Disclaimer: I do not own Tron: that would be Disney.
Risie spent the next week cooped up in the house playing video games. She slept only when she passed out from exhaustion. The dream had frightened her into silence. It was Quorra that came up with an idea to get her out of the house. Sam went out and borrowed a pickup truck. He loaded it up with camping equipment and taught Tron how to drive it, which didn't take more than a few days.
Sam and Quorra found Risie the morning they put their plan into action on the couch in her trademark tank top and blue jeans. Without a word of warning, Sam took one arm and Quorra took the other. They dragged her, barefoot, kicking and screaming, to the truck, where they unceremoniously tossed her into the cab where Tron waited in the driver's seat. Before Risie could escape, she was locked in. Sam banged on the side of the truck and Quorra waved, the ISO yelling for the others to have a good time. Tron put the truck in gear and drove away.
By the time they were on the freeway, Risie was calm and strapping on a pair of hiking boots. Tron focused on the road, giving Risie time to adjust to her "kidnapping". Risie stared out the side window, watching the trees fly past. It was late afternoon when they left the freeway for a small two-lane highway. As the sun was setting, they pulled off into a dirt road. Tron drove the truck carefully through the trees until they parted to reveal a small campground overlooking the ocean. Risie's eyes went wide when she saw it.
Tron wordlessly exited the truck. He and Sam had discussed a camping trip. The idea amused Tron. When Quorra said that just Tron and Risie should go, Tron objected. He had no real camping knowledge. Sam taught Tron what little he remembered and had invited Alan over to teach Tron the rest.
Tron opened Risie's door. Risie was still unresponsive, so he scooped her up into his arms and sat her on a dry log. He started building a fire while she watched the sun set.
"How long are you going to be on stand-by?" he said as he finished.
She looked down at her hands. He knelt in front of her and grabbed her wrists, shaking them as hard as he dared. Her eyes met his own.
"I did the math," he said, "it's been a full cycle since you woke up screaming."
She went to speak, but snapped her mouth shut. Tron sighed and stood. He turned walk back to the truck when Risie finally spoke.
"I killed you," she said, staring back at her hands.
Tron turned back to her, watching her hands begin to shake.
"I killed you, Tron," Risie said.
He sat next to her. She found herself telling him everything from her dream. When she was done, she was in tears and her whole body was shaking. Tron put an arm around Risie's shoulders and let her lean on his own.
"It was only a dream," he said, "I know you're afraid of that part of you, but it is a part of you now and you are strong enough to overcome it."
"I'm not any stronger than you," she said.
They sat for a long time in silence. Neither wanted to voice the fear the nightmare had infused in them. Risie was afraid it was true, that one day she would be a cold and calculating killer. Tron was afraid that if it came to that, would he really fail to save her and refuse to fight?
To break the tension, Tron went to the truck and returned with two blankets and a bag of food. Inside the bag Risie recognized chocolate bars, marshmallows and graham crackers.
"Alan said that one of the things you are supposed to do camping is using these to make something called a s'more," Tron said, "I don't get why, but Quorra said we should try it."
He stuck a marshmallow on the end of a roasting stick and shoved it into the fire. After a few attempts, most of them ending with charred marshmallow remains, he successfully made a roasted marshmallow. He sandwiched it between a chocolate bar and a graham cracker. He took a bite and laughed.
"This is really good," he said, "and really hot."
"Let me try," Risie said.
He went to hand her the stick, but she snatched the s'more out of his hand and took a bite. She smiled for the first time since that night as the marshmallow stuck to her fingers. She tried to pull the marshmallow off her fingers, making it worse. Risie laughed as she touched Tron's nose, causing the marshmallow goo to stick to his face. Tron went cross-eyed trying to see it.
They each wrapped up in their own blankets, making s'mores and talking about old friends. They talked into the night, Tron calling it quits on the snacks while Risie kept right on going. As the moon started to set over the water, they finally set up a tent using the truck's lights to help. They got their own sleeping bags and fell asleep.
A strange weight on Tron's face woke him in the early afternoon. While he and Risie had fallen asleep on different sides of the tent, somehow overnight their feet had tangled up and Risie ended up on her stomach next to him. The strange weight was her hand plastered over his nose and eyes. Tron quickly escaped, untangling his feet as Risie rolled away from him in her sleep.
He walked outside, sitting by the fire pit. He was watching the waves crash on the shore when he heard a literal gut-wrenching sound. Risie was holding a blanket around herself and throwing up into the trees beside the tent. Tron tried not to laugh. He had felt the sugar begin to affect him last night and that's when he had stopped eating.
Risie clearly didn't get that feeling.
Tron could not hold in his smile as Risie turned to him. Her brown hair was a tangled mess. She glared at him and he started laughing.
"Too much of a good thing," he said.
She tried to keep a smile off her own face and failed.
"I hate you," she said, then laughed before throwing up again.
Two days later they came home. Quorra and Sam were pleasantly surprised at Risie's turnaround. She was smiling and laughing again. She had also discovered something she loved to do, and was good at: drawing. When it got too hot in the summer heat to be outside, she would draw anything she could see and sometimes things she couldn't see. She also started drawing memories of the Grid.
By the end of summer, one wall in her room was covered in paper sketches of the Grid. A lot of them were from the Arena.
The sketch they all centered around was the four friends as they were on the Grid.
Author's Notes:
Well, I know it was short, but I have writer's block. I can't seem to think of what kind of things to put them through. I am going to write the next story and jump a year or so ahead. That way I can add to this one as I get ideas. I would also love to hear from you guys on what you would like to see happen to Risie and Tron while they're here in the User World.