AN - So, tell me what you think. And obviously, I don't own anything.
One Part Truth
Ah, Peter. You are old and naïve, easily conned because you easily trust – and that is exactly why I have stayed. I stayed because you trusted me, because you knew I could escape and you believed I wouldn't. Who does that? But Peter, I am young and complex and the minute I met you I knew you could be exploited. But I didn't. See, Neal Caffrey didn't exploit people, not unless he had to. Neal Caffrey could almost be trusted.
But Peter, oh Peter – you are too old and I am too young, you are too naïve and I am too complex. The minute I met you I knew you could be exploited and I knew I wouldn't and I knew it would work until it didn't. I'm always moving on. Since the day I first changed my name I have never stopped, and you are too trusting so you thought I meant to stay but I never did. Neal was one part truth and two parts half-truth and two parts lie, and maybe there was some part of him that meant to stay but I never did. I never could.
Peter, oh Peter – you only knew one of me. And I have too many more stories, too many more lives to live to stay. But the truth of Neal Caffrey is sorry, even if nothing else is.
["Goodbye Peter. Tell Elizabeth I'm sorry I missed the apple pie, but I'm sure it would have been marvelous."]
Elizabeth is actually the one who finds the note, wedged into their doorframe the third time she opens the door to check for Neal. She brings it inside to Peter and he reads it out loud, slowly. He looks at her, and then he reads it again. She stands, sad and small, while he goes and checks outside himself. "Neal!" he hollers into the evening, as if the young man is going to appear around the corner and say it is all a joke. He doesn't. Elizabeth has to go out and bring Peter inside and shut the door herself, while her husband mumbles about fugitive pursuits and conmen and blasted tracking anklets and stupid FBI agents who trust too easily. She takes his head in her hands and kisses him, hard. Then they eat dinner, and then Peter calls work.
WHITE COLLAR WHITE COLLAR WHITE COLLAR
Neal's goodbye note isn't as good as Peter hoped it would be, isn't as satisfying. It is too short, too carefree and hopeful and Peter knows there must be something deeper hidden inside it just as the author is always hiding something deeper inside himself. So he analyzes the scrap of paper every way he knows how, takes it to artists and forgers and cryptologists but all of them say the same thing – nothing is there. It is just a note, nothing more. He thinks to himself that Neal is smarter than all of them, smarter than every single one.
So he reads it, over and over, searching his memory for some significance to tie to the words. He searches in all the wrong places and thinks of all the wrong things [grins and crooked hats and slender fingers painting] and it ends with him in the office at one am shuffling papers aimlessly and pretending to work.
So it ends like this, he tells himself. It really ends like this. Neal was something real to him, something honest underneath the conman/agent front. Neal was a friend, a young man to mentor and advise and learn from. He was a friend. That's what it really comes down to – so Peter crumples his tie in his hands and then he smooths it out again and he heaves a sigh and he locks his door. Friendships, for all their complexity, are somehow also simple. He walks away from his office and his memories and a friendship that was maybe never real except to him, and that is the end. That is really the end.
WHITE COLLAR WHITE COLLAR WHITE COLLAR
Except, somewhere far away, a man with many stories is finding out he is not as good at lying to himself as he thought he was...