Working title "Rescue"; first half is here: http://ebeneezerdark.dreamwidth.org/2478.html AU from Season 3 "Checkmate" (mid-season finale); Neal tries to rescue El, but Things Go Badly Wrong...

Takes place post-series for "Sentinel" and sometime before to shortly after S.3#18 "Shades Of Grey" on "Stargate". While on vacation and hiking around the desert looking for petroglyphs, Blair and Jim stumble into the N.I.D.'s secret 'Gate operation. After questioning, the N.I.D. goons are fairly sure the Cascade cops' intrusion was accidental... but rather than kill them, they just toss them through the 'Gate to an uninhabited planet. Several months later, SG-1 happens to arrive on the same planet. By this time, both Blair and Jim are half-starved, Blair's on the verge of pneumonia, Jim's ready to KILL someone, and they believe the team which has just arrived is connected to the Bad Guys who dumped them in an alien wilderness with nothing but their day-packs and the clothes on their backs...

a.k.a. the El's Having A Baby AU. Goes AU from "White Collar" as of the beginning of Season 2, and from "Burn Notice" around Season 3. Rather than the "White Collar" canon revealed in season 2 (with Adler and the Nazi treasure), I postulated that the "Mentor" bad guys were connected to "Management" on "Burn Notice". In the months after the mess in WC-"Out Of The Box", Neal and Peter are trying to get to the bottom of the "Mentor" conspiracy. Meanwhile, El's pregnant (adding to Peter's stress). When Burke's team gets too close to the truth, the conspirators attack, shooting Peter and kidnapping Neal.. and El. Shortly thereafter, Michael Westen and his crew try to infiltrate one of "Management"'s operations, and discover the Bad Guys are holding a pair of captives: a talented forger, and a pregnant lady who's being used as leverage against him...

Gen (canon het Michael/Fiona) for "Burn Notice"; canon het Peter/El and eventual "OT3" (Peter/El/Neal) for "White Collar".

This is an AU postulating a different ending to 3.16 "Judgment Day". Summary: What if Neal hadn't run? He's stuck in D.C., working for Kramer, until a botched undercover gig lands Neal in the hospital and exposes how badly Kramer's been treating his C.I. ...

* Indentured Servitude *

In some alternate universe, he mused, another Neal Caffrey was sitting on a warm, tropical beach, basking in sunshine and sea air... 'I should've gone along with Mozzie...' he decided, as he rubbed his aching eyes. Reaching for his (now cold) coffee-cup, he forced down a gulp of the vile brew (it was free, and most mornings it was all the "breakfast" he got). Neal considered that, if he had followed his friend's plan, he might now be sipping some fruity rum drink with a little umbrella in it, instead of over-brewed industrial-strength F.B.I. office coffee, its bitterness barely mitigated by the spoonfuls of sugar and splash of milk he added. He stretched, trying to ease the stiffness in his back from four hours spent hunched over Kramer's paperwork, then allowed himself a moment's indungence in the tropical mai-tai beach fantasy while he rose and slipped into the break-room for more coffee...

As he turned back to the stultifying boredom of files and paperwork, Neal dismissed the useless daydreams. 'I couldn't have left. Couldn't have done that to Peter...' As it was, Peter Burke had put his career on the line for Neal. Even more cherished than his daydreams of tropical havens (and the even better ones where he'd wake back in his beautiful room at June's, looking forward to a day spent with Peter and the team) was the memory of what Peter had said at the commutation hearing in his defense. He might never know (though he had his suspicions) who'd slipped that transcript into Mozzie's "lawyer" briefcase before one of their ultimately-futile meetings while he'd been in Rikers awaiting trial... During the grim months in lock-up, he'd held on to those words. He'd consoled himself, while lying on his cold, hard bunk unable to move without awakening the pain from yet another brutal beating, imagining Peter's strong, steady voice proclaiming his value, his worthiness as a man and a partner... No, whatever happened to him now, as Kramer's despised lackey, he couldn't have run when it would have destroyed Peter's future with the F.B.I., taken from him the career he loved. 'After everything, I owed him that much...'