"There are some things that time cannot mend. Some hurts that go too deep, that have taken hold."
-Frodo Baggins; The Return of the King, J.R.R. Tolkien
It was the dreams that did it.
One morning, President Vanellope von Schweetz awoke from sleep in her large bedroom in the castle in Sugar Rush. The strange dreams had troubled her again. And now she had had enough.
During the several months since her return to a normal existence after the re-set of Sugar Rush, she had progressed through several stages. At first, wide-eyed, she had soaked up everything like a sponge. Win, lose, or draw, she was finally getting to race, and her spirit soared. The changes she introduced as president also met with wide approval; and she became, if not the absolute center of attention, the first among equals among the racers. The other racers, too, felt they had a heavy penance to pay for their years of maltreatment of Vanellope, even if their minds and their actions had not been fully under their control, due to Turbo's gamewide brain-lock. Taffyta in particular went out of her way to solicit Vanellope's trust and friendship; and the two of them began going over to Pac-Man together when the Bad-Anon meetings would get out, bringing cookies and sweets from Sugar Rush to the assembled "Bad Guys", who the kids soon found were nothing of the sort. Taffyta even ended up making a connection with the genteel Saitine, and they began to spend free time together, much as Ralph and Vanellope did.
All this was wondrous. She now lived in the castle, and wanted for nothing. And the racing was wonderful. On the few occasions when she required another kart, she and Ralph would amble over to the bakery and create something new and unexpected. Other racers asked Vanellope if Ralph could help them too, but here she drew the line. "Nope. We got trade secrets to protect! You guys can hang out with him all you want—but no baking karts!"
Yet, over time, she felt other rays of light making their way into this wonderland. Darker ones. Thoughts and feelings that would come any time of the day or night; but particularly when all had gone to bed and she was by herself in the dark—again. At such times, the old feelings would steal into her soul. The desire to strive—against the near-impossible. To not have all her wishes granted. To be required, for instance, to make her own kart out of scraps she found in the junkyard. To have to slink around to avoid detection. It was quite strange, but there was something she really liked about the thought of this. For better or for worse, she had had to live a very unusual existence for most of her life...and it had molded her. She tried talking to other racers about it, but none of them seemed able to relate to it at all. They had always had just what they needed, whenever they wanted it. Loneliness and need were foreign concepts to them. They were nice, but uncomprehending. About the only negative feelings they had ever experienced were from discovering they had been pawns in Turbo's misrule of Sugar Rush, and so they were all concerned to make Vanellope feel as welcomed as possible. The idea that there was anything positive in her fifteen years as an outlaw was simply beyond them.
Ralph had been a better interlocutor on this subject; but even he, who had rued his thirty years' worth of being shunned by all in Fix-it Felix, did not feel anything like the "homesickness for the time 'before'"—for that is what it felt like—that Vanellope experienced from time to time. Ensconced in his new, happy life, he was not able to really grasp where she was coming from. He felt it was better for him to try to steer her away from dwelling upon this time, feeling that it was now as remote as Tamora's engagement to Brad.
After a time, Vanellope found herself increasingly beset by boredom. When it began extending to racing, she got very concerned. How can I be feeling this? I don't understand. There's nothing in the world I like better than racing. How can I feel this way about it? Her dreams were there to offer an interpretation, as they had done during her long years of exile. In those days, she had dreamed of what turned out to be her denied life: racing, and collegiality with the other racers. These visions were strange to her at the time, but reinforced her ideas about racing being in her code, as she later put it to Ralph. Now the dreams were different. Opposite, it seemed. Instead of dreaming about happy times racing with colleagues, she would dream about her hideout in Diet Cola Mountain and the things she had painstakingly scavenged to make it a home; about moving stealthily around the game, and the intimate knowledge she had gained of the entire geography of it as a result; and above all, about this "outlaw" feeling that characterized those years.
She would awaken from these dreams indignant. And on this morning, she reached the limit. She exploded inside herself. This doesn't make any sense! I was back living by the hot springs...and I liked it! People didn't like me...and I kinda liked it? I'd rather have a pedal kart I made myself and have to sneak into a race? This is too weird. Man, I wish someone would understand this. She paused in thought. There was another part, too. One she never put into words. She had always avoided looking at it, or thinking about it. But it was there, whenever she started thinking about this. She shook her head. No...I'm not going there. She paused again. Is all this...something the folks at Bad-Anon would understand? Maybe Clyde? Or Saitine? Bless him, Ralph just doesn't seem to get it, any time I try and talk to him about it. But—can I actually get up in front of all those guys and...make any sense? It was her way to decide things quickly and then act on them quickly. Yep. That's what I'm gonna do. If I don't, I'm gonna go crazy.
That evening, once the arcade had closed, she made her way briskly towards Pac-Man. She caught sight of Ralph in Game Central and waved, shouting, "I got an errand to do! Meet you at Tapper's in an hour!" Ralph smiled amiably and went off to Tapper's, accompanied this evening by Coily and Q*Bert. Her purposeful stride slowed somewhat as she approached the entrance to Pac-Man. Fear—fear of the unknown—and fear of uncovering to others (not least Ralph) the full extent of her malaise, slowed her steps. But in a moment, she shook off the doubts and sat down in the transport into Pac-Man, which presently whisked her to the game entrance.
She knew the place well, since she came every week for the Bad-Anon meetings. Clyde knew her as a mood-brightening element after the meetings. How would he react to this very unusual request—a non-Bad Guy wanting in on Bad-Anon? In a moment, she caught sight of him. "Clyde!", she called. Acknowledging her, he moved in his sidelong way over to her. "Vanellope. To what do I owe the pleasure of this surprise visit? A little after-hours game-jumping?" Yet her expression did not speak fun and games to him, and after a moment she said, "Can we go into the meeting room? I gotta ask you something. Something important." Clyde knew that Fix-it Felix was coming up on its thirty-first anniversary. Was she planning some big surprise party for Ralph?
They entered the small, plain room Vanellope now knew so well. Here's another hidden place. Where these guys meet. Out of sight of everyone. Like...like the hot springs. She unfolded two chairs for them, and they settled. Clyde was a laconic sort, so he did not say anything—Vanellope had requested the meeting, after all. After a moment, she began.
"Clyde...now, whatever happens, whatever I say now, I wanna tell you: I'm not crazy. This...problem I'm having is driving me crazy...but I'm not crazy. Okay?" Clyde nodded; and she continued. "There's so much...I almost don't know where to start." The anticipated relief of unburdening herself was already affecting her, and her eyes moistened somewhat. Clyde noticed this and his expression shifted slightly, radiating concern and acceptance. "You can tell me, Vanellope. I have heard many people speak about their troubles in my time; and you look like one who is troubled." Oh, thank you thank you thank you. She allowed the balm of his voice, and the acceptance it brought, to spread over her.
"You know about what Turbo did to Sugar Rush, and what that did to me, right?" He nodded. "For...for fifteen years I lived as an outlaw in what ended up being my own game, in which I was supposed to be in charge. Ralph has probably told you all about it: I lived in a cave, inside a mountain, next to a hot springs. I scavenged stuff from around the game. I got very good at not being noticed, or seen. I knew deep down that I was a racer—though no one else seemed to feel that way—so I even scavenged old parts from the kart junkyard to make my own. I thought, 'Maybe if I could get into a race, and show them I can do it, they'd change their minds and let me have a kart and be in the roster.' What Ralph did after he saw the others destroying that kart, after pushing me in the mud, was the beginning of our friendship...though I gave him a lot of grief for a while." She chuckled, recalling her Hero's Doody wisecracks of that day and Ralph's reaction to them.
"So now everything's different. Turbo's gone, the game's re-set, everyone remembers me and is my friend, I'm the president of the game, and I live in the castle. Life's just peaches and cream." She paused. "Isn't it." She looked down. Here it comes.
"No. I don't get it. There's something...off about it for me. Now here's where you're really gonna think I'm crazy: I have dreams that I'm back living in the cave and being an outlaw. And I like it! And...like...I think that's my real life. Or at least part of it." She tried to organize what she had not been able to communicate to anyone. "If Turbo had never come along...today I'd be 'Princess Vanellope'"—she spat out the phrase—"and I wouldn't have a care in the world. I'd'a been racing and ruling for years and I wouldn't know anything else. But...this...this happened to me. And I'm not the same person as that. I had this...totally unprogrammed life. A life other than what I was made for. And I had to survive it anyway. And not go crazy from the loneliness and frustration. And...I got used to it. I...I think there's ways it's...it's made me a better person than I would have been. You think I ever even think about giving up being princess if this doesn't happen? No way! But I gave it up the very first thing the game got re-set."
She looked down for a moment. Clyde remained silent and allowed her to think, and feel. At length she spoke, more quietly. "With all the stuff Ralph has told me about his life before, and about stuff at the meetings here, I think I understand it real good, because...well, I was a Bad Guy in my own game for all those years. I wasn't even doing anything like wrecking a building. People just didn't like me for some weird reason. I tried to be nice to everyone but they all hated me. That...you know, that does something to you. It might not make you bitter—I don't know how I never ended up there—maybe another part of my code, one that gave me a happy outlook on things because I was also the leader of the game as well as being a racer—but it changes you. Because I'm an upbeat person, I feel like...like it made me better. And..."
She shuddered at a new thought. It came, as it always did. That...no. I won't. But it was insisting. No... And suddenly, she flashed back to when King Candy was about to take her out in the ice caves...and she had embraced glitching, instead of avoiding it. And that that was good. A light began to dawn. Yes. Tell him. Say it. Go on. Say it. It's safe here. C'mon... "...I...I feel so...guilty! About...about feeling anything positive about...that time...after...after Ralph did what he did for me. I feel like he's gonna think I'm ungrateful for what he did. Like...like it wasn't the most amazing thing anyone ever did for me...for anybody...like I think he shouldn't have done it...no...no..." She began crying and gasping for breath, but forced herself to keep talking. Go. Drive through it. Keep going. "...that's not it, no...I just feel so confused, like I'm gonna burst in two! Like...like, who the heck am I, anyway? President? Outlaw? What's right? Do I gotta choose? Am I really a Bad Guy, just pretending to be a Good Guy?"
And here the excitement of finally pouring this all out to someone else got the better of her, and she began sobbing. Clyde, good psychologist that he was, adopted an attitude of kindly concern but did not move to intervene. He just let her have a good cry, because he felt that's what she really needed right now. He had heard many stories of discontent in Bad-Anon over the years. But this one was unique. Vanellope certainly was the only resident of the arcade who had had her identity stolen from her for years. What she was telling him now jibed with things he had wondered about in the back of his mind since hearing her story from Ralph months ago. It's almost as if she is an honorary Bad Guy. She's coming at it from a different direction than us, but she is grappling with similar...concerns.
All at once both began speaking. "I was thinking that—" they both began, and then Clyde stopped, to let her continue. They both laughed at this. "...that...if you guys allow it...if you'll have me...I really wanted to come to a meeting—during a meeting...as a participant...and talk about this with you guys. I think you would understand. I know that some of you have stories about 'before' that...have to do with your part in your games...that might...I dunno...resonate. Like Ralph had his land and then they build Niceland on it, so before, he was living this other life and then in the game he's gotta be this angry guy. I...I had another life too, 'before'—what I was programmed for, and then never lived..." Her voice caught. "Ralph...I love him...dearly...but when I've tried to talk about this with him, he just doesn't really get it. He's so happy having friends now, and he wants me to be happy and enjoy that too. I know he had an even longer time alone than me...but...I'm sorry...that was part of his job. His code was to be a Bad Guy, even if he wasn't a bad guy. But...my code was to be a racer...and I got turned into a Bad Guy...not by the game, but by somebody else...and then I had to live that, nonstop, for fifteen years. No racing. No friends. No escape from...the game..." She began weeping quietly.
After a time, she grew quiet, and looked up at Clyde. He spoke. "Yes, I believe that is a very good idea. You already know everyone here. They will be a little surprised to have you join our ranks, even temporarily—though after what you have told me, you are always welcome in Bad-Anon. Would you like me to give them any sort of notice beforehand? Or just surprise them?" "Surprise 'em, I think," replied Vanellope. Why let there be gossip for a week beforehand? They can just show up and see me there and wonder. Clyde continued. "This is an unusual situation, to be sure, but I think I know how I will proceed. The meeting will begin, and I will make a short preamble, explaining that we have someone new joining us for the evening—but nothing more—and then hand it over to you. Does that sound all right to you?"
Shafts of sunlight were streaming into her spirit at Clyde's welcoming words. "Yes, Clyde, yes. I can't thank you enough." She rose from her chair and approached the ghost, enfolding him in an embrace. "Thank you," she said quietly.