Lightning McQueen, Doc Hudson's Ra - no, the #51 Crew Chief (remember?)
The flowers overflow Storm's pit box, threaten to swallow Dinoco's like a runaway garden, but Lightning just pulls their rack of tires out of the way.
"All those flowers - they're a really nice gesture," Cruz says quietly. She's been trying not to look at them, Lightning can tell. They make her sad.
"It's a gesture," Lightning allows. The entire row nearest them still has its invoice stickers on the wrapping. They're from IGNTR. Gotta put on a show.
"Is something wrong?" Cruz asks him, and Lightning blinks. He tears his gaze away from the invoices in time to see her peer up at IGNTR's empty crew chief stand. Cruz swallows thickly. "I mean, aside from…"
"Hey, it's gonna be okay," Lightning assures her. "You're okay."
Cruz looks Lightning up and down. "That wasn't supposed to happen," she says. "We saw him at qualifying last week, he was fine, and he wasn't - " She takes a deep, urgent breath. "I'm okay," she says. "I just - really need to run this race."
Lightning smiles limply at her. "Yeah," he agrees.
Aside from the flowers, race day proceeds as normal. It's bombast and spectacle, celebration and release. It's escape. Or it's supposed to be. No one really talks to Storm, in the same way that they never really have. Some of the other racers stare at him, though. Ryan Laney. Ed Truncan.
Lightning remembers being on the receiving end of those stares, when it had been Doc missing from the track. He nudges Cruz in the tire when he feels her gaze drifting Storm's way, too.
Don't, he whispers through his teeth.
The pre-race meeting is quiet. It had always been Ray who asked for the important rules clarifications, argued about interpretations, and brought up old precedents that any new proposal contradicted. He'd had a long memory for a sport he'd only spent a season in - at least, at the Cup level, in recent memory. Anyone who could have remembered him from before was long since gone. The King, maybe. Or Chick Hicks. Unlike Ray's, the Piston Cup's memory is short. With a few notable exceptions, it's all just a flash in the pan.
Lightning has seen all the Ray broadcasts, of course - the reels that are meant to be his legacy. By this point, everyone in the business had. Aside from the initial news, RSN put together a retrospective - short, but informative. Maybe a little bombastic, because that's the Cup's style. As a crew chief, Ray'd had one of the longest, most varied careers of anyone. Cup, Outlaws, Indy, Cup again. Rumor had it he'd even crew chiefed for speed boats once. That, RSN declared, should be honored. That should be his legacy.
Lightning has mixed feelings about legacies these days. Which - maybe, coming from him, that's stupid. He knows exactly how much of his life he's spent honoring Doc's, and he'd never change that.
But when he thinks about that first year after Doc, where the Piston Cup had become the Hudson Hornet Piston Cup, where there'd been retrospectives on every channel, shoutouts and memorials everywhere he looked? He doesn't know how to feel about that anymore. He doesn't know how much money had exchanged trunks, or from whom, but he knew that getting Doc's name on that Cup had taken quite a bit. He knows that that season, the ratings were way up. And he knows that a lot of those cars were tuning in to see him. Because Lightning McQueen is one thing. Doc Hudson is another. But Doc Hudson's bereaved?
No talent in the world can touch bare, morbid curiosity.
Everyone wants to see you hurt.
Someone is shouting up at him in Italian. When Lightning looks up at the leaderboard, they're already 15 laps in. Because, you know. They're racing. It's 2017. There's no time to wander the past.
"I was just wondering if you could tell how the high groove looks." Cruz's voice crackles over the headset. "But if you can't tell, that's... okay, too?"
Lightning swears. "Hang on - "
Both Treadless and Swervez pass her on the top.
"Are you okay up there?" Luigi asks from below.
"Laney's going for the bottom. Block him and let those two fight it out up there. We'll get it back," says Lightning.
"Lightning?" Luigi entreats.
"Watch the white line. They don't want you passing left of it on this track. Stay on it, though - stay on the line. Laney's tight - you'll lose him in the turn. Then it's just you and Storm down here," says Lightning.
"Line, Cruz. Just focus on the line."
Storm wins that race. Cruz takes second, and comes back to pit row in significantly brighter spirits than she'd been at start time. Endorphins can be miracle-workers. She doesn't even mind having lost to Storm, though he'd stolen it from her in the last five laps. Late caution (thanks, Truncan). Storm had the better restart.
"Storm looks happy," she says, a bit breathlessly. She's on top of the world, still vibrating with leftover energy, mind still running laps at pace. The hard past is another 500 miles behind them. "So that's a good sign!"
Storm's smiling, that's true. And he raced well.
"Doesn't mean he's okay," says Lightning. "Doesn't mean anything, really."
"What do you mean?" Cruz asks. She's not thinking about Storm anymore. She's staring too hard at Lightning to be thinking about Storm.
"Nothing."
The press has Storm swaddled. Only a few are asking about the win.
Show us the pain. Show us how you hurt.
Meanwhile, the Cup's shooting off fireworks, begging, By happy. Be strong. Set an example.
It's not coming from a mean place, Lightning struggles to remind himself. Death is a confusing thing. It's second-nature to stare. The press is trying to 'be there for him,' whatever that's supposed to mean. The racing world is, too. Sort of. Maybe.
"Jesus, give him some space maybe?" Bubba Wheelhouse suggests under his breath. Not that he approaches the press huddle with his suggestion. He and Ryan Laney skirt the throngs and try to get lost.
Lightning frowns. Not that that isn't exactly what he and Cruz were doing. But he remembers sitting alone in his trailer and not wanting to talk to anyone - but wishing desperately someone would come. Wishing desperately everyone else's lives wouldn't just continue on as normal, as though nothing had happened. Wishing that his would. He remembers wanting someone to fix all this, and hating anyone who tried. He remembers being alone.
He remembers the TV telling him that the racing world was all in this together. That Doc's passing touched everyone. He remembers how quickly his world had moved from pain to celebration - kindred spirits bonding over loss and, rather than stewing in their pain, celebrating what they'd used to have. What of course they'd always have, because honor is permanent and champions are forever and happiness will always outlast tears. Or so they said. Don't think about what the racing world has lost in the Hudson Hornet, they'd said. Think about what it had been given. No one wanted to think about pain. So, they figured: Celebrate!
He remembers writing a speech and smiling a lot.
Lightning remembers thinking, very clearly, But I'm in pain.