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A Follow-up to Homesick 9910 words, 2 chapters Characters: Turbo, Make-it Mavis Themes: Hurt/Comfort, hopeful ending CW: Depression, suicidal intentions Summary: After getting Roadblasters and his own game unplugged, Turbo's world is rocked off its axis. He spends months completely lost, unsure of his place in the world, unsure of who he is without his game and glory. But, really, the answers are undeniable: He has no place anymore, and he is nobody. There is no point in hiding nothing. But if he is going to reveal himself to the arcade that believes his own crime killed him, he figures his best friend might as well be the first one to know. Even if she could very well kill him herself when she finds out.
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Turbo could not have said how much time had passed since he ruined his own life. Up above, the passing of time was marked by the usual rituals. The arcade opened, the arcade closed. Sprites slept, sprites woke. Weekends were marked by a distinctive boom in business. One could guess the season by observing what time of day the arcade was most crowded. Decor around Devout sprites’ homes and Game Central Station would be a close imitation of whatever Litwak had hung up in the arcade proper for annual holidays. But Turbo could not rely on these signs from his prison under the world. Any glimpses he was granted of the surface were fleeting, separated by long periods of blindness, deafness, and death-like sleep. But time made itself known, all the same. Even an existence as meager as his would not be forgotten by time, nor would it be shown any mercy. Turbo could not see it, but always, he could feel its eyes upon him.
No, he did not know how many days, weeks, or months he had been in the dark. He did know that he had been suspended in zero-gravity long enough for his body strength to waste away, leaving him winded just from pulling himself along the underside of the ground. He knew that he had been lost in silence long enough to hear voices echoing from the deep, blaming him, mocking him for what he had become. He knew that the man he was before had sunk far enough into the distance that he could no longer see him. He could remember his own name. Time had just worn away all memory of what it meant.
There came a point when, for the first time since the incident, Turbo’s situation was about to change. All of his maddening, painful work had finally paid off just enough to free him from the void, so that he could drag himself right into another. In this void, however, he felt different. In the code space of Fix-it Felix Jr., the passage of time no longer seemed like an unending, unknowable road. The end was finally in sight, and he could feel a sweeping pressure inside him, as if he had begun to step on the brake pedal. He knew, with a nauseating mix of fear and relief, that his suffering would soon be over, or at the very least, different. There was just one thing he absolutely had to do first.
He had to see Mavis.
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