Peter wanted to collapse. The effort it had taken to get Neal to this point was overwhelming him. And the answer itself... he realized now that he had been terrified either way. "Yes" would verify something horrifying and unfair. "No" would mean the young con was still trying to play his game, still not trusting anyone around him. Still trapped in a world of dangerous deceit.
But Jesus Christ, the look in Neal's eyes as he'd pressed him to answer. Like Caffrey thought... what? Peter buried his face in his hands, allowing himself just a few precious seconds to absorb the unexpected flood of emotion that swept over him. He had thought there would be sadness, but the shame and fury he felt instead were thoroughly unanticipated. How could he do this to Neal? How could he make him relive whatever terrible ordeal he'd survived? And the anger toward whoever had been responsible... it burned white hot, blinding him with its intensity and leaving the beginnings of tears pricking at his eyes.
He looked through his fingers up at Neal Caffrey, master thief/forger/fraudster who sat bloodless across from him, wound so tight he was shaking. It was time for Burke to cowboy up.
"Neal."
The young man's eyes darted up to meet Peter's before flicking instantly away again.
"Neal, buddy." Peter began to reach out to place a comforting hand on Neal's knee, but instantly thought better of it, leaving the hand dangling awkwardly between them before it dropped back onto Peter's leg.
"Neal, look at me. C'mon."
Caffrey finally complied.
"Neal, do you want to tell me about it?" His blue eyes closed. Peter tried again. "Neal?" And he opened them once more, examined the agent's emotion-reddened face, and looked away, shaking his head.
Peter nodded. "Okay." He waited before asking the next question. "Have you ever talked to anyone about it?"
Caffrey looked at him again, face blank and eyes empty. And shook his head.
"Not even...?" Peter couldn't bring himself to say the names. Mozzie. Kate. Anyone.
This time Neal managed to rasp out, "No." He drew in a shuddering breath and shifted uncomfortably, bringing a hand up to run through his hair.
Burke knew what the answer to this next one was, but he had to try anyway. "We have professionals at the FBI. People who've dealt with... things like this. No one has to know why you're seeing them."
Neal barked out a laugh that made Peter sit back in shock. "Oh, Peter! Now you're threatening ME with mental health?" His grin was a little too hysterical, his over-shined eyes a little too wide, but the amusement was genuine.
Peter smiled nervously. This was good, right? A joke, a reference to earlier office banter—wasn't this a little bit of a return to normal?
"Yeah, okay, point taken," the older man grumbled. "But the offer still stands, if you want it."
"Thanks. I appreciate it. Really." Caffrey was regaining his color. He seemed more relaxed. More composed. Peter hoped it was real. He was thrown just a little more when Neal offered up the tiniest of openings. "I'll be fine. I hadn't even thought about it in years."
Burke took advantage of the opportunity. "How long has it been?" Neal was more than capable of sidestepping this if he wanted to.
Neal paused, thinking. "Fifteen years or so, I think. A little more."
Oh, Jesus, that would make him—what?—a teenager? Or younger? Christ. "God, Neal... how old were you?"
He shrugged one shoulder. "Fifteen. Sixteen."
"Which one? Fifteen or sixteen?"
A shiver ran through Neal's frame, and his eyes hardened for a split second. "Both."
Peter had to look away, pulling his lips into thin white lines. He rocked back and forth a few times, shaking his head. He shouldn't keep asking about this. Neither of them could take much more.
"Your parents? Where were they?"
Another pause. "Dead."
Not the whole truth. Burke could hear it. But close enough. Peter, no one's looking for her. And no one had been looking for him, either.
"School?"
Neal shrugged again. "We moved around a lot."
"Why?"
Another unexpected reaction. Neal looked... embarrassed. He was blushing and had that shifty look Peter could never quite pin down. When Caffrey responded it was with a grimace as though he was admitting something deeply shameful. "Bill collectors."
Peter knew he was gaping, and he knew he looked like an idiot, but he just couldn't help it. "Bill collectors?" He repeated.
Caffrey's voice was angry now, and his eyes had a fire in them that Peter was actually a little glad to see. "Mom worked hard. She was honest. And the amount of work she did—it DIDN'T equal certain things in the real world."
Burke heard the accusation directed at him in the statement. It took a moment to place the reason behind the tone, but Neal was still talking.
"It wasn't her fault. She got sick. There were hospital bills. She tried to pay them all off. It wasn't enough. She gave them everything and then put the rest on credit cards." Neal snorted out a grim laugh. "Between the bill collectors and the debt collectors, we had nothing. I didn't understand it all while it was happening at first. I didn't know why there was no power, why we had to hide when someone came to the door, why the phone kept ringing and ringing and then we had no phone at all, why we came home one day and the keys didn't work."
"Locked out."
"Yeah. They had locked us out."
"Your mom, she didn't try to work with the hospital, the credit companies, the collectors? There are supposed to be..."
"Yeah, I know there are 'supposed to be' a lot of things," Neal interrupted. "And I don't know why none of those 'supposed to's ever happened. I was, like, preschool age when it all started. I just knew we started moving around a lot, staying with anyone who would let us or in cheap motels. And Mom couldn't get a good job after that because she had to get paid under the table or they'd find us again, garnish her wages, report us to social services."
"Wait, what? Why would they report her to social services for not paying debts?" This wasn't adding up.
Neal's lips curled into a twisted parody of a smile, unpleasant and full of teeth. An echo of the expressions he had seen on the men who preyed on the desperation of the poor and friendless. "They told her that if she couldn't afford to pay her bills, she obviously couldn't afford to keep her child."
"And she bought that? It's illegal!"
"Yeah. It is. And yet somehow I still ended up spending a weekend in 'protective custody' at a processing center. Until my mother paid the guy off. Somehow. " Neal let his face fall flat again and shook his head. "C'mon, Peter. You know your system doesn't always work the way it's supposed to. You've seen it. So we stayed out of the system."
"How?" Peter demanded. It was hard to believe. Go that far underground because of debt? Evade the detection of every law enforcement, social service, and welfare agency in every place they lived? "What about schools? There'd have to be records kept through them. No one ever thought there was something funny going on there?"
"Mom was smart. We stayed in big cities. Large schools." Caffrey softened at the next memory he encountered. "Great libraries. Amazing museums." He refocused on Peter. "Anyway, school didn't exactly... hold my interest for very long anyway."
"So... what? You just pulled an Artful Dodger and started to pick a pocket or two?" Burke was incredulous.
"What? No! Jeez, Peter, I can be honest, you know. I'm not a congenital reprobate."
"No, just a congenial one," Peter retorted.
"Oh, congratulations, you know your vocabulary better than a 90's political hack."
"Well, that's not hard."
And after a tense silence, for reasons neither could define, but both silently attributed to a combination of inebriation and exhaustion, they started laughing.
"It's not funny!" Burke forced out through what he cringed to think might be termed a giggle.
"I know!" Neal replied breathlessly. Then he started to laugh louder as he wheezed out, "That's why I'm not laughing!"
Which set Peter off again just as he had been about to bring himself back under control. They were bowed over and red-faced, trying to catch their breath.
"And he had a column!" blurted Neal.
"I... I know! 'On Language!'" They doubled over in hilarity.
"Oh, oh, but do you remember what Hilary said?" Caffrey steadied himself long enough to do an impression of seriousness, a dramatic hand to his breast. "'I'm not offended myself, but for my mother's sake.'" He dissolved back into giddy giggles.
Peter nodded. "The whole thing," he gasped, "Was so stupid!"
"I know! And it went on for weeks!"
Slowly, they brought their breathing closer to normal as they wiped the tears from their eyes.
"Oh,man," Peter grinned, drawing himself erect with a sigh. "I needed that."
"Yeah," Neal agreed. "You did."
"Smart aleck."
"Thank you."
Burke squinted a dirty look at Neal and retrieved his glass for another sip of cognac. "Okay," he conceded, attempting to leave the silliness behind for a time, "So we've established you weren't BORN stealing."
"Of course not. I didn't pick a single pocket until I was at least ten." A finger to his lips, Neal made a show of considering his facts. "Yeah, at least ten."
"Jesus, Neal, how...," Peter was still smiling, but he shook his head. Again. He felt like he'd been doing a lot of that today. "Who would teach a kid how to do something like that?"
And another shrug from Neal when he said, as it if it was the most natural thing in the world, "One of my mother's boyfriends. Kind of a scumbag, now that you mention it." Caffrey wrinkled his nose. "He smoked."
"Oh, well, if he smoked, that explains everything."
"Sarcasm is the language of the devil, Peter."
"Who said I was being sarcastic, Mr. Carlyle?
"Oooh, nice catch. I wouldn't have taken you for a fan of Victorian satirists."
"What can I say, Neal? I live to astonish you." Peter put his glass back down. "And drink your cognac. Wow. That is good stuff."
"It should be," Neal commented. "It's a Comet Vintage."
"Really?" Burke raised his brows. Pre-phylloxera?" Neal nodded. "I've confiscated some of those, but I've never tasted one."
"Well, it's good to know you can appreciate these things."
"Oh, I can't. And how did you do it? How did you even find out about... about Sy Devore and French grape harvests and Goya-esque riffs and ... and Thomas Carlyle, for Christ's sake? That's not usually included in the 'school of hard knocks' curriculum."
"I told you. Libraries. Museums."
"So you dropped out of school to go to the library?"
"So you don't believe me?" Neal sounded so sincere. Peter knitted his brows in consternation. "That's why it worked." Caffrey smiled.
"What's that supposed to mean? Why what worked?" Burke was beginning to feel too slow for this conversation.
"If you do it right—keep your days consistent, give the staff just enough charm and the right cover story—then a kid spending all day in the library and, when you're a little older, the museum, seems like the most natural thing in the world." He scratched his chin. "And you meet the most amazing people, sometimes. People who love knowledge and beauty. Who are passionate about subjects and authors and painters and sculptors. They'll tell you stories and give you reading lists and show you how to do things you could never get in a normal school."
"Like pick locks?" Peter suggested.
Neal frowned at him. "Don't turn this into something tawdry. And I couldn't pick locks until I was much older." His fingers found their way to his wrists and brushed against them absent-mindedly. "Not well, anyway." Not well enough. If he'd just been less honest earlier in his life, honed his criminal skills just a little more... He shook himself out of the reverie before it could pull him in too deep. But he could see Peter already making mental notes, filing everything away for later reference.
And suddenly it was all once again too much. It reminded the young man of being observed, prodded, tested, and used. That is what it is to be vanquished and imprisoned: you let things happen. He bit back the sudden chaotic amalgam of terror and rage that balled itself in the pit of his stomach. A dreaded helplessness welled up in him and took him back to every time he had been forced to wait, watch, and suffer.
Neal wanted to stand, move, pace about the room, smash his glass against a wall for the sheer satisfaction of hearing it shatter. He wanted to do something—anything—to wrench control back into his own hands and assert his independence to the world... to himself. But he carefully moderated his voice and said, "I'm sorry, Peter. I'm through."
A klaxon sounded in Burke's mind. "Through? What does that mean?"
"It means," Neal asserted, removing his feet from the ottoman to place them flat on the floor and lean toward Peter for emphasis, "That this conversation is over. It's been a very long day. Set of days. I'll call a cab for you. You probably shouldn't be driving." He leaned back in his chair with an air of finality. "See you at work tomorrow. Tell Elizabeth I said 'Hi.'"
Peter opened his mouth, ready to demand an explanation, but the look on Neal's face shut it for him. This wasn't the time to let wounded pride get in the way. He needed some rest, anyway. They both did. And El was waiting for him by now. He had more questions, needed more answers, but he'd already gotten more than he was sure he even wanted. And the nerves of both men were frayed beyond belief.
So all he said as he got up was, "I will, Neal. She'll be glad to hear it." Peter walked slowly to the door, the weight of the past twenty-four hours bearing down on him heavier than ever. He paused in the frame to look at Caffrey, still leaning back in the cushioned chair, and tell him, "Get some rest, Buddy."
Burke stepped somberly to the staircase, and all he heard as he descended were his feet on the wood beneath him and the muffled sound of breaking glass behind Neal's door.
...
