THE NEXT DAY
"Well, I don't think this'll come as a huge shock to you..."
"You're going to Washington."
"They want me as a Section Chief in DC."
Neal shifted around, and smiled a little. "It's been a long time coming. You deserve it."
Peter tried to stifle a grin. It did feel good. Really good. After being consigned to the evidence cave, passed over for promotion, and thrown in jail, this felt like the vindication he never thought he'd get.
"Ah - job starts in two weeks."
"Two weeks, wow."
"Hard to imagine - not working here any more." Peter looked away, hating himself. He'd blown it. That should have been not working with you any more, and that should have led to a sensitive discussion of their options.
But he'd been a coward. He wanted to enjoy his moment of triumph, wanted Neal to share it. He didn't want a wrenching discussion about prisons and new handlers and goodbyes. He wanted Neal to have faith in him and be able to celebrate with him, confident that Peter wouldn't let this hurt him.
He wanted a fairy tale.
He finished the conversation with all the wrong reassurances, picked up an evidence box, and walked out.
Three hours later, Peter closed the door and sat with a thud. He put his elbows on the desk, buried his face in his hands, and closed his eyes.
This day was a disaster unfolding, and both of them were too emotionally exhausted from recent events to have the strength to face another wrenching, deadly-serious conversation.
Neal was smiling, had that little bounce in his step...and Peter was smiling, and there was so much unsaid that it almost made Peter squirm.
But what was he going to do, sit down in the middle of the office and say, "Hey, a total stranger said I should commit to you, so I'd like to tear you away from a home and a life and people you love in New York to come live in our back yard. I know you'd rather face prison than a new handler, so how 'bout I completely ignore your wishes and assign you one in DC?"
No. That was less telling someone you cared about them unconditionally and more like telling them you'd like to ruin their life in the creepiest possible way.
So he kept smiling, and Neal kept smiling, and wow, had they gotten good at conning each other.
Neal was walking past, and Peter opened the door and flagged him down. "Neal, it's going to be okay."
"I know," came the cheery, instant reply.
He could've said, "Neal, I'm going to shoot you later today," and Neal could've replied "Not if I poison you first," and it'd have been just as sincere as that last little exchange. This was impenetrable, self-protecting Neal.
He closed himself into his office again, and sat down with the file. Something about getting chewed out regarding boundaries by Neal Caffrey, a man he'd have sworn didn't know the meaning of the word, was unsettling.
But this was evidence, and Peter was an FBI agent. He looked at evidence.
It was terrifyingly well laid-out. FBI protocol dictated that reports stick strictly to proven or observed facts, with no supposition or editorializing, no editing. Rachel Turner protocol did not.
Oh, she had the evidence. School reports, medical reports, legal documents, photos, letters, even internal communications and reports from within WitSec. But her report was put together like a novel.
Neal's mother had tried to recover from the mess with his father, but never really did. Grief became depression, and coping turned from nightcaps to heavy drinking and drugs. She tried to be a good mother to Neal, but was in no shape to manage her own grief, let alone that of a very bright young boy.
She couldn't hold down a job, couldn't get Neal to school reliably, and they slipped into poverty. Ellen started stepping in and caring for Neal, and it was she that he came to rely on emotionally. Neal's mother eventually signed a document giving Ellen legal guardianship of Neal if she were incapacitated or died, but Ellen's new career kept taking her away for longer and longer periods.
His mother got drunk and high one night when Neal was eight and managed to burn their house down. A week later, she slashed her wrists in their hotel room.
Neal came home to find her bleeding out on the floor, called 911, and managed to tie pressure bandages over the wounds and keep her barely alive until the ambulance arrived.
Ellen got a call in London from a blood-soaked and terrified Neal Caffrey, who'd just been told that his mother was being committed and he was going into the custody of Child Services.
Ellen wouldn't be back for six months, but a few calls to the US Marshal's office later, and a Marshal showed up at the ER to pick him up and "take care of him for Ellen."
Neal's mother ended up in rehab, and Neal spent the next six months shuffled back and forth between five families of US Marshals as an alternative to being thrown into foster care. When Ellen returned to the US, he went to live with her.
It didn't appear he'd had a stable home for more than a year at a time from that point on. He was thrown from school to school and house to house like a lovable but ultimately unwelcome stray puppy. He become an expert at fitting in, making friends instantly, and, it seemed, tried desperately to make himself lovable enough to keep around.
He discovered art in his early teens and instantly connected with the history of it. In art was the assurance that grief, pain, violence, love, and drama were not unique burdens specific to his life, but had been woven through the human experience for centuries.
He'd been grooming himself to carry on his father's legacy in the police force, and mostly stayed out of legal trouble. Mostly. There was a sealed juvenile file on the time their dog ended up in the pound.
He hadn't been able to reach his mother, so he found out the requirements to spring the pooch: An adult signature, a picture of the dog, and $150.
Neal hopped the bus, but got off halfway to the pound. He stole three wallets to get the money, and got back on the bus. He used part of the stolen cash and a particularly cute picture of their dog to enlist the aid of a fellow passenger in providing the needed adult signature.
Bailed-out family pet in hand, he cobbled together what looked something like a service dog harness to get them on the bus back. His downfall came when the driver, suspicious, asked to see Neal's ID. Neal fumbled getting his wallet out and spilled the stolen ones out on the floor.
The police were waiting for him at the next stop. Neal had been just young and cute and just Witness-Protected enough to escape without charges.
He easily procured the money to pay his victims back, although nobody was quite sure how.
Peter set the file aside and closed his eyes. No wonder Neal was so sensitive about being handed over to new handlers. It didn't let Peter off the hook, but it made throwing up in the bathroom a little easier to understand.
He'd never had a stable family, a stable future. So he did what Neal does, and found the best in it. Embraced adventure and change and risk, learned to love danger and insecurity.
Maybe that was one reason he'd been somewhat content in prison. Predictability, structure, routine, and confinement sounded like a recipe for pure torture where Neal was concerned, but there must have been something comforting in the stability of it.
But something had been missing his entire life. He needed a family. Not just a friend or a partner or a girlfriend or a tropical island paradise. A family he could count on.
And he chose me. Heaven only knows why exactly, but he did.
He chose El and Mozzie and June too, but at the core of it, the young suspect who called from foreign lands and sent birthday cards and champagne had chosen him years ago.
Peter had a set of keys for handling Neal Caffrey, things he reminded himself constantly. Never forget that he's keenly intelligent, resilient, far tougher than he seems, deeply sensitive, and emotionally vulnerable. All at once. He'd laugh off being shot, yet be moved to tears by a few words.
It seemed he should add a new rule: listen to what he's saying to your face.
Peter was so used to wanting for the subtle cues and hidden flickers of emotion and masked reactions that he'd ignored what Neal had been practically screaming at him, out loud, over and over again.
Stop hurting me. You're my friend. I chose you. I trusted you. You're not my get out of jail free card, you're my family. How could you give me away?
I'm a human being.
Peter drew in air in a huge gulp. He wanted to cry.
"Neal - who your father was or how you grew up doesn't dictate who you are. You get to decide that for yourself."
Neal gave him a long and very thoughtful look. "My experiences shape who I am. I'm not one of those people who takes pride in never learning and never changing. I've let you shape who I am for years, and I'm a better person for it."
"A decision you made," Peter pointed out. "Just like the decisions you made not to cross the line into violence, or not to hate the people who imprisoned you. None of those are typical choices for someone with your background. You made them, you get to decide who you are. Not some parents that screwed up their responsibility to their kid."
Neal cocked his head to one side in curiosity. "Forgive me if this turns out to be an insensitive question, but - how come you and El don't have kids?"
Peter gave him a wry smile. "Too much responsibility."
Neal chuckled. From his expression, that'd been the exact answer he was expecting.
"Besides, we kinda ended up adopting," said Peter.
"Ah, right. Satchmo."
They exchanged a long look. Behind the carefully assembled cheer, Neal's eyes reflected pain and exhaustion. Surely part of that pain was Peter's responsibility, but not all of it. Neal's expression wavered. Please, not now. Peter gulped. That was pretty much how he felt too.
"Yes. Satchmo. Yep," agreed Peter.
"Now, see, if I'd known this dog story earlier, I'd have been prepared for how far you'd go to get a friend out of jail."
Neal grinned. "Well, he hated kennels, and it was a kill shelter. I was scared to death they'd put the wrong dog to sleep."
Peter grinned and swatted him on top of the head with the file.
Neal ducked and squirreled away to the side. "Hey! Easy there with the rolled-up newspaper!"
Peter pointed at him sternly. "Go home!"
Neal laughed, and they were both grinning sincerely for the first time all day, and Peter gave him an affectionate shove. "I mean it. Go home and relax."
Peter caught his elbow on the way out. Neal froze and looked at him. "Neal - even on my very worst days, I care about you."
Neal nodded. "Me too," he said quietly. Then he pulled away and walked out of the office.
Neal paced back and forth, stopping at each circuit to stare at a large blank canvas with his arms crossed. He'd always maintained that to be a good original artist, you had to know who you were. He never had, still didn't.
But maybe Peter was right. Maybe he needed to stop looking to other people to shape him, and decide for himself.
He and Rebecca had one thing in common, and that was the ability to mold themselves into different people at will. So why not decide who he was? Peter, his anchor and his compass, was leaving. He was going back to prison, where the easiest thing to be was nobody. But nobody could also be synonymous with blank canvas. He could paint what he chose on it.
So who was he? He thought about painting himself looking into a mirror, and seeing a different version of himself in every part of it. Him in a cell. Him with Kate, looking at her gravestone. Him and Peter hugging each other. Him standing at the door, watching his father leave. Him, covered in blood - his own, that of his parents, Siegel's, Kate's - that of everyone he'd seen die. Him with Mozzie, cracking a safe. Him and Sara kissing on the top of the Empire State Building.
No. Good art wasn't about the artist, it was about the viewer. It was the artist expressing his own outlook in a way that connected with humanity, in a way that invoked a certain feeling in the viewer and made them feel that's me. I've been there.
But again, there was too much. How could he, how could anyone, boil down who they were into a single concept, a single painting?
They didn't. That's what they had careers for, that's why they painted more than one work.
And so he started painting, and didn't stop until Mozzie walked in with dinner hours later.
"Wow," said Mozzie, distracted by the mostly-completed painting on the easel. "That's good. Whose work is it? I don't recognize it."
Neal smiled, and waited.
"That's you? Neal - wow. You're actually good. You're - really good."
Neal grinned.
It was an ocean scene, in the middle of a stormy night. A barge was towing a ship into port, and clinging to the cable connecting them a figure was making his way from the forbidding freighter towards the barge, waves threatening him with oblivion. The barge's deck was a home, bathed in warm light, furnishings and a fireplace visible through the windows and five not quite identifiable figures going about their business inside.
Before, he'd always stopped painting before he had to sign his work. Which of his alieses had painted it? What might his name be by the time someone saw it? But this one bore a confident inscription tucked into the lower corner.
Neal Caffrey.