Title: Unbreakable
Part: 7/8
Author: angelita26
Rating: PG-13
Characters and/or Pairing: Gen – Neal, Mozzie
Spoilers: None.
Warnings: Unbetaed. Angst. Discussion of torment and violence. Guns.
Word Count: ~1900
Summary: Mozzie finds Neal on the terrace in a storm and learns more than he wanted to know about Neal's captivity.

Notes: Written for a prompt at collarkink that can be found at the end of this chapter. There's one more part to go! Also, special thanks to theatregirl7299 and embroiderama and the ladies of chat for cheerleading me through much of this fic.

Part 1: Day 0/ Month 3
Part 2: Month 7
Part 3: Week 1
Part 4: Week 2 or so
Part 5: Month 1
Part 6: Year 1



Timestamp #7: Month 9

Mozzie always knocked, without fail, on Neal's door now. Diana had moved back to her own apartment a few months ago, but Neal didn't like to be surprised anymore by unexpected visitors raiding his wine collection.

He also always tried three times to get a response. Sometimes, Neal was sleeping or in the shower. Rarely, he was out of the apartment outside of work hours. There had only been a couple of times since Neal had been released from the hospital that Mozzie had entered without being invited, and he'd only done it out of concern.

Today was going to be another one of those instances. Mozzie had a terrible feeling that something was wrong with his best friend. It didn't help that it was storming outside, angry streaks of lightning and booming thunder claps punctuated his unease.

“Neal?” Mozzie called, after picking the lock and pushing the door open. Immediately, he felt the cold draft from the open terrace doors. Neal wasn't anywhere in sight and Mozzie's heart sped up painfully. Rain was blowing into the apartment, soaking the rug and the hardwood floors. “Neal?!”

Heedless of the storm, Mozzie hurried outside and squinted into the darkness. When lightning flashed across the sky, he finally saw Neal, huddled against the retaining wall with his arms wrapped around his knees and his head bent forward.

Mozzie knelt down and asked, “Neal? Are you okay?” When the younger man didn't answer, Mozzie grasped his shoulder and shook him until Neal laboriously raised his head.

“Moz?” his voice was barely more than a whisper, but Mozzie breathed a brief sigh of relief.

“C'mon, let's get you inside.” He tugged and pulled Neal until he stood and shuffled back into the apartment. He tried to head for the bed, but Mozzie corrected his course and sent him toward the bathroom instead. “You're freezing. You need a warm shower.”

Neal didn't protest, didn't say anything, as he followed Mozzie's lead. Within minutes, he was stripped and sitting on the floor of the shower, letting the warm spray wash over him.

In the meantime, Mozzie gathered the warmest pajamas he could find – a pair of cotton pants and a long sleeve henley – and set them on top of the closed toilet lid for Neal to find when he was ready. Then, he stripped the bed of the sweat-soaked linens and added a few extra blankets when he made it back up. Neal'd clearly had a nightmare to kick off this whole incident, and Mozzie wasn't sure what he was more worried about – Neal's current state, what his nightmare had been about, or why the kid was sleeping at eight o'clock at night.

When Neal eventually stumbled into the kitchen, Mozzie held out a glass tumbler of amber liquid. Neal frowned but downed both fingers of scotch in one gulp. He coughed, and his wide eyes showed more awareness than Mozzie had seen all night.

“You okay?”

“No,” Neal choked out. He held up the glass and nodded for another shot.

Mozzie complied but put the bottle away before Neal could ask for more. “You were holding out on me. Macallan 1926?”

“June,” was Neal's explanation. He rubbed a hand over his face and through his hair, disheveling his curls completely.

He'd let his hair grow out again, and Mozzie saw it as the defense mechanism it was. He sighed at that and followed his friend over to the bed. Mozzie pulled up a chair while Neal was laying down. “Are we going to talk about this?”

Neal shrugged and curled up on his side. The fact that he was facing Mozzie was encouraging, but his silence was not.

Mozzie produced his latest burner phone from one his many pockets and held it out. “Would you rather call your doctor?”

“I'm tired,” Neal responded. “I just want to sleep.”

“Neal-”

“Please, Moz. Please.”

Despite the kid's pale, haggard face, Mozzie refused to back down. He pushed the phone into Neal's hand and waited.

Neal closed his eyes and took a deep breath, shoring up his emotions as best he could. Unconsciously, he clutched the phone and pulled it close to his chest as he huddled into the blankets. When he opened his eyes again, they were hard, haunted, and focused on a spot somewhere to the right of Mozzie's shoulder.

“They wanted information about how FBI operations worked and how they caught people and what they did with them afterwards. They knew I wasn't an agent because of the anklet they'd almost immediately found and ditched. It just made me more valuable, I guess. They wanted to know what I'd done, what kind of criminal I was.

“I tried staying quiet. I tried being myself. I tried everything I could to distract them, to give Peter and the FBI time to find us. But they just got more and more violent.” He shuddered; violence had always been Neal's number one turnoff. “They took Diana away once for what felt like hours. When she came back, she was bruised from head to toe. Everywhere. It was- I didn't want that to happen again.” He paused and furrowed his brow. This clearly wasn't the topic he'd meant to discuss, but the words were tumbling out of his mouth faster than his sleep-deprived brain could rein them in.

Mozzie quietly got up and went to pour himself a glass of wine and Neal a glass of water. He added a bendy straw so that Neal wouldn't have to move if he didn't want to and then took them back to the bed.

“I don't know how long we'd been there. Time didn't seem to move at the right speed. They came for me once...”

Neal and Diana were sitting in comfortable silence, shoulder-to-shoulder against the wall when the door swung open with its usual creak of old hinges. It was horrible sound; one that they'd grown to despise and fear.

Both their heads shot up as two men stepped into the room. The first was a man they called Vader because of his stocky build, deep voice, and commanding presence. He seemed to be the leader and mastermind. And the other was a guard that they had dubbed Lurch due to his height and habit of grunting and pointing instead of speaking.

“You,” Vader growled, pointing at Neal. “On your feet.”

Neal felt Diana grip his hand supportively as he rose silently. He wouldn't put up a fight in the room, when there was a chance that they would leave him and take Diana instead.

Lurch spun him around and zip-tied his hands as soon as he was within reach. Neal groaned when the ties were cinched too tightly but otherwise only gritted his teeth as he was marched from the room.

They were in a long hallway with several doors the led into rooms where Neal had been tormented any number of times. His steps were hesitant as he waited to see which one they would enter, but Vader prodded Neal in the ribs with a pistol and ordered, “Keep moving.”

Within a few minutes, they were in an open space in the back of the warehouse. Neal had never been here before, but he didn't get a chance to look around. Lurch pulled him to a stop in front of a rusty ladder attached to the wall by some even rustier brackets.

Vader cut the ties on Neal's wrists and poked him with the gun again. “Start climbing.”

Neal looked up. The ladder ended at a trap door in the roof. “C'mon guys. Let's skip the part where you,” he nodded to Lurch,” hang me off the side of the building by my ankles. It's not very original. I've seen it in at least five movies and a Levi's commercial.”

Scowling, Vader backhanded Neal hard enough to split his lip and draw blood. “Climb.”

Neal crossed his arms over his chest and planted his feet firmly on the cruddy concrete floor. There was no way he was letting them take him to the roof to be tossed off or worse. “Can't we talk about this like gentlemen?”

Vader fired a round in the air and then turned the gun back on Neal. “I won't say it again.”

He'd flinched at the discharge and hesitated only a moment before climbing a few feet up the ladder. Every time he lingered for too long on a rung, Vader fired on him. The bullets embedded in the wall much too close for his comfort.

Soon, Neal was scrambling through the trap door. Lurch wasn't far behind, but all he did was pull the door shut with a resounding thud. Neal waited a couple of minutes before trying to lift it, but, predictably, it was locked from the inside.

Examining the roof took some time in the early morning light. It was made of metal and barren of anything useful as far as Neal could see. He walked the entire length of it and came up empty of either a tool to loosen the hinges on the door or an escape option. There were no external ladders and no visible handholds. There wasn't even a drainpipe to shimmy down. The ground was too far away to make it feasible to jump, and there weren't any other buildings in sight or even any road noise. Help wasn't close. With a sigh, he sat down and watched the sun rise in the distance.

Hours passed without so much as a whisper from Vader or Lurch or any of the other guards. The sun was hot and unrelenting. Neal was going to have the mother of all sunburns when, if, they ever let him back inside. He couldn't look over the edge any longer; it made him too dizzy and nauseous to be so close, yet so far from freedom.

Neal took a sip of water to ease his aching throat and continued, “I must have blacked out up there because the next thing I knew, I was back on a cot in one of the rooms down in the warehouse. Vader asked the same questions again and again. I wanted to answer him, but I couldn't think, couldn't remember anything.”

Mozzie didn't know what to do or say, and he suspected that there wasn't anything he could do to make this any better for Neal. His heart, the one he claimed to not have, was breaking at the hurt in his best friend's voice.

“Eventually, they tossed me back in with Diana, and she took care of me.” Neal's eyes flicked toward the terrace. “Tonight, I woke up out there, and I couldn't move. Couldn't get up to come back inside.” He reached out with a trembling hand and squeezed Mozzie's fingers. “Thank you.”

“For what?” Mozzie whispered.

“Bringing me back.”

“Always, mon frère. Always.”

(End Scene – To Be Concluded)

Part 8: Year 2

Thank you for reading!

Original prompt at collarkink here: For some reason, Diana and Neal are kidnapped. For many weeks or months, they remain in captivity, isolated from the rest of the world. They go through a very deep trauma – brutal physical or mental torture, possibly both. The captivity creates a very strong bond between them. After they escape or are rescued, they still need each other. They often hug and touch; sometimes they hold hands, sometimes they lean together on a bench outside, maybe one strokes each other’s hair. They’re also very protective of each other; however, there is absolutely nothing sexual about their relationship.
I would really love to see even a small piece of this.


Also posted at AO3