AUTHOR'S NOTE: Updates as promised. Let me know what you think!
Again, thanks for the support,
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.
11. The Unspoken Word
Smith struggled to form a sentence as Persis breathed in his ear. After labouring to hold onto a stream of coherent thought, the sentence (to his credit) came as always, perfectly executed and articulated.
"Theoretically, I wouldn't know how to replicate such an experience, Persis, as I do not live as you would define the word".
"That makes two of us".
Smith traced the line of her arched eyebrow with an index finger.
"Why do humans feel the need to identify or otherwise attach themselves to others?"
Persis draped herself over him, laying her head on his chest, over his heart, listening to the artificially created noise of a heart that didn't pump real blood.
"It makes us feel that we're not alone".
The former agent pondered this carefully, stroking the tendrils of hair that were beginning to-what was the word humans used?-tickle his neck. An absurd sounding word, but one that made sense of what it described. It echoed the situation he was currently in; a former agent with a being that was not entirely human, an absurd situation, but one that for some reason that no database could explain, one that made perfect sense.
He motioned for Persis to rise.
He sat up on the bed and faced her across the tousled sheets.
He told her that she belonged to him, that she was his.
She smiled and remarked that he sounded like a jealous human lover.
Smith told her that he wasn't jealous or human.
Persis raised an eyebrow.
Smith quietly smirked at his newly acquired mastery of the unspoken word.
They sat for a few seconds, just looking at one another, by defacto law bitter enemies, complete opposites of each other. In reality, two entities imprinted onto each other, who when they looked at the being before them saw shades of themselves.
Then Persis shifted up the bed and laid down beside Smith, lying on her side. The agent imitated her movements, and they remained, completely still, hand clasped in hand, hard, blue eyes gazing seriously into their twins. Moments passed.
"Welcome back", Smith murmured in low undertones.
Persis sat up again and moved across the bed, seemingly to drape her body over his again, but at the last moment sat up, straddling the agent beneath her. She looked down at his face, to the unseeing eye still the same impenetrable expression, the hard nosed demeanour. She saw the little nuances. The glittering in his eyes, the almost imperceptible hint of vulnerability. The slight relaxation in his muscles. Persis placed a wandering hand on his chest. She saw everything.
"Things have changed since I was gone".
Her fingers ran over the line of buttons centred on the perfectly starched shirt.
Smith nodded, his body temperature slowly rising at her touch.
"I don't even look the same anymore. I don't feel as human. I've effectively been an agent for so long it's as if everything was a dream".
"Agents do not dream, Persis. Humans do. Trust in that to convince yourself of who and what you are".
Persis took in a conscious breath and began with difficulty, "I - I missed you, Smith. Even though I didn't even remember who you were, its as if something was always missing, like an error in my programming. Something Morpheus once said, about a splinter in your mind".
"Hmm". She grinned at his neutral reply before growing sombre again. Her mouth ached from smiling; a gesture she hadn't made in a while.
"You were the splinter, Smith. You let me know something wasn't right".
The automatic arch of his eyebrow.
"And you, Miss. Carlisle, are the constant thorn in my side".
A playfully carnal twist to her smile, followed by a wince.
"Perpetually reminding me of all my failings and shortcomings as an emotionless, killing machine, a sentient programme plagued by-"
"Unwelcome emotions?"
"The majority, yes. However, by some minute percentage-"
Her hand shifted and two elegant digits slipped inside the seams between buttons, grazing the skin underneath. Smith's low intake of breath and the equally deep growl that followed like the strains of a bass in a symphony heard after years in a world without music.
Smith grasped her questing hand and placed it at his shirt collar. Persis wrapped her fingers round it and pulled him up to her so she could taste him again.
********
Persis had practically yanked Smith up from his reclined position, fingers wrenched around his shirt collar. Something in her had felt overcome with the previously small, now burgeoning desire to convince herself that she was back - again, she thought with the returning dry sense of humour she'd once had-and if Smith was willing to be the catalyst to reverting back to her more human self, than she welcomed it.
Smith had placed a firm hand, fingers splayed, across the base of her spine as she ground herself against him, seeking, it appeared, the fusion between them triggered by interlocking hands. Somewhere during the course of those numerous hours spent indulging in, and reminding themselves of, the baser, human responses to the touch of each other's skin, Persis had sworn that Smith trembled.
If he had indeed trembled, he'd soon recovered and, with no small contribution from herself, proceeded to drive them both over the edge, pushing towards sensory overload.
Nerve endings crackled and gladly self combusted.
After each blaze had reduced to a smouldering ash which still hinted at igniting again, they had simply lain there, staring at each other. They finally reclined, sated, but not remotely exhausted. In the last slow, hungry dance, they'd alternated leadership without a single word. She really did see everything, her human perception of the intangible coupled with a sentient programme's judgements on the more obvious. Smith was the same now, she thought, the same as her. He fingered a lock of her hair between thumb and forefinger, still looking in her eyes.
"You are able to close them, you know".
She smiled wanly at this remark. This was different; Smith not threatening her with a gun as they lay on the bed, as he had the last time. This was new, Smith offering her the chance to relax. Persis wondered if he'd watch her as she slept, and decided that it was not something she'd dwell on. At the mearest inclination that he'd do so, she knew the stimuli would provoke more painful tears. She didn't want that. Simply crying was more exhausting than any activity she'd engaged in recently. Her tear ducts were beginning to smart from the intense wake up call they'd received.
Although the situation they'd landed themselves in again was perhaps more volatile than the last time around, she thought, this time she welcomed the vulnerability their unions revealed in both of them.
Persis slipped her arms into the sleeves of a shirt before wrapping it round herself-she didn't know or care whether it was hers or Smith's- and slowly closed her eyes.
Let me forget what I've done for a few hours, she begged whatever gods were listening. Let me refrain from being a murderer for a while. Let me rest.
Smith remained alert, deconstructing the small, soft breaths she took into her lungs and remainingly ever watchful, like a benevolent guardian keeping both eyes on his charge, his stern face a warning to those who might disturb her from the forgiveness she found in rest.
********
When morning arrived, it found them in a similar arrangement, Persis facing Smith as they lay still on the now made bed. Smith had resumed his customary attire, the suit perfectly clothing his body. Persis had also dressed, but was still deliberating whether to complete the uniform with the tie she held in one hand. Would doing so mean accepting what she had been? Would it go against what she intended to do in order to make up for her crimes against Zion?
Zion.
She looked at her hands. Why did it still feel as if they were someone else's? She trembled slightly, and slipped one inside her jacket pocket. Her fingers closed round the rims of the disc still lying dormant at the bottom of the lined pocket.
She had to do something. She did not want to decipher the disc's contents herself. In fact she did not want to make any move associated with the agent she had effectively been. She needed to contact the rebels.
Persis did not know if Smith would allow her to aid Zion.
But Neo might.
Persis withdrew her hand from the pocket and drew the programme next to her closer, if only to convince herself that he was still there.