Solace woke up with a feeling of unreality, not knowing where she was. For one thing, she was on an actual bed, underneath actual covers... a pretty thick one, too. The window was open, and it was chilly outside... not too cold, but chilly. And there was someone else in the room with her.

She wanted to sit up, wake up, and draw her gun. Only just in time did she remember that she couldn't. She was dressed... if that was the term... in one of the slips she kept around for sleeping purposes. The thought made her blush.

"What.... What what what..." her mind stuttered, making her repeat the word. She shook her head slowly, trying to clear it. "What... where..." Okay, a different word. That was better. "What happened?"

He must have been learning. He didn't say anything about the attack, just leaned forward in his chair till she could see him in the fading light of the moon. "You slept for two hours, and then I woke you and transferred you to the bed."

Solace looked over at him, thinking about asking how she'd gotten into her nighttime clothing. She decided against it. "Thank you..." Her voice was barely in the audible range. She knew he'd hear her.

There was a very long silence. Somewhere towards the middle of it Smith rolled the chair soundlessly over to her bedside and sat back down, not quite touching her, waiting for her to climb out of the bed. She didn't want to leave the warm and soft cushions. She really didn't want to get up, unplug, and face the real world.

"Your supervisor... excuse me, your editor called. He wanted you to know that you could take the next ... couple of days off."

Solace blinked, having trouble digesting that for a couple of seconds before she realized who her editor must have been. "Oh... right." This time she did slide to the edge of the bed and sit upright, feet on the floor. "I should get moving..."

"You should rest, Solace."

"I need to get back to work..." she stood up gingerly, feeling every muscle and joint creak and twitch.

"You need to rest. There remains the possibility that you have a concussion..."

"You thought I might have a concussion and you let me fall asleep??"

"I was monitoring you. There was no danger..."

"Smith, you can't always tell if there's no danger or not with a head wound... I might have had internal bleeding..."

"You did not. We made sure."

"We?"

He looked uncomfortable. Probably because he didn't want to explain that the Agents and such had been monitoring her life functions "The doctors."

She decided to put another face on the reason for his discomfort. "You were there, too."

He nodded slowly. "Yes."

She reached out and clasped his hand in hers, pressing tight with her fingers. "Thank you."

His hands were just shy of sweaty. It struck her yet again that the machines had put in every last little detail when they constructed the Agent programs. "You are welcome."

She tilted her head to one side. "Why is it that I was the one who was attacked, and yet you're the one who seems to need to talk about it?"

"I am fine."

Quieter, lower tones. "You don't look fine."

"I am merely concerned for your safety."

He was turning away. She darted over to stand in front of him. "I am safe. I'm here, in my house, with you. Nothing's going to happen to me."

"Nothing should have happened to you in the park, yet it did."

She shuddered. "I know."

He took a deep breath. "I am... unused to being unable to prevent danger. It does not sit well with me when I find that I can't..."

"You don't like being helpless."

"Yes."

Solace sighed. She could empathize with that; they had, after all, been in very similar situations. She had been unable to use her preternatural speed and strength because it would have brought Agents down on her head, never mind what it would have done to the relationship between her and Smith. He had been unable to use his powers for a similar reason, although she presumed he was less worried about alerting Agents to his presence than she was.

"I know how it is..." she said after a minute. "I don't like feeling helpless either."

"How do..." he paused, rephrased, turned away and started pacing down the length of her bedroom. "How do you deal with it?"

Shrug. "I don't know. Everyone deals with circumstances in their own individual way." Weak smile. "Patterns and amalgamations and equations, remember? Tiny variations..."

He nodded impatiently. "I know. I know."

"Smith... you can't blame yourself for what happened. You were there in time, before anything irreversible..." she took a deep breath. She didn't want to say the r word. "Before they raped me. Thank you."

"Barely in time."

Bitterness and self-recrimination. Solace tried to tell herself that this was a computer program talking, albeit a remarkably well constructed computer program. He stood in the doorway, back turned to her. She stared at him from her vantage point by the bed, by the window.

"I should have ..."

"Should have what? Been there? Smith, you are not prescient. You couldn't have known what would have happened."

He nodded, but didn't respond.

"I'm glad you were there. If you hadn't been..." Scenes of rape, torture, stabbing, pain, murder flashed through her mind. She shuddered violently. "I don't know... what would have happened." Bile rose into the back of her throat.

He turned around, expressionless. "I would recommend against thinking about it."

"Yeah..." she wrapped her arms around herself.

He stared at her. "Solace..."

"Yeah?"

"I am sorry."

The tears started to flow hot and thick down her cheeks. Something in that statement, all the more poignant because it had come from an Agent, a computer program, had broken something within her. "Me too..."

His eyes narrowed. "Solace...?"

It was her turn to face the wall, away from him. "Yeah?"

"Are you all right?"

"Yeah... I'm fine."

"You don't sound fine..."

She wiped her eyes. "I'll be all right."

"You..." he sounded as though he were struggling with his words. "It was not your fault."

"I know." Her voice was barely above a whisper.

"Do you? Solace..." his hands came down on her shoulders, making her jump. "I'm sorry... I didn't mean to startle you."

"It's okay."

"Solace... from what I understand, many women who are put into the situation you were thrown into today blame themselves for what happens to them, rather than their attackers."

"Yeah...."

"I would ... like to know that you ... are not one of those women."

She wasn't sure what he was trying to say. "I don't..." she paused. Honesty as the best policy. "I don't know... how I feel about it. I'm still trying to get over the fact that it happened at all... it shouldn't have happened. I just don't understand..." she started to cry again, and her shoulders started to shake. It shouldn't have happened, she should have been able to fend off every last ganger there... but for the Agents, and her need not to blow her cover. And now she was paying the price for it.

Smith's hands flexed and tightened on her shoulders, and finally dropped. This didn't make any sense either, why she should feel so comfortable, so safe around her natural enemy.

"I don't understand it myself...." She felt the breath rather than heard his sigh. "Why ... human beings have to be so destructive, it seems, to survive. What this imperative is to violence and aggression."

"If we knew, we'd probably try to get rid of it..." she sighed. "Of course then we wouldn't be human... we might all just be passive jellyfish..."

"Jellyfish do not hunt and kill each other."

"Hamsters do..." the thought suddenly occurred to her. "Small rodents... even dogs. They eat..." her breath was starting to come in gasps. "They eat their young...."

"I have no answers for you..."

"I felt so.... Incompetent. Helpless...." She moaned the words, choked by her tears. "I hate feeling helpless. I still feel ... and I hate it. I hate it!"

"You are far from helpless," he told her, carefully stroking the top of her head and letting her hair tangle itself around his hands. "You are one of the least helpless women I have ever met."

"Really?"

"Of course."

It was some compliment, considering the women he usually took notice of were Resistance members. "Thank you."

His hands fell back to his sides again. He clearly didn't know what to do, and she couldn't really blame him. She had never expected this when she had taken the assignment upon herself. Not in a thousand years. Not in a million. And she hadn't expected him to stay with her for as long as he had.... She didn't understand that part either. Why was he monitoring her? Granted, the Mainfraime, the AI had ordered him to ... to watch humans, to study how they worked. This was probably part of it. Had the Mainframe even set up the attack so that.... No Her mind shied away from the idea, and she turned away from Smith, heading in towards the kitchen.

"Shouldn't you get some more sleep?" his voice called behind her.

"If I sleep now I'll be up all night again. I just need to stay up till around eight in the evening, and then I'll be okay..." her voice was distant, even to her, and it wasn't just that she'd gone into the kitchen. He followed her, still expressionless.

"Then what will you do?"

"Well... it's almost dawn. I thought I'd make some orange juice, toast, or something, and watch the sun come up." Shaky, Sol. Very shaky. She swallowed. "Should you be getting back to work, or..."

"I will return to work in a few hours. When I know that you are..."

The glass slipped and crashed on the floor. "Dammit!"

"... better."

The shattering noise seemed to somehow echo the shattering in her mind. She didn't even notice the piece of glass sticking out of her finger. "I'm fine, Smith... I..." The tears started to flow again. "Shit."

He grabbed her hand. His flesh was still warm... would he bleed if she cut him? She shook her head to banish the thoughts.

"You are far from fine, Solace. You will be all right, but you need to allow yourself time to recover."

She winced when he pulled the glass out. "Time...."

"Do you keep a first aid kit..."

"In the cabinet above the refrigerator."

He reached up, grabbed it, and started to tape up her finger while she watched with emotions numbed over by too many shocks, too much thinking. "I told you that you are one of the least helpless women I know... but you are also one of the most stubborn."

"... oh."

"You must allow yourself time to heal. It is no discredit to you if you take a couple of days to rest and accept what has happened, and deal with the problem. There is no shame in ..."

"... in what? Being a victim? I'm not a victim, Smith, I never have been." Sigh. More tears. "I never wanted to be."

"I don't believe anyone would want to be a victim. And you aren't. You are a survivor."

She sniffled. "I hadn't even thought of that."

"You haven't taken much time to think." He was right. Damn the man... program. Why did he have to be right about matters of emotions? "Go... sit down. I will take care of the glass."

She did.