Fic: Remnants Of A Voice And Smile

[s2309]

Title: Remnants Of A Voice And Smile
Characters (Pairings): Elizabeth Burke, Mozzie, Sara Ellis, Peter Burke, Neal Caffrey (background Peter/El and Neal/Sara)
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2431
Beta Credit: percygranger, thank you so much!! ^^ I fiddled with a few things after she went over it, so that's all on me C:
Spoilers: S06E06 (Au Revoir)
Content Notes: Grief. Run on sentences.
Disclaimer: White Collar is Jeff Eastin's brainchild. Not mine.
Summary: After the funeral, everyone tries to heal.
Author's Note: Title from Say Uncle by Vienna Teng. Originally written for elrhiarhodan's promptfest, for her prompt, 'Hiding Out By Day'. Also, I'm still angry at Neal. I have no apologies.
For more finale tags, click here.

By some consensus that was reached when she wasn't listening, everyone gathers in their living room.

Elizabeth doesn't want them there, doesn't want anyone but Peter, but Diana's sprawled out on their armchair, with Theo nestled in the crook of her arm, and Moz is standing against the bookshelf, watching over everyone with eyes just short of dry, and Alex may or may not be skulking in a corner, conveniently body blocked by two agents who are milling about, and June is seated on one half of a sofa, sitting too stiffly, she's holding herself together better than most people, but anyone could see her pain, and Lauren is hovering awkwardly next to a sofa, looking very out of place but there, and Jones, surprisingly gentle Jones, is guiding Peter around carefully without looking like he is, it's a masterful job (she doesn't think of where he may have learned it from, she can't), and Peter isn't the only broken person in the room. The room is full of people who cared for Neal, even if just a little.

But the air is too damned heavy in here, even the hushed whispers are scarce, and Neal's ghost is hanging over them, not a gentle reminder in a whisper of dust, but air weighed down by humidity, their collection of fruit flies will drown and die if this goes on, and she's grown rather fond of those pesky creatures. Or maybe, right now, anything's better than death.

So she clears her throat, draws eyes to herself, and starts talking, even though the silence is uncomfortably heavy just then. "I met Neal a few days after he'd been released. He showed up on our doorstep, smiled at me - I'm sure you know the smile -" and at last, the air lightens a little, a few people crack smiles, she hears at least two chuckles, "and asked me not to mind the blinking red light on his ankle, and if I'd please let him in because there'd been a development in a case."

She can tell that she struck the perfect tone, because Neal's receded now, to the post of gentle reminder, and she didn't want all these people here but now the air's more breathable and her heart feels lighter and maybe she wouldn't have felt it without them.

Peter shakes himself free of Jones, drapes an arm around her waist, kisses her, just next to her ear, she can feel exactly how chapped his lips are, he hasn't been taking care of himself, none of them have. He whispers, softly, "I'll be upstairs, okay?" and she turns to look at him, look into her eyes, before she nods. She has to see, for some reason, has to know exactly how he's feeling, has to let him know how she's feeling, their connection feels absurdly fragile just then. He looks tired, and worn out, and nowhere near capable of standing and listening to people talk about a man he loved, a man who just died, so she nods, and kisses his cheek, and, when he's halfway up the stairs and can't see, she gestures to Moz, Follow. Moz won't mind in the least. And she doesn't want Peter to be alone.

Moz moves slowly, more slowly than she's come to expect from him, god damn you, Neal, she can't help but think when she sees Moz, whenever she looks at anyone in this room, why did he have to make so many friends if he was going to die so soon? He breaks hearts everywhere he goes, and she'd think he didn't understand the destruction he’d left in his wake if she'd never gotten a glimpse at the bruises he carried, and when he was alive, it was some small contentment to know that he hurt, too, but now he's gone and there is so much pain here and it's all so unfair, in some way that she's justified in her head. Unfair and cruel and not on.

Diana shifts on the sofa, adjusts a sleeping Theo, and says, deadpan, "He flirted with me. Relentlessly. On the first day," and something about what she said and the way she said it sets off a round of light chuckles.

El feels lighter, she does, but she's still so angry at Neal, she doesn’t think it’ll go away that soon or that easily, a few deceptively easy laughs don’t make up for all this pain. But she's done her part. Now she just lets the conversation flow around her and pretends that it actually does something to soothe this bone-deep pain she’s feeling.

-:-

Moz trudges up the stairs at his own leisurely pace. If it wasn't for Elizabeth, he'd be gone already, but he owes her, and he cares about her, so he sticks around, for a little while.

Feelings are oddly blunted, ever since the morgue (he can't, he doesn't think Neal's name, he just did), and somehow, that wearies him even more. But he manages to traverse the stairs (with no less effort than it would take to scale Everest), if only because it carries him out of earshot of the conversation below.

Peter is ridiculously easy to find. Moz checks the bedroom, finds him in the bedroom. But how he finds him...

Peter's curled up into just one corner of his bed, half-buried under a thick comforter. Only his eyes and a few tufts of hair are peeking out. He looks like a child. A tiny, frightened child who's seen worse nightmares than should be legal.

"I cou- I couldn't," Peter whispers between what sound like half choked sobs, "couldn't stay there and listen to them talk about... him. I don't... I'm not ready. I'm not ready to try to move on," and then he shudders and hides his eyes in the comforter too (comforter, the name feels oddly crude,vile, dirty, in that moment, precious little of its job it's doing in that moment), and Moz really doesn't have an option but to sit next to the mass of blanket and Peter, and rest a hand on what feels like a shoulder, but may also be a thigh, and try to wrap his head around the fact that watching Peter like this is cutting him worse than the memory of Neal's body (oh god, it's his turn to shudder) in that morgue, mostly because that first image has taken on an air of myth, of unreality, but Peter's right here, and he's right here, and it hurts too damn much, really, too damn much to ever be fair in any equation, and he may have let out a couple of sobs, but he'll never admit to it.

Eventually, he stretches out along one half of the bed, with Peter at his feet (he's short, there's more than enough room for Peter), takes off his glasses, interlocks his fingers and rests his hands on his chest, and just stays there, with someone who understands, who knows what it feels like.

-:-

She spent too much time at his marker. She hadn't meant to, but she saw his name, Neal George Caffrey, an inscription in concrete, just like so many others around his, that's not how he was meant to go, Sara can't help but think, Neal can't have been reduced to something as ordinary as that.

And she lingered, for how long she doesn't know, heels gradually sinking deeper into the ground, watching the marker not change, watching it not morph itself into something else, and all this means that she's almost literally falling out of a cab on DeKalb avenue, tossing a few notes she didn't even look at onto the front seat before she did (she's decently sure that they were all dollars, and even more certain that there was at least one hundred note, given how fast he sped away), in heels that are killing her feet, because, again, she spent too long at that stupid marker and now her mascara is running too. Damn it all.

She somehow stumbles her way to the top of the stairs, too fast, as if that can make up for the time she lost, and maybe her mascara isn't as bad as she thinks it is, because the person who opens the door for her (Lauren, her name is Lauren, she’s from Peter’s office) doesn’t give her the overly concerned look. Or maybe Lauren's not the type to do so.

"Am I too late?" she asks as she walks in, tugging at her dress uncomfortably for what has to be the first time in her life, god, she's a mess. Elizabeth shakes her head warmly, gestures to an empty patch of sofa, and says kindly, "We were just nabbing the culprit of a rash of stapler heists from a year ago," and it takes Sara a full minute to think of Neal, oh god, Neal. Her face must have given something away, because El suddenly looks like she understands everything ever, and when she tries to make some feeble excuse about needing to use the bathroom, El nods knowingly and says, "Peter and Moz are upstairs." She casts a longing look in that direction. Maybe she wants to be there too. But even just after a funeral, even at a memorial, someone has to play hostess, and El's probably the only one of them strong enough to do that. El or June. For anyone else, absolutely anyone else, Sara would have been on that list too. So many people would have been on that list too. There aren’t many people who seem to have a dedicated hard line to everyone’s hearts. That was just… him.

She stumbles up the stairs gracelessly (she wants her usual confidence back, what the hell is this jagged crack down the centre of her heart doing to the rest of her that she can't even walk from place to place normally?) and finds her way to the room where Peter and Moz are hiding out. Neither of them remarks on her appearance, or her bearing, which she silently thanks them for as she moves across the room to shut the curtains.

"Thank you," Mozzie murmurs.

"It's not a problem. I didn't know you were here till Elizabeth told me, and I didn't think I'd have to hide, but I heard something about stapler heists - sorry, sorry," she says quickly as Mozzie flinches and the mass of comforter that must be Peter shudders, "- and I don't think I would have lasted more than a minute down there-"

"Shhhhh," Mozzie says, calmly, too calmly, over her weak, desperate attempt at a laugh.

"I-"

"Calm down." He pats the free half of the bed. She sits, finally takes her heels off, and lies down on the bed, and feels... safe. Suddenly, out of nowhere, this bizarre sense of calm overtakes her, and she mouths a surprised "Oh," which Mozzie only responds to with a serene nod.

She isn't even hidden under a blanket, but somehow, here, surrounded by quiet breathing and kindred spirits, she feels like she's in some underground cavern, cool and safe.

She wasn't expecting that.

-:-

Peter uncurls carefully - he knows Moz is somewhere near him, and he heard Sara's voice a little while back, and he doesn't want to bump into anyone. He ignores his mussed up hair and finds his bed occupied by Sara and Moz instead of himself and El. It's an odd picture, not made any more realistic by the fact that neither of them really appears conscious of where they are.

He shifts awkwardly. His back hurts, and he really wants to lie on his side of the bed, but Sara's there.

"Sara," he says, in a voice that's shakier and softer than he thought it'd be, "do you mind shifting to the middle of the bed?"

"Yes," she says, not sharply, calmly, like she just granted him a wish. Except that she didn't.

"Mozzie," he tries, but Moz is already shaking his head.

He grumbles in the back of his throat and shifts to the middle himself, tries and fails to rest his head comfortably in the valley of two otherwise comfortable pillows, shifts miserably, they shouldn't even be allowed to do that, this is his bed-

-and then he bursts out laughing. Loud enough to draw angry glares from both sides of the bed, but he doesn't really care, he feels so light, "Neal's dead," he chokes out between gales of laughter, the words are surprisingly easy, "and I'm fighting you over bed space." He keeps laughing, he feels almost hysterical, he shouldn't be this happy, it makes no sense, but this is laughter not happiness, and the heartbreak's still all there, but he can feel that this is a moment he's going to remember for a long time now, count on for an occasional smile, he should make the most of it -

- and Sara joins in. Delighted peals of laughter, the loud, ringing kind, he didn't think she had it in her. Even Moz contributes a reluctant chuckle or two. Elizabeth appears at the doorway, looking concerned, the sound of heels on stairs from a little while ago suddenly makes sense, and he'd try to explain it again, but he's just shaking his head and laughing, the comforter lazily curled around him, and El smiles from the doorway, more brilliantly than he thought she would for a long time, and they're going to be okay. They're going to be okay.

-:-

Neal wakes up gasping, he could swear on anything he holds dear that just moments ago, he was surrounded by bodies, Peter, Moz, Sara, Elizabeth, he thinks he saw Hughes too, he doesn't know, but there were so many, and all he has in his hands are silk sheets.

I want to go... I want to... I want... I... he can't remember, Riverside Drive, DeKalb Avenue, his old apartment with Kate, one of Mozzie's warehouses? He doesn't know, but it's stopped up all his breaths, and he needs to get something out.

"Home," he chokes out, finally, "I want to go home," and oh, dear god, he's sobbing, but he shouldn't be, he's lying in a bed that he made, from the springs to the foam to the fabric, and he scattered thorns in it himself, that was all him.

He clutches a pillow to his chest and pretends it's someone, anyone, just as long as he doesn't have to be alone here. But he is, but he is, but he is.

Comments

[sherylyn]

And yeah... that whole "could have been worse" is just... worse! LOL!! There have been several series whose finales were just... blech, to put it mildly, even ones that I didn't care about all that much (like "Seinfeld;" I've never liked it all that much, but I saw the finale, and it was the dumbest thing EVER, IMO), and others that I really did like (like "Will & Grace" and "How I Met Your Mother") where I really enjoyed the show, and realllllly couldn't stand at least a good chunk of the finale -- mostly ones where things didn't turn out well for the characters and/or they upended things they'd been establishing for the whole series and then "ha ha, now we're changing it!" in the finale :-P "Glee" was never a "great" show, in a lot of ways -- it always had aspects where I just wanted to smack someone, but part of that was in its trying to balance the insane comedy parts with the drama. But when it ended? It stuck true to the best parts and the best aspects of the characters and what the fans loved and it felt finished but yet hopeful and it kept all those warm feelings in tact. "Friends" did it even better; it's still one of my favorite series' finales ever. And I think WC aimed for *some* of those things ("cappucino in the clouds", etc.), but so much else just ... didn't. I'm glad (I think?) they left some things open for interpretation, but to have put us through that wringer just to do it? ... NOPE. I've never watched "Grey's Anatomy," but the reactions I see repeatedly from my friends who do watch it makes me sorta glad I don't! LOL!! From what I have seen of how it's gone, though, I think you're probably right about it just blowing up the whole thing! I guess that's another of those "at least it didn't..." aspects to WC's finale: I suppose you can say that one thing it "accomplished" was in making sure people would still be talking about it for a long time after it aired!! :-PAnd yeah... that whole "could have been worse" is just... worse! LOL!! There have been several series whose finales were just... blech, to put it mildly, even ones that I didn't care about all that much (like "Seinfeld;" I've never liked it all that much, but I saw the finale, and it was the dumbest thing EVER, IMO), and others that I really did like (like "Will & Grace" and "How I Met Your Mother") where I really enjoyed the show, and realllllly couldn't stand at least a good chunk of the finale -- mostly ones where things didn't turn out well for the characters and/or they upended things they'd been establishing for the whole series and then "ha ha, now we're changing it!" in the finale :-P "Glee" was never a "great" show, in a lot of ways -- it always had aspects where I just wanted to smack someone, but part of that was in its trying to balance the insane comedy parts with the drama. But when it ended? It stuck true to the best parts and the best aspects of the characters and what the fans loved and it felt finished but yet hopeful and it kept all those warm feelings in tact. "Friends" did it even better; it's still one of my favorite series' finales ever. And I think WC aimed for *some* of those things ("cappucino in the clouds", etc.), but so much else just ... didn't. I'm glad (I think?) they left some things open for interpretation, but to have put us through that wringer just to do it? ... NOPE. I've never watched "Grey's Anatomy," but the reactions I see repeatedly from my friends who do watch it makes me sorta glad I don't! LOL!! From what I have seen of how it's gone, though, I think you're probably right about it just blowing up the whole thing! I guess that's another of those "at least it didn't..." aspects to WC's finale: I suppose you can say that one thing it "accomplished" was in making sure people would still be talking about it for a long time after it aired!! :-P

[sapphire2309]

Neal was his front man, after all. And, I mean, I'm sure Mozzie's more than capable of pulling off those sophisticated heists, but, idk, maybe he needs a partner to dream them with? Like, even when he conned Eva, he wasn't really into it till he saw her and they hit it off. And after Neal dying like that, I don't think Moz would want any random partner to replace him with. Maybe after he finds out that Neal's alive, he'll go big again, feel more comfortable partner-hunting. Or maybe he decides to stick to the cards. Thing about Moz is, he could go either way. (Or maybe he bumps into Sally again... :D)

OMG, YES. Neal cares, SO MUCH. Even when he's conning Amy, I think? The girl with the arc similar to Rebecca's, except she slapped him. He really cares. He buys his own cons. I really don't know if that's naive or stupid or just so perfectly, adorably Neal.

He didn't forge a bus pass at age 7, he broke into school at age 7, to change the clocks. (second grade). But that's bad enough. (An undetermined time later, he rerouted the school bus to pass by his house. Then, he forged himself a city bus pass. I remember too damn much about this ridiculously adorable show.)

And I can completely imagine him pretty much being the responsible person out of him and his mom. Despite also being a kid, and not really knowing how to be responsible properly. Ow, my heart's starting to break.

I don't know, maybe he didn't tell Ellen, or she found out after the fact? Given the amount of responsibility this little kid's taken on all by himself, I don't really see him being able to/knowing how to talk about it.

They kinda did fail this child.

(I have a hypothetical plan to tell Neal's mother's story someday, and not vilify her but not make her innocent in all this either. It's going to be difficult. If I ever do it.)

Agreed. He created great characters, and because of that, I still haven't changed my standard disclaimer, which contains his name, even though I want to. If only to add his middle name ;)

I don't have plans to buy the DVDs soon, but eventually, I want to own the whole set, yes.

Yes. Yes. Yes to all of it. Neal's only problem may just be that he feels too much, too readily. And despite all his masks, I don't think he really knows how to protect himself.

Yet (like we said), the thing he trusts least, in so many ways, is that others love him that same way. *headdesk* I think it's why he keeps trying to con them, at least sometimes. Oh, man. OH, MAN. Fuck. This is too accurate to handle.

The thing about the con is it doesn't protect him. Even when he tried to con Kate over Copenhagen, it was more of not knowing how she'd react, not being able to deal with that, and putting it off for as long as possible. Neal has a very understandable aversion to the truth.

That's a thing I didn't consider. Yeah, absolutely, Neal may not be able to deal with the idea of a new handler. The completely understandable lack of emotional maturity coming into play, again. Oh, Neal. *cuddles him*

I think, in some way, Neal may be used to dealing with the really massive problems by himself. I mean, obviously, he's worked with Mozzie a lot over things like Fowler and Adler. But given the conversation we've just had over his childhood, it makes sense that he wouldn't know how to ask for help over a problem that clearly has a lot of emotional facets for him.

I don't think he's ever had a real 'impulse control' problem. I mean, he steals things on a whim, yes, but he's never been caught doing it. He's careful, he thinks things through (and yes, I see the glaring contradiction, but it's somehow less of a contradiction because of the context? IDK. Tell me what you think!). Even in canon, he was only caught because he loved Kate, and he showed his face that day at the bank.

Yeah. I'm amazing at thinking up worst case scenarios :P :D

I want happy fuzzy finales. I have never had one of those. Is it weird that I'm a little jealous of you?

We're talking about it, right now, even months after the fact. But that doesn't indicate all good things. It just says that the finale just made me really, really angry and bitter.

[sherylyn]

Absolutely. Neal was his front man, and also the person Mozzie cares about most, and that had to have made everything seem a bit more ... uninteresting, to put it mildly, when it came to cons. And since Neal *did* make sure he had money, it's not as if he had to pull in big stakes, either. Gah.

I think, to at least an extent, Neal does buy his own cons, partly in relation to that whole "protecting himself" thing again. It's not that it necessarily *actually* protects him/his feelings, but if things *do* go badly, at least he can tell himself it was part of the con. Now, whether or not he can always get himself to believe/feel that is another question ;-) I'm thinking no, but I think he'd think it at least gives him the option of trying not to hurt about it. :-P

Ah, you're right. He might've been a bit older by the time he got to forging the bus pass, but from the way Ellen told it, I got the feeling that all that happened in pretty close order. Setting the clocks ahead didn't work, re-routing the school bus only worked for a couple weeks, so the next step was forging the city bus pass. He *might* have passed another birthday by then, but regardless, he was still way too young to be having to take that on :-P And yeah, maybe Ellen didn't know at the time, but geez... it still just makes me sick to think of everything Neal learned to "get around" just b/c the adults who were supposed to be taking care of him just flat *didn't* do their jobs, for whatever reason.

I don't think of Neal's mom as a horrible person; I know all too well how depression, etc., can affect people, and I wouldn't have been a bit surprised if that wasn't at least part of why she wasn't doing everything she "should" have been doing for him. But it also still just breaks my heart to imagine this gifted, brilliant child and what all he might have done with his life if he hadn't basically "had" to learn to lie and manipulate and con everything and everyone about everything in order to survive :-P (Although he's welcome to come forge me a doctorate any time so I can say I'm DONE! LOL!!)

I totally agree about Kate and Copenhagen, etc. I think Neal, in a sense, fears the truth, b/c that leaves him nothing to hide behind. If he's conning, even a teeny bit (by his definitions *grin*), it means he can hide behind it if he needs to. It just... gah. To me, it goes right back to the whole thing w/taking responsibility for stuff when he was a kid -- "pretend", somehow, that things are different than they really are, and keep on "pretending" until it happens the way you want it to.

I agree about the "impulse control" -- but that's what Mozzie and Peter kept accusing him of doing ;-) But yeah, even when he did things like taking the portrait b/c he didn't like the guy from the museum, he still thought through *how* to do it, etc. He may have had the impulse to take it vs. reporting it to Peter or whatever, but he still thought through aspects of how to do it without getting caught (well, mostly ;-)).

No, that's not weird at all, to me, but that's two good ones I can think of out of quite a few that I wasn't happy with at *all*, so... yeah, apparently, they don't happen all that often! :-P

It bugged the crap out of me, too, but I've somewhat softened(sorta?) since it happened to where I'm just like, "okay, that's done, they had their say; now let's fix it" more than anything else :-P

[sapphire2309]

Neal gave Moz a ticket to Easy Street, and Moz didn't take it. All these boys are just shattering my heart.

Oh, man. Neal really needs to learn how to properly take care of himself. Or have someone teach him, properly this time.

I kinda got the feeling that this was over many years. IDK why. It could be either, I suppose. Doesn't change how wrong it is, and how much it hurts, though :/

And Moz was wrong. Talent like Neal's is made, not born. *sads*

So much anger, omfg. I'm mad at JE for how he treated Kate, at everyone ever for Neal's childhood, and at JE again for killing off Rachel, for what he made Neal do in the finale, and for that comment. I can't handle all this rage.

Me too. I've been there. But it's terrible that Neal suffered as a result. In short, what you said.

I really want Neal to grow up and be okay.

That's what everyone accuses him of. But it's not quite an exact fit for what he does. Though, to be fair, the macuahuitl in S5 did feel very, very impulsive.

I have a plan to fix it C: If only I could stop talking about it and start writing. I may be able to do something on the 13th, though :D The next instalment, maybe :D

[sherylyn]

I know, I know... As my niece says it: THE *FEELS* of the whole thing just just sorta mind-blowing, really, b/c there's just so *much* to feel about!!

To me, that whole "do it properly this time" thing is what is a large part of the reason why he so *needs* Peter and El in his life. They let him see, close-up and personal (so to speak) what it's like to be in a *real* family where people take care of each other, etc. He didn't get to grow up in one, really, but that doesn't mean he can't be an adopted sibling, if nothing else ;-) (Since Peter insists he's more like a big brother ;-))

I realllly hope you get to write some soon. That's selfish on my part, but it's also just a way to process things, too. I wrote up a scene between Peter and Neal (post-finale) that just was eating my brain. It's not anything close to complete, but I just had to get it "outside" instead of "only" inside my brain. I'm hoping maybe my brain will be able to take a break after I finish this school stuff this week and just unwind with it all for a while!

[sapphire2309]

OMG, yes, exactly. There's just so much.

That's so true. Neal could definitely learn by example. And I'm waffling like this because otherwise I'll give away story details :P

Well, I've been researching long-stay permits for France in my free time. Now all I have to do is find a suitable part of Paris for Neal to live in and find him an apartment there. So I think I might get some fic done as soon as these next few exams are over :D

I want to bring Neal back to NY soon, because really, that's when he has the most chance to grow. I mean, I still need to show him in Paris because that's an important chapter, but a lot more happens after everyone knows that he's alive.

[sherylyn]

I totally understand not giving away too much -- no worries at *all*. But yes, there's just so, so much, and such *rich* scenarios to mine for fic and... yeaahhh... TONS to work with!!

Oooh, I love how you're doing that. And yes, there's an important bit to being in Paris for a while, too. He needs that time alone, as hard as it might be initially. One teeny thing that JE said on the S6 DVD that I actually liked was that so much of what they did was about Neal finding out who *he* was. And (which there's obviously a ton that he says that I'd like to forget!) I actually kinda agree with him on that -- letting Neal figure out he's not "just" a conman/ex-con, not "just" his father's son, or Moz's partner or Peter's, even. And maybe that time on his own will help him with that, too, so that he's dealt with some of that before he comes back "home" again :-)

[sapphire2309]

There's also the fact that I'm not entirely decided on what's going to happen, heh. At this rate, I'm going to have AUs of my AU.

Exactly. Figuring out who he is when he doesn't have to walk around with 'con' tattooed on his forehead, unless he chooses to.

[sherylyn]

LOL OH well, even best-selling authors don't have all the details hammered out before while they're writing ;-)

I absolutely agree. And this, too, will help him figure out about going straight (or *how* "straight" ;-)) *he* wants to be, not b/c of Peter or Mozzie or anyone else, really.

[sapphire2309]

True C: So true.

Okay, I'm going to stop talking about it and start writing now :)

[sherylyn]

Hee!! I'll never complain about that!!