Summary, Warnings, and Disclaimer: Lessee, nothing really new, but I'd like to dedicate this chapter to stanley T and Andrew Joshua Talon, for helping me with this and for giving me the inspiration to break through my writer's block, respectively.
…fall on real life
is anybody left there sane?
if we slide on over and accept fate
then it's bound to be a powerful thing
if it's just that you're weak
can we talk about it
it's getting so damn creepy
just nursing this ghost of a chance
the fiction, the romance
and the Technicolour dreams
of black and white people…
-Matchbox-20, "Black and White People"
Harry yawned, covering his mouth with one hand as he watched Tank mess with the computers. He offered Trinity a sleepy smile as she walked into the jack room.
"Hey, kiddo," she said, ruffling his hair. "Sleep okay?"
"Great!" he answered enthusiastically, before being forced to hide another yawn.
Trinity grinned. "Great, huh? Then what's with the jaw-cracker?"
The boy shrugged, curling up further into the chair. "This thing's surprisingly comfortable, once you get used to it."
"Well, it would have to be." She sat down on the edge of the seat, nudging him over a bit. "Think about it. To do our jobs, we have to stay in these things for hours, sometimes. Without being semi-crippled when we wake up."
Harry nodded thoughtfully, and was silent for a few moments. "Trinity?" he finally asked, "why did Tank come wake me up?"
She sighed, wondering how to say it, and decided to just do it. "We're going back to the Matrix."
The child's eyes widened in alarm. "Back? But-"
"Not back to your uncle's house," she interjected hastily. "You're never going back there again. In fact, we won't even be in the same country." Trinity smiled as the alarm was replaced completely with curiosity. "Do you know where New York is?" she asked.
Screwing up his face in concentration, Harry thought back to musty primary-school geography lessons. "Is it in America?" he said uncertainly.
The woman nodded. "Right! New York is where most of our missions take place. Our coming here was… unusual, to say the least. The only other times we've come to England, we were somewhere in London itself."
"Missions?" Harry asked, cocking his head to one side, and mentally Trinity cursed. This was not how she'd planned to bring this up.
"The Machines," she said at last, looking away. "We're at war. We're losing, but we still fight them all we can. Going into the Matrix is a very large part of that." Even if some of those idiots in Zion can't see that. Where the hell else are we supposed to get the bodies to run their precious gunships?
"Oh." The quiet sound brought her head back up, and she saw Harry watching her calmly through emerald eyes. "So, where are we going?" he asked, and Trinity breathed a quiet sigh of relief at the change in subject.
"We're going to see a very wise woman," she said with a smile. "We all go to see her, after we're freed."
"Really? Why?"
"Other than the fact that it's tradition, you mean?" Trinity asked, the smile turning a bit wry. "She… gives good advice. And a direction to go in." Seeing the boy's puzzlement, she reached over and ruffled his unruly hair. "You'll understand when you meet her."
"If you say so…" he said doubtfully, and she laughed.
It was another ten minutes of yawning before Tank announced he was ready, during the course of which both Morpheus and Neo found their way to the jack room. "Hey," Neo said softly, walking over to where they sat.
"Good morning," Harry offered with a genuine smile. "Are you coming with us?"
The man nodded. "Yeah. Poor Morpheus has to stay behind and watch the ship with Tank, though."
Trinity looked at her husband in surprise. She knew he had no fondness for the Oracle. It wasn't that he personally disliked her, it was just…
Well, she was the one who had told him his life had been ruined for nothing.
"Well, are you three ready to go?" Tank asked cheerfully, leaning back against an empty seat.
Trinity and Neo nodded pretty much in unison, with an understandably reluctant Harry only a second behind them.
"Right, then!" The Hispanic man clapped his hands together cheerfully, beaming. "Let's get you rolling." He held a hand out to Harry, and after a moment of struggling with old instincts, the boy took it trustingly.
For a few minutes, even after the three had been plugged into the Matrix, Morpheus stood in the jack room watching their slumbering forms. Finally, he turned and left the room to take up his post in the cockpit, leaving Tank to look after their impromptu family.
Trinity peeked through the gauzy curtains at the street several stories below, careful not to let the movement be seen. "All clear," the woman called quietly a moment later. Relieved, she turned back to Harry and her husband, and had to suppress a wince as she again caught sight of the clothes that reflected Harry's self-image. He was sitting on the couch of the apartment they'd appeared in, looking very young in the monotonous gray of his baggy clothing.
Were she the kind to weep, she would, for all that the world had done to him and to them all. But she had never, would never let herself be that vulnerable, and so all Trinity could do to heal his wounds was to love him.
And occasionally, get a little… physical with anyone who tried to hurt the child. Trinity was hard pressed to hold back a fierce grin as she walked over to Harry, an imagined, remembered crack filling her ears.
Smiling, she grasped one of his hands and pulled him to his feet. "C'mon, kiddo. It's nice to be lazy sometimes, but time's a-wasting!" Not to mention we can't count on our hosts staying conveniently absent forever, she added mentally, with a look around at the small, but well-furnished apartment.
Neo quietly ushered them out the door, locking the handle before he pulled it shut to keep out anyone who might decide to take advantage of the apartment's temporary defenselessness. Together, the threesome walked down the vacant hallway.
"First rule of surviving in the Matrix," her husband said as they stopped by a heavy metal door. "Always use the stairs, if you can. Elevators are too easily interfered with. A convenient power outage would leave you nicely trapped for the next Agent to come along."
Harry's thin shoulders shuddered a little as he undoubtedly remembered the cold face of the Agent that had set all this in motion. He nodded quickly.
A few minutes and six flights of stairs later, they were stepping out into the ever-bustling streets of New York City. Trinity took a firm hold of Harry's hand to keep from losing him to the crowd, and she chuckled as the young boy gaped at the gleaming sky-scrapers that towered over their heads. As they set off down the pavement, she couldn't keep a tuneful little ditty from running through her mind.
And we're off to see the Wizard, the wonderful Wizard of OZ…
The Oracle hummed quietly to herself as she bent to check the chocolate-chip cookies in the oven. They weren't quite that wonderful golden-brown that she preferred yet, but that was all right. There was still some time left before Morpheus arrived with his newest protégé.
The new ones always appreciated her cookies so much…
She carefully shut the oven door, again feeling a twinge of curiosity over the captain's new charge. The ones he chose nearly always turned out to be the best, and she almost hadn't expected him to free another human after that disaster with Cipher last year. The child must be something truly special, then…
For a moment, a whim hovered at the back of her mind, but she dismissed it. This era's Champion hadn't even been born yet. The next Remaking wasn't scheduled to occur for another twenty years at least. Which was a good thing, since the last version hadn't had anything nearly as fun as baking in a nice quiet kitchen to keep her occupied.
Or candy. And she so loved candy…
Still, she couldn't wait to meet the boy. Her subordinate spy programs hadn't been able to tell her much beyond the fact that his parents were dead and his uncle murdered with no suspects. Reportedly, though, there had been Agent activity in the area that night, so she had her suspicions.
Her graying head came up as one of her sentry codes sent data about its first sighting of her visitors, and she blinked in surprise to find that there was no sign of the imposing captain with the little group. Instead, it was the lovely Trinity, and that nice boy, Neo, with the small child, and the Oracle instantly dismissed all thoughts of the boy being the One. If there were even the slightest possibility that he was the One, Morpheus would never have let him out of his sight.
Which made the child merely interesting, not important.
With a quick command, she turned the spy's attention to the young boy. He wasn't much to look at on the first glance. His self-image was distinctly… drab. An overly-large gray T-shirt hung from too-thin shoulders over faded jeans, and sneakers that looked as though they had seen their last days completed the ensemble.
Frowning slightly, she focused in on his face, and discovered just why his self-confidence was so low. His green eyes were old, easily as old as those of the freedom fighters to either side of him, and the last vestiges of a bruise decorated his cheek. She called up the file that held what little information she had on the boy, and added a short statement: Possible child abuse; investigate further. Satisfied, she exited out again, though not without the usual twitch of amusement at the coincidence of his name.
"Here we are," Trinity said quietly as they came to a stop in front of an inconspicuous door. "Are you rea-…" She shut her mouth on the far too frequently asked question, and Harry sent her a look of amusement. "Never mind."
"Let's just get this over with," Harry said with a shiver. This apartment complex, unlike the other one, hovered somewhere between dingy, dirty, and disturbingly neglected, which would make anyone raised with Aunt Petunia's exacting standards nervous. He half expected to feel her heavy hand as she ordered him to get back to work.
And that feeling of being watched that made the place between his shoulder blades itch really wasn't helping.
Eyes narrowed in determination, Harry reached for the doorknob, only to draw back as it turned before he touched it. The door creaked open, to reveal a rather pretty black woman on the other side. "Hello, Harry. We've been expecting you."
After a moment of pure surprise, he nodded and stepped through the door the woman held open invitingly. Inside was a perfectly normal waiting room, the kind you would find in any doctor's office, complete with a few people sitting in the seats and reading magazines. The boy hung back, close to the doorway, as he tried to figure out what the hell it was doing in a residential building. Did that many people really want to see one lady?
Then there was a gentle hand at the small of his back, and he looked behind him to see the same woman from the door smiling at him. Trinity and Neo were nowhere in sight. "Where-?"
"Your guardians will wait for you outside," she replied, still smiling. "Don't worry, hun, this won't take long. Just wait out here while I go see if the Oracle is ready." She turned and vanished through a door on the other side of the room.
Hesitant, unsure of what to do, Harry looked around the waiting room again. There were three adults present, all of middle age, and two children. One, an apparently hyper-active little girl who couldn't have been more than four, sat next to her mother, chattering nonstop of nothing. The other, the boy couldn't help but take a closer look at.
He was close to Harry's own age, perhaps a year or two younger. That in itself wasn't unusual, but the facts that his head was completely shaven and he was dressed in white robes were. He sat cross-legged on the floor, studying something in his hands.
Curious but a bit wary, since Dudley had chased away anyone who might have wanted to make friends with his cousin for as long as he could remember, Harry sat down a few feet from the boy. "What are you doing?" he asked quietly.
Startled, the boy looked up, revealing calm brown eyes. Silently, he held out the object, which turned out to be a simple silver spoon. Harry stared at him in confusion, and he smiled. "Watch," he murmured, and as the green-eyed boy obeyed, the spoon seemed to… ripple, to sway, and twist, and finally bend…
Then Harry blinked, and there was nothing more in the boys hand then a normal, utterly straight spoon. For another few seconds he stared at it, and then slowly grinned. "Wicked…"
He wasn't alone, wasn't a freak after all. There was someone else who could do these… things.
"I'm Harry," he offered tentatively. The boy studied him for a moment, then smiled back, a clear, bright smile.
"Clarence…" He glanced towards the doorway leading further into the apartment. "You'd best go. She's ready to see you now."
With a final, slightly nervous grin to his new friend, Harry stood.
(1) Clarence means clear, luminous, in Latin. /shrugs/ What? I thought it was appropriate…
A/N: /collapses/ Oh, thank God… I am so, so sorry. Everything just conspired to keep my from this story, school, my dad's computer getting overhauled (which still isn't finished, and cuts my writing time in half), boyfriend, and good, old-fashioned writer's block… /sighs/ You get the picture, I hope.
And I really meant to put all of the Oracle stuff in this chapter, but the chapter was getting long and I figured you'd prefer this now instead of next week. It'll be in the next one, I swear!
Review Responses:
(I'm only going to reply to a few of these, to insure that I actually get this out before midnight, which is when it would be if I answered every single one (40! That's the most I've ever gotten for a single chapter!))
Our thanks to: angelkitty77, aurora, borne-shadow-childe, Burning DragonSword, colon, Drakhar, Gohan00, James, john1234, KawaiiWhiteWolf, kitkat, Kitsune-chan, marshmallow-orc, Maxennce, Mithros, Mr Blader X, Noompjuh, Queen of the Elven City, raudvx5, she-who-loves-to-read, ShizukaSelphie, Silverpaws69, and spectra2.
Andrew Joshua Talon: /bows/ Thank you, so very much. Your review was just what I needed to get through that damn block of mine, not to mention being one of the best compliments I've received on this story. A real confidence booster.
bellashade: /laughs/ And your prayers are answered… Thanks, by the way. I wasn't even sure anyone would see that, let alone pray for me.
Bukama: I started to read that about three months before I started this, and couldn't get through it. I've found a couple others since, but it was pretty much the same deal with them.
And as for pairings… /sweatdrops/ I don't have a bloody clue yet.
curlytop: /laughs/ You're very close…
Karasu Sage: /blinks/ Wow… /blushes/
Lady Foxfire: /sighs/ Does third year count? Truthfully, I wrestled with that temptation for months while planning this, but it just doesn't work out if he doesn't 'escape' then.
Molly Morrison: I added the "Prelude" the same day I posted the last chapter. I decided to make everything from before Hogwarts its own story, and then each year after that as a new one as well.
Neo Anderson: Really? Thanks!
Serpent of Light: /grins/ 'Bout bloody time… So, which is your favorite? Or least favorite, if you can decide which is the best. /grimaces/ My least fave is the second one, to tell you the truth.
And those are the right questions to be asking.
Sierra-Falls: /shakes head/ No, not hiatus. Just a severe case of RL and writer's block. If I ever decide to stop a story (unlikely, for a story I've put this much work into), I'll put it in the summary.
stanley T: /frowns/ You do realize you have nothing to be ashamed of, right? I read a couple of your stories, and while I'll admit you could work on grammar a bit, they're still a far cry above many of the stories on this misbegotten website. And as long as an idea is good, it shouldn't matter who it comes from…
/shakes head/ Anyway… /looks curious/ How does anger disprove he's a program? Anger is simply a word, after all, like love…
Hmm… exorcism… it's thought, and would probably help in… /shuts mouth/ No, no more giving out spoilers, you idiot, you know better than that… Erm, I'm talking to myself again, aren't I…?
Oh, definitely the teenage boy factor. How the bloody hell could she move?!
That Kid Crying In The Corner: /shakes head/ That assumes that a wizard has been unplugged before. You have to realize, most of those unplugged are hackers, and wizards rarely, if ever, interact with computers.
Wren Truesong: /smiles secretively/ You have no idea how close you are…
And I thank you. /bows/
I apologize for not writing more in the responses. I wanted to, it's just that I suspect I'll be lynched if I don't get this out now. Anyway, R&R!
20 October 2004