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I'm not sure how much I respect myself right now *facepalm*
Er, I went and committed extremely self-indulgent White Collar post-Countdown fic. Dammit. *g*
I should warn you right up front that this is (fairly dark) catharsis fic for me. It's not meant as a stab at anyone's fic tastes, it's not meant to imply that anyone is wrong for liking certain tropes; what it is, though, is a Neal character study which happens to be me working through my own issues with the way that certain Season 3 themes are often handled in fic. For me, it's total emotional PWP. Don't go in here expecting a thoughtful and nuanced look at the aftermath of Countdown, is all I'm saying. This was written because I needed to get it out of my head, and I figured I'd go ahead and post it because it turned out 4500 words long, but ... heed the warning, and don't expect my usual characterizations to apply when it comes to how Peter, in particular, is handled.
~ Gen, 4500 words, Countdown spoilers.
Neal spent weeks after they got Elizabeth back doing everything in his power to make up for it.
He followed every order to the letter. Never stepped out of line. Didn't talk back. Put up with every restriction that was placed on him without complaining.
But it didn't take long to start getting to him. Because, yes, he'd screwed up; he knew it. And he wanted to make amends. But this was petty and ridiculous. He didn't deserve this.
Peter never talked to him unless he had to in a work context. Otherwise he simply ignored him. Neal wasn't allowed to leave his desk without permission -- he even had to ask for bathroom breaks, like a grade schooler. The other agents were mostly taking their cues from Peter, as Neal guessed they had always been; when Peter was friendly with him, they were friendly with him, and when Peter wasn't ... well. He was just a con artist doing a work-release, and that was exactly what it felt like. Diana and Jones were still semi-friendly, at least, but Peter glared at them whenever he caught them trying to make small talk with Neal, and they'd back down. If it came to having to choose between Peter and Neal, which apparently it had, it was pretty obvious which side they were on.
His radius was tightened to a half-mile, then, not long after, to house arrest at June's. He couldn't help wondering what Peter thought to gain by it. Make it intolerable enough for me here, and I'll try to run? Give you an excuse to prove what you already think you know about me?
He was banned from contact with Mozzie, but that, as Mozzie pointed out, was only a problem if the Suit found out about it. The first couple of times Mozzie came to see him at June's, Neal tried to get him to leave, because at that point he was still determined to prove to Peter that he really had changed, that he wasn't that person anymore. Eventually, though, he started thinking, Screw it. This was the big thing he wasn't going to capitulate on. He had exactly one friend left at the moment -- a friendship he'd almost blown up -- and if Mozzie was willing to give it a second go, Neal wasn't about to let him walk out that door again.
But that was what opened the door, really, to an upwelling of resentment that he'd been fighting for weeks. He was trying, really trying, but with the whole office giving him the cold shoulder, it left him wondering why he was trying.
He'd started out on the assumption that if he could just do enough, be good enough, that they'd take him back in. But he was starting to realize that it wasn't going to work out that way. Nothing that he did made a difference; this was the new normal, apparently.
Prison was suddenly starting to look appealing by comparison.
Mozzie started trying to talk him into leaving again. Moz still had some of the treasure squirreled away somewhere; Neal knew that he did, but Mozzie wouldn't admit it to him, which, in its way, hurt even more than Peter shutting him out. Moz didn't quite trust him anymore; in Mozzie's mind, Neal had gone over to the Suit side, and while they were putting things back together, Neal wondered if the cracks would always show.
He'd turned Mozzie down once, almost destroyed a decade-long friendship, and for what? So that the White Collar unit could go out of their way every day to make sure that Neal knew he was still just a con, and not one of them. What baffled and annoyed him even more was the fact that he kept deflecting Mozzie's attempts to talk him into escaping. He told Moz that Peter would just catch him again ... which was true, but it wasn't the whole truth. Neal couldn't figure out what the whole truth was, though.
He wasn't happy here. He was increasingly certain that most of the people he'd thought were his friends had never actually liked him. And yet, he stayed. That was what really confused him.
"Peter's not your father," Mozzie said one rainy afternoon, lying on the couch with a glass of wine while Neal worked on a painting.
"Thank you, Doctor Freud, for stating the obvious once again."
"Neal. I'm serious." Mozzie rolled over and sat up on the couch, trying to catch Neal's eye; Neal refused to let him. "Look, I can see what's going on here. It's the same thing, isn't it? You pinned your hopes on the Suit. You thought he was a hero, someone to look up. He turned out not to be, and it's ripping you up."
"All heroes have feet of clay," Neal said. "It's how things work. So the Burkes weren't who I thought they were. We make mistakes. We move on."
"Except you're not moving on," Mozzie said, and reached under one of the cushions to come up with an island vacation brochure, which he waved in Neal's direction.
"I said no, Moz. And get rid of that. The last thing I need right now is Peter thinking I'm planning an escape."
"He already thinks you're planning an escape. That's the problem."
Neal didn't answer. He squeezed out more cadmium yellow. His paintings had been bright lately, sometimes verging into the lurid.
Mozzie sighed. "Neal, look at me." Neal kept his eyes on the painting; he began applying yellow in long, sloppy strokes. "You don't owe these people anything. If you ever did, you've long since paid it back, and they've thrown it back in your face. Why are we still here?"
The paintbrush snapped in Neal's hand. Mozzie jumped. So did Neal. He stood for a moment, staring at the broken pieces of the brush, and then hurled them across the room.
"Uh ..." Mozzie said after a moment. "Wound a little tight, are we?"
Neal went to get a wet rag and began wiping cadmium yellow off June's floor. "I don't know, Moz. I don't know, all right? It didn't feel right to leave before, and it doesn't feel right now."
"You stayed because of the Suit, before," Mozzie said, and then frowned at him. "Or did you?"
"I don't know."
***
He thought about it, as the weeks stretched into months. You have to hit rock bottom before you can change, he'd said to Peter, all those months ago. He'd thought his moment of rock bottom had happened after Elizabeth's kidnapping, when the world had fallen apart around him, and all the decisions he'd made had turned out to be the wrong ones.
But losing everything wasn't truly rock bottom. Rock bottom was realizing that he'd never had any of it in the first place.
And staying in New York still didn't feel like the wrong decision, despite all that had happened since then.
You can't change for other people. You can only change for yourself.
This epiphany hit him while he was painting in the loft, the doors flung open to the world outside -- as close as he could get to it, anyway, since he was still on house arrest when he wasn't at work. Thoughtfully, he washed out his brush and then wandered outside. It was autumn, the air sharp and clean -- well, as clean as New York air got, anyway.
Neal leaned on the railing and looked down at the traffic below.
I've spent my whole life trying to find someone to tell me who to be.
It was startling and sad, and ... true, he thought. Mozzie had been right about Peter, as much as Neal hated to admit it. The same process Neal had gone through as a teenager -- idolizing his father, looking up to him, wanting to be him, only to find out that his father wasn't the man he'd thought he was ... it was more or less what had happened this year with Peter. Not exactly, of course, because he wasn't a child anymore. But it hurt in a similar kind of way.
Maybe acknowledging that was the first step to letting it go.
Who do I want to be? he thought, amazed at the simplicity of the question. Mozzie wants me to be his partner in crime. Peter wants me to be a sort of FBI mini-me, a good little soldier who knows my place. But who do I want to be, for my own sake?
No wonder none of Peter's lessons had really taken. It wasn't enough to be "good", whatever that meant, just because someone else told you to. You had to want it for yourself. He'd come closest to following Mozzie as a mentor because Mozzie, at least, was telling him to do what he wanted to do anyway, which was to indulge his id and enjoy the finer things in life.
But that wasn't enough anymore. And pleasing Peter had turned out to be a fool's errand; he was starting to realize that he could spend his whole life running in circles at Peter's behest, and Peter would still think of him as a con artist, and look down on him for it.
So where did that leave him?
It leaves me here, Neal thought, looking down at the street below him. I don't want to run, and it's not because of Peter or the FBI, no matter what Mozzie thinks. It's because it doesn't feel right. It would be self-indulgent and short-sighted; it would gratify me in the short term while screwing me over long-term.
And it felt right, it felt natural. He was staying because it was the right thing to do. It was hard, and it was frustrating, and one of these days if things kept on the way they'd been, he was probably going to snap and punch Peter in the face and get sent back to prison for it. But he'd done the right thing, and he knew it was the right thing, and he didn't regret it.
He laughed out loud. It was a sound of pure joy, the first time he'd laughed like that in a long time, since quite a while before Keller had taken Elizabeth.
Well, he thought giddily, that's the hard part down; now all I have to do is figure out what I actually want to do with myself.
There were only two things he knew for sure: whatever he wanted to do with the rest of his life, it wasn't what he had been doing, and it wasn't what he was doing now. On the other hand, that was two more things than he'd known a few months ago. Or even a few days ago.
***
Things came to a head after Neal got shot a few days later.
It wasn't a bad injury, as these things went; it was more that he got winged, really. But it made him realize that he'd been going into dangerous situations with indifferent backup and inadequate mission prep for months now. This wasn't the first time that things had gone bad, just the first time he hadn't been able to deflect or defuse, but as he leaned against a brick wall with blood welling through his fingers, he realized that he couldn't take another year of this. And the problem wasn't emotional, because by this time he'd gotten to the point where he could take or leave Peter and the rest of them. But the odds were pretty good that he wasn't going to survive another year of going undercover when his only backup were people who didn't particularly like or trust him.
It was like working with Rice all over again.
At the hospital, they bandaged his arm -- it really was just a scratch, though it hurt like hell. The ER was fairly busy, so Neal ended up cooling his heels in one of the observation cubicles for a while, waiting for a doctor get him a prescription for painkillers. At least it gave him time to think. Or, rather, to brood.
There was a soft knock and someone pulled back the curtain. Neal looked up and, to his surprise, saw Elizabeth hovering. He hadn't talked to her since the Keller thing had happened -- the only times he'd seen her had been a couple of times at work, just long enough to say a polite hello and goodbye. For a moment they stared at each other awkwardly. Then Elizabeth gestured to the bandage on his arm. "I heard you'd been shot. Are you all right?"
"It's just a flesh wound. I'm okay."
"Oh," she said. "Good."
Hunting around for something else to say, Neal couldn't help noticing that she had a small suitcase with her. "You going on a trip?"
Elizabeth glanced down at the suitcase, then at Neal. Her smile slipped sideways, became embarrassed. "Actually, I'm going to stay at my sister's for a while. I was on my way when I heard you'd been shot. It's -- a thing. Peter and I are working some stuff out."
"Oh," Neal said in surprise. Peter and El had always seemed like the perfect couple to him. What he and Kate might have been, in a different universe.
"We've been in counseling for a while. Ever since ... well. You know." She didn't have to say Keller. "It's not going anywhere, so a separation seemed like the best thing."
"Temporary?" Neal asked after a moment.
"That really depends on what Peter does, I suppose." The fleeting shadow of anger and resentment that passed over her face was familiar: Neal had seen it in the mirror.
There was a part of him that wanted to feel vindicated -- at least he wasn't the only person Peter was an asshole to -- but instead, mostly he just felt sad for her. "Well, I hope ..." And he trailed off, not really sure what outcome El would want him to offer his hopes for. "I hope it'll be a good thing for you, being there," he finished weakly.
"Thanks." She smiled at him. "Well, if you're doing okay, I ought to be going."
Neal got the distinct impression that she wanted to slip off before running into Peter. "Thanks for coming by," he said, and meant it.
Elizabeth gave him a little wave, and ducked out.
Peter showed up a half-hour or so later to drive him back to June's. They went most of the way in silence before Peter said at last, "I'm taking a week off, so you'll be off too. Just so you know."
Chasing Elizabeth, by any chance? Neal almost said, but didn't. Instead he said, "All right. I'll catch up on my painting, I guess."
"Yeah, about that house arrest thing." Peter cleared his throat and didn't look at him. "I may have been a little harsh, the last few weeks. So -- you know. Sorry."
Neal had thought that he'd reached the point that Peter couldn't make him angry anymore. He'd been wrong, and it took every fiber of self-control in him not to let his reaction show on his face.
You treat me like dirt for months, send me undercover repeatedly without adequate backup or preparation, throw my every attempt to apologize or make amends back in my face -- and then, you think you can give me some kind of half-assed apology and make everything okay again? Go to Hell, Peter, you manipulative jerk. Go directly to Hell, do not pass Go.
He realized that he'd been silent long enough that Peter was looking at him nervously.
I could be honest, and we could have a screaming fight right here in the car, and I'll have every privilege yanked that he's still willing to grant me, if he doesn't just send me straight back to prison. He'd never been so acutely aware of how much power Peter had over him. His entire existence outside of prison was at Peter's suffrage. Peter could make his life a living hell -- had, in fact, or had at least tried, for the last couple of months.
I'd rather be in prison than put up with this, he thought, and the thought came with the same sort of relief as his epiphany about why he'd stayed in New York -- the same snap of rightness.
But he didn't have time to analyze that thought properly, not with Peter sitting right there, not with his own carefully controlled temper threatening to blow up. If he could just get through the rest of the ride to June's, Peter would be out of his life for a week and he'd have time to think.
Neal had once told Peter that he'd never lied directly to him, and it was true -- a point of pride, actually. So it was with a tiny tearing feeling inside that he swallowed down his fury and put on a smile, a perfectly convincing one, he hoped, and said, "Thanks, Peter. Apology accepted."
"Oh good," Peter said, in a relieved, there's one thing off the checklist kind of way. "So, I'm thinking maybe we could give you a little more leash, right? Maybe a half-mile radius, see how you do with that, and enlarge it again if you behave yourself and keep on the straight and narrow."
"That's decent of you, Peter," Neal said. "Thanks."
He might have laid the sarcasm on a little thick there, based on the way Peter glanced at him, but they'd reached June's, so Neal said a quick goodbye and walked swiftly into the house. He didn't stop until he reached his apartment, where he reached for the wine with a hand that was shaking with rage, then remembered that he wasn't supposed to have alcohol with the pain meds, so he just stood and trembled for a moment until he had himself under control.
Then he made himself a cup of coffee, sat down and began composing an email to Hughes.
He was going back to prison.
But it was by his own choice this time. He only had a year to go. He could do a year. And he'd be out from under Peter's thumb. When he got out, it would be on his own terms, not anyone else's.
Mozzie was going to think he'd lost his mind. And Peter would hit the ceiling. Maybe. Or maybe, at this point, he'd just let Neal go without a fight. But it didn't matter; Peter would be gone for a week, and when he came back, the process would be done. A fait accompli.
***
Prison was simultaneously worse than Neal remembered, and not as bad as he'd feared. Word had gotten around about his FBI snitching, but Neal had always been good at playing one end against the other, and he managed to keep himself on the guards' good side while making his enemies run in circles. It was done at the cost of sleep and peace of mind, and there was one time he zigged when he should have zagged and ended up in the prison infirmary for a few days after getting shivved in the leg. But he kept reminding himself that it was only a year. He'd done three and a half, before, and he would have finished out his sentence if not for Kate. This time, he was determined to do it.
Peter came to see him once. If he'd actually known who it was, he figured he'd probably have stayed in his cell, but all they told him was that he had a visitor. "Moz --" he began, and then saw who it was, and froze in place. Carefully he pasted a smile on his face. "Peter," he said politely.
Peter looked older. Of course, he was older, but he looked to Neal like he'd aged years rather than months. "They tell me you're refusing to make any sort of deal," he said.
Neal shrugged.
"I'm willing to do what I can to get you out, but I'm going to need your cooperation, Neal --"
"I don't want out," Neal said. And that was a lie, a total lie -- he wanted out so bad that it burned in him day and night. But he wasn't going to get it at the cost of his self-respect. And he could see that Peter knew it was a lie, or at least not the whole truth, so he added, "Not like that. I'm going to finish out my sentence, Peter, and get out that way."
"I can help you --"
"I don't want your help." And there it was. "I don't want to be beholden to you. I can do this on my own, Peter."
"Well, obviously you can't, or you wouldn't be here in the first place."
Neal's jaw ached from the effort of keeping his face still. "I think you should probably leave."
"Not until I get some answers out of you."
"You want answers? All right." He kept himself where he was, kept his voice low, didn't make any threatening moves that might get the guards involved. He'd had plenty of time to think about this in prison, plenty of time to run through possible scenarios and rehearse things he might say to Peter if they ever met again. "You never did see me as a person, let alone a friend. You saw me as someone you could rescue, and remake me over in your image. But I'm not your child, and I'm not your dog."
"You ungrateful --" Peter began.
"I'm not finished," Neal interrupted, and somewhat to his surprise, Peter shut his mouth with a snap, anger hot in his eyes. "You weren't angry because I lied to you -- okay, that was part of it, and I know I screwed up, but what really pissed you off is that you realized I didn't need you, that I had a life apart from you. That's why you cut my radius down and started taking away privileges. You wanted to make me dependent on you again." Peter was turning redder and redder with fury, and Neal spoke faster, wanting to get it all out before Peter erupted. "And if I'd gone along with it, if I'd crawled long enough to satisfy you, then you'd have started giving me those things back again. Patting me on the head, like your good dog. But I'm not, I'm a human being, an adult, and I'm getting out of here on my own, owing you nothing. And you're here today because you can't stand that."
There was a long, tense silence when he'd finished. Finally Peter said in a very low voice, so tight it was about to snap, "Fine. You can rot in here for all I care."
He started to turn away, then spun back. "But you know what? You're a con, Neal. That's what you'll always be, and you know it. Go ahead, finish out your sentence. Pay your debt to society. But when you break the law again -- and you will -- I'll be there, and I'll throw you back in here so fast it'll make your head spin."
"Good luck with that," Neal said. "Oh, and Peter?" It was petty, he knew it was beneath him, but Peter certainly wasn't holding back, and he didn't feel like taking the high road. "Did Elizabeth ever come back?"
He'd already guessed the answer -- Peter's beaten-down look was answer enough -- but hurt flashed sharply over Peter's face. Good for her, Neal thought. She stuck to her guns.
"I think we're done," Peter said tightly, and turned away.
"Yeah," Neal said to his back. "I think we are."
Back in his cell, lying on his bunk and contemplating the ceiling, he thought, You have to hit rock bottom before you can change. He'd hit it at last. He wondered if Peter ever would, and for that matter, what constituted rock bottom for Peter, if driving away Elizabeth wasn't it.
But Neal didn't plan to stick around to find out. Peter had as much as told him what would happen if he stayed in New York: he'd have a hostile FBI agent watching his every move, just waiting for him to slip up. He had a feeling that every time something went missing in the New York art world, he'd be a person of interest.
Well, there was a whole world out there, most of it beyond Peter's jurisdiction. He'd always liked France. And Amsterdam. And there was still a lot of Europe he'd never been to, never mind the rest of the world.
Neal closed his eyes. He was still acutely conscious of the prison walls around him, but he spread out his arms as if he could touch the world beyond them with his fingertips.
***
Neal got out on a cold, blustery day, uncomfortably reminiscent of the first day he'd gotten the anklet, when Peter had been waiting for him in the prison yard.
But this time, there was no anklet, just the clothes he'd been wearing when he went in, and a small package of personal effects. And rather than Peter's Taurus, there was a Rolls-Royce waiting for him, long and sleek and looking very out of place among the other cars.
He hadn't expected this at all, and he balked, amazed, until June waved at him from the backseat and rolled down the window. "What are you waiting for," she asked, "an engraved invitation?" and Neal laughed, delighted, and ran to slide in next to her.
The driver of the Rolls twisted around, grinning at him from under a chauffeur's hat. "Moz," Neal said, and raised a hand for a high-five. "Earning an honest living?"
"Wash out your mouth," Mozzie said. He smiled at June. "So I do a few favors, now and then."
"Not to mention cleaning out my wine cellar," June said, in an affectionate tone. She patted Neal's shoulder. "It's good to see you again. You look thin. But I'm sure my cook will be able to do something about that."
They turned out of the prison parking lot, and Neal said, "Wait a minute. I'd assumed you would have rented out the apartment by now --"
"I did," June said, and Mozzie raised a hand in a little wave without taking his eyes off the traffic.
"Mozzie is living in the loft?"
"Just keeping it warm for you," Mozzie said.
"He pays rent," June said, smiling at both of them. "And I really do feel better with someone in the house."
"Well, I can't kick Moz out --"
"I have plenty of spare bedrooms," June said. "It's a big house. We have time to figure it out."
Not to mention, Neal thought, he didn't plan to stay in New York that long. Also, he wasn't quite sure how to break the news to Mozzie that he didn't plan to forge paintings for a living anymore. But there was time to work out all of that. In the meantime, he had a place to stay while he regrouped and made plans. And, even once he did leave, he still had a place to come back to.
Neal found himself grinning.
"Penny for your thoughts," June said lightly.
I did it. I made it. I'm free. "Just looking forward to the rest of my life."
~
If this story is too depressing to bear, there is now a cheerful, cracky OT3 follow-up/alternate ending.
I should warn you right up front that this is (fairly dark) catharsis fic for me. It's not meant as a stab at anyone's fic tastes, it's not meant to imply that anyone is wrong for liking certain tropes; what it is, though, is a Neal character study which happens to be me working through my own issues with the way that certain Season 3 themes are often handled in fic. For me, it's total emotional PWP. Don't go in here expecting a thoughtful and nuanced look at the aftermath of Countdown, is all I'm saying. This was written because I needed to get it out of my head, and I figured I'd go ahead and post it because it turned out 4500 words long, but ... heed the warning, and don't expect my usual characterizations to apply when it comes to how Peter, in particular, is handled.
~ Gen, 4500 words, Countdown spoilers.
Neal spent weeks after they got Elizabeth back doing everything in his power to make up for it.
He followed every order to the letter. Never stepped out of line. Didn't talk back. Put up with every restriction that was placed on him without complaining.
But it didn't take long to start getting to him. Because, yes, he'd screwed up; he knew it. And he wanted to make amends. But this was petty and ridiculous. He didn't deserve this.
Peter never talked to him unless he had to in a work context. Otherwise he simply ignored him. Neal wasn't allowed to leave his desk without permission -- he even had to ask for bathroom breaks, like a grade schooler. The other agents were mostly taking their cues from Peter, as Neal guessed they had always been; when Peter was friendly with him, they were friendly with him, and when Peter wasn't ... well. He was just a con artist doing a work-release, and that was exactly what it felt like. Diana and Jones were still semi-friendly, at least, but Peter glared at them whenever he caught them trying to make small talk with Neal, and they'd back down. If it came to having to choose between Peter and Neal, which apparently it had, it was pretty obvious which side they were on.
His radius was tightened to a half-mile, then, not long after, to house arrest at June's. He couldn't help wondering what Peter thought to gain by it. Make it intolerable enough for me here, and I'll try to run? Give you an excuse to prove what you already think you know about me?
He was banned from contact with Mozzie, but that, as Mozzie pointed out, was only a problem if the Suit found out about it. The first couple of times Mozzie came to see him at June's, Neal tried to get him to leave, because at that point he was still determined to prove to Peter that he really had changed, that he wasn't that person anymore. Eventually, though, he started thinking, Screw it. This was the big thing he wasn't going to capitulate on. He had exactly one friend left at the moment -- a friendship he'd almost blown up -- and if Mozzie was willing to give it a second go, Neal wasn't about to let him walk out that door again.
But that was what opened the door, really, to an upwelling of resentment that he'd been fighting for weeks. He was trying, really trying, but with the whole office giving him the cold shoulder, it left him wondering why he was trying.
He'd started out on the assumption that if he could just do enough, be good enough, that they'd take him back in. But he was starting to realize that it wasn't going to work out that way. Nothing that he did made a difference; this was the new normal, apparently.
Prison was suddenly starting to look appealing by comparison.
Mozzie started trying to talk him into leaving again. Moz still had some of the treasure squirreled away somewhere; Neal knew that he did, but Mozzie wouldn't admit it to him, which, in its way, hurt even more than Peter shutting him out. Moz didn't quite trust him anymore; in Mozzie's mind, Neal had gone over to the Suit side, and while they were putting things back together, Neal wondered if the cracks would always show.
He'd turned Mozzie down once, almost destroyed a decade-long friendship, and for what? So that the White Collar unit could go out of their way every day to make sure that Neal knew he was still just a con, and not one of them. What baffled and annoyed him even more was the fact that he kept deflecting Mozzie's attempts to talk him into escaping. He told Moz that Peter would just catch him again ... which was true, but it wasn't the whole truth. Neal couldn't figure out what the whole truth was, though.
He wasn't happy here. He was increasingly certain that most of the people he'd thought were his friends had never actually liked him. And yet, he stayed. That was what really confused him.
"Peter's not your father," Mozzie said one rainy afternoon, lying on the couch with a glass of wine while Neal worked on a painting.
"Thank you, Doctor Freud, for stating the obvious once again."
"Neal. I'm serious." Mozzie rolled over and sat up on the couch, trying to catch Neal's eye; Neal refused to let him. "Look, I can see what's going on here. It's the same thing, isn't it? You pinned your hopes on the Suit. You thought he was a hero, someone to look up. He turned out not to be, and it's ripping you up."
"All heroes have feet of clay," Neal said. "It's how things work. So the Burkes weren't who I thought they were. We make mistakes. We move on."
"Except you're not moving on," Mozzie said, and reached under one of the cushions to come up with an island vacation brochure, which he waved in Neal's direction.
"I said no, Moz. And get rid of that. The last thing I need right now is Peter thinking I'm planning an escape."
"He already thinks you're planning an escape. That's the problem."
Neal didn't answer. He squeezed out more cadmium yellow. His paintings had been bright lately, sometimes verging into the lurid.
Mozzie sighed. "Neal, look at me." Neal kept his eyes on the painting; he began applying yellow in long, sloppy strokes. "You don't owe these people anything. If you ever did, you've long since paid it back, and they've thrown it back in your face. Why are we still here?"
The paintbrush snapped in Neal's hand. Mozzie jumped. So did Neal. He stood for a moment, staring at the broken pieces of the brush, and then hurled them across the room.
"Uh ..." Mozzie said after a moment. "Wound a little tight, are we?"
Neal went to get a wet rag and began wiping cadmium yellow off June's floor. "I don't know, Moz. I don't know, all right? It didn't feel right to leave before, and it doesn't feel right now."
"You stayed because of the Suit, before," Mozzie said, and then frowned at him. "Or did you?"
"I don't know."
***
He thought about it, as the weeks stretched into months. You have to hit rock bottom before you can change, he'd said to Peter, all those months ago. He'd thought his moment of rock bottom had happened after Elizabeth's kidnapping, when the world had fallen apart around him, and all the decisions he'd made had turned out to be the wrong ones.
But losing everything wasn't truly rock bottom. Rock bottom was realizing that he'd never had any of it in the first place.
And staying in New York still didn't feel like the wrong decision, despite all that had happened since then.
You can't change for other people. You can only change for yourself.
This epiphany hit him while he was painting in the loft, the doors flung open to the world outside -- as close as he could get to it, anyway, since he was still on house arrest when he wasn't at work. Thoughtfully, he washed out his brush and then wandered outside. It was autumn, the air sharp and clean -- well, as clean as New York air got, anyway.
Neal leaned on the railing and looked down at the traffic below.
I've spent my whole life trying to find someone to tell me who to be.
It was startling and sad, and ... true, he thought. Mozzie had been right about Peter, as much as Neal hated to admit it. The same process Neal had gone through as a teenager -- idolizing his father, looking up to him, wanting to be him, only to find out that his father wasn't the man he'd thought he was ... it was more or less what had happened this year with Peter. Not exactly, of course, because he wasn't a child anymore. But it hurt in a similar kind of way.
Maybe acknowledging that was the first step to letting it go.
Who do I want to be? he thought, amazed at the simplicity of the question. Mozzie wants me to be his partner in crime. Peter wants me to be a sort of FBI mini-me, a good little soldier who knows my place. But who do I want to be, for my own sake?
No wonder none of Peter's lessons had really taken. It wasn't enough to be "good", whatever that meant, just because someone else told you to. You had to want it for yourself. He'd come closest to following Mozzie as a mentor because Mozzie, at least, was telling him to do what he wanted to do anyway, which was to indulge his id and enjoy the finer things in life.
But that wasn't enough anymore. And pleasing Peter had turned out to be a fool's errand; he was starting to realize that he could spend his whole life running in circles at Peter's behest, and Peter would still think of him as a con artist, and look down on him for it.
So where did that leave him?
It leaves me here, Neal thought, looking down at the street below him. I don't want to run, and it's not because of Peter or the FBI, no matter what Mozzie thinks. It's because it doesn't feel right. It would be self-indulgent and short-sighted; it would gratify me in the short term while screwing me over long-term.
And it felt right, it felt natural. He was staying because it was the right thing to do. It was hard, and it was frustrating, and one of these days if things kept on the way they'd been, he was probably going to snap and punch Peter in the face and get sent back to prison for it. But he'd done the right thing, and he knew it was the right thing, and he didn't regret it.
He laughed out loud. It was a sound of pure joy, the first time he'd laughed like that in a long time, since quite a while before Keller had taken Elizabeth.
Well, he thought giddily, that's the hard part down; now all I have to do is figure out what I actually want to do with myself.
There were only two things he knew for sure: whatever he wanted to do with the rest of his life, it wasn't what he had been doing, and it wasn't what he was doing now. On the other hand, that was two more things than he'd known a few months ago. Or even a few days ago.
***
Things came to a head after Neal got shot a few days later.
It wasn't a bad injury, as these things went; it was more that he got winged, really. But it made him realize that he'd been going into dangerous situations with indifferent backup and inadequate mission prep for months now. This wasn't the first time that things had gone bad, just the first time he hadn't been able to deflect or defuse, but as he leaned against a brick wall with blood welling through his fingers, he realized that he couldn't take another year of this. And the problem wasn't emotional, because by this time he'd gotten to the point where he could take or leave Peter and the rest of them. But the odds were pretty good that he wasn't going to survive another year of going undercover when his only backup were people who didn't particularly like or trust him.
It was like working with Rice all over again.
At the hospital, they bandaged his arm -- it really was just a scratch, though it hurt like hell. The ER was fairly busy, so Neal ended up cooling his heels in one of the observation cubicles for a while, waiting for a doctor get him a prescription for painkillers. At least it gave him time to think. Or, rather, to brood.
There was a soft knock and someone pulled back the curtain. Neal looked up and, to his surprise, saw Elizabeth hovering. He hadn't talked to her since the Keller thing had happened -- the only times he'd seen her had been a couple of times at work, just long enough to say a polite hello and goodbye. For a moment they stared at each other awkwardly. Then Elizabeth gestured to the bandage on his arm. "I heard you'd been shot. Are you all right?"
"It's just a flesh wound. I'm okay."
"Oh," she said. "Good."
Hunting around for something else to say, Neal couldn't help noticing that she had a small suitcase with her. "You going on a trip?"
Elizabeth glanced down at the suitcase, then at Neal. Her smile slipped sideways, became embarrassed. "Actually, I'm going to stay at my sister's for a while. I was on my way when I heard you'd been shot. It's -- a thing. Peter and I are working some stuff out."
"Oh," Neal said in surprise. Peter and El had always seemed like the perfect couple to him. What he and Kate might have been, in a different universe.
"We've been in counseling for a while. Ever since ... well. You know." She didn't have to say Keller. "It's not going anywhere, so a separation seemed like the best thing."
"Temporary?" Neal asked after a moment.
"That really depends on what Peter does, I suppose." The fleeting shadow of anger and resentment that passed over her face was familiar: Neal had seen it in the mirror.
There was a part of him that wanted to feel vindicated -- at least he wasn't the only person Peter was an asshole to -- but instead, mostly he just felt sad for her. "Well, I hope ..." And he trailed off, not really sure what outcome El would want him to offer his hopes for. "I hope it'll be a good thing for you, being there," he finished weakly.
"Thanks." She smiled at him. "Well, if you're doing okay, I ought to be going."
Neal got the distinct impression that she wanted to slip off before running into Peter. "Thanks for coming by," he said, and meant it.
Elizabeth gave him a little wave, and ducked out.
Peter showed up a half-hour or so later to drive him back to June's. They went most of the way in silence before Peter said at last, "I'm taking a week off, so you'll be off too. Just so you know."
Chasing Elizabeth, by any chance? Neal almost said, but didn't. Instead he said, "All right. I'll catch up on my painting, I guess."
"Yeah, about that house arrest thing." Peter cleared his throat and didn't look at him. "I may have been a little harsh, the last few weeks. So -- you know. Sorry."
Neal had thought that he'd reached the point that Peter couldn't make him angry anymore. He'd been wrong, and it took every fiber of self-control in him not to let his reaction show on his face.
You treat me like dirt for months, send me undercover repeatedly without adequate backup or preparation, throw my every attempt to apologize or make amends back in my face -- and then, you think you can give me some kind of half-assed apology and make everything okay again? Go to Hell, Peter, you manipulative jerk. Go directly to Hell, do not pass Go.
He realized that he'd been silent long enough that Peter was looking at him nervously.
I could be honest, and we could have a screaming fight right here in the car, and I'll have every privilege yanked that he's still willing to grant me, if he doesn't just send me straight back to prison. He'd never been so acutely aware of how much power Peter had over him. His entire existence outside of prison was at Peter's suffrage. Peter could make his life a living hell -- had, in fact, or had at least tried, for the last couple of months.
I'd rather be in prison than put up with this, he thought, and the thought came with the same sort of relief as his epiphany about why he'd stayed in New York -- the same snap of rightness.
But he didn't have time to analyze that thought properly, not with Peter sitting right there, not with his own carefully controlled temper threatening to blow up. If he could just get through the rest of the ride to June's, Peter would be out of his life for a week and he'd have time to think.
Neal had once told Peter that he'd never lied directly to him, and it was true -- a point of pride, actually. So it was with a tiny tearing feeling inside that he swallowed down his fury and put on a smile, a perfectly convincing one, he hoped, and said, "Thanks, Peter. Apology accepted."
"Oh good," Peter said, in a relieved, there's one thing off the checklist kind of way. "So, I'm thinking maybe we could give you a little more leash, right? Maybe a half-mile radius, see how you do with that, and enlarge it again if you behave yourself and keep on the straight and narrow."
"That's decent of you, Peter," Neal said. "Thanks."
He might have laid the sarcasm on a little thick there, based on the way Peter glanced at him, but they'd reached June's, so Neal said a quick goodbye and walked swiftly into the house. He didn't stop until he reached his apartment, where he reached for the wine with a hand that was shaking with rage, then remembered that he wasn't supposed to have alcohol with the pain meds, so he just stood and trembled for a moment until he had himself under control.
Then he made himself a cup of coffee, sat down and began composing an email to Hughes.
He was going back to prison.
But it was by his own choice this time. He only had a year to go. He could do a year. And he'd be out from under Peter's thumb. When he got out, it would be on his own terms, not anyone else's.
Mozzie was going to think he'd lost his mind. And Peter would hit the ceiling. Maybe. Or maybe, at this point, he'd just let Neal go without a fight. But it didn't matter; Peter would be gone for a week, and when he came back, the process would be done. A fait accompli.
***
Prison was simultaneously worse than Neal remembered, and not as bad as he'd feared. Word had gotten around about his FBI snitching, but Neal had always been good at playing one end against the other, and he managed to keep himself on the guards' good side while making his enemies run in circles. It was done at the cost of sleep and peace of mind, and there was one time he zigged when he should have zagged and ended up in the prison infirmary for a few days after getting shivved in the leg. But he kept reminding himself that it was only a year. He'd done three and a half, before, and he would have finished out his sentence if not for Kate. This time, he was determined to do it.
Peter came to see him once. If he'd actually known who it was, he figured he'd probably have stayed in his cell, but all they told him was that he had a visitor. "Moz --" he began, and then saw who it was, and froze in place. Carefully he pasted a smile on his face. "Peter," he said politely.
Peter looked older. Of course, he was older, but he looked to Neal like he'd aged years rather than months. "They tell me you're refusing to make any sort of deal," he said.
Neal shrugged.
"I'm willing to do what I can to get you out, but I'm going to need your cooperation, Neal --"
"I don't want out," Neal said. And that was a lie, a total lie -- he wanted out so bad that it burned in him day and night. But he wasn't going to get it at the cost of his self-respect. And he could see that Peter knew it was a lie, or at least not the whole truth, so he added, "Not like that. I'm going to finish out my sentence, Peter, and get out that way."
"I can help you --"
"I don't want your help." And there it was. "I don't want to be beholden to you. I can do this on my own, Peter."
"Well, obviously you can't, or you wouldn't be here in the first place."
Neal's jaw ached from the effort of keeping his face still. "I think you should probably leave."
"Not until I get some answers out of you."
"You want answers? All right." He kept himself where he was, kept his voice low, didn't make any threatening moves that might get the guards involved. He'd had plenty of time to think about this in prison, plenty of time to run through possible scenarios and rehearse things he might say to Peter if they ever met again. "You never did see me as a person, let alone a friend. You saw me as someone you could rescue, and remake me over in your image. But I'm not your child, and I'm not your dog."
"You ungrateful --" Peter began.
"I'm not finished," Neal interrupted, and somewhat to his surprise, Peter shut his mouth with a snap, anger hot in his eyes. "You weren't angry because I lied to you -- okay, that was part of it, and I know I screwed up, but what really pissed you off is that you realized I didn't need you, that I had a life apart from you. That's why you cut my radius down and started taking away privileges. You wanted to make me dependent on you again." Peter was turning redder and redder with fury, and Neal spoke faster, wanting to get it all out before Peter erupted. "And if I'd gone along with it, if I'd crawled long enough to satisfy you, then you'd have started giving me those things back again. Patting me on the head, like your good dog. But I'm not, I'm a human being, an adult, and I'm getting out of here on my own, owing you nothing. And you're here today because you can't stand that."
There was a long, tense silence when he'd finished. Finally Peter said in a very low voice, so tight it was about to snap, "Fine. You can rot in here for all I care."
He started to turn away, then spun back. "But you know what? You're a con, Neal. That's what you'll always be, and you know it. Go ahead, finish out your sentence. Pay your debt to society. But when you break the law again -- and you will -- I'll be there, and I'll throw you back in here so fast it'll make your head spin."
"Good luck with that," Neal said. "Oh, and Peter?" It was petty, he knew it was beneath him, but Peter certainly wasn't holding back, and he didn't feel like taking the high road. "Did Elizabeth ever come back?"
He'd already guessed the answer -- Peter's beaten-down look was answer enough -- but hurt flashed sharply over Peter's face. Good for her, Neal thought. She stuck to her guns.
"I think we're done," Peter said tightly, and turned away.
"Yeah," Neal said to his back. "I think we are."
Back in his cell, lying on his bunk and contemplating the ceiling, he thought, You have to hit rock bottom before you can change. He'd hit it at last. He wondered if Peter ever would, and for that matter, what constituted rock bottom for Peter, if driving away Elizabeth wasn't it.
But Neal didn't plan to stick around to find out. Peter had as much as told him what would happen if he stayed in New York: he'd have a hostile FBI agent watching his every move, just waiting for him to slip up. He had a feeling that every time something went missing in the New York art world, he'd be a person of interest.
Well, there was a whole world out there, most of it beyond Peter's jurisdiction. He'd always liked France. And Amsterdam. And there was still a lot of Europe he'd never been to, never mind the rest of the world.
Neal closed his eyes. He was still acutely conscious of the prison walls around him, but he spread out his arms as if he could touch the world beyond them with his fingertips.
***
Neal got out on a cold, blustery day, uncomfortably reminiscent of the first day he'd gotten the anklet, when Peter had been waiting for him in the prison yard.
But this time, there was no anklet, just the clothes he'd been wearing when he went in, and a small package of personal effects. And rather than Peter's Taurus, there was a Rolls-Royce waiting for him, long and sleek and looking very out of place among the other cars.
He hadn't expected this at all, and he balked, amazed, until June waved at him from the backseat and rolled down the window. "What are you waiting for," she asked, "an engraved invitation?" and Neal laughed, delighted, and ran to slide in next to her.
The driver of the Rolls twisted around, grinning at him from under a chauffeur's hat. "Moz," Neal said, and raised a hand for a high-five. "Earning an honest living?"
"Wash out your mouth," Mozzie said. He smiled at June. "So I do a few favors, now and then."
"Not to mention cleaning out my wine cellar," June said, in an affectionate tone. She patted Neal's shoulder. "It's good to see you again. You look thin. But I'm sure my cook will be able to do something about that."
They turned out of the prison parking lot, and Neal said, "Wait a minute. I'd assumed you would have rented out the apartment by now --"
"I did," June said, and Mozzie raised a hand in a little wave without taking his eyes off the traffic.
"Mozzie is living in the loft?"
"Just keeping it warm for you," Mozzie said.
"He pays rent," June said, smiling at both of them. "And I really do feel better with someone in the house."
"Well, I can't kick Moz out --"
"I have plenty of spare bedrooms," June said. "It's a big house. We have time to figure it out."
Not to mention, Neal thought, he didn't plan to stay in New York that long. Also, he wasn't quite sure how to break the news to Mozzie that he didn't plan to forge paintings for a living anymore. But there was time to work out all of that. In the meantime, he had a place to stay while he regrouped and made plans. And, even once he did leave, he still had a place to come back to.
Neal found himself grinning.
"Penny for your thoughts," June said lightly.
I did it. I made it. I'm free. "Just looking forward to the rest of my life."
~
If this story is too depressing to bear, there is now a cheerful, cracky OT3 follow-up/alternate ending.
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