Title: Nemesis

Author: Belladonna Poisoning

Author Email: belladonna_poisoning@yahoo.com

Pairing: Smith/Neo

Rating: PG-13

Summary: The musings of a computer program on hatred, love, and the one man who evokes both emotions from him.

Series: Nightshade Arc

Genre: angsty romance

Warnings: None

Feedback: Please? Pretty please? Or I’ll sic my precious darling Smith on you? Give me the damn reviews NOW!

A/N: The titles of the fics in this series are the names of various Greek goddesses. Nemesis killed people who offended the gods. Or something like that; mythology is not my strong point.

I remember. I remember dying.

I remember watching him die, blood on the floor, blood everywhere, all over the walls, blood because he was alive and I had killed him. And I remember feeling lost. He was gone–my purpose. I hated him. I had killed him. But there was nothing left anymore.

It sounds strange, to admit that I was–happy, if such a thing could be said. Happy that he was alive again, happy that my nemesis was back. Because as long as he was alive I had a purpose, and that was to kill him.

And then he killed me.

He altered my programming, ruined it, changed it, saved it. I don’t know what happened or how or even why. But I could feel him, a connection that was almost tangible. I can still feel him, pulling at me. He destroyed my programming, and replaced it with himself, broke me and mended me and changed me. He is at the center of my universe, everything revolving around him, and I am pulled along.

I have always hated him. I do not know when I started to love him.

The love of two nemeses is the most perfect emotion, for what pair of beings know each other so well as two enemies? When you have fought someone for so long, he becomes a part of you, your other half, and without even realizing it, you love him even as you hate him, so that you are compelled to destroy and to regret the destruction you must wreak–so that in destroying him you destroy yourself.

I am not what I was. I do not know what I am, and I do not care. I follow him because he is all that is still the same. We are still enemies. We will be enemies until one of us wins, and I do not want to win. I cannot kill him again. Not when I know what it will do to me. So no matter how the battle ends, I lose.

I doubt he realizes that I let him go. That I was not truly fighting him. No, I would not have won that fight, even if I had tried–but he would not have escaped. We would have been locked in combat until the Matrix disintegrated around us.

I did not want to fight him. There is always the chance that your enemy will make a mistake. If I err, there is another to take my place. But there is only one of him, and he cannot be replaced. What if he slips? What if he blinks at the wrong moment? What if the thought of that woman distracts him and he does not duck quickly enough? What if he dies?

So I let him go. I would rather watch him than fight him.

I could wish to be something other than his enemy. But that is not what I truly desire. He is special, but that is obvious. I am his nemesis, and to him I am distinct from the rest, the first enemy, the one who will always oppose him. Perhaps someday he will realize that he and I are indeed the perfect enemies. Perhaps he will live out his life without understanding, ever, what lies between us.

The most perfect lovers are enemies whose hatred is so pure it is the deepest kind of love.

I hate him. And I love him.