Disclaimer: I do not own. Based on a scene from 2x14 "Payback"

Neal's not a fan of the bittersweet. It sounds too much like defeat. But that is what he feels when he finds Kate again after so long. And that is how he feels when he barters her ring for Peter's life. The last piece of a life unlived is gone and perhaps forever lost to him (just as he knows that Kate is), but this feeling is tempered by the knowledge that his sacrifice will keep his friend alive and safe.

"Are you really going to give that up for the suit?" Mozzie asks him.

There wasn't even a moment of hesitation for Neal; and definitely not with Peter's life on the line. The FBI agent has gone to the moon and back for Neal on several different occasions and Neal will be damned if he lets his sporadic tendency for oversentimentality be the fall of perhaps one of the best relationships of his adult life.

Peter and Neal rely on each other, and while Neal has always been one to seek the thrill of danger (his past can attest to that) until his partnership with Peter it had only been his own safety with which he had been chiefly concerned. But his days of working with the FBI, working with Peter Burke, have taught him the value of having someone you trust at your back. Their friendship had perhaps been born of necessity with the contact between consultant and handler as a key factor, and their trust fragile in the face of Neal's identity as an accomplished con, but at the end of the day they both had each other's best interests at heart. That selfless give and take, action and reaction which characterized their verbal and nonverbal communication was something Neal valued with a subtle reverence. Protecting it from failure had become a point of pride and a continual source of contentment for Neal.

So it was with no hesitation that Neal answered Mozzie's question with the unflinching truth of the bittersweet: "Keeping Peter alive is more important than holding a candle for someone who isn't."

END