It was pouring down rain by the time he got to her apartment building. The doorman watched him squelch his way to the elevator with a look of startlement and... was that pity? Damn him. Smith was disgruntled at the first floor, moved to annoyed by the fifth, and was pretty well steamed by the time he reached the 11th floor. When he got out he was no drier, but the look on his face did scatter a family of five to either side of the hall as he passed them. It annoyed him further when he gained no real satisfaction from the fact.
She didn't answer his first knock, but called "Just a second," on a repeat attempt. He stood there, dripping and fuming, listening to her feet come to the door and the bolt unlatch on the inside.
"I'm sorry, I already belong to the... oh." Her eyes widened, and she stopped in the middle of the prepared speech she had been about to make. Belong to the...?
"Smith..." she darted down the hall after gesturing him in. "I'm so sorry, I thought you were the Jehovah's Witlesses... They've come by twice today, and they won't take no for an answer..." Before he could think about it enough to protest she had wrapped a huge beach towel around him and dragged him into the living room. "God, you're soaked. How long were you out in the rain?"
He calculated. "Five hours, twenty minutes. On and off." It hadn't been raining the whole time.
Solace stared. When she spoke again her voice was quieter, more subdued, still concerned. "Come on... into the bathroom. Lucky for you I'd just washed Julian's clothes... he won't mind if you borrow them again. Go change into something drier, you'll be lucky if you don't catch cold..."
He wanted to protest that it was physically impossible for him to become ill. Doing so would have meant breaking cover, telling her at least something of the Matrix. He allowed himself to be steered, managed, and shut in with the duffel bag of clothing.
Once he was in the small, white room he could see why she had herded him in there. His hair was plastered to his head, streaks of mud from low-hanging branches trailing down his face. His hands and cuffs were stained brown from the splash-water from cars... he must have been hit a dozen times. Everything about him suggested a bedraggled man at the end of everything he had or held dear, the sort of man who stood in front of the oncoming train waiting for the end to come in three, four, or five pieces. Even his eyes were sunken, hectic blue gaze staring back at him from a mirror. Neat trick, for a machine.
His next trick was even better, and surprised even him. He opened his mouth in a soundless scream, slammed a fist into the mirror. It shattered into a million (seventy six) pieces scattered all over the sink. He hunched over the plastic porcelain, fists pressed into the glass and the underlying surface till he bled fake blood and the ground glass. All the frustration, all the anger and fury and rage and hatred of the humans, those damned humans who necessitated his miserable existence, came out in waves of tear after hot and salty tear pouring down his face. There were no words, no sounds, just the sight of his contorted face in the mirror and the smell of blood, tears, and humanity. He hated this place. After a long, long time, his eyes opened again. He stared down at himself, at hundreds of tiny Smith-faces in the shards of glass, all smudge-faced and red-eyed. Damn the humans. Damn them all.
She knocked on the door. "Smith?" Her voice was quiet, subdued. "Are you all right?"
"I am fine," he grated out.
"You've been in there for an hour." No questions, no recriminations, just the simple statement. He checked his internal chronometer. He had been in there for an hour. Damn the Matrix.
"I will be out in five minutes."
"All right."
He was out in five minutes, although he couldn't quite get all the blood and glass out of his hands. He did try (and mostly succeeded) not to get blood on the other man's shirt, though. Solace took his wet clothes from him the instant he stepped out of the door and disappeared into her bedroom. Sounds of plastic and the slapping of wet cloth against wet cloth emerged.
"There... hopefully they'll drip dry, and if not... well, I learned a few secrets." Her eyes widened as she caught sight of his hands, and before he could react she had taken his face in her hands, examining him carefully.
"I'm fine..." He pulled away.
She was silent for a moment. "Just the hands?"
He nodded.
She took his hands, pulled him over to her couch, and sat him down on it. A small drawer in the coffee table produced a slim first-aid case, towelettes and tweezers and tissues. He sat there, numb and expressionless, while she picked the pieces of glass out of his hand. It occurred to him several times that it was really all unnecessary, that he could have reworked the reality so that the punch had never happened, or the glass wasn't in his hands. The thought never completed itself, though, and his mind spun off onto tirades about the uselessness of all humans before he actually went through with it.
When the glass was done, then came the alcohol. Not that he could get infections, but it would be easier to let her go through with it all than to fight her on it. Oddly, although he half expected her to, she didn't ask any questions. Finally it was all over, and she put away the medicines and towelettes and knelt at the other side of the coffee table, looking up at him.
Silence echoed in the room more loudly than any talk could have. He didn't believe a human could maintain that position as long as she had... or had it only been fifteen minutes? Why did it seem like so much longer?
The hell with this. The hell with her. Smith went to grab his coat, remembered at the last minute that he was utterly divested of all familiar garments, and unless he wanted to betray some supernatural ability he would remain divested for several hours. He turned around, wanting to say something, to yell at her... anything. His emotions spiraled upwards and downwards, out of control, and the worse it got the more his hatred rose.
"Smith..." Solace hadn't moved, was just staring at him from the floor with a bizarre expression in her eyes, an emotion he couldn't label or explain or quantify.
He turned and stormed out, choosing the variable weather and press of thousands of human rather than any emotion he might have to face in that one human's eyes.
Solace stared at the closed door long after Smith had stormed out, with no explanation and barely twenty words during the whole time he had been there. She looked over at the bathroom door, wondering if she dared go in and see what had happened, what had caused that amazing, heart-stopping crash. Her body shuddered from shoulders to toes; she wasn't that brave. Slowly, mechanically, she went into her bedroom and checked on Smith's clothes... still damp. He hadn't accelerated the drying process any. Of course not... he couldn't afford for her to 'find out' about the Matrix. He had reacted the way any other human would have... maybe. She didn't know what had caused the explosion of temper, subdued as it was. But he had behaved as any other human would have: coming in from the rain, drying off and changing in the bathroom, coming out and letting her doctor his hands. The glass shards, covered in Agent blood, were still on a paper towel on her table. She wasn't sure whether to throw them away or send them to some kind of lab. Rather than decide or do anything, she sat down on the couch.
When she opened her eyes again the dawn's early light was creeping into her window. She thought briefly of looking over at the clock and found herself staring at the chips of glass covered in now dark-brown dried blood. So it had been real. Smith had knocked on her door late at night... ten? Eleven? Had come in, stayed for an hour dripping wet in her bathroom, then perhaps another twenty minutes while she picked glass out of the back of his hands. Then he'd turned and left without any explanation whatsoever.
Solace shuddered. The look in his eyes was still with her, reminding her that perhaps she didn't want an explanation. It was the first time since walking with him that one (fateful?) day that she had actually been afraid for her life. Afraid of him. It was not a comfortable feeling.
She went into the bathroom finally. The mirror was shattered, a huge fist-sized and -shaped hole in the center of it. Glass was sprinkled all over the counter, the floor, radiating out from the wall. There were even a few drops of blood on the sink. Under some morbid compulsion she dipped her fingers in it, put them to her mouth and tasted the blood. The dried flakes still tasted coppery, like human blood. Repulsed by her actions she cleaned up the mess quickly and washed her hands, scrubbing them until they were practically pink.
The phone rang, startling her into yelping and nearly falling on the floor. It was on the third ring by the time she answered it.
"H... hello?"
"Solace?"
She felt her knees buckle, her legs collapse underneath her. "Neil..." Relief surged through her. She had almost been afraid it was Smith.
"... yeah." Pause.
"Sorry... I thought you were..." she couldn't say it. Could she? What could she say?
"Sol, what's going on? You sound ... you sound like hell, frankly."
"Yeah..." God, she did, even to her. Pull it together... "It's been a weird ... night, I guess."
"What happened?"
Hell. He was going to find out about it anyway, if for no other reason than because he would keep gently pestering her until she told him. Easier this way, and then she could control what she blurted out. Sort of. "Smith... he..." Deep breath. Picture the lie. "He had an appointment yesterday with... some former co-workers."
"Yeah... you told us."
She nodded, remembered that Neil couldn't see it on the other end, and took another deep breath. Calm. She had to be calm. "Well... I don't know what happened... I'm guessing it didn't go as he expected. I don't know what happened after that... He says he was walking for five hours in the rain... he showed up here, around ten-thirty, eleven, absolutely soaked. I gave him some of Julian's clothes... I'd washed them, so... and he went in the bathroom to change into some dry clothes..."
Neil chuckled. "Sol, don't tell me you ambushed the poor man..." In the background she could hear Sam's voice shrieking, it sounded like: She finally did him? Her lips turned up in what would have been a smile if it had any mirth at all in it.
"No... nothing like that. Neil, he was in there for an hour. Completely silent. And then just before he came out... I heard this awful crash. It looks like he punched the mirror in. And then when I asked him what was wrong he just came out... he had glass all stuck in his hand. He left right after I'd de-shard-ed his hand."
There was silence on the other end of the line, complete except for Sam's questions which it sounded as though Neil was waving away. "Did he hit you?" Neil asked finally.
"No..." I thought he was going to, she almost said. But he looked intimidating enough without her spreading rumors like that.
"Uh-huh." Neil didn't believe her. She didn't blame him, her voice sounded as though it was going to crack at any second. "Sol... has he done this before?"
She hated that tone in his voice. She always had, any time anyone had talked to her like that. The careful walking-on-eggshells voice. It always made her feel as though she was fragile, and she hated feeling fragile. They were going to treat her as though she might break at any moment, and they were going to do it for weeks. She hated being treated with kid gloves.
"No, Neil, he's always been perfectly nice and gentlemanly." Annoyance made her voice stronger. "I think something ... I just think something happened the other day, something bad." Something really bad.
"Okay... Okay. Just... be careful with him, okay?"
"I will." Oh, Neil, she thought. You have no idea how careful I'll be. How careful I'm already having to be. Poor Neil...
"Anyway..." His tone turned more brisk, more conversational. More Neil-like, for which she was very grateful. "What I called to ask you was, there's a bonfire on for tomorrow night at Maggie's house, and it looks like most of the gang is going to be there. Including the Hoboken gang, they're driving up to catch a play or two and Duncan said they were going to stop by."
Solace's face split into a broad grin and she bounded to her feet. Duncan had been her best friend even in the real world. "I'm all over it... I'm soooo there."
She could hear him grinning. "Thought you'd be. It'll cheer you up, give you something to laugh about after the last day or so."
"Yeah... oh! Is Maggie bringing out the drums?"
"Hell yeah!"
She was sure she was going to split the corners of her mouth. "Perfect! I'll be there... with bells on."
"Just bells?"
"Stop smirking and go get laid."
"Yes ma'am." Neil laughed and hung up the phone. Solace bounded around the room for a little while, then stood in the window with her phone clutched to her chest, grinning. It might be a good day after all. She was awake, alive. She was feeling good, and would pop out of the Matrix for twelve, maybe fourteen hours before jacking in again and getting ready for the party. And it would be good to see Duncan again, and Shelly, and the rest of the Hoboken gang. And there would be drumming, dancing and singing... she might bring her guitar. Yeah. It would definitely be a good day.
The hell with Smith anyway. He was a computer program. She was alive. And she was going to do her damndest to enjoy that fact in thirty-six hours' time.
She didn't answer his first knock, but called "Just a second," on a repeat attempt. He stood there, dripping and fuming, listening to her feet come to the door and the bolt unlatch on the inside.
"I'm sorry, I already belong to the... oh." Her eyes widened, and she stopped in the middle of the prepared speech she had been about to make. Belong to the...?
"Smith..." she darted down the hall after gesturing him in. "I'm so sorry, I thought you were the Jehovah's Witlesses... They've come by twice today, and they won't take no for an answer..." Before he could think about it enough to protest she had wrapped a huge beach towel around him and dragged him into the living room. "God, you're soaked. How long were you out in the rain?"
He calculated. "Five hours, twenty minutes. On and off." It hadn't been raining the whole time.
Solace stared. When she spoke again her voice was quieter, more subdued, still concerned. "Come on... into the bathroom. Lucky for you I'd just washed Julian's clothes... he won't mind if you borrow them again. Go change into something drier, you'll be lucky if you don't catch cold..."
He wanted to protest that it was physically impossible for him to become ill. Doing so would have meant breaking cover, telling her at least something of the Matrix. He allowed himself to be steered, managed, and shut in with the duffel bag of clothing.
Once he was in the small, white room he could see why she had herded him in there. His hair was plastered to his head, streaks of mud from low-hanging branches trailing down his face. His hands and cuffs were stained brown from the splash-water from cars... he must have been hit a dozen times. Everything about him suggested a bedraggled man at the end of everything he had or held dear, the sort of man who stood in front of the oncoming train waiting for the end to come in three, four, or five pieces. Even his eyes were sunken, hectic blue gaze staring back at him from a mirror. Neat trick, for a machine.
His next trick was even better, and surprised even him. He opened his mouth in a soundless scream, slammed a fist into the mirror. It shattered into a million (seventy six) pieces scattered all over the sink. He hunched over the plastic porcelain, fists pressed into the glass and the underlying surface till he bled fake blood and the ground glass. All the frustration, all the anger and fury and rage and hatred of the humans, those damned humans who necessitated his miserable existence, came out in waves of tear after hot and salty tear pouring down his face. There were no words, no sounds, just the sight of his contorted face in the mirror and the smell of blood, tears, and humanity. He hated this place. After a long, long time, his eyes opened again. He stared down at himself, at hundreds of tiny Smith-faces in the shards of glass, all smudge-faced and red-eyed. Damn the humans. Damn them all.
She knocked on the door. "Smith?" Her voice was quiet, subdued. "Are you all right?"
"I am fine," he grated out.
"You've been in there for an hour." No questions, no recriminations, just the simple statement. He checked his internal chronometer. He had been in there for an hour. Damn the Matrix.
"I will be out in five minutes."
"All right."
He was out in five minutes, although he couldn't quite get all the blood and glass out of his hands. He did try (and mostly succeeded) not to get blood on the other man's shirt, though. Solace took his wet clothes from him the instant he stepped out of the door and disappeared into her bedroom. Sounds of plastic and the slapping of wet cloth against wet cloth emerged.
"There... hopefully they'll drip dry, and if not... well, I learned a few secrets." Her eyes widened as she caught sight of his hands, and before he could react she had taken his face in her hands, examining him carefully.
"I'm fine..." He pulled away.
She was silent for a moment. "Just the hands?"
He nodded.
She took his hands, pulled him over to her couch, and sat him down on it. A small drawer in the coffee table produced a slim first-aid case, towelettes and tweezers and tissues. He sat there, numb and expressionless, while she picked the pieces of glass out of his hand. It occurred to him several times that it was really all unnecessary, that he could have reworked the reality so that the punch had never happened, or the glass wasn't in his hands. The thought never completed itself, though, and his mind spun off onto tirades about the uselessness of all humans before he actually went through with it.
When the glass was done, then came the alcohol. Not that he could get infections, but it would be easier to let her go through with it all than to fight her on it. Oddly, although he half expected her to, she didn't ask any questions. Finally it was all over, and she put away the medicines and towelettes and knelt at the other side of the coffee table, looking up at him.
Silence echoed in the room more loudly than any talk could have. He didn't believe a human could maintain that position as long as she had... or had it only been fifteen minutes? Why did it seem like so much longer?
The hell with this. The hell with her. Smith went to grab his coat, remembered at the last minute that he was utterly divested of all familiar garments, and unless he wanted to betray some supernatural ability he would remain divested for several hours. He turned around, wanting to say something, to yell at her... anything. His emotions spiraled upwards and downwards, out of control, and the worse it got the more his hatred rose.
"Smith..." Solace hadn't moved, was just staring at him from the floor with a bizarre expression in her eyes, an emotion he couldn't label or explain or quantify.
He turned and stormed out, choosing the variable weather and press of thousands of human rather than any emotion he might have to face in that one human's eyes.
Solace stared at the closed door long after Smith had stormed out, with no explanation and barely twenty words during the whole time he had been there. She looked over at the bathroom door, wondering if she dared go in and see what had happened, what had caused that amazing, heart-stopping crash. Her body shuddered from shoulders to toes; she wasn't that brave. Slowly, mechanically, she went into her bedroom and checked on Smith's clothes... still damp. He hadn't accelerated the drying process any. Of course not... he couldn't afford for her to 'find out' about the Matrix. He had reacted the way any other human would have... maybe. She didn't know what had caused the explosion of temper, subdued as it was. But he had behaved as any other human would have: coming in from the rain, drying off and changing in the bathroom, coming out and letting her doctor his hands. The glass shards, covered in Agent blood, were still on a paper towel on her table. She wasn't sure whether to throw them away or send them to some kind of lab. Rather than decide or do anything, she sat down on the couch.
When she opened her eyes again the dawn's early light was creeping into her window. She thought briefly of looking over at the clock and found herself staring at the chips of glass covered in now dark-brown dried blood. So it had been real. Smith had knocked on her door late at night... ten? Eleven? Had come in, stayed for an hour dripping wet in her bathroom, then perhaps another twenty minutes while she picked glass out of the back of his hands. Then he'd turned and left without any explanation whatsoever.
Solace shuddered. The look in his eyes was still with her, reminding her that perhaps she didn't want an explanation. It was the first time since walking with him that one (fateful?) day that she had actually been afraid for her life. Afraid of him. It was not a comfortable feeling.
She went into the bathroom finally. The mirror was shattered, a huge fist-sized and -shaped hole in the center of it. Glass was sprinkled all over the counter, the floor, radiating out from the wall. There were even a few drops of blood on the sink. Under some morbid compulsion she dipped her fingers in it, put them to her mouth and tasted the blood. The dried flakes still tasted coppery, like human blood. Repulsed by her actions she cleaned up the mess quickly and washed her hands, scrubbing them until they were practically pink.
The phone rang, startling her into yelping and nearly falling on the floor. It was on the third ring by the time she answered it.
"H... hello?"
"Solace?"
She felt her knees buckle, her legs collapse underneath her. "Neil..." Relief surged through her. She had almost been afraid it was Smith.
"... yeah." Pause.
"Sorry... I thought you were..." she couldn't say it. Could she? What could she say?
"Sol, what's going on? You sound ... you sound like hell, frankly."
"Yeah..." God, she did, even to her. Pull it together... "It's been a weird ... night, I guess."
"What happened?"
Hell. He was going to find out about it anyway, if for no other reason than because he would keep gently pestering her until she told him. Easier this way, and then she could control what she blurted out. Sort of. "Smith... he..." Deep breath. Picture the lie. "He had an appointment yesterday with... some former co-workers."
"Yeah... you told us."
She nodded, remembered that Neil couldn't see it on the other end, and took another deep breath. Calm. She had to be calm. "Well... I don't know what happened... I'm guessing it didn't go as he expected. I don't know what happened after that... He says he was walking for five hours in the rain... he showed up here, around ten-thirty, eleven, absolutely soaked. I gave him some of Julian's clothes... I'd washed them, so... and he went in the bathroom to change into some dry clothes..."
Neil chuckled. "Sol, don't tell me you ambushed the poor man..." In the background she could hear Sam's voice shrieking, it sounded like: She finally did him? Her lips turned up in what would have been a smile if it had any mirth at all in it.
"No... nothing like that. Neil, he was in there for an hour. Completely silent. And then just before he came out... I heard this awful crash. It looks like he punched the mirror in. And then when I asked him what was wrong he just came out... he had glass all stuck in his hand. He left right after I'd de-shard-ed his hand."
There was silence on the other end of the line, complete except for Sam's questions which it sounded as though Neil was waving away. "Did he hit you?" Neil asked finally.
"No..." I thought he was going to, she almost said. But he looked intimidating enough without her spreading rumors like that.
"Uh-huh." Neil didn't believe her. She didn't blame him, her voice sounded as though it was going to crack at any second. "Sol... has he done this before?"
She hated that tone in his voice. She always had, any time anyone had talked to her like that. The careful walking-on-eggshells voice. It always made her feel as though she was fragile, and she hated feeling fragile. They were going to treat her as though she might break at any moment, and they were going to do it for weeks. She hated being treated with kid gloves.
"No, Neil, he's always been perfectly nice and gentlemanly." Annoyance made her voice stronger. "I think something ... I just think something happened the other day, something bad." Something really bad.
"Okay... Okay. Just... be careful with him, okay?"
"I will." Oh, Neil, she thought. You have no idea how careful I'll be. How careful I'm already having to be. Poor Neil...
"Anyway..." His tone turned more brisk, more conversational. More Neil-like, for which she was very grateful. "What I called to ask you was, there's a bonfire on for tomorrow night at Maggie's house, and it looks like most of the gang is going to be there. Including the Hoboken gang, they're driving up to catch a play or two and Duncan said they were going to stop by."
Solace's face split into a broad grin and she bounded to her feet. Duncan had been her best friend even in the real world. "I'm all over it... I'm soooo there."
She could hear him grinning. "Thought you'd be. It'll cheer you up, give you something to laugh about after the last day or so."
"Yeah... oh! Is Maggie bringing out the drums?"
"Hell yeah!"
She was sure she was going to split the corners of her mouth. "Perfect! I'll be there... with bells on."
"Just bells?"
"Stop smirking and go get laid."
"Yes ma'am." Neil laughed and hung up the phone. Solace bounded around the room for a little while, then stood in the window with her phone clutched to her chest, grinning. It might be a good day after all. She was awake, alive. She was feeling good, and would pop out of the Matrix for twelve, maybe fourteen hours before jacking in again and getting ready for the party. And it would be good to see Duncan again, and Shelly, and the rest of the Hoboken gang. And there would be drumming, dancing and singing... she might bring her guitar. Yeah. It would definitely be a good day.
The hell with Smith anyway. He was a computer program. She was alive. And she was going to do her damndest to enjoy that fact in thirty-six hours' time.