Smith never went back to sleeping on the couch. The apartment had become "ours" a while ago, and now it was "our" bed. He teased me about how many pillows one woman could need to sleep, and insisted I took the covers in the middle of the night, but I teased back.
"Don't think I haven't noticed that's your favorite excuse to get closer," I told him one morning.
"I have no idea what you're talking about," he said, pulling me, blankets and all, to his side of the bed.
"Still think only humans can feel something this 'insipid'?" I prodded, propping chin on hand and giving my most impish, mischievous look. We'd come a long way, if I could openly mock him now over things I knew only because he'd said them after he'd copied over me.
"I merely said only humans could've 'come up' with the idea," he said, logic flawless as usual. "And I am fairly certain you and I did not invent the concept, so my statement stands." He arched his eyebrows in that superior agent look. I attempted to smother him with a pillow.
Months passed this way. In all the years I'd been living, disembodied, in the Matrix, I'd forgotten how much "physical" touch could mean. Smith had discovered that physical touch was good for more than causing damage, and that he liked the idea very much. He slept less than I did, never having been human. He'd never developed the habit, and only "slept" long enough to reboot or recompile or whatever it was he did. He was always content to lie with me while I slept. Usually he just watched me, though I did get a number of very, very pleasant wake-up calls.
We still fought every so often. Smith never seemed to lose his taste for intimidating people, though the violent tendencies were curbed. It was a shock for him to realize he'd completely lost his ability to intimidate me, though, and there was a definite adjustment period when it dawned on him. The yelling matches shook the rafters sometimes, and more than once we sent our neighbor, a perpetually startled looking program with a thick Irish accent, running from his own apartment to find a moment's peace. Sometimes our "making up" probably sent Loki running, too. Poor Loki; I always tried to send him a nice apology after those incidents. Usually an apology involving baked goods.
We went to an amusement park once, where I found, much to my amusement, that roller coasters unnerved Smith greatly. I proceeded to insist on riding every single one, just to see the slightly wild look in his eyes grow more fierce after each one. He dearly loved coffee, and drank it with enough sugar to kill a horse. In fact, he seemed to have even more of a sweet tooth than I did, and that was really saying something. It was probably a good thing programs didn't gain weight, or we'd both have had to lay off the ice cream. He liked plants, and in a bit of role reversal from the normal order of things, I usually surprised him with flowers rather than the other way around. He quickly caught on to my favorite guilty pleasure, and I'd find unexpected gifts of expensive, scented bath products. He was a consummate people-watcher, and could sit in the park for hours, with or without me, just watching humans & programs alike.
Encouraged by Smith, I stopped avoiding Exiles. Surprisingly, I found more in common with many than I thought I would. They didn't really seem to see me as all that different. For the first time since becoming trapped in the Matrix, I began to haltingly develop a social life. We even visited Club Hel at times, where Smith delighted in the fact that other programs were still frightened to death of him. The crowd would fall away in sheaves as we passed through it. He wasn't the only Rogue Agent I saw. I know I saw Brown in the club once, agent suit and all, and I'd swear he was willingly on the end of a leash carried by another man in a pair of stunning leather pants. I was simultaneously amused and intrigued to notice the Man in the Leather Pants was none other than Agent Jones. Having developed something of a rapport with Persephone, we had many delightful & entirely inappropriate conversations speculating on that particular subject. Smith was slightly alarmed and annoyed at my interest in Jones' tight leather pants. That is, until I told him I'd like to buy him a pair. Then he was very alarmed.
Redpills had been coming & going to the Oracle's at an astonishing rate since the "Night of Storms" as it came to be called. If my presence caused awkward pauses, Smith's usually caused outright gaping and stares among newer redpills. Ghost's crew had become accustomed to us, however. Ghost greeted me with no less warmth than he gave to the Oracle herself, and even began to carry on lengthy conversations with Smith. Tamar, the redhead I'd impressed with my fight with Lucius, began treating Smith like something of an older brother, herself a younger sister whose sole purpose was to torment him at all opportunities.
Smith certainly didn't look like an agent today. He was dressed in black pants, a pale blue shirt, and a pink & yellow striped apron with Hello Kitty faces along the hem. The apron had been Sati's idea & creation, and he wore it without protest any time she wanted his help in the kitchen. Ghost's crew had arrived one day when he'd been wearing it. No comment from Ghost, who was beginning to take on some of Seraph's serenity, but Tamar laughed so hard she collapsed against the wall. I had to help her stand up. Smith continued taking Sati's cookies out of the oven with the utmost dignity.
I sat on the couch with Ghost. Ghost being more philosophical than most, he figured there was a "reason" for what had happened to me, and had begun to treat me as he treated the Oracle, as well as the other benign programs that co-inhabited the Matrix with the coppertops & bluepills. It was odd, knowing he thought of me as a program, but it was better than being treated as a pariah. Smith & the Oracle were programs, so it wasn't so bad, really, I told myself.
A trend seemed to form in the wake of Ghost's treatment of me, too. More redpills stopped being awkward in my presence, and I even counted some who smiled at me. There was a young girl from a ship called The Merlin who could never seem to stop blushing in my presence. Haruka insisted the girl had a crush on me; I always snuck her an extra cookie before she left. Somehow, that girl seemed to have a different, more startling hair color each time she jacked-in. Tamar began bringing along her "daughter" Tirzah--a girl of no more than 7 years old. She had been an orphaned prodigy when plugged in, and had actually tracked down Morpheus and sent an email explaining she knew all about the Matrix and would like to see the real world and could he come and unplug her please? I recalled the days before this "peace", and wondered that we'd come so far that a 7-year-old could safely crew a ship with her mother, much less be allowed to jack-in to the Matrix. But today here was Tirzah, in the kitchen baking cookies with Sati and Smith. I remembered the days when Smith would've killed Tirzah as soon as look at her. But today here was Smith, helping a couple of 7-year-olds because they weren't allowed to go near the hot oven. I can't imagine that I was the only one who thought all this, but life had begun to feel so...peaceful.
Today Ghost was warning me about the other kind of redpills, though. There were those who believed the machines couldn't be trusted, and would break the agreement eventually. "It's in their programming," the rhetoric went. "They'll never trust us to keep our word, so they won't keep theirs." Flawed logic, and Ghost knew it. It was a small faction, but vocal and growing.
Tamar's laughter was still ringing from the kitchen, and I overheard Tirzah's indignant protests that Smith looked "very nice in his apron."
"Where do you think it's headed?" I asked Ghost.
"I can't tell," he said, and looked uncomfortable. "Etna, they know about Smith."
"Everybody knows about Smith now. Everyone who knows anything, at any rate. Is it...are they planning something?"
"I don't have specific information. Just that it's recently become a talking point, and they aren't happy about his continued existence here in the Matrix. It's contributing to their mistrust of the machines."
"His continued existence," I echoed bitterly. "They don't even know him, Ghost."
"No. But think back to your reaction when you found him. You'll never convince me you weren't terrified when you figured out what you had. Seraph told me about the phone call."
I lobbed a piece of cinnamon candy at Seraph's arm. Not a very satisfying form of revenge, as he simply caught it, unwrapped it, and put it in his mouth. I rolled my eyes.
"They're all just as scared now as you were that night. You may be the only human alive who wouldn't have killed him on sight, Etna. And you found him. There has to be a a reason for that."
"Apparently it was to give the radical factions something to bitch about," I told him, offering him a piece of candy & eating my own. "And I'm not sure they see me as a 'living human' anyway."
"You're in the lessons now, Etna." I started and almost swallowed my candy whole. "When we teach the children & the new releases, we teach them about you, and what happened. We'll probably never be sure what caused the incident, but you're fast becoming a bit of a folk hero on the Outside." Well. That explained the wide-eyes & blushes & schoolgirl crushes on me.
I blinked back tears. "Thank you, Ghost."
"It's actually Tamar you can thank." I blinked, and he continued. "It started that day when you...confronted Lucius and told your story." Ha. "Confronted" was a nice word for what I'd done to Lucius. I winced. Lucius was one of the radicals now, and had transferred off Ghost's crew.
"I lost my temper that day. Shouldn't have done that," I said.
"No harm done," Ghost said, palms up. "And you impressed Tamar. She got all the information she could on your situation & began to tell your story. She seems to feel you sacrificed your life for the cause, and wants to make sure your efforts in the intervening years don't go unnoticed." He seemed pleased about that, and I was flattered. His voice took on the warning tone again. "There are the radicals though. You make them uncomfortable. You're a gray area, and they don't know what to make of you. With people like this," he said, turning up his hands, "they fear what they can't understand." I nodded gravely. So Smith was not the only point of contention.
Smith came from the kitchen, removing his apron. A giggle followed him from the kitchen, and he cast a glare back in at Tamar. Where once a glare from Smith would've frozen anyone in her tracks, this only netted another giggle, with good-natured laughter from the Oracle thrown in.
"Thanks for the information, Ghost." I kissed his cheek; I really was picking up a lot of habits from the Oracle these days. "If you'll excuse us, we'd planned on going to the Club to scare lesser programs this evening, and I have to pour myself into a leather corset now." Smith sighed rather blissfully at this statement, and Ghost was snickering as we left.