✓ WORKING FOR THE KNIFE ━ lando norris. ¹

[ 008 ] The Devil On Your Shoulder

( ACT I. ── The Becoming )
chapter eight / the devil on your shoulder

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Annika had a death wish for her own goddamn inconsistent racing. P9. P9 in Baku, one of her favorite circuits. She was all over the leaderboard, between her debut P6 in Bahrain followed by the P13 in Jeddah, and then the whole mess of her podium finish-turned time penalty knockout in Melbourne ─ she had sworn to herself and Toto that she would have a fresh start in Baku, and after a promising P4 in qualifying it was as if she could finally see the sun. But front wing damage from a collision in the very first lap took her down to a place she couldn't recover from.

Idiotic. Infuriating.

In karting she had been consistent; top three, almost always. In the lower leagues she had been consistent; podium finishes and pole positions ─ at least one or the other in nearly every race. She had been silly and blind to believe she had any chance of keeping that trend.

Miami now reared its terrifying head. Annika struggled to adjust to it, both in mind and body. The time zones were difficult for her, and always had been, despite jumping between them for her entire life.

At 4:30am on media day she found herself in the hotel gym, the bottom floors quiet except for the usual comings and goings and a bleary-eyed elderly receptionist. Sitting in her hotel room and waiting for the sun to rise was on the brink of driving her stir-crazy, so she migrated to a place that at least had signs of movement and life.

She started slow with basic yoga, pulling stiff muscles loose, stretching out old injuries, applying gentle rotation to her sore neck.

In her headphones was a shuffled playlist that Greta had been cultivating for her over the years in an effort to merge their music tastes. Annika could admit that it was working ─ she had grown fond of Frank Ocean, SZA, Lord Huron, Daniel Caesar, and the likes. Sometimes she would pause her workout specifically to text her sister and let her know that she had a particular favoritism to one of the songs. It was a way of staying connected when they so rarely saw each other, which eased Annika's guilt.

As the opening notes of Good Days began to play, she stretched her legs out straight ahead of her and reached for the toes of her shoes, feeling the muscles stretch and pull uncomfortably all across her body. Twenty seconds of dedicated stretching, ten seconds of release. On and off. Another song was playing by the time she was comfortably warmed into the exercise.

She thought about her father, although she tried not to. The idea of his hope for her souring into disappointment was almost too much to bear. He would be watching everything, from the media interviews to the post-races.

In fact, everyone would be watching.

There were certain expectations for the child of a world champion, she had always known that much. But because of her gender, she had to both meet them and defy them.