Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Phone, planner, keys, work phone, laptop, and sample feedback from the University—no, that was still on the kitchen table.  

Elizabeth ran past Peter, who was shrugging on his jacket while taking a final sip from his half-full coffee mug. Feedback in hand, she grabbed her own—earrings! She'd left them for last and she almost forgot—Elizabeth deftly slunk the earnings in with one hand, shifting the feedback sheet to the other, before stepping into her heels.  

"Are you picking up Neal?" She asked, finally shrugging on her own blazer.  

"No, it's part of why I'm running late. I always assume I have so much time on days I don't pick him up, then get slammed with 8 a.m. like it was sneaking up on me."  

"Is it an office day?"  

"No, I gave him the day off. I'm with Violent Crimes today, remember? They need a CPA who can recognize doctored books, and the FBI doesn't hire when they have someone in-house. Diana will be with me as backup."  

Peter locked up and turned to his car, and El, who had parked a little farther up the street, stepped closer to kiss him goodbye. "Well, have a good day finding doctored books. You'll be home as usual?"  

"Early, even," Peter said, as he bent down to kiss her. "Have a good day, hon."  

She wished him the same and walked to her car, and it was one of those days that were just busy enough and just productive enough to make her remember how much she loved her job. She arrived home a little later than usual, and was halfway through preparing dinner when there was a knock at the door. She was in a good mood, and even when she opened the door and saw the somber-faced FBI AD standing there, alongside Neal who looked positively ashen, not even when the man she didn't know said, "Mrs. Burke? Can we come in?" did she realize that her life had ended; she smiled and stepped aside in invitation, because even though she feared this moment for almost thirteen years she was in a good mood, and didn't fathom that it was the knock.  

Chapter Text

Neal went into the office the next day because he didn’t know what else to do.  

He could remember certain frames and conversations from the night before with perfect clarity, like a movie playing on repeat somewhere between the inside and the outside of his eyelids: El, as she realized what their presence there meant; holding her, while the notifications officer levelled platitudes at the both of them; the long silences. Certain blocks of time were wiped clean, like his brain had filed them as unimportant even as they were happening: did he say anything to her, those first few minutes? He remembers thinking how sorry he was, but he can't remember what he'd told her; when did Mozzie get there? Neal knew he'd stayed until Mozzie arrived, then Yvonne, and hours later El's parents, but it was close to midnight when he left and he couldn't begin to piece together how all those hours were spent.  

He remembers how his own reaction had somehow perfectly paused in the face of grief that was so much realer, so much more valid than his own.  

He'd never felt more useless in his life.  

It was a day off, he thought as he pushed into the White Collar offices, and the already hushed mood fell into an entombed silence. Neal pulled off his hat and considered sitting at his desk, but before he could so much as move around it three people came up to him with I'm so sorry and you doing okay and how was it last night? and Neal couldn't stand the sympathy. He wasn't the story right now.  

He made his way instead to the conference room, thankfully empty at six-thirty, and pulled open one of the files they'd been working on the day before yesterday at the far edge of the table, with his back to the bullpen. 

A day off.  

He'd been tending to the bees he hated on his terrace, he'd been finishing up his report on the Wolcott case, he'd been having… such a regular day. When he got the curt call from Diana summoning him to the office now, right now, he'd assumed there'd been some break on Siegel's murder.  

She was waiting for him just inside the glass doors.  

"It's Peter," she'd said.  

He later thought he should have been able to put together the pieces without the question; all the signs were there. But he had asked with a confused smile, “What’s Peter?”  

Diana exhaled, all of her defeat. "Died in the line of duty."  

He sat.  

He had a feeling that was something you were supposed to do when you receive terrible news, so he sat.  

It didn't help.  

"The operation with Violent Crimes went bad. The old house they thought was headquarters was abandoned, and in bad shape. There an explosion. Peter was hurt by debris—" Her mourning seemed to infect him, his own quickening grief exactly in time to her tears—"a secondary gas leak, we were in the van but it was five minutes out, we had him on comms, but we had to wait for the fire department but he couldn't make it out before—" Diana's hand at her mouth hadn't been enough to stifle the sob, then, and she left, and Neal 

And Neal,  

And Neal—  

What was the last thing he'd said to Peter? 

Someone had asked if he'd join the notification officer who was leaving to tell Elizabeth. Neal was careful only to repeat the paltry consolations Elizabeth had been given: it was quick and painless, he died in the line of duty, he was a hero because he forbade anyone from coming in after him.  

But here, in the office, they all knew the truth. They knew that Peter had lost a lot of blood at the scene, and between his injury from the first explosion and his death in the second one, he must have been eaten by flames. The body they pulled had been charred beyond even dental recognition, but Peter's holster and firearm had been melted into its side, his badge melded into his charcoaled flesh, splashed with 24k golden droplets where his ring dripped away above it.  

It was nobody's fault, he kept hearing.  

Some time later, he's not sure exactly when but the office is full, he turned to see Jones, Diana, and Bruce step into the conference room. He turned back toward the window. He can't bear to look toward Peter's office, or the head of the table where he gave his briefings, or the platform where he'd hand out assignments or— 

"Mr. Caffrey," Bruce said, and Neal thought he might turn and offer a small smile of recognition, a tip of his head, something, but he didn't.  

"I'm sorry for your loss, for all our loss. To lose Agent…" Neal tuned him out. Shocking, and terrible, and heroic, and more spineless platitudes that failed to address how any of this was possible, how Peter could show up to look at some books and end up dea—  

"We need to talk about your deal. About your future with the FBI."  

Neal thought that should have fully grabbed his attention. What was the last thing he'd said to Peter? It bothered him that he couldn’t remember.  

"Caffrey," Jones took over, and at least his tone isn't dripping with sympathy. He carried his own grief, and he's sensitive to but not concerned with Neal's, and somehow that's a buoy into the conversation, not exactly tethered but not floating aimlessly, either. Neal tilted his head toward him to indicate he was listening.  

"We asked, Diana and I, if we could take over as your handlers. But the Director himself weighed in, and they won't allow that."  

"It's okay, I figured," Neal said, and now he did fully turn to look at Jones, so he could see that Neal wasn't upset, not over this. "Can I stop at June's to change, or are we leaving straight from here?"  

Jones raised his eyebrows in surprise, and then shifted his eyes to glance at Diana.  

"Jesus, Caffrey, your partner just died. We're not… insensitive to that," Bruce responded instead of them, and in his hesitation Neal could hear something he didn't like.  

"In fact, the Director is willing to offer you a version of your deal, but with a handler who has at least as much seniority as Agent Burke. That was the only reservation against Jones or Berrigan here. If you're willing, they're willing to offer you a similar deal, in DC. With an Art Crimes agent, he's the top of his game, we're sure you two will work well togeth—"  

Neal is fully anchored to the conversation now.  

He faced Bruce, and with open, clear, unantagonizing certainty said, "No, thank you. I'll serve out my sentence in New York."  

"Caffrey, you're reeling from the loss of Agent Burke right now, we all are. Maybe take a day or two to think about this. Think of what Agent Burke would want for you. It's a good deal."  

Neal looks to the others. Jones' face is a mask of neutrality, Diana's eyes are wide with worry.  

"Is it my choice? Can I say no?" Neal asked to clarify.  

"Of course."  

"Will I be allowed to go to his funeral either way?" The body hadn't been released yet, and he knew it would take some time.  

Bruce's answer is a less definitive, "That can be arranged."  

Then it's really no choice for Neal. He knew what Peter would want for him, beyond any shadow of uncertainty. He'd sent him to Cape Verde rather than have him tethered to Kramer, and no one knew better than Neal that Peter thought he deserved to be in prison. He was a criminal, until he served out his sentence.  

Neal took his seat, and turned back toward the window. "I'll serve out my sentence in New York." Neal said again. "Just let me know when to…"  

He trailed off and the others waited in bated silence, waiting for him to finish. When it became apparent Neal wouldn’t speak again Jones made some excuse on his behalf and guided Bruce away, an act of tacit kindness Neal had no way of repaying.  

Diana hung back.  

"We really tried to have you stay here," she said. "But you should know—" 

Diana hesitated, tapped the papers she was holding on the table, and Neal could see her reflected expression in the window in front of him, creased brow, biting her lower lip, shaking her head.  

"I don't know if it's my place to say, but I think you're making the right choice. I've worked with Kramer, and he's not the kind of guy you want in charge of your life. He's already put in a request to limit your radius. And the CI he had when I was in DC? He accidentally," Neal could hear the sarcasm that shrouded the word, "set the center of the radius to two apartments over. He had to call Kramer every time he wanted to use the bathroom in his own home, for over a year. It… It won't be like it was with Peter, or Siegel, and I don't think Peter would want that for you."  

Not that we’ll ever know, Neal thought unfairly, even though he’d just reached the same conclusion himself. Diana must have caught his own expression in the reflective window, because she immediately said, ”You didn’t ask. Right. I’ll check when the Marshals want you to surrender yourself.”  

With a final tap of her papers she turned to leave.  

Neal realized he hadn’t asked— “How much?” He called over his shoulder.  

Diana shook her head and shrugged to indicate she wasn’t following.  

“By how much did he want to reduce my radius?”  

“He submitted a request to reduce it to 40 feet, if you came to DC. He claimed you’d earn more when you earned his trust, but judging by his past CIs… It would probably stay at forty feet, or shrink.”  

Neal couldn’t help but laugh, and he wasn’t deterred by the worried look Diana shot him before she left. Feds didn’t understand the meaning of freedom at all.  

Peter was lying in a morgue, his— corpse, such a detestable word—too grotesque to be seen by his loved ones, and Neal was out of time. They all were.  

Neal would have given anything for the opportunity to know Peter as a young man, a peer; to have been at his graduation, his wedding, his housewarming. Kramer had been lucky enough to be there for all of it, but instead of calling Elizabeth he had emailed the Director about Neal’s radius. It was as funny as it was unfa—  

Neal doesn’t finish the thought because he doesn’t think he can maintain what passes for composure. He blinked rapidly, casting his eyes any which way, anything to distract him from finishing that thought, because it wasn’t fai—  

His eyes shut against the pressure. It was ineffectual, and the pressure matured into pain, but Neal made sure it went no further than that. He couldn’t control his heavy breaths, but he would, in a minute. He always did.  

Mom, Ellen, Adler, Kate, James, Siegel, he knew loss. He’d lost before. He knew this was different, deeper, realer than any of those were; but it was also the same. It wasn’t hard to compartmentalize this grief when he had so many compartments dedicated to some version of it, even if none of them were quite large enough. This was all so immensely, intensely, and utterly profanely unfair, but there was nothing to be done about it.  

~*~

Neal resented how easy it had been for him to reintegrate back into genpop.  

Jones had pulled him aside before he boarded the Correctional Facilities van that had been sent for him, and asked if he was absolutely sure he didn't want Administrative Segregation, just in case.  

Neal wondered if Jones had ever seen an AdSeg cell; but the offer was meant kindly so Neal answered kindly, too.  

"I'll be okay, Jones. It's not a big deal."  

"You're returning to prison after being a CI for the feds… It might be a big deal. It's not too late, we can arrange a transfer to a different prison, or you can—" 

"It's fine." Then, less shortly, Neal added, " My mind's made up about DC. And this is one of those better the devil you know situations. Really, I'll be fine," he'd promised Jones, and got in the van.  

And he was.  

Only two of the gangs even cared that he'd been on work release, and it took one conversation with each to convince them that he was working the system, not for the system. And who was going to contradict him? Of the criminals he and—of the criminals they caught, only some went to prison, a few of those in-state, and fewer still in supermax. And the handful that Neal had personally put in this prison, well, they weren't rich and they weren't popular in here, and they posed no threat to someone who already had established rapport with all the big players.  

He resented it, but it was his playground, and he was home. 

He assured Jones of it when he came up to visit the next day, and later that week he assured Diana, and then Rebecca. When Elizabeth came up—his fourth visitor in 10 days—he'd asked if they had a schedule worked out.  

"Yeah," she nodded, her eyes again, always, brimming with tears. "I'm never alone these days, it doesn’t seem right that you should be."  

The simple recognition of his loss seemed to bypass a glassware grief-proof maze he hadn't even realized was there, with the accuracy of a targeted attack; something shattered, and cool detachment was overcome, drowned, smothered, by a wave of intangibility. Ellen, James, Siegel, he'd mourned them all, what they had been, should have been, could have been to him; but Peter was. He fully was all those things to Neal, continuously and concurrently. He so much was, he was there, and he cared, and he allowed Neal to become his family. And he paid the price for being Neal’s.  

Neal hadn’t said anything, but Elizabeth could see the effect of her words. She reached out a hand to take his, and he almost felt the touch, the cool softness of her hands, the light squeeze, the proof that his loss was real, even if it paled in comparison to hers.  

“No touching,” a guard barked, and Elizabeth pulled her hand back as though his skin was a live-wire.  

Neal pulled his own hands back, too, as though anticipating touch had been an aggression they’d committed.  

He inhaled sharply, once, and blinked himself into composure. He couldn’t afford to focus on Peter right now. There’d be time for that.  

“Is there a date for the funeral?”  

“Oh, Neal, yes. That’s what I came up here to tell you. It’s set for Monday next week, the service starts at eleven, so you should have plenty of time to make it down to the City. I put you down as a speaker, I hope that’s okay… Oh, and I already cleared it with Bruce, and he’s cleared it with the warden. I brought up a suit, so you should be all set.”  

She smiled her Premiere Events smile, but the expression was so obviously laden with sadness at what it was she was planning that Neal had to clench his own hands together or risk reaching for her.  

“Elizabeth,” Neal started, but he wasn’t sure what he wanted to say. He thought he needed to apologize, for not being there for her; he wanted to ask how she was doing, really; he wanted her to insinuate again that he had what to grieve, too.  

“Thank you for coming up,” was all he said, and she brushed off his thanks and reminded him that Diana would be up to see him before the funeral.  

As it was, he saw almost no one between then and the day of the funeral, five days later.  

Neal said goodbye to Elizabeth and turned to make his way back to his cell block, but a young guard stepped in front of him, a hand raised in a request he stop.  

“Warden Blythe asked to see you, Caffrey,” he said, and nodded Neal toward the other side of the hallway.  

Neal followed him to the office.  

The warden gestured for the guard to wait outside and for Neal to sit, and before Neal could so much as smile in question he was preempted by Blythe explaining why he was here.  

The man remained seated, his hands clasping one another over an impossibly ordered desk, and he spoke to Neal in a straightforward, no-nonsense sort of strictness.  

“You’ve caused trouble before, Caffrey, my predecessor made that clear, but since you’ve come back you’ve been toeing the line. It’s important to me you know that I respect that. It’s a shame your work-release had to end so abruptly, and for the reason it did.  

“But I just got off the phone with the governor’s office, who got off the phone with the FBI. Seems like they’re still looking out for you.”  

He paused, as though Neal might wish to interject. When Neal didn’t, he shrugged and continued. “You’re already cleared for a furlough next week for, uh…” he rummaged through his paperwork, before pulling up the name he was looking for, “Burke’s funeral, from nine until four, including travel. But looks like the FBI believes there are concrete threats against you in genpop, and they’re recommending you be moved to Special Housing.”  

Special Housing. What a clean, promising term for solitary confinement.  

“Threats? Did they say what kind?” Neal had trouble believing that someone in the FBI was able to read the prison landscape from Manhattan better than he was able to from inside. He always had an ear to the ground, and he was very sure he was on solid footing with everyone who could possibly matter, and with many who certainly did not.  

“No, I’m afraid not. Just that they have credible threats and for your own safety you’re to be moved to Special Housing.”  

“For how long?”  

“Indefinitely.”  

The hollowness in Neal’s chest was panic, he knew that, but it still felt like something else, like a bad dream where Peter had died and he was next.  

“Sir—please, I’m fine, I don’t think there’s a thr—”  

“Frankly, I don’t either, Caffrey. This isn’t Oz, we take the safety of our inmate seriously, and if there’s any hint of a conspiracy to commit violence we stop it. But when the FBI gives a recommendation that the governor repeats, by the time it’s on my desk it’s an order. I do have some discretion, so I’m going to ignore the recommendation that we revoke yard time, as well. The constitution still means something to some people,” he muttered, organizing his already-neat papers.  

“Since it’s protective, and not punitive, I’ve allowed you to have your books and your papers down there. No pens, but I can get you pencils if you’d like them.”  

Special housing, AdSeg, the box, the hole; none of those names could paint the reality with any stroke of justice. Neal realized he was breathing heavily, and forced himself to calm. If he was going to the box indefinitely—and why hadn’t he been told about whatever threat had supposedly reared its head?—he couldn’t afford to start his stay with a panic attack, because it would only get worse from here.  

“Thank you, warden,” Neal forced himself to say, keeping his eyes wide and his voice steady. “I would appreciate pencils, yes.”  

“Okay. The chaplain will be down there once every couple of days to check on you, and you’ll get yard time twice a day following genpop. It’s the best I can do until I get more details about these threats,” Blythe said.  

“Hobbart here will see you to Special Housing.”  

Neal followed Hobbart to the western-most side of the building, separate from the other cellblocks. The AdSeg cells weren’t basement cells, at least, and the one he was taken to had a narrow slit that at this hour was already shining with the golden glow of afternoon sun.  

He stepped into the narrow cell—he could touch the walls with either hand if he spread his arms—and noted that his things were already brought in. indefinitely . His books were piled neatly on the floor, and he noticed they were joined by at least a dozen others, what looked to be random titles from the library.  

It was a nice— indefinitely— gesture.  

“Meals will be brought to you,” Hobbart said, standing behind Neal. Neal turned to face him. 

“There’s one guard in Special Housing, we sit at the end of the block. You’re the only one here right now, so if there’s an emergency or you need a doctor, that sort of thing, just holler.”  

He shifted from foot to foot, as though anxious to leave. Neal took control of his breathing and reminded himself that losing it now wouldn’t help him.  

“I’m on shift till four, that’s…” he checked his wristwatch, “in about half an hour. After that Derrick will replace me, he’ll be bringing you dinner. You can ask him who’ll be on shift after him, probably Wallace. You’ll get yard from eight to nine, and again from three to four. You missed it today, I guess,” Hobbart half-apologized. Then he added, “Oh,” and held up a box of no. 2 pencils. “The Warden said to leave these with you.”  

He hesitated, then set the box down on a pile of books. “Blythe is a hardass, but he’s fair. If you behave down here, he’ll let you have more things. He doesn’t actually like to use this wing.”  

Neal nodded, but didn’t trust himself to speak. Everything was closing in on him, had been, even before this new sentencing; hearing the confirmation that he was now trapped in a box indefinitely seemed to seal it around him.  

“Good luck, man,” Hobbart said, and stepped out.  

He closed the door, and bolted it.  

Neal resented how easily he adjusted to his little box, too.  

The first minute, five, hour, night, twenty-four hours had been the worst, they always were, but after that it was like Neal’s natural place as a caged animal reasserted itself, and he was… Fine.  

He read his books, and he wrote his poetry, and he thought about Peter with the same sad but inevitable acceptance that accompanied all his losses. At first he thought that he was numb from the news, then that he’d been busy reestablishing himself in genpop, then overwhelmed with the prospect of spending weeks or months or longer in AdSeg.  

But as he walked his laps around the prison yard early Friday morning, it occurred to him that maybe he had just… dried up. It wasn’t that he didn’t care about Peter, he knew he did, more deeply than he’d cared for anyone else in his life, with the exception maybe of his mother; unlike his mother, he was reasonably sure that Peter cared back.  

But all the same, he found himself more clinically concerned with the technicalities of the funeral than its implications. He assumed there wouldn’t be an open casket if everyone had been denied view of the body, but he realized that he didn’t have a clear idea of what Peter had wanted his funeral to look like. 

It felt like the kind of thing a partner should know, Neal thought. Peter would know for him, he was sure, because while Neal had forged and molded by Mozzie and Adler and Kate, Peter had been the first one to really see the result, the one to look at him and see not a useful vessel but an independence, which existed in its own right. He defined Neal in way more fundamental than any birth certificate ever could. Neal lay awake in the darkness that night and wondered who he was now. He wondered who would ever know. 

The next morning Neal remembered that he hadn’t been marking days since he’d been isolated, and thought that maybe he should. He used his first pencil for that. 

It was a Saturday, and after his morning time outdoors he was surprised to find a large manilla envelope waiting for him on his bed. 

“Wallace?” Neal asked, turning toward the guard before he locked him in again. “What’s this? There’s no mail on Saturday.” 

Wallace shrugged. “Came down through the warden’s office, was told to give it to you as is. Anything else?” 

“No, thank you,” Neal answered, and waited until the door was shut before turning his back on it. Somehow, it felt more polite that way. 

He sat down and pulled at the tab that had been glued shut. He peeked inside, then pulled out the only thing inside. 

It took him a moment to orient himself around what he was seeing. It was a glossy image, marked in the corner with a case number with the words autopsy FBI245R-L10 but the image itself was a blackened blur, an inky stain against a stainless steel background, an enormous coal with curled—

Neal dropped the image and dropped off the bed onto his knees, for once grateful that there was no distance to speak of between the foot of his bed and the toilet. He heaved, the image already burned into—he heaved again at the thought—the curled fingers, the gaping jaw yawning forever in a charred scream, the body hairless, clothesless, a mummified sac of charcoaled flesh that used to be Peter Burke. 

Neal finished gagging but remained on his knees, unwilling to turn around and face the cruel gift left for him. 

He knew now why no one had been allowed to see the body, and he couldn’t think of what he had done to make someone in the FBI think that he deserved to be the exception. 

It was smoke inhalation that killed him, Neal told himself. It had to be. 

No one could survive long enough to feel that happening. 

It was a crass consolation. 

Neal stood and washed out his mouth, and without looking flipped the grotesque image so it was facedown on the bed. 

That revealed the message that had been scrawled on the back. The handwriting was unknown to him, so it precluded Diana, Jones, or Hughes; and he didn’t want to believe anyone would have been heartless enough to share this image with Elizabeth. 

The letters were formed with a thick black marker, written in the all-caps favored by old men and people who wanted to obscure the tell-tale signatory elements of their own handwriting. 

YOU HAVE A LOT TO MAKE AMENDS FOR. 

Those eight words send Neal heaving again. 

Neal didn't want to look at the accusation, but he couldn’t bear to look at Peter’s remains, either; he wanted to get rid of the picture altogether, but the thought of tearing the image into pieces and flushing them down the toilet—the only means of disposal he had—felt like further desecration of Peter’s body. 

He tried his best not to look, but he still caught both the words and the outline of the gruesome cadaver—Peter, it was Peter— and tucked the glossy image back into the envelope. He tossed it as far way from him as he could. 

He pulled his knees up and rested his feet on the bed, head pushed back against the wall. 

You have a lot to make amends for. 

It… The words were cruel, calculatingly so, but Neal didn’t think he was being too forgiving by wondering whether they were untrue. He wasn't even on that case, and he hadn’t known anything about it beyond the fact that Peter had given him the day off.

Should he have been there? Was the implication behind those terrible words that he should have been there? He probably wouldn’t have listened to Peter’s warning, would have gone in after him. Neal raised his eyes to the stained ceiling, but it did nothing to stem the realization that was bleeding into him. 

He’d have been able to save Peter, or he’d have died with him; either would be preferable to this.  

He had a lot to amend for, and an indefinite amount of time to think about it. 

The next day another manilla envelope waited for him. 

He ignored it. 

For hours, he ignored it. 

But he knew it was about Peter, and sometime late at night the need to know, to grasp any thread that could connect them, even if it was painful, overcame his certainty that he did not want to look. 

It was another glossy print, with the same words written across the back. It was Siegl’s body, strewn on the wet pavement and surrounded by yellow evidence markers. It was accompanied by a note, received by fax from a DC number. It simply read, I’m sure 40ft is sounding like a pretty good deal right now. It’s down to 35. I urge you to reconsider. It’s what Petey would have wanted. 

Neal read the note once, twice, then with a small laugh crumpled it up. 

He was grieving, and he isolated, but why did Kramer think that made him stupid? Kramer had, as always, overplayed his hand. He’d showcased his cruelty, then acted like a show of its withdrawal would be incentive enough to change Neal’s mind about working for him. 

He really had no understanding of freedom. 

Neal lay back on the bed, determined to get sleep before his early start tomorrow. 

It was the day of Peter’s funeral. 

Somehow, the early start turned into hours of bureaucratic flexing and completely evitable delays, and Neal arrived at Peter’s funeral in an orange jumpsuit, handcuffed, and an hour late. 

Elizabeth had been livid. 

She met him at the van, and once she was satisfied that there hadn’t been a car accident or an incident at the prison, she turned on the guards with words sharp enough to draw blood. I am trying to bury my husband and you decide it’s the right time for power plays? Where is the suit I left for him? This was his partner! His mother is inside, would you like to handcuff her, too, on this special day? She’d railed, and when her anger very suddenly collapsed into worried, anxious tears, Neal intervened. 

“El, it’s fine,” he said, stepping between her and the guard, forcing her to take a step back. “And I’m here for you, and for Peter. It doesn’t matter what I’m wearing.” 

“But it would have mattered to him,” Elizabeth cried, her voice breaking and her self-composure shattering. Neal raised both hands and looped them around her, and by the time she had calmed enough to wipe her eyes and reassure him that they had drawn out the visitation and delayed the service for him, the guards had gone around them and unlocked the handcuffs, and Jones had managed to round up a suit jacket from his own car, slacks that had been brought to the funeral director’s office but never worn, and a button-down shirt off the back of one of the agents from the division. 

When he had changed, El gripped his hand and held it close.”Don’t leave me alone with my parents, and don’t leave me alone with anyone from the FBI who isn’t Reese, Jones, or Diana,” she ordered in a fierce whisper, and Neal at least had a job to guide him through the simultaneous numbness and electric anxiety. This was a work event, Neal understood, and for Peter’s sake, he would help Elizabeth through it. 

Neal stayed by her side, and glibly guided along those agents who seemed to come up to Elizabeth with an air of political maneuvering, and then briefly directed her back towards them whenever her parents crowded her with offers of food, kleenex, and a passive aggressive suggestion she touch up her makeup. 

Elizabeth cried, silently, during the call-and-response parts of the service; she gripped his hand tighter and he held her back. She went up and through tears talked of how she and Peter met, how they loved, how they parted. "Have a good day, hon. Our last words were… casual. Because we thought there’d be more. I thought I’d have more time—”

When the tears overpowered her then she couldn’t recover. She stood up there, trying to control her hitching breath, until Mrs. Burke came to her side, hugged her, and led her back to her seat. Peter’s dad spoke next, about Peter the kid and Peter the athlete and Peter the son who always made them proud, even when he did things they didn’t approve of, and Neal realized how much he owed Mr. Burke; but instead of the warmth of connection he felt another piece of himself hollowed out by the eulogy. It was meaningless, without Peter as the joining thread. 

Then it was Neal’s turn. He’d intended to talk about what made him proud. Not Peter, Neal . He’d prepared a speech about how all his multivarious talents—the painting, his understanding of people, the exactitude of replication he was capable of—ultimately meant nothing because he hadn’t earned those. But his years of earning Peter’s trust, his respect, that was his lifetime achievement. How the best he could hope for himself is to keep earning that respect, even if Peter wasn’t there to give it. 

He had stood up there and adjusted the buttons of his borrowed jacket and had been about to start, when he looked over the assembled crowd and saw Ruiz, and Rice, Kramer, even Hughes; and scores of other law-enforcement in front of whom it was simply impossible for him to be so honest. Peter was a vulnerability he couldn’t risk, a part of himself he simply couldn’t share with those who wanted his harm. If it had been just the people from the office, just El, maybe—

Neal spoke instead of Peter the partner, the agent, of a brilliant man and a great cop. It was what they all wanted to hear, anyway. When people came by to offer their condolences to Elizabeth after the graveside service, they included him, as well. 

It wasn’t how he thought he’d meet Peter’s parents. 

He was, however, expecting to meet Kramer.

The man had been dripping with contented sympathy—I suppose deals like Peter’s don’t come around every day, one would be wise to take them when they’re offered, don’t you think? And It’s a shame, just a shame. Anyone who was involved in that op should make amends, isn’t that right, Neal?— and Neal answered his polite inquiries with an open smile that wasn’t quite up to form. 

Elizabeth, at least, seemed to read its limitations, and she very quickly excused herself and Neal from Kramer’s side, under some vague pretense and a thank you for coming.

The gathering afterwards was held in the funeral home, and it hadn’t been going for more than ten minutes when Bruce had had enough and ordered Neal’s guards to stop hovering a step behind him, and wait outside. 

Neal felt a little lighter, but still like he was shackled at the ankle to a weight that now lay six feet underground about 500 yards away. He took a seat on a sofa close to the wide parlour windows to ease the tension. 

People spoke, and Neal listened when groups drifted near him, and vaguely wondered if the hollow feeling in his chest would eventually be filled with rage or sorrow when he finally began to feel things again. 

It was academic, because he couldn’t truly imagine feeling anything through the cold indifference that inched out of his core to slowly consume him. He burned with sympathy for Elizabeth, he wished he could ease Mozzie’s pain (real though it was, he couldn’t bring himself to come to Fed Central), he wanted nothing more than to erase the barely-controlled grief that radiated from Diana and Jones like a toxic reminder of what they’d lost; but he couldn’t quite contextualize what he himself was feeling. 

“If I have to hear about that case one more time,” Diana threatened as though they’d been in the middle of a conversion, and handed Neal a plate laden with food. 

“And it wasn’t even Panama,” Jones stabbed the air in punctuation, then handed Neal the fork he’d been wielding. “How can he be getting it that wrong?” 

Diana almost tackled a passing waiter, and turned back to the other two holding three glasses of red wine. Neal took his but set it down on the table beside him.

“You driving after, Caffrey?” Diana asked him, crossing her arms at him like he was a schoolboy in trouble. She squeezed in between him and the side table, forcing him to scootch to the other side of the sofa, and handed him his wine again. “It’s gotta be better than toilet wine.” 

Neal huffed in reluctant humor. He balanced the plate on his lap and took the wine. 

“I haven’t been paying attention. Who’s getting what wrong about Panama?” He wasn’t sure why, but the name bore importance he wasn’t quite grasping, an idea he wasn’t fully seeing.

“In a sec,” Diana said, and shifted so she was facing him. “Why didn’t you want to see me?”

Neal asked what she was talking about without so much as moving his head. 

“On Saturday. I drove all the way up there, but they told me you weren’t interested in receiving visitors.” 

Neal took a sip of the wine to buy himself a moment to gather himself, to decide how much to reveal. He instead spent it savoring the deep richness of a dry shiraz, and answered Diana with unintended honesty. 

“No one told me you came. I’ve been in AdSeg since Friday.” 

“Why?” Jones had been standing and now moved closer to tower over Neal, but his step somehow had a protective quality. 

“They didn’t really say. What case in Panama?” The more he ignored it the more certain he became that there was something there, an intuition he’d never really indulged before screaming for his attention like a muted itch. 

“Peter never had a case in Panama, is the point, so it couldn’t have been what he was talking about,” Diana answered him, sort of. “How can the warden put you in AdSeg without giving you a reason?” 

Neal finished his wine in one, frustrated tip of his glass. It was the wrong way to consume what was a fine vintage, but he was at Peter’s funeral, so wrong seemed to be the order of the day. Besides, he could see the prison guards hovering at the entrance to the gathering hall; he didn’t have time for them to talk around one another much longer. 

“It wasn’t Blythe. He said he had orders from the governor, and those came down from the FBI. If it wasn’t you guys reporting a credible threat, it was probably Kramer pretending there was one. But forget that, please.” 

Neal leaned forward, and with a glance up at Jones invited him to pull a chair closer. “I don’t know why, but I think this is important. Why are you talking about Panama?” 

“It’s Agent Grunlicht, from violent crimes,” Jones replied. “He’s trying to pretend that Peter’s final words were some meaningful reference to heroics in a case in Panama, but like we said, Peter never travelled there.” 

Neal looked at the guards, who were looking at Bruce. In the light of day and surrounded by Peter’s—by his—team, meaning registered with the deafening click of a releasing lock.  He spoke quietly and urgently, eyes flitting back and forth between Jones and Diana. 

“Did you hear that recording? Of—his last, of the op?” 

“I didn’t,” Jones said, but Diana crossed her arms and looked down. She nodded. 

“Yeah. I was in the van, I heard it on the comms. I wish I could forget it, though.” 

Neal didn’t blame her. 

“What did he say exactly about Panama?” 

Diana looked to Jones, but he shook his head with a light shrug. She tilted her head and admitted, “Like I said, it wasn’t that. He was telling us not to come in after him, because the building was unstable, and there was a gas leak and exposed wiring. I guess he was trying to comfort us. What he said was, don’t feel bad, these things are nobody’s fault, like in Panama City.” 

Something numb snapped into wakefulness that engaged all his nerve endings at once, from his fingertips to his eyelids and down to a bolt of electricity that seemed to run through his toes. Neal felt airless, but not hollow; it was like helium now filled his lungs, so full with lightness that if he were to take a deep breath he might crash down from the plain heaviness of oxygen. It was an abrupt certainty of something he had no way of proving. 

Neal inched even more forward on the seat of the couch, so he could set the plate of food down and look directly up at Jones. 

“Do you remember what happened at Panama City, and why it was nobody’s fault? I know for a fact you were there with Peter.” 

“What happened in Panama City?” Diana asked, and Neal pulled a little back to include her in the circle. In the… conspiracy. That’s what this was, a desperate conspiracy theory that even Mozzie hadn’t indulged in the days after Peter had died. 

Had…

“You sure that’s what he said?” He asked Diana. 

She nodded. “He was getting confused with blood loss near the end, but he repeated that a few times. I’m sure. It’s nobody’s fault, like Panama City.” 

The guards had deemed that the danger from Bruce had either passed, or wasn’t equal to their orders to be back before supper. They began moving across the room. 

“Listen to it yourself. I know I can’t—I don’t know if you can—but you have to get me the files he’d been working on with Violent Crimes. And anything related from the last couple of years.” 

Neal stood as the guards approached. “It’s time.” 

Neal shrugged out of the borrowed jacket and handed it back to Jones. He began working the buttons of the shirt when Diana also stood, and gently touched his arm. “Keep it. How can we get you the files when they won’t allow you visitors?” 

Neal stepped between them, and one of the guards gripped his arm. “Mozzie. He’s my lawyer, he can get files to me. The warden will let those through.” 

“Caffrey, you can’t really think—” 

“Indulge me? Please, Jones?” Neal cut him off. “Anything even remotely connected. I have nothing but time.” Although the guard was tugging on his arm he planted his feet, until he received a nod from Jones. 

“What the hell happened in Panama City?” Diana asked again, and Neal heard Jones’ low answer as he allowed himself to be pulled away. 

“Caffrey faked his death.” 

~*~

Peter kept getting small updates about who he used to be. Some of them came from the FBI servers they'd hacked through email access on his phone, some from direct observation; Peter wasn't too hurt or too hungry to note that this meant he was being held within a few hours of the NYC area. 

Agent Brielle was promoted and they've released your body for interment and it was a lovely service and your widow put the house up for sale. 

That last one hurt the most, and they could see it, and they made a point of revisiting it. 

“I made some small talk when I was in Brooklyn today,” Galvin said as he sat heavily on the iron bed frame beside Peter. 

Peter wanted desperately to move away from the cloud of body spray that always, always, always preceded some pain or other, but the chain connecting him to the bed had been pulled taut today, and as it was he could only barely sit without spraining his ankle. He breathed in Galvin’s body spray and paused his work, one finger marking the row he was on. If he lost his place he’d never finish it today, and that would mean he wouldn’t eat; and even though he was a realist about his prospects, he wanted to keep his strength up. 

“I saw her as she was leaving, you know she took off her ring? Looks like the house isn’t the only thing back on the market, eh? Anyway, I asked why she was selling the house. She’s so pretty,” Galvin said, bumping Peter’s shoulder lightly, as though appreciating El was some kind of shared mischief. 

“She said she couldn’t afford the mortgage anymore. Your pension doesn’t kick in until a death certificate is issued, and there’s been some delay because of the tox screen, and some other things I didn’t really care about. Is it weird? Four weeks dead, two weeks buried, and no death certificate? Is it usually like that?” 

Peter inhaled the detestable cologne and bit down on the heartache because Galvin was expecting an answer. 

“I don’t really know,” he offered, his tone conversational, in hope it would encourage the other man to move on, or better yet, leave. He had work to do, and it was already past twelve in the afternoon.  

“Huh.” Galvin paused, and Peter held his breath. “Well, she said it’s a seller’s market right now, and she already got several offers past the asking price, so I guess good for her. I hate to think of her having to haggle right now.” 

Peter did, too.

He’d struggled at first to accept that this was his reality now, that their ploy had worked, that he was effectively dead; but they had been very accommodating with the flow of information since it served them well. 

Once he finally recovered from his injuries and was well enough to stay awake and sit up—the death had been fake, but the blood loss very real—Galvin sat beside him on the bed, holding Peter’s phone while the man they called Dooley stood guard, weapon drawn and trained, and had flipped through the FBI server for him. 

The form letter announcing his death in the line of duty; correspondence about his CI, who had gone back to prison; the initial ME reports; an email titled Peter Burke, funeral details; and even an internal tender asking for resumes to fill his position. 

His existence had been reduced to a room less than a hundred square feet, though his chain barely allowed him to stand up from the bed tucked into the corner. He was taken to the bathroom twice a day, and allowed to refill his water bottle then. 

Food was earned. 

The only thing that had given him comfort was the thought that Elizabeth was at least taken care of; that she’d have the house, she’d have his pension, and she wouldn’t be forced into the exact position Galvin was describing. His chest hurt and an uncomfortable pressure was building above his jaw, and he picked up his pencil again and resumed his work. 

“I hope to finish the Bleier books today. Do you want me to fill out the forms for City Planning, too?” 

Galvin punched him lightly on the arm and leaned forward, the creaky metal springs squawking as he did. 

“You are the best,” he said, and using Peter for support pushed himself to stand. “Man, that bed is uncomfortable. Keep up the good work and maybe we’ll see about getting you a mattress, huh?” 

Peter closed his eyes against the swell of despair that hit him. 

He’d been about to say thank you, and mean it. 

At the mention of the mattress Peter had felt true, sincere gratitude, he’d felt ambition, he’d felt… a goal. It worked, he realized. A month, and he’d been reduced to the space, the life, the work they allotted him. 

But as that realization settled, it seemed to sink into a steel wire he hadn’t known was there and didn’t recognize. It was a delicate, imperceptible, naive, untenable hope. He knew he had no hope, and he didn’t recognize where it had come from. But it whispered to him with a foreign bright-eyed belief that being what they wanted didn’t mean giving himself up, it meant changing into a new self that was better equipped to handle the now . When that changed into a later, well, he could see about changing, too. 

“Thank you, I would appreciate that,” he said, not quite smiling but with a sincerity of kindness that couldn’t be faked, so one he forced himself to feel. 

Peter Burke ceased to exist at that moment. 

But in the breath before he winked out of existence, he decided to fight. 

He filled out the City Planning forms, and he did it impeccably, and he earned himself a deli sandwich, and when he did it again for their other illegal business, and then for their colleagues’ businesses, and then for anyone who could afford the services he was forced to render, he earned also a mattress, and good coffee, and an occasional stroll outdoors. 

But that day with the Bleier family was the first time he signed forms on behalf of a fictional employee of the enterprise, one Nick Halden. 

~*~

After the funeral documents started pouring in. 

Jones managed to strong-arm the administration into allowing Neal one visitor every other week, and either he or Diana would drive up and use the visit to exchange information. It was far from efficient, but those visits bolstered Neal; with each one, except the first, he became increasingly certain with what he had intuited at the funeral. 

“Are you okay?” 

If Diana had been a little ruder with her greeting he’d have taken it as a joke, but her face was contorted with worry that only served to distract her from what they were meant to be discussing. Neal brushed her off. 

“I’m fine,” he said, and tugged a little on his uniform shirt to obscure how loosely it hung on his frame. It was hard to maintain an appetite, hovering in uncertainty between the reality where that grisly photo was real, and one where he had to prove it wasn’t. “Have you found anything?” 

Diana held out her hands, the guard in the corner of the room took a half-step forward, and Diana withdrew. “I wasn’t going to,” she said to the guard. Then to Neal, “We’re operating on less than fumes here. I don’t even know what we’re looking for.

“The business Peter was called in to take a look at? Their finances are a mess of poorly cooked books. We sent you those, but there’s another round of subpoenas going out next week, and we expect those to have a smoking gun. We’ll have Mozzie send those documents when we get them, but…” 

But she didn’t expect it to reveal anything. 

Neal had been over every line of those records, every transfer, every purchase, every business partnership. He had 22 hours a day and very little else to occupy his time. 

But even so, he wasn’t finding anything besides evidence of poorly laundered money. 

“Please,” Neal leaned forward, shaking his hair out of his eyes. “I don’t—I have a feeling we can’t drop this yet. Send me the new financial records, when they come in? I promise, I’m not, this isn’t, I—” 

He faltered. He didn’t know how to express that he wasn’t losing his mind, when it was very possible he was. He could recognize how insane this was, based on a wild intuition and a con he pulled almost ten years ago. How inappropriate, even, it was to insinuate that the last thing on Peter’s mind had been Neal Caffrey’s capers. That he’d use his dying breath on Neal, when Neal couldn’t even remember the last thing he’d said to him. 

But he couldn’t drop it. 

“Yeah, Neal. We’ll have Mozzie send them over. How are you, though, really?” 

Neal didn’t want her thinking about him. Not if… He could handle Kramer’s minor pressures to get him to change his mind about the deal, which was now down to a 30 foot radius and a twelve-hour day. It wasn’t as though being denied coffee privileges was worth the distraction. 

“It’s really good to see a friendly face,” he said, sincerely, and even if Diana wasn’t actually fooled she did get distracted, because it was true and she could see that on his features. 

“It’s time,” the guard said a few minutes later, and Neal rose. 

It took two more weeks but Mozzie got Neal the files, and at first all Neal could see was the suddenly immaculate bookkeeping. Not only was every discrepancy accounted for, the Bleiers were suddenly big donors to a series of wonderful causes, their intricate knowledge of tax deductions accounting for every past sum that had been under review. 

Neal sat on the floor of his cell, the papers spread out all around him as he traced and added sums on the backs of older documents, occasionally consulting the tax code the warden had provided him on request. 

The bookwork was beyond clean. 

Which meant they had nothing. Three weeks after the funeral, three weeks since he started looking into this, and he had nothing. He wasn’t even sure what he was looking for, but these books were so perfect the FBI would sooner send the Bleiers an apology for ever suspecting them than they’d investigate further. 

Neal snapped the pencil he was holding, and threw the pieces against the door, the spiteful joy at the damage a flimsy gossamer of satisfaction in the face of what it represented. Jones would be by next week, and Neal would have to admit that he'd been grasping at— 

He flung the papers off the bed, and when that felt flimsy, too, he scattered them, each movement angry and raw and filled with everything he couldn't control stacked against him. 

He left the mess for two days; it wasn't an issue, since Kramer had managed to pull his yard time a week ago and the guards didn’t need to step inside to slide him his food.

It was a Saturday night when he finally began collecting the mess. The chaplain had been down earlier in the day, and Neal had been surprised at the flair of embarrassment that fluttered within at being seen as he was. He couldn't control his long hair or the stubble of the weekly shave he was allowed, but the evidence of his tantrum was beneath him. 

When the chaplain left he began rearranging the documents in order, and that's when he noticed, in the middle of page four of the City Planners permit, in neat script so tiny it took him a few minutes to be really sure of what he was seeing. 

“Nick Halden,” he said to Jones when he next arrived, cuffed hands in his lap but his eyes bright. “Dated a month after Peter's—op.”

He'd been about to say death , but that wasn't true anymore, was it? 

“That's why all their books came up clean, how the case against them fell apart. They realized an FBI expert was coming in to review their books and planned to use him, instead, to clean up shop.” 

“Caffrey, that… I'll have to look it up myself, make sure there isn’t some poor bastard named Nick Halden out there cooking books. But if it's there, you realize what this means?” 

Neal nodded, inhaling through his open mouth because he needed more air. “Yeah.” 

“Should we tell Elizabeth?” 

Neal sat back at that. The idea of keeping this from her was repulsive, but giving her false hope would be worse. He shook his head. 

“Let's wait till we have more. When Diana is on board, we can tell Elizabeth." 

Jones chuckled. “Yeah, she's not fully sold on Panama City, but she wasn't there to see that shark.” He shivered. “And anyway, I don't want to bother Elizabeth. Not while she's stressed about selling the house, you know?” 

Neal hadn't known, and somehow it was worse now that he truly believed Peter was alive. It was bad enough that they'd all been fooled for so long, but to have him return—Neal couldn't accept another outcome—to a life that had been dismantled around him? 

Neal could deal with the solitude, with the confinement, with all of this, but he needed to know that the people he cared about were safe. 

“Why is she selling?” 

As Jones explained, Neal calculated. He didn't have the exact numbers, but he was sure Mozzie would make up the difference if it came up short. 

“Can you have Mozzie draw up some documents for me?” 

He parted with Jones with a promise that he'd take care, whatever that meant, and that Jones would send him the financials of any businesses that worked in close partnership with Bleier. Neal rattled off the ones he knew by memory, but made sure Jones knew to check for others. 

That had been seven weeks after Peter died. 

At eight weeks, Neal's visitation from everyone but his lawyer had been cut off. 

At nine weeks, he’d been put exclusively on disciplinary loaf and water for all three meals.

He didn't care, because once he knew what to look for he unravelled the plot with such accuracy that the biggest challenge had been getting information to the others in a timely fashion. The cell phone Moz had smuggled for him helped, but since he didn’t have a charger he could only use it to text, and only sparingly. 

Out of the hundreds of contacts the Bleiers cultivated, Neal narrowed down the couple dozen whose financial records seemed doctored by the same immaculate hand. When finally given the full workup on those, he'd found documents and permits and tax workarounds signed by Steve Tabernacle, Daniel Brooks, Benjamin Cooper, Jimmy Berger, and James Moreau. And when Mozzie handed him six thousand pages worth of known assets associated with each of those businesses and their owners (and ex wives and adult children), Neal scoured them for any assets that might serve as a good place to hold an FBI agent captive for over two months.

It was slow work, and since he and Diana and Jones were covering the same ground with no easy way to communicate, it sometimes proved redundant. 

But at the ten-week mark after they faked Peter's death Diana was confident enough in what they'd uncovered to tell Elizabeth. 

That was also the last time Neal saw Mozzie. He wasn’t sure how they were justifying denying him access to his lawyer, but he knew the futility of arguing the point. He only wished he knew how Elizabeth had taken the news. He hoped she understood why they'd kept their suspicions from her for as long as they had. 

At eleven weeks he'd been moved to a windowless—and receptionless—cell, and at twelve weeks he was down to two meals a day. Even if it was meant as a punishment it was a soft sort of clemency to reduce how often he had to consume the shapeless, colorless loaf with the aftertaste of rotten bell peppers. 

For a week after that they kept the lights on twenty-four hours a day, and in the sleepless hours Neal reviewed the documents they had let him keep. Family, finances, expenditures, business and personnel, he’d been over them all a dozen times, but the money always checked out. 

Their accountant really was very good. 

It was on day six of eternal neon-o’clock that Neal absently thought, lying on the stone ledge that served as a bed waiting for sleep to end the heartache and the thousand shocks he’d dealt with since Peter’s supposed death, that Joseph Bleier’s oldest daughter must be at least as tired and stir-crazy as he was, raising her five kids in a two-bedroom home up in Suffern, and then making the commute to their private school in the City every day.

He sat up. 

Suffern was an odd choice for a socialite like her, and especially if she had the money to send her kids to one of the best private schools in the State. 

He fell to his knees and grabbed the sheaf of papers that contained the property details, and shuffled through another stack until he found the one that had the business-related transfers. The cost of the property was listed as $162,500 in the daughter’s tax forms, bought just two weeks before Peter went missing, and… in the other sheaf Neal found the sum, a monthly transfer of $1,865 listed as a charitable donation but might be a monthly mortgage payment, if he added an interest between three and seven percent—

Neal stood up and was already calling as he moved closer to the door. “Wallace!” 

He realized he actually had no idea what time of day it was—and Wallace worked only mornings—and he added, “Guard? Guard! I need to speak to the warden!” 

He called for two or three minutes when he heard Hobbart calling back. “Caffrey? It’s six p.m., he’s probably just heading out. Can this wait till morning?” 

Neal leaned his head against the door, overcome for a moment by a relief that hit his heart with so much force he momentarily lacked air to speak. It had been days since he’d heard another voice, and maybe a week since someone called him by name. 

He breathed heavily once, twice, then said, “He told me to tell him as soon as I was ready to deal with the FBI.” 

A pause. “You’re sure you want that?” 

Neal wondered how much Hobbart, or the other guards, knew or guessed about his situation. They never went out of their way to trouble him, which counted as downright chivalrous conduct in prison; but as far as he knew they didn’t so much as blink when a new restriction was added, or a privilege reduced. It made Neal a little untrusting of his concern now. 

“Yes, please, tell him I need to talk.” 

He heard Hobbart’s retreating footsteps, and raised his voice again to call after him, “Thank you!” 

Warden Blythe was seated at his desk when Neal was shown in, but Neal could see his briefcase on the visitor’s chair, as though he’d dropped it there when called back into the office. Neal remained standing. 

“I think you’re making the right choice, Caffrey. I've been trying to push back, but I'm getting stonewalled at every turn. They’ve threatened to arrest your lawyer on some aiding and abetting charges, even, and now there’s talk of moving you out of state. They’ll keep finding ways to make your life hell until you agree to whatever it is the FBI needs from you. It's a shitty system, but it's the one we got. You’re right to make the most of it.” 

Neal didn't respond. He opted not to tell Blythe that he'd had Wallace's key card the first day he's been in AdSeg, or that he was making a fairly solid passive income with the smuggling ring he'd set up while he was still on genpop. He didn't think a man like Warden Blythe would understand that Neal was here because at first he'd been trying to respect what Peter would have wanted for him, and now because he intended to be where Peter expected him to be when he got back. 

At Neal's silence Blythe stood up. “Please, call whoever you need to and finish this.” He turned his office phone around, so the buttons were facing Neal. 

“I'll give you three minutes. Make the right choice.” 

He nodded the guard to step out with him, and left Neal alone in his office.

The only choice was who to call. He longed to hear Rebecca's voice, to reassure her that he was alright, not to worry; he ached to speak to Elizabeth, to make sure she knew, and she wasn't angry, and even if she was to tell her that he hadn't stopped looking, that he—

There was only one right choice. 

She picked up on the second ring. “Berrigan.” 

“Diana? It's me.” 

“Neal!” The noise around her quieted, and when she spoke again she said, “I have Jones. You're on speaker.” 

From memory, Neal talked them through what he suspected about the property in Suffern and its connected financials, and he could hear as they rustled through papers on their end, verifying his numbers and delegating for Blake to check on all the addresses listed to Bleier’s children. 

“Blake?” Neal asked. “You looped him in?” 

For a moment the room behind Diana quieted again, and she said, “Everyone’s looped in. Three weeks ago this became an active case. We wanted to tell you, but—” 

“I’ve been out of touch,” Neal said, an unnamable resentment coupling with hope inside him to produce an unpleasant longing. It was good the case wasn’t stalling, but he should be there with them. 

“That’s good news,” he said blandly. “Listen, I have to go, the warden thinks I’m cutting a deal with Kramer—” 

“About that,” Jones interrupted him. “We’ve been trying to get Bruce involved, but he thinks it’ll set a dangerous precedent if he intervenes in favor of a CI, and may not work out in your favor, in the long run. We’re still working on it, though. Your little friend is upstate right now, uh, digging, and a court order just came through today for the prison to release your file. The warden’s on board and he assured us it’s all listed there, and once we show that to Bruce we hope he’ll change his mind about intervening.” 

“I appreciate that,” Neal said, “but finding Peter comes first. Let me know if Suffern turns something up?” 

“We’ll figure out a way,” Diana assured him, and he took it more as a nice gesture than a solid promise. 

When the warden stepped back into his office, Neal told him that the terms of the offer had changed, and he was unable to accept it. Blythe’s shoulders sagged in disappointment. 

“Take him back,” he waved Neal toward Hobbart, and grabbed his briefcase. 

Later that evening they killed the lights. It was a relief at first, until Neal realized they weren’t coming back on. He sat in the darkness hour after hour, squinting at the low glow of the food slot that had become his entire, detested world, and wondered what they found in Suffern. 

~*~

The Accountant hadn’t worried about a meal in weeks, maybe months. 

The longer he spent in the small house the easier it became to smile at Galvin, to cook the books with growing ease, and even to suggest ways to evade detection when he saw the operation getting too vulnerable. 

He was helpful; at first he survived, then he thrived. They'd already gotten away with killing him once, and there was nothing stopping them from doing it again if he ceased to be useful. 

And all the while he kept signing names no one would ever think to look for, except for maybe the one person who wouldn’t have access to them. 

He wished he’d been a little more clear-headed in those final moments as… as the man he was before. He’d lost a lot of blood—it had taken him almost a week to recover enough to maintain consciousness for more than a few minutes at a time—and no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t recreate what exactly he’d said in those crucial, final moments. 

He hoped he said goodbye to his wife, because when he parted with her that morning he hadn’t said anything meaningful. Every day now he woke up thinking of her and pretending he wasn't, wishing for a way at least to apologize that he'd taken their life together so much for granted.

For a while, even after he embraced his life as the Accountant and erased anyone else, he used to hope for a rescue. But somewhere between the sale of his house and the extension of his chain all the way to the bathroom that hope had matured—rotted, maybe was the better word—into a pragmatic plan for end of life. 

Despite his careful cooperation they never forget he was there reluctantly, and even if they didn't realize he had kept a small part of himself hidden and unbroken they still didn't trust him. They laughed with him, shared meals with him, even drank beers with him on occasion; but there was always a gun in the room with him, always ready for a quick end. So he'd begun searching for ways to mark his body in a way that would at least allow it to be identified when he was inevitably deemed to have outlived his usefulness to them. At the moment his best plan was to carve his name into his flesh, and he had even secured a rusted screw with which to begin his work; but since that wouldn't uphold in a fire he kept his mind open to new ideas.

“Time to get back to it?” He suggested, and his guard gestured with his gun that the Accountant should move ahead of him back inside the house. He’d been outdoors for nearly half an hour, during daylight; the feel of the sun after so long indoors was always a blessing, and some twisted part of him counted himself lucky for the luxury. But if he hurried he’d be able to finish the McClanndit books before dinner, and those had been particularly tricky. He hoped it might earn him a newspaper.  

The Accountant paused by his bed and extended his leg as the armed guard took his position in the corner of the room, gun drawn, and Galvin reached down to reattach the chain to the circlet that had been melded shut around his ankle. Once it was locked into place he grabbed the calculator off the messy duvet, and extended the chain all the way to the desk, where he sat down to his afternoon's work.

Half an hour later he was inhaling smoke on the ground and new people were around him and he knew—

“He’s in here! We need bolt cutters up here,” someone said, pulling him to his feet.

“Get those FBI people in here,” the someone called out, then turned to him. “Agent Burke?

He didn't know how to answer that. 

They cut the chain and led him downstairs to agents in FBI blazers, and he realized he knew them. 

But he didn’t know how to respond when Jones pulled him into a hug. He stared in a half-stupor, eyes still watering from the smoke bomb as Jones released him and Diana moved in, whispering “It’s damn good to see you, boss.” 

The Accountant knew, he understood everything, but he also had absolutely nothing within the grasp of his comprehension or under control, and he coughed at first just to postpone needing to talk, but then a true fit took over. 

He couldn't control that, either, and he passed out with a vague sense of gratitude that there were people calling his name. 

He snapped awake in the ambulance. He stared up, trying to grasp that he was out of that room, away from that house for the first time in… months. 

“I’m Dr. Safra,” she said, and she didn’t use his name and she didn’t touch him and for the first time in a long time he felt gratitude that wasn’t tainted by self-repulsion. 

“We’re on our way to the City. We want to get you checked out at the hospital and there are closer ones, but your team thought it would be best to bring you to Brooklyn. Is that alright?” 

He nodded, and looked back up again. This was real, this was so terribly real, and he’d thought about this day every day since that op with Violent Crimes, but now that it was happening he felt like he was watching it from without.

He wanted so badly to stop being on the outside of his life; but he didn’t know which part of it was safe to reengage. Could he stop being the Accountant, without incurring wrath or punishment? Did he have a home? A job, a partner? 

A name? 

“Your wife—” his head snapped toward Dr. Safra “—asked, insisted, that we call her as soon as we knew you were safe. Would that be okay?” 

His heart was twisting around itself, tangling away its supply of oxygen as it fidgeted with—she pulled out a phone, but she didn’t dial, the number was already saved—was it still the 6678 number? 

Somehow that crashed through the glass dome that separated him from Peter’s feelings. He knew her number, and if that had changed… He took the proffered phone with numb fingers. 

“Hello?” 

He thought of her voice every day, every night, every update; he’d regretted their last conversation because it hadn’t been enough, and he’d vowed that if he got another chance he’d make sure it was more than their casual, diurnal exchanges. What he said was, “Hey, hon.” 

What else was there possibly to say? Their love, their life, it was casual, it was diurnal, it was special because it infused the simplest moments of either of their lives. 

“It’s me.” 

She broke. Her tears were interrupted only by apologies as she tried to contend with a pardon from grief she thought was hers for life. He knew how she felt, and Peter spent the rest of the ride trying to console her through his own tears. 

Thankfully, he felt more like himself after four or five hours at the hospital; he was irritated and impatient and he desperately wanted El to return from the phone call she’d taken. 

He’d been given a clean bill of health and a psych eval that said he wasn’t a danger to himself or to others, and the doctors generally agreed that going home would be better for him than forced hospitalization. He waited behind a thin ER curtain for Elizabeth and for his discharge papers, and when he finally spotted her across the reception area she was walking with a woman he didn’t recognize at first. 

Her vibrant red hair had been haphazardly thrown up in a mess of a bun, her glasses were slightly askew like they’d been slept in, and her shoulders were slumped as she sent delicate fingers beneath the frames to wipe away at tears that weren’t as errant as she seemed to think. They kept falling in a steady stream.

Peter had never seen Rebecca look less than immaculate, less than radiant. Even when she’d lost her job at the gallery, she had an internal robustness to her demeanor that was now missing. 

He tugged the curtain shut to allow them some privacy, but he could still pick up the tailend of their conversation. 

“I promise you, we all want that,” El was saying, and Rebecca sniffled once. “This isn’t over.” 

Their shadows shifted as Elizabeth hugged the younger woman, and Rebecca said, “I’m glad you have him back.” 

“You will, too,” El said, and another hug and final goodbyes later she pulled open the curtain. 

It wasn’t hard to piece together that this was about Neal, but Elizbath wouldn’t tell him much more than what he’d overheard. 

“Peter, we still have a long day ahead of us. The FBI still needs to interview you, and the doctors aren’t sure you aren’t still in shock. Please, can we take it slowly? I promise you, I’ll fill you in tonight, but there’s nothing you can do right now, anyway.” 

She did confirm that Neal was in prison and that he’d spoken to Diana the evening before, which put Peter somewhat at ease. 

“Does he at least know I’m—I’m not—how much does he know? Did anyone tell him about today?”  

Elizabeth looked surprised at the question. “Tell him? Peter, he’s the one who found you.” 

His own surprise at that remained unaddressed; before he could ask her to elaborate on what exactly she’d meant everything started happening at once, as though time itself launched into competitive overdrive in an effort to make up for the dead hours, days, weeks he’d spent chained up away from everything important. 

The agents who came by to conduct his initial debrief about his faked death overlapped with the agents who came by for answers about the Bleier family business, and before either team could finish with their questions Peter was asked to make himself available for another psych eval, this time on behalf of the Bureau. 

By the time he finished it was hours past nightfall, and he followed Elizabeth out to her car with an exhausted sort of numbness. 

“I asked Jones and Diana to come by tomorrow morning, and fill you in with everything about Neal. After nine, I thought would be fine,” she said on the way. “Then they want you to give a more complete statement about… about everything, if you’re up to it. If not, they said they typically do this sort of thing over several sessions, so not to pressure yourself into it if you’re not ready.” 

He dreaded the drive, even though he recognized the route; he said nothing because he couldn’t cause her any more sorrow than he already had, but it wasn’t lost on him that he’d be going to Elizabeth’s place. 

Peter swallowed hard when she parked in front of their home. Their old home. 

“I thought… They said you sold it. They showed me the listing.” 

“I didn’t want to.” Elizabeth’s words were an easygoing dissembling. She collected her things as though the topic didn’t bother her. “But I couldn’t make the mortgage payments on my salary alone, and when your deat—” she inhaled deeply through the phrase, “certificate kept getting delayed, I thought it would be better to sell than to default.” 

She opened her door, but Peter hadn’t even unbuckled. 

“Why are we…?” Peter couldn’t ask the question. He was so terrified of hoping, but equally terrified of accepting that this was just… a driveby, that he would get to witness the corpse of the life he’d built with Elizabeth. 

She seemed to realize what he wasn’t asking, and why he wasn’t asking it. She shut her own door, and used both her hands to grab his left, and Peter was transfixed by her ring as it caught the yellowish glow of the streetlights. 

“Oh, Peter, I didn’t sell.” She shook her head, as though the longer she did that the less weight the notion would have. “When Neal heard he, I wasn’t going to let him, but Mozzie said he insisted, he wouldn’t even sign a loan contract. He said you would have wanted me to stay here, and I didn’t want to leave our home, and by the time I knew about it Mozzie had already sold the bakery.” Elizabeth paused for breath and swiped at her eyes, “I didn’t want to leave our home,” she said again, and buried her face in both her hands. 

Peter pulled her into a hug across the console. 

He hated that she’d even had to consider selling, but he was more so overcome with—it wasn’t gratitude, that was too small—it was vindication , at every choice he’d made in his life that led to having someone like Neal step up to care for Elizabeth when he himself had failed her. He would dig into his own culpability for the months he’d spent gone, for the months she’d believed him dead; but she had been taken care of, and that overshadowed any sense of resentment or anger over what he himself had been through. It was nothing , compared to the knowledge that El hadn’t been alone. Between his friends, his colleagues, even his job, there was a system that worked. It took care of El and it brought him back to her. 

His thoughts drawn back to Neal, he intended to ask her again to elaborate what was going on there. Even knowing that Neal had been helping with his disappearance and that he’d been there for Elizabeth, Peter was uneasy. Something unpleasant stabbed at him every time he tried to press forward with the thought of Neal, some dark intuition that something was very, very wrong. 

They stepped out of the car and he’d gotten as far as, “About Neal—” 

But then he stepped into their home, and the full weight of everything that had happened crashed into him in an instantaneous overload of anger, despair, helplessness, fear and gratitude. 

He didn’t ask about Neal that night. 

But he crashed so early, and he’d been physically well-rested even before his rescue, and he’d been woken at five every morning for the last three months; the combination of circumstances meant he was awake at five a.m. the next morning, and he found it impossible to go back to sleep. 

It took him a few minutes, though, to remember that he could go downstairs without being unlocked. 

 He put up coffee, the routine strange and foreign, even though his muscles remembered it flawlessly, and while he waited for it to percolate he texted Jones. 

He received an answer immediately, you’re up? How are you feeling can we come over before 9? 

They were at his door before he finished his first cup of coffee. 

“We need to talk about Neal,” Diana said, still standing in his doorway. 

“Have you had a chance to update him?” He asked as he led the way back to the kitchen. He hadn’t been expecting heavy silence in response, and he turned back to catch them exchanging heavy looks. 

“What? What is it? Elizabeth said he helped find me,” he dropped his voice to a whisper, in case Elizabeth hadn’t been given the whole story. “Is he not working with you?”

“More like we’re working for him,” Jones said, shaking his head. “He’s the one who put it all together, he must have spent every waking minute in the last three months scouring financial documents to trace back to you. It’s not that.” 

They started with the day of the Violent Crimes op, and talked him through everything that followed: Kramer’s competing application to become Neal’s handler, Neal’s decline of the deal, and Kramer’s ensuing pressures to get Neal to rescind. 

“So, what, they cut his phone time? Are you saying no one’s told him yet that I’m,” Peter pivoted mid-sentence, because he wasn’t sure how to refer to himself now that he was no longer presumed dead, “about the rescue?” 

“We’re saying no one’s been allowed to see him in over three weeks, not even his lawyer,” Diana said, shaking her head. “He had to con the warden just to get to a phone to call us about the Suffern connection. Mozzie got his prison file subpoenaed, and they complied the day before yesterday, Peter. It’s bad.” 

“We thought taking this to Bruce would make a difference. But because it’s all legal,” Jones continued, “no one’s eager to step in and stop it, not when Kramer has clout both with the Director and the governor.” He pushed Neal’s prison file closer to Peter. 

He flipped it open. 

“AdSeg? Why?” He looked up at them, but Diana merely bit her lip and nodded for him to keep reading. 

Special Housing due to credible threat to safety, protest filed by Warden Blythe; overridden 

Coffee privileges rescinded for lack of cooperation with authorities, no contention 

Yard time rescinded for lack of cooperation with authorities, protest filed by Warden Blythe; overridden 

Every time he thought Neal had taken the worst punishment prison could offer him, the file surprised him with some new, increasingly creative cruelty of perfect legality. 

“Disciplinary loaf?” He whispered in disbelief, looking back up at Diana and Jones. 

Jones exhaled sharply. “Yeah. Apparently it’s still legal in New York. We didn’t even know until we got the file, Caffrey never said anything.” 

“Whenever we asked him how he was, he just used his slippery charm to divert the conversation back to finding you.” 

“Well, I’m found,” Peter said, flipping forward. “Let’s return the favor.” 

But the more Peter read the more he came to realize that getting access to Neal wasn’t a favor, any more than Neal spearheading the effort to bring him back from the dead had been; in fact, it was the same distressing imperative. More so, because Neal’s treatment was… 

Mozzie wasn’t ever officially denied access, but the warden had annotations of orders he’d been given to perform headcounts, or surprise inspections, and once a full lockdown whenever he showed up, as a soft deterrent. That had started about three weeks ago. Three weeks since Neal had seen or spoken to anyone who wasn’t a prison guard in AdSeg. 

Peter must have reread his transfer orders to the smaller, windowless cell twelve times before he could catch his breath enough to move on. Due to overhousing; protest filed; overridden, and he stopped entirely when he saw that he’d been put on two daily meals. 

“Are they trying to kill him?” Peter asked, his heart pounding. He knew what hunger felt like, a particular kind of torture that propagated itself even when finally given food; the promise that it would soon be gone, but the hunger would return, reawakened by the gentle prodding of not-enough food… And he had been lucky enough to receive actual food, not the congealed pig slop that qualified as nutraloaf. 

“Not they,” Diana gently corrected him. “Him. Kramer. When we were able to talk to Neal, he said that Kramer was trying to pressure him to take a deal with him. There’s more, boss.

“The warden spoke to us off the record. He said they wanted to move Neal out of state, keep him in permanent transfer between AdSeg across the country until he agreed to work with Kramer. He fought back on that, but in return for keeping him in-state he had to give them something else. Warden Blythe wouldn’t admit to it outright, but he went out of his way to mention an electric malfunction that kept the lights on at all hours, for the last week. The day before yesterday that was reversed.” 

Elizabeth had come down shortly after they first sat down, at first lightly panicked that Peter was gone, then slightly annoyed that they had come to him with work. Now she asked, “Reversed? As in back to normal?” 

“As in the lights in AdSeg have been off for—” Jones checked his watch, “almost thirty hours at this point, with no idea when they’re going to come back on. Mozzie is upstate digging up dirt on the governor, and we were gonna take this file to the Director, but we can’t even get an appointment for three weeks. Now that you’re back we think that the fastest way to end this would be for you to take over as Caffrey’s handler again.” 

Peter gripped Elizabeth’s hand. He knew he couldn’t do this without her permission, but he didn’t know how to explain why it was more important than his health or comfort right now. He knew that the Director wouldn’t see it, but a feeling deep in his gut told him this was about Neal’s life. How long could he be expected to hold on like this? His only avenue of escape was into the grip of the architect of his suffering. 

“Is that an option? Aren’t I legally dead?” 

“And even if you weren’t, we’d have to get you reinstated first,” Diana added. 

“And cleared for active duty.” Jones spoke with the finality of someone who had researched his options, and was adamant on the choice he’d made. “But like we said, no one else is going to intervene.” 

“But the agents who came by the hospital made it sound like it could be weeks before they got that sorted, and—” 

Elizabeth squeezed Peter’s hand lightly, and he ceded to her. 

“As a matter of fact, you aren’t legally dead, just legally buried. Which is a little disturbing, come to think of it,” she added absently, then shook herself back on topic. “The death certificate never came through. And the Bureau sent over your projected annuity, you have over 150 days of unused sick leave. Get back on active duty, get Neal out of there, and then we can… get better.” 

Peter asked Diana and Jones to give them a minute. 

When they excused themselves into the other room he asked, “Hon, are you sure I should do this? This means… It means I’ll owe the FBI my time. They’ll let me take as much unpaid leave as I need, but once I’m back on active duty…” He knew it wasn’t fair to put this on her. He knew it was his decision, and that he needed to stand by it. 

But Peter Burke hadn’t made a decision for himself in a very, very long time; and he needed help. 

“Peter.” She turned to face him, eyes bright with clarity he envied. “I lost my two best friends within two days. If Mozzie hadn’t been around… Hon, you know I always put your first, and I always will. If I thought that this would hurt you I wouldn’t even entertain the thought. But this is Neal . We can’t let him rot away in that prison. He doesn’t deserve to be there.” 

Grateful vindication surged again, for a moment. “Two days? I thought he was at the funeral.” 

By the time she finished explaining the circumstances of the funeral, how Neal had arrived and how he’d been taken away before she could even say goodbye, how he’d shielded her during and picked up on an unlikely thread from the bumptious ramblings of a self-important colleague, something in Peter hardened again. It was a familiar sensation, not unlike when he realized he was going to have to be the Accountant in order to survive. 

But this time, it wasn’t so much a shelving of himself as Peter Burke, as it was becoming him to the extreme, to the exclusion of nearly everything else. What kind of rest, what kind of healing would it be while Neal was paying for his freedom with his life? 

It took six days. Six days to fast-track his statement on his captivity—he had no time or patience for hedging, and he described every hurt, humiliation and act of compliance with goal-oriented dispassion—and to give minutely detailed reports of everything he’d done for the Bleier family and their business partners; for Diana and Jones to cross-reference that with their own and Neal’s findings; to bully their way into Galvin’s interview and to secure his statement so they could close the file on the FBI end. 

El and Mozzie quickly put a hold on the death certificate, and handled every bureaucratic nuisance to ensure he was legally alive enough to be reinstated. 

While they were doing that, Peter had called nine different psychologists until he found one in Jersey City who could take him on immediately for three double sessions on four consecutive days, so he’d meet the minimum requirement of therapy before being reinstated. With no physical trauma to speak of after thirteen weeks, he only had to show that he’d gone, not what progress he’d made. 

Blake and Campanelli filled out sheaves upon sheaves of tedious paperwork to reinstate Neal’s deal, and Graham personally ran it to Legal, the DOJ, and finally drove it down to the Director’s office in DC for signature. 

Mozzie was absolutely not blackmailing the governor into resignation, but by happenstance the governor was likely going to resign by the following week. 

He got his badge back and the next day, the seventh after he’d been rescued, Diana texted him at four-thirty in the morning that she was waiting outside. 

They’d timed the drive to be there at six, and they accosted the warden as soon as he was out of his car, explaining that they were FBI and here to offer Neal a deal. 

“Let me save you the trouble,” the man said, not bothering to turn toward them. In fact, he quickened his pace and waved a dismissive hand behind him. “He's not interested.” 

“I’m very sure I can convince him to take this one,” Peter said, holding up the briefcase in illustration. 

The warden whipped around at Peter's words. 

He was shorter and thinner, frailer, even, but he advanced toward Peter fueled by a rage that surpassed physicality. Peter took a step back before it.

“You are fucking out of line, coming here like this! What more are you going to do to that man?” 

Peter shook his head, flustered at the accusations, and the warden took that as a sign he could go on. 

“You may have the governor in your pocket, and you can have the governor threaten my funding and encourage some of my guards to ignore my orders, but you're not going to see him after you've cut off everyone else. You wanted restricted visitation? You got it.” 

He turned on his heel, and it took Peter a full seven—shocked—seconds to recover. He caught up with Blythe just as he was about to go through the first checkpoint, and Peter maneuvered himself around the other man to block his way. Diana cut off his retreat. 

“Warden, we're here to help Neal. We're his friends. Please, hear me out.” 

Blythe did, and “Thank God,” was all he said when he understood who they actually were. He waved them in past security and sent them to wait in the Special Housing visitation room. “I’ll have him brought right up.” 

~*~

Neal lay down in the darkness and recited Chaucer from memory. He'd started with Shakespeare but quickly realized that mourning his father and contemplating suicide with Hamlet wasn't doing him any favors, and defaulted instead to to tales of pilgrimage; something with hope. 

It was soothing to imagine colorful, varied company in a world that had been reduced to near-eternal black. 

At least he knew now which the guards he could trust. It didn't make a practical difference since none of them spoke to him unless he contrived a question they happened to be compelled to answer, but he liked knowing. 

When Hobbart was on shift the lights would often come back on, harsh but infinitely preferable than the darkness that smothered him whenever Wallace was on shift. Derrick would leave the lights as he found them, either way. 

The lights had been turned on several hours ago—and he'd used the time to reread the Bleier property reports again, in case the Suffern house hadn't panned out—but they turned off just before he received his loaf. He supposed that meant it was morning, and Wallace was on shift. 

Neal stood and took the tray back to the stone ledge. As always, he contemplated not eating it. In his mind, there was something noble in refusing to suffer the abuse, in one of the few places he had enough control to do so; but then he tore off a small chunk and swallowed it without chewing. He knew he wasn't ready to give up, and however foul it was, the disciplinary loaf kept him alive. 

At least until he knew what they'd found upstate. 

He had only managed a few bites before he had to rush to his sink and wash the flavor away  with water, or risk throwing it up.

That was when he turned to Chaucer, and he was still on the prologue when the bolt to his door scraped open.

Neal sat up, his eagerness for interaction undercut by caution. He squinted against the suddenly bright light that filled the doorway. 

“Caffrey, up. You have a visitor.”

Neal pulled on his rubber prison slippers, then stood and held out his hands. “Am I allowed those again?” He asked, making sure his tone was light and his smile was easy. He wasn’t going to show Wallace that the isolation was bothering him. 

“They don’t really consult me on those things. I just follow orders.” 

That was a truth Neal could readily believe. 

“Is it my lawyer?” 

“Don’t think so.” Wallace made sure the handcuffs were secure and held Neal’s arm as he led him upstairs. “The warden radioed down and said the FBI was here.” 

Neal hated that he didn’t mind the impersonal handling, because it was worth the contact. 

The halls were poorly lit and the windows were so heavily barred that not much daylight made it in, but the glare hurt Neal’s eyes all the same. He lowered his eyes and let his hair fall across his face. He ached for the visitor to be Jones or Diana, even if they didn’t have good news about the search for Peter; but he feared it was Kramer. 

He remembered only at the very last moment to raise his head—whether his friends or his enemies, showcasing his weakness wouldn’t do; the first needed to focus on finding Peter, the other didn’t deserve the satisfaction of seeing him in his lowness—and he first clocked Diana, standing in the far corner of the room, looking out the half-opaque windows, as though there was anything to see beyond the milk-plexiglass.

His comfort that it was her translated into a relieved smile that died before it was fully formed, because standing in the center of the room, one hand on the table and the other on his hip, wearing a— the —familiar suit, was

Neal stalled, and was pulled into the room by an impatient Wallace. “Come on.” 

Neal breathed heavily, how, he wanted to ask, but he didn’t have the air, or the words, and this couldn’t be real, but he was looking at 

Peter didn’t say anything, either. He looked Neal up and down, his eyes full of a caution Neal couldn’t properly account for, and then stepped forward. 

“Hey.” Wallace pulled Neal back with a sharp yank, and stepped alongside him. “No touching.” 

Diana whipped around, eyes narrowed, and moved closer as well. 

“No touching. You try that again the visit is over.” 

Neal shook off Wallace’s hand, and looked up at Peter with apology. He could see what Peter had been about to do, if he tried he’d be able to imagine the feel of the embrace, the pressure, the touch. 

But a second attempt wasn’t worth the risk of cutting the visit short, not when Peter was alive, and well, and here. 

Whatever Peter saw in Neal’s face tipped him over from caution to rage. He didn’t bother looking at Wallace. With his eyes still on Neal, he reached into a briefcase that had been placed on his side of the table. He pulled out a thick stack of papers, and reached into his breast pocket to pull out a pen. He clicked it open, and slammed both on the table. 

“Sign the damn papers, Neal.” 

Neal. 

He didn’t need to verify what they were, and he didn’t need to review the terms, and he didn’t need to be told twice. Neal reached for the pen, and with a tremor pronounced enough that it rattled the handcuffs around his wrists, he signed his name on the first page. 

Peter didn’t wait a second longer. He stepped forward and folded Neal in a comprehending embrace. One hand was on the back of Neal’s head and the other was grasping at his back, as though if he found the right spot he might be able to pull Neal closer than he already was, separated from Peter only by the hands that were cuffed between them. 

Neal felt every finger pressed against his scalp through his too-long hair, every touch through the thin uniform like it was made of fire, one that bypassed his skin and bloomed inside with a warmth that expelled every hollow inch that had been his lungs, his throat, his heart. For the first time since before Peter’s funeral his existence was proved to him by the contra of someone else’s; the temptation to exist overrode the small amount of control he had. He dipped his head into Peter’s shoulder and allowed himself the petty relief of silent tears. 

They stood that way for a while. 

Behind them, Neal absently registered Wallace’s objections, but Diana was now between him and Neal, and she asked him to think really well whether he wanted to make a fight out of it now that Neal wasn’t a ward of the prison any longer. 

She promised him that if it came to that, she would win. 

Wallace decided he believed her. 

Peter pulled away first, but only to demand Wallace uncuff Neal, and that time when he pulled him into an embrace Neal held him back. 

“Welcome back from the dead,” Neal said, and Peter laughed when he pulled away. 

“Are you ready to rejoin the land of the living?” 

Neal hadn’t realized until asked that he’d been elsewhere, but the answer was yes. 

Neal changed into the suit he’d been meant to wear to Peter’s funeral. As soon as they stepped out of the prison Peter clocked something on Neal’s face, and wordlessly handed him his sunglasses. Neal was grateful, and not just because of the painfully blinding daylight glare. 

When they got to the car Peter pulled out an anklet and asked Diana to do the deed. Peter himself looked away, even though he usually delighted in that part. 

Their first stop out of prison was, at Peter’s insistence, breakfast. No one mentioned that Neal hadn’t had the luxury of real food in just over a month, and Diana and Peter, by some mutual understanding, engaged one another in conversation when Neal was presented with the simple, almost bland breakfast of an omelet and toast. 

Then they spoke. 

Diana and Peter talked him through the last week, alternately apologizing for not being able to get him out sooner and brushing away Neal’s apologies that he hadn’t found Peter sooner. 

“We threw it all together as quickly as we could—even Mozzie worked with us—because I had to be on active duty so I could take over as your handler. But it’s only been a week, and now I’m going on sick leave for… a while.” 

“All things considered, I think I can handle being at work without you. It's fine,” Neal hoped his smile was enough to assuage Peter’s concerns. 

“You deserve leave more than I do, but you know how the Bureau is, if you’re out of prison they want you at work, immediately.” 

“It's not my first time doing this, Peter.” 

“Today, immediately.” 

He was apologizing again, Neal realized, like the very act of being alive wasn’t enough. 

He tugged at his jacket. “Don’t be fooled by the trappings and the suits of woe, I’m happy to return to work,” Neal said, shrugging. Then he remembered to smile brightly. “Really. It’s fine.” 

Peter looked over Neal’s shoulder, his mouth pressed into a thin line. He looked back, then turned to Diana. “Would you mind calling ahead? Tell Jones and everyone that Neal’s coming in today?” 

“Sure thing, boss.” Her phone was already in her hand as she pushed past Neal, and she was on the phone before she even reached the door to the diner. Peter waited until she was fully outside, then turned to Neal. 

Rather, he turned on Neal. 

“It’s me. Cut the crap. I wouldn’t be sitting here if it wasn’t for you—”

“What does it matter who—” Neal tried to preempt him. 

“It matters to me.” 

“I was in prison, it was the FBI who did most of the heavy lifting.” 

“Don’t bother, Neal. The others already sold you out. I know it was you who picked up on Panama City—I don't even remember saying that, that’s how thin a lead it was—I know you kept digging and uncovering layers and digging some more until you found me, and…” 

Peter paused, not out of hesitance but the overpowering weight of the conversation. His hand moved from his mouth, to his neck, and finally dropped, heavy and helpless, into his lap. 

“They’re embarrassed. The Bureau,” he added, at Neal's tilt of his head. “They want to give me the Medal of Valour over this.” 

Neal didn't say anything. He wasn't sure whether he was meant to contribute, or merely listen. Six days wasn’t enough time to recover from the kind of loneliness Peter had been subjected to. 

“And… I don't want it,” Peter laughed, lightly, like the idea was absurd. “Do they really think I was chained to a bed for three months, being valorous ? I survived, barely, and only thanks to you.” 

It was a nice thought, but it wasn't fair, and Neal couldn't accept it. “You survived because of you.” 

Peter took on another look like he was having a whole conversation, and the result of it was, “If you were anyone else you'd be receiv—” He stopped short, then, “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have…” He retreated. “Forget it,” Peter added with a soft, embarrassed smile, and took a deep sip from his glass, which turned out to be empty. He waved the waitress over and ordered them both coffees, instead. 

Neal thanked the server, and when she left he held the mug in both his hands, but didn’t drink it. 

Diana must have finished her phone calls long ago, but she lingered outside and the silence that fell between Neal and Peter had a quality of paucity to it, like it wasn’t existing in its own right but was a placeholder for something else that should be there. 

Peter eventually said, “It’s just—” he stopped himself. “How do you come back?” 

“From being dead?” 

“From being someone else,” Peter corrected quietly, and Neal understood.

All those books, scrubbed clean; those dances through the commas and colons of the New York tax code; the meticulous accounting that left the trail not only cold, but sealed off into dead ends—those hadn't been Peter resisting or complying under some acute threat. It had been acceptance, of what they'd done to his life as Peter Burke, and the new role he now had to play. A three-month con was nothing to Neal—barely enough time to settle into an alias—but for someone as steady as Peter? 

Neal leaned forward, breathing in the coffee between his hands and making sure his face read as a conspiratorial map; there was no clear route out of the quagmire Peter was trying to navigate, but Peter didn't need to know that. He needed a system to believe in, even if it was inverted from the one he liked to rely on. Eventually he’d find a path that was right for him. 

Neal smiled as he shared one of his deepest secrets. “That's what makes the con work. You never stop being yourself, so there's not really a someone else to come back from. It's like…” Neal shifted in his seat, in a show of casting for the right words, even though he had them all laid out and waiting. “It's like your identity is a powerplant, run by all these dials. Sometimes there's an emergency that means you have to turn one dial, like the FBI agent, all the way down, and another, like the cooperative CPA in you, all the way up. But it only works if those are already all parts of you.” 

Neal sat back. “And when it's time to readjust the dials again, well, sometimes it takes a while to get back to the baseline balance you had before, but that's just tweaking,” he said with a careful balance of his own—part dismissive, part deep understanding—hoping to strike an average that amounted to it's a problem with a solution. 

He dared now to take a sip of his coffee, and being the first thing he’d been denied, followed by sunlight and human contact and real food , he didn't expect that one sip to be as meaningful as it was. 

And as utterly disappointing .

It wasn't quite bad enough to spit back out, but it was close. 

“Did they burn the brew or just brew ashes?” Neal asked, examining the cup as though he might see ashes listed on an ingredients list. “This is not…” 

He gently placed the cup down. “If I didn't know better I'd say Kramer brewed that, just for me.” 

Peter inhaled sharply. “What he put you through, Neal—no,” he said sharply to when he saw Neal gear up for an interruption, “don't say it's fine. It's not, none of it is. You were put through hell because he wanted to close some more cases, and… The governor is resigning next week. I don't know the details, but Mozzie does. As for Kramer… Once I'm back, we're going to look into him, you and I, and we're gonna take him down. I promise you that.” 

“Peter, have I tipped your internal scales of justice into revenge?” 

Neal had been trying to tease, to deflect from the grave earnestness in Peter’s face, his voice, but Peter merely shook his head with the same gravity and said, “Taking Kramer down is justice, Neal. We can't let that happen to you, or to anyone else ever again.” 

Neal nodded. He agreed, and it provided him with the opening he'd been waiting for since Peter slammed that release agreement on the little dark table in that little dark room. 

“There’s something you need to know, Peter, about me taking this deal.” He hesitated, wondering if this was an unnecessary opening shot of something greater, if he wasn’t tipping his hand. 

But Peter was right, as always. The last three months had been hell, and a price he’d gladly pay again if it meant keeping Peter alive, or Elizabeth safe. But never again, not for anything less. 

“The system failed me for the last time. I’m never going back to prison.” 

Peter looked as though he’d been struck. “The people failed you, Neal. The system got you out.” 

Neal stood, and buttoned his jacket. “That’s a differentiation without a difference. I intend to serve out my sentence with you, hopefully even get it commuted. But you need to know that I would rather die than forfeit my freedom again to someone like Kramer, or the governor.” 

Peter looked at him, for a long time. His head shook minutely, his mouth twitched, his eyes narrowed and widened, as though he were running through several conversations in his head. He finally exhaled softly and said, “Understood.” 

He stood too, and pulled out his money clip. He dropped a couple of bills on the table and with his own brand of deftness changed the subject with no nuance or segue. 

“Do you own my house now?” 

Neal took the proffered truce. “I don’t know what Elizabeth told you, but I set up a fund with a monthly payment towards your mortgage, until your pension kicks in. Which I hope is moot for another twenty years.” 

He spoke over his shoulder as he pushed through the glass doors, now adjusted enough and composed enough not to need the sunglasses. He handed them back to Peter. “In retrospect I don’t think it paid for more than a couple of months, so no.” 

Peter fell into stride alongside him. “I don’t know. It sounds to me that you’re my landlord, and if that’s the case there are a few things that need fixing around the house.” 

Neal pulled slightly away so he could pivot towards Peter. He wanted to be very clear. “Don’t look at me. I have a job to get to, and my boss,” he gestured respectfully at Diana, who was leaning against the car, “won’t let me slack off to do your home improvement projects.” 

“Your boss is still me, and he says you’re going to have some sick days after you close a case or two.” 

Diana uncrossed her arms in a way that told Neal she was rolling her eyes behind her sunglasses, and opened the driver-side door. “If you boys are going to bicker the whole ride, sit in the back.” She climbed in behind the wheel.

Neal didn’t know if her primary motivator was annoyance or kindness, but he felt grateful either way. He took the side behind the driver, and Peter sat across from him. 

“Do you really want me around your house at all hours, messing with your furnace and painting over mildew?” Neal asked, still holding onto the grab-handle as he looked out the window. It was already midmorning, and even though he was expecting it there was color, everywhere. It was casually breathtaking. 

Up front, Diana pulled the passenger seat forward, and Peter adjusted his longer legs until he was seated comfortably. He bumped Neal’s knee with his own, and Neal blinked as he landed back in the conversation. He turned to Peter. 

“I want one of those things, Neal.” 

The backseat of the car was a little too cramped for two grown men, and the late morning light was blinding in its brilliance. Neal closed his eyes against the glare, relishing the tight-quartered closeness, and fell asleep almost immediately. He didn't wake up until Diana pulled up in front of Peter's home. 

They both got out, and Peter tried to invite Neal inside, to see Elizabeth—Neal hadn't seen her since the funeral, and he longed for new memories to override how lost, hurt, sad she'd been then—but Diana reminded them that it was getting late, and Neal still had to report for a full day at the office. 

“Dinner, then?” 

When Neal hesitated, Peter pushed. “Come on, you don't want to cook on your first night out, and I have all day. It's really the least I can do.” 

The least Peter could do was not be dead, and the second least was get Neal out of that prison, but Neal didn't argue the point just then. 

“See you for dinner, then,” he said brightly, and smiled with a quickness he didn't recognize when Peter clapped him on the shoulder. 

It was good to exist around other people. 

Neal climbed up front next to Diana, and said through the open window, “Have fun on your time off. Don't do anything I wouldn't do.”

Peter scoffed good-naturedly. “That leaves an uncomfortable gamut of possibilities of things you would do, Neal. See you at seven.” 

He waved them off, and as Diana drove away, her eyes on the rearview mirror as she pulled into the road, she laughed. “You’re both so predictable.” 

“Excuse me?” 

“That's almost the exact same exchange you had before that op,” Diana said. “Peter called you from the car, to make sure you remembered you had the day off, you said basically the same thing. And he answered you the same way, too.” 

For some reason, everything considered, Neal found that truly amusing. He laughed, out loud. 

Chapter Text

Knocks on the door still put Elizabeth on edge. 

It had been close to two years, and she logically knew she hadn’t earned that type of anxiety, not really; she got Peter back, after all, and anyway Peter hadn’t knocked when he came home that day they took down the Pink Panthers. 

But still, she tensed from her heart down to her stomach when Peter knocked—it was so foolish, she knew it was him—on the door, back from his urgent trip abroad, his hands filled with luggage and duty-free bags. 

She stepped aside as he stepped in, the cool late-night air rushing in after him as he hurried inside. 

He put down his bags, then kissed her hello, and dug out a bottle of very nice wine from one of his bags. “We need to talk,” he said. 

Another detested phrase. 

It was how he started the conversation about Keller, about the operation gone wrong, about Neal.

In some ways, it had been worse than being told about Peter. 

With Peter, she’d been the center of mourning, and she had no doubts that, whatever else, Peter had known how much she loved him. 

But her love for Neal seemed to have always been misaligned with her opportunities to express it. She took every opportunity to defend him to Peter, but to Neal? Her duty had always been to take Peter’s side, to facilitate Peter’s stance to Neal’s understanding. 

Had he known that she believed him about the treasure? That she told Peter not to dare give him a hard time about lying about the evidence box after his car accident? That she was the one who convinced Peter to take their deal, all those years ago? 

She didn’t think so. 

She hadn’t even been able to let him see what it had meant for her that he found Peter, with insane odds and terrible abuses leveled against him. At first she’d been denied access to him, and by the time he was there, her first responsibility had been Peter, and rebuilding the marriage she had buried alongside her husband. 

She had been the one to push, then fight, for naming the baby what they did; but as an expression of love it was too little, and far too late. 

Peter came back with an open bottle and two wine glasses, and poured her a very hefty glass. 

“Hon?” 

“I really missed you,” he said, “and like I said, we need to talk.” 

“Is everything okay?”

“Everyone is okay, yes,” Peter answered, and she couldn’t put her finger on what, exactly, was wrong with the way he stressed his words. 

Once she was curled into her side of the couch he sat down, and placed his wine on the table near him. Only later would it occur to her that it wasn’t meant for him. 

“You know how Philip Kramer retired last week?” 

Elizabeth blinked. She had not expected this to be about him. 

“I know you used Neal’s teething fever to get out of going to Bureau’s retirement event,” she said, and even though she’d meant it as a joke, Peter heard the slight barb underneath the surface. 

“You can’t be angry that I didn’t want to go to that,” Peter said. 

“I’m not angry you didn’t go,” Elizabeth stopped, and corrected course. “I’m not angry at all. I just wish you’d told him why you weren’t going. Vocally. And CCed everyone on NATO’s mailing list,” she added, pettily, and took a deep sip of her wine in punctuation. 

“Well, do you remember that the night of his retirement event we got a nice bottle of wine? That we thought was from Mozzie?” 

Elizabeth mostly remembered that the cork had gone missing and the wine had soured. 

She nodded, and Peter continued. 

On an entirely different topic. 

“You know after I got Neal out of prison, that last time, almost the first thing he said to me was that he wasn’t going back. And I didn’t realize it at the time, but I think he was warning me. He said he wasn’t going to risk being under the control of a man like Kramer, ever again. And it didn’t occur to me as we were working on the Pink Panthers’ case, but… Even if he was free, if his sentence was commuted, all it would take was for Kramer to pin some old crime on him, and he’d be right back where he started.” 

Elizabeth supposed that was true, and for a moment her heart broke for Neal, for all the things she hadn’t told him, and for some things she had. But then the entirety of the conversation caught up with her. 

Neal, desperate to avoid ever being at the mercy of a man like Kramer. 

Kramer, retiring the very day they received a very nice bottle of wine. 

Peter, rushing off to Europe, with a joy he couldn’t contain, a particular brand of joy she hadn’t seen since—

Elizabeth tensed again, from her heart down to the pit of her stomach, at a knock at the door. 

She whipped back around to look at Peter, who reached over and gently took the wineglass from her hand. 

The knock sounded again, light, gentle. 

“You should get that, hon,” Peter said. 

Elizabeth rose to get the door.