'd never had. I loved them, and I think that they loved me. But then there was an accident…one of the first encounters with an agent…and four of them were killed. And I thought that…I couldn't afford to be close anymore. Because we're soldiers, and any one of us could die at any moment. So I taught myself not to feel. But then I realized that that was wrong too. That the closeness is what we're fighting for. If we lose the ability to feel then we become like them. Like the machines. But it's too late for that. I can't go back. I can't make myself feel anything anymore…it's just…so empty."

"Trinity…" Neo is floored by her honesty. He has never heard her speak like this before, never had anyone trust him so completely. It is an honor. It is a blessing. And it is utterly frightening. He leans closer and hooks the fingers of his free hand beneath her chin, turning her face toward his. She tenses beneath his arm, and for a moment he is afraid. "I bet you can still feel this." He leans in and kisses her before he has time to think twice and doubt what he is doing. The contact is an explosion of feeling, fire and ice, an electric shock. She moans a little, and suddenly he is glad they are sitting; he is sure his legs would not hold him if he were standing up. His hand has moved down now, away from her face, clasped on the place where neck meets shoulder. Hers has come up, pressing lightly against his cheek, urging him closer.

"Jesus, Neo," she gasps after a moment, pulling away. He leans closer again, but she holds up a hand for him to stop. "Not here. Please, not here." Her voice is tight with an emotion he cannot read.

He somehow finds the strength to get to his feet, and leans down, offering her his hands. She allows him to pull her up and guide her through the bowels of the ship, to his quarters. He closes the door and turns on the light, then feels shy. She raises her eyes to meet his again, and suddenly he realizes they are sparkling with unshed tears. Confidence regained, he leads her over to the bed and gently pushes her sit down, then kneels behind her, fingers working gently to unknot the tense muscles of her back and shoulders. He has never had a successful relationship before, hardly even tried to have one in the Matrix. But tonight it is as if some unseen force is guiding him, and suddenly he is sure that this is right. After a few minutes, he ends the massage, his hands coming to rest lightly on her shoulders. She swings her legs up onto the side of the bed and turns to face him. She is still struggling not to cry, he realizes, and wraps his arms around her. She struggles in his grasp, but he does not let go.

"Neo, I can't…I—I'll break…"

'Break' is a term he has heard a lot lately. Though it is the correct term to describe someone who has gone insane from the shock of being unplugged, it is used often to describe a crew member who has had a traumatic experience, who is having nightmares, or who has cried in front of fellow officers. Neo tightens his grip.

"Trinity, I think that's exactly what you need right now."

"The hell it is," she mutters, but her voice has no conviction. She is already too far lost in the torrent of emotion. "I haven't fucking cried since I got here."

"Then stop fighting it," he whispers into her hair. And somehow, she obeys. He rubs her back as she sobs, a tight, ragged sound, years of loneliness at last being shed into the chest of her savior.

A long while later, when her crying is spent, Neo helps her into bed, pulling the blankets over her, then curling himself around her. She is unexpectedly soft in his arms, and he realizes for the first time how fragile her body is. He clings tighter as they drift off to sleep, suddenly terrified of losing her.

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