Darje > Beautiful
- AUTHOR: Darje
- TITLE: Beautiful
- CATEGORY: Drama
- RATING: PG
- SUMMARY: In his last hours of life, Neo muses about what was, what could have been, and what will never be.
- SPOILERS: Major Revolutions spoilers. As in, portraying the ending of the series.
- DISCLAIMER: So. I make no cents out of this story, nor do the goddesses that if I'm lucky will agree to put my fic on their archive. It's for mere entertainment, or so I hope. And as much as I'd wish that Trinity were mine, nor her nor Neo are of my property. Wachowski property, yo!
Beautiful
When I was a young boy, or at least dreamed I was, I had a fascination for old movies. The kind that have storylines so weak you could’ve laughed at them, but instead shed tears over. Girl meets boy, boy takes girl on a date, girl flirts with boy, boy makes a big old effort to have girl as his, and if the viewer is lucky, wedding ensues!
I guess that as cliché as it sounds, I was a romantic at heart at that age. Thomas A. Anderson, age 9, would have given everything to have a love story like that when he was a grown up.
Not unlike almost every fascination I had being so young, it all faded away when the feeling started. I felt so wrong about my existence (can’t blame me for saying I thought I really did exist in the Matrix, now can you?) I forgot about everything involving romance or even women, and apart from a mere fascination over the opposite gender, I never gave a penny for love. I like to think that hacking was my full time fascination, looking for Morpheus my full time obsession, and there simply was no time for women.
That and a few run-in’s with wannabe female hackers, or I would like to think they were female, left me without a real desire to look for anyone that wasn’t someone who could give me my answer.
Then there was her. Oh god, haunted gray eyes. I’m sure I did a double take the first time I saw her. And then proceeded to make a fool out of myself by telling her I thought she was male. I would’ve wanted to be swallowed by earth if she hadn’t faintly smiled and answered that most men do.
Trinity.
I first heard of her when some amused guy in the hacker website I used to frequent communicated to us that an entity called Trinity had hacked into the IRS database. However fun it must’ve been for them, I praised Trinity’s courage to do such a thing at that time. FBI may be three letters, but the meaning behind them is enough for any hacker to cower and leave.
However, I forgot all about the IRS database one or two weeks later. Metacortex had just hired me.
She could notice me looking at her, even with my eyes scorched shut and a piece of cool, humid cloth covering my wounds. I see her smile and I wonder how can she even smile if she knows what she’s joined me into.
If she could only know, just how beautiful she is, in my blindness. It lets me gaze upon her bright self, and it quite honestly feels like the whole freaking craft is being illuminated by her glow, echoing of her light.
I am blind but not stupid, and I know she’s afraid, but when we hold hands, everything dissipates.
It’s been years, lots of them, since I realized my reality was a lie, but if painful, nothing compares to the way my heart skipped a beat as I caught Trinity falling down the building she had entered to make sure my way was cleared to the source. I know her and myself all too well to feel guilty for her actions. My lover or not my lover, she would’ve kicked Commander Lock’s ass and fed him to a sentinel if it implied keeping me safe.
But the way she screamed. Twists my heart and wakes me up sweating and gasping for air, that scream of raw pain. Shakes awake my humanity, shreds my brains to pieces. I could have been cool if I was taking a bullet out of anyone else’s body, but I shivered in her desperate embrace and watched her die as she whispered her apologies.
If pumping her heart didn’t work, I swear I would have entered my own chest and stopped mine.
There was a moment, I practically did not notice when, that I told her to fly the ship upwards, well over the scorched skies, to get rid of the sentinels badly maiming the Logos. I was holding on for dear life, to both her hand and my seat. The lights surrounding me became blinding, a burning white, and for mere warning I looked at Trinity, that still had not left my hand go. I can’t describe what I saw because I had never seen anything like that. Trinity had been granted a last wish, I knew, when the light that surrounded her started dulling and I heard, in the cacophony of the failing Logos, a whisper.
“Beautiful.”
I don’t know what she was talking about but felt a second’s worth of relief. She was admiring something, something that in my blindness I had failed to see, and as the Logos turned its nose down, her hand tightened in mine. She could have said something more but I wasn’t able to hear it; the Logos had started to fall down into the darkness again. The brilliant city underneath us grew closer and closer.
Blind as a newborn, I cursed inwardly when I noticed Trinity’s hand was missing from mine after the crash, and called her name. I felt like dying when I tried to look in her direction and noticed she was dimming, but I couldn’t discern why she was doing so. I thought she was half unconscious from the blow, but I was sorely mistaken.
Now, I walk down my last path, I remember Trinity as she should be properly remembered. I had never felt more useless than when tears forced themselves out of my wounded eyes and stung my burned skin. I had brought her back once. Why not once more? Why not?
Briefly, sitting besides her body and trying not to cry anymore because it was of no use, I was pensive. Trinity was not a program. But was this her moment to die? Had she done what she had to do? I knew I wouldn’t be getting out of this alive…
… and it hit me hard.
It wouldn’t have been fair for her either.
END
