This was written for Skullvis on Tumblr for the Tron Secret Santa Fanart/Fanfic exchange. Yeah, our fandom is that awesome. Skullvis requested Ram/Abraxas. I've never written slash before. This is the result. I may continue it later if I get time.
He did not know how long he's been in the Outlands. Actually he did, but he doesn't feel the need to actively process on it. He had waited here for anyone, something to tell him that the game had changed, that he could go back and find Tron waiting for him. He'd watched with hope when the Portal had illuminated so briefly- it had seemed too good, though, and it was. But then had come the explosion, and he wondered if his old friend had triumphed against his creation. Something about the crumbling city that flickered on the horizon suggested neither had walked away.
That made him sad, but in a very distant way. Everything had been sort of distant since the last time he'd heard from Tron.
Viral outbreak. Betrayed. Run away and don't ever come back. Find somewhere far away from CLU.
A simple binary message, curt as ever, but somehow more urgent and final than the countless others he'd received from Tron. Binary often substituted for actual dialogue, as Tron was increasingly busy in the new system, especially post-ISO emergence.
He'd gotten out of the city just as the Purge was starting in earnest. He left not to escape like his friend had told him to, but to try and find him. Flynn certainly wouldn't be helping Tron this time. He had never succeeded in that, of course. Tron seemed to have vanished from the system that cycle.
He did not return to the City once the Purge died down. Disregarding the last words of a security program was unwise at best. There was nothing else he could do bu wait, hoping that one day Tron would meet him where he had told him to go. The boredom of it was excruciating. He'd learned the Outlands and all that inhabited them, in time, from the swarms of verminous glitches to the larger, cunning monsters that were spoken of in whispers.
He'd become a ghost in the system- deprived of purpose, unknown to the rest of the living. It was lonely and tedious at first, but he had learned to love the strange rhythms and secret caverns of his wild home. It was beautiful in ways that reminded him of another system, yet were totally alien.
But the distant hellfire explosion of the Portal- bright again, however briefly, had called him back to the city. His time here was done, he sensed. No one was left to wait for.
His off-grid lightcycle had been destroyed in an avalanche decacycles ago, so he walked. Impatience prickled at him and he trudged a little faster over the irregular slants of code, watching for crevasses. You never really appreciate how far apart everything is until you walk it, he realized. Lightbikes don't let you feel the distance.
The first thing it was aware of in a very long time was pain. Everything else reformed around the pain, slowly, so very slowly. Tiny shreds of corrupted code wormed their way through city and Outlands, Sea and sky. The pain grew, and began to take a form.
Finally,long after the rest of the Grid had forgotten about it, after the Creator and the Admin and perhaps the Monitor were all gone, the pain opened its eyes. They didn't want to focus, and the data feed kept guttering out. Close enough. The pain searched for its name, for its past, for an explanation of why its rebirth felt like dying.
Recall was scattered, files damaged. Names whispered from crumbling, warped memories. Names that had been replaced by the simple tag Infected once the pain had consumed them, too. Bartik, hissed one discarded designation. Radon. Ace. Gibson. Xar. Cringing, dying echoes.
The pain growled, struggling to find the right shred of information. They do not matter anymore. Who am I?
Jalen That was not its name. That was the other the ISO the champion CLU promised me what did he do why not him. It would never be him again.
Abraxas.
That's the one.
Abraxas slowly became more away of himself, of his reassembled body curled deep within some cavern in the Outlands. He had formed near a subterranean spring, and he dragged himself over to the power and drank greedily, desperately trying to sate the violent hunger that possessed him. But he knew that it wasn't energy he needed. Poisoned code spread around him, wherever he touched the ground. He watched with satisfaction as his taint set the dark space aglow with corrupted light.
Soon, he was strong enough to leave as more and more of what he had been returned to him. He found a slender fissure that opened to the open Outlands, but it was too narrow for his shoulders. A Basic would have been trapped.
I am not a Basic. Never was a Basic. What was he? Nothing but hunger fueled by pain. But powerful. Not a User, but dangerous. He was remembering how to corrupt and destroy code into when he heard footfalls. Drawing closer. A program. Alone, on foot.
That is just what I need.
The desperate need to attack overwhelmed him, flooding him with a familiar agony. He clenched his jaw and felt his hands twitching.
Wait.
It was all he could do to refrain from ripping the rock away from over his head, claw his way out to meet whatever was out there head on. But he was still very weak. He needed to time this right, or he risked being scattered across the Grid again.
Wait.
The program was right above him. The footfalls hesitated, stopped.
There was the hum of an energized disk. Abraxas wondered how he missed the insidious sound that must have been following this program- the scuffle of thousands of tiny feet.
The program is fighting for his life now, and the sounds of shattering code can be heard from overhead. Only the hum of the disk tells him that it's not the program derezzing. Not yet.
It had begun to rain a while ago, pouring unprocessed energy down on his head. It was cold and tiresome, but he kept walking. The simple act of getting back to the city had proven a delicious challenge on its own thusfar, and he didn't really mind the additional challenge. Hardship was often preferable to boredom.
A brilliant arc of energy discharge branched across the sky, crackling in a thousand different directions. He stopped and admired the storm's power, transfixed by the lighting.
You never saw this in his old system.
In that flash of light, he saw motion, all around him in the darkened wilderness, a rolling surge of living hunger, all tiny jaws and sharp little legs.
Oh, wonderful.
He'd forgotten to scan regularly for gridbugs since the storm kicked up. They closed around him, and he fell in among them without further hesitation. It was a game of give and take, manipulating the swarm as a single entity to slowly and systematically destroy it.
I should have been rezzed a security program.
It was the wrong thing to think, as the tenuous upper hand he'd gained slipped away as quickly as it had come. This was a huge swarm, chaotic and unmanageable, and it didn't respond to his carefully planned attack sequences as he would have liked. Pain ripped up his leg as some mandibles found their mark, sinking through the white armor.
Crippled in one leg, he was slower and a weaker by the smallest margin, but it was enough to doom him. More bites found his legs, his arms, his hands, each new wound bringing a chance for two more to hit home. What had happened out here to attract this magnitude of a swarm? The bugs usually came in response to power fluctuations. One program seldom attracted such attention.
Just my special brand of luck at work.
He nearly backed himself into a narrow fissure in the rocks, and he tripped over his wounded legs trying to get away. He swore as he fell. It was over. They piled onto him, latching onto him, three more for every one he derezzed. The bugs tore into him, ripping armor and underlying code away, feeding on the energy that sustained him.
From the corner of his eye, he watched as the fissure began to fracture with yellow lines of light. It crumbled and yawned wider. A figure began to pull itself through, dark and angular, with the same shattered circuitry that had spread from the fissure. He could barely see for power loss and grid bugs, but with a few swift movements, the creature had dispersed the entire swarm. A few bugs bit into it, but with a pulse of sick light they fell away derezzing. The others sensed the danger and fled.
He had no idea what this thing was. Not a gridbug of any variety, certainly not a Basic. Where ISOs capable of becoming such monsters? Then he remembered.
The virus. What else could it be?
The program had lost. Only Abraxas' presence had saved him, for the moment. . He looked down on the Basic, who met his gaze steadily. He was too weak to stand; damaged beyond recovery by the swarm. He still reached for his disk, laying near his mauled right hand, still energized. That irritated Abraxas in its futility. What did he hope to do with it? He could barely hold the weapon. It was the perfect chance to infect a program for a badly recompiled virus that really, really needed this chance.
Abraxas stalked closer, warier than he needed to be. He was mindful of his own weakness that still clung to him from reformation. That disk could yet prove a greater danger than he expected. Regardless, he still went into the program's range of attack, just to see his face. He remembered loving to see the terror in their eyes. What he saw gave him pause instead.
The dying program's face held no fear. It confused Abraxas- all of his ghost-memories of the others he'd consumed had been filled with horror and panic. They'd screamed for their Users with their last words.
Why aren't you afraid? Within nanos, he would never know. The program was starting to derezz, the code around the numerous bites fracturing into inert pixels.
"You wouldn't happen to know what happened to a security program I knew, would you? His name was Tron." With his dying words, this program had asked not for mercy but for a friend. Abraxas was barely aware of the concept, but the Basic's tone implied friendship.
Abraxas grabbed the Basic by the neck, lifting him to his eye level. The pain spread across the program, radiating from Abraxas' hand, but he controlled it. Didn't let it take this Basic over. Not yet. It was the most difficult thing he'd ever done. He replaced what the bugs had taken, but no more Every digit of him wanted to destroy, to corrupt. It was agony. But he had to understand this fearlessness. He wanted it for himself.
His will surged into the Basic's code, tearing through his memories, there were so many, he was old, and he forced a name out of his mouth-
"Ram," gritted the program, shaking his head as if to clear Abraxas from it.
"You know, I would've just said so if I'd had a chance,"—
"You should be begging for mercy." Abraxas hissed, almost fearful.
"Pray to your User and I'll let you go," It was a shallow lie, but he had extricated much religious fervor in the past with it, he almost-remembered. If this program took the bait, it would prove that he was no better than all of the others. Ram gave him a tired smile, and suddenly the program's age showed in his eyes.
"Fear didn't help me the last time I was dying. Neither did Users. They're really not all they're cracked up to be." Abraxas suddenly wondered what he was dealing with. Kill him, raged his instincts. He tightened his grip, and the Basic's face lined with pain.
Make him understand what it's like to be like this.
Something in Ram's eyes said he understood pain as well as Abraxas did, though he was sure that was not possible.
He wanted to, needed to efface Ram in the way only a virus could, destroy him from the inside out like Jalen had been but he was too curious. He had never been curious before.
I've never been so weak before.
That had to be why he let go of Ram. He sank to his knees beside him as fresh agony exploded through him, the desperate need to corrupt threatening to destroy him entirely.
He couldn't do this. He couldn't let anything survive.
He sank clawed hands into the rock, sending his corruption deep through the Outlands, poisoning everything he could. The code beneath them fractured and shuddered. It wasn't enough. He was sustained by spreading into other programs. He needed to, or he would derezz as well, and it would be slow and painful.
He turned on Ram, who watched him with concerned interest. The smaller program was too damaged to stand, but he'd propped himself up with his arms, wounded legs crumpled lifelessly under him. Abraxas' code patched his own, pulsing raw and corrupted were fractured bites had been, but alive, full of power and strength.
Why didn't he take what life was left in the Basic for himself as he always had?
"I'm sorry, I never caught your name," Ram said.
Whatever strength the power pool hidden below them had given Abraxas seemed to have faded. Suddenly it was all he could do to keep his helmet rezzed, and in lieu of an answer he allowed it to retract.
The virus' eyes were bright in the same sick color as his circuits, glowing from within the shadows under his hood. His face was shattered down one side by circuits that might have once' been an ISO's. He gave Ram a dark, sullen look that was ruined by rain. He hissed and flinched when the droplest touched him, as if expecting them to hurt.
"It's been a long time since you felt anything but pain," said Ram, not even really asking as much as realizing that it had to be true. The faintly mystified look the creature gave him as Ram gently traced a finger down the fractured circuits on his cheek confirmed it. He didn't mind the yellow circuits that traced burning lines up his own hand in response- he was either corrupted irreparably or not, and he couldn't prevent anything now, as he was literally held together with viral coding.
His accidental rescuer held rigidly still before leaning into the touch, a barely noticeable movement. Those darting, too-bright eyes searched his face, very much a hungry predator seeking fear and weakness. Or, perhaps he was only trying to puzzle out Ram's motives, as Tron would have.
With a gentle flick, he nudged the virus' hood away. Once again he recoiled, but then tilted his head up into the rain with eyes half-lidded, exulting in the feeling of a storm on his skin. Ram smiled for a brief moment, but it faded as he watched the increasing flicker in those yellow circuits.
It was obvious in the desperate way the virus had attacked the system after releasing him that infecting another program was the only way he could have secured his tenuous renewed grip on life. The viral patchwork of code that had saved his life burned in him, searing and hungry and desperate to spread itself. This is what it must feel like to be him all the time, he reflected. What had abstaining from entirely destroying Ram cost the virus?
He should have infected the program. He should have looked into his fearless, illogically calm face and corrupted him into a viral drone, erased those ancient, sad eyes once and for all.
Abraxas shivered, sinking down under the weight of the rain. He was frozen and on fire at the same time. The hard, defined boundaries of hunger and pain that defined what he was seemed to be shattering, allowing in things like the way rain felt on his face and the gentle, bewildering touch of a program who should be dead and gone.
He had been a force of destruction, an element of the Grid, an act of vengeance and a vessel of pain. The moment he'd let go of Ram he'd destroyed his own purpose.
He wished for the Basic's touch again. That had given him a flicker of justification, however fleeting.
He realized that he couldn't stand back up. He let himself sink down against the shattered, infected code of the Outlands that he had destroyed in his last bid for survival. Sharp edges pressed into his face. Ram stood up over him, but Abraxas couldn't be bothered to look up at the program. He let his eyes sink closed.
Leave, he thought. Take the life I gave you and go.
The last thing he was aware of was arms around him, lifting him up and holding him close. Saying something. Something that sounded like hold on.
…Did this program exist just to defy him?