A/N-Gifted to Hack Generation. This was going to be based on a prompt from Hack Generation...but the moth wanted to go somewhere else with it. So, this is based on a prompt from Hack Generation that was dropped on its head. *whistles innoncently*
It was just over half of a millicycle since Sam had entered the Grid this trip, and he was seriously considering asking Quorra to just activate the laser again in an hour. That would—hopefully—give him enough time to finish what he had started. If he could just manage to convince a certain security program of a few things….
"I'm telling you, Sam, it's not safe enough. This area was always prone to gridbugs. If you will just let me add and implement the extra features…"
"Look, it has the exact same safety features as all of the other buildings in this sector. I don't see what the problem is here," he said, interrupting.
Tron looked at him, a small furrow of concern creasing the skin between his eyes. "The other buildings are not where you would be staying in this sector. There are extra precautions that need to be taken on this one to keep you safe."
"So, it's just me that you're worried about, then. I can take care of myself just as well as any of the programs here can, you know," Sam said, looking up from the ghostly outline of a wire-frame building model. "You're the head security program for the Grid. If they're safe enough for you, I must be, too. Seriously, Tron, you worry too much. Everything is under control."
Tron's mouth was a thin, hard line. "Never say that to me again," he said, his voice flat and short, almost frightening in its lack of inflection.
"I never said that I thought that they were safe enough. But if I implement enough security measures to keep them as safe as I want, they cannot process their functions properly. You, on the other hand, are a User, Sam. You have no backup to bring online if you are derezzed. And you can't take care of yourself to the same degree as a program. You're not as fast, or as strong—"his voice cut off suddenly as his attention was drawn upward by a pale flash of tiny circuits. The tightness on his face eased just a little as he recognized the moth and raised a hand up to offer it a landing place.
Sam lifted his gaze to follow Tron's hand, not sure why the program had lifted it. Once he saw it, however, he could easily recognize the moth. After all, there was only one of the things on the Grid, right? He watched the program's face for a moment as the moth fluttered down to land on Tron's hand. Sam really didn't understand why his often somber protector would always interact with what was no more than an active code fragment. For that matter—
"What is it with this little critter, anyway? If you or Quorra are in an area long enough, it shows up. It's following you around like a dog or something…."
Tron glanced over at the User standing near him, his face calmer and his voice mild as he said, "It follows you, too, Sam." He still did not fully understand what a 'dog' was.
"Yeah, User power bleeding off; Quorra told me. I get it following her around; I mean, it was made from her code—but why does it follow you?" he argued. "It just doesn't make a lot of sense."
Tron looked back at the moth, which was now determinedly marching over the curve of his shoulder, wings fluttering occasionally to help it keep its balance.
"We understand each other," he told Sam.
"What's to understand? It's a piece of damaged code that Dad pulled from Quorra. It doesn't have a function. It's not really even a full program."
The security program stared back at him, his eyes unreadable as he stood, dark against the damaged landscape around them. There was almost no light here, since all of the buildings in this sector had been too badly damaged to save, their code crumbling and derezzing at even the smallest types of stress. Was that the faint rumbling growl of thunder in the distance, or had the sound come from Tron? The otherwise silent night was becoming unnerving and oppressive to Sam as he waited, shifting slightly on his feet, for a reply.
Finally, after several long moments, Tron spoke.
"What is a program, but part of the Grid system? It's not the entire Grid system. And what is code, Sam Flynn, but a portion of the system that makes up a program?"
It knows what it means to have someone decide that it is too damaged to remain part of a system as it is; and it knows what it is like to be changed from your original functions."
Despite all that, it has never given up. It has never faded, and it continues to make itself a part of this system. It is running to the full extent of the coding that it has left. Its very decision to continue to exist is admirable to my coding. How can I not acknowledge such determination when I see it?" There was no hiding the raw honesty in the security program's voice.
"As I said, we understand each other." He was quiet for a moment as the moth flapped its wings and lifted itself from Tron's shoulder. It fluttered around Tron's head as if in a farewell salute before winging away again into the darkness of the perpetual Grid night. "I think that it does better here than I, sometimes." His voice was very quiet as he spoke the last sentence.
Sam was suddenly reminded of Tron coming to him shortly after having been reactivated following the removal of the Rinzler coding overwrites. The security monitor had been visibly upset after learning of the uses that CLU had put Rinzler to. He had begged Sam to delete him from the system; saying that a security program that had done such things could not be allowed to continue to function. That Tron could not continue to function. And when he thought that he had let down his User, the program had been almost inconsolable.
Now, however, listening to Tron made him wonder—when the program spoke of having someone decide if something was too damaged to remain part of the system as it was, was Tron speaking of CLU rewriting him into Rinzler; or was Rinzler somehow still there, speaking of Sam removing the overwrites to change him back into Tron? The thought was more than a little disturbing, to say the least; and it made Sam wonder how well he really knew his godfather's 'best program ever written'.
It also let him understand just a little of the mental stress and anguish that the stoic program must have been under when he learned more about what Rinzler had done, and told him that Tron may have been closer than Sam realized to finding a way to end his runtime than simply asking the only User on the Grid to delete him. And if interacting with the moth had convinced him to accept what had occurred without seeking out deresolution—something that Sam wasn't sure he had managed to do on his own—
"Maybe it does have a function that it is fulfilling," he told Tron, watching as Tron's eyes followed the tiny flicker of circuit-traced wings until it disappeared into the night.
A/N-This did not end up nearly as sweet and fluffy as I had originally anticipated. The moth decided to let Tron do all of the talking this time; it was too busy marching around on someone's shoulder to do so itself.