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Four days after the funeral, it snows.
A winter monsoon, really. They hadn't seen it coming, precipitation and temperatures and fronts irrelevant in the chaos of loss. Dawn breaks and the world is white, whip and ice-fog.
They didn't close the road through Tailfin Pass in time.
It’s no one’s fault; all of them gathered up, close knit this week, sobbing and hugging, and every single vehicle in town has managed to catch the flu all at once.
And now there are tourists stuck in Tailfin Pass.
Red can’t get the tourists, he’s garage-ridden, unable to move and steaming with fever. Sheriff can't go either; in fact, Sheriff hasn't said so much as a sentence. His husband is dead.
Mack is on winter leave. Sarge, Flo, Luigi, Mater, everyone is down for the count. And the weather is only making everyone’s misery worse, a piercing gale through the canyons.
They get an emergency radio call at the station. Sally answers it, hoarse and shivering, barely able to drive. People are stranded, and there’s a medical emergency. A chopper can’t save the day with zero visibility in the mountains, thousands of feet up in the thin air, higher still than even their baseline thousands from sea level in the valley. Planes certainly can't land up there on the narrow cliffs. Other outside help is hours and hours away. There’s only one option left.
“Stickers,” Sally pleads, voice ragged from coughing.
So Lightning goes.
Thankfully, Lightning is the only one not sick. He doesn't get the flu, it's not something he’s ever had to worry about. But everyone has been treating him like wet paper, so he may as well be. He feels terrible, like nothing is real no matter how hard he tries to focus on it.
“Shock,” Sarge had said when everyone started asking, somewhere along the past week, fuzzy and half-remembered. “He’s got shellshock.”
Lightning shook his nose at the exaggeration. He’s never been to war.
Lightning blinks and finds himself in the clinic; so terribly familiar, but so, so different. It’s cold in here; no one has turned the heat on. He’s gotten his snow tires out from Luigi's warehouse, half-rigged up from last winter when Doc insisted on adding snowchains to them, and brought them here to put them on by himself, all without realizing.
Isn't the clinic green? Doc’s favorite color is green. Why isn't it green in here anymore? They didn't change anything. It feels like someone changed something. Lightning wants to relax into the usual contrary solace of the clinic, but all that grips him is a claw of anxiety. The clinic is just another surgery theatre without its operator; sparkling, sharp, ready to cut.
It’s hardly been a week.
Lightning fumbles for the leveraged wheelgrips to swap off his All-Seasons. That’s why he’s in here. He’s just borrowing. This is where Doc keeps his wheelgrips and other tools.
The wheelgrip slips where Lightning’s tires are wet. Kept. Kept his tools. The rubber-squeak echoes in the empty room.
Five lugs per wheel.
Five lugs per wheel.
He does not count how many more times he slips changing out his tires, but when he emerges from the clinic into the white sky again, he’s sore for some reason, like he’s been shimmed a full inch for the banking at Daytona and gone into second overtime, overworked and ready to sleep ‘til Tuesday.
He ventures to the station again to borrow one of Red’s snowplows, picking a medium one Mater fitted for him his first winter in town, when it had snowed a foot and Mater and him and Sally had made ice-tractors out by the flat farmlands. Usually, the memory makes him smile (Frank had been so confused, pacing the fenceline, trying to get to his new herdmembers), but Lightning is out on the street again already, more time lost without notice. Lightning hopes he was quiet, and didn’t wake Red.
Sally appears again to catch him before he leaves. He can't hear anything she says over the weird underwater ringing sensation that comes and goes, but he knows he sent her home from her post at the station. Watching her shiver makes him ill, like he’s going to faint.
“You need to rest too, Sal. Okay? I’ve got this. I’ll be back.” It’s his voice, but it doesn't feel like it’s him saying it. He says it anyway; it’s the right thing to do. He says what Lightning McQueen would say, does what Lightning McQueen would do, which is really no different from how he wakes up every day. His earned name: I am Lightning. It feels different now, like the meaning has changed. Something more; or something less.
Deep down, he hopes it’s less. At least then, there would be justification, a start to sense. Marks lost, a banner lowered.
He drives out of town to the mountain pass. He has only this morning before it's too late to dig out the tourists, before the road becomes impassable. It's up to him now.
The temperature drops as soon as he starts to climb in elevation; not good. The cold burns through his intake, and the feeling makes him cough.
The snow sticks to the roads this low already, and he drops the plow to clear the center lane.
It’s a forty minute drive up the mountain- and that’s his usual time, when Sally leads him up, disobeying all street signs.
With these conditions, it'll take longer. That’s fine; the work will distract him. It’ll keep his mind off of-
Fuck.
Lightning coughs again from the dry cold scraping his airways. He’s usually the backup in these types of situations anyway, the responsibility afforded to him for being both the strongest and fastest vehicle in the county. He’s learned all sorts of road and fire safety procedures over the years. He can get the hard work done, and he can get it done quick.
But he's driving, already working up a lather pushing aside snow, and driving just reminds him of Doc, which isn’t at all what he wants to be thinking about right now.
It’s going to be a long way up the mountain.
It’s going to be a long rest of forever, one thing wrapped up in another.
…No one expected it. Doc was in fine health. Cars don't just die, it’s a ridiculous concept: just look at Lizzie, a car over a hundred. Lightning would scoff, laugh even, if someone tried to explain what happened, if he hadn't seen Doc blow his engine right in front of him-
Lightning clamps his eyes shut and brakes on the incline with a whine from his discs. There's a reason he hasn't slept in days.
It’s snowing heavier up here too, just a few miles in. Beyond the idle of his own motor, the only other sound is the wind, muted and quiet behind the innumerable curtains of ice crystals wafting down into the valley. It never snowed in any other places Lightning lived before, which he used to be grateful for, and the silence always stuns him. You can't rust if it doesn't snow, if they don't salt the roads. If you don’t rust, you don’t die. Lightning huffs. Not even true. The snow dulls all sound- in the air as it falls, and as it lays on the ground.
There are cars waiting for him, so he puts himself back into gear again.
He pants behind the plow. Slush and ice has built up in his wheel wells, making him clumsy and numb on his wheels. Numb on top of his numb. Odd. Plowing snow has never been difficult before. He can't catch his breath.
Higher up the mountain still, and the quiet snow-static blankets his mind, too, only interrupted by images, icicles, things he can't remember seeing but he knows he did because he can feel it, the flower petals on the carpets. No one Lightning has known has ever died before, not like this. His parents are still alive, presumably (though he couldn't tell you where), and he never had siblings, didn't know his grandparents or aunts or uncles or anything like that. This acute feeling of loss is new to Lightning, and he hates it, he hates it so much. At least if someone betrays him, breaks his heart, they're still out there somewhere, breathing. In true Doc fashion, the old man managed to accomplish it all, and disappear forever on top of it.
He didn't expect it to hurt, like actually, physically hurt. The worst thing he can recall feeling in his adult memory was the day he thought his career died, when he was dumped by his team in the Regionals and left penniless in the infield; entirely, singularly alone on earth with no other skills or people to help him (until Mack had intervened, bless him). The world was over. Lightning would go back and live in that moment indefinitely if it meant Doc were still alive, out there somewhere having never met him but still hating his guts for being a failed racecar, probably saying ‘I told you so.’
‘See how this world is? You’re nothin’ but a fool for ever hoping otherwise.’
The snow deepens, and Lightning digs in with his gears, keeping his torque curve under careful handle. Snow and grit sloshes over the sides of his nose as he pushes the plow up the asphalt, and his gums start to lose feeling, bumper long since gone numb where he pants open-mouthed behind the arms of the plow. The temperature drops further as the wind whistles around the cliffs. Visibility falls off, but Lightning knows this road. He keeps going.
He reaches the bridge over El Rio del Radiador. He comes out of the curve onto the concrete bridge, and he starts to glide sideways, as if he were still in the curve. Shit. Icy.
A few quick flicks of his reticulating steering column, and he countersteers his body rightwise again. The chains on his tires scrape across the ice, peeling up strips of shavings in his wake. The waterfall is quiet, only half-flowing behind a violent, jagged mass of crystals stuck to the rocks, enshrouded in mist, stretching upward into the clouds without end.
Just a little more elevation gain and he’ll be there-
But as he climbs the final few miles of road, a wave of dizziness slams him, and he has to stop again. He brakes and shifts into neutral, but he rolls backward a few feet and nearly stalls, engine sputtering in protest at his lack of momentum. He can't keep stopping like this. He’s almost there. Lightning blinks his burning eyes hard, drawing in deep whistling breaths through the cutting wind.
The conditions are far worse than they thought. The tourists should have been fetched hours ago if it was going to get this bad.
Again, no one managed to close the road ahead of time. Not even Lightning, the only one of them not sick, but he may as well be for how useless he’s been all week. He doesn’t think he’s even managed to brush his teeth more than once since it happened.
Snow. They weren't prepared for snow.
The world is grey static at the edges, but the landscape has stopped tipping sideways, so Lightning clutches into first and tugs the throttle again to push through the deep snow, engine rumbling. The snow boxes in his skirts, and his exhaust bounces off of the narrow passage, reduced airflow choking him further. Nose down, push. Dig in. Almost there. Almost there. Almost there-
Headlights, deep within the fog of snow. “Hey! We’re over here! Hey!” a stranger distantly calls.
Lightning stops with a shiver and gasps for air. He’s made it to the Wheel Well. The stranded travelers radioed from here earlier, as it's the only shelter and stop for fuel in the entire pass. They got lucky, being held up here.
“We lost power! The snow’s too thick, and my wife needs her medication-” Cars crowd him, crawling through the snow on normal road tires, words half-dragged away in the swirling air. “Weather wasn’t supposed to be this bad-“
Lightning tries to respond, but his voice won't work. He clears his throat, which turns into a cough, which turns into a coughing fit, and he's leaning away from the other cars, embarrassed. Gosh, when does he ever cough? He’s being so rude to these people!
“Sorry,” Lightning pants once he’s gotten himself under control again. “I can get you folks down the mountain. It’ll be hard at first, but we can make it out so long as we go slow. Does everyone have a working parking brake?” He starts instructing over the whistling wind, doing his best to project his voice, but his words are all wrung-out and weak for some reason. He hardly sounds like himself.
Everyone gathers their things from the cold and dark hotel, and they line up behind Lightning to follow him down, hazards blinking.
“Negative twenty with the wind, wow!” one of them says as they read their own dashboard with their eyes squinted. Huh. It doesn't feel that cold to Lightning. It’s cold, but not that cold. He doesn't have any ambient sensors, but he could have sworn it was so much warmer- his engine bay is burning hot. His body seems to disagree, and a shiver wracks him, deep to his chassis.
Time to move.
Everything is fine at first. The winds are harsh this high up, but the road is still freshly plowed, the grade forgiving.
It doesn't last long. Between the howling wind blowing snowdrifts around and the rate of snowfall, Lightning has to drop the plow again to re-clear the path he just made. He can use his own weight coasting downhill, but now he has to feed the throttle to push. His motor isn't built for careful little low-gear inputs, and his valves chuff at him in annoyance. Careful, careful, little tugs on the throttle-cable to stay off his power curve lest he slip, and a lot of brakework. The frozen discs squeal under the grit caked into them, and they don't warm under the friction. His steering column shakes from just behind his front framerails, where the plow is hitched.
Lightning is all powercurve, so the world gets quiet as he tries to focus on his job. Suddenly, he hears someone else gasp in alarm, and the unfamiliar voice rattles his awareness, the wind rushes back in.
He’s bumped up against the inner guardrail, leaning on it with most of his weight. There's a scrape down his side where the layers of ice-buildup have sloughed off, a dent in the plow, and presumably, a long scratch in his paint, which he cannot feel. His hearing rings.
He crashed into the guardrail. He could have gone off the road.
“Are you okay?” One of the travelers asks him in a panic.
Lightning shoves off the guardrail with a punched-out grunt, and the chains on his wheels rattle, slack as he picks up each tire to reorient, clumsy and stiff. How dare they ask him-
“Road’s getting slick, everyone be on guard,” he yells back at the single-file line of headlights, blurry and distant despite being so close.
These cars have no other way of getting off this mountain but to follow him. He knows this road, they don't. He can't do that again.
Lightning bites the inside of his cheek until it bleeds and digs in, daring not to blink this time. His eyes water and burn. He doesn't have a windscreen fluid reservoir either- whatever’s in his eye just freezes in wind-spattered streaks down his flank. That sore-feeling from before never faded- in fact, it's only gotten worse, and every bolt in his frame is starting to ache for no reason. It’s different from the cold-ache too; it’s deeper, sharper, like pain.
It’s cold, but it's not. Lightning’s head spins one way, his stomach another, and he swears his blowoff valve is about to whistle with boiling steam.
Keep going, keep going, keep-
He gets everyone over the icy bridge, and then he pitches off the side of the road to be sick.
Nothing comes up; he hasn’t eaten in days. His insides cramp with the violent effort of twisting, and when he drags the plow back onto the road, he’s trembling.
“Are you sure you’re alright?" One of the strangers puts their wheel on his shivering flank.
He yanks himself out of their reach. “Stop it! Just don’t talk to me!” he yells, and he wants to keep yelling, but he can't get enough air, so his raw throat chokes him back down into a litany of coughs.
They have to keep going. Somewhere between then and now, Lightning’s motor cut out, so he flips his ignition switches and starts up again with an angry puff of carbon. He can't look any of them in their pitying eyes, not right now, so he just turns back around to the road.
He realigns the plow, and they continue the slow descent down the mountain.
The grade increases. Despite the path he’s cleared, someone is bound to slip-
-and right around the next corner, several cars lose traction.
It's a line of dominoes, one car hitting the next in slow motion and sliding, until the frontmost car finally hits Lightning, pinned between his tail and the cars behind them. Not even Lightning’s snow tires can handle the added weight, and he starts to slide forward, too.
No!
People behind him shriek in a panic as they realize braking isn't going to solve things, and the guardrail of the cliffside road creeps closer as they approach a sharp curve. Lightning grits his teeth and turns his wheels against the grain. The chains screech as they scrape across the asphalt: sparks fly, and something catches.
The entire line of cars comes to a slow halt. His whole frame shakes with the effort of holding everyone back.
The screaming stops, and so does everyone’s momentum as they stop panicking. Lightning’s stomach flips again at how close the cliff-edge guardrail is to his nose, but he’s too tired to feel any fear.
They inch around the corner one by one at a lemon’s pace with Lightning guarding the outside to catch any further slips. He plants his snowtires and tries to hide his labored breathing, encouraging each car with a sharp eye and nod as they inch around the dangerous bend. After every one is clear, he takes the lead again with the plow.
The wind quiets with the elevation drop, but now Lightning has started shivering, and can’t stop. Steam and blowby smoke wafts from his frontend, and his radiator boils, valves and hoses hissing with exertion. The precipitation turns to a heavier mix of ice pellets and freezing rain with the sharp little snowflakes, like a sandstorm peeling off paint. His teeth chatter so hard it hurts his entire front clip. Even his powertrain aches, channeling the pain to his tail and center. He aches like he’s wrecked.
Further down they go, and they finally hit the valley’s edge, the switchbacks smoothing out to long paces of road, back and forth languidly until the road snakes into town. The travelers cheer: they've made it to safety.
It’s just in time too- the whipping winds from the mountaintop have reached the valley, and the precipitation starts to bucket in from all directions. The travelers shriek, and Lightning can't pick out the tone of emotion from it this time. Maybe the snow is exciting now. Lightning can't figure out why none of them appear to have struggled to drive as much as he had beyond that one tricky corner.
Lightning is damp, and frozen, and steaming and dizzy (so dizzy, and his hearing is fuzzy), but he leads everyone to the Cozy Cone, hands out keycards to those who will stay to wait the weather out, and meets with the EMT from the next county over for the woman who needs medical attention. The ambulance was contacted hours ago, when they’d first received the SOS from the stranded travelers, and had only just arrived now. The EMT drives off with the car and her husband, to some distant hospital (the one that’s several too-long hours away, which makes Lightning sad to think about for a reason he can’t recall), and finally, Lightning can take the damn plow off. His framerail hurts from where he’s been pushing it, worse than the time he had to scrape hardened asphalt off the road.
He wanders over to the clinic (he needs something from inside, but he can't remember what. He left something there earlier?), but he really shouldn't go in there caked in road-slush and ice, should he? Doc would get all cranky with him, and he’s too exhausted to deal with a lashing from that old grouch right now. There's a sting in Lightning’s heart as he thinks it, but he doesn't know why.
He leaves the plow somewhere, probably propped outside the door, and opens the wooden doors to Doc’s garage. He drives over the threshold, but his coils are jello, and he stumbles, nearly hitting his fender into the cinderblock walls. His bumper scrapes across the floor as his balance wanes, leaving a smear of gritty ice and slush behind. He can't seem to close his mouth right now; he can only breathe if it’s open.
The force of his wheezing breaths tickles his raw throat, and he stops to cough, eyes clamped shut. Sounds funny. His chassis hits the floor with a wet thump, and packed chunks of ice and slush rain down out of him. Huh. Lost his balance. Lightning is close to admitting defeat here. He hates to say it- he doesn't get sick, but… Maybe he’s sick. There, he said it. Fine.
Lightning doesn’t know what to do when he’s sick, on account of him never having to really deal with it in the first place. Rest, and fluids…? Is part of it maybe? He doesn’t know. It’s impossible to think.
That’s okay, Doc will be here soon to fix him, like always. He’ll just wait for Doc; he knows what to do. The closed door rustles in the wind, white sky peeking through the gaps.
The room spins. Lightning swallows, and presses his eyes shut for a long moment. No, that’s wrong. Everything is wrong. He opens his burning eyes and remembers. None of the tools on the walls have color in them anymore. Doc is dead. He died, and he’s gone forever, and Lightning has to spend the rest of his stupid life missing him.
Lightning starts shaking again, and this time, he can't make it out if it's from the cold, the fever, the exhaustion, or the grief.
He just wants to sleep. He just wants to sleep for a long time.
Maybe a few days. Maybe a few weeks. Will it hurt less, then? Somehow, it’s still getting worse with each day, each hour. The few times this week he’s managed to sleep, it's the first thing he realizes upon waking, like it’s new information every time. Waking up is to be reminded, again and again, fresh and cruel.
A shadow appears in the doorway, two-door with one mirror. Lightning is certain it isn't real, but the figure stares at him, mouth moving without a sound.
Lightning is so tired his mind burns, and he can't fight it anymore. Chattering, breath whistling though his open mouth, he sleeps alone on the concrete floor.
***
Guido has always had an iron constitution. He wakes up, and for the first time in days, his mind is clear, his strength returning to him. He peels himself off of the cushioned headboard where he was leaning and drooling, and folds his corner of the bedspread with his tines, tucking the loose ends back in around his partner. Luigi mumbles adorably in his sleep, still fevered. The poor car had sobbed for hours this week and had spent the last of his strength. Luigi has always been able to feel every emotion to the fullest, but it takes a toll in times like these.
Guido squints and rolls to the kitchenette in their garage. He pours out some electrolyte-coolant for Luigi, and stares at their wall-calendar. He crosses off the days to stay punctual, but he hasn't crossed off any days in days. Ugh. He’d turn the TV on to check, but he’d rather not wake Luigi.
Guido heads out to find out what damn day it is.
The sky is white but bright, and apparently, there was an entire snowstorm he somehow missed. No wonder it’s so chilly. Snow banks against the buildings in drifts, melting first off of the roads and pavers under the obscured sun, refreezing into crusts of ice in shadow. The surrounding mountains are powdered a bright white where they peek through low clouds, like the monsoon is still lingering in the higher altitudes to the east. His breath clouds in front of him, exhaust behind, and the temperature on the mercury-thermostat hanging off the window by a suction cup and a loop of fishing line reads still below freezing.
Guido makes his rounds around town to check on folks- and everyone is still sick. Go figure. At least Mater isn't outside in his nonexistent garage, thank The Manufacturer- Guido finds him holed up in the station with Red, sniffling and sneezing, red eyed from crying still.
Lizzie is in Flo’s guestroom (with only a sniffle), Sarge is at Fillmore’s, Guido goes around checking everyone off the list. One less than usual, he thinks with a lump in his throat. Poor Doc.
Doc was in his seventies, but that isn't at all a reason for a working car to die. A car is a machine: if it works, it works. Guido can't help but feel afraid at the thought. Haven't all of them always made certain to take good care of one another? Where did they go wrong?
Judging by the news station on the TV in the Cone lobby, it’s been three days since he marked off his calendar, since him and Luigi got too sick to do anything but sleep. Guido frowns: all of Sally’s plants have died.
He arrives last to Sally’s garage, tucked up on the hillside in a nest of trees behind the Cone- and only counts one of two.
Sally sniffles from under her duvet, hardly awake and staring at him over an undrunk bowl of cold chicken broth. Her eyes widen as she realizes who Guido is looking for. Her voice is unrecognizably hoarse, but she tries speaking anyway. “He said he was at t-the Lobby with the- How long have I-” she breaks off to cough, burying her bumper into the wrinkled duvet, eyes wrenched shut in agony.
Guido knows where he is. “Tornerò,” he tells her, and drives back to Main Street. The wind whirls, and he shivers in the biting cold.
Yep, a discarded snow plow, dented and coated in ice sits there near the back corner of Sarge’s picket fence. Guido turns to face the doors of Doc’s old garage, KEEP OUT signs making him flinch. He doesn't want to go in there, it seems like bad luck.
He pushes open the doors to find his quarry.
There Lightning is; Guido’s only remaining idiot racecar. And God, he knows it's been hard on the boy especially, but he looks like hell. Are those icicles running off of him, stuck to the floor-?
No. Don't tell him-!
The heat isn't on in here.
Guido just parks there and stares at the mess. How long has Lightning been in here, ill and frozen to the floor?!
Guido should have never gotten sick, he thinks as he jumps into action, rifling through the corners of the filthy garage to find if Doc ever kept any space-heaters.
He gets one plugged in and running, and then he taps Lightning on the metal nose with a clang. “Svegliati!” Guido barks, voice still hoarse from his flu.
Lightning doesn't respond. Guido cannot handle this right now. He grabs the racer’s bumper between his outstretched tines and shakes him with force. “Svegliati, ragazzo idiota!”
Lightning makes a noise that sounds like a blender full of lugbolts and woodscrews. He’s breathing, but fucking barely. Guido shakes him again, hating the noise as the unconscious stock car makes it a second, then a third time. Something is broken. Hopefully not Something only Doc knew how to fix, Guido realizes grimly that from now on, Lightning’s razor-margined condition is entirely up to them to keep.
Guido rushes to pry open his hood, but the locks are frozen shut. He curses, and once again ransacks the dusty shop for an ice-scraper. He actually finds one in a crate under a shelf, and starts furiously hacking ice off of Lightning’s steel panels, the racer occasionally making a crackle-whistle noise that must be his breathing.
Guido gets his stupid hood open, and his heart sinks at what he sees. He’s no expert on Internal Medicine, but he certainly knows his racecar well enough to patch him up on the fly. Even his motor is iced- and as Guido leans in closer, squinting in the poor light, he spots streaks of oilsmoke near the gasket-seams and bolts. Blowby from overheating with fever. Fuck. That’s going to be a bitch to heal. At least there’s two more months before the season starts.
The electric heater is working now, coils glowing hot and blowing warm air at the racer. Lightning starts to thaw out, but so does his attitude. He starts rolling away from Guido's tines as he works, paired with a drawn out raspy groan that sounds like a ‘no.’
It’s the only word he seems to know, because he starts saying it over and over. At least it’s something. But once the racecar gets moving, he keeps moving- not making it very far where he’s still mostly frozen to the floor and to himself, but he tries nonetheless. He’s near impossible to get a handle on when he’s well, and Guido has never seen him so sick before without alcohol involved- and even then, that’s usually funny: this isn’t.
His breath starts to cloud in front of him as he gets warmed up, and his body starts shaking, turning his no’s into warbles as he blindly starts to bat at Guido for bothering him. Guido is panicking, still strung out on flu virus and grief and the ache of the cold. He darts around outside the building to the clinic, again flinching as he enters, and passes by a set of discarded tires he had fitted on Lightning weeks ago, before the holidays, when everything was still happy and normal and the way it should still be. Guido starts opening every cabinet in the clinic. Sorry, Doc. There has to be something useful here…
He finds his safest bet: a few bottles of cold medicine, and picks the one with the highest concentration of ingredients before circling back around to the garage. Lightning has quieted again, still hardly conscious, wheezing on the ground in front of the heater. He can’t handle seeing Lightning like this. It hurts.
Guido has no idea how he’s going to get the cold medicine into the car. A funnel? That’d get him bit. He’s going to have to hold his mouth closed. Moving quickly, Guido tips the entire bottle into the racer’s mouth at once, using his other tine and dense forklift-weight to pin his bumper to the floor. Lightning squeaks, but is weak enough to take the whole bottle before he breaks away, forced to swallow with a choked breath that sets off a bout of coughing. The empty medicine container clatters to the floor, and Guido rolls back out of his space. Not once yet has the car’s eyes opened.
Guido rotates the heater, placing it at different sides as he gets back to work scraping ice and frozen slush, the only thing he feels like he knows how to do right now in his foggy mind. Chop, chop, chop, get his racecar back to perfect working order, whether it be cactus or mud or twisted steel. Lightning’s hood warms back up in a flash of fever as the chill leaves the room, and water pours out of him. He must have thawed and frozen several times over fighting the virus, Guido realizes.
Only once Lightning’s paint is visible again and most of the ice has melted down onto the floor and circled the garage drain does Guido set back with a pant to take a break. He should eat something, feeling woozy on his three wheels. He dares to leave the boy, and darts across town to his and Luigi’s garage, the back room of which is crammed with racing supplies, steel rims, and spare parts. There's a promotional package of sponsored race-grade coolant back here, and Guido grabs the shrinkwrapped bottles. He can't resist habit, and grabs a fresh sealed pack of microfiber towels, too.
Luigi peeks an eye open at him as he rushes past. Guido doubles back to peck him on the fat cheek, and the Fiat is still warm with fever against his lips. He won't dare to mention the condition of their racer, lest he disturb Luigi’s rest forevermore. He would no doubt fly out of the bedding, a hapless hurricane to sniffle and wail and try to help. Not that Guido is doing much better. But he has to do something.
Guido crosses three days off of the calendar and grabs electrolytes for himself as he leaves the kitchen- something suited better for two-stroke motors- and crosses the road back to Lightning again.
***
There’s a figure in the doorway.
Lightning fights to keep his eyes open as he stares. Small, slight, the irregular flutter of a two-stroke. Guido fades into focus, carrying too many things for his little tines as usual, peering sideways over a forkful of pallet.
Lightning is glad to see him well. Last he had seen the forklift, he was sneezing so hard he couldn't keep upright on his odd-number of wheels, and Luigi had to keep catching him against his doors. This bug going around town is really frying Lightning’s last nerve. He can't stand it, feeling faint at the idea of anyone else going down and never getting back up again.
“H-hgk-” Lightning tries to greet him, but his voice is so fucked he feels like he’s spent a week gargling rocks. There’s something sharp under his tongue, and spits out an actual road-rock. Oh yeah. Plowing.
Lightning turns his bumper away and coughs so hard his vision turns to static, and every inhale is a bed of boiler-coals. When he opens his eyes, Guido is parked at his nose, holding out a nozzle-bottle of coolant. He isn't so sure if he can keep any of that down, but if Guido wants him to try, he will.
Thank you, is what Lightning opens his mouth to say, but what comes out is, “I’m sorry.”
Guido’s face fails to stay stoic, which just makes Lightning apologize again. “I’m sorry,” he rasps. He doesn't know why it isn't working. His friend just keeps staring at him with that sad look, holding out the bottle.
“I’m sorry,” he shivers. Anything, he would say anything to fix it. “I’m sorry.”
***