Filling in the Empty Spots
-o-o-o-o-o-
Chapter 9: Little Cabin in the Woods
-o-o-o-o-o-
Ralph all but disappeared over the next few months as he retreated to the Pine Locum forest and worked on his cabin. Sometimes he'd resurface for the Random Roster Race and Jubileena would greet him happily. "You're gone so long. I miss you," she'd chide him, followed by: "When can I come see the cabin?"
"When it's ready," he'd always reply.
"When will it be ready?"
"When I've built the road."
"When will you build the road?"
"Once the cabin's ready."
And sometimes they would start looping the badinage as a joke, repeating the exchange over and over until one of them gave in and moaned for a stop.
"It is taking a long time for me though. I'm having to learn to build things...not wreck them. Even with Felix helping me half of the time."
But eventually the cabin and the approaching road to it were ready and he came for her, collecting her just before the Random Roster Race began. Ralph climbed onto the back of her kart and she drove him out the long distance to his new home, high on the side of the mountains.
"Oh!" Jubileena repeated a hundred times as she walked through the cabin and the garden around it. Ralph had put a lot of effort into the rebuild, more than just patching the holes in the walls and replacing the cookie shingles on the roof. Inside was a spacious living room with an impressive fireplace along one wall. A large rug lay in front of the hearth and above the mantle hung a sign that read 'Home, Sweet Home, Literally.' A broad table took up part of the area as well, spread not with dishes but with Ralph's maps and cartography supplies. Off of the living room sat a small kitchen and a bathroom. There had been a tiny tub in the bathroom when he had found the cabin, but now there were two, the original and a much roomier one that he could fit more than just his feet into. Upstairs in the open loft were two beds, a big one with a fist painted on the headboard and a smaller one with a painted pair of cherries. "Ralph! There's even a place for me!" she squeaked excitedly on seeing the bed.
"And we built a shed out back for you to park your kart in. It snows a lot of powdered sugar up here on the cold nights."
"Oh Ralph!" She jumped up into his arms and kissed him again and again with the enthusiasm of a happy puppy.
-o-o-o-o-o-
That night as the sun went down and the glittering stars came out, Ralph piled maple logs into the fireplace and lit them, coaxing out a sweet scented blaze. He and Jubileena snuggled on the big couch nearby watching the flames. "Ralph, I know what I'm about to say sounds completely mean and selfish, but I'm glad your game is gone. If it weren't we wouldn't be here right now in your beautiful gingerbread house."
"Sometimes it takes a disaster to change things for the better," he said as he nuzzled his button nose into her cherry-scented hair affectionately.
"It was a disaster, but everything worked out."
"It did. I still have you. I still have a place to live. I still have my friends. But now I have more of everything." He kissed her on the top of her head again. "And I think everyone in my game found a place to go."
"Maybe sometime we can go visiting and see how everyone's doing."
"That would be nice. I'm curious to see how Mary's getting along in Hero's Duty. Last I heard from Felix, the men all voted to promote her to the rank of 'Mom'."
Jubileena giggled. "But not tonight. Tonight I just want to spend time in your new home and relax in front of the fire and sleep in that little bed upstairs." She looked up at him lovingly. It really had been a disaster, but now it seemed as if it were meant to happen. They would be together in Sugar Rush now, together in a sweet little world of revving engines and hand-drawn maps, snuggling together in his adorable gingerbread cabin
"Are you sure that bed's yours?" he teased. There was no question that the bed was for her. He had even placed a little pair of pink slippers on the rug beside it.
She groaned and then started tickling him. Some time ago she'd discovered that he was quite ticklish to her touch, and it didn't take much to have him writhing and sweating on the floor, tears in his eyes from laughing so hard. And soon she had him there, rolling on the braided rug holding his sides and trying to escape. And when he did, he ran away, and she chased him all around the cabin, up and down the stairs, in and out of the doors, and even across the porch roof at one point. But then he suddenly turned, and too late to change direction she ran right into him, where he scooped her up in his big hands and held her against his chest, the racer squirming and laughing.
Ralph carried her back inside and sat down on the big couch again. When he looked into her eyes she stopped squirming and simply gazed back. "Ralph?" she prompted, knowing there were words ready to spill.
"I made that bed hoping that there would be a Mrs. Wreck-It someday."
"A Mrs. Wreck-It? But...there are cherries painted on the headboard. I thought that you made it for me." She felt a little confused. Was her welcome only temporary?
He took a breath and nodded to her, too nervous to say anything else.
Suddenly it hit her. "Wait, are you...are you wanting to marry me?" Her stomach began to flutter as the conjured butterflies began to panic.
He nodded again, trying desperately to read the emotion in her words and face. But then his voice returned. "I thought about it a lot, Jubie. You were always on my mind as I fixed up this place. Every shingle. Every floorboard. Every stepping stone. Every foot of that road. I felt like I was fixing up this place for us. Not just for me, but for us." It was complete truth. For the first time in so long the shadow of Vanellope's death had not hung upon him. Instead there was the bright glow of his cherry girl filling every waking moment.
Ralph moved off of the couch and went to his knees before her. Taking her shaking hand, he gave her the gentlest, sweetest smile he could conjure, throwing in plenty of the pleading looks that Vanellope used to give him. "Jubileena, would you be my wife and share my cabin with me? Would you even consider marrying a big sappy guy like me?"
Jubileena felt herself trembling from head to toe.
Long ago she had hoped to someday marry one of the boy racers, but had given up on those dreams as the years passed and her attempts to get close to any of them had failed. So after the realization that her fate was that of a perpetual batchelorette, she'd resigned herself to a life devoted to her job as a racer and fun with her friends.
But seeing some of the other racers find love, either with each other or with characters outside of the game, she'd begun again to long for a companion. A storybook of fairytales at a slumber party one night had led to her foolish romantic fantasy and all too many hours wasted lying in the licorice grass of Red Twist Park. Until one afternoon a fateful clumsy moment in that meadow had brought an unlikely but likeable someone into her life. She had been thrilled and even content with Ralph's romantic friendship and kisses, but here he was offering a full commitment.
"Ralph, I will!" she blurted, not even pausing to think any further beyond her gut reaction. Dizzy...completely dizzy.
His sweet expression became one of great joy and he snatched her up and hugged her tightly. "Jubie," he purred and rubbed his cheek against hers.
"I'm going to be a bride," she squeaked to herself. "A real bride! I'm going to have a wedding." Her head danced with excitement. "Can we have a big wedding? With a huge cake and lots of flowers and all our friends? I'll ask Snowanna and Adorabeezle to be my bridesmaids!"
"Anything you want," he said happily. "I'll have Felix be my best man, and I'll hire Mary to make you the biggest wedding cake anyone's ever seen."
"I bet Princess Vanellope would let us get married in the castle, and we could have the party there afterwards."
Ralph's elation suddenly came to a screeching halt. "The castle?"
"Sure! That's where all the best parties in Sugar Rush are held."
The big man recovered himself quickly. "I have a better idea. Lets have the wedding up in Red Twist Park, where we first met." The castle was just too close to the cracks in his heart.
"An outdoor wedding? Ooh! I love it! It's so pretty up there and it's so us."
"It's very us."
"I can't wait to tell everyone we're getting married. Snowanna's going to have kittens! And I think Adorabeezle will probably melt. Or should we keep it a secret for now?" She pulled back and looked at Ralph, wondering what his decision would be.
"I'd say tell everyone. Especially Taffyta."
"I will! I'll tell everyone!" She held him tightly, but then suddenly began crying as another realization struck her. "Ralph. We're going to be together, together in love forever," she whimpered in her sweet naivety.
He smiled and hoped that there wasn't any sadness showing through that smile. The loss of Vanellope had taught him the foolishness of the word 'forever.'
-o-o-o-o-o-
Ralph sat down across the table from Vanellope, a small one set up for an intimate dinner near the bay window at the end of her office. "This looks nice. Kinda romantic," he said. "What's the occasion?"
She lit the two candy cane tapers. "Three months since the incident," she said, flouncing into her seat. She was wearing another of her royal gowns, not her fluffy layered one that was her default dress, but a confection of pale rose georgette that made her look somewhat older and more serious.
"I guess it has been. It already seems so far in the past."
"And it's been one week since Felix and Calhoun were married."
"I still remember that."
Vanellope giggled. "I'd hope so."
Sour Bill arrived at the table with a bottle of pink sparkling wine and filled up their glasses. "This is a special occasion, isn't it?" remarked Ralph. And then he squinted his eyes at her. "Wait, aren't you a bit young for champagne?"
"Do the math, Stinkbrain." She picked up her glass in a toast. Ralph raised his as well and touched the lip of it to hers. The delicious chime created as the two glasses clinked together seemed to echo along the long, high-ceilinged office. "To the safety of Sugar Rush," toasted Vanellope.
"To the safety of your kingdom," smiled Ralph and he sipped the bubbly. It was just like her...pink and sweet and effervescent and quietly dangerous.
Sour Bill brought in a tureen of candied fruit soup and ladled it into two bowls for them. "Bon Appetit," he said unenthusiastically before departing back to the kitchens.
As they enjoyed the soup, Ralph noticed that Vanellope kept looking across the table at him between the candles. And she was using 'that look,' the one that meant that she was about to twist his arm and force him into doing something he might not necessarily agree with. "All right," he said eventually, unable to take the gaze any longer. Something about the combination of delighted expectancy and sad-eyed waifishness in it always triggered something in his vulnerable heart. "What do you want?"
"What do you mean?" she asked innocently.
"When you look at me like that, I know there's something you want from me."
"Am I that obvious?"
"To me you are."
"Ralph, we should get married," she said matter-of-factly.
He was glad he wasn't sipping his champagne, or that he didn't have a spoonful of soup in his mouth, otherwise he would have spit either across the table. "What?!" he coughed, and kept coughing in shock.
"We love each other, don't we?"
"Well yes, but it's not that kind of love."
"It could be. Besides, what about what happened after the wedding reception?"
Ralph blushed. Somehow they'd gotten caught up in the emotion and passion of Felix and Calhoun's nuptials and had ended up on a park bench somewhere outside of Niceland, kissing and clutching each other for hours. "I guess we did get a bit carried away. I told you I'm not always myself when I've been drinking."
"Ralph, you'd not had anything to drink. You were stone-cold sober so you can't blame it on that."
"Okay, so I was feeling kinda romantic that night," he said slowly, trying to play down their serious make-out session with the tone of his voice. It was true, he was an emotional sap. "But Vanellope, you can't marry me. You deserve someone better. Someone from your own game at least. I'm just the guy who wrecks the building." He shuddered. He was using Gene's words, but somehow they weren't as offensive when he applied them to himself.
"I don't want someone better, and I don't want someone from my own game." She glitched out of her chair and was beside him, hanging onto his arm. "I want you, Ralph." Her eyes had gone into full-on puppy-dog mode. "Ralph, you know I love you, and you know that you love me. Please?"
Not so many months ago he had been a pariah pushed to the breaking point. And now here he was dining in a castle with a cute loveable girl that wanted to marry him, and not just any cute loveable girl in a castle, but a popular character in the arcade as well, and not just any popular character, but the president of her game and the princess of a kingdom. What had he done to deserve this?
And she was right. He did love her, and he did want to marry her. At that moment it felt to him as if his heart might leap from his chest. "You really want this?"
"I do. I want to be yours forever, until the final Game Over."
"You really mean it? You're not just playing?"
"I do mean it, Ralph. I want this more than anything else in the world," she pleaded.
"All right," he said, his hands shaking terribly. He took a deep breath. "But on two conditions."
"Tell me."
"One, I'm still Wreck-It Ralph, and I'm in my game every day the arcade's open. And two...that our marriage is kept a secret."
"A secret? Why a secret?"
"I don't want all the Nicelanders knowing that I married some brat with dirty hair."
She looked at him blankly for a moment, and then laughed so hard that she fell out of her chair and onto the floor. "Good, because I don't want anyone in the kingdom to know I married some Bad Guy who lives at the dump."
They both laughed and then kissed and toasted the engagement to make it official. When Sour Bill came back in, Ralph looked over at the blushing Vanellope. "We should probably tell him though, right?"
She nodded.
"Tell me what?" asked Bill disinterestedly as he removed their soup bowls and replaced them with their dinner plates.
"Vanellope and I are going to be married," said Ralph, leaning casually back into his chair.
His face a sudden storm of panic, the sourball whipped his head around to face Ralph, who nodded. And then he looked at Vanellope, hoping that the wrecker was just teasing him.
"It's true," she said with a huge grin.
Sour Bill turned two shades lighter and fainted to the floor.
"Awww. That wasn't much fun. I was hoping to torture him a bit longer," Ralph moaned.
-o-o-o-o-o-
Filling in the Empty Spots continues in:
Chapter 10: Back to the Meadow
Chapter 11: The Spring Solstice Ball
Chapter 12: The President's Legacy
Chapter 13: A Heavy Crown
Chapter 14: The Final Secret
Chapter 15: Filling in the Empty Spots Commentary
-o-o-o-o-o-o
Wreck-It Ralph and all related concepts, characters, worlds, and events are property of Walt Disney Pictures. Original characters and story elements are property of E. Potter, writing under the pen name of Miratete.
