elrhiarhodan

Title: We Shall Come Home - Chapter VII
Author: elrhiarhodan
Fandom: White Collar
Pairing/Characters: Peter Burke, Neal Caffrey, Elizabeth Burke, Reese Hughes, Diana Berrigan, Clinton Jones, Mozzie, Satchmo, plus other characters.
Rating: R
Spoilers: None
Word Count: ~2,500 (this chapter) ~61,000 (total)
Warnings/Enticements/Triggers: None
Summary: Transformed beyond recognition, beyond comprehension, Peter and Neal are lost in the woods and desperately try to get home. A tale of friendship, sacrifice, loss and ultimately, of love. Diana and Mozzie meet and discuss the improbable. Peter begins to lose faith that they’ll ever make it home.

We Shall Come Home is not a work in progress. New chapters will be posted once a week, on Tuesdays.
Chapter I | Chapter II | Chapter III | Chapter IV | Chapter V | Chapter VI

__________________


CHAPTER VII - Saturday Morning

EARLY SATURDAY MORNING, DIANA STALKED HIM LIKE A DEER HUNTER – it was amazing how stealthy she could be in four inch heels. She found him holed up in the luncheonette three blocks from the Burkes’ house. He was nursing a cup of tea and trying to read the newspaper. Or at least hiding behind the newspaper.

When she slid into his booth, Moz almost had a heart attack. On top of all his worry about Neal and the Suit, to have his beautiful monster voluntarily seek him out was an almost unbearable thrill. He dropped the paper and stared at her.

She dropped a file on top of his paper and stared back. All she said was, “You never read this.”

Before Moz gingerly opened the folder, he donned a pair of nitrile gloves (he was allergic to latex as well as lactose); he didn't want to leave any fingerprints on a federal document. It wasn’t the same thing he had seen yesterday. This file contained the final lab reports about the evidence found at the site. Moz read all of it, and then read it again. And again.

“Okay...this is a little crazy.” Moz tried to keep an even tone. He didn’t want to frighten the monster: she’d eat him alive.

“Yeah, I know it is.” Diana grimaced and waved off the hovering waitress.

“There was wolfhound fur and DNA inside their clothing? Inside their underwear?” He couldn’t help it; his voice reached nearly inaudible heights.

Diana shushed him. “And it wasn’t the same animal. Peter’s clothing had brindle and Neal’s had gray fur – there was no crossover of fur or dander inside the clothing. The DNA tests confirm that there were two dogs, one for each man. There was no cross-contamination of dog fur or DNA between their clothes.”

Moz flipped back through the report and reread that section. He looked up and just shook his head.

Diana continued. “And the holster? I can’t even begin to imagine what they did to Neal to get those results.”

“Both Neal and the dog left saliva on the holster. What is the point of that?”

“I don’t know.” Diana scrubbed at her eyes. “I just don’t know. We haven’t received a ransom demand, there is no physical evidence of another vehicle on that road. Nothing makes sense. Jones and I have been poring through Peter’s old case files, and we can’t find a single perp who has enough juice to make something like this happen.”

Moz gave Diana the same answer he gave the Old Gray Suit four nights ago. “Neal’s enemies, those who could pull something like this off, would never go after him when he’s with the Suit. They’d go for him when he’s alone, vulnerable. That tracker does more than report his whereabouts to you busybodies, it protects him too.”

A strange expression crossed Diana’s face, and Moz pounced on it. “What about the tracker? The Suit’s boss told me that the tracker was found at the site, locked and working.”

Diana shook her head. “The EMU re-ran the tracker’s data stream, and there was a seven-second anomaly. The tracker didn’t go offline, but the data was not verifiable. The car’s GPS doesn’t transmit data in a continuous stream, so we don’t know if the anomaly was limited to the tracker’s unit.”

“Sunspots?”

“We checked, there was no increased activity, according to NASA.”

“Seven seconds is more than long enough to unlock and relock the anklet.” Moz muttered.

Diana took hold of one of Mozzie’s hands. He shivered, telling himself, “fear, not desire”. “Moz – do you know of any way that the tracker could be removed without a key? We need that information.” She stared into his eyes, as if to mesmerize him. “It could mean the difference in Neal’s life or death.”

Moz held his breath. The thought of giving up such secrets to the Man (and particularly to his beautiful monster) nauseated him. But it was for Neal, and there was almost nothing he wouldn’t do for his friend.

“There may be a way...” He paused, and his natural reticence tried to take over.

“Mozzie, please.” Diana begged.

It was the “please” that pushed him over the edge. “It’s only a theory – neither of us wanted to test it.”

“Why?”

Mozzie muttered, “Too dangerous.”

“What’s the theory?”

“That a sustained application of high voltage electricity to the anklet could interrupt the locking mechanism.”

“I could see why Neal would be reluctant to try that.”

Moz grimaced. “It’s possible whoever took them got the tracker off Neal like that – and it would produce an anomaly. But if they broke his foot to remove it...” He didn’t want to complete that thought.

“We checked with the manufacturer: even if Neal’s ankle was dislocated, they couldn’t remove it. The cuff is designed so that his foot would have to be crushed or need to be amputated to remove it.”

Diana meant that information to be reassuring, Moz supposed. And he supposed it was, since they found no blood.

“What do you think about the deer?”

“Huh?” Diana’s swift change of topic caught Mozzie off guard.

“The deer that the car hit.”

Moz flipped back through the file and reread the section. “A Persian Fallow Deer? That doesn’t sound like it’s a species native to northeastern Pennsylvania.”

Diana shook her head again. “It’s not. There are no Persian Fallow Deer in North America – none at all, not even in any zoos or conservation centers. There are less than one thousand of them in the wild – all in the Middle East and southern Eurasia.”

Moz was silent. He looked through the reports again, even though it was unnecessary. He had a photographic memory. He took a sip of his tea and swallowed heavily. He knew he was irritating Diana (a perverse pleasure), but he took his time and folded his newspaper precisely, realigned everything on the table – including the report folder – and then took another sip of tea. It was nerves – because what he was about to suggest was so far off the wall as to warrant him a one-way ticket to Bellevue.

“You know the saying, when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains ...”

Diana finished the quotation “... however improbable, must be the truth?” Yes, yes – Sherlock Holmes. I read ‘The Sign of the Four’ when I was twelve. What are you getting at?”

“I am a man of science – you know that.” Diana nodded in agreement (or at least pretended agreement). Moz paused, took yet another sip of tea. It was cold now, and he made a face at the cup. “But sometimes, science may not have all the answers.”

“What are you saying?”

Moz licked his lips and continued. “There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

“Hamlet, Act One, Scene Five. Stop taking refuge in quotations, Mozzie.”

“Okay, okay, this is just going to sound completely crazy – but what if Neal and Peter were transformed into dogs.” That last bit came out in a rush.

Diana didn’t say anything.

“Look, there is no other explanation that makes any sort of sense. It would explain the dog fur and dander inside their clothing, the combined DNA on the chewed off part of the Suit’s holster, the fact that there were no tire tracks for another vehicle, no sign of any other humans. How Neal’s tracker got off and why Peter’s gun and badge were left behind.”

Diana didn’t run shrieking out of the restaurant. She did bite at her lips, though. “That’s impossible, not improbable. You know that.”

Moz briefly closed his eyes and sighed. “Yeah, I know. But it explains everything.

Diana reached into her bag and pulled out another folder. “You haven’t seen this one either.” She opened up the file to the picture of Neal’s shoe, the tracker, and his sock – all together, as if the foot that was once inside that shoe, wearing the tracker and that sock, had simply dematerialized.

Moz opened his mouth to say something, then closed it with a snap, finally remembering that he was in a place full of ears.

His monster seemed to pick up his thoughts. “I don’t think our government has any such program that could do what you just suggested.”

“You don’t think, but you don’t know for certain.”

She just nodded.

“This solution has crossed your mind too.”

“I also read Edith Hamilton when I was twelve. I was very disappointed to learn that none of those stories were real.”

“I suppose you’re thinking of Artemis – how appropriate.”

She grinned at him. “I was particularly fond of the story of Actaeon.”

“You would be.” Moz snorted.

“For a number of reasons, all of them fairly obvious.”

“Well, if you add in the Persian Fallow Deer...it makes a twisted sort of sense...if you believed in this type of craziness.”

“But being a man of science...”

“I am also a romantic.” Moz leaned back against the booth and gave her his best and sweetest smile. Then he grimaced and shook his head. “Nah. Not even improbable.”

“Nope. Not even.” Diana gave him an intimate little smile. She picked up both folders and tucked them back into her bag. And then, to Mozzie’s surprise, bent down, took them out again and left them on the floor under the table.

“I’m heading back to the Burkes’, to see if anything has developed. Want to come with me?”

Moz declined. “I’m going to sit here and think a bit. There are other possibilities.” He shifted and put his foot over the files.

“There are?”

“There has to be. Because what I’ve suggested is just not possible.”

“Okay – keep me abreast of anything you think of.” She tossed him a business card with her cell phone number on it and left.

Moz carefully ran his fingers over the card stock. It was government issue, and certainly not the finest. He probably shouldn’t keep it; it could have trackers or hallucinogens in the ink, but he couldn’t help himself. He tucked it into his wallet, into a carefully hidden place, where it wouldn’t fray or get damaged.

The waitress came back with a fresh tea bag and hot water. As the tea steeped, Moz tried to come up with truly logical explanations for Neal and Peter’s disappearance, but his thoughts kept focusing on a pair of dark and dangerous eyes.



PETER DIDN’T KNOW WHAT WAS WORSE, THE HUNGER OR THE GUILT. He knew that each time he sent Neal out to hunt, and each time Neal had to kill something, he lost a little more humanity. He was using Neal to try and stay alive, hoping that once they got home, they’d become human again. But what if he couldn’t bring Neal back to himself? If he lost him to the dog’s instinctive drive to survive, could Neal ever become human again?

For the first time in days, Peter allowed himself to really think about Elizabeth. Although she was his lodestone, his magnetic north, he had tried to keep her out of his conscious thoughts. He knew that she must be worried, terrified that he was missing. What had they told her? And when?

Peter had only decided to take the trip out to Sylvania Lake to interview Constantine Velton about 8 o’clock the evening before. Everything was very much last minute. It was likely that no one would have realized they were missing until the next day. He tried to remember El’s schedule, and he wasn’t certain that she was going to be in New York. Regardless, she must know by now that he was missing. And if she knew, and the FBI was searching for them, he could just imagine what she must be going through now. There was no logical explanation for their disappearance. He had a dim memory of their clothing scattered across the unpaved road, the dead deer and the damaged car. What did they tell Elizabeth? He wondered and worried about his wife.

He could picture her face, her bright eyes and long dark hair. That brilliant smile and the way she cocked her head when she was listening to him. But he couldn’t hear her voice, or recreate the sound of his name when she spoke it. He started to panic – suddenly he couldn’t even remember his name, who he was and why he was here. He could remember that his wife – Elizabeth – had blue eyes, but he didn’t know what “blue” meant. He tried to remember the details of his life, his home: the number of steps up to his front door, how many chairs at the dining table, his telephone numbers, and his ZIP code. This information came back slowly and it was full of gaps; he knew his cell phone number, but not his landline. He could picture the steps from the street to the front door, but he wasn’t sure if there were six or eight of them. He remembered that the house had three stories, plus a basement apartment and storage area, but not the number of rooms on each floor.

The panic started to recede and he tried to reground himself. If poetry worked for Neal, maybe math would work for him. He counted backwards from one hundred by sevens, which was too easy. He calculated pi to the twentieth place and multiplied the result by the square root of a random six-digit number. He flopped to the ground, panting and worn out, too hungry and too tired to do anymore calculations. But at least he remembered his name.

Peter tried to ignore the hunger pangs, the sick and weak feeling, and the shakiness in his legs. They had been subsisting on rabbits for three days, and each time Neal killed one, Peter could feel the bonds between them weaken. He thought about Satchmo, and the high calorie diet they fed him (and supplemented by the one he took for himself). When the Lab got regular exercise, which meant when Peter regularly jogged, Satch was lean and nicely muscled. When Peter was forced to work out at the gym in the winter, or when work kept him too busy, his dog quickly plumped up. He and Neal were twice Satchmo’s size and they were eating the bare minimum, but were burning infinitely more calories. This morning, Peter realized that they were covering less distance, but traveling longer. It was going to come to a point very soon that they wouldn’t be able to travel at all.

Maybe when they got to civilization, they’d be able to forage for food. Restaurants disposed of uneaten food all the time, and they were big enough to get into a Dumpster – or maybe Neal could don his friendliest con artist’s face and beg. Except that they were huge animals, and he didn’t think that people would be inclined to approach two dirty dogs, each bigger than a compact car, no matter how friendly they appeared. Peter shook his head and told himself to stop being so self-defeating.

He wondered how much longer Neal was going to be. He was so hungry.

To Be Continued - Go To Chapter VIII