The Shrine

Neal walked down the hallway with the memorial wall of lost agents several times that first day back before he noticed his own face was grinning at him. Even once he noticed, he thought his eyes were playing tricks on him at first. He had to stop, tuck his case file under his arm, and stare at the portrait for a full minute before his brain catalogued what he was looking at.

It was him, slick, smooth Neal Caffrey, in his classic Devore suit, in an official DBI photo he didn't remember taking, complete with American flag in the background. His framed picture sat right next to the picture of the ill-fated David Siegal.

A lump settled in Neal's throat. He was on the wall with the dead agents. He hadn't thought they had cared enough to honor him as one of their own. But here his picture sat, as if he had somehow earned the respect due all these other lost people who had actually dedicated their lives because of that.

He didn't even read the nameplate at first. But when he did…

"Agent (Honorary) Neal Caffrey."

Who… How… Why would they…?

He didn't know how long he stood there, staring at the memorial wall, subtle tears slipping down his face, until Jones called his name and Broke him out of his reverie.

"Hey, Caffrey! You find that file?"

Neal jumped and wiped his face with his sleeve. He started to speak, but realized his voice would be too wobbly, so he settled for clearing his throat.

Jones strolled up to his side. "Ah. You saw the memorial wall."

"Yeah." Neal cleared his throat and tapped his picture. "You can take this down now."

"No," Jones said immediately. "That picture stays on the wall."

"But I'm…not dead anymore," Neal said. "I don't deserve to be up there."

"Don't care. Don't touch that picture." Jones strolled away whistling.

Neal didn't know what else to do but follow him.

Neal threw himself down on a chair in Peter's office, a case file in hand to pretend he was there to talk about work. He waited for Peter to look up at him and scowl in feigned irritation before speaking.

He didn't get feigned irritation from Peter, but a brilliant smile. Nevertheless, Neal plowed on, propping his feet up on the desk.

"You didn't tell me I'm an honorary agent now," Neal said.

"Shoes." Peter hit one of Neal's feet with a pen.

Neal thumped his feet to the ground.

"How could I? You were dead," Peter said. "Besides, I've had other things on my mind. Like you almost dying. Again."

Neal ignored the pointed reference to the pneumonia he was still recovering from. "Who made that decision?"

Peter shrugged, twisting a pen in his hands. "Hughes and Bancroft talked about it at your funeral, and they managed to guilt the FBI director into signing off on it. Of course, we all supported it here."

"I didn't…" Neal started.

"You earned it, Neal," Peter said. "The Pink Panthers are behind bars because of you. Keller can't hurt anyone else ever again because of you. You worked for several years breaking the hardest cases, putting more into this job than most agents do. Even if you did do it the wrong way sometimes." He flicked a pen cap at Neal so it bounced off his forehead. "Don't let it go to your head. You got some ideas about that case?"

Peter nodded at the case file in Neal's hands.

Neal grasped the lifeline like he was a drowning man. "Yeah." He propped his feet upon the desk again and delved into the case.

Neal knew Jones told him not to mess with it. But its presence ate at him sitting there at his desk, knowing that picture hung on the wall. So one day he waited until almost everyone had gone home, then slipped down the hall and took down the picture and plaque. He couldn't bring himself to destroy it, so he hid it in a janitor's closet.

He knew he was on the cameras taking it down. He didn't even try to hide the fact that he did it. So what? He wasn't dead. He didn't belong on that wall.

He dared Peter or Jones to say something about it, staring at them the next day with a "Try me" look on his face. Neither of them said anything about the missing picture to him.

But three days later, the picture was back on the wall. It had been nailed firmly so it would be difficult to remove. And that honorary agent plaque was stuck firmly below it.

Now, Neal had been challenged. He planned his first heist in over a year and removed the dumb picture from the wall, patched up the nail holes, and he painted everything so it looked like the picture was never there. The picture and plaque went into a warehouse that had once held Neal's stash.

The next morning featured the weekly team meeting at work. Neal doodled through Peter's typical "Everyone's doing well, keep up the good work," speech, but Peter tacked on an addition to the end of the speech.

"I'd just like to remind you all that the memorial wall is not to be messed with. Remaining pictures from the wall will result in a write up."

Neal twirled his pen in his fingers as if Peter wasn't staring directly at him. "I would never mess with the pictures of dead agents." Of course not addressing the fact that he was neither dead nor an agent.

Peter's silence was full. He knew what Neal had left out as much as Neal did. Finally, he said, "See that you don't."

The third time, Neal only made it halfway down the hall before Jones caught him.

Neal tucked the picture behind his back as if it wasn't obvious he had it. His painting-stealing skills were really getting rusty if this was how everything had ended up.

"Come on, man. Leave the picture alone," Jones said.

"It doesn't belong on the memorial wall," Neal said.

Neal didn't realize it until later, but Jones had spent too much time around him and absorbed too much. Because Jones smiled innocently and gave in too easily.

"Fine. If you give the picture back, I promise not to put it back on the memorial wall," Jones said.

Neal stared at him suspiciously, but Jones's "Come on, Caffrey, I don't make a habit of lying," prompted him to hand his picture over.

"No more memorial wall," Neal reminded Jones.

"No more," Jones agreed.

To Jones's credit, he didn't put the picture of Neal and the plaque back on the wall.

Instead, he cleared the corner of the main White Collar office near his desk and place the picture and plaque on the floor instead.

By lunch, there were three pictures of Neal in the corner, the "prom picture" of Neal and Peter and the team picture added to the faked "Agent Caffrey" photo. By the next morning, two black and white photos of Neal, an unlit red candle, and a wooden display that said, "Gone but not forgotten," had been added to what was rapidly becoming a shrine.

After that, Neal had to admit defeat, because the shrine rapidly spiraled out of control. About a dozen pictures of Neal sat in the corner, along with five different candles, two vases of flowers, three framed cheesy mourning sayings, a handful of origamis he had left behind after his "death," some random doodles various agents had stolen from him, two tiny crosses, and a rosary necklace left behind by Peter and draped over Neal's "agent" photo. Lapsed Catholic, his rear end. Every time Neal complained about the shrine, something else popped up in the corner the next morning. To stop it from growing completely out of control, he had to learn to keep his mouth shut.

And of course, that was when Diana came to visit.

Neal was doodling-ahem, working hard on a case when Diana strode in. He glanced up with his trademark smile. "Diana!"

"Hey, Neal." She opened her mouth as if to say something more, but then her eyes cast to the left and landed on the corner behind Jones's desk. More specifically, on the shrine in the corner behind Jones's desk.

And Diana immediately burst into laughter.

Neal's face heated up. He was inexplicably embarrassed for the first time in years. "I didn't encourage that, by the way. I've tried to stop them."

"You do realize that the only reason that's so big is because you hate it?" Jones commented casually from his desk. "If you had preened and basked in the attention, we would have taken down that picture a long time ago."

Neal glared at him. "You're telling me that all I needed to do to stop this is be a little more self-centered?"

At Jones's corresponding nod, Neal faked a small swagger and leaned back in his chair. "Now that you mention it, it is rather—"

"It's too late, Caffrey, we already know you're lying," Diana cut him off.

Neal scowled at her. "Why are you even here if you're just going to make fun of me?"

Diana just smiled and climbed the office stairs to talk to Peter.

Neal tuned out Jones's quiet snicker and focused back on his doodling-his important casework.

Phillip Beemer's heart hammered hard as he walked into the New York FBI White Collar office. The information he was about to confess could land him straight in jail, but he couldn't keep it in any longer. Too many people were getting hurt.

One of the agents glanced at him with an impassive face, then nodded at him and introduced himself as "Jones" from his desk. Behind him sat a pile of portraits, candles, flowers, and various other paraphernalia. A grinning young agent smiled from all the pictures. A plaque read "Neal Caffrey" and another read "Gone, but not forgotten."

"Lose an agent recently?" Phillip asked. One in the prime of his life, at the looks of it, and one very well loved by the other agents.

Agent Jones nodded.

"I'm sorry for your loss," Phillip murmured.

A young man in an expensive suit and a hat sauntered by and sat at a nearby desk.

Phillip's heart stalled. It was the dead agent in the corner. "I…Isn't he…aren't you…?" He pointed at the agent—the FBI ghost? Isn't he dead? He's the dead agent?"

"Is he?" Jones said mildly.

The agent ghost smiled and stared at his desk, his shoulders shaking.

Phillip wandered up to the office his had been told to find, dazed and confused. He just needed to find this Agent Burke fellow and return back to his world of scamming and ripping off innocents instead of this strange haunted office and mysterious dead agents who smiled at him.

The End