Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

He doesn’t pay attention to the restlessness, the itch in the back of his mind. He thinks it’s the winds of change pushing him from the largest shareholder to the new face of ENCOM, the wayward son finally stepping into the too-large shoes of his visionary father. He thinks it’s the miracle that is Quorra, watching her wide-eyed awe and wonder at the brand new world around her. He thinks it’s the move from the modified old Dumont shipping containers by the river to a downtown loft, a respectable home for someone to rides an old Ducati to work every morning.

He thinks it’s the nightmares that wracked his nights for weeks and weeks after. How does he move on from the night he found and lost his father? How does he file away the vivid memory of the aged, familiar face staring at him with so much grief and regret, saying his name like he’s an illusion? The lights of TRON City reach for the stormy sky as he takes his first uncertain step on the Grid. Clu laughs at him as the Black Guards haul him away to the lightcycle arena, his father’s voice echoing around the walls.

“I’m not your father, Sam.”

He’ll wake up soaking in sweat, sheets tangled around his legs, and with Marvin sitting at the foot of the bed, cowering and wagging his tail uncertainly. He'll get up and limp to the bathroom to splash cold water on his face and neck, stare down at the porcelain bowl while water dripped from the tip of his nose and his chin. Then he’ll look up at his reflection.

He always shivers at the fear in his eyes.

He busied himself with studying ENCOM the company inside and out, overhauling it from the top down, and diving into the work his father left lying around his old office above the arcade. He ventured downstairs once or twice but he never stayed for long and he never touched the glassy table with the running clock, skirted around the humming drives while filching yellowed manila folders and the yellowed map tacked to the wall.

Nothing he looked at could tell him what Flynn meant when he said that Quorra could change the world.

Sam smiled at the awe on Quorra's face the first time she saw the sun, laughed the first time Quorra yawned, had a beer, had coffee, had juice, had a cheeseburger, went shopping, rode a glass elevator, learned that Jules Verne had been dead for over a century, had a go at the old arcade game machines, went to the zoo and saw flamingos. He smiled as she complained about the unnecessary details in a typical User’s life, from flossing and rinsing with mouthwash to the necessary etiquette involved in interacting with Users like ENCOM's new board of directors, and tried valiantly to explain how a string of words can mean ten different things because definitions and intent can't be coded. He hugged her when she said she missed the Grid and her fellow ISOs, held her close while she cried into his shoulder and soaked the fabric through with hot tears. When she talked about the cycles she spent with Flynn, he withdrew deep into his mind and told himself that jealousy was unbecoming.

Sometimes she’d notice his silence and take his hand in both of hers. “He always talked about you, Sam. He told me so much about you and, well, sometimes I see that in you. Sometimes I see that - that kid he described.” She’d rub her thumb over the faint white scars on his knuckles, relics from the motorcrossing days that Sam would never be able to tell his father. “He always said he’d give up everything - and I mean everything - for one more day with you.”

He’d look down at their linked hands, turn his over, lace their fingers together, and swallow hard.

“Yeah.”

In those moments he’d feel the shape and the weight of the microchip resting against his collarbone, and pretend that in some way his father was still with him.