What Can You Say?

Trinity stared in horror as Apoc’s body fell limply to the floor. She then heard that voice - the now-hated voice - say the words she knew in her gut were coming.

“If you have anything terribly important to say to Switch, I’d suggest you say it now,” Cypher said.

The moment slowed, just like those moments when she slipped out of the bounds of gravity. The two sets of dark eyes met and held each other.

What do you say to the woman who’d been a friend, confidante, battle partner and past lover? What words tumble from frozen lip tho those last moments? Each heartbeat seemed to take an hour between.

They’d been sitting in the room Neo himself had exited not long ago. But rather than the dark male, it was a short-coiffured platinum blonde who sat in the chair.

“Thank you” was the first phrase that tumbled from Switch’s lips when she awoke in the real world, nude and dripping in the arms of the dark-haired woman who’d fastened the monitors to her before the world turned inside out.

Switch had come to them online, posting on message boards she knew Morpheus had to frequent. Short posts.

“Help.”
“I think - therefore I am (not).”

A college student in The Matrix, she’d begun to think of things outside her world, of the nature of reality - or unreality. She’d come to some frightening conclusions that didn’t seem to jive with what her senses told her.

She knew what she needed and was willing to do what she had to do. For months - or whatever time actually was in that world - she’d been fighting for freedom from The Matrix - whatever that was.

Now she knew. Or at least in part.

Trinity had stared down at the pale woman, her eyes tracing the woman’s strong cheekbones and graceful collarbones, wrapping her in the blanket Morpheus handed her. Trinity pondered her first success in freeing someone using the trace program she’d designed. It wasn’t easy to fight the illusion the machines had pulled over humanity’s eyes. But Switch had done it. And they’d found her.

It was a rare and precious gift Switch had given Trinity just by laying there on the deck of the Nebuchadnezzar - hope.

Another heartbeat passed. Trinity faintly heard the scuffle of Neo’s shoe as he shifted his weight. The others’ gazes weighed heavily on her. She could punch a hole through a brick wall without batting an eyelash, but the small cellphone felt like it weighed thousands of pounds.

“I’ll be there for you,” Trinity whispered softly to the trembling woman. “Let me be your strength.”

“But you can’t always,” Switch said, as the reality of everything had begun to overwhelm her after keeping it at arm’s length for the past day or two in the real world.

“I can for this moment,” the dark-haired beauty replied, moving the plate of protein she’d brought for Switch further away and gathering her in her arms.
---
The blonde had smiled as she let Trinity into her quarters.

“It’s nicvingving another woman around,” Switch said. “Don’t get me wrong, the guys are some kind of alright, but ... you know?”

“How you feeling after training?”

Switch stretched, her white clothing tightening across her ass and chest.

Trinity tried not to stare, very aware of Switch as a woman. She’d long known she was attracted to both genders, but was aware of the potential conflict in shipboard relationships.

“Ah, I feel alive for the first time in ages. I loved the sai training and the gun training,” Switch said. “But ooooh, does my back hurt.”

“You know, of course, the pain corresponds to the level your body thinks the simulation is real,” Trinity said.

Switch nodded as she laid on her stomach on the bed.

“Sit with me awhile? I’d be glad of someone to be with,” she said.

They talked of what life had been like for both of them in The Matrix and what it was like learning to deal with things in the real world.

Trinity told of her life as a social worker in the Matrix and dealing with the broken families every day and the walls she had to build to survive. She thought of the things she’d wanted to do the child-support-skipping parents, the abusers, the strung-out junkies with three children, wondering if she could go back now and do them, knowing that it wouldn’t really be happening.

Switch told about struggling each day to keep her apartment and work and study. Of eating dry cereal without milk because there wasn’t enough to have milk and buy notebooks for school. Of taking the train through the darkest parts of town and the calls from the darkness and how she wanted to scream and smash at them with her fists but how she walked tough and talked tough instead.

What did it mean to who they were that the dark streets and the broken families they’d seen weren’t real? Was who THEY were less real?

Without real consciousness of it, they’d drifted into bed next to each
other. Trinity began giving Switch a massage, her strong hands working out the kinks in the younger woman’s body.

Trinity’s eyes softened as she felt Switch begin to tremble.

“I don’t know either, Switch, what it all means,” Trinity said softly. “But I know where we are, what we’re fighting for. We’re fighting for the air we’re breathing. Shouldn’t everybody be able to take it into their lungs? Shouldn’t we all be able to walk on our own two feet? For this. This touch, my hand on your back. Shouldn’t everybody know that feeling?”

Her dark eyes passionate, Switch rolled over, leaned up and kissed Trinity, sliding a hand into her dark hair.

“Definitely,” she whispered softly.

Another heartbeat. Another wordless plea to any gods who might be listening to stop this madness. But time marched inexorably forward. So did her memory.

“Baby,” Trinity said with an out of breath laugh. “Again?”

“Again,” Switch said determinedly, her eyes sparkling, her mouth descending to the soft furry area beneath her face.

As soon as Trinity determined the stars she’d seen where part of the program and not after-affects from the mind-blowing orgasm, her lips twitched in a smile as her mouth raised to the sweet spot above her own face. Tongues tasted mirrored honey.

Mutual gasps as they gave themselves to pleasure. They didn’t think about anybody else who might be viewing the construct - they trusted Morpheus’ discretion. He’d been happy when they told him about their relationship and had offered the construct as a place to get away.

They’d taken advantage of it for that night - a date in the New York they’d remembered. A stroll down night streets, a cafe for a quick bite to eat, and then dancing at one of the jazz clubs. Dressed in mutual evening gowns - black and white, respectively, as always - they’d walked hand-in-hand down the busy boulevard, stopping to smile at Times Square as it had been.

“Morpheus,” Trinity said with a smile. “Load the astronomical program.”

The cityscape fell away and the black majesty of space surrounded them.

Switch’s eyes grew big as she was briefly disoriented.

“I’ve always wanted to try this,” Trinity said. “May I have this dance?”
They moved into a smooth waltz in the middle of space, the fiery radiance of the stars surrounding them. Switch moved in closely, moving her hips against Trinity’s.

Trinity responded by leaning down and passionately kissing her, moving her hands from Switch’s waist to her shoulders, down over her breasts. In mutual hunger and need, Switch reached behind Trinity and unzipped the back of her dress, then slithered out of her own.

She knelt before Trinity.

“Please?”

Trinity nodded.

With hungry eyes, Switch licked a smooth trail northward from Trinity’s dark pussy, mapping the terrain of the beautiful woman’s anatomy with her tongue. A hand slid between Trinity’s legs, fingers moving home with practiced ease.

A gasp burst from Trinity’s lips. No matter how many times Switch did that, it always lit a fire in her belly. She needed the blonde, she knew that. She wanted her. She burned for her.

“I love you, Switch,” she cried out as she came for the second time.

“Trin - I love you so much,” Switch said softly.

Another heartbeat.

Perhaps they’d just burned each other out after their time together. In some cases, too much of a good thing isn’t a good thing. They’d agreed to cool things off and had finally said what they had to, did what they had to do. But cooling their ardor had left a steely bond between them, something lasting. They were lethal battle partners and still good friends.

But maybe not much longer.

Trinity nearly bowed beneath the weight of helplessness. She could bend the rules of gravity but couldn't stop this.

Just as Trinity's lips began to form the word "Goodbye," Switch's eyes rolled n hen her head and she fell to the floor on top of Apoc.

"Damn you, Cypher," Trinity said, her heart breaking into thousands of pieces. Apoc, Switch, Tank, Dozer - gone.

Suddenly she heard rustling on the phone.

"No! I don't believe it!" Cypher yelled.

"Believe it or not, you piece of shit, you're still gonna burn," she heard Tank say, followed by the eardrum-cracking noise of electrical feedback. The phone went dead.

Her glance went behind her to Neo, who she was growing to love. But her gaze stayed on the one she'd loved and now lost. She only wished it had been her hands pulling the trigger, watching Cypher dance.