White Collar Ficlet - Time, Immobile
Jan. 11th, 2012 12:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elrhiarhodanTitle: Time, Immobile
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
elrhiarhodan
Fandom: White Collar
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairings: Neal Caffrey
Spoilers: None
Warnings/Enticements/Triggers: Extreme Angst
Word Count: ~600
Summary: Neal is back in prison, for life.
A/N: This story was written for the Fandom Snowflake Challenge Day 9 – Create a Fanwork, and I used the prompt An immobile time not marked on clocks from Charles Baudelaire’s The Parisian Prowler. It didn’t help that I was listening to Nina Simone singing “Who Knows Where the Time Goes” when I started writing this.
No beta. All mistakes are mine and mine alone.
__________________
His cell was small, smaller than the cell he had occupied for four years and a few days. Smaller than the one they stuck him in after Kate’s murder.
The proportions were coffin-like, and Neal wondered if this was a message. But no pipes ran across the ceiling. His mattress rested on a cement slab. He wasn’t permitted anything that could be used to inflict harm upon himself.
When he arrived, he was allowed two books, a pad of paper and a box of crayons. That was the extent of his personal effects. No music, no art. No way to communicate with the outside world. As if the outside world wanted to hear from him
Meals arrived through a slot in the door and Neal had wondered if he was to be treated like Edmond Dantes in the Chateau D’if. When the empty trays did not come back, they’d open the cell and cart out his dead body.
And then he’d laugh and tell himself not to be so maudlin. He was kept in solitary for his own protection. He was, after all, a famous snitch who, once-upon-a-time, had his own desk at the FBI offices in New York City. He was the other half of Gotham City’s most famous team of Cop and Robber.
But that was all over now. It had been for quite a while.
Three years, two hundred thirty seven days and about nine hours after he was incarcerated for the rest of his life, Neal Caffrey went crazy. Not screaming bonkers, not catatonic. He didn’t snap and start believing that he was Frank Sinatra. No – he just lost himself. Time had no meaning; the days progressed according to the calendar, the seconds and minutes and hours swept with the hands of the clock.
But time was stationary for Neal Caffrey. Or maybe it didn’t exist at all.
There were days when Neal remembered a friend he thought he once had. A man who was partial to Albert Einstein, often employing quotations from the genius’ writings to make a point. His favorite was “The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once.”
Neal no longer understood that.
His madness was a suffocation of time, the endless nothingness of a life without meaning. The fixed routine of his days continued without end. He woke when the lights went on; he slept when they were turned off. He ate when food arrived and eliminated when his body was done with the food. He was allowed to shower with some regularity and once a day he was permitted to see the sun.
The paper had long since been used up, and the crayons gone to nubs. The books disappeared one day when his room was tossed and Neal couldn’t find the energy to ask for them back. Maybe if someone cared enough, they would have argued that this treatment was torture at its most refined.
But no one cared.
No one came to see him or send him letters or even make an inquiry as to his health and mental well-being. Neal Caffrey was simply a decaying prisoner in solitary, immobile and forgotten in time. His existence was the deathly inertia of a pendulum, set into motion and slowly moving to stillness.
FIN
For the framework of this story, I point you to this New York Times article (sorry, reg. required) about the inhumanity of solitary confinement.
Author:
elrhiarhodanFandom: White Collar
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairings: Neal Caffrey
Spoilers: None
Warnings/Enticements/Triggers: Extreme Angst
Word Count: ~600
Summary: Neal is back in prison, for life.
A/N: This story was written for the Fandom Snowflake Challenge Day 9 – Create a Fanwork, and I used the prompt An immobile time not marked on clocks from Charles Baudelaire’s The Parisian Prowler. It didn’t help that I was listening to Nina Simone singing “Who Knows Where the Time Goes” when I started writing this.
No beta. All mistakes are mine and mine alone.
His cell was small, smaller than the cell he had occupied for four years and a few days. Smaller than the one they stuck him in after Kate’s murder.
The proportions were coffin-like, and Neal wondered if this was a message. But no pipes ran across the ceiling. His mattress rested on a cement slab. He wasn’t permitted anything that could be used to inflict harm upon himself.
When he arrived, he was allowed two books, a pad of paper and a box of crayons. That was the extent of his personal effects. No music, no art. No way to communicate with the outside world. As if the outside world wanted to hear from him
Meals arrived through a slot in the door and Neal had wondered if he was to be treated like Edmond Dantes in the Chateau D’if. When the empty trays did not come back, they’d open the cell and cart out his dead body.
And then he’d laugh and tell himself not to be so maudlin. He was kept in solitary for his own protection. He was, after all, a famous snitch who, once-upon-a-time, had his own desk at the FBI offices in New York City. He was the other half of Gotham City’s most famous team of Cop and Robber.
But that was all over now. It had been for quite a while.
Three years, two hundred thirty seven days and about nine hours after he was incarcerated for the rest of his life, Neal Caffrey went crazy. Not screaming bonkers, not catatonic. He didn’t snap and start believing that he was Frank Sinatra. No – he just lost himself. Time had no meaning; the days progressed according to the calendar, the seconds and minutes and hours swept with the hands of the clock.
But time was stationary for Neal Caffrey. Or maybe it didn’t exist at all.
There were days when Neal remembered a friend he thought he once had. A man who was partial to Albert Einstein, often employing quotations from the genius’ writings to make a point. His favorite was “The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once.”
Neal no longer understood that.
His madness was a suffocation of time, the endless nothingness of a life without meaning. The fixed routine of his days continued without end. He woke when the lights went on; he slept when they were turned off. He ate when food arrived and eliminated when his body was done with the food. He was allowed to shower with some regularity and once a day he was permitted to see the sun.
The paper had long since been used up, and the crayons gone to nubs. The books disappeared one day when his room was tossed and Neal couldn’t find the energy to ask for them back. Maybe if someone cared enough, they would have argued that this treatment was torture at its most refined.
But no one cared.
No one came to see him or send him letters or even make an inquiry as to his health and mental well-being. Neal Caffrey was simply a decaying prisoner in solitary, immobile and forgotten in time. His existence was the deathly inertia of a pendulum, set into motion and slowly moving to stillness.
For the framework of this story, I point you to this New York Times article (sorry, reg. required) about the inhumanity of solitary confinement.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2012-01-11 06:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-11 06:05 pm (UTC)But thank you. I will do something fluffy now.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-12 01:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-11 07:32 pm (UTC)~pt
no subject
Date: 2012-01-11 07:33 pm (UTC)And thank you for your lovely words of encouragement.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-11 08:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-12 02:03 pm (UTC)In a way, it hurts more than the deathfic I wrote last August that started in a similar vein.
Ow
Date: 2012-01-12 04:30 am (UTC)Re: Ow
Date: 2012-01-12 02:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-12 05:32 am (UTC)One question: in the last line, is this phrase:
supposed to read "SLOWLY moving to stillness"?
no subject
Date: 2012-01-12 02:02 pm (UTC)(And thank you for pointing out the typo, all fixed).
no subject
Date: 2012-01-11 05:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-11 05:46 pm (UTC)It hurt to write, but it somehow needed to be written.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-11 05:47 pm (UTC)Seriously, this was lovely...stark but lovely.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-11 05:48 pm (UTC)Thank you!
no subject
Date: 2012-01-11 05:49 pm (UTC)Then I read your author's note and although I cannot read the NY Times article, I spent the last year getting familiar with the topic so I have a pretty good idea what it says anyway.
Long story short, I like how you wrote this, it's brilliant in it's own way, but desturbing enough that I don't want to read it again. Could you write something happy, pleeeeeeeeeease? ;)
no subject
Date: 2012-01-11 05:54 pm (UTC)Yes, long term solitary confinement is as much torture as stress positions, waterboarding and the physical infliction of pain. And quite likely worse, since it can go on without end.
I'll set my mind to something fluffy, but I'm not known as the angst-queen for nothing!
no subject
Date: 2012-01-11 06:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-11 05:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-11 05:55 pm (UTC)Thank you.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-11 08:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-11 09:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-11 09:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-11 10:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-11 10:50 pm (UTC)I really love the bleak environment you created, and Neal's sense of hopelessness as well as time passing. The idea of him having to make do for life with two books and crayons is heart breaking, and also left me wondering what happened and where everyone is and why they're leaving him (or, alternatively, as is entirely likely in the American prison something, if they are being denied Neal/lied to about him, and again, why?).
Excellent fic. :)
no subject
Date: 2012-01-12 01:48 am (UTC)Again, thank you for reading and for your insights.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-12 12:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-11 10:54 pm (UTC)Donna
no subject
Date: 2012-01-12 01:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-12 01:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-12 01:42 am (UTC)I may continue it.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-12 04:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-12 04:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-12 06:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-12 07:15 am (UTC)Very well written!
no subject
Date: 2012-01-12 07:35 am (UTC)