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[abrightboy]

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[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."

[abrightboy]

"So do you," Malcolm tells him. "You deserve that."

[conning]

"Maybe I did," he says. It's unclear if he means before he ended up here, or before something else. "Am I done dying?"

He's so tired.

The bleeding has slowed. It's not stopped. But it has slowed.

[abrightboy]

“Almost there,” Malcolm tells him. “If you go back there, will you promise to find someone who’ll give you a real chance?”

[conning]

"How?" It's a mix of genuine question and slurred irony.

[abrightboy]

“By demanding it,” Malcolm tells him urgently. “By demanding no less than what you’re worth.”

[conning]

What if they say no, what if they leave, what if, what if, what if.

Neal closes his eyes, relieved to hear the approach of one of the medical people. Someone who can put him back together again enough for Malcolm to leave him alone, at least about this.

[abrightboy]

The medical attendant crowds Malcolm out of the way. The bleeding has slowed enough for them to control it. A hand over the faint seeping of his own wound, he finds a chair to wait it out.