Smith would admit remnants of hatred remained in him, but they were not specific, they were not directed at Mr. Anderson in particular, he just had hate in his heart. Probably it was mere anger at the world for the life he had been given. He did not know what to think of his life any more. It had been five years since the Boy was revealed to be Thomas A Anderson, Neo, The One, the Source, and each day the Boy would come to Smith, to what was familiar, to what was his other half. The years had gone by and the Boy looked more and more like Anderson, he feared the Boy would grow to have his exact face, to which Smith would be very uncomfortable, as Smith had mused most of his life since of smashing that skull of which that face was supported by.

The Boy had grown in height and his hair grew long enough for a haircut, his brown eyes grew larger and wiser, more observant, and Smith was rather sure he would see the code sooner rather than later by then. The Boy had been trained in martial arts by Seraph, foresight and visions by the Oracle, guns and discipline by Smith, and Sati kept the Boy rightfully a child. Almost despite the Boy's previous incarnation he would go to Smith in all times of his downtime. And would ask for Smith to act as bodyguard whenever there were times when he could go out.

Smith did not know how to feel about it.

He was quite fond of the boy, who showed loyalty only matched by fellow Agents, and was even sporting some of Smith's vocabulary by then. He admired the child's endurance as Smith once locked him on the roof while it was raining once and didn't receive many complaints apart from Seraph and Sati.

It was a strange thing to see Mr. Anderson, but not have it be Mr. Anderson. To have that Boy grow into what would be The One but welcome Smith with smiles instead of the finger. Smith did not know this would happened, he had anticipated to merely wait for their purpose to come up and fulfill it, there was little else he was living for but that moment where he would most likely die, and hopefully not return again.

Currently the boy and he were playing chess. The Boy sat with his fingers to his mouth and his eyes intensely predicting any possible moves. He sat in the lotus position and was at any moment ready for meditation.

"I'll beat you some day." The Boy sighed, giving up and putting his King wide open for the final blow.

Smith began to reset the chessboard.

"I had a dream last night." The Boy said.

"Did you?"

"It was a nightmare. There was some guy in a suit, and it was raining, and he wouldn't shut the fuck up." The Boy smiled. "I can even remember what he said! Feeble constructs of a human mind trying desperately to justify an existence that is without meaning or purpose, and all of them as artificial as the Matrix itself." The boy smiled. "Right? Did I get it right?"

Smith looked at him with utter indifference.

"I said 'Constructs of a feeble human mind.'" Smith corrected.

"Damn!" The Boy laughed.

"Did you at least see the fight?" Smith asked.

"No."

"Well, I beat the piss out of you." Smith grinned. "Just so you know."

"You're exaggerating." The Boy said.

"No I'm not." Smith shook his head.

"Sati is he…" He called across the room.

"No he's not!" Sati called back from the living room.

"Damn it, I sound like a pussy." The Boy laughed.

The day was soon approaching, the day that the Boy was to be unplugged from the Matrix upon his choosing, and he decided that it was a good time to leave and begin training elsewhere, but of course there would be frequent visits back here, to Smith and to everyone.

"It's time." Seraph entered.

The Boy had said his goodbyes and promises on his visits, he'd have to help out with those cookies after all, and training Sati. And then they had left, gone out the door, and were in their black car, driving to the meeting point. The Boy took one last look at the world the Matrix of which he had grown so fond of, and they past a place where he ate good noodles.

They began walking off into the abandoned buildings where humanity made their exits for their own kind and Machines supervised it all. The walk towards the empty buildings was long and through rows of humanity at its worst, drug addicts, the homeless, drunks walking the streets. But as the Boy followed Smith and Seraph he turned his head to see a girl. The Girl.

He stared at her from across the road, and somehow he knew.

"Trinity?" The Boy asked beneath his breath.

She walked away, turning the corner and away from his view without even noticing him. The Boy panicked in a familiar sense of love.

"Smith! Seraph!" The Boy called and ran off.

The two immediately followed him as he ran off into a marketplace without stopping, only concerned with finding that girl, the Girl, that somehow he just knew, was her, it had to be, he saw it, he felt it, Smith would say he smelled it in the air, it was her. He hadn't even seen Trinity beyond his dreams but he knew that was her. He ran and randomly and in a panic chose a street to follow and run down. Smith and Seraph separated to attempt to find him.

The Boy continued on running further and further without stopping undeterred by anything, until finally he realized he didn't see the Girl anymore. He stopped for a moment to look around and see where he was as he panted.

"He's alone!"

"Now!" He heard.

That was when he heard gunfire.

"The Frenchman's not gonna let you get him again, you little bastard!"

The Merovingian. His men. How long had they been there? All his life? Firing upon him since he was nine years old? Wanting him dead, seeking and seeking but having Smith or Seraph always defeat him. But what about then, what about now? The Boy was paralyzed in the realization he could not stop bullets, and was going to die.

And as they fired he was pushed to the ground, and Smith stood above him firing his Desert Eagle widely, taking out gunman. Until henchman themselves jumped from the skies, men that did not even look like men, monsters, vampires, ghosts, were more like it, but not men. First four came towards them and Smith kicked two in the face at the same time, leaning in to punch another in the gut, and whip his other foot around to kick the fourth. The Boy got up to stand and watched as a nearby monster began to get up. Six years of training told him to kick the monster, but he didn't do just that, he ran up that monster, like he was a rap, standing on his chest and kicking him in the face in a manner his previous self loved to do.

More of them came from what seemed nowhere, Smith having to hit one in the face with his empty gun, while he reloaded it at the same time. He grabbed another by the throat and threw him into two other monsters, while turning and shattering the rib cage with a punch to an approaching monster. Smith was pulled by another monster by the tie and punched in the face then kicked in the rib cage. Smith got it together to brag the foot and swing him into the ground, where the Boy landed on the monster's face.

Then there was gunfire, and Smith dodged those bullets, running over to the Boy with the speed of an Agent and moving him out of the path of the bullets.

"Jesus Christ!" The Boy screamed.

More gunfire hailed from the sky and Smith pulled the Boy along with him away, dancing through bullet paths. But then suddenly the Boy tripped, and Smith stood three feet away as bullets continued, in a moment the two stared at each other, positive and negative, yin and yang, the light and the dark, and the Boy looked to Smith as a father figure, and Smith looked to the Boy almost as a son, and ran over to him standing over him, and shielding him as he was shot twelve times in various places.

And then Smith stood and blood ran down his mouth and onto the staring Boy whose eyes shook from the fear.

"…Smith?" The Boy asked.

Smith fell over with a noise that sounded like a whisper that was trying to be a word.

"SMITH!" The Boy screamed.

The Boy heard laughter from the Frenchman's monsters behind him.

"It's like killing two birds with one stone!" They said.

The Boy stood then, careful and stumbling, he stood and faced the gunmen who surrounded him in all directions. He stared at their smiling faces and their smirks and the pleasure he saw in their eyes. He shut his eyes and opened them, and he could see the Green Code of the Matrix.

And he had enough.

"No." The Boy whispered.

They fired, and each bullet stopped before The Boy, and he stared at their coding, watching the very essence of their life, the Source in the light that shown from their green codes. He watched as the code changed based upon their expressions, movements, feelings, thoughts, and he saw what they were thinking. They thought together, we're too late.

They dropped their guns and they ran.

And the bullets fell to the ground into the blood of Former Agent Smith. The Boy looked down at Smith who rolled to his side to cough up some blood as red spread over his white collar shirt. The Boy cried out and fell to his knees, grabbing Smith by the arm and shoulder.

"Are you okay!?" The Boy screamed.

"This hurts more than I thought it would." Smith spat.

"Oh God, oh God, oh God." The Boy panicked then pushed his hands over the bullet wounds, attempting to cover them. "We have to stop the bleeding."

Smith laughed at the irony of all this, so this was it, this is how he would die.

"Don't worry Seraph will be here soon, some one will be here soon!" The Boy screamed.

"It's okay, Neo." Smith started.

"Don't call me that!" The Boy said. "You're not going to die!"

"I'll just come back…"

"But I don't want you to! I want you like this! Smith, don't die…please don't die…" The Boy tried.

And tears began to form as the Boy tried so hard to do something.

"I can take the bullets out!" The Boy said. "I know I could! And…and then I'll learn to fly, and I'll teach you, I'll teach you, it can't be that hard…" The Boy said.

Smith only smiled.

"That's thoughtful…" Smith said.

"Smith…don't die. You're the negative! The Yin to my Yang! You can't…" The Boy still tried.

"It ends tonight…" Smith mused.

He grabbed the Boy by the chin to lift his face to look at him. Just one last time, to see the face of the future Mr. Thomas A Anderson. Smith knew somewhere that he was probably going to come back in anther body, another face. He looked back upon his miserable life, where there was only indifference, anger, sorrow, pain, death, and of which the only smiles he shared were with this Boy, that he help raise, and grow to be this young Man.

He appreciated the Boy. He was thankful he got to meet his Neo from the beginning, even if this child wasn't really Neo. He was now Neo with a better vocabulary.

"I know it does. I've seen it." The Boy finished with a smile. "Why, Mr. Anderson? Why do you persist?" The Boy said.

"Because I choose to." Smith finished.

"Okay I got one, um…What good is a phone call if you don't have a mouth to speak?" The Boy came up with.

Smith shook his head, putting his hand to his mouth and making mumbling sound that made the two of them laugh a bit or as much as Smith could laugh at the time. He could feel the holes the bullets made get bigger with the rushing blood flowing out of them. He thought he could feel a bullet enter his what was his coded liver and another a lung, but the rest of them he wasn't really too sure. But he did not want to think about that, he wanted to look at this Boy, Neo.

"Okay, here um. Look past the flesh, look through the soft gelatin of these dull cow eyes and see your enemy…" The Boy said.

"No…" Smith said.

"Oh yes, Mr. Anderson."

"It can't be…"

"There is nowhere I can't go, there is nowhere where I won't find you…"

"It's impossible."

"Not impossible. Inevitable."

Inevitable.

That was the story of his life.

Smith grinned one last time, look at the life he had lived. Then he closed his eyes and he thought about that life, and he thought about what he'd done to the world, and he thought about what he could have done to the world. Then his hands went limp, the breathing stopped, the beating ceased, and The Boy watched as his code went dim.

"Goodbye, Mr. Anderson." The Boy finished.

-----------------

He was only to act as a door. A component so the new One could enter this world. But he was not fit for the coming trials, his heart was ruined with Hate already, his mind was bound by the centuries of his life. He was too old, obsolete for what was to come. He had to be reborn.

He deserved it really. To be born again, free of that hate, free of all that pain.

And so, The Boy, now the Man, going by the name of Oen, walked down the hall where the Potentials were kept, looking in on them through one way mirrors, seeking, searching for the familiar, the piece that he lacked. She walked by his side, Trinity of the new time, her name was Kari. She held his hand as he looked stern into each one of their faces.

Until he stopped at a young looking man, dressed in a dirty black collar shirt with a white tie loosened and leaning on the wall with a look of utter contempt. And Oen pointed.

"Him." He said.

"You sure?" Kari asked him. "It says he's an Exile, used to be a Machine on the outside, apparently a repair unit."

"Yes. I'm sure."

"His name's Relic."

Dark Times were coming. Smith would have not accepted it, would have not allowed it, would have not survived. In death he would live again in a form that was clean and free.

He deserved that.

And Oen entered the room to shake his hand.

"Hello, Mr. Smith."

-------------

I couldn't get the image of Smith protecting a young version of Neo, and then I couldn't get the image of Smith dying before that boy. Then I just had to figure out why Smith would die, and I think this is a rather fitting reason.

Love, Mae