A/N: Me: Oh, I'll just write a tiny little fic about Neal being super sad alone in Paris and then Peter bringing him home. It'll be like 3,000 words, max

Also me: 13,000 words later...

I'm almost afraid to start on my other post-canon fic now.

TW: possible suicide ideation, intrusive thoughts, vv sad Neal

Neal thought the first few weeks would be the hardest.

He was wrong. They were the easiest. In the first few weeks, he was still exploring Paris, settling into his new place, his new job, his new life. Getting the thrill of working to protect the beautiful paintings and artifacts in the Louvre, and with that contract, the other museums and priceless archives of Paris.

Reality only settled in as he began to settle in. When he wandered the streets of Paris after his work shift and realized only after half an hour that he was looking for a New York City municipal van to climb into and report the details of his sting.

Except he wasn't on a sting and there was no municipal van to climb into.

He went to his new apartment—it didn't feel like home—and tried to cheer himself up by drinking some French wine he had purchased the other day, but somehow it didn't taste the same knowing Mozzie hadn't picked over the bottles and drained half his collection.

He wound up dumping out half his glass into the sink and going to bed early.

A couple days later, he contracted the flu. He told his work he couldn't come in and curled up in bed, watching his phone lay on his nightstand.

He didn't know why until a random thought popped in. Why hasn't Peter called concerned yet? Or just showed up to interrogate me?

Peter didn't even know Neal was still alive. He couldn't track his anklet and show up concerned, he wouldn't pop in that evening after work with chicken soup from El, he wouldn't hover like a concerned dad for a week until Neal recovered.

Neal turned his face into his pillow to hide his tears.

Even so, his ear stayed cocked for a sound. When the neighbor down the hall slammed the door, he jumped and croaked out, "Mozzie?"

He slumped back onto his bed. Mozzie thought he was dead and was either still in New York or had disappeared somewhere in grief. Mozzie didn't know where Neal was and wouldn't be bursting in to interrogate Neal about his symptoms and then disappear for a week.

After that, he couldn't escape it. Every brown-haired man that visited the Louvre had him spinning around, heart thumping, until he caught the man in full view and realized it wasn't Peter. Any short bald man or short man in a ridiculous wig sent a smile spreading across his face until he realized the man wasn't Mozzie. He caught himself whipping around thinking he heard Jones, thinking up quips to poke Diana's buttons with, planning ways to convince Peter to take him to MoMA, and searching for the municipal van. Whenever he saw a calendar, he calculated how close Elizabeth was to her due date.

And the memories and instincts got harder and harder to brush off. Wine, which used to be a simple pleasure for him, didn't taste right anymore, without Mozzie's prior approval or the view off Neal's balcony. He tried painting, but everything he tried to paint, whether it was the Mona Lisa or a Picasso or the Eiffel Tower, wound up having Peter or El or Mozzie or June or Jones or Diana in it. Once he tried to paint a wolf and accidentally painted Satchmo instead.

Then there were his instincts. Before, he always scoped out places for escape and robbery, calculated the value of everything around him, tried to scope out the feds and crooks in the area. Now, even though those old instincts still existed, he found himself evaluating everyone in the Louvre as possible suspects for white collar crimes and wandering through the business districts of Paris hoping to find a case to bring back to the office. In New York, he had wondered if he would ever truly adjust to the life of a lawman. He knew now that he had adjusted too well to ever go back to a life of crime.

Unfortunate that he only knew this now that he couldn't go back to his old life without risking the lives of everyone he loved.

At least not until the Pink Panthers went to prison for life. Assuming they all would. If they did, he could send his bottles and let Mozz and Peter know he was alive. Then Peter could chase after him and find a way to bring him home.

If the Pink Panthers all got convicted.

Neal strolled through the slick hallways of the Louvre, inspecting the new security upgrades and whistling.

"Neal?" Peter said.

Neal spun around. "Peter! You made it!"

Peter grinned wider than Neal had ever seen him grin before. "Barely. It's a little hard to find you when I don't speak French."

Neal smiled back. "I couldn't make it too easy for you."

"Oh, come here, you." Peter threw his arms around Neal.

A gunshot echoed throughout the room. Peter grew limp in Neal's arms.

"Peter? Peter!" Neal fell to his knees, cradling his best friend. "Peter!"

Blood stained the entire front of Peter's shirt. His eyes were stiff. He was already gone.

"No! Peter!" Tears sprang to Neal's eyes. His throat was hoarse. "No!"

Neal jerked awake with a start. His heart raced and sweat soaked his pajamas. He gasped for breath but couldn't steady himself.

It wasn't real. It wasn't. Peter still thought he was dead. The Pink Panthers thought he was dead. No one was going to hurt Peter to get to Neal because no one knew Neal was still alive.

But what if Neal hadn't pulled off the fake death as well as he had thought? What if the Pink Panthers had already killed Peter? Would Neal even know? What if the Panthers blamed Peter for their arrest and went after him anyway? Neal never should have brought Peter onto the crew. He should have kept his family far away from such deadly people. He should have known better.

Neal's stomach churned. He bolted for the bathroom and puked up his dinner.

His hands shook. He collapsed against the bathroom wall, heaving for breath. The Panthers could have already gone after Peter, El, and Mozzie and he wouldn't know. He couldn't know because he couldn't call and check or he risked exposing himself and them.

For all he knew, all his friends could already be dead, and Neal was sitting here in Paris like a fool, imagining them safe and healthy and waiting for the day they could all be reunited. A day that would never come because Neal had heedlessly jumped into a dangerous case that promised his freedom and had been so selfishly single-minded on ditching that stupid anklet that he hadn't counted the cost to the people around him.

Tears slipped down his face before he realized what was happening. Choked sobs clogged his throat. He wrapped his arms around his knees and sobbed hard. All his efforts for freedom seemed so pointless now. Where was the joy in traveling the world and being able to go wherever you want and do whatever you want when all you wanted was to live in a studio apartment of a New York mansion, go to a regular nine-to-five with your best friend and catch crooks together, then return home to find your other friend plotting some elaborate job neither of you will ever carry out? Freedom was overrated compared to Peter's arm around his shoulders, El's greeting hug whenever he walked in the door, eating delicious dinners at the Burkes' table with his family, wine and conspiracies with Mozzie, Italian roast on the balcony with June, walking Bugsy or Satchmo, even bantering with Diana or sitting in the van with Jones and competing for if being in prison or the military made you more owned by the US government (Neal was convinced he would win every time in peacetime, but Jones had him beat with his combat tour for sure).

"I want to go home," Neal whispered to his silent apartment, as if some kindly guardian angel was listening and would take pity on him. "I want to go home."

Except, unless he wanted to watch his family and friends die one by one until there was no one left but him and his failures—and his hubris—he couldn't go home.

They were all better off without a selfish conman mucking up their lives anyway. Peter had almost gotten life in prison because of Neal. El had been kidnapped. With a little time, Neal could surely find a dozen different ways he had made his friends' lives more difficult, more troublesome, more stressful, less…worth it. Peter and El, Mozzie and June, they were devastated now, for sure, but eventually they would realize that a Neal-less life gave them the peace and happiness they had always deserved. Neal got plenty from them, but, like the thief he was, he didn't give back in ways that made his presence worth it. Diana and Jones were probably glad they didn't have a criminal coworker to chase after and periodically arrest anymore.

But that didn't make Neal's life any less empty now that they were no longer in it.

He snorted. Look at him, a single financially stable man living alone in Paris. That had been his dream for so long. The world was his oyster.

He didn't want the world. He wanted the life he had had.

"The dream with an anklet attached," Jones had said once.

Neal should have believed him and appreciated it when he had the chance.

Neal couldn't stomach breakfast that morning, so he just skipped it. Exhaustion plagued him, and he found himself surviving on coffee. He picked at lunch and barely convinced himself to finish dinner. Somehow, food was losing its taste. Not actually, but…

Eating just didn't seem important anymore.

He told himself everything would look better in the morning after a good night's sleep. And maybe it would have, if he had been able to catch a good night's sleep. But nightmares of Peter, El, and Mozzie dying haunted him, and he ended the night more exhausted than when he went to sleep. He skipped breakfast again, skimped on lunch, and picked at dinner. He relied on copious amounts of coffee to keep him awake.

So that became his routine. Sleep plagued by nightmares, no food in the morning and very little in the afternoon. Forcing himself through his daily duties on autopilot, which got slowly worse as the coffee stopped working. Making himself eat a full dinner. The shakes that had periodically cropped up after Kate's death haunted him again. He found himself zoning out at random times. He couldn't even paint anymore. He found himself aimlessly wandering the Paris streets, waiting for something to happen, though he wasn't sure what.

He wasn't happy about what his life had descended to. He hated it. But he didn't know how to make it better.

Today was actually a somewhat okay day. Neal had taken the Saturday morning to sell some of the paintings he couldn't bear to look at on the street and had, to his surprise, sold a significant number of them. He then found himself somewhat hungry for the first time in a while, so he got in line for a nearby café, eyeing the pastries while the American tourists in front of him ordered. They were a family from somewhere in the South, based on the accents, and the father of the family had a full thick dark beard.

"Can I get a name for that order?" the tired barista asked.

"Peter," the Southern man drawled confidently.

He didn't look like Peter Burke. He didn't sound like Peter Burke. He didn't even order a similar coffee as Peter Burke would. So Neal couldn't explain why the very mention of the name from the American tourist brought tears into his eyes. He fled from the café, not stopping until he was safely back in his apartment, where he crumpled to the floor and burst into heaving sobs.

The café incident convinced Neal that he was not doing okay. But knowing that didn't help anything. He didn't have a support system anymore, he couldn't afford a therapist, and even if he could find a way to swing it, legally or illegally, he was never setting foot in a therapist's office again after what Dr. Summers had done to him.

In a fit of desperation, he tried to plan a heist. But there was no challenge in robbing the most high-profile targets since he provided the security for most of them. And for some reason, planning a heist made him feel something he'd never felt before.

Guilt.

He had never before felt guilty about the heists and thefts he had pulled off. But this time, all he could see was poor innocent Amy whose life he'd ruined. Even though he had told himself that his crimes had never hurt anybody, there was an invisible victim. Peter had tried to tell him time and time again there were always victims, even if Neal couldn't see them. Knowing that, remembering Amy, thinking of how disappointed Peter would be finding Neal hadn't gone straight like he'd promised he would after the Pink Panthers went down…

He just couldn't do it.

With nowhere else left to go, he lingered in churches. Specifically, any cathedrals he could find. The elaborate stained-glass windows soothed him, and thinking of Peter's lapsed Catholic background made him somehow feel closer to him by lingering there.

Yet, any time some well-meaning person tried to sit near him and talk to him about the troubles that drove him into the buildings, he fled. He didn't know why, but he didn't know why he lingered in empty churches either.

Neal found that he could adjust to anything. He adjusted to prison, he adjusted to the anklet, and now, he adjusted to this. Whatever this was. The emptiness, the nightmares, the self-recrimination, the constant guilt, the grief that followed him everywhere. His own mind tricking him into thinking he saw Peter, Mozzie, El, or any of the other people he had grown close to in NYC. The skipped meals. The loss of interest in hobbies that used to relax him. He simply…got used to it. It wasn't living, exactly, but he…existed. If he had been anyone other than Neal Caffrey, the man who never gave up, he might have…

Well. His intrusive thoughts made him jumpy around knives, balconies, even crossing the street sometimes. He was afraid that one day they would creep from his intrusive thoughts into his normal thoughts, become not something his brain tried to shock him into feeling something with, but something that represented an escape. But the thoughts stayed where they should. Because he was Neal Caffrey. And he never gave up.

But, oh, how hard it had become for him to remember why.

He almost didn't send the bottles of Bordeaux.

Even after all his waiting, even when the idea that this would all be over soon, that it would be safe to reach out to his family again and he could see them all (but especially Peter Burke) again, even after he realized he didn't care about his freedom, didn't even care if his faking-death stunt landed him in prison—for good—as long as he had his family visit, even after all that, Neal still came just a hair away from never sending those bottles.

Because he needed them, Peter and El and Mozzie and June and Diana and Jones and even Satchmo, but they didn't need him. He was a complication, a mistake. If he loved them, truly loved them, he would stay out of their lives completely, set them free of the failure that was Neal Caffrey and let them live their peaceful lives without having to worry about career-ending humiliations, prison, kidnapping, and death because of the heedless criminal that kept mucking up their existence.

But he was Neal Caffrey, and he was, as he always had been, selfish.

So, he clung to the articles that stated all the Panthers had gotten life in prison, sent off his bottles, and prayed.

A/N: Not me stopping at 1700 words for the day on my original work because "That's quite a bit" and going to this to relax and staying up past midnight to write 5000 words more...