AN: Hey everyone out there! What's going on? Hope everyone's enjoying the ride. I apologize if things seem a bit slow and rather sucky now. I promise things will get better and more action orientated soon. The "Matrixy" action will return shortly! This is just a small look into the misadventures of Pixie and her friends in Zion. Anywho, I hope everyone's having a good time doing whatever it is you're doing. I'm, at the moment, trying to work on a fashion show my Girl Scout Troop is doing. We're donating the money we make from the fashion show to the Lance Armstrong Foundation (LAF)! It should be a good time…I just hope everyone comes through with what they're supposed to be doing! Please, let me know how I'm doing here! I'm always open to any and all comments- good, bad, or indifferent. I just want to know what everyone things of my little misadventure.

Disclaimer: I own nothing except the characters I made up and their Real World alter egos. I don't own The Matrix, The Animatrix, or any of that cool stuff. I'm broke and in graduate school studying biology. All I own are my Pointe shoes.

"In walked luck and you looked in time

Never look back, walk tall, act fine

Come get up my baby" (from "Golden Years" by David Bowie)

Pixie watched Chian walk off, almost knowing without seeing that the older female was wearing one of her most self satisfied smiles on her face. She might have been one of Pixie's friends- As Chian often pointed out, she thought of Pixie as a sister of sorts even though they weren't really related- but she did seem to enjoy driving Pixie out of her mind. Case in point, she seemed to enjoy throwing wrenches into Pixie's thoughts by presenting her with things she wouldn't normally think.

Chian's entire litany about Wheeler having feeling for her that weren't exactly platonic was a good example. Pixie and Wheeler were friends, that much was obvious, and Pixie never thought of them being anything more. They couldn't be anything more because of their friendship.

At least, that's how Pixie saw things. She figured that, in this situation, it was her point of view that counted. Maybe people could read other things into the friendship she and Wheeler had forged between their time in the Matrix and their time in Zion but it was, ultimately, their opinion that counted. It was the two of them who decided if they were friends or something else.

Still, Pixie couldn't convince a small part of her mind, a small niggling square patch of her brain, that Chain had been wrong. There was a small part of her mind- the part that was still immature and reveled in acting like a foolish teenager even though Pixie was nearly out of her teen years- that was convinced Chian was right. That there was something more to the relationship she had with Wheeler.

It was this part of her mind that she was trying to silence when Pixie felt that someone was watching her. For whatever reason, she felt that someone was staring at her, watching her think. Pixie wanted to say it was a sort of sixth sense she'd developed during her recent wanderings through the Matrix but she didn't think that was true. Her senses weren't that attuned to the world around her. Not in Zion and, especially, not in the Matrix.

Maybe, instead of the sixth sense some of those she worked with seemed to have, it was just that feeling people got when they were staring at. The feeling she, sometimes, imagined single celled organisms had when being watched under a microscope. If single celled organisms had feeling at all. Sometimes it wasn't good to give human qualities and feelings to things that weren't supposed to have them.

That was probably the reason why the Agents in the Matrix had no, apparent, human emotions. Machines- and the programs that they created- weren't supposed to be able to feel as humans did. Probably thought it made them weak or something to that effect. Either way, it was the best analogy Pixie could come up with. She felt like she was being observed by someone else.

Pixie looked up; her mind almost entirely back on the moment at hand instead of wandering through the tricky maze of thoughts Chian had created in her mind and noticed that she was, indeed, being stared at. The odd thing was that she recognized the person watching her. For whatever reason he had- Pixie was no mind reader- he wasn't saying anything to her. He was just watching her mull things over in her head.

"Is this seat taken? I don't want to intrude if you're waiting for someone else," asked the person who'd provided Pixie with the strange feeling of being watched.

A small smile, a happy smile, actually, crossed Pixie's face as she heard the familiar voice of the person standing next to her table. At least now she wasn't going to have to look for Wheeler- the figure that had been watching her- since he'd come along and found her first.

That was a stroke of luck, really, because Pixie had no idea where to find Wheeler in Zion. She was almost sure that she wouldn't have been able to find him before she had to meet Aisling and the others back at her place. Now that he'd found her, the problem was solved.

Sort of, anyway.

The conversation Chian had left her thinking about what still wandering through her head. Since Wheeler had played a distinct- if unknowing- role in said conversation, having him sit with her so soon after might not have been the best of situations. Still, Pixie couldn't just tell him to go away. That not only would have been mean and cold. Since she and Wheeler were friends, that much she was sure of, Pixie wasn't about to tell him to go away.

"No…no one's sitting there and I'm not waiting for anyone, Wheeler," she answered, giving the scruffy blond male a friendly sort of smile.

"Fancy bumping into you here, Pix," Wheeler commented, taking the seat across from Pixie, "I didn't know you'd gotten back into Zion"

Though he was sitting across from her and trying to strike up a conversation with her, Pixie was doing her best to avoid looking Wheeler directly in the eyes. She feared that, if he managed to catch her brandy brown eyes with his bright hazel gaze, her cheeks would turn an unflattering shade of red. Then he'd ask what was wrong and she'd have to tell him about the conversation.

There was no way around it because Pixie had never been good at bluffing. He'd catch her in a well meaning lie and she'd still be forced to admit what Chian had said.

Better for her not to meet his eyes. At least there was nothing unusual about that where she was concerned. Pixie usually kept her eyes on something else when she talked to people.

"Are you feelings any better?" he asked, recalling the rough state she had been in a few nights earlier and making another attempt at a conversation between the two of them, "Not feeling so sad now, are you?"

He noticed, as he started eating what amounted to a snack in Zion, that Pixie seemed uncomfortable but he assumed it was from what she'd gone through with her confrontation with the Agent prior to Eurisko's freeing. Being a medic-in-training, taking care of people and keeping them alive, was something Wheeler knew Pixie prided herself on.

Doing something that went against that was, most likely, hard for her. At least, that's what Wheeler assumed, anyway. He didn't know why- call it a gut feeling- but he knew that for a fact. He knew Pixie would be bothered by what she did because it went against not only her training but her sense of self.

One couldn't both be responsible for saving lives and taking them away at the same time. Those were, definitely, opposite sides of the coin.

"I think I'm better now. I mean, I'm trying not to think about what happened and focus on all the other, good stuff that's going on but…" Pixie answered, offering a lame shrug as the only end to her sentence.

She wasn't really sure what to say to Wheeler, other than she was really trying to stay on the positive side of things. She wasn't trying to dwell on what happened because she wanted to be able to sleep at night. Sometimes that was easier said than done.

"Well, I'm sure being back in Zion is going to help. I mean, there are a lot of us here that are around to keep your mind busy," Wheeler pointed out with a friendly sort of smile.

Pixie wanted to say something to the effect of "You don't know how true that is" but that would have opened her up to too many ugly questions. It was enough that she knew that Wheeler was speaking the truth. Her friends in Zion seemed to be the perfect cure for her still bothered mind. Though, that cure might have been a little more dangerous, what with friends like Chian and Aisling and all. They'd give her new things to think about, new thoughts to set her mind spinning.

"You're right," Pixie stated, agreeing with Wheeler, "I like my job on the ship and everything but sometimes there are days when it's not all that fun being cooped up on a ship."

"Especially with Hawk on board," Wheeler stated, almost stated the other's male name like it was a curse word of some kind.

Giving Pixie a good once over, he added "He hasn't done anything to you, has he? Hit you upside the head with something in a training session, maybe"

Wheeler and Hawk had never seen eye to eye, going as far back as their days in the orphanage together. Pixie wasn't entirely sure why that happened. For quite some time- Before Hawk taking his rather angry leave from what she thought was their friendship a few years prior- Pixie had wanted the two of them to get along. After all, she didn't really relish playing the role of middle...person…between the two of them. That and she wanted her friends, such as they were at the time, to get along.

Her attempts hadn't worked, much to her chagrin then. Now, she figured it was a good thing. Though she and Hawk had an uneasy truce between themselves, since they lived and worked in close quarters and neither of them wanted to lose their job, Pixie was sort of glad she didn't have to see him outside of the ship the two of them worked on. If Hawk and Wheeler had become friends- and stayed that way after what had happened between him and Pixie- that might not have happened. She might have had to see Hawk outside of a work situation. If that was the case, the medic-in-training wasn't sure their little truce would hold. Pixie had a funny feeling that it wouldn't.

After looking around the wide room just to be sure that Hawk wasn't anywhere around, Pixie shook her head and answered, "Aside from a few off color jokes, he's being civil. I'm not sure if he thinks that if he starts acting up again he'll have to do more work or Trinity or Switch might get it into their heads to spar him or something"

The pair lapsed into an uneasy silence. It wasn't, by any stretch of the imagination a first for the two of them. It seemed like, for the longest time, the two of them sat in an uneasy sort of silence. That had been a long time ago, though, or, at the very least, it seemed like it was a long time ago. Once the two of them became good friends, that changed and the uneasy silences disappeared.

Though she was trying to force them to be quite, her mind was busy replaying Chian's words in a loop. The more she tried not to think about them, the louder they became.

The problem was that it was Wheeler sitting across from her. He was her friend, her pal, her buddy. Then again, he was a good listener, allowing her to talk to him for as long as she wanted, and he seemed to genuinely care about her. She figured that was what friends did for one another, though. The listened and they cared. Those seemed to be hallmarks of a good, healthy friendship.

"Snap out of it Pix. This is one of your best friends you're thinking about here," she chided herself.

Unbidden, and most certainly unwanted now, the words of the Oracle entered her mind. The old woman had said that someone had liked her for a very long time and that he was scared to say anything about it. She tried not to think of Wheeler in that role but his nervous expression told her otherwise.

Whatever he was thinking about seemed to make him about as uneasy as she was. His, normally, genial and open expression seemed to be more thoughtful now. It was almost as if he was considering what he wanted to say next, except what he wanted to say next appeared to be something very serious.

"So," Pixie began, trailing off when she couldn't think of anything to say.

The lull in the conversation, once a small crack, was started to spread into a wide and uncomfortable gulf. A gulf that seemed to grow in both size and depth as the moments passed. As it grew, it threatened to swallow both Pixie and Wheeler whole.

"How about you come up to Rain's with me for diner?" Pixie suggested, fishing for something, anything to say and coming up with the offer she was supposed to make, "Aisling and the others are coming too. It wouldn't be nice to leave you out."

"That is," she, hastily added, "if you're not busy. I don't want you to change your plans on my account. I'm sure everyone will understand if you have something to do. We could all get together another time or something."

Wheeler thought for a moment, chewing as he did so. A relieved expression crossed his face for reasons Pixie didn't really understand. He seemed glad that he didn't really have to think all that hard for the next direction their conversation was supposed to take.

"Nope, nothing to do. I'd love to come to Rain's with you," he replied, making Pixie smile though she wasn't quite sure why she was, "I haven't seen Aisling, and the rest of them in a while. It'll be nice to get together like old times."

Part of Pixie wished things were like "old times," as Wheeler called them. At least, then, she didn't have to deal with thoughts put in her head by Chian and the Oracle. Things seemed to be a whole lot simpler back then. She and Wheeler could be just friends and that was that.

Now, well, Pixie wasn't sure what she was going to do. Maybe, once she was around the others, Chian's comments and the Oracle's words would fade into the background.

A girl could hope, right?