Do You Want to Build a Snowman? || Oneshot
Turbo had started taking piano lessons from Felix quite some time ago, not too long after the boy’s initial reset. Back then, though, he hadn’t bothered to practice all that much. He’d spend a few minutes each week disinterestedly moving through scales and dull beginner pieces, and had seemed to make little progress, if any at all. But then the bad time began, and he was spending more and more time in the castle instead of tearing up the racetrack like he used to, and he eventually discovered that crochet and drawing and journaling were no longer enough to occupy his restless mind. So, he’d turned back to piano.
Vanellope remembered hearing him plug away more and more frequently when she returned from work in the evening. At first, it had only been him, some Grade 1 music books, and the basic electronic keyboard that he practiced on. But then the Phantom of the Opera Easy Play book arrived, followed by full arrangements of the easier showtunes he’d already learned, until he was a fairly advanced player. The piano he’d received for Christmas only served to send him practicing more and more often, and since Vanellope didn’t recognize any of his songs, the tinkling of ivory-played keys more or less served as the background music of her life. She, too, was around to hear it all the time now.
One day, Turbo requested her presence in the dining room, because there was a song that he wanted to play for her.
"It’s called ‘Do You Want to Build a Snowman.’”
Vanellope peered curiously over the back of the chair she’d pulled up. “I’ve never heard of it.”
"It’s from a movie,” Turbo explained. “A musical movie. It’s about a younger sister trying to get her older sister to play with her. But what she doesn’t know is that the older sister has something dangerous inside of her, and that she only started shutting out her little sister to protect them both…”
Vanellope didn’t say anything.
Turbo placed his fingers on the piano keys, and an innocuous, tinkling melody began. He sang for her, too, since she didn’t know the words, and his voice was quiet and a little off-key but passable nonetheless…
"Do you wanna build a snowman?
Come on, let’s go and play!
It’s like you’ve gone away!
We used to be best buddies,
I wish you would tell me why…
Do you wanna build a snowman?
It doesn’t have to be a snowman…”
"Please, Bo?” Vanellope attempted to coax her brother, pressed close against the door to his bedroom. She rubbed her mitten-clad hands in anticipation.
"Come on! It’s Sugar Rush’s first snow cycle of the season — we can’t miss it! Don’t you wanna make a fort with me? Or a have a snowball fight? Or build a snowman?”
Finally, she received a muffled response…although it wasn’t the one she’d been seeking.
"I’m not in the mood, Vanny…just go away…”
She withdrew her ear from the side of the door, sighing in disappointment…
Turbo continued pacing back and forth across his room. A part of him regretted not taking Vanellope up on her offer, but it was better this way…
She could worry about forts and snowball fights and snowmen. He could worry about the malware.
That was just the way it had to be.
“Do you wanna build a snowman,
Or ride our bike around the halls?
I think some company is overdue,
I’ve started talking to the pictures on the walls…”
“Will you please get out here and entertain me? I’m so bored,” complained Vanellope.
The daily races had concluded, and everyone else had moved on to their plans elsewhere. It seemed that she was the only one free this evening. Even if someone else had been available, it wouldn’t have mattered, because Turbo was the one she really wanted to spend time with. She leaned back against his bedroom door, as if being as close to him as the distance would allow might somehow show him how she was feeling.
He didn’t even bother to answer her, and her heart twinged. Was it possible that she’d done something to warrant getting the cold shoulder all the time? Well, whether she had or not, she was in for another exciting night of throwing herself across various pieces of furniture while sighing dramatically.
“It gets a little lonely,
Just watching the hours tick by…”
Little did she know that Turbo wasn’t even in his bedroom; he was in Ralph’s.
“W-what are we going to do…?!” He struggled not to hyperventilate as his mind continuously looped the malware’s threats, ever-increasing in severity. “He’s getting stronger….!”
“Panicking isn’t going to solve anything,” murmured Ralph, closing his fingers around Turbo’s hands. The bite wounds and scars on the boy’s knuckles ached dully.
“Listen to me, bud…we’re going to get through this. Together. I’ll always be here for you. You know that…”
Turbo forced himself to nod shakily. “I-I do know…” he whispered.
They didn’t know that when the Fix-It Felix Jr. cabinet was returned to the arcade, it would not turn out to be the blessing it had initially seemed. They didn’t know that the screen would break down again, and then the console would be unplugged immediately, without allowing any of the characters inside an opportunity to escape. They didn’t know that it would in all likelihood be gone for a month or more, and that the possibility of a reset would be looking over it, meaning that its residents’ memories would be wiped out for good…
And when it was all done, and Vanellope was finished staring at the empty outlet where her family’s game had once been, and wandered back to Sugar Rush in a daze, and dragged her feet through the halls of the castle that no longer felt like home…she passed her brother’s room, one more time…
It seemed like an eternity before she finally dared to knock.
"Please, I know you’re in there…
People are asking where you’ve been…
They say have courage, and I’m trying to,
I’m right out here for you,
The first of what would almost certainly be many tears to come rimmed her eyes as she pressed herself against the door, seeking the comfort of Turbo’s presence through the unyielding wood…
"Do you wanna build a snowman…?"
And, from her chair in the dining room, with her eyes fixated on the piano and the boy playing it, Vanellope remembered how she had finally opened the door herself, surprised to find it unlocked.
Inside was an unmade bed, an open window, and various signs of a hasty departure. It had given her a cold shock when she finally understood that Turbo had run away. He wouldn’t be there for her…he couldn’t be…
Back then, she’d had no idea why he was doing it. But now she knew.
Turbo had stopped singing now, though he played three last notes in the melody, which sounded to her an awful lot like "yes I do…"
Like the big sister in the song, he had only wanted to protect her, and believed that shutting himself off was the only way to do it. Ultimately, it had hurt both of them, and now they were still paying the price.
"…that was a nice song, Bo," she finally whispered, finding her voice.
He dipped his head slightly. “Y-yeah…I thought so, too…”
From that day on, Vanellope understood why Turbo had found such comfort in his piano playing. Life had squeezed him through the ringer, flung him into situations that he had no means of describing…but the songs he chose spoke the words that he was unable to find. ‘Confrontation’ was about him struggling against his malware incarnation; ‘Alone in the Universe’ was his ongoing feelings of loneliness and isolation; and ‘Do You Want to Build a Snowman’ was about the two of them.
She certainly wouldn’t begrudge him his songs. In fact, maybe she should start listening a bit more carefully.
