A fill for kriadydragon's prompt at collarcorner on livejournal.
Standard disclaimers apply. Also, I apologize for Neal whump, foul language, and poor grammar (specifically excessive comma usage and "'s" in place of "is"). I was sleepy.
The Surface
"It sure was a long flight." Neal's tense voice mixes with static and the noise of distant construction as it echoes over the com.
"Damn it!" Peter shoots out of his seat and rips his headset off in one swift move. The niggling in his gut that Peter's been pushing aside for the better part of the case suddenly flares up in vindication. "Suit up. We're moving in. Now."
"Why?" Diana asks even as she pulls on her own vest and checks her gun. "It was going fine."
Peter shakes his head. "No." They don't understand. "That's Neal's signal. Something's wrong." A gun fires in the distance as if to prove his point.
Peter's out the door before his team can react.
It takes two minutes for them to reach the warehouse, and to Peter, that's two minutes too long. He spots their suspect sprinting along the side of the building, away from the waterfront, where he knows Neal, as Nick Halden, had just gone in to meet him. The guy is distracted, waving the gun around behind him, as if he expects to see someone following him.
He hopes that means Neal is okay, but he needs to see his partner in one piece before he can feel any sense of relief.
As he comes up on Barnes, their suspect, Peter channels all his rage into his fist and drops him with one solid punch to the jaw without breaking his stride. He's heading towards Neal and the docks. There's no time to stop.
"Secure him!" It's an order directed at Diana, and he doesn't need to look behind him to know that she's got the situation under control or that Jones is still hot on his heels, rushing to Neal's aid.
When he finally rounds the corner towards the docks, he expects the worst. He expects to see Neal laying unmoving on the decrepit planks. He expects to see blood oozing from a mortal wound and pooling around his body. Thankfully, he sees none of these things.
What he does see is the other team of agents turning onto the narrow docks from the west end and an empty path leading to them. Confused, he looks back to Jones, but it only takes a moment before they both look out to the water with a sinking realization.
WCWCWCWC
Neal's instinctual reaction to the gun is to cover his manhood and pray for intervention. He knows that Peter isn't likely to show up in the next ten seconds, but lucky for him, Barnes spends most of his time working with papers and not pistols.
His shot goes wide, missing all his vital parts, but it clips him in shoulder. The impact sends him stumbling backwards, feet clumsily tangling with piles of industrial junk. He flails his good arm, trying to regain balance in midair, but he tumbles into the icy Hudson anyway, taking half the trash with him.
His dive into the river is shocking. If he'd had any air in his lungs before the fall, the cold would have forced it out right out. It's less than forty degrees outside, but the water is colder. He needs air, but more importantly, he needs out. He kicks his way towards both, and when he breaks the surface, he reaches out with both hands, not feeling and not caring that he's not feeling his injured arm. His fingers are an inch shy of the docks before something yanks him beneath the surface by his ankle.
He counters the tug at his ankle by kicking his other foot, but whatever it is, is pulling him down...down...down into the murky water, until the light from the surface becomes muted and green and indistinguishable.
His good hand feels its way down to his ankle to assess the problem, and he realizes quickly that whatever he tripped over before is now twisted up in his tracking anklet. He tugs at the fishing line or wires or whatever the hell it is, but it holds tight. He tries kicking again and waving his arms, but all he's doing is pushing around water.
There's no breath left in his lungs. There hasn't been for several seconds. He tells himself not to panic. 'Don't panic!' he tells himself. Then he proceeds to panic, kicking and flailing and jerking in a violent death struggle.
A few seconds pass and his struggles weaken, and just as his vision starts to go dark around the edges he takes one last longing look at the surface.
WCWCWCWC
As Peter dives into the water, he takes small comfort in the fact that Jones is already radioing an ambulance. It's so cold that Neal will probably need it whether he's injured or not.
The water next to the dock is so filthy that he can only see a few feet ahead of him. That's why, when Neal's face suddenly appears in front of him, so still and pale like a ghost or a corpse, it terrifies the hell out of him. He hesitates half a second, grabs hold of his arm, and pulls him toward the surface. Only, it doesn't quite work.
When he finally realizes what's wrong, that it's the anklet-'The anklet for Christ's sake!'-that's killing Neal, he wants to be sick. Instead, he kicks to the surface for the key, and has Neal out of the government-issued death trap in seconds. He lets the tracker sink to the bottom with the rest of the trash.
When they break the surface, Neal doesn't gasp for air. Neal doesn't move. His body is limp and icy and blue. Jones wordlessly helps Peter get Neal out of the water, and together they start CPR. Peter takes chest compressions so he doesn't have to look at his partner's half-open eyes. For what feels like eternity, they run through the cycle of steps surrounded by agents, all standing by, all watching in a state of disbelief or horror.
Then finally, finally, Neal starts choking. Horrible, wet, painful choking.
Peter's never been happier.
It's later, when he's holding Neal's hand in the ambulance as the paramedic treats the gunshot wound, that he discovers how close the FBI came to losing their asset, and it's much, much later, when he's watching Neal rest from his own hospital bed, that he's willing to admit how close he came to losing his best friend.
The End.