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Trinity shifted restlessly in their bed. A few moments ago, sitting across from Neo at their kitchen table, her eyelids had started to droop and he had shooed her off to bed, promising to join her as soon as he tidied up the kitchen. But she had no habit of sleeping without him in the real world. Her mind recalled to-do lists from another life – school lunches, soccer registrations, haircut appointments – all irrelevant now. Her limbs twitched irritably, craving Neo's embrace. Part of her thought that she should be able to settle without him. A much bigger part was relieved when she heard him move softly towards the bedroom.
A smile played on Trinity's lips as Neo slid into their bed behind her. She hummed contentedly as Neo moved close, wrapping his arm around her middle and pulling her back flush against his bare chest. Trinity pushed her bottom to rest comfortably in the bend of his hips. Their legs separated and then entwined with each other.
His warm presence banished concerns about “Tiffany's” responsibilities far away, where they belonged. In this moment, she craved more contact with him. Trinity used her toes to slide up one of his loose pant legs, uncovering more of his skin to press against hers. He sought her warmth with a hand pushed under her shirt and splayed across her abdomen.
With her free hand, Trinity worked to loosen the light blankets that had become trapped haphazardly between them, fluffing them up and allowing them to settle over them both. Finally, Neo nuzzled her shoulder and she laid a hand across his where it rested on her stomach and gently entwined their fingers. They both sighed.
Here in Io, their apartment was neither persistently hot like Zion nor uncomfortably cold like The Neb. She hadn't been chilly before Neo came to bed, but his warmth felt like everything she had been missing – a small echo of what it was to find him again. Warmth radiated from him like a manifestation of his love for her, filling and soothing the parts of her that had begun to feel hollow and achy in his brief absence. She allowed the sensation of being engulfed to seep through her skin and into her bones. Any idea that she should become more independent felt meaningless now.
"I thought you might be asleep," he mumbled into the crook of her neck. Warm puffs of air escaped with his words to tickle her neck even as the stubble of his chin rasped against her shoulder. Trinity closed her eyes and savoured the sensations. It was only two months since they had been reunited against all odds. She wouldn't take any touch for granted.
"You know I don't sleep well without you," she murmured in answer. He turned his head slightly to drop a soft kiss on her shoulder blade. Trinity heard his unspoken question. Did she never sleep well in their 60 years apart? She already knew that he hadn’t. They spoke about their entrapped lives intermittently. He had told her of lonely nights spent in front of the keyboard, looking for some distraction when he couldn’t sleep. Unlike the years he had spent searching for Morpheus, this time he’d had no sense of purpose. And any time he had come close to finding one, he now realised, The Analyst had twisted and distorted it.
Now their lives as Tiffany and Thomas often felt entirely too distant to be relevant, and they usually chose not to speak about that time at all. As Neo kept quiet about their recent past and only moved his hand softly across her belly, she decided to stay in the present. She squeezed his hand in hers, stroked the ball of her foot up his calf, and turned her head slightly into the pillow as a defence against the unwanted memories.
They were finding their way in this new life, she and Neo. Learning when and how to talk about the years they had suffered apart. Fumbling to find the form and structure of their new lives and plans for the future. When they were simply too tired or too overwhelmed to consider anything deeply, there was always this. Another chance to hold each other and communicate without words.
She felt the gentlest touch on the back of her neck. The brush of the tip of his nose. Now his lips, whisper soft, left one feather-light kiss, then another. The plates on the backs of their necks had been removed almost two weeks ago, exposing raw skin underneath. Only small plugs, similar to the ones she had lived with all her free life, remained. Until a few days ago, they had worn bandages to cover the sensitive skin.
Anything more than his gentle caress would be painful, but his touch was exquisite. Trinity smiled again as she felt a pleasant tingling emanate from her fragile skin. At times like these she wondered if she could ever be as gentle with him as he was with her. During the war years, when he carried the weight of humanity's survival on his shoulders, she needed to be strong for him. Now that the world was at peace and his tender heart had been battered with confusion and despair, she worried that she could never be soft enough for him.
When his attention drifted back to her shoulder, she sighed and turned to face him. Neo threaded an arm under her neck and another around her lower back as she settled into him. Their legs found each other again and Trinity draped an arm around his upper back. With his face just inches from hers, she admired its beauty in the faux-moonlight that drifted through their bedroom window. His features were soft in relaxation. His eyes sparkled as they drifted over her face. After two months back together, he seemed just as much in awe of her as when they first laid eyes on each other aboard The Mnem.
"I didn't even ask you how your day was," she said. It was their first official shore leave as officers aboard The Mnem. Today they had reluctantly ventured out to different corners of Io, separating in order to meet with some of the people who had been begging for their attention. Trinity had spent the afternoon touring Io's mechanical levels, while Neo attended a council briefing on relations among Io and the synthient factions.
"Hmmm…it was interesting," he said, sounding a bit distracted, tracing his fingers gently along her spine. "I think I finally got a good handle on the diplomatic structure. And there seems to be some progress on the tri-party agreement."
"That seems promising," Trinity commented evenly. The tri-party agreement on exploring alternative energy sources was widely acknowledged as the key to reducing synthient dependence on the Matrix. Yet Trinity sensed it wasn't foremost in Neo's thoughts tonight. She tucked her head into his chest and ran her hand along the expanse of his back, silently encouraging him to say what was on his mind.
"They want to give me an official role. Some sort of ambassadorship. I guess they think it will remind everyone that I – that you and I – sought peace for all of us."
Trinity hummed thoughtfully. Neo always had been insightful when it came to human-synthient-program relations. His perspective had been different from anyone else’s in Zion years ago, and was still unique among the residents of Io. Trinity had no doubt that he would be an invaluable ambassador.
What she wasn't sure of was how Neo or she could cope with occupations that took them away from each other for hours each day. After 60 years trapped apart in the Matrix, they relied on each other for a sense of reality and meaning.
"The thing is…I just don't know if I'm ready to do anything like that. I mean…I can represent Io or represent humans, I suppose. It's a lot, but the will for cooperation is strong and I want to help."
As Neo went on, it became clear that he was trying to justify something to himself more than her.
"But there would be meetings upon meetings…trips to the synthient cities and the surface. And I just don't think I can be away from you that much, Trin."
With those last words, Neo almost sounded desperate. He pulled her even closer into his arms and she felt him press his lips to the top of her head.
Realising that Neo was once again feeling forced into a role he was uneasy about accepting, Trinity felt some anger towards the council members who had exerted the pressure. She had been by his side nearly every day of his free life. She had seen firsthand how the pressure to be The One had weighed on him – from the time Morpheus shared the Prophecy with him to the day they flew to the Machine City. From what she knew of the days between his second freeing and hers, they were no easier for him. But there was no war now. No urgent duty that Neo needed to understand and carry out.
"You know, there's no war on now," she began. He pulled back to meet her eyes. "You get to decide how and when you want to contribute. Maybe we stay with Bugs for a while. We're doing important work there for the people who are still inside the Matrix. Or maybe you take the ambassador role and I go with you. Or maybe we say fuck it all and never leave our quarters again."
She delivered the last line with a mock seriousness that made Neo smile, but there was a sincerity behind her humour. She knew they both cared too much about the collective good to sit around, living off gratitude for their past deeds. But she wouldn't accept that duty would dictate every aspect of their lives again.
"You're very smart, you know that?" Neo commented. He was staring at her with a new shade of adoration. Raising his hand, he began trailing his fingertips through her short hair, as he liked to do. It was an echo of Thomas' habit of using his fingertips to remind him what was real. It was also a measure of how much time had passed since they had re-started their lives together.
The gesture was sweetly soothing to her, but it also seemed to help Neo relax. She could feel the muscles of his back unclench even as he rested his head against the pillow and continued to gaze at her. Trinity mused that maybe her role in their relationship hadn't changed so much, after all. Neo was still prone to giving too much of himself to those who would ask or demand. In that way, he still needed Trinity to be his fierce guardian.
But not all things were the same. Without a war to win, there would be more time for them – time to be together and time to explore their own interests. And even though decades had been stolen from them, they could now look forward to a future that they could define for themselves. This thought reminded her that she hadn't told him about the most interesting part of her day.
"I got something today, while I was in the metal shop."
"Oh?"
"Yeah, just a second…"
Trinity sat up to retrieve the item in question from their bedside table. Even as she reached in the opposite direction, Neo pulled himself up as well, scooching in closer to her side. She smirked to herself as he made a pillow of her breast.
With the item closed in the palm of her hand, she sat back. "Comfortable?"
"Never more. Whatcha got there?"
"It's a piece of platinum. I was asking about precious metals and Drake – the guy who was giving me the tour – he offered me this."
Trinity opened her palm and Neo leaned over to take a closer look at the piece of metal. It was smooth on one side as though it had melted and cooled as a blob. The other side was blunt with sharp edges as if it had been roughly cut from a larger piece.
"They retrieved it on a scavenging mission to Zion," Trinity explained. This revelation caused Neo to inhale quickly. Then he lifted the metal with his fingers and examined it with more interest.
"It was from one of the generators that kept the last survivors alive after the fall of Zion – until Io could rescue them. It kept recycling water and pumping in oxygen."
"Wow," Neo commented. "I remember hearing about people being trapped. There's a lot of history I still need to catch up on."
Neo and Trinity have been told the stories of Zionites gathering in the temple – most feeling little hope for survival – as they themselves made the harrowing flight to the Machine City that would ultimately halt the war. Their new acquaintances in Io were less eager to tell them about the fall of Zion, decades later. In the final siege, Zionites again took to the temple and found themselves buried in the rubble of their city. Without a prophesied saviour, with machines maintaining their access to water and oxygen, their situation was desperate. Yet they had survived and lived to find new hope in Io.
Neo placed the metal back in Trinity's palm but continued to stroke it with his thumb. It had a pleasant weight and feel.
"I thought I could use it. To make our wedding bands," she explained.
At this Neo sat up, his face breaking into a smile.
She had proposed to him on their first trip back into the Matrix. After years of an imprisonment in which her life centred around a husband she didn't choose, Trinity had decided that she wanted to officially bind herself to her true partner. They were inexplicably bound through code and love but maybe, just maybe, this extra bond would be the one that ensured they would never be parted again.
After checking that she wasn't suggesting marriage out of some misguided sense of guilt for the years she had spent as Tiffany, married to a control program, Neo had eagerly agreed. The more Trinity learned about the hollow emptiness of his life as Thomas, the more she understood that the symbolic union would mean just as much to Neo. To declare their intention to live entwined in a manner of their choosing.
"This way you'll have something from me. To be with you always, even when we have to spend time apart," she explained.
"It's…wow, Trin, that's perfect," he said. His smile and his eyes told her more than his words could. Her heart sang to give him this happiness. Thoughtful gestures seemed to come naturally to Neo and he gave them without reservation. Such gestures might never come as easily to Trinity, but she was glad to find one that conveyed something about how much it meant to be reunited with him.
He stretched out his hand so that it covered hers, the metal warming between their palms. He moved closer to meet her lips in a soft kiss. Then he drew back, but not far, leaning his forehead against hers. As her eyes fluttered open she saw that his were still shut. She closed her eyes as well when he cupped her cheek and they breathed together.
"I was actually asking around today, about how this whole marriage thing works in Io," he said after a few moments, settling back with his head in the crook of her neck.
"Oh?" she said, interested but not surprised to know that formalising their marriage had been on both of their minds during their hours apart today.
"Um hmm," Neo commented, withdrawing his hand from hers and tucking his arm around her waist. Trinity placed the platinum back on the nightstand so she could turn towards Neo, holding him, face-to-face.
"So the paperwork is pretty simple. I downloaded a copy onto our datapad. If we want to have a ceremony in Io it will probably turn into a whole big deal and we might have to let Niobe officiate or else it could be seen as a snub."
Trinity winced at this. The politics and the pomp – these were some of the reasons that marriage didn't appeal to her in the past.
"But," Neo said, and Trinity looked at him hopefully. "Once a ship has disembarked from Io, the captain has the right to notarize a marriage. Kind of a throwback to the old days, but I thought…"
"Yes!" Trinity exclaimed. "That's perfect. Bugs can marry us on our next mission."
They smiled at each other for a moment. At their age and after all they had suffered, it didn't seem possible, but planning the details of their wedding was making them both a little giddy. They were still smiling when they kissed.
Despite the trauma and tragedy they had faced together and apart, moments like these made them feel like the luckiest people alive. Notions of how much was too much time to spend together lost meaning. They would always have a sense of duty outside each other's arms, but now there was no secret or shame in putting each other first. As Trinity resettled herself in Neo's embrace, she felt sleep approach and welcomed it – at peace in the moment and content in the bone-deep certainty that they would face the future together.