Trinity is below me, her eyes conveying her love. For once, on this most beautiful of nights, I let go. She is everything to me, and I finally allow myself to see it. Suddenly, I am afraid to touch her. She is more than a woman and a warrior, she is a goddess. I look at her naked form below me and see the perfection. Each part as if sculpted from white marble. Her cerulean eyes look at me questioningly, and I feel the fire starting inside. This isn't the lust and I have become accustomed to, it is the love I have been denying ever since the first night we have laid together. As if sensing the change, she graces me with one of her rare yet dazzling smiles. I smile back, and then lean in to touch her lips. I mean to be gentle, yet the flood of love enters me and drives me as never before. My hands pass over her body not as a means to end as before, but to give her pleasure. I touch her nipples, imbued with the color of coral, with gentleness before I cover one with my mouth. Sucking on it gently, I hear her moan my name and that gives me new fire. With my other hand I start caressing her thigh, moving progressively upward until I feel her warmth. I find her most sensitive area and start stroking it gently, and I feel her bucking beneath me, as if willing me to go further. My mouth moves from her breasts slowly downward, and when I find the area where my hand was I hear her cry out in pleasure. Her hands start fondling my hair, and I hear her breathing become louder and more ragged. My fingers find her inner core, and it is then I feel her need. I am far gone at this point, the throbbing becoming unbearable. I lift up to look at her once more and see the tears in her eyes. This is what she has wanted from me. Love-making, not sex, and I have finally seen what I should have seen years ago. I kiss her again, positioning myself so that we join physically. I hear a cry, and realize that it is my own. We have found a rhythm, and suddenly I feel her shudder. When I look down to see her eyes, they are not focused. They are vacuous. And then I see the blood.

She is no longer nude, but clothed her in cat suit. And she is bleeding from where the bullet entered her. From where I let the bullet enter. I call her name, but there is no response. The red blood is staining the crisp white sheets, and as I grab her, to call her back, I can feel that her heart has stopped. Trinity

I wake up with a start, wiping the sweat from my brow. Years ago, when I first started having this nightmare, I didn't know how to handle it. I would scream at the top of my lungs, pounding the walls. All that accomplished was breaking my hand and getting some strange looks from the doctors. Then I tried finding someone to share my nights with me. Lilith and I became friends and then lovers, but it never scratched the surface. And the nightmares kept coming. Finally, she walked away. I didn't care all that much. She remained my friend and my closest confidante, but we never shared what I could have had with Trinity. I think she sensed that, and never tried to get much closer than I let her in. Once, post-coitus, I told her about the nightmares, and she nodded with understanding.

"You can't blame yourself. In the Matrix, I had a husband. He wanted to have children, but I wanted to wait. You know, get my career going and all. We were married only one year when he was killed by a mugger. The guy didn't even mean to kill him. He had a bad heart and we just didn't know it." She shifted her attention to the corner of the sheets, clenching and unclenching it with her hand.
"I didn't know that all of it was an illusion. For all I know he was, too. But sometimes, when I hold a baby in Zion, I think of what we both could have known."

I looked at her for awhile, watching as her strong shoulders began to shake. She was crying, and before I knew it I felt my vision blur. I was crying too.

It was the next morning when I received word that the Neb was returning with a newly-freed member. Her given name was Julianne, but her hacker name was Trinity. Something inside my body ran cold as I realized that my time was almost up. The Oracle said I had to advise this new generation, but how? I couldn't save Zion in my tenure as the One, how would I do it now?