Title: Choices and Chances: Chapter Nineteen

Author: Stormhawk

Chapter Word Count: 1831

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The bullet slammed into the wall beside him, but it had been so close that the flesh on his cheek was grazed and burnt.

He fell backward as the panel to the secret stair opened.

He ran up the stairs.

"I was so fucking close!" he heard her yell. "How the fuck could I miss? He so gets a slow death now!"

Smith bounded up the stairs, knowing death was just behind him. He burst through the door at the other end of the stairs and found himself in the grand entranceway, or at least he assumed so by it's imposing nature.

He turned back toward the stair and watched as Stef ran out. He took a couple of steps back and then waited for her next move. There was no way out, and he deserved whatever happened, so he wasn't going to try and run anymore.

Carlson was just behind her, and Mero was behind him, the Frenchman never ran for anything.

Smith stared as the Desert Eagle was raised against him, he'd never expected that the standard agent weapon would be used to end an agent's life. It was a little too ironic.

Mero walked up beside her, the side of his coat just brushing her left arm, "what are you waiting for?"

"For you to catch your breath boss, so you can enjoy this."

"How considerate."

"I'm quite nice once you get to know me." She turned from Smith and ran her hand down the sleeve, feeling the texture, "I love the coat boss, think I can get one?"

"We shall discuss your wardrobe when you finish Smith."

"But I want to take my time," she said with a smile, "cause him all of the pain he caused me."

She slipped a hand into his pocket, "oh, it's silk lined."

"I will have nothing but the best."

"For the world's best trafficker of information, you deserve nothing less than the finest quality in everything." She removed her hand from his pocket and sighed. "Well, I guess I can finish with him a little quicker than I had anticipated, we all have lives to get on with."

Stef chuckled and aimed her gun at him, "back up, against that wall. This is an execution, and I'm going to do it in the traditional way."

Smith raised his arms and started to back up, "at least tell me that this is you doing this, or if they've corrupted you, tell me that at least."

"This is me, and I know exactly what I'm doing, Agent Smith."

"You've become the enemy." And it was his fault.

"Save it. I've had it with you."

He was now backed up against the wall. He stared down at her is disbelief. "Now," she whispered, "it's time for you to fall...."

She moved in close and pressed the gun to his head with one hand and pushed her key into the lock with the other. "...Angel Smith."

In one swift move, she turned the lock and the handle, then spun and shot a few shots wildly toward but not at the exiles and then turned and pushed Smith through the door. Slamming it behind them, she shot out the hinges and somewhat relaxed.

Smith breathed a sigh of relief, "for a while there, I thought..."

She aimed the gun back up at him, "what did you think that you aren't thinking now?"

Unafraid, he pushed the gun arm away and wrapped his arms around her in a tight hug. She tried to push him away, but after a moment she dropped her gun and hugged him back, before resting her head on his chest and sobbing.

"I hate you!" she screamed through her tears.

"I know," he said as tears fell down his cheeks. "I know." He let her go, "don't forgive me, I've caused you nothing but pain, and my actions in the last few days have been utterly unforgivable." He hung his head, "I won't blame you if you walk away the Agency and go back to the exiles, they seemed to understand you better than I ever have. At least with them you won't...at least with them you'll be able to have some semblance of the life I stole from you."

"I would be dead anyway, power plant body was screwed up remember? So you didn't steal anything."

"I stole your life from you when you were two. If I had wiped your memories like I should have, you wouldn't have been plagued by questions and curiosity your whole life, you wouldn't have looked, you would have been normal."

"Normal people suck."

"Go Stef, this will be your only chance to get away from me."

"What makes you think I want to get away from you?" she asked as she wiped her eyes on the back of her sleeve.

"But..."

"I still hate you for leaving me in hell and for choosing Ivy over me, but I understand why you did it. I really do. I hate you for what you said to me outside your cell, you're a jerk for giving into Mero and giving up your security hacks, Jones is going to have to go over me with a fine tooth comb my code is so screwed up thanks to that, but we're family Smith."

"Family?"

"Yeah, family. No matter how much we hate them sometimes, the ones we love, our family, are the ones we would die for and the ones we would do anything for. That's why after all this, I can't walk away from you."

"I..."

"It's going to take a while, but I think we're going to be ok? Don't you? We love people for their flaws and we have so many of those I'll think we'll be stuck with each other for a very long time."

Smith smiled, "let's go home."

They began walking down the alley, "one question," he said, "what were you doing to The Merovingian?"

She pulled a flash disk from her pocket and waved it in front of his face, "he had a copy of the hacks on this, I knew everything that computer did so I knew about it. If I hadn't got it back it would have all been for nothing."

"Oh, ok."

She smirked and crushed the disk under the heel of her shoe.

Smith and Stef walked through the doors of Agency, and the guards just stared. Both of the normally immaculately-dressed agents weren't in anywhere near full uniform and what they were wearing of it was dirty, dusty, muddy or covered in blood. The agents stared at them and they didn't ask any questions.

They took the elevator up to Jones' lab. The tech agent was slowly tapping at the keys of his laptop, doing work, but very slowly, as if he didn't want to do what he was doing.

"Jones..." Smith said to alert him to their presence, as he hadn't seemed to notice them coming in. the slightly built agent swiveled in his chair and his green eyes lit up as he looked at them.

"I'm so glad to see both of you," he said with a smile. "Are you all right?"

"We're fine," Smith said with a nod.

"I need a damn vacation," Stef said as she sat down on the slab in front of Jones.

"Well if you're alright, perhaps we should inform Clarke..." Jones suggested.

"I will do that," Smith said as he concentrated for a moment and required back his suit and shifted away. Despite the virus, he was still connected to the system.

"Well, I guess I can get rid of that," Jones said as he pointed to empty Smith shell on a slab in the corner of the lab.

"Please do, it's creepy."

Jones nodded and the empty avatar disappeared.

"Where's Agent Dirt?" she asked Jones. "I need to give him a violent piece of my mind," she sighed, "Jones, is there a move in VWS where you can like rip out his liver or burn him at the stake or something? That sounds like real fun right about now..."

He looked up at her, "no, I didn't design it with that kind of violence in mind. And Brown is..." he said and then trailed off to an unintelligible mumble.

"I don't like the way you trailed off, where is he?"

"He is in the Mainframe, being debriefed and sub-scanned."

"English please Jones, I have had the longest couple of days."

"He is being debriefed for not requesting permission from the Mainframe before making a deal with the exiles, and a sub-scan is where every one of a program's subroutines is checked for errors."

"Great...now he's going to hate me even more. He didn't make the trade to get Smith back, he made it to get rid of me."

"I assumed as much, but at least he will be gone for seventy-two hours."

"I think that's the first good news I've had all week."

"You look very tired."

"I think I'm going to..." She looked up when someone cleared his throat at the door. She looked up and saw Smith, "if you say we have to talk to Clarke, I am going to kill you. For real this time."

"It won't take long."

"I am not coherent enough to talk to him, I need..." Smith gave her a Look. "I need to get my suit on and talk to the most boring program in existence?"

"Precisely."

"Oh...joy of all joys..."

Three hours, twenty-seven minutes and nineteen seconds later Clarke was finally finished with his questioning and was satisfied with their report.

"Now can I take off?" Stef asked Smith as they walked back toward his office.

"Don't you think you should stick around for a while?" he asked as he opened the door. "Considering what just happened?"

"Considering what just happened, I need a shower, I need to go to sleep, I need to relax. I need to tell your little girl that you're fine. I need to tell my boyfriend I'm alive."

"No, it's not a good idea. Especially not after you admitted to temporarily siding with the exiles. Even if you didn't tell him quite everything."

"If Clarke could accept my reasoning then what's the problem?"

He sighed, "it's because you were human."

"I don't understand..."

"Out of all the agents you are seen to be the one who the exiles would most accept a change of sides from. You chose to be loyal to mainframe, something that could change if you changed your mind."

"So you're saying that after complete loyalty it still thinks I can go off on a whim and betray everything?"

"No, just that you are more likely to."

"Great. Just great."

"This is not my doing."

"Well, you know something Smith? I've really thought about it and you know what? I quit."

He stared at her for a full minute. "What?" he finally asked.

"I said I quit."

"Stef?"

"I quit."