Spreading the tales of a con man

Title: Misfire (Also on DW)
Author: magistrate
Spoilers: Point Blank and a few things from Burke's Seven
Characters: Neal, Peter, Diana, Jones, Elizabeth
Pairings: only background canon ones
Warning: None
Summary: AU of Point Blank. A gun goes off, but Fowler isn't the one who catches the bullet.

Why rec'd? This fic just blew me away -- in the best possible way! I think that one of the main reasons it impressed me so much is because this scenario (Neal accidentally shoots Peter during the standoff in Point Blank) is one which could so VERY easily have been written in a way that was terribly OOC and very unfair to either Neal or Peter. And it could also have focused on these events to the extent of completely ignoring what happened to Mozzie later in the episode.

But this fic does not do that at all! Instead it's a wonderfully complex and believable alternate take on the episode's events and how this sends things spinning down a different path. The FBi reaction is plausible; Neal's reaction is plausible; everyone is fantastically in character and all the fallout feels believable and convincing. The author does not downplay or ignore either Peter or Neal's character flaws (actually I think that's one of the things I appreciated most about this fic, that it never feels like the author is taking sides or portraying either or both of the characters as paragons of virtue -- Neal's flaws are addressed, but so are the various ways in which Peter has let Neal down). And it neatly sidesteps most of the h/c cliches that one might expect to find here, which actually makes the emotions a great deal more wrenching and powerful than they might otherwise be, because the beats don't fall where you expect them to, and the characters don't do what we've been fanon-conditioned to expect them to, and it just makes your heart bleed for all of them.

This author is new to the fandom and I really hope they write more, because their take on the characters is just a little bit different without being at all OOC, and I love that!