12-21-97
"I surrender," Ghost chuckled.
His sister had him pinned on his back. His palms were to the sky, her fist was at his throat. On the surface of things, it might appear ludicrous for a woman to pull punches against a man; fortunately, Ghost was not one to be concerned with mere appearances.
"That makes it what, twenty to one? Two-hundred, maybe."
"I think you may be exaggerating that score," he smiled as she straightened. He accepted her hand and let her pull him to his feet. Construct fights might be a guilty pleasure, but he cherished the time with his sister. She was always a welcome intrusion into his meditations, as much a part of his private time as everyone else was meant not to be.
Trinity's defiant grin made him laugh. "I never exaggerate."
"No, of course not. Heaven forfend. Just like I never pull my punches. Least I can say I've never really hit a girl."
"Watch it," she snapped, arms folding across her chest. The long PVC gloves slid along one another, friction causing an audible rub. This brought him up short. Inside the world of his personal processing unit, they sparred, baited one another, but never actually fought. Unwanted stress got left behind at the jack-in port. There was no call for a temper here, where no one was listening, where it was just them. They could gripe about anything and everything that might sound taboo or seditious to the higher-ups in Zion and the Resistance. It was supposed to be a place to vent, not simmer. And, usually, Trinity told him what she couldn't tell anyone else.
"What?" She seemed to notice his surprise and surveying look.
"What's eating you?"
"Nothing," she leaned backwards, bracing herself against one of the rocks in his garden with one foot, leaving her other leg stretched out. A deep frown and the creases in her forehead belied her answer. He waited until she looked at him again, mouth ticking up in a beloved smirk. "Can't hide anything from you, huh?"
"Things on the Neb not going so well?"
"No, not that," she shook her head, "well, actually, a little yeah. We lost another one a few days before we got back to Zion."
That explained her distraction. Ironically, he might have made a better second to the legendary captain of the Nebuchadnezzar than his sister. He embraced the metaphysical prophecy that was the stalwart of Zion's faith; Trinity supported Morpheus, revered his methods instead of his madness. The same could be said of him and Niobe. So, in each their own way, they were following a priest of a religion to which they did not subscribe. Their choices perhaps proved the common adage of opposites attracting, but he could see the toll that Morpheus' didactic, grandiose style was taking on his sister.
"You wanna talk about it?"
"He...Lucid," she corrected herself, "Lucid was Morpheus' 'new' candidate."
" 'New'? Meaning...?"
"Different," Trinity shrugged, a gesture at once nonchalant and confused. "I don't know, he got it into his head that he needed to look for people who weren't..."
"Gods among men?" Ghost chuckled as she raised a skeptical eyebrow. "Morpheus is looking for the proverbial 'king of kings,' and he has realized that he won't find him on a throne but in a manger, to borrow the metaphor," he bowed slightly, grinning. His commentary on the mythos of religion never ceased to irritate his sister. She claimed not to believe in God, nor any of the theological teachings she'd absorbed in the Matrix, though, on some fundamental level, she retained them.
This time she did not smile. She looked away. "He didn't even tell Lucid why we freed him."
"Why not?"
"He wanted to see if Lucid would adopt the mantle, I suppose," she shrugged. Ghost watched her play with her hands for a moment. He started when it hit him, which drew her attention away from her hands. "What?"
"I'm sorry, I didn't realize. You and he were close?"
Trinity snorted. "God, you are just like family, Ghost." She placed her hands firmly on her hips. "Yes, little brother, I was fucking him. If you'd stop being a prude, you'd live a lot longer."
"Sex doesn't seem to be making you happy," he retorted immediately, realizing too late that the barb struck too deep for their usual banter. Trinity didn't flinch externally, but he knew better to think he hadn't hurt her. Which was not his intention. Ever. No matter what choices she made in her life, Trinity would always have his love, and he'd sooner kill himself than intentionally hurt her. "I'm sorry."
It seemed lame by way of an apology between two who shared so much, but Trinity shook her head. "Don't be. You're right. It was just sex. It happens on ships," she looked him over once before adding, "usually."
He accepted her taunt graciously by means of further apology, a payback for his carelessness. "You don't seem that upset about losing him."
"I am upset, but not really because of anything about Lucid personally, you know?" He shook his head; honestly, he didn't have any clue, that's what celibacy meant. Trinity shrugged again, seeming unaffected, as if she'd long ago decided how she felt on the matter. "I didn't want him to die, but it was more about what it meant for us that he didn't end up making it."
"What does it mean, Trinity?"
"It means we failed. Again." She kicked at the ground, sending a small shower of pebbles scattering away from her booted toe. "God, I don't know if I can keep doing this."
"Lives are lost in war. It is an unfortunate part of the definition of 'war,' you know." He resisted the urge to hug her; it wasn't a gesture they often shared, nor was it one she needed now. It wasn't that kind of hurt. Despondency could not be fixed with a simple embrace.
"I know," she tilted her head to the artificial sky. She was silent a long moment before continuing, "I'm not sure I can keep trying for Morpheus. Keep pretending that it's not driving me up the wall to see him get excited about someone we free and then forgetting about them as soon as they fail to be what he wants them to be."
"That's not fair."
"No, she laughed without mirth, "you're right, it's not. He does mourn. He takes responsibility. I just get frustrated that he's not really trying to change the way he goes about this."
"It would be like telling a zebra to change its stripes, though, right?"
"Yeah, probably," Trinity muttered, finally sinking down to sit, her back against the rock, arms crossed at the wrists atop her bent knee. Ghost cartwheeled up to a one-handed handstand, hopping on his supporting palm so he faced her. She squinted up at him behind her shades. "Doesn't all the blood rush to your head when you do that?"
"It's not real," he chided, then shrugged-a difficult thing to do upside down-and grinned. "Yes, actually, but the point of meditation is to overcome the limitations of the body to center the mind."
"Centering your mind means convincing yourself that you don't feel gravity here?"
"Something like that. But don't change the subject."
"Right." Trinity snatched at a few pebbles, tossing and catching them in the palm of her gloved hand. "What were talking about?"
"Lucid, Morpheus, the ever elusive One. Your choice, sister, dear."
"They're all sort of related." She paused, and when she spoke again, she sounded far away. "I even thought maybe this time Morpheus was right."
"And here I thought you were losing faith in his choices."
"It's not that," Trinity sounded noncommital. "I can't take this constant cycle of getting my hopes up only to be disappointed. It's not me."
That was true. It wasn't her. Trinity wanted proof-excitement on delivery thereof, he laughed to himself. The converse problem was hers, too; once she was convinced or hopeful, she invested so much of herself into her hopes. Years ago, when he had been freed, he had visited Zion for the first time and met his sister in the flesh. At that first meeting, both disoriented and somewhat in shock, they found comfort and assumed kismet in the simple fact that they'd been freed on the exact same day. Their real-world 'birthday.' It hadn't meant as much to him since. He loved her, she related to him as a sister. It frustrated any other hopes he had for their relationship, her tendency to see things one way, black-and-white, her intractability. A person was a surrogate family member, a friend, a lover, or a stranger, and, with Trinity, it took a great deal for one to evolve from her categorizations. If Morpheus promised her the One, Ghost knew that it would have to be a constant shock to have that promise broken.
"With Lucid, I though maybe it could be different."
"Because he didn't expect anything of himself?"
"Because I..." Whatever she'd been about to confess, she apparently reconsidered, waved it off. "Never mind."
"Trinity." She met his eyes without hesitation. "Nothing leaves here that you don't want to, you know that." You can tell me. I won't judge you, and you know that, too. No one else offered her that comfort; it was hard to have close friends on a ship, knowing one day you might have to leave them behind, or, worse, kill them for the good of the whole. It made sharing secrets, to one such as Trinity, a waste of time. What good did it do you if you had to go back to pretending that friend was just another solider on your next run? Ghost distanced himself from crewmembers as a matter of course. They were still his friends, and he would fight to save their lives, but he couldn't say what Niobe's favorite color was or whether their operator had any family. Well, he's new, so maybe in time, Ghost shook that thought as he realized that it took him a moment to remember the new operator's name.
"I liked him, Ghost."
"Seriously?" It was not a question of his disbelief but of hers.
"I thought so for a while."
"Now you don't." It wasn't a question at all.
"Damned if I know, Ghost." Trinity sounded pissed. At least she dressed the part, though her next words were slightly colored with helplessness. "I have no idea what that old woman meant."
The Oracle. Yet another secret that never left their sparring sessions, and one Ghost felt especially privileged to know. How could he? It made him feel guilty as he had not shared (not entirely) with her what the Oracle had told him. Trinity told the Oracle's prediction of her future years ago, when she was still green enough to have shared something like that with him. Ghost doubted she would have told him if she had only just gone to the Oracle recently. The Trinity that latched onto him as a girl had quickly grown up in the real world. He considered himself fortunate to have her confidence on so personal matter.
"You thought he might be the One."
"That's just it," Trinity pushed her sunglasses up to pinch the bridge of her nose. "I liked him well enough. I was attracted to him, obviously."
"Duh," Ghost smiled, sticking his tongue out at her when she flipped him off. It earned him a begrudging smirk in return, which was well worth the rude gesture.
"I'm not a romantic, Ghost. I get how to work with people, how to get the job done. I have no idea how I'm supposed to go about falling in love. I don't even know if I can remember what that's like. I left that complication behind in the Matrix. Haven't 'loved'"-somehow she pronounced the quotes around the word-"since."
"But..." he prompted, shifting and switching hands without taking his eyes from her.
"But I did care about Lucid. Like how I feel about you, only I wanted to sleep with him, too." Ghost tried to pass off his wince as one of physical pain; he envied Lucid for having what he had always known he couldn't have: Trinity's affection. "I love you, little brother, however little you deserve it," she cast a knowing glance at him. "So, if that's not love, I'm at a loss to what is."
"She didn't say how you would love the One, did she?" The thought really had only just occurred to him, but Ghost cursed himself a fool for not thinking of it sooner. "The Oracle rarely speaks unambiguously, Trin."
"Perhaps."
"She may understand your capacity for and understanding of love and apply it to mean something other than romantic involvement. She never speaks the direct truth." Ah, truer words never spoken, he gritted his teeth against the pain; the Oracle had never precisely told him Trinity would never love him the way he wanted, but, he could read between the prophecy and find his destiny.
" 'She can help you find the path.' "
"Pardon?"
"It's what Morpheus said to me the day Roland took me in to see her." Roland must have been only too glad to get rid of Morpheus if, even at that time, the man was spouting such phrases. Ghost wondered if Roland lamented Trinity's decision to follow Morpheus onto his own ship. If he knew what you knew, he wouldn't, a voice laughed in his head. Poor Roland. No pity for the straightlaced. They didn't want pity, either, they wanted results without bullshit; he faced everyday on the Logos-his metaphysics were not welcome or open to discussion around Niobe.
"I think she meant romantically. It's too easy for him to just be a friend." She smiled up at him, "Or you."
"I can assure you it's not me. Much to my regret, I must disappoint you." And only he would know just how much it disappointed him.
"So, what then?"
"I wish I had your answer, sister, dear."
She balked at this. "No witty quotations? No words of wisdom from long-dead scholars?
"In case you hadn't noticed, the study of love has not been mine to undertake in this lifetime. I seek to transcend the body, not to remain a slave to it."
"So, I'm a slave, am I? Them's fighting words, little brother." Trinity rolled fluidly into a crouch and stood, hands automatically fisting at her sides. Ghost cocked his head, bent his arm, and pushed against the rock. His momentum carried him backwards to face her on his feet, the rock between them. His hands came up, palms open, one extended towards Trinity, the other bent to protect his chest. Trinity mirrored him, her hands still in fists. "Whenever you're ready," she called, feigning sweetness, "it's your ass."
"We'll see."
And the dance began again.