Fic: Migration Patterns (White Collar, PG, 4300 words)
Title: Migration Patterns
Author: Flora
Rating: PG
Genre and/or Pairing: Gen
Characters: Neal, Peter, Mozzie, Elizabeth
Spoilers: Through 3.16
Warnings: None
Word Count: 4300
Summary: Hiking through the woods and sleeping under the stars meant you’d really screwed up this time, and you had to get out of town yesterday with your face plastered on wanted posters all over every bus and train station in the area.
A/N: Set post-S3. Written for aqwt101 for this prompt at collarcorner. Huge thanks to kernezelda and LC, my awesome beta readers!
He should have listened to Mozzie.
“Vacation, Neal!” Peter had said, once the latest case - his first since coming home - was closed. Neal had been looking forward to a quiet weekend with June, a chance to settle back in at last, soak up that view from the balcony until he could convince himself it was all real.
He and Peter had very different ideas about what vacation meant. And yet he’d walked into this madness with his eyes open. “I thought I don’t get vacation days.”
“You do if I say you do,” Peter said. “A week upstate. Cabin in the woods, fresh fish on the grill, camping under the stars …”
Neal had been preparing some choice retort about the joys of cramped tents and outdoor toilets and dead fish and the kind of woods that had bears in them, and this time of year very possibly hunters with guns. But Peter looked as wrecked as Neal felt after the past few months; he’d been left to clean up one hell of a mess, struggling to keep his own career intact while wrangling with Kramer and Bancroft and DOJ on Neal’s behalf. He’d barely slept since Neal left, Elizabeth had said, and looking at the new lines around his eyes, Neal believed her.
If dragging Neal camping upstate would help Peter relax, Neal had decided to go along with it. Just this once.
That was his first mistake.
He’d insisted on inviting Mozzie, at least. Peter had agreed, presumably on the assumption that Mozzie would rather spend five days locked in the van. But Mozzie was a true friend, and he’d agreed after only three hours’ grumbling and a bottle of Neal’s favorite red.
Mozzie was a true friend, but he wasn’t a martyr. Which is why he was back at the cabin with Elizabeth, where they had running water and a fully-equipped kitchen. According to Mozzie's last text - before the cell phone coverage completely crapped out - they were baking cakes, right now, while Neal and Peter were headed into the woods far from all such civilized amenities. Mozzie had tried to talk him out of it.
“We dragged the tent all the way up here.” Peter had looked like an eager kid, standing by the cabin door with the gear already packed. “It’ll be an adventure.”
Mozzie was not impressed. “Adventure is just bad planning, suit.”
“Teddy Roosevelt?” Peter guessed.
“Roald Amundsen.” And then, to Neal: “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“You always do.”
“I try, Neal. I try.”
Neal agreed with Mozzie; he’d never been one to do without the finer things in life unless he had a good reason. Hiking through the woods and sleeping under the stars meant you’d really screwed up this time, and you had to get out of town yesterday with your face plastered on wanted posters all over every bus and train station in the area.
Still, he’d tried to make the best of it; he’d even packed colored pencils.
The weather couldn’t have been more perfect for hiking. The sky was a pale crystal blue, white feathered clouds painted along the tops of the mountains. The ground was still soft after last night’s rain, and they stepped carefully around rocks plastered with slick wet leaves. Moving uphill at a steady pace, he’d soon been warm enough to welcome the bite of a faint breeze off the lake.
But the sun was fading by the time they stopped for the night, along with his enthusiasm for the view. His boots were soaked through from wading across three picturesque mountain streams Peter insisted they didn’t have time to stop and sketch, and his neck and shoulder ached from the weight of the tent.
Mozzie was probably licking cake batter off the mixing spoon right now, damn him. While Neal, having once again failed to listen to the voice of reason, was stuck hiking up a mountain and sleeping on the ground for the next two days, with an excited Peter and the bears. Trying not to think about the last night he’d spent in the woods, when the guys with guns were hunting him.
Mozzie would save him some cake, at least. All the while anticipating the moment he got to tell Neal “I told you so,” and very likely plotting ways to make Peter’s life hell if Neal came back to the cabin with so much as a blister.
Neal dropped the tent, rolled his shoulders ostentatiously and rubbed the knots out of his arms. He’d spent three weeks in his old cell after coming back to New York, while Peter argued with DOJ. When Peter first contacted them, saying he’d convinced Bancroft to speak for Neal if he turned himself in, he’d estimated one week until everything could be straightened out.
Neal knew Peter had done everything he could, but Mozzie still hadn’t forgiven those extra two weeks.
Now Peter gazed downslope at the trees standing like ragged torches, red and yellow in various stages of undressing for winter.
“You don’t see something like that in Paris,” he said with a touch of pride, as though surveying a canvas he’d painted himself.
“We didn’t stay in the city all the time,” Neal said. “We spent three days hiking down off the French Alps.” Because really, it wasn’t like he couldn’t camp out of doors. “We were at this ski chalet. It was the off season, so hardly anyone was staying there. We got free dessert the first couple nights.” His smile faded. “Until Interpol showed up, at least. Then we had to leave in kind of a hurry.”
Kind of a hurry had meant squeezing out of the bathroom window while the dogs whined eagerly outside the front entrance, dropping twenty feet onto a forty-five degree slope and picking their way down the winding trail in the dark. Just after moonset on the second night, huddling in the shadow of a grey rock eating leftover chocolate ganache and lemon chiffon cake with their fingers, he remembered thinking Kate would have loved this.
He would have loved this, if Kate had been there. But her grin and the light in her eyes and her joy at the rush of the chase had gone out of the world, never to return. Kate was gone and he wasn’t twenty-four anymore and he was tired of running, and they had twenty miles of open ground to cover and that cake was the last food they had.
***
Peter wouldn’t let him use newspaper to build the fire - no, they had to spend the last of the fading light searching for dry pine needles in the dripping forest. Neal grumbled halfheartedly under his breath, more out of habit than genuine irritation. Peter stacked the logs and piled the tinder like he was assembling a work of art.
“I was a Boy Scout, Peter,” Neal said, as Peter started to explain the process; Peter’s eyebrows jumped, startled, and Neal regretted saying anything. “Long time ago.”
Somehow, his feet ached even more sitting beside the fire; sore muscles locked up, stiff and painful once they were no longer moving. He’d gone soft, the frightening thought came to him, in two years’ living by the rules. But they got the fire going at last, and there was a bag of squashed marshmallows somewhere at the bottom of his pack.
“You can’t beat this,” Peter said later, looking half proud, half uncertain as he gestured around the campsite with the last scorched marshmallow on a stick, and Neal brushed dirt off his hands, wondering again how he got talked into this. And then Peter said, “It’s no chalet in the French Alps -”
And it hit him, then - Peter thought he missed it. The glamour of being a wanted fugitive, of life on the run, chalets and palaces and backwoods chases. “No, this is nice.”
Peter looked skeptical, like he suspected Neal of trying to placate him. Which he was, but he didn’t know what else to say except they were hunting me with dogs and roughing it had always meant running.
I want to be here, he thought, watching Peter’s face as the last of the flames wavered, low and bright, subsiding to a pile of glowing ash. How much that was going to matter, he couldn’t say.
The last of the papers were signed only three days ago - immunity for his latest flight and three months on the run in return for helping wrap up this latest case. With the case closed, he was officially stationed in New York under Peter’s supervision for the next two years.
“The cabin’s pretty nice, too, though,” he offered, with a grin and a helpless shrug. Because he didn’t lie to Peter. Much. “I’m not really a roughing it kind of guy.”
Commutation was, of course, out of the question; he hadn’t expected any different. He was, more or less, back to where he had been before the hearing was even proposed. It was what he wanted. It was a hell of a lot more than he’d ever expected, practically a dream come true.
So of course it felt like a trap.
And yes, he’d been on edge, and of course Peter was going to notice. But if he told Peter he’d lain awake every night since they cleared customs, listening for the sound of the other shoe getting ready to drop on his head, Peter would hear I don’t trust you.
Always, before, he’d been running toward something. Or someone. Whether he ran toward Kate, or Fowler, or that damn music box, always the thought of what was ahead drowned any dread of pursuit.
Mozzie understood. Happily ever after, Mozzie would say, isn’t for guys like us. And, The secret to a happy ending is knowing when to stop the story.
Right before the dream blows up in your face.
He had nothing more to run toward; he was exactly where he wanted to be, but there was no cover here and nowhere to hide if - when - things went south again. He’d spent the last three months a wanted fugitive, he’d spent three weeks in prison, and his parole had been officially reinstated for barely three days. It was going to take him a lot longer than that to learn how to stop sleeping with one eye open.
He could see Peter making the decision not to push, as they shoved dirt over the remains of the fire. Instead, he clapped Neal on the shoulder and turned to crawl into the tent. “Don’t stay out here all night.”
“Someone has to watch for bears,” Neal said. And smiled, at last, warmed by Peter’s answering snort of laughter.
***
If he dreamed, he remembered nothing, waking just after dawn as Peter unzipped the tent flap, letting in a swirl of cool air and the high, mournful cadence of wild geese overhead.
Now that it was light, Neal could see they were camped at the top of a gentle hill, sloping down a short ways toward the lake. Breakfast was slightly crumbled granola bars, but Neal had come prepared for mornings like this; he waited until Peter was nearly finished boiling water before pulling out a small foil-wrapped package and a miniature French press.
“Is that - ?” Peter asked, incredulous, and Neal grinned.
“With June’s compliments.”
“She’s a wonderful woman.”
“She is indeed,” Neal agreed fervently, with a surge of affection.
They folded the tent and lingered over coffee. Peter had brought binoculars, and Neal dug out a sketch pad and tried to draw the water birds and the fringe of cattails flung about the lakeshore. Something was off about the scene, Neal decided, tapping pencil against paper, studying the waves lapping against the reeds.
A few rough lines approximated the ripples in a duck’s wake and something was still off, whether in the scene or in his head he couldn’t tell. He shifted forward for a better view, stretching his legs in front of him, sending a shower of small stones skittering downhill.
“Look, you -” Peter let the binoculars drop long enough to glare at him, as a grey heron startled up from the weeds. “Now you scared it away. What are you, twelve?”
Neal gave a put-upon sigh, watching the bird flapping over the water, neck curved in a graceful S and an unfortunate fish in its beak. His heart wasn’t in it, though, any more than Peter’s was; they could both recognize this sniping as only half real frustration, half trying to fall back into their old pattern.
Something was off there, too.
Peter reached for the little French press, then paused. “Last of the coffee says you can’t sit still and be quiet for the next five minutes.”
“Let me see those and you’re on.” Neal held out a hand for the binoculars. And then, after about a minute studying the staggered V of ducks bobbing toward the center of the lake, “They’re decoys.”
Peter reached for the coffee with a smirk.
“Oh, come on -”
“It’s mine, now. How can you tell?”
“Are you saying I can’t spot a forgery?” And then he knew what was off: “Their heads don’t move.”
A winged shape circled overhead, unable to see clearly through loneliness and distance and the last of the morning haze. Even though he was waiting for it, Neal still flinched at the distant pop of gunfire from somewhere across the water. He watched with a flash of satisfaction as the duck wheeled, unhurt, winging for the shelter of the trees.
“I can see ducks in Central Park without having to watch them get shot at,” Neal said, with more of an edge than he’d intended, but no one deserved to get shot for being nearsighted and lonely.
***
Peter carried the tent for the first three hours, a twisting uphill path around moss-crowned rocks, stepping between the roots of trees determined to reclaim the narrow track forced through their territory. They didn’t speak; the woods were quiet, with only the occasional breath of wind rustling dry leaves.
Another squadron of geese passed over as Peter shrugged the tent from his shoulders at their first halt. Neal could hardly see them, squinting against the midday sun, but he knew their voices, the music of autumn in New York. Headed south for the winter, following an instinctive pull that said we’ve been here long enough, that said it’s time to move, soon it won’t be safe here anymore.
He sank onto a convenient rock as Peter passed him a water bottle. Half hidden under a fringed evergreen bough, he saw three familiar shapes - grouse, he remembered. Shy brown birds frozen in silent anticipation, trying to draw no attention, barely four feet from where they sat.
Peter’s voice was quiet. “Ever seen one this close before?”
Neal only raised one eyebrow, and Peter snorted; the birds stayed still, frozen.
“Let me guess - they used to hang out under your window at some five-star hotel in France?”
“No, Vermont,” he says, vaguely, because he can see it, again. A confused explosion of stippled brown feathers, separating from the suddenly thrashing bushes to launch upward, slantwise, in ragged formation, syncopated wingbeats pounding the still morning air sending a jolt of pure adrenaline straight to his heart.
“Seven years ago. Winter of - no, it was late fall. The trees were like -” He waved a hand at the leaves swirling in a breeze like scraps of flame-colored silk. “Like this.” The trees had been like nothing he’d ever seen, blazing colors, draped like a slow-motion sunset across the low foothills. Not that he’d been in any position to appreciate them. “I was hiding under a big spruce, one of those picture-perfect New England Christmas trees. Lying very still - I can do that, you know - waiting for the Marshals to go by.”
“You sound nostalgic.” Peter said it lightly, but it was there again - that note of uncertainty, his eyes questioning.
“I’m not.” When Peter looked unconvinced, “I had a broken arm, Peter.”
He’d jumped from the train some thirty minutes after the Marshals got on at Waterbury, rolled down the embankment onto what he’d thought in the dark was a pile of soft ferns but wasn’t. Mozzie had been waiting in St. Albans with a new set of IDs and a getaway plan, and he’d been frantic, but Neal had no way to contact him; his cell phone fractured in the fall along with his arm.
He’d dragged himself up a freezing cold stream in what seemed a vaguely northerly direction, stopping at sunrise to squeeze his way under the low-hanging spruce boughs for a brief rest that had turned into a longer nap when exhaustion overtook him. He remembered the smell of pine sap, feeling his arm throb in time with his gradually slowing heartbeat, waiting for feeling to return to his wet feet. Watching the irregular window of sky framed between black needles shade from grey silk to peach and rose, watching as the surrounding shadows lightened into grass and fern studded with silver beads of dew, and three shy brown grouse just across the narrow path. Watching the first team of Marshals go by, blue jackets and long rifles disappearing over a rise.
Neal started, now, as the birds burst up from the bush. Peter said, “Will you relax?” The words were exasperated, but his eyes were suddenly gentle. He went on, softer, “You’re not running now.”
Peter could be maddeningly obtuse sometimes; other times, like now, he could see straight through everything.
Three months ago, Peter would have said you don’t have to run anymore, but they both knew he couldn’t promise that now. Three months ago he would have said dammit, Neal, why didn’t you just turn yourself in?, furious at the thought of Neal stumbling through the wilds of New England alone and injured.
Three months ago, Peter had still trusted the system of justice he’d devoted his life to serving.
This betrayal was worse even than Kramer’s; Peter had believed in the system. The system had let him down when Kramer could use it, without breaking any laws, to drive his friend into a corner and force him to flee. Neal knew this had rocked Peter more than he’d ever show, but this faith in justice was one Neal had never shared. He had no words to offer comfort now it had been shaken.
Neal believed in people, not in systems. He believed in Mozzie, who’d found him after three days in the woods just south of St. Albans, who’d stayed with him at the hospital in Quebec where they’d had to break his arm again to reset it, nine hours’ driving and two bottles of whiskey later. He believed in Peter, in a barely perceptible motion of Peter’s head that could have been turning to look at a passing car, but wasn’t. It was nothing anyone could prove, and it was everything.
Justice was an abstract, bloodless, institutional concept that meant nothing to Neal; it had no more room for mercy or second chances than it had for revenge.
So he only said, “They warned me.” Peter’s head came up sharply. They’d never talked about it; they didn’t need to, not when eye contact could say so much. “I didn’t see the second team of Marshals. They did; I was about to break cover when they took off. If they hadn’t -”
If you hadn’t -
He’d tried to paint it, since, but he could never quite capture the frantic urgency of that leap into flight.
***
Neal was carrying the tent when he fell; a log that looked solid wasn’t, caving in and sliding out from under his foot in a shower of spongy, rotted wood. The side of the trail dropped off in a steep slope, strewn with whippy young bushes large enough to sting, slapping at his face, but not solid enough to slow his fall. A wild grab for the trunk of a sapling, a twisting explosion of pain that started in his shoulder and radiated down his arm; his fingers wouldn’t hold the trunk, but that shock of impact stole enough momentum that he skated to a halt on his back halfway down.
With his good hand he clawed at a nearby birch root, pulling himself to a sitting position and taking care not to skid further downhill on the loose leaves. The root turned out to be attached to a larger tree, reassuringly solid enough that he could stand and prop himself against it and try to judge how far he had to climb back up to the trail.
“Dammit, Neal, stay there.”
Peter half slid down the hill, in what could only be described as a slightly more controlled fall. Skidding to a stop against a lichen-draped stump, a few feet away, he scowled at Neal like he’d somehow done this on purpose.
For some reason this was oddly, absurdly comforting.
“Look at me.” Peter leaned in close, one hand fastening on his good arm. “Did you hit your head?”
“Shoulder.” This through gritted teeth, as Neal shook his head carefully. He tried, once, to move that arm and didn’t try again, breathing slowly and deliberately and trying not to throw up; definitely dislocated. He didn’t think it was broken. “Can you fix it?”
A pointless question. He saw the brief flash of uncertainty cross Peter’s face, wondered if he’d ever done this before. They were at least three hours’ walk from the nearest paved road, and it would take almost that long for any vehicle to reach them; if the joint wasn’t put back in place by then it would be severely swollen and maybe permanently damaged.
“You ever do this before?”
“I’m familiar with the theory,” Peter said gruffly, his eyes running up and down Neal’s arm. “This is gonna hurt. You ready?”
Neal was seized by a sudden sharp gratitude for the question. For a few breaths’ time to lean against the tree and brace himself for it without fearing it would be a few breaths too long. You’re not running now, Peter’s words earlier came back; struggling to breathe through the pain, this was abruptly all that mattered, that he didn’t have to force the joint back into place himself and immediately keep moving.
Peter looked distressed, and Neal wanted to tell him it was all right, but he wasn’t sure he could find a way to put that into words for Peter, who’d always worked with a team, always worked with backup. So he said only, “I trust you.”
Peter blinked rapidly several times before turning to focus.
A quick wrench and the world did a brief, dizzy spin, end over end.
“I’m really glad you’re on my side right now,” Neal said, once he could see properly again.
Peter made him sit on the ground, leaning back against the tree, while he climbed back up to the ridgeline and called Elizabeth. “She’s going to drive out and pick us up,” he said, when he had picked his way back down. “Think you can make it down to the road?”
***
She didn’t come alone; Mozzie was out of the car almost before it stopped a few hours later, stomping up the hill toward them, his face like thunder but his hands gentle like someone who’d stitched entirely too many wounds closed in the backseat of a stolen car.
“I told you this was a bad idea.”
This was addressed over Neal’s head to Peter, as Neal sat on the hood. And then, “Don’t be ridiculous,” when Peter asked how far to the nearest hospital. “He needs rest; he’s not going to get that in any hospital. Your scarf, suit.” An impatient glare, when compliance was not immediately forthcoming. And, to Neal, “At least you don’t have to avoid moving your thumbs for a week.”
Neal could practically see Peter decide not to ask about that one.
Once Mozzie had finished wrapping his arm so he couldn’t move it, Neal was bundled into the car where Elizabeth turned up the heater while Peter and Mozzie trudged back up the slope to retrieve the camping gear.
The cabin wasn’t at all bad, he decided much later, sitting in front of a cozily rustic fireplace with his right arm bound tightly to his side. There was cake, and decent wine, and after Mozzie’s outraged glare at Peter had faded to an expression hinting at some plot for creative revenge, Neal felt some easing in the tension of the last few weeks. Perhaps it was the cabin itself - isolated enough to feel like a bolt hole, but furnished comfortably so it didn’t feel like desperation - or perhaps it was simply the company.
Over dessert Elizabeth quizzed him, skeptical, on a story Mozzie had told her about an old heist. All the details were true, he assured her, even the part about the carrier pigeon and the mark’s one-eared cat. Mozzie alternated between looking smug (Estelle had given that cat a fight to remember) and watching Neal with a fierce, familiar look that said I let you out of my sight for five minutes …
Peter brought him his sketch pad when he asked, with only a brief glance at his arm.
It went against his forger’s eye for detail, drawing with his left hand. Still, this worked, somehow; the drawing, when he finished, had a ragged sense of urgency to it, the imprecision of haste that had been the essence of the scene. He’d never been able to capture it, before.
Three birds, launching in a burst of motion, a wild bid for freedom. A warning.
“Keep it,” he told Peter.
No one said welcome home; no one said you’re done running, now. But the wine Mozzie poured him, after he’d finished his first glass, said it was safe to drink enough to dull the ache in his arm. The warmth of the fire and the blankets Elizabeth tucked around him as he settled onto the couch said he could sleep soundly and not wake up in cuffs.
For tonight, this was enough.
Author: Flora
Rating: PG
Genre and/or Pairing: Gen
Characters: Neal, Peter, Mozzie, Elizabeth
Spoilers: Through 3.16
Warnings: None
Word Count: 4300
Summary: Hiking through the woods and sleeping under the stars meant you’d really screwed up this time, and you had to get out of town yesterday with your face plastered on wanted posters all over every bus and train station in the area.
A/N: Set post-S3. Written for aqwt101 for this prompt at collarcorner. Huge thanks to kernezelda and LC, my awesome beta readers!
He should have listened to Mozzie.
“Vacation, Neal!” Peter had said, once the latest case - his first since coming home - was closed. Neal had been looking forward to a quiet weekend with June, a chance to settle back in at last, soak up that view from the balcony until he could convince himself it was all real.
He and Peter had very different ideas about what vacation meant. And yet he’d walked into this madness with his eyes open. “I thought I don’t get vacation days.”
“You do if I say you do,” Peter said. “A week upstate. Cabin in the woods, fresh fish on the grill, camping under the stars …”
Neal had been preparing some choice retort about the joys of cramped tents and outdoor toilets and dead fish and the kind of woods that had bears in them, and this time of year very possibly hunters with guns. But Peter looked as wrecked as Neal felt after the past few months; he’d been left to clean up one hell of a mess, struggling to keep his own career intact while wrangling with Kramer and Bancroft and DOJ on Neal’s behalf. He’d barely slept since Neal left, Elizabeth had said, and looking at the new lines around his eyes, Neal believed her.
If dragging Neal camping upstate would help Peter relax, Neal had decided to go along with it. Just this once.
That was his first mistake.
He’d insisted on inviting Mozzie, at least. Peter had agreed, presumably on the assumption that Mozzie would rather spend five days locked in the van. But Mozzie was a true friend, and he’d agreed after only three hours’ grumbling and a bottle of Neal’s favorite red.
Mozzie was a true friend, but he wasn’t a martyr. Which is why he was back at the cabin with Elizabeth, where they had running water and a fully-equipped kitchen. According to Mozzie's last text - before the cell phone coverage completely crapped out - they were baking cakes, right now, while Neal and Peter were headed into the woods far from all such civilized amenities. Mozzie had tried to talk him out of it.
“We dragged the tent all the way up here.” Peter had looked like an eager kid, standing by the cabin door with the gear already packed. “It’ll be an adventure.”
Mozzie was not impressed. “Adventure is just bad planning, suit.”
“Teddy Roosevelt?” Peter guessed.
“Roald Amundsen.” And then, to Neal: “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“You always do.”
“I try, Neal. I try.”
Neal agreed with Mozzie; he’d never been one to do without the finer things in life unless he had a good reason. Hiking through the woods and sleeping under the stars meant you’d really screwed up this time, and you had to get out of town yesterday with your face plastered on wanted posters all over every bus and train station in the area.
Still, he’d tried to make the best of it; he’d even packed colored pencils.
The weather couldn’t have been more perfect for hiking. The sky was a pale crystal blue, white feathered clouds painted along the tops of the mountains. The ground was still soft after last night’s rain, and they stepped carefully around rocks plastered with slick wet leaves. Moving uphill at a steady pace, he’d soon been warm enough to welcome the bite of a faint breeze off the lake.
But the sun was fading by the time they stopped for the night, along with his enthusiasm for the view. His boots were soaked through from wading across three picturesque mountain streams Peter insisted they didn’t have time to stop and sketch, and his neck and shoulder ached from the weight of the tent.
Mozzie was probably licking cake batter off the mixing spoon right now, damn him. While Neal, having once again failed to listen to the voice of reason, was stuck hiking up a mountain and sleeping on the ground for the next two days, with an excited Peter and the bears. Trying not to think about the last night he’d spent in the woods, when the guys with guns were hunting him.
Mozzie would save him some cake, at least. All the while anticipating the moment he got to tell Neal “I told you so,” and very likely plotting ways to make Peter’s life hell if Neal came back to the cabin with so much as a blister.
Neal dropped the tent, rolled his shoulders ostentatiously and rubbed the knots out of his arms. He’d spent three weeks in his old cell after coming back to New York, while Peter argued with DOJ. When Peter first contacted them, saying he’d convinced Bancroft to speak for Neal if he turned himself in, he’d estimated one week until everything could be straightened out.
Neal knew Peter had done everything he could, but Mozzie still hadn’t forgiven those extra two weeks.
Now Peter gazed downslope at the trees standing like ragged torches, red and yellow in various stages of undressing for winter.
“You don’t see something like that in Paris,” he said with a touch of pride, as though surveying a canvas he’d painted himself.
“We didn’t stay in the city all the time,” Neal said. “We spent three days hiking down off the French Alps.” Because really, it wasn’t like he couldn’t camp out of doors. “We were at this ski chalet. It was the off season, so hardly anyone was staying there. We got free dessert the first couple nights.” His smile faded. “Until Interpol showed up, at least. Then we had to leave in kind of a hurry.”
Kind of a hurry had meant squeezing out of the bathroom window while the dogs whined eagerly outside the front entrance, dropping twenty feet onto a forty-five degree slope and picking their way down the winding trail in the dark. Just after moonset on the second night, huddling in the shadow of a grey rock eating leftover chocolate ganache and lemon chiffon cake with their fingers, he remembered thinking Kate would have loved this.
He would have loved this, if Kate had been there. But her grin and the light in her eyes and her joy at the rush of the chase had gone out of the world, never to return. Kate was gone and he wasn’t twenty-four anymore and he was tired of running, and they had twenty miles of open ground to cover and that cake was the last food they had.
***
Peter wouldn’t let him use newspaper to build the fire - no, they had to spend the last of the fading light searching for dry pine needles in the dripping forest. Neal grumbled halfheartedly under his breath, more out of habit than genuine irritation. Peter stacked the logs and piled the tinder like he was assembling a work of art.
“I was a Boy Scout, Peter,” Neal said, as Peter started to explain the process; Peter’s eyebrows jumped, startled, and Neal regretted saying anything. “Long time ago.”
Somehow, his feet ached even more sitting beside the fire; sore muscles locked up, stiff and painful once they were no longer moving. He’d gone soft, the frightening thought came to him, in two years’ living by the rules. But they got the fire going at last, and there was a bag of squashed marshmallows somewhere at the bottom of his pack.
“You can’t beat this,” Peter said later, looking half proud, half uncertain as he gestured around the campsite with the last scorched marshmallow on a stick, and Neal brushed dirt off his hands, wondering again how he got talked into this. And then Peter said, “It’s no chalet in the French Alps -”
And it hit him, then - Peter thought he missed it. The glamour of being a wanted fugitive, of life on the run, chalets and palaces and backwoods chases. “No, this is nice.”
Peter looked skeptical, like he suspected Neal of trying to placate him. Which he was, but he didn’t know what else to say except they were hunting me with dogs and roughing it had always meant running.
I want to be here, he thought, watching Peter’s face as the last of the flames wavered, low and bright, subsiding to a pile of glowing ash. How much that was going to matter, he couldn’t say.
The last of the papers were signed only three days ago - immunity for his latest flight and three months on the run in return for helping wrap up this latest case. With the case closed, he was officially stationed in New York under Peter’s supervision for the next two years.
“The cabin’s pretty nice, too, though,” he offered, with a grin and a helpless shrug. Because he didn’t lie to Peter. Much. “I’m not really a roughing it kind of guy.”
Commutation was, of course, out of the question; he hadn’t expected any different. He was, more or less, back to where he had been before the hearing was even proposed. It was what he wanted. It was a hell of a lot more than he’d ever expected, practically a dream come true.
So of course it felt like a trap.
And yes, he’d been on edge, and of course Peter was going to notice. But if he told Peter he’d lain awake every night since they cleared customs, listening for the sound of the other shoe getting ready to drop on his head, Peter would hear I don’t trust you.
Always, before, he’d been running toward something. Or someone. Whether he ran toward Kate, or Fowler, or that damn music box, always the thought of what was ahead drowned any dread of pursuit.
Mozzie understood. Happily ever after, Mozzie would say, isn’t for guys like us. And, The secret to a happy ending is knowing when to stop the story.
Right before the dream blows up in your face.
He had nothing more to run toward; he was exactly where he wanted to be, but there was no cover here and nowhere to hide if - when - things went south again. He’d spent the last three months a wanted fugitive, he’d spent three weeks in prison, and his parole had been officially reinstated for barely three days. It was going to take him a lot longer than that to learn how to stop sleeping with one eye open.
He could see Peter making the decision not to push, as they shoved dirt over the remains of the fire. Instead, he clapped Neal on the shoulder and turned to crawl into the tent. “Don’t stay out here all night.”
“Someone has to watch for bears,” Neal said. And smiled, at last, warmed by Peter’s answering snort of laughter.
***
If he dreamed, he remembered nothing, waking just after dawn as Peter unzipped the tent flap, letting in a swirl of cool air and the high, mournful cadence of wild geese overhead.
Now that it was light, Neal could see they were camped at the top of a gentle hill, sloping down a short ways toward the lake. Breakfast was slightly crumbled granola bars, but Neal had come prepared for mornings like this; he waited until Peter was nearly finished boiling water before pulling out a small foil-wrapped package and a miniature French press.
“Is that - ?” Peter asked, incredulous, and Neal grinned.
“With June’s compliments.”
“She’s a wonderful woman.”
“She is indeed,” Neal agreed fervently, with a surge of affection.
They folded the tent and lingered over coffee. Peter had brought binoculars, and Neal dug out a sketch pad and tried to draw the water birds and the fringe of cattails flung about the lakeshore. Something was off about the scene, Neal decided, tapping pencil against paper, studying the waves lapping against the reeds.
A few rough lines approximated the ripples in a duck’s wake and something was still off, whether in the scene or in his head he couldn’t tell. He shifted forward for a better view, stretching his legs in front of him, sending a shower of small stones skittering downhill.
“Look, you -” Peter let the binoculars drop long enough to glare at him, as a grey heron startled up from the weeds. “Now you scared it away. What are you, twelve?”
Neal gave a put-upon sigh, watching the bird flapping over the water, neck curved in a graceful S and an unfortunate fish in its beak. His heart wasn’t in it, though, any more than Peter’s was; they could both recognize this sniping as only half real frustration, half trying to fall back into their old pattern.
Something was off there, too.
Peter reached for the little French press, then paused. “Last of the coffee says you can’t sit still and be quiet for the next five minutes.”
“Let me see those and you’re on.” Neal held out a hand for the binoculars. And then, after about a minute studying the staggered V of ducks bobbing toward the center of the lake, “They’re decoys.”
Peter reached for the coffee with a smirk.
“Oh, come on -”
“It’s mine, now. How can you tell?”
“Are you saying I can’t spot a forgery?” And then he knew what was off: “Their heads don’t move.”
A winged shape circled overhead, unable to see clearly through loneliness and distance and the last of the morning haze. Even though he was waiting for it, Neal still flinched at the distant pop of gunfire from somewhere across the water. He watched with a flash of satisfaction as the duck wheeled, unhurt, winging for the shelter of the trees.
“I can see ducks in Central Park without having to watch them get shot at,” Neal said, with more of an edge than he’d intended, but no one deserved to get shot for being nearsighted and lonely.
***
Peter carried the tent for the first three hours, a twisting uphill path around moss-crowned rocks, stepping between the roots of trees determined to reclaim the narrow track forced through their territory. They didn’t speak; the woods were quiet, with only the occasional breath of wind rustling dry leaves.
Another squadron of geese passed over as Peter shrugged the tent from his shoulders at their first halt. Neal could hardly see them, squinting against the midday sun, but he knew their voices, the music of autumn in New York. Headed south for the winter, following an instinctive pull that said we’ve been here long enough, that said it’s time to move, soon it won’t be safe here anymore.
He sank onto a convenient rock as Peter passed him a water bottle. Half hidden under a fringed evergreen bough, he saw three familiar shapes - grouse, he remembered. Shy brown birds frozen in silent anticipation, trying to draw no attention, barely four feet from where they sat.
Peter’s voice was quiet. “Ever seen one this close before?”
Neal only raised one eyebrow, and Peter snorted; the birds stayed still, frozen.
“Let me guess - they used to hang out under your window at some five-star hotel in France?”
“No, Vermont,” he says, vaguely, because he can see it, again. A confused explosion of stippled brown feathers, separating from the suddenly thrashing bushes to launch upward, slantwise, in ragged formation, syncopated wingbeats pounding the still morning air sending a jolt of pure adrenaline straight to his heart.
“Seven years ago. Winter of - no, it was late fall. The trees were like -” He waved a hand at the leaves swirling in a breeze like scraps of flame-colored silk. “Like this.” The trees had been like nothing he’d ever seen, blazing colors, draped like a slow-motion sunset across the low foothills. Not that he’d been in any position to appreciate them. “I was hiding under a big spruce, one of those picture-perfect New England Christmas trees. Lying very still - I can do that, you know - waiting for the Marshals to go by.”
“You sound nostalgic.” Peter said it lightly, but it was there again - that note of uncertainty, his eyes questioning.
“I’m not.” When Peter looked unconvinced, “I had a broken arm, Peter.”
He’d jumped from the train some thirty minutes after the Marshals got on at Waterbury, rolled down the embankment onto what he’d thought in the dark was a pile of soft ferns but wasn’t. Mozzie had been waiting in St. Albans with a new set of IDs and a getaway plan, and he’d been frantic, but Neal had no way to contact him; his cell phone fractured in the fall along with his arm.
He’d dragged himself up a freezing cold stream in what seemed a vaguely northerly direction, stopping at sunrise to squeeze his way under the low-hanging spruce boughs for a brief rest that had turned into a longer nap when exhaustion overtook him. He remembered the smell of pine sap, feeling his arm throb in time with his gradually slowing heartbeat, waiting for feeling to return to his wet feet. Watching the irregular window of sky framed between black needles shade from grey silk to peach and rose, watching as the surrounding shadows lightened into grass and fern studded with silver beads of dew, and three shy brown grouse just across the narrow path. Watching the first team of Marshals go by, blue jackets and long rifles disappearing over a rise.
Neal started, now, as the birds burst up from the bush. Peter said, “Will you relax?” The words were exasperated, but his eyes were suddenly gentle. He went on, softer, “You’re not running now.”
Peter could be maddeningly obtuse sometimes; other times, like now, he could see straight through everything.
Three months ago, Peter would have said you don’t have to run anymore, but they both knew he couldn’t promise that now. Three months ago he would have said dammit, Neal, why didn’t you just turn yourself in?, furious at the thought of Neal stumbling through the wilds of New England alone and injured.
Three months ago, Peter had still trusted the system of justice he’d devoted his life to serving.
This betrayal was worse even than Kramer’s; Peter had believed in the system. The system had let him down when Kramer could use it, without breaking any laws, to drive his friend into a corner and force him to flee. Neal knew this had rocked Peter more than he’d ever show, but this faith in justice was one Neal had never shared. He had no words to offer comfort now it had been shaken.
Neal believed in people, not in systems. He believed in Mozzie, who’d found him after three days in the woods just south of St. Albans, who’d stayed with him at the hospital in Quebec where they’d had to break his arm again to reset it, nine hours’ driving and two bottles of whiskey later. He believed in Peter, in a barely perceptible motion of Peter’s head that could have been turning to look at a passing car, but wasn’t. It was nothing anyone could prove, and it was everything.
Justice was an abstract, bloodless, institutional concept that meant nothing to Neal; it had no more room for mercy or second chances than it had for revenge.
So he only said, “They warned me.” Peter’s head came up sharply. They’d never talked about it; they didn’t need to, not when eye contact could say so much. “I didn’t see the second team of Marshals. They did; I was about to break cover when they took off. If they hadn’t -”
If you hadn’t -
He’d tried to paint it, since, but he could never quite capture the frantic urgency of that leap into flight.
***
Neal was carrying the tent when he fell; a log that looked solid wasn’t, caving in and sliding out from under his foot in a shower of spongy, rotted wood. The side of the trail dropped off in a steep slope, strewn with whippy young bushes large enough to sting, slapping at his face, but not solid enough to slow his fall. A wild grab for the trunk of a sapling, a twisting explosion of pain that started in his shoulder and radiated down his arm; his fingers wouldn’t hold the trunk, but that shock of impact stole enough momentum that he skated to a halt on his back halfway down.
With his good hand he clawed at a nearby birch root, pulling himself to a sitting position and taking care not to skid further downhill on the loose leaves. The root turned out to be attached to a larger tree, reassuringly solid enough that he could stand and prop himself against it and try to judge how far he had to climb back up to the trail.
“Dammit, Neal, stay there.”
Peter half slid down the hill, in what could only be described as a slightly more controlled fall. Skidding to a stop against a lichen-draped stump, a few feet away, he scowled at Neal like he’d somehow done this on purpose.
For some reason this was oddly, absurdly comforting.
“Look at me.” Peter leaned in close, one hand fastening on his good arm. “Did you hit your head?”
“Shoulder.” This through gritted teeth, as Neal shook his head carefully. He tried, once, to move that arm and didn’t try again, breathing slowly and deliberately and trying not to throw up; definitely dislocated. He didn’t think it was broken. “Can you fix it?”
A pointless question. He saw the brief flash of uncertainty cross Peter’s face, wondered if he’d ever done this before. They were at least three hours’ walk from the nearest paved road, and it would take almost that long for any vehicle to reach them; if the joint wasn’t put back in place by then it would be severely swollen and maybe permanently damaged.
“You ever do this before?”
“I’m familiar with the theory,” Peter said gruffly, his eyes running up and down Neal’s arm. “This is gonna hurt. You ready?”
Neal was seized by a sudden sharp gratitude for the question. For a few breaths’ time to lean against the tree and brace himself for it without fearing it would be a few breaths too long. You’re not running now, Peter’s words earlier came back; struggling to breathe through the pain, this was abruptly all that mattered, that he didn’t have to force the joint back into place himself and immediately keep moving.
Peter looked distressed, and Neal wanted to tell him it was all right, but he wasn’t sure he could find a way to put that into words for Peter, who’d always worked with a team, always worked with backup. So he said only, “I trust you.”
Peter blinked rapidly several times before turning to focus.
A quick wrench and the world did a brief, dizzy spin, end over end.
“I’m really glad you’re on my side right now,” Neal said, once he could see properly again.
Peter made him sit on the ground, leaning back against the tree, while he climbed back up to the ridgeline and called Elizabeth. “She’s going to drive out and pick us up,” he said, when he had picked his way back down. “Think you can make it down to the road?”
***
She didn’t come alone; Mozzie was out of the car almost before it stopped a few hours later, stomping up the hill toward them, his face like thunder but his hands gentle like someone who’d stitched entirely too many wounds closed in the backseat of a stolen car.
“I told you this was a bad idea.”
This was addressed over Neal’s head to Peter, as Neal sat on the hood. And then, “Don’t be ridiculous,” when Peter asked how far to the nearest hospital. “He needs rest; he’s not going to get that in any hospital. Your scarf, suit.” An impatient glare, when compliance was not immediately forthcoming. And, to Neal, “At least you don’t have to avoid moving your thumbs for a week.”
Neal could practically see Peter decide not to ask about that one.
Once Mozzie had finished wrapping his arm so he couldn’t move it, Neal was bundled into the car where Elizabeth turned up the heater while Peter and Mozzie trudged back up the slope to retrieve the camping gear.
The cabin wasn’t at all bad, he decided much later, sitting in front of a cozily rustic fireplace with his right arm bound tightly to his side. There was cake, and decent wine, and after Mozzie’s outraged glare at Peter had faded to an expression hinting at some plot for creative revenge, Neal felt some easing in the tension of the last few weeks. Perhaps it was the cabin itself - isolated enough to feel like a bolt hole, but furnished comfortably so it didn’t feel like desperation - or perhaps it was simply the company.
Over dessert Elizabeth quizzed him, skeptical, on a story Mozzie had told her about an old heist. All the details were true, he assured her, even the part about the carrier pigeon and the mark’s one-eared cat. Mozzie alternated between looking smug (Estelle had given that cat a fight to remember) and watching Neal with a fierce, familiar look that said I let you out of my sight for five minutes …
Peter brought him his sketch pad when he asked, with only a brief glance at his arm.
It went against his forger’s eye for detail, drawing with his left hand. Still, this worked, somehow; the drawing, when he finished, had a ragged sense of urgency to it, the imprecision of haste that had been the essence of the scene. He’d never been able to capture it, before.
Three birds, launching in a burst of motion, a wild bid for freedom. A warning.
“Keep it,” he told Peter.
No one said welcome home; no one said you’re done running, now. But the wine Mozzie poured him, after he’d finished his first glass, said it was safe to drink enough to dull the ache in his arm. The warmth of the fire and the blankets Elizabeth tucked around him as he settled onto the couch said he could sleep soundly and not wake up in cuffs.
For tonight, this was enough.