Chapter Text
Errant data swirled around the program as he fell deeper into the Sea’s clutches. He could hear coding within him, screaming at him to move, to swim to the surface, to survive. But the program, the one that had fought for the Users, refused.
He was fated to derez.
He smiled at the irony, though. To think he would meet his end here. Where everything changed. Where Flynn’s miracle emerged. And where Flynn revealed the truth of the Grid to him.
Tron woke up the moment she announced herself.
“I’m not a program. My name is Samantha Flynn.”
When she was being taken to the next Games, Samantha Flynn glanced over to Rinzler and saw the lights on his chest. She immediately recognized his circuits and froze.
“…Tron?” she called for him. For Tron.
From that moment, Tron’s coding, his oath to Flynn, his primary directive, all of it fought against Rinzler harder than ever before.
And then he heard Flynn.
“Tron, what have you become?”
But even with that, it was only at the final moment, when CLU was about to derez the light-jet carrying the Flynns and the last ISO, that Tron had finally been able to regain control over his own body. Impossibly, Tron felt himself make eye contact with her. Samantha Flynn. The Child of Flynn. The being Flynn loved more than anything and anyone.
There was no reason for her to believe in him. Still, she called to him, “Save me, Tron. Please.”
He would protect her. Even if it could only be once.
Tron rammed his light-jet into CLU, expecting to derez. For both of them to derez.
Neither deserved to live.
But they both came out unscathed. Rinzler’s protocols forced Tron to grab his spare baton. But before he could activate it, CLU was on him. With a war going on within himself, Rinzler wanting to grant the baton to his master and Tron desperately wanting to keep it from him, Tron couldn’t stop CLU from snatching the baton.
He could only watch as CLU sped off in pursuit of the Flynns, desperately hoping he bought them enough time to escape. Then, his body hit the Sea of Simulation, and he was swallowed by darkness.
Tron could feel his end coming. Programs functioned by absorbing the energy provided by the Grid, but the Sea did the opposite: it drained energy from anything unfortunate enough to fall in its grasp.
As he watched his circuitry flicker, Tron remembered when he first met Flynn, and they fought against the MCP together. When he learned Flynn’s true identity as a User and how it flipped his entire world upside-down. To programs, Users were the equivalent of gods. And Flynn destroyed that notion when he told Tron that Users just made things up as they went, the same as their programs.
‘Goodbye, my friend. I hope you and your daughter make it out of here,’ Tron smiled as he closed his eyes for the last time.
An enormous explosion rocked the entire Grid. White energy erupted from the Portal, shattering everything in its path, including the Rectifier. The Sea trembled violently and heaved up tsunami waves of data from its farthest depths. In the aftershock, the Sea gently cradled Tron’s body from its depths and towards the shore.
The Grid still had need for this one.
Tron opened his eyes to a different world. There were clear signs of major damage around him, where even the ground was derezzing into pixels. Whatever happened while he was powered down must have been devastating; it even created a surge strong enough to bring him to shore. Looking across the Sea, he saw that the Portal was closed, and CLU’s command ship was gone.
But what did that mean?
Had CLU succeeded, and transported himself and his loyal Black Guards into the User world? Or did the Flynns escape?
Tron had other things to think about at that moment, though. With a soft groan, he rolled onto his stomach and dragged himself further onto the shore.
He was alive.
Even better, he was in control. But he could feel Rinzler inside of him, a beast raging to be set free. Their places were reversed at last. He was Tron again, not CLU’s pet.
But with his freedom came the horrible burden of everything Rinzler did in the past hundreds of cycles. And he remembered every sickening detail. He clawed his hands on the gravel, glaring at those hands with the knowledge of the thousands of innocent programs they murdered. Even-
…Even Beck.
“Your training will be a long, difficult road, Beck. There will be setbacks. Many of them.”
His young protégé sent him a confident grin. “So, when do we start?”
Tron smirked and tilted his head back toward the Outlands behind them, which were filled with outcroppings and pits—a natural obstacle course. “Right now,” he answered, powering up his light-cycle with a running leap. He could hear his protégé yell as he scrambled to follow behind.
Tron gasped at the old memory and the grief that came with it. Beck was a promising, strong-willed program. He had the natural charisma Tron just knew would make him a great leader, but the boy lacked self-confidence. It had taken a long time for Tron to convince Beck to even try to take his mantel and even longer to train him to do so. Tron remembered telling Beck that he could rise above his programming and become something greater.
How foolish he was.
No matter how much training he could give Beck, it wasn’t enough. The boy just didn’t have the strength, the speed, the reflexes that had been hard-wired into Tron. Beck grew much stronger than he was before, but he couldn’t beat Tron.
And he would have no hope against the ruthless killer that was Rinzler.
Tron could still hear Beck’s first words when faced with Rinzler.
“I never thought I would have to fight you.”
Tron smashed his fist to the ground, gritting his teeth as the voices invaded his mind.
“Tron, fight it! It can’t end like this!” Beck yelled desperately while blocking Rinzler’s strikes.
“Finish him, Rinzler,” CLU commanded, a triumphant smirk at Rinzler’s obedience.
“Tron, please!”
“Derez him. Now.”
Tron could still feel Beck’s code spilling over his hands.
“I’m so sorry, Beck,” he whispered hoarsely.
CLU was more than capable of being sadistically cruel; Tron learned that the first time he was captured. The methodic torture that nearly killed him and left him permanently scarred had been by CLU’s direct orders. Many cycles later, after his recapture and rectification, Rinzler’s first task had been to hunt down and destroy Beck. Beck was the last program to know with certainty that Tron was still alive, and CLU needed him silenced. One way or the other.
It was an unnecessarily long battle. Rinzler was more than capable of ending Beck quickly. But CLU wanted a spectacle; he wanted proof that Rinzler was absolutely obedient. He made Rinzler keep Beck alive until the boy was so damaged he couldn’t even lift his disk. And reveled at the final order to Rinzler to finish it.
Even at that moment, Beck never stopped calling for Tron, begging his friend and mentor to fight the repurposing. But Tron couldn’t hear him. Only Rinzler did. And Rinzler didn’t care.
‘I am tainted,’ Tron thought. He could never escape this reality. He was a murderer. ‘I destroyed everything Flynn built... with my own hands.’
Tron took his disks from his dock. He stared at them for what must have been tens of microcycles. Torn by the desire to destroy himself and the knowledge that doing so was just a coward’s way out of taking responsibility. He could feel Rinzler scratching at his mind, protesting his suicidal thoughts. If only to destroy that abomination, Tron would gladly tear his own throat out. But… he had a responsibility. He’s had it since Alan-One created him.
‘I am… I was a protector. If I can never absolve my sins, I can at the very least protect the Grid from CLU.’
“Flynn,” he whispers, “I promise you. I will not fail you again, old friend.”