Chapter Text
If there was one thing life had taught him, it was that nothing would ever come easy.
You worked for what you got, you earnt less than you deserved and, frankly, you were grateful if you got even one day where life didn’t spit in your face.
Sally calls him jaded. Mack says he has a flair for the dramatics. Doc just gets an odd look in his eyes, one that looks a little too similar to his own. Sadder, in a way, like a faint echo of the overwhelming grief that Lightning feels, every so often, for the childhood he might have had.
A childhood in which he had been popular in school. A childhood where his mother had stayed. A childhood where, maybe, he’d never spotted the poster on the wall of the bar he tagged along to with his dad when he was little, after school.
The one with the old, beat up sofa along the far wall where he’d sleep when he got bored of watching the little muted TV in the corner above the bar. The one that smelled of stale beer and sharp whiskey and the faint lingering of a put-out cigarette. The one that let him in as a personal favour to his dad, so long as he kept quiet and out of the way. The one with the loud men and the peeling wooden seats and the dingy lighting, where the same rotation of about 12 different people came and went. The one that was never full and yet somehow, somehow managed to stay afloat, perhaps on the profit of those regulars alone. Even then, Lightning had known it was no place for a child.
That poster, though, was like a beacon in the dark. The colours were fading and the tape holding it to the wall was long since dried out, but it seemed to cling to the wall out of sheer determination, still. If he closed his eyes, Lightning could still see it. Six cars, lined up in a V shape, the one in the centre at the front a bright, vibrant red with a young man no older than 24 standing in front of it. His helmet tucked under his arm, eyes narrowed, grinning roguishly with all the confidence in the world, as if he were the centre of the universe. And above him, in bold, striking letters: The Piston Cup: 1995.
He’d first spotted it at 7 years old, instantly enamoured by the thought of a race car. The poster was outdated by almost a decade and a half, speaking to its yellowing corners and creased appearance, but it was everything to Lightning. On particularly long nights, when he no longer cared to listen to the slurred ramblings of his father and his friends, he would sit cross-legged on the floor in front of the poster, eyes boring into it as he imagined the life of the man before him. Cars faster than he’d ever seen before, crowds cheering and screaming his name, standing atop a podium, cameras flashing and trophy glinting in his hands and- and-
-and his family, stood to the side, faces open and proud, shining with love and respect that he’d made something of himself.
Yes. He had thought. One day, that man would be him.
Slowly, his break and his lunch hours at school would be spent in the library, pouring over books and articles of previous Piston Cups, over winners and legends and historic moments of the sport. Old tapes and clips of past races, interviews and biographies and schematics of cars. Afternoons and evenings spent at the bar would be put to good use, earning $1.50 an hour cleaning toilets and polishing glasses and sweeping the floor. By the time he turned 10, he had saved just over $4,000, an immense, unthinkable amount to a 10 year old. He kept it locked away in a box under his bed, insisting to anyone who asked that he simply spent any money he earnt in the days after he got it; on candy and junk food; trading cards or a baseball cap, or whatever he could think of first.
He had his first lesson on a kart when he was ten-and-a-half. He told his dad that he had joined the after-school chess club, that every Tuesday and Wednesday he would stay behind, then walk to the bar and meet him there at 7pm, working the last 3 hours before they went home. His dad didn’t care, of course, barely glancing up from his newspaper.
Taking the bus from his school to the last stop just outside of town, and then walking the last stretch to the track took about 25 minutes, the round-trip totaling just about an hour, leaving him 3 hours to learn what he was born to do: race. His instructor, a kind young man named Mark who was about 26, and who Lightning unabashedly revered, called him a natural. He said he had racing in his blood, in his bones. He was the first to call him Lightning. (The pure, unconditional support Lightning felt from Mark was unlike anything he’d ever felt before. It made him want to try. To be better.)
Lightning’s money from his part-time job paid for his lessons, and by 13 he was racing against 16 year olds and winning . It felt amazing. Mark was looking into options for his future, for doing this professionally, and the world felt right at his fingertips. He’d found his calling, found his purpose, and he had built it all himself.
Then, when he was 14, his dad lost his job.
The already tight money was stretched thin, the time his dad spent at the bar stretched longer, and Lighting found himself decreasing the time he spent at the track just to scrape together enough money at his meagre part-time job to afford food.
Mark asked, because of course he did. Lightning told, because of course he did.
He told how he had been paying for his own lessons, how he’d been working at the bar he’d practically grown up in. How his dad spent more time there than at home, how he didn’t know that his own son was a relatively well-known racer amongst the karting circuits, he didn't know that he spent hours a week out of town, and had done since he was barely ten. He told how he was having to support himself now, because he could barely hold a conversation with his father. He trusted Mark, because Mark had been so good to him. But he hadn’t realised how good Mark was.
He went straight to CPS, to the police.
In one day, Lightning found his whole life changed. He was pulled from his dad, from his house, told countless, exhausting times that everything would be okay, that things would be better now. Lightning didn’t want better, he liked things how they were.
He was placed in foster care, in a different town far from the one he’d grown up in. After that day, he never spoke to Mark or his father again.
He was seventeen, the next time he set foot on a racetrack.
He had gotten a real licence and a new job at a diner, earning a proper wage on a fair schedule. He had somehow gotten enough to rent a cheap, terrible apartment, barely big enough for a bed and a toilet, let alone a fridge and an oven (it was fine, the ladies at the diner loved to feed him on the job), and then saved enough to find a local racing club and join.
It was full of older men in their late 20s and 30s, who had been reluctant to let him in the car at first. It wasn’t until he’d forced his way in, driven a few laps in perfect time that they’d realised what he was capable of. They asked his name, taking an interest in him for the first time since he’d shown up. Grinning cockily, just like the man in the poster from all those years ago, he’d replied. “They call me Lightning - Lightning McQueen.”
The months after that blurred together, some of the men from the club formed a team with him, helped him enter races and tournaments, provided the car and put his name on the map. In a way, Lightning felt 12 again, watching other racers pale as they recognised his name on the competitors list, except this was a bigger scale; he was barely outside of the major leagues now. It wasn’t just recognition within the little loop of his small hometown, it was spreading, slowly unfurling its tendrils and sinking them into every reach of the country. He was becoming nationally known within the racing community, and so it really shouldn’t have come as a shock when an agent contacted him.
Harvey. Harv, he had insisted he call him, somehow overly casual yet equally uptight, untouchable. He presented himself in a way that screamed ‘approachable’, and yet Lightning suspected the last thing that the man wanted was for Lightning to engage with him about anything but racing. The guy was clearly not good, even Lightning could see that, but he was his chance . The chance he had been waiting for his whole life, to break into the big time and prove that everything had been worth it.
He’d abandoned his old team in a heartbeat and without a second thought. He had learnt from his mistake with Mark, that trusting anyone but himself would only come back to haunt him. He felt nothing as he handed back the keys to the car he used to race in, carelessly threw his team jacket onto the desk of their old racing club. One of the men, David, had called out goodbye and good luck to him, told him he would always have a place there with them. Lightning didn’t reply; he didn’t even glance back.
In retrospect, perhaps that was where his reputation as a self-centred, egoistic loner had started. Harv told him not to bother about that. Being liked didn’t win trophies, after all.
His first day with Harv and Rust-Eze had been spent getting fitted in a new race suit, posing for photoshoots and long, pointless media training. Lightning knew how to charm people, how to flash a smile and a wink at the young girls and boys that swooned at him, how to grin in a way that showed off his dimples to the older women who thought him too young to be racing, and how to square his shoulders and grit his teeth in the face of men who didn’t even consider him to be competition. At first he had argued against the training; Harv was the one who had told him being liked wasn’t as important as getting results, but in the end it became clear there was no choice in the matter.
Most importantly, though, was that his first day was spent getting to know his new car. It was amazing, the stuff he had dreamt of from the moment he’d learnt what a racing driver even was. A bright red Chevrolet Camaro ZL1, glowing in the spring sunlight, not a scratch or a dent on her. And it was all his. Harv asked him what number he would race under, and for a moment his mind stalled.
Back at his old team, he’d raced under 23, but that was just the number that the old car had come with, it had never been a conscious choice he had made. Somehow, over the 10 years that he had spent dedicating every possible moment to thinking about racing, it had never occurred to him to pick a racing number. He thought back to when he was 7, sitting cross-legged on the uneven, dirty floorboards of the old bar, staring up at the beat-up poster on the wall with sparkling eyes and belief that he could achieve anything. The Piston Cup, 1995.
1995.
‘95.
“Yeah,” he grinned, taking a deep breath. “I want to be 95.”
Okay, here we go. Focus. Speed. I am speed. One winner, 42 losers. I eat losers for breakfast. Speed. Faster than fast, quicker than quick. I am Lightning. Speed.
I. Am. Speed.
The Piston Cup. He was competing in The Piston Cup. He was leading The Piston Cup. He had won–
–he had…tied…for The Piston Cup?
No, no, no, nonononono-
That was not part of his plan. But it was fine. This was fine. He’d just win the tiebreaker and his victory would be even sweeter. Nothing worth having ever came easy. (As if this had come easy anyway ).
Racing was in his blood, in his DNA. Besides, Harv had made it explicitly clear that losing had not been an option anyway, even if Lightning was racing against the Chick Hicks, and living legend, undefeated Strip Weathers.
(I took a chance on you kid, I stuck my neck out for a rookie!)
(He spat out the word ‘rookie’ like merely saying it left a sour taste in his mouth, like it was something Lightning should be ashamed of.)
(If you don’t win this race you’re letting me down. You’re letting the whole goddamn team down. Those guys at Rust-Eze have forked out god knows how much on you. There’s a lot riding on this, so get your head out of your ass, and WIN. It’s what I signed you for. Not a bloody tie. Nobody remembers second place.)
And then Radiator Springs happened.
He almost missed the tiebreaker.
He found people that looked at him the way Mark had.
Doc called the press, and Lightning was whisked away.
How did he let it happen twice?