AN: I don't own TRON/TRON: Legacy or any of the characters contained therein; Disney does.
Life's Work
By The Lady Razorsharp
In a place where speed was all, and time was measured in whisper-thin slices, Flynn sometimes found it ironic that here, he had learned to be still.
In the Real World, he had always been in motion; always needing something to do. His mother had called it 'itchy fingers,' and kept a supply of strong glue in the house to rescue whatever treasured knickknack that had succumbed to his ministrations. Putting things together, taking them apart, destroying, rebuilding, destroying again—it wasn't just something he did, it was who he was.
He smiled thinly to himself, his bearded face creasing the barest amount in the twilight gloom. He supposed he had always had—what did the doctors call it?—ah, yes, attention deficit disorder. Easily distracted. Restless. Impulsive. He'd managed to infuriate his teachers while simultaneously taking their collective breath away. His parents, grateful for the scholarship he'd earned, had turned him loose on Cal Tech and breathed a sigh of relief.
He'd have almost believed he had ADD, if the restlessness hadn't been cured by what he'd discovered in those years. Outside the labs and the classrooms, he was still 'In Like Flynn', the life of the party, the crazy guy riding the rattletrap motorcycle, always with some giggling girl wrapped around him. Inside the classrooms, though, all the distraction fell away until his focus was so intense that he sometimes forgot to breathe.
In those days, he'd discovered that he could talk to machines. He befriended them, and could coax them to do his bidding when everyone else had long thrown their hands up in defeat. Pretty soon, he discovered that machines could not only talk, they could sing, and they sang their songs for him.
Then it was time to graduate and enter into the Real World. Time to grow up, cut his hair, get a real job—except Walter Gibbs, who'd been one of his professors at Cal Tech, stepped in and claimed Flynn for ENCOM. Gibbs, a fellow knickknack breaker in his youth, knew exactly what he was seeing in Flynn, and wrangled an interview with the suits he'd given the admin side of his business to. Actually, Flynn had heard that Gibbs told them they'd be 'damned fools' if they didn't hire him, but he'd never asked the old man if it was true.
At ENCOM, Flynn felt like Peter Pan. He never did grow up, never did cut his hair, and what he did was too much fun to ever call it a 'job'. Working in the ENCOM system made Flynn feel as if he'd gone from leading a glee club to directing a heavenly chorus, such were the machines that sang for him. He'd even loaded the chess program he'd put together onto the mainframe, and when the rest of the building slept, he and the computer pitched battle after battle against each other long into the night.
And then…he'd met Lora.
Flynn touched the surface of the shimmering liquid that flowed in its bed before him, and Lora's features swam into view. Not Dr. Baines, hiding behind her glasses and her Ph.D., but Lora, she of the sparkling eyes and quick smile. Lora was an attractive woman, and her wit and intelligence made her all the more magnetic to him. He loved to hear her laugh, and found himself acting the part of a clown—not much of a stretch, he admitted—just to see her smile.
The features in the pool blurred for a moment, replaced by the sleek, lithe form of Yori, the design program that had helped him and Tron destroy the Master Control Program. He closed his eyes, remembering the moment he'd kissed her on the bridge of the solar sailer. Even now, after all the time that had passed, the memory still electrified him.
His smiled widened. At the time, the kiss had truly electrified both of them, engulfing their bodies in pulses of blue flame. When they'd parted, Yori's ersatz breath was coming in quick gasps, and her luminous eyes were dancing in the darkness. He'd wanted to stay with her, but looking at Yori when she was with Tron—well, Flynn knew when he'd been beat. And so it had proved, in the Other World as well as the Real World.
Neither Tron nor Alan had held his attraction against him, though. Both became his friends, and after the MCP was just so many dying electrical impulses, both had helped him shape the world that was left into something more than any of them could have ever dreamt. Yori and Lora had helped too, adding details with their characteristic flair and working tirelessly to see everything come to fruition. He had found he owed Lora a great debt, for it was her life's work—the laser array that she and Walter had created to digitize solid matter—that had made it possible for him to even enter the Other World.
He closed his eyes wearily, regret making him ache down to his bones. He supposed he ought to have listened to them-both of them. Lora, who chided him for spending too much time on the Grid and not enough with Sam, and Yori...
...Yori had been wary of Clu from the moment Flynn had introduced them. She tolerated the User's avatar because of Tron, who saw Clu as an important part of what Flynn was trying to accomplish, but Flynn knew she didn't like him. When Flynn caught Clu staring at Yori as she discussed the new design for the solar sailer with Tron, the predatory look in the avatar's eyes made him want to derezz the guy on the spot.
Flynn let out a mirthless chuckle. He'd thought he could keep an eye on Clu. As in the Real World, his work had stolen his attention, and everything happened when he wasn't looking.
In the end, when Clu had ascended to his highest functions, had realized all the potential he'd been created with, and had brought the system to its knees in a cataclysm that made the iron-fisted reign of the MCP pale in comparison, he had come for Yori. He'd taken what he wanted from her, and left her to dissipate in a hail of shimmering silicon.
Having long progressed beyond his creator's cleverness, Clu had become shrewd, patient, and ruthless. As he knew it would, the taking of Yori had enraged Tron, and from there it was an easy step from battle to murder. Rinzler rose from the ashes of Tron's consciousness, born of pain and betrayal.
If Flynn had managed to get back to the Real World, he could have ended it so easily. Just a few keystrokes and Clu would be so much electronic trash in the Recycle Bin. If only…
He opened his eyes, and realized that his cheeks were wet.
Lora's words echoed back to him: "This laser is my life's work. Don't spill anything."
I have, he thought, turning his gaze to the view of the Grid sprawling endlessly beyond his window. I've spilled everything all over the place, and now I can't clean it up.
-End-