White Collar fic: A Handful of Lightning 2/2 (Psychic Neal #1)
See Part One for all header information, warnings, etc.
***
Peter woke feeling washed-out and exhausted, with a drug hangover and Elizabeth holding his hand. The doctor didn't believe him that he'd only been stabbed a couple of hours ago -- apparently it looked like he'd been healing up for several days, and although his abdomen felt like it had been worked over with a baseball bat, he could move around as long as he was very careful.
Jones and Diana arrived along with an update on the latest happenings on the case. Risetti was in custody -- alive, Peter was relieved to learn. Attempted murder of an undercover agent had been more than enough to get a search warrant for the restaurant, and they were having a very interesting and fruitful time going over the forged documents they'd found. Risetti had apparently been involved in importing containerloads of cheap Nike knockoffs to be resold at a tremendous markup -- "Shoes?" Peter said in disbelief, and Jones retorted, "There's a lot of money in those stupid things."
"Did they arrest Caffrey too?" Peter asked, hoping for and fearing the answer. "I didn't dream that, right?"
"Nope. I put the cuffs on him myself," Jones said. "And this time, they stayed on."
Only because most of the agents in the room had been wearing their tinfoil hats, Peter thought, but he wasn't quite drugged enough to say it out loud. He told himself that Neal being arrested was actually a good thing. He would've come closer to believing it if it hadn't happened because Neal had been busy saving his life. "And he's still in custody?"
"For some reason, Homeland Security's taken over jurisdiction," Diana said. At Peter's startled look, she said, "Yeah, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me either, but I guess the paperwork's all in order. Probably," she added, because Diana was no dummy, "that part has something to do with a room full of inexplicably unconscious kitchen workers. Even some of the restaurant patrons had headaches. We've been busy squashing rumors of a terrorist attack all afternoon --"
"I have to get out of here. Where are my pants?" He swung his legs out of the bed, got a head rush and nearly passed out on El. The combined persuasive force of Elizabeth and his two agents got him back into bed, but he demanded Diana's cell, started to dial Hughes, then went right over Hughes' head to Bancroft.
"What's going on, boss?" Diana asked while he waited on hold.
"I wish I could tell you both." And after all this was over, he thought he just might. "Sorry, guys, I need to have a private conversation. Honey ..."
El, who probably suspected at least some of the content of his "private" conversation, took Diana and Jones in hand, herding them out into the corridor just as Bancroft picked up.
"Neal's in custody," Peter said. "Homeland Security has him. Can they do that?"
"What happens to him once the cuffs are on is out of your hands, Burke," Bancroft said.
"The hell it is. They're going to make him vanish, Bancroft. You and I both know it. We've been around the block too many times not to know how this works."
There was a brief silence, then Bancroft said, "The Bureau's been after Caffrey for years. This is a win for our side."
"He deserves justice," Peter said. "He deserves a trial. He's not going to get it, and you know it." More silence answered him. "Look, all I'm asking for is time. Buy me some. I'm not saying I want him to go free, but I want this done right. That kid's already been fucked over enough. I'm fine with watching him go down for what he's done, but I don't want to see him buried for things that aren't his fault."
He waited, and Bancroft said, "I am absolutely not authorizing anything that's outside normal procedure."
"I'm not asking you to. All I want you to do is stick to procedure. Come on, you don't want to see him crucified any more than I do."
"If time's what you need, I don't know how much I can give you," Bancroft said, and Peter closed his eyes and thought, Thank you, thank you.
"I know," he said. "Thank you, sir. You won't regret this."
"Burke, knowing you're involved, I already regret it."
He hung up and lay there for a moment with the phone in hand and his eyes still shut, thinking, thinking. Then he called, "Hon?"
El's head popped in the door immediately.
"Did Diana and Jones already leave?"
"I think they're headed out. Do you want me to catch them?"
"Please," Peter said, and as her head vanished in a swirl of long dark hair, he thought, Because I'm about to violate an NDA from a segment of the government you really don't mess around with.
***
They took it better than he was expecting. He wasn't entirely sure if they would have believed him without El to back him up, but she could be pretty persuasive when she wanted to be. And the otherwise inexplicable wound told its own story.
"He healed you," Diana said, sitting on the edge of the bed.
"I didn't know he could do that," El said.
Peter shook his head. "I don't think anyone did. But there's no doubt in my mind that Neal Caffrey is the reason I'm here now, and it's because he stopped to save me that he isn't out there somewhere thumbing his nose at us right now. And I can't just sit by and do nothing about that."
It turned out that Diana and Jones had both had their suspicions that something was going on -- Peter's sudden shift from "catch Caffrey at all costs" to "let's focus on other cases for a while" had not escaped their notice. "And now we know why you kept insisting on those damn hats," Jones said.
Diana frowned. "How much trouble are we in for knowing this, exactly?"
"As long as no one ever finds out that you know, none at all." Peter sighed. "I'm sorry. I really am. Both your careers will be at stake if anyone finds out. I didn't want to drag you into this, but I have a lot to do and I don't think I can do it by myself."
"If there's going to be a jailbreak," El said, "I have some cake recipes that could be modified to include files."
That broke the tension a little; they all laughed.
"No jailbreaks," Peter said. "No files in cakes. We're doing this by the book -- but we're going to pick and choose which pages."
***
Two days later, he sat in a prison interrogation room while Neal was brought out in chains. The guards escorting him were heavily armed, although Neal had never looked more harmless; he was chalk-white, moved slowly and sat down even more slowly. He smiled at the sight of Peter, though, looking genuinely glad to see him.
"You okay?" Peter said, at the same time as Neal said, "How are you doing?" There was a brief pause and Neal made an "after-you" gesture.
"I'm still limping around." Actually, he was not supposed to be out of bed at all; his energy level was still rock-bottom, and he'd been working himself to exhaustion, even with the willing help of Diana, Jones and Elizabeth. But Neal didn't need to know that. "What about you? I hear they've got a ... thing on you."
"Oh, yeah. Stylish." Neal turned his head carefully to give Peter a glimpse of the silvery contraption wrapped around the back of his neck. It gave Peter the shivers; it looked like it belonged on a high-performance automobile, not on someone's head. There was surgical gauze taped around the base of it. From what Peter had been able to get from Bancroft, they'd basically hustled Neal straight from lockup into surgery and shoved their experimental telepath-damper into his skull. God damn them. And yet, he could understand why they were paranoid. Tinfoil baseball caps could only get you so far, and Peter was starting to understand that no one really knew the limits of Neal's abilities -- including Neal himself.
So a lot of Neal's pallor and the careful way he was moving was the fact that he was still recuperating from brain surgery. And from the way he blinked unhappily under the bright lights of the interrogation room, Peter got the impression that he wasn't very comfortable. Another bit of information that Peter had obtained, this time from a sympathetic guard, was that the device had been giving Neal blazing migraines; he'd been throwing up in his cell that morning.
"I'll make this quick," Peter said. He shoved an open folder across the table to Neal, who squinted at it. "That conversation we had? About you being arrested, and what would happen next? You were right, Neal. And I'm not going to let the bastards get away with it. Take a look at this."
Neal rotated the file, started trying to read and then blinked and swallowed. "Fill me in," he said.
"No one wants this to go to trial," Peter said. Since he knew they were being recorded, he refrained from saying They won't LET it go to trial, but he thought they both heard it. "So let's cut a deal. I can get you out of here. I have a plan. There's even some precedent for it."
Neal frowned at him; Peter could see his initial surge of hope being flattened by distrust. "Uh-huh," Neal said.
"The way it would work is you'd be released into my custody as a confidential informant. Basically, you'd serve the term of your sentence by lending us your expertise to help the FBI solve crimes." Peter leaned across the table and flipped a page. "You'd be on a GPS tracking anklet, probably on a very tight radius. And you'd have to wear that thing you've got on. Sorry about the last part, but that's really not negotiable."
Neal blinked at him. Looked down at the file. Looked at Peter again. "I'd be solving crimes," he said.
"Yes."
"In your custody."
"Exactly," Peter said. "I have the paperwork right here --" and he flipped another page "-- for you to plead guilty to a handful of the more pressing charges we have against you, in return for getting the rest dropped. The U.S. Attorney's office agreed; they're overloaded as usual and as long as we're happy, they're happy. I think you can guess who's really not happy, but the faster we can get you in front of a judge, the less of a leg to stand on they'll have."
As soon as he said "plead guilty", he saw Neal's tentatively hopeful (though still baffled) expression crash into flat distrust. "So that's what it comes down to," Neal said. "I plead guilty, I vanish into the criminal justice system ..."
"No, you stubborn kid, listen to me. The paperwork's all ready to go -- and I've been pulling strings like you wouldn't believe, getting that to happen. As soon as your conviction is filed, we can turn right around and get the other half of it signed off on, and you can probably walk out with me the same day."
"I don't get it," Neal said. A small furrow of concentration appeared between his brows, and Peter realized that Neal was probably trying to read his mind without even noticing he was doing it. For Neal, having to guess what people were thinking was probably a new and unpleasant experience. "Why are you doing this? What do you want?"
"It's more like what I don't want," Peter said. "You had your hands in my guts, so let's not stand on ceremony here. I know what you can do, Neal, and you can't keep doing it like you have been, but I also know that you're smart and you're talented and you could be a real asset to the Bureau." And even if you were rock-stupid -- which you're not -- you still don't deserve to rot in a lab somewhere, without a single person in the world giving a damn.
Knowing that they were being recorded, and maybe listened to right now, he didn't want to upset the apple cart by even hinting at the other half of what he was thinking: that once he had Neal out of here, they could start working on a plan to make sure that justice would indeed happen on behalf of Neal and his lab-siblings and all those other long-ago babies who'd never even had a chance.
But maybe Neal still retained a vestige of his augmented abilities, or maybe there were times when it wasn't necessary to have telepathic powers to read someone's mind. Neal flashed Peter a smile that was unexpectedly genuine and sweet. "Where do I sign?"
***
In the end, it turned out that he'd been wildly optimistic. Getting Neal released into his custody took weeks ... weeks during which he was on tenterhooks, worried that a last governmental loophole would snatch Neal out of his grasp and into the depths of a cover-up from which it would never be possible to retrieve him.
And then there was the inevitable worry about why he was spending so much time and effort trying to free a mind-reading felon who would probably head for the hills, GPS anklet or not, the minute he got out. Peter spent a lot of sleepless nights staring at the ceiling and wondering if Neal had planted a suggestion in his mind, which had then taken root and grown ... Neal could easily have done it during the healing, and maybe the healing itself was all part of Neal's master plan ...
But, no; if getting locked up was part of Neal's plan to be freed again on someone else's terms, then it was an incredibly stupid plan, especially considering that he could have been free if he'd only taken off rather than sticking around to keep a particularly careless FBI agent from bleeding to death. And Neal's apprehension and surprise had seemed genuine. No, Peter didn't think Neal was playing him, at least not in that way.
It was early autumn when they cleared the final hurdles and he picked up Neal at the prison. "Show me your ankle," he said, and Neal rolled his eyes and showed it to him.
Neal looked a little better than he had before, but only a little; he was still pale, his eyes smudged with blue shadows. Peter had meant to greet him with a firm talking-to and a set of ground rules -- get this whole affair off on the right foot -- but instead he asked as Neal got into the passenger seat, "That thing still giving you headaches?"
"Only on days ending in Y." Peter's expression must have been concerned, because Neal brushed it off. "It's getting better. I only get the bad migraines every once in a while." He drummed his fingers on the dashboard. "So this is for four years."
"Yeah." That had been as far as they'd managed to plea-bargain down.
"When I get the anklet off, do I get this thing on my head off, too? Are they really going to let me just walk around?"
"I don't know," Peter said. "Look, let's take it one day at a time here, okay? We're way out on a limb as it is. First let's prove this can work; then we'll start taking baby steps the rest of the way." He looked at Neal more closely, at Neal's obvious exhaustion and pain, and said carefully, "You told me once ... that you didn't know what it would be like not to -- be able to hear things like you do. That you thought the silence might be hard to take."
Neal heaved a sigh. Peter could see him trying to decide how much to tell him.
"Look, Neal, this isn't a trap. I'm not trying to find a reason to put you back in. You're out; that's done. I just want to know what I'll be needing to deal with. If going to a doctor would help --"
"It won't," Neal said. "You asked if it was hard to take? It is. Mostly at night." He gave a sharp, bitter laugh. "There were a lot of times, you know, when I wished I was like everyone else. Hard to believe, huh? So, be careful what you wish for, I guess."
After a moment Peter said slowly, "It's not impossible that we might be able to have the blocking thing taken off sometimes, for some of your undercover missions." Neal gave him a hard look that he couldn't decipher. "I haven't discussed it with anyone, but it's not impossible ... Okay, what's the matter with you?"
Neal's hand hovered over the door handle. They were driving at about 30 mph -- he wouldn't jump ... would he?
"Neal, come on. Talk to me."
"Just ... I finally figured out your angle." Neal laughed again, shook his head. "I might've known. You FBI guys want your own pet telepath. For awhile I thought -- yeah, no, I don't know what I thought."
Peter wrenched the steering wheel, skidding across two lanes of traffic (to the sound of honking horns) and fetching up in a McDonald's parking lot. Neal was clutching the dashboard, wide-eyed.
"Jeez, Peter! Do you always drive like that?" Neal pried his white-knuckled fingers off the dashboard. "I might have been safer in a cell with the spooks ..."
Peter didn't say anything, and Neal gave a nervous little laugh. "You're starting to worry me here, Peter. I'd like to point out that I'm harmless, de-psychified and unarmed --"
"I'm not worried about you," Peter said. It came out more harshly than he'd intended. "I mean, not in that way. Neal ..." He turned, hooking an arm over the back of the seat so that he could confront Neal face-to-face. "You're nobody's pet telepath. Not mine, and not the FBI's. You're never going to be anybody's pet telepath if I have anything to say about it."
"So you say," Neal said, and his eyes kept darting away, refusing to meet Peter's.
"I do say. And I mean it. Is it really that foreign to you," Peter said, almost plaintively, "that someone might want to do something for you out of nothing other than concern for your welfare?"
From the look on Neal's face, it really, truly was.
Peter sighed and pulled back out into traffic, more carefully this time.
After they'd driven for awhile longer, he said, "The FBI is paying for housing for you, but they're not going to shell out for more than it would have cost to house you in prison. Which pretty much puts you at the bottom end of the New York housing market."
"Yay," Neal murmured.
"Look upon this as a temporary living situation. I'll help you look for something better. We might even be able to get the FBI to cough up a stipend if you can prove that having you around is an asset. And," Peter added, "on the bright side, you don't have anything to steal at the moment, so that won't be a problem."
"Not inspiring confidence here, Peter."
"Hey, look, I'd offer you a spare bedroom at my place, except that it's a clear and blatant ethics violation. But Diana knows a few people, and Jones might have a friend who's looking for a roommate." Peter tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. "On the other hand, there's no reg I know of that says I can't feed you before I send you over there. How about it? El's making her famous meatloaf. That'll perk you up if anything can. El's my wife, by the way."
"I know your wife's name, Peter. I did my research on you, too. And, uh, I hate to say this, but meatloaf is not exactly the kind of thing I normally --"
"You could be eating prison food. You'll eat my wife's meatloaf and you'll like it."
El had been dying to meet Neal. Peter decided not to mention that part; no point in giving Neal ammunition. He felt a quiver of conscience at taking the mind-reading con artist to meet his wife -- but, no, Neal was ... what would the word be? "Tamed" had entirely the wrong connotations, and he wasn't reformed. Dampened, Peter thought; that was certainly how Neal looked, kind of damp and wilted.
He couldn't help noting the contrast between this wilted, unhappy Neal, and the playful, energized, devil-may-care Neal that he'd chased for nearly three years. Neal's life had been dangerous and unethical and it had almost gotten him killed any number of times. But it had made him ... alive. And, Peter thought, it was up to him now to prove to Neal that a life on the wrong side of the law, a life of stealing other people's possessions and stealing their thoughts, wasn't the only thing that could fulfill him. What could he say that would get through Neal's thick skull, impress on him that there were other ways to go, that the life he'd known wasn't the only life he could have?
"When I was growing up," Peter found himself saying, "I knew exactly what I wanted to be. Know what that was?"
Neal, slouched in the passenger's seat with his head resting in his palm, rolled his eyes in Peter's direction. "A giant pain in the ass of the criminal element in this town?"
"I wanted to be a major league baseball star," Peter said, and he had the satisfaction of getting a mildly surprised look from Neal. "Growing up, baseball was my whole world. Well, that and math. I was good at it, and I knew I was good at it."
"That's very you," Neal murmured, without (much) rancor. "So you turned out not to be as good at it as you thought you were, and the point is?"
"I was drafted by the Twins right out of college," Peter said, and this time the look was not just surprised, but long. Measuring. Wondering where he was going. He waited, and then went on, "And then I blew out my shoulder in spring training. Had surgery. Went back. I could have gone on. But if I had, I would've destroyed my shoulder for good. I could have had a few months on the pitcher's mound. Maybe even a few years. And that would have been it; I'd have been in pain for the rest of my life, and no FBI career, that's for sure."
It was funny that the memory still hurt after all these years. And he couldn't even say why. He didn't tell El until years after they were married. El didn't care about baseball; she cared about him. What did he think, that she'd kick him out of bed if she knew he'd turned down the possibility of a short, glorious career in the spotlight for a life of dangerous work catching bad guys for the U.S. government? Of course not; she'd been as sympathetic as she knew how to be. Peter knew it hadn't changed his image in her eyes one iota. But that wasn't really the point; the point was that El didn't understand, she couldn't understand. You couldn't know unless you'd been there, holding one dream in your hands and giving it up because it cost more than you were willing to give.
He could have gone his whole life without telling Neal this.
But he had to, because of that "wilted houseplant that hasn't been watered in a month" droop to Neal's demeanor.
"Life is cruel. It's not perfect. Stuff happens," Peter said. The words felt clumsy in his mouth; this was El's area, not his, this whole talking-about-feelings thing. But El wasn't here, and anyway ... this was something that El couldn't really help with, because as far as he knew, she'd never known that feeling -- when your whole world falls down around your ears, when the future you've planned for so long turns black and you can't see where the road is going, or if there is a road at all. She might want to help, but she couldn't really know.
"You make plans and they blow up in your face. And then you go on. You find something else that gets you up in the morning. You have to do that, or you just ... stop."
"The FBI," Neal said, on the exhale of a sigh. "That's what it was for you."
"The FBI," Peter agreed.
He drove. There was a long silence between them, measured in the flickering of the lines on the road. Then Peter said, "But it can also be little things in the meantime. There was a while there when I had no idea what I was going to be. Who I even was, if I wasn't Peter Burke, baseball star. But there was still Mama Burke's award-winning cherry pie, or a cold beer with the old man on a hot summer night. Reruns of Rockford Files. The satisfaction you feel when you finish a hard crossword puzzle in ink."
"Or Elizabeth Burke's meatloaf," Neal said.
"That too."
"You are so ..." Neal trailed off, on the verge of whatever he'd been about to say, and shook his head. "Never mind. So you, I guess."
He went silent, gazing out the window, but Peter could tell that he was less wound-up than he had been a few minutes ago.
It was up to him, Peter thought, to show Neal that there was more to life than screwing people over before they screwed you. More to society than just a bunch of people who wanted to use and hurt him. Neal was smart, and compassionate, and Peter really believed that the kid could be more than what he'd been so far -- a victim, and then a thief.
He caught himself wishing that Neal could still read minds, if only for a moment. It would be so much easier to prove his sincerity that way. As it was, though, he'd simply have to show Neal the old-fashioned way.
Peter had always been a believer in the old saying that actions speak louder than words.
And maybe actions spoke louder than thoughts, too. Sometimes.
~
***
Peter woke feeling washed-out and exhausted, with a drug hangover and Elizabeth holding his hand. The doctor didn't believe him that he'd only been stabbed a couple of hours ago -- apparently it looked like he'd been healing up for several days, and although his abdomen felt like it had been worked over with a baseball bat, he could move around as long as he was very careful.
Jones and Diana arrived along with an update on the latest happenings on the case. Risetti was in custody -- alive, Peter was relieved to learn. Attempted murder of an undercover agent had been more than enough to get a search warrant for the restaurant, and they were having a very interesting and fruitful time going over the forged documents they'd found. Risetti had apparently been involved in importing containerloads of cheap Nike knockoffs to be resold at a tremendous markup -- "Shoes?" Peter said in disbelief, and Jones retorted, "There's a lot of money in those stupid things."
"Did they arrest Caffrey too?" Peter asked, hoping for and fearing the answer. "I didn't dream that, right?"
"Nope. I put the cuffs on him myself," Jones said. "And this time, they stayed on."
Only because most of the agents in the room had been wearing their tinfoil hats, Peter thought, but he wasn't quite drugged enough to say it out loud. He told himself that Neal being arrested was actually a good thing. He would've come closer to believing it if it hadn't happened because Neal had been busy saving his life. "And he's still in custody?"
"For some reason, Homeland Security's taken over jurisdiction," Diana said. At Peter's startled look, she said, "Yeah, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me either, but I guess the paperwork's all in order. Probably," she added, because Diana was no dummy, "that part has something to do with a room full of inexplicably unconscious kitchen workers. Even some of the restaurant patrons had headaches. We've been busy squashing rumors of a terrorist attack all afternoon --"
"I have to get out of here. Where are my pants?" He swung his legs out of the bed, got a head rush and nearly passed out on El. The combined persuasive force of Elizabeth and his two agents got him back into bed, but he demanded Diana's cell, started to dial Hughes, then went right over Hughes' head to Bancroft.
"What's going on, boss?" Diana asked while he waited on hold.
"I wish I could tell you both." And after all this was over, he thought he just might. "Sorry, guys, I need to have a private conversation. Honey ..."
El, who probably suspected at least some of the content of his "private" conversation, took Diana and Jones in hand, herding them out into the corridor just as Bancroft picked up.
"Neal's in custody," Peter said. "Homeland Security has him. Can they do that?"
"What happens to him once the cuffs are on is out of your hands, Burke," Bancroft said.
"The hell it is. They're going to make him vanish, Bancroft. You and I both know it. We've been around the block too many times not to know how this works."
There was a brief silence, then Bancroft said, "The Bureau's been after Caffrey for years. This is a win for our side."
"He deserves justice," Peter said. "He deserves a trial. He's not going to get it, and you know it." More silence answered him. "Look, all I'm asking for is time. Buy me some. I'm not saying I want him to go free, but I want this done right. That kid's already been fucked over enough. I'm fine with watching him go down for what he's done, but I don't want to see him buried for things that aren't his fault."
He waited, and Bancroft said, "I am absolutely not authorizing anything that's outside normal procedure."
"I'm not asking you to. All I want you to do is stick to procedure. Come on, you don't want to see him crucified any more than I do."
"If time's what you need, I don't know how much I can give you," Bancroft said, and Peter closed his eyes and thought, Thank you, thank you.
"I know," he said. "Thank you, sir. You won't regret this."
"Burke, knowing you're involved, I already regret it."
He hung up and lay there for a moment with the phone in hand and his eyes still shut, thinking, thinking. Then he called, "Hon?"
El's head popped in the door immediately.
"Did Diana and Jones already leave?"
"I think they're headed out. Do you want me to catch them?"
"Please," Peter said, and as her head vanished in a swirl of long dark hair, he thought, Because I'm about to violate an NDA from a segment of the government you really don't mess around with.
***
They took it better than he was expecting. He wasn't entirely sure if they would have believed him without El to back him up, but she could be pretty persuasive when she wanted to be. And the otherwise inexplicable wound told its own story.
"He healed you," Diana said, sitting on the edge of the bed.
"I didn't know he could do that," El said.
Peter shook his head. "I don't think anyone did. But there's no doubt in my mind that Neal Caffrey is the reason I'm here now, and it's because he stopped to save me that he isn't out there somewhere thumbing his nose at us right now. And I can't just sit by and do nothing about that."
It turned out that Diana and Jones had both had their suspicions that something was going on -- Peter's sudden shift from "catch Caffrey at all costs" to "let's focus on other cases for a while" had not escaped their notice. "And now we know why you kept insisting on those damn hats," Jones said.
Diana frowned. "How much trouble are we in for knowing this, exactly?"
"As long as no one ever finds out that you know, none at all." Peter sighed. "I'm sorry. I really am. Both your careers will be at stake if anyone finds out. I didn't want to drag you into this, but I have a lot to do and I don't think I can do it by myself."
"If there's going to be a jailbreak," El said, "I have some cake recipes that could be modified to include files."
That broke the tension a little; they all laughed.
"No jailbreaks," Peter said. "No files in cakes. We're doing this by the book -- but we're going to pick and choose which pages."
***
Two days later, he sat in a prison interrogation room while Neal was brought out in chains. The guards escorting him were heavily armed, although Neal had never looked more harmless; he was chalk-white, moved slowly and sat down even more slowly. He smiled at the sight of Peter, though, looking genuinely glad to see him.
"You okay?" Peter said, at the same time as Neal said, "How are you doing?" There was a brief pause and Neal made an "after-you" gesture.
"I'm still limping around." Actually, he was not supposed to be out of bed at all; his energy level was still rock-bottom, and he'd been working himself to exhaustion, even with the willing help of Diana, Jones and Elizabeth. But Neal didn't need to know that. "What about you? I hear they've got a ... thing on you."
"Oh, yeah. Stylish." Neal turned his head carefully to give Peter a glimpse of the silvery contraption wrapped around the back of his neck. It gave Peter the shivers; it looked like it belonged on a high-performance automobile, not on someone's head. There was surgical gauze taped around the base of it. From what Peter had been able to get from Bancroft, they'd basically hustled Neal straight from lockup into surgery and shoved their experimental telepath-damper into his skull. God damn them. And yet, he could understand why they were paranoid. Tinfoil baseball caps could only get you so far, and Peter was starting to understand that no one really knew the limits of Neal's abilities -- including Neal himself.
So a lot of Neal's pallor and the careful way he was moving was the fact that he was still recuperating from brain surgery. And from the way he blinked unhappily under the bright lights of the interrogation room, Peter got the impression that he wasn't very comfortable. Another bit of information that Peter had obtained, this time from a sympathetic guard, was that the device had been giving Neal blazing migraines; he'd been throwing up in his cell that morning.
"I'll make this quick," Peter said. He shoved an open folder across the table to Neal, who squinted at it. "That conversation we had? About you being arrested, and what would happen next? You were right, Neal. And I'm not going to let the bastards get away with it. Take a look at this."
Neal rotated the file, started trying to read and then blinked and swallowed. "Fill me in," he said.
"No one wants this to go to trial," Peter said. Since he knew they were being recorded, he refrained from saying They won't LET it go to trial, but he thought they both heard it. "So let's cut a deal. I can get you out of here. I have a plan. There's even some precedent for it."
Neal frowned at him; Peter could see his initial surge of hope being flattened by distrust. "Uh-huh," Neal said.
"The way it would work is you'd be released into my custody as a confidential informant. Basically, you'd serve the term of your sentence by lending us your expertise to help the FBI solve crimes." Peter leaned across the table and flipped a page. "You'd be on a GPS tracking anklet, probably on a very tight radius. And you'd have to wear that thing you've got on. Sorry about the last part, but that's really not negotiable."
Neal blinked at him. Looked down at the file. Looked at Peter again. "I'd be solving crimes," he said.
"Yes."
"In your custody."
"Exactly," Peter said. "I have the paperwork right here --" and he flipped another page "-- for you to plead guilty to a handful of the more pressing charges we have against you, in return for getting the rest dropped. The U.S. Attorney's office agreed; they're overloaded as usual and as long as we're happy, they're happy. I think you can guess who's really not happy, but the faster we can get you in front of a judge, the less of a leg to stand on they'll have."
As soon as he said "plead guilty", he saw Neal's tentatively hopeful (though still baffled) expression crash into flat distrust. "So that's what it comes down to," Neal said. "I plead guilty, I vanish into the criminal justice system ..."
"No, you stubborn kid, listen to me. The paperwork's all ready to go -- and I've been pulling strings like you wouldn't believe, getting that to happen. As soon as your conviction is filed, we can turn right around and get the other half of it signed off on, and you can probably walk out with me the same day."
"I don't get it," Neal said. A small furrow of concentration appeared between his brows, and Peter realized that Neal was probably trying to read his mind without even noticing he was doing it. For Neal, having to guess what people were thinking was probably a new and unpleasant experience. "Why are you doing this? What do you want?"
"It's more like what I don't want," Peter said. "You had your hands in my guts, so let's not stand on ceremony here. I know what you can do, Neal, and you can't keep doing it like you have been, but I also know that you're smart and you're talented and you could be a real asset to the Bureau." And even if you were rock-stupid -- which you're not -- you still don't deserve to rot in a lab somewhere, without a single person in the world giving a damn.
Knowing that they were being recorded, and maybe listened to right now, he didn't want to upset the apple cart by even hinting at the other half of what he was thinking: that once he had Neal out of here, they could start working on a plan to make sure that justice would indeed happen on behalf of Neal and his lab-siblings and all those other long-ago babies who'd never even had a chance.
But maybe Neal still retained a vestige of his augmented abilities, or maybe there were times when it wasn't necessary to have telepathic powers to read someone's mind. Neal flashed Peter a smile that was unexpectedly genuine and sweet. "Where do I sign?"
***
In the end, it turned out that he'd been wildly optimistic. Getting Neal released into his custody took weeks ... weeks during which he was on tenterhooks, worried that a last governmental loophole would snatch Neal out of his grasp and into the depths of a cover-up from which it would never be possible to retrieve him.
And then there was the inevitable worry about why he was spending so much time and effort trying to free a mind-reading felon who would probably head for the hills, GPS anklet or not, the minute he got out. Peter spent a lot of sleepless nights staring at the ceiling and wondering if Neal had planted a suggestion in his mind, which had then taken root and grown ... Neal could easily have done it during the healing, and maybe the healing itself was all part of Neal's master plan ...
But, no; if getting locked up was part of Neal's plan to be freed again on someone else's terms, then it was an incredibly stupid plan, especially considering that he could have been free if he'd only taken off rather than sticking around to keep a particularly careless FBI agent from bleeding to death. And Neal's apprehension and surprise had seemed genuine. No, Peter didn't think Neal was playing him, at least not in that way.
It was early autumn when they cleared the final hurdles and he picked up Neal at the prison. "Show me your ankle," he said, and Neal rolled his eyes and showed it to him.
Neal looked a little better than he had before, but only a little; he was still pale, his eyes smudged with blue shadows. Peter had meant to greet him with a firm talking-to and a set of ground rules -- get this whole affair off on the right foot -- but instead he asked as Neal got into the passenger seat, "That thing still giving you headaches?"
"Only on days ending in Y." Peter's expression must have been concerned, because Neal brushed it off. "It's getting better. I only get the bad migraines every once in a while." He drummed his fingers on the dashboard. "So this is for four years."
"Yeah." That had been as far as they'd managed to plea-bargain down.
"When I get the anklet off, do I get this thing on my head off, too? Are they really going to let me just walk around?"
"I don't know," Peter said. "Look, let's take it one day at a time here, okay? We're way out on a limb as it is. First let's prove this can work; then we'll start taking baby steps the rest of the way." He looked at Neal more closely, at Neal's obvious exhaustion and pain, and said carefully, "You told me once ... that you didn't know what it would be like not to -- be able to hear things like you do. That you thought the silence might be hard to take."
Neal heaved a sigh. Peter could see him trying to decide how much to tell him.
"Look, Neal, this isn't a trap. I'm not trying to find a reason to put you back in. You're out; that's done. I just want to know what I'll be needing to deal with. If going to a doctor would help --"
"It won't," Neal said. "You asked if it was hard to take? It is. Mostly at night." He gave a sharp, bitter laugh. "There were a lot of times, you know, when I wished I was like everyone else. Hard to believe, huh? So, be careful what you wish for, I guess."
After a moment Peter said slowly, "It's not impossible that we might be able to have the blocking thing taken off sometimes, for some of your undercover missions." Neal gave him a hard look that he couldn't decipher. "I haven't discussed it with anyone, but it's not impossible ... Okay, what's the matter with you?"
Neal's hand hovered over the door handle. They were driving at about 30 mph -- he wouldn't jump ... would he?
"Neal, come on. Talk to me."
"Just ... I finally figured out your angle." Neal laughed again, shook his head. "I might've known. You FBI guys want your own pet telepath. For awhile I thought -- yeah, no, I don't know what I thought."
Peter wrenched the steering wheel, skidding across two lanes of traffic (to the sound of honking horns) and fetching up in a McDonald's parking lot. Neal was clutching the dashboard, wide-eyed.
"Jeez, Peter! Do you always drive like that?" Neal pried his white-knuckled fingers off the dashboard. "I might have been safer in a cell with the spooks ..."
Peter didn't say anything, and Neal gave a nervous little laugh. "You're starting to worry me here, Peter. I'd like to point out that I'm harmless, de-psychified and unarmed --"
"I'm not worried about you," Peter said. It came out more harshly than he'd intended. "I mean, not in that way. Neal ..." He turned, hooking an arm over the back of the seat so that he could confront Neal face-to-face. "You're nobody's pet telepath. Not mine, and not the FBI's. You're never going to be anybody's pet telepath if I have anything to say about it."
"So you say," Neal said, and his eyes kept darting away, refusing to meet Peter's.
"I do say. And I mean it. Is it really that foreign to you," Peter said, almost plaintively, "that someone might want to do something for you out of nothing other than concern for your welfare?"
From the look on Neal's face, it really, truly was.
Peter sighed and pulled back out into traffic, more carefully this time.
After they'd driven for awhile longer, he said, "The FBI is paying for housing for you, but they're not going to shell out for more than it would have cost to house you in prison. Which pretty much puts you at the bottom end of the New York housing market."
"Yay," Neal murmured.
"Look upon this as a temporary living situation. I'll help you look for something better. We might even be able to get the FBI to cough up a stipend if you can prove that having you around is an asset. And," Peter added, "on the bright side, you don't have anything to steal at the moment, so that won't be a problem."
"Not inspiring confidence here, Peter."
"Hey, look, I'd offer you a spare bedroom at my place, except that it's a clear and blatant ethics violation. But Diana knows a few people, and Jones might have a friend who's looking for a roommate." Peter tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. "On the other hand, there's no reg I know of that says I can't feed you before I send you over there. How about it? El's making her famous meatloaf. That'll perk you up if anything can. El's my wife, by the way."
"I know your wife's name, Peter. I did my research on you, too. And, uh, I hate to say this, but meatloaf is not exactly the kind of thing I normally --"
"You could be eating prison food. You'll eat my wife's meatloaf and you'll like it."
El had been dying to meet Neal. Peter decided not to mention that part; no point in giving Neal ammunition. He felt a quiver of conscience at taking the mind-reading con artist to meet his wife -- but, no, Neal was ... what would the word be? "Tamed" had entirely the wrong connotations, and he wasn't reformed. Dampened, Peter thought; that was certainly how Neal looked, kind of damp and wilted.
He couldn't help noting the contrast between this wilted, unhappy Neal, and the playful, energized, devil-may-care Neal that he'd chased for nearly three years. Neal's life had been dangerous and unethical and it had almost gotten him killed any number of times. But it had made him ... alive. And, Peter thought, it was up to him now to prove to Neal that a life on the wrong side of the law, a life of stealing other people's possessions and stealing their thoughts, wasn't the only thing that could fulfill him. What could he say that would get through Neal's thick skull, impress on him that there were other ways to go, that the life he'd known wasn't the only life he could have?
"When I was growing up," Peter found himself saying, "I knew exactly what I wanted to be. Know what that was?"
Neal, slouched in the passenger's seat with his head resting in his palm, rolled his eyes in Peter's direction. "A giant pain in the ass of the criminal element in this town?"
"I wanted to be a major league baseball star," Peter said, and he had the satisfaction of getting a mildly surprised look from Neal. "Growing up, baseball was my whole world. Well, that and math. I was good at it, and I knew I was good at it."
"That's very you," Neal murmured, without (much) rancor. "So you turned out not to be as good at it as you thought you were, and the point is?"
"I was drafted by the Twins right out of college," Peter said, and this time the look was not just surprised, but long. Measuring. Wondering where he was going. He waited, and then went on, "And then I blew out my shoulder in spring training. Had surgery. Went back. I could have gone on. But if I had, I would've destroyed my shoulder for good. I could have had a few months on the pitcher's mound. Maybe even a few years. And that would have been it; I'd have been in pain for the rest of my life, and no FBI career, that's for sure."
It was funny that the memory still hurt after all these years. And he couldn't even say why. He didn't tell El until years after they were married. El didn't care about baseball; she cared about him. What did he think, that she'd kick him out of bed if she knew he'd turned down the possibility of a short, glorious career in the spotlight for a life of dangerous work catching bad guys for the U.S. government? Of course not; she'd been as sympathetic as she knew how to be. Peter knew it hadn't changed his image in her eyes one iota. But that wasn't really the point; the point was that El didn't understand, she couldn't understand. You couldn't know unless you'd been there, holding one dream in your hands and giving it up because it cost more than you were willing to give.
He could have gone his whole life without telling Neal this.
But he had to, because of that "wilted houseplant that hasn't been watered in a month" droop to Neal's demeanor.
"Life is cruel. It's not perfect. Stuff happens," Peter said. The words felt clumsy in his mouth; this was El's area, not his, this whole talking-about-feelings thing. But El wasn't here, and anyway ... this was something that El couldn't really help with, because as far as he knew, she'd never known that feeling -- when your whole world falls down around your ears, when the future you've planned for so long turns black and you can't see where the road is going, or if there is a road at all. She might want to help, but she couldn't really know.
"You make plans and they blow up in your face. And then you go on. You find something else that gets you up in the morning. You have to do that, or you just ... stop."
"The FBI," Neal said, on the exhale of a sigh. "That's what it was for you."
"The FBI," Peter agreed.
He drove. There was a long silence between them, measured in the flickering of the lines on the road. Then Peter said, "But it can also be little things in the meantime. There was a while there when I had no idea what I was going to be. Who I even was, if I wasn't Peter Burke, baseball star. But there was still Mama Burke's award-winning cherry pie, or a cold beer with the old man on a hot summer night. Reruns of Rockford Files. The satisfaction you feel when you finish a hard crossword puzzle in ink."
"Or Elizabeth Burke's meatloaf," Neal said.
"That too."
"You are so ..." Neal trailed off, on the verge of whatever he'd been about to say, and shook his head. "Never mind. So you, I guess."
He went silent, gazing out the window, but Peter could tell that he was less wound-up than he had been a few minutes ago.
It was up to him, Peter thought, to show Neal that there was more to life than screwing people over before they screwed you. More to society than just a bunch of people who wanted to use and hurt him. Neal was smart, and compassionate, and Peter really believed that the kid could be more than what he'd been so far -- a victim, and then a thief.
He caught himself wishing that Neal could still read minds, if only for a moment. It would be so much easier to prove his sincerity that way. As it was, though, he'd simply have to show Neal the old-fashioned way.
Peter had always been a believer in the old saying that actions speak louder than words.
And maybe actions spoke louder than thoughts, too. Sometimes.
~