(Untitled)
Who: Tron and Open
When: After he's had a few millicycles to adjust to the new Grid.
Where: The Outlands and Hideout
What: Chasing his own demons
Warnings: Nothing except possibly more wangsting Tron. 9_9
( Coming )
When: After he's had a few millicycles to adjust to the new Grid.
Where: The Outlands and Hideout
What: Chasing his own demons
Warnings: Nothing except possibly more wangsting Tron. 9_9
( Coming )
But then he saw the white of the circuits, the truth of the identity hitting him like a ton of bricks. He'd never thought that the Flynn he'd heard of would be here. He should have. He knew that now, felt foolish for not thinking it through. His mind had been struggling too much with the knowledge that Flynn - his own Flynn, who had looked quite different then this one - had been derezzed at the Portal. He hadn't been able to comprehend in his grief that this would of course be the most likely place for the User to stay.
In a way, this hurt almost worse then if it had been Clu. At least then he could fight back, lash out at the Program who'd ruined so much. He couldn't even imagine facing the User after the things he'd done, let alone attacking him, neither physically nor verbally. He wasn't ready for this. Not yet.
He stepped back as if he'd felt the world shifting underneath his feet, his gaze moving away in a timid look the User would never have seen on Tron's face before - fear. Even as he adopted the submissive posture of the devout User-believers, humbling himself before him, he was muttering softly, apologetically, trying to find a way out of this situation gracefully when there was none.
He turned to look for the panel that would reactivate the lift, taking him back down and away. He had to get away.
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'So, what brings you to my comfy abode? Sorry, it's in a bit of a mess at the moment. I've mainly been outside busy working on the Grid,' he tossed an apple core into the bin and plumped the couch cushions. 'Make yourself at home, man. Don't stand on ceremony,' he patted Tron's back and looked at the guy. He looked to tense. Had something happened?
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And through it all, Kevin rambled on in that endless stream of consciousness that had been so characteristic of the User, as if nothing had happened, as if there had not been a thousand cycles of pain and suffering and between them. It was obvious this was a Flynn who had been pulled from a time before the uprising. But it was more then that, the man seemed completely oblivious to the truth of things outside his hideout, hadn't even seemed to notice the old damage that had practically destroyed the left side of his face.
Tron gaped in disbelief, unable to form a coherent response and looking at him with his good eye, away and around the room as he found himself unable to look him in the face, still seeming to look for an escape route out of the situation. And then Flynn told him to sit, and he sank onto the couch like a pile of datarocks with a huffed exhale.
Finally, he dared to glance at him, his mouth pulling down the start of a distraught frown.
"Flynn, how long have you been back? Do you realize what's happened?"
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'I guess I'm pretty out of touch with everything since you're looking serious at me, man. I am also guessing that I should know a lot of stuff that's gone on,' he swallowed. This didn't sound good at all. Tron's face wasn't the only thing that was disturbing Flynn. The fact that he'd been out so long in the User world that events had unfolded around him, making him oblivious.
'Tron. You need to tell me what's happened, man. I feel like I'm walking in the dark here. Your face....what happened with that?,' he felt like going to his medi-box and trying to patch him right up there and then.
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He didn't even know that Tron and Clu had destroyed the Isos he loved so much, tried to murder his son, tried to murder the last living Iso, and tried to bring an entire army of rectified soldiers into the User world, to continue the terror there. Or that he had...
Flynn fussed over his face, of all things, when it was nothing compared to the deresolution of thousands of Programs and Isos and the death of the very man who was doing the fussing, all because Tron had failed to perform his tasks and failed to stop Clu when he had the chance. It made another sharp, bitter, sobbing laugh erupt from him. There was absolutely no humor in the sound.
It took him a long moment to pull himself back under control, calming himself and forcing himself to push his emotions back into check. It had been a constant battle since he'd woken up on the edge of the Sea. He doubted it was going to end any time soon, but right now, he felt much closer to hysterics then he had since he'd learned of the User's death. He didn't know if he could do this, didn't know if he could find the strength to recount over a thousand years of horror and pain and death and torture to the very person who's death made the past hurt so deeply.
He certainly didn't feel comfortable having to face Flynn's reaction when he did explain things, didn't want to have to see the looks that he feared would cross his face when he learned the truth. Even after he was calm enough to trust his voice to speak again, he didn't have the courage to look up from his hand, kept his palm pressed into his eye while the other arm wrapped defensively around his middle.
"Users, Flynn, I-..." Where did he even start? You died? Clu reprogrammed half the Grid and had everyone else murdered? He warped my Programming and made me join him and made me enjoy every sick, glitched up micromillicycle of it??? He made me try and derezz your son???
And then his control slipped again, and he was sobbing completely, now, leaning forward to curl up on himself as if he could fold in on himself and disappear and be free of all the pain. The thin thread of control he'd had over his tenuous mental state since he'd woken up in this System snapped, leaving him shaking violently, his internal cooling systems working erratically, glitching as he gasped and panted sharply, trying to draw cool air in and fight off the overload his body told him he was experiencing.
[ooc: Aaaand Tron's having an "Heroic BSOD." JSYK, my poor Tron is suffering Complex-PTSD, which might explain why he's being a little ooc...:< ]
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Flynn needed to act to save his friend. 'Hang on, man. It's going to be ok. You're going to be alright, buddy. I'll help you,' he placed both arms on Tron's shoulders to try and stop him shaking. 'Look. No matter what's happened or what will happen, you've still got me, ok? I'm alive. I'm here right now with you and nothing will take me away. You're no murderer Tron, I know you, man. I also know Clu. I'm going to help cool your circuits, ok?,' he ran over to his workstation and pulled out some bottles and a syringe. He filled the syringe with some blue liquid and came running over back to Tron.
'I'm going to inject this into you, ok? It'll help calm your circuits down. Something I made a while ago for stresses programs. It'll help cool your micro-processor down. He injected Tron slowly in the shoulder and prayed that it would work. He couldn't help but swallow with a dry mouth as he saw his friend in this state. Had Clu done this or someone else? He hated them for it, whoever did it.
He sat with Tron and wrapped an arm around his shoulder. 'It's ok, man. I've got you. Just try and relax, ok? Let the medicine do it's work. Try not to think on these memories either,' he massaged Tron's shoulders to try and kneed the stress from his wracked systems. The poor guy. He was cursing himself for not realising what state he was in. He should have gotten here earlier too. Right now, saving his friend was all that mattered.
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So the flurried attempts to comfort him, to calm his hysteria and cool his circuits confused and scared him, in a way. He could not accept it, could not believe that Flynn was worried. He was misunderstanding, his audio sensors were registering the words and the tone and the inflection poorly. He could not accept the comfort because when the reality hit and the world stopped swimming around him as it was doing right in that moment and he saw Flynn's fury and hate, he would not feel disappointment and the pain of rejection would not hurt as badly.
But then he felt a sharp sting in his shoulder and he flinched, gasping and reaching up to grasp at the pain. It was so unlike any pain he'd felt before. It was not severe, so faint and little more then a pinch in the muscle, but so unexpected that it burned. In the micromillicycles after it had come, though, it was over and quickly replaced by a warmth - not physical, and yet something he felt all the way to his code just the same - that spread all the way to his mind, and he found his racing thoughts and intense pain eased, slowing and calming to a gentle numbness.
His sobs eased, his breath hitching softly in his chest as the energy surge the emotional state had given him melted out of his form, and when he felt that arm wrap around his shoulder again this time, he leaned into the hold unconsciously, trembling and weak. It was...perhaps the most calm he'd felt in the entire time he'd been back on the Grid. It was amazing, even as confusing as it was.
He looked back up at the User, a confused look on his face. Even after his body had relaxed and Tron found the courage to face his gaze again, the worry and support he'd heard in his voice just moments before was still there, not an illusion. Despite all he'd done, Flynn was still...Flynn was still being Flynn, exactly who he had always been, the User he'd known he would be, not the angry being he'd imagine in his hysteria, pushing away the memories of friendship and affection he knew the User had for everyone, no matter what. His mind struggled to make sense of it, to understand what was real and what, if any of it, was simply a construct of his own processor.
He gave a gentler sob, little more then his breath hiccupping in his chest, as his eye slid shut and he leaned more fully into the hold, into the hands massaging the tension out of his shoulders.
"I'm so sorry, Flynn. Everything...everything went wrong."
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'Don't let Clu hurt you, man. He's out of order and I'm so sorry his programming went against everything I taught him. He must have malfunctioned, that's all I can think of. That or a deep hatred towards the ISOs because I favoured them over him. He should never have committed those crimes you just told me,' Flynn felt sadness overtake him as he knew his creation had turned against him.
'I am just lucky I found you tonight, Tron. If we never met tonight I might have just walked up to Clu oblivious and he might have....killed me. I'm assuming that is what you meant when you said he tried to kill me and you,' he looked at Tron and patted his shoulder. 'Nothing will take me from you, man. We're buddies for life. Through everything,'
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And yet he'd still tried to hurt the User's son, the one being he knew he cherished more then any Program, Iso or Basic, in any world, and had tried to hurt the User's Iso companion. He felt so broken, so corrupted for what had happened. Flynn's confusion over what had caused the Program to go so wrong made him frown, shaking his head again, and for a moment pure hatred swept across his face. "He...he thought he was better then you. He thought he could control the system better then you could. Better then the Users. Just like the MCP. Your time away was hard on us, all of us, but..." He shook his head again, the expression calming once more. The sedatives were making it hard for any strong, negative emotion to dig their claws in deep enough to stay for long at all. "It's not an excuse for what he did. I helped him run the system in your absence, and I never would have done the things he did. I was under the same pressure he was."
But then as Flynn spoke again, he remembered his conversation with Quorra by the Sea, their questions on whether there could ever be a Grid that did not suffer the fate their own had, and had drew in a gasp, his expression taking on...perhaps a bit of a crazed panic as he turned to the User, gripping his arms with an urgency.
"Flynn! Flynn, you have to stop him!" He felt pain hit him at the User's reassurances that he would never leave, that he would always be there, and he smiled even as tears rolled down his face. His own Flynn was gone. He could not change that, even if this Flynn was here, wanted so much to reassure him. "What if...what if this is the entire reason the Portal has malfunctioned? What if it's our job to help you stop the same thing from happening to your Grid??? You can change it!"
If he could stop one of the systems from suffering the same fate as his own, then...then maybe it was worth it. Maybe he could live with the pain, knowing he'd allowed others to be saved.
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'I know what you are saying, Tron. Clu always wanted to think he was better than me. Because he was a program, he was programmed to be a leader. I think the power got to his head, man. It took hold of him,' he shook his head sadly. 'It was my fault though, programming him the way I did. One objective. To build the perfect system. I never even guessed that those few words could create so many flaws,' he closed his eyes and then opened them again.
He looked at Tron for a few moments and listened to his words. Change? Could he, Flynn, change what had happened? Re-write time? So that the ISOs never became....extinct? His heart pounded fast in his chest at the thought. What if it was possible? 'You.....you reckon I could do that? Change everything? Stop Clu in time before he wipes the ISOs out?,' he swallowed.
'Man, you might be right in this. If I can stop his plans.....the ISOs and the cities will be safe. Quorra won't be the last of her kind anymore. This is my timeline so....it should be technically possible, right?,' he looked at Tron with new hope in his eyes.
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And that was perhaps one of the worst things about it. Not only had he done those horrible things, he'd enjoyed himself the entire time. Rinzler had fun when Programs derezzed. He shook his head at the fallacy of what Kevin said, unable to believe that Flynn's programming had been what had done it. "No, Flynn, no! You made him good! In the beginning, he was our friend, he was your Program." What exactly had corrupted the System Admin, he didn't know, even now. But it could not be Flynn.
Flynn's uncertainty seemed to deflate some of his own excitement for a small moment. Of course he could, he was the User! How could he doubt himself??? He shook his head gently, as if disbelieving that Flynn could believe anything else. "Flynn, you're the User, you created this world. If anyone can stop him, it's you!"
He didn't know how the whole "different times" thing worked, but he knew that Users who'd been transported into this Grid by mistake were supposed to have been able to get back to their own world and time when they left the Grid. "It would be easy for you, all you would have to do would be to delete Clu, or rewrite him from your world, where it's safe! It...it won't change this world, but you can still save your own. You have to try."
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'I know you'll be with me, man. Through all of this, I know I can count on you,' he held onto Tron's arm as if in support. Could he do this? Stop Clu and bring peace to the Grid? Bring back all the ISOs that he killed? Radia? The ISO leader, if she were to come back then all the ISOs would be safe.
The thought about Clu entering the User world didn't bare thinking about. He would try and perfect EVERYTHING. Things that couldn't be perfected, he would destroy the world that everyone knew. But that wasn't his fault, it was Flynn's. Giving him the objective to perfect a system, whatever kind of system he would try and mould it into his own image of perfection.
'Tron. I will try and do this. But I may need your help too. It won't be easy trying to temp Clu out of his ideas and plans but I need to do it. For all of us and the ISOs. If he's planning to use the portal to get to the User world, I have to stop him,' he closed his eyes for a moment then opened them. He stood up and looked at his friend with sombre eyes.
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