31_days fic: "Matrix Revolutions"

[matrixrefugee]

Title: I Have Never Seen the Sky
Day/Theme: September 10: When I See your Heavens
Series: "The Matrix: Revolutions"
Character/Pairing: Trinity/Neo
Rating: G to PG

Note: This is an older fic I retooled for these challenges. I've also added another part to it, right off the cuff...



Part One: Trinity Speaks

I have never seen the sky above the clouds.

I have always lived in darkness, but now I have seen real light. Not from a flourescent lighting strip, not the light from the core, but real sunlight.

I have never seen the sun, except as a dim, brassy ball glimpsed through a brief break in the smog and ozone blanketing the scorched sky.

Until now, I have only seen its replica, in the false world inside the Matrix, and when I saw it, it too was dim, with that greenish tint the code gives everything there.

I've seen so many horrible things in my life, but you have shown me something truly beautiful, so blue and clean and pure.

I wish you could see this with your own eyes, Neo. I wish you could feel what I am feeling, the sensations this sight stirs in me.

Think of the color of my eyes. That's what the sky looks like. That's something the machines couldn't get right when they made the "sky" in the Matrix.

I've always seen the sky from below, in the few times I've ventured up to the surface. I've only seen it black and indigo and violet with smoke and smog, the damage inflicted by man's madness. But this image will stay with me for the rest of my life and beyond, however long I have to live.

Someday, when this war is over and the Matrix has fallen, man will find a way to break through the clouds, so that their children and their children's children can once again see the sky.

Seeing the sky has made the war with the machines worth all the pain and suffering it has cost me. Even if I should die today, I shall die happy.

I have seen the sky above the clouds.

Part Two: Neo Replies

I never even really got a good look at what I thought was the sky, inside the Matrix. Most of my life I've kept my head down, buried in schoolwork, or a gadget I was tinkering with, or a program I was writing... or I kept it down to stay out of the way of someone bigger or more powerful than I was. But you helped me break free of that mini-Matrix of my own creation, just as you helped me escape the one I was trapped in. I can never thank you enough for helping me open my eyes to the truth, so I could choose to live in it. Maybe the sight you've seen, of the sky above the clouds, is reward enough for all you've done for me.

I may have lost my physical vision, but that's a small sacrifice to make. I can still see with my mind and my heart: a lot more than some physically sighted people do, inside or outside of the Matrix.

I don't envy you, even though you've seen something that I couldn't see, that you've gazed on the beauty of the heavens. Your reaction to that sight, that alone tells me all I need to know. It's a good thing, but it's not something I'd need to take along with me. Where I'm going, I'll have to leave everything behind, in order to break the power of the system, to free the humans and the machines, to bring peace to both species, so we can all live unharassed by overweening systems of control that would blind us to the beauty of freedom.

Maybe then, our kind's descendants and the machines, will both be able to work together, so they all can see what you've seen...

Comments

[misskass.livejournal.com]

Aww, beautiful!

[beckyh2112.livejournal.com]

*gapes*

Oh, that is lovely, MR! Very, very poignant.