a/n: This chapter is meant to work with the story told by Neo in The Undiscovered Country, ch. 14 part 2. The Morpheus and Trinity "Q'nA."
I hope you enjoy it - including my biochemical rant (you'll know it when you see it), and the second half of this chapter, which I give to Morpheus and Niobe. Part two will follow paying homage to Trinity and Ghost, and then... I have a treat so sickeningly sweet it is guarenteed to rot your teeth and induce diabetic coma (involving Rorie, Knight, and two pairs of sunglasses). Enjoy, and thanks always to those kind enough to review!
Sydney.
Chapter 20, (part 1 of 2)
The Surface. In what was formerly Sweden, near the Baltic Sea. circa 2199
NEO DOESN'T KNOW the person who tries to take Trinity from his arms, nor can he see him clearly. Sound and motion are out of synchrony, and images skip in his mind's eye, like a damaged film stuttering ahead, jumping backwards, scrambling frames. His thoughts tell him to release her, but his body won't comply; the message is lost somewhere between idea and execution, as it is sometimes in nightmares.
Like an ice sculpture of two lovers, they are locked in a cold embrace, faces nuzzled as if taking a brief détente between kisses. Is she alive? Neo holds his breath and listens. Nothing. The white squall drowns out her rhythm. If any. If any.
Something in him snaps. He can't let them take her. Trinity has many enemies. How can he be sure where these strangers' loyalties lie? Or worse. They will confirm that there is indeed nobody to take, because he holds a corpse, and not Trinity at all. "Leave us. Go away," he grumbles, pulling her closer. "Get away. She's mine."
Their flashlights blind him. Their animated chattering bothers him. All this motion and noise, sometimes too loud to bear, is like vinegar on razor-sliced tissue. His nerves have been eroded by the winds full of sand and ice and poison. Only Trinity is soft enough to touch.
Neo rocks with her, blocking out all other stimuli. He drifts on eddies of recollection, tying his fragile consciousness to the sound of baritone and alto humming a fragmented melody. Morpheus was just talking to her, his tone like chocolate, hers like warm milk. They were playing a game. Passing the time, just as if these weren't their final breaths, but something much more ordinary.
The memory feels like sanity. It is because the air between the captain and his first officer is a sanctuary, though Neo never realized it before. Before, he doubted they even liked each other, these two stoic, iron-willed soldiers. They spat at each other. Barked orders over the helm, and avoided sharing company in the mess hall. But he was wrong about them. Their crossfire pops and sparkles like birch bark in a campfire, combustible, tense, acrid and somehow warm. Neo has never had a family. And he didn't know he had gained one until the three of them huddled into a triangle, slowly dying together.
Three questions. Only three, Trinity. So choose wisely, Morpheus told her. She was still awake, but barely. Please, Morpheus… just… let me be.
Nevermind. Any three questions, without limits or boundaries.
You'll lie, she countered. Of course I won't lie. Oh, yes you will. Like children, they volleyed their monosyllabic arguments back and forth – yes, no, yes - until abruptly, she replied with, How old are you?
Choose a number, Trinity, any number between one and one hundred.
I knew it. I'd rather freeze to death than play your sick mind games.
Do you have the number?
Yes.
Add twenty eight… alright?
What are you waiting for? I'm faster than this…
Now multiply by six. And subtract three. Divide by three. And then-
And then subtract the original number plus three. Add eight. Subtract the original number less one, multiply by seven. I haven't forgotten.
Good. That is a good sign.
But what does the inevitable result of four hundred and twenty seven have to do with anything?
You are still alive.
... hm. Touché.
Next question.
But you didn't answer my first one.
Two remaining. Without any limits or boundaries. But only two, Trinity. So choose wisely.
Neo presses his mouth down onto frozen hair, and another's fingers, not Trinity's fingers, brush his cheek. A woman's voice transcends his blockade, and her white beam flickers off. She tells him it's okay. She tells him he has to let Trinity go. No, we won't hurt her. We're here to help. No, she isn't; she's still alive. I can feel a pulse. But you need to give her to me, now. Can you do that? Do you even understand what I'm saying?
"The boy's delirious, Niobe."
"Who is he?"
"Who? What is he? Looks newborn. But he's too old…. might've gone nuts when they pulled him out, d'you think?"
"Nevermind. We have to separate them."
"I don't know. He's got quite a grip on your girl, there, Ghost."
"Get the stretcher."
This rouses him again, though Neo realizes, quite painfully, that he is not in control of his actions. It's the cold, which like a drug, is affecting him on the molecular level. Thermoreceptors, the tiny proteinaceous sentinels of mammalian core temperature, sensed the initial chill, and induced shivering and tightening of blood vessels. Produced heat. Maintained his blood pressure. But he is hours past this defense mechanism. He isn't shivering anymore, because his delicate biochemistry cannot operate for long when the enzymes are being frozen out of shape. The human body is a persnickety thing. A few degrees, that's the extent of the window. Anything else is Nature's failed chemistry experiment. No reaction. Cause and effect, a broken link in the metabolic chain. Everything slows down: heart, lungs, kidney. The brain suffocates, slowly, firing off electrical impulses that are discontinuous with sensory input. The boy is delirious, Niobe. He can hear it all and respond to none of it. It is enough to drive one mad.
Neo heard it happen to Trinity. It began with slurs. Malapropisms. Various small, neurological mistakes. She heard them, too. The sickening sound of her mind giving up.
What was your name? In the Matrix? That's my second question.
No man alive knows my name, Trinity.
No doubt. Four hundred and twenty…what the hell was-
Twenty seven.
Yes. Two hundred and forty seven years is a long time.
I never told Niobe.
I wouldn't tell her, either.
No. But you will laugh.
Let me laugh. Cummon. I prolly won't rhumemblur any… ammie… -Jesus Christ Almighty-… anyway.
Morpheus frowned, expression soft and sad as he leaned over to whisper in her ear. Trinity's eyes brightened, and she laughed. Winced as she laughed. Tears welled up in the corners of her eyes. No. She chuckled. Oh, f… fuck, no.
Yes. It goes to your grave, Trinity. A very long time from now.
She kept shaking and crying with laughter.
That will do, Trinity.
And Niobe really doesn't know?
Next question.
Can I… please, can I tell her that she knows what I don't know that I won't remember?
No limits. No boundaries. But you have only one left, Trinity. So make it a good one.
The Trinity of the past and the Trinity of the present meld in a confusing scrambling of dialogue and image. Neo hears her speak as they are torn apart, as her inanimate body is carried ahead of his and laid on an adjacent table. He turns his head, watching the same person from earlier takes her hand and leans over her face. He brushes the back of his hand over her cheek. Folds a blanket over her face. No. Trinity, no.
"It's just to get her warm. She's alright."
"Take it off her face… please, take it off."
"Most body heat escapes though the head. It'll heat her up faster." The woman who'd spoken to him so softly earlier covers his body in a stack of covers and takes an IV bag from a basin of steaming water. "Try to relax. You're not doing too well yourself."
"Who are you?" He asks, struggling for articulacy. "Who is he?"
The man who still holds Trinity's hand looks up from her only briefly before turning the dainty arm over to administer an intravenous line and attach a bag of warmed fluids.
"My name is Niobe. You're aboard my ship. This is Ghost, my first officer. The man who brought Morpheus in is Sparks."
"Morpheus is alright?"
"He will be." Niobe slides a needle into the first plug on his forearm, and he cringes at the sensation. "You haven't been out for very long," she observes. "So what's your name?"
"…Neo."
"Neo," she pulls the threadbare fabric up to his chin. "Can you tell me what happened? To the rest of the crew?"
He shakes his head. "Cypher."
"What about him?"
"Niobe." A voice calls her tersely from the entrance of the medbay. "I took a look at their vitals, and the broadcast logs from the past six hours. Shit, you… you just gotta see this."
THE CAPTAIN OF THE LOGOS has transferred the data to her ready room. And as is her wont on quiet Sunday afternoons, she sits with a cup of infused tea and studies strings of green code, looking for anomalies. Glitches. Indications of concentrated agent activity. And, of course, there is Morpheus, though she'd never admit it to anyone. That she'd never stopped watching him. And Trinity, who has begun to do most of his footwork. Over the years, she has gotten very good. But Niobe has never, ever seen anything like this.
The man she'd found wrapped around Trinity in iron-cast devotion is now a greater mystery to her than when they found him. He fights like a rebel. Moves like an agent. Looks like he might be in his thirties. Impossible. And yet he is lying in her medbay, somehow alive after being shot eleven times by a sadistic sentient who continued to pump his chest full of metal, even after he'd collapsed to the ground. "Jesus Christ, Morpheus. What have you done?"
He has lost his crew. Six of them – an unimaginable number for any captain to survive. It strikes her deep, far deeper than professional empathy should. It has been almost five years. Long enough for the bitterness and resentment to fade, for her anger to quell and now all that lingers is the ghost of their once nearly combustible connection. It's like an emotional tether. She may not love him anymore. She may never again. But still, his pain is her pain. She doesn't know how to stop.
Niobe leans back in her chair and lets out a sigh, commanding the computer to replay the audio component of the Neb's core monitor from time index nine-two-four. She closes her eyes and listens.
You know, for a long time… I thought I was in love with you. I used to dream about you. You're a beautiful woman, Trinity. Too bad things had to turn out this way.
You killed them.
The conversation gives her gooseflesh. She told Trinity not to unplug that one. And she told Morpheus not to keep him aboard. But what did it matter? When has her opinion ever mattered? The Neb belonged to Morpheus and Trinity long before she ever left. There was even a short time when she suspected they were falling in love. That was the final accusation. That's what ended it for good. Morpheus couldn't even look her in the eye after that. "Trinity has a great deal of respect for my relationship with you, Niobe. It is one of the uncountable differences between her, and Jason Lock."
Don't hate me, Trinity. I'm just a messenger, and right now I'm gonna prove it to you. If Morpheus was right, then there's no way I can pull this plug. I mean, if Neo's The One, then there'd have to be some sort of a miracle to stop me. I mean, how can he be The One if he's dead? You never did answer me before, if you bought into Morpheus' bullshit. Come on, all I want is a little yes or a no. … Look into his eyes, those big, pretty eyes. And tell me: yes, or no?
For the third time that afternoon, Niobe listens closely to the barely audible response …yes. Yes. And she really thought she knew Trinity better. It just… it doesn't make sense.
An impertinent knock at her door prompts Niobe to end the recording. She turns her computers off and runs a hand over her hair. She knows this knock. "Yes, come in."
He looks like hell. Though, for a man who spent a few hours at the mercy of three agents, Niobe respects him for even being able to stand. Suppressing another pang in the pit of her stomach, she rises and meets him in the center of the room. "It's good to see you up."
"Niobe."
Morpheus extends his hand. Is it ridiculous that, under the circumstances, she was expecting a hug? Or maybe it's just her- when she found him, there was a devastating moment when she was certain they were too late. Niobe brushes it off and returns the gesture in a firm shake. "Sparks took a look at the Neb, and he thinks the pads will get her home. The charge will take a few more hours."
He gazes at her for half a beat, and she catches something there, a hidden glint of something. But she must be imagining it. "Thank you, for all you've done," he says, pronouncing the words with an intonation of majesty, as an overly-dramatic actor might on the stage. "I'm very much obliged to you and your crew."
"I've reviewed your broadcast logs. The bodies are in the Logos' cargo hold. I'm… sorry, Morpheus. If there's anything I can do-"
"Their loss was a necessary sacrifice. If you've watched the logs then you know already." He takes a step closer. "I've found him, Niobe. You've seen it."
Her mouth opens, and closes again. Is that an I told you so? Or it's a justification. It's what he's been telling himself since it happened. They died so Neo could live. But usually, when he speaks of The One with such conviction, he is able to look her in the eye. No, she recognizes his doubt when she sees it- a momentary blip in his voice, a fleeting error in his posture, an anomaly in his composure he would never admit. And still, there is a sparkle of something else- it hasn't left him.
"Cypher is the one who killed them," Niobe says carefully. "You couldn't have known. This isn't your fault-"
"It is why I was chosen. I am prepared to do what needs to be done."
"Morpheus, if Neo is The One. Especially if he is The One, then all the more reason to honor the loss. Let yourself mourn them. They were a damn fine crew. "
She cannot tell if she has penetrated him, or if perhaps he resents her for even presuming to try. It isn't her place anymore, and it isn't as if she was ever good at handling him, even at the best of times. But she is worried about him. He didn't even have any blankets on him when the Logos docked with the Neb. It appeared as if, in the final moments, he'd piled them all onto Trinity and the man he believes, however misguidedly, will end the war.
"Then you have come to see the truth." Morpheus takes a second step towards her, bringing them so close she can feel his body heat. "You believe, Niobe?" he asks her softly. "Tell me… you must believe. Tell me my wait is over."
And now Niobe understands him completely, though she is shocked to be faced with the proposition. He wants her back. He thinks he has won her back. That once she has seen the light and realized the error of her ways, she will apologize and return to him, his loyal disciple at long last. But how ridiculous! How narcissistic! How… Jesus, Morpheus. For a split moment as he waits for her answer, his eyes are unguarded- warm, intense, yearning. Vulnerable. But it lasts for only that flicker of time, because he has already measured her response. She looks away. "I'm sorry," she whispers to the floor. "Even if I did believe you, do you really think it would be that easy? I can't just forget-"
"It has not been easy. Not for those of us making the sacrifices."
"How dare you-"
"I dare every day, Niobe." Rejected, he turns away abruptly. And with three huge, swift paces, he wrenches the door open with a force that betrays his low purr. "I dare more than you could imagine," he says over his shoulder. "And all I ask in return is your confidence. I will have it. When this is all over, know that I will still be waiting. I will never stop waiting for you."