Hello! If you feel like it, can you do GP pov on chapter 16 of dwtd on the time that Max went missing? I'm kinda curious how GP felt, thinking that you said that GP saw that Max was hanging on by a thread.
Max's stuff is still on his hotel room. Maybe not all of it, but a lot of it. It's sitting there. Taunting him. Because the stuff is here but Max is not.
Rupert elbows past him, checking the bathroom first, going through the drawers like he's looking for something.
GP can't breathe.
Max is gone. Max is gone.
I'm just tired. I need it all to stop.
The words echo in his head.
But everything hasn't stopped. Everything had gotten louder. Worse.
And now Max's driver's room was destroyed. His hotel wasn't cleaned out. And Max was gone.
He could be dead.
He could have-
Normally he'd say no. Normally he'd say that Max wouldn't do that. Not them. Not to him. But right now? He didn't know. He truly didn't.
Yesterday when Max had cried when he's finally broken down and cried GP had known they needed to talk. Really actually talk. But he'd pushed it off. Waited. He shouldn't have. He's waited too long. He could tell Max was suffering. Hed given him space instead of pushing. He'd made the wrong call. Called the wrong strategy. And now-
max's helmet being stained with red in silverstone because it scraped so hard against the red wall and it was horrifying at first but everyone calmed down realising it was just paint and now max's balaclava being stained red in silverstone but this time its actually blood and its impossible to calm down
Paint
There had been a moment. A split second when he had first gotten a glimpse of Max's helmet. A moment where he could have sworn it was blood. Bright red blood that had somehow leaked through the helmet. Snapped his neck and bled out and leaked onto the outside somehow. Pierced a hole straight through the carbon fiber where the only thing left was bright red blood.
But it wasn't.
It had been paint. Just paint. (Pait scraped off of the side of the barrier due to the intensity of the impact, but just paint nonetheless.)
That had been 2021.
The 2021 Silverstone Grand Prix was a day GP never wanted to relive.
But it was no longer at the absolute bottom of his list.
There had been a moment. A rather long moment. (Almost five years to the day.) A moment where no answer came over the radio. But there was the possibility of a malfunction. The camera caught movement. The gloves were transporting life signals. It was a scary moment but only a moment.
Until it wasn't.
Max gets out of the car on his own. He hadn't answered due to a technical problem. Or claustrophobia perhaps. The overwhelming need to get out of the compact space of a flipped car.
The cameras are glad for movement, for proof that the rollover would affect little but champions points.
Until Max takes off his helmet.
They never would have shown it if they had known. That much is certain. The broadcast would have stayed far away with only vague non answers about the drivers’ conditions.
But they had already shown Charles and Alex and Pierre. And now there was only one driver left to show.
It made sense really. They had thought all was well. Hadn't considered the way he scrambled to undo his helmet straps. Hadn't thought it odd the great Max Verstappen stayed on his knees while the world watched on.
They don't realize the ramifications until it's live on the air.
And GP is watching. Eyes glued to the screen the moment it happens. When the helmet comes off and the only thing GP can see is the red.
Bright red.
Blood red.
Paint.
It's paint.
It has to be.
Paint from-
Paint from inside the helmet.
Paint from-
Paint from the red Ferrari.
Paint from-
Paint from something.
The broadcast cuts away immediately. The cameras relegated for team use are not. Not fast enough.
Not before Max’s balaclava is off and the… the paint is smeared all over his face. Around his mouth. On his nose. Cheek. Forehead. Mingled with his hair.
Not before then.
The cameras disconnect. All of them from that part of the track. One by one. The close up first. Then the wide shot. Even the track angle that only caught the edge of an Alpine in frame.
He's suddenly staring at blank screens mixed in with the telemetry and statistics and a wide shot of the pitlane as Lewis Hamilton pulls his car to a stop.
The Ferrari gleams in the remarkable sunlight over Silverstone. It gleams red. Bright red. Ferrari red. (Blood red.)
theartofmadeline
2087
yousharknotpass
amandla
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