A/N- Hi there! I am glad you have stumbled upon my story. First I'll have to clear up some things. Spoiler wise: I have seen the series all the way to the first episodes of season 5 so everything up to that point is game. I think I haven't messed up on the timeline for this story, which takes place after Matthew Keller kidnaps El. I have taken a few liberties to tell this story: In my version Moz never told Neal about the treasure, but still tried to convince him to run with him, saying he'd gotten a score of a lifetime. Neal doesn't know but suspects Moz had the treasure. They tricked Keller and caught him that way like they did in canon, without help from Moz, who already had run. Also Peter and the other agents have been treating Neal badly ever since the kidnapping. This is my first fan fiction I have ever published. I got hooked on White Collar and have been spiraling down the fan fiction sinkhole and I couldn't get this story idea out of my head (seriously, it was bothering me even at work) so I decided to write it and share it with anyone still willing to read :)

Warnings: Foul language, depictions of violence, mentions of extreme violence, depression

Chapter 1 -

Neal sighed. He was standing beside Peter's car, arms crossed over his chest as the agents buzzed around the scene he knew wasn't where their goons were lurking in. He debated whether or not to say "I told you so" to Peter and the others but decided against it seeing as the formerly mentioned agent had been in a foul mood, to put it lightly. Peter had practically bitten the conman's head off when Neal had told them this would not be the right location from the start, so in the name of self-preservation Neal just watched the agents search around some poor schmuck's warehouse that seemed to store nothing but plastic pipes in various colors and sizes. Neal hadn't been interested enough to find out why this weirdo needed a rainbow of plastic pipes and was absolutely not going to. Some things were better left as mysteries. He merely focused on enjoying the feeling of being outside his apartment, even if it meant hanging around in warehouses in the woods.

House arrest. That pair of words sounded like a curse word more and more as the days went by. After Keller had taken Elizabeth the entire white collar division had given Neal the cold, or more like the absolute-zero-nothing-moves-freezing shoulder and the ex-con supposed he couldn't blame them too much since even he hadn't quite forgiven himself for dragging assholes like Keller into his handler's life. And he wasn't sure he ever could. Nobody at work had uttered a single non-case related word to him in the four months this had been going on. Neal had mostly been slumped at his desk up to his eyebrows in mortgage fraud cases (which he had started to hate with a never before seen intensity) and called in to Peter's office only for a question or two, not even for an entire meeting. He had had no undercover operations or anything to break the sheer boredom brought on by endless paperwork.

That morning had been an exception, but only because they really had nobody else with as much knowledge on ancient gold coins as Neal. Even if the mark he had talked to had been boring to an almost offending degree, Neal had relished the human contact with someone who didn't think he had stolen a treasure. Cruelly enough it only seemed to intensify the loneliness he felt after he came back to the icy atmosphere of the office.

Otherwise his days followed a numbing routine. He simply got in in the morning, brought by Diana or Jones, whichever happened to be on the Caffrey watch and left after a mountain of paperwork had been completed and either of the agents working for Peter was available to give him a ride home. Neal's house arrest was applied even at the office and he wasn't allowed to get lunch from outside the office. This had quickly spread across the office and since the team was fiercely loyal to Peter and very, very angry at Neal, they rarely ordered anything to the office anymore and even if they did, they made sure Neal wasn't getting anything. He had started to bring his own lunch in fairly quickly, but the days he forgot about it very much sucked. Days that sucked more were those, when Diana or Jones would pick him up and his ride home would be the agent who hadn't picked him up. This meant very long days for Neal, a fact which Peter seemed to brush off without a second thought.

Peter hadn't even as much as looked at Neal after the situation with El had been solved. Neal had tried to make amends, to talk with his handler whom he considered a dear friend, but had only been met with stern command to get back to work. Mozzie didn't answer from any means of communication Neal had access to and he hadn't seen his friend after he dashed away when Neal refused to run. Neal wasn't even sure if the man had received his message about Elizabeth going missing. To make matters worse, June had also been absent. Four months ago, after hearing El was all right, she had informed her tenant that she'd be visiting her daughter for some time. Even the staff was working during the days when Neal was at the office and the social pariah was starting to make prison sound like a paradise. At least there would be someone there he could talk to. If only for a little while.

Neal had been tempted to call El, to apologize and to get her to speak to her husband but since Peter had been very clear that all of his phone calls and any contact were supervised in case he'd try to access the treasure everyone still thought he had; Neal hadn't tried to contact her. He was fairly sure that if he tried to call El, he wouldn't get past hello before Peter broke down his front door.

And if this wasn't enough, the rumors circling around the office seemed to be getting crazier and crazier. The obvious ones were about Neal having the treasure, the most obscure ones were about Neal being the bastard son of some big crime lord who had him on a leash doing all his dirty work and the nastiest ones were questioning Neal's relationship with June, his involvement in Kate's murder and whether or not he had an affair with Peter's wife and had pointed Keller at her when she refused to leave Peter for him.

Neal had tried to ignore the rumors and the snide comments made about him. Emphasis on tried. The rumors combined with the fact that it seemed to be open season for Neal Caffrey for those agents who had hated him to begin with and some of the new agents and probies who were eager to impress their seniors joining in, life at the office was quickly becoming unbearable. But since the alternative was to sit alone in his apartment void of any contact save for occasional sightings of maids, Neal had gritted his teeth and pressed on.

The situation was spinning out of control, rapidly. At first Neal had thought this to be temporary, but with no end in sight it had started to affect his life in all aspects. The first one to go was his appetite. Rationally he knew he needed food, but nothing tasted good anymore and his stomach seemed to have declared mutiny against anything considered food. He forced himself to eat enough to keep functioning, but had still lost a lot of weight from his already slim body.

The next one to abandon him was sleep. Nightmares plagued him every night and that was if he actually managed to fall asleep in the first place. He saw Keller, Elizabeth and Peter, sometimes also Mozzie, Kate, Sara, Diana and Jones and in his dreams none of the scenarios ended well for his friends.

The final thing, the thing he never thought he'd be without and never before had abandoned him, was painting. He had drawn and painted as long as he remembered, but little after entering his third month of this cruel and unusual punishment he had stopped. It wasn't like he hadn't tried. He'd dragged his easel around the house, trying to start a painting, anything. But no matter where he had been, the blank canvas seemed to be mocking him, much like his coworkers. After a few days of trying he'd given up. He had gathered all of his paintings and dumped them in the attic. Then he had put all of his painting equipment into a large box and stuffed it under his bed.

He'd tried to read, tried anything to distract himself, but nothing was working. He could feel the mean things said about him getting to him more and more. Most days after work he just lay in bed, staring at the ceiling since sleep eluded him. Sometimes he didn't feel like he was real anymore. With the human contact he needed cut to a bare minimum, he felt himself wither.

Neal wasn't sure if Peter was aware of all of this, but he didn't believe the man to be completely oblivious to what was happening, at least at the office. Of course Neal couldn't be sure if the older man cared enough to do anything about it. In a way, Neal thought sadly, this was even worse than solitary in prison, since this way the life he knew and loved seemed to be dangling in front of him, just out of his reach, and he was powerless to get it back since lord knew he'd tried.

Sighing again Neal untangled his arms and stood a little straighter as he saw Peter, Diana and Jones approaching. He had been dragged along to this search to identify the stolen artwork they were chasing but seeing as they were in the wrong location, there was nothing to see here for him.

"If I see one more packaging of plastic tubing in the near future, I think I'm going to scream." Peter grumbled as he walked past Neal and pulled the driver's door of his Taurus open. His junior agents followed him, Diana riding shotgun and Jones circling the car so Neal could get in the door he had been standing by.

If things had been normal, Neal would have cracked a joke or two, teased the agents on how he already knew they had been in the wrong place, and gotten into the car smirking. Then again if things were normal Neal was pretty sure they would have never been at this particular warehouse, since he had long ago told them that Rick Maraccio, the notorious art thief and smuggler, would prefer a location he knew thoroughly and was likely to store his goods somewhere he was familiar with.

What worried Neal the most about this case were the rumors he'd heard from his street contacts. There were whispers of Rick being a murderer and a sadistic one at that. There was talk about the man actually taking souvenirs from his victims and other grueling details that had put Neal off his lunch more than once. He had shared this with the agents, but since there was no evidence they had written him off by saying they were only rumors meant to scare off anyone willing to tangle with Rick.

"Get in." Peter commanded and Neal complied without uttering a word. By now he knew it was useless to rebel. He plopped himself down on the backseat and fastened his seatbelt.

"Don't. Say. A. Word." Peter grumbled as he started the car. It took Neal a while to realize that Peter was actually talking to him. He tore his gaze away from the passing scenery and looked towards the driving agent, puzzled.

"I know you are thinking "I told you so". Say it and you'll walk home." Peter grumbled, not even glancing at his CI through the mirror. At least he was concentrating on the road Neal thought and turned his eyes to the window once more.

Neal could practically feel Jones staring at him, the agent sitting beside him had been having a hard time with the way Neal was treated around the office lately. He had still done it but now looking at the man beside him he started to notice first hand that this thing had been going on way too long.

Caffrey would have never let a comment like that slide under normal circumstances. Now that Jones thought about it, he hadn't seen the conman smile or joke in a very long time. He had thought that at least some of the interns would cave in due time and start talking to the consultant but he'd been wrong. Loyalty to Peter ran deeper than he had even thought possible and since the senior agent blamed Caffrey for stealing the treasure, so did the entire office.

Jones stared at the man sitting next to him. Caffrey looked tired; he was slumped against the car door, absently scanning the view outside the car. He had dark patches under his eyes and the eyes themselves were a matter of their own. The stunning blue eyes lacked their sparkle and were generally starting to look frighteningly lifeless.

Jones himself had spent some time watching June's house and now that he thought about it, he hadn't seen June or the weird little dude who was one of Neal's closest friends around the house even once during his duty on surveillance duty. He had also noted the rumors.

Just earlier that day he had barely contained himself as three of the newest additions to white collar had commented on how the conman was paying his rent to June "in nature" and laughed loudly after their rather repulsively detailed assumptions about what went on in Neal's penthouse. Jones had wanted to backhand the youngsters. He knew June, who was one of the sweetest elder ladies he had ever come across, and knew that she considered the young man living under her roof like an adopted son. He also knew that Caffrey would never in a million years use someone or his body like that.

Beside him Neal sighed, looked over at Peter with a heartbroken expression and adjusted his position. The look decided the matter for Jones. He had to talk to Neal today. He didn't know if the conman had just not let them see how much the treatment he had been receiving had affected him, or if he just had gotten too tired to try to mask it anymore, since everything the younger man did to redeem himself went unnoticed. Guilt gnawed on Jones as he thought of all of the ways Caffrey had been shunned the past few months. He had seen all of it but had done nothing. Now, looking at the exhausted consultant silently leaning to the cool car window he wished he had.

The ringing of Peter's phone pulled Jones out of his thoughts.