Title: Choices and Chances: Chapter Five

Author: Stormhawk

Chapter Word Count: 1318

Summary: Smithy ain't dead...and that's not all...

Notes: I'm not putting any notes, no delay, read it!

Please read and Review.

After he had been shot in the back with the dart, Smith's consciousness had grown dim until it had faded out. And after a while he had come back into being, and fallen. Smith had fallen, down through darkness toward the unseen bottom.

He blacked out on impact. He woke up some time later, next to a rough orange concrete wall and lying on a floor of much the same color, but not texture. The room was dark, the only light coming from a few dim bulbs.

Smith sat up and looked around in surprise, he had absolutely no idea where he was. It looked like it was underground, at least it had that feel to it. He was on the edge of a large room, there was a barred barricade, but it was open at the moment.

The large room beyond the bars was sparse, but he could see a few dark shapes - people presumably - moving about. Beyond that, he could see a few dark hallways leading back further into the place.

"Hello?" he called, this had to be the exiles' doing, unless of course, somehow the rebels had managed to pull his code out of the Matrix and this was a construct program they were using to distract him. He dismissed that, that was giving the rebels way to much credit.

"Why haven't you disappeared yet?" a voice from off to the side asked him. He turned and saw a woman - judging by the voice anyway, she was wearing a large and heavy cloak hewn from a rough material.

The voice sounded familiar. A voice he could never forget. But he wasn't going to jump to any conclusions yet.

"Disappeared?" he asked as he stood up. "Why would I disappear?"

"I know what you are," she said with a sniff. "You're just a feedback error. I do like seeing you again though."

That comment clinched it, the voice was the one he remembered. But that was impossible...wasn't it?

"Where are we?" he asked.

"There's no point telling you, you're not real," she whispered sadly. "I know that for a fact. Nothing in here is real. This is hell, or something. You can't leave, you can't die, you can't live. It's nothing, it's nowhere, these people if you want to call them that are no one, they have ceased to be anything they were, if they were anyone at all."

He knew the voice, he knew that he knew her voice. "Take off your hood," he said as he walked over to her.

"Why should I listen to you? You're just some apparition. Feedback error. Coding reflects want you want to see and hear, but not touch."

He reached across and grabbed her hood, her hand shot up to stop his hand and then she froze. "I can feel you, I can touch you."

"I'm real, I'm really here."

"And you're warm."

"So?" he asked, not seeing how that was important compared with who she was.

"It goes away after a while, you forget what warm and cold feels like, there's not really any heat or cold here. No seasons. I can feel your warmth." She reached out her hand and touched his face.

He extended his fingers so that he could hold her face. Trembling, he reached up with his other hand and pulled her hood back. Tears welled up in his eyes as he saw for himself who she was, that it really was her. "Ivy..." he whispered, almost afraid to believe his own senses.

"God I wish you were real," Ivy mumbled as she closed her eyes. "You have no idea how much I wish you were real. The feedback errors must be getting stronger, it can't really be you."

"Ivy?" he whispered, hoping that she wouldn't disappear. "Is that you?"

"Yeah, but it's not you."

"You died. I saw your body."

"I came here. But..." she shook her head.

He kissed her. Holding her thin form close against him, he kissed her as tears rolled down his face. Then he took a step back, "Ivy?" it really was her, that had been the proof he needed. Whatever this place was, she was real and she was here. Her body may be dead in the Matrix, but something of her had survived.

A single tear rolled down her face, "Is it really you?"

"You have to believe me. I don't know how this can be, but I don't care."

"Neither do I," she said as she kissed him back.

"I can't believe you're alive," Smith said as he held her. "I never thought I would see you again."

"Stop talking," she said with a playful smile, "we are going to make the most of this time, just in case this is a dream or something."

"And what do you have in mind?" he asked her with a smile.

"The same thing I had in mind the day I died," she said as she pulled him toward the room she had claimed as her own.

Later.

"How long has it been?" Ivy asked him as she wrapped her arms around Smith's chest.

"A little over ten years," he replied as his fingers traced intricate patterns over her bare back.

"That long?"

"You didn't know?"

"You don't really have a good sense of time in this place, it's as though it doesn't really exist here," she replied as she pulled the thin sheet up over them both.

"Do you have any idea of where here is?"

"What's the last thing you remember?"

He thought back, "something hit me in the back, a dart I think. It had a virus in it."

"That's quite a bit nicer than the last thing I remember before coming here." She shuddered and he pulled her closer.

"You don't have to say anything if you don't want."

"If I don't tell you who I am I supposed to tell?" She took a deep breath. "I was finding a nice dress, remember we were going to go on a date?" He nodded. "I had been hoping to do what we just did then...and then these two guys grabbed me and pulled me into this alley, I though they were just some punks...then I looked at them. They were werewolves, and there was also a vamp, and a guy who was like eight feet tall." She grimaced, "the tall guy threw something at my eyes and then I couldn't see. I was fighting back, they were making enough noise for me to hear where they were, but I couldn't beat all of them. They shoved me and I fell down, I tried to require my earpiece but it wouldn't appear. I heard a door slam and then the wolves started. Their claws were so sharp," she took a deep breath, "then someone hit me in the back of the head and I fell down. I just knew I was going to die, and there was nothing I could do about it. Someone poured something into my mouth and then...one of the wolves tore out my throat."

He had seen the injuries on the body, but now it was worse that he knew how she had gotten them. After she hadn't come to see him that night, he had shifted to her location and found her body dumped carelessly in a dumpster.

"I woke up here, I was sore for a while but I had none of the injuries. I just figured this is what death was like, not very grandiose, at least in hell there is fire and some kind of experience, every day here is a like a hell, because there's just nothing. And there's no one."

"You're not alone anymore."

"I know," she said as she kissed him again. They were both determined to make the most of their time together, and not waste even one minute.