Chapter Text
Marc could count on one hand the number of times he spoke to Valentino after 2021. After the older man left and never came back. That’s perhaps dramatic to think, it’s not like Valentino flew off the face of the planet. He came to races, he posted online, he did those interviews, those articles, those podcasts and stories, always needling at the corner of Marc’s mind. But the minute he stopped racing, the minute he stopped competing, Marc felt that person he once knew, that rival, that friend, that always-admired-always-hated person, slide right out of his grasp.
It all created a feeling inside of him. Like the world had shifted off its axis ever so slightly, leaning too far right, making him feel off balance no matter how he stepped. When he raced now, it was with a strange feeling in his chest. Memories flitting in his head of Valentino and Jorge and Dani and Dovi and all those who he fought against for so many years, the giants who he beat and who only left behind empty spaces, chasms that none of the ones he currently fights against have been able to fill.
Maybe it wasn’t just Valentino, though he was perhaps the biggest. Maybe it was returning to the sport after years of injury and finding himself more alone than he had ever been. Alex was present, always, but that even made it all worse because he wasn’t racing his own peers anymore. No, he was racing his brother’s, the riders Alex had fought bitterly, connections trailing back into the past and the ebb and flow of respect and rivalry that can only ever be developed through time and familiarity.
They were talented. They were good. They were even sometimes interesting enough to give him pause. But there was no comparison to how it used to be, the battles he used to wage, the adrenaline that would spin through his chest with another monster like him trailing just a bit too close. There is no replacing any of the so-much that surrounded him before.
Not that he had such great friends among the riders from his first few years. True friendship doesn’t often fly in the paddock, friendliness twined with a strange sort of desperate hatred, sometimes mixed in with obsession if the relationship was… intense enough. Like Dani and Jorge, or him and Valentino. Toeing a little too close to the edge of a somewhat twisted cliff that sane people couldn’t understand. And in truth, no MotoGP rider is right in the head, but there are some who are abnormal even for them and that is where Marc lives, stuck there forever with Valentino and Dani and Jorge and Casey and all those they called ‘alien’.
2025 was when he really felt it. It settled over his shoulders crossing the finish in Motegi, a title now marking this a season of unparalleled dominance. Victory ripped through his chest as it should, but for a split second, he glanced back at the riders and fully expected to see neon yellow and blue, or that familiar bright orange, or a tilted head in classic red. Then he remembered that red was his color now, and Honda hadn’t been orange in a few years, and Yamaha does not have a trace of yellow anymore. After that the taste of victory remained, because how could it not after all he had been through. But the flavor wasn’t the same.
He tried to explain that to his brother once when he was tipsy and too honest after another weekend of brilliant victory. The almost-longing, the way he felt clicked out of place, even the strange thunk that always seems to follow these days whenever he dove past someone and expected an immediate attack back, but got nothing. Alex hadn’t understood, just furrowed his brow and got that look he always has when Marc says something particularly strange; incomprehension paired with enough experience with him to be nervous.
“I think you need to talk to someone about that,” is all his brother had said, and Marc had just smiled and decided to never bring it up again. Because of course Alex didn’t see, of course he didn’t understand. And no therapist would either; they would just stare at him in the same way. You have the titles, you have the victory, you have the story, they would say. What else do you need?
Really there was only ever one person he thought would maybe get the un-clicked feeling, though he could never say such an open thing, not anymore. Him and Valentino had stopped being honest with each other years ago, after all. He would sooner take another fall like Jerez then sit the older man down and say that he misses it all, or that he dreams of racing against him sometimes, or any other number of the silly, mindless, pathetic thoughts that threaten to eat him alive whenever he rewatches old races and sees the way his own eyes used to glow after a wild battle finished.
Valentino really would see the whole picture, though. They’d always understood each other perfectly, even at their worst. The older man had seen him from the start and had never treated Marc like anything but a special player in his game.
Laughter behind press conference tables, sharp words exchanged with a grin, overtakes that came too close too close too close. Curses thrown at him through snickers, a hand gripping his thigh that day in the ranch as Valentino leaned close and called him a bastard for bringing his own team with him. Bitter, a bit irritated, but delighted by the way Marc wanted to win that badly. Delighted by seeing that same need for victory painted in someone else’s face, from seeing that same ability to throw away expectations in an instant.
From that first race a connection existed, and the number of times they had gone back and forth and back and forth in Qatar 2013 had spoken to that. Valentino read him, Valentino felt him, right from day one. As if they had known each other for years, as if they had raced against one another since birth.
And in a similar vein, Marc knew him in the same way. Knowledge, of course, coming from being a fan for years, but more than that. He could tell when Valentino was going to have a bad day just from the tilt of the older man’s head. He could recognize when a joke would be thrown out, and he could taste the barbs laced through each teasing little word. He saw his own hunger echoed back at him when Vale won, and Marc could almost dip his toes in and feel it too, if he tried hard enough. He could spend an entire race behind the older man and predict the exact moves he would make until the right one happened, and Marc would sail by full of smug satisfaction, could feel the laughter echoing behind him as Valentino saw what he’d done.
This understanding also meant that he knew what Valentino was doing with his accusations in 2015. Maybe that’s what pissed the older man off the most, maybe that’s why he ended up losing his temper in such a dramatic way. Marc had looked at him after that damn press conference and saw right through it, had felt it in his bones. Not a game like normal, not a joke, but a written-out attack. A preemptive strike for perceived crimes, because Valentino Rossi does not go on the defensive ever.
No, he would rather have Marc on his back, belly up and confused. He would rather control the story of 2015 into being about Marc rather than about Valentino losing yet another championship to Jorge Lorenzo. He would rather step one foot on the younger man’s neck and deny him a proper legacy, than always be known as the greatest until Marc Marquez got there. He would rather intimidate and see this boy who was meant to replace him cower under his hands. Not that it worked.
Marc remembers catching Valentino’s eyes right before the race and not allowing his face to shift from the placidity he had achieved overnight after the shock and hurt faded away. He remembers the way it ticked the older man off, made his eyebrow twitch the way it always did when he was irritated and hadn’t gotten what he wanted. Marc even remembers the thoughts that went through his head, laced with anger, tinged with red.
You want to do this? Fine by me. But be prepared.
The older man had scowled in response to his calm, eyes smug but a bit thrown off, then everything happened as it did. And from the moment Valentino had stepped into that steward’s room, Marc had made sure to smile every single time he looked at him. I’m in on the joke too. I see what you’ve done. I see you. Do you understand that? Can you feel that?
All the years after that was Marc doing exactly what he had done in Sepang and Valencia, but cranked up to eleven. Making a goddamn point, pulling back the curtain on this whole show that Valentino created and forcing it to be clear that while he might be on stage, Marc certainly won’t follow what is laid out for him, not like everyone else does. The world is a play to Valentino Rossi and he had always seemed to view himself as the narrator, the writer, the director. Everyone else is simply side characters, given their lines and their actions, forced to comply, unaware of what they are as Valentino laughs and laughs and laughs.
But not Marc. Because he knew, because he could take a look at the role Valentino created for him and laugh too, straight from the beginning. So he did the unexpected and did not bend or break or crack. He rode hard in Sepang until he was kicked down into the dirt, he rode hard in Valencia until he saw the rage on Valentino’s face from his place on the podium, and he spent the next four years stomping his foot right down on everyone’s throats. Ripping apart the script and dancing on its grave.
Purposeful, always purposeful. And Valentino knew, because they know each other so well. Even years later when he talks about the man, he feels a surge of familiarity, as if he is saying his own name. Even years later when he watches Valentino do the same, he spots it in his eyes, sitting there like an unwanted friend, curled intimately around the sour disgust the older man always tries to show.
Valentino saw his tableau after 2015, but could do nothing about it. Because that’s the thing, you can only pull the strings when every person slides into character obediently. And while the older man found Marc’s propensity to go off-script fascinating at first, the same talent he holds, he certainly didn’t expect it to happen for real. He certainly didn’t expect it to sit in the air even ten years later, he certainly didn’t expect Marc to laugh right in his face.
It was fun for a while. All the way up to 2019 Marc felt greedy and drunk on it all. Drunk on the way he was the top of the world, drunk on the way people cursed and praised his name, drunk on the look in Valentino’s eyes every time Marc won yet another championship. The play continued, but it was Marc who set the scene while Valentino could stand on stage and only watch, dragged along for the first time in his life by a puppet master who knew him too well.
Then the injury years happened and all that fell apart, and when Marc finally came back to his self-created role in 2025, everyone was gone. Jorge, Dani, Dovi, Valentino. They all exited stage right. Props in their places, scenery painted, lights on, but emptiness left behind. No more games, no more fun. Just victory and the echoing sound you only get when you stand on a stage alone. And when he turned to all those waiting in the proverbial wings, those riders who trailed after him on track, the ones who had won in his absence, all they did was stand there and wait for their lines to be handed to them.
They don’t understand, they never understand what it is like to feel like that. Alone even when surrounded, wishing for a past that will never come back, desperate to have someone step right in his face and go off script too.
Yes, only Valentino would understand that feeling, long as he lasted in the sport. But he’s not here anymore. None of them are.
So Marc holds his head high, lets the joy of that championship settle over his shoulders and smiles as he cheers with his team. Pretends that Pecco Bagnaia doesn’t have the morose, tight look on his face, also pretends that it doesn’t make him a little bit smug to see, as it bitterly has all year. He goes on with his day. Sprays champagne, cycles through the media, laughs and laughs and laughs and laughs. Because the world is his once more. And that was his goal, right? He doesn’t need the show, he doesn’t need the games, he doesn’t need any of it. He only needs to win.
Right?
Once the dust settles down on his thrill and relief, he gets that feeling again, but worse without the season to distract him. Sitting there right below his solar plexus, thunking his breath away every couple of seconds. It becomes thick and heavy and bad once he returns home, to that concrete fortress he shares with Alex and his brother’s girlfriend, attention-snatchingly bad. When he sat by the pool and toed the surface of the water, it thunked. When he napped on the couch, he awoke to thunks. When he played with the dogs while rewatching old races, it thunked the worst and he had to pause and hold a hand to his chest to try and breathe a little easier.
He actually went to the doctor after that last one. Went to several doctors. Had his chest scanned about a billion times, had a heart monitor for two weeks, did so many blood tests his arms looked concerning. But nothing. Healthy as a horse, fit as a fiddle, or really any other number of nonsensical phrases that simply mean nothing is wrong. It is only until one of the doctors gently suggest a psychologist that he allows a sharp-edge smile to slice across his face and gives up.
So Marc smiles his way through the post-season events he must attend as reigning world champion and ignores all the whispers that everyone is simply waiting for someone to come up from the lower levels and finally challenge him. Ignores how the clips they use for his video at the awards ceremony are him and Valentino and Dani and Jorge and Dovi so much more than anything from the 2025 season. Ignores the way it makes his chest thunk louder as he watches those old fights, the longing cloaking his mind, thick and tar-like. He ignores it all.
2026 is a repeat of it all again, no threat, no struggle, no anything. That same perfect victory he craved intertwined with the hollowing thunks. Only worse, so much worse, and when he wins his tenth in Malaysia, when he stares down into the crowd and finally claims one more than Valentino, and ironically passes him for wins in the same race, Marc just steels his face and pretends like his chest isn’t killing him where he stands.
Valentino is in the crowd that day, as Marc celebrates on the podium in first place. It was a surprise, in fact, that the retired rider would come here for this. The press had marveled about him showing up for the race where Marc would surpass him. They all knew the 93 would win, of course, so 116 victories and 10 championships were achieved and Marc Marquez passed Valentino Rossi on the list of all-time greats while the man himself stood in the crowd and stared up.
It’s a strange sight, honestly. Because Valentino stopped going to podiums years ago. 2024 was the last time Marc can recall him being there, and ever since, he seemed to run away before the ceremony began. Probably because he knew Marc would be there, probably because he can’t stand the sight. Probably because, just like Marc, the feeling of standing in the crowd and staring up at someone in what you see as your place is like a knife to the gut. Marc would know. He spent enough time under the scalpel and off the bike to be familiar with such a feeling.
But still, this one is strange. Valentino isn’t smiling, or scowling, and it’s not Bezzecchi he is staring at, who had gotten a solid second place. No, rather it’s Marc, even though the older man had made it a point to ignore his existence for years, at least in person.
Marc stares back as the Spanish national anthem swells in the air, waiting for a shake of the head, a mouthed curse, or some sort of typical sign of Valentino despising him. But the older man just stares with an odd expression, and Marc feels trapped by the sight of him. Trapped by the way he doesn’t blink once, trapped by the way he looks like he is waiting for something, trapped by the loamy scent of burnt rubber and the way it echoes memories through the air.
Only when champagne sprays straight into his eyes, stinging and warm, does Marc look away, and when he glances back Valentino is gone, the crowd having swallowed around the empty space he left behind, as if he never existed in the first place. Marc feels a bit sick at the idea, sick in a way he hasn’t been in years when it comes to Valentino.
So he ignores it. Laughs and cheers, douses Riga and Alex and Bezz and the waiting Ducati team members below. Enjoys his championship, because victory is his and he has never been more satisfied with anything in his life than the sticky feeling of champagne on his skin, or the way they roar his name. Valentino doesn’t matter. That play ended years ago, and while the current story being written isn’t close to the one of the past, at least it is Marc’s. He had gotten his 10th, he has made a point yet again, he has reached the crescendo of this song after years of awfulness. Finally.
At the press conference, that is all they ask him, of course. Beating Valentino, slotting into second behind Agostini for both race wins and championships, cementing his place in history even more than he has while still having many more years of career left. He expects that, because everything he does feels tied into a greater narrative and has since 2015, but it’s still annoying enough to make that thunking louder and louder.
“Will you retire soon now that you beat him?” One ballsy journalist even asks, eyes glimmering, and Marc forces out a laugh in response, smiles that smeared on, PR-pasty smile and does what he can to make everyone think he believes that idea to be hilarious nonsense.
“No, no, I will retire when I start losing, of course,” he responds with a cocky raise of the eyebrow, slipping back into his old role like it’s nothing, even if it’s a bit too large without the press of rivalry and bitter battle around him.
“Which has not happened yet,” he tacks on cheerfully, wincing slightly when one particular thunk rattles his chest. He swallows, and grins around it.
They titter at that, Alex gives him a joking smack to the arm and mutters curses, and the conference goes on. Bland questions, average ones, a handful of decent ones, though they are not thrown at him. That’s the problem with winning so much and so easily, after all; you don’t have a lot to talk about. No fierce battles, no wars, no controversial moments on track that make an entire country decide to curse your name, no seconds of wild laughter when you surprise yourself and everyone else. Just placid, grateful happiness. The boring kind, the predictable kind.
Ironically, Marc thinks to himself, it feels a lot more like he’s going through the motions of a script now than it ever did with Valentino. He says what he needs to say, races and expects to win, sprays down whoever tries to come close that day and are always genial to them. Answers questions in a plain tone because he is so good that nothing can even be asked beyond ‘will you ever stop’ and Marc could only answer that question in one way, after all, even if he would never be so honest as he is in his own head.
No. No, even if every time I raise a trophy over my head I feel like I am fading more and more into whatever story you need me to be in. I can’t stop.
By the time they get to the tail end, Marc’s chest is thunking so bad he can hear the sound in his ears. A quick beat that, for some reason, reminds him of a very old clock. Rickety and perfectly metronomic, insistent and proud. That thunking rattles in his brain, and he swears for a split second he hears a *tick tick tick* right before every pulse. He swears he can see the hands flash before his eyes too, only one minute until midnight.
“Marc, one more question,” someone calls, and he squints at them through the pain, sees a tall woman with her hair in a great pile on her head smack dab in the middle of all the journalists. Eyes sharp and green, almost glowing in the dimness of the conference room, she smiles as if she is greeting an old friend when he makes eye contact with her. He has no idea who she is, has never seen her before.
He does his best to smile back, to focus on who is talking rather than the blur they are all becoming or the cornered feeling he gets from the way she stares. He doesn’t feel good. He really doesn’t feel good, but it’s not her fault. She might be a bit frightening, but it’s not her fault. He’ll answer whatever soulless question she has, leave the stage, celebrate, and then curl up in his hotel room, clutching his chest in his hands and praying those thunks away, pointedly not running the look on Valentino’s face through his head until he falls asleep.
“Yes, go ahead,” he breathes out, and swallows down the pained noise that threatens to crawl up his throat. She smiles that odd smile and leans forward.
“Many have said it is strange that Valentino Rossi would choose to come to this race knowing you would surpass him here. What are your thoughts on that? Could we see a reconciliation come from this?”
Another question about Valentino. Always. Marc readies some sort of normal answer, opens his mouth, but what comes out is a gasp, hand flying to his chest as one thunk jolts what feels like his entire heart up and down. The room goes blurrier, there is a rustle of confusion, and he feels Alex put a hand on his arm.
“You okay?” He asks, leaning over until out of the comer of his eyes, Marc sees his brother’s concerned eyes, a pale shade of brown with all the lights aimed at them.
“Yes,” he grits out, clearing his throat. But when he goes to give that clean answer again, it happens once more, lurching him forward, something wounded and strange slipping out right into the mic, echoing around the room.
Alex reaches for him, but Marc waves him off, lifts his head back up, and grins as sharply as he can, pain making him cruel almost in the same way it had during the bad years. He should be nice, he should say something bland just like they expect, just like he planned to. But something pointed in her eyes, paired with the pain in his chest, makes him lash his tail a bit, makes honesty tumble through his brain.
“It is not up to me, and I don’t have any thoughts,” he grits out, meaner than he intended, “I don’t care if he is here. He can do what he likes, I am not racing him anymore. I don’t care.”
That was a truth and a lie, bitter and pained, everything he should not say when there are dozens of cameras pointed at him. He can see it in their faces, the way several reporters’ eyes light up, the way others scowl at his tone. He needs to curl this back into safe territory, like Ducati would expect him to do. But the thunking in his chest is so loud now, and Alex is actually tugging on his arm, and the strange woman is still staring at him, amusement clear on her face, and he just feels wrong. He feels wrong and twisted and held upside down by some force of nature he cannot see.
“But what he said after the race-” The woman begins in a purring, demanding voice.
“I don’t know what he said,” Marc interrupts her, and ignores the way she is still so calm, unnervingly so. Stands up, feels wobbly and now it’s not just Alex who is concerned. Bezz is staring up at him with furrowed brows, the blurry faces he sees in the crowd seem to be leaning forward, he hears someone say to call for a doctor. Marc shakes his head, goes to leave but-
“He said he was the last person to really challenge you, and if he was young he could do it again. Race you again.”
Her voice is suddenly clearer than anything, the sounds of the rest of the world muffled and quiet, almost slow motion. Marc turns to her, thunking filling his ears, louder, louder, louder, loudest, and attempts to understand what is going on.
The room blurs, her eyes glow for real this time, terrifyingly so. Marc can’t help the words that tumble from his mouth, almost compelled from his tongue. Too honest, too childish, too much like how he used to be when he was a rookie who was simply thrilled Valentino Rossi even knew his name.
“It would be fun,” he jitters out, stumbling over words, “more fun than now.”
The woman smiles, fierce and sudden, as if she is thrilled with his answer. Hands grip Marc and tug him, panicked words fill his ears, but he feels trapped by her eyes and the way the world around him is getting hazier and hazier and hazier. He feels lost as the edge of his vision disappears and all he knows is that feeling in his chest and venom green eyes pinning him in place.
A small laugh fills his ears, crystal clear and cold, old and young, loud and quiet, right in his face and in the distance too, somehow. Something rings all around him, fifty million clocks striking midnight, their tolls like a warning or a promise, loud and unavoidable, right in his chest. He slams his hands up over his ears, stumbles forward until his knees knock into the table. Blearily he recognizes that Alex is clutching at him, blearily he sees the way everyone is panicking. Blearily he laughs a bit and uncovers his ears when he realizes that it does nothing to stop the sound of the clocks chiming that seem to have overtaken everything.
“It would be fun,” he repeats without meaning too, and is entirely unaware of what he sounds like.
“I wish I could. I wish I could. It would be fun.”
“I’m sure it will be,” the woman murmurs back, her words somehow pouring over everything, crisp and clear right in his head. Marc swallows once, opens his mouth to say something, anything, and watches as the woman’s smile tilts toward bemusement when he realizes he doesn’t have enough air in his lungs to speak. And just for a second Marc swears he sees her face shift. Old and decorated in wrinkles, then young with soft fat filling out her cheeks, then back to how she was when he first saw her. When she speaks again, her voice roars in his ears.
“Good luck.”
In an instant, the world goes silent, the thunking stops.
And all he knows is darkness.
End Chapter 1