Chapter Text
Sometimes, federal agents had to do things they didn’t like; it was part of the job.
Sometimes, they had to do things they utterly despised; it was also part of the job.
Sometimes, they even had to do things they dreaded; that too, was part of the job.
And sometimes, they had to do all three things at once.
That’s how Peter found himself living his personal nightmare: presenting the FBI’s job on a Monday morning to a visiting class of 10-years-old as part of the bureau’s opening-to-the-public program.
Quantico had not prepared him for that.
In a flash of inspiration, he’d brought Neal along. His CI was notoriously good with kids and if anyone asked, his presence could be explained as an effort to show the FBI’s attempts to reach out to and rehabilitate past criminals.
In truth, Peter needed all the help and support he could get to face hordes of loud kids armed with their unexpected, invasive and unrelated questions.
He’d lived through enough Bring-Your-Kids-To-Work days to know how these things went: like a horror movie with snot-nosed brats out to munch on your neckties in place of rotting zombies hungry for your brains.
Honestly, Peter didn’t see the difference, apart from the fact that you could legally shoot zombies.
“Breathe, Peter.” Whispered Neal with a bemused smile as they waited outside the meeting room where the class had been told to sit for the teacher to introduce them and call them in. “It’s just kids.”
“As if that’s reassuring. I’m hopeless with kids – you know that. You’ve seen me around them!”
Neal seemed to laugh despite himself as he attempted to keep a straight – but open, for the children – face. “Just repeat the kid-friendly version of the recruitment speech El helped you prepare and let me answer the questions. It will be fine.”
Right. Right. El had coached him all week on what to say to the demons in diminutive human form waiting for him behind that door, and he’d brought Neal to work as a distraction. Every risk had been calculated, every option had been accounted for; now he only had to execute the plan.
He could do it. He had faced worse than this and prevailed.
The teacher called their names and both men walked in.
A ball of paper sailed over their heads. A kid started shrieking and another burst into unexplainable sobs. A pencil case dropped to the floor in a loud clatter of pens and crumpled candy wrappers. The air reeked of the artificial fruity scent manufacturers thought great to add to markers and that gave Peter headaches. Two dozen eyes were riveted on the two of them and Peter froze.
No, he couldn’t do this after all!
He was about to courageously turn tail and run (in the face of an undefeatable opponent, retreat was the better part of valor) when Neal marched in, an easy smile on his face and closed the door behind him, cutting off all paths of escape.
The betrayal!
“Hello kids!” Neal greeted with a cheerful wave, preternaturally at ease in front of children. “My name is Neal. Don’t worry, we’re not here to arrest anyone, only talk about our wonderful work arresting real bad guys like people who steal cars or destroy toy stores. Pencil stealing and hair-pulling is the job of another division!”
The kid at the back slowly stopped blubbering in his sleeve to look up with hopeful eyes. Neal shot him a reassuring smile that had the side-effect of soothing Peter’s nerves a little.
Right, these were only small adults-to-be, humans in their larval form…
No, better not think of them like that. Just small people, not yet completely formed, but not quite monsters.
“Today, you’re here to learn all about what the FBI does.” Neal kept talking in a clear, friendly voice. “FBI stands for Federal Bureau of Investigation, it’s one of the biggest agencies in our country. And today, we’re lucky to have one of their best elements with us to talk about it, Special Agent Peter Burke!”
With wide, spectacular gestures, Neal introduced his handler to the class, drawing all of the kids’ complete attention and putting a swift end to the earlier chaos. Just like that. Peter was a little bit in awe of his friend.
“Good morning.” He started at Neal’s prompting. El had told him not to look any of the kids in the eyes as he repeated his speech, just look a little over their heads and everything would be fine.
Then, because it couldn’t be so easy, the first words of his prepared text jumped right out of his shaking ship of a mind. The only thing this nightmare lacked was his clothes vanishing into thin air, though that would be problematic on more than one level when in front of a bunch of kids.
He choked on no words. Frozen in front of expecting faces with big eyes, he threw his CI a desperate glance, dumbly pleading for help.
“Oh, but, Agent Burke is right, we forgot something didn’t we?” Neal announced as if Peter had actually said anything. “Can anyone tell me what?”
A hand shot up, a little girl in glasses and neat braids. “We didn’t say the Pledge of Allegiance!”
“That’s right!” Neal beamed. Under his breath, and because his CI stood so close, Peter heard him urgently mutter. “I don’t know it, Peter, you’re gonna have to go first.”
Which, what?
Thankfully, it was short and familiar enough that the words had stuck in a corner of Peter’s mind no matter the stress or how long it had been since Peter had gone to school. The children followed his lead, as did Neal, although Peter noted he only moved his lips in a parody of speaking and no sound came out.
Starting with the Pledge had gotten the ball rolling, and Peter managed to continue onto his speech with minimal issues. He stuttered a few times, but El’s advice of not looking the mini-humans in the eyes worked like a charm.
Neal answered the following questions with his usual easy charm, which seemed to work as well on kids as on adults (and on the teacher, who swooned a little when Neal smiled roguishly at her). Peter was all too happy to fade into the background to observe his CI.
Did Neal really not know the Pledge of Allegiance or had that been a clever ploy to help Peter shake off his nerves? But if it had been the latter, then why had he not actually recited it once Peter got started?
Didn’t every American kid know those few words? Every school had started the day with it back in Peter’s days, and it shouldn’t have changed when Neal was a student either. Sure, kids were not forced to say it, but just hearing it on a daily basis for years should have drilled it into Neal’s head all the same, no?
Neal was American, wasn’t he?
Their time with the class came to an end when another agent showed up to escort the kids to another division (thank Christ!). Peter waited until his CI and him had gotten a lukewarm mug of coffee to wind down to start his interrogation.
“So you don’t know the Pledge? How is that possible?”
Next to them, Jones and Diana, who had probably come to ask how the presentation had gone, froze mid-step.
Neal shrugged as he added his usual ungodly amount of cream and sugar to his cup. “The place I lived in wasn’t all too keen on those things. We never learned it at school and I never had the occasion to learn it afterwards either.” He looked up when he noticed the shocked silence of the break room. “What?”
“You never learned it?” Repeated Jones incredulously. “I thought every American school was required to at least have students listen to it.” The same suspicion that plagued Peter’s head visibly crossed his mind. “Are you actually American?”
It caused Neal to laugh, which didn’t soothe Peter’s nerves in the least. The FBI was a domestic agency – if they had sent to prison and used as CI a citizen from another country, there could be dire consequences.
“Oh! Yes, I’m American. Wasn’t born around here, but I definitely grew up in the States and was naturalized as a small child. You don’t have to worry about that.”
That… was new information, but it certainly didn’t explain everything. If Neal did indeed grow up here, he should by all accounts know at least a few words of the Pledge. Peter smelled something fishy in his CI’s story. “Then how come you didn’t know the Pledge of Allegiance at all?”
Neal exhaled through his nose, apparently a bit annoyed that they kept bothering him for something so inconsequential. Except it wasn’t that benign, Peter felt it in his gut. “Look, the place I used to live in really wasn’t on board with all the big shows of American patriotism – we basically had our own version of most of those things. It’s part of the United States, I swear, but we were always a bit… apart from it, metaphorically speaking, for various reasons that I couldn’t list if I had the time. In any case, I grew up without learning a lot of what you apparently consider common knowledge; trust me, it was quite the culture shock when I moved out.”
Peter squinted. His CI was still hiding something, but what? “And what’s the name of your hometown?” He imagined it must have been quite small to be so different from the rest of the country while still sitting in it. Maybe a farm town in the middle of the mountains, or an isolated community in the sticks?
(Perhaps a place troubled by illegal fields of cannabis or something similar that would justify the presence of a large criminal community in the hicks and explain Neal’s old scars and his brazenness towards gore.)
He couldn’t imagine slick Neal Caffrey as anything but a city boy, but maybe that was another behavior Neal adopted when he left his rural hometown? The man was a human-shaped chameleon.
“Ah, ah, ah.” Neal waved his finger in playful disapproval. “I’m not telling you that, it would be too easy!”
No amount of pestering, threatening or pleading had Neal reveal the name of his hometown. Peter imagined it must have been quite the embarrassing place for someone of Neal’s caliber if he so adamantly refused to reveal anything about it.
After learning that Neal had never been taught the Pledge of Allegiance, it became something of a game to figure out what other staples of American life their favorite CI had missed during his childhood.
Neal didn’t know the national anthem, or the names of their Presidents before the last twenty years. On the other hand, he had a good grasp of American History, although with a decidedly less patriotic outlook than what Peter remembered from his own lessons.
How strange that a person that could rhapsody at length about the intricacies of neo-gothic architecture or the wonders of impressionist paintings could barely tell you the names of the people featured on Mount Rushmore…
But what really stumped Peter, more than any other discovered holes in Neal’s education, was that he had barely seen any Disney classics.
Even Peter, who had no kids and didn’t have all that much free time, had seen more than him.
“I’ve watched some!” Argued Neal after Diana stumbled on that revelation and they started listing all the movies Disney had released since the beginning. “Mostly the older ones. I saw them before moving to what I consider my hometown, though, because Disney had a pretty bad reputation over there. I remember liking Dumbo very much…”
Of course, when El learned, she invited Neal and the team every Friday night for the CI to catch up on his flawed cinematic education.
Peter liked those movie nights more than he’d thought. There was something bittersweet and nostalgic about rewatching the stories he’d loved so much in his youth, and even though he enjoyed the more recent movies less, they still made for good entertainment.
El, Diana, Jones, and even Mozzie, the few times he dared to join them, seemed to agree. Neal, on the other hand…
He spent the entirety of Cinderella and Peter Pan with a frown on his face and glared darkly throughout Bambi. When they watched Frozen, he clutched the sofa so tightly it left permanent creases in the leather and he looked like the TV might explode on him at any time.
Sure, Peter wasn’t a fan of ‘Let it go’ either, but it didn’t deserve the look of utmost hatred Neal shot at the screen.
The less said about their viewing of Alice in Wonderland, the better. If Peter hadn’t been one hundred percent sure his CI was as non-violent as they came and not a threat to him and everyone in the room, he would have ensured Neal left his house and never came back.
Rarely did Neal look anything dangerous, but when he did…
Anyway, they kept looking for more holes in Neal’s education. It turned out that the conman had absolutely zero patriotic fiber; he didn’t even celebrate the Fourth of July.
Allegedly, they had their own pseudo-national day in Neal’s hometown. Peter imagined it was some kind of harvest celebration, a quaint little gathering of all the inhabitants around pies and moonshine – and perhaps a few leaves of cannabis the local gangs would sell them. He could almost picture the residents, a bunch of reclusive people that denounced the American system, consumerism and global warming, maybe a bit on the survivalist or hippie side. They'd turn a blind eye to the local criminals' atrocities as long as they only targeted people from the outside, and they'd lead peaceful lives farming and arguing with each other against the NRA or the American health system.
Why else would they renounce every national symbol?
Neal even smiled knowingly when a probie had jokingly asked him if his hometown still had the bald eagle as a national emblem. “Not quite.” He’d laughed. “We preferred a different kind of flying animal.” And then he changed the subject before Peter could dig deeper.
An endemic animal, typical enough to be used as a symbol, could have pointed him in the right direction.
One day, he’d discover what village or small town Neal came from, and from there he’d learn the CI’s real name and backstory. After all, in a tiny remote place like Neal's slips painted, everyone knew everyone.
The day he pieced everything together, Neal would be unmasked in a blink – no matter how differently he behaved from when he left – and the Caffrey mystery would finally be unraveled.
Dick knew his coworkers imagined he came from a small town in the hicks and found it hilarious to comfort their belief by dropping hints in that direction.
If only they knew he came from one of America’s largest, densest cities, a monster of brick, stone and mortar. One that didn’t actually consider itself part of the United States, because the States didn’t really consider it as part of them either.
How many times had Gotham been attacked, displaced, blocked off, isolated, flooded, burned, destroyed or worse? Dick had no idea, probably more than he could count, and several instances had been initiated by the people in power themselves.
How many times had the government or surrounding cities made any move, even the tiniest attempt to help in living memory – Superman and the Justice League excluded? That answer was easy: zero.
So if they could have none of the advantages and security supposedly owed to American citizens, Gothamites decided they would no longer belong to the United States at heart.
They still paid their taxes – although they considered it some sort of fee to be left alone – but any and all signs of affiliation to the US were thoroughly and systematically erased from their city. They didn’t even vote for a President, because they already knew no candidate would ever lift a finger for them.
Hell, most government or state-funded agencies, like the FBI, downright refused to hire people from Gotham. They pretexted all sorts of paperwork problems, but the core of the problem was that Gothamites weren’t trusted, weren't seen as good enough for American citizenry.
No wonder Gotham quietly and unofficially seceded from the United States.
As long as the big companies kept spewing money out of the city (and they always would, because despite all hurdles, or maybe because of them, Gothamites were a sturdy and obsessive bunch), Gotham was left to her own devices.
They made their own national day – the day Gotham’s first stone was allegedly laid – and their own anthem. They had their children learn a different pledge at school, one that basically stated that they would survive no matter what and that anyone that attacked their city would be crushed with extreme prejudice (with not-so-subtle hinting at the United States featuring among said foes). Their ‘national’ emblem was, bizarrely, a bat since the tribes that used to dwell where Gotham was built had worshiped the creatures.
(Dick found it utterly mind-boggling that Bruce’s chosen vigilante costume and his hometown’s symbol were one and the same, yet had been decided on completely independent reasons, with no cause and effect in either direction. But then again, it was Gotham, and few creatures suited her more than nocturnal, feared but colony-minded bats.)
Gotham had a culture of her own, one that would probably make any Outsider quake in their boots with how ruthless and violent it was.
For instance, while children were still raised hearing fairytales, Gothamites generally chose to tell the older versions, the ones that didn’t end well and had a moral, a truth that would help keep the kids alive like ‘don’t trust strangers’ and ‘don’t wander alone at night’. Not useless songs about how living underwater is better than on land or the ways a baby lion intended to abuse his power as an adult.
Seriously, who came up with that tripe?
Once upon a time, when he was still a blissfully ignorant child, Dick had loved Disney classics. He’d watched Dumbo multiple times, mostly because it featured a flying elephant and happened in a circus like his own.
But then his parents were killed and he could no longer watch the movie without thinking back on his dead family. Bambi was much the same; in fact, it was alarming the number of Disney heroes that had lost one, if not both of their parents.
(No, seriously. He and his siblings had done a tally, once, and it was appalling.)
Although most of his hatred of Disney movies didn’t come from the trauma of being brutally orphaned too young, but from the villains that emulated their characters.
Thankfully, apart from those from Alice in Wonderland – who could as well have been taken from the book – most of the movie-inspired villains were pretty lame and had never lasted long. In fact, they were so terrible that few remembered them as more than a vague, unpleasant memory and a permanent black mark on the eponymous characters.
Peter Pan had been a man-child in a costume that made Dick’s old Robin suit look sensible, and that sprinkled trippy ‘fairy dust’ everywhere. His victims tended to jump from buildings thinking they could fly under the effect of the powder’s hallucinations. Elsa was a more recent Mr Freeze wannabe that sang ‘Let it Go’ at the top of her lungs on repeat and apparently mixed both versions of the Snow Queen’s tale. Gepetto, a woodworker, and his wife the Blue Fairy, a retired chemist, had been an elderly, kindly-looking couple that secretly kidnapped kids and – through experiments Dick didn’t care to recall – turned them into inanimate but still living dolls. All were especially obnoxious and disturbingly intent on singing cutesy songs off-key while abducting little boys, because why the fuck not?
Suffice to say any iteration of Robin quickly learned to despise Disney…
Even a character as seemingly innocent as Cinderella could be distorted by Gotham’s brand of insanity. ‘Cindy Rella’ (or Cynthia Rellan, if you wanted her real name) led an army of trained mice that could eat a man alive (clearly emulating Rat Catcher), threw explosive pumpkins (that smelled distinctively rotten as they blew up – the stench took days for Alfred to clear up) and fought with razor-sharp glass stiletto shoes (the only distinctive, if utterly impractical characteristic to her villain persona).
Mind you, not every madman taking inspiration from Disney was bad, per se. Frollo (once known as Father Frederic Odlow, respected priest in one of Gotham’s many churches before his cousin almost killed him and God allegedly gave him new instructions) turned out to be a decent man whose only big quirk was that he ‘defaced’ buildings by adding gargoyles on their roofs and built small bonfires every now and then to preach and sing dramatically. Since he was harmless and everybody in Gotham liked his artful additions to the skyline, the police left him to his own devices.
(He amassed a lot of believers every time the Sun showed its dreaded face over their heads, making his sect one of the largest in the city. The Church of the Divine Hellfire advocated for more gargoyles to be sculpted over rooftops as a means to repel the Evil Day Star and used its donations to build awnings throughout Gotham to offer the Salutary Shade to its dwellers – it earned them a lot of goodwill.)
If only the same could be said of his murderous relative, Quasim Odlow, who now went by Quasimodo and liked to assault church people like his cousin, disfigure random passerbys beyond recognition or hurl lovey-dovey couples from skyscrapers…
The only redeeming grace to this clusterfuck was that none of the Disney-themed villains had really taken. Most of them vanished after a single apparition, and even the most persistent (a witch disguised as a purple-faced octopus that called herself Ursula and used people’s voice boxes and legs for dark rituals) had only managed to enact eight major incidents before disappearing altogether.
A handful of those villains got rehabilitated with extensive psychiatric following, a few more just decided to hang up the costume on their own, some never managed to escape Arkham or Blackgate… But the vast majority of the Disney rejects simply got killed by another, usually better established and more infamous rogue.
Because not even the Joker’s demented sense of humor could tolerate Disney songs on repeat during the evil gatherings every aspiring supervillain dreamed of attending.
And since Gothamites were a very proud bunch, no serious rogue in the making would pick up another one’s gimmick, not even if said guy was long dead or in retirement. It just wasn’t done, unless the name was properly passed down, Robin-style (as if any time the mantle had been passed down had been peaceful…), or the thing that made you ‘unique’ really suited an existing-but-free alias, like Clayface.
Unfortunately for everyone, Disney kept making new movies, so hopeful villains always had a variety of potential personas at their disposal. And some people wondered why every ‘sane’ Gothamite despised the company…
The latest in a long series of Disney-inspired weirdos was a guy that had watched too much Encanto, but Dick didn’t want to talk about ‘Bruno’…