...

It's simple. It's basic. The order chains itself through process and priority, finds a dozen inbuilt iterations, and quite nearly cancels on the spot. Staying is a fact already, corollary to obey and serve. It's what it means to belong to someone. To be a belonging.

Rinzler has never, ever, been anything more.

Tron was. Tron was, but Tron is dead, cut and split and pared away to voiceless fury, a corrupted, constant scrape of sound. Rinzler is not Tron, and Rinzler has no idea when core definitions faltered, when an order that should never have needed to be voiced became a tremulous insistence. It's not a question. Not as such, not here and now.

But it's the promise that going forward, it could be.

This is more than just not back. This is forward, down a vector Rinzler could never have looked for. An option that he still can't allow himself to name. It flags a choice well past accounting, a future value that Rinzler has no way to predict. Stay, stay, stay and he can feel the weight, as grounding and suffocating as the grip still pinning him in place.

The faceless shell dips and rises: hesitant, heavy. As sure as he can be.

He promises.