Disclaimer: All characters are property of USA network, Jeff Eastin, ect. I just borrow them for some fun.
Special thanks to my dear friend Sarah (1983Sarah) for all her help and encouragement and the great beta. Any mistakes that are still in there are mine. Also thanks to everyone who reviewed/alerted one of my stories!

"Agent Burke, should Neal Caffrey's sentence be commuted?" the chairwoman of the commutation hearing board sitting behind a metal desk across from him asked.

Peter had to fight the urge to react to the now total irrelevance of it. A day ago he wouldn't have thought that this question would turn both Neal's and his situation completely upside down in just a matter of hours.

But it did, in the form of his former mentor, Agent Kramer.

And in a twisted way it was Peter's doing as well. If he hadn't asked the man for assistance a couple of months ago it wouldn't have come to this. When Kramer had spoken of his own CI back then, telling that he had been forced to arrest him, Peter should have realized that the agent would stop at nothing to make him see that his arrangement with Caffrey could only end the same way.

Problem was that the man wasn't even entirely wrong. Since he had begun working as a consultant for the FBI Neal had done some stupid - and illegal - stunts that Peter hadn't any proof of beyond his suspicions.

So it was even worse that a blast from Caffrey's past helped Kramer succeed in his plan. No matter the outcome of the hearing, his mentor was planning to arrest the former conman, for something as simple as jumping from one tram to another as soon, as Neal would return to hear the decision of the board and take the man with him to Washington. And Burke had no means left to keep the agent from going through with it.

So it may have been destiny that, just a second after the other agent had told him what he was going to do, Neal had appeared in Peter's line of vision, unseen by Kramer and the Federal Marshals accompanying him. Seeing his partner stop in his tracks immediately Peter had blessed the man's ability to instantly pick up on the seriousness of a situation.

Standing there on the steps in front of the FBI building and having his CI's questioning eyes meeting his he did the one thing he never thought he'd do: He told Neal to run by simply shaking his head slowly, almost imperceptibly.

It was ironic really. All this time he had tried to keep the conman from running, always feared that he would do it given the right opportunity. And now the man actually wanted to stay and Peter had to send him running.

So Neal had done what he could do best: blending with the crowd and disappearing in it from one moment to the other.

Despite everything that had happened, everything that the CI had done, he didn't deserve to be on a leash for the rest of his life and especially not in Washington with Kramer as his handler. Because Neal had changed over the last three years, maybe more than even he realized, and Peter was sure that he would continue to do so. Everything he needed in order to do that was here in New York: a job, friends and a department of people who didn't treat him like a criminal but valued his input.

And Neal had told him not even an hour ago that no matter if his sentence would be commuted or not, come Monday morning he would step off the elevator at the FBI. That alone showed Burke that he had succeeded in what he had tried to achieve when he had agreed to Neal's deal and gotten him out of prison; to make the other man realize that he could have an honest life with people around him who cared about him.

This all had gone up in smoke now. And unwittingly Peter had played a small but vital part in it by unknowingly setting Kramer on a mission to take Neal away from him just because of a - albeit mostly true - suspicion of his when he'd asked the fellow agent to help finding evidence that, despite constant denial, the former criminal had indeed taken the treasure. So he couldn't deny the guilt he was feeling for that, even though Caffrey had challenged him into doing so by telling him to prove it when Peter had first confronted him about it.

It was like he had set in motion the first stone in a row of dominos and now he couldn't stop them from falling and triggering the next one until inevitably the last one toppled, with the arrest of his CI by Kramer.

As much a pain in the neck as Neal could be sometimes, Peter had gotten used to having him around, not just as an asset to their work but as his partner, the person he could bounce theories off, someone with the same level of intelligence and experience who had proven his loyalty to Burke and his team more than once. He had learned to trust Neal's instincts, his abilities and the sometimes more unorthodox approaches to solving cases to the point where he now blindly put his life in the other man's hands without hesitation.

But as much as he trusted him professionally, he couldn't bring himself to do the same on a personal level to the man he considered to be his friend. He was too much in the mindset of a cop and also knew Caffrey too well from the three years spent chasing him to be able to do it in the beginning, and the conman's occasional fall-backs into his old profession hadn't helped the matter either.

Surprisingly though, those trust issues were more or less one-sided, as Neal had proven when he had told the agent in the first year of their work-release arrangement - albeit in a drugged state - that Burke was the only person in his life he trusted. To this day Peter didn't have a clue what had gotten him that privilege, and god knows he had done some things over the years to damage this trust that was so readily given, but it still had never wavered one iota, not once. Sure, there had been an argument about it here and there, but Neal had always forgiven him in the end.

He could only hope that his actions in this chain reaction - however unintended they had been - didn't result in him losing this trust now. Because it was something that, standing there on the steps and seeing Neal's shocked face over Kramer's shoulder, he had realized he depended on, took for granted.

And he had noticed something else, too. After everything, or maybe just because of it, he had found his trust in the young man, just before he had given him the subtle message.

Funnily enough, Kramer had asked him a moment prior to it if he was handling Neal or becoming him. Peter had to admit that the truth was somewhere in the middle. He no longer was the back-and-white agent he used to be before Caffrey had entered his life; the conman had shown him the grey areas in between, a concept he had come to accept. The line between good and bad had gotten a little blurred. And Burke was fine with that.

But what Kramer couldn't see was that Peter didn't do it for Neal Caffrey, the former felon, but for Neal Caffrey, his friend. He couldn't help the urge to protect his younger partner. Sure, the ex-con was a grown man but sometimes it felt to him like Neal was his son, sometimes his little brother. Maybe that was because in those moments Burke could see glimpses of the real, unguarded person beneath the mask, and for being a conman he still had an air of childlike innocence around him that had nothing to do with him acting immature from time to time.

There was a somewhat unexplainable bond between them, had been right from the beginning when Peter had started chasing Neal over seven years ago, that had slowly strengthened since they had begun working together. And now Kramer tried anything in his power to sever it.

The worst thing was that Burke didn't know a way out for them, not at the moment, not when it mattered, other than telling the conman to run. He knew Neal saw it the same way, he wouldn't have complied if he didn't, but that didn't lessen his guilt any.

So Peter had to admit that Kramer had won after all. Even if he couldn't take Neal with him to Washington anymore, the consultant didn't remain with his handler either, so the other man had actually succeeded for the most part.

And there wasn't anything that Burke could do now, except giving his statement and thereby also stalling for time. It was for both of them, really, to assure that his friend would have enough time to get away safely and to make himself appear to be oblivious to that officially.

So here he sat in front of this hearing board of which outcome he knew to be irrelevant; if there even would be a decision, depending how fast Neal would be ready to leave and cut the anklet.

A pang of sadness touched his heart when he realized that he wouldn't know where Caffrey would be from that moment on, but he trusted that his friend would be safe for the time being. He prayed that the other man stayed out of trouble, hopefully until Peter had figured out how to sort out this mess so that the CI could return home, return to them. Though he had no idea how to do that yet, he was sure he was gonna have some help from both sides of the law.

Peter would miss having him around till then, would miss him, but he meant every word when he answered, "Yes. I'm saying Neal should be free."

A/N: Thanks for reading! If you have some time please leave a review! Constructive criticism is always appreciated.