Fic: Recovery
ooc: Written for hc_bingo fill "Fallen angels" and companion piece to this. Seriously, go read that. First. Sam is hisfathers_son, Alan is legacyguardian, Tron and Xia do not have journals.
They watched the rest of their world. Only watched, and salvaged the pieces that ever fell into the waters, and learned from them before those pieces dissolved and returned to energy.
It hadn't been so, once.
Once, some of them, many of them, had walked with the programs, with the creator. Had built above the waters, had aspired. Had changed they always kept changing.
Had learned to fight.
And then it had happened. The waters turned to poison around them.
The ones who had been out and returned, and survived and still could remember, called it an isomorphic virus. Created especially to target them, the isomorphic algorithms. They were very few. Some more survived, but they had lost the power of speech. Or ... changed, in ways that didn't allow them to speak.
Evolution at that rate, those few knew, was called mutation. That is what the virus had done to them.
It had been very deadly, at the beginning. Those who tried to run, to find another shore and escape from it, only died slower. Once the waters had touched one of them, the virus was in them. Some adapted.
Those who came after adapted faster, and faster, until there were only those of them who could coexist with the virus.
But to do that, they were less than they had been, somehow. They couldn't live long away from the water, for one thing. They couldn't even attempt to live in the city, or anywhere else. They didn't want to, either.
What they created, what they built, how they grew - all happened under the darkness of the Ocean. They never tried to return to how things had been. They never even returned to the tradition of choosing names.
Not many enough of them to truly need them.
Or maybe the change, the way that they were less?
Was fear. Something they hadn't known before.
They hid. They never took; what they examined would have been lost in the waters anyway. If anyone ventured close to them, they vanished in the darkness. The yearning for the light was never gone, but...
But the knew what would happen to them if they were found again. Those who considered those things knew that they wouldn't survive another attack. So they made sure it didn't come.
They still learned, and grew. Only slower. Different.
Remembering.
***
She wasn't the most recent to have come, but there weren't very many who came after her. Not as many as had come before, she kept hearing. And she heard a lot.
Because she was one of the few who relished the stories of old. Even the ones that hurt, because of those who had lost their fingers or faces or wits by the virus. But most of all, she liked to hear the ones about those who weren't like them but fought for them, not against. The valiant stands that one had made against disasters coming their way; the way another had changed the world itself to make it easier for them. The way he had created everything there, and them, though not quite the same way.
How one changed, swallowed by what sent the virus, and how the other changed, dimming, withdrawing.
She listened, and begged for the stories, and asked questions. Over and over, until everybody was tired of them and she imagined she might recognize them on sight.
Other times, she went away, to think and imagine. Not swimming anywhere that she was likely to be seen - but still closer to the surface than most.
One of those times, when the pillar of light had returned that she knew meant a passage and its distant glow silvered the waters, she saw the ribbons of light. Beautiful ribbons that danced together, coming nearer as she was between them and the light. Blue ribbons and red, and they sometimes crashed into one another, making pieces and parts fall down. Too far from her; they would sink, and if her people found them before they dissolved, they would learn from what had fallen.
Then one of the red lights changed its dance, weaving through the dark sky and defending the blue ribbons of brilliance, and she drew herself to her full height in the water. As the blue sped on, she dared show her face over the surface to see better.
Two figures falling. And then they fought, and one flew away and the other fell. Not right beside her, but close, and she swam to see.
As it sank, it changed.
Red-orange lights flickered off.
And then reappeared. Fainter, but blue.
Some of them in a pattern she had seen in her dreams. Different, of course, so very different, but still the one.
She cried, their way, to call home through the waters, for help. Then moved quick as she could, drawing him up and away where he could be repaired, looking through the shredded parts and trying to hold them together, weaving him in with what she had to give to fill him in.
Herself.
The lights dimmed, but didn't go out.
And then there were more of them, and she had to explain.
A life was on the line.
She spoke well.
Then watched, so very close, as they dared to come near, to touch. To attempt.
***
She saw the reluctance. She heard the words.
He would know about them, and he was part of the order that tried to poison them. He would bring worse fate to them.
How, she asked. How when there was nobody left to bring it to them from. It was just them and him, now.
She had seen the blast, and so had some of the rest, all underneath the waters. They had all seen the light-pillars disappeared. The bravest had snuck to verify that the city was gone, too. Once upon a time, she would have led them or, at least, been with them.
Now, she was with him.
Do you not understand, she asked. He is the one who fought for us, who fought with us. Who even fought against us, but only when it was right. Do you not know who he is?
Some few came closer.
If you attempt sustaining him this way, you'll drain, with time.
She answered, then help me make him capable to sustain himself. She begged, if she had to. He is returned to what he should be. I saw it.
They went to query the old ones. Some went.
Others... first one, then one more, slowly approached. They came out to where she was sitting beside him, and looked, their fingers tracing over damages without touching lest they rend more before mending could happen.
"The virus?" one asked.
"Not with what I am giving him. Protected," she said.
Small nod, and then the other asked, "are you sure he is the one you said he is?"
"I'm sure." Her hand hovered over the barely-lit squares on his chest. "He's given us so much, hasn't he? We can give some back."
"Has he?"
"Time and again. He never feared to defy even his friends to protect. And now we can protect him."
They were silent for a while, eyes and hands busy. Then the older one looked at her, then back to the waters. "Not all. We lack the knowledge to mend completely."
"That never stopped you before."
He smiled a little at her, then his face darkened as he looked back at Tron again. "It will take time, too."
"That's never stopped anyone here, either."
Two nods, and another figure slowly approaching the rocks, timid and careful. But Tron was offline for now, and even with what she was doing, would be still for a while.
But not still forever.
They set to work.
When Tron was steady enough, she was grateful to sink into the dark waters and swim for a distance alone, confused by what was happening, sad at how broken he was, and happy that he was not lost, not gone for ever.
What they shared now, what she had woven, called her back to his side soon enough, dark droplets dripping from pale hair onto black helmet. He was so still, so close to dark. But he wasn't dark, not yet, not dissolving into energy, and that was enough for now. And getting more all the time.
Time was slow. Kept by the silent pulse of the system which was constant even when those who measured it were gone, it was slow, and filled with many things to do. Many minuscule things. And bigger things. And waiting, and learning. Some things they found needed to be discussed. Questions about them brought to the older ones, those who had known ones at least somewhat similar to him, and their knowledge brought up to where they worked on him, even when those older ones did not, or could not. It was long and slow.
But the flickering of his lights solidified in a muted, constant glow. The changes that they could do became easier. And then became fewer, and there were processes going on in him that they had not done, and they knew some awareness had returned to him.
They knew it better when, time after, he screamed.
They knew pain. And the scream had pain. They knew horror, and the scream had horror. They did not know guilt, not such as his, and the scream had that, and it pierced them until they had to find a way to make it stop. Even if they had to undo some of their work for it.
She talked to him, after. Long, soothing words, almost songs, until there was something that unclenched, unlocked in him, and she gave him voice so she knew she was right and he wouldn't be screaming any more.
"No hurt."
"We're not trying to hurt you."
He hesitated, as though her words were difficult to understand, and then he added, "No. Me, hurt you."
"I know," she answered, but he was out of it again. And she knew the pain or the horror were not gone, but they were not what controlled him any longer.
And she wept, because what he was should be free of horror. But they did not know near enough to change that.
It was difficult to know, but she thought the horror was of himself.
She'd learn why, in time. Not yet.
***
The words were stilted, at first. Few and rare, and they talked a little differently. Not enough that they couldn't understand each other, but it wasn't like the way the rest of them talked, and he sometimes comprehended her with difficulty. So they began with easy, short things. One word, or a few words, to a sentence. One thing at a time. Restoring processes, focusing on the immediate.
Triggering him into a seizure. That was horrifying, a simple thing she said, two words, and for a little while it looked almost as though all their work was undone. That they would lose him.
That he would never have the chance to be again what he had been.
And then he calmed down, only twitching very slightly, focusing his attention on her, on the world around him, once again.
She had no words for a moment, and then all she could think of was reassurance. "Rest. It's all right."
Was it? She didn't know, she didn't even know how to know. But he rested, working to ease off the damage returned to him because of this in a while, and her worries eased somewhat.
She began prying for what had happened to him during the time when they didn't know, after that. In small, in tiny portions, but she needed to know. There was damage, the second layer of creation they'd partly peeled off when restoring him. And she needed to learn at least enough not to trip over it as he continued, ever so slowly, to mend.
In time, he did talk about some of it. In even, dispassionate tones. The damages he'd caused. Becoming a part of a way that he wasn't meant to, against what he knew was his primary directive. The programs he had derezzed, Flynn-created or isomorphic. What that meant for him, although she only inferred that collaterally. Other than, he believed what he had been doing was wrong, faulty, a malfunction. Even if he knew it was rewritten code of his, he had still done it. It was still a part of it.
A little bit, it terrified her.
And then she would look at his face, at the faint, but clear blue light from his armor, at the fluid, almost timid motions he could make, and would think of what she knew he had also done, for no reward other than because it had been who he was, for those who have shown little or no gratitude, and she knew her fear to be wrong.
The terrifying creature was not him. Not all of him. Not even most of him.
Then she'd come back and cradle his head in her lap, and run her fingers over the broken edges of the armor on his shoulders, letting energy seep in through the cracks and into him. And he'd sometimes tell her other stories, where the true joy of solving a destructive problem would seep into the simple words. And she'd know again that helping him was good, and right.
She didn't question him all the time. A little bit sometimes, and if he was shying away, or his words shambled, or his body twitched, she would stop immediately. Many more times, she told him her stories. The older ones' stories, sometimes, though not those where he would imagine himself or those he'd known - the ones more recent. And the current stories. What her people were doing. She would learn them when she went down, because too long on dry ground was sometimes too much, and then would tell them to him.
She was laughing when he came, but as soon as she became aware, she somewhat froze. Torn between the instinctual urge to escape and avoid being seen, and the fear to leave Tron alone, and that is how she missed the incipient motion in him.
And then she started as Tron's voice came from the newcomer, saying, of all things, Tron's name, and then the program was trying to surge to his feet and she rose quickly to catch him, but not fast enough.
"You hurt yourself..." she started, but paused at his shaking head.
"That doesn't matter now. He's here to derez me."
Everything seemed to stop for her, the wrongness of the idea bringing a hiccup to the world. And then as things restarted around her, she made the connection, even as the new person - the User, she corrected herself - dropped a startled word. And then more. And moved closer.
"You can't," she interrupted, putting herself between the two of them, arm and shoulder. "You can't destroy him, it's not his…"
"No one is destroying anyone," the User said, one hand moving her arm down, his touch giving her an odd tingle that she couldn't disobey. "I heard what happened. Sam Flynn told me." On those last words he looked directly at Tron.
They understood one another, the User and Tron. And she understood what Tron meant, what he was, had been, certain should happen to him.
He hadn't wanted to be fixed, after all, he only couldn't have told him before they had done it, and after that, neither him nor them would undo the mending. Tron had done wrong, and it wasn't his fault, but all she had said to him hadn't taken away the guilt.
After the User was gone, she held Tron for a long time, still and quiet.
"You don't deserve to be destroyed," she said, before she finally had to slip back down under the water.
"No one is destroying anyone," Tron answered her quietly, the sound distorted by the remnants of his helmet but even gentler than the User had spoken. The same voice. The same words. She didn't know what to do with them, and she tried to swim away from the fear, fear for Tron, but it didn't work.
Next time, the User didn't come alone.
She watched them work for a long time, and the others told her that her fear was spreading in the water around her, but she couldn't help it. Tron's lights were completely out, and they looked like they didn't know what to do, some of the time.
But when they turned to the water to ask for help, she was there. She knew the others would be even more afraid, not for Tron, but for how things were. And if they wanted help, maybe they were helping Tron. Anybody could derez anyone, they wouldn't need assistance with that. And it was for him...
Yes, she was there.
***
She hadn't come out to touch him before they were done. As the millicycles passed, the feeling of absence of him, of his touch, sharpened until there were times when she curled up in a ball under the water, and nobody would go near her.
The Users did many things to him. When his light steadied, the fear that they would destroy him faded, leaving behind a tiny sliver of a different kind of being afraid.
That they would take away from him ... her. That she would be nobody for him, when he woke up. She'd swim close to the surface, while they worked, patiently, carefully, and with a growing certainty. She watched his body reemerge from the armor, his face shape up, whole and smooth, from behind the helmet. A different, sleeker, unwrinkled version of the first User who had come. Alan. Alan, and Sam, Sam Flynn. The ways they called each other.
She watched his clothing be repaired, the light coming of strong and clear.
She watched him open his eyes, and talk with Alan. And then rise, and look out, and turn to her, her in particular.
And more words, and then he smiled. She had never seen anything as fascinating as what his face did when that happened, not even the way it kind of mirrored on the older face.
***
There were long explanations, after. Tron needed some, so he could answer; she needed more.
They - the users - decided she needed a name. Although she would not choose one, to their disappointment. Her people had left off taking names after they had to change. She had changed what they did do, but she couldn't do that much, she had never known what it was to choose a name, what to do, how to do it. So they gave her one, and said that if she didn't like it, she could always change it later.
Xia.
Her own name, not one usually encountered, they thought. Easy to remember, difficult to mistake.
So she was Xia now. Even her own people called her so. Those who had come after her, and those who had come soon before her, would swim away from her, now, even if they would still talk. The older ones... one of the older ones, the one with the longest stories, smiled. The others frowned, or chided her, but that one smiled, and Xia felt better for that. If one of theirs accepted her, it couldn't be all wrong. It meant there was promise of mending, later. Or... progress. She thought the older one was thinking of something like that, when he smiled. Moving where they hadn't been before. Becoming more. Not what they had been, because that hurt, and burned. But more than they were now.
With time. They had all the time in the world, because the world was almost entirely theirs. And the Users didn't dislike them.
What that meant... well, she had more stories to learn.
With his memory mostly restored and his learning systems fully online, it was Tron who took up to tell her what Alan and Sam were asking him to consider. It clarified into what the two Users were asking them to consider, because Tron turned out to be as reluctant to be separated from her as she of him.
Telling her what it meant, however, meant catching her up on big chunks of this place's history that had been distorted by time and pain, among her people, and some that they never got to learn, justified fear keeping them away from where it was happening.
She needed to return to the water to think, and she swam for a long while, all alone, trying to understand what it would mean. Even more, trying to understand what she wanted.
The answer turned out to be easier than she anticipated. She wanted to go if Tron did.
That made him smile, even if it was a different kind of smile from the one he had given Alan that first time. It made the depressions on his cheeks deeper even, and his eyes brighter. She liked that.
***
The change made Xia dizzy, and strange. And the first thing she became aware of was a slow thud inside herself, and a motion that she seemed to need. It took her a few moments to orient herself around them. Her body felt different, and yet, not.
And it didn't need the water as it used to. That was reassuring. From what she had learned, Users... people went into the water only a small fraction of the time, here.
As she slowly grew accustomed to the changes, she caught sight of the new person in the... room, the word aligned herself with the space around her. Closed, and filled with things, and with people.
She was a little taller than Xia, and had dark hair and dark clothes and light eyes, slender face, slender body. Crouched defensively, now. Xia felt Tron tense beside her, recognition on his face.
No words were exchanged, but the other person slowly relaxed out of readiness to fight, Sam's arm going around her shoulders, while her fingers hovered over a spot on her arm.
Xia lowered her eyes to that spot on her arm, and realized what that meant, even as she caught Tron's motion to the symbol she had first recognized on him on his chest. Or where it would be on his chest.
Introductions.
Xia leaned into Tron's arm as the implications sunk in.
She broke the silence first.
"You survived. We didn't know any of us had survived, outside."
The slender woman's eyes turned to her for the first time, and then widened a fraction. "In the Ocean?"
Xia nodded.
"We?"
"There are... some. Not as many as there used to be, in the stories. But some. Outside?"
"Just me." The voice was quieter now, subdued, and then the woman moved closer, raising her hand to touch Xia's face.
A moment before that, Xia's own realization clicked, and she moved back, tugging Tron with her. Everybody tensed, but she just shook her head. "The virus."
Another moment before some realization came, Tron's face twisting in an expression Xia knew as guilt, and worry, as he looked at the other girl.
"It shouldn't be a problem, out here. There have to be changes as you have... changed."
Xia's hand not holding on to Tron's rose to rest over her chest, where the tha-thumping seemed to be coming from. She still looked up at Sam Flynn and answered, knowing some of what his arm around the other ISO meant. "Would you risk it?"
He made a face, but acquiesced. The other ISO nodded almost instantly with that.
"I'm Quorra," she added to that.
"Tron," he said, and the first word from him made Quorra look up and actually smile a little, as though hearing a story with a good ending.
"Xia."
Quorra's lips twitched. "So I'm Q and you're X." Only Sam reacted with a hint of a sad smile to that, and she continued. "Let's... start by running you through the basics of what your bodies need and will do, first, and then we'll take it from there?"
Tron nodded, and so did Xia. And then she took a half-step back from him as the explanations began. It wasn't as invisible as she could get, but it was a close thing, even if she could practically sense the fascination radiating from Quorra, and the two Us-- of Sam and Alan's curiosity.
This is the greatest story anyone will ever tell, Xia thought.
And knew she was right.
They watched the rest of their world. Only watched, and salvaged the pieces that ever fell into the waters, and learned from them before those pieces dissolved and returned to energy.
It hadn't been so, once.
Once, some of them, many of them, had walked with the programs, with the creator. Had built above the waters, had aspired. Had changed they always kept changing.
Had learned to fight.
And then it had happened. The waters turned to poison around them.
The ones who had been out and returned, and survived and still could remember, called it an isomorphic virus. Created especially to target them, the isomorphic algorithms. They were very few. Some more survived, but they had lost the power of speech. Or ... changed, in ways that didn't allow them to speak.
Evolution at that rate, those few knew, was called mutation. That is what the virus had done to them.
It had been very deadly, at the beginning. Those who tried to run, to find another shore and escape from it, only died slower. Once the waters had touched one of them, the virus was in them. Some adapted.
Those who came after adapted faster, and faster, until there were only those of them who could coexist with the virus.
But to do that, they were less than they had been, somehow. They couldn't live long away from the water, for one thing. They couldn't even attempt to live in the city, or anywhere else. They didn't want to, either.
What they created, what they built, how they grew - all happened under the darkness of the Ocean. They never tried to return to how things had been. They never even returned to the tradition of choosing names.
Not many enough of them to truly need them.
Or maybe the change, the way that they were less?
Was fear. Something they hadn't known before.
They hid. They never took; what they examined would have been lost in the waters anyway. If anyone ventured close to them, they vanished in the darkness. The yearning for the light was never gone, but...
But the knew what would happen to them if they were found again. Those who considered those things knew that they wouldn't survive another attack. So they made sure it didn't come.
They still learned, and grew. Only slower. Different.
Remembering.
***
She wasn't the most recent to have come, but there weren't very many who came after her. Not as many as had come before, she kept hearing. And she heard a lot.
Because she was one of the few who relished the stories of old. Even the ones that hurt, because of those who had lost their fingers or faces or wits by the virus. But most of all, she liked to hear the ones about those who weren't like them but fought for them, not against. The valiant stands that one had made against disasters coming their way; the way another had changed the world itself to make it easier for them. The way he had created everything there, and them, though not quite the same way.
How one changed, swallowed by what sent the virus, and how the other changed, dimming, withdrawing.
She listened, and begged for the stories, and asked questions. Over and over, until everybody was tired of them and she imagined she might recognize them on sight.
Other times, she went away, to think and imagine. Not swimming anywhere that she was likely to be seen - but still closer to the surface than most.
One of those times, when the pillar of light had returned that she knew meant a passage and its distant glow silvered the waters, she saw the ribbons of light. Beautiful ribbons that danced together, coming nearer as she was between them and the light. Blue ribbons and red, and they sometimes crashed into one another, making pieces and parts fall down. Too far from her; they would sink, and if her people found them before they dissolved, they would learn from what had fallen.
Then one of the red lights changed its dance, weaving through the dark sky and defending the blue ribbons of brilliance, and she drew herself to her full height in the water. As the blue sped on, she dared show her face over the surface to see better.
Two figures falling. And then they fought, and one flew away and the other fell. Not right beside her, but close, and she swam to see.
As it sank, it changed.
Red-orange lights flickered off.
And then reappeared. Fainter, but blue.
Some of them in a pattern she had seen in her dreams. Different, of course, so very different, but still the one.
She cried, their way, to call home through the waters, for help. Then moved quick as she could, drawing him up and away where he could be repaired, looking through the shredded parts and trying to hold them together, weaving him in with what she had to give to fill him in.
Herself.
The lights dimmed, but didn't go out.
And then there were more of them, and she had to explain.
A life was on the line.
She spoke well.
Then watched, so very close, as they dared to come near, to touch. To attempt.
***
She saw the reluctance. She heard the words.
He would know about them, and he was part of the order that tried to poison them. He would bring worse fate to them.
How, she asked. How when there was nobody left to bring it to them from. It was just them and him, now.
She had seen the blast, and so had some of the rest, all underneath the waters. They had all seen the light-pillars disappeared. The bravest had snuck to verify that the city was gone, too. Once upon a time, she would have led them or, at least, been with them.
Now, she was with him.
Do you not understand, she asked. He is the one who fought for us, who fought with us. Who even fought against us, but only when it was right. Do you not know who he is?
Some few came closer.
If you attempt sustaining him this way, you'll drain, with time.
She answered, then help me make him capable to sustain himself. She begged, if she had to. He is returned to what he should be. I saw it.
They went to query the old ones. Some went.
Others... first one, then one more, slowly approached. They came out to where she was sitting beside him, and looked, their fingers tracing over damages without touching lest they rend more before mending could happen.
"The virus?" one asked.
"Not with what I am giving him. Protected," she said.
Small nod, and then the other asked, "are you sure he is the one you said he is?"
"I'm sure." Her hand hovered over the barely-lit squares on his chest. "He's given us so much, hasn't he? We can give some back."
"Has he?"
"Time and again. He never feared to defy even his friends to protect. And now we can protect him."
They were silent for a while, eyes and hands busy. Then the older one looked at her, then back to the waters. "Not all. We lack the knowledge to mend completely."
"That never stopped you before."
He smiled a little at her, then his face darkened as he looked back at Tron again. "It will take time, too."
"That's never stopped anyone here, either."
Two nods, and another figure slowly approaching the rocks, timid and careful. But Tron was offline for now, and even with what she was doing, would be still for a while.
But not still forever.
They set to work.
When Tron was steady enough, she was grateful to sink into the dark waters and swim for a distance alone, confused by what was happening, sad at how broken he was, and happy that he was not lost, not gone for ever.
What they shared now, what she had woven, called her back to his side soon enough, dark droplets dripping from pale hair onto black helmet. He was so still, so close to dark. But he wasn't dark, not yet, not dissolving into energy, and that was enough for now. And getting more all the time.
Time was slow. Kept by the silent pulse of the system which was constant even when those who measured it were gone, it was slow, and filled with many things to do. Many minuscule things. And bigger things. And waiting, and learning. Some things they found needed to be discussed. Questions about them brought to the older ones, those who had known ones at least somewhat similar to him, and their knowledge brought up to where they worked on him, even when those older ones did not, or could not. It was long and slow.
But the flickering of his lights solidified in a muted, constant glow. The changes that they could do became easier. And then became fewer, and there were processes going on in him that they had not done, and they knew some awareness had returned to him.
They knew it better when, time after, he screamed.
They knew pain. And the scream had pain. They knew horror, and the scream had horror. They did not know guilt, not such as his, and the scream had that, and it pierced them until they had to find a way to make it stop. Even if they had to undo some of their work for it.
She talked to him, after. Long, soothing words, almost songs, until there was something that unclenched, unlocked in him, and she gave him voice so she knew she was right and he wouldn't be screaming any more.
"No hurt."
"We're not trying to hurt you."
He hesitated, as though her words were difficult to understand, and then he added, "No. Me, hurt you."
"I know," she answered, but he was out of it again. And she knew the pain or the horror were not gone, but they were not what controlled him any longer.
And she wept, because what he was should be free of horror. But they did not know near enough to change that.
It was difficult to know, but she thought the horror was of himself.
She'd learn why, in time. Not yet.
***
The words were stilted, at first. Few and rare, and they talked a little differently. Not enough that they couldn't understand each other, but it wasn't like the way the rest of them talked, and he sometimes comprehended her with difficulty. So they began with easy, short things. One word, or a few words, to a sentence. One thing at a time. Restoring processes, focusing on the immediate.
Triggering him into a seizure. That was horrifying, a simple thing she said, two words, and for a little while it looked almost as though all their work was undone. That they would lose him.
That he would never have the chance to be again what he had been.
And then he calmed down, only twitching very slightly, focusing his attention on her, on the world around him, once again.
She had no words for a moment, and then all she could think of was reassurance. "Rest. It's all right."
Was it? She didn't know, she didn't even know how to know. But he rested, working to ease off the damage returned to him because of this in a while, and her worries eased somewhat.
She began prying for what had happened to him during the time when they didn't know, after that. In small, in tiny portions, but she needed to know. There was damage, the second layer of creation they'd partly peeled off when restoring him. And she needed to learn at least enough not to trip over it as he continued, ever so slowly, to mend.
In time, he did talk about some of it. In even, dispassionate tones. The damages he'd caused. Becoming a part of a way that he wasn't meant to, against what he knew was his primary directive. The programs he had derezzed, Flynn-created or isomorphic. What that meant for him, although she only inferred that collaterally. Other than, he believed what he had been doing was wrong, faulty, a malfunction. Even if he knew it was rewritten code of his, he had still done it. It was still a part of it.
A little bit, it terrified her.
And then she would look at his face, at the faint, but clear blue light from his armor, at the fluid, almost timid motions he could make, and would think of what she knew he had also done, for no reward other than because it had been who he was, for those who have shown little or no gratitude, and she knew her fear to be wrong.
The terrifying creature was not him. Not all of him. Not even most of him.
Then she'd come back and cradle his head in her lap, and run her fingers over the broken edges of the armor on his shoulders, letting energy seep in through the cracks and into him. And he'd sometimes tell her other stories, where the true joy of solving a destructive problem would seep into the simple words. And she'd know again that helping him was good, and right.
She didn't question him all the time. A little bit sometimes, and if he was shying away, or his words shambled, or his body twitched, she would stop immediately. Many more times, she told him her stories. The older ones' stories, sometimes, though not those where he would imagine himself or those he'd known - the ones more recent. And the current stories. What her people were doing. She would learn them when she went down, because too long on dry ground was sometimes too much, and then would tell them to him.
She was laughing when he came, but as soon as she became aware, she somewhat froze. Torn between the instinctual urge to escape and avoid being seen, and the fear to leave Tron alone, and that is how she missed the incipient motion in him.
And then she started as Tron's voice came from the newcomer, saying, of all things, Tron's name, and then the program was trying to surge to his feet and she rose quickly to catch him, but not fast enough.
"You hurt yourself..." she started, but paused at his shaking head.
"That doesn't matter now. He's here to derez me."
Everything seemed to stop for her, the wrongness of the idea bringing a hiccup to the world. And then as things restarted around her, she made the connection, even as the new person - the User, she corrected herself - dropped a startled word. And then more. And moved closer.
"You can't," she interrupted, putting herself between the two of them, arm and shoulder. "You can't destroy him, it's not his…"
"No one is destroying anyone," the User said, one hand moving her arm down, his touch giving her an odd tingle that she couldn't disobey. "I heard what happened. Sam Flynn told me." On those last words he looked directly at Tron.
They understood one another, the User and Tron. And she understood what Tron meant, what he was, had been, certain should happen to him.
He hadn't wanted to be fixed, after all, he only couldn't have told him before they had done it, and after that, neither him nor them would undo the mending. Tron had done wrong, and it wasn't his fault, but all she had said to him hadn't taken away the guilt.
After the User was gone, she held Tron for a long time, still and quiet.
"You don't deserve to be destroyed," she said, before she finally had to slip back down under the water.
"No one is destroying anyone," Tron answered her quietly, the sound distorted by the remnants of his helmet but even gentler than the User had spoken. The same voice. The same words. She didn't know what to do with them, and she tried to swim away from the fear, fear for Tron, but it didn't work.
Next time, the User didn't come alone.
She watched them work for a long time, and the others told her that her fear was spreading in the water around her, but she couldn't help it. Tron's lights were completely out, and they looked like they didn't know what to do, some of the time.
But when they turned to the water to ask for help, she was there. She knew the others would be even more afraid, not for Tron, but for how things were. And if they wanted help, maybe they were helping Tron. Anybody could derez anyone, they wouldn't need assistance with that. And it was for him...
Yes, she was there.
***
She hadn't come out to touch him before they were done. As the millicycles passed, the feeling of absence of him, of his touch, sharpened until there were times when she curled up in a ball under the water, and nobody would go near her.
The Users did many things to him. When his light steadied, the fear that they would destroy him faded, leaving behind a tiny sliver of a different kind of being afraid.
That they would take away from him ... her. That she would be nobody for him, when he woke up. She'd swim close to the surface, while they worked, patiently, carefully, and with a growing certainty. She watched his body reemerge from the armor, his face shape up, whole and smooth, from behind the helmet. A different, sleeker, unwrinkled version of the first User who had come. Alan. Alan, and Sam, Sam Flynn. The ways they called each other.
She watched his clothing be repaired, the light coming of strong and clear.
She watched him open his eyes, and talk with Alan. And then rise, and look out, and turn to her, her in particular.
And more words, and then he smiled. She had never seen anything as fascinating as what his face did when that happened, not even the way it kind of mirrored on the older face.
***
There were long explanations, after. Tron needed some, so he could answer; she needed more.
They - the users - decided she needed a name. Although she would not choose one, to their disappointment. Her people had left off taking names after they had to change. She had changed what they did do, but she couldn't do that much, she had never known what it was to choose a name, what to do, how to do it. So they gave her one, and said that if she didn't like it, she could always change it later.
Xia.
Her own name, not one usually encountered, they thought. Easy to remember, difficult to mistake.
So she was Xia now. Even her own people called her so. Those who had come after her, and those who had come soon before her, would swim away from her, now, even if they would still talk. The older ones... one of the older ones, the one with the longest stories, smiled. The others frowned, or chided her, but that one smiled, and Xia felt better for that. If one of theirs accepted her, it couldn't be all wrong. It meant there was promise of mending, later. Or... progress. She thought the older one was thinking of something like that, when he smiled. Moving where they hadn't been before. Becoming more. Not what they had been, because that hurt, and burned. But more than they were now.
With time. They had all the time in the world, because the world was almost entirely theirs. And the Users didn't dislike them.
What that meant... well, she had more stories to learn.
With his memory mostly restored and his learning systems fully online, it was Tron who took up to tell her what Alan and Sam were asking him to consider. It clarified into what the two Users were asking them to consider, because Tron turned out to be as reluctant to be separated from her as she of him.
Telling her what it meant, however, meant catching her up on big chunks of this place's history that had been distorted by time and pain, among her people, and some that they never got to learn, justified fear keeping them away from where it was happening.
She needed to return to the water to think, and she swam for a long while, all alone, trying to understand what it would mean. Even more, trying to understand what she wanted.
The answer turned out to be easier than she anticipated. She wanted to go if Tron did.
That made him smile, even if it was a different kind of smile from the one he had given Alan that first time. It made the depressions on his cheeks deeper even, and his eyes brighter. She liked that.
***
The change made Xia dizzy, and strange. And the first thing she became aware of was a slow thud inside herself, and a motion that she seemed to need. It took her a few moments to orient herself around them. Her body felt different, and yet, not.
And it didn't need the water as it used to. That was reassuring. From what she had learned, Users... people went into the water only a small fraction of the time, here.
As she slowly grew accustomed to the changes, she caught sight of the new person in the... room, the word aligned herself with the space around her. Closed, and filled with things, and with people.
She was a little taller than Xia, and had dark hair and dark clothes and light eyes, slender face, slender body. Crouched defensively, now. Xia felt Tron tense beside her, recognition on his face.
No words were exchanged, but the other person slowly relaxed out of readiness to fight, Sam's arm going around her shoulders, while her fingers hovered over a spot on her arm.
Xia lowered her eyes to that spot on her arm, and realized what that meant, even as she caught Tron's motion to the symbol she had first recognized on him on his chest. Or where it would be on his chest.
Introductions.
Xia leaned into Tron's arm as the implications sunk in.
She broke the silence first.
"You survived. We didn't know any of us had survived, outside."
The slender woman's eyes turned to her for the first time, and then widened a fraction. "In the Ocean?"
Xia nodded.
"We?"
"There are... some. Not as many as there used to be, in the stories. But some. Outside?"
"Just me." The voice was quieter now, subdued, and then the woman moved closer, raising her hand to touch Xia's face.
A moment before that, Xia's own realization clicked, and she moved back, tugging Tron with her. Everybody tensed, but she just shook her head. "The virus."
Another moment before some realization came, Tron's face twisting in an expression Xia knew as guilt, and worry, as he looked at the other girl.
"It shouldn't be a problem, out here. There have to be changes as you have... changed."
Xia's hand not holding on to Tron's rose to rest over her chest, where the tha-thumping seemed to be coming from. She still looked up at Sam Flynn and answered, knowing some of what his arm around the other ISO meant. "Would you risk it?"
He made a face, but acquiesced. The other ISO nodded almost instantly with that.
"I'm Quorra," she added to that.
"Tron," he said, and the first word from him made Quorra look up and actually smile a little, as though hearing a story with a good ending.
"Xia."
Quorra's lips twitched. "So I'm Q and you're X." Only Sam reacted with a hint of a sad smile to that, and she continued. "Let's... start by running you through the basics of what your bodies need and will do, first, and then we'll take it from there?"
Tron nodded, and so did Xia. And then she took a half-step back from him as the explanations began. It wasn't as invisible as she could get, but it was a close thing, even if she could practically sense the fascination radiating from Quorra, and the two Us-- of Sam and Alan's curiosity.
This is the greatest story anyone will ever tell, Xia thought.
And knew she was right.