The Snare 2/2
Author: Regency
Title: The Snare
Rating: PG-13 for a bit of cursing.
Pairing: Neal/Peter/Elizabeth, implied Neal/Kate
Spoilers: General series, but with particular spoilers for Free Fall (1.07) & Hard Sell (1.08).
Warnings: Sap and regret. Unusual injury. Character death.
Word Count: ~ 4,225
Summary: The final showdown between Neal, Peter, and Kate has more winners than losers, but no fewer casualties.
Author's Notes: Written for the White Collar Valentine's Day Fic Exchange.
Prompt: Kate has been kidnapped and Neal knows exactly where she's being held. He charges in blind. It's a setup. Whether she wants his stash or is trying to get to Peter is up to you.
Disclaimer: I don’t own any characters recognizable as being from White Collar . They are the property of their producers, writers, and studios, not me. No copyright infringement was intended and no money was made in the writing or distribution of this story. It was good, clean fun. The stanzas quoted at the beginning are taken from the poem Joy and Sorrow by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
~!~
Peter
Peter listened very carefully to the sounds of the half-sunk fish boat. It hadn’t seen a crew in some time, but Peter wasn’t putting it past Kate to have planned for a few opportunistic stragglers to come on by and finish him. Nope, there was no love lost there. Love found in an odd, indirect, way, but none lost.
At least, not for me, Peter thought, feeling smug and regretful all at once. Somewhere else in this great water channel was his partner, his friend, and so much more than the one language he spoke well had defined yet. He wondered if there was a word for Neal in French or Portuguese. Neal would know, he attested and had no doubt. Neal always knew.
Peter just hoped that Neal didn’t know that his partner was nearby, but couldn’t save him, couldn’t save either of them. I’m so sorry, El. I tried to bring us both home.
Unfortunately, Peter couldn’t put it past him to know this, too, because Neal knew everything.
That only made it worse.
~!~
Elizabeth
The only difference between the state El was in now and the state she’d been in was that she’d switched locations. Now, she was at the marina, staring out at the great body of water in front of her as though she could actually see through the darkness that had fallen hours ago.
All there was was the artful echo of a moonless night above and below and she idly wondered if from wherever they were they could see it, too.
She hugged herself tight and thought, Neal could improve on perfection if he painted this. And she didn’t doubt it. Neal had always had a gift for not only imitation, but flattery. She was pretty sure nature would have approved of whatever he put up on her living room wall as long as it was finished by his hand.
There she went again, wanting things.
They’d asked her if she wanted to go out on one of the retrieval boats. They’d been careful not to say rescue. They don’t think there’ll be a rescue. She hadn’t said yes or no, she’d just looked at them, because to get on either boat was to decide that seeing one of them again was more important than seeing the other. That wasn’t a choice she was prepared to make-ever, really.
So, she stayed on the deck in its uneasy silence with a battalion of search and retrievers and FBI agents standing shoulder to shoulder with her. Neal hadn’t started out a good guy, but he’d become one of their own pretty quick. And, Peter, well, Peter went without saying. He always had. She wondered if he’d ever realized how much people admired him. She doubted that, he didn’t spend his time wishing that people loved him more or carrying if they didn’t love him at all. He did his job and, that, he loved more than enough.
There was a commotion on the left hand edge of the Sound. There was a ship’s horn blowing so loud, El’s teeth rattled even this far in. There were search lights and ants, or people who might as well have been ants for all she could see, leaping into the murky depths off the back of a water cruiser.
She might have held her breath if she’d taken a breath since yesterday afternoon. But she didn’t, so there was no need. Besides, she didn’t think the dizziness had come from oxygen-deprivation. They were pulling someone from under the surface and she didn’t have the heart to look. Too bad her body didn’t have the heart to look away.
She might have hit the deck like a weighted anchor if Clinton hadn’t been there. He was there, though, and she didn’t even fall.
~!~
Neal
In death, he hadn’t thought he could be colder, but he shivered again anyway. His muscles twitched in spasms that would have made him wince if his waterlogged eyelids seemed even slightly capable of the motion. He’d been still too long and his body protested. He tried to move and gasped, surprisingly, unbelievably surprisingly, sucking in air where water had been.
The air didn’t even seem salty and he’d been expecting that. Then again, that could have been the waterlogged everything else talking. Either way, he was just glad there was air, because air meant he could breathe, he could live.
Maybe even forever if there was an Elizabeth to his Neal and a Peter for them both.
As long as there’s air, too. Can’t forget the air.
All right, so he guessed there was some poetry to be found in that. He coughed when he would have laughed; but, then, his mind remembered and his heart rebelled.
Peter?
~!~
Elizabeth & Neal
They sat huddled together in the back of an ambulance that had surrendered its blinking lights to their stubbornness. Even if he’d nearly drowned, he wouldn’t go; even if she’d nearly gone into trauma-induced shock, like hell was she leaving. They were in this together, the three of them, and that was how they’d be leaving: together. That was the plan.
If you ever show your rule-abiding face around here, Peter, we’d be glad to get this show on the road, Neal mused with a touch of affection he would have loved to bestow on his handler, whom he needed more than a warm blanket or a cup of French-roast. Elizabeth’s getting antsy, better hurry before she makes you clean the attic. That was his mind right now, a constant series of thoughts to Peter as though just thinking of him would keep him alive.
He tried to keep the, Don’t go, please and I need you, you know that, don’t you to a minimum, but he couldn’t tell how well he was doing with that. The itchy rawness of his of ankles and wrists-and, oh, yeah, his lungs-was playing havoc with his ability to think clearly. It’s kind of a bitch.
Elizabeth, for her part, was kissing Neal’s forehead with comforting regularity. Every time his teeth would begin to chatter anew, he’d get a series of warm soft kisses to his brow. She relished holding him close, brushing through his damp curling hair, and dancing her fingers intermittently over his carotid as though he couldn’t tell what she was doing. Even if he could.
Not that it mattered, but he did the same to the pulse thrumming at her wrist and he kept breathing in her clean, Elizabeth scent. She didn’t smell like saltwater or rust or damaged wood. She didn’t smell like a beautiful Chinese silk sash worth more money than sentiment. She didn’t smell like hysteria or blood-caked fingernails. She smelt like tasteful perfume and the leather from Satchmo’s collar. She smelled like blue ink and collated carbon paper from the 1990’s, like Peter; and loved and laundered wool and shoe polish, like Neal.
She pulled them all together and nothing had ever been this right. There was an Elizabeth for his Neal. They just needed a Peer to complete the picture.
Neal was an optimist. He did the hope thing with more regularity than Peter had ever encouraged.
Maybe they didn’t notice that gunfire?
No, Peter, you don’t really look like a Fed. You just act like one.
Elizabeth’s totally not mad at you right now. Scout’s honor.
Generally speaking, most of those counted as a cross between optimism and a little white lie, but that had always worked for him. He didn’t see the point in tweaking a working system.
He squeezed Elizabeth’s hand. “He’ll be okay. I bet any moment now he’ll come walking from the shadows and ask what all the fuss is about.”
She nodded and, even if she didn’t believe, she knew how to play along. “He’ll probably smack you upside the head for nearly killing yourself.”
He waved his free arm around in a fit of indignation. “Hey! Drugged and kidnapped here. I was not expecting to be tied to a sinking ship.” He paused and tipped his head thoughtfully. “I don’t think anyone can actually predict that happening” He stuck his tongue out at her, his judgment made. “ So not my fault.”
She snorted and raised a finely arched eyebrow. “We’ll let Peter be the judge of that.”
“Oh, yeah, that’ll work out in my favor.” He rolled his eyes, hoping without saying that he’d get the chance to see.
“Your problem, not mine.” She beamed and hoped the same. They were good at hoping.
He hissed in her direction, “Traitor.” He was pretty sure he’d been a bad influence on her all along.
“You love me for it,” she twinkled, snuggling even closer to him. He was as bad an influence as one kitten could be on another, but she’d learned the nuzzling thing all on her own.
All he could say was, “Yeah,” and nuzzle right back.
There were more searchlights and more horns blowing and actual, honest to God whooping somewhere farther out and to the right of where Neal’s yacht had been. The night air carried the sounds and, no, Neal had never heard a symphony play more beautifully than that. It was one of theirs and he was back.
He didn’t spare a thought for where Kate might be. Somewhere. He almost hoped that somewhere was in the Sound, near the bottom.
~!~
Peter
“Who brings a harpoon to a gunfight?” Neal asked, disbelief coloring his shuddering syllables.
Peter smiled crookedly and gave a brief shrug. It might have hurt like hell an hour ago, but since he was pretty much numb from the chest down, what did he know from pain? I know cold, though. Got that down pretty well. Blankets are beautiful things. Peter had decided this fundamental truth and would not be deterred.
As though in response to his thinking, one of the rescuers tucked another blanket around him, taking great care, of course, to avoid the oversized steel arrow that had already nearly put someone’s eye out. Between Peter and God, he had to admit he’d nearly laughed at that. Morbid, yes, but also funny. He was pretty sure being pinned to a deck like a frog to be dissected had warped his sense of humor, and, mostly likely, his sense of right and wrong, too. Pity.
“I’m going to kill her,” was the first thing El said once she was through touching every unbruised, unpunctured part of Peter she could reach. (It was a surprisingly large surface area. He was impressed, though if by El or Kate or himself, he couldn’t say.) “I am actually going to kill her.”
“Don’t worry about her,” he croaked, shifting his eyes toward the organism known as the free-range, stumbling Neal Caffrey out of Greater Manhattan that was lurching along at his side. His eyes were shadowed, with good reason given the time of night, but he didn’t seem totally opposed to El’s plan. He even seemed like he might have been cooking up a couple of his own.
If it made a difference, the girl wouldn’t stand a chance , he opined and felt strangely proud. His Neal and his Elizabeth could be dangerous when they wanted to be. Lucky for everyone, they never did. However, he wasn’t kidding himself, or any of them.
It wouldn’t make a difference.
Be it a matter of days or a matter of hours, they’d eventually find Kate Moreau. Just off the ship where’d she’d left Peter to die, dead herself among the sundry nets and hooks that had snared a hundred thousand fish in their day.
Caught in her own trap, Peter tutted. He would have scoffed if he could have. Cute.
Cute, because it was actually a little poetic, and, God, Peter hated poetry.
He did love happy endings, though.
Even if he’d be damned before he ever told Neal that.
Part 1/2