A/N: Alex/Neal was always my OTP for this show.
Paper flowers never die, because they never lived in the first place.
...
Alex meets Neal when they are both young and foolish. By all accounts, they are still young, now. By some accounts, they are still foolish. Alex thinks she's wiser, because Neal's fallen farther, time and again.
Then again, he makes crashing and burning into an art. There's the con.
And maybe Alex is the more foolish of the two, because she's still in love with him. There's the truth.
...
Kate had eyes as blue as Neal's, but Alex saw through her smile at once. It tastes bitter and wrong, to move towards being forgotten. She sneers at what they have, how Kate is Neal's angel. Alex was his first, and now his second-best. She tilts her head and tosses her hair and leaves his life like it doesn't matter.
(It does.)
(She thinks he knows it, too.)
...
They don't come back for each other, time and again. But Alex will swear to her grave that Kate is the one who betrayed him.
Alex has told many lies in her life, but she's never pretended to be anyone's savior.
...
She's never liked Kate. Never wanted Kate for Neal. Never believed in their happy ending.
And yet her heart stops when she hears that the plane blew up.
...
Alex sends a message to Mozzie in an origami crane. It only says, how is he?
Two days later, a pigeon brings her a tiny furled note. She lets the bird flutter away before she lets herself read it.
It says, still Neal, and for some strange reason, that's what makes her cry.
...
They don't come back for each other, time and again, but somehow they find each other every time.
I can't believe I'm saying this, but—I saw a mockingbird in the park today.
What color was the mockingbird?
Her heart stops, in a different way this time.
...
Every meeting with Neal these days is like a goodbye to a lover; all glances stronger than wine, knowing smiles, and an ache in her chest that might feel like heartbreak if she let it.
You know I'd never let anything happen to you.
...
The trouble is, Neal's a romantic, and she's a realist. Neal, for all his practical skills, has always walked in daydreams. Alex has dreams, but that doesn't mean she believes them.
Kate's gone, Neal. The rest of us are still here.
He watches the taxi pull away. He always watches her leave, and she watches him watching; a silhouette of tailored lines and a diamond smile. Alex wonders why she's always had a thing for men with soft hearts and sharp edges, and runs her fingertips over the case that holds the Matisse.
For a moment, at least, it's hers.