Neal's Flight Instinct

Warning for minor spoilers for the Caffrey Conversation AU.

Penna started it off by expanding on what happened when Neal ran away after discovering the truth about his father. She added the concept that Neal took up running as a sport in high school to help combat his flight instinct. Neal is well aware that running away from issues isn't the best solution even if it sometimes seems unavoidable. It's an urge that he fights to suppress but doesn't always emerge victorious.

In my stories I extended the concept, comparing Neal's quicksilver nature to water. In An Evening with Genji, I have his art professor, Myra Stockman comment on it. She criticizes him for the lack of identity in his paintings. Like water, he assumes the shape of whatever vessel contains him while keeping his own personality hidden. In other words, he's a shapeshifter.

Neal equates his situation with that of the river. The riverbanks represent his efforts to control his instinct to flow free. If he doesn't win, the river eventually disappears into the ocean and is lost, a phenomenon he's well aware of. Even more distressing is what happens when a storm causes the river to overflow its banks and destroy its surroundings. Neal's greatest fear is that like that river he will hurt others. The loss of identity is a secondary concern.

June's mansion is next to Riverside Park where Neal can run along the Hudson River. In St. Louis as a child, he used to run along the Mississippi. One of Neal's paintings for his first-year exhibition was titled The River. He'd painted it during a bleak period of his life in The Queen's Jewels when he thought he'd have to abandon his dream of a new life in New York City. In Echoes of a Violin, he considers making rivers the theme of his second-year exhibition.

It was a moment of serendipity when I discovered the painting Time is a River without Banks. For me, it embodies how Neal feels about himself in Echoes of a Violin. Marc Chagall created the surrealist work shortly before the outbreak of World War II. The painting is viewed as a metaphor for the flight of Jews across Europe. The title is taken from Ovid's Metamorphoses. The lovers on the riverbank, the river, the violin, and the flying fish—all have a personal significance to Neal. The clock does as well.

Echoes of a Violin on Archive of Our Own
Echoes of a Violin on FanFiction