[For Neal] I have been gone

[girlsolo]

No more late night Sanctuary viewings, Kate thinks, as she glances around an office that used to be Magnus's but now has the marks of Will all over it. A baseball on the desk, psych texts on the shelves, IM up on his laptop where she can see he's been chatting with someone nicknamed 'ModernDayBacall'. Kate rolls her eyes. Her brain must be fevered if Will's been doing Bogart and Bacall with Abby. She doesn't check to see if he's changed his screen name. If he did, in her dream, she doesn't want to know.

The man himself is on the phone, hand in his hair and he's leaning over, looking like he's about to slam his fist down on a desk. Not weird. If Magnus disappeared back in time and Will doesn't know it, he'd be on edge all the time with running the Sanctuary. Kate starts to walk over, but Will waves her off. Okay, so he sees her. Not that weird, it's her dream. So she listens the best she can - he's negotiating with someone - while her fingers run over the familiar surfaces of things that are still Magnus's, like the ridiculously opulent furniture while her gaze picks out the new things, new wear on old things. The lamp that used to be near the window has been replaced and the outlet it was plugged into has new wallpaper around it. Kate decides Will smashed it in a fit or Henry did, or maybe she did, but it's been replaced by one as nice. Some things never change.

A smile curls at the edges of her mouth. Some people never change. Like Biggie. Her dream, he'll be here. She turns to go, but Will shouts, "No!" into the phone and Kate spins back. He's looking at her with huge eyes and gesturing her over.

Of course she goes. It's Will. It doesn't seem weird to him that she's here and why should it? The world went to hell while she was planning a wedding to Garris. They probably broke up. Which is good, because everyone she cares about leaves. Declan. Liv. Imri. Finnick. Sawyer. Whatever. She glances up at Will, gaze narrowing in question. What's up? she mouths, not wanting to give away that he's not alone.

"No. There has to be something else you want," he says, and Kate's struck with a very unpleasant thought.

"Give me the phone, Will," she says out loud this time.

That must've given his contact a clue because Will rolls his eyes, sighs, and puts his hand over the phone. "You don't have to do this, Kate."

Sure she did. You don't have to do this always meant she'd end up doing whatever it was. "Just give it, Will."

She listens while Clayton Ellsworth explains that he has the second to last breeding pair of Sally's species in a tank in his living room. That they'd 'very much like to go to the Sanctuary,' but he's afraid he 'can't see his way clear' to let them go. Unless. There's always an unless, and that'll be where she comes in. "You want me in trade for them."

"Ah, pet. You always were brighter than you look."

"And you always were a worse lay. What do you want, Clay?"

"You're both right and wrong. I do want you, but not as a house-slave, attractive an image as that is. I need you to steal something for me..."

* * *

Bigfoot walks the quiet halls of the Sanctuary, stalking an unfamiliar scent. Human, male, afraid or possibly confused. Unfamiliar. Hunh hunh. For a big creature, he moves silently. As silently as their new guest. It doesn't take long for him to find the intruder, a slender, dark-haired man dressed in a sleek well-tailored suit. He waits beyond the turn of the hall to see what the man does.

The lights in the hall he occupies are low and warm, casting an elegant glow over the brass fixtures - the odd sconce or picture frame - dark wood panels and Moroccan crimson and gold carpets. A tall glass display case to his right contains maps, sextants, globes, logbooks from ancient voyages, each of inestimable value. Another has medical instruments from earlier eras. The paintings on the walls are by Old Masters and unacknowledged masters, each of fantastic creatures and places. Louis XIV furnishings sit opposite but oddly perfectly with a holographic display frame with scenes from an underground city of unparalleled beauty, gray stone and blue light. Literally everywhere he might look, the place is filled with a thief's temptations. A careful eye will note that the carpets have been mended, the wallpaper occasionally slides 99% of true instead of 100%, and he might suspect the place is well-lived in, but there is nothing to give away that this exact hall was the scene of an epic battle between the inhabitants when a violent parasite possessed them serially, or that several years ago, a stone troll battled for its life, several corridors down.

For anyone who doesn't know the secrets behind the doors of the vaguely steampunk elevator at the end of this hall, it looks, in every respect, like a modern day palace, furnished by someone with an extraordinary sense of history.

*
title and cut text from The Who, I Don't Even Know Myself

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[notgoingtorun]

Neal was used to having fairly involved dreams. It was a side effect of his busy mind, cataloging the details of places and events that the average person may not even notice.

But still, his dreams are predictable more often than not. He was too grounded to dream of the surreal. If he wasn't reliving the memory of an old heist, then he was reliving the smoke and the heat of a plane on fire, still helpless even in his dreams to do anything about it.

So when he comes to awareness in an unfamiliar place, he thinks that maybe it's just an old job with some new twists.

Neal scrubs his hands against his face as he sits up, takes stock of where he is. Something feels off about the dream, but he's having trouble placing it. Everything feels too real, too solid, and he doesn't understand why. His own dreams are grounded in reality but still, he is not used to feeling the slide of carpet beneath his feet, the knot of his tie at his throat, the pounding of his heart in his chest. This doesn't make sense, but he doesn't know what to do with that information, so he sets it aside to dissect later. Whatever's going on, there's probably some grand lesson to be learned in all of this, but Neal just hopes that he gets to subconsciously steal something awesome before he wakes up.

Neal stands, straightens his tie, brushes a few creases out of the back of his suit jacket, and advances towards the door. He is in a room, and he wants to be out of it, but not without knowing what's on the other side. He puts his ear to the door and hears nothing out of the ordinary. Already concocting a cover story in his mind, were he to be caught, he pauses for just a moment before opening the door and stepping confidently into the hallway, owning the place, pretending that he belongs there.

Neal is very, very good at pretending.

The hallway he enters into is a veritable wonderland for Neal. There are paintings, priceless artifacts, items so rare it makes his head spin. Neal only lets the tiniest puff of air escape his lips as he soundlessly pads down the hall, surrounded by treasures. This is definitely not a place he has been before, and he can guess at why his mind has supplied him with such greatness. He is bored, he is a thief without things to steal (and with a slightly kick-started moral compass, to boot), he misses having tangible good things -- expensive things -- in his life, so his subconscious has made up for it in extraordinary fashion.

On his way down the hall, he pauses in front of a painting. It is large, and old, and beautiful. The brush strokes take his breath away and he steps in close, hand hovering a safe distance away from the canvas. His fingers make small, graceful moves in the air, imitating the moves one would need to make to paint the same thing. Forging comes automatically to him, and he wants to commit this painting to memory, love it, become it, have it for his own.

Maybe he will take it.

Maybe not.

Neal forces himself to walk away from the painting, and ignores the suspicion that this is feeling less and less dream-like as time goes on.

Neal's dreams, unlike Neal himself, had never grown a conscience, after all, and Neal in the dream world would have just lifted that painting from its spot on the wall and walked out with it, bold as you please.

But he walks away, brush strokes and paint crackle burned into the back of his mind, and casually makes his way towards the end of the hall. He pauses every so often, admiring the odd juxtaposition of antiquities with modern technology.

He doesn't know where he is, but he is fascinated.

[girlsolo]

Were he human, the curl of his lips might be a snarl, but he's not, and they are almost a laugh. Biggie recognizes this one. Not by name or scent, but by species:

Thief.

But he recognizes something else, too. That this thief doesn't know where he is or why, and there's a hesitation that keeps him from touching or taking. The curl of Biggie's lips becomes suspiciously like a smile.

Thief. Subspecies: Reforming.

The man, different in style from his best friend as Henry is from Tesla, is still familiar. And probably not here to hurt anyone. Still, he is uninvited.

Biggie moves silently down the hall until he stands in the space of the man's shadow, arms crossed over his chest. Although he can, he doesn't speak in English. He grunts, "Hunh," in a way that unmistakably means what exactly do you think you're doing?

[notgoingtorun]

Neal hears a noise behind him, a grunt that means he's been caught in the act, and he pivots easily towards the sound.

"I'm sorry, I was just--" he starts, before his eyes have even registered the person he's speaking to. He expects to see a security guard, or someone equally official.

That's not what he's got, though. He's got... a very grumpy looking Sasquatch, is what he's got. Part of his brain shoots up in alarm, because what the fuck, but he also remembers Kate showing him a picture of this very... individual, and now Neal is extra confused, because there's no good reason for people from Kate's life who he barely knows anything about, to be showing up in his dreams.

"--just looking for the restroom," he finishes, faltering only for the tiniest of moments as he tried to work out what was going on. "I think I must have gotten lost, could you point me in the right direction?" He gestured down the hallway and tried to look confused.

[girlsolo]

Hunh. The thief smells surprised and frightened. Biggie curls his lips to reveal his fangs and snarls a low, little growl and points ahead of him, back the direction the thief was headed.

He's not answering the bathroom question, that's clear, from the menacing step forward and the aggressive double-point when the thief doesn't move fast enough. Biggie's having him on a bit, but he doesn't know what the thief is doing here, and he's not going easy on him.

"Go," he grunts finally, in his gruffest, deepest tone and takes another step toward him, while nodding with his chin.

[notgoingtorun]

Neal tries not to yelp whenever Biggie growls like that -- being growled at by people who defied evolutionary logic wasn't exactly in Neal's repertoire, after all. ]

He keeps trying to convince himself that this is a dream. He had a long day, after all, and maybe he's under more pressure than he'd previously thought.

The alternatives weren't exactly appealing, after all.

Neal takes a few steps in the direction that Biggie's crowding him in. "Oh, it's this way?" he says, sounding cool as can be, trying to not let his confusion show in his voice. "Thanks, I got really turned around in here somewhere."

[girlsolo]

From inside the office (it is always the office, not Will's office, or Helen's office, with Helen gone), Biggie hears a familiar voice. That it's raised in argument with someone and Will's is raised, trying to argue with her doesn't bother him at all. Kate argues.

Instead, he smiles and his steps quicken until he's crowding the thief, herding him toward where he'd been taking him anyway. Now he thinks he understands. This one is with Kate. Even a very good thief would have trouble getting past Henry's alarm systems and this one is reforming.

His own voice holds a hint of a smile when he says, "You're welcome, thief," and reaches past his head to push open the door to the office.

****
"Fine," Kate is saying to Clay. Fine she will do this job of his. She will break into Forsythe's (it's still his, even if he's beyond-the-reach-of-Hollow-Earth dead) facility and undertake this ridiculous scavenger hunt of a job (he has no idea where inside the facility the things he wants are being held, except the one). Fine. Her gaze locks with Will as she says, "But I choose when and I pick my own--"

The door opens and Kate turns to look, smile already growing for the distinct scuff of Biggie's tread and her eyes widen just a touch. Her chances of pulling this off just went from 55% to 95%.

"Team." She doesn't bother to say goodbye, just hands the phone to Will and walks toward Neal and Biggie. No question, no transition, whatever they're doing here, there's only one path through this that doesn't lead to a long interrogation. Boyfriend ploy. Warmly, "Hey, babe."

Follow my lead, Caffrey.

One hand reaches for Biggie to pat and squeeze his arm, but the other rests squarely on Neal's abs for long enough for Will Zimmerman, Profiler to notice, before she finds his hand for an encouraging squeeze. "Sorry about that. Didn't mean to leave you that long. Hope the Big Guy didn't scare you too much," but the quivering laughter in her voice says she doesn't exactly mean that. She can't mean it. The Kate Freelander they know would have done it on purpose.

[notgoingtorun]

Neal doesn't bother to try to make small talk with Biggie. He's not supposed to be here and it's pretty clear that they both know it. Being a source of constant chatter wasn't going to get him anywhere. He lets himself be herded forward, and he tries to memorize the path he's being taken on. He's constantly reevaluating what he thinks is going on; right now, he's betting on either stress induced hallucination or island trickery. He doesn't like either option.

And then he's shoved inside an office and his eyes widen just a bit, because there's Kate, looking like she belongs here, and if anyone can get him out of this mess, she can. Before he can even open his mouth to say anything, she's sidled up next to him, hand fitting neatly into his.

This is a game that Neal Caffrey knows how to play well.

He leans into her, squeezing her hand back, as if to say don't worry, I know this song and dance. "Oh, don't worry about it," he says, sticking close to her, close enough that people aren't going to ask any questions. "I got so turned around out there anyway, it's good that he found me. This place is like a maze."

[girlsolo]

"Maze--" She makes like she's weighing two words between her hands, without letting go of Neal's. "Museum. Museum. Maze. One or the other." Thieves' paradise, she'd told him the time she'd talked about it, mostly how weird it was to live in a place like this and never take anything and not even want to.

A little smile, flirt with her eyes, all of her attention on Neal for a minute, then she lets him go and launches herself at Biggie.

Surprised, Biggie lets out a double-grunt, head tossing with laughter. "Good to see you too, runt," he teases and messes up her hair. He doesn't ask about Garris.

"Hank around?"

"Took Erika to visit her aunt in prison," Will supplies and comes over to get his own hug, which she gives willingly enough. "It's kind of weird. I don't remember you coming in today, or calling to let us know you were coming up from Hollow Earth."

Will's suspicious, because he's damned good at his job. She swats him full on across the gut with one arm. "You haven't seen me in a month and so you're going to interrogate me before I get a shower and food? Nice." They may end up having to explain later - but by later, Kate will have a story.

Right now, she's got, "Neal, this is Will, the temporary boss." Will lifts both eyebrows at her. "Dr. Will Zimmerman." A beat. "Will." She tips her head toward the Big Guy. "And Biggie. Guys, this is Neal Caffrey. If there's a better thief than me, he's it. I need him for this job, and I need Hank." Will's gearing up to argue but she's not giving him a choice. "Get him back here for me."

Both Will's eyebrows hit his hairline but he holds out his hand to Neal. "Nice to meet you, Neal."

[notgoingtorun]

Watching Kate in her natural habitat is fascinating, but Neal can't let himself get too distracted. He doesn't know this place, and he can't afford to be anything other than at the top of his game. He can dissect this later; right now, he's busy matching names and voices to faces, memorizing the nuances of the conversations unfolding in front of him. He's not as good as Mozzie, with the photographic memory, but he's close.

Kate's doing introductions, and Neal beams and nods his head at Will and Biggie. Reformed thief, he wants to amend, because that's who he's supposed to be now -- Neal Caffrey, plaything of the FBI, reformed art thief extraordinaire. Getting into his backstory would just make things messy.

Instead, he steps forward and shakes Will's hand. He recognizes the man from the island, but hasn't really interacted with him, and Neal adds another checkmark in the column in his brain labeled trickery rather than dream.

"Likewise, Dr. Zimmerman," he says, all teeth and grin and charm. "I'm just glad that it looks like I'll be able to help. Guess Kate picked a good day to show me around the place."

[girlsolo]

"Show you around the place," Will repeats and it's not quite a 'Kate, can I talk to you for a minute?' but she knows the tone. This is boss!Will and he's ticked that she didn't consult him.

Before Neal can step into the middle of that mess, Kate rolls her eyes right into a look that borders on apologetic. Passes for it, anyway, considering it's her. "I know I should've let you know first. But--" A shrug and that gives way to sharpness. "If you can decide to read Abby in without talking to the rest of us, I can read Neal in."

Now Will looks openly pissed but it's aimed at her. "Abby's an FBI agent tasked with doing this work. Better she's with us than against us."

Instead of getting mad, Kate gets triumphant, because she's been holding that in reserve. "So's Neal. White collar criminal informant."

Will stutter-speaks for a half-step then shakes his head. "Fine." And a beat later, he's Will again. "Well played, but don't do it again." Empty threat, made emptier when he watches her stepping backwards toward Neal, instinctively finding his arm with her hand. She's protecting him and Will knows her well enough to know what that means.

Biggie's already given what approval he has to give but he huffs twice and says, "Made lasagna and ravioli last night. Go. Eat. I'll find Henry."

Just to be a smartass and make things right again, Kate upchins at Will. "That okay with you, bossman? Can I show Neal the kitchen?"

"Get out," Will says, but he's laughing. "I guess it's ... good to meet you, Neal."

[notgoingtorun]

Neal merely rocks back on his heels and grins, hands casually in his pockets while Kate plays that card of theirs. He only barely refrains from gloating about their record case closure rate. After all, some of those cases were solved with less than standard procedures.

"Likewise, doctor," Neal says, every inch the polite, professional adult -- a big feat, given that Neal mostly wants to frolic around the halls of this place and marvel at their treasures. "I'm just glad it looks like I'll be able to help." He paused, then smiled before continuing. "In any way that complies with your typical practices and procedures, of course," Neal added, just a hint of mischief in his eyes

[girlsolo]

"Will's more of a people guy than a rules guy," Kate tells Neal as she wraps her hand around his arm and tugs him back toward the door. The sooner they get out of here, the less likely Will is to start asking hard questions he's not going to believe the answers to. At least, he won't believe them soon enough to save Sally's species from extinction.

They'll probably be like cheetahs, now. All clones of each other. Which is kind of sad. Maybe the Doc can figure out something for them when she gets back from wherever she is in the past. She will come back. Kate's pretty sure of it.

She's not sure how she's sure of it, because the rest of this is some crazy bullshit. But she remembers Liv telling her about these dream-time trips home, so she's figuring that's what's up and running with it.

"Besides, there's no procedures for something like this." Her lip catches in her teeth when she stops them at the door and glances back at Will. "I know you're gonna want to come. You and Declan." Declan. She doesn't know whether to hope to see him or it'll just break her completely. "But you can't. You're needed here and both of you are liabilities on a B&E."

Will gets this totally indignant look and Kate shrugs. "It's the truth and you know it. Just let me handle this and you keep doing the voodoo that you do." And all the paperwork.

While Will's still rolling his eyes and looking like he's about to change his mind and yell, Kate shoves Neal back through the door into the hall and goes with him, shutting the door behind her.

When they're alone - as alone as they can ever be with Henry's security cams - she rubs a hand over her face. "Well. You did say you wanted to see what I did with the rocket launchers."

[notgoingtorun]

Neal lets himself be guided out of the room by Kate. This is her turf, her world, her rules, and he'll play whatever game she puts him into. If that means playing at being a boyfriend along for the ride, fine. If that means assisting on some sort of questionably legal, possibly coerced break in, well, even better.

"Do you have any idea what's going on here?" he asks, when they're out in the hall. His voice is hushed, he's uncomfortable with being too loud, too noticed here, where he already sticks out, already doesn't belong. "Because I thought I was in a nice dream where I woke up in a building full of wonderful treasures that I could dream-steal, and then I'm being marched in by a real actual Bigfoot -- and I have a friend back home who is going to feel so validated by that, by the way -- and I'm just ... incredibly confused." His words come out in a rush; he's not angry, just frustrated. Neal doesn't like being put at a disadvantage, his life's work has involved him having the upper hand, and now he feels like he's playing catch-up on a game that he's not sure he ever actually started playing in the first place.

[girlsolo]

Neal's voice has an edge on it she's never heard from him before. It twists something in her gut that she hasn't felt for a while, that strong, sharp, step in front of a bullet feeling she got when Savannah came to her about Scott or she used to get about Will on retrievals. Same genus, different species (home five minutes and she's right back in science-land, Will would be so proud) of what she felt when she saw Lilo out in the water with Nikita.

She keeps him walking to the kitchen, hoping there'll be an open bottle of wine or Biggie brought some up from the cellar. If not, after she feeds Neal, she knows where they're headed for planning. "Maybe, yeah," she says as her hand falls awat from her face. Glancingsideways and up at him, she shrugs away some of her tension. "Sometimes people sleep for like three days on the islnd, and when they come back, they were on some adventure at home. Pretty sure I dragged you into dreamland with me and we're stuck here until we do whatever the island or my brain wants us to do. Sorry about that."

[notgoingtorun]

Neal's eyes flicker closed for just the briefest seconds as he lets Kate's explanation sink in. She's been on the island longer than he has, and he trusts her in this, at the very least. They're in her home, and as good at he is at being a chameleon and making himself at home in any situation, it will be a hell of a lot easier if he has her to guide him through whatever the hell it is that they've got to do.

He takes a precious few seconds to center himself. He has to put back on the mantle of Neal Caffrey, world renowned thief, escape artist, con man. He's semi-retired these days, thanks to the island, and reformed in some senses (but not all). He has to remember who he is. Peter would disagree with his assessment of himself, but Neal has always believed, deep down at his core, that he will never be anything other than bad, and now is not the time to entertain any notions to the contrary.

He exhales, opens his eyes, and when he does, he's a new man. Gone is the fear and uncertainty that he'd allowed to creep in. It's his con man's facade, but it's kept him alive through worse situations than this. He's calm, cool, collected, ready to face the situation, whatever it may be. "Alright," he says reaching for Kate's hand, tangling his fingers in hers. It helps anchor him in a way that he'd never admit to her, because that would mean talking about this whatever it was they were doing, and they both had better things to do, here and now. "Alright, island weirdness, I can go with that. What's the job we've got to do?" Down to business, start making a plan. It's what he knows, what he's so good at, and when he stops being afraid, he feels a little thrill that he might get to do something exciting for a change.

[girlsolo]

It's kinda fascinating, really, watching Neal create himself. She does the same thing, she knows, whenever she's freaked out. Like the day she took Will his dinner not knowing if he'd turned into a psillobar or not, she'd stopped, forced herself to pull it together, find a Freelander smirk...and then she'd ended up on the island and come completely unspooled. But that's not going to happen here, because Kate's not a shrink, she doesn't need Neal's emotions to be real right now. She doesn't need--

Him to hold her hand, like this FWB thing they're doing is something more than that.

But there are things a chick knows and one of 'em's when a guy's doing something for her and when he's doing it for himself. Neal Caffrey, con artist, might just be playing the role, but there's something, a tension behind the calm, that tells her he's looking to her lead and holding hands might be part of that.

"The job's pretty standard B&E, secured data recovery," she drawls, making it sound simple. It is, in a way. The security might not be familiar, but she's got some ideas about using their particular skills to get around that. "It's the why we're doing it part that's gonna be weird. Why don't we eat and you can get up to speed on the Sanctuary, and then I'll take you to see Sally."

[notgoingtorun]

Neal arches his eyebrows, because if things haven't been weird so far, he doesn't want to know what in the world is going on that will make things even more weird. He can't afford to think about that, though -- there is a job to do, and he can't get distracted. He's seen what happens whenever people get distracted, and it never ends well.

It ends with a bullet between the eyes, or with handcuffs. Neither were good options.

"Doesn't sound too bad," he said, in a true fake it till you make it mode. If he kept telling himself this was all normal, maybe it would be. "You know, when I was feeling like I was missing... the way things used to be, I don't know that this is what I expected the island to do to me in retaliation." Because that's all this place did, retaliate against people who didn't deserve it.

He lets his fingers fall away from Kate's, feeling steadier on his feet now, so to speak, and instead hooks his fingers loosely in the pockets of his trousers. He looks casual, natural, like he belongs there.

Fake it till you make it.

"Well, lead on, let's get down to business."

[girlsolo]

Yeah, so, that's not happening, Kate tells herself as she buttons down the pang of something when Neal lets go of her hand. No time for that, not now, not ever.

She leads on, not saying much, but pointing out some of the sexy, sexy antiques and even sexier tech (just in case Neal gets the bright idea to try stealing some of those sexy antiques) on their way to the kitchen. Maybe surprisingly, the kitchen's just a kitchen.

Just a kitchen with every high end everything you can imagine, including Christofle silver, six different kinds of Waterford crystal and a bunch of Lalique and that's before you even start on the appliances. But even with all that, there's a homey feel to it. Warm woods, warm light - it's definitely Biggie's place not Magnus's, and Kate feels good just being here.

She gestures to a wine rack (new addition, good call, Biggie). "Grab what blows your skirt up," she says while she yanks open the fridge. "Looks like you've got your choice of the best bolognese in the history of bolognese, veal picatta, or--" When she shoves aside the wreckage of Italian, there's one of her favorites. "Oh, scratch all that. Filet Mignon Napoleon with--" Her head pops out of the fridge and her grin brightens. "Fresh popovers. You in?"