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The first thing Sonny noticed was the silence.
Not literal silence, but lack of something impossible to define. Energy. Vibrancy. Enthusiasm. Instead, the factory felt...careful. Like everyone was walking on egg shells, whispering in hushed tones.
Kate met him in reception. She looked older than the last time he'd seen her. More tired than older, really. She smiled when she saw him, but it faltered almost immediately. "You actually came."
"You stopped answering my calls."
"I know."
"JP dodged every question."
Kate sighed. "I know."
"Nobody would tell me why Ruben wasn't at any races."
"I know."
Sonny folded his arms. "So? Because the team owner sure as hell shows his face during race weekends. I’ve been following the season, Kate. I saw one hell of a car you built. I saw JP winning races. You know what I didn’t see? Ruben."
Kate looked away, blinking sudden tears away. "Come with me."
*****
Joshua was waiting outside a quiet suite at the end of a corridor. It wasn’t an office - and definitely not Ruben’s fancy one - but a small apartment built into the headquarters.
Sonny frowned. "What is this?"
Joshua rubbed both hands over his face. "He doesn't like going home anymore."
"What?"
"He thinks it's someone else's house."
Sonny stared in disbelief. “What?”
Joshua only nodded. Kate rang the bell, and an elderly lady opened the door. She smiled warmly in greeting.
“This is Margaret,” Kate explained. “She’s Ruben’s caretaker though he thinks she’s the cleaning lady. Margaret, this is Sonny.”
Margaret’s eyes widened, and her smile grew bigger. “So he really does exist,” she exclaimed, shaking his hand.
Sonny just frowned in confusion.
"Before you go in," Kate said softly. "Please keep in mind that there are, well, good days..." The hesitation before ‘good’ said everything. "...and there are days where..." She couldn't finish.
Joshua did it for her. "He doesn't know who we are."
*****
Ruben sat in a comfy chair by a window, looking out into the gardens. He was wearing faded jeans and an old Lotus tee shirt that looked thirty years out of date. He was thinner. His shoulders had curled inward. The expensive watch Sonny remembered was gone, replaced by a simple digital one.
He looked, for lack of a better word, lost.
Kate smiled. "Ruben?"
He looked over politely. The smile he gave her was warm -- and utterly empty. "Hello."
"It's Kate."
"Oh." He cocked his head. "Do I know you?"
Sonny heard Joshua inhale sharply beside him.
Kate's smile never slipped. "We work together."
"Do we?"
"We do."
"That's nice." Ruben looked genuinely pleased. Then his attention drifted away again.
Joshua stepped forward. "Hey, Boss?"
Ruben studied him for a long moment. "I'm sorry." He frowned in concentration. "Mechanic?"
Joshua laughed once. It sounded suspiciously like a sob. "Something like that."
Sonny couldn't move. This wasn't... No. This wasn't Ruben. Couldn’t possibly be.
Kate finally turned. "Sonny?"
He swallowed. "Yeah. Uh. I..."
She stepped aside. "Maybe..." She didn't sound hopeful. "Maybe he'll recognize you. He keeps talking about you, at least."
Sonny approached slowly. "Hey, amigo."
Ruben looked up. Their eyes met. For one endless heartbeat, nothing happened. Then Ruben's entire face transformed. His eyes widened. His back straightened. A grin exploded across his face. "SONNY!" He was on his feet before anyone could react. He crossed the room in surprising speed and grabbed Sonny by both shoulders. "I knew you would come!"
Sonny barely had time to catch him in a hug. "Hey, Ruben."
"What took you so damn long?"
"I was driving."
"You always are!"
"Well, you know me."
Ruben barked a laugh. A real one. Loud and unrestrained and full of energy. It was like someone had switched the lights back on.
Kate covered her mouth. Joshua simply stared. This... This wasn't possible.
"Did you hear what Bobby did?" Ruben asked. "He says they are bringing a new front wing to Silverstone."
Sonny froze for half a second. Bobby. Bobby Collins. Lotus technical director. Dead nearly twenty years. But Sonny's brain caught up almost instantly. "Yeah?"
"This is absolute nonsense, of course."
"Oh?"
"He will stall the airflow!"
"Ya think?"
"I know." Ruben launched into an animated explanation with sweeping gestures, sketching imaginary airflow across invisible bodywork. His voice grew louder. His accent grew thicker. His confidence became absolute.
Sonny watched him, and immediately made a decision. Not consciously. Just instinctively changing tactics. Like shifting gears. He smiled. "Nah."
Ruben looked scandalized. "Nah?" he echoed.
"I've seen the drawings."
"You have not."
"I have."
"When?"
"This morning."
"Bullshit."
Sonny shrugged. "I bribed a mechanic."
Ruben burst into delighted laughter. "You sneaky bastard!"
Joshua looked at Kate in disbelief. Neither of them had ever seen Ruben move this much. Or laugh. Or talk. Usually every sentence was work. And now, suddenly, they couldn't get a word in edgewise even if they wanted to.
"And Senna will kill everybody in qualifying," Ruben declared.
Sonny nodded solemnly. "Unless Prost wins."
Ruben gave this some serious thought. "Maybe."
Sonny grinned. "Or I will."
“Oh please. You will never beat Senna or Prost.”
“You just watch me. You’re talkin’ to the next world champion here.”
Ruben gave a derisive snort, causing Sonny’s grin to widen.
And Kate realized with a jolt that Ruben wasn't living in the here and now, he was somewhere around 1992 or 1993. Before Sonny’s crash. And decades before APX. Before businesses. Before his failed marriage. Before everything. He wasn't confused. He was...home.
"So where is the car?" Ruben asked suddenly. "I want to see what they did with the suspension."
"They're still workin’ on it."
"But how are we supposed to get used to the new suspension if we cannot take the car out for a test drive?"
“What, you need test drives? I thought you had talent.”
Ruben’s eyes narrowed at that. “I have more talent than you do, Yankee,” he replied, mock haughtily. “I just prefer to know my car instead of just trying my luck with unknown components.”
Sonny immediately shot back with a good-natured comment, matching Ruben’s friendly insults every beat. And every time Ruben wandered deeper into the past, Sonny just followed. He never corrected him, never mentioned APX, never said Formula One had changed, never said Lotus was gone.
Joshua leaned over and whispered into Kate’s ear, “He's pretending."
Kate shook her head. "No."
"What?"
"He isn't pretending." She watched Sonny lean against the window exactly like he used to in old photographs she'd seen from the nineties. Loose and cocky and carefree. Thirty years younger. Most importantly, he wasn't talking to a man with Alzheimer's. He was talking to his teammate before morning practice. He even laughed differently. As if the decades between them had simply dissolved.
"By the way, you still owe me twenty," Ruben announced.
Sonny didn't miss a beat. "I paid you."
"You absolutely did not."
"I bought dinner the other day."
"That does not count as payment."
"But it was expensive."
"You ate most of it. I went home hungry."
Sonny sighed dramatically. "Fine." He dug into his pocket and pulled out a twenty pound bill. "Here."
Ruben accepted the money with immense satisfaction. "Thank you."
"We square?"
"Yes." Ruben immediately slipped the bill into the pocket of his jeans like priceless treasure.
Joshua had to turn away. Kate's eyes filled with tears. They'd spent two years trying to pull Ruben into the present, correcting dates, explaining where he was, reminding him who they were. Every failed conversation had ended in frustration because he couldn't understand why everyone insisted he was wrong.
Sonny, on the other hand, hadn't corrected him once. He had simply gone to where Ruben already was. And it seemed to make all the difference.
Eventually Ruben yawned. He looked around, suddenly uncertain. "Practice soon?"
Sonny softened. "Little while yet."
"So we still have time?"
"We've got all afternoon."
"Oh." Ruben relaxed immediately. "Good." He settled back into his chair. "You will wake me?"
"I promise."
"Good." His eyes closed. Within a minute Ruben was asleep, still smiling.
No one spoke until the quiet breathing told them he was truly sleeping.
Kate finally whispered, "How?"
Sonny kept looking at Ruben. "You've been tryin’ to bring him here. But he can't come here anymore." Sonny swallowed hard, fighting sudden tears. "So..." He looked at the sleeping man whose hands still curled as though they remembered gripping a steering wheel. "You go where he is."
Joshua's voice cracked. "But that's not real."
"No." Sonny smiled sadly. "But it's real to him." He gently adjusted the old Lotus tee shirt where it had bunched around Ruben’s shoulder. "And if that's where my teammate's waiting for me..." His thumb stroked briefly along Ruben’s collar bone. "Then that's where I'll meet him."
THE END