......

"Hey. You've done nothing wrong. Don't be ashamed. Don't play into what the MCP wants. Remember? Humiliation tactic."

"You really think he planned all this?"

"Yeah I think that. He's found out he can't break you with pain or danger. He's moved on to psychological torture. If you've got a weakness at all, it's that you can't stand to be seen like that-- vulnerable, losing control of your own needs."

"Ugh. That's... that's... glitch it! I hate that."

"I know, right? Such a dirty hack. Making your hate for vulnerability into a vulnerability itself. I... I guess it doesn't help to say 'don't be ashamed,' does it? Because that's really not a thing you can switch off. I wanna help you find a way to patch that. But I guess I don't know how. And that... well, that doesn't feel fair."

"No it doesn't. Me having a vulnerability that you don't. I'm the security program. How do you manage that?"

"You mean, be immune to humiliation? I don't even know-- just am, I guess. Shameless by default. If anything ever does start to embarrass me enough to be a problem, I run it through routines that turn it to pleasure, til I'm getting off on the embarrassment. Can do that with most feelings, actually-- it's why he stopped using pain to torture me, too."

"Hah. I... I'd say I want that skill, but even the idea of doing that seems too embarrassing for me to consider. I guess either I'm too repressed-- or you're just indecent."

"Probably both. I wish I could do something to help, though. Don't exactly know what your shame is like, but it looks really uncomfortable. Wish I could take some of it off you."

"It's okay. I think... I think you just being here is helping. Some, at least."

"I'm glad."

"..."

"Would you want help with, um, other stuff?"

"Like what? Not like we can do anything now, through that forcefield."

"Yeah, I'm talking about times like now. If you need something but I can't reach you to help."

"What do you even mean?"

"Like I told you, I've learned some things. Maybe things that'd help you, if you haven't experimented as much as I have."

"...I haven't. Apart from the I/O Tower, it's... it's pretty much only been Yori. And she always took the lead."

"Ever touched your own circuits?"

"Barely ever. Haven't found it very satisfying."

"Suppose I show you what works for me."

"What, right here?"

"Where else?"

"You think the guards will notice?"

"Probably won't care if they do. I've done it in here alone before. And if they do object, worst they'll do is hit us with their staffs. Wanna risk it?"

"You're incorrigible, Ram."

"And you better be thankful for that. Because I try things, and I collect data, and I share it. Who knows, I might have something that'll help make it better for you."

......

"It helps to lean your back on the wall. Pressure on the disc, it's... nice. Plus, if you get nervous about dangers from behind, a wall at your back can help you relax."

"Counterintuitive that relaxing is a goal here. Seems like the whole point is to build tension."

"You'd think, right? But even that build can't happen without some relaxation in the right places."

"What's the right places?"

"Varies. You gotta find that on your own. Can change from time to time, too. Same goes for what places need the tension built."

"..."

"When you find a spot, like-- oh!-- Oh yeah. When you find where the sensitivity is, you might get the urge to just go crazy on that spot, but trust me, it won't make things better or even faster. You gotta move off for a while, gentle strokes around the area, and come back slow, little by little."

"Huh. That's also counterintuitive."

"I guess. But maybe think of it like a battle. One-on-one, direct, a strong enough opponent might fight you off. But strategic retreats, surprise attacks..."

"So I'm at war with my own body."

"What other body could hold its own against a warrior like you? And hey, it means you win eventually, no matter what."

......

"Ram... how do I... why isn't it..."

"Sometimes it takes a while. It's okay."

"But it keeps... I don't know..." Struggle for words. Such a Tron sort of frustration. Something slipping away from him. A barrier he can't articulate.

"Mmm. What are you trying to imagine? ...If you're comfortable telling me, I mean."

"...Imagine?"

"Yeah. You're supposed to imagine. Pick a fantasy. Think about how you'd rather be doing it."

"I... I don't think I have fantasies."

And no, Ram supposes he doesn't, probably. Tron's a very straightforward sort of program. Sure, he has things he wants... but to him they're goals, directives. Usually certainties, until proven otherwise.

"Well, a... a hope, then, I guess. You want to be with Yori, right? And Alan-1? It'll probably help if you think about something like that."

Ram's eyes are still closed, so he gets Tron's response only in the deliberate slowing of sound, of breath and motion from behind the forcefield. The sound of Tron trying to marshal his own thoughts; a watchman's too-conscious effort to watch himself. Ram doesn't envy him. So much vigilance, at every step of everything. So hard to ever let go.

Ram thinks in speculations, probabilities that range from near-certain to vastly unlikely... and those can shift with the lightest thought sometimes. His own fingers play an intuitive dance of pressures against his circuitry in tune with the scenarios that rise and fall in his thoughts.

He's well aware of the line between speculation and fact. He'll welcome any thought that brightens the pleasure, and keep it for as long as it keeps heating his circuits, and he won't bother questioning whether it's a thought applicable to real life.

He won't tell Tron what he's thinking right now-- and he won't stop, because what's inside his mind can't do any harm, as long as it stays in there-- but he's riding toward his own pleasure on a stolen fantasy right now, one that should belong to Tron before Ram should even consider it.

Yori. Alan-1. Tron and Yori carrying Ram into the Tower; their bodies bathed in ethereal light, leaning together to form a triangle pointed at the heavens-- Tron in the center now, with a lover holding onto him from each side.

As his lightlines burn and deepen in color under the quickening movements of his fingertips, Ram becomes the self in the fantasy, a supporting buttress. Giving freely of his own energy, alongside Yori's, to boost Tron's sublime pleasure, as the beam of Tron's most central love courses, fast and hot, up and up and higher up, into the Realm of the Invisible--

"Ram."

It's Tron's voice, low and rough in the dim cell outside the light of his imagination.

And Ram speeds through guilt and worry-- mishears it first as an accusation (oh no, did Tron notice the illicit fantasy somehow?) and then as a new plea for help (...oh no, is Tron having trouble again?) before he realizes, with a hot-purple full-body blush, what it is.

......