A:/run/program/5.exe

Disclaimers: The Matrix belongs to those pervert brothers. Yes, those brothers.

Warnings and Rants: This is a Smith-fic, and I'm experimenting with the style. Eventually will be slashy, but for now, it's all pretty general. I'm getting there, though… slowly… slowly… __

Summary: Agent Smith visits the Oracle, she tells him some kooky stuff, and then visits Persephone, and she shows him something interesting.

Status: 5/?

Radishface

* * *

There was a time when he wouldn't have known what was moral, there was a time when he wouldn't have know what his own thoughts were.

But it is all very clear to him as he follows Seraph down the sterile white of the hall, these familiar doors, their soft green colors staring out at him, and any moment now one of the Agents, the real Agents, their minds still controlled by the Matrix, by the Architect, they will come through one of those doors, and seize him by the arm, and drag him away to be deprogrammed.

He can feel it-- the electricity sparking around him as he kept his eyes open behind the sunglasses, expecting the doors to open, expecting those familiar, monotonous faces to peer out behind one of the doors, say in the same intonation, ah, there you are.

But he knows that Seraph won't let them capture him, if only for now. Maybe, after he has met the Oracle, after she says what she needs to say and he hears what he needs to hear, maybe then Seraph will abandon him to his fate, and he will walk down this corridor again, and all the doors will look the same. He knows that he has come out of these doors multiple times, and it has been simple. Who is to say that they can't do the same?

The man in front of him stops in front of a door, and Smith wonders why it matters that it is this door and not another one, aren't they all the same, don't the locations only appear when the correct key is placed in the keyhole?

And Seraph takes out a key, and it is a little silver key, a regular household key, and it turns in the lock, and he can hear the faint sound of heartbeats thudding in his ear, and maybe they are his own.

The room is simple, and a woman sits on a chair in the middle of the kitchen, and she smiles at him, and he knows that this is a smile that she presents to everyone, one that says, I know infinitely more than you, and it shall remain that way. And isn't she a rogue program as well? That the Architect would have endowed such a program with boundless knowledge, encased in the form of riddles, and he feels a snarl in the back of his throat, for hadn't he once been a loyal emissary of the Matrix, its servant, its tool, and what had he known?

He hadn't know anything until Neo had flown at him, eyes undecipherable, and Neo's code had mixed with his own, and Agent Smith, because he was still an Agent at the time, knew that it wasn't code, but that it was flesh and blood, the essence of a soul of a human being. He had known everything, but those thoughts, those complexities, had unraveled themselves in front of him, endless layers of ribbon waiting to be peeled away, and he couldn't do it, because they were all riddles, just like what the Oracle knew, just like what the Oracle would never be able to tell.

"Smith." She says, and her voice might be kindly, but it's like a mountain of steel, every word dripping with hidden ice. "I trust you haven't waited long."

"For what?" He finds himself asking, and his legs feel strangely numb, as if they are frozen, rooted to the ground, and he can't move. "I haven't waited for you."

Her eyes flash, and her smile lessens, the room around them seems to grow a little darker, the sun outside seems to disappear behind the clouds. "My dear." She says. "Everybody waits for their prophecy, the day their destiny is written for them. That is the inherent nature of humankind, their curiosity, their weakness." And here she smiles again.

"I'm not human." He says, and she starts to laugh, as if she has expected him to say this, but of course she has, she's the Oracle, isn't she, she's like the one at Delphi, the woman who murmurs unintelligible things to the priests who interpret what she says, except now there are no interpreters, and Smith is on his own.

"Oh, my boy," she says, and gazes at him, almost fondly. "When did you lose your inherent programming?"

And his eyes widen just a little, and he refuses to believe what she is insinuating, yet it is there as clear as glass, and he turns abruptly, only to see Seraph standing at the door, his arms folded, his eyes watching him, unwavering in their resolution.

"Smith." The Oracle says. "The moment Neo drove into you, the moment he realized he was the One, the moment he drove into you with the purpose to defeat you, that was when you lost your innocence."

His eyes are fixed upon Seraph, the white of his shirt, the dark buttons that go up his neck, his hands, strong, smooth, perfect, as only a machine's should be. The glasses hide Seraph's eyes, and he can't tell what the other program is thinking, what his purpose is other than to lead unsuspecting souls to the Oracle to have their lives judged and misjudged, if Seraph has any other will than to be a messenger boy, this privileged messenger boy, the one who has to fight and prove his opponents worthy of the Oracle, to prove that his opponents may have the brawn, but not the mind, to decipher what the Oracle wants to tell them.

"Smith." The Oracle says. "This has happened six times. The One will choose which door to pass through, for Zion or for the Matrix, and Smith, his life does not depend on yours, like yours depends on his. To him, you are but another machine."

"Smith." The Oracle says, and she stands. "The past six times, the One has always chosen to walk through the door that will save Zion, the one that will supposedly save mankind. Yet the Matrix reboots, my child, and it is restored, and Zion lives, only to die again. Perhaps Neo will be kind enough to break the endless cycle, and free us from this routine. Perhaps Neo will have a reason to make a different choice." She walks over to him, and turns him around, gently, so that now he is facing her, his eyes carefully shielded behind the glasses.

The sun pours in through her windows, coming in slits through the blinds, and he can hear Seraph breathing behind him, the Oracle's hands on his shoulders, and again, he is so very aware of everything, of the children playing in the next room, except they are not children, but are also programs, and he thinks that this place is like the Chateau, but without the delusions of grandeur, without the illusions that strive to make it a wonderland, for it is here that the programs seek to interfere with the Matrix, while in the Chateau, internal affairs keep the Merovingian from expanding elsewhere.

"For six times I have told you this, and you never listen." The Oracle steps back, regards him with a slight smile on her face, a disappointed one, a derogatory one, a compassionate one. "My child, you inhabit the Matrix, and every time it restarts, you are reborn. But you do not lose the memory that is imprinted within you-- only that you hesitate to resurrect it."

"Should you give him a reason to change?" The Oracle says, and she seems to be talking to herself now, her voice a hushed sound, as if conferring with a private audience, and he feels like a spectator. "Has Neo served penance enough for humanity's transgressions? Has he borne the weight of the sins of humans? Will his decision serve to doom humanity to another eternity of delusions?" Her eyes alight on Smith, wide and indifferent. "Do you know why this is the seventh version of the Matrix, why the past Ones have failed to enlighten the race of humans, why Zion remains but an underground city?"

And he shakes his head, because he doesn't know why, and maybe he wants to know, maybe he doesn't. An inner rage seethes inside him, and he feels the concentration of it in his chest, and it's stifling him. His fists are clenched at his sides, he stares at the kitchen tiles.

She sits back down and reclines slightly in her chair, and he hears it creak under her weight. She closes her eyes and folds her hands together, purses her lips. "You are selfish, my boy. You won't let him go."

Seraph takes him by the arm, guides him to the door, and in that instant, he takes out his gun and points it at her, pulls the trigger. He feels the recoil, he celebrates in his mind as the images come pouring forth, the Oracle, dead, even though she can never die, blood on the kitchen counters, even though she's not flesh, the children running in and watching, even though they aren't children.

She sits there and watches as it approaches her head, and the bullet stops between her eyes, and she looks at him serenely. "I don't blame you." She says, and the bullet slowly gains acceleration again, in the opposite direction, back towards where he's standing, by the door. Seraph is behind him; the gun is wrenched out of his hand, his arms twisted behind his back. "I don't blame you for your selfishness. It's not even that you are selfish-- it's just that you don't know anything else."

It's always at times like these that Neo appears in his head, not as the One, but as Thomas Anderson, his white shirt and his black tie and his desperate expression as he's being arrested, as he's being forced into the car. Smith thinks, it wasn't supposed to change, it was supposed to stay the same, cat and mouse, me always chasing after you and that it meant something to you, that you had to constantly run away from me. You were vulnerable, and I was invincible, I had power over you, Thomas Anderson. And now you don't care. You don't care, because you have her, you have Trinity.

The Oracle is looking at him, not really seeing him, but still looking at him, and reading what he is thinking, and she continues. "You don't know that maybe his freedom is worth a little of your emptiness, for only a little while. You don't know that maybe his freedom will liberate you as well."

The bullet stops in front of his chest, and then drops harmlessly to the ground, a clinking sound as it hits the tiles.

"Goodbye, Smith." The Oracle says, and she smiles again, that enigmatic smile, that mocking smile. "When I see you next, you may be an Agent again."

Seraph opens the door for him, and instead of the white corridor he expects to see, he sees one that is dimly lit, flickering light bulbs glimmering, metallic sounds in the background, a woman crying in the next apartment. And Seraph shows him out, and then closes the door behind him.

Smith swings around and opens the door, expecting Seraph's emotionless gaze, the Oracle's piercing one, but it's an empty room, whitewashed walls, a light hanging from the ceiling, a single chair the only piece of furniture in the room. He sees Agent Johnson, who rises up from the chair, unsurprised to see him, as if he had been expecting his arrival the entire time.

"Smith." He says, and begins walking towards the door. "Don't run this time. The Matrix needs you. They'll reprogram you, and you'll be one of us again."

But what if I don't need the Matrix?

He closes the door, and Agent Johnson's footsteps die away. When he opens it again, it's the same room, but Johnson isn't there any more.

* * *

When he turns the handle of the door, she's not there. Instead, he's in a kitchen of some sort, chefs and waiters dressed in white and black fluttering here and there, steam rising off the pots and pans, sudden gushes of fire and the exclamations that go in hand with it, the sound of things sizzling, the heavy humidity that hangs over his head, the scent of the sweat of people.

Nobody spares him a second glance, and he takes his sunglasses off. It is at this point that she walks through the door he just opened, and he peers over her shoulder. Instead of the maintenance hallway, he sees something like a restaurant, and can hear the strain of a string quartet over the bustle of voices.

"Smith." She says, when she meets his eyes. She then ushers him aside and goes to one of the chefs, whispers something in his ear. The man raises an eyebrow and fiddles with his moustache, and then nods. She smiles at him, a winning smile, and then walks back to Smith.

"What did you say to him?" He asks, and realizes that it is impudent, that it isn't his business, but should it matter to him whether he receives an answer or not? One or the other way, the responder would decide.

Persephone's smile remains in place. "I told him to serve a cake."

He remains stoic, and she takes his arm, leads him across the kitchen, and they ignore the bustle around them. A set of doors awaits them, and she lets go of his arm, and reaches to her waist to pull out a key. She turns the key in the lock, and a gust of cool air rushes from the door, and when she opens it, he sees snow-covered mountains, the stark white and blue; he breathes the crisp air of high altitudes.

"Where have you been now?" She says, teasingly, tucking the key away, shutting the doors behind them. Persephone tosses her hair back behind her shoulder and leans over the balcony, her face composed, placid, and he stands next to her, stares ahead into the unrelenting cascade of mountains.

"I went to the Oracle."

She doesn't look at him when she says that, she does not display surprise or indignation or any emotion, she merely shrugs, as if she has been expecting this. "And what did she say?"

"She told me I was selfish." He says, and then senses a change in the air, the way they breathe.

"Parce que tu le veux?" She says, her lips shaping the words slowly, as if speaking to a child. He turns away from her, wants to press a hand to his face, and tell her that she's wrong.

"Persephone," he says, "how many times has the Matrix been in existence?"

She contemplates him for a while. "This is the seventh."

"Has this happened before?"

She nods, does not voice her assent. Persephone stares at her hands, at her fingernails, and purses her lips. "Did you ask the Oracle why you were given the key?"

"No." He says.

"Why?" She asks, and turns to look at him. "It should have been the first question out of your mouth." Then she laughs. "Or you must have forgotten. But a machine does not forget." She suddenly looks wistful, her eyes luminous, a flush high on her pale face. "No, we don't forget."

He wants to ask her if in the previous versions of the Matrix, if an Agent Smith, an exiled Agent, had ever approached the Chateau, had ever sought companionship with a woman so like him, a woman who could understand him like this. He wants to ask her if she could tell him what happened, if this exiled Agent in the previous Matrix had left her because of Neo, if he had been infatuated and obsessed with finding Thomas Anderson in this stable chaos that was the One.

"Come." She says, and infuses a spark of mirth into her eyes, replacing the solemnity of before. "I have something interesting to show you."

She turns the key in the lock, and pushes open the doors.

It is their foyer, he thinks, seeing the marble M laid into the floor, bits of broken glass at his feet, perhaps disassembled from the chandelier, which lies on the floor. Statues lay in heaps, cluttered on the stairs, stone crumbling to dust, paintings with holes ripped in their canvases. He walks to stand in the middle, his feet avoiding the wreckage, and he stands and views the destroyed hall, and turns to look at Persephone.

"When did this happen?"

The raw code of their surroundings flashes before his eyes, and he blinks it away distractedly, his eyes narrowing as they look at her, as they trace the line of her shoulders, her prominent collarbones, imagines what it must have been like for her to kiss Neo, for Neo to have touched her shoulder, his hand on her back.

"It happened when Neo and his friends paid a little visit." She says, and joins him in the center of the Great Hall, surveying the damage with a critical eye. "It is certainly impressive, n'est-ce pas?"

"This happened the same day you kissed him?" He says, and sees raw code again, the greens and the whites, he sees Persephone through these eyes, and her code is strangely jumbled, he sees her form lift up a hand and touch his shoulder, move up to touch his neck, he sees her code as heat emanates off of her, and she is not cold, not now.

"He kissed me." She says, one of her hands seeking his, holding it so that they are intertwined. "I merely requested it."

He wants to turn away, wants to walk away, wants to push the key into the lock and be back in the safe sterility of the maintenance hallway.

"I am named after the goddess who serves as the love of two lovers." Persephone says, her voice hushed, almost conspiring, and a pained smile appears on her face, and her voice shakes slightly. "I am a mediator, I am a intermediary, a negotiator of two worlds. Do not run away, do not turn away, parce que je sais que tu veux, I can show you."

She touches her lips to his, and he does not move, her tentative grip is at the same time, like iron, a machine, so unsure of herself, so sure of what she is doing, he thinks, a machine, her eyes are open, but unfocussed, as warmth cascades from her fingers and she is inside his head again, searching for something, and he closes his eyes.

Kiss me, Persephone is saying, as something overrides his senses, and he is standing somewhere, mirrors and black tile, and she is saying, Kiss me, as if you were kissing her.

Smith can only watch from somewhere, he is the only one who knows where he is. He sees Neo kissing Persephone, making love to Trinity, his tension barely betrayed as he fights the Agents the Matrix sent to eliminate him, his humanity as it is being torn down by this war, his loss of compassion, his struggle to forget himself when as Thomas Anderson, his life before then, his hidden anxiety as he fights Smith and Smith and Smith again, the cold sweat that breaks inside him when Smith whispers to him, it is inevitable, Neo as he sees himself, sitting in that chair in the interrogation room, white shirt and tie, his head buried in his face, unshed tears streaming down his face, his voice, husky and desperate, and he's saying it to himself, it's inevitable, inevitable, inevitable.

And suddenly it's torn from him, and he's left staring at Persephone as she looks up at him. His hand is cradling the back of her skull, silky hair threading through his fingers. He stares at her, and she is composed, calm, as if something has left her, as if something has been poured out of her: sustenance, life.

She smiles at him, her eyes half-closed, and she exhales, looks away. "That was not much different than kissing Neo, was it?"

He lets go of her, and she steps away from him. "I wouldn't know."

She laughs.

* * *

Somewhat strange, but that's how it always is. O-o Sorry this hasn't been updated in forever. Matrix Revolutions is coming out soon! Hopefully this will agree with the canon. _ Thanks to all those who still have faith in this story! ::teary-eyed:: I luuurve you guys.

Next part will be up soon, hopefully. The Merovingian is wondering who that man is…