Chapter Text
Chapter Ten
In which Neil finally gets a clue
It was three more days before Neil had finally had enough. Beyond his admission that he knew who was controlling the weather. (No, he did not know her name, Dan, please stop asking.) He had kept silent as he watched the rest of the Foxes run around trying to do what they could, but Neil knew that nothing the foxes did would ever help against the enemy they were fighting now. She hadn’t even begun to show them her true power yet, and already the Foxes were stretched to their limits. There was a reason his mother had chosen to run rather than fight after all. The weather witch was sending a message, and Neil was receiving it loud and clear. Surrender or she would kill everyone he had come to care for. Neil had only just found this new family, he didn’t intend to lose them when there was something he could do to stop it.
So, while Nicky and Andrew slept in the Columbia house – Aaron was still working long hours at the guild house as more and more people were injured in the skirmishes – Neil slid out of the front door and down the street to the gate, his orange cloak pulled tightly around him to fend off the evening chill.
Neil couldn’t tell you how he knew where he was going. If he had to guess, he would say it was likely the same reason there was now an ever-present fog hanging around Palmetto, but even so, it took him a distressingly short time to reach the source of the fog and thunder. The source turned out to be Castle Evermore. What a fucking plot twist. Neil did not have that on his bingo sheet for the year. He considered going back to Palmetto with a warning that two of the biggest assholes he knew were now collaborating, but then the gates opened before him.
“Well if it isn’t Junior,” someone drawled from the shadows. Neil stared at her in disgust, arms instinctively rising to cross in front of his chest. Kevin would have a conniption if he could see him abandoning his fighting stance now.
“You again,” he responded moodily, days of adrenaline high and depression weighing on him until it was all he could do to make the response as scathing as possible.
“Where’s your mother, darlin’,” the witch asked with a lipsticked smirk that belied her obvious hand in his mother’s vanishing. Neil took this to mean that the woman had finally managed what she had been aiming for since he was a small child, and put his mother out of her misery for good. He fought back a wave of grief mixed with scorn, he had no time to unravel his complicated feelings for his mother at that moment. The witch strode towards him, and Neil stepped back. It would do no real good, she was nothing if not capable of firing on you at a distance, but it made him feel better nonetheless.
“What do you want? What’s your name, anyway?” Neil tried to cover his unease with bluster, but he could tell it wasn’t actually working.
“Oh honey, your mother really didn’t tell you anything, did she? The name’s Lola. You should probably know the name of the person who’s going to torture you slowly. Really, you should have stayed with your father. It would have been so much less painful than what I’m about to do to you.” She had a point really, how had it taken this long for him to get her name? What exactly had his mother been trying to protect him from?
“Stay with my father? My father is dead! How would that be better for me,” Neil pointed out, and watched in fascination as Lola’s smile dropped. Evidently, Lola did not appreciate the reminder that his father was dead. Which was honestly far more than he ever wanted to know about both his father and Lola.
“Oh, Junior, by the time I’m done, you’ll only wish you were as dead as your father,” she seethed before launching a lightning bolt at him. Neil dodged and thought that the whole “frying him alive with a bolt of lightning” thing sort of defeated the purpose of her previous statement regarding his will to live, but he appreciated the drama of it anyway. He bet Andrew would do something similar if he were into more aggressive forms of magic. Then, as if the thought of Andrew alone could summon him, Andrew appeared at his side and Neil blinked as he watched Andrew make a shimmering shield of orange light to stop her second bolt of lightning.
“What,” said Andrew through gritted teeth, “The fuck, Neil.” Andrew’s cloak fluttered around him and Neil noticed Andrew hadn’t even gotten dressed, just thrown his cloak over his t-shirt and sweatpants.
“I didn’t need your help!” Neil told him indignantly, even as he subdued the fluttering in his chest at the knowledge that Andrew had cared enough to come after him.
“Aw. Did you make yourself a new friend, Nathaniel?” Lola mocked, still throwing lightning at them. Andrew and Neil both ignored her.
“Like hell you don’t need my help! What, were you planning on just dodging forever?”
“Maybe. But it’s what I can do to help protect you all!” Neil grabbed Andrew’s cloak, allowing some of his magic to spread across the fabric and reinforce Andrew’s spells.
“Are you an idiot? I’m the one who does the protecting around here, got it?”
“You have everyone else’s backs, who is going to have yours?” Neil retorted, ignoring the instinct to cross his arms and stomp his foot, if only because he was still helping to power the shield that was currently keeping them from imitating the chicken they’d had for dinner the night before. Andrew scowled at him but didn’t answer. So focused was he on keeping up his protections, that it wasn’t until it was too late that Andrew noticed Lola pull out a knife. Neil only managed to escape a knife to the kidney by virtue of having lots of practice with dodging projectiles. His practice only extended so far however, and he ended up with the knife in his arm instead. Neil watched Andrew’s eyes darken and he used his shield as a makeshift battering ram – shoving Lola back through the gates of the castle behind her. Andrew then grabbed Neil’s wrist and activated the transportation spell he had taken to carrying at all times.
“I’m fine,” Neil said as soon as they were back in the living room of the Columbia house.
“I am going to stab you myself, if you don’t eradicate that word from your vocabulary,” Andrew hissed at him, dragging him to the kitchen, and presumably the first aid kit. Neil wondered how this was his life.
Andrew was going to lose his goddamn mind. Why the hell had he decided to take in an idiot with a death wish? He dragged Neil to the kitchen to remove the knife from his arm, mostly annoyed that of course Neil would have found the one person to antagonize other than Andrew who would think to bring a knife to a magic fight. If Neil continued to stick around, he would have to adjust all of his cloaks to protect against more aggressive physical attacks as well as the magical.
Neil stared down at him, blue eyes shifting with unknowable thoughts as he watched Andrew sanitize and wrap his arm.
“Thanks,” he finally voiced.
“I hate you,” Andrew responded, still salty about the idiot getting himself damaged in the first place.
“You know, every time you say that, I believe you a little less,” Neil commented, admiring his now wrapped arm. Andrew’s fingers itched with the desire to reach out and touch Neil again. He resisted the urge and wondered silently if Neil was trying to protect his feelings or if he really had no idea about Andrew’s feelings at all. Andrew ignored said feelings boiling in his chest and directed Neil’s attention back to the massive number of problems he was still causing.
“It’s not your job to go running into danger to protect us.”
“Why not. You gave me a key. You gave me a place to call home.”
“I’m not your answer, and you sure as hell aren’t mine,” Andrew snapped. It was too harsh a reaction, he winced at the desperation — the vulnerability — that shone through in it. He was flung back to the first day he’d met Neil. I ’m not your answer, and you sure as hell aren’t mine. Oh. He hadn’t realized. He hadn’t known what it would mean.
A new vision overtook his sight and he was helpless to stop it. It seemed he was always helpless to stop the inevitability of Neil Josten. It was another one of his own visions. His own impossible future. Part of him wondered if he was only able to see his own future now because he hadn’t had one before Neil. The thought was a bit too on the nose.
He was holding Neil’s hand. It was warm and comforting. Neil was laughing at something, and he looked at Andrew like he had hung the stars . Like he was doing right now. Andrew pulled himself out of the vision to find that Neil was still staring at him, but he now had a look of recognition on his face that was quickly morphing into surprise.
“You like me.” Andrew wasn’t sure why Neil looked so surprised by this. He hadn’t been subtle. Even Aaron had noticed. He also would have liked to know what on earth had changed in his face during that vision to make Neil come to his senses. Only so he could never do it again of course.
“Ninety percent of the time I would like to kill you,” he responded grumpily. Neil’s shock morphed into a grin.
“And the other ten?”
“Ninety one percent.” Neil just grinned wider and Andrew was inadvertently reminded of the sassy commentary his brother had bequeathed upon him when he was attempting the flight spell months before. You still can’t do it? Maybe you should try kissing someone. They say it makes you feel like you can fly. He shoved his unwanted mental Aaron away, but was somewhat unsurprised when that didn’t get rid of the thoughts completely. He was so fucking screwed.