Positive
Title: Positive - Prologue
Rating: PG-13
Chapter Word Count: 2700
Cumulative Word Count: 2700
Warnings/Content: Mentions of pregnancy, occasional swearing
Characters/Pairings: Peter, Neal, Diana (mentions of past Kate/Neal)
Beta: None
Summary: "Peter Burke found Neal barely eight hours after he broke out of prison, sitting in the empty apartment, still staring at the little plus sign on Kate’s pregnancy test." In which the Pilot, and the rest of the story, goes very, very differently.
Notes: Fill for rabidchild67's prompt on whitecollarhc's Trapped Fic Bash:
Plotcakes happen and Kate didn't come to Neal in the Pilot to dump him...but to tell him she was preggers.
How's he feel about that? DOES he feel trapped? Hopeful? MAybe he escapes to be with her?
So I actually didn't follow the prompt as closely as I'd intended when I started, but hopefully the fic is still okay. :)
~*~
Positive - Prologue
“Adios, Neal.”
Two words that started this whole thing. The beard and the clothes and the truck manual and the warden and-
“It’s been real.”
Those three words kept echoing in Neal’s head as he shaved off his beard, as he walked out of the prison, as he stole his way across the city to his apartment.
“I’m sorry.”
She didn’t want to leave him, that much was clear. She looked agitated, sleep-deprived, trapped as she dumped him. One week, she was as loving and happy as ever, talking about their plans for when he got out of prison. The next week, she was nervous. Then suddenly- no, no one could go from I love you to it’s been real so fast, not without good reason...and Neal was going to find that reason.
There was a message waiting here, he knew it. It wasn’t in the key hanging from the doorknob, and it wasn’t in the empty apartment.
It was the bottle, their bottle, sitting lonely on the floor.
At least, Neal had thought that was the message. Right up until he noticed there was something inside it, a small stick of some sort. Blinking in surprise, he leaned against the column and tipped it out.
Then stared in shock.
No
There was no way she was-
But why would she leave? That was all Neal could think. Why the hell would she leave him, at a time like this?
Neal may have been the world’s greatest conman, but even he had his limits. Kate severing ties with him so suddenly, breaking out, this-
He just sat there, staring at the bottle and the test in his hands, frozen from the shock.
That was how Agent Burke found him several hours later.
~*~
Peter would never admit it, but when the Neal Caffrey on screen shot to his feet, apparently shouting desperately after Kate, his heart went out to the man.
“She came every week like clockwork,” Haskley said.
Peter nodded, looking down at the reports, flipping through the pages - then stopped.
He looked up at the prison warden.
“You are aware that she’s his girlfriend, not his wife, right?” Peter asked.
Haskley, clearly knowing where this was going, slowly nodded.
“Then how, exactly, did she get conjugal visits with Neal?” Peter asked.
“She presented a marriage certificate,” the Warden said. “It seemed authentic enough.”
“Authentic enough?” Peter asked incredulously.
“...I told you, Agent Burke, everyone liked Caffrey, even me.” Peter could feel his incredulity rising, as well as his eyebrows. “Up until this stunt, he was a model prisoner. He tutored the kids trying to get their GEDs, he mediated conflicts between prisoners, taught an art class now and then - he even managed to stop two separate riots from happening before they started by calming down some chest-pounding gang leaders. Turning a blind eye to the fact that he and his...that he and Moreau both have histories in forgery seemed like a small price to pay for the peace he managed to bring with him to this prison.”
Peter wanted to ask the man what the hell he was thinking in allowing that, but even Peter could see the logic and heart behind it, so instead he looked back down at the reports and logs of Neal’s prisoner activity. “Every six months?” Peter asked.
Haskley nodded. “The last one was just a few weeks before this visit.”
Peter reached forward to rewind the tape.
“So she and Neal have their last conjugal visit before his release from prison - then suddenly she leaves him...”
Even as Haskley asked about getting a lip-reader in, he murmured, “Adios, Neal. It’s been real...”
More silence.
“Why didn’t anybody think something was off when Neal stopped shaving?” Peter asked.
“Like I said, everyone liked him,” he said. “Her dumping him, was - a bit dramatic. He definitely looked crushed. We all just thought he was so depressed he stopped giving a damn. We’ve all been there at one point or another in our life...do you really think he left to chase after the girlfriend?”
“I think Neal Caffrey is a romantic at heart,” Peter said, standing up. “We’re going after the girlfriend.”
And that was how Peter found himself walking slowly down the hallway of Caffrey and Moreau’s old apartment towards the clearly shocked young man leaning against the column.
“I see Kate moved out.”
Caffrey, rather than responding with something witty like normal, just shifted, but didn’t even try to get up.
“Did she leave you a message in that?” Peter asked.
Here, Caffrey...laughed. Not something joyous like what Peter has heard coming from him so many times, but something much colder, much more manic.
“Yeah,” he said. “That’s one word for it.”
Peter approached slowly, but then stopped when he saw what was in Caffrey’s hands.
In one was a wine bottle. In the other, a pregnancy test.
One that read positive.
~*~
Peter Burke found Neal barely eight hours after he broke out of prison, sitting in the empty apartment, still staring at the little plus sign on Kate’s pregnancy test.
Neal knew he should be running, he really did. But all he could think was Kate’s having a baby and it’s mine - it had to be.
He heard Agent Burke sigh above him. “I’m sorry kid, I really am - but I still gotta take you in.”
“She’s having a baby,” Neal said, looking up at him. “She’s having my baby.” He paused. “Why did she run?”
“She’s a single woman expecting a baby whose father is an incarcerated felon,” Peter said calmly, like he would to a spooked animal, and Neal nearly laughed, wondering if he really looked that crazy right now. “She has plenty of reasons.”
“I have to find her,” Neal murmured. “She- she just left, with no explanation, no reason - nothing about her ‘break up’ was natural or made sense.”
“You can’t find her, kid,” Burke said, standing right beside him now, his voice coming from above Neal. “I’m bringing you in.”
Neal set the bottle down as he heard Burke on the radio, telling somebody Neal was “identified and unarmed”. Or that the subject was, anyway.
“How many you got out there?” Neal asked, looking out the window to the flashing lights.
“Between my agents and the marshals...all of them,” Burke said. “Now come on, stand up. I don’t wanna have to go rough on you, but if I need to, I will.”
Neal sighed, setting the pregnancy test down, too, and pushing himself up, looking at Agent Burke.
Then he smirked as he realized something. “That’s the same suit you were wearing the last time you arrested me...”
Burke made some quip about the classics, but Neal didn’t hear the rest - because right then, he saw the security fiber on Burke’s suit.
The idea flashed through his head, and even as he was getting his hands cuffed behind him, he was securing a meeting with Agent Burke in a week. That should be all the time he and Mozzie needed.
Before he let himself be frogmarched away, though, he stopped and turned his head. “Agent Burke!”
The arresting officer shoved him, but Burke said, “What?”, stilling the agents holding him.
“You found her once before,” Neal said. “Please, can you just - find her again? Even if she really is leaving me - I just want to talk to her one last time.”
Burke looked down at the bottle and the pregnancy test, before looking back up to Neal, nodding. “I’m not promising anything - but I’ll see what I can do.”
“Thank you,” Neal said with a genuine smile, before letting himself be led away.
~*~
“His girlfriend’s pregnant?” Diana asked in surprise when Peter handed her the evidence bag with the pregnancy test inside.
“It would appear so. She dumped him, he broke out of prison for her, and she drops this bombshell on him,” Peter said with a sigh, as he walked into his office, Diana trailing behind him.
“That’s kind of - what the hell?” she said, clearly as confused as Peter about Kate Moreau’s actions.
“Exactly,” Peter said, sitting in his chair and leaning back in it. “I never liked her.”
Diana raised an eyebrow. “Are you saying you did like Caffrey?”
Peter smiled self-deprecatingly. “Something like that. He’s one hell of a thief and a forger - but he’s also like a kid. A really hyper-active, high-maintenance, too-smart-for-his-own-good kid.”
“It was fun chasing him,” Diana admitted.
“Exactly - he’s a romantic at heart. I’m pretty sure at least half the crap he pulled was to impress Moreau. But she was always jerking him around, even before this. And now? He’s getting another four years because he thought she was in danger, and this is what he gets for his efforts.” Peter pursed his lips, looking at his power-down computer screen. “Hell we only caught him the first time because he was so desperately in love with her and she...”
“She did visit him in prison every week for four years,” Diana pointed out.
“I know, I know, just - I don’t like this, any of this.”
“And idea what Caffrey wants?” Diana asked.
Peter shrugged. “When we apprehended him, he asked me to look for Kate.”
“And?”
“And nothing.”
Diana slowly nodded, before looking down at the test again.
“Think she might’ve faked this?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Peter admitted. “Get it analyzed, see what we can pull from it. Check for Moreau’s DNA.”
“We have her DNA profile?” Diana asked, confused.
“...not exactly,” Peter said. “But we do have evidence in various cases connected to her and Caffrey that should have some biological sample you can collect DNA from. Have them check if there’s even actual, pregnancy-positive urine on the rest, and check that it’s Moreau’s.”
“What happens if it is? Or if it isn’t?” Diana asked.
Peter stared at the post-it note pad on his desk for a long moment, before looking up at her.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I don’t know.”
~*~
Neal would admit trashing the cell once he was put back in it was stupid, but he abruptly felt like a caged animal, a caged and desperate animal as he realized he would be stuck in here for another four years if Burke didn’t buy his offer.
He collapsed on his bunk when he was done scribbling out his tally marks, and just breathed, almost sobbing but not quite, trying to reconcile Kate leaving him and Kate being pregnant with his child.
Unless she’s leaving you because it isn’t yours...
He shook his head against the insidious voice. Kate wouldn’t do that to him, she wouldn’t. He only had a few more months left on his sentence. She held on for more than three and a half years, coming every week, every holiday - spending all sorts of time with him. Just a few more months, and they would be together - Neal would've been there for the birth of his child.
Why would she leave him?
He stared out the small window in dismay as everything he’d been trying not to think of since they arrested him came crashing down on him.
He wouldn’t be there for the birth of their child, now.
~*~
“Boss?”
Peter looked up from his paperwork to where Diana stood in the doorway.
“You know what you asked me to look into last week?” she asked.
He nodded, slowly sitting up straighter, even leaning back a little.
Diana sighed. “It’s her’s. I had the analysts compare the test to samples from three different evidence files over the last five years. Kate Moreau is pregnant. Whether it’s Caffrey’s or not, though, they can’t tell you.”
Peter nodded grimly, shaking his head. “Damnit. This is going to wreck Caffrey.”
“You sound concerned for him,” Diana said, keeping her voice carefully neutral. Peter knew she was both confused and amused, though, despite how well she hid it.
“I am,” he said, leaning forward on his elbows on the desk. “It feels...wrong. He only had a few more months. He’s getting a few more years because he had the audacity to want to protect the love of his life when he thought she was in danger. I was hoping this was fake, at least Caffrey would have one less thing to worry about, but if she is pregnant...” He dropped his head into his hands.
“I’m sorry, Boss,” Diana said.
“It’s not your fault, none of this is,” Peter said, lifting his head to look at her. “My meeting with Caffrey is tomorrow and I have no idea what the hell he wants or what kind of state he’ll be in. I just need to work through some stuff, on paper and in my head.”
Diana nodded. “I’ll take a long lunch with Agent Jones, then, shall I?”
“Yes,” Peter said, leaning back in his chair. “Remember to bring the tape reports for the Dutchman case on your way back up.”
She nodded and left, and Peter sat ruminating in his office, the glass walls allowing him to see the various agents and clerks and staffers in between. He could see one of the other agents, Price, and remembered the way he’d practically been dancing every where when he announced his wife was pregnant. Everyone had been congratulating him, clapping him on the shoulder in joviality and sending his wife their well wishes...
Neal was in prison. But if he thought his girlfriend and his unborn child were somewhere out there and in danger, in need of his help, Peter didn’t think it would stay that way for long. But if broke out again, and was caught again, he’d go down for much longer than four years.
They might try to send him down for life. They probably wouldn’t succeed, but for someone like Caffrey, even just the extra four years he has now might be close enough.
“Damn you, Moreau,” Peter said. Neal forged and stole billions of dollars’ worth of art and documents for her, and she left him out to hang and dry. He broke out of prison for her, and she dumps him and tells him she’s having his baby. What the hell was wrong with this girl?
Peter looked over to his filing cabinet, looking at the box that contained her file, and Neal’s.
Reaching in, he pulled out the files, spreading them out across the desk, looking at the evidence of Neal’s crimes that he would probably never be convicted of, at the evidence of his playfulness and good heart (if bad actions), of his love for the world, for art, and for Kate.
It was obvious to anyone who paid close enough attention to how much Neal tried to impress her that Neal thought he wasn’t good enough for her, that he didn’t deserve her but wanted her anyway.
He looked down at the picture of the girl Neal Caffrey was willing to throw his life away for.
“You don’t deserve him,” Peter informed the photo, as he planned out whether or not he’d be able to lie to one of the best liars in the world.
Either he did lie, and Caffrey wondered why his girlfriend would leave and fake a pregnancy in his wake and be wrecked with confusion and hurt. Or Peter told the truth, and Caffrey wondered why his girlfriend would leave when pregnant, and be wrecked with guilt over not being able to protect them.
And while Caffrey would never even consider any other option, Peter would be stuck wondering, either way, if that baby was even his. He wouldn’t put it past her, at this point.
Grunting in frustration, Peter shoved all her papers back into her file and pinched it shut, slamming her part of the cabinet closed. He didn’t feel any better, so he took more care with Caffrey’s file, and by the time Diana came back from her long lunch with the reports, Peter was already hunched over the Dutchman’s paperwork again.
He couldn’t do anything for Neal until tomorrow. He didn’t have Kate, and the only new information he had was a confirmation of what Neal already knew. He could at least have this, have something close to gratitude for Neal helping them with this case, gratitude by way of productivity, and utilizing the gift that was given to him.
It was better than nothing.
Unsurprisingly, that thought did little to reassure Peter as he worked the afternoon away.
~*~
A/N: Would you believe me if I said that I actually like Kate?
Anyway, this was originally going to be just a little longer, and a much fuller fic, but then that kind of grew into a massive epic, so I’m just leaving this hear now as a kind of prologue.
Rating: PG-13
Chapter Word Count: 2700
Cumulative Word Count: 2700
Warnings/Content: Mentions of pregnancy, occasional swearing
Characters/Pairings: Peter, Neal, Diana (mentions of past Kate/Neal)
Beta: None
Summary: "Peter Burke found Neal barely eight hours after he broke out of prison, sitting in the empty apartment, still staring at the little plus sign on Kate’s pregnancy test." In which the Pilot, and the rest of the story, goes very, very differently.
Notes: Fill for rabidchild67's prompt on whitecollarhc's Trapped Fic Bash:
Plotcakes happen and Kate didn't come to Neal in the Pilot to dump him...but to tell him she was preggers.
How's he feel about that? DOES he feel trapped? Hopeful? MAybe he escapes to be with her?
So I actually didn't follow the prompt as closely as I'd intended when I started, but hopefully the fic is still okay. :)
~*~
Positive - Prologue
“Adios, Neal.”
Two words that started this whole thing. The beard and the clothes and the truck manual and the warden and-
“It’s been real.”
Those three words kept echoing in Neal’s head as he shaved off his beard, as he walked out of the prison, as he stole his way across the city to his apartment.
“I’m sorry.”
She didn’t want to leave him, that much was clear. She looked agitated, sleep-deprived, trapped as she dumped him. One week, she was as loving and happy as ever, talking about their plans for when he got out of prison. The next week, she was nervous. Then suddenly- no, no one could go from I love you to it’s been real so fast, not without good reason...and Neal was going to find that reason.
There was a message waiting here, he knew it. It wasn’t in the key hanging from the doorknob, and it wasn’t in the empty apartment.
It was the bottle, their bottle, sitting lonely on the floor.
At least, Neal had thought that was the message. Right up until he noticed there was something inside it, a small stick of some sort. Blinking in surprise, he leaned against the column and tipped it out.
Then stared in shock.
No
There was no way she was-
But why would she leave? That was all Neal could think. Why the hell would she leave him, at a time like this?
Neal may have been the world’s greatest conman, but even he had his limits. Kate severing ties with him so suddenly, breaking out, this-
He just sat there, staring at the bottle and the test in his hands, frozen from the shock.
That was how Agent Burke found him several hours later.
~*~
Peter would never admit it, but when the Neal Caffrey on screen shot to his feet, apparently shouting desperately after Kate, his heart went out to the man.
“She came every week like clockwork,” Haskley said.
Peter nodded, looking down at the reports, flipping through the pages - then stopped.
He looked up at the prison warden.
“You are aware that she’s his girlfriend, not his wife, right?” Peter asked.
Haskley, clearly knowing where this was going, slowly nodded.
“Then how, exactly, did she get conjugal visits with Neal?” Peter asked.
“She presented a marriage certificate,” the Warden said. “It seemed authentic enough.”
“Authentic enough?” Peter asked incredulously.
“...I told you, Agent Burke, everyone liked Caffrey, even me.” Peter could feel his incredulity rising, as well as his eyebrows. “Up until this stunt, he was a model prisoner. He tutored the kids trying to get their GEDs, he mediated conflicts between prisoners, taught an art class now and then - he even managed to stop two separate riots from happening before they started by calming down some chest-pounding gang leaders. Turning a blind eye to the fact that he and his...that he and Moreau both have histories in forgery seemed like a small price to pay for the peace he managed to bring with him to this prison.”
Peter wanted to ask the man what the hell he was thinking in allowing that, but even Peter could see the logic and heart behind it, so instead he looked back down at the reports and logs of Neal’s prisoner activity. “Every six months?” Peter asked.
Haskley nodded. “The last one was just a few weeks before this visit.”
Peter reached forward to rewind the tape.
“So she and Neal have their last conjugal visit before his release from prison - then suddenly she leaves him...”
Even as Haskley asked about getting a lip-reader in, he murmured, “Adios, Neal. It’s been real...”
More silence.
“Why didn’t anybody think something was off when Neal stopped shaving?” Peter asked.
“Like I said, everyone liked him,” he said. “Her dumping him, was - a bit dramatic. He definitely looked crushed. We all just thought he was so depressed he stopped giving a damn. We’ve all been there at one point or another in our life...do you really think he left to chase after the girlfriend?”
“I think Neal Caffrey is a romantic at heart,” Peter said, standing up. “We’re going after the girlfriend.”
And that was how Peter found himself walking slowly down the hallway of Caffrey and Moreau’s old apartment towards the clearly shocked young man leaning against the column.
“I see Kate moved out.”
Caffrey, rather than responding with something witty like normal, just shifted, but didn’t even try to get up.
“Did she leave you a message in that?” Peter asked.
Here, Caffrey...laughed. Not something joyous like what Peter has heard coming from him so many times, but something much colder, much more manic.
“Yeah,” he said. “That’s one word for it.”
Peter approached slowly, but then stopped when he saw what was in Caffrey’s hands.
In one was a wine bottle. In the other, a pregnancy test.
One that read positive.
~*~
Peter Burke found Neal barely eight hours after he broke out of prison, sitting in the empty apartment, still staring at the little plus sign on Kate’s pregnancy test.
Neal knew he should be running, he really did. But all he could think was Kate’s having a baby and it’s mine - it had to be.
He heard Agent Burke sigh above him. “I’m sorry kid, I really am - but I still gotta take you in.”
“She’s having a baby,” Neal said, looking up at him. “She’s having my baby.” He paused. “Why did she run?”
“She’s a single woman expecting a baby whose father is an incarcerated felon,” Peter said calmly, like he would to a spooked animal, and Neal nearly laughed, wondering if he really looked that crazy right now. “She has plenty of reasons.”
“I have to find her,” Neal murmured. “She- she just left, with no explanation, no reason - nothing about her ‘break up’ was natural or made sense.”
“You can’t find her, kid,” Burke said, standing right beside him now, his voice coming from above Neal. “I’m bringing you in.”
Neal set the bottle down as he heard Burke on the radio, telling somebody Neal was “identified and unarmed”. Or that the subject was, anyway.
“How many you got out there?” Neal asked, looking out the window to the flashing lights.
“Between my agents and the marshals...all of them,” Burke said. “Now come on, stand up. I don’t wanna have to go rough on you, but if I need to, I will.”
Neal sighed, setting the pregnancy test down, too, and pushing himself up, looking at Agent Burke.
Then he smirked as he realized something. “That’s the same suit you were wearing the last time you arrested me...”
Burke made some quip about the classics, but Neal didn’t hear the rest - because right then, he saw the security fiber on Burke’s suit.
The idea flashed through his head, and even as he was getting his hands cuffed behind him, he was securing a meeting with Agent Burke in a week. That should be all the time he and Mozzie needed.
Before he let himself be frogmarched away, though, he stopped and turned his head. “Agent Burke!”
The arresting officer shoved him, but Burke said, “What?”, stilling the agents holding him.
“You found her once before,” Neal said. “Please, can you just - find her again? Even if she really is leaving me - I just want to talk to her one last time.”
Burke looked down at the bottle and the pregnancy test, before looking back up to Neal, nodding. “I’m not promising anything - but I’ll see what I can do.”
“Thank you,” Neal said with a genuine smile, before letting himself be led away.
~*~
“His girlfriend’s pregnant?” Diana asked in surprise when Peter handed her the evidence bag with the pregnancy test inside.
“It would appear so. She dumped him, he broke out of prison for her, and she drops this bombshell on him,” Peter said with a sigh, as he walked into his office, Diana trailing behind him.
“That’s kind of - what the hell?” she said, clearly as confused as Peter about Kate Moreau’s actions.
“Exactly,” Peter said, sitting in his chair and leaning back in it. “I never liked her.”
Diana raised an eyebrow. “Are you saying you did like Caffrey?”
Peter smiled self-deprecatingly. “Something like that. He’s one hell of a thief and a forger - but he’s also like a kid. A really hyper-active, high-maintenance, too-smart-for-his-own-good kid.”
“It was fun chasing him,” Diana admitted.
“Exactly - he’s a romantic at heart. I’m pretty sure at least half the crap he pulled was to impress Moreau. But she was always jerking him around, even before this. And now? He’s getting another four years because he thought she was in danger, and this is what he gets for his efforts.” Peter pursed his lips, looking at his power-down computer screen. “Hell we only caught him the first time because he was so desperately in love with her and she...”
“She did visit him in prison every week for four years,” Diana pointed out.
“I know, I know, just - I don’t like this, any of this.”
“And idea what Caffrey wants?” Diana asked.
Peter shrugged. “When we apprehended him, he asked me to look for Kate.”
“And?”
“And nothing.”
Diana slowly nodded, before looking down at the test again.
“Think she might’ve faked this?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Peter admitted. “Get it analyzed, see what we can pull from it. Check for Moreau’s DNA.”
“We have her DNA profile?” Diana asked, confused.
“...not exactly,” Peter said. “But we do have evidence in various cases connected to her and Caffrey that should have some biological sample you can collect DNA from. Have them check if there’s even actual, pregnancy-positive urine on the rest, and check that it’s Moreau’s.”
“What happens if it is? Or if it isn’t?” Diana asked.
Peter stared at the post-it note pad on his desk for a long moment, before looking up at her.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I don’t know.”
~*~
Neal would admit trashing the cell once he was put back in it was stupid, but he abruptly felt like a caged animal, a caged and desperate animal as he realized he would be stuck in here for another four years if Burke didn’t buy his offer.
He collapsed on his bunk when he was done scribbling out his tally marks, and just breathed, almost sobbing but not quite, trying to reconcile Kate leaving him and Kate being pregnant with his child.
Unless she’s leaving you because it isn’t yours...
He shook his head against the insidious voice. Kate wouldn’t do that to him, she wouldn’t. He only had a few more months left on his sentence. She held on for more than three and a half years, coming every week, every holiday - spending all sorts of time with him. Just a few more months, and they would be together - Neal would've been there for the birth of his child.
Why would she leave him?
He stared out the small window in dismay as everything he’d been trying not to think of since they arrested him came crashing down on him.
He wouldn’t be there for the birth of their child, now.
~*~
“Boss?”
Peter looked up from his paperwork to where Diana stood in the doorway.
“You know what you asked me to look into last week?” she asked.
He nodded, slowly sitting up straighter, even leaning back a little.
Diana sighed. “It’s her’s. I had the analysts compare the test to samples from three different evidence files over the last five years. Kate Moreau is pregnant. Whether it’s Caffrey’s or not, though, they can’t tell you.”
Peter nodded grimly, shaking his head. “Damnit. This is going to wreck Caffrey.”
“You sound concerned for him,” Diana said, keeping her voice carefully neutral. Peter knew she was both confused and amused, though, despite how well she hid it.
“I am,” he said, leaning forward on his elbows on the desk. “It feels...wrong. He only had a few more months. He’s getting a few more years because he had the audacity to want to protect the love of his life when he thought she was in danger. I was hoping this was fake, at least Caffrey would have one less thing to worry about, but if she is pregnant...” He dropped his head into his hands.
“I’m sorry, Boss,” Diana said.
“It’s not your fault, none of this is,” Peter said, lifting his head to look at her. “My meeting with Caffrey is tomorrow and I have no idea what the hell he wants or what kind of state he’ll be in. I just need to work through some stuff, on paper and in my head.”
Diana nodded. “I’ll take a long lunch with Agent Jones, then, shall I?”
“Yes,” Peter said, leaning back in his chair. “Remember to bring the tape reports for the Dutchman case on your way back up.”
She nodded and left, and Peter sat ruminating in his office, the glass walls allowing him to see the various agents and clerks and staffers in between. He could see one of the other agents, Price, and remembered the way he’d practically been dancing every where when he announced his wife was pregnant. Everyone had been congratulating him, clapping him on the shoulder in joviality and sending his wife their well wishes...
Neal was in prison. But if he thought his girlfriend and his unborn child were somewhere out there and in danger, in need of his help, Peter didn’t think it would stay that way for long. But if broke out again, and was caught again, he’d go down for much longer than four years.
They might try to send him down for life. They probably wouldn’t succeed, but for someone like Caffrey, even just the extra four years he has now might be close enough.
“Damn you, Moreau,” Peter said. Neal forged and stole billions of dollars’ worth of art and documents for her, and she left him out to hang and dry. He broke out of prison for her, and she dumps him and tells him she’s having his baby. What the hell was wrong with this girl?
Peter looked over to his filing cabinet, looking at the box that contained her file, and Neal’s.
Reaching in, he pulled out the files, spreading them out across the desk, looking at the evidence of Neal’s crimes that he would probably never be convicted of, at the evidence of his playfulness and good heart (if bad actions), of his love for the world, for art, and for Kate.
It was obvious to anyone who paid close enough attention to how much Neal tried to impress her that Neal thought he wasn’t good enough for her, that he didn’t deserve her but wanted her anyway.
He looked down at the picture of the girl Neal Caffrey was willing to throw his life away for.
“You don’t deserve him,” Peter informed the photo, as he planned out whether or not he’d be able to lie to one of the best liars in the world.
Either he did lie, and Caffrey wondered why his girlfriend would leave and fake a pregnancy in his wake and be wrecked with confusion and hurt. Or Peter told the truth, and Caffrey wondered why his girlfriend would leave when pregnant, and be wrecked with guilt over not being able to protect them.
And while Caffrey would never even consider any other option, Peter would be stuck wondering, either way, if that baby was even his. He wouldn’t put it past her, at this point.
Grunting in frustration, Peter shoved all her papers back into her file and pinched it shut, slamming her part of the cabinet closed. He didn’t feel any better, so he took more care with Caffrey’s file, and by the time Diana came back from her long lunch with the reports, Peter was already hunched over the Dutchman’s paperwork again.
He couldn’t do anything for Neal until tomorrow. He didn’t have Kate, and the only new information he had was a confirmation of what Neal already knew. He could at least have this, have something close to gratitude for Neal helping them with this case, gratitude by way of productivity, and utilizing the gift that was given to him.
It was better than nothing.
Unsurprisingly, that thought did little to reassure Peter as he worked the afternoon away.
~*~
A/N: Would you believe me if I said that I actually like Kate?
Anyway, this was originally going to be just a little longer, and a much fuller fic, but then that kind of grew into a massive epic, so I’m just leaving this hear now as a kind of prologue.