Saturday, September 1st, 2018- Monza, Italy
Italian Grand Prix, the Autodromo Nazionale di Monza
The world around Max hardly registered with him at all, not the crowd of people, not the shouts of his name, not the questions or the promises being made to keep the interview short if he'd give one, none of it.
The wash of noise, the press of bodies in from all sides, the warmth of Horner's hand between his shoulder blades, guiding him through the melee, it all barely even scratched the surface of his awareness because the entirety of Max's capabilities was otherwise preoccupied.
All of the words and explanations, the confessions and revelations and betrayals, the rationale and justification, all of it, churn about like a roiling, riotous sea of thought inside Max's mind as he tries to make sense of it, to glean what there is of any worth without letting the rough waters pull him below, as the threat of being swallowed whole hangs over his head.
Max had learned over the years that, for the sake of survival, he should always expect the worst of his father because when you expect nothing, when you prepare for the worst, and you get exactly that, you're ready for it and it all hurts a little less, the pain mitigated by being right, by being ready.
The fact of the matter was that Jos had not ever been the kind of father that other kids had, and Max had never really let the knowledge of that bother him because the way he saw it, since he didn't lead the kind of life all those other children had, he had no need for a dad like theirs.
It had always just felt right to him, had always made sense in his mind, and he'd always done his very best to not waste his time on such aimless, inconsequential pursuits as imagining what his life would be like if his father had been a different man, if he'd been the kind of parent that other children had.
And yet, now that Max let his thoughts wander, rifling through the information that's been revealed, mulling through the repercussions of his father's actions, he finds that he's grateful for Jos, for the gift he's been given, that takes shape in the wake of his dad's wrongdoing- he walks into his daughter's life armed with the knowledge of what a father shouldn't be, of what Max will never, ever let himself be.
Max had expected to feel cheated, to feel like he'd been robbed of something, that he'd been denied the privilege of his youth, of the opportunity to make the most of being young and rich and, in his own personal opinion, though others might think otherwise of him, his fairly good looks, but he didn't, he didn't feel anything like that at all.
Rather than that maelstrom of bad emotions, of the kind of feelings that just fester and rot, that only breed resentment and lead to the sort of regrets that last a lifetime, Max found, much to his surprise, that he felt nothing but an overwhelming, all-consuming sense of relief.
He had less of a clue how to go about handling that than he did about becoming a father, which even to his own ears, sounded like it was incorrect, that it should be incorrect.
Yet, regardless of how many times he took that mental half step back to reassess, to disconnect however briefly from the inner workings of his mind until it felt as familiar to him as a stranger's would, and only then permitting himself to take stock of the array of thoughts spread out before him, even then Max kept coming up with the same answer.
He was nervous and he was uncertain, but he was not afraid. His daughter needed him, and he would not be afraid.
Kaia needed her father, and Max Verstappen would not be afraid.
------------
In all reality, the revelation that his father had kept Max's child- his daughter, his Kaia- from him for her whole life should have wielded infinitely more power than it did, it should have caused irreparable damage, should have had the facilities to level him, to take him down to the foundations, to reduce him to rubble and ruins.
