Author’s Note:
Okay, to clear things up. This does take place during the movie,
pre-Oracle. Kind of explains Neo's
apprehensiveness
toward Trinity, etc. It was going to be a smut fic, but now it's all angsty
and they're, well, still chaste. Rating R
for naughty
language.
Cat-and-Mouse: The Kill
by
Scottishlass
sequel
to Cat-and-Mouse: The Chase
"Get her out
of there," yelled Neo angrily as he furiously tried to unbuckle himself
from the loading chair. "She's going to get
killed!"
Morpheus studied
his reaction carefully; Switch's eyebrows nearly flew off her head. No
one talked to Morpheus like that,
except for
the occasional Trinity-rant, and she was allowed to.
Neo continued to fume. "Why are you just standing there? Get her out!"
Morpheus put
a hand on Tank's shoulder, reassuring him that Morpheus did indeed want
his second-in-command to stay in the
program.
"Are you fucking
kidding me? Get out of my way," spat Neo, trying to take over the controls.
Morpheus calmly held him back.
Neo may have
an exceptional mind, but his physical muscles were no match for the captain's
strength.
"She's okay," explained Morpheus. "She can't be killed in there."
Neo's face
screwed itself into a contortion of anger and fear as he scanned the monitors
for Trinity's vitals. "She's hurt, look you
can see right
there..."
"It's a program, Neo, you have to let her finish."
"Like hell I do. Let me go!"
Morpheus bent
Neo's arm behind his back and led him away from the core. The crew turned
their eyes back to the screens,
watching Trinity
make a painful dash to her alternate exit to the soundtrack of Neo's incessant
cursing.
***
"So when are you going to bring in the boy wonder?" asked the Oracle, lifting her eyes over the top of her book.
"He's why I'm here," replied Morpheus as he sat in a red-and-orange plaid chair across from her.
"Yes, that's
what your operator said. He sounds like a nice man. Tank, is that his name?
I wish I could meet him. Maybe one
day."
"About Neo," continued Morpheus. "Today he went through a training simulation with Trinity..."
The Oracle's
eyebrows shot up. "You paired those two together?" she interrupted. "Can't
you tell what's going on between
them?"
"Well, yes, they are fond of each other..."
"Fond? By this
point those young people are probably crawling out of their skin for one
another! Tell me, Morpheus," she
continued,
her tone becoming more serious, "they haven't done any love confessing
yet, have they?"
"I don't believe so..."
"Good. Because now is not the time. Those two are meant for each other...but it is imperative that they not tell each other yet!"
"Why is that?"
"There is a time for everything, Morpheus. Now go back to your ship. Have a talk with Neo."
"What about Trinity?"
"Leave her alone. She's going to have a hard enough time telling that boy her feelings."
***
Here's where
I act like a dick, thought Morpheus as he sat across from Neo. He didn't
quite understand why the Oracle didn't
want them
to deepen their relationship, but he knew better than to ask too many questions.
It was better to do as she said.
Morpheus tried
to think of the best way to reprimand Neo for his stint in the training
simulation and discourage him from starting
anything with
Trinity at the same time. Although he was disappointed in the performance
of his two brightest crew members and
the fact that
they let their emotions tag along with them into the Matrix, he wasn't
terribly angry about it. But he knew that Neo
was emotional,
and perhaps pulling on his heartstrings a bit would be more successful
than anything else.
"I'm
disappointed in you, Neo," said Morpheus at last, his fingers pressed up
against his lips. "I expected you to keep up with
her, at the
least."
Neo stared
at the table. "I don't understand how you can talk to me about my performance
in there when Trinity's obviously
going to come
out of this hurt."
"That's her
problem," said Morpheus calmly. "It was her simulation, she knows what
she's doing. She just made a mistake, and
in that world,
Neo, we always have to pay for those mistakes."
"Oh, and it's just that easy," he said vehemently. "You left her in there for a punishment she didn't deserve."
"She hesitated, Neo, and that could have cost us your life."
"What about her life? Doesn't she count for anything?"
"You are the One."
"You don't know that."
"Your protection is all that matters."
"That's bullshit, Morpheus. I won't accept that."
"Accept it or not, Neo, we would all die for you. It is our duty."
Neo sighed with remorse. "I should have gotten shot, not her," he said quietly at length.
Morpheus raised his eyebrows, but said nothing.
"I...I wanted to beat her. Show her that I could beat her."
"You were flirting
with her, Neo," said Morpheus, trying to make himself sound more disgusted
than he really was. "That's a
dangerous
game to begin with, but what you did in there had no place in a serious
training simulation. It was uncalled for and will
not be accepted."
He narrowed his eyes a bit for emphasis. "Especially not with my second-in-command.
She is the expert out
there, Neo.
You get her killed and you can forget about any of us getting out of the
Matrix alive."
"I'm sorry."
Morpheus shrugged his shoulders and paused for a moment. Then, leaning in toward Neo, he spoke.
"Do you have feelings for her?"
Neo stared at the table.
"Get rid of them now, Neo, before they kill you. Before they kill her."
"I thought we...shared something," muttered Neo.
"You thought wrong."
Morpheus thought he could almost see Neo's heart break in two.
"You've learned many lessons since you've been here," he said at last. "Trinity's the hardest lesson of them all."
***
Trinity laid
flat on her back, trying to ignore the pain and concentrate on the other
feeling...that deep slow-burning fire that raged
somewhere
between her heart and her gut. It was nearly overpowering. She knew that
she should be angry, or upset, after what
had happened:
Neo catching her off guard, getting shot. But it was her own damn fault
anyway, she knew, and tried to let the
anger flow
through and out before it had a change to fester.
She'd sustained
wounds from six of the eight shots and was able to put cap in Agent Dick
before he reloaded. Thank God she'd
slowed them
down a bit; had he been a real agent she wouldn't even have been able to
get Neo out.
Limping, she managed to make it to the alternate exit without complications.
The rest of
the crew stood by silently as Dozer helped her out of the chair and to
the med lab where she knew more than a
couple of
stitches awaited her. Thankfully only one required stitches; had it been
real it would have been a direct shot to the
throat. Dozer
felt her embarrassment and dressed her wounds without a sound, and the
crew watched in anxious silence as she
hobbled from
the medlab to her cabin without a backwards glance.
Now, however,
embarrassment was far from her thoughts. There was only Neo clasping her
tightly as he stood against the
fence, that
awkward moment where they had been so close. She actually contemplated
looking back through the saved
simulation
later to see if the tension between them was expressed in code.
Calm down,
Trinity, she urged herself. You told yourself not to let your body
run away with you until you knew for sure...
She exhaled
sharply. Yes, she liked him. Wanted him, even. But loved him? That was
something she hadn't yet decided.
***
Neo lay on
his cot, wide awake. He'd heard from Dozer that Trinity was pretty beaten
up; a lacerated shoulder, bruised ribs
from her fall,
welts from the bullets...
His heart sank another foot into the pile of shit he'd mentally created.
Trying to make
himself comfortable was impossible, he decided, and resolved to lay flat
on his aching back, arms above his
head, and
stare at the ceiling. He was simply disgusted with himself. Here he was,
the supposed One, the protector of
humankind,
and he couldn't even get through a stupid simulation without nearly killing
someone. He was so sure of himself, but
now...this
changed things.
For an instant
he was so sure that he'd done something right, beating her at her game...it
was a game, wasn't it? Suddenly he
understood;
nothing was ever a game here. They were always fighting, always on. Never
let your guard down, he
remembered
Morpheus saying from one of his earlier training sessions. Perhaps that's
why he couldn't let go of her face, her
eyes, as he
grabbed her from behind and she nearly ran into him, locked in a stare
of something primal that he'd never seen from
her before.
He thought
it may have been for him, now the thought disgusted him. He realized it
was just a game to her, another chance to
show off her
skills. And that was okay by him; he knew he needed to go up against her
one time or another. But what he had
pulled was
inexcusable, he knew. Letting his penis run away with his mind like that...and
to Trinity!
Trinity had
been the one person aboard the Neb that he really managed to bond with;
Morpheus was too much of a leader to
enjoy a friendship,
Mouse too young and immature, Cypher too - well, creepy, Switch and Apoc
too wrapped up in each
other. Tank
and Dozer he was close to, yet, try as he may, Neo was unable to relate
to them, the plugless and free. Trinity,
though, was
different. Even from the first time he met her he knew that his life would
some how be entangled with hers.
Romantically
would be great - God, she was beautiful - but he valued her too much to
let romance screw things up now. Today
his stupid
moves resulted in the abuse of the person whose friendship he treasured
most.
Morpheus' words
echoed through his mind as he thought of her lying there, alone, bruised
and battered: not with my
second-in-command.
His heart sank another notch. She was his superior, friend or not. Morpheus
obviously knew something
about Trinity
that he didn't...did she already have a lover? Was she completely uninterested?
What did he mean to her?
Neo flopped
over in his bunk, trying to ease his upset stomach and troubled mind. Trinity
was too hard to read, even harder to
touch. He
replayed all of their interactions over and over in his mind, trying to
make sense of it all. The more he thought, the
harder it
hit him: she doesn't want you, Neo. You are her friend, nothing more.
She thinks of you...as a brother, perhaps.
Someone
to pick on, to be close to without being intimate with. She was just sick
of your cocky ass today and decided
to make
a fool of you. But it was you who made a fool of her. Morpheus was right.
The day she loved him...well, shit,
that would
be the day he would actually turn out to be the One.
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