Chapter Text
Max might want to be someone extraordinary simply by birthright. Yes, he had “talent”, which really meant thousands of hours spent go-karting — dry, drenched, sick, healthy, it didn’t matter. But there was no special ability. And if there was none, then talent had to make up for it. That was why, for Max, no world existed outside the tracks. There was no school, other than as a box to tick, no neighborhood boys kicking a football around. Only the goal of becoming world champion, burning like a lonely star in the sky.
The empty years passed by, filled with two categories of people: strong rivals, useful only as sources of traits to copy and become better himself, and everyone else — mere biological waste. The vivid emotions of childhood gradually faded, giving way to concentration. Only his father’s rage remained, burning demonic red, and the triumph of victories, sparkling gold. Grayness crept over life like a slow landslide, burying sadness, longing, curiosity, and vanity alike, leaving only ash behind.
Was that right? Hell no, Max understood that himself. Could it have been a consequence of his magical heritage? Who the hell knew — Max had neither horns nor a tail nor the rabid temper his father had. No wings, no halo, no scales or fur, no fangs, not even the faintest aura. There was just a blank line in the heritage record and the verdict: “not human”. But who was he, then?
His interest in his own nature faded too after some time, the same way all other feelings faded, leaving his father to figure out the dubious bloodline of his offspring on his own. And what difference did it make what he was, with the Formula 3 championship looming ahead? Soon Formula 2 and Formula 1 would be within arm’s reach, and then the championship title. The cold gleam of that dream awakened something deep inside him. Something hungry. And Max, swallowed by grayness, had no intention of stopping it.
~~~
“...and I hope your enthusiasm, Mr. Verstappen, will bring us many victories”, Helmut Marko said with a crooked smile. “We are counting on a very successful cooperation with you. Very much so”.
The door shut with a soft click, and Max let out a long breath. Everything was going according to the plan.
“Of course they’re counting on you, thise overgrown idiots”, Jos muttered with satisfaction, which by his standards sounded almost like a love confession. “They beat Mercedes, McLaren, and Ferrari to sign you. That many teams don’t fight to sign mediocrities. You remember what you’re supposed to do?”
“Win”, Max answered shortly.
There was no need for any “show yourself in the best light”, “choose stability over momentary risk”, and other nonsense like that — his father had taught him long ago that such phrases were padding for fools. Strategy was better saved for specific circumstances. In general, he either won or he was a loser.
“Don’t let those crybabies push you around”.
Max thought Vettel, Hamilton, Räikkönen, Button, Alonso — were hardly crybabies, if only because they had all won championships, but decided to keep that opinion to himself. Besides, what did it matter who they were? He would simply bulldoze forward and would not care what happens behind him.
~~~
A Formula 1 debut at seventeen sounded pretty good. Max didn’t even have an ordinary driver’s license yet. His teammate was twenty-year-old Carlos Sainz. The young El Matador, a textbook Red Bull prodigy, gleamed with glossy black horns curved backward.
“Human?” Sainz asked briefly during their first meeting.
“Yes”, Max replied just as laconically. It was easier than explaining what he really was. Especially considering he didn’t know himself. “And you? Devil?”
“Minotaur”.
Max glanced downward.
“And the hooves and all the… rest?”
“I shapeshift”,
That was the end of their exchange of pleasantries.
Both of them had racing-driver fathers, and both had been taught the same thing — bite if someone bites you. The extent of their cooperation was simply not sabotaging each other too openly.
They exchanged polite nods when they met, played friends for the cameras; overall, everything was rather calm and measured.
The first year passed under the sign of “absorb information until your brain hurts, then do it again”.
It felt like all previous achievements were just a puff of smoke, not worth a drop of attention. Formula 1 was an entirely new path, and Max was only at the very start — a green, albeit highly talented junior. He would work on himself. Reaching Formula 1 was not the pinnacle of the world, and the attitude toward him reflected that.
Max wanted to convince himself that he didn’t care that almost all the drivers openly laughed at him and journalists dragged his name through the mud. He was tougher and stronger than they all thought, above stupid mockery.
Max almost believed it.
Almost.
Daniel — that brazen satyr from the senior Bulls — grinned sharply, and Sebastian, despite being human, threw around the words so poisonous it was enough to suffocate on them. The entire paddock, with perhaps the exception of Fernando Alonso and Checo Pérez, tested Max’s resilience every race weekend. The heavy collective aura of rejection pressed down unbearably, the negative energy making the air itself crackle. Mechanics, engineers and other staff exchanged uneasy glances, darting nervously around the paddock, team principals frowned at the tension, but overall nobody really cared about Max. Christian Horner turned a blind eye to the bullying of the youngest driver in history and only bared his small fox teeth in a smile.
“It’ll toughen him up”, he replied lazily to the fair question of “how is this acceptable?”, flicking his ginger tail.
Against that backdrop, Carlos’s neutral attitude felt almost like a blessing.
Max's father, for all his cruelty, had been right. He really had prepared Max for reality, for this filth. Nobody was ever going to help him. If Max didn’t want to give up like a weakling and whine, he needed thicker skin and sharper teeth. And Max, clenching his jaw, did what he had to do, the only thing he truly did well — drive.
Ignoring curses and sarcasm directed at him, and when it became utterly unbearable — telling everyone to fuck off so hard, they'd never look back.
In some ways, it helped. In others, it only convinced everyone further that he was, at the very least, the devil in the flesh. But Max learned to ignore gossipmongers. He was a driver; malicious tongues did not concern him.
The first year ended with... almost nothing. Twelfth place in the drivers’ championship — Max was barely qualified to drive a bus now, according to his father, especially that he had finally gotten his license. His father never let him forget it: he was still nobody. And he needed to work harder. He needed podiums and victories, and preferably in the main team.
Whose seat would suit him better? Who should be displaced — Ricciardo or Kvyat?
Max had spent the season observing all his rivals, studying how each of them reacted, who bent under pressure and who charged straight through it.
He tried not to use the word “tormentors” even in his own thoughts.
In 2015, Daniel Ricciardo ended up a couple of points lower in the drivers’ standings than Kvyat, but in 2014 the gap between them had been the size of Everest, and not in Kvyat’s favor.
Though that had been Kvyat’s rookie year, so it was hard to say. Analyzing their results, Max still leaned toward the conclusion that Kvyat was more inconsistent. If Ricciardo pulled himself together, he could produce a worthy result, and that wasn’t even his peak form. Kvyat could as well, but... the potential didn’t feel the same.
Max allowed himself, young and without a single podium, to imagine himself in the role of a Red Bull driver.
I will take your seat.
~~~
Whether it was his resilience, his actual driving skill, or Kvyat’s flaws being that glaring, Max was called up to the senior Bulls almost at the beginning of the following season.
“And what about the curse?” Max narrowed his eyes, drilling Christian Horner with his stare.
“Well, Daniel is holding up just fine, despite having been a second driver under Sebastian just the same”, Christian smiled. “And Daniil isn’t injured or wounded either. It’s all about resilience, which, let’s be honest, you are not lacking. You’ll be fine”.
Max did not believe that old fox for even a second, but had to admit that no one was going to kill him for no reason. Only the deaf hadn’t heard of Mark Webber’s curse. The Australian shaman had apparently been driven so mad by Sebastian Vettel and his own role as number two that he cursed Red Bull down to the seventh driver. And he had done it so skillfully that people had been trying to unravel the curse for three years already. Rumor had it that the second Red Bull seat would spell doom for drivers — literal or figurative.
And Daniil Kvyat would be its first victim. Max did not pity him. He was simply better.
The contract signing was ceremonial. Helmut Marko clearly favored Max and didn’t value Kvyat at all, his watery eyes looking proudly at the young driver as if he had personally raised him for this moment. Horner smiled his usual enigmatic smile, though the faint twitching of his ginger ears betrayed strong emotions. Max's father looked at his son heavily, but there was more warmth in that gaze than ever before.
The pen glided easily across the paper, the angular signature gleaming with fresh ink. A second later, Max felt strong bonds — far stronger than the ones with Toro Rosso — tie him to the senior team. It almost felt as though the contract had been signed in Kvyat’s blood; the Russian stood weakly by the wall, the recoil from the severed bond clearly hit him hard. Something shifted contentedly in Max’s chest. Something large, though still quiet. As if not yet fully awake from a long sleep, it would certainly become louder later, stronger, but for now only whispered I’m here, beating like a tolling bell in his ears.
Max licked his lips.
The curse of the second driver lingered nearby too. At first like dust in the eye — a gray web appearing at the edge of his vision, becoming sharper with each passing hour, though not yet overtaking him entirely. Watching. Assessing.
Go fuck yourself, Max thought. I won’t be second. Go find yourself a better victim.
But he only had a week to prepare for the next Grand Prix in Spain. Just one week, and he had to absorb endless technical specifications about the car, setup configurations, quirks, even safety protocols.
Christian approached him before qualifying, relaxed and smiling as always.
“It’s your first race, relax, everything will be fine. Enjoy it”.
Max heard what he really meant.
Don’t do anything stupid.
He looked openly at Christian, equally calm, though his nerves were already twisting into knots.
I won’t.
Fourth place in qualifying — not bad at all. Rosberg and Hamilton collided unexpectedly, and Max capitalized on his rivals’ misfortune to the fullest. There was a chance of a podium. Räikkönen constantly loomed in his mirrors — Max gripped the wheel tighter, braking thousandths of a second later, entering corners at the limit of grip. The car was perfectly obedient, as if it had only been waiting for him, so lively and aggressive. Driver and machine became one from the very first practice session — yet another bond linking him to Red Bull, letting them merge even deeper.
Max reduced the curse to zero by winning his very first race for Red Bull. First podium. First victory.
He shone brighter than the sun, and from the highest step the world looked cleaner, better. The curse, not even managing to latch onto him, flew off in humiliation toward Ricciardo, but Max couldn’t care less. Instead of tears, his father wiped blood from beneath his nose, the gold medal and trophy shimmering under camera flashes — life was in full bloom.
Max stood atop the podium and felt himself growing stronger. The negativity around him shattered helplessly in fat black droplets against the aura of a winner, sinking into the ground. A smirk crossed his face: he had proven to himself and everyone else that he was a future champion. Now he truly did not care what others thought of him.
The poison of collective rejection transformed almost into hatred, but it no longer harmed him. It fed him, quenched his thirst, and filled him with certainty. All the anger of these losers now worked in his favor. He was better than departed Kvyat, had stolen victory right from under Ricciardo’s nose.
He was the first driver now.
The thought was not spoken aloud yet, but everyone could feel the curse had failed to stick to him. Max had announced himself and found solid ground beneath his feet.
They had unleashed the lion.
~~~
The year ended incomparably better than the last — fifth in the drivers’ championship, six more podiums, without any more wins though. Max finished behind the two Mercedes, Sebastian Vettel, and Daniel Ricciardo.
By the end of the year, Rosberg was practically spitting venom at Max, though Max genuinely couldn’t understand what had pissed Britney off so deeply. But Britney was already a touchy son of a bitch on his own, even if on track he transformed into a block of ice. To beat that fiery, hot-tempered djinn, Hamilton, in equal machinery after all those years had required absolute commitment from the human. Max had no intention of making Rosberg’s life easier, but he still didn’t understand such disgust directed at him.
Rosberg quit at the end of the season — broke under pressure, whatever. Good for him for persevering as long as he did, but if he cracked, then he didn’t deserve to continue. Not that he was trying to anymore.
The next year was weaker. Sixth in the standings, two wins, and two podiums. At least the gap between Max and Daniel had shrunk by a few points.
After becoming teammates, Daniel stopped mocking Max, and it turned out he was actually a pretty funny guy. He had a wide grin that almost never left his face. Max wasn’t the type to hold grudges — he preferred answering on track — so he allowed Red Bull’s PR team to drag him into shared activities with Daniel.
They became about as close as two teammates with equal cars and identical ambitions could be.
“I saw this fact once”, Dan said to him during one of the filming days. “Only drivers with double letters in their surnames have ever won Grands Prix for Red Bull”.
“Vettel, Webber, Ricciardo, Verstappen,” Max nodded. Yes, that amusing coincidence had also been checked as a possible component of the curse, but no luck there. “Those really are the only ones who’ve won?”
“Yep. Funny, right?” Daniel said, sounding slightly thoughtful. Naturally, all of them already knew this as team members, but filming was filming. Everyone had to say the most obvious nonsense possible.
“So when someone eventually takes that open seat at Red Bull”, Dan continued, “if your surname doesn’t have double letters, you will be... g-g-g-gone!!”
Max laughed then.
Not the sharpest joke, but something about it resonated pleasantly inside him.
When someone takes the open seat.
It would not be his seat.
They were all ambitious. Formula 1 was the queen of motorsport; simply making it there already meant being better than over ninety percent of racing drivers. Becoming champion literally meant becoming champion of the entire world. One of twenty drivers, already the best of the best, then becoming the single best among them.
As cool as it could possibly get.
And if you allowed yourself to be deceived by that sense of greatness — you were already a racing corpse.
Max had never seriously allowed himself to say I’m the best or I work harder than everyone else. You could bust your ass all you wanted, but until you were champion, you could shove your complaints right back up your fucked-up ass.
So he kept learning in silence, without shouting at every corner about how talented and hardworking he was. He compared himself to Dan more often than to anyone else. Who better to compare yourself with than the man in the exact same car? But no matter how hard he tried to suppress the insolent feeling, it kept lifting its head again and again.
Not even the realization of himself as the best driver. He wasn’t the best. Not yet.
But he had to be.
He was already more diligent.
More precise.
Sharper.
But unstable.
Where Dan consistently secured fourths and fifths, Max could just as easily score a podium as a DNF. He had wrecked so much cars over the years it was impossible to count. Deconstructor of the Year, indeed.
Max didn’t care about those worse than him. But to become better, he had to adopt the best traits from the strongest and become the very best. That was what being champion meant — to know how to improve.
So Max gravitated toward Daniel.
With laughter off track and a pressing stare on it. He could feel himself crossing some sort of line, one he couldn’t name, but he didn’t stop. Champions did not stop when they heard no. He is a champion.
A future one, but he will be there eventually.
Not because he had to, not because it was already too late to stop, and not even because he had spent his whole childhood pursuing that goal.
It was a pull.
Victory shone in the sky like a cold and still unreachable star. A wolf looked at it and promised that one day he would swallow that star whole. A lion smelled blood as he left a weakling torn apart and humiliated, taking his place.
A predator was drawn to blood. It was hungry.
Max closed his eyes and saw the golden shine of the trophy. Saw the whole world beneath his feet and heard the pounding of his pulse in his ears.
There was a gaping hole in his chest that had to be filled. He craved success, wanted to shove that damned shining champion’s trophy straight into the emptiness.
For the first time in years, Max cried after crashing his car in Monaco through sheer stupidity. He learned his lesson — become more restrained.
If he wanted to be a lion, he had to know how to sit in ambush and pin antelope to the ground with one lightning-fast strike. He wasn’t some damn rabbit, darting back and forth across a field hoping something would eventually work out.
Max narrowed his eyes.
There was an unfamiliar chill in his gaze now. Daniel wasn’t used to a restrained teammate.
He had become even stronger.
“You’re leaving because you don’t want to be second driver to me?” Max raised an eyebrow. “You outscored me every previous year”.
“Let’s not lie to each other, Maxy”, Daniel smirked, though the smile came out strained. Too heavy an aura radiated from Max now, too... too much. “Horner isn’t even pretending anymore that Red Bull’s main star isn’t you. I don’t want to be some fucking second driver because in the end everything always circles back to you. The car is built around you and only you, not me”.
“Making the car better doesn’t mean making it for me”.
“You’re not that stupid, don’t pretend”, Daniel grimaced. “Setups are based on your training results, nearly all the telemetry is tailored to your performance. And I’m just the lab rat for the everything before Max fucking Verstappen takes his ass in the cockpit and starts churning out fast lap after fast lap!”
Max stayed silent.
And that was... unsettling.
Because Max wasn’t someone who stayed silent.
Daniel decided to add:
“And get yourself checked for your heritage. I know you’ve always been human, but mate, the aura coming off you is definitely not human”.
Max’s eyes widened.
That nameless unease beneath his skin, the thing he had never been able to identify, suddenly gained a precise shape in his teammate’s words.
The chaos that followed was immediate.
Within ten minutes Christian was already calling the legal department and the best clinics in Europe, anxiously flicking his tail, Helmut wringing his hands like his own grandson were dying, team members with any medical knowledge swarming around, and Max felt as if he might explode.
“I don’t think we can correctly identify your heritage, Mr. Verstappen”, the doctor said two days later, peering at endless sheets of test results.
“But it exists”, Max said, only half-affirmative.
The doctor nodded.
“Without question. It can be classified under the category of energetic vampirism, but we cannot say more precisely. Your heritage... failed to define itself during the initial examination, and even now we likely cannot determine much more. Strong waves of energy reach you, as with ordinary vampirism, but they are so subtle that we cannot determine their exact type”.
“So I drain the people around me and don’t even notice?”
“Not necessarily people”, the doctor replied. “Possibly the general energetic environment, or... we can’t fully conclude anything, Mr. Verstappen. Have you personally noticed changes when you remain in one place for a long time?”
Max thought that when his father spent too much time in Red Bull’s garage, the mood across the whole paddock soured — but that could hardly be attributed to Max himself.
He remembered how the joy of victory always tangled together with a hungry dissatisfaction.
How someone else’s eyes — not his — seemed fixed on the golden trophy currently in Hamilton’s possession.
How hot thirst flowed through his veins when he looked at those better than him and imagined himself in their place — so intensely it made him shake.
How Daniel, so ambitious and bright, had gradually turned into a shadow of himself.
Of course, Max did talk to his “colleagues”. Rivals. Every driver noticed his hunger for victory, and Max couldn’t exactly say that every single one of them hid their madness behind masks of politeness.
It was as though Max alone did not live but merely existed for one singular purpose. Devoting every second of breath to racing.
To machinery.
To physical form.
To tactics and strategy.
To feeling the car as an extension of his own body. As though the world itself did not exist.
Only the path. And him — a tiny point with every fiber of his being directed toward the finish line, asleep or awake, while eating, training, or standing in an elevator.
There was no Max Verstappen as a person. There was only hunger.
“I wouldn’t say there’s anything especially unusual, no”, Max said with a shrug.
The doctor nodded once more and handed him part of the paperwork.
“I can’t give you any specific recommendations. Pay attention to the environment around you, try to feel out the energetic field for your connections, and exercise restraint”.
The sun blinded him for a moment when he stepped out of the clinic. Max squinted up at the sky. Even with the brightness turned all the way up, his phone screen still reflected his displeased face.
“Hello, Christian? I think we have a problem”.
With Daniel leaving the team, most of Red Bull’s resources did not shift toward the newly promoted Pierre Gasly, as logic would suggest, but toward Max. More than a dozen curse-breakers ran through Milton Keynes, pestering nervous mechanics, engineers, managers, designers, marketers, strategists, security guards, and even janitors, while someone constantly hovered around Max himself, measuring his every breath.
“I’ll strangle Webber if I see him in the paddock,” Max muttered through clenched teeth, tugging at the hem of his shirt as sensors were removed from him for what felt like the hundredth time.
“Max,” Christian began.
“Don’t ‘Max’-me!” he snapped. “I thought you will help me with the heritage, not... this. Tell me, is this normal?! Third in the Constructors’ Championship, fourth and sixth in the Drivers’ Championship! It’s not perfect, but it’s not even nearly bad enough to distract everyone with this bullsh... Give me five damn minutes to talk!” He barked at yet another curse-breaker. The man immediately went pale for some reason, stammered something incoherent, and practically fled the room, leaving Max alone with Christian.
“I’m responsible for the team”, Christian said deliberately. His ginger tail swayed lazily from side to side. “I’ve been here since the very beginning of Red Bull Racing. I know every stage of car assembly, every factor affecting driver performance, every logistical aspect of the championship, and where every cent is spent. And if my lead driver in my team is diagnosed with unidentified vampiric heritage somehow connected to a curse... then I need to know what it is”.
Max pressed his lips together and nodded.
Christian studied him for another few seconds before continuing in a more businesslike tone.
“The FIA is sending independent researchers next week to verify that neither your heritage nor the curse poses any threat”.
“To whom?” Max asked dryly. “The team or the championship? Aren’t the mountains of reports they’ve already compiled fro...”
The sharp slam of a palm against the desk caught Max off guard. Christian’s fox ears flattened tightly against his head, broadcasting an extreme level of irritation.
“Max, use your brain for once”, Christian hissed. “The curse exists. The FIA spent years trying to pin something on it; they still hold a grudge against us because of it. If not for the absurd amounts paid back in 2013, they would’ve made our lives hell. And now, after just three years, you’ve managed to stir up the entire issue again. With Daniel leaving and your heritage now exposed, people will very quickly start asking whether this is all some kind of strategy”.
He leaned forward.
“Can you tell me with one hundred percent certainty that you did not undermine Daniel’s emotional state? Or that your unidentified heritage won’t drain other drivers one day too? What arguments exactly am I supposed to give the FIA and the other teams? What do I tell investors, for that matter?”
Max sat there, feeling metaphorical shit drip all over him. Christian had cornered him completely.
Was he certain it wasn’t him?
A coldness breathed in his chest at the thought that Daniel’s decline might actually be his doing. A coldness of indifference swept like a frozen blizzard across the open wastelands of his soul, carrying biting winds and snowflakes with merciless sharp edges beneath a dark gray sky.
The lack of fear and guilt — that was what suddenly horrified him most. Asked honestly by his own conscience whether he cared about his destructive heritage, the answer was no.
Daniel had been something close to a friend, as much as Max understood friendship. He had been something important, someone associated with many good memories. Good. But were those memories warm?..
A tiny candle stub sputtered weakly and went out under the relentless wind of the wasteland. Gray, almost black clouds descended from above, burying both sky and earth beneath a crushing avalanche. A piercing storm advanced indifferently from the northern front.
Max blinked.
With crystal clarity, he understood: he wasn’t sorry.
Daniel had been almost his friend — in a sport where “almost” didn’t count. In the end, Max simply didn’t know. Maybe once, long ago, he would have been upset. At least disturbed or troubled by it.
He knew that intellectually. But he didn’t feel it. Where childish naïveté and empathy had once lived — now nothing remained. Emptiness.
Max absently shifted his gaze toward the window. It was late January; testing would begin soon, and with it a new season, new pressure, new heat will come. But for now, Britain was freezing, and soft snow drifted lazily outside.
He should have been frightened. Should have been upset. Max was horrified precisely because he was completely calm.
“I just hope we actually find something”, he said, without taking his eyes off the window.
Christian gave him a short nod.
Let the people responsible deal with the team’s image, Max thought. To hell with the heritage — he had lived with it all his life and nothing had happened. To hell with teammates and other drivers; everyone here was on their own anyway. He would do what he was meant to do: squeeze three hundred kilometers per hour out of the car and be the best of twenty.
An indifferent wind tore at dry, lifeless stalks. Soon the crude earth would be completely gutted and buried beneath kilotons of sharp, freezing snow.