Part the sixth, in which Morpheus and Niobe's relationship is further extrapolated upon, Link and Feather play some more chess, (Don't look at me like that. I happen to like chess.) and Trinity and Neo... get pretty much ignored, actually. Don't do much at all.

A/N GYAAARRRGHH! Damn you! Damn you Wachowski brothers! Revolutions went and AU'd all my fics!

So, from now on, this is an AU!

Niobe and Feather looked up as Morpheus entered Niobe's office. "Is it true?" asked Niobe, looking vaguely shocked.

"Yes," said Morpheus shaking his head and grinning in disbelief. "Trinity has been healed."

"Told you," said Feather smugly. She was sitting on a small bare patch of Niobe's paper-covered desk.

Niobe shook her head in astonishment. ''And Neo did this?"

"Well, he thinks so," replied Feather. "I really don't see any other way it could have happened."

"Man, that's incredible."

Feather stood up. "Well, I've got work to do, and I'm sure you do too. I'll leave you to it." Exit Feather, through the hatch. Niobe's head met the table with a dull, metallic 'thunk'.

"Urrgghh. I'm so bored of all this administrative bullshit," she whinged.

Morpheus sat down in the small room's only other chair. "You turned down the promotion, you get the relative anonymity, you take the extra work."

She flipped him the finger without lifting her head from the desk. "Shuddup, you."

After the final battle, Morpheus had been promoted. The council had judged it too risky to have only one supreme commander of the city's defences, so Morpheus had been made what amounted to an admiral. Niobe had been offered a similar promotion, but had politely declined, and then just as politely offered her shiny new ship as a flag ship to Morpheus. The Neb II was the pride and joy of the first battalion of Zion, made up of ten of the sixty ships currently active in the city's defence. Morpheus had the undoubted honour and somewhat dubious pleasure of commanding that battalion, which meant a hell of a lot of paperwork and a berth on the Neb II. He never used it, preferring to share with Niobe. He said it was warmer. He didn't have time for all the paperwork that went on, and, as water flows downhill, much of the burden fell to Niobe, who admittedly was far better suited to administrative detail than he.

Morpheus rounded the desk and knelt by her chair, pressing his cheek against her shoulderblade. "You shouldn't work so hard in your condition," he murmured.

She shifted in her seat. "I refuse to allow myself to become incapacitated because of you."

"You're saying this is my fault?" he asked incredulously, pulling back.

She glanced down at her bulging, eight-month belly. "Well, who would you blame?"

"I seem to recall you being fairly enthusiastic at the time."

She scowled at him, but he was deadly serious when he looked up at her. "Do not want this?" he asked softly. Her face softened immediately and she flung her arms around his neck.

"Of course I do. Of course I do. Don't ever think that I don't."

He smiled, pulling her out of her chair and cradling her gently in his lap. "Then what is it?"

"It's just damned uncomfortable, is all," she muttered wryly. "I can't crawl around in the ship, it's hard to get up and down the ladders, and I haven't been able to touch my toes in months. Hell, I don't think I've seen my toes in months."

Morpheus laughed, his arms tightening about her. "Not much longer now, baby. Soon."

"Soon," repeated Niobe, resting her head against his shoulder. "Soon we'll have our baby." A thought occurred to her and she lifted her head from his shoulder and pulled back from him slightly. "Hey, what are we gonna call this little one?"

He looked down at her thoughtfully. "You know, I hadn't even thought about it."

"Well, we'd better think about it. We don't have long."

"No, we don't." His face clouded with thought as he shifted to a more comfortable position, braced against the wall with his legs stretched straight out in front of him and Niobe sideways on his lap, resting against his chest. "Well, didn't the Niobe of legend have a ridiculous amount of children?"

Her face lit up. "Oh, yeah. But wouldn't that be a bit of a cop-out?"

He frowned again. "I suppose. But it should have something to do with one of our names."

"Well, Morpheus was the god of dreams."

"Reve?"

"Belle reve, perhaps."

"You got that from that play, didn't you."

"Non, je reve de toi."

"Aww, you're just saying that."

"No no, it's true."

Link appeared at the open hatch. "Sir? Ma'am? Is anything else happening today?"

Morpheus looked up and said, "No, Link. I think it would be best if today were a day of leisure for the whole battalion. It's unlikely that anything constructive would happen anyway."

Link nodded obediently, but his heart sank. A day of leisure meant he would inevitably get pulled into endless games of chess with Feather. They'd played cards for a while, but the cards had mysteriously gone missing when he started winning. So chess it was.

Now if only she would stop winning. He was convinced that she was somehow cheating.

A/N: By the by, the French word 'reve' means dream. 'Belle reve' means beautiful dream, the play referred to is 'A Streetcar Named Desire', and 'Je reve de toi,' according my sources, means 'I dream of you.' Just in case you care.