Like a moth to a flame - Chapter 1

[ephitomis]

Title: Like a moth to a flame - Chapter 1
Fandom: All for the game
Notes: Written for the prompt "Era una gioia appiccare il fuoco. (Ray Bradbury, Farenheit 451)" for COWT9
Wordcount: 40000
Summary: In a world where mutants are considered half heroes, half monsters, Neil is on the run from his father and Palmetto University and the Foxes, a superhero team composed only of problematic mutants, might be the best (and worst) place for him to die. (Aka an XMEN!AU)

Mary Hartford doesn't know how she ended up the wife of Nathan Wesniski. It's a strange question to pose to herself: How did I get here?
And yet she thinks it constantly, every time he sees her son. Every time she sees her husband. She's no saint, she knows that, but there is a difference between what Mary is and whatever Nathan has chosen to be.
There's a difference between the Hartford family and the Wesniski name. There's a difference between what her family did to other people and what Nathan did to his own family.
Family first, always the Hartford motto, and yet Nathan had no qualms to hitting his own son. To screaming at his own wife.
She remembers that he was a different man, once, but it's difficult to know how much is her naive hope and how much is the actual truth.
Maybe he always was this monster. Maybe she had always been like this and Mary had only been hopeful and young and desperate to have some kind of freedom. To exist outside of her family, outside of her mutation.
What can be most important to a woman who had no face than to finally have an identity?
Mary hartford is not one woman, she's many faces, many bodies. She can change shape like one changes clothes and none of them fit better than the other.
Mary Hartford is a construction, someone who never existed at all. That, she thinks now, is why Nathan wanted her so much.
He never wanted her for who she was, for the woman who desired an identity and a freedom; he wanted the weapon, the faceless criminal.
How did I get here? she wonders again and again, looking at the sky and holding her son.
She still hasn't found an answer to the question, not one that satisfies her anyway, but she knows the answer to another much more important question: How is she going to get out of it?
Oh. She has that one planned perfectly.

Nathaniel has spent his entire life running. He run from his father and his cruelty, from his father's weapons, from his old life, from anything or anyone. He has run so much that it's impossible for him to think of a life where running is the center of his entire being.
He has been running since he was a child and his mother took him in the night and has never stopped since.
One could say that Neil had a real talent for running.
Even when he was too young to really run properly, when he was just crawling around, Nathaniel had been faster than anyone else. His young feet carrying him whenever he needed to go in record speed.
When Nathaniel (or Alex. Or Chris. Or Daniel) runs, no one can ever catch up to him.
Running is the most important thing in his life. He needs it to survive, but he also enjoys the feeling of wind in his air; he enjoys the freedom, the escape.
When his feet touch the ground at a steady pace, is like every other thing disappears. He's not Nathaniel (or Alex. Or Chris. Or Daniel), he's not running for his life, he's not running from his father.
When he runs he's free. He's exactly who he's supposed to be.
Really, it's a blessing that Nathaniel is so talented at running, since it's the only thing in his life that brings him any kind of joy.
And so when his mother takes his hand in the night, when she looks at him and her face is a mix of one thousands more and yet still his mother and tells him: "Abram, run." He does.
Nathaniel runs and his feet pick up speed. "I'll catch up to you two towns over," she tells him, passing him a little piece of paper, "wait for me here. You'll get there much quicker than we can hope to arrive there together."
She's right, of course. Nathaniel can get there in a flash and she can blend in the crowd much more effectively without him. Who can catch a woman who can be whomever she desires?
And so Nathaniel runs.
It really is lucky that he's so talented in it.

They haven't stopped running since that night, really. Sometimes Nathaniel (or Alex. Or Chris. Or Daniel) lies awake at night thinking how easier it would be for both of them if they went their separate ways.
His mother has many shapes, she could change in a moment's notice and she could blend in, impossible to track and recognize to anyone but a telepath, something his father sorely lacked.
Nathaniel, on the other hand, could run quicker than anyone. Faster than the eyes could see. Alone he could have already reached the end of the state and back.
They dragged each other down in different ways, and yet they sticked together. Nathaniel doesn't really know how to explain it.
A part of him, the part that still has hope, the part that refuses to die even with the scars and the punches, thinks it's because of maternal love. He likes to think that his mother doesn't want to leave him, that even now her desire to protect him is stronger than the need to disappear and survive.
But Nathaniel has never been a naive young man. He was brought up on knifes and violence and he knows how to read people. His mother loves him, of course, in her own way, but there is something more there.
Under the love, under the strict desire to survive, under the rules and under her violence. What Mary Hartford desires the most isn't Nathaniel's survival or her own, it's the identity that their survival rappresents.
What Mary Hartford can't give up is the ghost of Mary Hartford herself, stripped down of all her aliases, all her different identities, all her different shapes.
After all, who is a shapeshifter if there is no one to remember her original form? Who is Mary Hartford if there's no one that really knows her?
Still. Nathaniel lies awake and thinks, while his cheek throbs painfully where his mother punched him, what if she loves him more? She's like this because she wants the best for him.
She has to be, right?
What else is there, after all.

As talented as Nathaniel is in running, no one can run their whole life, he knows that very well. Being fast doesn't mean that other people can't outsmart you. Being quick doesn't mean that no one will ever catch up to you.
After all they have to stop to catch a breathe and Mary isn't as fast as Nathaniel is. Her talents are different than his, and as careful as she is, there is no way to ever know when they are safe.
They had many close calls over the years, and one day their luck would have to run out. He just would have never thought it would be because of a packet of gum.
They're stopping to load up on gas and his mother has sent him to gather something to eat. It's easier to buy food in the middle of nowhere, where the possibility of being spotted is smaller. He isn't as good as his mother at body manipulation, but it's a convenient second mutation to have.
He can only change superficial things like the color of his hair or his eyes (or cover up the scars on his back) but it's mostly enough to get around unnoticed.
Chris, his name at the time, is buying chips and some protein bars, a quick and effective meal that would have kept them alive and sated until they reached Milton. He also picks up some gum because they have been on the road for days and gum usually helped with the hunger and the need to move and when he looks up he knows he's been spotted.
There's a man on the other side of the shop, a man that Chris has never seen but he recognizes the aura around him. There's always a certain something that surrounds his father's men. He doesn't know if it's the murder that changes them, or if similar people tended to gather around each other.
But there is no doubt in Chris' mind that it was one of his father's man and that he had spotted Chris.
And so Chris takes everything and runs.
He hears the man yell at him to stop and the shopkeeper yell at him to give him back his stuff, but Chris just keeps going. He reaches the car in less than two seconds, slamming the car door and looking at his mother.
"They are here, go!" And so she does. She doesn't question him, not after all this time, but she changes shape almost on reflex. It's a face that Chris has never seen before, probably the one she wanted to adopt in Millport, and they start driving away before the man can reach his own car.
In the end it doesn't even matter.
When they are a couple of miles away from the gas station, Chris notices a car behind them and one in front of them. It might be a coincidence, of course, but if there's one thing his mother had managed to teach him in all this years was that coincidences almost never really happened.
"Mom..." he starts, but he doesn't get to finish before his mother curses and stirs the car just before an energy blast runs through where Chris' seat would have been before
An energy manipulator, shit. They have another mutant.
His mother loses control of the car and they end up going off road, the bumpy road making it hard to control the vehicle but also easier to lose their pursuers. For a while Chris thinks they might actually end up running away unscated when another energy blast hits them on the side of the car, sending them spiralling out of control.
When Chris comes to, he's upside down on his seat. His mother is already awake, trying to remove her seatbelt and everything is slowed.
He watches her move oh so very slowly to unbuckle her seatbelt. He can hear the steps of his father's men getting closer, but it's slowed down almost to a crawl.
And so Chris moves.
He removes his own seatbelt, helps his mother, brings them both out of the car. When Chris looks towards the men, he sees them slowly, so slowly, aiming their weapons at him and so he runs towards them.
What most people don't understand when they think of Chris' power is that it's not all about speed. Sure he can run faster than anyone, but that means that's not where his power ends. And so he puts everything he has and accelerates as much as he can and punches the first man in the face. The kinetic force of his hit sends him spiraling back, meters away. He might be dead, Chris doesn't have the time to care.
He turns towards the other one and punches him in the side, hearing the sound of a bone breaking. The third one, probably the energy manipulator, is bringing his hand up ready to blast him, but Chris evades him and he uses a rock to bash it upon his head.
They're probably all dead. He doesn't stop to check.
He turns towards his mother, runs towards her and picks her up. She's starting to protest, but the world still isn't slowing down, and Chris can't allow himself to stop. He drags her towards one of the other two cars, since theirs is totalled, and then puts her in the passenger seat and he sits down in the driver seat and starts going.
It seems to him like the car is moving incredibly slow, but when he watches the speed meter they are going well over 100 k/h.
Everything is too vibrant, too fast. He just wants to run, but he wouldn't be able to do it and carry his mother away. Just like she keeps bringing him around, even though it would be easier to just disappear on her own, he owes it to her to bring her with him.
"-am. Abram," his mother calls him and, incredibly, the entire world starts moving at a normal speed again.
He blinks and looks at the road and then at her, almost surprised. Her breathing is erratic where once it had seemed so slow to him.
There's something wrong is the first thing he thinks. There's something really wrong, is the second, when he looks at her face.
"Mom?" Chris asks her, slowing down the car.
"No," she growls at him, angry and feral like she always is after a close call. "You never stop the car, you understand me?"
"Mom, you're..." he starts, but he doesn't know how to finish. She's hurt, that much is obvious, but he doesn't know how much, nor how severe it is. It might be just a scratch or something way more serious.
Chris doesn't know.
"Do you understand me, Abram?" she asks again and she reaches her forward, tangling her fingers in Chris' hair. She pulls a little, enough to hurt, but not enough to impede his driving.
"Yes," he says, because there is no other answer he can give.
She lets his hair go and, for a moment, she lets her hand in his hair. It would seem like a kind gesture from anyone but Mary Hartford. This is just as cruel as anything else she ever did.
She's dying, Chris thinks.
"You never stop running. If you ever stop, they'll catch you and you'll be dead. Promise me you'll never stop running, Abram. You're... you're the only one who remembers me." Mary whispers the last part like it's a secret.
Chris wonders why she never reached out to her family back in england, what they did to her to make her feel like she was no one back there. They loved her, he knows that, but aren't them a prime example that love never solved anything?
"Promise it, Abram," she grits out.
"I promise it. Of course I do." He doesn't have any other choice.

Later, when he sees the car go up in flames with the now dead body of his mother inside, he feels dumb.
When she died, she reverted to her natural face.
It's not the first time Chris has seen it, of course, but it might have been the first time seeing this relaxed. He doesn't think Mary Hartford knew what relaxation meant. She had looked younger, it's the only thing he could think.
How young had she been when they had run? How young when she had decided she couldn't take her husband abuse any longer?
It's this how Abram's life will always go? Will he die just like she did? On a beach, burning inside a car, with no one who remembered him but his enemies?
Nathaniel (Alex, Chris, Daniel, Abram) looks at the beach and at the mounting fire and thinks that it didn't matter how good he was at running, he couldn't run where there was nowhere for him to go.



Andrew discovers his powers early on. They are strong, they tell him, and they watch him closely. They look unsettled by him, even if they try to keep it under wraps.
It's not really uncommon for mutant kid to end up in foster care, they reassure him, really it's more common than anyone thinks.
Andrew doesn't really know why that would be a reassurance. It only shows that no one probably will ever love him. That no one will ever want him, really.
They don't say it, of course. All his guardians, and everyone who handles his case, smiles at him and says we'll find you a good family, you'll see but when Andrew looks at a fire, or when he uses his powers to warm himself, he sees how scared they are.
Andrew doesn't really have much control of his powers since he's so little and so they usually try to get him to suppress them. Until we're sure you won't hurt anyone, they tell him after each and every check when they just give him an inhibitor.
He doesn't really care, if he's honest. His powers aren't strong enough that their loss hurts him in any way. Sometimes he just feels a little too light, like he's missing a limb. But it's a sensation that goes away quickly and he never thinks about it twice.
Not until the first house.
His foster father hates mutants and even if Andrew mostly doesn't have any way of using his powers, it's not enough to satisfy him. He punches Andrew in the gut and calls him a filthy mutant.
He says he doesn't care if they call them heroes, if there are superheroes going around and saving the city. They're an abomination and they should just disappear.
For a moment, while his stomach still stings with the hurt and his ears still ring for the cruel words, Andrew wishes for the fire. He feels it crackling inside it, fueled by his rage and by his fear. He wants to reach forward and burn the bastard to a crisp.
He can't and he doesn't.
Andrew makes sure to report him and that no other kids will ever pass through it, but now he feels it. The desire to be powerful enough, the desire to be able to protect himself.

His new goal, from that moment on, is controlling his own powers. If he shows the doctors that he has complete control over his mutation they can't give him the inhibitors that are usually handled to troublesome kids.
Andrew still gets passed over from house to house but this too, they tell him,isn't unusual for mutant kids. They smile at him, ever so understanding, ever so happy to tell him that he's normal. Andrew simply smiles at them, more teeth than happiness, and let's them talk.
He knows the truth now, and nothing they will ever tell him will make it easier.
Andrew finally masters his powers before he's transferred to a family called Spears. He doesn't think they will be much different than all the others, but he's happy that he's able to protect himself now.
They remove him from the inhibitors and he enters the Spears household a free mutant, in complete control of his powers and there he meets Cassie.
She smiles at him like she hasn't read his file. Andrew uses his fire to help her cook and instead of getting angry, instead of spitting in his face or call him a filthy mutant, she smiles and tells him she's proud.
What a good and capable son I have, she says and Andrew doesn't know how to react to kindness. Doesn't know how to stop the want, the need.
Cassie Spears calls him son, and Andrew wants.
Of course, just like everything, Andrew should have known that Cassie's love came with its own sets of compromises. Or, in this case, with its own Drake.
Drake Spears appears like a normal guy at first. He plays with Andrew, smiles at him. He's an older brother he says, with happiness, an so he has to act like it.
And then he goes to Andrew's room at night.
The first night, Andrew didn't know how to act, tried to push him away, but Drake told him that he knew Andrew wanted it. That he knew Andrew enjoyed it.
And then he told him "Do you think mom would believe me or you?"
Andrew wanted and that, in the end, was his own weakness.
Even now, where he was in complete control of all his powers, where he knew he would be able to burn Drake to a crisp and see his body disappear into ashes, he can't do much but lay there.
Because it doesn't matter how much power you have, if you can't use it. If you're too weak to give up on anything else but the encompassing fire.

Andrew discovers about Aaron when Cass is ready to adopt him and that - that - changes everything.
Andrew might have given up on himself, might have already resigned himself to this life, but he won't subject his brother to this. deliver him to Drake on a silver platter.
And so he goes out one night, breaks and enters into a building and makes sure he's fucking caught.
When the cops deride him for being sloppy, he doesn't smile at them, but he's deeply amused.
He's away from the Spears but, most of all, Aron is safe.
Maybe this is what it means to be an older brother, Andrew doesn't know and doesn't care, because what he knows about what older brothers do, is nothing good.
They send him to a reform facility for mutants and he's back to the inhibitors. They tell him to be careful, that only the ones for minors are this light. Once he becomes an adult the inhibitors become stronger, the side effects worsen.
Now that Andrew knows how it feels to have his powers, having them gone is much more difficult. He feels their absence every moment of every day. He reaches for them when he's bored, when he's thinking. When he can. They are still there, but far enough that they don't come to him when he calls them.
He chose this, he has to remind himself, and it's certainly better than the alternative. At night, when he isn't able to reach his powers, he thinks about Drake as a way to steel himself. This was the better alternative. He's glad that he's here, that he gave them up.
His powers never really gave him anything when he needed them the most, anyway.

Aron doesn't give up, the little git, and so one day he finds both his brother and his uncle in the visitor chairs of the reformation facility. His uncle doesn't really seem happy to be there or to see Andrew, but Aron seems to be ecstatic.
Andrew really doesn't know why. It's not like he ever cared about meeting Aron in the first place and he thought he had made it clear in the letter he sent him. Maybe it wasn't clear enough.
"I don't want to see you," he says then, looking at his brother directly in the eye. He knows that they are twins, but he hopes he has never been as miserable as Aron appears to him. As weak, as defenseless.
He doesn't want to know the answer to that, knowing full well that he has been weak and defenceless a lot of times in his life.
"Andrew..." Aaron says, but Andre just shakes his head.
He doesn't want to have anything to do with this version of him. Doesn't know what to tell him. They might be brothers in DNA, but what do they have in common?
"Come on, now," his uncle, Luther, if Andrew remembers correctly, says. "We're all members of the same family. I'm sure we can get along."
The way he says it, Andrew immediately knows that Luther will never be kind to him. Regardless of what Andrew will do in his life. He recognizes his tone of voice, his eyes. Luther wears a cross on a necklace and Andrew has had too many experience with people of religion to ever forget them.
Still, even if he won't ever care about Andrew, maybe he'll care about anyone else.
"I don't want to talk to him," Andrew repeats, not even pointing at Aron. He doesn't want Aaron to hear this; he's not sure why, but he wants to shelter him from this terrible truth. If he doesn't keep protecting him from it, anyway, what good would his sacrifice be?
He gave up everything he ever wanted to keep Aron in the dark, to keep him safe, and that means that he has to keep going or nothing will have meaning anymore.
Aron, thankfully, seems to be taking offence to Andrew's curt tone and he walks away quickly, leaving Aron and his uncle there. Exactly like Andrew wanted.
"You know, you could try to be kinder. We just want us all to be a family. Tilda would really be happy, I think."
Andrew vaguely knows who Tilda is, and he thinks it's a little sad that he only has a vague idea about his own mother. But of course Andrew has stopped being sad a long time ago.
"I will come with you once I'm out of here," he tells Luther. "But in exchange you have to make sure no other kids go to the Spears."
"What?" Luther says, surprised. "I talked with Cass, you know? She seemed to be a very kind woman."
"It's..." he stops, thinks about Cass' smiles, about her breakfast in the mornings, about her kind words. And then he thinks about Drake, and the nights he spent in that nightmare. "It's not her. It's his son he... he can't be around children."
He wonders why, exactly, he's hesitating to call it what it is. Rape. Violence. A violation of anything and everything Andrew had and was. The words come easily to his mind, but slowly to his mouth.
He's still weak.
Luther, however, blanches for a second. His eyes grow wide and fearful, almost as if Andrew had tried to burn him. And then... then he composes himself.
"Impossible," he tells him, huffing. "You probably misunderstood something. It was brotherly love."
This is what big brothers do, Drake said. And Andrew hates him. Hates him with everything he has. He hates Drake and he hates Luther. He hates them all.
"It wasn't," he pushes out, angry and wounded. "If you promise that the Spears will never be able to foster another child I'll come with you. I promise." Andrew doesn't break his promises, after all.
Luther looks at him in the eyes and then, slowly, nods. "Okay."
Andrew closes his eyes. What is another sacrifice, anyway?

Three months later he's out of the facility, the last of the inhibitors out of his system. Out of the facility he sees Aron, Luther and a woman.
It's probably Tilda, but Andrew doesn't see any kind of familiarity between them. She might be the woman who gave birth to him, but there's nothing of a mother in her frail and fragile body. She's haunted, standing there between her brother and her son.
Andrew has no mother, after all. He almost had one, but gave her up for the brother he never knew he had.
Tilda will never replace Cass in his life.
And so he steps towards them, while the sun shines upon them and he wants to laugh. If Andrew was someone who ever laughed he might have.
In the car, driving towards his new home, Andrew looks down at his hands and, experimentally, he makes the tip of one of his fingers caught on fire. The flame respond to him readily, reaching for the dormant power inside him, starving to be let out. It feels like he's finally complete again.
"You shouldn't do that," Luther says. He's looking at him from the rearview mirror and there's something harsh in his eyes. Right, after all dear uncle Luther doesn't really like mutants, does he?
Misunderstanding comes immediately to Andrew's mind and he almost makes his entire hand catch fire. He would enjoy seeing the face Luther would make, he things. He would tell him it's a misunderstanding.
Before he can do anything, however, he looks at Aron and, for a moment, he sees a moment of fear in his eyes. He flinches, almost as if he was expecting to be hit, and Andrew stops. Oh. Right.
They are twins after all.
The flames disappear from his hand and uncle Luther nods, satisfied. He can't see Tilda, seated right in front of it, but it's impossible to miss the way her shoulder relax when she senses Luther being satisfied.
Oh, Andrew really doesn't like this at all.

Soon he discovers that his initial conclusion wasn't exactly accurate. Luther is still a dick and a terrible hypocrite to booth, but Tilda isn't any kind of victim.
He sees it in the way she looks at Aron, in the way she speaks and act. He still hasn't caught her hitting him, and he hasn't seen any bruises on Aron's skin, but there are certain tells that neither of them can hide.
Andrew just wonders why Aron wants to hide at all.
(Cass, his mind supplies, helpfully. You were ready to do the same thing. They really are brothers after all, made of the same weaknesses.)
In the end, Andrew discovers it by chance. He returned home earlier that usual and when he walks towards his room he spots Aron in the bathroom. The door is open, probably because his brother thought he would be the only one home for a while, and there's a bruise on his face.
Andrew stops short and looks at it, surprised. Aron reaches for it, puts a finger on it and closes his eyes. After a second the bruise is gone.
Oh. How poetic.
Andrew's power was destruction. A fire that would consume everyone. It was violence and made to hurt, while Aron's power was healing. Something made to protect. Andrew can't help but wonder if this is why Tilda decided to keep Aron and not him, but he knows that's impossible.
Andrew didn't manifest his mutation until he was six.
Still, he advances towards Aron, making as much noise as he can, and he enjoys the moment Aron turns towards him. Scared and a little surprised.
Andrew smiles at him.
"So, this is how you were hiding it," he says, getting closer. "I was starting to get a little bored."
"I don't know what you mean," Aron growls. It seems that ever since Andrew has come to live with them, his twin brother has accepted the fact that Andrew isn't his answer to anything.
He's wrong, obviously, because Andrew can be the answers to many things.
"Dear old Tilda hitting you when the pills don't do it," he says, looking at it, "and, I suppose, when the pills do it a little too much for you. I mean, I'm not really surprised that you ended up a druggie like her. At least they are the normal kind."
There are other drugs, drugs that mimic the effect of inhibitors and help mutants not only hide their abilities, but also reach a high that normal pills simply couldn't. At least Aron wasn't that dumb.
"You don't know anything," Aron tells him, standing up and walking closer to him. A mistake, obviously, but Aron still didn't know him enough.
He will learn, he thinks.
"I don't care about you lying to my face," he says, bored about this already. "But if you want, I can protect you. I can protect you from her and anyone else."
"I don't need protecting," Aron replies immediately, growling at him. "I can... I can heal myself. And it was my fault anyway. I..."
Andrew is already bored. He knows these excuses, heard them a thousand times from the mouths of people he doesn't want to remember. Andrew always asked for it. It was always his fault. After all if only Andrew was more quiet, more agreeable, less Andrew. What a load of bullshit.
He rushes forward and takes Aron's shirt in his hands and brings him forward, their faces mere inches apart. "We'll make a deal, you understand me? You promise me that you'll be with me and with me only from here onward and I'll protect you. I'll protect you from anyone. You understand?"
Aron's eyes widen, he's shaking slightly, but Andrew won't let him hide away his hurt again. He will bring all his bruises and all his broken bones to the surface and make sure they never appear again.
"I..." Aron stutters, but there is something in his eyes. A moment of weakness. He's tired, Andrew realizes. Good. Give yourself to me.
"Okay," Aaron says in the end, and Andrew nods, letting him go "sure, do whatever the fuck you want." He doesn't believe Andrew, probably, but that's way beside the point. He has agreed and so, now, they have a deal.
"It's a promise then. And you'll fucking stop with the pills as well."

He goes to Tilda next, one day when Aron is out of the house. She's scared of him, probably because his power isn't at harmless as Aron's. Andrew is the problematic child after all, he's the one that will burn everyone and everything.
It's a story that can fit him nicely.
"You'll never touch Aron again," he says. She's drunk or high or a combination of the two, but she's listening and that's all he cares about, "or I will make you regret it."
She turns towards him, her eyes widening in fear. "You don't... you don't command me," she tells him and Andrew wants to smile.
"I'm not Aron, dear Tilda. I don't care about you or you anger," he informs her cordially. "You touch him and you're dead."
She looks at him and then she laughs. It's obvious she doesn't believe him. She thinks he's just a kid, way over his head. He doesn't care.
The fact that she believes him or not should be irrelevant, but he made a promise. So he lets the fire out and he allows them to consume his entire hand.
He brings it up, putting it between their faces. "Touch him again," he says, emotionless, "give him another one of your happy pills and I will kill you."
This, it seems, finally manages to pierce the veil of stupidity and booze that clouds Tilda's mind and she moves back, away from him. She's scared, looking at him like he's a ghost or a monster.
He's most certainly the latter.
Still, he's done what he wanted to do and so he moves on. If not happy then satisfied.

Tilda doesn't listen to his worry. She hides it better, most certainly, and she makes Aron hide it better, but Andrew lives in their house. It's impossible to hide it from him when she's high most of the time.
Sloppy, Tilda. Real sloppy.
So one day he dresses as Aron and goes to his mother. He acts exactly like Aron would and convinces her to go on a ride to the supermarket. She would have never brought Andrew, of course, but that was something she did with Aron a lot of times.
What she doesn't know is that Andrew has melted the brakes a little. Enough that they'll work for a little while before breaking completely.
"I told you," he tells her, when she starts to panic because she can't slow down. "If you touched Aron again I would kill you."
"You're crazy," she tells him, wide eyed and scared. "A psychopath!"
He shrugs and reminds her, in the most uninterested tone possible, "I warned you."
This, really, is all her fault.

Tilda dies. Andrew doesn't.
Aron looks at him and there's hate there, even more than before. Good, Andrew never wanted to be liked. This is not what allows people to be together. Pacts, deals. Aron and him are now intertwined for the rest of their life or, at least, until the end of college.
That is enough.
Maybe Aron will forever hate him, but Andrew hates him as well. Aron is the reason why he had to give up Cass. The reason why he will never actually have a real family. And so they will hate each other until the end of their life.
Isn't that the perfect representation of the american family?
Luther says that he will take care of them, but Andrew can't think about anything that he would like less. It's a surprise then when his cousin, who Andrew never met before, steps forward.
Nicky isn't really that much older than them, nor he looks like them, but there's a strength there that Andrew almost admires. "No, I'll take care of them."
"You're just a child, Nicholas," Luther says. It's obvious that there's no love between them. or at least that Luther doesn't hate only mutants.
"I can take care of them. I have a job. And a house. So... I'll take care of them," Nicky pushes, standing up for them. Andrew thinks it's unnecessary, but Aron seems to appreciate it.
"We didn't buy you that house only for you to..." Nicky's mother starts, but her son stops him.
"But you did buy it for me, and now we'll just go and live there. Right? You want to go to Columbia with me?" Nicky smiles at them, tries to coax them as if they were frightful childrens.
Andrew sneers. "We will," he says, not even looking at Aron.
His twin opens his mouth to say something, but Andrew stops him with a single look.
They have a deal now. Aron is his to protect and, in exchange, Aron will do as he says. Will have no other friends than the one Andrew choses for him.
It's obvious anyway that his brother can't be left to make his own decisions after all.
"Well, I guess we have decided then. I'm Nicky," their cousins say, with a smile, "I'm sure we'll be happy together, as a family."
It's then that Andrew decides that he pities Nicky. If he's looking for a family, he hasn't understood that he will never find it with them.


Millport really isn't that different from any other city where he has ever taken refuge and Neil Josten really isn't all that different from any other identity he has adopted over the years.
The only real difference is the big gaping hole at Neil's side. Where all his previous identities had someone, Neil doesn't have anyone else.
He is one hundred percent alone.
Of course no one else knows that. He's at his last year of high school and if anyone were to know that he was an orphan (or at least an orphan of the only parent he ever considered as such) they would try to do something unnecessary like find a family for him. Or maybe search a place to let him sleep.
If they knew he was a mutant...
Mutant rights have gone a long way in recent years, everyone knew that, especially thank to the numerous bands of superheroes that have formed and helped keep the general population safe.
Thanks to the legislation most, if not all, of superheroes teams had their own jurisdiction and it was unusual for one or more team to work together.
However that didn't change the fact that many people are scared of them. Of these humans with incredible abilities that could kill them with just a thought. Some would say that they shouldn't be scared, but Neil knows better than anyone how dangerous a mutant could be if he put his mind to it.
They're right to be scared, he thinks. In his experience, he hasn't met many mutants that didn't want to kill him or that didn't work for his father - and the two group usually coincide.
So he knows that he should never reveal himself. He should never let them know what he is, what he can do. His mother made him promise, after all, right?
Neil Josten isn't a mutant anyway. Neil Josten has dark hair and dark eyes and he doesn't mingle much at school. Neil Josten doesn't do sports and he has a note of a doctor that exonerates him from any strenuous activities.
Neil Josten is really a sickly guy and nothing more.
When he's not at school he sleeps in an abandoned building, and when he can he tries to sleep in the gym locker room since it's usually empty.
After high school he's not sure where he'll go. He has an year here in Millport and then he'll just run away to the next city. He has enough money to last him a while, probably his entire life (considering it won't be a long one).
Work and college seems like stupid dreams and Neil Josten (or Alex. Or Chris. Or Daniel) has never believed in dreams. So he pushes forward and pretends to be someone he's not. Someone normal.
Someone real.
Everything is going splendid, as well as it usually does for him, before everything goes to shit. Neil is convinced that the peace he's experiencing comes from the fact that his father's men don't really know that Mary is dead.
They're still looking for a child and a woman (or a child and someone else) but Neil Josten is always alone.
The knowledge that he's probably safer than ever, while makes him think about his mother and her less, also makes him careless.
Tonight is one of the bad nights, where cops are looking around the abandoned building where he usually sleeps and so he has to try his luck in the locker room or try a park bench. He tries the locker room first because he hopes to actually sleep but when he gets there he immediately smells flames. He stops and looks towards the building and finds flames dancing around the locker room. It doesn't seem like it's big enough to have caught any attention and so he gets ready to run and just go sleep in the park, when he hears someone asking for help.
He doesn't immediately recognize the name, but he knows it's familiar. Might be someone he met in school, some other student that stayed a little later playing basketball or football or Exy.
Someone stupid that Neil should leave there to burn (Neil has killed and seen killed too many people to ever really have any remorse).
But his visions is filled with his mother's corpse, burning inside a stolen car. He smells the fire and everything inside him revolts. He needs to save her, he wants to save her.
So he runs. He runs inside, pushing against the flames and against the heat. He runs fast not as Neil but as Nathaniel, as Abram, and he takes the man trapped in the fire and runs outside. The whole ordeal is over in not even a minute.
"You... you saved me," says the man Neil saved, the man that should have never known of Neil's talent.
Neil recognizes him, even if he has never had much experience with him. He's the Exy coach... the name evades him now. Still, it doesn't matter, after all Neil will have to disappear come morning.
He can't really stay somewhere where someone knows his secret.
"Don't mention it," he says, starting to walk away. If he starts running and he goes the whole night, he wonders how far he can go. He still has never tried. It might be the time to start.
"Wait!" the coach stops him. He's coughing hard, and it's obvious that he's feeling the after effects of the fire. Neil understands, he feels a little unbalanced himself.
He run through fires, he's sure that he's a little burned around, but he wouldn't allow anyone to see it.
"Let me thank you! I... no one knows about you, right?" Coach Hernandez says. "I'm not going to tell anyone, I promise."
Neil wonders what the other man is seeing to say something like that. Is it that obvious to him that Neil is ready to bolt and never come back?
Honestly he enjoyed his time in Millport as much as one can enjoy something like this. He also doesn't know where he can go now. He doesn't have any plans or any documentation.
Really, what chances does he have on his own?
But he promised his mother, didn't he? Nothing else matters. "You don't need to thank me," he mumbles, taking a step back, "I just want to go. Please."
"No. Not until you promise me I'll see you tomorrow at school," he pushes, taking a step forward. Neil can't help himself, he flinches and takes a step back.
Hernandez, seeing this, stops immediately. He really doesn't seem like a bad guy, but that doesn't matter. Neil can't trust anyone.
"Please. Just... just think about it, I might be able to help you. I know someone. Where would you go anyway?" Hernandez asks and Neil... doesn't really know how to answer but that doesn't matter.
No one can really help him after all, right?
He runs away before the other can say anything else. Everything he owns is in the bag on his shoulder, he can probably be two states over by morning if he runs and never stops and that's what he intends to do.

He doesn't know why, then, he's still in Millport the next day. He run for two hours before he had to stop to catch a break.
His feet hurt, but most of all he was panicking. The more he run away from Millport the more he realized that he really didn't have anywhere to go. He has contacts, that's true, but he needs time to peruse them. Reach out to them. Make sure they can create a new identity for him.
Right now he'd just beg to get discovered.
Desperation, his mother always told him, is the weakness of the ill prepared. Still if Hernandez told someone about him... his time in Millport is already over.
What had he meant with someone who could help him, he wonders. He guesses someone who protects young mutants? Maybe... that would certainly be the last place his father would look for his and his mother, after all.
And if it ends up not working... he can always run away, right? That is the one thing he will always be good at doing.
So he's back in Millport and at school come morning. He's not surprised to see Coach Hernandez waiting for him at the entrance of school. He's surprised, however, when the face of the man completely lights up, like he's really happy to see him. Why would he? It makes really no sense, does it?
He scowls and gets closer, looking around to see if some else is there waiting for him.
"Neil! You're here, I'm... happy," Hernandez greets him with a smile, "I hoped to talk to you about your issues with gym, if you're free. I already excused you from today's first period."
It doesn't seem like there's someone ready to take Neil and drag him away and so he shugs and follows him to his office.
it's really a boring room with trophies and sports clippings attached to the wall. News about the Exy's sport team over the years. It really looks more like a shrine than anything else.
"I didn't tell anyone, you know, just like a promised," Hernandez promises him with a very serious look.
He seems to be sincere, but Neil hasn't survived this long by believing the first person that came around and talked pretty. "Why?" he asks him anyway.
"You... you saved my life, Neil. You run inside a flaming building and didn't seem all that fazed," Hernandez explains, looking at him. He seems worried, almost like adults should look while watching traumatized childrens, at least according to the television. "But when I tried to get closer to you you flinched away, scared. I don't know what happened to you, but it's obvious that you're scared of letting someone discover your... talents."
Mutation would be the correct word, of course, but Neil lets it go.
"I..." he might tell him he's wrong, but what other kind of explanation can he really give him? This seems to be one as good as any, really. So he stops and shrugs, let the adult deal with it in any way he wanted to.
"It's okay, Neil," Hernandez says, looking at him. "I can assure you that I will keep silent until the end of the year and then... I know a place you can go to. A place where mutants that have difficulties can find refuge."
Neil tries to think about anything like that but he comes up short. He really isn't sure what the other has in mind. "What do you mean?"
Hernandez smiles at him and leans in, almost as if he's scared that someone might hear the. "You see, there's a school, a college really that's kind of famous for taking in mutants that need it. Especially the ones that have... encountered problems in their lives."
Neil blinks and then realizes what Hernandes is talking about. Of course he does, he has entire clippings that talk about it in his bag. "I'm not going to Palmetto."
Hernandez blinks, surprised that Neil knows what he's talked about, but he doesn't relent. "Neil, it would be perfect. I mean, I understand now why you don't participate in gym class, but it can't be healthy to hide your own life!"
Oh, if only he knew how much Neil was hiding. How much of a lie Neil really is.
"I'm not doing it," Neil repeats standing up. He might have already broken one of his mother's rules and considering breaking another by remaining in Millport, but he won't endanger himself by going where Kevin Day is.
He's not that desperate nor that stupid.
"Okay!" Hernandez says, standing up as well. "I won't call them. Or say anything about you to anyone, I promise. You can stay here, Neil, it's safe."
Neil looks at the man, at the ernest expression on his face. He means what he's saying and even if he won't keep it for the rest of his life, Neil thinks he's safe here for at least a little while.
He can call up his contacts, start setting up another identity somewhere else. It will be easier now that he doesn't have to finish high school anymore, really.
Neil Josten will be the last of his identities that will be young enough to go to high school. Nathaniel Wesniski would have another year, but he hasn't been Nathaniel in far too long.
So he nods at Hernandez, promises to stay and starts planning his new escape plan.

The next two weeks run as smoothly as the ones before the fire incident. Hernandez keeps an eye on him far more than before, but he usually leaves Neil alone.
He appreciates it, really, he feared he would have the coach on him 24/7 but the mans seems to be keeping his distance.
His contacts have assured him that another identity will be ready for him in a week. This time he has chosen a little city in the south. He thinks he might be ready for some sun. Neil Josten will stop existing soon, and so he enjoys the last week of his existence as much as he can.
It's his fault, really, that he lowers his guard.
He should know, really, that it's always the last week before they change their identity that it's the one where he's more in danger of being discovered.
Really, this would have never happened if his mother was still there to keep him focused.
It's why he's surprised when he steps out of school one day and sees David Wymack standing in the parking lot of Millport High School.
He should have known, really, that Hernandez wouldn't give up so quickly, but he hadn't expected him to have called the cavalry.
"Neil Josten? I would like to have a word with you if possible," Wymack said, moving closer to him. There are still people walking around and if Neil runs now, he will attract even more attention.
This is why they are talking here, in such a public place, he realizes. Because Wymack knows what he can do and that he wants to keep it a secret. The bastard.
He glares at him and takes a step back when Wymack gets too close for comfort. He already had a place in store and he's ready to bolt if things get worse than this.
Neil Josten would have ceased to exist in less than a week anyway. It might put his father's men on his tracks, but he's not going to be in Millport for much longer.
"I don't think we have anything to talk about," Neil says, almost snarls ready. Wymack doesn't seem impressed.
"I think we do. And your coach thinks we do. So that at least merits a chat, don't you think?" He doesn't take a step forward again. He seems to be looking at Neil like one does a scared dog. What he doesn't realize is that Neil is more feral than anything else.
"Well we have talked. My answer, like I told coach Hernandez, is no." He doesn't think there's much else to say, but Wymack ignores him.
"We need someone who is ready to throw himself into a fire to save someone else, our team... sorely lacks this kind of selflessness," Wymack says, trying to convince him. Neil almost wants to laugh.
He didn't do it for coach Hernandez, was really close to walking away and leave him to dying. Burn to ashes. And he wouldn't have even cared.
"If it's a hero you're searching for, I hear you already have one. You don't need me," he says with a smile, trying to walk away.
Everyone knows about Kevin. Neil more than most, true, but everyone at least heard of the number two of the Ravens.
Edgar Allan was one of the most prestigious school for mutants and the school where most of the current best superhero teams came from. Kevin had once been Riko's number two but now, after a tragic accident where they had stopped a supervillain only for him to injust Kevin's leg, he moved to Palmetto.
No one really understood why, and Neil had followed the news a little surprised and intrigued. He and Kevin had played together once as childs since they had similar powers.
Kevin was much more rounded than Neil having super strength, super speed and a minor invulnerability. He was hardier and stronger than normal humans, a true hero. He wasn't as fast as Neil or as strong as someone with only super strength as his mutation, but the versatility of his talents allowed him to be a great superhero.
Neil had played with him a day before his mother had took him and run. He remembers Riko as well, watching but refusing to play.
He needs to stay away from them. He can't risk them recognizing him, after all.
"I'm not enough to make a superhero team," someone says behind Neil and Neil freezes.
He recognizes that voice, has heard it give countless interviews and talk show. He turns and there it is, Kevin Day, staring at him.
How could he have not noticed Kevin sneaking around him? Had he really been this distracted? This weak?
He looks in Kevin's eyes and he knows that whatever life he hopes to have after this will be gone if Kevin recognizes him. He would tell Wymack and they would apprehend him, as good superheroes should.
Nathaniel Wesniski is the son of one of the most notorious supervillains that America has ever seen, one that has avoided capturing by the Ravens and every other major superhero team.
Why wouldn't they bring Nathaniel to justice as well? He certainly isn't innocent.
"No. I can't..." I can't stay in the same team as you, he wants to say, but he can't. That would give away way to much.
They don't need to know the reason, after all. He just can't.
Fuck keep a low profile. Fuck everything. He runs, sprints in the direction where less people seem to be and he intends to run and never fucking stop. His run doesn't last long however. Before he can reach full speed he feels something impact with his stomach. He's going fast enough that the blow makes him bounce back a couple of meters and hurts like fucking hell.
When he looks up, through the pain, he can see a boy holding what looks like a bat. He's trying to play it off, but Neil can see the tension in his eyes and in his arms.
He's hurting from the colluttation as much as Neil, after all he just had to hit with a bat something that was going as fast as a (slow) moving car.
"Andrew!" Wymack screams, angry, but the boy - Andrew Minyard - simpy shrugs.
"What? You wanted me to let him go? The kid is a runner, you would have never saw him again," he tells both Wymack and Kevin and then he looks back towards Neil. He's smiling, but there's something feral about the espression. It's not happiness that makes Andrew smile like that.
The pills, Neil immediately realizes. He read about it, because he read everything about Kevin and that meant about his new bodyguard. Andrew is under a cocktails of drugs and pills to keep his powers at bay. They're not completely suppressed, but severely controlled.
"If you kill him, he's useless to us!" Kevin says, reaching them.
Neil snarls. "I'm useless to you anyway, I'm not joining a superhero team!"
When he had been younger, a small boy that still didn't know what life had in store for him, he had dreamed of being in a superhero team. He had dreamt of helping people, being recognized everywhere. Being loved, needed.
Now... now he knows better.
Still, Wymack and Kevin both look at him like they don't believe him. Like they can still convince him if they try a little more.
"Whatever the reason," Kevin says, looking as heroic as always, "you threw yourself into burning fire to help someone. That doesn't seem to me like someone who has no interest in using his gifts for good."
Gifts. Right. He knows why Kevin thinks like that. Kevin who saw his father butcher someone in front of him but was still allowed to keep going. To have a life in Edgar Allen, to become a Raven, to be a hero.
He scratched Neil's world, but was never corrupted by it.
Neil, however, would never consider his powers a gift. Without them maybe his father would have let him go. Without them his father would have just been a man, cruel but without supernatural powers.
Kevin's gifts only made Neil's life that much worse.
Still a part of him really wants Kevin to make it. He has been following his progress all his life because of that. If there was one of them that was supposed to live, to make it big, that was Kevin and now...
Now he could watch it from closer instead of from far away. He could be there. Make sure Kevin survived, was happy, made their dream a reality. At least one of them deserved to survive. To thrive. To be remembered.
To not burn away on a beach without anyone else knowing their real face. That someone would never be Neil, he knows that, but maybe it can be Kevin.
He wouldn't stay long, he thinks, not long enough for his father to figure out where he is, but maybe... just for a little while.
Neil looks towards Wymack who is watching them like a hawk. His gaze is worried but still interested. It’s obvious he’ll stay out of it unless he feels like there’s the possibility of someone getting really hurt. He then looks towards Andrew who looks bored once more, disinterested in anything they are saying.
Then, he looks back towards Kevin, who is looking at him without any recollection.
Maybe, he thinks, he can do this. If Kevin doesn’t recognizes him… maybe he really can. It would be crazy and stupid, of course, but there’s no one stopping him from doing stupid things anymore.
"What do you say, Neil Josten? Do you want to try and be a superhero?" Kevin asks him and Neil, who is as weak as the first day, answers:
"Yes."


Andrew doesn’t know why both Kevin and Wymack are so fixated on this guy. He understand Kevin’s need to be part of a team again, to find someone to replace the brother he lost (even if Andrew will never comprehend why he even misses that piece of shit) but, if he’s honest, this guy doesn’t seem to be all that incredible.
He’s fast, sure - Andrew’s arms are still hurting from the impact - but there’s nothing heroic about someone who bolts at the first signs of dangers is there? They don’t seem to have noticed it, however.
And isn’t that a shame?
In the end, as always, Andrew is the only one that has any interest in keeping everyone safe. He has deals to uphold and he won’t allow a runner to get in the middle of them.
Kevin and Wymack might not see it, but Andrew knows very well that no one that runs that fast doesn’t have at least a reason to be running.
Of course, Hernandez is convinced it’s the kid’s parent and Wymack, always one for sob stories and puppy dog eyes, flew in like the idiot he was.
However the kid couldn’t stop staring at Kevin from the moment the idiot revealed himself and that isn’t normal. One could attribute it to a severe case of hero worship, but Andrew really doesn’t buy it.
Neil Josten is hiding something and he’s going to find out what.
It’s why he opens up his eyes the day of Josten’s arrival and instead of going to his dresser, he goes to Aaron. He picks up a shirt and pants that don’t look completely black, and he puts his armbands on the bed.
He leaves the room and walks into the small living room that’s part of their suite, and looks meaningfully at the occupants of the room. Aaron just quirks an eyebrow, but shrugs, uninterested. Nicky seems to be a little more unhappy about Andrew’s decision, but he doesn’t say anything.
Kevin looks up, sees him in his get up, and opens his mouth. It’s more backbone that Andrew has seen him show since his arrival at Palmetto and he’s impressed for a second. Then he’s just annoyed.
Still, Kevin doesn’t say anything in the end. A coward as always, and simply allows Andrew to leave the room and start his journey towards the airport.
Neil Josten evidently knew about Andrew and he won’t be careless in Andrew’s presence. Aaron is another matter and probably why Wymack asked Aaron to pick Neil in the first place.
Really, their coach should have known better and asked Nicky. Or, even better, ask one of their upperclassmen to come back to escort their new prodigy safely home.
It’s like Wymack doesn’t care about the safety of his new kid at all.
Or maybe he just knows that Andrew will have his way in any case.
Andrew arrives at the airport fifteen minutes before the runner’s plane is supposed to land and so he has some time to think about what exactly he wants to find out. He needs to see what the runner thinks of Kevin, what he hopes to achieve in Palmetto and what it will take to let him spill out of all his secrets.
It really shouldn’t be too difficult. Josten didn’t seem like the intelligent type, running straight into a bat and saying yes to proposals he should have really said no to.
Andrew is sure he can do it in minimal time and kick him off the school by thursday.
When he looks up and he finally sees the idiot walk towards him he scowl his face in an unimpressed expression and walks over.
“Aaron?” Josten asks, looking at him strangely. There’s really no way for him to recognize Andrew, not when he actually tries to act like Aaron, so he’s not too worried.
He’s probably just surprised about how much they look like each other.
“Give me your bag,” he only replies, extending his hands. If he never admits out loud that he’s Aaron he can claim that he hadn’t lied later, if anyone discovered his trick.
Josten simply shrugs and holds the bag closer to him. “It’s okay. I only got this and I can carry it myself.”
That tells Andrew two things, one he already knew and one which is far more interesting: the first is that Neil Josten is a runner and used to pack light in case of a sudden need to escape. The second is that there’s something interesting in that bag, something Josten doesn’t want him to see.
It becomes incredibly important that Andrew takes a look.
Still, there’s no need to force the issue now. At one point Neil will lower his guard and Andrew will strike. “Let’s go.”
They walk slowly and in complete silence to the car. It seems that Josten isn’t someone that talks too much and while Andrew would appreciate that in any other situation, he needs to gather informations.
“The upperclassmen are still away for the summer. There will be only us, Nicky, my brother and Kevin. I heard you already both Andrew and Kevin…” he hopes it will be enough to get him to talk, at least a little.
Josten simply shrugs and looks out the window. “Yeah, I have to say I didn’t like your brother very much.”
Well, at least he’s sharp and knows danger when it hits him with a bat. He smirks, amused.
“And Kevin?” Andrew asks, sounding completely disinterested. After all, even if Neil doesn’t know it, Aaron isn’t someone who usually shows any care about Kevin or someone’s opinion on him.
Andrew hopes to never have Neil discover his little trick, so he needs to be as convincing as he can.
“Kevin is a hero,” Neil only answers, looking at him. “He’s one of the best. What do you think of Kevin?”
“He will get himself killed,” is the only thing he says because it’s the truth. Of course, not if Andrew is there to stop it, after all they have a deal, but Kevin is the most stubborn coward he has ever seen. He’s terrified of his own shadow, but he doesn’t want to step down from this useless superhero team.
Andrew doesn’t understand.
“You’re on the team too, aren’t you?” Neil asks him,
Andrew doesn't smile. If he had the pills then maybe, but he doesn't feel any kind of need now. There's only apathy where anything else should be. "Haven't you heard? We're the worst team this side of the ocean. Don't think you're getting to play in the big leagues."
Josten watches him for a moment before he nods and shrugs, gazing again out of the window.
A part of Andrew itches to know more, but he also knows that if he prods more the other could start to become suspicious. It's okay, he'll have time to dig in more.
Especially when he finally gets to hold that bag.
They soon arrive at the school and Andrew parks in his usual spot.
Palmetto University isn't as small as its reputation would have you believe, even if maybe it should have been. The school didn't sustain itself on much funds and housed some of the more useless mutants, or so the superhero community believed anyway.
Those who ended up at Palmetto where the ones that weren't fit for combat and wouldn't find a place in any of the more prestigious schools and then, of course, there were the Foxes.
The Foxes where the young team of superheroes that Wymack had put together from scraps and traumatized children. Really, it was a mystery why his gamble was working so terribly.
Still, the school was big, housing more than a hundred students. Almost none of them were on the Foxes, but they still studied there and tried to live a normal life. As normal as one could with their talents anyway, Andrew thought.
Of course now the building stood eerily silent. Most of the student had gone home for the summer and only the ones that couldn't go back to their families still lived in the dorms.
Andrew, Aaron and Nicky among them, obviously.
Neil scoots out of the car before Andrew even had to say anything. He picks up his bag and walks towards the entrance where Nicky and Wymack are waiting for them.
Andrew doesn't see Aaron, and that almost makes him smile.
"Neil! Wellcome!" Nicky says, smiling, "we were waiting for you! I can't believe you don't have a phone, I would have written to you. Are you okay?"
"Why wouldn't I be?" Neil wonders, looking confused.
Wymack looks strangely at Andrew and he simply shrugs. Wymack isn't good enough to pick him and Aaron apart, Andrew knows it far too well, and so he feels pretty safe.
"No reasons at all," Nicky says, sending a strained look towards Andrew, "but I'm here to be your guide! I mean, you're lucky, you're getting a room for yourself for a couple of days!"
"Normally we would prefer to let freshman room with other freshman but..." Wymack stops and sighs, shrugging.
"The truth is that you're the only Fox we managed to snag this year," Nicky explains, with a shrug. Some new students, obviously, but no one that was Fox material.
"So no one fucked up enough?" Neil wonders out loud and Andrew thinks he might have snickered had he been on his pills.
Nicky blinks and then shrugs. "Yeah, I guess you could say it like that. But I don't really like saying that."
"No one that would have the right motivation or possibility would be more exact," Wymack interjects with a sigh. "Come on. We'll show you to your room and then we'll show you the training grounds."
They start to move away and Wymack sends another look in Andrew's direction. It's harder than it should be not to send him his usual wave with two fingers. But that's Andrew's thing. Not Aaron's.
He won't be discovered for something so stupid.
Andrew lets them go and then walks back to his own room.

Aaron and Kevin are waiting for him there. Aaron is reading a book and doesn't seem very interested in his return while Kevin stands up immediately after Andrew enters.
"So? Is he here?" he asks, looking around.
Andrew doesn't really reply, moving inside and towards the bedroom. It's obvious that Neil isn't hiding behind his back and if Kevin wants to believe that he killed his precious new toy... he really doesn't care enough.
Once he's in his room he undressed and then goes towards his own closet and puts his own clothes back. He reaches towards his armbands and puts them on. There's a comfort on having them back on his again.
They are the only fireproof clothes he has and he feels almost naked without them. And without what's inside of them, obviously.
When he's done, Aaron enters the room and simply walks towards the clothes Andrew has just discarded and walks towards the bathroom to change.
They'll join with Neil and Nicky later, and it's important that Neil doesn't have any motive to suspect the switch. Andrew is glad that, for once, his brother is on the same page.
Kevin is still sulking in the living room when Andrew comes back. He seems to be really annoyed for some reason. Andrew really isn't in the mood for one of his dramas. He already had to talk too much for his liking.
"You know, he could be good for us," Kevin says, looking at him. "Might be what finally makes us a better team."
"And I should care why?" Andrew asks, putting at least four spoons of sugar in his coffee. He reaches for his own pills, feeling their weight comforting in his hands. He knows he's cutting it a little too close for comfort. Another five minutes and the tremors would have started.
Replying to Kevin is a mistake, of course, he should let Kevin talk to himself enough to tire himself. Everytime Andrew answers him it seems to make Kevin think that he gives a shit.
"Because I know what you want, Andrew. You can't lie to me," Kevin replies, standing up. "I can feel it, he's going to be the thing we need."
"Have you developed premonition as well?" Aaron says, walking back inside the room, "can you tell me what will be on the next test?"
"I just mean," Kevin says, looking at the two brothers with an annoyed glare, "that you two could be surprised if you just stopped being so uninterested."
"Don't look at me," Aaron says, shrugging, "I do my part. It's Andrew you should waste your energy on."
It's true. As much as Aaron doesn't enjoy the rest of the team, he likes using his mutation to help. He's been training under Abby for the past year and his powers have already increased a lot.
He's still shit at controlling himself and more times than not his powers didn't obey him, but he has improved.
It's Andrew that doesn't really care about any of this. He has tried to explain to Kevin how worthless this all is. Their powers, their mutation, didn't make them stronger than anyone.
In the end, when it mattered more, this gifts still wouldn't help them.
Andrew knew it better than anyone else.
He looks straight at Kevin, puts the pill in his mouth and simply drinks half of his cup of coffee in one go. Kevin grimaces and that's at least moderately funny.
"What's the verdict?" Aaron asks, looking absolutely disinterested.
Andrew simply shrugs and decides that replying would be too much of an hassle. Aaron would see it on his own.
"Good talk," his twin says and then he walks out of the room.
"Can we go too?" Kevin asks him too, looking expectantly towards the door. Andrew toys with the idea of telling him no for a second, enough to feel the texture of the world on his tongue.
On one hand it would be satisfying to annoy Kevin further, on the other hand he can't let Aaron alone with the new kid. Not until he's sure that he's not a threat to them.
His deal with Kevin might be more pressing right now, but he hasn't forgotten the one he has with Aaron (even if Aaron acted like he had).
So he starts walking towards the door, following Aaron out. He's sure Kevin will catch up soon enough.

When they reach the training grounds, the others are already there. Neil still has his bag slung across his back.
It's obvious that he has never seen a training ground before, even one as run down as their is. There's a shine in his eyes that hadn't been there before. He's looking around like a kid in the playground.
Another one like Kevin, then, perfect. Just what Andrew needed, another junkie hellbent on dying in a blaze of glory. Why couldn't they just be happy to die in a blaze of Andrew's making?
Kevin doesn't even hesitate before stepping towards Neil and stopping at his side. "It's not the best camp I've ever seen, but I can promise you we have very good supplies. Edgar Allan has a holographic simulator, of course, but..."
"Well, I'm sorry if this is the only thing we could afford," Wymack says, shaking his head in exasperation.
Kevin seems to grimace a second, realizing that what he said could be considered rude. "Like I said," he tries, looking back towards Neil, "it's really sufficient."
Wymack sighs and Nicky coffs to cover up a laugh. Even Josten seems to be laughing at Kevin. Seems that starstruck doesn't mean stupid.
"Well, anyway," Wymack says, looking around. "I'm sure you're tired for today, but I would like to see what you can do tomorrow if it's okay with you. I like to evaluate the power of our team members before creating a personalized training regime and sending them on the field."
It's true, everyone of them had a personalized training, even if Andrew never did his.
Neil shrugs and fixes his bag more firmly on his shoulders. "You know," Nicky says, looking at him, "you could have left that in the room."
Neil looks at him with immediate distaste, as if he's offended by the suggestion. Oh dear sweet Nicky.
Wymack sees the interaction and instead of stepping in he nods, taking a keychain from his pockets. "This reminds me. These are the keys to your room," he says, handing them to Josten, "for now you're the only one here in the building who has them, at least until Matt and Seth come back in a couple of days."
Neil hesitates a second before extending a hand and taking the offered keys. He looks at them for a moment before looking confused: "All of them?"
"No," Wymack confirms, pointing towards two of the bigger keys. "Those are keys for the training grounds. You can come here whenever you want."
"Someone could start thinking you're playing favorites," Andrew says, smiling at Wymack. The pills where humming inside him, making him a little manic. He hates this, but there is really nothing he can do.
"I am," Wymack immediately replies, looking straight at Andrew. "And you would have keys as well if you weren't a constant thorn in my back. Also you can use Kevin's. It's not like you would ever come here for any other reasons."
It's true, but that's not the point.
Wymack sighs and shrugs, looking at all of them. "Can I trust you guys to bring him t his own dorm alive and well?" he asks them, looking entirely serious.
Josten doesn't look as scared as someone should after hearing that.
"Yeah, Coach, don't worry," Nicky promises, smiling. "Leave him in my good hands. Lord knows I would like that."
Aaron sighs, turning and starting to walk back towards the dorm building. Andrew glares at Nicky immediately.
It doesn't matter if Neil is a nuisance, Nicky should know better by now.
"Fine. Just keep him alive until the other come back," Wymack threatens them, "I need to talk to Abby. You will need to see her in the next few days." The last part is obviously for Neil who simply shrugs. "I can already tell you'll be a pain in my ass too," Wymack mumbles, walking away and leaving them to their own device.
"Come on, let's go back to the dorm. We usually eat whenever we want, but the mess opens at 7PM," Nicky says, taking Josten by the arm and pulling him towards the building.
Kevin looks back towards the training grounds and for a moment Andrew is sure that the other will stay to train, but he surprised them all by starting to walk back with them.
"Can I ask something?" Neil wonders, looking towards Nicky.
"Sure! What do you want to know?" Nicky smiles, ecstatic at having the possibility to be helpful and maybe woo Josten.
Neil doesn't seem to notice it, or he's simply very good at ignoring advances, and he simply asks, never turning toward Andrew. "I thought he always had to be on his pills?"
A terse silence falls between them and Nicky stops walking, too surprised to continue with his happy facade. "What do you mean? Andrew is on his pills..." he says smiling nervously.
If Wymack, or really anyone, were to find out that Andrew had not taken his prescription that morning, some very bad things could happen to him. They all know that, even Josten.
It's not a threat. If it was, he's sure Josten would have made it clearer.
"How?" Andrew simply asks and Neil turns towards him. There's something too intelligent in his eyes, something too dangerous to be allowed to live.
"Only one of you really hates Kevin's heroism. The other one really can't care less," Josten explains and then he turns towards Nicky again. "I remember the road. I can find the room on my own."
Before Nicky can say anything Neil walks away, leaving them all here.
Oh, this... this might be more interesting than what Andrew thought.

Neil closes the door behind himself and he looks at what will be his room from now on. It's strange to think that he's here, that he really decided to do something so stupid.
If his mother was here... but she isn't and she will never be again, after all. That's the only thing that Neil should remember.
He's alone now, and there's no one here to stop him from making any of these stupid mistakes.
Alone. What a strange thought.
He should be used to it by now, after an entire year, and yet he still isn't.
Neil sits down on the bed beside the one that will be his and he closes his eyes. He knows that he's panicking but he has to remember that he's not a prisoner here. He can run away whenever he wants.
Who could ever stop him?
Kevin isn't as fast as him, he knows that, and he has enough money to be able to get far away from there and buy himself a completely different identity.
Shedding himself of Neil Josten would be as easy as breathing, really. he has done it so many times with so many names. So many identities.
Neil opens his bag and picks up his binder. He opens it from the back and looks at the money stashed there and then the flips the page and starts looking between all the newspaper clippings that talked about Kevin and Riko. He knows that Andrew is already suspicious of him, the stunt today only proved it to him further.
Neil wonders what he would say if he saw his binder, all the news he has collected over the years. What explanations would he give himself?


Neil really doesn't know.
He won't have to wonder anyway because he would keep the bag close to himself at all times. It might not be the best or safer idea, but until he has a better one it's the only solution that presents to him.
Still... he takes the keys that Wymack gave him and he walks experimentally towards the door and he locks it from the inside. If what Wymack told him was true... no one else could enter now.
He was... safe. Alone. Protected.
What a joke. neil has never been safe once in his entire life and he isn't going to start thinking he is now.
Still he keeps the keys in his hands, feels the weight of them on his palm. It might not be safest place on Earth but having keys of his own, a place to sleep where he has some form of control... it's certainly something, isn't it?
Neil has a couple of protein bars in his bag and so he doesn't go to dinner. He wonders if the others are talking about him, if they will comment the fact that he decided not to show. In the end he realizes that he doesn't care.
Neil isn't someone who is supposed to stay, he isn't someone who has to make friends or fit in into the group. He's here because he wants Kevin to make it, because a part of him wants to live close to what could have been his life, had it not been for his father.
Because he really has nowhere else to go. Without his mother he will die, it's only a matter of when, and maybe in the meantime he can just... enjoy this.
That night he sleeps with his bag up in his bunk with him and an eye open, trained towards the door. He's ready to bolt at the first sign of someone, but even if he stays awake the entire night, no one enters or even tries.
It's a rather strange experience.

The next day he's awake fat too early for someone who hasn't slept for more than two hours, but his body is already buzzing with energy. He has to move, he has to run.
It's really a rash decision, but in a second he's out of bed, dressed and in front of the training ground. His bag is on his shoulders and he clutches it firmly.
He has run with far more weight on himself and so he enters the facility and immediately sets into a sprint, running laps over laps on the field. It's not as big as he would have liked and after a couple of minutes he has made the same circle at least a hundred times.
There's really not much to do and he's getting bored fast...
He looks around and sees a obstacle course and stirs towards that. It's not particularly difficult, especially when he can just run up the wall that one would usually climb, but it's at least more challenging that running in a straight line.
He's at the end of his first lap when he sees someone in the corner of his eyes. He stops and turns immediately, feeling every part of him get ready for a fight. When he turns he sees Kevin and Andrew looking at him.
Kevin has a calculating look in his eyes while Andrew seems to be looking at Neil's bag. Oh, he's sure Andrew would love to put his hands on it.
"You're here early," Kevin says, walking towards him.
"I couldn't sleep," Neil says, shrugging. It's mostly true, after all, and something that one could attribute to nerves about being in a new school and not old habit taken while on the run from his supervillainous father.
Kevin nods and then steps forward. "You're fast, but you don't seem to have much control. Your curves are too wide, and you lose speed there."
Neil blinks, surprised and then shrugs. He never really had time to experiment with his own mutation. The only important rule, the one he always knew, was to run as fast as possible.
Nothing else really mattered.
"Do another lap. Leave the bag here." Kevin orders him. When Neil doesn't immediately comply, he raises an eyebrow, waiting for Neil to move.
"I can do it with the bag," Neil says, gritting his teeth. There's no way that he would leave his bad with Kevin and Andrew. No way in hell.
"You're the fastest here, aren't you?" Andrew voice comes, a few feet behind Kevin. "So show it to us, if you leave the bag and do a lap before I can reach it... there's nothing for you to worry about, is there?"
Kevin looks between them a little confused and Neil feels the known irritation mount inside of him. Andrew Minyard seems to exist only to make him mad.
Still it's true, he doesn't have anything to fear from Andrew. Everyone knows his mutation, after all, and while Kevin might be stronger than Neil is. He's most certainly slower.
Andrew probably thinks that Neil isn't brave enough to accept his challenge, but it's true. There's nothing for him to fear.
Andrew is smiling where he stands and that's a sign enough that he's on his medications which means that he doesn't have his full powers at his disposal. If it came to a fight, Neil could win.
Or at least run fast enough to end it very quickly.
So he drops his bag on the ground and before Kevin can even react he starts running. He's back at his bag's side before they can even blink.
Andrew rises his eyebrow and smiles at him. There's promise of hurt to come in that smile, but Neil has faced much more dangerous man in his life than Andrew Minyard. He's not that easily cowed.
Kevin seems too shocked to react for a second before he huffs. "Okay. Again."
"No." Neil says, grabbing his bag. "I'm done."
Kevin seems displeased by this, but Neil knows what happens when you play too close to the fire. And Andrew was a pyre ready to burn them all to ashes.
"You can be a good hero," Kevin tells him, stopping him from getting away, "but you need to train. You need to make sure not to waste any of your energies. If you curve too wide, you lose momentum. Momentum you can use to punch someone in the face."
Neil huffs, shrugging. "I can punch people adequately enough."
"Adequately enough doesn't mean perfectly," Kevin says, rounding up on Neil. "You want to do this, I can see it in your eyes, but you're still too unskilled. Give your power to me, Neil. Allow me to make you a hero worth remembering."
It's a strange dream the one Kevin is giving him. A promise of something that Neil should never want. The possibility of being remembered. Of being someone.
Neil who isn't even a real boy, who doesn't even have a real face. Neil who was born to be forgotten and abandoned.
It's really ridiculous to want something so much and know you should never have it.
But, he thinks, he's here for this. For the little time he spends here, for the little time he's Neil Josten, he's here for this.
"Okay," he says, regretting it the moment the words leave his mouth.
Kevin smiles and nods. "There are lockers inside that building. Put the bag inside one of them. Andrew will stay here while we train, if that's what you're afraid of."
They both turn towards Andrew who simply shrugs and go and sit down on one of the nearby benches. He doesn't seem interested in them anymore and Neil decides to give it a try,
He runs towards the locker room and closes the bag inside one of the lockers. When he runs back, Kevin is already running some laps.
Just like Neil suspected, Kevin is slower than Neil is and so he catches up to him quickly, running circles around him. Kevin looks at him, not bothered in the least. After a while Neil starts being tired, but Kevin doesn't show any signs of stopping or even painting.
He's running steadily while Neil's stamina depletes itself.
"If you don't know how to pace yourself," Kevin tells him, when Neil is running at his speed, too tired to accelerate, "you won't ever use your power effectively. You might be fast, but that doesn't mean anything if you're not trained."
Neil wants to tell him that he run a whole night, once, just after he left his mother's body on a beach, burning away in the sand. Yet he doesn't say anything, he just nods.
Kevin seems satisfied of that. "You will start doing some weight everyday and some training for your legs. You need to develop the muscles in there. Also we need to know how fast can you go and we'll start from there."
Neil nods, finally stopping. Kevin stops as well, looking no worse for the wear.
This is the difference, Neil thinks, between someone who has been trained for this all his life and someone who only knows enough to survive.
Andrew is still exactly where he was before, looking at them from afar. Neil has been looking at him constantly and he knows that he hasn't even tried to go towards the locker room.
Still, when Kevin tells him they're done and Neil can go grab his bag again he feels a little better.

That afternoon Wymack tells him that Abby wants to see him. Apparently Abby is the healer of th school, the one that makes sure that everyone who is in the team isn't suffering from anu ill effects from their powers.
She looks at Neil and smiles, a kind and caring expression. Neil has never seen someone look like that and he's almost ready to sprint out of the room, but he knows he has to do this.
It would be worse, really, if he didn't have his secondary mutation. He's glad that no one knows about it, really, since it's something easy to hide.
Neil Josten is a sprinter and that's the only mutation he has. Nathaniel Wesniski, however, is another story completely.
He removes his shirt quickly, putting it down on a chair. There isn’t a single scar on Neil’s body, nothing for Abby to see and judge, but Neil knows what’s under his modifications. If he was to drop his concentration and let her see how his skin really is… he wonders what she would say.
She scans him and touches him lighty, without any thought. It’s obvious she’s a trained professional, used to see kids much more fucked up that Neil appears to be.
He imagines she would have smiles sweetly at him, tried to cover up the horror in her eyes. A part of him wants her to see; a part of him wants them all to see. But he hasn’t stayed alive this long by giving in to this stupid impulses.
“You’re cleared,” Abby tells him in the end, writing something down in her clipboard. “You need to eat a little more and put some muscles. With the way your body consumes proteins and fats you should eat almost twice what a normal human should.”
“I’ve never had any problems,” Neil tells her, sincerely. Food has never been something that they had in abundance and they had to do with what they could find.
He might have suffered hunger more times than he can remember, but he had never been unable to run.
“I know you think that,” Abby says with a sigh, “but believe me there. If you start eating a more balance diet and a little more? You’ll leave them all in the dust.”
Neil shrugs, because he doesn’t really care in the end, and starts putting his shirt back.
“There’s someone else you might be required to talk to,” Abby tells him, putting down her book. “It won’t be for a while, and I assure you that she won’t do anything you don’t want her to do.”
That’s… a strange phrase. Neil turns towards her thinking that this is it, the moment this place reveals itself for what it really was. After all no one created a school for fuck ups for no other reason than compassion, right?
Neil really should know better than that.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Abby immediately says, a little uncomfortable. “It’s just to be sure that you kids are alright. David just doesn’t want to send you all fighting if you’re not ready and… well you could say her talent is figuring out what’s in your head.”
“A telepath…” Neil summarizes and he takes a step back. His father never had any use for telepaths. He preferred to do it the old way, not one to waste time on psychological torture, but Neil has seen over the years his fare share of supervillain with some kind of telepathic power.
Enough to know that he doesn’t want one of them inside his own head any time soon.
“A psychologist, really,” Abby immediately reassures him. “She’s also a telepath, but one who is very good at keeping herself out of the way. If you don’t invite her in she won’t do anything.”
“I don’t want to meet her,” he spits out, shaking his head. They can’t force him to have someone rummage in his head. There are too many secrets in there, too many things that he doesn’t want anyone to know.
“Neil…” Abby tries, but he shakes his head.
“No. I won’t stay if that’s the price to pay,” he immediately tells her, taking another step back. His bag is in the room with them, he could just pick it up and run. He still has everything in there.
“Ok! I’m sorry really! We’ll talk about it again when you’re a little more settled, okay?” she tries, as if that would reassure him.
That doesn’t mean never. It just means when they have him cornered enough.
“No!” He repeats, getting closer to his own bag. Before he can really start to run, however, the room opens and Wymack steps inside, looking a little worried.
“Everything okay here?” he asks, watching Neil closely.
“I’m not meeting your telepath,” Neil says again, picking up his bag. “You can’t force me.”
“Meeting a psychologist is really just standard procedure for a superhero, kid,” Wymack says with a sigh. “Betsy won’t enter your mind, you have my word on that. She’s just a normal psychologist under all of that.”
Neil grips the bag tighter and stares down at the man. “So everyone has to meet her? Even Andrew.” He really didn’t think, from what he knew of the boy, that the other would be amenable to something like that.
Andrew seemed like someone who protected his own secrets jealousy and didn’t enjoy having people prod inside his head.
“Andrew is the only one that sees Betsy regularly,” Wymack immediately replies. “I promise to you. You just have to met her once a year at most. And if something particularly traumatizing happens. And whenever you decide to. It’s mandatory…”
Was it? Or were they trying to trick him and discover all his secrets? They really didn’t seem like the type, but Neil didn’t know them all that well.
“If I ever feel her inside my head…” he mutters, glaring at them. He doesn’t know what he would do, probably run away, but he looks at them and hopes that they might take it as some form of threat.
The two adults seem to breathe easier after that and Neil uses that opportunity to slip by them.
“Neil!” Wymack calls after him, “Matt and Seth are coming back tomorrow, probably late morning. The rest of the team will arrive during the day.”
Oh right, his two roommates… he wonders what kind of mutants they were.

Matt, it seemed, was the mutant version of a hug machine, or so it seemed to Neil. He didn’t hug the two twins, nor Kevin, but he immediately hugs Nicky and tries to hug Neil as well. Only when Neil ducks out of the way, faster than humanly possible, Matt blinks and looks at him.
He doesn’t seem to be offended by Neil’s reaction, and instead he smiles at him. “I’m sorry, it’s kind of a habit. I like hugging and touching people in general,” he says, shining, “but I forgot not everyone likes it. I’m Matt, and I’m happy to have you in my room. Me and Seth don’t always go along great.”
“Why?” Neil can’t help but ask. Matt doesn’t reply immediately and so Nicky fills in the blanks.
“He’s a dick.”
“He’s a dick,” Matt confirms, shrugging. “Not really that bad, most of the time he means well. But he’s a dick.”
Neil nods, gathering all the informations he can. He will have to live with these people for as long as he’s here, and even if that didn’t mean much, he needs to learn to adapt to them.
He sees Matt walk towards all of his luggage and he takes a step to help when Matt starts gathering all the luggages with a single hand. Super strength, then.
When he has every luggage safely picked up, Matt smiles at him and motions to him. “Dan, my girlfriend, will be here soon. So i want to bring my things to the room and help her. Do you want to come with me?”
Neil looks at the other occupants of the common room (Aaron and Nicky) and decides that he would really prefer Matt’s company to theirs.
He doesn’t know Aaron all that well, an while he thinks Nicky is mostly harmless, he talks too much for Neil’s tates. Matt seems like the safest bet.
So they walk out of the room and towards the stairs that lead to their room. They’re not even a minute into their trek when Matt says, with a strange voice, “Sorry about leaving you with the Monsters, hope they didn’t scare you too much. The rest of us are pretty normal.”
Neil turns towards him, surprised.
“Monsters?” he can’t help but ask, surprised.
“It’s how we call them,” Matt explains, shrugging. “I mean, I guess it’s a little mean. But it stuck.”
“Why are they called the Monsters?” he can’t help but ask, wondering.
Matt shrugs, looking at him. “If you don’t know it’s okay, really. Let’s just say that there’s not that much love between us and them.”
That didn’t bode well for the team, really. But Neil doesn’t care, won’t care.There’s no reason for him to be concerned about any of this.
“Anyway you’ll see,” Matt continues, smiling brightly at him, “we’re much nicer than they are. Mostly. Seth is kind of a dick. Allison as well, I guess. But Renee is a sweetheart and Dan is great!”
Neil doesn’t want to tell him that he feels a little unsettled by nice. It’s not something he has much experience with, and usually he doesn't know how to react to it.
Nice is a language that Neil (or Alex, or Chris, or Daniel. Or Nathaniel) never got the chance to learn and like all languages he has become rusty. He wonders if in Matt’s eyes Neil is more monster than a part of their team.
It’s not that difficult to imagine.
They reach their room quickly and Neil actually helps Matt put some of his stuff away. If Matt notices that none of Neil’s shirt made it out of the bag, he doesn’t comment on it. Matt really seems like someone who is too good to be real.
They’re almost done with all of Matt’s luggages when the door opens and someone else steps inside. Neil only has to look at the boy for a second before realizing what the other meant.
Seth really looks like a dick. With his shaved head and his piercing eyes, he looked like any of his father’s lackeys. The way his mouth curls almost in disgust when he looks at Neil doesn’t help.
“Oh great, so we really got another freak,” Seth says with a sigh, putting his own baggage on a corner of the room.
“Try not to be a dick for at least a minute if you can,” Matt says, annoyed. “Neil doesn’t deserve it.”
“If he’s in this team like us then he’s a fuck up just like us,” Seth reminds him, with a sneer. “Just because Day likes to pretend to play Hero doesn’t mean it’s not like that.”
Honestly, from what Neil has seen, he can’t really say that Seth is wrong. Beside Matt, Kevin and maybe Nicky, the rest of the team isn’t exactly Superhero material.
Neil absolutely included.
“So I see we’re already making a good impression?” someone says from the door, just behind Seth, and Neill looks up to see a woman looking at them with an amused smile.
Before he can wonder why, exactly, there are so many people in his room, Matt stands up and almost runs towards the door. “Dan! I thought you were arriving later!”
“Change of programs,” she replies, hugging back her boyfriend with a smile. “I already put everything in my room.”
“I could have helped you,” Matt immediately replies, pouting a little, and Dan laughs. At her laugh Matt, still draped on her, relaxes and almost melts. It’s really a strange sight.
“Whatever,” Seth mumbles, taking off immediately and leaving his own luggage unpacked in the room.
Matt and Dan watch him go for a second before Matt asks: “Are him and Allison on or off?”
“I think off. I don’t know, I stopped keeping track,” Dan replies, shrugging. “How much do you want to bet they’ll be back together by the end of the week?”
“I don’t know, I think they’re already on.”
“Fine, I’ll take the bet.” That resolved, apparently, they both turns towards Neil and smiles. Dan takes a step forward as well, but Matt follows her, apparently unwilling to let her go. “I’m Dan. I’m the team leader of the Foxes, I guess you can say. My power is Elasticity.” And, as she says that, she extends her hand enough to put it in front of Neil, to shake.
He does so, amused. Dan seems pleased by that and she smiles at him. “I’m glad to see you all in one piece. Three days alone with the monsters… I would have came back earlier, had I knew.”
Neil wants to say it hadn’t been that bad, because it’s true, but his usual situation is not something they would probably consider ideal.
“It’s okay. We mostly trained,” he answers honestly.
“Well! Now that we’re here it will be another story,” she promises him, with a smile. “We’re having a party today. And you’ll get to meet the rest of the team!”
Neil shrugs. He’s not really one for parties, but he can see that both Dan and Matt are looking forward to it, and there’s nowhere for him to hide.

That night he meets Allison and Renee as well.
Allison, who is in fact still Seth’s girlfriend, is a telekinetic. She has no problem showing off her power every two seconds, using it for retrieving various alcoholic shots. Allison is what one could consider a beautiful woman. Even Neil, who isn’t usually one to notice these kind of things, can safely say that Allison is gorgeous.
Seth and her make a striking couple, if not completely obnoxious.
Renee, on the other hand, doesn’t talk about her power. She’s completely covered, with gloves covering her hands. She also has rainbow colored hairs and she smiles at everyone.
She looks sweet, sweeter than anyone on that team should have any right to be. Neil is unsettled by her and tries to keep as far away as possible from her presence.
All in all it’s a much more enjoyable night than the other two he spent at Palmetto. The others, without the monsters, looked more like a real team.
He can’t help but wonder why there is this gap between the two sides of the team. Who was the one who created it in the first place, and who enforces it.
Neil realizes he’s starting to care about them a little and shakes his head. Making friends isn’t the reason he’s there, and he should really start remembering that.

The next day is the first day of training all together. It’s a sorry sight.
Of course everyone has their individual courses, specific to their own special powers, but there isn’t any kind of unity between the team. Everyone acts without really looking at anyone else.
Dan has a pretty solid grip on the other upperclassmen and they tend to follow her like a unity, but she has no control over the Monsters.
Kevin does as he wants to all the time and usually just yells at the others because they’re not to his standards. Aaron, whose role is more support than anything else, watches them from the side, uncaring. Nicky spends the entire training seated down on a bench and cheering for them.
The worst of them all is Andrew, who stays there for half the training, without doing anything - not even a little spark - and then walks away in the middle of it.
No one even blinks at the occurrence and that only makes Neil think that it’s not such an abnormal sight.
They are, for lack of better terms, an unmitigated disaster.
They have no strategy or united focus. Everyone is more focused on their individual strength and achievements to care about anyone else’s.
It’s not a superhero team. Just like Seth said, they were just a team of fuck ups.
Wymack closes the training early, telling them that it’s only the beginning of the year and they need to get back in synch. From how everyone looks at each other, Neil doesn’t think the others ever thought they were in synch. Still, no one really says anything while they start walking towards the showers.
Neil, however, doesn’t really want to go to sleep. He has still so much pent up energy an he needs to run, deplete it. He sees Matt look at him, but he motions for him to go. He just wants to run a little, maybe train with Kevin if the other wants to.
When he looks around, however, he doesn’t see Kevin anywhere. Well, it seems like Neil will have to train by himself.
He runs laps of the training grounds and does some of the laps on the obstacle course. When he gets bored of looking at the same things he does a couple of weights, just like Kevin told him and after that… after that he still wants to run.
He’s been eating more, just like Abby said, and already after two days he thinks he has too much energy to run. Neil isn’t used to this, to the thrumming in the veins, to all this unused energy.
Life on the run was never one where he could relax enough to reach this level of boredom.
Well, he guesses he could go run a little outside. Make a lap of the entire building, and maybe see how long it takes him to reach the closest city. It could be a test, after all he needs to know how long it would take him to escape in case of need.
It’s why he runs towards the exit, already thinking of the possible route to take, when he hears someone talk. He stops and notices it comes from Wymack’s office. Maybe he should leave it alone, but he can see a concitated voice.
Too curious to really pass it up he runs towards the office and peaks in. What he sees is a strange sight:
On one side of the desk there’s Wymack, evidently trying to calm Kevin and, on the other side, Kevin seems to be freaking out.
“You don’t understand,” Kevin says, holding his head in his hands, “if they’re doing this is because Master has a plan. Riko… I can’t go back…”
“They can’t take you back, Kevin, that’s not how it works,” Wymack promises him. “I received this news as a heads up, and I wanted you to know it. Edgar Allen is still far away.”
“But now the Ravens have jurisdiction here! They can swoop in whenever they wanted. I… I don’t want them here. Why else would they do this?” Kevin seems almost feverish, lost in a sort of fear that seems to be paralyzing him.
Neil almost wants to show himself and ask for clarifications, but he doesn’t think it’s really the time. It’s something about Edgar Allen, the Raven and Riko. Maybe if he stays and listens a little bit more, he’ll catch some sort of clue about what that all meant.
Why would Kevin be afraid of them deciding to operate in their district? The last that Neil knew, Kevin and RIko had been inseparable until the villainous attack that had left Kevin with a broken leg.
An almost invulnerable hero with a broken leg had almost seemed impossible, but there Kevin was. The healers at Edgar Allen couldn’t do much for him and so, in the end, Kevin had searched for outside help.
By the time his leg had healed, Kevin had already decided to transfer to Palmetto.
None of that gives him a clue about Kevin’s fear now.
He’s too engrossed in thinking about this, that Neil doesn’t notices until it’s too late that Wymack looks up right at that moment and spots him on the other side on the door. They gazes catch for a second, but Wymack doesn’t react in any way.
“Look,” Wymack says, standing up. “Stay here for a while. Andrew won’t be done for a hour and you have the time to recompose yourself. You’re safe here.”
Kevin doesn’t say anything, simply remains there, trembling and nothing like the hero Neil imagined him to be. Honestly? He seems more like coward, cowering and whimpering, And he has the gull to talk to Neil about being a hero?
Coach walks towards the door then, and Neil takes a step back to allow him to exit his office. They look at each other for a second without anyone saying anything before Wymack sighs.
“Look. I know it’s a lot to ask, but I would prefer if no one else knew about this,” he says, closing the door and making sure that Kevin couldn't hear them.
“Why?” Neil wonders, curious. Edgar Allan’s transfer doesn’t seem important enough to warrant a surprise or that kind of reaction in Kevin and Neil needs to know what he’s putting himself at risk for.
After all he can recognize the look of a terrified man, of someone running from someone stronger.
“You’re a Fox now, and so you deserve to know the truth. Kevin hasn’t parted in the best ways with Edgar Allen and the Moriyamas,” Wymack explains. “If by not the best ways you mean that they broke his leg.”
Neil blinks. Then blinks again. And tries to make sense of what he has just heard. What?
“The news said it was a villain,” he says, almost short of breath.
“Yes, of course they did. But everyone knows that the Moriyamas aren’t the most trustworthy. They have a lot of politicians and supervillains under them.”
“Supervillains?” The Moriyama? One of the most famous families of mutants and superheroes on the planet?
“Yeah. Kevin came here after Riko broke his leg. We weren’t sure if he would have ever gotten back his super speed,” Wymack explains, “and even now, he’s not as fast as he was once. He probably won’t ever be.”
Neil had always wondered why Riko and Kevin had been there that day, when Nathan killed that man. At the time, as little as Neil was, he hadn’t asked himself the question. This, however, this explained everything.
His father and the Moriyamas were probably working together.
Neil couldn’t believe it.
Would it really be possible? Would his father work with the Moriyamas? Would they really allow him free reign over Baltimore in that way? How could they manage to keep this all quiet?
Neil doesn't really know, but all this means is that he really can't show his face to Riko or anyone from the Ravens.
If the Moriyama are working with his father, it would be too easy for them to draw the connection between Neil and the Butcher and that's something he can't allow to happen.
"How did Riko break his leg?" he asks insteady, trying to throw a look inside the office.
Wymack shrugs. "Everyone knows Riko is stronger than anyone else. Kevin's powers don't offer him a hundred percent protection. He probably got in a good hit..."
It seems so surreal now, learning all of this. Everything that went under his nose.
"Look, Neil," Wymack takes a step forward and leans in, making sure again that no one is listening to them. "I just want a couple of days for Kevin to digest the news before telling everyone, okay? Of course we'll tell them soo, but the situation is complicated enough without this.
"So you want me to keep silent?" Neil wonders. Lying isn't really something Neil is new to, and he almost wants to laugh at the irony. He will keep Wymack's secret, even if only because the man has been kinder than anyone else in his entire life.
Neil won't be able to stay there too long, it's obvious now, but he wants to enjoy the weeks he has.
"Yeah. I mean... I know you've just arrived and..." Wymack seems to be having some kind of internal emotional conflict, but Neil really doesn't care.
"Okay," He says, shrugging, "can I use this to get out of meeting with the telepath?"
"No. That's mandatory. And she's a psychologist. She's not going to use her power to enter you mind, Neil, I promise." Wymack seems to be long suffering about this, but Neil has an advantage now.
"I'll see her, but I won't reply to her if I don't feel like it," he bargains, looking steadfastly at the door to his office.
Wymack thinks about it a couple of seconds before sighing. "God, I can already see the headaches you'll get me. Fine. You meet her and tell her just what you want to tell her and I'll be satisfied. That's okay?"
Neil shrugs and starts walking away. "I was never here," he promises, and the next moment he's out of the camp and running laps around the building.

Training on Thursday goes exactly the same way as the day before, but Andrew doesn't live in the middle of practice, he simply stands there the whole time. He looks at them like he's not really interested in anything they're doing, but Neil notices him guarding both Kevin and Aaron like a hawk.
It seems that while Andrew might not care about the superhero business, he's interested in keeping at least two people of this team safe. It's something.
Still, everyone goes back to their room quickly when the training ends and that leaves Neil and Kevin training a little further than anyone else. The other boy seems to have completely recovered from the day before. So much so that Neil is almost impressed: he wouldn't have pegged Kevin for such a good liar, really.
Neil is almost not too surprised to see Andrew and Kevin immediately leaving after their training. They don't wait for Neal to finish showering to go back together. Neil doesn't much care.
He's a little surprised, however, when, the next day, he meets Nicky sitting down in the communal living room. He's alone, and that's surprising enough in itself.
When Nicky looks up at his entrance and smiles, Neil knows that this can only mean disaster.
"You're here! Andrew said you would be back soon," Nicky tells him with a smile. There's a bag beside his leg and he has a manic smile on his face.
"You're coming with us tomorrow, right?" Nicky asks, standing up and walking towards him.
"Where?" Neil wonders, eyeing the bag with a safe dose of mistrust.
"To dance, obviously!" Nicky replies with a smile. "Andrew really wants you to come."
"I don't really care what Andrew wants," Neil replies, honestly. If the pyromaniacs wants something from him, maybe he can just come out and say it himself instead of letting Nicky do it.
The other's face falls down, a little disappointed. "Look, I know you don't really trust us very much, but I think it would be good to bond a little, right? Start feeling like an actual team."
Neil wants to point out that they haven't done a good job with the rest of their team, but he feels like Nicky isn't really the right recipient for his anger. It's a shame Andrew isn't here.
"I'll think about it, okay? I can't promise much else," Neil says and shrugs away the happy look in Nicky's face.
Dancing and partying aren't really his scene, and he's even less interested knowing it's something that Andrew wants. Still, Nicky seems to be happy enough and he walks back towards the sofa, picking up the bag and giving it to Neil.
"We've seen your wardrobe and it's a disaster. Andrew wants you to wear that tomorrow," Nicky explains with a wink. Before Neil can reject it, the other walks back towards the sofa and sits on it, going back to the book he was reading before Neil's entrance.
Well, the conversation is over, it seems.
Neil walks back to his room and drops both hi duvet and the new bag on the floor, a little annoyed. Matt is already there and he looks at Neil with apprehension.
"Are you okay, Neil?" he asks, worried.
Matt really seems to be a generally nice dude, really. Neil can't help but ask himself what he's doing with the Foxes.
"Yeah, nothing I can't handle, don't worry..." he will open the bag later, he decides. The probability of him going to dance with the monster is, after all, practically non existent.
Matt doesn't seem reassures but he still nods and looks at him. "Look, I wanted to ask you. Me and the girls want to eat something all together tonight and we wanted to invite you. What do you say?"
It's not exactly a surprise, he thinks, but it still shocks him. Is he up to a night with the others? He's not really sure...
"Come on! It will only be two rooms over, and you can run back here in less than three seconds," Matt urges him, standing up and smiling at him. "We just want to know you better."
Neil looks at the room and then at Matt, beaming at him. And he doesn't want to say no. Realizing how little time he has left here, with this people, in this semi peaceful life, makes him want to appreciate it.
Maybe it will be harder after this to get back into running, but he doesn't want to waste it. The feeling of people wanting him around. Of someone being nice to him.
It's rather alien to him.
"Okay," he answer then and is a little surprised when Matt whoops. The other goes to hug him but stops before doing so. Maybe he's remembering Neil's reaction to the other time he had tried.
But Matt stops and simply smiles at him, without touching him. "I promise you won't regret it."
Neil shrugs and follows him out of the room. They lock the door behind themselves and go to the girls room.

It's a strange night, but not exactly unpleasant.
Dan and Matt spend most of the night hugging and Matt seems to get in an even better mood the more they do so. Allison on the other hand seems to get more and more annoyed the more time they spend there.
"She and Seth are fighting," Renee informs him, looking apologetic about the whole thing.
Neil still tries to be as far away as possible from Renee at all times. There's something he can't place about her, under all her niceness and smiles. Of course it can just be that he's a little paranoid,but he has learnt the hard way to always trust his instincts. And right now they were screaming at him.
It's during the night, when Dan stands up to get something to drink, that Matt turns towards him. His expression has lost most of the happyness from before.
"Dan says I should tell you sooner rather than later," he says, looking towards the floor. "And she's right. I mean we live together, and I like you. So you should know."
Neil looks at the other, confused. It doesn't really seem like a confession about some kind of violent crime, or maybe Neil's bar is set pretty low as far as confessions go.
"Super Strength is not my only power," Matt reveals in the end, looking a little embarrassed. "I'm a touch empath as well. It's why I don't really like fighting. I prefer training and using my strength for other stuff."
Neil blinks, surprised. He knows what empaths do, and being a touch empath probably meant that Matt would feel every emotion of everyone he ever punched. Neil could guess it wasn't a good experience.
He can't really imagine what that would mean. "I'm sorry..." he says, looking at the other man and trying to show his sympathy.
Matt looks surprised at that, however, and he blinks. "What?"
"I'm sorry," Neil repeats, sincerely, "that must suck."
"It...I mean it kind of does. I'm past it now, but I wasn't dealing with it well for a while," Matt replies, honestly. He's looking at Neil a little strangely. "But I should be the one apologizing," he explains, "all of the Foxes now, so when I hug them or touch them, they know that I'm feeling some of their emotions. I almost hugged you... a lot. It wouldn't have been fair."
The hesitation from before now makes sense. Matt hadn't been thinking about Neil pulling out of the hug the first time, but about his own powers.
It strangely warmth his heart. To have someone so conscious of his mutation, of something he couldn't really control. He thinks of all the people he has seen Matt touch, and he realizes there aren't that many of them.
He hugs Dan the most and always seems to relax while he does that, and Neil has seen him hug Nicky and Renee as well. He sometimes shares some casual touches with Allison, but everyone else seems to be off limits. Neil now understands why.
Still, he realizes how hard it must be for Matt.
He's not sure what emotions Neil would be giving off most of the time, but emotions are easier to give away than thoughts. He feels like he has a pretty good control on his own emotions and what he shows to people, and unlike thoughts, emotions wouldn't blow up his cover.
So Neil makes a split second decision and extends his hand, touching Matt's arm. The other stops, surprised, and blinks.
Neil hopes he's sending gratitude and friendship, and not something else, but Matt immediately relaxes under the touch and smiles brightly at him.
"It's okay," Neil tells him, "if I don't want you to know something I can just run away from you. I'm certain you can't catch up to me."
Matt laughs, nodding. "No shit, you're like a flash, running around like a pinball. I can't even keep track of you. To be honest it's kind of cool. We only had Kevin before, but he's not..."
RIko broke his leg, Wymack had said, and we weren't sure if he would ever regain his super speed. Matt doesn't finish his sentence, but Neil can guess what he wanted to say.
"Your power is cool too," Neil says shrugging. He means the super strength, sure, but Neil would have loved to have some kind of telepathic or empathic power.
It would have been much easier to know someone's intentions before actually having a gun pointed at you.
Matt laughs at that and shakes his head. "Strength? Sure. But being an empath isn't that great, really. I mean... sometimes it's great. I love touching Dan and making sure she's happy. Feeling her emotions always makes me feel safe. But there are times when you touch someone and you feel such intense hatred or... or you feel something worse."
"Worse?" Neil wonders, looking at Matt with curiosity.
The other doesn't reply, however, and simply shrugs.
"It's nothing. Just know it's not always a nice power," Matt admits, standing up. "I'm going to join Dan, she was giving us a little space to talk. Do you want to come?"
Neil looks at Matt and then at the rest of the room occupants. He actually had a better time than he would have thought, but he's tired and this, all this, is a little too much for him.
"I'm going to bed," he says, with a smile, "thank you."
Matt doesn't try to stop him and he simply smiles at him, happily. Neil really wonders how someone so trusting could exist in this world.
He's back in front of his door in mere seconds and he opens it quickly and then he stops. There's nothing out of place in the room, but Neil feels an itch under his skin. He runs towards his bed and takes his duffel bag from under the bed and opens it.
Everything is exactly where he left them, except all the tags aren't in the position Neil leaves them in. Rookie mistake, really. He digs inside and relaxes when he feels the binder, still there.
He's sure Andrew has seen it, but at least he hasn't taken it. The money, once he cheks, are still there as well.
It really seems like someone is hellbent on making his life a living hell, but they don't know who they are dealing with. Neil has faced much greater and scarier enemies than Andrew Minyard.
Still, he can't really allow this to continue, can he?
Neil closes his bag, puts everything back as it should be, and stand up. Time to make someone understand that he's not someone who will take this quietly.


Andrew was starting to lose hope in Josten lowering his guard enough for him to take a look at that bag and so had resigned himself to organizing Columbia without ever knowing what the kid was hiding.
And then Matt Boyd had done a miracle. Figured that all of Andrew's tactics to wait Josten out would have failed and Boyd had just been his usual bright self and given Andrew the perfect opportunity.
When Nicky tells him that Neil and Matt were partying in the girls' room and Neil doesn't have his duffel bag with him, Andrew walks towards room immediately.
He doesn't know how much time he has, and so he knows he has to be efficient about this. What he discovers is even better than what he expected.
Like everyone else he has his theories about Josten, but what he finds only make his suspicions worsen.
The large amount of cash are one thing. The long lists of numbers and codes are another. But when Andrew reaches the clippings upon clippings of articles about Kevin and Riko he knows he scored.
This is too much of an obsession on the two top young superhero of the nation, even for a junkie like Neil is. Andrew might not know if the Junkie's obsession is with Kevin or with Riko, but he will have to take care of it soon.
Now bringing Neil with them to Columbia becomes even more imperative.
Andrew puts everything back exactly like he found it and then walks back to his own room.
Kevin is looking at battle strategies, studying team positioning and other bullshit. Aaron and Nicky are playing a videogame and, by the looks of it, Nicky is loosing.
Andrew is in too much high spirit to be annoyed at the volume of the TV. He has managed to finally find out some interesting information about the new kid and he will have tomorrow night to confirm if Josten needs to leave or not and, most importantly, how fast.
He's pretty happy with himself and he goes to make himself a bowl of ice cream to celebrate. The pills make him feel more lightheaded than usual and he knows he's smiling even if he doesn't mean to.
He has almost finished his bowl when someone knocks on the door. Seven ripetitive knocks in such a fast sequence that it can't really be anyone but Josten.
Kevin and Aaron both turns to look at him with a glare of accusation on their face, while Nicky goes to open the door.
"Neil? Everything okay?" Nicky asks and while Andrew can't see Neil's face from his place, he can imagine what the other must look like. He would say he's sorry, but he would be lying.
He's not even sorry he got caught. At least it's something interesting.
Finally Nicky steps back and Andrew can see their unwelcome guest. Neil looks ready to kill. There's a smile there, something brittle and cruel.
Neil is handsome, it's something Andrew has been aware off since that day in Millport, but this is something more. That smile makes Andrew feel things he really shouldn't be feeling.
Neil is looking directly at him, a calculating look, and then he speaks and Andrew doesn't understand a word of it. French, he realizes, seeing Kevin blanche.
Kevin immediately replies and Neil continues. He holds Andrew's gaze for a moment longer and then finally turns towards Kevin.
While Andrew might not understand the single words, there's a general air of mockery coming from Neil. Kevin's agitated state can only mean one thing: Neil Josten is using Kevin's cowardice against him.
It's not something particularly difficult to do, of course, but he's impressed that the runaway managed to pick up on it in so little time.
Either Kevin really is that flat, or Josten is more perceptive than Andrew gave him credit for.
Well, he managed to figure out that someone went through his stuff in less than a minute, it seems. Andrew knows how perceptive the runaway is.
What Andrew doesn't expect is to see Kevin rise up and walk towards Josten, menacing and gesticulating wildly.
Neil might be faster but there's no doubt that if Kevin catches him Neil is done. Yet, the other doesn't seem particularly scared.
It seems that where Kevin's worst weakness is his cowardice, Neil's might be his lack of self-preservation.
A strange trait for someone that seems to be hellbent on surviving alone.
Still, Neil stands his ground even when Kevin smacks him against the wall hard enough to probably bruise the kid's back. He has guts, Andrew will give him that.
It's then that Matt, probably called by the noise, burst into the hallway and walks briskly towards them. As always Boyd, goody-two-shoes Boyd hesitates with his arms extended and doesn't touch any of them. "Kevin, let him go."
Andrew watches, interested. If Boyd tries to hurt Kevin, he'll have to intervene. He doesn't particularly care that Boys is stronger than him, he know he can defeat him.
Neil is still smirking, looking like he got exactly what he wanted and Kevin hesitates a second before letting him go. "Nothing's happening," Kevin says, gritting his teeth.
Neil just shrugs and nods. "As he said," he confirms looking at Matt.
Boyd looks between them, a little concerned, but seems to buy it. Behind him the rest of the foxes is looking at the scene, confused and a little alarmed.
Kevin walks away then, retreating to their room and closing the door behind him. It's lucky that most of the doors in the place are reinforced to withstand mutant kids, or he's sure it would have given away.
The situations now controlled, Matt turns back with a last lingering look at Neil, and goes to reassure the rest of the team.
Andrew finds this whole spectacle displeasing. He's the one that rummaged inside Neil's bag, why did he go against Kevin?
He needs to learn french, it seems.
"Is this really all you wanted to do?" he asks Neil, unable to help himself.
Neil turns towards him slowly, almost considering. "You know, if you want me to go, you can just tell me." "What gave you that impression?" Andrew replies, all teeth and violence. The fact that Neil doesn't even react says a lot about him. A lot that Andrew files away for later.
The only one who is ever so relaxed around him is Renee.
"Why do I have to give you to make sure you stay away from my stuff?" Neil asks him. It seems that Josten really is paying attention and is trying to speak Andrew's language.
It's a valiant effort, but this is a game Andrew has been playing most of his life and Neil seems to be an amateur at it.
"Come with us to Columbia tomorrow," he says then, knowing full well that Neil won't refuse now.
The other seems to be thinking about it for a second before he nods and walks away without sparing Andrew of another glance.
Well, it seems the trap is set and he has a little mouse to catch.
"Is it really necessary?" someone asks and Andrew turns to see Nicky, looking at Neil's retreating back.
"Since when have you started to grow a conscience?" Andrew wonders out loud, already bored of the conversation.
"Fine. Forget I said anything. At least I get to see him wasted, he's too cute to just be sober all his life," Nicky says, shrugging.
Andrew feels prickle of annoyance hit him and he walks towards Nicky, crowding him against the wall. "Try something and I'll nail you to the wall."
"Woah!" Nicky almost screams, scared. "I won't try anything, I swear. I don't know why you're taking it so seriously."
Of course he doesn't know, Andrew thinks. After all Nicky doesn't know anything about Andrew.
"Just do as I say," he growls and then walks way back to their room.
He wants to know what Neil said to Kevin, and he wants to know now.

Kevin doesn't tell him much. Apparently Neil talked to him about Riko and his injury and that was pretty much it.
Andrew has an inkling that maybe Kevin is lying to him, but he can't be sure. RIko is a touchy subject for Kevin and a subject that is easily exploitable.
It might even be the truth. Maybe Neil just went and poked the Kevin bull with the big Red Riko flag and everything else was history.
It doesn't matter because Andrew will know what he needs that night and then he will be able to put this whole mess behind him. Either Josten will prove himself another boring person, or he will prove Andrew's suspicion right and he will be immediately kicked out of the school.
Either way, Andrew is going to clean his hands off this one after Columbia and it feels good.
Of course, Neil has been the most interesting thing in Andrew's life in the past two years, but that's beside the point. He'll be glad to get rid of him.
He really will.
Andrew will also be able to stop looking at him. Neil might be handsome, but Andrew doesn't enjoy thinking about those kind of things. He has a good arrangement with Roland, the bartender at End's Twilight, and he doesn't need anything else.
He really doesn't. Andrew repeats it to himself when Neil arrives the next day, dressed in the shirt and pants that Andrew chose for him.
It seems that under the baggy and old clothes, Neil had a... pretty good body. Andrew can practically see Nicky appraise him.
Andrew will have to be sure that his cousin doesn't get himself too carried away that night.
"Neil!" Nicky welcomes the newcomer with a smile. "You should always dress yourself this way! I mean you're always hot, but like this? I'm sure Erik understand."
Andrew and Aaron both glare at his cousin, even if for different reasons, while Neil looks confused. "Erik?" "My boyfriend," Nicky explains, with a smile, "he lives in Germany. But he's very understanding," he explains.
"Just stop," Aaron groans in german. "You're disgusting."
Andrew sees Nicky glare at Aaron and Neil looking confused at both of them. French, it seems, is the only linguistic talent that the other has.
Nicky goes behind the wheel, while Aaron claims the seat beside him. Andrew, Kevin and Neil go in the back.
It's a torture not being able to drive, but Andrew can already start to feel the effects of the pills leaving his body. Soon he will be shaking too much to be allowed to drive.
The nausea will hit him later and then, if he doesn't take something to alleviate the symptoms, hell. Thankfully the Ice cream parlour isn't that far ahead.
They get there later than Andrew will like and he can already feel the nausea gnaw at his stomach. When the waiter brings them the dust, he immediately sprinkles a little bit of it on his tongue.
Neil looks at them, surprised, but refuses when offered one. Oh, poor Neil, he doesn't even know what is going to happen to him soon.
Really, it's his fault. Andrew gave him plenty of opportunities in the past to come clean and avoid this fate. He's the one that chose to have it the difficult way.
There are too many threats and Andrew is bound by too many promises for him to ignore Neil and all the mysteries that he brings. If he doesn't investigate this, he knows it will come to bite him in the ass later.
After they've eaten their ice cream they get back in the car. Andrew feels a lot better now, thanks to the dust. The dust is a drug that's mostly harmless for normal humans, but acts like a sort of power regulator for mutants, much like the pills Andrew is forced to take everyday, but far less strong.
He can already feel the fire dance in his arm, happy to be let free. Andrew squashes the need to let it out immediately.
He's always had splendid control on his powers ever since he discovered how. It's what most people don't understand about him.
Even the judges that prescribed the pills to him.
It was never control that Andrew lacked. Nor what landed those four people in the hospital with severe burns.
He decides not to care about it anymore while they park outside of Eden's Twilight and get inside.
They walk towards the bar the moment they enter and Andrew turns to look at their plus one.
Neil seems to be overwhelmed by the place, looking around frantically. He seems to be trying to scan every face in the crowd.
That, Andrew couldn't help but think for the thousand time, is the face of someone who is running from something.
Roland smiles at them when he spots them and looks surprised at Neil. It has been a while since they brought someone else, but not long enough for Roland to forget their deal.
"Guys! It has been a while? You want the usual?" he asks, all smiles. He really doesn't look like someone who is going to spike someone's drink. It's why this always works.
He starts pouring drinks without waiting for their answers and then looks at Neil, expectantly. "You're new," he tells him, "what's your poison."
"I don't drink," Josten immediately says. Figures.
"Soda then?" Roland presses, with a smile, and Neil nods. Roland picks up a soda and Nicky distracts Neil while the bartenders puts a little extra in the runner's drink.
Nicky might be a pain in the ass, but at least he's useful sometimes.
"Here it is," Roland says, holding the tray up to them. Kevin immediately picks it up without any problems and starts walking towards their usual table.
Neil seems still completely unaware of what's going to happen soon and Andrew would smile, if he was still under the pills influence.
He's not, however, and so he keeps a straight face.
At the table everyone immediately starts drinking and even Neil picks up his soda and drinks it slowly. Roland's mix, as always, seems to be working fine, and the other doesn't notice anything wrong until he has drunk almost all of it.
Neil blinks, and Andrew can see that his eyes are a little dazed. The drug is taking effect then. Good. And then Andrew notices something even more fascinating.
As Neil's powers start to get affected by the drug, his eyes change color. From a deep dark brown to a clear blue.
It seems like Neil Josten has more tricks up his sleeve than Andrew thought.
Neil stands up, startled, and immediately holds his shirt back down, almost as if he's scared of showing his skin. Even more secrets then.
This is starting to become interesting again very quickly.

Neil should have been sharper. This is really his fault. He dropped his guard too quickly, confident in his abilities to take everything Andrew could throw at him that he hadn't noticed the drug until it was too late.
Even then, he almost completely missed it, until his powers started acting up. Time is a strange concept for Neil. If he focuses hard enough time slows down for him considerably even while he's not actively running. Keeping the time going as fast as everyone else is usually a struggle for Neil so when he notices that he doesn't have to focus anymore, that time is just flowing normally, he knows something is wrong.
He can't run but, what's worse, is that he knows that his other mutation will be disappearing quickly.
He doesn't worry too much about his hair, that his mother had him bleach and recolor the human way as well, just to be safe, but his eyes are surely changing color by now. And his skin is losing the glamor and showing all the signs of his life on the run.
He doesn't want anyone, but especially Andrew Minyard to see them. To see the crack in his armor.
Neil can't really allow him to see them.
"What did you put in my drink?" he asks, but he's not sure that he manages to say it all without spluttering.
He's losing control of some of his muscles and he can't think straight. He wants to run, so badly, but his legs don't respond to him.
"Wow, you really should have realized it a lot sooner," Andrew tells him, looking bored and not like someone who had just drugged someone else. "But you're still a little too coherent. Give it some time and then we have an appointment and you'll tell me the truth, you understand?"
Andrew stands up and while he hasn't most certainly grown in size, right now he seems massive to Neil,
"We'll start with your eyes, what do you say?" Andrew asks him before walking away. It's a battle declaration, a way to intimidate Neil. And it works.
He wonders how blue are his eyes right now, how similar to his father's. Icy glaze that intimidated him so many times in the past. A clear reminder of everything Neil had inside him, of what he could so easily become.
He can't stay here, he realizes, waiting for Andrew to pry all the informations from him. He starts walking towards the exit, but he gets pushed towards the dancing floor. He's suffocating among all the bodies and he feels himself suffocating.
It's then when he feels a hand grip his arm and drag him away. When he look he sees Nicky, smiling at him.
Nicky, who might be the one Neil has more trouble relating to, but who is most certainly the kindest of the bunch. He's a monster in relation only to his ties to both Aaron (who couldn't care less about Neil, he's sure) and Andrew (that orchestrated this entire night). Nicky, maybe could help him.
"Neil, where are you going?" Nicky asks him, with a smile. "Do you want to dance with me?"
"I don't feel too good," Neil tells him, hoping the other will understand. "Andrew did... he..."
"Oh," Nicky says, looking a little unsure. "You're still way too sober. Is it your metabolism? Usually those drugs act way faster than this."
And that's when Neil realizes that Nicky knew. That this entire night was just orchestrated by them. That he's not safe anywhere.
He tries to leave, to get away from Nicky as fast as he can, but the other doesn't allow him to. "Look, Neil, I'm sorry. But it's better for everyone if Andrew gets what he wants and then we can all go back to living our life, ah?" he says and then he takes one of the dust from his pocket and puts it in his mouth.
It strikes Neil as something strange to do in that moment before Nicky surges forward and kisses him. It's so much of a surprise that Neil doesn't even resist when the other pries his mouth open to push the drugs inside of him and forces Neil to take more.
God he won't be able to stand straight soon, he thinks.
He pushes Nicky away, panting and looks around, scared. There are so many people, so many bodies that could hurt him. So many that already did.
Neil isn't safe here.
He isn't safe anywhere.
And so he does the only thing he can do. The only thing he knows how to do. The one thing that he's really good at doing.
He runs and then he doesn't remember anything more.

When Neil comes to he opens his eyes and a blinding light catches him. He turns, trying to get away from the sun, and then wonders why he's sleeping under the sun in the first place.
It's not really an unusual occurrence in Neil's life, but one that has almost disappeared from his life in the past year. And yet here he is again.
He sits up, looking around himself. He's in a field, that much is clear, and there doesn't seem to be any houses or humans for... a lot of miles.
What the hell...? And then he remembers. Parts of it as well.
He remembers Andrew and Nicky drugging him. He remembers the panic and his powers starting to leave him. He remembers thinking that he wanted to run and then... then?
Looking around he thinks that he managed to run alright, but he doesn't know where he is. He knows his powers are back, can feel time push to move slower, his body stretch to move faster.
It's a welcomed sensation after last night.
Neil sighs and picks himself back up. He looks terrible, covered in dirt and sweat, but that doesn't matter now. All that matters is that he needs to go back to Palmetto and pick up his bag.
Then... he could run. He should run after yesterday, but what he understood the night before with Matt and the others is that... he would like to enjoy this while he can.
And he can't do that with Andrew breathing down his neck. It's why he agreed to the stupid night out in the first place, right?
What a great idea.
This time, however. This time he has a plan and one that will be played on his own terms. He made a mistake on letting Andrew chose the place of their meeting, gave him too much of an advantage.
He's not making the same mistake again.
Neil picks a direction and starts running in that direction. It doesn't take that long for a house to appear in the distance.
When he gets closer he notices is a service station. It seem like he's finally having some luck.
Neil makes sure to slow down before reaching the station and searches for the first phone. When he finds it he thanks his brain for remembering Matt's number and dials. He doesn't have a lot of coins and he's really lucky that this station had such a old phone anyway.
It rings for a minute before a weary Matt answers: "Yes?"
"Hey. It's me."
"Neil?" Matt screams, making him jump. "Where are you? The Monsters came back yesterday night looking for you because they lost you. We've been looking for you all night! Where are you?"
They were looking for him? That... Neil doesn't know how to process that right now, so he simply decides that he won't.
"It doesn't matter. Look, can you keep Andrew far away from my bag? I... I need to do something and I don't want him looking at it."
"He already tried yesterday," Matt tells him, "I didn't give it to him. I don't know what happened but... I know nights in Columbia can be hard. I should have told you."
Neil wonders what Matt knows about what happened in Columbia. If he's making a mistake in trusting Matt with this.
Then he remembers the other's smile, the timid hesitation while he told Neil his secondary mutation. He's not making a mistake, he can feel it.
"Thank you, Matt. I'm fine. I'll be back soon," he promises, meaning it, and then hangs up.
When he looks up at the sign of the gas station he makes a couple of calculation and shrugs. He's probably two hours away from the campus if he runs.
It will be a good exercise, really.

In the end he's still a little too weak from the night before and he's forced to hitchhike for a part of the journey. It's something he used to do with his mother a lot when he was younger.
People stopped much more frequently for a mother with her son.
Still, he finds an old couple that takes him in and drives him part of the way. The rest he does by running and reaches Palmetto a little later than he would have liked.
Immediately, he goes to the training grounds and Wymac's office. He isn't surprised to see him there, really. He's a little more surprised to see him yelling at Andrew. Still, a two birds with one stone situation.
He enters the office and both Wymack and Andrew immediately turned towards him. "Neil!" Wymack says, walking quickly towards him. "Are you okay? What happened?"
Andrew doesn't really move and his eyes don't betray any expression. He's emotionless while he looks at Neil and there's a part of him that wants to know what he's thinking. Another part really doesn't care.
"I don't really remember," he answers, honestly.
Both he and Wymack turn towards Andrew who simply shrugs. "I don't know why you're looking at me, if I had known, Nicky wouldn't have insisted about looking all night for him. I told him he had just run away."
"You were wrong it seems," Neil says and he sees a flash of something violent pass through Andrew's eyes.
Now they were getting somewhere.
"Don't give me that answer, Andrew, I warned you about what would happen," Wymack growls.
It's a little strange to see someone feeling so protective towards him. The only person who ever acted like that was his mother, and her motherly love had a very different shape than this.
Still, it's a protection he doesn't need.
"Coach," he says, "I would like to talk to Andrew alone."
it seems that he manages to surprise both Wymack and Andrew with this move and he's a little proud of himself for that. "No can do kid," Wymack says, however, looking annoyed. "I can't live this menace alone with no one."
Neil thinks about it a minute and then decides that giving up another secret at this point isn't the worst thing he can do. He switches to german and starts to talk: "You want the truth? I can tell you the truth, but after this you leave me alone."
Andrew seems surprised for a second before schooling his face into the perfect picture of indifference. Neil thinks Aaron does a much better show at it, probably because Aaron actually doesn't care.
"The truth is all I wanted, but you lie as easily as you breathe," Andrew answers back immediately. His german isn't perfect, too heavy with an american accent, but Neil decides not to comment on it.
Now, here came the gamble. He doesn't know if the story he came up with while he was running will hold up. it's a patch up work of the truth and some lying. It should still work, he thinks, but he doesn't know how good of a liar detector Andrew is.
Still, what else does he have to lose? Wymack is strangely silent, looking between them. He doesn't understand what they're saying, but Neil appreciates the trust he's giving them.
"My parents are both dead. My father was a low level villain and he stole a lot of money from his boss. They killed him and then my mother and now they're looking for me," he explains. It's true enough, he supposes.
Most of it is actually the truth, really.
"And who did your father worked for, and what does it have to do with Kevin?" Andrew presses. This, Neil thinks, is where it gets tricky.
"Riko's family killed my father. I know you've seen the journal. I was keeping track of them. After all, the Moriyama killed my father."
"And what is it that you want? Revenge?" Andre seems almost bored at the thought. Strange, when he had been ready to kill him the day before.
"No. After all my father deserved it, he wasn't a good man," that was an euphemism. "I'm just trying to survive. I came here because... because I was jealous of Kevin. I just wanted to be close to him for a while, but I won't stay here long. I'll be gone the moment we get too close to the Ravens."
"You know, for someone who is so hellbent on surviving, you make a lot of stupid choices," Andrew says, looking at him. He's studying him, trying to decide if he can trust Neil. If he's telling the truth.
Whatever he sees must convince him because he sighs and shake his head. "I won't protect you, and if you bring any problems to Kevin or to us, you're out of here. Does that seem fair?"
Neil nods, relieved. He really doesn't want or need Andrew's protection. He has been doing fine on his own.
"What just happened here?" Wymack asks, looking at them.
Andrew doesn't answer, but Neil turns towards Wymack and smiles, reassuringly. "We won't have any problems anymore."
"Are you sure?" Wymack asks, but he's not talking to Neil. His gaze is now staring down Andrew who, in turns, shrugs.
"As the run away said," he replies, standing up and walking towards the door.
Neil lets him go and tries to breathe. It comes easier than this morning, like a heavy weight has been lifted from his chest. He can stay here, he thinks. He can stay.
At least for a little while.

Everyone welcomes him with open arms. Neil smiles at them and then looks to the side where Kevin and Nicky are looking at them.
Truth is that Neil doesn't feel like forgiving them. He might have come to an understanding with Andrew, but that's one thing. Andrew... he expected the worst from him. Andrew had never pretended to be Neil's friend, to care about him.
Nicky and Kevin, each in his own way, had. And now Neil feels the burn of the betrayal even worse than the remains of the drugs. It's a strange sensation, really.
So he ignores them, and when Kevin comes to his room that night to ask if Neil wanted to train, he refuses.
Seth seems to find it hilarious and almost seems like he's starting to enjoy Neil a little. Matt simply smiles at him.
Neil doesn't ask him why Matt knew what happened in Columbia, and Matt doesn't elaborate. It's fine, Neil wants to tell him, you'll tell me when you're ready.
Still, the chasm between the upperclassmen (and him) and the monsters seems to be bigger than ever. Neil doesn't think he's at fault, really, but there's a part of him that suffers the situation.
He's still not ready to forgive and forget, but every time Nicky tries to talk to him or Kevin asks him to train with him, Neil forgives them a little bit more.
It helps that Andrew respected his end of the deal and has stopped harassing Neil at every opportunity. He also seems to have lost any interest in Neil's bag.
That's good, really.
It's just a little strange, that's all.

Bee looks at him, that wednesday, and doesn't say anything.
She knows what he did, and she's probably the only person that can understand why, but she doesn't approve.
He knows that every well.
Most people don't understand how Andrew can be so comfortable with Bee. As someone who keeps his emotions and desires so close to his chest, a telepath should be his worst enemy.
They don't understand absolutely nothing.
Andrew finds Bee's presence comforting. She understands his meaning even when he doesn't say it clearly. Unlike everyone else who doubts him or seem to think he's someone prone to lying, she takes everything he says at face value.
It might be because she can read in his mind the words that he can't say, or maybe just because she's a better person that almost anyone else. He doesn't know, but it's why he's so comfortable in the session they do together.
Today, however, isn't like that.
He can feel the weight of her gaze. Not judging, not accusatory, only evaluating.
She knows him enough to be able to read between the lines, to be able to infer from his actions and from his face.
He can admit, at least to himself, that the situation with Josten got out of hand. When Andrew had heard Nicky yell for him he had run into the room, leaving a stunned Roland chained to the pantry, only to find him yelling because Neil had just run away into the night.
Andrew would have left him to himself, after all the kid was a runner, that was just what he did, but Nicky had been panicking. "He isn't in control of his powers, Andrew," Nicky had said, looking at him, "and it's our fault."
Andrew thought it was his fault, after all Josten only needed to tell the truth for once in his miserable life to get out of the situation. But had spent the night looking for him anyway.
When they hadn't found him, Andrew had been so sure that he would have never saw Neil Josten again. And then the other turned up three hours later, as if nothing happened.
Andrew promised to wash his hand off of him and transferred him to Renee's care but... but there is still something itching at his consciousness. The truth is that Neil Josten is still interesting.
Everything he does, all the contradictions that seem to sustain him. A kid who wants to survive, but still jumps into any opportunity to get himself killed.
Really. How could Andrew not find that interesting?
And, yes, of course, there is the problem that he's attracted to him. At least physically. But that's not something he's ever going to act on so...
"Is there one of those thoughts you want to reflect on today?" Bee asks him, sipping her tea.
Andrew gave her permission to stay inside his head at the beginning of the session. He doesn't regret it, but he also doesn't want to talk about any of those topic.
"Josten is going to hate you," he says instead, because he knows that's true. "You know that right?"
"I still haven't seen Neil," Bee says, shrugging, "David told me that he has a rather strong dislike for telepaths. But we're not here to talk about Neil. Unless you want to."
"Not really. I don't care about him," Andrew says, shrugging.
Bee remains silent, but her presence inside his head means that he can't get away with a statement like that. It's a lie and they both know it.
"Do you want to maybe try to understand the reason why finding Neil interesting scares you so much?" Bee asks him. She doesn't push him, asks only a question but allows him to decide if he wants to continue down that path or not.
This, Andrew thinks, seems to be a safer route than others. "He's dangerous," he replies immediately. "I need to protect both Kevin and Aaron, and Josten makes it difficult."
"Is that the only reason?" Bee wonders.
Andrew looks at her, unimpressed. "What else could it be?"
Bee doesn't answer and Andrew decides that they've talked too much for the day.

The next day Wymack tells them about the Ravens. It's not exactly the best moment for the announcement, but apparently they've been called to deal with a minor villain.
When Dan asks why no one else was taking care of it, since usually young teams like theirs weren't send to take care of villains, but were mostly used for civilian rescue, Wymack tells them that the Ravens are busy taking care of another Supervillain and they are the only other superteam in the district.
It's how Andrew discovers that the Hares have transferred districts because the Ravens wanted to have jurisdiction over theirs. No one is stupid enough to think that this doesn't have anything to do with Kevin's presence.
It's also when Andrew discovers that Kevin has been keeping secrets from him for days. Itìs not something that makes him happy, but apparently they have a villain to take care of.
Wymack looks at him and asks him, point black. "Will you do this?"
Andrew doesn't care about fighting villains. He only cares about the thing he gets in return. To be free from the pills for a while.
To finally have his powers back.
So he smiles at Wymack, high on his medication, and extends an arm towards Aaron.
One thing that Aaron excels at where Abby doesn't is poison healing. His medication worked a lot like a potion, or so Aaron said, and removing it from Andrew's system was easy for him.
Most of the time he refused to do it, but Andrew and Wymack have a deal.
Andrew helps with the superhero business and, in exchange, he gets to be free for a while.
It's... better than the alternative. And so Andrew takes it.
Neil watches the exchange like a hawk, the only one of their team not to know the deal. Andrew doesn't spare him a glance.
He keeps looking forward at Wymack while the poison finally leaves his body and he gets back his full control over his flames.
As always it's a rush that feels him with the need to burn. he squashed it down and gets up. They don't have much time until the side effects will destroy him and render him useless.
"Well? We have a villain to catch, right?" he asks, his voice an emotionless pit.

The villain really isn’t anything special. Another team would have dealt with him in a second.
He can manipulate energy and shoot lasers from his hands, but they aren’t really anything too strong. Andrew is bored from minute one.
But the team doesn’t work as a team should and they’re having difficulties keeping up with the villain. The only ones who seems to be able to avoid all of his blasts are Kevin and Neil, which isn’t exactly surprising considering their superspeed, but only Kevin seems to be able to hit him.
Andrew isn’t even trying
Still, at one point, one of the blasts hits one of the nearby houses and that catches fire. Andrew can immediately feel the pull of the flames. Developing and engulfing the building.
Wymack curses and runs towards Andrew immediately. “Can you control the flames? I think there are people inside. I’m going to get them out.”
Andrew nods. He will do it because it’s part of the deal. He gets to be free of the meds, but he has to help when there’s something regarding fire, since it’s his specialty. So he gets ready to control the flames when Neil appears beside them.
“I’ll do it,” the kid says, looking at them. “I’m much faster. I can take everyone out before the fire gets too bad.”
“Are you sure?” Wymack asks, hesitating. Wymack’s mutation is probably one of the strongest, but it’s not useful in these kind of situations. Wymack will regenerate himself from any kind of wound, but there’s nothing he can do for anyone else.
Neil would probably be better at rescuing a group of civilians quickly.
“Yeah,” Josten says, shrugging. “I’m very fast.”
And he is. Andrew concentrates on keeping the flames at bay for as long as he can, while Neil rushes in and out of the building. Everytime he comes out he leaves someone beside Wymack and then dashes back inside.
Most of the civilians don’t even realize they’ve been saved until a couple of minutes later.
It’s tiring work, not only for Neil but also for Andrew himself, who has to keep his concentration at all times.
When Neil finally comes out with that seems to be the last of the civilian, the rest of the team has dealt with the villain and Andrew finally allows his control to slip.
The flames roar, now finally free of constrictions and Andrew watches them starting to consume the building. It’s a satisfying sight. He knows more people wouldn’t understand, but fire is such an important part of Andrew’s life that he feels connected to the sight.
How many houses had he wanted to burn out. How many people.
Before anyone can move on, however, one of the ladies screams: “My cat!”
It’s such a standard, clichè situation, something that happens in every stupid superhero film ever, that they all turn towards her with the same identical expressions. “He’s still in there,” she continues, and points to one of the apartment.
Her house seems to be completely taken over by the flames, even with Andrew’s help from before, and there is literally no possibilities of the cat having survived that. “He was in there,” Andrew says, making Matt glare at him.
“I might try…” Kevin says. He’s tired from the fight, but his partial invulnerability means he’s the only one that has any chance of going in there and actually coming out somewhat okay. Andrew immediately glares at him.
Their deal to keep Kevin safe didn’t mean he could go and literally throw himself at fire.
Before anyone can say anything else they see a flash moving towards the building and no. The kid can’t be this stupid. There should be limits.
“Neil!” Kevin yells, a mixture of surprise and anger. But the damn stupid idiot is already inside the building.
Andrew looks at the flames and for a second thinks about helping, but Neil isn’t his problem. They don’t have any kind of deal, and he has already passed all responsibilities to Renee. Just because he finds him interesting doesn’t mean he will go out of his way to help him.
They don’t have a deal, nothing to bound them, and in Andrew’s world that means he can’t do anything.
In just a handful of seconds Neil is out again, clutching a cat who is frozen in his arms. He looks unscated by the experience.
Everyone gathers towards him, checking him for injuries and returning the cat to his owner. There’s nothing wrong with Neil at a first glance, but Andrew knows that’s just another lie. He’s the only one that knows, he realizes.
He should let it go. Not many people touch Neil, since he ducks out of the way and shies away from any physical contact, and so the probability of anyone figuring out that Neil is hurt is… very small.
Just like before, Andrew shouldn’t care. They don’t have a deal and if the idiot wants to burn himself, then that’s his prerogative.
Still…
While everyone gathers around the idiot, Andrew goes to Renee, making sure that no one sees him. “Make Abby check him out,” he tells her.
She looks at him, a little surprised, but he walks away immediately. He already did more than he should have and he knows that he has exposed himself too much to Renee. She has been shown to be trustworthy enough, he thinks.
Also he’s under her protection and that means that Andrew is only upholding their deal. He’s giving Neil to her.
Andrew looks around then. The villain has been defeated, the civilian has been saved, and there are a lot of reporters trying to get a good look at the Foxes. This, Andrew thinks, might be the first real mission that the Foxes have completed with minimal structure casualties.
This, he thinks with a grimace, might be a problem.

It’s annoying. Ever since the stupid idiot throw himself into that flaming building, it seems that everyone is suddenly interested in him. For being someone who, supposedly, doesn’t want to attract much attention to himself, he sure managed to get everyone to look at him.
There are people searching for him online, trying to identify his code name - the idiot still doesn’t have one - and there is a lot of buzz going around about where he came from and why is he with the Foxes.
Of course, this is also made worse by Kevin’s general kevin-ess and by the fact that, for once, the foxes have actually managed to do something useful for society without wrecking everything else in the meantime.
It is, as Andrew said, a problem.
The biggest part of the problem, right now, is an interview. Kevin immediately accepted, telling the rest of the team that good publicity, in their line of work, can really make or break a team. After all, as Kevin puts it, they’re here to serve the public.
Andrew really isn’t.
Still, Kevin wants to do it and both Wymack and Abby are convinced it will do good for school founding. Andrew won’t let Kevin go somewhere alone and so he’s forced to be dragged behind the others.
The TV hostess welcomes them with big smiles and a fake cheer. She’s happy to have them there, but Andrew doesn’t trust her as far as he can throw her and his suspicion are even more proven when she turns towards Neil with a predatory look in her eyes.
“Neil Josten! I’m so glad you could come,” she says, getting closer to him, “and it’s even more of an honor to be the first one to have you on a proper interview!”
“What?” Neil asks, looking at the woman and then the rest of them.
Kevin immediately looks something between guilty and angry and Andrew knows how this will go even before it happens. It irks me, but once again this isn’t something he can do anything about.
Neil isn’t under his protection and he idiot decided to give his power to Kevin. It was his stupid mistake that has landed him in this position and Andrew won’t interfere with that.
Idiots should learn that their choices have consequences.
Kathy’s face immediately falls and she looks in Kevin’s direction, almost disappointed. “You haven’t told him?”she asks him and all eyes turns towards Kevin as well.
Neil looks like he’s ready to bolt any second, and no one here would really be able to stop him. He says something in french to Kevin that Andrew doesn’t understand and Kevin replies in the same language.
Soon they’re firing off words and sending each other death glares. It’s obvious that Kevin won’t give up on this and, unfortunately for Neil, he’s actually good at making other do what he wants.
Kevin says one last thing and Neil doesn’t respond immediately. He actually looks tempted for a second and whatever Kevin has said seems to be enough to push him over the edge.
Kevin waits for another minute before nodding and looking back at Kathy. “No problem, he’s doing the interview with me.”
He has his press smile on and he looks almost inhuman. Neil huffs behind him, obviously not feeling the public image Kevin is trying to create.
Andrew agrees with Neil more. Even with the improvements in the treatment of mutants, and how much people like to pretend that they completely accept mutants in their life, it’s obvious to anyone with half an eye open that the situation in the real world is different.
There’s a reason why schools like Palmetto are needed and it’s not because mutants and humans have learned how to coexist peacefully.
It’s easier to accept their existence when they were isolated from society and fighting other people like them after all. But the number of known Mutants in human-dominated job industries (really any but superheroing) is still incredibly low.
Andrew knows this because Aaron would have liked to work as a doctor and he would have made a great one with his mutation, but no one would hire a mutant doctor. It just wasn’t done.
So, really. Kevin’s crusade to make other people accept them seems useless and naive.
Andrew, who doesn’t have energy for important things most days, certainly won’t expense any for this useless crusade.
The rest of the team, minus Kevin and Neil, gets escorted to their seats. From there the stage where Kathy will interview both of their teammates is perfectly visible.
Andrew spends a second watching Neil’s face, the nervous tic of his eyes. Neil’s utmost priority should be remaining anonymous, but it doesn’t seem like that would be a possibility for much longer. What will he do now? Andrew guesses that if he starts running now, he’ll probably outrun anyone coming to get him.
After all, how many people would tune in to watch this shit?
The interview starts and it’s as boring as Andrew would have thought.
Kathy asks Neil how it feels to be the third most searched mutant in the world and she asks Kevin about the Ravens. All things considered it’s really not that interesting.
Neil acts surprised, and then annoyed and then a little scared.
Kevin replies like a coward once again. Kathy asks him how long he’d like to stay with the Foxes and Kevin replies: “I’ll stay as long as they allow me to.”
Not I’ll stay forever or I’ll stay as long as I want to. Little Kevin still needs permission to go out to play with friends, it seems. It’s an answer that only someone who isn’t sure in his position would give and everyone notices it.
Even Kathy smile turns a little more cruel at those words, as if she knows there’s something to push there; a weakness to be exploited.
All in all, it seems to be a rather boring interview and so Andrew starts to fade away in the background. He’s not interested in hearing them talk for hours about superheroing or their mission from the other day. He takes enough of it from the stupid idiots everyday and he was there for the battle.
He feels completely excused to just stop paying attention.
Andrew instead spends his time looking at Neil. He isn’t exactly proud of it, but what no one else knows can’t really hurt anyone. There’s really no reason why he can’t take his eyes off Neil, really. He’s attractive, ridiculously so, and Andrew knows it (everyone does, really. probably everyone but Neil himself) but there are a lot of handsome men in the world and Andre manages to keep most of his composure in front of them.
What Neil has that most of the other don’t, however, is that Neil is interesting. He zags where Andrew thinks he would zig, and his eyes are as cold as Andrew’s.
Not his brown eyes, but his icy blue ones. The ones that Andrew managed to see for not even one minute before Neil was gone.
The eyes that he can’t seem to forget, it doesn't matter how much he tries.
Andrew makes sure that everyone is too focused on the interview to pay attention to him while he does his musings, and it’s why he realizes there’s something wrong only when he notices the shock and he fear in Neil’s eyes.
Andrew comes back immediately and looks up and around, trying to see the source of Neil’s fear. From what he has seen the idiot isn’t scared by much, and anything that would scare him would most certainly be able to harm Kevin.
When he opens his eyes, then, and sees who is entering the stage, he feels rage pull at his cords. The need to keep his promise, to put himself between Kevin and Riko is so strong that he realizes he was already getting out of his chair only when Renee and Boyd both hold him down.
Of course, Boyd would be enough to keep him, but Renee knows what to look out for. Knows to keep a hold of Andrew’s arm where his knives are. Boyd is only focussing on keeping him seated, and not really in stopping him from gutting them all.
Still, he will appreciate Matt’s guts later. He knows how much Boyd avoids touching someone when they’re in an altered state, and he’s sure that what he’s picking up from Andrew is anything but pleasant. Still the idiot holds on to him.
Once Andrew has dealt with Riko, because he will deal with the asshole, he’ll make sure to punish Boyd too.
Riko walks into the stage like he owns it, and the entire room applauds him like they are subjects welcoming their king. Andrew really hates them all.
Kevin, on the stage, looks pale as a a sheet, cowering in front of his old buddy, the reason for his most recent brush with mortality.
To Andrew it’s plain to see that Kevin is terrifying, but he’s not sure if the screaming masses understand it. To them, they’re nothing more than protectors, public figures. They probably don’t think of them as real people.
“We’re so glad we managed to get the two of you together again!” Kathy says, standing up to kiss Riko.
The boy greets her and then turns towards Kevin with a smile that’s all fake. “A hug for old sake?” Riko asks, high enough that everyone in the room can hear him. The crowd cheers and Kevin stands up immediately.
Public face before anything, Andrew thinks with a sneer, what a good little Raven, Kevin.
The two embrace each other and Andrew knows that Riko says something to the other because Kevin’s face becomes even more pale.
Not even an entire bottle of scotch will be enough to make Kevin forget about this night, Andrew is very sure.
After Riko and Kevin return to their seat and Andrew can shift his focus on Neil for a second. He’s looking at the two of them, but the fear that Andrew saw in his eyes is gone. Pulled back against one of his mask.
No one would be able to tell that Neil is in the run, that Riko recognizing him would mean the end of him. He’s better than Andrew gave him credit for, really.
“Now, I’m sorry for this little trick. I wanted it to be a surprise,” Kathy says, with a smile towards Kevin and then the audience. “We were all so broken up when we heard your decision to transfer to Palmetto and we couldn’t wait to see the golden duo back together again.”
“It’s a shame, I know,” Riko says, all smiles and dimples and cruelty. “I mean, when Kevin got hurt and was too scared to face the supervillains we have to deal with every day… I was saddened.”
Riko’s words shake the audience, but Andrew can see what his plan is. He’s making Kevin look like a lost boy, someone who can’t be trusted with the powers he’s been given.
Everyone of his words mine Kevin’s credibility even more.
And then. Then Neil Josten opens his stupid, idiotic mouth: “Well, he didn’t seem to have any problems the other day.”
Everyone on the stage blinks and turns towards Neil, almost as they had forgotten of his presence. Neil Josten tends to have that effect on people: everything about him is designed to be normal, to attract the less attention. Everything but what he says, everything but his intense gaze.
Everything but anything that made Neil Josten Neil Josten.
“Oh, Neil. I’m sorry. We ignored you too long, didn’t we?” Kathy says, as sweet as sugar, before turning towards Riko. “It’s true that the Foxes showed us an impressive rescue the other day.”
Riko shrugs, unbothered, but Andrew can see the annoyance in his eyes and in his stance. Neil Josten is an obstacle he hadn’t expected in his mission.
“Yes, against a villain that was mostly a joke. We didn’t have the time to handle it, and so we asked you to take care of it,” Riko explains, turning towards Kathy. “Anyone, even a group of kids, could have taken care of him.”
Kathy nods along, but before she can say anything, Neil interjects. “You shouldn’t belittle in this way the traumatic experience of those people.” Neil looks sympathetic, like a true hero should, and he’s making Riko look back in front of his adoring fans. “Just because you don’t care much about anyone else but yourself, doesn’t mean we’re all like that.”
Andrew hear’s someone gasp beside him, probably Dan, but he’s too trained on the scene unfolding in front of him to really check.
Unstoppable asshole, meet unmovable idiot.
Riko’s public face doesn’t shatter, but Kevin is almost shaking. Neil doesn’t seem fazed. “That’s not what I meant. I’m obviously sympathetic to the plight of these poor people that lost their home in the attack. We’ve prevented countless destruction all over the state. I’m just sorry to see Kevin sink so low. A hero of his caliber… a member of my perfect team…”
Kathy sighs along, like it’s such a great loss that Riko doesn’t get to have his little play team.
“It just means that Kevin is helping other people,” Neil continues, uncaring of how much he’s angering Riko. “Shouldn’t everyone be happy if the strongest heroes are separating their efforts, making sure more people are safe? Maybe he just needed to find a better team that would let him use all of his powers.”
Kathy turns towards him, surprised. “Do you mean to imply that the Ravens didn’t let Kevin use his full potential?”
Neil shrugs, while Riko’s mask cracks a little. “I’m just saying that if the strongest superhero has decided to train and help another team, maybe it’s better for the whole population. When you’re dealing with supervillains, sometimes you forget about the minor tragedies.”
Everyone stops. The entire public goes silent.
If there’s one thing Riko has never been subtle about is how much he cares about his position as the strongest of the Ravens. There’s a reason, after all, if he has branded every member of his perfect team with a number.
Riko is one and Kevin is two. The two number glares at everyone that dare defy them from their place on the two’s face.
That Neil comes and doubts them so easily and so plateably isn’t something that Riko can allow to pass.
If Neil Josten wasn’t on Riko’s radar before. He is now.
Everyone on the Fox’s team knows it. Kevin certainly knows it. Neil must realize it, but he simply smiles in the face of Riko’s anger.
Such a stupid idiot. Andrew really is glad they don’t have a deal, or it would be impossible to uphold with the way Neil throws himself to his death.
What an idiot.
“Well,” Kathy interrupts them, smiling nervously, “this is all we have time for today, I’m glad we managed to do this and we look forward to further heroics from both the Ravens and the Foxes!”
After that the lights go out and Boys and Renee let him go.
Andrew is out of his chair and walking towards the backstage immediately. He has someone to kill.
He’s still undecided if it’s going to be Riko, or if Josten will have the honor this time.

When he reaches the trio backstage, he sees Riko pushing Neil against the wall and Kevin looking uselessly at them. Stupid idiot.
He moves quickly and pushes himself between Riko and Neil, making sure to have a knife trained against the Raven. His pills make his power completely useless, but he can use a knife and he will. Of course it might be useless against someone as strong as Riko is.
After all, if he had managed to intimidate Kevin, whose powers were some of the strongest around, he’s not someone to be trifled with. Andrew doesn’t much care.
Let him come to him. Andrew only needs an excuse.
Riko doesn’t seem particularly scared about his presence, but he still lets Andrew put himself between him and Neil and releases the other’s arm.
The runner immediately goes to Kevin side. At least he’s useful for something, Andrew thinks.
“If it isn’t the guard dog,” Riko says, with a sneer, “I was looking for you. Don’t worry, your master is okay.”
“Just go, Riko, no one here cares about you,” Andrew tells him. He still has a knife trained on him, and he can see a couple of Ravens he hadn’t noticed before converge towards them.
Riko stops them by holding his hand up.
“We’ll be going now, but we’ll see each other many times. I’m sure. After all, we’re patrolling the same part of the state,” he smiles at both Kevin and Andrew and then his eyes turns towards Neil. “I’ll be looking forward getting to know you all a little more.”
He walks away without saying anything else and Andrew has to struggle with himself. One hand he can imagine how good it will feel to stab the asshole in the face. On the other, he wants to wait until he can use his powers.
Andrew wants to burn him. He wants to see the flame consume him and turn him into bones first and then into ashes.
He can’t even imagine how good that would feel.
So he allows Riko to go and, in the meantime, they are joined by the rest of the Foxes.
Immediately Nicky, Aaron and Wymack converge towards Kevin, keeping an eye on Andrew. Boys and Dan, instead, go and talk to Neil.
Renee is the only one that comes to him. “I’ll keep everyone in tonight,” she says, as if Andrew should care.
Keeping the rest of the team safe isn’t his responsibility, he left it to Renee a year before. He only has to look out for Kevin, Aaron and Nicky.
He looks at Neil, stares at his face while he talks to Dan and Matt. He notices the way Kevin looks up, searches for Neil’s back, and actually looks like he might not vomit for a second.
Andrew looks at Neil Josten and he already knows what he’s going to say. He hates himself a little for it.
“I’ll take Neil out tonight.” In his word is a confession too big for anyone but Renee to understand.
She smiles at him, amused, but thankfully doesn’t say anything. She enjoys living, it seems.
“Okay,” she acknowledges, moving away from him.
What is Andrew even doing, he wonders.

On their ride back to Palmetto, he doesn’t have time to wonder about what to do with Neik. Kevin is a wreck, needing assurance and drinking everything he can.
Andrew has to stay beside him and actually listen to him ramble on and on about Riko and about what he will do to them.
Everyone’s mood is terse, and most sti silently, looking at each other.
Andrew is glad that they are all very aware of the danger Neil put them all in tonight, but he also notices that no one tells Neil so. In fact, Matt compliments Neil at one point.
They’re sticking by another Fox’s side.
Andrew agrees with them. not for the sentimental reason they all seem to have, but because he’s glad someone put Riko in his place where Andrew could not
In the stage, when Andrew was forced to stand still and watch Riko try to get Kevin back little by little, Neil stood as a shield in between them. Made sure that Andrew could keep his promise.
Even now, Andrew is sure that hadn’t it been for Neil, Kevin would be a lot worse for wear.
So he doesn’t really have the time to think about how to approach the runner and when they’re finally back at Palmetto, he still has to take care of Kevin. He makes sure that he’s back in their room, along with Nicky and Aaron.
“We’re going to Eden, right?” Nicky asks, looking around at the others. Aaron simply shrugs, while Kevin is still too lost in his own head to care. Andrew doesn’t want to reply to something so obvious, and so he simply gets up and goes out.
He walks around the school, looking around in hopes to see Neil’s stupid hair, and he’s not really surprised to see him on the training grounds.
The idiot is running in circles, going too fast for Andrew to see anything but a blur. He wonders if Neil runs in circle just to avoid running away.
Actually, he’s shocked the idiot hasn’t taken up running the moment they returned to the school. He has to know that Riko won’t stop looking into his past, and from what Andrew has seen, there are a lot of holes in the lie that is Neil Josten.
Andrew takes a couple of steps forward, stopping only when he’s sure that Neil has noticed him. And is content enough to wait for the idiot to stop running and actually come to him.
It actually takes less than he would have thought.
When Neil finally stops in front of Andrew, he looks worried, a little worn out. How much of the stupid brave idiot act had been false.
“You certainly run your mouth a lot for someone who doesn’t want to be recognized,” Andrew can’t help but point out. Looking at him like one would a very stupid do who didn’t learn from his mistakes.
Neil doesn’t have anything to say in his defence and so he just shrugs and sits down.
Andrew lights up a cigarette for himself, trying to see what he should say to get the idiot to stay, and he’s a little surprised when Neil turns towards him. He looks like a sunflower, changing and turning to follow the sun.
“You know, someone could start to think that you have an insane obsession with fire,” Andrew says, with a smirk. He can hear the traces of innuendo under his tone, the layer of attraction he can’t manage to hide or quell down.
Neil, however, doesn’t seem to really get it.
He shrugs, looking forward. He doesn’t reply, doesn’t say anything, and immediately Andrew knows what he wants in exchange for this deal to work.
“Even if you run now,” Andrew says, blowing some of the smoke in Neil’s face, “you’re now under Riko’s radar. How long will it take him to figure out who you are, or who your daddy was?”
Neil grimaces and looks down at his own hands.
“I’m very good at running. I was going to go tonight, when everyone is asleep, but I can go now if you prefer.” Neil really hasn’t understood the point Andrew is trying to make.
“He would catch up with you quickly. He knows where to start searching for you. And as fast as you can run, the world is only so big…”
Neil shrugs and simply looks ahead. There’s something lost in his eyes, like he’s a young boy who doesn’t know what to do. Who’s looking for someone to tell him how to move forward.
Andrew is trying to do exactly that.
“It wouldn’t be your problem anymore,” Neil says. He sounds as uncaring of his own survival as Andrew feels everyday. But Andrew knows that where for him it’s a natural state, Neil is someone who holds his own survival at a high standard.
It looks more like he’s forcing himself not to care, to pretend that he’s something he’s not. Andrew always thought Neil was a good liar. He might have to rethink that, looking at this. It’s a pathetic attempt, and something that shows how much faith in his ability to survive this he has.
“Stay. Keep Kevin interested, and I’ll protect you from Riko,” Andrew proposes, turning towards Neil and holding onto the other’s gaze.
Neil’s eyes go from surprise, to shock, to immediate distrust. Yes, really someone who is used to keep himself alive.
“You can’t keep me safe from the Moriyamas,” he says, but Andrew only shrugs.
“I’ve managed to keep Kevin here, haven’t I?” Andrew simply says. Before Neil can say anything, however, he continues, “the only problem is Kevin himself. I can’t stop him from giving himself up like the coward he is. So I need to keep him interested in staying here.”
“Why do you care?” Neil asks, peering at him curiously.
“Because we have a deal,” he replies and it is as simple as that.
“What did he promise to give you for his protection?” Neil continues and Andrew almost smiles.
Wouldn't he love to know? But Kevin's promise to him is an impossibility, something that will never happen and that Andrew has given up in long ago.
“Nothing for you to worry about,” he tells him with a smile.
Neil accept this, probably realizing that Andrew is being forthcoming enough and pushing him more will only end in pain for him.
“So what? I just have to keep Kevin's interest and you let me stay?” Neil wonders. He seems sceptical, like he knows there's something more under this deal.
He's right, of course. He's an intelligent idiot, after all. “That and we start a game between us,” Andrew says, telling the fabricated happiness from the pills fill him.
“A game?”
“A truth game,” Andrew specifies. “You tell me one truth and I tell you one. Complete honesty, Josten, isn't that fun?”
Neil doesn't outwardly move, but Andrew knows how dangerous a game like this is for someone like Neil. Someone who lies as easy as breathing and as necessarily as food.
It's why Andrew proposes this. Because he needs Josten to give himself to Andrew if he ever hopes to be able to protect the idiot. And because he needs to be able to trust him as much as he's able to trust anyone.
Neil doesn't answer immediately, and Andrew can see the battle going on inside him. A raging war between the part of Neil that wants to take running and stop only when his legs give out on him, and the part of him that risked himself and his own safety enough to mouth off to Riko to protect Kevin.
It's a dilemma Andrew can understand. Even he once wanted to stay in a place where he could not. Still, It was time for Neil to decide who he wanted to be.
Andrew's cigarette burns out and he ficks it away. He picks up another one, lights it up with his finger but doesn't inspire.
He gives it to Neil, who accepts it with somewhat shaky hands. “If you decide to stay, you'll come with us tonight. I'll take that as your acceptance.”
Neil blinks at him and then at the cigarette. He doesn't take a drag but just looks at it while it burns, the smoke rising up towards his nose.
There is no other reason for Andrew to stay here. The worst thing is that he would like to find one.
How annoying.
Andrew walks away then and refuses to look back.

Neil thought he already made his decision. After all didn't he come here to this school certain that he would leave it at the first sign of trouble?
Riko Moriyama, with everything Neil now knew about him, was most certainly trouble. Not even first sign, it was already critical levels of trouble.
So what he should do is really pretty simple. He should run away in the night, make sure there are enough states between him and all the people that know Neil Josten, and start again. He could try picking Steve as a name.
He has never been a Steve.
But then Andrew arrived and with him a possibility that Neil hadn't even considered. One he shouldn't be considering right now: staying.
It seems impossible, like one of those dreams where you realized you're in a dream, but you still can't wake up.
After all what protection can Andrew offer from those that are really on Neil's trail? Maybe Riko could be scared of Andrew, for reasons Neil couldn't understand, but he knows that his father wouldn't.
Andrew Minyard isn't important enough to even be a bleep in his father's vision.
And yet here Neil is. Considering it.
Considering staying, letting Andrew protect him for as much as he can. Pretend that he can actually be someone, that he can actually have somewhat of a normal life.
It would be reckless and go against everything his mother had ever taught him. She would hit him blue and black for this, if she could even read his mind and find he's not shooting down the idea the moment it was proposed to him.
Oh God, he realises in a single second of starling clarity: he's going to say yes.
Why? He asks himself. Why would you give up on everything for some people you met three days ago.
But that's not what this is.
He's so tired. The months in Millport before Wymack talked to him, were the worst of his life.
No one was stabbing him, burning him, shooting at him and yet he had never felt worse.
It might be a little strange to realize that he's not an animal that does well alone, regardless of anything his mother tried to teach him.
Neil likes Matt, and his desire to be close to people even with his powers. He likes Dan, her strong sense of responsibility and dedication.
He liked more or less everyone in the team. Honestly he could live without Aaron. And he still doesn't know what to think about Renee. And he's still pissed at Kevin, Nicky and Andrew. And he doesn't much care for Seth. He thinks he might like Allison but they haven't talked enough yet.
So, really, he just likes Matt and Dan. A lot.
He doesn't want to live on his own again. Now that he knows what it means to have friends, to have people that support you - even the fucked up version the Fox offer - he doesn't want to go on living without it.
If he has to give up everything he is for this… then maybe it's worth it.
Sure, he still won't tell Andrew about his father or his real identity. He wants to live the name Nathan Wesniski in Baltimore and move forward from there.
But about anything else he'll be as forthcoming as he's able and hope it's enough.
He certainly has nothing else to offer.

When he returns to the main building, everyone is strangely gathered in the living room. They're not really talking to each other, but they're watching Wymack with rapt attention.
They all turn towards him when he enters, all beside Andrew who was already looking at the door.
“Yeah, shouldn't we tell him what he's walked into?” Allison asks, pointing at Neil.
Everyone looks like they're having a heavy conversation and Neil regrets coming back when he did.
“Neil has known about the Raven transfer as long as I and Kevin did,” Wymack says, looking at them.
Everyone now looks at him with something else in their gaze. It's obvious they're surprised by the news but Neil doesn't really know why.
"That's not the point, you should have told us sooner," Seth says, spitting up the words like they're poison that can hurt all of them. The air around him starts to vibrate but Allison puts a hand on his arm and he stops immediately. "We've already risked enough for Kevin haven't we? When will it be enough?"
"Shut up, Seth," Dan says, glaring at him. "That's not what we meant. It's just that we would like to know these things before they are broadcasted in live tv, Coach. I think we deserve to know."
Wymack nods at her and then at all of them and solemnly says: "You're right, of course. I apologize. I wanted to give Kevin the time to deal with it on his own."
"That's the mistake, we're a team! We should deal with things together!" Matt tries, smiling at all of them, but it doesn't seem like the monsters are all that moved by that speech. Only Nicky smiles at Matt, but it's obvious that Nicky is the only one of the monsters that really wants to have a relationship with the rest of the team.
Aaron and Andrew seem to be completely disinterested in everything that's going on, and Kevin doesn't seem to be able to keep his attention on anything at the moment.
How is Neil supposed to keep Kevin's attention, really? What does Andrew even mean with that? It seems that, sometimes, nothing but alcohol and superheroing can make Kevin do anything.
And Andrew, of course.
"Anyway," Coach says, standing up, "I just wanted you all to hear it from me. Even if for second. Keep your guards up."
He walks away, leaving the kids between themselves. Silence descends upon the two groups, who don't even look at each other. They really don't seem like a superhero group, if Neil is honest with himself.
At one point Matt looks towards Neil and smiles: "We were thinking of having a party in our room, what do you say? We have to celebrate the mission and the fact that we actually got on tv! It's a great honor."
Neil opens his mouth to refuse, of course, but Andrew speaks over him: "Neil is coming to Columbia with us, tonight."
Neil was going to say the same thing, but the fact that Andrew says it, with such certainty, irks him. Neil is not a pet to be owned, nor someone who will be dragged around. But he knows why Andrew is doing it.
He sees the separation between the two groups, and in the middle of them, keeping the chasm open, is Andrew. So fiercely protective of his and so uncaring of others.
If Neil says yes, then he'll have to walk on the other side of the chasm. Officially join the monsters on the team and leave behind the upperclassmen.
Or so Andrew wants, at least.
"What?" Dan says, standing up, "no he's not!"
Andrew smiles and looks towards Neil. "Are you?"
Having seen Andrew both hidhg and not, it's eery to see the difference. Andrew is smiling, yes, but his eyes hold no emotion. At least, when the pills don't change his mood, every part of him matches with the rest. Neil doesn't know what Andrew did to deserve the pills but he thinks that no one deserves to be transformed into this mismatch of emotions.
Still, it's way beyond the point.
"I am," he says, while Andrew infinitesimally relaxes on the sofa. At Dan's betrayed look, Neil sends her an apologetic smile. He has made his choice, but it's to be with her as well. With all of them. He won't let Andrew create the chasm between him and the upperclassmen as well.
"We could do dinner tomorrow?" he says then, smiling at her.
Dan seems surprised for a second, and she sends scathing looks at Andrew and the others, but she nods at him. "Sure, okay."
Neil looks towards Andrew, who seems to be very pleased with himself, and then he walks away towards his, Matt and Seth's room.

While he's getting ready to go out, Matt enters the room. He has the same look from the other night, when he confessed to Neil about his second power. He looks so serious that for a moment Neil wonders if, maybe, he has a therdiary mutation.
He has never heard of it, but who knows.
"So. Dan wants me to talk to you," Matt starts, sitting down on his own bed. "I don't think I'm the best person to do it, but still, here I am. Understand we're only worried because the last time you went out with the monster you run all the way back here from Columbia."
"Not all the way," Neil feels forced to point out, "I hitchhiked for a while."
Matt laughs, shaking his head. "I know you know that's not the point."
Neil smiles and nods. Glad he managed to make Matt laugh a little.
"The reason we're worried... well, the reason they're worried, is that it's not the first time they did something like that. You have to understand, I told you I haven't always dealt well with my two mutations..."
Matt stops and looks down. He takes a big breath and then looks at him. "I used for a while. It helped dull the empathic powers. I was... addicted to it. I tried to give it up on and off, but I always relented in the end."
Neil stays silent, nodding to make the other understand that he's listening, but he doesn't think this is something that needs his input.
"I'm not ashamed of it. I mean, it was horrible obviously and I'm glad to be out of it, but I spent enough time with Bee to know that being ashamed of it would be useless," Matt smiles reassuringly at him. "But the reason I stopped is Andrew, really. He brought me with them to Columbia and he offered me... a lot of drugs. A lot. And I couldn't say no."
That is... strangely different from what happened to Neil himself, who had no problems saying no and was forced to take drugs anyway. Maybe Andrew's tactic changed on who he was trying to investigate.
"I could have died that day. I understand why Dan and the others are pissed at him, and maybe I should be too, but after that night, I knew I was done. I didn't want to feel that way anymore, didn't want to suffer so much," he explains it with a smile. "I mean, it still really sucks getting in a fight, and that's why I usually just try to save civilians during missions. My powers would really be better with fighting, I know that, but..."
"Matt, it's okay. You heard Kevin, he's stronger than anyone else, leave it to him," Neil says, trying to go for lievity. Matt smiles at him, even if it wasn't really funny.
"You're not too bad yourself, you punched him a couple of time too," Matt compliments him and Neil just shrug. It's easier when he's faster than anyone else, no one can ever duck.
"The point of this is," Matt continues, "I don't know what Andrew did to you, but I know what happens in Columbia. Most of us had to pass his stupid test. So if you need to bail, or if he's forcing you in any way. We'll help you."
It really strikes him as sweet how worried they are. And sad how quickly they jumped on Neil's side. They have known Andrew for more time, but it really seems that they don't give him the benefit of the doubt.
Neil doesn't either, if he's honest with himself.
"Don't worry," he says, trying to be as reassuring as possible. "He's not forcing me to do anything. I'm going there because I want to."
It's the truth. He won't tell him, or anyone else, about his first time in Columbia. Accepting this deal he has decides to leave the rest behind. He also doesn't want to create even more of a gap between the two groups. And he knows that Matt and Dan would never forgive the monsters if Neil told them the truth.
That knowledge is enough. Neil doesn't need to test it.
Matt nods, satisfied. "Okay, that's what matters. And remember we're here for you. Whatever you need."
Neil smiles at him and nods, picking up the clothes from the last night in Columbia.

Neil goes to the Monster's room well before they need to leave. He's ready and the rest of the team was starting to gather inside his room and Neil didn't know what to do with their worry right now.
He hopes that Matt can explain it to them and that he won't have to do it all over again.
Also, he needs to resolve a couple of situations with the Monsters.
Neil knocks on their door, then, and waits.
He's not that surprised when Nicky opens the door. The other looks at him and then smiles, brughly. "Neil! So it's true! You're coming with us tonight!"
"Yeah," Neil confirms, nodding. "I also wanted to talk to you."
"Oh. Uhm, sure," Nicky says, looking back inside the dorm room and then stepping inside the corridor. He closes the door behind him and seems to be unsure on how to act. "Are you still mad at me?"
Neil thinks about it for a second and then he nods. He doesn't want to lie to NIcky, and between the others, his actions are the one that really hurt him the most. "I expected Andrew to try something," he explains, "and I never trusted Aaron or Kevin to do anything about it. I guess I expected more of you."
Nicky flinches, almost as if Neil had struck him. It's not his intention, but he believes that it's better to admit everything and let it air out.
"You really don't pull your punches, do you?" Nicky wonders out loud, clutching at his own chest.
Neil shrugs but doesn't say anything more.
After a couple of seconds, Nicky asks him: "Do you know what my mutation is, Neil?"
Neil blinks and thinks about it for a second. He realizes then that no, he doesn't know. Nicky doesn't usually train with them, content to sit on the side and cheer him on. Thinking about it, it's not really something he expected from someone like Nicky.
Nicky looks at him and nods. "You know why you don't know? Because I don't have one."
It's a shock. Humans are still the prevalent majority in the world, but Neil certainly didn't explain to find one in a mutant school. He didn't even think that it was possible for a human to join a mutant school.
Nicky smiles at his shocked expression, finding it funny. "I know. Everyone reacts the same way. You have to understand, I'm only here for Andrew and Aaron, because I care for them and they're under my responsibility. I owe them a lot, and... I want them to think I'm on their side. I know that it doesn't mean doing what he made me do to you, but..."
A part of Neil understands. Both him and his mother had done terrible things in the name of each other. In the name of their family, unconventional and broken as it was.
Nicky is simply doing what he can to try and keep a hold on his two cousins. He might be misguided, but he's not a bad guy.
Still, that doesn't mean that he's completely forgiven either. It doesn't work out so easily in the real world and Neil knows that very well.
"Okay, I... I don't forgive you," he says then, honestly, "but I'm starting to."
Nicky smiles and nods, satisfied with this. It's more than what Neil has given him the past few days, he thinks.
"I know we're leaving in an hour, but if you want to come inside, they're playing video games..." Nicky offers, with a smile.
And Neil accepts.

Inside Aaron is play video games just like Nicky said, and Neil can see another joystick left there beside him, probably the one Nicky was using before he left it to talk with Neil.
Andrew is seated in a chair on the other side of the room, disinterested in all of them. He looks up when the door opens, looks towards him and Nicky, and then drops his gaze again.
Kevin is the only one seated on the sofa and he's looking at his own hands, as if they hold the answer to the universe mysteries.
He looks completely pathetic.
"Look who decided to join us!" Nicky exclaims, walking towards Aaron and sitting back down beside him. Andrew doesn't acknowledge them again. Aaron doesn't turn towards them
and Kevin doesn't seem to be interested in nothing but his own lap.
Not the warmest welcome, but it's something.
Ignoring everyone, Neil walks immediately towards Kevin and sits down beside him.
"Tomorrow we're training, right?" he asks, looking ahead.
They haven't trained just the two of them since that night in Columbia and it's the only white flag that Neil will throw at him. Kevin can decide if he wants to take it or not.
Neil doesn't know if Andrew is looking at them, but he remembers vividly that the terms for him to stay hinge upon Kevin's interest in him. Superheroing is the only thing Neil can give him.
Kevin looks up, apparently surprised by the arrival of someone beside him, almost as if he hadn't even heard Neil sitting down beside him.
"I... you're sure?" he asks and Neil nods.
He doesn't say I wouldn't have asked if I wasn't sure because it's obvious and he doesn't want to waste his breath that way.
"I... yeah. I mean we could come back in the afternoon and train before dinner..." Kevin seems a little more spirited after this and Neil nods in his direction. It seems like a good plan as any, really.
It seems almost incredible that the one thing Neil needs to do to be able to stay here is become a better superhero. He thinks it's impossible that he got so lucky after so many years of bad luck.
"You say that now, Kevin, but we all know you'll be too hungover to even think about training tomorrow morning," Aaron says from his place.
It might be one of the first thing Neil has heard him say. And he's not really surprised when it's nothing nice.
He gets the impression that the other members of his team prefer Aaron to Andrew, think him less of a handful, but it seems to Neil that Aaron is much worse than his brother.
At least, with Andrew, you always know what you're getting. Regardless of anything, Andrew seems to be honest to a fault. Aaron, instead, seems to be much more mild, but doesn't seem to ever have anything nice to say about anyone.
Not even his own family.
"I'll be fine in the afternoon. I always am," Kevin says, shrugging.
Neil wonders how many times they have done this for Kevin to be so certain, but he's almost sure he doesn't want to know.
Andrew huffs from his place on the chair and Nicky laughs out loud.
All in all, Neil thinks he has made the right choice.

When they go out, they meet Allison, Seth, Renee and Dan in the living room. Seth and Allison are dressed like they're going dancing, and looking at everyone's espression, that might not be a good thing.
"You're going out?" Renee asks them. There's something in her voice, like they should know better and Neil wonders what's that about.
Seth huffs and then points at them. "They are going out, aren't they? I'm not letting them have fun while we stay cooped up inside."
Allison shrugs and then, cryptically, she puts her hands first in Seth's coat pockets and then in his jean's pockets. When she does so, Seth allows her, simply raising an eyebrow at her,
No one seems to find that strange, and Neil is left there wondering what's exactly is happening.
"Well, we can't stop you," Dan admits, looking more worries than a simple night out warrants. "But be careful, okay?"
"Sure," Allison replies with a smile. "Don't worry. We're keeping out eyes open."
Before they can say anything else, Seth and Allison walk away and leave the rest of them to look after them.
After a couple of seconds the two girls turn towards them. Renee smiles at them while Dan glares even harder.
"You on your way to Eden's Twilight?" Renee wonders, with a kind expression. She seems to be the only one that isn't genuinely afraid of Andrew. Of course, Neil doesn't even know what her power is.
It might be something so terrifying that she has no reason to be scared of anyone. After all there is something strange about her, even if Neil can't really say what it is.
He only know how he feels everytime he looks at her.
"Yup. Ice cream first and then Eden's," Nicky confirms with a smile. "You guys staying in?"
"Yeah, we're having dinner in Matt and Neil's room," Renee confirms.
Dan, who still hadn't said anything, takes a step forward and points out a finger at Andrew. "I don't trust you, and I still haven't forgiven you for Matt. Do something to Neil and I'll make you regret it."
Andrew looks at her and raises an eyebrow. He doesn't smile nor taunts her, and that's how Neil knows that he hasn't taken his pills tonight. It seems to be something of a theme with these Eden's Twilights outings.
He wonders if that's the reason why he likes to go to Columbia so much. From what Neil remembers from last time, Andrew hadn't really gone to dance. he had drunk, sure, but not too much, and then he had been watching Neil like a hawk to see if the drug took effect.
Not exactly a fun night, if Neil can say so himself.
"Didn't he already said that he wants to come? Tell them again, because I think out dear team leader hasn't understood," Andrew says, looking at Neil for a second before he starts walking away.
Before Dan can say anything else, Neil stops her.
"Dan, it really is okay," he promises her. He's ready for anything today. He won't let Andrew drug him again, he can promise that much.
There's nothing else he's really scared about.
"Don't worry, Dan, I promise you nothing will happen to our favourite runner!" Nicky promises, putting an arm around Neil's neck.
Neil huffs, but Dan looks at him and he tries to appear as calm as he can be.
He's not scared, not really, and he hopes that Dan can see that. Neil turns towards Renee, and she looks at him with a serene expression. She doesn't have any doubt about the night, Neil is sure, she knows Andrew enough to know that the reason why he's going out with them is that Andrew has taken him under his wig.
Problem is that while Renee might know what that means, Neil really has no idea.
Still he walks away with them and he reminds himself that this is what he has chosen. This is what he wants.

The night starts exactly the same as the last one. They go to Sweeties and they order Ice Cream with a side of cracker dust. They offer it to him, but once again he refuses, and they don't insist.
That happened the last time as well, so he's not relaxing just yet.
They reach Eden't Twilight, and immediately they move towards the bar, where Rolan, the same guy from last time, welcomes them. He seems surprised to see Neil still there.
"Well, this is new," he says, watching Neil with a smile. "The usual?"
"I want my soda from the can," Neil immediately says, making sure that the other one knows he's not really kidding. Roland laughs but still hands him an unopened can.
"Fair enough, dude, really," he says, He doesn't seem bothered by Neil's lack of trust, probably because he knows that he deserves it.
Still, Andrew says, high enough so that they all can hear. "He's okay. If he says that he doesn't want anything, he's not getting anything."
Neil can understand a gesture when he sees one, and he appreciates it. He will still ask for cans for a while, but he acknowledges it.
Once they gather all their drinks they move towards the same table from the other night and sit down on it. Kevin, Nicky and Aaron quickly drink three drinks in succession and then Andrew distributes another wave of dust. He doesn't offer it to Neil, and he appreciates it.
It doesn't take long for the others to drift to the dance floor. Nicky tries to convince him to go with there, but Neil refuses easily.
He's not really a dancer, but most importantly he thinks that he needs to have a conversation with Andrew, just the two of them alone. So he waits for them to go dancing before he turns towards Andrew.
"So. When does this truth game starts?" he asks him.
Andrew looks at him and then picks up another drink. "Are you sure you want to do this? You do realize that we both get a question."
"Yeah," he says, shrugging.
Andrew nods and then motions for him to continue.
"Matt told me what happened with him," he says, watching Andrew closely, "I want to know why you did that."
Andrew seems to think about it a second before settling on: "Because he was a threat."
It doesn't make a lot of sense, Neil thinks, because between them all, even with his super strength, Matt is the least threatening.
But maybe it's not Matt's strength that was the problem, but his addiction. Having someone addicted to drugs could bring along a lot of complications, but most of all, it tended to bring drugs alone.
He tries to think about why Andrew would be against drugs when he partakes in Dust almost every weekend.
Sure, from what Neil knows dust isn't really a strong drug. So Andrew is only worried about someone getting dragged under the effect of heavy drugs?
It can't really be Kevin, who would never risk his powers for anything. Nor Nicky, who wouldn't benefit from any of the power-blocking drugs, Matt would be using.
That left only "Aaron."
"Well, isn't someone clever," Andrew says, with a shrug. "He's sober. I want it to remain that way."
Neil thinks about it a second. Matt doesn't seem to be angry about it, and as always Neil can understand doing anything for one's family.
He might not approve of Andrew's methods, but Matt seems happy about the end result and so Neil decides to let it go.
"Okay. What do you want to ask me?" Neil wonders. Better to get the first question out of the way immediately. He remembers the partially true story he has given Andrew and he's ready to repeat it as much times as it takes.
Instead Andrew looks at him and asks: "Your secondary mutation, how much can you change?"
That's true, Neil thinks, Andrew saw his real eyes the other night. It's a fair question, really. There are people, just like his mother, that could change everything about themselves, enough to become a completely different person.
"Not that much. Just superficial things. Eyes, hair... skin." It's enough of a confession, he knows. He wonders if Andrew will use his turn to ask Neil about what he's hiding with his power.
He doesn't want to show them to everyone in the club, but he would if Andrew asked him. At least a couple.
It's better for Andrew to know immediately rather than later. So that he can understand what kind of danger Neil is.
Andrew doesn't say anything for a couple of second before he turns towards Neil. "Let's go outside. I want a cigarette."
Before Neil can say or do anything the other stands up and starts walking away. Neil follows him immediately, a little confused.
They don't go out of the main entrance, but Andrew leads them towards a back door. No one stops him while he opens it and enters. When Neil looks questioningly at him Andrew just shrugs.
It seems that Neil will have to pay with a truth to get to know anything about Andrew.
Still, the other sits down on a step outside of the building. He takes out two cigarettes and lights up both of them with his finger.
Then he passes one to Neil and he smokes the other one himself. Neil takes it immediately and inhales the smoke, and it's like being on that beach all over again.
He can see the car burning. He can imagine his mother slowly getting covered in flames. This might be the closest thing to a gravestone he will ever get. The fleeting smoke of a cigarette.
"Why are you so fixated with smoke and fire?" Andrew wonders, looking at him. It's a fair question, Neil thinks, especially because Andrew is so connected to fire.
Still, it's a complicated answer.
He promised to be honest however, and he thinks nothing here will contradict his story. "I told you that my father stole some money from his boss and then when he was killed me and my mother run. Well, they didn't stop looking for us. And one time they got my mother. I didn't even realize. I drove for hours while she was bleeding out in the other seat. I... we were on the run. I couldn't really give her a funeral or leave any traces so..." He stops. Thinks about the sunny beach where he had left his mother, about the rest of the car.
No one would be able to tell what once was in it, but he still imagine someone finding it. Finding his mother and not knowing it. He closes his eyes and inhales the smoke from the cigarette. It's a different smoke, less strong.
Big black smoke had been coming off the car, and every breath Neil had taken were full of fire and death. This isn't similar at all, but it's something.
"I burned her with the car," he admits, looking ahead. "I left it all in a beach and burned it all. It was the only way. Ever since then..."
"You throw yourself into burning buildings for fun," Andrew concludes for him. Neil would like to point out that it's not really for fun, but he has thrown himself inside two burning buildings. It's starting to become a habit.
When Andrew doesn't say anything else, Neil knows it's his time to take a turn. He thinks about it carefully. For a second he thinks about asking about this place, but there's something more important he can use his truth in.
Something that has been in his mind ever since their encounter with Riko.
"You have knives," he says, a little out of breath. He remembers his father's knives. He remembers how they felt in his hand, but most of all h remembers how they feel inside his skin, cutting him open.
He really doesn't like knives.
"That's not a question," Andrew says, interrupting his musings. It's true and Neil can only nod.
"Why do you have knives?" he tries again. Not many mutant bothered with human weapons, not if they didn't have a particular affiliation with them, like his father.
Yet Andrew had gone for his knives immediately, before even trying to use his own power. Neil guesses that it might be because of the pills, but there was something automatic in his decision.
Andrew has been fury and threat and Neil really doesn't think that he was thinking rationally about what weapon to use. His first instinct had been to go for the blade.
It's something unusual, really.
Andrew thinks about it and then he shrugs. "Because you're all too dependant on your powers," he settles for, not really looking directly at Neil. It's not something against Neil, really.
Neil thinks that most of what Andrew says is mostly against himself.
"You get too complacent in your power, they will fail you when you need them the most."
Neil doesn't say anything to that. In his experience, his power is the only thing that has saved his life time and time again, but he can't hope to tell to Andrew what to do with his own power and especially not how to feel about it.
Fire is a dangerous power. It can cause unmentionable destruction if not controlled. Maybe this is what Andrew is scared about. Maybe it's simply not Neil's business.
He looks at his cigarette and then at Andrew and, out of the blue, the cigarette smoke isn't enough. Neil needs more.
"You're not on your pill now, right?" he asks and Andrew doesn't even bother answering.
"Let me see your power," he says, looking straight in his eyes.
Andrew seems taken aback for a second. "Why?
"Because I've never seen it. I want to see you at full power. Even last mission, you only controlled the flames in the building and nothing more." When Andrew seems to be hesitating, Neil says "please."
The effect on Andrew is immediate. He recoils, almost as if Neil had struck him. It's a rather odd reaction. "I don't like that word. Never use it again," he says, but the next second his hand completely catches fire.
In front of Neil, Andrew's hand gets covered in flames. Neil watches it, watches them dance on the other's skin and he thought he was ready.
He was so sure that he needed this, but now he's almost ready to vomit. Is this how his mother had looked?
God. God.
Andrew's hand returns normal and he's looking at Neil like he understands. Like he knows.
He stands up, flicking the rest of the cigarette away.
"I can burn them all," he tells Neil, serious, looking ahead. "Riko and the other Moriyama. One day I'll burn them all, and it'll be a delight."
Neil stares at Andrew, at this little small boy that still seems so imposing.
"Is that what you want?" Neil wonders.
Andrew looks at him and smiles. "I don't want anything, Neil."

After that the night passes in a blur. They go back inside and Andrew drinks something else while Neil takes another can of soda. The others return to the table one after another.
Kevin is completely wasted and, unsurprisingly, he’s a maudlin drunk. Aaron, who is probably drunk as well, appears far more composed.
Nicky is as exuberant drunk as he’s normally and tried to hug and kiss Neil before Andrew stops him with a glare.
They decide to turn in not long after that and that’s when Neil discovers that the cousins have a house in Columbia they go to when they party at Eden’s Twilight.
“We went here in high school,” Nicky tells him, drunk and happy. “Andrew worked at Eden’s Twilight, it’s why they always let us enter.”
And probably, it’s what Neil thinks but doesn’t say, why Andrew knew and was allowed to use that back exit.
They deposit Kevin in one of the couches and then Aaron walks immediately upstairs. They probably all have their own room, Neil realizes looking around. Kevin also has occupied the only couch that looks comfortable enough to sleep on.
Well.
“You can share with me,” Nicky tells him, with a big smile. He winks at Neil in what is probably supposed to be a seductive move, but only comes out as highly uncoordinated.
“Nicky.” Andrew says, just one word, and the other stops.
“Oh, come on. I’m doing the world a favour. We need to figure out for what team Neil bats for! I haven’t seen you watch a single pair of boob tonight, so I’m thinking mine!”
Neil blinks, a little surprised at this change of topic but he shrugs. “I don’t really swing,” he admits. Over the years he hasn’t really thought of anyone as attractive.
He has kissed a couple of girls in his life, but they weren’t worth the kick and the punches his mother gave to him.
“Wait… no one?” Nicky wonders, looking at him like he’s seeing an alien. Neil simply shrugs.
“No one,” he confirms, and then looks around for something to sleep on. In his life as a runner he has slept on wooden floors a bunch of time and it’s not really a problem doing it again.
Just kind of annoying.
“This is a tragedy,” Nicky fake weeps. “I’ll have to cry to Erik later.”
That reminds Neil of something. “That’s right, you have a boyfriend, wouldn’t he be angry?” He really doesn’t understand well how relationship work, but that seems normal, right?
“Oh, don’t worry about it,” Nicky immediately reassures him, “we have a compromise. We love each other, but we live very far away. We can go with whomever we want as long as the other knows and it’s okay with it. I cleared you with him when you arrived. You and Kevin are both in my allowed list.”
It’s at that point that Andrew has enough. He stands up and glares at Nicky enough that the other starts moving towards the stairs on his own, too scared to stay put.
“Think about it, Neil!” Nicky says, still obviously a little bit drunk. Andrew simply sends him a look and then they disappear upstairs together.
Neil watches them go and then looks around. There’s a chair or the floor, he doesn’t see anything else for him to sleep on and Kevin is already long asleep.
Well, Neil thinks, laying down on the floor and closing his eyes, this won’t be the first nor the last time he sleeps on the floor. At least this time the house is completely intact and there are no leaks.

Neil doesn’t know how long he has been asleep, but he knows it’s not long enough. In his years on the run he was always focused on every sound and movement and so he immediately wakes up when he hears a cell phone ring.
He opens his eyes immediately and sees that the room is still dark. Kevin is still asleep on the couch and nothing has really changed.
The cell phone isn’t ringing anymore. Of course it might have been a mistake, someone calling someone else by misclicking, but Neil doesn’t believe in coincidences.
He’s rewarded for his suspicion when he hears someone walk frantically upstairs, probably to wake the others. Someone is panicking, and by the voice it appears to be Nicky.
Neil hesitates only a second before he starts walking up towards the second floor. It might not be his place, but he’s the fastest here and if someone is needed somewhere, he’s the only one that can get there in record speed.
He arrives there just in time to hear Nicky say: “... of course I’m sure!” but nothing else.
Out in the hallway Nicky, Andrew and Aaron are gathered. Andrew looks uninterested as usual, but Aaron’s face is tight and pale. Nicky looks devastated.
“What happened?” he asks. Maybe the others were attacked? Maybe there’s a villain lose in the city? These are the kind of things one can expect in their line of work after all,
Instead, Nicky turns towards him, his face a mask of terror and anguish, and tells him: “Seth is dead.”
Neil blinks, for a moment sure that he has heard wrong, but Nicky’s face doesn’t change. Aaron’s shock doesn’t fade.
Seth is dead.
Oh.
“Is anyone else in danger?” is the first thing he ask and Nicky shakes his head.
“Apparently it was overdose, or so Wymack said but…” Nicky stops and he looks at all of them. In a flash Neil remembers Allison going through Seth’s pockets, looking for something.
She had been looking for drugs, he realizes now, and she hadn’t found any, He had been clean.
Sure, he could have bought drugs outside but…
“He was killed,” Andrew says, as if the news doesn’t touch him. Neil understands. He has seen too many people die to care. “It was Riko.”
Neil stops and looks at Andrew, scared for a moment. This hits far closer to home.
“This is what happens when you mouth off on tv,” Andrew simply tells him and then walks back inside his room.
Oh.