DISCLAIMER: I own not a goddamn thing in this but Henry the Mach 1. All else belongs to Disney and Pixar, and may it long become them.
Henry you may recognize from certain other fics. In this iteration he has nothing to do with Christine Redhart.
Oh but time is a river.
Dip a wheel into it once and you can never, ever get back there. Time is a river and Time is hungry and she never, ever, not once, lets up.
Henry was running on fumes and he knew it. The sick queasy ache in his tank had been worse and worse since he'd passed the lights of the old Wheel Well hotel, and paused there to look over the valley. He had kept going, because there was really nothing else to do, and because the sick swimming in his mind had been bad enough these last few days to make thought hurt too badly for prolonged attempts.
He'd passed some kind of neon sign a little while back, and as the fumes gave out to nothing he let himself coast to the edge of the old hotpatch, coughing heavily, dry-retching. Everything hurt. Shocks, struts, valve seats, fuel system, tank. It was a feeling he knew very well.
He'd been running sick and hot for the past hundred or so miles, and he could feel it in the ache of cooling metal. The fuel he'd had at that greasy-wrench place back on the highway hadn't sat well, and he'd had to stop and get rid of quite a bit of it on the side of the road, leaving him with only a few queasily sloshing gallons. Stupid, he thought. Trying to drink anything. You know how touchy it's been. Everything hurt.
He let his eyes close, shivering violently in the mild dawn air, and drifted. He supposed at some point—maybe years from now—someone might come by, and laugh at him, and maybe drive on and tell a wrecker to come fetch the old muscle-car from his grave.
Oddly enough, when Henry woke, he didn't wake to the endless desert wind and the spick-spack of sand against his rocker panels. He was in a white place, with clean walls, and the curve and glint of medical equipment all around him.
"Awake at last?" someone said, and Henry blinked. The voice didn't sound like an angel's; it was an amused, rough, no longer young sort of voice. He blinked again, and tried to focus, and made out an old dark-blue Hudson Hornet watching him with amused concern.
"….where am I?" Henry asked, and even as he shaped the words he knew how cliched they were. The Hornet merely chuckled.
"Radiator Springs, son. Welcome. You've been through hell, but I've got your systems more or less running again. How's the tank?"
Henry had to force his consciousness back into his body. It didn't want to go. "….a bit queasy, but not bad…look, what is this? Radiator Springs? What happened? Who are you?"
"All in good time, son," said the Hornet, and nudged a control releasing Henry's wheels. "You strike me as a car who's lost his hope. We specialize in that, round these parts. Now, do you feel up to going out and meeting the locals, or should I go down to Flo's and fetch you some hi-test?"
Henry gulped. He couldn't remember the last time he'd had proper hi-test. "I….I don't know. It's been a while since I refueled, I, I…." And I'm sick every time I try.
"That's all right, son. I'll bring you some, and there's no shame if you can't hold on to it. Cars out in the desert find themselves terrible thirsty, and that never ends well." He smiled, a comforting curve of old chrome, and reversed out of the shop.
Henry found himself desperately, wordlessly grateful to the Hornet, whoever he was—there was something terribly comforting about the older car's low gravelly tones and his understanding, and he really, really didn't want to try to refuel and find himself miserably sick in front of this—this Radiator Springs, whoever lived here.
He closed his eyes and huddled in on himself, his ancient Wide Oval tires squeaking a little on the sterile floor, and hoped that wherever he had found himself it was as kind as the dark-blue Hornet had been.
"Hey, Doc! What's the story on that hotrod Mater brought in this morning?"
Flo's was busy—as it always was these days. Radiator Springs had become something of a hotspot for travelers on the newly re-popularized 66; seemed like everyone wanted to see the place where the Fabulous Hudson Hornet had been hiding out all these years, and where McQueen's headquarters had been built. Every conceivable kind of vehicle had been coming through the town in the past few months, from sporty little T-birds and ricer imports to huge sleek Mercedes twelve-cylinders and Lexus luxury sedans. Once—and this had been something of a coup for Flo's—they'd even catered to a Roller.
But the locals still owned the town. McQueen made a point of being involved; this afternoon he was showing off his newly retouched paint job, courtesy of Ramone, and chatting with Fillmore and the Sarge. Doc pulled up beside them.
"He'll be okay, I think. That kid's got a story to tell, though. He's been running himself to pieces, and I want to know why."
"Dude," said Fillmore, thoughtfully, "maybe he's runnin' from something. The Man."
"You're paranoid," snapped the Sarge. "That organic fuel of yours is rottin' your mind."
"Hey, lay off my fuel, man. It's all-natural."
Doc said nothing, merely filling a can with Flo's best high-octane juice. What he'd noticed, as he was going over the Mustang's hard-worn engine, was a lot more interesting than the fact he'd apparently decided to drive until he dropped; there had been traces of what appeared to be water damage inside some of the components, as well as some kind of black glaze. At one time or another, the kid had been dunked in a river. No salt-corrosion, though, other than the ordinary undercarriage stuff he expected from a car who'd come from the East, where winter meant salted roads and rusted floorpans. He'd gone swimming in fresh water, which meant a lake or a river.
Definitely a story to be told, there.
"But he's gonna be okay?" McQueen persisted.
"Physically, yes." He thought, at least. The kid's temperature wasn't where he'd like it to be, and he didn't much fancy that black crinkled glaze inside the dual Quadrajets, but he figured that could wait until he got the kid's story straight. Doc wasn't necessarily sure about his mind—but he had hopes. He turned off the pump as the can filled, and was about to pull back onto the street, when a tiresomely familiar sound system made itself known.
"Goddamn kids," the Sarge muttered. The Delinquent Road Hazards had been something of a fixture around the Springs recently, and while the Sheriff was happy to pull their overlit rear ends over every time they came through (thump-thump-bang-thump, went DJ's subwoofers), the town was running out of roads to be re-paved. Bessie had never had so much work to do.
Doc rolled his eyes. "There's a foursome who don't seem to get the concept of law and order. –Well, I'd better be getting back, if I'm gonna have to hold traffic court for the fifth time this month."
"You oughta ban them from the town, Doc," said the Sarge. "Disrespectful hooligans, that's all they are. And some of the younger cars are startin' to act like them. I don't like it."
Doc sighed. "I'll take that under advisement, Sarge."
In fact he didn't make it back to the clinic before the four of them hove into view, riding single-file for once down the two-lane. Boost was in the lead, and he was in one hell of a hurry; Doc had to haul off the road to avoid being broadsided, and the import's bumper flirted by with bare inches to spare. He refrained from yelling what was on his mind, though, and waited for the Sheriff to do the necessary.
The Mach 1 was drowsing, shivering, half-asleep, wheels pulled in like a tired child's. Doc found himself wondering again just what had happened to him to make this kind of desperate run worth it—and what the story was with that water damage. He didn't like the shaking.
"Son?" he said, quietly, rolling forward, "you awake? I brought you some fuel."
The Mustang's eyes opened, slowly. They were a shade somewhere between blue and grey, and almost utterly desolate. There was a glassy shine to them Doc didn't like. "T-thank you, sir. I don't know if I can—"
"I know. Just take it slow, okay? After starving like that you're apt to make yourself sick if you drink too quick." Outside he could hear Sheriff's wheezy siren, and ticked off another worry in his mind. "What's your name, anyway?"
"H-Henry. I'm Henry. And you're…very familiar, somehow." The blue-grey eyes closed again, reopened. "Are you famous?"
Doc chuckled. "Once, a long time ago, I guess I was. I'm Doc Hudson." He set down the can of fuel and moved it forward for Henry to drink. "I run the town here, as well as being the doctor. Think they call it multitaskin' now."
"Hudson….Hudson Hornet. You're that Hornet? Number Fifty-One?" Henry sipped at the fuel cautiously: it tasted like heaven, rich and heady and golden—and felt his tank lurch. He gulped, and tried to distract himself from the nausea—he was used to it, by now, and he found sometimes it helped to think of something else. "Uh….not to sound stupid, but am I actually awake, or is this still the crazy dream part?"
The Hornet—Doc Hudson—nudged over an oil drip pan, and Henry closed his eyes for a moment: it was…well, rather depressing to be so easy to read, but at the same time the older car's unassuming kindness felt like a soft blanket against a cold wind. He shivered, helplessly, rocking on his springs.
"You're awake, son. Just take it slow, and don't worry if you can't keep it down just yet. You've been through one hell of an experience."
Henry felt something odd, like a smile, tug at the corners of his mouth. He tried another sip, and another, ignoring the grumbling of his tank--and when after a brief, inevitable and unsuccessful battle he deposited it in the oil pan, groaning, he felt the smooth cool metal of the Hornet pressed gently against his baking side, steadying him, and heard him saying quiet comforting things. He shook and shuddered, his body refusing what it had been offered, and ached as the doctor's clinic receded into darkness.
Nobody has ever done that. Ever seemed to care.
Time is a river.
…and again we are here where we have been so very many times before: a hot dog-killing August with the cicadas singing their mindless endless song in poison-green treetops, a white haze over the distance, the asphalt softening and bubbling under a blowlamp of a sun; green hills and mountains, and well-worn roads, and a red car, driving.
A red car—and this is the same red car that always drives this road in this dream, every time, exactly the same, down to the little tiny dent just at the base of his right front wheel arch, and the small hairline crack in his left taillight; this is the same red car that downshifts to third for the bend, heavy V-8 engine bellowing, RPMs dancing at redline, and snaps up again as the straight comes into view and the bridge and its battered concrete parapet approaches—the same red car, dark gleaming red, hugging the road on his fat Goodyear Wide Ovals, that we have seen every time this dream begins, and every time it ends. It is close to ending now.
…and time is ticking away and the red car seems to gather himself to spring ahead, into fifth and past the time record, and we can see—before he can—the way the road surface is not perfectly flat any more, the way a shadow that should not be there has appeared on the beige concrete of Margate Bridge; and a moment later, one less moment to go, that shadow has lengthened and become appallingly black in the bright day, and the red car falters as his offside driving wheel is caught in what is now a widening crack, and we can watch as the crumbled parapet of the bridge splits in two like a dry bone, and as the red car—helpless to slow himself, or to escape the end to which we now understand he is consigned—tumbles sideways, and down, and turns end over end with his wheels still spinning and his engine roaring in sudden horror; and we can see as the water seems to rise to receive him, and close over him in a froth of churned white.
There is a moment where—now righted, if leaning in the fast-flowing green water—his roof surfaces, and half his right side; but he has his windows open for the sake of the broiling sun, and it is not long at all, at all, before there is nothing left of the red car but a swirling oilslick on the water, being borne downstream, and then nothing more of that.
Chunks of concrete and rebar swing from the crippled bridge. Perhaps ten minutes later another car comes into view round the curve, but this car is not trying to beat his own time, and he is able to stop in time—and to pull a screaming U-turn and beat hell back to the nearest town, and the nearest police station.
And now we are under the green water, and silvery pockets of air remain here and there in the red car's body. He has already given up consciousness, and been glad for it: the dreadful choking as every part of him was invaded by the cold fingers of the water had been more painful than anything he has ever known. He is unconscious when the river-currents fetch him up against a shelf of rock; he is unconscious when the setting sun glints scarlet from the water just by that shelf, and catches the eye of one of the searchers along the road, and he is almost completely gone when the hooks catch under his bumper and the chains snap tight, throwing off gilded droplets of water, and carefully, inch by inch, pull him up and into the air once more.
He would have been better off had they not found him, we think, watching as he goes through agonies, resuscitated viciously on the side of the road. We watch him being forced and pummelled back into life, and breath, and when at last they ease him into the back of the emergency trailer and set off with sirens blazing we look back at the quiet and unassuming river and think: better they had not.
But it is always the same, this dream, and time is like that river, and oh but we would give anything if we could step back into the river again and come to a halt, and think no more.
Doc had been forced to revise his diagnosis, after watching his patient be repeatedly sick, and registering the upswing on the temp gauges. The Mach 1 was very far from well; he'd taken siphon samples from his tank after heavy solvent lavage, and what he saw on the readout was not reassuring.
"Sugar?" Sally asked, unbelieving. "You're telling me this poor kid got sugared?"
"That's what I said." The doctor's gravelly voice had no expression at all. "Happened a while back, by the look of things. He's been runnin' so hard all the damn caramel got burned off from the workin' surfaces, but the damage was done. And his temp's almost offscale. I'm doing what I can to clean him out, but the prelim says he's probably gonna need a whole shiny new fuel system, and the cylinders need regrinding, and the heads are a mess. I'm only telling you about this, Sally, because you're our town attorney—and this, what I'm seein' here, this is actionable. If we can find out who did it to him, he's due one heck of a settlement. Maybe even enough to cover that new system."
Sally's eyes were wide. The Mustang drooped listlessly on the lift, eyes shut, breathing shallowly. "Chrysler. Poor kid—I shouldn't even say kid, he's at least—what, gotta be thirty years older than me—"
"He's a muscle-car, Sally. They're famous for slow maturation. 69 was a good year for the 'Stang, especially the Mach 1. He's well-built and he's strong. But he's been maltreated for a long time, and he's had a swim. There's water damage in the engine, as well as the sugar. When Mater brought him in he'd run out of gas—and run himself ragged in the process. Kid's trying to escape something. I want to find out what."
"What's…what's doing this to him? The fever?"
"Got me. I'm thinking probably just exhaustion, it can be like this; and the damage he's taken is enough to set up infection, despite what I've done. He can't keep anything down, and Chrysler knows he's tried. I've got him on a slow drip feed, and I'm changin' out what I can from his fuel system—the pump had burnt sugar inside it, Sally, it was one hell of a mess. But until he gets enough strength back to get his mind out of its own knot, I won't know what his story is."
Sally stared up at the red car, lying on the lift. Every now and then he twitched restlessly, and moaned; it was a little quiet sound of desolation.
"This isn't right, Doc."
"I know."
She sighed. "Hate to have to heap more bad news on top of this, but you got two of the Road Hazards in the impound for reckless endangerment. The other two lost Sarge and Sheriff somewhere outside of town. You want I should keep them there for another night while you work on this guy?"
Doc had to sigh, too. "No. He's stable, at least, even if he's sick as hell. I'll deal with them. Which two?"
"DJ and Wingo. The other two booked."
"All right." Doc put down his sensor array and slumped for a moment, looking tired. "Go on, Sally. Go tell Sheriff to pull 'em from impound and get them to the courthouse. I'll be along shortly."