Fic: Hidden Treasure
Title: Hidden Treasure
Author: wraithkeeper
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Peter/Elizabeth/Neal
Spoilers: Out of the Box
Word Count: ~900
Disclaimer: White Collar and its characters don't belong to me.
Notes: Written for the promptfest at elrhiarhodan's journal. Prompt was: Hidden Treasure.
Summary: Neal drew his nightmares in his sketchbook, casting grief onto the page to chase it from his mind.
El had never seen inside the little sketchbook. She’d seen Neal drawing in it - in the middle of the night, when she woke up to find only Peter lying in bed beside her, she knew Neal would be downstairs frantically filling the latest page of the book. The few times she’d gone to check on him, he’d quickly closed the sketchbook and flashed his fake smile, though even that wavered uncertainly as it never did during the day. Neal always came back to bed when he was ready, so eventually El stopped going to check on him when she heard him leave.
El even knew where he hid the sketchbook, but she had never once opened it to look inside. She only found it by accident when she had been putting away laundry. It was always kept slipped between the folded sheets on the bottom shelf of the linen closet, so it was clear Neal didn’t intend for anyone to see the drawings inside. El would be lying if she said she wasn’t tempted to look inside, but she would never betray Neal’s trust like that. She knew how hard it was for him to be open and honest with them. She wasn’t going to insult the effort he’d made by intruding upon his privacy.
She knew he hadn’t wanted them seeing inside the sketchbook, which is why it came as such a surprise the day she found it tucked inside her purse, its worn corner poking out. She was sure it must have gotten there by accident, but she could think of no way that it could have been placed so purposefully in her purse unless Neal had intended for her to find it. El slipped it out carefully and any thoughts of this being an accident disappeared when she saw the post-it note stuck to its cover. Her name was written on the note in Neal’s smooth handwriting.
El carried the sketchbook into the living room and sat down, nervously fingering the edge of its cover. After being so curious for all this time, she now wasn’t sure if she really wanted to look inside. She finally swallowed her nerves, told herself she was being ridiculous, and opened to the first page. The drawing was a swirl of dark graphite like an explosion, with lighter strokes forming the flames that burst up from the smoke. El’s breath caught as she remembered the day Kate was killed, when Peter came home smelling of jet fuel and smoke, barely able to force out the pained words there was an explosion.
El turned the page to see another similar sketch, after which was a drawing of a prison cell. The image was composed of harsh, sharp lines, the walls narrowing toward the ceiling like they were closing in on her. On Neal. Maybe they had been. There were several images of prison after that, some showing detailed depictions of the cell block while others focused only on the bars that had caged Neal for four years. One drawing had dark smudges on the bars and a spattered pattern on the wall that El hoped wasn’t supposed to be blood.
About a quarter of the way through the sketchbook, El started finding roughly sketched portraits of Kate and of Mozzie. There were a few people she didn’t recognize, some with smiling eyes and bright smiles and others with predatory grins that made her shudder. Slowly, the smiling people began to outweigh the darker images. El even found a few drawings of Satchmo, sometimes curled up asleep on his bed and sometimes staring up from the page intently.
The last quarter of the book consisted almost entirely of her and Peter. Some drawings capturing them peacefully asleep, legs entangled together beneath the sheets, while others were of Neal in their embrace. On the final page of the book, Neal had written words almost too small to be read. El wondered if he had done so hoping she would miss it. She squinted at his tight script that read only one sentence: My dreams are a lot better now.
El drew a jagged breath and closed her eyes at the realization that these sketches were of Neal’s dreams, his nightmares cast onto the page to rid them from his mind. She thought of the numerous pages filled with fire and explosions, with prison bars and blood, and she shuddered in remembrance of all the nights Neal had slipped out of bed to disappear, careful not to wake them. She realized now how much of himself Neal was trying to hide, out of fear alone. She didn’t blame him for this pretense. She only wished he could see that it was unnecessary.
She was grateful that he had trusted her with this hidden part of himself. As she weighed what she should do with the sketchbook, El realized that his trust alone was the treasure of this gift. She returned the book upstairs and carefully slipped it between the folded sheets, right where it always had been. The only difference now was that Neal’s words were not alone on the final page. Now her own loose scrawl rested beneath his note as a reminder.
We love you. All of you. No matter what.