Chapter Text
When Neil had first bought the plane ticket, he had no one sitting next to him, and it was a relatively empty flight. Not many people flew overseas in the middle of the week at eleven at night.
Or maybe they did, as Neil now watched as his flight was slowly overtaken by two sports teams—two rival sports teams, two rival murderous sport teams.
The sports teams—Neil didn’t even like sports, he didn’t even know who they were, if he was supposed to be impressed—Foxes and Ravens, their jackets said, had apparently accidentally booked the same flight on the same plane to the same place they were apparently going.
“This is bullshit!” a woman shouted, no doubt a captain based on her disposition and the way the rest of her team, the Foxes, deferred to her. “Make them change flights!”
Neil watched from his place in the back of the gate area, hood pulled up and hat pulled over his eyes, as the Raven’s captain fought back. There was a weird tension going on with the Raven and someone from the Foxes’ team—actually, Neil realized the more he stared, the Raven’s captain had a weird tension with two people from the Foxes’ team: a short, blond man with a vacant expression and black armbands, and a tall man with green eyes and scarred skin below his eye. The tall man looked anxious. The blond man looked bored.
The Raven’s captain, the back of his jacket proudly displaying the name “Moriyama,” sneered and taunted and riled each one of the Foxes—except for the bored one, who continued to look disinterested but was standing protectively in front of the tall anxious scarred man.
Neil watched them squabble for thirty minutes before the coaches stepped in and said there was literally nothing to be done—this was the only connecting flight for both teams from both places they came from, and each team would just have to play nice until they landed.
“Coach! This is an eleven hour flight!” the captain shouted.
The Foxes’ coach rubbed his eyes and sighed.
The Ravens’ coach stared at his team, who were standing in a strange formation with serious expressions on their faces, and didn’t say a word, didn’t make a sound.
“This is going to be a long flight,” one of the Foxes bemoaned. He was tall and standing beside another short blond man identical to the short blond bored man.
Neil closed his eyes. This was going to be a long flight. He intended to sleep it away.
*
Short blond bored man was sitting beside Neil on the flight. The tall anxious scarred man sat in the aisle seat. Neil was crammed in the window seat.
Neil kicked his duffel bag a little farther under the seat in front of him and made sure his hood hid his face. He did not want to engage with the sports teams.
As soon as the flight attendant finished checking the rows, the short blond bored man flipped down the armrest between them, and Neil looked over at the movement.
The blond man was already staring at him. Neil snuck a glance at the man’s armbands and, annoyed at the man’s staring and the inevitable toxic masculinity that would overtake the flight, said, “How did you get those past security?”
The man didn’t seem surprised that Neil had noticed the knives in his bands. He didn’t seem anything at all.
The tall anxious scarred man said, “Are you fucking serious, Andrew?”
Andrew, still staring at Neil, gently fingered one of the hidden blades inside his band.
Neil turned away and flipped up the window blind, staring out at the wing and waiting for takeoff. Let Andrew stare. Let him smuggle knives onto an eleven hour flight. Let the Foxes and Ravens fight. Whatever. This would be the last time Neil would see the United States. He intended to stay where he was going or die while he was there.
It was a strange farewell, bittersweet, seeing a beach that was across the country from where his mother was buried. Neil was tired. He didn’t want to be here anymore. He didn’t want to be anywhere anymore.
The pilot announced they were ready for take off, and Neil closed his eyes. It was time to go.
*
Things were fine until they weren’t.
The flight was quiet until it wasn’t.
Everything was calm until the cabin depressurized and oxygen masks fell in front of every passenger.
Neil heard someone from a few seats behind him scream.
Everything was too chaotic and Neil couldn’t breathe and so many people were screaming, people were standing up, the tall anxious scarred man—Neil knew his name was Kevin because someone had called his name at some point during the flight—was securing a mask on his face. Neil could see, through the turbulence and the chaos, most of the other passengers doing so as well.
Andrew was unbuckling his seatbelt and moving to stand up. A bump of turbulence made him fall back immediately, and Neil watched as Andrew’s hands curled tightly around the front of the armrests as he attempted to stand again. His legs looked shaky. His hands looked weak. Neil looked at his face and noticed that his skin was pale.
“Hey,” Neil said, quietly, over the roar of the plane, the people, the storm. Andrew did not turn to him.
“Hey,” Neil said again, a little louder. Andrew still wouldn’t look away from the people in front of him, searching, looking. Neil reached up for Andrew’s oxygen mask, and that was when Andrew finally turned to look at him, annoyed, intense, furious. Neil, without a second thought, slipped the band quickly over Andrew’s face and secured it behind his head, pulling it tight. Andrew immediately pulled out one of his smuggled knives and pushed the tip to Neil’s throat. The jostling of the plane poked the blade into his skin. Neil barely felt it.
Neil pushed the blade away from his neck and said, “Your brother is three rows up. He’s not sitting by a Raven, and he’s in the middle seat.” The more Neil spoke, the more he realized that, oh, actually, maybe he should have his oxygen mask on, too. His vision was blurring and it was hard to breathe. He reached up for it, still staring at Andrew, still trying to get him to calm down. “You need to get Kevin out of his seat, and then you can move to the emergency exit row, which should be in front of your brother. Don’t forget that your seat is a flotation device. I’d advise taking Moriyama’s. He should be up there, too.”
Neil finally slipped his mask on and took a deep breath. There was so much screaming he didn’t know if Andrew heard anything he said, if anyone was paying attention to anything other than the fact that they were going down and everything was dark and scary and Neil didn’t have anyone who would look for him when he was gone.
And then the plane crashed.
*
There was fire in the water, an engine and an emergency boat somewhere, and people were still screaming, calling out for names that Neil didn’t recognize, wouldn’t know. He was trying to keep his head above water, was hoping to find his duffel bag, but Neil didn’t have anything, just the clothes on his back and the cushion of his seat as a flotation device, cradled to his chest, and he was kicking his way somewhere, in any direction. It was dark outside, and people were still screaming, and no one was calling Neil’s name.
*
Eventually the waves stopped overtaking him and Neil could breathe enough to focus and focus enough to open his eyes, and he saw the sun cresting behind an island not far from where he was, and he saw debris drifting, and people floating and crying, and he started toward land, and he came across someone who couldn’t keep their body afloat.
Neil thought for a moment—but it wasn’t worth it, leaving someone out here, and he’d want someone to stop for him, even if he didn’t have anyone, so Neil, through thick and weary limbs—he was so cold—went to the drowning man and held him up.
“You need to take off your shoes,” Neil said, trying to keep him up, he was so tall, and his bright orange jacket was soaked and sagging off his skin. “I can’t keep you up if you don’t help.”
The man, panting, gasping, held tight to the floatation device Neil was sharing and took off his shoes and placed them atop the seat so he wouldn’t lose them to the depths of the ocean.
“I need to find Dan,” the guy said. “I need to find her.”
Neil didn’t know how to tell him they weren’t going to find her, but instead he said, “Okay. We’ll find her.” Anything to get them to shore.
Neil started kicking, and soon, the guy joined in, weak and weary, looking out for Dan, looking out for anyone. Neil looked at the island up ahead and kicked.
*
Matt must have seen Dan amongst the people who were already on shore as he abandoned Neil as soon as their feet brushed the bottom and slogged his way to her and the few others huddled together on the beach. Neil, as soon as he was able, collapsed on his knees. He was gasping, breathing in sea water, thick with salt, and immediately coughed it out. He vomited up whatever was left in his body before he crawled his way out of the ocean and curled up on the beach, breathing and breathing.
He could hear the huddled mass call for more people out on the waves. Neil wanted to look out, see who else had made it, but he couldn’t move. He listened to the people instead, face buried in the sand, eyes closed. The sun was still rising.
*
“Did you see the emergency boat?”
“Yeah, I fucking saw the boat. Did you see Tetsuji on it?”
“I saw Tetsuji and the pilot pull an unconscious Coach out of the wreckage and put him on the boat.”
“Where’s Riko?”
“Dead, hopefully.”
“I don’t think we can afford to hate each other in our current situation.”
“I don’t fucking care about our current situation! Our plane just crashed! I just had to swim to shore! I'm on a goddamn island! Oh my god, I’m panicking. Fuck. Oh my god. Shit. Where are the monsters? They’re the only ones not here.”
“What about the Ravens?”
“I could give two shits about the Ravens. Where are the monsters?”
*
Neil needed to get up. As much as he would like to lie on the beach and wait for death, he didn’t want to be around either sports team while they were marooned on this island. Wiping at his cheeks and scrubbing more sand into his skin, Neil struggled to sit up, struggled to motivate himself, struggled to stand.
But he didn’t have anything else to do, so he sat up, motivated himself, and stood. He began limping along the shoreline, considering the trees above him, taking stock of what was around him. The Foxes in their huddle didn’t notice him leave nor try to stop him.
Neil moved on. His clothes were cold and clammy and caked in sand, but he could feel already how hot the day would be. Not a cloud in sight—ironic, considering the storm that ruined them. Neil moved on. He hadn’t gotten far before he saw another group of four sprawled on the beach, and it only took a few seconds for Neil to recognize the twins and their two tall companions. Andrew was on his back, an arm tossed over his eyes, one leg bent. His twin was beside him, hugging his knees and rocking. Kevin was pacing the beach and staring out at the horizon. The other man was on the other side of Andrew, sitting cross-legged and ticking a list off his fingers. Neil couldn’t hear what he was saying.
Once he was close enough to the group, feet crunching the sand and drawing their attention to him, they all looked at him. Kevin stopped pacing. Andrew’s twin stopped rocking. The other brunette stopped speaking. Andrew did nothing, arm still thrown over his eyes.
“They’re looking for you,” Neil told them, and that’s when Andrew finally uncovered his eyes and looked up at Neil.
“Who the fuck are you?” Andrew’s twin snapped.
“Um, bro,” the man on the other side of Andrew said. “What’s up with your eyes?”
Oh right. Neil looked down at his sandy fingers in consideration. He wiped his index finger on his wet, sandy shirt. There was now more sand on it. Thinking that nothing could hurt more than it already did, Neil sighed and fished the contact out, tears immediately pooling and pouring down his cheek. He must have lost the other one somewhere in the ocean. He blinked a few more times to clear out the sand, tears still streaming, as he dropped the contact at his feet.
The monsters, as the Foxes had called them, stared at Neil in various degrees of horror and confusion. Kevin looked disgusted. The other tall man looked horrified. The twin looked annoyed. Andrew had sat up. He was the only one staring at Neil with no expression at all.
Neil tapped two fingers to his temple in a sad salute and said, “Go Foxes,” before he continued his trek, alone, across the beach.
*
“Oh my god, Kevin! Nicky! Guys! Are you okay?”
“Not really, but we’re here. It looks like all the Foxes made it. Where’s Coach?”
“I think that Tetsuji and the pilot took him and some of the Ravens on the emergency boat and fucking left.”
“Coach wouldn’t leave us!”
“He would if he was unconscious and had no fucking choice!”
“Oh my god, so we’re really stranded?”
“Oh my god, I’m gonna puke.”
“Do it over there.”
“I’m gonna do it here.”
“Ew!”
“Bro!”
“Stop!”
“Are you okay? It’s okay; here, I’ll hold your hair.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“It’s not okay.”
“Look, it’s going to be okay. We are a well-known sports team and we were on our way to a well-known place. Our coach made it out. There wouldn’t have been enough room for all of us to fit, anyways. We just have to wait for help. We just have to wait.”
“But for how long?”
“Oh god.”
“I’m gonna be sick again.”
*
Matt, once everyone stopped being sick and they realized, fatalistically, that they really were going to be stuck here, stranded, for who knows how long, remembered that he hadn’t made it to the beach alone.
“Where’s that guy?” he asked, looking up and around. Guilt hit him heavy in the chest. Matt had left that guy in the ocean. He hadn’t even waited to make sure the guy could stand before he clamored to the beach, trying to get to his people, to Dan.
“What guy?” Dan asked. Matt was still looking for the guy, now out at the ocean and the scattered debris floating in from the crash. He took two steps out, like he was going to go into the waves to search, when a hand grasped his forearm and stopped him.
Matt was honest-to-god shook that it was Andrew who had stopped him. Matt shrugged out of his grasp, a little startled, and took a step back. Since when did Andrew care about something outside the monsters?
“What guy?” Andrew asked, and Matt suddenly had the attention of all the Foxes.
“Um,” Matt said. He decided that he didn’t like Andrew’s undivided attention, but he couldn’t look away as he went on, “I was really struggling out there. After the…after it all. I don’t really know what was happening, but suddenly this dude was there and he was telling me to take off my shoes and he helped me get here. He saved my life.” Guilt and shame now weighed heavy on his chest. Matt needed to find him.
“Was he a Raven?” Allison asked.
Matt shook his head. “I don’t think so. I don’t know who he is, but I didn’t even get a chance to thank him.”
“Did he have brown hair? Blue eyes? Kinda shady?” Nicky asked. Matt didn’t know how to answer. He had been too frantic to pay attention to anything. He thought the guy’s eyes had been darker than blue, but who paid attention to the eye color of people they just met, in the dark, after their plane crashed? Matt shrugged, helpless, and Nicky went on, “Because we saw him walking down the beach a little while ago. He said you were looking for us, and then he left.”
Matt looked down in the direction the monsters had come from, but he didn’t see anyone down the barren strip of beach, going and going, in front of him.
“Fuck,” Matt said.
“Whatever,” Aaron said. “Who gives a fuck about some random dude? We need to find something to eat.”
“What was the guy doing on our plane?”
“We don’t own the airlines, Allison.”
“Still seems pretty sus.”
“He saved my life,” Matt said again. He was still looking down the beach. From beside him, he could feel that Andrew was doing the same.
*
Neil had finally ventured into the thicket of jungle in the middle of the island, not wanting to be on the beach anymore. He wished he had thought to take one of Andrew’s knives, if he still had one, but Neil could make do without one for now. He wouldn’t have been able to rob him, anyways, four against one and Neil not nearly caring as much as he should.
So he was stuck on a deserted island. He’d been living on the streets just a few nights before. At least now there wasn’t the threat of his father’s men finding him.
First, Neil needed to find somewhere to sleep. And then he could work on finding some food. The sun was a lot higher, and things were a lot hotter than they were a few hours ago. Neil would have to find a way to boil water. He’d need to search the debris washing up on shore.
This would be fine. Everything would be fine.
“I’m fine,” Neil said. He turned from the jungle and went back to the beach, hoping to find anything to help him. “I’m fine,” he said again, and again, and again.
*
Neil was just evaluating a potential tree he could use as shelter when someone hit him in the stomach with a giant tree branch. He was smacked so hard, and the tree branch wasn’t smooth, that something hard and pointy stabbed into his stomach. Neil felt his skin break, but he didn’t feel anything else break, so he could manage. Well, except for that the wind was knocked out of him and he was flat on his back.
“Well, well, well,” someone drawled from above him as Neil wheezed for breath, and then the abhorrent face of the Raven’s captain, Moriyama, was leering down at him, flanked by two other Ravens. He was smirking. “Looks like we’ve found ourselves a lost little pig. What should we do with it?”
Neil, unimpressed with Moriyama’s weird act (hadn’t they only been on the island for a few hours and already he was acting like an insane psychopath?), said, “Spill its blood?”
“An educated pig!” Moriyama said. More Ravens emerged from the trees to bear witness to Neil’s sorry state. God, Neil hated sports teams. “Remind me again what happened to the pig at the end of the book?”
Neil, hands sliding around for a rock, a stick, anything, retorted, “Remind me again what happened to the rich, entitled kids at the end of the book?” One of the Ravens stepped on Neil’s roaming wrist, pressing down. Neil hissed but stopped struggling.
Moriyama glared. “I’m not entitled.”
“And I’m not scared of you,” Neil said, and then he spat in the Raven captain’s direction.
Moriyama gestured for two of his Raven’s to grab Neil and lift him up. As soon as he was upright, Moriyama grabbed Neil by the chin and tilted him this way and that, as if sizing him up for a meal, and said, “You should be.”