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Yori wakes in the middle of a burning dream, wakes to soft blue light rolling from her circuitry, muted by the nearness of sleepmode. Blue. Blue, thank the users it's blue.
She’s a light sleeper, always has been. Countless times she’s been shaken from sleep mode; by voices in the neighboring address, bit collisions overhead, or a burst energy junction in the next sector. Usually, she can roll back over amidst the racket, blend it back into her dreams, and fall asleep again.
But she doesn't want to return, this time. Not to the dream, where her world collapses to a thin line of orders. Numbers with no meaning attached. Fever-red pain that followed questioning. The MCP's voice, hungry drain of power, echoing through her code.
She's awake now. She's awake, and it’s quiet, but it’s an inverted sort of quiet. Sits weird in the core of her being, somehow, like an unstable energy line, moments before it breaks, sending the unfortunate solar sailer travelers to unforgiving code tundra below.
Sometimes she worries about these dreams. She worries where they come from, if there are vestiges of old code in her, fragments from the MCP. Dormant. Waiting. Waiting to take over again, take her mind back. Tron was able to clear her mind, then. Was it enough?
—
According to her results from the last User Patching Ceremony, yes. It was enough. Yori felt it through the signal; Lora-Prime seemed pleased, even a little surprised, at the state of her star program. No malware, no vulnerabilities. Her code was clear and strong as ever.
Tron, on the other hand, was not so lucky. Throughout their journey to fight the MCP, he stood firm, sure and certain of his purpose, utterly unshakeable. He was light, he laughed and leaped in celebration after they brought their system to freedom. All the while, he carried hidden wounds. His code was unraveled and broken, twisted from its original form, and he was afraid. He didn't want Alan-One to see.
—
Now, beside her, Tron shifts, moving with his back to her. She knows him, knows he has nightmares too. While the MCP reigned, he'd been awake, while she'd been locked in a sort of sleep. She returns to this prison, in her worst nightmares. Where does he return?
She sees his frame, silhouetted against the city light, pouring in from the window. She knows the way his breathing sounds when he’s asleep. He’s not asleep. He’ll fight it alone, it’s his way.
But it isn’t her way, to see someone in pain and leave them there.
She moves, through the space between them, until she’s right there, shell on shell, trading warmth. I’m right here. Aware of every breath he takes, uneven, broken. Battle after battle after battle. I’ll always be here.
His breathing catches.
—
Oh, Yori remembers the moment the I/O towers turned blinding white, and the high, resonant signal ran throughout all the system. It was the call of the users, the call for system update. Programs would be collected, scanned, purged of the twisted, spying filth the MCP planted within.
He was nervous before the ceremony, she could see it in the way his eyes darted, this way and that, scanning everything at once with no focus. So she’d slipped her hand around his waist, catching his hand, and holding him close against her.
It’ll be okay, she pinged him.
He may find reason to fate me for Deletion, he replied, and held up an arm, gleaming with fraying circuits and chipping code. I mean, look at me.
After you just saved the system? She’d tilted up her face, and smiled. Come on.
He kissed her then, the user act, still so strange and new, and went into the I/O tower with new resolve.
When he emerged, his shell was smooth and newly rezzed, but his hands shook, and his eyes were weary.
“Rough update, huh?” she said.
“Crashed on the stress tests,” he admitted, and there was a catch in his voice. “Every single one of them. But I’m still here.”
“Of course you are,” she said. “And so am I. Always will be.”
—
She's talked about it at length; it doesn't make her ashamed. The MCP all but possessed her, her and countless others. She was angry, at first. Tron was angry, too; but he was also proud of Yori. Unbearably proud; and little by little, Tron taught her how to be proud also. That hungry, endless, ever-reaching power drain? She outlived it. She outlived the MCP; though it ran through her code, tried to make her into its own, she did not burn out. She remained herself, and when Tron removed the red blinders from her eyes, she was still Yori: simulator, creator, laser-bright and ready for war. She was no victim of the MCP. She was a victor over it.
But Tron. He doesn’t talk about it often, and she never pries, but in the strange, euphoric millicycles after the MCP’s defeat, he has let little details slip. And she, a sim program, designed to connect the dots and see between the lines, she’s figuring it out. She knows he sustained torture in prison; torture and an endless barrage of forced battles to the death. And energy, they’d deprived him of energy, weakening his code integrity, all while forcing him to fight, cycle after cycle, kill after kill after kill. He was designed to kill, but he was ordained to protect, and each life weighed heavily on his mind.
In the middle of the darkness, recent triumphs fade, giving up ground to louder terrors.
—
He is breathing, trying to. It isn’t easy. It often isn’t easy.
Sometimes, he wakes up fighting; bursts awake with fury and zeal, leaping to his feet, searching for the disc he locked away before they went to sleep. Sometimes, it takes her a while to talk him down from that, convince him he’s safe, that there is no war anymore. Sometimes, he wakes up fighting.
More often, he wakes up like this.
Far too often, he wakes up like this; and Yori stays close to him, silent in the dark, her core threatening to unravel with it. Her core will shatter with it—compassion for him, and violent hatred for the ones that did this. She holds onto him, and he holds onto her if he can move, and she is reminded that for all Alan-One’s meticulous patching, there are some invisible things no user can mend.
“You wanna talk about it?” she whispers, when he’s been above the dream long enough to not drown in it.
He sighs, softly, taking one of her hands in both of his, tracing circles on her hand with his left thumb.
“Only if you want to,” she reminds him, as he circles and circles. “Only if you want to.”
The silence stretches, but he’s facing her, he’s trying to find the words, and she will listen. Eventually, he says something. “You remember Ram?”
“How could I forget?” She reaches up with her free hand and brushes the hair out of his face. “You talk about him often. Your friend.”
“My friend.” The left-hand corner of his mouth lifts; could almost be a smile. “I told him about you. Oh, he had to put up with me talking a lot about you.”
“And you put up with his rants about his true love,” she says.
“Floating point math,” they both say, in quiet unison, and he smiles, shaking his head.
“Exactly.” She lets her hand rest on his shoulder, and completes the story. “So. You’re even.” She knows the story well. He does that, repeats stories he likes, memories he likes, lessons he likes. Repeats them over and over and over, to the point of annoyance for some.
“He wanted to meet you, you know,” he whispers.
“I know.” She can never be annoyed, knowing what the repetition means for him.
“I… This is silly.” He is smiling. There is no light in his eyes. He looks up to the ceiling, smiling that way. “I dreamed he got to. Meet you, that is. In my dream, we all got free… he got to see the system… free again… got to talk to his user again.”
“I wish he had,” she says, softly. “If anyone deserved it, Ram did.”
He gives her a nod, his hands still latched onto hers, left thumb circling faster and faster and faster. “You know,” he says. “For cycles in that prison, they did everything they could to break me, wear me down, break my belief in the users.”
I know.
“And they couldn’t do it. I wouldn’t let them get to me. But they tried. Everything.”
I know.
“And I…” He leans forward, hunching over their clasped hands.
“Shh…” Carefully, she detaches one hand, and runs it through his hair, down his neck. Across his shoulders. She knows what he’s going to say. Ram was his friend, his best friend, the only good constant in that prison. They leaned on each other, encouraged each other’s faith, comforted each other. And then, like a double-freed place in memory, like a void within a void, like an empty error...
Tron’s said it before, detached, mid-cycle. On a break from patrol, just sort of said it, and moved on. Ram died in the escape.
She hasn’t forgotten.
“In that prison,” he says now, “they starved me, and tortured me, and questioned my belief in the users, over and over and over, trying to wear me down. They never could.”
Because Ram was there.
“But when we ran, and they came after us…” He does not continue aloud. He can’t catch his breath, it’s like he’s been running, running and running and running, though the tanks have long ceased their pursuit.
Yori knows. She’s heard and seen the pieces. She can almost visualize it, that terrible, infinite-hanging moment, when the blast ruptured the air and he looked back… he looked back… back to where they’d been, and saw nothing. Nothing but a pile of rubble.
“Nothing.” He shakes his head, his voice low and crackling with anger. “Nothing Sark did to me brought me lower than that. Because how could the users exist… how could anything true… and good… and… and perfect exist… when it’s all just a glitching pile of rubble?”
It takes Yori by surprise; the openness. She’s had her doubts about the users, of course, especially after meeting Flynn in all his glorious chaos; but Tron? He never doubted. He always held a pure certainty, so brilliant and unflinching and bright that she doubted her own doubts.
He takes a deep breath, finally. “I see it,” he says. “All the time, Yori. All the time. Every time I fall asleep. Every time I hear them testing the tank updates, down at the New Game Grid. Rubble. Ram, underneath.”
She is quiet.
“And I think… I think… we should have waited longer at the energy source… I should have let him take the lead… I should’ve… should’ve looked back—”
“No.”
“Warned him somehow.”
“No. Do not blame yourself. You were all running for your life. Panic narrows the mind.”
“Well, I should not have let it narrow mine,” he snaps, and his posture is so rigid, his tone so cold, it sends a chill crawling through her circuits. In the next moment, he catches himself, and bows his head. “I’m sorry.”
She gives him a little hug. “Me, too.”
He lifts his head, relaxing into her, wrapping his own arms around her. “You would have loved him, Yori,” he says. “You would’ve really loved him. And he would’ve loved you, no doubt.”
“Well.” She leans into him. “What’s not to love.”
He breathes out, some whisper-ghost of a laugh.
“You don’t have to worry about me,” she says. “You’re stuck with me. I’m not going anywhere.”
“You can’t know that.”
And she’s tired of it. Cold logic, reason, worst-case scenarios, always lurking in the corners of their conversations.
“Neither of us can,” she replies. “But Tron, we must not let that paralyze us.”
His arms tighten around her, like he’s holding her tight against the current of some unseen, inexorable pull.
“I’ll fight for it,” she continues. “Cycle after cycle after cycle. Will you?”
“Yes. Always.”
“Well, then, it’s settled. Let the system do what it will. The only thing we can control is ourselves, and we’re both pledged to do our best.”
After a while, they lay back, and she giggles.
“What?” he asks, half-smiling and gruff.
“Let the system do what it will,” she says, turning over to face him. “In this moment, I have you.”
“Mhm.”
“And you have me.”
He sits up halfway, circuits brightening. “Correct.”
“Well, program.” She smiles. “There are so few things we can control in this mad, mad system. I think it’s only logical to enjoy the things we can.”
“Your logic,” he says slowly, “is beyond reproach.”
“Your logic’s not so bad either,” she replies.
And this time, when he smiles, it does reach his eyes. And this time, they keep the madness at bay. And this time, the ending is a happy one.
Sometimes, in this mad, mad system, the endings are happy ones.