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TITLE: Viola
AUTHOR: Centaur
RATING: A healthy R. Sex, and some weird drink that you may choose to align either with alcohol or with harder drugs. I don’t know, it’s made-up.
SUMMARY: ". . . and some have greatness thrust upon them." Dancing, drums, Shakespeare, and sex.
SPOILERS: This fic may contain some itty-bitty Reloaded spoilers. I was inspired to write it based on two relatively new still shots posted on the official website. The man with whom Neo chats in this fic is an actual character, but I know nothing about him other than his name, which I got from the caption on the photo – I saw the shot, found myself wondering what they were talking about, and wrote the story around that. And then, as the concept spiralled outward, I got a little more inspiration from another still shot. However, if anything that I write here proves close to what actually happens in the movie, that will just be my psychic powers kicking in, or something.
CATEGORY: Adult.
AUTHOR’S NOTES: Thanks to Raedances and MTS for reading this first. The play to which they refer and which is frequently quoted is Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night.”
NOTE FROM RAE: Centaur is out of town while I'm posting this, so I'm taking the liberty of putting her image URLs back into the HTML (they wouldn't work on fanfiction.net)
DISCLAIMER: I don’t own The Matrix or any associated characters. And I ain’t Bill Shakespeare.
Viola
Neo was quite sure that she was asleep. Her breathing was deep and even, each exhalation sliding across the skin of his chest like rainwater over warm ice. The bed was a good size, here, a mattress slightly larger than a standard double thrown into the corner of the room, lost in the shadows of the rock. It was a living space carved out of the solid rock that made up the Zion caverns; this deep underground, the rock itself worked hard to keep them warm.
For his part, Neo wasn’t sure if he would ever find sleep again. He wasn’t sure what it was – perhaps it was just too warm, when he had grown used to clutching Trinity against him to ward off the chill aboard the ship. Perhaps it was whatever had been in the drinks passed around at the feast, earlier – what had that been? Alcohol? No, some kind of stimulant, something dissolved in that harsh-flavoured liquid that the freeborns and Zion-dwellers threw back like water in the light of their torches and fires. Whatever it was, it was potent; Neo felt hyper-aware, extremely sensitive to the slightest noises, the slightest movements. He couldn’t help but notice every particle of his skin that was pressed against Trinity’s, her arm across his stomach, her head at the hollow between chest and shoulder, her leg slid casually between his. His fingertips, at the small of her back, felt wetness there; sweat highlighted her temples, too, and her hairline. It was she who had fed him drinks through the evening. Not many; she, herself, had consumed more. But her eyes sparkled wickedly when she handed him his first vial of the clear liquid, clinked her own against his in toast, and then held his eyes as they both tossed it back.
For a few minutes, he felt nothing. Then it hit him like a brick – the lights became brighter, every inch of his skin became aware of every movement of the air. The sounds of footsteps echoed around him like the beat of a bass drum. Caught off-guard, he reached out a hand and steadied himself against a rock, waiting for the initial shock to pass.
It hit her around the same time, but her reaction was altogether different. She tossed her head back, arms outstretched at her sides, and exhaled sharply, intensely, like someone who had just been thrilled. When she turned to him again, she had fire in her eyes, and she was smiling. Smiling. Widely.
“Hey, are you okay?” she asked, when she saw him pressed against the wall. He could only look at her, wincing against the heightened clarity of his vision, and the light-sensitivity.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “I should have warned you. It’s hard stuff. But it’s less damaging than alcohol, believe it or not.”
Neo closed his eyes and merely nodded, still not prepared to release the rock he was leaning on. The initial wave wasn’t passing -- it maintained its strength steadily, holding him from all sides.
Trinity’s smile faded. “Neo? Are you all right?” She reached up and cupped his jaw with her hand. And in that instant his eyes snapped open, settling on hers, and he involuntarily covered her hand with his, pressing it there. The warmth of her hand felt magnified, like every cell of her palm was intimately connecting with the cells of his cheek; he felt an electricity there in his heightened sensation, multiplied a hundred times by whatever it was that had been in that drink.
His eyes held hers as he lifted himself away from the wall and found his centre. There. Balance. Her eyes curled up at the corners, and then she was smiling again. One eyebrow rose pointedly.
“Come on,” she said, removing her hand from his face. His hand followed hers, and she clutched his fingers as she led him away, further into the madding crowds.
There were men with drums, beating out deep tribal rhythms. They stood on a platform with their shirts off, drums slung in various ways off their shoulders, and they stomped the ground with their feet in time with their music. Neo couldn’tplace the sound – like the music of South Africa merged with the fast-paced, hard, Taiko percussion of Japan or the drum-n-bass electronica from Europe. There, beside them, was another table presenting rows and rows of vials of that same clear liquid. Trinity picked one up and swallowed it without hesitation. She met Neo’s eyes, and clearly judged that he wasn’t ready for more. It hit her in a few seconds, and he could see the fire in her eyes spring up again, eyeing him like something to be devoured. And in the subtle movements of her body he could see her infected by the rhythms of the drummers, he could see their heavy beats reaching down and pulling at something inside of her.
“Dance with me, Neo,” she said, pulling on his hand.
Dance? Trinity?
Neo shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
She tugged a little. “Come on. Dance with me.”
But Neo was saved from having to answer when Tank materialised out of nowhere at their sides, his eyes, too, sparkling from the effects of the drink.
“Hey! What are you two doing, hovering on the edge, here?” He reached an arm out and touched Neo’s shoulder with one hand, Trinity’s shoulder with the other. “Dance! There’s no room to move on the Neb!”
Neo shook is head again. “You don’t want to see me dance. I’m a terrible dancer.”
Tank shook his head, as if disappointed. “You’re missing out, man!”
Neo shrugged.
And then Trinity turned, releasing Neo’s hand from hers and raising it to Tank’s strong shoulder. “Let’s dance, Tank,” she said, and he grinned. He cocked an eyebrow questioningly at Neo, who merely smiled and waved the two of them out onto the floor. Tank picked up two more shots as they walked, and handed one to Trinity; they swallowed them together and set the empty vials down near the base of the drummers’ platform. It was there that they found a space, and Neo watched from the fringe as they found the beat with their shoulders, hips, and feet; the sound seemed to carry them, rolling through their bodies like waves. Dancing here was like an infection – no steps, no standard formula, just letting the sound seep into the muscle and letting the movement flow out. There they were, two soldiers cooped up in a small hovercraft for months on end, finally letting their energy out, sometimes stepping close together so their chests touched, and swaying together as one; only moments later to fall away, perhaps one hand clasping the other’s wrist, as they rose and fell with the break-beat.
Neo was mesmerized. He had never seen Trinity move like this, never even close; she wore a sleeveless shirt and he watched the flex and fall of the smooth muscles in her arms. Her hair clung to the dampness of her forehead, and she was smiling, smiling widely in a way that he had never seen her smile – it was the grin of an adrenaline high, the feeling of just letting it all go. Tank, too, was laughing; they pushed each other away and then drew back together, and pushed away again. Neo didn’t feel threatened – Tank, he knew, had a purely fraternal love of Trinity, and he trusted him. But Trinity – god, Trinity – he had never, never seen her move like that, heavy footfalls made with light grace, moving like a woman possessed.
He could feel the beat of the music in the swells of his fingertips.
He had had enough.
Without thinking, he found his way to the table and picked up two more drinks, trying to ignore the weight of the beat in his gut already, trying to ignore how intensely he could notice the smell of sweat. He approached them in the crowd; Tank spotted him as he approached, and smiled, bidding a hasty retreat. Trinity, opening her eyes and realising that her partner was gone, turned around suddenly –
Only to be met with Neo’s dark eyes, and his hand, holding a glass out to her.
She cocked an eyebrow at him. He smiled back.
“You want another one?” He figured that two of these for him was probably equivalent to four for her, who had had many, many more years to build up a tolerance.
Wordlessly, she took the vial from him and held it up. Neo held up his own. And then, together, they shot them back, tossing the empty cups, again, to the side of the platform.
They stood still for a moment.
Then it kicked in.
Neo felt his own eyes go wide, he felt the sound become more clear. He ran a hand down Trinity’s arm and the sensation was infinitely heightened, and when he wove his fingers through hers, he felt each of her separate digits pressing individually into his palm. She stood dangerously close to him. Her back against his stomach.
“Just relax,” she said softly, “just let it come to you. Just follow me.”
She began to move, slowly at first, and he let her body guide his, large and small movements with heavy and light beats. Her head hovered near the crook of his shoulder and neck, eyes turned slightly inward, looking up at his face. The longer he let himself follow, the further he felt the rhythms sink in, until he didn’t need to follow anymore; his arm was around her waist, hypersensitive fingertips noticing every fine fibre of her shirt. Her upraised arm reached back over his shoulder, so her hand touched the back of his neck; he touched the exposed muscle and skin there, biceps, triceps, feeling her rise in goosebumps. Her breath tickled his chin.
He realised, suddenly, that without noticing it he had managed to slide a hand under her shirt, his palm resting against the skin of her stomach, over her navel. Trinity wasn’t smiling anymore – she looked too far gone to be smiling, her eyes locked with his, and suddenly there was nothing else – there was her eyes, her body against his, every cell of her screaming out to every cell of him, as though their bodies wanted to fuse. It was he who broke the gaze, bringing his lips down to the side of her neck, the angle of her shoulder, the base of her throat. The flavour of her skin seemed to burn his tongue. Her head was thrown back against his shoulder, and the brush of her hair against his neck made him shiver. And they were still dancing, still swaying with the music, even as his hand was sliding upwards under her shirt, and her hand was pulling his mouth down to hers –
Lips against lips, like an explosion against his skin. The smell of her sweat-dampened skin close to his nose, his free hand working its way into the dark strands of her hair. He tested her lips with his tongue and she drew him in; he felt a shiver run through him. It was a desperately wanting kiss, mouths wide, as though they couldn’t draw each other in far enough. Her fingers tangled themselves in the hair at his nape, and he could feel the urgency of her quick, harsh breaths. It was her that pulled away, eyes closed, breathing hard through parted lips. His hand had found its way near the base of her sternum, and he realised that he had been digging his fingertips into her abdomen, hard.
“Neo,” she said, licking her swollen lips, “let’s leave.”
He was only too happy to agree.
Making love had felt like swimming in fire. Her hands left burned trails on his skin; her mouth was something to fall into, to be consumed by. The smallest sounds, the quietest whispers of his name had shot straight through him, straight to his core. Even the way she smelled – her own, Trinity scent – it overwhelmed him, flowing into him like water. When they had both finally collapsed, neither one really sure where their own body ended and the other’s began.
Trinity fell asleep, her body against his; her arm across his stomach, her head at the hollow between chest and shoulder, her leg slid casually between his.
Neo wasn’t sure if he’d ever find sleep again.
In this wide, low bed, they both had room to stretch out. They didn’t take it. So accustomed were they to sleeping half on top of each other on a narrow cot that they took a shared half of this bed out of its middle. It wasn’t some excessively romantic gesture, some overwhelming need to be this close, even in sleep; rather, it just that this was the position they had grown accustomed to. Their most comfortable sleeping positions had changed over time to accommodate each other’s presence, because on the Neb, there was no way to avoid it – they either slept half on top of each other, or they slept in separate rooms. The latter, of course, wasn’t really an option.
Trinity shifted a little in her sleep. Her eyes, he could see, were moving under her lids; she was dreaming. Her lips twitched a little. Neo stared at the ceiling a few minutes longer. The effects of the drug were slowly fading, his senses returning to normal. It was something of a relief. But sleep still wouldn’t come. Slowly, he eased his arm out from under herand rose; almost immediately, she rolled into the warm space he had left in the bed. This made him laugh, just quietly, to himself, as he pulled the blanket up around her shoulders.
Neo pulled out a loose pair of cotton pants and a worn sweater and put them on in the dark, finding his way, as quietly as he could, out of their quarters to the elevated walkway outside. He leaned on the wrought-iron trellis there, looking down to the cavern floor where the last remnants of intoxicated revellers were stumbling around on their way home. The drumming had long since stopped.
“Everything okay there, son?”
Neo turned. The man who had spoken was older, perhaps in his late fifties or early sixties, with a head of regal white hair. He had met him earlier that day – a Councillor. Hamann. He, too, looked to be wearing sleepwear.
Neo smiled a little, and nodded. “Yeah. Couldn’t sleep.”
Councillor Hamann moved to lean against the trellis next to him, and he nodded, too. “Neither could I.” For a moment, the men were quiet, before the Councillor said, “You disappeared early tonight. Did you enjoy the festivities?”
“Yes, sir. Very much.”
“Good, good. In your honour, you know.” He paused. “This is a brave people that you must lead.”
Neo looked down at the trellis between his hands. “I don’t know. I’ve never been a leader.”
“You’ll become one. You’ll learn. You must.” The older man shifted his gaze from the cavern floor over to look Neo in the face, the gentle but challenging gaze of a government leader. “Some men are born great,” he said softly, “some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them. You, son, fall among the latter of these.”
For a moment, Neo almost smiled, but then looked down, instead, and shook his head. “You see – the thing is, I know that play, I know who says that line. It’s the buffoon, the guy who’s the heel of all the jokes. The one who gets sucker-punched so badly that it ruins his entire life.”
“Malvolio.”
“Yeah.”
“And do you remember why he’s the brunt of their jokes? Why he’s the one who gets so—” the Councillor paused, then laughed, “so badly ‘sucker-punched’?”
Neo was quiet for a moment, racking his brain, reaching back to that core English class he had had to take in his first year of university. “He overreached his status. He believed that he could be a greater man than he was.”
“That’s right. And in the end, when the farce was exposed, his last line – ‘I’ll be revenged on the whole pack of you.’” The Councillor rolled back his sleeve, exposing the plug implanted in his forearm. “Who are we all, if not the buffoons who saw through the farce that we had been made to believe as truth?” The skin around the plug was wrinkled in concentric circles, where its movement had been made to accommodate the unnatural interference. He pressed his thumb into it. “We are all Malvolio here. We are Malvolio when the play is over; after the festivities of the Twelfth Night, is he not justified to want to reclaim some of the dignity so unjustly stolen from him?”
Neo was quiet.
“One cannot overreach his status here. Status is based on merit only. There is no one to be made the clown, but only one to be made the prince.” He let his sleeve drop back down, covering his forearm again. “You, lad, have had greatness thrust upon you.”
Neo didn’t answer. There was nothing to respond. He looked out into the open space, and nodded quietly.
“At least you aren’t alone,” the Councillor said, eventually. “Morpheus has pledged his life to help you. And—” he looked up, eyeing the younger man with a narrowed, sparkling gaze, “where is your lady-love?”
Neo fought to repress his telltale grin. “She’s sleeping.”
The councillor’s eyebrow arched pointedly, and he gave a crooked smile. “You’re a lucky man, son. Many of us never find love after being freed. And Trinity – the name that haunts the Captains’ mess halls, whispered in tones of longing.”
“Trinity?”
“Certainly. Among a few other names. Petra. Nike. Wolfe. But Trinity especially, because she was so pointedly unattainable.” He chuckled. “Boys will be boys like that.”
“Yes – yes, they will.”
“Indeed.” The older man sighed, shaking his head. “All our women fighters. It’s a shame that we drive the women into this life. They shouldn’t have to live this war.”
Neo’s eyebrows climbed up his forehead at that. He had long since thought that that was a mentality left behind in the old world. “I think – I know – Trinity would sooner gnaw off her own right arm than be pulled out of combat before this war is over.”
“Oh, I know, son; trust me, I know.” He offered a distant smile. “Perhaps she is your Viola – your woman in a man’s clothes, in a man’s life. Your cross-dressed heroine.”
Neo laughed quietly. “Perhaps.”
“I’ll just say this to you, son: you take what she offers you and you treasure it. She gives you the love of a woman with the strength of a man, and in this age, there is nothing – nothing – more precious than that, nothing that can offer you more strength in a broken universe. You,” he said, with a tone of finality, “are a very, very lucky man.”
With that, he rose from where he had been leaning, and clapped the younger man on the shoulder. “I’m off to bed,” the Councillor said. “You should consider doing the same.”
Neo nodded. “Good night.” He watched the Councillor’s back as it retreated down the walkway.
Trinity hadn’t moved on the bed, asleep in its middle, on her stomach. Blanket around her shoulders.
Give me thy hand;/ And let me see thee in thy woman’s weeds.
For a moment he stood there, looking down at her sleeping figure. Was she his Viola, his cross-dressed heroine? This short-haired woman who hit him as hard as he hit her in sparring matches; who barked out orders like any good sergeant, and expected them to be followed? Who, just a short time ago, had breathed his name into his mouth, her body joined so fully with his, and who, shortly before that, had shared with him an intoxicated kiss in the middle of a throng of people, had let him press his hand against the skin of her abdomen as she taught him to dance, to find the rhythm of the music?
Quietly, he undressed and slipped back in next to her. For a brief moment her eyelids fluttered as she made space for him, settling back into the same comfortable position they had been in before.
“Everything okay?” she muttered groggily as he settled in next to her.
“Shh,” he murmured, “everything’s perfect.”
Still half asleep, she propped herself up just a little on her elbow to touch one cheek with her fingertips and drop a light kiss on the other. “Goodnight.” She fell back in next to him, and in seconds, was fully asleep again. He felt her breasts pressed against the side of his ribcage.
A cross-dressed heroine? The love of a woman with the strength of a man? No, he decided, that wasn’t it at all – she was a woman, every inch a woman, with the clothes and the life and the love and the strength of a woman. Why the love of a woman with the strength of a man? Could he not love her with the love of a man? In faith, they are as true of heart as we.
She could fight as he could love. Further distinctions were useless.
He slept.
END
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