AN: Sorry, everyone who's still out there reading this, for the fact this update is late. It's been sort of crazy for me between midterms and some of the Girl Scout craziness. We had our charity fashion show last Friday and I'm glad to say that we made a great sum of money to donate to the Lance Armstrong Foundation! The kids in the troop had a really good time pretending to be America's Next Top Model. The little kids especially! Everyone who came commented on how funny they were because they were so serious about being models. It was a good time but we're already working on our next big fund raiser! That being, the troop talent show! Anywho, thanks to everyone who's out there and still reading this. You're all awesome!

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 in graduate school studying biology. All I own are my Pointe shoes.

"Your mother warned you there'd be days like these

Oh but she didn't tell you when the world has brought

You down to your knees that...

I'll be there for you

When the rain starts to pour

I'll be there for you

Like I've been there before

I'll be there for you

'Cuz you're there for me too..." (From "I'll Be There For You" by The Rembrandts)

Pixie's mind was busy, swirling with thoughts she wished she could banish out of her head. It was a funny thing, though, because Pixie really liked to think. It was something of a hobby for the long haired medic-in-training. At the moment, though, she wished she couldn't think. She wished she could silence the thoughts in her head, get her mind to settle itself down and stop trying to puzzle out her own feelings and the ones she assumed Wheeler had for her. The ones that caused him to kiss her.

At least the world decided it liked her for a brief moment. There was a knock at the door of her small home. The sound- A loud, insistent banging instead of the meeky sort of knock she used. - was loud enough to break the hold her thoughts had on her.

"It's open," Pixie very nearly shouted, speaking from the presumably safe confines of her own bedroom.

It was an old tactic Pixie was using at the moment. Something she hadn't done since her days as a failing battery living in the Matrix. An escapist tactic that she'd adopted back when she was very young.

It was something she hadn't done in years. She'd given up doing it when she started hacking and hadn't even considered doing it once she'd been freed from the confines of the Matrix. There's been no reason to do it, until now.

Pixie was hiding from the world. She was in her room, under the covers of her bed- A bed that was neatly tucked into a natural alcove in the wall and a bit bigger than necessary for one smallish person- trying not to think about anything. It was funny, the more she tried to not think, the more thinking she did.

Her hiding, when she lived in the Matrix was for good reason. There, she was hiding from the truth; hiding from the fact she was dying and hiding from the knowledge she had acquired about her world.

Now her reason for hiding sounded silly and empty, even to her. She was hiding just because she didn't want to have to deal with the world around her. She wanted nothing to do with her feelings and the person who'd turned her calm world into a topsy-turvy mess.

Pixie heard the creaky sound her door made as it opened on its rusty hinges, followed by the same sound as the door closed behind the person who'd entered her home. Boots crunched along her floor as the person wandered around the sparse but neat space that served as her kitchen, among other things. The walking sound stopped for a moment and Pixie got the mental image of a person just looking around the space, maybe trying to locate her or just because they wanted to look.

"Pix, you alive?" called a concerned voice that Pixie recognized as belonging to Chian.

Pixie, still hiding in her room, felt her face turn a bit redder. She'd made the mistake of calling on her friend to help her figure out what was going on and had wound up being more than a little embarrassed for doing so. It was, in Pixie's mind, a reminder of why she never asked for help. It never turned out well.

All she could manage was a small, squeaky sort of sound. A variation on the mousy sort of sound she'd made before.

"Where are you hiding, kid?" Chian asked, noticing that Pixie wasn't in the room.

The room, itself, was trademark Pixie but the owner of the space, herself, wasn't present. There weren't many places for Pixie to hide but, still, Chian didn't want to scare the younger female. Something had to be wrong if Pixie had sought her out at an inhumanly late hour of the night. It had to be important otherwise Pixie would have waited until what passed for morning in Zion to hunt her down to talk.

"Back here, my room," Pixie responded, finding her voice and using it.

The sound of walking returned as Chian meandered her way through the heavy orange and blue dyed curtain that blocked Pixie's room from the rest of the small space Pixie called home. Where some didn't bother with such an odd looking door, Pixie didn't want her friends wandering into her bedroom. It didn't work as well as a locked door but it served its purpose most of the time.

Chian found Pixie lying in her bed, back to the rest of the room. Since her legs were nowhere to be seen and her back was slightly rounded, the older female had to assume that they were pulled into Pixie's chest. Such a feat was likely as Pixie was rather bendy or, at the very least, was more acrobatic that Chian was herself.

Hearing someone enter space, Pixie rolled away from the wall and pushed herself into a sitting position. She left her knees pulled into her chest and her arms wrapped around said knees. Her head rest at the tops of her knees; her eyes finding everything else except her friend interesting.

Chian, not waiting for an invitation, took a seat at the edge of the foot of Pixie's bed. Whatever was wrong with her friend- Well, technically, her little sister, since that was how Chian thought of Pixie. - had to be a something not health related. Other than a very red face, which might be considered a sign of fever if the older female remembered correctly, Pixie looked to be her normal, healthy, self.

For a long moment, there was a heavy silence between the pair. The sort of silence that came from not knowing where to start talking mixed with a good bit of embarrassment to flavor.

"I'm sorry I came by. I just was looking for something. I shouldn't have come in. It was rude of me. I hope you're not mad," Pixie said, speaking in a rush and staring down at the beat up cover on her bed.

To Pixie's mild surprise, Chian started to laugh. That threw Pixie further into confusion. Laughing was the last thing the young woman figured her friend would be doing. In all actuality, she'd assumed her friend would be mad at her for what she'd done. She'd obviously interrupted a private moment, something that a good friend shouldn't have done.

"I'm not laughing at you, Pix," Chian pointed out, making a concerted effort to control the laughter that was spilling out of her, "it's just that Sparks saw you when you came in and, for all his bluster, he was more embarrassed than you were. What were you looking for?"

"Something happened and I'm all confused. I'm not sure how I'm supposed to feel about something anymore," Pixie, still speaking in a rushed tone, answered.

Giving Pixie a withering look, Chian threatened, "Being vague isn't going to help you any. Either open up that word horde and tell me what happened or I'm going to get going."

It wasn't the nicest thing to do, Chian knew, but it needed to be said. Pixie was taken aback by her friend's pronouncement. She didn't expect Chian to say something like that. Though, Chian was a fan of good natured teasing, she'd never been outright mean to her.

Actually, Pixie recalled Chian telling her she'd never be outright mean to her. Something about teasing being part of how sibling relationships functioned- Pixie didn't quite understand that since she was an only child. - but being mean was out of the question. Siblings could be mean, sure, but she didn't intend to be mean to the siblings she adopted.

Thinking as fast as she possibly could given the circumstances, Pixie tried to come up with something a bit less vague. Though she hadn't been as keen as she'd once been to speak to Chian, Pixie found that, now that her friend was there, she wanted to talk to her.

Maybe things would be better if she could just get what happened out in the open. Get an outsider's opinion on the situation. Gain a new perspective on things because of some advice given. Better still, instead of advice, an explanation of the whats and whys of what had just taken place.

"Wheeler kissed me. Like kiss kissed me," Pixie stammered, trying again to explain what had happened and why she was looking for someone to talk to.

She wasn't sure there were anymore words for what he had done. If such words existed, they were escaping Pixie's upload enhanced brain.

"And..." Chian prompted in an expectant tone.

Pixie shrugged and continued, "I don't know what to do now."

Chian started to laugh again. The sound echoed throughout Pixie's bedroom, bouncing off the walls and making the younger female feel more than a little uncomfortable. The laugh was a knowing sort of laugh; the laugh of someone who knew this was going to happen eventually and had done the "nice" thing by warning her friend about it.

"I hate to say it but I told you so. I told you he's always liked you are more than a friend and it was just a matter of time before something happened. I figured it was going to be him to make the first move," Chian pointed out, her tone still knowing much to Pixie's chagrin.

Getting a handle on herself, Chian decided to take, what she figured was the next logical step and pointed out, "That logical brain of yours can't figure out what to do now, right?"

Pixie gave a simple nod as her answer. That was the be all, end all of her problem. She wasn't sure what to do with all the emotions she was feeling now. It was all a jumble in her mind, taking up space and preventing her from thinking about anything else.

"Well, let's start simply, how did it make you feel?" Chian questioned.

"It was weird at first. I mean, the whole night with Wheeler was weird. There was this sort of awkwardness between us. Things have never been strange between the two of us. We always got along. I don't know why but I was afraid at first but then I wasn't anymore. It felt sort of nice," Pixie answered.

"At least you didn't get it in your little head of yours to smack him or something and it's a good sign you thought it felt nice. What else?" Chian prompted.

"Now I don't know what to do. I mean, I'm all confused. If I knew what to do, I wouldn't have gone to talk to you. This isn't exactly something you expect from someone you thought was just a friend," Pixie replied, sounding both utterly exasperated and totally downtrodden.

She knew it sounded pathetic and sad- Maybe a bit on the harsh side too- but Pixie found herself wishing that she was like the Agents of the Matrix. The Agents were smart but they didn't seem like they had any emotional capacity. Though she knew being able to feel emotions made her human, made her different from the emotionally dead Agents of the Matrix, Pixie, at the moment, wished she was unable to feel anything. It would have made her life, she figured, a whole lot easier.

"Like I said before, as smart as you are, that's how blind you are. How do you feel about Wheeler? I know he likes you and I'm pretty sure you like him. Maybe you'd feel better if you just said it out loud," Chian suggested, trying to get Pixie to understand what had happened.

It might have been easy for a "normal" person to understand what a kiss meant but this was Pixie she was talking to. The younger female was more about understanding things with her head rather than her heart. Wonderful for someone in the medical or scientific field. Not so great for matters of the heart.

Pixie hesitated, unsure of what to say to her friend. It was like trying to untangle a bunch of twisted silk threads. The knots were too tiny, the threads too fine, and the fabric too slippery to be able to accomplish the set task. All she was doing was making a bigger mess out of things.

"He's my friend, one of the best ones I have here. He's always been there to listen to me, even before we came here. Sometimes, I think he'd like me as what I was before all the rebuilding. I know I like him as my friend but, other than that, I don't really know. Maybe I do like him as more of a friend, I think anyway," Pixie babbled.

"That's a start," Chian commented, "I can't do this for you, Pix; you're going to have to do this yourself."

Another small sound from the younger female, the one akin to a mouse being trod over, prompted Chian to add, "I know you're scared of anything and everything related to emotions that impair your logical nature. You can do this, though. You have no choice in the matter. Just tell him how you feel otherwise he's going to think that he's done something wrong. That'll make a bigger mess with that friendship you two have."

"But, what if I can't," Pixie groaned, "what if I make a bigger mess out of things because I'm not good at this sort of thing. I really don't want to hurt Wheeler's feelings and I really don't want to ruin our friendship. I'm at a loss for what to do here. All I know is that I don't want to make anything worse."

Chian frowned, wondering if she was going to have to beat the ideas into Pixie. There was no way someone could be that thick, in denial so deep that she was blind to everything around her. Especially when that someone was as smart as Pixie was. Though they were in different Academy classes, she knew Pixie was smart. She had to be to be spouting off about Plato's Cave at fourteen going on fifteen.

It took a moment but Chian realized what was the problem was. There was one thing that was plaguing Pixie and giving her a hard time understanding what was happening between her and her friend.

Pixie relied on logic and reason to solve every problem she came across. She'd become so use to looking at things through such a lens, that it became second nature to her. Emotional decisions, ones made from the heart or the gut, had no place in her world, it seemed. She was not use to making such decisions.

Well, Chian figured, there was no time like the present to learn.

"All you have to do it speak from the heart. For once, ignore what that brain of yours is telling you. Not everything in the world can be explained by logic, as unpleasant as that is for you to hear," Chian informed her friend.

She ruffled Pixie's hair and yawned widely. It was quite late now.

"Sleep on it, kid. Just make sure to talk to him sooner than later. He's going to think he did something very wrong if you make him wait," Chian told her friend as she left Pixie's bunker.

Alone and emotionally exhausted, Pixie yanked off her boots and wriggled under the covers of her bed. The problem would still be there when she woke up in the morning but, for now, she could pretend they didn't exist.
For now, she could try and get some sleep. She'd try and sort things out the next day or so.