TRON Week Prompt Day 7: Glow
On the End of Line Club Discord a few weeks ago, we brainstormed some ideas to celebrate TRON’s 41st anniversary (which is TODAY, July 9). Someone came up with a list of prompts for the week preceding, so here is my response to the seventh and final prompt.
I could not come up with a good idea for a drabble for this one, so.... I wrote a whole little fic instead. This is an Uprising fic, set sometime after the end of the show (which I am STILL not over). Paige finds out that Tesler's been lying to her, and comes to the only program she can trust--Beck.
~~~
Beck lowers his disc when he opens his apartment door and sees Paige standing there, but only a little. He wipes the initial shock off his face and says coolly, “Commander Paige. To what do I owe the house call?”
She only glances at him, her gaze much more focused on the hallway behind her, back towards the lifts. Her disc is in one hand, her cloak still rippling around her shoulders. “I—I didn’t know where else to go,” she says, looking at him for just a moment. “I understand if—can I come in?”
His grip on his disc relaxes minutely, but he does not lower it. “That depends,” he says, and he sees, suddenly, the fear in her eyes. But what could she be so afraid of? “Were you followed?” he asks.
Paige finally meets his eyes. “I know how to lose a tail,” she says, her eyes flashing. “Are you letting me in or not?”
This could be a mistake, he thinks. A trap set by Tesler or Clu. But she’d said she didn’t know where else to go. And she is afraid like he’s never seen her. Before he overthinks it, he steps aside and waves her in. Half the tension in her shoulders relaxes, and she hurries inside, her cloak brushing his shoulder as she passes. Beck hits the panel beside the door to close it, and hits a code sequence to lock it as well. Then he turns to Paige.
“So, what brings you here?” he asks, placing his disc back on its mount.
She’s pacing now, still holding her disc, her cloak fluttering behind her. “I was lied to,” she says, as if this explains everything. “For—for cycles. By someone I thought I could trust.” She stops pacing and meets his eyes. “Can I trust you? You’re the only program I could think of who hasn’t lied to me, or tried to kill me, or—” She breaks off, reaching up to cover her face with her free hand.
And then Beck sees it—the tracery of fine red lines along her wrist, emanating from a blue-gray patch of injury at the crook of her elbow. “You’re hurt,” he says, stepping forward, concern in his voice even though he knows he should be cautious.
Paige glances at her arm as though she’s just noticed it. “It’s fine,” she says quietly. “Nothing I can’t fix.”
Beck’s gaze goes from her wrist to her eyes. “But… who did that to you? The Renegade, or…?”
He only brought up the Renegade to throw her off, and because he knows how much she hates him without knowing it’s him. But Paige laughs. It’s a hollow laugh, mirthless, but it is a laugh.
“No,” she says. “That, I could almost understand from him. It was… General Tesler. He did it, and… Clu watched.” Her expression hardens for a nano, and then she sighs, her shoulders slumping. “I thought I knew what I was fighting for. I thought—” She shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter.”
Doesn’t it? Beck thinks. Out loud, he says, “What do you need from me?”
“Somewhere to lay low, so I can heal my arm,” she replies. “I’ll be out of your way before next millicycle starts, I promise. And if Tesler’s guards come—”
“I didn’t see anything,” Beck finished. “Got it.”
For the first time since her arrival, Paige smiles. “Thank you,” she says, and she sounds like she means it. Then she opens her disc in her hands and begins the work of repairing her own code.
Beck watches her warily, unsure if he should ask her any more questions. He wants to know why Tesler injured her, why Clu, whom she was so proud to serve, watched on. He wants to know how she escaped them both and made it here. And he needs to know if she has any hopes of returning to Clu’s army, or if that bridge has been burned so thoroughly that she cannot return.
Paige drops her disc suddenly, and only a quick move by Beck keeps it from clattering to the floor. He straightens, holding the disc flat between them. “You all right?” he asks.
“I’m losing strength in this hand,” she says, clumsily flexing her injured wrist. “Can you hold my disc? I need to make a few more adjustments, they just require a fine hand.”
Beck nods. “Anything you need.”
Their gazes lock for a moment, and then Paige returns her attention to her code. Her good hand is deft as she fixes the injuries in her arm. Beck doesn’t have the slightest clue what exactly she’s doing, but eventually she seems satisfied and closes out the disc. He hands it over, and she replaces it on her back, closing her eyes as the adjustments sync.
“Better?” he asks.
“I will be once the repairs complete,” she answers. She steps past him, retracting her cloak as she glances around the apartment. “Do you have anywhere I can sit down? I haven’t stopped since—”
“Right through here,” he says, leading her into the apartment’s other room, where a pair of low couches face each other beside a window overlooking the harbor. “If you need to lay down, I can recline one,” he adds, glancing back her.
“No, thank you,” she replies. “Can you opaque that window?”
“Sure.” He crosses the room and does so, and Paige walks in and sits the moment the glass darkens. “Can’t be too safe, huh?”
“Something like that,” she says. She tilts her head back and sighs as she closes her eyes. Beck watches her from the window, his gaze lingering on her injured arm, which is pulsing blue and slowly repairing itself. Again, he wonders: how did she get away? He can guess what caused the injury—Tesler’s in-built hand weapons. But he’s been in that vise-like grip before, and he knows how it feels, and how lucky he was that Able got him out of that tight spot. So how is Paige sitting here now, instead of crumbled to cubes at Tesler and Clu’s feet?
Before he can overthink it, he says, “Can I ask you something?”
Paige opens her eyes. “Depends on what you’re asking.”
“I just… want to understand something.” He leans against the wall, folding his arms. “Why are you on the run from Tesler and Clu? The last time we really talked, you seemed… happy, working for them. So…”
“So what changed?” She meets his eyes; he nods. “What changed is that Tesler lied to me. About something important. And if I hadn’t been so—” Paige breaks off, looking away from Beck. “It doesn’t matter.”
He wants to go to her, to comfort her, but he stays where he is against the wall, letting the silence stretch between them. After a micro or more passes, he says quietly, “From where I’m standing, it seems like it matters to you a lot.”
Paige doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t look at him. But as the silence grows, she leans forward, he head bowed, her shoulders slumped.
Beck straightens up and takes the seat opposite her, on the other couch. He doesn’t want to pry too much, but he can tell there’s something she won’t say. Something more than Tesler simply lying to her, something that might explain why a medical program became an army commander, and why an army commander might defect and call on a mere mechanic because she can’t trust anyone else. And it may be the same reason a mere mechanic decided to stand up against an occupying army, and become a persistent thorn in its side.
Still quiet, still gentle, he says, “Will you tell me about them?”
Her head shoots up, and she glares at him through narrowed eyes. “About who?”
He meets her glare calmly and spreads his hands. “Whoever it was that you lost,” he says.
Paige holds his gaze in silence for nearly a micro before she bows her head again, covering her face with her good hand. She takes two shaky breaths, then says, her voice soft, “Their names were Rox and Sy. They were my best friends. We started a medical center together. We… we teased each other. Laughed together. And I believed Tesler when he said the Isos killed them. I believed him,” she continued, her voice growing in volume. “And I worked for him. For cycles! For cycles I worked for the program who ordered them derezzed and I—” She brings her fist down on her knee with a thump. “I can’t believe I was so naïve. I can’t…” With another uneven breath, she shakes her head, her shoulders slumping further as she leans back in her seat.
Beck stares at her, not sure at first what to say. He leans toward her, his wrists on his knees as he thinks. He knows the grief he felt (still feels) after Bodhi was derezzed; he imagines Paige is feeling some of the same grief anew for her friends. So he reaches out toward her, offering his hand in the space between them. “I know this won’t really make you feel better,” he says, “but I’m sorry about your friends.”
Paige turns her attention back to him. She stares at his hand, and then at him. “You’re the first person to say that to me,” she says slowly. “Tesler didn’t even… Thank you, Beck.” And she reaches out and takes his hand in hers.
As she grips his hand, her circuits flicker one by one, the red light going out and being gradually replaced by a pale white glow. Paige smiles at him, and after a moment, Beck smiles back. “Thank you,” she says again.
“Of—of course,” he replies. “You’re not going back, then?”
Paige’s smile turns sly. “No,” she says. “But you can be sure I’ll make Tesler sorry he ever lied to me.”
Beck chuckles. “I believe you,” he says.
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happiness hit her like a bullet in the back
from my post about song prompts - for @munich-live!
I got "Dog Days Are Over" by Florence + the Machine. This drabble is about Paige finding comfort in pain and not wanting to accept the unconditional love she is given.
Happiness hit her like a bullet in the back
Struck from a great height
By someone who should have known better than that-
"Dog Days Are Over" - Florence + the Machine
It was easier to wallow than to accept. Accepting meant vulnerability, though she had no reason to believe that vulnerability would be exploited. Happiness was right there, waiting for Paige to accept it, but it meant leaving behind the comfort of hurt and self-pity. She had emotional wounds, but kept picking at them so they never healed.
Beck noticed how Paige clung to her pain. It was probably a side effect of working with such hateful programs - you learned to focus on the negative and to let things fester. Hate was a powerful motivator, after all.
He tried to encourage her healing. He took her places, held her, and offered a listening ear. But she was holding herself back. His offers to let her talk about it were met with a “not right now.” There never was a right time.
Paige nearly resented Beck for how kind he was to her. She didn’t deserve it, and the attempts to help her heal felt like an attack on her emotional crutch. She would lash out at him, angry that he cared so much about her when she was unworthy. She always apologized after, but she noticed how Beck began to withdraw from her, and that felt even worse.
She had to accept his love and be vulnerable. Paige crawled next to him in his bed and looked at him, scared but eager.
“Can we talk?” she asked.
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