AUTHOR'S NOTE: Thank you thank you thank you to the following people: alocin, Exobiologist, Selina Enriquez and sway653. You remain endearingly supportive of my little writing sprees-Hope you enjoy the update,
Morithil.
NOTICE: Unfortunately, I do not own any of the original characters from the Matrix trilogy. HOWEVER: All other characters in this fanfic do belong to me, as they're all products of my overactive imagination.
10. We've Been Here Before
Smith closed his eyes briefly. Accessing databases, he concluded that what she needed was time. Time to accept what had happened to her, time to accept the work she had done for the Mainframe, which contradicted everything she had spent her human existence fighting for.
She had run away from him without a word as to where she was going.
Smith knew. After opening the file within himself that he had so vigorously denied the existence of, he knew where she was. He half smiled with the beginnings of amusement and understanding. It seemed that she would return to a place which held emotional significance to her, a trait that most humans seemed to possess, to relive events already over, a masochistic method of healing the past.
He walked off the bridge and in the direction of where the sedan was parked,
He had passed that place numerous times since Persis had-ceased to exist. Such a bland, nondescript piece of architecture, but already he was experiencing a wave of affection towards it-no, not the structure itself; but what had taken place within.
A motel on the other side of town.
Odd, he mused; already he was having trouble associating himself with the programme that had been disgusted at the smallest amount of contact with a human.
Smith was beginning to acknowledge the extent to which he had become involved with Persis, and he was not even remotely disgusted with the memory.
********
Persis, as she now realised she was, broke open the blue door of the motel room with a ferocity born of despair and almost uncontrollable angst. A door further down the walkway opened, and the somewhat irate figure of the owner, complete with shirt the colour of dirty laundry and miserable cigar in one hand stuck his head around the opening.
"What the hell do you think you're-"
Persis pulled herself together without thinking and gave him the most convincing performance of her so called life.
She flashed the badge.
Told him his own name.
Gave him a list of reasons why the Government required the room for surveillance purposes.
Challenged him to challenge her authority.
By the end the motel owner had apologised profusely, if a little grudgingly, and had retreated in fear to the relative safety of his living area.
Persis swallowed a sob and walked in, closing the door and absorbing the soft, worn texture of the carpet beneath her feet.
Funny, how when she had been an agent, even when she had been fully human, she had never quite fully appreciated the little details of sensation. A soft carpet beneath your feet, a smooth work surface polished to perfection, the feeling of a hand in yours.
She had not clasped anyone's hand in a long time. Too long.
She examined the room, the same neutral decor, the same past it furniture, the same bed, or at least one very similar to it. Clean sheets. The window was closed. She swivelled round to confront the mirror and more besides.
An agent stared back at her. The perfectly cut suit, the same nondescript hair, quietly imposing aura, deadpan mouth and strikingly blue eyes, not a trembling, weak blue, but a defiant, hard tint like colour of ice covered rocks on a sea swept coast. If she hadn't filled these firm vessels with disbelieving tears and if her body hadn't been shaking with each drawn out breath, she would have been nothing more than a programme, nothing more than the ghost of her memory would allow. An agent's eyes looked out from her face. She'd seen herself through Smith's eyes the moment their hands had linked and he'd transferred the file on her to her own system. Now the system was fading, and the human she once was strained to break the surface.
Persis felt the sharp need to sit down but fought it and stood, uneasily, staring herself in the face and resisting the urge to punch a hole through the mirror and into the next room.
Agent Carlisle. The Mainframe must have had a twisted sense of A.I. humour to assign her the name she had been "born" with when she had entered the Matrix. Why didn't they just call her goddamn Agent Persis and laugh behind their simulated hands at the not so pleasant irony.
Since running like a madwoman off the bridge she hadn't thought about Smith. Now he was everywhere and threatening to drive her even more insane than her recovered memory was. Love opened a dying crack in her chest and Persis winced at the thoughts of tabooed gestures, the stigma of being attached to a programme and blatantly sensual contact of skin upon simulated skin. Warmth; that was what had originally drawn her to Smith. He had always, if subconsciously and with no small degree of annoyance, emitted warmth. Warmth, that she, even when human, had never felt before.
She really had been alone for a long, long time.
Persis forced a painful laugh through gritted teeth. Strange and beautiful, that an agent with distinctly human attributes and a human with distinctly agent mannerisms should end up together. Strange and beautiful.
When Smith silently opened the door she was standing with her back to him, facing the slightly claustrophobic space before her and looking at the sunlight coming through the closed window. He closed the door and felt the latch click. The mechanical sound echoed in the stillness.
"Who are you?"
Her head moved slightly. Her voice came out, despite being raw with emotion, sounding dead like his own.
"I'm not sure anymore".
Smith stepped towards her slim figure.
"Your name is Persis".
"It was".
"It still is".
"I'd forgotten". A trace of bitterness in the remark cut him, and Smith marvelled at the pain.
"Say it".
"Why".
"Tell me who you are".
"I don't know anymore".
Still not looking at him. She still refused to give herself another reason to cry. Smith walked up to her and stood, so close behind her she could feel his breath at her neck and he could smell the perfume of her hair. He felt her tense without touching her and all chances of disgust and revulsion at the human resurfacing were suppressed as he studied the woman before him.
"You are Persis, formally captain of the Antigone-"
"Don't say that name; don't mention that ship-" strangled words between gritted teeth.
Smith continued, his hand travelling millimetres above her skin, up the outline of her arm, the air pulsing with electricity.
"-rebel fighter, human, strong; physically as well as mentally, and-"
He paused, his hand hovering above her left shoulder. The thunder of a heartbeat furiously beating in a small room deafening.
"-mine".
The word came loaded with heavy want, possession and surprising sincerity.
Smith's hand came down on her shoulder with assuring weight. Persis spun round and her mouth met his in a desperate kiss. Hands, firm but searching, wanting to be everywhere at once, both of them tangled in each other, the silk of a tie, the flutter of an eyelash, fingers running through each other's hair. Smith wound his fingers round the unforgiving ponytail of her hair and snapped the band, the recently brown, impossibly straight hair flooding into his searching palms. In between the intense kisses and touches seeking to relieve the pent-up feelings that had been before, Persis gasped out what he had asked her to say.
"I am Persis, I am Persis ... I missed you".
A hand grasping a tie, role reversal as Smith pulled her in closer to him, forgetting the Matrix for the second time in all his existence.
"God, Smith, I missed you".
One arm round her waist, the other clasping her hand to his. A drawled reply.
"I missed you".
He led her to the bed this time, but Persis met him halfway and they descended onto the indifferent sheets.
Hard won determination and awakening shone out from her eyes as they looked down on him. Surfacing from another drawn out, probing kiss, Persis' face was like one emerging from a bad dream and realising she was awake, with the nightmare over.
"Show me what it's like to be alive again".