Title: Choices and Chances: Chapter Twenty-two

Author: Stormhawk

Chapter Word Count: 2113

C&C finishes with this chapter! YAYNESS! And for those who don't know, it IS LONGER THAN FOS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

C&C final word count: 34768

FOS: 33587

As for what I'm doing next: A short afterward to this, probably just a couple of thousand words, then maybe two chaps of SMU and then the novel. Ok?

Please read and Review.

Smith walked down an empty back street, and looked up at the back of Ivy's apartment. It was clear by the furniture that it was occupied, he somewhat wished that it wasn't. If it had been empty, he could have gone up there, and looked for something to remind him of the days when she was still alive. Any small reminder of their time together, something besides his memories.

Their first date had been in her apartment, she had insisted on cooking him dinner, and afterward she had taught him how to dance. The night had been strangely surreal, but a memory he held deep in his heart. His first date, with the first woman he had ever loved.

Perhaps, the only woman he would ever love like that.

"I knew you would be here," a voice said.

He spun and drew his gun, and aimed it at the shapeshifter, Kyla. "Wait, please wait!" she pleaded as she backed away from him.

"Why should I?"

"Because somewhere between downloading your girlfriend's memories and spending time with you, I think I fell in love with you."

"You're lying and I don't intend on putting up with anymore of your lies."

"No, please, listen to me..."

Smith pulled out his gun and pointed it toward her. "Thanks to you exiles, I have lost the woman I love twice. I am going to make every effort to exterminate you people once and for all."

"I have all of her memories, I remember how much she loved you and how much you loved her. I remember that the last thing she ever thought about was you."

"Do you want to know the difference between you and my Ivy?" The exile nodded.

"The difference is," Smith said as he pulled the trigger and Kyla fell to the ground, "or rather the point is that she is dead and you are a false copy of her. You defiled her memories in an effort to strike back at the system." He stared down at the body of the shapeshifter, and walked away.

Unknown to him, he was followed.

He walked, rather than shifted, to the graveyard where Ivy was buried. Unlike a lot of recruits who died who had very little close family, Ivy's parents had been around so the Agency had allowed them to deal with the...arrangements.

Recruits who died and had no close family where buried in a private graveyard with simple headstones and their name put in the obituaries. As simple as these arrangements might seem, they were in case anyone ever came looking for them. And despite their best efforts to train their recruits, the graveyard grew larger every year.

Rebel bodies, on the other hand, were simply incinerated.

He had gone to Ivy's funeral, standing at a great distance, but his enhanced senses had made it easy for him to hear and see everything, making it seem as though he was there.

Out of a need not to alarm the family, they had repaired the body first, leaving only a small wound. The cover story that was she had been a government secretary and a madman had broken into the building and killed several of the employees. With the crime rate, this explanation was easy to accept.

The graveyard was silent, a few gray clouds hung about in the air, an echo of his gloomy mood. There was no one else about, he alone seemed to be grieving today.

And then, suddenly, he wasn't alone anymore.

A rugged exile, taller than he, landed beside him. Smith pulled out his gun but the man shook his head calmly. "I just want to talk."

"Why?"

'Ivy."

"Are you pathetic traitors fixated on me? Why can't you leave her alone? You took her from me, but you won't leave her be."

"I'm not from Merv. I was in the...bowels of hell I think she called it. I was his prisoner, so I hate him as much as you do." He looked down at the agent, "and besides, no one would believe me if I said I saw Agent Smith grieving for a human."

Smith pointed his gun up at the exile's head, but the exile just laughed. "I'm pretty tough, you'd have to have a bigger caliber to get rid of me with one shot, and trust me, you won't land more than one shot on me, I'm fast as well." The were-bear reached into his coat and pulled out an old and faded envelope. "This should buy me a head start."

Smith snatched it out of his hand, "what is it?"

"Ivy was in hell, a long time ago she was anyway. She was so frail when she got there that we all treated her like she was a kid. We looked after her as best as we could but she wouldn't talk to us. After about a week or so she finally started talking. We didn't believe her at first when she said she was human, and had been your girl, but after a few months it really didn't matter anymore. She wrote this and asked me to hold onto it. It's for you, and I swear I never opened it."

"Why should I believe you? What proof do I have that this isn't another one of his tricks?"

The were-bear stared at him for a second, and then patted down all the pockets of his coat, looking for something. "Give me a minute," he said and the agent gave him a long-suffering look but the gun never wavered.

"Ah finally," Joshua said and pulled out a necklace with a pendant made out of a tie clip. "She said to give this to you."

"And you just agreed to pass these things onto me? An agent?"

'Well, I was going to mail them to you, but I caught wind of your scent so i decided to deliver them to you, like I promised."

Smith lowered his gun - but didn't put it away - "how did she die?'

"It was during one of their parties."

"Parties?"

"Most of the time they come in small groups, cause hell is a playground, a special treat for Merv's guys, but sometimes they have parties, where whole groups of them come at once. It's those times where we lose lots of people. The number of us stays roughly the same though, the cells of the chateaux are mainly just for atmosphere and for the ones he hasn't finished with yet."

"So how have you survived so long?"

"I'm a werebear, I'm tough, takes more than a bullet or two to down me, all of us have sustained injuries though."

"How long ago did she die?"

"Eight years, a party in November if my time-sense didn't completely abandon me. We all wanted to get rid of Merv's shapeshifter but he threatened to delete the whole place if we went near her, so that's why we kept to the shadows when you were there."

"How. Did. She. Die?"

"I know you loved her, but this isn't easy for me to remember either. I knew her for two years, she was like my little sister or something."

"Tell me or I'll take you apart at the seams."

"I thought she was right behind me, I really did. But then this vamp came out of nowhere, like one of the ghosts man, I'm serious. He phased right out of the wall, black phase, we couldn't even see him. She didn't have a chance."

"Do you know which vampire it was?"

"Vlad, it was Vlad. You don't even have to know him to know it was him."

"Yes, I've heard of him."

"Like the twins, he's one of Merv's choice weapons, but unlike the albinos, Vlad strikes from the darkness." Joshua shrugged, "so are you going to try and kill me now?"

"If I ever see you again, I will kill you. But for today, I will let you live."

"I guess I have to be glad of that," he said as he leapt away, landing in the tress at the side of the graveyard.

Smith wrapped the necklace around his fingers and watched the dull light reflect off his tie clip. She'd taken it off him about a month before she had...

They had only been together for three months, but it was three months he would never forget, even if he didn't think about it that often. He stared down at the necklace, she had taken the tie clip off him one night, just before she had gone to bed.

He hadn't understood it, thinking that it was one of her games or jokes, but the next day he had seen her wearing it as a necklace. She had never taken it off, she said it was like having him with her all the time. She even wore it when she had her suit on, tucked under her white shirt.

It had been many decades since he had been detached and impartial toward humans, but Ivy had shown him a side of humanity that he had never seen before. A side that they usually only showed to other humans, but she had deemed him special enough to show that side to him.

Before that, the most human thing he had done was go to a movie.

The door to his office flung open and Carol took a step in, then a sheepish look crossed her face and she knocked on the open door.

"Yes recruit?"

"If you don't stop calling me that or 'Miss Whitman' I am going to convert."

"Yes...Carol?"

She threw a newspaper down in front of him with an ad circled. "I was going to be in that movie."

A puzzled look grew on his face, "oh...I don't quite understand."

"If not for this stupid war, that would be me running from the Ultimate Hamster of Doom."

"Ultimate Hamster of Doom?"

"You know these B-grade sci-fi movies, the pick an animal at random and say it has been affected by radiation or add 'from space' after it. This time it was a hamster."

"...a hamster?"

"There were going to use a sheep, but a hamster is sooo much cuter so therefore more monstrous after the radiation hits it."

"Carol, should I be questioning your sanity?"

"Geez Smith, it's just a movie, you know."

"Actually, I don't."

"You've never seen a movie?"

"Why would I have?"

"Because they're fun," she smiled, "tell you what, there's a session about to start, let's go."

"Now?"

"Why wait?"

"Carol, I don't think I should..."

"...say no when a lady offers to pay for the movie. This doesn't happen a lot Smith, so be glad of it."

"Does it take a long time?"

"About an hour and a half, live a little Smith. Get a life."

"All right, but just this once."

Smith knelt down and kissed the headstone. Then he sat down with his back up against it. Carefully he opened the yellowed letter and began to read the last communication he would ever receive from her.

But to his surprise, most of it was written in code, there was only one instruction written on the first page, written in her neat hand, 'program this into yourself.'

Curious, he opened up his program and began to input the code. At the end of the last page of code, after he had put in the last sequence, he was no longer sitting in a graveyard, he was standing in his office.

And Ivy, wearing the suit he had issued her himself, was standing before him with a smile on her face. He went to speak but she put a finger to his lips, "don't ask me any questions, because I can't answer them. And don't be fooled, this isn't real, this is my goodbye to you."

She gently led him by the arm and sat him down in his chair, "rather than a long-winded letter, I just wanted to say a simple goodbye."

Smith could feel the tears welling up in his eyes.

"It took me a long time to think of a perfect way to say goodbye, and I'm just praying that you get to see this." She paused and smiled at him, "I thought our last kiss should be our first. Goodbye Smith, and remember, I did love you."

Ivy leant down and kissed him.

He kissed her back and wrapped his arms around her thin body, wanting the moment to last forever. He opened his eyes and looked at her once more before she faded away and he was once again in the graveyard, surrounded by nothing but his memories.