Ghost felt his heart constrict when he opened the door five days later, and saw Trinity standing there. She looked tired, he noted, drawn. She immediately put her arms around him and hugged him tightly, and then after a moment drew back, and looked into his eyes, and nodded, apparently satisfied with what she saw. He wished he could feel similarly. Her face looked as if an older woman inhabited it than the one he'd said goodbye to, ten weeks before.

"Ghost- I'm sorry I didn't come to see you before now."

"You never need to apologize to me. Ever."

Her face softened. "I know that. I am anyway."

"I understood."

She looked at him. "Neo?" she said. Simply, without preamble. "You know about Neo?"

Ghost shrugged. "Who doesn't?"

She sighed, and leaned back against the door frame, her hands behind her. "The Council spend most of the days trying to work out how he does it. If he can do more. If he can show anyone else how to. And in the evenings, the whole goddamn fleet drops by. I seem to spend my life fending people off. He's only been free a month, he's entitled. We're entitled. It makes me angry."

"They have to, Trinity. The Council."

Her mouth set. "I don't have to like it. It exhausts him. He's a man. Not some kind of weapon."

Ghost nodded, slowly, and Trinity gave him an affectionate smile. "You're one of the few people I want him to meet," she said. "And you're one of the few who wouldn't visit."

"Not unrelated, perhaps. I realized you needed some time."

"Nobody else has."

"You can't blame people for curiosity. It's the human condition." He coughed slightly. "How are you?"

She looked at her hands, and he waited. Then she looked up, sighed. "I miss them," she said.

"I know. So do I."

"He didn't know them. Not really. He doesn't know what to say. It's hard for him."

"Harder for you."

There was a silence, and then "No," she said. "No. I've changed my mind. I think it's harder to watch, sometimes, than to suffer."

"Is he suffering?"

"I don't know." She paused, and then said "I think- he's struggling."

Later, they walked slowly to the elevators, and waited there. Neither spoke until they reached the level where Switch and Apoc had had their room. The red door seemed identical to the others, to a casual observer, but Trinity reached out a finger and traced the line of a scratch in the red paint; remembered the occasion it was made. There was a silence.

"You have the key?" Ghost said eventually.

Trinity nodded mutely, but made no move to retrieve it.

"We don't have to do this today, Trinity. You don't."

She stared at the door for a few moments more. "We do. I can't leave it any longer. It's been over a week, I owe them it. If I don't A & S will step in. Switch would hate that."

"Authority rummaging through her things…………"

"God knows how many infractions are in there. Apoc once said he lived in permanent fear of raids."

"He lived for it. The drama, he was so peaceful himself, he admired her for it. And she broke rules, not laws."

Trinity smiled with an edge of cynicism. "Sparks- he came round last night. He said he didn't want her hack codes, now. He wanted her liquor."

"Sparks is immutable."

"Is that what they call it." She stood, biting her lip.

"Do you want me to?"

"No," said Trinity. And opened the door.

The room was cluttered and untidy- the strict orderliness of active service had never come naturally to them. The bed was roughly made, and Switch's home shirt and pants lay strewn across it, where she had left them, last leave. Trinity went slowly over, picked them up and began to fold with automatic precision. Ghost walked over to the desk and began to sort through the piles of disks, tools, clothing, and the general, disparate clutter of Zion life.

"Do we look at their disks? Or just wipe them?" Trinity said doubtfully.

"They've probably left instructions somewhere. As to what they wanted. Most people do."

"True."

But Trinity was unprepared for what lay on the first one they opened. They stood, and looked at it, and then she said "Jesus."

It was poetry.

"I didn't know Apoc liked poetry," she said.

"He didn't. Switch did."

"But- it looks like love poetry."

"She liked love poetry."

"You've got to be kidding me. And how the hell do you know?"

Ghost was looking at the screen, and he scrolled down, slowly. "She asked me to make these up for her. She said she wasn't well read enough to know where to look. So I put a few together. Yeats. She liked Yeats."

"When you are old and grey and full of sleep,

And nodding by the fire, take down this book,

And slowly read, and dream of the soft look

Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,

And loved your beauty with love false or true,

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,

And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,

Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled

And paced upon the mountains overhead

And hid his face amid a crowd of stars."

Trinity had her hands clenched on the back of the chair, and Ghost saw the knuckles whiten, the veins stand out in sharp relief.

"None of us are ever going to live to be old," she said. "None of us. You know that, Ghost. What possessed you?"