Work Text:
After the first time Peter saw Neal have a migraine from the psychic damper device he was required to wear, Peter started dropping hints that Neal ought to see a neurologist about it. And then flat-out ordered him to. And when that didn't work, he made an appointment on Neal's behalf.
"Her name is Dr. Gupta and she comes highly recommended. Apparently she works with injured veterans and she's on the cutting edge of a lot of new research. I've asked the Marshals to give you an exemption for the building where her office is."
Neal could feel himself tensing, and the ever-present ache at the base of his skull ratcheted up a few notches. "Are you ordering me to go?"
Peter started to say something that sounded like "yes". Then he paused and looked at Neal more closely. Neal wasn't sure what he saw, but Peter said, "That's up to you. The appointment is for Wednesday at 1:30. I'll let you go after lunch for the rest of the day. And I'll be checking your tracking data. You'd better be in Dr. Gupta's building or at June's."
"Does she know about me?"
"She'll be briefed by that point," Peter said.
Even when Neal walked out of the office at 1 p.m., he still wasn't sure. He'd successfully dodged Peter, who would certainly have tried to talk him into it one last time, or else given him a typically awkward Burke pep talk. He didn't feel like dealing with either option.
It wasn't that he liked being in pain. The migraines had settled down to one a week or so, but they were still debilitating and miserable, and he had constant low-grade headaches of varying intensity. But he couldn't imagine what a doctor could possibly do for him. The best-case scenario was that he'd be a medical curiosity, so he could look forward to being stared at like a butterfly on a collector's table while this Dr. Gupta examined the device and cooed over how wonderful it was. The worst-case ... well. At least Peter would get a notification from the Marshals if Gupta tased him and tried to smuggle him away in a load of laundry.
He shivered. He wasn't going back to being a lab animal. Not for any reason. He had no desire to die -- in fact, he very much liked being alive -- but if it came down to a choice between that or going back to the life he'd run away from ...
In the end, he went. He almost wished Peter hadn't decided, at this of all possible times, to back off and give him what passed for privacy. It would have been nice to have Peter right there, just in case they did decide that having their own captive psychic was worth the risk of jail time. And it would have also been nice, much as he hated to admit it even to himself, to have Peter around as a distraction, rather than staring at magazines in the waiting room with too much time to think.
Of course, if Peter had been there, he'd probably have taken the opportunity to pick Neal's brains about anniversary presents for his wife. Again. His seventh wedding anniversary was coming up, and Peter had been pumping Neal for ideas. Neal got the impression that this was Peter's standard routine every year: forget completely, then stress, panic, and end up taking her out to the same restaurant where they always went.
"What makes her feel alive?" Neal had asked, which had netted him a blank look that clearly said a) Peter had never thought about it that way, and b) Peter had no idea.
For some reason the Burkes' marriage seemed to be solid, from what Neal had seen of it, so apparently Elizabeth had long since resigned herself to being married to a clod with no romance in his soul. In which case she was unlikely to be sitting around fretting about not being swept off her feet with a dozen roses and tickets to the symphony. Neal had said so. Peter had latched onto that with his usual bulldog tenacity.
"Roses, roses are good. Traditional. Very traditional. I'm not big on classical music; maybe she could go with her sister?" and Neal had given up and started trying to avoid the topic as much as possible.
"Mr. Caffrey?" the receptionist said, and Neal drew himself together, took a breath and hoped that Peter was watching his tracking data closely.
Dr. Gupta ("Call me Claire") was a small, intense woman in her fifties with a firm handshake and a graying bob cut. After taking Neal back to an examination room and closing the door, she said, "May I see it?"
Neal set his jaw and took off his hat. Then he sat there, hat in hand, for a moment before bowing his head forward, the old familiar pose that he'd assumed so many times growing up. Familiar. Easy. Just like old times, huh?
He broke out in a cold sweat, and his stomach was so knotted that he felt on the verge of throwing up. When Dr. Gupta started to circle around behind him, he gave a violent flinch, and she stopped immediately. For a moment he'd almost thought -- but no, she wasn't. Dr. Harris was dead, Dr. Benson too. They would never put their hands on anyone again. And what she was going to do to him today wouldn't hurt.
He hoped.
"Neal." Gupta reversed direction and seated herself on a stool in front of him, placing herself lower than him -- Neal recognized the technique even while appreciating it. Standing above was threatening; sitting below was less so, and clearly she knew this. She placed her hand on his.
"I promise that I will not do anything without your permission. I read your file ..." She smiled. "It reads like science fiction in places. I must admit that I wondered at first if I was the target of an elaborate joke from my colleagues. Actually -- I will be honest with you -- I'm still wondering that. I hope it doesn't offend you."
"Honestly," Neal said, "if you told me that you believed everything in my file without questioning it, I'd know you were lying."
"Well, then, I'd like to look at the implant, but perhaps we should go over your symptoms first."
Step two: talk to your skittish patient first and gain their trust, Neal carried on in his mental running commentary. "Sure," he said, slipping on the easy smile that he wore like a mask. It was less difficult to keep up the facade now that she was no longer behind him. "I've been having migraines..."
He went on to describe the symptoms, then the daily headaches. She was interested in those. "What kind of pain? Burning, stabbing, aching?"
"Aching, mostly. Sometimes it's more like pressure than pain. Sometimes it's kind of twingey."
"Different from the migraines?"
He hesitated; with each piece of information that he gave her, he found himself doing an automatic calculation in his head: How can this be used to hurt me? "They start out that way," he said. "In the beginning, they don't feel that different from the regular headaches, except I can't really think clearly. Then it starts to burn. It goes across my head -- I can feel it, though I don't know if that's really what I'm feeling; I imagine it like a live electric line." He'd sketched it sometimes, in prison, when they'd finally responded to his requests for colored pencils to distract himself from the pain and isolation and fear that was driving him mad. He'd drawn his head with blue and white lines arcing over it, branching and flickering, lightning caught in mid-flash. "It settles behind my eyes -- well, my right eye, usually."
"Did they inform you of the risks beforehand?"
Neal snorted.
"That was a serious question."
"I know. That's what's funny. They put paperwork in front of me and had me sign. So I've given consent, on paper at least."
Gupta's mouth drew into such a firm line that her lips had gone slightly white around the edges. Neal found himself reaching out automatically to calm her -- She can hurt you -- except that he couldn't, and besides, he realized that she was angry on his behalf, not at him. He decided not to mention that the migraines had been more or less constant at first. He hated people feeling sorry for him.
"Did they give you anything for the migraines?"
"They tried. None of it worked. Sometimes it made me sicker; sometimes it didn't do anything. I've always had weird, idiosyncratic drug reactions." Neal tapped the side of his head. "This thing messes with the way that my body produces hormones and processes chemicals. At least that's what they told me in the -- when I was a kid."
"Do you know what you were given?"
He told her the names of the drugs he could remember. She wrote them down. "Out of curiosity," she said, "have you seen the implant? The new one, I mean."
Neal found himself shifting instantly into wary mode. "It's on the back of my head; I can't see it." Not properly, anyway. He took advantage of every opportunity to glimpse it in the mirror, in the hope that he would eventually adjust to having it back there. So far, it hadn't worked.
"No, I mean before they put it in. I thought you might be interested."
She opened one of the file folders and spread out its contents. The diagrams were similar to the ones he and his fellow labmates had pored over as teenagers -- they'd never been invited to look at them, but breaking into the computer file system had been a simple matter of scooping the passwords from their caretakers' brains. There were also printouts of digital X-rays, which Neal couldn't help studying in wonder. The traceries of the devices, old and new, were a network of white lines like the branches of a tree. His brain was full of it. No wonder they can't take it out without killing me.
When he had finished looking at the X-rays, Dr. Gupta said, "I'd like to examine the implant now, if that's all right."
He said that it was, and resolved that it would be. This time she wheeled the chair around the examination table rather than standing up -- staying low, seated, non-threatening. "I'm going to touch you now," she said, and Neal nodded. Her fingertips were cool and dry, pressing firmly on his neck. He balled his hands into fists on his knees and let her do it, answering her questions ("Does this hurt? How about here?") with monosyllabic responses. By the time she withdrew, he was involuntarily shivering.
"Would you like me to give you a minute, or would you like to go on? I can step out and tend to some paperwork."
"I'm fine," Neal said.
"That's not what I asked."
No, it hadn't been. "I can go on," Neal said. "I'd rather get this done. Also, I appreciate that you haven't once pointed out what a fascinating little machine this is."
To his surprise, she laughed. "Believe me, I had that reaction when I was going over these files last night. But it's in your head right now. And your head is what I'm here to fix. If you'd managed to swallow a hundred-thousand-dollar diamond choker, I should hope the emergency room staff would be less interested in admiring the size of the diamonds and more interested in getting it out."
"Taking it out," Neal said, and he straightened up a bit. "I've been told over and over that it can't come out. Do you think --"
"I'm sorry. Bad example. I didn't mean to get your hopes up. I suppose that must be why your other doctors, in a sense, capped it, rather than removing it." She looked thoughtful. "I'm not going to say it's impossible, though. I'll look into that, if that's something you want done."
Neal recognized this feeling: the mingled exhilaration and terror that he felt when he prepared for a particularly hard con, that unique blend of excitement and the fear of unforeseen disaster. Having his powers blocked was difficult enough to deal with; having them gone ... Who would I be then? WHAT would I be? "Normal" was the answer that immediately came to mind, but he'd never considered normal a particularly positive thing to be.
"I guess," he said, after thinking it over, "that it would be nice to know if that's a possibility."
"It's always good to know your options," Gupta agreed. "Now, about the migraines. I have a theory about that, but I'd like to get some bloodwork done before I prescribe you anything long-term. We have an in-house lab -- it's two floors down -- and you can stop on your way out and have blood drawn. I'd also like to schedule a PET scan, which will need to be done at one of the area hospitals. What I'd like to do, once we get the results back, is try you on one of the newer anticonvulsants. A seizure medication, in other words."
"I'm not having seizures."
"I know you aren't. But, if traditional migraine medications like Imitrex don't do anything for you, I'm wondering if your headaches might actually be less of a traditional migraine and more along the lines of seizure-like cascades in the brain's calcium-sodium channels, presenting with pain rather than seizures. So I'd like to try out a sodium channel blocker and see if that makes a difference. I'll give you some handouts before you leave, and you can look over them at home. In the meantime, are you taking anything for the migraines?"
"Just aspirin."
"If it works, keep doing it. I'll also give you a prescription for something to help with the nausea. These are stopgap measures, though. Once we get your bloodwork back, we can start looking at long-term solutions." She flipped through her notes for a moment, ticking things off with little taps of the back end of the pen. "There's one other thing I wanted to ask you about -- are you in any sort of therapy?"
"No," Neal said, more sharply than he'd intended.
"I'm not going to push. However, my practice deals with a lot of veterans and law enforcement, and outcomes are usually better if --"
"No. No therapy." He stopped himself on the verge of saying that he didn't need it, because that would just be inviting an argument to the contrary.
"If you change your mind, I can give you some recommendations," she said, and Neal smiled and nodded, because he'd learned long ago that pretending to go along with people was a good way to get them off his back.
***
He walked home from Gupta's office. It was about four miles, and he was sweaty and tired by the time he got there, but he'd stopped shaking, at least. He hadn't realized the reaction was going to be so strong. Of course, the only time since he'd escaped the lab that he'd been back in a clinical setting was in prison, and it hadn't exactly done a lot to reassure him about the medical profession.
All he really wanted to do was pour himself a large glass of wine and collapse. However, he heard the sound of voices too late to avoid them, and stepped into his apartment to find that Peter was there. And also, Mozzie. The two of them appeared to be having a civil, if not friendly, conversation.
"I see you two have met."
"Neal," Mozzie said, "your apartment has become infested with suits."
"Your little friend won't tell me his name," Peter said.
Neal smiled inscrutably and went to change his shirt.
When he came back out, Peter was grilling Mozzie for gift ideas for his wife. Really must be desperate, then, Neal thought. Peter abandoned that line of conversation -- Mozzie wasn't cooperating anyway -- and handed Neal a cup of coffee.
He'd have preferred wine, but given the way he currently felt, it was probably a bad idea to start drinking in the middle of the afternoon. At least if he wanted to be in any condition for work in the morning.
"So," Peter said, "how did it --" and then he broke off and glanced at Mozzie.
"He knows about me," Neal said, and sank down on one of the chairs. Despite his still-present urge to spend the afternoon huddling, he gave them the highlights of the appointment -- heavily edited, of course, but hitting the salient points: Gupta's suggestion of anti-seizure medication, in particular.
"I didn't know they were that bad," Mozzie said, almost accusingly, and shot a fast glare at Peter, as if it was his fault. Which, well, it was, in a way.
"You haven't seen him have one of them?" Peter asked, and there was a note of challenge in it. Parry and riposte.
Neal couldn't believe they were actually getting combative over who was a better friend to him. Good grief. "I don't send out flyers advertising it," he said. "Peter, have you thought about taking the novel step of asking Elizabeth what she wants?" Luckily Peter was quite easy to distract at the moment.
"Hard to make it a surprise when she's the one who tells me about it ..."
"So remember what she says and file it away for next year. At least you can save yourself the grief for your next anniversary."
"That doesn't help me with this one, though." Peter glanced at his watch. "I'd better get back to work anyway. Pick you up in the morning."
As Peter left, Neal realized that he hadn't even suggested that Neal go back to work with him, even though Neal thought he was doing a perfectly decent job of acting calm and completely undisturbed by the day's activities. It was always a little disturbing when Peter got insightful.
"So that's your suit," Mozzie said as soon as the door closed behind Peter.
"He's not my suit."
"The suit for which you sacrificed your freedom, your health, and our meal ticket," Mozzie said, refusing to be deterred.
"I wasn't exactly thinking in those terms at the time." He could still remember, with a visceral jolt, the hot, slick feeling of Peter's blood on his hands.
"I hope he was worth it," Mozzie said darkly, his tone implying the opposite.
***
The hospital where they'd scheduled the PET scan was out of his radius, which meant he needed to tell Peter about it, and then subject himself to Peter driving him there.
"Here," Peter said, handing him a file folder as they got into the car. "Look these over for me."
"Is this for the Hopkins case?" They were currently trying to nail a shady real estate developer who'd been illegally flipping properties at artificially inflated prices. It was pretty much all paperwork, and unbelievably boring. However, the names were all wrong ... "Wait. This is Elizabeth's Visa bill."
"Yep. I got it all: Ebay bids, video rentals, library books ..."
Neal stared at him, then flipped through just enough of the top printouts to confirm that Peter had, indeed, gone off the deep end. "So ... you're stalking your own wife?"
"You're lecturing me about my relationship with my wife? Remind me again where Kate is? Oh, right, somewhere in Europe ..."
"Where Elizabeth is going to be, too, if you don't knock off this kind of thing."
"Sorry," Peter said after a moment. "That was kind of a low blow."
"Yeah, it was." But only because it mirrored some of his own thoughts. Kate hadn't written to him during his incarceration. Or called. Not even once. He'd been trying to convince himself that it was just that she didn't know what had happened to him, and not that she'd really sworn him off for good. It had been almost a year now since Peter had managed to accidentally reunite them in the course of his quest to apprehend Neal and they'd fled to Europe, where they had lasted two weeks before Kate accused Neal of messing with her head again. (He couldn't help it, it was habit, he hated that about himself; but it probably served him right for being honest with her about his abilities in the first place.)
Maybe Kate would be willing to reconsider their relationship now that his powers were temporarily damped down? On the other hand, he was working with the feds now, involuntary though it was, which was a huge strike in the "no" column ... maybe he'd ask Mozzie if he had any current contact information for her, though ...
Peter had changed the subject and was rambling about oleander candles. Digging further into the file, Neal discovered that Peter had actually written up a summary report of his findings from Elizabeth's data, including a bullet-pointed and cross-referenced list of possible gifts. There were times when he really wondered about Peter.
"I don't think you're going to find the answer in her Ebay bids," he said, interrupting a tangent on El's reading habits.
"So help me out here. You're the romantic."
"Which, as you just pointed out, didn't stop my girlfriend from fleeing to a villa in France to get away from me."
"A villa in France?" Peter said. Neal got the feeling that if Peter been a dog, his ears would have pricked up. Kate was on Interpol's wanted list at the moment, though not a particularly high priority.
"Knock it off; I don't know where she is right now. That's a guess. And you're not going to use me to find her in any case." He had lines he wouldn't cross. And that was one of them.
Peter let it go, which probably meant that it would come up again later. "Tenacious" didn't even begin to describe Peter. "So tell me what you and Kate used to do on your anniversaries."
It was hard, at the moment, to think back to when things had been good between himself and Kate. But they really had, once upon a time. "Well, one year we pretended to be movie stars. I'd give you more details about where we went, what we did and who we did it with, but the statute of limitations hasn't run out on it yet."
"I don't know why I bother asking, I really don't."
Neal turned serious. All flippancy aside, Peter really did seem to want his advice, and aside from specifically work-related situations, that was a rare thing indeed. "The thing about me and Kate ... I made her a promise." I will never use The Touch on you again, Kate, he'd said. And he'd meant it. He really had. He'd managed to keep that promise for all of two weeks. "And I couldn't keep it. Have you made Elizabeth any promises, Peter?"
Peter settled into thoughtful silence as he pulled into the visitor parking lot. Neal looked up at the hospital building. It's just a building, he thought, when his stomach tried to knot up. It can't hurt you. You can leave anytime you like -- you don't even have to go in if you don't want to -- so stop being stupid about this.
Now Peter was getting out of the car, too. "What are you doing?" Neal asked tightly.
"Walking you in." Peter flicked a finger at the anklet.
"Oh for God's sake. I don't need to be chaperoned everywhere."
"Actually, that is exactly what the terms of your release say." Before locking the car, Peter reached in and retrieved the Stalking Elizabeth file. Wonderful. Light waiting-room reading material.
"You realize this is going to take some time," Neal said. "What are you planning on doing, hanging out in the waiting room the whole time?"
"I have reading material." Peter tapped the file folder into his palm.
Neal rolled his eyes. "Well, I assume Elizabeth is used to this sort of thing by now. She told me you had her put under FBI surveillance when you were dating."
"She told you that?" Peter recovered hastily: "And it wasn't surveillance. I just needed to know if she was seeing other guys."
"Some people just ask, you kn--"
He didn't expect it to hit him as hard as it did. It was the smell that did it. One minute he was cheerfully mocking Peter, and then they walked through the sliding glass doors into the lobby, and it felt like he'd been punched in the chest. His lungs seized up and his heart rate accelerated out of control. He turned around blindly; all he wanted to do was leave, but he couldn't breathe, and black spots bloomed in his vision.
Someone was saying his name. Someone grabbed him. Hands on his shoulders -- he tried to fight instinctively, lashing out, then recognized Peter's voice. "Breathe, Neal, just breathe," Peter was saying, and he managed to gulp a few breaths while Peter guided him to a chair in the lobby. Over his head, he heard someone -- a woman's voice -- ask if he was all right. "He's fine," Peter said, and knelt down, putting a hand on Neal's knee. Neal flinched; he couldn't seem to help it. Peter squeezed his knee -- heavy pressure; it seemed to help a little, once he knew it was Peter, anchoring him. "Slow steady breaths. There you go."
Neal tipped his head back against the wall and closed his eyes. Some rustling beside him indicated that Peter had shifted to sit down in the next chair over, without releasing his grip on Neal's leg. The smell was still there -- faint, chemical, institutionally clean -- but he could, he thought, get used to it. Just ... the suddenness of it ...
After a moment Neal risked cracking an eye open. Peter was regarding him with honest concern. "You can stop staring at me," Neal said, pulling his knee away. "I'm not going to pass out."
"You want a drink of water or anything?"
He started to say "no", then realized that his throat was so dry it hurt. "Maybe."
Peter got up. Having him gone, if only for a few minutes, helped take the pressure off; Neal could relax, breathe through it, and by the time Peter came back with a paper cup of water, he felt a little less fragile, less like he was going to shake apart.
"I don't think I realized --" Peter began, then stopped and started over. "Do you want to talk about that?"
"Nope," Neal said. He accepted the paper cup with hands that still shook slightly.
"Somehow I knew you were going to say that." Peter cleared his throat. "Does that happen ... often?"
"What part of 'I don't want to talk about it' wasn't clear?"
"Mainly I'm wondering what happens if something on a case --"
"It won't," Neal said, and wished he could be entirely sure he was right. "It's just ..." He waved a hand around the lobby.
"I guess you haven't been back in a place like this since --" Peter's eyes went to the device on Neal's neck. Neal had to resist the urge to cover it with his hand. "Aw, shit, Neal," Peter said, and ran a hand over his face. "I didn't think about that."
It wasn't prison, not really -- it was much older and deeper than that -- but if Peter wanted to believe that, then it was a nice pat answer and didn't require more digging. On the other hand, Peter being Peter, he might have guessed the "older and deeper" part anyway. Neal shrugged.
"Don't take this the wrong way, but have you thought about therapy?"
"Dr. Gupta asked me the same thing," Neal said, and then wished he'd kept his mouth shut, since he'd just implied that he'd done this in Gupta's office too. Which he hadn't. "I told her no. And that's what I'm telling you too. That's not negotiable. No one's getting into my head, Peter -- no one. Not that way." He stood up and crumpled the empty cup. "Come on, let's go get this done."
***
They let Peter stay in the room with him while they prepped him for the scan. Neal figured that Peter had already seen him have a panic attack in the lobby; what the hell, it wasn't like watching him getting shot up with radioactive isotopes in a hospital gown was any more embarrassing. And for some weird reason, having him there seemed to make it a little better, if only because he knew that if they tried to haul him off, Peter would flash a badge and make them stop. Peter was reliable that way.
Neal still caught himself straining to read people's thoughts. It was like suddenly becoming illiterate, with a world that had been an open book to him now forever illegible. And it was worse in a place like this, where he desperately wished that he could simply and easily detect the intentions of the people around him. Since he couldn't, he strained to pick up every tiny nuance of their body language instead, an effort that left him exhausted and shaking by the time they put him in the machine.
While he waited for the scan to finish, an interesting thought occurred to him. He went through his days wishing that he could read the minds of everyone from the coffee shop barista to the suspects they interviewed, but he very rarely felt that way about Peter. Mostly, he thought, it was because he didn't have that much trouble figuring out what Peter was thinking anyway.
Maybe that's what it was like for most people, all the time. This was a thought that disturbed him deeply -- if the entire rest of the human race had been walking around with a form of mild telepathy and he didn't even know it.
"You're quiet," Peter said as they took the elevator back down to the lobby.
"It's called 'thinking'. It's what happens when people aren't talking." Then he looked at Peter and noticed that Peter was practically vibrating in place, cheerfully animated in a way that Peter didn't get very often. The fact that he hadn't noticed sooner was a testament to just how hard he was focusing on not actually being here. "What's with you?"
"I figured out what to give El."
"Good for you!" Neal's congratulations were heartfelt not just for Elizabeth and Peter's sake, but because this meant no more awkward conversations about aspects of Peter and Elizabeth's marriage that he'd really rather not know about.
"You asked if I'd made her any promises," Peter said. "I did. Well, not a promise exactly, but we're always talking about going to the Caribbean, when we can find the time. Except we never find the time. Well, I am going to make the time. I still need to clear it with Hughes, of course ..."
"Workaholic Peter Burke. Taking a vacation." Neal grinned at him.
"Yes, life is just that much easier since I caught you: now I can afford to take vacations."
"You caught me?" Neal echoed in disbelief. "Since when? That's not how I remember it."
Peter acknowledged that point with a small shrug -- Neal could tell that Peter, for reasons Neal couldn't quite fathom, still felt guilty about the circumstances of Neal's capture. But, being Peter, he rallied almost instantly. "Technically I caught you a year ago, at the warehouse, except you cheated."
"It's not cheating to use the talents that you have at your disposal," Neal said loftily, and then the doors opened and he was outside and for the first time since he'd gone into the hospital, he could breathe.
It was the end of the workday anyway, and Peter casually took him out for a drink before dropping him back at June's. He even let Neal pick the bar. In deference to Peter's budget, Neal avoided the temptation to screw him for as much money as possible and picked something midrange, not such a dive that he'd feel ashamed to be seen there, but not at the top end of the jostling-elbows-with-celebrities scale of nighttime hot spots, either.
Peter turned out to have ulterior motives beyond just being nice to him, which was actually sort of a relief; Neal didn't trust people who did things without ulterior motives. Peter wanted to talk Neal into letting him redecorate June's terrace to spring his anniversary surprise on Elizabeth. From the sound of things, he must have spent the entire time they were in the hospital contemplating beach chair placement and where to obtain artificial palm trees.
"You've really thought this through."
"If there's one thing I know," Peter said, sketching a diagram of the terrace on a cocktail napkin, with entrances and exits marked, "it's how to plan an op."
***
"I don't think removal of the original implant is going to be possible," Gupta said. "At least at the present time."
Neal tried to work through his initial feelings about that: a rush of disappointment along with relief. At least it wasn't a decision he had to make.
"However," she added, "there are a few things we can do to make the deactivation module less noticeable. Actually, I'm surprised -- or disappointed, perhaps -- that they didn't even try. It's very ... industrial-looking."
Neal snorted. "Good word for it. And I don't think they were expecting to have a live subject so quickly. They rushed it out of development just for me." Although, even if they'd had an extra year, or ten, he didn't think they'd have gone to a lot of trouble to make it unobtrusive. His feelings about it were not high on their list of concerns. At least they hadn't just had him shot.
"I'm thinking that we can cover most of it with a custom, skin-colored prosthetic device. I can take some measurements today."
Neal held his hair out of the way while she did that. "How did you know it bothered me?" he asked, genuinely curious.
"Your body language. The way you move. Well, that, and as I said, I deal with a lot of combat veterans and other people adjusting to physical impairments that are new for them. When a patient starts using a prosthetic device, body image issues are one of the hardest things they have to cope with. Harder, in some ways, that the loss of the limb's functions." She fell silent for a moment as she scribbled down measurements, then said, "It's a normal human trait to be concerned about what people see when they look at you, Neal. It's not something to be ashamed of."
It wasn't until Neal was out of her office, with a prescription for anticonvulsants and a list of side effect warnings, that he realized this was the first time he could remember that someone who'd known about his abilities had used the word "normal" -- or, for that matter, the word "human" -- in specific connection to him.
***
Neal didn't mean to eavesdrop on Peter and Elizabeth's "date" on the terrace. After an evening of helping Peter string lights and haul artificial palm trees and other heavy objects up two flights of stairs, all he wanted to do was crash on the couch. However, Mozzie had set up security cameras (of course he had); the feed ran to a laptop in June's living room.
"Don't you think this is a little unethical?" Neal said, leaning over Moz's shoulder. Peter and Elizabeth were snuggling on a deck chair.
"There's sound, too," Mozzie said, slipping off a set of earmuff-style headphones and offering them to Neal, who demurred with a raised palm.
"Yeah, that's getting a bit too '1984' for me, Big Brother." The thought occurred to him an instant later that this might seem a bit hypocritical from a man who had made his living eavesdropping on people's thoughts, but Mozzie just shrugged and put the headphones back on.
"Your loss." Mozzie reached for a handful of popcorn. "Oh look, he's feeding her a shrimp."
"June does have cable, you know."
Mozzie ignored him, munching popcorn, so Neal pulled his sketchpad into his lap and began sketching the complicated antique lamp on June's end table.
June came in from the back garden with Bugsy on a leash. "Date-cam!" Mozzie called, waving a hand at her. "Pull up a chair!"
June dutifully looked over the back of the couch. "Ah, I see they're enjoying themselves up there," she said. "Very pleasant couple."
"For a suit and his other suit-half, perhaps."
"Thank you again for letting them use the terrace," Neal said.
June patted his shoulder. "It's no hardship at all. It was kind of you to do this for your friends."
"Me? I didn't really do anything," Neal said, embarrassed. "It was Peter's idea in the first place, and it's your house. I just carried some scenery."
"Also, you appeared to have experienced a slip of the tongue, madam," Mozzie said. "Or possibly it's my ears, but I distinctly heard you say 'friends'. This is highly inaccurate given Neal's current situation."
"That's right, talk about me like I'm not here," Neal said.
June smiled enigmatically. "I was about to go ask Marcia to fix me a cup of cocoa before she leaves for the night -- shall I make it three?"
"With marshmallows," Mozzie said promptly.
As she left, Neal said, "Now who's settling in?"
"I merely appreciate creature comforts where I can get them. Today we eat and drink, for tomorrow we shall die."
"Your optimism is always an inspiration, Moz."
June returned with three cups of cocoa; the maid followed a moment later, bearing a plate with neatly arranged cookies of various types. "Have a seat, dear," June said to her. "Join us."
"I'd love to, Mrs. Ellington, but I have plans tonight." Still, she flicked a swift glance and a smile at Neal. He smiled back, and felt, like muscle memory in an amputated limb, his brain undergoing the mental shift to push her, gently. Instead a sharp twinge went through the base of his skull -- the pain the doctors at the prison had claimed he wouldn't feel, had told him was purely psychosomatic.
Now his head hurt. And maybe this time, he deserved it. He watched the maid walk away and wondered how long it would take to lose the habit to skim the thoughts of the people around him, to lightly push them to make the decisions he wanted them to make, rather than the ones they'd make naturally.
Peter had called it cheating. Neal had never thought of it that way. It was simply a talent he had. He hadn't asked for it, any more than he'd asked to be able to draw. And he didn't think it was cheating to use it. People didn't call it cheating when someone worked their way up to CEO of a multinational corporation by using their own innate intelligence and drive to manipulate people.
Well, okay ... Peter would probably say that was cheating, too.
He hoped this wasn't going to be a regular thing ... having a mental Peter voice (well, more of a mental Peter peanut gallery; the most annoying Jiminy Cricket ever) pop up in his head at inopportune times.
The three of them settled into companionable silence. June had a book, while Mozzie had lost interest in the Burke Channel and had located a book of his own. Neal leaned back on the couch, his fingers curled around the warm mug of cocoa, and realized with sudden surprise that he was aware of Mozzie and June's presence even without being able to feel their thoughts.
This was something he'd been struggling to get used to. He'd never been alone, really. He had been able to shut himself off from the flood of stimulus around him -- it was one of the first things they'd learned in the lab as children -- but, if he wanted to, all he had to do was reach out and brush a nearby mind, and he'd know he wasn't completely isolated. Being trapped in his own skull, at first, had been like being in solitary confinement.
But, come to find out, it was still possible to be aware of other people's presence. They made little sounds all the time -- shifting position, breathing -- and beyond that, there was an odd sort of physical awareness of them, something he had never noticed before. He was even aware of Peter and Elizabeth upstairs; that one had to be purely psychological, but still he felt ... less alone.
***
He almost didn't take the meds.
Mozzie insisted that he was being a fool to trust anything the military-industrial-medical complex prescribed for him. Of course, Mozzie also believed that the psychic-damping device on Neal's neck could be remotely detonated, which both Peter and Dr. Gupta had assured him was not true (although Gupta, at least, seemed to think he was joking).
Neal was mostly confident the medical establishment wasn't trying to poison him, at least not on purpose. And it wasn't the side effects that bothered him so much as the dependency. The drug wasn't one that he could stop suddenly, at least not without suffering what Gupta described as nonstop, life-threatening seizures. If he started taking this, he couldn't just vanish without securing enough of the drug to taper off. He'd be dependent upon it.
But then he lost a day and a half to another migraine. His life right now was wobbling along on an unsustainable tightrope; he couldn't keep destroying his stomach lining with high doses of aspirin, losing days at a time to crippling migraines, going through life with a constant headache cinching a vise at the base of his skull. He was caught in a miserable limbo. Choosing to take the drug meant that one more tie would be holding him here: to New York, to the FBI. And yet, those connections were happening anyway, whether he chose it or not. And at least this way he could be a little more functional and in less pain.
Leap of faith, he thought, standing in the bathroom at June's with the pill cupped in the palm of his hand.
People were a drug anyway. He was already noticing a certain addictive quality to taking people's word for things. The more you trust people, the easier it is to trust them ... Mozzie would probably tell him he was being a fool. Or maybe not. Mozzie had been hanging around June's a lot lately, too.
Through the open door of the bathroom, he could see out the glass doors to the terrace ... so recently converted to a tropical vacation spot for Peter and El's anniversary. Neal recognized the chair where Peter had stood to hang lights, and nearly tipped himself over the railing to the street below; Neal had lunged and caught him, but Peter's grip on the lights had slipped -- and over the railing they slithered. Peter let out a string of profanity in three different languages, and then they'd both started laughing ...
And there was the table where he and June had coffee most mornings, and watched the sun come up over the balcony.
A leap of faith. He poured himself a half-glass of water, and gazed at the pill for a moment longer before he closed his eyes and tipped it back.