Disclaimer: as before, I own nothing but Henry and his Woeful Angst-Filled Backstory. This Henry is a slightly different iteration than the one who shows up in my KR fics, but is born of the same basic inspiration.

Henry woke in the night to unexpected and unidentifiable noises. For a moment he couldn't work out where he was, and panicked; then the faint familiar smell of sagebrush and motor oil, and the feeling of the lift holding him comfortably just enough off the ground to take the weight off his shocks, registered. Radiator Springs. How long have I been here, and... what have I been saying, I wonder?

Trying to remember the past few days was like looking into a broken mirror: nothing seemed contiguous, coherent, on the same plane. Images were recognizable, but they didn't fit together in any kind of a story.

There had been pain, yes, and sickness, and over and over again the bridge and that flare and fade of agony as he had felt himself invaded by green river-water; and interspersed with the bridge had been someone talking to him in a low kind voice, and something wonderfully cold sheeting over his burning hood, and more voices—that's good, Red, he'll probably need another dousing, don't go far—and someone urging him to drink, and then more crazy dreams. At one point he had been entirely sure he was home again, back when home had meant something in particular, and Dayne had been there, with her chrome heliographing sunstars in his eyes and her paint brilliant and endless green, and he had wanted to go to her, to light his engine and pull out of wherever it was he had been, and touch that curved bumper with his own—and then that flood of coldness again, and people yelling. Don't you give up on me, kid.

But I wasn't, he'd wanted to say. I just want to go home to her. Can't I go home?

Coldness, and then pressure all around him: people were there, someone was there, and Dayne seemed to shimmer like a mirage at noon, and then was gone entirely. After that, he couldn't remember a goddamn thing.

Except now there he was, awake in the darkness. He shifted a little, testing the pain in his chassis: he felt exhausted, weak as a kit-car, but the worst of the hurting was gone, and he no longer felt that sickening dizziness that had been with him ever since he'd left the East Coast. Moreover, he could think in a straight line. Great. I so needed that.

The noises from next door interrupted again. It sounded as if someone was having trouble breathing. Henry's curiosity, long-dormant with the exhaustion, flickered like a pilot light; he slid down off the lift, suppressing a little hiss as the coldness of the floor against his tires registered, and crept over to the connecting door.

It was only open a crack, but the lights were on, and Henry could make out a very familiar candy-orange paintjob. That's the Barracuda with that ridiculous blower, the one who was with the imports that ran me off the road. Guess he had worse than a cold.

The Cuda looked considerably different than he had in Henry's rearviews: for one thing, his supercharger had been removed, and sat on a chrome trolley nearby, looking more monstrous than ever. His hood, too, what was left of it after the charger's cutout, was leaning against a toolchest, revealing the gleaming orange-and-chrome complexity of his mill. Henry recognized the dual Holley carbs as top-of-the-line, even as they shook as the car's whole body shivered. His breathing had a thick, rasping sound, even with the huge blower taken off and the throats of the carbs wide open.

Must be serious.

Doc was working on something beyond the Cuda on his lift, and came around into Henry's field of view, talking softly. He couldn't make out words, but the tone was familiar: he'd heard that same tone of voice inside the broken-mirror of the past few days. Quietly, he retreated to his own lift; but the old Hudson was no fool, and he'd seen the flash of movement out of the corner of his eye.

"Man, this sucks."

It was a completely valid statement, but that didn't stop Lizzie from whanging Wingo's rear deck with one of her hard little tires. "Keep a civil tongue in yer face while yer in my store!" she crowed.

"Aaugh! You didn't stick no stickers on me, old lady! Please tell me you didn't stick no stickers on me!" Wingo wriggled, trying to see his butt in his rearview mirrors. "This paintjob cost more'n this whole stupid store!"

Lizzie cackled. "Then you best not tempt me!"

He had been sentenced (after some deliberation) to community service, as had the other tuners; in his case, since he was the smallest of them, cleaning out Lizzie's old back storeroom. They'd hooked him up to an industrial vacuum.

It sucked. Hard.

Wingo groaned, going back to cleaning out sixty years' worth of dust from forgotten corners. At least Boost got to be out in the open air repainting road stripes—although he did have to do it under that freaky lowrider's supervision. Wingo had caught only a few of Ramone's comments re. sartorial elegance and Boost's lack thereof, but damn could that Impala burn a guy. DJ was off with the Hummers and Escalades at Sarge's boot camp, and after some thought Wingo decided he didn't much envy the Scion either. His sound system was totally not meant to be jolted over hardpan at forty miles an hour, and—yeah, okay, Wingo had to admit it, these lo-profile tires were not so hot on a road that wasn't smooth as a new vinyl job. And what was worst, that stupid McQueen made a point of trundling by and examining their work, as if he, and not that old Hudson, ran this place.

C'mon, Snot Rod, he thought, get better so we can blow this excuse for a town and get back on the highway!

"Feeling better?"

Henry blinked. It was full morning, the sun streaming through the windows of Doc's clinic, lighting dust motes into floating gold. He must've dreamed that weird thing last night. Must've.

"…yes, sir. A lot. Um. Thank you."

Doc rolled up to Henry, and examined him. "Good. Yes, I'd expected you to be awake around now. You gave us a scare, son. Want to tell me why you have both sugar and water damage in your engine?"

Henry froze. Yeah, he'd expected to have to evade questions, but not such direct ones, and not so damn fast.

"And don't tell me you were trying to start a hummingbird colony." Doc's eyes were friendly, but they still had steel in their clear blue. Henry met that gaze for almost a minute, but inevitably had to look at the floor.

"Look, Doc, I'm grateful to you for what you've done. I really am. But I don't want to talk about it, okay?"

"So what're you gonna do, son? Drive on out of here once you've paid my bill and find yourself the nearest reservoir to dive into? Drive until you lose the road entirely?"

"No! I—" all right, yeah. "It's none of your business." He knew he sounded like an idiot child, and couldn't help himself.

"Maybe not. But when I see a car like yourself with that kind of damage, I got to wonder what got him to that level. I got to wonder how many secrets it's healthy to keep."

The Hudson's voice had lowered, and Henry suddenly knew he wasn't just talking about him any more. He stayed silent, and after a moment Doc sighed, shrugged a little, and turned away. "Up to you, kid." At the door, though, he turned; at the very last moment, and said "Who's Dayne?"

Henry gasped. Doc's eyes narrowed. "Thought so. You talked about her while you were still raving. Green paint to lose yourself in and eyes like the bluest sky…"

"Stop!" Oh, God. He could feel it threatening to blow past his last reserves of self-protection. "Please."

"Who is she?"

The dam burst. Henry slumped on the lift, pushing away everything but that memory. Maybe it wouldn't hurt so much once he had said the words, but he didn't really think so.

"She died. A long time ago, when I was young. She was a Jaguar XKE, on her way to see the races at Daytona; I was screwing around with dirt-track in Pennsylvania, and her trailer broke down, and, well, she never did make it to the races. We had four years together."

Doc was watching him; he could feel it, even though his own eyes were fixed on the concrete floor. "It was an accident, nobody could have saved her. An oil tanker jackknifed on State Route 50 and spilled crude all over the place: she was the fifth one round the corner and straight into hell. She had no chance at all."

"I'm sorry, kid," said Doc, quietly. For once the words didn't make Henry want to scream.

"Yeah. So was I. Went half-nuts after that. Trying to beat my own speed on little winding back roads. I wasn't paying attention to reports that the bridge was weakening, and I was busting rubber to get my seconds down when I crossed that bridge and it dropped straight into the river."

Doc said nothing, but Henry could sense his sympathy.

"They fished me out, which I really kind of wished they hadn't; and fixed me up, as much as they could, and as soon as I was fit I left town. Drove west. Here and there I got enough to keep going by competing in little races, and one of the little races was run by cars who didn't mind a little sabotage here and there to secure their wagers, and…well. You can figure the rest out." He stopped, still staring at the floor. It didn't exactly feel better now that he'd got it out; it felt different.

Doc continued to say nothing, for long enough that Henry cautiously looked up.

"Son," said the Hudson, at length, "you've been through hell. I know that look, I've been there myself. But you have your mind so far up your own tailpipe you can probably watch your own valves at work."

"What…?" That was not exactly the reaction Henry had been expecting—and had been receiving ever since he'd set off on his pointless journey.

"You had friends back East who fished your tail out of the river and got you runnin' again. You blew them off cause you had some kind of selfish little theory that the world revolved round you and your own grief." The Hudson's voice was still low, and not unkind, but it was harder around the edges. "And you've been wastin' your own talents and your life all the way across this continent. You got a lot to give, son. You could be someone again. Do you think your Dayne would be proud to hear what you've been doing?"

Henry stared at him, a wide, wounded stare, his mouth open. "I…but…"

"You think about that, son. I'll go and fetch your breakfast."