Nevertheless, Neo was suffering from amnesia when he came back to the real world for a second time. And this time, it was Trinity who had yelled her voice out of her throat because she had thought that Neo was dead. She as well was pretty much worn out when Neo finally came back to his senses. But he had no idea of what she had been through because his brain had been going through a major reboot finally. Nor did he remember that she was still alive.
Once again, there was only darkness for him. Nothing but darkness. His head was still hurting like hell. And still he couln't see anything.
Like the last time, he was trying to tap around with his hand to find out where he was. He assumed that he was lying on some kind of bed and that he had defeated Smith a few seconds ago. When he went on tapping around he started to feel something warm and soft beside him. Another human body was lying beside him, but there were lots of plugs and wires stuck into it.
And like a deja-vue, it went like a shock through his head again:
Trinity!
Once more, Neo would have to go through the heavy pain of realizing that the love of his life was dead; only rememberring that she had died in his arms. But this time, his mourning was waking up Trinity, who had been crying herself to sleep. Her body had not healed yet, and speaking was hard for her.
Neo!, she nevertheless whispered back breathlessly, and he couldn't believe his ears.
"Neo!", the whisper returned, more softly now.
And tapping around once more, he felt someone take his hand gently.
However in the world could this be?
He knew these hands. He had known them too well.
"It's me!", the voice said, "don't be afraid."
Those hands were now comforting his face.
"You finally came back to life!", she said, hardly believing it herself.
Neo still thought that this was some sort of test the machines were putting him through for no understandable reason.
"I came back to life?", he gasped. "I saw you die!"
"But I wasn't really dead", she tried to point out with the last power she had in her voice.
"Soon after you were gone, they tried to save my life."
"Who? The machines?"
Neo felt her head nodd, while he was holding it in his hands.
He realized that she was still quite weak and speaking was hard for her, so he chose to ask no more questions. While pointing at the shapes of her face with his own fingers, he stopped on her lips.
She took his hand once more and kissed it very gently.
"Trinity!", he whispered, hardly believing what was happening.
And taking her weakened body into his arms, Neo had to cry out of relief.
He could not handle this. She was still alive. She lay beside him.
"But... Those wires that stuck in your body...", he went on asking her after a while.
"As far as I can see it", Trinity tried to manage to speak, "they supply me with artificial blood and drugs." She was giving it a painful and dirty laughter.
"I don't get why did the machines keep us alive", Neo wanted to know, but he realized that having to answer more questions was to stressful for Trinity right now. So he said: "I don't care why, Trin. If this is really true... and not a dream or a simulation... and I'm not plugged in to the Matrix anymore..."
"It's not a dream", she whispered, and kissed his head. He could feel it was none. He could feel Trinity as he had always been able to sense her presence, even if their two minds were operating in different realities from time to time.
Once more, the man that had saved Zion could not fight his tears.
Were there really tears? He began to feel something wet on his skin.
Trinity tried to whipe it away with her finger.
"Neo... On your face..."
She looked at the place where once his eyes had been.
He still wore some cloth wrapped around his head, and Trinity saw that it was full of blood.
She was too afraid to lift up the cloth, being scared of the sight.
But Neo grapped it immediately and pulled it away.
"I can't believe it!", Trinity said, while looking at his new eyelids, which the machines had given him. Neo touched them himself.
"Trinity", he asked, "is it true?"
She nodded silently. Then she asked in a very careful way: "Can you open them?"
It was hard for him, but he tried to. Somehow, he realized that he was still afraid to wake up and find out it was all just a dream. If it was, he just wanted to kiss her once more.
Pressing his lips onto hers with the passion of doing that for the last time, Neo slowly managed to lift his eyelids and began to see some some light appear within the darkness. First, the light hurt him, and all outlines were quite unclear, but he could still feel Trinity's lips. She had to be there. While he was trying to figure out some of her shapes, he felt her tears drop down on his face.
"Neo...Your eyes...", she said very moved, "Not the ones I knew, but..."
He started to point out something blue. This had to be her eyes, he assumed.
It took him hours to adopt to this new kind of viewing, until he could really recognize her face again. That moment ment endless joy to him. She was still alive, and once more he was given the chance to look into her beautiful eyes. He would have been totally satisfied with having her back and would have spended the rest of his life as a blind man without complaining for a single moment. But looking into her eyes was special, and had always been an exchange between their two souls. All the pain they had been through meant nothing to them, now that they had found rest again in each other's arms.
Finally, they both fell asleep, wrapped around each other tightly. All that had happened had made them both so worn out, though Neo still didn't totally remeber. But when they woke up again, Trinity wanted to explain him.
She told him how he had saved her from the Oligarch Network, and how Sati and the Oracle had managed them both to enter the Source of the Matrix.
Taking her place in there, Neo could act as a union between man, machine and code, because he was still being connected to his body. This was the only way to save Trinity, who had to be convinced of going back to her body; which was quite a risky option. But it was their only option for a common future. She did not know if she could handle it or if she would get lost between this world and the other one. They both didn't know if Neo's code could be translated back to his brain after the mission; or if it got erased forever. Before they tried, they had both said goodbye.
But they had not only known that this whas a chance for their future, but also for the future of mankind and machines as a whole. Right now, with the truce being really fresh, perhaps a real union between man and machine could be achieved; under the council of the Oracle and most of all with the help of Neo and Trinity as ambassadors, whose existence represented a merging between the two competing forms of life.
Trinity and Neo had both grown far beyond what they had been before they agreed to the plans of the Oracle, back in their days as unsfinished Programs. They had become human with all their hearts, and this was the way they both wanted to keep on living like. Now that they had remembered their roots within machine code, they could understand both civilizations. And having freed the machines from the Oligarchy, the way was open for a democratically developed peace process.
"...The first part of the plan worked out well, because we're both still alive!", Trinity grinned, as she came to an end of her story.
Neo's new eyes were wide open and he still could not believe all of this. The memory of what had happened in the Matrix as a double-agent had been erased from his brain. But he understood how lucky he was that his conscience had been able to be reconstructed after all.
And he was endlessly thankful for being with Trinity. Neo had never ever anticipated that this could happen, nor had he dared to hope for anything personal when he finally faced Smith for the last time.
Now, Smith's code had become an add-on to Neo's. The lack of purpose that Smith had always been complaining about had been an equivalent to Neo's inevitable destination. But finally, the equation got balanced within him, and Neo was free to chose a life of his own now. A life with purpose.
"If you weren't here with me", Neo joked, "I guess I'd turn into a psychic assasin... That all really is too much for my poor brain now. But I don't care, you see, because..."
"I guess I know why they saved me", Trinity added grinningly.