The next morning, Persephone came and got the Exile family and showed them the way to the Merovingian's office. She softly knocked on the big oak door and waited until her husband gave her permission to enter. Taking the doorknob in her hand, she turned it and entered the room.
"Ah! Come in, please." The Merovingian smiled and greeted the family as they entered and stood in the middle of the room. "Take a seat and make yourselves comfortable. That will be all, Persephone. You may leave us now."
Persephone glared at her husband, not in the least bit pleased at him for treating her like one of his servants, and softly made her way out and closed the door.
"Have you made your decisions?"
Abraham glanced at his wife and then at the Twins. He sighed wearily and stood up.
"We've decided," He stopped and again looked at Vevina. "We've decided to hand our children over to you."
"Excellent!" The Merovingian clapped his hands together in pleasure and turned a glad look towards the two little twins standing beside Vevina. The Twins slowly looked up into the face of the strange man before them. Shy, they quickly turned away and hid their faces in Vevina's baggy pants.
"I can assure you that they will have the best of care."
The couple didn't say anything but sighed sadly.
"Oh come now. Why all zee sad faces? This should be a time of rejoicing and a time of celebration. You're all free!"
The room remained silent except for occasional sniffs from Vevina.
"You're a bad man!" Two suddenly blurted out. The Twins' parents stiffened. Vevina leaned over and softly told Two that he shouldn't say rude things like that. Two's eyes swelled with tears at the scolding. Vevina hated doing it, mainly because Two was right, but she didn't want her son to grow up to be rude.
Everyone's attention was drawn to the door, where giggling could be heard on the other side. The Exile couple turned a puzzled look to the Merovingian.
"Obviously someone's listening at the door." He sighed. "That's a rather feisty young son you've got there." The Merovingian cleared his throat and broke the long silence.
"Yes, sir." Vevina answered, barely above a whisper. "But he'll learn."
"I do apologize for my son's rudeness." Abraham smiled.
"Oh don't apologize. Think nothing of it. After all he is a child and children are expected to say funny and sometimes rude and embarrassing things. It's part of their obnoxious behavior."
"We aren't obnocksheous!" One protested, hitting the side of the Mero's desk.
The Mero chuckled in delight. "You can't even pronounce the word. I highly doubt that you even know what it means."
Beaten, One timidly and embarrassingly looked around at his mother. Vevina gave the Mero a threatening look and pulled One away from the desk.
"Mrs.?"
"Just Vevina" the woman answered. "And this is my husband, Abraham. There is no last name."
The Mero nodded. "Understandable. Most Exiles don't have last names." He turned to the Twins again. "What are your sons' names?"
"One and Two." Vevina coldly answered.
"Unusual names, aren't they?"
"We see nothing wrong with those names."
The Merovingian stopped the conversation right there and got up from his chair. He walked toward the window behind him, stood there a few minutes and then came back to the desk. He reached into a stack of papers over to the side, pulled out a couple and set them down in front of the two Exiles. Offering them a pen, he pointed to the bottom where a signature went.
"Sign these papers for me, please."
Abraham slowly took the pen. "What are these?"
"Just the usual papers I have all Exiles to fill out. It's for my records. You can go ahead and read over it if you want." The Mero pushed the papers forward. "It's to show that you are legally free under my jurisdiction in case anything comes about with the agents. And this paper here is to show that you've handed your children over to my care."
Abraham and Vevina each took one of the papers and read over it to make sure it was as the Mero had said. Seeing that everything was indeed in order, both of them applied their signatures to them. The Merovingian took the papers back and filed them away in one of the drawers of his desk.
"So how does it feel to be free?"
"It feels wonderful." Abraham breathed. "Especially the part of not being hunted any longer."
"Yes," The Merovingian sighed long and hard. "One of these days we will all be free. Free to live in the Matrix without the fear of being caught and being deleted and not needing to fill out papers like these."
"Are you one of the resistance fighters?" Abraham asked excitedly, hoping the Mero actually had a good side after all. The Merovingian shot Abraham an icy stare that nearly stopped Abraham's words in his throat.
"No." He answered distastefully. "Do you honestly think that I would work with humans? Them and their so called 'The One' who is supposed to come and free all humans? You must be out of your mind."
"But the Oracle works for them and she's not human."
"The Oracle eez insane." the Mero quickly and coldly stated.
Abraham stared confusingly at the Mero.
"I put a stop to their savior." The Mero's lips curled into a devilish smile.
"You mean… you've seen him?"
"What's left of him."
Abraham and his wife gasped.
"My henchmen took care of him a few weeks ago, when they finally caught up to him. Turns out he wasn't 'The One' after all. He was nothing but a weakling idiot."
The Merovingian broke out in an evil laughter and remained laughing for a good minute and a half until he straightened up in his chair and tried to contain himself.
"It's happened several times before, and it'll be the same way over and over. You'll see. There's this person named Morpheus who's supposed to be looking for The One. I honestly don't believe there will ever be a 'The One' again."
"You're wicked." Abraham stood up. "You're wicked as sin! I can't believe we're still sitting here. And I can't believe we signed those papers. Tear them up. I will not be apart of you; I don't care if you send me back to the Source."
"It's too late. The papers have been signed and there's no way I'm going to tear them up. You belong to me and so does your children!"
Abraham brought his hand down sharply on the Mero's desk in a fit of rage. "I demand that you tear those papers up!"
"Temper, temper."
"What do we do now?" Vevina came between her husband and the Mero before a fight broke out between the two men.
"You two can do whatever you wish, but you will have to remain here in the chateau. This is your home now so you may go anywhere you like and do whatever you like. Your children, however, will remain here with me and they will be taken to the boarding school as soon as possible."
Vevina broke out crying while grasping her twins in her arms and hugging them close. The Twins began to cry too. Abraham walked up to his family and embraced them all.
"We don't want to leave you, Mummy." The Twins said together between their crying.
Unknown to the Exiles, the Merovingian pressed a silent button under his desk, which called several of his henchmen into the room. He motioned for them to take the Exile couple out of his office. One of the Dobermen grabbed onto Vevina and pulled her away from the Twins while the other grabbed onto Abraham. Vevina started crying all the more and the Twins, by this time, were screaming their heads off and struggled to keep their hold of their mother and father. It was no use, the Dobermen were too strong. The Twins' grasp loosened and they fell onto the floor.
"Get them out of here!" The Merovingian shouted to his henchmen. The Dobermen dragged the Exiles out into the hall, but Vevina fought as much as she could in order to hinder.
"Be good!" she shouted back to her children. "We love you!"
The Doberman holding Vevina pushed her forward down the hall and slammed the office door shut. The Merovingian silently eyed the Twins as they lay crying and sobbing in the middle of the floor. Twin Two suddenly got up and ran to the door in an attempt to open it, but he was too little to fully reach and turn the doorknob, and was certainly too small to pull it open even if he could reach it. He hit it with his small fists in a fit of frustration and then slid back down to the floor. The Mero continued to eye the strange looking kids in curiosity. He'd seen many Exile children during his lifetime, but he had never seen any like these. They weren't vampire, werewolf, alien or leprechaun like so many of the others were. Their skin was much paler than their parents and the color of their eyes and hair was most extraordinary, clearly the sign of Exile albinos. It interested the Merovingian.
Persephone opened the door and walked in and stopped when she saw the Twins crying. She immediately went to them and pulled them toward her, all the time trying to comfort them.
"What is wrong with you?" she glared at her husband. "Do you enjoy tormenting?"
The Merovingian said nothing.
"There, there, everything's going to be alright." She cooed to the Twins, kissing them on the cheek. She turned back to the Mero. "I don't know what you have planned, but these twins are staying with me. And you can't stop me."
Persephone stood up and moved the Twins behind her as if shielding them from an evil force. Then again, maybe she was.
"You take those twins? I don't think so." The Merovingian stood up and came forward toward his wife. "Those twins belong to me. As far as I know this does not concern you."
Perse held her husband's gaze.
"There's something special about them that interest me greatly. I somehow have this feeling that they will be of great use to me in the future. So you see there's no way that you're taking them."
Twin Two suddenly and without warning kicked the Merovingian in the shin, causing the great and powerful man to literally forget everything else in the world and grab for his leg. The Twins, then, took off down the hallway, running as fast as they could go. But they didn't go far. One of the Merovingian's Dobermen henchmen was waiting for them around the corner. When the Twins came within his reach the creature hit the poor children upside the faces, knocking them backwards into each other… and unconscious.