A/N- This is it, folks. The last chapter. Wow. Thank you so much to all reviewers and readers who stuck with me. And I would also like to take a moment to that Florence+the Machine, whose awesome songs helped me get through the mind-numbing task of translating this story from what's in my head to actual typed words.

Now, enjoy.


"Mozzie, I need a favor," Neal said, joining his friend at the table. "Obviously, my movements are somewhat limited." He didn't even need to gesture to his anklet anymore. Its presence was too ingrained in both of their psyches to ever forget about it.

Mozzie tipped his glass in acknowledgement. "If I may hazard a guess, you need me to aid in some sort of scheme to find Ellen's killer. Good. It's about time."

Neal frowned at him. "That's not it, Moz. Remember, I went down that path with Kate and nearly screwed everything up. No, I'll follow Peter's lead on this one. Ellen was a cop, even if she gave up her badge. She'd want us to do it right."

"Justice, not revenge?" Mozzie said skeptically. "You know, 'Justice is the firm and continuous desire to render to everyone that which is his due'. Justinian. It could be argued that it's simply rendering that which is due. An eye for an eye."

Neal shot him a look. "A life for a life? Don't you think you're being a bit overdramatic? Besides, we don't want another Fowler."

"True," Mozzie allowed. "And you may be right; a woman like Ellen deserves better than crude revenge. And violence has never been our forté. But if it isn't finding her killer, than what's this favor that would require venturing outside your electronic tether?"

"I need you to retrieve a stash outside of the city," Neal said, not meeting Mozzie's eye.

"So this doesn't have to do with Ellen?" Mozzie asked, derailed.

"Sort of, Moz. Can you do it?"

Mozzie sighed. "I have no conflicts in the recent future. Where's the stash?"

Neal glanced up through his eyelashes, gauging his friend's reaction. "St. Louis."

Mozzie's eyebrows raised comically. "As in St. Louis, where you lived as a kid, with Ellen? That St. Louis?"

"Yes, Moz," Neal said, resigned. "There's something I left behind that I need. I want you to go get it, assuming it's still there. I'd do it myself, but obviously, it's a bit outside my two miles."

The short conman looked contemplative. "I suppose that travel could be arranged. I've been meaning to visit the city for a couple of years anyways."

"Oh?" Neal inquired. "Why?"

"There's this pool hall that I want to visit."

"Pool hall," Neal said flatly, knowing deep in his gut where this was going.

"Yes!" Mozzie said excitedly. "It's infamous in certain circles. All the real legends have been there at one time or another. And they all signed their names. Of course, this is all deeply hidden from any governmental cronies. There's even a memorial to an old con who apparently was a regular. I'm surprised you've never heard of it."

Neal swallowed down the tightness in his throat. "I have, actually. Kate and I... We signed our names. We were hiding out in the city after that thing with the Met."

Mozzie looked at him curiously. "And you never mentioned it? Neal, having your name on that wall is a badge of pride! A sort of grifter's Hollywood Boulevard. And you never said a word?"

"I didn't think it was such a big deal," Neal admitted. "And I had other things on my mind at the time. It was the first time I'd been back since I'd run away." He sipped his wine, simply for an excuse to stop talking.

His friend was looking concerned again, probably worried about how Neal would react as the conversation circled back to Ellen again. "Well, it's about time that I add my mark, so to speak. It's no trouble picking up your package while I'm there."

"Thanks, Moz," Neal said, genuinely grateful.


"No trouble," Mozzie muttered to himself, stalking away from the crumbling building. "How exactly did I get myself roped into this?"

Neal hadn't mentioned just how decrepit the building where he'd stored his stash was. Nor had he explained why it had been tucked into a rudimentary secret compartment in the closest of a bedroom in an abandoned apartment.

But Mozzie had persevered, and now held the long, thin box under one arm. His curiousity was screaming at him to just take a peek, but he held out. After all, Neal would do the same for him.

Probably.

More or less.


It didn't take Mozzie long to find the pool hall. He was a member of a surprising number of certain circles, and he'd always had a good ear for rumor.

The inside was oddly familiar, even though Mozzie had never been there. Perhaps it was the presence of so many of his type of people. One grifter can usually recognize another, and most of the patrons all had the small give-aways; the momentary flicker of attention and wariness as the door opened, the carefully crafted masks, the unthinking elegance and confidence.

At one end of the room, an old man stood behind a bar, calmly wiping out glasses. His sharp eyes latched onto Mozzie for an instant, evaluating him. Apparently the little man must have passed the test, because he smiled vacantly and returned to his task.

Mozzie wandered towards him, for lack of anything else to do. "Gin, please," he told the man.

The bartender nodded and reached behind him, unerringly locating the correct bottle and a glass. "New in town?" he asked conversationally, pouring out a measure of alcohol and passing it to Mozzie.

"Just passing through," Mozzie corrected. "I'm here on an errand for a friend."

The old man smiled. "And you decided to stop in for a drink and a game?" His voice was pleasant but probing.

"Heard about this place from an... acquaintance," Mozzie said carefully.

"They usually do," the bartender laughed, relaxing slightly. "I've been tending bar here for almost thirty years. You wouldn't believe some of the people we get in here."

"Legends," Mozzie said. "To those of us who scorn the system."

The man looked at him funny but his smile didn't fade. "I'm guessing you want to leave your mark?"

"In a manner of speaking, yes," Mozzie said airily. "My John Hancock, if you will."

The bartender nodded. "You find the list, you can add your name. That's the rules."

Mozzie shrugged. "Got a pen?"

The man handed one over and Mozzie pushed away from the bar, wandering out into the middle of the room. He glanced around, carefully noting details with his perfect recall.

There.

Only one rack of cues in the entire room was completely filled, and the cues themselves looked practically unused compared to their brethren, yet the rack was well-maintained and dust-free.

But before Mozzie could head over to test his theory, something else caught his eye.

A drawing of an older man reclining with a drink and pack of cards hung in a simple yet elegant frame. Mozzie moved closer, trying to identify what exactly had caught his attention about it.

Although the subject was unfamiliar to Mozzie, the artist had done a good job of capturing a certain spark in the eye that Mozzie recognized well. Below, the frame bore the phrase, Old conmen never die; Their smiles just fade away.

Mozzie stared at it for a moment, his mind racing as he tried to understand why it looked so familiar. His gazed trailed down the naggingly familiar strokes to the bottom right corner, where the artist had inscribed two letters: DB.

Immediately, the pieces snapped together. Unlike Kate, Mozzie had seen some early "Neal Caffrey originals". The little con's mouth fell open as he examined the sketch that he now realized was in his friend's distinctive style. And the initials... Neal might have told Peter first, but Mozzie too had eventually heard the truth of his childhood as Danny Brooks- or DB.

But, then... If Neal had drawn this as Danny Brooks, he still would have been a kid. That meant it would have been at least fifteen years ago... before the tradition of signing the wall had been started.

So, logically, that meant only one thing.

Neal Caffrey, the same Neal Caffrey who'd been so offhand and uncomfortable when Mozzie had brought up the pool house, had unintentionally started the very tradition that brought Mozzie to the place.

Talk about conspiracies.

Wait. Wait just a moment. What had he said?

Tell Max I said hey...

Mozzie marched purposefully back to the bar. "Max?" he asked bluntly.

The old man looked up. "I'm sorry, did you say something?"

"Are you Max?" Mozzie asked again.

Max smiled. "In the flesh."


Neal sat on his balcony, breathing in the night time air. Granted, the air above a major metropolis was not of the same quality that one might find, say, at the top of the French Alps.

But it tasted like home.

And it was home, even more so than even St. Louis had ever been. St. Louis, where Mozzie was currently retrieving a package for him and visiting Cal's pool hall and no doubt figuring out the truth even as Neal sat breathing in the slightly polluted air...

Neal groaned and poured himself more wine.

It wasn't as if he were embarrassed or anything, and it certainly wasn't that he didn't trust Mozzie, but... He'd always kept secrets. It was his past. It had always stayed in the past.

Although, there had always been those little reminders, those little nudges...


It was his first real heist. The prize- a painting by Amedeo Modigliani, an Italian painter from the late 1800's, early 1900's.

Neal wasn't stupid enough to try and crack a heist like this on his own -at least, not the first time. His partner was a guy named Erik Embrey. Neal didn't particularly trust him, but that was to be expected in such partnerships.

For a thief, Erik was rather unassuming. His clothes were nothing special (neither were Neal's, but that was because he had only been able to afford one set besides the one he'd been wearing when he ran). He was a tall man, but slender, almost as if he'd been stretched like taffy.

However, despite his large, lanky frame and low-key wardrobe, Erik was a highly successful cat-burglar. Normally he wouldn't have involved someone as green as Neal, but the security on the private collection that housed the painting was complex enough to make it a two-man job.

On the night of the heist, Neal and Erik met up two blocks away from the target, both dressed for a break-in. Silently, Erik passed Neal his ski-mask and bag of tools. Neal smiled appreciatively, pulling the mask over his head. For a moment, he was so distracted by adjusting the mask and getting all the holes lined up with the appropriate parts of his face that he didn't see what else Erik was holding out.

A pistol glinted in the reflected glow of a streetlight.

"Take it," Erik said in his gravely voice. "Just in case we run into any trouble. Even if you don't know how to shoot it, oftentimes just having it can scare people off. Go on. We don't have all night."

Neal reached out a shaking hand, but hesitated. He heard a whisper, a faint fragment of memory that he'd tried so hard to repress over the last few months.

"He confessed to murder."

Murder.

No. No, he wasn't his father. Just because he had it didn't mean he would ever use it. His fingers extended farther, hovering over the gun, almost brushing its cold surface.

A different voice, deeper, smoother, dull with time, whispered into his other ear.

"Stay away from that stuff," Cal advised. "Whatever you end up doing. It's not you, Danny."

His hand pulled back. "No," he said quietly but firmly. "I can't. And you have to leave yours behind too."

"What?" Erik said, surprised. "Are you crazy? I'm not just going to leave my piece behind on a job!"

Neal's face hardened. "I don't like guns," he said, feeling the truth growing behind the statement. He really didn't, and to be honest, he never had.

"You leave it behind," he continued, his voice brooking no argument, "Or I don't go. No guns, or we're through here and you can try to get past the security system on your own."

Erik had been furious that this kid, this kid who was lucky to be even getting a cut of the profits, was calling the shots, but Neal stood firm.

"It's not you, Danny."


"Neal Caffrey," Max repeated with a slight smile. "Damn, does that kid pop up when you least expect it."

"You're telling me," Mozzie said. "The least he could do is tell you what you're getting into, but nooo. At least this time there aren't any Chilean gangsters. That was a bad one."

Max bit his lip to keep from laughing. "I really don't want to know. I've found that in this business, it's best for the bartender to be selectively deaf, if you know what I mean."

"Plausible deniability isn't only for high-level government stiff," Mozzie agreed solemnly.

Not knowing quite how to respond to that one, Max passed the little guy another drink. "I saw you looking at the sketch," he commented. "You recognize the artist?"

"Danny Brooks," Mozzie replied, waggling his eyebrows. "Of course, his style has matured over the years, as he's moved into less... original works."

"I'd heard he got caught on some forgeries," Max sighed. "It's a real shame. Kid like that, he could have been anything. He had so much talent. And now he's got a record, and what? Who'd hire him, legally? Real shame. D'you know, he was just nine when he first showed up. Nine."

Mozzie straightened his glasses. "I'd always suspected he was a precocious con. True talent manifests early."

"Doesn't it just?" Max agreed fervently. "Cal took him under his wing, tried to keep him from getting into any real trouble, but you just can't stop talent like that. Nine years old! He even picked Cal's pocket once. You shoulda seen it when Ms. Ellen brought him back in. You would have thought someone kicked a puppy."

"Ms. Ellen?" Mozzie repeated, freezing. "You met Ellen Parker?"

Max frowned slightly, trying to remember. "Don't know about Parker, but she took care of Danny- Neal, I mean. She was real broke up when he ran off. Why? Do you know her?"

Mozzie hesitated, taking off his glasses and buffing the lenses on his shirt. "Ellen Parker was murdered a few days ago in New York."

Max's breath caught and he sank down onto a stool. "Oh... Poor Neal. I only met her twice, but she seemed like a great woman. Give him my condolences."

"Will do." For a moment, the two men sat in silence. Then Mozzie spoke again.

"Do you think he'd be proud of Neal?"

"Who?" Max asked, not immediately following. He caught Mozzie's meaningful glance towards the framed sketch. "Oh, Cal? Hard to say. Sure, the kid's one of the best, but still... You know, the day he died, that very day, he told me that he hoped Danny didn't ever get into the game. Honest to god, that's what he said."

Mozzie snorted. "No one could have kept Neal on the straight and narrow if he didn't want to be there. And why would he? There's so much he can do without those bureaucratic restrictions." But there was a faint uncertainty in his tone and the lines of his face.

"You don't sound sure about that," Max observed.

Mozzie looked offended and opened his mouth to object, but at the last moment changed it to a sigh. "I would have been once. But we tried that before, and it didn't work out. Now... Neal may have abandoned the unspoken criminal creed, but I have to admit, he has found his own little... niche. Who am I to interfere with that? Now he has an option besides the Big Score or the Big House."

"Let's just hope he can leave something behind besides a smile," Max agreed, his gaze drawn slightly towards Cal's portrait.

"Like what-" Mozzie's question was interrupted as the pool hall's door was thrown open and a smaller-than-usual shape barreled in.

"Daddy!"

An exuberant, blond-curled cannonball ducked behind the bar and threw itself at Max.

The old man laughed and hugged the girl. "Hey, baby. How was school?"

The blond head detached itself from him, hopping up to sit on the bar. "It was soooo boring," the girl complained, pouting comically. "They were teaching us how to make change. Mister Andy taught me that when I was six, and he showed me how to tell when the money was real. I don't see why I have to go to school when I learn so much more here."

"Because I said so," Max replied sternly, while Mozzie watched with a slight smile. "Now, you run on home, okay? Your mother is waiting, I'm sure."

The girl made a face but obediently dropped off the counter and ducked out the door, pausing only when her bright pink backpack got caught in the door.

Max looked after her with a beaming smile. "My daughter," he explained to Mozzie. "Me and my wife got started a bit late, but she's a good girl. Well, as good as she can be when she hangs out with this bunch of felons."

Mozzie smiled too. "How old is she?"

"Nine," Max answered. "And she's already sick of third grade. Ah, well."

Mozzie chuckled softly, imagining Neal bouncing in at the same age. "What's her name?"

He was surprised when Max flushed and hesitated. "Danielle. Danny. Her mother insisted on it," he said defensively. "I tried to tell her there was already a Danny, and it might not be the best omen, but it was her mother's name and she insisted."

To his own surprise, Mozzie started laughing so hard that tears came out of his eyes. "It looks like he already has left a legacy behind," he managed. "I'm sure he won't stop grinning like an idiot for days."

Max chuckled. "Yes, well, let's just hope that she doesn't follow in his footsteps too closely. Not that I don't think Neal's a good guy, but I don't ever want her getting into the business."

"Fair enough, fair enough," Mozzie said amicably. "Once you're in the game, it's next to impossible to get out."

"That's what I've always said," Max agreed. "It's a shame that it's too late for Neal."

The short conman smiled slightly, leaning across the bar. His voice was so low that Max, only inches away, could barely hear him.

"There's always another option," he murmured. "If you can't get out of the game, you can always play for the other side."


The moment Mozzie walked back in the door, Neal knew that he knew.

"Hey, Moz," he said cheerfully, avoiding his friend's disappointed gaze. "Good trip?"

Mozzie scowled, his glasses glaring with reflected candlelight. "You could have told me. Considering I was already going almost a thousand miles out of my way to get your precious dust-magnet of a box."

Neal ignored the first part, concentrating on the second. "So you have it?"

"Yes, I have it," Mozzie said in exasperation, passing Neal the box before heading over to liberate some wine.

Neal held the box carefully, as if afraid it might suddenly crumble to dust. Carefully, he slid off the top, baring its contents. Mozzie peered curiously over one shoulder.

"That's what you had me retrieve?" he asked, surprised and a bit annoyed. "A bunch of your old sketches?"

"Among other things," Neal said, lifting out a small leather bundle that served as a backing for a shining piece of metal. "Besides, I never actually said that it was an illegal stash."

"What is that?" Mozzie demanded, pointing to the object in Neal's hand. "Is that a badge?"

"It's Ellen's," Neal admitted. "The funeral is coming up soon, so I thought-" His throat closed up suddenly and he hung his head. Mozzie suddenly understood.

"'Old conmen never die; Their smiles just fade away'," he quoted. "It really makes you wonder- What about old lawmen?"

His friend gave a strangled chuckle. "Oh, they don't die either. Their handcuffs just don't work anymore."

Mozzie nodded appreciatively. "Oh, but so I went to that pool hall that you conveniently didn't tell me about, and you'll never guess what I saw..."


Neal wondered occasionally why Ellen's death didn't affect him as viscerally as Kate's had.

Maybe it was because, while he'd seen her bloody from the bullet wound, being taken away by paramedics, he hadn't been there when it happened like he had when Kate's plane exploded. Maybe it was because he'd gotten to hear her last words in person.

But the more Neal thought about it, the more he realized it came down to regret. With Kate, he hadn't been able to stop focusing on his mistakes, his failures. Lying to her in the first place, and how it felt when he'd had to tell her. Trying to con her into helping him with the music box and losing her. Finding her right as he was arrested. Stupidly breaking out of jail to find her rather than waiting three more months for his sentence to end. Giving up the music box, trusting Fowler and his boss to honor the agreement.

Hesitating when Peter showed up, when she was blown to pieces.

It had haunted him for a long time, poisoning his good memories.

But with Ellen, it was the opposite. He didn't think about the day he ran away. He didn't think about her bleeding out on a gurney and telling him to trust Sam.

He thought about her ruffling his hair when he was little, or holding him up so he could see the paintings at the art gallery. He remembered fondly when she would scold him for breaking the rules, and how her face would twitch as she tried to hide a smile when he tried to talk his way out of it.

He saw her sitting tiredly on a bar stool, talking to Cal, and the man's oddly nervous expression as she walked away. He felt her rubbing his back as he cried for his dead friend.

He recalled the time when she'd lost her keys and had to pick the lock to get in, inadvertantly giving him his first lesson in the fine art of breaking and entering.

He remembered her sharp intake of breath when she heard his voice for the first time in years.

And he heard her talking to Mozzie, fondly reliving his childhood with a faraway expression that told Neal that she'd missed him just as much as he'd missed her.

He felt guilty for contacting her, for placing her in danger, but he could practically see the stern, no-nonsense look she would have given him.

Oh please, she'd have said. I made my own choices.

Neal had to admit that he was glad he'd finally seen her again, even if it was for such a short time.

And so, he laid the boquet on her casket and shed a few tears for the woman he loved like a mother. And then he looked up and called out to the shadow that he was sure was Sam, because she'd wanted him to find the truth.

And, unlike when Kate died, he went to work and he smiled, genuinely, because the good memories outweighed the regrets.

But he did swear that he'd find her killer. And when he did, he would go for justice, not revenge, because Ellen wouldn't have wanted it any other way.


And there we are. Need I say it? I will anyways.

THE END- for now.

If you want a continuation, then check out USA on Tuesday nights at 8 o'clock (adjust time accordingly for time zones).