Chapter Text
He remembered falling falling falling, suddenly there’s nothing to hold him, no powerful machine roaring beneath him. In his disbelief he forgot how to fall. His feet went up over his head and his head went up over his feet as he spun, again and again, flailing, frantically reaching out to grab hold of something, anything, but he was lost in open space. Then a shape rockets past him, a blur of black and red. As the opportunity arrives, the sleek black casing of a light baton showing in the bloody circuit light, Clu finds his balance.
His arms are on either side of his head, bent at ninety degree angles, and his knees are bent behind his head. He remembers how to fly, because he isn’t lost in space, the air rushes past him, cradling his body with a familiarity. When he locks his arms against his sides he’s rocketing downward, diving toward freedom in that jet compacted inside Rinzlers- Trons light baton. Anticipating Clu’s intent, the other program snatches for the baton first, and holds it out in front of him, fingers working to snap the canister open.
Clu grabs hold and his weight is pulling them both down faster, he tries to wrench his salvation out of Tron’s grasp. He kicks at the black featureless helmet, but Tron stubbornly hangs on, his knee connects with Clu’s stomach, and an elbow crashes into Clu’s forehead. The sysadmins vision fades out, and when his eyes blink open again he’s alone, but a brilliant blue jet is soaring through the sky above his head. The thin shape twists gracefully, dodging daringly, needlessly through the veins of lightning like it has all the time in the world to reach the portal. He’s celebrating his new freedom.
The sea hits his back, greeting him with a cold and dread that reaches through his code and leaves him shaking and vulnerable, after falling from such a height the impact is as painful as smashing into solid rock. She’s all too happy to have him back.
“It’s been far too long.” He thinks he can hear the waves purr. He struggles against the vengeful data, he kicks his legs, moves his arms. A desperate mantra sounds in his head swim swim swim. With one powerful kick he inches closer to what he deems to be the surface, but as dizzy and disoriented and in pain as he is he has no way of knowing which way is up.
He’s suddenly very aware of the current curling around his limbs, wrapping around his torso, pulsing with a life of it’s own. The current slams against his side with a force so violent his vision fades to black again for a moment, longer? He has no way of knowing. There’s another watery strike to his abdomen, still sore from Tron’s blow.
With the wind knocked out of him, he gasps for air, instead he fills up with his own virus. It burns the inside of his throat and sears into his code with a pain that has him writhing and screaming wordlessly without air. She hits his back, his shoulder, she tosses him, forcing him deeper and deeper down into the dark cursed depths. She’s trying to beat him smooth, like a helpless pebble caught in the tide.
—-
When Clu comes back online, the world is on it’s side. Distantly he can feel the sea slide in around him, and then contract and race back out toward the horizon, leaving him behind on the beach. The continuous, swish hush swish hush, fell into pace beside his breathing.
He’s alive? Why didn’t he drown? Why hadn’t the sea torn him to pieces?
Clu groaned as he slowly coaxed his body up onto his hands and knees.
The portal had closed. The sky was black, The Grid was black. He’d never experienced such total darkness, he wouldn’t be able to see the hands in front of his face if it weren’t for the light of his circuits… when had that light been so bright?
Something shimmered blindingly at the corner of his eye, he turned his head.
He sees the mark burning a violent yellow on his left forearm, he thinks stupidly. Oh. Oh.
He looks down into the water burying his hands, and he sees his wavering reflection.
What he sees puts a snarl on his face and he clenches his fists in the sand, Clu strikes out at the traitorous image with his fist and the data scatters, his reflection shatters. All too soon, it reforms itself on the waters surface.
The yellow lines are vicious and numerous, they look like war paint rather than the delicate, gently placed marks on the faces of his predecessors, he’s forced to think. His nonexistent stomach churns with simulated nausea.
His vision swims. Clu feels sick, doubled over he wretches and hacks up the grease and data he swallowed in the sea until he feels empty and hollow, stomach aching. It splatters against the gritty grey sand, thick and black and poisonous, leaving a sticky residue on his mouth and chin. It smells like rotting rubber and decaying plastic, he gags at the foreign smell, too pungent to a sense that is used to nothing but the uniform null scent that permeates the rest of The Grid. Clu grit his teeth.
The Sea, the bitch has a sense of irony. Does she think she’s being funny?
“I’ll kill myself.” He growls in defiance, and he reaches for the disk at his back. He looks at it for a moment in his hands, yellow rings pulsing dangerously, and shifts his grip to plunge the weapon into his own chest. He won’t let her win, she won’t have her abominations back to destroy the scraps that are left of his people. He won’t be turned into her weapon.
The disk slips from his slime slicked fingers. It drops into the water between his legs with a low caploosh. He reaches for it, but as he does so the sea recedes again. He tries to chase it with his fingers but it’s already gone, swallowed up by the data, swept far away. He spins where he kneels.
“Hey! Give it back!” He yells toward the horizon, sounding strangely like a child who’d had his toy stolen by another, bigger bully on the playground. For his trouble a particularly large wave rumbles through the sea, as it crashes against the shore he’s soaked through anew, and his mouth and nose are filled up with more of that disgusting viral sea water. He coughs and sputters.
He’s all alone. Alone and cursed. They’ve left him for the other world, the real world, the better world, the true world.
“Rinzler!” He calls. “Flynn!”
He left like he always does, and he didn’t take Clu with him. “Flynn!”
A sound struggles its way up out of his throat, broken and raw, suspiciously like a sob. He wants to be real too, just real enough for his creator to give a damn. Why does everyone else get to go and be real and happy without him?
He’ll have to find himself a new disk, a lightblade, something, but to do that he’ll have to search out other programs. In the distance the city is a dim blue glow, occasionally flickering out, before relighting itself. The flame that refuses to die.
Clu rises to his feet.
The first of the new ISO’s stumbled towards the remains of Tron City.