Peter had no idea where he was.
The garden of the villa, bathed in the sunrise light, was full of exotic plants from all over the world. Beyond it was the deep blue sea. The place could be set in any kind of subtropical island. The villa had a very modern design that also gave nothing away about its location.
The private plane that had taken him had landed by night at the very end of a small airport and a car with tinted glass had driven him immediately to this place. The driver was a nondescript, bearded man with black glasses who hadn't uttered a single word. It was easy to recognize in all this Mozzie's paranoid ways, and Peter wasn't surprised to see him opening the door himself. He was holding a strange device, probably of his own invention, and after a brief greeting he began to pass it around Peter's body from head to toe.
"I'm not wearing a recorder," Mozzie, said Peter in an exasperated tone. "I though we were friends." "We were … sort of. But when Neal's freedom is at stake, I wouldn't trust my own mother," replied Mozzie. "But didn't you tell me once that you don't even know her?" "Well, that's a good reason not to trust her, isn't it? As for you, the reasons are at the opposite of the spectrum." Then a familiar voice said suddenly, "Come on, Mozz, stop that!" "You let me be in charge of your meeting with the Suit" replied Mozzie, unfazed. "Now it's done, I'll leave you two alone." And with a quite unusual discretion, Mozzie went out of the room.
Peter hardly saw him go, hardly noticed the fine furniture and the art displayed in the room, his eyes locked on the man he'd thought he'd never see again. It had been three years now since Neal had vanished from his life, only two years since he knew he was alive. He didn't notice any change in the handsome face. In the sparkling blue eyes, he thought he saw joy at seing him again, but also a kind of distance. Was it guilt or distrust, or both? He couldn't say.
Peter wanted to reach out and hug him, but wasn't sure how Neal would respond. He was still wondering when Neal said softly,"I'm sorry I had to do this to you." "You didn't have to," protested Peter. "Would you have let me go if I had told you about my plan?" "No," replied Peter without hesitation. "I'm an FBI agent, remember? Besides, it was madness. One of these impulsive stunts you've always specialized in. The Pink Panthers were caught. Your contract was signed. Why didn't you wait to be officially a free man as Neal Caffrey?"
"For more than one reason," sighed Neal. "First, I couldn't be sure that the FBI bigwigs would keep their word this time. They didn't the last time. And that was not the only reason," added Neal as he saw that Peter was about to protest. "Above all, this time I had infiltrated the gang as Neal Caffrey, not as Nick Halden or whatever other alias. And Keller was right when he told me that even in prison, the Panthers would stop at nothing to get their revenge, and that they would start with anyone close to me who was not a LEO: June, or Mozzie. I had to disappear quickly. It could have taken months before all the people linked to the Panthers were caught. Besides, how long would it have taken for some other guy I had helped put behind bars to establish the link between the CI that had conned the Panthers and the man who had caused their own downfall? I'd already heard that some guys linked to the Architect were looking for me. He knew my real name and my link to the FBI."
"I didn't want someone to kidnap Alex, or to shoot Mozzie again to get at me," added Neal. I didn't want anyone to search for me again to use my skills or for revenge, or both, as Wilkes and the Dutchman had done. And Keller as well. By the way, using a fight with him was an opportunity I couldn't miss either. If I had faked an accident, you'd have always been suspicious. I knew he wouldn't want to kill me, unless he really had to, but you'd be easily convinced that he had. I hadn't foreseen that you'd kill him, but I'm glad he had my gun when you faced him. He'd become nothing but a ruthless killer. Yet he'd once been my associate and kept popping up in my life. If I'd stayed in New York as Neal Caffrey, Peter, I'd never have been free from my past. I had to choose between true freedom…"
"… and me," finished Peter with some bitterness.
"And New York, and seeing June every day, and Cindy, Samantha and some other friends… But you helped more than a little with that choice, remember. Strange that you told me the same thing as Keller: once a criminal, always a criminal. I think I've proven you both wrong. Whatever my activities are now under my new identity, I can assure you that they are completely legal," Neal said, his tone mischievous, but also a little sharper than it used to be.
Peter knew that Neal was hinting at his harsh words when he had discovered Neal's pact with the Dutchman and the crimes he had commited to save him from a murder conviction. "I'm sorry I told you that, Neal. I didn't really mean it. I was angry."
"At the time, you seemed to mean every word of it," replied Neal. "And it wasn't the first time you told me that. Remember the night you came to tell me I was about to have a new handler? Someone who would see me as I am? As a criminal?" In Neal's eyes, there was something that was not pain, but the memory of it, as faint as a reflection in a window glass.
"You had brought a new anklet with you, probably because you thought I could get around the GPS in the old one. You said it was different on the inside, and I said it looked the same on the outside, and that there was a metaphor there, somewhere. What I was thinking was that it applied to you as well. You looked the same on the outside, but I realized I had never really known the man on the inside. I was seeing a different man."
Peter blushed a little. He had forgotten that one time, and realized now how Neal could have felt. At the time, he had thought he was only doing the proper thing: following El's advice, putting an end to his too strong emotional investment in Neal. But he had just told him a few days before that he was proud of him, and then he had come to say these cruel words, based only on faint suspicions. Neal hadn't seen the blow coming, and he had been terribly, irreparably hurt.
"Neal, I…"
"It's OK, Peter. I began to realize then that true friendship between handler and CI wasn't really possible. You'd been wiser, seeing it before I did."
Peter wanted to say that they could be friends now. But he knew it was impossible. He knew that El wouldn't tolerate his visiting Neal frequently. She held him responsible for all that could have turned very badly during his partnership with her husband. And a federal agent couldn't visit on a regular basis a man supposed to be dead, living under a fake identity. It wouldn't have been safe for any of them.
"The solution I chose was the better way for both of us, as I had told you once on Cape Verde."
"I suppose so", sighed Peter. "But why did you wait for a year before letting me know that you were alive? Or why did you do it at all? And when I told June, several times, that I wished I could see you again, why did you wait two more years before sending a message?"
"Well, I must confess that in the beginning, I wasn't sure I would ever let you know I was alive. I thought that between El and the baby, you'd move past the sorrow that my "death" had caused you quite quickly. But when I sent Mozzie checking on you, he told me you were still grieving. So I decided to take the risk to let you know. Mozzie put enough clues in the container to make you understand the truth without leaving evidence convincing enough for the FBI to reopen the case. But I wasn't sure you wouldn't start investigating me again. So…"
"You're the one who sent Elizabeth the reservation for a trip for two to Hawaï, as if it came from the billionaire whose wedding she'd just organized, aren't you? I understood it when we came back and found that anything linked to you in our house had disappeared, even the photographs of us together," Peter added sadly.
"I'm not the one who did that. Mozzie was. He didn't trust you to give up the chase. And you know how good he is at erasing any trace or clue. He hacked the FBI system, made all that remained of my files disappear. The same for the prison and the newspapers. He had all the documents altered or destroyed. But many datas had already been erased, as I'm officially dead. Now I don't think there's any photo of Neal Caffrey in any place that could cause me to be recognized."
"You didn't have to do that, you know," said Peter after a pause. "When I discovered the container, the first thing I did was to come back home. But when I told El that you were alive, and that I planned to find you again, she ordered me to choose immediately between her and finding you. She threatened to take the baby and leave me that very evening if I didn't promise never to look for you again. She said that I was obsessed by you, that it would lead to disaster, and that it had to end. I'd never seen her that upset. She even made me promise not to tell anyone that you were alive, not even Jones and Diana. I gave her my word for all that."
"Oh, of course", he added with a smile, "I couldn't help asking myself questions about your new identity. I wondered sometimes if you were Daniel Savy, the owner of the company that upgraded the security system of the Louvre, or Victor Moreau, that newly famous painter whose exhibits had been successful all around Europe, or that mysterious thief whose methods are quite close to yours. He's less brazen, though, no one knows what he looks like. The security specialist never appears in person, he always sends employees. And the artist is known for hating photographs and refusing to have any picture of him anywhere. I thought you could even be the three of them altogether. You'd be capable of that. But I didn't try to check. What I had in my home were only souvenirs," he added wistfully.
"Sorry, we didn't know… But El was right, you had to focus on her and the baby," said Neal quietly. "Didn't you break that promise by coming here?"
Peter shook his head. "She said it was OK, rather reluctanly I must say, as long as it would last only one day, and as long I wouldn't try to find any clue about your activites and current location during that meeting. And I think that even if I was able to break a solemn promise made to El, Mozzie took care quite efficiently that I'd have no other choice. Now tell me, are you happy? I suppose you've met a girl, or rather a dozen?"
"You know I've never been after a dozen, Peter. I only wanted to find the one. And that was another of the reasons why I decided to "die" officially. Before Sara, I've always been with girls who shared my activities. I hadn't had too many scruples about involving Sara in my life, because she already knew my past, was more than able to take care of herself, and already familiar with danger. A light and short-term relationship was fine for me at that time, and I didn't love her as much as I had loved Kate. As for her, obviously, she wasn't ready to have a too serious relationship with me. The only free and deep relationship I've been in after Kate was with Maya, on Cape Verde. But it was soon destroyed by Collins's arrival and I thought it was better for her if I went out of her life for good. It was one of the hardest decisions I've ever made, because I was already very much in love. Then Rebecca appeared in my life. I began to be attracted to her, but I suspected she was hiding something. Her knowlege in art was rather large but not enough for a supposed assistant-curator of a museum. And she kept insisting she wanted to get involved in the search for the diamond. When I confessed about my past and she accepted it, I was overjoyed, yet still not completely sure of what she was up to. But when I thought she'd been kidnapped, it was like reliving every bit of what I'd felt when Kate had disappeared. I thought I had again caused the death of an innocent woman. And when we discovered that Rebecca had been the Dutchman's associate, that she too had been after my "special skills," it was just another proof that it was impossible for me to get involved with a woman I could trust without putting her in danger as long as I was tethered to my past."
"So now you're done with that past, I assume you've met someone, and that it's serious."
"More than that. I'm a father, and a married man. With the only woman, apart from Kate, I ever truly loved. Neal took his cell phone, dialed a number and said simply "Maya, it's OK, you can come, love. We are waiting for you." "She had gone for a walk with the children," explained Neal. "I was not sure I could let you meet her again, but now I know about your promise to El, I'm sure she's safe."
A few minutes later, a pretty young woman entered the room and Peter recognized immediately the bar owner who had helped Neal on the island. She was holding the hand of a little boy who seemed to be about four years old, with blue eyes and dark hair. On her other arm was a little girl of about two years old with soft auburn hair.
"It's nice to meet you again Peter, greeted the young woman. And meet as well Gabriel and Alicia."
"You kept in touch, the two of you? I didn't know," said Peter.
"We didn't for a while," said Neal. "As I told you, I thought it was better, for her own protection. I loved her too much to put her in danger again."
"I had completely disagreed with that decision," said Maya." I had every intention to find a way to go to him in New York as soon as possible. But then I realized I was pregnant. So I decided to wait, as he had obviously too dangerous a life for our child's safety. Once, I left Gabriel with my sister and went alone in New York. I asked for him at June's house, but I was told that he didn't live there anymore. I didn't know what to think, if the woman at the door had lied for Neal's protection, or if it was he who had lied to me all along. So I came back home."
"And one month later, after a short stay in Paris for the sake of my cover, I went straight back to our island," Neal completed. "We made up for the year we had lost", Neal added with a tender look at his wife.
"The boy's your living portrait," said Peter.
"He is, isn't he? And little Alicia will be as lovely as her mother. How's little Neal, by the way?
"We call him Tom, now. Thomas is his middle name," said Peter, a little embarrassed. "El decided when she learned that…"
"… I was alive? I understand how angry with me she must have been. And I think it's for the best, Peter. The boy needs a name that will be linked only to him in your mind. Are you happy, now?"
"Yes," said Peter, with his most convincing smile. He supposed he should be perfectly happy. The boy was healthy, El was still with him, he was still the head of the White Collar division in New York. How could he say to Neal, with his wife and children at his side, that El was so devoted to Tom that he felt displaced? How could he tell him that his solved case rate had lowered so much that the promotion in DC had been postponed indefinitely, and that he had heard some agents from the Organized Crimes unit say that "Without Caffrey, Burke was no more special than any special agent?" His pride would never allow him to say so to his former partner.
"Tom is terrific. El was very angry at you at first, because I really went through hell for a year. But she also said what you've just stated, that you would never have been free from your past, and me from you. I think her views about my so-called obession are completely exaggerated, though. But she's right when she keeps reminding me that the Neal I have to look after now is our son."
Peter hesitated, then added,"I gave a lot of thought to our years together, before and after my conversation with El about you. I'm sorry that I had lost your trust to the point you've preferred to disappear from my life. I see now that I didn't always treat you fairly, nor as a true friend should have."
"No, you didn't", said Neal quietly. "But you did also many good things for me, even if it was sometimes for wrong reasons. I know you thought you meant well."
Peter tried to figure out what was behind that ambiguous sentence, but Neal's light eyes were unreadable again.
"That past seem so far away now," he added. "And as I told you, I had many other reasons to fake my death that had nothing to do with you."
There was a pause, then Peter asked, "Is this the last time I'll ever see you?"
"We may sometimes find a way to keep in touch. Maya and I travel a lot with the children, while they're too young for school. But we have our quiet moments and quiet places, like this one."
Peter tried to hide his disappointment. He had hoped for a more firm promise.
"And maybe, some day, you'll come to visit me in New York?" he asked.
"Maybe, but not for many years. I want to have changed enough for it to be totally safe. Meanwhile, perhaps we can find other ways."
"I'm looking forward to it."
They spent a pleasant day, walking in the garden, having lunch on the terrace (the food was of course delicious), talking about Peter's still successful career, about the children, anything but Neal's current activities. At the end of the day, as they were having a drink in the living room, Mozzie walked in again.
"Time to go, Suit," he said. "The car is ready."
Peter would have liked to stay, but the visit had been scheduled for only one day. He rose and, somewhat awkwardly, he reached out to shake Neal's hand. He realized it had not often happened in the past. Maybe once or twice. He had hugged Neal on one or two occasions, he had manhandled him once or twice as well, but an FBI agent didn't usually shake hands with his CI.
Neal took his hand with a smile.
"Let's try to keep in touch," he said.
And with that, all Peter could do was to folllow Mozzie into a basement where a car with completely opaque windows was prepared.
"Blind again?" said Peter, getting into the car. "Do you distrust me that much? "
"Seriously, I do, Suit. "
"Why did you agree to organize this meeting then? "
"Simple. Because Neal asked me to. And I much preferred to take care of the details myself. Neal's far too trusting. And it has cost him too dearly in the past."
"And why did Neal agree at last for that short meeting?"
"Frankly, I don't know. The best reason I can see is so that you'd stop pestering June. Or because he needed it for some kind of closure. But Neal is Neal. I suppose he wanted to see for himself if you were OK as well. I think that he was even glad to see you again. He's like that. He always remembers the good and forgets most of the wrongdoings, as long as he's the receiving party at least. After all that you did to him, putting him in prison, then taking him as your CI to endanger him all the time for the sake of your career, asking him sometimes to do illegal things to boot, there you were, telling him that he'd always be a criminal, and that all he had done for you was just because of that. Do you know how devastating THAT has been for him? Do you know how much he looked up to you? In spite of the way you and your team often treated him? I know all about your coarse jokes and demeaning comments, Suit; don't think I'd have let my friend spend his days with you without investigating how it went. Janice's information was especially enlightening."
"So all this time, you hated me, Mozzie?" said Peter, bitterly. "I'd never have suspected it."
"I didn't hate you, Suit. I just didn't have as many illusions about you as Neal had. For a handler, you could have been worse. You covered up for him several times, even if it was often as much for you career's sake as for him. And I really liked your wife… for a while, until she began to freak out about your safety with no concern at all for Neal's. But what you told Neal, that he'd always be a criminal after the disappointment James had caused him, was the final straw. I knew he needed to get away from you."
"But I loved him, you know that."
"Yes, I know. But not as a true friend should. Rather like a precious possession, or a challenge you were never sure you would win in the end."
"And what about you ?" said Peter, his stone acerbic. "You're clinging to Neal like shit to a shovel. And you endangered him quite a few times too. Remember the time you had him break into Navarro's den to save Gina? If I hadn't been there in time…"
"Yeah, I know I shouldn't have asked him to do that. And I never said he hadn't reasons to be grateful to you at times, but that gratitude should have been mutual. And I may not like to be away from him for too long, but at least, I always respected his decisions. If not, he wouldn't have remained stuck with you for so long. And you'd not be here presently."
After a silence, Peter finally asked : "Do you think Neal and I will meet again?" He knew that his pride should have prevented him from asking this to such a hostile Mozzie, but he couldn't help it.
"I don't know. It's completely up to Neal. But I must tell you something," Mozzie added, with a suddenly a sharp, steely edge in his voice that Peter had hardly ever heard. "Stay away from him, unless he calls you again. And if you ever break your promise to El, and tell anyone that Neal is alive, there will be very serious consequences."
Peter looked at the plump, bald little man and was suddenly reminded of the Dentist of Detroit, of the price on Keller's head. He knew that Mozzie, under his quirky facade of a harmless follower of conspiracy theory, was an even more complex enigma than Neal had ever been, and certainly far more dangerous. He knew he should have been outraged by the veiled threats, but couldn't find it in him. The memory of his blunder with the map in the Cape Verde episode stung too much.
"I've learned my lesson, Mozzie," Peter said. "I'll never say a word to anyone. Be sure of that. It's enough for me to know that Neal is happy in his new life. I just hope he won't cut me completely off from it in the future."
"I'd like to be sure that he will," replied Mozzie.
After that, Mozzie drove on without speaking and Peter was left to hope in silence.
The beginning of that story had already been published on this site, but it changed so much (especially Mozzie's role in it) when I rewrote it for Archives of Our Own that I decided to remove it and post it on its new form again. Apologies to those who would have already read the first version.