Authors note: Not quite sure where this came from really! I had a review from 'Agent Smith' asking me to write a Smith Christmas piece, and after Christmas shopping in the city I guess I got inspired! Hope you like it! :D
Sorry about the weird formatting earlier! I don't know what happened!
* * *
A Very Merry Smithmas.
"Have yourself a merry little Christmas"
Lights were twinkling all over the city; late Christmas shoppers trudged through the lightly falling snow looking for gifts. Glitzy banners adorned the streets proclaiming 'Merry Christmas'.
"Let your heart be light"
Many of the offices of the dark tower blocks were strewn with steamers for Christmas party, and eager children dragged the parents forward to see department store Santa's.
"From now on your troubles will be out of sight."
Up in one of the towering office blocks, behind faceless mirrored glass, Agent Smith watched. So many people, hurrying and busying along, the height of their troubles being to remember to sent off the last of the cards, or wrap that last present.
It was Christmas Eve in the city, and Smith found it all so…meaningless.
He could not comprehend how all of these people could get so excited about one event, rushing around through simulated snow, and not one of them know the true nature of their existence.
He tilted his head to look at a scruffy man shutting up a cyber café for the evening. No, that wasn't quite correct. Smith thought. There were the rebels.
The rebels knew. They had found out about their reality, they knew that the Christmas trees and snow, robins, and presents were just coded signals sent to their brain, that it wasn't 'real'. So because of that, they sought to destroy it. They were probably worse than the oblivious plugged humans at understanding the matrix.
With a slight smile Smith wondered if the rebels had Christmas in Zion.
"Have yourself a merry little Christmas"
Smith tried not to scowl as he noticed a group of carol singers set up right outside the agency almost exactly under the window he was standing.
Carol singing, Smith wasn't sure why, but carol singing really annoyed him. Music in general confounded him, but singing? Mere extensions of the vocal cords to produce noise vaguely different to speech, it was utterly pointless.
"Make the Yuletide gay"
Smith swore that one of the little children, a dark-haired girl in hat, scarf and mittens, was staring right up at him through the window. "Virus." He muttered.
"The rebels in sector 12 have been disposed of." Stated Jones, the large-built Agent entering the room.
Smith nodded curtly.
The smaller Agent Brown stepped into the office, and looked to Smith. "There has been a disturbance in sector eight, single rebel, motives unknown."
Smith gazed over to the windows, the group down below were still singing.
"I will deal with it." He said and touched his earpiece.
"From now on your troubles will be miles away."
* * *
Smith strode past the crowds of shoppers to the area the rebel had been sighted in. Why a rebel would come into the Matrix alone astounded him, even in large groups they were almost always caught, so going solo was practically suicide. Some humans really were stupid.
Turning down a side street he saw his target. Female brunette, around 20 to 25 wearing what Smith considered to be an excessive amount of black leather.
The girl was walking along quite calmly; she obviously had no idea she was going to die in but a few seconds. Smith drew his gun.
Suddenly the girl turned. The look of pure horror on her face as she realised she was facing an Agent would have made Smith break into a grin if he hadn't had found it sickeningly human.
Smith started to fire as the girl sprinted forwards and with surprising grace for the particular outfit, leapt up and jumped into the open window of a building at the side of the street.
That was fine. With the monotonous nature of his job, Smith found he had grown to almost, as a human might put it, 'enjoy the chase'.
Breaking through the decrepit wooden door of the building, Smith was up the stair and just behind the rebel in no time at all. The girl looked terrified, and whipped out two hefty guns from her holster. She sent a barrage of shots at the Agent who dodged them with painful ease as the wall behind him was reduced to chunks of plasterboard and tacky wallpaper.
Smith brushed a few flecks of dust and plaster off of his suit and pulled out his desert eagle, the girl rocketed down the hallway.
He chased her past several wreath adorned apartment doors, before he heard a despairing yell of "No! Oh shit!"
Turning the corner of the dank hallway he smirked as she saw that the stupid girl has run herself straight into a dead end. She cowered, back against the wall, like the trapped animal she was.
Smith raised his gun to her head. "Goodbye".
He was a little shocked to find his hand empty, his gun across the grungy-carpeted floor, and the girl clutching a curved samurai sword.
"Goodbye" She obliged, and swung at him.
Smith shot backwards, and noticed with a slight twinge of upset, that the girl had cut off his tie and torn a sharp line through the front of his suit.
With a burst of anger he threw a punch at the girl sending her back into the wall, she swiped at him with her sword, but he dodged, only letting his jacket get cut further, and coming in to strike her.
The pair fought in the tight confines of the old apartment block hallway, as the residents separated only by a few inches of brick, watched television and ate mince pies.
Smith sent a powerful punch straight through the floor as the girl rolled to evade it, and as the pair continued to fight heavily, the floorboards started to groan.
The girl launched herself off the wall at Smith and the pair thudded to the ground. The floorboards gave an ominous snap. The human's and program's blue eyes both met as they realised they were going to fall.
There was a loud crack as both bodies hit the floor of the room below. Smith snarled and pushed the rebel of him with a force the made her skid into the empty fireplace. He was searching for his gun when he heard it.
Light footsteps running up to the door. "Santa?"
Smith turned and stared at the child, not older than six, bobbed brown hair and plaid pyjamas. It was the girl who was with the carol singers.
"Your not Santa are you?" she questioned with a slight lisp.
"No. I am not the fictional entity you call Santa." He snapped.
The little girl frowned. "I don't know what a ent…an ennittley is. Do you have a present for me?"
Smith held back a growl. Infuriating human spawn, worse than an adult virus, he thought angrily.
"No I do not have a present for you. I am an Agent, I do not partake in such juvenile human activities as Christmas." He explained irately.
The child looked rather confused.
Smith relaxed slightly. He was an Agent, he didn't need to deal with these type of things.
There was a meek cough from the fireplace, and Smith turned to the bedraggled rebel remembering the type of things that he was supposed to deal with.
The little girl also noticed the rebel. "Why is there a lady in the firepl….Lilly!"
She ran over and gripped the dusty rebel in a tight hug.
"Hi Amy..." The rebel began cautiously. Smith stared at the two.
The rebel looked up to him. "Please don't hurt her, just…let me say goodbye." Smith frowned. "Please," the rebel pleaded.
Smith knew he should shoot the rebel there and then, but something stopped him, what it was he wasn't sure. He lowered his gun. It was the child. She…she was a witness.
The rebel smiled, though the happy façade didn't reach her eyes. She knew she didn't have long left. She reached and brushed the little girls dark hair away from her face. "I told you I'd come visit didn't I?"
The little girl nodded furiously. "Mummy is missing you lots, can you stay now?"
"No, I'm sorry Amy, I can't " The older sister replied sadly, she pulled a small box out of her coat.
"I got you this…" She began, handing it to the delighted Amy. "..But you have to go back to bed now ok?"
"I don't wanna, I miss you Lilly! Will you come back again? Please?" the little girl pleaded.
The rebel cast her eyes up to the imposing figure of Smith, his expression hidden by dark glasses.
"I...I don't think so Amy."
Smith didn't understand what this girl expected of him, he was an Agent and it was his duty to kill rebels, to protect the system. Did she wish for him to spare her? No…no, that wasn't what she was asking of him, she knew what was to become of her, she just didn't know how soon.
"Come." He ordered
The rebel ushered her reluctant sister out of the room, and followed Smith. He wondered if she would try to run. Surprisingly she didn't.
When they reached the end of the hallway, Smith drew his Desert Eagle. The rebel fidgeted, as if fighting with herself over what to do.
He aimed it at her head.
Through the years we all will be together
Christmas music echoed into the hallway, one of the apartments had started playing a radio. Smith frowned and tightened his finger on the trigger.
If the fates allow
He could hear the girls pulse quicken.
But 'til then we'll have to muddle through, somehow.
"Wait." She gushed. Smith hated it when they tried to plead for their worthless lives. He was a program, what could they possibly offer him?
"I just need to say…Thank you."
"What?" Smith asked, genuinely confused. Why was she thanking him?
The girl avoided his penetrating blue eyes. "You could have hurt my sister…or killed me right there. You didn't...Thank you."
Smith stared at her incredulously. Why was he thanking him? It wasn't like he had done that for her benefit, it was just more practical to avoid civilian witnesses. That was all, he told himself.
The girl stared at the floor in obvious fear.
It was unusual, Smith thought, how a person could look like a vicious rebel one moment, and a frightened child the next.
As the girl closed her eyes, anticipating the shot, he realised that was what she was. Scared, young and human. Yet she waited for the death right in front of her.
Smith knew he would probably regret this, but at the moment he didn't care. Maybe it was a flaw in his programming, he quite wasn't sure, all he knew was what he wanted to do. He holstered his gun.
"Go."
The rebel looked up at him in utter disbelief.
"I am not sparing you. If you chose to disobey the system then it is only a matter of time. I am just giving you a little extra time." He stated emotionlessly.
The girl didn't need to be told twice, and fled out of the building.
* * *
Smith headed back to the Agency. The Carol singers had long left, and the dark streets' only other occupant was an icy wind, that blew snow among the shadows of the flickering neon shop signs.
He was about to push open the heavy glass doors to the building when he noticed something glittering in the snow.
He bent down and lifted a small black covered present with a code-green bow from the ground. Without thinking, he opened it.
Inside there was a long, thin, black silk tie; identical to the severed one he was still wearing. Smith was filled with an emotion he had never felt before, and probably was never meant to feel at all.
Awed, he looked up to the sky. Outside the dark oppressive Agency, In the Matrix; the real world for millions of people, it had started to snow. A bell chimed midnight. It was Christmas.
Have yourself a merry little Christmas now.
* * *
Have yourself a merry little Christmas
Let your heart be light
From now on your troubles will be out of sight.
Have yourself a merry little Christmas
Make the Yuletide gay
From now on your troubles will be miles away.
Here we are as in olden days
Happy golden days of yore, ah
Faithful friends who are dear to us
Gather near to us, once more.
Through the years we all will be together
If the fates allow
Hang a shining star upon the highest bough.
And have yourself a merry little Christmas now
Faithful friends who are dear to us
Gather near to us, once more.
Through the years we all will be together
If the fates allow.
But 'til then we'll have to muddle through, somehow
And have yourself a merry little Christmas now.
* * *Please review, and have a Merry Christmas! :D
Beth.