White Collar fic: Worldwalking
Title: Worldwalking
Fandom: White Collar
Word Count: 9000
Rating: PG-13 (violence, assorted deaths of alternate-reality characters)
Pairing: gen for our universe, though other pairings are mentioned in the context of other realities
Summary: "It's sort of like you turn around, and walk out of the world," Keller once said. Neal never could do it. But then Keller did it and he took Peter with him, so Neal had to learn how. For a prompt at whitecollarhc: Neal and Peter trapped in another reality. (Um, I may have gone slightly off-prompt here, but this is what my brain did with it ...) Spoilers for 3x11, Checkmate.
Crossposted: http://archiveofourown.org/works/328259
"So long, Caffrey," Keller says, at the sound of distant sirens. "Time to blow this popsicle stand." And Neal knows what Keller's going to do, but he's too slow, too damn slow, as Keller gets a grip on Peter's collar, Peter slumping half-conscious, too out of it to struggle -- and then they're gone.
*
Keller first told Neal about it in Monaco, and Neal didn't believe him. It was later, in France, when he finally had to believe, because he saw it.
They were being pursued by police on foot; Neal, more agile, had taken to the rooftops, while Keller had gone for a flat-out sprint. And he wasn't going to make it. Neal looked down and saw them closing on him and then --
-- then Keller turned sideways, was the only thing Neal could think of, except that he didn't move at all. It was like he rotated through an axis that shouldn't exist. And then he was gone. The startled cops plowed into each other and ended up in a confused jumble, while Neal quietly melted away.
Keller showed up at Neal's hotel room that evening with a bottle of expensive wine, as casual as if he'd made his getaway by any normal means.
"I used to think it was useless," he'd said, topping off Neal's glass. "You always come back to the same place you left, so it's not like you can use it to get out of a prison cell or stop yourself from being splattered all over the pavement at the bottom of a fifty-story fall."
"Nice image. Thanks."
"But it's a good little trick to have in the arsenal." Keller tipped his glass to Neal. "You should learn it."
The problem was, Keller couldn't explain exactly how he did it. "It's sort of like you turn around, and walk out of the world." Which wasn't helpful.
And yet, Neal did it once. In prison, after the forged bonds, during those long, long nights -- he got so bored that he decided to see if he really could teach himself to do it, just to get a break for a while. Sure, he'd come back to the same four concrete walls, but it would be interesting to see if there really was another place out there to visit. Like a vacation.
He worked on it for weeks before he finally managed to do it. Keller had said he couldn't do it without some adrenaline in his system, but for Neal, what worked was the opposite: not concentrated focus, but sleepy meditation. He was lying on his bunk in his cell, just letting his mind drift and thinking sideways, sideway, sideways, and then, he wasn't there at all.
He was standing in someone's living room -- not a hotel, too nice and too big and too eclectically decorated, with huge floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over Manhattan. Neal looked down at his hands and saw that he was wearing black gloves.
I'm robbing it?
But if so, he couldn't seem to remember what he was supposed to be stealing.
"Nice view, huh?"
Neal jumped and spun around, already starting the mental gymnastics to explain what he was doing in the middle of someone's very expensive living room full of very expensive art, while the familiarity of the voice sunk in like water on his skin. Alex. It was Alex. And then he got a good look at her, and was disconcerted all over again. She was wearing her hair short, for one thing -- Alex never wore short hair in all the time he'd known her. On top of that, it had been dyed red. She hardly looked like herself at all.
Alex frowned at him, and then crossed the space between them and gave him a quick, casual kiss on the lips. "Are you feeling all right?"
No, not really, because at the brush of her lips -- familiar, so familiar -- a cascade of memories began unfolding in his head: things he didn't remember at all, and yet all of it just as real as any of his (he thought) real memories. No Kate, for one thing. And no Mozzie. He'd come to New York City two years earlier -- he'd met Alex first, and the two of them had hooked up, and whenever things got too hot for them in New York, they just took a short hop to Europe until the feds cooled off. He'd never met Peter. Never been caught.
He hadn't merely gone to another reality.
He'd become another Neal in another reality.
It was such a shock that he woke up with a hard jolt, almost falling off his bunk. For a long time he stared at the dim ceiling of his cell, listening to the familiar nighttime prison-noise around him, letting his heart calm down, trying to convince himself it had all been a vivid dream.
He never tried it again.
*
After Keller takes Peter, Neal just stares for a long time at the now-empty spot in the grass.
If Keller comes back, he'll come back to the same place -- it's how it works, how it has to work. Keller said so.
Unless he was lying.
Unless he's figured out a better way to do it.
Unless he's not planning on coming back at all.
Then the FBI descends on the scene, and Neal has to find a dozen ways to explain that, no, he doesn't know where they went, but Keller has Peter, and they have to find him.
He's aware that there are still people in the White Collar unit who don't trust him -- even now, even six months after the return of the treasure and everything that happened after. And without Peter, he can feel the distrust turning on him -- not where it counts, not from Diana or Jones or Reese, but there are sharp looks and murmurs. Fragments like "in it together" and "planned this latest jailbreak all along".
They've got to keep watching this spot, because when (if) Keller and Peter come back, this is where they'll come back to. And yet, he can't imagine how he can possibly explain it in a way anyone will understand or believe. They won't do it on his word alone; they'll need to know why, and then they'll think he's had some kind of break with reality ...
Of course, a break with reality is exactly what he needs.
Sideways, sideways, sideways, he thinks, while he tramps along with what seems like half the nation's complement of FBI agents, combing Central Park in a search that he knows is hopeless. Sideways, sideways, sideways.
But he's too wound up. He can't relax, can't concentrate.
Darkness falls and Diana drives Neal back to June's. "We'll find him," she tells him. "We'll find him, Neal. We'll find both of them."
"I know," Neal says, though he can't quite meet her eyes when he says it, because he knows that he's lying. Keller's taken Peter somewhere that no one else can go.
No one but Neal.
He forces himself to eat something, and then he composes himself on his bed, faceup, fully clothed. He's not at all sure he can follow. Even if he can do it, he doesn't know if he'll go wherever they went. And maybe they're back already -- but, no, the FBI is still searching Central Park in the darkness, and even if they're not watching that exact spot, there's no way that Keller could have remained undetected for long.
Which Keller certainly knows, which means he's not planning on coming back until the search dies down. If he comes back at all.
If he hasn't already killed Peter and left the body in another reality.
Neal's hands clench into fists on the bedcovers.
One way or another, I'm going to find you. Both of you. If you've killed him, Keller, you can't run far enough or fast enough to get away.
He closes his eyes and slips away.
Somewhere else.
*
It's daytime and raining and he's standing on a streetcorner, umbrella in hand, getting ready to cross.
Neal stops, takes stock of himself. He's wearing one of Byron's Devore suits, but not the one he was wearing a few minutes ago. He can also feel the weight of the anklet, which means he's not in the same reality where he went from prison, the one where he and redheaded Alex have a thing.
Which means there are an infinite number of other realities out there.
Which means he's utterly screwed. How can he possibly find Peter and Keller when they could be anywhere in the world, in any reality at all? He could spend his entire life searching just in this reality, but there are other possibilities beyond measure, and no way to sort between them ...
His phone rings. Acting on autopilot, Neal steps under the overhanging facade of a bank -- he's in Manhattan, in his usual radius -- to answer it. "Neal," he says, only realizing a second later that he might not be using that name here.
"Caffrey," Peter snaps, and Neal sags with startled, gratified relief to hear his voice, then a second later realizes that something's wrong, because Peter sounds furious. "Where are you? Didn't we talk about coming in late?"
"I'm on the corner of --" he begins, but Peter rides right over him.
"I don't give a damn where you are. No excuses. I want you here in five minutes or you're going back on curfew."
And Peter hangs up.
Neal stares at the phone. That wasn't Peter, not the real Peter, not his Peter.
And now the memories start to come, falling into place one by one, just like the last time, when Alex's kiss had opened his eyes to an entire alternate lifetime. This Peter didn't take him up on his anklet suggestion until almost a year after he first made it, when they needed help catching -- of all people -- Keller. This Peter, Neal realizes, as his new memories of the last three years begin to shuffle in with his existing ones, has no Elizabeth; he has a vague recollection that something happened to her, that she died or left before Peter even started chasing him, but he's not really sure because this Neal never met her -- it's ancient history to him. This Peter is hard-edged, inflexible, and doesn't like Neal. They've never become friends. This Neal didn't take the treasure because he had no opportunity; he's been on a tight leash ever since he started working with the FBI, and Peter gives him no chance to make a mistake, and no tolerance for running around playing his own angles.
Not to mention, no glasses of wine in the Burkes' kitchen in the evenings. No light, playful conversations in the Taurus. It's a working relationship, nothing more, and this version of Neal looks forward to the day he'll get the anklet off and never have to see Peter again.
But, as Neal stands staring at his phone in the rain, drowning in memories not his own, another thought comes to him out of the jumble. If he's himself here -- this universe's Neal -- then Peter and Keller should also be their alternate-universe selves.
He doesn't have to search the whole world. All he has to do is find Peter's alternate -- which shouldn't be too hard, assuming things are similar enough that Peter still works for the FBI -- and confirm that it's not his Peter.
It's not the only possibility -- what if this works differently for Keller, or for Peter, than it does for Neal? -- but it's the only one that gives him some reasonable chance at success, so it's the one he's going with. And he just spoke to Peter, and ruled him out, so he can move on now and check somewhere else.
Neal leans back against the wall and closes his eyes.
It's easier this time.
*
After three realities, he enters one in which Peter is dead.
He tries calling the FBI and no one has heard of Peter Burke. A quick search at a public library computer shows him why. It's an unexpected kick in the gut, staring at Peter's obituary on the screen -- like a terrible glimpse of a future in which his search will fail, in which Keller will murder Peter while Neal is still wandering between realities. Except this Peter died years ago, gunned down in a shootout. He is survived, the obituary says, by his wife Debbie (Debbie? Neal thinks) and two children.
This version of Neal has never even heard of Peter, and never been caught.
He wonders what would happen if Keller and Peter crossed into a reality with no Peter. Would Peter simply vanish, popping out of existence? No -- Neal won't believe it. For one thing, he has yet to enter a reality with no Neal, which makes him think that it simply doesn't work that way. For the time being, he will assume that in order for Keller and Peter to have crossed over, they must have gone somewhere that has both a Keller and a Peter.
Still, he has some trouble getting himself to move on this time. He has to close his eyes, slump in the library chair, and fall half-asleep in order to relax enough to move on. It's not just being rattled from reading the obituary; it's also the fear that he's wrong, that the next reality won't contain a Neal, and that he'll vanish like a soap bubble in the breeze.
*
But he doesn't.
He's actually starting to get a little blasé about it by the time he hits the tenth or eleventh alternate universe. He's met a couple of Kates and another Alex, encountered a reality in which he and Mozzie hooked up, and another one where his alternate version is thoroughly (and, as far as Neal can tell, futilely) in love with that reality's version of Peter.
There seem to be a whole lot more realities in which he and Peter aren't friends than those in which they are. It can go wrong in all kinds of ways -- maybe they never met at all, maybe Peter refused to take him up on the anklet scheme, maybe Peter's too jaded or Neal's too emotionally defensive to make it work. He slips into the skin of one version of himself who never met Kate, Alex or Mozzie, instead falling in with Adler and ending up under his thumb for years. This version of himself views Peter with fear and loathing, perceiving the anklet as just another shackle in a long line of them. Looking at the whole situation with a perspective that this bitter, cynical Neal doesn't have, Neal can see that this Peter is basically the Peter of his universe -- and it's very strange seeing it from the outside, seeing that this Peter keeps giving this Neal second, third and fourth chances even though Neal is not sure that his alternate self deserves them. This Neal doesn't view the anklet as any sort of second chance. It's a prison, and Peter is his deeply resented jailkeeper, and he plans to escape as soon as possible.
Neal suspects that this Neal is not going to come to a good end. There's a part of him that wants to try to fix things, but he doesn't even know where to begin.
This is also the reality in which he learns that if he hurts himself, he won't take it with him when he leaves, because this reality's Neal is cooking dinner when Neal enters his head, and he accidentally burns his (their) hand. It throbs viciously all through his mercifully brief stay in this place, but when he opens his eyes in a new body, a new reality, his hand feels just fine.
Good to know. On the other hand, it's the other Neal who has to deal with it, and Neal feels bad for him, even if that particular version of himself is selfish and kinda screwed up.
*
If nothing else, he starts thinking after a while, he's getting an opportunity that most people would probably kill for. He's getting a chance to see how his life might have gone if he'd made different choices.
Most of the options are pretty depressing.
But not all of them. He enters one version of himself who didn't alienate Kate, who proposed to her in the park and married her, just like his daydreams. He still ended up getting sent to prison, but Kate testified on his behalf and he only got a year with some probation tacked on the end. He's already out, he's going back to school for a Master's in art history, and Kate is six months pregnant.
Of all the realities he's entered, this is the one he has the hardest time leaving. But it's also a reality in which Mozzie is dead and Peter and Elizabeth are divorced -- this version of Peter seems to be well on the way to a hardcore drinking problem -- so it seems as if his own happiness comes at the expense of most of the other people he cares about.
He doesn't want to believe it's a zero-sum game.
In the next reality, it's night and he's in his apartment at June's, and the first thing that hits him when the memories start coming is a wash of hard, bitter grief over Elizabeth. She's dead, and for some reason Neal blames himself -- oh. Oh. Keller kidnapped her, but they never got her back; they found her body in the Hudson a week later.
Neal is no longer working with Peter; his new handler is a guy called O'Bryan, someone Neal doesn't even remember from his own reality. Pushing and shoving at his new memories, trying to sort them out from his own, Neal figures out that Peter's on an extended leave of absence. Rumor around the Bureau is that he's going to take early retirement.
Neal calls him, but he doesn't answer. Not surprising: he and Neal had some pretty vicious fights before he left.
This is the first time that he's been unable to confirm or deny the existence of "his" Peter in a new reality -- usually he can either get in touch easily by phone, or find an obituary or other confirmation that this is a Peterless universe. By this point, too, Peter and Keller would have been in their new reality for a few days at least, so if nothing in Neal's memories indicates that Peter's been behaving abnormally the last few days, the odds are pretty good that he's this reality's Peter and not another one. (There's also the possibility that Keller and Peter are dimension-hopping just like Neal is, but Neal considers it unlikely. It's disorienting and unpleasant to keep doing it over and over. If Keller's not planning on coming back to their own reality, then he's probably settled down somewhere for a while.)
But this reality's Peter hasn't been talking to anyone, so no one's seen him in weeks and therefore no one would notice if he went missing. Neal calls a cab and heads over, even though it's late. He watches for a red light on his anklet, but apparently no one thought to remove the Burkes' townhouse from his list of approved locations.
He knocks. No answer. No sign of Satchmo, either. Finally Neal picks the lock and slips inside.
There's a soft, weaponlike click from his right. Neal puts his hands up, and pivots slowly. As his eyes adjust to the dark room, he can make out a human shape on the couch, framed against the diffuse glow from the window. The light glints off the barrel of a gun.
Peter shouldn't have his service weapon, since he's on leave, which means he bought another gun -- which strikes Neal as a terrible idea for a whole lot of reasons.
"It's me," he says, waving his hands a little so that Peter can see he's completely and utterly no threat at all. "Neal."
"I know," Peter says, his voice low and hoarse.
The gun slips down to rest on his thigh, pointed at the floor.
This is clearly not Neal's Peter, which means he ought to leave. Turn sideways, walk out of the world.
Leave Peter sitting alone in the dark, depressed and probably drunk, with Elizabeth gone forever and a gun in his lap.
"I called," Neal says, and clears his throat. "You didn't answer."
It takes Peter a moment to speak, and the words are slow, as if each one is so heavy he can barely pick it up. "Well, now you know I'm here. So --" His voice turns bitter, hard. "-- leave, Neal."
Instead, Neal goes into the kitchen. He makes coffee and a sandwich, then on second thought, two sandwiches -- he doesn't know if he's hungry because this body hasn't eaten lately, or because he hasn't, but food sounds like a nice idea.
He leaves the kitchen lights on, but the living room lights off. It's dim and quiet, as if no one exists in the world but the two of them. Peter is still sitting on the couch with the gun in his lap. Neal puts the plate and cup of coffee on the coffee table, but Peter makes no move to reach for them.
"I thought I made it clear I didn't want to see you, Neal."
"Yeah, you did." Except it was a different Neal. He remembers the fight as clearly as if it had happened to him: the hurtful, vicious words -- on both sides, though this Neal doesn't want to admit that. This Neal is angry, miserable, and so buried in his own guilt over Elizabeth's death that he's barely hanging on. He's not about to reach out when Peter has slapped his hand away every time he's tried.
But Neal doesn't have those problems, those hangups. He just feels bad for both of them, as well as being desperately worried about his own version of Peter, and, by proxy, this one.
"Yet you're still here." Peter's voice is brittle.
"I think we've established that I'm not good at doing what I'm told."
Peter makes a sound that's halfway between a sob and a laugh. Then, slowly, he reaches for the sandwich.
Neal's braced for whatever might come: for Peter to vent at him, or burst into tears, or whatever's about to happen. What Neal isn't expecting is for Peter to fall asleep on him, halfway through eating. He smells like a brewery and also like he hasn't showered in a week. Neal shakes him awake and steers him upstairs into the shower, leaving the gun on the floor beside the couch. Then he goes to collect clean clothes and a bottle of water to leave on the bedside table. While he's at it, he steals the bullets from the gun and buries them in the trash.
The rest of the house is a mess, but Peter and Elizabeth's room looks exactly the same. It's like a shrine, Neal thinks. A shrine to Elizabeth ... and he sinks down on the bed and puts his head in his hands. He's so sick of this, so goddamned sick of all these broken realities, all these versions of himself and the people he loves where everyone is scattered, damaged, alone. Where the hell are the ones where they're all safe and happy, and no one is lost or dead or a hopeless mess? Surely there must be universes like that out there somewhere, right? "What's the point," he says aloud, "of dragging me through all of this if I can't fix any of it?"
Peter clears his throat from the doorway. Neal looks up quickly. Peter's hair is wet and he's wearing a T-shirt that hangs off him -- he's lost weight, and in the light of the bedside lamp, he looks gray and ghastly.
"If you want ..." Peter pauses, and clears his throat again. "To spend the night," he finishes at last, "you know where the spare bedroom is."
Neal nods, and gets up quickly, gets out of the way. Peter brushes past him without acknowledging him further, and sinks into bed. He doesn't bother to turn out the light. He's asleep almost as soon as his head hits the pillow.
Neal goes to turn off the lamp, but hesitates, watching Peter sleep the deep sleep of the utterly exhausted. He's not really sure what compels him to do this, but after a few minutes of silence, he leans down and kisses Peter lightly on the temple.
Then he makes sure the water bottle is in easy reach, and flicks off the lamp. In the darkness, he walks down the hall to the spare bedroom, finding it by touch.
Spending the night was certainly never part of his plan. But he's got to stop moving sometime, even though fear for Peter, his Peter, keeps pulling him onward. He's not physically tired, but mentally, he's exhausted.
He flops on the twin bed without doing more than toeing off his shoes.
The next thing he knows, he's drifting awake, more peaceful and relaxed than he can remember being in a long time. There's sunlight shining through the curtains, and when he listens, Neal can hear clinking noises from downstairs. He also smells frying bacon.
He closes his eyes, and with a certain sense of regret, he goes sideways and away.
*
Neal wonders how long he's been doing this. It feels like forever. Elizabeth must be going out of her mind. He wonders if his disappearance was blamed on Keller, or if the Marshals are looking for him right now.
Of course, that's assuming that any time at all has passed back at home. Time itself seems to be elastic. Sometimes it's day when he comes through, sometimes night. Most realities seem to line up, more or less, with the current date in his home reality, but he enters a future in which he's already off the anklet, working at an art gallery in Amsterdam while making connections to start a gallery of his own. That's a nice future. Neal likes it ... well, except that this Neal seems to have completely lost touch with Peter and Elizabeth, and doesn't plan to get back in touch with them: he's looking ahead, not back.
Peter, while not his Peter, sounds delighted to hear from him when Neal calls him, and while Neal only meant to verify Peter's identity and then end the conversation, they end up chatting for almost an hour. Neal secures a promise from Peter to call back later, and when he hangs up the phone, he hopes that his alternate self remembers all of this.
In another of the realities he visits, it's only about a year after his arrest and he's still in prison. For a few minutes he thinks he might have to break out of prison -- again -- just to figure out whether Peter is really Peter, but then the thought occurs to him that all he has to do is call Peter (collect) at the FBI.
Peter, like many versions of Peter, is very nonplused to hear from him. "Caffrey," he says warily, in a tone that indicates he's expecting a con.
"Happy birthday," Neal says, unable to think of anything else to say. The thought crosses his mind that what he mostly seems to be doing is leaving a trail of bewildered Peters across a few dozen realities who all think he's flipped his lid.
"My birthday was six months ago," Peter says, but he sounds amused.
"Did you get the card?" Neal asks. His memories verify that, yes, he did send birthday cards in this reality as well as his own.
Peter laughs. "Yes. I got the card. Thank you. Don't expect any favors because of it."
"No ulterior motives," Neal promises. "Cross my heart."
"Come on, seriously, Caffrey," Peter says. "Spill it. What do you want? I doubt you just called to hear my voice."
But he did, and that's the main reason why he hasn't ended the conversation yet -- well, that and the fact that he hopes this will be a little something to help swing the balance in his favor whenever this Neal gets around to offering Peter the anklet option. A little leverage to help tip this reality into becoming one of the ones where Neal doesn't end up hunted and alone, and Peter doesn't become an alcoholic recluse.
So there's that. But there's also the fact that talking to Peter makes him feel a little less lonely. These conversations with Peter have become his lifeline, the one thing that's the same through all these realities. There's always Peter's voice at the other end of the phone, and it may not be the right Peter (in some cases, very much not the right Peter), but it's still Peter and somehow that makes it a little better.
"I was just thinking, that's all," Neal says. "About people. There's not a lot else to do in here, you know. Just lots of thinking."
"Well, I hope you've been doing lots of thinking about not committing crimes in the future."
"Yep," Neal says. "Thinking about that too."
Peter laughs again. "Unless there's anything else, I have actual work to do. You know, because I'm not in prison."
"Twist the knife," Neal says, but it's a friendly sort of annoyance. "Hey, maybe we'll talk again sometime."
"I'm not going to be your prison pen pal, Neal. No matter how many birthday cards you send."
"We'll see," Neal says, and hangs up so that he gets the last word.
*
The next jump takes him to a serene view of -- farm country? Really? Most of the alternate Neals are city kids to the bone, just like he is. One of his jumps did take him into a little town in the Midwest -- he and Kate were on the run -- and another time, he landed in a villa in the French countryside. Mostly, though, it's been cities, and the vast majority of them New York.
This looks like it might be upstate somewhere, north of the city. He's holding a glass of wine and looking out a large plate-glass window at a huge sloping lawn or field, rolling down to a little country road. On the far side, there's pastureland with cows and a very iconic-looking red barn.
"One thing I'll say for the Big Bad Apple -- I miss the pizza," says a voice behind him, a very familiar voice, and Neal spins around so fast he almost spills his wine.
Keller.
But Neal has no idea if it's "his" version of Keller or someone else entirely. This Keller is wearing a loose dark shirt with the sleeves rolled up, holding a beer by the neck and a half-eaten slice of pizza in the other hand. He's got a small mustache, which is extremely disconcerting. At least it's not a goatee.
"Whoa, settle down, Caffrey," Keller says. "It's just me." His eyes go narrow. "Somethin' wrong?"
"You know I don't like people sneaking up on me," Neal says, but his memories are starting to fall together, and oh, wow, damn. He's pretty sure he's hit the right reality at last, but this is something that he didn't see coming. Though maybe he should have.
"Yeah." Keller gives him a long, searching look. "Think I'm gonna go have a look around the perimeter."
"You do that," Neal says, but he waits until Keller's out of the room, the door closing behind him, before he dares turn his back to look out the window again. He's still trying to sort out his memories and get the timeline straight, but he's pretty sure that he's got most of the picture already.
In this universe, Neal's arrest went very badly wrong. Mozzie was there, and a whole lot of FBI agents who weren't with Peter's unit, and it degenerated into a firefight. Kate and Mozzie were both killed in the crossfire. This version of Neal blames Peter for it, and he doesn't just blame him a little: Neal is staggered by the impact of years' worth of resentment and hatred. Everything that he once felt for Fowler is, in this reality, turned on Peter.
This Neal wasn't expecting Keller to contact him and offer help in taking revenge on Peter, but that's exactly what happened a week ago.
Neal wonders how long Keller had to look to find a version of reality so nicely suited to his needs. Maybe he's been searching and planning for a long time -- Neal wouldn't put it past him. Or maybe he simply stumbled upon this reality by pure chance when he kidnapped Peter from Central Park, and decided to take advantage of it.
Keller's problem, Neal thinks, would have been that once they came through, he'd lose control of Peter. Keller would be wherever this universe's Keller was. Peter would be wherever Peter was, almost certainly at the FBI and out of reach.
But Peter doesn't know how to get back. Peter is stuck here. And Keller, Neal realizes with a sharp twist in his stomach, used this version of Neal to lure him into a trap.
To give Neal's alternate self some credit, he seems to be having second thoughts now. Neal reads confusion and uncertainty in the wash of foreign-to-him memories -- there is hatred, yes, but also some moral qualms. This Neal has wanted revenge on Peter for years, but now that it's come right down to it, he's not prepared to do some of the things Keller wants to do.
You're not a killer, Peter said to him once, in a place far away from here. This isn't who you are.
Neal leaves his glass of wine untouched on the windowsill, and goes where his memories tell him that Peter is.
The basement.
*
The basement stairs look perfect normal, but there's a reinforced steel door at the bottom, locked and deadbolted from the outside. Neal throws the locks and flicks on the single naked bulb inside.
It's dank and plain, cinderblock walls and concrete floor. Peter is chained to the wall. Keller always was a traditionalist in some ways, Neal thinks, through a red haze of anger. Peter's definitely been roughed up -- he's stripped to the waist, so the bruises on his torso are plainly visible, and one of his eyes is almost swollen shut. But he's alive, and in relatively okay shape as far as Neal can tell.
When he sees Neal, he draws himself up and stiffens his back, an automatic wary response that cuts Neal to the quick.
"Peter, it's me. I mean, me me. The Neal you know, from where you come from. Assuming where you came from is Central Park, a week or two ago."
Peter stares at him, long enough for Neal to wonder if he's wrong. Then Peter lets his breath out in a great sigh and leans his head against the wall. "I thought I might have lost it. In fact ..." he raises his head as Neal crosses the floor to him. "I'm still not sure I haven't."
It's him, really him. The right version of Peter at last. Neal laughs in relief so great he wants to cry. "If you have," he says, "then I have too."
"So we really are ..."
"In another version of reality. In the bodies of other versions of us. Don't think about it too hard and it almost makes sense."
"How long have you been -- you?" Peter sounds hesitant, and Neal wonders what sort of conversations have gone on in this little room. He doesn't want to think about it; the things he does remember make him cringe.
"Not long. Just a few minutes. I came down here as soon as Keller left me alone."
Neal reaches for Peter. All he has to do, he hopes, is touch Peter and he can take them back to their own reality.
Except ...
Neal hesitates.
"What?" Peter asks, twisting against his chains.
"If I take you back to our New York right now, it'll mean leaving this Peter Burke -- the one who belongs here, I mean -- with Keller and the other me," Neal says.
If he'd come here first, if he hadn't gone through all those other realities on the way, then he might have been prepared to do it. But that was before he realized that he's just as stupidly fond of Peter in every other reality as in his own. Not that he doesn't want to get Peter (and himself) back where they both belong. But ... not at the cost of another Peter's life.
Also, he knows Peter well enough to know how Peter would feel about that.
"We can't do that," Peter says firmly. "And we can't leave you with Keller, either. Uh, the other you."
"The other me is a messed-up little bastard," Neal says. He goes to work with his lock picks, since Keller's never trusted him with the keys to Peter's cuffs. "Believe me, I've got all his memories." And some of them aren't memories he wants.
"He's still you, on some level. I think he can make different choices; he just hasn't had much opportunity with Keller messing with his head."
Neal thinks Peter might be giving the other him too much credit. On the other hand, he remembers how he reacted to even the most self-hating and bitter versions of Peter: mostly, he just wanted to help them. So it's not like he's one to talk. "Then let's get out of here."
The chains come free and Peter slumps with a gasp. Neal offers him a hand, but Peter shakes his head and makes it to his feet on his own. This lasts until he takes a step and almost falls down. Neal slides an arm around him and helps him to the door.
The whole time, he keeps expecting Keller to appear in the doorway, smiling and sardonic and pointing a gun at them. But no Keller. Since Neal knows better than to believe that Keller trusts any version of him, he can only imagine that Keller's been paranoid for long enough now that he's starting to get a little less attentive. Neal's memories indicate that Keller's been watching him like a hawk -- and now he knows why -- but Keller can't keep an eye on him every minute of the day.
They make it up the stairs without incident. The house isn't large; it's one story and built on a rambling open plan. Neal can see all the way to the front door.
Once they get there, though, they have to make it down that sloping, empty lawn -- which is almost certainly one of Keller's reasons for selecting the house. From the big picture windows, Keller can see anyone coming. Or leaving.
"Ideas?" Peter murmurs, leaning against the wall at the top of the stairwell. He seems to have rallied a bit now that he's out of the basement, but he still looks gray and exhausted. In the brighter light upstairs, the bruises on his face are even more evident. Neal has to force himself not to mentally fit the shape of his own knuckles against the livid impressions on Peter's jaw. He doesn't need to know. He doesn't want to know.
"You feel up to a little running?" Neal asks him.
"If it gets me out of here, I'll run a marathon."
"That might not be necessary. I just had an idea." It's frustrating, trying to sift through memories not his own for information that he needs. But he recalls this house having a garage. There should be at least two vehicles in it: Keller has a Hummer -- not a surprise -- and Neal, this Neal, is currently driving a silver sports car. Neal touches his pocket and feels the keys.
Splitting up is logical, but neither of them suggest it. Instead they stay close together as they make their way through the silent house, drawing reassurance from each other's presence.
"Where is Keller, anyway?" Peter murmurs, his lips near Neal's ear.
"He said he was going to check the perimeter, whatever that means to him. Hopefully he's wandering around outside and won't notice a thing 'til he sees us tearing down the driveway."
He knows it won't be that easy, though. It's never that easy with Keller. And it's worse knowing that all the two of them have to do to leave ... is just leave: turn sideways, go back to their own reality.
But they'd have to leave their alternate selves in Keller's hands.
And neither of them is willing to do that.
"You got a rope?" Peter asks suddenly.
"What? Why?"
"If we meet Keller ..." Peter nudges Neal behind him, so that he's in front. "I'm your prisoner. You're taking me somewhere."
"It won't buy us much time." But Neal pauses to pull loose the draw-cord on a drape, wraps it quickly and loosely around Peter's hands.
"A little time is better than none," Peter murmurs, taking up one end of the cord into his palm and snugging it tight.
Neal leans over Peter's shoulder and nudges open the door from the house into the garage. Inside, it's nothing but baroque shapes in the darkness. He doesn't dare turn on the light and risk drawing Keller's attention. He spots the long low shape of the silver convertible and aims for that.
The door slams behind them.
Neal spins around, startled and yet not terribly surprised -- because he knew it wouldn't be that easy, and even now the lights are going on, and there's Keller, not ten feet away from them with a hunting rifle in his hands. In the close confines of the garage, there's no way they can dodge.
"Damn," Keller says casually. "I was hoping you'd run. That would have been fun, boys! You ever read that story, The Most Dangerous Game? Always wanted to try something like that."
"You think I'm going with him because I want to?" Peter does a credible imitation of indignant surprise.
"Uh-huh. Lemme see your hands, Caffrey."
The rifle is pointed at Peter's chest. Neal reluctantly raises his hands. He wonders how quickly he could grab Peter and take them home. Much as he loathes the idea of abandoning the other Peter to Keller, if he really has to choose one of them --
Unfortunately, it just doesn't work that way for him. He can't do it fast. And with Keller's crosshairs on them, Neal suspects that he probably can't do it at all. There's enough adrenaline in his system right now that he feels like he won't be sleeping for a week. Or traveling between universes, either.
"I think you're reading this situation all wrong," Neal says. He tries to look around without moving his head, looking for something, anything he can improvise into a weapon.
"Uh-huh." Keller smiles, showing his teeth. "It is you, Neal, isn't it? Not the one from here. Or did he finally manage to Stockholm the other you, too? What is it about this guy, anyway?"
"You'd never understand," Neal says quietly.
"Maybe not, but I do understand what pushes your buttons, Caffrey. I always have."
Neal can read it in an instant, in the small motions of Keller's hands and upper arms: he's going to pull the trigger. Because this is the moment he's been waiting for, isn't it? Blowing a hole in Peter right in front of Neal, with Neal close enough to feel the hot spray of Peter's blood on his face.
There's no time to think and only one thing to do, and he does it -- shoulders Peter aside as the rifle fires, deafening in the enclosed garage. Maybe this is what he's come all this way to do. Maybe they weren't both supposed to go back anyway.
He feels the impact of the bullet, but it doesn't hurt. It just feels cold.
As he falls, he catches snapshot glimpses: Keller, trying to jack out the bullet casing and chamber the next round; Peter, moving a lot faster than a guy who's been beat up should be able to move, closing the distance between them and knocking the rifle's barrel upwards. The next shot blows a hole in the ceiling and then Peter's the one with the rifle and Keller is stumbling backwards, pulling a pistol out of somewhere, swinging it towards Peter's face -- and Peter fires at him, point blank, there's no way he can avoid it --
Neal doesn't see Keller's face, and he's not sure if Keller has a chance to jump out or not. Time stutters and then Peter is bending over him, gripping him by the shoulders. "Neal," he says. "Neal, hang on."
If Keller just jumped back to their reality, then taking Peter back there and dumping him in Central Park -- the inevitable result -- is going to be a very bad idea. But Neal can feel the world receding, sounds being buried under a rushing in his ears. If he's going to do this, if Peter is ever going to get home, he has to do it now.
"Neal," Peter says, as Neal's vision starts going dark, telescoping down to a long black tunnel in which he can see nothing but Peter's face, worried and frightened. Neal tries to grasp Peter's arms, but he can't feel his hands anymore.
Now or never.
Sideways.
Twist.
Go.
Dark.
*
Neal jerks so hard that he falls off the bed.
"Ow," he says aloud, to no one in particular. He stares up at June's ceiling, feeling his heart beat, feeling his lungs inflate and relax, inflate and relax.
He's back. He's home. He's not dying. He's perfectly fine and unhurt and --
"Peter!" He sits bolt upright, just as his phone rings.
It's Peter on the caller ID. He's in Central Park, and there's no sign of Keller.
*
It turns out they've been missing for two weeks, which means there is a warrant out for Neal's arrest and a full-manpower search for Peter. Luckily, at this point, "Keller abducted us and we just now escaped" is a perfectly valid explanation for an unexpected two-week absence, and has the advantage of being true, even if some of the details are slightly fudged.
Neal hopes he didn't leave another version of himself to die -- but, no, the other Peter will get Neal to a hospital, no matter what is between them in that universe. Neal can't believe there's a version of Peter anywhere that would abandon any version of him to bleed to death.
At least that's what he tries to tell himself, although he was hurt pretty bad, and maybe he didn't make it after all. But, well, one more dead Caffrey in the multiverse, he supposes. If there's one thing that the last few days have taught him, it's that there are probably a whole lot of dead versions of himself out there.
Peter spends a couple of days on leave while he recovers from the injuries he sustained in his original fight with Keller, two weeks ago, all of which are still as fresh as the day he got them. And ... that's that. There's not much they can do. Peter manages to get a security camera set up in the park that happens to cover the location where Keller disappeared -- not that they can afford round-the-clock monitoring, or justify it even if they could, but it seems to make Peter feel like he's doing something.
A few days after they get back, Peter, still limping a bit, shows up at Neal's apartment with a six-pack and a (not too cheap) bottle of wine. They chat about trivial things. Neal talks a little about the other realities that he saw -- not too much, because he wants to keep most of it to himself, and he's never, ever telling Peter about the dead-Elizabeth one. But it's a relief to be able to talk to someone about it. It's not like he can tell Mozzie; Moz doesn't need even more paranoia fuel. And it reaffirms for both of them that they're really not crazy, that the whole thing actually happened.
"You think he got away?" Peter asks.
"I don't know. I was a little busy at the time." Busy dying. "It's possible."
"You know." Peter concentrates on his beer rather than on Neal. "What with one thing and another, I might've forgotten to say thank you."
"Yeah you did," Neal tells him, because Peter says it every day in little ways, something Neal is not sure he'd ever realized before seeing so many Peters overlaid on one another.
There's a silence, but it's a comfortable one, the sort that doesn't need filling.
"Do you ever worry," Peter says thoughtfully, "that this isn't ..."
"No," Neal says sharply. "Don't think about that. That way," he adds, taking a sip of his wine, "lies madness, Peter."
Peter gives him a half-smile. And Neal wonders if Peter's been doing what he himself has been doing since they got back: carefully checking his memories against the newspapers, against Google. Examining his toiletries in the bathroom and the paintings on June's walls for discrepancies from what ought to be there. Looking for anything that might tip him off that he's not in the same universe he left.
So far, he hasn't found anything, and he's been trying hard not to spend too much time looking. This is a good way to end up like Mozzie. Or a whole lot worse.
If it's not the same universe, if these aren't the people he left behind, it's all so close as to make no difference. Or that's what he keeps trying to tell himself, anyway. It's one of those questions that you just can't wonder about, like the question of whether some other Neal has ever taken up residence in his brain. If it's happened, he doesn't know about it, and he's simply going to have to be content with that.
"So," Peter says at last, in that casual-but-not-casual way that he has. "Do you think you'll be taking any more unexpected side trips?"
And Neal hesitates, because he's not quite sure how to explain.
He's done a lot of thinking about this since he got back. And he's realized that there are reasons why Keller can do it so easily and Neal can hardly do it at all, except under very specific circumstances.
For one thing, Keller doesn't care about taking over the lives of other Matthew Kellers in other universes. It's possible that all Kellers out there are just like him, but Neal doesn't think so -- he expects that there are Kellers who met their own equivalent of Peter and turned to a different life, and Kellers who never set foot on that path at all. Neal doesn't want to live another Neal's life; he's stolen a lot of things, but that's one thing he knows is not his to take. Keller doesn't give a damn.
And Keller almost certainly doesn't give a damn if he comes back or not, and that's the dealbreaker, that's the thing Neal himself doesn't dare risk. He was able to do it for Peter's sake, before he had time to really think things through, but now there's a little voice in the back of his head saying You were lucky that time. What if he gets to the other side and it stops working? He doesn't even know how it works in the first place. He'd find himself trapped in a stolen life, cut off from everyone and everything that he loves. And that's not a risk he's willing to take.
"No," Neal says. "This is home."
Peter doesn't say anything more on that topic, but he smiles.
*
And in another place, somewhere very far away, another Neal is waking up, floating on an anesthetic haze halfway between dreams and the gray light of dawn.
Waking alone, he realizes muzzily -- just as he's been alone since Kate's death, since Mozzie's death.
He fully expects to be handcuffed to the bed. He's a fugitive, after all, and one who recently kidnapped a federal agent. But his hands are free. He gazes at them in surprise slightly muted by the painkillers, then looks up at a soft throat-clearing noise.
"They said they wouldn't need to cuff you as long as an agent was in the room," Burke says.
He's sitting in a chair beside the bed, with a half-finished crossword puzzle in his lap and several styrofoam cups of coffee on the tray table beside him. There are bruises fading yellowish around his eye, his jaw. Neal remembers putting some of them there.
Neal gazes at him, honestly baffled, and even more baffled by the foggy memories of just how, exactly, he took the bullet wound that's currently got him laid out in this hospital bed. Because what he remembers can't actually be what happened. But he remembers it, and he remembers, too, the throat-clenching panic and worry, the grief and fear and love that went along with it.
Agent Burke -- Peter -- glances up from the crossword and answers Neal's curious look with a curious look of his own.
Outside the window, the sun is coming up.
~
This entry is also posted at http://sholio.dreamwidth.org/798210.html with
comments.
Fandom: White Collar
Word Count: 9000
Rating: PG-13 (violence, assorted deaths of alternate-reality characters)
Pairing: gen for our universe, though other pairings are mentioned in the context of other realities
Summary: "It's sort of like you turn around, and walk out of the world," Keller once said. Neal never could do it. But then Keller did it and he took Peter with him, so Neal had to learn how. For a prompt at whitecollarhc: Neal and Peter trapped in another reality. (Um, I may have gone slightly off-prompt here, but this is what my brain did with it ...) Spoilers for 3x11, Checkmate.
Crossposted: http://archiveofourown.org/works/328259
"So long, Caffrey," Keller says, at the sound of distant sirens. "Time to blow this popsicle stand." And Neal knows what Keller's going to do, but he's too slow, too damn slow, as Keller gets a grip on Peter's collar, Peter slumping half-conscious, too out of it to struggle -- and then they're gone.
*
Keller first told Neal about it in Monaco, and Neal didn't believe him. It was later, in France, when he finally had to believe, because he saw it.
They were being pursued by police on foot; Neal, more agile, had taken to the rooftops, while Keller had gone for a flat-out sprint. And he wasn't going to make it. Neal looked down and saw them closing on him and then --
-- then Keller turned sideways, was the only thing Neal could think of, except that he didn't move at all. It was like he rotated through an axis that shouldn't exist. And then he was gone. The startled cops plowed into each other and ended up in a confused jumble, while Neal quietly melted away.
Keller showed up at Neal's hotel room that evening with a bottle of expensive wine, as casual as if he'd made his getaway by any normal means.
"I used to think it was useless," he'd said, topping off Neal's glass. "You always come back to the same place you left, so it's not like you can use it to get out of a prison cell or stop yourself from being splattered all over the pavement at the bottom of a fifty-story fall."
"Nice image. Thanks."
"But it's a good little trick to have in the arsenal." Keller tipped his glass to Neal. "You should learn it."
The problem was, Keller couldn't explain exactly how he did it. "It's sort of like you turn around, and walk out of the world." Which wasn't helpful.
And yet, Neal did it once. In prison, after the forged bonds, during those long, long nights -- he got so bored that he decided to see if he really could teach himself to do it, just to get a break for a while. Sure, he'd come back to the same four concrete walls, but it would be interesting to see if there really was another place out there to visit. Like a vacation.
He worked on it for weeks before he finally managed to do it. Keller had said he couldn't do it without some adrenaline in his system, but for Neal, what worked was the opposite: not concentrated focus, but sleepy meditation. He was lying on his bunk in his cell, just letting his mind drift and thinking sideways, sideway, sideways, and then, he wasn't there at all.
He was standing in someone's living room -- not a hotel, too nice and too big and too eclectically decorated, with huge floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over Manhattan. Neal looked down at his hands and saw that he was wearing black gloves.
I'm robbing it?
But if so, he couldn't seem to remember what he was supposed to be stealing.
"Nice view, huh?"
Neal jumped and spun around, already starting the mental gymnastics to explain what he was doing in the middle of someone's very expensive living room full of very expensive art, while the familiarity of the voice sunk in like water on his skin. Alex. It was Alex. And then he got a good look at her, and was disconcerted all over again. She was wearing her hair short, for one thing -- Alex never wore short hair in all the time he'd known her. On top of that, it had been dyed red. She hardly looked like herself at all.
Alex frowned at him, and then crossed the space between them and gave him a quick, casual kiss on the lips. "Are you feeling all right?"
No, not really, because at the brush of her lips -- familiar, so familiar -- a cascade of memories began unfolding in his head: things he didn't remember at all, and yet all of it just as real as any of his (he thought) real memories. No Kate, for one thing. And no Mozzie. He'd come to New York City two years earlier -- he'd met Alex first, and the two of them had hooked up, and whenever things got too hot for them in New York, they just took a short hop to Europe until the feds cooled off. He'd never met Peter. Never been caught.
He hadn't merely gone to another reality.
He'd become another Neal in another reality.
It was such a shock that he woke up with a hard jolt, almost falling off his bunk. For a long time he stared at the dim ceiling of his cell, listening to the familiar nighttime prison-noise around him, letting his heart calm down, trying to convince himself it had all been a vivid dream.
He never tried it again.
*
After Keller takes Peter, Neal just stares for a long time at the now-empty spot in the grass.
If Keller comes back, he'll come back to the same place -- it's how it works, how it has to work. Keller said so.
Unless he was lying.
Unless he's figured out a better way to do it.
Unless he's not planning on coming back at all.
Then the FBI descends on the scene, and Neal has to find a dozen ways to explain that, no, he doesn't know where they went, but Keller has Peter, and they have to find him.
He's aware that there are still people in the White Collar unit who don't trust him -- even now, even six months after the return of the treasure and everything that happened after. And without Peter, he can feel the distrust turning on him -- not where it counts, not from Diana or Jones or Reese, but there are sharp looks and murmurs. Fragments like "in it together" and "planned this latest jailbreak all along".
They've got to keep watching this spot, because when (if) Keller and Peter come back, this is where they'll come back to. And yet, he can't imagine how he can possibly explain it in a way anyone will understand or believe. They won't do it on his word alone; they'll need to know why, and then they'll think he's had some kind of break with reality ...
Of course, a break with reality is exactly what he needs.
Sideways, sideways, sideways, he thinks, while he tramps along with what seems like half the nation's complement of FBI agents, combing Central Park in a search that he knows is hopeless. Sideways, sideways, sideways.
But he's too wound up. He can't relax, can't concentrate.
Darkness falls and Diana drives Neal back to June's. "We'll find him," she tells him. "We'll find him, Neal. We'll find both of them."
"I know," Neal says, though he can't quite meet her eyes when he says it, because he knows that he's lying. Keller's taken Peter somewhere that no one else can go.
No one but Neal.
He forces himself to eat something, and then he composes himself on his bed, faceup, fully clothed. He's not at all sure he can follow. Even if he can do it, he doesn't know if he'll go wherever they went. And maybe they're back already -- but, no, the FBI is still searching Central Park in the darkness, and even if they're not watching that exact spot, there's no way that Keller could have remained undetected for long.
Which Keller certainly knows, which means he's not planning on coming back until the search dies down. If he comes back at all.
If he hasn't already killed Peter and left the body in another reality.
Neal's hands clench into fists on the bedcovers.
One way or another, I'm going to find you. Both of you. If you've killed him, Keller, you can't run far enough or fast enough to get away.
He closes his eyes and slips away.
Somewhere else.
*
It's daytime and raining and he's standing on a streetcorner, umbrella in hand, getting ready to cross.
Neal stops, takes stock of himself. He's wearing one of Byron's Devore suits, but not the one he was wearing a few minutes ago. He can also feel the weight of the anklet, which means he's not in the same reality where he went from prison, the one where he and redheaded Alex have a thing.
Which means there are an infinite number of other realities out there.
Which means he's utterly screwed. How can he possibly find Peter and Keller when they could be anywhere in the world, in any reality at all? He could spend his entire life searching just in this reality, but there are other possibilities beyond measure, and no way to sort between them ...
His phone rings. Acting on autopilot, Neal steps under the overhanging facade of a bank -- he's in Manhattan, in his usual radius -- to answer it. "Neal," he says, only realizing a second later that he might not be using that name here.
"Caffrey," Peter snaps, and Neal sags with startled, gratified relief to hear his voice, then a second later realizes that something's wrong, because Peter sounds furious. "Where are you? Didn't we talk about coming in late?"
"I'm on the corner of --" he begins, but Peter rides right over him.
"I don't give a damn where you are. No excuses. I want you here in five minutes or you're going back on curfew."
And Peter hangs up.
Neal stares at the phone. That wasn't Peter, not the real Peter, not his Peter.
And now the memories start to come, falling into place one by one, just like the last time, when Alex's kiss had opened his eyes to an entire alternate lifetime. This Peter didn't take him up on his anklet suggestion until almost a year after he first made it, when they needed help catching -- of all people -- Keller. This Peter, Neal realizes, as his new memories of the last three years begin to shuffle in with his existing ones, has no Elizabeth; he has a vague recollection that something happened to her, that she died or left before Peter even started chasing him, but he's not really sure because this Neal never met her -- it's ancient history to him. This Peter is hard-edged, inflexible, and doesn't like Neal. They've never become friends. This Neal didn't take the treasure because he had no opportunity; he's been on a tight leash ever since he started working with the FBI, and Peter gives him no chance to make a mistake, and no tolerance for running around playing his own angles.
Not to mention, no glasses of wine in the Burkes' kitchen in the evenings. No light, playful conversations in the Taurus. It's a working relationship, nothing more, and this version of Neal looks forward to the day he'll get the anklet off and never have to see Peter again.
But, as Neal stands staring at his phone in the rain, drowning in memories not his own, another thought comes to him out of the jumble. If he's himself here -- this universe's Neal -- then Peter and Keller should also be their alternate-universe selves.
He doesn't have to search the whole world. All he has to do is find Peter's alternate -- which shouldn't be too hard, assuming things are similar enough that Peter still works for the FBI -- and confirm that it's not his Peter.
It's not the only possibility -- what if this works differently for Keller, or for Peter, than it does for Neal? -- but it's the only one that gives him some reasonable chance at success, so it's the one he's going with. And he just spoke to Peter, and ruled him out, so he can move on now and check somewhere else.
Neal leans back against the wall and closes his eyes.
It's easier this time.
*
After three realities, he enters one in which Peter is dead.
He tries calling the FBI and no one has heard of Peter Burke. A quick search at a public library computer shows him why. It's an unexpected kick in the gut, staring at Peter's obituary on the screen -- like a terrible glimpse of a future in which his search will fail, in which Keller will murder Peter while Neal is still wandering between realities. Except this Peter died years ago, gunned down in a shootout. He is survived, the obituary says, by his wife Debbie (Debbie? Neal thinks) and two children.
This version of Neal has never even heard of Peter, and never been caught.
He wonders what would happen if Keller and Peter crossed into a reality with no Peter. Would Peter simply vanish, popping out of existence? No -- Neal won't believe it. For one thing, he has yet to enter a reality with no Neal, which makes him think that it simply doesn't work that way. For the time being, he will assume that in order for Keller and Peter to have crossed over, they must have gone somewhere that has both a Keller and a Peter.
Still, he has some trouble getting himself to move on this time. He has to close his eyes, slump in the library chair, and fall half-asleep in order to relax enough to move on. It's not just being rattled from reading the obituary; it's also the fear that he's wrong, that the next reality won't contain a Neal, and that he'll vanish like a soap bubble in the breeze.
*
But he doesn't.
He's actually starting to get a little blasé about it by the time he hits the tenth or eleventh alternate universe. He's met a couple of Kates and another Alex, encountered a reality in which he and Mozzie hooked up, and another one where his alternate version is thoroughly (and, as far as Neal can tell, futilely) in love with that reality's version of Peter.
There seem to be a whole lot more realities in which he and Peter aren't friends than those in which they are. It can go wrong in all kinds of ways -- maybe they never met at all, maybe Peter refused to take him up on the anklet scheme, maybe Peter's too jaded or Neal's too emotionally defensive to make it work. He slips into the skin of one version of himself who never met Kate, Alex or Mozzie, instead falling in with Adler and ending up under his thumb for years. This version of himself views Peter with fear and loathing, perceiving the anklet as just another shackle in a long line of them. Looking at the whole situation with a perspective that this bitter, cynical Neal doesn't have, Neal can see that this Peter is basically the Peter of his universe -- and it's very strange seeing it from the outside, seeing that this Peter keeps giving this Neal second, third and fourth chances even though Neal is not sure that his alternate self deserves them. This Neal doesn't view the anklet as any sort of second chance. It's a prison, and Peter is his deeply resented jailkeeper, and he plans to escape as soon as possible.
Neal suspects that this Neal is not going to come to a good end. There's a part of him that wants to try to fix things, but he doesn't even know where to begin.
This is also the reality in which he learns that if he hurts himself, he won't take it with him when he leaves, because this reality's Neal is cooking dinner when Neal enters his head, and he accidentally burns his (their) hand. It throbs viciously all through his mercifully brief stay in this place, but when he opens his eyes in a new body, a new reality, his hand feels just fine.
Good to know. On the other hand, it's the other Neal who has to deal with it, and Neal feels bad for him, even if that particular version of himself is selfish and kinda screwed up.
*
If nothing else, he starts thinking after a while, he's getting an opportunity that most people would probably kill for. He's getting a chance to see how his life might have gone if he'd made different choices.
Most of the options are pretty depressing.
But not all of them. He enters one version of himself who didn't alienate Kate, who proposed to her in the park and married her, just like his daydreams. He still ended up getting sent to prison, but Kate testified on his behalf and he only got a year with some probation tacked on the end. He's already out, he's going back to school for a Master's in art history, and Kate is six months pregnant.
Of all the realities he's entered, this is the one he has the hardest time leaving. But it's also a reality in which Mozzie is dead and Peter and Elizabeth are divorced -- this version of Peter seems to be well on the way to a hardcore drinking problem -- so it seems as if his own happiness comes at the expense of most of the other people he cares about.
He doesn't want to believe it's a zero-sum game.
In the next reality, it's night and he's in his apartment at June's, and the first thing that hits him when the memories start coming is a wash of hard, bitter grief over Elizabeth. She's dead, and for some reason Neal blames himself -- oh. Oh. Keller kidnapped her, but they never got her back; they found her body in the Hudson a week later.
Neal is no longer working with Peter; his new handler is a guy called O'Bryan, someone Neal doesn't even remember from his own reality. Pushing and shoving at his new memories, trying to sort them out from his own, Neal figures out that Peter's on an extended leave of absence. Rumor around the Bureau is that he's going to take early retirement.
Neal calls him, but he doesn't answer. Not surprising: he and Neal had some pretty vicious fights before he left.
This is the first time that he's been unable to confirm or deny the existence of "his" Peter in a new reality -- usually he can either get in touch easily by phone, or find an obituary or other confirmation that this is a Peterless universe. By this point, too, Peter and Keller would have been in their new reality for a few days at least, so if nothing in Neal's memories indicates that Peter's been behaving abnormally the last few days, the odds are pretty good that he's this reality's Peter and not another one. (There's also the possibility that Keller and Peter are dimension-hopping just like Neal is, but Neal considers it unlikely. It's disorienting and unpleasant to keep doing it over and over. If Keller's not planning on coming back to their own reality, then he's probably settled down somewhere for a while.)
But this reality's Peter hasn't been talking to anyone, so no one's seen him in weeks and therefore no one would notice if he went missing. Neal calls a cab and heads over, even though it's late. He watches for a red light on his anklet, but apparently no one thought to remove the Burkes' townhouse from his list of approved locations.
He knocks. No answer. No sign of Satchmo, either. Finally Neal picks the lock and slips inside.
There's a soft, weaponlike click from his right. Neal puts his hands up, and pivots slowly. As his eyes adjust to the dark room, he can make out a human shape on the couch, framed against the diffuse glow from the window. The light glints off the barrel of a gun.
Peter shouldn't have his service weapon, since he's on leave, which means he bought another gun -- which strikes Neal as a terrible idea for a whole lot of reasons.
"It's me," he says, waving his hands a little so that Peter can see he's completely and utterly no threat at all. "Neal."
"I know," Peter says, his voice low and hoarse.
The gun slips down to rest on his thigh, pointed at the floor.
This is clearly not Neal's Peter, which means he ought to leave. Turn sideways, walk out of the world.
Leave Peter sitting alone in the dark, depressed and probably drunk, with Elizabeth gone forever and a gun in his lap.
"I called," Neal says, and clears his throat. "You didn't answer."
It takes Peter a moment to speak, and the words are slow, as if each one is so heavy he can barely pick it up. "Well, now you know I'm here. So --" His voice turns bitter, hard. "-- leave, Neal."
Instead, Neal goes into the kitchen. He makes coffee and a sandwich, then on second thought, two sandwiches -- he doesn't know if he's hungry because this body hasn't eaten lately, or because he hasn't, but food sounds like a nice idea.
He leaves the kitchen lights on, but the living room lights off. It's dim and quiet, as if no one exists in the world but the two of them. Peter is still sitting on the couch with the gun in his lap. Neal puts the plate and cup of coffee on the coffee table, but Peter makes no move to reach for them.
"I thought I made it clear I didn't want to see you, Neal."
"Yeah, you did." Except it was a different Neal. He remembers the fight as clearly as if it had happened to him: the hurtful, vicious words -- on both sides, though this Neal doesn't want to admit that. This Neal is angry, miserable, and so buried in his own guilt over Elizabeth's death that he's barely hanging on. He's not about to reach out when Peter has slapped his hand away every time he's tried.
But Neal doesn't have those problems, those hangups. He just feels bad for both of them, as well as being desperately worried about his own version of Peter, and, by proxy, this one.
"Yet you're still here." Peter's voice is brittle.
"I think we've established that I'm not good at doing what I'm told."
Peter makes a sound that's halfway between a sob and a laugh. Then, slowly, he reaches for the sandwich.
Neal's braced for whatever might come: for Peter to vent at him, or burst into tears, or whatever's about to happen. What Neal isn't expecting is for Peter to fall asleep on him, halfway through eating. He smells like a brewery and also like he hasn't showered in a week. Neal shakes him awake and steers him upstairs into the shower, leaving the gun on the floor beside the couch. Then he goes to collect clean clothes and a bottle of water to leave on the bedside table. While he's at it, he steals the bullets from the gun and buries them in the trash.
The rest of the house is a mess, but Peter and Elizabeth's room looks exactly the same. It's like a shrine, Neal thinks. A shrine to Elizabeth ... and he sinks down on the bed and puts his head in his hands. He's so sick of this, so goddamned sick of all these broken realities, all these versions of himself and the people he loves where everyone is scattered, damaged, alone. Where the hell are the ones where they're all safe and happy, and no one is lost or dead or a hopeless mess? Surely there must be universes like that out there somewhere, right? "What's the point," he says aloud, "of dragging me through all of this if I can't fix any of it?"
Peter clears his throat from the doorway. Neal looks up quickly. Peter's hair is wet and he's wearing a T-shirt that hangs off him -- he's lost weight, and in the light of the bedside lamp, he looks gray and ghastly.
"If you want ..." Peter pauses, and clears his throat again. "To spend the night," he finishes at last, "you know where the spare bedroom is."
Neal nods, and gets up quickly, gets out of the way. Peter brushes past him without acknowledging him further, and sinks into bed. He doesn't bother to turn out the light. He's asleep almost as soon as his head hits the pillow.
Neal goes to turn off the lamp, but hesitates, watching Peter sleep the deep sleep of the utterly exhausted. He's not really sure what compels him to do this, but after a few minutes of silence, he leans down and kisses Peter lightly on the temple.
Then he makes sure the water bottle is in easy reach, and flicks off the lamp. In the darkness, he walks down the hall to the spare bedroom, finding it by touch.
Spending the night was certainly never part of his plan. But he's got to stop moving sometime, even though fear for Peter, his Peter, keeps pulling him onward. He's not physically tired, but mentally, he's exhausted.
He flops on the twin bed without doing more than toeing off his shoes.
The next thing he knows, he's drifting awake, more peaceful and relaxed than he can remember being in a long time. There's sunlight shining through the curtains, and when he listens, Neal can hear clinking noises from downstairs. He also smells frying bacon.
He closes his eyes, and with a certain sense of regret, he goes sideways and away.
*
Neal wonders how long he's been doing this. It feels like forever. Elizabeth must be going out of her mind. He wonders if his disappearance was blamed on Keller, or if the Marshals are looking for him right now.
Of course, that's assuming that any time at all has passed back at home. Time itself seems to be elastic. Sometimes it's day when he comes through, sometimes night. Most realities seem to line up, more or less, with the current date in his home reality, but he enters a future in which he's already off the anklet, working at an art gallery in Amsterdam while making connections to start a gallery of his own. That's a nice future. Neal likes it ... well, except that this Neal seems to have completely lost touch with Peter and Elizabeth, and doesn't plan to get back in touch with them: he's looking ahead, not back.
Peter, while not his Peter, sounds delighted to hear from him when Neal calls him, and while Neal only meant to verify Peter's identity and then end the conversation, they end up chatting for almost an hour. Neal secures a promise from Peter to call back later, and when he hangs up the phone, he hopes that his alternate self remembers all of this.
In another of the realities he visits, it's only about a year after his arrest and he's still in prison. For a few minutes he thinks he might have to break out of prison -- again -- just to figure out whether Peter is really Peter, but then the thought occurs to him that all he has to do is call Peter (collect) at the FBI.
Peter, like many versions of Peter, is very nonplused to hear from him. "Caffrey," he says warily, in a tone that indicates he's expecting a con.
"Happy birthday," Neal says, unable to think of anything else to say. The thought crosses his mind that what he mostly seems to be doing is leaving a trail of bewildered Peters across a few dozen realities who all think he's flipped his lid.
"My birthday was six months ago," Peter says, but he sounds amused.
"Did you get the card?" Neal asks. His memories verify that, yes, he did send birthday cards in this reality as well as his own.
Peter laughs. "Yes. I got the card. Thank you. Don't expect any favors because of it."
"No ulterior motives," Neal promises. "Cross my heart."
"Come on, seriously, Caffrey," Peter says. "Spill it. What do you want? I doubt you just called to hear my voice."
But he did, and that's the main reason why he hasn't ended the conversation yet -- well, that and the fact that he hopes this will be a little something to help swing the balance in his favor whenever this Neal gets around to offering Peter the anklet option. A little leverage to help tip this reality into becoming one of the ones where Neal doesn't end up hunted and alone, and Peter doesn't become an alcoholic recluse.
So there's that. But there's also the fact that talking to Peter makes him feel a little less lonely. These conversations with Peter have become his lifeline, the one thing that's the same through all these realities. There's always Peter's voice at the other end of the phone, and it may not be the right Peter (in some cases, very much not the right Peter), but it's still Peter and somehow that makes it a little better.
"I was just thinking, that's all," Neal says. "About people. There's not a lot else to do in here, you know. Just lots of thinking."
"Well, I hope you've been doing lots of thinking about not committing crimes in the future."
"Yep," Neal says. "Thinking about that too."
Peter laughs again. "Unless there's anything else, I have actual work to do. You know, because I'm not in prison."
"Twist the knife," Neal says, but it's a friendly sort of annoyance. "Hey, maybe we'll talk again sometime."
"I'm not going to be your prison pen pal, Neal. No matter how many birthday cards you send."
"We'll see," Neal says, and hangs up so that he gets the last word.
*
The next jump takes him to a serene view of -- farm country? Really? Most of the alternate Neals are city kids to the bone, just like he is. One of his jumps did take him into a little town in the Midwest -- he and Kate were on the run -- and another time, he landed in a villa in the French countryside. Mostly, though, it's been cities, and the vast majority of them New York.
This looks like it might be upstate somewhere, north of the city. He's holding a glass of wine and looking out a large plate-glass window at a huge sloping lawn or field, rolling down to a little country road. On the far side, there's pastureland with cows and a very iconic-looking red barn.
"One thing I'll say for the Big Bad Apple -- I miss the pizza," says a voice behind him, a very familiar voice, and Neal spins around so fast he almost spills his wine.
Keller.
But Neal has no idea if it's "his" version of Keller or someone else entirely. This Keller is wearing a loose dark shirt with the sleeves rolled up, holding a beer by the neck and a half-eaten slice of pizza in the other hand. He's got a small mustache, which is extremely disconcerting. At least it's not a goatee.
"Whoa, settle down, Caffrey," Keller says. "It's just me." His eyes go narrow. "Somethin' wrong?"
"You know I don't like people sneaking up on me," Neal says, but his memories are starting to fall together, and oh, wow, damn. He's pretty sure he's hit the right reality at last, but this is something that he didn't see coming. Though maybe he should have.
"Yeah." Keller gives him a long, searching look. "Think I'm gonna go have a look around the perimeter."
"You do that," Neal says, but he waits until Keller's out of the room, the door closing behind him, before he dares turn his back to look out the window again. He's still trying to sort out his memories and get the timeline straight, but he's pretty sure that he's got most of the picture already.
In this universe, Neal's arrest went very badly wrong. Mozzie was there, and a whole lot of FBI agents who weren't with Peter's unit, and it degenerated into a firefight. Kate and Mozzie were both killed in the crossfire. This version of Neal blames Peter for it, and he doesn't just blame him a little: Neal is staggered by the impact of years' worth of resentment and hatred. Everything that he once felt for Fowler is, in this reality, turned on Peter.
This Neal wasn't expecting Keller to contact him and offer help in taking revenge on Peter, but that's exactly what happened a week ago.
Neal wonders how long Keller had to look to find a version of reality so nicely suited to his needs. Maybe he's been searching and planning for a long time -- Neal wouldn't put it past him. Or maybe he simply stumbled upon this reality by pure chance when he kidnapped Peter from Central Park, and decided to take advantage of it.
Keller's problem, Neal thinks, would have been that once they came through, he'd lose control of Peter. Keller would be wherever this universe's Keller was. Peter would be wherever Peter was, almost certainly at the FBI and out of reach.
But Peter doesn't know how to get back. Peter is stuck here. And Keller, Neal realizes with a sharp twist in his stomach, used this version of Neal to lure him into a trap.
To give Neal's alternate self some credit, he seems to be having second thoughts now. Neal reads confusion and uncertainty in the wash of foreign-to-him memories -- there is hatred, yes, but also some moral qualms. This Neal has wanted revenge on Peter for years, but now that it's come right down to it, he's not prepared to do some of the things Keller wants to do.
You're not a killer, Peter said to him once, in a place far away from here. This isn't who you are.
Neal leaves his glass of wine untouched on the windowsill, and goes where his memories tell him that Peter is.
The basement.
*
The basement stairs look perfect normal, but there's a reinforced steel door at the bottom, locked and deadbolted from the outside. Neal throws the locks and flicks on the single naked bulb inside.
It's dank and plain, cinderblock walls and concrete floor. Peter is chained to the wall. Keller always was a traditionalist in some ways, Neal thinks, through a red haze of anger. Peter's definitely been roughed up -- he's stripped to the waist, so the bruises on his torso are plainly visible, and one of his eyes is almost swollen shut. But he's alive, and in relatively okay shape as far as Neal can tell.
When he sees Neal, he draws himself up and stiffens his back, an automatic wary response that cuts Neal to the quick.
"Peter, it's me. I mean, me me. The Neal you know, from where you come from. Assuming where you came from is Central Park, a week or two ago."
Peter stares at him, long enough for Neal to wonder if he's wrong. Then Peter lets his breath out in a great sigh and leans his head against the wall. "I thought I might have lost it. In fact ..." he raises his head as Neal crosses the floor to him. "I'm still not sure I haven't."
It's him, really him. The right version of Peter at last. Neal laughs in relief so great he wants to cry. "If you have," he says, "then I have too."
"So we really are ..."
"In another version of reality. In the bodies of other versions of us. Don't think about it too hard and it almost makes sense."
"How long have you been -- you?" Peter sounds hesitant, and Neal wonders what sort of conversations have gone on in this little room. He doesn't want to think about it; the things he does remember make him cringe.
"Not long. Just a few minutes. I came down here as soon as Keller left me alone."
Neal reaches for Peter. All he has to do, he hopes, is touch Peter and he can take them back to their own reality.
Except ...
Neal hesitates.
"What?" Peter asks, twisting against his chains.
"If I take you back to our New York right now, it'll mean leaving this Peter Burke -- the one who belongs here, I mean -- with Keller and the other me," Neal says.
If he'd come here first, if he hadn't gone through all those other realities on the way, then he might have been prepared to do it. But that was before he realized that he's just as stupidly fond of Peter in every other reality as in his own. Not that he doesn't want to get Peter (and himself) back where they both belong. But ... not at the cost of another Peter's life.
Also, he knows Peter well enough to know how Peter would feel about that.
"We can't do that," Peter says firmly. "And we can't leave you with Keller, either. Uh, the other you."
"The other me is a messed-up little bastard," Neal says. He goes to work with his lock picks, since Keller's never trusted him with the keys to Peter's cuffs. "Believe me, I've got all his memories." And some of them aren't memories he wants.
"He's still you, on some level. I think he can make different choices; he just hasn't had much opportunity with Keller messing with his head."
Neal thinks Peter might be giving the other him too much credit. On the other hand, he remembers how he reacted to even the most self-hating and bitter versions of Peter: mostly, he just wanted to help them. So it's not like he's one to talk. "Then let's get out of here."
The chains come free and Peter slumps with a gasp. Neal offers him a hand, but Peter shakes his head and makes it to his feet on his own. This lasts until he takes a step and almost falls down. Neal slides an arm around him and helps him to the door.
The whole time, he keeps expecting Keller to appear in the doorway, smiling and sardonic and pointing a gun at them. But no Keller. Since Neal knows better than to believe that Keller trusts any version of him, he can only imagine that Keller's been paranoid for long enough now that he's starting to get a little less attentive. Neal's memories indicate that Keller's been watching him like a hawk -- and now he knows why -- but Keller can't keep an eye on him every minute of the day.
They make it up the stairs without incident. The house isn't large; it's one story and built on a rambling open plan. Neal can see all the way to the front door.
Once they get there, though, they have to make it down that sloping, empty lawn -- which is almost certainly one of Keller's reasons for selecting the house. From the big picture windows, Keller can see anyone coming. Or leaving.
"Ideas?" Peter murmurs, leaning against the wall at the top of the stairwell. He seems to have rallied a bit now that he's out of the basement, but he still looks gray and exhausted. In the brighter light upstairs, the bruises on his face are even more evident. Neal has to force himself not to mentally fit the shape of his own knuckles against the livid impressions on Peter's jaw. He doesn't need to know. He doesn't want to know.
"You feel up to a little running?" Neal asks him.
"If it gets me out of here, I'll run a marathon."
"That might not be necessary. I just had an idea." It's frustrating, trying to sift through memories not his own for information that he needs. But he recalls this house having a garage. There should be at least two vehicles in it: Keller has a Hummer -- not a surprise -- and Neal, this Neal, is currently driving a silver sports car. Neal touches his pocket and feels the keys.
Splitting up is logical, but neither of them suggest it. Instead they stay close together as they make their way through the silent house, drawing reassurance from each other's presence.
"Where is Keller, anyway?" Peter murmurs, his lips near Neal's ear.
"He said he was going to check the perimeter, whatever that means to him. Hopefully he's wandering around outside and won't notice a thing 'til he sees us tearing down the driveway."
He knows it won't be that easy, though. It's never that easy with Keller. And it's worse knowing that all the two of them have to do to leave ... is just leave: turn sideways, go back to their own reality.
But they'd have to leave their alternate selves in Keller's hands.
And neither of them is willing to do that.
"You got a rope?" Peter asks suddenly.
"What? Why?"
"If we meet Keller ..." Peter nudges Neal behind him, so that he's in front. "I'm your prisoner. You're taking me somewhere."
"It won't buy us much time." But Neal pauses to pull loose the draw-cord on a drape, wraps it quickly and loosely around Peter's hands.
"A little time is better than none," Peter murmurs, taking up one end of the cord into his palm and snugging it tight.
Neal leans over Peter's shoulder and nudges open the door from the house into the garage. Inside, it's nothing but baroque shapes in the darkness. He doesn't dare turn on the light and risk drawing Keller's attention. He spots the long low shape of the silver convertible and aims for that.
The door slams behind them.
Neal spins around, startled and yet not terribly surprised -- because he knew it wouldn't be that easy, and even now the lights are going on, and there's Keller, not ten feet away from them with a hunting rifle in his hands. In the close confines of the garage, there's no way they can dodge.
"Damn," Keller says casually. "I was hoping you'd run. That would have been fun, boys! You ever read that story, The Most Dangerous Game? Always wanted to try something like that."
"You think I'm going with him because I want to?" Peter does a credible imitation of indignant surprise.
"Uh-huh. Lemme see your hands, Caffrey."
The rifle is pointed at Peter's chest. Neal reluctantly raises his hands. He wonders how quickly he could grab Peter and take them home. Much as he loathes the idea of abandoning the other Peter to Keller, if he really has to choose one of them --
Unfortunately, it just doesn't work that way for him. He can't do it fast. And with Keller's crosshairs on them, Neal suspects that he probably can't do it at all. There's enough adrenaline in his system right now that he feels like he won't be sleeping for a week. Or traveling between universes, either.
"I think you're reading this situation all wrong," Neal says. He tries to look around without moving his head, looking for something, anything he can improvise into a weapon.
"Uh-huh." Keller smiles, showing his teeth. "It is you, Neal, isn't it? Not the one from here. Or did he finally manage to Stockholm the other you, too? What is it about this guy, anyway?"
"You'd never understand," Neal says quietly.
"Maybe not, but I do understand what pushes your buttons, Caffrey. I always have."
Neal can read it in an instant, in the small motions of Keller's hands and upper arms: he's going to pull the trigger. Because this is the moment he's been waiting for, isn't it? Blowing a hole in Peter right in front of Neal, with Neal close enough to feel the hot spray of Peter's blood on his face.
There's no time to think and only one thing to do, and he does it -- shoulders Peter aside as the rifle fires, deafening in the enclosed garage. Maybe this is what he's come all this way to do. Maybe they weren't both supposed to go back anyway.
He feels the impact of the bullet, but it doesn't hurt. It just feels cold.
As he falls, he catches snapshot glimpses: Keller, trying to jack out the bullet casing and chamber the next round; Peter, moving a lot faster than a guy who's been beat up should be able to move, closing the distance between them and knocking the rifle's barrel upwards. The next shot blows a hole in the ceiling and then Peter's the one with the rifle and Keller is stumbling backwards, pulling a pistol out of somewhere, swinging it towards Peter's face -- and Peter fires at him, point blank, there's no way he can avoid it --
Neal doesn't see Keller's face, and he's not sure if Keller has a chance to jump out or not. Time stutters and then Peter is bending over him, gripping him by the shoulders. "Neal," he says. "Neal, hang on."
If Keller just jumped back to their reality, then taking Peter back there and dumping him in Central Park -- the inevitable result -- is going to be a very bad idea. But Neal can feel the world receding, sounds being buried under a rushing in his ears. If he's going to do this, if Peter is ever going to get home, he has to do it now.
"Neal," Peter says, as Neal's vision starts going dark, telescoping down to a long black tunnel in which he can see nothing but Peter's face, worried and frightened. Neal tries to grasp Peter's arms, but he can't feel his hands anymore.
Now or never.
Sideways.
Twist.
Go.
Dark.
*
Neal jerks so hard that he falls off the bed.
"Ow," he says aloud, to no one in particular. He stares up at June's ceiling, feeling his heart beat, feeling his lungs inflate and relax, inflate and relax.
He's back. He's home. He's not dying. He's perfectly fine and unhurt and --
"Peter!" He sits bolt upright, just as his phone rings.
It's Peter on the caller ID. He's in Central Park, and there's no sign of Keller.
*
It turns out they've been missing for two weeks, which means there is a warrant out for Neal's arrest and a full-manpower search for Peter. Luckily, at this point, "Keller abducted us and we just now escaped" is a perfectly valid explanation for an unexpected two-week absence, and has the advantage of being true, even if some of the details are slightly fudged.
Neal hopes he didn't leave another version of himself to die -- but, no, the other Peter will get Neal to a hospital, no matter what is between them in that universe. Neal can't believe there's a version of Peter anywhere that would abandon any version of him to bleed to death.
At least that's what he tries to tell himself, although he was hurt pretty bad, and maybe he didn't make it after all. But, well, one more dead Caffrey in the multiverse, he supposes. If there's one thing that the last few days have taught him, it's that there are probably a whole lot of dead versions of himself out there.
Peter spends a couple of days on leave while he recovers from the injuries he sustained in his original fight with Keller, two weeks ago, all of which are still as fresh as the day he got them. And ... that's that. There's not much they can do. Peter manages to get a security camera set up in the park that happens to cover the location where Keller disappeared -- not that they can afford round-the-clock monitoring, or justify it even if they could, but it seems to make Peter feel like he's doing something.
A few days after they get back, Peter, still limping a bit, shows up at Neal's apartment with a six-pack and a (not too cheap) bottle of wine. They chat about trivial things. Neal talks a little about the other realities that he saw -- not too much, because he wants to keep most of it to himself, and he's never, ever telling Peter about the dead-Elizabeth one. But it's a relief to be able to talk to someone about it. It's not like he can tell Mozzie; Moz doesn't need even more paranoia fuel. And it reaffirms for both of them that they're really not crazy, that the whole thing actually happened.
"You think he got away?" Peter asks.
"I don't know. I was a little busy at the time." Busy dying. "It's possible."
"You know." Peter concentrates on his beer rather than on Neal. "What with one thing and another, I might've forgotten to say thank you."
"Yeah you did," Neal tells him, because Peter says it every day in little ways, something Neal is not sure he'd ever realized before seeing so many Peters overlaid on one another.
There's a silence, but it's a comfortable one, the sort that doesn't need filling.
"Do you ever worry," Peter says thoughtfully, "that this isn't ..."
"No," Neal says sharply. "Don't think about that. That way," he adds, taking a sip of his wine, "lies madness, Peter."
Peter gives him a half-smile. And Neal wonders if Peter's been doing what he himself has been doing since they got back: carefully checking his memories against the newspapers, against Google. Examining his toiletries in the bathroom and the paintings on June's walls for discrepancies from what ought to be there. Looking for anything that might tip him off that he's not in the same universe he left.
So far, he hasn't found anything, and he's been trying hard not to spend too much time looking. This is a good way to end up like Mozzie. Or a whole lot worse.
If it's not the same universe, if these aren't the people he left behind, it's all so close as to make no difference. Or that's what he keeps trying to tell himself, anyway. It's one of those questions that you just can't wonder about, like the question of whether some other Neal has ever taken up residence in his brain. If it's happened, he doesn't know about it, and he's simply going to have to be content with that.
"So," Peter says at last, in that casual-but-not-casual way that he has. "Do you think you'll be taking any more unexpected side trips?"
And Neal hesitates, because he's not quite sure how to explain.
He's done a lot of thinking about this since he got back. And he's realized that there are reasons why Keller can do it so easily and Neal can hardly do it at all, except under very specific circumstances.
For one thing, Keller doesn't care about taking over the lives of other Matthew Kellers in other universes. It's possible that all Kellers out there are just like him, but Neal doesn't think so -- he expects that there are Kellers who met their own equivalent of Peter and turned to a different life, and Kellers who never set foot on that path at all. Neal doesn't want to live another Neal's life; he's stolen a lot of things, but that's one thing he knows is not his to take. Keller doesn't give a damn.
And Keller almost certainly doesn't give a damn if he comes back or not, and that's the dealbreaker, that's the thing Neal himself doesn't dare risk. He was able to do it for Peter's sake, before he had time to really think things through, but now there's a little voice in the back of his head saying You were lucky that time. What if he gets to the other side and it stops working? He doesn't even know how it works in the first place. He'd find himself trapped in a stolen life, cut off from everyone and everything that he loves. And that's not a risk he's willing to take.
"No," Neal says. "This is home."
Peter doesn't say anything more on that topic, but he smiles.
*
And in another place, somewhere very far away, another Neal is waking up, floating on an anesthetic haze halfway between dreams and the gray light of dawn.
Waking alone, he realizes muzzily -- just as he's been alone since Kate's death, since Mozzie's death.
He fully expects to be handcuffed to the bed. He's a fugitive, after all, and one who recently kidnapped a federal agent. But his hands are free. He gazes at them in surprise slightly muted by the painkillers, then looks up at a soft throat-clearing noise.
"They said they wouldn't need to cuff you as long as an agent was in the room," Burke says.
He's sitting in a chair beside the bed, with a half-finished crossword puzzle in his lap and several styrofoam cups of coffee on the tray table beside him. There are bruises fading yellowish around his eye, his jaw. Neal remembers putting some of them there.
Neal gazes at him, honestly baffled, and even more baffled by the foggy memories of just how, exactly, he took the bullet wound that's currently got him laid out in this hospital bed. Because what he remembers can't actually be what happened. But he remembers it, and he remembers, too, the throat-clenching panic and worry, the grief and fear and love that went along with it.
Agent Burke -- Peter -- glances up from the crossword and answers Neal's curious look with a curious look of his own.
Outside the window, the sun is coming up.
~
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