White Collar fic: Through the Storm and Safe to Shore
I am sleepy and don't feel like doing anything of the many things I should actually be doing. SO HAVE SOME FIC INSTEAD.
Title: Through the Storm and Safe to Shore
Fandom: White Collar
Word Count: 9300
Pairing: Gen
Summary: Post-5x13, Neal's captors convince him that Peter is dead. For a prompt by leesa_perrie at collarcorner.
Notes: Thanks to
frith_in_thorns for beta and cheerleading! .... and a special thanks for talking me out of my rather bleak original ending. This one is much better. :)
Cross-posted: http://archiveofourown.org/works/1265761
"Russ? He's out of his restraints again."
Russell sighed and looked up from his tools. "Again? I thought he was secure this time ... well, it doesn't matter. It's time to give him another dose anyway."
Scowling, his partner Carmen followed him down the hall to the room where they were keeping Caffrey. "I don't know why we're bothering with this farce anyway."
"Do you want to let him out on a job and have him go right back to his keeper? Caffrey's an escape artist in the FBI's pocket." Russell shook his head. "No, unless you want to watch him every minute, this is the only option."
He unlocked the door. They'd managed to thwart Caffrey's ability to actually get out of the room by having the foresight to make sure there was no handle on the inside -- the door had to be opened from the outside -- but they had yet to stop him from undoing his restraints.
This time Caffrey was huddled in a corner, knees drawn up to his chest with his face buried in them. He'd torn out his IV.
Russell handed Carmen his kit and motioned her back, then knelt beside Caffrey. "Hey," he said gently, laying a hand on his shoulder.
Caffrey flinched explosively and raised his head, squinting against the light. His pupils were blown dark, his face pale.
"Come on." Russ got him to his feet. Caffrey stood up readily enough, but as he balanced himself he got a look at his own hands -- and the dried and flaking blood on them. The front of his scrubs were splattered with blood as well.
"No," he breathed.
He swayed; Russ caught him before he could fall, guiding him quickly to the bed. Caffrey was shaking, his breath coming in short, rapid gasps. Carmen helped Russ secure him again, putting the IV back in place.
Caffrey was still murmuring "No, no," twisting his head against the pillow. Russ leaned close to him and caught his chin, forcing Caffrey to meet his eyes. "Neal," he said. "Do you remember what happened?"
"No," Caffrey whispered. He jerked against his restraints. Russ nodded to Carmen, who slipped a needle into the IV's access port.
"Neal," Russ said, "I need to know that you remember what happened. What happened to Peter."
"I -- I -- no," Caffrey protested. His words began to slur as the sedation took effect. "No, I didn't, I couldn't."
"You know what happened," Russ said gently. "Tell me."
Caffrey only shook his head, trying to look away.
Russ undid the restraints on one of his hands, raising it so that Caffrey could see the blood crusted under his nails and flaking off the back of his hand. Caffrey made a tiny whimpering sound and screwed his eyes shut.
"Do you know whose blood this is?" Russ asked. Technically it was pig's blood, but he'd figured they needed more to convince Caffrey than just talking to him, even with the drugs making him suggestible.
Caffrey's dry, cracked lips shaped the word "no".
"You killed Peter, Neal," Russ said. "You shot him. Do you remember?"
Caffrey shook his head and made a choking sound. Tears seeped from his tightly closed eyes. "I wouldn't," he gasped. "I wouldn't. I couldn't."
"You didn't mean to," Russ said. "You were only trying to escape. He tried to stop you. You didn't mean to pull the trigger."
"I didn't mean to," Caffrey whispered.
"It was an accident."
"An accident." Caffrey was shaking all over. "Peter, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry."
"But the FBI doesn't know that," Russ went on. "The FBI wants you for murder. All your old colleagues ... they know you killed him. They're hunting for you. And we're helping you."
"You're safe here," Carmen said on cue, leaning over to run an impersonal hand over his forehead, smoothing back his hair with a rough approximation of kindness. It was obvious that her heart wasn't in it; she thought all of this was completely unnecessary. We'll just coerce him if he won't cooperate, she'd said, but Russ had gotten his way in the end. They had to make sure Caffrey believed he had nothing to go back to, and no reason not to help them.
"Why don't you sleep now," Russ said, and kept his hand over Caffrey's until their prisoner's tight, rapid breathing evened out. He was still weeping soundlessly in his sleep. Russ refastened the restraints and followed Carmen out of the room, leaving him alone.
"This is ridiculous," Carmen said, locking the door. "No matter how many times you tell him, no matter how drugged he is, he's eventually going to figure out the truth. He's not stupid."
"It's already working," Russ retorted. "If I tell him our version of events often enough, he will believe it on some level. He'll manufacture false memories. And it doesn't have to be that convincing, as long as it holds for awhile. We won't need him forever."
"And then we'll be rich," Carmen said, and smiled.
"And then we'll be rich."
***
Neal woke slowly, his brain foggy. He was desperately thirsty and his entire body ached. Even opening his eyes seemed too much work for awhile, so he simply lay still, miserable but unable to summon the energy to move.
What's wrong with me? Was I sick? His memories slid away from him, too slippery to grab onto. And the realization dawned on him slowly that he was afraid. There was something he didn't want to think about.
He sat up carefully. His head throbbed. He was in an unfamiliar bedroom, on an unfamiliar bed. Hotel room? The windows looked out on a city skyline that was clearly Las Vegas. It was so disconcerting to see the Vegas Strip instead of the familiar New York skyline that he had to stare at it for a moment to make sure it really was a window and not a large high-definition screen.
Everything was still terribly fuzzy. He felt horrendously hung over and unwell. After he'd managed to stay vertical for a few minutes, his headache had diminished from blinding to merely uncomfortable, so he lurched to his feet and stumbled into the bathroom. He used the toilet and drank a paper cupful of water. The cool water made his stomach cramp.
What happened to me? He was wearing pajamas. His left arm ached, and when Neal rolled up the sleeve, his stomach cramped again at the sight of needle marks on the inside of his arm. There were also faint bruises on his wrists, such as fighting against padded restraints might leave.
Kidnapped. Yes. That seemed somehow familiar. And there were other things -- flashes of memory. Blood? He took a quick look down at his hands, because for a moment he thought there ought to be blood under the fingernails, blood embedded in the lines of his palms. There was nothing; his palms were clean, the fingernails neatly trimmed and manicured.
Someone had done that while he was sleeping. They'd shaved him too.
He shivered.
The sound of a door opening and closing made him go rigid. He hadn't closed the bathroom door completely, and he moved behind it as quietly as possible. There was nothing he could use for a weapon.
"Neal?" a voice called, and for an instant, just an instant, he thought Peter! But it wasn't Peter's voice, and there was something else, some hazy recollection that made a stab of pain go through him -- a pain so intense it was nearly physical.
Had something happened to Peter?
"Neal?" the voice said again, coming closer. "Hey, Neal, it's Russ. Are you in there?"
The voice was vaguely familiar. Neal's memories were still foggy, but he remembered a man bending over him in a white room, speaking to him, telling him things that didn't make sense. He remembered the man sitting on a park bench ...
"Neal?" Russ stepped into the bathroom. Neal flattened himself against the wall, but there was nowhere to go. "There you are. How are you feeling? I know you'll be confused."
"You drugged me," Neal said flatly. He was pretty sure it was Russ, anyway. Russ had been there. And a woman. And someone had put a bag over his head ...
"Only to stop you from hurting yourself," Russ said. "C'mon, sit down. I brought you something to eat."
At the thought of food his insides clenched and he realized that he was desperately hungry. Still, he'd have to be a fool to eat something offered to him by someone who'd just admitted to drugging him. Neal crossed his arms and tried to present a facade of strength -- never mind that he was barefoot, wearing pajamas, and still so shaky from the drugs that he felt like he was about to fall over. "I think you'd better tell me who you are and where I am. And what day it is."
"You've been out for about a week," Russ said, and Neal flinched. A week? "Look, there's a lot we need to talk about, but I think you should eat first."
The sound of Russ's voice was starting to bring back hazy flashes of memory. Russ had said -- impossible things, and Neal began to shiver. Again he looked down at his hands. They were clean. "Am I ..." He swallowed. "Am I a fugitive?"
"You ran," Russ said, his voice gentle, and Neal had a vivid flash of memory. Russ had said this to him before.
"I ... did?" Had he? Would he? But now memory surfaced from the gray haze. Yes, he'd talked to Mozzie about it. Because the FBI had promised him freedom and then snatched it away. Anger tightened in him -- the unfairness of it all!
But if he'd run, then Peter would be looking for him. "Peter ..." he said, and didn't realize he'd spoken 'til he saw Russ's face change, becoming -- apologetic, almost?
"Neal," Russ said, placing a hand on his arm. "Come on. Sit down."
Neal jerked away. "I want to know where Peter is," he said, his voice shaking. Peter was -- Peter was at the FBI, he had to be. Looking for him. Probably pretty angry by now, but that was okay, Peter had a right to be, if he'd really run on Peter's watch.
"Neal ..." Russ said. "Peter's dead. Don't you remember?"
Memory rose up and choked him. Russ leaning over him, saying impossible things to him. His hands, covered with blood still tacky as it dried. He remembered sitting in a white room, covering his face with his hands to shut out the world, clawing his face because maybe that would make it stop, would make him stop knowing --
Neal looked desperately away from Russ, past him, to his own face in the mirror. He'd gone chalk-white, and there were scrapes and scratches along his hairline, such as he might have inflicted with his own fingernails.
You didn't mean to. You were only trying to escape. He tried to stop you. You didn't mean to pull the trigger.
"Oh God," Neal choked, and he lurched past Russ, barely making it to the toilet before he vomited up the water he'd drunk. And then he dry-heaved, clutching the toilet rim and shaking so violently he thought he'd fly apart.
Peter.
I shot Peter.
I can't. I couldn't have. I WOULDN'T.
But he had. He remembered it ... almost. It was somewhere in the disorganized jumble of his recent memories, along with the white room and Russ talking to him and a hard-eyed woman tying his hands down.
Russ helped him up and Neal staggered along with him. The world went foggy and then he was sitting on the bed and Russ was folding his fingers around a cup of water. This, too, was familiar. Russ had helped him before.
Neal took a couple of sips to clear the taste out of his mouth. He had to fight to keep it down, but his stomach finally stopped heaving and he was left with a great, dead, empty hollow inside.
"Who are you, anyway?" His voice sounded hoarse.
Russ sat beside him on the bed. "Russell Giordano, remember? You approached me for help escaping from the FBI. We were going to work together. Do some jobs."
Was that right? He vaguely remembered telling Mozzie he wanted to go straight. But he also remembered telling Moz he didn't regret anything he'd done. He'd stolen things and he'd liked it. And he had planned to run. That part sounded right.
"We're in ... Vegas?" he said carefully. It still seemed unreal. His life had been bounded by Manhattan for so long. Even when he'd run to Cape Verde, it still felt as if New York was an anchor on him, dragging him back.
Now that anchor had suddenly snapped and he felt like he was in freefall, with no idea where the ground was.
"That's right," Russ said. "We're here to scoop a little off the casinos -- do you remember?"
Neal shook his head slowly. He didn't really remember anything, just fragments. Snatches. And what little he did remember (blood, blood on his hands) sent cold waves of sickness washing through him.
"You were keeping me drugged," he said, as his head cleared a little more.
"We had to," Russ said. "You went a little crazy after Burke died. We had to keep you from hurting yourself or going to the police. You seemed to be calming down so we figured we'd let you come back up and see how you were feeling. Do you think you're going to be all right?"
Neal bowed his head and dug his fingers into the flesh of his upper arms. The pain brought him out of the memories, a little. "I'm all right," he said. He'd have to be.
And they could be lying. He was pretty sure he hadn't known Russ before.
"We also had to keep you inside because you're wanted by the FBI," Russ said, and a new wave of shuddering rocked him. "You and I know it's an accident, but it's pretty much just your word against theirs, and they think you killed your handler and fled."
"Diana and Jones," Neal breathed. They wouldn't believe it ... would they? If I really killed Peter just to get my freedom, do I deserve the benefit of the doubt?
It seemed so unlike something he'd do.
But he'd been so desperate. He did remember that, the memory cutting through the drug haze like a knife. His desperation and his anger. He would have done anything to get out.
Anything?
Oh God, he thought, closing his eyes. Elizabeth.
"Neal?" Russ said. When Neal opened his eyes, Russ was staring at him with apparently sincere concern. Neal wondered if this was the first time they'd let him come out of sedation, or if there had been other times. If he seemed too distraught, would they put him under again?
One thing he gave himself no illusions about: Russ did not have his best interests at heart. He was an asset at best, and a prisoner at worst.
Just like at the FBI, he thought, but his heart didn't quite believe it. Quiet lamplit evenings at the Burkes' proved otherwise, or Peter covering Neal with his own body to keep him safe ...
And all that was over now. He'd exploded that little circle of lamplight and safety with a bullet.
"Yes," he said. "I'm all right."
***
He showered, and managed to eat a little, and felt somewhat better as long as he didn't think too much.
This turned out to be his main coping strategy in the days to come: don't think about it. He wanted to know what had happened, but didn't dare allow himself to search his memory too hard, because what little he did remember left him teetering on the brink of a pit he wasn't sure he could climb out of.
He revisited it in dreams, though. Every night. It was always different: sometimes he and Peter were in an alley, sometimes on top of a building or in a restaurant or in the White Collar office. Sometimes Peter was angry and yelled at him. Sometimes Peter begged him to stay. Sometimes they struggled and the gun went off. Sometimes he fired at a shadow and then realized it was Peter as it fell.
Sometimes Peter died instantly, with the vitality and warmth fading out of his open eyes. Sometimes he died choking on his own blood while Neal knelt in it and tried, tried, tried to push down hard enough to stop Peter's life from ebbing away around his fingers.
But the worst dreams, the cruelest dreams of all, were the ones in which it had never happened. Peter wasn't dead, and Neal was visiting him in DC, or they were wandering the streets of New York and he was back on the anklet.
Those were the dreams that made him wake up with tears on his face.
After a while he didn't want to sleep anymore.
And he stayed, because he wasn't sure what else to do. He got to know Russ and Carmen and the other members of their crew. Carmen clearly didn't like him, for reasons Neal hadn't quite been able to figure out; she mostly stayed away from him and let Russ do the talking.
They didn't give him a phone or unsupervised access to a computer. He supposed he couldn't blame them -- he'd been working with the FBI for three years, which might be Carmen's problem with him too, come to think of it.
The gang was in Vegas to, basically, take the casinos for as much money as possible. This was one scam Neal had never tried, because it was too damn risky. Better to go for the low-hanging fruit elsewhere. In Vegas, they expected cons; the security was top-notch, and all the money was carefully counted. It was also where the amateurs went, because people new to the biz thought, hey, Vegas, money! And then they got caught.
Neal tried pointing this out to Russ, who said, "Well, that's why you're here."
Neal's main role in the gang was twofold: to instruct them in the finer points of gambling, and to monitor the dealers' tells through a closed circuit camera mounted in a tie clip, purse decoration or other small object. For better or worse, he couldn't be the front man himself because he was currently on the FBI's most wanted list and casinos were full of cameras.
"You realize they know about this stuff, right?" Neal said. "Some of these place sweep for bugs."
Russ shrugged. "Word on the street is, you're the best. You only got caught because Burke made you with a girl." Neal tried not to flinch at Peter's name. It didn't seem to be getting easier. Maybe with time, it would. "So, show us how it's done."
So he did. Carmen supplied casino security camera footage, and Neal had his "students" replay it until they, too, could recognize the subtlest of tells among both the dealers and the players. They played endless practice games of blackjack and poker, trying to feel the delicate ebb and flow of what might be called luck or energy, at the subtle confluence of skill and chance.
The basic slight-of-hand skills needed to cheat at cards or dice were simple tricks. Any street-corner three-card-monty scammer knew them. But cheating in Vegas was high-end work. And Neal found that he actually ... well, enjoyed wasn't quite the right word. He didn't really enjoy anything these days, and he was also acutely aware that he wasn't a part of the gang, not really. But he got a small mood lift as he watched them repeat his lessons and add their own embellishments. Maybe I might like to be an art teacher, he thought, before remembering that was a glimpse of another future, one which was closed to him now.
He could easily have escaped. They weren't holding onto him too hard. But there was simply nowhere to go. At least nowhere that he wanted to go. And when he was with Russ's crew he felt a sort of camaraderie, even if he wasn't entirely a part of it.
Neal had always considered himself a lone wolf. Only now did he realize that this had never really been true. He'd worked alone quite a bit, but he'd always gravitated towards working with partners: Keller, Mozzie, Kate, Alex. And then he'd spent three years in New York at the White Collar division ...
That had been, he realized, the longest he'd ever been in one place, with one group of people, since he'd left home. Well, not counting prison, which was basically a black hole into which four years of his life had vanished. Counting prison, he'd been in New York for seven years. No wonder he felt so uprooted, so lost.
And then he realized he could still contact Mozzie.
It amazed him that it had taken days -- no, weeks to remember that. He'd been floating along in a gray haze, doing what Russ wanted, trying not to think beyond the moment. But ... Mozzie wouldn't care that he was wanted by the FBI. Mozzie wouldn't think of him as a murderer.
The trick was how to do it. Now that he was actively looking for an opportunity to make a phone call or send an email, Neal began to notice how closely he was watched. Any illusion that he was a member of the gang rather than their prisoner evaporated. He might not be in chains, but he was a prisoner all the same.
Now that he had a goal -- contact Mozzie -- he felt as if he was waking up from a long sleep. He'd just been drifting, letting the world wash over him. Now, suddenly, he had something to do, somewhere to go. He wondered if it was worth just walking away, ducking Russ and Carmen's scrutiny and hitting the street ...
But, no, because he didn't even know if Moz was still out there to find. A chill of fear washed over him -- what if Moz had been arrested as an accomplice to Peter's murder? Diana and Jones knew about Mozzie's association with Neal. Diana even knew his real name.
I can't let Mozzie go down for something I did.
And he didn't have his "go" bag. He didn't have an ID or passport or credit cards in any name other than his real one, which was now the name of a fugitive. He could make them, but he needed supplies and time, which he clearly wasn't going to get with Russ and Carmen watching him every minute.
He was starting to realize how thoroughly screwed he was. He hadn't before because ...
Because ...
Because he hadn't been thinking, because he'd been wandering around in a haze of grief and guilt and nightmare-induced sleep deprivation.
A tiny suspicion began to nibble at the corner of his mind: Was it possible that Peter might not really be dead? Could they only have told him that to stop him from leaving?
But he remembered the blood so vividly ...
No. First things first. Contact Mozzie, then go from there.
He wasn't allowed to use a computer without someone right over his shoulder, but there were laptops in the hotel suite where they'd been doing the training, and everyone had come to take Neal so thoroughly for granted by now that it was just a matter of watching carefully for the right moment. And his moment finally came: the only person in the suite with him was Russ, who went into the bathroom. Neal was supposedly sorting decks of cards.
As soon as the bathroom door closed, he rose and moved as swiftly and silently as possible to wake up the nearest laptop. It was already connected to the hotel's wireless. He and Mozzie had a number of disposable email addresses with free mail hosts, so Neal brought up a web browser and picked one at random. He typed out a quick email to Mozzie using one of their simplest codes:
Hi, I saw your ad on Craigslist! I am very interested in purchasing one of your pigeons. I am especially interested in the one called Maude. I would treat her well and keep her safely confined except when she was carrying messages for me.
Please give me a number where I can call you to discuss payment. Thanks!
In other words: I'm okay, but I'm being kept prisoner. Let me know how I should contact you.
The toilet flushed and Neal hastily cleared his browser history and closed the laptop. He just had time to get up and make a pretense of stretching before the bathroom door opened. Russ didn't act visibly suspicious, but Neal wasn't left alone for the rest of the day, which might be a coincidence or, he thought, might not be.
In any case, there was no telling when Mozzie would check the account, or even if Moz was in a position to be able to do so. If he didn't hear back from Mozzie in a couple of days, Neal decided, he'd just leave. He was thinking more clearly now, and feeling things again, which made him realize how out of it he'd been for the last couple of weeks. He was actually hungry that evening, a little bit. Russ's gang had allowed him to order whatever he wanted from room service, but the food tasted like cardboard to him. Tonight, he found himself enjoying it, just a little.
-- and then he felt guilty about that, because maybe he shouldn't be enjoying things. If Russ was telling the truth, then Neal had taken Elizabeth's husband away from her. He'd taken Peter's life. Nothing could ever make up for that.
He pushed away his dinner, the brief surge of appetite fading.
The nightmares were back that night with a vengeance, and now with the added fun of horrible things happening to Mozzie too.
Neal entertained himself the following day, while supervising Russ and the rest of the gang's card tricks, by imagining picking up the phone and just calling the police on the whole bunch of them. Yeah, he'd get swept up along with them, but he wasn't entirely sure that he cared.
He was worried about Mozzie, though. He really had to get out of here.
And then someone kicked the door in, and a voice barked, "FBI, freeze!"
Neal had a frozen moment when he couldn't remember if he actually had called the police. In silence, still sitting on the couch, he put up his hands while Russ, Carmen and the others went into a mad scramble to escape or throw incriminating items off the balcony -- completely useless, because the room was rapidly filling up with federal agents.
"Weapons down, get on the floor," the lead FBI agent barked, but it wasn't until he turned and said Neal's name that Neal recognized him, because it was so completely, utterly impossible that he could be here.
It was Peter.
Neal stared. The couch seemed to be sliding sideways out from under him.
Peter was dead. My hands are covered with blood ... And then Peter was kneeling in front of him, putting his gun away while looking at Neal with eyes that had gone soft and concerned -- the expression was such pure Peter that Neal felt himself going weak and hazy.
"Neal," Peter said. "Neal, are you hurt?"
Neal flinched when Peter touched him, patting him down, looking for injuries. "I'm not hurt," he finally managed to say. His voice sounded distant and weak. "I'm okay."
"You're obviously not," Peter said. "You look terrible." He kept his hands on Neal's shoulders, which at this point might be the only thing keeping Neal from falling over. Big warm hands, grounding him.
"I'm okay," Neal repeated, but he was increasingly less certain this was true. It was getting hard to breathe. Black spots danced in front of his eyes.
"Diana --" Peter said over his shoulder.
Diana's voice said from somewhere else in the room, "I've got this. Take care of him."
"Neal, come on, lie down." Peter's hands repositioned him on the couch, laying him flat, and Neal went along with it because it was Peter and Peter said so and he always tried to do what Peter said ... except when he didn't. Peter spread a hand on his chest, firm but gentle. "Breathe, Neal. Slow even breaths. Breathe with me."
The worst part was trying to convince himself that this wasn't a dream. Because Peter wasn't supposed to be here. Peter couldn't be here. And Neal couldn't think of a single way to tell for certain. If this was a dream, then things were about to go terribly wrong. Any minute now, Peter's chest would disintegrate into a crater of blood; his warm brown eyes would go still and fixed.
Or maybe it was the other kind of dream, the kind where everything seemed good and normal until he woke up. In all his nightmares, he hadn't dreamed about Peter rescuing him yet. Maybe even his subconscious had given him some mercy, until now.
"Breathe, Neal," Peter said, or dream-Peter; he wasn't sure, but Peter said so, and he tried. The room tilted around him and slowly stabilized. Peter's hand rested on his chest; Neal could feel it lift and settle as he breathed. Peter was an island of stability in the shifting, treacherous world: an anchor, a landmark. Neal rubbed his thumb over the texture of the couch's fabric covering, letting that ground him a little bit too.
"How did you find me?" he asked. His voice was a little stronger this time. Dreams didn't have much logic, usually; this might be a way to know for sure.
"Mozzie got your email," Peter said. "Did you get his?" Neal shook his head. "He sent it in code -- we were afraid of tipping off your kidnappers, but Mozzie insisted he could get a message to you without giving it away. He actually came to us immediately when he got the email. Jones traced back the IP, and Diana and I were on the next plane to Vegas. Jones stayed back at White Collar to coordinate with the local Vegas agencies from there."
"You flew here from New York," Neal said slowly.
"Yeah." Peter glanced around. "Never been to Vegas before. I guess it's one of those places where you have to go once before you die." Neal closed his eyes, shutting out everything but the gentle, steady pressure of Peter's hand on his chest. A moment later, Peter's voice turned worried. "Neal? You okay?"
Neal only shook his head, conscious of the crushing disappointment pressing the walls of his chest inward, crushing his heart and his lungs. Because Peter wasn't in New York. Peter was in DC. He'd been reassigned. Which meant this wasn't real, none of it ...
"Neal!" Peter said, sounding alarmed, but the world was sliding sideways, going, going, gone.
***
Neal woke up slowly, in pieces. He became aware of his body first -- he was lying on the couch with his cheek pressed into it -- and then the noise in the room, which had died down somewhat.
He cracked his eyes open. His head hurt. The first thing he saw was Diana. She looked both relieved and annoyed.
"EMTs are on their way, Caffrey, so stay still."
Neal ignored the advice and tried to sit up, then collapsed back onto the couch.
"For God's sake," Diana said. "Don't make me hold you down."
Oddly enough, it was Diana being cranky at him that convinced him this was, in all likelihood, actually happening. He surveyed the room from a prone position. Russ's gang were all cuffed and the FBI were in the process of smoothly and professionally searching the room. Neal glimpsed Peter over by the door, talking to another agent. Peter looked over the agent's shoulder at Neal -- it had the smooth look of practice, like he'd been doing that every minute or two since Neal passed out -- and, seeing that Neal was awake, smiled at him. Neal looked quickly away. Seeing Peter alive and well was doing nothing for his tenuous grip on reality.
"I'm okay," he told Diana.
"You passed out. That doesn't constitute 'okay', and my job is currently to keep you on this couch, preferably flat, until the paramedics get here. So help me, I will handcuff you to the coffee table if I have to."
Neal grinned sideways at her. "Good to see you too."
Diana sighed and a reluctant smile broke through.
"How's Theo?" Neal asked. "Did you leave him all alone to come gallivanting out to Vegas?"
"Contrary to what you apparently think, babies can in fact survive without a parent nearby," Diana said dryly. "This is why we have what we call 'a babysitter'. At least once I managed to find one that Mozzie didn't reject on sight," she added in exasperation.
Neal tried not to laugh. "You're letting Mozzie interview your babysitters?"
"Letting him?" Diana said. "No, we eventually reached a compromise. He provides a list, I provide a list, we each look at each other's lists, then I pick one from my list and I don't shoot him."
"Sounds fair," Neal said. "How many dead people were on his list?"
"Surprisingly few, which is not the same as none."
Neal was making furtive sitting-up motions, trying to do so in stages every time she looked away. Diana rolled her eyes.
"Okay, yes, you can sit up, but if you start to faint again, the handcuffs are still an option."
"Noted." He sat up carefully. Things swam a bit, but the room steadied once he was vertical. He gave Diana what he hoped was a reassuring smile, but she frowned at him.
"Peter said you turned white and keeled over," Diana said. "He checked you all over but couldn't find any injuries. Are you hurt? Because if there's something I should be bandaging and you're not telling me about it --"
"Nothing," Neal said quickly. "It's just -- it was a shock. Seeing --" Peter. "-- all of you."
"Oh, come on. If FBI agents bursting through the door made people faint, then our jobs would be a whole lot easier. You're still white as a sheet." She looked at him more closely. "I'm not going to force you, Neal, but if it's easier to talk to me than Peter --"
"They made me think he was dead," Neal said. He wasn't planning to say it. The words just fell out.
Diana sat back, startled. "What?"
"Peter. I thought he was dead." He couldn't quite bring himself to say the rest of it. They made me think I killed him. It seemed stupid to him now. How could he have believed it? And yet, he couldn't stop seeing his hands covered with blood ... "It was kind of a shock to see him come in. That's all."
"A shock," Diana murmured. "I bet." She reached out, hesitantly, and put her hand on his shoulder. Diana wasn't much of a toucher. Neal let himself lean into her hand, just a little.
"Can you not tell Peter?" Neal said. "Please."
"Why not? Neal, he won't be angry. Why would he?"
"No, he'll be -- Peter." He didn't have the words to explain that he was having enough trouble dealing with his own emotions without having to deal with Peter's on top of everything. Particularly Peter's urge to fix things.
"I suppose I can understand that," Diana conceded, with a faint smile. "But, Neal, it's going to come out in the interrogation eventually."
"I know," Neal said. "Just give me some time."
And then the paramedics entered the room, and he gave himself over to them. Diana stepped back. Neal wanted to say Please come with me, because as soon as he couldn't see her the doubts swarmed up again: What if this isn't real, what if I'm dreaming, what if --
He started out of his reverie when a hand, bigger than Diana's, settled on his arm. "They're taking you to the hospital," Peter said. "I'll follow along behind, okay?"
"Okay," Neal said. He was caught between wanting to stare at Peter -- drink him in with his eyes, salve the part of his soul that felt raw and burned -- and wanting to shut him out, because it was too much. He ended up fixing his eyes somewhere around Peter's chest, so that he didn't have to look at his face, but he could still fix himself on Peter's solidity.
Diana, sensing Neal's anxiety, moved in on them. "Boss, I need you over here for a minute."
"Can this wait?" Peter demanded.
"Let the paramedics do their job." She tugged on his arm, smoothly removing him. Peter looked distressed. Neal curled in on himself, thinking, This is ridiculous. It's just Peter. Everything is fine.
But he couldn't relax on the drive to the hospital. The paramedics were kind to him, but he still felt as if he was in freefall, as if he'd been falling since Peter and the FBI burst through the door, and he didn't know where he was going to end up.
***
At the hospital, he changed into a gown in a curtained alcove. A resident examined him, drew blood, asked a few questions about his recent eating and sleeping habits. The hospital staff seemed to have been informed he was a crime victim but, when he said he hadn't been assaulted, left the rest alone. "I think you're just a bit dehydrated and stressed," the resident said. "Drink plenty of fluids, get a good meal in you and some rest."
He was allowed to get dressed again, and was sitting kicking his feet on the examining table when Peter came in. Neal's gaze dropped to his lap.
"Hey," Peter said.
"Hey." Neal risked a glance at him and tried to fight the way his eyes instantly started to slide away. He was going to have to get used to Peter being alive. It still roused a powerful, complicated mix of emotions that he tried to squash down until he had time to sort through them in private.
Peter looked uncertain as well -- unusually, since Peter didn't really do uncertain that often. He was carrying a very familiar object. "Ah," Neal said, striving for a normal, flippant tone. "Anklet time."
"Yeah," Peter said, but he didn't make any move to put it on. Just held it, and hovered. "They said you're good to leave."
"Yeah, I'm basically all right," Neal said. "Just need to drink lots of fluids and eat something." Which should be good, but that didn't explain the look on Peter's face.
Peter hesitated, then jerked his head toward the hallway. "I shouldn't know this -- and you're certainly not hearing it from me -- but I happen to know Mozzie's at the service entrance behind the hospital kitchen with a car."
Neal stared at him.
"Look, those guys we arrested ..." Peter said. "Most of them weren't armed. It was pretty obvious they weren't holding you by force. I know you didn't go with them of your own free will -- we had witnesses, and we'd been proceeding on the assumption that you'd been kidnapped. But Mozzie said you were thinking about running even before that. I know you could've walked if you'd wanted to."
Neal couldn't quite wrap his mind around what was happening. "Are you ... telling me to go?"
"No!" Peter said. "No ... but ..." His smile was tired and a little sad. "What happened to you wasn't fair, and I know that. Neal, you can't even look at me anymore. Don't think I haven't noticed. I guess this is all I can do to make up for it, and I know it isn't what either of us wanted, but I'll give you as much of a head start as I can. One condition, though."
Neal looked up at him quickly, meeting his eyes for what he realized was the first time since Peter and the rest of the FBI had burst into the hotel room.
"Drop me a note sometime," Peter said. His voice cracked. He cleared his throat. "You can code it somehow if you have to. Just ... let me know you're okay."
For an instant -- one long instant -- Neal was tempted. He'd meant to run. And Peter was giving him the okay. Or, at least, the choice.
But.
For weeks he'd thought he was on the run. And it had been an empty, lonely hell, because he had believed he'd sacrificed something beyond price on the altar of his freedom. There were worse things than being a prisoner, especially since Peter had never held him tightly, and -- metaphorically speaking, anyway -- always left the key to his prison within his reach.
"What happens to you?" he said. His voice sounded small. "If I go."
Peter made a face. "Bureau's already not that happy with me, but hey, we've got a win since we got this bunch in custody. It'll balance out okay. Worst-case scenario, they stick me back in the Cave for a bit. I got through it before."
"They can do that?" Neal said, baffled. Now Peter looked confused too. "Now that you're in DC."
"Oh." Peter's forehead smoothed out. "No, Neal, I didn't go to DC. I'm sorry, I forgot you've been -- yeah, you wouldn't know that."
"You stayed in New York? But -- your new job --"
"I turned the job down," Peter said. Since Neal had still made no move, Peter sat on the bed beside him, still holding the anklet, turning it over and over. "I couldn't take it in good conscience, not after everything. Sitting at a desk, making arbitrary decisions about other people's lives, like someone did about yours -- no. And anyway, that's not me. I'm meant to be out there on the street, arresting bad guys."
"How'd Elizabeth take that? She had her heart set on the National Gallery."
"She went," Peter said. "Yeah, don't say anything. Everyone keeps telling us it's a mistake, but ... so far, it seems to be working out. Of course, I've been too busy with your case to have time to miss her. She comes up on weekends."
"Elizabeth's in DC," Neal said. Leave for a few weeks, and everything changed ... "And you're ASAC in New York."
"Not ASAC anymore," Peter said with a wry, deprecating grin. "They filled that job when I took the DC offer. Just regular old Special Agent Burke, back in charge of White Collar, like old times." He cleared his throat. "Your ride's probably getting restless."
"My ride knows me pretty well. I don't think he's still waiting." Neal held out a hand, palm up, and this time he looked Peter in the eyes, and it wasn't hard.
Peter wordlessly placed the anklet in his palm. As Neal started to take it, Peter closed his hand over the top of it, stopping him.
"Neal, I don't know how much I can promise as far as getting you out early. I'm gonna try. Every string I have, I'll pull. At the very least, I will make sure they hold to the terms of your original deal or, so help me, I'm taking the bastards down with me." Peter's fingers brushed his, the tips twining together with Neal's, the anklet clasped between their palms.
Neal swallowed around the lump in his throat. "I know you will," he said quietly. He gave the anklet a little tug, and Peter let go. Neal snapped it around his own ankle, the thought occurring to him as he did so that it had been a while since Peter had been the one to put it on him. Apparently he was chaining himself now.
But how did that old song go: Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose. He'd had a taste of it, and yeah, that's exactly what it had felt like. It had felt like nothing.
This felt like the warmth of Peter's shoulder against his, and Diana's hand on his arm, and knowing that Moz would still man the getaway car no matter how many times Neal turned him down. And, even though Mozzie wouldn't admit it, Neal had a feeling that his friend wouldn't object to a few more lunches with Elizabeth and evenings of harassing Diana over her parenting choices.
Neal didn't realize that he was grinning until Peter, with a smile of his own, asked, "What?"
"Just good to be going back, I guess," Neal said. He meant to lean against Peter, pressing their shoulders together, but his arm slipped somehow, and they ended up in an awkward sideways hug. Peter was warm, and there, and not dead at all, and not going anywhere.
***
Things shouldn't have felt so normal after that, but they did.
In a way it was like coming back from Cape Verde, those first few days, when Neal was skimming along pretending to be normal and then eventually the pretense settled into reality and it was all right.
There were still nightmares. He would wake gasping and lie on the bed in a cold sweat until he had to turn on the light -- even knowing it was stupid, knowing it was false -- to look at his hands to check for blood.
He was fairly sure the blood thing was a true memory -- that they had splashed him with something. That week was always going to be a blur, he suspected, but he'd been able to put it into some semblance of order now that he knew how much of it was fake and how much wasn't. They'd kidnapped him; they'd held him in a white room and drugged him. And they'd told him, over and over, that Peter was dead by his hand, until finally he believed them and then they let him come up from the drugs.
Knowing what had happened didn't make it easy to bear, exactly, but it did make it easier.
His appetite was coming back, slowly. He was starting to sleep more than a couple of hours at a time. Being around Peter was becoming comfortable rather than weird. Neal was pretty sure that he put on a fairly normal facade at work, which was slowly slipping from facade into reality, but Peter kept giving him worried looks when he didn't think Neal was watching. Peter had suggested therapy a couple of times, but Neal turned him down. Not again. Not ever again.
He did tell Mozzie the whole story over two very expensive bottles of wine. He started crying in the middle of it. Mozzie didn't mock him, didn't even crack a smile, just listened and told him it was going to be okay and then helped him get cleaned up and put to bed.
Moz was a good friend.
And so life went on and things were okay and Neal was pretty sure he was getting over it, until about two weeks after he'd gotten back to New York, when Peter knocked on his door late in the evening.
"Peter." Neal stepped back to let him in. Peter hadn't been over to Neal's place since the kidnapping, though Neal had been to the Burkes' a couple of times. Neal hadn't really pushed it, because they were still slightly uncertain around each other, still finding their way back to a good place. He still had moments in Peter's presence when he saw blood on his hands -- but he knew it wasn't real and it happened much less now.
Peter stopped just inside the door and let out a long sigh. "I should have called first," he said.
He was dressed in casual clothes, slightly rumpled. He looked upset, and Neal found his defenses going up. There hadn't been a time Peter had come over to his apartment looking like this that things had ended well.
Neal's brain obligingly served up a variety of unpleasant possibilities: maybe the anklet deal had been extended past its original end date, maybe Peter had found out about some other thing Neal had done lately (he did still have the pre-Columbian sword in the closet; those things were difficult to fence), maybe Peter really was moving to DC, maybe they were sending Neal back to prison ...
He could just push Peter out the door and not worry about it until tomorrow.
But Peter looked genuinely upset. And, with El in DC, he'd be all alone at home.
Neal took a bracing breath and said, "You want a beer?"
Surprise and gratitude skated across Peter's face. "Sure." As Neal went to the fridge, he added, "I didn't know you still kept some here."
"I bought it when I got back from Vegas." Neal handed the cold beer over; Peter accepted it with a slightly shamefaced look.
"Sorry I haven't been by sooner. I figured you wouldn't want to see me. I thought --" Peter ground to a halt; his jaw was set, and Neal thought Oh right before Peter said, "Why didn't you tell me what those bastards did?"
Interrogations with Russ's crew had been happening this week. Neal had mostly been trying not to think about that. He crossed his arms, barricading himself. "Because I didn't want you to know."
"Neal! They drugged you, they messed with your head -- Russ told me they dipped your hands in pig's blood and then told you that it was -- Neal, this isn't okay!"
Oh, Neal thought, pig's blood, so that's what it was. "It's my problem, not yours," he said. It came out stiffer than he'd intended. "I'm dealing with it."
"It is my problem!" Peter snapped. "I'm responsible for you, and I knew you weren't handling things well, I just didn't know why --" Then something seemed to break in him. He crumpled, and put a hand over his face as he turned away from Neal. "No wonder you've been angry with me. I don't blame you."
The righteous indignation propping Neal up took a sudden hit. "Wait, what?"
"I figured it was to do with the anklet thing." Still not meeting his eyes, Peter carefully set the beer on the counter, untouched. "But it's this, isn't it? I didn't ..." He took a shuddering breath. "From what Russ says, they put you through hell, Neal, and we didn't find you, we weren't even close. We'd never have found you at all if you hadn't sent us a message. And then I just brought you back and we've been going on as if everything's normal -- damn it, I knew you weren't eating or sleeping well, but I figured I'd leave it up to you, I didn't want to push -- I just thought ..." He wound down and slumped against the wine rack. "I had no idea," he said in a small, broken voice. "Neal, I'm so sorry. I had no idea."
"Peter, wait --"
"I should go," Peter said, turning blindly away. "I'm not sure why I came --"
Neal caught his arm. "Peter, no, don't. I'm not angry at you. I never have been. It's just easier than --"
And then it hit him, really hit him -- hit him in a way it hadn't even when he was telling Mozzie about it. Because he'd spent two weeks putting it away, packing it down, wrapping it in layer upon layer of defensive armor and even so the pain had seeped through like poison, leeching the color and joy out of the world. Seeing Peter in the hotel room hadn't brought feeling rushing back; it had only created a terrible distance between what he knew he should be feeling and his numb heart. He'd slowly managed to build bridges back to the world but he'd still been armored; it was like he no longer knew how to feel things.
Peter's arm was warm under his hand and Neal felt it, really felt it, and maybe it was the first thing he'd truly felt since the hotel room.
"You were dead."
"Neal --"
"You were dead," Neal said, "and I killed you." He caught a fistful of Peter's shirt, and dragged him into a hug, buried his face in Peter's chest and held on for all he was worth. Dimly he was aware that Peter's arms had wrapped around him, holding him back.
This is real, he thought, and let go, and crumbled. He didn't cry, but he shook so hard he thought he might have flown apart if Peter hadn't held him, rubbing a hand up and down his back, saying things -- Neal had no idea what, but Peter's voice was a tether and he clung to it.
He'd been falling ever since the hotel room and maybe, just maybe, he'd finally hit ground. And Peter was there to cushion the shock.
When Neal could breathe again, he very cautiously detached himself from Peter. He kept a hand on Peter's arm, though, and Peter kept a hand on him, steadying him. His legs kept threatening to collapse.
"I think maybe I will have that beer," Peter said.
"A drink sounds good," Neal said with a shaky laugh.
Peter steered him to a chair, disappeared for a minute, and then came back with a glass of wine and his own opened beer. Neal accepted the wine glass with both hands; he was still shaky enough that he worried he might spill it. Peter sat down at the table with him -- beside him, not across from him. They were nearly touching and Neal realized that he wasn't the only one who needed that reassurance.
"You died," Neal said quietly.
"And you disappeared," Peter said, just as softly. "Because of me."
"Peter, no ..."
"Well, it's what I thought at the time. And it's more or less true. I was supposed to keep you safe, Neal, and I failed on every level. Then we got you back, and I kept feeling like it should have been a relief, but it wasn't, because it felt like we'd left part of you behind."
"I think maybe I felt that way too." Neal laughed quietly again. As the shakiness began to pass, he felt -- alive, and happy, and oddly free.
Peter frowned down at his beer. "I've never wanted to hit a prisoner as much as I wanted to hit Russell Giordano today."
"I'm guessing you didn't," Neal said. "Being you."
"Sadly it's against regs to punch a prisoner in the face during an interrogation. Damages the case later." Peter looked up, saw Neal smiling, and his own smile opened up slowly. "What's that look for?"
"I'm just happy," Neal said. It felt like admitting a secret. Peter started to say something, then floundered to a stop, and for a moment they just grinned stupidly at each other.
Peter sobered eventually. "Neal, I should have noticed there was something wrong."
"You did," Neal pointed out. "And I kept telling you I was okay. In my defense, I really thought I was."
"The Bureau therapist --"
"No therapy," Neal said flatly.
Peter raised a hand in surrender. "Fair enough. But, if you do want it, the offer's open."
"I know." Neal tipped his head to the side. "Peter ... what about you? How are you, anyway?"
"Me?" Peter said, startled. "I'm fine."
"I know, basically, but -- I haven't even asked you about your life since I got back." It was surprising to realize how isolated he'd been, without even knowing it. "We talked about cases, but we haven't really talked at all. I don't know how you and El are settling into the New-York-to-DC thing, or ... anything." His smile was softer this time. "Tell me."
Peter got a fresh beer, and Neal topped off his wine glass. "I'm not sure where to start," Peter said.
"You could start with El moving to DC."
So he did.
~
This entry is also posted at http://sholio.dreamwidth.org/941098.html with
comments.
Title: Through the Storm and Safe to Shore
Fandom: White Collar
Word Count: 9300
Pairing: Gen
Summary: Post-5x13, Neal's captors convince him that Peter is dead. For a prompt by leesa_perrie at collarcorner.
Notes: Thanks to
frith_in_thorns for beta and cheerleading! .... and a special thanks for talking me out of my rather bleak original ending. This one is much better. :)
Cross-posted: http://archiveofourown.org/works/1265761
"Russ? He's out of his restraints again."
Russell sighed and looked up from his tools. "Again? I thought he was secure this time ... well, it doesn't matter. It's time to give him another dose anyway."
Scowling, his partner Carmen followed him down the hall to the room where they were keeping Caffrey. "I don't know why we're bothering with this farce anyway."
"Do you want to let him out on a job and have him go right back to his keeper? Caffrey's an escape artist in the FBI's pocket." Russell shook his head. "No, unless you want to watch him every minute, this is the only option."
He unlocked the door. They'd managed to thwart Caffrey's ability to actually get out of the room by having the foresight to make sure there was no handle on the inside -- the door had to be opened from the outside -- but they had yet to stop him from undoing his restraints.
This time Caffrey was huddled in a corner, knees drawn up to his chest with his face buried in them. He'd torn out his IV.
Russell handed Carmen his kit and motioned her back, then knelt beside Caffrey. "Hey," he said gently, laying a hand on his shoulder.
Caffrey flinched explosively and raised his head, squinting against the light. His pupils were blown dark, his face pale.
"Come on." Russ got him to his feet. Caffrey stood up readily enough, but as he balanced himself he got a look at his own hands -- and the dried and flaking blood on them. The front of his scrubs were splattered with blood as well.
"No," he breathed.
He swayed; Russ caught him before he could fall, guiding him quickly to the bed. Caffrey was shaking, his breath coming in short, rapid gasps. Carmen helped Russ secure him again, putting the IV back in place.
Caffrey was still murmuring "No, no," twisting his head against the pillow. Russ leaned close to him and caught his chin, forcing Caffrey to meet his eyes. "Neal," he said. "Do you remember what happened?"
"No," Caffrey whispered. He jerked against his restraints. Russ nodded to Carmen, who slipped a needle into the IV's access port.
"Neal," Russ said, "I need to know that you remember what happened. What happened to Peter."
"I -- I -- no," Caffrey protested. His words began to slur as the sedation took effect. "No, I didn't, I couldn't."
"You know what happened," Russ said gently. "Tell me."
Caffrey only shook his head, trying to look away.
Russ undid the restraints on one of his hands, raising it so that Caffrey could see the blood crusted under his nails and flaking off the back of his hand. Caffrey made a tiny whimpering sound and screwed his eyes shut.
"Do you know whose blood this is?" Russ asked. Technically it was pig's blood, but he'd figured they needed more to convince Caffrey than just talking to him, even with the drugs making him suggestible.
Caffrey's dry, cracked lips shaped the word "no".
"You killed Peter, Neal," Russ said. "You shot him. Do you remember?"
Caffrey shook his head and made a choking sound. Tears seeped from his tightly closed eyes. "I wouldn't," he gasped. "I wouldn't. I couldn't."
"You didn't mean to," Russ said. "You were only trying to escape. He tried to stop you. You didn't mean to pull the trigger."
"I didn't mean to," Caffrey whispered.
"It was an accident."
"An accident." Caffrey was shaking all over. "Peter, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry."
"But the FBI doesn't know that," Russ went on. "The FBI wants you for murder. All your old colleagues ... they know you killed him. They're hunting for you. And we're helping you."
"You're safe here," Carmen said on cue, leaning over to run an impersonal hand over his forehead, smoothing back his hair with a rough approximation of kindness. It was obvious that her heart wasn't in it; she thought all of this was completely unnecessary. We'll just coerce him if he won't cooperate, she'd said, but Russ had gotten his way in the end. They had to make sure Caffrey believed he had nothing to go back to, and no reason not to help them.
"Why don't you sleep now," Russ said, and kept his hand over Caffrey's until their prisoner's tight, rapid breathing evened out. He was still weeping soundlessly in his sleep. Russ refastened the restraints and followed Carmen out of the room, leaving him alone.
"This is ridiculous," Carmen said, locking the door. "No matter how many times you tell him, no matter how drugged he is, he's eventually going to figure out the truth. He's not stupid."
"It's already working," Russ retorted. "If I tell him our version of events often enough, he will believe it on some level. He'll manufacture false memories. And it doesn't have to be that convincing, as long as it holds for awhile. We won't need him forever."
"And then we'll be rich," Carmen said, and smiled.
"And then we'll be rich."
***
Neal woke slowly, his brain foggy. He was desperately thirsty and his entire body ached. Even opening his eyes seemed too much work for awhile, so he simply lay still, miserable but unable to summon the energy to move.
What's wrong with me? Was I sick? His memories slid away from him, too slippery to grab onto. And the realization dawned on him slowly that he was afraid. There was something he didn't want to think about.
He sat up carefully. His head throbbed. He was in an unfamiliar bedroom, on an unfamiliar bed. Hotel room? The windows looked out on a city skyline that was clearly Las Vegas. It was so disconcerting to see the Vegas Strip instead of the familiar New York skyline that he had to stare at it for a moment to make sure it really was a window and not a large high-definition screen.
Everything was still terribly fuzzy. He felt horrendously hung over and unwell. After he'd managed to stay vertical for a few minutes, his headache had diminished from blinding to merely uncomfortable, so he lurched to his feet and stumbled into the bathroom. He used the toilet and drank a paper cupful of water. The cool water made his stomach cramp.
What happened to me? He was wearing pajamas. His left arm ached, and when Neal rolled up the sleeve, his stomach cramped again at the sight of needle marks on the inside of his arm. There were also faint bruises on his wrists, such as fighting against padded restraints might leave.
Kidnapped. Yes. That seemed somehow familiar. And there were other things -- flashes of memory. Blood? He took a quick look down at his hands, because for a moment he thought there ought to be blood under the fingernails, blood embedded in the lines of his palms. There was nothing; his palms were clean, the fingernails neatly trimmed and manicured.
Someone had done that while he was sleeping. They'd shaved him too.
He shivered.
The sound of a door opening and closing made him go rigid. He hadn't closed the bathroom door completely, and he moved behind it as quietly as possible. There was nothing he could use for a weapon.
"Neal?" a voice called, and for an instant, just an instant, he thought Peter! But it wasn't Peter's voice, and there was something else, some hazy recollection that made a stab of pain go through him -- a pain so intense it was nearly physical.
Had something happened to Peter?
"Neal?" the voice said again, coming closer. "Hey, Neal, it's Russ. Are you in there?"
The voice was vaguely familiar. Neal's memories were still foggy, but he remembered a man bending over him in a white room, speaking to him, telling him things that didn't make sense. He remembered the man sitting on a park bench ...
"Neal?" Russ stepped into the bathroom. Neal flattened himself against the wall, but there was nowhere to go. "There you are. How are you feeling? I know you'll be confused."
"You drugged me," Neal said flatly. He was pretty sure it was Russ, anyway. Russ had been there. And a woman. And someone had put a bag over his head ...
"Only to stop you from hurting yourself," Russ said. "C'mon, sit down. I brought you something to eat."
At the thought of food his insides clenched and he realized that he was desperately hungry. Still, he'd have to be a fool to eat something offered to him by someone who'd just admitted to drugging him. Neal crossed his arms and tried to present a facade of strength -- never mind that he was barefoot, wearing pajamas, and still so shaky from the drugs that he felt like he was about to fall over. "I think you'd better tell me who you are and where I am. And what day it is."
"You've been out for about a week," Russ said, and Neal flinched. A week? "Look, there's a lot we need to talk about, but I think you should eat first."
The sound of Russ's voice was starting to bring back hazy flashes of memory. Russ had said -- impossible things, and Neal began to shiver. Again he looked down at his hands. They were clean. "Am I ..." He swallowed. "Am I a fugitive?"
"You ran," Russ said, his voice gentle, and Neal had a vivid flash of memory. Russ had said this to him before.
"I ... did?" Had he? Would he? But now memory surfaced from the gray haze. Yes, he'd talked to Mozzie about it. Because the FBI had promised him freedom and then snatched it away. Anger tightened in him -- the unfairness of it all!
But if he'd run, then Peter would be looking for him. "Peter ..." he said, and didn't realize he'd spoken 'til he saw Russ's face change, becoming -- apologetic, almost?
"Neal," Russ said, placing a hand on his arm. "Come on. Sit down."
Neal jerked away. "I want to know where Peter is," he said, his voice shaking. Peter was -- Peter was at the FBI, he had to be. Looking for him. Probably pretty angry by now, but that was okay, Peter had a right to be, if he'd really run on Peter's watch.
"Neal ..." Russ said. "Peter's dead. Don't you remember?"
Memory rose up and choked him. Russ leaning over him, saying impossible things to him. His hands, covered with blood still tacky as it dried. He remembered sitting in a white room, covering his face with his hands to shut out the world, clawing his face because maybe that would make it stop, would make him stop knowing --
Neal looked desperately away from Russ, past him, to his own face in the mirror. He'd gone chalk-white, and there were scrapes and scratches along his hairline, such as he might have inflicted with his own fingernails.
You didn't mean to. You were only trying to escape. He tried to stop you. You didn't mean to pull the trigger.
"Oh God," Neal choked, and he lurched past Russ, barely making it to the toilet before he vomited up the water he'd drunk. And then he dry-heaved, clutching the toilet rim and shaking so violently he thought he'd fly apart.
Peter.
I shot Peter.
I can't. I couldn't have. I WOULDN'T.
But he had. He remembered it ... almost. It was somewhere in the disorganized jumble of his recent memories, along with the white room and Russ talking to him and a hard-eyed woman tying his hands down.
Russ helped him up and Neal staggered along with him. The world went foggy and then he was sitting on the bed and Russ was folding his fingers around a cup of water. This, too, was familiar. Russ had helped him before.
Neal took a couple of sips to clear the taste out of his mouth. He had to fight to keep it down, but his stomach finally stopped heaving and he was left with a great, dead, empty hollow inside.
"Who are you, anyway?" His voice sounded hoarse.
Russ sat beside him on the bed. "Russell Giordano, remember? You approached me for help escaping from the FBI. We were going to work together. Do some jobs."
Was that right? He vaguely remembered telling Mozzie he wanted to go straight. But he also remembered telling Moz he didn't regret anything he'd done. He'd stolen things and he'd liked it. And he had planned to run. That part sounded right.
"We're in ... Vegas?" he said carefully. It still seemed unreal. His life had been bounded by Manhattan for so long. Even when he'd run to Cape Verde, it still felt as if New York was an anchor on him, dragging him back.
Now that anchor had suddenly snapped and he felt like he was in freefall, with no idea where the ground was.
"That's right," Russ said. "We're here to scoop a little off the casinos -- do you remember?"
Neal shook his head slowly. He didn't really remember anything, just fragments. Snatches. And what little he did remember (blood, blood on his hands) sent cold waves of sickness washing through him.
"You were keeping me drugged," he said, as his head cleared a little more.
"We had to," Russ said. "You went a little crazy after Burke died. We had to keep you from hurting yourself or going to the police. You seemed to be calming down so we figured we'd let you come back up and see how you were feeling. Do you think you're going to be all right?"
Neal bowed his head and dug his fingers into the flesh of his upper arms. The pain brought him out of the memories, a little. "I'm all right," he said. He'd have to be.
And they could be lying. He was pretty sure he hadn't known Russ before.
"We also had to keep you inside because you're wanted by the FBI," Russ said, and a new wave of shuddering rocked him. "You and I know it's an accident, but it's pretty much just your word against theirs, and they think you killed your handler and fled."
"Diana and Jones," Neal breathed. They wouldn't believe it ... would they? If I really killed Peter just to get my freedom, do I deserve the benefit of the doubt?
It seemed so unlike something he'd do.
But he'd been so desperate. He did remember that, the memory cutting through the drug haze like a knife. His desperation and his anger. He would have done anything to get out.
Anything?
Oh God, he thought, closing his eyes. Elizabeth.
"Neal?" Russ said. When Neal opened his eyes, Russ was staring at him with apparently sincere concern. Neal wondered if this was the first time they'd let him come out of sedation, or if there had been other times. If he seemed too distraught, would they put him under again?
One thing he gave himself no illusions about: Russ did not have his best interests at heart. He was an asset at best, and a prisoner at worst.
Just like at the FBI, he thought, but his heart didn't quite believe it. Quiet lamplit evenings at the Burkes' proved otherwise, or Peter covering Neal with his own body to keep him safe ...
And all that was over now. He'd exploded that little circle of lamplight and safety with a bullet.
"Yes," he said. "I'm all right."
***
He showered, and managed to eat a little, and felt somewhat better as long as he didn't think too much.
This turned out to be his main coping strategy in the days to come: don't think about it. He wanted to know what had happened, but didn't dare allow himself to search his memory too hard, because what little he did remember left him teetering on the brink of a pit he wasn't sure he could climb out of.
He revisited it in dreams, though. Every night. It was always different: sometimes he and Peter were in an alley, sometimes on top of a building or in a restaurant or in the White Collar office. Sometimes Peter was angry and yelled at him. Sometimes Peter begged him to stay. Sometimes they struggled and the gun went off. Sometimes he fired at a shadow and then realized it was Peter as it fell.
Sometimes Peter died instantly, with the vitality and warmth fading out of his open eyes. Sometimes he died choking on his own blood while Neal knelt in it and tried, tried, tried to push down hard enough to stop Peter's life from ebbing away around his fingers.
But the worst dreams, the cruelest dreams of all, were the ones in which it had never happened. Peter wasn't dead, and Neal was visiting him in DC, or they were wandering the streets of New York and he was back on the anklet.
Those were the dreams that made him wake up with tears on his face.
After a while he didn't want to sleep anymore.
And he stayed, because he wasn't sure what else to do. He got to know Russ and Carmen and the other members of their crew. Carmen clearly didn't like him, for reasons Neal hadn't quite been able to figure out; she mostly stayed away from him and let Russ do the talking.
They didn't give him a phone or unsupervised access to a computer. He supposed he couldn't blame them -- he'd been working with the FBI for three years, which might be Carmen's problem with him too, come to think of it.
The gang was in Vegas to, basically, take the casinos for as much money as possible. This was one scam Neal had never tried, because it was too damn risky. Better to go for the low-hanging fruit elsewhere. In Vegas, they expected cons; the security was top-notch, and all the money was carefully counted. It was also where the amateurs went, because people new to the biz thought, hey, Vegas, money! And then they got caught.
Neal tried pointing this out to Russ, who said, "Well, that's why you're here."
Neal's main role in the gang was twofold: to instruct them in the finer points of gambling, and to monitor the dealers' tells through a closed circuit camera mounted in a tie clip, purse decoration or other small object. For better or worse, he couldn't be the front man himself because he was currently on the FBI's most wanted list and casinos were full of cameras.
"You realize they know about this stuff, right?" Neal said. "Some of these place sweep for bugs."
Russ shrugged. "Word on the street is, you're the best. You only got caught because Burke made you with a girl." Neal tried not to flinch at Peter's name. It didn't seem to be getting easier. Maybe with time, it would. "So, show us how it's done."
So he did. Carmen supplied casino security camera footage, and Neal had his "students" replay it until they, too, could recognize the subtlest of tells among both the dealers and the players. They played endless practice games of blackjack and poker, trying to feel the delicate ebb and flow of what might be called luck or energy, at the subtle confluence of skill and chance.
The basic slight-of-hand skills needed to cheat at cards or dice were simple tricks. Any street-corner three-card-monty scammer knew them. But cheating in Vegas was high-end work. And Neal found that he actually ... well, enjoyed wasn't quite the right word. He didn't really enjoy anything these days, and he was also acutely aware that he wasn't a part of the gang, not really. But he got a small mood lift as he watched them repeat his lessons and add their own embellishments. Maybe I might like to be an art teacher, he thought, before remembering that was a glimpse of another future, one which was closed to him now.
He could easily have escaped. They weren't holding onto him too hard. But there was simply nowhere to go. At least nowhere that he wanted to go. And when he was with Russ's crew he felt a sort of camaraderie, even if he wasn't entirely a part of it.
Neal had always considered himself a lone wolf. Only now did he realize that this had never really been true. He'd worked alone quite a bit, but he'd always gravitated towards working with partners: Keller, Mozzie, Kate, Alex. And then he'd spent three years in New York at the White Collar division ...
That had been, he realized, the longest he'd ever been in one place, with one group of people, since he'd left home. Well, not counting prison, which was basically a black hole into which four years of his life had vanished. Counting prison, he'd been in New York for seven years. No wonder he felt so uprooted, so lost.
And then he realized he could still contact Mozzie.
It amazed him that it had taken days -- no, weeks to remember that. He'd been floating along in a gray haze, doing what Russ wanted, trying not to think beyond the moment. But ... Mozzie wouldn't care that he was wanted by the FBI. Mozzie wouldn't think of him as a murderer.
The trick was how to do it. Now that he was actively looking for an opportunity to make a phone call or send an email, Neal began to notice how closely he was watched. Any illusion that he was a member of the gang rather than their prisoner evaporated. He might not be in chains, but he was a prisoner all the same.
Now that he had a goal -- contact Mozzie -- he felt as if he was waking up from a long sleep. He'd just been drifting, letting the world wash over him. Now, suddenly, he had something to do, somewhere to go. He wondered if it was worth just walking away, ducking Russ and Carmen's scrutiny and hitting the street ...
But, no, because he didn't even know if Moz was still out there to find. A chill of fear washed over him -- what if Moz had been arrested as an accomplice to Peter's murder? Diana and Jones knew about Mozzie's association with Neal. Diana even knew his real name.
I can't let Mozzie go down for something I did.
And he didn't have his "go" bag. He didn't have an ID or passport or credit cards in any name other than his real one, which was now the name of a fugitive. He could make them, but he needed supplies and time, which he clearly wasn't going to get with Russ and Carmen watching him every minute.
He was starting to realize how thoroughly screwed he was. He hadn't before because ...
Because ...
Because he hadn't been thinking, because he'd been wandering around in a haze of grief and guilt and nightmare-induced sleep deprivation.
A tiny suspicion began to nibble at the corner of his mind: Was it possible that Peter might not really be dead? Could they only have told him that to stop him from leaving?
But he remembered the blood so vividly ...
No. First things first. Contact Mozzie, then go from there.
He wasn't allowed to use a computer without someone right over his shoulder, but there were laptops in the hotel suite where they'd been doing the training, and everyone had come to take Neal so thoroughly for granted by now that it was just a matter of watching carefully for the right moment. And his moment finally came: the only person in the suite with him was Russ, who went into the bathroom. Neal was supposedly sorting decks of cards.
As soon as the bathroom door closed, he rose and moved as swiftly and silently as possible to wake up the nearest laptop. It was already connected to the hotel's wireless. He and Mozzie had a number of disposable email addresses with free mail hosts, so Neal brought up a web browser and picked one at random. He typed out a quick email to Mozzie using one of their simplest codes:
Hi, I saw your ad on Craigslist! I am very interested in purchasing one of your pigeons. I am especially interested in the one called Maude. I would treat her well and keep her safely confined except when she was carrying messages for me.
Please give me a number where I can call you to discuss payment. Thanks!
In other words: I'm okay, but I'm being kept prisoner. Let me know how I should contact you.
The toilet flushed and Neal hastily cleared his browser history and closed the laptop. He just had time to get up and make a pretense of stretching before the bathroom door opened. Russ didn't act visibly suspicious, but Neal wasn't left alone for the rest of the day, which might be a coincidence or, he thought, might not be.
In any case, there was no telling when Mozzie would check the account, or even if Moz was in a position to be able to do so. If he didn't hear back from Mozzie in a couple of days, Neal decided, he'd just leave. He was thinking more clearly now, and feeling things again, which made him realize how out of it he'd been for the last couple of weeks. He was actually hungry that evening, a little bit. Russ's gang had allowed him to order whatever he wanted from room service, but the food tasted like cardboard to him. Tonight, he found himself enjoying it, just a little.
-- and then he felt guilty about that, because maybe he shouldn't be enjoying things. If Russ was telling the truth, then Neal had taken Elizabeth's husband away from her. He'd taken Peter's life. Nothing could ever make up for that.
He pushed away his dinner, the brief surge of appetite fading.
The nightmares were back that night with a vengeance, and now with the added fun of horrible things happening to Mozzie too.
Neal entertained himself the following day, while supervising Russ and the rest of the gang's card tricks, by imagining picking up the phone and just calling the police on the whole bunch of them. Yeah, he'd get swept up along with them, but he wasn't entirely sure that he cared.
He was worried about Mozzie, though. He really had to get out of here.
And then someone kicked the door in, and a voice barked, "FBI, freeze!"
Neal had a frozen moment when he couldn't remember if he actually had called the police. In silence, still sitting on the couch, he put up his hands while Russ, Carmen and the others went into a mad scramble to escape or throw incriminating items off the balcony -- completely useless, because the room was rapidly filling up with federal agents.
"Weapons down, get on the floor," the lead FBI agent barked, but it wasn't until he turned and said Neal's name that Neal recognized him, because it was so completely, utterly impossible that he could be here.
It was Peter.
Neal stared. The couch seemed to be sliding sideways out from under him.
Peter was dead. My hands are covered with blood ... And then Peter was kneeling in front of him, putting his gun away while looking at Neal with eyes that had gone soft and concerned -- the expression was such pure Peter that Neal felt himself going weak and hazy.
"Neal," Peter said. "Neal, are you hurt?"
Neal flinched when Peter touched him, patting him down, looking for injuries. "I'm not hurt," he finally managed to say. His voice sounded distant and weak. "I'm okay."
"You're obviously not," Peter said. "You look terrible." He kept his hands on Neal's shoulders, which at this point might be the only thing keeping Neal from falling over. Big warm hands, grounding him.
"I'm okay," Neal repeated, but he was increasingly less certain this was true. It was getting hard to breathe. Black spots danced in front of his eyes.
"Diana --" Peter said over his shoulder.
Diana's voice said from somewhere else in the room, "I've got this. Take care of him."
"Neal, come on, lie down." Peter's hands repositioned him on the couch, laying him flat, and Neal went along with it because it was Peter and Peter said so and he always tried to do what Peter said ... except when he didn't. Peter spread a hand on his chest, firm but gentle. "Breathe, Neal. Slow even breaths. Breathe with me."
The worst part was trying to convince himself that this wasn't a dream. Because Peter wasn't supposed to be here. Peter couldn't be here. And Neal couldn't think of a single way to tell for certain. If this was a dream, then things were about to go terribly wrong. Any minute now, Peter's chest would disintegrate into a crater of blood; his warm brown eyes would go still and fixed.
Or maybe it was the other kind of dream, the kind where everything seemed good and normal until he woke up. In all his nightmares, he hadn't dreamed about Peter rescuing him yet. Maybe even his subconscious had given him some mercy, until now.
"Breathe, Neal," Peter said, or dream-Peter; he wasn't sure, but Peter said so, and he tried. The room tilted around him and slowly stabilized. Peter's hand rested on his chest; Neal could feel it lift and settle as he breathed. Peter was an island of stability in the shifting, treacherous world: an anchor, a landmark. Neal rubbed his thumb over the texture of the couch's fabric covering, letting that ground him a little bit too.
"How did you find me?" he asked. His voice was a little stronger this time. Dreams didn't have much logic, usually; this might be a way to know for sure.
"Mozzie got your email," Peter said. "Did you get his?" Neal shook his head. "He sent it in code -- we were afraid of tipping off your kidnappers, but Mozzie insisted he could get a message to you without giving it away. He actually came to us immediately when he got the email. Jones traced back the IP, and Diana and I were on the next plane to Vegas. Jones stayed back at White Collar to coordinate with the local Vegas agencies from there."
"You flew here from New York," Neal said slowly.
"Yeah." Peter glanced around. "Never been to Vegas before. I guess it's one of those places where you have to go once before you die." Neal closed his eyes, shutting out everything but the gentle, steady pressure of Peter's hand on his chest. A moment later, Peter's voice turned worried. "Neal? You okay?"
Neal only shook his head, conscious of the crushing disappointment pressing the walls of his chest inward, crushing his heart and his lungs. Because Peter wasn't in New York. Peter was in DC. He'd been reassigned. Which meant this wasn't real, none of it ...
"Neal!" Peter said, sounding alarmed, but the world was sliding sideways, going, going, gone.
***
Neal woke up slowly, in pieces. He became aware of his body first -- he was lying on the couch with his cheek pressed into it -- and then the noise in the room, which had died down somewhat.
He cracked his eyes open. His head hurt. The first thing he saw was Diana. She looked both relieved and annoyed.
"EMTs are on their way, Caffrey, so stay still."
Neal ignored the advice and tried to sit up, then collapsed back onto the couch.
"For God's sake," Diana said. "Don't make me hold you down."
Oddly enough, it was Diana being cranky at him that convinced him this was, in all likelihood, actually happening. He surveyed the room from a prone position. Russ's gang were all cuffed and the FBI were in the process of smoothly and professionally searching the room. Neal glimpsed Peter over by the door, talking to another agent. Peter looked over the agent's shoulder at Neal -- it had the smooth look of practice, like he'd been doing that every minute or two since Neal passed out -- and, seeing that Neal was awake, smiled at him. Neal looked quickly away. Seeing Peter alive and well was doing nothing for his tenuous grip on reality.
"I'm okay," he told Diana.
"You passed out. That doesn't constitute 'okay', and my job is currently to keep you on this couch, preferably flat, until the paramedics get here. So help me, I will handcuff you to the coffee table if I have to."
Neal grinned sideways at her. "Good to see you too."
Diana sighed and a reluctant smile broke through.
"How's Theo?" Neal asked. "Did you leave him all alone to come gallivanting out to Vegas?"
"Contrary to what you apparently think, babies can in fact survive without a parent nearby," Diana said dryly. "This is why we have what we call 'a babysitter'. At least once I managed to find one that Mozzie didn't reject on sight," she added in exasperation.
Neal tried not to laugh. "You're letting Mozzie interview your babysitters?"
"Letting him?" Diana said. "No, we eventually reached a compromise. He provides a list, I provide a list, we each look at each other's lists, then I pick one from my list and I don't shoot him."
"Sounds fair," Neal said. "How many dead people were on his list?"
"Surprisingly few, which is not the same as none."
Neal was making furtive sitting-up motions, trying to do so in stages every time she looked away. Diana rolled her eyes.
"Okay, yes, you can sit up, but if you start to faint again, the handcuffs are still an option."
"Noted." He sat up carefully. Things swam a bit, but the room steadied once he was vertical. He gave Diana what he hoped was a reassuring smile, but she frowned at him.
"Peter said you turned white and keeled over," Diana said. "He checked you all over but couldn't find any injuries. Are you hurt? Because if there's something I should be bandaging and you're not telling me about it --"
"Nothing," Neal said quickly. "It's just -- it was a shock. Seeing --" Peter. "-- all of you."
"Oh, come on. If FBI agents bursting through the door made people faint, then our jobs would be a whole lot easier. You're still white as a sheet." She looked at him more closely. "I'm not going to force you, Neal, but if it's easier to talk to me than Peter --"
"They made me think he was dead," Neal said. He wasn't planning to say it. The words just fell out.
Diana sat back, startled. "What?"
"Peter. I thought he was dead." He couldn't quite bring himself to say the rest of it. They made me think I killed him. It seemed stupid to him now. How could he have believed it? And yet, he couldn't stop seeing his hands covered with blood ... "It was kind of a shock to see him come in. That's all."
"A shock," Diana murmured. "I bet." She reached out, hesitantly, and put her hand on his shoulder. Diana wasn't much of a toucher. Neal let himself lean into her hand, just a little.
"Can you not tell Peter?" Neal said. "Please."
"Why not? Neal, he won't be angry. Why would he?"
"No, he'll be -- Peter." He didn't have the words to explain that he was having enough trouble dealing with his own emotions without having to deal with Peter's on top of everything. Particularly Peter's urge to fix things.
"I suppose I can understand that," Diana conceded, with a faint smile. "But, Neal, it's going to come out in the interrogation eventually."
"I know," Neal said. "Just give me some time."
And then the paramedics entered the room, and he gave himself over to them. Diana stepped back. Neal wanted to say Please come with me, because as soon as he couldn't see her the doubts swarmed up again: What if this isn't real, what if I'm dreaming, what if --
He started out of his reverie when a hand, bigger than Diana's, settled on his arm. "They're taking you to the hospital," Peter said. "I'll follow along behind, okay?"
"Okay," Neal said. He was caught between wanting to stare at Peter -- drink him in with his eyes, salve the part of his soul that felt raw and burned -- and wanting to shut him out, because it was too much. He ended up fixing his eyes somewhere around Peter's chest, so that he didn't have to look at his face, but he could still fix himself on Peter's solidity.
Diana, sensing Neal's anxiety, moved in on them. "Boss, I need you over here for a minute."
"Can this wait?" Peter demanded.
"Let the paramedics do their job." She tugged on his arm, smoothly removing him. Peter looked distressed. Neal curled in on himself, thinking, This is ridiculous. It's just Peter. Everything is fine.
But he couldn't relax on the drive to the hospital. The paramedics were kind to him, but he still felt as if he was in freefall, as if he'd been falling since Peter and the FBI burst through the door, and he didn't know where he was going to end up.
***
At the hospital, he changed into a gown in a curtained alcove. A resident examined him, drew blood, asked a few questions about his recent eating and sleeping habits. The hospital staff seemed to have been informed he was a crime victim but, when he said he hadn't been assaulted, left the rest alone. "I think you're just a bit dehydrated and stressed," the resident said. "Drink plenty of fluids, get a good meal in you and some rest."
He was allowed to get dressed again, and was sitting kicking his feet on the examining table when Peter came in. Neal's gaze dropped to his lap.
"Hey," Peter said.
"Hey." Neal risked a glance at him and tried to fight the way his eyes instantly started to slide away. He was going to have to get used to Peter being alive. It still roused a powerful, complicated mix of emotions that he tried to squash down until he had time to sort through them in private.
Peter looked uncertain as well -- unusually, since Peter didn't really do uncertain that often. He was carrying a very familiar object. "Ah," Neal said, striving for a normal, flippant tone. "Anklet time."
"Yeah," Peter said, but he didn't make any move to put it on. Just held it, and hovered. "They said you're good to leave."
"Yeah, I'm basically all right," Neal said. "Just need to drink lots of fluids and eat something." Which should be good, but that didn't explain the look on Peter's face.
Peter hesitated, then jerked his head toward the hallway. "I shouldn't know this -- and you're certainly not hearing it from me -- but I happen to know Mozzie's at the service entrance behind the hospital kitchen with a car."
Neal stared at him.
"Look, those guys we arrested ..." Peter said. "Most of them weren't armed. It was pretty obvious they weren't holding you by force. I know you didn't go with them of your own free will -- we had witnesses, and we'd been proceeding on the assumption that you'd been kidnapped. But Mozzie said you were thinking about running even before that. I know you could've walked if you'd wanted to."
Neal couldn't quite wrap his mind around what was happening. "Are you ... telling me to go?"
"No!" Peter said. "No ... but ..." His smile was tired and a little sad. "What happened to you wasn't fair, and I know that. Neal, you can't even look at me anymore. Don't think I haven't noticed. I guess this is all I can do to make up for it, and I know it isn't what either of us wanted, but I'll give you as much of a head start as I can. One condition, though."
Neal looked up at him quickly, meeting his eyes for what he realized was the first time since Peter and the rest of the FBI had burst into the hotel room.
"Drop me a note sometime," Peter said. His voice cracked. He cleared his throat. "You can code it somehow if you have to. Just ... let me know you're okay."
For an instant -- one long instant -- Neal was tempted. He'd meant to run. And Peter was giving him the okay. Or, at least, the choice.
But.
For weeks he'd thought he was on the run. And it had been an empty, lonely hell, because he had believed he'd sacrificed something beyond price on the altar of his freedom. There were worse things than being a prisoner, especially since Peter had never held him tightly, and -- metaphorically speaking, anyway -- always left the key to his prison within his reach.
"What happens to you?" he said. His voice sounded small. "If I go."
Peter made a face. "Bureau's already not that happy with me, but hey, we've got a win since we got this bunch in custody. It'll balance out okay. Worst-case scenario, they stick me back in the Cave for a bit. I got through it before."
"They can do that?" Neal said, baffled. Now Peter looked confused too. "Now that you're in DC."
"Oh." Peter's forehead smoothed out. "No, Neal, I didn't go to DC. I'm sorry, I forgot you've been -- yeah, you wouldn't know that."
"You stayed in New York? But -- your new job --"
"I turned the job down," Peter said. Since Neal had still made no move, Peter sat on the bed beside him, still holding the anklet, turning it over and over. "I couldn't take it in good conscience, not after everything. Sitting at a desk, making arbitrary decisions about other people's lives, like someone did about yours -- no. And anyway, that's not me. I'm meant to be out there on the street, arresting bad guys."
"How'd Elizabeth take that? She had her heart set on the National Gallery."
"She went," Peter said. "Yeah, don't say anything. Everyone keeps telling us it's a mistake, but ... so far, it seems to be working out. Of course, I've been too busy with your case to have time to miss her. She comes up on weekends."
"Elizabeth's in DC," Neal said. Leave for a few weeks, and everything changed ... "And you're ASAC in New York."
"Not ASAC anymore," Peter said with a wry, deprecating grin. "They filled that job when I took the DC offer. Just regular old Special Agent Burke, back in charge of White Collar, like old times." He cleared his throat. "Your ride's probably getting restless."
"My ride knows me pretty well. I don't think he's still waiting." Neal held out a hand, palm up, and this time he looked Peter in the eyes, and it wasn't hard.
Peter wordlessly placed the anklet in his palm. As Neal started to take it, Peter closed his hand over the top of it, stopping him.
"Neal, I don't know how much I can promise as far as getting you out early. I'm gonna try. Every string I have, I'll pull. At the very least, I will make sure they hold to the terms of your original deal or, so help me, I'm taking the bastards down with me." Peter's fingers brushed his, the tips twining together with Neal's, the anklet clasped between their palms.
Neal swallowed around the lump in his throat. "I know you will," he said quietly. He gave the anklet a little tug, and Peter let go. Neal snapped it around his own ankle, the thought occurring to him as he did so that it had been a while since Peter had been the one to put it on him. Apparently he was chaining himself now.
But how did that old song go: Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose. He'd had a taste of it, and yeah, that's exactly what it had felt like. It had felt like nothing.
This felt like the warmth of Peter's shoulder against his, and Diana's hand on his arm, and knowing that Moz would still man the getaway car no matter how many times Neal turned him down. And, even though Mozzie wouldn't admit it, Neal had a feeling that his friend wouldn't object to a few more lunches with Elizabeth and evenings of harassing Diana over her parenting choices.
Neal didn't realize that he was grinning until Peter, with a smile of his own, asked, "What?"
"Just good to be going back, I guess," Neal said. He meant to lean against Peter, pressing their shoulders together, but his arm slipped somehow, and they ended up in an awkward sideways hug. Peter was warm, and there, and not dead at all, and not going anywhere.
***
Things shouldn't have felt so normal after that, but they did.
In a way it was like coming back from Cape Verde, those first few days, when Neal was skimming along pretending to be normal and then eventually the pretense settled into reality and it was all right.
There were still nightmares. He would wake gasping and lie on the bed in a cold sweat until he had to turn on the light -- even knowing it was stupid, knowing it was false -- to look at his hands to check for blood.
He was fairly sure the blood thing was a true memory -- that they had splashed him with something. That week was always going to be a blur, he suspected, but he'd been able to put it into some semblance of order now that he knew how much of it was fake and how much wasn't. They'd kidnapped him; they'd held him in a white room and drugged him. And they'd told him, over and over, that Peter was dead by his hand, until finally he believed them and then they let him come up from the drugs.
Knowing what had happened didn't make it easy to bear, exactly, but it did make it easier.
His appetite was coming back, slowly. He was starting to sleep more than a couple of hours at a time. Being around Peter was becoming comfortable rather than weird. Neal was pretty sure that he put on a fairly normal facade at work, which was slowly slipping from facade into reality, but Peter kept giving him worried looks when he didn't think Neal was watching. Peter had suggested therapy a couple of times, but Neal turned him down. Not again. Not ever again.
He did tell Mozzie the whole story over two very expensive bottles of wine. He started crying in the middle of it. Mozzie didn't mock him, didn't even crack a smile, just listened and told him it was going to be okay and then helped him get cleaned up and put to bed.
Moz was a good friend.
And so life went on and things were okay and Neal was pretty sure he was getting over it, until about two weeks after he'd gotten back to New York, when Peter knocked on his door late in the evening.
"Peter." Neal stepped back to let him in. Peter hadn't been over to Neal's place since the kidnapping, though Neal had been to the Burkes' a couple of times. Neal hadn't really pushed it, because they were still slightly uncertain around each other, still finding their way back to a good place. He still had moments in Peter's presence when he saw blood on his hands -- but he knew it wasn't real and it happened much less now.
Peter stopped just inside the door and let out a long sigh. "I should have called first," he said.
He was dressed in casual clothes, slightly rumpled. He looked upset, and Neal found his defenses going up. There hadn't been a time Peter had come over to his apartment looking like this that things had ended well.
Neal's brain obligingly served up a variety of unpleasant possibilities: maybe the anklet deal had been extended past its original end date, maybe Peter had found out about some other thing Neal had done lately (he did still have the pre-Columbian sword in the closet; those things were difficult to fence), maybe Peter really was moving to DC, maybe they were sending Neal back to prison ...
He could just push Peter out the door and not worry about it until tomorrow.
But Peter looked genuinely upset. And, with El in DC, he'd be all alone at home.
Neal took a bracing breath and said, "You want a beer?"
Surprise and gratitude skated across Peter's face. "Sure." As Neal went to the fridge, he added, "I didn't know you still kept some here."
"I bought it when I got back from Vegas." Neal handed the cold beer over; Peter accepted it with a slightly shamefaced look.
"Sorry I haven't been by sooner. I figured you wouldn't want to see me. I thought --" Peter ground to a halt; his jaw was set, and Neal thought Oh right before Peter said, "Why didn't you tell me what those bastards did?"
Interrogations with Russ's crew had been happening this week. Neal had mostly been trying not to think about that. He crossed his arms, barricading himself. "Because I didn't want you to know."
"Neal! They drugged you, they messed with your head -- Russ told me they dipped your hands in pig's blood and then told you that it was -- Neal, this isn't okay!"
Oh, Neal thought, pig's blood, so that's what it was. "It's my problem, not yours," he said. It came out stiffer than he'd intended. "I'm dealing with it."
"It is my problem!" Peter snapped. "I'm responsible for you, and I knew you weren't handling things well, I just didn't know why --" Then something seemed to break in him. He crumpled, and put a hand over his face as he turned away from Neal. "No wonder you've been angry with me. I don't blame you."
The righteous indignation propping Neal up took a sudden hit. "Wait, what?"
"I figured it was to do with the anklet thing." Still not meeting his eyes, Peter carefully set the beer on the counter, untouched. "But it's this, isn't it? I didn't ..." He took a shuddering breath. "From what Russ says, they put you through hell, Neal, and we didn't find you, we weren't even close. We'd never have found you at all if you hadn't sent us a message. And then I just brought you back and we've been going on as if everything's normal -- damn it, I knew you weren't eating or sleeping well, but I figured I'd leave it up to you, I didn't want to push -- I just thought ..." He wound down and slumped against the wine rack. "I had no idea," he said in a small, broken voice. "Neal, I'm so sorry. I had no idea."
"Peter, wait --"
"I should go," Peter said, turning blindly away. "I'm not sure why I came --"
Neal caught his arm. "Peter, no, don't. I'm not angry at you. I never have been. It's just easier than --"
And then it hit him, really hit him -- hit him in a way it hadn't even when he was telling Mozzie about it. Because he'd spent two weeks putting it away, packing it down, wrapping it in layer upon layer of defensive armor and even so the pain had seeped through like poison, leeching the color and joy out of the world. Seeing Peter in the hotel room hadn't brought feeling rushing back; it had only created a terrible distance between what he knew he should be feeling and his numb heart. He'd slowly managed to build bridges back to the world but he'd still been armored; it was like he no longer knew how to feel things.
Peter's arm was warm under his hand and Neal felt it, really felt it, and maybe it was the first thing he'd truly felt since the hotel room.
"You were dead."
"Neal --"
"You were dead," Neal said, "and I killed you." He caught a fistful of Peter's shirt, and dragged him into a hug, buried his face in Peter's chest and held on for all he was worth. Dimly he was aware that Peter's arms had wrapped around him, holding him back.
This is real, he thought, and let go, and crumbled. He didn't cry, but he shook so hard he thought he might have flown apart if Peter hadn't held him, rubbing a hand up and down his back, saying things -- Neal had no idea what, but Peter's voice was a tether and he clung to it.
He'd been falling ever since the hotel room and maybe, just maybe, he'd finally hit ground. And Peter was there to cushion the shock.
When Neal could breathe again, he very cautiously detached himself from Peter. He kept a hand on Peter's arm, though, and Peter kept a hand on him, steadying him. His legs kept threatening to collapse.
"I think maybe I will have that beer," Peter said.
"A drink sounds good," Neal said with a shaky laugh.
Peter steered him to a chair, disappeared for a minute, and then came back with a glass of wine and his own opened beer. Neal accepted the wine glass with both hands; he was still shaky enough that he worried he might spill it. Peter sat down at the table with him -- beside him, not across from him. They were nearly touching and Neal realized that he wasn't the only one who needed that reassurance.
"You died," Neal said quietly.
"And you disappeared," Peter said, just as softly. "Because of me."
"Peter, no ..."
"Well, it's what I thought at the time. And it's more or less true. I was supposed to keep you safe, Neal, and I failed on every level. Then we got you back, and I kept feeling like it should have been a relief, but it wasn't, because it felt like we'd left part of you behind."
"I think maybe I felt that way too." Neal laughed quietly again. As the shakiness began to pass, he felt -- alive, and happy, and oddly free.
Peter frowned down at his beer. "I've never wanted to hit a prisoner as much as I wanted to hit Russell Giordano today."
"I'm guessing you didn't," Neal said. "Being you."
"Sadly it's against regs to punch a prisoner in the face during an interrogation. Damages the case later." Peter looked up, saw Neal smiling, and his own smile opened up slowly. "What's that look for?"
"I'm just happy," Neal said. It felt like admitting a secret. Peter started to say something, then floundered to a stop, and for a moment they just grinned stupidly at each other.
Peter sobered eventually. "Neal, I should have noticed there was something wrong."
"You did," Neal pointed out. "And I kept telling you I was okay. In my defense, I really thought I was."
"The Bureau therapist --"
"No therapy," Neal said flatly.
Peter raised a hand in surrender. "Fair enough. But, if you do want it, the offer's open."
"I know." Neal tipped his head to the side. "Peter ... what about you? How are you, anyway?"
"Me?" Peter said, startled. "I'm fine."
"I know, basically, but -- I haven't even asked you about your life since I got back." It was surprising to realize how isolated he'd been, without even knowing it. "We talked about cases, but we haven't really talked at all. I don't know how you and El are settling into the New-York-to-DC thing, or ... anything." His smile was softer this time. "Tell me."
Peter got a fresh beer, and Neal topped off his wine glass. "I'm not sure where to start," Peter said.
"You could start with El moving to DC."
So he did.
~
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