I'm not going to summarise, just read it and see if you like it. I should be posting a new chapter every few days. Please R&R, and be gentle with me, it's my first fic :S! BTW, the words typed like /this/ mean I tried to do italics and failed miserably. If anyone knows how to type in italics on ff.net, can you pls tell me!! Oh, and thank u to Trin (ttlg) for letting me cheeb her statement. It is totally the rock of the story, and the entire fic would simply fall down without it! Ta love x :P

(I don't own anything from the Matrix film(s) or anything like that.)

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Chapter 1

She gradually raised her small, lean frame from the chair. She spread her strong delicate hands onto the edge of the table and pushed herself slowly up. Slowly, tiredly, as if this action was among her last.

Her movement was careful, weary. When she was standing, her drink in one hand fizzing with all of the energy she didn't have, she room fell silent. Sound fading away until the entire space was still.

Her eyes rested momentarily on a space on the floor. She steadily raised her head to look the crowd in the eye. This room, here, was her house now. Where /she/ would have been, where /she/ would have stood, where /she/ would have lived. A brief, short moment of silence, where embarrassment should have interfered and told her to get off and sit down. But no feeling could touch her until she had projected herself upon these people. It seemed an eternity ago when it was summer, and these pale winter-skinned individuals were animated and colourful. But not now. Now their hypocrisy had taken over their appearance. This room full of bitches, this space filled with traitors. It would make her spit in disgust to think about once calling them friends. Her heavy, lethargic eyelids closed briefly and she dragged them open.

"She...." She stopped herself. Realisation of not knowing what she was about to say washed over her. She allowed her mouth to open and her soul to speak for her.

"She loved you all."

A few people looked around, unsure. She knew what they were thinking. If she were in anybody else's position, she would have written this woman standing on a table, shoes kicked off on the floor, dress wrinkled and hair unruly, as a drunk. But, although this was an undeniable truth, the alcohol in her body did not cloud her actions. If anything, they made the world slightly clearer. A bare display of emotion coming from deep within her was exactly what this treacherous crowd needed.

"An unbefitting glitch, inconsistent with your norms and unwritten tenets was what she was. And she loved you all."

Her tone was not angry, just simply hopeless. Like talking to a person about to die that evening about what you were going to do tomorrow. You know that nothing you can say will change anything, there is no hope for you there, but hell, who cares? Just as that dieing person had asked what you were going to do tomorrow, these people had asked for what she was giving them now.

A woman stood, gently taking her hand. "Come down now, babe. You're making it harder for everyone else."

She pulled her hand away, not coldly, nor sharply, but showing such rejection that the woman sat down again.

"What saddens me most is that she never knew. And what should hang over your heads and over your graves is that /you/ did. And that your own selfish minds made the choice, /that/ /choice/, not to say anything. Not to let a dying woman know the truth before she finally passed away. I think the saddest truth is, unconditionally, she /loved/ /you/ /all/."

She stood for a moment, in her tired position, her head tilted down slightly, her shoulders drooping, her dress hanging gently across her thin lean frame, letting the stunned hush of her spectators fill the air. She raised her head and lifted her eyes one last time.

"I want to thank all of my friends, all of you, for /not/ being there when I was needing you most. You have no idea how much stronger you made me."

As she made her way off the table, the same woman that had taken her hand before tried to help her. She brushed away the gesture and independently climbed down. Slipping on her shoes, she turned the woman, who was once a good friend.

"Don't offer me help if you don't mean it. The least you could do now is be straight with me."

She whispered it, so as not to cause the woman public embarrassment, but her face still flushed red in an unsightly contrast to her pale blonde hair.

And now, this newfound coldness took over her being. As she picked up her bag and made her way through the room with her drink still in one hand, she felt herself harden. This is what it felt like, to have nothing. She felt no sadness, except grief for the loss of her mother figure, but the betrayal of her 'friends' had been extinguished along with the now gone relationships she had had with them. Her eyes, normally seen as an incredible shining diamond blue, had turned to a cold, unemotional ice blue. It was a difference undetectable to anybody except her now. She had nobody to care for that would note this new unfamiliar hardness etch its way into her heart.

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