A week after Caffrey disappears, Sara lets herself into his apartment, just to look. It's already been searched thoroughly by the marshals, and the FBI, and most things hauled away for evidence, but she does so anyway.
The painting with the alcove behind it hangs open, and there is a strange quiet to the place, bare as it is of so many of Neal's things. No bottles of wine, either, not even empty ones abandoned by Mozzie the perpetual finisher of unwatched vintages. He disappeared at the same time Neal did, of course. She wasn't surprised by that.
No notes on case files, no half finished paintings. Even some of the CDs are missing, and Neal's computer, and a few of his very favourite suits. She half smiles at that. Even going on the run, Caffrey needed his suits.
June is out for the day, pulled in for Bureau questioning, something she had already been subjected to earlier in the week. Sara continues looking, riffles through drawers on a whim, moving nothing, taking nothing, finding nothing. With a sigh, she turns to leave, but catches herself, remembering something.
She returns to the closet, and looks a little more thoroughly. The marshals missed it, but she'd been looking for hidden compartments for years… It took barely ten minutes. The wall panel pops out, and Sara has a sharp intake of breath.
It's a copy of the recovered Raphael, on canvas, carefully framed, signed near the bottom with the initials NC.
Only it isn't, it's different. The damsel in the background is missing, and the knight is a little changed in the features, more delicate, with longer hair, the face turned more towards the viewer.
With a start, she realizes the knight is her. Neal painted the knight as Sara. She flips the frame over, and undoes the back. A piece of paper slips out, and she picks it with trembling fingers.
Sara,
I used to love this painting because it reminded me of Kate. I thought, despite myself, that if I could somehow be her knight, slay her dragons, that she'd stay, that she'd love me more. My middle name is George, did you know that?
I'm still not sure how much of what Kate and I had was hoping, and how much of it was real. I'm still not sure how much of a damsel she was, or if I ever really knew her as well as I thought I did.
I'll never really know her part was in everything that happened. Though I hope that she still really did care in the end, I know she wasn't the innocent I wanted her to me, and that I have largely myself to blame for that. I loved her, and I miss her, but I've moved past it.
Alex was more of a dragon. Beautiful, dangerous, wonderful, but not someone you can build something with. Too fiery to really love.
Sara might mean princess, but you are so much more. I know that you don't need me to fight your dragons, and I respect you for that.
If anything, you've fought off more of my dragons, personally and a touch more literally. I have to thank you for that, and I wish what we had could have ended up other than how it did.
Tell Peter and Elizabeth thank you, for everything, from me. Mozzie too, to a lesser degree.
I left them notes as well, but I think he'd like to hear it from you, as well. He always did root for us to work things out. Too bad what I am got in the way.
I'm sorry,
~Neal