Neo bites his tongue so he doesn't speak, and closes his eyes from the pain. He looks over at Smith across the room in the opposite corner. Unlike most times Smith is facing him while sitting in the corner, watching him carefully. Neo quickly looks away, and feels Smith smirking at him, silently laughing like Smith always does. And Neo can't help but watch as his eyes wander back to Smith, laughing without laughing at him. Neo gives an angered look at Smith, and then sticks out his tongue at him like a child. And then quickly turns his back to Smith, lying on his side on the ground.

Smith smiles.

You see, after a few days of not screaming, it was becoming incredibly difficult to bottle it all up. The lies they knew to be true, the truly insane, and all that. This need to scream was vented out by excessive talking on Neo's part. This talking was on subject for a time, all about his dreams and their past, but after a while it drifted from that into complete nonsense. This nonsense could have been mistaken for the rambles of madmen, plus there is only so much Smith can take of complete nonsense. So, in order to silence dear Neo, Smith offered him a proposal. If Neo could stay absolutely silent until they are let out of their little cell, well then Neo can call Smith, John, if he liked.

So far the silence has been enjoyable for Smith. It's been four days without a word from Neo. Smith never really expected Neo to go so long in silence he should really stop underestimating him. Smith has enjoyed Neo's moments of almost screaming. Where he writhes in pain, from biting his tongue.

Neo wiggles a little on his side, biting his tongue some more. Silence, utter silence. He hated it now more than ever. He hated it so much; he took comfort from the noise the buckles on his straight jacket made. After all this, Neo would never give Smith a moment of silence. He felt as if he didn't have a mouth, like it was taken away from him. He was afraid for a time, that if he had hands and he reached for his mouth he would find nothing. He was screaming, on the inside, but his mouth wouldn't move.

He hated it.

Then something snapped, and it hurt.

"John…" Neo whispered.

"And so comes an end to a beautiful and simple thing. Yet I suppose everything that has a beginning has an end. You can't call me John either." Smith said smiling.

"John, I think my tongue is bleeding."

"What? Let me see!"

Smith in urgency crawled in his straight jacket to his fallen companion, sitting on his knees and raising his head. Neo turned onto his back and stuck out his tongue to its fullest length. Smith bent down and scanned it, then sat back down.

"It's not bleeding." Smith shook his head.

"Are you sure?" Neo asked clearly worried.

"Do you taste blood?"

Neo's worried look increased, as he turn his stare to the floor, and moved his tongue around his mouth. Then he looked back up at Smith with a look of complete helplessness that only the mad seem to achieve when they walk among the sane and when they do not understand something seemingly simple.

"What does blood taste like?" Neo asked.

Smith was thrown off by the question, and sat back in a moment of thought.

"Well…." Smith began.

But Smith didn't know either. He could picture blood, how it flowed throughout the human body, in contact with the outside world it turned into the deep and hellish red blood was recognized for.

"Um…it's blood…." Smith tried to find the right words. "It doesn't matter anyway, you're not bleeding." He said and dismissed the entire thing.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"All right, John."

"Stop that."

Neo still twisted his tongue throughout his mouth, and sat back down into his corner. His safe corner, his and only his. Not Smith's, but his. He laid his head on the side of the wall, and side.

"Never make me do that again." Neo said.

Smith leaned in closer to him.

"They're going to let us out. They've got to. We've been so good. We haven't struggled with them, we done everything they could ever ask. They have to let us out of here." Smith told him.

"I wonder if Michelle is back…"

"Never mind her! Why do you care so much about her? She's not Trinity, and we have bigger things we must focus on!"

"But…I…."

Smith backed away from him in frustration, and sat farther away. He sighed and Neo looked away to the lovely wall, his wall. His safe wall that never yelled at him. Smith stared at the floor, noticing the subtle differences there were between this side of the floor and his side.

"It's okay." Smith said softly.

Neo said nothing. Smith nudged him with his shoulder.

"It's okay." He repeats.

Neo said nothing.

This is why Smith didn't particularly enjoy talking.

"You know…outside of here…it's the same thing." Neo begins. "Just…white walls and doors…."

"I don't care."

Smith looks towards their small little window in their small little door, and Neo looks over at him.

"I hate this room. I hate it so much." Smith says with such lack of anger, as if he really didn't hate their room, or didn't know how to hate their room. He said it casually and turned to Neo with a smile. "A prison is all it is."

Neo thinks for a moment, but nods in the end.

"Anything beyond here must be better. It has to be better." Smith says smiling.

Smith turns back to their little window again, and leaves only Neo to look at him. And there is silence again, and Neo hates it. He opens his mouth to say something, anything to break the silence, but finds nothing to say. He curls up a little into a ball again, trying not to scream something out. He looks back at Smith again, and frowns.

"Smith…" He begins to say.

"Yes…" Smith turns to him. "Mr. Anderson?"

His mouth hangs open, there's something he should say, something that must be said. Is there anything else to say? There must be, we don't talk a lot when we should. Neo wanted to say something, but he's never said it, and he probably never will again. He wanted to say, "Don't call me that."

Then their door opened to the outside.

"All right, boys! Good news!" Aaron seemingly jumped right in. "Orders straight from the Doctors."

Then Aaron walked right over to them and gently pushed them forward, and started doing something. He started with Neo first, and Smith backed away unsure of what he was doing, Neo looked to Smith in horror also wondering what was going on. It took them a moment to realize that Aaron was only taking off Neo's straight Jacket.

"We can let you out now." Aaron finished.

Then Neo smiled like he smiled when he first, and begins struggling, trying to already run out of the jacket, the horrible, horrible jacket. He jumps nearly trying to get out of it, and Aaron holds him back, laughing from his excitement.

"Hurry up! Let me out! Let me out!" Neo said laughing.

Neo continued to pull at the jacket, still trying to get out, until Aaron finally just pulled it right off of him, and Neo ran out of that room and jumped as he did so. He remembered Smith, and didn't scream at once, but he held it in and jumped up and down. He did a flip but no one saw, and he didn't even know he did it. But he got on his knees and he looked at his hands, and he touched them, then touched his face and his arms, and his back and legs. He laughed at it all. His hands! His hands! He felt his hair, and he rubbed it into a complete mess. Then he went to the wall, and he felt the cold walls. Then he nearly ran into Smith, who seemed to just be standing in the doorway.

"What are you doing?" Neo asked.

"Looking at my hands." Smith said.

"Why? Why not touch something with them?"

"Because I haven't seen them in years." Smith said a little aggressively.

Not really years, but long enough.

He looked over at Neo, and considered what he said, so he reached over to Neo and he touched his hair. And he started fixing it, putting it back to the nice and formal hair instead of the mess Neo himself left it in.

"There." Smith said.

Neo laughed.

Then he looked at their door, the other side of their door and saw something, he touched it, and took it. It was a clipboard with a piece of paper clipped to it. And Neo for the first time in ages, read words. The file was about them. He read their names, and their illnesses.

"Apparently we suffer from severe gaps of amnesia…violent behavior, outbursts, delusions, and possible schizophrenia…." Neo read. "…We don't suffer from schizophrenia!"

"Let me see that." Smith tugged at the clipboard.

"I'll take that!" Aaron grabbed it out of Neo's hands with two straight jackets over his shoulder. "So guys, um, let me so you around I guess. It's nothing really special. You'll learn where everything is in no time."

It took Neo a moment to see that the clipboard was no longer in his hands but in Aaron's. And when Neo did realize this he looked over at Smith, and decided to do something with his hands.

Neo gently punched him in the arm.

"Now I can punch you!" Neo exclaimed.

Smith rubbed his arm for a moment, making his hands into fists, and punched the air rather quickly. Smith smiled and looked at Neo.

"Yeah…well I'm still better at kicking." Neo said.

"Inferior in punching."

"I could kick you in the mouth."

"But I could simply punch you in the mouth with more ease."

"Shut up."

"Hey guys! No fighting!" Aaron interrupted.

Aaron stood in front of them as Neo looked at everything, and began touching everything he could find. And Smith, Smith just stared at his hands, his hands that were his, with uniqueness. A thumbprint that was only his, and no one else's, such a little thing that separated him from so many others. Then he closed his hands, done looking at the palms, but then he noticed something, and he walked over to Neo to tell him.

"It smells out here,…" he told Neo.

"Smells?"

Smith nodded.

"I don't smell anything." Neo said.

"It's faint…but it does."

"Are you sure?"

"Maybe it's the Windex or something, Michael just washed this area, there he is." Aaron interrupted.

The Sane man pointed down the open space to a young boy with a mop, doing his job relentlessly. Michael looked up hearing his name faintly, and he saw Neo and Smith. Neo smiled, and waved at the boy, but Michael quickly looked away. Neo turned to Smith and frowned, wondering what was wrong.

"Sure…Windex…" Smith agreed with the sane man.

But it wasn't Windex. It was something utterly repulsive. Yet it was so faint, he ignored it for the time being and dragged Neo closer to Aaron so that they may listen.

"Yes, well." Aaron began. "This is one of three main halls that lead to the main area, the center sort of, where you can find everything you need. Well…everything we can provide. So, follow me."

It was one of Smith's more recent visits outside their room, and down the hall they walked, passing others in such rooms. Smith could not help but to peer into them whenever they passed one, to see the poor souls in their own little prison.

Soon they entered the main area, and just as Aaron said, there were more hallways and doorways that would provide everything the sane were allowed to give them. It was a large room; empty really except for all the rooms it led to. Though there was the cafeteria visible, where Smith and Neo saw their fellow "insane" men for the first time. One of them was a Frenchman who was sipping cheap wine. Neo saw this man, and this man saw Neo. And this man grinned.

"So this is it, there's the cafeteria. They serve the same food you've been getting, but now you can you know, eat with others. Over in that room is the gaming room, they don't have a lot, just chess and other things. They don't give you cards however, if you ever wanted to play, cause well…someone once tried to eat the cards, and well they sort of got stuck in their throat. There's the outdoor area, but you can't go out there, we're doing some intense gardening."

"Outside!" Neo exclaimed.

Indeed the outside, which was not white, could be seen. The entire back wall was just pretty much glass windows and glass doors. Of course bulletproof glass, so no one rams into the glass to break it and hurt themselves. But it was the outside, it was green and beautiful and bright and warm. Everything the inside wasn't.

"Okay, that leads to the Library, lots of books in there. Down there is the laundry room, Kali works there. Over in that hallway, that's where the staff goes to check in. Over there are the other two hallways. The other rooms are pretty much just other quarters for patients….Yes well…I guess that's pretty much it. Ask around if you get lost…" Aaron walked up to them. "I guess you won't be needing these straight jackets anymore, hopefully anyway. I'll just take them to Kali. No, fighting, okay? No going into locked rooms, no loud screaming, curfew at eight, and don't go down those two hallways or the stairs."

"Why not?" Smith asked.

"Well those two hallways are where we keep the criminally insane, you know, convicts. And the stairs, well no one is allowed up the stairs."

"Why?" Smith again.

"Because we don't want anyone jumping off of there for suicide. Um, don't stray far away from here, okay? I still have to figure out where your new room is."

"You mean we won't be staying in the one we have?" Smith asked.

"Well no, you don't need a padded one anymore…I'll check back with you two later."

Aaron began towards the Laundry room, but Neo grabbed at his sleeve.

This place, this white, white place. The Asylum to which they have lived in for all too long. And now they knew how it worked. Where people ate, slept, played. The others who resided there. The truly mad, not like them. No, no, they're not insane, not them, all they have to do is keep believing in that.

Neo was right. Outside was like inside. White. Smith was beginning to hate the color. Though white wasn't even really a color, merely the absence of color. Either way Smith hated it. Though he did like going outside, and moving his arms, he was indeed disappointed. He would not allow Neo to know such a thing. It was white. That's all it was. Wherever you would look it was all white. Everyone dressed in white, the walls covered in white, the floor white. If you stared at the wall you would be able to trick yourself into thinking you saw not a wall but a room. White, endless white. The Asylum must have gone on forever.

And Smith hoped the rest of the world was not like this.

The World couldn't be like this, he knew it wasn't. It just couldn't be like this. This wasn't right. All this white it didn't seem like it was meant to be there, it didn't seem real. None of this could be real, nothing is pure and white like this. Nothing is so perfect like this. This…this couldn't be real.

"Wait, Morpheus, I mean Aaron, Aaron!" Neo exclaimed.

"What is it?"

"Where's Michelle, is she okay?"

"She's still at home, Neo."

"I didn't hurt her that bad did I?"

"No! No, Neo not because you hurt her. I think…I think her brother died, or some relative, she just taking a few extra days off. She'll be back soon, okay?"

Neo frowned, but slowly nodded. And Aaron left, slightly worrying in the back of his mind what damage those two could do now that they were outside. Neo turned to Smith who was kicking the ground.

"There's something we should consider." Smith said without looking at him.

"What?"

"That all this…" He stomped the ground, "All these people could be fake. Another dream world made just for you and me. A…personal prison."

"A dream world within a dream world?"

"A Construct just for us…. What do you think?"

"I think you're being a little too paranoid." Neo smiled.

Smith didn't frown, he didn't seem disappointed. He just looked up at Neo, then back to the ground.

"Merely something to consider. If it is true then it will be increasingly difficult to find a way out." Smith said softly.

"I don't like the idea that even this isn't real. I don't like it when you say Michelle isn't real." Neo said sadly.

"You're dependent, Mr. Anderson." Smith said, bumping into Neo. "It is a weakness."

"Sometimes…it's a greater weakness to have no one to depend on." Neo whispered, looking up at Smith.

Smith again didn't seem angry or sad; he just looked up at Neo.

"There's always you." Smith said. "Whether I want you or not. I just can't seem to get rid of you."

And Smith gently punched Neo in the arm, and stepped back. Neo laughed. Smith started walking off towards the gaming room. Neo closely follows holding back laughs. And when Neo caught up to Smith he went in front of him, and smiled.

"Like you'd ever want to get rid of me." Neo said.

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Next Chapter: I Know Kung Fu