Legado | 𝑫.𝑹

Epilogue

Emilia Senna had never really loved someone as much as she had loved Jules Bianchi.

She loved Sebastian Vettel, but he could and only ever would be her best friend.

She loved Lewis Hamilton, but he was beginning to get on her nerves with all his whining.

She loved Fernando Alonso, Kimi Raikkonen, Kevin Magnussen and Valtteri Bottas.

She loved Pierre Gasly and Max Verstappen.

She loved Charles Leclerc in a way that only a sister could ever love her little brother.

She loved Daniel Ricciardo, her heart swelled happily with how much she loved him.

And whilst it didn't entirely compare to the love she had held for her late boyfriend, it could damn well measure out to be only a little bit less.

One year later – 2019:

"Are you okay?"

Everything hurt.

There was a ringing in her ears, a pounding in her head, an intense pain shooting through all the nerves that ran across her body making her want to scream and cry until there was nothing left.

"Emilia?"

But she couldn't make her brain work.

She so desperately wanted to cry out down the radio that she was alive, that she could smell the smoke and feel the heat licking at her back. She wanted to press that button and scream as loudly as she could just to make it known that she was still fighting.

But she couldn't make her mouth move and any form of physical movement she could manage made everything hurt ten times more.

Encased in the darkness of the cockpit, she was pressed up against the wall she had been thrown into, the only light she was given to show her proof that a world outside this existed was from the flames bursting from the engine and slowly eating away at the carbon fibre bodywork of her McLaren Formula One car. Slowly but surely getting closer and closer to her to the point she knew she had seconds to get her mind to function correctly before the flames took away the last of her fight.

The car that usually protected her and made her feel alive was the thing that was attacking and killing her.

"Emilia are you okay?"

When the smoke fought into the cockpit, she couldn't breath. The feeling of the flames hitting her back and trying to break through her suit made her scream the loudest scream she had ever screamed in her life. Her mind only able to focus on the feeling of the fire against her back which was now slowly beginning to encase her to notice the fact that she had pressed the radio button.

"Em! Breathe, listen to me!" The voice was frantic but it wasn't Patrick on the other end. "Emily!"

"It hurts." Emilia was sobbing, brain barely configuring together sentences now.

"I know, breathe with me." Daniel Ricciardo's voice was soft, compared to how he actually felt.

The smoke got worse and now she could see the flames in her vision but was too scared to turn her head because she knew she would come face to face with them. Breathing became difficult and black spots clouded the edge of her vision, the sound of her boyfriends voice in her ears fluctuating as she clung to the last of her consciousness.

Desperate for an escape from the never ending darkness surrounding her.

When it fell silent on the end of that radio, everyone's hearts sank and their tears raised.