Author's note: Well, here we are at the end. Thank you so, so, SO much to everyone who read this and especially to those who reviewed! I appreciate all of you so much. :)

If anyone's interested, this fic has a 'soundtrack', which is here: 8tracks [.com] / aurorawest / terminal (remove the spaces and brackets)

And...yes there's a sequel planned. :)

The castle doors weren't even locked, and Taffyta wondered, as she pushed them open, if she was wasting her time coming here at all. Vanellope and Ralph had made a deal with Turbo, after all—a deal that he could leave the game, that they wouldn't stop them. And there was no one here to stop him, so even if Vanellope had been crossing her fingers to render that promise null and void, there was no reason he couldn't have left already. Sure, Taffyta hadn't seen him on her way here, but he knew the kingdom like the back of his hand. He'd ruled it—he'd explored it and lived here—for fifteen years, after all, and he knew just about all its shortcuts and hidden roads and false walls by now. If he didn't want anyone to see him leave, no one would see him leave.

But he was standing in the throne room.

He was standing in front of the throne, actually, leaning a hand on Vanellope's desk in blatant disregard of her placard's directive, while he stared at the incomplete fixture. His fingers drummed on the desk and his other hand was curled into a fist and resting on his hip.

Taffyta walked up behind him. She stopped. And then she cleared her throat.

Turbo turned around to face her. They stared at each other for a long moment, and then Turbo tipped his helmet up and said, "You can say it. I'm amazing."

"I wasn't going to say that," she said. But then, she smiled. "But…I have to admit, it looks like what you just did was…well, pretty amazing."

"Yeah, well, it's not the most impressive thing I've ever done, but it was pretty good. Sugar Rush might need a few check-ups—and I'm actually not saying that just so I can get in the code vault—but she's healthy again."

There was no rancor in his voice. He sounded happy about the fact that he'd saved Sugar Rush. She took a step closer to him, and then, she asked hesitantly, "Can you really leave the game?"

"Sure."

"Even though you're a glitch?"

"You know, my dear, if you want to learn the mechanics of it, and why I'm not a glitch in the sense that your darling president is, I'd be delighted to teach you some coding."

She didn't respond to that—though the offer was…tempting? Not that there was ever anything she'd do with that kind of knowledge…certainly she wouldn't go into the code vault and maybe tweak anything in her own code, or in the code of those she was annoyed with…even if some people like Swizzle frequently deserved it…

Shaking that thought off, Taffyta crossed her arms over her chest. "So if you could leave the game," she said, "why did you come back?"

Turbo raised an eyebrow at her and smirked. "Well, it turns out I just like being imprisoned in my former home."

"Seriously."

"Seriously?" When Taffyta just stared at him, her arms still crossed over her chest, he blew a breath out through his mouth. "Well, it turns out that…" He hesitated. "…it does matter that someone in this arcade gives two bytes about me. You know. A little." He met her eyes. "Okay, maybe…well, possibly more than a little."

She lowered her arms to her sides. Her chest was tight with an emotion that she recognized, but didn't want to name. "It does?"

Turbo put his hands in his pockets and looked at the ground. "Yeah." He glitched and she saw his two forms overlaid on each other, shimmering in red, and he didn't look sinister or scary. He just looked like her friend. Her friend who she thought she'd lost, in more ways than one.

Meeting her eyes again, he said, "Look, the other racers…I don't have anything against them, but you…" He hesitated again. "You were the only person that I really cared about in this game. And…that means that you're the only person I've really cared about since TurboTime got unplugged. So." He cleared his throat, obviously embarrassed. "I figured that was worth saving your game. We're a lot alike, but…you know, I…I guess I didn't want you to go through what I did, and…well, I made my choices. But I didn't want you to feel like you needed to make the same ones."

There was a long silence. Taffyta's throat was tight—she couldn't possibly speak, he'd just said…

A voice broke the quiet suddenly, startling both of them. "Uh, it's your game too, Turbutt," Vanellope said, sauntering up to them.

She'd come in silently—probably glitched right through the doors, actually, because Taffyta hadn't heard them open. Turbo's expression shifted immediately, becoming standoffish, and he said, "Hey, this is kind of a private moment, glitch."

Vanellope waved this away. "I know, it was getting really touchy-feely there, yeesh."

"Vanellope!" Taffyta said. "Aren't you supposed to be racing?"

"I did one," Vanellope said. "But I had some stuff to do. You know, real presidential stuff. Like calming the masses about Turbo's return, for one thing. Nougetsia's in my spot for the rest of the day." She thought about that. "Well, maybe not the rest of the day."

Turbo looked around, leaning exaggeratedly to the left and right, and sniffed. "Where's your bodyguard? 'Cause I don't think you're going to be able to get me back down to the fungeon by yourself."

"Oh, so you wanna go back to the fungeon?" Vanellope asked with a smirk.

Turbo returned the smirk and said, "Not especially." Then he glanced around the throne room. "In fact, I was just thinking about heading out of the game. You know, like you said you wouldn't stop me from doing?"

"Then you can leave," Vanellope said calmly. "Good luck with that. Write when you get work. Actually, never mind. Don't."

He smiled. There was nothing friendly about it. "You're really just gonna let me walk out of here…go back to Game Central Station…and jump to a new game?"

She gave him a remarkably similar smile back. "The first two parts, yeah. You might have trouble with the last one though. See, once we figured out your code was part of this game, we took sort of a snapshot of it." Understanding dawned in Turbo's eyes, and Vanellope's grin got broader. "Yep, kind of a…digital fingerprint, if you will, diaper baby. And I just got back from giving it to Surge. He should just about be done installing it on every single game portal in this arcade. So you're not going in or out of any game without everyone knowing it. Sirens, flashing red lights, SWAT teams, the whole shebang."

His jaw stiffened and twitched. "Well," he said, his voice tight, "I don't know why I'd wanna leave, anyway. Where am I gonna go, over to those losers in Finish Line?"

Vanellope stuck her hands in her hoodie pocket and rocked back and forth on her heels, a smug smile on her face, but before she could say anything, Taffyta burst out with, "You'll stay? Here? In Sugar Rush?"

His gaze shifted from Vanellope to Taffyta, his glare became a bemused blink, and he drew his hands up towards his chest, his fingers curled loosely. "I don't think I have much of a choice."

"No, you…you do…" Taffyta said, glancing at Vanellope for confirmation.

"He really doesn't," Vanellope said in a matter-of-fact tone. "Me and Ralph and Felix and Calhoun kinda want to keep him here so we can keep tabs on him."

Turbo's lip curled as he looked at Vanellope. "Well. Then I accept your generous offer to stay in this game."

"Aw, glad to hear it!" Putting a hand on her hip, Vanellope said, "Then I think we can stick to the arrangement we had. House arrest when I'm not around, real arrest when I am?" Raising her eyebrows, she asked, "Deal?"

Turbo crossed his arms over his chest and looked around the room again. "Sounds really great."

"Deal or no deal, 8-bit?"

With a sneer, he said, "Deal. And don't expect me to shake on it, glitch."

"Ugh, like I want your cooties?" Vanellope said, sticking her tongue out. Then, she hesitated. "And we can see how things go."

Narrowing his eyes at her, he asked, "What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means we'll see how things go." Shifting so that her hip was cocked in the other direction, she said, "You might get sick of the fungeon someday."

"I'm already sick of the fungeon."

Vanellope ignored this, skipped in place, and said, "And maybe if someone agrees to chaperone you, you'll even be able to leave the castle someday."

Taffyta looked between the two of them, knowing that the only person in the arcade who'd agree to such a thing was her. Turbo's yellow gaze flicked towards her, but he just said, "A chaperone, huh, glitch?"

"Better than a prison escort, am I right?"

He just rolled his eyes.

With another smirk, Vanellope said, "Check this out, not only did I just selflessly and at great personal expense offer to let you stay in my glorious republic—"

"I thought it was a constitutional democracy," he muttered.

"—but I'm even gonna do you a second favor today—"

"Excuse me?" Turbo said. "Me saving the game doesn't cancel out one of those?"

Ignoring him, she said, "—which is to go hang out outside the castle, so you don't have to go back to the fungeon right this second." She cocked a finger at Taffyta, said, "See you on the track, Taff," and then turned on her heel and sauntered up the throne room's green carpet towards the doors.

When the doors banged shut, Taffyta turned to look at Turbo. Neither of them spoke. There were…a million things to say, and Taffyta didn't know how to say any of them. She didn't know where to start, she didn't know…well, anything. Except that he'd come back. He could have left and he'd come back. And he cared about her.

Maybe it made her a bad person—no. She didn't think she was a bad person. But she knew she had her faults, and they maybe wouldn't ever go away. But knowing that King Candy really cared about her and that Turbo still cared about her—suddenly, that was all she really cared about, too. Yes, he'd done terrible things. No, she'd never excuse any of them.

She couldn't not love him, though.

Taffyta scuffed a shoe on the ground and took a step closer to him. "So," she said. "You, um, know how I was sick?"

"Yeah. I remember that, believe it or not," Turbo said.

She twisted a piece of hair around her finger and forced herself to look him in the eye. "I never really thanked you for helping me."

"Oh." Turbo lifted a hand, made a vague gesture, and then shrugged. "Well. I mean, I couldn't let you die."

Taffyta snorted with laughter that she hadn't quite meant to let slip out. It wasn't funny, like, at all, but…King Candy had always had the ability to make her laugh even when she didn't want to. Turbo, apparently, could too. It was still hard to think of them as the same person, but…she was getting used to it. Turbo's smile had some of King Candy's in it, and King Candy's eyes occasionally flashed with Turbo's bite.

She offered him a small, shy smile. "The thing is, it seems like there's kind of a…a side effect from it."

Turbo looked alarmed. "What?"

She put her hands behind her back and looked up at him. "I think I have a terminal case of…well, not being able to hate you."

He glitched, flickering two or three times between Turbo and King Candy, before the latter was left standing in front of her. He smiled. "That'sth incurable, I think." Holding up a finger, he added, "But the good newsth isth, there'sth a sthate-of-the-art, new treatment for sthomething like that."

Her smile twitched into a smirk. "Glad to hear it."

He hooked his fingers into his tailcoat's lapels and said, "It'll require a little effort on your part, though. You'll have to be the only persthon in thisth game whosthe brave enough to keep an eye on me when Presthident Glitch Facthe letsth me out on the town."

"Vanellope," Taffyta said.

"Whatever."

"If she lets you out on the town."

He just made a noise at that.

She rolled her eyes. But then she looked at him, with that smile on his face that had always meant the world to her—that smile that had been just for her—and she grabbed his hand. He glitched in surprise, and his red binary traveled down his arm to their clasped fingers, where it pixelated her into blue. She flinched but didn't let go. "I missed you," she finally admitted. Out loud. To him.

King Candy looked speechless. Then, he put his other hand over hers. "You know," he said, "I've sthpent the lastht three monthsth convincthing mysthelf that it wouldn't matter if you hated me."

A lump rose in her throat and then, without thinking, she flung her arms around him. For a second, all she did was cling, and then his arms went around her. He glitched but this time she didn't jerk away. The feeling was getting less creepy.

She felt him sigh and for just a second, he rested his head on the top of her hat. Then he gave her a tight squeeze and let go, taking a step back and fixing her with a pleased look. "By the way, I thought I should tell you," he said, an innocent lilt to his voice that Taffyta recognized as trouble. "There'sth a little sthomething…exthtra in your code now."

"Huh?"

"Well." He clasped his hands behind him and rocked back on his heels, a bright, self-satisfied smile on his face. "You never sthaid it, but I figured the reasthon you, you know, went Turbo in the firstht placthe was the sthame reasthon I did. You weren't racthing."

"What? How did you…?" she asked, bewildered.

"Oh, Taffyta, my dear, we really are very sthimilar. Do you really think that after fifteen yearsth I can't read you like an open book?"

Finally getting past her surprise that he'd guessed everything, she said, "Okay then, so what did you do to my code?"

He stuck the tip of his tongue out the side of his grin. "Justht a little packet to make you a more tempting choicthe for that randomizther. Doesthn't sthurpristhe me that sthwitch got flipped in the code."

Her eyebrows shot up. "You…"

"You're welcome."

"I totally wasn't going to say thank you."

"Sure you were." His grin got crooked. "Eventually."

She shook her head. "You know I have to tell Vanellope." She thought about adding that it wasn't fair. Except, well, that was obvious, and honestly…she wasn't sure that she cared. But she knew Vanellope would.

Heaving a sigh, he said, "I wasth afraid you were going to sthay that. But hey, no rush. You can at leastht get in a good couple weeksth of winning before then."

Taffyta tried to look stern, but a smile snuck onto her face. She pulled a lollipop out of her pocket and stuck it in her mouth. With the stick jutting from the side of her smile, she said, "Maybe I won't tell Vanellope right away."

He glitched to Turbo and gave her a thumbs-up, a wicked smile on his face, as he said, "Turbo-tastic, my dear."

Of course she'd tell Vanellope. After all, she did want to be better than the person she'd been for fifteen years. But then again, she wanted to win, too—and you didn't win without racing.

Turbo—King Candy—he was still a complication. But Taffyta didn't care. Life was complicated. Life was messy. And she wasn't going to run from that anymore. She wasn't going to run from that ever again.

"Hey," she said. She dug in her pocket for another lollipop, then tossed it to him. His hand darted out, and he caught it and twirled it in his fingers, his eyebrows raised at her. Taffyta grinned and said, "Have some candy."