A past that never is

We eventually landed the ship and purged the system, after which I returned to my quarters for the sleep that I had been missing for the last few days. I knew that once I woke up I had a let of questions to answer. Despite the fact that I was exhausted I only slept a few hours before being woken by one of my many nightmares. It took me a few minutes to calm down enough to realise where I was and then I was up and on my way to the mess hall. I grabbed a bowl of glop, and sat down at one of the long tables. I stared at the unappealing flavourless food in front of me, I hated eating, but it was something that I had no choice in. I can remember after Morpheus found and rescued me, I had lain curled up on a bed for what felt like days, refusing to eat anything, eventually he had no choice but to put me on a drip. I can still feel the long needle entering the plug in my arm, feeling the fluid from the IV coursing through my body as it kept me alive. Morpheus had sat next to my bed all that time, I think that I was in a state that many refer to as catatonic, he talked to me and sometimes he just sat watching me, giving me his silent support. He was the closest thing I had ever had to a father. After I got back to Zion that all changed, Morpheus handed me over to Commander Locke and then he went back to his ship and his life and forgot about me. Or at least that’s what I thought at the time.

“You’re awake.” Roland’s voice broke into my morbid thoughts. My head jerked up, as I stared at him, I hadn’t even heard him come in.

“Couldn’t sleep.” I mumbled.

“Something bothering you?” He asked calmly. Only the childhood I never got to have, I thought.

“Not really.” I answered.

“You’re not a great liar you know.” He said as he sat down opposite me.

“Not one of my skills.” I ducked my head back down. He looked at me in silence for a moment.

“What happened earlier?” He asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Your room is right next to mine, I heard you screaming a few times.” He replied. I blushed, I didn’t even know I’d done that.

“Just a nightmare.” Welcome to my little world, where I never get the chance to just be me. Whoever ‘me’ is. I added silently.

“You sure that’s all it was?” He asked. What is this, twenty questions?

“You and I probably don’t have time for this. I’m supposed to go work with AK in a few minutes.” I said.

“Actually, you have the next twenty four hours off and I’m the captain of this ship, if I want I can take the time.” He caught my arm, which I yanked free. I smiled grimly at him.

“You ever wish that you could start your life all over, captain? Have you ever wanted, more than anything to go back and change your life?” I spat at him. I was surprised when he nodded.

“Sometimes, who doesn’t wish for that. But consider, if we were able to go back and change certain parts of our lives, would we still be who we are now?” He asked. I rolled my eyes and crossed my arms over my chest.

“That’s easy for you to say.” I snapped. He nodded again.

“You’re right, it is.” He paused for a moment and caught my eye.

“You are expecting me to understand something that I know nothing about. How can I if you don’t tell me what’s bothering you?”

“Trust me, you don’t want to know.” I answered. He cocked his head to one side.

“Why don’t you let me be the judge of that? I might surprise you.” He said. I sighed in frustration and dropped my head, as I sat back down. It had always been this way with me, people would ask me what was bothering me and I’d say nothing, they’d accept my answer. Then there were people like Roland who kept pushing.

“You’d better be sure that’s what you want, before I answer that.” I said. He sat back on the bench and spread his arms wide.

“All I have is time.” Then he turned slightly more serious, as he ducked his head slightly.

“I have another confession to make.” He ran a hand over his short greying hair.

“I felt it the first time you walked into my office. That’s why I was avoiding you for the first few days you were here, I was hoping it would go away, but it wouldn’t. Then I decided that there was no point in fighting the inevitable. I can see that something’s hurting you, I want to help but I can’t unless I know what’s going on.” He said.

“That’s in our nature I guess, to try to get away from our own destiny. It’s something we cannot do, no matter how hard we try.” I said. But I knew what he meant; I liked him to, in a way I had never liked anyone before. Which made it all that much harder to speak of this to him, but I knew that if I wanted anything to happen between us, then he would have to know sooner or later, and even if I tried to put it off he would eventually find out.

“I don’t remember coming out of the matrix, I must have been very young, maybe even still a baby. That you already know. What you don’t know is that it was the machines that removed me from the matrix. Many people are given the choice of what they want to do with their lives, I was not. The first few years of my live are a little blurry, probably because I didn’t want to remember them. I’m not sure what their plans for me were, but I think that they had some idea that I could either be some kind of human agent, or a cyborg in this world.” I met his eyes.

“Hence the parts of my skeleton that were removed and replaced with metal. They did the first one of those little operation when I was five, and I remember that very well. They said that there would be no anaesthetic because that would interfere to much, they had to be able to read my vitals properly.” I moved my eyes away from his, because I didn’t want to see his reaction to what else I had to say.

“They also had unique ideas on torture. Aside from the more normal; if you could call torture normal, methods of beating, they used to drown me and then revive me, only to do it all over again. And their training methods are not what you’d call painless,” I laughed humourlessly, I pointed at the scar that ran across my chin.

“This is just one of their little gifts to me and believe me this isn’t the worst of them. They wanted to see how long a human body can last without oxygen, so they took blood out of me, removed the oxygen and pumped it back in. Do you have any idea how painful that can be? One of the worst things they did was to put a hot spike in my socket and then cuff my hands just close enough that I could brush my fingers against it, but not close enough that I could pull it free.” I finally met his eyes again. I saw something there that I did not want to see; it was like he was sharing my pain.

“When a woman is raped she at least has an idea of why. To do that as often as they want, without caring about what it does to the child their doing it to. Maybe you know the answer, Roland. Because I sure as hell don’t. What do you say to a child when they ask you why someone would hurt them like that?” I raised my eyebrows. I had now told him everything, and I waited for his reaction.