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[abrightboy]

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[conning]

“Should’ve been more careful,” he says softly. “Made more sure I wasn’t followed. Overconfident, distracted…”

[abrightboy]

"Victim-blaming," Malcolm says. "You can't control who chooses to prey on you."

[conning]

Neal hates how close he is to tears again. He’s still bleeding, oblivious to the fact that it’s at least slowed a tiny bit. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

[abrightboy]

“I want you to tell me why it hurts you,” Malcolm says. “Why do all these things hurt you? I think the reason is the same.”

[conning]

“I don’t know,” he says, and he believes it, or half believes it. There’s truth to the statement, though a thousand emotions he can’t pin down boil underneath. “I just. Want them to…”

He gives a helpless little sound of frustration. “I don’t know what I want. I want them to trust me.”

[abrightboy]

“Why them?” Malcolm presses.

[conning]

“They’re my family,” he finally says. “They’re the only family I have.”

[abrightboy]

“Do you resent them for that?” Malcolm asks, even as he can feel the bleeding slow. “Don’t you think you deserve better from them?”

[conning]

He does resent them. He resents them enormously, resents every joke at his expense, every time they teased him about his radius, every time they assumed the worst without giving him a chance. He can’t make himself say it. There’s a part of him that wishes, imagines, contorts itself into believing if he could just do a little better next time, they’d stop.

[abrightboy]

"Don't you think you deserve better than that?" Malcolm pushes.

[conning]

"Yes," he grates out, wanting to shout and dropping his voice to a whisper instead. "Yes. Yes I do."

He finally opens his eyes to stare at the ceiling. "One of the last things I said to Peter, before I got shot, was when... we found out Rebecca wasn't Rebecca. We were searching her apartment, and I said 'you think I deserve this.'"

He presses his lips together for a moment. "He said no one deserved it. Not that he didn't think I did. Just that no one deserved it."

[abrightboy]

"Do you ever want to tell him it's not enough? His... stern chiding?" Malcolm presses.

[conning]

Neal subsides again. "He loves me."

He squeezes his eyes shut. "He cares about me. More than most people. More than--he really is family. I wouldn't have done everything I've done to protect him if he hadn't earned it. He's risked everything for me. More than once."

[abrightboy]

"So why won't he trust you?" Malcolm asks.

[conning]

"Because I'm a criminal," Neal says, the words tired. Tired in multiple senses of the word. He doesn't have a better answer.

[abrightboy]

"But isn't that what he brought you there to do?" Malcolm asks.

[conning]

Neal tries to parse the question for a moment before answering. "Brought me where?"

[abrightboy]

"To the FBI. To his family. Because you understood things he didn't and you could do things he couldn't. Crime things. He doesn't trust you because of things he asked you to do and you did them?" Malcolm clarifies.

[conning]

"I don't know what you want me to say," Neal repeats, frustrated this time. He's acutely aware of the pain in his ankle. "I'm a criminal. It's who I am. It's what I do. It's what I'm good at, it's what I've always been good at, and Peter knows that. I'm a criminal, he's not, he never will be, even when he's wrong."

[abrightboy]

"That doesn't mean he can't trust you," Malcolm insists.

[conning]

Neal gives up. He doesn’t know what answer Malcolm wants. It’s not one he can supply. He takes for granted that there is an answer that Malcolm wants, one he’s going to get wrong over and over in increasingly personal ways. His head hurts. He feels sick, nauseated, light-headed but also like one wrong move will make him puke. The soup from when he talked with Maggie sits like stagnant marsh in his stomach.

“Just let this be over,” he says, to no one in particular. “Can this just be over?”

[abrightboy]

“You want them to be your family because you’ve never had one,” Malcolm tells him. “The anklet chafes because it’s a symbol of the distance they keep you at. But you work for them, Neal. You have to stop working for them to be their family.”

[conning]

“Not like I can do anything about that,” he mumbles, breathing damp with effort and blood.

After a second he says, an apparent non-sequitor, “Were they looking for you when that man took you? Stabbed you? Your friends.”

[abrightboy]

“…I assume so,” Malcolm tells him. “They must have.” Gil wouldn’t have had it any other way.

[conning]

"Good," Neal says thickly. "You deserve it."