Title: "The One"

author: Mona Ramsey

Fandom: The Matrix

Pairing: Morpheus [Laurence Fishburne]/Neo [Keanu Reeves]

Author: MonaR. (aka Mona Ramsey, aka Mona)

Series: Could have a sequel, if I can figure out what to do next.

Rating: PG. Pretty much pre-slash.

Archive: Sure, if anyone wants it. Let me know if there's a "Matrix" slash archive!

Warning: I don't use betas. :( Any mistakes are solely my fault and the fault of my *#^&@ spellcheck. ** is used for emphasis, // for thought. Any weird characters should be hunted down and killed.

Spoilers: Yeah. If you haven't seen the movie - the *entire* movie - this won't make sense.

Summary: Neo deals with the ramifications of being "The One", with what the Oracle told Trinity - and with Morpheus.

{I thought this movie was so awesome I saw it twice - and this was before the Phantom Menace, when I *never* went to see the same movie twice in the theatre. Now, on *video* I'll watch something a hundred times, but go and pay for something more than once, when there are twelve other things to see? Pshaw. Still, the cinematography was so incredible I knew I'd have to get the DVD as soon as it came out. Actually started to write this before then, with just a memory of the 'voices'. . . Will wait until I get to see the movie again before I post, though, to make sure my memory isn't as faulty as it usually is. Pre-slash, at least until I get my footing in this fandom and decide what sex *is*, outside of the Matrix. :)}



"The One"
by MonaR.
monaram@yahoo.com

The half-tilted chair shifted and rolled back, startling the sleeping watcher awake. He rubbed his hands over his eyes and yawned, aware of a cramp in his back that was as dim and meaningless as sunlight peeking through clouds; he didn't have time to deal with it, didn't want to know what it was. Yet. There would be time, later, to make sense of any of this stuff.

Morpheus was still living up to his name - 'the god of dreams and the forms dreaming sleepers see' - asleep on the bed. He had waited until Neo was back to succumb and collapse, waited until he knew that Neo was all right to give in to his own body's demands for rest and recuperation. Neo wondered if he was dreaming, if Morpheus dreamt the same dreams that he himself did. Before he knew the truth, he dreamed endlessly of the Matrix; now that he knew what it was, he dreamed of what his 'life' had been before he knew it was *all* a dream.

Morpheus looked like hell, a testament to the 'confession' the faceless Agents had attempted to extract from him, face bloodied and bruised and body wrecked in places that would take a long time to heal. And with all that - with a litany of abuse fresh on the dark skin, unconscious and probably in pain from the mostly-internal injuries that would have been unbearable awake - Neo thought just one thing, looking at him.

He was beautiful.

They *all* looked like hell, even Trinity, who had escaped the worst abuse of her body and seen the worst of all of them, watching Switch and Apoc die, helpless to do anything when Neo seemed to die, too - and yet she'd brought him back, screaming in his ear, pounding on his chest. She was keeping watch over Tank, coming here with periodic updates and to check on Morpheus, scanning the open signals for signs of life in the slowly-awakening pods of enslaved humanity, keeping her eyes open for stray Sentinels. She was doing too much, and she'd soon have to crash, hard, but Neo knew that right now she had to keep moving, and that telling her to stop for a moment would be like her telling him to move from the chair that had become his personal home, ever since they brought Morpheus back.

Ever since *he* brought Morpheus back.

The Oracle had been right, and she had been wrong; Neo *was* the One, and there was no One. There had been nine, and then eight, and then five, and now four. Being the One didn't mean anything if there were no others. She had told him what he needed to know, just like Morpheus told him she would - just as the child in the waiting room had: there is no spoon, you are not the One. Everything is simultaneously real and unreal, right and wrong, here and gone. Real, and the Matrix. There was only one thing that separated humans from machines: Belief in the innate wonder of the truly impossible.

Only the Matrix was gone, the curtain pulled back and the Wizard exposed. And it was still here. There were others - thousands of others, millions of others - who would need to awaken, and be told. Some of them would believe, and some of them would refuse. Red pill, or blue. It was over, and it was just beginning.

He rubbed the heels of his hands over his eyes and stretched, thinking, /I want a cheeseburger, onion rings. And a beer./ The only thing in the hold was the yellow-goo single-cell protein mush that they always ate, Mouse's 'Tasty Wheat'. Maybe today he could close his eyes and pretend it was chicken. Everything tasted like chicken, didn't it?

He looked again at Morpheus. Morpheus had offered him the choice: comfortable oblivion or stark reality, blue pill or red. Open your eyes, and they stay open, forever, until they're closed, forever. Once you know what the Matrix is, and what you are, and what the truth is, you can never un-know it. Cypher was wrong - he couldn't have gone back in; there always would have been some part of him that would realize. They told him what they needed him to believe, so he could betray his friends; the Oracle had told Neo what *he* needed to know, so he could save them. Those machines had the right idea; people don't need the truth, they don't *need* freedom. They need comfort, and reassurance, and passivity, and they'll keep needing it until it's taken away. Blue pill, or red.

He shifted on the seat, sending it back another inch or so on squeaking wheels before it stopped. Moving seemed like too much of an expenditure of energy, right now; moving didn't even mean the same thing that it had a couple of days ago. Or was it weeks? The lines were blurring more and more; he was having trouble keeping everything straight.

It took him a moment to realize that Morpheus' eyes were open, looking right at him. "Hey," he said, leaning forward, a voice a husk of what it had been, unused in so long. Other than the odd word to Trinity, there was no-one to talk *to*.

"I'm not dead."

"Not yet."

Morpheus tried to chuckle, but all that came out was a wheezing rasp that made Neo wince. The half-smile he had given was almost instantly gone. "You shouldn't have come back for me, Neo," he started. "Something could have happened to you - "

"Could have. Didn't."

Morpheus wasn't willing to let it go so easily. "You could have been killed. Then what would have happened? You think that I wanted to go to all of this trouble to find you, only to have you die practically your first time out?" Morpheus looked disgusted. "If I had been in your place - "

"You *were* in my place, Morpheus. You chose to come and get me. You chose to stay inside the Matrix so I could get away." Neo sat back in his chair. "I made a choice, and did the same thing you did. What you always would have done."

Morpheus was looking at him like Neo wasn't there - as though he was seeing right through him, like a window. "And what is that supposed to mean?"

"It means that we're the same, Morpheus. It means that *you* are the One, just as much as I am." He stood up, ready to go and look for something that even the greatest simulation in the universe wouldn't be able to make him believe was a cheeseburger.

"The Oracle - "

"Lied. Told the truth." Neo walked to the doorway. "Get some sleep, Morpheus." He stopped with the door in his hand, and finger-touch away from closing, his back to Morpheus. He spoke not knowing if the other man would even be able to hear him. "You're welcome."

Morpheus didn't say a word.

**********

He found Trinity pressing a cool cloth against Tank's forehead. The Natural-born was still unconscious, but he looked better than the last time Neo saw him. His gray pallor was a little *less* gray - which wasn't saying much, but certainly had to mean *something*.

"How is he?"

Trinity looked up at him, her dark eyes sad and infathomable and deep. "The same. Better."

"Morpheus woke up for a moment. He spoke."

She nodded.

"I guess that means that they're going to be all right."

"I guess so."

Silence stretched out between them for a few moments, and then he said, "I was going to get something to eat. Do you want - "

She shook her head. "I ate - half an hour ago?" She shrugged. "Something like that."

He nodded, then paused. "What did you have?"

She looked at him, startled, and then smiled. "Chicken."

"Excellent choice. Taste good?"

She nodded. "I thought so."

**********

The food was better the faster you ate it. He lingered, looking at it, wondering how hungry he was that it actually still looked palatable. He wished that Trinity were here, to talk to, but he had known that she wouldn't be, and even if she'd come, that they wouldn't talk. She was avoiding him, as much as you can avoid one of the only other three people in the 'world', on the tiny ship. He remembered waking up, right after he'd come out of the Matrix the last time - with her, beside her, looking at her. She smiled, and he just kept looking at her, watching the smile die on her lips and in her eyes. He wondered if he'd actually said it aloud, tried to remember if the words in his mind came out of his lips, but it didn't really matter. Whatever had happened, if it was actual words or if it was just his eyes that did it, it was still the same thing; he had looked at her and said 'you're the wrong one.'

Red pill. It doesn't stop. You see the truth, and you can't unsee it. It never goes away. He understood Cypher's betrayal, understood the reasoning behind it, and the desperation. It made perfect sense, to him. The truth is usually better in principle than it is in reality; it's cleaner, in principle. It can *be* something when it's in your mind, like the Matrix. And then, when *you* get inside it, you realize that it isn't anything, it's a thousand things, all at once. It's everything that you see and everything that you feel and everything that you smell and everything that you hear and everything that you taste and everything that you *think* it can be, all of it, all at once - everything is real. And nothing is. Inside the Matrix, it all has to *be* there, downloaded, virtual and actual. If it shimmers away when you touch it or look at it or if it sounds wrong or tastes wrong or smells wrong, you know it isn't real. There is no such comfort in the real world. You think things are real and they aren't; you think things are unreal and they're suddenly solid, and right in front of you, and lying in bed and looking at you, and expecting you to know the truth. Expecting you to be the One.

Right now, the only thing that Neo knew, was absolutely *sure* of - the only thing, was that nothing in the world could make him ever believe that what he was eating was anything *remotely* like a cheeseburger.

**********

Too soon, he found himself back on the plastic chair, tilted at a dangerous angle, one foot resting on the metal edge of Morpheus' bed. The back of his head was lying towards him on the pillow, and Neo could see the round, unnatural fixture of the brain jack. His fingers reached out to trace it, glad that it was on the back of the head, so it couldn't be seen by the owner. 'You but not me.' They all had one, except Tank; Trinity's hair covered hers, as Neo's would, soon. But Morpheus' was right there, in the open. It was a part of him; a reminder.

Suddenly, Morpheus turned over on his back, eyes open.

"Sorry," Neo said, resting his fingers on the pillow, and then drawing his hand back to his lap.

"What is it you want to know, Neo?" Morpheus asked. "I can hear you thinking."

"Nothing. Go back to sleep."

Morpheus smiled at him, "Tell me."

Neo shifted in the chair. "What did the Oracle tell you?"

"I told you already: She said that I would find the One."

"That's all?"

"That's all I needed to hear."

"And you believed her?"

Morpheus nodded. "She was right. You're proof of that."

"You still believe it's me."

"You've *proved* that, Neo. You *are* the One. You have to stop *thinking* about it, and just believe it."

Neo half-smiled. "She told me - "

"What the Oracle told you was for your ears alone, Neo. You don't have to tell anyone."

"You told me. So did Trinity." Morpheus' eyes flashed at him, in surprise, but Neo didn't say anything further about Trinity. He knew that it wasn't his place, and he had a half-suspicion that Morpheus knew what her prophecy had been, already. "She told me I wasn't the One."

Morpheus nodded, unsurprised. "She told you what you needed to hear, Neo. She said the one thing that would make you believe."

"That wasn't it," Neo said. "At least, that wasn't *all*." His fingers traced over one of the jacks on his arm, then pulled the long sleeve of his gray shirt down over it, to hide it away. "She told me that one of us was going to die, Morpheus - and that, if it came down to a choice, you were going to sacrifice yourself for me. I couldn't let you do that."

"I didn't go in there to die, Neo."

"No. But you would have. For me."

"For everyone. For the future. For the truth."

Neo nodded. "So now what?"

"Now it's just beginning. Nothing has ended yet; by proving that we can not only survive, but *thrive*, we've scared them, but that won't last for long. They're going to come after you, Neo. They're afraid of you, and they're going to try to destroy you. But they can't, because you *are* the One." Morpheus smiled a big smile, without pain. "Miracles happen. They don't understand that."

"Yeah." Neo chuckled. "Speaking of miracles, I want a re-match in karate, you know."

Morpheus laughed out loud, the sound a mere echo of his deep, rich baritone, but Neo was glad to hear it, anyway. "Not a chance. When I get out of this bed, you're going to stand still and let me kick your ass."

"Whatever you say." Neo leaned forward, dragging his feet along the floor to bring the chair closer to the side of the bed, leaned close in, and brushed his lips over Morpheus' mouth. He thought it was going to be a surprise, but Morpheus closed his eyes an instant before their mouths touched, and smiled right in the middle of the kiss.

**********

Trinity stuck her head just inside the door, a couple of hours later. "You okay?" she asked, her eyes taking in the sight of the sleeping Morpheus and Neo, still propped in the chair, one large dark hand caught in one of his own.

"Yeah," Neo answered, knowing that she was asking as much about Morpheus as himself, maybe more. "He's just asleep, now," he added, nodding his head towards the sleeping man, rubbing his thumb unconsciously in small circles over the back of Morpheus' hand.

"You should get some sleep, yourself."

"Yeah."

She smiled, for a second, knowing that he'd stay there all night and sleep in that chair, just as he had for most of the past couple of days. "I'll be on the bridge. It's been a while since one of the Sentinels has been by. If they don't try to kill us every couple of hours, I get nervous."

Neo smiled at her. "You want some help?"

She shook her head. "No. Stay here. I'll call you if I need you." She started out the door, down the corridor.

Neo called out, "Trinity - "

She stopped, came back to the doorway, a question in her eyes.

"You do that. Call me, I mean."

She nodded. "I will," she said, and disappeared down the hall.

Neo watched the doorway where she had been for a moment, and then turned his head, wondering once again what Morpheus dreamed about.

In his sleep, Morpheus smiled.



The End
MonaR.