"Hey!"

Neo turned. "Hey Zach."

"How was your trip?"

"Oh, you know."

He'd avoided spending time with Zach the past couple of weeks. He hadn't wanted to hear about Trinity's manifold perfections; he was missing her quite badly enough as it was. But leaving Zion had been a wrench, and returning to the Matrix amplified that. He was lonely, he couldn't be with the one person he really needed, and this guy was, at least, a potential. It was as good as it got around here.

"You want to go for a beer?" he said. "I could do with the company."

But Zach shook his head, a strange, secretive expression on his face. One that was too damn happy for comfort. "Can't tonight. I have plans."

"Plans?" Neo repeated, and then willed the word back that same second. But it was too late.

"Yeah." Zach was positively glowing. "I'm taking Kenz out to dinner. Figured I'd take her somewhere nice. You know, the full cliche."

Neo felt the world fall away from him. "Mackenzie," he said stupidly, unable to make it connect. "You're... taking Mackenzie out to dinner?"

"Yeah." Zach smiled then, a huge, joyous, ear-to-ear grin. "We got together, while you were away."

She'd always been so serenely confident in his love. Her trust in him was absolute, and her faith in his fidelity was part of that. She'd comforted him over Persephone, not the other way around - he'd been sick with guilt, knowing he'd hurt her, and only her calm reassurance had made it okay again. And she'd never shown the slightest jealousy otherwise, not on any other occasion.

But he had.

He'd hated it when they ran into her old lovers in Zion, hated reminders that she'd once had a sex life that didn't exclusively mean him. The truth was that he'd always doubted deserving her at all; always wrestled with a haunting anxiety that, one day, he'd have to face a reckoning for the absolute joy she gave him. That, one day, the fates would exact payment in full. Those terrible minutes in the machine city he'd thought it was finally upon him, but then she'd been returned to life, essentially unharmed. The bullet had been dodged. And now another levy had been set.

He knew that the pain was nothing, compared to the pain of her death. That this could have been - had been - a lot worse. But watching Zach caressing the small of her back as they walked away from the office one evening, her animated face towards him as she explained something - off to spend the weekend together, doing things he couldn't bear to imagine, but couldn't stop imagining, either - he also knew that the fact didn't help him cope with this. Nothing could. It was like enduring amputation without pain relief instead of disembowelment. One was far worse, but the other was agony, just the same.

It wasn't real, life in the Matrix. That was the Zionist faith. Nothing was real, so none of it mattered, not unless you died there. All else could be walked away from.

That faith, he was discovering, was bullshit.

Seeing them on the days they came into work together was the worst. He would know then, beyond any doubt. And she was indisputably fond of the guy. At this stage, that was all it was - she didn't look at him as she used to Neo, she didn't even touch him much - she accepted it when he touched her, but for the most part, she didn't treat him any differently from before. She'd never treated Neo like that. The moment they were together, she'd put him at the absolute center of her world - had always openly loved him, just as he had her. Nobody could ever have speculated about the strength of their feelings, or the seriousness of what they shared. But hugging those past memories to himself, in the face of present heartbreak, only took him so far. And it wasn't anything like far enough.

He was, increasingly, terrified that this surreal situation might grow into something more concrete. He couldn't even tell if this fear was rational and well-founded, or just rampant paranoia. His grip on reality was steadily loosening over the weeks jacked in; he was lost, quite unable to determine which way was up. All he knew was that the fear swelled as he saw her smile, sometimes even laugh, when she and Zach talked. And they talked a lot - intently, intensely, seemingly fascinated. He'd watched her talk this way with Ghost, and enjoyed the sight. They were hugely attuned intellectually, and he'd always appreciated how much strength they both drew from that bond; had never been remotely threatened by it. With Zach, who couldn't begin to match her intelligence, the horror was that it must be emotional in basis. That was harder to quantify - and much, much harder to handle.

Once, the very worst day of all, Zach had said something to her as they left for the day, something Neo hadn't caught. She'd reached over and touched his face with real gentleness, before kissing him tenderly, if swiftly, quite of her own volition. The elevator doors had closed on them that second, leaving Neo standing there, frozen with shock. The memory would hit him at random moments; at work, on the El, at home when he lay sleepless at night. It always, and instantly, closed his throat up with threatened tears. More than once, if he had the privacy, they'd actually fallen. It had been the first time he'd had to consider whether she might come to want Zach and not him, even when freed. Zach could offer her a future that was simple, happy, private - the things she'd always wanted in life. And the only one of the triad Neo could compete with was the second.

It made matters infinitely worse that she suddenly seemed to have lost all interest in him. She was polite, friendly, professional. But the particular, personal interest she'd always shown - the quiet preference for spending time with him - had vanished. He had no idea why, and no way of coping. In all the time he'd known her, she'd prioritized him over all else. Preferred him and his company to anyone else. And that had carried over, in a subtle way, even when she started at Metacortex, even not knowing who he was. She'd made excuses to talk to him, quietly invited him to social events, been warm, albeit guarded. He'd just taken it for granted as the way the universe was supposed to be. But now days were succeeding empty days, days in which he didn't see her at all. And even when he did, she was never alone.

He dreamed about her more and more. Dreams aboard the Neb, working side-by-side. Talking about anything and everything. Watching her work on some engineering project, overcome with admiration. Making love in Zion, or the swift, tender exchanges on the ship, when they were benefiting from the sleep shifts Morpheus always tried to overlap for them - you rest far better together. You always look more refreshed. It was true, he'd always slept badly without her. But now, he had to. He had to do without her all the time.

The war had been easier.

"Can I join you?" he said.

He didn't know what came over him. He just saw her, sat there alone in the cafe, and couldn't bear it anymore. Needed to see her close to, to hear her voice, to see her notice he was still alive, no matter how much it hurt. And if he didn't initiate it, he knew it wouldn't happen.

She looked up. "Hey, Tom," she said. "Sure."

He sat down opposite her, and tried to think of something to say. "So, you and Zach," was all that came out. She didn't reply; just looked at her cup, frowning slightly. He wasn't surprised, it was an inane comment. Even if it was all he thought of, whenever he saw her. "He's seriously happy," he went on. "Talks about you all the time."

"Really?" She sounded slightly thrown. "Well. He's a sweet guy."

"Yeah." It was true, after all.

"It's very different." She was stirring her coffee in methodical circles now, even though it was black and unsweetened, and she hated it to cool too much.

"Different?" he said.

"From what I'm used to."

"How do you mean?"

"Marriage, I guess. Wasn't for me."

"You mean Ghost wasn't for you?"

She was thoughtful a moment. "I don't know, if I'm honest. We always got along amazingly. Still do. We had problems, sure..." her eyes became guarded and she looked away, evasive. He found himself wondering what sort of problems they'd programmed for her and Ghost, to explain it all. It was very evident that she had no intention of telling him - that as far as she was concerned, it was much too private to share with some guy she hardly knew. She drank some of her coffee before she spoke again. "There were other factors too, and maybe in the end they were what did for us. In our circles - research circles - he's kind of famous, crazy as that sounds. It got wearing, being known for who you were married to. Always having to watch what you said, and to whom. We never really had any privacy, because there were a bunch of crises all the time, and he was always being waylaid." She shrugged, a little apologetic. "It's nice to be anonymous, be a little selfish. Have things be uncomplicated. I didn't do irresponsible at the right age, perhaps."

"So the serious comes later?" he asked.

"As in, relationships?" He nodded, and she shook her head at once. "No. I don't ever see myself being involved like that again. I'm not cut out for it, I didn't like the person I'd have become, given time. Love only takes you so far."

He looked at her and wondered how he could keep breathing, hearing Trinity say this, anything like this, to him. She'd always hated the publicity his role attracted, and now it was exponentially worse. Maybe, at some level, she knew it. Maybe, at some level, Trinity was making good choices while she was free of the past, free of guilt, free of anything but her own gut instinct. Making choices on what she really needed for herself, not what her love for him demanded of her. And maybe what she truly needed wasn't Neo, or his fame, or the dark, brutal wartime memories they shared, but something much simpler, much more sunlit. Maybe Trinity just couldn't take being a living symbol anymore, and leaving him was the only escape. He couldn't blame her. He'd dearly like one himself. And unlike him, she had a choice in the matter.

"Tom?"

He looked up, startled, into her eyes - eyes filled with concern. "Huh?"

"You okay?" she said, very gently. "You were miles away."

"I'm sorry. And yeah, I'm fine."

"You don't look fine. If you don't mind my saying."

"I'm just tired. Not been sleeping that well lately."

She was silent for a moment, and then she said, "You were thinking about her, weren't you?"

He looked up again, into those depthless eyes. God, he missed her. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah. I was."

"How is she?"

He didn't move a muscle, just carried on looking into her eyes. "Beautiful," he said eventually. "But very lost."