Disclaimer: Not my characters.

Paper Flowers

(and it's not real, nothing is real)

She dreams.

(six candles on a cake, daddy smiling, saying don't you look pretty in your new blue dress?)

The ship is colder at night, quieter too, and she wraps herself up as warm as she can and watches him. He's not real yet, he's still green code on a screen, but she feels her cheeks flush and wonders if he could be the One.

Then she tells herself to stop being silly; of course he's not the One. The Oracle is wrong and there are no fairytales for her. Not in the real world, and not in the matrix either.

But still she wonders.

(no candles this year, just the beeping of monitors and white walls so bright, and nurses saying what a lucky little girl she is to have survived)

Morpheus is wrong. She thinks, but still she watches.

She likes him, likes the way he helps his landlady, likes that strange naiveté in his eyes, likes the feel of his fingers as they brush across her belly—

No, she thinks.

Wait, she thinks.

That isn't real.

She can't explain the ache inside, can't explain why she wants to keep watching him.

Since when does she have feelings?

(two grey stone slabs in a sea of grass, beloved mother, beloved father the child reads through a veil of tears)

It's time to make contact, Morpheus tells her. You know what to do.

Her pulse quickens, anticipation flares in the pit of her stomach and suddenly she's not at all cold.

In the club, she's close enough to touch him, his breath tickles her neck and –

the mind makes it real –

she brushes against him just once, but it's enough.

See you soon, she thinks.

(hands warm on her skin, and she's on fire, neo she says wait, like this)

She visits him in the Med Lab, watches him sleep.

She wants the Oracle to be wrong. She can't deal with this, doesn't want to deal with this. Love isn't real. Love is weakness. She can't – won't – love him.

But she wants the Oracle to be right, because she's tired of the cold.

Welcome to the real world, she tells Neo, and when she returns to her room her sleep is dreamless.

(this is real, this is all that's real)