Sam walks into the apartment (new, fully furnished, thanks being CEO of a multinational corporation) and immediately hears sobbing.
“Quorra? Q?” He steps gingerly into the living room and finds her sitting in front of the TV, the credits of a jaunty holiday special flashing definitively on the screen, and large streaks of black mascara running down her face. “Oh, man, let me get you a rag or something.”
“No, no, it’s okay,” Quorra says through her tears. “I’ll just—oh. Right.”
“Yeah,” Sam says, “no editing your code out here. I’ll get you that rag.”
He comes back with a damp hand towel, replies to her thanks with a, “Yeah, of course,” and sits next to her as she wipes at her face.
“It tastes bad,” Quorra says with a hiccuping sob. “The mascara. It tastes bad. I’m never using it again.”
“That’s…” Sam pauses to find a good word. “Fair.”
Quorra’s sobbing eventually becomes sniffling. The channel moves onto a Frasier rerun. Sam reaches for the remote.
“Wait, don’t change it,” Quorra quickly says. “I wanna see what crimes against decency he commits.”
Sam pulls his hand back and lets the episode run. “So… are you okay?” he says. “Do you wanna talk about it?”
“I—I don’t know,” she says with a wobbly grin. “It seems so silly—”
“Hey, I promise it isn’t,” he says. “Everything out here’s still new for you. Whatever it is, it isn’t silly.”
She smiles gratefully at him. “Thanks, Sam. It’s—well, it’s… it’s…” Her eyes start to water. “It’s Frosty the Snowman.”
He blinks. Reminds himself that it’s not silly, at all. And says, keeping his voice even, “What about Frosty the Snowman?”
“Well—his entire existence,” Quorra replies with a sniffle. “He isn’t meant to be alive. He’s made of some of the most ephemeral material in the world—and he knows it. He knows his existence is an abomination. He knows that the slightest change in temperature could kill him. He knows he’s doomed and is burdened with that knowledge from birth—and yet he manages to find joy and happiness and meaning in his fragile little life. Despite everything, he—he—”
Quorra sobs again. She makes sure to catch her tears with the towel before the mascara can run into her mouth. “He knows the world is full of sin and suffering and the inevitability of death, you know?” she says, her voice cracking. “But he chooses to come back every Christmas. He could break out of his cycle of life and death but he chooses to comes back. He’s—he’s like a bodhisattva, Sam.”
“… A what?” Sam says.
“A bodhisattva,” she says again. “Instead of attaining nirvana, he chooses to remain among the other doomed people of the world. He’s free to leave but—but he—Sam, he wants to stay, even knowing everything working against him and the people he loves. He just—he loves being alive, Sam. He loves it so much.”
Sam tries to come up with a response. What he ends up with is, “Yeah. He does.”
They spend a moment in silence. Quorra keeps sniffling as Frasier complains about his dad’s chair yet again.
“See, it was silly,” Quorra finally says.
“What? No—no, it wasn’t,” Sam states. “I’m just. I’ve never heard that sort of deep read of Frosty the Snowman before. You make some good points.”
“Thanks.” She pauses. There are still streaks of black on her cheeks. “You know what? I bet that’s why Frosty exists.”
“So you can overanalyze it?” he teases.
Her chuckle is shaky, but it’s still a chuckle. “No, just… Use—we,” she says, tripping over her own correction, “we… don’t have backups. Like he does. But we know we’re doomed, too. And he shows us that in spite of that, we can have joy. And happiness. And meaning, and friends.” She pauses again, and looks at him. “If I could, though… I’d come back. For this. For you. For… everything.”
Sam looks back at her. He doesn’t want to contemplate his mortality at all, but he thinks… well, the fact that Quorra, despite all she’s been through, sees enough in the world—in him—to consider it worth staying…
Frosty’s got nothing on that, honestly.
“I’d come back for you, too, Q,” he says.
She smiles and leans against him, letting him rest his head on hers, and they share their warmth and affection as Frasier stumbles into yet another of Bulldog’s shenanigans.