(This story takes place sometime roughly after the Tron: Uprising episode "The Stranger," but definitely before "No Bounds".)

Maybe he was getting too old for this.

No, it's not me; it's this damn virus, he insisted to himself.

You sure? His mind betrayed him with uncertainty. You sure you're not just too archaic to know any better?

Tron scrambled down the dimly lit side street, trying to soften his steps, deaden the noise that would give him away to the figures not too far behind him. His pitch-black suit kept him in the shadows, but his sparse circuitry lights gave him away as he ran.

Derezzing them would be the easiest option, but he didn't want to have to resort to that. These were just thugs… desperate thugs, he hoped. Programs that wouldn't normally stoop to this if they didn't have a tyrant over their heads. You'd have to be desperate to try mugging programs after curfew, right?

Keep telling yourself that, his mind icily snarked.

Of all the times for Beck to go to Gallium City. A few cycles after Beck's suspicious failed attempt to go to Gallium for a supply run requested by Able, he left for a second time under Able's urging. Those supplies weren't going to get themselves, after all. Beck was unavailable, and things were still uncomfortable with Able so Tron had kept his distance there too.

Not many options for someone who only knew two other programs.

He cursed under his breath. I could've waited a cycle. I could've sent him here instead of myself. Kept out of harm's way.

It had seemed so easy, a simple run into Argon to secure a new adapter for the healing chamber. Hell, it was even on the side of the city closest to his hideout. Stealing it from the warehouse was the easy part... at least until one of the thugs had gotten wind of it. Unfortunately for Tron, it was during curfew, and the only programs willing to be out during curfew weren't the kinds of programs he wanted to be messing around with right now. At his peak, this would be child's play. But in his current state, with his energy sapping away every milli-cycle he wasn't in his chamber, this had gotten serious.

The alleys were too narrow to use his light cycle, and stepping out into the open would mean he'd have to bare down for a full fight, so he kept at it through the alley, looking for some place to veer off and hide until they passed.

Until he hit a dead end.

He could've sworn that this passageway led to an intersection, but there it was, a wall in front of him as plain as the nose on his face. Did they construct it recently? Was he not thinking straight because of the energy drain?

Not important right now.

He tensed up, as the footsteps grew closer. Four programs spilled into the dead-end, cutting off Tron's only escape route.

"Wow man, you really made us work for it," one of the cockier thugs laughed. He motioned over to a scrappy looking program. "Dabber here caught you stealing some choice stuff from that place near the port." He extended his palm. "Hand it over and you won't get derezzed."

Tron clenched his jaw tight behind his helmet. "I can't do that. I need this."

"That's a shame," the thug replied. "Then we're gonna take it." He paused, the grin growing across his face. "While we're at it, we're gonna take your disc too. I hear they sell well in Purgos."

The disc in Tron's hand flared white. "Come and get it," he snarled dangerously.

In the blink of an eye, the back alley erupted into a blur of bodies, a deadly, messy dance of discs and fists. The thugs weren't especially good at fighting, but they had energy to burn.

Tron didn't.

As the clash went on, Tron managed to deftly dodge several disc swipes, while flipping two of the programs over into the recycle bins off to the side. The cocky thug got an elbow to his face for his trouble. The scrappy one had his legs kicked out from under him by a quick foot sweep.

The thugs regrouped, panting and angrily clutching their discs in haphazard fashion.

Pathetic.

Tron almost chuckled at their ineptness... before he doubled over in pain.

No…

Familiar scars began eating their way across his chest. Despite wearing a helmet, he could feel the burn of the scar on his jaw. It was growing.

Not now-

He collapsed to his knees. The programs straightened up, confused.

"What is that? Is he infected?"

The fight had used too much energy; whatever reserves he had were now spent. He had to get out of here before-

The thugs were visibly frightened by the scarring.

"I don't wanna get infected! Let's just derezz him! What if that shit's contagious?"

"No, y-you don't understand-" Tron tried to explain.

The cocky program stepped forward. "Dabber's right, can't take chances. Sorry man, your game is over."

"N-no…" Tron tried standing up but completely fell to the ground in a heap. He couldn't hold onto his disc, and it clattered noisily below him.

I can't derezz here… I can't…

His vision dimmed and he passed out. The thugs began to swarm in on him.

Just then, the rhythmic sound of footsteps began echoing from the alleyway.

"Stop right there, programs," a booming, low voice called out.

"What?" They stopped short of Tron and turned around.

Mechanical, goose-stepping figures emerged from the alley, filing in and spreading out.

Three of Clu's black guards. Their red-orange circuitry played off of the walls in the dead-end, bathing the space in a red hue. They ominously came to a stop in a line formation.

"Fuck!" Dabber blurted out.

In unison, the black guards removed their discs, as they flared up in succession. The programs' faces went pale.

"You have violated the curfew. You will come with us for re-purposing. Or…" Discs raised up. "You will be derezzed."

Whatever courage the thugs had grown in mistakenly thinking they overpowered Tron instantly disappeared as they panicked, completely forgetting about him and fleeing past the black guards and into the alley and beyond.

"Stop! Submit for re-purposing!" The black guards turned and chased after them, orange discs humming like a batch of mad bees.

The noisy exit of the guards and programs faded into the distance, leaving an unconscious Tron alone on the ground. From chaotic noise to deathly silence.

A few short moments later, a gentle set of steps broke the quiet, as a slender female program carefully entered the dead-end, looking around, as if to confirm she was alone. Her eyes honed in on Tron's crumpled form. She quickly knelt down and checked him over. A mysterious looking program, she thought. Almost all black and I can't seem to get the helmet open. The scars were an eye opener, but she shrugged it off and went about trying to lift him up.

The movement jostled him awake, barely. He was close enough to peer deep into her green eyes, eyes that looked a great deal concerned. For him? For herself? He couldn't tell.

"Hey... hey, are you okay?"

"Who...?" Even with his energy depleted, he still managed to fumble and push away defensively.

"Whoa! Hey, calm down, I'm here to help!" She tried her best to steady him, but it was like trying to herd cats.

The last time someone helped him… Cyrus…

That only made him try to break away harder.

"Hey! Stop! You're going to-"

He pushed himself out of her embrace, but in doing so lost his equilibrium and tumbled badly to the ground. His helmet impacted hard, and everything went black.

Tron came to in a dimly lit room, lying on a comfortable bed. It was a quiet apartment, with large windows covered by drawn blinds. A few beams of light from the street outside trickled in, but otherwise it was a very low-key environment.

Instinctively, his hand whipped to his face, but he realized quickly that his helmet was still on and intact. Slight relief escaped his lips as he sat up slowly.

"Finally awake, are we?" a voice gently inquired from the shadows of the hallway.

Tron prickled with apprehension. He had no idea where he was, and even less about the program behind the voice. All undesirable variables.

"Who's there? ... Who are you?" His tone was affected by his helmet, creating more of a digital snarl to his words than he intended.

The form in the hallway stopped, its blue and white circuitry the only light in the darkened corridor.

"Relax, I'm not here to derez you," the voice continued, sounding a little hurt. "If I was, why would I have saved you?"

The program stepped gradually out of the shadows. Tron's tensed body relaxed a bit in recognition. It was her... the program from the alley. The thin bars of light from the windows trickled across her body as she walked forward into the room, revealing her violet locks and taupe skin. Her light green eyes scanned the space, finally resting upon Tron on the bed.

"What is that?" he barked, pointing at her hands.

She raised an eyebrow, lowering the bowl in her hands a little to show him. "Calm down, I was just trying to help you out." He could see that there was some kind of energy in the bowl, and a compress floating inside it as well.

She chuckled a little. "You really get worked up pretty easily, don't you...? Although from the looks of it," she mused aloud, checking out his full-body black suit, "you certainly have your secrets." No discernible markings or circuitry. A fully opaque helmet. An almost complete absence of light on his suit, except where absolutely needed. He was a veritable shadow on the Grid.

"I don't need your help... I need to get out of here," he snapped back.

She deadpanned, her weight shifting on her hips in a defiant pose. "Look, this act might work with other programs you know, but I wasn't scripted yesterday." She motioned at him with the compress in-hand. "I'm not sure how you're coded, but I can see you're running dangerously low on power. I don't know if your subroutines are a resource hog or what, but you're practically bleeding energy." Her steps grew sterner, more direct as she approached the bed. "You leave now and you'll probably derez in less than a milli-cycle. I saw you; I could've left you to those two-bit thugs. I made a choice to help you."

Tron eased off a bit.

"Look, I get it," she said softly. "It's hard to really trust a program these cycles. Believe me, I... I understand that more than most. But when I saw you getting attacked, it reminded me of something. And I realized I could either walk away and let it happen... or do something about it." She carefully ventured closer to the bed, and sat at the edge of it. "The question now is... will you let me help you?"

Tron leaned back gingerly against the bed's headboard. It was all he could manage. Despite being so weak, his body was still tensed up by instinct; he'd never truly been able to let down his guard anywhere, not even at his hideout. She wasn't lying though, because he knew the virus was well on its way to eating him up; his energy was greatly diminished from the fight and he could feel the scarring worming its way up his jaw again. He didn't have enough time to get back to the hideout on his own before he'd collapse from the lack of power... and probably derez.

He looked down finally, relenting. "All right, fine." Curt.

She raised her eyebrow again, amused. "Oh, what a benevolent guy! Deigning to allow this lowly program to provide succor in times of need!" she teased sarcastically, the air of buffoonery in her voice causing Tron to squirm.

"I-I didn't mean-"

She laughed, like a small cascade of gentle notes. "I'm teasing you, program, that's all ." This one was really wound up, she thought to herself. She wondered if it was by design, or if things had been rough for him. Her smile wilted slightly at the thought. That hit a little too close to home.

Tron saw the smile fall from her face and felt a twinge of guilt.

"It's okay," she said quietly. "I think we've all had bad cycles... I know. I just thought maybe you'd find that a little funny, but I suppose there's not a lot to find funny out there anymore." She cleared her throat and straightened up. "In any case, let's get you some energy, hm?"

She dipped the compress in the glowing blue pool of energy in the bowl, scooping it up in her hand and scooting closer to Tron on the bed. Instinctively, his knees buckled in, as if to protect himself from an attack.

She paused. "You're going to have to remove your helmet though..."

Tron froze. "No, I can't do that."

A frown crinkled her otherwise sleek features. "Okay, Mr. tall, dark, and broody, this is how it's going to go down. You're going to remove that helmet so I can give you energy. You don't seem like a program that just trusts from the get-go, and that's fine... but I need there to be mutual trust here, okay?" She leaned in, staring deep into his obsidian faceplate. "And trust works both ways. I put my own safety on the line to help you. Can you do the same... and trust me now?"

Silence.

"Please?" Emerald eyes implored him.

This was dangerous, but he wasn't just concerned for himself. If she knew who he was then that would place her in danger, too... But he was out of options.

"Tell me," he said simply, "What's your name?"

She tightened up a little. Clearly she hadn't been asked that in a long time. Her eyes dipped down. You did ask me to trust you, didn't you? Tron thought.

"It's Pandora," she replied at last.

There was a considerable pause, but eventually Tron tilted his head forward, as the plates of his helmet folded in on themselves and retreated inside the neck of his suit. The pitch-black of his suit rippled away as his usual black and white circuitry re-asserted itself.

She almost dropped the wet compress.

There, staring at her, was the face of Tron. His eyes were listless from the strain, but focused on her. The scarring across his face had grown larger, reaching up to his left eyebrow.

"My name is-"

"T-tron..." she exhaled almost breathlessly, her eyes as big as saucers. "I... I thought you were dead? Derezzed?"

"Most programs do," he replied with a rueful smile. He winced and leaned back on the headboard with a groan, holding his midsection.

She regained herself to help ease him down to lay on his back. She swallowed hard, chuckling nervously. "It's not every cycle that you rescue a hero of the Grid, you know." Snapping herself out of it, she carefully pressed the compress against his face. It covered his scar completely, the energy seeping out of it into his mottled skin. He took a breath sharply.

"Ahh! That feels..."

"Sorry, it'll take a little adjustment, but I think this'll be just what you need," she murmured as she dipped the compress into the bowl and then returned it to his face. "This is concentrated energy, not the usual stuff. Got a bit of a kick to it at first."

"How did you...?"

She beamed a proud grin, almost gleeful, like a mischievous child who had snuck from the cookie jar undetected. "Oh I've got my ways," she replied. "I've got... a bit of a talent for acquiring stuff like this. This is the extra potent stuff Tesler's goons like to store at their facilities." She glanced back briefly at the room down the darkened hall. "I've had a few cycles to stock up on it." Her hand had an exquisitely tender touch; he couldn't tell whether it was the energy or her caress that was causing his cheeks to throb. Vaguely self-conscious of his reaction, Tron's eyes darted back and forth from her hand to her face anxiously. He wasn't sure if she noticed.

Pandora, however, was still too preoccupied with elation at her discovery. "You know, my instincts are usually pretty good, but I guess I hit the jackpot this time!" She re-applied a freshly soaked compress. "Just relax, this will probably take a little while... have to make sure to apply this directly to those scars."

Tron nodded uneasily. He didn't generally like being at someone's mercy like this. He'd been on the defensive so long that it was an uncomfortable, alien feeling. Too much could happen too fast. If something went wrong, how quickly could he react? Survival mode slowly started creeping back in, and his body language tensed up.

Pandora could read the conflict on his face. "Hey," she soothed, "It's okay. You're safe here. I know what it's like to need that security." Her hand faltered. "I... I've had a lot of practice being on the run. I've had that feeling." Her eyes fell, staring down at the bowl. "I mean... you probably know that better than any program, right?"

Tron considered her for a moment. "Did you have to run...? ...from Clu?" he asked. His expression was still non-committal, but his voice was apologetic, delicate.

She found it hard to look him in the eyes. "Yeah, you could say that," she replied emptily. Noticing the diminished scar on his cheek, she moved the energized compress to the larger scars on his chest.

There was a long stretch of silence as she worked and re-worked the energy through his scars. Something about her diverted gaze made him all the more compelled to look at her as she did so. I've never seen a program like her. I can't explain it... but there's something, something about her code that seems... different.

The stillness in the air was broken periodically by the gentle splash of the energy in the bowl absorbing into the compress. The process itself took longer than a stint in the healing chamber, but amazingly enough the concentrated energy helped, and after a while the scars had successfully receded enough for Tron to sit upright a bit more solidly. It wasn't perfect, but the drain had subsided enough for him to regain his alertness.

The bowl now empty, Pandora dropped the spent compress into it and checked Tron over.

"Well, that definitely looks a lot better," she mused softly as her fingers brushed past his now miniature jawline scar. Instinctively, his hand came up and clasped hers... not in appreciation, but defensively. The sudden motion frightened her and she snatched back her hand. Her scared face stung him with regret instantly.

"Sorry, I-" they both blurted at the same time. Awkward.

"Sorry," Tron started again, "force of habit."

Pandora waved her hands. "Oh, no no, it's my fault, I'm sorry." Embarrassment colored her cheeks. "With everything you've been through, I don't blame you for wanting boundaries. I have them too, but sort of the reverse I guess." She absently fumbled with the bowl as she put it on a stand near the bed. "It's... " Her eyes were stuck on the bowl, unable to meet his gaze. "It's just that I haven't been able to talk to someone, a real someone, in a very long time." She smiled sheepishly. "I think I'm out of practice."

Tron blinked. In that moment, he was reminded of Beck. It was on more than one occasion that he jokingly reprimanded Tron for his… lack of tact dealing with Beck, his own friend. Yes, Tron was abrasive at times, but he usually felt like he was justified… wasn't he? He frowned a little recalling his spats with Able as well. He'd been on his own for so long, a solitary soldier. A soldier so good at defending himself that his own barbs unintentionally hurt those around him. Was he out of touch? Out of… practice?

"I… think I can understand that," Tron heard himself say. A pang of remorse trickled through him. The stakes are high, he reminded himself. But… Beck's a good kid. And he's trying. I should try harder too. He's sacrificed a lot; I shouldn't discount that. I won't baby him, but… I shouldn't be so cold with him either. He deserves better than that.

Snapping himself out of his thoughts, he turned to regard Pandora. She certainly was an unusual program; she had no love for Clu, was resourceful, and seemed to be very effective in remaining unseen. Tron had been prodding Beck to look for possible allies… maybe he had stumbled onto one himself?

"Have you heard of the Renegade?" Tron ventured.

She squinted for a second and smirked. "Sure, but… the rumor was that the Renegade was you. Is that true?"

In too deep now, not much point in lying about this… "No." He leaned forward a little. "The Renegade and I work separately, but our goals are the same. We're fighting against Clu… someone I'm guessing you don't particularly like."

Pandora's eyes steeled over. "No. That's putting it mildly," she replied with a halfhearted chuckle.

Good.

"The Renegade and I want to do something about that. We want…"

Moment of truth. All in, or not at all.

"We want to start an uprising." His voice dipped low, the purr of his gravelly tones cutting against his words. "But we can't do it with just two programs. We'll need all the help we can get."

To say Pandora looked floored might've been an understatement. Her life had gone from 0 to 600 in a single cycle. Not unlike that cycle that happened way back when…

"Me? In a resistance…?"

Tron nodded. Pandora studied his features. Solid, stoic. There wasn't a lie in there; if there was, it was one hell of a performance. "I-I don't know…"

"You don't have to decide right away, but I want you to think about it," Tron caught himself. Less abrasive. Right. "...Please."

"All right," she acquiesced. "I'll think about it."

Tron smiled. A small, tight smile, but a smile nonetheless. "Great." His body language loosened up a little. "After all, it's not often that I come across someone who has the kind of fighting skills to fend off a gang of programs."

Pandora scratched her chin nervously. "Hah, well, actually… I hate to disappoint you, but there really was no fighting involved at all."

Tron frowned. What? "None? Then how did you deal with those thugs in the alley…?"

She rubbed the back of her neck and sighed slowly. "I guess this was inevitable really, but I probably owe you an explanation, especially since you were passed out."

A keen, quick glint flashed across her green eyes as she blinked.

"Well, we can't all be security programs," she joked lightly, "so I had to… enlist a little help."

"Help?"

"Yeah… sort of," she replied. She raised her hand and waved it back towards the darkened hallway.

On cue, the hall was immediately bathed in light.

Red-orange circuitry light.

Tron froze on the bed, muscles tense. Survival mode screamed in his ears.

Three of Clu's black guards slowly marched out of the darkness...

Coming for them.