Your thoughts aren’t quite There. They’re pieces, fragments, and right when you think you can focus on one, it seems to simply dissipate.
You remember—mostly. You’re Kevin Flynn. Clu’s in you, somewhere. The two of you had merged during reintegration, and it strikes you now that maybe all these pieces and fragments aren’t all yours. It makes… sense. It makes things focus, just a bit.
You don’t remember when it had happened. How many cycles since reintegration, since—oh, yes, since Sam and Quorra escaped? How many cycles since you’d seen your son for the first time in twenty years? Perhaps for the last time, too? It had never been easy to read the passage of time on the Grid. Now, with the Grid in so many pieces, it feels impossible.
Your only companion is the Sea of Simulation—soothing, ever-present, rolling seemingly endlessly—until it unceremoniously spits out a new one. A program—helmeted, lights a steady white, unmoving—
Tron.
You rush over, reach out, make the helmet retract. And it makes you pause—Tron looks exactly as he did the day of the coup. His face is smooth, ageless. And maybe that shouldn’t shock you as much as it does, but the things that have happened in the last thousand or so cycles make it feel like an eternity has come and gone. Seeing Tron like this is too much like looking at a memory.
You lose track of time; it’s not like you have much else to do. You siphon energy into Tron, bit by bit, and watch over him, contemplate, try to keep your thoughts straight and coherent and time a progressive line.
Eventually, Tron opens his eyes.
And the first thing he says is, “Flynn…?”
And it takes a moment—quick, brief, like a snap in empty space—for you to remember yet again that that is, in fact, who you are.
And before you can respond, Tron closes his eyes and enters sleep mode again.
The next time, Tron seems more prepared. He sits up with a groan and looks out at the sprawling ocean of code. (Later on, when you sit together on the shore, Tron will turn to you and say, “I think part of me’s still in there.” Cryptic, but neither of you knows the effects of being in the Sea of Simulation so long.)
“Tron,” you say, and Tron finally looks at you.
“Flynn—Flynn, I’m sorry. I—I’m sorry. I’m so sorry—”
“Tron,” you say again, firmer this time, and take him by the shoulders. “Don’t. Don’t apologize for anything. None of it’s your fault.”
“But I—I failed my directive. I failed y—”
You pull Tron into an embrace then, tight, and you hear Tron choke back emotion, everything he’s wanted to say for one thousand cycles. And Tron hugs you back, hands fisting into your robes and face burying into your neck. And you stay there for as long as both of you need to.
The pieces that aren’t you are angry. Furious. They see Tron, Clu’s failure, their imprisonment in their own creator, and rage.
Now that you can put a feeling to these pieces—a name to them even—it’s easier to make sense of your own thoughts. Of yourself. It’s easier to quiet them down, ignore them, and the next time you wake up, it’s like everything within you clicks into place.
Tron’s a few feet away. He’s standing guard, but he breaks formation and approaches, kneels next to you, when he notices you’re awake.
“How are you feeling?” he asks.
And you reply, “Better.”