Title: Mission to Find...
Author: SuperiorityComplex858
Disclaimer: I regret to admit that I do NOT own Neo, Trinity, Morpheus, or any of the other excellent characters from The Matrix (*pouts*) – ownership rights belong to the Wachowski Bros., Warner Bros., etc.
Summary: Another piece from Trinity's POV – this time during the destruction of the Neb and Neo's coma in Reloaded.
Author's Note: ACK, what can I say, I absolutely LOVE breaking into Trinity's mind, lol... I took Andross937's advice for this one. I have to say, I haven't played Enter the Matrix or seen The Animatrix so far, so I apologize if anything I've written here contradicts something in the game or the DVD. And now, without further ado... :-)
Trinity was scared out of her mind.
As she, Neo, Morpheus, and Link fled from the ill-fated Nebuchadnezzar with weapons in tow, she found it exceedingly hard to believe that they could survive now. Their ship had a bomb hurtling toward it, a rampant group of Squiddies were undoubtedly close behind, and they were stuck in the middle of nowhere with little defense. Frankly, it would take a miracle to get them out of this one...
At these thoughts, she glanced back at Neo, who was running behind her. Miracle, she thought vaguely. Neo might be able to do something... She definitely considered it possible – the crew of their ship never stopped being surprised at his powers, his gifts. Perhaps there was a way...
All four of them jumped and turned at the huge explosion behind them. It was the ship. Trinity watched with mixed feelings as the Nebuchadnezzar was engulfed in orange flames and sent up a brilliant plume of blue fire in its wake. That had been her home for the past several years... her home.
From somewhere to her left, she heard Morpheus speak. "I have dreamed a dream," he whispered, barely being heard over the din before them, "but now that dream has gone for me."
Trinity fought against tears, cursing the whole situation inwardly. Of all the atrocities she knew would come during the war, she never thought they'd be in a rut such as this...
A faint rumbling sound knocked them all back into their senses.
"Here they come," Link said. He turned and grabbed Morpheus by the arm. "Let's go, Morpheus."
Trinity turned and went as fast as she could, Neo on her heels. The debris on the ground make it difficult to move quickly, and, hearing the sentinels draw ever-closer, she grew nervous.
"We won't make it," she heard Neo say from five feet behind her.
Trinity kept moving. "We have to try," she said, apprehension creeping into her tone. She crawled through what used to be a window, and paused to look back.
Simultaneously, Neo stopped in his tracks.
"Come on!" she called urgently.
He half glanced back at the burning ruins of the ship. "Something's different."
"What?" Trinity asked. Different? They were sentinels for crying out loud, what the hell could be different about them?
He slowly turned to face her again. Looking him straight in the eye, she could see his confusion and curiosity. "I can feel them."
Feel them...? Trinity thought, heart beating wildly. She trusted Neo with everything in her, but she felt at that moment that nothing beneficial could possibly come of feeling a machine...
Neo turned his back to her, and she felt her heart practically stop as the sentinels headed straight for him. But he stood his ground.
She was a second away from crying out for him to stop and run, but her voice died in her throat as she saw him raise his hand toward the oncoming machines, just like she'd seen him do countless times before.
Panicking, she tried to get her gun to power up, but stopped as she heard a peculiar clamor in front of her.
The machines were right in front of him, and one by one they fell – Neo was holding them off. Again, she was amazed; she could see him shaking as he used all of his energy. Two... three... four of them he had destroyed already...
As the last machine hit the ground, she looked up at Neo in amazement, but froze in horror as he collapsed into a heap with the rest of the sentinels.
The world around her melted.
"Neo!" she screamed, throwing the gun aside. In two seconds she was kneeling beside him. As she turned him over to see his face, she sensed Morpheus and Link approaching them from her right.
"What happened?" Morpheus queried, his voice miraculously calm.
Trinity cradled Neo in her arms, choking back tears for the second time in five minutes. "I don't know," she got out, her eyes searching his face for any signs of life.
But there were none. He was unconscious.
A new sound reached their ears. A different kind of rumbling that sounded nothing like the sentinels...
She kept her eyes on Neo, hoping for him to wake up, shake the confusion out of his eyes, and ask what the hell he had done, what had happened...
"It's the Hammer," Link confirmed with a degree of relief.
Trinity looked up as the light from the great ship's pads illuminated the area around them, a wind gracing their tired bodies. The Hammer... they were saved.
*`;-.___.-;`*
Trinity sat silently in the infirmary of the Hammer, holding Neo's hand and staring into his expressionless face. He looked like he was merely sleeping. Oh, how she wished that were truthfully the case...
Truthfully, she had no idea of what had happened to him; just that he was unconscious. That was problem enough for her.
He had never been able to stop the machines like that before – with "the hand thing", as Link liked to call it. Trinity had supposed that Neo could handle it, but apparently she'd been wrong.
Absent-mindedly, she squeezed his hand, listening to the soft tapping of the keyboard from behind her. One of the Hammer's crew members, a short woman with blonde hair, was working on Neo's stats.
To Trinity, it felt like the woman had been typing at the same computer for days... She occupied herself by once again gazing at Neo's face – the sight that never failed to calm her. She saw that sight often – every time she rolled over, stressfully sleep deprived, in the bed they shared; whenever Morpheus needed an unbreakable team to complete a risky mission in the Matrix...
She clenched her jaw. Nerves be damned – Neo was her reassurance of everything good... So why wasn't the sight of his sleeping face providing her any comfort now?
Footsteps eventually jerked her back to reality. Trinity raised her head to see the woman walking to the end of the table and held her breath.
"He's in some kind of coma," the woman finally said, observing the monitor behind Neo's head, "but his vitals are stable."
Trinity silently exhaled.
The woman surveyed her with caution. "What about you?"
It took a good deal of Trinity's self-control not to snap at the woman, so she kept her face set, glanced up at the woman, and said firmly, "I'm fine." With that, she rested her tired eyes on Neo again.
"You could use some rest."
Trinity didn't look up. "No, I'm going to stay with him."
The woman hesitated before leaving, and while Trinity was grateful for the help, she was also utterly sick of people asking her if she was okay. She was well known among the Hammer as well as other ships, and the general population of Zion knew that Trinity could certainly take care of herself. She didn't need people asking her if she was okay.
Especially when she wasn't. Especially now.
She closed her eyes for a second, still holding onto Neo's hand. A coma, she thought. That was such a painful word for her to think about. Her father had been in a coma a few years before she'd been freed. He'd never come out of it.
Trinity had been crushed, and found it nearly impossible to accept the fact that he had gone... Her seemingly invincible father, who had taught her everything she knew about computers... He'd had no idea what she'd used the information for, of course – all the hours she'd spent at her computer, hacking her way through government files, looking for something she hadn't even known about...
When her father had died, she was plagued by a feeling of guilt over what she'd used her skills for. Then, when she'd finally found Morpheus, found out what the Matrix was... she'd moved past her father, convinced she'd done the right thing.
Now, looking at Neo in front of her, the feelings of her past crept up on her again.
She couldn't lose him.
A single tear ran down her cheek, and she didn't stop it. Pursing her lips to keep them from trembling, she wondered whether his abilities as The One could save him from wherever he was. Maybe Neo simply hadn't been ready to destroy those five sentinels as he had. Maybe he would wake up after his body had gotten enough rest.
Trinity scowled. Even she didn't even believe that, despite how badly she wanted to. It hurt her to consider anything but the possibility of his waking up. Now that they'd gotten this far, she didn't think she could go any further if he wasn't beside her, and getting through this battle together was how she'd always thought it would be. Both of them, moving down an insanely twisted obstacle course, helping each other, and keeping each other from falling back into the miserable state they'd been in before they'd found each other.
The fact was that Trinity knew his powers, however amazing they might have been, had to have some limit... It was true, they had brought each other back from a once certain death, but this was somehow different.
She sensed something odd about this. But then again, she had been taught to always question, always be suspicious...
Damn it.
Tracing circles on the back of Neo's hand with her fingers, she let loose a small sigh. "I'll find a way to get to you," she whispered. "Even if I have to fight through hell to get there... I promise."