FIC: Broken Ice
Title: Broken Ice
Author: calis_1st
Rating: PG
Characters: Neal, Peter, Jones
Spoilers: 5.06, Ice Breaker, and earlier episodes.
Word count: ~ 3200
Disclaimer: Characters are all from the brilliant mind of Jeff Eastin.
Summary: What if Jones arrived a few seconds later .... an alternate ending for "Ice Breaker"
Note: Written in response to a Collar Corner prompt by azertynin, who wanted to know what would happen if "Jones arrived too late when the Russian thug slammed Neal's head against the wall." It also fills the "death" square on my h/c bingo (no, it is NOT a death!fic).
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“Hey, buddy! It's Neal Micali. Come on, the party’s just gettin’ started, where’s the fire, my man?” Nikolai walked past him and tried to ignore the irritating, gum-chewing American.
“Hey, I feel like we got off to a bad start,” Neal continued, one hand on Nikolai’s shoulder, the other in the Russian’s back pocket as he lifted his wallet. “How about you and me go back up there, have a shot or three. What do you say?”
They could hear Peter’s toast to the happy couple. His big ending, that all of the guests were under arrest (immediately followed by the sounds of agents pouring into the upstairs dining area shouting “FBI” and “hands in the air”), was a little too clear. Nikolai turned toward Neal with a look of rage.
“You’re no sports agent,” he said, eyes narrowed and closing the gap between him and Neal.
“Yeah, you’re not - ” Neal looked at Nikolai’s identification - “Sammy Jordache? Really?”
Nikolai moved surprisingly quickly, grabbing Neal by the shoulders, spinning him around and slamming him into the wall. The sudden turn caught Neal off-balance and before he could correct his stance Nikolai slammed him into the wall again. The first time Neal’s shoulder took the brunt of the force but he second time it was his head. Nikolai pressed his forearm into Neal’s throat hard enough so Neal couldn't inhale and drew his other arm back, fist clenched and clearly aimed at Neal's face.
They heard Jones before they saw him as he ran down the hall, gun drawn. He shoved the Russian away from Neal, yelling “don’t even think about it.” Jones glanced quickly at Neal as he pressed Nikolai chest first against the wall with a quick, “you okay, Caffrey?” Neal, eyes a little wider than normal, nodded once and turned away from the agent. He leaned into the wall and began walking toward the stairs. Jones managed to cuff the Russian, thankful that Nikolai didn’t try to fight him, since Jones had to holster his weapon in order to both hold and cuff him.
It was nearly a half hour later before the last of the party-goers was taken away. Peter had gathered quite a few passports, many of which bore the same tell-tale forgery mark that Neal had pointed out a couple of days earlier.
“You’ll remember my face,” Sergei said to Peter as he was taken away in cuffs.
"Yeah, yeah," Peter mumbled. Speaking of faces Peter realized he hadn’t seen Neal’s since before the raid.
“Jones, where’s Caffrey?” Peter asked as the younger man walked past.
“Neal? Didn’t he come up here?”
Peter shook his head. “If he did, I didn’t see him with everything else that was going on.”
“Huh. He did look a little shaken, I'll see if he's outside."
Jones checked the front of the building where the last of the FBI vehicles was parked, then crossed the boardwalk to the beach. There was no sign of Neal.
"He's not out front," he said to Peter. "You realize he’s not wearing his anklet, right?”
"He's not in here, either," Peter said, shaking his head as he pulled out his cellphone. His call went immediately to voicemail. “Dammit, Neal, where are you?” he said, not expecting any kind of response.
“You want me to look for him?” Jones asked.
“No, I’ll go, I want you to get the ERT team started. Wait, I need to go head back to the office to start processing these guys. You know what? I’ve had it. I don't know what games he's playing, but I'm through. We’ll deal with Caffrey later.”
*****
“You okay, Caffrey?” Jones had asked. Neal had nodded and then carefully made his way down the hall that Jones had just crossed. He nodded more out of habit than truth; in fact, he was most definitely not okay. His palm skimmed the wall in an attempt to walk a relatively straight line, as he was rapidly developing an overwhelming sense of vertigo. His throat ached fiercely where Nikolai had pressed against it. Neal reached up to rub it and noticed blood dripping on his hand from a bloody nose. The dizziness was getting worse, he could barely swallow, and he watched with detachment as the blood flowed more heavily.
There was an open door right past the stairs. Neal slid into the room and closed the door behind him; he didn't think he could make it up to the main level just then. It was a small storage room - industrial shelving holding cleaning products, mops, brooms, and partial cases of paper towels and bathroom tissue. In the absence of a chair Neal sank to the floor against the door and pulled off his tie. He wanted something other than his tie to press against his bleeding nose. The paper towels were closest, He clumsily pulled a pack from the stack, then struggled to tear open the thin cardboard wrapping. He finally managed to free a few and pressed them to his nose. Tilting his head back he barely managed to avoid vomiting from the extreme nausea caused by moving his head. The industrial paper was nearly useless at absorbing blood. Instead, his head fell forward as he watched his blood stain his pale gray shirt.
Your behavior is sociopathic.
Neal looked up. He didn't see Dr. Summers in the room. She must be in the hallway, he thought, just outside the door.
"You don’t think I can change," he murmured.
You’ll never be anything more than what you are.
"I am a criminal."
You’re a criminal, and until you’ve served out your sentence, that’s exactly what you are.
“Peter,” he whispered out loud. His throat hurt, his head hurt, but the worst pain of all was the hurt in his heart when he heard those words again. He couldn’t stop the tears he felt filling his eyes, which must have been because of the physical aches, not the emotional ones.
The noise from upstairs was diminishing and he needed to get away, to clear his head someplace. There was a small window a couple of feet from the shelving that he thought he could squeeze through, if he could only get up to it. It took him much longer than he’d expected to climb the shelves, crawl through the window and drag himself up onto the ground outside the restaurant. By the time he pulled his foot through the opening even his teeth hurt. Worse, he couldn’t remember why he needed to get away, just that he did. Burke was after him, maybe. Or Hagen. Or Burke found out Neal was working with Hagen. The FBI raided the restaurant, he recalled; he was lucky to have avoided being arrested. Had to get away, if only his head would stop hurting and the dizziness would pass.
He was on the boardwalk. If he could cross it without being discovered he could hide under it and wait for Peter - no, that couldn’t be right, he was on the run from Peter, wasn't he? The few agents still in the area were focused on their prisoners. By walking carefully and staying away from the spotlights the SWAT team had positioned facing the restaurant he was able to reach the beach before collapsing on the sand. He pushed himself backwards under the boardwalk, facing the ocean and closing his eyes to the rising moon.
*****
It was after midnight when Peter got home. He still hadn't heard from Neal, and his emotions swung wildly from anger to worry and back. Peter's calls to Neal cell went straight to voicemail, indicating Neal had turned his phone off. He began pacing in synch with his rapidly moving thoughts. Things hadn't been right between them since - well, since prison. No, since the theft of the Welsh gold. Did Neal steal it? Peter was so sure that he had, just like he had been so sure Neal had stolen the Nazi treasure. Except it was Mozzie who had stolen it. Although Neal had known about it. But he hadn't stolen it. Yet he was willing to take sole responsibility for the theft after they had gotten Elizabeth back from Keller, just to make sure that Keller would go away for a long, long time. He'd also given up a two and a half million dollar ring to ransom Peter from Keller, the same ring he was going to use to propose to Kate. Peter stopped pacing and sat down hard on his couch. The couch on which Neal, clutching a pillow to his stomach, had told Peter about Dr. Summers. The couch Peter had dragged him to after he'd been drugged at the Howser clinic, the day he'd told Peter that he was the only person in his life that he trusted. The couch Peter had found his wayward charge sitting on, talking to his wife and petting his dog, within two days of getting out of prison the first time.
Peter had told Neal that he needed perspective, and then called him a criminal. He knew that he was absolutely right, and at the same time he was absolutely wrong. A mental image of a cartoon Schrödinger’s cat briefly crossed his mind. He ran his fingers through his hair and sighed. Neal was family; Neal was a criminal. Neal, who had lost so much in his life - his childhood to Witness Protection, his father both when Neal was only a child and again just a couple of months back; the woman he had thought he’d spend his life with, and the woman who had loved him as a son, both suddenly and violently.
Peter needed to remember who Neal was but he couldn’t let him go back to prison. They had promised each other, no more secrets, but Neal was hiding something, and Peter was more and more certain that it somehow involved him. Right now, though, he was tired. The case they’d just wrapped up was dangerous and exhilarating; the only thing lacking was Neal, and Peter didn’t know if he was hurt or had taken advantage of being off anklet during the chaos surrounding the arrests. He recalled a brief discussion with Neal - how long ago? - I may have rushed to judgement, Peter had said; Oh, you had judgement on speed dial, Neal had replied. And look how that turned out, Peter reminded himself.
He was startled from his thoughts by the ringing of his phone. It was Jones.
“Peter, ERT just got back. There’s - they found blood in the downstairs hallway and in a storage room. And a tie, also bloody. I think it’s the tie Caffrey had on tonight.”
“What else?” Peter asked softly.
“Just that there was an open window with more blood on the casement. After that - nothing.” Jones let out a deep breath. “I didn’t see any bleeding but I should have known he wasn’t okay. Nicolai had him in a pretty good chokehold. I’m gonna go back out there as soon as we get all this evidence logged in, but it might be a while. You want me to call the 60th?”
“I can be there in twenty minutes. When you can, could you send someone uptown and see if he’s at June’s? If he’s holed up someplace closer to the scene the locals aren’t going to find him.”
*****
Neal woke up lying on his side under the boardwalk and was immediately struck by three things: the moon was no longer in his line of sight, his head hurt as much as it did earlier, and he was cold. Oh, four things - it was raining. Make that five things - every part of his body was hurting now, maybe from the rain, maybe from sleeping on wet sand. It didn't matter, he just needed to get out, get warm, feel better, and deal with the Peter and Hagen disaster, somehow. The Peter-Hagen-FBI juggling was killing him slowly but at the moment he didn't have the strength to deal with it. He could, though, find help for the first three.
He had to open and close his hands a few times to drive away the stiffness enough so that he could get his phone from his inside jacket pocket. He tried to use it three times before he realized he must have turned the phone off. The screen's bright light made him cringe. He squeezed his eyes shut while he took shallow breaths to control the nausea. He rolled over to his back and tried to focus on the phone's clock - could have been 11:10 or 1:10 or something with ones and zeroes. A chirp told him he had voicemail. He fumbled with the buttons until he found the right combination of numbers to retrieve them. The first was from an angry Peter; he ignored the rest of them. He wanted to call Mozzie but couldn't remember the number of his burner phone of the week. Panicking, he tried to crawl out from under the boards. He got about halfway out when he just needed to close his eyes for a bit, maybe take a brief nap. That might help him remember how to reach Mozzie. That might help.
*****
Peter was still a few miles from the restaurant when Jones called him.
"Peter, Neal's cell phone is back on. I traced his location to somewhere near the restaurant. It looks like he might be on the boardwalk about a block south."
"Thanks, Jones." Peter dialed Neal. This time it rang before going to voicemail. "Come on, Neal, pick up," he said anxiously. "I'll be there soon. "
Peter parked in the area Jones had indicated, but, between the hour and the rain, there was no one in sight. He pulled out the flashlight he kept in the glove compartment and got out of the car. He called Neal's name while he shone the flashlight up and down the boards, then walked over to the beach. The rain was cold as it dripped down his neck. His earlier anger at Neal was gone, completely replaced by worry that he wasn't answering. Peter stopped and pulled out his cell phone. As soon as he connected with Neal's number he could see a light blinking in the sand a couple dozen yards away. He aimed the flashlight and saw Neal's hand, holding the phone. Peter ran toward him, jumped down to the sand, and stopped suddenly as a terrible sense of déjà vu washed over him. Lying on his back, eyes closed in the rain, blood on his shirt, was Neal, looking all the world like David Seigel. Peter had to take several deep breaths before he could bring himself to kneel beside him and check for a pulse. With his own hands shaking it took a few seconds but he found it. He could finally exhale as he tried to rouse Neal. It was while he was trying to find the source of the blood on Neal's chest that the younger man finally responded by weakly batting Peter's hand.
"Hey, Neal, what are you doing out here?" he asked.
"P'ter?" Neal squinted with one eye, the other remaining firmly closed. "Stop."
"I'm trying to find out where this blood came from."
"Nosebleed. 'M okay." He managed to sit upright with Peter's help.
"No, you're really not," Peter said. "Why can't you be honest about this?"
Neal took a shaky breath and leaned against Peter more than he wanted to.
"Bleeding stopped. Feel like shit. Don't need a lecture." His voice was a breathy whisper.
Peter was immediately contrite. "You're right, I'm sorry. What actually happened before Jones arrested Nicolai?"
"Head, wall."
Peter gently ran his hands over Neal's head until he found a large lump near his right ear.
"Can you make it to the car, or should I call an ambulance?"
"Don't need a hospital, Peter."
Peter sighed.
"You need to get checked out, Neal. Your choice is mode of transportation. Do you think you can stand?"
Neal didn't have the energy to argue, so opted for the car. But once inside, under the domelight, Peter saw an ugly bruise on Neal's throat. With as much self-control as he could manage, he casually said, "neck hurt?"
Neal reached up and winced. "Yeah, it does," he said, deflating Peter's anger.
"Were you going to mention it?"
"Forgot. Head hurt more."
Shaking his head, Peter turned on the heater and carefully drove to the nearest emergency room.
*****
The phrases "head injury," "bruised neck" and "unconscious" got Neal into an examination cubicle quickly. The cool air and damp clothes caused him to shiver through the beginning of his initial exam. The nurse pulled a pair of hospital gowns from a supply drawer and told him to put those on while she left to see if there were any blankets in the warmer. By then Neal was shaking so much Peter stepped over to help him unbutton his shirt, momentarily pausing when he saw - again - the blood on his shirt. For as often as Peter had seen Neal in the sleeveless tee shirts he wore while painting he rarely saw him bare-chested.
"You've lost some weight."
"Stress, I guess."
"Anything you want to discuss?"
And here it was, the opening they both looked for. Except, for as much as Neal wanted to exit the carnival ride that now defined his life, telling Peter was the last thing he could do. The truth would destroy Peter's faith in the law he so firmly believed in; it would send the both back to prison in a heartbeat. In the end, Peter might be found innocent, but he'd never work for the FBI again. Neal would likely not get out until he was too old to care.
"No," he finally said, looking down.
Peter was tired - no, exhausted. Memories of every major life event over the last few months were crashing down on him. Knowing that Neal had stolen the Welsh coins, getting a promotion at work, being in prison, being exonerated from a murder he didn't commit, Elizabeth's fears for his safety, the car accident, helping Neal connect with his father and then finding out James really was a cop killer. Even the trip to Cape Verde and subsequent return to the Cave - every low point of his life lately was centered firmly on Neal, and every high point was in spite of him. And Neal was under stress? Peter turned away, bit his lip, and shoved his fists into his pockets. One hand hit Neal's anklet. He'd nearly forgotten about it. He took it out and flicked his wrist in a staccato movement toward Neal,
"You know," Peter said, "trust is dead here, and faith - "
"Is on life support, I get it, Peter," Neal replied.
"I'm ready to pull the plug."
Neal lifted his head for just a moment, and even through his anger Peter finally saw the anguish on Neal's face before the younger man looked back down. The opening of the curtain to Neal's examination room kept them both from continuing.
"Go home, Peter. I'll get a cab," he said as the nurse wrapped a warm blanket over his shoulders.
Peter put the tracker on Neal's ankle.
"We'll finish this conversation later," he said, more kindly than he'd said anything earlier, as he turned and left the exam room.
"Never," Neal whispered, after he was certain Peter was gone.
Thank you for reading. Comments are very much appreciated.