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[gridfather]

Flynn here, leave a message.

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txt; somewhere in wiggletime around the 8th

[a_perfect_end]

Should he do this?

Sam's ACE_ID is missing from the contact roster. He'd made a point of steering clear--easy enough to do, here, with ecosystems between them and no real reason to antagonize the boy. Flynn must have noticed his absence already.

Things were so much easier to respond to when Clu's every move had been to hurt, to injure, to damage, threading wounds with salt.

Where is my son?

He shouldn't do this.

I am standing right here.

...He's doing this. Text should give them the distance Flynn might wish.

It seems we've had a roster change. More like a status report, but not impersonal.

Is this good? Let it be good. He hasn't had enough practice at pulling the blow.

You doing okay?

Flynn will answer if he wants. Clu can leave it at that.

He cradles the screen under a cupped hand to see it better, just to be sure.

txt; lovely

[gridfather]

There are a thousand things to do today, a schedule limned in data packets and archival ink, tourist info and circuit boards. Several of those can be performed alone. For the moment, Flynn favors that route, cloistered in a lab to build a station map from a collection of digital pamphlets.

He considers leaving the ACE there on the edge of the table, the wide slice of glowing cyan screen brightened by Clu's bold messages. Flynn deliberately, delicately drags away a section of holo-map by the corner.

He knows. Knew, rather, an abrupt halt to his morning. No one else new would be coming by now, but sometimes people left in stops and starts not long after that first arrival. They go without warning and, last night, Sam went with them.

Satisfied with his progress, Flynn reaches for his ACE.

Just working, man.

What's a word that means 'fine', but also 'not fine', that perfectly encapsulates the slimmest line between happiness and heartache? He had precious extra time afforded to him, the span of hours teased out to weeks. Months. Now, Sam is gone, and that means Sam is safe. His eyes burn briefly and he sighs, soft in the silence.

I need your help with something.

There's a bridge to keep building here.

txt; no u

[a_perfect_end]

Moments become seconds become almost unbearable minutes, and Clu swings up from the chair with both feet, straightens it as it stills. He dusts the desk--there is no dust to remove, but these things have their forms, and so he dusts the desk. He plays at cleaning the knife, the only thing on it, unworn in its holster--and is careful not to water Euclid again, despite the urge prickling at his fingertips: he'd almost drowned the little succulent before, a surfeit of care.

The deep amber rectangle of his ACE does not so much as flicker.

...Clu is not going to lay flat on his bunk and wait for it to move.

Flynn's fine, or not in enough distress to broadcast between them without prying after it. He's just busy! He's fine.

Sam's gone.

It's probably fine.

Clu sighs and scrubs a hand down his face--and gets a beam of text right in the eye, hot gold affirmation that he blinks away with a hiss.

Work is good.

Ooof. How casual. So smooth. And he winces internally but doesn't quit, was not made to give up, because the next correct response is--

...Wait. That's--he's not sure if he's being teased or not, I'm locked out, remember queued there at the ends of his fingers before he discards the impulse as hurtful and (worse!) useless.

You want

Flynn answered him.

And Flynn needs his help.

Stay put. Much clearer than asking. I'm on my way.

txt; o gosh

[gridfather]

Work is good, necessary, pure in its purpose. Flynn never does anything by half measures, never has. You whole-ass or you just don't do it, man, that isn't something Zen ever had to teach him. To hone his drive, certainly, to slow, to narrow his focus with purpose, to throw open himself to the system that surrounded him; the system he lived and breathed and, regardless of intent, affected with action and inaction alike, and the system that he was just as much a part of as the Programs he'd written to inhabit it.

Even in the Outlands, there was work to do. Here on Avagi, it's no different, but today it's a necessary distraction. You think you're past worry, and the way love can turn sharp and hard like a knife between the ribs...

He taps his fingers against the desktop, then peels the bright shiny tourist-y jargon from another pamphlet, casting it into the small collection at the corner of the wide holo display. More of the map comes together, while Flynn chuckles tonelessly to the empty room.

I got nowhere to be, man.