Cruz, these days, is a legend. It takes about three seconds for someone to find her and tell her she's got visitors: McQueen and a plus one.
A tiny plus one.
The tiny plus one doesn't have a name yet, hasn't chosen one; for now, she's just Baby. She's still nursing an automatic transmission and is just now learning how to school it out of neutral. But when Cruz charges toward her, Baby mirrors the motion.
They collide with a soft plastic clink, kissing nose to nose.
"200!" chirps Baby because no McQueen has ever learned to count 1, 2, 3, have they?
Baby sings 200, 400, 500, and Cruz shoots an impish, conspiratorial glance at Lightning.
And Cruz would never, ever tell him this, but she kinda misses the Fabulous blue. She's not used to seeing him in his new get-up, clean of sponsors and candied red, like it's the 60s all over again. He's not the 95 anymore.
Vitoline's racing the 95 this season: It's someone new and probably pleasant whom she hasn't yet met. She'll admit she hasn't tried that hard; it's been years now, but to Cruz, the 95 will always be Lightning.
The association might be even harder for Cruz to let go of than Lightning's acting like it is for him-but then, she'll probably never know how he actually feels about all this. Lightning McQueen hasn't touched tires to a Piston Cup track in half a decade. Not even to spectate.
Cruz hasn't seen him face-to-face since the end of her rookie year.
"How was Rio?" Cruz asks, because she did, at least, get that postcard last month.
Lightning makes a face, as though he's the baby and not, well, Baby. "She liked the water. A lot. She liked going very deep in the water."
"California girl, huh?"
"We live in Arizona!" Lightning objects. "But every time Sally picks our vacation, we always end up-"
"She has her mother's mouth," says Cruz, and his expression softens.
Cruz seizes the opportunity. "Which means she's gonna roast you once she learns more words."
"Nah, she's gonna know to respect her eld-" Lightning starts, as Baby coasts straight past Danny, and Storm, and takes up pole position in defiance of three forklifts, a flag car, and four formidable security SUVs who seem wholly ill-equipped to deal with this intrusion.
"Huh. And her daddy's attitude," Cruz notes. "Dangerous combination!"
But the flag car-Wesley Wheelie-he's a father of eight from a family of thirty-seven, counting all the halves and steps. So he whips out his green flag and waves it right in Baby's face. When he shoots it up over her head, she shoots forward-at a hot five miles an hour.
The actual quals aren't for another three or four hours, but Wesley keeps waving the flag in Storm's face, as though Storm's life depends on his winning this race.
"She's gonna lap you, buddy!" Wesley jibes.
Storm glares at him hard, but he's wholly at Wesley's mercy, because being made fun of is only the second to last thing on earth Storm wants in his life. The last thing he wants is to be the guy who ran over Lightning "Fabulous" McQueen's damn infant.
Danny, for his part, scratches the race almost immediately, laughing so hard he starts choking on his own exhaust fumes. Cruz hears him trying to crawl into the stands to get a better view of the field, but his hysterics win out over his handling, and he just ends up belly-down in the dirt.
"I hate you," Storm hisses at him. And Wesley. And Cruz. Lightning, he ignores.
"He says that a lot," Cruz tells Lightning, solemnly. "I think it's a term of endearment."
Baby's still making her way around the track-really flying now, eight miles an hour. She's making almost as much forward progress around the track as she is laterally.
Almost.
"She's good," Cruz says.
Lightning wheedles his LF tire through the dirt. "Well! She's seen every. single. race. of oh, some Dinoco racer. Even the ones you can only get on DVD. She's kind of obsessed."
"You've been watching?" Cruz asks.
"Obviously."
"I thought maybe-"
"Give me some credit!"
Cruz sees a glimmer of it, then. How hard it is for him to be here, how happy he is to be here, how much he wants to tear around this track, make it is again, make this world his again. How much he has now beyond this that he'd never, ever give up, that he loves more than what he loves most in the world. It's a delicate paradox, but hey, it's the language they all speak out here. Lightning wants to be here, and he absolutely doesn't. Yearning hurts.
"She wanted to meet you," Lightning says, in answer to Cruz's unspoken question. "I'm not gonna say no."
"She acts like she already has!" Cruz laughs.
Lightning laughs too, though it's more of a sheepish chuckle. "Uh, I'm not sure if she can tell the difference between you and stuffed-toy you."
"So are you-" Cruz is interrupted by a piercing wail.
Rather, she's interrupted by Lightning's reaction to a piercing wail, which she swears comes first. Lightning before thunder, he's launched himself a foot in the air before Cruz can begin to fathom why.
Baby's plowed face-first into the outer wall. Not hard, and not fast-just persistently. She doesn't know to reverse.
Lightning doesn't rush to help her, though clearly that's his base impulse. He stays corralled at the edge of the track, as though pinned there by invisible chocks, and he chants under his breath, Come on, baby. You got this! Take a breath and figure it out. There you go. Focus.
Focus.
Cruz closes her eyes and it's like she can hear it over her comm line. It's as though no time has passed at all. She thought she'd known how much she missed him. But she really hadn't-not until just now.
Come on, Cruz! You got this!
Baby don't got this. Baby's stopped crying, but she keeps prodding the wall with her nose. Maybe this time it will work. Or maybe this time. Or maybe-
"Definitely her daddy's attitude," quips Cruz.
"Haha. Ha!"
Storm catches up to her. He stares, says nothing. He's probably had his engine off since two turns ago, and he's still coasting too fast. Hits his brakes and waits. For ten seconds, Storm does absolutely nothing.
Then Baby reverses cleanly, and escapes the wall.
Danny shouts, so loud the walls of the stadium echo with his renewed laughter, "BABY WHISPERER!"
Danny departs, muttering something along the lines of, "Oh god, where's Tim? I gotta-"
Cruz snorts. "He's a dork, but he's my dork. What're you gonna do?"
Baby drives.
She overtakes Storm again.
Storm's expression is one of almost genuine agony, he's been holding still for so long. He jerks forward and ends up a full body-length ahead of her again. When again she catches up, Baby taps Storm on the rim and says, "Excuse me."
Storm says "Whuh-"
And Baby climbs. She mounts his tire, wedging her own under his fender and scrambling up to his hood. A moment of studied deliberation and she rolls, slow and lopsided, clear past Storm's bewildered eyes and plops down to the ground on his opposite side. Then she hits the gas and drives toward the Wesley's checkered flag.
"OH!" exclaims Cruz. "I GET IT. SHE DID THE-"
"Yes. We all get it," says Storm.
When Baby finally makes it past Wesley's waiting flag, Cruz extends a tire for a high-five. "You won! You won!"
Baby beams, and starstruck she accepts the high-five. Then she says, utterly nonchalant, "Cruz, next time I'll beat you."
It's Storm's turn to laugh. "You hear that, Ramirez? She's coming for you."
Before he disappears-likely to go put the fear of god in Danny-he awards Lightning with a sidelong glance, acknowledging him for the first time in six years.
"Cute baby," he says. Then he's gone.
"So are you gonna stay for the race?" Cruz asks Lightning, as they watch Wesley enchant Baby with his dancing flag. He's waving green and yellow and white all at once.
"Baby needs a nap," says Lightning. "Uh, that baby, not this baby," he clarifies quickly.
"Oh." Cruz tries not to look crestfallen.
"But uh- Sally said she'd take her if I, if- you know. Actually, Sally made me promise that I'd let her- so that I'd- Because you-" Lightning blurts out, fragmentary.
"Mr. McQueen! You were trying to get out of this, weren't you! If I hadn't asked, you were just gonna-"
"No!"
"You were gonna use your own child as an excuse!"
"Oh, please!"
"I'm telling Sally."
"Wait, no-"
"I'm really happy to see you again," Cruz says, abruptly ending the banter.
Lightning looks at her-guilty, yearning, happy. Mostly happy. "Right back atcha, Cruz."
"You don't have to stay if you don't to."
"Yeah I do, actually. And I do want to."
"Yeah, okay." Cruz smiles. "So... are we gonna be seeing more of you again, or is it back to Arizona after this?"
"Not for me to decide!" Lightning replies airily. He turns back to Wesley, and Baby, and the flags.
Then he looks Cruz straight in the eyes. Really looks. "I'll take her to all the races she wants, though.
"Gotta let her dream big, right?"