Title: Silence will always fall
Rating: Eh, a bit of a high-pg rating
Warnings: Spoilers for Tron: Uprising's Scars, Pt 2
Author's note: So, this is kind of a sequel to that Cyrus drabble that somehow got labelled After the Storm. Anyway, they're still in that cave. Tron decided it was story time.
_._
It was quiet in their little cave. The silence unsettled them both, made them uneasy. Cyrus made frequent patrols, most of which were primarily between the cave and the small energy pool he had found that first microcycle. Tron was still heavily injured, but his wounds weren't getting any worse, thank the Users. Between the Security program and the Sentry, they managed to somehow form a minuscule room and start an energy chamber that would help Tron recover, even though neither of them had any real ability to engineer. Cyrus did what he could, though, and got Tron to tell him about the Encom grid, mostly to make sure the older program would stay awake, stay alive. So that Tron wouldn't derezz.
"I had a friend, a long time ago on the Encom Grid," Tron began one microcycle. Cyrus looked over at him from the spot where he was working on the design for the energy chamber. He made an interested noise but didn't say anything, for fear that Tron would stop. Cyrus had a feeling that this wasn't another story about Yori, a program Tron was willing to talk about. "He was a 'guest,' as he put it, of the MCP for longer than I'd been rezzed by the time he derezzed. He was a brave program - he even kept my hopes high." Tron fell silent, staring off into the middle distance, remembering times long past.
Cyrus was silent for a while, not quite willing to disturb the Security program. "Tron?" he ventured, catching his focus. When Tron tilted his head in affirmation that Cyrus could ask his question, he queried "What happened to your friend?" Tron smiled sadly at the question. "We'd escaped the cells during a light cycle match. We even made it some distance away, but there were a lot of tanks, and... he was hit," Tron explained, voice going soft.
Though Tron didn't continue, Cyrus knew instantly what had happened. "He derezzed, didn't he?"
Tron nodded. "He did. He never saw the end of the MCP." Falling silent once more, Tron stared out the entrance to the cave.
"For what it's worth, I'm sorry." Cyrus stood, abandoning the project for a short while. Stepping over to Tron, Cyrus placed his hand on Tron's undamaged shoulder, pinging /safe-hope-sorry. It was a habit Tron had gotten him into, one which had spawned from his need to make sure Tron wasn't going to derezz on him.
Tron just turned his slightly sad, forlorn smile on the sympathetic Sentry. "Don't be. It was a long, long time ago." Cyrus only nodded. He wasn't sure why, but he felt something was about to happen. And he wasn't sure he was going to like it.