"Come on back," said Larson, greeting him with a friendly handshake. "We just locked the place down for the evening, he'll be in his cell."
Peter looked away, his lips twisted in discomfort. He didn't really want to. Didn't want to humiliate him, or - "Won't he get into trouble for talking to an FBI agent?"
"He's not a snitch and everyone knows it. The inmates trust him, and nobody's gonna hurt him. If you're still thinking about doing this, you need to see the reality of where and who he is right now. You ever been locked in a cell before?"
"Uh...no." Peter instantly remembered about a dozen times he had been, including that miserable little basement cage with Caffrey, and corrected himself. "Not in a major prison."
"Come on."
"You gonna lock me in with Caffrey?" Peter was a little dumbfounded.
"He won't hurt you," said Larson.
"I know that!" snapped Peter. "But what the hell...by the way, I've been in his cell. After he escaped."
"Not the same. You're an empathetic guy. Let yourself be locked in with him, you'll figure out more'n I could ever tell you."
"Okay," said Peter, a bit reluctantly. It felt like a stunt, and not a very nice one, for Neal or for him.
Neal was lying down, reading a book. His eyes widened in shock when he saw Peter, and he jumped to his feet. "Peter!"
The Sergeant locked the door behind him, an almost unbearably noisy sound of metal against metal, and walked away.
Caffrey didn't really look like himself. He looked sad, and was subdued. He was pale, his eyes distant and guarded. There was stubble on his chin, and he'd lost weight.
No wonder. His girlfriend vanished, he was facing four more years in prison, he'd been thrown in solitary for three weeks for escaping, and Peter had quashed his one faint hope.
The first order of the day was to find out if Caffrey resented him for turning down the deal. "I got your birthday card," said Peter.
Neal lowered his head and smiled, looking away, like he was embarrassed.
"Didn't know if I was off your list after rejecting your deal," said Peter.
Neal swallowed hard. "It was a pipe dream. I'm sorry I asked that of you."
"You're not pissed at me?"
Neal managed to meet his eyes, and shook his head. He didn't look pissed. He looked embarrassed, crestfallen, and still rather adoring. He looked lonely, and glad to see Peter.
"Decided to come slum it with me?" asked Neal. "Or did you rob a bank?"
"It was Larson's idea. We had a long talk about you. He seems like a pretty decent guy."
"He is," said Neal. "Wow, do you ever look nervous."
Peter frowned. "Uncomfortable. Not nervous. I'm affronted."
Peter glanced around the cell which seemed so much smaller with the door closed. But with the bed, and toilet, and drawings on the walls, he felt like he'd just been shoved into Neal's home without permission. "I'm - sorry to intrude."
Neal chuckled. "That's not really a concept that exists here. Relax. Sit down. It's just a room with a door that locks. It's comfortable and it's safe."
Maybe, but this was a tiny space to be confined in, and an ugly one. "Do you have to spend a lot of time in here?" asked Peter. He regretted the question a moment later. This whole facility was harsh, noisy, and tense. He was probably standing in the one place approaching a home and a safe haven Neal had.
"Sometimes," said Neal. "When the place is on lockdown, or I'm being disciplined, it's twenty-three hours a day. Most of the time, no. Usually the only time I'm locked in here is at night, like this. I don't mind."
Something he couldn't quite make out blared over the intercom, and it sounded like about twenty different people were shouting things from one end of the building to the other. Peter shifted uncomfortably on his feet. This place was so massive, and the cell he was standing in was so tiny, that the strangeness of it made his whole body tense. He wasn't frightened, it was just - off-kilter.
"This really is its own world, isn't it," said Peter. Being locked in here for years wouldn't just be a bleak prospect, it would shrink and disorient your whole viewpoint.
Neal nodded. "It might as well be on another planet, for all the connection it has to the outside."
Peter looked at the drawings on the walls. Different, from the last time he'd been here. The faces held a wounded vulnerability, and the shadows were dark and deep. He could see the talent from a mile away, the intelligence and precision in every line and highlight.
"Neal, you can be so much more than this." Something had gone very wrong, somewhere, when a guy who could contribute as much to society as Neal was capable of instead concentrated on fraud and theft. It sounded like a subway station in here, continual shouts and yelling and sound reverberating against hard surfaces.
"According to whose definition of more?" asked Neal. He still wasn't the witty, fiercely alive person Peter knew; more like a guy who resembled him physically and was acting the part of Neal Caffrey.
He'd turned his head away at Peter's statement, taking it as an attack. Neal walked a few feet away and sat down on the bunk, leaving Peter wondering uneasily if he'd just seen Neal limping.
"Mine," said Peter. "And that wasn't a criticism."
"The fact that I'm locked in this cell means that society doesn't want me in it," said Neal, shrugging. "So what's 'more'? More of me being who I am? Or do you mean less? That's what most people usually mean. Stop being what you're good at, and what makes you happy and your life worth living. Adopt a lesser existence, take a boring job, and subsist in a substandard apartment eating TV dinners and pretending to be a subservient moron. Know what 'sub' means? Below. When people tell me they want me to be more, they mean they want me to crawl into a hole and be their inferior."
"Do you honestly think all the joys in life are illegal?" asked Peter. "This looks like subsistence and subservience, right here. Confined and isolated with your life under the complete control of people who have the right to put you in chains? Neal, there's a camera watching you go to the bathroom. What do you call this?"
Neal grinned for the first time. "Getting caught. Being bad at my job."
Peter sighed and looked around for a place to sit down. Neal patted the bunk, and Peter joined him there, feeling more invasive than ever. And like he'd started off on a wrong note. Larson had been warning him between the lines that Neal was hurt, and vulnerable, and needed a friend. And then shoved him headlong into the guy's cell.
"You can't possibly have meant it, when you said you didn't care about getting another four years in this place," said Peter.
Neal shrugged. "Don't know if you've noticed, but I never lie to you, Peter."
"Didn't think it was a lie, just maybe...bravado?" suggested Peter. He had to take a moment to think about that. Of course Neal had lied to him. Hadn't he? Neal lied to everyone.
Something approaching genuine vulnerability, grief, or sadness filled Neal's eyes. "I'm not brave."
"I think you are," said Peter gently. "How could you possibly mean it?"
Neal did something Peter would never have expected. Snuck his arm out, mostly hidden from view, and took Peter's hand in his. He did it with amazing gentleness, maybe out of a desire to be nonthreatening, maybe out of shyness. He tucked his fingers into Peter's hand, and Peter responded on instinct alone, squeezing reassuringly and holding on.
"I've had a wonderful life," said Neal. "I've had more fun than you or anyone else I know, and even in here... I'd rather kill myself than take orders at Burger King or clean hotel rooms. But I'd never kill myself over being in here. Most of my life's been hard, and it's hurt, and I've never stopped finding ways to enjoy it."
"That's gotta be one of the most optimistic and painful things anyone's ever said to me," said Peter, returning honesty with honesty.
Neal smiled, and looked out the bars of the cell door to the concrete wall on the other side of the hall. His hand tightened. "I fell in love with art as a kid, when things had been pretty rough for a while. You look at the violence and pain and darkness and love and beauty and sex and passion and madness in art, and you see these things are universal to humanity. This place is no more or less painful than any of the rest of it. Life isn't easy and fun for most people, but I've lived in luxury hotels and tasted the best wine in the world and fallen in love. I've never been flogged or mutilated or any of the horrors you see in those old paintings."
Peter closed his eyes. This sort of sober, honest wisdom was the last thing he expected from Neal Caffrey. It was completely out of character from anything he'd encountered from him before. So was it a con?
And then he realized why Neal had taken his hand. As sort of a polygraph offering. I know you aren't going to believe anything I say, so feel that I'm telling you the truth. Feel that I'm lost and found, scared and calm, heartbroken and happy.
No, it wasn't a con. It wasn't even out of character. It was what you got when you took Neal Caffrey and made him live in a cage in a dangerous warehouse for years, when you trapped him in that cage and made him open up to you right after he'd lost his girlfriend and his freedom again. Right after he'd gone through a punishment that even his guards clearly didn't want to think of him enduring.
That hand clinging to his was also the desperately lonely artifact of a social man who'd had his affection for people used to punish him, by locking him away alone in a cement box for weeks.
The guard who'd locked him in here with Caffrey was decidedly not dumb or unfeeling. This was Larson forcing him to see reality without the filtering structure of a visitor's room. "You - kinda let me catch you this time around."
Neal nodded and shrugged.
"Why, Neal? That was beyond being bad at your job, and I understand what you just told me, but I can't imagine you being one of those institutionalized guys who want to be here."
Neal was silent for a very, very long time.
"Neal?"
"If I tell you the truth, will you listen?"
"Yes."
"I -" his voice broke. "I think Kate's in trouble. I won't know until I find her. I know from experience I can't do that alone and on the run. From here, I have two chances. One is you. You did it once, you can do it again. The other is the most extensive collection of underground connections in New York. I prefer the first."
Peter leaned back against the cool, hard concrete wall of the cell. Actual honesty from Neal Caffrey. Interesting. Of course, he was leaving out the trifling little side motive of getting out of prison. But Peter would have expected Caffrey to play up the 'getting out of prison' motive, not the more vulnerable Kate angle.
Peter didn't want to talk about anklets right now. Didn't want to get Neal's hopes up, didn't want a sales pitch. He'd come out of sympathy, curiosity, and because the guard had asked him to. This was Peter's decision, and he didn't want Neal's input yet.
"I believe you," said Peter. "But I don't want to answer right now."
"Okay," said Neal. His eyes took on a minor twinkle for the first time. "Are you staying for dinner? I've got some candy bars and tap water. I make a wicked Snickers bar soup."
Peter disentangled his fingers from Neal's hand and patted him on the back. "I can't stand Snickers soup. But I'll make you my famous saltine crackers steeped in pruno, if you like."
Neal grinned. "Thanks for coming. Peter Burke, FBI agent, locked in a cell in Sing Sing, is gonna be one of my new favorite memories."
Peter realized he didn't really want to leave Neal's company. Despite the loaded history between them, this mutual affection could become genuine friendship almost instantly. Neal could be a valuable asset, a co-worker, even a partner. He stood, and squeezed Neal's shoulder. "You want me to come back sometime?"
The longing in Neal's eyes answered the question and wrenched at Peter's heart. "Stay?" asked Neal almost inaudibly. So much so that Peter could have pretended not to hear or notice.
Peter closed his eyes and sat like a sack of potatoes. The light was fading outside, the already opaque windows turning dark. The noise level was falling a bit, the hanging light becoming necessary to illuminate the inside of the cell. It was a comforting and achingly lonely shift. He put an arm around Neal's back, gripped his shoulder, and held him tight.
He had to consider it. Talk to Reese, talk to El, talk to the DOJ. Find out if it was even possible, first. Sure there was precedent, but he doubted the precedents were maximum security escapees.
"I'm not helping you stalk your ex-girlfriend. Nor am I using FBI resources to locate her, unless you can bring me compelling proof that she's in danger."
Neal's eyes lit up, and for the first time, he looked like Neal. "Does that mean -"
"I know I'm a stubborn hardass," said Peter. "I might have been doing a little reconsideration."
Neal sat a little straighter. He also stopped breathing and his face froze, as though if he moved he might scare a very flighty bird.
"Neal - please don't get excited, or get your hopes up, or try to talk me into this. It's complicated, and there are a dozen people and agencies who could shut the idea down cold. Including me. But - I've been giving thought to your crazy scheme."
Neal's eyes sparkled, and he grinned. Really grinned, that cocky, annoying, and right now, vastly reassuring grin. "So you need me after all."
"I need you like I need to be shot in the head," said Peter. "Control your damn ego for five minutes." He punched Neal lightly in the upper arm, and Neal swatted at him, and just like that, Caffrey was alive again.