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White Collar fic: Thin Bright Line
This one's been sitting around mostly completed for awhile, because I was thinking about using it as the springboard to a much longer post-finale story. But it looks like that's not happening, so I cleaned it up to post as a stand-alone.
Title: Thin Bright Line
Fandom: White Collar
Rating: PG
Pairing: mostly gen with background Peter/Elizabeth
Word Count: 8000
Warning: Spoilers for 3x16
Summary: "Are you handling him, or becoming him?" Peter doubts ... and wonders. It's hard to believe in yourself when people you respect keep telling you that you've made the wrong choice.
Note: For this prompt at![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
collarcorner.
Cross-posted: http://archiveofourown.org/works/415051
El picked up on the first ring. "Well, hon?" she said, her voice bright and determinedly cheerful. "Which cake is it going to be?"
"Neither of them," Peter said, and then the next words caught like a fishhook in his chest, so that all he could do was stand with the phone to his ear, his mouth open. Around him, the babble of the FBI in full emergency mode faded into the background. There was only El's breathing on the other end of the line.
"What happened?" she asked at last.
"Neal ran," Peter said, forcing the words out, making them real.
"He -- what?"
He could see El's face all too well, the beautiful smile freezing, her eyes going wide and shocked. At the same time he was acutely conscious of the ears around him, particularly Kramer's. Acutely aware of the razor's edge upon which he and his career were presently balanced.
"We lost track of him about half an hour ago, but right now we're proceeding on the assumption that he cut his anklet and took off. We're putting together a manhunt right now. The Marshals are coming in to take the lead on this one."
Peter didn't believe in telepathy, marital or otherwise, but as he spoke he tried as hard as he could to infuse every word with everything he couldn't say. Tried to will her to understand, or at least, to wait -- to withhold judgment on Neal until he could tell her everything.
"What can I do?" El asked quietly.
Oh, Elizabeth. "Stay by the phone in case he tries to contact you. We're going to put a detail on the house." For all the good that would do. "The Marshals will want to talk to you. I'm going to call our family attorney --"
"An attorney?" El said, her voice firming. "That's ridiculous. I don't need an attorney."
"Hon, I want our attorney present when they question you."
"Am I being charged with a crime?" Now there was an extra-crisp element in her voice. Damn it, the woman was too smart. "Are you?"
"Everyone knows you didn't have anything to do with it." God, he hoped not. Neal couldn't have had time to contact her before he left, could he? No, her shock had been genuine. He knew El well enough to know she wasn't faking. "But because of my -- our close involvement with Neal, we're doing everything strictly by the book, and keeping everything on the record. That's for all of our protection -- yours, mine, Neal's."
"Burke!" Hughes barked from across the room. Peter looked up. Hughes was doing his best poker face, but Kramer's expression was sharp enough to cut glass. There were a swarm of Marshals around them.
"Gotta go, hon. The Marshals are here." Peter rubbed his eyes. He was already exhausted, worn down to an emotional snapping point by the past few days -- hell, the past few months. And it was only going to get rougher from here. "I won't be home until late tonight. Maybe not at all, depending on how it goes."
"I won't wait up. I love you." El hesitated, and then said, "Good luck," before she hung up.
Good luck. More than one way to take that. No matter what she suspected, Peter was suddenly, intensely glad that he hadn't had a chance to talk to her in private yet. Right now, El knew nothing, and she was better off that way. She could tell the absolute truth to the Marshals without holding anything back.
Plausible deniability, all the way.
When did it come to this -- hiding things from my wife, so that she doesn't have to lie to the authorities on my behalf?
*
In the end, it was over twenty-four hours before he had a chance to talk to Elizabeth. Twenty-four hours of living on lukewarm coffee and cafeteria sandwiches, twenty-four hours of staring at maps and computer screens until his eyes crossed.
Neal had vanished so utterly and completely that Peter knew he'd had an escape plan already in place. Of course he'd had a plan. Neal always had a plan. For the last two years, he'd probably had everything set up to disappear at a few moments' notice, if he had to.
But, until now, he hadn't.
"Mozzie wanted to leave New York. I didn't."
"Why not?"
"You."
Just as prison had only held Neal as long as he wanted to be held.
I caught him both times because of Kate, Peter thought, gazing at two overlapping computer printouts of Neal's recent tracking data, but the numbers blurred into a meaningless haze. Who is his Kate now?
Sara. Me. Elizabeth. June ...
The sound of June's voice from the direction of the interrogation rooms -- speak of the devil -- roused him from his contemplation. He hadn't been involved with any of the interrogations of Neal's known associates. He wasn't leading this one. Kramer had taken firm control of the FBI side of the investigation, working in tandem with Agent Ross of the U.S. Marshals.
Peter, at this point, was just another agent. Which meant, so far, he'd been able to do his job. No uncomfortable conflicts of interest. They passed him things to do. He did them, to the best of his ability.
Of course, if he actually did find a clue that someone else had missed ... then the conflict of interest would come into play in a major way.
How did this happen to me?
Someone was pointing him out to June. She crossed the conference room like a ship under full sail, and people moved out of her way instinctively. Of course June Ellington would wear a hat and gloves and an expensively tailored suit-dress to be interrogated by the FBI.
"Agent Burke," she said, and inclined her head to him.
"Mrs. Ellington," he responded in kind, accepting the level of formality under which she wished to proceed, but unsure if it was for the benefit of everyone around them, or for him alone.
Her face was cool, neither friendly nor hostile. Peter wondered how much hard-won social capital he'd blown with Neal's friends and associates already -- what they knew, what they suspected, what they were willing to admit or acknowledge. One thing was for certain: in their eyes, he was the enemy again.
"You won't find him, you know," she said.
"He's definitely got a head start."
"It doesn't matter if he has five minutes' head start, or two months, or none at all. You won't find that boy if he doesn't want to be found."
He was too exhausted, and too heartsore, to wend his way through all the traps lurking in this minefield of a conversation. "Mrs. Ellington," he said, reminding himself and her where they were right now, where they stood with each other. "You've already given your statement. If there's anything else we need, we'll call you."
We. You. Us and them. Isn't that how it's always been? How it's supposed to be?
She looked at him for a long moment. Peter had thought that Reese Hughes had one of the best poker faces he'd ever seen, but June's was better. Finally she said, "I defended you, you know. To Mozzie in particular. I told him, more than once, that you were Neal's friend, and that, even if he couldn't trust you, he should trust you to have Neal's best interests at heart."
Yeah, he was definitely far beyond his ability to navigate this conversation. "I appreciate that," Peter said. "I really do."
"I only wonder if I've been right, all this time," she said, and turned briskly, breezing out again.
"Kinda wondering that myself, at the moment," Peter murmured. He ran a hand through his hair, picked up his cup of cold coffee, then set it back down again.
Someone cleared their throat. Peter looked up.
"Diana."
"Boss. I came to tell you that they're pulling all your case files with Neal."
Peter looked past her, at the probies busy like a hive of little bees humming around the bullpen with file boxes. "I'm surprised it took them this long."
"I'm assisting," Diana said. "I came to ask you if there's anything that I should ..." Her voice, already low, faltered.
God, how had it come to this? One of his best agents, someone he'd mentored from her probie days, looking for his permission to destroy evidence? "Diana," Peter said, folding his hands on the edge of his desk and looking up at her with every bit of command he could still muster after two days without sleep, "whatever they're searching for, I want you to help them to the best of your ability. In short, I want you to do your job."
Her back went straight, and he couldn't interpret the look she gave him, but he had a feeling it wasn't a particularly happy look. "Yes, sir," she said.
Sir. Ouch. He couldn't remember the last time she'd called him that. She was on edge. He was on edge. Peter rubbed his eyes again. "And before you do that," he said, "go home. I don't want to see you back here until you've had a good, solid eight hours. And that's an order."
Her face relaxed into a tired half-smile. "You should take your own advice."
"Thinking about it," Peter said. Hughes appeared behind her, and Diana slipped out, flashing him another smile.
"Burke. My office," was all Hughes said.
Damn. Thus far, he hadn't spoken to either Hughes or Kramer alone. He had, in fact, been avoiding them, more or less successfully since both of them had half a dozen people competing for their attention at any given moment.
Putting things off, he knew, only made them harder when the time came around.
"Shut the door," Hughes said, as Peter followed him in, and Peter did, then took the chair across Hughes' desk. He felt oddly like a child in the principal's office, and the thought crossed his tired mind that maybe Neal had felt like this whenever Peter had summoned him up to his own office.
The two men regarded each other for a moment; then Hughes said, "For the love of God, Peter, what did you do to piss off Phil Kramer?"
This startled a little laugh out of him, though there wasn't much humor in it. "What makes you think I pissed him off?"
"Because I know you, Peter," Hughes said. He rubbed his temple. Peter could sympathize; between the caffeine and lack of sleep, he felt as if his head was clamped in a vice himself. "You've made a career out of pissing people off. Frankly, it's one of the things I like about you, but it's a pain in my ass at times. At least it's fairly predictable. When the crap hits the fan and my phone starts to ring, all I have to do is look around, and Peter Burke is likely to be in the neighborhood."
Peter took a deep breath and let it out again. "Kramer and I are having a difference of opinion about Neal Caffrey."
"Yeah, I guessed that much. Actually, let me rephrase. I didn't exactly guess." Hughes picked up his cup of coffee, took a sip and grimaced. "I have, in fact, been hearing a lot of interesting things from Kramer about you. So I ask you again, Peter: what'd you do to get on his bad side?" He lowered the coffee cup and raised his eyes to meet Peter's. "If I have to hear it from someone, I'd rather hear it from you than find out when Phil sets an OPR report on my desk."
Peter looked up sharply. "Has this gone upstairs to OPR?"
Hughes gave him a slow nod. "You are by no means the FBI's top priority, so the paperwork isn't going to move fast, but it's moving. I'm not suspending you, Peter -- yet -- because Kramer hasn't given me any evidence. Just hearsay and suspicion. But he's going through your files."
"I heard," Peter said heavily.
"Damn it, Peter, talk to me. I've known Phil for thirty years. He's a good cop -- at least, he was back when we worked together. Determined. Dedicated. And I know he was your mentor at Quantico -- hell, it was Phil Kramer who recommended you to me. That's a strong bond. It's not the kind of bond a man throws away lightly."
A thread of anger worked its way through Peter's exhaustion, unwinding slowly from the coffee-sour pit of his stomach. "And you think I'm the one who threw it away?"
"Well, in the absence of your side of the story, that's what I'm left with."
Peter leaned back in his chair, ran both of his hands over his face, blew out another breath. Hughes waited.
"I called Kramer in on the Degas forgery a few months ago." In retrospect, not the brightest idea he'd ever had. But at the time, he'd really needed it -- needed the backup, needed the emotional support, needed Kramer's level head and advice.
"Yes, I remember. Right before everything went to hell with Matthew Keller."
"The thing I always respected most about Phil Kramer ..." Peter began, then trailed off. No, he thought. More than that. The thing I wanted to emulate. To be. And suddenly, with a sharp stab of pain tempered with unexpected warmth, he remembered Neal saying, of Adler, He's the man who made me who I am today.
Neal. Where was he now? Somewhere far away, Peter thought. Hoped. Feared. Somewhere far beyond the reach of the FBI.
"Kramer would get his teeth into something and never let it go," he said slowly. "Tenacious as a bulldog. You know how they have that saying about the Mounties, that they always get their man? Well, that was Kramer. He'd do whatever it took, and he wasn't the sort of guy who pawned off the work onto someone else because he didn't want to do it. He'd roll up his sleeves and get right down to it, do all the legwork, build an airtight case and finally nail the bastard."
The man who made me who I am today...
My God, it's true, he thought. Perhaps it wasn't fair to say that Kramer had made him who he was -- any more than, in his opinion, it was fair to say that Adler had made Neal -- but certainly, Kramer's methodological and determined working style had found fertile ground in young Peter Burke, who came from an accounting and mathematics background. In math, there was always a right answer. In law, he had believed, it was the same -- that between the facts of the situation, and the laws of his jurisdiction, a right answer could always be found.
"And Caffrey is Kramer's man this time," Hughes said quietly.
Peter nodded, not trusting himself, for a moment, to speak.
"It doesn't end there, though. Some of the things that Kramer is saying ..." Hughes leaned forward, hands folded on his desk. Peter had never thought of Hughes as an old man, but for a moment, he looked old -- old and tired. "I'll be blunt with you, Peter. He tells me you're a dirty cop. Says you've been colluding with Caffrey for years. That the two of you concealed the U-boat treasure. That you helped him escape."
"Are you handling him, or becoming him?"
The terrifying thing -- the thing that opened up a bottomless pit under his feet every time he started to think about it -- was that he couldn't entirely say Kramer was wrong. Part of him said That's absurd. Another part of him replied, Don't you think that's what all of them say, the dirty cops, the ones who turn your stomach? Do you think all of them recognize what they're turning into in time to stop it?
"When Neal cut his anklet," Peter said, "I was testifying in front of his commutation board."
"I know that. I'm not saying I believe it, Peter, but I'm telling you what I've been hearing, and what OPR is going to hear."
And the evidence, Peter thought, was there -- in his casefiles with Neal, those damning casefiles. It was there between the lines: all the times he'd looked the other way, all the times he'd felt the greater good was served by giving Neal a longer leash, by allowing Neal to gather evidence his way and twisting the law into a pretzel shape to justify it.
Hell, he'd done it yesterday, not only giving the go-ahead for Neal to retrieve the Raphael, but staging a wholly false cover story and watching the pieces fall into place, Kramer's triumph turning to ashes.
And you enjoyed it, didn't you? he thought, turning the stinging barb of his own condemnation on himself. He'd always loved the thrill of putting one over on the bad guys, the moment when it all came together and they saw that they'd been had.
Except this time, the "bad guys" were the FBI and his mentor. His friend. Someone he'd cared about, someone whose opinion he'd respected, someone he'd trusted all these years to have his back.
If I was wrong about Kramer, then he was also wrong about me.
But Kramer was wrong. Peter still believed that. Neal could change, was changing, and he didn't deserve to be hung out to dry for things he'd done years ago. And so, he'd helped Neal play his former mentor for a fool, and now he wondered if the difference was in Kramer, or in himself.
I can't deal with this right now, he thought. "If we're done here, sir, I haven't seen my wife since yesterday morning."
Hughes studied his face, then sighed and waved a hand. "Yes. Go home. I think we all need to go home for a while. It's obvious that Caffrey isn't going to fall into our laps. You were talking about legwork -- we're looking at some long, careful legwork this time."
"Just like when I caught him the first time," Peter said, pushing himself out of the chair before he fell asleep in it.
"No," Hughes said, looking up at him solemnly. "Not entirely. I appreciate your concern for Caffrey, but there's still a thin bright line between the us and the people we catch, Peter. You've always been clear on which side of it you stand. I hope that's still true."
*
Elizabeth was sitting at the kitchen table when he opened the door, laptop in front of her, though she didn't seem to be doing anything but staring at it. She rose and took him into her arms. For a long time they just held each other.
"You were right," she said at last, into his chest. "The Marshals were here. They asked a lot of questions."
"Satchmo bite any of them?"
El laughed, sad and slightly muffled. "No. Though he was eyeing one of them in a very suspicious way. Do you want something to eat?"
"Please," he said, heartfelt. "I don't even care what it is. As long as it doesn't come from a vending machine."
He felt a bit more human after a slice of El's meatloaf and a long shower. He pulled on a T-shirt and sweatpants, and lay on the bed with El, a beer sitting on the bedside table. He needed the relaxation, but hadn't taken more than a couple of swallows, knowing that in his present state it was going to put him out like a light.
"We don't have to talk about this until you get some sleep," El said, nesting into the crook of his shoulder.
"No, we need to get it out of the way now. I'm probably going to sleep like a rock until morning, and I have to be back at work by first light." He sighed and played with her hair, a habit from the days when they were first dating. "El, Neal ran because I told him to."
El swatted him on the shoulder. "I knew it!"
"Ow!"
"I knew it! I knew he wouldn't simply take off. Honey, why didn't you tell me?"
"With a dozen federal Marshals and Kramer listening in?"
"Oh. Good point." She settled back down against his arm.
"I shouldn't even be telling you now."
"But you are."
"We don't keep things from each other," Peter said. "Not things like this."
"Well, I should hope not." El was quiet for a moment, then she said, "So tell me?"
So he did: about Kramer, about the fallout from the Raphael, about the moment when his eyes had met Neal's and he'd known, or at least hoped, that they were on the same page.
"You did the right thing," El said.
He hadn't realized until that moment how desperately he had wanted to hear someone, anyone, say that. "I wish I was as sure as you are."
El rolled over and sat up. "Honey, you said it yourself. Kramer was either going to take Neal to DC for as long as he could hold him, or put him back in prison."
"Would that really be the worst possible outcome? Worse than going on the run?"
"Being in prison for the rest of his life? I'd say so."
Peter threw an arm over his eyes. This cut too close to things he'd spent the last twenty-four hours very stubbornly not thinking about. "He'd be in prison because he broke the law, hon. Kramer isn't hanging him out to dry for things he didn't do. He's sending Neal away for things that he did. Laws he broke. Crimes he deserves to be punished for."
"So he forged a few little paintings, back when he was a kid ..."
"Grand larceny is more than a few little paintings."
"Peter, you said it yourself just now. Why did you help Neal return the Raphael to Sterling Bosch, rather than turning him in? Because he's not that person anymore. Because it's not fair to send him to prison for something he did years ago. It wouldn't restore the painting to its owners or make Neal a better person. it would only hurt him. You've always said ..." She drew nearer, her hair falling to frame his face. "Arresting people, putting them in prison ... it's not about punishment, not really. It's about justice. About making the sentence fit the crime. People can't just go around breaking the law, so there has to be a penalty. But law enforcement has to be above anger, above revenge, above eye-for-an-eye justice, or all you have is vigilantism." She touched his nose with a fingertip. "Don't you always say that?"
Peter grinned despite himself. She always did have that effect on him. "I think you make my rants about justice sound more coherent than I ever managed to."
"But that's what you believe."
"More or less." He could tell that she saw this as a funk to drag him out of, and he wasn't ready for that. There were serious issues that he still felt she was missing. "El, I guess the question is -- what if Kramer's right? What if Neal's been playing me all this time?"
This time her swat was a little less gentle.
"Ow."
"You don't truly believe that."
"No, I don't, and I think that's the problem." He reached for the beer, deciding that he really needed the anesthetic effect right about now. "I've done a lot of things the past couple of years that I'm starting to wonder about, El. I've cut Neal a lot of slack, taken a lot of shortcuts, and at the time it always seemed like the right thing to do, but now that I'm looking at it overall, at the pattern ..."
El leaned her elbows on her knees. "You're wondering how it looks from the outside."
"More than that. I don't give a damn about OPR. Well ... okay ... I really do give a damn, because they have the ability to screw up both our lives royally, but what really matters to me, El ..." And this was the heart of it, the core problem that his brain had been circling around for the last twenty-four hours, only to be deflected every time because he couldn't go there, wouldn't go there. "El, I've been asking myself what I would think if I looked at another agent, another CI, and saw some of the same things I've done with Neal. Done for Neal." He began to tick off on his fingers. "Hiding evidence. Stealing evidence. Turning a blind eye to both misdemeanors and felonies. Not asking him questions I know he can't answer without incriminating himself. Actively stopping him from incriminating himself in front of federal agents." He started warming up to his topic, gesturing with the beer. "Inviting him to my house. Leaving him unsupervised with my wife. Allowing him to help my wife commit burglary --"
"Honey. That was only once," El pointed out.
"Assisting in the commission of cons, including aspects I knew were illegal at the time. Letting my own judgment override the law whenever it suited me. I don't know, El." He discovered that the beer was nearly empty, and drained the dregs. "Kramer thinks Neal was playing me for a patsy. That's not really what I'm worried about, though. If he was running a con on me -- on us --"
"He wasn't," El said firmly. "Not Neal."
"-- then I don't think it lasted beyond the first month or two that we worked together. Well, okay, maybe there were a few points afterwards ... but see, that's the thing I can't get through to Kramer, or anyone: I could tell when Neal was trying to con me. That's not what worries me. What worries me is that I actually knew him well enough that I could tell. What worries me ..." He closed his eyes, forced the words out. "What worries me is that I'm afraid working with Neal has so deeply eroded my sense of right and wrong that I can't even tell them apart anymore. I'm afraid I'm not me anymore, El. And I'm afraid I wouldn't even know if I wasn't."
"Oh, hon." Her lips found his cheek and the edge of his mouth. "Well ... didn't you once tell me that I'm your reality check?"
"I may have said something like that, once or twice," he said, feeling a smile flirting with the corners of his mouth despite his best attempts to stay serious. Damn it.
"Then let me be a reality check for you now. I live with you, sleep with you, talk with you every day. I think I know you better than Kramer, or Hughes, or even Neal, don't I?"
"I think that's fair to say," he agreed, then tried to torpedo her optimism before it rose too high. "But you don't know everything about me. You don't see me at work, honey --"
El laid a finger on his lips. "I'm not done," she said, and kept the finger in place until he gently captured it with his lips and then let it go. "I don't believe that you've become a completely different person over the last two years. It's not that I haven't noticed changes --"
"Wasn't I just saying that, Ms. Reality Check?"
"Good changes," El said, wrinkling her nose at him. "You're ... lighter, I suppose. You laugh more. You have more fun."
"I do?"
"You're less devoted to justice as an abstract, and more interested in helping people. I mean, you always have been, and that's one of the things I love about you, but I think you've come around a lot more towards seeing the people in the system, and serving them, rather than serving the system in order to serve the people. Now, unless you're going to say that my judgment is entirely unreliable ..."
"I would never say that," he said as earnestly as he could.
"Well, then, as your duly appointed reality check, Agent Burke, I think Neal's been as good for you as you have been for him. Really. I do." She kissed his nose, and looked suddenly wistful. "And I hope he's safe and happy, wherever he is."
"Oh, God, me too," Peter whispered.
She fell on top of him, and they clung to each other for a while.
"Starting to feel that beer," Peter murmured at last.
El withdrew, tucking a blanket around him. "Go to sleep. Everything will still be here in the morning."
"Does it have to be? I'm hoping that it'll all sort itself out while I'm asleep."
"Maybe it will." Her lips lingered along his cheek, warm and petal-soft. They were the last thing he felt as he drifted off.
*
OPR showed up on the third day of the investigation into Neal's disappearance. They commandeered Peter's case files from the last two years, trucking box after box off to a room near Hughes' office that was hastily cleared for their use.
The third day was also when his Kramer-avoidance efforts failed, and the two of them came face-to-face in front of the coffee machine.
"Pete," Kramer said.
"Phil."
They maneuvered around each other, Peter aiming for the coffee machine, Kramer en route back to the office that OPR had taken over and filled with Peter's files. But Kramer hesitated and turned back.
"What the hell happened to you, Pete? You were good. You were one of the best I've ever seen."
"That's a funny thing, Phil," Peter said, pouring himself a cup of coffee and focusing on that, not on Kramer's face. "I used to feel the same way about you."
"You've fallen, Peter. I refuse to believe there's a part of you that doesn't recognize it. I don't think you're so far gone that you can't come back."
Peter raised his head and forced himself to meet Kramer's gaze. Once, he'd tied himself into knots trying to win this man's approval. A word of praise from Kramer left him walking on air. Even seeing Kramer again on the Degas case had made him feel -- worthwhile. Like someone had his back. After months of not knowing where he stood with Neal, fumbling for safe ground only to have it crumble underfoot, he'd reached out for Kramer's solidity and stability like a drowning man.
Kramer had been there when Peter had needed him.
And now this.
Did I fall, or did you? he wondered, more miserable than angry. Did we both change, or is it just me?
And most of all, he wondered if Kramer was right -- or if he was right -- or, most staggeringly of all, if maybe both of them were right, from within their individual frames of reference.
But only one of them could prevail in a court of law.
"If you'll excuse me," Peter said, "I need to find an escaped felon, and I suppose you have to manufacture a few more charges to pin on me."
"You're dirty, Pete," Kramer said to his back as he escaped. "Damned if I know how it came to this, how the man I used to respect turned into what you are now -- but you're dirty, and I'm going to prove it."
Peter retreated to his office with his cup of coffee.
*
Actually, just being investigated by OPR was throwing up fences around him. Hughes, he knew, was doing his best to keep the wolves from Peter's door until the very last minute. But there was always water-cooler talk. The White Collar unit was returning to business as usual -- new cases were coming along, agents being assigned to them, but Peter himself was still on Caffrey-finding detail, for as long as he could remain. He had a feeling that his days on that assignment were numbered, but Hughes had made it clear that he didn't want Peter working on anything else.
Either he was giving Peter an opportunity to cover Neal's trail, or he wanted to keep Peter on a dead-end assignment away from actual casework that might end up as tainted as his earlier cases were in danger of becoming. A vote of absolute confidence, in Neal as well as Peter -- or a flat no-confidence vote. It could be read either way.
And there was also Neal's desk, still sitting just as he'd left it. Someone needed to be assigned that space. Peter hadn't done it yet. As long as the desk still remained in its usual spot, its usual condition, he could imagine that Neal might walk through that door at any moment, twirl his hat and settle into place just as if nothing had happened.
It was a stupid thing to even imagine, and Peter told himself that it had absolutely nothing to do with why he hadn't put another agent at that desk yet, or cleaned out its contents. Everything had to remain in situ as evidence. They'd gone over it, of course, in search of any clues as to where Neal had gone. But they might have missed something ...
More and more, Peter felt as if his life were in a holding pattern, waiting for something to break. Waiting for Neal to be found, for OPR to pass down a ruling, for rain to fall from the clouds he could feel gathering above his head.
*
The break that finally came wasn't the one he'd been hoping for. It was a suspension.
Hughes called Peter into his office a week after Neal's disappearance, after most of the division had gone home for the day. It was, Peter knew, Hughes' way of sparing him as much as possible. Kramer wasn't there, either, though Peter suspected that it had taken some maneuvering on Hughes' part to make sure he wasn't there to share in the victory. That's another thing he and I have in common, Peter thought bitterly. They both wanted to be there to see the bad guy go down.
But he'd never expected that he'd be the bad guy in Kramer's sights.
"I'm sorry, Peter," Hughes said. "I'll need your gun and badge."
It was becoming almost routine, Peter thought numbly as he handed them over. He'd never been suspended before he'd started working with Neal. Now, here was the third suspension in as many years. Another piece of damning evidence that he wasn't the agent he thought he was. Good cops didn't get investigated once a year for not doing their jobs.
Twice before, it had worked out. Third time's the charm? Peter thought, and then, The charm for whom?
"Mind telling me what they found?" he asked mildly.
"All I know is that they're looking into the files from the last six months."
The U-boat. Shit. Of everything he'd done with Neal -- of every time he'd made a calculated decision to look away, to play dumb, to omit a convenient detail or five from his report -- that was the one that had the most potential to come back and hurt him.
Still, no matter what Kramer thought he'd found, they had a plausible out. "The treasure's been repatriated," he said.
"You didn't hear this from me," Hughes said, "but apparently half the treasure's been repatriated."
Peter's head snapped around. "Say what?"
"Damn it," Hughes said wearily. "I wish I'd gotten that reaction on polygraph. It's true that everything on our manifest fragment has been accounted for, but they've been doing comparisons of the U-boat's estimated cargo capacity, and existing information about missing Russian museum artifacts, to the actual recovered items. And they're fairly sure there's a lot of it still missing."
"Could have been on another U-boat," Peter said through stiff lips. "Or stashed somewhere else sixty years ago."
"Could have been," Hughes agreed.
So he went home. Both Diana and Jones, when he sent them brief text messages, promised to keep him in the loop.
Still, it felt as if he was being severed from his life, one strand at a time.
"Honey," El soothed, draping her arm over his shoulder and kissing his ear. "It's either a mistake, or part of the treasure really was destroyed in the fire. You and I both know Neal wasn't hiding anything from us."
"I really, really want to believe that, El." But the longer Neal was gone, the more his trust in Neal seemed to slip into a nebulous, hazy past. He began to question his own motives, his own reactions. It was like trying to recall a dream, or a favorite memory -- replaying events, reassessing everything in light of new information.
Would I have still given Neal the nod to leave, even if by doing so, I'd lose everything?
And the answer his heart came back with, not even thinking about it, was yes. Neal was free, and it was worth it.
Traitorous heart. He wished he dared trust it.
*
Now that he was suspended, Peter had nothing to do but let the wheels in his brain spin. He was snapping at El over nothing, and waking up at 2 a.m. to roam the house. The urge to try to find Neal was overwhelming, a combination of worry and simple force of habit. It was so ingrained that he had to fight against it. Neal is missing. Must find him.
But he didn't dare search. He knew that he was still under suspicion for Neal's disappearance, even if no one could prove a thing. They would be watching him -- maybe not closely, but if he started seriously investigating Neal, he knew that he would risk putting the Marshals and FBI onto Neal's trail. He wanted to reach out to Neal's old friends and contacts, but didn't dare. And he wasn't sure how they felt about him right now anyway. June had made no overtures since Neal had gone missing. Peter had a feeling that if he went to see her, she'd be polite and formal and in no way helpful, and she'd probably be glad when he left.
He simply had to trust Neal. Had to trust that Neal was safe and happy and keeping himself out of trouble. Trust that, if Neal did get in over his head wherever he was, he'd trust Peter enough to ask for help if he needed it.
That was a lot of trust. On both sides.
*
El suggested getting out of the city for a few days -- Peter suspected that he was driving her up the wall, but when he thought about it, she had a point; hanging around the city wasn't good for either him or his marriage right now. So El took a few days off from her business, and they drove upstate to visit El's sister and Peter's parents, who lived within about a hundred miles of each other. They took Satchmo. For a time, the city and everything happening in it receded to a distant pinpoint on the map, not even worth thinking about.
While El spent some quality time with her sister's family, Peter went back to the old family home north of Syracuse, kicked back on the porch and tossed a ball around with the old man.
He couldn't talk about his cases. His dad was long since familiar with this. And personal problems weren't the sort of thing that guys like them talked about, anyway. Peter knew that his parents could tell something was bothering him, but no one tried to force him to talk about it.
It was oddly like traveling in time, slipping back into the skin of his childhood self. He slept in his old bedroom -- it had his mother's sewing machine in the corner now, but the sun still slanted through the branches of the oak tree to wake him up, and the bed still had that one wobbly leg he remembered. He took long walks in the fields with Satchmo, and played catch with his dad in the backyard just for the hell of it.
And he thought about the child he'd been, the kid who loved math and baseball, always tried to stay out of trouble, and never dreamed of a career in law enforcement. He wondered what that kid would think of him now, thirty years later.
As he walked through the fields behind the house, golden in the slanting sun, the thought occurred to him that before Neal came into his life, he'd had it all: a wife, a house, a job he liked, even a dog. (He reached down to ruffle Satchmo's ears.) He'd been living the dream, and if the bedrock beneath his feet felt like slippery sand now, then he had only himself, not Neal, to blame. He'd started aiming higher. He'd found new ways to play with the law in the belief that it was better than what he'd done before. He'd stood on home plate at Yankee Stadium and didn't ask any questions, just let himself believe that it was okay. He'd wanted things he couldn't have, and done things that guys like him didn't get to do. And most of all, he'd started believing that he could draw lines between right and wrong without using the law for a guide, and instead it had all ended up in a tangled mess and now he stood on the edge of losing everything.
Because that was how it worked. He'd said that to Neal, all the way back at the beginning, hadn't he? The only way to earn anything that was real, meaningful, lasting, was to work hard for it. He'd learned that lesson while growing up with a father in the construction trade. Hard work in the real world translated to real things. You built a house and had a house. You worked hard in school, went to college, built a career, and you had that, you'd earned that.
Things like standing on the pitcher's mound at Yankee Stadium didn't happen to guys like him -- and certainly didn't just fall into his lap. There was always a price to pay, and whether you paid it beforehand -- in the form of hard work -- or afterwards, in hard and painful consequences, the reckoning would come. Always.
Satchmo dropped a stick at his feet and whuffed softly.
"Yeah, boy." Peter picked it up and tossed it into the golden fields. This? This is real, he thought. The feeling of the stick in his hand. The rippling of the grass as Satchmo bounded through it.
You never get something for nothing. You start believing you're better than everyone else, start believing that you're such hot stuff that you can interpret the law all on your own without being held accountable to anyone, and sooner or later, you'll fall. The law will bring you down. And you'll deserve it.
He threw the stick again, and wiped the dog slobber on the thigh of his jeans. The sun rested on the rim of the world. Was Neal watching the sun go down somewhere too? Different time zone, probably, Peter thought. It most likely went down a long time ago.
If it was night wherever Neal was, then Neal was probably ... being Neal: out enjoying the night life, maybe, or, more ominously but not that unlikely, casing something. Was Neal back in the business? They hadn't heard a peep, and Peter wanted to believe, he really did. The U-boat treasure -- no. Neal wouldn't have lied to him with El's life on the line.
So maybe Neal wasn't hanging on a rope outside some rich tourist's balcony. Maybe Neal was walking on a beach, barefoot in the sand. He'd have a glass of wine in his hand. He'd be relaxed and happy and thinking about his future, anklet-free.
Peter closed his eyes. He could picture it so vividly that he could smell the ocean, hear the slap of the waves.
If life were a movie, this would be when his phone would ring in his pocket. And it would be Neal on the other end.
But life wasn't a movie, so no phone calls. The sun slipped below the trees. Peter took a deep breath, took the stick gently from Satchmo's mouth -- "Sorry, boy, we're done for the day" -- and turned to head for his parents' house.
When it came right down to it, the thing about life was that you didn't get those perfect little moments, those times when your faith was upheld. What makes it faith, Peter thought, is that you have to believe or not believe. If you have proof, it isn't faith.
Walking home through the grass in the sunset light, it felt so much like his childhood that he could almost believe that he was back there, walking home after an afternoon of playing fetch with his old spaniel mix -- what was that dog's name? Rusty, yeah, that had been it. For a moment he felt a deep sense of loss on behalf of that child, the boy he used to be, who knew himself and his place in the world, who believed that every question had a right answer and that he would always be able to find it if he looked hard enough.
Then he'd grown up, and his black-and-white life faded into endless shades of gray.
There's a thin bright line between the us and the people we catch, Hughes had said. You've always been clear on which side of it you stand.
Was I? Peter thought. Or was it just that you used to agree with most of my choices?
The setting sun in his eyes, the ground beneath his feet -- these things were real, solid, there. And Neal's friendship was real too. Neal's potential was real. The things we've done in the last two years ... they mattered. The people we helped. The bad guys we put away.
Maybe he hadn't always made the right choices. Sometimes there hadn't been right choices to make, just the need to choose between equally flawed options.
But he believed in Neal. He really did. Peter believed that wherever Neal was right now, he was safe and free and doing the right thing.
And he still believed in himself. Perhaps he could see better options in hindsight than he'd managed to find at the time. But, no matter what, he had always done his best.
And that's what matters, he thought, and suddenly he felt as if the crushing weight that had been bearing him down for the last few weeks had lifted, and he could breathe again. I did my best, damn it. And I'm going to keep right on doing my best. No matter who tries to convince me otherwise.
Even if it meant helping Neal hide from the law. Because legal wasn't always right. There was a thin bright line, all right, but it wasn't between the law and the other side. It was between right and wrong, and he'd always worked as hard as he could to stay on the proper side of it. There had been times he'd screwed that up, too, but he'd always done his best to fix it.
Using the law for a moral compass was infinitely easier, and had much less potential to cost him dearly. But it wasn't right.
The sun had set, and the farmhouse loomed before him in the dusk. The porch was in shadow, and when his father's voice spoke out of the darkness, Peter jumped. "Did you find what you were looking for out there, son?"
"Yeah," Peter said. "I think I did."
~
Title: Thin Bright Line
Fandom: White Collar
Rating: PG
Pairing: mostly gen with background Peter/Elizabeth
Word Count: 8000
Warning: Spoilers for 3x16
Summary: "Are you handling him, or becoming him?" Peter doubts ... and wonders. It's hard to believe in yourself when people you respect keep telling you that you've made the wrong choice.
Note: For this prompt at
collarcorner.Cross-posted: http://archiveofourown.org/works/415051
El picked up on the first ring. "Well, hon?" she said, her voice bright and determinedly cheerful. "Which cake is it going to be?"
"Neither of them," Peter said, and then the next words caught like a fishhook in his chest, so that all he could do was stand with the phone to his ear, his mouth open. Around him, the babble of the FBI in full emergency mode faded into the background. There was only El's breathing on the other end of the line.
"What happened?" she asked at last.
"Neal ran," Peter said, forcing the words out, making them real.
"He -- what?"
He could see El's face all too well, the beautiful smile freezing, her eyes going wide and shocked. At the same time he was acutely conscious of the ears around him, particularly Kramer's. Acutely aware of the razor's edge upon which he and his career were presently balanced.
"We lost track of him about half an hour ago, but right now we're proceeding on the assumption that he cut his anklet and took off. We're putting together a manhunt right now. The Marshals are coming in to take the lead on this one."
Peter didn't believe in telepathy, marital or otherwise, but as he spoke he tried as hard as he could to infuse every word with everything he couldn't say. Tried to will her to understand, or at least, to wait -- to withhold judgment on Neal until he could tell her everything.
"What can I do?" El asked quietly.
Oh, Elizabeth. "Stay by the phone in case he tries to contact you. We're going to put a detail on the house." For all the good that would do. "The Marshals will want to talk to you. I'm going to call our family attorney --"
"An attorney?" El said, her voice firming. "That's ridiculous. I don't need an attorney."
"Hon, I want our attorney present when they question you."
"Am I being charged with a crime?" Now there was an extra-crisp element in her voice. Damn it, the woman was too smart. "Are you?"
"Everyone knows you didn't have anything to do with it." God, he hoped not. Neal couldn't have had time to contact her before he left, could he? No, her shock had been genuine. He knew El well enough to know she wasn't faking. "But because of my -- our close involvement with Neal, we're doing everything strictly by the book, and keeping everything on the record. That's for all of our protection -- yours, mine, Neal's."
"Burke!" Hughes barked from across the room. Peter looked up. Hughes was doing his best poker face, but Kramer's expression was sharp enough to cut glass. There were a swarm of Marshals around them.
"Gotta go, hon. The Marshals are here." Peter rubbed his eyes. He was already exhausted, worn down to an emotional snapping point by the past few days -- hell, the past few months. And it was only going to get rougher from here. "I won't be home until late tonight. Maybe not at all, depending on how it goes."
"I won't wait up. I love you." El hesitated, and then said, "Good luck," before she hung up.
Good luck. More than one way to take that. No matter what she suspected, Peter was suddenly, intensely glad that he hadn't had a chance to talk to her in private yet. Right now, El knew nothing, and she was better off that way. She could tell the absolute truth to the Marshals without holding anything back.
Plausible deniability, all the way.
When did it come to this -- hiding things from my wife, so that she doesn't have to lie to the authorities on my behalf?
*
In the end, it was over twenty-four hours before he had a chance to talk to Elizabeth. Twenty-four hours of living on lukewarm coffee and cafeteria sandwiches, twenty-four hours of staring at maps and computer screens until his eyes crossed.
Neal had vanished so utterly and completely that Peter knew he'd had an escape plan already in place. Of course he'd had a plan. Neal always had a plan. For the last two years, he'd probably had everything set up to disappear at a few moments' notice, if he had to.
But, until now, he hadn't.
"Mozzie wanted to leave New York. I didn't."
"Why not?"
"You."
Just as prison had only held Neal as long as he wanted to be held.
I caught him both times because of Kate, Peter thought, gazing at two overlapping computer printouts of Neal's recent tracking data, but the numbers blurred into a meaningless haze. Who is his Kate now?
Sara. Me. Elizabeth. June ...
The sound of June's voice from the direction of the interrogation rooms -- speak of the devil -- roused him from his contemplation. He hadn't been involved with any of the interrogations of Neal's known associates. He wasn't leading this one. Kramer had taken firm control of the FBI side of the investigation, working in tandem with Agent Ross of the U.S. Marshals.
Peter, at this point, was just another agent. Which meant, so far, he'd been able to do his job. No uncomfortable conflicts of interest. They passed him things to do. He did them, to the best of his ability.
Of course, if he actually did find a clue that someone else had missed ... then the conflict of interest would come into play in a major way.
How did this happen to me?
Someone was pointing him out to June. She crossed the conference room like a ship under full sail, and people moved out of her way instinctively. Of course June Ellington would wear a hat and gloves and an expensively tailored suit-dress to be interrogated by the FBI.
"Agent Burke," she said, and inclined her head to him.
"Mrs. Ellington," he responded in kind, accepting the level of formality under which she wished to proceed, but unsure if it was for the benefit of everyone around them, or for him alone.
Her face was cool, neither friendly nor hostile. Peter wondered how much hard-won social capital he'd blown with Neal's friends and associates already -- what they knew, what they suspected, what they were willing to admit or acknowledge. One thing was for certain: in their eyes, he was the enemy again.
"You won't find him, you know," she said.
"He's definitely got a head start."
"It doesn't matter if he has five minutes' head start, or two months, or none at all. You won't find that boy if he doesn't want to be found."
He was too exhausted, and too heartsore, to wend his way through all the traps lurking in this minefield of a conversation. "Mrs. Ellington," he said, reminding himself and her where they were right now, where they stood with each other. "You've already given your statement. If there's anything else we need, we'll call you."
We. You. Us and them. Isn't that how it's always been? How it's supposed to be?
She looked at him for a long moment. Peter had thought that Reese Hughes had one of the best poker faces he'd ever seen, but June's was better. Finally she said, "I defended you, you know. To Mozzie in particular. I told him, more than once, that you were Neal's friend, and that, even if he couldn't trust you, he should trust you to have Neal's best interests at heart."
Yeah, he was definitely far beyond his ability to navigate this conversation. "I appreciate that," Peter said. "I really do."
"I only wonder if I've been right, all this time," she said, and turned briskly, breezing out again.
"Kinda wondering that myself, at the moment," Peter murmured. He ran a hand through his hair, picked up his cup of cold coffee, then set it back down again.
Someone cleared their throat. Peter looked up.
"Diana."
"Boss. I came to tell you that they're pulling all your case files with Neal."
Peter looked past her, at the probies busy like a hive of little bees humming around the bullpen with file boxes. "I'm surprised it took them this long."
"I'm assisting," Diana said. "I came to ask you if there's anything that I should ..." Her voice, already low, faltered.
God, how had it come to this? One of his best agents, someone he'd mentored from her probie days, looking for his permission to destroy evidence? "Diana," Peter said, folding his hands on the edge of his desk and looking up at her with every bit of command he could still muster after two days without sleep, "whatever they're searching for, I want you to help them to the best of your ability. In short, I want you to do your job."
Her back went straight, and he couldn't interpret the look she gave him, but he had a feeling it wasn't a particularly happy look. "Yes, sir," she said.
Sir. Ouch. He couldn't remember the last time she'd called him that. She was on edge. He was on edge. Peter rubbed his eyes again. "And before you do that," he said, "go home. I don't want to see you back here until you've had a good, solid eight hours. And that's an order."
Her face relaxed into a tired half-smile. "You should take your own advice."
"Thinking about it," Peter said. Hughes appeared behind her, and Diana slipped out, flashing him another smile.
"Burke. My office," was all Hughes said.
Damn. Thus far, he hadn't spoken to either Hughes or Kramer alone. He had, in fact, been avoiding them, more or less successfully since both of them had half a dozen people competing for their attention at any given moment.
Putting things off, he knew, only made them harder when the time came around.
"Shut the door," Hughes said, as Peter followed him in, and Peter did, then took the chair across Hughes' desk. He felt oddly like a child in the principal's office, and the thought crossed his tired mind that maybe Neal had felt like this whenever Peter had summoned him up to his own office.
The two men regarded each other for a moment; then Hughes said, "For the love of God, Peter, what did you do to piss off Phil Kramer?"
This startled a little laugh out of him, though there wasn't much humor in it. "What makes you think I pissed him off?"
"Because I know you, Peter," Hughes said. He rubbed his temple. Peter could sympathize; between the caffeine and lack of sleep, he felt as if his head was clamped in a vice himself. "You've made a career out of pissing people off. Frankly, it's one of the things I like about you, but it's a pain in my ass at times. At least it's fairly predictable. When the crap hits the fan and my phone starts to ring, all I have to do is look around, and Peter Burke is likely to be in the neighborhood."
Peter took a deep breath and let it out again. "Kramer and I are having a difference of opinion about Neal Caffrey."
"Yeah, I guessed that much. Actually, let me rephrase. I didn't exactly guess." Hughes picked up his cup of coffee, took a sip and grimaced. "I have, in fact, been hearing a lot of interesting things from Kramer about you. So I ask you again, Peter: what'd you do to get on his bad side?" He lowered the coffee cup and raised his eyes to meet Peter's. "If I have to hear it from someone, I'd rather hear it from you than find out when Phil sets an OPR report on my desk."
Peter looked up sharply. "Has this gone upstairs to OPR?"
Hughes gave him a slow nod. "You are by no means the FBI's top priority, so the paperwork isn't going to move fast, but it's moving. I'm not suspending you, Peter -- yet -- because Kramer hasn't given me any evidence. Just hearsay and suspicion. But he's going through your files."
"I heard," Peter said heavily.
"Damn it, Peter, talk to me. I've known Phil for thirty years. He's a good cop -- at least, he was back when we worked together. Determined. Dedicated. And I know he was your mentor at Quantico -- hell, it was Phil Kramer who recommended you to me. That's a strong bond. It's not the kind of bond a man throws away lightly."
A thread of anger worked its way through Peter's exhaustion, unwinding slowly from the coffee-sour pit of his stomach. "And you think I'm the one who threw it away?"
"Well, in the absence of your side of the story, that's what I'm left with."
Peter leaned back in his chair, ran both of his hands over his face, blew out another breath. Hughes waited.
"I called Kramer in on the Degas forgery a few months ago." In retrospect, not the brightest idea he'd ever had. But at the time, he'd really needed it -- needed the backup, needed the emotional support, needed Kramer's level head and advice.
"Yes, I remember. Right before everything went to hell with Matthew Keller."
"The thing I always respected most about Phil Kramer ..." Peter began, then trailed off. No, he thought. More than that. The thing I wanted to emulate. To be. And suddenly, with a sharp stab of pain tempered with unexpected warmth, he remembered Neal saying, of Adler, He's the man who made me who I am today.
Neal. Where was he now? Somewhere far away, Peter thought. Hoped. Feared. Somewhere far beyond the reach of the FBI.
"Kramer would get his teeth into something and never let it go," he said slowly. "Tenacious as a bulldog. You know how they have that saying about the Mounties, that they always get their man? Well, that was Kramer. He'd do whatever it took, and he wasn't the sort of guy who pawned off the work onto someone else because he didn't want to do it. He'd roll up his sleeves and get right down to it, do all the legwork, build an airtight case and finally nail the bastard."
The man who made me who I am today...
My God, it's true, he thought. Perhaps it wasn't fair to say that Kramer had made him who he was -- any more than, in his opinion, it was fair to say that Adler had made Neal -- but certainly, Kramer's methodological and determined working style had found fertile ground in young Peter Burke, who came from an accounting and mathematics background. In math, there was always a right answer. In law, he had believed, it was the same -- that between the facts of the situation, and the laws of his jurisdiction, a right answer could always be found.
"And Caffrey is Kramer's man this time," Hughes said quietly.
Peter nodded, not trusting himself, for a moment, to speak.
"It doesn't end there, though. Some of the things that Kramer is saying ..." Hughes leaned forward, hands folded on his desk. Peter had never thought of Hughes as an old man, but for a moment, he looked old -- old and tired. "I'll be blunt with you, Peter. He tells me you're a dirty cop. Says you've been colluding with Caffrey for years. That the two of you concealed the U-boat treasure. That you helped him escape."
"Are you handling him, or becoming him?"
The terrifying thing -- the thing that opened up a bottomless pit under his feet every time he started to think about it -- was that he couldn't entirely say Kramer was wrong. Part of him said That's absurd. Another part of him replied, Don't you think that's what all of them say, the dirty cops, the ones who turn your stomach? Do you think all of them recognize what they're turning into in time to stop it?
"When Neal cut his anklet," Peter said, "I was testifying in front of his commutation board."
"I know that. I'm not saying I believe it, Peter, but I'm telling you what I've been hearing, and what OPR is going to hear."
And the evidence, Peter thought, was there -- in his casefiles with Neal, those damning casefiles. It was there between the lines: all the times he'd looked the other way, all the times he'd felt the greater good was served by giving Neal a longer leash, by allowing Neal to gather evidence his way and twisting the law into a pretzel shape to justify it.
Hell, he'd done it yesterday, not only giving the go-ahead for Neal to retrieve the Raphael, but staging a wholly false cover story and watching the pieces fall into place, Kramer's triumph turning to ashes.
And you enjoyed it, didn't you? he thought, turning the stinging barb of his own condemnation on himself. He'd always loved the thrill of putting one over on the bad guys, the moment when it all came together and they saw that they'd been had.
Except this time, the "bad guys" were the FBI and his mentor. His friend. Someone he'd cared about, someone whose opinion he'd respected, someone he'd trusted all these years to have his back.
If I was wrong about Kramer, then he was also wrong about me.
But Kramer was wrong. Peter still believed that. Neal could change, was changing, and he didn't deserve to be hung out to dry for things he'd done years ago. And so, he'd helped Neal play his former mentor for a fool, and now he wondered if the difference was in Kramer, or in himself.
I can't deal with this right now, he thought. "If we're done here, sir, I haven't seen my wife since yesterday morning."
Hughes studied his face, then sighed and waved a hand. "Yes. Go home. I think we all need to go home for a while. It's obvious that Caffrey isn't going to fall into our laps. You were talking about legwork -- we're looking at some long, careful legwork this time."
"Just like when I caught him the first time," Peter said, pushing himself out of the chair before he fell asleep in it.
"No," Hughes said, looking up at him solemnly. "Not entirely. I appreciate your concern for Caffrey, but there's still a thin bright line between the us and the people we catch, Peter. You've always been clear on which side of it you stand. I hope that's still true."
*
Elizabeth was sitting at the kitchen table when he opened the door, laptop in front of her, though she didn't seem to be doing anything but staring at it. She rose and took him into her arms. For a long time they just held each other.
"You were right," she said at last, into his chest. "The Marshals were here. They asked a lot of questions."
"Satchmo bite any of them?"
El laughed, sad and slightly muffled. "No. Though he was eyeing one of them in a very suspicious way. Do you want something to eat?"
"Please," he said, heartfelt. "I don't even care what it is. As long as it doesn't come from a vending machine."
He felt a bit more human after a slice of El's meatloaf and a long shower. He pulled on a T-shirt and sweatpants, and lay on the bed with El, a beer sitting on the bedside table. He needed the relaxation, but hadn't taken more than a couple of swallows, knowing that in his present state it was going to put him out like a light.
"We don't have to talk about this until you get some sleep," El said, nesting into the crook of his shoulder.
"No, we need to get it out of the way now. I'm probably going to sleep like a rock until morning, and I have to be back at work by first light." He sighed and played with her hair, a habit from the days when they were first dating. "El, Neal ran because I told him to."
El swatted him on the shoulder. "I knew it!"
"Ow!"
"I knew it! I knew he wouldn't simply take off. Honey, why didn't you tell me?"
"With a dozen federal Marshals and Kramer listening in?"
"Oh. Good point." She settled back down against his arm.
"I shouldn't even be telling you now."
"But you are."
"We don't keep things from each other," Peter said. "Not things like this."
"Well, I should hope not." El was quiet for a moment, then she said, "So tell me?"
So he did: about Kramer, about the fallout from the Raphael, about the moment when his eyes had met Neal's and he'd known, or at least hoped, that they were on the same page.
"You did the right thing," El said.
He hadn't realized until that moment how desperately he had wanted to hear someone, anyone, say that. "I wish I was as sure as you are."
El rolled over and sat up. "Honey, you said it yourself. Kramer was either going to take Neal to DC for as long as he could hold him, or put him back in prison."
"Would that really be the worst possible outcome? Worse than going on the run?"
"Being in prison for the rest of his life? I'd say so."
Peter threw an arm over his eyes. This cut too close to things he'd spent the last twenty-four hours very stubbornly not thinking about. "He'd be in prison because he broke the law, hon. Kramer isn't hanging him out to dry for things he didn't do. He's sending Neal away for things that he did. Laws he broke. Crimes he deserves to be punished for."
"So he forged a few little paintings, back when he was a kid ..."
"Grand larceny is more than a few little paintings."
"Peter, you said it yourself just now. Why did you help Neal return the Raphael to Sterling Bosch, rather than turning him in? Because he's not that person anymore. Because it's not fair to send him to prison for something he did years ago. It wouldn't restore the painting to its owners or make Neal a better person. it would only hurt him. You've always said ..." She drew nearer, her hair falling to frame his face. "Arresting people, putting them in prison ... it's not about punishment, not really. It's about justice. About making the sentence fit the crime. People can't just go around breaking the law, so there has to be a penalty. But law enforcement has to be above anger, above revenge, above eye-for-an-eye justice, or all you have is vigilantism." She touched his nose with a fingertip. "Don't you always say that?"
Peter grinned despite himself. She always did have that effect on him. "I think you make my rants about justice sound more coherent than I ever managed to."
"But that's what you believe."
"More or less." He could tell that she saw this as a funk to drag him out of, and he wasn't ready for that. There were serious issues that he still felt she was missing. "El, I guess the question is -- what if Kramer's right? What if Neal's been playing me all this time?"
This time her swat was a little less gentle.
"Ow."
"You don't truly believe that."
"No, I don't, and I think that's the problem." He reached for the beer, deciding that he really needed the anesthetic effect right about now. "I've done a lot of things the past couple of years that I'm starting to wonder about, El. I've cut Neal a lot of slack, taken a lot of shortcuts, and at the time it always seemed like the right thing to do, but now that I'm looking at it overall, at the pattern ..."
El leaned her elbows on her knees. "You're wondering how it looks from the outside."
"More than that. I don't give a damn about OPR. Well ... okay ... I really do give a damn, because they have the ability to screw up both our lives royally, but what really matters to me, El ..." And this was the heart of it, the core problem that his brain had been circling around for the last twenty-four hours, only to be deflected every time because he couldn't go there, wouldn't go there. "El, I've been asking myself what I would think if I looked at another agent, another CI, and saw some of the same things I've done with Neal. Done for Neal." He began to tick off on his fingers. "Hiding evidence. Stealing evidence. Turning a blind eye to both misdemeanors and felonies. Not asking him questions I know he can't answer without incriminating himself. Actively stopping him from incriminating himself in front of federal agents." He started warming up to his topic, gesturing with the beer. "Inviting him to my house. Leaving him unsupervised with my wife. Allowing him to help my wife commit burglary --"
"Honey. That was only once," El pointed out.
"Assisting in the commission of cons, including aspects I knew were illegal at the time. Letting my own judgment override the law whenever it suited me. I don't know, El." He discovered that the beer was nearly empty, and drained the dregs. "Kramer thinks Neal was playing me for a patsy. That's not really what I'm worried about, though. If he was running a con on me -- on us --"
"He wasn't," El said firmly. "Not Neal."
"-- then I don't think it lasted beyond the first month or two that we worked together. Well, okay, maybe there were a few points afterwards ... but see, that's the thing I can't get through to Kramer, or anyone: I could tell when Neal was trying to con me. That's not what worries me. What worries me is that I actually knew him well enough that I could tell. What worries me ..." He closed his eyes, forced the words out. "What worries me is that I'm afraid working with Neal has so deeply eroded my sense of right and wrong that I can't even tell them apart anymore. I'm afraid I'm not me anymore, El. And I'm afraid I wouldn't even know if I wasn't."
"Oh, hon." Her lips found his cheek and the edge of his mouth. "Well ... didn't you once tell me that I'm your reality check?"
"I may have said something like that, once or twice," he said, feeling a smile flirting with the corners of his mouth despite his best attempts to stay serious. Damn it.
"Then let me be a reality check for you now. I live with you, sleep with you, talk with you every day. I think I know you better than Kramer, or Hughes, or even Neal, don't I?"
"I think that's fair to say," he agreed, then tried to torpedo her optimism before it rose too high. "But you don't know everything about me. You don't see me at work, honey --"
El laid a finger on his lips. "I'm not done," she said, and kept the finger in place until he gently captured it with his lips and then let it go. "I don't believe that you've become a completely different person over the last two years. It's not that I haven't noticed changes --"
"Wasn't I just saying that, Ms. Reality Check?"
"Good changes," El said, wrinkling her nose at him. "You're ... lighter, I suppose. You laugh more. You have more fun."
"I do?"
"You're less devoted to justice as an abstract, and more interested in helping people. I mean, you always have been, and that's one of the things I love about you, but I think you've come around a lot more towards seeing the people in the system, and serving them, rather than serving the system in order to serve the people. Now, unless you're going to say that my judgment is entirely unreliable ..."
"I would never say that," he said as earnestly as he could.
"Well, then, as your duly appointed reality check, Agent Burke, I think Neal's been as good for you as you have been for him. Really. I do." She kissed his nose, and looked suddenly wistful. "And I hope he's safe and happy, wherever he is."
"Oh, God, me too," Peter whispered.
She fell on top of him, and they clung to each other for a while.
"Starting to feel that beer," Peter murmured at last.
El withdrew, tucking a blanket around him. "Go to sleep. Everything will still be here in the morning."
"Does it have to be? I'm hoping that it'll all sort itself out while I'm asleep."
"Maybe it will." Her lips lingered along his cheek, warm and petal-soft. They were the last thing he felt as he drifted off.
*
OPR showed up on the third day of the investigation into Neal's disappearance. They commandeered Peter's case files from the last two years, trucking box after box off to a room near Hughes' office that was hastily cleared for their use.
The third day was also when his Kramer-avoidance efforts failed, and the two of them came face-to-face in front of the coffee machine.
"Pete," Kramer said.
"Phil."
They maneuvered around each other, Peter aiming for the coffee machine, Kramer en route back to the office that OPR had taken over and filled with Peter's files. But Kramer hesitated and turned back.
"What the hell happened to you, Pete? You were good. You were one of the best I've ever seen."
"That's a funny thing, Phil," Peter said, pouring himself a cup of coffee and focusing on that, not on Kramer's face. "I used to feel the same way about you."
"You've fallen, Peter. I refuse to believe there's a part of you that doesn't recognize it. I don't think you're so far gone that you can't come back."
Peter raised his head and forced himself to meet Kramer's gaze. Once, he'd tied himself into knots trying to win this man's approval. A word of praise from Kramer left him walking on air. Even seeing Kramer again on the Degas case had made him feel -- worthwhile. Like someone had his back. After months of not knowing where he stood with Neal, fumbling for safe ground only to have it crumble underfoot, he'd reached out for Kramer's solidity and stability like a drowning man.
Kramer had been there when Peter had needed him.
And now this.
Did I fall, or did you? he wondered, more miserable than angry. Did we both change, or is it just me?
And most of all, he wondered if Kramer was right -- or if he was right -- or, most staggeringly of all, if maybe both of them were right, from within their individual frames of reference.
But only one of them could prevail in a court of law.
"If you'll excuse me," Peter said, "I need to find an escaped felon, and I suppose you have to manufacture a few more charges to pin on me."
"You're dirty, Pete," Kramer said to his back as he escaped. "Damned if I know how it came to this, how the man I used to respect turned into what you are now -- but you're dirty, and I'm going to prove it."
Peter retreated to his office with his cup of coffee.
*
Actually, just being investigated by OPR was throwing up fences around him. Hughes, he knew, was doing his best to keep the wolves from Peter's door until the very last minute. But there was always water-cooler talk. The White Collar unit was returning to business as usual -- new cases were coming along, agents being assigned to them, but Peter himself was still on Caffrey-finding detail, for as long as he could remain. He had a feeling that his days on that assignment were numbered, but Hughes had made it clear that he didn't want Peter working on anything else.
Either he was giving Peter an opportunity to cover Neal's trail, or he wanted to keep Peter on a dead-end assignment away from actual casework that might end up as tainted as his earlier cases were in danger of becoming. A vote of absolute confidence, in Neal as well as Peter -- or a flat no-confidence vote. It could be read either way.
And there was also Neal's desk, still sitting just as he'd left it. Someone needed to be assigned that space. Peter hadn't done it yet. As long as the desk still remained in its usual spot, its usual condition, he could imagine that Neal might walk through that door at any moment, twirl his hat and settle into place just as if nothing had happened.
It was a stupid thing to even imagine, and Peter told himself that it had absolutely nothing to do with why he hadn't put another agent at that desk yet, or cleaned out its contents. Everything had to remain in situ as evidence. They'd gone over it, of course, in search of any clues as to where Neal had gone. But they might have missed something ...
More and more, Peter felt as if his life were in a holding pattern, waiting for something to break. Waiting for Neal to be found, for OPR to pass down a ruling, for rain to fall from the clouds he could feel gathering above his head.
*
The break that finally came wasn't the one he'd been hoping for. It was a suspension.
Hughes called Peter into his office a week after Neal's disappearance, after most of the division had gone home for the day. It was, Peter knew, Hughes' way of sparing him as much as possible. Kramer wasn't there, either, though Peter suspected that it had taken some maneuvering on Hughes' part to make sure he wasn't there to share in the victory. That's another thing he and I have in common, Peter thought bitterly. They both wanted to be there to see the bad guy go down.
But he'd never expected that he'd be the bad guy in Kramer's sights.
"I'm sorry, Peter," Hughes said. "I'll need your gun and badge."
It was becoming almost routine, Peter thought numbly as he handed them over. He'd never been suspended before he'd started working with Neal. Now, here was the third suspension in as many years. Another piece of damning evidence that he wasn't the agent he thought he was. Good cops didn't get investigated once a year for not doing their jobs.
Twice before, it had worked out. Third time's the charm? Peter thought, and then, The charm for whom?
"Mind telling me what they found?" he asked mildly.
"All I know is that they're looking into the files from the last six months."
The U-boat. Shit. Of everything he'd done with Neal -- of every time he'd made a calculated decision to look away, to play dumb, to omit a convenient detail or five from his report -- that was the one that had the most potential to come back and hurt him.
Still, no matter what Kramer thought he'd found, they had a plausible out. "The treasure's been repatriated," he said.
"You didn't hear this from me," Hughes said, "but apparently half the treasure's been repatriated."
Peter's head snapped around. "Say what?"
"Damn it," Hughes said wearily. "I wish I'd gotten that reaction on polygraph. It's true that everything on our manifest fragment has been accounted for, but they've been doing comparisons of the U-boat's estimated cargo capacity, and existing information about missing Russian museum artifacts, to the actual recovered items. And they're fairly sure there's a lot of it still missing."
"Could have been on another U-boat," Peter said through stiff lips. "Or stashed somewhere else sixty years ago."
"Could have been," Hughes agreed.
So he went home. Both Diana and Jones, when he sent them brief text messages, promised to keep him in the loop.
Still, it felt as if he was being severed from his life, one strand at a time.
"Honey," El soothed, draping her arm over his shoulder and kissing his ear. "It's either a mistake, or part of the treasure really was destroyed in the fire. You and I both know Neal wasn't hiding anything from us."
"I really, really want to believe that, El." But the longer Neal was gone, the more his trust in Neal seemed to slip into a nebulous, hazy past. He began to question his own motives, his own reactions. It was like trying to recall a dream, or a favorite memory -- replaying events, reassessing everything in light of new information.
Would I have still given Neal the nod to leave, even if by doing so, I'd lose everything?
And the answer his heart came back with, not even thinking about it, was yes. Neal was free, and it was worth it.
Traitorous heart. He wished he dared trust it.
*
Now that he was suspended, Peter had nothing to do but let the wheels in his brain spin. He was snapping at El over nothing, and waking up at 2 a.m. to roam the house. The urge to try to find Neal was overwhelming, a combination of worry and simple force of habit. It was so ingrained that he had to fight against it. Neal is missing. Must find him.
But he didn't dare search. He knew that he was still under suspicion for Neal's disappearance, even if no one could prove a thing. They would be watching him -- maybe not closely, but if he started seriously investigating Neal, he knew that he would risk putting the Marshals and FBI onto Neal's trail. He wanted to reach out to Neal's old friends and contacts, but didn't dare. And he wasn't sure how they felt about him right now anyway. June had made no overtures since Neal had gone missing. Peter had a feeling that if he went to see her, she'd be polite and formal and in no way helpful, and she'd probably be glad when he left.
He simply had to trust Neal. Had to trust that Neal was safe and happy and keeping himself out of trouble. Trust that, if Neal did get in over his head wherever he was, he'd trust Peter enough to ask for help if he needed it.
That was a lot of trust. On both sides.
*
El suggested getting out of the city for a few days -- Peter suspected that he was driving her up the wall, but when he thought about it, she had a point; hanging around the city wasn't good for either him or his marriage right now. So El took a few days off from her business, and they drove upstate to visit El's sister and Peter's parents, who lived within about a hundred miles of each other. They took Satchmo. For a time, the city and everything happening in it receded to a distant pinpoint on the map, not even worth thinking about.
While El spent some quality time with her sister's family, Peter went back to the old family home north of Syracuse, kicked back on the porch and tossed a ball around with the old man.
He couldn't talk about his cases. His dad was long since familiar with this. And personal problems weren't the sort of thing that guys like them talked about, anyway. Peter knew that his parents could tell something was bothering him, but no one tried to force him to talk about it.
It was oddly like traveling in time, slipping back into the skin of his childhood self. He slept in his old bedroom -- it had his mother's sewing machine in the corner now, but the sun still slanted through the branches of the oak tree to wake him up, and the bed still had that one wobbly leg he remembered. He took long walks in the fields with Satchmo, and played catch with his dad in the backyard just for the hell of it.
And he thought about the child he'd been, the kid who loved math and baseball, always tried to stay out of trouble, and never dreamed of a career in law enforcement. He wondered what that kid would think of him now, thirty years later.
As he walked through the fields behind the house, golden in the slanting sun, the thought occurred to him that before Neal came into his life, he'd had it all: a wife, a house, a job he liked, even a dog. (He reached down to ruffle Satchmo's ears.) He'd been living the dream, and if the bedrock beneath his feet felt like slippery sand now, then he had only himself, not Neal, to blame. He'd started aiming higher. He'd found new ways to play with the law in the belief that it was better than what he'd done before. He'd stood on home plate at Yankee Stadium and didn't ask any questions, just let himself believe that it was okay. He'd wanted things he couldn't have, and done things that guys like him didn't get to do. And most of all, he'd started believing that he could draw lines between right and wrong without using the law for a guide, and instead it had all ended up in a tangled mess and now he stood on the edge of losing everything.
Because that was how it worked. He'd said that to Neal, all the way back at the beginning, hadn't he? The only way to earn anything that was real, meaningful, lasting, was to work hard for it. He'd learned that lesson while growing up with a father in the construction trade. Hard work in the real world translated to real things. You built a house and had a house. You worked hard in school, went to college, built a career, and you had that, you'd earned that.
Things like standing on the pitcher's mound at Yankee Stadium didn't happen to guys like him -- and certainly didn't just fall into his lap. There was always a price to pay, and whether you paid it beforehand -- in the form of hard work -- or afterwards, in hard and painful consequences, the reckoning would come. Always.
Satchmo dropped a stick at his feet and whuffed softly.
"Yeah, boy." Peter picked it up and tossed it into the golden fields. This? This is real, he thought. The feeling of the stick in his hand. The rippling of the grass as Satchmo bounded through it.
You never get something for nothing. You start believing you're better than everyone else, start believing that you're such hot stuff that you can interpret the law all on your own without being held accountable to anyone, and sooner or later, you'll fall. The law will bring you down. And you'll deserve it.
He threw the stick again, and wiped the dog slobber on the thigh of his jeans. The sun rested on the rim of the world. Was Neal watching the sun go down somewhere too? Different time zone, probably, Peter thought. It most likely went down a long time ago.
If it was night wherever Neal was, then Neal was probably ... being Neal: out enjoying the night life, maybe, or, more ominously but not that unlikely, casing something. Was Neal back in the business? They hadn't heard a peep, and Peter wanted to believe, he really did. The U-boat treasure -- no. Neal wouldn't have lied to him with El's life on the line.
So maybe Neal wasn't hanging on a rope outside some rich tourist's balcony. Maybe Neal was walking on a beach, barefoot in the sand. He'd have a glass of wine in his hand. He'd be relaxed and happy and thinking about his future, anklet-free.
Peter closed his eyes. He could picture it so vividly that he could smell the ocean, hear the slap of the waves.
If life were a movie, this would be when his phone would ring in his pocket. And it would be Neal on the other end.
But life wasn't a movie, so no phone calls. The sun slipped below the trees. Peter took a deep breath, took the stick gently from Satchmo's mouth -- "Sorry, boy, we're done for the day" -- and turned to head for his parents' house.
When it came right down to it, the thing about life was that you didn't get those perfect little moments, those times when your faith was upheld. What makes it faith, Peter thought, is that you have to believe or not believe. If you have proof, it isn't faith.
Walking home through the grass in the sunset light, it felt so much like his childhood that he could almost believe that he was back there, walking home after an afternoon of playing fetch with his old spaniel mix -- what was that dog's name? Rusty, yeah, that had been it. For a moment he felt a deep sense of loss on behalf of that child, the boy he used to be, who knew himself and his place in the world, who believed that every question had a right answer and that he would always be able to find it if he looked hard enough.
Then he'd grown up, and his black-and-white life faded into endless shades of gray.
There's a thin bright line between the us and the people we catch, Hughes had said. You've always been clear on which side of it you stand.
Was I? Peter thought. Or was it just that you used to agree with most of my choices?
The setting sun in his eyes, the ground beneath his feet -- these things were real, solid, there. And Neal's friendship was real too. Neal's potential was real. The things we've done in the last two years ... they mattered. The people we helped. The bad guys we put away.
Maybe he hadn't always made the right choices. Sometimes there hadn't been right choices to make, just the need to choose between equally flawed options.
But he believed in Neal. He really did. Peter believed that wherever Neal was right now, he was safe and free and doing the right thing.
And he still believed in himself. Perhaps he could see better options in hindsight than he'd managed to find at the time. But, no matter what, he had always done his best.
And that's what matters, he thought, and suddenly he felt as if the crushing weight that had been bearing him down for the last few weeks had lifted, and he could breathe again. I did my best, damn it. And I'm going to keep right on doing my best. No matter who tries to convince me otherwise.
Even if it meant helping Neal hide from the law. Because legal wasn't always right. There was a thin bright line, all right, but it wasn't between the law and the other side. It was between right and wrong, and he'd always worked as hard as he could to stay on the proper side of it. There had been times he'd screwed that up, too, but he'd always done his best to fix it.
Using the law for a moral compass was infinitely easier, and had much less potential to cost him dearly. But it wasn't right.
The sun had set, and the farmhouse loomed before him in the dusk. The porch was in shadow, and when his father's voice spoke out of the darkness, Peter jumped. "Did you find what you were looking for out there, son?"
"Yeah," Peter said. "I think I did."
~
no subject
This fic is brutally honest, in the proper, healthy sense of the phrase. The story, and Peter, don't hold any punches. You really examine Peter's decisions and choices, what they mean, and what they say about him. I love that you don't give him an easy out, that he has to earn his sense of peace, which is entirely fitting, given the story. There aren't any easy answers here, and you accomplished that without making things disheartening or bitter.
I'm so impressed with how you address the way Peter has lost Kramer. That's been largely ignored in fandom, though understandably so. Obviously people are going to be focusing on the relationship between Peter and Neal. But I think losing Kramer would hurt as much in a different way. It's one thing to lose someone by being physically separated from them, it's another to lose them emotionally. You give the crumbling relationship proper emotional weight, and, even more unexpectedly, you show that it causes Kramer pain as well.
Other things I liked:
June and her conversation with Peter. I love June in general, and it's fascinating to imagine what was going through her head here. Man, I want more June in fandom.
Elizabeth. You continue to capture her pragmatic, fluid worldview, and you show wonderfully how it helps her marriage.
Drawing the comparison between Neal and Adler and Peter and Kramer. I've been thinking about that, but I haven't seen anyone bring up the connection. But I'm intrigued by the fact that both Neal and Peter had mentors who they admired and emulated, and they were both let down by those mentors.
(P.S. If you ever do decide to write that longer fic, just call this a prequel. That's what I say.)
no subject
Yes! This is Peter in a nutshell, right here. He is a decent guy by nature, but what makes him really admirable is that he keeps questioning and rethinking and learning new ways of looking at the world.
And yeah, I wanted to address Peter's relationship with Kramer as well as what he has with Neal. As recently as 3x10, he seemed to still look up to Kramer, respect his judgment, and admire him. Losing that relationship has got to be as hard on him as (potentially) losing Neal.
I'm very glad you enjoyed the story. :) And yeah, if I ever do go forward with a longer story, this would probably be the prequel to it! But I think it stands just fine on its own, and in a month or so we'll find out what the writers had in mind anyway. :D
no subject
This is such a fine point and explains him so well. It's not that he was a dirty cop, but that he had never walked such a fine line before.
I'm gonna agree with previous poster, use this as prologue. This is a wonderful introspection to a complicated man.
no subject
tldr; so much love
Re: tldr; so much love
to me, that scene is less about Peter getting something he's not entitled to than Neal giving Peter something that Peter would never have dreamed of asking for himself
Oh yes, I agree! But Peter is having a hard time convincing himself of that ...
no subject
no subject
regardless of our POV, Peter does have a life and a career outside of his association with Neal.
*nods* This is actually one of the things I love most about the show -- that Peter and Neal both have their own individual lives, and their own sets of friends, and while their stories weave in and out of each other's lives, they're still separate and distinct. I hope the show always manages to maintain that.