Title: Nyx

Author: Belladonna Poisoning

Author Email: belladonna_poisoning@yahoo.com

Pairing: Smith/Neo

Rating: strong PG-13

Summary: A meeting between two enemies teaches them both that the line between love and hate can be terribly blurry.

Series: Third in the Nightshade Arc

Genre: angsty romance

Warnings: very mild BDSM. If you’re squeamish about mixing sex with pain, take anti-nausea pills prior to reading.

Feedback: You’ve heard it before. I really would like reviews to improve my work, feed my ego, etc. If you actually read these notes, I’m rather surprised.

A/N: Nyx was, I believe, the goddess of night, daughter of Chaos, and mother of countless offspring. I just liked the name. But I digress.

Two men, both in black, standing in an empty lot. "We meet again, Mr. Anderson."

The younger man nods. "Smith."

Neither moves to attack the other. After a long moment, Smith sits on a bench and stretches out his legs. "Care to take a seat?"

"I’d rather stand."

"As you wish." He lounges back and removes his sunglasses. "So," he says idly. "Are you going to stand there staring all day?"

He doesn’t bat an eyelash behind reflective lenses. "What do you want?"

"What I want is, at this point, irrelevant. The question is, what do YOU want?"

"Answers."

"So ask. Although I doubt you will like the answers."

"Why did you follow me here?"

He answers with a question. "Do you hate me, Mr. Anderson?"

"Yes."

"How much?"

"Excuse me?"

"How much do you hate me? As much as you love that Trinity creature of whom you seem so fond?"

"I… yes."

"I see." Smith sits up, tucking his glasses into his pocket. "So tell me, Mr. Anderson, do you hate me or love her more?"

He knows the answer, and he doesn’t like it at all. "I thought I was supposed to be the one asking the questions."

"And I am answering them in the only way there is a chance you will comprehend them. Which emotion is stronger, your love for her or your hatred for me? Which is more a part of you?"

He glares from behind the sunglasses he has yet to remove. "Hatred."

"Exactly, Mr. Anderson. Exactly. I doubt you understand it, but that is the answer. You needn’t look so confused," he continues, rising. "It is a flaw of human nature, or perhaps simply the nature of emotion. What are generally termed negative emotions–rage, hatred, fear–are inevitably stronger that their ‘good’ counterparts. Hatred, true hatred, is a deeper and purer emotion that love. That is the nature of the beast."

"I fail to see how that answers my question."

"Still? Yes, I suppose you do. The grand irony behind all emotions is that, at a certain intensity, they become indistinguishable from the opposite, their presumably weaker opposite. The deepest rage is actually a calm, and in the throes of one’s worst fear, one will find the most indestructible hope."

"So?"

"And so, Mr. Anderson, when you hate someone enough, you love him."

Neo stares, removes his glasses, stares again. "Are you saying that you followed me because you love me?"

"Is a computer program even capable of love?" he retorts lazily.

Neo lifts an eyebrow. "I believe that you hate me," he replies. "I believe that you hate me enough that you could love me. I simply wonder why."

Smith shrugs. "Believe what you want."

"That isn’t an answer."

"It wasn’t a question."

"Assume it was. Will you answer?"

"Will you ask?"

"Why do you hate me?"

"Because I have been looking for you for a very long time. I have been waiting to kill you for a very… long… time."

"You did kill me."

"And you destroyed me."

Silence falls again, both black-clad men staring into each other’s eyes without the protection of dark lenses. "So tell me, Mr. Smith. Do you hate me?"

"Oh, yes. Believe that, if nothing else. I hate you."

Neither knows who moved first or even really cares, but suddenly they are kissing, viciously, tasting blood and sweat when Smith savagely bites Neo’s tongue and Neo grabs his arms, forcing them up painfully behind his back. Smith struggles free, and they are locked in a battle that neither can win, still kissing with brutal force.

Blows rain down on both men, somewhat hindered by their inability to detach from the other. They sip a bittersweet, addictive cocktail of love and hate and pain, still fighting, still kissing, until Neo is slammed up against a wall and held in place, concentrating too much on fighting back with teeth and lips and tongue to free his body. "Surrender," Smith hisses down his throat.

"No," he growls back, and a sudden blow to Smith’s solar plexus causes him to double up in pain. Neo swings around, reversing their positions and pressing against the other’s body so closely that he cannot move. It has the added effect of grinding the obvious evidence of his arousal against Smith’s groin. Smith’s eyes unfocus briefly, then narrow into slits, and he caresses Neo’s hair and neck gently. Neo relaxes ever so slightly, and the former agent immediately wrenches out of his grasp, freeing his mouth in the process. Before either can grow accustomed to the sudden lack of the other’s tongue and blood in his mouth, he sinks his teeth into Neo’s neck, biting hard enough to leave a set of perfect red marks above a throbbing pulse point, then licking the mark soothingly. Neo drags his head up and fastens his mouth on the tender flesh below Smith’s ear, a dark purple bruise forming almost immediately.

They are no longer struggling against the inevitable; they instead turn their attention to waging a feral lovers’ war, biting and sucking and kissing, already reduced to near incoherence, ready to continue dueling until one of them surrenders.

Neither will ever give in, but they continue their vicious combat, love and hatred so irrevocably intertwined that neither could ever be separated.

"I love you."

"I hate you."

But their meaning is the same in the end.