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magibrainTitle: Three Times Neal Ran (and one time he was found) – 4. Escalation
Index Post: [Fic][White Collar] Three Times Neal Ran (and one time he was found) – Index
There's a long period of time when he's experiencing sound and shapes and colors and movement, but the first thing he knows (can understand, can recognize) is the feel of wet pavement under his cheekbone. He blinks – there's water in his eyelashes – and pushes himself up, but gingerly. His chest feels like someone's put sandpaper between all his muscles and his bones.
He gets upright enough to put his head in his hands.
There's a car beside him, its front tire down low like a face bent to see if he's okay. He's pretty sure he's not, but it's nice of something to care.
Neal puts his hand out to the car's body. His reflection is cloudy and distorted; the street is dotted with cars, all still and silent for the night, or possibly down for the count. There's an air of abandonment hanging over this place.
Probably not a place he wants to be.
He stands up. Squints into the soggy darkness. Mutters, "It'd be too much to ask for these streets to have signs, wouldn't it?"
Behind him, the long anonymous wall of a building is holding down the sidewalk. Neal needs to move, but he doesn't know what he's moving toward. He has a feeling he's not going to get there.
He has the disconcerting feeling that, from a car tucked somewhere in his memory, his reflection has peeled itself from the glass and is creeping after him.
"Work it through," he says, and his voice hits the wall, slithers off somewhere in the direction of a fire escape. "Wherever I am, it's right here." I'm sick, I'm going crazy, something is wrong with me. "What's going to be worse, staying out here and hoping I get better, or going to a hospital and finding out I'm headed back to prison?"
There's a third option. Maybe. Maybe he should find Mozzie. If he's run away and it's all gone epically wrong, finding Peter means finding jail, but Mozzie, he can trust. He's always been able to trust Mozzie. Mozzie's always trusted him.
Something jams into the back of his mind like a shard of hourglass and grit, and he amends that: mostly always. The thought doesn't introduce itself, though, so he's not sure where it's come from.
There's movement on the street.
Without thinking, he's running; down the side of the building, down to an alley, the world churning around him so by the time he turns the corner he's back on his knees again, stomach assaulting his lungs. There's a siren keening in the distance, like an ambulance with his name on it.
The fear is a clue, probably.
It'd be so much easier if he could just think.
The world is grey at the edges, and he digs his fingertips against the concrete. The sky is a jumble of cloud and light pollution, all the streetlights and headlights and lit-up signs and lonely lamps in windows smothered down by the oppressive rain. That means he's not quite nowhere; he's still somewhere enough that even on a clear night he'd never see the stars.
If it's Manhattan he's seeing reflected against the rain, that's as good a place to find Mozzie as any.
(Go into the light.) If it's Manhattan he's running from, it'd be a really bad idea.
And besides. And besides–
He turns away, looks back over the streets swimming in rain. Wonders how he'd retrace his steps, even if he wanted to. Wonders if he wants to. Wonders if he's meant to. What's the use of freedom if you don't keep yourself free?
What's the use of freedom if it's bought.
Neal turns his back on the city lights.
Mozzie likes to quote Objectivists and Darwinists, says that the strong and the clever survive, says that altruism is trumped by self-interest. Mozzie isn't great at following his own philosophy. Neal is kinda worse.
Still not knowing where he's going, he angles himself back into the dark and the rain.
Like a metaphor, the clouds are rolling in.
Neal doesn't pause to appreciate the sky's theatrics. He ducks in through the villa's doorway, tucking the hastily-grabbed flyer against him like it's a work of art he needs to shield from the rain. "Mozzie!"
The villa is large; larger than it needs to be for two bachelors to get lost in. It's unabashedly ostentatious, but what else are you supposed to do when you have more money than you know how to spend? For a moment, though, Neal's not sure what he'll do if Mozzie has stepped out for a moment. He feels like if he has to search through the place, by the time he's finished on the upper balconies the sky will have cracked open, and the wolf will be at the door.
For a certain value of "wolf", anyway.
"Mozzie!"
Fortunately for him, though, Mozzie meets him in the sitting gallery spread out at the base of the stairs. He's got paint on his fingertips and a glass in hand, and shoots Neal a quizzical look as he comes around the corner from the kitchen. "You sound alarmed, mon frere."
"Someone's chased us here," Neal says, planting the flyer on a table with the flat of his hand.
"Well, of course you're being chased," Mozzie says, giving the flyer a disinterested glance. "You're always being chased. Who is it now? FBI? NSA? KGB? IAU?"
"I–" Neal ignores the obvious question. With Mozzie, the obvious question is usually the one that gets you the least useful information. "Well, I'm guessing it's the FBI. The point is–"
"Yes, but are you certain it's the FBI?" Mozzie asks. He sets down his drink. He picks up the flyer. Holds it up to the muffled outside light. "It doesn't seem like their style."
Neal's head hurts.
"Do you remember anything at all about the years I was on the run?" he asks.
"Well, yes," Mozzie agrees; "if they were going to put up wanted posters, that would be very them. Biological warfare, though. Now that you're mercifully out of the prison health care system..."
That question, Neal can't talk himself out of. "You think my sore throat has something to do with this?"
Mozzie gives him an even look. "You think it doesn't?"
Thunder rumbles outside. "Mozzie," Neal says. "Not helpful."
"You have to examine all the possible angles on these things," Mozzie says, and he's got his mentor voice on now. "Incorrect assumptions sink ships. And you've already gone and jinxed yourself, Señor Maine. It was friendly sabotage, you know–"
"Mozzie!"
"I'm just saying," Mozzie says.
Neal's head hurts, a lot.
He stops, rubbing at one temple with his thumb, and then gestures to the flyer again. "People have seen this," he says. "I was getting looks while I walked back here." And he feels like he remembers a group of men all standing up from their tables, a chase, a narrow escape, a run toward refuge. But none of that has happened. "We have to go."
A corner of his mind answers: It was paradise, though, while it lasted.
"Neal," Mozzie says. "You can run at any time. I'm hardly going to stop you."
Friendly sabotage. Neal can't believe he's hearing this. "Are you going to help me?"
Mozzie turns to the table, and picks up his drink again. "What do you need?"
Something is wrong here.
Mozzie isn't a you can run or a what do you need kind of person – not when the law is involved, not when the safehouse isn't safe. He's a let's pick our exit strategy; here's three to choose from sort. Or, more likely, he's got one selected already and is handing out ghillie suits while everyone else is still trying to get their heads on straight. Mozzie, standing and sipping an island mojito while the city gets familiar with his partner's face, isn't Mozzie in some fundamental sense of the name.
There's a rumbling coming from the sky, like the thunder doesn't know when to quit. But maybe not, maybe it's in his head; an auditory migraine, an intrusive line of sound like a plane taking off, like the rush of blood in his ears when he's running.
The airport is small, but well-appointed; that's what a steady supply of tourist dollars will do for you. Neal is heading back toward the staff-only area, thinking of finding a locker room, gambling on getting a uniform his size to get him past the security gate. A little impromptu, sure, but he's done more with less.
Thing is, before he pulls that off, he sees the man who's beyond the security gate already.
Short sleeves on dark arms. Bulge at the back of the shirt like a pistol in the small of the back. Expression like a bulldog looking for a bull.
How the hell Agent Collins the bounty hunter has gotten involved in this, Neal doesn't want to know.
Collins starts to turn, attention sweeping the airport, and Neal makes himself suddenly very interested in the shelf of brochures by the wall behind him. He's not in his New York three-piece suit, and if Collins is here hunting, how many people in the world must have Neal's basic build and hair color? He keeps his ears alert, just in case.
But there aren't any footsteps except those going about their business, heading off the islands or settling in to meet the people arriving.
If it is Collins (and something seems wrong about that, displaced, with more than just the displacement of the man being here instead of wherever else he could be), then Neal's just waiting for a bullet. If it is Collins, that's check, right there, trying for checkmate.
He picks up a brochure on the islands' nature trails, and uses it as cover as he turns back. Past the security gate, Collins is casually reaching toward a back pocket. Could be he's going for a badge or a passport.
Neal doesn't stick around to find out.
He's out the front door and there's the suggestion of commotion behind him, just starting up as he lets the door swing shut and dashes for the nearest spot of cover. If Kate's in the airport, that's one kind of trouble, compounded once over. If Kate's not, that's two kinds of trouble, and that's not much better.
There's a weary quality to the dripping rain and a restless quality to his breath, and Neal doesn't know what he's meant to be running from, just what he wants to run to. And that, he can't – can't write Mozzie, call Peter, because he's burned those bridges himself; can't find Kate, because it's not just that Kate's not here, it's that he's fighting the rising sense that she's near at hand but behind blastproof glass. That, conversely, she's too far away to reach, and she'll always be.
But she's not here, and she's not too far. She's just running. It's just what their lives bring them back to, this running. There's never a way to stand still.
Neal is pacing.
On the table, his face smirks up at him like the photograph knows something he doesn't. Someone came close enough to put that poster in Neal's path; how many minutes earlier would Neal have had to walk by, to walk straight into them?
The thought leaves a cold feeling on the back of his neck.
"It wouldn't be Fowler," Neal says. He doesn't know what became of Fowler, but he doubts it was anything good. "It would be Collins." The bulldog. The bloodhound.
"Of course," Mozzie says, like there's nothing strange about that foreknowledge. Neal looks at him.
"Why aren't you helping me?"
Mozzie spreads his hands. "Hello? I need to know what you want me to do. You're the one going off and getting yourself targeted by rogue officers; details, Neal."
Neal doesn't have any details to offer.
He stops, turns to the entrance. The road back down toward the city is grey and empty, and on the horizon, the darker clouds are gathering like a swelling bruise. He rubs his forehead, trying to think past the heavy atmosphere. "If Collins is here, then I need to find Peter."
"And how do you intend to do that?"
Neal turns a sharp look on Mozzie, but it probably reads as fraying or desperate. Fair enough. He's not feeling particularly together at the moment. But it feels like the natural order of things: he's chased, Peter is there at the end of it; he runs, Peter finds him; the rain rolls in, the wolves close in...
"He has to be on the island, Mozz!"
"And – what? My extremely well-connected information network has somehow missed an American tourist stepping off a plane and flashing your picture around?" Mozzie shakes his head. "Your faith in the Suit has gone from bewilderingly naive to alarming."
Neal rounds on him, a bolt of anger like a muzzle flash going off between his lungs. Because of course Mozzie would torpedo that idea outright; of course his friends won't trust each other, what kind of life does he think he lives–
But the anger is gone in a heartbeat. "I know him," he insists. "If Collins was on our trail, if he tracked us out here, Peter would know. He wouldn't just cut us loose, he'd–"
"He'd what?" Mozzie asks. "Fly to Cape Verde and smuggle us out on a charter jet? He's a fed. If he finds you, he's going to throw you back in prison." Mozzie watches him, like he knows the next words are going to shatter some pleasant delusion, but it has to be done. "He doesn't have a choice."
"Yeah, well, he's better than Collins." Neal steps around Mozzie, goes to the doors to the back patio, peers out. Collins had men in fatigues with guns, with him; he's not going to be subtle when he arrives. "Collins isn't going to take me in when he finds me. He's going to kill me."
Mozzie stares at him, eyes narrow and speculative. "Neal. You're a flight risk, but you're also the least threatening criminal I know. And that includes the twelve-year-olds in my training program."
"Thanks," Neal says, darkly.
Mozzie sighs. "You know what I mean. Never let it be said that I doubt the dark core of evil that lies inside every FBI agent worthy of the name, but they're usually not murderers."
"Yeah, well, Collins is," Neal says. "Or he can be. He's already shot me once–"
"What?" Mozzie demands.
Neal stalls out.
"Is there some part of your past that you're not telling me?" Mozzie asks, and Neal honestly doesn't know the answer to that.
Collins on Cape Verde. Their hideaway, their seaside villa, their paradise, burned like a bad alias. He's only ever run here once.
But his leg hurts, his head hurts, and he feels like he's just recently been caged. He turns to Mozzie. "Why aren't you helping me?"
"As I said, again," Mozzie says, but Neal doesn't let him finish.
"No." The air smells like aircraft fuel. The clouds above seem colder than Cape Verde's should. "You would help me. Mozzie would help me."
Mozzie scoffs and gestures to himself, but the body he's indicating seems diffuse and indistinct. The sense of Mozzie without the identifying features. A facsimile caught in the corner of the eye. "I've purposefully expressed my genome to be difficult to counterfeit. You think someone, somehow, managed a successful disguise?"
Yes. No. It's almost what he thinks, and at the same time, it's a borough away and that might as well be half the world. Neal's heart is going way, way too fast, and it doesn't feel like he's getting enough air. Feels like the walls of the villa are flaking away, and there's nothing between him and the sky. "I think you're not here!"
The words fly out of him like bullets, and cross a Rubicon just as well. The moment he's said them, he knows something has changed, and he can't go back again.
"Neal, what are you talking about?" Mozzie had looked amused – probably three parts amused to two parts skeptical – and now it's about two parts skeptical to one part cautiously ha-ha-I-hear-your-joke to another two parts completely my-best-friend-is-losing-it freaked. "I'm right here. I am literally standing right in front of you."
Neal notices that he's starting to hyperventilate, every breath asphalt-rough in his chest, and does his best to fight that down. "No," he says, because he can see Mozzie, right there – Mozzie and the heavy grey skies and the dim light on the railing and the city spread out on the green island, and he can feel the sea breeze but it's cold and the sun through the clouds is too hot and seems to be hitting his blood without passing through his skin, and the words in his mouth feel correct even as they feel wrong. "You're not here. No one is here."
"Um, then how do you explain my standing right here?" Mozzie says. Neal shakes his head.
"I don't know." His blood is playing all the parts of an island band. It's deafening. "I think – Mozzie, I swear to god, I think I'm hallucinating in an alley somewhere in Hunt's Point and none of this is real."
Mozzie stares at him as the fear thrums in circles in his chest, and then something like realization dawns on his face.
"Oh," Mozzie says, and Neal's gaze snaps to him. He's not sure when he looked away, or if looking away has any meaning here.
Mozzie turns, settles back onto the bench, and turns a speculative eye toward the ocean.
"That," he says, "would actually make a lot of sense."
Index Post: [Fic][White Collar] Three Times Neal Ran (and one time he was found) – Index
( )
There's a long period of time when he's experiencing sound and shapes and colors and movement, but the first thing he knows (can understand, can recognize) is the feel of wet pavement under his cheekbone. He blinks – there's water in his eyelashes – and pushes himself up, but gingerly. His chest feels like someone's put sandpaper between all his muscles and his bones.
He gets upright enough to put his head in his hands.
There's a car beside him, its front tire down low like a face bent to see if he's okay. He's pretty sure he's not, but it's nice of something to care.
Neal puts his hand out to the car's body. His reflection is cloudy and distorted; the street is dotted with cars, all still and silent for the night, or possibly down for the count. There's an air of abandonment hanging over this place.
Probably not a place he wants to be.
He stands up. Squints into the soggy darkness. Mutters, "It'd be too much to ask for these streets to have signs, wouldn't it?"
Behind him, the long anonymous wall of a building is holding down the sidewalk. Neal needs to move, but he doesn't know what he's moving toward. He has a feeling he's not going to get there.
He has the disconcerting feeling that, from a car tucked somewhere in his memory, his reflection has peeled itself from the glass and is creeping after him.
"Work it through," he says, and his voice hits the wall, slithers off somewhere in the direction of a fire escape. "Wherever I am, it's right here." I'm sick, I'm going crazy, something is wrong with me. "What's going to be worse, staying out here and hoping I get better, or going to a hospital and finding out I'm headed back to prison?"
There's a third option. Maybe. Maybe he should find Mozzie. If he's run away and it's all gone epically wrong, finding Peter means finding jail, but Mozzie, he can trust. He's always been able to trust Mozzie. Mozzie's always trusted him.
Something jams into the back of his mind like a shard of hourglass and grit, and he amends that: mostly always. The thought doesn't introduce itself, though, so he's not sure where it's come from.
There's movement on the street.
Without thinking, he's running; down the side of the building, down to an alley, the world churning around him so by the time he turns the corner he's back on his knees again, stomach assaulting his lungs. There's a siren keening in the distance, like an ambulance with his name on it.
The fear is a clue, probably.
It'd be so much easier if he could just think.
The world is grey at the edges, and he digs his fingertips against the concrete. The sky is a jumble of cloud and light pollution, all the streetlights and headlights and lit-up signs and lonely lamps in windows smothered down by the oppressive rain. That means he's not quite nowhere; he's still somewhere enough that even on a clear night he'd never see the stars.
If it's Manhattan he's seeing reflected against the rain, that's as good a place to find Mozzie as any.
(Go into the light.) If it's Manhattan he's running from, it'd be a really bad idea.
And besides. And besides–
He turns away, looks back over the streets swimming in rain. Wonders how he'd retrace his steps, even if he wanted to. Wonders if he wants to. Wonders if he's meant to. What's the use of freedom if you don't keep yourself free?
What's the use of freedom if it's bought.
Neal turns his back on the city lights.
Mozzie likes to quote Objectivists and Darwinists, says that the strong and the clever survive, says that altruism is trumped by self-interest. Mozzie isn't great at following his own philosophy. Neal is kinda worse.
Still not knowing where he's going, he angles himself back into the dark and the rain.
(iii)
Like a metaphor, the clouds are rolling in.
Neal doesn't pause to appreciate the sky's theatrics. He ducks in through the villa's doorway, tucking the hastily-grabbed flyer against him like it's a work of art he needs to shield from the rain. "Mozzie!"
The villa is large; larger than it needs to be for two bachelors to get lost in. It's unabashedly ostentatious, but what else are you supposed to do when you have more money than you know how to spend? For a moment, though, Neal's not sure what he'll do if Mozzie has stepped out for a moment. He feels like if he has to search through the place, by the time he's finished on the upper balconies the sky will have cracked open, and the wolf will be at the door.
For a certain value of "wolf", anyway.
"Mozzie!"
Fortunately for him, though, Mozzie meets him in the sitting gallery spread out at the base of the stairs. He's got paint on his fingertips and a glass in hand, and shoots Neal a quizzical look as he comes around the corner from the kitchen. "You sound alarmed, mon frere."
"Someone's chased us here," Neal says, planting the flyer on a table with the flat of his hand.
"Well, of course you're being chased," Mozzie says, giving the flyer a disinterested glance. "You're always being chased. Who is it now? FBI? NSA? KGB? IAU?"
"I–" Neal ignores the obvious question. With Mozzie, the obvious question is usually the one that gets you the least useful information. "Well, I'm guessing it's the FBI. The point is–"
"Yes, but are you certain it's the FBI?" Mozzie asks. He sets down his drink. He picks up the flyer. Holds it up to the muffled outside light. "It doesn't seem like their style."
Neal's head hurts.
"Do you remember anything at all about the years I was on the run?" he asks.
"Well, yes," Mozzie agrees; "if they were going to put up wanted posters, that would be very them. Biological warfare, though. Now that you're mercifully out of the prison health care system..."
That question, Neal can't talk himself out of. "You think my sore throat has something to do with this?"
Mozzie gives him an even look. "You think it doesn't?"
Thunder rumbles outside. "Mozzie," Neal says. "Not helpful."
"You have to examine all the possible angles on these things," Mozzie says, and he's got his mentor voice on now. "Incorrect assumptions sink ships. And you've already gone and jinxed yourself, Señor Maine. It was friendly sabotage, you know–"
"Mozzie!"
"I'm just saying," Mozzie says.
Neal's head hurts, a lot.
He stops, rubbing at one temple with his thumb, and then gestures to the flyer again. "People have seen this," he says. "I was getting looks while I walked back here." And he feels like he remembers a group of men all standing up from their tables, a chase, a narrow escape, a run toward refuge. But none of that has happened. "We have to go."
A corner of his mind answers: It was paradise, though, while it lasted.
"Neal," Mozzie says. "You can run at any time. I'm hardly going to stop you."
Friendly sabotage. Neal can't believe he's hearing this. "Are you going to help me?"
Mozzie turns to the table, and picks up his drink again. "What do you need?"
Something is wrong here.
Mozzie isn't a you can run or a what do you need kind of person – not when the law is involved, not when the safehouse isn't safe. He's a let's pick our exit strategy; here's three to choose from sort. Or, more likely, he's got one selected already and is handing out ghillie suits while everyone else is still trying to get their heads on straight. Mozzie, standing and sipping an island mojito while the city gets familiar with his partner's face, isn't Mozzie in some fundamental sense of the name.
There's a rumbling coming from the sky, like the thunder doesn't know when to quit. But maybe not, maybe it's in his head; an auditory migraine, an intrusive line of sound like a plane taking off, like the rush of blood in his ears when he's running.
(ii)
The airport is small, but well-appointed; that's what a steady supply of tourist dollars will do for you. Neal is heading back toward the staff-only area, thinking of finding a locker room, gambling on getting a uniform his size to get him past the security gate. A little impromptu, sure, but he's done more with less.
Thing is, before he pulls that off, he sees the man who's beyond the security gate already.
Short sleeves on dark arms. Bulge at the back of the shirt like a pistol in the small of the back. Expression like a bulldog looking for a bull.
How the hell Agent Collins the bounty hunter has gotten involved in this, Neal doesn't want to know.
Collins starts to turn, attention sweeping the airport, and Neal makes himself suddenly very interested in the shelf of brochures by the wall behind him. He's not in his New York three-piece suit, and if Collins is here hunting, how many people in the world must have Neal's basic build and hair color? He keeps his ears alert, just in case.
But there aren't any footsteps except those going about their business, heading off the islands or settling in to meet the people arriving.
If it is Collins (and something seems wrong about that, displaced, with more than just the displacement of the man being here instead of wherever else he could be), then Neal's just waiting for a bullet. If it is Collins, that's check, right there, trying for checkmate.
He picks up a brochure on the islands' nature trails, and uses it as cover as he turns back. Past the security gate, Collins is casually reaching toward a back pocket. Could be he's going for a badge or a passport.
Neal doesn't stick around to find out.
He's out the front door and there's the suggestion of commotion behind him, just starting up as he lets the door swing shut and dashes for the nearest spot of cover. If Kate's in the airport, that's one kind of trouble, compounded once over. If Kate's not, that's two kinds of trouble, and that's not much better.
There's a weary quality to the dripping rain and a restless quality to his breath, and Neal doesn't know what he's meant to be running from, just what he wants to run to. And that, he can't – can't write Mozzie, call Peter, because he's burned those bridges himself; can't find Kate, because it's not just that Kate's not here, it's that he's fighting the rising sense that she's near at hand but behind blastproof glass. That, conversely, she's too far away to reach, and she'll always be.
But she's not here, and she's not too far. She's just running. It's just what their lives bring them back to, this running. There's never a way to stand still.
(iii)
Neal is pacing.
On the table, his face smirks up at him like the photograph knows something he doesn't. Someone came close enough to put that poster in Neal's path; how many minutes earlier would Neal have had to walk by, to walk straight into them?
The thought leaves a cold feeling on the back of his neck.
"It wouldn't be Fowler," Neal says. He doesn't know what became of Fowler, but he doubts it was anything good. "It would be Collins." The bulldog. The bloodhound.
"Of course," Mozzie says, like there's nothing strange about that foreknowledge. Neal looks at him.
"Why aren't you helping me?"
Mozzie spreads his hands. "Hello? I need to know what you want me to do. You're the one going off and getting yourself targeted by rogue officers; details, Neal."
Neal doesn't have any details to offer.
He stops, turns to the entrance. The road back down toward the city is grey and empty, and on the horizon, the darker clouds are gathering like a swelling bruise. He rubs his forehead, trying to think past the heavy atmosphere. "If Collins is here, then I need to find Peter."
"And how do you intend to do that?"
Neal turns a sharp look on Mozzie, but it probably reads as fraying or desperate. Fair enough. He's not feeling particularly together at the moment. But it feels like the natural order of things: he's chased, Peter is there at the end of it; he runs, Peter finds him; the rain rolls in, the wolves close in...
"He has to be on the island, Mozz!"
"And – what? My extremely well-connected information network has somehow missed an American tourist stepping off a plane and flashing your picture around?" Mozzie shakes his head. "Your faith in the Suit has gone from bewilderingly naive to alarming."
Neal rounds on him, a bolt of anger like a muzzle flash going off between his lungs. Because of course Mozzie would torpedo that idea outright; of course his friends won't trust each other, what kind of life does he think he lives–
But the anger is gone in a heartbeat. "I know him," he insists. "If Collins was on our trail, if he tracked us out here, Peter would know. He wouldn't just cut us loose, he'd–"
"He'd what?" Mozzie asks. "Fly to Cape Verde and smuggle us out on a charter jet? He's a fed. If he finds you, he's going to throw you back in prison." Mozzie watches him, like he knows the next words are going to shatter some pleasant delusion, but it has to be done. "He doesn't have a choice."
"Yeah, well, he's better than Collins." Neal steps around Mozzie, goes to the doors to the back patio, peers out. Collins had men in fatigues with guns, with him; he's not going to be subtle when he arrives. "Collins isn't going to take me in when he finds me. He's going to kill me."
Mozzie stares at him, eyes narrow and speculative. "Neal. You're a flight risk, but you're also the least threatening criminal I know. And that includes the twelve-year-olds in my training program."
"Thanks," Neal says, darkly.
Mozzie sighs. "You know what I mean. Never let it be said that I doubt the dark core of evil that lies inside every FBI agent worthy of the name, but they're usually not murderers."
"Yeah, well, Collins is," Neal says. "Or he can be. He's already shot me once–"
"What?" Mozzie demands.
Neal stalls out.
"Is there some part of your past that you're not telling me?" Mozzie asks, and Neal honestly doesn't know the answer to that.
Collins on Cape Verde. Their hideaway, their seaside villa, their paradise, burned like a bad alias. He's only ever run here once.
But his leg hurts, his head hurts, and he feels like he's just recently been caged. He turns to Mozzie. "Why aren't you helping me?"
"As I said, again," Mozzie says, but Neal doesn't let him finish.
"No." The air smells like aircraft fuel. The clouds above seem colder than Cape Verde's should. "You would help me. Mozzie would help me."
Mozzie scoffs and gestures to himself, but the body he's indicating seems diffuse and indistinct. The sense of Mozzie without the identifying features. A facsimile caught in the corner of the eye. "I've purposefully expressed my genome to be difficult to counterfeit. You think someone, somehow, managed a successful disguise?"
Yes. No. It's almost what he thinks, and at the same time, it's a borough away and that might as well be half the world. Neal's heart is going way, way too fast, and it doesn't feel like he's getting enough air. Feels like the walls of the villa are flaking away, and there's nothing between him and the sky. "I think you're not here!"
The words fly out of him like bullets, and cross a Rubicon just as well. The moment he's said them, he knows something has changed, and he can't go back again.
"Neal, what are you talking about?" Mozzie had looked amused – probably three parts amused to two parts skeptical – and now it's about two parts skeptical to one part cautiously ha-ha-I-hear-your-joke to another two parts completely my-best-friend-is-losing-it freaked. "I'm right here. I am literally standing right in front of you."
Neal notices that he's starting to hyperventilate, every breath asphalt-rough in his chest, and does his best to fight that down. "No," he says, because he can see Mozzie, right there – Mozzie and the heavy grey skies and the dim light on the railing and the city spread out on the green island, and he can feel the sea breeze but it's cold and the sun through the clouds is too hot and seems to be hitting his blood without passing through his skin, and the words in his mouth feel correct even as they feel wrong. "You're not here. No one is here."
"Um, then how do you explain my standing right here?" Mozzie says. Neal shakes his head.
"I don't know." His blood is playing all the parts of an island band. It's deafening. "I think – Mozzie, I swear to god, I think I'm hallucinating in an alley somewhere in Hunt's Point and none of this is real."
Mozzie stares at him as the fear thrums in circles in his chest, and then something like realization dawns on his face.
"Oh," Mozzie says, and Neal's gaze snaps to him. He's not sure when he looked away, or if looking away has any meaning here.
Mozzie turns, settles back onto the bench, and turns a speculative eye toward the ocean.
"That," he says, "would actually make a lot of sense."