Revelations
Fanfic by Nightingale
 

Lyrics taken from 'Silicone' by Mono

So many times I tried to make you understand
You never tried to see behind my smile
If I didn't know you like I do
I'd let you into the secret in me
Just because I'm good at fooling you
When no one's around I walk in your shoes
I'm smiling, while lying to you
If you only knew...
 

   Night again.  You wouldn't know it from looking at the sky,
but it's irrelevant anyway.  Everyone else is asleep, even him,
the one that distracts me from myself enough so that these thoughts
don't creep into my mind during the waking hours of the day.
But the fact remains.  I wonder if he'd look at me the same
way if he knew what I know.  My secret, the thing I've never dared
tell, even though now it hardly seems to matter to anyone else.
 Maybe because of those who knew, one is dead, and the other never
cared in the first place.  Maybe I'm the only one who still cares.
 Maybe I'm the only one who ever did.
Still, I wonder.  Would he still love me if he knew that I'm
a liar?  A fake?  An imposter?

" Trinity?"  He'd asked, incredulous, filled with awe at the possiblity
if I said yes.    "*The* Trinity?  The Trinity that cracked the I.R.S. Kansas City D-Base?"

What could I say to that?  How could I have told him anything but what he wanted to hear?  So I told the truth, sort of.

"That was a long time ago."

It was a long time ago.  I was a teenager then, a hacker, yes, that much was true. I'd like to think I was good, but  in reality I was probably little more than a mild annoyance to the  local 'authorities'.  The word makes me laugh now - if I'd known then how little the authorities here actually meant, and how high the stakes actually were, I might not have gone looking for trouble.

 No, that's a lie.  Trouble was my middle name, even before I started
idolizing her.  The *real* Trinity, the original one.  A woman that
I never met, ironically enough.  Ironic, because I now possess her
name, and likely her face, too.  I've no way of knowing that, for not a picture of her exists, and not a soul alive seems willing to speak of her for fear of... whatever.  Not even my father, the man who claimed to love her.  All he ever said was that I had her smile.  I doubt he ever saw either one of us smile.  Maybe that's the point.
     I think she must have intended for me to search for her, because
it would have been one hell of a coincidence otherwise.  Maybe the
fate that Oracle speaks so highly of had some role in it, hell,
I don't know.  All I know is, one day I was hot on her trail, and
the next, poof, there's some guy named Morpheus standing on my doorstep, looking creepy in his long black coat and sunglasses. He told me I had a choice: come with him, and learn the 'truth', or stay here, and likely end up dead.
I wasn't impressed. His name didn't mean much 11 years ago.  His name wasn't on the front pages of the newspapers then, only in the top-secret files of the  FBI, CIA, and of course the Agents. But how could I have known that?  Some choice he was giving me. Of course, being myself, I told him to fuck off.

Until he mentioned her - Trinity.  THE Trinity.

"You know her?"  I jumped from my seat, nearly knocking it over.

"I am - was - a close friend of hers."  he said, his expression
unreadable to me then, but it must have contained immeasurable sadness.

"Was??  What do you mean, was?  She can't be-" I didn't dare to
think that my idol, my heroine, was dead.

"She passed away recently.  That's why we need you.  She left explicit
instructions. She said that you were the only one who could take
her place."  he said, calmly giving me a near heart-attack.

"She knew about me?"  I didn't believe it.  But I *did* believe
it, otherwise I'd never have taken that pill he handed out to me
moments later.  "My mother always warned me not to take drugs from strangers."  I joked.  He only smiled, knowing that no mother of mine would have said that.  If she'd had her way, she'd have been the 'stranger' offering me the red pill.

After I was freed, I learned more about my predecessor. She had
been the ship's captain, Morpheus her second in command.  They'd been
close friends, maybe more, until she died fighting an Agent.  For
a long time it had been speculated that she was the second "One". She had all the talent, she'd been incredible in the Matrix.  Everyone was sure it was her, that the second 'One' was a woman.  She the most certain of all.  But one failed mission had proven that wrong, and cost her her life.

One mission, to save a young girl who the Agents had finally discovered
her connection to.  I'm sure you can guess who that was.  She'd
died to save me, the daughter she'd left behind when she'd joined the resistance.

*I* was to essentially 'become' the woman known as Trinity, the
mother I would never know, except by reputation.  Reputation, and stories that Morpheus told me, things he threw at me during training, when I felt ready to give up.

I asked him why, why me, why she'd tried to protect me only to leave me this bitter legacy.  Why I had to be her, and not myself.  Why The Trinity couldn't just stay dead to the world.
He only shrugged and said "She was a mystery to us all."

A mystery.

I wonder if that's how they'll describe me, when I'm dead.  I wonder.
But now, I quit wondering, because I hear him whisper my name in his sleep. My name, her name, our name, and for now all I can do is answer.