syren_fic | Live Truly, My Heart: Part 36 (Reply)

This is Trinity's story - AU due to a whole bunch of stuff, but mostly because of her getting unplugged in '1995' rather than in '1987'.

Enjoy! :-D

Part One: Real
Part Two: Search and Rescue
Part Three: The Oracle Speaks
Part Four: Revelations
Part Five: Half of Her Heart
Part Six: Batteries
Part Seven: Life Goes On
Part Eight: Shattered Flight
Part Nine: Truth Be Told
Part Ten: Goodbye, My Friend
Part Eleven: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back
Part Twelve: Negotiations
Part Thirteen: Out of Order
Part Fourteen: Getting In
Part Fifteen: Getting Out
Part Sixteen: Breathe
Part Seventeen: Walls and Doorways
Part Eighteen: Know Thyself
Part Nineteen: Hope and Dread
Part Twenty: Come Together
Part Twenty One: Fire, Water, Earth
Part Twenty Two: Afterglow
Part Twenty-Three: Different Kinds of Trust
Part Twenty Four: Outfoxed
Part Twenty Five: Enter the Seeker
Part Twenty Six: Cravings
Part Twenty Seven: Coming Home
Part Twenty Eight: Quick Change
Part Twenty Nine: Practice Makes Perfect
Part Thirty: Conversations
Part Thirty One: Getting Ideas
Part Thirty Two: Chiaroscuro
Part Thirty Three: Game Night
Part Thirty Four: Wire Tap
Part Thirty Five: Aftermath

Title: Live Truly, My Heart
Fandom: The Matrix
Characters: Trinity, Switch, Cypher, mention of Neo, Morepheus.
Pairings: Trinity/Switch
Rating: PG13. If that.
Author's note: This me be twiddled and/or added-to over the next week or so. Also note: this chapter is set about a year and a half before M1.

The Things We Know

Time passes.
I'm so used to the days running together, a blur of work and sleep and tasteless rounds of rations, that it's strange to be aware of every minute, every hour.
But I am.
I can't shake the feeling that I'm living on borrowed time.

Switch, in a rare private moment in the Mess, tells me that the feeling's not all that strange. She passes me a bowl of amino-acid goop, as I pluck two spoons from the drawer.
"Really?" I ask, sitting down.
She shrugs.
"We all feel like that, sometimes."
I think about this, swalling a spoon full of rations. Think about how Switch, herself, has been shot - more or less fatally - three times already. How it could, so easily, have been a fourth.
Because of me.
It takes a minute to register that she's waving her hand in front of my eyes.
"Trin?" she queries, her eyebrows hovering, like question marks.
"Sorry," I mutter, feeling foolish.
The corner of her mouth quirks.
"And I thought Cypher was the brooding one," she comments, offering a lopsided, lightening-quick smile to gentle her words.
I sigh.
"How do you deal with it?" I ask. "How do you handle the fact that you could have been dead by now?"
She shrugs, one-shouldered, swallowing her mouthful of rations.
"You do what you have to," she answers. "Learn to move faster." She sighs, looking pensive. "You do your duty 'til you can't anymore."
I consider this, as I eat my tasteless meal, wondering if Switch ever asked the same questions.
I can imagine Cypher telling her to get back in the chair and get revenge.
"Don't let the bastards know you're scared," he'd say.
Or Morpheus, solemnly intoning words like "providence" and "destiny". And, yes, "duty", too.
I reach across the table and take her hand, hold it silently for a moment.
"Any idea what that agent wanted?" I ask, eventually, shifting the subject a little.
She snorts.
"All of us dead or back in the cages," she suggests. "What else do they want?"
I sigh, just a little, and let it go.
It's not like I have an idea what it was after, either. These days, I'm not sure what to think about anything.

"Throw yourself into your work," is Cypher's unlikely suggestion, when he finds me brooding on the main deck two weeks later. Not that he doesn't take his own advice. Not that we haven't had a surplus - finally - of work to throw ourselves into.
Ever since Switch and I established that new hardline - how it went undiscovered is utterly beyond me. I'm just thankful that the mission was a success - we've been dropping into the Matrix more and more, trying to get, and keep, our Potential's attention without damaging his sanity or attracting too much notice from less savoury quarters.
Cypher's volunteered for more solo missions in the last month than I've ever seen him go on before. Maybe he believes that, this time, Morpheus has really found the One.

"What do you think?" he counters, hedging, when I finally ask him about it, one night as I'm about to take over piloting duties.
I consider the question, but I don't know what to think.
"Doesn't matter," I answer, with a careful shrug. More than certain about one thing: I don't want to tell him about what the Oracle told me, so long ago. "Either way, it's one more person out of the power plant,and that's what's important."
He pushes the co-pilot seat out, with his boot.
"See," he says, as I sit down. "That's a good attitude to take. You don't know if he's the one. I don't know either. Hell, even Morpheus doesn't know, and he's risking all our lives just to find out. So stick with what's real, eh?"
He sighs, stroking his beard.
"Have a good night, Trin," he says, abruptly, standing and stalking away.
That was wierd, I think, sliding into the pilot's chair. Usually he won't leave me alone.

I think about Neo a lot over the next few weeks. Hard not to, given the ammount of attention we're trying to generate.
Hard not to, given how I feel about him.
This is ridiculous, I tell myself for the millionth time, as I catch myself smiling, stupidly, while monitoring the feed.
He's just so determined.
I watch him chasing Morpheus, downloading newspaper articles and secret chat-room print-screens, trying to peice together the truth of my own Captain.
I know he wants to find us.
Trick is, I don't know if that subtle wrongness he must feel all the time is so subtle as to be negligeable. I don't know whether he's ready to believe that there's a way out for him, if he'll just take it.

*~*~*~*~*

Comments would be *wonderful*! :-D