AUTHOR'S NOTE: I'd love to share thoughts and views on Revolutions with more of you, but I don't want to be the bringer of major spoilers for those who haven't yet seen it^^...
Vis á vis, as the Architect would say ^_~, feel free to email me: MorithilMuse@aol.com
Also-there is one last chapter to follow this, in case you were wondering…^^I will upload it a.s.a.p.
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.
14. Defining Your Enemy.
She remembered the words, always the words.
Persis found herself in a Matrix she did not know. The sky was dark and shot through with lightning bolts that crackled through the air like malevolent claws. From suddenly standing in the abandoned bar to being transported inexplicably from one part of the city to the next took a while to adjust to. She swayed slightly, steadying herself on the wall, disorientated and momentarily confused.
Then she knew. She saw the darkness around her for its significance and the rain for a sign of things to come.
Smith.
What had he done? she agonised. What indeed, the voice inside her answered.
A blinding pain suddenly struck her. Persis stumbled and grasped at her throbbing head. She knew where Smith was.
She started walking.
The rain beat down mercilessly, relentlessly persistent and cold.
At some point she kicked out savagely at a metal pole missing the sign normally at its top. She twirled the weapon casually in one hand, the jagged end where it had broken sharp and cruel. She walked through the deserted lonely streets like a ghost; rain running from her fingertips and the strands of her hair. Persis slowly pulled the band from the ponytail and let the weight of it fall onto her shoulders in thick, straight folds. Her statuesque frame looked as haunted as the empty buildings around her appeared. Persis stopped, mid step. What? she thought, looking at her sleeves.
Wide leather sleeves. Black.
She looked down at herself. The suit jacket was gone, and replaced with a leather trenchcoat identical to that she had worn once, the only difference being its colour. She noticed that the shirt and tie remained. Fingering a wet lock of hair she realised it had also reverted to its original colour. Black as the night around her. So, she was returning, going back to who and what she had been.
However, she did not need to check to know that her eyes were still Smith's.
The words and faces kept returning, willing her on. Persis thought she might go mad from them. Her mind's eye was flitting between images of all those she'd known and all those she'd killed.
"NO, NO PLEASE, DON'T, DON'T-"..."Run! Save yourself! It's an agent-just go!"..."Who the hell are you?"..."Fuck all of you machines"..."HELP, GOD SOMEONE HELP-"..."What are you doing? What the-"
All those I killed without knowing. Without mercy, without remorse. The echoing screams and cries of pain and fear struck Persis to the core. What am I doing? She asked herself. You know, the voice answered. You knew the moment darkness fell. You knew the moment you remembered that dream. You made your choice.
Yet the darkness falling and the sudden journey here had been unexpected.
Persis looked down after gazing at the torn sky. She stood at the end of the street. What seemed like thousands of Smiths, all in military rows lining both sides of the soaked road turned their heads towards her and stared. Some grinned, some bared their teeth and the rest remained icily impassive, acknowledging her presence with as much dedication as one would regard a fly. An annoyance.
One stepped out from the front row. He strode out into the centre of the street, pacing to the double yellow lines and faced her. Persis felt her heart pound painfully in her chest. She gripped the pole tightly. The faces of those she'd killed flickered before her in a torturous montage and nearly caused her to cover her eyes as if that would prevent her seeing their faces.
"Something wrong, Miss. Carlisle? Anything I can do to alleviate the pain?"
The sarcasm in the comment tore into her and Persis wiped a hand through her rain washed hair to prevent wincing at the remark.
"Don't do this, Smith. Don't make me do this".
In her mind Persis was already down on her knees and begging him with outstretched hands. She could see the pain in his every move, the codes reflecting what she knew he could see in her. She was in agony, and what made it worse was that Smith was no better. He had, however, inherited that most predictable of all human emotions. Denial.
"Come to save the human race?" he taunted, biting back the swell of emptiness with every passing second she spent in defiant silence. Smith was in turmoil, power and emotion running riot through his system. He knew he was beyond the machine world's control now. Now, he was his own master. But Persis, she-
She still remained necessary to him. She must join him, he raged, it is logical, inevitable. We are two of the same kind, no other being could possibly comprehend our connection, he concluded, resolute.
Persis felt the emotion break in her voice as she spoke, "The Matrix will still exist. The Matrix will still be here, you'll still be here, Smith-you'll still be here, trapped, in this place if you stand in the way of the Exodus".
"I'm afraid you are mistaken, Miss. Carlisle, when Zion is destroyed I will have my key. My key to leave this-zoo, as there will be no purpose to my remaining here".
"There was no purpose to my remaining in the Matrix, but yet I am still here, Smith. I am still here. And I want to escape it".
Smith smiled bleakly.
"Then why aid the other rebels? When they are gone you too will be free. You will no longer have to remain here; you will be able to-"
Smith abruptly cut off the rest of his sentence. It didn't matter; Persis knew what he had been about to say. I will be able to leave with you, she thought. It was a beautiful dream. She voiced her thoughts.
"It's a beautiful dream, Smith".
"I do not dream, Miss. Carlisle".
"Neither do I".
Persis discarded her sunglasses and faced him with her eyes open wide, impenetrable and strikingly blue. Smith remembered what her eyes had been like before; dark and fathomless, even to him.
"Don't do this. Don't make me do this, Smith".
The angular eyebrows rose instinctively.
"You would stop me, Persis?" He strolled almost nonchalantly towards her.
Don't say my name, Smith, Persis quietly pleaded. Don't make this harder.
"Then you are truly more than your human nature allows. You are more ambitious, more driven, more purposeful, more singular in your purpose than I imagined. You are mine. You belong with me. I feel somehow that if I were to destroy you I would be destroying part of myself-"
His aching fingers reached out and firmly stroked her face, running down her cheekbone. His features contorted. Smith pushed back the yearning to lap persuasively at the Circean mouth.
Persis shivered, and it was not from the cold. Seeing him now, dark and malevolent, more powerful, more driven-
It was wrong, but she couldn't deny it. Smith had become more alluring and even more magnetic to her than she dared possible. Then they came back. The faces. The words.
Priest, Aei, Seefa. Calyx, faithful to the last. God, the Antigone, I loved that ship, she inwardly cried, God I loved that ship she was mine, what I worked for is no longer, those I knew are dead.
"That was close sir", the Antigone's operator spoke inside her head. Yes, Persis thought, too close. I'm so sorry, Calyx, I'm so sorry, all of you, Neso, Titus for both your understanding and acts of kindness those I knew in life and-
"Don't fight me, Miss. Carlisle. You can't deny what you are, what we are. We are the same, you and I, torn free of both worlds. You belong here, where you are at your most powerful and where I am", Smith hissed sibilantly.
Persis looked away before lashing out at the face that had been the first thing she'd seen every time she'd come back. If Smith's fury was all consuming, than her desperation was equally potent.
When he swung back at her she would have welcomed the crushing pain, allowed it to overwhelm the feelings driving her on, but her hand still gripping the pole swung it up in a reflexive block manoeuvre. She flipped the pole, flat end first and struck at Smith's jaw, cursing herself with every shallow breath she took into her lungs. He drove her back, lashing out with pounding fists and jabs that she knew would travel through flesh and bone if they got any closer. Persis spun the pole in front of her in a metallic shield, blurring her vision of him slightly and sending droplets of rain flying in all directions.
Smith knew the moves. Most were his. The rest, the rest were hers, and he welcomed the challenge of improvising responses to her every balletic strike and graceful kick, her moves incorporating the impossible speed and crushing strength of an agent with a lithe beauty and dazzling array of different attacks that were her own. Smith mentally winced as he fought her off. He wanted her, still wanted her, even now as she sought to wound him with the sharp end of the pole she used to fend him off with. He tried to shake off the feeling, but it was as deep-rooted in his system now as the increase in his powers.
He needed Persis. She had become almost necessary to him. Smith fought the notion off, but he could not help but wonder at the probability that killing Anderson and not having Persis with him to control the Matrix would leave him with a strangely empty victory.
He neglected to inform her that the effects of having emotions were making him more vulnerable than before. There was a bruise on his wrist hidden by the jacket and shirtsleeve. It had not vanished. It lingered. But with his immense powers it was almost certain that no one would harm him and stay alive long enough to discover his new frailties.
Persis gritted her teeth as Smith swung out at her head with a clenched fist resembling a ball of iron. She ducked to avoid it but swung too high with the pole in a counter attack and left herself open to his other fist as it pummelled straight into her unprotected torso.
She flew backwards and tumbled onto the concrete. Sorely winded, aching already from the blow, and debating whether she was bleeding internally, Persis realised something astonishing through the numbing pain.
Smith was holding back.
Theoretically, that punch should have passed straight through her and emerged out of her lower back. The blow hurt, goddamn but it hurt, her muscles groaned, but it had not been the fatal attack she'd been expecting.
Was Smith becoming more human even though he became more powerful as a programme? Persis tried to control her crazed string of questions and stood up again. When she leapt into the air, the weapon held out horizontally behind her, one arm out before her to focus on her point of descent, she thought she detected a tiny flicker of doubt on the former agent's face.
But when she brought the pole crashing down to his head he was ready and turning swiftly on his heel, grabbed it out of her soaking hands and flung it away from them decisively. Persis rolled into a break fall as she hit the ground, but before she could adopt a defensive stance Smith had her throat in his unstoppable grip and her feet were straining to touch the wet concrete. He had to make her understand, make her see that it was useless to resist when it was obviously logical to join him, not oppose him. Fighting her was becoming more of a strain on Smith's growing foundations of a conscience. Persis tried to hold on to her resolve as stars exploded before her eyes, oxygen escaping her lungs rapidly. History does repeat itself after all, she thought grimly as she made a last bid to release herself. She kicked out at his chest, and registered Smith grabbing the assailing limb firmly.
Simultaneously he relinquished his grip on her oesophagus and Persis was flipped neatly onto the ground, landing on her stomach.
The darkness of the wet road was strangely soothing to her aching body. Shooting pains were blossoming all over her torso and for one dreamlike moment, Persis assumed she would black out.
Then Smith turned away from her to confront a figure at the opposite end of the street.
Neo.
Dimly Persis recognised the flowing robes of the One and admitted that if the potential battle was going to be stopped, then now was the only time to do so.
There was too much at stake for her to remain motionless in the gutter.
She crawled feebly, using her arms to traverse the hard surface. Painstaking moments passed, every second seeming like an eternity. Almost blind with distress and biting her tongue to prevent herself crying out for him she reached the pole, laying discarded some feet away.
Define love.
Neither logical or remotely concrete. You are unable to explain it because the emotion, if you could call it that, is inexplicably human, intangible and cannot be relied upon.
Silence between the two facing each other. Persis asked the godless landscape to forgive her for what she was doing, for she could not begin to assume she would be able to forgive herself.
Latching onto the pole, she drew herself up into a preparatory stance, and turned slowly to see Smith standing facing Neo, his back to her.
Persis slowly walked, but found herself running until she arrived, sprinting full tilt forwards like a leather clad juggernaut, the pole clenched in a deathly grip with both hands.
She didn't know that it would be as if someone tore her physically in two. She'd never been so involved with anything or anyone before. Her tortured cry rent the night with similar passion.
Smith looked down.
The jagged end of the metal pole protruded grotesquely from his chest, somewhere under his right shoulder. It pointed obviously at the darkened figure of Neo, who stood as if in a daze, refusing to believe the scene in front of him.
Denial, the most predictable of all human emotions.
Blood trickled from the serrated edge.
Persis withdrew the weapon, using all her strength to rip it back out of Smith's body. Her accompanying sob a telltale sign of how difficult, how nearly impossible it had been to make the fatal move. She flung the pole away from her as if it had bitten the hand holding it.
Smith stood indifferently; dark stains slowly spreading from the wound. Fleetingly, Persis thought she had missed where his heart would have been, and then made the pain masochistic when she hoped she had.
Was that blood? Had she been right to assume that Smith was becoming human and so more vulnerable? Did that mean-
Smith turned round to her, with obvious effort.
Persis' tearstained face spoke volumes of anguish and the rawest of sorrows.
He reached out for her and when she clasped his arm they both descended as the sentient programme fell to his knees, taking her with him.
A simplistic set of phrases came back to her as she gently levered him down onto the concrete, gut wrenching sobs racking her frame silently.
You always hurt the one you love.
Define love.
A thin line between love and hate.
Define hate.
Destroying him I destroy myself, she screamed inwardly. Persis fervently hoped that the other Smiths would rip her into shreds, but when she looked up they had disappeared.
It was just her and Smith, and the just visible form of Neo in the distance.
"It's not fair".
Persis looked down at the resigned face, crying the tears she felt she'd held back since forever.
Define fair, she thought.
"Nothing's fair, Smith...but for what its worth I-"
The once agent dismissed her response with a bloodied hand. She tried again, her meaning fragmented, all apologies. Apologies that would never be enough for either of them, Persis bemoaned.
"I couldn't let you-let you become...what I could have become was evil and-as exiles, it wouldn't have worked...we can't - what if-"
Smith placed a bloodied hand on her shoulder.
"What if, indeed".
Persis swallowed partly from anxiety, partly from the steady weight of Smith's hand on her shoulder, mostly from the anguish of feeling the wetness of the dark red flower seeping from his shoulder. She slipped an arm underneath his wounded back; fresh sobs emerging as she felt the torn edges of flesh.
"Would you have let it go? Would you have let Neo do what he has to? If we could have left here, would you have stopped planning your revenge?"
Smith turned away, one cheek to the concrete.
Persis mentally grimaced. So there was nothing to be done. Smith would not have rested until the One had been killed. There was no hope for-
Smith looked up and faced her with a deadly seriousness in his eyes.
"You have become almost necessary to me. You demonstrated a new set of abilities, a new range of experiences".
"I made you vulnerable again. I -"
"I made the choice to open the file. It seems unfair that you are the cause of this downfall which is otherwise self inflicted. You came to stop me".
"Why was I brought here?" she tearfully asked, "Did you summon me here?", she challenged Neo, who stood uncomfortably some distance away.
"I did", Smith answered.
"The Matrix, it-"
"-It is a cage", he finished for her, "and you hold the key. My key to escape this-"
"In this disc is the key, Smith. Our key". The lie left her lips smoothly; and yet it was not a complete falsehood. The disc did hold escape for them. And it held rest. Peace.
Death. Deletion. Surely the disc would destroy everything created by the Matrix, even her. Even Smith. When the Matrix was destroyed all the machines, all the programmes would cease to exist.
She wanted to ease his pain.
Smith grimaced as the new sensation of pain-induced lucidity engulfed him.
"-prison. Set me free".
She felt her fingers enclose around the disc and its smooth edges. How strange, how infinitely remarkable that such a small object could determine the fate of mankind. A
girl had died in transporting it. A girl she had killed. Now was the time to let thoughts of retribution pass. Now was the time for rebirth, to start afresh. But not for me, she accepted. But not for me.
She nodded to Smith.
He was struck by how much such a simple gesture could affect him. There was never anything more beautiful, he found himself thinking, never an entity so complex, so unique, so-his. Persis was his ; they were like one. Both each other's destroyer and creator. She had literally brought him to his knees.
Persis blinked as the disc gave up its final information regarding the destruction of the Matrix. All we have is now, she mused; I leave the future to humanity. Persis withdrew the disc from her pocket and pressed it slightly. The contents of the slim object flowed into her, the information, the fate of mankind. Smith looked human now, she observed, seeing his mouth twist in another grimace. Persis lay, partly net to him, partly leaning over him as he remained stretched out on the road.
I made the pain real.
"Get to an exit", she said clearly for Neo to hear. She vaguely saw him disappear from her peripheral vision, and felt herself grow numb.
They lay in the shattered concrete and rain, water pelting down on them from the blackened sky.
She found his hand and clasped it in hers, their fingers intertwining as they had before. A faint glow emitted from Persis' fingertips, which grew stronger with every pulse of her blood through her veins.
It grew brighter, the transfer gaining momentum and speed.
Smith was already losing the information on what Thomas A. Anderson looked like, forgetting his purpose, finding it difficult to hold onto everything he had striven to do before Persis. His system was caving in on itself. There was a feeling of release in this, he realised. Before Persis there was nothing. After Persis, he would not exist. He suddenly felt lighter, relieved of a burden. He did not understand why, but he held no grudge against her for stopping him, just acceptance, and-was that sadness? Was this what humans called peace? This silent, calm sensation inside ?
Accessing databases...
Searching for databases...
Run search again...
Find items 'databases'...
Smith reluctantly gave up the search, unable to locate the databases, only the items Persis had imprinted onto his system.
Persis suppressed the strangled noise in her aching throat.
She pulled him closer and waited for oblivion.
Persis released the disc's information, using her very being as the tool of destruction.
* * * * * * *
Rays of light shot out from the minute space between them, stretching out further and higher.
The pure light grew in size and intensity. Persis opened her mouth to scream.
The light smothered the Matrix completely and shone even brighter. Then, as suddenly as it had appeared, it was gone.
A sudden flash marked its departure.
And both worlds seemed to hold their breath.