elrhiarhodan (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
elrhiarhodan) wrote2014-05-19 06:43 pm
elrhiarhodan) wrote2014-05-19 06:43 pm
Entry tags:
- character: diana berrigan,
- character: elizabeth burke,
- character: garrett fowler,
- character: james bennett,
- character: june ellington,
- character: kate moreau,
- character: matthew keller,
- character: mozzie,
- character: neal caffrey,
- character: peter burke,
- character: reese hughes,
- character: satchmo,
- genre: alternative universe,
- genre: angst,
- genre: backstory,
- genre: domesticity,
- genre: emotional trauma,
- genre: hurt/comfort,
- genre: transformation,
- genre: wing fic,
- kanarek13 warms my heart,
- pairing: peter/elizabeth,
- pairing: peter/neal,
- type: fan fiction,
- type: longfic,
- wc verse: just one life,
- white collar,
- written for: wcrbb,
- year: 2014
White Collar Fic - If the Soul Doesn't Sing (Just One Life) Part II (White Collar Reverse Big Bang)
Title: If the Soul Doesn’t Sing (Just One Life) - Part II
Artist:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kanarek13, Artwork Post
Author:elrhiarhodan
Fandom: White Collar
Rating: R
Characters: Neal Caffrey, Peter Burke, June Ellington, Garrett Fowler, Reese Hughes, Matthew Keller, Mozzie, Clinton Jones, Diana Berrigan, mention of Kate Moreau, mention of Elizabeth Burke, mention of Satchmo, mention of Terrance Pratt, mention of James Bennett, original characters
Pairings: Pre-story Peter/Elizabeth, pre-story Peter/Hughes; Neal/Keller, Peter/Neal
Spoilers: Mention of canon events at the end of In the Wind (S4.16)
Warnings : Non-canon deaths of canon characters (all off-camera and pre-story): Elizabeth Burke, Satchmo, Kate Moreau, OMC
Word Count: Total ~50,000 / Part II – 7,700
Beta Credit:coffeethyme4me, sinfulslasher
Summary: Neal is an Archon, a ‘guardian angel’, who has been watching over the soul of Peter Burke for millennia. He’s learned that Peter’s soul will not be reborn into a new life, and cannot bear the thought that he will continue for eternity without Peter. So he decides to take the forbidden path: become mortal and spend the rest of his days watching over Peter and caring for him.
But he will need to make a sacrifice, and he will need to learn how to Fall.
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The decision, when Peter finally made it, was surprisingly freeing. He’d thought he’d be like Reese, all but forcibly ejected from the Bureau, made to retire because of his age. He didn’t expect his departure to be precipitated by some sub-rosa disgrace.
There were going to be a million details to wrap up, of course. He’d been on suspension after the Pratt shooting, and it was like being cut loose and set adrift without any way to make it back to shore. Other than showing up for endless interrogations, he’d spent six long weeks of doing nothing.
But his letter of resignation to the Director triggered a hell of a lot of interesting events.
Fowler and his investigation just melted away like ice in the summer sun. Before he could change his mind, Peter had sent his notice in a little after nine in the morning and showed up for another scheduled interview with OPR shortly after noon. Fowler was there, but the room – which just yesterday had been filled with cartons of evidence – was now empty.
“What’s going on?”
Fowler shrugged. “Don’t know, don’t care. Got orders a few hours ago that this investigation was closed and I’m to head back to D.C. to work on another case. Nothing to do with you.”
“Closed? I don’t understand.”
“Apparently the higher ups have decided to accept your version of the shooting. They now believe what you said about James Bennett, that he’d convinced you that he’d been set up by Terrance Pratt thirty years ago to take the fall for killing another cop. That when the evidence proved otherwise, he grabbed your gun and shot the Senator.”
That was the truth, except there was a lot more to it than that. The senator was far from innocent. While James Bennett was truly the man who shot his supervising officer nearly thirty years ago, it was Terrance Pratt who set the circumstances in motion. Bennett was just a pawn in the game that Pratt had been playing for three decades. And sometimes, pawns can take down the king.
“Forensics is done with your gun. You can retrieve it whenever you want to. According to the brass, I’m supposed to give this back to you.” Fowler pushed an envelope across the table.
Peter took the envelope and opened it. It was his badge and FBI credentials. “Why? Why now?”
Fowler shrugged. “Dunno. The answer to that question is above my pay grade.” Fowler held out his hand, a surprisingly genial smile on his face. “Take care of yourself, Burke. You’re a good agent. None of this was personal. I was just doing my job.”
Bemused, Peter shook the man’s hand and watched him leave. He clipped the badge onto his belt and tucked the identification folder into his jacket pocket. Everything felt as it was supposed to, but Peter knew that wasn’t going to last. He hadn’t heard back from the Director’s office yet, other than the automated confirmation that his message had been received. But there was no reason to believe that anything had changed. He was still persona non grata in the Bureau. The Pratt investigation had closed because he was resigning – no, make that retiring. The powers that be had no need to continue to throw mud at him if he wasn’t going to be around.
He went over to the Forensics lab, and as Fowler had promised, they were finished with his gun and gave it back to him. The firing mechanism had been disabled and would need to be replaced, but it wasn’t as if he was going to have any need to use it at this moment or any moment in the immediate future.
Peter debated about going to the office; he worried about what type of signal that would send to his staff. Well, not his staff anymore. No – they were still his people until the Bureau said otherwise.
He went up to the twenty-first floor and stepped into the office like it was an ordinary day. Clinton saw him first, and the smile on the man’s face was bright enough to compete with the lights in Times Square. Diana looked up at that moment, too – and soon the whole team was on its feet, clapping. He was mobbed and hugged by his staff; they shook his hand so vigorously that he thought it might fall off.
Peter hated to say anything, but he couldn’t let this continue. Diana must have seen something on his face. She frowned at him.
“Boss?”
Peter let out a deep sigh.
“Peter?” That was from Clinton.
“I’m back, but just for a short while – just today. I’ve decided to … retire.” Peter spoke loud enough that everyone could hear him.
There was a collective gasp from the staff.
He might as well do this now, before it got too painful. Peter held up a hand to forestall any comments. “You are the best group of agents anyone could ever work with. It’s been an honor and a privilege to work with you, to have you at my back, to watch yours.” He swallowed hard against the tears that threatened. “Do good things, everyone.”
The room fell silent. Peter ducked his head before turning and heading up the short flight of stairs to his office. There was a pile of mail on his chair – most of it probably garbage, since his caseload had been assigned to other agents. Besides, little evidence arrived by way of the US Postal Service these days.
For shits and giggles, he booted up his computer and logged in. There was a warning that his access was restricted and his activities were monitored. Naturally.
And naturally, his email inbox was nearly empty. In fact, there was just a single message there – the notice from the Administrator’s Office regarding his impending “retirement.” Peter opened it and tried not to laugh. He was to report to the Human Resources department for out-processing by four-thirty this afternoon. And not to forget to bring his badge and his identification.
His credentials had to be turned in, but he’d be allowed to keep his badge, except that they punched a hole in the gold shield so he couldn’t use it anymore. Peter was tempted to tell them to put it through the recycler. It wasn’t like he wanted it.
No, that wasn’t true. He desperately wanted it. It represented everything he was.
Peter stared at the message and he thought about Reese’s offer. It wouldn’t be that hard to slip into a slightly different role. He could look at it like a full-time, life-long undercover assignment. That’s what Reese had done. He sighed and scrubbed at his eyes, unable to make any sort of decision.
“Boss?”
Peter looked up. Diana and Clinton were hovering in his doorway. He gestured and they entered, shutting the door behind them. Peter didn’t know what to say. Of all the agents on his team, these two meant the most to him and he couldn’t help but feel like he’d let them down by retiring.
Clinton spoke first. “Six weeks ago, when you were suspended, we told you that we’d stand beside you – that we were as much a part of what happened as you were. You told us not to get involved, that falling on our swords would be a waste of two good agents. We shouldn’t have listened to you. This isn’t right.”
Diana picked up the argument. “We can fix this. We can keep fighting.”
Peter shook his head and cut them off. “This is not something that can be fixed, Di. This part of my life is over. The fight is over.”
“Peter – ” He almost hated the way Clinton said his name, with respect and a touch of exasperation. “You can’t just give up like this.”
He shrugged. “I haven’t given up.”
“So, retiring is a strategic retreat?” Diana actually sounded angry.
“That’s a good way to put it.”
“You have something in the works?” She looked over at Clinton, like they’d discussed this already.
“Maybe.” He certainly couldn’t tell them about Reese’s offer.
“We want to go with you. Wherever you go.” Diana and Clinton actually spoke those words simultaneously.
Their loyalty stabbed him through the heart. He just shook his head. “You can’t.”
“Why not?” Of course, Diana pressed at him.
“Because you two are the future of this office. You’re the best agents I’ve ever trained, I’ve ever worked with, and whatever issues I have with the Bureau have nothing to do with you. You owe your loyalty to the Bureau, to this division, not to me.” Peter gave them a wry smile. “I can’t tell you how much your offer means to me, but I can’t allow you to make that choice.”
Neither agent looked convinced. “We have free will and we’re not slaves. If we want to leave, we can.” Diana was speaking for both of them.
“Yes, you can. You have every right to, but you’d be stupid to do that. And if there’s one thing I know you aren’t, it’s stupid.”
They grumbled at him, he made them promise to keep in touch, and then he shooed them out of his office. It was time to go.
Peter shut down his computer and looked around his office. There were a few personal items he wanted to take – his college diploma and a few framed certificates, a picture of him and Elizabeth that he could never bear to put away, a pen and pencil set his parents had given him when he graduated college. All of it fit into a single box with room to spare. He dumped his now useless gun in there, too. Peter looked around the room – the place that had defined him for so long – and felt a deep pang of sorrow. It was another death, only this time; there were no prayers to be said. There was no ceremony for him, no gravestone to mark his passage. Just some paperwork to sign.
How appropriate.
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“You went to see Matthew. That was not wise, Neal. Not wise at all.”
Neal looked up from the mirror pool and smiled. The Archon who’d just invaded his aerie was a welcome guest, despite the fierceness of her statement. “June.” He went over to her and was enveloped in a tight hug, which he returned, his hands carefully avoiding her delicate plumage. “Since when have I been known for my wisdom?”
She pulled him over to the ledge that ringed the mirror pool and they sat down. She didn’t let go of his hand; her strength was not one of muscle and bone, but filled with the power of the Elders, and regardless of her status, Neal would never show her such disrespect as pulling his hand free.
“I’d ask what brings you here, but you’ve already made that clear.”
“Of all the Archons you could have gone to, Matthew should have been the last on your list.”
“And maybe that’s why I needed to talk with him first.”
“He will only bring you pain, Neal.”
“He’s my friend, and he’s dying by inches. Your punishment is torture.”
“You should have better friends, Neal. Matthew destroyed a human soul. The soul given into his care, a soul he had been watching over for centuries. He is getting what he deserves, no more, no less.” June’s anger was unyielding.
Neal didn’t agree. “Then why not kill him outright? Slow poison and an antidote to ensure he stays caged and passive? That’s not justice, that’s revenge.”
June just shook her head. “We will have to agree to disagree on that, Neal.”
Her answer was unacceptable to the very core of his being. Neal gently pulled his hand free and paced by the glass. In his agitation, he couldn’t stop his wings from extending and they quivered with the emotion he couldn’t contain.
“Exert some self-control, Neal. This outrage does you no good.”
It took some effort, but he calmed down. June was right, behaving like a fledgling, immature and uncontrolled, would only harm his cause.
“Can you help me?”
June tilted her head and looked at him. Her gaze seemed to bore through all the layers of his being, into his very essence. He felt flayed, naked, all his truths exposed.
“There are a million reasons why I should not. You have to realize that if you continue on your chosen course, Matthew’s punishment is one you could share.”
“Only if I ruin Peter’s soul.” Neal took a deep breath and committed himself. “Only if I speak his name. Only if I seek him out without making the sacrifice.” His words rang against the stone walls, the truth of his intent undeniable.
“Do you understand what that will mean to you?”
His assent was voiceless, wordless.
June’s whole posture softened. “My dear Neal, I know what it means to grieve, to lose someone you have watched over for so long. But the consequences of your actions will not be easy to live with.”
Neal shook his head. “I love him. I can’t continue without him. How many times will I have to say that before you understand?”
“I have loved my charges, too.”
Neal shook with the force of his emotions “The souls you’ve watch over will be reborn. They will take root and flourish in another life, another time. When Peter dies in this life, his soul dies forever.”
Maybe his words finally penetrated, but her warnings took on a different tone, one of sorrow. “If you do this, you will become mortal and all of your gifts will be taken from you. You will become a shadow of who you are. You will be silent, flightless, powerless. You will be alone. You will, in time, die.”
“I will have Peter.”
The look June gave him was frightening – both fierce and pitying. “You will be silent and Peter is but a mortal. He has no perceptions beyond the limits of dense matter. He will not see you for what you were, he will not understand what you mean to him and what he means to you. He may look at you and walk away.”
“I know.” Neal wasn’t giving up, despite the danger he faced.
June continued to deliver her warnings. “You could end up wrecked, living out the remainder of your allotted time alone. You will have no armor against the mortal world. You know what they are like, Neal. You know that you will be vulnerable, easily damaged, made to suffer for the simple reason that you can suffer. The human world is filled with petty evil and you could be an easy target.”
“June, I’ve told you – I’m willing to risk that. I can’t not take the chance.”
“And if I did not care for you as I do, I would walk away and let you Fall into the mortal world unprepared. There is no one in this realm for whom I care for as much as you, and if I did not counsel you against this course, I would be failing in my love for you.”
Neal ducked his head, accepting the wisdom of her words. But despite June’s love and wisdom, he was not going to change his course. He’d Fall with or without her help.
“My dear boy – ”
“June, please don’t say anything more.”
“There is nothing more to say. I can see your determination in your eyes.” She smiled, sad and resigned. “I will miss you; there are many others who will miss you. Not just for your potential, but for who you are.”
Neal took a deep breath, trying to quell the surge of emotion. “I will miss you, too.”
June brushed a kiss on his lips, a gesture of farewell, and Neal thought she was about to leave, but she didn’t. Instead, she cupped his cheek and then her hand slid down, resting a moment on his jaw, before curving around his throat. “Say the name of the soul you love. Say its name.”
“Peter.” The sound rang through the room, echoing against the walls, the syllables like bells, like claps of thunder, like the noise of creation.
“Again, say the name again.”
“Peter.” This time, the world didn’t shake, but peace and happiness rang through him and every feather in his wings quivered. Although his feet didn’t leave the ground, he felt airborne for the space of that sound on his lips.
“Again, Neal. One last time.”
“Peter.” There was sound and then nothing. He spoke the name again and heard the word only in his mind. He accepted the binding.
June kissed him again, binding him to silence and completing the sacrifice.
Neal mouthed the words “thank you” but heard nothing but puffs of air.
“Now you must Fall.” She let go of his throat and gestured to the ledge that surrounded the mirror pool.
Neal stepped up, his wings fluttering a little to give him balance. For all their ubiquity in this realm, the mirror pools were dangerous places, holding enough power to damage through careless contact. An Archon could see into the mortal realm through any polished surface, but nothing provided as much clarity as a mirror pool. Neal looked at the swirling chaos and then at June, and she nodded. “Do not be afraid. Remember your love.”
He finally understood.
Neal furled his wings tight against his body and closed his eyes, thinking of Peter and the last time he saw him. The man was tired and sad, the losses in his life weighing him down. He remembered Peter in happier times in this life – a boy playing games with his father, a young man seeking wisdom in books and numbers, an adult discovering pleasure with lovers of both sexes, then falling deeply in love with a woman and knowing that she was the one person who’d complete him. Neal put Peter’s happiness in the front of his mind; he embraced the happiness of all the lives he’d watched, the memories that accumulated across the centuries, and he took a deep breath and let go.
Neal Fell through the brightness, he Fell through the universe, he Fell and was reborn in pain and love and purpose.
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And what do you plan to do with the rest of your life, Peter Burke?
That was the question he kept asking himself, as he walked out of the Federal Building and down to the subway. He shifted the box he was carrying and asked himself what he was going to do for the next thirty years. He found a seat on the A train – it was midday and the subway car was nearly empty – and he asked himself that question as the train swayed against a curve in the tracks. He transferred at the Borough Hall station and asked himself that question. He kept asking that question with every step he took from the subway exit to his house.
He dumped the box on the floor beside the entrance and waited a moment for Satchmo, but his dog was gone, like his wife, like his life, and he wondered how much longer he’d continue to wait for the greeting that would never come.
After Elizabeth died, after her family returned to their homes, after all the well-meaning people went back to their lives, Peter had tried to take comfort from Satchmo. He’d relaxed the rules that El had insisted on, allowing the dog on the couch, inviting him upstairs and into the bedroom. But like Peter, Satchmo was never the same after El died. He rarely stirred from his dog bed, he barely ate, and Peter knew that it was only a matter of time. One morning, a few months after that terrible day, he came downstairs to find Satchmo gone. Like El – quietly, and leaving him just as shattered by his passing.
Peter went up to his bedroom and stripped out of his suit, shirt and tie. He balled everything up and dumped it into the bag for the dry cleaners, wondering if he should even bother. It wasn’t like he’d need to put on a suit again. Clad in old jeans and an even older Harvard sweatshirt, he headed back downstairs.
Time to start the rest of his life.
Par for the course, Peter had no appetite. That was nothing new these days. He ate because he needed fuel, not because he enjoyed it. He seemed to exist on coffee in the mornings and beer at night and maybe a sandwich in between, but most days, he couldn’t remember if he actually ate the food that his agents brought him. For a while, he had groceries delivered, but the service cancelled his contract the fifth time they tried to make a delivery and he wasn’t home. Peter supposed that was only fair. He couldn’t remember the last time he had turned on the oven; he barely used the kitchen that El had once taken such pride in.
Not for the first time, Peter thought about selling the house. He knew he could get a ridiculous amount of money for it. He’d have enough to retire in comfort and buy a place on the coast, or even back where he grew up and live very well on the rest. Hell, he could go find some small town upstate and run for sheriff or mayor and make a new life for himself away from the memories of everything he’d lost.
He could even get a new dog. Maybe go to a shelter and adopt an animal as lost as he was and give it a home. And if he did move back to the country, he could raise horses and never have to think about mortgage fraud or antitrust cases or securities violations ever again. He could be Peter Burke, Gentleman Farmer.
As fantasies went, it wasn’t a bad one. Except that he couldn’t see himself leaving this house, the last tangible piece of the life he was supposed to have had.
He sorted through the mail. Most of it was junk. The only thing worth saving was the bill from the private mailbox place he’d been using for the past few years. The contract on the box was expiring and needed to be renewed before the end of the month.
He had a CI – wait, he’d had a CI because he wasn’t an officer of the law anymore and civilians don’t have or need confidential informants – and the man, who went by the name Mozzie or Moz, was a paranoid genius with delusions of persecution. He refused to communicate by cellphone (something about brain cancer), or regular landlines (the NSA weren’t the only ones listening), and while the U.S. Postal Service was a branch of Big Brother, he took refuge in the fact that regular mail had built-in fail safes against random governmental intrusion. There was just too much of it to open and scan without generating all sorts of suspicions. Moz would only contact him through “snail mail” and Peter wasn’t willing to give him his home address, although he suspected that the man knew it. Hence the private post office box, which he kept under the name of Peter Suit, per Moz’s instructions.
Mozzie would, when he needed to see him, send him tickets to a concert, usually a performance of religious music. Always two seats, and if there was assigned seating, it was always on the aisle. Peter would leave one ticket at the Will-Call and the man would appear just before the performance started, just before the doors closed. He’d sit next to Peter, not say a word until the intermission. Sometimes he’d hand him a package and leave. Sometimes he’d pass information on to him without looking at him. Sometimes, the little guy would be in a chatty mood and tell him about his latest project or conspiracy theory throughout the intermission, then disappear just before the lights went down.
Peter honestly enjoyed his encounters with the little guy. He’d come into his life shortly after Elizabeth died and for a few minutes every couple of months, Moz sort of filled the great big gaping hole in his life.
He looked at the bill and tossed it in the ‘to be paid’ pile. He’d keep the box for another year, it wasn’t that much money and he needed a way to get in contact with the little guy, even for one last time, to tell him that he didn’t need the information he provided anymore. Peter wondered if they could keep in contact, if just for old time’s sake.
He opened the refrigerator and grimaced, it was as empty as it had been last night. More so, because he and Reese had finished off the last two beers. There was just that sprouted onion and the odd assortment of condiments. Peter didn’t bother with the freezer.
There was a bottle of Johnny Walker Black in the credenza in the living room. He’d made it a point to avoid hard liquor, too aware that it could be an easy path to his destruction. But he had something to celebrate tonight. No, something to mourn, and even if he didn’t have anyone to share his grief with, he still deserved a damn drink.
He poured the Scotch – two fingers, no more – over ice and took it out to the patio and sat down. The question that dogged him all the way home was still relentlessly echoing in his brain. He was fifty years old, a twenty-two year veteran of the FBI, in excellent health according to his last physical, and unless he contracted a fatal, untreatable disease or got hit by a bus, the odds were that he was going to live at least another twenty-five, maybe thirty years.
So, what the hell are you going to do with the rest of your life, Peter Burke? He’d been asking himself that for hours but he still had no answers.
The moon had just risen over the trees and he leaned back in the chair and watched the sky. He and El had loved this little bit of space, just large enough to hold a table and chairs, a two-seater swing, a barbecue grill and a little patch of grass that needed cutting once every few weeks in the summer. Their neighbors had trees, but they were far enough back that they didn’t completely obscure the view of the night sky.
Summer nights, he and El would sit out here and watch the fireflies dance. Brooklyn, even their almost-suburban neighborhood, was still too close to the city and all but the brightest stars were swallowed by the light pollution. That never mattered to El. She loved the moon and they’d often stay out and watch its passage across the night sky.
He used to call her his moon goddess, and he’d be content to spend the rest of eternity worshipping her. El would laugh, her eyes sparkling in the moonlight, and tell him he was such a silly, romantic man. She didn’t want to be worshipped like a goddess. She wanted to be loved like a woman.
Peter sipped at the Scotch, hating the taste, hating the burn, hating the loneliness, the emptiness, and the abrupt absence of purpose in his life.
He looked up and marked the passage of the moon. It was halfway across the sky. Had that much time passed?
A strange sound filled the night. Not the roar of a jet on approach to Kennedy. Not the rumble of a truck as it careened too fast up the street. No, this was a strange cacophony of sounds – birds and beasts calling out to the world, all the leaves left on the trees rattling in harmony with their desiccated brethren skittering along the street.
And then a crash.
Just like that, out of the clear night sky, a man fell into his backyard.
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Falling was painful, but it was a pain he could endure. And to be truthful, Falling wasn’t nearly as painful as landing. The ground came up to meet him with a rush that he’d not expected. This wasn’t the first time he’d fallen from such a great height. As a fledgling Archon, he’d tumbled out of the sky plenty of times, landing on surfaces a lot harder, a lot less forgiving than this small patch of greenery.
Of course, he’d had his wings then, he’d had his immortality and his strength. Now, he had a pair of trousers and nothing else.
Except Peter.
He’d Fallen and he’d landed, right where he was supposed to be.
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Peter looked at the glass in his hand; it was still three-quarters full of Scotch. He wasn’t drunk, not by any stretch of the imagination. Except that his imagination seemed to be working in overdrive. A man had just fallen out of the sky and landed on his tiny patch of grass.
By rights, he should be reaching for his gun, or his cell phone, or rushing over to the body. Because it had to be a dead body falling from an airplane. Men didn’t drop out of the sky like that.
And crazier still, it wasn’t a dead body, but a living one, wearing a pair of pants and not much else. It – he – rolled over, sat up, rubbed his shoulder, his back, his ass – as if he’d simply fallen out of a tree or off a ladder or tumbled down a short flight of stairs.
“What the hell?”
At his exclamation, the man turned, looked at him and smiled. Peter felt like he was hit by a baseball bat. Or like he’d brushed up against a live wire. His head started to ring; his blood ran hot, then cold, then hot again.
The stranger’s grin broadened, and in the bright moonlight, it seemed like an expression of purest happiness. Another jolt rocketed through Peter, something he hadn’t felt for a long, long time.
Life.
He was alive. Truly alive – not just a sack of meat and bones existing from day to day.
He found himself smiling back, feeling like a fool. He was standing on his patio, grinning at a crazy stranger who had just dropped out of the sky. He should be reaching for his gun, pointing it and shouting at the intruder to raise his hands, or to lie on his stomach, or to stay still, not move. He should be calling the police and having him arrested for trespassing.
But his gun was in a box on the floor by the doorway, and even though it defied all logic, Peter couldn’t think of a single reason why this man was a threat to him.
He held his hands down and out, as if the stranger was a wild animal, and approached. “Who are you?”
The man smiled and shook his head.
“What’s your name?”
Again, just the smile and the head shake.
“Can’t you talk?”
This time, the man mouthed a word. Peter’s lip-reading skills were rusty, but it was obvious what the word was. Great, a half-naked mute man fell out of the sky and landed in his backyard. A perfect way to end one of the worst days of his life. And yet, it did feel perfect. Not perfectly normal or perfectly wonderful. But perfectly strange in its reasonableness.
“Are you okay?”
The man nodded and Peter held out his hand. The stranger grasped it, his touch like a shot of electricity. Peter gasped but he didn’t let go, pulling the other man to his feet. All of Peter’s questions – born of his intensely practical nature – were forgotten as they stood there, eye to eye. The stranger’s clasp was now warm, human, and oddly comforting. In that simple touch, he felt his fears, his anxieties, all the hurt and resentment that had been accumulating over the last few months just evaporate.
In a single heartbeat, his life changed. All he wanted to do was get to know this man better, to invite him into his home and keep him close. Peter looked into this man’s eyes and wanted to break every rule to which he lived his life.
Peter finally withdrew his hand and stepped back. Not because he really wanted to let go, but because it seemed so damn stupid to be standing in his backyard, holding onto a stranger like they were long-lost friends finally reunited.
And where the hell did that thought come from?
The stranger kept smiling, but as he put some distance between them, the smile dimmed just a little and Peter found he wanted to weep from the loss. “Come on, let’s go inside.” He put a hand on the man’s shoulder, and again there was that brief jolt of electricity.
The man paused at the door, as if he wasn’t sure what to do, and Peter stepped around him, then just tugged him across the threshold.
Peter was distracted by the unfamiliar sound of ringing bells. It was way too late for the neighborhood carillons to be tolling, but with all the strangeness tonight, anything was possible.
He closed the back door and got his first good look at his unexpected guest in bright light. Again, his breath caught in his throat. He was not struck simply by the man’s physical beauty, but at the incredible tattoo across his back. He’d never seen anything like it – wings with feathers in such incredible detail that it was almost too much for the eye to take in.
“Your art – it’s exquisite.” Peter loved body art like this – and this was truly art – but he couldn’t imagine lasting through the countless hours needed to complete the process, of lying still and enduring the pain.
The man looked over his shoulder and then at Peter, confused. Did he not know about the tattoo? How was that possible?
Peter took him over to the mirror above the fireplace, turned him around and turned his head so he could see his back.
His guest – and Peter really needed to learn his name soon – still seemed surprised by the ink. But he seemed even more surprised by his own appearance. He turned to face the mirror and stared into it, even reaching out and touching the glass. Touching and immediately withdrawing his hand, as if he were afraid the mirror would harm him. But he overcame that fear and placed his right palm against the glass and then his left, pressing gently. The mirror swayed a bit and he stepped back, startled. But he still didn’t lose his fascination with the reflection.
Peter was reminded of a documentary he’d once seen about primates when first confronted with their reflection. His guest’s reaction was nothing like that. He seemed to completely understand what the mirror was, but he didn’t recognize himself in it.
That worried Peter. And yet he couldn’t help but be amused by his worry – of all the things to be concerned about, the man’s failure to recognize himself was probably the least important.
“Are you hungry?” Peter asked, more for something to say than for any particular desire to feed his guest.
The man shrugged again. But Peter’s stomach chose that moment to rumble and he clapped a hand over it to stifle the embarrassing noise. But his embarrassment was shared, as his guest’s stomach made a similar sound. Peter laughed and maybe the man did too, but no sound emerged.
“How does pizza sound?” Peter picked up the phone. “Cheese, of course. Do you want sausage? Pepperoni? Onions? I’ll have anything but pineapple and green pepper on my pizza.” He wondered why he was even asking – would a person who didn’t recognize themselves in a mirror have any clue about pizza toppings? Or was he being stupid?
“Can you write?” Peter scrounged for a pad and pencil, his innate practicality overtaking the momentary bout of whimsy. He found what he was looking for in the kitchen junk drawer and pushed it towards the man and watched as he picked them up. The guy fumbled with the pencil for a moment and Peter’s heart sank. But a second later, he was holding it and writing something.
No, not writing – drawing. Almost faster than his eye could follow, there was an extraordinarily detailed sketch of a pizza, with cheese, mushrooms, olives, pepperoni and what looked like bits of crumbled sausage. How the hell did he manage this – It looked like a photograph. And to draw the exact pizza he’d order if his choices were the only ones that mattered? All Peter could say was “Okay – this works.”
Peter placed the order and asked them to deliver a six-pack with the pizza. He winced at the total – the pizza parlor was charging him almost twenty bucks for the beer, about three times the cost if he’d picked it up at the bodega down the block. But he didn’t want to leave his guest alone.
It wasn’t like he was afraid that he was going to rob him or go through his stuff. Peter just had this need to keep the man in his line of sight. Which was ridiculous. Utterly, completely ridiculous. He was almost tempted to call the pizza place back and tell them not to deliver, that he’d pick up the order.
Except that he got caught in his guest’s gaze and all thoughts about pizza and beer were forgotten. A memory teased at him and he tried to grasp it. It seemed important but the harder he chased it, the more elusive it became. He blinked, deliberately breaking eye-contact, and tried to think of something to say. Something like, “Are you cold? Would you like a shirt?”
The man nodded and Peter rummaged around in the basket of clean laundry sitting next to the couch. He’d been meaning to fold and bring it upstairs for the better part of a week, but like most of the time he did the laundry, it sat unfolded until he grabbed whatever he needed from the basket. He pulled out an FBI Academy sweatshirt. It really wasn’t twenty-plus years old. He’d bought it at the company store a few years ago when he’d been down there for some training and had gotten caught short in the apparel department. It was a size too small and he rarely wore it, but he’d gone for a run a few days ago and it was the only clean sweatshirt in his drawer.
He handed it to the man and was almost relieved as the tattoo and the rest of his pale, perfect flesh disappeared under the heather-gray fabric.
One problem solved. Time to tackle another. “Do you have a name?”
His guest nodded.
Thank god. Peter pushed the pencil and paper back to him. “Can you write it for me? I have to call you something.”
Although the man seemed bound to silence, the room filled with laughter. He took the pencil and paper and wrote out his name. Four letters. But they looked like no letters he’d ever seen before. There was something vaguely tribal about the shapes, or maybe Celtic. Peter blinked and the letters re-formed into something readable.
“Neal.”
He spoke the name and all the glassware in the cabinets shook and rattled musically. Peter looked around, startled at the sound, but was more intrigued by the mystery of the man before him. “Your name is Neal?”
The man – Neal – nodded and smiled.
Progress. Thank goodness.
“What happened to you?”
Neal gestured, lifting his hand and bringing it down, his fingers making a fluttering motion.
“You fell?”
Again, a nod.
“From where?” Peter had heard of people who’d stowed away in the wheel housings of big airplanes, dying from the exposure and the altitude and falling back to earth when the plane lowered the landing gear.
Neal just spread his hands in the universal gesture of ‘I don’t know’. But Peter wasn’t buying that. There was something in Neal’s posture, in his eyes, that told him that he was lying. Which was a strange thing for a man who didn’t speak.
Peter decided that, for the moment, he was going to accept the improbable – no, the impossible – and stop asking. Maybe because his gut wasn’t sending him signals – other than hunger – or maybe because he didn’t mind a mystery in his life.
Neal’s stomach growled again, shaking Peter out of his momentary stasis. He fetched a few paper plates and a pile of napkins and hoped like hell that Neal didn’t want a knife and fork to eat his pizza.
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It was wonderful, really.
He had no other word for it – well, he had no words to speak of. Archons didn’t just exist only through the experiences of their charges. They had lives and loves and experiences, too. But those were always subsumed by the need to care and watch over the souls in their keeping.
The joy of being here, in the same realm, no – in the same room – as Peter was beyond anything he’d imagined. He felt complete, completed, and he’d never realized that a part of him had been missing. But it had, and it existed in the man standing a little more than an arm’s length away. Maybe this was why he’d needed to Fall, why he needed to defy logic and reason and law and be with Peter.
Neal’s very being sang at the proximity of the man. He’d watched over Peter in so many shapes and forms, across centuries of human time. To be here now, close enough to smell him, close enough to feel the air stir as he walked around the room was almost too much.
He couldn’t take his eyes off of Peter. And Peter seemed to sense that.
“What?”
Neal shrugged. He was doing that a lot – it was an easy way to communicate. A simple gesture that conveyed so much.
“Do I have dirt on my nose?”
Neal shook his head and just kept smiling. He almost wished he’d nodded yes – it would give him an excuse to touch Peter.
Neal knew it was better to stick with the truth as much as he could, at least for the small things. Let Peter draw conclusions that weren’t necessarily correct, if only because the real truth – like Falling between celestial dimensions – was not something he was actually prepared to explain.
Besides, touching Peter might be a bad idea. He knew, from his years of watching, that Peter – in this incarnation and in every other one – had a very strange sense of personal boundaries. He touched, but strangely enough, he didn’t like to be touched, at least not without invitation. Neal was content with letting Peter touch him. Very content.
As Peter set the table, Neal looked around the room, his eyes skipping from bookcase to couch to table, avoiding the large mirror over the fireplace. When Peter first brought him into the house and tried to show him the feathers imprinted on his back, Neal had been frightened and enthralled by the mirror. He knew, in the mortal realm, that they were a trick of physics, reflecting light back into the human eye. But in his world – his former world – a mirror was a portal between the dimensions. Archons did not see themselves; they saw the souls they were watching over.
In truth, Neal had actually never seen his own face. He knew that his fellow Archons found the symmetry of his features pleasing – just as he’d taken pleasure in their beauty. It was just shocking to see himself as others saw him.
An experience he didn’t want to repeat just yet.
Peter’s home was much as he’d thought it would be. He’d observed it from the other side of that mirror, from other bits of polished glass that were placed around the room. Being in the room, however, was a vastly different experience.
Neal resisted the temptation to pick things up and examine them in detail; to hold them, to learn their contours instead of simply viewing them from a distance. But he kept his hands to himself, which wasn’t really that much of a trial. The shirt that Peter had so casually given him was almost unbearably soft and he kept rubbing his hands against the fabric, enjoying the dual sensation of the soft fuzziness against his arms and the slightly rougher weave on his fingers.
In truth, the shirt was more interesting than anything else in the house except Peter himself. The caress of the fabric against this back was a constant distraction. When he thought about Falling, he’d deliberately avoided thinking about the loss of his wings. He’d feared their loss, but he had considered it part of the sacrifice he’d needed to make. He hadn’t expected the markings on his back – the image of feathers and bone that decorated his skin like a residual memory.
He continued his explorations, hands tucked under his arms, learning how to move without needing to consider his wings. Neal felt almost weightless and without the beautiful distraction just a few feet away, he’d probably break down in shock at the loss of his wings. But he’d made this choice, he Fell, because he needed to be with Peter, and the price of that need – his voice, his wings – was well worth paying.
“Are you okay?”
Peter’s question interrupted his musings. Neal opened his mouth to answer and remembered. He smiled and nodded instead. Having any meaningful conversation was going to be interesting.
The doorbell rang and he was saved from figuring out that conundrum. At least until after they ate.
Continue to Part III
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Artist:
kanarek13, Artwork PostAuthor:
elrhiarhodanFandom: White Collar
Rating: R
Characters: Neal Caffrey, Peter Burke, June Ellington, Garrett Fowler, Reese Hughes, Matthew Keller, Mozzie, Clinton Jones, Diana Berrigan, mention of Kate Moreau, mention of Elizabeth Burke, mention of Satchmo, mention of Terrance Pratt, mention of James Bennett, original characters
Pairings: Pre-story Peter/Elizabeth, pre-story Peter/Hughes; Neal/Keller, Peter/Neal
Spoilers: Mention of canon events at the end of In the Wind (S4.16)
Warnings : Non-canon deaths of canon characters (all off-camera and pre-story): Elizabeth Burke, Satchmo, Kate Moreau, OMC
Word Count: Total ~50,000 / Part II – 7,700
Beta Credit:
coffeethyme4me, sinfulslasher Summary: Neal is an Archon, a ‘guardian angel’, who has been watching over the soul of Peter Burke for millennia. He’s learned that Peter’s soul will not be reborn into a new life, and cannot bear the thought that he will continue for eternity without Peter. So he decides to take the forbidden path: become mortal and spend the rest of his days watching over Peter and caring for him.
But he will need to make a sacrifice, and he will need to learn how to Fall.
The decision, when Peter finally made it, was surprisingly freeing. He’d thought he’d be like Reese, all but forcibly ejected from the Bureau, made to retire because of his age. He didn’t expect his departure to be precipitated by some sub-rosa disgrace.
There were going to be a million details to wrap up, of course. He’d been on suspension after the Pratt shooting, and it was like being cut loose and set adrift without any way to make it back to shore. Other than showing up for endless interrogations, he’d spent six long weeks of doing nothing.
But his letter of resignation to the Director triggered a hell of a lot of interesting events.
Fowler and his investigation just melted away like ice in the summer sun. Before he could change his mind, Peter had sent his notice in a little after nine in the morning and showed up for another scheduled interview with OPR shortly after noon. Fowler was there, but the room – which just yesterday had been filled with cartons of evidence – was now empty.
“What’s going on?”
Fowler shrugged. “Don’t know, don’t care. Got orders a few hours ago that this investigation was closed and I’m to head back to D.C. to work on another case. Nothing to do with you.”
“Closed? I don’t understand.”
“Apparently the higher ups have decided to accept your version of the shooting. They now believe what you said about James Bennett, that he’d convinced you that he’d been set up by Terrance Pratt thirty years ago to take the fall for killing another cop. That when the evidence proved otherwise, he grabbed your gun and shot the Senator.”
That was the truth, except there was a lot more to it than that. The senator was far from innocent. While James Bennett was truly the man who shot his supervising officer nearly thirty years ago, it was Terrance Pratt who set the circumstances in motion. Bennett was just a pawn in the game that Pratt had been playing for three decades. And sometimes, pawns can take down the king.
“Forensics is done with your gun. You can retrieve it whenever you want to. According to the brass, I’m supposed to give this back to you.” Fowler pushed an envelope across the table.
Peter took the envelope and opened it. It was his badge and FBI credentials. “Why? Why now?”
Fowler shrugged. “Dunno. The answer to that question is above my pay grade.” Fowler held out his hand, a surprisingly genial smile on his face. “Take care of yourself, Burke. You’re a good agent. None of this was personal. I was just doing my job.”
Bemused, Peter shook the man’s hand and watched him leave. He clipped the badge onto his belt and tucked the identification folder into his jacket pocket. Everything felt as it was supposed to, but Peter knew that wasn’t going to last. He hadn’t heard back from the Director’s office yet, other than the automated confirmation that his message had been received. But there was no reason to believe that anything had changed. He was still persona non grata in the Bureau. The Pratt investigation had closed because he was resigning – no, make that retiring. The powers that be had no need to continue to throw mud at him if he wasn’t going to be around.
He went over to the Forensics lab, and as Fowler had promised, they were finished with his gun and gave it back to him. The firing mechanism had been disabled and would need to be replaced, but it wasn’t as if he was going to have any need to use it at this moment or any moment in the immediate future.
Peter debated about going to the office; he worried about what type of signal that would send to his staff. Well, not his staff anymore. No – they were still his people until the Bureau said otherwise.
He went up to the twenty-first floor and stepped into the office like it was an ordinary day. Clinton saw him first, and the smile on the man’s face was bright enough to compete with the lights in Times Square. Diana looked up at that moment, too – and soon the whole team was on its feet, clapping. He was mobbed and hugged by his staff; they shook his hand so vigorously that he thought it might fall off.
Peter hated to say anything, but he couldn’t let this continue. Diana must have seen something on his face. She frowned at him.
“Boss?”
Peter let out a deep sigh.
“Peter?” That was from Clinton.
“I’m back, but just for a short while – just today. I’ve decided to … retire.” Peter spoke loud enough that everyone could hear him.
There was a collective gasp from the staff.
He might as well do this now, before it got too painful. Peter held up a hand to forestall any comments. “You are the best group of agents anyone could ever work with. It’s been an honor and a privilege to work with you, to have you at my back, to watch yours.” He swallowed hard against the tears that threatened. “Do good things, everyone.”
The room fell silent. Peter ducked his head before turning and heading up the short flight of stairs to his office. There was a pile of mail on his chair – most of it probably garbage, since his caseload had been assigned to other agents. Besides, little evidence arrived by way of the US Postal Service these days.
For shits and giggles, he booted up his computer and logged in. There was a warning that his access was restricted and his activities were monitored. Naturally.
And naturally, his email inbox was nearly empty. In fact, there was just a single message there – the notice from the Administrator’s Office regarding his impending “retirement.” Peter opened it and tried not to laugh. He was to report to the Human Resources department for out-processing by four-thirty this afternoon. And not to forget to bring his badge and his identification.
His credentials had to be turned in, but he’d be allowed to keep his badge, except that they punched a hole in the gold shield so he couldn’t use it anymore. Peter was tempted to tell them to put it through the recycler. It wasn’t like he wanted it.
No, that wasn’t true. He desperately wanted it. It represented everything he was.
Peter stared at the message and he thought about Reese’s offer. It wouldn’t be that hard to slip into a slightly different role. He could look at it like a full-time, life-long undercover assignment. That’s what Reese had done. He sighed and scrubbed at his eyes, unable to make any sort of decision.
“Boss?”
Peter looked up. Diana and Clinton were hovering in his doorway. He gestured and they entered, shutting the door behind them. Peter didn’t know what to say. Of all the agents on his team, these two meant the most to him and he couldn’t help but feel like he’d let them down by retiring.
Clinton spoke first. “Six weeks ago, when you were suspended, we told you that we’d stand beside you – that we were as much a part of what happened as you were. You told us not to get involved, that falling on our swords would be a waste of two good agents. We shouldn’t have listened to you. This isn’t right.”
Diana picked up the argument. “We can fix this. We can keep fighting.”
Peter shook his head and cut them off. “This is not something that can be fixed, Di. This part of my life is over. The fight is over.”
“Peter – ” He almost hated the way Clinton said his name, with respect and a touch of exasperation. “You can’t just give up like this.”
He shrugged. “I haven’t given up.”
“So, retiring is a strategic retreat?” Diana actually sounded angry.
“That’s a good way to put it.”
“You have something in the works?” She looked over at Clinton, like they’d discussed this already.
“Maybe.” He certainly couldn’t tell them about Reese’s offer.
“We want to go with you. Wherever you go.” Diana and Clinton actually spoke those words simultaneously.
Their loyalty stabbed him through the heart. He just shook his head. “You can’t.”
“Why not?” Of course, Diana pressed at him.
“Because you two are the future of this office. You’re the best agents I’ve ever trained, I’ve ever worked with, and whatever issues I have with the Bureau have nothing to do with you. You owe your loyalty to the Bureau, to this division, not to me.” Peter gave them a wry smile. “I can’t tell you how much your offer means to me, but I can’t allow you to make that choice.”
Neither agent looked convinced. “We have free will and we’re not slaves. If we want to leave, we can.” Diana was speaking for both of them.
“Yes, you can. You have every right to, but you’d be stupid to do that. And if there’s one thing I know you aren’t, it’s stupid.”
They grumbled at him, he made them promise to keep in touch, and then he shooed them out of his office. It was time to go.
Peter shut down his computer and looked around his office. There were a few personal items he wanted to take – his college diploma and a few framed certificates, a picture of him and Elizabeth that he could never bear to put away, a pen and pencil set his parents had given him when he graduated college. All of it fit into a single box with room to spare. He dumped his now useless gun in there, too. Peter looked around the room – the place that had defined him for so long – and felt a deep pang of sorrow. It was another death, only this time; there were no prayers to be said. There was no ceremony for him, no gravestone to mark his passage. Just some paperwork to sign.
How appropriate.
“You went to see Matthew. That was not wise, Neal. Not wise at all.”
Neal looked up from the mirror pool and smiled. The Archon who’d just invaded his aerie was a welcome guest, despite the fierceness of her statement. “June.” He went over to her and was enveloped in a tight hug, which he returned, his hands carefully avoiding her delicate plumage. “Since when have I been known for my wisdom?”
She pulled him over to the ledge that ringed the mirror pool and they sat down. She didn’t let go of his hand; her strength was not one of muscle and bone, but filled with the power of the Elders, and regardless of her status, Neal would never show her such disrespect as pulling his hand free.
“I’d ask what brings you here, but you’ve already made that clear.”
“Of all the Archons you could have gone to, Matthew should have been the last on your list.”
“And maybe that’s why I needed to talk with him first.”
“He will only bring you pain, Neal.”
“He’s my friend, and he’s dying by inches. Your punishment is torture.”
“You should have better friends, Neal. Matthew destroyed a human soul. The soul given into his care, a soul he had been watching over for centuries. He is getting what he deserves, no more, no less.” June’s anger was unyielding.
Neal didn’t agree. “Then why not kill him outright? Slow poison and an antidote to ensure he stays caged and passive? That’s not justice, that’s revenge.”
June just shook her head. “We will have to agree to disagree on that, Neal.”
Her answer was unacceptable to the very core of his being. Neal gently pulled his hand free and paced by the glass. In his agitation, he couldn’t stop his wings from extending and they quivered with the emotion he couldn’t contain.
“Exert some self-control, Neal. This outrage does you no good.”
It took some effort, but he calmed down. June was right, behaving like a fledgling, immature and uncontrolled, would only harm his cause.
“Can you help me?”
June tilted her head and looked at him. Her gaze seemed to bore through all the layers of his being, into his very essence. He felt flayed, naked, all his truths exposed.
“There are a million reasons why I should not. You have to realize that if you continue on your chosen course, Matthew’s punishment is one you could share.”
“Only if I ruin Peter’s soul.” Neal took a deep breath and committed himself. “Only if I speak his name. Only if I seek him out without making the sacrifice.” His words rang against the stone walls, the truth of his intent undeniable.
“Do you understand what that will mean to you?”
His assent was voiceless, wordless.
June’s whole posture softened. “My dear Neal, I know what it means to grieve, to lose someone you have watched over for so long. But the consequences of your actions will not be easy to live with.”
Neal shook his head. “I love him. I can’t continue without him. How many times will I have to say that before you understand?”
“I have loved my charges, too.”
Neal shook with the force of his emotions “The souls you’ve watch over will be reborn. They will take root and flourish in another life, another time. When Peter dies in this life, his soul dies forever.”
Maybe his words finally penetrated, but her warnings took on a different tone, one of sorrow. “If you do this, you will become mortal and all of your gifts will be taken from you. You will become a shadow of who you are. You will be silent, flightless, powerless. You will be alone. You will, in time, die.”
“I will have Peter.”
The look June gave him was frightening – both fierce and pitying. “You will be silent and Peter is but a mortal. He has no perceptions beyond the limits of dense matter. He will not see you for what you were, he will not understand what you mean to him and what he means to you. He may look at you and walk away.”
“I know.” Neal wasn’t giving up, despite the danger he faced.
June continued to deliver her warnings. “You could end up wrecked, living out the remainder of your allotted time alone. You will have no armor against the mortal world. You know what they are like, Neal. You know that you will be vulnerable, easily damaged, made to suffer for the simple reason that you can suffer. The human world is filled with petty evil and you could be an easy target.”
“June, I’ve told you – I’m willing to risk that. I can’t not take the chance.”
“And if I did not care for you as I do, I would walk away and let you Fall into the mortal world unprepared. There is no one in this realm for whom I care for as much as you, and if I did not counsel you against this course, I would be failing in my love for you.”
Neal ducked his head, accepting the wisdom of her words. But despite June’s love and wisdom, he was not going to change his course. He’d Fall with or without her help.
“My dear boy – ”
“June, please don’t say anything more.”
“There is nothing more to say. I can see your determination in your eyes.” She smiled, sad and resigned. “I will miss you; there are many others who will miss you. Not just for your potential, but for who you are.”
Neal took a deep breath, trying to quell the surge of emotion. “I will miss you, too.”
June brushed a kiss on his lips, a gesture of farewell, and Neal thought she was about to leave, but she didn’t. Instead, she cupped his cheek and then her hand slid down, resting a moment on his jaw, before curving around his throat. “Say the name of the soul you love. Say its name.”
“Peter.” The sound rang through the room, echoing against the walls, the syllables like bells, like claps of thunder, like the noise of creation.
“Again, say the name again.”
“Peter.” This time, the world didn’t shake, but peace and happiness rang through him and every feather in his wings quivered. Although his feet didn’t leave the ground, he felt airborne for the space of that sound on his lips.
“Again, Neal. One last time.”
“Peter.” There was sound and then nothing. He spoke the name again and heard the word only in his mind. He accepted the binding.
June kissed him again, binding him to silence and completing the sacrifice.
Neal mouthed the words “thank you” but heard nothing but puffs of air.
“Now you must Fall.” She let go of his throat and gestured to the ledge that surrounded the mirror pool.
Neal stepped up, his wings fluttering a little to give him balance. For all their ubiquity in this realm, the mirror pools were dangerous places, holding enough power to damage through careless contact. An Archon could see into the mortal realm through any polished surface, but nothing provided as much clarity as a mirror pool. Neal looked at the swirling chaos and then at June, and she nodded. “Do not be afraid. Remember your love.”
He finally understood.
Neal furled his wings tight against his body and closed his eyes, thinking of Peter and the last time he saw him. The man was tired and sad, the losses in his life weighing him down. He remembered Peter in happier times in this life – a boy playing games with his father, a young man seeking wisdom in books and numbers, an adult discovering pleasure with lovers of both sexes, then falling deeply in love with a woman and knowing that she was the one person who’d complete him. Neal put Peter’s happiness in the front of his mind; he embraced the happiness of all the lives he’d watched, the memories that accumulated across the centuries, and he took a deep breath and let go.
Neal Fell through the brightness, he Fell through the universe, he Fell and was reborn in pain and love and purpose.
And what do you plan to do with the rest of your life, Peter Burke?
That was the question he kept asking himself, as he walked out of the Federal Building and down to the subway. He shifted the box he was carrying and asked himself what he was going to do for the next thirty years. He found a seat on the A train – it was midday and the subway car was nearly empty – and he asked himself that question as the train swayed against a curve in the tracks. He transferred at the Borough Hall station and asked himself that question. He kept asking that question with every step he took from the subway exit to his house.
He dumped the box on the floor beside the entrance and waited a moment for Satchmo, but his dog was gone, like his wife, like his life, and he wondered how much longer he’d continue to wait for the greeting that would never come.
After Elizabeth died, after her family returned to their homes, after all the well-meaning people went back to their lives, Peter had tried to take comfort from Satchmo. He’d relaxed the rules that El had insisted on, allowing the dog on the couch, inviting him upstairs and into the bedroom. But like Peter, Satchmo was never the same after El died. He rarely stirred from his dog bed, he barely ate, and Peter knew that it was only a matter of time. One morning, a few months after that terrible day, he came downstairs to find Satchmo gone. Like El – quietly, and leaving him just as shattered by his passing.
Peter went up to his bedroom and stripped out of his suit, shirt and tie. He balled everything up and dumped it into the bag for the dry cleaners, wondering if he should even bother. It wasn’t like he’d need to put on a suit again. Clad in old jeans and an even older Harvard sweatshirt, he headed back downstairs.
Time to start the rest of his life.
Par for the course, Peter had no appetite. That was nothing new these days. He ate because he needed fuel, not because he enjoyed it. He seemed to exist on coffee in the mornings and beer at night and maybe a sandwich in between, but most days, he couldn’t remember if he actually ate the food that his agents brought him. For a while, he had groceries delivered, but the service cancelled his contract the fifth time they tried to make a delivery and he wasn’t home. Peter supposed that was only fair. He couldn’t remember the last time he had turned on the oven; he barely used the kitchen that El had once taken such pride in.
Not for the first time, Peter thought about selling the house. He knew he could get a ridiculous amount of money for it. He’d have enough to retire in comfort and buy a place on the coast, or even back where he grew up and live very well on the rest. Hell, he could go find some small town upstate and run for sheriff or mayor and make a new life for himself away from the memories of everything he’d lost.
He could even get a new dog. Maybe go to a shelter and adopt an animal as lost as he was and give it a home. And if he did move back to the country, he could raise horses and never have to think about mortgage fraud or antitrust cases or securities violations ever again. He could be Peter Burke, Gentleman Farmer.
As fantasies went, it wasn’t a bad one. Except that he couldn’t see himself leaving this house, the last tangible piece of the life he was supposed to have had.
He sorted through the mail. Most of it was junk. The only thing worth saving was the bill from the private mailbox place he’d been using for the past few years. The contract on the box was expiring and needed to be renewed before the end of the month.
He had a CI – wait, he’d had a CI because he wasn’t an officer of the law anymore and civilians don’t have or need confidential informants – and the man, who went by the name Mozzie or Moz, was a paranoid genius with delusions of persecution. He refused to communicate by cellphone (something about brain cancer), or regular landlines (the NSA weren’t the only ones listening), and while the U.S. Postal Service was a branch of Big Brother, he took refuge in the fact that regular mail had built-in fail safes against random governmental intrusion. There was just too much of it to open and scan without generating all sorts of suspicions. Moz would only contact him through “snail mail” and Peter wasn’t willing to give him his home address, although he suspected that the man knew it. Hence the private post office box, which he kept under the name of Peter Suit, per Moz’s instructions.
Mozzie would, when he needed to see him, send him tickets to a concert, usually a performance of religious music. Always two seats, and if there was assigned seating, it was always on the aisle. Peter would leave one ticket at the Will-Call and the man would appear just before the performance started, just before the doors closed. He’d sit next to Peter, not say a word until the intermission. Sometimes he’d hand him a package and leave. Sometimes he’d pass information on to him without looking at him. Sometimes, the little guy would be in a chatty mood and tell him about his latest project or conspiracy theory throughout the intermission, then disappear just before the lights went down.
Peter honestly enjoyed his encounters with the little guy. He’d come into his life shortly after Elizabeth died and for a few minutes every couple of months, Moz sort of filled the great big gaping hole in his life.
He looked at the bill and tossed it in the ‘to be paid’ pile. He’d keep the box for another year, it wasn’t that much money and he needed a way to get in contact with the little guy, even for one last time, to tell him that he didn’t need the information he provided anymore. Peter wondered if they could keep in contact, if just for old time’s sake.
He opened the refrigerator and grimaced, it was as empty as it had been last night. More so, because he and Reese had finished off the last two beers. There was just that sprouted onion and the odd assortment of condiments. Peter didn’t bother with the freezer.
There was a bottle of Johnny Walker Black in the credenza in the living room. He’d made it a point to avoid hard liquor, too aware that it could be an easy path to his destruction. But he had something to celebrate tonight. No, something to mourn, and even if he didn’t have anyone to share his grief with, he still deserved a damn drink.
He poured the Scotch – two fingers, no more – over ice and took it out to the patio and sat down. The question that dogged him all the way home was still relentlessly echoing in his brain. He was fifty years old, a twenty-two year veteran of the FBI, in excellent health according to his last physical, and unless he contracted a fatal, untreatable disease or got hit by a bus, the odds were that he was going to live at least another twenty-five, maybe thirty years.
So, what the hell are you going to do with the rest of your life, Peter Burke? He’d been asking himself that for hours but he still had no answers.
The moon had just risen over the trees and he leaned back in the chair and watched the sky. He and El had loved this little bit of space, just large enough to hold a table and chairs, a two-seater swing, a barbecue grill and a little patch of grass that needed cutting once every few weeks in the summer. Their neighbors had trees, but they were far enough back that they didn’t completely obscure the view of the night sky.
Summer nights, he and El would sit out here and watch the fireflies dance. Brooklyn, even their almost-suburban neighborhood, was still too close to the city and all but the brightest stars were swallowed by the light pollution. That never mattered to El. She loved the moon and they’d often stay out and watch its passage across the night sky.
He used to call her his moon goddess, and he’d be content to spend the rest of eternity worshipping her. El would laugh, her eyes sparkling in the moonlight, and tell him he was such a silly, romantic man. She didn’t want to be worshipped like a goddess. She wanted to be loved like a woman.
Peter sipped at the Scotch, hating the taste, hating the burn, hating the loneliness, the emptiness, and the abrupt absence of purpose in his life.
He looked up and marked the passage of the moon. It was halfway across the sky. Had that much time passed?
A strange sound filled the night. Not the roar of a jet on approach to Kennedy. Not the rumble of a truck as it careened too fast up the street. No, this was a strange cacophony of sounds – birds and beasts calling out to the world, all the leaves left on the trees rattling in harmony with their desiccated brethren skittering along the street.
And then a crash.
Just like that, out of the clear night sky, a man fell into his backyard.
Falling was painful, but it was a pain he could endure. And to be truthful, Falling wasn’t nearly as painful as landing. The ground came up to meet him with a rush that he’d not expected. This wasn’t the first time he’d fallen from such a great height. As a fledgling Archon, he’d tumbled out of the sky plenty of times, landing on surfaces a lot harder, a lot less forgiving than this small patch of greenery.
Of course, he’d had his wings then, he’d had his immortality and his strength. Now, he had a pair of trousers and nothing else.
Except Peter.
He’d Fallen and he’d landed, right where he was supposed to be.
Peter looked at the glass in his hand; it was still three-quarters full of Scotch. He wasn’t drunk, not by any stretch of the imagination. Except that his imagination seemed to be working in overdrive. A man had just fallen out of the sky and landed on his tiny patch of grass.
By rights, he should be reaching for his gun, or his cell phone, or rushing over to the body. Because it had to be a dead body falling from an airplane. Men didn’t drop out of the sky like that.
And crazier still, it wasn’t a dead body, but a living one, wearing a pair of pants and not much else. It – he – rolled over, sat up, rubbed his shoulder, his back, his ass – as if he’d simply fallen out of a tree or off a ladder or tumbled down a short flight of stairs.
“What the hell?”
At his exclamation, the man turned, looked at him and smiled. Peter felt like he was hit by a baseball bat. Or like he’d brushed up against a live wire. His head started to ring; his blood ran hot, then cold, then hot again.
The stranger’s grin broadened, and in the bright moonlight, it seemed like an expression of purest happiness. Another jolt rocketed through Peter, something he hadn’t felt for a long, long time.
Life.
He was alive. Truly alive – not just a sack of meat and bones existing from day to day.
He found himself smiling back, feeling like a fool. He was standing on his patio, grinning at a crazy stranger who had just dropped out of the sky. He should be reaching for his gun, pointing it and shouting at the intruder to raise his hands, or to lie on his stomach, or to stay still, not move. He should be calling the police and having him arrested for trespassing.
But his gun was in a box on the floor by the doorway, and even though it defied all logic, Peter couldn’t think of a single reason why this man was a threat to him.
He held his hands down and out, as if the stranger was a wild animal, and approached. “Who are you?”
The man smiled and shook his head.
“What’s your name?”
Again, just the smile and the head shake.
“Can’t you talk?”
This time, the man mouthed a word. Peter’s lip-reading skills were rusty, but it was obvious what the word was. Great, a half-naked mute man fell out of the sky and landed in his backyard. A perfect way to end one of the worst days of his life. And yet, it did feel perfect. Not perfectly normal or perfectly wonderful. But perfectly strange in its reasonableness.
“Are you okay?”
The man nodded and Peter held out his hand. The stranger grasped it, his touch like a shot of electricity. Peter gasped but he didn’t let go, pulling the other man to his feet. All of Peter’s questions – born of his intensely practical nature – were forgotten as they stood there, eye to eye. The stranger’s clasp was now warm, human, and oddly comforting. In that simple touch, he felt his fears, his anxieties, all the hurt and resentment that had been accumulating over the last few months just evaporate.
In a single heartbeat, his life changed. All he wanted to do was get to know this man better, to invite him into his home and keep him close. Peter looked into this man’s eyes and wanted to break every rule to which he lived his life.
Peter finally withdrew his hand and stepped back. Not because he really wanted to let go, but because it seemed so damn stupid to be standing in his backyard, holding onto a stranger like they were long-lost friends finally reunited.
And where the hell did that thought come from?
The stranger kept smiling, but as he put some distance between them, the smile dimmed just a little and Peter found he wanted to weep from the loss. “Come on, let’s go inside.” He put a hand on the man’s shoulder, and again there was that brief jolt of electricity.
The man paused at the door, as if he wasn’t sure what to do, and Peter stepped around him, then just tugged him across the threshold.
Peter was distracted by the unfamiliar sound of ringing bells. It was way too late for the neighborhood carillons to be tolling, but with all the strangeness tonight, anything was possible.
He closed the back door and got his first good look at his unexpected guest in bright light. Again, his breath caught in his throat. He was not struck simply by the man’s physical beauty, but at the incredible tattoo across his back. He’d never seen anything like it – wings with feathers in such incredible detail that it was almost too much for the eye to take in.
“Your art – it’s exquisite.” Peter loved body art like this – and this was truly art – but he couldn’t imagine lasting through the countless hours needed to complete the process, of lying still and enduring the pain.
The man looked over his shoulder and then at Peter, confused. Did he not know about the tattoo? How was that possible?
Peter took him over to the mirror above the fireplace, turned him around and turned his head so he could see his back.
His guest – and Peter really needed to learn his name soon – still seemed surprised by the ink. But he seemed even more surprised by his own appearance. He turned to face the mirror and stared into it, even reaching out and touching the glass. Touching and immediately withdrawing his hand, as if he were afraid the mirror would harm him. But he overcame that fear and placed his right palm against the glass and then his left, pressing gently. The mirror swayed a bit and he stepped back, startled. But he still didn’t lose his fascination with the reflection.
Peter was reminded of a documentary he’d once seen about primates when first confronted with their reflection. His guest’s reaction was nothing like that. He seemed to completely understand what the mirror was, but he didn’t recognize himself in it.
That worried Peter. And yet he couldn’t help but be amused by his worry – of all the things to be concerned about, the man’s failure to recognize himself was probably the least important.
“Are you hungry?” Peter asked, more for something to say than for any particular desire to feed his guest.
The man shrugged again. But Peter’s stomach chose that moment to rumble and he clapped a hand over it to stifle the embarrassing noise. But his embarrassment was shared, as his guest’s stomach made a similar sound. Peter laughed and maybe the man did too, but no sound emerged.
“How does pizza sound?” Peter picked up the phone. “Cheese, of course. Do you want sausage? Pepperoni? Onions? I’ll have anything but pineapple and green pepper on my pizza.” He wondered why he was even asking – would a person who didn’t recognize themselves in a mirror have any clue about pizza toppings? Or was he being stupid?
“Can you write?” Peter scrounged for a pad and pencil, his innate practicality overtaking the momentary bout of whimsy. He found what he was looking for in the kitchen junk drawer and pushed it towards the man and watched as he picked them up. The guy fumbled with the pencil for a moment and Peter’s heart sank. But a second later, he was holding it and writing something.
No, not writing – drawing. Almost faster than his eye could follow, there was an extraordinarily detailed sketch of a pizza, with cheese, mushrooms, olives, pepperoni and what looked like bits of crumbled sausage. How the hell did he manage this – It looked like a photograph. And to draw the exact pizza he’d order if his choices were the only ones that mattered? All Peter could say was “Okay – this works.”
Peter placed the order and asked them to deliver a six-pack with the pizza. He winced at the total – the pizza parlor was charging him almost twenty bucks for the beer, about three times the cost if he’d picked it up at the bodega down the block. But he didn’t want to leave his guest alone.
It wasn’t like he was afraid that he was going to rob him or go through his stuff. Peter just had this need to keep the man in his line of sight. Which was ridiculous. Utterly, completely ridiculous. He was almost tempted to call the pizza place back and tell them not to deliver, that he’d pick up the order.
Except that he got caught in his guest’s gaze and all thoughts about pizza and beer were forgotten. A memory teased at him and he tried to grasp it. It seemed important but the harder he chased it, the more elusive it became. He blinked, deliberately breaking eye-contact, and tried to think of something to say. Something like, “Are you cold? Would you like a shirt?”
The man nodded and Peter rummaged around in the basket of clean laundry sitting next to the couch. He’d been meaning to fold and bring it upstairs for the better part of a week, but like most of the time he did the laundry, it sat unfolded until he grabbed whatever he needed from the basket. He pulled out an FBI Academy sweatshirt. It really wasn’t twenty-plus years old. He’d bought it at the company store a few years ago when he’d been down there for some training and had gotten caught short in the apparel department. It was a size too small and he rarely wore it, but he’d gone for a run a few days ago and it was the only clean sweatshirt in his drawer.
He handed it to the man and was almost relieved as the tattoo and the rest of his pale, perfect flesh disappeared under the heather-gray fabric.
One problem solved. Time to tackle another. “Do you have a name?”
His guest nodded.
Thank god. Peter pushed the pencil and paper back to him. “Can you write it for me? I have to call you something.”
Although the man seemed bound to silence, the room filled with laughter. He took the pencil and paper and wrote out his name. Four letters. But they looked like no letters he’d ever seen before. There was something vaguely tribal about the shapes, or maybe Celtic. Peter blinked and the letters re-formed into something readable.
“Neal.”
He spoke the name and all the glassware in the cabinets shook and rattled musically. Peter looked around, startled at the sound, but was more intrigued by the mystery of the man before him. “Your name is Neal?”
The man – Neal – nodded and smiled.
Progress. Thank goodness.
“What happened to you?”
Neal gestured, lifting his hand and bringing it down, his fingers making a fluttering motion.
“You fell?”
Again, a nod.
“From where?” Peter had heard of people who’d stowed away in the wheel housings of big airplanes, dying from the exposure and the altitude and falling back to earth when the plane lowered the landing gear.
Neal just spread his hands in the universal gesture of ‘I don’t know’. But Peter wasn’t buying that. There was something in Neal’s posture, in his eyes, that told him that he was lying. Which was a strange thing for a man who didn’t speak.
Peter decided that, for the moment, he was going to accept the improbable – no, the impossible – and stop asking. Maybe because his gut wasn’t sending him signals – other than hunger – or maybe because he didn’t mind a mystery in his life.
Neal’s stomach growled again, shaking Peter out of his momentary stasis. He fetched a few paper plates and a pile of napkins and hoped like hell that Neal didn’t want a knife and fork to eat his pizza.
It was wonderful, really.
He had no other word for it – well, he had no words to speak of. Archons didn’t just exist only through the experiences of their charges. They had lives and loves and experiences, too. But those were always subsumed by the need to care and watch over the souls in their keeping.
The joy of being here, in the same realm, no – in the same room – as Peter was beyond anything he’d imagined. He felt complete, completed, and he’d never realized that a part of him had been missing. But it had, and it existed in the man standing a little more than an arm’s length away. Maybe this was why he’d needed to Fall, why he needed to defy logic and reason and law and be with Peter.
Neal’s very being sang at the proximity of the man. He’d watched over Peter in so many shapes and forms, across centuries of human time. To be here now, close enough to smell him, close enough to feel the air stir as he walked around the room was almost too much.
He couldn’t take his eyes off of Peter. And Peter seemed to sense that.
“What?”
Neal shrugged. He was doing that a lot – it was an easy way to communicate. A simple gesture that conveyed so much.
“Do I have dirt on my nose?”
Neal shook his head and just kept smiling. He almost wished he’d nodded yes – it would give him an excuse to touch Peter.
Neal knew it was better to stick with the truth as much as he could, at least for the small things. Let Peter draw conclusions that weren’t necessarily correct, if only because the real truth – like Falling between celestial dimensions – was not something he was actually prepared to explain.
Besides, touching Peter might be a bad idea. He knew, from his years of watching, that Peter – in this incarnation and in every other one – had a very strange sense of personal boundaries. He touched, but strangely enough, he didn’t like to be touched, at least not without invitation. Neal was content with letting Peter touch him. Very content.
As Peter set the table, Neal looked around the room, his eyes skipping from bookcase to couch to table, avoiding the large mirror over the fireplace. When Peter first brought him into the house and tried to show him the feathers imprinted on his back, Neal had been frightened and enthralled by the mirror. He knew, in the mortal realm, that they were a trick of physics, reflecting light back into the human eye. But in his world – his former world – a mirror was a portal between the dimensions. Archons did not see themselves; they saw the souls they were watching over.
In truth, Neal had actually never seen his own face. He knew that his fellow Archons found the symmetry of his features pleasing – just as he’d taken pleasure in their beauty. It was just shocking to see himself as others saw him.
An experience he didn’t want to repeat just yet.
Peter’s home was much as he’d thought it would be. He’d observed it from the other side of that mirror, from other bits of polished glass that were placed around the room. Being in the room, however, was a vastly different experience.
Neal resisted the temptation to pick things up and examine them in detail; to hold them, to learn their contours instead of simply viewing them from a distance. But he kept his hands to himself, which wasn’t really that much of a trial. The shirt that Peter had so casually given him was almost unbearably soft and he kept rubbing his hands against the fabric, enjoying the dual sensation of the soft fuzziness against his arms and the slightly rougher weave on his fingers.
In truth, the shirt was more interesting than anything else in the house except Peter himself. The caress of the fabric against this back was a constant distraction. When he thought about Falling, he’d deliberately avoided thinking about the loss of his wings. He’d feared their loss, but he had considered it part of the sacrifice he’d needed to make. He hadn’t expected the markings on his back – the image of feathers and bone that decorated his skin like a residual memory.
He continued his explorations, hands tucked under his arms, learning how to move without needing to consider his wings. Neal felt almost weightless and without the beautiful distraction just a few feet away, he’d probably break down in shock at the loss of his wings. But he’d made this choice, he Fell, because he needed to be with Peter, and the price of that need – his voice, his wings – was well worth paying.
“Are you okay?”
Peter’s question interrupted his musings. Neal opened his mouth to answer and remembered. He smiled and nodded instead. Having any meaningful conversation was going to be interesting.
The doorbell rang and he was saved from figuring out that conundrum. At least until after they ate.
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The scene between June and Neal as she helps him brought tears to my eyes. I have a question though. Is it that the capacity for speach has been sacraficed by Neal and he is no longer physically capapble of speach, or does he retain the physical ability to speak but the sacrafice is that he gives up using that capability?
From what Keller said to Neal about speaking Kate's name, it seems like it is the latter and hence could cause some terrible problems for him down the road.
Wonderful chapter.
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I'm not answering your question - you'll need to continue to read the story as it unfolds.
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I love wing fics....and your Neal is wonderful. Of course he would fall in love with the soul he's supposed to guard..
Hmm, I'm dying to see where this goes.
Congrats and hugs
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Looking forward to tonight's chapter.
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D'awwwwwwwww ♥ I just can't get enough of the image of Neal, so beuatiful and smiling and completely in love with Peter who, for the most part, doesn't have a clue what is actually going on :D Tim DeKay has supplied us with an insanely huge collection of perfect faces for any ocassion, so my mind is supplying all the necessary images, heeeeeeeeeee :D
I also love it that even though Peter knows he should be cautious, he just can't resist Neal and the connection between them :D Yes, yes and yes all around :D
The scene with Neal making the sacrifice was beautiful. And my heart was aching for Peter and how the Bureau forced him into retirement /o\ Neal couldn't have picked the right moment to fall :D
On to the next part ♥
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And yes, Tim's expressiveness makes creating stories that rely on emotions so much fun to write. I can see his reactions perfectly.
And hugs you again because you've had a hellacious day.
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June is perfect - strong, understanding, yet opinionated. Love her.
I love your rich descriptions of what Peter is going through, him thinking about his past and what he may do in his future.
And Neal - oh my. So expressive without words. I can see the shrug in my mind.
The thought of Peter's bright spot being Mozzie just tickles me, too.
Brava, my dear.
On to the next chapter.
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