Take Courage, My Heart, You Have Been Through Worse Than This

by Aurora West

She was a racer. She'd always been a racer. She was nothing if she wasn't that. What was she going to do? Taffyta and King Candy on the occasion of the unplugging of "Sugar Rush."

Disclaimer: Wreck-It Ralph and Ralph Breaks the Internet are the property of the Walt Disney Company. Title from Homer's The Odyssey.

Author's note: This is meant not only as a fill-in-the-gaps fic but also a bridge between 'Fallout' and its follow-up, 'Peripeteia.'

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Take Courage, My Heart; You Have Been Through Worse Than This

"I haven't seen this many gameless characters since Space Invaders went down…"

At Surge Protector's words, Taffyta bawled harder. She was homeless. She was homeless. How was that even possible? Ten minutes ago she'd won a race—sure, only because Vanellope had been fooling around, doing something stupid. Getting their game unplugged. But still, ten minutes! TEN MINUTES. Her entire world had fallen apart in less time than it took for her to roll out of bed and drag herself to the shower every morning. How could this have happened?

Surge was still talking, but Taffyta couldn't concentrate on any of it. Something about staying in Game Central Station for now, finding homes for them later, but what did any of it matter? Their game was gone. Their game was unplugged, and she was never going to race again.

The thought made her tears abruptly stop, but only because she suddenly felt like she was going to throw up. What was she going to do? She was a racer. She'd always been a racer. She was nothing if she wasn't that. All of them were. It was all they knew. For twenty-one years, twenty-one precious years, all they'd done was race. What was a racer supposed to do when their game got unplugged?

Two horrible thoughts abruptly occurred to her at the same time. The first was that she knew what a racer did when his game got unplugged. She knew that because her best friend was the person who'd done exactly that and turned his own name into arcade parlance for Grade A Selfish, Evil Jerk.

The second was that she didn't know where said best friend was.

Had King Candy gotten out before Sugar Rush's plug had been pulled? The nausea got way, way worse as she swiped at her eyes to clear the tears away and looked around, her vision still blurry. She couldn't see him. Oh god, oh sugar frosted mother of malted milk balls, if no one had warned him, and depending on where he'd been in the game that was very possible, it wasn't like he hung around other people in the Sugar Rush, he would have been alone, and that meant—that meant—

The idea was too awful and she had to squeeze her eyes shut, clench her fists, and grit her teeth hard to keep from spewing her breakfast all over the tiled floor of Game Central Station. Who would know where he'd been? Who could she ask? She was his closest friend and she had no idea. Had he said anything this morning? Had she even seen him before she'd left for the starting line? The whole day was a sick swirl of jumbled, disconnected events, and none of them lined up or made any sense. Only two things stood out with any clarity in her mind: she was homeless, and her best friend might be dead.

She realized, suddenly, that the crowd around her was dispersing. Everybody looked some variation of miserable, but most of them had stopped crying. Candlehead was chasing after Surge, sniffling and bombarding him with questions. Snowanna had her arms around Jubileena as tears slowly dripped down Jubileena's face. Rancis was sitting with his back to the wall, his knees drawn up to his chest, while Crumbelina, Gloyd, and Swizzle were standing in a cluster looking lost. The rest of the racers weren't in her field of vision, and she couldn't bring herself to care all that much about them. They'd gotten out, that was what mattered. Who cared where they were right now.

Swallowing, she glanced around, looking for someone who might know something. She should have asked Surge, but now she'd missed her chance. But then, she heard, "Excuse me, sthorry, coming throu—ow! Sorry, Sour Bill, didn't see you there—"

She whirled. King Candy was making his way through the crowd of NPCs. Well, at the moment, he was rubbing at his shin where he'd bashed it into Sour Bill. Taffyta squealed, or screamed, or maybe just sobbed, and threw herself at him, kicking Sour Bill in the process and sending him rolling until he cracked against the wall.

"Taffyta, what…?" he asked, holding onto her as she clung to him and sobbed.

"Y-you're—you're o-o-okay!" she wailed.

"I mean, I'm drowning a little bit, here, but yes, more or less. What's going on?"

For another minute, her chest hitched with sobs and she couldn't get any words out past her spasming throat. But slowly, as he patted her back, she was able to draw in a few breaths, and she was finally able to say, "The game—the game g-got unplugged."

He didn't react. He must have already known. Suspected, at least. Why else would all of them be out here during arcade hours? King Candy wasn't dumb, in fact, he was the smartest person she knew, and he must have known exactly what was happening the minute he saw all of them milling around.

At the thought, her tears started again, and she buried her face in the lapel of his tailcoat and started crying again. Why had this happened? After everything their game had been through, why now? It wasn't fair!

King Candy was silent, but she'd felt his breath hitch when she'd said the game had been unplugged, and his breathing was shallow. "It—what?" he finally asked in a strangled tone. There was a garbled sound that she recognized as a precursor to a glitch.

Sniffling, Taffyta pulled back from him a little, wiping her nose on her the back of her hand. She could feel her mascara pasted on her cheeks where it had run. "Just now. Litwak pulled the plug. It…the cabinet…the steering wheel b-broke." Her lip quivered as she said it and she felt tears well in her eyes again.

With a small, wounded sounding noise, he looked around at the characters who hadn't already wandered off, his form glitching with red binary. Then, he swallowed, got the glitching under control, and looked back at Taffyta. With a tiny, unhappy smile, he pulled a handkerchief from a pocket and wiped her cheeks off. "You might want to invest in some waterproof mascara, my dear."

That made her laugh and cry at the same time, which just kind of made her sound like she was drowning. "I was afraid you didn't get out."

"Pfft. It takes more than a game getting unplugged to take me out." He gently wiped at her face again, but when tears threatened again, he just gave her the handkerchief. As she blew her nose, he added, "And I can say with 99% confidence that I had nothing to do with thisth game getting unplugged."

Shaking her head vehemently, Taffyta said, "You didn't. It was Vanellope's fault."

Now that the initial shock of losing her game was passing and the crisis of not knowing King Candy's whereabouts had been resolved, another emotion was bubbling to the surface.

Anger.

More than that. Broiling, coursing fury, and all of it directed at one person. Maybe two people. Yeah, definitely two people. Because Sugar Rush hadn't just randomly broken. It wasn't like it had gotten old, it wasn't like someone (cough, Taffyta, cough) had unwittingly brought a virus back into the game. Maybe this had been an accident, but it had been completely, totally preventable.

The only reason Sugar Rush had broken, the only reason they were currently homeless, was because Vanellope couldn't just stick to the fudging program and finish a race. It wasn't enough for her to cheat with her glitch and win races all day long. No, she was bored, they had to listen to her harp on about it all the time, how the tracks were easy, she could do them with her eyes closed, blah blah blah. What, did she really think it wasn't the same for Taffyta? For Candlehead and Rancis, Jubileena and Snowanna and Minty and Gloyd? For King Candy, who'd give her a run for her chocolate money if they were ever on the track together? Every racer in the game knew those courses like the back of their hands, and okay, so maybe the recolors didn't always have the easiest time with them, but even they could probably draw every single track from memory, to scale, with topographical details and everything.

Oh but Vanellope thought she was special. Like she was the first person to ever think, huh, you know, these tracks never change! It made Taffyta want to scream. Instead she just balled King Candy's handkerchief in her fist. He was staring at her, his mouth slightly open and his brain clearly cycling through about a hundred different responses.

But he just said, "Come again?"

From him, this was pure diplomacy. And at any other time, Taffyta would have been really proud of him. She'd been trying to get him to be nicer to Vanellope for years. Considering what he'd done to her, it was the least he could do.

Right then though, Taffyta wasn't interested in being nice. "Ralph made a new track for Vanellope. While a gamer was playing. And instead of ignoring it, like anybody who didn't have cotton candy stuffed between their ears would, she took it." She clenched her fists tighter. "The steering wheel broke and Litwak says the company that makes Sugar Rush went out of business and he can't order a replacement part, and all the gamers went on their phones and looked and it's too expensive to buy off the internet and we're never going to race again and we're homeless and it's all Vanellope and Ralph's fault." Her lip trembled but she held it together. Barely. But barely holding it together was still holding it together.

King Candy was staring at her, his face looking bloodless. He swallowed hard and asked, "What was Ralph doing in Sugar Rush during arcade hours?"

"Does it matter?" Taffyta demanded.

"No, no, I guess it…it doesn't." He put his hand out like he was searching for something to sit down on, and when it meant nothing but air, he just sank to the ground. Something hard pushed against Taffyta's sternum. If he was going to fall apart too, what about her? How was she possibly going to keep it together without him proving it was possible? "So," he said faintly. "That's it."

She sat down next to him, her anger draining out of her. "That can't be it," she said.

Glancing at her, he said, "Want to help me reprogram another game?" When she blanched, he laughed humorlessly and said, "That was a joke."

"You shouldn't say that kind of stuff," she hissed. "Someone might think you mean it."

With a shrug, he said, "Who cares. They're all thinking it, anyway."

Taffyta looked around despite herself. No one was nearby except the other characters from their game. Jubileena and Snowanna were close to enough to have heard, and she was sure they had. "No one from Sugar Rush is thinking it," she said quietly. "The other racers trust you. You're one of us."

"I assume we're excluding the glitch from this rosy little picture of our unplugged game. I can't decide if I'm delighted to be right about the fact that she was always going to get us unplugged or…hoo-hoo, well, the obvious, totally devastated."

Taffyta didn't correct him. Right then, she didn't care if he called Vanellope a glitch. It was no more than she deserved. And yeah, she was excluding Vanellope, because everyone knew Vanellope and King Candy were never going to be friends. Everyone knew Vanellope had been way nicer to King Candy than she should have been. And lately, if she was honest, Taffyta had been forcing herself to remember that. Every time Vanellope cheated to win another race, every time she moaned about how boring the tracks were, Taffyta grit her teeth and reminded herself that the president had given King Candy more second chances than even he would admit he probably deserved.

"You've been one of us longer than she's been," Taffyta muttered darkly, almost under her breath. Too quiet for Snowanna and Jubileena to hear, loud enough for King Candy to catch. He just looked at her, the expression on his face defeated. It made her feel a million times worse. "What are we supposed to do?" she asked forlornly. "We're racers. How are we supposed to just…not race?"

"Hoohoohoo! Don't you think you're asking the wrong person, Taff? You know what I would do." He covered his eyes with a hand, his shoulders slumped and his head drooping.

She took her hat off and put it in her lap, watching the morning light catch the sparkles. "You're not going to do that."

"Well no. Obviously." He sighed, his hand still over his eyes. "I wish I could."

"Don't say that."

"Why?"

"Because it's not true." She scooched closer to him and reached out to touch his shoulder. "Because it was a bad idea to take over Sugar Rush in the first place."

With a humorless laugh, he replied, "Oh I don't know, was it? It worked out pretty well for me."

Her fingers clenched around her shoulder. He was actually starting to worry her a little bit. "Yeah, until it didn't. And it didn't work out pretty majorly."

He sighed and removed his hand from his eyes. "I know." Reaching up to pat her hand with one of his, he added, "You're right. You usually are." Huh, not exactly, but it was a bright spot in this terrible moment that he thought so. "Anyway I think I'm too…ugh, it painsth me to say, reformed now. Too many ties to this place to cut and run, unfortunately." At the look she gave him, he amended, "Okay, okay. Fine. Fortunately. It's mostly your fault, by the way. Keep that in mind."

Tears burned at her eyes, not at anything specific, but at…just…everything. "I will," she said. Then, she laughed a little, sniffling at the same time, and said, "Sorry to be such a good influence on you."

He shot her a small, crooked smile, and then it faded away and was replaced by despondency again. "Anyway, I don't know what we're supposed to do. All I know is it's hard to be the greatest racer ever if I can't race." Leaning his elbow on his knee and propping his chin on his hand, he said darkly, "Turbotastic."

Her heart clenched. "But we'll figure it out, right? We have to figure something out."

Red binary ran up his form as he glitched. His eyes glowed sulfur yellow for a moment and King Candy's shoes were replaced briefly by Turbo's red high tops. With clear effort, he forced the glitching down, then said, "Well you know, it's not really my responsibility to figure something out. That would be our dear president's job."

The bitterness in his tone was palpable. King Candy, despite everything terrible he'd done, had been a good king. Taffyta would die on her hill defending that fact. He'd cared. He'd liked looking after Sugar Rush, being responsible for it, keeping its best interests at heart. And yeah, she knew that pretty much anyone would have told her that he didn't have its best interests at heart—that pesky little detail about him taking over the game, ripping out Vanellope's code, locking up their memories—but, well, maybe it was wrong, but Taffyta saw them as distinct from each other. Sure, taking over the game had been bad, but once he'd done that, he'd been a good ruler.

Nobody else was going to go along with her on that one. Oh well. Just another thing to keep to herself.

The idea of Vanellope taking responsibility made Taffyta sniff contemptuously. "You know she got bored with being president right around the time she got bored with all the tracks. She's not going to help." Gesturing to Game Central Station, she added, "She didn't even stick around."

"Yesth, I don't exactly see her offering any words of encouragement," he said, rolling his eyes.

Taffyta opened her mouth to further abuse Vanellope, but then she closed it and sighed. "Whatever. We know who she is. There's no point in expecting something else from her."

He raised an eyebrow, his head still tilted to one side as he rested it on his hand. "That's very mature of you."

"Really? I was thinking it was just really resigned of me." All the fight felt like it had burnt out of her. King Candy wouldn't tell her that they'd figure something out—because he couldn't. He didn't know any better than she did, and maybe in some sad way it was better that he respected her enough not to sugar-coat anything.

She glanced over at Jubileena and Snowanna again, both of whom were staring hopefully at King Candy. Huh. Old habits died hard. He couldn't help them. "Maybe we can go live in Finish Line or something," Taffyta said in a small voice.

He just shook his head a little, his eyes meeting hers and then sliding away. "They'll never let me in. And I hate to say it, but you should probably face up to the fact that they're not going to let you in, either." Gesturing vaguely with his other hand, he said, "No racing game in this arcade is going to take any of us. I'm, well, an obvious risk, you're too close to me, the rest of the racers are suspect enough through association." He paused. "Also, to be perfectly honest, in a group, you're all sort of out of control. I'm not really imagining much of an improvement there without racing to blow off steam."

"Surge said he'd find places for us to live," she said, and she didn't need King Candy's unamused laughter to tell her how ridiculous this was. When had Surge ever done anything helpful? All he ever did was give King Candy a hard time, and his second favorite pastime seemed to be giving her a hard time.

"Oh, okay then. If Surge asks, I'm sure I'm going to welcomed with open arms into any game of my choosing." When her eyes filled with tears, he straightened up, looking guilty. His fingertips were glitching red. "Taff—sorry. I'm just—this is the second time—a guy starts to feel cursed after awhile—"

"What if we have to g-go l-live in Pac-Man or something?" she sniffled. "I can't live there, it's so ugly and boring!"

He reached out and put an arm around her shoulders, pulling her to his side, as a glitch rippled up his form and caught her in its undertow for a flickery second. She turned her face into his sleeve and felt tears leak out of her eyes, and he said, "You won't have to go live in Pac-Man. I'll make sure you live somewhere suitably sparkling. We want it to match your personality, right?"

With a sniffle, she said, "Right."

"All right, so, that's solved."

"Except you can't make anyone do anything."

"Maybe I have some favors to call in."

She smiled and let out a weird, hiccupping, sobbing sound. Even if he didn't have a single favor to call in—and she knew he didn't—it was nice that he was trying to make her feel better. Though she hadn't missed the fact that he'd said 'you won't have to go live in Pac-Man.' Not 'we.' Obviously he didn't think they'd end up living in the same game, and that was depressing too. Having a home wouldn't feel right if it wasn't his home, too.

"What about you?" she finally asked, figuring it would be obvious what she meant.

He sighed and rubbed her shoulder. "Oh, you know. I can take care of myself. I'll figure it out."

Closing her eyes, she said, "Don't be like that."

"Like what? This is how I am." He didn't sound happy about it, though. Bitterness laced his tone, threaded with grief and loneliness, and Taffyta's chest ached—for all of them, but for him especially. Sugar Rush was the second game he'd lost. It hurt enough to lose one—she felt like she was staring down a black hole of despair—but the thought of finding another home and then having that one taken from you too…

She reached out and grabbed his hand, holding it tightly. "It'll be okay, King Candy," she said.

"You'd be more convincing if you weren't sniffling, my dear," he said, his voice tired.

Straightening up, she stared at him until he met her eyes. "I mean it. Somehow, everything's going to work out."

With a mirthless snort, he said, "I wish I could share your optimism. Despite the get-up—" He gestured to himself, glitching a little and sort of ruining the effect. "—I'm afraid I've always been a bit lacking in positivity."

Now, that wasn't true. His problem was that he had no in-between, no way to stop the steep slide into anxiety and despair. When he was up, he was up, but when he was down… And you couldn't get much more down than having your game unplugged, though she'd seen him in some pretty terrible moods. She'd seen him in some some pretty great moods, too. That was the thing about him, though, when he was unhappy, or angry, or sad, or anxious, or whatever, it was hard for him to see his way out of it. He had an inability to believe anything could ever get better.

Huh, and she was expecting him to comfort her? What was she thinking? She knew how he felt right now, and the lengths he was going to put on a brave face were suddenly obvious.

"Hey," she said. He glanced at her, something dark in his eyes and a glitchiness to his features. She wanted to tell him he didn't have to keep it together, but she knew if anything, it would make him try harder. If he could keep everyone from noticing except her, he'd count that as a win. These days, he tried just a little harder to make himself more palatable to the rest of the arcade. She had a feeling he didn't want to remind people who he was in the aftermath of his game being unplugged, even though he'd be the first to acknowledge that no one would ever forget.

"Hey," she said, more softly. "Seriously. I don't know how, but it's going to be okay." Litwak had said his salvage guy was coming on Friday. How in the world was it going to be okay? Their cabinet, their home, was going to get taken away and trashed and sold for parts. There was no path that led even remotely in the direction of 'okay' that she could see.

But she needed to be the strong one here, didn't she? She needed to be the one to prove to him that it was possible to keep it together. The fact that he could try at all for her made her love him fiercely, but he just wasn't capable. Not right now. Not with this.

Squeezing his hand, she said, "I won't freak out about living in Pac-Man if you just, like…stay with me. Not like, stay next to me, I don't mean it like that, I mean, you can go where you need to, if you need space, but just…don't go. Permanently." She would freak out if she had to live in Pac-Man, but she'd keep it from him. That was close enough.

"Taff." He squeezed her hand back. "I—look. No. Of course not. I can't…that is, I won't, though maybe I really do mean I can't—" He glitched once, fully to Turbo, and then back. Taking a deep breath, he put his hands out and held them there, palms down. Red binary frissoned across his knuckles. "No going Turbo for this game-jumper. Not anymore. Not even considering the fact that I am Turbo."

She held onto his hand tightly. "Promise?"

"Oh, please. Don't tell me promises from me actually mean something." When she just looked at him, he sighed and broke their eye contact first. "You know, this has never made sense to me."

"What?"

"You."

Despite herself, a smile ghosted across her face. "That's not super specific."

He glanced at her, one eyebrow raised but his eyes hooded. "I can't possibly be worth the trouble. I'm not king, I only race when President von Glitch lets me on the track, and now—" He sucked in a breath. "Now I'm just gameless. Hoo-hoo, a gameless, game-jumping racer. Now if that isn't the one of the most pathetic thingsth I've ever heard… Anyway, it's hard for me to see what you're getting out of this."

His eyes dropped away from hers and she just kept holding his hand, squeezing her own fingers bloodless. If holding onto him to make him stay was what it took, she'd do it. Taffyta kept watching him, and then she simply asked, "So?"

Flicking his gaze back to hers, he chuckled tiredly and said, "Thanks, Taffyta." At her confused look, he passed a hand over his eyes. "I just—you know. It's sort of, well. Sort of a thankless job. Sticking around for this, I mean." I gestured at himself. "Someone should thank you." He hesitated. "It should probably be me, since, you know, I'm the one you're doing it for."

Taffyta's eyes filled with tears again, but with a struggle, she kept them from falling. No in-between. How could he be so confident and cocky so much of the time and so insecure at others? Though—she realized with a start—she wasn't really that different, was she? When times got bad, she couldn't find her way out, either. Maybe that was something to change.

She thought about telling him that she'd do anything for him, but in the end, she just wrapped her arms around him again. "No problem," she finally said. "Anytime."