WC Fic: The Other Shoe, Part 2
Title: The Other Shoe, Part 2
Rating: R for language, some violence
Characters/Pairings: Neal/Diana; Peter, Elizabeth, Moz, OCs
Spoilers: None
Content Notice: MPREG, BAMF!Neal
Word Count: 16,000
Summary: Neal is preggers. Diana is the other DNA donor. That’s gonna be some pretty baby, huh?
A/N: This is the really whumpy part!
Part 1
----
Week 30
Neal liked the first week back to work after the New Year - there was a feeling of starting over fresh, and after all the slacking off and excess of the holidays, he really needed it. Things between he and Diana weren’t ever going to be the same, but at least she wasn’t giving him the cold shoulder anymore. Sure, they still pretty much avoided each other, but it was with more of a sense of sorrow over what was lost than the anger/shame cocktail they’d been mixing up. Neal counted it as progress.
His pregnancy was going as well as it possibly could, not only according to his doctor but also according to the surprising number of women who’d come up to him to assess his condition, unasked-for. They took it upon themselves to fill him in on all the horrors they’d personally experienced when they were in the process of bringing their own little angels into the world. Neal supposed he didn’t much mind tales of episiotomies and stretched-out pelvic floor muscles - since he’d be delivering by Caesarian in his 38th week for safety reasons, it didn’t much concern him. But their stories of the joys of breast feeding kind of made him sad to hear, because he would never be able to experience it - he didn’t exactly have the right equipment, not that functioned, anyway.
Grace, for her part, was a model fetus, wiggling and wriggling away happily during the day and pretty much sleeping and quiet at night. On the occasions when she got the hiccups (and Neal still couldn’t believe that one), it tickled so much it made him laugh out loud. Anytime he drank orange juice, she would practically tap dance on his bladder, and whenever Moz recited beat poetry at her, she seemed to be laughing at him. Which was about Neal's usual reaction, so clearly the child was taking after him.
What he hadn’t been expecting - and was apparently a particular complication for all the men in his situation - was the bone-aching pain he was in all of the time now. Male pelvises weren’t designed to accommodate a fetus, and while it was bearable for the most part, he was particularly uncomfortable by the end of the day, and sometimes needed help getting out of his chair. Hughes had suggested to Peter that Neal work half days the last two weeks he’d be at the office - he’d be spending the last six weeks at home on bed rest due to the high risk nature of his pregnancy - and he was very grateful.
One thing he found odd - and all the women had warned him of this - was the sheer number of people who felt they had the right to touch his belly. Some days he felt like some sort of lucky rabbit’s foot, so many people were rubbing him. Peter was very protective of him when he could be, for which Neal was also grateful.
He didn’t mind when people he knew touched him, though, like in today’s staff meeting. He was, as usual, playing with his rubber band ball, tossing it in the air idly in the minutes before the meeting began. Once Peter started talking, Neal rested it on his belly, thinking nothing of it. Grace, however, seemed determined to prove her worth as a future world class soccer player, because she kicked him hard enough to send the ball flying onto the table.
“What was that?” Peter asked, amazement on his face as he pointed at Neal.
“Um… baby kicks.”
Jones sat forward in his chair. “Really? They’re that hard?”
Neal nodded. “They can be. Especially when she’s hungry. I mean, when I’m hungry - it’s almost lunchtime.”
“Do it again!” Brooks urged, returning the ball to Neal.
“Well, it’s not me doing it,” Neal said as he replaced the ball, “but -“ Immediately, the ball bobbled a bit, then once again flew off of him, though not nearly as far as before.
“I saw it!” Brooks said, excited. “I saw the little foot or whatever! Can - can I feel it?”
“Sure,” Neal said with a smile and allowed Brooks a go.
“Wow, it’s kinda hard, isn’t it - like a bike tire,” Brooks observed, pressing his hand into Neal’s stomach. “I always thought you’d be all soft.”
Neal didn’t know whether to be insulted by that one or not - he had tried to maintain an exercise regimen, after all.
“Really?” Jones said, leaning over and laying a hand on Neal. “Wow, that’s amazing isn’t it? Oh! She kicked me!”
“She likes deep voices,” Neal told him.
“Can I have a turn?” said a soft voice.
Neal looked to find Diana standing beside him. “Um, sure,” he said, swiveling his chair around.
She crouched in front of him and placed a tentative hand on his belly. Neal took it and moved it three inches to the right to where the latest action was.
“Hey, little one,” Diana cooed. “How you doing in there?”
Grace’s reaction to her voice was immediate as the baby began wriggling and kicking excitedly.
“Ow! Ooo, I think she likes you,” Neal told her.
Diana looked up into his eyes, a myriad of emotions in her eyes - wonder, regret, hope. Their eyes locked.
“Okaaay, maybe we should get this meeting going?” Peter said, breaking the spell, for which Neal was thankful. Any longer and he knew their reaction to each other would be noticed. “Diana, you want to fill us in on the CI you’ve been cultivating for the Chelsea cybercrime case?”
Diana stood abruptly, her face now perfectly expressionless. She straightened her jacket and went to the front of the room. “Just to catch you all up from last week,” she began, “Our confidential informant has been giving us names of some of the lower-level members, and we’ve set up digital surveillance on each of them.”
“Has it yielded anything?” Jones asked.
“Not yet.”
“You follow the money?” Neal asked; given their estrangement, he didn’t really know that much about the case anymore.
“Of course - we’ve got traces on known accounts and we know where money is coming in from, and where it’s going. They’re smart about it - the cash hits more than three hundred accounts - most of which are owned by private citizens and legitimate businesses who know nothing of the transactions. The money’s in these accounts for less than an hour before they’re transferred and used to buy and trade Bitcoins. They let those gain a little interest, sell them, then the cash hits an account in the Caymans for a while before being filtered back to the States. It’s taken Cyber Division the last three months just to piece that together.”
“But have you traced what they do with it once it’s moved? What are they using it for, what are they spending it on?”
Diana looked at him blankly.
“What do you mean?” Peter asked Neal, sitting forward in his chair and clearly interested in this new angle.
“Well, if they’re able to hide their tracks so well, there could be something they’re doing with the money that’d identify them. Have a look at what they’re buying - and who they’re buying it from. It’s a longshot, but maybe you’ll get a lead there.”
“That’s brilliant, Neal,” Peter said. “Boy, we’re gonna miss you when you go on leave!”
Week 33
Neal felt kind of excited to be returning to the office for a baby shower today. Sure, it was nearly two weeks since he’d had to start his leave, and he was meant to be on bed rest, but the doctor said he could leave the house for short periods of time as long as he kept off his feet, and he was already bored. Not for the first time, he reflected that this pregnancy was a much better way of keeping him to his radius than the anklet ever had been. Speaking of the anklet, Peter had let it out as far as it could go to accommodate the swelling in Neal's ankles, but barring the invention of an elastic model, he was stuck with the daily discomfort of it.
When he entered, the break area was decorated in pink, with little stork-shaped cupcakes and baby bottles favors filled with candy. All of these were arranged around a pile of presents that was almost embarrassingly huge but, as he realized a few weeks back when Elizabeth had forced him to go out and set up a registry, baby paraphernalia was both costly and large.
“You guys, this is too much,” Neal said, truly overwhelmed. The gift pile at another shower thrown by El and June the weekend before had been even larger.
Peter threw a companionable arm around his shoulders and squeezed. “It’s just enough,” he said with a grin.
“Neal.”
Neal turned to find Diana standing there with her briefcase slung over her shoulder. “Listen, I really want to stay, but I’ve got this suspect in holding and -“
“Suspect?”
“A break in the Chelsea case,” Peter supplied. “We’re pretty sure this guy, Sean Goodman, is middle management, but we’re hoping we can get him to dime out his bosses.”
“That’s terrific, congratulations.”
“Couldn’t have done it without you,” Diana pointed out. “Your idea about looking where they spend their money really paid off big. But I’ve gotta go - the guy hasn’t lawyered up yet, and I’m hoping to break him!”
Neal grinned to see her enthusiasm, and watched as she and young Brooks took off down the hall towards the interrogation suite.
“Gotta love the enthusiasm,” Neal commented to Peter. “You have to go supervise?”
Peter shook his head. “Our little girl is all grown up. She can handle this one on her own.”
They settled down to a catered lunch before Neal was shown to a large, comfy desk chair that he recognized as Hughes’ set up beside the presents. It took nearly a half hour to open everything, and when it was over, he lingered behind well after he was supposed to go home, to thank all his friends for their generosity.
“I think this is the last of it,” Peter said to Neal; he and Jones had needed two trips to get everything downstairs and loaded into the Taurus. “If you’re ready, I’ll drive you home.”
“Thanks,” Neal said. “Think I’ll just hit the bathroom before we go. Meet you downstairs?”
Peter nodded and Neal made for the men’s room as Peter and Jones disappeared inside the elevator one last time.
Neal was alone in the men’s room and was just washing his hands when he heard a loud bang, followed by what was, unmistakably, the sound of automatic weapons fire. He immediately pressed himself back against the wall beside the urinals as more shots were fired. He heard shouts and screams and the rushing of footsteps. He fumbled for his phone and tried to call Peter, but the call wouldn’t go through. He next tried Diana, then Jones with no luck, and even his call to Moz resulted in nothing.
Neal realized two things with sudden clarity: the building was under attack and whoever they were had managed to block communications. Oh, and a third thing: He was pretty much fucked.
After a few minutes more, it seemed as if the noises had died down. Concern for his friends drove Neal from the men’s room. Being eight months pregnant was not ideal for maneuverability, but he hadn’t lost any of his former cat burglar skills, so he was at least stealthy.
He looked up and down the hall - there was really no one around now. Building protocol was for non-agents to shelter in place in offices with doors that could lock, but most of those were on the north side of the building and Neal was on the south side. He thought he heard a sound off to his right, in the direction of the interrogation suite. His heart hammered in his chest when he remembered that Diana was still down there, questioning her suspect, and then took off in that direction.
Halfway there, he saw blood drops on the floor and smudges of it on the wall. A sound ahead made him freeze. It was not repeated; he didn’t think anyone would be coming. Up towards the ceiling he spotted the flashing of the light he knew indicated that a silent alarm had been tripped - good, at least someone knew there was something bad going down and help would be here soon.
Still, not knowing where Diana was, he continued on, keeping a slower pace than before, moving completely silently. When he rounded the corner and the glass-walled room came into view, he nearly cried out at what he saw.
Bodies. On the floor. Bodies and blood. He rushed forward, the sight of a dark-haired woman facing away from him making him want to whimper and rage all at the same time. But it was not Diana, she wasn’t even wearing a grey suit today, and the relief he felt almost shamed him. He dropped to his knees before the woman, adrenaline helping him to ignore the usual complaints of his pregnant body. It was AUSA Victoria Potter - he’d met her a total of three times, to testify on some of the cases he’d worked with the White Collar team. She was conscious but breathing shallowly and in a lot of obvious pain.
“Vicky!” Neal said to her; he realized that most of the blood on the floor seems to have come from her. She probably didn’t have long.
“Caff-Caffrey?” she stammered.
“What happened? Who did this?”
“Ketchum,” she said weakly. “Mark Ketchum.”
Neal wracked his brain - Ketchum’s name had been in the alerts sent from Homeland Security a lot the last two years; his Indiana-based Ketchum Militia was rumored to be the fastest-growing domestic terror threat ever documented.
“Ketchum? Here?”
“We were interrogating h-h-him.”
“I thought the suspect’s name was Goodman?”
She winced in pain. “Alias. W-w-we’ve had the bastard here the last two days and didn’t know. Oh!” She clutched Neal's shirt with a bloodied hand. He closed one of his over it and squeezed it reassuringly. “If we knew who we had, we would have moved him to a secure location.”
Neal thought this was a secure location. “How many men, Vicky? How many of Ketchum’s men were there?
“Don’t know. All I saw were guns. All I saw…” Her voice trailed off as she began to lose consciousness.
“Vicky!”
When she opened her eyes, she had the same look in them Neal remembered seeing in Ellen’s eyes just as the EMTs were taking her away in the ambulance. She didn’t have long. Neal squeezed her hand.
“Neal!”
“Tell me. Tell me whatever you need to, Vicky.”
She actually smiled, looking relieved. “Tell my husband… that I love him… And… tell him… I’m not mad about… the Corvette, OK?”
Neal smiled despite tears in his eyes. “I’ll do that, Vicky.”
“Thanks. You’re… you’re… a good…” She said no more as her eyes lost focus and Neal knew she was dead.
A groan behind him distracted him and Neal turned. Back against the wall was a man on the floor with a gunshot wound in his shoulder.
“Brooks!” Neal said to him urgently, shaking him awake.
Brooks moaned as he opened his eyes, looking around in a panic before his eyes fell on Neal's. “Neal! God, it hurts!” He shut his eyes against the pain, but Neal was feeling the urgency of the situation, so he shook the injured man once more.
“Brooks - where’s Diana?”
“Took her. They took her with them. A hostage.”
“Where?”
Brooks shook his head.
“How the hell did they get weapons into the building?” Neal said.
“I don’t know, I don’t know,” Brooks said through gritted teeth. “They sure seemed to know their way around the place though. I th-think they had an inside man.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Neal said. His mind was reeling. They FBI offices had been attacked by domestic terrorists who apparently had inside knowledge of not only the building’s layout but its security features - or lack thereof, as it turned out. If they had as much knowledge as they seemed to have, Neal reasoned there were two places they’d go - back the way they’d come or up to the roof, where a helicopter could pick them up. “Listen, Brooks, I think you’re going to be OK, so I’m gonna go and see if I can find Diana.”
“Neal, no! They’ll kill you as soon as look at you.”
“I’m not leaving her, Brooks. Besides, you should know by now - I have more lives than a cat. Did you see how many of them there were?”
Brooks shook his head. “I personally saw maybe four, but I had the impression there were more. Sorry Neal. I did manage to get a few shots off, though, and I think I hit Ketchum - I saw him flinch.”
That probably accounted for the blood drops Neal had seen on his way here. He squeezed the young man’s uninjured shoulder and stood. “Good man. Listen, I’ve got to go.”
“Neal!”
“Yeah?”
“Good luck.”
Neal made it to the Southeast stairwell - the closest and therefore most likely way the terrorists had gone - without incident, and without seeing another person, living or dead. He didn’t know if he should be thankful for that or not, so he decided to just not think about it. There was more blood over here, on the floor and the door, confirming that the bad guys had come this way.
He was about to open the door when a bullet ricocheted off its metal jamb and he ducked. Another shot sent him spinning, throwing himself behind a nearby cubicle wall. He underestimated his own mass and momentum - thanks, pregnancy weight gain! - and landed heavily on his hip against it, shaking the thing so hard it almost fell over.
The gunman - he had to be an unfriendly, because all of the agents on this floor certainly knew him - continued to fire. Neal could feel the cubicle wall and the desk in front of it absorbing the impact of the bullets; eventually, the man ran out of ammunition. Hoping he didn’t have a secondary weapon, Neal pulled himself up - it wasn’t as if his belly allowed him to crouch like a hidden tiger or whatever - and stood on the balls of his feet with his hands up and his knees bent, ready for anything.
“You there, Fed?” a voice called. It was very close. Neal willed the idiot to keep talking. “Don’t think I don’t know where you are.”
As a matter of fact, Neal was counting on it. He heard the footfall on the cheap, industrial-grade carpet before he saw it, and launched himself forward, taking the man by surprise as he tackled him to the floor. Neal pushed himself up, straddling the man as he punched him once, twice, a third time, until he was finally knocked out.
Breathing heavily, Neal looked at the guy. White, dark hair, early 30’s, as nondescript as they came. His clothes were more remarkable, however: he was dressed in the same coveralls the building’s maintenance crew wore. Neal concluded that was how they’d gained access, though how exactly he couldn’t guess, nor did he care. He just needed to find Diana.
He pulled himself to his feet using another cubicle wall and moved slowly back to the stairwell. “Ow,” he gasped, placing a hand on the side of his belly when it twinged. He must’ve pulled something when he tackled the shooter to the floor, but he couldn't think about that now.
“Don’t worry, Gracie. I’ve just gotta make sure mommy’s OK, then we’ll go home, I swear,” he said before disappearing through the door and beginning to follow the blood trail up the stairs.
The blood drips seemed to stop around the 26th floor, a fact for which Neal was supremely grateful. He was winded after just five flights of stairs, and the twinge in his belly was now a full-blown stitch. He decided to pull the door open and stuck his head through.
The corridor seemed deserted, so he stepped out from behind the door. He turned right, following the blood, but froze when he heard voices to his left along an interior hallway. He decided to investigate. Moving as quietly as he could, he found two rooms at the other end: a large conference room and an adjacent, connecting office. Both had windows cut into the walls beside their doors. As he poked his head around the first one, he nearly passed out from relief to see Diana inside, sitting on the floor against the wall with her hands zip-tied behind her, looking murderous. Inside the second room were five armed men, gathered around the conference table where a sixth, presumably Ketchum, lay, face a wholly unhealthy shade of grey.
Neal backed away, trying to stay out of their line of sight. He tapped lightly with his fingernail on the window, getting Diana’s attention.
Diana’s eyes widened to see Neal there; he crept into the room and crouched down with some difficulty beside her, reaching for the zip-ties to try to break them. “Neal! What the hell are you doing?” she hissed at him.
“I thought I was saving your life,” he whispered back, “but these damn ties won’t budge.” He moved around to face her and noticed she had the beginnings of a black eye as well as a gash on her forehead. He felt a wave of rage pass through him again that he rapidly suppressed, and instead touched her face tentatively with his fingertips. She winced in pain but didn’t pull away. “You OK?”
She nodded. “I gave as good as I got.”
He crawled over to the room’s desk and grabbed the scissors that protruded from the pencil cup on it, then returned and freed her. A flurry of activity in the room beyond made them both freeze, but the terrorists made no move to come into this room. “Let’s go,” Neal whispered and they both got out of there.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy to see someone in my entire life,” Diana murmured as they got farther away.
“Likewise,” Neal said. “The stairs are this way.”
They were nearly there when the door slammed open, and the man Neal had encountered downstairs emerged. They ducked into a copy room with a second door that let out onto a different hallway.
“Shit, what do we do now?” Neal asked.
“Well, this is the NSA floor - there should be a secure room somewhere at the center of it - all of them have that.”
Neal looked at her in much the same way he might have looked at an alien. “First off, this is an NSA office? It says Social Security Administration on the doors.” Diana shrugged. “And secondly, how do you even know that?”
“I dated an NSA agent once upon a time.”
“Naturally. Well, let’s not dawdle - the minute they figure out you’re missing is the minute they come after us.”
It didn’t take long to find the room - it appeared to be a storage closet on the far side of the break room, the heavy duty door and biometric lock a dead giveaway - but getting in was going to be another story.
“Shit, it’s a Wilson A-390,” Neal said, recognizing the configuration.
“That means something to you?”
“Allegedly.” He pulled a leather pouch out of his pocket, inside of which were a few lockpicks, a universal USB adapter, and a few other things he’d need.
“You still carry those things around with you?”
“Old habits die hard.”
“I suppose I’m thankful for that,” she said, then went over to the door they’d just come through to watch for the bad guys.
“So what happens next?” Neal asked as he worked; he’d already hooked up his phone to the locking mechanism, and now it was just a matter of finding the right override code. “I mean, what’s the protocol? If I get us inside this room, how long do we have to wait?”
“They’ll send SWAT in to sweep all of the floors, starting with where the breach happened and working outward. Shouldn’t be too long, actually.”
Neal hoped that was true, because the stitch in his belly had become a full-on stabbing pain, and it was worrying.
“Hurry, hurry, hurry,” Diana whispered, and Neal decided to take it as encouragement. It took longer than he anticipated - he hadn’t downloaded the latest update to the lock-picking app Moz had given him - but finally the lock clicked, indicating it had been disengaged.
“Good work, Caffrey!” Diana said, rushing over to him as he disengaged his phone and pulled the door open.
Suddenly, there was a shout, and moments later three armed men appeared, weapons firing. Acting on instinct, Neal turned and pushed Diana inside the safe room ahead of him and, as another bullet lodged itself in the wall inside the door, just missing her, he slammed the door closed, locking it.
“Crap,” he muttered, lifting his hands above his head and turning slowly and deliberately to face the gunmen.
“Who the hell are you?” the one in front asked him.
Neal smiled his best smile. “Neal Caffrey, pleased to meet you. I’d offer to shake your hand, but I don’t think I want to make any sudden movements just now.”
“He’s the guy that attacked me downstairs, Warren!” the man Neal had encountered earlier said as he stepped forward. “Let me finish him off!”
“Please don’t do that,” Neal said, resting his hands on his head. “I am no threat to you. You’re the ones with the guns.”
“There’ll be no killing unless I say so, Eddie,” Warren said. “We just need to find a first aid kit and get Mark to the roof so we can get out of here.”
Eddie scowled at Neal.
“You wouldn’t shoot a pregnant person, would you? You look like a nice bunch of terrorists, after all,” Neal said, thinking fast.
“What do you mean - you’re having a baby?” Warren asked.
“He’s one of those freaks I seen on the news,” the third man said. “Remember that sex-changing disease a few months back?”
“Really?”
“Please, you don’t think that I’m really shaped like this, do you?” Neal asked, insulted.
“Suppose not,” Warren said. “What’s it like?”
Neal couldn’t believe he was having this conversation. “It’s harder than you think, actually.”
“No kidding?”
Suddenly, the pain Neal had been experiencing became infinitely worse, and he doubled over with a groan. He was dimly aware of all three men raising their weapons higher when he moved, all of them pointed at him, but he didn’t much care at the moment. “God!” he couldn’t help gasping as he fell to his knees.
“What’s the matter?” Warren asked.
“I don’t know,” Neal answered. “I think I pulled a muscle before.”
“Let’s just shoot him and get on out of here,” Eddie insisted.
Neal felt real panic and held up a hand to them. “Please don’t do that. My baby - her name is Grace. You don’t want to be responsible for… for…” Neal couldn’t bring himself to say the words: killing her. “Do you have any children?”
“I got a niece,” Warren said.
“Do you love her?”
“She’s real cute.”
“Then you know what I mean. Come on, Warren, you can just get the first aid kit and go - I won’t give you any trouble.”
“Aw, for Pete’s sake,” Eddie said, then strode forward and clocked Neal on the side of his head with the butt of his weapon. Neal fell to the floor, stunned. “We don’t have time for all this talking. Let’s get the first aid kit and get the hell out of here.”
Neal was vaguely aware of them rooting around in a cabinet in the corner. He painfully managed to push himself over to lie on his back, but when he opened his eyes, there was Eddie standing over him again, an angry expression on his face.
“This is for before,” he said, then hit Neal with the gun a second, and third time. “Now we’re even!”
Neal was unconscious before Eddie left the room.
----
“Neal! Neal, please, I know you’re out there, I can see you on the monitor that’s in here! Neal! WAKE UP!!”
Diana’s shouting at him through the door roused him, but the sudden, excruciating pain in his belly was what really woke Neal up. He sucked in a breath and hissed it out, but it did nothing to ease the agony.
“Neal! Neal!”
“I’m up,” he breathed, and pushed himself up to a seated position against the door to the safe room.
“Neal! Neal, come on - I can’t get the door open. Whatever you did to the lock, it’s in some sort of safety lockdown mode. Neal!”
The pain backed off somewhat, but it left Neal panting. Warren and the other two were gone, and he couldn’t really hear anything else going on on this floor except for Diana’s urgent calls from behind the door.
“CAFFREY!”
“Diana.”
“Come on, you’ve got to get me out of here.”
“True,” he agreed, but the throbbing in his head begged to differ and he may have blacked out for another moment or two...
“Neal, Neal, Neal,” Diana begged, and it was the desperation in her voice that truly roused him.
“Gotta get you out of there,” he said, waking.
“That’s right. I’m stuck in here - see what you can do?”
With a moan, Neal patted through his pockets to find the tools he’d used only moments before. Pushing himself up onto his knees, he fumbled with the phone, his fingers suddenly clumsy, dropping it. He shook his head. “Get it together Caffrey,” he breathed.
He tried to stand so he could hook the phone to the lock’s control panel once more, but a stab of pain ripped through him that sent him to the floor again, writhing and clutching at his abdomen. “God!” he only managed to gasp out as everything went all white around the edges.
“Neal, what’s wrong? Please, talk to me.” Diana was crying now, beating ineffectually at the door with her fists.
“I don’t know,” he told her, but it was a lie. It was the baby, he knew it. Something was wrong, something serious.
“Neal, we’ve got to get you out of here, but you’re the only one, the only one who can make that happen.”
“I know,” he breathed. Another pain ripped through him, and if that was a contraction, it was way too soon, and they were way too close together. It couldn't be, it just - whatever it was, it was so severe, he couldn’t control the scream that was ripped from his throat.
“Neal!” Diana all but begged.
But he couldn’t move, he couldn’t do anything. Eventually, the pain eased somewhat, and he had just one thought. “Diana,” he moaned.
“Neal, Neal!” She was beating on the door and he could hear her crying.
“Diana, something is wrong with me, or with the baby, I’m not sure.”
“Neal!”
“Dammit, listen to me!” He gasped through another stabbing pain. “Listen,” he said, fighting against the pain and the darkness that crept around the edges of his vision. “If it comes down to it, promise me you’ll make them save the baby. Promise me that Grace comes first.”
“No, Neal, please.”
“Promise me, he bit out, fighting down the urge to scream.
“I promise, I promise.”
For some reason, that knowledge had a calming effect. He eased his head to the floor, pressed his forehead up against the door. Beyond, he sensed movement, could see a shadow, and knew that Diana had assumed the same position. He imagined he could see her, could see her large, expressive eyes and her beautiful lips. “Di,” he breathed, “I love you. I’ve loved you for a long time, and I know you can’t love me back, but I don’t really care. I just need to say it.”
“No, Neal, don’t give up now, you can’t, please.”
“Don’t know if I have much of a choice here.”
“Neal, please don’t leave me, you can’t. You have to hold on.”
“Can’t.” He closed his eyes at yet another wave of agony, felt the darkness closing in.
“Please, I love you, don’t give up, I love you, I love you, Neal.”
“That’s nice… nice of you to say.”
“I mean it, goddammit!” He felt her punch or kick the door in frustration. “Listen to me Caffrey, I realized something when I felt our baby kicking for the first time - something I’ve been denying for too long. I love you - I’m in love with you. And it goes against everything I am, or thought I was, or something, but you have to believe me when I say it. Please, I can’t lose you, not now, not when everything’s just about to get good.”
For some reason, Neal found that amusing, and he laughed. “Thank you.”
Then, another stab of pain wracked him, this one worse than the others, forcing out another scream, and it didn’t stop, it wouldn’t, and he screamed again, and Diana screamed, and then everything went black.
----
“Neal.”
Diana?
“Neal.”
Not Diana.
“Peter?”
“Hey, buddy, hang in there, OK?”
Neal felt like he was floating. No: he was being carried. Peter and Jones were carrying him. The pain hadn’t stopped, but he was somehow above it, beyond it.
“I don’t know if I can.”
“You have to. For Grace. She’s gonna need her daddy, now.”
Grace.
“I’ll try,” Neal promised, and then he was floating again.
----
The voices of the EMTs working on him were quietly urgent, but that wasn’t what Neal heard clearest.
“God, just tell me if he’s all right, Peter. PLEASE!”
“I don’t know, Di, I don’t know.”
“Neal!”
Diana. Please don’t cry, Neal thought before everything faded to black.
----
“It’s going to be all right, Mr. Caffrey. We’re taking good care of you.”
“The baby.”
“We’re gonna take care of the baby too. Just keep calm. You’ve lost a lot of blood and we need to get you into surgery right away.”
“The baby,” he repeated, afraid. But at least there was no more pain here.
----
“Neal.”
Someone was petting him, and this had never been anything he’d liked before, but he was too groggy to lodge a protest. His eyes focused in. “Di?”
“Hey,” she said with a smile, but there were tears in her eyes and he wasn’t sure why.
“Is…” He couldn’t really talk, either.
Then Diana was gone and he couldn’t say anything to bring her back and he was so, so disappointed.
“Meet your daughter,” she said, suddenly there.
And a small bundle was laid on his chest and she weighed next to nothing, and she had a tiny, squinched-up face and way too much hair. And she was his.
“Grace,” he whispered and passed out again.
----
When he woke again, he felt more himself and less floaty, and there was a baby crying. There was a baby crying and it was the most beautiful thing he’d ever heard.
He turned his head to see Diana sitting in a chair against the wall, beside a wheeled bassinet, pressing a small bottle filled with formula against the baby’s mouth. Grace immediately began to suckle, though not without an enraged whimper first, just to get her point across.
Diana noticed him moving and looked up at him, smiling.
“Hi,” he said, smiling back.
“Hi,” she replied, and there was a sublime beauty to her sitting there with the baby in her arms, and it just looked so right he wanted to cry.
“You want to feed her?”
Neal wanted to desperately, but he didn’t want to disturb either of them. “No, you look like you’ve got it under control. Besides, I’m sure I’ll have ample opportunity in the next eighteen years or so.”
Diana nodded.
“What happened?”
She frowned. “Ketchum’s men launched an attack to free him - that much you know. It was definitely an inside job - the maintenance contractor for the building is part of their organization and hid the weapons in recycle bins if you can believe it.”
Neal could believe it.
“Three are dead, including Ketchum.”
Vicky, Neal thought with a pang - he’d have to find her husband and have a talk with him. “Brooks?”
“He’s fine. His shoulder’s all shot to hell and they’re not sure when or if he can resume duty, but it was his bullet that killed Ketchum.”
Neal didn’t know how to feel about that. “How long have I been out of it?”
“Almost two days.”
“Cripes.” He’d missed the first two days of Grace’s life.
“You had to have emergency surgery - you lost a lot of blood, and of course there was the baby.”
“How is she? Any complications?”
Diana grinned down at the bundle in her arms. “Ten fingers and ten toes - she’s tiny and perfect. They’ll send her home when they send you.” She got to her feet and came to stand beside him. “Still don’t want to hold her?”
“No,” he said, and held out his arms, ignoring the pull of the IV line.
Diana settled Grace into his arms, and she fit so perfectly he almost couldn’t believe it. Bereft of her bottle for the moment, she squawked in protest, tiny fists clenched tight, but as soon as Neal pressed the nipple to her lips, she began sucking away like a champ.
He studied his daughter, amazed by the individual hairs of her tiny eyelashes and eyebrows, the perfect little wrinkles of the joints of her fingers, her beautiful, bow-shaped mouth. “She looks just like you,” he said to Diana.
“You think?”
“Perfect.”
“Aww.”
Everything would be perfect.
Epilogue - One Week Later
“I refuse to use a wheelchair in my own home!”
Elizabeth actually tut-tutted. Neal wasn’t sure how that was possible. “You’ve had major surgery - you will stay off your feet until the doctor says it’s OK.”
Neal would have grumbled that she wasn’t the boss of him, but she really, really was. Peter wheeled him over to his bedroom, where he reluctantly deposited a sleeping Grace into her bassinet. She stirred, her tiny face opening up, eyebrows raised, but she soon settled, little mouth turned down as she suckled in her sleep.
“Lunch is served!” Elizabeth called.
Peter wheeled Neal over to the table, where they got into a minor slap fight when Peter tried to assist Neal out of the wheelchair. “Jesus, I can walk the two steps to the table, Peter!”
“Fine.”
“Boys, can you act like adults for one afternoon?” El admonished, setting a platter of chicken salad sandwiches down.
“Some things will never change,” Diana said to her with a laugh, carrying over a bowl of salad and a bag of chips.
“The more things change, the more they stay the same,” Moz intoned, sniffing fussily at a sandwich.
“I’m looking at the biggest change over here, darlings,” June called from her spot hovering over Grace’s bassinet.
Neal reflected that he didn’t much mind any of the changes in his life.
After lunch, and more importantly, after they’d all had a chance to hold, feed, coo over and yes, even change (thanks, Uncle Mozzie!) the baby, his friends left Neal alone with his new little family member. He was content to sit in the wheelchair beside her bassinet, staring at her as she slept. He supposed this would get old eventually, but he was determined to enjoy it while it lasted.
“So, I’ve got to go into the office and make a statement - again - but I’ll be back by 7:00, OK?” Diana said, coming up behind him and laying a hand on his head.
“Sure.” He glanced up at her and smiled shyly; her hand slipped down to his shoulder. They’d rarely been alone together since Neal had awoken in the hospital, hadn’t really had a chance to discuss Diana’s little through-the-door revelation.
He hadn’t had a chance to let her rescind it, either.
“Listen, you don’t have to come back here if it’s a hassle - Elizabeth left me with a ton of food, and a dozen bottles all made up. We’ll be fine, if -“
“Do you not want me to come back?” She sounded hurt.
“I do, it’s just -“ He sighed and turned the chair so he could face her, though he couldn’t really look at her as he spoke. “I know you said you loved me because you thought I was dying, and I - look, if you need an out, Di, I’ll understand.”
“I don’t want an out, Neal. I meant what I said. I meant it in that moment, and I mean it now.”
“Really?”
“Really. I don’t know what it ultimately means, and we’ll have to work through a lot. But this feeling,” she put her hand on her heart, “I like it, and I want it. I fell in love with you Neal, not your gender. I know that now.”
He smiled.
“We have a lot to work through. Like sleeping arrangements and, uh, sleeping arrangements, but we can do it. I want to be with you, Neal, if you want to be with me.”
There was something perfectly honest about the way she said it, and he knew she would never lie to him, and maybe it wouldn’t work out - they had a lot to deal with - but he was willing to give it a shot. His heart was willing to give it a shot.
“I want to be with you.”
“Good.” She reached out, slipped the first two fingers of her right hand under his chin and kissed him on the lips. The kiss was light, almost chaste, but he thought it contained a lot of promise for their life ahead of them, and he kissed her back softly.
“Huh,” she said, as she straightened up. Her eyes were still closed, lips still slightly moistened.
“What?”
“Just now - when I kissed you, it was just like kissing -“ She opened her eyes and closed her mouth, not wanting to say anything.
“Just like kissing her?” He saw her blush. “Well, that’s OK, because she is me, and I am she and we are all together.”
“Don’t misquote the Beatles at me, Caffrey.”
“I wasn’t even trying.”
“Still, I like it.”
“Goo goo g’joob.”
----
Thank you for your time.
Additional Notes
* I have no idea what the protocol for a terrorist attack on a Federal building is, or whether an NSA office would have a panic room - just go with it.
* Let’s hand-wave the fact that Neal is technically a ward of the state since he’s still a prisoner, shall we? Would he be able to keep his baby? This makes me sad... why do I do this to myself? Hurray! Thanks to zou2 I no longer have to worry about Neal's losing Grace - whew!
Rating: R for language, some violence
Characters/Pairings: Neal/Diana; Peter, Elizabeth, Moz, OCs
Spoilers: None
Content Notice: MPREG, BAMF!Neal
Word Count: 16,000
Summary: Neal is preggers. Diana is the other DNA donor. That’s gonna be some pretty baby, huh?
A/N: This is the really whumpy part!
Part 1
----
Week 30
Neal liked the first week back to work after the New Year - there was a feeling of starting over fresh, and after all the slacking off and excess of the holidays, he really needed it. Things between he and Diana weren’t ever going to be the same, but at least she wasn’t giving him the cold shoulder anymore. Sure, they still pretty much avoided each other, but it was with more of a sense of sorrow over what was lost than the anger/shame cocktail they’d been mixing up. Neal counted it as progress.
His pregnancy was going as well as it possibly could, not only according to his doctor but also according to the surprising number of women who’d come up to him to assess his condition, unasked-for. They took it upon themselves to fill him in on all the horrors they’d personally experienced when they were in the process of bringing their own little angels into the world. Neal supposed he didn’t much mind tales of episiotomies and stretched-out pelvic floor muscles - since he’d be delivering by Caesarian in his 38th week for safety reasons, it didn’t much concern him. But their stories of the joys of breast feeding kind of made him sad to hear, because he would never be able to experience it - he didn’t exactly have the right equipment, not that functioned, anyway.
Grace, for her part, was a model fetus, wiggling and wriggling away happily during the day and pretty much sleeping and quiet at night. On the occasions when she got the hiccups (and Neal still couldn’t believe that one), it tickled so much it made him laugh out loud. Anytime he drank orange juice, she would practically tap dance on his bladder, and whenever Moz recited beat poetry at her, she seemed to be laughing at him. Which was about Neal's usual reaction, so clearly the child was taking after him.
What he hadn’t been expecting - and was apparently a particular complication for all the men in his situation - was the bone-aching pain he was in all of the time now. Male pelvises weren’t designed to accommodate a fetus, and while it was bearable for the most part, he was particularly uncomfortable by the end of the day, and sometimes needed help getting out of his chair. Hughes had suggested to Peter that Neal work half days the last two weeks he’d be at the office - he’d be spending the last six weeks at home on bed rest due to the high risk nature of his pregnancy - and he was very grateful.
One thing he found odd - and all the women had warned him of this - was the sheer number of people who felt they had the right to touch his belly. Some days he felt like some sort of lucky rabbit’s foot, so many people were rubbing him. Peter was very protective of him when he could be, for which Neal was also grateful.
He didn’t mind when people he knew touched him, though, like in today’s staff meeting. He was, as usual, playing with his rubber band ball, tossing it in the air idly in the minutes before the meeting began. Once Peter started talking, Neal rested it on his belly, thinking nothing of it. Grace, however, seemed determined to prove her worth as a future world class soccer player, because she kicked him hard enough to send the ball flying onto the table.
“What was that?” Peter asked, amazement on his face as he pointed at Neal.
“Um… baby kicks.”
Jones sat forward in his chair. “Really? They’re that hard?”
Neal nodded. “They can be. Especially when she’s hungry. I mean, when I’m hungry - it’s almost lunchtime.”
“Do it again!” Brooks urged, returning the ball to Neal.
“Well, it’s not me doing it,” Neal said as he replaced the ball, “but -“ Immediately, the ball bobbled a bit, then once again flew off of him, though not nearly as far as before.
“I saw it!” Brooks said, excited. “I saw the little foot or whatever! Can - can I feel it?”
“Sure,” Neal said with a smile and allowed Brooks a go.
“Wow, it’s kinda hard, isn’t it - like a bike tire,” Brooks observed, pressing his hand into Neal’s stomach. “I always thought you’d be all soft.”
Neal didn’t know whether to be insulted by that one or not - he had tried to maintain an exercise regimen, after all.
“Really?” Jones said, leaning over and laying a hand on Neal. “Wow, that’s amazing isn’t it? Oh! She kicked me!”
“She likes deep voices,” Neal told him.
“Can I have a turn?” said a soft voice.
Neal looked to find Diana standing beside him. “Um, sure,” he said, swiveling his chair around.
She crouched in front of him and placed a tentative hand on his belly. Neal took it and moved it three inches to the right to where the latest action was.
“Hey, little one,” Diana cooed. “How you doing in there?”
Grace’s reaction to her voice was immediate as the baby began wriggling and kicking excitedly.
“Ow! Ooo, I think she likes you,” Neal told her.
Diana looked up into his eyes, a myriad of emotions in her eyes - wonder, regret, hope. Their eyes locked.
“Okaaay, maybe we should get this meeting going?” Peter said, breaking the spell, for which Neal was thankful. Any longer and he knew their reaction to each other would be noticed. “Diana, you want to fill us in on the CI you’ve been cultivating for the Chelsea cybercrime case?”
Diana stood abruptly, her face now perfectly expressionless. She straightened her jacket and went to the front of the room. “Just to catch you all up from last week,” she began, “Our confidential informant has been giving us names of some of the lower-level members, and we’ve set up digital surveillance on each of them.”
“Has it yielded anything?” Jones asked.
“Not yet.”
“You follow the money?” Neal asked; given their estrangement, he didn’t really know that much about the case anymore.
“Of course - we’ve got traces on known accounts and we know where money is coming in from, and where it’s going. They’re smart about it - the cash hits more than three hundred accounts - most of which are owned by private citizens and legitimate businesses who know nothing of the transactions. The money’s in these accounts for less than an hour before they’re transferred and used to buy and trade Bitcoins. They let those gain a little interest, sell them, then the cash hits an account in the Caymans for a while before being filtered back to the States. It’s taken Cyber Division the last three months just to piece that together.”
“But have you traced what they do with it once it’s moved? What are they using it for, what are they spending it on?”
Diana looked at him blankly.
“What do you mean?” Peter asked Neal, sitting forward in his chair and clearly interested in this new angle.
“Well, if they’re able to hide their tracks so well, there could be something they’re doing with the money that’d identify them. Have a look at what they’re buying - and who they’re buying it from. It’s a longshot, but maybe you’ll get a lead there.”
“That’s brilliant, Neal,” Peter said. “Boy, we’re gonna miss you when you go on leave!”
Week 33
Neal felt kind of excited to be returning to the office for a baby shower today. Sure, it was nearly two weeks since he’d had to start his leave, and he was meant to be on bed rest, but the doctor said he could leave the house for short periods of time as long as he kept off his feet, and he was already bored. Not for the first time, he reflected that this pregnancy was a much better way of keeping him to his radius than the anklet ever had been. Speaking of the anklet, Peter had let it out as far as it could go to accommodate the swelling in Neal's ankles, but barring the invention of an elastic model, he was stuck with the daily discomfort of it.
When he entered, the break area was decorated in pink, with little stork-shaped cupcakes and baby bottles favors filled with candy. All of these were arranged around a pile of presents that was almost embarrassingly huge but, as he realized a few weeks back when Elizabeth had forced him to go out and set up a registry, baby paraphernalia was both costly and large.
“You guys, this is too much,” Neal said, truly overwhelmed. The gift pile at another shower thrown by El and June the weekend before had been even larger.
Peter threw a companionable arm around his shoulders and squeezed. “It’s just enough,” he said with a grin.
“Neal.”
Neal turned to find Diana standing there with her briefcase slung over her shoulder. “Listen, I really want to stay, but I’ve got this suspect in holding and -“
“Suspect?”
“A break in the Chelsea case,” Peter supplied. “We’re pretty sure this guy, Sean Goodman, is middle management, but we’re hoping we can get him to dime out his bosses.”
“That’s terrific, congratulations.”
“Couldn’t have done it without you,” Diana pointed out. “Your idea about looking where they spend their money really paid off big. But I’ve gotta go - the guy hasn’t lawyered up yet, and I’m hoping to break him!”
Neal grinned to see her enthusiasm, and watched as she and young Brooks took off down the hall towards the interrogation suite.
“Gotta love the enthusiasm,” Neal commented to Peter. “You have to go supervise?”
Peter shook his head. “Our little girl is all grown up. She can handle this one on her own.”
They settled down to a catered lunch before Neal was shown to a large, comfy desk chair that he recognized as Hughes’ set up beside the presents. It took nearly a half hour to open everything, and when it was over, he lingered behind well after he was supposed to go home, to thank all his friends for their generosity.
“I think this is the last of it,” Peter said to Neal; he and Jones had needed two trips to get everything downstairs and loaded into the Taurus. “If you’re ready, I’ll drive you home.”
“Thanks,” Neal said. “Think I’ll just hit the bathroom before we go. Meet you downstairs?”
Peter nodded and Neal made for the men’s room as Peter and Jones disappeared inside the elevator one last time.
Neal was alone in the men’s room and was just washing his hands when he heard a loud bang, followed by what was, unmistakably, the sound of automatic weapons fire. He immediately pressed himself back against the wall beside the urinals as more shots were fired. He heard shouts and screams and the rushing of footsteps. He fumbled for his phone and tried to call Peter, but the call wouldn’t go through. He next tried Diana, then Jones with no luck, and even his call to Moz resulted in nothing.
Neal realized two things with sudden clarity: the building was under attack and whoever they were had managed to block communications. Oh, and a third thing: He was pretty much fucked.
After a few minutes more, it seemed as if the noises had died down. Concern for his friends drove Neal from the men’s room. Being eight months pregnant was not ideal for maneuverability, but he hadn’t lost any of his former cat burglar skills, so he was at least stealthy.
He looked up and down the hall - there was really no one around now. Building protocol was for non-agents to shelter in place in offices with doors that could lock, but most of those were on the north side of the building and Neal was on the south side. He thought he heard a sound off to his right, in the direction of the interrogation suite. His heart hammered in his chest when he remembered that Diana was still down there, questioning her suspect, and then took off in that direction.
Halfway there, he saw blood drops on the floor and smudges of it on the wall. A sound ahead made him freeze. It was not repeated; he didn’t think anyone would be coming. Up towards the ceiling he spotted the flashing of the light he knew indicated that a silent alarm had been tripped - good, at least someone knew there was something bad going down and help would be here soon.
Still, not knowing where Diana was, he continued on, keeping a slower pace than before, moving completely silently. When he rounded the corner and the glass-walled room came into view, he nearly cried out at what he saw.
Bodies. On the floor. Bodies and blood. He rushed forward, the sight of a dark-haired woman facing away from him making him want to whimper and rage all at the same time. But it was not Diana, she wasn’t even wearing a grey suit today, and the relief he felt almost shamed him. He dropped to his knees before the woman, adrenaline helping him to ignore the usual complaints of his pregnant body. It was AUSA Victoria Potter - he’d met her a total of three times, to testify on some of the cases he’d worked with the White Collar team. She was conscious but breathing shallowly and in a lot of obvious pain.
“Vicky!” Neal said to her; he realized that most of the blood on the floor seems to have come from her. She probably didn’t have long.
“Caff-Caffrey?” she stammered.
“What happened? Who did this?”
“Ketchum,” she said weakly. “Mark Ketchum.”
Neal wracked his brain - Ketchum’s name had been in the alerts sent from Homeland Security a lot the last two years; his Indiana-based Ketchum Militia was rumored to be the fastest-growing domestic terror threat ever documented.
“Ketchum? Here?”
“We were interrogating h-h-him.”
“I thought the suspect’s name was Goodman?”
She winced in pain. “Alias. W-w-we’ve had the bastard here the last two days and didn’t know. Oh!” She clutched Neal's shirt with a bloodied hand. He closed one of his over it and squeezed it reassuringly. “If we knew who we had, we would have moved him to a secure location.”
Neal thought this was a secure location. “How many men, Vicky? How many of Ketchum’s men were there?
“Don’t know. All I saw were guns. All I saw…” Her voice trailed off as she began to lose consciousness.
“Vicky!”
When she opened her eyes, she had the same look in them Neal remembered seeing in Ellen’s eyes just as the EMTs were taking her away in the ambulance. She didn’t have long. Neal squeezed her hand.
“Neal!”
“Tell me. Tell me whatever you need to, Vicky.”
She actually smiled, looking relieved. “Tell my husband… that I love him… And… tell him… I’m not mad about… the Corvette, OK?”
Neal smiled despite tears in his eyes. “I’ll do that, Vicky.”
“Thanks. You’re… you’re… a good…” She said no more as her eyes lost focus and Neal knew she was dead.
A groan behind him distracted him and Neal turned. Back against the wall was a man on the floor with a gunshot wound in his shoulder.
“Brooks!” Neal said to him urgently, shaking him awake.
Brooks moaned as he opened his eyes, looking around in a panic before his eyes fell on Neal's. “Neal! God, it hurts!” He shut his eyes against the pain, but Neal was feeling the urgency of the situation, so he shook the injured man once more.
“Brooks - where’s Diana?”
“Took her. They took her with them. A hostage.”
“Where?”
Brooks shook his head.
“How the hell did they get weapons into the building?” Neal said.
“I don’t know, I don’t know,” Brooks said through gritted teeth. “They sure seemed to know their way around the place though. I th-think they had an inside man.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Neal said. His mind was reeling. They FBI offices had been attacked by domestic terrorists who apparently had inside knowledge of not only the building’s layout but its security features - or lack thereof, as it turned out. If they had as much knowledge as they seemed to have, Neal reasoned there were two places they’d go - back the way they’d come or up to the roof, where a helicopter could pick them up. “Listen, Brooks, I think you’re going to be OK, so I’m gonna go and see if I can find Diana.”
“Neal, no! They’ll kill you as soon as look at you.”
“I’m not leaving her, Brooks. Besides, you should know by now - I have more lives than a cat. Did you see how many of them there were?”
Brooks shook his head. “I personally saw maybe four, but I had the impression there were more. Sorry Neal. I did manage to get a few shots off, though, and I think I hit Ketchum - I saw him flinch.”
That probably accounted for the blood drops Neal had seen on his way here. He squeezed the young man’s uninjured shoulder and stood. “Good man. Listen, I’ve got to go.”
“Neal!”
“Yeah?”
“Good luck.”
Neal made it to the Southeast stairwell - the closest and therefore most likely way the terrorists had gone - without incident, and without seeing another person, living or dead. He didn’t know if he should be thankful for that or not, so he decided to just not think about it. There was more blood over here, on the floor and the door, confirming that the bad guys had come this way.
He was about to open the door when a bullet ricocheted off its metal jamb and he ducked. Another shot sent him spinning, throwing himself behind a nearby cubicle wall. He underestimated his own mass and momentum - thanks, pregnancy weight gain! - and landed heavily on his hip against it, shaking the thing so hard it almost fell over.
The gunman - he had to be an unfriendly, because all of the agents on this floor certainly knew him - continued to fire. Neal could feel the cubicle wall and the desk in front of it absorbing the impact of the bullets; eventually, the man ran out of ammunition. Hoping he didn’t have a secondary weapon, Neal pulled himself up - it wasn’t as if his belly allowed him to crouch like a hidden tiger or whatever - and stood on the balls of his feet with his hands up and his knees bent, ready for anything.
“You there, Fed?” a voice called. It was very close. Neal willed the idiot to keep talking. “Don’t think I don’t know where you are.”
As a matter of fact, Neal was counting on it. He heard the footfall on the cheap, industrial-grade carpet before he saw it, and launched himself forward, taking the man by surprise as he tackled him to the floor. Neal pushed himself up, straddling the man as he punched him once, twice, a third time, until he was finally knocked out.
Breathing heavily, Neal looked at the guy. White, dark hair, early 30’s, as nondescript as they came. His clothes were more remarkable, however: he was dressed in the same coveralls the building’s maintenance crew wore. Neal concluded that was how they’d gained access, though how exactly he couldn’t guess, nor did he care. He just needed to find Diana.
He pulled himself to his feet using another cubicle wall and moved slowly back to the stairwell. “Ow,” he gasped, placing a hand on the side of his belly when it twinged. He must’ve pulled something when he tackled the shooter to the floor, but he couldn't think about that now.
“Don’t worry, Gracie. I’ve just gotta make sure mommy’s OK, then we’ll go home, I swear,” he said before disappearing through the door and beginning to follow the blood trail up the stairs.
The blood drips seemed to stop around the 26th floor, a fact for which Neal was supremely grateful. He was winded after just five flights of stairs, and the twinge in his belly was now a full-blown stitch. He decided to pull the door open and stuck his head through.
The corridor seemed deserted, so he stepped out from behind the door. He turned right, following the blood, but froze when he heard voices to his left along an interior hallway. He decided to investigate. Moving as quietly as he could, he found two rooms at the other end: a large conference room and an adjacent, connecting office. Both had windows cut into the walls beside their doors. As he poked his head around the first one, he nearly passed out from relief to see Diana inside, sitting on the floor against the wall with her hands zip-tied behind her, looking murderous. Inside the second room were five armed men, gathered around the conference table where a sixth, presumably Ketchum, lay, face a wholly unhealthy shade of grey.
Neal backed away, trying to stay out of their line of sight. He tapped lightly with his fingernail on the window, getting Diana’s attention.
Diana’s eyes widened to see Neal there; he crept into the room and crouched down with some difficulty beside her, reaching for the zip-ties to try to break them. “Neal! What the hell are you doing?” she hissed at him.
“I thought I was saving your life,” he whispered back, “but these damn ties won’t budge.” He moved around to face her and noticed she had the beginnings of a black eye as well as a gash on her forehead. He felt a wave of rage pass through him again that he rapidly suppressed, and instead touched her face tentatively with his fingertips. She winced in pain but didn’t pull away. “You OK?”
She nodded. “I gave as good as I got.”
He crawled over to the room’s desk and grabbed the scissors that protruded from the pencil cup on it, then returned and freed her. A flurry of activity in the room beyond made them both freeze, but the terrorists made no move to come into this room. “Let’s go,” Neal whispered and they both got out of there.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy to see someone in my entire life,” Diana murmured as they got farther away.
“Likewise,” Neal said. “The stairs are this way.”
They were nearly there when the door slammed open, and the man Neal had encountered downstairs emerged. They ducked into a copy room with a second door that let out onto a different hallway.
“Shit, what do we do now?” Neal asked.
“Well, this is the NSA floor - there should be a secure room somewhere at the center of it - all of them have that.”
Neal looked at her in much the same way he might have looked at an alien. “First off, this is an NSA office? It says Social Security Administration on the doors.” Diana shrugged. “And secondly, how do you even know that?”
“I dated an NSA agent once upon a time.”
“Naturally. Well, let’s not dawdle - the minute they figure out you’re missing is the minute they come after us.”
It didn’t take long to find the room - it appeared to be a storage closet on the far side of the break room, the heavy duty door and biometric lock a dead giveaway - but getting in was going to be another story.
“Shit, it’s a Wilson A-390,” Neal said, recognizing the configuration.
“That means something to you?”
“Allegedly.” He pulled a leather pouch out of his pocket, inside of which were a few lockpicks, a universal USB adapter, and a few other things he’d need.
“You still carry those things around with you?”
“Old habits die hard.”
“I suppose I’m thankful for that,” she said, then went over to the door they’d just come through to watch for the bad guys.
“So what happens next?” Neal asked as he worked; he’d already hooked up his phone to the locking mechanism, and now it was just a matter of finding the right override code. “I mean, what’s the protocol? If I get us inside this room, how long do we have to wait?”
“They’ll send SWAT in to sweep all of the floors, starting with where the breach happened and working outward. Shouldn’t be too long, actually.”
Neal hoped that was true, because the stitch in his belly had become a full-on stabbing pain, and it was worrying.
“Hurry, hurry, hurry,” Diana whispered, and Neal decided to take it as encouragement. It took longer than he anticipated - he hadn’t downloaded the latest update to the lock-picking app Moz had given him - but finally the lock clicked, indicating it had been disengaged.
“Good work, Caffrey!” Diana said, rushing over to him as he disengaged his phone and pulled the door open.
Suddenly, there was a shout, and moments later three armed men appeared, weapons firing. Acting on instinct, Neal turned and pushed Diana inside the safe room ahead of him and, as another bullet lodged itself in the wall inside the door, just missing her, he slammed the door closed, locking it.
“Crap,” he muttered, lifting his hands above his head and turning slowly and deliberately to face the gunmen.
“Who the hell are you?” the one in front asked him.
Neal smiled his best smile. “Neal Caffrey, pleased to meet you. I’d offer to shake your hand, but I don’t think I want to make any sudden movements just now.”
“He’s the guy that attacked me downstairs, Warren!” the man Neal had encountered earlier said as he stepped forward. “Let me finish him off!”
“Please don’t do that,” Neal said, resting his hands on his head. “I am no threat to you. You’re the ones with the guns.”
“There’ll be no killing unless I say so, Eddie,” Warren said. “We just need to find a first aid kit and get Mark to the roof so we can get out of here.”
Eddie scowled at Neal.
“You wouldn’t shoot a pregnant person, would you? You look like a nice bunch of terrorists, after all,” Neal said, thinking fast.
“What do you mean - you’re having a baby?” Warren asked.
“He’s one of those freaks I seen on the news,” the third man said. “Remember that sex-changing disease a few months back?”
“Really?”
“Please, you don’t think that I’m really shaped like this, do you?” Neal asked, insulted.
“Suppose not,” Warren said. “What’s it like?”
Neal couldn’t believe he was having this conversation. “It’s harder than you think, actually.”
“No kidding?”
Suddenly, the pain Neal had been experiencing became infinitely worse, and he doubled over with a groan. He was dimly aware of all three men raising their weapons higher when he moved, all of them pointed at him, but he didn’t much care at the moment. “God!” he couldn’t help gasping as he fell to his knees.
“What’s the matter?” Warren asked.
“I don’t know,” Neal answered. “I think I pulled a muscle before.”
“Let’s just shoot him and get on out of here,” Eddie insisted.
Neal felt real panic and held up a hand to them. “Please don’t do that. My baby - her name is Grace. You don’t want to be responsible for… for…” Neal couldn’t bring himself to say the words: killing her. “Do you have any children?”
“I got a niece,” Warren said.
“Do you love her?”
“She’s real cute.”
“Then you know what I mean. Come on, Warren, you can just get the first aid kit and go - I won’t give you any trouble.”
“Aw, for Pete’s sake,” Eddie said, then strode forward and clocked Neal on the side of his head with the butt of his weapon. Neal fell to the floor, stunned. “We don’t have time for all this talking. Let’s get the first aid kit and get the hell out of here.”
Neal was vaguely aware of them rooting around in a cabinet in the corner. He painfully managed to push himself over to lie on his back, but when he opened his eyes, there was Eddie standing over him again, an angry expression on his face.
“This is for before,” he said, then hit Neal with the gun a second, and third time. “Now we’re even!”
Neal was unconscious before Eddie left the room.
----
“Neal! Neal, please, I know you’re out there, I can see you on the monitor that’s in here! Neal! WAKE UP!!”
Diana’s shouting at him through the door roused him, but the sudden, excruciating pain in his belly was what really woke Neal up. He sucked in a breath and hissed it out, but it did nothing to ease the agony.
“Neal! Neal!”
“I’m up,” he breathed, and pushed himself up to a seated position against the door to the safe room.
“Neal! Neal, come on - I can’t get the door open. Whatever you did to the lock, it’s in some sort of safety lockdown mode. Neal!”
The pain backed off somewhat, but it left Neal panting. Warren and the other two were gone, and he couldn’t really hear anything else going on on this floor except for Diana’s urgent calls from behind the door.
“CAFFREY!”
“Diana.”
“Come on, you’ve got to get me out of here.”
“True,” he agreed, but the throbbing in his head begged to differ and he may have blacked out for another moment or two...
“Neal, Neal, Neal,” Diana begged, and it was the desperation in her voice that truly roused him.
“Gotta get you out of there,” he said, waking.
“That’s right. I’m stuck in here - see what you can do?”
With a moan, Neal patted through his pockets to find the tools he’d used only moments before. Pushing himself up onto his knees, he fumbled with the phone, his fingers suddenly clumsy, dropping it. He shook his head. “Get it together Caffrey,” he breathed.
He tried to stand so he could hook the phone to the lock’s control panel once more, but a stab of pain ripped through him that sent him to the floor again, writhing and clutching at his abdomen. “God!” he only managed to gasp out as everything went all white around the edges.
“Neal, what’s wrong? Please, talk to me.” Diana was crying now, beating ineffectually at the door with her fists.
“I don’t know,” he told her, but it was a lie. It was the baby, he knew it. Something was wrong, something serious.
“Neal, we’ve got to get you out of here, but you’re the only one, the only one who can make that happen.”
“I know,” he breathed. Another pain ripped through him, and if that was a contraction, it was way too soon, and they were way too close together. It couldn't be, it just - whatever it was, it was so severe, he couldn’t control the scream that was ripped from his throat.
“Neal!” Diana all but begged.
But he couldn’t move, he couldn’t do anything. Eventually, the pain eased somewhat, and he had just one thought. “Diana,” he moaned.
“Neal, Neal!” She was beating on the door and he could hear her crying.
“Diana, something is wrong with me, or with the baby, I’m not sure.”
“Neal!”
“Dammit, listen to me!” He gasped through another stabbing pain. “Listen,” he said, fighting against the pain and the darkness that crept around the edges of his vision. “If it comes down to it, promise me you’ll make them save the baby. Promise me that Grace comes first.”
“No, Neal, please.”
“Promise me, he bit out, fighting down the urge to scream.
“I promise, I promise.”
For some reason, that knowledge had a calming effect. He eased his head to the floor, pressed his forehead up against the door. Beyond, he sensed movement, could see a shadow, and knew that Diana had assumed the same position. He imagined he could see her, could see her large, expressive eyes and her beautiful lips. “Di,” he breathed, “I love you. I’ve loved you for a long time, and I know you can’t love me back, but I don’t really care. I just need to say it.”
“No, Neal, don’t give up now, you can’t, please.”
“Don’t know if I have much of a choice here.”
“Neal, please don’t leave me, you can’t. You have to hold on.”
“Can’t.” He closed his eyes at yet another wave of agony, felt the darkness closing in.
“Please, I love you, don’t give up, I love you, I love you, Neal.”
“That’s nice… nice of you to say.”
“I mean it, goddammit!” He felt her punch or kick the door in frustration. “Listen to me Caffrey, I realized something when I felt our baby kicking for the first time - something I’ve been denying for too long. I love you - I’m in love with you. And it goes against everything I am, or thought I was, or something, but you have to believe me when I say it. Please, I can’t lose you, not now, not when everything’s just about to get good.”
For some reason, Neal found that amusing, and he laughed. “Thank you.”
Then, another stab of pain wracked him, this one worse than the others, forcing out another scream, and it didn’t stop, it wouldn’t, and he screamed again, and Diana screamed, and then everything went black.
----
“Neal.”
Diana?
“Neal.”
Not Diana.
“Peter?”
“Hey, buddy, hang in there, OK?”
Neal felt like he was floating. No: he was being carried. Peter and Jones were carrying him. The pain hadn’t stopped, but he was somehow above it, beyond it.
“I don’t know if I can.”
“You have to. For Grace. She’s gonna need her daddy, now.”
Grace.
“I’ll try,” Neal promised, and then he was floating again.
----
The voices of the EMTs working on him were quietly urgent, but that wasn’t what Neal heard clearest.
“God, just tell me if he’s all right, Peter. PLEASE!”
“I don’t know, Di, I don’t know.”
“Neal!”
Diana. Please don’t cry, Neal thought before everything faded to black.
----
“It’s going to be all right, Mr. Caffrey. We’re taking good care of you.”
“The baby.”
“We’re gonna take care of the baby too. Just keep calm. You’ve lost a lot of blood and we need to get you into surgery right away.”
“The baby,” he repeated, afraid. But at least there was no more pain here.
----
“Neal.”
Someone was petting him, and this had never been anything he’d liked before, but he was too groggy to lodge a protest. His eyes focused in. “Di?”
“Hey,” she said with a smile, but there were tears in her eyes and he wasn’t sure why.
“Is…” He couldn’t really talk, either.
Then Diana was gone and he couldn’t say anything to bring her back and he was so, so disappointed.
“Meet your daughter,” she said, suddenly there.
And a small bundle was laid on his chest and she weighed next to nothing, and she had a tiny, squinched-up face and way too much hair. And she was his.
“Grace,” he whispered and passed out again.
----
When he woke again, he felt more himself and less floaty, and there was a baby crying. There was a baby crying and it was the most beautiful thing he’d ever heard.
He turned his head to see Diana sitting in a chair against the wall, beside a wheeled bassinet, pressing a small bottle filled with formula against the baby’s mouth. Grace immediately began to suckle, though not without an enraged whimper first, just to get her point across.
Diana noticed him moving and looked up at him, smiling.
“Hi,” he said, smiling back.
“Hi,” she replied, and there was a sublime beauty to her sitting there with the baby in her arms, and it just looked so right he wanted to cry.
“You want to feed her?”
Neal wanted to desperately, but he didn’t want to disturb either of them. “No, you look like you’ve got it under control. Besides, I’m sure I’ll have ample opportunity in the next eighteen years or so.”
Diana nodded.
“What happened?”
She frowned. “Ketchum’s men launched an attack to free him - that much you know. It was definitely an inside job - the maintenance contractor for the building is part of their organization and hid the weapons in recycle bins if you can believe it.”
Neal could believe it.
“Three are dead, including Ketchum.”
Vicky, Neal thought with a pang - he’d have to find her husband and have a talk with him. “Brooks?”
“He’s fine. His shoulder’s all shot to hell and they’re not sure when or if he can resume duty, but it was his bullet that killed Ketchum.”
Neal didn’t know how to feel about that. “How long have I been out of it?”
“Almost two days.”
“Cripes.” He’d missed the first two days of Grace’s life.
“You had to have emergency surgery - you lost a lot of blood, and of course there was the baby.”
“How is she? Any complications?”
Diana grinned down at the bundle in her arms. “Ten fingers and ten toes - she’s tiny and perfect. They’ll send her home when they send you.” She got to her feet and came to stand beside him. “Still don’t want to hold her?”
“No,” he said, and held out his arms, ignoring the pull of the IV line.
Diana settled Grace into his arms, and she fit so perfectly he almost couldn’t believe it. Bereft of her bottle for the moment, she squawked in protest, tiny fists clenched tight, but as soon as Neal pressed the nipple to her lips, she began sucking away like a champ.
He studied his daughter, amazed by the individual hairs of her tiny eyelashes and eyebrows, the perfect little wrinkles of the joints of her fingers, her beautiful, bow-shaped mouth. “She looks just like you,” he said to Diana.
“You think?”
“Perfect.”
“Aww.”
Everything would be perfect.
Epilogue - One Week Later
“I refuse to use a wheelchair in my own home!”
Elizabeth actually tut-tutted. Neal wasn’t sure how that was possible. “You’ve had major surgery - you will stay off your feet until the doctor says it’s OK.”
Neal would have grumbled that she wasn’t the boss of him, but she really, really was. Peter wheeled him over to his bedroom, where he reluctantly deposited a sleeping Grace into her bassinet. She stirred, her tiny face opening up, eyebrows raised, but she soon settled, little mouth turned down as she suckled in her sleep.
“Lunch is served!” Elizabeth called.
Peter wheeled Neal over to the table, where they got into a minor slap fight when Peter tried to assist Neal out of the wheelchair. “Jesus, I can walk the two steps to the table, Peter!”
“Fine.”
“Boys, can you act like adults for one afternoon?” El admonished, setting a platter of chicken salad sandwiches down.
“Some things will never change,” Diana said to her with a laugh, carrying over a bowl of salad and a bag of chips.
“The more things change, the more they stay the same,” Moz intoned, sniffing fussily at a sandwich.
“I’m looking at the biggest change over here, darlings,” June called from her spot hovering over Grace’s bassinet.
Neal reflected that he didn’t much mind any of the changes in his life.
After lunch, and more importantly, after they’d all had a chance to hold, feed, coo over and yes, even change (thanks, Uncle Mozzie!) the baby, his friends left Neal alone with his new little family member. He was content to sit in the wheelchair beside her bassinet, staring at her as she slept. He supposed this would get old eventually, but he was determined to enjoy it while it lasted.
“So, I’ve got to go into the office and make a statement - again - but I’ll be back by 7:00, OK?” Diana said, coming up behind him and laying a hand on his head.
“Sure.” He glanced up at her and smiled shyly; her hand slipped down to his shoulder. They’d rarely been alone together since Neal had awoken in the hospital, hadn’t really had a chance to discuss Diana’s little through-the-door revelation.
He hadn’t had a chance to let her rescind it, either.
“Listen, you don’t have to come back here if it’s a hassle - Elizabeth left me with a ton of food, and a dozen bottles all made up. We’ll be fine, if -“
“Do you not want me to come back?” She sounded hurt.
“I do, it’s just -“ He sighed and turned the chair so he could face her, though he couldn’t really look at her as he spoke. “I know you said you loved me because you thought I was dying, and I - look, if you need an out, Di, I’ll understand.”
“I don’t want an out, Neal. I meant what I said. I meant it in that moment, and I mean it now.”
“Really?”
“Really. I don’t know what it ultimately means, and we’ll have to work through a lot. But this feeling,” she put her hand on her heart, “I like it, and I want it. I fell in love with you Neal, not your gender. I know that now.”
He smiled.
“We have a lot to work through. Like sleeping arrangements and, uh, sleeping arrangements, but we can do it. I want to be with you, Neal, if you want to be with me.”
There was something perfectly honest about the way she said it, and he knew she would never lie to him, and maybe it wouldn’t work out - they had a lot to deal with - but he was willing to give it a shot. His heart was willing to give it a shot.
“I want to be with you.”
“Good.” She reached out, slipped the first two fingers of her right hand under his chin and kissed him on the lips. The kiss was light, almost chaste, but he thought it contained a lot of promise for their life ahead of them, and he kissed her back softly.
“Huh,” she said, as she straightened up. Her eyes were still closed, lips still slightly moistened.
“What?”
“Just now - when I kissed you, it was just like kissing -“ She opened her eyes and closed her mouth, not wanting to say anything.
“Just like kissing her?” He saw her blush. “Well, that’s OK, because she is me, and I am she and we are all together.”
“Don’t misquote the Beatles at me, Caffrey.”
“I wasn’t even trying.”
“Still, I like it.”
“Goo goo g’joob.”
----
Thank you for your time.
Additional Notes
* I have no idea what the protocol for a terrorist attack on a Federal building is, or whether an NSA office would have a panic room - just go with it.
* Let’s hand-wave the fact that Neal is technically a ward of the state since he’s still a prisoner, shall we? Would he be able to keep his baby? This makes me sad... why do I do this to myself? Hurray! Thanks to zou2 I no longer have to worry about Neal's losing Grace - whew!