Darling? Oh my darling Neal… won't you open your eyes for me?
Someone was running fingers through his hair, and Neal's first thought was to assess the situation, to perceive it as a threat as it was such an unfamiliar sensation… but this felt nice. It felt nice.
Neal wanted to remain still, to relish in the attention, but the voice… she was so delicate and loving and kind, and Neal wanted to please her. He feebly turned his head into the gesture, the warmth of her hand.
Oh darling, Neal? Neal, can you open your eyes for me, please?
She still sounded muffled, sounded so far away.
Lilacs and vanilla. She smelled like lilacs and vanilla, and there was someone who wore that distinct mix, that perfume, someone he really should remember.
Neal?
Darling, can you open those blue eyes for me? It's me, darling. It's me- do you know who I am? Can you tell who I am?
Neal was afraid to say it, afraid of the crippling disappointment he would feel when it wasn't her…
"Mom?" he queried, his voice small.
June felt a distinctive pang in her heart. Taking a thick breath and blinking away tears, she continued caressing his face, his hair.
"Darling, it's June. It's June." And June hated herself for ever making him question who she was, for ever playing that little game.
"Right, sorry," Neal slurred, not fully with her. The voice that was usually so self-assured, so confident, was gone. In its place was a broken boy who wanted his family, who wanted love. And again, in that horrible quavering whisper, Neal struggled for control, uttering broken apologies. "Shoulda known. 's never her, sorry, I'm sorry.."
June strummed her fingers through his hair, taking in the steady rhythm of Neal's breathing, of the machines around her, startled out of her thoughts as Neal's weakened state combusted before her. He was whispering something, whispering it with a veracity that broke her heart in a way that only Neal could do.
"I don't want it to go back to what it was.." Neal's posture was all at once frigid, and there were taut lines of pain on his ashen face, a gleam of sweat on his brow that curled his hair and gave him the appearance of being an ill little boy. He was in the thralls of something, in a place that June couldn't reach him, and oh how she wanted to. Because no, she wasn't Neal's mother, but she loved that boy. Loved him like he was one of her own, had loved him a little on the very first time they met, had loved him for the magnificent heart that she got to see, the Neal Caffrey that he kept burrowed from the outside world.
June would be pressed if she were to explain it; she doubted she ever truly could. But she and Neal… much like she and Byron…. they were cut from the same stone. They danced to the music of the city, only letting their facades crumble, slip away, in the dead of night, in the silence, and in their solitary company.
So yes, Neal was her boy. And while June didn't know exactly what Neal was referring too, a good mother could always guess.
I don't want it to go back to what it was.
June used her handkerchief, the lovely one (it was a gift from Byron's sister) with an ornate J.E. stitched into it, to mop Neal's fevered brow.
Neal's posture was no longer rigid, his back no longer arched off the bed, but he was in obvious discomfort. More than anything, he seemed weak. He'd stopped moving about, his head no longer fitfully moving… though June deduced that he lacked the strength to move… and to see her Neal so weak, so depleted… it stole her breath.
"Shhh, shhh, my darling. It won't be. It won't," she cooed.
"Please… please… ask me to stay. I need to stay." His voice was gravelly and so very quiet. Hardly a whisper. Hardly a breath.
June, ordinarily so eloquent with words, found herself swallowing shards of glass to speak.
"Please ask me to stay.." Neal whispered.
Neal, you're home. You are home, my boy. Stay. Paint, and live, and drink wine, and love, and stay in my life, because I need you to stay. You are home; you are at home, and you are home to us.
June cleared her throat and simply whispered "Stay."
"I wanted to… before Kate was… I was going to stay. I was always going to stay… need Peter to know that. Need him to understand, need him to want me to stay…"
"Shhh, shhh, my darling."
"Maybe that's why… I can't stay. If… If I had gone, Kate and I would be gone together." Gone. Dead.
Meaning I don't deserve to stay, because my turning around, my not getting on the plane kept me from the fire… and let Kate die alone. June's heart was pounding in her chest..
Peter took in the scene from the doorway, two hot coffees in his hand… but Peter needed some air after that. June would understand.
He turned and promptly left the room, June's eyes him following as he left.