In fractal geometry, connections are not simple. Connections aren't straight lines, they're winding paths, with infinite self-similar mazes at every curve.
Neal knows this. He doesn't know the equations behind it but he knows this.
Which is why he barely keeps a straight face when Peter - the man who could have easily gone into higher mathematics - tells him, oh so sincerely, that order is good and chaos is bad.
Peter likes to do this. Draw a straight line between Neal as he is and the Neal Peter wants him to be. (Or a straight line between Neal's good behavior and Neal having a good life. As if Peter's naive enough to really believe the world works like that.)
Peter knows that chaos and order have a more complicated relationship than that. A more intimate relationship than that, even, if it's not going too far. But Peter doesn't want to say so in front of Neal, apparently.
But Neal knows that Peter knows. So he resists the urge to leave drawings of fractals on Peter's desk. (And you can't origami a fractal anyway).
Until Adler shows up again.
-
When Neal worked for him, new and eager but already impressive, Adler loved to tell him about chaos theory. About how chaos is actually a superior form of order. Chaos comes along and annihilates the ordinary, the simple, the Euclidean. There is order in chaos and chaos in order, and it is only the minds of the small who can't see that.
Neal, despite his true intentions, adored Adler. His style, taste, charisma. His imagination, seeing the big picture - and its vulnerable places - where others only saw a jumble of forces too complicated to explain. He truly did want to be like Adler, and he did his best to make it happen.
It was actually Kate eventually who pointed out to Neal that Adler was bluffing, that he knew little about math. Like Neal, he was brilliant at the mathematics of finance but not so much the other kinds. But Neal continued to listen, more fascinated than he liked to admit, as Adler prattled on and on about the nature of chaos and order, saying they were like two snakes embracing, too strong to ever be separated. Saying that true brilliance is to see the threads of causality that hide in the tangles of complexity, in the seemingly unpredictable messiness of reality. In finance, the genius to see the method among the madness. In art, to see the anarchy of the modern brushstroke. In a good suit, to stick close to the line of the human form, boundlessly malleable and always in motion.
The order in the chaos, bright like red threads, if you were extraordinary enough to see it.
-
It turned out, of course, that Adler wasn't a master at finding order in chaos or chaos in order or whatever else it was he said that men like him (and Neal) knew how to do.
His profits weren't from vision but from plain old scams.
And his later work, violent displays of power. Corrupting authorities, OPR working for thieves, clouds of wreckage on a sunny day, killers smiling brightly in the park as they send bullets into Moz. Neal knew that this wasn't anything like the Adler he used to know, the one he wanted to be like.
And yet.
There was that part of Adler, Neal knew, that would have found a certain... intellectual satisfaction... in being a force of chaos.
But Adler, Neal knew now, was no agent of disorder. He wasn't some infinitely complex figure, bursting the previous order. He was a thug. He used power and violence and fear, and that wasn't a new world order, that was just the most brutish form of the same old order.
Adler fancied himself some kind of aesthete anarchist. But the truth was...
He was conventional. Base. Extraordinary in his manipulation, but not his vision.
It felt good, after all these years, to realize how small and foolish Adler was. It didn't lessen the rage or grief, but it was a welcome addition. To know how very simple, how very base, Adler was.
Especially after it turned out that all that money and power and maze-like manipulation couldn't protect Adler from a suit with a kickass wife, a driven CI, and the CI's erudite, if paranoid, friend.
Peter makes a special point to make sure Adler is tried for Kate's murder. The other charges are an easier win, but Peter insists, and Hughes backs him to the prosecuting Attorney.
Neal is grateful.
At the sentencing - Adler gets life - Neal sheds a tear and Peter puts a strong hand on his shoulder. It's not a tear of relief, it's a tear at what a waste it all was. Someone like Kate, sacrificed for the whims of someone like Adler.
But it's done. It took help, but he got the man who took Kate.
He thanks Peter for making him use the system.
Peter smiles, sad because Neal is still sad. But he seems to think that his point about order and chaos has finally gotten through.
-
Two years later, the night before Neal gets his anklet off, Peter finds a sketch on his desk.
It looks like ... a fractal.
He brings it to Neal. "Fractals were Adler's thing," he says, concerned. Whenever Neal is ambiguous, Peter gets concerned.
Neal smiles. "Adler didn't actually know what fractals were. But you do, mathlete."
"I was an athlete who did math. I'm not telling you again."
Neal smiled.
Peter sighed. "Fine, I was a Mathlete, but only for junior year. But I also was an athlete. You can check."
"I did."
Peter pretended to look annoyed, then held up the sketch again.
"Why a fractal?"
Neal smiled again.
Of course Peter didn't see it. That even though Peter had never stopped talking about order and justice and rule, he was very much the man Adler wanted to be. The kind Adler fancied himself.
It was Peter who decided that if justice means asking criminals to help you bring down high ranking Feds, then that's what you do. It was Peter who decided that his personal compass was going to have to be good enough when Bureau policy wasn't, since every major step against Adler ended up getting Peter suspended or falsely accused.
It was Peter who saw the bright white threads that connected the swirls of deception and violence, and Peter who came up with a plan dynamic enough to reshape the big picture.
When Neal was terrified their justice would cost them too much, would get Peter killed, it was Peter who insisted they couldn't let the way of the world stop them from doing what they knew to be right.
It was Peter who shook up the DOJ, the FBI, and several major criminal organizations - the people who defined the order they all had to live in - because Peter refused to let this be unfinished business.
It was Peter who changed the relationship between chaos and order, using them both, like a sword in each hand, showing they were two of a kind all along.
And after, many months after, it was Peter - and of course El - who turned out to believe that the 'rules' of traditional marriage were there to serve love, not the other way around. When Neal believed the conventional wisdom that the number three had an expiration date, Peter and El convinced him that they could make their own rules, and that love didn't have to be a zero sum game.
And then there was the sex. Unpredictable, continually surprising, full of twists and games and infinitely complex labyrinths of eroticism. Wild, in every conceivable sense.
Peter never admitted that he knew a damn thing about chaos theory. But Neal figured him out anyway. Peter was more of an anarchist than anyone Neal had ever known. And Neal loved that about him.
But Neal knew that Peter wouldn't hear it. So he smiled at Peter, said, "Just leaving you a little note."
"Saying what?" Peter asked, holding up the sketch once more. Worried.
"That... I've grown accustomed to bringing chaos into your life. And so you should expect me to keep on doing it." Neal grinned.
Peter relaxed, leaned in for a kiss. "You already told me that."
"Just a reminder."
Peter looked down at the fractal again, this time appreciatively. "Remind me as much as you want, Neal. The more you assure me you'll still be a model citizen once you're a free man, the more I'll reward you at home," he said with a flirtatious wink.
"Direct correlation, huh?" Neal teased.
"Yup. Straight line, clear result," Peter said without irony.
"Always is," Neal asserted. He tried not to laugh.