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White Collar ficlet: Thursday's Child alternate ending
Remember Thursday's Child, the Elizabeth-is-a-con-artist AU? I was digging through my old fic stuff the other day and discovered that I'd written an alternate ending to it. Which I vaguely remember, now. This is actually the original ending. I ended up writing myself a completely self-indulgent "happy" ending to make me feel better about the way that the fic was originally supposed to end, and ultimately I used that ending in the posted version of the fic itself.
Anyway, since I wrote this, I figured I may as well post it! Keep in mind this is considerably less optimistic than the other version (though no one dies, in case you were worried about that).
This picks up after Peter is shot. There's no need to bother including that since it's basically the same and you can read it in the other fic. Actually, Neal and Elizabeth's argument is basically the same too, but I figured I'd include it for context. Where things start to go different is that Elizabeth and Neal's results in the pencil draw are switched from how they were in the other version.
--
"What's going on is all of you people are staying right here. Nobody's going anywhere."
"This man needs a doctor," Elizabeth said in that same too-quiet, too-calm voice.
"Well, he's not getting one." Krebbs knelt and scooped up their phones. "All of you are staying right here, and I -- I need to make a few calls."
He backed out and slammed the door.
Peter closed his eyes. When he opened them, Elizabeth was bending over him, taking off her scarf. "Don't move," she said. "Peter? Can you hear me?"
"This ..." Peter said. He swallowed. It felt like there was a great weight sitting on his chest, making it hard to breathe. "This is the stort of situation where backup would be nice."
"We have backup." Neal's voice came from somewhere outside Peter's field of vision; then Neal knelt beside Elizabeth, his face white. "Moz is still out there and he knows where we are."
"We can't count on that, though," Elizabeth said. She was working busily outside Peter's range of vision, and something that she did hurt in a way that made his vision white out for a moment. When he came back, it was to Elizabeth saying, "-- windows?"
"Bulletproof glass," Neal said from farther away, sounding disgusted. "How paranoid can you be? There's plenty in here to work with. Getting out isn't going to be that hard, except ..."
Peter could guess what, or who, the "except" was. "Look, guys," he said, trying to raise his head and only managing a sort of feeble thrashing. Elizabeth pushed him back down onto the soft thing he was pillowed on, which turned out to be her thigh. "I appreciate loyalty as much as the next guy, but it makes a lot more sense for you to get out of here and call the cops on him."
"He has a point, hon," Elizabeth told Neal.
"Bulletproof glass in the windows," Neal mused, "but possibly not in the skylight." He dragged the conference table under the skylight and scrambled onto the tabletop. Peter tipped his head to the side to watch. Neal added a chair, and was able to reach it easily. "Yeah, this just pops right up." He jumped back down and crouched beside Elizabeth and Peter. "El, you're better at climbing than I am, and you're smaller."
"I'm busy," Elizabeth pointed out. "You'd be faster; you have more experience."
"I'm not just going to run off and leave you here."
She arched a brow. "So I should run off and leave you?"
"You two are being ridiculous," Peter told them. His mouth tasted coppery. "You should both go."
"Shut up, people who've been shot don't get a vote." Neal laid his hand on Peter's chest, where Elizabeth had pulled away Peter's shirt to get at the injury, and left it there. Neal's fingers were very warm; Peter felt cold to the bone.
"It makes more sense," Peter argued. He kept having to pause, collect his thoughts, get his breath back. "Get out, call the police and EMTs. You don't want to be here when they get here."
There was some rustling and a snap, then Neal said, "Short straw."
"Those are pencils," Elizabeth said, but she leaned forward, shifting Peter in her lap. A hot sharp pang flashed through his chest and he plunged into red-tinged darkness.
When he swam back to consciousness, he was almost regretful, because waking up hurt. However, he was nestled in the pleasant softness of Elizabeth's lap, which was nice. Someone had covered him with what turned out be one of the window drapes.
"Neal got the short pencil, so he went out the ceiling," Elizabeth said when he opened his eyes. "Cavalry should be here anytime."
"At which point you do what?" Peter asked. His voice was thread-thin.
"Go out the ceiling too, of course," Elizabeth said impatiently, as if the question was too stupid to need asking. She smiled. "This won't be our first last-minute escape from the authorities across the rooftops."
"I'm sure," Peter murmured, and then, "You really have to go, huh?" The words slipped out before he realized he was going to say them.
"You were the one telling us to go a few minutes ago," Elizabeth said, sounding amused. "And you're right. We can't be found here."
"I know," he murmured. "And I don't want you do. It's just ... your lap is very comfortable." Which wasn't what he'd meant to say, but it was the closest that he could seem to come.
"Don't let my husband hear you say that."
Her tone was playful, but it was a stinging reminder of what they had, and he didn't. And maybe that was what made his barriers fold; he was simply too weak to keep them up. "When will I see you again?"
Elizabeth laughed, but there was a slightly regretful undertone. "We don't exactly keep a schedule, Peter."
"I know." It was so hard to fish for words in his current state. "I just don't know when you'll come back, if you'll come back. And it's hard. Not knowing."
There was a brief silence, and when Elizabeth spoke, her voice had cooled perceptibly. "You think because we've pulled a couple of cons together that you -- what, own us? That you have any right to tell us what to do, where to go?"
"No, I just --" Damn it, he'd known how precariously all of this was balanced, how easy it would be to fuck it up. And he'd gone and opened his mouth anyway. "It's not that," he tried to explain. His thoughts were like molasses, slow-moving and thick; he couldn't pull them together enough to find the words to stop them from walking away. In the end, it was brutal honesty that he found instead. "It's just -- it hurts when you go away."
Elizabeth sighed; she sounded sad, now. "Neal and I don't need chains on us, Peter. Of guilt or anything else."
"I'm not trying to chain you," he whispered. Darkness pooled in his vision, the world tilting, sliding away. "I just don't know how long I can handle this ... never knowing where you are, how you are, when you're coming back."
She bent over and kissed his forehead -- or maybe it was just his imagination, the warm brush of her lips on his cold skin. "Then we won't be back."
There was more he wanted to say, so much more -- stay, don't go, I'm sorry -- but he couldn't, because the world was sliding sideways, going away.
Gone.
***
He woke, alone, in the ICU.
The nurse told him there had been no visitors and didn't seem to understand why he was so agitated about that. Somewhere in the middle of arguing with her, he slipped away again.
Through the next few sleep-wake cycles, he managed to get calmer, so that when the police came to interview him, he was able to tell them an edited version of what had happened without shaking them and demanding to know where Neal and Elizabeth were. He told the police that he'd recognized the two con artists who'd ruined his life, tried to confront them, and ended up going back to Krebbs's place to talk it over. "Yeah, I know it was a stupid decision. But I didn't have any evidence, and I had no idea he'd be dangerous. I was faced with watching them laugh it off and walk away. What was I supposed to do?" Then things went bad, Krebbs shot him, and the con artists had, presumably, fled.
"Unless you caught them," he added with innocent curiosity.
"No one else was found at the scene, aside from employees of Mr. Krebbs," the interviewing officer said, and something in Peter sagged in relief. The detective flipped through his notes. "There was a woman's scarf binding your injury. Did it belong to Mrs. Mitchell?"
Mrs. Caffrey, he almost corrected. "It might. I was pretty well out of it at the time."
So Neal and Elizabeth had gotten away. Far away, judging from their continued non-presence at the hospital. There had been a small, hopeful part of him that had thought maybe ... Well, but it didn't matter; he knew how it was. Neal and Elizabeth would probably show up in another month or two, when things got too dull on the Italian Riviera or wherever they'd ended up, bringing a dash of light and life into his world, and then vanishing again. In the end, Peter was just another of their fantasy bubbles, and they were not the type to stay in one of those for very long, let alone deal with the messy and boring parts.
But in the meantime, recovery took up most of his attention. He was out of the ICU after a few somewhat drug-addled days, and then spent a week getting himself to the point where he could walk on his own and handle his daily needs. He had no insurance, but the hospital didn't seem inclined to kick him out. When he called the hospital's business office, he was cheerfully informed that his bill had been covered by a Mr. and Mrs. Tabernacle, including all expenses.
Huh. How about that.
He also got the nurses to bring him a daily paper, not only supplying him with crosswords but also the ongoing developments of the investigation into Krebbs. It seemed that the local police, the FBI and the IRS were all fighting over him now. Peter grinned. Nothing like having a former FBI agent turn up shot and covered with blood to give all kinds of grounds for warrants to snoop into Krebbs's confidential records, and what they'd found had been enough to put him away nicely, even on top of the attempted murder charge.
By the time the hospital declared Peter fit to release, he was going out of his mind with boredom, but he'd also had an opportunity to make some decisions. He was going to try for the accounting career. The idea of seeking an entry-level accounting job still didn't appeal to him much, but he was confident that he could work his way up. And even if it seemed like a rather sterile career compared to the FBI, he though that he'd end up enjoying the problem-solving aspect in the long run. He could make good money at it, and the odds of getting shot were a whole lot less.
He made his slow and painful way up to the condo. At least he didn't have to navigate all the stairs at his old, crappy apartment.
The condo had the still, unlived-in feeling of a place that's been abandoned for a while. Unexpectedly, there was a note on the kitchen countertop. Two simple lines in Elizabeth's handwriting. Peter picked it up and stared at it for a while.
No one owns us. We're even now.
Goodbye.
He thought maybe he should feel grief, but instead he just felt tired ... tired and old.
The food in the refrigerator had spoiled, but he found a can of soup in the cabinet and heated it. He didn't have the energy to make it to the bedroom, so he sprawled on the couch.
There was a future out there somewhere for him, but he was too tired to grasp it. Not right now.
***
In the end, he sold the condo and moved to Chicago. The nest egg from selling the place covered his expenses while he took some refresher classes and, eventually, got a job as a CPA.
It wasn't the life he'd envisioned for himself, but it was a pretty decent life, all things considered. The job was a little dry, but he'd always liked math. He volunteered four days a week at a local youth center.
He never saw Neal and Elizabeth again. From time to time he Googled them, just to check and see if they were ever caught -- which they never were, at least not under their real names. But he thought of them sometimes, imagined them in some foreign country. Barefoot in the sand. Laughing. Holding hands. Wild and reckless and in love, and young forever.
~~~
Notes:
So, yeah, originally the whole fic was leading up to this moment where Peter oversteps the bounds of the somewhat tentative relationship they have and lets slip that he's started relying on them and worries when they go away; they didn't realize he was going to take things that seriously, and disappear. I wrote most of the fic with that ending in mind. The other ending -- the posted one -- was just me playing around and doing an alt version for fun and general happyfeelings. I don't recall off the top of my head why I went with the other version, except I was feeling optimistic and wanted to give Peter an ending that was at least temporarily happier than he's generally been getting in this universe. *g*
I talked about this in the comments to some post or other, but my headcanon for this 'verse, even after posting the "happy" version of the fic, has always been that they get bored and leave him eventually. However, it's a headcanon that I have trouble holding onto because the characters keep trying to twist around and make it a happy ending. STUBBORN CHARACTERS. They are very annoying that way. I don't mind other people having conflicting headcanon because, well, obviously it's none of my business in any case, but with this particular story, I disagree with my own headcanon half the time anyway; I keep wanting them to have their happy ending even though that's never been The Plan ...
Anyway, I already linked this above but I figured I'd link to the posted version of Thursday's Child again, in case you want to read the happier version!
Anyway, since I wrote this, I figured I may as well post it! Keep in mind this is considerably less optimistic than the other version (though no one dies, in case you were worried about that).
This picks up after Peter is shot. There's no need to bother including that since it's basically the same and you can read it in the other fic. Actually, Neal and Elizabeth's argument is basically the same too, but I figured I'd include it for context. Where things start to go different is that Elizabeth and Neal's results in the pencil draw are switched from how they were in the other version.
--
"What's going on is all of you people are staying right here. Nobody's going anywhere."
"This man needs a doctor," Elizabeth said in that same too-quiet, too-calm voice.
"Well, he's not getting one." Krebbs knelt and scooped up their phones. "All of you are staying right here, and I -- I need to make a few calls."
He backed out and slammed the door.
Peter closed his eyes. When he opened them, Elizabeth was bending over him, taking off her scarf. "Don't move," she said. "Peter? Can you hear me?"
"This ..." Peter said. He swallowed. It felt like there was a great weight sitting on his chest, making it hard to breathe. "This is the stort of situation where backup would be nice."
"We have backup." Neal's voice came from somewhere outside Peter's field of vision; then Neal knelt beside Elizabeth, his face white. "Moz is still out there and he knows where we are."
"We can't count on that, though," Elizabeth said. She was working busily outside Peter's range of vision, and something that she did hurt in a way that made his vision white out for a moment. When he came back, it was to Elizabeth saying, "-- windows?"
"Bulletproof glass," Neal said from farther away, sounding disgusted. "How paranoid can you be? There's plenty in here to work with. Getting out isn't going to be that hard, except ..."
Peter could guess what, or who, the "except" was. "Look, guys," he said, trying to raise his head and only managing a sort of feeble thrashing. Elizabeth pushed him back down onto the soft thing he was pillowed on, which turned out to be her thigh. "I appreciate loyalty as much as the next guy, but it makes a lot more sense for you to get out of here and call the cops on him."
"He has a point, hon," Elizabeth told Neal.
"Bulletproof glass in the windows," Neal mused, "but possibly not in the skylight." He dragged the conference table under the skylight and scrambled onto the tabletop. Peter tipped his head to the side to watch. Neal added a chair, and was able to reach it easily. "Yeah, this just pops right up." He jumped back down and crouched beside Elizabeth and Peter. "El, you're better at climbing than I am, and you're smaller."
"I'm busy," Elizabeth pointed out. "You'd be faster; you have more experience."
"I'm not just going to run off and leave you here."
She arched a brow. "So I should run off and leave you?"
"You two are being ridiculous," Peter told them. His mouth tasted coppery. "You should both go."
"Shut up, people who've been shot don't get a vote." Neal laid his hand on Peter's chest, where Elizabeth had pulled away Peter's shirt to get at the injury, and left it there. Neal's fingers were very warm; Peter felt cold to the bone.
"It makes more sense," Peter argued. He kept having to pause, collect his thoughts, get his breath back. "Get out, call the police and EMTs. You don't want to be here when they get here."
There was some rustling and a snap, then Neal said, "Short straw."
"Those are pencils," Elizabeth said, but she leaned forward, shifting Peter in her lap. A hot sharp pang flashed through his chest and he plunged into red-tinged darkness.
When he swam back to consciousness, he was almost regretful, because waking up hurt. However, he was nestled in the pleasant softness of Elizabeth's lap, which was nice. Someone had covered him with what turned out be one of the window drapes.
"Neal got the short pencil, so he went out the ceiling," Elizabeth said when he opened his eyes. "Cavalry should be here anytime."
"At which point you do what?" Peter asked. His voice was thread-thin.
"Go out the ceiling too, of course," Elizabeth said impatiently, as if the question was too stupid to need asking. She smiled. "This won't be our first last-minute escape from the authorities across the rooftops."
"I'm sure," Peter murmured, and then, "You really have to go, huh?" The words slipped out before he realized he was going to say them.
"You were the one telling us to go a few minutes ago," Elizabeth said, sounding amused. "And you're right. We can't be found here."
"I know," he murmured. "And I don't want you do. It's just ... your lap is very comfortable." Which wasn't what he'd meant to say, but it was the closest that he could seem to come.
"Don't let my husband hear you say that."
Her tone was playful, but it was a stinging reminder of what they had, and he didn't. And maybe that was what made his barriers fold; he was simply too weak to keep them up. "When will I see you again?"
Elizabeth laughed, but there was a slightly regretful undertone. "We don't exactly keep a schedule, Peter."
"I know." It was so hard to fish for words in his current state. "I just don't know when you'll come back, if you'll come back. And it's hard. Not knowing."
There was a brief silence, and when Elizabeth spoke, her voice had cooled perceptibly. "You think because we've pulled a couple of cons together that you -- what, own us? That you have any right to tell us what to do, where to go?"
"No, I just --" Damn it, he'd known how precariously all of this was balanced, how easy it would be to fuck it up. And he'd gone and opened his mouth anyway. "It's not that," he tried to explain. His thoughts were like molasses, slow-moving and thick; he couldn't pull them together enough to find the words to stop them from walking away. In the end, it was brutal honesty that he found instead. "It's just -- it hurts when you go away."
Elizabeth sighed; she sounded sad, now. "Neal and I don't need chains on us, Peter. Of guilt or anything else."
"I'm not trying to chain you," he whispered. Darkness pooled in his vision, the world tilting, sliding away. "I just don't know how long I can handle this ... never knowing where you are, how you are, when you're coming back."
She bent over and kissed his forehead -- or maybe it was just his imagination, the warm brush of her lips on his cold skin. "Then we won't be back."
There was more he wanted to say, so much more -- stay, don't go, I'm sorry -- but he couldn't, because the world was sliding sideways, going away.
Gone.
***
He woke, alone, in the ICU.
The nurse told him there had been no visitors and didn't seem to understand why he was so agitated about that. Somewhere in the middle of arguing with her, he slipped away again.
Through the next few sleep-wake cycles, he managed to get calmer, so that when the police came to interview him, he was able to tell them an edited version of what had happened without shaking them and demanding to know where Neal and Elizabeth were. He told the police that he'd recognized the two con artists who'd ruined his life, tried to confront them, and ended up going back to Krebbs's place to talk it over. "Yeah, I know it was a stupid decision. But I didn't have any evidence, and I had no idea he'd be dangerous. I was faced with watching them laugh it off and walk away. What was I supposed to do?" Then things went bad, Krebbs shot him, and the con artists had, presumably, fled.
"Unless you caught them," he added with innocent curiosity.
"No one else was found at the scene, aside from employees of Mr. Krebbs," the interviewing officer said, and something in Peter sagged in relief. The detective flipped through his notes. "There was a woman's scarf binding your injury. Did it belong to Mrs. Mitchell?"
Mrs. Caffrey, he almost corrected. "It might. I was pretty well out of it at the time."
So Neal and Elizabeth had gotten away. Far away, judging from their continued non-presence at the hospital. There had been a small, hopeful part of him that had thought maybe ... Well, but it didn't matter; he knew how it was. Neal and Elizabeth would probably show up in another month or two, when things got too dull on the Italian Riviera or wherever they'd ended up, bringing a dash of light and life into his world, and then vanishing again. In the end, Peter was just another of their fantasy bubbles, and they were not the type to stay in one of those for very long, let alone deal with the messy and boring parts.
But in the meantime, recovery took up most of his attention. He was out of the ICU after a few somewhat drug-addled days, and then spent a week getting himself to the point where he could walk on his own and handle his daily needs. He had no insurance, but the hospital didn't seem inclined to kick him out. When he called the hospital's business office, he was cheerfully informed that his bill had been covered by a Mr. and Mrs. Tabernacle, including all expenses.
Huh. How about that.
He also got the nurses to bring him a daily paper, not only supplying him with crosswords but also the ongoing developments of the investigation into Krebbs. It seemed that the local police, the FBI and the IRS were all fighting over him now. Peter grinned. Nothing like having a former FBI agent turn up shot and covered with blood to give all kinds of grounds for warrants to snoop into Krebbs's confidential records, and what they'd found had been enough to put him away nicely, even on top of the attempted murder charge.
By the time the hospital declared Peter fit to release, he was going out of his mind with boredom, but he'd also had an opportunity to make some decisions. He was going to try for the accounting career. The idea of seeking an entry-level accounting job still didn't appeal to him much, but he was confident that he could work his way up. And even if it seemed like a rather sterile career compared to the FBI, he though that he'd end up enjoying the problem-solving aspect in the long run. He could make good money at it, and the odds of getting shot were a whole lot less.
He made his slow and painful way up to the condo. At least he didn't have to navigate all the stairs at his old, crappy apartment.
The condo had the still, unlived-in feeling of a place that's been abandoned for a while. Unexpectedly, there was a note on the kitchen countertop. Two simple lines in Elizabeth's handwriting. Peter picked it up and stared at it for a while.
No one owns us. We're even now.
Goodbye.
He thought maybe he should feel grief, but instead he just felt tired ... tired and old.
The food in the refrigerator had spoiled, but he found a can of soup in the cabinet and heated it. He didn't have the energy to make it to the bedroom, so he sprawled on the couch.
There was a future out there somewhere for him, but he was too tired to grasp it. Not right now.
***
In the end, he sold the condo and moved to Chicago. The nest egg from selling the place covered his expenses while he took some refresher classes and, eventually, got a job as a CPA.
It wasn't the life he'd envisioned for himself, but it was a pretty decent life, all things considered. The job was a little dry, but he'd always liked math. He volunteered four days a week at a local youth center.
He never saw Neal and Elizabeth again. From time to time he Googled them, just to check and see if they were ever caught -- which they never were, at least not under their real names. But he thought of them sometimes, imagined them in some foreign country. Barefoot in the sand. Laughing. Holding hands. Wild and reckless and in love, and young forever.
~~~
Notes:
So, yeah, originally the whole fic was leading up to this moment where Peter oversteps the bounds of the somewhat tentative relationship they have and lets slip that he's started relying on them and worries when they go away; they didn't realize he was going to take things that seriously, and disappear. I wrote most of the fic with that ending in mind. The other ending -- the posted one -- was just me playing around and doing an alt version for fun and general happyfeelings. I don't recall off the top of my head why I went with the other version, except I was feeling optimistic and wanted to give Peter an ending that was at least temporarily happier than he's generally been getting in this universe. *g*
I talked about this in the comments to some post or other, but my headcanon for this 'verse, even after posting the "happy" version of the fic, has always been that they get bored and leave him eventually. However, it's a headcanon that I have trouble holding onto because the characters keep trying to twist around and make it a happy ending. STUBBORN CHARACTERS. They are very annoying that way. I don't mind other people having conflicting headcanon because, well, obviously it's none of my business in any case, but with this particular story, I disagree with my own headcanon half the time anyway; I keep wanting them to have their happy ending even though that's never been The Plan ...
Anyway, I already linked this above but I figured I'd link to the posted version of Thursday's Child again, in case you want to read the happier version!
no subject
My own headcanon for this fic, which I know doesn't count like yours, is that Elizabeth and Neal do eventually move on, but not in a terribly sad way. Rather the way that people often move in and out through one another's lives. They still think about each other, and maybe Elizabeth and Neal drop Peter a postcard sometimes, even though they're all living their own lives.
no subject
Still, my preferred headcanon for them is always having them moving in and out of each others' lives, no matter what 'verse they're in.