NECESSARY CONTEXT FOR THIS FRAGMENT:
Tron is already in a bad mood, following various confrontations with Yori about what he's doing to/about Rinzler. There's a lot of tension among the admins about the prospective return of the ISOs. A couple parties want to re-poison the sea and just stop it from happening. A couple others, notably my OC Radi and Yori, think that's the most atrocious thing ever. Paige literally took off, babbling about needing a "second opinion" if "I can find him" thus ending her cameo, at least for the moment. YAY PLOT TENSION.
Rinzler pushed a very, very serious button at some point in this exchange. Probably something along the lines of: "Your kind could be born broken." [IE ISOs]/ "Broken like you?" at which point Tron flips, starts demanding that Rinzler recall his various crimes. Emphasis on "Rinzler's" crimes. And then something along the lines of "How about I remind you?"
We go from there.
Rinzler
I am usually so good at pain.
But this time it all hurts in a way that I can barely stand, probably something to do with what he did to my disc the last time. My filters are gone. I am a broken-ended circuit, raw and smoking and exposed.
He cuts me open all the time.
But he usually leaves my face alone. Leaves my head alone. Usually he baits me into resisting him, uses self-defense as his excuse, or drains me to nothing and kicks me around the floor awhile, furious over the answers I don't have, but that's all. That's the end of it.
Not this time.
This time it's too much for him. My willing silence pushes him too far.
He pulls my head back, grabbing me by my hair. He does that a lot.
"Give me one reason why I shouldn't just kill you."
"Because you can't."
You aren't strong enough. You couldn't kill me any more than you could kill yourself.
I'm a poor substitute for the thing he hates the most.
His reply to this accusation is to drive the edge of his disc into my head, slicing a long line across my scalp, down my forehead, following the circuit there as if he intends to cut it out of my skin . . .
Like I used to do.
Clu liked this technique when it came to torturing ISOs. I used it all the time.
My head feels like it's splitting in two.
I remember how they writhed. It took three guards to hold down even the weakest of them when I did this. Now I know why. Skin-circuits, lightlines, whatever you want to call them . . . it's like having internal circuits on the outside. They are so sensitive. Vulnerable.
His disc…. He must be up to his wrist in my head. It feels like he's sawing through the back of my skull from the inside. I expect that, in a moment, the blade will also emerge from between my eyes. It feels like it is, must be, he must be slicing my head in half, splitting it down the middle, forcing disc blade through compacted pixels and hair and skin and—and—
Every system I have shorts at once. I swear I can see the light of his disc inside of my head, feel the heat behind my eyes, as I peel apart down the middle . . . I can't breathe past the agony, and I am numb everywhere except for my imploding, butchered head . . .
And there is this horrible noise.
Louder than the burning, sparking sound of a shorting circuit, reverberating off the walls, this awful, awful noise that sounds exactly like my voice.
Tron
When I start in on that circuit in his head, he freezes for a moment.
I hope you're remembering.
This used to be his favorite form of torture; it only seems fair that he should get to try it for himself, after all.
But then he starts screaming.
. . .
Warning—
Reevaluating…
I have heard him groan before. I have seen him wince and then look away because he hates for anyone, especially me, to see his emotions plastered all over his face. I have watched him bite back pain with such force that he breaks some of his own teeth. But he never says a word, and he never, ever screams.
All I'm doing is putting the very edge of my disc to the circuit on his head, just tracing it, but to hear him now you'd think I'd cut his head in half.
He'll hate himself for it, when this is over. He hates feeling exposed, and there are few ways he can be more exposed than this. There is no helmet to hide under, nowhere else to go, no way to stop his own voice as it rings out in agony, reverberating off the walls of his sound-proof cell.
I don't even have to move my disc. The heat alone is painful, apparently.
His expression is so twisted he doesn't look like himself anymore.
Users, for once he doesn't even look like me. The circuits I haven't turned into a streak of wounded, broken data, on his cheeks, are distorted due to the violence of his expression. His eyes are shut so tightly it's as if someone sealed them closed. It's appalling, really.
I let go of his hair, and pull my disc away.
He collapses forward, instantly silent, doubled over at the waist with a hand clamped over his mouth. He is shaking despite his obvious efforts not to, and he doesn't move, doesn't blink, while I open up the contents of his disc to cover up the evidence of the wound. This is between us, and I don't need the lack of approval for these kinds of techniques the others will share to get in my way.
He says nothing.
Despite the jumble of words in my head, neither do I. I turn and walk to the door, pressing a hand to the sensor on the wall as I approach. It recognizes me as always, and lets me out.
I turn to look at him before I go, morbidly curious. He is still on his knees on the floor, doubled over at the waist with his hand pressed firmly to his mouth, a mix of shock, horror, shame, and something else I can't read in his sea-blue eyes. It might be guilt. It might be vulnerability. It might be memory. Whatever it is, I leave him alone with it.
As I walk away he deflates, bending forward till his forehead is against the floor, the hand not over his mouth clutching the back of his head through his dark hair.
