Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Hi, I’m Liz”, she waves with a small smile. She's nervous and unsure about meeting these two. Especially since they caught her red handed while trying to pickpocket them.

“Nice to meet you Liz. This is Mozzie and I’m Neal”, he replies with a charming smile.

“All for one and one for all”, Liz announces and raises her glass of wine in a toast. They just got their first score as a team and she can’t help but feel all bubbly inside.

“Here’s you're cut little D’Artagnan”, Neal smiles indulgently and hands Liz her money.

“He wasn't a musketeer”, she shakes her head.

“You’re not Athos”, he comments, more out of curiosity than anything, and it comes out sounding like a question.

“Of course not, Athos was the oldest, so it's obviously Mozzie”, she explains, “and you're Porthos.”

“Porthos?”

“Yup, he was the charming one.”

“So you're Aramis?” Mozzie asks, making it clear in his tone that he doesn't believe that the analogy fits. Liz just shrugs and sips some of her wine.

“I decided the musketeers is too cliché”, Liz drunkenly announces one night.

“Then what are we?” Mozzie asks, jumping at the opportunity to compare the crew to anything else. He found the musketeers thing to be a bit of a cliché too.

“We are artists, composers of our own fortunes”, she slurs and finishes the wine in her glass. She goes to pour some more, but Neal takes the bottle away before she can. She pouts, yet soon forgets the wine in favour of explaining her idea, when Neal asks about it.

“Mozzie’s obviously Mozart”, she says with a roll of her eyes and leans back on the couch until her head is partway hanging over the back rest, “and Neal has to be Beethoven.”

“What's that make you?” Neal asks seriously, because he finds that he much prefers this comparison to the musketeer one.

“That's easy! I’m Bach”, she exclaims with an exaggerated flair of her hands.

“Why Bach?” Mozzie asks.

“Because I'm basic and I can't do anything as impressive as you two.”

“I think you're Vivaldi”, Neal counters with a wink, “You're always so happy and quick and bright.”

Liz’s smile gets wider as a blush, that has nothing with the alcohol she's consumed, spreads across her face.

Liz isn't smiling that night. She doesn't feel bright or happy. It's been a week since Neal met Kate and with each moment he falls harder for her. The harder he falls, the more romantic he gets and the more depressed Liz feels. She sighs and gathers her knees to her chest. She ignores Mozzie's curious look, but when he pointedly clears his throat she knows she can't avoid it anymore.

“Beethoven found his Elise, didn't he?” Liz comments and hates how small her voice sounds.

“It appears so, yes”, Mozzie tries to be gentle, but even someone as socially awkward as him knows that there's no gentle way to put it. Liz is going to get hurt regardless.

“I don't think I can be Vivaldi anymore, Moz”, she admits. Mozzie's not surprised by her admission. He’s long known that this was bound to happen. Liz didn't hide her blooming feelings for Neal very well. Sooner or later it would inevitably affect the whole crew.

“We need someone who can sing to get us in”, Neal tells Mozzie while planning their next con, “Do you think we could get Vivaldi's help?”

“I highly doubt that, mon ami”, Mozzie shakes his head. He's both disappointed and sad at the words he's about to say. “Last I heard she joined the soulless cage of capitalism with the rest of the corporate drones.”

Chapter Text

Liz was supposed to have a boring day answering phones at work and then have a fun date with her boyfriend of four years. Neither happened. Instead she got dumped, quit her job and is now running back to a city she never thought she would return to. She drives and drives and drives, until she can see the familiar skyline of New York get bigger and bigger on the horizon. It's very late in the afternoon when she finally makes it to a cheap motel that looks like it should have been condemned years ago. She still gets a room. She sits on the bed, reminds herself there are worse places she could be at, and picks up the burner phone she bought to make this specific call. She waits anxiously as the tone beeps once, twice, thrice. She hopes he will pick up, that it's still one of his contacts. To her relief he picks up after the fifth ring.

“Hello”, his suspicious voice sounds in her ear and it makes her want to cry in relief.

“Hello”, she replies and tries to stick to the script they discussed years ago, because she knows how cranky Mozzie gets when his associates don't play along, “I’d like to rent a quartet for a farewell party. The person of honor loves Mozart's music.”

“What about some Beethoven too? We have this special lineup that mixes the two composers so well.”

“No, just the Mozart will do”, she insists. She might have left the con game when she left their little crew behind, but even she knows that Neal is working with the feds. She needs to disappear, but not to a prison cell.

“Fine, we’ll send you a quote on this number”, Mozzie tells her and then ends the call. It's nice hearing his voice again. Liz still considers him a friend, even if she knows she's just an old associate to him by now. He's willing to help her though and that's all that matters to her at the moment. They can rehash the past after she's safely away.

Liz patiently waits for her phone to buzz and let her know that she received Mozzie's message. It doesn't take too long, although as anxious as she is it feels like a lifetime. In reality it's barely two minutes later that she receives Mozzie's text. It doesn't say much, just an address and a time. The address is not that far from the motel she's staying at and she wonders for a moment if Mozzie knows where she is or if it's one of those crazy coincidences he doesn't believe in. She doesn't dwell on it much, choosing to get some rest instead.

Early the next morning Liz packs up her small backpack, which contains the few clothes she took with her when she ran, and makes her way to the address Mozzie indicated. She's there a few minutes early, just enough to marvel at the beauty of the mansion before her, and knocks on the door. A woman in a maid uniform opens the door and shows Liz to the terrace where there's a door leading to a penthouse. If she weren't so rusty, Liz would have been suspicious that Mozzie of all people would choose to live in a place where there's other people to note his comings and goings, like a maid. Instead she walks to the penthouse’s door and knocks on it after the maid leaves. Liz might have been out of the game for years but she isn't so rusty as to do anything in front of an unknown audience, even someone that apparently Mozzie trusts.

The door swings open and Liz comes face to face with the one person she told Mozzie she didn't want to involve. Neal looks good. He's in a dark grey suit, although he hasn't put on the jacket yet, and his silky tie is hanging limp between his fingers. She obviously interrupted him while he was getting dressed, but Liz doesn't have time to note any of that, she barely registers the surprise in his eyes before he engulfs her in a tight hug.

“Viv?” he exclaims the old nickname he had for her. His arms wrap around her, and she doesn't imagine the way he moves them against her to see if she's wearing a wire. At that moment she's not sure who she's more mad at; Mozzie for ambushing her with Neal like that, or Neal for suspecting her when he's the one actively working with the FBI?

“Where’s Moz?” she asks in an effort to keep herself on track. She doesn't have time for a reunion, not when the people she's running from are still on her trail.

“He sent you here?” Neal asks as he shows her in. He closes the door behind her and gestures to the dining table in front of her. She nods in answer to his question and takes a seat. Neal doesn't join her, opting to stay standing near the table to put on his tie.

“I take it you didn't expect this either”, she voices her assumption as he straightens his tie. He joins her at the table when he's done a moment later.

“No, I didn't”, he admits with that charming smile of his that he uses when he's unsure of what's going on. It's a mask to hide his confusion, Liz knows, but it doesn't stop her from admiring it. It's been nine years since she left, but that smile still gets her, makes her want to smile in return. She can't, because she has much more pressing matters than catching up with an old crush.

“So how can I help?” Neal smiles after a beat of awkward silence.

“You can’t”, she replies with a smile in an effort to soften the blow. She doesn’t want him to take it as a challenge.

“Viv-”, he begins, but is interrupted by the door swinging open.

“Neal, what’s taking so long?” an older man asks loudly, entering the room without even bothering to knock, “We have a ca-” he stops mid-sentence as he finally notices Liz. He runs his eyes over her face trying to place her and Liz studies him back in return, noting the gun and badge clipped to his belt.

“You have company”, the agent states with a hint of disappointment that Liz thinks she should be offended by. She can’t find it in herself to care.

“Yeah”, Neal smiles charmingly, which doesn’t seem to work on anyone in the room, “Viv was just leaving.”

“No need to leave on my account”, the agent assures although he still doesn’t directly speak to Liz, “She’s not another Alex, is she?”

Okay, Liz is definitely offended at that. She knew Alex briefly, and she never liked how flaky her loyalty is. Liz is loyal and trustworthy and dependable, inside and outside of a con. Neal just shakes his head at the agent and then introduces him to Liz. Peter Burke, the name sounds familiar. It’s not until a moment later that she realizes it’s because he’s the agent that caught Neal a few years back.

“Sorry for making you wait, Agent Burke”, she apologizes with a smile that’s dripping the tiniest bit with honey, “we were just catching up.”

“You’re old friends, are you?” he questions and Liz can hear the underlying question of whether she’s a criminal too. She’s not anymore, but it wouldn’t matter to someone like the agent. She was a criminal once, and that’s all that an agent like him cares for before marking her a criminal for life.

“Used to be neighbours”, she smoothly lies. That’s one skill she didn’t let get rusty, mainly because she finds it terribly useful when dealing with unreasonable clients. Charm and lies, her two friends when having to explain to an angry power-tripping middle-manager that her boss can’t stop his meeting in the middle just to get him in thirty minutes before he’s scheduled.

“So Viv, what do you do?” Burke asks and his tone makes it obvious he thinks of this as an interrogation.

“I’m an executive secretary”, she replies hoping he won’t ask where she works. Telling him she just quit her job would be a red flag to the agent, one that he was obviously suspicious enough to not overlook.

“That’s nice”, he comments, dropping it and she sighs internally. He instead turns to Neal, ordering him to get ready.

“We were actually talking about classical composers before you came in”, she tells the agent, keeping her tone friendly and casual. Neal is picking up a hat from his closet, but she knows he’s listening to every word in this conversation, that’s why she changed the topic to the composers in the first place.

“Really?” the agent asks, half interested.

“Did you know that Beethoven turned deaf?” she tells the agent, answering Neal’s earlier question on why he couldn’t help her.

“He didn’t stop composing though”, Neal adds, now completely dressed and ready to go to work.

“Sure, but it wasn’t really the same, was it?” she replies and then stands up. She wishes the men a good day and leaves with an excuse of having some errands to run.

Neal keeps thinking of Liz for the rest of the day. He can’t stop himself from wondering what exactly she needs and why she thinks Mozzie can help but Neal can’t. He doesn’t like the implication that he’s too much of a fed to help, not when he’s never given her any reason to think he’d betray her. Peter on the other hand doesn’t think much of his interaction with Liz. She wasn’t dodgy, didn’t try to run the moment she realized he was an agent, and didn’t even look anxious. And after the way Neal just lost Kate a few months back, Peter didn’t want to begrudge him the support of a friend. He may be strict with Neal, but that’s because he has to be and not because he’s cruel. So Peter doesn’t pay much mind to Liz, almost forgetting the interaction entirely. Until, he’s returning to the bureau after having lunch with El.

Peter’s happily walking back to his car when a weird movement catches his eye. He turns to look, but everything seems normal. Except there’s a weird shadow that looks like two people fighting coming out from one of the alleys. Peter draws his gun out of its holster and keeps it lowered to his side while he makes his way to the mouth of the alley. He takes one look at the scene in front of him and that’s enough to tell him he was right to investigate. There’s an angry man pressing a woman to the rough brick wall of the alley, his forearm digging painfully into her windpipe.

“FBI, freeze!” Peter announces but it only prompts the man to use the woman as a shield, pulling her in front of him and placing a knife to her already bruised neck. Even red faced and teary, Peter can recognize the woman as Viv, Neal’s old neighbour.

“Let her go and no-one has to get hurt”, Peter orders, gun aimed at the offender’s head. He doesn’t want to take the shot, not with an innocent civilian so close to getting in the way.

The man only smiles antagonistically at Peter, as if he knows he doesn’t want to take the shot, and then whispers something in Viv’s ear. It’s too low for Peter to hear clearly, but he manages to make out the words ‘boyfriend’ and ‘owe’. Peter orders the man to drop the knife and step away from the woman. The assailant only smiles coldly and then in a quick smooth motion that must have been practiced, he throws the knife at Peter and shoves Viv away. Peter ducks to take cover from the knife and by the moment he recovers the man is long gone. He turns his attention to Viv, who’s lying on the floor. She hit the edge of the fire-escape ladder when he pushed her, an angry bruise already forming at the base of her jaw.

“Are you hurt anywhere else?” Peter asks and she tries to reply, but the movement causes too much pain. She ends up letting out a low whimper, swaying on her feet. That much pain from trying to talk can mean that there’s some serious damage to her jaw, Peter thinks. He follows protocol and makes the necessary calls to report the incident, then takes the injured woman to the ED. He also sends a quick text to Diana to let her know she has to babysit Neal and that he’ll be late. Between the police statements and the hospital, ‘late’ turns out to be almost four hours.

When Peter finally walks through the doors of the FBI with Liz in toe, Neal is practically stalking the door like a sniper for he’s so overcome with the feeling that something’s wrong. And he’s right. Otherwise a clearly beat Liz wouldn’t be walking in next to Peter of all people. Neal doesn’t even think about it, he immediately goes over to them, anxious concern evident in his face. It turns into a scowl when Lix refuses to meet his eyes.

“Viv?” the conman asks in concern. Whatever happened it must have been bad if she willingly walked into an FBI building, especially after the conversation they had that morning about how she wouldn’t even accept his help just in case it was remotely FBI related.

“Stop lying”, Peter accuses with a scowl of his own, “I know her name isn’t Viviene.”

“I never said it was”, Neal defends, “I only said that I call her Viv, which I do.”

Peter turns a contemplative gaze first to Neal then to Liz, who nods in agreement to Neal’s words. The movement must be painful, Neal notes, as it causes her to grimace and a weird noise to escape her throat. It sounds like it could possibly be a whimper or a gasp, but with her jaw unmoving it doesn’t have the chance to be fully realized. It’s concerning to say the least and Neal involuntarily takes a step closer to her.

“What’s wrong?” he asks gently, earnestly, genuinely. He isn’t wearing any masks, and isn't pulling any tricks. He’s being real, Peter realizes and softens just a smidge. Maybe they were telling the truth earlier, when they said they used to know each other.

“She can’t talk, Neal”, Peter explains, the exhaustion of the day catching in his voice, “They had to sew her jaw shut to heal.”

Neal’s skin visibly pales as he snaps his head to look her directly in the eyes. It’s a wounded look, protective and worried and angry all mixed in one storm brewing behind blue ice. Peter understands that look perfectly. He’s seen it in the mirror plenty of times, usually after his job gets too close to his wife. And it’s curious. Because it’s a look that he didn’t see when Kate died right in front of them, but Neal is sporting it now. Suddenly, Peter’s suspicions that Neal was in love with the idea of Kate rather than the woman herself become more substantiated.

“Who hurt her?” Neal demands, eyes locked on hers still.

“That’s what we’re trying to find”, Peter replies, disappointment and apprehension warring in his voice. If she’s really that close to Neal she won’t be co-operating, his friends never do. And that means that she’s going to pull away from the path Peter has managed to keep him on since Kate’s death.

Peter was right. She didn’t cooperate, instead she pretended that she didn’t know why she was attacked, despite the attacker making it obvious that she did. Neal didn’t help things either, too concerned for her to actually be of any help. Stopping lines of questioning and making Peter rephrase left and right because “She’d been through enough Peter, don’t make her cry too”. In the end, Peter had to accept her testimony, useless as it was and file it with the PD who would take over the case. He did suggest she stays at Neal’s though. For one, he doesn’t like the idea of an injured person being alone even if she’s hiding things from the agents trying to help her. For another, the way Neal’s mother henning her, he’ll definitely be too busy to fall into any trouble. Peter should have known better. Yes, Neal doesn’t fall into trouble, but trouble does come knocking on his door. It comes in the form of a bald bespectacled mystery of a man named Mozzie.

Mozzie takes one look at his beat up friend and takes a gulp. This is much worse than he thought. This isn’t about a con gone wrong, or a poorly chosen mark. No. This is meddling with uncouth things like gangs and thugs. The mere thought causes him to wrinkle his nose in disgust. A close associate of his knows better than that and that means there’s something really wrong going on.

“Did you know your boyfriend was planning to stiff the Polish?” he demands, and it’s not as gentle as he wanted it to be. She gives him a look that clearly says ‘does it look like I did?’ and Mozzie sighs. Just as he expected. His little Vivaldi joined the corporate yolk and it sucked out her very soul, heart and mind.

“We could help you get out of it”, Mozzie suggests slowly so that she understands just how much she hates that option, “But you’re going to have to pay back what he stole.”

If Liz could, she would’ve exhaled a big sigh of relief through her mouth. As it is she just slumps back into her chair, eyes screwing shut as it jostles her injuries.

“We can get her money”, Neal offers, a relieved smile playing on his lips.

“Real money”, Mozzie clarifies, “not the kind we can make.”

Neal deflates a bit at that. But Liz doesn’t. Instead she puts a security box key on the table between them. Two pairs of quizzical eyes land on her face. She ignores them, choosing to write something on a piece of paper. Neal notes with pride that she makes sure there’s nothing other than the tabletop beneath the piece she’s writing on. Nothing to trace her words. Vivaldi isn’t as done composing as she wants to believe.

“My share of the blue emeralds job”, she writes, “I never fenced it.”

“That could work”, Mozzie ponders for a moment, then unexpectedly springs to his feet.

“I have people to find”, he announces right before he opens the door, “keep an eye on her.”

Neal just nods and then turns to her, a small smile lifting his lips, although the edges are still weighted with worry and sadness.

“Would you look at that”, he exclaims gently, but his voice isn’t as light as he wants it to be, “We still have music left to write!”

Liz can’t help it. Her lips peel in a painful grimace distorted by the smile she can’t quite stop. Because despite the pain and the fear and all the bad she can’t quite stop thinking about, she missed this.