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Neal had weathered disappearances before, ever since he first came to the island. Once Peter went, though, Neal began trying to harden himself against the inevitable, that people he cared about would go, and he had no say in it. In some respects, it was just like home: keep your ties light, so they can't be used against you.

He'd never been able to stop himself from falling for a beautiful woman, though, so even in that respect, the island was nothing new.

He hadn't lost anyone close to him in a while, but he knew it was rough for Kate and Lilo, and the disappearances made him think about things he couldn't promise: I'm never going anywhere, he wanted to say, but in this, he had to give up control to the island, and Neal had never excelled at letting anyone or anything have control over his life.

Neal stretched out in bed, a glass of wine on the bedside table, and a sheaf of papers in his lap. He sketched idly on the paper, not with any real intent other than taking his mind off of how overwhelmingly sad everyone seemed to be these days.

It was working; he was so focused on the drawing (and the wine) that he didn't hear Kate come in.

[ for kate : winter plot ]

The decadence of a free New York is overwhelming to Neal, impossible for him to ignore. In record speed, he's decorated his new home in style, a characteristic mixture of vintage fashions and modern flair. Everything has been legally acquired -- as legally as one can in a version of New York which refuses to allow you to pay for anything -- despite his pathological need to test out the security at the Guggenheim, at MoMa, the Whitney. His closet is full of vintage suits and modern, bespoke ones. He has a wine rack and a bed that is practically impossible to get out of, and every book imaginable at his fingertips.

He also has a whole city to show to a beautiful woman. Neal lives and breathes New York, and while Kate might be a Second City girl at heart, he still wants to show her his world, the New York that he loved so much that he would have done anything to stay.

Neal shows up at Kate's door in a suit -- black with faint pinstripes, tailored to perfection -- and flowers. Flowers aren't her, he knows -- she puts up walls, she doesn't want to be wooed, and they both want to pretend that what they're both doing is just fun rather than meaningful -- but beautiful women are Neal's kryptonite, so to speak, and he just can't help himself.

Flowers clutched in one hand at his chest, he raises the other to knock on her door. He is going to take her out for a night on the town, with dinner and dancing and walks through the park, whether she likes it or not.

[ for peter ]

The island was different.

But this wasn't the old west, like the last time Neal woke up to everything being changed.

This was New York. Home. He never thought that he'd see home again -- when he left, he had no expectation of ever seeing New York again. He'd run, and he'd left behind everything he knew, because the alternative -- staying, Kramer, DC -- was worse.

For just a moment, he thought that he was back in the real New York, but that illusion was shattered the instant he stepped outside and began seeing familiar faces -- familiar island faces.

He did his best to ignore it, and pretend instead that he was home. It was a fantasy he would keep up for as long as it was feasible. He didn't realize exactly how much he yearned for home until it came back to him, in the island's slightly altered form. Neal had went out and outfitted himself in what felt most natural to him -- suit, tie, shoes, wool coat, cashmere scarf. It was almost like stealing, except for the fact that everyone was doing it and no one was going to get in trouble for it. The clerks at the stores just waved him off when he tried to pay for anything, anyway.

Neal found himself roaming the city, feet taking him down familiar paths, until he found himself standing outside of the Guggenheim. There was a familiar tug, deep down, pulling him towards it, for reasons less sedate than just browsing, but he ignored it, hands clenched into tight fists in his pockets.

All because he could take something didn't mean he was going to.

Probably.

[for Kate]

Neal had settled in rather well to his new hut. Sure, it wasn't exactly the Queen Elizabeth-inhabited room he'd had at New Pemberley, but it was still a space all his own. He was sure that Peter would raise an eyebrow at this living situation, too, given that it wasn't one Neal had worked for to get; no, Kate offered the empty hut and he took it. (Peter would probably raise a few eyebrows at Kate, too, but there was nothing Neal could do about that.)

He'd unpacked and had begun decorating, as well as one could on the island. It didn't quite feel like home yet -- as a (reformed) con man, Neal was predisposed to be an eternal wanderer, anyway, even if he did long for home more than priceless things and notoriety these days -- but it was getting there.

Neal had a vision for the hut, but without canvas and real painting supplies, he had to improvise. He'd moved all of the furniture away from one long, windowless wall of the hut and had begun to sketch a large mural of the New York skyline, based on his view from his apartment at June's. It was just a rough outline, but it was shaping up very quickly. Stripped down to a tank-top and light linen trousers, Neal was focused on getting the bold lines of the skyscrapers just right, and was mostly oblivious to anything else around him.

[for Lipton]

Neal had thought that his great tour of island apologies was done and over with. He hadn't accounted for the fact that significant portions of the island had lost great chunks of their memories. It didn't make sense to tell people who didn't even remember him.

And, of course, one of the people who had no idea who Neal was just happened to be Lipton. Jane might have dealt with his lies with a quiet, sad resignation, but he doubted that her husband would be quite so non-confrontational about it.

He'd already moved his belongings out of New Pemberley, but once he'd realized that everyone had their memories back, he thought it was time to find Lipton and tell him the truth, too.

"Afternoon," he said, approaching the other man once he'd tracked him down. "Have a minute? I've got something I need to talk to you about."

[open]

If Neal was being truly honest with himself, he knew full well that this moment was inevitable. He knew he was going to be exposed one way or another. At least this way, Peter had let him keep at least some of his dignity by allowing him to tell the truth on his own, rather than have the message delivered for him as though he were completely incapable of telling the truth. Oh, it would still be humiliating to round up so many people and tell them the truth, reliving a difficult conversation over and over again, but perhaps that was the message that Peter was trying to get through Neal's head: taking the easy way out was never the best solution. Neal had taken the easy way out, and he was paying the price for it now.

Neal had put this off for as long as he could, but he knew it had to be done. Aside from facing Peter's wrath, the guilt would gnaw at him until he did. Guilt was a new feeling, one that had never touched him when he was stealing priceless artifacts or defrauding billionaires, but now that he'd made friends and started a life that was built on lies, he was starting to know what regret really felt like.

This wasn't the first time that he'd had to do this dance -- once, not so long ago, he'd had to sit down with Kate and tell her that Nick Halden was a fabrication, and that hurt -- but that didn't mean he wasn't nervous about it. He'd dressed in his best clothes today -- suit, waistcoat, tie, hat -- because if he was going to go back to being Neal Caffrey, then he was going to own it.

As Neal began to track down his friends, people he cared about, people who trusted him, he realized that this was going to be a very long day.

"Hey there," he said, plastering on a cheerful smile as he approached, "do you have a couple of minutes? There's something I need to talk to you about."

[for Blaine]

There appeared to be another epidemic of Island Weird going on. Or, at least, some sort of mass confusion. There seemed to be a lot more concerned whispering going on, at any rate, and Neal was a professional at concerned whispers. Neal largely kept his mouth shut about things, all the better to slide under the radar, but he noticed everything. It was part of his job, even if he didn't have a job here anymore.

He sat in the rec room, trying to ignore whatever weirdness was going on, and instead flipped through the pages of an art book he'd found lurking on the shelves. It was a book of Warhol paintings, and he wasn't the greatest fan of Warhol, but it was better than nothing. The bookshelf mostly tried to give him heavy texts on criminal law, anyway.

Mostly, though, Neal looked longingly at the pool table. He tried to stay away from it, but sometimes it called his name. Neal was just so tired of pretending to be someone that he wasn't -- oh, sure Neal Caffrey as a concept was someone he wasn't, but he'd never chosen to give up things he knew and loved just to keep from attracting attention. He was already being risky with his work at the casino -- no one just learned to deal cards the way he did for fun, and he and Trixa both knew it.

Trying to pass himself off as a mediocre pool player just wasn't going to happen, so he ignored the table for now, and instead flipped past another page of soup cans. Maybe next time, the bookshelf would give him something a little more classic.

[for Kate]

Neal had yet to really settle into a routine on the island -- the whole place turning into the old west had managed to disrupt any tentative sense of normalcy that he had. He tried to keep some sort of continuity with life as he'd known it in little ways here and there, mostly with how he dressed. Today he was clad in a white button-down shirt, vest, and dress trousers. The lack of tie or suit coat were his only concessions to the fact that he was on a distressingly warm island.

There were a few regular stops that he made, during his completely un-planned days on the island, one of which was the Winchester, an ideal spot for people-watching. Oh, the whole island was ideal for people watching, but you could learn a lot about people at a bar, and that's what Neal was after.

He leaned up against the bar and ordered a drink, still finding himself somewhat surprised that the islanders had managed to perfect the art of making alcohol. Oh, sure, it wasn't quite as good as anything in his collection back home, but that miles (and dimensions, possibly) away, and, well, it was better than shitty boxed wine or those terrible beers that Peter always insisted on drinking.

Drink in hand, Neal sipped slowly and found himself looking around the room, wondering what each person's story was.

Everyone had a story.

[Old West: Gold Mine!]

There was a little voice in the back of Neal's head that said that this was an absolutely terrible idea. This wasn't like robbing a palace or an embassy or even stealing from another crook. This place could quite possibly be a death trap, and yet he was willingly going ahead with the plan, anyway.

He tried to rationalize it by saying it was just an adventure, the type of freedom he'd longed for while on the anklet. He didn't even have to steal anything. He just wanted to see, that was all. Besides, he wasn't supposed to be a thief here. He was just a normal guy who'd gotten on an airplane for normal reasons and wound up on the island, which was absolutely not normal. That was all.

But somehow, he found himself assembling a team to do some exploring. It was a half-baked idea, but once the idea got in his head, he just couldn't get it back out. Before he knew it, he'd assembled his group of new friends outside of New Pemberley to take stock of their supplies before heading out to check out the abandoned mine. He'd dressed simply today, eschewing his more customary formal style of dress. A mining adventure was no place to enact his assault on the commonplace.

"Alright, everyone," he said to the assembled group of men. He tried hard to not channel any of his past experiences. Point man, thief, criminal mastermind: none of those had any place here. "So there's an abandoned mine up here that's just begging to be checked out, and I guess we're all going to go for it. I don't have any words of wisdom other than, uh, watch where you're walking? And try not to die. Hopefully one of you has something more motivational."

[for Jane]

Neal hadn't intended to worm his way into getting to live in New Pemberley. He'd enjoyed talking to Jane, and found her kindness comforting as he tried to navigate this strange new place that he'd found himself living. It wasn't like he was looking for another June, another woman with a too-big, empty house, but he'd found one anyway, and, well, he wasn't stupid; he wasn't about to turn down an offer of a private room.

He wondered what Peter would say, if he were here. Somewhere in between reading Neal the riot act and demanding to know whether Neal or Mozzie were behind this whole island business, Neal had to think that Peter would have appreciated the irony of Neal's fresh start on the island.

But none of that mattered. Here, Neal was on his own. Here, Neal wasn't even Neal, a fact that he sometimes had to keep reminding himself, even if Victor by design wasn't entirely too different.

After a short trip to the compound to scavenge through the clothes box once more, Neal made his way back to his new home. He had a small armful of clothes that he struggled with while he made his way through the front door. A tie slipped off of the top of the pile and went bouncing across the floor, unfurling some distance away.

"Crap," Neal muttered, trying to readjust his bundle so he could lean over and pick it back up.

[for eden]

Neal had been settling into the island as well as could be expected. He was a chameleon after all, and if there was anything he excelled at, it was fitting in at just about any situation, so adapting to island life wasn't as hard as he'd expected it. He missed New York very keenly at times, and it wasn't helped by the fact that he'd fully assumed the identity of Victor Moreau, and he could only talk in vagaries about the people he'd left behind.

But conmen didn't get to say goodbye. They just dusted themselves off and started over again, which was exactly what Neal did.

At least the weather was beautiful. It almost made up for the clothes he'd been forced to wear. (After all, one couldn't exactly wear a Devore while lounging in the sand.) He tried to make a t-shirt and shorts as fashionable as possible, but he only had so much to work with.

Neal was stretched out under a palm tree, just at the edge of the beach. He had a book open in his lap, but mostly, he was watching the waves roll in and trying not to think of home.