The Devil's Dues

Fandom(s): Tron: Legacy
Characters: Sam Flynn, Tron/Rinzler
Rating: T
Disclaimer: All television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. As this work is an interpretation of the original material and not for-profit, it constitutes fair use. Reference to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context, and are not intended to be libelous, defamatory, or in any way factual.

Summary:
It wasn't so much that hope died, but that Sam realized it had only been wishful thinking all along.

For Winzler, and the prompt (misinterpreted):

The world ends. Nuclear wasteland, Mad Max style, etc. One day Sam comes out of the computer and everything is gone. The power will run out soon/the arcade is in danger/etc so Sam hurriedly brings a recovering Tron(zler) out to save him.

Tron is OK at first but slowly reverts to Rinzler under the stress of survival — and Sam eventually begins to lose it as well. In the end we're left with 2 bugfuck crazy survivalist murdermachines roaming the wasteland together.

Notes:
So. Originally, TDD was supposed to end on a whooooooole different track. There wasn't supposed to have been a hotel or community. It would've been the relentless wasteland exactly a la Mad Max as the prompt had called for. There was even one particular piece of dialogue that I had actually written out - but then I had a completely different idea, TDD swerved off those tracks, and none of that came to be.

Then I made the mistake of showing that AU of my AU to Winzler after going lol look at what TDD was supposed to be.

Well, needless to say, she enabled, and parts of what I'd envisioned actually seemed plausible for something that occurs well after TDD's main storyline. But, rather than extending it into 50 thousand chapters, I put it into an epilogue instead. In truth, it totally violates the whole angst of the prompt (though I guess it's more bittersweet than truly hopeful), but whatever, I do what I want! :D

Hope you enjoy, and thank you, everyone, for all of your wonderful support throughout this endeavor! 3

Epilogue

Deep within the cool, concrete bowels of the stadium, he could feel the pulse of the crowds outside like the familiar, rhythmic chant of his name within the Grid.

"This ... this doesn't have to be so different, Sam."

"What are you talking about?"

"There were factions then, too. The ISOs, before the ... before The Purge. The Basics. The rebels and revolutionaries. Clu, and those attempting to curry his favor, and even within them, there were subclasses with their own motivations - "

"Yeah? And how'd all that work out for you?"

"We played the games."

And, just like then, it was the rare moment that he made a personal appearance now. As the years had passed, the challengers had dwindled even as his reputation swelled, until only a hot-headed new generation or an immigrant from another territory would come to test the legend for themselves.

" ... you can't be serious."

"On the contrary. I can't be anything but."

"Look, maybe Clu was my father's copy, but I sure as hell ain't gonna walk in either one of their footsteps - "

"Aren't you? Why did you try so hard to rebuild the Grid?"

"Look, that was a mistake, all right? I wasn't think - I was too tied up in Quorra, and the others, and ... God, Tron. Is this what it's about? Do you miss the Grid?"

Eighteen years. Such a timespan was little more than a lightsailer flight compared to all the cycles of his total up-time, but somehow, they had attained a weight and luster that nothing from before could compare to. His recall no longer had the edge-sharp fidelity that it had once held, but even with the inherent uncertainties of analog translations and messy, imprecise biology, there was still something about the real world that gave even the most innocent moments an immediacy and depth that he still struggled to define.

"I do, like nothing I have ever experienced before. But this isn't about that, Sam. I have a purpose here too. There is something here that I can protect."

"So you're going to fight again? There aren't any users or programs anymore, you know. You're just one of us, now. Is this really what you want, to go back to that?"

"Maybe I'd never left it behind."

"Eight months."

"That's at least the second longest record," Tron pointed out with a quirk of his mouth as he stood to face his friend.

Sam still refused a walking aid, though the wet season seemed to be playing particular havoc with his limp this year. The Flynn's pride was still the stronger for now, though, and the man - grayed hair pulled back in a tail, face lined and grim - strode through the locker room with shoulders squared and a pace that many perfectly able-bodied people might have found hard to match.

It was easier than ever to see the Kevin in him now ... just as it was equally easy to see that the elder Flynn was not the only influence. Genetics had been explained to Tron in Year Three, along with the laws of inheritance and theories of nature vs. nurture, but he sometimes still couldn't shake an inherent belief that Sam was simply a direct cross-product of his father and mother's characteristics. More and more, he had begun trying to filter out what might be Jordan, and in moments of whimsy, he tried to guess at what the woman might have been like.

"If this one had held off for another two months it could have been the record," Sam retorted waspishly, swinging around Tron to check the ties that held the padded armor in place. "Better yet, he could have held off altogether and we'd still be counting."

"At least we have ample warning this time," Tron tried at cheek only to have Sam prod mulishly at the neatly stitched line over his brow. "Ow! Hey!" he swatted the hand away with a scowl. "What was that for?"

"I don't care that the challenger's actually challenging you this time, I'd rather there not be any challenges at all anymore!" Sam snapped back, taking the two steps toward the stave that he had leaned against a locker door and tossing it to him. "Maybe next time the guy with the gun won't be such an obligingly bad shot."

"He was not a bad shot, I was just that much better," Tron grumbled, catching the staff with one hand and gingerly feeling along the sutures with the other.

"Oh, right, forgive me, how could I forget we're talking about The Champion here?" Sam rolled his eyes. "Stop that, it's not bleeding, I don't know why you're worried about it, it's not like it's even going to scar."

"I'm not," Tron huffed as he gave the staff a few experimental swings to re-learn its heft. "Besides, I have it on good authority that girls prefer a marked man."

"What, the good authority of one? And they're women, Tron, not 'girls' - " Sam smirked, earning himself an eyeroll in turn before they both paused at the change in pitch of the audience's muffled shouts. "Looks like it's showtime," the Flynn murmured.

"Who is the challenger?"

Once upon a time, the shift of priorities had been a conscious switch between processes; a rapid background shuffle that suspended non-essential threads and re-weighted others, as easy and sure as flicking a switch between pre-programmed modes. Now, he could still sense the drop of unnecessary overhead, the calm that preceded a sharpening focus on the sensory input that told him - weight texture grip friction force momentum position projections - all that he needed to fight and to win. But it was tied to variables that weren't always under his control anymore ... the rumble of raised voices. The skin-prickling sensation of a stare held too long. The flash of light upon shaped or honed metal. Sometimes, even, a dream.

"Some kid named Alec Yenson. From the west."

A ripple of surprise and concern skated across the calm, but his footsteps never faltered. "The west?"

"The far west, his registration says." Sam's voice lowered, brow furrowed only partially due to the wash of late afternoon sunlight streaming through the end of the tunnel. "There was some vague BS grievance about stolen property or something; Sara says he kept dodging the details when he registered."

"Most of the challengers lately only want the challenge. They've made up plenty of excuses - "

"Yeah, but they say they're from the New England territories with some beef about where the borders are drawn, or the Panhandle, or the South - they don't say they came the long way across the continent to settle some misdemeanor."

"It's hard to pull an ambush in a formal challenge in the middle of the stadium," Tron argued with a pointed tap of his staff's end upon the hard floor - there were few weapons he was as well versed in, and certainly many more the challenger could have chosen that were deadlier.

"Yeah, well, still, keep your eyes open."

"I always do," Tron chided, as Sam fell back and he stepped alone out into the light.

The stadium was smaller than the one on the Grid, but even so, it was nowhere filled to capacity. Packed in elbow-to-elbow, knee-to-back, bodies occupied the seats barely halfway up the soaring bleachers. But there was that same connection between himself and the audience regardless of the venue, that frission of borrowed energy skating along nerves and skin, and he barely needed the momentary lull when they focused upon him as prompt before he brought his staff down twice upon the ground - clack clack - and thrust it high above his head.

Their voices exploded around him like the surf in winter, like the storms in summer, funneled up and in by the stadium's bowl until the stamp of feet and roars of approval settled somewhere just beneath his disphragm, throbbing in time to his heartbeats.

Stomp, stomp - "Rin-zler!" Stomp, stomp - "Rin-zler!" Stomp, stomp - "Rin-zler ... !"

Eighteen years of practice, and the best he could estimate his opponent's age at is somewhere to the left or right of the twenties. One of the most difficult concepts he had initially tried to grasp was the effect of time and weathering; that nothing in the real world was constant or permanent, and instead of helpful tags and public declarations, he had to guess from a dozen visual cues - that varied even between individuals - just how much experience a person had accumulated throughout their life.

The young man stood tense and ready, anxious as if this was his first match, but his grip loose and practiced, rather than deathly tight. From the angle at which he held the staff, he possessed eastern martial arts training, and Tron shifted his own hold to match.

Alec Yenson had the lightly bronzed skin of the fair complexioned that spent long weeks beneath the sun, hair cut raggedly at shoulder-length, held back by a red and yellow kerchief tied over the top of his head and the padded circle of an open helmet. He had the rangy figure of someone who was well accustomed to the outdoors beneath the set of borrowed armor, and when Tron met his gaze and held it, he did not flinch, look away, or bluster.

Satisfied that this would be a serious match, Tron halted a precise six feet away, slid one foot back, and waited. Alec's brow furrowed as the crowd's chant devolved into an expectant roar, his eyes flicking furtively to the sides, and Tron couldn't help tipping his balance just a little bit further over his toes, wondering who or what the boy was looking for. Perhaps Sam was right after all, and there was an ulterior motive behind the challenge?

"Wait - when do we start?" Alec asked as he shifted to match Tron's stance, stiff and uncertain.

Time to flush the real game out, then, if there truly was another one being played here. "Now," Tron declared flatly as he whipped the end of his staff toward the boy's ribs.

Two years, Sam and Tron had wandered across the continent.

They had gone south, first, and observed the cracked, glassine crater of LA from the crests of the distant hills, and Tron learned about the bits that made up the real world which the users called 'atoms'. Except, here, even those were not indivisible, and he remembered what awe was with Sam's revelations as they turned away from the City of Angels, now just one of many similar sights scattered across the world.

In Year Zero, Tron saw his first deer, his first mountain lion, his first moose ... and subsequently had to run from said moose when he misjudged its antlers as vegetation before it raised its head with an irritable bellow. He saw geese flying in orderly formations and his first herd of bison; great, shaggy silhouettes snorting steam, wandering placidly through the mist-laden trees.

Year One-point-two, he saw his first snow-fall, learned that even animals knew how to steal, and that a bear could climb to astonishing heights before the branches began to give way.

He heard the ululating threads of the wolves' howls, echoing between the mountains. Sam earned his limp, and Tron was forced to kill the first lupine he ever laid eyes on.

There were people too, though many of them narrowly escaped the classification of 'animal' only by dint of their bipedal stature, while others were sometimes indifferent, and the remainder astonishingly kind. Tron continued to struggle with his other self, the one that only thought in numbers and statistics and tallies of wins and losses, and he became accustomed to the fact that in user bodies, the mind was never completely quiet, even during sleep. Sometimes, especially during sleep.

In Year Two-point-one, he began learning from people other than Sam; that humans had figured out how to turn away violence without becoming violence themselves, that there were dozens of disciplines in which the goal was protection and incapacitation, not death or humiliation. Sam had looked alternately tickled and appalled at the enthusiasm with which Tron had tackled such pursuits, but covered his eyes and could manage no words when, one day, he called for Rinzler ... and Rinzler did not answer.

Rinzler did not answer, but it was still there; in that quiet where unnecessary thoughts did not wander, in the knife-sharp clarity that rivaled the Grid's own digital precision. It was the rapid, economical shuffle of data and extrapolations, the constant prioritization and re-prioritization of factors compared to the primary directive of victory ... and currently, 'victory' was synonymous with survival, and survival meant putting down his opponent as quickly as possible so that he may face the hidden threats undistracted.

The boy was trained, and he was daring. He was fit and he was fast. But he fought to win, not to live, and Tron knew down to the flex of the smallest muscle how much force he needed to bring to bear for the type of damage he wanted to inflict, at what speed and what angle, and he hammered away at the youth's defenses until his opponent was stumbling back with white-knuckled hands, struggling to maintain his grip against the jarring vibrations of badly-managed blocks -

Tron swung, feinted with a sweep for the legs, exposed his back as Alec tensed for a leap ... and jerked his arms back in a seemingly blind jab, except he was prepared for the meaty thump of the staff's end striking home and the choked gasp that followed. He did not wait for the boy to finish falling before he hooked the staff from nerveless fingers, flinging it spinning over his shoulder, and glazed eyes had barely rolled up to find his when his weapon's weathered end was pressed to a desperately working throat.

"Who are you waiting for?"

Alec wheezed, coughed, and held his hands up in the universal sign of surrender. "Don't know ... what the hell you're talking 'bout ... "

Tron leaned in fractionally and the boy squirmed, alarm finally widening his eyes. "You were looking for something or someone earlier - "

"A referee! God, was just lookin' for a ref - !" he gasped against the unyielding wood, and Tron frowned, wondering how seriously he should take such an excuse, when the boy bared his teeth and rasped, "We made it, Tron ... or did we?"

Tron felt the breath freeze in his lungs, and though he was certain he had not moved, something in his expression had the boy abruptly holding his hands up in renewed penitence, rapidly croaking, "It's okay, it's okay, I'm one of the good guys, you don't have to be afraid - !"

Tron understood irony well enough by now to have to force down an inappropriate laugh at the last assurance. It was just disorienting enough that he did not crush the boy's throat out of sheer reflex, and allowed him time to gather himself to demand, "Who are you."

The boy swallowed thickly, expression abruptly earnest and hopeful. "Eric," he rasped, no games and no hesitation this time, and Tron did not need his formerly eidetic memory for the connections to begin snapping into place. "Eric Yen. Son of Xiao Yen. From - "

" - the west. The far west. You're from San Francisco," Tron breathed.

"You weren't really going to kill me, right?"

"I should have, with that stunt you pulled," Tron tried to pull his Rinzler face, but even without Eric's unrepentant smirk as evidence of his failure, he could feel the muscles pulling inexorably at the corners of his mouth.

"Yeah, you have me totally convinced," the boy - young man, now, at twenty-three years - eyed the colorful flags and drapes now lining the stadium field. As had become tradition in the monthly challenges, once all grievances - and bets - had been settled, one could set up stands and tents to take advantage of the gathered people for trade. The words 'carnival' and 'festival' have been bandied around, but Tron had little more than a single photograph in a book to compare the actual experience to.

"There has only ever been two fatalities, and one was an accident while the other had been a genuine attempt at murder." In spite of the grim subject, though, even Sam couldn't help smiling wide enough to near split his face as he clasped Eric's hand. "We try to keep things lively, but it only stays fun and games 'till someone loses an eye," he nodded toward the safety equipment now piled to the side.

"'Till someone loses an eye'," Eric snorted. "Do people really say that?" he began in aside to Tron, but before he could even manage a shrug in response, the young man's brows were quirking upward. "Oh, uh, right, I guess you wouldn't know."

And Tron suddenly felt tight all over again, wary and anxious like he never was in the arena, and he watched the young man's sober glance between them as he asked, "Eric. Earlier, what you said to me ... how did you - "

"Danny told me," Eric admitted slowly, and Tron caught the curl of Sam's hands into fists at the edge of his vision. "He ... he told me everything, about Encom, about Sam and his father, about the Grid. He wanted to make sure I knew, before I came, what I was getting myself into - "

"Tron - " Sam started, stopped, expression hesitant as he tried again, "I'm sorry, it was when you were hurt and Danny had just put you back together, and he was asking me all these questions about you - "

"It doesn't matter anymore," Tron tried to forestall them with a wave, suppressing a sigh. "It's been over a decade since it had last mattered. And Danny seemed like a good man."

"He can barely hobble across the courtyard now and likes to terrorize anybody still shorter than his hip, but yeah," Eric grinned crookedly with clear fondness. "He never breathed a word of it to anyone. I never even suspected he knew anything more, until I was already packed up and ready to make my way east."

Which begged the question of just how Eric had tracked them down, but even more pressingly ... "Not that we aren't glad to see you again, but what are you doing here, Eric?" Tron asked carefully. "It's a long way from San Francisco."

Eric licked his lips, suddenly looking young and nervous. Digging clumsily beneath the collar of his hoodie, he grasped something that had been hanging around his neck and ducked out from beneath the lanyard.

The original strap had been replaced by a braided cord. From its middle dangled a small, black square, just a little bigger than the end of his thumb. Its thin, rubber casing had been worn down to shiny baldness - like a pebble rolled by ocean tide to perfect roundness upon a beach. Like someone had rubbed it between their fingers every day for the last eighteen years.

Tron still had no problem recognizing it, though, and from the sudden indrawn breath beside him, neither had Sam. Eric's eyes were fixed upon the device as well as he visibly swallowed, preparing himself, and suddenly burst out in a breathless rush, "You ... I still remember when you were there, when you'd been part of our family. I came to give this back to you - to tell you that I did it. The last census put us at close to sixty-thousand people, split between the farms in Napa and the San Francisco city limits - "

Tron felt his throat abruptly close in on itself. Sixty-thousand people in a single county ... more than had gathered at any one of these challenges, even coming from the entire Carolinas and their neighboring territories ...

" - and more are arriving every day, either through immigration or through births. We hold fairs, market days, even concerts, sort of. We have safe drinking water, electricity ... you should see the city lights at night, it's beautiful - "

A small sound escaped Sam, and Tron felt as if he were newly rezzed - still loading and integrating a new body and new commandments, trembling with fresh energy and the wide horizon of possibilities ...

" - and what I'm getting at is ... what I'm trying to say is - Tron, Sam, I think, I hope, that it's been long enough. I came to ask if you'd like to go back with me ...

"I came to ask if you would like to come home."