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magibrainTitle: Three Times Neal Ran (and one time he was found) – 8. Checkmate
Index Post: [Fic][White Collar] Three Times Neal Ran (and one time he was found) – Index
He hits the real world like the surface of the ocean, and it floods in to drown him. For a second, he doesn't inhale.
A siren has started up, far too close for comfort. Another joins it from another way, two voices howling in the night. Hounds for the hare. Neal has to wonder where the pack is.
He doesn't let himself stop to consider it.
There's a place that looks plausible up ahead; abandoned construction site, plenty of high ground, plenty of low hideaways, perches, escape routes, obstacles. He's three steps toward the street where the streetlights spill red over the asphalt, brighter than blood and just as disrupted by the rain.
The lights one street down are beating as fast as his heart.
Every flash is like a glancing blow, and the car swings onto the street to come towards him. Neal backs away.
Another way. There's always another way.
He backtracks two buildings and slips around the side as the sirens slip by, then changes his angle. This is a bad position, nowhere to hide, and the best place to get to is across a long expanse of parking lot. Fool's gambit, nothing ventured–
He skids around the corner, and he feels the headlights like a pedestrian-car collision.
Shot to the chest. Three moves to checkmate.
He turns, sees the searing red flash of another car, turns again, darts rabbit-quick into the open while the automotive hounds run to rout him. Makes it over a parking stop and there's the scream of lights again, searing across his vision, cutting him off.
I'm dead, I'm dead, I'm dead, two moves to checkmate–
He turns. He's trapped in a circle of lights, complete 911-call with backup; squad cars are pouring into the lot from two entrances, all howling aggression. Doors snapping open like walls coming up to cage him. Policemen all ready to kill.
One of them, at least.
"Get on the ground! Hands where we can see them!"
He puts his hands out, open and empty. One of these men has a bullet with his name on it, and on a dark, stormy night with a baker's dozen guns, things can escalate quickly. For some people, all you need is confusion, and that's the motive to kill.
Neal has confusion in spades.
One move.
"On the ground! Down!" A dozen voices, a cacophony of sound. It's meant to demoralize and disorient, and it's a bit redundant, here. He's lowering himself to one knee, scrabbling for chances among the guns and the lights, the squeal of more car tires, and the tension prickling along the back of his neck and spiking between his shoulderblades. There's a rising pressure between his lungs that makes it hard to breathe, makes him want to spring from this awkward half-crouch like a runner from the starting line, run–
And then, behind him, over his shoulder, a familiar voice calls, "FBI!"
And the pressure goes out of him like the punch of a pneumatic hammer, and he hits the deck.
The cavalry is here, but despite his instinct telling him to duck and cover, there aren't any bullets flying yet. Instead there's footsteps – heavy, authoritative – and the rain-dim smell of the parking lot concrete beneath him, rough against his hands.
"The man you have surrounded there is a confidential informant for the FBI," Peter calls out, in his best Shut-up-I-outrank-you voice. It's a pretty impressive voice, but all Neal notices is that it's here. He's pretty sure it's here. "He's unarmed; potentially injured. I'm going to need all of you to stand down."
There's palpable confusion, at that, but Neal has to fight a grin. He doesn't even know why he's grinning, except that he's not dead, not dead, not dead.
Peter's backup moves – quickly, efficiently, gotta love that FBI discipline – to secure the place, and Neal stands, though stiffly. Peter heads to Neal's side, and one of the police officers meets him there. Peter looks at Neal, then doubletakes at him, and then turns back to the police officer without – mercifully – commenting on the state of Neal's anything.
"Agent," the officer says. "We got a call that some guy was running around here, completely wired. If he's in possession of narcotics–"
"He's not," Peter says. "He's one of ours."
The policeman looks dubious. Neal tries to give him a reassuring smile.
"I'll talk with your supervising officer to get everything straightened out. We'll take it from here," Peter says, and lands a hand on Neal's shoulder to steer him away. Presumably before he can convince anyone else from New York's Finest that he's on drugs. And before any of them can shoot him.
The lot is crowded with agents and officers; all the lights going off, from the blue-and-white squad cars and the unmarked black cruisers and the ambulance stopped just outside the phalanx, are enough to make Neal's brain jitter. In contrast to Peter's hand, Neal's shoulder – and the rest of him – feels like it's vibrating more than it needs to be. Even things that should be solid, like the ground, are more of a vague impression than anything; the night feels like if the rain picked up, it'd all fall down.
A few paces away and Peter stops walking; Neal almost keeps going until Peter's hand tightens and stops him. He turns, and Peter is staring him down, and he feels like now is the time when Peter is going to bring up that he looks like a drowned rat that the cat dragged in.
"Once we had the trace, you should have held tight. Not gone haring off to scare the NYPD. What happened?" Peter asks, and in comparison to his inter-Law-Enforcement-Agency tone of calm, this voice is quiet but turned up to eleven. "It's been fourteen hours since your tracker went dark."
Neal takes a deep breath, ready to start explaining.
"–I think there was something with a backhoe," he hears himself saying.
Peter's eyes narrow. He doesn't look amused, which would be fine, except Neal wasn't trying to be amusing. He scrambles for something else to say.
"No. I–" He can't actually remember what he was doing before all of this began. Or, rather, he's sure he can remember, but the memory is buried under a heap of broken images and he doesn't know where to begin sifting through them. "We got separated. I think something happened to Kate–"
"Kate?" Peter interrupts. "Neal, Kate is dead."
A spear of annoyance goes through him. "I know that," he says. Peter thinks he doesn't know that? "I know. But she went missing. I broke out to find her, but Adler knew I was out. He was coming after me."
Peter just gapes, and then clamps a hand onto Neal's forehead with all the subtlety of an arresting officer clicking on cuffs. "Jesus, Neal," he swears. "You're running a hell of a fever. You're probably hallucinating–"
A wash of relief floods through Neal. He gets it. "Yes," he agrees, probably too eager. "Yes. I am. I mean, I was. So we have to find out who Kate was, and where she is now. And listen, Collins had a three-man team–"
"Collins?" Peter asks.
"–and I think he's a cop," Neal finishes. "You can't let me get in that ambulance." If they cuff me, I'm dead.
"You're going to an ER," Peter says. "That is not negotiable."
"He's a cop," Neal stresses, and grabs for Peter's lapels. It takes a couple tries to find them. "Peter, I couldn't contact you because getting to a phone meant going somewhere where someone might see me and call the cops." He takes in a breath, and his lungs try to seize up. He doesn't let them. "I don't think I'm wrong about this."
You were just talking about your dead boss and dead girlfriend in present tense, Peter's expression rather eloquently says.
Neal scrambles for something, and hits on it. "You can protect me." It works, it fits, it's brilliant, and he plunks a finger into Peter's sternum. "If I turn myself in to you."
Peter scrutinizes his face. "You are making even less sense than usual, Neal; that's a bad sign."
"You can take me in," Neal says.
Peter stares at him for a moment longer, then surrenders to the situation. "Yeah, okay." He turns away. "Jones! Diana!"
From out of the milling mass of people, the two named shapes emerge. Neal eyes them as they come close – apparitions in black, somehow no more real or solid than the night or the island.
"What do you need?" Diana asks.
"Keep an eye on things, here," Peter says. "I'm driving Neal to Lenox Hill. Get whatever marshals have his new anklet to meet me there." He drops his voice. "Listen, one of the cops here may be implicated in what went down tonight. Get names and badge numbers, and keep an eye out for anything suspicious."
Jones looks from him to Neal, and back again. "We'll take care of it," he says.
"Thanks," Peter says, and takes Neal by the arm. Guides him through the black, slick rain to the black, rain-slicked car, opens the door for him, and hangs at his elbow while he puts himself in. Neal doesn't pay a lot of attention as Peter closes the door and goes around to the driver's side; he pulls on his seatbelt when Peter says, "Seatbelt," and then he just puts his head back and tries to get his inner ear to understand what's happening as they pull out of the lot and onto the street.
Everything is swimming, which is good, because below that, there's a foggy sense that everything hurts. His head is thrumming, his ankle stings and aches, and his chest feels too tight, but if the pain tries to push him out of his head, he can slip out and come back later. It's comforting to have options.
He breathes in, just to hear himself do it. Just to place one more mark on the sliding scale of his reality. Peter glances over at him, and it seems like he's expected to say something, so he says "I'm sorry I broke into your house, Peter." And he is. He really is.
"I'm sure it'll all be – wait," Peter says. "When did you break into my house?"
He tries to remember. "When Adler was after me. After I broke out of prison." The motion of the car is distracting; rain on the windshield, brake lights, green lights. He's not used to having trust, not the kind you don't snatch with a con, and he's discovering that without the con in place, betraying that trust no longer feels like the cost of doing business. "Thanks."
There's an uneasy silence, like Peter is gauging his sanity. "For what?"
"Not cuffing me," Neal says. "Taking me in."
"Yeah," Peter says, like he doesn't get why he's being thanked for this. "No problem."
They stop at a few red lights, and Peter hasn't put the lights on in the windshield, so he can't think Neal's in that much danger. But after some time and the lulling sense of motion, he says, as though from a great distance, "You still with me?"
"Mm," Neal says, listening to the thunder rolling across the skyline. Peter has the car heater on, and between that and Neal's soaked-through clothes, it makes the night warm and humid. Eighty degrees, he thinks. Dead of night.
"Talk to me," Peter says.
"I wonder what time it is in New York right now," Neal answers, and drifts away.
Index Post: [Fic][White Collar] Three Times Neal Ran (and one time he was found) – Index
( )
He hits the real world like the surface of the ocean, and it floods in to drown him. For a second, he doesn't inhale.
A siren has started up, far too close for comfort. Another joins it from another way, two voices howling in the night. Hounds for the hare. Neal has to wonder where the pack is.
He doesn't let himself stop to consider it.
There's a place that looks plausible up ahead; abandoned construction site, plenty of high ground, plenty of low hideaways, perches, escape routes, obstacles. He's three steps toward the street where the streetlights spill red over the asphalt, brighter than blood and just as disrupted by the rain.
The lights one street down are beating as fast as his heart.
Every flash is like a glancing blow, and the car swings onto the street to come towards him. Neal backs away.
Another way. There's always another way.
He backtracks two buildings and slips around the side as the sirens slip by, then changes his angle. This is a bad position, nowhere to hide, and the best place to get to is across a long expanse of parking lot. Fool's gambit, nothing ventured–
He skids around the corner, and he feels the headlights like a pedestrian-car collision.
Shot to the chest. Three moves to checkmate.
He turns, sees the searing red flash of another car, turns again, darts rabbit-quick into the open while the automotive hounds run to rout him. Makes it over a parking stop and there's the scream of lights again, searing across his vision, cutting him off.
I'm dead, I'm dead, I'm dead, two moves to checkmate–
He turns. He's trapped in a circle of lights, complete 911-call with backup; squad cars are pouring into the lot from two entrances, all howling aggression. Doors snapping open like walls coming up to cage him. Policemen all ready to kill.
One of them, at least.
"Get on the ground! Hands where we can see them!"
He puts his hands out, open and empty. One of these men has a bullet with his name on it, and on a dark, stormy night with a baker's dozen guns, things can escalate quickly. For some people, all you need is confusion, and that's the motive to kill.
Neal has confusion in spades.
One move.
"On the ground! Down!" A dozen voices, a cacophony of sound. It's meant to demoralize and disorient, and it's a bit redundant, here. He's lowering himself to one knee, scrabbling for chances among the guns and the lights, the squeal of more car tires, and the tension prickling along the back of his neck and spiking between his shoulderblades. There's a rising pressure between his lungs that makes it hard to breathe, makes him want to spring from this awkward half-crouch like a runner from the starting line, run–
And then, behind him, over his shoulder, a familiar voice calls, "FBI!"
And the pressure goes out of him like the punch of a pneumatic hammer, and he hits the deck.
The cavalry is here, but despite his instinct telling him to duck and cover, there aren't any bullets flying yet. Instead there's footsteps – heavy, authoritative – and the rain-dim smell of the parking lot concrete beneath him, rough against his hands.
"The man you have surrounded there is a confidential informant for the FBI," Peter calls out, in his best Shut-up-I-outrank-you voice. It's a pretty impressive voice, but all Neal notices is that it's here. He's pretty sure it's here. "He's unarmed; potentially injured. I'm going to need all of you to stand down."
There's palpable confusion, at that, but Neal has to fight a grin. He doesn't even know why he's grinning, except that he's not dead, not dead, not dead.
Peter's backup moves – quickly, efficiently, gotta love that FBI discipline – to secure the place, and Neal stands, though stiffly. Peter heads to Neal's side, and one of the police officers meets him there. Peter looks at Neal, then doubletakes at him, and then turns back to the police officer without – mercifully – commenting on the state of Neal's anything.
"Agent," the officer says. "We got a call that some guy was running around here, completely wired. If he's in possession of narcotics–"
"He's not," Peter says. "He's one of ours."
The policeman looks dubious. Neal tries to give him a reassuring smile.
"I'll talk with your supervising officer to get everything straightened out. We'll take it from here," Peter says, and lands a hand on Neal's shoulder to steer him away. Presumably before he can convince anyone else from New York's Finest that he's on drugs. And before any of them can shoot him.
The lot is crowded with agents and officers; all the lights going off, from the blue-and-white squad cars and the unmarked black cruisers and the ambulance stopped just outside the phalanx, are enough to make Neal's brain jitter. In contrast to Peter's hand, Neal's shoulder – and the rest of him – feels like it's vibrating more than it needs to be. Even things that should be solid, like the ground, are more of a vague impression than anything; the night feels like if the rain picked up, it'd all fall down.
A few paces away and Peter stops walking; Neal almost keeps going until Peter's hand tightens and stops him. He turns, and Peter is staring him down, and he feels like now is the time when Peter is going to bring up that he looks like a drowned rat that the cat dragged in.
"Once we had the trace, you should have held tight. Not gone haring off to scare the NYPD. What happened?" Peter asks, and in comparison to his inter-Law-Enforcement-Agency tone of calm, this voice is quiet but turned up to eleven. "It's been fourteen hours since your tracker went dark."
Neal takes a deep breath, ready to start explaining.
"–I think there was something with a backhoe," he hears himself saying.
Peter's eyes narrow. He doesn't look amused, which would be fine, except Neal wasn't trying to be amusing. He scrambles for something else to say.
"No. I–" He can't actually remember what he was doing before all of this began. Or, rather, he's sure he can remember, but the memory is buried under a heap of broken images and he doesn't know where to begin sifting through them. "We got separated. I think something happened to Kate–"
"Kate?" Peter interrupts. "Neal, Kate is dead."
A spear of annoyance goes through him. "I know that," he says. Peter thinks he doesn't know that? "I know. But she went missing. I broke out to find her, but Adler knew I was out. He was coming after me."
Peter just gapes, and then clamps a hand onto Neal's forehead with all the subtlety of an arresting officer clicking on cuffs. "Jesus, Neal," he swears. "You're running a hell of a fever. You're probably hallucinating–"
A wash of relief floods through Neal. He gets it. "Yes," he agrees, probably too eager. "Yes. I am. I mean, I was. So we have to find out who Kate was, and where she is now. And listen, Collins had a three-man team–"
"Collins?" Peter asks.
"–and I think he's a cop," Neal finishes. "You can't let me get in that ambulance." If they cuff me, I'm dead.
"You're going to an ER," Peter says. "That is not negotiable."
"He's a cop," Neal stresses, and grabs for Peter's lapels. It takes a couple tries to find them. "Peter, I couldn't contact you because getting to a phone meant going somewhere where someone might see me and call the cops." He takes in a breath, and his lungs try to seize up. He doesn't let them. "I don't think I'm wrong about this."
You were just talking about your dead boss and dead girlfriend in present tense, Peter's expression rather eloquently says.
Neal scrambles for something, and hits on it. "You can protect me." It works, it fits, it's brilliant, and he plunks a finger into Peter's sternum. "If I turn myself in to you."
Peter scrutinizes his face. "You are making even less sense than usual, Neal; that's a bad sign."
"You can take me in," Neal says.
Peter stares at him for a moment longer, then surrenders to the situation. "Yeah, okay." He turns away. "Jones! Diana!"
From out of the milling mass of people, the two named shapes emerge. Neal eyes them as they come close – apparitions in black, somehow no more real or solid than the night or the island.
"What do you need?" Diana asks.
"Keep an eye on things, here," Peter says. "I'm driving Neal to Lenox Hill. Get whatever marshals have his new anklet to meet me there." He drops his voice. "Listen, one of the cops here may be implicated in what went down tonight. Get names and badge numbers, and keep an eye out for anything suspicious."
Jones looks from him to Neal, and back again. "We'll take care of it," he says.
"Thanks," Peter says, and takes Neal by the arm. Guides him through the black, slick rain to the black, rain-slicked car, opens the door for him, and hangs at his elbow while he puts himself in. Neal doesn't pay a lot of attention as Peter closes the door and goes around to the driver's side; he pulls on his seatbelt when Peter says, "Seatbelt," and then he just puts his head back and tries to get his inner ear to understand what's happening as they pull out of the lot and onto the street.
Everything is swimming, which is good, because below that, there's a foggy sense that everything hurts. His head is thrumming, his ankle stings and aches, and his chest feels too tight, but if the pain tries to push him out of his head, he can slip out and come back later. It's comforting to have options.
He breathes in, just to hear himself do it. Just to place one more mark on the sliding scale of his reality. Peter glances over at him, and it seems like he's expected to say something, so he says "I'm sorry I broke into your house, Peter." And he is. He really is.
"I'm sure it'll all be – wait," Peter says. "When did you break into my house?"
He tries to remember. "When Adler was after me. After I broke out of prison." The motion of the car is distracting; rain on the windshield, brake lights, green lights. He's not used to having trust, not the kind you don't snatch with a con, and he's discovering that without the con in place, betraying that trust no longer feels like the cost of doing business. "Thanks."
There's an uneasy silence, like Peter is gauging his sanity. "For what?"
"Not cuffing me," Neal says. "Taking me in."
"Yeah," Peter says, like he doesn't get why he's being thanked for this. "No problem."
They stop at a few red lights, and Peter hasn't put the lights on in the windshield, so he can't think Neal's in that much danger. But after some time and the lulling sense of motion, he says, as though from a great distance, "You still with me?"
"Mm," Neal says, listening to the thunder rolling across the skyline. Peter has the car heater on, and between that and Neal's soaked-through clothes, it makes the night warm and humid. Eighty degrees, he thinks. Dead of night.
"Talk to me," Peter says.
"I wonder what time it is in New York right now," Neal answers, and drifts away.