Title: Zero Space
Author: That's ridiculous. It says it right there.
Warnings: At least some implied slash. Perhaps more than implied.
Pairing: Eventual Smith/Neo. In the next(and probably final) chapter. Possibly mention of Trinity/Neo. I hate writing it out like... ergh. Nevermind.
Rating: Er. Let's go with R, just to be safe for later.
A/N: I saw this, in a dream. Enough said. I know that I have several 'uncompleted' works up here, and to everyone who wants the long-overdue Part II of The End of All Things, etc.: I'm sorry. I can't... force it, you know? Odd things come at odd times, and I simply... write them down. This haunted me so badly that I had to write it: I've posted some of this on Livejournal as a multimedia story, complete with the pictures jacked out of my head. If you get the feeling I got from this, then that's the whole point. Oh. And there are lyrics here, but it isn't Ye Olde Deadly Songfic: three, I think, simply to illustrate the point. Respectively: Mos Def/Massive Attack, Drowning Pool, and Kidney Thieves. And the next chapter WILL be up within a matter of a day or two, I'd hope.
Dedication: Bishop to King Four. You know.
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"I against I, flesh of my flesh, and mind of my mind, two of a kind but one won't survive, my images reflect in the enemy's eye, and his images reflect in mine the same time... whoever survive this, only one of us can ride forever, so you and I can't ride together, can't live or can't die together, all we can do is collide together, so I skillfully apply the pressure, won't stop until I'm forever... one."
Perfect white: unbroken, zerospace. Washed-out, but not empty: perfect, zero white. The Construct. The Matrix? Either, or both. Neither and all.
A quiet second, and then the unbroken white is interrupted by a splatter of red: impossibly bright, impossibly deep, impossibly red. Blood, thinned with saliva: a smear against what looks like nothing; a quiet laugh from somewhere out of sight not a mocking laugh, nothing of evil intent within it at all: simply amusement, appreciation and then from one corner of the whiteness emerges a black shoe, slightly scuffed but still as impossibly black as the blood was impossibly red: the hem of a shifting long black coat touches briefly on the top of the shoe, drags over it, falls back. A momentary blur of motion, a flexing, wool-clad elbow, the edge of one knee... one small, muffled sound of effort. And then a dark weight moves airborne, spiraling head over shoes, a parody of flight that ends in a semi-graceful landing... graceful, that is, for landing flat on his back. The barely audible thud of the contact between shoulderblades and shiftless ground fades out of consciousness and memory even as it's still being registered in ears and blood and bone: he rolls onto his chest, raising himself up on one knee as the unseen adversary comes into his line of vision once again.
Neo, there, standing above him, then: reaching up with the back of his right hand to wipe the blood away from a badly concealed smile. It was Neo's, then, the mouthful of blood that had first broken the endless expanse of white: Smith, there, propped on one elbow as the other man approaches... not quite a swagger, but exaggerated enough. There's something strange, something off, somehow, about this confrontation: something exceedingly dramatic and yet at the same time, utterly utilitarian, absolutely matter-of-fact. And it's Neo's piss-poor attempt at hiding a This point's mine, then, hmm? expression that turns Smith's half-amused, half-annoyed glare into a lip-curling grimace. Shoving upward with his hands, raising his upper body ever so slightly, he curls one blood-smeared fist, never breaking eye contact with Neo, and brings it down hard against the shapeless surface beneath him.
"Suddenly you rule the universe: everything was shapeless, is clear now."
For a moment, the world seems to warp: the very fabric of existence around them shimmers a bit, ripples, bulges like a too-full bag, like someone trying to poke through the world from the other side. Neo cocks his head as the endless white flickers in and out of shimmering Matrix code: white to green to white to an overlay of code... like seeing through the veil once more, like tearing the cover off reality to expose the electronics inside. The code swells, shifts, and the overwhelming response in blood and gut, at least from Neo, is simple: Jesus. It's beautiful. For a moment the frequency changes, shifts: distinct orange-red sparks swirl into the midst of descending green, and then the world ripples again... and code begins to resolve itself into a fragment of pavement, the side of a building, in programmed relief. A final throb, and the shift is complete: Neo looks up, raising his eyebrows, as where a moment ago he'd stood in perfect nothing, he now stands on the edge of a decaying street, darkness replacing the diffuse glow of white... and in the time it takes him to blink, his hair and coat are sopping wet.
It is raining.
He remembers this.
(And it's goddamn cold, he thinks as one corner of his mouth twists upward almost against his will.)
His gaze moves from the gray-canvas sky, to Smith, who is rising from the (now-)pavement, an economy of motion, elbows and knees, with a satisfied smirk replacing the grimace, now. Neo backpedals a few steps and they almost circle, in reverse, and then Neo laughs quietly, shaking virtual water out of his hair.
"I'm impressed."
As if they are moving on radar, they both launch into motion in that very next second: closing the distance between them in what seems like a negative span of time. Neo meets the rushing onslaught by pausing on the ball of his foot just as the two would collide: a flex of his knees, a lowering of his body center, and he has flashed that scuffed black shoe up and over in a high spinning back kick, his grounded foot leaving the ground... but the flying kick meets nothing but air.
He'd expected as much: it was a flashy move, simple, yet not as brutally effective as some.
As his feet meet the floor again, his left hand twitches upward without any conscious thought, to catch an incoming fist. And so it begins again: the empty thud of flesh on flesh, the open smacking sound of palms meeting fists, of forearms meeting descending blows, of leather shoes being batted away... of the occasional grunt of impact when a swing meets Neo's ribs, Smith's chest: once Neo gets a rising reverse kick up under his adversary's jaw that snaps his head back with a satisfying jerk, and then comes down on his hands to spring himself over and back on his feet, ducking another incoming blow. The blows, perhaps, linger a moment's (zero)space: neither of them seem to be working particularly hard to destroy the other. One, two, three, and he retreats: the water is pouring down on them in sheets, in gray torrents, pooling at the back of his collar and as they circle again, the single moment of I can't. I'm not that powerful... am I? is as fleeting as the lightning strikes illuminating the horizon. So without thinking it through further, without allowing his mind to try and prevent him what he knows with his own instinct is a massive revelation, some world-shaking truth, he takes one final step back, flexes his knees again, straightens his back, and raises a hand.
His eyelids flutter for less than a quarter of a second, and he draws the hand back across his body, extended: as if he's brushing away water or smoke with the back of his hand. A slow, deliberate gesture, much like the one he'd made right before he'd dived back into combat with Smith's clone army, armed then further with a steel pole.
And it happens for him, like he'd known somewhere deep down that it would.
Where before the world around them, the very air itself seemed to have bulged, now the light, the cracking street, the buildings' facades, everything... begins a slow, pulsing shift: a ripple, like a stone thrown into reality's pond. Neo's head goes back the tiniest bit, his eyes half-lidded, as the downpour and the street shimmer into brilliant green code once again... back... gold bursts nearly too bright to look at, even through their dark glasses. Things tilt sickeningly for a single moment, and then there is a pulse, a throb, and something that for that half-second looks like a dizzying trick of the eyes: two scenes overlaid. And then Neo smiles, his lip curling up ever so slightly, as he gives the tiniest nod and steps back, lifting a brow at Smith.
"I am a means until the end: I move a mountain with my hand."
The two of them are now past the soles of their shoes in fresh snow: the rain has faded, and so has the ominous Apocalyptic street: what remains now is a quiet, breathing city snowfield, a silent breath past dusk. A park, clean lines and deserted.
Neo's coat and hair are dry at once: he fights back a smirk as Smith's are still sopping with rain that no longer exists... if it ever did.
Smith tilts his head, in that way he has, and then looks back to Neo, one side of his mouth losing the valiant battle not to show amusement. And even though he doesn't actually say the words out loud, Neo can swear he hears them anyway: Not unimpressive... Anderson.
Although he knows that the just-deep-enough-to-be-sloggish snow will be a hindrance: but the opportunity was still too compelling to pass up...
...a lot like this encounter.
And this is one of Neo's favorite spots, as far as the Matrix goes. The air(air?) is bracing, cold, sharp. The distant lights are glowing a soft gold through the haze, everything is hushed... and inside him something is racing, racing. The entire framework of code, at least in this little corner, had been shifted... by force of will? What earth-shattering upheavals might they catalyze next, the two of them? What unaware powers might be awakened again, as though never forgotten... even though they hadn't been known to begin with? His body is trembling with the exhilaration of it... the door, opened, gusting light and cold through the rooms of his existence.
This time, it is he who moves first: feet leaving the ground in a rush, a turn, a hover, a head tilt and a grin: Come on, then: check. Your move.
(To be continued)