Disclaimer: Wreck-It Ralph is the property of the Walt Disney Company.
Author's note: Wrote this for a WIR Secret Santa exchange on tumblr.
King Candy hadn't realized how much he missed Christmas.
Back in TurboTime, he hadn't been that into it. It was one of the few times that the arcade closed, and he hated when the arcade was closed because that meant he wasn't racing. Him and the twins had done the whole thing of course, the tree, presents, but it hadn't interested him much.
Then he'd spent those ten years hiding in Game Central Station. Miserable. Ignored. Alone. And for some reason, when Christmas came around this year, six months after he'd reprogrammed Sugar Rush, he'd been hit with an overwhelming urge to…to…
Celebrate it.
But he hadn't spent all that time and effort reprogramming this world only to have his cover blown by his interest and knowledge in a holiday that, as far as he could tell, the denizens of Sugar Rush haven't even heard of. He'd casually asked Taffyta Muttonfudge if they expected some kind of special…get-together, at the castle, perhaps, to celebrate the arcade being closed, and she'd looked at him, stuck a lollipop in her mouth, and said, "If you want. You're the king! Are we supposed to celebrate the arcade being closed?"
He'd smiled, tossed her some more of those lollipops that she liked so well, and driven off with a vague comment that he'd see about putting something together.
Right. The last thing he wanted was all fourteen of the brats running around his castle, which he hadn't even learned every nook and cranny of yet, asking him questions about who Princess Vanellope von Schweetz was. He knew, he just knew, that he hadn't found every mention of her in the castle yet. He'd appropriated her symbol, the three pointed crown, he'd taken her kart and her home and her color scheme—which he really did like, even if it was pi—er, salmon, but it would be just his luck that one of the other racers would find some portrait of her or something.
Taffyta, he didn't worry about her so much. It was obvious she looked up to him. The others, though…he, well, worried about them more. None of them were stupid—after all, you couldn't be a stupid racer—and sure he could just make another trip into the code vault, lock up their memories again, but at a certain point you had to start worrying about degradation in the code and what if you did start ending up with stupid racers, that wouldn't be any good for the game at all, and maybe the gamers would go elsewhere, maybe they'd go to Finish Line, for the love of programming, and he couldn't have that, he couldn't be abandoned again, and—
So, no. No party at the castle. He'd decided that within about three seconds of driving away from Taffyta. He'd just…put up a tree. Yes. Yes, that was—that was a good idea. A brilliant idea. A tree just like—
He'd scanned the landscape around him, and then—yes perfect there—slammed his brakes on at the sight of a tree that resembled an evergreen. It was good enough for him, anyway, certainly better than any of the blocky, short little trees that had grown in TurboTime. And it wasn't too hard to uproot, nothing was stuck too deeply into the cocoa powder ground.
Which—yes, meant that now that he was back at the castle, he was coated in sweat and cocoa dust, which was sort of disgusting but worth it because the longer he'd thought about it the more important this had become to him. He hadn't appreciated the little things about Christmas when he'd had the chance—hadn't appreciated them before everything had been taken away from him.
So he swerved up the spiral drive that wound through the castle into the throne room, where he came to the same skidding halt that he always did before backing his kart into the throne.
Come to think of it, the throne would be a good spot for the tree—well, next to it at least, and once he'd hauled it off his kart, he commenced searching for something to stand it up in. Which ended up with him digging through the chest of weaponry that Wynchel and Duncan had supplied him with, and everything in there looked lethal, though he wasn't sure exactly what most of it was supposed to do. He left the brute force stuff to them—ten years hiding in Game Central Station had taught him that true power came from more subtle control. The control that learning how to sift through code had given him.
Yes, the coding was good because it meant it didn't have to use—well— He pulled something square and spiky out of the chest. It meant he didn't have to use this, whatever this was.
He shook it gingerly and wondered if it was going to explode or something. If not he could stick the bottom of the trunk onto the spikes and stand it up, it seemed stable enough…
If it exploded in his face he'd regenerate, of course, but he still didn't particularly want that to happen. But it didn't and he got it standing up next to the throne to very nice effect, if he did say so himself. Which he did because no one else was around to say it.
King Candy put his hands on his hips to admire his handiwork, then slowly lowered them to his sides as he realized it was missing something. It was missing decorations. Hm, where was he going to get something like…
His eyes flicked to the curtain behind the throne, and it was like he could see straight past it to what was beyond it—a blue and silver gleaming corridor with a locked door at the end. The code to open that door was tucked in his tailcoat, was always tucked into his tailcoat even though he'd memorized it long ago. What if he coded himself some decorations? Sure it was frivolous, but it would only help to keep his abilities sharp.
He rubbed his hands together gleefully, suddenly excited by the prospect, and walked over to the curtain, a bounce in his step.
Just as he was lifting the curtain up, however, to slip behind it, a morose voice asked from behind him, "What are you doing?"
King Candy's heart stuttered then raced and even though his mind instantly knew it was Sour Bill, his body took a moment to catch up and there was nothing he hated more than that feeling of utter uncontrolled panic when something surprised him because that meant he wasn't ready, wasn't prepared.
"Ah, Sour Bill!" he said, dropping the curtain and taking a few steps forward to lean against the throne. He hoped it looked casual. He'd sort of perfected looking casual and relaxed despite the fact that he never was, he'd always been too wound up to really relax and now everything he ate was sugar and that wasn't helping anything.
His fingers were fidgeting and it was with considerable effort that he forced them to be still, though he couldn't stop tapping his foot just a little.
Sour Bill blinked slowly at him, looked towards the tree standing on the other side of the throne and then back.
"Er," King Candy said.
This was worse than the racers asking him what he was doing, and he wanted to kick himself for forgetting about Sour Bill, how could he forget about Sour Bill? Sour Bill who knew just a bit too much through necessity, Sour Bill who might or might not have suspected that King Candy wasn't exactly who he said he was. Well, no he was King Candy, he didn't—Turbo was gone, gone not dead but buried and King Candy was content to never let him surface again and to be a jolly, harmless old monarch for the rest of his life. Okay not the rest of his life, if Sugar Rush were to get unplugged he'd of course jump games again, though obviously he hadn't planned that, after all Sugar Rush had just gotten plugged in and it was wildly popular, there was no need to think about his next move, not when gamers lined up every day to play and—
Wait, this wasn't…this wasn't what he needed to be thinking about. So he said, "Sour Bill! Just the man I wanted to see!"
Sour Bill just stared at him.
Three months into his rule, King Candy still couldn't decide if he liked Sour Bill. The sour ball had been useful to him, of course. But he wasn't exactly likable, and King Candy liked most people…well provided they weren't glitchy little brats who kept trying to talk him into letting them race. Scratch that, he liked people who didn't get in his way. The other racers didn't count of course, it was their job to get in his way, racing would be boring if they didn't. Sour Bill hadn't gotten in his way. Sour Bill had been helpful, if…dour.
"That looks like a Christmas tree," Bill said, in the same tone you'd say 'that looks like a kart'.
King Candy looked at him, and Bill just stared back, eyes half-lidded the way they usually were. "It…yes. Yes, it is," King Candy replied, hoping for a nonchalant tone.
Bill turned his gaze to it and King Candy ran through comments in his head. The last thing he should do was to ask Bill how he knew what it was, because he himself knew what it was and it made no sense to wonder about it because if he could find out about it well then couldn't anyone, and…but how did he know? Taffyta hadn't known, Taffyta hadn't known because…she didn't leave Sugar Rush, did she?
But that meant that Sour Bill…did. When? King Candy himself didn't go out all that often—after all he'd spent enough time in Game Central Station, and anyway he'd been nervous at first that someone would see through his disguise, someone—Fix-It Felix, Pac-Man, Clyde, even pathetic homeless Q*Bert—that he'd known before, who could recognize his voice, his mannerisms, even though when he thought about it logically it was so unlikely, there'd be no reason for them to suspect but—
He knew it had kept him away. Sour Bill didn't have any reason to stay away though. No, he'd just…been to Tapper's or something, Tapper always had a tree up, King Candy remembered it, though he hadn't seen it in ten years. Good. Mystery solved.
Except he still felt…uneasy. Sour Bill knew things…he knew about Vanellope, for one thing. Because Vanellope's glitchy, isolated code was visible if one stood outside the code vault, and King Candy had tried locking up Bill's memories of this each time he'd gone into the vault but he'd noticed some…strange behavior so he'd had to stop. Of course, the day he'd taken over Sugar Rush, Sour Bill had seemed only too happy to assist.
Okay well not happy. Sour Bill was never happy. But he'd never questioned the fact that a stranger from another game was demanding access to the code vault. That part of his memories was locked up of course, permanently, but the thing was that Sour Bill knew his memories were locked up, knew and never asked about it, didn't seem bothered by it.
King Candy had often thought, over the past three months, that he may have put his trust in the wrong person in this game.
Sour Bill's stare hadn't changed. "How did you know you should get one of those trees when you never leave the game?" he asked, his tone typically dour but why did King Candy hear something else underneath it?
"Oh, Sour Bill, don't be silly," King Candy said, waving a hand. "I—hoohoo—I go out all the time."
No change in Bill's expression.
"Well," King Candy amended, "maybe not all the time, but…you know, I saw that tree in Tapper's last week and thought it would be, well, nice to have one here. Don't you think?"
He could only hope that Tapper still put up a Christmas tree, that Sour Bill didn't pay that much attention to his sovereign's movements (he never seemed to…), and that this was an acceptable explanation to deal with Sour Bill's not-suspicious-but-still-somehow-suspicious stare.
King Candy felt his heart racing—which wasn't unusual, it almost always was racing, but what was unusual was for him to notice. Then Sour Bill shrugged, said, "The one in Tapper's is nicer," and trundled off.
Which seemed to take forever, but when the throne room's heavy side doors closed behind the sour ball, King Candy exhaled loudly and slouched against his throne. That had been…close? Except…he still wasn't sure exactly what had happened there. He still wasn't sure exactly what Bill knew. Or what secrets he was willing to keep or…
King Candy looked at his Christmas tree and decided the throne room might not be the best place for it after all. Maybe the library. Where no one else could see it. Yes, that was—that was better.
Having decided that, he straightened up. Then another thought struck him. If he didn't know exactly how loyal Sour Bill was, well then, there was one thing he had to do at the very least.
Christmas was coming, and if you couldn't bribe your underlings with presents to make sure they kept their silence, then what was the holiday coming to?