Summary: AU, Revolutions and its aftermath. Deus Ex Machina agrees to a little more than peace, and Neo and Trinity find their own path to the future.
Category: Drama, Angst, Romance and AU
Rating: currently PG-13 (based on the fact that the Matrix films are R. It will go up.)
A/N: There will be more to this. It's un-betaed though, and I could do with some feedback. Please let me know what you think and if there's anything I could do better with!
***
'Take my revolution. Let's go on with our lives...'
--- Okui Masami, Rinbu Revolution (Shoujo Kakumei Utena)
"Pump the igniter, the ship will start. Again - slowly! Now!" Neo's voice was commanding, desperate. He couldn't really see what was happening but it didn't worry him; he could see the lights of 01, the glowing machines all around them. He could feel it when they started to fall.
Suddenly a premonition of additional danger flashed through his mind as he felt Trinity's hand pulled from his grasp. Immediately, almost subconsciously, he reached out and yanked his lover out of her seat, pulling her to him and clasping her tightly in his arms, ignoring her gasp of surprise. It didn't matter, now, that she couldn't navigate. The Logos was beyond steering.
Trinity shouted above the grinding as the hovercraft started to crash, a wordless cry of frustration and anger. The entwined soldiers both cried out as the Logos hit the ground; Neo's a low groan of pain from the force of their landing, Trinity's a high-pitched, dangerously painful-sounding scream.
For a moment everything was still. Silence reigned inside the tiny vehicle for a brief time, before the lights faded and Trinity's vision began to return. Neo's real-world vision, since the terrible fight with Bane, never would.
Twisted metal was everywhere. Sliding her left hand, almost numb with cold and pain, down her back, Trinity could feel the sticky trickle of blood and shards of metal that had hit her. It hurt.
"Neo, are you all right?" I'm worried about you. Talk to me. Her head was pressed into his shoulder where he'd held her close during the last part of their flight, and she lifted her face to look into his.
She couldn't read the expression on his face. Awed, petrified, painful. Mixed feelings shot through her as he wrapped an arm more gently around her, inhaling deeply.
"God, can you see this?"
The tone of awed amazement confused Trinity for a moment, and she looked over her shoulder to see the huge expanse of 01 in front of them, metal glinting dully in the rain. Pausing, she realised that he couldn't have been talking about what she could see: that would not have had this effect on him. Slowly, she turned her face to him, questioning.
"What is it? What do you see?"
Easing himself up, with her on his lap, Neo murmured, "Light. Light everywhere. It's like the whole thing was built with light. I wish you could see what I see."
I wish I could, too,
she inwardly sighed. Trinity turned again, roughly shoving a fallen rebar away and slipping off his lap to stand up. She winced as she did so, biting her lip hard at the sudden reminder of pain. Looking down, she saw what she'd already suspected: her leg was bleeding. Her trousers were torn and the scarlet trickle of blood down her calf was just barely visible in the dim light of the fallen Logos. With a grimace, she stepped back to let Neo get up. As he did, she looked over at the pilot's seat where she had been sitting and her eyes widened.Stumbling, almost falling to her knees, Trinity retched violently, reaction for once overriding control. Where she would have landed if Neo hadn't grabbed ahold of her, iron rebars punctured her seat, and as clearly as if she had seen an alternate future, she could picture what would have happened. She closed her eyes tightly, wiping her mouth on her sleeve.
"Trinity?"
Neo sounded worried, and with good reason. She had forgotten that he couldn't see what she could, just like she couldn't see all the light in his strange non-vision.
"I'm fine," she told him, her lips still trembling. "Neo, my seat... if you hadn't..." She didn't need to finish the sentence, as he made his way cautiously toward the source of her voice with a slight nod.
"I know, Trin."
She didn't want to ask how he'd known, and he couldn't have told her if she had, because he didn't know. All that mattered now was getting to the leader of the machines before Zion fell completely. She took his hand and led him out into the percussion of the falling rain.
***
"I only ask to say what I've come to say. After that, do what you want and I won't stop you."
Trinity shivered in the rain, standing close behind her lover as he spoke. A montage of sentinels and other machines combined to form the image of a face, that moved as the grating sound of the creature's voice was heard.
"Speak," it boomed; the voice of eternity.
Neo was quietly confident, serious, despite his loss of the assurance that would have come with being able to see to what he spoke.
"The program Smith has grown beyond your control. Soon he will spread through this city as he spread through the Matrix." No doubt of that, Trinity thought, taking a deep breath and holding it as rivulets of raindrops washed the blood and grime of their flight from her cheeks.
"You cannot stop him," Neo told the face, "but I can." He sounded definite, so sure, and for a moment her confidence flared. But she could not smile, not even nervously, her jaw clenched tight. Not now, not here, and not in this position. If the machine did not accept what Neo had to say, all the people she had known would die, herself and Neo with them, but so far from Zion. She didn't even want to think about it.
The face roared, and Trinity instinctively dropped to a crouch behind Neo as the sentinels forming the face hurled themselves at and around them. She wanted to pull him down with her, to protect him, but she knew that she couldn't. Not now.
"We don't need you! We need nothing!" Great, terrible anger, but Neo didn't even flinch, and she wondered at that. Even machines can get angry.
What is he thinking? For once, Trinity could not share in the thoughts of the man who made her whole, and she didn't understand what he was asking.
"If that's true, then I've made a mistake and you should kill me now." Oh, please, no...don't... She was praying silently, gazing over his shoulder after having risen to her feet when the flood of sentinels ceased.
"What do you want?" the machina visage demanded, echoing Trinity's silent question.
"Peace."
***
"And if you fail?"
"I won't." Steadily, evenly, with surpassing confidence that reminded Trinity of a time while they'd been watching him before he'd been unplugged. My own personal Jesus Christ, Choi had called him, and now he was becoming the deity, the legend. The One.
Neo turned and pulled her fiercely close, whispering softly, "I love you." Then he kissed her, a deep, furious touch that lasted a moment - felt like a lifetime - before turning and stepping toward Deus Ex Machina as thousands of machines reached to support him, to plug him into the Matrix.
"I'm ready."
***
Trinity couldn't think, couldn't move, could do nothing. All she could do was watch the prone body of her beloved as Neo jerked and twisted in the grip of that world-within-a-world.
For an age, she stared, her ice-blue eyes intense and her body more rigid than his. He lay in a crucifix shape, but she didn't even notice. Her gaze was too glued to his face.
Every unnatural shudder wrenched her heart, but she couldn't move, riveted to the grid, picturing the way he would be being hurled and tossed around in the Matrix - like a rag doll, but he was far from weak. This was the hardest fight of his life, and she could do nothing to jeopardise the outcome. Nothing.
I can't protect him now.
***
Dizzy and light-headed from the blood loss she was still suffering, Trinity lost all sense of time. Forced to blink continually now against the rain, sitting cross-legged, she was the only conscious human in 01, and not even that.
Suddenly the machines behind her began to grind into a face again, and she struggled to her feet to look up at it.
The voice resounded through the city.
"It is done."