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Tiff felt Chad pull away from her to get out of bed, and groggily wondered what time it was. He could just be getting up to pee, but if he was waking up for work, then her alarm really should have gone off by now. She reached out with her eyes still closed to pick her phone up off the nightstand and check the time, only to find nothing there but empty space. She opened her eyes in confusion, waiting for them to adjust to the dark before finally processing the rest of the room outside of the alcove of Neo’s bed. Right. She was in IO, not San Francisco. Her name wasn’t fucking Tiffany. And that was Neo who had just pulled away from her, not Chad. She groaned internally, wondering how long it would take to stop having moments like this upon first waking where she was pulled back into being Tiff. It felt ridiculous that she was still doing this more than two months after leaving the matrix. She knew, obviously, that it was harder for those who had been in there longer to let go, but it never stopped astounding her how much harder it was this time around than it had been when she was a teenager.
Being in Neo’s bed with her was more understandable to have not immediately remembered at least, since that was still pretty new for them. Their relationship was another thing that was much more complicated this time than it had been originally. She had- well. They both had a lot of shit to work through from their second stint in the matrix, but given that so much of Trinity’s shit was centered on relationships and moving past the cloying, clawing suffocation brought on by the thought of fully enmeshing her life with someone else’s the way she had with Chad, she felt like her issues were the biggest impediment to their relationship going back to what it had once been. But still, they were working through it, one day at a time.
This wasn’t the first time one of them had stayed the night at the other’s place, but she could still count the number of times it had happened on one hand. So it was perhaps understandable that it had taken her this long to process that Neo’s side of the bed was where the alcove of it was carved into the wall. She had pulled away from Trinity, but hadn’t climbed over her, so she must still be in the bed, just as far away from Trinity as the space would allow. She turned over to see Neo sitting with her back pressed against the wall, very obviously regulating her breathing, and flexing her hands in the way that Trinity had come to recognize as her unconsciously reaching for the grounding technique the Analyst had taught her before stopping herself.
Despite Neo’s completely understandable distaste for the Analyst’s method, Trinity knew that she did still find touch grounding when she was struggling to root her mind in the here and now, so she reached out to place a comforting hand on Neo’s knee, and Neo promptly flinched at the touch. Trinity froze, unsure if continuing the contact or taking it away would be more jarring for her.
“Hey,” she tried to offer in a soothing tone, but the sleep in her throat combined with the fact that Neo’s place didn’t have the humidifier she had come to learn was important for sleeping while using an oxygen tube meant that her voice was rough and dry. She swallowed before trying again. “Are you doing okay?”
Neo didn’t answer for a long moment, her throat working the way it did when she was making a difficult decision. Finally, she moved one of her hands on top of Trinity’s and asked in a quiet voice, “You don’t hear him, right?”
Trinity paused, listening. All she heard was the ever present humming of the machinery in IO that typically faded into the background. “I don’t hear anything. What do you hear?”
Neo deliberated more before giving a miniscule shake of her head. Which meant it probably wasn’t some sort of connection to machinery that Neo was experiencing and Trinity wasn’t because of her longer experience as the One and interaction with the source code. It probably was something genuinely only occurring in Neo’s head.
Neo hadn’t ever been particularly forthcoming with discussions of things she wasn’t sure was real- a lifetime in the matrix drilling into her that if she ever let on to the fact that she sometimes saw and heard things that weren’t there, she’d be forcibly committed to some sort of institution made it hard to let go of the fear of talking to anyone else about it. But when they were younger, after their relationship developed and they came to trust each other with their lives, Neo had begun tentatively talking to Trinity and sometimes Morpheus about her hallucinations. It had started as her asking more and more whether something was actually happening, because while she had, prior to waking up, learned on her own what was possible and thus been able to decide for herself that it had to be in her mind when something impossible was happening, learning that her entire reality was fabricated and its rules could bend threw the rulebook out the window. So she had begun cautiously asking Trinity and Morpheus if things were real, and when she eventually learned that they weren’t judging her regardless of whether the answers were yes or no, she had started to open up to Trinity about what the things she experienced felt like and on occasion, what she needed to do to feel safe with what she saw, heard, or felt.
But they hadn’t had any conversations of the sort since waking up a second time. Trinity could kick herself for not realizing it until now, but even that shy question of if she heard whatever it was Neo was hearing now was a first since waking up, though it undoubtedly wasn’t the first time Neo had experienced something like this. She had just been hiding it again, almost certainly because of what life had been like for her in there for decades again, this time with at least part of her mental health struggles being public knowledge.
She sat up, making sure not to break the physical contact they already had as she dragged her oxygen tank onto the bed with them so she could scoot back and sit next to Neo, pressing their sides together. “You don’t have to tell me whatever it is you’re hearing, but if you want to, I’ll listen.”
Neo turned Trinity’s hand over so that she could hold it properly, but was quiet long enough that she thought she wouldn’t answer. That was fine; she could sit here holding Neo’s hand as long as she needed. She had been planning today to talk to Berg and his group more about what life in Zion had been like sixty years ago, and she had physical therapy scheduled later in the day, but both of those things could be rescheduled if need be.
She wasn’t sure exactly what time it was beyond the fact that the bio-sky outside the window was just barely beginning to lighten, meaning that it was still pretty early. But the early hour combined with the darkness and quiet meant she was just beginning to nod back off in a way she knew her neck would regret when Neo finally spoke. She ground out like she was fighting against herself to say it, “The Analyst. He’s telling me that this isn’t real. That you aren’t real.” She squeezed Trinity’s hand. “That I’m having a major psychotic break and need to go back to the hospital.”
“Jesus,” she let out in surprise. That woke her up. She wanted to kill the bastard. Even though he wasn’t actually saying those things to Neo currently, he had still clearly worked to entrench these fears in her, and this particular delusion was the outcome of the way he had engineered her life in the matrix. But focusing on the anger wouldn’t help Neo right now. So she swallowed her anger and offered what she could. “Well, I am real. I promise you that. So is the rest of IO. But,” she furrowed her brow, “having an angel and a devil on your shoulder both telling you the other isn’t real probably isn’t helpful, huh?”
Neo let out a short, sardonic laugh. “No, I know, or-” she took in a deep breath “- I am choosing to believe this is real.” She held up their joined hands. “But even if I’m right, he’s still not wrong. I am crazy. I’m sitting here hallucinating him telling me how crazy I am.”
“Okay,” Trinity said, knowing that this could sound dismissive but still needing to say it. “And?”
Neo whipped her head towards her, still moving to look directly at people when surprised out of habit, even though eye contact was no longer possible.
She took a deep breath, trying to figure out how to word what she wanted to say without diminishing what Neo was going through. “I just mean, okay. You hallucinate. This one, obviously, is distressing, but it doesn’t mean you need to be locked away. That’s bullshit from in there, not how we have to live out here. It doesn’t have to mean anything more than what it is.”
Neo turned away from her, taking her own deep breath before softly saying “I don’t want to be crazy though. I don’t want to have to deal with this. You shouldn’t have to deal with this.”
Trinity barked out a startled laugh at that last bit, but upon seeing Neo’s reaction, immediately started apologizing. “Sorry, sorry. You not wanting to deal with it is totally understandable. Trust me, I get it,” she gestured towards her oxygen despite Neo being unable to see it. She had mostly become accustomed to the various disabilities she had found upon awakening and accepted them as part of her new and more free life, but she still often found herself frustrated by the pain, the shortness of breath, the fatigue, and more. “But not wanting me to deal with it? There’s so much shit in our lives that we shouldn’t have to deal with, but being with you isn’t one of them. This is just a part of you, always has been. And I love all of you. Always have. Don’t worry about me “dealing” with you.”
Neo went through a long series of facial expressions, either thinking really, really hard about what Trinity had just said or reacting to whatever the Analyst was saying. Probably the latter if how guilty and upset she looked was any indication. Trinity rubbed her thumb along Neo’s fingers, hoping the stimulation would help keep her grounded.
Neo pulled away from her though, crawling out of the bed to stand. “I need to not just be sitting here. Do you want breakfast?”
Trinity blinked at the sudden change, moving to get out of the bed herself. “Uh, sure. Do you need help?” She glanced at her wheelchair next to the bed. She could make it over to the kitchenette on foot if she could rest after, but if Neo did need her help, she would have to get in the chair.
“No,” Neo dismissed as they both moved across the space, Trinity trailing behind her more slowly. But as Neo began pulling things out of cabinets and Trinity sat down, Neo added, “Actually, uh. Could you talk to me? Just so I don’t have to only hear him?”
“Of course. Do you want to keep talking about this?”
“No,” Neo said emphatically.
“Okay. Let me get some water if I’m going to be talking for a while though.” Ideally, she’d also get some of the ointment her doctor had given her to help with how dry the oxygen made her nose, as that was part of her morning routine, but that was in her own housing unit and she didn’t want to leave Neo right now to get it. Water would have to do. Neo offered to get the water for her, but she delivered her own emphatic denial.
When she sat down again, she began telling Neo about the time she had Morpheus had spent together the previous day, working on rebuilding their friendship together. She still wasn’t quite used to it- a new Morpheus with a new face who was simultaneously her Morpheus and not, and also Smith. But their own identity struggles made them the person in IO with whom Trinity felt most comfortable discussing her inability to fully separate herself from Tiff. They still lived primarily in the Mnemosyne’s construct, so the two had plugged in there, with Morpheus showing off all that they had programmed into it, which lead to Trinity showing off her new skills as a One, and had ended the way so many trips into the construct ended: with them sparring.
As she talked, she watched Neo prepare the real food they had access to, trying to resist the impulse to ask again if she needed help. She knew from experience just how frustrating it was for others to insist you needed help when you didn’t, and she knew that Neo had been working with another blind girl in the city to learn how to navigate the world without her eyes. So under normal circumstances, she would have been content to let Neo be and relax into the luxury of having a partner make her breakfast- something she was lucky if Chad ever did even on special occasions. But with her sharp intakes of breath and the way she would occasionally stop what she was doing in favor of running her thumb over the tips of her other fingers- another method she had picked up to stop herself from using the Analyst’s grounding technique- it was clear that she was still hearing him and quite distracted by it. But she resisted, and eventually Neo made her way over to the sitting area with two plates in hand.
As they ate, she finished her story about Morpheus and moved on to a mechanical problem that the engineer of the Janus had posed her before they set out on their current mission- nothing critical that would endanger the ship, but annoying to continually have to fix regardless- and how she thought she had a solution they could try when they got back. Halfway through explaining the issue though, Neo’s shoulders sagged as she let out a long breath of relief.
“He’s gone?”
Neo nodded. “Yeah. Thank you. And I’m sorry, again.”
Trinity shook her head, “I told you, you have nothing to be sorry for.”
Neo tensed again slightly before trying to explain “It’s not fair to you to-”
“I’m rolling my eyes at you,” Trinity narrated as she did just that. Neo let out an annoyed huff and Trinity continued, “Okay, well, is it fair to you to have a partner who flinches every time we try to have sex?” Neo opened her mouth to argue that, but Trinity barrelled on, not giving her the chance to interrupt. “Or who had a breakdown in the middle of the street when I thought I saw one of my kids? How about when I started sniping at you while you were helping me with my colostomy bag because I was embarrassed to have you see me like that?”
“None of that is the same,” Neo finally cut in.
“How?” Trinity asked incredulously. Obviously none were one to one equivalents, especially since she meant it when she told Neo she genuinely didn’t see any problem with her the way she was, but if they were talking about what was fair to make the other deal with? She thought it obvious that Neo got the worse end of the deal there.
Neo worked her jaw, trying to formulate an answer before saying in a voice that broke Trinity’s heart, “That’s all a result of stuff that happened to you. You didn’t just come broken.”
“Neo-”
“You said it’s always been part of me, but I’m so much worse now than I was then. This isn’t what you signed up for.”
She took a deep breath to steady herself before asking “Is that what you really believe or what he was telling you?”
Neo pressed her lips into a thin line.
Trinity reached across to her, threading their fingers together. “Listen, I get it. I don’t really believe you either when you tell me all those things I just listed off are okay.” Again, she saw Neo moving to interrupt her but cut her off by emphasizing her next word, “But… you said earlier you were choosing to believe this,” she held up their joined hands, “was real, like you didn’t quite believe it but were choosing to work under the assumption it was true anyway. It’s like that. I have to trust that you mean it when you say it’s okay even if I don’t believe it. So I need you to trust me, too. I don’t have any problem with this. I don’t mind- I want to help you when you need it. There’s nothing wrong with you, and I love you exactly as you are. Okay?”
Neo took a deep breath and was quiet for a moment, but eventually said “Okay.” And Trinity could tell that she didn’t fully mean it, but that was alright. They’d keep working on it, one day at a time.