He was still turning the idea over and over in his mind the next day. In fact, he had not departed from the park the entire night. She probably wouldn't think anything of it... he didn't look any worse for the wear, didn't have any sort of body odor or bags under his eyes... and she had left him in the park the previous evening, with a promise to be back the next day. Which she was, of course, as she always was. But he still hadn't decided whether or not to tell her.
And then, that might be a moot point. She ran up to meet him and stopped ten feet away, slowing down to a walk until she stood a bare foot in front of him, staring up, eyes worried.
"Are you okay?"
His lip curled, but he made no sound. She reached out and laid her hands on his lower arms.
"Smith?"
"I am fine."
Her lip curled, in what had to be an unconscious imitation of him. They had been spending too much time together as it was.
"You look like hell, Smith. You're slumped, your eyes are dead... deader than usual. You haven't said a damn thing to anyone, and from what Joe says you haven't left this park in the last twenty-four hours."
... he had forgotten about Joe. Dammit.
"Smith, what's going on? I'm worried about you..." her voice grew quiet. Her body grew completely still except for the touch of her hands on his sleeves. Her eyes locked with his, blue and green and wide and full of concern. Did he really look that bad?
She waited for him to talk. He watched her, wondering when she would come out and ask him what was going on. That was usually what humans did, after all. Granted, she was a little more strange than most, but she would surely ask him what was bothering him... after a while. At some point. The minutes ticked by, and neither of them moved or changed expression. Was she really going to wait until he said something?
"I..." he started, then stopped. He still didn't know how to explain it.
"If you don't want to talk about it, just say so." Her voice was very quiet, barely audible. "I'll worry, but if you don't want to talk it's not my place to try to force you. But I am worried about you, and I would like to know what's going on. You've helped me enough..." And now she looked... haunted. "You've helped me more than I have words for. And I'd like to try and help you. If it's something that can be helped."
"You can't help... no one can. It is merely something I must live with." He was surprised at how easily the words came out.
"Can I at least try?"
He took a deep, deep breath and let it out very slowly. Really, he was just stalling for time at this point. A random search of appropriate ways to say what he wanted to say turned up with an odd quote. "Lady, will you walk a bout with your friend?" He held his arm out to her.
"All right..." she slowly looped her arm through his and followed where he led. "Shakespeare. Strange, but I can deal with it."
They walked into one of the myriad areas in the park that was entirely covered by foliage. When they were completely alone... when he could be sure that they were alone for a while... he turned and faced her.
"I have been terminated."
Confusion crossed her eyes for a split second, then horror, then a mixed bag of sympathy, worry, and compassion. Each emotion was reflected, refracted in her eyes. He wondered at his ability to pick them all out so neatly now. He couldn't have done it a month before. She was nodding slowly.
"All right." She took a deep breath. "What happens now?"
He blinked.
"Excuse me?"
"What... do you do now? Find other employment... is there some sort of severance package..."
The thought was laughable. Unfortunately, he did find himself laughing. Laughing until he sat down abruptly on the ground. Solace knelt beside him unceremoniously in the dirt, hands on his shoulders, looking worried. He stared at the pattern in her skirt until order reasserted itself in his mind. Just in time, he remembered to take perhaps ten times as long about it. It was strange... he was having the same sorts of reactions he would have expected of a human only faster, so much faster. Machinistic reflexes, he supposed. He would have to be careful... if he wasn't careful, he would cycle through the emotions ...
He stopped that line of thinking before it started.
... behavioral patterns fast enough that she would think he had a mental or emotional disorder.
The pattern on her skirt was intricate, and seemed to be of Indian origin. Stylized leaves wove themselves in and out of vines, with equally stylized berries occurring here and there. A very nice effect. He followed the line of one of the vines until he thought he could speak again. Solace had not moved the entire time.
"No... although I don't have any need to take another job. I am adequately provided for food..." since he didn't need it... "Shelter, clothing..."
She waited for him to continue, then spoke up herself when he didn't. "That job was your life, Smith. I know it, and you know it." She settled into a sitting position next to him. "What are you going to do now?"
That was the question, wasn't it. "You'll get your dress muddy..."
"Screw the skirt. I'm serious..."
He was silent for a comparatively long time. "I don't know."
She sighed, rested her head on the furthest end of his shoulder... presumably in case he objected to the contact. Her hand sought and found his, gently clasping and interlacing her fingers. He realized that this contact was more likely for her comfort than his. He realized that every second she remained in close contact with him she was further contaminating his formerly pristine utilities. He also realized that he did not want to move.
"How did this happen?" Her voice was still soft, still quiet.
"I was assigned ... with Brown and Jones, the two agents who you observed with me at our first meeting... to apprehend and secure a computer hacker, one we believed to be a significant threat to our operations. I failed, and in the process there was... more collateral damage than the Agency was willing to endure. I was the Agent in charge, and it was therefore deemed my fault."
Her eyes widened a little, but she didn't say anything.
"You are right, you know. The Agency was my life. And now I no longer have it, I am left somewhat rudderless, adrift, without occupation, without meaning or purpose..."
Her hand tightened over his.
"There is nothing for me to do now, I have no requirements, no framework around which to base my daily life. I know what it is I must do, but..." he trailed off, not entirely sure how to explain deletion to Solace.
She waited a good fifteen minutes before asking him about it. "There is some sort of protocol for people in your position?"
Yes. Deletion. "We disappear quietly and are never heard from again."
"Ouch."
"Yes."
"Why would anyone willingly submit to that?"
He sighed. The breath seemed to shake his entire body, and for the first time since Neo's attack he felt as though he were somehow losing control of his own self. It wasn't pleasant. He found himself gripping Solace's hands until even her face turned white, and forced himself to loosen his grasp. Once that was done he decided he was able to speak again.
"By the time such a thing is likely to occur we have been trained to submit to it willingly, to believe that it is the right and proper thing to do. This training seldom fails or ... misfires."
Solace nodded slowly. "Brainwashing." Contempt dripped from her lips and he glanced at her, startled.
"Something like that."
He looked back down at their clasped hands. He didn't remember taking both her hands in both of his. "But now I find myself unwilling to be spirited away, to be erased from existance, as far as anyone else is concerned, to be rendered inconsequential and shuffled aside as a malfunctioning piece of very high security equipment. I do not want to go quietly into that good night."
The faintest hint of a smile. "Rage, rage against the dying of the light."
"And the most aggravating part of it all is that I don't know why..."
Long silence.
"Why you were ... terminated, or why you don't want to submit to the party line?"
"The latter."
She took a deep breath. "Things change, Smith. People change. Circumstances change. I told you that at the beginning of our conversations."
"I know. But I do not."
She smiled gently but didn't argue the point. It was probably for the best. He didn't feel in the mood for a debate, however friendly.
"Which still brings us back to the first point... What do you want to do?"
"I don't know."
Shy smile from her. From him, a death-lock stare on the ground. It was the big problem... he didn't want to be deleted, but he didn't know what else he was going to do. His entire existence had been as an Agent, and now that it was over he had no conception of being able to do anything else. How else to fulfill the purpose that was so deeply ingrained in him it was as hard to shed as the suit he wore. And yet in a sense he was also left purposeless; his purpose had been to enforce the system, to act as an Agent of the Matrix, but he had been stripped of that rank and status. His earpiece, still connected but left dangling down his collar, was a reminder of that. Absently he pulled it out and balanced it on his palm, staring at it.
"Was that a symbolic gesture, or are you just allergic to plastic?"
He looked over. She was smiling, but her eyes were still concerned. He wondered how long it would take to lose the worried crease between her eyes.
"Largely symbolic, now."
"Ah." Pause. "Shall we make a few more symbolic gestures?"
He blinked at her. "Excuse me?"
She reached up and quite thoroughly tousled his hair, gently tugged his glasses down and off, and undid his tie with deft and expert fingers. She was probably equally capable of doing it back up again. For a finishing touch, she unbuttoned his suit jacket and shook it a little so that it hung limply from his shoulders.
"There. A final act of defiance against the Agency that doesn't see a valuable resource when it has one."
He blinked at her. Ran slimly tapered fingers down the length of his tie.
"Do you know how to put one of these on?"
She chuckled. "I had uncles, once. Uncles that could never dress themselves appropriately to save their life. Uncle Benny thought 'black tie' meant his fatigues should be tied at the ankle with a black cord."
The image was jarring.
"Our uniform does not allow for any freedom of individual style."
"I can see that." She wrinkled her nose, then smiled to show that she wasn't entirely serious. "Although you could probably have gotten away with sneaking in a Mickey Mouse tie tack or something. I can't imagine that your bosses would have objected to that."
Smith tried to picture the other Agents' faces... as close to a 'boss' as he was likely to get... if he had ever appeared with a Mickey Mouse tie tack. The thought was ludicrous... and yet now he was wishing he had, if only to assert some sort of creativity, ability to adapt.
"I would have thought a skull and crossbones would be more appropriate," he murmured before he let himself think about it too much. Solace laughed delightedly. The crease was still there.
"Maybe a skeletal hand. Or, I know! The eye inside the pyramid, the symbol of the Illuminati. Everyone says that the government is in league with the Illuminati. Or the Freemasons."
"They do, do they?"
"Yep."
"How..." inspiration. Suddenly he wanted very much to make her laugh, to make that worried crease in her forehead go away. He didn't want to be reminded that today was somehow different from the rest of their days. He didn't want to think about what had happened, what was going to happen. "fascinating."
Solace stared at his single upraised eyebrow for a couple of seconds before bursting out laughing. He smiled. He had to. It was starting to come easier, though.
"Thank you, Mister Spock..." she said finally when she could draw breath without giggling. "Oh good golly miss molly. You would be an absolute riot at cosplay."
He blinked. He didn't even want to query that one, both for the strangeness of the word and the chance of alerting the other Agents.
"Cosplay?"
"Cosplay... er, costume play. Commonly known as costume parties, but I suppose the word mutated." She shrugged.
He frowned slightly. "Explain?"
"We-ell. Every so often someone has a party... or a convention. And there's a sort of an event... cosplay. People sew, beg, borrow, purchase, cobble together, or do whatever they have to in order to make a costume that looks like some character they want to portray. Like..." she struggled for an example. "Charlie's Angels. Sometimes a group of women will get together and go as Charlie's Angels. Or characters from comic books."
"And.. what happens at these parties?"
"Oh, people mingle. Same thing that happens at most parties. Sometimes there's a contest to see who has the best costume or who can stay in character the best. It's a lot of tun." She looked at him speculatively.
He found himself drawing back with an exaggerated expression of alarm. And, really, why not? Now that he was no longer an Agent he was no longer bound by their rules. He was starting to realize what that meant. "What?"
She grinned. "Oh, just thinking ... there's a party tomorrow night, comic book night, over at one of the Another Universe stores. You'd make a perfect Elric, or Dream. I'd almost suggest Elrond, but I don't think they've made a successful Lord of the Rings comic book yet."
Now that one he was familiar with. "An elf?"
"Sure."
"You wish to make me into an elf?"
"Why not?"
"No."
"But..."
"No."
"Spoilsport." She laughed. "You can go as Dream. That doesn't involve nearly as much dressing up, and only a little bit of makeup. Besides..." her smile faded, and that worried line was back. "It might take your mind off of things."
He would have welcomed almost any type of diversion she could inflict on him at that moment. The relief he felt was only slightly tempered by his habitual emotionlessness. "All right."
She blinked. "All right? You'll go?"
"Yes."
She laughed. Pressed the back of her hand to his forehead. "Are you sick? Wait... are you really Smith? Did you just agree to look ridiculous for the sake of entertainment? I think I may have a heart attack right here..." Her hand pressed to her chest and she leaned back dramatically.
"It does happen occasionally. Very. Occasionally."
"Well, then, we'd better make the most of it while you're still in the mood... and I think I can find something for you to cosplay in. Unless you have jeans and a t-shirt, both black?"
He gave her another one of those raised-eyebrow looks. "I?"
"Point."
He almost expected her to leap to her feet right at that moment and go tearing off to find him a costume. He was very relieved when she didn't, when she remained seated, rested her head further up on his shoulder, took his hands in hers again. They sat in the park, in the dirt, and watched the birds fly from tree to tree, making nests, laying eggs. Eventually she stretched her legs out till they were almost in the path, but since there weren't any walkers along that particular road today it didn't matter much. The wind rose and died, and at one point whipped his tie clean off his neck and wrapped it around a nearby tree. Neither of them moved, or gave any sign that it had happened. He did, however, take note of the bird that decided it would make a wonderful nest lining.
And then, that might be a moot point. She ran up to meet him and stopped ten feet away, slowing down to a walk until she stood a bare foot in front of him, staring up, eyes worried.
"Are you okay?"
His lip curled, but he made no sound. She reached out and laid her hands on his lower arms.
"Smith?"
"I am fine."
Her lip curled, in what had to be an unconscious imitation of him. They had been spending too much time together as it was.
"You look like hell, Smith. You're slumped, your eyes are dead... deader than usual. You haven't said a damn thing to anyone, and from what Joe says you haven't left this park in the last twenty-four hours."
... he had forgotten about Joe. Dammit.
"Smith, what's going on? I'm worried about you..." her voice grew quiet. Her body grew completely still except for the touch of her hands on his sleeves. Her eyes locked with his, blue and green and wide and full of concern. Did he really look that bad?
She waited for him to talk. He watched her, wondering when she would come out and ask him what was going on. That was usually what humans did, after all. Granted, she was a little more strange than most, but she would surely ask him what was bothering him... after a while. At some point. The minutes ticked by, and neither of them moved or changed expression. Was she really going to wait until he said something?
"I..." he started, then stopped. He still didn't know how to explain it.
"If you don't want to talk about it, just say so." Her voice was very quiet, barely audible. "I'll worry, but if you don't want to talk it's not my place to try to force you. But I am worried about you, and I would like to know what's going on. You've helped me enough..." And now she looked... haunted. "You've helped me more than I have words for. And I'd like to try and help you. If it's something that can be helped."
"You can't help... no one can. It is merely something I must live with." He was surprised at how easily the words came out.
"Can I at least try?"
He took a deep, deep breath and let it out very slowly. Really, he was just stalling for time at this point. A random search of appropriate ways to say what he wanted to say turned up with an odd quote. "Lady, will you walk a bout with your friend?" He held his arm out to her.
"All right..." she slowly looped her arm through his and followed where he led. "Shakespeare. Strange, but I can deal with it."
They walked into one of the myriad areas in the park that was entirely covered by foliage. When they were completely alone... when he could be sure that they were alone for a while... he turned and faced her.
"I have been terminated."
Confusion crossed her eyes for a split second, then horror, then a mixed bag of sympathy, worry, and compassion. Each emotion was reflected, refracted in her eyes. He wondered at his ability to pick them all out so neatly now. He couldn't have done it a month before. She was nodding slowly.
"All right." She took a deep breath. "What happens now?"
He blinked.
"Excuse me?"
"What... do you do now? Find other employment... is there some sort of severance package..."
The thought was laughable. Unfortunately, he did find himself laughing. Laughing until he sat down abruptly on the ground. Solace knelt beside him unceremoniously in the dirt, hands on his shoulders, looking worried. He stared at the pattern in her skirt until order reasserted itself in his mind. Just in time, he remembered to take perhaps ten times as long about it. It was strange... he was having the same sorts of reactions he would have expected of a human only faster, so much faster. Machinistic reflexes, he supposed. He would have to be careful... if he wasn't careful, he would cycle through the emotions ...
He stopped that line of thinking before it started.
... behavioral patterns fast enough that she would think he had a mental or emotional disorder.
The pattern on her skirt was intricate, and seemed to be of Indian origin. Stylized leaves wove themselves in and out of vines, with equally stylized berries occurring here and there. A very nice effect. He followed the line of one of the vines until he thought he could speak again. Solace had not moved the entire time.
"No... although I don't have any need to take another job. I am adequately provided for food..." since he didn't need it... "Shelter, clothing..."
She waited for him to continue, then spoke up herself when he didn't. "That job was your life, Smith. I know it, and you know it." She settled into a sitting position next to him. "What are you going to do now?"
That was the question, wasn't it. "You'll get your dress muddy..."
"Screw the skirt. I'm serious..."
He was silent for a comparatively long time. "I don't know."
She sighed, rested her head on the furthest end of his shoulder... presumably in case he objected to the contact. Her hand sought and found his, gently clasping and interlacing her fingers. He realized that this contact was more likely for her comfort than his. He realized that every second she remained in close contact with him she was further contaminating his formerly pristine utilities. He also realized that he did not want to move.
"How did this happen?" Her voice was still soft, still quiet.
"I was assigned ... with Brown and Jones, the two agents who you observed with me at our first meeting... to apprehend and secure a computer hacker, one we believed to be a significant threat to our operations. I failed, and in the process there was... more collateral damage than the Agency was willing to endure. I was the Agent in charge, and it was therefore deemed my fault."
Her eyes widened a little, but she didn't say anything.
"You are right, you know. The Agency was my life. And now I no longer have it, I am left somewhat rudderless, adrift, without occupation, without meaning or purpose..."
Her hand tightened over his.
"There is nothing for me to do now, I have no requirements, no framework around which to base my daily life. I know what it is I must do, but..." he trailed off, not entirely sure how to explain deletion to Solace.
She waited a good fifteen minutes before asking him about it. "There is some sort of protocol for people in your position?"
Yes. Deletion. "We disappear quietly and are never heard from again."
"Ouch."
"Yes."
"Why would anyone willingly submit to that?"
He sighed. The breath seemed to shake his entire body, and for the first time since Neo's attack he felt as though he were somehow losing control of his own self. It wasn't pleasant. He found himself gripping Solace's hands until even her face turned white, and forced himself to loosen his grasp. Once that was done he decided he was able to speak again.
"By the time such a thing is likely to occur we have been trained to submit to it willingly, to believe that it is the right and proper thing to do. This training seldom fails or ... misfires."
Solace nodded slowly. "Brainwashing." Contempt dripped from her lips and he glanced at her, startled.
"Something like that."
He looked back down at their clasped hands. He didn't remember taking both her hands in both of his. "But now I find myself unwilling to be spirited away, to be erased from existance, as far as anyone else is concerned, to be rendered inconsequential and shuffled aside as a malfunctioning piece of very high security equipment. I do not want to go quietly into that good night."
The faintest hint of a smile. "Rage, rage against the dying of the light."
"And the most aggravating part of it all is that I don't know why..."
Long silence.
"Why you were ... terminated, or why you don't want to submit to the party line?"
"The latter."
She took a deep breath. "Things change, Smith. People change. Circumstances change. I told you that at the beginning of our conversations."
"I know. But I do not."
She smiled gently but didn't argue the point. It was probably for the best. He didn't feel in the mood for a debate, however friendly.
"Which still brings us back to the first point... What do you want to do?"
"I don't know."
Shy smile from her. From him, a death-lock stare on the ground. It was the big problem... he didn't want to be deleted, but he didn't know what else he was going to do. His entire existence had been as an Agent, and now that it was over he had no conception of being able to do anything else. How else to fulfill the purpose that was so deeply ingrained in him it was as hard to shed as the suit he wore. And yet in a sense he was also left purposeless; his purpose had been to enforce the system, to act as an Agent of the Matrix, but he had been stripped of that rank and status. His earpiece, still connected but left dangling down his collar, was a reminder of that. Absently he pulled it out and balanced it on his palm, staring at it.
"Was that a symbolic gesture, or are you just allergic to plastic?"
He looked over. She was smiling, but her eyes were still concerned. He wondered how long it would take to lose the worried crease between her eyes.
"Largely symbolic, now."
"Ah." Pause. "Shall we make a few more symbolic gestures?"
He blinked at her. "Excuse me?"
She reached up and quite thoroughly tousled his hair, gently tugged his glasses down and off, and undid his tie with deft and expert fingers. She was probably equally capable of doing it back up again. For a finishing touch, she unbuttoned his suit jacket and shook it a little so that it hung limply from his shoulders.
"There. A final act of defiance against the Agency that doesn't see a valuable resource when it has one."
He blinked at her. Ran slimly tapered fingers down the length of his tie.
"Do you know how to put one of these on?"
She chuckled. "I had uncles, once. Uncles that could never dress themselves appropriately to save their life. Uncle Benny thought 'black tie' meant his fatigues should be tied at the ankle with a black cord."
The image was jarring.
"Our uniform does not allow for any freedom of individual style."
"I can see that." She wrinkled her nose, then smiled to show that she wasn't entirely serious. "Although you could probably have gotten away with sneaking in a Mickey Mouse tie tack or something. I can't imagine that your bosses would have objected to that."
Smith tried to picture the other Agents' faces... as close to a 'boss' as he was likely to get... if he had ever appeared with a Mickey Mouse tie tack. The thought was ludicrous... and yet now he was wishing he had, if only to assert some sort of creativity, ability to adapt.
"I would have thought a skull and crossbones would be more appropriate," he murmured before he let himself think about it too much. Solace laughed delightedly. The crease was still there.
"Maybe a skeletal hand. Or, I know! The eye inside the pyramid, the symbol of the Illuminati. Everyone says that the government is in league with the Illuminati. Or the Freemasons."
"They do, do they?"
"Yep."
"How..." inspiration. Suddenly he wanted very much to make her laugh, to make that worried crease in her forehead go away. He didn't want to be reminded that today was somehow different from the rest of their days. He didn't want to think about what had happened, what was going to happen. "fascinating."
Solace stared at his single upraised eyebrow for a couple of seconds before bursting out laughing. He smiled. He had to. It was starting to come easier, though.
"Thank you, Mister Spock..." she said finally when she could draw breath without giggling. "Oh good golly miss molly. You would be an absolute riot at cosplay."
He blinked. He didn't even want to query that one, both for the strangeness of the word and the chance of alerting the other Agents.
"Cosplay?"
"Cosplay... er, costume play. Commonly known as costume parties, but I suppose the word mutated." She shrugged.
He frowned slightly. "Explain?"
"We-ell. Every so often someone has a party... or a convention. And there's a sort of an event... cosplay. People sew, beg, borrow, purchase, cobble together, or do whatever they have to in order to make a costume that looks like some character they want to portray. Like..." she struggled for an example. "Charlie's Angels. Sometimes a group of women will get together and go as Charlie's Angels. Or characters from comic books."
"And.. what happens at these parties?"
"Oh, people mingle. Same thing that happens at most parties. Sometimes there's a contest to see who has the best costume or who can stay in character the best. It's a lot of tun." She looked at him speculatively.
He found himself drawing back with an exaggerated expression of alarm. And, really, why not? Now that he was no longer an Agent he was no longer bound by their rules. He was starting to realize what that meant. "What?"
She grinned. "Oh, just thinking ... there's a party tomorrow night, comic book night, over at one of the Another Universe stores. You'd make a perfect Elric, or Dream. I'd almost suggest Elrond, but I don't think they've made a successful Lord of the Rings comic book yet."
Now that one he was familiar with. "An elf?"
"Sure."
"You wish to make me into an elf?"
"Why not?"
"No."
"But..."
"No."
"Spoilsport." She laughed. "You can go as Dream. That doesn't involve nearly as much dressing up, and only a little bit of makeup. Besides..." her smile faded, and that worried line was back. "It might take your mind off of things."
He would have welcomed almost any type of diversion she could inflict on him at that moment. The relief he felt was only slightly tempered by his habitual emotionlessness. "All right."
She blinked. "All right? You'll go?"
"Yes."
She laughed. Pressed the back of her hand to his forehead. "Are you sick? Wait... are you really Smith? Did you just agree to look ridiculous for the sake of entertainment? I think I may have a heart attack right here..." Her hand pressed to her chest and she leaned back dramatically.
"It does happen occasionally. Very. Occasionally."
"Well, then, we'd better make the most of it while you're still in the mood... and I think I can find something for you to cosplay in. Unless you have jeans and a t-shirt, both black?"
He gave her another one of those raised-eyebrow looks. "I?"
"Point."
He almost expected her to leap to her feet right at that moment and go tearing off to find him a costume. He was very relieved when she didn't, when she remained seated, rested her head further up on his shoulder, took his hands in hers again. They sat in the park, in the dirt, and watched the birds fly from tree to tree, making nests, laying eggs. Eventually she stretched her legs out till they were almost in the path, but since there weren't any walkers along that particular road today it didn't matter much. The wind rose and died, and at one point whipped his tie clean off his neck and wrapped it around a nearby tree. Neither of them moved, or gave any sign that it had happened. He did, however, take note of the bird that decided it would make a wonderful nest lining.