Tron fic: Moving Day (2/2)

[seriousfic]

I'm gonna need a Tron icon pretty soon.

Title: Moving Day
Fandom: Tron
Rating: PG
Word Count: 3,007
Characters/Pairings: Sam/Quorra, Alan Bradley
Previous: Moving Day 1/2
Next: Dear Cosmo Magazine...
Summary: If Sam had known playing videogames would get him branded history's greatest monster, he would've seriously reconsidered going for the high score in Time Crisis.



He'd known this was coming. It was inevitable, like a recurring nightmare finally coming true. Sam Flynn, juvenile delinquent, rebel without a cause, and two-time X-Games watcher, was working late at the office, doing paperwork.

"Well, isn't this a sight for sore eyes," Alan chortled, strolling through the door, pleased as punch to find that his friend's old office, after ten years as a supply closet, had been refurbished and given to Kevin's son.

"Don't gloat," Sam grumbled. "Let's just assume I'm the spitting image of my old man and move on."

"Actually, he used to Indian-sit on his desk." While on the subject, Alan took a seat in front of the desk, which Sam was now eying uncertainly.

"I've been napping on my dad's ass-groove?"

"You've been napping?"

Sam shuffled some papers. "These aren't exactly Dennis Lehane."

"So let me get you someone from the secretary pool to ease the load. What are you looking for, anyway? These files must be twenty years old."

"I don't know," Sam admitted, back to paging through his research. "Something after Dad took over Encom, soon after." He looked at Alan. "It might've seemed… spacey."

Alan laughed. "To me, everything Kevin did seemed spacey. He was bursting with ideas, talking about metaphysics and philosophy while I was just programming. But there was something he was adamant about. In the middle of pitching new games, he disappeared. I found him in the arcade. He loved that place, but he'd locked the doors. I only got in because Lori had a key. He was coding like a madman. I barely understood it, but it was beautiful. Elegant. Instead of having the computer run a new routine for every enemy, he set it so the routine kept going, just shifting from one unit to another when the player destroyed one. It made the system run much smoother, which made the arcade machines last longer. But he didn’t charge a cent for the upgrades. Paid for it all out of his own pocket, and released the code onto the Usenet. I can't think of a game out there that doesn't use a version of it. Why do you think he's so revered?"

"I never really thought about it," Sam said truthfully. He hadn't. His dad was awesome… why wouldn't everyone love him? Then Sam had gotten older and it'd been so much easier to live replacing that love with bitterness.

"I'm sorry," Alan said, rising. "I didn't mean to dredge up old memories."

"It's fine. He's gone. I'm cool with it."

"I must not be up on my slang. I didn't know that was the sort of thing you could be cool with."

Sam felt a headache start to buzz behind his eyes. He didn't want to deal with this right now. He wanted to get back and fix things with Quorra. That was all. Scowling, he drummed his fingers on the desktop. "What'd my father call this code, anyway?"

Alan cast his head down as if saddened. Maybe it was the past weighing down on him. "Rerez."

***

When he got back to the garage, Sam saw that Quorra had continued her angry girlfriend routine, dumping his stuff out on the lawn. Since they were moving, that would actually probably save him some time. He went in to find Quorra taking out her frustration on the wall… with a Frisbee. It didn't seem to be working as well as her old Lightdisc.

"My dad and I used to play with that," he said.

Quorra dropped it. "I'm not speaking to you."

"So I noticed."

"And I think you should sleep on the couch," she added, protectively stationing herself between Sam and the game station.

"We don't sleep together!"

"So?"

Sam angled his hands pacifyingly. "Listen, Quorra… in all the stories you've seen about a girl angry at a guy, doesn't he always get a chance to make up for what he's done with a grand romantic gesture?"

"How could you possibly make up for what you've done?"

He grinned. "Get in the car. I'll drive."

***

Flynn's Arcade was exactly as he'd left it, which seemed almost blasphemous after everything that had happened deep inside. One day, Sam would have to reopen it, filling the old place with the latest games. Maybe taking a page from dear old dad and adding a new one based on his adventures. But none of that mattered just then.

"You shouldn't have brought me here," Quorra said, her usual look of doe-eyed wonder falling into dismay. "This was where I breathed fresh air for the first time. You shouldn't sully it."

"I'm not." He unlocked the doors and ushered her inside. She tapped her foot impatiently, a practiced gesture, as he threw the breakers. Despite himself, Sam felt excitement overtake him as the arcade games started up and the jukebox was cued. This would work. It had to.

He asked for her help to move the Tron game aside. She looked pointedly away. "Laying it on a bit thick, aren't we?" She kept looking away. But she followed him when he went down the staircase.

"You confuse me so much," Quorra said, bitter and hurt. "I want to hurt you, but I don't like you being in pain… I don't like feeling this way. I want to feel the way I did before, but I don't know if I can."

"Just have a seat," Sam said, indicating the two chairs.

She didn't. "Are you going to digitize us?"

Sam was already seated in front of the console. "Yup."

A note of concern entered her otherwise stringent tone. "Sam, the men in your family haven't had the best luck with this technology."

"Relax, I'm not a complete idiot." Sam took out his cell phone and set it on top of the console. "If we're not back in one hour, this'll send a message to Alan explaining the situation. He'll call in the National Guard."

"What could they do?"

"Beats me, it's just an expression." Sam typed in the laser test command and hovered his finger over the Enter key, looking back to see Quorra was still standing aloof. "Do you trust me?" he asked.

"I probably shouldn't," Quorra said, sitting down.

Sam pressed Enter.

***

All of a sudden they were on a new Grid, one Quorra had never seen before. It was much smaller and more primitive than the one she had grown up on—there were still Bits floating around. The whole thing resembled a skyscraper under construction, a DOS-green lattice in which levels floated like slices of other realities. On the floor they were on, part of a Star Destroyer was tethered. By the lights of their suits she could see Programs maneuvering in zero-G around and into the level, placing power-ups and doing costume checks on other Programs dressed as Stormtroopers.

"Let's pick up the pace, ladies," one Program yelled, checking off items on a clipboard. "The game just booted and we are not ready for render! C'mon, this is the first level!"

"At ease, fellas," Sam said, walking up to the foreman. "I'm just giving Quorra here a backstage tour."

As soon as he saw Sam, dressed in slacks and a T-shirt, the foreman fell to his knees. "User! The User is among us!"

The others stopped what they were doing to follow suit.

Sam sighed. "I thought I told you guys not to do that."

The foreman wouldn't look directly at him. "It's in our programming to serve the Users."

"Well, it's against my programming to impersonate a deity." Sam broke off to scowl. "This has gotta stop before I hit the prequels."

Just then, Quorra pulled him aside. Sam noticed she held her lightdisc in one hand, ready for trouble. "You've been here before?"

"Sure. I needed to check it out beforehand. You know, find all the right nightspots, scout out a nice place to eat—"

"Alone!?" One look at Sam confirmed it. "How could you be so stupid! What if there'd been another MCP here, or a virus? I could've lost—you could've been killed!"

All the old fears were rushing back, so Sam clasped her arms to reassure her. "You're worth it." Before she could process that: "Come on. There's someone I want you to meet."

Taking her hand, he showed her how to disable the gravity constraints so they could ascend through the Grid until landing, upside-down, on a plane of cyberspace. It, at least, was familiar—one enormous polygon. Sam led her along the bottom and, with practiced ease, flipped around the corner and onto the top. Quorra followed suit, into a break area of sorts. Programs wore their codes on their sleeves there, drinking energy and cuing up cutscenes on large projectors. In a corner, a particularly large Program with his coding glowing almost blindingly bright was exercising, lifting weights of pure data.

"Quorra, this is Dreb," Sam introduced, patting Dreb on the back. "He handles the boss fight. This guy must've killed me a hundred times!"

"You got me in the end," Dreb replied. "And on Hard too, back when that meant something. The Nintendo days…"

"Wait, so…" Quorra blinked. "You didn't derez?"

"No, it's all smoke and mirrors," Sam said. "Their sprites gets blasted, they go off and prepare for the next stage. My dad called it rerezzing. He invented it after he got digitized."

"Oh," Quorra said. "So I shouldn't be mad at you?"

"You can keep going if you want. Never seems to stop some people."

"No, no, I… I'm very glad you're not a mass murderer." Quorra smiled. "I didn't research what I'm supposed to do now."

Sam pointed at her grin. "That's just fine." He chuckled, relieved. "Say," he said abruptly, swiveling to Dreb, "I was wondering… did you cheat? Because when I was fighting Rom Mohc, I could've sworn you hit me with shots that no Imperial officer could make. "

Dreb spread his arms wide. "Hey, I'm the bad guy. It's what I do!"

Sam raged playfully. "I knew it! Next time we play, I'm using cheat codes!"

"Oh, I'm so scared!"

Sam put an arm around Quorra's shoulders. She was still standing a bit apart, her back turned, brow furrowed. "You wanna get back? I really don't want Alan to find out this whole… thing… from voicemail."

"Yes, but…" Quorra turned, pushing his arm away. "Sam, I was wrong to be angry with you. Even if you had killed Programs, you had no way of knowing. I should've realized that. I should've understood… I'm supposed to be better than this." She walked a few steps away from him, hands on her hips, frustrated with herself.

Sam waved off Dreb's gesture of assistance to follow Quorra. "Hey, people have emotions. They're irrational. They make mistakes. It happens."

Quorra turned on him. "I'm not people. I'm not even human. You shouldn't have to—"

"Trust me, you're a lot more human than a lot of people I've met. Don't sweat it." His hand on her arm again. Inside the computer, her skin wasn't cold, wasn't warm. It was like water after you'd been submerged for a while. Just… there. He wanted to get her back to the real world. No matter where she'd been born, that was where she belonged.

Quorra smiled, but a little sadly. "Your father tried to teach me that. Forgiveness. Serenity. I still held so much anger for what CLU did to my people. When I fought the Black Guards, I enjoyed derezzing them."

Sam shrugged. "I was right there with you. And I wasn't exactly a Quaker."

"You did what you had to do, but you can—you're—you're better than me. These things just come to you. I have to work at them and pretend and guess and—I'm never going to be like you. I spent hundreds of years with Kevin and I still don't understand him. I don't think I'll ever understand you."

She was downcast. Sam put his fingers on her lukewarm chin and raised her gaze up to his. "Do you want to?"

"Part of me. But another part likes it when you surprise me. Like this. You didn't have to do this for me. You could've just told me… I know, I know. A grand romantic gesture."

Sam rubbed the back of his neck, starting to feel a little embarrassed by the whole thing. "I didn't even have to fight any gladiators. It was nothing."

"When people have done something wrong, they should try to make amends. I should've trusted you. You're a good person. Let me do something good for you."

She flipped her disc so it was held horizontally on her hand, like a waiter holding a serving tray. Quorra closed her eyes. The light on her disc started to flicker and soon grew into a hologram… a wall of light rose in front of Quorra's face, showing a projection on it like a TV screen. It was turned to Sam. He watched as the image solidified into a view of Kevin Flynn's living quarters on the Grid, the white expanse dim at the moment, fading to gray.

Sam put a hand on Quorra's shoulder and the image froze as she opened her eyes. "Are you sure you wanna do that? It's kinda… your head."

"It's your father," she said, and her eyes closed. The image swung around… Quorra's first-person perspective as she roamed the room, eying the books, tidying up the table so the place settings were all in perfect order, then seeing Kevin sitting at the window. Gazing out at Tron City as the light from fractal fireworks washed over him, dyeing the apartment in CLU's fiery colors.

"We should strike now," Quorra said, and her voice was so full of anger that Sam almost couldn't recognize it. "The Programs will rise up with us, CLU will die."

"Do you really have that much faith in the others, or do you just hope they share your rage?" Kevin turned. His face was between Sam's memories… just starting to puff with age, stubble metamorphosizing into a beard. "CLU's time will come eventually. That kind of aggression can't stand. For now, let's see about you. Did you read the Mahayana Sutras?"

"Yes."

"The New Testament?"

"Yes."

"What about Professor Nabir's argument on hadith? I found his views pretty interesting, but I can see how they could lack context for a novice. If you have any questions…"

"How does any of that help us kill CLU!"

Kevin rose up, putting his hands on his back and cracking it in a profoundly un-shamanic gesture. "How does killing CLU help us? Will we be able to avoid the mistakes that led to him taking power in the first place?"

"Don't give all the power to a… to a giant douche, yes, that's a good lesson."

Sam smiled to himself. Young up-and-comer Quorra seemed like fun.

Kevin shook his head sadly. "I made a mistake with CLU. I don't know what it is yet… if it was in his programming or," he tapped his forehead, "—up here… but I'll find it. And when I do, I'll know how to stop CLU."

The smile froze on Sam's face. He remembered exactly what his father's eventual solution had been. He remembered standing there in the arcade, finally free, knowing that his father was gone forever… and such a strange relief in that sadness, in finally being able to mourn, in letting go of hope and finding it and embracing that good, clean hurt like a bone being set back into place.

He might've stood there a long time if Quorra hadn't tapped him on the shoulder and asked if she would need clothes in the real world.

But back then, way back then, Quorra was practically on fire. "What about out there!? According to your calculations, two years have already passed among the Users. Aren't you worried? You rule that world, what if it falls into disarray, what if it rots, what if—"

Kevin folded his hands together. "I only rule a little corner of that world. The rest will get on just fine without me. And as for Encom… Alan can handle it. He loves that corporate stuff, he's probably having a ball."

Quorra was finally calming down. "But what about the ISOs? You said we… I could save the world. If CLU keeps us pinned down here, who's going to save the world?"

"The world will get by. It's got good people in it. They even have another Flynn lying around."

"Sam."

"Yeah…" Kevin turned away, staring out the window… or perhaps at his reflection in the glass. "He's a good kid. And my folks, they'll be great to him. Alan and Lori, too, they'll look after him. He'll grow up to be just like his old man… or, even better, like his mother. Probably hatching up some crazy scheme or another as we speak. With him around, I think the world will do just fine. Now, did you read Nabir or not?"

The disc darkened and Quorra opened her eyes to find Sam with his hand half-raised to the disc, his eyes shot through with liquid, turning red vein by vein.

"Did I do something wrong? Are you hurt? You're crying. You're not supposed to be crying unless you're hurt or sad, and I didn't mean to make you sad."

"You didn't," Sam said. He raised his hand all the way, putting it on Quorra's. He smiled through his tears.

"Then why are you crying?"

"Because sometimes I forget how much people care about me. And it feels good to remember… People cry when they're happy, Quorra. It's just another thing about us that doesn't make sense."

He didn't say it was a good time to hug him, but Quorra didn't ask. She just felt his chest patter for a few moments before settling down into deep, contented breathing and knew she'd done the right thing.

Comments

[suadela87.livejournal.com]

Aw, that was so sweet. I like the whole rerezzing thing. Whenever I play video games, I always end up killing the same programs over and over. :) This explanes it. XD

[nani1986.livejournal.com]

That was beautiful. Your Sam/Quorra stories are AMAZING.

I love that he took her into the game and this:

Sam raged playfully. "I knew it! Next time we play, I'm using cheat codes!"

Is possibly my new favorite fic line :D

I hope you continue writing this pairing. This series is so good.

[mymatedave.livejournal.com]

Really liked this. I knew what was going to happen as soon as I saw rerezzing, but you played it out very nicely.

[(Anonymous)]

This story is so adorable and cute. It's also unique. I really like it and look forward to more updates!

[roger allan cherry (from livejournal.com)]

And finally I catch up. Of course Daddy Flynn would have figured out a way to protect all those little programs! And have so much faith in his son, too... *sniff*

I love this, and I look forward to loving whatever is next!