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sheenianniTitle: Can’t Be Both (Chapter 1)
Author’s Name:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sheenianni
Fandom: White Collar
Spoilers: Season 3.10 – Countdown
Characters/Pairings: Neal Caffrey, Peter Burke, Clinton Jones, Diana Barrigan, Elizabeth Burke, Sara Ellis, Agent Kramer, June and others
Raiting: PG
Warnings/Triggers: None
Word Count: ~ 2,800 (chapter), ~31,000 (total)
Summary: In the aftermath of Elizabeth’s kidnapping, Neal has to make a life-defining choice - and then he has to face its consequences. Post 3.10 Countdown story.
This story is finished. New chapters will be posted every few days.
Prologue
A/N: This chapter (as well as the whole story) has been beta’ed by GrayWolf84 from fanfiction.net. Thank you!
CHAPTER 1
Four days later
„Hey.“
Caffrey looks up at Jones, who is standing above him with a cup of water and plain sandwich bread.
„Scoot over,” says Jones and sits down next to the conman, who reluctantly moves to the left side of the bench. Jones notices the wistful look in Caffrey’s eyes as he longingly eyes the bread and the cup he is holding.
“Take it. It’s for you,” he says and presses both things into Caffrey’s cuffed hands. Neal barely has the time to whisper one coarse “thank you” before he hungrily devours the sandwich and starts taking small sips of water. With the haunted look, the various bruises covering most of his body and the dirty, torn clothes, he looks almost nothing like the charming and proud Neal Caffrey Jones has come to know.
Not to forget the slight tremors running randomly through all Caffrey’s body.
“Thanks again,” says Caffrey when he finishes up and awkwardly looks away.
Even though Jones knows that this man is an accomplice to the theft of the Nazi treasure, that it is indirectly his fault that Peter’s wife was kidnapped, and that he should now rightfully spend a long time behind bars, he can’t help but feel a lot of sympathy for him. And he knows that while Neal has made a lot of shady decisions, he isn’t a bad man. In fact, Jones would even go as far as to call him a friend. Which is why he is here, trying to offer some measly measure of support.
Caffrey certainly seems to need it.
“You look like crap,” says Jones in an attempt to stir up conversation.
“Yeah?” chuckles Caffrey humorlessly. “I wouldn’t have guessed.”
All right, that probably wasn’t a great opening line. But with everything that has happened, Jones really doesn’t know what to say.
“What do you think is going on there?” he asks, motioning upwards to the closed door that is now hidden from their view.
“Wish I knew,” says Neal tiredly. “On the other hand, probably not. Anyway, I’m sure the higher ups will fill me on the moment they’re done.”
Jones doesn’t need Caffrey to spell it out for him. No matter how that makes Jones feel given the events of the past seventy-two hours, it is more than likely that Neal is going back to prison.
“I didn’t want this,” says Caffrey quietly. “The treasure… this wasn’t supposed to happen.”
No matter how sincere it sounds, it still makes Jones lift his eyebrows. “Honestly, how did you think it was gonna end?” he asks in disbelief.
Neal’s only answer is a helpless shrug. “Not like a disaster?”
At that, Jones can only laugh incredulously.
The sight of Caffrey’s defeated form however cuts his laugh short.
“Hey, man. This is gonna work out,” he says gently and places his hand loosely on Neal’s shoulder.
“You really think that?” asks Neal doubtfully.
Honestly?
No, Jones doesn’t think so. And seeing the wistful longing in Caffrey’s eyes, knowing that he might soon have to testify against him makes him feel like the biggest bastard in the world.
“You saved Elizabeth’s life,” he states instead. “What you did was the craziest and most stupid thing I’ve ever heard of.” Neal gives a weak chuckle at that. “But it worked,” continues Jones seriously, “and man, it was also completely amazing!”
“It had to be done,” says Caffrey quietly, but with a distinct certainty in his voice. “If I hadn’t done it, Keller would have killed Elizabeth the moment he got the treasure.”
“So you decided to sneak into his place, utterly alone and without any backup, through miles of abandoned tunnels and sewer-pipes,” says Jones, who even now is still feeling the absolute shock he experienced when they found just how Caffrey got into Keller’s hideout. “Why didn’t you voice this plan to Hughes, Diana or me?” Because face it, Peter really wasn’t on speaking terms with Neal right then… but Jones would have listened.
But when he looks at Neal’s state, he knows the answer right away.
“It was way too long a shot,” says Caffrey tightly. “The whole system hasn’t been in use for more than a century. There was no way to know what state everything was really in… Some of these pipes had sixty centimeters in diameter. No sane person would send his men there, not even somebody who could soon be sent to jail for life.”
Sixty centimeters… that’s about twenty four inches…Jones has heard that, he has even seen the place where Caffrey crawled out, but it is still sending shivers through his whole body. “You could have died there,” he says. “What if the air hadn’t been breathable? What if the path had been blocked?”
“I was prepared,” says Caffrey in cool blood. “I had a storage battery steel saw and a drill for any grates. Short of the tunnels collapsing, I was prepared to remove any obstacle in the way. And I did. As for the air… it was my risk to take.”
Jones just shakes his head, trying to come in terms with Neal’s words. “You were in there for forty hours just with a hundred years old map, two tools, a torch, one bottle of water and two packages of cookies?”
“I needed to move fast. Any additional weight would just slow me down. I had nothing to lose, Jones,” says Neal steadfastly. “When we located Keller, I had already given you all the information I could. You didn’t need me once Mozzie was on the way. Even worse, if I remained, Keller would have continued playing those games with me, games that could have cost Elizabeth her life. If El died… Once I discovered these pipes existed, it was the easiest choice in the world.”
The thing is, when Caffrey disappeared, all of them believed he had run. Sure, Jones had his doubts, but since the signal from Neal’s tracker was lost and with the incriminating evidence… None of them knew that the GPS wasn’t working because Neal was deep underground. They were sure Caffrey had selfishly taken the opportunity to escape from justice, knowing that he wouldn’t be the FBI priority at least until Elizabeth Burke was recovered.
Imagine their surprise when Neal’s signal suddenly reappeared inside Keller’s place. This time, though, when an agent suggested that Neal might be possibly working with Keller, Diana fiercely jumped to Neal’s defense, only to be proven right about twenty minutes later.
Neal’s tracker didn’t work in the pipes. If anything had gone wrong there, if he had suffocated, they wouldn’t have even been able to locate his corpse.
Feeling slightly nauseous, Jones stares hard at the con next to him. “At least tell me you’re not claustrophobic.”
“My mother was,” says Neal detachedly.
“Christ, Caffrey!”
“I knew I could do it,” claims Neal calmly. “I have once allegedly entered somewhere through roughly hundred meters of similar system. The key is to be really set on your target.”
“There is a huge freaking difference between hundred meters and several miles! How did you – “
“It was absolute hell,” says Neal curtly and another tremble runs through his body. “Can we please drop the subject of the pipes now?”
Anyone could tell that Caffrey isn’t lying, even if judging just by the paleness of his face and his haunted look. No, Jones is sure Neal is absolutely sincere, which makes this nightmare even worse.
He gently squeezes Caffrey’s shoulder.
“You did great,” he says softly.
Caffrey sighs. “Jones – “
“No, really. When Keller hired those men, his hideout became untouchable if we didn’t want to risk Elizabeth’s life. But then you found her, overcame her guard and barricaded both of you in her room for long enough so that the SWAT team forced their way inside and captured Keller after you called us on the phone. If that is not amazing – “
“Like I’ve said, it had to be done.”
They sit in silence after that.
“You want some more water?” asks Jones.
“That’d be great,” whispers Caffrey and leans against the wall, his eyes closed, his head dropped on his shoulder.
Jones hesitates. He looks around.
“Stay here.”
Neal doesn’t even open his eyes. “Do you really think I’m a flight risk right now?”
Jones shrugs. “Force of habit. I’ve learned not to underestimate you.”
“Good for you.”
The answer makes Jones uneasy.
Suddenly, Caffrey stares at him in an intense way. “Jones. I stayed. I’m not gonna run now.”
And that is, basically, the truth.
Jones leaves for the kitchen and pours water into Neal’s cup. He also searches the fridge for something additional food. Unfortunately Neal has already eaten Clinton’s own snack. He thinks about it a little, but then – screw it – he takes Diana’s sandwich, making a mental note to tell her about it later.
He is sure she won’t mind in this case.
Caffrey does, though.
“This is Diana’s sandwich.”
“Yeah, it was. I’ll buy her another one.”
“I’m not stealing Diana’s food,” says Neal flatly.
“Technically, that was me. I’ll authorize it with her later.”
“I can’t eat that. She’s gonna shoot me!”
Jones raises his eyebrows. “Somehow, I don’t believe that after not shooting you when you were supposedly a fleeting suspect, she would do that over a piece of bread and cheese. ... At worst, she’ll break your arms and legs.”
“That’s really reassuring,” says Neal, but then he ceases to resist and takes the sandwich from Jones. “If she shoots me, it’s on your head,” he says before he finally starts taking quick, but dignified bites.
Jones is certain Caffrey is ready to hide the incriminating object if Diana comes into sight. It almost makes him laugh, except he knows that if the talk in the conference room doesn’t go extremely well, this might be the last time he sees Caffrey on an occasion like this.
Caffrey finishes the water and eats all the “evidence”.
“So now we’re officially accomplices to the theft of Diana’s lunch,” says Neal with a small grin. “Is it a criminal offense to corrupt an FBI agent?”
“Probably,” replies Jones with a tight smile of his own.
Neither of them is really enjoying the joke.
Suddenly, Jones feels a strong wave of anger against Caffrey. He wants to yell at him or shake him, because Caffrey should have kept his damned nose clean, and instead he got involved in all this crap.
He is angry, because despite being a thief and conman, Neal is not a bad person. He has Jones questioning everything he ever believed in, he turned their lives upside down and he is Jones’s friend, and if Jones could cover up the evidence, which he can’t, he would be sorely tempted, which is completely, utterly wrong.
He is angry because he can’t really do a thing to help, except talking to his superiors and talking to Neal now.
And feeding him.
Or maybe Jones is angry because he sees that Neal is changing, that he is trying to leave his past behind, just not quick and soon enough. He is angry because he wants Caffrey to become an upstanding citizen and it doesn’t just miraculously happen overnight. Whatever Caffrey’s involvement was with the treasure (because they still haven’t heard his own full confession), he stayed and didn’t run, not after his confrontation with Peter, not even when he could have after Elizabeth Burke was rescued.
Just as it came, the anger leaves and it is replaced with a feeling of hollowness.
“So, now that we know about the treasure,” starts Jones after a while, “there’s something I wanted to ask you about.”
Caffrey subconsciously chafes his wrists that are smarting from the cuffs. “Ask away.”
“You remember the case just a few days after the warehouse exploded, with the man who wanted to smuggle his sixty million out of the city,” says Jones with a hint of question.
Neal gives him a careful look. “Lawrence? Yes, I remember. We wanted to arrest him at the port.”
“Except that I had been discovered,” finishes Jones for him. “And he would have killed me, except – “
“ – I suggested we use you as leverage and told him about the plane,” recalls Caffrey. “So, now you want to know if the plane had something to do with the treasure.”
“Something like that, yes.”
Caffrey closes his eyes and leans against the wall without saying anything.
Jones watches the lines in his face, the sheer misery, guilt and exhaustion that’s written there, and he decides to cut him some slack. “All right, I won’t pry. And I’m grateful that you saved my life that day.”
At that, Neal’s eyes open and he stares at him. “No,” he says softly. “No, I am grateful. I think I’ve subconsciously been grateful since maybe a week or two after the incident. If you hadn’t been in danger that day… I might have done something I would have regretted for the rest of my life.”
It is as close as one can get to a confession with Neal Caffrey, and frankly, Jones is flattered. It was one thing when Caffrey confessed about the treasure when Mrs. Burke’s life was on line. It is another thing altogether when he does it now.
Jones should maybe care that Caffrey has just admitted in not so many words that he intended to run, but he knows that in the end, the man made the right choice, and that is enough for him.
“Do you regret it now?” he asks curiously.
He can see this really gives Caffrey a pause.
“If I had run,” he starts shakily, before he hesitates. “If I had run, then Keller would have never kidnapped Elizabeth.”
Jones wants to somehow oppose that, but he feels Neal isn’t done yet, so he keeps quiet.
“But that could have been prevented if I had been honest about the treasure. Which would have meant to betray Mozzie’s trust in one way or another, but then I’ve still lost that. Worse, Moz is now on the run.”
That was one of the ugly things during the whole Nazi treasure fiasco and Elizabeth’s kidnapping. It took all Neal’s and the FBI’s resourcefulness to contact Mozzie. When Mozzie learned about Elizabeth, he was willing to part with the treasure, but only after the FBI gave in to his demand that he wouldn’t be prosecuted. Jones had been angered just like the rest of them, even after Neal pointed out that Mozzie wasn’t meaning harm, but that it was just a part of his paranoid nature and need to protect himself.
He was proven right three days later when Mozzie led them to the treasure despite being denied immunity. Of course, by then Neal was already gone on his own rescue mission.
Jones knows that Neal’s relationship with Mozzie is another thing that will definitely be held against Neal. He remembers how his friend Jimmy was arrested not so long ago and knowing how hard it was, he can’t help but feel for Neal – and Peter.
Peter, the equally tragic figure in this whole mess, who still had to personally cuff Neal only moments after he hugged his rescued wife.
“If you could do it all over again…?” asks Jones.
“I still wouldn’t run,” says Neal quietly, but his voice is firm.
“That’s good to know.”
“Of course, that answer might change in a year or two after they send me back,” murmurs Neal, and Jones pats his shoulder.
There is this silence again.
“June has offered to pay for my lawyer,” says Neal after a while. “She also said my room will be waiting for me in her house as long as she is alive, and afterwards I could turn to her granddaughter Cindy.”
Jones once more wishes that the Nazi treasure had never been found at all.
Neal sneaks up a glance at the office upstairs, where they are deciding his fate, and bites his lip, his conman’s masks lost sometime during the past few days.
“Hey, don’t give up,” says Jones. “I know for a fact that Diana will speak up for you, and so will I. Even Peter has calmed down considerably.”
“I knew about the treasure, I messed with evidence, I forged the Degas and betrayed Peter’s trust,” replies Neal. “No matter what else I did, I can’t really see a way out of this.”
“Neal – “
“Jones?” calls Diana from the stairs. “You’re wanted up there.”
“Got to go,” says Jones and starts standing up, when Neal’s hand stops him in movement. He gives him a curious look.
“Thank you,” whispers Neal. “You and Diana… that means a lot to me. So… thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” says Jones sincerely before Caffrey reluctantly nods and let go of his suit.
As he goes up, he feels Caffrey’s eyes on him, knowing that Jones is about to fight for his freedom.
Author’s Name:
sheenianniFandom: White Collar
Spoilers: Season 3.10 – Countdown
Characters/Pairings: Neal Caffrey, Peter Burke, Clinton Jones, Diana Barrigan, Elizabeth Burke, Sara Ellis, Agent Kramer, June and others
Raiting: PG
Warnings/Triggers: None
Word Count: ~ 2,800 (chapter), ~31,000 (total)
Summary: In the aftermath of Elizabeth’s kidnapping, Neal has to make a life-defining choice - and then he has to face its consequences. Post 3.10 Countdown story.
This story is finished. New chapters will be posted every few days.
Prologue
A/N: This chapter (as well as the whole story) has been beta’ed by GrayWolf84 from fanfiction.net. Thank you!
CHAPTER 1
Four days later
„Hey.“
Caffrey looks up at Jones, who is standing above him with a cup of water and plain sandwich bread.
„Scoot over,” says Jones and sits down next to the conman, who reluctantly moves to the left side of the bench. Jones notices the wistful look in Caffrey’s eyes as he longingly eyes the bread and the cup he is holding.
“Take it. It’s for you,” he says and presses both things into Caffrey’s cuffed hands. Neal barely has the time to whisper one coarse “thank you” before he hungrily devours the sandwich and starts taking small sips of water. With the haunted look, the various bruises covering most of his body and the dirty, torn clothes, he looks almost nothing like the charming and proud Neal Caffrey Jones has come to know.
Not to forget the slight tremors running randomly through all Caffrey’s body.
“Thanks again,” says Caffrey when he finishes up and awkwardly looks away.
Even though Jones knows that this man is an accomplice to the theft of the Nazi treasure, that it is indirectly his fault that Peter’s wife was kidnapped, and that he should now rightfully spend a long time behind bars, he can’t help but feel a lot of sympathy for him. And he knows that while Neal has made a lot of shady decisions, he isn’t a bad man. In fact, Jones would even go as far as to call him a friend. Which is why he is here, trying to offer some measly measure of support.
Caffrey certainly seems to need it.
“You look like crap,” says Jones in an attempt to stir up conversation.
“Yeah?” chuckles Caffrey humorlessly. “I wouldn’t have guessed.”
All right, that probably wasn’t a great opening line. But with everything that has happened, Jones really doesn’t know what to say.
“What do you think is going on there?” he asks, motioning upwards to the closed door that is now hidden from their view.
“Wish I knew,” says Neal tiredly. “On the other hand, probably not. Anyway, I’m sure the higher ups will fill me on the moment they’re done.”
Jones doesn’t need Caffrey to spell it out for him. No matter how that makes Jones feel given the events of the past seventy-two hours, it is more than likely that Neal is going back to prison.
“I didn’t want this,” says Caffrey quietly. “The treasure… this wasn’t supposed to happen.”
No matter how sincere it sounds, it still makes Jones lift his eyebrows. “Honestly, how did you think it was gonna end?” he asks in disbelief.
Neal’s only answer is a helpless shrug. “Not like a disaster?”
At that, Jones can only laugh incredulously.
The sight of Caffrey’s defeated form however cuts his laugh short.
“Hey, man. This is gonna work out,” he says gently and places his hand loosely on Neal’s shoulder.
“You really think that?” asks Neal doubtfully.
Honestly?
No, Jones doesn’t think so. And seeing the wistful longing in Caffrey’s eyes, knowing that he might soon have to testify against him makes him feel like the biggest bastard in the world.
“You saved Elizabeth’s life,” he states instead. “What you did was the craziest and most stupid thing I’ve ever heard of.” Neal gives a weak chuckle at that. “But it worked,” continues Jones seriously, “and man, it was also completely amazing!”
“It had to be done,” says Caffrey quietly, but with a distinct certainty in his voice. “If I hadn’t done it, Keller would have killed Elizabeth the moment he got the treasure.”
“So you decided to sneak into his place, utterly alone and without any backup, through miles of abandoned tunnels and sewer-pipes,” says Jones, who even now is still feeling the absolute shock he experienced when they found just how Caffrey got into Keller’s hideout. “Why didn’t you voice this plan to Hughes, Diana or me?” Because face it, Peter really wasn’t on speaking terms with Neal right then… but Jones would have listened.
But when he looks at Neal’s state, he knows the answer right away.
“It was way too long a shot,” says Caffrey tightly. “The whole system hasn’t been in use for more than a century. There was no way to know what state everything was really in… Some of these pipes had sixty centimeters in diameter. No sane person would send his men there, not even somebody who could soon be sent to jail for life.”
Sixty centimeters… that’s about twenty four inches…Jones has heard that, he has even seen the place where Caffrey crawled out, but it is still sending shivers through his whole body. “You could have died there,” he says. “What if the air hadn’t been breathable? What if the path had been blocked?”
“I was prepared,” says Caffrey in cool blood. “I had a storage battery steel saw and a drill for any grates. Short of the tunnels collapsing, I was prepared to remove any obstacle in the way. And I did. As for the air… it was my risk to take.”
Jones just shakes his head, trying to come in terms with Neal’s words. “You were in there for forty hours just with a hundred years old map, two tools, a torch, one bottle of water and two packages of cookies?”
“I needed to move fast. Any additional weight would just slow me down. I had nothing to lose, Jones,” says Neal steadfastly. “When we located Keller, I had already given you all the information I could. You didn’t need me once Mozzie was on the way. Even worse, if I remained, Keller would have continued playing those games with me, games that could have cost Elizabeth her life. If El died… Once I discovered these pipes existed, it was the easiest choice in the world.”
The thing is, when Caffrey disappeared, all of them believed he had run. Sure, Jones had his doubts, but since the signal from Neal’s tracker was lost and with the incriminating evidence… None of them knew that the GPS wasn’t working because Neal was deep underground. They were sure Caffrey had selfishly taken the opportunity to escape from justice, knowing that he wouldn’t be the FBI priority at least until Elizabeth Burke was recovered.
Imagine their surprise when Neal’s signal suddenly reappeared inside Keller’s place. This time, though, when an agent suggested that Neal might be possibly working with Keller, Diana fiercely jumped to Neal’s defense, only to be proven right about twenty minutes later.
Neal’s tracker didn’t work in the pipes. If anything had gone wrong there, if he had suffocated, they wouldn’t have even been able to locate his corpse.
Feeling slightly nauseous, Jones stares hard at the con next to him. “At least tell me you’re not claustrophobic.”
“My mother was,” says Neal detachedly.
“Christ, Caffrey!”
“I knew I could do it,” claims Neal calmly. “I have once allegedly entered somewhere through roughly hundred meters of similar system. The key is to be really set on your target.”
“There is a huge freaking difference between hundred meters and several miles! How did you – “
“It was absolute hell,” says Neal curtly and another tremble runs through his body. “Can we please drop the subject of the pipes now?”
Anyone could tell that Caffrey isn’t lying, even if judging just by the paleness of his face and his haunted look. No, Jones is sure Neal is absolutely sincere, which makes this nightmare even worse.
He gently squeezes Caffrey’s shoulder.
“You did great,” he says softly.
Caffrey sighs. “Jones – “
“No, really. When Keller hired those men, his hideout became untouchable if we didn’t want to risk Elizabeth’s life. But then you found her, overcame her guard and barricaded both of you in her room for long enough so that the SWAT team forced their way inside and captured Keller after you called us on the phone. If that is not amazing – “
“Like I’ve said, it had to be done.”
They sit in silence after that.
“You want some more water?” asks Jones.
“That’d be great,” whispers Caffrey and leans against the wall, his eyes closed, his head dropped on his shoulder.
Jones hesitates. He looks around.
“Stay here.”
Neal doesn’t even open his eyes. “Do you really think I’m a flight risk right now?”
Jones shrugs. “Force of habit. I’ve learned not to underestimate you.”
“Good for you.”
The answer makes Jones uneasy.
Suddenly, Caffrey stares at him in an intense way. “Jones. I stayed. I’m not gonna run now.”
And that is, basically, the truth.
Jones leaves for the kitchen and pours water into Neal’s cup. He also searches the fridge for something additional food. Unfortunately Neal has already eaten Clinton’s own snack. He thinks about it a little, but then – screw it – he takes Diana’s sandwich, making a mental note to tell her about it later.
He is sure she won’t mind in this case.
Caffrey does, though.
“This is Diana’s sandwich.”
“Yeah, it was. I’ll buy her another one.”
“I’m not stealing Diana’s food,” says Neal flatly.
“Technically, that was me. I’ll authorize it with her later.”
“I can’t eat that. She’s gonna shoot me!”
Jones raises his eyebrows. “Somehow, I don’t believe that after not shooting you when you were supposedly a fleeting suspect, she would do that over a piece of bread and cheese. ... At worst, she’ll break your arms and legs.”
“That’s really reassuring,” says Neal, but then he ceases to resist and takes the sandwich from Jones. “If she shoots me, it’s on your head,” he says before he finally starts taking quick, but dignified bites.
Jones is certain Caffrey is ready to hide the incriminating object if Diana comes into sight. It almost makes him laugh, except he knows that if the talk in the conference room doesn’t go extremely well, this might be the last time he sees Caffrey on an occasion like this.
Caffrey finishes the water and eats all the “evidence”.
“So now we’re officially accomplices to the theft of Diana’s lunch,” says Neal with a small grin. “Is it a criminal offense to corrupt an FBI agent?”
“Probably,” replies Jones with a tight smile of his own.
Neither of them is really enjoying the joke.
Suddenly, Jones feels a strong wave of anger against Caffrey. He wants to yell at him or shake him, because Caffrey should have kept his damned nose clean, and instead he got involved in all this crap.
He is angry, because despite being a thief and conman, Neal is not a bad person. He has Jones questioning everything he ever believed in, he turned their lives upside down and he is Jones’s friend, and if Jones could cover up the evidence, which he can’t, he would be sorely tempted, which is completely, utterly wrong.
He is angry because he can’t really do a thing to help, except talking to his superiors and talking to Neal now.
And feeding him.
Or maybe Jones is angry because he sees that Neal is changing, that he is trying to leave his past behind, just not quick and soon enough. He is angry because he wants Caffrey to become an upstanding citizen and it doesn’t just miraculously happen overnight. Whatever Caffrey’s involvement was with the treasure (because they still haven’t heard his own full confession), he stayed and didn’t run, not after his confrontation with Peter, not even when he could have after Elizabeth Burke was rescued.
Just as it came, the anger leaves and it is replaced with a feeling of hollowness.
“So, now that we know about the treasure,” starts Jones after a while, “there’s something I wanted to ask you about.”
Caffrey subconsciously chafes his wrists that are smarting from the cuffs. “Ask away.”
“You remember the case just a few days after the warehouse exploded, with the man who wanted to smuggle his sixty million out of the city,” says Jones with a hint of question.
Neal gives him a careful look. “Lawrence? Yes, I remember. We wanted to arrest him at the port.”
“Except that I had been discovered,” finishes Jones for him. “And he would have killed me, except – “
“ – I suggested we use you as leverage and told him about the plane,” recalls Caffrey. “So, now you want to know if the plane had something to do with the treasure.”
“Something like that, yes.”
Caffrey closes his eyes and leans against the wall without saying anything.
Jones watches the lines in his face, the sheer misery, guilt and exhaustion that’s written there, and he decides to cut him some slack. “All right, I won’t pry. And I’m grateful that you saved my life that day.”
At that, Neal’s eyes open and he stares at him. “No,” he says softly. “No, I am grateful. I think I’ve subconsciously been grateful since maybe a week or two after the incident. If you hadn’t been in danger that day… I might have done something I would have regretted for the rest of my life.”
It is as close as one can get to a confession with Neal Caffrey, and frankly, Jones is flattered. It was one thing when Caffrey confessed about the treasure when Mrs. Burke’s life was on line. It is another thing altogether when he does it now.
Jones should maybe care that Caffrey has just admitted in not so many words that he intended to run, but he knows that in the end, the man made the right choice, and that is enough for him.
“Do you regret it now?” he asks curiously.
He can see this really gives Caffrey a pause.
“If I had run,” he starts shakily, before he hesitates. “If I had run, then Keller would have never kidnapped Elizabeth.”
Jones wants to somehow oppose that, but he feels Neal isn’t done yet, so he keeps quiet.
“But that could have been prevented if I had been honest about the treasure. Which would have meant to betray Mozzie’s trust in one way or another, but then I’ve still lost that. Worse, Moz is now on the run.”
That was one of the ugly things during the whole Nazi treasure fiasco and Elizabeth’s kidnapping. It took all Neal’s and the FBI’s resourcefulness to contact Mozzie. When Mozzie learned about Elizabeth, he was willing to part with the treasure, but only after the FBI gave in to his demand that he wouldn’t be prosecuted. Jones had been angered just like the rest of them, even after Neal pointed out that Mozzie wasn’t meaning harm, but that it was just a part of his paranoid nature and need to protect himself.
He was proven right three days later when Mozzie led them to the treasure despite being denied immunity. Of course, by then Neal was already gone on his own rescue mission.
Jones knows that Neal’s relationship with Mozzie is another thing that will definitely be held against Neal. He remembers how his friend Jimmy was arrested not so long ago and knowing how hard it was, he can’t help but feel for Neal – and Peter.
Peter, the equally tragic figure in this whole mess, who still had to personally cuff Neal only moments after he hugged his rescued wife.
“If you could do it all over again…?” asks Jones.
“I still wouldn’t run,” says Neal quietly, but his voice is firm.
“That’s good to know.”
“Of course, that answer might change in a year or two after they send me back,” murmurs Neal, and Jones pats his shoulder.
There is this silence again.
“June has offered to pay for my lawyer,” says Neal after a while. “She also said my room will be waiting for me in her house as long as she is alive, and afterwards I could turn to her granddaughter Cindy.”
Jones once more wishes that the Nazi treasure had never been found at all.
Neal sneaks up a glance at the office upstairs, where they are deciding his fate, and bites his lip, his conman’s masks lost sometime during the past few days.
“Hey, don’t give up,” says Jones. “I know for a fact that Diana will speak up for you, and so will I. Even Peter has calmed down considerably.”
“I knew about the treasure, I messed with evidence, I forged the Degas and betrayed Peter’s trust,” replies Neal. “No matter what else I did, I can’t really see a way out of this.”
“Neal – “
“Jones?” calls Diana from the stairs. “You’re wanted up there.”
“Got to go,” says Jones and starts standing up, when Neal’s hand stops him in movement. He gives him a curious look.
“Thank you,” whispers Neal. “You and Diana… that means a lot to me. So… thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” says Jones sincerely before Caffrey reluctantly nods and let go of his suit.
As he goes up, he feels Caffrey’s eyes on him, knowing that Jones is about to fight for his freedom.
