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In the aftermath, the hardest thing for Neo to wrap his mind around is how it wasn’t hard, at all, to go back into that cafe and throw it all on the line for her. Not the decision itself—like the red pill, that was a choice already made a hundred times over before the moment of truth. But he'd still expected the actual doing of it to be difficult, just like taking the red pill had been, both times. He thought that like the Little Mermaid in the original fairy tale, he'd to have to force his fearful feet to take every agonizing step, walking blindly toward his annihilation or redemption. But instead, it had been so easy. Even when he thought he was lost, even when she was walking away, it felt… effortless. Like he was meant to do this.
Of course, a tiny touch of freedom can be bewildering, even terrifying, for a man who has been a slave most of his life. Neo remembers that, dimly, from his first time on this go-round, from the last time he’d jumped off a rooftop and gotten a glimpse of the truth, from all the people he’d helped extract, from Morpheus and Trinity’s stories. He wonders if maybe it was easy because some part of him longed for the cage again.
But while Neo’s been many things, been forced into so many shapes that he's not sure he'll ever feel at home in his body, he was never a docile prisoner, could never stop himself from scratching uselessly at the cuffs, dislocating his thumbs, gnawing off an arm if necessary, to be free.
Except… for her. He would follow Trinity anywhere, even into a prison, even into bondage. For her, he will always gladly kneel.
And she saw it in him, when she turned, when their eyes met, there at the edge of everything. Divided by a chasm of separate lives lived and a room full of enemies and yet still naked to each other, as they always were, no walls in between. She recognized the quiet peace in his eyes—the resignation, yes, but also the joy in his submission, in doing this for her, in making of his life an offering to lay at the altar of hers.
And she broke. Shattered the clay baked around her and emerged, truly and purely Trinity again, bursting phoenix-like from the shards. And oh, how he’d thrilled to see it.
But after all the fighting, and cleanup, and journeys, when they finally get a chance to be alone, it’s a little… awkward.
How could it not be? They’re two familiar strangers—they’ve shared every possible intimacy and also know nothing about each other, about these people they’ve become, what the last sixty years have been like for each other.
Sixty years, Neo still can’t wrap his brain around that, and he knows it’s worse for her. He held her while she sobbed on the bridge of the Mnemosyne after they told her that her friends and crewmates, her city, her whole life, are not just dead, but so long gone that they've become the stuff of statues and legends.
(Although he supposes they spent an unknown amount of that time actually being dead, before the Analyst rebuilt them. Which is also something he doesn’t really care to think about.)
But part of it is… Well. He can be honest with himself, here at the end of an improbable existence. (Or the middle, perhaps? Two-thirds of the way down the Möbius strip, and who knew how many times they’d been around.) Neo is, was, probably will always be, awkward by nature. His entire life—his whole brand, as Jude would have said—has been one long stretch of awkwardness punctuated by only brief, soaring moments of grace.
(Oh god, Jude. Was Jude … ennh. Never mind.)
But Trinity was never like that. She never lacked confidence, never seemed out of place in her own skin, even when everything around her was uncertain. That surety was one of the earliest things that attracted him to her. (Not that that was a short list, admittedly—he’d been instantly and intensely attracted to her every part and aspect from the moment he’d first seen her.)
But when they’re finally alone, just the two of them and their scarred, colonized bodies wrapped in loose ship knits, Trinity seems hesitant, ambivalent, almost frightened.
“Trin?” he asks. “Is everything okay?”
Inwardly, he starts quietly freaking out. Perhaps she’s regretting her choice. He can’t believe she would rather be with Chad instead—his insecurity has limits. But she’d had her motorcycles to work on, her life to live. God, she’d had children to raise, even if they’d only been subroutines—and he doesn’t actually think they were, and they’re probably going to have to deal with that at some point. And what can he offer, to replace all of that? He’ll break himself trying to be partner and project and child all at once—and gladly, but it won't help.
Her eyes, so tense a moment ago, soften as she sees his matching fears. Yet again, he’s struck by their otherworldly beauty—green and blue and gray and everything in between, pellucidly clear, almost glowing despite the distorting blend of electronic lights.
(She’d been so insanely, fantastically beautiful on the rooftop, in the air soaring over the city, lit up by the rising sun. Yet she’s hardly less so now, despite everything working against them. Shaved heads, graceless clothes, mechanical implants, and he can still hardly breathe for fear that this will turn out to be yet another fantasy, another poisonously beautiful dream, an illusion of everything he ever wanted, spread out in front of him.
But then, the Matrix has never been that kind.)
“I’m just—I remember us,” she says, her voice soft and uncertain. “I do want that again. But it’s been so long. I… I’m not…” she gestures down to herself. “Look at me. I’m… older. Weaker. Different. I don’t know if I can be who, what we remember. What you want. Who you think I am.”
Neo shakes his head. He almost can’t believe that she can look at him—gaunt in some places and flabby in others, wrinkled and gray and so goddamn tired—while she stands there a goddess, tall and proud and so beautiful it almost hurts his heart, and feel remotely insecure.
But he also understands. It’s been so long since the last time they stood together in the flesh. Their aged, atrophied, and partially cyborg flesh is strange and uncomfortable, virgin territory and yet already laid waste. And they’ve both spent decades being hidden, unseen, untouched, under other people’s faces, a thin veneer of constructed flesh masking the real person underneath.
And perhaps that, in addition to but more than everything else, is why they were so addicted to those moments in the Analyst's cage when they would glimpse each other—and for just a moment, they could glory in the intoxicating sense of someone seeing them, in their entirety, exactly as they saw themselves.
And so he gets it, visceral and deep, how much it scares her, that he might look at her now and see someone else, someone she’s fought so hard and with such quiet desperation not to be.
He moves forward, into her space, wrapping his arms around her shoulders and back. And she welcomes him gladly, despite her fears, her hands coming up again to rest tenderly on his sunken chest, until their foreheads press together and her breath falls warmly against his face.
“You are everything I could ever want,” he whispers. “I don't expect you to be the Trinity I remember, any more than I can be the Neo I was back then. But you are who I want. You always have been.” She huffs out a shaky breath, not hard enough to be called a gasp nor soft enough for a sigh. They kiss, a lingering meeting of lips, tongues, and minds.
And then he goes to his knees for her again.
“Tell me what to do,” he says, leaning against her legs, nosing against her belly, rucking up her shirt to find the warm, soft, vulnerable skin below. “Tell me what you want.”
He can feel it as her endless, boundless serenity and self-possession returns—as the sight of him, on his knees for her, returns her to herself and grounds her, just like it did the last time. She stands straighter and hums—she purrs, and it vibrates through her flesh to meet his lips, a confident, dominant sound, and god, but he’s missed this like he would miss air, like the people of Io had missed the sky, until they’d recreated it for themselves.
“I want you to be good for me,” she says, and he shivers with the joy and promise of that, tears springing to his eyes. “Is that what you want, too?”
“Yes,” he moans. “Yes, Trinity, please.”
She pulls down her pants for him, guides his head into place, and holds him where she wants him. He moans to discover that she’s not wearing anything underneath the loose knits. He knows it’s probably just that Bugs was reticent in dressing a living legend, too intimidated to do anything but pull on the most rudimentary covering garments. But in his mind, he imagines her deciding to leave them off, hoping for this, and the idea of her wanting him, even this older, graying version, plotting how to make the best use of him just like she would plan out the repair of one of her motorcycles, leaves him dizzy and shaking with desire.
The taste of her, salt and tangy on his tongue and on his lips, is exactly how he remembers it, and that’s what grounds him in return. For the first time in far too long, he is entirely confident that this is real, he is real, in every sense and meaning of the word, and the quiet certainty spreads through him like a balm.
She comes quickly the first time, shuddering and gasping, ruthlessly grinding up and pressing his head down hard against her, without regard for his comfort or need to breathe. Exactly as he likes, and when she goes slack, her knees weakening in blissful exhaustion, he keeps on, tongue and lips busy, arms tight around her waist and legs and shaking slightly with the strain of holding her up, until she groans and slaps him lightly on the back of the head to get him to knock it off.
“Bed,” she directs imperiously. He’d like nothing more than to catch her up in his arms and carry her the few feet to the simple mattress, a humble servitor bearing his mistress to her throne. But he’s not the man she remembers either, who used to swing her effortlessly around the Nebuchadnezzar. Light though she is with pod-fed slenderness, he hasn’t used his muscles for anything more strenuous than walking in—well, ever, actually, now that he thinks about it. He’d still be willing to try, but dropping her on the floor would significantly delay things, and he’s harder than he’s ever been.
(Which also doesn’t mean much. The Analyst had thrown a number of insanely attractive women—and later, when Neo proved indifferent, people of other genders—at him in the new Matrix. With Trinity’s siren song in his ears, some part of him knowing that she was there, just out of reach, he’d never been able to drum up any kind of interest. No other person, no matter how seductive and sensual, had been as compelling as going back to the coffee shop to catch even a passing glimpse of her. Even by himself, he’d never gotten much headway. Eventually the Analyst had claimed it was a side effect of his medication, and Neo had accepted that and felt nothing beyond a small measure of relief. He literally hasn’t had sex, virtual or otherwise, in this body before, and he’s not sure whether he should be angry about that, or just grateful that he comes to her as a virgin sacrifice twice over, fresh and untouched.)
Instead of trying to pick her up, he stands, still holding her locked in their embrace, and sort of crow hops them both over to the bed, half walking, half falling. She laughs out loud, free and unrestrained, as they land ungracefully on the thin mattress, her on top of him to cushion the drop. He joins in, his whole being singing and chortling with glee that they can do this, be here, that they’re finally together. The laughter dies quickly, however, melting into quiet intensity as they both realize how close they are, the potential of their position. She kisses him again, just a brief promissory touch of lips. Then she pushes herself up, straddling him, and pulls her sweater off over her head. Her pants were lost during one of those hops and she’s now proudly, gorgeously, gloriously nude. He takes a few long minutes to drink it in, fingertips skating over unimaginably soft skin, unbroken and unmarked except for the ports. At this moment, even they are beautiful, a sharp, hard contrast that accentuates her perfection. She gasps underneath the light touches, arching her back, preening under the rightful worship that he bestows upon her.
Eventually, however, he realizes that he’s still wearing far too many clothes, even the soft knit beginning to feel rough and painful against his sensitized skin. She helps as soon as he starts pulling them off, rising up to her knees so he can wiggle out of his pants, then sitting back against his legs as they both lift his shirt over his head. As soon as he's naked she embraces him again, pressing her body against his as if she can't stand there to be even a centimeter of space between them. There’s so much bare skin now, the long line of their bodies pressed up against each other and touching everywhere, that he thinks he might get drunk on it, if it doesn’t short out his brain, to be presented with such a feast after his long starvation.
They kiss like that, sweet and wet and long, until he’s shuddering underneath her and begins letting out tiny whimpering noises into her mouth.
After the third or fourth of those, she chuckles, pulling back an inch. “I’m sorry, was there something you wanted, love?”
How she still has the presence of mind to tease him at this moment, he can’t grok. “Please,” he begs.
“Please, what?”
“Please—please anything, god, anything,” he manages to gasp out, thrusting up uselessly into her belly. “Use me, touch me, fuck me, anything. ”
Trinity groans at that, the vibration translating down through her body and driving him even wilder. She braces one hand against his chest and grasps and guides him with the other, rises up and sinks back down, engulfing him, owning him, body and soul. He nearly weeps again with the bliss of it, of being hers again, the only thing he’s ever truly known how to be.
“I love you, Trin.” His voice breaks with the naked honesty of it, at handing over something he’s never been able to trust to any other.
“I love you, too,” she replies, and her voice is strong, rising exultantly as she rides him, claims him, drains him, uses him for her pleasure.
And his.
Afterward, they lie entwined for a long time, neither of them wanting sleep after their six-decade-long surfeit of it, but both of them unwilling to leave this quiet space with each other. They’re content to talk quietly, spooned together on the narrow bed, comparing details of their lives over the last few decades, trading soft touches and kisses without urgency.
“Once we get back to Io, what do you want to do next?” he asks finally. “Lay low for a while, or go right back and challenge the Analyst? Something in between?” He hesitates for a second, then continues. “Do you want to find your—the kids, try to free them?”
She smiles at him, bright and wide and painting her face with joy, and the brilliance of it almost blinds him, fills him with a deep and abiding awe.
“I want to change the world.”