Save Me from My Dark Side
Chapter Twelve
Vanellope had raced to the Lemonade Loop as soon as Minty told her what she and her twin had found there, unable to believe it until she saw it for herself. Sure enough, there was Turbo sitting in a crashed car in front of an orange gumdrop with Torvald keeping him company. Vanellope slapped her forehead in frustration as she tried to figure out what to do.
"We only have two hours 'til the arcade opens!" she exclaimed, throwing her arms up in the air as she paced about frantically. "What the heck did he think he was doing, gettin' boozed up and crashing some outlandish car into one of our tracks?"
Torvald tugged at her sleeves nervously. "Well, Miss President, while I was waiting on you and Minty to come back, I took a break from watching him and followed the tire tracks up that hill."
She pointed to where she was referring to and the other girls looked up in response. "There was actually two sets of tracks up there, but the second one had turned around and gone back the way they came from the looks of it."
"So you're saying this might not have been entirely his idea?" Vanellope asked her, stroking her chin. "I suppose that's a possibility. But regardless, whoever was with him is long gone by now and the fact remains that we still have a slightly damaged course."
"It's just the grass and this one gumdrop, your presidency," Minty said in effort to make the situation not look so bad.
"I know, ga-DOY!" Vanellope rolled her eyes. "But if this course gets unlocked by a gamer today, they can still see it. Not to mention, we gotta get rid of that eyesore of a car."
She snapped her fingers as an idea came to her. "I've got it! There's still enough time to get Fix-It Felix over here, repair all the damage including making that car driveable again, and then get Turbo outta here and back home."
A prideful grin played across her face and she stuck her hands inside her hoodie's pocket. "I'm a genius."
Rosie got home within an hour of the arcade opening. Needless to say, she was not expecting to see Vanellope's kart parked by the side of the house and most certainly did not expect to see the pint-sized candy girl and Fix-It Felix, Jr. waiting on her inside the den.
Vanellope was sitting on top of a stool with her legs dangling off the side, swinging them back and forth aimlessly while she helped herself to a soda she had gotten from the upstairs refrigerator, blowing bubbles in it through a straw. Felix was pacing across the room with his hands behind his back, constantly checking the front door. They both had quit what they were doing upon hearing the door open and Rosie gave them both a fearful stare.
"What happened?" she asked, almost afraid to know as she shut the door slowly behind her.
Felix took off his hat out of respect but that made her think something else entirely.
"Oh my God, he's not dead is he?" Rosie immediately assumed, feeling the onset of a crying spell coming on.
Alarmed, Felix slapped his hat back on. "No, no, he's not dead!" he was quick to correct her, calming her down almost instantly. "He's perfectly fine."
"Yeah, except for the fact that he's still un-con-scious," Vanellope snidely added with a roll of her head.
"Unconscious!"
Felix cleared his throat. "We don't know what exactly happened, but from what we gather, Turbo got more drunk than usual and-"
"Got his hands on the ugliest car in the world and parked it accordian-style into one of my giant gumdrops," Vanellope finished for him, resting an elbow on the bar.
Rosie didn't know whether to be happy that he was alive or be mad at him for doing something so stupid or be mournful that things were spiralling further out of her control. With a groan, she rested her face in one of her palms and fell into a sitting position on the plush couch.
"Where did you go earlier?" Felix decided to ask. "Turbo thought you'd up and left him."
Rosie lifted her head back up and blinked hard at him. "He thought I left him?" she repeated in wild disbelief. "Why in the...all I did was visit my family for a while! How could he possibly think that-"
"I don't know," Felix interrupted her. "I told him that you probably just went to clear your head somewhere but obviously he thought otherwise."
"Where did he get a car from? That's what I want to know," Rosie asked, not sure who in the world would offer a drunk something to drive. Honestly, even though it sounded mean, she didn't know who would give Turbo a car, the way people were treating him these days.
Felix hated to be a fink, but he had recognized the vehicle that the former racer had been driving.
"Well, it looked like Candy Goodbody's car," he informed her. "I remember it from when she used to live over here with Officer Bob and-"
Rosie's eyes flashed and lowered at hearing the names. "What was he doing with that self-righteous asshole and his little whore?" she asked angrily through clenched teeth, grabbing the accent pillow to squeeze her nails into.
Vanellope started snickering behind her hand upon hearing the two "grown up words" while Felix had more of a panicked-concerned reaction. He knew how Rosie felt about Bob and he didn't want her to blow a fuse just thinking about him.
"Now, Rosie, calm down," the handyman said soothingly. "We don't know what hap-"
"That toothpick-chomping smiley-face of a dick always had the most hateful things to say about my baby and make me more miserable than I already was after he disappeared!" she practically shrieked, her nails still digging into the pillow like it was an oversized stress ball. "So don't tell me to calm down after telling me that he was hanging out with the likes of him!"
"I know that," Felix replied calmly. "I understand you're upset but no one knows what happens but Turbo, and right now he's passed out in bed so we can't ask him. I'm sure it's not as bad as we think it is."
Rosie gave him a doubtful look but she did start trying to calm down anyway. She rested her head against the back of the couch, already worn out from the day.
"Thanks for bringing him home in one piece."
"It's no problem, ma'am," Felix smiled, patting his hammer on his toolbelt out of habit. He coughed and cleared his throat. "Um, not to bring up bad memories, but you remember that talk I gave you a long time ago? Back at Chun-Li's?"
Rosie nodded slowly, remembering very well. It wasn't the fondest memory she had.
"Might want to give him some version of that," he suggested. "Or at least think about it and act according to what you think would be best for him."
She nodded again, keeping quiet. "I'll try."
Felix smiled then cleared his throat while glancing at his naked wrist at an invisible watch. "Well, I'd love to stay and chat some more but the arcade opens up soon so I need to get ready."
"All right, bye, thanks again," Rosie told him as he let himself out.
Vanellope hopped off her stool and bounced herself onto the couch beside Rosie, almost immediately sinking down into the plushness of it.
"Don't you need to get back too, Miss President?"
"Oh, I sometimes take myself off the roster to give one of the others a chance to race," Vanellope explained casually, subconsciously chewing her hoodie strings. "And don't worry about any damage he caused at my place, Hammer Time took care of it already."
"I'm really sorry about that," Rosie said tiredly with a groan.
"It's okay," the child shrugged it off. "Since he can't take over again, I don't care if he visits...sober."
"I don't know what I'm going to do with him," Rosie admitted to her as she rubbed her neck. "He misses his old life, with the racing and the winning, and he thinks he's not worth anything. He keeps getting shunned by everyone which isn't good for his self-esteem. Everytime I try to do something though, he gets mad or thinks I'm just doing it because I feel sorry for him."
Vanellope knew how that felt. When she was still an outcast in Sugar Rush during the days of "King Candy", she had been given both the cold shoulder treatment and bullied. There had been times during those days that she felt she wasn't worth anything either, questioned why she even existed, even though she knew that deep down in her code she was meant to race and be part of the game.
She thought very carefully before she spoke. "I...might have an idea on how to help him out...if I can get the other racers on board and if we can even get him to agree to it."
Rosie raised a curious brow.
"And you are going to have implement some tough love," Vanellope continued, pointing an authoritative finger at her. "This mushy holding-hands stuff isn't gonna work for him to make him snap out of it, so you're gonna have to get a little firm with him."
"I don't know if I can do that," the teen admitted quietly. "I don't like the idea of being mean to him."
"I'm not saying be mean, silly, I meant just lay down some ground rules. Pretend he's an overgrown kid or something. He's in trouble and you have to do whatever it takes to make sure he doesn't do it again. Give him an ultimatum. Anything to force him to do whatever it takes to get him normal."
Rosie blew her breath out and curled her legs up under her. "All right, I'll do my best. But what's this little plan of yours exactly?"
Vanellope scooted herself off the couch and landed on the floor with both feet. "Lemme go back to Sugar Rush and have a quick chat with the others first. They should all be gathered around the starting line anyway. I'll be right back."
The miniature president glitched herself out of the house and Rosie heard the sound of her kart starting up and leaving the premises. She wondered what the little moppet had up her sleeve, hoping whatever it was would work. She was all out of ideas on how to help Turbo deal with this depression he was under.
Rosie recalled Felix saying he was sleeping upstairs so she decided she best check up on him. After slowly opening up the bedroom door, she took a peek on the bed and found he had rolled up onto her side of the bed, curled up in a ball with his head on her pillow. Rosie sighed to herself and sat down on the bed beside him, looking down and watching him sleep for a while. He looked so peaceful laying there, not a care in the world, as he slept off his hangover.
He was still wearing his helmet so, thinking he'd be more comfortable, she gently wedged her fingers underneath the edge of it to carefully pry it off him. She hooked it on the knob of the bedpost where it normally stayed. In his sleep, Turbo curled his arms tighter to him and shivered like he was cold, so Rosie put a hand to his forehead to see if he was running a fever. No, he felt normal. Since he was sleeping on top of the covers, Rosie had to tug the blanket from the other side of the bed and make do with covering him up that way in a makeshift cocoon.
That seemed to stop the shivering and Rosie reached her hand out to pet his head, tenderly running her fingers through his short black hair.
"You could have died, you know that right?" she whispered so not to wake him. "I love you too much to let you hurt yourself like that, so you can just forget having another drink for a while."
He didn't say anything of course, just laid there and slept. Rosie let her finger drift down to trace the features of his face; across his brow line, where ironically he didn't even have eyebrows, just smooth gray skin that personally she always found more exotic than "corpse-like" (yes, she had actually heard people say that); down his cute little upturned nose that she liked to give "eskimo kisses" to; around his big orb-shaped eyes that, thanks to the slightly darker skin tone around them, gave off the appearance of being sunk in when they really popped out; a lot of people may have considered yellow eyes unnerving to look at, but she'd always thought they were more mesmerizing than anything, especially when they glowed in the dark; and then on around his mouth where a few laugh lines were present.
That must have tickled even in his sleep because he gave a lazy hint of a lop-sided grin when she did that. Rosie smiled and leaned down to kiss his temple. Okay, bad idea, he really did reek of alcohol. She wrinkled her nose and raked her hand through his hair one more time before getting off the bed and leaving the room, closing the door gently behind her. She let out another sigh and leaned back against the door, letting the back of her head hit it gently as she did so, as she remembered her last time indulging in alcohol as a means to erase painful memories away.
Street Fighter II - 1997
Another bottle shattered just above Felix's head as it hit the door, but this one just barely missing him. Shards of glass rained onto his cap and he involuntarily ducked and threw his hands over his head to pointlessly shield himself.
"I said to piss off!" Rosie yelled at him viciously as she threw the covers back over her and buried her head under her pillow.
Felix sighed deeply, trying not to get aggravated, and he took off his hat to shake the remnants of the beer bottle off of it before placing it back on.
"Rosie, I know you had a bad day, but..."
"I don't wanna hear it, damn it!"
"But everyone's worried sick about you drinkin' this heavily," the kind handyman pressed on, much to her extreme annoyance. "You gave everyone quite the fright when you fell off the roof today."
Her eyes flashed at that and she pressed her pillow to her ears in attempt to drown him out. "Get the hell out of my room, Felix! You're giving me a freakin' headache."
Apparently Felix needed to get his ears checked because he kept rattling on. Damn, she could still hear him through her pillow. She was out of ammunition, having just thrown her last empty bottle at him and she wasn't about to waste one of the full ones.
"You should consider yourself lucky that Zangief caught you this time," he was saying. He sounded like he was getting closer to the bed as he talked, which was a very bad idea. "Next time, you could Game Over."
"Do I look like I give a shit if I live or die?" Rosie asked him bitterly. "My life ended ten years ago anyway, does it really matter what I do with the rest of it?"
She didn't hear him comment right away. Then he said, "Turbo wasn't the only thing in your life, you know."
That did it. Rage coursed through her veins and she grabbed her pillow from her head, sat up and clumsily threw it at Felix to shut him up, though she missed him by several feet. The angle that she was sitting when she chunked it made her accidentally knock some things off her little night stand, one item in particular crashing into pieces when it hit the hardwood floor.
Rosie glanced down at the noise and in that instant, her anger was replaced with both horror and despair. The framed picture she had of both her and Turbo had been what shattered on the floor, jagged pieces of glass missing in random spots over the photo and the frame bent in a few places. She was absolutely mortified that she had broken it and ignoring Felix's warning cry that she was going to cut herself, she toppled out of the bed awkwardly on her knees and grabbed the destroyed treasure.
Hot tears flooded out of her sad green eyes, bloodshot from all the drinking and with bags under them from lack of sleep, and she surveyed what damage she had done to the frame, her hands shaking as she flashed back to the day the picture was taken. They'd both been so happy...he'd been so alive.
Felix was wisely hanging back yet still inching closer as he saw the anger leaving her.
"Let me see it," he said gently, holding a hand out.
Rosie clutched it to her chest and glared up at him. "No, it's mine," she snapped childishly, turning herself slightly towards the bed so he couldn't try to take it from her. "You can't have it."
Felix resisted the urge to roll his eyes, knowing that she was still impaired and emotionally charged up. He stretched his arm out further, his hand still waiting.
"I'm going to give it back," he promised her in a soft voice. "Let me fix it for you so you won't cut yourself holding it."
She considered him for a second, just sitting there tangled up in her sheets with her legs bent under her and her hair messed up from rolling about in the bed, and very slowly she handed it to him. Felix got his hammer out and tapped it, making it good as new, and gave it directly back to her. Rosie looked at it, the glass now in one piece and the frame not bent up or scratched. Fresh tears came as she hugged it again.
"Why'd he have to leave me?" she asked, her voice coming out in a whine due to crying. "Didn't he know I'd miss him?"
Felix didn't respond, knowing she wasn't really looking for an answer. The only one who did know the answers was dead now.
"He was...everything to me," Rosie continued, her tears cascading down her cheeks and onto the blankets she was still partially wrapped in. Her head was killing her from the hangover she was experiencing and she felt nauseated but she didn't care. She didn't care about anything anymore.
Felix decided it was okay to speak now while she wasn't in an angry mood. "I know you miss him," he started, still talking in a gentle tone. "But you can't live the rest of your life this way, drinking like a fish and shutting yourself off from the world. It isn't healthy."
He took a breath before adding, "And I don't think he would like knowing that you let yourself fall apart like this either. I'm sure he would've wanted you to at least try doing something productive with yourself besides...what you're doing now."
Rosie didn't say anything, just sat there and hugged her picture and propped the side of her throbbing head sideways against the mattress, not even looking at Felix. All she'd been doing since Turbo died had been drinking and moping about feeling sorry for herself, mourning his death. It didn't help that everyone had cast him in the light of villainy since his unspeakable actions ten years ago, actions that she'd rather not talk about. She knew she was talked about among the other characters, only natural as she had been his girlfriend of four years. Some people even said ugly things to her face, especially that ass from A.P.B., Officer Bob.
"You need to let other people in and help you," Felix continued, not even sure if she was listening to him.
"Other people," she scoffed bitterly, tilting her chin down and holding her picture away from her just enough for her to look down at it. "Why should I let people in? They all hate him. I'm not associating with people that have nothing better to do than drag his name in the dirt."
Felix thought that Turbo had dragged his own name in the dirt but he didn't dare say that out loud. He had no idea what the racer had been thinking on that fateful day and though there were multiple theories, no one really knew the truth. Even Rosie didn't know what was running through his head that day as she hadn't even seen him.
"Not everyone thinks unkindly of him," he finally said.
Rosie cut him a glare from the side. "Do you?"
Felix opened his mouth then closed it. He wasn't sure how he felt exactly. It wasn't like he was good friends with the racer to begin with, only chatting casually when they ran into each other. His silence seemed to be enough of an answer for her though, and she shut her eyes to him.
"Thought so."
The handyman sighed to himself, rubbing the back of his neck. He hated seeing someone that used to be so lively now being so...dead. Not physically dead of course, but she might as well be the way she was acting these last few years. The drinking had gotten heavier as of late, thanks to the arrival of Sugar Rush.
Rosie had went into near hysterics when Litwak brought in the new racing game, his first one since the RoadBlasters incident since he had somewhat thought that racing games were a jinx after that. But this game had high ratings and was very popular in other arcades, so he had taken a chance on it and brought it in. Everyone wouldn't shut up talking about it and it was driving the depressed cheerleader insane. All it did was remind of her of TurboTime, even though the format, design, programming, etc. were all completely different.
"Look, it doesn't matter what other people think," Felix was telling her as she wiped her tears from her face. "What does matter is how you respond to it. You can't let everyone drag you down. You need to get up and start living, and shutting yourself off and drinking isn't living. You need to find something to preoccupy your thoughts, some kind of activity or a hobby or some kind of lifestyle change. But you can't just sit here feeling sorry for yourself living off the old days."
She didn't say anything, just sat there silently. Felix was almost positive that he was wasting his breath. Then he heard,
"You're right."
Rosie turned her head just enough to where she could view him out of the corners of her eyes.
"You're right. I'm only hurting myself. I'm not doing myself or anyone any good like this."
She sniffled and grabbed some tissues that were in the box that had fallen on the floor.
"I just want to be by myself right now, okay?" she requested quietly as she dabbed at her eyes and nose.
Felix smiled politely, still not knowing if anything he said made a difference or not. Rosie heard him shut the door when he left and she tilted her head back down to her picture. Damn it, she missed him so much! Even after all these years she could still feel the way he used to touch her, the way he kissed; she could still hear that contagious laugh of his, hear him whisper to her in the dark during their private moments.
I love you, pretty girl...he used to say.
Large tears fell and landed on the frame. "I love you too, champ," she whimpered out, pressing her lips against the smooth glass for a few seconds then pulling back and running her finger gently over it.
Her heart hurt again and she stood up on her knees and placed the picture back in its original location on the night stand. She glanced over at the small breakfast table she had in her room (she was staying at Chun-Li's house) and eyed the few bottles of now warm beer that she had left over. Weakly, she stood up properly using the bed for support and shuffled over there and grabbed a bottle, taking a good hard look at it. She then picked all of them up with her arms and slowly but surely made her way to her open window and looked down at the empty street below.
Then she chunked them all in one pitch, watching them shatter on the ground, the alcoholic contents draining into the gutter never to be drank by anyone.
She had to get her life back. It would never be the same as it was, she knew that, but she had to do better than this. Turbo wouldn't have wanted her to live like this. He'd want her to try and be happy, even if he wasn't in the picture anymore. First thing was to quit drinking, which might be harder than she thought since she'd been at it so long. Second thing was to get away from here, away from all these people that only served to remind her that he wasn't there.
She wasn't sure where she'd go yet, but she knew she was going. She had to get away from society for a while if she was ever going to have a chance at redeeming her sanity.
Present Day
Rosie wiped the tears away that had come when she relived that day. She didn't know what she was going to do about Turbo and his demons, but she knew Vanellope was right. She was going to have to go into "tough love" mode and get more firm with this. She'd already lost him once and she'd be damned if it was going to happen again. Now she just needed a gameplan.