"You're talented, but—Van Dyck has you beat."
Neal knows.
He's in the business of knowing, of knowing who is watching him, who he is watching, what Peter knows and doesn't know.
A con, a forgery, a card trick—they all require knowledge, and more than that, self-knowledge. So, then, Neal knows that his talent is not of the Masters.
(Except when he's faking them.)
His smile, his charm—they are best at their worst, vulnerable only when there is nothing to hide. And there is so rarely nothing to hide, which lets Neal's charm become almost an art form itself.
(Almost.)
(Almost, because it's not the real thing.)
Neal knows what the real thing looks like. He's studied it under high-powered magnifying glasses, sketched it and molded it and lifted flakes of pigment and recreated the light for it like it's a lazy afternoon in fifteenth-century Italy.
Neal knows.
The real thing is sunny kitchen windows, and the comfortable inside jokes, "Hun," and the way Peter smiles when it's El who's calling on the phone.
Neal thought he had the real thing, too. But all he has is an empty bottle, with a map that leads him somewhere else—a diversion, like all others,look over here, not at me, never at me, truly—and all he can do is hold the bottle in his hands and know that if it wasn't always empty, it is now.
He knows.
He knows Kate's gone, and he knows finding whoever killed her won't bring her back, but he knows he has to find them anyway.
He knows from day to day that Peter doesn't trust him, not all the way, and Neal knows that's because when it comes down to it, he was never really meant to be trusted.
He is not the real thing. He's no Van Dyck. No Rembrandt. He is only Neal, and that is not real either, a chosen name. A chosen past. A chosen smile.
He knows there's no good in being angry when Mozzie admits that he burned all the art, knows that Mozzie took a risk, threw the dice, and that he himself would likely have done the same.
But—
But. The art was his. No greatness, perhaps.Good art that is not quite great leaves no history; he had to become a good criminal before he could make his mark. But the art was his, truly, and it was real. Neal Caffrey, the man built on lies, made something real.
The art is gone, and what simplicities his life might have had have gone with it. He was never meant to be trusted, and after all, he has always been at his best when he makes an art of imitating life.
This, he knows.