Chapter Text
“Did you think I didn't need you here to hold my hand, to dry my tears?
Did you even miss me through the years at all?”
~ “I Wonder,” Kellie Pickler
The house was quiet when she stepped in through the side door that evening. So quiet, she nearly jumped five feet in the air when she rounded the corner and saw Lightning sitting there at the kitchen table. His hands were folded neatly as he waited.
Quietly.
Sally had learned long ago from her many visits to Doc's that a house with Lightning McQueen in it was not often a quiet house.
Yet, there he was, staring at her with the most subdued expression she'd ever seen on him.
It only served to boost her feelings of guilt, which had been sitting heavy in her chest ever since Flo's.
Sally was certain an eternity had stretched by long and slow before Lightning's soft, "Hey."
"Hey," Sally returned. Something in the back of her mind pushed at her, nagging her to go to him. To sit down beside him, or across the table, at the very least.
Despite this, her feet remained firmly planted on the floor under the archway.
"I..." Lightning cleared his throat and Sally jerked her head up, not even realizing her gaze had drifted to the floor. "I'm sorry. I didn't know about the plant, or... or what it meant to you. I should've taken better care of it anyway, even without knowing, but I..." He shook his head. "No. No, 'buts.' I neglected your mom's plant and I have no excuse. I'm so sorry, Sal."
It took Sally a moment to find her voice and she hated herself for it. "Who told you...?"
Lightning offered half a shrug. "Doc mentioned it briefly."
She nodded. Of course. Not that she resented Doc for that. How could she when he did the one thing she had never been able to bring herself to do?
A few more eternities of silence passed, then Lightning spoke up again.
"Did she... I mean, when did she die?"
Clutching at the strap of her tote bag, Sally braced herself. You're acting like a child. Just do it and get it all over with.
"You don't have to tell me if you don't want to. You know I know that stuff can be painful, but—"
"She left."
Silence.
Sally took a breath. "I was in the fifth grade when I came home from school one day and all her stuff was gone." The next bout of silence felt even more suffocating than the last and she found she couldn't stand it. "I know, I should've told you. It was a stupid thing to tuck away, but I didn't really want to bring it back out and—"
"My dad left."
This time, the silence absolutely choked her. Breathing had never been so hard.
She wanted more than anything to go to him, to comfort him.
And still, her legs refused to budge.
"Why...?" Brows furrowed, Sally shook her head. "Why didn't you tell me?"
Another shrug. "Same reason you never did, I guess. Because sometimes, I still wonder what it was about me that drove him away... and why he couldn't see anything in me worth sticking around for."
A quick flutter of her lashes shoved back the tears. You've already cried enough.
"And," Lightning continued, clearly trying to keep his own emotions at bay, "you... I... we, maybe, can't stop clinging to this fear that comes up sometimes: that families always break up sooner or later and we're wondering which one of us is going to give up first. Maybe that's just how I think, I don't know, but even if I can't keep your plants alive, I can promise you this: it's not gonna be me."
Sally barely registered the salty tears stinging her lips as she shook her head once more. "It's not going to be me either."
A soft chuckle filled the kitchen. "Well, then, I guess we both just agreed that we're stuck with each other for life."
"We already agreed that at the altar. I just... I don't think I ever truly let myself believe it until now."
Still smiling, albeit a bit sheepishly now, Lightning reached behind his chair and pulled out a very withered, yet hopefully perky looking Archie.
"Red's always been good with plants—like, really good—so I took it over to him. Turns out, Archie wasn't dead after all, not really. I think with a little help from the experts, I can get him back to where he was before you left."
The tears were flowing freely now, but she was laughing. "I thought I threw him away."
"Yeah... I kinda fished him back out. I mean, it's the only thing you have left from your mom, so I think that's worth a little dumpster diving."
At some point, she was able to rip her feet from their roots, slipping into the chair beside him.
"Do you have anything left from your dad...?"
The answer was a resounding no, and Lightning hadn't even opened his mouth yet.
"I don't even remember him, so it doesn't really matter as much—"
"It hurt you," Sally interrupted, "so it matters. Of course, it matters. But our life together matters more, which is why I got this."
Tugging the plant out of her bag, she placed it beside Archie, smiling as Lightning furrowed his brows.
"I got Ramone to help me dig up one of the Desert Willows by the waterfall, where we got engaged. Archie has always been a reminder of the past; this one will remind us of our future. Together."
It was Lightning's turn to blink back tears, and while he was a bit more successful than Sally, she couldn't bring herself to care.
Let the tears flow. After all, someone once told her that tears weren't all bad. In fact, the tears trailing down her cheeks as she melted into her husband's side, savoring the feeling of his arm around her, felt good.
"We're stupid, aren't we?" Lightning said through a chuckle.
"We're just..." Sally flashed him a grin. "New at this."
"That's a nicer way of putting it."
"I'm sorry, too," she said after a moment. "You put so much effort into our relationship. Sometimes, I'm too blinded by myself to see it."
"Hey, you've never been blinded by yourself. If anything, that’s me. You're the most selfless person I know."
Sally hummed, a soft smile gracing her lips. "You're sweet. Wrong, but sweet."
"Well, I try." His sly smirk earned him a light punch to the shoulder.
“You know, it can be a pretty small world sometimes,” Sally mused, sporting a smirk of her own. “What if your dad and my mom somehow found each other and, I don’t know, got together.”
“Ew, no! Come on!” He scrunched his face even as she laughed. “Why would you even say that? It’s in my head now. Gah! It’s in my head! Never say that again. Neh-ver.”
“Anything’s possible.”
“That’s it, you need to shut up, like, right now.”
He took her head in his hands and she melted into the kiss with another laugh.
Maybe they weren’t a perfect couple.
Maybe they would always have issues to work through.
But now she knew… She wasn’t going to be left behind again.
At last, she truly believed it.
And she knew Lightning did, too.