Author's note: A brief look on CLU's and LIN's relationship, mentions of before the purge, during and after. Story partially inspired by Mika's Any Other World...Another character, Ylla is briefly mentioned in this, and she will be in a story I will be uploading shortly.
She would have followed him to the ends of the grid, beyond the Sea of Simulation and back again...Though all those cycles ago, he had been a different person...
He had laughed, laughed with Flynn, with Tron, with her; back when the perfect system had been a paradise just beyond the looking glass. Close enough to touch, but far enough away to be the thing the Users called dreams.
She could remember the cycles they spent...walking through the growing and thriving cities; he, Flynn and Tron jovially discussing the progressing system. And although she and Tron were mere security programs, they had a place with the two architects of the new world; they had purpose.
And when she had mentioned to Clu that she felt like mortal amongst gods he would laugh heartedly and wrap his arm around her shoulders and bring her close and give her a warm squeeze...And those nights when Flynn had gone back to the world of the Users and Tron was out patrolling the streets of the city, they would walk the light polluted streets, finding comfort in the quiet embrace of one another...And he had be patient with her rigid nature, just as Flynn had been with Tron; and slowly she opened up to him and he had embraced her with open arms...
Though as the cycles began to pass Clu had begun to distance himself from the rest; unhappy and reclusive she could see uncertainty behind his once certain eyes. She had gone to him, as open and as excepting as he had been to her.
"Am I still to create the perfect system...?" he murmured to her, as though unsure of his own voice as they walked through the streets of Tron city.
"Of course." she had replied simply, but could see it was not enough. "Flynn is always discussing what it will like."
At that he threw his head back and laughed, but it wasn't the warm laugh that she had come to find was so similar yet so different from his creator's, but rather it was cold and void.
"The ISO's are all he can think about!" he said in bitterness and gazed over to her. "They are a flaw in the system, he can't see that! With them running around the system will never achieve perfection."
She had allowed his words to mull over in her mind for a moment; and when she didn't respond Clu quickly slid around her and stood before her, barring her path.
"Do you trust me?" he questioned her, his gaze hard and adamant.
"Yes." she replied with certainty.
"Would you follow me?" he continued, stepping closer and resting his hands on her shoulders.
"To the ends of the cyberspace." she responded, her eyes curious, but her tone unwavering.
He smiled at this and embraced her, and she could help but feel out of place, but quickly pushed it aside at the thought of Clu being close to her once more and content with his purpose.
"I'm going to change the world LIN...I will create the perfect system, and you will always have a place in it, at my side."
She found that when she went to return the embrace, she could not, something settling unassured in her gut; but she trusted him...And she would do anything to help him achieve his perfect system...
And when Clu had confronted Tron and Flynn on the quiet streets of the city, she stood by him, unwavering and certain...She knew, she knew he would explain to Flynn why the perfect system was lagging in its progression.
But when he had shouted out the same question he had asked her not three microcycles ago, she felt her systems tense and fill with dread...and it was all she could do but stay rooted to the spot as she watched him go after her once companions.
She had turned away when he rose his disk to Tron, who lay beaten and broken on the ground, and tried her best to affirm her loyalty to program she once believed to be a god...She remembered his vision of a perfect system, and how it would be a whole new world for programs...She remembered how she had felt abandoned by her user, and how her had said, that the users were useless and in his perfect world they would be obsolete...She remember her anger at Flynn when he had been too young and foolish to realize his user abilities and save RAM, the program she was to protect and guard...And she remember how Ylla had refused to speak to anyone after discovering her fellow actuarial program was gone...
...And for all those cycles afterward, those thoughts had kept her sadly contented, even when she saw what Tron had become, and what Clu had done to ISOs.
She stood by his side, as she always had, as she had always promised she would, as rigid as she once had been..before she had met him...before all the chaos.
And when she lay in her bunk, preparing for her sleep cycle, she would fall asleep to the memories of what once was; and her longing to return to the days when Clu had laughed warmly with Flynn and Tron. When he had walked with her on the quiet city streets; when the perfect system had been just a dream...