AN: Alrighty….um…where to start on this. This story kind of wandered into my head and wouldn't go away. This story takes place before all of the other Matrix stories I've written. It also takes place before The Matrix, too. It's sort of back story I guess, in a way. I was going to post the whole thing as one long one-shot story but I turned into three smaller parts because it just seemed to make more sense that way. I'm open to any and every opinion so please leave me a review to let me know what you think. I'm open to anything you have to say…good, bad, or indifferent. OH! The title comes from an ancient Scottish idea that children born with any kind of defect were marked by the elves for mischief later on in life.

Disclaimer: I own nothing except the characters I made up and their Real World alter egos. I don't own The Matrix, The Animatrix, or any of that cool stuff. I'm broke and I just finished graduate school for my Master's Degree. All I own are my Pointe shoes.

"Girls become lovers who turn into mothers
So mothers, be good to your daughters too…" (From "Daughters" by John Mayer)

It was late, extraordinarily, inhumanly late but Sprite didn't mind the hour. The later her shift was, the happier she appeared to be. Though "happy" was a relative term where Sprite was concerned. Maybe "content" was a better word to use since Sprite didn't exactly seem like the happy type. Either way, the ship she was currently stationed on, the Thunder Wraith, was as quiet as a tomb at night. It was perfect for just sitting at the Operator's console and watching the Matrix scroll down the screens that surrounded her.

Thanks to her attitude towards not only her position but to the Resistance in general, Sprite hadn't exactly endeared herself to the other members of the crew of the Thunder Wraith. Sprite was tracked as a ranked officer but she had little interest in promotions, letters of good conduct, or an eventual captain's position.

To anyone who'd met the crew of the Thunder Wraith, it almost seemed like twenty-two year old Sprite didn't even want to be on the hovercraft which was true in a way. Sprite openly told anyone who would listen that her foster family--- all former or current members of the Resistance ---had guilted her into military service since she was a member of their family. She had to continue on her family's fine tradition of serving the Resistance, whether she wanted to or not. It was just an obligation she'd unwittingly wandered into when they adopted her at fifteen.

In her four very long years with the Resistance, Sprite had managed to work on three ships thanks to the fact she was rather thickheaded about most everything and was felt by many captains to be hard to control as she didn't like following orders all the time. The Thunder Wraith was just the latest--- the fourth to be exact ---in the parade of ships Sprite had worked on.

Maybe that was why Sprite was so fond of working the later shifts on whatever ship she happened to be working on at the moment. There was no one around to bother her, no one giving her annoying orders, or telling her to do things she didn't want to do in the first place. Sprite could sit in the Operator's chair, sometimes with her legs tucked underneath her, and stare at the Matrix as it rained down in front of her as if she was watching television.

Whenever she was on watch, at least one of the screens was trained on a small city just outside of Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. Not because she was keeping an eye on a potential or anything like that--- As far as Sprite knew, the Thunder Wraith wasn't watching anyone at the moment anyway. ---but because the one part of her past life in the Matrix she couldn't bring herself to let go of lived in that small town now.

Sprite had wanted to know the truth in the worst way and understood that by learning the truth, she'd never be able to go back to the life she'd lived in the Matrix. Despite all of that, there was still something, someone she felt bad leaving behind in the false reality of the Matrix. Someone she wished she could have taken with her when she'd taken the red pill but knew it was impossible.

As far as Sprite knew, it had never happened and probably never would happen especially when she considered the age of the other person that would have been involved. It was unheard of and probably fatal to at least one of the people involved. As it was, when two people were unplugged at once--- glibly called "twins" by members of the fleet ---there was the occasional fatality as one person was mistakenly tracked by both ships involved in the freeing and the other individual was left to drown in the dirty waters of the Real World.

Sprite knew she couldn't risk that happening. She was well aware of the fact that she'd risked more than she should have before her own freeing. Though she'd been only fifteen at the time--- just a stupid kid to her older sister ---even now she continued to think about what she'd done not only to herself but to the person she spent her not-so-free time watching.

"Sprite, my dear, you're going to get in trouble for watching her," reminded the Thunder Wraith's Operator Eran as he entered the ship's Core and peered over Sprite's shoulder to stare at what she was watching. "You left her behind when you learned the truth. It's not like you can bring her here yet or ever, for that matter. She's too young to be freed and too sick for it to be a viable option later on in her life. Even if it was, there's no captain in his right mind that would take on such a risky case."

Sprite spun in her chair, mud colored eyes regarding her third Operator. Sprite, herself, was a dark haired--- it was an almost black shade of brown that she kept cropped to the base of her neck as a rule ---young woman with sharp but not angular features. If one looked at her long enough, one could see that she actually resembled a sprite or an elf of some kind but not in a rough way. It was more in an elvish, fairy sort of way instead. Eran, a Zion Born, often wondered if the stories he'd heard about people in the Matrix having children with elves were true looking at the usually belligerent Sprite's appearance.

"Eran," Sprite answered, sounding more serious than anyone her age probably should have sounded. "You have to stop listening to the captain or your family or whoever else you're talking to. There are just some parts of our past we Pod Borns can't let go of, no matter how hard we try. That little girl is the only part of my past in the Matrix I can't force myself to let me go. It's taken four ships for me just to find her again. I can't tell you how annoying that is!"

"You've been looking for her since you were eighteen?" Eran asked, slightly stunned at the idea of Sprite doing something for more than five minutes.

"It was the only reason why I decided to play nice with my foster family and a job in the fleet," Sprite admitted. "There was no way I could run this search while I was in Zion. I figured if I had access to the Matrix feed on a ship, I'd be able to find her. It's taken me a while but I've finally done it."

"What's she to you Sprite?" Eran asked, wondering if he was stepping too far over Sprite's very high and well protected boundaries but not really caring since she'd made him curious now. "Little sister, friend, cousin, neighbor."

"Daughter," Sprite answered, around a heavy sigh. "That girl is my daughter."

Eran glanced at the screen Sprite had been paying the most attention to, reading the bright green symbols that made up the Matrix code. As the Operator for the Thunder Wraith, the Matrix code was nothing more than an open book to him. The rain everyone else saw as just a series of tiny pictures formed images in his mind as easily as the words in a book created pictures in the imagination of the reader. What he saw on the screen surprised him, though.

In a Matrix schoolyard, according to the image he was seeing, a little dark haired girl of seven sat away from her peers, coughing into the elbow of the overly bright pink sweater she was wearing. Except for the eyes--- which were an odd shade of brown ---she looked almost to be the carbon copy of Sprite. They were both even built the same way. The little girl in the Matrix and Sprite were both on the short size, for their respective ages, and quite thin.

It was her age group; her peer group that surprised Eran more than her uncanny resemblance to Sprite. The little girl on the screen was seven years old, a first grader even in Zion terms. Sprite was twenty-two years old according to her medical records. It didn't take a genius to figure out the math. Sprite couldn't have been more than fifteen when she'd had the little girl and Sprite had been fifteen when she was freed. She couldn't have been with the little girl for more than a few months and a few months was not long enough to form any kind of permanent bond with her, he figured.

"Whatever you're thinking Eran," Sprite stated, knocking Eran out of his reverie. "You're wrong."

"So you weren't fifteen when you had that girl, Sprite," Eran countered.

"No," Sprite retorted, though there was a certain softness to her voice that wasn't usually there. "You're right about the fact I was fifteen when she was born. What you're wrong about is how I feel about her. Leaving her in there, at the mercy of the Matrix and, worse, my big sister, was the hardest thing I ever did. I can't tell you how badly I'd love to go in there and free her right now."

With a sigh, an uncharacteristic sound from Sprite who only sighed when she wanted to express her annoyance, she added, "But I know I can't just swoop in there and slip her the red pill. She's only seven years old and she might not be able to handle the change. If not that, then she's just too sick to handle the change but, Eran, you have to understand, I can't help but watch her. That little girl is part of me--- she came from me, no matter what the Matrix says ---and I can't just give up something that's a part of me."

"But you were only fifteen, Sprite, and you couldn't have had her with you for more than a few months, at the most because you were freed at fifteen. You couldn't have formed that kind of bond with her in that short span of time," Eran pointed out. "It's impossible!"

"She was mine for exactly three hours, Eran," Sprite corrected with a smirk. "Three of the finest hours the Matrix allowed me to have after five of the worst it made me experience."

Noticing Eran's confused expression--- he was an unmarried man with no children, after all, so Sprite figured he didn't know about these sorts of things ---she added, "She came pretty fast, at least that's what the emergency room doctors said...no time for drugs or anything. Once she came, they brought her to me because she just wouldn't stop crying. I had three wonderful hours with her before my sister came and ruined it for me. She had the social workers take her from me and this is the closest I've ever been to her since."

With a self depreciating laugh, Sprite stated, "I don't even know her name. I should have named her but I didn't think of doing that. I was too busy just…being…with her because I knew my time was running out. I'd be taking the red pill eventually so I figured I should enjoy every second I could with my daughter before then."

"What would you have called her?" Eran managed to squeak out, shocked that Sprite was sharing as much as she was with him.

To everyone on the Thunder Wraith and according to the reports attached to her personal file, Sprite was supposedly a very closed off person. Even if she was asked, she never spoke about herself and her past at any length. Though she was known for being unfriendly and hard headed, Sprite stood before him on the verge of tears and talking about a daughter she'd left behind at fifteen.

"Faith," Sprite answered around a hollow sounding laugh. "She was my Faith in humanity made real but I doubt that's her name now. Knowing my big sister, she has some awful bland name. Aimee was never known for her creativity."

"Why torment yourself like this, Sprite? Why watch her when you know she's not a good candidate for freeing even if she discovers the Matrix? You can see it in her code. There's something very wrong with her. Even though it's taking it's time to show up there'll be no stopping it once it does," Eran, carefully, broached.

"I like watching her. She's so smart, Eran, heads and tails above anyone in that class she's in but it looks like my sister and her husband don't recognize that fact. She's languishing in a class where she's bored out of her mind instead of in a class where she's challenged. Plus she's so small and so sick…I feel like that part's my fault," Sprite said. "I just wish I could go in there and talk to her for a little while. Maybe tell her...I don't know...something so she knows that my sister isn't the be all, end all of things and that she's allowed to be herself."

"You go in there and do something incredibly stupid like that, Sprite, and they'll throw you off the fleet so fast you won't know what hit you. I mean if you had a better track record they might leave you alone but you've been nothing but trouble since day one," Eran pointed out. "We're supposed to leave the batteries alone unless we're freeing one."

Watching a curiously mischievous look cross over Sprite's face, Eran blurted, "Sprite, you seriously can't be considering doing what I just told you not to do. There's just absolutely no way you can do that and get away with it! It's not only insanely dangerous for you but for your daughter if you were go and visit her."

"Eran, I stopped caring about being on the fleet my first day on a ship. I don't want to fight anymore. I came out here to learn the truth, not to fight machines and put my life in danger on a daily basis. I only took this job to find my daughter and because my foster family wanted me to. I'd be happy just living in Zion with everyone else," Sprite stated. "So if I get thrown out, I get thrown out. It won't bother me in the least."

Thinking quickly, she added, "If you help me, Eran, I'll make sure you don't get into even a hint of trouble. I'll tell everyone that I completely forced you into doing it."

"Do you really think anyone's going to buy that story, Sprite? Especially coming from a trouble maker like you," Eran quipped, putting his hands on his hips.

Shaking her head and getting frustrated with Eran, Sprite answered, "I highly doubt it anyone would believe me but I promise I'll find a way to take all the blame myself. I won't get you in any trouble or, at least, try my best not to get you into trouble. I promise I'll think of way so this all falls on me...even if it was your idea to begin with."

"We both need a few days to think about this, Sprite. You're probably just tired or feeling over emotional or something like that. Give it a few days and maybe you'll see I'm right and it's better to just leave well enough alone," Eran stated, trying desperately to convince Sprite to do the right thing and just leave the girl alone.

Sprite frowned, disliking the idea of thinking anything over. She wouldn't be able to sleep tonight or for the next week, her thoughts entirely consumed by prospect of meeting her daughter once again. Sprite was well aware of the fact that she'd given up her entire life in the Matrix by taking the red pill.

If given the choice to do it all again, she wouldn't have changed a thing. She wouldn't have taken the blue pill if she could go back in time and pick again. Sprite had wanted nothing more than to be free. The fifteen year old wanted to be out of the false reality that was the Matrix and away from the oppressive older sister that had raised her and leveled insane rules about how the young Sprite should live her life.

It was just that she couldn't give up on the daughter she'd left behind. Leaving the little girl had been the hardest decision she'd ever made, harder than even taking the red pill, even though Sprite hadn't been home with her daughter on the day they came to get her for her freeing.

Sprite, according to the Matrix police reports she'd been shown, had escaped from a drug rehabilitation facility nearly six weeks after the birth of her daughter. Her sister had declared her an unfit parent due to her young age and her dependence on some sort of pill shaped drug. Sprite had tried to pass the purple pill off as some kind a vitamin she needed to take but her sister hadn't believed her. Aimee never believed her.

What the purple pill was, Sprite could never exactly say. She remembered finding out that she was pregnant and that a man named Alphonse--- who was the baby's father and might have been a member of the Resistance, though, even now, Sprite didn't know that for certain. ---had given her a large bag of them. He said they would protect her and her baby from the Agents until Sprite could be freed.

The pills, they were only still in the testing phase, he'd told her, so no one was sure if they would actually work or not. Sprite, being young and a more than a little foolish, hadn't cared what the pills did. She wanted to be able to have her child and still be freed, though there were other options set before her by Alphonse. She gladly took the pills over any and every other suggestion even if there was the possibility of side effects on both her and her child.

Besides, she trusted Al and figured he'd never do anything to endanger the two of them since Sprite assumed that he loved her. It was just that her sister had jumped to conclusions---- Sprite knew she couldn't tell her sister what the pills were really for ---and taken her daughter from her. Not that Aimee wouldn't have wound up caring for Sprite's daughter in the end since Sprite had been freed but little more time with her daughter, that would have been nice.

Instead, it was six weeks of her "dealing" with an addiction she didn't have instead of spending what time she had with her daughter. Her being freed from the Matrix, to Sprite anyway, had been a welcomed gift on one hand but torture on the other. She got away from Aimee and out of the Matrix but at the cost of her newly born daughter.

"Fine...fine," she sighed, giving in for now. "But next time I have late watch, I'm going in whether or not you help me."

"You can't jack yourself in. First rule of ship life, Sprite," Eran countered, wearing a knowing smile.

Groaning, he added, "I'll help you if you decide this is what you really want to do but you better find a way to take all the heat for it. I'm not taking a hit for you because, unlike you, I like my job."

"Girl Scout's honor," Sprite laughed, holding up three fingers on her right hand. "You won't go down for helping me. I'll make sure it's just me that goes down. I'll say it was my idea and I forced you into taking part by using blackmail or something. I don't know yet."

With a quirky smile that made her look like her namesake, she added, "But I'll be polite and wait, just for you Eran. Besides, it gives me more time to figure out just what I'm going to say to get you out of trouble and get me into more trouble than I thought possible.