Light Duty

"I think they know better than to expect us back on time anymore," Trinity says, between breathless kisses. Neo and Trinity defy their doctors' orders to take things easy in Io. (Also, young!Trinity processing her visit to the Oracle with Morpheus.)

They shouldn't even be alive, not to mention kicking about in exceedingly good condition for two people who were killed and kept in pods for the last sixty years.

Their good, cautious doctors on Io are giddy with curiosity, but trained to dispense concern with sensible professional restraint. Sixty years is longer than most of them have been alive. For Trinity and Neo's first weeks in Io, they're running all the diagnostics they can think of, all of which indicate that everything looks good – miraculous, even. Still, prudent, they order more tests, bed rest, and plenty of fluids.

Trinity and Neo listen, serious and attentive, as the doctors give them yet more good news and send them off to await the results of some other scan. Then they thank everyone like they always do and step out of the clinic, into the elevator. The doors are still closing when they drop their bags and dive for each other.

"How long did they say until we need to be back?" His voice strained with impatience as he nuzzles her ear.

She tilts her head back, a whimper escaping her throat as he traces the curve of her shoulder with his lips. "Four, maybe five hours."

He breaks away to touch his forehead to hers, looking straight into her eyes. "Think they wouldn't mind waiting six?"

"I think they know better than to expect us back on time anymore," she says, between breathless kisses.

Their visits to Zion together – there had been so painfully few of them – had been just like this. Showing up dutifully when they had to, thinking about each other the whole time, counting down the seconds until they could get away. They tease each other about what must have been showing on their faces.

"Today I almost started feeling sorry for us back then," she murmurs. Lying next to him, both of them soaked in sweat and catching their breath, their clothes still on the floor where they'd kicked them off. "But then I thought I'd rather just get straight to making up for lost time."

In these heady first weeks, they've both had their share of being emotional, coming to terms with changes they never thought they'd see, mourning old wounds that have resurfaced. But over and under and through it all is this new white-hot joy of being alive and together again. And the surprise of how much they can laugh about now, with time, perspective, and another chance.

Like the look on the face of the young junior medic whose job it was to enter them into Io's medical database, only to discover that their old records were still in the system, carried over from who knows how many generations of software ago and stubbornly refusing to be edited or deleted. And how when Trinity finally asked what the problem was, the medic had reluctantly turned it over to her and she'd solved it in under ten minutes.

Or Neo's account of almost watching the Analyst shoot her in her workshop, back in the Matrix. "I almost didn't get to see you," he says, explaining about how their crew had been attacked by the Merovingian and other exiles. It doesn't sound at all like the set-up for a joke, but he gets there. "Bugs said we had to go. I said I had to talk to you. She said, 'We barely handled those exiles, Neo, and they were even older than you."

"Ouch," Trinity says, unable to keep from smiling.

"I insisted I had to talk to you. She gave me this look. She kept trying to tell me it was a bad idea. But we all knew she thought it was a great idea. Finally, she just dusted my jacket off and said, 'My man, you look like shit.'"

She laughs. "You had blood coming out of your nose. But my heart almost stopped when you walked in. I couldn't believe it was really you."

He smiles. "Well, the feeling was mutual. And still is." He gives her a look she can only describe as awestruck. "Have I ever told you how hot you are?"

"Not in those words, maybe. But in a lot of other ways."

"I should have said it a long time ago."

"Don't worry. I liked all those other ways you said it." Feeling his heartbeat quicken as she lays back against his chest.

It isn't that there isn't any pain in these early weeks, only that the pain makes everything that's not pain all the more vital.

One old wound that had resurfaced for them together was finding out all they'd missed when they were gone.

Neo had been the one to bring her to the Zion monument, the cave burning with candles that made their shadows jump on the walls. He kept apologizing for not knowing the whole history of the last sixty years, but she just told him she was glad to hear it from him first.

They'd both cried looking up at the statue of Morpheus. Remembering.

"He saw as far as he could and he did the best that he knew how," Neo says. "I just wish he hadn't… He could've been here right now."

That hurts in a completely new way. She knows she'll be grieving that for a long time. "He changed my life," she says finally. "I think he knew. But I would have loved to tell him again."

"They found that stone he always wore around his neck. Do you know anything about it?"

"I don't," she says, looking down. "I never asked him. It felt too personal, I guess. But I wish I'd asked him now."

Funny, considering what she had somehow dared to ask him about.

For six months after her visit to the Oracle, she'd found her prophecy to be completely indigestible. You're going to fall in love, Trinity. I can't tell you how you'll know, except that you will. Like you've never been so certain of anything else in your life. And that man, that man you love will be the One. She'd handled it by not letting anyone get near her. She was reserved, precise, and a writhing black hole on the inside.

She remembers being especially uncomfortable in Zion during that time. It felt like going to a family reunion and feeling painfully ill-equipped to relate to all these people she was supposedly related to. She was always relieved when they were back onboard the ship again, where she could just go back to being a soldier. Instead of struggling to try to be a human being, while her heart felt like cracked ice.

And there was something else. It was in Zion that she watched men as they passed by, feeling predatory and victimized at the same time, and hating herself for it. Not knowing how many years this would go on. (Years. Ghost loving her silently, helplessly; Cypher always looking at her first, constantly, with sincere but disquieting admiration; far too many more.)

And then there was the big gathering to celebrate the day of Zion's founding. She'd gone with the rest of the crew, knowing it wasn't worth worrying them by staying away. But all she'd wanted to sink beneath the earth. She slipped out of the great cavern as soon as she could. And then she couldn't seem to get another step further.

"Trinity?"

She jerked her head up. Feeling caught. "Sir. I mean… Morpheus." He'd been asking her to call him by his name, at least when they were in Zion. When they weren't on duty.

He was wearing a loose jacket the color of a sunset, holding a drink in one hand. She saw him take in the sight of her sitting against a wall, with her arms around herself and her knees pulled up high to her chest. Huddled in the darkest, most threadbare sweater she had, the closest thing to being dressed in black in this world, ridiculous in the sweltering heat of the earth's core.

"Aren't you coming to the gathering?" he asked her. But his expression told her he already knew.

She tried to give him an opaque smile. "I just felt like thinking for a while. You should go ahead."

What he did next startled her. He downed his drink and then threw it aside, literally threw it. It hit a wall and rolled a few feet. She stared at it in disbelief, barely even registering him lowering himself to the ground to sit beside her.

"You don't have to say anything," he said. "But you look like you want to."

"Can you promise to keep this between us?" The words were out of her mouth before she knew she was thinking them.

He answered without a moment's hesitation. "Of course."

"Morpheus…" She was the one who hesitated for a long time. Trying to find another way to say it, failing. "Morpheus, do you believe in fate? Do you believe in destiny?"

Do you believe in soulmates?

She'd seen him dancing with Niobe earlier. There was something between them, no doubt, but it looked to her a little explosive, like a live wire pulling in the opposite direction.

Because the Oracle told me I was going to fall in love with the One.

But she hadn't told Morpheus what the Oracle had told her, and didn't now.

For a minute, she couldn't look at him. She wished she had never asked such ridiculous questions out loud. She hoped he thought she was just drunk. Wished it were that simple.

But he was only thinking about what he wanted to say in reply. He spoke slower than usual, with even greater care. Which she knew amounted to care for her. "I know there have been many moments in my life when I've felt that what happened had to have happened, and couldn't have happened any other way."

"But isn't that circular reasoning?" She heard the hurt and fury in her voice, but couldn't stop. "A bias towards the events you're conscious of? You don't know any of the billions of tiny events that were part of causality. A butterfly flapping its wings on the other side of the world, and so on." An illustration she'd always disliked, but she just couldn't do any better right then.

He just looked at her calmly. "I said that was how I felt, not necessarily how things actually were. But when it comes to those moments, I also think about what I did, if I did anything, what actions I contributed. I believe that matters."

Then she said it. "If you never find the One, would you feel that you had failed?"

Part of her couldn't believe she was asking that question. The rest of her had wanted to ask it a hell of a lot sooner.

He raised his eyebrows. "Niobe just asked me the same question earlier tonight." The corners of his mouth turned up. "Perhaps the universe is trying to tell me something, through the two wisest women I know."

She flinched at the compliment. He tactfully let it pass. Considered her question.

"The Oracle told me I would find the One," he said. A clear light in his eyes. "I believe it is my purpose."

She pressed again. "If you never find the One, would you feel that you had failed?"

He thought for a long time.

"Yes, I would," he said at last. "But perhaps I would feel that I had succeeded at something else. And perhaps that would not be so bad."

"But you have to promise to keep this between us," he added.

She held out her hand to him. "Of course."

He took her hand in both of his for a moment, then let go.

Afterwards, when people ask her about Morpheus and what he meant to her, she keeps her promise not to anyone about this conversation. It's their secret, this exhange, and no one can ever take that intimacy away from them by misunderstanding.

"Do you mind if I ask you why you asked me that?" Morpheus said after a moment.

Her throat tightened. But she wanted badly to tell him something, at least. "I have this conviction that…"

He leaned in closer, and through her raw nerves, she almost smiled. He loved convictions.

"I have this conviction that at some point, I'm going to have to do something." Fall in love with the One. She almost stumbles over her words, feeling herself unravel. "But I don't know if it's going to be my choice, or it'll just be me doing what I've been programmed to think I want. Something I have no control over. Fate. Destiny."

"And that scares you?"

She realized she was holding her breath. "It scares me a lot."

He was silent for a while. And then he said, "Trinity, it will be okay."

She couldn't believe what she was hearing. Of all the hand-waving bullshit. And from him. "But what if I'm supposed to choose something, and I make the wrong choice? What if there's some purpose I'm supposed to carry out, and I can't?"

He blanched, just a little, and she was grateful for the honest reaction. Yet his expression was calm, steadying, when he looked at her again.

"Even if that's the case, Trinity, it will be okay. There may be consequences for your actions. Things will happen differently. But that doesn't mean things won't still work out for good in the end. Think of a river taking a different path, but finding its course all the same. Somehow, we are all conveyed, in a river so vast that we don't even see it. A river that's changing all the time, like a song that just keeps incorporating more and more. I like to think of myself as the captain of my own ship. But I also suspect the universe is far more creative than I'm willing to be."

A shadow seemed to pass over his face for a second. "I thought of some of this when we unplugged you. It brought me some peace when I thought my worst fears would come true. Do you know you almost died?"

That startled her. "No. No one told me about that." She remembered working out that she'd been in recovery longer than other people, but she hadn't even thought to wonder why.

"You had a certain heart arrhythmia." He looked away for a moment. "I knew the details at the time, but I've done my best to forget them. We were lucky to catch it right away, and we were able to correct it. Dozer promised me you'll be fighting fit for many years to come. But if we'd waited three more months like we'd meant to… if you hadn't cracked the IRS database earlier than you were planning to… The possibility of what could have happened has always haunted me." He looked into the distance. "Things would have unfolded differently. I don't know how. But I know how I felt when you pulled through. That things happened at the right time. Was that destiny?"

He sighed.

"I know that when things don't seem possible, when you don't see anything yet, that's the time to have hope. In the dark. In the long moments before knowing."

(More than seventy years into the future: Her code reading pure blue pill, just like Neo's. The crew of the Mnenosyne suspecting a trap. And choosing to try anyway.)

He looked at her. "And I know that I have faith in you, Trinity. I will no matter what you choose, or how it happens. And no one can tell me there's anything wrong with that."

In those days, her mind had been ablaze with theology, philosophy, anger, and despair. To the degree it was burning her up, she didn't know how she was going to know how she felt about anything again. Everything had felt like a mirror, driving her own jagged thoughts back into her.

The questions had fueled and then almost destroyed her. She'd wanted answers Morpheus didn't have, answers that no one could have given her.

But still, in that confusion, he had been a door. An opening. Something she could walk through.

He'd sat with her that night for almost an hour longer before leaving to rejoin Niobe, an hour of the very few he had. Willing to go with her into whatever story she was trying to tell him she was caught in, even when she hadn't fully told him all of it. She'd talked incoherently about fate and destiny, and he'd brought her back to just what St. Paul had said would remain, while everything else knew in part and prophesied in part, consumed itself like kindling: faith, hope, and love.

"But you do believe in love?" the Oracle had asked her.

"I thought I did," she'd said, trying to sound flippant, coming across as defensive. "But that was in the Matrix. I had all these memories, and none of it was real."

Not everything was healed, and almost nothing was resolved, but his presence that night changed something in her, amidst all the questioning and doubt. She became just a little less brittle, a little less afraid. A little more sure of what was real.

She wonders if he ever realized how finding the One had started with him finding her.

She knows it will be hard for both her and Neo to be in a world they've never known without Morpheus. But it's still a world he helped to build. And somehow, they go on living in it.

She doesn't remember cuddling and drifting off, but she wakes up in Neo's arms. For a moment, it's disorienting to realize she's exactly where she wants to be.

"Sorry if I woke you up," he says softly. "You looked like you were dreaming."

She remembers where they're supposed to be. "Are we due back at the clinic?"

"In about half an hour."

She bites down a smile. "We should leave now if we're as sore as I suspect we're gonna be when we get up."

"That's your fault as much as mine." She laughs. "Maybe you can learn how to fly here, Trin. Since you already know how to fly in the Matrix now."

She gives him a long come-hither look. "It's not so hard. I'll teach you."

He squeezes her hand. "I'm in for as long as it takes."

She smiles. "I imagine you'll get right back into it. I bet it's one of those things. You never forget what it feels like."

"I know I want to spend the rest of my life remembering." The look of devotion he gives her sending her reeling.

Her breath catches as he kneels over her again, bending low to touch his forehead to hers. "Neo…"

"So these tests," he says, fighting back a smile. "They know what we're doing, right?"

"They definitely know," she says. "Twenty years ago, I would have been embarrassed."

"Yeah, so would I." To have been so gingerly placed on indefinite light duty, and then having all their tests come back showing they've been engaging in off-the-charts cardio. "Then I died and got sixty years older and decided nothing was going to make me keep my hands off you."

"I'm still a little embarrassed," she admits. "But it's not holding me back."

"You would never have been held back," he says, with that knowing smile that never fails to melt her completely. "For as long as I've known you, you've been unstoppable."

"You make it easy," she says, pulling him close again.

A/N: Before this, when I heard authors talk about getting to know their characters, I never found that to be remotely appealing. It sounded like an intense kind of solipsism or something. But having this resurrected fandom where we all came back to life together and started talking again (thank you again to the Hardline and the Construct; raise your hand if you were also a crying teenager in the movie theater after Revolutions), and having these completely unexpected stories come out of holding all of that together, has been kind of unexpectedly life-changing and life-giving. So thank you so much for reading. I'm so glad we get to love all of this together.

(Also, the extended Morpheus section in this one surprised me. All I wanted to do was make a callback joke to the moment new!Morpheus throws his drink out the side of the dojo and it lands in the water with a splash. I don't know if anyone else finds that as hilarious as I did, but if you did, I guess this is the mood fic for you!)