Ooh. I eagerly await more of that. Especially when it deals with facing the fact that there are very few true victimless crimes, and even if you do have a strong moral core going into it, things aren't always so cut-and-dried. (Moral dilemmas! Shades of grey! These are the best things.)

It's actually two fics - that snippet is from a shorter piece from Kate's POV of the aftermath, but I'm eventually going to write out the whole story of that job, probably with interspersed flashbacks to Neal's early years before Kate and Mozzie.

In my head this is "the one where Neal and Kate and Mozzie decide they're not going to be Masked Vigilantes For Greater Justice" - or more like Kate and Mozzie decide and inform Neal of this decision and make it clear to him that this is not up for debate.

I've decided that the Wilkes job came right after the three-man job with Keller where Keller shot that guy who dropped his passport, and the whole reason Neal got it into his head that he was going to sign on with Wilkes in order to sabotage the job and save people was because he was seriously messed up about watching that guy get shot, so it was less of a "Neal is awesome and wants to save people" sort of thing and more of a "Neal is having issues and half trying to get himself killed" sort of thing, and possibly almost getting Kate or Mozzie killed too, when normally he'd stay far away from guys like Wilkes altogether, and once it's over and Neal almost does get himself killed Kate and Mozzie decide that's enough.

sometimes things ring true as character motivations, and sometimes you have to say "...no. Bad writers," and pull an I-reject-your-canon-and-substitute-my-own. And those spots will tend to vary wildly from viewer to viewer. :P

Heh. Yeah, I do this with ... pretty much all of S3. And about half of S4.

And trying to figure out pre-series timelines will totally make your head explode. Hell, trying to figure out in-series timelines is hard because they do this thing where each season is less than a year. And apparently they only film in summer, since S1 ended, or something. Out of the Box is the last time we see anyone wearing a coat, I think.

(And then they go and do things like have the malfunctioning air conditioner in the judge's chamber be a major plot point in Free Fall while everyone is walking around outside wearing coats for that whole episode. And, well, I am the sort of writer who likes to throw in purpley descriptions of weather and scenery and stuff, which is really hard to do when you can never tell what season it is at any point in canon! This is a thing which bothers me. I like my purpley weather descriptions.)

Neal might be very good at doing what he puts his mind to doing, but the impression I always got of him was someone who'd come across as completely intractable in the short term, but who could be talked around or swayed over time.

Hmmmm ... but there's a difference between the sort of pretending-to-go-along-while-dragging-his-heels that he does with the Adler con, and during most of S3, and that sort of ninety-miles-an-hour-toward-a-cliff's-edge-and-stomping-on-the-brakes-at-the-last-minute we see in S2.

I see what you mean about Neal and Mozzie and the Adler con - but the Adler con was eight or maybe nine years ago, and he and Mozzie were still very much in a student/mentor sort of relationship, at that point. Whereas even by the end of Forging Bonds, Neal is clearly the leader in their partnership - and already capable of doing ninety miles an hour toward the cliff. (Mozzie says "I think I know where Kate is but I'm pretty sure it's a trap and the feds are going to be waiting to arrest you," and Neal's all "Great! Where is she?") S3 seems to have Neal and Mozzie reverting back to the dynamic they had in the very earliest days of their partnership, when Mozzie was the leader, and I'm not sure why.

it's usually all consequence that falls directly on the Burkes' house and caves in their roof. (Which makes a certain amount of sense – Peter and El, as law-abiding sorts, are tied into a more rigid framework of available options and possible consequence

And Neal isn't used to a world where you can't just pick up and leave town and find a new house when the roof caves in. It's not so much that his actions haven't had consequences as that he and the people he loves have always been able to leave those consequences behind - he thinks he wants to stop running but he doesn't really understand, yet, what that implies. He's used to being able to leave town, and he's used to the most important people in his life (Kate and Mozzie) being willing and able to leave town with him, while the consequences fall on other people who aren't his family, who aren't people he loves. But Peter and El aren't Kate and Mozzie - having the kind of stable life they have, the kind of stable life Neal thinks he wants, makes them vulnerable to the kind of consequences Neal's unstable, always-on-the-move lifestyle has let him avoid until now.