I really do apologize. But stuff happens, ya know? Anyway, I never had any intention of stopping with the last chapter - I'm not that cruel, and I just though it would be fun to mess with people's heads. Anywho, I don't intend it to take this long again.
---
Death and Rebirth
Chapter Fifteen
Reunion
---
"I am not going!" The young girl was indignant. She had the couch's throw blanket pulled over her head, effectively hiding her short, jet black hair. Ice blue eyes peeked out, glaring slightly into the doorway across from her.
"Yes you are," her mother called from the kitchen, completely unperturbed by the strength of her daughter's voice. "It's just down to the basement." She reappeared in the living room with her keys, and picked up her full laundry basket. "Come on."
"I am not going anywhere looking like this." Her voice was at a more normal volume, but the tone remained the same.
"It is just a haircut, stop acting like the sky is falling."
"You know I like my hair long, Mom, why'd you make me cut it?"
The older woman sighed, brushing her own hair behind her ear. "Sweetheart, it's better like this. It kept getting into your face before, and it got all tangled." Her daughter narrowed her eyes, pouted and crossed her arms over her chest. "It'll be easier to handle for both of us. Come on, lets go."
"No."
The door was already open, now, and she was halfway through it. She turned over her shoulder, looking stern. "This is not a request. Besides," she said, trying her best to brighten up, "there's a new family that's moved in down the hall. They'll be there, and they have a daughter your age, you'll like her."
The girl did not move. Dark face returning, her mother set her laundry basket just outside the door, and dragged her daughter - and her own basket - through it, shutting it before she could go back. She practically had to shove her to make her move.
"I don't want to go!" Back to whining. "I look ugly like this!"
"Sweetheart, you look beautiful, same as always."
"I do not!" People in the apartments down the hall probably could have heard her. "I look like a boy!"
"You do not look like a boy."
"Yes I do!"
"Fine," her mother resigned. "You look like a boy. Why is that such a big tragedy?" She pushed the call button for the elevator, and the doors slid open immediately. She pushed the girl forward with a gentle nudge from her basket.
"Because girls are better!" They stepped out six floors later, in the basement - the young girl still being shoved along. "But Mom, everyone is down there this time of day, they'll see me."
"Stop it." She seemed to have finally lost her patience. "You're overreacting." She had little difficulty balancing the laundry basket against her hip so that she could open the laundry room door. Although she managed to pull her daughter along as well, she could not persuade her to come out from behind her in an attempt to hide from the rest of the tenants. "Look," she said after a moment, pointing, "there they are. Rachel!"
She peeked out from behind her mother to see a blond woman, and her even blonder daughter approach them. In that moment of inattention, her mother tugged her around to face them. The other girl looked no more willing to be there than she.
"Come on," her mother whispered as she forced her to take a few steps farther. "Sweetheart," the blond woman said to her daughter as they approached, "this is Eva Harper and her daughter Amelia."
"Amelia," she said, holding her daughter in place with a hand to her shoulder, "Rachel and Kelly Miller."
"Say hi, Kelly," Rachel said sweetly. Nothing. "Kelly," she said in a low, warning tone.
"Hi."
Amelia stayed quiet, until she felt a sharp nudge in her back. "Hi." Both girls stared at each other briefly, before looking back to their quickly talking mothers.
"All right. There's a few washers over there you can use," Eva said, pointing to the far side of the room. "We'll be over here if you need anything."
The two girls watched their mothers' retreating backs for a long minute, then turned around and headed towards the two empty machines. They did not watch each other, they did not speak - each acted as if she was completely alone. This continued through measuring out soap, digging loose change from pockets, and sorting clothes - and they still did not acknowledge each other. They did notice, however.
"Why do you have your hair like that?" Kelly asked absently, shoving a shirt into the machine. "It's too short."
"My mom made me cut it. It was really long before." That little, nearly-precious angry look returned.
"I thought you were a boy when you walked in."
The look of anger changed, was mixed with a certain cynical satisfaction as she marched back to her mother. "At least somebody in here can tell a bad haircut when they see it," she muttered, loudly.
"Oh, what now?" she complained.
"She -" Amelia pointed back to the other girl "- says I look like a boy, too."
Rachel's face grew stern. "Kelly," she began as her daughter joined them, "did you tell her she looked like a boy?"
"Well she does -"
"Kelly, that is very rude."
"I told you I'm not stupid for thinking that," Amelia whispered under her breath to her mother.
"Amelia."
"Apologize." Rachel's hands instinctively went to her hips. "Now."
"But she -"
"Apologize."
"...sorry...."
"Good. Now I want you two to be nice. All right?"
"Yeah," Kelly muttered, as both girls quietly meandered back to their laundry.
Sighing, Rachel leaned against the washer, and put her head into her hands. "I'm beginning to think that today wasn't the best time to try to get them to be friends.
---
"So how come you're in such a bad mood?" Amelia asked, bored, as she slumped against the machine, hugging her knees to her chest.
"Who said I was?" Kelly's tone was equally bored, and a little annoyed by the question. She absently kicked the toe of her tennis shoe against the running washer.
"You are. I can tell." She picked at a small spot of mud that had long since dried onto her shoe.
"How?"
She shrugged. "I don't know. I just watch people and I can usually figure out what mood they're in." Kelly accepted that answer, and hoisted herself to the top of the washer and sat there. "So why are you in a bad mood?"
"I never wanted to move here," she muttered. "My dad got some stupid job and they dragged me over here without even asking me if I wanted to come."
Amelia looked up at her. She was sitting cross legged on the washer, chin resting carelessly in her hand. She was rather angry, and annoyed.
"And to top it off, my stupid brother's bedroom is right next to mine now, so I'll wake up every time he cries at night."
"How old is he?"
"Not even one yet." She looked slightly angrier for a moment, then a thought occurred to her. "Please tell me that school's at least going to be tolerable."
"Well...." She wasn't sure what to say. She assumed that there were better schools out there - or at least schools where she wouldn't have to go around bruising sixth-graders' shins for being such idiots. "Who are you going to have, do you know?"
Kelly squinted at an invisible point across the room, trying to remember. "Miss... Swanson. I think."
"That's my teacher. But a little tip, if a boy named Kevin with really messy hair and freckles says he has something cool to show you, don't go. Kick him or hit him on the back of the head or something if he doesn't leave you alone." Kelly decided not to ask why. The two of them waited in silence for several minutes, until Amelia's stomach growled, and she realized that she hadn't eaten anything since the night before. "Are you hungry?"
"I don't know. A little, I guess."
She stood up and checked the timer on the washer. Plenty of time. "C'mon. There's a McDonald's on the corner." She took the small pile of change she had taken from the pockets of her jeans, and the slightly larger pile her mother had accumulated, and motioned for Kelly to follow her. "Come on."
---
Rachel put the first load of laundry into the dryer, set it to high, and turned it on. Her whites were next into the washer. There was a minor problem, however, one which she did not remember or realize until just then.
"Do you have any bleach?" she asked. "We haven't really gone shopping yet."
"Upstairs," Eva replied simply, folding a towel and adding setting it in the basket. "Give Amelia my keys, she'll run up and get it."
Rachel took the keys that were hanging just over the side of the hamper, and set off toward the far side of the room, to the girls. However, she stopped short when, scanning the area, then the entire room, she saw no saw no sign of them. She quickly turned over her shoulder to the other woman. "Where are they?"
---
"What are you supposed to do around here for fun?"
"Movies. Central Park. There's some smaller parks around here, some arcades and stuff. And this place." Amelia indicated the interior of the McDonald's with a nod of her head.
"Do you come here with your friends a lot?" Kelly asked, trying to make conversation.
"I come here by myself or with my parents. I don't have any friends."
"How come?"
"Everybody at my school is stupid. I don't want to be friends with any of them. None of the girls want to do anything but play with Barbies and steal their moms' makeup and use it. And none of the guys want to play with a girl. Or they just want me to be Lois who just sits in her office all day and does nothing while they're all playing Superman."
"Huh," she mumbled, popping a fry into her mouth. "So it wasn't just the people at my old school."
Amelia couldn't help but laugh then, and she nearly spat out her Coke in the process, and soon both girls were laughing quietly in their corner table.
"Kelly!"
Her head snapped up, startled, at the sound of her mother's concerned, and very angry, voice.
"Kelly, don't you ever scare me like that again!" She swept her daughter up in a hug - it was the only sign of affection and kindness that Amelia would see directed at her for the rest of the day. "What were you thinking, Kelly?" she heard Rachel say as she dragged her daughter off. "You know the rules, you aren't -"
"But she -" Kelly pointed back to the booth where Amelia still sat. "- was with me, she knew where we were going -"
"I don't care if she was with you...." Their voices faded away as they passed through the door and onto the sidewalk.
"Why is her mom so mad? I was here too."
"Well," Eva said, pulling her from the seat with just a bit more force than was necessary, "you'll have plenty of time to think that over. You're grounded for a week."
"What?" she nearly screamed. Her mother pulled her along by her wrist, ignoring her protests. "I didn't do anything, you always let me come down here! I didn't break any rules!"
"You should've known better than to bring Kelly without asking her mother." She left it at that, not saying another word.
---
"What was all that about?" Tank asked as Morpheus entered the mess hall.
"It was the Vigilant. Their crew is all full up, but there are some potentials they've been watching that have some promise. They asked us to watch them." He took one of the tin bowls from the cupboard and filled it with the dinner serving of goop. "Trinity," he continued, taking his usual seat. She looked to him over her shoulder as she cleaned out her own bowl. "Your shift is first, I'd like you to check them out for me."
"Sure," she said, circling around the table to the doorway. Just as she left, she heard Tank gloating about winning the card game he had been playing, and Cypher complaining about having to take his nightshifts for a whole week.
IN the core, Trinity spent the first ninety minutes searching through the Matrix for three of their four new prospects, watching for little details to be added to the brief profiles they have been sent. The three seemed fairly promising, and would make good additions to any crew. She made brief notes on each of their abilities and skills before moving on to the fourth and final prospect.
Each profile the Vigilant had sent included the potential's real name and hacker alias, a brief paragraph detailing why they were being targeted, and an RSI picture compiled from their code. It was this profile of the forth potential that Trinity glanced at before she began the search - and it was that profile that made her stop dead in her tracks and stare, open-mouthed, for several very long minutes.
She eventually snapped out of it, and her fingers flew over the keys at lightning speed, running the search. She tapped her fingers and stared at the profile as she waited. time had changed that face so little....
Her fixation turned to the Code when the search was completed, and stayed there until the end of her shift.
All the while, he Oracle's casual words from so long ago rang through her head. "Don't worry about her, you'll see her soon enough."
"My God...."
---
"Hey," Tank said casually folding his arms across the back of the chair just as the computer alarm sounded, officially ending Trinity's shift. "Watching someone?" he asked, seeing that the streaming Matrix code was following a woman down a street.
"Yeah," she trailed off, absorbed in the code. She pulled herself back to reality when the woman stepped into a drugstore. "One of the prospects from the Vigilant."
"Okay," he said with a yawn. "You go get some shut-eye, I'll watch her." Once again, she appeared not to be listening. Her hands were folded, and pressed against pursed lips. "Trin?"
"I need to go in and talk to her."
He stared blankly. "Okay." He put a hand to her shoulder, attempting to pull her out of the chair and steer her towards the lower deck. "I think you're just a little bit too sleep deprived. Why don't you -"
"Tank," she snapped, "I'm serious. I have to see her."
"Trinity," he sighed - he really didn't want to play this game with her in the dead of night. "You've been here for four years, you know the rules. No -"
She cut in sternly, "No contact with prospects until we unplug them, I know, but it's too late for that, and I have to see her."
Rolling his eyes, not bothering to hide it, he humored her, though his patience was running thin. "Trinity, you've waited a week -" Already having lost her patience, she began setting up her chair. "- You can wait until we unplug her to talk."
She didn't stop. "I had to wait a week, Tank. You're the only one I trust, and Cypher had taken your shifts. If I ended them early, he would have wondered why, and this is no one's business but my own."
"What makes you so sure -"
"Tank," she was back to him in an instant, and took his hand to emphasize her words. "Please. I need to see her. I'll take your shifts if you help me and if anyone finds out, you were never involved." She watched him intently as he thought. "Please."
It took a while, but he finally sighed, and slid into the operator's chair. "All right."
---
She entered her tiny apartment silently, not wanting any sound to travel through the thin walls to her sleeping neighbors. She deposited her coat and backpack onto the chair by the door and went straight to the kitchen. She didn't turn on any lights until she got there, filled the teakettle with water, and set it on the stove. Returning to the living room, she switched on an overhead light while she slowly sifted through her mail.
"Switch," said a voice from behind her, terrifying her, "if you insist on forgoing the deadbolt, at least make sure you know who's sitting on your couch."
She whipped around and stared, dumbfounded, at the woman sitting so casually at one end of the couch, resting her head against her hand. In the next moment they had met in the middle of the room and were hugging fiercely.
"Trinity...." Switch finally whispered after several minutes. "Where the hell have you been?"
She laughed quietly. "It's a long story." Both women pulled back to regard one another, looking at every facial feature, every detail that had stayed the same, and everything that had changed - and they were locked in a tight embrace once again.
A whistling sound suddenly came from the kitchen, quickly growing louder and more obnoxious with each moment. Pulling away from Trinity, a still stunned Switch asked, "Do you want some coffee?" even as she set off towards the kitchen. She took the kettle off of the stove and pulled took two mugs from the cabinet. Only when she had filled one with the steaming water and added the coffee did she look over her shoulder to see Trinity leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed over her chest, and carrying in her eyes the stern look of a mother. "What?"
"I expected that you would be upset that I was gone," she stated nonchalantly. "I'd be hurt if you weren't."
"But...."
"But that you would switch to instant and stay with it worries me."
Laughing, she mixed the coffee into the second cup and pressed it into Trinity's hands. "You act as if you've been drinking stuff flown in right from South America."
"Actually, the closest thing to coffee where I live tastes like crap," she muttered as she drank. "I only tolerate it because there's nothing else. I'm just surprised you've willingly lowered your standards."
Switch rolled her eyes as she added two packets of sugar and a little creamer into her mug.
Seeing that, Trinity turned back to the couch as she said, "Glad to see that some things haven't changed." She smiled to herself as they sat, loving the ease with which they returned to their old, friendly ways. "So how've you been?"
"Better, worse. I got a full scholarship for the university. Turns out that damn school was good for something after all."
"And this place?" Trinity indicated the small apartment with a small nod.
She was avoiding the questions that she knew were coming. It may have been four years since their last meeting, but Switch could still tell that much in an instant. "My mom got a job at the New York Times. She's helping, and I share this place with a girl who's in some of my classes."
"Right," Trinity mused, remembering seeing that in the last week. "Her. Is she as intolerable as she seems?"
"Trinity, stop it," Switch snapped. "Where the hell have you been?"
The mug had been halfway up to her mouth, and she slowly brought it down, sighing heavily. "Like I said. We don't have enough time for me to explain." She waited silently, not watching her friend, and shook her head with an almost sad smirk. "You wouldn't believe me even if we did."
"Really?"
"I guarantee it."
She smirked. "Then you're not going to tell me what you're doing with a gun on the back of your belt?"
Trinity started slightly, coughing a few times from the coffee that had gone down the wrong way. A small, almost rueful smile appeared on her lips. "No."
"All right," she said impatiently. Trinity was still Trinity, but Switch didn't remember her being this enigmatic four years ago. "At least tell me what insane thing you did to get yourself kidnapped by terrorists -"
"Kidnapped?" She sat a bit straighter and regarded her friend carefully. "Who said I was kidnapped?"
An even, puzzled gaze held hers for a minute before she answered, "Everyone."
Her eyes closed, and she shook her head slowly. "If there's one thing I've learned, Switch, it's that this world is one big lie. But, for the record, Morpheus didn't kidnap me. I didn't have to go if I didn't want to."
She sipped her coffee, staring at some point on the wall. "So you're willingly helping terrorists." There was no malice in her voice, no judgment, just the obvious frustration, and the underlying concern she had always had for her best friend.
"Switch," she said strongly, and waited until she held the other woman's eyes before continuing. "He's not a terrorist. And you know me better than that."
"People change."
"Trust me. I am helping him, but he's not a terrorist. I'm doing the right thing."
Switch watched her for a moment, before shaking her head in aggravation and standing up, suddenly restless. She paced around for a moment, then took her coffee back to the kitchen and stood beside the counter, drinking slowly. This was Trinity, who had been her best friend for years. If there was one thing about her that stood out in her memory, it was how much she wanted to right every wrong she came across. Big or small, whether she would be able to change it or not, she always wanted to fix things. She even remembered a time, just after they had met, when two sixth-graders had been teasing one of the younger students for something she couldn't quite remember. Trinity had told them to leave the boy alone. They refused, and were given one week-long black eye each. Even though it had gotten Trinity herself into serious trouble, the younger boy never had more problems.
She knew Trinity better than anyone in the world. She knew the kind of things she felt she had to do, and what she did and did not consider worth it. Or at least.... she knew what it had been four years ago. Morpheus was mentioned every now and then, an article on the second or third page of the newspaper. There was almost always a body count - sometimes a staggering one. And if Trinity had been helping him, who was to say that she hadn't had a hand in that? Why were there so many deaths if he was not a terrorist? What kind of goal could Trinity set that would require such drastic measures?
She raised her eyes to the glass door of the cabinet, to the barely visible reflection of Trinity on the couch, watching her turned back. She looked away, and stayed against the counter. She didn't have any way to prove or disprove what she had been told. Most people would tell her that she had no obligation to believe a word of Trinity's story. Still, this was her best friend. She always had been, and the trust that had once existed between them had not completely faded in the last four years.
Slowly, she refilled her mug with coffee, and returned to her place on the end of the couch. "It's not like I'm under any obligation to believe you," she finally stated, blandly. "I don't have any proof that you're telling the truth. You certainly don't deserve my trust after what's happened since you left."
"I know." A very small smile appeared. She knew what Switch really meant, even without it being said.
"For God's sake, Trin," she said quietly, and Trinity smiled at the familiar, comfortable use of the nickname, "I thought you were dead."
Her eyes narrowed. "What?"
"Yeah." She still hadn't looked at her friend, and was rubbing tension out of her forehead. "Everybody did, until you started showing up when Morpheus did."
She waited before speaking, hoping her voice would make Switch look up, "How long have you been looking for him?"
"Started about a year after you left." She stared to the window now - still not meeting her friend's eyes. It was raining, the streaming water on the windowpane looking identical to the Matrix code, as seen in the real world. "Figured if you were dead, I could at least figure out what the son of a bitch had done with you."
"No." She shook her head. "He didn't -"
"Do anything to you." She sighed quietly. "I know, I know."
"He's really nice. You'll like him."
"Will I now?"
"You'll like most of them, once you meet them."
Switch eyed her suspiciously. Trinity was thinking, remembering the first time she had met each of them, trying to recall her initial impressions. She didn't remember most of those, as she had met most of them when she had just been unplugged, and those memories were part of a blurred, jumbled period in time. "And by the way," she said as a thought struck her, "you remember how I was always convinced something was seriously wrong with the world, and you never believed me?" She smirked. "I was right."
"I know."
Trinity looked up from her coffee, and slowly raised an eyebrow.
"Let's just say I'm not as skeptical as I used to be."
"When did this happen?"
She could have laughed. "I thought you were crazy. But then you left. Everyone was making too much out of it for that to be the case. And I thought about it. It doesn't seem like such an insane notion now."
"Well." She settled more comfortably into the couch. "Good to know you don't think I'm crazy anymore."
"Trinity," she laughed, "I know you're crazy. But now I also know you're not as crazy as I thought."
Both were laughing now, setting their cups on the coffee table so that they wouldn't spill. "I guess that's a -"
A shrill ring broke through their laughter and silenced them. Trinity's eye's fell shut, and a barely audible growl emanated from her throat. Standing from the couch and quickly moving to a corner of the room, she pulled the cell phone from her coat pocket and clicked it open. "Hello?"
"You've got about fifteen minutes before your shift is up and Morpheus comes out. You'd better get a move on."
"Tank," she said quietly, "it won't even take five minutes to get to the exit, I have plenty of time."
"You know Morpheus always comes out early." He sounded almost sympathetic.
"I know," she sighed, and hung up. She folded her arms across her chest, still clutching the phone and stared at the carpet. "Switch, I have to go."
"You just got -"
"I know," she snapped, still not turning around to face her. "I have to."
"Trinity," Switch began quietly, "what are you up to?" There was no tone of accusation in her voice. Only worry.
"I'll tell you, I promise." She sighed and turned as Switch came to meet her in the corner. "But it'll have to wait a while."
"How long?"
"Few weeks." She was still reluctant to meet her friend's eyes. "I probably won't see you until then." Her eyes were fixated on some point beyond the windowpanes as she prepared herself to leave - again - when Switch suddenly had her arms around her shoulders, hugging her tightly. It took a few seconds, but Trinity finally hugged her back, just as strongly. She broke away several long moments later. "I'll see you soon, Switch," she said quietly, and silently disappeared through the door.
---
Amelia climbed over her bed to the window, pressing her forehead against the glass. She could barely make out one side of Kelly's face, illuminated from the light of the open living room window. She seemed to sulking.
Glancing at her closed bedroom door, she pried the window open and climbed through it, making her way down the catwalk. She sat wordlessly, just a few feet from the other girl.
"I'm sorry I got you into trouble," she muttered. Kelly leaned away from her, resting her head on a hand and grumbling wordlessly. "How long are you grounded for?" she asked tentatively, trying to lighten the mood.
"A week."
"Oh." She waited, but nothing was said, so she ventured further. "I got a couple of days."
Silence.
"Are you mad -"
"My parents are so stupid!" she yelled, startling Amelia. "I'm not stupid enough to go wandering around by myself when I've never been here before, and they should trust me, it's not like they didn't drill that into my head when we were driving here -"
Amelia slid a few inches to her left, away from Kelly.
"- and I didn't do anything wrong, I was with you -"
"Kelly -"
"- and fall break just started, so I can't even go to school for most of the day! I have to stay here all day and listen to my stupid brother cry!" She slumped against the brick wall, nearly blue in the face from her long-winded rant.
Amelia sat a foot or two away, staring at her, dumbfounded. She had not expected such a display.
Suddenly, as if on cue, a cry came from inside the apartment, whining and wailing. Kelly, in turn, slumped lower down the wall and covered her ears, moaning.
And then, for some reason she would never be able to explain, some feeling she would never be able to account for, Amelia burst out laughing, and could not bring herself to stop.