Chapter Text
So basically, Neil didn’t get out of Baltimore unscathed. And he wasn’t taken by the FBI or reunited with the foxes.
Nathan cut some tendon in Neil’s left knee just before Stuart came and killed him. And then Stuart took Neil with him instead of leaving him for the FBI, framing it as a fight with his father which resulted in both of their deaths (Neil had lost too much blood and was in and out of consciousness to do much about it).
Most of the doctors Stuart has him see say that there’s a slim chance of him ever playing Exy again, or even walking. Neil’s leg will never be the same, but he got out alive which was a miracle in itself. Though he’s not allowed to make that known to the foxes. Neil Josten becomes Neil Hatford (Neil tells Stuart that he can remove his first name from his cold dead hands, even though he’s beginning to feel less and less like Neil and more like a nobody again).
The foxes grieve all in their own ways. They have a funeral and then over the years start to move forward in their lives. Neil’s urn is displayed next to Seths on a high shelf in Palmetto courts home lounge room. Photos plastered all around the shelves with orange and white fairy lights and flowers. The team is never the same without Neil, but they try to keep some semblance for Neil in his memory—every time Dan says that Andrew wants to punch her in the fucking face.
So the team didn’t go back to their divided ways before Neil united them as one team instead of two sides, but the new freshmen are not any help though. Especially the replacement for Neil. Andrew hates the guy enough for that reason alone so the kid being annoying as hell isn't good. Kevin frets because this kid is no where as good as Neil but sure fucking talks like he is. Andrew has gotten physical with the kid on a few occasions (usually involving his knives), which shocked the foxes because Andrew usually never wasted his time on anyone. But they also understood because most times the kid needed to be put in his place. Wymack has mostly given up on reprimanding Andrew for it. He knows it’s no use. Bee is also hiding her disappointment in Andrew for not trying to go on with their lives like the rest of his team after Neil.
Andrew doesn’t really move on from Neil’s death like the rest of the team does nor lean on them for support; he becomes even more closed off. He’s stoic and cold, disappears a lot with the Maserati. He also gets violent anytime anyone asks him about Neil—the foxes know that they were a thing and can only guess how real that thing was. So the foxes give him an even wider birth when around him. As far as the foxes are concerned, Neil Josten was and will always be remembered as a real person.
As they graduate, most of the main foxes stop getting interviewed so there’s less for Neil to keep up on regarding them. Kevin goes pro and Matt does too for a few years, Andrew doesn’t bother going pro without Neil (he feels hollow) and goes back to working at Eden’s, living in the Columbia house full time. Dan becomes Wymack’s assistant coach. Allison becomes a designer like she's always wanted and Renee, Allison’s now girlfriend, becomes a rights activist. She raises lots of money for her own and other charities (probably something along the lines of under-privileged children). Nicky moves to Germany to be with Erik—after some hesitation of course because of Andrew’s distant behavior, but he ends up going after Andrew snaps at him that he needs to just go. Aaron becomes a doctor with Katelyn and starts a family with her soon enough. Matt and Dan start one too around that same time (Matt retires for it, and helps out coaching the foxes sometimes), their toddlers are immediately best friends.
The foxes make sure their kids know about Uncle Neil and how amazing he was—they show them pictures along with the ones from college which have been enlarged and hanging in their homes. They make sure Neil is remembered. It’s sweet. Oh, and none of the foxes kids qualify for playing for the foxes and that’s important.
Andrew graduates and then pretty much disappears from the upperclassmen and even the monsters' lives. They’re all concerned despite all their differences through the years. Kevin thinks Andrew is stupid and a stubborn asshole for giving up exy. So he has stopped trying to keep up with Andrew outside his own pro schedule. Sometimes Kevin regrets it but now has no idea where Andrew is nor how to contact him.
And then Andrew decides that he’s ‘bored’, so he sells the house in Colombia, quits working at Eden’s (telling Roland to fuck off one last time). But no one really knows that Andrew had gotten a teaching license after graduating. And so he moves and starts teaching Criminology and Social Science at some random highschool in some bumfuck town outside of a random city. He likes that no one knows him here.
The kids love him. He’s infamous at the school for being apathetic but strangely reasonable to his students. It’s also known for having unprompted debates—sometimes the debates were related to the case they were working on and sometimes they weren’t. What kind of ice cream is the best? No it’s not cookies and cream, Sarah, I will dock you points next time I hear you saying that. What sport is the best? If anyone says Exy you will fail my class. Didn’t she kill him? No she didn’t, did you fucking read the case? And they don’t ever call him Sir or Mr, he just goes by Minyard.
The students favor him and he pretends to hate them. He now lives alone in a house in a quiet suburb a bit away from the city. He likes that no one knows him and he really refuses to call it ‘a fresh start’ because it’s too corny. He stops wearing his knives in his armbands because he is a teacher at a school with kids. The knives rest in his bedside table, right next to Neil’s flip phone—the one he found in Neil’s duffel after the riot.