xoscarlettlox

[xoscarlettlox]

So uhhh, I have written a lengthy and completely self edited fanfic about my take on the aftg world, I posted the very first chapter on Ao3 a couple of months ago and decided, why not post it here as well!

Neil Josten has been on the run for 10 years now, him and his companion Raven Lirette only have each other and Exy, a sport that they would undoubtedly die to play; Raven Dumott is the daughter to the Lola Malcom, the butcher of Baltimore’s right hand and one Neil and Raven’s tormentors.

••••

“Neil, we have to go.”

Raven’s voice snaps Neil back into mental awareness, they are both standing on a black sanded beach, the smell of ocean and saltwater thick in the air; mixed with the smell of putrid smoke and gasoline fumes that makes the air unbreathable, his whole body feels the weight of every breath that his body makes, every hiss of the wind on his wind chapped lips, and it makes him remember who is not here and will never be; his nails bite into his palms, breaking skin to keep him here, in the now with Raven, raven who is still here but won’t be if you don’t move now!; his mind screams at him, “I know.” Neil says, his voice coming out as a shock, a sound that reminds him of shattering glass on concrete.

He forced his gaze that was transfixed to the coal stained sands up to the 1970 Volvo that used to be a boring monotone brown that has now been turned into a blackened husk of a car, his mother’s charcoaled bones have long since been buried deep into the Californian earth near the highway just up the hill, a highway they should have been on and away from hours ago.

He looks over at Raven, her long hickory curls made almost the color of pitch in the inky midnight, he looks at her tear stained face, not from emotional attachment to his mother but from the fumes that were emitted from the destroyed car that had made Raven’s eyes water and Neil cry even more, he gazed at the crimson cut on her right eyebrow which was just as umber as the rest of her hair and tried to memorize the features of the only living person Neil knew who would kill for him and Neil would do so in kind for his longtime companion; and finally said “what do we do now?” His voice was raw, but less so then before, she didn’t reply right away instead marched her way up the sandy hill towards the highway, Neil followed her obediently in his numbed haze. Halfway to the top she says “we do what we always do, we run.”

-1 year later-

Neil and Raven were perched on the bleachers, Neil nursing the acrid smoke of a cigarette and trying not to remember the peel of a body glued to a leather car seat slathered with scarlet, and Raven silently sucking down her second cigarette in the last 10 minutes, her fingers were cool on his cheek, a show of affection that he leaned into, tonight was the Millport dingos last game of the season, to Neil it was a farewell to something that hadn’t made him feel alive in forever, Neil needed Exy like everyone needed oxygen to breathe, Neil knew Raven felt the same way, but less so. They tapped their cigarettes at the same time, the ash falling gracefully into the chilly Arizona winds, he glanced up at the blacked out sky and not for the first time- he wondered if his mother was up there- looking down on him and willing herself back to corporeal reality in order to beat the stupidity out of his entire being.

Neil and Raven jumped into high alert as a door creaked open, they both shuffled their respective duffles beneath their feet further under the bleachers stands, Raven reached for the knives stationed in her thigh sheaths, but paused as they saw who had invaded their cocoon. Coach Hernandez propped said door open to plop onto the bleacher in front of the teens.

“I didn’t see your family at the game tonight.” Hernandez said.

“they’re out of town.” Raven said lazily, she lied almost as good as Neil if not better.

Hernandez quirked a graying bushy brow at them, “Still or Again?”

Neither, but not Neil nor Raven could reveal any of this to their coach, the sorry excuse had been well expired and they’re teachers and Coach were tired of the recycled lie, but it explained why the Jostens weren’t ever in town, it also made it 10x easier to say Raven was his cousin that had moved in with Jostens due to the death of her family two years ago, it patched up any lose ends on why they were both eighteen.

Not to mention that Millport Arizona was basically where the half dead retired until they were actually dead, no one asked questions since everybody knew everybody; it made for a sublime place to hear who came in and out, which worked out for both Raven and Neil to get them the hell out of dodge in case his father decided to cash in his threats of death and torture to the both of them.

Suddenly Hernandez reached out for both of their cigarettes signally with a quick flick of his fingers to hand them over; Raven ignoring his hand, ground hers out completely but not before taking a strong drag, Neil obediently handed his over and watched as Hernandez crushed it beneath his sneaker which clanged obnoxiously on the metal bleacher before he tosses the destroyed bud aside;

“I thought they would at least make the exception tonight” He said.

“No one knew it’d be the last game,” Neil says, looking over at the court.

Raven snorted beside Neil, they both knew it was a lie. Millport’s loss was a sting but not an unexpected one, it had booted them from state championships two games away from finals, again it was not a surprise, the dingos were a terrible team; they barely kept up their winning streak because of Neil and Raven alone, but the missed possibility still clawed him raw. And now the Exy court would become the Soccer court again.

“We’ll call them later with the score,” Raven said, because Hernandez was silently waiting for an answer and Neil wasn’t going to answer anytime soon, “they didn’t miss much,” she finished off.

“Not yet, maybe,” Hernandez said.

“There’s someone here to see you two.”

Those seven words were all it took for both of their hearts to seize in their chests, and have them scrambling for the duffles beneath their feet and up off the bleachers towards the nearest exit, a scuff behind them revealed that they were indeed too late to escape. When they turned they were met with a beast of a man, adorned in a stark white wife beater and tribal tattoos encroached in flames on both biceps, one hand was concealed within his jeans pocket and the other was holding two suspicious vanilla colored folders, Neil notes that his stance was casual but his mahogany eyes had a look of intent.

Neither Neil nor Raven recognized him, not likely to be one of his fathers men then, it was unlikely that his father would send anyone else but Lola and her brother to the task. And with 900 residents in Millport, he definitely wasn’t the sort Neil or Raven would forget about. He looked over at Raven to confirm, brows furrowed, she shook her head slightly.

“We don’t know you,” Neil said.

“He’s from a university,” Hernandez said. throwing it into the tense silence. “He came to see you both play tonight.”

“Bullshit,” Raven seethes, “No one recruits from Millport. No one knows where it even is.”

“There’s this thing, y’know called a map?”

The man said, “You might have heard of it,”

Hernandez sends both Neil and Raven a reproaching look, Raven gazes back with nothing but ice in her eyes, Hernandez gets to his feet, “He’s here because I sent him your file. He put out a note saying he was short on his striker line, and I figured it was worth a shot. I didn’t tell you two because I didn’t know if anything would come of it and I didn’t want to get your hopes up.”

Neil just stared.

“You did what?” Raven asked, her voice was all ice but Neil could hear the fear and hope that she tried to smother.

“I tried contacting your parents/guardians when he asked for a face-to-face tonight, but they haven’t returned any of my messages. You two said they would try to make it tonight.”

“They did,” Neil Finally said voice even, “They couldn’t.”

“I cannot wait for them,” tribal tattoos said clomping down the steps to stand beside Hernandez, “ It’s incredibly late in the season, I know that; but I had some technical difficulties with my last striker sub and it was pure luck that I had come across you two. Your coach says you guys don’t finish till fall, works out just peachy doesn’t it? I need the both of you on my line and you need a team. All you have to do is sign here, and are mine for five years.”

Neil’s throat felt as if it had been stuffed full of cobwebs, he cleared his throat a few times, “You can’t be serious.”

“Very serious, and very out of time.” The man said dearly grave.

He tossed the folders onto the bleacher nearest to them, a lifeline dangled in front of people holding onto the thinnest of threads-a future, a promise of something besides surviving. Neil and Raven both knew they couldn’t take it, but the want and the “what if” sucker punched them both nearly in half. They both knew in 5 weeks when they graduated they’d be long gone, Raven Dumott and Neil Josten would be no more, nothing besides two slight smudges in a hopelessly messy abstract painting.

He should have gotten used to this, the bottomless pit of disappointment, and the ever present reminder that his father could still torture him without even being there to touch a blade to his skin. Raven and Neil had twenty-two past lives each to themselves, but Neil Josten felt real for the short period of time that he was him; Raven felt the same way, Neil could tell by the way her brown eyes never strayed away from the folders as if by her own sheer force of will she could be able to hold onto this fable and make it into a reality worth living.

They both knew what it would cost, being still and stable; signing this contract was essentially signing their deaths, but a voice in the back of his head that he could not silence whispered, what about mother? We ran and ran and they still got her, you know it’s death either way Abram. Neil turned to Raven, she shook her head, even though the glint in her brown eyes revealed she was thinking the same thing-had the same voice in her head. His father was in prison, but his father’s henchman weren’t, the risk was too high for Raven and Neil, they both knew they were pulling at strings that would inevitably be cut.

“Please go away.” Raven said, her voice rang out a bit pleading but hard.

“I know it’s a bit sudden, but I have to have an answer by tonight, the committees been on my ass since Janie got committed.”

Both his and Raven’s eyes snapped up to meet the man’s, his stomach dropped to his toes and pooled at his feet;

“The foxes.” Neil said incredulously, “Palmetto State University.”

Tribal tattoo’s- Coach David Wymack, looked taken aback at how quickly Neil had figured it out; it wasn’t a coincidence that he didn’t outright say he was here to recruit them to the lowest ranked team in Class I Exy, The palmetto state foxes.

“I guess you the saw the news.”

“Hmm, technical difficulties you said,” Raven said voice technically a glacier, “Funny way to say that your striker sub almost committed suicide.”

David Wymack was well known to give the chances to those form broken homes and fucked up pasts.

The Foxhole Court was known for the fractured isolationists who couldn’t move past their egotism to actually win a game, They were notorious in the NCAA for not only how small and meager the team was in numbers but the fact that they barely scraped by to hold their Class I ranking. As Wymack had said the committee was tired of his shit.

Then former national champion Kevin Day, joined the line. It was the best thing for the foxes in-ever. Which meant he and Raven were absolutely not signing with them. Raven caught and held is gaze and nodded towards the exit, they both knew now without a shadow of a doubt this was a door they absolutely did not want to open.

“You can’t be here.” Neil said.

“Yet here I stand.” Wymack said “Need a pen?”

“No,” Raven said voice all steel, “We’re not playing for you.”

“I mishear you.”

“You signed Kevin,” Neil says.

“And Kevin is signing you both-“

Raven and Neil did not wait to hear the rest.

They bolted towards the locker room, ignoring both coaches surprised sputters, and continued down towards the exit, metal clanged loudly beneath Neil’s ratty sneakers and Raven’s black boots, All that mattered was getting the hell away from the empty promises, Coach Hernandez and his hopeful and worried gaze; forget everything besides running until the disappointments and missed opportunities felt like a dull hum of background noise.

Raven was in front of him, she was halfway through the locker room when a loud curse echoed through the cement walls, someone was waiting for them, but Raven anticipated the hit right before it hit her sternum, she grabbed the hideously yellow base of the racquet and held on with a death grip, and looks down at the assailant, Neil tried to move by but she holds him in place with her other hand.

“Fuck off.” Raven grits between her teeth, just then Wymack bursted in.

“God dammit Minyard! This is why we can’t have nice things.”

“Oh Coach,” someone said in front of Raven, “If they were nice they wouldn’t be any use to us, would they?”

“They are no use if you break them,”

“Au contrair Coach, this ones feisty.” Neil had finally had enough, he stepped around Raven to reveal, her and a blonde midget in a tug-of-war match with a racquet; said blonde midget suddenly let go of the racquet entirely making Raven stumble only the slightest bit.

The midget turned towards Neil, who wore a sickeningly blinding white grin on his face that made Neil’s stomach turn; Andrew Minyard, goal keeper for the Palmetto State Foxes and a national threat to society. Neil could tell by the way Andrew bounced on the balls of feet and the way that manic gleam in his eyes never strayed from his own and Raven’s that he was high off his rocker.

Raven moves to stand next to him, silently willing him to get the hell out of here; Andrews manic smile seemed to stretch out even more,

“To be continued, I suppose.” Andrew said with an awful glint in his eyes as he regards Raven with intrigue, he then brought two fingers to his temple in a mock salute.

“Whose fucking racquet did you steal?” Raven seethe.

“Borrow.” Andrew said turning his gaze back towards Neil, “Seems as though your raven, is actually a bodyguard.”

“ Neil, Raven are you alright?” Coach Hernandez said, him catching up to them and stands next to Wymack.

“Just peachy Coach H, you try getting your sternum almost knocked out of your body and see how you like it.” Raven said sarcastically all ice, she must’ve been imagining that it was Neil who was in front of her instead. Neils skills in fighting only went so far since he was not trained as hard as Raven was before they ran, Mary had made sure to keep them in top fighting shape; but Neil knew he’d never be as good as Raven.

Wymack’s gaze darkened a bit on Andrew but he held his tongue against what he really wanted to say, “Andrew’s a bit raw on manners,” coming around to stand in between blond haired midget and and the two teens. Andrew apparently was able to read clear warnings in his drugged state of mind, he backed a way with his hands upturned and backed away to give them space.

“He break anything?” Wymack said, looking at Raven.

“Nope.” Raven said looking straight at the exit.

“We’re fine and we’re leaving, let us go.” Neil said.

“We’re not done.” Wymack said.

“We are and we don’t care.” Raven chimes in.

“Coach Wymack-“ Hernandez starts, warning evident in his voice.

“Just give us a moment, will ya?” Wymack said.

Hernandez is hesitant to leave but he does, “I’ll be out back.” Hernandez said, Looking from Neil to Raven. They both nod knowing they won’t be needing him.

They waited for the steps to recede into the night, the rattle as the door was unhinged from where it was propped, squealed shut, and then clicked.

“We already told you, we are not playing for your team, you have the answer that you needed, so now we leave.” Raven said.

“You don’t know the whole entire offer,” Wymack said “If I paid to have three people flown out to bumfuck Arizona, the least you could do is give me five minutes of your time.”

Neil’s stomach was again pooling at his feet, the blood was gone from his whole body, leaving the world cold with shock and fear, Raven clasped onto his forearm centering him here, even though she was feeling the same icy hot fear Neil was feeling. He should have put it together once he realized Andrew was here.

“You brought him here?” Neil said, numb.

Wymack stares hard at them, confused; “Is that a problem?” He said.

“We’re not good enough to play alongside a champion.” Raven lied easily, everyone who was in the room knew that they were.

A scoff was heard somewhere behind them, “Partly true, but irrelevant.”

Raven was stock still at his side, and Neil’s heart was basically beating in his throat at this point. They turned around at this same time, their bodies supposedly on autopilot.

Kevin Day was centered in the middle of the entertainment console behind them, and he was haloed by papers that were scattered haphazardly around him, apparently watching the whole debacle unfurl in front of him, judging by the cool measured look he sent Raven and Neil, he was wholly unimpressed with what he was seeing.

Neil and Raven had not seen Kevin since that brutal day at Evermore ten years ago, when they had seen his father and Lola brutally torture and slice a man into one hundred bloody ribbons, and by then both Neil and Raven were desensitized to the gore of their families occupation, but he’ll never forgot the sheer terror on Kevin’s face as he regarded him and Raven after it was over.

It was as though Kevin had not changed, as though they had just taken child Kevin and stretched out his body to be an adult, he had the same dark almost black hair, same emerald green eyes; and when Neil’s gaze snagged onto that damn tattoo, he swore he stopped breathing, he wanted to retch until he was numb.

A memory resurfaced, tiny Kevin putting a black sharpie to his small rounded face that was taken up by saucer green eyes, and traced a two on a chubby cheekbone that he retraced when the former had faded, telling Neil and Raven that they would make court someday with him and Riko, #1,#2,#3, and #4 they had recited over and over.

Kevin and Riko reached the stars; while Raven and Neil dunk into the trenches of the deepest pits of the ocean floor, fighting for any patch of air that could be found in order to avoid completely drowning.

Neil wanted to bolt, to run until he could no longer stand. He looked over at Ray and could tell she was itching to do the same, her hands twitched towards the knives at her thighs.

Neil knew Kevin could not recognize them, at this point Raven and Neil had to be unrecognizable, they both were concealed with hair dye and dark contacts; so why was the Kevin Day in a backwater retirement town in bumfuck Arizona? Had he and Raven fucked up somehow, fucked up besides playing Exy at all that is.

“What are you doing here?” Neil asked.

“Why are you leaving?” Kevin rebutted.

He asked you first.” Raven stated.

Kevin’s eyes flicked over to her impassively, but Neil saw a spark of something Neil couldn’t name, so he forced himself to pay attention to it.

“Coach already answered that question for you,” Kevin said annoyingly impatient, his eyes flicked back over to Raven’s for a second before turning back to Neil’s scrutinizing gaze, “We are waiting for you two to sign the contract, Stop wasting all of our time.”

“Nope,” Raven said with emphasis on the P, “There are a thousand other strikers in the U.S. that would love to play for the great Kevin Day.” She said mockingly.

“Why don’t you bother them?” Neil added. Kevin’s face flushed slightly, he huffed and Wymack chimed in before Kevin could undoubtedly unleash his wrath.

“We saw their files,” Wymack said “we chose you two.”

“We won’t play with Kevin.” Neil said.

“You will.” Kevin huffed.

Wymack shrugged his shoulders at Neil. “Maybe you noticed but we are not leaving until you guys say yes. Kevin says we have to have you two, and he’s right.”

“We honestly should have ripped your coach’s letter to shreds the moment we saw your statistics, they are subpar at best and not what we need on our line.” Kevin said, Neil notes that he did not look at Raven as he said his piece, “Lucky for you he sent us a tape from one your past games, you two play with skill that is unexpected and with some fine tuning and a lot of practice we could actually turn you into something acceptable to be able to play on our court. You both play like you have your lives on the line.”

Raven is stock still and silent; “So that’s why?” Neil asked.

“What else would you want in a striker?” Kevin said.

Relief hit both Neil and Raven like a freight train, this was all just a sick twisted coincidence, the universe was a cruel and demented thing. This was a sign, a sign to not stay in one place too long, an example of what could happen for the still and non runners, what would happen if it was Lola next time? Or even worse, his father himself? They couldn’t take that chance, this should be an easy choice, to listen to his instincts and his dead mothers dying wishes, but a big part of Neil wanted this so badly he ached with the need to say yes.

“This works out for the better anyways, No one besides your coach knows that we are here to recruit you guys,” Wymack explained, “That way the ERC won’t be on your guy’s ass with news spreads and interviews until the semester starts in late August.”

“We didn’t say yes.” Raven said.

“But I have feeling that your going too.” Wymack stated matter of factly.

Neil turned toward Raven fully,

“This is not a good idea.” Neil said.

Raven ignored him completely, “If we sign we will get complete anonymity until the semester? As well as housing?” Raven asked.

Wymack nods his head, “You can’t move into the dorms until June 13th when the rest of the foxes get there. But yes to both, to answer your questions.”

“Five years?” She asked again.

Wymack nods.

“We need a pen then.” Raven said, an air of finality was clear in her voice. Cutting a look to Neil that dared him to speak up, her gaze was piercing enough to get the message, we would be absolute idiots to turn this down. Neil nodded, suddenly angry with a mix of sick excitement.

Wymack gives them a wide grin, incredibly pleased; Neil nor Raven looked at Kevin again, now that their panic had subsided they didn’t care or want to have anything to do with him besides Exy.

Wymack pulls out the envelopes and gives them their respective pens; then Neil Josten and Raven Dumott are forever inscribed into a legally binding contract and are officially Palmetto Foxes.

Link to the rest of the chapters:

#aftg fic #aftg fanfic #andreil #tfc fanfic #andrew minyard #neil josten #the foxes #kevin day #matt boyd #allison reynolds #dan wilds #nicky hemmick #aaron minyard #renee walker #long post