2022 Season

MONTE CARLO, MONACO

MONACO GRAND PRIX

FRIDAY - FREE PRACTICE

Dakota McManus was shaking, her eyes puffy and her cheeks tearstained as she sat in the Red Bull hospitality suite. She didn't want to be there. She wanted to be back at the AlphaTauri building, but the mass of reporters who were swarming outside having witnessed her outburst were making that difficult for her.

Sergio Perez sat on her left side, holding her shaky hands in his. Checo never went through the Driver's Academy. He had no idea what was happening to the young woman, what on earth had caused her to lash out at Helmut Marko the way that she had. 

Liam and Dennis were still outside, the junior drivers rendered inherently speechless at what had just transpired. They'd grown close to Dakota since both of them had joined the Red Bull Academy, and Liam had been friends with her for going on two years. 

"What the fuck just happened?" Dennis asked quietly as cameramen and reporters began to swarm Dr. Marko. "Is she okay?"

"I have no idea. Did you hear what she said, though?" Liam was still reeling. All he had tried to do was help Dakota back to her feet. His arm still stung from where she had hit him, curled in a ball in the middle of the paddock until Checo came running. "What did she mean Red Bull starved her?"

Back inside hospitality, Dakota was clinging to Checo for dear life. She had only just started to breathe normally, struggling to take a sip of water. 

"Dakota, what happened back there?" Checo asked slowly, not wanting to upset the girl. 

"I don't know." She said quietly. "Where's Yuki? I want Yuki."

Checo's heart broke for her. He'd only ever seen Dakota McManus in a state this fragile once, and that's when he drove her to the hospital in Mexico City, a night that bonded them together in ways beyond explanation. The Mexican had seen her at her lowest, and that did something to two people.

"Christian went to go get him, it's okay."

Christian Horner was one of the last people that Dakota wanted to see. She wasn't too sure how to explain what had happened anyways. There was something about the way Helmut had been talking to Sky, the way he had scoffed when he said her name.

Before he said, to her face, that nothing had happened to her at Red Bull. That nothing had happened, at least to his knowledge, that would have lead to the ripple effects, the trauma and the mental anguish that she had been caused. To invalidate her on live TV.

And she had lost it.

But something about confronting it head on made her feel lighter. Maybe now she had to fully come clean. Maybe now she had to go public with her little grey notebook.

"Where is she!" Yuki Tsunoda's voice carried as the rookie ran across the hospitality floor, Christian Horner standing in the doorway behind him.

Checo helped Dakota to her feet, and on shaking legs, she wrapped her arms around Yuki, burying her face in his hair as she let out another sob.

She'd kept this from him for so long. But maybe Daniil and Ilies were right. 

She couldn't live like this anymore. She didn't want to keep putting Yuki through this, she loved him too much.

"Dakota, what happened, love bug?" Yuki asked softly, pulling her to sit next to him on the couch near the covered windows. "Christian said you collapsed, and that you were screaming at Dr. Marko about something."

"Yuki, I need to tell you something." The words almost hurt to say. Even Pierre didn't know the full extent of what had happened that awful year. Daniil had seen the recovery and the after effects, and filled in the blanks from there. "In 2019, when I started at the driver's academy, putting in testing and development time, working towards my superlicense, all that bullshit..." She stopped, taking a ragged breath and wiping at her eyes.

Yuki's hand rested comfortingly on the small of her back, his worried eyes staring at hers. "Baby, what's wrong? Did something bad happen to you?"

"Bad doesn't begin to cover it. It was an endless cycle of shouted insults, and diets and weight loss and gaslighting and me thinking that I was worthless. And it was all Helmut's fault." She reached for the bag sitting next to her on the couch. "To this day, I can't go inside a gym without having a panic attack. Charles was the first person I could be naked in front of after I got out of the academy. It took me two fucking years, Yuki. I hated everything about myself and my body." She passed her lover the suede notebook. "I'm going to give the notebook to Ted. I need to tell the world what Red Bull has done. It's all in there, clear as day."

The room went silent as Yuki flipped through the pages in the notebook. The notebook had started as a way for Dakota to track her progress as she worked towards her superlicense. To keep track of what worked and what didn't. 

And then it became a record of what she was going through, finite proof of what Red Bull had done to her. She tracked her weight loss, what she was eating, her fitness plans. Secretly, she knew she had known that this day would one day come.

"That's why you spend so much time with Dennis." The gears in Yuki's brain were turning. "You were nineteen when this happened to you. He's the same age, isn't he."

Dakota nodded. "I need to make sure that this doesn't happen to any of the other juniors. Dennis is still young, he can get out. He doesn't have to wait for something terrible to happen to him. I never had that option. And look what it did to me."

Checo had been hiding in the wings, wanting to give the couple space but also wanting to make sure that the girl he sometimes saw as a baby sister was okay. He'd been there in 2019. He should have seen the signs when she stopped eating, when her skin lost it's usual Australian tan. When she got thinner. Maybe things would have been different if there had been an intervention then. Maybe things wouldn't have gone this far. But Sergio knew as well as anybody that nobody could have predicted this. Not when they were all caught up in their own drama.

"So what to we do now?" Yuki asked, closing the notebook as Dakota rested her head on his shoulder.

"I don't know, Yuki." She felt safe in his arms, his fingers laced with hers. she'd told him something that not even her grandfather knew. Dakota had always tried to solve herm problems on her own, just to prove that she could. And look where that got her. "But I can't go on like this. I'm so scared at what's going to come next."

"But I'll be with you. You don't have to face this alone, Dakota." The Japanese driver said softly, kissing her on the forehead. "I'm going to be here for you no matter what."

"We never actually found out if I ever regained the ability to have children." Her voice sounded far off, detached from reality. "Not that Ilies cared, he never noticed in the first place. I don't even know if that's something you can get back after you've lost it. What if I can't have kids anymore, Yuki? I don't even know if I want children."

Yuki pulled away, guiding her face so that he could look her in the eyes. "We cross that bridge when we get to it. But I'm not going to leave, if that's what you're insinuating. I'm not going anywhere."

"I love you, Yuki. Thank you so much." A single tear rolled down her cheek as she kissed him gently. 

"I love you more than I could ever say, Dakota Elaine McManus."