Greetings Users! Here's the next chapter, submitted for your approval. I hope you enjoy the thrilling conclusion of TRON:ABSOLUTION!

As always, thanks to my fantastic reviewers for their input. I'd be a worse writer without you guys - you're the reason I've kept going.

Disclaimer: Elementary my dear readers. I'm writing a fanfiction. It wouldn't be a fanfiction if I owned it, would it. So there you go.

Jessie got into the jet and sat in the back, her face still red. Tron wondered if she was ashamed. He put it out of his mind as he placed Hannah carefully in the co-pilots seat and climbed in himself, taking the controls. Without a word they took off, leaving the grid floor behind them and soaring through the air towards the portal.

Hannah knew time was passing. It felt strange, like she was watching a black and white movie of her own life. Disjointed images flickered in front of her eyes for a moment before fading back in the white hot haze of pain. There sensations too, mostly fleeting and chased away by the incessant, overhwelming throbbing.

The first time she woke up was to the sound of someone calling her name. It was a small noise, but it was insistent and she managed to force her eyes open, only to be confronted with darkness more severe than any night she'd ever known. It pressed itself around her, closing in like a smothering blanket. Her heart pounded, fluttering in a moment of absolute blinding panic, and she couldn't do anything but cry. Everything hurt.

The voice didn't stop. It told her everything would be alright, and like a child she totally trusted it. She liked the voice. The darkness fell away as a bright light wandered into her line of vision. She followed it up until she found a face to go with the voice that'd called her name.

"Hello," she managed, finding Tron's hand and holding on for dear life. Of course it was him. She grimaced through the pain, but it was meant to be a smile. Propping herself up on a shaky elbow, she tried to find more words. It was hard when everything was rushing around in her head, happiness and pain, hope and fear, a million different fragments of witty phrases she could use to either make him smile or confuse him completely. She didn't get a chance to say any of them because as soon as she sat up, her leg protested, insisting she join it on the floor and she was helpless not to obey.

It was a long time before she woke up again. It was a slower process this time. She heard voices, and footsteps, and the sound of Jessie being stubborn. She sat for a while, trying to process what was going on. For a start she wasn't lying down anymore, but she wasn't supporting herself either, and Jessie was sulking a few feet away, which left only one option. Tron was holding her, and he was very, very comfortable. Her leg still throbbed insistently, but it wasn't overwhelming. His thumb ghosted over the skin of her hand and she relaxed against his chest. Out of the corner of her eye, she spied a disk discarded on the floor.

"No luck?" she managed to say.

"No," Jessie didn't even move; her chin on her chest and her legs drawn up like a wall. Great time for a tantrum, Hannah thought to herself. It's not like she's-

"How are you?" Tron interrupted her train of thought, so she blurted out the rest of it anyway.

"In crippling pain," she winced as her leg demanded her attention. "What happened to the plane idea?" she asked, gripping Tron's hand like a vice. There was a dull ringing in her ears that she was sure was a signal she'd pass out again soon.

"I couldn't make it work. I'm so sorry," Jessie had a look on her face like the one thing she wanted to do was break down and cry, but she wouldn't. Hannah sighed. The amount of times Jessie had saved her, both on the Grid and in her life before; there was no way she could stay mad at her, even if she was being a big baby.

She was sure she said things after that, and they were probably great things well worth saying, but they went by in a haze. Her leg throbbed again, and the ringing got louder.

"You guys trying to make a lightjet?" said the noise. "That's pretty heavy stuff for your first try." Hannah agreed with it. She'd never even tried to make anything before; she didn't have a clue about what to do. She might as well have been trying to do a 5000 piece puzzle without any idea as to what the picture was meant to be. The noise hummed to itself for a little bit, like it'd lost its train of thought. "Well, I can give you a few pointers." It buzzed, "Here's what you need to do-"

And Hannah did as she was told. She activated the disk and felt around for the right code. It was somewhere close by, buried in the rubble, a lightjet ruined in some long lost war that she was able to put back together, with the instructions of the noise.

As the light faded and the jet was revealed, sleek and whole on the ground before them, Hannah smiled, a little bubble of pride filling her up.

"Ah," she said. "Good," The noise faded to nothing before she had time to wonder where it was coming from, but out of the corner of her eye she saw something fluttering away, like a little white butterfly.

Suddenly exhausted, she let her head fall back onto Tron's chest and she slept.

The black and white movie was playing again. Rocks flickered by on the sputtering film reel, lights rolled lazily over slow waves and a huge pillar in the distance got miles closer each time she blinked. Tron was at the helm of the lightjet, his intense eyes fixed on that tower. She couldn't see Jessie, but she could hear her, shuffling uncomfortably in the back seat.

They were finally going home. If she felt any better about it she thought she'd burst. No more constant threat of death, no more fighting, no more pain from a place that didn't know what morphine was- she couldn't wait. The pillar got closer and she was on the edge of sleep again when something hit her like a tonne of bricks.

If she left the Grid, she'd be leaving Tron behind. Suddenly she wasn't happy anymore.

She'd be leaving Tron behind here, in this horrible, dark, lonely place. She didn't know how many other programs were still hiding in the woodwork, or plastic, or whatever it was that the city was made of, but she hadn't met a single friendly face apart from him. The thought of him confronted by a horde of them, all chanting that terrible word, deresolution... she bit her lip, her heart sinking like a stone. What if he died? What if he went orange himself and turned into one of them? What if he killed them all and was left here completely alone?

There was no one taking care of the system. Tron had been all by himself before, but this was different, she knew he was there now, a real person, not just a faded face on a billboard. She groaned, remembering it. If she left him alone how could she ever forgive herself, especially when his face was plastered practically at eye level from her bedroom window?

"Tron," she said softly. She felt Jessie jump in the back; she obviously hadn't been expecting any conversation. Tron didn't flinch.

"Yes?" he replied.

"I'm a User, and I can come into your world, here in this computer," she said. "Could you come back with me, into mine?"

"Hannah! What the hell?" Jessie interjected angrily.

"I'm not sure," Tron answered, ignoring Jessie. "It's been tried once before, but I didn't see how it turned out. I believe it's possible though."

"Hannah, you are not thinking of taking him with us," Jessie exclaimed. "No way,"

"I said could," Hannah said defensively. "I just wanted to know if it could be done,"

"Yeah, so you could take your white knight back with you. Kid, you're transparent!" Jessie retorted.

"It's not like that," Hannah said miserably, her leg twinging. Jessie frowned.

"Trans-pa-rent," she repeated slowly, "look, we're just going to get ourselves home and then that's it; we're not coming near this place again, not ever."

"Speak for yourself," Hannah retorted.

"No way, you're not coming back to this place on your own, it's too dangerous. Besides, how do you think you're going to get up and down all those steps at Flynn's without me, huh? Unless you're going to cut someone else in on the deal." Jessie scoffed. Hannah let out a frustrated sigh.

"I guess you're right," she said meekly, staring at her hands. They were pale and shaking, but in a moment they were clenched into fists. "But I'll find a way somehow, even if you won't help me,"

"Oh for Gods sake!" Jessie spluttered. "Why would you even want to come back?"

"Why are you getting so angry about this?" Hannah dodged.

"Because you're being an idiot! We won't be coming back here, we can't take him with us and we won't be taking him with us." Jessie huffed. "Haven't you ever seen Stardust?"

"No," Hannah frowned. "What's that got to do with anything?"

"Look, it's a book about a guy who found a star, and it was a person," she started.

"Still not seeing what that has to do with us," Hannah interrupted.

"Lemme finish. Anyway, there was this wall. He wanted to take the star over the wall, back to his world and do you know what would happen if he took her there?"

"What?" Hannah asked. He got the feeling she wouldn't like the answer.

"It wouldn't be a person anymore, just a hunk of rock. What if Tron got out of the computer and turned into a pile of circuits or something?" She sighed, "That's not even getting into the logistics of it. You take him out of the system, what then? He doesn't have a name, an age – and what if he doesn't age at all- he doesn't have a social security number or a passport. Do you get where I'm going with this?"

"But I-"

"Don't want him to be alone," Jessie finished.

"You're going to tell me he doesn't have feelings again?" Hannah sniped. Jessie shrank back a bit.

"That's not the issue," she said defensively. "But think about this if you're so worried about his feelings. What's a cage? Is it being by yourself in a place like this, or is it being trapped in a room in a world you can never explore?"

The cockpit was silent after that. Tron watched Hannah out of the corner of his eye as she slumped back into her chair, defeated. He didn't know which cage would be worse. He hated this system, the failure that he, Flynn and CLU had made and destroyed, but would the User world be any better? He'd talked to Flynn many times about it, curious as to what Users did when they weren't creating. Flynn had been quiet for a while the first time he'd asked, wondering how best to describe it to a program. 'Chaotic' was the word he'd eventually used.

"Well," Flynn had said. "It's certainly different to this place. There are some similarities, Users have jobs, tasks they have to do, just like programs, but for the most part it's a huge mess of people trying to do whatever it looks like they should be doing."

He'd told him other things, about how some Users were good, others were bad and most of them were both, about life, death and love. Tron found himself agreeing with Flynn though, it did sound chaotic, so much so that CLU had made that world his target after taming the Grid.

In fact, CLU had been sure he could do it, transfer a program from the Grid to the User world. He'd been willing to play his hand, to cross over with his army, because he was so sure. And what had become of Quorra, the little ISO? The more he thought about it the more he was sure that it was at least possible he could leave.

He swept the lightjet around a tower of rock, the portal creeping closer every second. But then, that was assuming that the portal was open at all.

They landed gently on a flat outcrop near the top of the pillar. Tron lifted Hannah out of the craft and she hung her arms weakly around his shoulders, her head resting in the crook of his neck. He was about to head off towards the stairs when he heard Jessie let out a low whistle.

"Have you seen this?" she called out. Tron made his way over, careful not to jolt the fragile girl in his arms. It didn't take him long to see what Jessie was talking about. Just a few feet away and barely hidden by a glassy looking boulder was another lightjet, larger and hugely damaged. Tron faltered, remembering the people who'd used it, and how he had been Rinzler one moment and Tron the next, fighting for control in his own body. Mostly he remembered the disappointment on Flynn's face, the last time he'd ever seen him.

"Tron?" Hannah asked from his arms. Her breath tickled his ear and he snapped out of the memory.

"It's the lightjet Flynn, Sam and Quorra used to escape," he said. He held Hannah a little tighter and turned away from the jet, walking towards the stairs again.

"Do you remember that I told you I wanted to hear your story sometime?" she asked quietly. Tron nodded. "We've got time,"

"No, we don't," he told her, and she flinched in his arms. "It's not a good story." He continued. Hannah leant into him again as they started up the steps.

"Another time," she said agreeably. Tron didn't reply.

They climbed for less than ten minutes. The steep steps levelled out to a platform and then to the remains of a bridge. Hannah remembered it from the recording they'd watched on Flynn's disk. This was when Flynn and CLU had faced off, and ultimately destroyed each other. That wasn't the first thing on her mind though.

"Hey, Tron, what's this portal supposed to look like?" Jessie said lowly. Tron looked from her to the end of the platform.

"It's like a pillar of light, wide enough to hold about two people. That's what transmits the data from this world to the User world." He said. Hannah looked around and saw Jessie pacing to the end of the ruined bridge and back.

"Call me blind, but I'm not seeing one of those around here." She said. Hannah bit her lip. Tron walked to the edge of the bridge and put Hannah down gently. Standing next the red headed woman, he said,

"That's because it's not there. The portal is closed."

He should have expected what happened next. As he turned towards Hannah, Jessie punched him in the face. He stumbled back, eyes widening as he nearly lost his balance and tumbled over the edge of the bridge. Jessie grabbed hold of him and screamed wildly in his face, swinging him around as she punched him again.

"Jessie stop!" Hannah yelled from the floor, pushing herself onto her front and lifting herself onto her forearms. "JESSIE!" but Jessie wasn't stopping. She kept hitting him and Tron let her.

"What am I meant to do now!" she screamed at him, spit flying from her mouth. "How the hell do we get home?" She kicked him in the chest, wobbling as she landed back on one foot. Tron took his chance and swept her legs out from under her, slamming her to the floor. He pushed his arm down on her chest so she couldn't get up and got so close to her that they were almost nose to nose.

"You're going to have to stay. The portal is closed." He growled. "There's no way to open it from this side. You're stuck here and you're going to have to deal with it." He let go and she slapped at him, tears dripping from her eyes.

"Why can't I go home?" she sobbed. Tron didn't answer her. He stood up and offered her his hand.

"You ran out of time. Without knowing there was a limit on how long you had to escape, you never had a chance." Jessie smacked his hand away.

"So why did you let us think we did?" she demanded, her face like thunder. "Why did you tell us there was a hope in hell when there wasn't?"

"It wouldn't have stopped you coming here if I did. You'd just have had another reason to tell Hannah not to associate with me." He tried to help her again, but Jessie knocked his hand away and got up by herself. Drawing herself up, she stood before him and looked him dead in the eye.

"You remember what you told me before, that you hate me? Consider it mutual. Hannah wants you to stick around then fine, you stay with her, because hell will freeze over before I spend any time with you that I don't have to." She stormed down the bridge towards Hannah.

"You had a bit of a blow out back there," Hannah said with frown. Jessie didn't answer. "He didn't deserve that."

"Don't you tell me what to do!" Jessie yelled. Hannah rolled onto her back and looked up at her sister.

"I didn't deserve that either," she hissed. Jessie turned away, but the only thing back that way was Tron. Cursing under her breath she sat down next to Hannah, swinging her legs over the side of the ruined bridge.

They sat in silence, gazing into the darkness.

"Sorry," she said eventually. Hannah looked back at her.

"I'll bet you are," she said grumpily. "It's not anyone's fault this happened, so stop acting like everyone's out to get you." Settling her hands on her stomach, she huffed in the air. "You're not to only one stuck in a computer for all time."

"I wonder if Mom and Dad know we're missing yet." Jessie said, running her hands through her hair. Hannah sighed.

"I don't know. That was the first thing I wanted to do when we got back. I wanted to see them,"

"So did I Han. Dad would know what to say, and Mom would be there to comfort us, and she'd stroke my hair," her finger wound into the flame red strands, "and when you got your new wheelchair Dad would wheel you around the block as fast as he could and you'd pretend like it was a rollercoaster, like we did last time." She started pulling on her hair, ripping it out by the roots.

"Jessie, stop," Hannah reached over and took hold of Jessie's arm. "Please, don't, you're hurting yourself." Jessie's hand sank into her lap and she started to cry.

"Hannah, look where we are because of me." She wept.

"I know, it's not like I'm not still mad about that either. Just don't give up. Think about it, we'll be ok. We've got Flynn's disk, we can make ourselves a house, with a pool and everything. You're good at this stuff, we'll learn as we go along."

"But we'll never get home," Jessie said, the tears still falling down her face. Hannah swallowed her own hopeless thoughts and smiled.

"Sure we will. Someone else is bound to find this place, like Sam Flynn or something; Tron said he'd been here before. When they come through the portal, we'll see it open, hop on the lightjet and bam, we'll be home free! I won't even make you pay that stupid $400."

"Seriously?" Jessie said, "That's your idea? Turn this place into Cribs until someone comes through and we hitch a ride out?"

"Why not? Hell we get stuck here long enough and we might get ambitious!" Hannah said with a bitter laugh. "Think less cribs, more Simcity,"

"But I was rubbish at that game. Thinking ahead's not my strong point," Jessie groused. She'd stopped crying though.

"I can plan then. You make stuff, I put it places; we can make the city nice again. I'm thinking water features, high rise buildings and something cultural; like a light up Eiffel tower." She made a triangle with her arms. Jessie burst out laughing.

"And a bit like Venice, with canals and gondolas and stuff," she joked, wiping at her face and sniffling.

"Why not? I'm not going to be satisfied until we've tried all this stuff. We've got all the time in the world," Hannah, the smile on her face a little wider.

Jessie stopped laughing.

"We do, don't we. We might have years in here,"

"Yeah," Hannah agreed. "But what else can we do?"

"I don't know," Jessie pulled herself up. "I'm going to go back to the jet. I need some time alone, just to think about things."

"Alright," Hannah said, "But don't do anything stupid, like pulling all your hair out." She said seriously. Jessie shook her head.

"I won't, promise." She looked back towards the steps. "Do you still need him to carry you?" Jessie asked. Hannah nodded.

"Yeah. I won't be able to put any weight on this damned leg for weeks," she complained.

"You know I'd carry you," Jessie started.

"It's okay." Hannah looked down at her hands. "I'm a bit on the heavy side, that's just how it is." They both looked towards the dark space where the portal was meant to be. There was a pregnant pause, the air thick with word neither woman would say.

"I'm going back down now. I'll see you in a bit," Jessie said finally.

"Okay. I'll see you." Hannah replied, and she watched Jessie until she disappeared down the stairs. Tron watched her go too before coming to join Hannah.

"Shall we go back?" he asked, going to pick her up again. Hannah held up a hand and stopped him.

"No, let's leave it for a bit." She said, "Could you hold me again? I want to sit up," She looked up at him with hopeful eyes.

"Sure," He sat next to her and pulled her upright. She shuffled back into his arms and he wrapped them around her. She relaxed, closing her eyes and letting the nothingness around her feel like peace.

"You're going to stay with us, right?" Hannah asked quietly. Tron nodded against her shoulder.

"My primary imperative is to fight for the Users. I couldn't leave you any more than you could fly." Hannah stiffened slightly.

"If you're only staying because you think you have to, you can leave, I'm not stopping you. I've got Jessie, she can protect me. You can go if you want."

Tron found himself smiling into her hair. Programs and Users might be similar in many ways, but to offer him a choice like that? That was something only a User would ever do. It was an option he'd never have considered asking her for, but she'd given it to him anyway. Two could play that game.

"Do you want me to?" he asked back.

"No," Hannah said quickly, grabbing hold of his arms and holding them tighter around her. "I want you to stay." She swallowed dryly. "I want that very much," Her leg throbbed and she whimpered a little. She managed to shift in his arms so she was facing him and she held onto him tight. He hugged her back.

"Then I'll stay. That's what I want to do," He told her firmly. She gave him a squeeze, pulled back and kissed him lightly on the cheek. Tron paused for a second. He'd only ever kissed someone on the mouth before. Hannah looked shyly at him, her blue eyes shining with the glow from his suit. It was more than just something he'd done before. It was something he wanted to do again. So he did.

~THE END~

...

Or is it?