The Whistler's Whistle
The Familiar Stranger
A/N: I hope people are still enjoying this fic as I'm having a little trouble writing it, what with White Collar gone until the summer (can't wait!) I seem to have lost my muse. Re-watching season three over again seems to help ;) As always, suggestions and constructive critism is welcome! I know I can improve my writing an awful lot. Chapters will probably be added less frequently from now on, simply because it only just hit me how close my exams are...uh. But please, stay tuned! The angst-ness will pass...hopefully...mwuhaha.
Warnings: Same as with every other chapter. Swearing! Also, my document manager wouldn't save so I couldn't break up the paragraphs properly, so it all flows as one...it's annoying and ruins it, but there's nothing I can do.
Disclaimer: White Collar is not mine and I do not profit from this.
"Does this darkness have a name? This cruelty? This hatred? How did it find us? Did it steal into our lives or did we seek it out and embrace it? What happened to us? That we now send our children into the world like we send young men to war, hoping for their safe return, but knowing that some will be lost along the way. When did we lose our way? Consumed by the shadows, swallowed all by the darkness. Does this darkness have a name? Is it your name?." - One Tree Hill
Peter Burke didn't cry very often. It took a lot to truly break him into pieces. But the look on Neal's face had done it. Peter had never seen a look quite like that, up close, on the face of someone he honestly cared about. It wasn't so much crying as it was silent tears. Peter didn't have the right to cry. He'd caused this by sending Neal into that building with that man.
That sick, pathetic excuse for a man who couldn't even detonate his own bomb.
He got his own brother to do it instead.
The look on Neal's face captivated Peter's gaze, he just couldn't look away. It was pure misery.
Hopelessness.
Dread.
It was everything that could destroy a man all blended together into one torturous look and the colour from the world seemed to drain, seep away leaving nothing but a cold, harsh reality that just didn't seem right anymore.
Neal had shook his head, a tiny shake and his eyes remained transfixed on a spot on the wall so far away. He watched an invisible thing move across the world, a shadow that seemed to suck the life right out of him then and there.
Neal seemed to curl and die in that chair, right in front of everyone's eyes.
Peter couldn't look at him anymore.
If he looked at Neal, then he'd know what Neal had lost.
What he had lost.
Neal Caffrey believed he lost his hearing, his life that day.
But Peter Burke lost his best friend.
The doctors said sorry, as if it was somehow their fault when maybe there had been no hope in the first place and Peter was too stunned to protest when he was bustled out of the room.
Neal still hadn't moved when Peter was gently shoved into the corridor where Elle and June waited. He didn't need to say it. The red tracks down his cheeks and rapidly blinking eyes told them all they needed to know, the one thing they'd probably rather not have not known.
June had bit down hard on her lip, her handkerchief coming up to hide her face and even in Elizabeth's daze, she clamped down on the older woman's hand as Peter sat down beside her.
"What do we do now?"
Peter clung hopelessly to Elizabeth, his fingernails digging into her shoulders. She didn't protest of course because she held onto him just as tightly, just as desperately.
"Now, we take him home."
With a nod and a dozen forms to be signed and far too many apologies, Peter was finally allowed to collect his friend and when he entered Neal's room, he immediately stopped short at the sight of the man.
Neal wasn't doing anything at all. He was still, disturbingly so and he barely moved except for the slow rise and fall of his chest with small, painful breaths and the bandage secured around his head was gone, but Neal somehow still managed to look like a broken doll held together by pieces of torn fabric.
A doll that had been mauled and beaten too many times.
He was facing the window and staring out through the closed blinds.
Peter tore his gaze away, unable to watch his friend disappear before his eyes and he picked up Neal's bag and handed it to Elle, who had followed him in.
"Can you go and get the car started, Hun? We'll be out in a minute."
Elle took one last sorrowful glance at the CI before leaving with June. Peter was glad because he didn't want anyone to watch his attempt at doing something to ease Neal's pain.
Except the younger man seemed to have adopted this impassive aura about him almost immediately.
It was like he didn't care, he was just existing, breathing because he had nothing else to do.
Neal didn't jump or react when Peter entered his line of vision.
He just stood up with a nod and no words and he was going to walk past his handler, but a hand on his forearm stopped him.
A gentle, yet distressed grip and Neal glanced down at the white imprint of Peters fingers around his wrist.
Peter looked down at Neal, waiting, wanted him to look up but he didn't. He wouldn't, so Peter did the only thing he could think to do. It was the only thing that felt justified.
Spoken words weren't important and besides, they were distant and gone from Neal's world, another one of those unreachable things.
Peter took Caffrey by the shoulders and pulled him against his chest, wrapping his own arms around the deathly still frame of his consultant and he just held him there. He didn't pat his back awkwardly or say anything and he did notice the way Neal's arms remained at his own sides, hanging limply. But he didn't pull away at the tension in Neal's muscles or the way he refused to acknowledge the older man's attempt at comfort. Peter was clasping onto Neal for his own sake, for his own guilt as well as that of the younger mans.
Neal was either unwilling or unable to return the embrace and his face was turned into Peter's neck, his cheek resting on the agents collar bone, his lack of expression hidden from everyone, even his best friend and Peter wanted Neal to cry.
That sounded like a horrible thing to want, but at least it would mean that Neal acknowledged what had happened and what it all meant.
But Neal Caffrey stood frigidly in the older man's grip. He didn't pull away and he didn't make a move to hug his friend.
He just didn't seem to have the will or energy to care.
On that rainy Wednesday evening, Elizabeth and Peter Burke welcomed a familiar stranger into their home.
They knew him better than he knew himself in a lot of ways, or at least, they had done, once upon a time, many moons ago it seemed.
Neal let Elizabeth lead up to the house and to the couch where he sat, staring at the television screen despite the fact it wasn't switched on and Satchmo immediately hopped up onto the couch and tried to nuzzle his way into the young man's grip. Neal responded with a quick pet, but that was it.
It wasn't so much what Neal did that scared Peter and Elizabeth. It was what he didn't do.
He didn't say anything besides 'thank you' and 'please' and only answered questions in short, simple sentences that gave nothing away. He had turned to writing notes instead of talking because it was easier in the way that it made it difficult for Peter to ask the real questions.
The important questions.
At first, Neal had felt nothing. Not really. Well, he felt something but for the life of Neal, he had no idea what it was.
Shock, perhaps? No, that wasn't it. A tiny, insignificant fraction of Neal had known it was coming.
Sadness? No. Neal had been sad before, far too many times and while those episodes, those rather large of chunks of his life when he was alone were the worst thing he'd ever experienced, they were nothing compared to what Neal felt at that moment.
That moment, when sadness wasn't enough and the sorrow and the grief was nothing compared to the sheer hatred Neal felt.
He wasn't sure why it was hatred. But it was the anger that was the cruellest of it all.
For Neal, it was safer to push everyone away, far away from that anger. Better for him, for Peter, Elle, everyone. How could he hurt them if he didn't let them get close enough to see it?
But it wasn't just that.
Neal blamed them. Of course, he knew it wasn't their fault. It was wrong and unfair on so many levels to even think it was but it was okay for them because they could hear.
Neal couldn't.
Neal didn't just grieve for what he'd lost. He hated himself, the weak, pitiful little creature he felt he had become and he hated how everyone acted differently now. The first few days he spent at the Burkes, they seemed to follow him with their hawk-like eyes, watching him, waiting for him to break. They knew it was coming and so did he, but he refused to let himself break because once he did, it would be real.
He wanted to cling onto his existence no matter how lost and futile it was.
He didn't want to let go and so Neal couldn't move one. All he wanted was to forget.
The first night that he arrived at Peters was the worst, the loneliest. More than anything, he wanted to open his mouth and crack a joke just to convince them that he was okay. In reality, Neal was the furthest thing from okay.
'Okay' was a concept he couldn't fathom.
'Okay' wasn't an option for Neal. There was no 'okay'.
He barely ate his dinner, just picked at his food with his fork, eyes transfixed on the plate almost as if by staring at it, the food would disappear and become someone else's problem.
Someone else's chore.
Neal, try to eat something. Please. Elizabeth's flowing handwriting with the looped letters seemed to echo the soothing, tender voice of hers he wished he could hear. He tried to imagine that tone, but it wasn't enough. It was never be enough.
"Sorry…..the anaesthetic is still making me feel a bit sick." A pathetic excuse and he knew it.
Peter had excused him kindly, his touch far too soft and Neal could have drowned in the pity that radiated from them both. He'd always hated pity, even as a child, unless there was something in it for him.
After an overly long shower that didn't feel like a shower because he couldn't hear the water draining down the plug, Neal sat on the guest bed, his hair dripping in tangled knots, his towel the only thing between him and the night air. He didn't want to put on his pyjamas and sleep because then Thursday would come.
Then Friday.
Saturday, Sunday.
Next week. Month.
Next year.
Neal didn't want to think that far ahead.
The door opened slowly and Neal wiped away the moisture that had gathered in his eyes just as Peter entered the room. It would be Peter, wouldn't it? The one person Neal didn't want to face. Pad and pen in hand, the man sat opposite Neal and began to write.
Neal wanted to crush that fucking pen.
You know that you can talk to us, right?
Caffrey pinched the bridge of his nose and tried to think of anything that could get him out of that conversation.
"I know, but I'm tired Peter." Neal said hollowly, without a hint of the torrent of emotions that cackled inside him.
I can't imagine how you're feeling and I won't pretend to understand but if you want to talk, whenever you're ready, I'm here.
Peter looked like he was waiting, almost as if he was hoping Neal would admit everything he was feeling, release all the wayward and catastrophic emotions that flowed through his veins there and then. Neal decided the agent was going to be waiting a long time.
The con man wrapped his towel tighter around himself, the damp, cold material felt cool against his skin and it grounded him as his head swam with fatigue and the good drugs that he still hadn't completely come down from. It was probably a helpful thing, the numbness; it meant he couldn't break because it hadn't fully hit him yet.
But the moment was coming. Slowly, but surely, it was there waiting in the darkness.
Peter passed over the navy, silk pyjamas and handed the shirt to his CI. It was embarrassing, to say the least, when Neal shrugged it on and found that his fingers were being extremely uncooperative. He was shaking too much. The cold being the source, obviously.
He couldn't even do up his own buttons.
Peter came forward and removed Neal's hands. It meant little to the FBI agent as he buttoned up Neal's shirt for him, but it meant everything to the ex-convict.
Neal couldn't carry on like that.
He wouldn't.
Neal wasn't sure how many days he was going to stay with the Burkes, but it didn't matter.
Either way Neal could continue existing in his lonesome silence, without answering to anyone because he didn't want them to know. They couldn't know how just how destroyed Neal truly was inside.
He didn't sleep and while to anyone else, it wasn't obvious, it was to the Burkes. They could hear him tossing at night, unable to stay still for long and then the floor boards would creak as Neal would slip out of his bed and sit on the window ledge.
It was impossible for him to step around the floor boards that gave him away simply because he couldn't hear which ones they were.
Peter had remained awake all Wednesday night, listening in the early hours in case Neal made a sound. He was uneasy, on edge and as soon as the clock had struck five-thirty, he'd dragged himself out of bed, eager to get to the office and back as quickly as possible. He needed to speak to Hughes, face to face. He didn't want to discuss Neal's future with his boss, it was all still too raw for that, but he wanted to look over some of the case evidence himself.
He wanted to catch the bastard that had ordered the attack and hurt Neal.
Hurt him so badly.
Once he was dressed, the older man poked his head around the guest room door, half-expecting to find Neal still on that window ledge but instead, Neal was tangled in the blankets, his legs and arms at awkward angles and it was obvious by the sweat on his forehead and the knot between his eyebrows that he'd been dreaming. Peter stepped in quietly and got down beside him and it took a lot of effort to untwist Neal from the web of blankets he'd created without jolting him too much. The agent hated the way that as he moved the ex-cons right arm from underneath his torso, his muscles and hands were clenched.
Even in sleep, Neal could get no peace.
Once Peter had straightened his friend out into a position that looked more comfortable, he left with a heavy feeling settling in his gut.
He felt bad for leaving Neal alone inside his own head.
Who knew what monsters lay there?
The evidence had been a disappointment and a total waste of time but in a way, Peter was glad he wasn't at the house. He didn't know how to handle Neal any more. It had only been a day since Neal found out he wasn't getting his hearing back and that seemed more devastating every second, every moment where Peter had to stop and think about what was going to become of that young man.
Hughes had taken one look at Agent Burke and voiced none of his concerns about Neal's future. That could wait.
"Hey, honey." Peter saidlater on that morning when he came back and went straight to the kitchen where he could hear the oven simmering and came up beside Elizabeth at the counter."Where's Neal?"
"In bed." Elle sighed as she peeled the potatoes with an expert hand.
"Asleep?" Peter hoped he was.
"He wasn't awake when I last checked on him; he was up all night, after all." Elizabeth stopped peeling the vegetables and let the tool clutter onto the work surface with a clang. Her knuckles turned white as she gripped the counter edge when it all became too much, heart thudding, jaw aching. Neal was her friend, no, he was more than that.
So much more.
"Elle-"Peter dropped his coat at the sight of Elle's face breaking, her lips trembling as she fought and failed to lock everything away. But Peter was the one person she couldn't ever hide from.
"This isn't right, Peter!" She choked with a half-sob as her husband's arms secured around her. "He doesn't deserve this! Not Neal, he's not a bad person…..misguided, maybe but….."
"I know, Hun. But it's happened." Peter was just repeating what Hughes had said to him. Recycled words of reassurance that would have made perfect sense to anyone who wasn't close to Neal and didn't have to watch him, feel him suffer. "Neal, he's strong and we won't let this beat him. This could have been so much worse, Elizabeth. In a way, he's lucky. He'll see that someday."
"I know, he could be dead, but Peter-"Elle pushed the agent away slightly so she could look directly into his eyes. "You know what he's like. When he's scared, he pushes people away. What if we can't get him back?"
"We're not going to let him go, Elizabeth."
Neal had debated getting out of bed. He didn't see the point in it. It's not like he had anything to do or appearances to keep. Peter and Elizabeth had already seen him at his lowest point and there was no going back from that. He glanced over at the clock, the bright green numbers read 8:45 and on any normal Thursday, he'd have been sat at his desk, doing his job.
If only.
Neal threw back the blankets and edged slowly upwards because with the buzzing and the pain, the world seemed a little off balance like it was tilting on the edge of its axis. It didn't take him long to get dressed and the plain trousers and white shirt he wore felt ridiculous on a week day. He couldn't be bothered to shower; besides, he'd near enough rubbed his skin raw the previous night trying to get the smell of 'hospital' off him.
Yet it still lingered.
Neal deliberately didn't look at his reflection as he passed the mirror and began to head downstairs, lowering his head so that he could try to see through the bars of the banister in case Peter and Elizabeth were in the living room. He didn't want them to watch his shaky descent.
Only Satchmo sat on the rug and as Neal made it to the bottom of the stairs, he saw the two figures of his friends in the kitchen, wrapped around each other and the con man hung back.
Elizabeth was crying. He could see it on her face.
She shouldn't have been crying, not over him.
Neal dropped down onto the bottom step and ignored Satchmo as the dog nuzzled his hands because all he could think about was the damage he was causing, the pain he was inflicting by showing his own pain.
The con man decided there and then that no, he wasn't okay, but he could sure as hell pretend to be.
That was his job, right?
So Neal stood up straighter than he had in days, his chin held high and he breathed in through his nose and out through his mouth. Neal Caffrey had become just another alias, another lie that he had live. So the young man called Satchmo over and he knew his voice was loud enough to alert the Burkes of his presence and he felt their eyes on his back as he rubbed the dogs belly and ruffled its ears like he always did.
Neal didn't spare a thought to the yelps of happiness coming from Satchmo he couldn't hear because he was too distracted by the fact that he could barely feel the soft, golden fur beneath his fingers.
It was like he couldn't feel anything, anymore.
Not a single thing in the world.