A03 Is Amazing! - Blog Posts

When I finished watching White Collar, I dove straight into the rabbithole that is A03 & fanfiction, and I was fortunate enough to stumble on this gem.

In Your Wildest Dreams by sahiya

This was what grief did to you, Sara knew. It played tricks on your mind. But if it wasn’t Neal, then who could it be? Who else would send her an anonymous packet detailing all the ways someone could knock over the Louvre?

This story picks up the threads the series leaves open & weaves them together beautifully. It opens with Neal in Paris casing the Louvre because he's bored out of his mind as a gentleman of leasure & he's starkly lonely even when he recognises the unavoidability of it all. Sara receives a mysterious package on her home address and Sterling-Bosch assigns her to track down the sender.

There's a realness to this story & I was struck by how in-character it felt. It's introspective and evocative. Our beloved characters do not shy away from their emotions and hard conversations, and they display a maturity that is wonderful to read.

The story feels poignant, melancholic & yet wonderfully fresh. It's my new favourite headcanon of what happened after the series ended.

(And I absolutely love the magic that is Archive of Our Own that allows me to find these stories years later. I remember the time before AO3 was imagined and still remember stories that I can never read again. The Archive is marvelous and I am grateful I found it especially during these trying times.)