Warnings/themes/etc.: Blatant friendship. Slash subtext. WAFF-y ending. Sap. Science fiction themes. Angst. OOC-ness.
Random Note 1: Kind of a crack pairing. Ye gods, I'm writing characterizations for a Disney character! (Though I never saw "Tron." Hadn't even heard of it 'til KH2.)
Random Note 2: Love the Leon! I demand it! He needs cuddles.
Random Note 3: I don't know anything about programming, really. I've just read a lot of scifi. Amy Thomson's book "Virtual Girl" in particular gave me an idea of how to depict Tron. And some of my philosophy studies slipped in; specifically "Can Animals and Machines Be Persons?" by Justin Leiber. And a definition I used was from the OED. Okay, I think all my citation bases are covered.
--
Liking You the Most
(because I couldn't come up with any other title)
There was nothing to indicate that Sora had won. Leon didn't know what he had been expecting, but he had thought that the Restoration Committee would at least have gotten a message from the kid. He supposed that since there wasn't an increase in the number of Heartless or Nobodies that Sora hadn't lost, but the adage of "no news means good news" wasn't any comfort when the last time he'd seen the boy and his two companions was right before they beamed up to their Gummi ship to face the Organization's stronghold.
A week had passed since the trio's departure. Even Merlin was starting to doubt Light's triumph over Darkness.
It had been a while for Leon since those thoughts and feelings had began. When he'd started seeing Sora as something other than a loud and perpetually cheerful kid. He'd managed to earn Leon's respect and--even more surprisingly--his very rare gift of affection.
Leon knew that he wasn't an expert in deciphering other people's actions and motivations, but he had honestly thought that Sora had been a little more attentive about what he had thought and planned than to what everyone else plotted and suggested. The keyblade wielder was nice to everyone in town, of course, but Leon had secretly thought that the brunet's eyes were a little more sparkly when he looked at Leon and his grins a little bit wider.
As time passed with no word, Leon tried to resign himself to the apparent fact that he'd been forgotten, and, in all likelihood, had never been that important in the first place.
--
It was Goofy who returned to Radiant Garden with the news of victory.
Alone.
Leon supposed that his eyes were a little to blatant in their search for spiky brown hair behind the Knight, because Goofy gave him a look. And Leon knew he was pathetic when he got pitying glances from someone as flighty and oblivious as Goofy.
While the others were cheering, Leon snuck off around a corner and did his best to blend in with the shadows.
"Gawrsh, Leon," Goofy said apologetically when he found the gunblade specialist. The dog rubbed the back of his head.
Leon sighed. "You don't need to say anything."
Goofy ignored his request. "Sora's never been like this before."
"Like what?" Leon had to ask bitterly, this moment's proof of life's cruel impartiality crumbling his usual phlegmatic facade. "Forgetful? Inconsiderate?"
Goofy's eyes were serious as he nodded. "He knew you guys were all worrying about us."
Leon's mouth was in a hard line. His grey irises were steely and his arms crossed tightly. He wasn't at all sure that he wanted to know, but he masochistically inquired anyway. "So what happened?"
In one of his infrequent moods of insight, the Knight understood that Leon's question wasn't about the battles or the enemies but was a plaintive demand of 'why did he forget about me?' Goofy knew that the answer was one that would hurt the man but it wasn't in his nature to lie, even to save a friend from hurt. "He found Riku." The pronoun was deliberate; all of them--Sora, Kairi, Donald, Goofy, the King, Ansem--had encountered the boy who had been pulled into Darkness, but Sora had found the best friend he had been missing for so long.
Leon closed his eyes and nodded almost imperceptibly. "I," he tried after a long moment. His voice wavered and he waited several seconds more before trying again. "I'm glad for him."
Goofy inclined his own head in acknowledgment. Yes, he thought sadly. Leon would be happy for Sora. The man was a natural martyr.
They stood for a while, Leon leaning against a wall staring broodily into nowhere and Goofy looking up at the man with compassion.
--
When Sora did return to Radiant Garden, Riku and Kairi were in tow. The brunet excitedly introduced them to everyone and dragged the duo around the entire town.
"This is where the master computer is!"
Leon, working on the terminal, straightened in alarm when he heard the familiar voice echoing off the walls. His eyes shifted around frantically as he considered doing something entirely uncharacteristic as hiding. But it was too late.
"Hey Leon!" Sora bounced over to him, even more exuberant and glowy than Leon remembered him being. When the teenager gave Leon a hug, the man stood stiffly, eying the two other-worlders. Four eyes looked back at him, one pair with warm curiosity and the other with cool consideration.
If Sora noticed Leon's lack of response, his reaction was well hidden. "This is Kairi, and that's Riku! They've been my best friends since forever! Guys, this is Leon. He's one of the leaders of the Restoration Committee.
Leon's eyes flickered; that was the only indication of a sudden, wrenching pain tearing through his body. 'One of the leaders of the Restoration Committee.' That was his only introduction to two of the most important people in Sora's life? Leon could almost hear the shattering of his hopes and presumptions.
"It is nice to finally meet you both. I've heard so much about you." His greeting was polite and impersonal.
"Hi Leon," Kairi said with a genuine smile. Riku's response was, in contrast, harsh yet dismissing. "Hey."
Sora recaptured Leon's attention by tugging his arm. "I told Riku about your gunblade. He said he's never heard of anything like it. I was hoping you would show it to him."
Leon's head began to throb. Through the mental buffer with which he kept his emotions at bay, he felt a surge of heat. Anger and resentment. Sora was asking him to let Riku see his weapon; take it in his hands and test the point with the pad of a thumb and run an index finger over the trigger? A month of silence, and then this intrusive and rude demand?!
Leon didn't bother trying to hide his scowl. "I left it at Merlin's," he lied. It was actually in the next room, tucked away in its case in Ansem's study.
"Oh." Sora practically drooped with disappointment for half a second before bouncing back. "Okay! C'mon! Let's go see Tron!"
With that, Leon was forgotten. The three teenagers were digitalized and zapped into the computer without a second glance at the silent man in the corner.
--
Leon only reentered the room of the Master Computer after Sora and his friends had left.
Greetings, User. The impersonal message blinked onto the screen character by character.
Greetings, Tron. Leon typed in. Then, feeling the faintest spark of curiosity through the haze of depression, he decided to ask the program something that he had been wondering for a while.
How did you know I was here? Despite all the time he had spent sorting through the files and codes on the massive computer, he still had no idea of what the capabilities and limitations of it, and the program personified as Tron.
Tron's reply appeared. There is a sensor on the door. As if anticipating Leon's next inquiry, the program clarified. That sensor activates the lights and temperature controls.
Leon hesitated, then typed, Can you see me?
Negative. There are no peripherals with that function in operation.
Peripherals. He wasn't as techno-savvy as Cid, but Leon was pretty sure that meant machines that could be connected to the computer, like printers and speakers. Leon frowned; he vaguely remembered finding a pile of equipment somewhere. Stuff he was pretty sure could have been "peripherals" for the Computer. He left the room and searched for that closet. It took him a while, but eventually he located the wall panel that disguised a spacious compartment littered with devices and components. He didn't want to sort through the entire pile, but he located what looked like a microphone. Leon took it back into the Computer room.
On the screen, the blinking cursor at the end of a sentence caught his eye. Goodbye.
Leon was struck with an odd sense of guilt. Somehow (though it was completely irrational), the single word on the console seemed... sad. Like the entity that had written it was lonely. The man shook his head, but the feeling stayed.
I didn't leave. I found where Ansem stored your peripherals. I brought one back that I think is a microphone.
Plug it in and I'll try to find the compatible program.
Leon blinked. It was probably his imagination, but it seemed that the Computer's response was quicker than usual. Did that mean that it was excited? That it had a sense of anticipation?
The gunblade specialist hadn't really believed Sora and his friends when they told him that there were people inside the Computer. It was probably an idea created by electricity from when they had been digitalized and connected with the Computer (though Leon still hadn't grasped the possibility, let alone the reality, of Sora 'entering' the Computer; there was no obvious technological explanation for something like that to happen, and magic didn't mix well with complex machinery at all). The best logical reasoning Leon could come up with was that Sora had encountered an AI program. But AI programs weren't yet sophisticated enough to mimic intuition and free will--things that all three adventurers had sworn Tron had.
This was the first time Leon had seen evidence that possibly there was an artificial intelligence in the Computer; he'd never heard of any computer stringing together coherent sentences in response to human input and referring to itself in the first person.
Leon shook off his woolgathering, located the socket and plugged in the microphone.
"Er, testing?" Leon knew his voice was quavery with self-consciousness.
Text flowed across the screen too fast for Leon to decipher. One window's scrolling ended with the words 'Audio pickup engaged' written in green.
Peripheral functioning. Would you like me to switch to speech mode?
Sp- Leon began typing before he remembered that he could simply ask the question aloud. "What's speech mode?"
"This."
The voice from the speaker startled Leon. "You're Tron?"
"Yes. Greeting, User. Do you have a singular designation with which I can refer to you?"
It took Leon several seconds to understand what the computer was asking him. "My name is Leon." More text flooded the screen. "What was that?"
"I have created a voice database that will monitor and record your voice patterns. Now I will be able to identify you as Leon whenever you speak to me."
Leon was trying to get over the fact that this was all a little creepy. He was talking to a computer program. Granted, the "voice" it used was smoother than he expected, but it was still obviously not human.
"You are an artificial intelligence, correct?" Leon asked. He almost expected the blunt question to be met with indignation.
Tron's response held nothing that could be deemed emotional. "I am a program designed to be self-aware."
"Is that all you are?"
"You are misusing the word 'all' in this sense. Being self-aware is not a trivial matter; that itself requires several megabytes of memory. The ability for me to interface with Users is possible only because of a vast library of protocols, thousands of smaller programs, input/output commands, and ample active memory."
Leon almost cracked a smile. He had the sense that the computer had taken offense at his last question and was telling him off quite condescendingly. "I apologize for my word choice. While my knowledge of computers is very limited, I believe I have a small idea of how complicated a program you are, Tron."
"You're apology is accepted, User Leon." A couple seconds passed before Tron's response was made. Compared with the lightning-fast text and audio replies from the program, Leon wondered what caused the hold-up. He asked.
"The word 'apology' was not in my basic vocabulary. I needed to refer to my dictionary. I apologize for the long delay."
"A few seconds is hardly a delay; your mind probably works much faster than mine." Belatedly, Leon offered, "And you don't need to call me 'User.' Just Leon."
"Correction noted, Leon." Tron replied.
Leon decided that his work had been put off long enough. "So, Tron, being able to talk with you is going to make things so much easier. I've been having trouble understanding the defense systems..."
--
Things had progressed much more rapidly with the innovation of Tron's audio capabilities. With the program's help and the humans better able to express their goals, the work of debugging the defense system, accessing Ansem's files, routinizing the electrical and sewer services, and itemizing and scheduling the Committee's rebuilding efforts had been accomplished in a significantly shorter time than had been expected. Tron's knowledge and abilities were invaluable, and Leon had spent a lot of time talking with him in between their work sessions.
So much time, that Leon had found himself thinking of and addressing Tron as a person. Tron had a personality; and if his 'hobbies' were a bit strange (e.g. calculating pi to the nth place, making anagrams, or tweaking audio files), that just made him seem more real.
Leon had found himself liking Tron and enjoying their debates and conversations. Tron's manipulated recording of Cid saying, "I'm a feathered chipmunk" (the original statement being something along the lines of: "I've had it with this &ing #+!") made Leon laugh.
He'd even started confessing things to the program that he would never had thought of revealing to any of his friends or acquaintances.
"I guess I just thought that, I don't know, he liked me more than anyone else," Leon found himself admitting one evening. "It's really stupid, but sometimes I want somebody to like me the most. Which I know is crazy, considering that I'm not outgoing or friendly or even particularly nice. And I understand that me wanting that is almost hypocritical of me, because I never expose my own feelings or whatever." He sighed, and slumped further against the wall. "I know that I'm pretty much unlikeable."
"You're not unlikeable," Tron replied. Leon could almost hear humanity in that voice, and it made something inside him ache.
"I don't know why I can talk to you like this. You're just different from everyone else, I guess."
"I'm stuck in this box," Tron joked, pulling a laugh from Leon. I'm not real, he typed in a private text file. I'm not a part of your world, so I am safe. Not human, so I can't leave or turn away or hurt you. Tron colored this text blue, a color he had found out connoted sadness to Users. In the past few weeks he had studied all he could find about human emotions; he knew the descriptions and events that evoked them so well that he thought he could almost feel them himself.
Tron found himself drawn more and more to those emotions of yearning, sadness, and regret (the latter in the archaic meaning of the term about "feeling sorrow for the loss or absence of something pleasant"). He replayed the short times when Sora, Donald, and Goofy had been inside the computer with him endlessly when Leon was away, and even constructed mini-programs that would allow his avatar in Space Paranoids to display human traits and movements.
"Yeah. I guess you are," Leon responded, something in his voice bland and lifeless. Tron had to flick over to the transcript of their current conversation to recall what Leon was talking about--his musings on emotions drawing his all of his attention away.
Conversations like that were never referred to again, though both Leon and Tron remembered them vividly. Tron, because he had prioritized everything about Leon in his most accessible memory banks; Leon because those times of security and companionship were so comforting and special.
--
One day Tron's sensors picked up an anomaly in the movement of a User. "Leon?" The program questioned, 67-percent sure that the tiny jangling sound was unique to that particular human.
"Tron."
Leon's voice, too, was different than normal. More of a croak; lacking its usual depth and variances. Tron cross-referenced his dictionaries and settled on the word "hollow." Leon's voice seemed to have an emptiness in it.
"You have been away for 4.2 days," Tron noted. "Has something happened?" The microphone captured a rough sliding sound along with Leon's uneven breathing. Tron concluded that the User was in physical or emotional distress. "Should I notify Cid or Aerith?"
"No," Leon protested. "Don't bother them." His instructions were punctuated by quiet gasps and gulps.
"What is it, Leon? What happened?" Tron wished he could modulate the default "voice" of his speech mode like he could with his avatar. He would have made his words carry concern and alarm.
Leon continued making the odd noises for almost a minute before his breathing returned to close to normal. "I went to a different world. Twilight Town. Tron-" the control broke, and the User's voice stumbled. "There were people I knew there. From my world."
Tron collated information from Ansem's notes and research. There was no indication that survivors from one world scattered to more than one new world. From his own inquiries, Tron had concluded that the largest group transported from a single destroyed world included Aerith and Cid. "Survivors from your world ended up in Twilight Town?" Tron knew he was simply restructuring what Leon had said, but wanted confirmation on this new phenomenon.
"Yeah." Leon's confirmation was a mere whisper, though not near the lowest volume ranges of the audio pick-up.
"Isn't that good news?"
"I guess so. But... they didn't remember anything." Leon's voice fluctuated but remained in control.
Tron stopped annotating Ansem's records. "They," he carefully made a pause, the only method he had of tempering words with reactions, "didn't remember you?"
"No."
All intentions of documenting this event stopped as Leon's predicament was understood by Tron. From what the human had intimated during their previous conversations, Leon (rather, Squall Leonhart) was the sole survivor from his world. He had finally encountered familiar entities but they did not recognize him.
"Which ones?" Tron once again regretted that his mechanical output couldn't convey emotion; he meant the question as a gentle one, not the harsh demand it sounded like.
"Seifer," Leon responded. "And his two friends."
Tron searched his transcripts for "Seifer," seeking a definition. Leon had mentioned him seven times: twice as a mercenary comrade, three times as an enemy, once as "an asshole" (a term that had incited a great deal of confusion for Tron), once as a fellow orphan. From these descriptions, Tron wasn't sure whether Leon wanted this User to remember everything.
"I'm sorry," the voice said, neutrally.
Leon didn't reply. The strange noises resumed, and Tron didn't want to interrupt. Finally, the User spoke.
"I just feel so alone."
Tron suddenly had an idea. He was surprised that it had not occurred to him before.
"Let me rez you in."
--
Leon didn't know what he had imagined the 'inside' of the computer would look like, but he hadn't thought of something as strange as this. The colors were weird...
He looked down at himself. He felt real. He sensed his body, and it felt just like it had a few seconds ago in Radiant Garden: tired and aching. In fact, his fingers were still wet from the tears he'd been wiping off of his face.
A movement caught his eye and he looked up in time to see a shape seem to emerge from the wall. Oddly colored, but distinctively humanoid.
"Tron?" Leon knew his voice was tentative. Feeling like his sanity was hanging by a thread, he didn't really care about appearances at the moment anyway.
"Leon." The voice was different, more human, with cadence and warmth. Then, the man--the program--Tron, Leon decided firmly, did something wholly unexpected.
He opened his arms and wrapped them around Leon.
Even more unexpectedly, the embrace comforted Leon and even seemed to heal something inside of him.
"You're here," Tron said. Leon could hear Tron's happiness at that fact, and feel his hair flutter with Tron's exhalation.
"You're here," Leon replied. Tron was real, just like Sora had said. Until this moment, Leon hadn't realized the worry he had carried these past weeks-- that the program that had become his friend didn't exist in a way that made that friendship real; that the entity he had confided in and joked with existed only through Leon's projected emotions and deliberate input/output protocols.
But, finally, here was evidence that Tron was Tron, an individual. Even if this world resided on a different plane of reality than Radiant Garden or the Coliseum, it was real enough for Leon.
These revelations were less coherent thoughts than muddled feelings. Leon was immersed in emotion and security. The devastation he was still feeling from Seifer's uncomprehending stare merged with his relief, and the mixture broke his usual reserve so that tears overflowed and he was crying again. But there was a difference--he wasn't alone anymore.
"I like you the most, Leon," Tron confessed softly.
Strangely, that non sequitur was the exactly the thing Leon wanted to hear.
The End
--
Random Note... uh... 4?: Nope. No more story. The end. No sequel. I don't know if these two can have a lasting (slashy) relationship, considering Tron's stuck in a box (possibly a very big box, but a box nonetheless). First completed fic with a strange pairing. Will anyone like this? Will anyone even read this? I dunno. I'm just typing to myself right now.
ker-thunk! One more plot-bunny slain. Damn things breed like... ... ...rabbits. Crud.