Disclaimer: Wreck-It Ralph is the property of the Walt Disney Company.

Author's note: This is the sequel to my story, 'Terminal.' 'Christmas in the Fungeon' takes place between 'Terminal' and 'Fallout', but it isn't necessary to read it. 'The King's Favorite' is also part of this universe, but again, isn't strictly necessary to read. No AUs here, as somehow Ralph Breaks the Internet didn't touch any of my head canon. As far as I'm concerned, this all happened. ;)

Thanks for reading!

CHAPTER 1

Taffyta could hear kart engines in the distance as she followed Sour Bill into the fungeon. Her fellow racers were warming up for a day of quarter alerts—victories and losses, a racer's fortunes rising and falling on the skill of the gamer who'd chosen them. High stakes, high drama—the best life in the arcade.

And here she was, in the fungeon.

Taffyta wasn't on the roster today. Ever since Sugar Rush had reset six months ago, the daily rosters had been decided by a randomizer, and random was definitely the key part of that word. Sometimes she'd be on it for days, even a whole week, in a row, other times she'd go just as long without racing. The latter were the times she hated. Talk about the worst. If she wasn't racing, she wasn't happy. But at least she dealt with it better now than she had three months ago.

"It's not going to work, you know," Sour Bill informed her, his tone as flat as always.

"Thanks for the vote of confidence," Taffyta said. Like she needed further discouragement. Her stomach was already twisted so tightly that she hadn't been able to swallow a single spoonful of her strawberry soup and she'd even put sprinkles on it, but even the smell of food had made her feel ill.

"Just being realistic—"

"Thanks, Sour Bill," Taffyta snapped.

The sour ball shrugged unconcernedly and held out a key to her when they reached the bottom of the stairs. "President von Schweetz will see you in her office in ten minutes. She needs to be at the starting line—"

"When the arcade opens in half an hour, I know, I'm a racer in this game too, in case you didn't notice?" When Sour Bill just continued holding the key out to her, she sighed sharply and snatched it away. "You don't have to stay."

But Bill was already on his way back up the stairs. "Wasn't planning on it," he droned.

Taffyta made a face at his back, forgetting her nervousness just for a second. Then it came crashing back down on her and she swallowed and clutched her hand around the key. Closing her eyes for a second, she turned around, drew in a deep breath, and marched down the fungeon corridor.

The door at the end of the corridor was the only closed one, and that was where she headed. "Good morning," she said as she stuck the key in the lock and turned it.

The door swung open, and Turbo was waiting for her, sitting on his strawberry wafer bed and kicking his heels against the floor. "Hi," he said. "I did some redecorating, like it?"

Taffyta glanced around the cell. Pointing to a glob of food dripping down the wall, she asked, "That?"

"What?" He looked startled and squinted at the food. "Oh, no, that's just from when I threw my breakfast at Sour Bill, I mean, if you can even call it breakfast, honestly claiming that was food has to be a violation of my human rights—"

By this time Taffyta had spotted what he was actually talking about—she'd get back to him slinging his breakfast at Sour Bill in a second—and she squealed and clapped her hands. "You hung it up!"

Turbo smiled smugly and bounced to his feet, glitching in the middle of the movement so that he was King Candy by the time he was standing. When he'd first shown back up in her life, she hadn't been able to get used to the way he glitched back and forth, like he couldn't decide who he wanted to be. Now it seemed perfectly normal.

"'Coursthe I did," he said. "Right nextht to the window, in case I get tired of the view." He paused. "Which—hoohoo—I did, about sixth months ago."

She moved to his side and looked up at the picture she'd painted for him, hanging in pride of place on the wall. It wasn't the only personal effect he had in his cell—Vanellope had eased up on him a little in the past three months—but the little smile on his face as he looked up at it made it obvious that it was special to him, and that made Taffyta glow.

The painting had taken her a whole month—mainly because she didn't know how to paint. But she'd always liked the paintings hanging in the castle, back when she'd hung out there all the time with him. Mostly they were landscapes, different locations in Sugar Rush. There'd been a portrait of him in one of the hallways, which had long since disappeared, though the spot was still slightly discolored, darker than the sugar cube walls around it. And, well, she'd thought he probably liked the landscapes too, especially after the reset, when it had become clear that nothing in the castle had been his to begin with. Except his self-portrait.

Actually she'd been wondering for awhile now where that had come from. And where it had gone, for that matter, though she kind of thought it might have gotten tossed into the hot springs in Diet Cola Mountain.

So she'd wanted to give him something. Snowanna was the most artistic person she knew, so Taffyta had gotten her to show her how to make the paint, and then for a month, a whole month, she'd stood on the balcony that ran along the upstairs hallway of her house, and painted the view.

It wasn't great or anything. But—at least you could get the general idea.

"Hopefully you'll get to see the real thing soon," Taffyta said.

He glanced down at her. "You really think the glitch is going to let me out of here? She likes having me locked up. Gives her something to gloat about."

"Vanellope," Taffyta said, the admonishment automatic by now. "And yeah. I mean…I hope so." This was going to be not the first, not the second, but the third time the two of them had made this request. Each time Vanellope had said no, and that made Taffyta mad, and sad—she'd cried last time—but she got it. When you had your game stolen from you, got turned into a glitch, bullied and tormented and kept from doing the thing you knew you were supposed to be doing for fifteen years…well, Taffyta probably wouldn't be inclined to let the person who'd done that to her out of the fungeon either.

She smiled at him. "It's going to go better this time. You're…I mean, I think Vanellope's starting to…" She'd been about to say 'like you', but no, that was, well, really stupid. "…warm up to you."

"You know you're a terrible liar, don't you? You should've just said third time's a charm. And by the way, the lie has to be somewhat realistic, not complete fantasy."

"Fine, she's starting to believe me when I tell her you don't want to take over the game again."

A musing look came over his face.

She stuck her lower lip out in an exasperated pout, and King Candy snorted and nudged her shoulder. "Fine, but starting to believe doesn't necesstharily translate to 'allow your sworn enemy to live freely in your game without supervision'."

"Am I seriously the only one that's going to be positive about this?" she grumbled.

"Blame Sour Bill. His negativity has a disproportionate effect on my normally bubbly persthonality, hoohoohoo."

Eyeing the food dripping down the wall, Taffyta said, "I think he has that effect on everyone." Then, looking at him, she asked, "You didn't really throw your breakfast at him, did you?"

King Candy glitched back to Turbo. "I mean, the door was shut. It wasn't like I was actually going to hit him."

She sighed. Maybe Sour Bill wouldn't mention that to Vanellope.

Smoothing her skirt and straightening her jacket, she took a deep breath, knowing they had to do this now if it was going to happen, and said, "Okay. Ready?"

He ran a hand through his dark hair. "Now or never, right?"

She opened the door to his cell. "That's what you said last time."

"Well, last time I'd been calling the palette swaps rank amateurs…not to their faces, so you'd think the glitch wouldn't have cared."

"It wasn't very nice."

"The truth isn't always nice." Sticking his hands in his pockets as they made their way down the fungeon corridor and up the stairs, he added, "You know they're not any good, you said it enough times before."

Before. This was their shorthand for 'before the game reset', which was really a euphemism for, 'before Vanellope entered the Random Roster Race and King Candy was revealed as Turbo and got eaten by a cy-bug and killed in a jet of boiling diet cola'.

With a shrug, Taffyta said, "Well, yeah, they're…not, but you still shouldn't say it to Vanellope."

Oreo guards were patrolling the hallways upstairs in the castle, and all of them stared at Taffyta and Turbo as the two of them walked by on their way to the throne room. Er, Vanellope's office. She was trying to get all of them to call it that, but so far it wasn't sticking.

Taffyta had gotten used to feeling like she was just as bad as him—people treated her differently when the two of them were together. And she could admit it to herself—sometimes, it was hard, and yeah sometimes, she didn't want to be stared at like she was evil. Most of the time she wanted to shake the other racers and the NPCs by their shoulders and tell them to just give him a chance, like Vanellope had given everyone in the game a second chance.

But sometimes… Sometimes she just didn't want to deal with it, didn't want to bring him out of the castle under her supervision. Sometimes she just wanted to live a normal, uncomplicated life.

Except she'd left 'uncomplicated' behind long ago. Like, long, long ago, when she'd first become friends with King Candy, over a decade ago. You didn't just let go of something like that. When he'd been revealed as Turbo she'd tried though, really hard, because he was evil and had taken over their game and tried to kill Vanellope and how could she like a person like that?

The thing was that he wasn't evil, she knew that. She knew that he couldn't have been because she'd seen the affection in his eyes for her, and the way he smiled at her. The bad things he'd done were bad but she couldn't forget the good things he'd done either.

Anyway she'd done bad things too, and people knew she was the ringleader of Vanellope's tormenters, and the arcade didn't treat her great. It had always been general knowledge that she'd been King Candy's pet, his favorite, but after the reset everyone outside Sugar Rush had just assumed that the two of them had done nothing but think of ways to be mean to Vanellope all those years, when the truth was that Vanellope hadn't had anything to do with…well, anything.

No one got it. They thought King Candy had spent all his time trying to torture her or lock her up, and that Taffyta had driven around Sugar Rush looking for the chance to pick on her. Vanellope had been nothing to them, and Taffyta knew how wrong that had been and still felt guilty about it.

But that didn't change how things had been. Vanellope had been a nuisance, a minor annoyance, something to deal with if you had to, and both of them had had better things to do.

What she'd done couldn't hold a candle to what he'd done of course, but…well, Minty had suggested that Taffyta should go to a Bad Anon meeting (and Taffyta had made sure to save all her power-ups in the next day's races to hit Minty with every single one. She hadn't won much, but it had been worth it to hear Minty screaming every time she spun out or was blown off the track).

When she'd told King Candy about it, angry tears prickling at her eyes, he'd grinned at her and said, "Well my dear, how about this—you don't lose any more racesth because of a personal vendetta, and I'll go to those Bad Anon meetings with you."

Which had just been…not the response she'd been expecting, and it had made her laugh, and then it had made her think, and he'd been right. He was right a lot, which was another thing she knew about him that everyone else seemed to have forgotten. When you were wrong in such a big way, nothing else mattered. But he was smart, and he knew how to race, and he knew how to rule a kingdom even if it was never meant to be his, and…

Yeah. Sometimes she didn't want to deal with it. Sometimes she wanted to go along with the popular opinion. But she couldn't. He was her best friend. And she'd stick by him always, because if there was one thing she'd learned in the past six months, it was that you stuck by your friends. It was the worst feeling in the world if you thought they'd all abandoned you.

"Does your hair looks nice?" she asked him as they reached the throne room doors.

"Does yours?" he asked.

"Mine always does," she replied, flipping it, hoping the bravado would turn into actual bravery once she was in front of Vanellope.

Then, with a deep breath, Taffyta nodded to the guards on either side of the throne room doors. They knocked, received a, "Come on in, citizens!" and opened the doors wide.

Standing exposed in the doorway was enough to make Taffyta's heart pound. Please please please please let Vanellope say yes this time, make her realize he's not that bad…or at least that he's getting better…

Vanellope was sitting on her desk, and when they entered, she jumped down and glitched over to them. "Hey, Taff," she said, then looked at Turbo and added in a much flatter tone, "Oh, you're still here?"

Taffyta was really proud of him for not responding with anything other than a tight smile. Granted, it was just about the least sincere smile ever, and it really more said I hate you than hi, nice to see you, but…small victories.

"Ready to race, Vanellope?" Taffyta asked, figuring she'd ease into this with casual conversation, even though all three of them were perfectly well aware of why they were here.

"You bet!" Vanellope grinned. "Too bad you're not on the roster today, 'cause I was really looking forward to paying you back for Chocolate Seashell Beach."

With a smirk, Taffyta said, "Well, guess you'll just have to wait for another chance, but I mean, that's assuming you ever have a shot of beating me again…" She batted her eyelashes innocently. "If it's any consolation, you looked really great holding that silver trophy."

"Aw, but I didn't think gold looked that good on you," Vanellope shot back playfully.

Out of the corner of her eye, Taffyta could see Turbo fidgeting, his fingertips glitching every so often as he drummed them on the sides of his legs. She'd given a lot of thought as to which guise he should appear in for this moment, the monarch who'd been cold and distant and unsympathetic or the grey-skinned racer that Vanellope had shrunk back from in fear as he'd tried to kill her.

But his original form was the stripped down truth of who he was—or who he'd been, and in the end Taffyta had haltingly argued that if he could show Vanellope that he was different as Turbo, then maybe she'd believe that he really had changed, down to his most basic 8-bit roots.

He'd looked at her, held out a hand and glitched it back and forth a few times, and said with a shrug, "If you think that'sth best. I don't think she cares what I look like."

Yeah, Taffyta was probably over thinking things. But she couldn't help thinking about things and how to make them better and how to make conditions perfectso that Vanellope couldn't say no. Of course, she knew all too well that no matter how hard you tried to make everything perfect, there were some things that would always be out of your control. And in the end Turbo was most definitely out of her control.

Taffyta cleared her throat. "So, um, Vanellope. I was wondering—that is, Turbo and I were wondering if…maybe…since he's spent six months in the fungeon now and he saved the game and everything and didn't do anything to the code—"

That wasn't strictly true, since he'd altered Taffyta's own code to make sure the randomizer chose her not quite randomly anymore, and she'd meant to mention that to Vanellope, really she had, she just kept…er, forgetting. "—Anyway, since he's been pretty…pretty nice, we were thinking maybe you'd let him live outside the castle?"

Vanellope's eyebrows were raised but her eyelids were lowered, an expression which Taffyta definitely recognized as her 'you've-gotta-be-kidding-me' look. She felt her heart drop into her stomach.

"Can't Turbutt talk for himself anymore?" Vanellope asked. "Usually he's got plenty to say."

Blinking in surprise—this wasn't a refusal!—Taffyta turned to look up at Turbo. His eyes were narrowed. She gave him a tiny, encouraging nod, praying that he'd be nice.

He glanced down at her and met her eyes, binary garbling them for a moment so that King Candy's brown-eyed gaze looked back at her. Then he returned his eyes to Vanellope. "Since I've been such an upstanding citizen, Vanellope—"

"That's President von Schweetz to you, chump," she interrupted.

His hands clenched into fists, and Taffyta watched him grit his teeth. She couldn't do anything but twist her hands together, hoping he wouldn't get angry.

"President von Schweetz," he said, his voice tight and a sneer just barely twisting at his lips, "I think it's about time you let me out of the fungeon. Don't you?"

Vanellope stared at him, looking unimpressed, and then looked at Taffyta. "Guess you're letting him write his own lines," Vanellope drawled.

Clasping her hands in front of her chest, Taffyta just said, "Please."

There was a long silence while the three of them stood there, Vanellope's hands jammed on her hips as she stared at Turbo. The roar of kart engines in the distance was coalescing towards one spot, and Taffyta knew by the sound alone that it was the starting line. This silence couldn't go on forever. Vanellope had to say something.

The president tapped one of her feet on the ground. "If I let you go," she said, and Taffyta's mouth dropped open as her heart soared, "where are you gonna go? Everyone's gonna know if you leave the game and no one's gonna let you."

"He can come stay with me," Taffyta said quickly. Turbo glanced at her, looking surprised, and she smiled at him.

"Ugh," Vanellope said. "Bet he throws his dirty laundry on the floor."

Taffyta was tempted to say something else, plead their case more, but she had a feeling she'd said as much as she could. Vanellope knew everything about what Turbo had and hadn't done in the past three months, and there wasn't anything Taffyta could say now to change her mind—which had probably been made up before the two of them had ever set foot in the throne room. Office.

Crossing her arms over her chest, Vanellope said, "Well, if you think he's house-trained, Taffyta, I guess you can take him home."

Taffyta gaped, then stuttered, "R-really?"

"I don't have to let him out if you don't want me to," Vanellope said.

Turbo glitched at her side and King Candy's hand came down on Taffyta's shoulder. "No no, she wantsth you to let me out."

With a squeal, Taffyta threw her arms around Vanellope, crying, "Thankyouthankyouthankyou you won't regret it, you really won't, Vanellope!"

"Okay, okay, yeesh, Taff, calm down!" Vanellope pulled her goggles out of her pocket and snapped them over her eyes. "You better be moved out by the end of the day, Turbutt, or else I'm giving all your stuff to the Homeless Characters' Charity." She looked, for a second, like she wanted to say something, else, but instead she just turned around and glitched across the room and through the door that would take her down to the castle's kart garage.

The sound of a kart engine starting echoed through the castle, then faded as Vanellope zoomed out the garage doors and towards the stadium to await the day's first quarter alert.

Taffyta turned to King Candy, the grin on her face matching his. "So what do you say," he began. "Help me pack?"