Chapter Text
Adrenaline was always running through your veins the night before a race. It was the same explosive mix of excitement laced with a hint of fear. So, when the track was closed and the flood lights went dark, you would quietly leave your motorhome and walk the grid alone.
The silence was peaceful in a way that couldn’t be found at any other time. The hours just before dawn were like a parallel universe where all the distractions and worries were lost to the stars above. You were in a world of your own.
“You should be sleeping,” Charles said as he stepped into your field of vision and looked down where you lay under the dark starting lights.
You hadn’t even heard his footsteps approaching as you imagined the track, your fingers twitching with the memory of its banks and turns. Though the asphalt was cold beneath you, it was the memory of the moulded seat that you felt against your pyjamas. Your cheeks even felt the ghost of a breeze like the air that would blow through the vents on your helmet.
As the only female driver in recent times there was a pressure that the other drivers would never feel. You had to fight for not just your position but for all the future female drivers who aspired to race in Formula One. If you didn’t meet the expectations then it wasn’t just your future at stake, and you felt the weight of that pressure every time you sat in the car. It drove you to push harder and test the limits of the car, it drove you to practise more than the other drivers.
You were pulled from your thoughts and looked up the length of Charles’ body. You took in everything from the loose grey sweatpants to the plain white t-shirt and then to the eyes that had been witness to the greatest and worst moments of your life.
“Lay down,” you said as you patted the cold ground beside you. “It’ll be like old times.”
“We’ve come a long way since F3.” Despite the words, he laid down beside you and laced your hand with his. He had always let you take comfort in his touch since he knew how nervous you got, even after years of racing. Those nerves had only increased after your recent debut into Formula One just a few short races ago.
“Does it get easier?” you asked quietly, not wanting to disturb the eerie silence. You looked across at him, the moonlight illuminating his eyes that seemed torn between wanting to calm you and wanting to be honest.
“It doesn’t get harder,” he admitted.
You lost yourself in his eyes and remembered dreaming of a time when you thought the friendship might be more. That dream had slipped away as his career took off and yours remained stagnant in F3. Your paths had no longer crossed often but you had still tried to keep in touch despite the newfound distance. If friendship was all you could have then you would take it, especially if the alternative was having nothing.
It didn’t stop old feelings creeping back the moment his hand was in yours.
“You’ll catch a cold lying down here all night,” he said, cleaving through the moment and shaking you from your daydream. “Vamos.” You groaned but let him pull you to your feet and he slung his arm over your shoulders, tucking your body into the warmth of his. “Can’t have you anything but your best for tomorrow.”
You grinned up at him in the moonlight. “Maybe it will be the day I finally beat you.”
Charles chuckled. “Would I still have to be your slave for a week?”
You laughed at the reminder of the challenge made over ten years ago and shook your head. “I wouldn’t know what to do with you for a whole week.”
He looked down the corner of his eye at you and his lips twitched up, a hint of mischief on his face as he squeezed his arm tighter. “I’m sure you’d think of something.”
Your heart skipped a beat as his voice deepened and the way he swallowed afterwards like the words were thick with meaning. You were certain you were reading too far into it but hope was something that still clung to your heart and you felt it skip a beat at the thought. You would never be brave enough to ask him and risk making a fool of yourself, so you parted ways when you reached your motorhome first.
“Goodnight, Charles,” you murmured as you reached the first step and turned. You missed the warmth of his body and shivered as the added height left you standing chest to chest.
Charles leaned in slowly, his hands running down your arms to softly hold your hands and you froze as his perfume infused with the same air you breathed before his warm lips pressed softly to your cheek. “Goodnight, Y/N. Sweet dreams.”
—
You hated starting at the back of the grid but there was only so much you could do with a car that didn’t have a big budget like some of the other teams. Still, Williams had given you an opportunity no other team had so you would make the best of it.
The first light turned red and you began your starting sequence, preparing for the best launch possible. At lights out the world faded away. There was no one else and nothing but four wheels and the track.
Accelerate, brake, turn, repeat.
Your pace was strong but it wasn’t enough and though you overtook both Saubers and an Alpine, the leaders were coming from behind to lap you. You kept aside with the blue flags, letting Max and Lando overtake before a familiar red Ferrari appeared in your mirrors.
The last straight of the lap was coming to an end and you moved off the racing line for Charles to have a clean pass and you spared a glance his way. You swore he looked right back at you despite the concentration he needed to keep on the tight left hand corner he was entering. You could feel his eyes meet yours even with the polarised visor hiding them from your view.
It all happened so quickly, but on the contrary time seemed to slow down.
You turned your steering wheel into the corner and felt the tension pop as the entire console dislodged from the locking system that held it in place. The corner was rapidly closing and you were stuck on a collision course towards the barrier with a console that wouldn’t click back into place. You slammed your foot on the brake and all four wheels locked, tread burning black smoke as the friction stripped the rubber.
Charles turned into the corner and you begged the universe to let him pass before you reached him. A shudder rippled through the chassis as your front wing barely clipped his back tire and a new fear gripped you as he spun back around to face you. For a moment you were face to face and his gloved hand reached out as if he could save you from what was to come.
You took comfort in that small gesture and crossed your arms over your harness to brace for impact.
Weightlessness washed over you as the car hit the gravel side on and the right hand tires dug in, the shift in the mass lifting the other wheels off the ground. Pain exploded through you as the entire weight of the car slammed down into the gravel and flipped too many times to count.
Sky. Gravel. Sky. Gravel. Sky. Grass. Sky.
The radio crackled in your ear as the world stopped spinning and you stared up at the blue sky over Imola. “Are you okay?”
The taste of copper filled your mouth when you tried to speak and only a pained wheeze came out. You couldn’t understand what was happening as the sky turned grey, the sunlight fading before your eyes. How had such a beautiful day taken such a dark turn?
“Y/N!”
You could hear Charles screaming over the ringing in your ears but you couldn’t answer him, though you desperately tried to. It was getting harder to breathe through the bubbling in your chest and the little air you could pull into your lungs was laced with smoke and fumes. You looked up at the sky again and felt the sudden heat blazing against your back.
Not clouds. Smoke.
You reached for the harness and screamed through the pain of trying to unbuckle them with the ribs that were undoubtedly broken.
“Let me go!” Charles screamed. “Help her!”
The heat was unbearable even with the fireproofs that you wore beneath your racing suit and there was a moment where the world seemed to fall silent, like the very air had frozen still. The atmosphere suddenly popped. White hot light flashed blindingly bright and in an instant the pain was gone.
—
The track was empty and the debris had long been cleared. The only reminder of the horrific crash were the deep gouges in the grass verge and the damaged wall that had stopped your car going any further off the track.
You didn’t belong here. You didn’t belong in this black and white world, this place where all the colour had faded away like a photograph left in the sun. Where you had once seen the world in vibrant blues, lively greens and…Ferrari red, it was all now shades of grey.
Was this the end? Was this how your eternity would be spent, anchored to the last place you lived? It was lonely and cold here, like all the joy and happiness had been drained along with the colour.
“Happy Birthday.” A quiet voice broke your revelry and a moment of warmth filled you as Charles unknowingly stepped through the spot you stood. A shiver went down his spine and the petals of the bouquet he held trembled before he placed them on the scorch marks that stained the concrete wall.
Your birthday? An entire month had passed while you stood rooted to the track.
“I’m sorry it took so long to visit.” He sank to his knees on the grass, not caring about the dirt that stained his jeans as he dropped his head in his hands. “I miss you.”
You wished you could ease his pain but the hand you placed on his shoulder went right through. Arthur’s didn’t though, and you watched as his brother comforted him in a way you no longer could.
“I miss you too,” you whispered to the wind that picked up down the straight.
“She was so nervous before the race. What if she felt something was going to go wrong? What if I missed something?”
Charles had tortured himself with late nights replaying every moment leading up to the crash, trying to find a way in which he could have saved you. He needed there to be something he could have done, something to justify the guilt and regret he carried.
“You can’t beat yourself up wondering ‘what if’. It was an accident, and it doesn’t make it any easier but they happen,” Arthur said as he sat beside his older brother. “You read the report, the console lock malfunctioned.”
“Arthur’s right,” Pierre said as he arrived with his own bouquet of flowers, placing them beside Charles’. “There was nothing anyone could have done.”
Charles sighed with defeat and seemed to shrink in upon himself as he plucked out a blackened blade of grass. “I could have told her how I felt. I always thought we would have time, I always thought I would have…her.”
Your soul shattered at his admission and if you could cry in this state then the track would have become an ocean. All those years wasted when if you had just told him how you felt you would have found out he felt the same.
You would give anything to have that time back.
“You’re talking like she’s dead already,” Pierre snapped and you jerked your head around to him at the revelation. “There’s still a chance she could wake up.”
Charles scrambled to his feet and the agony in his eyes nearly drove you to your knees. “Shut the fuck up!”
Charles ran his hands through his hair and tugged at the dark strands until he screamed to the sky above. Birds erupted from the treelines and took flight at the piercing sound but Pierre just shook his head sadly. He didn’t want to have hope. He didn’t want to be shattered by it again.
“She’s not Jules, Charles,” Pierre said, flinching when his friend glared at him. “Just go visit her, if anyone can bring her back it’s you.”
Charles turned his back and started to walk away without a goodbye and you took a step without realising it, then another. The invisible anchor that had kept you trapped at the crash site untethered from your feet and you were able to follow Charles, you were able to follow your heart.
He paused beneath the starting line and looked up at the lights you had laid beneath. Gone were the stars that you could wish upon, now only dark grey clouds remained.
“If anyone up there is listening, I could really do with a miracle, or a sign, or anything. Just something. Anything. Please.” His voice broke and he wiped his eyes on his sleeve before sniffing and departing the grid.