Chapter Text
“All-ya, All-ya, all the world. All the love. All. All. All.”
Excerpt from a sermon given by Truth Samuel Devans, leading cultura of Watershield Spat, Kingdom of Ferrari, 01/01/1965.
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They sent Alex to the fighting pits: the illegal ones, hidden in the dirty underground on the outskirts of Pinnae, the cultural capital of Red Bull. Of course, to be sent there was only for the exiles, the rejects and the dirt at the bottom of the shoes of the true leaders.
Nobody had even said goodbye. All of his belongings, new and old, loved and hated, were already left out on the large stone steps of the castle after his meeting with Christian.
“We are sorry, but it has to be done. You are not performing as you should,” Christian had said. He smiled, but none of the words that came out of his mouth matched the strange kindness of it.
Alex had cried, for hours, days, all until he had been told that fighting was not over for him, if he tried his hand at the true training.
So here he was now, looking down at the cage below and wondering what he had done to deserve this pain.
Someone had told him to bandage his hands up tightly. Leave enough room for flexing your fingers, the stranger had said, with a head half shaved and a spine slightly too curved.
“Albon, come on. It's your time to show us what you can do,” Nico Rosberg’s clipped accent said, nodding at the cage below.
That voice shocked his system back to regulation. This was no child's game. Alex walked over to the bench where he had left his belongings, a towel, a small water bottle that still had the Red Bull house sigil on it and his charm.
To be a disgraced fighter prince is to hide identities. George's charm, the small glass vial of sand, hung always as a loose pendant around his neck. In the arena, during those excellent days, and outside, in the performance of the real world.
Alex took a final sip and let himself roll out his shoulders. Three fights. Hand to hand. No giving up until a lack of ability to continue. What was it Helmut Marko had said?
Oh, of course. If you do well in these fighting pits, you may yet still have a chance.
Nico guided him down to the cage, where his opponent, some leftover from the earlier Formulas awaited. What a downgrade, Alex thought to himself. In the short space of a lifetime he had found himself brought down from the highest of highs, loving the bloody victories he clawed out in the arenas of the United Territories, to the lowest of lows, here. He swore he could see a rat in the far corner, chewing at some dead thing.
No matter. Nico whispered in his ear to fight like hell. It makes the pain easier to deal with. Alex could only grimace. Without his spear, the spear that was given to him as a gift upon graduating to the First Group of the Formula Games, what else is there he could do?
Nico stepped back and the cage shut behind him. Time to face his opponent. He had the height advantage, always had. The other man was a much more muscular enemy, coiled tight and ready to destroy.
The crowd shouted at them to take chunks of skin out of each other. What a degradation.
Alex gets into his formal fighting stance, the kind taught in the Red Bull academies for young fighters. The ones Lando and Charles and the rest of the young ones also had beaten into them. Sometimes literally.
A klaxon resounded and Alex did not wait to be defeated. A single step to the side as his opponent lunged gave him enough time to send a kick to the stomach. A mere jerk.
Difficulty in fighting was his strongest suit. There was a reason why Lewis Hamilton was his most famed opponent in the arena. There was a reason Nico took him under his wing. There was reasons to everything.
Step backs led him to the cage walls. So much smaller than grandiosity; someone's dirty hand pushed at his back to get closer. Fine, he would play their game.
The uncovered bare bulbs flickered in and out of their pale whiteness as he goes back in for a punch. It lands and Alex's unnamed opponent crumples to the ground, cupping their jaw.
No time for mercy. Alex gave another kick to his opponent's chest and began pummelling. He had never gotten this many cheers whilst he beat the ever-holy blood out of any of the other boys in the arena. All he got was jeers, and women fainting over him. He almost smiled at the memory.
Maybe exile was not so bad a concept. Maybe it would give him the opportunity to find his way back where he belonged. Alex had been through worse. He'd seen the anguish of his friends as they were told that fighting was not going to be for them any more. He'd seen broken ankles and broken arms and broken souls and broken collarbones.
The medicine they were given was always so terrible.
As the man began to cower underneath him, the klaxon sounded again. He hadn't even needed the three rounds. He was good, Alex realised of himself. Almost too good. Almost untouchable. Almost, though. When the man gets too comfortable with victory, there will always be someone waiting in the wings to steal it away.
Nico's shock of brilliant-blond hair stood out amongst the crowd littered with black hair, dirty bodies and strange concepts of restraint. Alex ducked his head down and shoved his opponent's head to the floor for good measure. Nico smiled in response and gestured for him to get up.
To revel in victory is to become one with the gods. Alex was not a religious man. He was never enticed by the wrath of Jemis, the fighting god in the way Esteban was as a child, or Charles still was. Max was worse. So, so much worse.
So he stood, in a strange replication of the past. Raising his arms above his head and hollering, Alex grinned. Someone came to unlock the door, leading out to the protected path back up the stairs. Nico was gone from his vision before Alex had even noticed, slinking back away to give him enough criticism to cut down to bone.
Aftermaths were always painful, so full of winces and bruises that he would press to see what happened. Today was no different, as Nico spoke to him after.
“They liked you. You're fucking good. Why did they bother getting rid of you for Perez?”
“You ask them, Nico.” Alex took a swig of water. “I can't think about that right now.”
“You want to come back, don't you?”
“Why do you think I let you hang around me like a bad smell?”
Nico laughed at that, a rich laugh that dripped with contempt. “You'll find out eventually.”
“Whatever you say.”
Returning back to his tiny apartment on the outskirts of the city later in the evening, after Nico had dragged him to a dive bar with some of the underground arena's benefactors, Alex gazed at the sky and thought to himself:
If this is hell, the one inhabited by pain, then why is it so good-looking?
Soft orange stone, gas streetlights, the sounds and smells of a strange place he now called home. Part of him hated himself for this thought, the kitsch of it all. The sentimentality. Fighter-princes were ruthless beings. Designed to do one thing only.
As Alex rounded the final staircase to his apartment door, the prickling sensation of being watched crept up into his neck. He spun instantly, hand reaching behind him for a weapon that was no longer there.
“Sebastian?”
“Let's go inside.”
Alex stared, wide-eyed at Sebastian's form. He was not at all prepared for this, for a championship winner to come to his home, the home of an exile and ask to see him.
Sebastian made himself at home, shoes neatly in a pile by the door. Alex tried to brush him off, to say that nothing was important, that there were no rules. Sebastian did not care and did it anyway.
“Why are you here?” Alex asked.
“Same reason you are.”
“Exile?”
“You're smarter than that. Contingency. This is not your home.”