Title: Nike

Author: Belladonna Poisoning

Author Email: belladonna_poisoning@yahoo.com

Pairing: Smith/Neo

Rating: G

Summary: Neo thinks about his most familiar enemy.

Series: Second in the Nightshade Arc

Genre: angsty romance

Warnings: None

Feedback: Please? ~big puppy eyes~ I’m not afraid to pull the new author guilt trip! This is my frst Matrix slash and I want reviews, dammit!

A/N: Nike is the Greek goddess of victory. Just so you know.

I knew he was back. Even before he sent me his message, I could feel him.

He’s back. You didn’t destroy him, after all.

I wasn’t angry, wasn’t frustrated, wasn’t even afraid. I was relieved. He is all that is left of my former life, a strangely comforting relic of innocence and ignorance lost. When you have no friends beside you, the next best thing is a familiar enemy.

And yet I seem to prefer his presence even to that of my friends. There are no illusions with him, no real deceptions. Only a battle that is almost a dance in its deadly beauty. He killed me and I destroyed him, and yet we are both returned, from the dead, or wherever agents go when they are no longer functional. We are more alike than I would prefer, and we understand each other too well.

He said he was free; that I had freed him. Why is he hunting me?

Computers have no emotions. But the only reason for persistence is hatred.

I would like to think that I am above hating him. Self-deception is the simplest of illusions. I do hate him. I hate him more than anything or anyone in the world or in the Matrix. I hate him because I can hate him; he is a face, a person, something real and tangible. He killed me, almost killed Morpheus and Trinity, killed countless people, some with faces and some without.

He is free of the system. Does that mean he has changed?

Polished black shoes on the pavement. Perfectly pressed black suit, neatly clipped tie, sunglasses hiding his eyes.

"Were you expecting me, Mr. Anderson?"