Work Text:
Vanellope may be a princess now, technically, (even she knows that presidents require elections, and no elections have been had), but being a princess doesn’t magically change the people around you. Not in any real ways. The other racers of Sugar Rush are basically the same people—they’re just not afraid of her glitching anymore. Also, Taffyta and her cohorts may still be half afraid of Vanellope’s power to do terrible unnamed things to them, and Vanellope may have seen fit to half encourage that belief but. Well, it’s weird. These are basically the people she’s going to spend the rest of her life racing, and maybe she should hate them for trashing the race-kart that she had made with her very own two hands (oh Lickity-Split, may you rest ever in peace) but she’s not sure that she does. They had been cruel, but Vanellope doesn’t feel like kicking them when they’re down. The racers have personalities like spun-sugar candies—they start melting even if you sprinkle them with a bit of water, or if you leave them in the summer sun for too long.
Vanellope is princess-president of Sugar Rush—okay, maybe next week she’ll have a real election and see what happens—but she wants friends. She’s not going to coddle these guys—she brutalizes them over the course of the next few races, and also she sips lemonade while watching them repaint the castle so it’s not one hundred percent shades of pink. But she joins them in racing around the candy kingdom, and for mini-games of constructing new kart with personalized designs, or of exploring to find and renovate secret levels and other passageways.
They’re kind of the same people they always were, but maybe things are a little different too. Vanellope has a whole racing career ahead of her, and she doesn’t want to spend it with people that she hates.
---
Ralph tells her that the Nicelanders are basically the same people too.
“I mean, but that’s life for you, I guess,” Ralph says.
He’s building new brick homes for the homeless characters of unplugged arcade games. Vanellope had come over for a visit. It was one of the perks of her restored coding—getting out of Sugar Rush every once in a while.
“Jerkballs forever?” Vanellope asks, and Ralph shrugs his big gorilla shoulders.
“Well, I don’t know. It’s nicer these days. They may actually be attempting to be what the nametag says. Like, you know. Felix invites me up to the flat. They’ve even given me pie.”
Vanellope makes a dismissive noise. “Where I come from, you can get your dessert just by pulling off a chunk of the nearest wall, so I’m not impressed, nope.”
Ralph puts another tile on the roof, and then wipes dust off his nose. “Yeah, but I gotta live with them, work with them every day, so maybe. Maybe it’s not worth holding on to old grudges, whatever else happens. Besides, I’ve got bigger things to worry about.”
Ralph looks at the compact little house he’s just finished putting up the walls and roof for. “There. So how’s that, do ya think?”
Vanellope squints at it. “Needs electricity. And indoor plumbing. I’m just saying.”
“….Yeah.” Ralph admits, “Felix is going to take care of that, I think.”
---
Vanellope has bigger things to worry about too, maybe.
She’s a real racer now, and she was right, she always knew it. Racing was in her coding. She loves the rush—no pun intended—of being out on the track, of zooming along the courses, of learning to drive like the kart’s a part of her, and she’s a part of the kart. Even when there’s no one to race against, she loves being out there, the wind in her face, the scent of sugar and mint and chocolate ever-present in the air. Now that she has a kart, she can get to parts of the kingdom that she never could reach before.
She makes Taffyta, Candlehead, and Crumbelina show her the tracks around White Chocolate Mountain. Powdered sugar is coming down all around them while they drive the tracks. Vanellope sticks out her tongue and catches sugar in her mouth.
They all take a stop at one of the look-out points, getting out of their karts to stare down at the steep, sugar-covered ridges down below. Taffyta has her ever-present lollipop in hand, and Crumbelina whistles when she looks down.
“I’m thinking about building some ramps to get down there,” Vanellope says excitedly, and pointing. “Ole’ King C gave me the idea when he went off the course, going on some secret path or whatever it was.”
Candlehead picks up a sugar-covered rock and chucks it down.
They all watch it whistle down to a frozen soda-pop creek at the bottom, and then oooh as appropriate.
“Sweetness,” Crumbelina says.
Taffyta chews the last bit of sugar off her lollipop stick and then tosses the stick over the edge as well. The wind picks it up, and the whiteness of the cardboard paper is lost among the whiteness of the sugar snowdrifts.
---
Yeah, they’re all about the same people that they were before. But then again, Vanellope has been ten-years-old since the day she was born, and she’ll continue to be ten-years-old until the day their arcade game is finally pulled from the plug. Maybe there’s a lot of things worth getting mad about in the world. When she thinks about the other racers destroying her kart, of course she gets mad at the memory.
She can’t imagine doing the same back to them though. She can’t see herself destroying anyone’s karts on purpose, or keeping them out of races. It’s not her style.
Things seem to be changing, anyway, somehow. Vanellope rules her kingdom (kind of; not that it needs much ruling) and races with her whole heart, and oversees exploration and construction in all the secret little niches and corners of her lands.
It’s weird. And cool. It’s like sugar melting and then recrystalizing, all the bits of it sticking one on top of the other. The sugar’s the same, but the shape is changing, and growing, and amazing.
Vanellope doesn’t really know how this is all going to turn out; it’s like, knowing something’s happening, but not really knowing what that thing is.
Maybe she’ll know someday.
And she’s okay with that.
She’s really, pretty okay.