Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

After solving a string of mortgage fraud cases that had plagued the bureau for weeks and bored all of them to tears, the team decided they deserved to spend the evening celebrating their success together in a bar. Not a seedy hole-in-the-wall, but a rather classy one, the kind where drinks were slightly overpriced, but it was compensated by the cozy atmosphere, the absence of sticky stains on the tables and chairs and the fact that the entire White Collar team could fit inside the main room.

Clinton ordered a beer and turned to watch the upcoming baseball match on TV – Metropolis Meteors against the Boston Red Sox. Not a meeting he was very invested in, considering he supported neither team, but watching the game helped him relax. Peter seemed to have the same idea, as he asked the bartender to turn the volume up. Considering the majority of his customers looked interested, the man obligingly set the sound higher. A group of supporters in Boston’s colors walked in and settled in front of the TV, ready to cheer for their team.

Diana shook her head with a tired smile, but made no comment. They were all too weary from the days of checking rows upon rows of numbers for an inconsistency to argue; even Neal, usually so unflappable and ready to criticize the merits of watching sports, kept his mouth shut. That is, until he took a glance at the screen.

The conman did a double take, before he straightened in his seat, more alert than a second ago. The motion caught his neighbors’ attention – nothing that had Neal react so readily had been good for them so far.

Yet Clinton couldn’t find anything amiss and neither could Diana or Peter, the other two who had noticed Neal perking up. The meeting on TV started like it was supposed to, the Boston fans looked a bit too excited, but not in any worrying way, and the rest of the bar watched the screen with a lazy sort of interest, except for a man in a far corner, whose eyes were set on the TV. Probably another supporter, although he wore no colors to show his allegiance. In any case, Neal’s eyes were firmly glued to the screen.

“Something caught your eye?” Asked Peter warily, even as he scanned the room a second time.

Neal looked at him in surprise for a second, like he’d forgotten they were there, before a smile broke on his lips. The specific, too symmetric smile that usually meant he was scheming something. “Huh? Oh, no. I just didn’t know the Meteors were playing tonight.”

The answer took the wind from their sails. “I didn’t know you were a fan of baseball.” Said Diana, already relaxing and taking a sip of her fancy cocktail.

“I’m not really; it’s just the Meteors I’m interested in. I barely know the names of the other teams to be honest.”

Peter still looked a little suspicious, but with nothing to base his doubts on, he turned to watch the meeting begin, like the rest of the agents that hadn’t noticed Neal almost vibrating through his seat with excitement.

The game started, and all was normal for a while. Then one of the Metropolitan players appeared on screen and Neal…

… booed?

He wasn’t the only one; the man in the corner had the exact same reaction and Clinton watched as Neal and him locked eyes in surprise, before devious grins broke on both their faces.

“Come here, sir. A man of good taste is always welcome at my table!” Called the conman before anyone could question his attitude. The unknown man wasted no time squeezing on the bench between Neal and Diana with a muttered apology for the woman. Both him and Neal looked way too excited. “I’m Neal, you?”

“Duncan.” Replied the man. He stared at Neal with a perplexed frown before shrugging. Clinton noted that neither this ‘Duncan’ nor Neal had offered a last name, but both seemed satisfied with their rushed introductions; the stranger and Neal turned back towards the TV in almost frenzied anticipation.

“Wait a minute, what the hell was that?” Demanded Peter, who looked more worried by the second. “I thought you supported the Meteors! And who are you?”

The man – Duncan – didn’t bother replying, but Neal was a bit more agreeable, even if he never tore his gaze from the screen. “He just told you, Peter, his name is Duncan. And before you ask, I’ve never met him before; I can only appreciate his tastefulness: anyone who agrees on how terrible the Meteors are is someone worth sharing a drink with.”

“Metropolis sucks.” Stated Duncan without glancing their way. The Meteors scored another point on screen. “Boooo! That was terrible! How are you even on the field when you hit like such a wimp?!”

“It’s a disgrace to baseball everywhere!” Added Neal in the same tone. “My grandma could do a better job than you, and she’s on the wrong side of the grass!”

“What the fuck…” Muttered Clinton as he watched the two madmen send increasingly strange jeers at the Metropolis Meteors every time they appeared on the TV. The rest of the room, agents and Boston supporters included, looked at Neal and Duncan incredulously, although neither seemed to mind, too absorbed in their methodical – if nonsensical – ridicule of the Metropolitan uniforms.

“Who even choses blue and red, really? They look like Woody Woodpecker with their caps on. Are they trying to copy Superman? Because if that’s so, they need to get their heads checked – Superman has absolutely no sense of style, just look at the way he wears his boxers over his tights.” Stated Neal with a decisive nod and all the solemnity in the world.

“Yeah, the man looks like a flying map of the country’s political alignment. What, is he a Democrat, a Republican? Can he even vote – the guy’s an alien from outer space who can’t decide on a party! Who would want to emulate that? Only colorblind morons, that’s who.” Announced Duncan, just as serious.

Peter valiantly tried to cut in several times, only to be interrupted by the two men’s unstoppable, bizarre commentary. In the end, the rest of them resigned themselves to waiting for the end of the game; a few people even settled down and enjoyed the show, watching Neal and Duncan rather than the TV.

Clinton had to admit, if he hadn’t felt so disturbed by the situation, he would have found it pretty amusing himself. As it was, he worried about Neal’s uncharacteristic behavior and wondered where this hatred of the Meteors – and all things from Metropolis apparently, from Superman’s underwear to Lex Luthor’s baldness, including their mail delivery system and the way the Sun reflected on their buildings – came from and why they both shared it.

One lunatic hating on Metropolis was one thing, but two? Not to mention the too easy way they united to deride the poor team; there had to be a semi-reasonable explanation.

The game ended with a clear victory for Boston, which obviously pleased Duncan and Neal. “It was a nice meeting you.” Said Neal, offering to shake the other man’s hand.

“Pleasure was all mine, Neal.” Answered Duncan, taking the proffered hand. Clinton didn’t like the way he stressed Neal’s name, like he knew something the FBI didn’t, despite having clearly met the conman for the first time this evening. “It’s always nice not to be alone when Metropolis plays.”

“Don’t I know it.” Neal laughed. “I always feel strange yelling at them alone in my flat, but tradition is tradition.”

Duncan nodded like that sentence made any sense and left the bar after paying for his drinks. He didn’t share any personal information, he just… left. The gathered FBI agents looked at him strangely as he vanished behind a corner, but what could they do? Duncan had done nothing wrong or illegal and clearly had no ties with Neal before today; they couldn’t question him more than they'd already tried.

That being said, they could interrogate their CI all they wanted. “What was that?” Demanded Peter now that he could place a word in edgewise without being interrupted by criticism about the Metropolitans’ stances and haircuts. The vein on his forehead pulsed with confused wrath. “And what do you have against Metropolis?”

“Nothing.” Shrugged Neal, who had apparently chosen to pretend this evening didn’t blow their minds and revealed a heretofore unknown aspect of his personality. “It just sucks.”

Poor Peter pinched the bridge of his nose; once more, Clinton was glad that Neal Caffrey was not his responsibility. The CI was all in all a good guy despite his poor choice of occupation, but by God was he a pain to deal with sometimes.

“What do you have against Superman, then?” Asked Diana, clearly opting for a different angle. “You and your friend had a lot to say about him.”

“I don’t have anything against Superman either, I just think that Big Blue is overrated and that he chose a pretty lame city to protect. Because Metropolis-”

“Metropolis sucks, we got that.” Growled Peter. He looked ready for the day to be over yesterday. Behind him, a few probies muttered ‘Big Blue’ with perplexed glances Neal’s way, but the people more familiar with the CI’s eccentricities knew to choose their battles. “And you’ve really never met this Duncan before?”

“Nope. Never met before and probably never will again.” Swore Neal. To Clinton, he looked sincere, but then again, Neal always did. Peter could read him better, though, and seemed to accept his words at face value.

“How come you both ended up in the same bar and decided to berate the Metropolis Meteors out loud, then?” Clinton couldn’t help but ask. He should probably let it go, but today had been so surreal that he had to poke a little more.

“Well, the bar had been a coincidence – I mean, even I had no idea I’d be here until tonight, and I hadn’t known there would be a game with the Meteors on TV either. As for the berating, it should be obvious.” He faced Clinton, a shit-eating grin on his face that proved he knew exactly what he was doing. “Anyone with a lick of sense should know that Metropolis sucks.”

And like the chaos gremlin he not so secretly was, Neal glided out of the bar with a laugh to wait for them by the cars. He didn’t even pay for his own drinks.

Peter settled his tab and Neal’s with a grumble, swearing to make him repay him later (Clinton wasn’t so sure, and judging from her knowing smile, neither was Diana. The agent regularly allowed Neal a bit more than he should, and paying for his drinks was not the worst thing the conman had gotten out of him). “What do you think this was about?” He asked his two closest colleagues before they met with Neal in the parking lot.

Diana shrugged. “I doubt it was a con or anything prepared in advance, but beyond that? No idea. Maybe he’s more of a baseball fan than he said and the Meteors defeated his team?” Even she didn’t look convinced by her theory.

Neal was notorious for not liking to watch sports (Clinton wasn’t sure the man so much as owned a TV) and had more than once shown that he knew almost nothing about baseball. Peter, who religiously followed the Major League results, had rambled about it on several occasions and never had his CI responded with more than polite non-answers and confused blinking. If he had been faking for so long, it had been masterfully done and Clinton couldn’t see the endgame.

“Maybe it’s something personal?” He suggested. “Like one of the players ruined a con of his or something like that; baseball players earn enough money to make them interesting targets for a crook like Neal.”

Neither of his companions had better ideas, although they all knew that Clinton’s theory had holes; like the fact that Duncan had reacted the exact same way as Neal whenever the Meteors appeared on screen. With nothing more to add and the resigned certitude that their CI would never reveal the truth, they unanimously decided to set this riddle aside for now.

One day, they would understand what had happened tonight, but mulling over it with so little to base an idea on was futile. Maybe the next time Metropolis played they could get answers.

Metropolis and Gotham had always been rivals of sorts for reasons nobody remembered, but in recent years, with Batman and Superman working so tightly together in the Justice League, the two cities had tentatively started to bury the hatchet.

Until the Knights vs Meteors incident, that is.

The Metropolis Meteors had come to face off the Gotham Knights on their own turf for some kind of big tournament, something pretty important apparently. Dick didn’t know the details – he hadn’t lied when he’d said he knew very little about baseball, but every Gothamite knew about that day.

In the middle of the game, Kite-Man had attacked the stadium. Kite-Man. A D-rank villain if there ever was one. The guy had threatened everyone in the audience with some stupid scheme – again, Dick had no details, but he knew enough about Kite-Man to seriously doubt the gravity of the situation.

Anyway, the Meteors and the supporters from Metropolis had fled at the first opportunity – when Red Robin had appeared to take care of the ‘threat’ – while the Knights valiantly stayed on the field. Say what you want about Gothamites and their baseball team, but the guys were devoted, and a lame villain like Kite-Man wasn’t enough to make them run for the hills. If people fled any time a minor supercriminal showed his face, nothing would ever get done.

Monsters like the Joker or Poison Ivy were one thing, losers like Kite-Man or the Condiment King were another, and Gothamites were a tough crowd.

So the Knights had staunchly continued the game despite the desertion of their opponent, and had naturally amassed a lot of points. The local referee had dutifully counted everything, and if the Metropolitans were not there to play, they should have lost by default anyway. That was the rule.

Yet hours later, when the Meteors finally crawled back and the game was long over, they objected to the results. They argued that the Knights had cheated, that they shouldn’t have kept playing, that the points rightfully earned in their absence shouldn’t count.

Of course, the Knights wouldn’t take that lying down. They retorted that they had won fairly, and that the Metropolitan shouldn’t have fled at first sight of a lame flying man with lousy explosive kites (or something equally underwhelming, Dick was sure). That if they were not dedicated enough, they should not play to begin with. All valid points in Dick’s and Gotham’s opinion, but when the bigwigs of the baseball league were called, they sided with the Meteors and banned the Knights from their games for the next ten years. One thing led to another, and all teams from Gotham found themselves fired from the national leagues, no matter the discipline, because all of them had rallied in support of the Knights. Apparently, their tenacious resolve didn’t agree with the other cities’ weak, losing mindset.

No Gothamite, fan of baseball or otherwise, would take that slight without retaliation, so from now on, every time the Meteors or other Metropolis teams played, the people of Gotham would boo and ridicule them. In the stadium, in bars, at home in front of their TV, there would always be a Gothamite to remind the cheaters of what they had done to the Knights.

At least, the vengeance was a nonviolent one; God knew Gothamites usually leaned towards more brutal resolutions.

Even Dick and his family followed the tradition, despite the fact that few of them knew the first thing about baseball, and often gathered to watch the games on TV and jeer at the Metropolitans. By scorning their team, Metropolis had insulted all of Gotham, and her people were vindictive and spiteful, with long memories and dramatic tendencies.

Thus the dying feud between the two cities was rekindled and even exiled Gothamites would unite, just the time to exact verbal retribution. ‘Metropolis sucks’ was their rallying call, a universal truth that they attempted to share with the world.

It was laughably easy to spot fellow Gothamites on days Metropolis played; you just had to look for the other lunatics hurling abuse at half the players and not cheering for any team. Even supervillains had been seen barking insults at their TVs.

It turned out that sport really brought people together after all.

So Dick and Duncan had recognized each other as Gotham expats immediately, despite having never met before (although from his confused staring, Duncan had soon recognized ‘Neal’ as Bruce Wayne’s oldest son, but Gothamites knew when to keep their mouths shut and when to keep secrets from Outsiders, so Dick had not been worried), and the two of them had banded together the time of a baseball game.

Then they had parted, because Gothamites also knew to mind their own business, and Dick relished the look of suspicious confusion on his friends’ faces.

Explaining would be useless because Outsiders rarely understood Gotham logic and Dick was in no hurry to share his origins, so he left them with a laugh and one last piece of wisdom, a kernel of truth to be passed for generations to come, an absolute, undeniable constant in an ever-shifting world.

Metropolis sucks.

Chapter Text

Even under duress, Peter couldn’t quite tell you how a routine cross-checking of witness testimonies ended up with him and Neal in a locked cold room slowly being filled with gas.

Apparently, Gus Marlowe, their main suspect (a little more than a suspect now), hoped to make their deaths look like an accident. The man had given them a poignant and utterly ridiculous soliloquy about how they had decided to visit the warehouse alone after speaking with him, without warning their colleagues, had somehow locked themselves in the cold room and how a truly unfortunate gas leak was about to be the end of them both.

If Peter had the time and wasn’t about to asphyxiate in a handful of minutes, he would have delighted in pointing out all the flaws in Marlowe’s plan, from the ridiculous breach in protocol, to the fact that cold room security should definitely allow anyone to open them from the outside, including the monumental fluke that would have been a gas leakage at the exact same time they entered the room.

Only in movies did such an ‘unfortunate string of bad luck’ ever take place. In bad movies at that.

Not all criminals were known for their intelligence, though, and if he and Neal didn’t make it out, then Marlowe was still going to have a lot to answer for; at the very least, the team should be able to get him for the massive breach in security in his own warehouse, if not for trafficking illegal diamonds. Criminal negligence leading to death didn’t make for as many years in prison as first degree murder or trafficking, but it was not a light sentence either.

Small mercies.

They weren’t tied, in a perfunctory effort to make it look like an accident, so Peter quickly went to work looking for a way out. No way was he making El a widow without trying his damndest to return to her side. Marlowe had said they had twenty minutes before the lack of air killed them, but Peter wouldn’t just take that criminal’s word for it.

The door was bolted shut, with no handle on their side. Trying to unscrew them with only his hands proved fruitless, even more so since they were encased in a layer of ice and blowing hot air on it did nothing. No other exit and the frosted metal under his fingers was starting to hurt. If he’d had his gun or his badge, he might have been able to use them as leverage or something, but Marlowe’s goons had thoroughly patted them down before locking them inside, and any potential tool had been dutifully confiscated, probably to be thrown back in once they were dead to complete the ludicrous setup.

Old shelves gathered dust on the wall, empty and unused for years. Peter couldn’t find anything useful there.

The gash in the pipes (clearly made intentionally with professional tools – another clumsy attempt at masquerading this as an accident) was too large to be completely covered, although Peter had already sacrificed his coat and Neal’s in an effort to minimize leakage and used his own tie to hold the makeshift patch in place. At best, he figured he’d bought them five more minutes

“Move aside, Peter.” Said Neal behind him, more serious than usual, but not nearly as much as the situation demanded.

Peter obliged, if only because he had no better idea and arguing would only waste precious air.

The CI stepped in front of the door and inspected it for a moment, then he removed his jacket.

What was he doing? The place was freezing cold.

Unaware or uncaring of his handler’s thoughts, Neal tore the lining of the vest to reveal…

Some kind of black flat plastic thingy the size of a matchbox. Peter had no idea what it was, only that Neal was probably not supposed to carry it if he’d hidden it so well. Even the earlier patting down had missed it.

Neal looked up, grinned at Peter’s reproving stare, and went to the door, plastic device in hand.

Chances were that no divine intervention would save their hides, but Peter couldn’t help but hope for one anyway. El would make the most beautiful widow, but both she and her husband agreed that she was too young to wear a black veil just yet.

The conman returned to fiddling with his box, and the next second a triangle of heated metal slid out, white with heat but thankfully not burning. Any flame would have risked igniting the gas.

… OK, Peter could admit he had definitely not been expecting that.

Carefully Neal melted the ice around the bolts and quickly turned off the torch-thingy to save as much air as possible. Peter watched, transfixed, as he messed with his device again and a small, curved blade popped out, thin, but sturdy enough to remove the caps on all the screws with minimum effort.

Wherever Neal got his equipment, Peter was going to figure out once they escaped and buy an apparatus for himself. Or rather, he’d confiscate Neal’s clearly unauthorized one – the CI was not allowed that kind of tool or weapon anyway.

More fiddling revealed a screwdriver with exactly the right shape for the door, leading Peter to guess there was more than one inside. Neal applied it, pressed a hidden button and the tool turned on on its own. Electrical, then.

Peter really needed one for himself.

In a handful of minutes, the door fell on the other side with a loud bang and they both rushed out, coughing lightly to clear their lungs.

“You’re *cough* you’re definitely telling me where you found that thing!” Announced Peter as he righted himself.

“It’s custom-made.” Replied Neal with a tired but heartfelt grin. “And I don’t think the maker will agree to building you one; he’s more than a bit paranoid with his gear and doesn’t give any away to people he doesn't trust. And even then, he’s notably reluctant to part from his things.”

Mozzie, then, which meant Peter had absolutely zero chance of coaxing another box out of him.

“We should get our coats back before hypothermia sets in.” Continued Neal, who looked to have completely recovered already. “It’s still December out there.”

“I’m not risking any more gas leaving the warehouse.” Argued Peter with a frown. “That’s just waiting for an explosion to happen.”

“I doubt our coats are doing much to stop the leak, Peter. And now that we’re outside, I can simply seal the room until the experts arrive to plug it.”

That was all well and good, but his CI had overlooked one tiny detail. “The door is screwed from the inside, Neal, and needs to be closed to be bolted back. We would have to lock one of us in again, exposing ourselves to another bout of asphyxiation, which we’re not going to do, even if one of us stays outside. The coats stay.”

It would have sounded more commanding without his chattering teeth.

Neal threw him a look halfway between amusement and annoyance. “I can seal the door from the outside, and it would be stupid to leave our coats in, especially since they do basically nothing right now. The gas is still leaking into the air as we speak. Trust me, Peter, I know what I’m doing. I got us out didn’t I?”

Yeah, he did. Peter supposed he owed the conman at least that much, but he wasn’t happy about it.

They both held their breath to retrieve their coats, tie (a gift from El, Peter wasn’t leaving it behind if he could help it) and torn vest. Then Neal revealed a hidden pocket in the padding of his coat and pulled out some transparent tape.

Peter would have to check his wardrobe more thoroughly if Neal could sneak in so many tools without his knowledge.

“Help me put the door back in place.”

“It won’t hold. That door is made of cast iron, it’s too heavy to be held by some tape.” Commented Peter dubiously.

Neal tutted at him with a sly smile. “That depends on the quality of the tape, Peter.”

And he was right. Impossibly, a single layer of tape all over the doorsill held the slab of metal in place and sealed the cold room. Congratulations to Mozzie for coming up with such impressive tools.

“We’re gonna have to talk about all this once we’re back in the office, Neal.” Even if the device had saved their lives, the conman’s release conditions stated clearly that he was not allowed to possess potential weapons. Even Swiss army knives were prohibited, and Neal’s tool looked much, much more elaborate. Probably custom made for high-stake heists if he had to guess.

“Peter, you have to adm-”

Neal’s reply was cut off by the sound of a door slamming shut in the distance and two voices closing in. Without consulting the other, both Peter and Neal went to hide behind two crates on opposite sides.

“You think they’re already dead? Boss said it should only take ten minutes before it’s over.” Said one of the goons as they turned the corner. “You ready to call the cops?”

“Yep, the second we confirm the feds are not breathing.”

Thankfully, there were only two of them, not too brawny and not visibly armed, probably for the sake of plausible deniability when they ‘conveniently’ stumbled upon two corpses. And neither had noticed the tape on the door yet, although that was only a matter of time.

Peter caught Neal’s eye and motioned for him to say put; he planned to neutralize the two grunts the moment they paused at the jury-rigged door.

The first guy fell easily, with a well-placed punch to the nose, but the second had the time to react and pulled a weapon from a holster under his jacket. He held Peter at gunpoint.

“What the- How’d you get out?!” Yelled the man, rattled, but not enough that Peter could disarm him. “Dan? Dan! Shit, you fucking knocked him out! I need to call Marlowe…” With one hand, he fished out a phone from his back pocket and started swiping down for his boss’ number.

Behind his back, Neal emerged from his hiding spot and motioned for Peter to keep the man busy. The agent wasn’t sure what Neal would do, but he had nothing to lose – if Marlowe returned, he would probably deal with the two of them in a more expeditive and definite manner than what they’d been afforded so far.

“Maybe we can find an arrangement.” Peter had to stall for time. Thankfully, the goon looked up for a moment. “I’m a federal agent, killing me would be more trouble than it’s worth; better make a deal with the FBI right now than worsen your case. Diamond trafficking is already a pretty ba-”

The grunt collapsed next to his companion, twitching and spasming. Behind him stood Neal, a stun gun in hand.

Either he had just conveniently found it lying on the floor, or it had been waiting in one of the conman’s hidden pockets.

Peter took the time to remove any weapons from the unconscious goons (he found another gun and three knives) and to call the bureau for backup using the second one’s phone before he turned to his sheepish CI. The stun gun had vanished again, just like the roll of tape and the miraculous black plastic box.

“Why the fuck do you have a stun gun, Neal?! You know it could send you right back to prison!”

Neal rubbed the back of his head. “I know, but I hardly ever use it. Only in extreme cases like today. I have enough enemies and my job with you is dangerous enough that I think a non-lethal defense weapon is justified.”

It made sense, but it still violated the terms of his contract with the FBI; Peter reminded him of those stipulations as they waited for the rest of their team. “What else do you have hidden? You don’t bother hiding your lockpicking set, so it’s gotta be worse than that, isn’t it? A hook to climb over walls? A collapsible hang-glider to fly away? A complete disguise, with clothes and a wig? Rope? Knives? Do you have a real gun stashed in your left sock?”

“No, Peter, I don’t have a gun. You know I don’t like them.” Argued Neal with the pout of a petulant child. “I’m non-violent, remember?”

“Well, I thought I knew that, but a non-violent criminal wouldn't walk around with a stun gun! You know I should send you straight to jail for that!”

He ranted long enough that Neal, usually so even-tempered, grew annoyed.

“Look, Peter, I know I’m not supposed to have concealed weapons and tools, but I do, and it just saved both our lives. Besides, the only thing I can do with a stun gun is stun, so that certainly limits the damage I could do, don’t you think? After all the times I’ve risked my neck against actual killers in one of the FBI’s operations, I think I deserve that little bit of protection, no?”

“So I might keep taking my tools with me, or I might not, but either way, you won’t find them or any proof of their existence no matter how much you look, so let it go and go celebrate your continued life with your wife. I’m sure after today, El will be glad that I kept my gear with me and will encourage me to keep doing it.”

The mention of El (and the completely accurate guess of her possible reaction) shut Peter up long enough for Diana, Jones and paramedics to arrive.

The Marlowe case was closed within the day with the culprit charged of trafficking of war diamonds, attempted first degree murder and criminal neglect for the state of his warehouses, much to Neal’s delight.

After speaking about it with El (and being told that Neal had a point after all the times he was intentionally placed in the line of fire by the FBI), Peter decided against reporting Neal’s tools, although he did look through the conman’s entire wardrobe.

He found nothing.

“If you’re gonna keep providing them to Neal, do you think you could also outfit my agents with some of your magic boxes?” Peter asked Mozzie as the man left the Burke house. El and him had a reading club meeting earlier. “They could be useful for more than heists, you know.”

Mozzie blinked at him in confusion, then he must have realized what Peter was talking about and his face returned to neutrality. “I have no idea what you’re implying, Suit, but if I invented something, you and your people would be the last to get access to it.”

Without another word, he turned tail and vanished behind a corner like a nervous, balding mouse.

Too bad. Peter would really have liked to get his hands on one of those boxes, if only to figure out all they could do.

When Mozzie barged in Dick’s apartment without so much as a knock, asking what Peter had meant when he’d talked about a ‘magic box’ and if they needed to hide something, Dick had to bite his lip not to laugh.

Of course Peter believed Mozzie to have created the bat-knife, Bruce’s vigilante version of a Swiss army knife, although Dick had coined the name. The one he used as Neal might be unmarked (and not in the usual bat or bird shape, because when you chose a leitmotiv, you had to commit), but it still had all the same tools.

Despite half-joking about what else his CI illegally carried, Dick knew Peter would have kittens if he ever decided to reveal the entirety of what he hid in his pockets, meticulously transferred from one suit to the next every day. Mozzie knew a bit more, he’d found out about the pen in his pant legs, the zip ties in his fedora and the mini stun gun in his belt buckle in case he had no choice but to incapacitate someone without revealing his fighting skills, like today.

Nobody knew about the collapsible escrima sticks in his heels (unmarked again, to leave no tail to the Bats, in case hiding his skills was no longer possible), the rope in his hat, the knives lining his belt (no batarangs or recognizable blades), the bandages and sewing set in his coat or the lamptorch and second phone in the sleeves of his shirt.

Amazing what one could hide with fitted clothes made specially for dissimulation, and June’s late husband had been a professional felon – Dick barely had to alter his hand-me-downs for all his stuff.

And of course, there were the Gotham specials: a weapon – in his case a flexible dagger – and a rebreather, hidden respectively in his left sock and in a cleverly hollowed section of the side of his right shoe. No Gothamite worth the name would be caught dead outside without those hidden protections… or rather that's exactly how they would be caught: dead. Some preferred a gun or pepper spray to a knife, but all carried a rebreather and a weapon of some kind, be they old or young, man or woman, honest or crooked, and most added more basic survival gear. Only tourists waltzed in without the necessary tools.

Gotham was the only place in the world where gas masks were a fashion statement, with people owning several to coordinate with their clothes, customizing their various rebreathers and creating designer models for more formal events. Adding glitter, pearls and stickers on their own masks was a popular activity for young children. Most kids painted them in the colors of their favorite vigilante, Robin, more often than not.

(This season, the trend swinged towards brightly colored rebreathers paired with dark, almost black baggy clothes. Most fashion professionals only swore by cherry red and chartreuse green over charcoal or slate gray suits. In high-society galas, just like you would become a pariah if you wore the wrong kind of shoes, nobody would take you seriously if you brought an out-of-style rebreather – Dick remembered a number of poor saps being laughed out of the room because they’d made the mistake of wearing a tie or stilettos in the same color as their gas mask. An unforgivable faux-pas in Gotham’s elitist and pretentious gatherings.)

The rebreather proved useless when locked in a sealed room with dwindling oxygen, though. It only filtered the air, it didn't create any, so Dick had opted not to reveal it to Peter when he only had one anyway. Of course, he would have offered his to his friend, but unlike the bat-knife, the tape or even the stun gun, it couldn't really pass as part of a thief's toolkit, and Dick would rather avoid unnecessary questions altogether.

Admittedly, the Bats went a little overboard with their hidden gadgets; none of them ever left home in their civilian clothes without a small arsenal concealed on their body. They had all been kidnapped enough as ‘mere’ Waynes to learn to always be prepared for the worst.

Peter would have an aneurysm if he knew half of the things the bat-knife alone could do, let alone the rest of his hidden gear, but even undercover and far from Gotham, Dick refused to go out without his bare minimum emergency equipment.

“Don’t worry about it, Moz. Peter’s just looking too deep again and coming to the wrong conclusions.” He smiled at the other man. “It’s about one of the tools dad made me, if you really want to know, but I’d appreciate it if you’d let him believe it was your invention.”

Mozzie had met Bruce and his bucketload of hidden gear years before he met Dick, even if he knew neither of their identities – civilian or vigilante. It only took him a moment of reflection before he nodded. “Of course, mon frère, you can always count on me to fool a Suit. In exchange, I’m sure you can let me take a closer look at this so-called ‘magic box’.”

Good old Moz, always on the lookout for a good opportunity. “Sure, just don’t press any random buttons, there’s a small electric saw and a molecular laser in there.”

Chapter Text

It only took a single wrong word for their undercover operation to go pear-shaped.

Diana had accompanied Neal to a secret auction as his plus one. Unlike regular black market deals, this one was rather upscale, with people expected to dress to the nines and mingle before the items were presented and sold, which meant an eye candy partner usually tagged along. Unlike Jones or Peter, Diana looked pretty enough in a short dress to make the cut.

So here she was, attending an auction for the rich and famous, where they could buy anything from stolen jewelry to illegal technology or restricted materials, and broaden their network of dubious contacts while at it.

Neal fit right in, like always. Diana… not so much. She could schmooze like the best of them, but the sheer levels of smarminess after the CI ‘accidentally’ revealed himself to have connections to several high-profile art dealers got to her. It was a good thing nobody expected her to interact with the other customers beyond vacant smiles or gormless giggles at their lame jokes, and even that was growing old fast.

All the repressed memories of endless galas, of people squeezing her cheeks and shamelessly sucking up to her parents for diplomatic favors came back to her like a brick to the head. Her attention started truly drifting away, rather than the act she had put on until now, and she thought much less about the few words leaving her mouth than she should have.

There was a man, a rich CEO of one conglomerate or another – Diana had missed his introduction, distracted by movement near the actual auction hall – who was trying to impress her with all the subtlety of a hippopotamus in a ballet.

“So you see, I was part of this amazing team, you wouldn’t believe the heists we pulled. And while the rest of them got caught, I made it out scott free, because why would someone with as much money as myself risk everything for a few paintings I could just buy? See, that’s the beauty of my plans: I can never be suspected because I’m already rich and successful! Smart isn’t it? So, once I set my eyes on that Rembrandt in a private collection…”

The guy kept rambling on and on, but Diana only paid enough attention to nod at the right places. She already knew about that case (and that the man bragging to her was still firmly in the FBI’s radar; the team in charge was just waiting until they had gathered more proof of his other crimes before pressing charges. The guy – Falman, that was their main suspect’s name – had a history of violence and near homicide that had only been covered up with money because nobody had died) so her focus stayed on Neal, who was in the middle of an animated conversation with their true target, a woman suspected of smuggling art belonging to other nations in and out of the country.

Neil looked neither stressed nor upset, but Diana knew from experience that things could change very fast around him, and she was the only reinforcements less than ten minutes away. If the CI needed her, she had to be ready to intervene immediately.

When Neal gestured for Diana to join his conversation (meaning hang by his arm and smile vacantly), she expected the oaf trying to impress her to leave her alone. Except the man clung by her side like an old piece of gum – what would Diana not give to be allowed to say she was lesbian and in a relationship…

Neal took the presence of the interloper in stride, even as he subtly placed himself between her and the guy. Most people would have perceived that move as possessive and/or demeaning for her, but Diana knew her almost-colleague better by now. Despite his rampant flirting habit, Neal was a gentleman who could take a rejection gracefully and trusted her to take care of herself, but didn't mind stepping in to help her keep her cover. Had this encounter happened anywhere else, he would have happily let Diana tear the oaf into shreds. Verbally, of course.

“Nick Halden, nice to meet you. You are?” Neal got in Falman’s face and offered a handshake, all the while blocking Diana from sight in the most obnoxious way.

See? Neal would never be so uncouth in reality, but the performance both helped deter the bragging man and earn him points in the target’s eyes for ‘protecting his girlfriend’. The CI had many faults, but nobody could deny his skill in conning, acting or knowing his audience.

“Uhm, John Falman. I was explaining to your friend how my team and I made our art collection.”

“Mr Falman is the proud owner of a Rembrandt and a Vermeer.” Added Diana with a smile, playing the part of the empty-headed eye candy.

Neal nodded in apparent interest, but Falman stiffened and looked suddenly wary. It took Diana a moment to understand why.

The man hadn’t mentioned a Vermeer, even if Diana knew he had it. The rightful owner had asked for its theft not to be made public since his family had managed to keep the painting for decades because no one had known they had it. The thieves had probably only stumbled upon it when stealing the Rembrandt (that had been bought quite publically a year before) and decided to take it too.

The only people aware of the second stolen painting were the thieves (most of which were already in prison and not talking in the hopes of finding their loot once they got out), the owner and his family, who had no reason to mention it to anyone now, and the FBI.

Shit.

“I- I’ll get myself another drink. I’ll be right back.” Announced Falman with a frown before he vanished in the small crowd.

Neal had probably noticed something was amiss, but he couldn’t stop talking with the target without a reason and Diana couldn’t explain her blunder in public. Hopefully Falman wouldn’t have the time to do anything; for security and secrecy, the doors to the ballroom were sealed until the auction was over. The guy would have to wait to get out but, in the van, Peter had already called the team in charge to tell them to hasten their investigation.

With any luck, the added time and Falman’s presence in a thoroughly illegal auction would prove enough to get him behind bars despite Diana’s blunder.

The rest of the evening went by without a hitch. Falman stayed at a distance. When the auction began and several pieces of ancient african art appeared, the smuggler incriminated herself nicely by sharing with Neal how she had acquired them herself and guaranteed their authenticity. In their earpieces, Peter confirmed that they had what they needed and Diana rejoiced that Nigeria, Benin and Togo would soon retrieve their lawful property.

In her relief that the mission had not been compromised, she let her guard down as they left the building into a small, dark alley, scattered in groups of two or three to avoid attention.

Diana never saw Falman attacking; all she registered was Neal’s warning cry and being yanked back by the strap of her cocktail dress.

Her federal agent training kicked in right after. She disarmed and immobilized her thrashing assaillant – Falman, of course – as he yelled about not allowing a ‘gold-digging whore’ to steal his spoils. From his bellowing, he believed Diana to be a fellow thief that had gotten the whole story from his jailed accomplices and wanted her share.

All his accusations fell apart a moment later, when Peter, Jones and a few more agents rushed in the alley, guns and FBI-marked bullet-proof vests out.

“You’re a fed?!” Falman exclaimed. “No way, you’re too hot to be a cop!”

Way to appear like a douchebag until the bitter end. At least attacking a federal agent meant there was more than enough time to investigate and find charges to put him in jail for a long while.

Falman was led away, his bloody knife taken as evid-

Bloody knife?! Diana was unharmed, which meant…

“Neal, you’re hurt!”

The CI leaned on a wall, obscured by the shadows but not enough for Diana and the others to miss the red stain on his shirt, beneath his soaked fingers.

“It’s fine.” Laughed Neal, which was more worrying in these circumstances than reassuring. “It’s only a nick; it should stop bleeding soon.”

Jones was already calling an ambulance while Peter and Diana went to inspect what was definitely not just a nick, not with that much blood.

But no matter how they prodded and coaxed Neal, the man refused any medical treatment. Hell, he refused to let them examine the ‘small graze’ altogether.

Diana had always pegged Neal as the type to overplay even the smallest papercut for sympathy points; she’d never have expected him to try to hide an injury of any kind, let alone a major one.

“It’s really nothing, guys, I’ve had worse.” His tone implied he thought them overbearing and was getting tired of their meddling; as if they could just let him go home with a bleeding knife wound. In any case, the ambulance was already on its way.

“I seriously doubt that.” Peter would have likely snorted had he not been so worried for his CI. “You’re not the type to get into fights, so you have no idea how bad this is. You need to let us, and the paramedics, check it, Neal.”

Neal huffed in annoyance. “I’d have you know I have some experience with wounds, Peter. And I don’t need medical assistance for something as minor as this.”

“Let us be the judge of that.” Argued Jones, who was trying to get Neal to sit down. The CI shot them all with an irritated glare, but didn’t relent.

Diana was torn between respecting Neal’s right to privacy (he had so little of it already) and tearing the shirt off directly to get a good look. It didn’t help that her friend had most likely been hurt pulling her out of harm’s way – she felt responsible for him now.

In the end, her concern for Neal’s health won out. “That’s it, Neal, either you take your shirt off or I do it.”

The assessing gaze she received in reply ran shivers down her spine (and not the good kind), but Neal must have realized she wouldn’t let this go because he slowly started peeling off his ruined shirt.

The street was still dark, but it showed enough for the three agents to let out shocked gasps at what they saw.

No wonder Neal had been so reluctant to show his skin. His torso was a mess of scars and healed injuries of all kinds. Diana was no expert and the lighting was poor, but under the glow of a nearby neon sign, she still caught the remains of old slash wounds, bullets, burns, discolored patches of skin and a giant bite mark she couldn’t explain.

Amidst all of that, the open wound on his flank did indeed seem benign.

“Neal…” She breathed, unable to figure out what to say. Neither of her colleagues were of any help.

The awkwardness abated with the arrival of the paramedics; while they flinched at first sight, they quickly regained their professionalism and started treating a very annoyed Neal on site.

The unease made way for the ambulance’s better lighting and increased horror.

Neal’s torso (and likely the rest of his body) was littered with more scars than she had thought. They were everywhere, and some looked too deliberate, too systematic to be anything but the product of torture. Next to those remained traces of frostbite and formerly infected needle points. The patches in an odd color, now that she looked at them more closely, were made of tiny veins expanding from a knife wound, the mark of a poisoned blade.

Worse, some of those scars looked old. As in they reached awkwardly over the skin, stretched by the growth of their bearer over time.

Neal must have been a child when it happened.

The paramedics announced Neal didn’t need stitches, since the knife wound was unexpectedly shallow. Like the conman had said, it was already scabbing over and would likely heal completely in a couple of weeks. They still made him a bandage and told him to get a prescription for painkillers (Neal’s eyeroll made Diana doubt he’d take them) before packing up and leaving.

“Neal…” Peter tried talking after a painful minute of silence. “I-”

“Don’t bother, Peter.” The CI looked more embarrassed than anything, which striked Diana as the wrong reaction. She couldn’t tell what the right reaction would be, though. “I don’t like showing my scars, but I understand you didn’t insist to distress me. We’re fine.”

“That’s… good… About those scars-”

Neal cut Peter off. “Look, I’d rather not talk about them. Let’s just say that I had a rough childhood and that my chosen occupation made me a lot of enemies and leave it at that. Please.”

As if anyone would force the matter after they coerced the man to expose his scars. “Right, I understand.” Nodded Peter quickly. “But we’re here for you anytime, if you want to talk about it.”

“Thanks, but right now all I want is to go home and sleep this off.” Neal offered them a tired smile before leading the way to the van, clearly putting an end to this entire conversation.

Behind his back, Diana exchanged a glance with Peter and Jones, knowing they all thought the same thing.

A ‘rough childhood’ hinted at an abusive parent, likely his father, because Neal had once admitted that his mother died when he was a small child. It certainly explained why the conman was so reluctant to share anything before his eighteenth birthday, before he’d have created the Caffrey alias to get away.

As for the ‘enemies’, well, the FBI had no intel on any that would torture their victims so cruelly, but there were still many dark spots in Neal’s past that they didn’t know about. The scars were probably part of that.

In any case, if Neal refused to talk about them, it was his right. The CI was now safe and far from his tormentors, and if he wanted to put them all behind him, then good. They wouldn’t force him to revive traumatic memories just to satisfy their morbid curiosity.

But like Peter said, if their friend ever felt the need to confide in any of them, Diana and the others would be happy to listen.

Dick knew exactly what the agents were thinking, what he let them think. An abusive dad and vengeful victims of a con. The poor feds had zero chance of guessing the truth.

He wasn’t quite as ashamed of his scars as he preferred not to dwell on them. They were as much reminders of his worst moments as proof of his survival. Nothing to think too long about, especially in a city like Gotham where literally everyone had odd scars of their own.

Gothamites were a rowdy, often violent bunch, even the regular civilians or the wealthy. There was a reason crime was so prominent there, in all social classes, ages, races, genders and so on.

Tim had once theorized it was something in the water, something among the mix of chemical wastes and the generally unclean and infested sewer system that awoke the more violent parts in Gotham’s residents.

(Metropolis, across the bay, didn't seem affected, but then again, Superman’s city and Batman’s had always been polar opposites. Light versus darkness; peace versus war; hope versus vengeance; wimpy, losing mindset versus strong, competitive spirit… )

In Gotham, people earned their first real scars in elementary school (or at that age, for those that didn’t attend school) in fistfights during recess and behind buildings after lessons. What started as scrapes and bite marks evolved over the years until the children turned into adults that broke bones and waved knives in bar fights.

Dick could still recall his first encounter with Gotham’s brand of juvenile, school-related violence: a particularly enraged 8-year-old girl with pigtails latching onto his ankle with her teeth and growling like a rabid dog because he’d told her she reminded him of Georg, the strongman of Haly’s circus.

The way she had hauled her chair over her head to toss it at an annoying boy that had pulled her hair (without the teacher so much as looking up or scolding her) had sent Dick into a melancholy-induced trance, and he hadn’t even noticed he’d made the comparison aloud until she bit his ankle to the bone. He still bore the mark of Betty’s teeth to this day.

Suffice to say he’d learned very quickly that Gothamite children were a kind of their own and his interest in Bruce’s self-defense lessons had found a second wind .

Then, of course, you had to factor in the various crimes occurring all over the city. Muggers left knife wounds, drunkards and addicts racketing for money attacked with broken bottles and you could never rule out being shot during a bank robbery. Not in Gotham. Not even if you avoided all banks.

Despite having way more banks than any other city its size and the security befitting of a place crawling with supervillains, bank robberies occured literally every day in Gotham, and more often than not between three to five times a day. Few attacks ended successfully, of course, but they still kept the Bats and cops busy.

Not all of these unlucky encounters left you wounded or hurt, but it happened often enough that any true Gothamite of twenty or more could brag about a couple impressive scars to Outsiders – natives had long stopped blinking at them.

The rise in supervillains introduced new types of injuries, often on a larger number of people, assuming they survived. Dr Freeze left you with aching frostbite while Firefly subjected you to fourth-degree burns. Ivy’s pollen gave you strange rashes in the most inconvenient of places and Killer Croc left deep bite and claw marks if you managed not to get eaten. Copperhead’s venoms discolored your flesh (assuming you got an antidote in time), but in a different way from the League of Assassins’ poisoned blades…

Several villains had their signature of sorts, and people versed in the ways of the Gothamite rogue gallery could recognize them on sight. All of that combined, it made for a very colorful patchwork of marks.

Finally, Dick had to mention the events that impacted Gotham or one of its boroughs as a whole, like the time Riddler had isolated the city from the world under threat of explosives, or when Joker had cut off the bridges between the main islands. Or even that one week where aliens teleported Gotham onto another planet.

Then started a massive and often bloody scramble for food. Forget friendships and loyalty, it was every individual for themselves in a mad battle for resources, often fought tooth and nail for. Dick had once seen a wealthy, decrepit grandpa bash heads in with his walking aid, or a mother literally tear an arm off someone threatening her children. In short, it was utter chaos, and everyone making it out alive sported fresh wounds that turned into brand new scars.

(But when you pointed them towards a common enemy, like the ones responsible for the whole mess, then Gothamites banded together like you wouldn’t believe. Civilians, thugs, cops, villains, vigilantes… the offending party had to deal with the united, brutal might of a vengeful Gotham.

The aliens that had wanted to create a Hunger Games style battle royale between the resident supervillains and vigilantes – with civilians as collateral – had never had the time to understand what they’d unleashed when tens of thousands of bloodthirsty humans, metas and others had marched on their base, uncaring of their defenses, razed it to the ground and blew up the remains. Not even Batman, with his inflexible no killing rule, had attempted to stand in their way. Bruce was many things, but not suicidal or stupid. He respected that Gotham always did what Gotham wanted and he, Dick and their family chose to add their contribution by dismantling the many alien traps in the rioters' way in an effort to minimize casualties.)

So, while the Batfamily’s scars were admittedly worse than most, they didn’t bother Dick. Each one had a story, one that ended well enough, since he survived it, and nobody in his hometown would blink twice at them. The Waynes and their closest friends publically loved extreme sports and had been the targets of enough failed or successful kidnapping incidents and assassination attempts that nobody asked how they collected so many wounds, giving them the perfect cover for their nightly activities.

But Outsiders like Peter, Diana and Jones didn’t understand that. When they saw Dick’s scars, they jumped to the conclusion of abusive parents and conned victims because people couldn’t understand Gotham’s violence without living there.

It was easier to let them believe the more common explanation, though, both because Dick wanted to keep his cover and because how did you explain to Outsiders the brutal madness that was Gotham? People thought tales from America’s seediest city were vastly exaggerated, if not outright fictional, to the point that the government didn’t bother sending relief or military forces whenever Gotham was under siege. Stories about the rogues ended in gossip rags, the kind that spread conspiracy theories and swore that the smallest event was an alien intervention.

(They were not, most of the time. The Bats kept a close eye on Earth, closer than the spread thin Lanterns, and wouldn’t miss so many aliens meddling. They were all too paranoid to overlook something like that out of hand, even if it came from third-grade tabloids.)

Another advantage of letting people assume he had been mistreated by his dad and tortured by vengeful targets was that it conveniently cut short any conversation. Dick felt a bit bad abusing the agents’ tact, but it wasn’t as if they would believe the truth either.

Telling them he hailed from Gotham, had been Robin, Nightwing, Batman and then Nightwing again and had fought monsters ranging from Betty, his 8-year-old classmate, to interdimensional gods would probably only earn him flat stares and a visit to the office shrink.

Best not to risk it; between Quinn, Strange and Crane, Dick’s history with therapists wasn’t exactly stellar or therapeutic. With his luck, the FBI shrink would turn into a supervillain within a month of his first appointment…

Chapter Text

Peter was in a good mood today. No big case in the works, El had planned to cook Italian tonight, the weather lady had forecast a warm and sunny week, and Neal had not done anything worrisome or illegal for a month. A full month!

Of course this had to be the day Neal acted up again, just to rain on Peter’s parade.

Where everybody outside wore loose or short clothes and smiled in the bright morning, happy with the early return of April sunlight, Neal walked out of his apartment covered from head to toe, with large sunglasses and his hat set deeply over his eyes.

It looked like one of those bad disguises amateur detectives wore in movies to be inconspicuous.

Even more concerning, his usually charmingly grinning CI looked downright grumpy when he climbed into Peter’s car; not even his designer sunglasses could hide that frown and pursed lips.

“Is everything alright?” Peter had to ask. When things went wrong for the conman, he tended to double up on the charisma and false cheer, not look as miserable as he did now.

“It’s just a headache, Peter.” Assured Neal with a forced smile that he dropped a second later.

“I’ve got medication in my office.” Offered Peter, but his friend was already shaking his head.

“Already took something pretty strong, but it’s not going away. Don’t worry about it, it should pass with some time.”

Except it didn’t. Peter watched as Neal got moodier and moodier all day. By the time he drove his CI back to his home, Neal didn’t bother smiling anymore and tersely thanked Peter with a hand over his eyes. He even got back inside blindly.

The next day was worse. And the day after. And the day after that.

He got so short with his colleagues and soured the for once cheerful mood so badly that Hughes stepped in and ordered Peter to stage an intervention: figure out what secret heist was stressing their CI so badly or he’d have to take a few days off in prison to calm down.

No way was Peter letting his friend be carted back to jail, so the next time he drove Neal back to June’s house, he followed him inside. Neal would prefer this conversation to happen in private, and Peter could check the flat for clues about anything bothering the conman.

No way was a simple headache the source of such uncharacteristic rudeness.

The first thing he noticed when he stepped foot in Neal’s apartment was the heavy curtains, all drawn over the windows, letting absolutely no light in.

Did Neal feel observed? Did he have a stalker or invasive neighbors? It could explain his tension.

Neal walked right in the dark apartment, leaving Peter to turn on the lights. He’d like to conduct his investigation with the ability to see, thank you.

But when the chandelier lit up, Neal flinched and grunted, startled. Then he turned towards Peter with a cross expression. “Did you have to do that?”

What, turn on the light? What did Neal have to hide so badly? Surely, even the most relentless of peepers couldn’t see through those layers of curtains, so the problem had to come from the inside.

“Yes, apparently, I did. What are you hiding in here, Neal?”

“Nothing, Peter. It’s just my home.” The conman growled back, before he went to fix himself some coffee in the unlit kitchen.

While the coffeemaker did its job, Peter quickly examined the entire flat. Nothing seemed amiss at first glance, but he knew better than to expect Neal to keep his secrets in plain sight. He began opening drawers and checking behind and under the furniture. He even drew back the curtains to check for voyeuring neighbors or forgotten binoculars.

Meanwhile, Neal watched him work with an annoyed frown under his sunglasses, a large mug of coffee and pills. Still keeping up the headache charade, then.

But no matter how much Peter looked, how thoroughly he overturned Neal’s home, he couldn’t find a hint of anything illegal. “What are you up to?” He demanded, at his rope’s end. “You have to tell me, Neal, or at least change your demeanor, because Hughes won’t tolerate any more insubordination from you.”

Neal collapsed on a chair, somehow not spilling a single drop of coffee. “I told you that I have headaches. But fine, I’ll be on my best behavior tomorrow. Now could you please…” He waved in the direction of the door. “I’m gonna try to sleep it off.”

Peter had no reasonable excuse to stay, other than the obvious fact that all this wasn’t about a migraine. This went way too far for a tiny headache. “Remember that I can track your movements. If you leave the house, I’ll know, Neal.”

The CI almost pushed him out of the apartment. “Yeah, yeah, you do that. Have fun spending the night watching me sleep. Good evening, Peter.” He slammed the door behind him and the agent watched the light vanish from the tiny gap underneath. Maybe this had to do with photos? The old kind that needed to be developed in darkness.

Whatever it was, he would get to the bottom of it.

The next day, Neal looked as miserable as before under his hat and sunglasses when Peter picked him up, but the moment they reached the office, he plastered a pleasant smile on his face.

Hughes and the others sent him strange looks all day, ranging from suspicious to concerned, since his fake smile fooled nobody, but what could they say? That Neal didn’t look genuinely happy to come to work?

In any case, today was still a warm day for April and nobody wanted to let the CI ruin the mood with his weirdness, so the man was left alone for the most part.

The next day was a Sunday, so nobody went to work and Neal stayed obediently at home. Peter checked, between bites of his picnic with El. His wonderful wife understood how concerned he was for his friend and only scolded him twice for not paying attention.

Even after being arrested, Neal Caffrey somehow still managed to interfere with Peter’s mariage. Damn.

On Monday, although Neal had fixed his plastic smile on his face again, Hughes decided he’d indulged too many of his eccentricities.

“Remove your hat and sunglasses, Caffrey. You can’t wear them indoors. This whole nonsense has gone far enough.”

Neal groaned and tried to argue, but Hughes was unmoving and the rest of the unit had gathered to see what was going on with their resident felon.

The men had started a betting pool on the reasons Neal kept his hat and sunglasses inside. Some thought he had a shiner, or that his vanity prevented him from showing how not enough beauty sleep had given him eyebags. Others had bet that Neal was an addict, and that his dilated pupils or bloodshot eyes would prove it. Unsurprisingly, the latter were composed of people that had not warmed up to the CI yet.

When Neal finally pulled off his hat and sunglasses, many were disappointed; through his squint, they could all see his pupils looked normal and he bore no eyebags. No black eye either.

But though they found nothing wrong with him, Neal never stopped squinting or covering his eyes with one hand while the other massaged his temples. “What’s wrong?” Eventually asked Diana after they started realizing Neal’s discomfort was all too real.

Heck, it had probably been real from the beginning and Peter now felt like an ass for doubting his friend again.

Neal sighed, and they all heard the pain in it. “It’s the light. There’s too much of it and it gives me the mother of all headaches.”

“... The light?” Neal’s grumpiness had started with the brighter weather, realized Peter. It would also explain why his flat had been so thoroughly obscured or why Neal had looked so pissed when Peter had pulled all the curtains and lit all the chandeliers. Crap. “Would it be better if we closed the shutters?”

Some agents grumbled about cutting off precious sunlight, but Peter and those who liked Neal all felt too guilty now to pay them much mind. Their friend was suffering here.

“It’d be nice, thanks.” Replied Neal gratefully. “You don’t have to close them all, just those in my corner.”

Despite his offer, Peter and Jones systematically closed all the shutters in their office and Hughes shut up all the protestors. Diana approached Neal with a glass of water and a bottle of aspirin.

“Here, for the pain.”

Neal turned her down, though. “I already took some heavy-duty pills this morning to leave the apartment; I’m not sure they would mix all that well with aspirin, but thanks anyway.” Diana still forced him to hydrate himself.

So Neal couldn’t even leave the house when it was sunny outside without medication? What would it be during the brighter months?

He had to voice his questions. “How did you deal with Summer before?”

Neal had placed his sunglasses back on his face, with no one arguing this time (the shutters reduced the amount of sunlight filtering in, but they didn’t cut it off completely) and had started massaging his temples again. “When I can’t go to less sunny countries or stay indoors, I only work between evening and morning, when there’s less light. I’m not sure how I’m going to pull this off now that I have office hours.”

“We can figure something out when the time comes.” Hughes stepped in, looking as guilty as Peter felt. They should have seen Neal’s suffering – the CI was their responsibility. “Since this seems to be a medical condition, you can ask for special hours or permission to work from home – like the customized schedules for new parents.”

Right, there was a program for young mothers and fathers that had no one at home to look after the kids; Neal’s circumstances were different, but there were already similar accomodations in place, and Peter could adapt his own schedule for his friend’s sake.

Whatever this condition was, it looked like serious business.

The rest of the day went by almost normally. Some people still grumbled about the drawn shutters, but Neal looked much less irritated than before which helped boost the team’s morale greatly. Without any of the agents noticing, the conman had become a vital part of the office’s soul.

It rained terribly that night, and the next day’s sky hung low over their heads, cloudy, dark and promising drizzle later. Neal greeted Peter in his car with a genuine smile and sauntered through the bureau when they arrived, distributing free coffee to everyone with his usual cheer.

The weather looked glum, but the CI was back to his charming self.

A couple days later, Peter encountered Mozzie leaving his house again; his literature club with El and June must be riveting for them to convene so often.

They exchanged their usual polite – if a bit stunted – greetings before Peter asked. “Did you know about Neal’s reaction to sunlight?”

“The headaches, yes.” Nodded Mozzie sagely, like this was common knowledge. “It's a family issue on his paternal side. I recall Neal saying that he didn't suffer from it as a small child but developed the symptoms later. It’s a fascinating condition, really.”

“So it is real.” Peter believed it was – Neal wouldn’t have faked such a thing for so long when it affected his attitude and working relationships so negatively – but he had to make sure. His CI could be awfully tricky sometimes.

“I didn't believe it either at first, Suit, but after seeing Neal curl up in pain on his bed every time we had more than half a day of bright sun, I can assure you it is as real as you or I. Our common friend is many things, but the kind to invent excuses to avoid work, he is not.”

True, Neal was a compulsive liar and a cheater, but he had an admirable work ethic. Never had Peter seen him slack off apart from absent doodling and origami folding, usually at the same time as he read a file. All his paperwork was systematically completed and compiled in time.

Some official agents could learn from that.

“We’ll try to give him an adaptable schedule on sunny days.” Peter promised.

“Good – you’re a cog in an oppressive and unfair system, but you take appropriate care of Neal. I appreciate that. Good day, Suit.”

Peter watched the other man vanish behind a corner in bemusement; this had almost sounded like a compliment.

Why, why did the White Collar office have to be so open and why did New York need to have so much Sun? What was the point? And the way it reflected on windows and glass skyscrapers… Just thinking about it rekindled Dick’s headache.

Thankfully, the team had eventually figured out his problem and agreed to help him deal with it as best they could. Dick hadn’t expected them to be so accommodating; people outside of Gotham tended to scoff and say to ‘endure’, as if it didn’t feel like a drill foring straight through your eyeballs and into your brain.

Because this was a problem all Gothamites shared, and one of the main reasons few ever left town.

Gotham hardly ever saw the Sun directly. The perpetual smog (and more than likely a few ancient curses and dark spells) kept its rays at bay until all its residents saw was a filtered glow, not strong enough to burn your retina or leave much of an afterimage. Nothing like the harsh glare of basically everywhere else.

Sure, they had a few true sunny days too. Like, maybe ten a year, split between Spring and Fall because the Summer pollution (worse than the rest of the year’s) and the Winter weather worked as an impenetrable barrier. But Gothamites stayed at home as much as possible during these days, like the nightly cryptids they were at heart. School was canceled, shops closed their doors, criminals didn’t conduct business. Heck, even Bruce, the work addict, refused to leave the manor; he had chosen a bat as his symbol after all, and Dick wasn’t called Nightwing for nothing either.

A couple years ago, they even had to make the factories work overtime to try to diminish the Sun's intensity by producing smoke. It had mostly been water vapor, so nothing polluting, but the artificial clouds had certainly helped put a stop to the hellish eleven consecutive days of unfiltered sunlight, courtesy of global warming.

(The entire city had come to an agonized stop. People had gone mad under the glare and the heat, others had committed suicide just to be free of the unrelenting Sun. Scenes of mass hysteria appeared on every street, with light-addled citizens shrieking and throwing stuff at the sky. Chaos reigned supreme. Several cults had risen that prayed – and sometimes sacrificed humans – to the 'cloud gods' so that they would shield them from the 'evil day star'. They even made dances and songs to summon the smog, little melodies that popped up anew whenever the Sun showed its dreaded face again.

The Eleven Days of Light would remain an ironically dark period in Gotham's history. Worse than any supervillain scheme to date.)

As a kid, when his birth parents were still alive, he had had no problem with sunlight and recalled tanning easily. But after living in Gotham (and Blüdhaven, Gotham’s close neighbor which shared its ghastly weather) for years, he’d developed the same intolerance for anything too bright and shiny. He’d never be as deathly pale as Bruce, Jason, Tim or Barbara for instance, born and bred Gothamites (even Duke, with his darker skin tone, bore the same weird paleness, a little like a corpse now that he thought about it), but comparing his current self with his childhood pictures made it obvious he’d gone down a few shades.

Hell, to get out in the Sun for more than half a day, he had to take hospital-grade pain medicine and apply a hefty dose of specially-made sunscreen for traveling Gothamites to avoid burns. His skin still looked healthily tanned enough that nobody thought twice about it, but it had lost virtually all its natural resistance to sunlight, which was a problem in an office with windows for walls and very little shade.

But that was every Gothamite’s lot when outside the protection of their dark city. Even local plants burned and died when transferred in a supposedly better place. Dick knew it was coming when he accepted this assignment, but his team’s unexpected thoughtfulness certainly eased his troubles. The perspective of Summer looked much less excruciating now.

It still hurt like hell, though.

Chapter Text

Reese Hughes watched as agent after agent walked into the interrogation room, only to exit it between half an hour and two hours later with nothing to show for their efforts.

Two days ago, chemical products magnate Frederic Walby, primary suspect in a large-scale case of money laundering, had dropped off the map, along with his secretary, Eleanor Dolls, mother of three children. As far as the FBI could tell, Walson had discovered their investigation into his business, panicked, ran away and taken his probably completely innocent secretary with him as hostage.

It had already been 46 hours since the two were reported missing; they needed to find their location before Walby deemed Mrs Dolls to be more dead weight than insurance if things went South. Every minute increased the chances of finding the woman dead in a ditch.

Time was of the essence, yet they couldn’t find anything useful.

They had one possible lead: Jack Summers, Walby’s supposed right hand man and main overseer of the money laundering. They’d found him this morning, over fourteen hours ago and had brought him into custody for interrogation.

He had not said a single meaningful word to the inspectors beyond demanding a lawyer. Reese was at the end of his rope.

Of course, he had other agents looking into other leads, like potential houses Walby might own, combing through his accounts for suspicious payments, or searching for something, anything to pressure Summers into selling his boss out.

Given enough time, Reese had faith that they would find something, but time was something Mrs Dolls didn’t have.

They rarely had a such a ticking time bomb in terms of human casualties in the White Collar Crimes Unit; either there was no dead body, or the victims were already dead by the time they were called. Hostage situations were thankfully uncommon and generally happened right before an arrest, when the suspect lost their cool and made a last ditch attempt at escaping justice. Nothing like this painful race against time.

As a result, the entire unit currently worked overtime on the Walby case, either frantically searching for a new lead or wearing down Summers’ silence and his thousand-dollar-per-hour lawyer.

Neither gave an inch no matter how many agents walked in the interrogation room. Summers was a hardened crook, well-versed into the FBI’s methods, and his solicitor deserved his ludicrous salary. They weren’t going to break so easily, not before Mrs Dolls’ time ran out.

Burke’s team had been part of the lead-searching side, because that was a field they had mastered, while making a felon of Summers’ caliber talk was not. Summers was suspected of killing and torturing quite a few people before he started working for Walby – rumor had it that the man had spent time in Gotham of all hellholes, although the bureau never had official confirmation.

(They never had much of anything from Gotham, to be honest. It always felt like that city was only on American maps for show, but didn’t actually belong with the rest of them. If it hadn’t been single-handedly responsible for about fifteen percent of the country’s wealth, Reese was sure it would have been cast out of the United States ages ago. Or maybe completely wiped out, just to be sure nothing nasty crawled out.)

In the hopes that new faces and a fresh approach would garner different results, Reese made the decision to temporarily pull Burke and his team from research and into interrogation duty. They were running in circles anyway, combing through Walby’s many known accounts.

Jones tried his hand first. Out of Burke, Berrigan and him (and Caffrey, who was as much a part of the team as the others, much to Reese’s chagrin), he was the most physically intimidating and the best at playing bad cop. The plan was for him to rattle Summers and then leave the door open for Burke or Berrigan to negotiate.

Technically, intimidation was not a sanctioned method of questioning, but a woman’s life was on the line, and Reese trusted Jones not to overstep.

“Mr Summers.” Greeted the agent in the interrogation room, choosing not to sit down to better loom over the suspect. The rest of them followed the conversation from behind a one-way mirror. “You’re already going down for money laundering and criminal association, as well as all the other charges we can pin on you for not cooperating. Don’t add indirect manslaughter by helping your boss murder an innocent woman.”

Straight to the point, with a threatening tone but not too aggressive. Jones was doing well, but it didn’t seem to have much effect on Summers. “I keep telling you, I have done nothing wrong. I don’t even have a criminal record. You have the wrong guy, friend.”

Next to him, the lawyer nodded, calm as ever. “My client is being detained without proof of his alleged deeds, Agent Jones. Instead of trying to browbeat him into admitting to crimes he didn’t commit, you should consider looking for the actual culprit and leaving my client alone.”

The interrogation went on along the same lines for a dozen minutes before Jones retreated; he was already shaking his head in defeat when he entered the monitoring room.

“This isn’t working. He’s obviously guilty, but either he’s convinced we won’t find anything, or he’s playing with us by demonstrating how he has all the power here. Maybe both, and he’s not at all affected by my act. I think this guy really did work in Gotham for a while – he’s too confident for a run-of-the-mill felon.”

In any case, it was Burke’s turn to grill Summers, and Jones passed him the baton with an encouraging nod. Reese and Berrigan immediately went back to watching the suspect, ignoring Caffrey’s obnoxiously bright cell phone next to them, all the more eye-catching in the dimly lit observation room. Was the conman not paying proper attention to this case?

The moment Burke was gone, he reverted to his old habits. Caffrey was hopelessly crooked and should be rotting in jail for his crimes, not dragging good agents down with him.

“Hello, Mr Summers, I’m Agent Peter Burke. I’m here to outline to you the various options you have at your disposal right now.” Said Burke, pulling a chair to sit down and drawing Reese’s gaze back to the interrogation room.

Summers looked just as unimpressed as before, but his lawyer spoke up first. “Agent Burke, the only acceptable option is for my client to walk out from here a free man and cleared of all your baseless accusations.”

“You’re expecting us not to find anything, but what if we do? What if right now we’re digging up irrefutable evidence of Mr Summers’ involvement? Are you still so sure you don’t want to hear my proposition?”

“You’re bluffing.” Stated Summers, cool as cucumber. “Like I told your colleagues, there’s nothing to find. But if you want to hear yourself speak, go right ahead; it just doesn’t concern me.”

“Thank you.” Burke replied with no small amounts of sarcasm. “As I was saying, there are several options. In the first, you keep quiet, Mrs Dolls’s body is found brutally assassinated in a few days, and by then we’ll have enough to send you to jail for all you’ve done, plus the nice little charge of assisting in her murder and obstruction in an investigation. You can look forward to at least thirty years behind bars, probably more given what I know about your other felonies. In any case, your life is as good as over.

“Option two, you help us find Walby and Mrs Dolls, and your cooperation is rewarded by a lighter sentencing and maybe a few privileges in prison. You might be able to pick your life back once you’ve done your time.

“Option three, you not only give us your boss’s location but also enough proof and testimony to bring him down, and you can hope to negotiate an early release or a house arrest instead of years in jail…”

Burke kept exposing all the pros to cooperation and the cons to refusing to speak, but they could all see Summers wasn’t buying it, and neither was his lawyer. In the end, the agent left the room, advising them to think about it. He deflated as soon as he reached the monitoring room.

“That was a waste of time; Summers ain’t breaking. I’ve no idea how he manages to stay so composed, but he’s not going to give us anything in time. Diana, you can go now, but don’t get your hopes up.”

“I’ll try, boss.” Replied Berrigan, already on her way out. When she appeared in the interrogation cell, her shirt had a few buttons undone, exposing her cleavage, and she sported a friendly smile.

If intimidation was against the rules, seduction was more of a… an approach not directly forbidden but ethically questionable. As long as the agent (male or female) didn’t have objections and they didn’t go beyond flirting, there would be no sanctions, but it was best kept for extreme situations all the same. Reese didn’t like resorting to it (or seeing his agents resort to it – he bore too many wrinkles to seduce anything now), but it had yielded good results in the past.

He didn’t like Caffrey using it either, but for one, the man was not one of his agents, for two, he had no morals to speak of, and for three, Caffrey seemed unable to restrain himself from flirting anyway. Might as well aim his dissolute tendencies in a useful direction.

“Mr Summers,” said Berrigan with a charming smile and a handshake. “I’m Diana. I was sent to get your version of the story about the Walby case.”

Summers’ gaze drifted quickly to her exposed bosom, but he seemed to lose interest in the next second and returned to his blasé charade. If anything, the lawyer looked more affected, but not enough for him to drop his professional mask. “Agent… Agent Diana,” he started, only pausing when he realized she hadn’t given him a surname, “what my client had been telling your colleagues for half a day is that he’s entirely innocent and unrelated to any of Mr Walby’s alleged criminal activities. It would be in your bureau’s best interest to drop the fake charges they made up in order to set up my client before we decide to press charges ourselves for illegal detention.”

Berrigan sighed, all commiseration and understanding. “I get you, sir. I really do, and I’d love nothing more than to show you the way out and forgo the mountain of paperwork all this is going to be, but I’m just a junior agent, and I can’t do anything against my bosses. They tell me to get your testimony, I have to take your testimony – I’m sure you understand. And between you and me, Mr Summer,” she leaned forward, as if ready to share a secret, flaunting more of her cleavage in the process, “my bosses really have it out for you. The only way they’d leave you alone is if you tell them something about Walby. Anything, really, just so they can focus on the other guy and let you go.”

Christ, she was good. Reeses began to wonder if maybe he should move her to another team, because this had Caffrey’s paws all over the act and he didn’t want to see a promising young agent like Berrigan be dragged to the conman’s level. He couldn’t object if Burke wanted to keep the felon close at hand, but he could try his best to protect the impressionable new agents from his bad influence.

“Sorry, Miss, but I don’t know nothing. If I did, I’d have told the feds immediately, like the law-abiding citizen I am.”

Summers wasn’t buying it. Damn. Berrigan tried to find a few more openings, acting like she wanted to help him, like she was just as tired and annoyed with bureaucrats as he was, but Summers never took the bait. She persevered for half an hour, laying down all her cards, but to no avail.

When she finally left, Summers stared at her back with a smug smile that told Reese he’d seen through their tactics. And the man didn’t even have the decency to look abashed by how he was running the FBI into circles!

Reese had one last option, one that was really out of bounds but that he would not hand off to any of his agents. If someone had to take the fall, it would be him.

He called the lawyer to his office to try to work over Summers’ head. Mrs Dolls’ life was in danger, her children and husband were anxiously waiting for her to come home, and Reese would do all he could to make sure she did, even if that meant overriding client-lawyer privilege.

“Do you have any idea what your client knows?” He asked the man – whose name he had already forgotten. “Any information could help save an innocent woman’s life, sir, think about that.”

The other man set him a flat glare. “Agent Hughes, I am not about to disclose my client’s secrets, assuming he has any. Moreover, I don’t appreciate you trying to corrupt me or you assuming I would ever betray a client’s privacy.”

“Even if your silence could spell someone’s death?”

“My job is to look out for my clients’ interest, not anyone else’s. I’m deeply sorry for Mrs Dolls’ unfortunate circumstances, but neither I nor my client are in any position to help.”

Reese was about to try one last plea when he noticed through the glass wall of his office, Neal Caffrey slipping inside Summers’ interrogation room. Alone.

Shit! Not only was that a grievous breach of protocol, but Caffrey could easily destroy what meager progress they’d achieved by saying the wrong thing. “Caffrey! Get out of there!”

All the people in the bullpen turned their heads in time to see the conman vanish inside. Burke swore, but he and his team moved immediately to pull Caffrey out.

The CI didn’t fight back and was frogmarched out of the room barely seconds after he made his way in. At the very least, he wouldn’t have had the time to say much.

More concerning were Burke, Berrigan and Jones’ expression as they escorted Caffrey away. The three of them looked at the felon in complete confusion, meaning the CI had done something in the cell. Reese decided to check on Summers right away, as did his lawyer.

Summers looked… haunted. Frightened out of his mind. His eyes were about to pop out of their sockets, his hands trembled and he flinched when he saw them enter the room. “I’ll tell you everything!” He swore in a quivering voice. “I’ll tell you all you want to know, I’ll plead guilty in front of the judge, I’ll tell you where the boss is, but please don’t let that man near me again!”

The lawyer paused for a second before he whirled towards Reese, furious. “Intimidation and threats are not an acceptable tactic, Agent Hughes! We’ll sue-”

“We won’t!” Shrieked Summers, looking at his lawyer in livid terror. “I’m not doing anything against the FBI as long as they keep me far from him!”

Then Summers spilled everything he knew about Walby’s criminal activities, including the location of a safehouse in Brooklyn where he had probably taken Mrs Dolls. Reese sent a team there immediately, gave Summers the proper paperwork to record his entire confession and stalked out of the interrogation room.

He found Caffrey sitting at his desk, brazen as always, surrounded by three baffled agents.

“Summers just blurted out all the crimes he ever committed and sold Walby out.” His audience blinked, not quite processing how easily the felon had broken down. Reese ignored their reaction to hiss at the CI. “What did you do, Caffrey? Threats are not receivable in court; you just cost us a case!”

The conman looked at him with – fake – innocence. “I didn’t threaten him. I barely had the time to get a sentence in before Peter and the others barged in. What makes you think I can intimidate a man like Summers with only a few words when scary guys like Jones got nothing out of him?”

Caffrey never changed his story or revealed what he said in the cell, no matter how long they interrogated him. Twenty minutes in, Reese received a call informing him that Walby was caught with incriminating evidence and Mrs Dolls was free and in good health, although in shock and a bit dehydrated.

“This is not over, Caffrey.” Warned Reese as he went to inform the rest of the unit and the Dolls family of the good news. “We’ll get to the bottom of this.”

They never did.

Summers shared all the details of his crimes, old or recent (much to his lawyer’s disapproval), but refused to repeat what Caffrey had told him. The man was outright terrified of the nonviolent CI.

Caffrey proved as uncooperative as ever. He kept changing his story, sometimes saying he told Summers about the latest baseball results, other times swearing he talked about gothic architecture, New York’s sunny weather or how bad the food in prison tasted.

The problem was that they had no proof that all these tales were fake besides the obvious: Summers wouldn’t have broken down so completely from that.

Then again, none of them could come up with a theory as to what could have caused such a reaction.

The camera inside proved utterly useless; Caffrey had carefully turned his back to it for the handful of seconds he was in the cell and had whispered low enough that it didn’t catch his voice. All they saw was Summers’ face blanch and contort in bone-deep terror.

But the Walby case was closed, with no casualties and no loose ends, considering Summers adamantly denied even thinking about suing the FBI for Caffrey’s methods. The mere idea, whenever his lawyer mentioned it, had him break down in shivers and barely restrained tears of dread. In the end, Summers looked all too happy to be carted to jail, far away from Caffrey.

A betting pool started about how the conman had done it (his agents thought Reese didn’t know), but with no conclusive answer and no plausible theory, it quickly fell apart. After all, the lead suppositions were that Summers had once worked with or for Caffrey (which none of their files concurred. The two had barely ever been in the same state at the same time, let alone close enough to collaborate. Besides, that wouldn’t induce half as much fright), that Caffrey was a meta that could inflict fear on his victims (a mandatory blood test in prison could attest he had no meta gene) or that Caffrey knew something about Summers’ family (which he didn’t have. No parents, no siblings, no spouse or child. Not even a close acquaintance outside of Walby – Reese had checked himself).

They all kept that scene in mind, though. Summers, paralysed by terror because of Neal Caffrey and begging to be kept far from the serenely smiling conman.

Dick watched as Mrs and Mr Dolls marched in the White Collar office to thank the agents for their work. Peter always looked awfully awkward receiving gratitude for what he perceived as his duty, especially when he thought he had not done his work.

But Dick was in no hurry to reveal himself as the reason Summers sang like a bird. He hoped the whole affair would be swept under the rug soon and bringing it up would only delay that.

It had been a stroke of luck, really. When Jones had mentioned Summers once working in Gotham, Dick had connected to the Batcomputer with his phone to get more data. Summers had indeed worked for Two-Face for a month or so as a relatively high-ranked officer due to his skill and experience outside the city.

Then the Bats got on his case.

Spotting the Outsiders looking for quick money or power in Gotham was ridiculously easy. They stuck out like sore thumbs to actual Gothamites, and the Bats always made it a point to go especially hard on them. It deterred most Outsider thugs from trying their luck in their city, and it was sometimes enough to get them out of the criminal world entirely.

A little fear made for powerful incentive, and Outsiders were seldom as hardened as the local outlaws. A single brutal beating by Batman or his Birds in all their terrifying might had led more than one criminal back on the straight and narrow. It didn’t work every time, but it was always worth trying.

(Gothamites, more resilient by nature, always stood back up and returned to their old devices once they healed from the Bats' tender care. Bruised skin, cracked bones and a little scare would never stop them from moving on with their lives – it certainly helped ease Dick's conscience when he remembered that most of the thugs he thrashed had loved ones and reasons of their own for turning to illegality.

No matter how hard he hit, the other side would soon be back on their feet, even if it meant the circle of crime would never be broken through vigilantism alone.

Outsiders, on the other hand, scared easily. A well placed whisper in their unsuspecting ears, a figure appearing from the shadows, a call of their names in a gravely or too cheerful voice, a few well-placed strikes, designed to hurt and paralyze without causing much damage… Dick's family had made terrorizing Outsiders until they ran from Gotham with their tails between their legs into an art form.

Unbeknownst to said Outsiders, each time one of them stepped foot in Gotham with the intent of making a name for themselves in the criminal scene, the locals started betting on how long they'd last.

The current champion had stayed three months and eleven days before Black Bat had spooked him away. The shortest – recorded – time was of two minutes and forty-eight seconds, the unfortunate thug's visit cut short by an early encounter with Scarecrow. The villains did as much to frighten Outsiders as the Bats, really.

Honestly, the sooner everyone understood that Gotham was only fit for Gothamites, the better for everyone.)

With Summers, it had yielded mixed results. The man had left Gotham with a broken arm and his tail between his legs, dropping the most violent aspects of his job in the process, but it had not made him a law-abiding citizen either.

Still, money laundering was arguably better than bank robbery, kidnapping, torture and murder. Less casualties and trauma.

Only this time, a life was on the line, a Mrs Eleanor Dolls, with a husband and three kids. Call him biased, but Dick wouldn’t let children lose a parent if he could help it and to hell with his cover. Juvenile victims, directly or not, had always been a sore spot in his family.

So he’d waited until Summers was alone and marched into the cell, knowing he had only a few seconds to make this count.

With his back carefully turned to the camera and his voice pitched low enough not to be caught by anyone but Summers, he had growled. The Batman Growl™ that he had practiced when Bruce had been assumed dead and Dick had worn the cowl.

“My family told me they met you in Gotham working for Two-Face, Mr Summers.” He’d grunted with his best rendition of a Bat-glare; he knew he sounded terrifying, especially to those who had already been subjected to the real thing, and judging from his reaction, Summers had definitely heard it before. “Ready for a repeat performance in New York?”

Diana, Peter and Jones had barged in right after, but Dick had said his piece and could already tell that Summers would spill everything. The man looked about to piss himself in fright and his trembling hands clung to the table like it was a lifeline while he leaned as far away from Dick as his handcuffs allowed.

It had been a risk, revealing his affiliations to a criminal like that, but he didn’t think Summers would ever blab, too afraid of seeing Dick or a family member pop by his cell. Besides, outside of Gotham, few people could recognize a Bat-growl. Bruce had been careful to monitor his TV appearances and left all PR matters to Clark or Diana, more family-friendly figures for the Justice League than the ominous Batman, and less likely to be recognized than the famous Bruce Wayne.

In Gotham, Dick would have been uncovered by everyone in a second – even those that had never met a Bat in person had heard tales and imitations and seen the results of their intimidation tactics firsthand on petrified, publically arrested criminals. But in New York? He could probably do the Batman Three Sacred G’s (growl, grunt and glare) at his colleagues all day long and still not be exposed.

All it would earn him would be more awkward questions to avoid and more ridiculous answers to come up with. Business as usual.

Chapter Text

It started as a routine investigation, a small museum with lousy security had found a fake painting in their collection, looked into the rest of their pieces and discovered a dozen counterfeits.

Not very good copies of not the best art, but added up, it made for quite a bit of money. The curator knew a guy who knew a guy who knew someone high-up in the FBI and Diana found herself on the case with Peter, Jones and Neal as her only backup. It was too small an affair for larger teams, and Hughes had already done the curator a favor by assigning three of his best agents and a CI to it.

He’d probably hoped to close the case quickly, but what began so easily turned more complicated the deeper they dug.

First, the head of security vanished; from all appearances, the man wasn’t abducted but ran away of his own free will. Then it turned out that another of the paintings, one they had thought to be authentic, was also a forgeries, only of much better quality.

Peter had then let Neal loose in the museum to sniff out the fakes. The conman had looked giddy like a kid in a candy shop when his handler had driven him there and told him to go wild, though it had been nothing compared to the gleeful expression on his face when he had returned to the office at the end of the day.

“Peter,” Neal grinned as he almost vibrated through his seat, “they’re all fakes.”

“What?!” Jones dropped his pen. Diana felt the same.

“They’re all fakes. From various artists, I think, which is why some works are better than others and why some weren’t detected immediately, but they’re still forgeries.”

They’d returned at the museum that evening where Neal put on a guide’s hat he must have lifted earlier and walked them through the tour to show all the little details the forgers had missed.

Admittedly, Diana found his act amusing – it certainly helped alleviate the heavy atmosphere as they discovered the extent of the problem.

Every painting in the museum. Every painting in the goddamn museum!

Sure, there were no real major pieces, no da Vinci or Picasso, but even minor paintings could be a massive headache when there were hundreds of counterfeits.

Thankfully, after Peter and Neal (who still looked like a kid on a sugar high) exposed the issue to Hughes, he agreed to assign more men to the case. Diana breathed a sigh of relief when five more agents arrived to take over the bagging and labeling of the paintings.

She wasn’t so relieved when she and her team moved on to speaking to the entire staff. For such a small museum, an awful lot of people worked there. The missing head of security obviously couldn’t be interrogated, but one man couldn’t be at the origin of such a large-scale fraud; he had to have accomplices, and they were who Diana, Jones, Peter and Neal wanted to root out.

Guides, acquisition managers, more security, cleaning staff, the people at the gift shop… the list of suspects went on.

At least the curator could probably be crossed out. If the man (who had been appointed there temporarily a month ago due to an administrative mishap) had not alerted the FBI, the whole con would have continued for years.

It quickly became obvious that all the old staff knew something, but no one talked. Either they were all in on it, or someone was threatening the innocent employees. Even Neal had a hard time spotting the difference between frightened guilt and guilty fright.

The case stagnated for days before a breakthrough literally landed on their desks in the form of an unmarked letter in the FBI’s mail.

Anonymous tips weren’t all that rare; oftentimes, people hesitated to denounce their coworkers or friends and only found the courage to speak up when they were alone at home. Of course, some also used mail to libel and report false facts, so the FBI had to check everything, but it certainly helped, most of the time.

The letter only had the name of the museum and an address. Of course Diana and her unit had to investigate it.

It led them to an office building, a four-floored complex that looked long deserted on the outside but the lock was brand new and people had obviously come and gone repeatedly in the past days. Diana would even bet someone had been there less than an hour ago.

Too bad locks were mysteriously open whenever Neal wandered near, giving Diana and her colleagues a good opportunity to step in when the poor, clumsy CI tripped on his feet and fell through the unlocked door.

What terrible luck Neal Caffrey had…

The four of them split up in two teams, and Diana went with Jones to check the lower levels. First floor was as empty and devoid of anything noteworthy as the outside promised: dusty desks, broken chairs, hollowed-out filing cabinets…

Second floor proved more interesting. Not nearly as much grime, and they soon found a couple paintings that were also exposed in the museum. Diana was no expert, but she believed these to be the originals.

A more thorough exploration revealed more art, all identical to pieces hung on the museum’s walls. The anonymous tip had been good this time.

Jones and she were looking through the pristine furniture in what was obviously the office of whoever was in charge when- “Bomb in the building! Evacuate immediately!” Came Peter’s bellow through the corridors.

They both rushed towards the exit, where they found Peter out of breath, looking around in panic. “You didn’t run past Neal?” He asked.

“No.” Replied Jones, his expression of horror quickly matching Peter’s and Diana’s. “He’s still inside?”

Instead of answering, Peter took a step towards the building, clearly about to go pull his wayward CI out.

Before he could go much farther, though, the aforementioned CI popped through the door, two paintings under each arm, looking thoroughly unimpressed by them. “What are you doing?” He asked as he carefully placed the paintings on the floor and made to return inside.

“What the fuck, Neal?! Didn’t you see the bomb?!” Peter went to catch their suicidal friend by the arm, but Neal proved surprisingly slippery.

The conman didn’t even slow down, and Jones and Diana had to step in in an attempt to keep him out of harm’s way. It didn’t work either, and they found themselves too close to the building for comfort. Neal was still headed straight for it. “Yes, I did, which is why I know we have some time.”

“It’s a bomb!” Pleaded Peter desperately, still trying to grab their elusive and fast felon before he reached the door. “We don’t run towards bombs, we run away!”

“It had a timer.” Neal argued, calm as ever as he went in and climbed the stairs. Diana hesitated to follow him for a second, but she wouldn’t abandon a teammate in danger, and Neal had long become part of the crew. “A timer that said we still have 32 minutes and 54 seconds before it goes boom.” Diana wondered if he was actually counting it down in his head. it sounded too precise for a random number.

“It’s not long enough for the bomb disposal unit to arrive and defuse it, assuming it doesn’t blow up before it hits zero!” Replied Jones urgently, also trying to bring back their CI before it was too late. “We’re too far out of their base and it’s rush hour – they’d never get here in time!”

“But it’s enough to empty the place.” Neal speed walked into the fourth floor, grabbed four more paintings out of the dozens stored there, and made his way out. The agents looked at him dumbly until he spoke up without breaking stride. “It would go faster if you helped, but if you don’t want to, at least don’t get in my way, would you?”

The three agents exchanged looks. Diana had to admit she was a bit awed by how calmly Neal handled the situation; the conman didn’t sound the least bit scared, only a bit irritated by their meddling.

A red light blinked in the corner of her eye. 32:12. The timer of the bomb sat on top of a mess of colorful wires and explosives, in plain view of anyone entering the room. Every second ticking away was accompanied by an ominous ‘click’.

Click. Click. Click. Click.

Not giving herself a chance to second-guess her decision, Diana picked up four paintings herself and ran out of there. If Neal was so adamant in saving the art and couldn’t be swayed, all she could do was give a hand to speed things up.

Behind her, she saw Peter and Jones follow suit, wide-eyed and baffled by the situation, but willing to help in the face of such determination.

Thirty-two minutes later, the office building blew up.

Diana endured the blast of hot air and dust in silence, still in a disbelieving daze after Neal’s scolding. Every painting and every file they could find had been carried out to a safe distance before the timer went out and were waiting next to them, unscathed.

Her colleagues didn’t look any better than her as the building collapsed on itself in a roar of smashing concrete and breaking metal. They had been inside not five minutes ago. The rest of their unit and some emergency responders for bombs were on their way to them, to check for injuries – as protocol dictated – to close off the area and to gather the art. Diana distantly wondered what they would make of this scene and their shell-shocked state.

As for Neal, he looked down at his salvaged loot in satisfaction, not even turning to watch the explosion, like this was something he saw every other day. Diana had no idea how he did it; all she could think was that she had been a few minutes off from being caught in the blast to save some paintings. Second-grade painting at that.

When she gathered enough of her wits to ask, Neal frowned at her in a disapproving way. “Art is art, Diana, no matter how rated it is. Artists put a lot of effort, time and attention into making these paintings, you know, and that’s all that should matter, and all I need to want to preserve it. Not how much money it can be sold for.”

An odd outlook for a forger, but she supposed Neal had always had a clear appreciation for everything artistic beyond his occupation. “I guess it is.” She relented, earning herself a bright smile from the conman before he went to fuss over the state of his loot. “I don’t think I’ll ever understand Neal.”

“Me neither.” Grunted Peter next to her, startling her. She hadn’t expected anyone to hear that. “Risking his life for a few canvases and some dried paint like that… One day, he’ll be the end of me. What if the bomb had exploded before the timer hit zero?”

They all took a moment to reflect on that, the reality of how close they’d been to dying sinking in again. “He probably didn’t realize how dangerous a real bomb is.” Reasoned Jones with the air of someone all too used to civilians without training minimizing threats.

“Or he doesn’t have any self-preservation instincts when it comes to art.” Scoffed Peter. “If Neal had any restraint around paintings, he wouldn’t have become an art thief to begin with.”

“Maybe he hadn’t expected the explosion to be so big either.” Added Diana, who was still a bit in shock herself at seeing an entire building collapse because of so small a device. Bombs were not a common problem in White Collar crimes. Even if she had witnessed explosions before, today marked the first time she had seen the bomb before it went off.

“In any case, he’s making it up to us by buying us drinks after this is over.” Decided Peter, almost back to his normal self by now. They could hear sirens in the distance already; nothing sped up police response like an explosion, even if it was in an abandoned area without a single resident in a three-block radius. “I sure hope the files we saved were worth it.”

Dick watched in satisfaction as they closed the case. The museum full of fakes had gotten off to a wonderful beginning, but he hated the mere idea of people blowing up art just to get rid of evidence. Dami would have had a fit and sliced the culprits into bloody pieces for such a crime.

The files they had saved were explicit and incriminating enough that they put an immediate conclusion to the affair. The entire museum had been part of a massive con: it bought several paintings on the cheaper side and sent them to various forgers (most of them not very good) to make copies. Then they hung the counterfeits, while the guides subtly alluded to the fact that they were for sale at interesting prices to potential customers if they could keep it quiet, citing budget problems. The forgeries were sold cheaper than the value of the real painting, but without all the official documents and most customers trusted museums too much to think about it twice; if they ever discovered the con, they would have no proof of having ever obtained their fakes from there and would probably not have contacted the authorities after buying art under the table.

The real paintings were either stored to make more copies in the future, or sold by fences in the know. All in all, it was quite an impressive scam, Dick had to admit, and it would have likely kept running for a long time had there not been a mistake in the appointment of the current curator.

Almost everyone else had been threatened or bribed into silence by the manager of purchases, Mrs Dunkel, the instigator of the whole thing, including the runaway head of security, who turned out to have also sent the anonymous letter in a surge of guilt and surrendered to the FBI a day later.

The poor man had looked horrified when they told him about the bomb. It had never been his intention to send them into a trap, only to point them to where they would find evidence. Unfortunately, Dunkel had chosen the same time to destroy all the evidence in the most dramatic way possible.

It hadn’t been a murder attempt; Dick had known that from the beginning. The bomb hadn’t been hidden, everything lay in plain sight, there had been absolutely no traps to keep them inside… Dick had extensive and up-close experience with various types of murder attempts, including ones by bombs, and that hadn’t been it. If there was a visible timer (usually for increased dramatic and tragic effect), then the room had to be locked or the victims bound. Or maybe there’d be traps and puzzles between them and the exit, if Riddler was the culprit.

What had happened that day looked more like a particularly clumsy way to dispose of dangerous evidence while Dunkel made herself scarce and an alibi.

Dick could have disarmed the bomb with his hands tied and his eyes closed, but Neal Caffrey had no reason to know how to defuse an artisanal explosive device. He’d still have done it of course, if there had been no other way, but given his estimated radius of the blast and with over thirty minutes to spare, there had been no need. Dick and the agents even had time to save everything of importance.

But Christ, did Peter and the others have to freak out so much? It had been a tiny bomb with a timer, and no reason to believe it would go off before the appointed time (like several of the Joker’s more devious tricks).

And it hadn’t even been a tricky bomb, with tripwires to set it off, or one that released fear toxin, acid or razor-sharp chattering teeth. No shrapnel, no expelled additional bombs that would set off later, when emergency services would scour the rubble for survivors (Joker’s latest fad), and not even a hint of the most dreaded substance in Gotham.

Glitter.

Gothamites didn’t like glitter. It was coarse and rough and irritating, and it got everywhere. Despite your best efforts, you’d find those little flakes of sparkling horror in every nook and cranny for months, up to and including in the victim’s nightmares and in their underwear, ready to scratch their privates and minds into madness.

There was a reason Steph still used the stuff, and a reason B strictly regulated how much she had access to. Only the worst of the worst deserved the glitter treatment.

In comparison, a good old home-made bomb was nothing to write home about.

Days like these, Dick missed Gotham more than ever. At home, nobody would have panicked over a bit of TNT. They would have left the area calmly after taking the time to finish whatever had brought them there in the first place, because if you dropped everything at the first tick of a timer, you’d never get anything done.

Although that was apparently not a sentiment shared anywhere else. For instance, Dick recalled a dumbstruck Uncle Clark asking him what drills were like in Gotham schools. Apparently, a class of preschoolers had visited a museum in Metropolis (some time before the Knights vs Meteors incidents – no self-respecting Gothamite had dignified Metropolitan institutions with their presence since) right as a bomb alarm sounded.

No, neither the preschoolers nor the teachers had set up the bomb. Why do you ask?

Anyway, while everyone around them had stampeded their way to the nearest exit, the class had calmly walked out, like every drill and pamphlet told you to. The teachers had even commented on some of the antiques they passed by without stopping, because even if they had to evacuate and their guide had hightailed it, they’d paid for a tour, dammit.

It turned out Uncle Clark and the local emergency responders had been a little baffled by such flippancy. Poor things didn’t have bomb alerts often enough to become inured to them.

In Gotham, you just called that a regular Thursday.

It took threats the scale of a supervillain to see them Gothamites lose their cool (a real supervillain, not one like Kite-Man or Polka-Dot Man, who only earned the title through seniority and technicality), and even then, they never panicked like Outsiders. Panic was useless, it only led to mistakes – everyone knew that.

(Unless the Sun was concerned, because nothing they did could affect the Evil Day Star; they could only pray and try to temper its cruel light. A little panic could be tolerated then.)

Bats took it a step further, like in most things, but that steadfastness was a Gotham staple. In fact, in lots of ways, Bats were just regular Gothamites cranked up to eleven.

But boy, must it be so exhausting to freak out over the smallest of things like Outsiders did…

Chapter Text

When Peter took Neal Caffrey as his CI, he obviously knew the man had an interest in art. He’d also quickly figured out during the time he chased the forger all over the world that Neal didn’t steal famous paintings or priceless items for the money or the ‘glory’ or to gloat about his latest possessions.

Neal was, to put it simply, an adrenaline addict; theft, con and forgery happened to be a convenient way to merge both his hobbies: the thrill and the art. Just because he stole or copied a piece didn’t mean it was his type, and the other way around.

Yet Peter was still caught unawares when he realized exactly what type of art Neal favored and reproduced in his free time, when there was no felony involved.

It turned out that Neal loved everything gothic, be it the architecture movement with the large stained glass windows and Art Déco patterns or the more ‘modern’ definition about darkness, gloominess and more darkness.

(Admittedly, Peter was no expert in that either category, but especially not in the latter and this was only based on his observation of black-clad people with heavy makeup, lacey garments and dyed hair that he sometimes saw scowling on TV or in the street. He knew his opinion was a bit restrictive and probably didn’t reflect what those people called gothic, but he didn’t have the time or motivation to look into it further. Sue him, Peter was an old man at heart who could no longer keep up with youngsters.)

In any case, Neal liked what Peter understood of that style, for all that he would never adopt the same look (Neal not-so-secretly enjoyed colors too much for that, but bright pinks or flashy blues unfortunately made for too recognizable a costume for a con).

The most prominent – and invasive – evidence of that strange love was the gargoyles.

At first, they were pretty discreet; half-finished drawings in the corner of unfiled documents, surrounded by hypnotic geometric patterns, or an eraser artfully carved into a scowling dragon-like creature during a particularly long stakeout. Nothing remotely worrisome.

But as Neal found his place in the White Collar Unit, so did the gargoyles, until they started multiplying and appearing everywhere. Statues of all sizes and materials, representing monstrous beasts popped all over the bureau, on wall and on everyone’s desks, like the most demented gifts conceivable.

El and Peter received a vaguely dog-shaped stone gargoyle the size of Satchmo for their wedding anniversary, complete with horns and folded wings. The craftsmanship was exquisite, and they could all tell Neal had sculpted it himself, but what the hell, Neal?! In terms of cumbersome gifts, this was right up there with Mozzie’s millstone!

Satchmo immediately adopted the thing, yapping excitedly around it like it would respond – don’t think about that! – and sitting next to it, mimicking its posture with a lolling tongue and gleaming eyes. El had looked at the gargoyle with a strained smile, clearly wondering where in the garden they could stash it so that it wasn’t the first thing visitors saw before they turned on their heels and ran.

Out of respect for the time and effort put into making it, El had begged Peter not to make a scene and they had both accepted the gift with forced gratitude. Peter doubted they’d convinced Neal, but none of them talked about it later and small gargoyles continued appearing randomly in the bureau.

(Neal’s apartment was littered with the abominations, so much so that Peter wondered how he could sleep in there, surrounded by countless grimacing and threatening figures. The conman said it soothed him, prompting Peter to offer visits to the work-affiliated shrink if he had troubles relaxing that badly.

Mozzie only shrugged and spent an hour checking them all for hidden mics or cameras or spontaneous signs of life every week, apparently well used to his partner-in-crime’s unusual collection.)

So no, Peter hadn’t intended to ask questions about the disturbing statues even when he found a tiny, horrifying metal monkey-like sculpture hanging on the rearview mirror of his car, or another gargoyle in the men's toilets at the FBI. Not over the stalls, mind you, but coming face to face with a grinning, vaguely goat-shaped creature of clay set innocuously next to the sinks when you went to wash your hands was never a nice experience.

He shared his findings with Clinton and Diana (who confirmed there was another one in the women’s restroom), then they left the conference room and stumbled upon Neal talking to the grotesque, wooden, bird-like gargoyle on his desk like it was alive now that he thought no one saw him.

They unanimously decided it was time to stage an intervention.

Pretexting El wanted to see them, he invited Neal, Diana and Clinton to his house to talk – no way were they breaching this subject surrounded by the nightmarish sculptures in Neal’s flat. Peter knew he wasn’t the only one feeling uncomfortable and observed under so many lifeless, empty eyes.

“Neal.” Peter started, having been designated official spokesman, much to his chagrin. Talks like these were not his forte. “We’ve been concerned about you lately.”

The CI smiled and tilted his head, bemused, clearly having no clue about any worrying behaviors. “I promise you, Peter, that I have nothing remotely illegal in mind at the moment.”

“That’s not what this is about.” The handler shot down. He didn’t want Neal to think they were worried about him rather than for him. “It’s about that hobby of yours of making gargoyles out of anything.”

Neal frowned. “Peter, I swear the papers I folded into origami gargoyles were going to the trash and didn’t contain anything sensible. I’m not that careless.”

“... Wha-”

“It’s not about those.” Interrupted Diana, apparently figuring that Peter was about to ask about any paper gargoyles whose existence he had been blissfully unaware of heretofore instead of going straight to the point. She’d have been right. “We’re more worried about the one you have on your desk.”

“Gary?”

That got them all to stop and reassess the severity of the situation. Neal had goddamn named at least one of his gargoyles. “You call your gargoyle Gary?” Inquired El with more tact than Peter could muster at the moment.

“Yeah, Gary the gargoyle.” Neal nodded like there was nothing fundamentally off with that sentence. “What’s wrong with him?”

‘Him’, not ‘it’. Christ, this was worse than Peter expected; they should have contacted the bureau psychologist directly instead of taking that home. None of them were equipped to deal with that level of delirium.

“You do know that it’s not actually alive, right?” Asked Clinton, looking as disturbed as Peter felt.

They received a blank look in return that had Peter even more concerned for his CI’s sanity, before Neal burst into chuckles. “Oh my God! Yes, Jones, I know they’re not alive.”

“Then why are you talking to ‘Gary’?” Demanded Peter with more harshness than he intended. He flinched immediately at his own tone but Neal didn’t look upset when he shrugged.

“I’m using it as a rubber duck and it’s easier to talk to if I have a name for him.”

Once again, they paused, exchanging glances to see if anyone understood anything. El asked the question on all their lips, the life-saver. Peter had married the most amazing woman in the world. “A- A rubber duck?”

“Yeah, a rubber duck.” At their confused and increasingly apprehensive stares, Neal elaborated. “You don’t know about that? It’s a fairly common concept in coding but it can be applied to a lot of fields – when you’re stuck on a program or something, you explain the whole process that led you there to a rubber duck. More often than not, the solution will appear as you talk and you’ll curse yourself for missing something so obvious.”

Peter scrutinized his friend’s face, but Neal looked as serious as ever. “Really?”

The conman huffed. “Yes, really. Look it up if you don’t believe me.”

Clinton was already on his phone, reading something in silence. A minute later, with the weight of everyone’s gazes on his shoulders, he looked up and nodded. “Seems legit, Peter. I found several sites speaking about rubber ducks in coding. But none of them mentioned any gargoyles.”

“I just like gargoyles better.” Neal shrugged with a secretive smile. “Besides, you’d all look at me weirdly if I arrived at the bureau and pulled out a rubber duck.”

“We already look at you weirdly with your gargoyles, Neal.” Countered Diana, never one to beat around the bush, although in this case, Peter figured blunt honesty might be the better part of valor. Surely there was no polite way to enquire why your CI was so obsessed with diformed, grotesque statues to the point of bringing so many to work. Every agent had arrived one day to find a hand-carved gargoyle on his or her desk, made of anything, from wood to clay, stone, candle wax or tinfoil. Diana even had one in marble, probably from the discarded parts of a statue the bureau had ordered Neal to carve for a con.

The only reason no one panicked or thought this was some kind of subtle, ominous threat was that they’d all witnessed Neal making similar sculptures in his free time. Otherwise there’d have been a frantic manhunt to find the culprit and get an explanation out of them.

In any case, Neal looked at them all in bewilderment right now. “Really? Don't you find gargoyles pretty? I thought you liked the gifts.”

“... They’re nice.” Peter replied, lying through his teeth. While the wooden carving on his desk or the tinfoil pocket-sized gargoyle on his kitchen plan no longer bothered him, the giant stone one in his garden still certainly did. “But you have to admit it’s an unsettling hobby, and that putting some all over the bureau, including in the restrooms is a bit over the top.”

Neal hummed. “I never thought of it like that. I only wanted to liven the bureau a bit – that place is desperately void of any decoration. But if it bothers everyone so much, I guess I can hold back a little.”

“That would be appreciated.” Agreed Diana, with Clinton nodding besides her.

“Oh, OK. Sorry if it bothered you.” How could a grown man look so much like a kicked puppy? Peter felt bad just looking at Neal’s downcast eyes. “But you liked Nelly, Katerina, Juliet and George, right?”

Oh dear. “Who?”

Neal looked at Peter with huge, hopeful blue eyes; he could have sworn they glistened with unshed tears. “The gargoyles I left on your desks to use as your own rubber ducks as personal gifts. You have Nelly, Diana has Katerina and Jones has Juliet. George is the one I gave to El for her own work.”

Faced with such a pitiful look, Peter could only give one answer. “Of course I love uh, Nelly. Nelly is a wonderful gift.”

Next to him, El, Diana and Clinton emphatically agreed that they adored their own gargoyles.

They were all so weak, dammit.

At least all four of those sculptures were small enough to be held in a hand, like all the ones Neal had personally gifted to agents (and probably to everyone he was close to). Nothing compared to the hip-height monstrosity in his garden.

… God, Neal had probably given that one a name too…

In the blink of an eye, Neal’s downtrodden expression morphed into his usual smiling face, with a hint of gloating smugness in the corner of his mouth. “That’s good to hear! Guess you’ll rely on my gifts for cases too from now on!”

Damnit. They’d been conned.

A couple weeks later found Peter in his office, struggling over a case, reviewing all the reports and files instead of going home to El for the night.

He knew he was missing something, something obvious, but no matter how hard he tried he just could pinpoint what.

The rest of his team had also opted to stay until they solved the case, working overtime in the hopes of unearthing the missing link. All they’d figured out so far pointed to their main suspect smuggling antique jewelry lifted from overseas museums and private collections, but they had nothing concrete to request a search warrant of his many, many properties – too many to search one by one – and the man knew too much of Neal’s reputation and appearance to attempt an undercover operation.

Tomorrow – according to all of Neal and Mozzie’s sources – clients would pick up the latest stolen jewelry in an unknown location, but the team had no idea where that would be and knew no more smuggling would happen any time soon after that one. Their suspect had caught on to their investigation and would lay low immediately after this last high-stakes sale.

All they could do was review everything, cross all their pieces of information in the hopes of figuring anything out before it was too late. A mind-numbing job, all the more frustrating when they knew in their guts that the answer lay in the documents they’d already gathered.

Peter lifted tired eyes from his desk, where the black lines on white paper had begun blurring into each other. His gaze fell on the palm-sized sculpture sitting in the corner of his desk, a gargoyle vaguely in the shape of a horse, bearing sharp teeth at him in a horrendous grin.

It definitely didn’t look like a Nelly.

He glanced around; Neal, Clinton and Diana were busy perusing their own files and everybody else had long left the bureau. The soundproofing of Peter’s office prevented any voices from carrying outside – no one would hear if he tried Neal’s ridiculous method.

The case was at a standstill anyway, he had nothing to lose except a little of his self-esteem, which was a price he was willing to bargain for a potential breakthrough.

“Nelly.” He started in a low voice and without moving his lips too much. He already felt like a moron for talking to a gargoyle, no need to risk being overseen doing it too.

“We’re trying to arrest a smuggler of jewelry, and we’re positive the culprit is Evan Stephens, but we can’t find any conclusive evidence or the place where he trades his goods… The case started when one of our informants told us he found a necklace of gold, emeralds and jade that he recognized as royal jewelry, stolen two years ago from a museum in eastern Europe…”

The more he talked, the fluider his speech and the more organized his thoughts became. Neal might have been onto something with his rubber duck problem solving theory, although he could have stuck to ducks and not gone for horrifying monster carvings.

“... and his bills show he did go to that shop where- Wait a minute.” He jolted up, an epiphany dawning onto his weary mind. "'Fanciful Meatings’ is a butcher’s shop, but our suspect is vegetarian and he lives alone. Why would he visit there so often, let alone buy for…” He browsed the account statement, looking for a price. “For over a hundred dollars of meat every week? If the shop belongs to him…” More shuffling. “Yes, it does, it’s one of his! He’s paying the owner to make the exchange in his stead and give him an alibi, and covering up the bribe by pretending to buy overpriced meat! I know where to begin to look! Thank you Nelly!” He automatically aimed a smile at the gargoyle, and its distorted expression made it look like it was grinning back.

Peter stood up, invigorated by the recent discovery and about to tell his team to prepare for a search when he realized they were already watching him through the glass wall of his office.

They obviously couldn’t hear him, but it was pretty clear he’d been talking to his own personal gargoyle, which explained Diana’s and Clinton’s worried and wide-eyed expressions, and Neal’s gleeful, smug grin.

Crap. Thankfully Peter had good news and more important things to do at the moment than wallow in his shame of being caught talking to Nelly. He left his office with a strong, decisive stride, ignoring his CI’s sniggers and his coworker’s careful inquiries about his state of mind (no, he didn’t need a break, than you Clinton).

“I know where the exchange will take place.” He announced.

“Thank you Nelly!” Laughed Neal, as if he’d heard Peter say it in his office; the agent willfully pushed that thought to the deepest corners of his brain for now to avoid blushing like a kid caught smoking in the toilets.

Neal couldn’t read lips, could he?

New York was woefully devoid of gargoyles, so Dick made it his mission early on in his undercover stint to add as many as he could while he worked there.

Yes, he’d noticed almost immediately that no one else around him seemed to appreciate the inherent beauty of a gargoyle, but he never let that deter him. With enough exposure, he’d make them like the misshapen sculptures, whether they wanted to or not.

And maybe he was a bit homesick and gargoyles reminded him of Gotham, that didn’t change the fact that New York and the White Collar Crimes office could use more Art Déco ornaments. Or any ornaments in the bureau’s case – did no one ever hear that a welcoming workplace helped people do a better job? The office looked as dull as mortgage fraud investigations with its clear, streamlined areas, glass partitions and soft, aseptic pastels everywhere. The single, dying ficus in a pot couldn’t work miracles!

It kinda reminded Dick of Metropolis, which wouldn’t do at all. The place needed a little Gotham touch.

So he started making gargoyles, the pinnacle of Gothamite art, and who cared if it drew a link between Neal Caffrey and Dick’s home city? Clearly, the agents only thought he had weird tastes and didn’t look any further; there was zero risk of being uncovered there.

Hell, governmental agencies and offices had clear instructions not to hire people from Gotham, so Dick could be sure the FBI was clear of any fellow Gothamite that would understand his plight.

Nobody here knew that small, hand-made gargoyles were a common, almost traditional housewarming gift in Gotham for centuries, lucky charms of sorts. People made them from anything and they supposedly looked over the home and its residents, like silent guardians scaring threats away – like Batman, actually. Thanks to their malformed appearances anybody could cobble one together, regardless of skill or wealth.

When Dick had moved in Wayne manor at age eight, freshly orphaned and intimidated by the house and everything in it, Bruce had welcomed him with his first gargoyle, a wooden figurine vaguely shaped like a bird with four sets of wings, wickedly long talons and a jagged beak. The craftsmanship was atrocious, but among the priceless treasures and expensive everything, it looked reassuringly normal in spite of its grotesque appearance.

After two days of wondering what the deal was with it (Dick hadn’t truly understood what B had explained of the custom back then) and feeling a bit disturbed by the thing, he’d eventually warmed up to it and decided to call it Gary. To this day, it still sat proudly on his desk in the manor and was the model for all the subsequent Gary's he carved when far from home and in need of familiarity or comfort.

Bruce still made unique gargoyles for his (many) new kids, and Dick made it a point to explain their meanings to those who didn’t hail from Gotham. He also took the kids on tours of the manor to show the innumerable gargoyles left behind by Bruce’s ancestors. They were never thrown away and stood watch in every corner of the house, some hanging on walls, others sitting in glass cases. Most of the latter looked very fancy, with precious materials and shimmering gems that only highlighted their distorted, terrifying features.

(Whoever accused B of being extravagant had clearly never heard of his predecessors' propensity for outlandish sculptures. One of the old gargoyles was made entirely of assembled rare seashells, another of volcanic rock and a third of silver with kryptonite beads for Christ's sake, and those weren't the weirdest by far, only the ones whose materials Dick could identify by sight alone.)

Dick still preferred Gary’s simple, heartfelt familiarity, though, hence the copy currently displayed with pride on his desk in the White Collar Unit. Gary the Fifth.

Besides being a marvelous improvement in the bureau’s nonexistent decoration policy and a secret callback to a Gothamite tradition, gargoyles also served a more practical purpose. Dick hadn’t been lying when he explained the whole rubber duck method.

Bats lived among gargoyles, perched on the large ones to prey on unsuspecting criminals underneath, camouflaged as one on rooftops, brooded next to life-sized grimacing statues… Gotham’s gargoyle-laden skyline was their natural habitat and they thrived in it.

More than that, when one of them was stuck on a case, either in the field or in the cave, gargoyles always helped them order their thoughts. Dick had lost count of how many times he had ranted at a stone statue and the solution revealed itself, like magic.

So yes, gargoyles were awesome and his plan to have the White Collar Crimes Unit adopt them had worked wonderfully. Peter had fallen for it hook, line and sinker, unwittingly playing along until he found himself talking to Nelly. Every piece was slowly falling into place.

And if all else failed, there was always the army of origami gargoyles Dick had been painstakingly folding in secret since day one. For now, they assembled in a janitor's cupboard (said janitor having been bribed with a painting of him and his family – and their new gargoyle, Steve – to keep it quiet and use another, farther away cupboard), waiting for the day their numbers allowed them to overcome the whole bureau with their grotesque glory.

Soon, Dick and Gary the Fifth would lead an artistic revolution, and the Age of Gargoyles would be upon the FBI!

Chapter Text

While it was usual for suspects to flee, White Collar criminals tended to seek deserted places, to escape arrest by losing their pursuers in warehouses and buildings devoid of human life.

Clinton was not used to culprits breaking into a house (a very lived-in house, judging by the carefully watered and pruned plants on the balcony) and taking one of its inhabitants hostage.

They heard screams and pleading before they broke down the door, a woman crying and begging for someone’s life.

Finally on site, the team saw their suspect (Max Langston, forger of ancient clocks and other delicate mechanisms, meticulous and mousy, not someone they had profiled as having a violent bone in his body), a gun in hand, the muzzle pointed at the head of the shell-shocked boy of ten or so he forcefully held in front of him.

“Don’t come closer!” He barked, eyes wild and hands trembling lightly. “I’ll shoot!”

Yeah, he looked like he would. There was a point in most improvised hostage situations where you had to step down for the safety of the captive, to calm the criminal down and try to negotiate, or at least lower the chances of them pulling the trigger out of sheer panic.

“Pull back.” Ordered Peter. They all retreated to the next room, Diana taking along the desperate woman still begging for the child – his mother, probably. “We need a plan.”

“Maybe we could circle him and get him from behind?” Suggested Diana in the same low tone.

“He’ll shoot the moment we startle him.” Retorted Clinton. “It’s too risky.”

The mother whimpered next to them, but they couldn’t waste time reassuring her beyond an understanding glance. First, they needed to save her son, then they could tell her everything would be fine.

“We’re not going to move, Langston, you don’t need to shoot!” Shouted Peter in an effort to buy them some time; in a lower volume, he continued. “Ma’am, is there any other access to this room?”

It took repeating the question twice for the sobbing mother to answer. “No… only the- the window and you can’t- you can’t open it from outside.”

“Shit!” Clinton cursed; negotiations and stalling it was, then. “I’ll call for backup, maybe a sniper.”

Except any attempt on Langston’s life could very easily have drastic consequences for the boy. Clean outcomes to hostage situations were hardly as common as the FBI would like.

“You do that, Diana evacuates the civilian, and I’ll try to talk Langston down.” Nodded Peter before he turned to the open door. "Langston!"

Clinton tuned him out as he left the room to send his call. Hughes promised backup in twenty minutes, which was by no means ideal, but could have been much, much worse.

He was about to tell Peter when he heard his usually polite boss curse. “What’s wrong?” Clinton demanded when he reached the other agent. Peter wasn’t in the room they had retreated to, and a cautious look showed him where Langston had stood previously.

Alone.

“He escaped through the window with the kid! We need to give chase, now!”

A running target was much harder to apprehend safely than a still one, especially with only two agents, but reinforcements would have to keep up. “After you, boss!”

They vaulted through the open window into an empty back alley. Langston was nowhere in sight, so they split up to travel both sides of the street. A kid’s life was on the line, they couldn’t waste any time with safety precautions, protocole be damned.

Thankfully, Langston hadn’t fled far; with a boy in tow that he had to keep at gunpoint, he couldn’t run as fast as earlier. With any luck, that would incite him to let the kid go unharmed to keep ahead of the FBI.

“I can see, you, fed!” Warned the man the moment he spotted Clinton on his heels. The agent had to stop.

“Give it up, Langston, you're not going to get away. Don’t make things worse for you by adding murder to your case.”

“You’re not sending me to prison! No, no, no, no, no! I’m never going!”

Clearly, the man was beyond reasoning at this point, half crazed by terror and stress. Clinton was about to try another angle when the most impossible sight interrupted him.

From the other side of the street, Neal Caffrey, who should have been waiting safely in the car, marched towards them like he was on a warpath. Clinton had seen him angry before, when Peter stopped one of his schemes or when his art was criticized, but it all paled in comparison to the blazing fury he read on Neal’s face right now.

For the first time, without any weapons or a bulletproof vest, Neal looked dangerous.

It took a moment for Clinton to gather his wits back and remember that Neal shouldn’t be here. “Get back, Neal, you can’t be here! You’ll just make things worse!”

Neal utterly ignored him and kept marching in Langston’s direction. The other man looked back and forth between the CI and Clinton and tightened his grip on the boy in fear. “Don’t come closer! Don’t- Don’t-”

“Enough.” Neal growled. It wasn’t particularly loud or angry-sounding, but it sent chills down Clinton’s spine all the same. “Let him go."

“No- I- You-”

“Now.”

Langston released the kid like he’d been burned; Neal wasted no time grabbing the boy to hold him close and shield him from harm while Clinton jolted and rushed to confiscate Langston’s gun. The man didn’t even fight him, only collapsed in a pile of miserable sobs.

For once, Clinton couldn’t blame him. The way Neal had uttered that last word would haunt his nightmares. He hadn’t known before today that it was possible to sound so commanding and coldly livid without so much as raising your voice.

Nothing like the soothing whispers Neal shared with the boy now as he held him in a protective embrace, expression soft and gentle, like the earlier fury had only been an illusion.

Heck, Clinton was really starting to doubt what he’d seen. It… It didn’t fit with what he knew of Neal, charming nonviolent conman and almost friend, at all. Just remembering what happened a minute ago made him feel silly with how ridiculous it was.

He must have made a mistake; with a trick of the light or adrenaline coursing through his veins, blood pounding in his ears, he’d seen and heard things that were never there. Neal simply wasn’t frightening in any way, let alone able to provoke the deep-seated, paralyzing dread of facing an apex predator Clinton had felt in his gut.

The fact Langston had obviously experienced the same hallucination didn’t count. Coincidences happen all the time, and the felon clearly hadn’t been in his right state of mind for a while.

Best get a move on and forget everything.

“Neal, can you call Peter? Let’s regroup at the bureau.”

“What were you thinking?! Going after an armed suspect like that, with a kid hostage?! You could have gotten that boy killed, Neal!”

Clinton stood aside in Peter’s office while his boss lectured Neal on all the ways things could have gone wrong with his intervention. In the bullpen, the boy – Aaron, apparently – and his mother were still hugging and sobbing on each other’s shoulders, both shaken but thankfully unarmed.

“I knew what I was doing, Peter.” Countered Neal with a mulish expression, bringing Clinton’s attention back to the two of them.

“Oh? And what did you think you were doing, then? Assuming you thought at all before barging in a hostage situation with zero equipment, zero backup and zero experience?” Sarcasm dripped from every word out of Peter’s mouth, but both Clinton and Neal knew him too well to miss the worry beneath. The older agent must have been terrified when he heard his CI had stepped in the path of a half-crazed armed felon.

Peter cared more than he liked to admit.

“I heard you negotiating with Langston through your comm while he was still in the house.” Admitted Neal with a roll of his eyes. “He sounded at the edge of a breakdown and only held up through panic and desperation. I knew he only needed a little push in the right direction to give in, which I helpfully provided. I don’t like to see kids involved in crimes.”

The dark tone he had delivered that last sentence in suggested there was a story there; not for the first time, Clinton wondered when Neal started his life as a felon, and if he had actually made that decision by himself. Since his first days as CI, he had found it odd how nice and actually concerned for the victims Neal had been, so at odds with his choice of career.

If someone else had forced him into a life outside the law as a child, it would explain quite a few things.

“So you’re an expert in hostage negotiation now? And how did you ‘push’ Langston to surrender, huh? Did you ask nicely?”

“I intimidated him.” Replied Neal evenly, like that didn’t contradict every observation they’d ever made of his character – Neal could do threatening, as in waving blackmail in your face or flaunting connections, not as in looking physically menacing. Or at least so Clinton had been sure of until today.

Now that he looked at it twice, Neal did pack quite the muscles under his designer suits.

“And I might not be an expert FBI negotiator,” continued Neal while Peter rebooted, the image of his CI intimidating anyone obviously not processing correctly in his head, “but I’m a very talented conman, and that implies being able to read targets. Your guy sounded this close to crumbling, and I just gave a little push.” He leaned back in his chair with a satisfied smile.

In the heavy silence, Peter huffed, then chortled, and finally outright laughed at the ludicrousness of Neal’s explanation; Clinton would have joined in had he not witnessed it firsthand.

“What, you raised your voice, rolled your sleeves and the guy got so scared he gave in?” Peter asked when his hilarity died down. “I thought you could make up better lies than that.”

Neal shrugged, completely unconcerned. “Think what you want, it’s what happened.”

Except it wasn’t. Neal had done none of the obviously threatening acts Peter had mentioned; he hadn’t even loomed or flexed or made a fist. If anything, his posture had been relaxed, fluid, and his voice quiet and controlled. Less like a raging gorilla henchman, more like a calculating professional killer.

But that was absurd, Neal was nonviolent, notoriously hated guns and liked to illegally copy art and bonds, not shoot people in the head or beat them until they stopped breathing. Those were two very different kinds of felons, with very little overlap.

"Clinton, tell me what really happened.” Peter turned to him, visibly expecting him to tear down Neal’s explanation. Clinton wished he could, or that he could share the bone-deep dread he had felt in front of the CI and not doubt his own statement at every word because it just didn’t make sense!

“Honestly, boss, it pretty much happened exactly like Neal said. He arrived, growled at Langston to stop and the guy broke down in tears. End of the story.”

Peter blinked in surprise, caught off guard at Clinton confirming Neal’s story. “... Huh. I guess he can tell the truth sometimes.” He mused, and then turned back towards his CI, calmer than before but still scolding. “But that doesn’t make what you did any less dangerous. You should have stayed in the car.”

Neal shrugged, unabashed. “Sure, the next time there’s a hostage situation, I’ll stay far from it. Unless there are kids involved again; all bets are off if there are kids.”

Yeah, definitely a story there. “You were pretty good with Aaron out there.” Noted Clinton in an effort to divert Peter’s attention from Neal’s alleged, possibly forced underage felonies. The guy had helped him today, even if he had given Clinton the creeps (and no, this was definitely not an attempt to stay in Neal’s good books after being utterly terrified of him for a second, no sir). “You have a sibling or something? More Caffreys hidden in the world somewhere?”

The look Neal sent him had him reconsider the reality of what he’d seen today again. It was utterly blank, no expression whatsoever. Assessing. Considering. Ominous. Then his usual smile broke out and the eerie void vanished like it had never been there. Maybe it had not; Clinton had had a long day…

“No, I’m the only Caffrey alive.” Replied Neal with a too wide smile – he was prevaricating, and Peter realized it too. Everyone suspected ‘Caffrey’ wasn’t Neal’s true name.

“Please tell me your parents didn’t have more children, or that you have a child, even under another surname.” He begged, already seeing more Caffreys running wild and committing felonies left and right. Clinton sympathized.

Neal’s grin soured. “No, my parents didn’t have more children; they were talking about it, before… Anyway, you don't have to worry about that, and I don’t have any kids either as far as I know. With how hectic my life is, I wouldn’t know what to do with them.” He chuckled, but it sounded weak. Forced. Clearly, they had stumbled upon a landmine.

They’d suspected for years that Neal had no family, that he had lost at least one parent, and the pain lacing his straining smile pretty much confirmed it.

Before they could awkwardly redirect conversation to safer topics, they heard a knock and the kid and his mom arrived in Peter’s office, escorted by Diana. “Mrs March and Aaron wanted to thank you again before leaving.” She explained.

Aaron rushed to hug Neal, who reciprocated immediately with a much more genuine grin. “Hey little guy, feeling better?”

“Yep.” Nodded the kid with a shy smile of his own. “Thank you for saving me, sir.”

“I can’t thank you enough for saving my little boy.” Added the mother; tears still clung to her lashes and her makeup was smudged beyond saving, but she looked much better than before.

“Don’t mention it, it’s part of the work.” Joked Neal with a wave of his hand. “I’m just glad everyone made it out in one piece.”

Mrs March and her son left soon after, and neither Clinton nor Peter resumed the conversation about Neal’s family afterwards.

Some topics were better left unexplored.

Dick felt a bit bad for misleading Peter and Jones, but what could he say? I have an unknown number of siblings because my dad is a compulsive adopter, to the point that I’m not even sure how many brothers and sisters I had when I left or if more joined the family while I was away. Yeah, that would have definitely not raised questions.

So he had relied on his memories of his dead parents to sell his point: Neal Caffrey had no family, in spite of his talent with kids.

Besides, he hadn’t lied to Jones, he didn’t have a sibling. Depending on how you counted it, he had anywhere between five, a dozen or a hundred.

(He and Bruce – and the rest of their crazy family to various degrees – had taken to finding, training, funding and supporting the many mentorless teenage and child heroes popping up every now and then. They desperately needed the help, and Dick liked to think his assistance made a difference. At the very least the death statistics of underage vigilantes throughout the world had gone from staggeringly high to moderately high, which was not enough but still an improvement.

None of said kids officially joined the Wayne family, but they were always welcome in their home and would be supplied with everything they needed if they only asked, from equipment to advice or a place to unwind; in Bruce-language, that was pretty much an informal adoption.)

But at least the stalled conversation about his supposedly nonexistent family had killed the one about his intimidation skills. Neal Caffrey couldn’t be thought of in terms of imposing or threatening, of possibly violent, not if Dick wanted to keep his cover and his job as CI.

Hearing a kid get hurt like that through Peter’s comm… all his carefully buried instincts had resurfaced at once, honed from years as Robin, Nightwing, even Batman, for a few, horrible months, and still sharp as ever after so long undercover.

Everyone knew not to use kids as collateral in Gotham. While it was a surefire way to get a Bat angry and push them to make mistakes, it was also a surefire way of getting a colony of seething Bats on your heels. Harming one of their own youngs, like Robin, whoever donned the suit at the time, had similar effects.

Some supervillains still tried it – the Joker certainly enjoyed getting a rise out of B – but most thugs had learned their lessons: involving kids made the Bats even more brutally vicious than usual; and Papa Hood always knew when one of his street rats went missing, so no luck preying on the homeless kids either. It just wasn’t worth the risk.

A normal Bat hurt you, but you could usually still walk afterwards, if with a pronounced limp. With a furious Bat, not so much.

Now imagine what happened with not one, but an entire family of incensed Bats after your blood…

Gotham still crawled with all kinds of crimes, but Dick and his family could pride themselves in drastically reducing the numbers of child abductions, ransoms, traffic, murders and so on.

(The fact that they had been kidnapped regularly as Waynes had also played a part. Oswald Cobblepot had once and for all stopped abducting them after the seventh time Dickie found himself tied up in one of his warehouses and started ranting about the most inane topics he could think of. Why everyone should ditch sports cars and buy unicycles, children’s TV programs well beneath his age, the merits of various candies… Gags and rope miraculously vanished and he fed the Penguin and his goons up so thoroughly that some looked relieved when a vengeful Batman swooped in and beat them unconscious.

Dick had not waited to play Neal to drive his minders crazy.)

The Bats’ protectiveness towards kids had become so well-known that at some point they all started getting tricked and/or threatened and/or guilt-tripped to look after small children while their parents were away. Nevermind that half of the time, said parents were goons working for a supervillain, or the supervillains themselves, on occasion.

Bruce had been forced to either build several day- and night-care centers throughout the city just to stop being saddled by criminals with their offspring, or to finally agree to permanently put down the pointy-eared cowl and become a full-time nanny.

(And yes, B had been tempted, no matter what he said. Despite his dour demeanor, he was pretty good with kids, especially young ones, before they got started on teenage rebellion, and Dick had seen him waver too often when a goon practically thrust their kids into his arms and informed him of bedtime hours or allergies. Fortunately for Gotham, Bruce also felt a strong devotion to his duty as Batman and had held strong until his available day- and night-care centers were ready to take over. The felons had no more excuse to use the Batfamily as babysitters.

Nonetheless, Dick and his siblings had been very careful never to leave any one of them, but especially not their father alone with some of his temporary, unexpected charges lest he brought one of them to the manor and they got a brand new sibling. B had an adoption problem, OK? And Jason could argue all he wanted, but with the gaggle of street kids on his heels at all times, he wasn’t any better.)

In any case, hearing that a little boy had been taken hostage had enraged Dick so badly that he had broken character long enough to put the fear of Gotham in the culprit. In hindsight, that hadn’t been the smartest move, but he would do it all over again if it kept little Aaron safe.

Neal Caffrey might be a placid, even-tempered persona, but Dick had always had anger issues. Few people realized that, because he’d grown up from the tiny ball of rage he’d been when B took him in and learned to temper his fury and keep smiling in most situations, but specific triggers still had his temper wake up with a vengeance.

Most of those triggers had to do with Dick’s own traumas, like seeing his family hurt. He had killed the Joker after Jason’s murder after all.

(Bruce had revived him. In hindsight and with a calmer mind, he could understand why. It would have stained Robin’s – Jason’s – legacy, Dick would have had to retire from heroics after that since Bats were only trusted because they never gave the killing blow, and losing that vital side of his life would have destroyed Dick – but that didn’t mean he approved. Jason deserved vengeance, deserved Justice, and everyone would be better off with the Joker dead once and for all.)

So yes, he stepped in today to keep the boy safe, fully prepared to blow his cover if needed. B would have grumbled, but he would have understood: the man had a softer heart for kids than anybody else – just look at how many he took in despite Dick and his siblings driving him closer to death by heart attack one prank war at a time.

Thankfully, like Dick had expected, Langston had crumbled after he subjected him to a bit of Gotham’s brand of fear. The Bat-growl always worked wonders with people who backed themselves into a corner, even more so if they had no predispositions to violence.

Jones seemed to have no desire to share what he saw in that back alley, to the point of visibly second-guessing his own eyes and ears, which was good, because this would have been much harder to wave over than the incident with Summers some months ago.

The team still didn’t know what had happened in the interrogation room back then, and the mystery served to keep Dick’s cover intact. As much as the agents speculated on what took place, they’d never guess the truth.

But this time, Jones – a trusted coworker – had witnessed Dick lose his cool (and almost break cover). Had Jones pushed to know where Neal Caffrey learned to be so frightening, his job as a CI could have been put into question.

However, his behavior in that alleyway had clashed so badly with his established personality that Jones had questioned himself rather than Dick, so his cover was safe.

Until the next time some moron had the bright idea of using a kid as collateral, that is.

Chapter Text

“Oh, Catwoman’s back in business?”

Diana startled, having missed Neal arriving behind her to look over her shoulder at their new case. The man alternated between infuriatingly obnoxious and disturbingly silent at the drop of a hat.

The playful smirk he sent her way proved he did it on purpose, the bastard.

But then again, that ever-changing duality was what made him such a good conman and such an asset to the bureau. That and his inside knowledge of white collar criminals and their ways.

“You think this is Catwoman’s work?” Asked Peter with a dubious expression. “She hasn’t been active in a couple years now – we thought she’d retired.”

“Oh, please! As if the Cat’s ever going to stop stealing. She loves her job too much to really stop – she’d only moved out of the country for a while.”

“Funny,” chortled Peter, “from the way you talk about her, you almost sound like you know Catwoman personally, Neal.”

It had been meant as a joke, Diana was sure, but the way Neal went silent was all but funny. Every agent in the conference room turned to look at him with expressions ranging from disbelief to anger or jealousy.

(Diana sure hoped she didn’t look the latter. She may or may not have had a bit of a crush on Catwoman when she studied her in Quantico; what could she say? The woman had style, and the moves she pulled off when fighting for her prizes looked downright sexy.

Anyone interested in women must have felt something watching what little footage they had of Catwoman in action, the same way anyone liking men drooled on Nightwing. Nothing to be ashamed of there.)

“Neal.”

“Oh, relax, Peter. Yes, I know Catwoman – she even taught me a couple tricks for heists – but I have never worked for her and whatever indirect association we had ended long before I started working for you guys.”

“Wait!” Started a probie whose name Diana had never caught – Nelson? – cutting off whatever Peter was about to reply. “You mean Catwoman is real? Like, really real? I thought she was like Batman or Santa.”

Right. Most people had never seen proof of Catwoman’s existence; what little footage they had was carefully locked down in fear of it creating impersonators or of starting vocations (Diana had heard even the videos they showed in FBI training had been removed last year because one too many people left Quantico to look for the woman, and not to put her in jail). She was that impressive. And that sexy.

Let’s be honest for a second, all that leather, that sensual flexibility and that whip…

As for Batman, while he did figure on the Justice League’s roster, he never appeared in public. All the other members had attended official events at one point or another, like meetings with the President or Wayne galas to raise funds for orphans, except for Batman and his associates.

It led to some conspiracy theories that Batman and his posse were only a tall tale, an invention of the Justice League to pretend they had basic human members in key roles. The whole idea was absurd, because Batman had been spotted outside of organized events – mostly during alien invasions or other world-ending incidents – but Diana knew by now that you couldn’t convince people who thought everything was a cover-up for some sinister scheme.

She had met Mozzie.

“Of course Batman is real!” Scoffed Jones, with perhaps less tact that he could have used on a newbie. A rude newbie that interrupted his boss, but still. “Don’t you listen to the Justice League’s official statements? They update the list of their members twice a year, and Batman’s been on it since day one.”

Right, Jones was a superhero fan.

“All I’m saying is that nobody’s ever gotten close enough to take a good picture.” Argued the probie – Newton? – with a frown and wide, choppy gestures. “And as long as we don’t have cold, hard evidence, he’ll stay a cryptid.”

“You can’t call one of our biggest heroes a cryptid!”

“I can if he doesn’t show himself!”

“That’s not how it wo-”

“People!” Yelled Peter over their screaming match. The rest of the agents had wisely backed off from the heated debate, with only Neal leaning forward to listen, a wicked grin on his face. “I don’t care if you believe Batman is real or not. I don’t even care if you think he’s got a pink tutu under his cape! You’re both grown adults who should know better than to argue about it at your workplace.” Both Jones and the newbie – Norrington? She was pretty sure it started with ‘N’ and ended in ‘on’ – lowered their gazes in embarrassment.

“Now, if Jones and Nashton are done, we’re back on our tracks.” Peter stopped glaring at the two chastised agents – Jones and Nashton! – to glower at an amused Neal. “You said you knew Catwoman. Can you give us a name? A description at least?”

Neal was already shaking his head. “Sorry, Peter, I can’t. But I can tell you if something is Catwoman’s work when I see it. This case is absolutely her doing.”

“How can you tell?”

“It’s pretty obvious if you know where to look.” Explained Neal as he spread parts of the file over the meeting room desk. “First, there was no obvious sign of breaking in. She didn’t blow up a wall or dig a tunnel from underneath or threaten her way in with a gun. That’s part of her signature: she enters from the roofs, unseen, with almost no material damage. You’ll probably find one of the skylights with a picked window. Few can manage to climb all the way up and down from that kind of place without breaking their neck.”

Peter nodded with interest while Jones took notes. Diana had to admit it sometimes paid to have a CI that knew so much about his competition.

“The two guards that were in the way were disposed of, but not killed or even permanently injured and they didn’t see their aggressor. They got taken care of quickly and with only a few bruises – that also one of Catwoman’s trademarks, although a more recent one. Allegedly, she swore not to hurt vigils too badly to Batman, out of respect for his no killing policy. Make of that what you will.”

The neutrality of his words belied the way he smirked knowingly at Nashton. Could Neal ever refrain from stirring up trouble?

No, clearly not.

“Then there are the stolen works themselves. Just from the list of what is missing, you can tell the thief has plenty of experience. Most people go in, take whatever they know is expensive with little forethought, and get out. Not Catwoman. She’s actually the one who taught me how to select my targets in advance, how to decide which pieces to pick. You have to account for price, of course, but also weight, portability, fragility, how easy it is to hide and to fence… That means weeks of research in advance and enough restraint not to lift a couple more shiny things on your way out.

“Here, you can see that the largest, most cumbersome, but also most expensive pieces were left behind. Only the smallest, most sturdy bronze sculptures and paintings are gone, the ones easiest to transport, especially when you work alone like Catwoman. Moreover, I think you’ll find that several of those stolen goods were acquired by the museum through dubious means. Catwoman does tend to pick those more often than legally obtained works of art.”

Clinton scribbled frantically on his notepad and Neal had the attention of the entire room as he expanded on the topic of Catwoman’s previous heists, highlighting the number of pieces she had taken that should never have fallen in the hands of their previous ‘owners’ to begin with. Diana and Peter exchanged looks – they’d have to review all the past Catwoman cases in light of this new information.

“And finally, the most damning piece of evidence.” Neal pushed the picture of one stolen painting forward. It depicted a gray tabby kitten tangled in a ball of yarn twice its size. Cute. “In each of her robberies, Catwoman takes a piece that’s often less valuable than the rest, but is somehow cat-related. This painting isn’t worth a tenth of the price of the cheapest work she took, but it clearly falls in her pattern. She’s taken it not for selling, but for her personal collection.”

His little presentation over, Neal leaned back in his chair as if to await questions.

“... You sure know a lot about Catwoman for someone who doesn’t know her name.” Noted Diana with a touch of suspicion. Neal only smiled winningly.

“You have to know your competition.” He laughed. “And I did meet her on the job a few times. Besides, she’s the most famous representative of our line of work, and her signature is pretty characteristic – it would be rude of an alleged fellow thief not to learn it and recognize it.”

“Right, an 'alleged' thief’s honor and all that.” Snorted Jones with a rueful shake of his head.

Peter was already ten steps ahead. “If you looked at our files on supposed Catwoman robberies and unsolved cases that fit this pattern, could you tell us conclusively which ones are her doing and which ones are not?”

Neal shrugged. “Sure. As long as the files are comprehensive enough, it shouldn’t be an issue.”

“Good.” Peter nodded before he addressed the rest of the agents. “I want a team checking the rooftops and the skylights for possible places of entry, no matter how preposterous they sound. I also want agents looking for other cat-related works in New York – Catwoman is not known to stop at one heist when in a new city and she usually acts fast before moving on. And someone bring Neal the files I just mentioned. I’d rather he stayed here reading them instead of prancing through museums.”

“Hey!” Protested the CI.

“It’s for your own good.” Argued Peter, a little too smug in Diana’s opinion. The others stood up to leave the meeting room with their orders, clapping an indignant Neal’s shoulders or smirking at him. “The best way to prevent you from committing more felonies is to keep you from temptation. And you should know sorting through files to ascertain which are actually Catwoman’s doing will really help us greatly.”

Neal pouted, with puffed cheeks and all. “Fine, fine, I get it. Besides, I’m not just doing it for you; Catwoman wouldn’t want her handiwork mixed with others’ either, and she’ll love to see her full achievements finally recognized. And always outwitting feds that know nothing about her gets tedious after a while; she’ll appreciate the increased challenge.”

Diana didn’t know how to take that last sentence, and judging from his face, neither did Peter. They unanimously decided not to dig deeper for now, but she knew her boss would interrogate Neal about it later.

Because from the sound of it, he knew Catwoman on more than a ‘professional’ level.

Unfortunately, when Neal applied himself to a task, he could finish it quickly, no matter that said task was perusing two piles of files of cold cases both as high as a sorting cabinet.

“The right pile are the thefts committed by Catwoman.” Informed Neal the next day, gesturing at the three stacks on his desk. “The middle one is burglaries made by someone unknown, and the left pile is for robberies I solved by reading the file. I wrote a short explanation for each of them, with evidence and the name of the culprit.”

The left stack was nowhere near as tall as the Catwoman pile, but it was still significantly higher than the ‘unsolved’ one. Damn, Diana almost felt bad about her own work in comparison.

A quick check on the solved files proved Neal’s claim. With nothing left to keep him busy, Peter had no choice but to bring along a smug-looking CI for his visit to the art gallery they had singled out as Catwoman’s most likely next target.

The curator and head of security didn’t look happy, but they seemed to take the FBI’s concerns to heart. That wasn’t always the case; Diana had faced more than one owner of priceless treasures refusing to listen to them out of conviction that their security was foolproof.

Spoiler alert: it rarely was. Especially when Neal started snooping around.

The reason they’d picked this gallery out of all the museums and art exhibitions was their recently arrived collection of ancient Asian pieces, among which lay a few beautiful ivory cat netsukes. A tempting prize for someone interested in feline art.

After buffing the security system and adding FBI agents to the staff for the night, Diana and the others retreated to the van. Catwoman’s pattern, as clearly evidenced by all of Neal’s work, showed that she would probably target the gallery tonight, three days after the first robbery, followed by weeks of silence until she reappeared in another city altogether.

If they had a chance of catching her, it was tonight.

“Team Alpha, anything new?” Asked Peter for the fourteenth time. It was past 3am, and nothing interesting had happened so far. A drunkard had loudly thrown up in a nearby street an hour ago, Jones still sucked at cards, and Neal had to be cheating, because no matter the game, he always won.

One day, Diana would figure out his trick.

“Nothing on our side.” Replied the comm’s tinny voice.

“Team Bravo, what about you?” Only static answered him. “Team Bravo? Do you hear me? Team Bravo?”

With no reply, they could only conclude that the three agents of team Bravo had been incapacitated, one way or another. “To all agents, stay in position and be careful. Catwoman is inside.” Peter ordered his subordinates as he, Diana and Jones got ready to move in.

“You can’t follow us, Neal.” Denied Diana when she saw the CI right behind them.

“Relax, Catwoman won’t harm me, and she might be more inclined to talk if I’m with you.” Neal argued with a relaxed posture completely at odds with the rest of the team. Inclined towards murder or not, Catwoman was still considered a borderline supercriminal and countries all over the world wanted her stopped. You didn’t play around with that kind of people.

Peter sighed. Diana reckoned it was too late to argue with their resident conman anyway. “Fine, but stay behind us. We’ve got no proof that she really won’t hurt you.”

Neal rolled his eyes but obediently settled at the back as they marched inside the gallery.

They cleared a couple rooms before arriving in one of the three large spaces with tall ceilings, high windows and skylights. Guards patrolled the roof while a team of three agents had been posted in each big room, guarding the priceless art exposed there; this one had been assigned to team Bravo.

They found the agents collapsed in the middle of the room, unconscious but breathing, with no visible wounds. Jones immediately checked on them while Diana and Peter secured the area. “They look fine, just knocked out.” Announced the man.

“Of course, I promised the Bat not to hurt anyone too badly.” Replied a female voice from seemingly nowhere. It sounded sultry, almost a purr. The three awake agents tensed like bowstrings and looked around, ready to fire on anything that moved.

From the corner of her eye, Diana noticed Neal leaning against a wall with his hands in his pockets, an amused little smile playing on his lips.

“Show yourself and surrender if you know what’s good for you!” Shouted Peter.

The voice laughed. “Sorry, Mr Officer, but I don’t feel like going to prison today.” A figure emerged from the shadows on one of the highest balconies, and Diana got her first good look of the infamous Catwoman.

Damn, the FBI’s grainy footage hadn’t done her justice. The woman had a body to die for under all that tight-fitting leather, with a cleavage and an enticing gait that inevitably drew the eye. Large goggles hid most of her face, but Diana had no doubt it was as enchanting as the rest of her.

She swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry. Next to her, she heard Jones do the same, and even Peter, who was unerringly faithful to his wife, stumbled a little.

“I’m afraid I’m here on a contract, so I can’t play with you too long.” Crooned Catwoman, hoisting a backpack over her shoulder while the agents were distracted. “My client would like to see their rightful belongings back in their proper place as soon as possible.”

“So you only took what your client wanted back?” Asked Neal playfully. His voice, coming from behind Diana and the others, shocked them all out of their stupor.

“Of course not, Kitten, you know me.” Replied Catwoman, equally coquettish. “I had to pick a souvenir.”

Neal laughed, and he sounded almost fond. Those two definitely knew each other.

“Put that bag down and put your hands in the air, or we’ll shoot.” Peter hollered, probably to break up whatever was going on between his CI and an internationally wanted burglar.

Catwoman sighed with a mock pout. “Kitten," she looked at Neal, utterly ignoring the agents pointing guns at her, "you're hanging with the wrong sort of crowd."

Neal replied with a roguish grin and a chuckle. “Trust me, I know.”

The burglar on the balcony shook her head in amusement and took a step back. Before anyone had the time to open fire, she backflipped out of a window, into the air.

Diana and her team were on the sixth floor, meaning Catwoman had jumped from the seventh.

They all rushed to the nearest window, knowing the thief was a lost cause but still inexplicably compelled to watch her plummet to her death.

They arrived just in time to see her use her whip as some sort of grapple and take advantage of the upswing to vault over another rooftop, out of range of any agent.

“What the-” Muttered Jones, accurately reflecting the baffled awe they all felt. Hell, Diana might be a little bit in love.

A delighted laugh behind them had them turn around. Neal walked to them at a leisurely pace, like he’d known all along that Catwoman would escape with her life – and her loot. “She gives a whole new spin to the term ‘cat burglar’, doesn’t she?”

Honestly, Dick was a bit disappointed by what little the FBI knew of Catwoman as a person. If they’d bothered considering Gotham like part of their purview and visited or even called every once in a while, this sad, scrawny file would have put on some serious weight in a blink.

Any Gothamite worth their salt knew more about Catwoman than was written in her case. Like her actual name, for starters, the ‘fact’ that she had had serious relationships with both Brucie Wayne and Batman (you couldn’t imagine the number of arguments among her fans about which she preferred, or if they ever had a threesome), her modus operandi and signature, her eponymous obsession with felines, and so on…

Selina spent much more time in Gotham than anywhere else in the world, half because the city had an absurdly high number of rich art amateurs with ill-gotten collections, half because her ‘two’ paramours lived there. As a result, the locals knew all about her activities.

She even had a fanclub devoted to recording all her thefts worldwide and all the sightings of her. They had a list of her known lovers, split among the confirmed and those pending verification, the ongoing and the abandoned, which would have made capturing her a piece of cake for the FBI.

But no, Gothamites weren’t worth asking, according to all governmental agencies. According to any Outsider, actually. As if stepping foot inside Gotham immediately made you a pariah, made you lesser in their eyes.

So with no other ‘acceptable’ means of acquiring intel, Peter and the others spent the next week harassing Dick for any information about Selina. Going to the source and asking the GCPD never even occurred to them.

Naturally, Dick lied, and not just because his Gothamite pride had taken a hit. He pretended to have only met Catwoman in passing, that she had taken pity on the newbie and given him some pointers. But what else could he say?

‘Well Peter, actually Catwoman, aka Selina Kyle, is my sorta step-mom, because she and my adoptive dad – whose existence I kept secret because it’s easier to make you think I have no family – have been flirting and playing cat and mouse for years. No idea who is the cat and who is the mouse, despite their respective monikers, because they both keep playing hard to get and then fall into each other's arms. I’ve seen things, Peter, you have no idea. It turns out rooftops are not the most private place when other people use them as pathways…

Yes, yes, it’s the same Selina Kyle that has been seen around Bruce Wayne on and off – have you been reading El’s magazines? What? No, of course my dad and Bruce Wayne are not the same person. Everyone knows Catwoman is with Batman, and there’s no way that Batman is Bruce Wayne. Or that my dad is Batman. Or that Bruce Wayne is Batman – did I say that one already? Can you imagine? Ha ha, please don’t go looking into pictures of the Wayne family.’

Yeah, that conversation could not be allowed to happen, hence the cover of lies and omissions he’s been weaving for days.

At least the part about Selina giving him tips for grand larceny was not a complete fib. Years of chasing after her by Batman’s side (only to leave the two alone in a hurry when they started flirting. Ugh. Some things, you never wanted to see your dad do. The plight of being Robin included dealing with the sexual tension between those two) had taught him a few things about theft if only through observation. Nobody had intended it to prove useful at the time, but hey, if it worked…

Though, apart from a few notes on seducing a target, Selina had taught him nothing about scam or fraud, only heists. All Dick knew about being a ‘good’ conman, he had learned first from Bruce (to stop it, but details…) and then from Moz.

The most hilarious part was that the majority of what B knew about con, he had learned from Mozzie too. When Dick had started as Neal Caffrey, he’d needed both a mentor and a contact in the criminal world and B had pointed him towards Moz.

Back when Batman had only been a vague concept in Bruce’s troubled mind, he’d gone on a journey throughout the world to learn any skill he could use. Or to ‘find himself’, if you wanted to be a dramatic rich emo boy that would one day become a dramatic rich emo man-bat-dad to punch criminals in the face…

(No, Dick would take no criticism towards his own dramatic emo tendencies. He knew how to smile at least, and blamed all his other penchants on his education. Bruce could take responsibility.)

Anyway, a younger Bruce had chanced upon Mozzie and then impressed him enough that the man had taken him under his wing. B had apparently done that with several criminals, except unlike the others, he didn’t sell Moz to the police once he’d learned all he wanted.

Moz, while a felon, was fundamentally harmless. Despite his claims to be a ruthless criminal, he didn’t con people who couldn’t afford it and had never resorted to violence. He even sent a large portion of the money he illegally made to his childhood orphanage, something which unknowingly earned him a lot of brownie points with B. Bruce (whom Mozzie had only ever known as ‘Brian’) had grown fond of the odd little man during their time together and thus, when they parted ways, had left him to his devices.

So when Dick had needed someone less infamous than Catwoman to introduce him, as Neal, to the wrong side of the criminal world, Bruce had told him to find Mozzie, impress him like B had done in his time, and hopefully get a friend/mentor in the process.

It had worked like a charm, and Moz had never suspected his ties with ‘Brian’ until ‘Neal’ admitted his dad had arranged for them to meet, months into their partnership. By then, Dick had known enough about forging, fencing and scamming that he could continue on without him if forced, although he’d prefer to keep his friend.

Against all his expectations, he liked Mozzie.

After a moment of utter bafflement, Moz had taken the revelation surprisingly well. Turned out that he too kept a fond memory of the sullen, quiet but dedicated and resourceful young man he’d known as Brian. Dick had expected more annoyance from Mozzie for being essentially conned himself, but the man had taken it all with good humor (after a series of trick questions meant to ascertain ‘Neal’ wasn’t lying and was indeed ‘Brian’s’ adopted son).

Some days, they still traded stories about ‘Brian’ and Moz regularly asked Dick how his father was doing. He’d never found out that his protégés were respectively Batman and Nightwing, or even Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson-Wayne.

He did figure out that Dick knew Catwoman through Bruce, though, after Peter interrogated him about Neal’s ties with the infamous burglar.

“I assume you met the Catwoman through your father.” Asked Mozzie once Peter left, empty-handed, because he would never throw Dick under a bus despite being in the dark himself.

Dick shrugged, cautious of what he could reveal. With his keen mind and his tendency to see conspiracies everywhere, Moz was at the top of the list of people likely to discover his real identity. “Yeah, she and dad worked together more than once. She even babysat me a few times.”

Catwoman had had several public relationships (or as public as a criminal could ever be), but the most famous and long-lasting of them were respectively with Batman and Brucie Wayne, so Dick didn’t want to lead Moz on that track. Better he think B and Selina were only acquainted professionally or as friends, because Moz would look into Gotham if pushed to, unlike the FBI.

Mozzie hummed noncommittally. “I see… Then if you ever have the occasion, could you get me her signature?”

Overwhelmed by his relief that Moz wasn’t digging deeper, Dick couldn’t help nervous peels of laughter from escaping and growing into full-blown guffaws.

“What?” Mozzie added defensively, cheeks red, when Dick’s crazed giggles died down enough that he could hear him. “Anyone in the profession knows and idolizes Catwoman; it’s only natural to look up to her!”

Six days later, Dick presented Moz with a present from Selina herself, wrapped in gray paper so that even Dick had no idea what it contained until Mozzie opened it.

Inside were a pair of orange-tinted goggles from Selina’s old suits, along with a letter.

‘Dear Mr Mozzie,

Brian only has good things to say about you. Thank you for taking such good care of both of our shared acquaintances. Like his father, the little Kitten always had a knack for getting himself in sticky situations; it’s nice to know he has a trusted friend by his side, and even nicer to know said friend is a man of great taste. Unfortunately, few recognize the artfulness of our shared occupation, or how much skill and wit it requires.

Here is a little token of my appreciation. I wore those goggles when I robbed the Musée du Louvre in Paris, nine years ago.

All my gratitude and love,

Catwoman.’

She had illustrated her signature with the drawing of a sleeping cat, noted Dick as he fought down the blush spreading on his face. He hadn’t thought Selina would write a message, let alone acknowledge her vaguely maternal relation with him.

Moz cradled the letter and the goggles like they were his first child, beaming as if Christmas had come early. No doubt the two items would find their place among his most treasured possessions, right next to Mozart the teddy bear.

Dick figured he could endure a little embarrassment in exchange for his friend’s visible fanboyish delight. After everything Mozzie had endured because of him, he'd earned it.

Chapter Text

Part of the reason Peter chose the White Collar Crimes unit was the general absence of bloody corpses in their investigations, which explained why he disliked working with Organized Crimes so much.

OC’s cases were rarely clean, and usually didn’t require assistance from other divisions, but this time they claimed they were onto something big and they needed some expertise. Some art expertise, so they had called for Neal and his encyclopedic knowledge of everything from ancient African sculptures to modern artists’ petty squabbles about colors .

Peter could have let another agent deal with his CI for a couple days, the time for Neal to do what they wanted, and save himself the discomfort of contact with OC and the special agent in charge, Ruiz. He could have washed his hands of the whole mess, said he had his own work to do, and let Neal be someone else’s problem for a short while. It could have been relaxing.

Except other feds didn’t usually treat CIs all that well, despite them being vaguely reformed, at least on paper, and Organized Crimed were infamous for their policy of intolerance. Coupled with Neal’s general ‘nealness’, and Peter could only tag along as the agent in charge of his CI rather than leave him in the not-so-tender hands of another fed.

Neal might get on his nerves on the best of days, but they were friends. Peter would have his back on this one, even if it meant facing Special Agent Ruiz and Organized Crimes.

“Ruiz isn’t in charge of this one, Special Agent Dimby is.” Said the guy who led them to the crime scene without introducing himself. “And I’m telling you in advance, this isn’t pretty. It’s even worse than what we regularly get.”

It could have sounded like a well-meaning warning if not for the cruel little smirk curling his lips. Clearly, the man expected them to react badly to whatever awaited them and found amusement in their upcoming misery.

Times like this, Peter could almost understand Mozzie’s disdain for anything FBI.

Next to him, Neal hummed absently to show he had heard. Damn. Peter had seen some gory stuff in his life, but Neal had never been exposed to Organized Crimes’ level of violence. Hopefully he would keep his wits to himself, or at least the contents of his stomach. Any other reaction would only fuel the OC agent and his crew’s sick enjoyment.

They slipped through the tape barrier and entered the crime scene proper.

Christ, it was worse than Peter had expected.

The basement obviously worked as both a wine cellar and a makeshift warehouse to store paintings and sculptures. Peter would bet that neither the alcohol nor the art were legally supposed to be there.

But judging by the hooks, the chains, the various instruments lying around, the giant pool of blood and the eight dead bodies, the place doubled as an interrogation room.

Peter tried his best to ignore the severed fingers, burn marks and general state of the tortured corpses by focusing on the art surrounding them. He and Neal came here for that, not the murdered people, though even that didn’t help as much as he wished, given the many red spatters sticking to canvases and sculptures.

This was a bloodbath, and the mocking OC agents surrounding them clearly found his instinctual recoiling and greenish complexion hilarious.

If he barely managed to push down the bile rising up his throat, how could Neal fare with the gory sight?

When he looked behind him, his CI no longer stood there. For a second, Peter feared his friend had to run outside, probably to expel the contents of his stomach, but then he heard Neal’s voice from farther down the basement.

“Oh! That looks like a real David Hockney; you’re going to have to scratch the blood off, of course, but it’s still worth a fortune if it’s not a forgery. Hell, the drama around it might raise its price even more!”

The CI cheerfully inspected a few paintings stacked on crude wooden tables, heedless of the puddles of still-warm blood he stepped in. Surely he couldn’t have missed the massacre a few feet away; surely the appeal of art couldn’t distract him enough to overlook the eight mangled bodies cooling in the middle of the room.

Right?

“Uh, Caffrey.” Called another agent with a prominent frown. He was the highest-ranking fed here and looked very displeased to have been robbed of his expected entertainment. When Neal didn’t turn his attention his way, he repeated in a louder voice, “Hey Caffrey! Did you see the bloody mess in here?”

The way he grinned in sadistic anticipation almost made Peter as sick as the ‘bloody mess’. Almost.

“Hmm, you mean the bodies? Yes, Agent Dumby, I did.”

“It’s Dimby!” Squawked the agent in awkward fury. Nobody knew how to react to such flippancy from Neal Caffrey, a non-violent conman that had supposedly never seen such a carnage in his life. “And like, have you taken a good look at them?”

How subtle…

Neal finally looked up from the impressionist painting he was scrutinizing, a look of clueless politeness on his face. Peter couldn’t tell if it was fake or genuine despite years of experience deciphering Neal’s expressions. “Why, yes, Agent Dimby, I have. But I thought you asked me here to inspect the art, not to look at the bodies of four torturers, three of their four victims and one of the three people that came to rescue the latter. That’s supposed to be your job, I believe.”

A stunned silence hung over the empty room, all eyes riveted on Neal. The felon looked at them all, calm as ever, sighed heavily, and moved towards the corpses. The blood under his shoes made horrible squelching sounds as he walked.

“It’s pretty obvious, really.” Neal said under their wide-eyed gazes. “First, you’ve got the people that were tortured here. We can all agree that this is a torture room, right? Good. Then those three were dragged here against their will for some rough ‘interrogation’.” He gestured towards three of the bodies lined neatly next to each other.

“Those four were tortured too.” Countered Dimby angrily, motioning at four other disfigured and cut up corpses, this time piled haphazardly in the center of the room. “And they look more roughed up.”

“No.” Replied Neal in a tone that brooked no argument. “The three you’re pointing at were mutilated after their deaths to make it seem like they were tortured too. Take a closer look, there’s not nearly enough blood gushing from their facial wounds for them to have been inflicted pre-mortem.”

Peter very much didn’t want to take a closer look at that mess of flesh, bone and whatever else. Judging from their queasy expressions, the other agents didn’t either. Even the Organized Crimes Division found this display of relentless fury a bit too much.

Neal continued, unflappable. “So back to what I was saying before I was rudely interrupted, these three were being tortured here, along with one other person. Three people came to rescue them, killing the four guys agent Dimby pointed out, but only one of the tortured people made it out alive. One of the rescuers was also shot down in the scuffle, our eighth and last body.” He nodded towards the remaining corpse that lay next to the three he started with.”

“How would you know all that?” Scoffed another agent. “You’re just making wild guesses.”

Despite his arrogant tone, Peter couldn’t help noting that the man looked just as disturbed by Neal’s flippancy as anyone else, Peter included.

“Four hooks with traces of fresh blood, all raised just high enough that the person hanging there would barely touch the ground with their toes, which means our missing man – or woman – hung from this hook and is thus pretty tall. ” Replied Neal with admirable (and terrifyingly unsettling) composure. “You’d need at least two people to safely escort a big, heavily wounded body outside without leaving traces by dragging them on the floor, so at least two rescuers were still alive at the end of this, and no more, or they would have taken one of the smaller dead victims. Since they went so far as to disfigure the others to hide their identities, they obviously tried to remove all clues leading to them – the best way would have been to remove the corpses on their side altogether, because even mangled by torture, we could still garner some information from their bodies. However, the rescuers did not take them, likely because they didn’t have the manpower. So three rescuers: one dead, two carrying the survivor outside, as evidenced by the blood stains leading out the door. You’re following so far?”

Neal took the ensuing, dumbfounded silence as agreement, because he kept going.

“Now, if you look at these four gentlemen,” he gestured at the bodies Agent Dimby had pointed out earlier, “you can see they’re not wearing the same kind of clothes as the three tortured victims. Sure they’re now in tatters, but you can still recognize three expensive suits and one very dirty, very blood-crusted apron. Too deeply set for it to be newly stained, so that blood is old, and has been accumulating for a while. Chances are good that this man was the torturer, the one in charge of cutting fingers and the like. Next to him are his ‘employers’, the people that had questions they wanted answered or that just found it enjoyable to watch others suffer. Some people have that kind of sick hobby.”

A couple OC agents looked away at that jab. Yeah, they had totally called Neal here expecting to see him lose it at the sight of mangled corpses.

Too bad it completely backfired, because now everyone looked more uncomfortable and nauseated than Neal. Under any other circumstances, Peter would have smiled in vindication.

“Anyway, unlike the others, who were arranged neatly on the ground, suggesting some form of respect and care from the survivors, these four were basically stacked here and brutally disfigured post-mortem – as we’ve already established – to make them unrecognizable. It implies some pretty deep hostility and further proves the theory that what happened here is a strike team rescuing high-ranking members of their own group.”

“High-ranking?” Inquired a brave probie from the back.

Neal smiled at her like a proud teacher answering an interesting question. “Look around you. Whether it's forged or real, the art here is worth a lot, and it doesn’t take an expert eye to see it. Yet from the blood spattered everywhere, no painting, no sculpture was taken or even moved. The rescuers didn’t glance at them before leaving with their survivor, meaning they either respected their wounded charge too much to linger, or they knew they would be rewarded handsomely for saving them. In any case, it means the survivor has some serious power.”

It all made a lot of sense, which didn’t make sense in itself to Peter. Sure, Neal was smart, but he should not be able to reconstruct a gory crime scene so easily without training, and definitely not without flinching. His expertise was art and con, not organized crime!

“And finally, there’s the eighth corpse. He wears thin body armor underneath his casual shirt, empty holsters and at least one knife I can make out from here, and generally looks pretty fit. His attire makes it obvious he was neither a torturer or a torturee, which means he was part of the strike team. Moreover, look at the way he was disfigured. The people in suits or in an apron had their heads bashed in with vengeful violence until only mush was left, but you can almost see the perpetrators holding back on this one. The other rescuers had to hide his features, but they obviously did it with regrets. It makes sense if they were part of the same team.

“The fact that they still had the discipline to muddle his features and the utter lack of needless bullet holes suggests that the strike team members were pros. You can check: not a single bullet found its way lower than head-level or in the surrounding walls or art pieces. Yet one of them died, despite clearly having the element of surprise – no bodies outside, no one to see them before they barged in the cellar. This part is a bit more guesswork than pure deduction, but I think two of them aimed for the same target, meaning one of the torturers had time to retaliate and kill our eighth victim. So despite being trained, our strike team made the rookie mistake of not assigning targets or sides before entering, which denotes a lack of experience.

“The oldest and most influential families wouldn’t have sent a small, unseasoned team to rescue pivotal members, so the survivors of this slaughter likely come from a younger, up-and-coming gang, but one powerful enough to either pay for mercenaries or for training of their own members. I’d start looking there if I were you, but far from me to ever tell Organized Crime agents what they should do.”

You could hear a pin drop in the deafening silence left in the wake of Neal’s brilliant, but deeply unsettling demonstration. It took some time for everyone to pick their jaws up from the floor.

“That’s- I mean… We’ll look into it.” Eventually stammered Agent Dimby.

Neal beamed at him, so genuinely guileless it could only be fake. “Great! Glad to have helped! Now, I’ll go back to checking on these paintings and that wine, if you don’t mind, since that’s what I was called for in the first place.”

This time, nobody objected or tried to distract him. Peter stood next to his friend while Neal gushed over the various pieces he discovered in the cellar, once more utterly uncaring of the bloodstains, the eight corpses behind him or the wary looks sent his way by the OC agents.

Not for the first time, Peter remembered there was a lot he didn’t know about Neal.

Peter waited until evening, when they were alone in Neal’s apartment before he dared ask the question that had been burning his lips all along.

He ostensibly set down his badge face down on the nearest table and motioned for his friend to sit down in front of him. “Neal, I need to know. Were you ever in a gang?”

The CI looked utterly blindsided by the sudden gravitas. “No Peter.” He drawled cautiously, like it should be obvious but he was unsure of where this was going. “I was never in a gang. I’m non-violent, remember?”

“I know, I just- Maybe this was before you were 18 or something, because you know way too much about gangs, strike teams and the way they operate.”

Neal chuckled. “That’s just knowledge you pick up when you’re a criminal, you don’t ha-”

“You didn’t even flinch, Neal!” Cut off Peter before the CI could elude his questions any longer and distract him with another topic. He knew all of Neal’s tricks by now and didn’t appreciate being played for an idiot. “Even the guys from Organized Crime looked disturbed by what we saw, when you looked perfectly fine! Maybe, maybe you can pick up knowledge about crime syndicates by being a conman – I wouldn’t know – but you definitely don’t get so inured to torture and gore through hearsay!”

With his artificial cheer dispelled, Neal was looking at him stone-faced, and Peter backtracked. He couldn’t afford to lose his temper again if he wanted to get anything out of his CI, who had objectively done nothing wrong this time. “Sorry, Neal, I just… I didn’t expect what happened today.” He sighed tiredly, his tone more pleading than angry now. “I promise this won’t change anything; I even put my badge away, see? But I need to know if you’ve ever had experience with organized crime, not as a federal agent, but as a friend. You really spooked me earlier.”

For a moment, Neal kept scrutinizing his face in silence, and Peter feared he wouldn’t say anything, but just as he thought that, the other man spoke up.

“I’m the one that should apologize.” Started the CI, avoiding his eyes. “When I realized we were only brought there to see our reaction to the crime scene, I got mad and wanted to one-up those assholes. It won’t happen again.”

That was… something, but not an answer to Peter’s earlier question. He kept staring at Neal until the conman broke down.

“Ugh, fine!” Neal deflated, leaned on his chair, swinging backwards until only two legs remained on the floor. Any other time, Peter would have chided him for it, but this was already a difficult enough conversation without him being patronizing.

With his eyes trained on the ceiling, Neal started his story, weighing each word before it left his mouth. “I honestly wasn’t part of any gang, but a lot of people around me were. I lived in… in a pretty bad neighborhood, you could say, and you don’t survive in that kind of place without getting a bit rough – I mean, you saw me.” He gestured towards his torso and Peter recalled the arrays of scars littering his skin, hidden beneath his clothes. “Even if you were not in any crime syndicate or mafia family, you saw a lot of things happening around you. I personally never killed or tortured people like we saw today, but I knew and saw people that did – I ended on the wrong side of the knife more times than I care to count. So I guess in comparison, a few already dead bodies are not that big of a deal.”

Peter let out the breath he’s been subconsciously holding. Neal had already made it obvious he wouldn’t be discussing his scars or how he got them, so the agent didn’t bother going that way. “You really were never involved?”

Neal shook his head, and snapped his chair back on four legs to look his handler in the eyes. This time, Peter believed him when he said “Never directly. I could have joined a gang at one point, when I was an angry brat hell-bent on revenge, but I was… lucky in my misfortune. There were always people that looked out for me and prevented me from going too deep or too far. And that’s all you’re going to learn about my childhood today.”

The dismissal was clearly heard. Peter wouldn’t dig deeper for now, not when he could see how painful this talk had already been to Neal. Some memories were better left buried, and he’d already learned more about his friend’s childhood than in all the months they’d worked together. “I get it. Thanks for sharing this with me.”

“Thanks for listening without judging.” Replied Neal with a wan smile. “But if you don’t mind, I’d like to just stay at home alone and relax for a while. Today was… taxing.”

“Yeah, for you and me both.” Peter laughed thinly, already standing up and gathering his things. The badge found its proper place in his coat again. “I’ll see you tomorrow for work.”

“Like every other day.” Promised Neal as he closed the door behind his handler. Peter couldn’t blame him for wanting some peace and quiet. For his part, Peter would go back home to his lovely wife and mull over today’s revelations.

Maybe El's clever suggestions would help him process this newfound side to Neal.

God, Dick hated betraying Peter’s trust. Not that he’d really lied, but these moments with the badge down demanded complete honesty, and he was unable to deliver without exposing himself.

Really, it was all the fault of these Organized Crime agents. Normal procedure would have had them box the paintings, cart them to the FBI and only then appraise them; Dick should never have stepped foot on that crime scene, especially not just to satisfy their cruel little power play.

So yes, he’d gone a little overboard with the detective work and the lack of reaction to mangled corpses, two talents a non-violent forger and conman shouldn’t possess, and that had been a mistake. But in his defense, he’d been itching to stretch his investigation skills beyond the usual theft or mortgage fraud, and OC had delivered that case on a silver platter.

(And while no agent of the League of Assassins would be stupid enough to pull such a stunt – meaning the agents today were probably not the moles he was after – Dick would add them to the list of people to investigate and keep a close eye on. Bullies didn’t usually stop at a single victim, and not everyone could throw them off their game as easily as Nightwing.)

At least he had given enough clues for them to figure out the identities of the bodies without outright revealing the names of the gangs he suspected or the people he thought lay dead with their faces disfigured. This might not be Gotham, but he was still in the loop of local crime syndicates enough to make an educated guess.

Speaking of Gotham, it was a good thing the FBI never went there, because if they could barely tolerate the state of today’s corpses, they could never handle the bodies GCPD found – or didn’t find, or not in their entirety – on a daily basis.

Several rogues and criminals enjoyed putting their victims on display. Joker came to mind first, of course, because his killcount was staggering and he lived to poke the hornet’s nest that was Batman’s temper, but he was far from the only one.

Mr Zsasz, Killer Croc when he didn’t like the taste of his unfinished ‘snack’, Harley on her bad days, Scarecrow when he had a point to make… And not just the ‘successful’ villains. Plenty of upcoming rogues tried to make a name for themselves by leaving what remained of their victims for all to see.

And then there were the so-called artistic types, who actually wanted people to admire their ‘work’, which often consisted of mangled body parts arranged with plastic flowers or ancient-greek-like columns in a supposedly pleasing way.

As you could imagine, with so many corpses, organs and limbs lying around on a regular basis, Gothamites had grown used to the sight of blood and gore. Finding a severed head or a ripped-out heart was basically a staple of Gotham life and nothing noteworthy, to the point that anyone caught screaming, puking or running away after stumbling across a torn arm was treated with no small amount of derision and/or scorn – if you were especially squeamish, people would go so far as to insinuate you came from Metropolis.

The shame…

(This general indifference had helped tremendously in making the locals accept Red Hood as a vigilante and ally of the Bats – although the rest of the world still saw him as a villain. Sure, he had gone around for a while shooting people dead and decapitating them, but said people had been the scum of the earth and he didn’t do it anymore. Besides, who had never wished to tear a limb or two from that kind of asshole, huh?

Dick preferred not to answer that question.)

Gotham was breeding grounds for the deranged and insane, and Dick couldn’t even say his own family was spared despite what he told Peter. After all, they spent their nights in quirky kevlar costumes punching felons and were this close to being a crime family themselves, with only a technicality to separate them from their enemies: they didn’t kill (most of the time) and they strived towards Justice, not to fill their own pockets. The fact that they had more money that they could spend on charities and that Wayne Enterprise’s profits increased each year didn’t help their case.

(But when you told Tim that and asked him to make just a little less money to ease your guilty conscience, he sent you such a betrayed and pitiful look over his dark eyebags that you could only apologize and drop the subject.

And if you mentioned to B that he was basically the crime boss of their not-so-little family, his face contorted with hilarious outrage, which almost made up for upsetting Timmy. Of course, you then had to endure Jason laughingly reminding everyone that he was the only crime boss around, and Dami had to counter that he would make a better boss because he was raised to become the next head of the League of Assassins. Everyone would start arguing over who would make the best Don, and after much screaming, posturing and maybe a couple thrown objects, they’d all eventually agree that it would be Alfred, hands down.)

Their only saving grace was that almost nobody knew the Batfamily and the Waynes were one and the same, or else people would be accusing them of being a crime family all the time, and they wouldn't be completely wrong.

Dick’s latest mission as Neal Caffrey only drove the nail home. Sure, the alleged thievery and even the bond forging were completely made up or had been committed with the support of an international agency (the Justice League) so they probably didn’t count. However, infiltrating the FBI under a false identity with hidden motives and investigating the agents there definitely counted.

Yep, Dick was now an actual career criminal without the thin excuse of vigilantism. Joy.

Chapter Text

It had become a habit of El’s to invite Neal over to dinner once every other week, to check on him in person. Peter might be a good man and a better husband, but he often overlooked things like the need to socialize or mental fatigue. As usual she extended the invitation to Mozzie, despite Peter’s vague and perfunctory protests.

El didn’t mind the extra work; she was more than happy to host dinners every now and then with people that made for good company and actually appreciated good food.

Because no, Peter, deviled ham did not constitute good food no matter how much you liked it…

“Have you heard about the latest Wayne scandal?” El asked as she polished the remains of her charlotte aux fraises. She’d have to add a bit more strawberries and a touch less sugar next time, but she’d say this recipe was a success. Definitely something to add to her menus. “Damian Wayne apparently attacked the host of a gala he was invited to with a candelabra and teaspoons. The poor woman had to run and hide in the ladies’ bathroom while the little Wayne yelled obscenities through the door.”

Gossip was another thing Peter had never really understood that she could share with Neal and Moz. Peter tried, he tried very hard to see the appeal, but she supposed that spending days at a time dealing with privileged trust-fund babies and the occasional spoiled celebrity at work didn’t endear him to their woes in tabloids.

Moz and Neal, on the other hand, had made a living (and maybe still did?) of knowing and exploiting that kind of people. Not only were they interested in the latest rumors, they saw their potential uses and generally had their own tales to share.

And if she’d noticed Neal was always a bit keener about the Waynes than any other celebrities, that was for her to know and discreetly bring up to the table.

“Really?” Answered the felon, a bemused smile on his lips. “That’s odd, the Waynes are usually much better than that at behaving themselves in public, despite their… colorful personalities.”

“That’s one way to say it.” Mozzie scoffed. El had never seen him as relaxed in her home as around a good meal. “From what I heard, the lady in question has an expansive collection of stuffed animals and furs and the little Wayne dislikes taxidermy. Really dislikes taxidermy. Not that I can blame him for that – there’s something inherently unnerving about the empty eyes of dead creatures mounted on a wall, as if they’re judging your sins for putting them there.” He shuddered, and El wasn’t the only one smothering a smile at his antics.

Only Neal dared laugh out loud, and not at his friend’s – justified – wariness of dead creatures used as decoration (although given the amount of eerie gargoyles hanging in his home, he had no room to talk). “Yeah, that explains Damian Wayne’s reaction. The kid is a vocal advocate of animal rights; he’s vegetarian and often helps at the nearest shelter. A place filled with stuffed animals was bound to trigger his terrible temper. The host probably got off lightly, all things considered.”

“I hadn’t known he was that proactive.” Noted El. She hadn’t, and she doubted many people did. While a large part of the Wayne’s lives and personalities was public knowledge, a similarly large chunk remained shrouded in mystery, protected by Gotham's shadows and the thick walls of their extravagant manor. Despite their – very – public scandals, the family prefered to stay private outside of scheduled events and impromptu parties.

“Yeah, Neal,” Peter followed like a dog on a trail, “you seem to know an awful lot about one of our country’s richest families. Care to explain why?”

El held back a sigh. Here her husband went again, snooping and suspecting Neal as soon as he showed a hint of unusual behavior.

“Oh, it’s nothing. When you mingle with high-society, it’s always best to stay apprised of the latest scandal – for the sake of conversation. The Waynes make for prime gossip material.”

Peter raised an eyebrow, clearly not impressed by his CI’s explanation. Neither was El: if nobody knew that information, Neal couldn’t have stumbled upon it through normal channels. Even Mozzie, usually so savvy in the ways of gossip and secret knowledge, hadn’t known of the strength of Damian Wayne’s proclivities towards animal welfare.

Neal’s paltry defense only highlighted that there was something wrong.

“Really?” Peter pressed on, relentless. “You’re absolutely sure you’re not forgetting to tell us something?”

Trapped under the weight of three stares (so Mozzie didn’t know either? Odd), Neal opened his mouth, closed it, pinched his lips, looked at them one by one, as if searching for an ally, and finally slumped in his seat. “Fine! I might have done a thorough investigation on the Waynes back in the days, before I even met Moz.”

“For a con?” Asked Mozzie, looking surprised. Then he turned to Peter. “Before you bring out the handcuffs, Suit, that was so long ago that you cannot legally bring this to court anymore, so don’t get your hopes up.”

“I won’t arrest Neal for this unless he murdered someone.” Promised El’s husband as he rolled his eyes at the balding man. “So, Neal, what did you do exactly?”

The conman chuckled awkwardly. “It’s not that big of a deal, I swear. I just might… I might have let some people believe I was Richie Grayson-Wayne.”

Heavy silence. “The airhead playboy with a fabulous ass, Richie Wayne?” Blurted El out before thinking.

“Hey!” Peter looked indignant, but El placated him with a smile and a hand on his thigh. Sure, she loved her husband and he also had a rather nice rear, but nothing like Richie Wayne. The man was as famous for his legendary ass as for his endless stupidity.

“Yeah, that Richie.” Agreed Neal with a cherry red face. The impersonation must have been a sight to behold if he felt that embarrassed about it. “I pretended to be him on a trip throughout the States; I told you it’s not that big of a deal.”

“I want to see it.” Announced El. “You’re not getting out of this house before I see sophisticated Neal Caffrey acting like a rich idiot.”

“Seconded.” Mozzie grinned at his friend’s betrayed expression. “That’s not a mask I’ve ever seen you wear. Flirty for sure, but never as moronic as Richie Wayne. The only living being more daft would be his father, because anyone with fewer brain cells than Brucie would simply forget to breathe.”

Neal turned imploring eyes to Peter. “Please, you can’t let them-”

“Consider this punishment for stealing the man’s identity years ago.” Peter smirked mercilessly. Ah, this was the husband she loved.

No matter how much Neal whined and begged, they would not let him talk his way out of that one. The conman eventually admitted defeat. “You guys are horrible. Don’t say I didn’t warn you: Richie Grayson-Wayne is the most annoying act I’ve ever done.

“Now, normally, I’d dye my hair black, arrange it differently, wear contacts for the right eye color and pick more suitable clothes, so keep that in mind if it looks weird.”

And before their eyes, he gradually transformed into someone else. He loosened his shoulders, eased his posture, curled his lips into a beguiling smile, emptied his eyes of all traces of guile… Everything ‘Neal Caffrey’ about him vanished under the trappings of something eerily close to what she had seen of Richie Wayne in magazines and on TV.

“Hello, beautiful.” He winked saucily at El with a voice a little more high-pitched than usual. She felt her cheeks heat up when he reached for her hand and kissed it for a little too long. “Would you be interested in a ride with me? My car is just outside; I could take you somewhere nice. We could share a drink under the stars.”

Next to her, Peter spluttered, but she could not tear her eyes from the impressive act in front of her. The physical resemblance might only be shallow, but Neal’s impersonation certainly made up for it.

“Neal!” Peter yelled in indignation. “Stop flirting with my wife!”

“Oh, you’re married?” Neal gently let go of her hand. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to intrude.” He turned to Peter with a too-bright, too-silly smile, not a trace of anything in his expresson besides idiotic delight at meeting someone new. Just as he’d done with El, he reached for Peter’s slack hand before he could react, only this time he only shook it with childish enthusiasm.

“I’m Richie Grayson-Wayne, it’s a pleasure to meet you! You have a beautiful wife, I’m sure you must be a happy man. I sure hope to one day marry a woman half as beautiful.”

Then he went on to babble about his – or rather Richie’s – past lovers and why they didn’t work out, then somehow smoothly continued on the topic of expensive cars, then on animals, and his brother’s impressive – and hopefully fictive – menagerie back at ‘home’, after which he trailed off on the various and surely imaginary times he’d been kidnapped in his life.

Apparently, Richie Grayson got abducted twice a month in a regular year, and after so much time in close quarters, now considered his kidnappers his friends. Neal kept prattling about their imaginary lives as if they all came from Wonderland.

If not for how utterly genuine he looked, El would not have understood how people could buy that pile of nonsense. Sure, Gotham was rumored to have been carved straight out of hell, but this was too outlandish by far. Where did Neal find all these crazy stories, anyway?

El, her husband and Mozzie watched in transfixed horror as Neal kept blabbering on and on about the circus Richie had grown up in, never once missing a beat or leaving time for one of them to speak up. It was a mesmerizing performance, from the empty-headed, but good-natured rant to the limited vocabulary or the childish delight on his face when he talked about topics that the real Richie Wayne would have been interested in.

It was so masterful, in fact, that El had to keep looking at Neal’s face to remember she wasn’t talking – or rather listening without getting a word in edgewise – to the actual Richie Wayne. Brown hair, not black. The wrong shade of blue. Not the right age or choice of clothing either… Yes, she could clearly see how someone not familiar with either Neal or Richie could fall for it.

It must have disturbed Peter too, because after a solid hour of dumb staring at his CI’s uninterrupted verbal spewing, he cut the conman off with a worried expression.

“OK, that’s it, Neal, we get it! Now stop it!”

Neal blinked at him, eyes vacant of any understanding. “Neal? No, silly, I told you, my name is Richie. It’s OK, I don’t mind. I kind of forgot your name too. It happens all the time, so no hard feelings.” He chuckled, charmingly moronic.

Peter, on the other hand, looked that close to a full-blown panic attack, as did Mozzie. El felt no better. “Neal, please,” she said, her voice trembling on the last word with growing fright. “We get it, you can impersonate Richie perfectly. But this is starting to freak us out.”

For a moment, when Neal aimed his air-headed gaze towards her, El thought he wouldn’t listen. But then a smug smirk broke out on his face, and all appearances of Richie Wayne dropped, leaving them in front of the man they knew. “That’s what you get for making me play Richie. I told you the guy was a pain.”

“I dare say none of us expected you to keep to character so completely.” Countered Mozzie after they all heaved a collective sigh of relief at having their Neal Caffrey back. “But congratulations on the performance – if you hadn’t looked a little different from Richie Wayne, I might have fallen for it myself.”

“Yeah, I can’t see the resemblance at all.” Peter pouted. He would never admit it, but he was definitely sulking. El could have sworn that, more than his fright at his CI’s masterful impersonation, the comment had something to do with her earlier observation on Richie Wayne’s ass. “And the act could use some more work to be believable.”

“If you say so.” Neal shrugged, clearly not believing a word of Peter’s sullen remarks. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to take my leave before you ask me to imitate anyone else. Richie is not only annoying, he’s exhausting to impersonate.”

They shared their usual goodbyes, with a promise to return in two weeks for another dinner, and Peter left to drive Neal back to his apartment. Mozzie went home by his own means – never would he climb into a federal agent’s car of his own free will.

Just before the door closed on her husband and his CI, El couldn’t help looking down at Neal’s ass, wondering if it compared to Richie Wayne’s legendary assets.

Huh, it actually looked pretty damn good.

Of course, when Peter returned alone from Neal’s apartment, both he and El had to revisit today’s dinner conversation.

“What do you think he used Richie Wayne’s identity for?” She asked as they settled on the couch, Satchmo between the two of them, getting absently scratched. “I’ve never heard of Richie being accused of anything worse than public intoxication or disorderly conduct.”

“Maybe Neal disguised as Richie never got caught?” Suggested Peter. “Or maybe Brucie made the accusations disappear. They certainly have enough money to bribe a crooked cop, and Gotham has plenty of those.”

“Hmm… Maybe, but that doesn’t tell us what Neal did with Richie’s identity.”

“Isn’t Wayne manor supposed to be full to the brim with paintings and other treasures? I remember they featured in the top ten priceless American private collections of art and antiques.”

“When did you read that?” Chuckled El. Although he definitely did have an interest in art, her husband usually wasn’t one to read magazines or anything featuring the Waynes. Or at least, he pretended to feel only aversion for tabloids, even though she knew he sometimes read through hers to better understand her conversations with Mozzie and Neal.

She found it terribly cute, although because she wanted to preserve his pride, she’d never tell him so.

“... I was gathering data for work.” Peter grumbled, lying through his teeth as obviously to El as if he waved a sign stating ‘I’m a liar’ in her face. He cleared his throat to give himself a contenance. “Anyway, there definitely are lots of interesting things for a thief in Wayne manor, and they might not even notice anything is gone for a long time.” He scrunched his nose in thought. “Forget what I just said. It’s the Waynes, they wouldn’t notice if you stole their own beds. I bet they have hundreds of them in their castle.”

El laughed, but shook her head. “The Waynes themselves might miss it, but I hear their butler is extremely sharp. He’s the one that has to look after all of them, run the household and make sure Brucie and his droves of kids don’t die by sheer stupidity; he’s bound to be scarily competent given what he has to work with. I don’t think even Neal could avoid such a mighty guardian. Besides, they might be idiots, but I still hope the Waynes would notice immediately that the ‘Richie’ at their door isn’t their brother and son.”

“I’m not so sure about that, but I guess it would be a bit too big for Neal before Mozzie taught him the fine art of the con.” Agreed Peter reluctantly. “Maybe Neal didn’t target the family as much as Wayne Enterprise?”

“Isn’t it led by another Wayne? Timothy, I think? He doesn’t appear in the tabloids nearly as much as the rest of the family. And you’d know better than me, but I doubt any board of directors would give access to their bank accounts to Richie Wayne, even if he shares his surname with the company.”

“I suppose they wouldn’t. And you’re right, the current CEO is Timothy Wayne. It made a lot of noise years ago, when Brucie appointed his then teenage son, but I think everyone involved is now grateful that their former ditzy CEO is gone. And all the rumors about Timothy say he’s a very competent boss, and a shark in the business world.”

“There are still quite a number of benevolent foundations and charities led by any of the Waynes.” Noted El. She figured the amount of money going in and out of that family’s pockets on a daily basis must be astronomical, no matter in which direction.

Peter was already shaking his head. “Even if Richie Wayne actually does anything more for some charities than act as a pretty poster boy – which I doubt – or if he has access to usable information, I don’t see Neal stealing from there. He might be a conman, but he’s got enough morals not to target a charity case.”

“You’re right.” El could only feel a bit chastised. Neal had surprisingly strong ethics for a felon. As far as El knew, and she knew a lot after hearing her husband rant about it in the months he chased after Neal, the CI had never targeted someone good that could not easily recover from the loss. “So what’s left?”

“... Maybe he only used Richie’s identity to get in high-profile galas and parties? He once told me he didn’t know how to really swindle and con before meeting Mozzie and I believe him, but if he used the opportunity to nick anything expensive-looking at hand, he could have still made quite a profit.”

“Huh. That does sound like something a younger Neal would do.” Agreed El. Stealing loose wallets and jewelry made a lot more sense than robbing a charity. “Not that he’ll ever admit it if we’re right.”

“He’s still adding ‘alleged’ before talking of any crime we haven’t arrested him for, even if we know he committed them.” Bemoaned Peter, though his tiny smile belied his feelings on the topic.

Neal’s little quirks could prove surprisingly endearing. El supposed that was part of what made him such a successful conman.

“I bet he has plenty of interesting stories about his time impersonating Richie Wayne.” Mused El out loud. Next to her, Peter groaned in despair.

“I’d rather never hear about them if it means I can erase that Richie act from my memory. Christ, the real man must be awful to be around if Neal’s imitation was that annoying! I just hope I never have to meet him.”

As draining as acting the part of Richie Grayson-Wayne always felt for Dick, he had to admit his friends’ faces when exposed to the full might of his public persona made it more than worth it.

Never underestimate the deterring power of bubbly stupidity; it repulsed people faster than a punch to the face. He’d learned that from Bruce.

Really, they’d all learned to put a mask on in public, to create a character for the world that could never, ever be a cover for smarts and secrets. The whole point was to have people go ‘Come on, Richie Grayson-Wayne and Nightwing? The same person? Don’t make me laugh!’

Richie Grayson-Wayne was a copy of Brucie, with a touch more naive charm and just enough brain cells to justify him joining Gotham and Blüdhaven’s understaffed police – with an assumed bribe. Maybe a bit more flirty too, and always the first in line for a good time.

Jay Todd-Wayne could be summed up as a dumb bad boy, the kind that regularly put his foot in his mouth because he had no filter and offended the delicate sensibilities of Gotham’s most fortunate with his street rat vocable (which Jason honestly found hilarious, because he was the most literate of the family). Timothy Drake Wayne couldn’t follow the stupidity route if he wanted to keep his credibility as CEO, so in public Tim chose to appear as a coffee-fueled, human-shaped robot. No emotions, no humor, nothing but hard facts and numbers, so completely at odds with Dick’s passionate little brother.

Dami Wayne was at once radically different and frighteningly close to Damian’s true personality. He was always angry, rash and borderline violent – which the real Damian kind of was, as much as Dick loved his youngest brother – but also spoiled, capricious and he threw a childish tantrum whenever he didn’t get what he wanted – faults Damian didn’t have, because when you grew up in the League of Assassins, even as an heir, you learned quickly that nothing was entitled to you; you had to earn everything by yourself or be disposed of like everyone else... And Dami loved animals, because you couldn’t keep Damian from trying to pet every dog, cat, turkey, cow or monstrous bat-creature he encountered if you tried.

Paparazzi – and everyone else, truth be told – saw Cassie Cain-Wayne as an angel, a delicate, almost fragile being of ethereal beauty that could shatter from a breeze and wouldn’t harm a fly. In truth, anyone in the family or outside would probably break long before Cass, because she was the best and strongest, end of discussion. By no means could she be considered anything close to ‘fragile’.

The fact that they found no cute shorthand or respectable lengthening to Duke’s first name had not prevented him from building up his own public persona, except they shared the same name: Duke Thomas, because ‘Dukie’ was not an acceptable nickname (even to the guy going by ‘Dick’ to his friends and family) and because Bruce had not yet come around to ask Duke if he wanted to go from ward to official son. Dick had no idea why, since the young man had long since become a full-fledged member of their crazy family. Even the tabloids sometimes called him ‘Thomas-Wayne’ or just ‘Wayne’ by mistake.

(Or maybe that was it. 'Thomas Wayne' was a name with a lot of painful implications for B.)

Anyway, Duke’s cover was of a nice young man, if a bit lost as to how to react to his family’s antics. The clueless one in a clan of lovable weirdos. To make sure nobody ever connected Duke and Signal, he had added to his public character a complete inability to keep confidences to himself; every now and then, he blurted out a ‘secret’ about his siblings or almost-adopted-father, either something utterly inconsequential but that would make the medias go wild (like Bruce – playfully – wondering if 100$ was enough money to buy lunch or Dick’s latest fashion statement in neon pink and soft yellow), or a fib they made up a few minutes beforehand. Of course, when that happened, everybody made sure to act as if Duke had revealed something absolutely private and monumental, and their audience ate it up.

And finally, though she was never adopted or officially taken in, came Stephanie Brown, seen by the paparazzi sometimes as a gold-digger that had found the right bandwagon by dating robot-like Timothy and ingratiating herself to soft-hearted Brucie, or sometimes as a poor young woman that couldn’t be officially adopted by the billionaire because her mother had the nerve to stay alive. Steph flitted from one persona to the other, just to mess with everyone’s head.

There was still Barbara, who totally counted as one of Bruce’s emotionally adopted kids (Dick used to joke that Batman and Jim Gordon had shared custody), but had enough notoriety as the daughter of Commissioner Gordon that she had no need to conceal her personality as hard as her pseudo-siblings, even if everyone knew she spent a lot of time at the Waynes’. After all, Jim Gordon would have stopped his daughter from becoming a vigilante or a hacker, wouldn’t he? And Babs did pretend she had no sense of humor when journalists interviewed her as a close acquaintance of his family, so maybe that counted as a mask too.

So yeah, all of Dick’s siblings or pseudo-siblings had built a public persona for them to better conceal their nightly activities, and had learned to slip into it at the drop of a hat. Dick considered it a family talent as well as a duty. No matter the actual state of their relationship with each other, in public, they always showed a united, tight-knit front. In a place as gloomy as Gotham, people looked up to his family as a light amidst the darkness; not blinding-bright like the sun, but a soft glow that illuminated the rest of the city, a proof that even the worst tragedies could still lead to happiness, as long as you found people to support you.

It befell to them to maintain that shine, a job just as important as their vigilante activities. The Bats repressed crime and punished the baddies, while the Waynes lifted the population up through donations and a hopeful example of a loving family.

Speaking of which, Dick really hadn’t liked how all his friends kept shortening his and his siblings’ names. He wasn’t ‘Wayne’, he was ‘Grayson-Wayne’, just like Timbo was ‘Drake-Wayne’, and so on for all his adopted brothers and sister.

Sure, for the common people it made no difference apart from being less of a mouthful, and they only had to remember one name, instead of how many Bruce had adopted. And don’t get him wrong, Dick loved the sense of belonging the hyphenated ‘Wayne’ gave him, as did his siblings, but to them, their original surname served as a reminder of their lives before joining the family, something none of them wanted to forget, no matter how painful or sad.

The people of Gotham understood that. They knew loss and hardship and past wounds that you clung to better than any other city, and respected Dick’s family’s choice to hyphenate their surnames. Never once had the Gotham Gazette or any other local media, no matter how trashy, mangled their patronyms.

Then again, Gotham as a whole paid much, much closer attention to Dick’s family than any other place did. Gothamites treated them like an unholy mix of royal family and rockstars.

Because sure, Dick had insider info he could share with El, Moz and Peter that they had never heard before, but all of what he sometimes let slip was public knowledge in Gotham. Like Jason returning to the family after being ‘mistakenly’ declared dead for years or Damian’s infamous love of animals – all animals, to the point of taking care of Penguin’s pet birds and sharks or Harley’s hyenas whenever they landed in Arkham. Every Gothamite knew Tim had bought all the cafés around Wayne Enterprises to have them make him more potent liquid abominations and they religiously followed Cass’s fledgling but oh-so-promising ballerina career.

Although truth be told, Gotham’s obsession with the Wayne’s went a little – a lot – too far.

Now, their privacy had never been breached when in the manor; although Bruce’s extensive and slightly paranoid security system might have played a role in that. But Gothamites respected the name Wayne in a way Dick had needed time to grasp when B took him in.

They were not-so-jokingly called Gotham’s ruling family for a reason. In the city, practically everything either ran on Wayne money, on dirty money or on both, with three degrees of separation at most from Wayne Enterprises or a local crime syndicate. The US government could only base their taxes on what revenue Gothamite companies earned outside of the city borders, and had no idea what the numbers looked like for domestic sales.

If they had, taxes would skyrocket. A good chunk of Wayne Enterprises’ (and other local companies’) profits were made inside Gotham herself, a place where there was almost no foreign competition given how little Gothamites liked importing goods. Everything, from medicine to food to clothes and electronics bore the Wayne brand.

The Waynes themselves were like the glittering light to Gotham’s cloying darkness, an ideal for her people to look to, a source of entertainment, glamour and hope, all wrapped into one pretty package, and yet firmly rooted in their city, like every other Gothamite.

It gave Dick’s family immense power in their turf, which every new member had to quickly learn to wield carefully. When out without a mask, their every word, their every action were scrutinized at all times. Complain about the abysmal service in a restaurant, and people stopped going there until the place closed down. Buy something in, or just visit a shop, and they would see their customer base increase dramatically. Put a good word in about a fundraiser, and everyone from the richest to the poorest would scramble to donate something. Bemoan a teacher’s assigned homework or teaching methods a bit too vehemently, and said teacher would be called by the headmaster, probably get scolded within an inch of their life, and then – depending on how harsh the words had been – either get sacked or segregated by the entire local teacher community.

Once, a couple months after Bruce had officially taken him as his ward, Dick had gone on a vitriolic rant with his schoolmates about his French teacher’s horrible accent and many grammatical mistakes – he’d lived in France with his parents for a year, and the locals hadn’t been able to guess he wasn’t born there by the time the circus left, so he’d know – and everything had gone haywire from there.

By a miraculous stoke of luck, the woman had survived the mob lynching without lasting damage and Bruce pulled strings to get her hired out of the city, but the memory had left scars in Dick’s mind, and from there on, he was extremely careful of what he said in public. He also helped Bruce better explain that new responsibility to his younger siblings, even to those that came from Gotham, because they would all severely underestimate the scale of the Wayne name’s power at first. You couldn’t understand the Wayne clout until you actually had it at the tip of your tongue, weighing down your every word and action.

Their influence on the public could destroy lives in the most drastic of cases. In the best scenario, though, it could save people too.

And not just with the charities they funded either. There was an entire black market where the highest bidder could purchase items belonging or having been touched by the Waynes. It had existed well before B's time, apparently, although the ludicrous amounts of money made by pilfered goods had then lined the mob’s pockets rather than the people’s.

Batman had uprooted the thing some years before Dick entered the scene, and every profit – aside from a set fee to the organizer – was now sent to carefully-chosen associations and charities, with Penguin of all people in charge of leading the whole shebang.

From a certain point of view, it made sense: Bruce obviously couldn’t run an illegal auction of his own stolen goods, nor could he hire an honest straw man or woman to handle it. He had to pick someone crooked, with enough business acumen to make profit, and enough good sense not to try to cheat B or keep much more charity money for themselves than agreed on.

Penguin fit all these criteria and, like most everyone in Gotham, showed a surprising amount of respect towards the Wayne name. Enough not to scam them too badly, at least.

(Seriously, even their monthly kidnappers were always polite and careful when they abducted a member of Dick’s family – as long as they were in civvies, of course; all bets were off with the masks on. Dick remembered being offered more sweets, juice and cake during these instances than during most birthday parties. Every Wayne even had friends among their regular, and dedicated teams of captors that they called by name, and they caught up with each other whenever they ended up loosely bound in a basement.

Harry currently expected his third child, privately hoping it would be a daughter after two sons. Carolyn now had a grand total of five aquariums and seventy-two fishes of fifty-one different species. Dimitri was trying to stop smoking and Susan had discovered her passion for macrame – Dick always came back from her kidnappings with new, experimental ornaments for his room. Rodrigo wanted to save enough money to buy a house in a better suburb (still in Gotham, naturally) but could never help himself from splurging every time he saw a new figurine from his favorite anime. Those things were apparently very expensive.

His regular abductors felt more like old friends than threats by now.

It made every subsequent kidnapping situation quite underwhelming and mildly disappointing, as Dick could loudly attest when playing Neal Caffrey, much to Peter’s dismay. Why couldn’t the abductors outside of Gotham prepare some snacks in advance when they knew they were about to have company? And if they disliked his constructive criticism so badly, they could simply gag him or plan ahead, duh.)

So yes, Penguin led a ring of underground Wayne items smuggling for charity, Dick’s family pretended not to notice when some of their belongings vanished without a trace whenever they went out (even sometimes ‘forgot’ them on purpose), and the police looked the other way despite everyone and their mother knowing when and where each illegal auction would take place.

Business as usual in Gotham’s underbelly.

Still, as logical and beneficial as the whole affair was, the range of presented items would never stop baffling Dick. Unwashed glasses in which one of them had drunk, used napkins, broken hair ties and bits of nails were sold alongside misplaced jewelry, discarded ties and one-time gala dresses or shirts. Gargoyles carved during moments of idle boredom and left behind stood among the most prized items, of course. There existed an entire network of people dedicated to obtaining everything they possibly could that was related to the Waynes outside of their highly-protected manor (and sometimes even loot from the inside, when Selina got involved).

Once, Dick had seen underwear up for bid and had promptly decided that Bruce could oversee Penguin’s work on his own. He hadn’t dared check whom the undergarments belonged to or if they’d been washed.

And the less he thought about how much people were willing to pay for them, the better.

Gotham’s obsession with their family was so strong that when one of them disappeared from the public eye for too long, journalists went snooping, and wrote wild and unsubstantiated articles about their whereabouts.

Cass had once left for Hong Kong for a couple months, and already conspiracy theories had popped up left and right that Outsider gangs had abducted their beautiful princess and were doing unspeakable things to her in some remote corner of the world (because local mobsters would never dare harm a hair on their angel’s head). People went to arms to save their angel from an imaginary threat. Even after Cassie returned, made several public apparitions and danced in a three-fucking-hours-long ballet to demonstrate her skills, it took a month for them to stop thinking she was a clone of their graceful idol.

To prevent that from happening again, Dick regularly slipped his ankle bracelet off, left Neal Caffrey behind, and Richie Grayson-Wayne attended a gala or two. It allowed him to see his father and siblings and reconnect with his regular kidnappers, so Dick didn’t complain about the added hurdles.

So to sum up, Gothamites were a crazy, paranoid bunch and mildly obsessed with their foremost family, from the regular people to the even more deranged supervillains (Two-Face, for instance, had a wide collection of Bruce’s shoes and socks, all mismatched, that Dick tried his best never to think about. And the less said about Hush, the better). Said family happened to be Dick’s family that he loved from the bottom of his heart, even when he had to admit that they were even more paranoid, crazy and obsessed than the regular Gothamite, which should be somewhat worrisome.

But then again, Waynes wouldn’t be nearly as interesting without their secret and public quirks.

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’…

Chapter Text

“No case this morning; we’ve got a last minute briefing today.”

Clinton blinked, blindsided by Peter’s announcement. They had started an investigation into a major electronics company’s possible money laundering just yesterday, and still had a good week of work before they could reasonably hope to close it. It was not the bureau’s policy to drop an affair – however temporarily – to do something else.

Especially not for an unrelated briefing.

Reading the disapproval on his face, Peter continued. “It’s not as bad as it seems – or well, it is, but not for the reasons you’re thinking of. No corruption or trying to cover our case up, I swear. We’ll go back to the Willis case immediately after.”

Faced with Clinton’s dubious expression, Peter clarified the matter. “Two big-wig villains from Gotham had a trek outside that cesspool of a city last night and caused some damage in one of New York’s industrial areas. No casualties, thank God, but enough of a scare that the higher-ups decided it was important for all units to get a proper reminder of how to respond in such cases. Even Hughes was only warned of the briefing when he arrived today and the guy from the FBI/Justice League liaison office was already on his way.”

Despite the perspective of yet another presentation no doubt cooked up by someone who had never set foot on the field, Clinton perked up. If someone from the FBI/JL office led it, perhaps this briefing might be more interesting than the usual snoozefest; maybe the agent in charge had some stories to share about superheroes?

What could Clinton say? He’d never completely outgrown his childish awe for heroes and the like. And why would he when the Justice League still saved the world several times a year?

He’d never met one in the flesh, so a liaison agent was probably his best chance at approaching the world of superheroes in his life.

Clinton followed Peter to the White Collar Crimes division’s largest conference room, trying his best to keep a professional attitude and not betray his glee by skipping his way there. When his Boss opened the door, Clinton realized he was far from the only one excited for the presentation. Quite a few agents looked just as enthused, and not all of them bothered masking it.

In contrast, Neal’s sullen pout stood out like a lighthouse in a dark night.

“What’s his problem?” Clinton asked Diana when he took a seat next to her.

The woman sighed, but it didn’t stop her lips from twitching up in amusement. “He didn’t want to come; said he had better things to do than, and I quote, ‘listening to boring instructions and protocols he won’t even be allowed to follow’. He thinks that he should be allowed to skip the briefing because he’s not an agent, and he has a point, but Peter refuses to leave him to his own devices after that last stunt of his.”

Right. Neal was a good guy, deep down, but not a single agent had forgiven him for exchanging all the coffee in the office with tea bags, allegedly in honor of his grandpa’s birthday. Nobody had bought the flimsy excuse, and everybody had resented the loss of their black, miraculous lifeblood.

No one messed with the coffee, even if in all objectivity, it was disgusting, barely caffeinated swill.

So even though the conman revealed immediately that he had only hid everything in the desk of an agent on maternity leave, Neal was still very much not in anyone’s good books at the moment, and not a soul would voice their complaints at Peter for forcing him to endure a presentation he didn’t want to attend.

In fact, if all punishments could be spent listening to someone possibly share gossip about superheroes, Clinton might misbehave more often.

In any case, this certainly explained the sulky CI curled up in his chair in a way that looked honestly painful, glowering at the table like a kid denied cookies.

Hopefully this would teach him to tamper with the coffee…

(Who was he kidding? After such a little slap on the hand, Neal would pout for two days tops and be back to his usual antics before they knew it.

No, Clinton really didn’t envy Peter’s job of handling Neal Caffrey. He’d prefer babysitting a class of kids on a sugar high in a gun factory for a month rather than spend a day cleaning up after the CI. Way less stressful and unpredictable.

Neal was a friend, and a kind, smart, fun man to have around, but he was also – in Clinton’s humble opinion – the biggest pain in the ass he’d ever met, hands down.)

The door to the conference room opened one final time, and a man walked in. Tall, built like a brick wall with slicked back reddish hair. Clothed in an expensive-looking black suit with a flashy orange tie and aiming a roguish grin at everyone in the room.

… Not quite what Clinton expected from someone in the FBI/JL liaison unit, but he knew better than to judge a book by its cover.

“Hello everyone from White Collar, I’m Special Agent Tinderstone, here to remind you all of what to do in case the big bad baddies leave their Gothamite hell to visit our beautiful Big Apple!”

Some chuckles sounded around the room, and Clinton relaxed slightly. Agent Tinderstone seemed friendly and laid-back – perhaps he’d agree to share a few stories after the meeting.

“Now, the earlier we start, the earlier we’re done with this schtick, so let’s begin!” Tinderstone clicked on his little remote and the video-projector turned on, showing the first page of a presentation on the screen. Emergency responses in case of attack from the major Gothamite supervillains, with a mug-shot of a grinning creepy clown underneath the title.

Neal shot up on his chair, suddenly alert and sitting properly. Huh? Was he afraid of clowns? Honestly, if all clowns looked like the one in the picture, Clinton could understand why.

“You lucky dogs get to see a presentation written by Batman himself, with yours truly for the comments!” Announced Tinderstone. “And I’m an expert in all things Gotham! If you really want to know, I happen to be personally acquainted with quite a few superheroes, including several of the infamous Bats. I’ve given advice to them on legal matters several times and Nightwing is a good pal of mine.”

As expected, most of the agents looked very excited at the prospect of getting some first hand info on the most elusive of all vigilante groups. Even Neal raised an eyebrow in dubious interest.

“Since us poor normal human beings cannot be expected to apprehend the nutjobs from Gotham ourselves, our job in case of attack is to contain the situation as best we can and wait for the qualified heroes to deal with the problem – unless the crackpots in question are really lame and can be easily stopped, like is actually the case for quite a few of them. This presentation is divided in several parts, each one detailing a potential danger and how to respond appropriately – although don’t be surprised when they overlap some. Gotham crazies rarely keep to one type of large-scale threat.

“Anyway, part one: biohazards!” Said Tinderstone with way, way too much cheer. “Quite a lot of Gotham villains rely on gas or other kinds of aerosol substances. Yeah, these guys don’t joke. First in our presentation is the much-dreaded ‘Fear Toxin’, one of Scarecrow’s special homebrewed chemicals.”

Another click and a man dressed like a particularly nightmare-inducing scarecrow appeared on screen. More than one agent reared back on their seats.

“Scarecrow, aka Jonathan Crane, has something of an obsession with fear and created the Fear Toxin himself.” Supplied Tindersone with a merry grin. “I know he looks like a walking nightmare, but he’s not all that much actually. He’s a weakling, and his prized invention doesn’t work if you have a gas mask or if you’ve been vaccinated.”

“Unless you weren’t immunized against the right strain, because Scarecrow creates a new one four times a year. And not all of his toxins are airborne – some can be carried through water, inside food, take effect after entering in contact with skin or simply be injected directly in your organism through his darts or his claw-like syringes, which kinda negates any physical advantage you might have in a fight.”

Everybody turned to look at Neal in shock after his rude interruption of Tinderstone’s presentation. The CI looked almost bored as he delivered his speech, an elbow on the table and his head resting heavily on his palm, smushing his cheek and adding an extra touch of laziness to his expression.

“Do you have something to say, Agent…” Tinderstone asked with a frown. He looked pretty annoyed to have lost his momentum.

“Not an agent. Neal Caffrey, resident CI. And yes, I’m adding information you missed. Crane might not look like much on paper, but anyone who goes after him mano a mano is a suicidal moron.”

Tinderstone’s face turned from an irritated frown to a patronizing grin in the blink of an eye. “Ah, a criminal informant. I guess that explains how little you know: Fear Toxin only instills a deep sense of fear and gives hallucinations; no strain has ever been lethal to the victims.”

Neal smirked right back. “Not directly, no, but Fear Toxin is still responsible for the death of hundreds of people over the years. When they don’t shoot or bash anything in sight in their delirium, killing anyone around them, the victims often end up self-destructing because they hallucinate something crawling in or out of themselves. Quite a lot of people met their end after ripping their own insides out or clawing their eyes, throat or any body part off, all the while screaming in terror. A few even died from simple shock or heart failure because of the horrifying visions, and even after being administered an antidote, the psychological damage often leaves lasting scars.”

Clinton gulped, staring at their non-violent CI talking about gruesome deaths and trauma with a charming grin, not once flinching at his rather graphic description. Sure, Peter had warned the bureau that Neal was not half as afraid of gore as they could expect, but this was, frankly, still disturbing.

At the front of the table, Tinderstone looked to be gritting his teeth so hard that Clinton was surprised not to hear them crack. With one last contemptuous glare Neal’s way, he clicked on his remote. “Well, since our resident convicted felon seems so sure of himself, who am I to argue? Anyway, if Scarecrow attacks, our job is to evacuate the area up to five blocks around him, if possible, and to alert the hospitals to stock up on antidotes while the higher-ups contact the Justice League. All that without getting within reach of the criminal in question.” He added as he read straight from the thick protocol manual in front of him.

“Moving on, here’s another common biohazard: the Joker’s ‘Joker Gas’, because the guy has no imagination for names. Like Scarecrow, he’s no meta and his gas isn’t lethal – it just makes you giggle like an idiot, bleaches your skin and turns your hair greenish. Like his alias implies, the man is a bit of a joke, dressing up like a clown and pretending to be a big deal-”

“Yeah, it’s not like he’s the biggest mass murderer in Gotham, the worst monster in all of Arkham, with a death count in the tens of thousands, including anyone from elderly grandmas to newborn babies, to the point that clowns are outright banned from the city because of him.” Mocked Neal with a flat glance Tinderson’s way. “I’m sure Batman’s greatest adversary is ‘a bit of a joke’. And it’s true, his gas isn’t technically lethal, it just forces the victim to lose their sanity and laugh like maniacs until they can’t get enough air and suffocate. And if they aren’t given an antidote in time, the effects can become permanent, leading to hundreds of people lost to madness and giggles, unable to so much as recognize their loved ones. Absolutely no big deal.”

Unease hung heavily in the air as people looked back and forth between Neal and Tinderstone, the former looking casually judgemental and the latter about to explode in embarassed fury.

The rest of the presentation went along the same lines. Tinderstone exposed a new danger, more biohazards, villainous metas, all kinds of bombs, the ‘most common’ types of hostage situations… (any of it enough to give Cliton nightmares on its own – why did people still live in Gotham again?) and Neal completely turned over his explanation with gruesome details that clashed with the other man’s lighter words.

Like the rest of the audience, Clinton wasn’t sure who to trust more; on the one hand, Tinderstone was a Special Agent, here expressly to inform them of Gotham’s dangers. On the other hand, Neal didn’t joke around with that kind of thing and really did seem to know what he was talking about.

“And that’s the end of the presentation.” Concluded Tinderstone, who by now looked anything but friendly. Clinton couldn’t say he blamed him; had it been his meeting that Neal had hijacked so thoroughly, he’d be pretty pissed as well. “Any questions?”

As if to add insult to injury, Neal immediately raised his hand with a grin like a schoolboy about to commit mischief.

Tinderstone pointedly ignored him and looked at the probies at the back. The three young agents looked at each other as if willing one of them to name themselves spokesperson. After much silent debating (and Neal wiggling in his seat, hand still in the air), the only woman in the group – Attaway? Something that sounded like that – straightened her shoulders. “We were… I mean, is everything that Caffrey said true? Is it really as bad as he says?”

Neal lowered his hand, smirking like the cat that got the cream.

Since everyone else seemed way too interested in the answer for him to brush off the question, Tinderstone had no choice but to reply. “I-” He trailed off, a slight blush on his cheeks; Clinton couldn’t tell if it came from embarrassment or anger. “This presentation was written by Batman, what do you think?”

Oh, prevarication if Clinton had ever heard any. It might have worked had everyone here, including the probies, not been exposed to Neal Caffrey, liar and conman extraordinaire.

The CI didn’t even bother to argue his opinion and just leaned back on his chair, feet on the table and hands behind his head. Tinderstone could dig his own grave.

Under their increasingly suspicious states, Tinderstone spluttered. “What makes you think a criminal knows what he’s talking about?! I’m a specially formed agent, and I personally know the Bats themselves! Why would you doubt my word instead of a convicted felon’s?!”

More beating around the bush. This wasn’t looking good for Tinderstone…

“Agent Tinderstone," started Diana with a dark furrow between her brows, “does this mean that this whole meeting was a waste of our time?”

The poor man blinked, like he couldn’t understand why nobody was defending him. “Of course not-”

“Maybe this presentation was prepared by Batman,” admitted Neal with an easy shrug, “but I seriously doubt your little speech came along with the visual support. Anyone remotely aware of what goes on in Gotham could tell you this was a bunch of horseshit. My guess is that your bureau got a complete file, but you thought everything was exaggerated for shock-value so you rewrote it and made up the rest all by yourself instead of, say, contacting the Gotham police for information. Did I get it right?”

Tinderstone closed and opened his mouth without a word, reminding Clinton of a fish out of water. Seemed like Neal had been right on the money once again.

But in that case…

“Wait a minute!” He said, a disappointing revelation dawning onto Clinton. “Does that mean you actually don’t know Batman and Nightwing and everyone else?”

“I-”

“Please,” scoffed Neal. “Everyone knows the Bats are perfectionists. There’s no way they would have let someone they know flounder if they’d asked for data. Clearly this man has never met a Bat in his life, or he could have asked them for help.”

Damn, Clinton’s hopes of meeting someone at least superhero-adjacent were dwindling by the second. “Is that true?”

The man at the head of the table gulped, looked around for support (found none, not with how disappointed everyone was) and averted his eyes. “I mean, I did meet Nightwing and Red Robin…” Everyone stared at him. “Once…” More intense staring. “Nightwing said it was nice to meet me…”

Right. So he’d only ever spoken pleasantries with two Bats on one occasion. Nothing remarkable or unique there, only a pathetic man distorting the truth to make himself look good. And to say that Clinton had been excited to meet the guy…

He should have known better, but the Bats were his heroes. He’d give almost anything to meet one face to face.

“I think it would be best if we disbanded this meeting now.” Peter stepped in before people could start insulting Tinderstone for giving them false hopes. “Special Agent Tinderstone, thank you for coming. I think we can rely on our criminal informant for more accurate information in case of another attack, so your assistance will no longer be needed.”

Huh. Seemed like Peter had taken all the jabs at Neal’s questionable choice of career personally.

Tinderstone showed a modicum of good sense by fleeing the scene with his tail between his legs. Clinton would almost feel sorry for him if he hadn’t raised his hopes up with promises of stories of Nightwing.

“Wait! Does that mean all his instructions on what to do if another Gothamite villain attacks New York were bogus as well?!” One of the three probies at the back couldn’t hide his anxiety at the prospect. “What do we do when it happens again?!”

“I wouldn’t worry about that.” Once more, Neal looked utterly unfazed by a prospect that terrified everyone else. “Last night was just Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn’s fifth anniversary together and they wanted to mark the occasion by going on a trip outside Gotham. They went a bit wild, but they didn’t kill anyone or damage much beyond some deserted factories that illegally polluted rivers.

“Gotham rogues hardly ever leave Gotham, so you should be fine for at least another year, and even then, I doubt Ivy and Harley would go for the same destination twice for their next anniversaries, so nothing to be concerned about on that front, if you ask me.”

Predictably, no one dared ask how Neal knew all these details on the life of two infamous supervillains. A beat of awkward silence passed by with the pace of an elderly turtle.

“Back to normal work, everyone, we still have the Willis case to solve.” Ordered a tired Peter, who didn’t seem to want to linger on his CI’s disturbing knowledge either. Everyone trickled out of the room to return to their desks, although not without some curious looks Neal’s way and some grumbling and glares in the direction Tinderstone had fled in.

Clinton himself had a few choice words for the man if he ever met him again.

Eleven days later, the Willis case came to a close and Clinton finally had time to properly grill the CI on his attitude and unexpected insight at the presentation.

“How do you know so much about Gotham villains?” Wondered Clinton while he and Neal waited in the breakroom for the coffee machine to spit out two cups of dark, disgusting lifeblood. “Almost no information gets out of that city unless you actually go digging for it.”

He’d know. Even before the presentation, Clinton had spent hours on the Internet and the FBI’s files available to regular agents, looking for details on the Bats and their mortal enemies but finding almost nothing tangible. After the presentation, and with Neal’s words as a starting point, he’d resumed his research in his free time and, so far, all of the conman’s assertions had been either proven true or at least not been found false.

Tinderstone had seriously understated the danger and cruelty of Gothamite rogues. If he and his colleagues had acted based on the man’s presentation, they would have been in a world of trouble.

“Well, my dear Jones,” started Neal with a playfully sanctimonious tone, “when you become as successful a criminal as I, it becomes necessary to learn about your fellow ferocious felicitous felons, if only to know how to avoid the worst of the bunch.”

OK… Clinton was 80% positive Neal had used ‘felicitous’ wrongly only for the alliteration, but fine. This wasn’t the reason he had rushed here when he saw the conman alone in the breakroom. “So what? You only researched your competition?”

“How do you think I ended up knowing Catwoman so well?” Neal laughed. “But the other reason is that a mere non-violent conman and thief like myself doesn’t want to inadvertently step on the toes of the Gotham crime bosses. The best way to ensure I stayed well away from them was to know as much as possible of their methods, brokers and prefered playgrounds and avoid them like the plague. Trust me, you don’t want to end up on the wrong side of that crowd if you can help it.”

Clinton supposed he should have seen it coming. Neal was very meticulous about his heists, and he could understand the fear of angering the Gothamite rogues after what little he had recently learned of their ‘exploits’. Add in Mozzie’s legendary paranoia, and it made sense for Neal to be informed of so many details of the Gotham villains’ modus operandi.

It also raised more questions that Clinton really wanted an answer to. “If you studied the rogues, does that mean you studied the Bats too? Any note-worthy insight on Batman and the rest of the Gotham vigilantes?”

Neal burst into laughter. “You’re a real fanboy, aren’t you? Yes, I researched them as well – while it might not be as bad to be caught by a Bat as by a supervillain, it’s still not on my to-do list.”

All the disappointment created by Tinderstone's presentation would be worth it if… “Could you share some of what you found? Anything about the Bats would be great.”

For some reason, Neal seemed to find Clinton’s eagerness endlessly amusing. “I’ll do better than that.” Without an explanation, he took the closest notepad, scribbled something on it, tore the paper off and handed it to him. “Here, you’ll find everything you want there.”

For a second, Clinton feared the CI had given him the address of a criminal gathering or something equally impossible to justify going to for a FBI agent. But no, a closer look at the note revealed a simple Internet address.

“It’s the local website for all Bat- and villain-watchers in Gotham, with all the information people have about them and the popular fan-theories.” Supplied Neal once Clinton took the note. “The Bat-watch has everything you might want to know and more. It even allows you to download an app to follow the rogues and the vigilantes in real time through their sightings, and it’s protected and overseen by Oracle itself, so no risk of any personal data getting hacked by said villains. Normally, it’s restricted to Gothamites, but anyone can get in as long as they have the address.”

Clinton clutched the note closer like it was the most valuable treasure ever. “Really?”

“Really.” Neal chuckled and retrieved his cup. In his amazement, Clinton hadn’t even noticed that the noisy and struggling machine had stopped spluttering blobs of semi-liquid coffee. With a final grin, the conman made his retreat and left him standing there in the restroom, still awestruck at the precious gift he had been granted.

Now he only had to resist the temptation of checking the website at work. Waiting for the end of his working hours promised to be excruciating.

Maybe they’d gone a little overboard for Harley and Pam’s party, but you didn’t celebrate a fifth anniversary every day either, and after all they’d been through, both women had deserved something special.

Besides, Dick’s entire family had been invited and there to limit damage to non-residential areas and empty factories. Bruce – always one to have plans – had even thoughtfully prepared a list of companies that both did lasting and unforgivable damage to the Earth and whose facilities would be empty on that day.

Sure, the factories were now rubble, but the party girls had loved their gift of a free pass on their destructive impulses (as did Steph, Jason, Damian and the few villains they had invited) and that was the most important. Tim and Bruce had already compiled a list of now jobless employees worth hiring because they hadn’t done anything wrong apart from obeying orders, and another list of people who would see their names appear in the closest police precinct along with piles of evidence of their environmental crimes.

(Dick’s family had a thing for lists, not just Bruce and Tim, and not just about contingency plans or ways to deal with their allies should they go rogue – although they also had those. Books to read, people who could take care of their pets, blackmail about their other family members, ground rules in the manor and ideas for birthday gifts… Lists everywhere, from the fridge door to the batmobile’s back seats.)

At least the authorities hadn’t heard of the afterparty once the willful destruction part was done. Nobody would live that down if the videos got out…

Even Jones, who apparently idolized Dick’s family, would find it hard to look up to them if he ever saw Batman dancing a heated, acrobatic tango with Catwoman while Spoiler and the Riddler started a rap battle in a corner with Oracle and Mr Freeze as judges. Not to mention Black Bat, Red Robin, Signal and Poison Ivy having a blast on Just Dance, Robin and Penguin debating the best ways to care for their avian pets, Batwoman, Two-Face, Deathstroke and Red Hood hosting a drink-and-shoot contest with all the mandatory corny western quotes, or Nightwing and Harley facing off in a karaoke match for the ages.

There was a limit to how much Katy Perry you could sing at the top of your lungs with one of your rogues before you lost credibility as a superhero to Outsiders…

Gothamites probably wouldn’t bat an eye at the sight. Considering the scale of the web of civilian watchers reporting on the Bats and rogues at all times, they’d seen much worse from their villains and vigilantes alike.

(They also knew that relationships between both ends of the lawful spectrum tended to be more complex than expected. As shocking as it was for Outsiders, there was a great deal of trust between most of the supervillains and the local vigilantes. Although not necessarily trust that they wouldn't stab you in the back. Or trust that they absolutely would stab you in the back.

It was horribly convoluted, but it worked.)

A few years ago, when they’d realized the amount of watchers spying on their every move, all of Dick’s extensive family had freaked out. Then Babs had uncovered their website, where every observation and theory was recorded, examined and sorted, and the Bats had been faced with a problem.

As far as they could tell, no villain had so far discovered this treasure trove of information, including a pretty good approximation of the vigilante’s locations at all times, but it was only a matter of weeks. Either the Bats put a stop to the whole thing and prevented it from appearing again – a difficult endeavor considering how obstinate Gothamites could be, and how enthusiastic the watchers were (Tim, especially, felt kinship with the little stalkers).

Or else they allowed the website to continue, only under their supervision and with enough additional security measures that it couldn’t be used against them.

Tim’s big, manipulative, teary eyes had been the deciding factor.

Since then the Bat-watch had evolved into a veritable encyclopedia of all things Bat and villain in Gotham, protected by Oracle’s impenetrable shields and all-knowing eyes. By now, every Gothamite was on it, since it also alerted them when a rogue went on a rampage nearby and it had pretty much replaced the city-wide alarms whenever something went wrong. Not only did it not deafen anyone in the vicinity, but it conveyed more critical information than ‘DANGER! DANGER! DANGER!’.

Although some of the developments born from allowing the site to subside had been completely unforeseen.

Like the fact that someone had added an ‘achievements’ section linked to individual profiles. For every meeting with a Bat or a villain, or for being subjected first-hand to certain kinds of attacks, you earned a badge of sorts, with a cutesy design showing their meaning. Of course, to apply for a badge, you had to 1. survive the encounter, and 2. have a believable story about how said encounter went, with a location and a short review of the experience. Then a jury of moderators examined your story, cross-checked it with what they knew of the general situation (if the Bat or rogue in question was indeed on the streets in that general area that day, if the story was believable compared to other referenced encounters, if there were other similar reports of these events…).

If your story was deemed credible, you earned a digital badge. Of course, some opportunistic company quickly created real badges to wear in the outside world as proof of your courage and/or survival skills and/or luck and/or right hook. It might have led to people telling tall tales about surviving an ill-fated run-in with deranged mass murderers, but very few Gothamites were willing to lie or tolerate lies on these matters. The badges quickly became a mark of pride, and woe betide anyone caught cheating.

Of course, since Gothamites didn’t have the most developed sense of preservation, but boasted a strong competitive spirit, many people went out to try to earn the badges they still lacked.

Dick’s job became increasingly harder when a bunch of idiots went out every time specific inmates from Arkham broke out, because said idiots wanted to get caught in an attack to get their missing badges.

No, “I still need a Killer Croc!”, “I must have the Nightwing badge – every other kid at school has it!” or “I have the whole bio-weapon set except for Joker Gas!” did not make proper reasons for putting their lives on the line. Or interrupting Dick and his family during patrol for that matter.

The worst part was that there was nothing they could do to stop the hype. Shutting down the ‘achievements’ section would only see it pop up on another website, one not protected by Oracle.

And of course, every time a new Bat appeared (courtesy of B’s inability to say no to a problem kid with a hero complex) or a new ‘major supervillain’ made his debut (approved as such by the surprisingly professional jury of moderators), a new badge was born and droves of dumbasses risked their necks for a chance to be the first to earn the coveted items.

The Bats had tracked down the creator of the achievements section, though, only to arrive straight into one of Riddler’s lairs. It turned out that the man was an avid contributor to the site, a very active member of the ‘Bat-theory’ chats and one of the moderators that awarded badges.

Honestly, given Nigma’s penchant for collectibles of all kinds, they should have guessed it was him the moment the stupid badges showed up…

In any case, even if Special Agent Tinderstone probably didn't have direct access to the Bat-watch and its hordes of eager fans ready to talk his ear off about their ‘favorite’ villains and vigilantes, a simple phone call to literally anyone from Gotham should have allowed him to confirm the information Dick knew B had provided for the presentation. The man had no excuses.

And really, who decided on the dangerosity of a supervillain based solely on their chosen moniker, their preferred outfit and if they're meta or not? This was ridiculous! Even more so than the badge nonsense, because Tinderstone didn’t have the cop-out of hailing from Gotham!

Lying about being friends with him was bad enough on its own (it painted a target on Tinderstone and all his acquaintances, and their alleged relation depicted Nightwing in a less than flattering light) and Dick would have taken action just for that. But using the supposed friendship to spread incorrect and dangerous information about the rogues was a hundred times worse. It gave credibility to the lies and would threaten the Bats’ already tenuous bonds with law enforcement when the truth would reveal itself in all its bloody, deadly reality.

Normally, Dick didn’t like using his leverage as a Bat to mess with other organizations’ inner workings. It felt too much like an abuse of power, and he’d always been careful not to overreach his already too great influence. But if Tinderstone – and maybe other agents, maybe the whole liaison office – went around spreading false facts that would endanger their colleagues, then it fell onto Dick’s shoulders to put a stop to it.

He’d write an urgent report to B tonight, as soon as he’d go back to his apartment. Batman could take care of the rest without implicating Neal Caffrey. Hell, maybe he’d even prepare another presentation, with a video of him or another Bat detailing the rogues with no bias. With a voice-over and no image of them, of course, because the least a vigilante is seen and captured on picture, the best his secret identity was protected.

Superhero 1.01, don’t leave leads on your true identity when you can avoid it.

Still, Dick would love to at least hear one his family member’s voice, and he knew the agents would go bonkers if one of the Bats gave them a presentation, even a recorded one – Jones was far from the only fan. As regular humans with no powers but a knack for investigation, the Gotham heroes were often the guilty favorites of most – not-crooked – law enforcement agencies.

Because sure, vigilantism was bad and all, but the Bats’s work was still the closest to what they did on an everyday basis, only on a different scale (and with less qualms about beating the culprits up, which was only a bonus for quite a few agents…). As strange as it sounded, the elusive guardians of Gotham were the easiest to relate to for those who protected the law.

Now Dick could only hope that, despite having discovered the Bat-watch, Jones wouldn’t jump on the badge bandwagon…

Chapter Text

Faster. Peter needed to run faster.

Neal’s life depended on it.

He knew from the start that he should never have allowed this operation, but the guys from Washington had insisted. ‘A big fish’, they’d said, ‘he’ll lead to the whole network’, ‘it’ll be the biggest catch of our career’, ‘it’s a foolproof plan’...

Yeah, foolproof. Sure. If the operation had indeed been as secure as they’d said, Peter wouldn’t be in the middle of a frantic game of hide-and-seek with a bunch of highly dangerous criminals as both the cats and the mice.

(Unless this was exactly what the higher-ups at Washington had been hoping for. Peter tried not to think too hard about how his superiors might want his CI and friend dead; he’d have time for that once Neal was back under his protection.)

Someone had informed the mobsters Neal was supposed to infiltrate that they were under FBI scrutiny and were about to be visited by a mole. Neal had walked right into their trap.

With his anklet off for the operation and his wire torn off within a minute of him meeting the thugs, Neal could very well be dead already and Peter wouldn’t know it. His only hope was that by the time his team had forced their way inside the house where the gathering took place, neither Neal nor his supposed captors were anywhere in sight.

Diana had found some rope near a chair wired to the floor. The knots had been partially unraveled, just enough to slip hands through them. If the mobsters had untied Neal to move him – assuming he’d been the one bound there – they’d have cut the rope instead of going through the painstaking process of undoing the knots.

The absence of blood on the scene and the fresh bullet holes in the walls leading to an emergency exit suggested Neal had found a way to give his captors the slip, but not without being seen. The thugs could still be on his heels while the CI ran for his life.

At least that was Peter’s best case scenario, and the reason why he had to catch up fast. The suspects on the FBI’s radar this time were not former boy scouts looking for some cash with bloodless money laundering; they were hardened killers that had attacked several galleries throughout the country with machine guns and already had two dozen deaths on their conscience.

(Really, the case should have gone to Violent Crimes or even Organized Crime, but the Washington bureau had craved a little glory, and because art and jewelry had been stolen, they’d thrown their weight around until the file landed on their desk.

And since the projected next target had been in New York, the local bureau’s top team had gotten involved. Or maybe that had all been an elaborate ploy for Washington to justify transfering Neal to their bureau, but Peter could contemplate that frightening possibility later. For now, he had to find Neal.)

Every agent had split up in teams of two in the hopes of stumbling upon the CI before one of the mobsters caught him. Diana ran two steps behind Peter, checking his left while he looked for traces of Neal to the right. They didn’t have time to linger, so he could only pray that neither of them had missed a capital clue that would have led them to Neal’s location.

Peter’s heart hammered in his chest as he crossed yet another empty street. This was a new residential district still in construction on a Sunday, so nobody was out. On the one hand, it meant less collateral victims; on the other hand, they couldn’t ask potential witnesses if they’d seen a man in a costly suit chased by mobsters.

The perfect place to set up a secret meeting to pawn off high-profile stolen goods. Also the perfect place to execute someone and vanish the evidence in some pool of hardening concrete…

Nothing, still nothing. Nothing aga- Wait!

Almost colliding with Diana with how sharply he stopped, Peter backtracked to the closed construction site he’d just ran by.

Or it should have been closed, but one of the panels circling the building had been pulled open, just enough for a man to slip through. The padlock lay on the concrete sidewalk, unbroken.

Someone had picked it open and multiple someones had left footprints in the fresh mud going in. None going out.

It could be a simple coincidence; smalltime delinquents committing petty crimes or a homeless group looking for a roof tonight. But in Peter’s gut, he knew it was Neal, and his gut had rarely been mistaken when it came to his CI.

“We found something.” He rattled off the address in his comm. “It might be nothing, but I think we found him. Agent Berrigan and I are going in.”

He barely waited for the assenting reply to reach his ears before he was off, Diana hot on his heels.

Three steps in, they spotted an apple green scarf hanging off a half-finished wall. A part of Neal’s disguise as a wealthy and unscrupulous buyer for the paintings the mobsters had stolen – he’d borrowed it from Mozzie.

Peter’s shoulders relaxed a fraction. They were on the right tracks, and Neal had been well enough to leave them a sign. Still, if he’d managed to outrun his aggressors, the conman would have waited for them outside the building in construction, which meant the thugs had probably found their way inside as well.

“Careful, they’re still in there.” Peter instructed Diana – quite pointlessly, because the woman had never dropped her guard.

One day, she’d make a fine senior agent.

(Unlike the ones that had dragged Neal in this mess. The tip that had alerted the mobsters of their ruse had been too detailed, its timing too perfect for it to have come from the outside. There was a mole among the agents, and Peter bet they didn’t come from the New York team.)

As quickly as caution allowed, the two of them made their way through the first level of the building. Distant shouting drifted to their ears from the upper floors, but they couldn’t rush. They’d be useless to Neal if they got shot.

At least none of the yelling upstairs sounded like torture ar an execution; if Peter had to guess, it felt more like the thugs were still searching themselves. Or it would have if not for the growing anxious note in their tone.

And was it him, or were there not more voices when they first arrived?

With the first floor secured (maybe a bit hastily, but Peter believed they had been thorough enough), Peter and Diana took the stairs.

They covered two more levels before finding the first real traces of the mobsters.

Well, actually, they covered two more levels before finding the first mobster, period.

The man was sprawled on the floor, unconscious and disarmed. A closer look while Diana cuffed him for safety's sake revealed a sizable bump on the back of his head. He’d been knocked out and left there for anyone to find.

Unless the thugs had turned on each other – which wasn’t impossible, but Peter doubted they’d have kept in non-lethal – Neal had been the one to knock the guy out.

It was uncharacteristic of the conman to resort to violence, but given that he was also stranded, chased by killers and had no idea if the FBI would ever find him in time (or if the FBI itself had not sold him out), Peter couldn’t begrudge him taking his pursuers out with a well-aimed hit to the head.

Nonetheless, from what they’d gathered through Neal’s mic before it had been torn off, there had been at least a dozen mobsters in the room with him. Even if not all of them had chased him so far, Peter couldn’t expect Neal to defeat them all on his own. The soft-hearted felon had zero fighting training and even if he resorted to drawing the stun gun Peter had not forgotten he illegally owned, the armed thugs after him were seasoned criminals with a lengthy rap sheet. They knew what they were doing.

As quietly as they could, Peter and Diana moved through the fourth floor, listening for the slightest evidence of the friend’s location.

They found another knocked out man. Then another. And another. And another. Soon, they’d left eleven unconscious men behind them in their quest for their lost CI, all carefully taken out with a precise strike to the back of the head and disarmed, but still breathing and otherwise uninjured.

… Maybe Neal stood a bit more of a chance than Peter had expected.

The screaming – that had grown more panicked as they advanced – had completely cut off by that point, and Peter allowed himself to relax marginally.

Big mistake. He’d barely lowered his guard when an unknown voice called out behind him and Diana.

“Put- put your gun down, or I’ll shoot!”

From the corner of his eye, he spotted a man holding a gun at Diana’s head. Of course Peter had to do what he was told – if he had been the one at gunpoint, he might have tried something, but no way was he risking Diana’s life.

Reinforcements were on their way, they only had to survive until then.

With both their weapons on the ground, they slowly turned around to see their aggressor.

The man looked… harried. Wide, shifty eyes, sweat gathering at his brow, nervous twitches, trembling arms and he kept muttering to himself under his breath. If Peter hadn’t known better, he’d have sworn the guy was hunted.

Which… might actually be the case. Whatever Neal was doing, it seemed to work pretty well given the number of unconscious bodies they’d encountered on the way up. Chances were good that the quivering mobster before them was the last one standing.

“What- what are you doing here? Did you take out all the others?”

De-escalation until backup could help. “We just arrived.” Peter said, voice soft and hands in the air. With a scar running over the bridge of his many-times broken nose and another crossing his lips, the thug looked like an experienced mobster. As terrified as he appeared to be, Peter didn’t think he’d slip badly enough that Diana or him could find a weak spot. “We found your comrades already unconscious.”

“You- Is it with you?”

“‘It’?” Repeated Diana, dubious.

“It- It’s not human. It can’t be. Not after it took everyone out!” The thug raved, eyes jumping from one shadow to another like Neal would spring from one of them.

Nevermind that it wasn’t dark enough to hide someone. Sure, the building in construction didn’t have lighting yet, but the sun still shone outside (although not brightly enough to trouble Neal just yet) with no curtains or outer walls to stop its rays, only a few opaque sheets hanging from the ceilings that concealed nothing and cast no shade.

“... Right. Maybe we can try to-”

“Don’t get closer!” Barked the thug when Peter took a tentative step towards him. “Don't! Get! Closer! I know it’s with you! I know it works for you!” He looked around with brisk tilts of his head, his eyes rolling in their orbits. “It’s there… It’s always there… It got the others, but I can get it first. I can make it hurt first.”

The mobster let out a demented little cackle as he aimed for Peter’s head. At this short range, he had no chance of dodging.

“Come out!” Crowed the lunatic. “Come out you demon! Come out or I’ll shoot your pet feds!”

No matter how desperately the guy peered into the light shadows in the room, he was still alone with only Peter and Diana.

Until he wasn’t.

Peter had been looking. He really had. Yet for the life of him, he couldn’t tell when Neal had sneaked into a shadow – right into the mobster’s blind spot, dead in front of Peter – or when his CI melted out of the darkness.

From one second to another, he was just there, behind the madman, a broken pipe in hand that he used to strike the man’s head.

The guy crumbled to the floor, knocked out before he realized what had hit him.

“And that was the last one!” Cheered Neal, swinging his pipe like a golf club. “Phew, that cut it a little too close.” Only after nudging the collapsed man with his foot did he look up to catch the dumbstruck expression on the agents’ faces. “Uh, Diana, Peter? You’re alright there? He didn’t have the time to hurt you, did he?”

“Where the hell did you come from?!” Sputtered Peter a moment later. “You couldn’t have been in the room when we arrived!”

“Oh, no, I wasn’t. I sneaked in after he started yelling at you.”

“How?!” So Diana hadn’t spotted him either, despite looking in the same direction. Good to know Peter wasn’t the only one.

Of course, his infuriating CI smirked at them. “I’m just light on my feet. Any good conman and thief knows how to stay concealed – it’s on top of the job description.”

It wasn’t just that. Peter had been right there and he had missed it. He was about to retort when the guy on the floor groaned, reminding them that the place wasn’t secure yet. “We’ll go back to this later.” He swore, meeting Neal’s eyes that twinkled with amusement. “Did you take them all out?”

“All knocked out and disarmed, sir!” Affirmed Neal with a mock salute and a smug grin. “I stashed their weapons in a nook near the stairs.”

“Alright. Agent Berrigan, you stay with Caffrey and coordinate with our reinforcements. I’m going to secure our targets. Neal,” he stared his chirpy CI down, as if that would have any effect on Neal Caffrey, “don’t move.”

“Aye, aye, sir!”

With a shake of his head and the absolute certitude that arguing would get him nowhere, Peter went to make sure none of the thugs had woken up. He’d deal with his CI’s weirdness later.

As Peter half-expected, half-feared, Washington tried to get their grabby hands on Neal the moment it became clear he used violence to neutralize his pursuers on the pretext that the New York unit clearly couldn’t keep him under control.

Nevermind that the CI hadn’t even used the guns from the mobsters he took out, or that it was their fault Neal had had pursuers to begin with. Peter hadn’t forgotten that someone had leaked the CI’s arrival before this fiasco of an operation even began.

Apparently, neither had Hughes, who might not appreciate Neal all that much, but took care of the people under his responsibility all the same.

“If you try to force Caffrey’s transfer, I will make this mess public.” Threatened Hughes over the phone. Peter couldn’t hear what the other side said, but his boss’s steely expression spoke volumes. “The press will hear about how a consultant, even a criminal one, had been placed in the line of fire because of a mole inside the FBI. And then they’ll hear how you tried to abuse your authority to get Caffrey on your side. Let’s see who comes out of this standing-”

It seemed to Peter that Hugues had the situation well in hand on his side, so with a thankful nod, he left his boss’s office. He still had Neal to deal with.

His CI was back at his desk, folding spare documents into origami and not looking the least bit worried about having almost died less than an hour ago.

“Are you alright?” Peter asked first when he got close, because despite all his quirks and his criminal tendencies, Neal was a friend.

It earned him a blinding grin. “Just fine, Peter, thank you. Those thugs only got a few punches on my ribs and the paramedics cleared me already. I’ll have some colorful bruises tomorrow, but that’s all.”

Good, that was good. Now on to less pleasing topics. “I’m sorry to bother you so soon, Neal, but I have to get your report on today’s failed operation. What happened?”

“Nothing very interesting, really.” Neal offered with an easy shrug, going back to his origami as he talked. For once, Peter let him; his CI was allowed to cope with near-death experiences however he wanted. “I went in, got captured immediately because someone had tattled on me – you heard that part on the comms. Then, while they were distracted, I managed to give them the slip, but they saw me and started shooting. Their aim was terrible by the way. I ran for my life and made my way to an empty construction site. There I used all my secret sneaky alleged thief training to split up the people on my trail and knock them out one by one. You arrived just as I was about to take care of the last one.”

“Why did you not head to a populated area?” Asked Diana, who had been not so subtly listening in. “There was a shopping mall closeby; you could have found help.”

“Given the way bullets were raining all around me, we’d be counting the bodies right now if I had. I didn’t want to risk anybody’s life.”

Peter could believe that. Neal hated endangering others, even seasoned agents with training and that knew better than him what they were doing. He was worryingly cavalier about his own health, but not about anybody else’s.

“How did you manage to take out fifteen men without getting caught?” Peter had counted the crumbled bodies as paramedics pulled them out. “And how did you just appear out of nowhere? I could have sworn there were only three people in that room.”

Neal shrugged, a secretive smile on his lips. “Like I said: super sneaky alleged thief training. Going where I want unseen and blending in the shadows is what I allegedly do.”

“That was more than just stealth.” Argued Diana, the only one beside Peter that had actually witnessed Neal at play. “And the room was not nearly dark enough to vanish in the shadows like you did.”

“It’s called talent, Diana.” Laughed Neal good-naturedly. “With enough skill, you can disappear in darkness pretty much anywhere.”

“... You couldn’t vanish in the bureau.” Countered Diana after a moment of reflection. She knew exactly how the CI would take her words.

And as expected, Neal rose to the challenge. “How much are you willing to bet on that?” He goaded with a sharp grin.

“No betting.” Interrupted Peter, because he was the man in charge and this could go overboard pretty quickly. However… “But I would like a demonstration too.”

“Sure, close your eyes.”

Peter shot him a deadpan look. This was not the time for childish games. “Neal…”

“Just do it, Peter.” Neal didn’t look the least bit abashed – like usual. Peter couldn’t help the way his shoulders relaxed a little: the dreadful experience of being hunted by killers probably hadn’t traumatized his CI too much if he could still grin like that.“It works better if you don’t see me doing it. Just five seconds, and the bureau is full of people anyway; I couldn’t go far if I wanted to.”

With one last shared suspicious glance with Diana, both the agents relented and closed their eyes, counting five seconds in their heads. When their mental timer reached the end, they looked around them and Neal…

… had vanished.

Peter and Diana looked all around them, checked under every desk and behind every cabinet, but no conman in sight.

After ten minutes of scouring the entire well-lit, open floor (and ignoring their colleagues’ curious glances and offers to help them look for whatever they had obviously lost), Peter was seriously starting to worry that his CI had given them the slip. He was about to check Neal’s position through his ankle bracelet when someone gently tapped his shoulder from behind.

“Convinced?” Came Neal's voice, full to the brim with amused delight.

To his death bed, Peter would swear he hadn’t screeched or jumped a foot in the air like a startled cat.

“Where- Where the hell were you?!” He stammered as he tried to slow his racing heartbeat.

“Right behind you, most of the time, hidden in the shadows.” The conman grinned like the cat that had gotten the canary. “I told you I could sneak around unseen if I wanted to.”

“That…” Peter trailed off, catching his breath as he pondered on his next words. Technically, Neal had only done what he’d asked him to. To scold him for that would be vastly unfair. “Just… Don’t do that again.”

“Sure.” Agreed the CI as his smile softened into something less smug and more worried. “Do you want to sit down for a moment?”

Peter’s legs almost gave out before he could nod.

When word that Neal could apparently vanish into thin air spread, several agents started challenging him into improvised games of hide-and-seek. Peter and Hughes didn’t approve, but what could they say? There was nothing illegal about fooling around during break time as long as it didn’t bother the other agents.

To Neal’s amusement, not a single person ever caught him, and he got some hilarious responses from the people he snuck up on. Peter’s reaction – that he still denied – was far from the most extreme.

However, the games didn’t last for very long. Something about the way Neal seemingly blended with the thinnest shadows eventually unnerved the agents, from the most experienced veterans to the newest probies.

It just… It just felt horribly unnatural. Like cold goop sliding down his spine, the stench of chemicals and claws scraping on a blackboard combined into one nightmarish impression.

When Peter mentioned it, Neal only shrugged and replied that he’d expected it. Peter refrained from asking why his CI’s stealth felt so disturbing.

As he’d learned the hard way over his time with Neal, some questions you didn’t want answers to.

Dick could have dispatched his aggressors blindfolded and with both hands tied behind his back, but after several displays of over-competence lately, he’d decided to play this one in a more low-key manner.

Meaning he still knocked all his pursuers out, but with subtlety and cunning instead of simply throwing himself in the fight and kicking their asses. See? He had this whole inconspicuous schtick down pat.

And really, the moment he’d decided to fall back on his Nightwing-like slinking was the moment those thugs’ lives turned into a waking nightmare. Criminals far more hardened than his pursuers had literally pissed themselves in fright because of what lurked into Gotham’s shadows, and Dick had worked hard to earn his reputation as Bludhaven’s terror. When on the prowl, he could be as terrifying as the original Batman himself.

Bats, even Signal, the daytime Bat, stuck to the shadows for a reason.

Although to be fair, that wasn’t solely reserved to Bats. Every Outsider – Justice League included – believed for some reason that only Batman and his extended family claimed the darkness as their domain. They couldn’t be more wrong: Gothamites as a whole clung to the shadows, and not just because of their aversion for bright lights.

More concerning for those unaware: the shadows clung back.

(And this was the reason Dick had the agents close their eyes before disappearing on them; for the sake of his cover, they shouldn’t see that.)

Now, nobody could quite say if it was Gotham herself who was cursed, or her inhabitants, but the fact remained that some pretty dark magic was at work in Dick’s hometown. Old, powerful and arcane enough that any magician that had taken a look at its tangled web so far had either dropped the matter altogether or gone mad trying to make sense of it.

Dick should know; every year, usually around the pagan holidays, they had to apprehend a wizard or ten that had lost their marbles by attempting to draw from Gotham’s deep well of dark magic for their own gain and went on a – often naked, for reasons that eluded Dick – sorcery-induced rampage instead.

Look into the abyss and the abyss looks into you, as said Nietzche. Although he probably hadn’t been thinking about Gotham specifically when he wrote it.

The city wasn’t quite alive, but it definitely had more sentience than the average town, enough to pick favorites and to nudge things in their favor every now and then.

(Dick privately suspected she had something to do for Jason’s revival. If that was true, she had his everlasting gratitude. If not, well, she was still his beloved home.)

Besides, it wasn’t as though the residents wanted to get rid of their curse, quite the contrary. Sure, it might be somewhat responsible for their city’s absurd crime rates and the rampant latent dementia skulking in all their minds, but it also made for a unique local feature, a cultural peculiarity found nowhere else on the globe that they could take pride in. New York had the Statue of Liberty, Washington had its eponymous monument and the White House while Gotham had its prowling, corrupting darkness. Fair, no?

Not to mention how the shadows took life and magically cloaked them with a little practice and the city’s favor.

Most people could only vanish from sight if they had access to pretty deep shadows, ones that naturally obscured most of their contents already and merely had to stretch a little further. Luckier and more trained individuals could vanish from sight with only the faintest shade; it could even apply outside of Gotham’s borders if she liked you well enough.

Suffice to say that the Bats (and the Waynes, if you didn’t know they were one and the same), as Gotham’s darlings, lacked neither in their city’s favor or in training.

It certainly complicated life from a vigilante’s standpoint when some of your villains could also become one with the shadows, but it also made for wild games of hide-and-seek with their targets.

(When playing only between themselves, though, Bruce had had to limit his kids to ten blocks (or just the manor, which was about the same size if you excluded the gardens) to give them a chance to finish in less than 24 hours.

He’d established that rule shortly after Damian had just entered their lives and had still been after his new siblings’ heads. Not only had Tim spent seven days running throughout Gotham and hiding from Robin, Nightwing and Red Hood for completely different reasons – one wanted to slaughter him, the second to take him shopping and the third to deliver him to either of the first two for a laugh – but he basically fed himself only with coffee, energy drinks, crisps and chocolate bars. When B had returned from his outerspace peace negotiating powwow, he’d been livid and had made them all swear to never expand their playground farther than the size of the manor.

And sure, it made it more difficult for his brothers and sisters to avoid Damian’s blades, Dick’s octopus hugs and Bruce’s nagging, but being found more easily at least prevented Tim – or any of his siblings – from falling back on their dismal self-care habits. Those coffee and energy drink cocktails looked much more dangerous for Tim’s health than Little D, despite the latter’s commendable efforts.

Besides, Dami had still been getting used to Gotham at that point and hadn’t yet gotten the hang of letting the shadows cloak him, so Timmy had had the edge over him long enough for their younger brother’s fratricidal urges to – mostly – die down. Dick hadn’t been too worried on that front.)

In any case, only Outsiders took the brightly lit, touristic streets, where they were horribly exposed and vulnerable to any wannabe mugger. Locals kept to the shaded alleyways or – if they had no other choice – the broader avenues where street lights were purposely dimmed enough not to burn their sensitive retinas. Even the Bats showed reluctance to enter Gotham’s few bright areas, and they had specially-made masks that protected their eyes for whenever they were forced to leave their city’s protective darkness.

There was a reason no lunatic had chosen a light-based gimmick in Gotham, even though it would have proven lethal against anyone (except maybe Signal. Maybe). A strong projector or non-Gotham-calibrated floodlights and everyone went down, vigilantes, rogues, civilians or policemen. It would be a bloodbath.

(Their generally unwelcoming behavior, the gothic decor and the suspicious lack of garlic in most restaurants and kitchens within Gotham combined with their aversion to sunshine led many conspiracists to believe the city to be infested by vampires. It was all nonsense, of course; Gotham only hosted a tiny, peaceful community that was always happy to sell you cakes in exchange for a bit of donated blood. They had a completely legal chain of stores throughout the city, Scarlet Delicacies, where you paid with small amounts of hemoglobin (your own or another’s) either prepared in advance or extracted on site in very sanitary conditions.

You could hardly call it an infestation.

Dick himself had visited a few times, just for a taste of Grandmama Carmilla XII’s famous chocolate-pecan brownies or old man Vlad’s red velvet cakes. They were on par with Alfred’s patisseries, and since the owners had no issues with contaminated blood, their shops were a very popular stop for people who craved comfort food after a nasty encounter with toxin-using villains, like Scarecrow or the Joker, for instance.)

Really, it was no surprise that a curse on Gotham (or its inhabitants) resulted in the shadows taking life, given that most Gothamites spent all their time at least in semi-darkness. Living shadows pushing minds to the brink of dementia or concealing people on the streets and excellent night vision weren’t strong enough to be deemed a superpower and not exclusive enough to earn the meta title, but they certainly helped to sneak up on unsuspecting victims, even if they offered no offensive advantage.

Local scientists had studied the phenomenon at length, and after decades, if not centuries of research, had finally isolated what they called the ‘Gothamite gene’, the section of DNA that made people so accustomed to darkness but also so susceptible to sunlight.

A gene that spontaneously manifested in whoever decided to make Gotham their home (and could tolerate or take part in the endemic madness without running for the hills). Like Dick. Or Bane, one of the few Outsiders that had really taken to Gotham, to the point of becoming a resident supervillain. The scientists hadn’t been able to explain how it changed someone’s DNA, but everyone knew it was the local dark magic at work.

In another far-fetched demonstration of their extreme brand of autarky, petitions had circulated to name Gothamites a new species, thanks to that specific gene found nowhere else and their generally different (read: deranged) disposition from the rest of the world. Given Outsiders’ dismal opinion of Gotham, Dick believed it might have actually gone through, had the various scientists working on it been able to agree on a single name.

The total number of signatures spread over the many campaigns could have at least done something, but between the simultaneous petitions to be called Homo Sapiens Gothamis, Homo Sapiens Gothicus, Homo Sapiens Tenebris, Homo Sapiens Chiroptera in Batman’s honor (although that one could have led to confusion with Man-Bat), Homo Sapiens Nox, Homo Sapiens Fubar (Dick’s favorite, because it really captured the essence of Gothamites) and so forth and so on, there had never been enough people supporting one single proposition to make a difference. Of course, none of the scientists behind either option agreed to back down either.

Just because you were learned did not mean you were reasonable or sane, especially in Gotham. The number of rogues having one or more doctorates was positively alarming, although some of the ‘blame’ could be laid at Bruce’s feet and his many scholarships and grants for students. The city boasted one of the highest ratios of people having higher education in the world.

Gotham University might have a dreadful reputation of churning out villains but surveys showed that only one out of fifty graduates ever went on to the path of super-criminality, so its infamy was not at all deserved in Dick’s opinion.

Unfortunately, people always forgot the forty-nine respectable other alumni that chose legality or regular crime over becoming full-on Rogues. A terrible injustice and a crying shame, really.

Chapter Text

Nowadays, June led a settled life. Only very rarely did she get a taste of the thrill of being the wife – and assistant – to a criminal anymore.

She could admit she sometimes missed that spark, a spark that had started to come back from the moment she took Neal Caffrey home with her and offered him a roof for a pittance.

(And even that sometimes strained his tight salary. Given all the work and all the risks Neal took for them, June believed the FBI could pay him much more than the measly income they reluctantly gave him. They even refused to reimburse the materials for pieces he did on their demand, the cheapskates. Good thing the young man had plenty of stashed money on the side if he ever needed it; not that she would ever throw him out if one day he couldn’t pay rent anymore.)

Every now and then, Neal requested her help – either for a legitimate FBI operation or for a more personal and often less legal project – and the spark of danger and mischief re-ignited in June’s old bones.

No, she never regretted taking a chance on Neal, but even less so when he offered to involve her in one of his schemes.

Today was about an official FBI operation, something about diamond smuggling, and despite objections from several agents, Neal had convinced his handler to listen to June and to consider her before deciding on sending the very competent Agent Berrigan in.

The moment she saw the name of the place they hoped to infiltrate, she understood why.

“This place is restricted to members.” June explained after reading the team’s plans to infiltrate the Red Clover. The casino itself was already pretty exclusive, but the room they were aiming for even more so. “If you’ve not been invited by another, approved client, they’ll never let you in, no matter how you present yourself. The Velvet Room is a select club.”

Neal looked pointedly at Agent Burke, proving to June that he had already made that argument and had been mostly ignored.

“And what do you have to do to be let in?” Asked the handler to his CI more rudely than June would have liked (and ignoring her now that she’d made her point). Sure, being shown that you were in the wrong was never fun, but Neal had just prevented them from making a big mistake and he could show some appreciation. “Know any rich businessmen willing to sponsor Diana?”

“That’s not going to work either.” Cut in June, this time not letting Burke dismiss her out of hand. She sure hoped he didn’t treat Neal like that all the time. “Even with all the referrals and bribes in the world, you cannot get in without strong ties to a crime family or coming from old, dirty money. And I mean old money. Any legitimate nouveau riche company owner spotted at the entrance would be laughed out the door, with or without an invitation. Not that any member would make the mistake of sponsoring one; the Velvet Room is neutral meeting ground for upper crust mobsters, not for upstanding citizens, no matter how wealthy.”

Frustration dug creases on Burke’s face, but at least he didn’t ignore her this time. “So there’s no way in?”

Neal threw her a pleading glance. Alright, she could make an effort if this really was such a big case. “Fortunately for you, Agent Burke, I happen to have been invited there some years ago, courtesy of my late husband.”

Byron had had a lot of contacts in the mob, despite not being part of it himself. It proved useful from time to time to have influential friends in different circles.

“Can you sponsor Diana? Her father is a diplomat, so she’s rubbed elbows with all kinds of upper crust people. She’ll know how to act.”

At Burke’s question, June looked at the youngest agent in the room. “Can you believably pretend to come from dirty old money?”

The woman winced. “It’s not my best act. Most of the guests in the galas I attended were politicians or nouveaux riches, and Dad always made sure I never mingled with the more controversial elements. But I can try my best.”

“No, it won’t work.” June was categoric on this point. “The people in the Velvet Room are used to deceit, one way or another. You’d be uncovered faster than you could get whatever information you need.”

“We only need to plant a bug on our targets.” Countered the man in charge.

“And it still won’t work. Trust me, Agent Burke, these people can smell others like them. You won't fool them enough to get close and make them drop their guards with an amateur act, no matter how talented Agent Berrigan is.”

“What do you suggest, then?” Inquired said agent, proving herself more insightful than her boss. June had had a plan from the beginning, but Burke clearly didn’t value her input enough to ask for it.

“Well, my dear, if an amateur act won’t cut it, why not a professional one? I suggest going in myself along with Neal, who I’ve no doubt is capable of a flawless impersonation.”

“I can do it!” Neal bounced on his chair, very eager to play his part, which seemed to give Burke cold feet.

“We’re not letting you into a gathering of crooks and mobsters, into a casino of all places, without an agent to oversee you. The risks are too high.” He argued with a deep frown and crossed arms, not clarifying if the risks were to Neal’s person (which they very much were among these crowds) or if he was worried about his CI misbehaving.

June didn’t like it.

“Too bad, because if this operation is as important as you make it out to be, this is your only chance. I won’t go in with someone that will blow their cover in a blink – my own reputation is on the line too, remember? And good luck finding someone else to give you a referral.”

Burke griped, argued and threatened (only Neal, but June took note of it all the same), but she had him cornered and they all knew it.

“This better be worth it.” He grumbled as they polished the last details of their operation. Or rather what the FBI believed would be the last details. Both June and Neal knew they would need quite a few more tweaks and preparations for this to work.

As Byron used to say, it’s the small details that make a con work.

The day of the operation, an unnamed agent got June set with a bugged ring. The FBI wanted her to wear a wired necklace, but the sheer gaudiness of the thing would have raised all kinds of red flags, so she argued for a heavy ring and small earrings instead. Easier to explain as sentimental trinkets than the horrid rhinestone jewelry they tried to wrap around her neck.

Neal’s golden wristwatch was just as tawdry, but he could hide it well enough under his sleeves as long as he refrained from making emphatic moves.

Really, if this was the FBI’s best attempt at blending in with the posh and the ritzy, it was a wonder they ever managed to see an undercover operation to the end. Good thing Neal had Byron’s old suits, because June shuddered to think of what cheap tuxedo they would have supplied him with.

This wasn't a show for celebrities to glitter and display their manufactured eccentricity for the camera; this was an informal meeting with the very old school criminal families of New York. Strass and gilded jewelry stayed at the front door.

“Remember,” repeated Burke to Neal for the umpteenth time, “follow the plan, don’t deviate from the script and get out as soon as you plant those bugs.”

Neal nodded, the picture of professionalism. Had June not known they would scrap the FBI’s poor plan from the start to put on a much more credible act, she’d have bought his innocent pretense as well.

In fact, the very moment they passed the first security guard and entered the casino proper, Neal turned to her, disregarding the spying device on his wrist. “Please, June, follow my lead, no matter what I say tonight. And I’m using the name Neal Caffrey – I’ll fit in better if I have even the slightest reputation.”

She didn’t even pause – her adventures with Byron had taught her to take things in stride. “Of course, Neal.” She smiled as chaos erupted through her earrings. The FBI’s tragically conspicuous van was in an uproar, but she had known from the start that their official plan would not hold up to the scrutiny of the Velvet Room’s dwellers.

High-ranking mobsters and members from old, rich families expected trickery and knew the signs. If the two of them wanted to blend in long enough to plant the bugs and not arouse suspicion in their exit, they could only dump the official plan from the start, a plan where June and Neal’s input had gone thoroughly ignored.

Burke’s flawed script only got further derailed when they got their casino chips. Instead of the thousand-dollar in a single debit card the FBI had grudgingly paid for (and fully expected back, as if June and Neal could get away with not playing a game or two), both Neal and June pulled out their own credit cards and each got a stack worth ten thousand dollars. June had more than enough in her bank account to take the loss, assuming she did lose her betting – she was quite good at card games.

She didn’t ask where Neal had found his money. It certainly didn’t come from the pittance the FBI paid him, and – judging from the voices in her ear – Burke had no idea how he got it either and resented that fact.

While no sign informed you of this, you couldn’t step foot in the Velvet Room without at least two thousand dollars in chips per person, something the FBI could have found out if they’d done a little recon instead of leaving everything to Neal to improvise on site.

(Really, they relied way too much on Neal’s talent, all the while not valuing him nearly enough. June had never been a fan of the FBI – a side-effect of marrying a felon, no doubt – but her recent experience through her tenant only deepened that negative impression.)

“June Ellington.” She introduced herself to the security agent at the door, the last obstacle before the Velvet Room and all its occupants. “I haven’t visited in some years, but both my late husband and I are on the list of members.”

The guard took a moment to consult his list and compare her to the picture she knew had been taken from old camera videos – they really didn’t joke with security, one of the reasons so many mobsters came here to relax. The man nodded when he found her, and much more politely enquired as to the identity of her companion.

“This is my protégé, Neal Caffrey.” She offered, knowing that his name and photo would now be recorded in the casino’s database, and that someone was already doing a quick search of Neal’s achievements. She wasn’t completely sure why he insisted on not using an alias, but Neal knew what he was doing, better than the FBI agents huffing and puffing in her comm.

(Besides, she wasn’t naive enough to believe either ‘Neal’ or ‘Caffrey’ were his original names, and she hoped Agent Burke wasn’t as stupid as to fall for it either.)

“You can go in.” Announced the security guard as he opened the heavy door for them.

They both stepped inside the Velvet Room. It hadn’t changed in all the years since she had last seen it.

Despite the heavily tinted bulletproof glass that served as windows (preventing people from peeping in), the number of opulent chandeliers, the warm wooden furniture, the tasteful golden accents throughout the room and the bright red draperies kept the place from looking too dark and instead created a private, cozy atmosphere.

All the better to have unsuspecting newcomers drop their guard and lose more than they intended, both in money and in information.

A bar stood against one wall, supplied with all the high-end alcohol one could wish for. Several tables dotted the large area, each with an assigned dealer, people that were paid well enough to take whatever they heard in here to the grave. Because despite the room belonging to a casino, this was more than a place to gamble. Lavish sofas and coffee tables had been placed at every corner, ready to host secret conversations and under-the-table deals.

This place served as an informal neutral meeting room for mobsters and people of dubious morality, in addition to an actual play room.

As they walked in, all the occupants’ attention turned to them, some more obvious than others. The old guard recognized June – she had followed Byron several times, and had often sung on the tiny stage stashed in a corner – and they relaxed minutely but the younger residents scrutinized the newcomers with suspicion.

Time to start the show.

June had known Neal to be a skillful conman, but she had to admit his act still impressed him.

He followed all the tacit codes of old, wealthy families with the perceived ease of someone who had grown up with them. Had June not known better, she’d have thought her tenant really rubbed shoulders with the mob on a regular basis.

(But no. Neal could perhaps be less nonviolent than he professed to be (even the most peaceful man could resort to fists and knives under the right circumstances), but he thoroughly and uncompromisingly hated firearms. Even the small gun Byron had left in what would become Neal’s home, kept there purely for self-defense. Neal had returned it to June within his first day there, holding it perfectly but with enough distance and distaste that she was certain the scorn hadn’t been faked.)

Most likely, the fuming FBI agents listening in didn’t understand the scope of the con Neal was currently pulling, except maybe for Agent Berrigan. Because this was a masterful demonstration on how to infiltrate the Velvet Room’s very select club.

At first, Neal had needed to prove himself, as did all newcomers. Much to June’s surprise, he presented himself not as June’s plus one, but as the opposite. He was the one leading June, not the other way around, which earned him some points – appearing as June’s lapdog would definitely not have endeared him to this crowd, and he would have been relegated to the rank of simple eye candy or gold-digger instantly.

(Still better than as her gigolo, like the FBI had wanted him to act. Not only would this have been uncomfortable for June and terribly demeaning for Neal, but it would have been seen with a jaundiced eye. The Velvet Room was no place to parade your bed warmer, no matter how pretty.)

And Neal did it without diminishing June’s worth. He bragged about having New York’s prettiest voice at his arm, repeating how lucky he was to have her show him New York’s sights. A clever move which established him as both a person of good taste (without false modesty, June was a very talented singer) and someone from out of town, here on a visit and as such, not a threat to the current balance.

Once more, June thought that Neal’s abilities were wasted on the FBI.

Then came the trick questions, the more or less subtle proddings to see if Neal really came from the same background as his audience. It was the part June worried about the most, because faking familiarity with these circles was much harder than affecting their mannerisms.

Neal passed with flying colors.

“Have you heard about the Henrys latest accident?” Asked a lady in a long, green dress.

“What? Don’t tell me they sunk another yacht. This makes it their seventh in less than a year, doesn’t it? Someone ought to confiscate their boat license once and for all.” Replied Neal without missing a beat.

“What do you think about Aberton’s new strategy?” An elderly man with deep scars wondered five minutes later.

“I think he really should focus more on developing what he already has instead of expanding into other people’s territories. Everyone knows the Giordanos won’t let him encroach on their turf without a fight, and he can’t afford it after last month’s debacle.” Neal answered easily, because he apparently knew who this Aberton was and the state of his business.

As June and Neal ordered their drinks, a young man approached them with a calculated grin. “Tell me, Neal, have you met Samantha Brooks’s husband?”

“Which one?” Neal joked back after a sip of his cocktail and an extremely generous tip to the waiter – the price of silence. “I met them all from first to eleventh, except for the eighth – this one didn’t last long enough for me to see him, but I heard all he ever talked about were car races, so it’s no big loss. No wonder she got rid of him so fast after what happened to her third husband!”

Question after question, shoulders relaxed and guards dropped when it became clear Neal was part of their world. June herself had a hard time following – she’d kept mostly out of the loop since Byron passed away – so she let Neal do most of the talking. He seemed to have everything under control, and she knew the FBI was taking notes of all the little things everyone let slip.

They played a few card games, but Neal also gave the roulette a spin, ‘for fun’. He lost a good quarter of his chips, but handled the loss with a smile and a fatalistic shrug. It appeased his audience even further – an undercover cop would have certainly cringed at wasting so much money. Nevermind that Neal regained everything and more at the poker table.

In the van, Burke and the other agent were fuming; their CI that he would have a lot to answer for at the end of this operation. Apparently, they did not know half of what Neal talked about either, and considering everything sounded pretty criminal, they didn’t like it one bit.

For once, Neal wore no audio equipment allowing him to hear his handler’s ranting, since he didn't have convenient earrings to hide the device and it was inadvisable to have a comm at a poker game with mobsters, but he must have known his schmoozing and ditching of the FBI-approved plan would garner that sort of reaction.

Over two hours after they first entered the room, they still hadn’t planted the trackers on their targets. Neal had reasonably chosen to err on the side of caution and wait until everyone had relaxed before making a move.

It frustrated the FBI to no end, but given who he was dealing with, June thought it perfectly justifiable.

“So tell us, Neal,” started a bold young lady in a short black dress and with heels high enough to give June vertigo, “how did you arrive here? We’ve talked about us, but you’re today’s surprise event, and we still don’t know a thing about you.”

Right. As if everyone here hadn’t done a discreet background check with whoever was in charge of the Velvet Room the moment they got a name.

(Maybe that explained why Neal offered his 'real' name. Neal Caffrey had a verifiable past, to some extent, and enough achievements to pique the interest of these people. A fresh, blank alias would have only garnered suspicion of him being a mole; unless he had another identity with enough – criminal – background to satisfy his audience’s standards.)

“Oh, I’m afraid I’m not all that interesting.” Neal chuckled as he trounced his opponents with a flush. If he was cheating, June had no idea how, but his pile of chips had almost doubled in size since he sat down at the poker table.

“Come on.” The woman tittered and clung to his arm. “There’s got to be something of interest.”

With a playful sigh, Neal relented – June had no doubt the young lady had played right into his hand. “If you insist, Miss. Where to begin… Well, I like art, all forms of it but especially paintings.”

Several people nodded, confirming June’s theory that they already knew about Neal’s forgeries. Of course, in this crowd, nobody had the boorishness to point it out.

“What else? I’m recently out of a pretty serious relationship; she was way too good for me, if you want to know. Mmh… I sing horribly off-tone, but I love it anyway. I come from a big family, like really big, but I haven’t seen my siblings in a while and I miss them, but they stayed at home while I went on a trip.”

“Oh? And where is your home then?” Wondered one of the players. He did a good job of pretending this was an innocent question, but everyone knew this was anything but. While Neal had ‘admitted’ to only be here in passing, if his hometown was close enough to New York, this could spell alliances or conflicts.

A talented conman or forger could always find employment in the Velvet Room. Byron certainly had.

The conman chuckled, lazily folding for this round, and letting another earn the pot. “Nowhere that matters. It’s a pretty isolated place, cut off from the rest of the world. Our most noteworthy activity lies in aviculture.”

Everyone in the room tensed.

The FBI probably wouldn’t pay attention to the change of atmosphere – the game of poker was still on, and people kept mechanically tossing chips and cards, so any change in sound could be imputed to a particularly riveting round. The agents wouldn’t catch the implications of Neal’s statement.

But everyone in attendance had. There was only one place that ‘aviculture’, the rearing and training of birds, could refer to. Mobsters used that code to avoid naming it directly out of superstition. Like just speaking its name would invoke its madness upon them.

June couldn’t tell if his implicit statement was the truth or just another aspect of the ‘Neal Caffrey’ narrative, but Neal’s knowing little grin confirmed that he had definitely dropped that allusion on purpose.

“Aviculture, you say? What kinds of birds do you have exactly?” A graying man asked, voice remarkably steady as he absently tossed a chip in the pile. He likely aimed to confirm Neal really meant what they all thought and had not made the insinuation by coincidence.

“All kinds, I suppose. We have the common birds of course, like falcons or robins, but also some owls and even a penguin if you’d believe it. No bald eagles, though, because those are a pain to keep; they’re territorial, but don’t take to competition very well. There’s a large collection of exotic nocturnal birds too if you want some color – they’re the town’s pride, really. Unfortunately, they're not for sale and they stay inside my hometown most of the time. You’ll have to visit in person if you want to see them.”

So no, that hadn’t been a coincidence. The references would fly right over the FBI’s heads (no pun intended), but everyone here had caught them.

The Falcone family, Penguin, Robins… It all pointed to Gotham.

“I was just trying to be polite; birds and their habitat are of no real interest to me.” The middle-aged man that had asked replied a beat too late, but still admirably composed. June vaguely recalled him to have already been one of the biggest fishes in the Velvet Room during Byron’s time.

“That’s too bad.” Neal grinned, fully aware of what his ‘innocent’ admission had triggered. “But if you change your mind, you know how to contact me.” An open offer to give them entry into Gotham if they ever needed it (assuming Neal really was a Gothamite) would garner him much good will. If any of the people present proved foolish enough to want to conduct business in that cesspit of a city, that was.

In June’s ear, Agent Burke idly ordered his men to search important aviaries with exotic birds throughout the country in a bid to find Neal’s hometown, completely missing the point.

Burke didn’t know about Gotham, of that, June was sure.

Which only added to the probability of Neal really coming from there; if it was just another lie to fool the people in the Velvet Room, he wouldn’t have delivered it in such an obscure way. The code had not been for the mobster present here, it meant to keep this part of his life secret from the FBI.

… Well, if Neal didn’t want his handler poking his nose in his past, June would not tell. Her tenant was entitled to some privacy, no matter what Burke seemed to think.

Discussions resumed around the poker table, carefully avoiding the topic on everyone’s mind. Criminals were a superstitious bunch, and even more so when it came to anything hailing from the hellscape known as Gotham. They wouldn’t speak of it aloud or afterwards; Neal’s secret was safe.

Still, with that revelation, the mobsters’ attitude towards the conman had shifted. People from Gotham were met with mixed reverence and fear, whether they were felons or not. Surviving what little they knew of the City of Crime was worthy of awe; offering to help outsiders in deserved respect.

Most high-ranking mobsters had met a Gothamite crime boss at least once, and the memory – and scars – would forever haunt and mesmerize them in equal measure.

Thankfully, as long as you didn’t step on their toes, Gothamites of all kinds rarely left their city’s borders. Mafia bosses throughout the world could sleep soundly on that front; their crazy, bloodthirsty competition wasn’t interested in them.

(June herself had met one through Byron, a weird fellow that went by Matches. He probably hadn’t been quite a crime lord, though she had no idea what exactly he did. Byron hadn’t either, but Matches had had enough connections in and out of Gotham to make him someone worth knowing.)

Tentatively, the people scattered throughout the room drew closer as Neal’s origins spread in hushed whispers. They came to ogle at the stray Gothamite lost in New York and, once he proved amiable enough, shake hands with him.

Gothamites outside of their natural habitat were rare enough that meeting one (one that didn’t try to murder you in outlandish ways on the spot at that) made for quite the curiosity. June bet the young people staring at Neal would remember this day for a long time. No doubt they also hoped that leaving a positive impression today would open doors later, if they ever wanted to expand into Gotham.

(The old guard knew better; their generation had already tried to break into Gotham’s closed criminal circles and those that returned bore the scars and suffered the nightmares for it.)

Neal must have used the handshakes to plant his trackers, even though June didn’t see him do it, because he soon smiled and winked at her, their previously agreed-upon sign that the mission was accomplished, much less conspicuous between two friends than the odd hand sign the FBI had tried to enforce.

They didn’t linger long after that, only enough not to arouse any suspicion. Neal pocketed his earnings first (a total of 24 380 dollars transferred directly to his account as a new VIP customer, over the double of his initial sum) and June followed suit (with a more modest but still honorable 12 450 dollars).

Once outside the casino, they only had a handful of minutes before Burke got ahold of them.

“I will keep anything that I learned today silent.” Promised June before Neal had the time to ask for exactly that. They walked towards the van parked a few streets over, mindful of their listening devices still recording their every word.

The forger clamped his mouth shut mid-word, grinned in gratitude and didn’t have the time to do more before Agent Burke rounded the corner, a thunderous expression on his face.

“What happened to following the plan?” He growled. “You were supposed to follow the plan!”

“We did follow the plan.” Argued Neal with a goading smile. “Just not your plan. It would have either left us at the door or saddled us with the mob’s attention for the rest of our lives. Our plan worked and we managed to plant the trackers without notice. Everyone wins!”

Burke opened and shut his mouth in quick succession, clearly mulling over what he could retort to that. He eventually settled on “This conversation is not over.” Complete with a threatening finger in Neal’s face.

Without another word, he marched back towards the van (that June was sure he shouldn’t have left before the official end of the operation to begin with), fully expecting the other two to follow. With a fatalistic shrug, Neal started walking again, though at a much more sedate pace.

Once in the totally inconspicuous white van parked on the side of the road, a technician removed the wires as June and Neal were debriefed. The trackers seemed to be working well, and though she had not been told what purpose they would serve, June hoped they would be able to close their case soon.

Neal handed over the unused FBI credit card without a fuss, but it wasn’t enough for Agent Burke. “All the money, Neal.” He scolded with a long-suffering sigh that only raised June’s hackles. As if he had any right to collect Neal’s earnings; she also noted that while he demanded his CI’s winnings, he didn’t dare ask hers.

“Why?” Asked Neal with a perfectly innocent face before June could ask the same question. “I only bet my own money and everything I won, I won fairly; you’re not entitled to anything I earn in a perfectly legal casino.”

“As if you didn’t cheat.” Burke scoffed. “And there’s nothing legal about a casino that serves as a meeting place for mobsters – we’ll make it close down soon. Besides, there’s no way you’d use that money for anything authorized. I’m only removing the temptation to commit more crimes.”

Now it was Neal’s turn to frown. “I’m a grown-up, I can control myself. And if you must know, I didn’t cheat. Just because I’m good at poker doesn’t mean it’s automatically cheating. And I seriously doubt you’ll manage to close the Red Clover; there’s nothing illegal about the Velvet Room – it’s just a very select club.”

“With all the incriminating evidence we’ve gathered today, we will close it down.” Argued Burke.

“Right.” Chuckled Neal, a hint of bitterness in his tone. “You know what? If you actually manage to put an end to the Red Clover, or just to the Velvet Room, I’ll give you back everything I won today, as well as the money I paid for chips.”

Agent Burke’s face scrunched up. He visibly weighed his options: arguing some more for Neal’s earnings now versus taking the wager he was sure he’d win (June wasn’t so confident. Between the lack of any actual crime, the members’ extensive connections and the army of lawyers ready to defend their clients’ place of leisure, the FBI wouldn’t go far).

“Fine.” He eventually agreed, assured in his victory. “You’d better not use that money for anything in the meanwhile.”

“Cross my heart. Now, would it be possible to eat something before we go back to the bureau to report? The amuse-bouches they had were delicious, but what they had in quality, they lacked in quantity, and I’m famished.”

Everyone in the van burst into chuckles at Neal’s clowning (although that was probably not the best word to use for a Gothamite, now that June thought about it), and Burke was forced to drop the topic for now.

No doubt he would pick it up again, sooner or later, but for now, Neal had made himself a reprieve with a bit of humor. Once more, June could only admire his talent and smile with the rest.

The casino was too well-connected for Peter’s paltry attempts to go far, and, as Dick had planned, his handler never saw the color of the money he’d earned in the Velvet Room.

Although Peter still enquired more or less politely where Dick had gotten his funds. Dick had to imply (without incriminating himself) that it was leftovers from his work before he was sent to prison; what else could he say? The truth?

‘Well, this is actually my own money, because my dad owns one of the wealthiest companies in the country and he gives his kids shares when they turn sixteen, to ensure we always have enough for necessities and more, just in case. Sure, I only own something like 0.1%, but considering the company in question is Wayne Enterprise, that still makes for a shit-ton of money. I usually give most of it to charities, like my dad taught me to, but I do keep a bit for myself. You know, for emergencies or impromptu undercover missions in an upscale casino.’

At least he hadn’t had to explain where all his knowledge of people came from. Peter and the team had assumed he’d learned all he could of high society in order to perfect his Richie Grayson-Wayne impersonation, and Dick had not refuted that altogether true theory.

It didn’t completely stop Peter’s need to know everything (or to think he did), but it gave Dick some breathing room.

On the other hand, June never asked him anything, despite having much more – accurate – intel than Peter. She merely smiled at him and let the matter go, for which Dick was endlessly grateful.

June was the most amazing of landladies. Dick had lucked out the day he met her.

(At least in the comfort of his apartment, he wasn’t constantly reminded of his homesickness by callous enquiries about his origins.)

Peter and the team spent days looking into aviaries and places boasting of a vast collection of birds, which both Dick and June found hysterical.

If only they knew that the ‘birds’ Dick had spoken about either referred to vigilantes and crime bosses.

Because sure, Robin, Red Robin and even Nightwing, in a way, had avian monikers, but so did a surprisingly large number of baddies. There was the Court of Owls and their Talons, the entire Falcone family, Penguin, and many less successful villains that tried to make it on the ‘big scene’.

Between bats and birds, Gotham had a thing for flying creatures.

(As long as they weren’t bald eagles, or anything too obviously American…)

The city wasn’t like New York, where you could easily live a peaceful existence without encountering the crime syndicates once in your life. In Gotham, mobsters were public figures, invited to every official event and expected to show themselves.

Because he was expected to attend galas and the like as Bruce Wayne’s ward and – later – eldest son, Dick had rubbed shoulders with dubious and rich people of all kinds ever since B took him in.

While the mafia was the most prominent syndicate in Gotham, mobsters of Italian origin were far from alone. There was the bratva, the triads, the yakuza, and every kind of criminal organization known to man. Some, like the Falcone, had long since been accepted by Gotham and had gone fully local, while others tried their luck in the city of crime, dreaming of riches and power.

But with very few exceptions, Gotham didn’t like Outsiders and the newcomers soon fled town with their tails between their legs.

Still, every time the wealthy and glamorous gathered, crime families made an appearance; the line between both happened to be paper-thin in Dick’s hometown.

At least it made galas interesting. There was always an Outsider to put his foot in his mouth and attract the badwill of one mafia boss or another, and even without that bit of entertainment, the criminals that made enough of a name for themselves (without getting caught and sent to jail) to be invited to these events tended to have colorful personalities.

Like Samantha Brooks and her eleven (and counting) husbands, for instance. She was a notorious black widow, known for disposing of any rich man stupid enough to wed her, yet people still threw themselves at her feet in search of money and a good fuck. Eight of her husbands had died in ‘accidents’ all more ridiculous than the next – the third one died in a dodgem crash, of all things – while two others had escaped in time with a quick divorce and hefty alimonies to their ex-wife.

The eleventh husband, an arrogant playboy that had inherited his fortune after his father’s untimely and very suspect death, had only worn the ring for three months and people were already placing bets on how long he’d last and how it would end.

Samantha wasn’t a Gothamite, but she attended enough parties at the edge of the city that she had more or less become one of them. Plus, she made for delightful company with her quick wit and her scathing comebacks whenever someone tried to confront her. Dick rather liked her, and Bruce had even brought her as his plus one a few times, when he wanted more interesting company (and a better diversion) than the vapid models he usually chose.

(Because she ‘might’ have killed several of her husbands, but they all knew what they were getting into when they asked her hand in marriage. There was no compulsion, no magic, nothing that altered her suitors' judgment besides their own basest instincts. Bruce might have opinions on the sanctity of life, but if these idiots had a death wish or were willing to basically commit suicide in exchange for Samantha’s hand – and fortune and bed – it was their problem.

Batman had bigger fish to fry, with actual, unwilling victims.)

But Samantha was a good example of the kind of people that got invitations to galas: sharks ready to pounce at the slightest scent of blood or of unwed bachelors and bachelorettes, on the hunt for fresh, or failing that rich meat.

Thankfully, since they all cared about maintaining the thin veneer of civility and manners they all upheld, outright assassinations rarely happened during parties. It simply wasn’t sophisticated enough.

Instead, they resorted to social murder, which could prove just as deadly as the regular kind.

Lethal poisons were switched with embarrassing ones, that made you high as Kiteman or gave you unmentionable and degrading medical issues. Daggers didn’t target soft flesh but the straps of expensive dresses and shoelaces, while strategically spilled drinks hoped to induce a mortifying tumble. Sharpened heels and nails punished the foolish competitor that got conned into a dance, and hors-d’oeuvres were sometimes filled with stones to break teeth, or switched with other kinds of amuse-gueules to provoke targeted allergic reactions…

(The staff had all the equipment necessary to deal with any incident, from suddenly dropping dresses to anaphylactic shock, so there had not been a death in a gala for years – apart from the untimely supervillain attack of course. The point was no longer to kill, but to make it so your enemies could no longer show their faces in public.)

Humiliation was the name of the game, as much physically as verbally. With their status as a Wayne, Dick and his siblings had mostly been shielded as children, and were respected – and dismissed for their low wits – enough as adults to be spared the most scathing jabs. Too vapid to earn any clout and too rooted in the system to be shaken off their pedestal.

But the same couldn’t be said for the other attendants.

Everything was observed, cataloged, analyzed and then used for the most damaging impact. Everything.

Your attire, of course, but also your survival gear and how it all coordinated. Dress up in last season’s style and you become a laughingstock. And woe betide any Outsider that came without a survival gear, or with outdated technology. The gas masks, guns, knives, emergency phones and everything you were supposed to carry in your bag were just as subject to scrutiny as your bowties and shoes.

Jewelry had to be both aesthetic and practical, with sharp edges to cut through rope (or sinews and jugulars) and hidden compartments. Poison rings were still all the rage in Gotham, despite the rest of the world forgetting them, and luxury watches came with all sorts of interesting features.

Etiquette had to be scrupulously observed, even with a buffet, so Alfred had drilled perfect posture and gestures into his almost grandchildrens’ brains until Dick had nightmares of judgemental oyster forks telling him off for putting his elbows on the table. He didn’t even like oysters, why should he have a fork specifically for them?!

Bruce had never forced them to follow the most stringent rules, even in upscale galas, as long as they observed basic manners (although he went as far as to use fork and knife on a poor hamburger. Ugh), but he preferred his children to be aware of etiquette and ignore it rather than one day needing it and not knowing it.

(At the time, Dick had believed he’d never have to rely on those hellish lessons, but now, years later, he was reluctantly grateful for them. Most of the time, he still forewent the most over-the-top table manners, but they had proven beneficial on occasion to be taken seriously, like in the Velvet Room.)

Add in the inevitable supervillain attack or ransoming (and don’t believe you would be cut some slack then. A panicked reaction was just as likely to induce mockery, whether you were all held at gunpoint or not. The only difference was that the aggressors might join in on the sneering), and every gala turned into a warzone, filled with insidious traps, explosive observations and sharp comments. The children’s corner wasn’t any better, since high-society Gothamite kids were groomed to join the bloodless battle from a young age. With their youthful bluntness, they could prove even more cutthroat than their parents.

In comparison, the Velvet Room’s little shindig looked laughably tame.

He had to admit the operation had been fun, especially when he obliquely told everyone he was from Gotham and they almost wet themselves, but all this deception of criminals in a glitzy setting had reignited Dick’s longing for the familiar cloak-and-dagger game he and his family played with the rest of the world.

Ah, Dick really missed his crazy home…

Chapter Text

Sometimes, Peter wondered if Neal was cursed. Maybe he’d scammed one of those wizards you sometimes saw the Justice League fighting, or just robbed a random dude that got so mad they got their hands on a grimoire and cast the infamous ‘may you live in interesting times’, because this was the only viable explanation why things always went haywire whenever the conman stepped on the field.

This should have been an easy day, just a bit of reconnaissance around the docks, nothing remotely dangerous or even inspiring. Many crooks used the warehouses for trafficking and many a White Collar operation ended up there, so Hughes regularly sent a team to check if anything changed in the layout or if they could sniff out any crimes.

It worked surprisingly often, especially when they dragged Neal along (like Peter said, the man attracted trouble like a magnet), hence his presence on today’s routine round.

They talked to the dockmaster, checked a few areas he pointed them to, took note of the new office built in the western side and just walked around for a bit. A perfectly nice way to spend a morning and avoid the piles of paperwork waiting for them in the office. Peter could admit he – and everyone else on that duty – sometimes indulged a little longer than strictly necessary, but mortgage fraud.

Then what should have been a routine inspection turned into a horror movie prologue.

Gunshots sounded in the distance. Lots of gunshots.

The Caffrey Luck™ struck true yet again.

As federal agents, it was Peter and his team’s job to investigate, and since the shootout seemed to happen closeby and kept moving around at a rapid pace, they couldn’t risk leaving Neal unarmed and alone behind. They had to take the conman with them.

“Stay at the back, Neal.” Ordered Peter sternly while Jones called for backup, hoping that for once, the CI would listen to his instructions.

Neal nodded, serious for now. Peter knew him too well to trust this would last.

Cautiously, they approached the origin of the shooting, checking behind each container and crate before moving on. The sounds of gunfire didn’t relent in the least.

They soon found the first victim, a man lying on the ground, unmoving and bleeding sluggishly from the shoulder. A quick checkup revealed the bullet wound to be minor and the man to be breathing; he’d probably fallen unconscious because of the purpling bruise on his temple.

Peter loathed to leave an injured man behind, but his life wasn’t in danger as far as they could tell, there were only three agents and Neal on site, and more people were being shot at while they waited. With a silent apology, they moved on.

More bodies littered the way, all still alive and bearing bullet wounds and prominent bruises. Moreover, the more the team advanced, the more… suspicious the victims appeared. Not to cast any hasty judgments, but the burly, scarred, often armed unconscious men they literally stumbled on evoked mobsters more than dockers.

Diana, Jones and Neal looked as baffled as Peter felt everytime he crouched to check a pulse and reported that he found one. The CI’s eyes kept lingering on the victims and a light frown found a permanent place on his face, almost like he recognized a pattern but wasn’t sure he was right. Peter hoped Neal would share with the class if he really was onto something, though he trusted his friend to speak up if he thought it was important.

Peter, for his part, identified one of the collapsed bodies. The nineteenth casualty was Jamie Dudders, a small-time gangster, regularly hired by more ambitious crooks to do their dirty work. Dangerous, and known for racketeering, not the kind of guy you expected to find a real, honest job and leave his wayward past behind.

Further proof that something illegal was afoot here, beyond the shootout.

At least none of the victims (or more likely the defeated shooters) showed any life-threatening wounds. Plenty of bullet holes, bumps and scrapes, but nothing that required immediate treatment or would likely result in permanent after-effects. It was strange, alright, not to encounter a single lethal injury or corpse, but it helped ease Peter’s conscience when he had to leave people behind to reach the source of the gunshots.

Gunshots that were starting to die down. Oh, people were still frantically firing at each other, but the number of people involved must have started to drop.

Peter couldn't tell if that was a good thing or not.

Finally, after some of the most surreal twenty minutes in Peter’s life, they closed in on the fight, or what remained of it. From the warehouse, shouts, gunshots and strangely tinny voices reached their ears, too chaotic for Peter to make sense of it all. “Stay. Hidden.” He impressed one last time on his wandering CI.

Neal nodded, and before he turned the corner, Peter had the strange thought that the conman looked more relaxed than when they first caught the sounds of a shootout. Odd, but Neal had already proven himself to have weird reactions and coping mechanisms. What was one more?

“FBI! Hands in the air everyone!”

Such an order commanded the attention of any criminal. The FBI was not an organization you could afford to ignore, and so whenever he walked in on a situation, demanding people to surrender, Peter was used to quick reddition or open gunfire.

Until today.

Not a single head turned to look at the three agents barrelling in. Not one. The thugs still awake kept firing at the shadows with everything they had, yelling terrified threats, inarticulate screams or just emptying their chargers into every dark corner of the warehouse with a frenzied meticulousness that any accountant would envy.

Yet it wasn't enough.

One by one, the goons still dropped. Some took a bullet to the knee or shoulder, some vanished around a crate and fell suspiciously silent. Some tried to turn tail and run but were caught by a dark figure, a flash of red, black and brown that dragged them kicking and screaming into the shadows.

Peter, so used to being the center of the conflict the moment he stepped in, needed a moment to re-center himself and reassess the situation. Who should he focus on, the visible, madly shooting thugs in front of him, or the one(s?) that stuck to the dark and – from what he could tell – seemed to be winning?

It took him two more futilely fleeing men for him to get a proper look on the figure abducting them. His mind was made up the moment he recognized an iconic red helmet.

"No way…" Muttered Jones next to him, barely audible over the ruckus of gunshots and yells. He'd probably realized the same thing as Peter.

Yet he chose the opposite stance from his superior. Where Peter immediately tried – and failed – to gun down the lone figure, with Diana following his example, Jones focused on the run-of-the-mill thugs who were still not paying any attention to the three federal agents.

Peter would have scolded him, had he been able to. As soon as he started aiming for the figure hiding in shadows, a smoke bomb landed at his feet and he had to retreat or risk being taken down. Coughing and with teary eyes, he and Diana drew back behind a crate, the time to get rid of the smoke's effects.

They didn't recover quickly enough, though, because the fight ended soon after, with the last thug catching the rear of a gun on his temple. He collapsed like a sack of bricks, leaving Jones standing alone just as Peter and Diana emerged from their improvised cover.

Peter got his first good look at the Red Hood.

The man (assuming he really was human and not some alien or demon) was a towering mass of muscle and Kevlar, with a blood-stained leather jacket on top. Two highly customized guns still aimed at their heads, not yet firing for some reason. The eponymous hood made it difficult to guess what the man thought, but Peter had the feeling the Red Hood was assessing them.

For all that he had three federal agents training their own guns on him (Jones was visibly torn between staying in position and lowering his weapon. Why in hell was he hesitating?!), the Red Hood didn't seem concerned in the least. His posture remained almost casual, despite having two arms raised to keep them at gunpoint too.

"Drop your weapons." Peter ordered again. Red Hood only tilted his head. “I said drop your weapons!”

Peter would look back on this moment later and realize that the psychopath must have shot all of the agent’s guns out of their hands. At the time, though, all he could register was a seemingly single bang and his weapon clattering on the ground after being violently torn from his grip, twisting his wrist in the process.

The guns landed far out of immediate reach and Peter clutched his throbbing hand to his chest. Shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit. Their chances of getting out of here alive had just dropped to zero. The Red Hood didn’t leave witnesses.

“What are you doing here?” Asked the juggernaut of a man, the mask made his voice tinny and emotionless, impossible to read.

“We’re FBI agents, White Collar unit; we only came because we heard a gunfight. We’re the good guys.” Said Jones, the closest to the Red Hood yet, for some reason, the least panicked. “I know you’re a good guy too, a hero. You protect people.”

What?! Peter stared at his colleague, his eyes almost popping out of their sockets. The Red Hood a hero?! If this was an attempt at negotiating their lives, it was one of the most bizarre he’d ever heard.

(Not the most bizarre. Not after all the bullshit Neal had put them through.)

“Huh,” the Red Hood said, bemusement bleeding through his posture. He didn’t lower his guns, though. “That’s not an opinion you hear all that often outside of Gotham. It still doesn’t convince me you’re on the good side.”

“We’re federal agents.” Growled Diana next to Peter. He supposed that, if they were already doomed, they could act however they wanted. Maybe a reminder of their official status would make the psychopath hesitate to kill them?

At least Neal was still hidden. He could get out of here with his life and tell their families how they died.

El was going to be devastated…

“Yeah, and so are some of these guys.” The villain gestured at the unconscious men. Did he intend to finish them off later? Or maybe subvert some of them to his cause? Was it easier to sever heads on still breathing victims than on corpses? “Or well, maybe not feds, but cops, and it didn’t stop them from trafficking my kids, so you’re gonna have to find something else to convince me.”

Human trafficking? His kids? Peter felt completely out of his depth. He saw Jones open his mouth to argue some more, only to be cut off by the last voice Peter wanted to hear right now.

“I can vouch for them!”

Under their wide-eyed stares, Neal walked inside the warehouse, casual as ever.

Even more terrifying, the Red Hood recognized him on sight.

"Neal Caffrey." Greeted the killer, something like amusement bleeding through despite his voice modulator. "Didn't expect to meet your sorry ass today."

"Yeah, me neither. I didn't know you were in New York."

The Red Hood finally, absurdly lowered his guns and hauled himself on a crate, posture loose and open. Peter didn't doubt for a second that he could still draw his weapons before any of them could move. "You know how it is. Plans change. I followed these morons all the way here – the kids they caught are already safe, but better dismantle the whole fucking cartel before they start again from scratch."

“Can’t say that’s ever happened to me.” Replied Neal with an easy smile. To Peter’s horror, it didn’t look like his practiced, fake smiles, but like the genuine ones he only graced small children with.

Did those two know each other? Red Hood had recognized Neal on sight, hadn't he?

Oh, Neal, what did you get yourself into? This was so much worse than Catwoman…

The supervillain wanted throughout the world scoffed. “I guess that sort of thing doesn’t happen to a nonviolent forger.” He straightened from his lounge. “So, you’re vouching for these guys?”

“Yep!” Chirped Neal, looking as casual as ever. “They’re my friends; my handler and his team.”

“Neal!” Peter choked on his breath, did the conman just reveal he now worked for the FBI?! Not only did an uncovered snitch have little to no worth to the bureau, but the other criminals rarely took such a betrayal kindly.

To inform the Red Hood, of all people, of his status as an informant was nothing short of a death sentence.

It didn’t seem to concern Neal, though. “Relax, Peter. Hood already knew I was with the FBI, right?”

“Like it was supposed to be secret.” Mocked the supervillain, still lounging. You could almost hear the smirk through his featureless helmet. “I like to keep tabs on my acquaintances that go through prison or mingle with the cops. Don’t sweat it, it’s not like I’m gonna blab.”

The three agents traded glances, lost. How were they supposed to react? Trust the Red Hood? Not a chance. Argue against him after he so easily disarmed them? Nope, definitely not. Attack him bare handed? The guy looked like he could crush them all without breaking a sweat. Say nothing?

… Yeah, say nothing. Seemed like the smartest option; Neal apparently had the situation well in hand, or something.

“So what are you doing here?” Inquired the CI pleasantly.

“Oh, business as usual. Human traffickers to shoot, dicks to greet, feds to terrorize…”

“Right.” Neal was fighting down a grin and visibly losing. Because of the Red Hood. “Now that that’s done, we’re free to go?”

“Sure, I’ll just clean up here and go back home. You go back to your boring bloodless crimes.” He made patronizing shooing motions, stood up and went so far as to turn his back on them to go back to the unconscious goons littering the place. Peter would have called him out on his patronizing attitude had he been anyone else.

Still, even after the psycho vanished into the darkness of the warehouse, taking his victims with him, Neal had to push his handler outside before he blew up a fuse, followed the Red Hood and commited suicide via supervillain. Jones took care of an equally incensed Diana after carefully collecting their guns.

They said nothing all the way back to the office. Maybe it was shock, finally setting in, or maybe Peter didn’t know how to start asking why Jones had covered for the Red Hood and interrogating Neal on his ties with a psychotic murderer.

“Hon!”

Somewhat, walking in the bureau and getting an armful of panicked El was what it took to shock Peter out of his numbness. Right, Jones had called to report while in the car, and FBI policy had the office phone their relatives to inform them and assure them of the agents' health (or not, but Peter wasn't in the right mindset to consider any other possible outcome at the moment).

"I'm fine." He swore, hugging his wife back. Behind her, he spotted Mozzie of all people checking on Neal. Moz in an FBI bureau, now he'd seen it all; the man must have been with El, talking about books, when she received the call.

"You're sure?" She asked, patting him over in search of injuries. "The agent said- he said you’d encountered the Red Hood."

Peter nodded, his mouth clamped shut. Shock was finally leaving place to righteous anger and bitter betrayal, and he refused to subject El to it when he had a much more deserving target.

Targets, actually. He ordered everyone concerned in a meeting room; this was not a problem he should address in public. Of course, El and Mozzie followed his team and Hughes – he hadn’t expected anything else from those two. “Neal. Jones.” He growled, cold fury building up fast. “What the fuck was that?!”

Jones at least had the decency to look abashed. “I know it sounds bad, Peter, but… I mean, the Red Hood isn’t a bad guy anymore.”

“What?!” Croaked Mozzie before Peter could react. “So you were really held by the Red Hood?! The madman who cut people’s head and stuffed them in a bag for delivery? The Gotham crime lord that even the freaks over there are afraid of?! The-”

“I think they got the idea, Moz.” Neal gently cut his friend off before he could continue his rant. The CI still didn’t show a hint of remorse or worry, which only infuriated Peter further. Diana was in a similar state, but let her boss speak, while Hughes slowly caught up on what happened – they’d only told him of Red Hood and their survival on the phone. El watched in silence, her hand in her husband’s, clutching too tight.

“How are you so flippant about this?! You just met the Red Hood, the beheading psychopath!” What did the world come to when Mozzie made more sense than his usual accomplice?

“Well,” Neal rubbed the back of his neck, more awkward than ashamed, “it wasn’t exactly the first time I met him.”

Heavy silence fell on the meeting room while everyone stared with wide eyes. Peter had understood that, but to hear it from his friend’s mouth gave it more weight, more realism.

“Explain.” Ordered Hughes, who seemed at the limit of his patience.

“It’s not as bad as it sounds!” Was Neal’s flimsy defense. “We just knew each other before he took on the hood, although we’d lost contact for years. He went crazy that time with the severed heads and the rest, but he’s been cured since, I swear. He’s also been cleared of his crimes on account of insanity – he’s actually a vigilante now.”

“It’s true.” Concurred Jones, who had wisely stayed silent until now while Neal dug his own grave. “No, it really is. The Justice League itself cleared him; they kept the news on the down-low because he wants to keep his reputation as a deterrent, but it’s an official pardon and he’s an official member of the JL. It’s just not quite publicly known. I checked.”

“... Where did you find this information?” Asked Hughes after a moment of reflection.

Peter swiveled to look at his boss in outrage. “You can’t- I- He shot at us!”

“At your guns; you don't have a scratch.” Corrected Neal blithely. “Even the thugs we left behind will all fully recover, and you can’t exactly blame him for defending himself when you barged in, guns blazing. You and Diana didn’t even aim at the other armed gangsters that actually shot to kill.”

Hughes raised an eyebrow, but it was El’s light tug that shut Peter’s immediate reply up. He took the time to swallow and think before speaking up. “You can’t blame us for focusing on the Red Hood, a notorious murderer, before small-time thugs.”

“Well, given the perfectly alive knocked out people we found on the way there, I think you didn’t take enough time to think before you moved in.” Countered Neal, before he turned to Hughes. “And you can find basic intel on Red Hood on the Justice League’s official website. It’s not readily accessible or featured in the formal list of members, but if you enter his name in the search bar, you’ll see his page.”

“Berrigan, please check.”

Diana booted up the laptop left in the room for conferences and presentations; the rest of them spent the time it took for a search in stuffy silence. Neal leaned against a wall, careless as ever, with Mozzie next to him, fretting and sending suspicious glances at everyone else and at the windows. No doubt being in an FBI office made the paranoid man even more nervous than usual.

Jones was also standing, but unlike the CI, he looked distinctively awkward. Not contrite, though. Hugues eventually pulled out a chair for himself and motioned at Jones to sit down too.

El dragged her husband down until they were both cuddling on the thankfully large chairs. It wasn’t exactly comfortable, but right now, they both needed the warmth and closeness.

“I have it.” Said Diana after a while. “Just like Neal said, not in the open, but not really hidden either.”

They all gathered behind her, except for Neal and Jones. In front of Peter’s eyes, the Red Hood’s profile and a picture of his helmet appeared.

And so on, various pieces of information that really didn’t tell you much, except that the Red Hood truly was an operative of the Justice League. Despite the murders, the beheadings, the drug trade, the assassination attempts on Batman and Robin that Peter hadn’t known about until he read it just now…

The world of superheroes really didn’t spin the same way as regular people’s.

“He’s really an approved vigilante.” Mused Diana out loud. “Will wonders never cease?” Nobody even pretended to consider that the JL’s official website had been hacked, not when everyone knew it was protected by the all-seeing Oracle system.

“That doesn’t change the fact that he murdered people. He shouldn’t have gotten away scot-free, and ‘insanity’ is no excuse. Everyone is insane in Gotham.”

“It still means he’s one of the good guys.” Argued Neal. His tone sounded a bit odd, more controlled than usual. Peter had expected him to gloat about being right.

“For all that you can call vigilantes ‘good guys’,” scoffed Peter with a dismissive gesture. “I can understand people with superpowers going into crime-fighting – at that point, it’s almost more of a moral obligation than anything. But a regular guy that decides to beat criminals up in a kooky costume only belongs in a mental ward.”

That last remark seemed to catch Neal’s attention. “Even if they help others? If they’re the last line of defense between normal people and people that use their abilities for evil?”

“It’s the job of the proper authorities or, if they’re not enough, certified superheroes like Superman or Wonder Woman.”

Something he said must have amused Neal, because a ghost of a smile floated on his lips. “And what about Batman?”

Peter snorted. “If the guy really has no powers, then yes, he should step down. He’s a vigilante, not a superhero. It’s not like a plain human being can compete with the others anyway.”

Neal hummed thoughtfully, but it was Mozzie that spoke up. “I’m also unsure if the Batman is human like the rest of us, but that doesn’t mean I’ll spit on his work. The man is pretty much the only thing keeping the monsters from Gotham inside, which is a blessing for the rest of the world. For that alone, I can only show gratitude and respect.”

“Vigilantism is illegal and wrong, and vigilantes could all do with a shrink.” Reminded Peter, believing every word. Where would the world go if every moron with a death wish or a screw loose started parading in a furry costume and provoking thugs? “So if I ever catch you or Neal in thighs and a cape, Mozzie, I’m sending you straight to jail.”

Mozzie raised his chin up. “As if we’d ever lower ourselves to wearing such horrid outfits. Isn’t that right Neal?” The CI laughed, and nodded, apparently finding the idea hilarious. True, the image of Neal in a gaudy superhero suit didn’t fit well in Peter’s mind either. “But enough nonsense; does the website say anything about the rumors surrounding the Red Hood?”

"Rumors? Asked Jones, reminding Peter that there were more people in the room than him, El, Mozzie and Neal. “What rumors?”

“All the rumors. Like the one that says the Red Hood eats brains, or that he’s a vengeful ghost returned from the dead to collect his vengeance. Or that he has no face beneath his hood. Or that he’s actually an amalgam of the souls of dead kids, gathered into one being to protect still living children. Or the reincarnation of an ancient entity summoned by a cult to exterminate all murderers. Or-”

“There’s nothing about any rumors.” Diana interrupted, well-accustomed to Mozzie’s neverending rants. The man could go on forever if no one stopped him. “In fact, there’s almost nothing here; only information that everyone knows and the confirmation that he was cleared of all crimes. It doesn’t even expand on the ‘insanity’ problem.”

“In any case,” said Hughes, cutting any debate about the supercriminal apparently turned vigilante short, “if what happened today really was a Justice League operation, or even an isolated operation from one of its members, it goes well beyond our paygrade. The best we can do is let it go and forget everything, especially since there were no casualties on our side. You're all dismissed for today to recuperate.”

It didn’t sit well with Peter, not after Neal had admitted he’d known the Red Hood before the man took up the helmet. That meant a name, a face and a profile.

A soft hand on his arm prevented him from grilling his CI. “Let's just go home for today, hon.” Pleaded El, and Peter melted. After such a long, grueling morning, spending the rest of the day with his wife sounded heavenly.

Neal had one more day of respite.

Dick had not expected to see Jason in New York. Since the beginning of the Caffrey operation, the Bats had made it a point to avoid the Big Apple and risk compromising the mission.

They still contacted each other through phone calls and the occasional video call, because they missed each other dearly (even if the widespread emotional repression issue in their family would never let them admit it), but they all knew it would be much harder to keep in character if they met in person, no matter the situation or the possible witnesses.

Case in point: it had taken everything in Dick not to glomp his little brother. In front of a bunch of fallen gangsters and his FBI team. It would have been a disaster.

At least Jason’s impromptu visit and ill-advised goading of the agents (that he had definitely recognized from their files, the little brat) had helped Dick get his handler’s opinion on his other illegal occupation. He’d been wondering what to reveal to Peter once this was all over and today had solved that conundrum quite neatly.

Nightwing would remain his secret, since not having any special powers apparently disqualified him for heroics.

Dick had hardly ever heard such bullshit. As if having abilities forced you to put your life on the line for others, and being devoid of them meant you could do nothing. Almost none of the Bats had any powers (and even Duke’s had limited uses in the midst of battle – they were hardly offensive) and they were still pivotal in most Justice League operations.

New, cocky superheroes provoked them every once in a while, thinking the Bats were easy targets to go up in the pecking order. They systematically got their arrogant asses handed to them on a bat-plate; Dick and his family worked hard to achieve and maintain their position, in spite of their alleged ‘handicap’, and they wouldn’t let themselves be demeaned by random upstarts bloated with self-importance.

… OK, this might be a sore point. Peter’s dismissal of basic human vigilantes had smarted.

And his continued attempts of extracting the truth about his relationship with Red Hood certainly didn’t help. Thank goodness Hughes had basically prohibited any mention of the incident, judging the League’s affairs too far over their pay-grade to meddle. Peter still tried to needle information out of ‘Neal’, but he had too much respect for hierarchy to really push.

As if Dick would ever reveal their brotherhood now. After the team – bar Jones – had discovered that Jason had been cleared of all charges due to temporary insanity and after they’d learned that, even under the Pit’s influence, Red Hood had never harmed a true innocent, they still treated him like a psychotic mass murderer. His adorable little brat of a brother.

Thankfully, the people back home were not nearly as opinionated… when it came to Red Hood, at least.

As soon as his official status on the Bat-watch website had changed from rogue to conditional vigilante, he’d been adopted by the broader population as one of theirs. Sure, there had still been a line in red and underscored twice precising that he was still a lethal danger to criminals, but regular people could go to him for help.

(The alteration of his page came from Bruce, a couple days after Jason had pulled off his mask and revealed his true identity, just long enough to compare the DNA he’d obtained, check the empty grave and retrace his second son’s steps before he returned to Gotham. The moment he’d been sure it was really Jason come back to life, Red Hood had been classified as a dangerous, misguided vigilante, with a warning to criminals to steer clear if they valued their heads, but still a force for good if you needed protection.

The show of trust had greatly helped Jason return to being part of the family again, once he got his murderous rage under control and took a look at his page on the Bat-watch. Everyone knew B had the final word when it came to who was seen as a vigilante in Gotham and who was not.)

The rest of the world saw Red Hood as a monster, because Jason liked the way his infamy intimidated Outsider criminals into the straight and narrow. In Gotham, though, and especially in Crime Alley, he was one of the beloved Bats. Jason had established himself as the main protector of local prostitutes, of junkies trying to taper off and of children. Street rats, especially, those that had nothing and needed everything.

What would the rest of the world say if they ever learned that Red Hood, the dreaded beheading monster from Gotham, was also the Ultimate Soccer Mom?

Of course, he made sure all the outcasts under his wings, the disowned, had a roof over their heads and enough food to survive, but Jason had also always placed great importance in education. Being learned was pretty much the only way to elevate yourself over your current condition without resorting to crime, so any kid he took under his wing (and any adult that wanted a chance at a better life), he systematically enrolled in school, and paid for everything out of his own pocket.

(He could easily afford it since, in addition to what he made as a successful though ethical drug lord, he owned some shares at Wayne Enterprise – like all of B’s emotionally adopted children. Most of the money went to charities, but paying for his wards’ tuition was just as good of a cause.)

It didn’t stop there. Jason – or rather Papa Hood, as he’d come to be known – helped his kids with homework and often cooked them homemade lunch boxes, because a balanced diet was paramount, all the more so when you suffered from the aftereffects of malnutrition. He knew all his wards’ names, their food preferences, their allergies, their aspirations and so on.

Papa Hood religiously attended every parent-teacher meeting, or, on the odd occasion when he couldn’t make it, sent one of his siblings in his place.

Imagine the teachers’ faces when, in place of a bored mother or an uninterested father, they were met with a fully invested Red Hood, who wanted a complete report on his kids’ progress and an explanation on the rare cases when one of the staff had mistreated or been unfair to his wards.

(Being faced with one of the other Bats wasn’t much better. As much as some of them would deny it, they all cared for their almost-nephews and -nieces. Even Damian – as Robin – had been caught threatening a math teacher at swordpoint after he intentionally failed one of the kids simply because he came from the streets. Suffice to say no other incident of this kind occured ever since.)

Jason went to every game, every school fair, every play, and recorded it all with his helmet. Then he sent copies to the rest of the family in what could only be deemed a display of look-how-cute-my-kids-are bragging.

(Brucie did the same at galas, assaulting any hapless listener with heaps of photos and movies of his children, all stored on his phone and wallet. The video of Dick’s first gymnastics competition still went around to this day, as did Tim’s first science fair after being adopted, Cass’s first ballet and a number of other adorable movies. Dick had a feeling the upcoming recording of some of Jason’s kids playing Hamlet would follow a similar path.)

Sometimes, when they were free, the rest of the family attended those events; they did all they could to support Jason’s crusade of taking in every homeless kid under his wing, including buying presents on birthdays and Christmas. Batman had earned himself the nickname ‘Santa Bats’ and so many carefully archived thank-you drawings because he always insisted on personally delivering gifts to his sort of grandkids…

Yeah, they had the Big Bat wrapped around their fingers, though Papa Hood wasn’t far behind. The day Jamila, Freddie and Kevin – some of his eldest wards – left for university, Jason was totally tearing up behind his domino mask.

Because when only in the presence of his kids, Jason removed his helmet. He never gave them his name or showed his entire face, but every street kid knew of his iconic tuft of white hair, which could have spelled the end of his anonymity very fast if not for one thing.

Well, two things, really. His persona as ‘Jay’ Todd-Wayne was too crude and uncultured to properly help anyone with their homework. The fact that he’d never gone to college only compounded that impression.

But the real protection to his identity came from his wards themselves. As a tribute to their protector, several of them had taken to bleaching their front bangs white, just like him. It had become something of a trend in Gotham, a way to show your support of Papa Hood’s actions or just to indicate you came from Crime Alley, his uncontested turf.

Since every Gothamite and their grandma knew Jay Todd-Wayne had come straight from Crime Alley’s seediest parts, no one batted an eye when he reappeared in the family with a similar patch of white hair, assumingly in honor of his roots as a street kid. Or well, people did bat an eye, but only at the fact that the second Wayne kid had returned from the dead.

Even in Gotham, that didn’t happen too often. Which only made Mozzie’s rumors about the Red Hood even more hilarious, because half of them were pretty close to the truth, but not quite right either.

But all those rumors, unfounded or not, didn’t excuse Peter and Diana’s completely unwarranted reaction. Red Hood had clearly avoided killing his targets, yet had been the only one at the end of the agents’ guns. Talk about unfair.

(No, Dick was absolutely not partial. This was his objective opinion about an attack on his adorable, slightly violent, bleeding heart of a little brother, no bias there whatsoever.)

Jones had displayed much more sense, although he had probably been helped by the Bat-watch website Dick had given him access to some time ago that explicitly introduced Red Hood as a good guy.

Still, Jones got a pass for the way he handled the encounter. Even Dick and his boundless love for his siblings couldn’t deny that Jason in full Red Hood regalia looked a smidge intimidating.

More surprising had been Mozzie’s defense of vigilantism. You’d think a man so paranoid as to have a whole array of safehouses, code phrases, disguises and false identities would be more critical of the Bats.

(Or, you know, be a Bat. But Dick was fairly confident that if Mozzie was a vigilante himself, nevermind another Bat, he’d have caught wind of it by now. Besides, violence and danger didn’t suit his friend’s personality at all.)

In any case, that support, especially in front of a bunch of federal agents, deserved a reward. So when Mozzie arrived at his flat late at night to discuss his run-in with Red Hood in private, Dick endeavored to be as candid as he could afford to be.

“So,” started Mozzie after a couple glasses of good wine. This was not a conversation either of them wanted to have sober. “How do you know the Red Hood?”

Two options there. Lie, and spin a tale of a job for a drug lord or something similar, or tell the truth. At least a version of it.

A single look at Mozzie’s expression, full of fear but also of dogged protectiveness, made up Dick’s mind. The other man had earned an honest reply.

“He’s my little brother.”

Mozzie choked on his wine, spilling most of it through his nose and on the table. A shame – the stuff wasn’t cheap.

“What?!”

“My little brother. Dad adopted him some years after me.”

It took some time for Mozzie to clear his airways enough to splutter more questions.

“How? I mean, you and Brian are non-violent; how are you related to the Red Hood?!”

Dick sighed, took one more sip of his wine and leaned back on his chair to study the ceiling. He hated recalling what his brother had gone through. “It’s a long story, and I’m pretty sure most of it is still classified by the Justice League. But the short of it is that we thought my little brother died as a teen. In truth, he got abducted by a terrorist group that wanted his skills – you know how thoroughly dad trained us – where he was subjected to a substance that balloons rage and agressivity out of proportions, got further brainwashed by his captors into thinking we’d abandoned him, received some more aggressive training and ta-da! The Red Hood you know about was born. It took some time for him to overcome the adverse effects with some outside help from the JL, and then he decided to put his new talents to use by becoming a full-time vigilante in a place that most direly needed help. He hasn’t killed anyone in years, but his reputation does half of the work, so he makes no effort to clear it.”

A version of the truth. No outright lies, but enough omissions that even Mozzie would not come to the right conclusion. Outsiders didn't know the Bats formed a family, let alone that Red Hood was part of it despite the very subtle bat on his chest; even knowing that Jason was 'Neal's' brother, Moz shouldn't realize that Dick was a vigilante too.

Mozzie blinked. And blinked again. He took a deep breath, to center himself as he visibly struggled to process Dick's explanation. The younger man let him have all the time he needed as he finished his own glass and poured himself another one.

"You- You're not kidding, are you?"

Dick shot him a commiserating look. "No, I'm not. I know it's a lot, but the point is: we were never in danger with Red Hood. You don't have to believe the rest if you can trust that."

Slowly, Moz nodded, as if physically weighing the truth of his allegation with his brain. "I… suppose that's something. I hadn't even known Brian had more kids than you."

Dick couldn't help it; he snorted. "Oh, he has many more kids than the two of us. Dad has a bit of a problem there: he sees a problem kid in need of parental affection and supervision, he wants to adopt them. It's almost a compulsion by now. And Hood is just the same."

Maybe Moz's raised eyebrow expressed his disbelief at Brian (Bruce's alias) having even more children, maybe it displayed his incredulity at the thought of Red Hood taking kids in, or maybe it pointedly informed Dick that his avoidance of his brother’s actual name had been noted. He wouldn't know; it could be all that at once, really. "The Red Hood adopts children?"

Of course this would be a sensitive topic for a man who had been raised in an orphanage. "Oh yeah." Dick snorted again. "Dad's legendary adoption issues have definitely been passed on to the next generation; nothing to worry about on that front. Of course, he can't make it official, but paperwork or not, Hood is still a real mama bear with his wards."

Mozzie's frown deepened, but Dick could tell he was winning him over. "He's good to them?"

"He's the best." Swore Dick, believing every word. Jason might have a lot of personal issues, but he did all he could for his kids. "Just the other day, one of his youngest wards, Paolo, lost his teddy bear somewhere in an old, crumbling building. Well, Hood spent all day looking for the thing instead of buying a new one, because it was Paolo’s last memento of his mom. He eventually found it in the sewers, after it had slipped in a manhole. The bear stunk to high hell, but after a good wash, the kid was thrilled to be reunited with his teddy back.

“There was also that time when little Annie needed help for a school project about volcanoes, and…”

All night long, story after story, Dick painted an image of Red Hood so very different from what people thought they knew about him. He spoke not of a beheading monster that killed indiscriminately, but of a foul-mouthed little boy that loved to learn, of a bratty teenager that stole the show during his theater club’s performances, of a coarse young man with a heart of gold that could cook anything, that could still recite Shakespeare’s entire works from memory and go on endless rants about the greatness of Austen’s books.

It had been so long since he had seen his family for longer than a phone call (or a spontaneous operation in a warehouse while undercover) that speaking of Jason to a spellbound Mozzie soothed some of Dick’s heartache.

Dammit all, he really missed his crazy home.

Chapter Text

There was one thing you had to understand about FBI policies: none of the agents liked going to their annual psychiatry tests. Sitting in front of a stranger that prodded and pressed until they found a weak spot in your mind was by no means a nice experience.

They all much preferred standing on the other side of the interrogation process, thank you very much.

Yet every single one of them attended their yearly session and any additional meeting, like after a shootout or an abduction or any other intensely stressful situation. Refusing to attend once earned you a black mark on your file and a new appointment; ignoring it three times without extenuating circumstances usually led to a demotion or – in the most extreme cases – outright dismissal.

Diana herself disliked everything about those visits to one of the in-house FBI shrinks, but she loved her job more than she hated the sterile little offices, the stranger taking notes and quietly judging you or the way you inevitably felt open and exposed when you walked out.

She needed a good review to keep working, so she complied without a fuss.

Neal didn’t seem to have gotten the memo.

“I’m not an agent, why would I need to see a shrink?!” He argued, arms crossed and smile gone from his pursed lips. It wasn’t often that you caught Neal with so stern an expression.

“It’s normal procedure for everyone employed by the FBI to see a certified psychiatrist once a year. You’ve been with us for eleven months, it’s time for a visit.” Replied Peter with the tone of someone who had repeated this exact same sentence a dozen times in as many minutes. “It’s mandatory for agents who go on the field.”

“As I said, I’m not an agent, Peter! I don’t need someone digging inside my head for sunshine and glitter to do my job – I manage my trauma very well on my own!”

The whole exchange felt weird (besides the obviously odd choice of words – how were sunshine and glitter traumatic?). In Diana’s experience, Neal wasn’t one for confrontations; he could argue, nitpick, haggle or simply ignore instructions, but he rarely opposed a decision head on – it wasn’t the Caffrey style.

Whatever bothered him about the mental health check, it was not something he was willing to negotiate.

Too bad he had no choice if he didn’t want to return to prison, as Peter explicitly stated.

“I’m not asking, Neal. If you want to keep working as our CI, you must be cleared by one of our therapists. It doesn’t matter if you’re an agent or not!”

“What, you make every CI, mole and snitch sit down and have their brain dissected? I don’t think so! Why should I have to go through the mind-shredder?”

“What exactly do you think a visit to a therapist is?” Wondered Diana. The argument seemed to be running in circles, so she figured she could step in. “We can all agree it’s not fun, but in the end, it’s just a talk.”

Neal snorted. Actually snorted in the most uncouth way she’d ever seen him act. “That’s what they want you to think, but the moment you lower your guard, it’s a very different story. I’m not letting anyone poke around in my head.”

For the first time, Diana fully understood how Neal and Mozzie could be such good friends. It had mystified her for so long, but she could now see they shared the same ridiculous paranoia on at least some topics.

“It’s just. A. Talk.” Peter repeated. He looked this close to blowing up. “And I’ll be forced to send you back to jail if you don’t have it. I’ve overlooked all the crazy, borderline suicidal stunts you’ve pulled so far, the dangerous men you just can’t seem to keep from provoking and your worrisome lack of self-preservation, but I can’t do that anymore, Neal! Not after you just bantered with the Red Hood a few days ago like you weren’t facing a known mass murderer.”

“I told you-”

“Yes, you told me you knew him and that he’s cured or reformed or whatever – which, mind you, isn’t at all reassuring – but that was just the last straw. You’re going to get a mental health check next Sunday; the doctor is already doing us a favor by seeing you on her weekend on such short notice.”

Neal huffed, more miffed than Diana had ever seen him. “As if that’s not suspicious. Why would this Parwell agree to work on a weekend if she had nothing nefarious in mind?”

“Be polite, Neal.” Peter growled, at the end of his rope. “It’s Doctor Parwell; she insists on it, and you’re going to behave on Sunday.”

“That’s even more of a red flag!”

“Why?” Asked Diana before Peter could go back to screaming at Neal. “Don’t tell me you’re one of those nutters that believe anyone with higher education is evil, are you?”

“Of course not.” Neal scoffed. Diana might have relaxed had he not persisted in his madness. “I only think anyone with a doctorate – and who insists on reminding everyone of it – should be closely monitored for signs of evilness. Especially those that chose to get a doctorate in snooping inside people’s heads.”

Good god, he looked like he believed every word.

“... You really need to see a therapist, Neal.” Groaned Peter, who no longer looked incensed or exasperated but defeated. Almost resigned.

“No I don’t.” Countered the conman like a brat, before he turned around and went back to his desk. Peter and Diana exchanged a look.

Yeah, this was worse than they’d bargained for. They’d have to stage an intervention to ensure things went smoothly on Sunday.

Neal’s appointment had been booked for late morning, which was precisely why Diana and Peter went to fetch him at the crack of dawn.

The CI would predictably not come quietly, so they figured they’d best start early if they wanted to make it on time, and that they wouldn’t be too much of two to frogmarch their friend to the psychiatrist’s office.

From the moment he opened his door, looking more unkempt than ever before, including the times he’d been kidnapped, to the moment they finally managed to drag him inside Dr Parwell’s waiting room, Neal proved utterly uncooperative.

Diana had no idea what had him so worked up. The conman refused to share anything besides ludicrous conspiracy theories about all psychiatrists being evil; surely that couldn’t be it. Neal had always seemed like such a down-to-earth individual – eccentric and irreverent for sure, but sensible and not bordering on lunacy like he seemed when they literally had to tug him from the car to the lobby.

As they sat, waiting for the doctor to arrive (they were only ten minutes early; good thing they’d knocked on Neal’s door at ass o’clock in the morning), Neal crossed his arms, hunched his shoulders and looked straight ahead with a heavy frown. Diana had never seen him this closed up. He refused to say a word, no matter how much they tried to coax one out of him or to reassure him that this was just a routine visit.

It looked like he was headed for a visit to an unlicensed dentist for a teeth removal operation without painkillers or anesthesia rather than a professional shrink.

Yet the moment an elderly woman walked into the room – Dr Parwell, she assumed – Neal was all smiles and easy charm, his mask firmly back into place.

No matter how many times she witnessed it, his ability to change behaviors at the drop of a hat still bewildered and amazed Diana in equal measure. No wonder Neal had been such a proficient and successful conman when he could become anybody in an instant, completely pushing aside his own emotions and personality.

Maybe that was one more reason for him to see a psychiatrist, now that she thought about it…

“Dr Parwell.” He greeted her with a wide smile and an eager shaking of hands. “I’m Neal. My friends told me you shifted your schedule to find me an appointment; I can’t thank you enough for bearing the inconvenience.”

“Not at all, Neal.” Replied Dr Parwell with a kindly smile. She looked at Diana and Peter, who were still sitting down and trying to collect their jaws from the floor. “If you don’t mind waiting here, Neal and I will start our session right away.”

Peter stammered a little before uttering a wobbly “Please do.”

Dr Parwell barely had her back turned that their CI shot both of the agents the most incensed glare in the history of glares. When the psychiatrist looked back at him, Neal smiled like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.

The door closed behind the shrink and the conman. Diana belatedly thought that this sounded like the start of a very bad joke.

“This is going to go horribly, isn’t it?” She asked her boss, eyes still trained on the door like it would explode any second. Given who had just walked out, she wouldn’t be that surprised if it did.

“Probably.” Replied Peter in the same vaguely dazed tone of someone expecting a calamity to befall them and unable to do anything about it but watch. “I’ve never seen Neal that upset. Even when I caught him and threw him into prison, he didn't fight nearly as hard. Both times.”

They waited for Neal and Dr Parwell to return in stunned silence.

An hour later, Neal finally emerged, a beaming smile on his face.

Diana was instantly on guard.

Both the conman and Dr Parwell exchanged friendly goodbyes, before the shrink turned to the two other people in the lobby. “Agents. A word with both of you, if you will?”

She said it in a sweet tone, but Diana had the feeling they could not decline.

“I’ll wait for you here.” Promised Neal with an innocent grin that she didn’t trust for a second.

Dr Parwell’s office was as dry and clinical as Diana had expected. What was it with shrinks’ workplaces that needed so much pastel and lifeless greenery? She even caught herself thinking a gargoyle or two could add some character.

Good God, Neal was really getting to her. Maybe she should see her own psychiatrist if it had gotten that bad.

“What did you think of Neal?” Asked Peter once they all took a seat and the cup of tea the doctor pushed into their hands.

“Hmm.” Dr Parwell hummed thoughtfully. “He’s a very interesting patient. Deeply suspicious of everything. He didn’t even drink a drop of my tea, but kept pretending to sip on it and emptied his cup in the plants whenever I looked away.”

Oh Neal…

“He’s frighteningly in control of what he shows to the world. I’d wager he didn’t speak a word of truth when I asked him about his past. The tales he spun could have fooled most, but unfortunately for him, I’ve been in the field for a long time, and I know how to spot a liar. There are definitely tragedies in his past and very profound traumas, but he won’t talk to me about any of them.

“That being said, I believe the emotions he displays are, for the most part, genuine, so there’s that. Although he’s much more calculating than he wants me to think – nobody who can so perfectly control his appearance is as candid as he pretends to be. But then again, I suppose that’s par for the course for a successful criminal. His file said he mostly did cons and forgeries, no violent crimes, is that right?”

“That’s right.” Peter confirmed after clearing his throat. Diana thought his voice still sounded a little tight. “He knows some pretty violent guys, people in gangs or crime syndicates. Murderers. But he swears he never resorted to violence anyway.”

“I can believe it. Despite his obvious rejection of law and authority, he seems to have a strong moral fiber and some lines he won’t cross. Though what those lines are is hard for me to tell after a single session.”

“So you’re going to see him again? Neal won’t be able to go back to the field just yet?” Diana asked after Peter stayed silent a beat too long.

Dr Parwell hummed again as she pondered her answer. “... I doubt he’d reveal anything to me no matter how much time we spend together. He has a thing against psychiatrists, has he not? In any case, from what I could tell, Neal Caffrey is no risk to others. To himself is another matter, but I think he’s too smart and deliberate to throw himself into danger without reasonably good chances of getting out alive. So I’ll take the risk of clearing him for active duty, but feel free to contact me again if he does something to endanger himself too greatly.”

Diana heaved a sigh of relief. If Dr Parwell had judged Neal too unstable to be of use, the man could have been carted straight back to jail. The FBI had no need for another paperpusher, and Neal’s worth had always resided on the work he did on the field, not behind a desk, though his contributions there were just as appreciated – and less likely to snowball into a diplomatic incident.

After thanking her for her time, Peter and Diana grabbed Neal and drove him back to his home. His mask of genial charm dropped like a stone the moment they were all in Peter’s car, but he stayed suspiciously silent all the way.

For reasons she couldn’t fully explain, Diana and Peter also escorted him right up to his flat…

… where they found a harried Mozzie, waiting for them in the living room.

“Finally!” He cried when they walked in. “I was starting to consider going there myself and ringing the fire alarm to get you out. Did she try anything?”

“Not that I know of.” Replied Neal gravely. “But we should still check – I don’t trust her.”

“As if you needed to remind me, mon frère.”

Without prompting, Neal sat on a chair and rolled his right sleeve up. Mozzie quickly pulled out a syringe and started extracting blood.

“Wow, wow, wow! What are you doing?!” Shouted Peter when he realized what he was seeing – Diana was still stuck in the what the fuck stage. “Why are you drawing blood?!”

“For a blood test, obviously.” Mozzie drawled. He pulled out the needle and let Neal treat the pinprick wound while he went to fiddle with the lab equipment stashed on a side table that she hadn’t noticed until then.

“I didn’t drink any of her tea, but there are other ways to get drugs in one’s system, so we’d better check.” Supplied Neal as he applied a bandaid to his inner elbow.

Mozzie mixed some drops of blood with various colorful chemicals in test tubes and Petri dishes before he turned back to the rest of the room. “We’ll get the results in half an hour, just enough time to perform the other tests.”

What followed probably counted as some of the weirdest thirty minutes of Diana’s life. She and Peter stood, entranced and confused, as Moz checked Neal’s pupil dilatation, methodically tested his reflexes, told him to do the weirdest tongue twisters (allegedly to test his mouth-to-brain coordination) and asked what she could only assume were trick questions to check his memory and see if his friend had been brainwashed or not.

“What do you think of the FBI?”

“It sucks; they make everything way more complicated than it should be, and they should throw at least half of all that paperwork out the window. Mortgage fraud is utterly boring. What they call coffee and a salary could be improved on too.”

“How did we meet?”

“You played card tricks on the street and I impressed you by turning it around, like I’d been told to do in order to get your attention. Then you gave me a riddle to solve in order to find you.”

“What is your brother’s name?”

Neal opened his mouth, paused, and threw Moz a shrewd look. “I never told you that.”

“No, you didn’t.” Confirmed the other man. “I was just ruling out truth serums. What was the first con we did together – and I might add for our intruding Suits that the statute of limitation has long expired for that case.”

Mozzie needn’t have bothered; Diana and Peter were still reeling with the revelation that Neal had a brother; who cared about whatever scam those two had done years ago?

Questions kept raining, and Neal must have answered correctly because Moz never stopped until the old-school cooking timer he’d set earlier announced that his chemical experiments were done brewing.

A careful inspection of his test tubes later, and all the tension in Mozzie’s frame relaxed at once. “Good news, mon frère! I can detect none of the substances the government is most likely to rely on. Of course, there’s always the possibility that they used something new that I don’t know about, but I think that for now, you’re in the clear.

Neal slumped on his chair with a mighty sigh of relief. “Thank god! Ugh, that was a close call.”

“You don’t say. We must have gotten lucky today. There will be no follow-up with his visits to the mind-digger, will there be, Suits?”

“Dr Parwell said she saw no need to see Neal again if he wouldn’t reveal anything.” Peter replied after a second of hesitation. Diana understood why he seemed to be re-evaluating that decision after what they just witnessed. “And I still don’t understand why the hell you thought you needed all those tests after a simple mental health check-up.”

Both Neal and Mozzie looked at Peter like he’d just uttered the dumbest sentence ever. “Because she could have tried so many things in that office!” The CI explained with wild gestures that did nothing to make him look saner. “Do you have any idea what happens to people who think they are going for a ‘simple mental health check-up’?!”

“Some got brainwashed into believing all the lies from the government.” Moz continued as he poured himself a glass of wine. Next to him, Neal nodded wisely in agreement. “You’re already a lost cause because you chose to become a Suit, Suit, but some people still have free will and agency.

“Then you have the shrinks that are after your wealth and that brainwash or hypnotize you until you give them anything they want. Money, power, blackmail… They can get everything with a snap of the fingers once they manage to get inside your head.”

“And don’t forget the so-called therapists that just like to mess with their victims.” Neal said, looking for all the world like he really believed that bullshit. “With all the technology and science we have today, it’s awfully easy to have someone believe they’re, say, an animal, a serial killer, their personal slave, a completely different person… anything, really. They can rework your mind so that you see and feel things that aren’t there, or become stuck in a specific state, just for their amusement. You let your guard down, you start trusting them, and before you know it, you’re completely at their mercy.”

“... This is ridiculous.” Diana muttered, although not low enough for Mozzie to miss it and not fly into hysterics.

“You think it’s ridiculous?! You think it’s ridiculous! Every year, thousands of people fall prey to psychiatrists, psychologists, and every kind of monster that professes to ‘heal the mind’! In truth, none of them have any interest in helping you – it’s completely counterintuitive. The worse you feel, the more money and control they earn. And unlike, say, a plumber, an electrician, or even a regular physician, they can just cover your deteriorating state of mind by saying they merely unearthed already existing disorders or traumas that you had unconsciously buried! There’s no concrete, tangible evidence that they’re fixing you, yet most everyone has been so conditioned to accept it as truth that they don’t question it anymore!”

“Alright, I’ll concede that some mind healers can be crooks.” Peter tried for diplomacy in the face of two agitated felons. “But that doesn’t mean they all are. Dr Parwell is an honest, very nice lady.”

“The nice ones are the worst.” Neal warned them with the air of someone with personal experience on the topic. Had he had an unfortunate encounter with a psychologist in his past? It would explain at least some of his unfounded paranoia. “They’re the ones that make you trust them to better get to you. And when you start having doubts, they’re the last ones you suspect. Never trust the kind ones.”

Next to him, Mozzie nodded his emphatic agreement.

“So what?” Diana couldn’t help asking, even if she knew it wouldn’t lead anywhere good. “You thought Dr Parwell was going to brainwash you into becoming a model citizen.”

Neal turned to her with wide, haunted eyes and she regretted not dropping the subject. “I don’t know what she wanted, and I don't want to find out. It could have been so much worse than being turned into a law-abiding citizen. Maybe she wanted to brainwash me into becoming the apprentice to an infamous mercenary, or the undead killing machine of an animal-themed cabal. Everything is possible!”

“You’ve read too many comics, Neal.” Peter sighed, looking like he was done with this whole topic yesterday. To be fair, he probably had been since the moment he announced to his CI that he needed to see a shrink. Diana would have sympathized, had she not also been involved in the whole process from start to finish. “And I’ve heard enough of this nonsense. I’m done. See you tomorrow at work, Neal. Mozzie.” He nodded his goodbyes and left the apartment, Diana on his heels.

She’d had her fill of their madness for the day too.

Really, who imagined that innocent shrinks were actually trying to abuse you? Where did they get those silly ideas, Diana wondered.

In Gotham, psychiatrists were evil.

That was it, no subtleties, no nitpicking, no exceptions. Anyone who delved into the matters of the mind was distrusted on sheer principle.

It had nothing to do with the fact that Dick was undercover, or decidedly less nonviolent than he had the FBI believe. No, he didn’t fear exposure, he feared actually having someone play with his brain like it was a mere puzzle to dismantle and reassemble wrong.

It had happened before, and it would probably happen again, but Dick would still try his damndest to stop it every time.

(Few feelings were as terrifying as realizing you didn’t hold the reins in your own head.)

In Gotham, nobody ever visited a shrink unless they were already in Arkham, and when you reached the point where you got sent to Arkham Asylum instead of Blackgate Prison, you knew you were already beyond screwed in the head anyway.

Despite what the common Outsider thought, only the worst cases were sent to Arkham. It had nothing to do with attempts at finding a cure or redemption for the inmates, or even the hope of sparing some of the ‘saner’ criminals by not having them share space with the true barking mad.

No, it was much more sensible than that. Arkham asylum was an island. A big island, but an island nonetheless, and there simply wasn’t enough space to host the droves of criminals with a screw loose and their marbles scattered to the winds.

The terminally ill and dangerous got carted to Arkham to be contained (and to fill their roster to absolute capacity), the rest got sent to Blackgate to be a bit less securely imprisoned. Not that it meant much when you saw the literal revolving doors at Arkham’s entrance, but hey! Dick and his family did what they could; they were not miracle-workers.

(Besides, injecting money into that mess only attracted the crooked and deranged like crows on fresh roadkill. The Waynes paid for repairs and security improvements, but they’d long learned not to promise funds to so-called mind healers.)

Gotham’s rampant curse(s) and the madness that came with it ensured that the overwhelming majority of the population suffered from mild to severe mental issues. As long as it didn’t stop them from surviving and that they didn’t go down the path of super-criminality, though, most people turned a blind eye to their neighbors’ quirks.

Who cared if you liked to talk to yourself with different voices, if you compulsively collected broken credit cards, if you laughed at the most inopportune moment or if you needed to flick the lights on and off twice every time you entered a room? As long as you never pulled out a customized weapon and a matching outfit and went on a rampage, you were allowed your eccentricities. And it went without saying that nobody got mad when you had a panic attack, a dissosiative episode, a flashback or any other way to express trauma that involved neither bombs nor guns. Everybody had their own baggage.

In that way, Gotham was a very tolerant and open place.

So sure, in theory, almost every Gothamite could use a psychiatric follow up, Dick’s lopsided family very much included. In practice, though, Dick had yet to meet a single mind-healer that wasn’t either a crook or evil. Or both.

Take Harley, for instance. She was no crook, and had earned all her diplomas fairly (before Gotham University terminated all the psychology courses out of sheer public necessity). And nobody would deny that the Joker had seriously messed with the head, making her one of the rare cases of reverse brainwashing (patient influencing the doctor instead of the other way around). But fewer knew that Harleen Quinzel had asked to be the Joker’s primary therapist in order to study him and all his disorders that to this day no psychiatrist had ever managed to accurately diagnose.

… Maybe Harley was a bad example, because insane and dangerous she might be, but she was also not evil, not now that she’d put distance between herself and her abusive ex. That didn’t mean Dick would agree to sit on a reclining chair and spill out all his trauma for her either, though.

Maybe take a look at Hugo Strange instead. Now there you had the archetype of a purely evil psychiatrist. Without lingering on his absolutely terrifying appearance (how was he supposed to get his victims/patients to relax when he looked like he’d walked straight out of a horror movie? You’d expect him to pull out a cleaver or a wicked-looking drill at any moment and to aim it at your head. And that fucking smile, ugh… Slasher smiles had nothing on him), the guy was malevolent to the core.

Dick had lost count of the number of people Strange had hypnotized or otherwise manipulated to do his bidding, including several Bats. And why did he do it? Well money was certainly a factor, but his main motive was fun. Or the study of the human mind and how far he could distort it, which – for him – was just another word for fun.

Or you could take a closer look at Scarecrow, because even if Jonathan Crane had stopped practicing in an office, he still showed great interest in how fear affected people’s psyche. Of course, his solution was usually to dose everyone with his latest hallucinogenic Fear Toxin and watch them writhe on the floor, scream in terror, maim themselves in their fright by tearing themselves apart or just stare into the void, paralysed by nightmares.

Suffice to say, he didn’t really improve the image of psychiatrists.

But it didn’t stop at the big names either. Plenty of less known shrinks got their rocks off scrambling people’s heads like eggs.

Dick had once met a man who brainwashed his patients into becoming mass murderers. Not to kill his enemies, no, that would be too rational for Gotham. Just to kill people at random, making tracing them very difficult, especially when his victims had no clue they disemboweled innocent passersby in their sleep.

Some years ago, an ambitious shrink decided to run for mayor, and instead of going on campaign and giving it a proper go, he lowered his prices and welcomed a lot of brave – and stupid – curious patients wondering about his policies. Then, with the help of some drugs that made them highly suggestible, he placed the idea in their heads to vote for him and to incite others to either do the same or come meet him in person for a session. By the time Batman caught him, the man had converted a good one point two percent of Gotham’s total inhabitants, which might not seem like a lot until you remembered the insane population density.

Had the idiot put half as much effort in a real campaign, he might have actually won…

There was also that amateur wizard lady, who used spells to get her vengeance on her former colleagues and make them believe they were various animals, like pigs, dogs, cows or monkeys, and act the part. To be fair, they had acted like beasts with her, sexually harassing her at every corner until she quit, fell into depression and discovered magic; but while the vendetta had been debatably understandable, her means were unacceptable.

On a more disturbing, yet ultimately less harmful front, you had the Riley Trickers case.

Over the last twenty years, fifty-one different people of various ages, genders, ethnicity and social class had been brainwashed into thinking they were someone called Riley Trickers.

They all believed they were 38, had a dog named Toby but no living family, loved jazz music and sewing and worked at Farbbs Industries as a janitor. That was how they all pinged on GCPD’s radar; the actual janitors that worked there reported an unknown employee that nobody knew about.

None of the Riley’s had ever been violent or crime-minded, so nowadays, whenever a new Riley Trickers presented themselves for work at Farbbs Industries, the staff simply contacted the police and the poor brainwashed individual was taken into custody, identified (through missing reports or articles with a photo asking for relatives in newspapers) and handed to their true family with basic instructions on how to help them remember themselves. After a few weeks at home, they usually recovered pretty well, though they never quite lost all of the shared Riley’s habits and mannerism.

To this day, the investigation on who brainwashed people into becoming Riley Trickers was still ongoing, though even Batman tended to put it on the backburner when more pressing cases inevitably arose, because very little harm was ever done, even to the victims, who only went to work at a place that had never hired them.

All the Riley’s had been checked for spirit possession, but not only did they always come clean on any test, there had never been any Riley Trickers in existence. Nevermind one that fit all the extremely specific personal details the victims all shared.

Apparently, someone was just really committed to turning random people into a completely made-up character by the name of Riley Trickers.

To each their own hobby, Dick supposed. At least this one wasn’t as pernicious as, say, Mad Hatter’s gig of brainwashing various mobsters into his own minions/slaves and sending them to kidnap him an ‘Alice’.

There was brainwashing and there was brainwashing, you know? And while both were bad, one was so much worse than the other.

The problem was that anyone with enough motivation could have access to some means of messing with people’s heads. Background, knowledge and skill meant nothing as long as you stumbled upon the right grimoire or the right mind-scrambling device.

And for some reason, Gotham had a lot of those lying around, waiting to be picked up by the first criminal lunatic.

It made the mind’s sanctity and inviolability even more sacred to Gothamites, and thus anyone looking into that field of research was automatically labeled an evil monster to-be (if they weren’t already), no matter their supposed qualifications or good intentions.

(To compensate for the lack of psychiatric counseling, though, Gotham had universal physical health care, paid a little by the people, but mostly by large companies themselves, with Wayne Enterprise at the forefront. Anyone asking for treatment was healed and hospitalized free of charge, which was a boon for all the thugs beaten black and blue daily by the Bats, but also for any random citizen caught in a rogue attack or a regular mugging.

The implementation of that system could be explained partly by the actual need to tend to hundreds, if not thousands of injured and sick people on a daily basis, and partly by Gothamites’ pathological urge to snub and deviate from anything American. Spite had always been their greatest motivator.)

And you know what? Maybe some shrinks outside of Gotham were actual good people, with honorable intentions and no dreams of world domination. And perhaps a few psychiatrists in Dick’s hometown hadn’t fully succumbed to the madness yet and really practiced their craft to help others. But Dick wasn’t betting the dregs of his already quite compromised mind on that off chance.

(Besides, Dick fully believed that a single glimpse at the absurdity that was his life would prove enough to push any shrink, Dr Parwell included, over the edge and into the pits of evil and insanity. It had happened before (although thankfully not with him specifically), so he’d taken the better part of valor and made everything he told the therapist up. For her own sake as well as his.)

Thankfully, Mozzie understood and shared his hatred of mind-healers, and had immediately agreed to perform all the necessary tests afterwards to see if his mind had been tampered with in any way. Dick had also given him basic instructions about what to do if he was mentally compromised, from slipping a sedative in his drink to calling ‘Brian’ on the emergency line he’d set up just for that.

Of course, Dick was absolutely ready to return the favor in case Moz got caught into the web of an evil shrink.

The poor bastards had no idea the nightmare Nightwing could unleash on them if they messed with his friend's head…

Chapter Text

Peter scratched at the edge of his cast, annoyed by the itching spot he couldn’t get to.

A week ago, the suspect in a case of large-scale insurance fraud had tried to flee from her arrest; Peter had given chase, of course, and then taken a magnificent tumble down the stairs because of the wet floor and an old piece of gum stuck under his shoe.

He hadn’t even been injured by the suspect – Mina Addams – which would have been more respectable, even if the woman looked like she’d break in an asthma attack if you breathed at her too hard. No, just plain old bad luck. And Addams had managed to get away while everyone rushed to check on him; or so he had been told, because Peter has no memory of that, despite apparently having been partially aware at the time.

He woke up at the hospital, with El and his colleagues around his bed. The doctor told him he had a mild concussion, plenty of nasty bruises, a slightly sprained ankle and a broken radius. The first two injuries would heal with little help, but the fractured bone required him to wear a plaster cast on his right arm for three weeks.

At least the damage was unexpectedly light when you compared it to the three floors he’d skipped like a graceless lemming jumping off a cliff. Even the broken bone had turned out clean and blissfully devoid of small fractured pieces.

Peter spent the first two days at home, with his fretting wife, Satchmo and a stack of painkillers, before calling off his sick leave and returning to work. The idleness was driving him up the wall, and even El looked about to knock him down with a frying pan to get him to stop walking in circles and aggravating his sprain.

Hughes had looked disapproving when Peter returned, but it was a small price to pay to preserve his wedding.

In fact, out of the entire bureau, only Neal seemed unconcerned to see him back to work so soon after an injury, which should perhaps make him reconsider the soundness of his premature return…

But no, just the thought of returning back home and having nothing to do made him antsy. He would just assume this was one of the rare – almost unheard of – cases where Neal’s reactions were not completely unwarranted or ridiculous.

Besides, his doctor had removed his ankle splint this morning, which meant Peter was now cleared for light field work. He couldn’t do anything exciting like go undercover or chase after criminals, but he was allowed to move on from desk work to on site investigation and talking to suspects or witnesses outside of the FBI’s building.

Stepping outside of the office felt like a breath of fresh air in spite of New York’s polluted atmosphere and the persistent itch of his arm. Smiling, Peter headed to one of Addams’ potential home bases with Neal and Diana in tow, the latter to drive him to his destination, and the former because (in Peter’s opinion) his wayward CI still had to be monitored and wasn’t allowed to drive. Neal Caffrey didn’t officially have a license, though some of his aliases did.

They stopped in front of a cluster of crumbling houses on New York’s outskirts. The place looked like a den of hobos, but the FBI had found deeds to those very same buildings in Addams’ last known haunt (where Peter had injured himself), hidden in a heavily encrypted laptop.

It had taken days for IT to crack it open, but for once, Peter wasn’t complaining about the delay. He’d have hated to miss out on part of the investigation because he’d been stuck on sick leave or on desk work.

Maybe he was a bit more personally invested in this case than he should be, but his pride demanded he caught the criminal that had indirectly caused him to humiliate himself in front of his coworkers. That tumble down the stairs had looked straight out of a cartoon, no matter how Peter looked at it.

The houses had only one or two floors each, and none were very big, but when you added all seven of them and their fenced gardens (with wire mesh, talk about overkill in these deserted parts), it still made for a lot of area to cover.

Mina Addams had not been deemed a physical threat, and even if she was, Peter still thought he could subdue her despite his cast and weak ankle. Besides, chances of her returning to a place whose address she knew the FBI had were so slim they didn’t bear considering. So they split up into two teams; Diana on her own, and Peter and Neal together because he preferred not to be separated from his flight risk of a CI, and because he might need a working pair of hands.

His right arm itched some more under the cast.

Neal pulled out his lockpicking kit while Peter looked elsewhere and they soon entered the serendipitously unlocked first house.

Nothing seemed particularly noteworthy (except for the layer of grim’s ludicrous thickness. How long had this place been abandoned again?) until they both spotted movement through a dirty window.

Against all expectations, it seemed Mina Addams had decided to return to one of her known hideouts.

Their eyes met for an endless second, like everything had frozen in place, and then Addams turned tail and bolted into the nearest garage.

Of course, Peter and Neal took chase, but before they could get close, the garage door literally burst open and a state-of-the-art turquoise green sports car raced down the alley right before their noses and Diana’s astonished face in another garden, behind a fence.

“Diana, give me the keys!” He ordered. If they hurried enough, they might catch up, but the younger agent’s path was cut off by wire mesh. By the time she’d go around, Addams would be too far.

Diana immediately threw the car keys over the fence, but Peter only remembered his plaster cast at the last second and almost didn’t have the time to switch arms and catch the keys with his left hand.

He couldn’t drive like this. Addams would get away again. Unless…

“Neal, you drive.” He instructed, well aware that his CI had his license, only under other names. The conman was not usually allowed behind a wheel, what with his tendencies to run away and elude the authorities, but Peter didn’t doubt for a second that Neal could drive.

Neal grinned and grabbed the keys. “Sure. We’ll catch her in no time.”

Right as he set up the flashing light, Peter was assaulted with the most ominous feeling. Like a nuclear warhead was aiming straight for his neck.

He didn’t have time to ponder on it, though, because Neal stepped on the gas with more haste than if the hounds of hell were on their tail. Peter found himself plastered on the passenger seat by the sudden force.

“Wha- Neal!” He barked when he finally managed to draw some air in his compressed lungs.

The other man didn’t seem bothered at all by the way trees and houses sped by through the windows too quickly to be anything but one, single blur, and instead fiddled one-handed with the radio. “What?” He asked distractedly. The station he landed on broadcasted an old disco song. “Oh, ABBA! One of my favorites!”

And then he started belting out the lyrics to Super Trouper, along with some parts of the melody. At least his hands both returned on the wheel.

See, there was a reason Peter never turned on the radio when he drived, not only did he not especially enjoy music or commercial breaks lasting a lifetime, but Neal – for all that he was criminally gifted in many arts – had absolutely no talent for singing.

Peter might have tried to change the station or turn off the radio altogether had he not been gripping his side’s handle for dear life with his only good hand.

He’d always wondered why those handles were installed in every car; they’d always seemed rather pointless and wouldn’t change a thing if the car crashed. But now that he saw himself rushing to his death with Neal singing very off-key ABBA at his side, and almost collided with his CI when he took a hard turn at a higher speed than Peter had known his car could run, he finally understood their purpose.

Car handles existed to give future victims of deadly car accidents something to squeeze other than the driver’s neck.

Though Peter might have better chances if he strangled his CI than if he let Neal drive one more second.

“Neal!” He screamed over the engine’s roar, the blasting radio and the conman’s bellowing (the song was now Dancing Queen. Christ help him, this was an entire ABBA retrospective); even the siren was drowned out by the noise. “Neal, for the love of God, slow down!”

“-feel the beat of the tambourine, oh yeeeaaaah!” Neal belted out, heedless of Peter’s yelling. “You can dance! You can ji-ive!”

“Neal! Peter tried again, before choking on his breath when the car made a U-turn.

The CI never so much as stopped singing. “Having the time of your life! Oooooooh! See that girl! Watch that scene!”

“Ne-aaal!” Peter squeaked when they almost collided with a car, only for Neal to jerk the wheel left at the last millisecond.

Although the high-pitched cry must have finally managed to reach Neal’s ears. Or maybe that was because the lyrics were over at last and left some room for the symphony of honks they left in their trail. A new song soon started (Money, Money, Money. Oh Lord), and the conman turned to Peter. “What is it?” He had to scream over the intro music as well, but somehow looked perfectly casual as he slalomed between other cars. The almost deserted neighborhood vanished in the rearview as they finally entered New York proper, with all its other vehicles and pedestrians.

So many more potential collisions…

Peter needed to make Neal stop before he killed someone – them or anyone else. “Stop the-” Neal swiveled right to dodge someone crossing the road, utterly ignoring the red light and the screams of panic. “Stop the car!”

“Why?” The lyrics had started again, and Neal was wildly shaking his head side by side to the beat. “We’ve almost caught up.”

Despite himself, Peter tore his gaze from the closest cars (potential crash casualties) to the far side of the road (all the while tuning out Neal hollering about the ‘rich man’s world’), and indeed, he spotted the telltale turquoise green of Addams’ sports car.

He had a decision to make: either force Neal to stop the car anyway, and let Addams vanish again (probably to be much harder to find after two failed arrests), or allow Neal to keep chasing her, and risk the lives of anyone within crashing distance, including the both of them.

It was a no-brainer. Peter was a federal agent, not a thug. “Neal, you have to-”

“Hold on!” Barked the CI as he yanked on the wheel and made them leave the main lane for the smaller, cramped streets without slowing down. “It’s a shortcut.”

Peter didn’t even have the breath to argue as they weaved between terrified passerby, swerving vehicles and the occasional street light. His life flashed before his eyes like a movie, from his childhood to his wedding with El to making the ultimately deadly mistake of taking Neal as his CI (with the conman’s belting out of Gimme Gimme Gimme as background music).

By the grace of God (he had no better explanation), they didn’t collide with anything. Neal pulled out of the side streets and back on the main artery without so much as adding a scratch to the paintwork.

And, as if to mock Peter, they were now just a single car away from their suspect to the sound of S.O.S..

“Almost there!” Cheered Neal between the chorus and the verse. Then he hit the gas harder than before – Peter hadn’t known this was possible, and this was his car – and in a new surge of speed, they finally crossed straight through traffic (provoking a new chorus of horns, tire screeches and yells) to arrive side by side with Addams.

Through her own window, she stared at them like she’d seen a UFO. A crazy, suicidal UFO that should have crashed into a plane long ago with how erratically it flew.

Peter couldn’t only reply with a half-commiserating, half-pleading look. No, he had no idea what was happening anymore either; he only wanted to get out of the car alive and to call his wife to say he loved her.

Neal didn’t stop there, though. He pushed forward even more, leaving a bewildered Addams in the dust. Peter didn’t have the strength to argue anymore, so he just sat there, the handle in his good hand, and listened to Neal scream ‘When you’re gone - how can I even try to go on?’ without thinking of El and the prophetic irony of those lyrics.

Maybe he should have expected his CI’s next stunt. After all, he only had to imagine the most stupid thing to do, and chances were high that Neal would do exactly that. Maybe he even did it on purpose, like a self-imposed challenge. Or Peter had angered him more than he expected and now Neal was trying to murder him by taking himself out with his handler.

Why else would he suddenly hit the brakes, pull the wheel to the far left and throw the car in wild spins?

Peter prayed to any god out there for his soul as the world whirled around them in an out-of-control smear of color and sound.

Or maybe not that uncontrolled after all. When the car finally stopped twirling like a spinning top (and Peter swallowed down his dizzying nausea enough to notice his surroundings), they were sideways in the middle of the road, right in the path of Addams’ incoming car.

Addams, like any sane individual, tried to stop her car. She still barrelled towards them at high speed, though, no matter how much her brakes screeched as they tried to prevent the unavoidable collision. Neal happened to be the first in line to be hit (singing Mamma Mia off-key now, as if he wasn’t about to die), but Peter was right next to him.

Too late to escape. He closed his eyes, held his breath and braced for impact.

After what felt like hours, the screeching of tires stopped, leaving only the radio, Neal’s horrible rendition of an ABBA classic and the strangely distant blaring of honks and of their siren. Inhaling, and surprised that he could still breathe at all, Peter tentatively opened his eyes.

The sports car had stopped an inch from Neal’s door. Inside, Addams looked as shell-shocked as Peter felt, and a crowd was starting to congregate on the road, cellphones in hand, to check if they were still alive.

“Mamma Mia, here I go again – My, my, how could I resist you?”

Neal’s uninterrupted singing finally prompted Peter to move, if only to get some distance between him and his nutcase of a CI. He opened the door and scrambled outside.

His legs wobbled beneath him, and he had to lean on the car. His heart thundered in his throat, he felt faint and sweaty, altogether worse than when he took a swan dive down the stairs a week before, but he was alive.

Against all hopes, he was alive!

“Give me the keys.” He ordered before Neal could do anything else. His voice shook like a leaf in the wind, but the tone of command was unmistakable.

“But it’ll cut off the radio!” Whined the conman. Peter didn’t care. Neal was never touching a steering wheel in his life again if he had anything to say about it. He held out his hand.

With a grumble about interrupting monuments of pop culture, Neal killed the engine and crawled out from the passenger’s side, somehow managing to look graceful anyway. “Aren’t you going to arrest her?” He asked after he handed the keys over.

Peter looked at Addams, still in her fancy sports car, gripping the wheel like a lifeline, trembling all over and looking no less traumatized than a minute ago. Then he tried to take a step without the support of his own car and almost collapsed on the asphalt.

No, Mina Addams could wait a moment or two. She clearly wasn’t going anywhere, and neither was he.

“Where in hell did you learn to drive?” Peter asked at last.

They were back at the bureau, having called their colleagues to pick them up and drive the two cars safely to the FBI’s car park; Diana had already returned by taxi. Addams had let herself be taken in without a complaint (without any sort of reaction, actually, the woman looked deep in shock. Peter foresaw years of therapy ahead of her) and Peter now found himself in the bureau’s break room, a warm cup of coffee in hand and the seldom opened box of good cookies next to him. Someone had scounged up a blanket to drape on his shoulders as he tried to get his footing again.

Neal, on the other hand, looked enviably unaffected by their disco near death experience.

“At home, of course, where else?”

Diana, who had seen Neal take off like a madman, shot him a dubious look. “And nobody had any problems with your driving back there?”

The CI looked at her quizzically. “No? I mean, everyone drives like me there, so there’s never been any complaints.”

Peter shuddered at the thought. A bunch of cars and tractors speeding away on dirt roads were no less frightening than Neal behind the wheel in a crowded city. Even a rural hometown like he imagined his CI’s hometown was, with more fields than concrete and few inhabitants, would have fatal accidents if everybody drove like that.

Yet Neal seemed perfectly honest in his answer, with none of the manufactured innocence found in his lies or the teasing edge to his raillery.

Suddenly, Peter wasn’t so sure he ever wanted to find out where his CI came from.

“Well, you’re forbidden from ever driving any vehicle from now on, Caffrey.” Announced Hughes, who had remained silent so far. “At least not until you learn to drive responsibly.”

Neal frowned. “What’s wrong with my driving skills?”

Everyone stared at him in flabbergasted silence. Peter broke down first. “You’re serious?!”

The vague shrug and puzzled looks spelled a clear ‘yes’.

“Neal,” Peter started, trying his utmost best to be calm and instructive in the face of his CI’s genuine confusion. He failed. “We almost crashed at every turn back there. You very nearly killed us, and an untold number of people; you could have caused a massive accident with the way you forced the other cars to dodge you! It’s a damn miracle that nobody was hurt! Just because you had the flashing light and the siren does not mean you can, or should, ignore every single traffic rule!”

He was almost screaming by the end, but Neal needed to understand how badly this could have ended.

Of course, being Neal Caffrey, the conman didn’t react like Peter expected.

“You think I don’t know the risks of driving? That I 'endangered people's lives' for 'fun'?” He railed, suddenly incensed at his handler. As if he had reasons to be mad. Peter tried to cut him off, but Neal and his cold, misplaced fury didn’t let him. “I knew what I was doing the entire time. Did we actually hit any pedestrian? Did we collide with a wall? Did we ram into another car or cause an accident? Did we so much as scrape municipal equipment? No. So stop criticizing my judgment and driving skills when nothing happened. I drive perfectly well, thank you.”

Peter and the others stared at the CI like they’d never seen Neal before, which the man seemed to notice, if the way he pursed his lips meant anything.

After sending them one final glower, Neal closed his eyes, inhaled deeply from the nose and slowly released through his mouth, expelling the tension in his shoulders with each breath. Calming himself.

When his features slackened into a neutral expression and the angry frown vanished from his face, Peter finally recognized his friend and almost colleague.

“Fine. I won’t drive anymore while under the FBI’s authority. This won’t happen again.” Neal promised tonelessly.

Maybe the jolt of adrenaline had affected his CI a little more than he’d thought. In any case, Peter was glad to see him back to normal. An furious Neal was no Neal at all, and he could admit it scared him, just a little.

(He was willing to overlook the ‘under the FBI’s authority’ part for now. Neal’s contract didn’t expire any time soon; they had plenty of time to impress the importance of road security on the man.)

He made yet another mental note to never let Neal take the wheel and to never mention driving again, if only because it apparently raised the conman’s stress levels much higher than expected. Maybe it was trauma-related?

(He also reminded himself to donate all his old ABBA albums, because he’d never be able to listen to them again without reliving the primal fear of death he’d experienced today and Neal’s horrid singing.)

Besides, what would Peter get by prodding Neal further on his driving skills, now that they’d all agreed he would never use them again? Maybe he’d learn why his CI seemed to be so good at high-speed chases, which, he inferred from experience, would only be more harrowing. Like, maybe Neal used to be the Red Hood’s runaway driver or something equally horrific that Peter would have felt better never hearing about. Traumatic memories would explain the suddenly erratic behavior.

Better drop the questions and move on to the next topic. He’d had enough near heart-attacks for one life, thank you very much, and he’d obviously poked at one of Neal’s hidden sore spots without intending to.

Peter trusted his friend would share his past if it ever became relevant. All he could do in the meantime was keep Neal as far away from a driving seat as possible, for the good of humanity.

So it seemed New York’s way of driving and Gotham’s were not only vastly different (as Dick had obviously noticed on his first day there), but utterly incompatible, if Peter’s reaction was anything to go by.

Maybe Dick had reacted a bit too fiercely at their accusations, but he resented being driven into a corner by his coworkers’ baseless accusations about abusing FBI privileges to endanger people; he had known what he was doing. But he let his temper get the better of him before he wrangled it back under control, and that was unacceptable in an undercover mission.

The injustice still stung, though.

(After his outburst and subsequent amends, the agents had talked about what punishment to give him. Unfortunately for them, Dick’s points had been sound: nobody and nothing had been damaged, apart from Peter’s tires – that he ought to change anyway; they didn’t adhere well to the road at all. And at the time, he’d acted under direct orders from his handler, who had never decisively told him to stop the car either.

But since Peter and Hughes couldn’t let sleeping dogs lie, they still insisted on a sanction. Normally, his behavior and background would have – apparently – warranted some time in prison, but with all the mitigating circumstances, they decided to only give him a fine.

A hefty fine, the likes his meager FBI consultant salary would have him slave for years to repay. Dick merely drew from his personal account (the one where he got money from his Wayne Enterprise shares) and paid it in one go, in cash.

Hughes fumed, but Peter had given his word the fine would be the end of this matter and Dick had fulfilled his part of the bargain. They did both needle him for weeks on where he got the money so fast, though. He subtly implied June had lent it to him to be left alone.)

But really, how could he have known New Yorkers would react so badly to his driving when he was perfectly within the norm back at home?

They didn’t really have any road regulations or traffic rules in Gotham; you basically went as fast as you could to your destination and you – mostly – stuck to the paths made for cars, but that was it. In an effort to not linger long in the dangerous streets, everyone drove at full speed all the time, and – since nobody dragged on at a snail’s pace like New Yorkers – it all worked out.

If everyone went fast and had decent control of their cars, they didn’t bump into other vehicles and traffic remained fluid. Simple, no?

Also, you didn’t find all that many cars in the city’s streets; most drivers stuck to the ring road, to the transverse elevated highways or, if they really needed to, to the large and straight floor-level main lanes. Cramped alleys and the like were notably devoid of motorized vehicles, which greatly minimized public installations damage and accidents caused by too narrow streets.

Of course, that left pedestrians out, who obviously couldn’t walk or run quickly enough to keep up with the few cars speeding down the streets. Gotham had a very smart solution to that problem.

If cars had roads made specially for them, why not do the same for people?

Gotham boasted the most comprehensive system of walkways, car-free areas and monorail stations in the world. You could go anywhere in the city on foot with relative ease and speed, for free, and not be bothered by the cars racing each other on the road.

(Of course, that didn’t protect you from muggers or the random supervillain scheme, but nothing was perfect, and driving a car didn’t mean you were safe either. In Gotham, safety was always relative.)

For that reason, the vast majority of Gothamites didn’t own a car. Only those that wanted to boast of their wealth, that absolutely needed one for, say, a shipping job, or the poor fellows that needed to leave the city for their work actually bothered with buying one. When you moved out or you wanted to transport something cumbersome, you rented a van; it was considered an unnecessary hazard to purchase a vehicle, and if Gothamites thought it was too risky…

Taxis, bus drivers, garbage collectors and delivery men were seen as dangerous daredevils – quite a few had actually gone into super-criminality despite their surprisingly high salaries (and the higher hazard pay), all the while still keeping their legal work. There turned out to be plenty of ways to combine the two activities, not all of them involving hostages, parcel bombs or poisoned pizzas.

Dick’s beloved hometown might be one of the – if not the – most polluted places on the planet, but in terms of car-free amenities, it was light-years ahead of all similarly-sized cities. And it pleased Ivy, which was always good, because Ivy in a snit was something nobody wanted to deal with.

(Her hair-trigger temper had gotten better since she’d hooked up with Harley, though she still attacked big corporations that disposed of their wastes in areas she’d deemed her own. Like all the parks, and the river banks, and the surrounding woods, and the botanical gardens, and the regular gardens, and the random trees on the sidewalks… It didn’t stop the companies from polluting, but it gave Ivy and her girlfriend a ‘plausible’ reason to lay waste on them in return.

A surprising number of things in Gotham relied on that kind of dubious understanding.)

When driving in Dick’s hometown, you also had to take into account that most of the cars in circulation in Gotham were not quite, well, cars, strictly speaking.

They looked like cars to not alarm any Outsider and avoid the American government believing they were amassing a motorized force inside their city’s borders (which had happened on occasion, like when Deathstroke had commanded an army of actual panzers to take control of Gotham for a contract, or when a local car constructor with little foresight changed the basic design of most of his products to something out of a Mad Max movie).

In truth, Gothamite vehicles were tanks masquerading as cars, but no one wanted Washington to know that, so they hid all the reinforced frames, they disguised the all-terrain unbreakable tires, they pretended the weapons inside the armature didn’t exist and concealed the engines better suited to an army jet than a car. They installed airbags meant for plane crashes and didn’t speak of the military-grade air filters. Bulletproof glass, thankfully, looked just like normal glass to the uninitiated.

All that to hide a truth that the American government already believed without evidence, just because Gothamite were not about to prove Uncle Sam’s perception of them right. Even if it totally was.

It was a matter of pride, OK? Stick it to the man and all that.

But yes, Gothamite vehicles, private or public, were built to withstand most ‘minor’ assaults, like an actual tank (that did not pretend it wasn’t a tank) rolling over them, a building collapsing over their heads, a flood, a fire, a bomb, extreme cold, or whatever common nuisance happened in the city on a daily basis. School buses were literally designed to be able to ride in the middle of a warzone and come out none the worse, with a crawler system cleverly hidden behind the fake tires, while the monorail system was reimagined every year to take in account all the bizarre gimmicks of new villains and still keep running with no delays.

Gothamites had things to do, and mild inconveniences were not about to stand in their way. Come hell or high water, they would survive and thrive on adversity.

(Cars were, in fact, one of the very few things where Gothamites actively toned down their natural dramatic tendencies. At least on the surface. Almost every other aspect of their lives could be as flamboyant as they wanted – and often actually was – but if every vehicle in the city looked like armored, armed tanks, the American government would undoubtedly take it as preparations for war and retaliate. They were only waiting for an excuse to wipe out Gotham from their maps.

Of course, Dick’s hometown would win. They might be much smaller than the rest of the States, but they had their unmatched mettle, their dauntless supervillains that would rally with the citizens against the rest of the world, and all the heavy weaponry and madness that came with it. Even the Outsider rogues dreaded and avoided any encounter with the regular guests from Arkham.

Uncle Sam wouldn't know what hit them.

There were also the Bats to account for – everyone at home knew Batman and his family had backdoor access to every relevant organization in the world and could remotely crush them if it came to it. But Gothamites weren’t supposed to be aware of that and Dick would pretend it was all a blown-up lie if anyone asked.

… It was completely true, but Superman and the others would be disappointed if they learned of it, so the Bats generally acted like they couldn’t hack into any governmental database on a whim. It was better that way.)

There were of course those that didn’t follow the tacit rule to keep their vehicles Outsider-friendly. Like some extravagant billionaires' limousines and sports cars, all made to be eye-catchy while still ensuring the absolute safety of their innocupants, and that didn’t always hold back on the mounted machine guns or laser beams. Bruce had quite a few of those too, for appearances’ sake. Without lethal weapons, naturally.

Then, there was Batman’s infamous Batmobile, and his family’s entire squadron of heavily customized vehicles for any situation. No matter how you looked at it, none of those wouldn’t pass as harmless. They had been designed to inspire fear after all.

(Outsiders that had seen B drive his homebuilt Batmobiles, Batwings, Batsubmarines or Batspaceships on a mission assumed he was the only man alive so reckless on the roads. They’d be wrong, Bats only had the fastest, most powerful – and resistant – vehicles, but everyone at home shared his lack of respect for traffic laws and speed limitations, even those that only owned a kick scooter.

Gotham didn’t even have red lights or speed tickets, and Dick had very much disliked discovering they were an actual thing and not some spooky tale from Outsiders.

Imagine having to always drive at ‘reasonable’ speeds…)

And finally, you couldn’t forget the villains’ sometimes horribly kooky vehicles, though none came close to the sheer indestructibility of the Bat-armada. The Penguin-mobile was a black and white antique luxury car with the wheel on the wrong side, a honk that squawked like its eponymous flightless bird, and enough guns, hidden or not, to take down the Gotham Bank Association on its own.

No, really. Penguin did it at least four times a year, and nobody had dared confiscate his car any time the Bats caught him and threw him back into Arkham. B liked racy cars too much to dismantle it, and any policeman who tried to get close got shot by the automated turrets – and couldn’t dodge as well as Batman.

(They usually towed it into one warehouse or another until Oswald Cobblepot escaped from Arkham, found it and reclaimed it. Yes, it was ridiculous, but Bruce really liked racy cars, and over half the family sided with him on the matter. Despite its questionable quirks, the Penguin-mobile was an antique car and a marvel of technology.

For once that he had a semi-healthy hobby that did not involve punching criminals, adopting half of Gotham's underage population or planning 42 ways to take down his colleagues in case they went evil, even Alfred let this fly.)

Two-Face, on the other hand, had a notoriously ugly car, a sports model that he had meticulously and systematically defaced on one side, inside and outside. He also had two wheels installed and, every time he went for a ride, Harvey tossed his infamous coin to see if he’d drive from the right or the left. The right side worked well enough, but had little in the way of weapons (only the bare minimum), while the right promised a bumpy ride, often interrupted by the engine giving up on the driver, but was loaded on guns, traps and other nasty surprises.

Dick would say this was a textbook example of ‘going too far’, but that was practically Gotham’s motto.

Any of the aforementioned vehicles had the locals scramble to avoid them, in an organized, blasé sort of chaos that was one of Gotham’s staples.

On a more personal note, Dick owned a thoroughly customized bike, which he’d used daily to commute between Gotham and Blüdhaven while he still worked there but had moved back to his home city. It had no deadly additions, of course, but it reduced the trip that took some of his friends (also owning Gothamite vehicles) forty minutes to barely five. It could also literally tow uphill a truck full to the brim with contraband weapons that did not want to come along, and could shift between its Nightwing, its Dick Grayson-Wayne and its Richie Grayson-Wayne appearance to keep his identity secret, so he supposed it packed a bit more power than even the average Gothamite bike.

He wouldn’t really know; Bruce had always supplied his kids and almost-kids with the best of the best in terms of transportation, first for their safety, then for their efficiency, and finally because he liked fast cars and fiddling with them, and showing his wards how to build a tank from scratch that could masquerade as a harmless, totally normal vehicle made for a great bonding activity. Dick had never really driven anything that had not gone through B’s obsessive meddling, and even then, it had always come from Gotham.

So imagine his well-hidden horror when he grabbed the wheel of Peter’s sluggish scrap pile of a car and it took him twenty-two minutes to catch up and intercept his target.

Sure, it left him some time to hear five and a half songs from one of his favorite groups, but still…

Any car from home could have completed the mission before the end of Super Trouper.

Chapter Text

In accordance with official guidelines, every FBI division had to organize a yearly training camp of sorts to make sure their respective agents still had all the necessary skills to survive a hostile situation. Today was the White Collar unit’s turn.

Truth be told, Clinton actually enjoyed those little gatherings. Sure, they tended to interrupt ongoing investigations, but they only lasted a day, and you could hardly imagine a better outlet for the frustration of perusing endless piles of potential mortgage fraud cases.

(Seriously, the FBI could have an entire division devoted to that single offense, and it would never run out of work.)

Moreover, the remedial sessions on fighting and subduing techniques made for a great occasion for Clinton to shine a little. All in a good-natured way, of course, but with his military background in a unit mostly composed of people that chose college over the army, he had a bit of an edge.

So yes, Clinton had been looking forward to the yearly Combat Ability Assessment day, and he intended to enjoy it for all it was worth.

“Could someone please tell me why I’m here again? As I’m sure I reminded you on several occasions, I’m not a FBI agent, and I’m nonviolent.”

Nope, not even Neal’s whiny arguing would manage to put a damper on his good mood.

“You’re here for your own good, Neal.” Peter repeated for the upteenth time, sounding more done with his CI with every word. “After all the ridiculous and dangerous situations you keep finding yourself in, we decided that you should have at least some proper experience in self-defense.”

“But I don’t want to fight, Peter! I’m nonviolent! And I don’t like to sweat in a suit!”

They’d been having this conversation on repeat since this morning, when Peter had ambushed Neal with the news that he would take his place in the CAA. The agent had been trying for a while to get his CI some combat experience, and, with his arm out of the plaster cast but still fragile, Peter was not medically allowed to participate anyway.

It all worked out wonderfully for everyone, except for Neal, who had been trying to argue his way out from the moment he learned he’d have to sweat a little.

After all the potentially deadly encounters he had lately, Peter had argued to his superiors for Neal to be involved in the CAA (especially since Peter would not actively participate with his sore arm). Since there was nothing to be done about his so-called ‘accident-proneness’ (that was totally deliberate at least half of the time but they couldn’t write that in the reports), the conman had a right to learn some self-defense, if only to preserve his own life.

Peter went behind Neal’s back and turned that right into an obligation, something everyone in the White Collar unit had approved of and helped hide from the CI until today.

Nonviolence was well and good, but only until being incapable of defending yourself cost you your life.

Neal would learn to fend off aggressors whether he wanted to or not. This was final.

It didn’t stop him from complaining to anyone in the vicinity, but now that he was here, there would be no skipping the training. Even if he didn’t learn much, Neal was bound to come out of the CAA with some knowledge of self-defense.

The first part of the day was spent reviewing theory and learning new tactics to subdue a suspect. The instructor put the emphasis on how far they were allowed to go, and in what circumstances they were authorized to resort to violence, but Clinton did learn a few new things.

Neal slept like a log all along. Peter tried to nudge him awake several times (he also attended the CAA even if he wouldn’t participate in the mock spars, both because it was mandatory and to keep an eye on his CI), to no avail. The conman only batted his hand away and went back to his nap.

The teacher threw him spiteful glares every now and then, but let him sleep. He also made a few snide comments about how every piece of information shared now would prove useful in the following practicals.

Yeah, Neal would regret dozing off in protest, Clinton was sure of it.

Lunch was provided by the FBI and as such, consisted of a sandwich, a cookie and a bottle of water. The instructor said it was to keep them from feeling queasy during the practicals, but everyone knew the meal was frugal because nobody in charge of budget wanted to spend more.

Of course, Neal still complained about it and stared at his ham and salad sandwich with miserable puppy eyes. It didn’t work on any of the senior agents, but a gullible probie still took pity on the grown man and offered him his cookie.

One day, Clinton would understand how it worked. How did Neal always get what he wanted in the end?

Surely, it couldn’t be the ridiculous fedora.

… Right?

Anyway, lunchtime ended and the practical part of the CAA started. First, they all headed for the shooting range.

They all had their tries in turns of four people. Clinton could admit he felt pleased with his results: six shots all tight together and pretty damn close to the center of the human-shaped target. Of course, against a real enemy, the opponent wouldn’t be standing still and Clinton would have to aim for non-lethal areas as much as reasonably possible, but this was the wonder of simulation.

Every agent dutifully gave it their best (Clinton couldn’t help noting with a twinge of pride that no one performed as well as him) until only one man was left who stubbornly refused to pick up his gun.

You guessed it; it was Neal.

“Caffrey, it’s your turn!” Barked Instructor Davis, who seemed anything but amused at the resident criminal’s unwillingness. He looked like a textbook stereotype of a military drill sergeant, with bulging muscles rippling under a white tank top, a buzzcut and the air of someone determined to make your life hell if you refused to follow his orders.

Neal shot him a flat look of utter disregard and went back to watching the narrow window. Clinton had no idea what was so riveting out there – they were on the 17th floor, all you could see were birds and other buildings – but it had captured Neal’s attention from the moment they’d entered the shooting range.

Most likely this was just another way for the conman to show he didn’t want to be here, but Clinton had to acknowledge Neal’s stubbornness. With the cumbersome security measures, the number of agents here and the fact that they each had to try four times at least before Instructor Davis deemed them done (and more if he thought they required additional training and teaching), the man had been watching the window nonstop for at least two hours now.

Talk about dedication to something pointless…

“Neal,” sighed Peter from the chair where he watched over his CI, “you’re not going to avoid it. Just do your four tries and get it over with; it’s not like you can’t shoot.”

Right, Neal had found himself with a gun in hand on occasion. An undercover job had notably forced him to partake in skeet shooting, and he had once saved Peter by firing at his opponent’s ankle. Clinton hadn’t been sure the non-violent conman had actually aimed at the ankle and that this had not been a lucky shot, but Neal undoubtedly had some experience with guns.

The CAA didn't require exceptional shooting skills, so even their pacifistic CI should be able to pass without too much trouble.

If he ever decided to give it a try, that was.

Faced with Neal’s refusal to so much as look at them, the training officer finally had enough. “Mr. Caffrey, if you do not show the skill to properly use a gun, you will have to come here and retake lessons every day until I let you pass.” He threatened, a ghost of a smirk on his lips.

Oh yeah, Instructor Davis was ready to make Neal pay for ignoring him so far, and there was nothing anyone could do if the forger didn’t cooperate. According to all FBI policies (though their relevance when it came to a CI was debatable), no one could be cleared for duty unless they showed adequate aptitude with firearms and hand-to-hand combat.

(Mind you, as long as you were good enough with guns, you were not judged too harshly on the physical combat part, so even Neal had a decent chance as long as he didn’t flunk the first test. Like he was doing right now.)

Peter decided to step in; more diplomatic than Davis, he also knew his CI better and actually cared about his well-being. “It’s true, Neal. If you don’t want to be stuck on training sessions you don’t need or like for the rest of the month, you have to pass this test. I swear you won’t have to shoot anyone or anything afterwards; it’s not like the bureau will provide you with a gun.”

“If I won’t be given a gun, and please note I’m not requesting one, then why am I here?” Argued Neal, because the man was pathologically unable to just obey an order. “This whole schtick is a massive waste of time, and you know I hate guns.”

“I’ve seen you fire one a few times.”

“Yeah, in emergency cases! How is this an emergency case?” He waved at the shooting stand without looking at it. “And how is this not encouraging me to let go of my non-violent beliefs? You’re literally inciting me to hurt people.”

“It’s just a simulation to make sure you can defend yourself and your colleagues in case the worst happens; there’s no need to take it so seriously!”

“It’s blatant inducement to gun violence is what it is!”

Peter sighed, looking more drained than ever. Clinton had almost forgotten the man had just returned from a pretty bad injury, despite arguing to come back to work early. “Just… imagine this is an undercover operation. Play along so we can all go home and forget today ever happened. Please.”

Neal bit his lip, clearly ready to protest the idea, but he must have also noticed the stress lines and dark eyebags. He let out a long exhale and closed his eyes. “Ugh, fine. Just to get out of here faster, though.”

“That’s all I’m asking.” Peter smiled, something grateful in his eyes. He, of all people, probably knew best how much it cost Neal to pick up a gun.

Clinton suddenly felt like the bad guy for getting mad at the conman for not cooperating.

With a weary sigh, Neal straightened himself, righted his tie (he was the only one here in full suit, the others having arrived in sportswear. Peter, who had hidden today’s agenda until the very last second, had offered to lend him sweatpants and a t-shirt, but Neal had outright declined wearing anything but his own clothes). The short walk to the shooting stand reminded Clinton of a death row inmate marching to the electric chair with how resigned and unhappy the man looked.

Instructor Davis watched him like a hawk as Neal dutifully performed all the necessary checks and preparations. He put on the muffling headset, reloaded the gun and removed the safety, as was expected of him. Then Neal fired six times in quick succession, barely taking the time to aim, before he replaced the safety, removed the magazine and lowered the headset so that it rested on his shoulders. “Satisfied?” He asked in a bored tone.

The target drew closer at the push of a button and Clinton held back a swear.

Honestly, he should have known Neal Caffrey, professional pain in the ass, would never give in so easily; the contrary conman had merely changed his angle.

All the shots had landed far from the center of the target, yet no one could accuse Neal of bad aim. Six perfectly symmetrical holes adorned the human-shaped figure, one one each shoulder, hand and knee, as if mocking the untouched concentric circles on the paper man’s chest.

That damn little gremlin…

“What the fuck is that?” Growled the instructor, who looked way more pissed than impressed.

Neal gazed at him in lazy unconcern. “What? I shot at the target, just like you asked.”

Instructor Davis turned a worrisome shade of puce. Then he made Neal do it all over again.

The CI performed flawlessly at each try, except that he adamantly refused to aim for the center of the target or any lethal area. Shoulders, hands, knees, every time, so perfectly aligned that Clinton thought if they stacked the paper figures, there would still be six neat holes going through.

Shoulders, hands, knees. Shoulders, hands, knees. Shoulders, hands, knees… Instructor Davis had Neal do his mandatory four tries, then a fifth, then a sixth. He was gearing up to demanding a seventh when Peter stepped in.

“I think that’s enough, sir. Neal can obviously shoot well enough.”

Indeed, despite refusing to comply with the rules, he had far outstriped even Clinton’s results.

“Regulations say he needs to aim for the center.” Barked the instructor, who seemed on the verge of a conniption. “None of his shots landed anywhere close.”

OK, Clinton understood that Neal could be a little shit whose very existence incited people to murder (several cases came to mind), but right now the trainer was being just as stupidly stubborn. Sure, Neal had never touched the smaller circles, but if he wasn’t deemed qualified enough to move on, then nobody here was.

Behind them, the other agents were starting to grow annoyed with the delay when Neal’s skill was so obvious there was no reason to linger except for Instructor Davis’s bruised pride. Besides, there would be plenty of occasions for the man to get his revenge later, during the hand-to-hand lessons.

Prissy Neal would no doubt struggle with that part.

Peter argued for his CI’s case for a while, while said CI observed the heated debate with idle amusement but thankfully kept his trap shut. “I think it’s time we move on to the physical part of combat training,” was the only sentence that got Instructor Davis to relent, spurred by the thought of Neal getting his comeuppance on the training mats.

They were all given a moment of respite before the next lesson, the time for the trainer to prepare the room, where Peter tried in vain to at least get the conman to remove his tie and vest.

“It’s going to get in the way of training. You’ll be too easy to grab.” Remarked the older man while Clinton brought them both another bottle of water. They’d need it later, even if they didn’t drink it now.

“I won’t be.” Denied Neal, bullheaded as ever. “And isn’t the whole purpose of this waste of time to see if you can defend yourself in real situations? I mean, if you get attacked during work hours, you’ll be wearing a tie anyway…”

… OK, Neal had a point, but nobody would ever tell him that.

“It’s- This is just a simulation. Things happen differently in real life – you can lose the tie…” Fumbled Peter, who seemed just as unwilling to concede the point as Clinton. He chose that moment to deliver his bottles as a distraction to the smirking CI. “Thank you, Jones. Is it time already to get to the training room?”

It wasn’t, but Clinton nodded nonetheless to rescue his boss from an argument he couldn’t win – and to keep himself from being drawn in. Coming out as the victor in a dispute against Neal was damn hard, especially when he actually was right and knew it.

They made their way to the next lesson in relative silence, Neal humming something under his breath while Clinton – and Peter, judging by his pitying looks – worried about the beatdown Davis had no doubt planned for their brazen friend.

As it turned out, everyone else had already arrived (no doubt to avoid lingering around the soon-to-be demolished Neal) and the instructor started the lesson a bit ahead of time.

“I’ll assign each of you a partner to practice the moves we saw this morning; you’ll switch places between attacker and defender once I validate your form, and once I’ve checked both of your responses as defender, you start practicing the next move. Rubber knives are in the back of the room if you need them. Everybody got it? Good. So the pairs are…”

Surprisingly, Clinton got assigned to Neal. It puzzled him for a moment, since Davis clearly hoped to hurt, or at least humiliate the forger, but then he realized the instructor had no idea the two of them were friendly. They hadn’t so much as spoken to each other in front of the man since the CAA started, and Clinton, as the most experienced in physical combat (it was in his file), was the most likely to aggressively put Neal down a peg or ten.

Aaaand now he felt like the bad guy again. Really, was he supposed to humiliate Neal? He couldn’t not go through the exercises, but he loathed the idea of degrading his friend in front of a man that had it out for him and the rest of the unit.

“Jones,” Neal himself pulled him out of his dark musings, “it’s fine. No hard feelings no matter what happens, OK?”

The idiot even smiled at him. What else could Clinton do but nod and take the position of the attacker. The sooner they got this over, the better, and maybe he could show Neal a trick or two before Davis’s rounds led him to them.

With a heavy heart and pulling his strength as far back as he thought reasonable, Jones threw the first punch…

… and missed.

He blinked in surprise. Sure, he’d gone easy on Neal, but that had still been a mildly serious punch. The conman had reacted much faster than he expected and was now gracing him with a shit-eating smirk.

Fine, Clinton could apparently go a little harder on his friend. It would look better when the instructor came around at least, even if it was still a far cry from the intercepting and neutralizing maneuvers they were supposed to practice.

He threw another punch, and Neal dodged. Another swing and Neal evaded him, light as a feather.

Blow after blow, the conman avoided his fist and Clinton actually found himself trying to land a punch. This was ridiculous; how many times had Neal gotten captured or otherwise landed face first in trouble because he didn’t get out of the way in time, and now the man could easily dodge a sustained assault by a trained agent?

Out of breath and sweaty, Clinton had to pull back for a moment, long enough to catch Peter’s wide eyes on the sidelines and see the same bewilderment.

“Why aren’t you training?”

Of course that brief pause was the moment Davis chose to appear next to them.

“I- We were training,” Clinton defended himself and his partner, even if the man had not been following the instructions. “But I can’t land a hit on Neal.”

The trainer shot him a long, dubious look before turning to the conman. Clinton imagined what he thought, seeing Neal fresh as a flower in his full suit, not the least bit winded and grinning like a misbehaving kid.

Of course Instructor Davis came to the conclusion that they had not been trying at all. “Don’t take me for a fucking idiot!” He barked, the unhealthy puce color returning to his face. “If you won’t perform the exercises like I told you to, you can find another pair to train with; I’ll personally make sure Mr. Caffrey learns to defend himself.”

His shouting had attracted the attention of everyone else in the room, and every agent’s eyes were trained on the three of them, even as they pretended to keep practicing. More than one person cringed at the perspective of seeing Neal get his ass handed to him, but no one could avert their gaze either.

“Caffrey! Get ready to stop me.” Davis’s smirk made it clear he didn’t expect Neal to succeed.

For his part, Neal had dropped the smile but still looked utterly unconcerned while the trainer charged him at full speed and threw a mean hook his way.

He just dodged.

Davis stumbled, clearly unprepared for his attack to be thwarted, but quickly gathered his wits and started a full-on barrage of hits on the CI, adding kicks and drawing a rubber knife from his belt when nothing connected.

Neal kept avoiding everything; he even had the nerve to look bored.

After a good five minutes of uninterrupted – and unsuccessful – assault, Davis pulled back, redder than before. “You aren’t supposed to dodge!” He yelled, out of breath. “This is a lesson on subduing tactics, not on running away like a wimp!”

“But dodging is so much more efficient.” Neal drawled, barely sparing Davis a glance. It only infuriated the man more.

“It’s not the point, and it’s not more efficient than subduing your opponent!”

“I don’t know,” the forger with an obvious death wish looked Davis up and down, “you don’t seem all that successful in taking me down either.”

You could hear a pin drop in the silence that followed that taunt. Instructor Davis went from red to crimson in a heartbeat and growled in rage. “That’s it you little shit! Since you can’t do a single neutralizing maneuver, you’re going to come back here for a month for remedial lessons! I’m gonna beat those techniques in your thick little skull until you’re black and blue!”

Davis had obviously gone off the deep end. Worse: he was completely within his rights, even if the threats went too far. Since Neal had not demonstrated a single defensive move apart from dodging, FBI regulations couldn’t allow him to return to active duty.

Sure, he was a CI and not an accredited agent, but by the time anyone could raise that issue and argue his case to whoever was in charge of the CAA, Neal would have already gone through weeks as Davis’s personal punching ball. That simply couldn’t be allowed to happen for their friend’s sake.

Peter rushed to the training mats (without removing his shoes, the only thing even Neal had deigned to pull off). “Neal, do you know any subduing moves?” He urged in a low voice, ignoring the fuming and gloating instructor.

The forger looked at him from the corner of his eyes, still appearing more annoyed than worried. “... Maybe.” He conceded. “But I don’t want to use them.”

“It’s no longer a matter of what you want to do!” Peter pressed, throwing sideways glances at Davis, who had his back turned as he boasted to the rest of the room of how he would ‘whip Neal into shape’. “If you don’t show you can intercept and neutralize an aggressor in the next minutes, you’re going to be stuck with Davis trying to beat you up for weeks. Just perform one single move for the records and we can leave this day behind completely.”

Neal stared at his handler with a flat, unimpressed expression, then he looked at Clinton, who hurriedly nodded his agreement with Peter’s plan. If Neal showed even a modicum of skill in hand-to-hand combat, with his results at the shooting range, they could argue the CAA had been a success to the higher-ups, even if the conman had put his own ‘spin’ on every exercise.

Letting out a weary sigh, Neal finally agreed. “Fine. What I wouldn’t do for you, I swear…” Clinton expected Neal to turn to him to demonstrate his moves, as did Peter. But the forger could never do what was expected of him and instead shouted to the last person he should have called. “Instructor Davis, sir! I’m ready to show I can intercept and neutralize you like you wanted!”

… He did that on purpose, didn’t he?

Predictably, Davis swiveled on his heels and looked at Neal like a bull ready to charge an overdressed matador. “What was that?” He growled.

Neal merely grinned and made the infamous – and patronizing – come hither move.

Davis roared and rushed at his victim. Clinton wanted to intercept him or close his eyes, but he found himself unable to do either – it felt like watching a car crash in slow motion. Neal would get seriously hurt if he didn’t dodge this one.

The next moment, Davis was flat on his back, wheezing and the most comical baffled expression on his face.

“There, satisfied?” Asked Neal, leaning on the instructor with a condescending smile.

It took a moment for Davis to regain his bearings and breath. When he did, he rolled out of reach of Neal, got back up, and attacked the CI again. This time, he opted for a less reckless approach, the first assault’s resounding failure having restored some of his cognitive abilities.

It didn’t matter. He still ended flat on the floor before anyone could see what Neal had done.

The same scene repeated itself several times in front of Clinton and the others' wide eyes. Davis tried various tactics, but he still didn’t touch Neal once, and the nonviolent conman systematically threw him on the training mats, breathless and clueless on how he ended there.

“That’s enough!” Yelled Peter, the highest-ranked agent here, after the upteenth time Davis found himself disarmed and incapacitated by Neal, who didn’t look the least bit winded. “Neal, you've shown enough. Instructor Davis, are you satisfied?”

The man didn’t respond. Fury had long given way to pure confusion, so much so that Davis couldn’t seem to understand what was happening, no matter how many times Neal threw him off.

“Good.” Peter moved on like he’d gotten a positive answer. “Then that’s enough for today, everybody is dismissed; you can all go home. Neal, Jones, I’ll drive you both back.”

The plan to get a private explanation on where his CI learned to stop an assault was more than transparent, but by now, everybody only wanted to go home. Except for Davis, apparently, who called the conman as he was about to leave the room with the rest of the agents.

“How? I thought… They said- Your file said you were nonviolent...”

Wait, so Davis had singled out Neal knowing all the while that he wasn’t supposed to know how to defend himself?!

Way to go up the douchebag ranks.

Neal stopped on the doorstep to look at the still gaping instructor. “Yeah, I’m nonviolent. It’s a choice of life. But you know what, Instructor Davis?” His contemptuous expression turned into a too large, too sharp grin that brought shivers down Clinton’s spine. “Nonviolent doesn’t mean harmless. Just because I choose not to wipe the floor with my enemies doesn’t mean I’m not able to. And on these wise words, I bid a good day to you.” With a flick of his fedora, he left the room.

Clinton and Peter threw a last glance at the thunderstruck man before following Neal out of the CAA building. Hopefully neither of them looked as dumbstruck as Davis.

Sitting at the back of Peter’s silent car as his boss drove both him and Neal home and tried to figure out where to start addressing today’s revelations proved to be a very uncomfortable position. Clinton did his best to vanish in the background.

“Neal?” Finally asked Peter when they stopped in front of June’s building; Neal had already unclasped his seat belt.

“Yes, Peter?”

“... You’re absolutely sure you’ve neve been part of a gang, right?”

“Absolutely, yes. Why?”

“No reason… Say hello to June for me, would you?”

“Will do. See you tomorrow!”

The door shut with a loud clang and the sound of Neal’s laughter as he walked away.

Clinton caught his boss’s eyes in the rearview mirror in a moment of mutual understanding; neither of them would talk about today ever again.

Dick was well aware he let his Neal Caffrey mask drop a little too much today, but he figured there’d be no harm. His work at the FBI was almost done, and he couldn't muster the energy to keep the act as flawless as before when going home was now a matter of days.

Besides, he found going against everyone’s presumptions of his harmlessness hilarious, especially when he recalled the two dozen ninjas he left bound at home for his family to collect this morning. A testament to his fighting skills as much as proof that his work rooting out unwanted elements from the FBI was almost over; the League of Assassins wouldn’t have resorted to such a paltry last ditch attempt on his life if they weren’t on their last rope.

Dick walked out with only a few easily bandaged cuts, though that proved mildly problematic later when he ‘found out’ he was supposed to exercise today.

Yes, he’d known in advance but kept pretending to be oblivious for appearances’ sake. No, he hadn’t forgiven Peter for keeping that secret, though he understood and appreciated the sentiment.

Thankfully, everything could be solved by adamantly refusing to change his clothes (even his tie, just because he liked being contrary and had an aesthetic to stick to). He could have played along with the silly exercises with ease, despite his shallow wounds, but he figured Neal Caffrey wouldn’t be cooperative in a forced training camp so he dug his heels in.

And who was he to refuse messing with the FBI and their aggressive, conceited excuse of a drill instructor?

Not only had the man tried to beat up a nonviolent, defenseless civilian (according to Neal Caffrey’s files), but Dick had read several semi-official reports stating this was far from the first time Instructor Davis singled out the weakest student and got his kick out of debasing and thrashing them in front of their colleagues, only to force them to attend remedial lessons where he beat the shit out of them without witnesses.

Now that he’d assessed the truth out of those allegations, he’d write his own report and make sure Davis had to answer for his abuse. Dick’s mission might have been mostly centered around League of Assassins moles and other spies, but he saw no reason to stop at supercriminals when he could also deal with scum like George Davis.

The FBI could find another instructor to replace him – it wasn’t like what he did was hard. In Gotham, people knew all those so-called ‘advanced defensive maneuvers’ at age ten, though Dick knew his hometown was a bit of an outlier in that field.

It had been quite the culture shock the first time he went to a local school after Bruce took him in and one of the first classes on his schedule was ominously called ‘Defense’. Even more surprising, instead of the basics of judo or karate or random martial arts that he’d expected, the lesson had been on where best to bite an aggressor to get away and first aid against third-degree and over chemical burns.

Dick had lagged behind his classmates for some time, but there was a reason he took to Gotham so easily when most Outsiders ran for the hills. Between Bruce’s lessons and his own anger issues in need of an outlet, he’d caught up to the other kids pretty fast and reached the top of the class in Defense.

While official self-defense lessons started when a child first enlisted for school, most parents took it upon themselves to teach a few things earlier. After all, you couldn’t in good conscience give a five-year-old a knife or a stun gun before they learned how to use it properly.

It would be the height of irresponsibility.

School lessons also covered the handling of small blades and the like, for those who hadn’t already learned their use, but built upon that knowledge with various conventional weapons, as well as many improvised tools. Parents were encouraged to come share their experience. Dick notably recalled a burly dad covered in scars visiting the 7-grade kids to show them where to stab their pens for maximum efficiency, and a proper-looking mom with a perfect hairdo and a pink dress teaching them all about common toxic plants, their cures, and how to distill poison from them.

Defense lessons had nothing to do with martial arts or who to call after an aggression; you could go to leisure centers to learn those (or have your hyper-qualified surrogate dad who went on a journey in his teenage years to learn to become a vigilante furry of vengeance show you the steps). Instead, you learned what Outsiders would call ‘dirty’ tactics or ‘feral behavior’ to get yourself out of trouble.

There was no such thing as ‘dirty’ or ‘cowardly’ or ‘unfair’ ways to save your life or another’s, though. You did what you had to do to survive; walking out of an unfortunate encounter alive was a victory in itself.

(And no, Dick didn’t deny the ‘feral behavior’ part.)

Dignity had nothing to do with survival, especially in a city like Gotham, where danger lurked in every alley. Fighting ‘rules’ and the like could also screw themselves where the law of the jungle ruled supreme: you struck whatever you could, however savagely you could and you made damn sure your opponent couldn’t follow your escape.

So Dick learned to scream in kidnappers’ ears and use their accomplices as shields. His nails and teeth were as much weapons as his knives and stun-guns. If he needed to, he knew he could piss or pretend to throw up on his enemies to create some distance (actual puking left you weak, so it had to remain a last resort). He learned the offensive power of school bags, dirty socks and sharpened pencils…

Gothamite kids were taught early how to escape kidnappings, to hide, to lie, to pick locks, to unknot binds, to lie, to swim strongly, to play dead, to lie, to identify weak points, to parkour to safety, to lie… Basic survival skills in a nutshell.

Instructor Davis’ watered-down lessons paled in comparison to Dick’s Gothamite teachings, let alone his additional training as a vigilante. In fact, Gotham’s education was generally calibrated for Gotham’s way of life, not just in the self-defense department.

No matter which school you attended, from the uppity private school for children of the elite (where Dick spent the majority of his years, as Bruce Wayne’s ward and son) to the underfunded public schools in Gotham’s ghettos, the curriculum was sensibly the same.

You learned PE to run from kidnappers and/or cops, Math to embezzle, English to write decent ransom notes, Gotham History to know your city (and all its historical hideouts and underground passageways), Outsider History to fight off any potential invader, Biology to know where to hit, Chemistry and Physics to devise weapons, and Languages to buy from foreign countries the handful of questionable good not sold domestically.

As such, a certain level of crime was expected in Gotham; with their education, it couldn’t be helped. By now, it was all too deeply entrenched in their identity to change, and nobody really wanted to reform, not even the Bats.

(Maybe the Bats less than anyone else. They did live a life of violence and crime, though on the side of Good. Dick wasn’t sure what he’d do if all crime vanished from their Gotham’s streets. Thankfully, that wouldn’t happen any time soon.)

Most non-violent crimes were… not quite tolerated but ignored unless they specifically targeted those that couldn’t protect themselves en masse. With all the murders, kidnappings, charity embezzlement, assaults and other unspeakable horrors happening an a daily basis, even Batman had to let some cases fall to the wayside. Some went to the police, others were simply let go of.

Many thieves and white collar criminals thus avoided the overworked Bats. Some got caught by the police, but the vast majority was either never worried, or fell at the hands of a violent criminal they’d targeted.

Catwoman – who had never stolen from the poor and bereft and now avoided hurting guards more than necessary – also slipped through the cracks, though her impressive work, her reputation, her daredevilry, and her tendency to flirt with anyone ensured she received more attention than the average robber.

Well… that and Batman’s interest in her, but no way was any cop ever admitting they chased Catwoman because they wanted her opinion on the Dark Knight.

That would be preposterous.

Chapter Text

It started as many other cases did: with a criminal running away right before the FBI could arrest him.

Except Jack Pullman proved more resourceful than most felons and actually managed to evade capture. After two days of inquiries, they discovered he booked a ticket for Gotham – with any luck, he might still be there.

Following protocol, Peter made a phone call to the local FBI branch office, asking for them to locate and arrest Pullman in their stead. Intervention in another division’s affairs was usually received with frowns and resentful glares, and nobody wanted a cross-subsidiary incident, especially not one that involved whatever poor schmucks got sent to Gotham.

While most of the tall tales coming from that place reeked of disinformation, Peter assumed that some of the hoaxes had to have a kernel of truth, however tiny it must be.

He tried calling five times, and was always sent straight to the answering machine.

‘Thank you for calling the Gotham FBI offices. If you are a federal agent from outside of Gotham, please refer to your supervisor for further instructions. If you are not a federal agent, please refrain from interacting with any Gothamite matters. Goodbye.’

Not even the option of leaving a message or another way to contact the Gotham FBI. Peter listened to the recording five times and it still baffled him to no end.

With no other idea, he actually did as the answering machine suggested and talked to Hughes, who had only overseen the case from afar until now – Jack Pullman was a routine felon, not a criminal overlord.

Hughes’s reaction was… concerning, to say the least.

“I’ll call the special coaching agent. Expect him tomorrow; he’ll tell you if a trip to Gotham is worth it and – if it is – what to do to get out alive and sane.”

The words, along with the way Hughes had gone three shades paler took Peter aback. He hadn’t expected his boss to be one of those conspiracy theorists that actually believed all the nonsense coming out of the ‘City of Crime’. “Come on, sir, surely it can’t be that bad.”

Hughes shot him a stern glare. “Before we started the coaching meetings, three in five agents sent to Gotham didn’t come back, and those who did were… no longer quite right in the head. We have a policy concerning Gotham for a reason.”

… OK, Peter hadn’t expected it to be that bad. If the numbers were true, that was a far cry worse than what he thought. What, did they hunt federal agents over there or something?

“Right. Sorry, sir. We’ll see what the- the special coaching agent has to say.” Even if Peter thought the agent wouldn’t have many pieces of interesting intel to share, it wasn’t worth getting the higher-ups on his case for a bit of procedure. Pullman likely wasn’t going anywhere soon now that he thought himself safe in Gotham.

He still had a question, though. “Do you happen to know why the Gotham branch didn’t answer my calls? All I got was a seriously useless voicemail.”

Hughes’s expression was strangely knowing. “There isn’t any FBI branch in Gotham.”

After Hughes’s singularly unhelpful statement, Peter could admit he was curious as to what the ‘special coaching agent’ would have to say. He volunteered to lead the man – Agent Arthur Gilden – to the conference room where his team waited.

Gilden himself didn’t look anything special. Brown hair, common facial features, average height, a bit fidgety upon entering a new place… A regular dude. Peter didn’t see how such a man could ‘prepare’ them for what everybody seemed to believe was hell on earth.

“Agent Peter Burke.” He introduced himself when Gilden exited the elevator into the White Collar unit.

The other man returned his handshake with a cordial smile. “Arthur Gilden, pleasure to meet you.”

“Pleasure’s all mine.” Peter replied politely, already shifting to lead the other agent to their destination. “Now, if you’d follow me, I’ll take you to the conference room.”

“Thank yo-” Gilden choked on his words. Worried, Peter turned around to see what had shocked the man so badly.

Gilden was staring at the closest desk in horror. Then his gaze jumped to another desk, and another, and another. No matter where his eyes landed, the expression of open dread only seemed to deepen. “Wha- How- What are they doing here?” He breathed.

Peter followed his pointing finger with no small amount of worry, only to huff out a laugh when he realized what the problem was. “Yeah, we all found it creepy too when they started appearing, but we got used to them after a while. One of our co-workers is crazy about them, so he puts them everywhere.”

“Gargoyles...” Gilden muttered as he looked at the – frankly outrageous – number of misshapen sculptures adorning every desk. Then he turned his horrified gaze, bursting with questions, to Peter.

Peter shrugged, fatalistic. “You know the artistic types; when they get an idea in their heads, there’s no changing their minds. Neal really likes his gargoyles.”

The poor agent still looked shaken (yeah, the gargoyles were unsettling, although Peter didn’t think it warranted that amount of dread), but gathered himself after a moment and regained his professional attitude. He still threw worried glances at every gargoyle on the way to the meeting room, though.

Peter kinda wondered how such a scaredy cat was going to help them deal with Gotham, but wisely kept his doubts to himself.

Once inside the conference room, Gilden studiously ignored the wooden goat-shaped monster head overlooking them and introduced himself to Diana, Jones, Hughes and Neal as he set up his presentation. If it went anything like the last meeting about Gotham (or its supervillains), this was bound to be a major waste of time.

“So, like Agent Hughes probably already told you, I’m here to tell you if an operation to Gotham is advisable, and, assuming it is, give you advice on how to get in and out in one piece.” Gilden pulled files as he talked, copies of the Pullman case. “I already read what you submitted about this case; since it seems Jack Pullman had no ties in Gotham – and more importantly, no contacts with any rogue – this should be a relatively straightforward extraction mission. Provided you agree to follow a few guidelines, I will approve the operation.”

Diana grinned in satisfaction and Peter couldn’t help feeling victorious as well. He’d have hated for his case to be abandoned because a few bureaucrats feared going inside an American city.

The others, however, didn’t look so happy. Jones frowned anxiously, Hughes and Gilden sported grave miens and Neal just seemed vaguely amused at everyone’s reactions.

Odd.

“Now that that’s out of the way, let’s start on the best way to handle a mission in Gotham.” Gilden folded his fingers in front of him, looking for all the world like he was about to announce the tragic extinction of red pandas. Really, those people made a big deal out of nothing. Gotham might have a high crime rate, but it was still a civilized city.

“Firstly, before you even step foot on Gothamite soil: forget you’re in the States. In fact, forget you’re still on Earth. Think of everything as if you’re in one of the worst corners of Hell, surrounded by humanoid creatures that are able and likely to harm you if you give them reason to. I know it sounds ridiculous, but your chances to come back alive rise exponentially if you look at everything around you like it’s out for your blood.”

… Was this a joke?

“Don’t look at me like that, I swear it works!” Gilden raised his hands in defense. “If you go into Gotham expecting to find the same benchmarks as literally anywhere else, you’re gonna out yourselves as Outsiders immediately. Just talking about the weather is a trap!”

“The weather?” Inquired Diana with a delicately raised eyebrow.

“Yeah, even the weather. It’s on the list of topics never to mention, because it’s a surefire way of exposing yourself as an Outsider, capital ‘o’. Gothamites don’t like Outsiders.”

“And what’s wrong with talking about the weather?”

Gilden looked at Diana with something approaching pity. “And what would you say if you talked about the weather?”

“I don’t know.” The female agent clearly didn’t see where the problem was, and neither did Peter. The weather was basic small talk, nothing remotely controversial. “‘It’s a beautiful day’ if it’s sunny, or ‘talk about lousy weather’ if it’s raining.”

“And you’d be immediately identified as an Outsider,” deadpanned Gilden. Everyone stared at him, except Neal, who was laughing under his breath for some reason. “Most funny or cheerful things are reversed with Gothamites. For them, the sun is bad, as in people stay at home on bright days and everyone prays for the smog to return. Only an Outsider would be happy about the good weather.”

Peter really wanted to call Gilden out on his bullshit, but the man looked strangely sincere, and Hughes didn’t look the least bit doubtful. And Hughes was not known for his gullibility or his sense of humor.

“The sun... is bad.” Diana repeated with a dubious frown.

“Like a lot of ‘good’ things in Gotham,” agreed Gilden with a despondent smile. “The sun, glitter, bright colors – unless they’re worn by a Bat –, Disney classics, clowns…”

“Clowns?” Diana paroted, and Peter agreed, because this one stood out. “Plenty of people are afraid of clowns, even outside of Gotham.”

Gilden shook his head. “They’re not afraid of clown so much as they hate them from the bottom of their shriveled hearts. And I’m not talking a fraction of the population either; every Gothamite would slip a knife between a clown’s ribs if they get a chance to. It’s because of one of their local supervillains, the Joker, who dresses up like a clown.”

The Joker. He’d been one of the rogues mentioned some months ago during a presentation about dangers from Gotham. To be honest, Peter didn’t remember much from that day, apart from Neal teaching the agent in charge a lesson about boasting and false information. He distantly recalled mentions of the Joker and bombs or biohazards, but the details eluded him, and all that day had been a long succession of overblown facts and obviously fake data.

The US government obviously wouldn’t let those people be if they were truly that terrible.

“So you’re telling me the whole city has coulrophobia?” He couldn’t help laughing a little, because he couldn’t erase the image of a bunch of people running away from Ronald McDonald from his mind.

“It’s really not something to laugh about,” said Neal, who had remained silent so far. His earlier smile had melted from his lips while Peter wasn’t looking. “The Joker is a mass-murderer.”

“I can’t be that bad. If he was, the authorities would have taken him down long ago.” Even if Gotham apparently had no FBI offices, there had to be someone to enforce the law that didn’t wear a Halloween costume gone too far. “And the guy's not a meta or an alien, if I remember well. Anyone with a gun could get rid of him permanently, so excuse me if I don’t take a grown man dressed like a fake Pennywise seriously.”

“You shouldn’t underestimate him.” Gilden warned. “There’s a reason the Joker is sometimes called Gotham's ‘prince of crime’.”

If this ‘Joker’ was the worst Gotham had to offer, Peter felt even more confident that he could handle anything the city had to throw at him. He drew a breath to offer a – probably a bit too patronizing – reply when Neal cut him off.

“Before you say something stupid,” Neal started, his feigned casualness so forced that Peter had to shut up, “you should know that the Joker’s victims are counted in the tens of thousand, and that among them are my little brother, whom he killed after beating him up with a crowbar, and my best friend, who had her spine severed by him, making her paralyzed from the waist down.”

…

Shit. Peter fucked up there, didn’t he?

He dumbly opened and closed his mouth a few times in mortification, floundering for something he could reply. “I- You… I didn’t- That-”

“We’re sorry for your loss.” Hughes came to his rescue after a minute of inarticulate stuttering. “None of us knew you knew people in Gotham.”

The rest of the team was quick to add their own condoleances, and Peter followed suit. He really hadn’t meant to upset his CI; hell, he’d barely even known Neal had a brother, let alone that said brother was dead.

Neal waved their sympathy away. “It’s fine, you didn’t know. Besides, they both got better in the end, so I’m not mad – except at the Joker, of course. That fucking clown would be roasting in hell if I had my say.”

Not for the first time today (and not for the last), Peter’s thoughts came to a brutal stop.

The verbal violence and profanity he could understand, even if Neal was generally more classy; the clown apparently deserved it ten times over. But what was that about ‘getting better’ after a severed spine and death?

“Fuck.” Gilden cursed as he stared at Neal. His eyes stayed wide open, unblinking, like the man had just experienced the most terrible epiphany since someone invented mortgage fraud. “The gargoyles… they’re from you, aren’t they? You’re Gothamite...”

Peter’s head swiveled so fast between Neal and Gilden that something made a loud crack.

The forger shrugged, utterly unaffected by the horrified and confused atmosphere. “Yep. What of it?”

Peter’s brain – that had just barely rebooted – crashed down once more.

That… that wasn’t possible, was it? Everything Neal had ever revealed about his hometown clashed with what Peter knew of Gotham.

“But- You said you came from some backwater town…”

“Did I?” Neal grinned with all his teeth. “All I said was that I came from somewhere on the American map but that didn’t consider itself American, where you saw a lot of violence and blood and where Outsiders were not very welcome. You went ahead and assumed I came from the boonies.”

“And the aviaries?” Diana asked while Peter processed.

“A code word for Gotham among Outsider criminals.” Neal laughed. “We have so many vigilantes and villains with a bird-related gimmick that it turned into something of an inside joke for us, and a way to avoid uttering Gotham’s name for others.”

Now that he thought about it, Peter couldn’t remember Neal actually saying his hometown was an isolated hippie or survivalist community. He’d never confirmed anything.

But Gotham?

“Wait a minute, let’s go back for a second there!” Jones gathered his wits faster than Peter. Or maybe he was still stuck on a previous statement. The older agent would have scolded him for not keeping up had he not been so lost himself. “What do you mean your dead brother ‘got better’? He didn’t really die? He was reanimated?”

Neal’s lips pursed; he clearly disliked the topic, but must have realized nobody would let him get away without an explanation this time. “No. Jason was dead and buried. But he rose from his grave a few months later. No one really knows how.”

Peter’s left eye twitched while he wondered how to take that unhelpful answer. In the end, he turned to the supposed ‘Gotham expert’, hoping for the man to bring them all back to reality and say this was all bogus.

Instead, Gilden tittered awkwardly as he looked anywhere but at Peter. “To be fair, I can’t affirm that’s a lie. There are reported and confirmed cases of zombies crawling out of their graves in Gotham.”

Christ, would this day ever end…

Unexpectedly, Jones cheered up instead of joining Peter (and everyone else but Neal) in the pits of despair. “Oh! You mean like Solomon Grundy!”

“Solomon Grundy? Like the nursery rhyme?” Diana had to ask.

“Yeah, exactly like the nursery rhyme.” Agreed Gilden with a commiserating glance her way. “Solomon Grundy is a zombie that usually lurks in Gotham’s sewers. His original name is probably not ‘Solomon Grundy’, but he allegedly heard the nursery rhyme upon ‘awakening’ without memories and took it as his name ever since.”

This was all so surreal that Peter couldn’t help sniggering tiredly. “... A zombie named Solomon Grundy…”

“Laughing at people because their chosen name has double meanings is bad Peter.” Neal said sternly, yet his mouth tugged up like he found something funny. Peter felt like he’d missed an inside joke.

“I get how you feel.” Gilden patted Peter’s shoulder with weary compassion, apparently opting to ignore Neal’s weirdness completely now that his origins came to light. “It’s always like that every time I learn something new about Gotham.”

“And what is wrong about Gotham?” Neal cut in, taking offense at the poor agent’s words. “Do you have anything against her? Huh? Do you?” He squinted, scrutinizing Gilden like he’d develop laser eyes if he tried hard enough. “I bet you’re from Metropolis.”

The way he all but spat the city’s name made it abundantly clear what he thought of the place.

Gilden, for his part, crossed his arms on the table and buried his face in them. “Oh God, here we go again…”

“What's so bad about Metropolis?” Wondered Jones, looking from one man to another.

“They’re all cheaters and sore losers.”

“We didn’t lose!” Gilden growled as his head shot up in outrage. “The whole thing was null and void the moment a supervillain attacked!”

“Oh, excuse me if your local team doesn’t have the mettle to keep going when a small inconvenience happens! I’m sure the poor, fragile little babies needed to see their mommies to get over the shock.”

“Just because they didn’t want to face one of your rampant maniacs doesn’t mean-”

“Enough!” Hughes barked, putting a stop to the crazy argument. “What are you talking about? Gilden?” He added when Neal made to open his mouth.

The man sighed and ran a hand over his face. “There’s always been… tensions between Gotham and Metropolis, my hometown. The last major conflict happened between our baseball teams. They were in the middle of a game when one of Gotham’s supervillains attacked. Of course, the Metropolis Meteors ran away, like any sensible people. But the Gotham Knights stupidly stayed on the field and kept illegally racking up points. When the Meteors returned, they naturally argued that the game didn’t count, since they weren’t there, but the Knights refused to see reason and made a scene. In the end, the Knights were banned from tournaments for a few years, and all the teams from Gotham that supported them, no matter the sport, suffered the same penalty. All because they didn’t admit that the rogue attack invalidated the match.”

“If a team leaves the field, it’s their loss by default.” Argued Neal with a glare Gilden’s way. The agent didn’t take that lying down.

“It was a goddamn supervillain attack!”

“It was Kite-man! He’s only an honorary supervillain by seniority!”

“He’s still responsible for dozens of deaths!”

“Exactly, dozens! According to all official registration bureaus, you don’t get the title of supervillain before your first hundred death count, stacked up in less than three years or it’s not admissible! If any random dude with a couple dozen deaths under his belt or any old-timer thug started calling themselves supervillains, Gotham would be crawling with them!”

“That’s exactly it! It fucking is crawling with supervillains already!”

“Pffff, that’s just your delicate Metropolitan sensibilities talkin-.”

“I said enough!” Yelled Hughes again. He, like everyone in the conference room, looked at Neal oddly. “Caffrey, if I need to take you off the mission and send you out, I will.”

Neal grumbled something uncomplimentary under his breath, but settled back on his chair to pout.

Peter couldn’t help staring at his CI, wondering where that new aspect of Neal came from. Not only was the forger usually not so virulent about anything except art, but the things he said…

He never expected Neal, a non-violent conman, to talk about dozens or hundreds of deaths with such flippancy. Like tens of people getting killed was just par for the course.

Maybe Peter should reevaluate his opinion on Gotham if it was anywhere close to what Neal described between the lines. By chance, he caught Gilden’s eyes as the man watched him with something akin to pity. Sympathy, maybe.

“You’d better get used to it – they’re all like that in Gotham.”

Hughes kept staring at Neal like he’d suddenly grow claws and use them to slit their throats. “So I’ve heard. I suppose there’s a reason federal policy is to-” Gilden interrupted the boss’s musings with a hand rudely shoved over his mouth and the most panicked expression to date.

Then his gaze turned to Neal, who was watching their antics with a lazy, spiteful sort of amusement. “If you’re hoping to keep the fact that federal institutions refuse to hire Gothamites and go to any lengths to secretly keep them from obtaining a job in government-led or -funded organizations, then don’t bother. Everyone at home already knows that. Uncle Sam repudiated us, so we despise him in return; no FBI branch made of Outsiders ever lasted longer than a week for a reason. The offices were just left unoccupied for the sake of appearances – that way even the American government can’t complain.”

Now Peter just got an answer to a question he hadn’t asked, and boy did he regret it. What exactly happened to the poor agents that were sent to Gotham, only to be rejected wholesale by the city? Were they simply chased away? Did local citizens refuse to work with them until they left? Were they even still alive?

Somehow, Peter figured he didn’t want to know the answer.

Awkward silence suffocated the meeting room, the agents all exchanging glances to see who would break it first. Gilden heroically did the honors.

“Moving on,” he said after clearing his throat. Peter took back all he thought about him being a coward. “This was supposed to be a presentation about the… pitfalls of Gotham.” He said, watching Neal cautiously for a reaction. The conman merely smiled like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.

Yeah, this was obviously a trap, but what could Gilden do except bravely push forward? Peter mentally sent him all his support.

“I was supposed to tell you about the most commonly encountered villains and what to do if you had the misfortune of encountering them, but…”

“Yeah, I can just give them access to the Bat-watch, so you don’t have to do that.” Neal took over when Gilden trailed off. “For those who don’t know, the Bat-watch is an app that tells you when a rogue was recently spotted near your location. It also serves as an encyclopedia of all known local supervillains and vigilantes, so as long as you take a quick look before departure and that you keep your phone at hand, you should be fine on that front without the full lecture.”

Jones nodded, like he already knew all this. When everyone looked at him in question, he shrugged and rubbed the back of his head. “Neal gave me the address of the website some time ago.”

That seemed to surprise Gilden. “Really? Gothamites rarely let others in on the Bat-watch.” He stared at Neal, confused and pensive. “Would you give me access? I used to be logged in when I still visited Gotham regularly for work, but it seems I’ve been thrown out.”

“No can do. Metropolitans are not allowed in unless they actually need the data for their survival.” Neal grinned as he said it, like he was avenging his hometown’s scorned pride by refusing to help Gilden. “Normally, Outsiders are not welcome either, but I made an exception for Jones. And don’t even think of trying to cheat your way in – the app is protected by Oracle, and it always knows if you’re from Metropolis, even if you try to hide it.”

Gilden sighed, but he didn’t look too disappointed. The man had probably expected the refusal. “It was worth a try, I guess.”

“Also, while we’re on the topic of Outsiders, I’ll take care of the ‘visitor packs’ for those three.” Neal added, as an afterthought. He grimaced in distaste. “I won’t be seen at home with people using the junk that the FBI calls a Gotham survival kit.”

The mere fact that there existed an official Gotham survival kit gave Peter headaches. Just what had he signed up for when he argued to chase after Pullman?

“That’s good.” Gilden explained with a smile when everyone around them looked lost. “It’s true the FBI-issued pack is a bit lacking, but with Gotham-branded gear, you should be safe for a few days, provided you don’t end up smackdab in the middle of a rogue attack or something.”

Yeah, for some reason, that wasn’t much more reassuring.

“So, back on the topics to avoid while in Gotham.” Was it Peter or did Gilden look much more relaxed now that Neal had promised to help? “Never mention that you’re federal agents. In fact, never mention you’re Outsiders or that you work for the government. The only man you should be safe talking to about your operation is Jim Gordon, Gotham’s Commissioner. He’s one of the city’s rare honest cops, and he’s generally… let’s say he’s generally less likely to flip on you if you say the wrong thing.”

“He’s a good man.” Neal agreed with a decisive nod. Peter wasn’t sure the forger’s approval really played in this Jim Gordon’s favor, but since both Neal and Gilden seemed to agree, he’d give the man a chance. Besides, they needed someone to guide them in their search, and who knew how up-to-date Neal’s intel was after at least five years away from Gotham, including four stuck in prison?

Gilden kept talking. “Don’t ever badmouth the Bats, no matter your actual opinion on vigilantes. If someone asks you which Robin is your favorite, pick a number between one and five and stick to it. With any luck, nobody will ask you to explain your choice, but keep in mind that the fourth was, according to all reports, female, so don’t make the mistake of saying ‘he’ or ‘him’ if you say four.”

Robin was… the child acolyte of Batman’s, right? And there were five of them?

“Don’t ever say anything bad about the Waynes either. I don’t care which of their ridiculous hijinks made it to the latest tabloid, don’t criticize them. Wayne money makes half the city run, and they adore their quirky first family, so be careful on that front too. If someone asks you, just say something nice about one of them, from their hairdo to their smile or whatever. Gothamites will eat it up.”

“I will take offense too if you slander the Wayne family.” Added Neal with a truly nasty smile. “I’m more than a bit partial towards them.”

Right, Neal had spent some of his younger years impersonating Richie Wayne. It wouldn’t be surprising if he became protective of the vapid playboy after researching him so thoroughly.

Gilden went on with the recommandations, all weirder than the next. “If you stumble on a rogue attack, don’t intervene. Not only are they all way over your paygrade and abilities, but a Bat will come take care of the problem sooner or later. You stepping in will only increase the number of casualties and/or hostages.

“Anything blatantly American has to be either erased or hidden. Gothamites are not American except on paper, and they will take offense if you suggest otherwise. Bear in mind that in Gotham, taking offense usually translates into armed assault, and any random Gothamite has the numerical advantage and is more trained than you. No, I’m not kidding, beating people up is literally part of their education.

“If you ever misspeak and aren’t immediately terminated, then you might want to try throwing shade on Metropolis. For some reason, it’s a rallying subject for them, even if it’s a totally misguided- Caffrey, stop looking at me like that!”

For hours, Gilden kept rambling about the do’s and don'ts of sneaking inside Gotham. After the first twenty minutes of nonsensical, but apparently completely legit instructions (judging by Neal’s no less nonsensical reactions), Jones pulled out a pocket book to take notes, and Diana and Peter soon followed suit.

No way were they remembering all of this for tomorrow, but the written set of warnings and tips would go a long way in making him feel safer.

Hopefully it would suffice – it seemed Peter had vastly underestimated the madness of the city that could create Neal Caffrey.

The following morning found Peter, Diana, Jones, Hughes and Gilden waiting in the empty offices at the crack of dawn for a final check-up. Neal had yet to arrive, having called in advance to tell his handler he would find his way there by himself.

“Do you really think we’ll make it?” Wondered Jones, uncharacteristically anxious.

Peter didn’t blame him. He’d only had that ‘Bat-watch’ app for a few hours, and a quick perusal had been enough to give him nightmares. If Jones had had access for months, surely he knew more about the dreadful things awaiting them than him.

Honestly, if Peter didn't believe so strongly in duty and justice, he'd be tempted to just drop this operation altogether. Pullman would most likely die a horrible death in Gotham anyway.

Gilden sipped on his coffee as he pondered his answer. “Normally, I’d lie to preserve morale and say you’ll absolutely make it when, at best, you’d have an individual fifty percent chance of returning in one piece – not counting the mental damage, of course. But since you have a bona fide Gothamite escorting you, and since Caffrey seems determined to keep you three safe, I’m pretty sure you’ll make it, yes. At the very least, your chances are much better than any other agent’s since the FBI was founded.”

… How exactly did this man manage to make something so ominous sound so optimistic?

“Hi, everybody, sorry we’re late! We had to pick up your gear on the way.”

Peter watched as a remarkably peppy Neal walked into the office, four bags in hand, followed by none other than Mozzie.

“He wasn’t supposed to tag along.” Observed Hughes, giving voice to what they all thought.

“The FBI has absolutely no say on my movements, Mr. Boss Suit. I’m a free man, despite this country's numerous attempts to shackle me to 'the system'.”

“Moz is with me,” announced Neal, with that smile that told Peter he wouldn’t budge. “If he’s not going, then neither am I.”

That statement, coupled with Gilden’s creepy prognosis on their chances of survival, cut short any more argument about Mozzie’s presence. Still, Peter couldn’t help noticing, “You’ve only got four bags; with Mozzie, we’ll be five.”

“Aww, don’t worry about me, Peter. You should remember I don’t carry my stuff in a bag.”

… Neal had pulled loads of gadgets from nowhere in the past, but surely he didn’t carry as much gear on his person as what filled those four bags, right? There was simply nowhere to fit all that.

“It’s because you get the basic tourist kit.” Neal informed him, as if he’d read the tacit question on his face. “Yours is a bit clunky, but cheaper, while mine is custom and much more expensive. They both still work perfectly, though, the only difference is that your gear isn’t made to resist more than a week of mild use, whereas mine will still be usable after months of intensive handling.”

Peter willfully resisted asking why Neal’s equipment was made to last that long. He knew he wouldn’t like the answer.

“That’s a native Gothamite for you.” Gilden muttered in his coffee behind their backs. Neal’s eyes focussed on him, like he’d heard him despite the greater distance.

“I’ll take that as a compliment, even though I’m not actually native. I arrived in Gotham as a kid, was orphaned soon after and was eventually adopted by a resident. That’s when she became my home.”

Gilden looked at him warily. “You know that’s worse, right? I mean, natives have the excuse of never having known anything else; you were weird enough to stay and fit in Gotham as an Outsider.”

“Yep, I'm amazing like that!” Laughed Neal, purposefully missing the point. Then he distributed the four bags. “Anyway, quick review of your gear so you know what to expect and what to use in case of emergency. Normal tourist packs have guns, but I don’t like them, and you’ve already got your service weapons, so I figured I could skip those.”

Peter’s bag vaguely reminded him of some sort of intense army package coupled with a thug starter pack, with a serrated knife, enough energy bars to last him a few days, a water filter, some zip-ties, a folded blanket, a small metal box holding various vials labeled ‘antidotes’ to different toxins and a syringe to inject them, an emergency fire signal, night goggles…

Just… what was this, and where had Neal found it all on such short notice?

“Is that a gas mask?” Wondered Diana as she pulled out a compact face mask.

“Of course, you’ll need it if you encounter any rogue that uses air-borne chemicals.” Neal answered as if it was all obvious.

Behind them, Gilden sighed but nodded in resignation.

“Uhm, Neal?” Jones spoke up, hesitant. “Why are there so many settings to this stun-gun?”

“The first notch is the security, and the second is for regular humans,” Neal informed them as Peter inspected his own taser. In tiny letters, the voltage of each level was specified next to each notch – the highest setting was way higher than regulatory. Any person touched by that would be turned into burnt toast on the spot. “Third setting is for metahumans that aren’t too resistant to electricity, while the last notch is to paralyze people on venom, Killer Croc, or the like.”

Peter had found some info on the venom drug while he read about ‘Bane’ on the Bat-watch (a horrible, horrible read); but he’d yet to see anything on this ‘Killer Croc’ thing. The name reminded him more of food than of a supervillain.

So, like a moron, he asked. “Killer Croc? What kind of monster needs that many volts to be taken down.”

“Killer Croc, aka Waylon Jones, is a cannibalistic criminal commonly found in Gotham’s sewers.” Gilden recited with the lack of emotion that typically came from assimilating and repeating a file to himself over and over until it almost made sense. “Due to a skin condition, his outer appearance has evolved until it resembles a crocodile’s scales, hence the nickname.”

“So he’s just a sick guy that eats humans?” Wondered Diana out loud. “Except for the ‘resembling a crocodile’ part, that doesn't sound too bad. For Gotham, that is”

“He tends to grab his victims with his maw and drag them in the sewers to eat them in peace.” Neal cheerfully informed them. “He’s also much bigger and much less human-looking than his file suggests. For instance-”

Hefting his leg over a desk, Neal pulled back his pants leg. At first, Peter figured he wanted to expose his ankle bracelet, but the fabric kept retreating up and up until…

“Are those bite marks?!”

“Yep!” Nobody should sound as blithely unconcerned when they answered Peter’s horrified squeak of a question. “Waylon caught me a few years back – I was able to get out thanks to the Bats, but I kept a souvenir!”

And what a souvenir it was. The bite marks stood out, even among the constellations of scars adorning every inch of Neal’s skin. It was, for a lack of better term, gigantic, like the CI had been mauled by a dinosaur or something.

Shivers wracked Peter’s spine as he tried to imagine what kind of monster had the jaws to inflict that. Hopefully, he’d never have to find out in person.

“You said you had your own gear on you,” started Hughes with a frown as the others finished inspecting their ‘tourist kits’. “Do you, an allegedly nonviolent criminal, also carry a lethal stun-gun and a serrated knife?”

Oh shit.

“Nonviolent?” Gilden parroted with the most baffled grimace. “What do you mean, nonviolent?”

“Caffrey is only allowed to work with the FBI because despite his thick record he’s never been accused or found guilty of a violent crime.” Hughes elaborated, though that did nothing to clear Gilden’s confusion.

All eyes looked at Neal, who shrugged unrepentantly. “Well, I’m nonviolent here, but, obviously, I’m not in Gotham. Back at home, I’m only nonlethal.”

The White Collar agents all stiffened, but Gilden (and Mozzie, who'd been weirdly silent and introspective since his arrival) actually relaxed at that confession. “Oh, that makes more sense!” The external FBI agent sagged in relief. “For a moment there, I didn’t understand.”

When everyone stopped staring at Neal to look at him, Gilden explained. “Nobody is nonviolent in Gotham. Nobody. Not the little kids, not the elderly grandmas; so of course I didn’t get how Caffrey could be nonviolent over there. Being nonlethal is already a pretty radical stance, and very hard to stick to.”

“I have never killed anybody in a way that stuck.” Neal swore, oddly solemn.

His wording was still pretty problematic (‘in a way that stuck’? Did that mean he’d killed people in a somehow non-permanent way?), but Peter was already exhausted, and it was barely eight o’clock.

Hughes didn’t seem as eager to ignore the matter, but he still realized now was not the time. “We’ll have to discuss this when you return.” He ordered.

Neal smiled mysteriously but didn’t respond. Instead, he busied himself by pocketing ‘Gary’, the gargoyle guarding his desk. “For luck.” He said when Peter looked at him.

They all closed their murder bags and prepared to leave; their luggage was already in the surveillance van they’d take for this operation (having no clue what they’ll have to work with in Gotham or how long they’d be gone), except for Mozzie and Neal’s suitcases, which they had in hand.

“One last thing!” Gilden called before they left. “I usually don’t get to tell agents this since they don’t have a Gothamite guide, so I forgot; once you get in the vicinity of Gotham, let Caffrey drive.”

Peter paused, the vague echoes of disco songs whispering in his ears like death sentences. He felt all the blood drain from his face. “What?”

Dear God, did his voice have to shake so much?

Gilden raised his hands, as if to display his innocence, but kept spouting nonsense. “I can imagine he drives like a madman, but when you reach Gotham, he’ll be your safest bet. A good driver in the outside world is an accident in the making in Gotham.”

Peter kept staring, waiting for Gilden to burst into laughter and explain this was all a joke. But no, it didn’t happen – the man was a hundred percent serious. “... We’ll think about it.” He eventually replied.

With a last pitying look from the other agent, Peter followed his colleagues to the van. Mozzie and Neal had already installed their suitcases, and made sure everything was bolted down or otherwise tied tight enough not to move.

(He refused to think about why.)

“Time to go!” Cheered Neal, the only one sporting a smile.

With one last prayer to any god willing to listen, Peter sat in the driver’s seat and started the engine.

Chapter Text

The first part of the ride to Gotham went by without any incident. Peter sat in the driver’s seat, with Neal beside him to guide him when they reached the city. Diana, Jones and Mozzie shared the back, and they all chatted the time away through the window connecting the operation center and the driving cabin. Mozzie was even kind enough to avoid his usual conspiracy theories and instead treated them all to his insight on art and how to forge it.

(Not the most lawful topic he could have picked, but better that than another explanation of how JFK’s assassination had been a ploy to hide the government’s secret experiments from the media.)

Diana had insisted that they turn on the radio, but after five seconds of Neal immediately belting out the lyrics of the first song they found, Peter switched to a classical music station. He wasn’t a fan – nobody here was – but if the background music made Diana happy and kept Neal from singing, he’d take it.

Gotham and New York weren’t very far from each other, barely a few hours by car, which was reason enough for Peter and his team to have taken the van. That, and the bewildering fact that there was no other direct way to access Gotham. All other means of transportation – train, bus, even planes – stopped a few miles before reaching the city proper. You had to stop at a specially built station and board the monorail into Gotham.

Only cars were exempt from this process, although there was a sort of customs office on the way.

“To make sure nobody wanders in by mistake,” explained Neal when asked. “We wouldn’t want some unsuspecting tourists or people unaware of what they’re getting into to drive into Gotham. They also sell surviving kits there, and only let you enter without one if you’ve signed a document attesting you know the risks and the city can’t be held accountable to anything happening to you without the kits; but you’re all set up already, so this should be quick.”

Peter had thought his CI was joking, until he actually reached the pseudo-customs and its full-length gate masking the road ahead. Signalization told them to stop the van in front of a bored-looking agent in a box.

“Welcome to Gotham city,” she droned with all the enthusiasm of a dead sloth. “Thank you for your visit. If you are newcomers here, please be advised that Gotham is a dangerous place; we strongly suggest you purchase this 10$ kit to help you enjoy your experience to the utmost while limiting the risks of minor inconveniences such as maiming, poisoning, brainwashing, extensive mental trauma and/or death. This is not an exhaustive list, and the city will not be held accountable if you decide to ignore our warning.”

Peter’s brain blue-screened as he floundered for a reply. Neal had to come to his rescue with a charming grin as he leaned over Peter to meet the customs officer’s gaze.

“No worries, I’m a local and I’ve already outfitted them with a kit. We’ll be fine, thank you!”

As if she’d seen a celebrity, the woman’s lifeless face lit up in unexplainable excitement. “You’re- oh, of course, sir. Welcome home!”

“It’s good to be home.” Neal replied with a soft, heartfelt smile. “Could you open the gate, please?”

“Oh, yes, of course.” She pressed a button, and they all heard the whir of machinery turning on. Heavy machinery. Now that Peter thought about it, why did they need full-length gates garding the outskirts? And said gates looked surprisingly solid for a mere customs barrier, almost as if they were reinforced…

No, surely he was reading too much into it.

“Uhm…” The customs lady dithered as she observed Peter and the people at the back of the van. “Aren’t your companions Outsiders? Shouldn’t you be switching places?”

“I’m driving.” Stated Peter gravely. It probably didn’t improve the woman’s impression of his mental abilities that these were his first words to her, but he was way beyond caring when it came to that topic.

He’d sworn Neal would never touch a driving wheel again, at least with him in the car.

The conman shot him a fond, long-suffering glare. “He’s stubborn.” He sighed to the customs officer. “But I don’t give him five minutes before he pulls the van over and gives in.”

“Over my dead body.” Peter countered, dead serious.

“Could happen sooner than you think…” The woman muttered, probably not expecting him to catch it. Louder, she continued. “Well, if you insist. In any case, there are several parking areas before Gotham proper for those who want to make additional preparations, when you finally decide to pull over. Please make use of these areas instead of stopping the van in the middle of the road.”

Why was everyone so sure he’d give in? He’d seen Neal drive, no way was he ever giving him a chance to reiterate the experience. With or without a disco soundtrack.

In a roar of laboring machinery, the gates finally drew open (why were they so thick?! The thing could probably stop a tank!) and Peter turned the engine on again, ignoring the waves of disapproval drifting from the customs officer and Neal.

He drove through the gates, and the first thing to hit him, metaphorically speaking, was how… gray everything looked. Like color and light had been sucked out of the world.

The road vanishing behind the closing gate in his side view mirrors didn’t look any less bright than before, though. As if the world had been divided on either side of the customs post, which made absolutely no sense, but the people in the back made the same observation out loud, so Peter wasn’t losing his mind just yet.

The second thing to hit him, almost not metaphorically speaking this time, was a car driving at unholy speeds that almost crashed into the van’s rear.

Peter swiveled at the last second, avoiding a collision by a hair’s breadth, and the mad driver vanished into the distance with loud honking and what was probably a middle finger extended from a window. From that distance, it was hard to tell.

“What the fuck?!” Yelled Jones. They’d all felt Peter violently veer and those in the back had recovered just in time to see the offending driver disappear on the horizon.

A second car almost collided with them before anyone had a chance to reply. Again, it sped away with outraged honking.

“Welcome to Gotham!” Neal laughed, the only one not watching the road in horror (although in the rearview mirror, Mozzie looked more resigned than shocked – had he known this would happen?). “I told you everybody drove like me here, didn’t I?”

A moment of silence, and Diana burst into shouting. “You’ve gotta be kidding! We all thought you were exaggerating!”

“If only.” Peter thought he heard Mozzie mutter under his breath.

“No, this is what Gothamite roads are like.” A third car brushed by their van and clipped the side mirrors. It once again vanished before Peter could get the license plate. “And driving at New York speeds is only going to get us all killed, so please pull over at the closest parking area and let me take the wheel.”

Two more cars rushed by in close succession, and Peter almost lost control of the van when he dodged them.

Still, he couldn’t just let Neal drive again!

“There’s got to be a way to make people slow down,” he argued, looking at his fellow agents for support.

Jones looked like he agreed, but Diana seemed more hesitant. “I don’t know, boss. We haven’t seen a single car go at a reasonable pace.”

A truck passed by them at the same speed as the long gone cars, with yet more honking and warning lights flashing in its wake.

Neal spoke up again, more serious than before. “Peter, there’s no such thing as speeding tickets or red lights in Gotham. You won’t be able to do anything besides following the other drivers’ example, because if you’re still crawling at a snail’s pace when we reach Gotham proper, we’ll all die in a stupid and preventable accident way before we reach the precinct.

“Now, pull over and let me drive before you get us all killed, would you? I can already see Gotham in the distance.”

Could he? All Peter saw was a dark mass of smog.

“Suit, that’s enough dithering. Stop the car and give Neal the wheel.”

What had the world come to that Peter found sense in Mozzie’s words and complied with his order? But he knew defeat when he saw it, so the agent pulled over at the closest parking spot to reluctantly let Neal take the wheel.

When he sat in the passenger’s seat, though, he immediately clung to the overhead handle. He saw Mozzie do the same with a security handrail in the back.

Diana and Jones, innocent and untested as they were, waited with only their seat belt as protection. The naive fools…

Neal hit the gas with all his weight and the van launched like a rocket. Twin cries of terror reached Peter’s ears from the operation center, but he could proudly say not a peep left his clenched jaw.

The rest of the ride went by in a blur of landscape and sensations, with only their fellow vehicles going at similar speeds being in any way discernable. Peter would later assume he dissociated all the way, though he faintly recalled the van swerving and drifting when Neal took sharp turns, all punctuated with yelps of distress in the back.

Surprisingly, they never hit anything.

Neal eventually hit the brakes with the same energy he’d hit the gas. The van screeched as it decelerated faster than the tyres should have allowed. Jones muttered a prayer.

And then everything stopped and the world outside regained shape again.

Diana and Jones rushed out of the van on quivering legs, while Mozzie and Peter – who was totally dissociating – walked out with measured movements-

-only to choke on the pollution in the air the moment they opened the door.

Seriously, what a wake up call! How did people breathe in here? Peter felt his lungs clog up with each inhale of this air-borne cancer that pretended to be respirable oxygen, and it could not all be blamed on the stench of overheating tyres.

Neal killed the engine and stepped out of the van with a bright smile and a deep, satisfied breath. “Ah, home sweet home! I missed the smell of Gotham!”

After some hacking, Peter started to get used to the rarefied air, enough to turn his attention to his crazy CI. “What?!” A few more coughs escaped him. Neal aimed his grin his way, and Peter decided he didn’t want to go there after all. “No, never mind. Where are we?”

The forger must have dumped them in one of Gotham’s seediest underground car parks. Everything was dark, with a few distant lampposts struggling to make the road visible for anyone but cats, though not a single car had driven by since they’d arrived; a city the size of Gotham would no doubt see much traffic, especially near the precinct, if reports of its criminal activity were in any way accurate.

“We’re right behind the Gotham City Police Department.” Announced Neal. “In the visitor’s car park.”

Peter stared at his friend for a moment, as did his colleagues and Mozzie, who had finally recovered from their wild ride and the olfactory assault of polluted air. Then they all tried to see through the darkness surrounding them.

“Use your night vision goggles if you need to.” Scoffed Neal as he watched them squint. “Today’s smog is a bit thicker than usual, so nobody’ll judge Outsiders for needing a little help.”

But Peter had his pride; he wouldn’t rely on the goggles, no matter how dark it was.

It took him a while, but his eyes did adjust to the lack of light. First, he realized that his assumption that this was an underground car park was wrong. No roof over his head, for all that he couldn’t see the sun. He clicked on his watch to light it up and see the time; yep, still noon.

‘A bit thicker’. Right.

Then, he spotted one, two, three… twenty-nine gargoyles looming over them. Only his months of exposure through Neal kept him from flinching at how life-like they appeared.

Finally, he saw the giant letters on the walls of the closest building. GCPD, Gotham City Police Department, just like Neal had said. Except he hadn’t told them the place looked like a vampire’s wet dream, with twisting reliefs in geometrical patterns, ominous angel figures sculpted into the facade, judging them, a dark coat of dust and whatever else dirtying every surface and the aforementioned gargoyles, of course. Couldn’t forget the blasted gargoyles.

So this… this was the precinct. Peter wasn’t sure he really wanted to meet whoever worked here. It all looked like a trap for some reason.

He wasn’t the only one thinking so. “It’s creepy.” Jones muttered to himself, never tearing his eyes from the statues who seemed to be crying in their stone hands. How welcoming. “I don’t want to go in there.”

“Oh, come on, they’re not going to eat you. Cannibals are strictly forbidden from joining the force unless they can prove they’ve stopped eating human flesh for more than a year.”

God, Neal’s jesting didn’t sound like a joke at all.

Nobody commented as they slowly made their way up the stairs to the visitor’s entrance, expecting a trap to spring with every step. Gilden’s warning about considering everything as if it belonged to an alternate, hostile dimension came to mind. Maybe he’d had a point in hindsight.

Nothing happened all the way to the entrance; Peter didn’t relax anyway.

The inside of the precinct hardly had more lighting than the outside. Peter couldn’t imagine how they read files with so little light; his eyes already strained to see in front of him and he dreaded the impending tension headache he’d have tonight.

The elderly woman in a police suit manning the reception area looked up distractedly, went back to her sudokus, until she realized she had visitors and her head shot up. “Dick!”

Wow, grannies were rude in Gotham.

“Sonja!” Replied Neal with a matching grin. Peter felt like he’d skipped a step somewhere.

“Dick, sweetie! It’s so good to see you back!” The old lady continued as she rose to pinch Neal’s cheeks… while still calling him a dick. “Why didn’t you call ahead to tell us you were home?”

Wait, did his CI know the rude grandma?

“Sorry, sorry! It was a last minute notice and I had all sorts of things to prepare for the trip; I didn’t really have the time to send word ahead to anyone but Gordon. Is the commish here?”

“You’re lucky; he just came back from a crime scene.” The old lady tutted in disapproval, but still smiled at Neal. She patted his cheeks one last time before she looked at the rest of the people in the room and her cheer dropped. “And what are you doing with Outsiders, Dick?”

… Peter had started to suspect ‘Dick’ was less an insult and more one of Neal’s aliases, but the sheer venom in the elderly policewoman’s gaze as she scrutinized them had him reevaluate that assumption. She did look like she could cuss them to hell and back all of a sudden.

“Sonja, don’t look at them like that.” Neal gently chided her. “They’re friends of mine, even if they’re Outsiders. In fact, I’m here to escort them to Gordon.”

The old lady harrumphed, kept staring at the group of FBI agents and Mozzie for a moment longer, and finally relented. She didn’t look happy about it, though. “Fine, dearie, you can bring them in. But they’d better not cause a mess.”

The sharp, pointed look she sent Peter and the others killed any thoughts of misbehaving before they could appear. Not that Peter was in any way inclined to misconduct – that was more Neal’s thing.

“Great!” Neal cheered, seeming a bit childish for a moment. “I’ll take them to Gordon then. See you, Sonja!”

The woman waved him away as he led the party inside the precinct’s dark depths. Soon, they entered a wide bullpen where many police officers busied themselves. More than one stopped what they were doing at Neal’s entrance to greet him with grins and calls of ‘Dick!’.

Either every single officer in Gotham should watch their vocabulary, or Peter really had just learned of one of Neal’s many other identities. He dearly hoped it was the latter. In any case, the cops definitely recognized Neal, and their cheer always died a swift death the moment they spotted the 'Outsiders'.

Despite most of his attention drawn on the inexplicable animosity and on making sure no hand drifted too close to a service gun, Peter couldn't help noticing all the little gargoyles scattered on every available flat surface. Strangely, the sight of misshapen sculptures on every desk put him a tiny bit more at ease. Amidst all the weirdness, this felt paradoxically familiar…

Neal finally stopped in front of an office overlooking the bullpen with a plaque reading ‘Commissioner Gordon’ on it. He knocked. “Commish? It’s Dick and the-” he threw a glance at the dozens of police officers watching him, “-the people I told you about.”

A gruff voice told them to enter, and Peter got his first look at Commissioner Jim Gordon, apparently the only man in Gotham they could reveal their identities as FBI agents to. Gordon had gray hair and wrinkles that Peter knew from experience came more from stress than old age. He wore a mustache, and one of those cliché detective long brown coats, still drizzled in snow. The man must have just returned from outside indeed if he still had it on his shoulders.

… Wait a minute, it hadn’t been snowing outside.

“Gordon!” Greeted Neal with a wide smile and a hug. A hug. Neal? Hugging? Peter blinked in confusion at this blatant uncharacteristic behavior, all thoughts of snow wiped out from his brain. “God, it’s been too long! How are you? How’s Babs? I mean, I know how Babs is – we still talk all the time – but, like, how is she? You know she never tells me anything important unless we can see each other in person, and with the mission and everything, that hasn’t been possible in a while. And how about you, commish? Did you manage to close the Anderson case you were on last time I saw you? It was the uncle, right? I bet it was the uncle – you owe me a box of cookies if it was the uncle. Anything new on the Bowery front, or have the turf wars finally ended? Last I heard, the Maroni had to retreat, but I doubt they left it at that. It’s not their style to just back off and let rival gangs take their old territory. Was that a new coffee machine I saw in the lobby, by the way? I swear, if there’s not at least one as good in the break room, I’m starting a riot. No, wait, even worse: I’m going supervillain, the disgusting GCPD coffee can be my tragic backstory. I’ll be Bitterman, the Boogieman’s more handsome cousin, and I’ll trick people into eating food like black coffee or dark chocolate – they’ll think it’s the good kind until they take a bite, and bam! Bitterness everywhere. Worse than raisins. Speaking of dark, bitter things, how’s old Batsy? Still refusing to let you see him leave and opting to vanish in the dark when you have your back turned? One day, you’re going to keep staring at him as you lock the windows, and he’ll be forced to take the stairs, like any old schmuck. You’ll have to take pictures when that happens, commish; I need to see pictures of Batman going down the stairs, all grumpy and gloomy. You could sell them to Vicky and earn enough money to buy new desk chairs that don’t kill your back a little every day. I swear, the guy who designed them must be one of the world’s evilest villains, and one of the most successful too, because he’s gone under the radar so far…”

On and on, Neal kept babbling about everything and anything, changing the topic at the drop of a hat. Peter couldn’t keep up, and neither could his companions from New York, but Gordon didn’t seem to have the same difficulties. He kept nodding at Neal, and motioned to everyone to sit down as he listened to the conman’s worryingly weird rant. He even wordlessly offered coffee and cookies to everyone, which they all accepted with gratitude as Neal didn’t stop talking by himself, figuring they’d need the energy boost.

Finally, finally, Neal lost steam and his monologue petered out.

“You got it all out, kid?” Asked Gordon with a knowing smile, the moment he could get a word in edgewise.

Neal grinned back, not the least bit embarrassed or concerned by his friend’s worried faces. “Yep, I think that’s all of it. Had to keep it all locked in for over a year; you have no idea how hard it was to stay in character and keep it all from spilling at any given moment. Caffrey doesn't blabber.”

“I can imagine.” Gordon huffed and offered him another cookie. “But you've yet to introduce your friends, Dick.”

Neal startled, something close to panic flickering behind his eyes. “Crap! Alfred would have my head if he knew! Uhm, Gordon, here are Special FBI Agents Peter Burke, Diana Berrigan and Clinton Jones, as well as Mozzie, a personal friend of mine. Guys, this is Commissioner Jim Gordon, the man in charge of enforcing some manner of order in Gotham.”

They exchanged the customary greetings in a weird sort of tense daze. This man clearly knew Neal personally, or at least one of his aliases that Peter had never heard of before. Since Gordon was a cop and their liaison in Gotham, Peter had to know more.

“So have you and Neal known each other long?”

Gordon raised an eyebrow. “'Neal'?”

“The alias the FBI knows me as, Neal Caffrey.” The CI clarified with a sheepish, anxious grin Peter's way. He didn't like it one bit. “I should probably tell you that everyone here knows me as Officer Dick Grayson.”

… What?

“You impersonated a police officer?!” Jones burst out.

“Uhm no? I am a police officer. Except I pretended to be a criminal called 'Neal Caffrey' for a long-term mission for the Justice League.”

If this was a joke, Peter wasn't laughing. “Neal,” he warned, “stop fooling around.”

“He's telling the truth.” Commissioner Gordon stepped in between serene sips of his coffee. “Officer Grayson has been a member of our force for years, and part of the Bludhaven police before that. Due to his skills, the Justice League regularly asked to borrow him for infiltration, intel gathering or item recovery missions under a fake identity, which is probably how you came to know a so-called Neal Caffrey.

“Over a year ago, the League became aware of spies and other dangerous elements undercover in the FBI. Dick was sent as Caffrey to sniff out and report those individuals to clear your bureau out. I'm sorry you had to learn of it this way, but nobody knew outside of select members of the Justice League, Dick’s family and myself.” Gordon concluded with a chiding look at Neal, who lowered his head in shame.

Peter still wasn't laughing. “Neal, if this is a con, you're going to have to try harder than that.”

Neal looked up in a panic. “No, Peter! This isn't a con or a prank or anything like that, just the truth. My real name is Dick, not Neal, and I'm really a police officer.”

As if Peter could believe that. “Uh-huh, and I suppose this is the real Commissioner Jim Gordon I was told to meet, and all this,” he gestured towards the room, “is a real police station, filled with real police officers and not your accomplices for whatever scam you've planned here. Now I understand why Mozzie had to come.”

“My comings and goings have nothing to do with you, Suit. And I was warned of Ne- Dick’s true identity yesterday night. I’m here to serve as moral support in the face of your skepticism.”

For God's sake, after so long working together you'd have thought Neal knew better than to try such a crude and transparent con on him, especially since Mozzie was so clearly involved. Peter actually felt a bit hurt that his CI ever believed this had a chance of working.

Hurt and disappointed. He'd hoped he and Neal were beyond these petty schemes. Apparently not.

He looked at 'Jim Gordon', sure that the man would crack sooner than unflappable Neal. “Enough of this charade, who are you and what are you trying to con FBI agents for?”

Neal and 'Gordon' exchanged commiserating looks.

“I am Commissioner Jim Gordon, and I'm here to explain to you the truth of Officer Grayson's mission as well as help you with whatever operation you have in Gotham or Dick wouldn't have brought you here.”

Persistent, was he? “Really? So I suppose you can show me your badge and identification papers.”

It earned him an amused huff, but 'Gordon' obligingly pulled out everything Peter demanded.

… It all looked very authentic, but Peter knew Neal's talent for forgeries. He wouldn't buy this scam with a few well-made fake identity cards.

“I guess I can ask everyone out there for the same papers and they'll all have them.”

“Go ahead.” 'Gordon' replied without losing his cool. If Peter didn't know this was an impersonator, he'd be impressed with his composure. “Just make sure to mention you're Dick's acquaintances and avoid saying you're federal agents. We don't like Outsiders much, here, and FBI agents butting in Gothamite business even less.”

Peter would have argued had 'Gordon's' words not echoed so perfectly Gilden's warnings. “Sure, let's get this over with right now to move on to the real GCPD office.” He stood up and made for the door. “Jones,” he ordered before they reached the bullpen, “please look for Jim Gordon's appearance online.”

Neal caught up just in time to add, “I'll give you the office's wifi codes. You need special access to have the internet in Gotham outside of the Bat-watch; we have our own service providers.”

Leaving his CI and Jones to their business, Peter took Diana with him to the bullpen.

The first thing he noticed was a team of harried men and women in police uniforms carting in an unconscious, oddly blue-faced man in an insulated full body outfit to what he assumed was a cell. It looked more suited to holding monsters than people with those heavy duty reinforcements and multiple security systems, but the locks on the outside and the transparent panels allowing him to see in clued him in.

Neal had really gone all out on the pretenses. How had he even found this building?

He went to the first free pseudo-cop and asked for his identification papers. It took Neal slipping by his side with a ditzy grin to smooth out a hostile frown and obtain them, though the documents and badge looked surprisingly legit, so he moved to the second policeman. Then the third, the fifth, the ninth, the twentieth…

All their documents seemed authentic. Either Neal and Mozzie had put a startling amount of effort into this scam, or…

But no. No. Doubt was the beginning of belief and then he might actually fall for the con. No way was Neal Caffrey actually an undercover cop on behalf of the blasted Justice League! The very idea was ludicrous.

“Uh, Boss?” Jones called from where he was hunched over his phone. “I- I don’t know how to break it to you, but our Jim Gordon looks a lot like… well like Commissioner Jim Gordon.”

Peter hurried to look over Jones’s shoulder and yes, the pictures in newspaper cutouts looked a lot like the man they'd left in his office.

Looking up, Neal, Mozzie and Gordon(?) were talking with each other as they watched over the bullpen, as if they were waiting for the FBI agents to come to their senses and admit the truth.

Assuming it was the truth, which Peter was not yet ready to consider.

Neal caught his eye and tilted his head with a smile. “How about we go back to the commish’s office to talk about what we came here for?”

He didn’t have any better option, did he?

Back in Gordon’s(?) office, with more cookies and half-empty mugs of now lukewarm coffee, Neal exposed the entire Pullman case. The Commissioner nodded at all the right places, and only spoke up when the CI was done.

“I don’t see why you had to come to me for that, Dick. You should know better than me that a socialite like this Pullman will first go to his fellow socialites for help. He’ll also find the most suitable people to extract him to other countries during a gala – probably the big one in two days. Assuming he’s not already dead in a ditch, that is.”

Neal shrugged as he opened a new box of cookies. White chocolate chunks this time. “Peter wouldn’t have believed me without another, respectable voice agreeing with me. But yes, best chance to catch Pullman is to wait for the annual gala in favor of education for the underprivileged in Crime Alley.”

The three agents looked at each other, all wondering if they should trust that tip. It did come from a known conman and who they still suspected to be his accomplice.

As the highest-ranking member present, the decision fell on Peter’s shoulders. “... Fine, we don’t have any better leads, so we’ll do that. We’ll wait here until it’s time to go to the hotel the bureau booked, and then we’ll wait there until it’s time to go. Our badges should allow us to enter this gala.” Gilden had advised them to limit contact with the locals as much as possible, and Peter intended on following the words of the sole sane man he’d met with any intel on Gotham.

Neal had other ideas. “Yeah, sorry but no. Your FBI badges would only get you attacked by an angry mob. Luckily for you, I can get us all in without troubles.” Peter opened his mouth, but his CI rushed on. “Yes, it’s all above the law. I have- you can say I have contacts, I guess.”

Gordon looked at Neal oddly, but Neal shook his head before he could get a word in. “No, commish, let’s not overwhelm them. They’ll know soon enough. Anyway,” he turned back towards the New Yorkers, “we also won’t go to the hotel. That place is a death trap, especially for federal Outsiders. You’ll have your throat slitted in the middle of the night and all your belongings stolen or thrown in the river, including your corpse. No, we’ll all go to my home.”

That was the first Peter heard of it. “You still have a home in Gotham?”

Gordon coughed in a way that sounded a lot like someone trying to cover a laugh. Neal shot him a knowing look but didn’t comment. “Well, yes, I still have my flat, but I wasn’t talking about that. I meant my dad’s house.”

“Oh.” Peter hadn’t expected that. He’d assumed his dad was dead, that Neal and his father were on bad terms, or that the man was an abusive parent, although he might have misunderstood his CI’s words the same way he’d thought the conman came from the boonies.

But then again, he didn’t feel all that comfortable crashing in the house of his CI’s father, the man whose son he had personally sent to prison. It would make their stay more than a little awkward.

“Uhhh, are you sure about this? We can always find another hotel instead of imposing on your father. I’m sure the five of us barging in unexpected would make his house too crowded?”

Yes, that was definitely a laugh Gordon hoped to pass as a cough.

Neal, on the other hand, didn’t bother pretending he didn't find his hesitation hilarious. “Don’t worry about that. And any hotel would be the same as long as you’re Outsiders, so don’t count on waking up in the morning if you insist on finding a room.”

Peter sighed, he really wasn’t getting out of that one, was he? Besides, he could tell Neal was eager to see his family again. “I guess we don’t have a choice. You should at least call your father to tell him we’re coming.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Neal grinned impishly. Gordon coughed suspiciously again. “He already knows. He always knows.”

… Peter wasn’t willing to dig deeper into whatever that meant.

They all stayed silent for a long moment until Gordon spoke up. “You’re free to stay in the precinct for a while, long enough to get a little accustomed to Gotham. I can promise whatever you see here will still be less chaotic than what awaits you in Dick’s home.”

“Hey!”

“You’ve been to Neal’s home?” Demanded Peter instead of acknowledging his CI’s outburst.

Gordon looked at Neal, who gave him a cryptic tilt of the head, then he turned towards the federal agents again. “Yes, several times. Dick has been friends with my daughter since they were both preteens, but I met him when he was eight. I was… I was in charge of the investigation into his parents’ murder.”

That… that made no sense. “His- his parents’ murder?!” Jones parroted as he shifted to look at Neal. “Don’t tell me your dad is one of those people that came back from the dead!”

Neal shook his head after another sip of his overly sweetened coffee, his voice preternaturally calm. “No, Bruce is my adoptive dad. My brother Jason is the only one that died and came back.”

… Maybe this was too sensitive a subject. Peter looked for a change of topic.

Thankfully, Diana had the same idea and more ideas on how to redirect the conversation.

“Is ‘Dick’ your real name? Like, your real real name?”

The chuckles Neal let out sounded much more genuine than his expression of a moment ago; Peter allowed his shoulders to relax a fraction. “Yes it is! Well, technically, it’s Richard, but I’m not too fond of that name and my parents have always called me Dick – they were foreigners – so it stuck. Nobody I like calls me Richard.”

Dick Grayson. Peter still didn’t believe in this obvious scam, but he had an inkling he’d just heard Neal’s true name nonetheless. Nobody picked ‘Dick’ as an alias.

“I thought everyone around here was just awfully rude.” Muttered Jones, eliciting another round of chuckles from the two Gothamites.

“Well, they wouldn’t be mean to me,” corrected Neal with a grin, “but they’re going to be much less nice with you unless I introduce you as my friends, so let’s get you your first proper introduction to average Gothamites – the commish and I don’t count, we’re both too tolerant of Outsiders, so don’t base your expectations on us.”

Peter thought his CI to be exaggerating for drama’s sake. Peter soon found out that he should have trusted his friend more (even if Neal still hadn’t convinced him this wasn’t an elaborate con).

Before he could even initiate a conversation with one of the visibly hostile policemen downstairs, Neal rushed before him and drew the closest cops into a discussion. He probably hoped to break the ice before Peter and the rest arrived, but Peter couldn't help suspecting his friend of secretly telling his accomplices how to behave.

“So, Dick, where have you been? You were gone for a long time.”

“New York.” Replied Neal with an easy, if not a bit vapid grin. It sat smoothly on his face for all that it felt weird to Peter. “That’s where I met my new friends.” He gestured towards the three FBI agents and Mozzie, who offered back awkward waves and forced smiles.

The policemen and -women replied with vaguely less antagonistic nods before they turned back to Neal. Peter and his team opted to stay some distance away for now.

When Gordon walked up to them and stayed near (between them and the bullpen, like he attempted to shield them?), Peter figured he made the right call.

“What was it like in New York?” Wondered one of the youngest cops downstairs.

Neal grimaced. “Sunny.”

All the Gothamites within hearing range shuddered, one even signed himself as if to ward off evil, except Peter didn’t recognize the symbol he used. It definitely wasn’t a cross.

Might as well ask their one source of information on Gotham that didn’t wear an ankle bracelet. “What was that?” Peter asked, motioning towards the man in question, who had resumed his questioning of Neal and his experience outside of Gotham.

Did these people ever leave their hometown or did they spend all their lives stuck in this cesspit? From the intensity with which they listened to Neal’s tales and complaints (that Peter had heard a thousand times before), you’d think they were all imprisoned within the city’s borders.

… There had been a heavily reinforced customs outpost…

“The sign?” Gordon confirmed, bringing Peter’s thought back to the topic at hand. “It’s the Mark of the Church of the Divine Hellfire, a local sect.”

Peter must have misheard. “What was that?”

“The Church of the Divine Hellfire, a local sect.” Gordon repeated automatically, not yet noticing the FBI agents’ growing concern. It took him a moment to realize the change of atmosphere and look at Peter and the others. “What is it?”

“You… I thought it was against internal policy to hire people from sects.” Answered Diana with more tact than Peter could muster. Who knew what a Gothamite sect with that name did. Burn people alive, maybe?

Gordon stared, confused, before he let out a few good-natured chuckles. “Tourists, I swear. You need to understand a few things about Gotham. First; we don’t give a damn about your Outsider policies; in fact, we might be tempted to go the complete opposite way out of spite. Second, as long as you haven’t committed really heinous crimes, like mass murder, rape or cannibalism, you can still get about any job. Your rep sheet isn’t as important as it is Outside, because basically everyone has done things they shouldn’t at one point in their lives.

“Third, the police force is massively understaffed, even when we only deal with super-criminality peripherally and leave most of the work to the Bats; we aren’t in any position to be picky on our new recruits, especially not because of their religion.

“Finally, there is sect and there is sect. We do have a few murderous religious groups around, the kind that’s into human sacrifice, brainwashing, torture and all that, but we also have sects that are just weird in a non-threatening way. Like the Church of the Divine Hellfire, led by Judge Frollo. Its biggest selling point is the implantation of more gargoyles, bonfires and shaded areas, and the praying against the Evil Day Star, aka the sun. They’re harmless, and their praying songs are pretty catchy.”

… Peter would need some time to process all that. He just needed one confirmation. “You do fight against the… the bad sects, right?”

“Of course, though as they tend to be led by people in the supervillain category, most of the work is delegated to the Bats. My men simply aren’t equipped to deal with magic, or demon summonings, or biohazards.”

Yeah, no. That answer didn’t help Peter’s frazzled nerves at all. He decided to tune back in Neal’s conversation with the cops-

“...too mainstream, so Pam and Harley decided on New York instead. We ‘visited’ a few carefully selected and empty offices of polluting companies, and the girls went all out in the name of the planet and senseless destruction respectively. I think they enjoyed their present. Then there was the afterparty; Harley wiped the floor with me at karaoke. For a supervillain that cackles so much, she has a really nice singing voice…”

-only to look around for another distraction after realizing his CI was talking about Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy’s recent attack on New York, the one that Neal had called an anniversary of them getting together and had apparently attended behind the FBI’s back. As his handler, Peter should listen in and find out how the monitored criminal slipped away unnoticed, but he’d far exceeded his limit of bullshit for the day (the week. The month. The year. His whole life) and he needed something less mind-boggling for the moment.

A few desks over, another cop was talking to his gargoyle and calling it ‘my darling Princess Antoinette’. Nope, not that way either.

Ah, Jones had split from the others and was talking with a policewoman farther back. Peter headed their way.

“Can I join you?” He asked, because despite Neal’s (and El’s) claims, he had manners.

“Of course!” Replied the officer, a visibly energetic and jovial woman in her late thirties. “Agent Jones was talking about the badges he hoped to earn while in Gotham.”

Badges? What badges? Surely they weren’t talking about police or FBI badges.

Jones must have read the confusion on his face. “The badges on the Bat-watch, in the achievements section.” Ah, Peter had seen it in the menu but had been far more focused on the terrifying description of villains and their evil deeds to look into it in the brief time since he’d had access to the app. “You can earn them by, for instance, meeting rogues and vigilantes or surviving certain types of attacks. I was asking Officer Tyler which supervillains were currently out of Arkham, just to know which badges I might have a chance to win during our stay.”

The groan behind him told Peter that Neal had also heard that, and wasn’t any more impressed than he was. The “I should have known,” that followed only compounded that feeling.

“I see,” replied Peter, not any more eager to tackle that bit of insanity than to interact with the grown man cooing over his gargoyle on the other side of the room. Was the Gotham madness contagious? Gilden had warned them that most agents that returned alive had lost some marbles along the way. “I- In that case, I won’t bother you. I’ll go see how the others are doing.” And he made his graceless escape.

Neal – who had ended his conversation about villains, and had moved on to asking how a penguin was doing – and Jones were out. That left Diana and, God forbid, Mozzie if Peter didn’t want to speak alone to the locals.

Mozzie was still on the ledge overlooking the bullpen with Commissioner Gordon (again, assuming he was the real deal and not a fake), both engaged in an intense conversation in hushed voices. Peter probably didn’t want to know what had paranoid, jittery Mozzy so absorbed, to the point of speaking to a cop and ignoring a room filled with more of them.

He wanted to avoid a one-on-one discussion with a Gothamite to preserve his sanity; getting involved with Mozzie’s crazy talks kind of defeated the point.

So Diana it was. The woman had found refuge in a corner of the room, next to the water fountain. They stood side by side in slightly awkward silence for a while, watching the utter chaos that was the Gotham City Police Department and getting suspicious looks from any cop that spotted them.

Policemen came and went, seemingly without reason. Nobody bothered respecting the tacit rule of keeping their voices down, so the whole precinct was filled with shouts from both law enforcers and the criminals they brought in and out all day. Lots of criminals. Peter felt like half the city went through the doors in handcuffs or zip ties in the short time he’d been there.

At one point, a bunch of street kids were brought in, all scraggly and half feral. They were guided to a waiting area, next to the water fountain, so Peter and Diana moved out of the way to another corner. Some of these kids glared at them and snapped their teeth like they’d like nothing more than to bite their legs off; a little girl even growled in their direction like a dog.

An hour later, a group of cops frogmarched wounded and frightened thugs into the holding cells. Most of them looked angry and bitter, but one of them kept shrieking in terror about being attacked by a ‘signal’ in spite of his broken nose.

Wait, no, not a signal, but Signal. One of Gotham’s numerous costumed freaks pretending to enforce order when they only added to the chaos. How did a city end up with so many vigilantes anyway?

When a police officer escorted a seemingly normal woman in and sat her in one of the guest chairs, Peter couldn’t help paying attention. He wouldn’t have taken notice if not for three things: one, the woman was the first sane-looking person to cross the precinct’s threshold. Two, she obviously had no idea why she was there, and was politely asking when she could return to work.

Three, half the loud, hectic bullpen quieted down the moment the officer announced “We have a Riley Trickers.”

If this was code for a villain attack, Peter didn’t get it.

“What is this about?” He asked Neal, because this didn’t look like a situation he would understand just by watching, and if he had to talk to a Gothamite anyway, he’d prefer to speak to one he knew.

Neal looked at him with a frown, mirrored in the faces of the policemen around him. “Riley Trickers isn’t a real person, it’s an identity someone regularly brainwashes people into assuming. The lady over there was made to believe she’s 38, works at Farbbs Industries as a janitor, has a dog named Toby, makes her own clothes, and so on. It’s always the same details; unless I’m counting wrong, she’s the fifty-second victim in the last twenty years.”

That… was too much for Peter’s overworked brain to process, so it joined the long queue of things on the backburner he’d take his time to digest in the near future. Probably.

Maybe.

Diana must have been assimilating weird facts better than him (or just managed to ignore and reject more oddities) because she actually had a reply to that. “Shouldn’t you take her to get a psych evaluation then?”

Everyone within hearing range looked at her in horror.

“What?! Why would we do that?”

“Hasn’t she suffered enough?!”

“What kind of monster would-”

“Stay away from her, you psychos!”

Peter blinked, and shared a bewildered glance with Diana. A few of the nearby cops were in the middle of drawing their guns when Neal stepped in to appease the threatening crowd.

“Guys, guys, calm down! Diana didn’t mean it like that; she’s an Outsider, you know they’ve all been conditioned to believe in shrinks. It’s not their fault. Of course we’re not going to send the poor miss to a mind-shredder, right Diana?”

“Well I-”

“Right, Diana?” Neal repeated, this time with a pointed glare and a tilt of his head towards the incensed, murderous cops. Diana took the hint.

“Of course, Nea- Dick. Of course we won’t.” She stuttered, a bead of sweat rolling down her temple under the mob’s bloodthirsty glowering.

“See? Now, instead of harming a poor indoctrinated Outsider for things beyond her control, we should take proper care of the newest Mrs Trickers.”

The police officers grumbled, shot Diana a few more cautionary glares, but eventually holstered their half-drawn guns and most went back to work.

Since Diana wisely kept silent for now, Peter took it upon himself to ask what she undoubtedly wondered. “What’s going to happen to the fake Mrs Trickers?”

Neal tore his gaze from the few still menacing cops long enough to reply. “We’re going to identify her with missing person files or a picture of her in the newspapers, then her family will collect her from the hospital and with some love and care, she should remember most of her real self in a few months. She’ll likely retain a few of the shared ‘Riley Trickers’ mannerisms, but that’s all.” He went back to staring the lingering policemen into staying at bay. “And do not ever again suggest sending anyone to a so-called mind healer in front of Gothamites. I stopped them from mauling you once, but I won't do it twice.”

Diana gulped loudly next to him, but none of the FBI agents dared to argue. They’d clearly avoided a bloodbath by a hair's breadth just now.

If all of Gotham hated psychiatrists, Gilden hadn’t told them in his long list of subjects to avoid. But then again, Neal was Gothamite, and he’d demonstrated an intense aversion for therapists, so maybe they should take their cues from his past weird behaviors as well.

God, but Neal was weird on so many points! How could they tell which were just a ‘Neal’ thing, and which were a Gotham problem? And how had agents not exposed to any Gotham madness beforehand survived a trip to the damn city?!”

(The answer was obvious: most of them hadn’t.)

Peter’s increasingly dark thoughts were cut short by a youthful voice with a thick Gotham accent. “Excuse me, I was told you found a bunch of kids on the streets. I’m here to take them home.”

He turned around and came face to face with a smirking teenage boy, about 17 or so, clad in baggy black clothes, covered in piercings and with a weird tuft of white bleached hair over his eyes.

Peter liked to think he wasn’t prejudiced, but there was no way the teen didn’t come here to cause trouble.

A comely policewoman arrived to take care of him. “Yes, dear, they arrived a while ago.” She looked at the group of street kids that had been brought in earlier, the ones that threatened to bite. “Who are you to them?”

“I’m their big brother.” Announced the boy. As he said it, he looked pointedly at the scraggly children, most of whom started back in confusion before they nodded in the least believable way possible.

Nevermind that they clearly didn’t know each other or that the teen was too clean and well-dressed to live on the streets, none of them looked anything alike. Peter expected the cop to send the boy off with a scolding for lying to a police officer.

“I see. Then give me a second to fill out the proper documents and you’ll all be free to go.”

Was this what having a stroke felt like? His brain had bluescreened so many times that Peter was seriously starting to worry for his health.

“Wait a minute!” He yelled, drawing the attention of most of the bullpen again. Even Gordon and Mozzie, who’d stayed away until now, drew closer at his outburst. “You’re not seriously going to let him take the kids just like that?!”

“Peter-” Neal tried to intervene, but his handler had had enough.

“Don’t you ‘Peter’ me! I can overlook all the madness going around in that fake police station of yours, but I’m not letting some kids be taken away by a suspicious teenager that obviously isn’t related to them! Just look at them! I bet none of the kids even have a single parent in common!”

“Family isn’t restricted to blood, Peter.” Neal growled. It raised goosebumps on the agent’s skin – even when he’d thought Neal had been angry in the past, never had he looked so terrifying. Had he always been like that? Did being in Gotham make him drop the pretense of harmlessness, or was the city turning his CI into a violent criminal?

Gordon defused the situation by stepping between the two. “It’s fine, Agent Burke. We know the kid; he’s one of Red Hood’s brood.”

In what world was that supposed to be reassuring?!

Jones cleared his throat loudly next to him. “Uh, Peter? Red Hood is a good guy, remember?”

Right. Right. He’d forgotten that. He didn’t believe it one bit, but Red Hood was protected by the Justice League, so he couldn’t doubt his 'goodness' in public. It didn’t make the current situation OK by any means, though, and that, he could and did say out loud.

“Well,” countered Gordon casually, “he’s pretty good with kids, and it’s always better than sending them to Child Protective Services. I don’t know how it goes Outside, but CPS in Gotham are the gateway to death, slavery or crime, if you’re lucky.”

Diana regained her wits the fastest and was thus the first to reply while Peter rebooted yet again. “You’re not serious.”

Neal must have calmed down while Gordon took charge, because he was back to chuckling again, with only hints of his earlier wrath lingering between his brows. “If only. I mean, if you want my experience with CPS, they threw me into juvie the moment my parents died. I hadn’t done anything wrong, but they didn't want to deal with the Outsider kid so I skipped the orphanages or foster homes stage. I got lucky; no criminal endorsement, dubious experimentation or organs harvesting for me. And I was adopted soon after, so my case is one of the few happy ones.”

… That was a lie. Neal was lying. He had to be lying.

Right?

“Yeah, I remember that. Your father tried to reform the system after taking you in, but the corruption came back faster than flies on roadkill, so nowadays, we just let Red Hood foster all the street kids instead of informing CPS. It’s safer for the children.”

And Gordon was supporting Neal's claim, so either the man really was an impersonator (which even Peter was starting to doubt. This was all too elaborate for a scam), or the CI had been telling the truth.

Christ. Why did he agree to come to Gotham again? Peter just wanted to go home to El right now.

“Red Hood is the best,” the teenager pretending to be related to the street kids piped up, “he got me out of a trafficking ring and taught me how to cook. Now I can bake cakes and pies all by myself!”

Peter, too mentally exhausted to filter what came out of his mouth, snorted. “At least these crazy vigilante freaks are useful for something.”

He realized he made a mistake right away. Every single Gothamite head in the GCPD swiveled to stare at him blankly, the rest of their body motionless and their eyes staring straight ahead, so the necks had to rotate at weird angles in true murder doll fashion to make eye contact. The cops, Gordon, the prisoners in the cells, the blue-skinned man in an insulated suit, Neal... they all watched Peter with eerie, emotionless faces.

Diana, Jones and Mozzie took a subconscious step back. He was alone.

A cold shiver wracked his spine, and Peter knew he’d fucked up royally. Gilden had told them never to insult the local vigilantes, or they’d face a furious mob out for their blood. He’d forgotten about that and was about to be murdered as a consequence, with his fellow FBI agents probably soon to follow.

Quick! Gilden had also told them to try something if they ever misstepped, but what? What had he suggested? Something about diverting their hatred on another topic, a topic that rallied them all together in their malice…

“Uh- But- But it’s better than wearing your underwear over your tights and flying around like an idiot like Superman in Metropolis, right?”

A heartbeat, and everyone suddenly started moving normally, like porcelain dolls morphing into human beings. People still groused and sent him suspicious glares, but his clumsy diversion got them to stop boring holes into his skull with dead eyes. Most Gothamites added their own disparaging comments about Metropolis, and the crowd dispersed, each cop returning to their duties.

Peter collapsed, boneless, on the closest chair. His hand shook and his teeth chattered, and everything felt cold. His blood pumped loudly in his temples, surprisingly still flowing inside his body after such a close call.

“You just dodged a bullet there.” Announced Neal, who thankfully looked like a living, breathing being once more. Then he leaned over Peter and all he could think about were the looming gargoyles of stone watching over the rooftops. “Make sure not to commit the same mistake twice.”

Chapter Text

New York, a day before, on the night of the meeting about going to Gotham.

When Mozzie received Neal’s message, he knew something was up.

They’d long established codes for all kinds of emergencies (Neal being the only one of all his contacts and colleagues that actually conformed to it), so when he read ‘Dinner at my place? I’ll make pasta.’ on his prepaid cellphone, he understood ‘Come to my place tonight. It’s not life-threatening, but we must talk about something asap’.

So here Mozzie was, in Neal’s apartment, sipping on some of his best burgundy while he waited for his fellow conman to make his appearance.

Hey, Neal knew that if he wanted Mozzie not to get his grubby hands on his belongings, he had to hide them better. The older forger took the bottle display shelf as an open invitation to treat himself to whatever wine he found. Neal had yet to do more than good-naturedly gripe about it anyway.

Two hours later, so well after his normal work hours, the FBI-bound CI finally came back home.

“Sorry for the wait, Moz. I had to explain a few things to the agents before I could leave.”

“No worries, mon frère. Chambertin and myself had much to share in your absence.” He replied with a gesture at the opened wine bottle.

Of course, Neal noticed that barely any wine had vanished from the bottle, meaning Mozzie had barely drank any, meaning he was too nervous to enjoy it as it deserved. But Neal didn’t comment, which was one more reason for the man to feature at the top of his list of favorite people (yes, it really existed). The conman knew when not to push.

“I see,” said Neal as he tore his eyes from the bottle to get himself a glass, “then don’t mind if I join in; I have the feeling this conversation will go easier with a bit of wine anyway.”

That got Mozzie to look up in alarm. “Troubles with the Suits?”

Neal sighed but shook his head. “No. Not with the FBI, not really.” He poured himself a glass but didn’t drink any. Whatever this was, it was bad. “It’s something related to my family.”

Mozzie gulped down his latest sip without tasting it. “Your family? Is Brian alright? Or Red Hood? Is the FBI on their tracks?”

At least his worry got Neal to smile, a tired, melancholy little thing, but a smile nonetheless. “No, they’re fine, all of them, thank you for asking.” His lips returned to their pinched flatness in no time, and Mozzie’s stress level rose in their stead. “But it’s still about them – and about me. I- I guess we haven’t been very honest with you all these years, Moz.”

As if he didn’t know that. “Of course you haven’t, Neal. In our profession, you can never tell the entire truth, not even to your closest associates. For instance, you don’t know my real name or my past. Not in detail.”

“Yeah, well,” he chuckled awkwardly, “we might have lied a bit more than that. For starters, my name isn’t really Neal. It’s Dick.”

Only because Mozzie was so familiar with Neal’s con face did he actually believe him. “Dick, huh? Your parents must have hated you.”

His attempt at levity was met with a smile that lasted a bit longer than the previous one. “English wasn’t their mother tongue, and technically, it’s Richard. But they always called me ‘Dick’ so dad and the rest of my adopted family followed suit. I’ve heard all the jokes.”

“I don’t doubt it.” Mozzie grinned, before he sobered up. “Are you sure you really want to tell me all this? I don’t mind you keeping secrets about your past, or for you to wait until you feel ready.” In fact, he’d keep referring to Dick as Neal in his head, if only to avoid slipping in the presence of Suits.

Neal ran a hand through his hair and shook his head at the same time. It looked weird. “Thanks, but I… If I ever tell you the truth, it has to be now, Moz. Tomorrow’s mission with the FBI will be my last, and I’m going to have to cut off all contact with anyone that knows Neal for a while after that.”

That was a lot to process. “What do you mean, ‘the last’? Your CI contract with the Suits still has years before expiration. Are you going to run away without me? Because you know I’m ready to help exfiltrate you no matter the cost, right?”

“I know, Moz, I know. That’s why we’re friends. But it won’t be necessary this time, because our next mission will take us to Gotham,” Mozzie choked on thin air, “which is my hometown, so I’ll have countless ways to give the FBI the slip.”

Mozzie took the time to lay down his glass to process, all the while never taking his eyes off Neal. The younger man let him stew in silence as he picked at the seams of the tablecloth, avoiding his gaze.

A long moment later, Mozzie found his voice. “You’re from Gotham. You’re from Gotham. I guess that explains a few things about you.”

Fact is: in general, criminals knew more about Gotham than the average joe. When you reached a certain level of skill, you inevitably had to trade with Gotham for some of your supplies. At least half of the city’s economy was built with crime in mind, if not in goal, so nowhere else did you find such quality of weaponry or tools.

Mozzie’s lockpicking set came from Gotham. A lot of the old paints, pigments, canvases and brushes for their forgeries, made with materials or in ways that were not so legal anymore, came from Gotham. The equipment they sometimes used to infiltrate high-security buildings came straight from Gotham, because the competition was not geared towards silent sneaking in, made some squeaky noise and left traces in their wake.

The place acted as an open market for every serious felon the world over. In order to purchase all that specialized equipment, though, you had to interact with Gothamites, which implied knowing exactly on which landmines not to step. And there were a lot.

So yes, Mozzie knew enough about the city to tell that Gothamites were not built the same way as regular people, and now had his eyes open enough to see that some of Neal’s quirks made a lot more sense with that added background.

Actually, he could hit himself for not having realized that earlier. In hindsight, it was all so obvious.

He pointedly looked at the rows of gargoyles on every available surface as he listened to Neal’s reply. “I imagine it does. At least it means I don’t have to explain to you the differences between Gothamites and Outsiders.”

‘Outsiders’, the capital ‘o’ audible in the faint sneer Neal subconsciously made as he uttered the word. Typical Gothamite terminology. Neal really was from Gotham.

Damn.

“Since I’m not sure you made the connection just yet,” Neal continued while Mozzie reassessed every interaction he’d ever had with him from the early days of their collaboration, “that means my entire family is from Gotham. Brian included.”

Which… made sense, but was a little too much for Mozzie to properly tackle right now. Because Neal was Gothamite.

All of a sudden, the weird Swiss army knife, the countless gargoyles, the odd defensiveness about the Bats, and his ties with Red Hood, his brother, made a lot more sense.

But a fidgety Neal kept talking in a clear attempt to get it all out as fast as possible, so Mozzie forced himself to pay attention. “You actually know ‘Brian’ and my real name. We’ve both got two other major identities, and they’re sort of famous.”

Famous people from Gotham that could be Neal and Brian’s real identities. No, Mozzie tried figuring it out when his friend trailed off, but he drew a blank.

So Neal tittered awkwardly as he said, “I suppose you’ve heard of Brucie Wayne and Richie Grayson-Wayne, right?”

Brucie and Richie? Of course, who hadn’t heard of the two lovable idiots? But what did they have to do with-

Oh. Oh fuck.

Neal’s uncontrollable, nervous giggles escalated when he saw the realization on his face. “Yeah, that’s me and ‘Brian’. We both act as air-headed playboys in public; it keeps us mostly out of danger and prevents people from making the connection with our aliases. Like, I told you I could act as Richie perfectly, but even after I showed you, Peter and El, none of you even thought for a second that I could be the actual Richie Grayson-Wayne.”

No, they hadn’t. Just like Mozzie would have laughed at anyone pretending sullen, shy, smart Brian could be in any way related to the fabulously moronic Brucie Wayne. The adoption problem clicked, though…

He wasn’t yet sure what he felt about the deception, but he had to admit, that was one magnificent con they’d pulled. Truly worthy of praise.

It also raised more questions; like, if Red Hood was Neal’s brother and Brian’s son, then he had to be-

“Red Hood is Jay Todd.” He said out loud as it hit him. Only one child of Brucie Wayne had ever gone missing for long enough in the right timeframe, and that was Jay. The son that had died and came back to life (no matter what the media outside of Gotham claimed. Mozzie remembered the funeral and the family’s very real grief on the news. No one could fake mourning so well).

“Todd-Wayne.” Corrected Neal with a pointed smile that was all Gothamite. Full, hyphenated names from now on, then, duly noted. “And yes, he’s Red Hood.” The smile faded, shifting into something abashed and apprehensive. “Which brings me to my and B’s other identities.”

“You’re not going to announce that Brucie Wayne is Batman, are you?” Mozzie forced a laugh in another attempt to lighten the heavy atmosphere. “The story about butts matching isn’t enough to convince even the most ardent serious conspiracy theorists.”

Neal’s guilty silence and averted eyes were… very telling.

It seemed the butts did match after all.

“Christ.” Muttered Mozzie as soon as he regained partial control of his vocal cords. He blamed his unbearably tight throat for how gutted he sounded. “Brucie Wayne is Batman.”

Then he looked at Neal, who was watching him with remorseful pity and there came another epiphany. “And you’re Nightwing...”

He knew a fair bit about Gotham’s Bats, and only one fit Neal’s, or rather Richie’s profile.

“That’s me.” Neal laughed awkwardly, and flinched as soon as he spoke. Words tumbled out of his mouth. “But that… It doesn’t really change anything Moz. I’m sorry we ended up using you, but you were never the target of this mission. Bruce trusted you not to commit any really bad crimes from the start, and so did I after just a week of meeting you. You were… a… a convenient way to train and introduce Neal Caffrey without forcing me to do things my morals wouldn’t approve of, but you were never endangered in any way by our other identities during the missions we did together. You’re not even in any JL database because B wanted to respect your dislike of the system.”

… Goddamnit… After all this time, Mozzie actually still believed Neal. The young man had saved his bacon too many times for him to revoke that trust out of hand. His head and his paranoia screamed at him that this was a trap, but his heart and all his instincts told him Neal – Richie Grayson-Wayne, Gotham's darling idiot playboy; Nightwing, the terror of Bludhaven – was telling the truth.

So instead of immediately confronting Neal or running away to drop off from the face of the Earth (as if that would help with Bats), he asked for explanations. “... Were all our jobs together actually missions?”

“No.” Neal replied without a second of hesitation. “A few were, like when we retrieved dangerous enchanted music boxes and kryptonite-imbued paintings, or when we gathered intel from people of interest, but the vast majority of our heists had nothing to do with the Justice League or Nightwing. I swear.”

That… was something. It meant at least some of what he shared with Neal was real, right? “And you’re on a mission right now.”

It wasn’t a question. Both Nightwing and Richie Grayson-Wayne could have easily avoided getting trapped under the Suits’ thumbs without revealing their other identities. Neal had to stay there for a reason.

He didn’t deny it. “Several dangerous people have infiltrated the FBI over the years, or bought the services of their agents. I was sent to flush them out. I let Peter send me to prison all those years ago to keep the Caffrey identity safe but benched – I barely spent any time in jail by the way – so when the JL became aware of those moles, we decided to pull a stunt that would hopefully end with Caffrey being brought in on the inside. It worked like a charm.”

That it did. Even Mozzie fell for it.

He stared, unseeing, at his empty glass as he pondered on what would follow. He could still run, for all the good it would do. If Neal’s words were true, the younger man wouldn’t go after him.

Though he already knew he wouldn’t do that. Not to Neal, whatever his other identities were.

Mozzie took the time to pour himself a large glass of burgundy and down it in one go (part of him wept at the waste of good wine, the other, much larger part needed alcohol to cope. To dull the sting of betrayal).

“So,” he started, collecting his thoughts as he spoke, “you’re Nightwing, here on a Justice League mission to purge the FBI of horrible criminals.” Neal nodded sheepishly. “You’re also Richie Grayson-Wayne, the eldest son of Brucie Wayne, who is actually Batman and the guy I know as Brian.” Another nod. “And I assume the rest of your family are vigilantes too, not just Jay Todd-Wayne, aka Red Hood.” A third nod. “Anything else of importance that I missed?”

“Well,” Neal ran a hand through his already disheveled hair. It still looked amazing, which Mozzie and his balding scalp took as a mild provocation. “As Dick Grayson, I’m a cop. Everybody at work knows I’m also Richie, but it helps separate my public persona from my work persona, which is pretty much how I am normally, minus a few brain cells. Gotta keep the Richie act believable. But apart from that, that’s it.”

Honestly, compared to the Cape revelation (although Nightwing wore no cape, which was only a mark of good sense, really), Neal working for the police was pretty easy to swallow. He’d always had strong morals on some topics.

“Have you told the Suits any of this?” Wondered Mozzie as he contemplated downing another glass. On the one hand, he preferred his head to stay clear for this conversation. On the other hand, alcohol had many useful and currently desired properties.

Neal grimaced; the shadows behind him undulated like a distraught cat’s tail. Mozzie had never noticed before, but now that he paid attention, it was impossible to ignore. Was Neal relaxing his tight leash on his Gothamite characteristics, or had Mozzie been willfully blind so far? “Not yet. I intend to tell them about the Richie part and the cop part when we get to Gotham, because that’s getting out whether I want it or not, but you remember Peter’s opinion on vigilantes… Diana mostly believes the same and Jones’ fascination with the Bats would make everything really awkward, especially if I only tell him, so they’re not learning about Nightwing.”

Yet Neal had told him, Mozzie. The paranoid criminal with dubious morals and a known tendency to use any information given to him.

He felt… touched by that display of trust.

Maybe he could return it in kind. Because it was Neal and Brian, two people he’d come to enjoy the company of and believe in over the years. They’d both helped him out of sticky situations enough times to earn the benefit of the doubt.

(Besides, he hadn’t missed that Neal could have just sent Suits or Capes at the safehouses he knew Mozzie currently resided in instead of spilling everything. Without this confession, he’d have never suspected the truth, and would never have stumbled into the, quite frankly, momentous blackmail material Neal was offering him on a silver plate.)

He just needed a point clarified. “You said this was to be your last mission with the FBI, so does that mean you’ll explain everything but Nightwing to the Suits or that you’ll run away once in Gotham?”

“A bit of both. I’ll tell Peter, Diana and Jones about the JL without mentioning that I’m part of it. Then I’ll stay in Gotham while they return home; the rest of the bureau will be told I died there, with plenty of evidence to back that up. It’s not like they’ll keep employing a Gothamite anyway.”

Ah, so that old piece of intel about the government refusing to hire from Gotham was true? Good to know Mozzie had one more reason to distrust the people in power. “So this will be your last time acting as Neal Caffrey?” He confirmed.

Neal nodded. “Yes, at least for the foreseeable future. Neal might come in handy again someday, you never know.”

“I see.” Mozzie crossed his arms over the table and braced for an objection he wouldn’t accept. “Then I’m coming with you to Gotham.”

Against his expectations, Neal looked absolutely unfazed by that statement. “Are you sure about this, Moz?” He still asked, but without conviction. “You’ll spend a lot of time surrounded by FBI agents, police officers and vigilantes. Not your usual crowd. And you know Gotham isn’t exactly welcoming of Outsiders either.”

“It doesn’t matter. You’re my friend, and so is Brian. I… I trust that you won’t betray me and that you’ll keep me safe from what Gotham throws my way. I want to come along; I need to see the truth of it with my own eyes.”

Neal’s gaze softened. For the first time today, his smile reflected warmth and actual happiness. “So be it, then. Bruce will be glad to see you at least. He gave me permission to tell you everything, but we weren't sure if you’d forgive us the deception.”

When Neal stood to stretch and loosen his taut frame, all smooth limberness, Mozzie could see both the shadow of Nightwing imprinted over his frame, but also the weight that had fallen from his shoulders with Mozzie’s acceptance. It comforted him in his decision to believe in his younger friend.

“Now, Moz, if you have no urgent questions that can’t wait until we’re home, I need to make a few calls. There’s a commissioner I need to warn, and four Outsider packages to prepare for tomorrow morning. I’ll have to pull a few strings to get them to New York on such short notice. See you tomorrow at seven?”

“Tomorrow at seven.” Confirmed Mozzie as he stood up as well, much less gracefully than Neal, he had to admit. But hey, everybody couldn’t be Nightwing!

If he snatched the half empty bottle of burgundy on his way out, Neal didn’t call him out on it.

Waving aside the Suits’ arguments against Mozzie tagging along proved easy, especially when Neal backed him up. At least the Suits had the good sense not to piss off a Gothamite when they needed his help to navigate his wretched home city.

The unknown Suit issued some last minute warnings after everyone checked the contents of the tourist kits Neal supplied, but Mozzie tuned him out. He’d already been given the speech on their way in, and knew they’d still be hit by curveballs no matter how much they prepared.

Such was the nature of Gotham.

The trip itself went by without a hitch. The Suits, while brainwashed cogs of an oppressive system, made for decent company as long as they all avoided some topics. Luckily for them, the awful revelation that the ludicrous ‘matching butts’ theory, the literal butt of all jokes in the conspiracy communities, was perfectly accurate had put Mozzie off conspiracies for a while.

Not forever, but he needed some time to get in touch with plausibility before he could dive in again.

When Neal took the steering wheel after the customs house and the boss Suit finally gave in, Mozie knew enough to grab the closest handrail and cling on for dear life. The two Suits in the back with him did not, too bad for them.

Those two might be tolerable for enforcers of a corrupted, unfair society, but Mozzie drew the line at helping Suits when no life was in danger. Or at least more in danger than any other time Neal drove…

Despite all the ghastly rumors Mozzie had gathered about Gotham over the years, he’d never entered the City of Crime before, only ordered materials from afar through several middlemen. It didn’t disappoint. The air was as polluted as expected, the light as dim, and the choice of decor as frightening. Like a haunted house, except ten hundred times worse, with barely breathable air, the scale of one of the States’ largest cities and with a very real risk of being murdered by a bozo in a cheap costume. It only lacked carved pumpkins and fake corpses.

God, let there not be any corpses or bits of corpses in his path during his stay, fake or otherwise…

The people inside the – questionably ornamented – precinct all greeted Neal by name, and all threw suspicious glares at his entourage. Mozzie had no idea how they identified them as Outsiders (maybe the smell of fresh air followed them; for all that you couldn’t call New York’s air ‘fresh’, it was still leagues better than this smog), but every Gothamite cop seemed intent on reminding them that they were not welcome, except for Neal.

The commissioner, on the other hand, smiled at them when he saw them. Moz had no idea if that was less or more worrisome.

Neal must have been more nervous than he’d let on, because the moment Gordon let him talk, he went on one of those jittery rants Mozzie hadn’t heard since their first days working together. The Suits clearly had never heard him blabber like that before, going on absurd tangents at the drop of a hat without leaving any opening for others to reply (or shut him up).

Gordon, on the other hand, seemed unfazed by the word vomit. He was Neal’s boss when the man wasn’t undercover for a Cape operation after all.

Predictably, the Suits didn’t believe a word of Neal’s ensuing, laborious confession. No wonder the young man refused to tell them of his third identity.

Mozzie felt a twinge of pride at being trusted with such information when honest – if misguided – fellow enforcers of the law were kept in the dark.

While Boss Suit and his minions went on their merry quest to interrogate the entire precinct in search of a flaw in what they believed to be a scam, Mozzie stayed behind to exchange a few words with Neal and Gordon.

“So you’re Ne- Dick’s actual employer.” He said, because he had to start somewhere.

“I am.” Agreed the commissioner. His mustache quivered with humor as he added, “At least when he works for the force. I’m not responsible for any of his other activities.”

Did… did the man know about Nightwing, or was he referring only to his undercover missions? Mozzie looked at Neal for confirmation.

The conman (cop? The wool he’d pulled over everyone’s eyes certainly qualified him for the ‘conman’ name) smiled without tearing his eyes from the Suit downstairs. Probably to leap off to their rescue in case they stepped on someone’s toes with their invasive questioning. “The Commish has known me since I was a kid, back when I started my ‘nightly escapades’.” He threw him a saucy wink. Of course, anyone could be listening in, and so Neal had to hide his vigilantism activities in the guise of Richie Grayson-Wayne’s ill-advised love affairs. Covering one secret with another. Smart. “But he’s been kind enough to look the other way any time he could have caught me. You know how paparazzi get when they smell a scoop.”

In other words, Gordon knew, probably about the whole family, even, but they’d never confirmed it for plausible deniability. OK, Mozzie could work around that; he didn’t like cops, but Gothamite police were still Gothamite and as such not nearly as straight-laced and opposed to crime as their Outsider counterparts, whether they were crooked or not.

In any case, Gordon was an ally. Neal wouldn’t have shared so much if he posed a risk to Mozzie.

“Nice coffee you’ve got here.” Moz observed as he took another sip to keep himself busy. Gordon might be on Neal’s side, but that didn’t mean standing next to a cop – two? Did Neal count? – in heavy silence felt in any way comfortable.

Neal chuckled. “Yeah, we definitely didn’t have anything this fancy when I left.”

“Recent donation from Wayne Enterprise. Both the machine in the break room and the one in the lobby.” Explained Gordon with half a knowing smile under his mustache. “Normally, we’d have to refuse, since this could be taken as a bribe, but since this was given personally to one of our officers on behalf of his father as a way to welcome him back home, we figured we could make an exception. Also, the two donated machines make excellent coffee, even with the cheapest beans. What our single old machine made could barely pass as caffeinated swill. Like we’d just taken a cup right out of the sewers.”

“Absolutely undrinkable; too bad we really need the boost on the job.” Neal agreed with a nod and a grimace. Considering Mozzie had seen him happily chug down the notoriously terrible FBI coffee, that made quite the statement.

Downstairs, the Suits’ desperate investigation gradually lost steam as they slowly realized this was no scam. Boss Suit didn’t look happy in the slightest, and stubbornly clung to denial; a poor policy in a town where everything and everyone could gleefully murder you, but who was Mozzie to point that out?

After regrouping inside the Commissioner’s office, Neal explained their current case to Gordon and they set up a plan. Then, the clearly braindead or suicidal Suits wanted to retreat to their booked hotel rooms. In Gotham.

Just… What did they learn in their so-called coaching if they were so willing to walk headfirst into Death's open arms? No really, Mozzie wanted to know!

Thankfully, Neal took control of the situation and redirected the Suits into spending the night at his home. His father’s home, more exactly, meaning Brian’s – Bruce’s – home, which could only refer to the infamously closed off Wayne manor.

Mozzie would be lying if he said the perspective of seeing the countless treasures rumored to be harbored there didn’t enthuse him, but more than that, he was actually pretty impatient about seeing Bri- Bruce again. Even if he was also Brucie Wayne and Batman.

How did he manage to get in this situation again?

Of course, they had to spend the rest of the day (day? the pitch black sky scrambled Mozzie’s sense of time) at the precinct, the time for the agents to hopefully grow accustomed to Gothamites enough not to offend one by mistake in the few days they’ll have to survive here.

Neal rushed to reacquaint himself with his colleagues, while the three Suits tentatively scattered after an enlightening, if stress-inducing, conversation on cults and the Gothamite police’s almost nonexistent criterias for recruitment. Mozzie opted to stay near the only confirmed ally in a room potentially full of ‘reformed’ murderers or muggers.

A man he identified as Mr Freeze thanks to his iconic suit and blue-tinged skin, was dragged in by some officers, only to be thrown in the most secure – and alarming – cell Mozzie had ever seen. And sure, he’d done his best throughout his life to avoid actually seeing cells with his own eyes, but that didn’t mean he never studied the subject in case he needed to break out.

Just by looking, he could tell the thing was reinforced to hold all but the strongest of metahumans. “Your supervillain cell looks like it could keep Superman himself in.” He mused out loud, not really expecting Gordon to reply.

“I don’t think it could hold Superman, actually,” answered the cop with the same indolent tone. “When Batman and Wayne Enterprise donated this cell, they told us it has all the needed modifications to detain our own rogues, and they keep updating it with every new gimmick that pops up. They also told us that any meta or regular human with abilities not on the list would be secured in one of Batman’s secret cells until they made the necessary modifications to this one, and to the cells in Arkham and Blackgate.”

He paused and looked at Mozzie, as if considering if he should continue. Moz did his best to offer his most trustworthy expression (a very alien stretch of his facial muscles by the way). It seemed to be enough, as Gordon continued in confidence. “I also happen to know that Batman has containment measures for all super-powered individuals, up to and including Superman.”

Huh. Mozzie had no idea if he should be reassured or concerned. “... Do you think this cell could hold a Bat?”

He worried for a moment that Gordon would take offense at his admittedly misplaced curiosity, but he only got a thoughtful hum in response instead of, say, a gun to the face and a bullet in between the eyes. “You know what, I’m not sure. Bat business stays strictly between the Bats, so even on the rare occasion where one of them turned against us – usually because of brainwashing or something similar – we never had a chance to put one in our cells. If I had to bet, though, I’d say they could get out. I don’t see Batman making something that could seriously backfire on his protegés, and they’re all too highly trained for a cell to hold them back for long; I’ve personally witnessed them get out of more difficult situations.”

What followed was an amicable, if nightmare-fuelling conversation on the Bats and the many occasions Gordon had seen them pull their way out of terrifying deadly traps of all kinds. Mozzie couldn’t help shooting looks in Neal’s direction every time he learned of yet another lethal situation Nightwing managed to get out of, and responded by sharing tales of Neal Caffrey’s more daring feats.

His friend was really something else, huh.

Their discussion got interrupted by the arrival of who he learned was yet another victim of head-scramblers and Suit Lady’s incredibly ill-advised suggestion of sending said victim to another mind-shredder.

For the first time in his life; Moz saw everyone around him react in a sensible way to that ludicrous idea. The guns were a bit much, but the outrage was definitely not.

Neal intervened in time to save Lady Suit’s neck, but Mozzie had no doubt that remark would be remembered by every single cop in the precinct. It only cemented the fact in his head that the Suits should not be let loose in Gotham without supervision for their own good.

Moz might distrust them on principle, but he still didn’t wish them the gruesome death that awaited careless fools in Gotham.

As if he heard Mozzie’s inner monologue and refused to do anything in line with a criminal’s thoughts, Boss Suit jumped on the first occasion to put his foot in his mouth. “Wait a minute! You’re not seriously going to let him take the kids just like that?!”

A bunch of scowling ragged kids and a lanky teenager with a white stripe of hair had likely caused his outburst. Mozzie and Gordon drew closer, to see where the problem was.

Neal tried to defuse the situation. “Peter-”

“Don’t you ‘Peter’ me! I can overlook all the madness going around in that fake precinct of yours, but I’m not letting some kids be taken away by a suspicious teenager that obviously isn’t related to any of them! Just look at them! I bet none of the kids even have a single parent in common!”

Bad move, Suit.

“Family isn’t restricted to blood, Peter.” And here was Nightwing, peeking out of Neal’s eyes and voice. Thankfully, both the Neal Caffrey and the Richie Grayson-Wayne personae proved efficient enough to mask the shift to anyone unaware of the third identity. Gordon noticed, though, and stepped between a cowering Boss Suit and an incensed Neal.

The shadows writhing all around and lapping at Neal’s feet (how did the Suits miss them? Willful blindness should have its limits) almost distracted Mozzie from the following exchange about Red Hood’s brood and Gotham’s CPS. Almost, but not quite; slowly but surely, he was getting used to the madness. Knowing Neal and Brian for so long likely helped.

Moz had long thought he’d had it bad as an orphan, but it seemed it could have been so much worse. He’d have to ask Neal later what happened during his brief time in juvie.

By the end of that conversation, the shadows had mostly returned to their proper place and shape, though he could still see them stretch towards Neal when he moved as if to wrap him in a protective embrace.

Loved by Gotham. He hadn’t understood what that meant until today.

The teenager with a white tuft of hair that started the whole mess made a comment about Red Hood (that corroborated what Neal told him about the crime lord cooking) and Boss Suit went off the deep end.

“At least these crazy vigilante freaks are useful for something.”

The entire precinct turned deadly silent as every Gothamite cranked their necks at odd angles to stare murderously at the Suit. Mozzie and the two other lower-ranked Suits backed away, instincts screaming to put distance between them and their as good as dead companion.

Boss Suit saved his skin at the last second by stuttering a comment about Metropolis he must have heard from Neal at some point. Neal loved to gripe about Metropolis.

In any case, after an ominous warning that reminded Mozzie that he was perfectly capable of cheerfully breaking all the bones in a human body – probably while naming them, he was extra like that – Neal decided they’d overstayed their visit to the cops.

Time to move on to ‘his father’s house’.

They all piled up in the van again, with Neal behind the wheel. Boss Suit barely seemed to notice being marched into the passenger seat, thunderstruck as he still was after Neal’s little intimidation routine. He did wake up from his daze with a jolt when the van lurched forward at breakneck speed.

The one advantage of not seeing a thing outside the windows was that you couldn’t tell how fast you were going or how close you came to a lethal car crash. Of course, you still felt every turn and the brutal accelerations, but he’d learned over time that as long as he treated it like some demented merry-go-round – violent but safe – Mozzie could deal.

The Suits beside him looked greenish, but that was their problem.

The ride lasted some time. Everyone stayed silent; Lady Suit didn’t even bother asking for some music this time. They all had too much to mull over, and the surprises weren’t about to stop coming.

An undignified squeak at the front of the van during a particularly rough turn alerted everyone that something was wrong, though they saw nothing strange from the back and couldn’t afford to let go of the security railings to take a closer look.

“Neal, what the hell are you doing?! You can’t go in there!”

Oh, Mozzie had an inkling about the nature of what upset Boss Suit.

“Relax, Peter-”

“I can’t relax when you’re intruding on private property! Turn around, Neal, you’re lost!”

“I’m not lost. This is the way to my dad’s house.”

“Neal, stop being stubborn and turn around. There’s no shame about getting a little lost in a place you haven’t been to in years.”

“I’m not lost, Peter. I’ve taken this road thousands of times, and we’re on the right track. Stop fretting.”

“God, Neal, swallow your pride for once and turn around. The sign clearly stated we’ve entered a private estate. The only thing that way is Wayne manor.”

“Yeah, that’s exactly where we’re going.”

A beat of silence while the three Suits processed. Mozzie bit down on a smirk.

“Uh, Neal, does your father work on the Wayne estate?” Asked Diana carefully.

Neal laughed – the van swerved for a moment, but Mozzie deliberately didn’t notice. He really, really didn’t. “I mean, if you want to see it that way. He does work from home when he can.”

Another pause. “... What did you say your father’s name was?”

From the Third Suit’s tone and careful expression, he definitely had an idea, but refused to consider it.

Neal clearly had no qualms whacking them with the truth. “Bruce Wayne, why?”

Oh, the little shit was having fun pretending to be clueless and innocent. Mozzie couldn’t even blame him, because he also definitely found some enjoyment in the Suits’ befuddled faces. He regretted not bringing a camera.

Wait a minute, didn’t Neal say the night goggles had a built-in camera?

Boss Suit loudly choked on his surprise in the front, allowing Lady Suit to come to an epiphany of her own. “Oh Christ, you’re Richie Wayne!”

More laughter from the driving seat, this time with an edge of warning. “Grayson-Wayne. But yes, that’s me.”

Mozzie hadn’t known that three people alone could make that much of a ruckus. They yelled and argued over each other so well that any word became incomprehensible. In a way, he was truly impressed.

Neal naturally laughed all along (the van swerved left and right like a rocking ship), although he didn’t even try to make himself heard for the ten minutes it took the Suits to calm down.

Well, Mozzie said ‘calm down’, but it was more Head Suit barking a bit louder for his colleagues to stop talking and then turning on Neal for answers. “What does that mean? You said you were Dick Grayson, you can’t be Richie!”

The vaguely appalled way he uttered that name told Mozzie all he needed to know about Head Suit’s opinion of Richie Grayson-Wayne.

Neal didn’t seem to mind, though. “I am. I told you my name is Richard, and both Richie and Dick work as nicknames. Richie is my public persona, and Dick is who I really am. I use the Grayson surname alone for my job because it helps remind people that I'm a cop and not just there as a Wayne. Of course they all know I'm also Richie and I have to be careful not to appear too smart to not ruin that mask, but otherwise, it helps me being treated like a regular cop instead of the eldest son of Gotham's foremost family, you know?”

“But Richie’s an idiot!”

“It’s a public persona, Jones. I shouldn’t have to explain to you how that works. Acting like a clueless idiot lets me avoid a lot of trouble when I’m in public or in one of those galas rich people love so much. After years of seeing how everyone let Bruce be because he’s a bit daft, I crafted the Richie mask after him.”

Neal could behave like it was simple all he wanted, to normal people it took some time to untangle (and Mozzie counted himself among those regular folk when the other side was Nightwing and the freaking Bats). Moreover, Mozzie was the only one in the van besides Neal that knew Brucie was also a persona; the Suits likely believed the Wayne patriarch to be just as dim as he appeared.

And they probably wouldn’t learn better during their visit if Neal had his say. Better brace themselves for a good amount of Brucie foolishness while they stayed at Wayne manor, just to seal the idea in their heads that Neal’s father (and the rest of his family) were hopeless eccentrics.

Any potential reply had to wait as Neal slammed the breaks and the van screeched to a stop in front of an intricate gate. Mozzie had to cling to his railing to keep from going through the cabin and the windshield, dead into the large wrought iron ‘W’ that adorned each side of the portal.

An intercom buzzed next to the front window. “Wayne manor, who is this?”

Neal answered the heavily British-accented voice with a wide grin. “Hey Alfie, I’m home!”

“Master Dick,” the voice continued, only this time with a clear note of warmth, “welcome home. Please proceed to the front gates.”

The gates opened, and Neal wasted no time driving through the gravel road at speeds that would put rockets to shame. None of the Suits found words to comment on the latest development in time.

The van skidded, spinned and stopped in front of a grand rock staircase. Neal went out first, with the New Yorkers trailing after him on unsteady legs. The inevitable result of Gothamite driving. After years of exposure, Mozzie still hadn’t shaken off the side-effects.

“Alfie!” The vigilante yelled, leaping into the arms of a primly dressed elderly man at the front doors. A butler. The famed butler of Wayne household, the one rumored to run everything and to keep the family alive despite their best attempts at suicide via lack of braincells. Alfred Pennyworth.

The suits gaped. How could they keep denying Neal Caffrey and Richie Grayson-Wayne were one and the same when he and the Wayne butler so clearly knew each other?

“Master Dick.” Pennyworth greeted with a hug. When the two men parted, he took Neal’s face in his hands. “I’ve missed you my boy. You look like you’ve lost some weight; have you not been eating enough?”

“You say that every time I leave on a mission.” Neal laughed. Mozzie got the feeling of well-worn banter. “I swear I eat just as much when I’m away as when I can attend Sunday dinners, Alfred.”

Pennyworth raised a dubious eyebrow but smiled back indulgently. “If you say so, Master Dick.” He turned towards the rest of them with a renewed neutral expression. “But where are my manners? My name is Alfred Pennyworth, butler to the Wayne family; you must be Master Dick’s guests. Please follow me inside.”

Before they followed the butler in, Mozzie took the time to appreciate Wayne manor’s exterior in all its glory. It represented the pinnacle of old Gothamite architecture, with thick stone walls to protect from attacks, and large curtained windows that overlooked the vast gardens shrouded in darkness. No doubt all the glass panes could resist heavy gunfire and more.

Sculpted friezes adorned the entire building, separating the four floors, and columns inset in the walls gave the whole an oppressive, towering feeling, despite the comparatively small height. Very Gotham. Of course, the ever-present gargoyles lurked on every corner of the rooftops, too far for Mozzie to distinguish their features in the dark. All he saw were their figures.

He thought, for a second, that one of the gargoyles moved, but that was ridiculous. The polluted Gotham air was getting to him; better follow everyone inside in search of fresher oxygen.

Chapter Text

The inside of Wayne manor was exactly as Mozzie pictured it, except with less lighting. Given how much Bruce must earn in a day, he could have afforded to splurge a little on the electricity bill.

Unless being Batman drained all his fortune? How much did vigilantism cost? And not just for him, but for his entire family and a good chunk of the Justice League too – it had to get awfully expensive, right? They weren't exactly paid by the state for their work.

A thought for another day.

Anyway, no matter where he laid his eyes, Mozzie found some expensive treasure or another. Paintings from masters, antique sculptures, gilded crystal vases overflowing with fresh flowers, showcases filled with priceless baubles…

A thief’s wet dream.

However, Mozzie would be on his best behavior here. Not only did he not want to sour his old friendship with Brian/Bruce, but only a terminally idiotic moron would attempt to steal something under Batman’s roof. Unless you were Catwoman, and Mozzie was not Catwoman.

He didn’t look anywhere near that good in a tight leather suit.

Next to him, the Suits made appropriate noises of awe. Of course, working in the White Collar division must have given them some appreciation for the fine arts.

Pennyworth led them to a drawing room. The place was just as richly decorated as the entranceway and corridors, with plenty of glass displays, priceless decoration and an antique grandfather's clock with a disturbingly life-like dragon coiled around the needles. But a closer look revealed a number of more personal touches. This had to be the family’s favored living room.

Several pictures of children and young adults rested on the furniture. Mozzie recognized a younger, black-haired Nea- Dick; in here, he was Dick Grayson-Wayne – a younger Dick in a few photos. He also featured in his adult self on one of the two large paintings hung on the far wall, along with the rest of the family, arranged in a formal but relaxed posture. Mozzie didn’t recognize the artist’s touch, but he had to admit whoever painted this knew what they were doing. Dick’s roguish grin looked identical to the real deal.

The other painting showed a couple with a young boy in the center. Judging from the old-fashioned clothes and the eerie resemblance between the smiling boy and the man Mozzie had known as Brian, he supposed that it was Martha and Thomas Wayne, before their untimely death, along with their young son.

Dick skipped into the room and jumped on the closest couch. It looked more comfortable than the average expensive sofa – this was definitely the family’s room, not the place you led unwanted or distant guests to show off your wealth on stiff cushions. “Sit down, sit down! The rest of the family should be here soon – no way is any of them missing a chance to meet all of you.”

The hint of mischief in his voice worried Mozzie. He wasn’t the only one; Head Suit frowned in alarm and refused to take a seat on one of the sofas. Nerves, no doubt. Instead, he wandered around the room, analyzing the various expensive knicknacks on display.

When he reached the first large painting; Dick spoke up again. “My little brother painted that one.” He announced, sounding for all the world like a proud mama bear. “Dami is really good with a brush; he insisted on making the family portrait himself when Duke joined us. What do you think?”

Mozzie could see the nightmarish thoughts flying through Head Suit’s head of a younger Neal Caffrey committing felonies left and right. Hah! From what little he knew of Damian Wayne, latest Robin, if the boy ever committed crimes, it wouldn’t be the White Collar division’s problem. More of Violent Crimes’ jurisdiction, or whoever was in charge of animal rights activists.

“I’ll bring refreshments.” Pennyworth announced. “Please remain in this room for the moment; I’m sure Master Dick will be happy to help his guests if you need anything.”

“Of course Alfie!” Dick was quick to agree. Pennyworth left with a polite smile and a stern glance their way that warned them against wandering the manor uninvited.

The silence that followed was all sorts of awkward. The Suits were still coming to terms with Dick’s identity, and even Mozzie himself felt a bit unbalanced. Give him a break; he’d only had two meager days to process both of Dick’s aliases after all, before he was confronted with the unavoidable proof in the form of a massive creepy manor.

Because the manor, though filled with riches beyond his imagination, was creepy. It creaked all around him – except beneath Dick’s and Pennyworth’s feet, which only made it more frightening, actually. The darkness that filled every corner seemed to swirl the more he stared at it, to the point Mozzie had to look elsewhere before it did something irremediable to his sanity. Even the smaller shadows couldn’t seem to agree on one direction, despite ostensibly being cast by the same dim light source.

Cold breezes with no identifiable sources raised the hair on his neck and carried what he could only call faint whispers. He couldn’t pick out any words, but it sounded distinctively like distant human – or not human? – voices in his ear. And of course, various horrible gargoyles looked down on him from the walls, the ceiling and a few tables, just to add the weight of their accusing stares to the haunted house atmosphere.

Actually, ‘creepy’ didn’t even begin to depict the sheer eeriness of Wayne manor. It was a thousand times worse than anything else Moz had experienced so far. If he didn’t have Dick’s assurance that this mansion was the absolute safest place in Gotham, he’d be running with his tail between his legs right now.

The Suits didn’t look any more comfortable than him. Did they also notice the discrepancies to the laws of physics, or could Moz only spot them because he knew what to expect to some extent?

Dick, on the other hand, looked right at home in this environment. Probably because he was at home. At least growing up here explained quite a few of his more unsettling quirks. Nobody raised in this all too real version of a horror movie mansion could come out a hundred percent sane in the head.

“So,” Third Suit shuffled awkwardly on the sofa, obviously looking for a topic of conversation to distract himself from his surroundings, “‘Master Dick’, huh?”

Dick tittered, embarrassed. “Yeah, I know. We’ve all given up on having Alfred call us anything but ‘Master’ whatever – though believe me, we’ve all tried for a long time. Even Bruce. I mean, Alfie’s family, like a grandfather, but he insists on acting as a butler, and that means keeping to what he calls the ‘proper address’,” he took on a posh British accent for a second there. “The only thing we ever managed to achieve was having him call us by our chosen name instead of the official one. I mean, ‘Master Dick’ felt weird at first, but that’s nothing compared to ‘Master Richard’.” He shuddered comically to drive the point in.

The Suits made various assenting or understanding noises, and the uncomfortable silence befell them all again. This time, nobody seemed to find a new subject to break the ice.

The stalemate lasted until a bunch of newcomers came running in. Most rushed to glomp Dick, but a few trickled into the room at a more sedate pace.

If anyone noticed the Suits’ hands instinctively reaching for their weapons at the eerily silent sudden intrusion – as if Bats would miss that – nobody commented on it.

On the sofa, a tangled mass of limbs and heads writhed to get better access to the man beneath. “Dick!” One of the assaillants – a blonde teenage girl – cried out. “You could have told us you’d be home early!”

Dick laughed, not at all worried by the pile of people apparently intent on crushing him under their combined weight. “Sorry, sorry! We kinda had to leave the precinct in a hurry after Peter… after he did something inadvisable.”

As one body, all the newcomers turned to look at Head Suit, visibly all aware of who ‘Peter’ was despite having never met him face to face. The man couldn’t fight back a shiver of dread at the stares, reminiscent of the ominous atmosphere he’d triggered earlier with his stupid comment on vigilantes. Still, Mozzie felt for him. The Waynes/Bats were intense.

Head Suit swallowed audibly and cleared his throat. “Uh, hello? Who are all of you?”

The answer came from a mountain of a young man with a tuft of bleached hair that had thankfully not joined the… pile? Group hug? Brutal assassination attempt? Anyway, if he’d added his weight to the rest, Dick would have been squashed. “We’re Dickface’s family is who we are.”

Looking at the number of various, very diverse teenagers and young adults assembled, Head Suit raised a dubious eyebrow. “His family?”

“Most of us were adopted.” Another teenager from the pile, this one male with dark, longish hair, explained. Mozzie didn't miss the light frown on his face as he looked at the offending Suit over Dick’s shoulder. “Don’t you follow the news?”

In Moz’s humble opinion, this was less a case of Head Suit not knowing about the Wayne family’s countless, eclectic members, and more about him still struggling to process that Neal Caffrey, his CI, was actually the oldest son of said family. Moz couldn’t even blame the man for that.

Indeed, now that Mozzie got a better look at their faces, he recognizes the many children of Bruce Wayne and their mediatized close acquaintances. It didn’t help that they did not act as… eccentric as he saw them on TV and in tabloids. They were still strange, don’t get him wrong, but not the same brand of strange.

The latest speaker, Moz recognized as Timothy Drake-Wayne, while the one before him was Jay Todd-Wayne. The blonde girl happened to be Stephanie Brown, who, while not officially adopted, spent so much time with the family in public that she was pretty much assimilated to them.

Also in the room, far from the crowded sofa stood Barbara Gordon, another close friend of the family. As for the remaining culprits for the pile on the couch, you had Cassie Cain-Wayne, Duke Thomas (Thomas-Wayne? Moz couldn’t remember hearing about an official adoption) and, sitting imperiously on top, as if above all this – yet still very much being hugged by Dick – was Damian Wayne.

The entire younger generation. Now the only one missing was-

“Chum! You’re back home!”

Mozzie watched, transfixed, as Brucie Wayne himself strode into the room and lifted the mess of people on the sofa in a hug. Yeah, you understood that well, Brucie lifted the six people into midair and engulfed them into one massive embrace, just to get at his eldest son underneath.

He put them down soon after, but what kind of ridiculous arm strength did you need to carry six people?

Batman strength, he supposed. Although the fact that they were one and the same was very hard to remember when Brucie immediately started babbling and patting Dick on the shoulders, only to extend his affectionate touches to any nearby kid, all without a break in his inane chatter.

“Dick, it’s so great that you’re back home! Oh, you have no idea how I’ve missed you; how we’ve all missed you. It just isn’t the same when one of you can’t attend family diners for so long. How was your job with the FBI? The White Tie division, wasn’t it? I think that’s what Alfred said. Did you catch a lot of bad guys? I bet you did! I hope you didn’t get hurt at work; you’d tell us if you got injured right? I mean, I know you were not supposed to talk to us at all, and bla bla bla, all that conferential information for the Justice League, and I know it’s important, so I didn’t try to call you, but we were all so worried! And we have so much to tell you about. A lot happened while you were away, and we couldn’t tell you about it. Don’t worry, though, I’ve got it all memorized inside my head to make sure you don’t miss on anything, chum!”

… Bruce was pulling all the stops on the ditzy Brucie persona, wasn’t he? Mozzie could hardly reconcile the smart, reclusive Brian he’d met with the lovable moron in front of him. The Suits didn’t stand a chance at seeing through the mask.

Dick chuckled, no doubt just as amused as the rest of the family by the large-scale con they were pulling over the rest of the world. “I missed you all so much too, B.” He leaned into the hand carding through his hair – Brucie’s eyes softened at the blatant need for familiar comfort, and the rest of the Bats drew closer. “What did I miss?”

“Well, for starters, Ozzy got elected major again.”

“Mayor.” Timothy corrected with the ease of someone long accustomed to Brucie’s mistakes.

Said man nodded in earnest. “Right, mayor. He won by a slide, since the other contestor-”

“Contender.”

“-ran away after Harvey got annoyed at him. Something about the other con-ten-der,” he spelled the word out carefully, turned hopeful eyes to Timothy and got an approving smile in reply that made him grin wider, “wanting to install an odd number of new monorail lines. I don’t know what’s so odd about that, but Harvey was mad and you know how he is when he gets mad. Ozzy didn’t even have to threaten the other guy to win!”

The man continued to babble like that for what felt like an eternity, time as good as frozen by the sheer absurdity of the situation. Here was Bruce Wayne, aka Brian, aka Batman, prattling on like a happy idiot, mistaking one word for another and getting corrected by his children every other sentence.

Yet beneath the inane chatter, Mozzie slowly realized, hid a report of all the major events that had happened recently in Gotham. Especially about villains, though it took him a while to understand ‘Ozzy’ and ‘Harvey’ and ‘Pam’ and all those seemingly friendly acquaintances of Bruce’s referred to infamous supervillains.

What the hell, Batman! Honestly, Moz knew relationships between vigilantes, civilians and rogues were tortuous in Gotham – one more reason to avoid the city – but that sounded way more amicable than he expected.

The Suits remained oblivious to the covert report, but Dick must have understood all the details that eluded Mozzie, since he never interrupted, not even to ask for clarification.

Truth be told, Mozzie was in awe of the way the family shared information, right under the nose of three competent FBI agents, without so much as arousing suspicion from any of them that there was more going on that met the eye. Quite the opposite, they reinforced Brucie's image of ineptitude.

It was inspiring.

He’d have to rework his entire code system with that example in mind at a later date.

Brucie’s rant did end up cut short by the return of Pennyworth, an adult woman in tow too old to be another adoptee helping him carry a second tray of drinks.

"Darling, you're overwhelming our guests." She purred as she caught Brucie by the elbow to guide him to an armchair where they both proceeded to sit much closer than decency allowed. The Wayne kids didn't even bat an eye.

"You'll have to forgive him," the short-haired, green-eyed woman half in Bruce's lap said. "He missed Dick very much and nothing gets him babbling as fast as his kittens."

Seemingly unaware of the way his kids grimaced in overdone annoyance at the nickname, Brucie mumbled a sheepish, but not too contrived 'sorry', then looked at Pennyworth as if seeking his approval. The butler nodded in satisfaction without looking up from where he was fixing them all a drink.

The woman drew everyone's attention to herself again. "I'm Selina, by the way. Bruce's most recent and recurring lover."

The way she said it implied she very much knew how uncomfortable her words, languorous tone and position made people. Well, again, except for the Wayne's who only shared long-suffering glances before they watched the Suits and Mozzie fidget awkwardly.

Of course they were enjoying this.

In the end, Lady Suit regained her wits first and offered to shake hands, prompting every other Outsider to follow her example.

Then, as they urged each other with their eyes to take one for the team and start conversation, Pennyworth distributed drinks. Hot chocolate with marshmallows (Dick), expensive wine (Mozzie), whiskey, beer, pineapple juice, strange, colorful cocktails, coffee... From their expressions, Moz got the feeling the butler had nailed everybody's favorite drink, which did nothing to ease the eerie sensation slithering down his spine.

Creepy.

At least it offered a welcome distraction from the thick awkwardness they all marinated in. Every Outsider paid way too much attention to their respective drinks while the Waynes engaged in conversation together, only rarely including the four people stuck in their living room by social convenances, fascination at seeing Dick/Neal in his natural environment, and a good slice of fear at the Bats' reaction to rudeness on Mozzie's part.

He was gearing up to join the discussion now that it drifted closer to known territory (Dami Wayne's latest art project) when the most blood-chilling sound rang throughout the room.

The Suits sprang for cover and drew their weapons as Moz flattened himself on the floor, searching for the origin of the ruckus.

The Waynes merely switched to ASL to keep conversing. Moz soon understood why, although that revelation didn't spawn the relief he expected. Quite the opposite.

Against a wall, the old grandfather's clock announced 5 o’clock in a great roar. Worse: the mechanical gargoyle clinging to the needles – its head on the hour, its tail on the minutes – started swiveling on his axis, the head doing a full spin around the clock in the slowest, most dreadful speed known to man, only to unhinge its jaw on the 'V' and to let out another ear-piercing screech. If he had to describe it, Mozzie would say it sounded like the unholy child of nails scratching on a backboard and of the rumble of thunder was howling in agony.

He stared at the grandfather’s clock in horror and would later congratulate himself for not soiling his pants. How did you make a piece of furniture so sinister? And why? For God's sake, why would anyone do that?!

The Wayne's, of course, barely looked like they noticed – this obviously was an everyday occurrence for them. The Suits, however, looked just as horrified as Moz behind their makeshift cover.

It was the butler that offered them a dignified exit strategy once the screeching gargoyle shut up. "Perhaps our guests would like to rest for the day. I'm sure the journey from New York to Gotham was taxing.” God, yes it was, in more ways than Mozzie could count. “I can bring you dinner in your respective rooms, if you so want, as well as Master Dick’s mission orders to prove he truly was on duty for the Justice League."

That suggestion caught Head Suit’s attention, and he – wisely – decided to shift his focus on the only sensible member of the household. With one last glance at their hosts (and another at the abomination masquerading as a clock), the Suits said their goodnights and stumbled out. Sure, it was only 5pm, but the day had seemingly gone on forever, and it was night outside anyway. Not that a lack of sun meant much in Gotham, but well…

Mozzie, on the other hand, declined the offer to retire just yet. Exhaustion also weighed on his bones, but he wanted to talk to the family without them putting on an act, which wouldn't happen in the Suits' presence.

They'd have regained some energy tomorrow morning and, with their returned common sense, would likely realize that leaving their CI – undercover JL agent or not – alone to plot with his family might spell trouble. The Wayne's didn't exactly appear as reliable, sensible citizens who’d prevent one of their own from doing something stupid.

If anything, they were all enablers when they were not committing to the stupid themselves, whether as a facade to protect their identities, or because the family was truly composed of lunatics. While admirable in their own right, those people went out in Gotham at night to fight monsters in flimsy kevlar and latex, for Christ’s sake! They had to be a few brain cells short of a full set!

Anyway, led by Pennyworth, the Suits staggered out of the room and to their temporary accommodations in Wayne manor. No doubt even the smallest guest room was luxurious beyond a five star palace, yet Moz had a feeling none of them would enjoy the experience all that much.

The moment the door clicked close, the atmosphere shifted.

All the previously vapid or easygoing eyes turned shrewd and piercing. Postures and positions changed until all exits were covered and in sight; nothing went in or out without them noticing.

Mozzie no longer sat among the Wayne's, Gotham's glamorous, lovable family of silly eccentrics. No, the people before him were the infamous Bats.

However, much to his surprise, their scrutiny didn’t feel dangerous. Oh, the naive lightness of earlier was no more, but it hadn’t quite vanished as much as metamorphosed into a sharper version of itself. Even to an outsider like Moz, this was still obviously a family reuniting after a long time apart, basking in their shared understanding, and curious about their guest. Not intruder or invader or – God forbid for Mozzie’s sake – threat. Guest. Ludicrous as it sounded, Mozzie was welcome here.

Bruce broke the ice, his previous silliness replaced with a sterner, and altogether more reassuring expression on Brian’s face. “Hello, Moz. It’s been a long time. Thank you for looking after Dick.”

“I don’t think he needed all that much looking after.” Moz tittered stupidly. God, he needed to get a grip. “He saved my skin more often than I saved his.”

“Nah, I couldn’t have done half the things I did without your guidance, and it really helped to have a friend around when things got rough.” Dick was quick to correct, but in such a casual manner that even Mozzie relaxed. Right, he knew Brian and Neal – Bruce and Dick; they were friends, and this was their family.

It was also a house teeming with Bats, but Mozzie wasn’t thinking about that. Not. At. All.

The tall guy with a tuft of bleached hair – Jay Todd-Wayne, the brother that died – reached out to mock-punch Dick. “Well, I don’t know who helped who the most, but ya got to get some credit for dealing with Dickface here for so long. And for dealing with B’s grumpy ass before that.”

While Dick playfully argued that he wasn’t that bad, Moz had the belated and painful realization that this was Red Hood sitting on the couch, blocking his older brother’s attempts at poking his ribs. He quickly buried that epiphany deep into his subconscious because that was a little too much for his overworked head to process at the moment. Not without a meltdown of epic proportions.

“You can ignore them,” apologized the woman – still ?! – half on Bruce’s lap with a fond smile. “They’ve missed each other very much, so when they’re finally reunited, it’s always like herding cats. Let them have their moments and you’ll get their attention back soon enough.”

Dick snorted from the sofa where a little brotherly poking had turned into full-scale mock-fighting with an increasing number of siblings. Neither Bruce nor Seline seemed all that concerned at the brutal, if skillfully executed takedowns, the ganging up, or the odd somersault. Assumingly, for crazy vigilantes, this was just a game; they all looked like they were having fun.

Yes, they were all crazy, but Moz was starting to understand that didn't mean they posed a risk to him.

Maybe to each other, but not to him.

Emboldened by this – for once happy – revelation, Mozzie dared to initiate the next conversation on a controversial, yet less difficult topic. "So, are any of you actual vampires or is that just a rumor?"

Good-natured snorts and giggles erupted from the pile of Wayne kids. "I blame B's habit of vanishing when people look away for that," snickered Stephanie Brown. "And the whole bat schtick of course."

"It's the cape," added Dick with a knowing nod. "You have no idea how goddamn heavy the thing is until you have to wear it yourself. I don't know how he keeps wearing it every night. I had bruises from its weight the few months I was Batman."

So Dick had been Batman for a while. Huh. One more piece of surprise information for Moz to carefully ignore until he had the time and alcohol to process it.

He was starting to lack enough brainspace to stock it all. For his part, the Bat patriarch shrugged. "It takes some getting used to, but I didn't start with such a heavy, bulletproof cloak. It only became a necessity when I acquired a string of young partners that didn't understand the concept of not provoking armed men into opening fire."

Tellingly, most of the kids coughed and looked away with awkward titters.

"No blood drinking?" Mozzie couldn't help asking. "No coffins for beds? No pet bats?"

… What was he supposed to make of the glances they all shared?

"I promise we've got no coffins, and Alfred would never let us drink anything as unsanitary as blood." Timothy swore, only to stumble at the third step. "As for the pet bats…"

"They are trained well enough not to venture into the manor," bragged Damian like this was something normal to talk about. My pet bats can do better tricks than yours. "We have the only recorded case of semi-domesticated bats in the world – or as recorded as we can allow them to be considering the secrecy of our activities. If you wish to see them for yourself, though, you will have to enter the cave."

… What cave? They had an honest to God cave? Like actual bats?!

"Please tell me you don't live in that cave, or sleep upside down on the ceiling."

Several heads turned as one to shoot Dick amused, mocking looks.

"For my defense," the man said with hunched shoulders and shifty eyes, "it was a trapeze, not the ceiling, and it only happened once, after a long night spent corralling half of Arkham back into their cells. I was exhausted."

Bruce caught Mozzie’s gaze and sighed in the long-suffering, commiserating way of all fathers of a hoard of vigilante kids. Or in the way they would sigh if Bruce wasn’t the only one insane enough to collect said kids (making this the de facto shared sigh, actually). Now that he has taken them all under his wing/cape, there couldn’t be any more for the poor other would-be adopting vigilantes to get their hands on. Not even one tiny little justice-hungry, blood-thirsty, violence-starved kid in a garish costume left; they all happily lived upside-down in a cave under Wayne manor.

Mozzie could tell just how badly he was taking this all by how wild his thoughts ran. Clearly, he’d more than reached his limit for today.

“Is- Could we postpone the grand tour to another day? I'm afraid all this is already a bit… much. I barely had the time to process Neal being both Richie Grayson and Nightwing before coming to Gotham. Seeing the- the ‘Batcave’ I believe it is called? Seeing the Batcave might blow my poor head up.”

Dick slid closer to draw an arm over his – hunched? Since when had he been so high-strung? – shoulders. “It’s fine, Moz. We get it. The truth can get a bit overwhelming. You can take a raincheck on visiting downstairs; the offer stays open any time. You’re always welcome here; isn’t he, B?”

“Of course. The manor is always open to friends,” and there Bruce shot a weirdly amused glance at his girlfriend, “as long as they don’t attempt to steal anything.”

The woman huffed in playful indignation. “Darling, I’ve never attempted to steal anything from you.”

Moz was too tired to try to figure that one out. Thankfully, the so far silent Cassie Cain-Wayne seemed to realize that as she signed something to her family. His ASL was rusty, but he definitely recognized the sign for ‘painting’, which instantly caught his flagging attention.

“Oh, you’re right, I hadn’t thought about that!” Dick thanked his sister, never once taking his arm off Moz’s shoulder. The familiarity of the gesture felt so grounding amid all the strangeness that the older conman didn’t even attempt to remove it. “Since you don’t want to see the cave just yet, maybe you want a guided visit of the manor itself? We’ve got plenty of interesting works of art or ancient artifacts you might find interesting.”

… Who could say no to such a suggestion? This was Wayne manor, the rumored home of countless masterpieces. And while the family made a point of often sharing their collection with the outside world through loans to museums and donations to charity auctions, only a handful of people could brag about seeing more than a fraction of a fraction of the full treasure locked behind a top of the line security system (Batman’s security system) and Gotham’s general repelling aura.

Mozzie could never look himself in the mirror if he turned this offer down.

Reinvigorated by the perspective, he let himself be led outside the drawing room and through the long, winding – shifting? – corridors of Wayne manor by Bruce’s enthusiastic gaggle of children.

The no doubt heavenly bed waiting for him in a guest room could wait a little while longer.

As promised by the mansion’s general sumptuosity, Moz slept like a baby the moment his head touched the cloud-soft pillow.

He’d spent a delightful evening yesterday, once they got past the first moments of awkward tension. Dick and his siblings showed him the treasures of Wayne manor (and though it took them a good couple of hours, Moz had a hunch he’d barely skimmed the surface; if the place looked humongous from the outside, it looked infinitely and suspiciously bigger from the inside) and they soon started sharing stories.

Conversation naturally drifted towards the plethora of outlandish theories surrounding the City of Crime, and the Waynes – especially Timothy, who turned out to be a fellow conspiracist – gamely sorted through the fake, the half-fake and the horribly true with him.

As it turned out, only a small number of theories found themselves in the pure hoax category. Even among the far-fetched alien stories.

(Yes, even the universally welcome Green Lanterns didn’t set foot in Gotham without Batman’s authorization. Not that they ever really needed to. Although the Yellow Lantern corp was allegedly fueled by fear, it seemed even their kind couldn’t withstand Gotham’s brand of terror; an ambush by Scarecrow followed by an encounter with Black Bat – Cassie Cain-Wayne, what the hell?! – had them fly back to their homebase in fright and swear never to return.

Also, Dick had apparently once dated an alien himself, the illustrious Starfire at that. But both his friend and Jay Todd-Wayne looked uncomfortable when Mozzie asked for details, so he stopped prodding and changed the subject for Gotham’s rumored – and clearly very real given the shadows following them all along – curse. )

Mozzie went to sleep with his head full of enthralling horror stories and slept like a log. He woke up late the next day, feeling impossibly refreshed and ready to tackle the madness that was Gotham and its beloved Bats.

Or, well… as ready as he’d ever be. He was still human.

Either by sheer luck or thanks to the manor’s obvious sentience and shape-shifting abilities, Moz found his way to the kitchen on the first try. Pennyworth awaited him there.

“Good morning, sir. I took the liberty of preparing you breakfast. No need to wait for the others to arrive – this family tends to wake up quite late.”

No kidding. Mozzie hadn’t been sure if the Bats would patrol Gotham yesterday, after he went to bed at a sensible time, but Pennyworth’s comment made it clear they did. Seriously, had they never heard of a day off?

Then again, Dick must have been unable to prowl the streets while he was undercover as Neal, so maybe that explained it. You did not trek Gotham’s grimy rooftops at night if you didn’t somehow enjoy it, right? Perhaps this was just the family’s way of spending some quality time together, punching criminals and stopping supervillains from committing mass-murder. Moz wouldn’t judge.

(Much. He wouldn’t judge much.)

Pennyworth served him the most delicious traditional British breakfast Moz had ever tasted in his life, and kept up a casual conversation as morning went on, slowly bleeding into noon.

At some point, the Suits also made their entrance, bleary-eyed and jumpy. Moz assumed the mansion hadn’t been so kind to them as to him, but refrained from commenting. Despite the new federal presence, he also stuck to his current position; he didn’t quite trust the manor not to trap him in a room or a bottomless pit, and the kitchen struck him as the safest, least strange room.

It was Pennyworth’s domain, no question about it, and while the man had to be his own brand of crazy to work for the Wayne/Bats, he was also clearly the sanest member of the household. Staying by his side while their hosts were away should be the smartest move.

And indeed, nothing untoward happened to Mozzie or to the Suits, apart from that short minute where Miss Suit tried to venture out and returned with a pale face and her hand twitching towards her gun. Moz did not ask what she saw.

About an hour before approved lunchtime, the Waynes walked in as a group. You could tell none of them were morning people by their haphazard sleepwear, their grumbled greetings and the way they all zeroed in on the coffee Pennyworth provided from nowhere.

Duke walked in first, half-an-hour before being followed by Dami – Damian, Moz had been told their preferred names yesterday, far from their public persona – Cassandra, Jason and Bruce. Then came Tim, Duke, Steph and Barbara (both of which shouldn’t live here at all but apparently had rooms for overnight stays) and finally a young man in a cotton candy pink Hello Kitty tanktop that Moz had yet to meet.

It took him an absurd amount of time to realize the black-haired man hunched over the counter was actually Dick.

His only solace was that it took even longer for the Suits. Head Suit only realized who his – former – CI was when the man curled on his chair in painful ways and started munching on his cereal. “Neal?!”

“Oh, hey, hi Peter.” Dick mumbled between one spoonful of horribly sweetened cereal and the next. “Slept well?”

Head Suit spluttered, clearly not over seeing his former CI in his native environment. “Wha- Where- Why isn’t your hair brown?!”

When in doubt, people always tend to revert to the easiest problems to expose. Head Suit was no exception.

Dick ran a hand through his mess of black curls, far less sophisticated than Neal’s artfully combed hairdo. “Uh, because that’s it’s original color? I dyed it for the mission. I also removed my colored contacts, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“What's with that outfit?” Third Suit asked in morbid curiosity, staring at the Hello Kitty’s beady empty eyes on Dick’s chest. That mascot always creeped Mozzie out too.

The assembled Waynes smothered snorts in their respective breakfast, but Dick only shrugged without shame. “I don’t see the point in keeping up the stuffy suits when I’m no longer undercover. You get to be treated to the sight of my fabulous wardrobe from today onwards.”

… Dick was lucky Mozzie respected him so much, because he could tolerate a lot, but that fashion statement came very close to breaking their friendship.

“Yeah, he’s for real,” snorted Jason as he grabbed more toast for himself. “Dickface here has always had the most appalling taste in clothes. It’s why he’s not allowed to choose his own style when going undercover.”

“It’s bright and cheerful.”

“It’s an eyesore and garish.” Damian corrected and crossed his arms when Dick went to argue.

A sharp intake of air interrupted the mock-debate (as far as Mozzie was concerned, there was no debate: the tanktop should burn). Miss Suit was staring at Damian’s arms in horror; no doubt they had caught her attention when the boy had moved them.

Moz understood the problem instantly: without the long sleeves he’d worn yesterday, Damian’s heavily scarred skin was on display for all to see.

The Suits’ gazes jumped from one Bat to the next, taking in the marks and old wounds on every piece of exposed flesh – and there was a lot. Clearly none of their hosts believed in proper pajamas.

Of course, the Suits then aimed their accusing glances at the most likely culprit, ready to take the matter in their own hands and charge him with abuse.

Brucie blinked back at them in guileless stupidity.

Ugh, no wonder nobody had ever accused Brucie of being Batman. You just couldn’t take him seriously when he looked at you with those big, dumb cow eyes. Even the Suit’s righteous anger petered out like a candle in a downpour. Besides, a closer look revealed the man sported just as many, if not more scars as his children/wards/potential adoptees.

Still, the federal agents couldn’t just drop the subject of potential child abuse. Even Mozzie had to admit they were better people than that.

“Uhm, Neal?” Head Suit started with all the tact a Suit could muster. It wasn’t much. “Why- Why do you all have so many scars?”

See, tactful as an elephant in a glass factory.

Dick appeared utterly unbothered by the inquiry, though. “Didn’t I tell you already? It’s a Gotham thing. We’ve all been mauled or mugged or kidnapped or dumped in the sewers or attempt-assassinated a few times. It comes with the territory.”

Third Suit threw another glance at Brucie’s clueless smile, clearly let go of the idea he was in any way responsible and looked again at the arrays of old wounds on display. “You can’t just make us believe this is normal. Surely something can be done to avoid… whatever’s going on here.”

“Of course,” Dick nodded like Third Suit was an idiot for not having guessed as much, “it’s why we have all those defense lessons at school.”

“I don’t think those lessons are all that effective, you guys clearly need more help.” Miss Suit muttered under her breath, unaware that she was in the presence of Gotham’s infamous Bats and that their hearing allowed them to hear her just fine.

“Take that back, you wench!” Damian got up in arms at the implied dismissal of his abilities. “We are all fully capable of handling ourselves without your meddling!”

“Easy, Baby Bat.” Dick quickly stood up and gathered the struggling boy in his arms. Damian looked all but happy at the manhandling.

“It’s true, though,” Steph concurred while the youngest Wayne grew increasingly furious in Dick’s embrace. “Defense lessons have allowed all of us Gotham kids to survive so far, so they must work. Besides, everyone here always had great grades in that subject.”

“Top of my class.” Announced Duke proudly, echoed soon after by his siblings/friends/ whatever the younger Bats called themselves.

As if to demonstrate that, Damian finally managed to extricate himself enough from Dick’s grip to grab a knife and throw it at the older man.

The Suits – and Moz – yelped in alarm, but Dick only caught the knife and waved it tauntingly in his little brother’s face. “Come on, little D, you could have at least aimed at my vitals!”

The Outsiders choked on their spit while Damian scoffed. “Humph, with how out of practice you are, Richard, your pitiful reflexes wouldn’t have allowed you to come out unscathed.”

“Oh, little D! Is that care for me that I hear?”

Dick then attempted to glomp his youngest brother, who dodged at the last second and threw a fork in retaliation. Dick avoided it, but it continued straight for Barbara’s face.

The red-head plucked the cutlery midair without looking, set down her mug of coffee, and slowly turned towards the rambunctious boys with a glare. The fork went back sailing towards Dick’s back.

One thing led to another, and soon, all the younger Bats were throwing things at each other with varying amounts of murderous intent. Mozzie had seen their skills and interactions enough to pick up that this was yet another game, and merely stepped back to avoid the crossfire (aware enough that no weapon had come anywhere close to him or the other Outsiders). The Suits, on the other hand, watched in transfixed horror.

Next to them, Brucie beamed. “Aren’t they adorable? We missed having a full house so much when Dick was gone.”

And then, as if this madness wasn’t enough, he proceeded into showing the hapless Suits pictures and videos of his children on his phone from the day he took them in to today. The man apparently had every one of their – public – achievements recorded there.

Was Bruce laying it on thick with his Brucie act? Undoubtedly. Was it working? God, yes; even Mozzie was starting to doubt the idiot in front of him talking the ear off the poor Suits could so much as write his own name.

Across the mayhem, the flying cutlery and the videos of every Wayne kid’s school fairs, Pennyworth sent Moz a knowing smile. The butler made no effort to organize the chaos, though.

Like he said, his own brand of crazy.

Mozzie had no idea what caused the chaos to recede, only that after an indeterminate amount of time, Brucie decided it was time to go to work (perks of being CEO, he assumed) and the kids dispersed with no one injured or dead.

Just like that, the mansion regained its eerie ghostly aura. The creaking returned everywhere but beneath the Waynes’ feet, the shadows rippled with no source to cast them, whispers muttered through ajar doors, the artificial light flickered…

Maybe the earlier mayhem hadn’t been so bad after all.

The abrupt change in atmosphere left the Outsiders reeling. None of them knew how to react, or what to do with themselves. The FBI operation didn’t take place until that night, which left them with plenty of time to do nothing but cast concerned glances at every corner when they thought they spotted movement and shiver under the feel of invisible, judging eyes. Even the paintings seemed to shift when you stopped looking, nevermind the countless gargoyles…

The woman from yesterday, Selina, made an appearance almost immediately after the Waynes disbanded. Dick – the only remaining member of the household outside of Pennyworth and Damian still in the manor – greeted her at the door with a smile.

“Hi Selina! Back so soon?”

“I’m here to help you look after your guests, Kitten. I’m not sure you know how to take care of Outsiders.”

“Hey, I lived outside of Gotham too! I know how to make sure Outsiders are comfortable here!”

Mozzie, who purposefully stuck close to Pennyworth at all times while the man busied himself around the manor, wasn’t so sure of that.

“If you say so, Kitten,” Selina replied with an indulgent smile. “Then why don’t you tell me what you have planned for your guests until this evening? Were you going to take them on the ‘scenic tour’ of Gotham that you’d take with your siblings?”

Dick opened and closed his mouth, clearly at a loss for words. Mozzie got the uncomfortable feeling that was exactly what his friend had in mind, and that this was not something Moz or the Feds wanted – or were able – to do. None of them had planned to throw themselves from skyscrapers today.

The more Mozzie watched, the more obvious it became that Bats had little knowledge of how to interact casually with people. Maybe they got the trick done with Gothamites, but normal, not-cursed folk were simply too different for them to engage with without preparation. Moz wondered if that applied to other superheroes as well, or if the Bats’ inherent weirdness made things difficult on that front too.

Dick wasn’t a bad guy to hang around with, far from it. But without the structure of a manufactured persona or the constant reminder of his otherness through a different setting, he tended to drift a bit too far into his Gothamite habits and forgot most people simply couldn’t follow him down that rabbit hole.

Moz had seen glimpses of that rift in New York, but here, where he let his guard down, Dick obviously struggled to interact with Outsiders without sending them running for the hills.

“Cat got your tongue?” The woman said in amusement after the silence lingered for too long. Dick huffed in good-natured defeat. “That’s fine. It’s all too common when Gothamite bring Outsiders home. Why don’t you take your friends on a ‘normal’ tour, then? Eat outside. Show them Gotham’s sights. Take Damian with you – he missed his older brother very much while you were away.”

Dick raised an eyebrow but turned to the Suits and Mozzie to ask their opinion.

“I wouldn’t mind going out.” Head Suit agreed, his coworkers immediately nodding in assent.

Moz understood the feeling, but then again, the manor had not rejected him as badly as it rejected the Suits. While the place felt creepy and unfamiliar, it wasn’t hostile. He wasn’t sure the same could be said of the city beyond the door…

“If you don’t mind, I’ll stay here.” He replied when Dick looked at him. “Plenty of artworks I still want to see at my own pace; I’ll be fine.”

“I’ll stay with your friend to give him a tour. Nothing cat-astrophic will happen,” promised Selina. “After all, I’m very familiar with all the works on display here.”

And somehow, that’s what did it. The purring tone, the obvious knowledge of every painting, sculpture and jewelry exposed in the manor, the various puns, the fact that she clearly had much experience with the Outside, the seductive, enthralling gait… Mozzie suddenly knew who he was talking to.

“Oh my God…” He whispered, painfully aware of the awe that dawned on his face.

He heard Dick laugh, no doubt aware of Moz’s epiphany. “I’ll leave you guys to it, then. I’m sure you’ll find some common ground to talk about.” And then he ushered the Suits out of the door and into Gotham’s dangers.

Meanwhile, Moz stared at Selina Kyle, at Catwoman with stars in his eyes.

“So, then, Mozzie,” she started with a smile that he couldn’t help returning, “what do you say I show you which pieces I ever stole from Bruce while you tell me of your own heists? And then we can trade stories about the Kitten and the Bat.”

Mozzie couldn’t accept quickly enough.

Chapter Text

Peter had never been good with kids; it was a weakness he easily admitted to. He just didn’t deal well with them.

But Dami Wayne? Oh God, that kid was a thousand times worse! And not just because he threw cutlery at his siblings – nevermind that his siblings, Neal included, retaliated right back, because that obviously didn’t happen and Peter had only imagined the whole scene.

There was an unsettling… intensity to the boy that just gave Peter the chills. Most kids he'd ever met were all too happy to ignore the boring grown-ups and leave him alone in favor of more entertaining games. Not Dami Wayne, oh no.

When Peter had heard from Neal that his youngest brother was into painting, he'd imagined a second, younger Neal Caffrey dealing in thefts and forgeries left and right. A nightmare he already dreaded.

After meeting said brother, Peter thought the world would be damn lucky if Dami Wayne didn't go down the path of the serial killer.

Walking down the winding – ludicrously long, did it ever end? It definitely hadn't been so far when they drove in – alley to Wayne manor's entrance with Neal and a glaring Dami, Peter clutched his Gotham survival kit close to his chest. He wasn't so far gone that he contemplated using his gun or the serrated knife on a child, but…

Well, he hadn't ruled out the stun gun on its lower setting if Dami kept glowering at him like that much longer.

"We'll walk down to the station outside the estate, and then we'll take the monorail to Gotham center," explained Neal with a grin. Like he didn't feel his brother's intense, ominous gaze setting on him before it returned to glaring at the FBI agents. "I think we'll start with Robinson Mall; the security usually keeps most goons from setting up traps and bombs and everything, so it’s one of the safest places for tourists in Gotham.”

“I wouldn’t be so confident. Just last week the Riddler set up a series of lethal games in the mall. Two clothes stores and a workshop for toys were converted into a deranged puzzle room. About four dozen people had to suffer the man’s enigmas to survive until Batman and Robin made their way in and took over the solving. Suffice to say the ‘game’ ended much sooner than the Riddler hoped and the man received a thorough beating for his transgressions. As well as for the pathetic simplicity of his puzzles.”

Peter didn’t know what bothered him the most: the gleeful smirk playing on Dami’s lips as he recounted that story (and closely watched the agents’ horrified squirming like he took pleasure in their fright), the hint of satisfied bloodlust when speaking of this ‘Riddler’s’ fate, the disdainful sneer at how easily the two vigilantes apparently solved the problem or the oddly complex language in a child’s mouth.

You’d think being more mature would help Peter interact with the kid. You’d be absolutely wrong.

Neal shot his brother an admonishing glance. “Dami, please don’t scare our guests.”

He didn’t disprove the boy’s tale though. Or look surprised by it. Were attacks in a mall so commonplace that Gothamites don’t even bat an eye at hearing of another one?

Why did he come to Gotham again? Surely this was too much to catch one measly criminal, a man who apparently didn’t have much chances of survival anyway.

It had already been a dreadful night – if Peter was superstitious, he’d swear the manor had tried to eat them. The corridors had shifted whenever they turned their back, he had no other explanation for the way he’d entered his guest room through a door and had exited in a completely different hall. From the very same door. Diana and Jones had reported similar troubles, and they’d all wandered the endless corridors for what felt like hours after stumbling upon each other. Finding the kitchen and the creepy smiling butler had felt like a miracle.

Peter hadn’t even been able to appreciate the countless masterpieces exposed throughout the winding, shifting corridors. The anguish of never escaping the haunted mansion of horrors had kept him from looking at the paintings, sculptures, gilded weapons and jewelry adorning every wall. He had, however, noticed the infinite amounts of gargoyles watching them stumble around, grinning with their sharp teeth at their misery.

He’d also swear he caught figures stalking them a couple times, around corners, over furniture, between gargoyles or even on the chandeliers. The shrill sound of laughter had echoed through the corridors, chilling them all to the bone. Of course, when they took a closer look, nobody was there, but the three of them couldn’t have shared the same hallucination, could they?

(Couldn’t they? Maybe one of those dreadful mixtures distilled by the local supervillain could induce targeted illusions? Who ever knew in this demented city?)

Peter knew that magic existed; in this day and age, it was impossible not to. But he’d always thought magic and aliens and metahumans were only something you encountered when you were either a superhero, a supervillain, tragically unlucky or criminally stupid. He had never expected to be caught in magic in the mansion of one of the richest men in the world, a hopeless idiot who also happened to be Neal – Dick’s – adoptive father.

They’d been warned that Gotham was a hell of its own, but still…

So when his CI had offered to take them out of the mansion, even if it was to guide them through the city itself, Peter and his colleagues had seized their chance with the desperation of the hunted.

And now here they were, trekking through the Wayne garden in the dark, even though his watch said it was 1pm. If he looked up and squinted, he could make out the blurry disk of the sun over their heads, struggling to shine through the smog.

How did plants even grow here? The gardens around him were lush and full of life, but how could that be without sunlight and watered only with contaminated rain? The same drizzle that had come and gone a while ago and left them all wet yet oddly sticky from the pollution. No way was that water healthy.

Dick and Dami spent the time talking with each other sharing their respective months apart. And it was Dick and not Neal. Neal would never have been caught dead wearing green yoga pants and a form-fitting mustard shirt with red sleeves. When Jones had commented on the attire, Dick had smiled, said it was an allusion to something and left his cryptic explanation at that. Dami had snorted in derision, but he’d looked strangely happy all the same.

Probably a family inside joke, not the beginning of Neal’s career as a supervillain. Even if Gothamite rogues had a reputation for outlandish costumes.

The agents, on the other hand, stewed in their own silence. Not only did they feel like they were intruding on the brothers’ conversation (Dami might be a little monster that gave him the creeps and reveled in their unease, but even Peter could tell he’d missed his oldest brother), but what were they supposed to say?

Ask questions about Dick’s family? Peter hoped he never had to think of that can of maniacal worms ever again.

Compliment his house? God no. There was nothing to praise about that man-eating mansion, no matter how many treasures filled it.

Question him on his link with the Justice League? Maybe later, but not now. Not in front of a civilian kid, Gothamite or not. In the relative safety of his guest room, Peter had perused the documents the butler had provided, made a few calls to confirm some details and come to the conclusion that this all looked horribly legit. Neal Caffrey was an alias of Dick Wayne to complete missions on the behalf of the League.

He still struggled with the idea, but all the evidence was there, and a number of agents did abruptly resign or disappear from the face of the earth since Neal came to work for the FBI. Peter had assumed most of them either moved on to greener pastures or refused to work with his pain in the ass of a CI, but with the new information…

Some of the names on the list of crooked FBI agents or moles hadn’t really surprised him; others had caught him completely unawares. They had been respected agents, known for their praiseworthy work ethics and affability. Peter would like to know what exactly they did and how Neal caught them.

But not in ear’s reach of an impressionable (if terrifying and sadistic) child. The mission order mentioned an organization called the League of Assassins, among others, and Dami should not hear of this lest he have nightmares until he’s old enough to drink.

(Or decides to join.)

Diana found the balls to break the silence first with a question. “You’d think a city the size of Gotham and with its reputation would have more places to cater to visitors. Surely you have a few tourist scams somewhere, don’t you? Why not go visit those instead of the mall?”

Before Neal could open his mouth, his demon of a little brother answered for him. “I would gladly lead you to the touristic sides of Gotham where you would undoubtedly swell the ranks of the foolish Outsiders murdered there, unaware of the city’s bottomless appetite for fresh meat.”

“Dami,” Neal rebuked him fondly before he turned to the shell-shocked agents. “But he’s not wrong, though. Tourist attractions are basically traps to lure Outsiders; no locals ever go there, so it’s all visitors and… well, let’s just say you make for easy prey. At best you’d be mugged and left to bleed out on the pavement, at worst… you probably don’t want to know.”

No, Peter indeed didn’t want to know.

“So, what’s there to see in the mall then?” Jones asked, his voice just a touch too high-pitched to sell his casual act.

The iron gates of Wayne manor were finally visible, which meant that Peter almost collided with them in the thick darkness. The portal opened inward, seemingly on its own in front of Neal and Dami. The former turned to watch them, a wide, ominous smile on his lips for all that he probably didn’t intend for it to look threatening. “You’ll see. I’m not spoiling the surprise.”

Not at all reassuring. Especially coupled with his little brother’s bloodthirsty smirk.

At least, the monorail station was close to the gate. So close, in fact, that Peter suspected it had been built solely for the Waynes’ benefit. With how wide estates spread in this part of town, the closer neighbors were at the very least ten minutes away on foot.

“You didn’t pay,” groused Peter when Neal simply jumped straight into the car.

“Public transportation is free in Gotham. It helps fight pollution.”

It… was theoretically a very sensible idea, but a single look upward betrayed how ludicrously inadequate it really was. Smog thick enough to smother the sun wouldn’t just go away because you limited cars; you’d have better luck by regulating industrial pollution and doing something about all the noxious gas supervillains released in Gotham’s skies. Or just nuking the entire place.

If the point had been to reduce the number of mad drivers on Gotham’s streets, though, Peter would have praised the initiative.

Of course, none of them told Neal that, even if they thought it very loud. The man looked way too proud of this meaningless achievement.

Although Peter had to admit the monorail system seemed to work rather well. Plenty of people boarded in and out as they changed stations, so it must be a popular means of transport. It also allowed him a chance to study Gothamites in their native environment.

He’d love nothing more than to say they looked like any random schmucks in the country, but that would be an egregious lie. Everyone around him carried an aura of sorts that just screamed for him to keep his distance. Neal and Dami didn’t seem affected (although Dami’s own stronger murderous aura might play in that), so they were either immune through exposure or it only targeted Outsiders. Moreover, quite a few people saluted the two Waynes with a grin, recognizing them even in their casual getup – or whatever the word was for Neal’s eye-searing outfit – only to sneer at Peter and his colleagues in the next breath.

The scars didn’t help the unfriendly atmosphere. All the passengers bore arrays of them, deep and shallow, fresh and old, clean or bearing traces of past infections. From the little girl with her creepy blank-faced doll that played in a corner to the burly man looming over everyone or the elderly grandpa in his seat that used his cane at every turn of the car to smack the three agents’ legs and pretend it was unintentional.

So Neal hadn’t lied when he said scars were a Gothamite thing. While a dreadful reality, Peter heaved a mental sigh of relief; he’d have hated to arrest his CI’s father if the man truly was an abuser.

Not that it seemed any likely. Brucie Wayne was too dumb to know how to put his belt on (the one he wore this morning was twisted inside out on itself and nobody had dared to point it out until the butler set it right) let alone wield it against his children.

Another oddity was the number of people of all ages sporting a tuft of bleached white hair. Like the teenager at the precinct and Jay Wayne had, actually. Peter dismissed it as a local trend – God forbid Gotham follows the whims of fashion from the outside…

They soon reached their destination, most of the crowd also getting out in the same station. The group walked out of the car, Dami taking the lead and Neal bringing up the rear. Peter had the sudden image of bodyguards escorting their charges for a second, before he remembered that for all his eerie maturity and sadistic tendencies, Dami was only like, ten. His mind was just playing tricks on him.

“Welcome to Robinson Mall!” Announced Neal with grandiose gestures. “One of Gotham’s commercial hubs! Well, one of her legal hubs; you probably won’t see her darker side.”

Peter dutifully ignored all the implications of that statement and took a look around.

The place looked like any mall he’d ever visited, except where it didn't.

For one, it was filled with Gothamites. Enough said on that topic.

For two, it lay entirely underground, with what Peter identified as fortified bunker doors dividing the mall into sections. No doubt they could close and completely quarantine any part of the place, although he refused to think about scenarios where that became necessary.

For three, most malls didn’t have the sheer variety of shops found in Robinson mall. Peter saw the customary supermarket, the clothes emporiums, the bookshop, the cobbler, ice-cream seller, toy store, pet shop… Then came the Gothamite weirdness.

Weapons shops weren’t unheard of in the rest of the world, but Peter had never walked past one that displayed guns, rifles and machine guns, baseball bats, stun-guns, all kinds of knives and blades, grenades, boxing gloves on springs, exotic ancient weapons, giant hammers, vials of acid, poisons, and unknown chemicals, a fire-thrower, landmines, jewelry – for whatever reason – and a few cumbersome things that couldn’t possibly be missiles.

If Dami looked at the swords on display a bit too long and Neal promised to buy him one later, Peter definitely didn’t hear about it. He also didn’t sneak a hand in his survival kit to clutch his own stun-gun.

A few buildings over they found a tailor for formal wear. Behind the window, Peter saw gorgeous evening gowns, expensive tuxedos, a selection of matching rebreathers and the most godawful attires that belonged more in a cheap Halloween store than a luxury shop. Like a suit that was dark blue and respectable-looking on one side but bright orange and shredded on the other. Next to it a mannequin wore a furiously green garment covered in question marks while its brother displayed an even worse body-suit spotted with massive, multicolored polka dots.

Engraved on the glass in flowing golden script, you could read the shop’s advertisement.

“We have all our formal suits and dresses made here,” explained Neal as he caught Peter staring. Trust the man to miss that what boggled the agent’s mind wasn’t the mention of his surname but the fact that the shop openly advertised making outfits for supervillains. “I remember the first time Mr Fanfreluche took my measurements; I was eight and I couldn’t stay still for more than five seconds, but the tailor was very patient and never once got annoyed with me. Instead, he started talking about circus stage costumes – it was really nice.”

Peter elected to leave it at that, even if he couldn’t conceive how a shop dared expose itself as working for rogues. At the very least, it probably explained the horrendous costumes inside.

A shout brought his attention to the other side of the street.

“Batarangs! Batarangs fresh from last night in perfect condition! Picked right up after Batman’s passage! Authentic batarangs for cheap!”

A scruffy child with a basket full of bat-shaped metal objects walked by, promoting his goods loudly in an attempt to attract customers.

“You think these are genuine?” Asked Jones as he looked at the basket longingly.

Neal shrugged. “Probably. Batman tends to throw a lot of these around and hardly ever backtracks to collect them. Most Gothamites have a batarang or two as mementos.”

After one last moment of hesitation, Jones went to talk to the kid and came back as the gleefully proud owner of a ‘batarang’. What a stupid name. Peter kinda hoped Batman didn’t use or come up with it, or the vigilante would lose the tiny amount of respect Peter might have for him for surviving this long.

They wandered the underground streets for a while, watching in awe and dread as Gotham gradually revealed her inner madness.

Neal eventually brought them to a fast food joint. Peter might be feeling a bit peckish at that point – his stomach had been too tied in knots this morning to swallow much – but he drew the line at eating in a place called Batburger and manned by overworked students in gaudy vigilante costumes.

Really, why was Gotham so obsessed with the Bats?

But Jones looked interested, Diana was also hungry, Neal did his best impression of a kicked puppy and Dami glowered at him, so he relented. They settled in the patio – whatever its point was in an underground mall.

Maybe the food tasted better than the junk Peter expected, but not even Neal’s needling would make him admit it.

They stayed in their plastic seats even after polishing their meal. The gala wasn’t before a good couple of hours, including the time to get there, debrief and get ready, but Peter believed both he and his two colleagues needed to catch a breath.

From the corner of his eyes, he saw a young man try to snatch an old lady’s purse, only for the grandma to snatch it right back and use it to whack the would-be thief in the face before the agents could intervene. Peter wasn't sure, but from this distance, he could have sworn the old woman proceeded in lecturing the delinquent on the proper way to lift purses, and then encouraged the mortified teenager to try his new techniques on her, only to get a second and a third smack for not performing well enough.

He caught Diana’s glance and shared a commiserating look. Jones hadn’t noticed the aborted theft, too busy playing with his new ‘batarang’ along with the Nightwing action figure Dami got with his kid menu and had graciously given to the agent.

“You are using that batarang incorrectly.” The creepy little boy said after watching Jones spin it between his fingers. “If you use it as a throwing weapon, you must hold it between two fingers for a stable trajectory. If you intend to use it as a knife, then you must grasp the blunt edge and hook a finger around the ears or you’ll lose your weapons with the first strike.”

“... Like this?” Asked Jones after a beat of perplex staring before he adjusted his grip. Following the instructions of a ten-or-something-years-old.

“No, you imbecile, like this.” Dami pulled the weapon out of Jones’s hand and demonstrated the ‘proper’ hold. Then he gave the batarang back to the agent who did his best to mimic him.

“Uh, Neal? Shouldn’t you stop this?”

“Nah, it’s fine, Diana. Baby Bat knows what he’s doing.” Neal watched his little brother handle the wicked-sharp weapon with a fond smile. “In fact, there’s a training range down the mall – Dami, you could take Jones there to show him how to throw the batarang.”

Dami replied with an eerily piercing look, apparently well-aware that his older brother had ulterior motives. Neal replied with a sweet, sweet smile that did nothing to convince anyone here of his innocence.

“Fine. Agent Jones, come with me. I will show you the proper way to use a batarang; don’t expect to walk out until I judge your form and aim decent enough not to shame me as your teacher.”

Oh, now Peter understood what Neal was trying to do. “You should go, Jones,” he supported his CI’s crazy idea, trusting in Neal’s care for his colleagues. He wouldn’t send them anywhere dangerous without warning. “In fact, Diana, you should tag along; just to ensure nothing goes wrong. I’ll stay here with Neal.”

Diana threw him a dubious glance, but she must have caught on to Neal’s intent as well, for she stood up with a sigh. “Fine, then. Show us where that ‘training range’ that absolutely doesn’t breach two dozen security rules by standing right in the middle of a mall is.”

The younger Wayne child nodded regally and led the two agents away, already instructing them both on the best way to use a batarang and the cases in which it might prove more effective than a gun or a knife. It gave Peter the chills.

“Dami will look after them,” promised Neal the moment the unlikely trio vanished around a corner. “And the two of us finally have a moment alone to talk. I imagine you want answers. Nobody will overhear us here, so ask away.”

Boy, did he have plenty of questions, so much so that Peter had no clue where to start. He picked up the first thing that came to mind. “How did you become a mole for the Justice League?”

“They were looking for someone to steal a few magical items at first – most notably a music box. When you turned it on, the music charmed people into murdering each other. Nasty thing, even damaged and with pieces missing, it still incited people to become violent. Problem was that it belonged to someone influential that did not want to part from it and could have caused trouble to the JL if they pushed. So they opted for outsourcing.

“I was the perfect candidate. Trained in acrobatics, trustworthy as a cop, charming enough to work my way in, with the right temperament, addiction to adrenaline and free time to pull it all off – superheroes are too busy to pull off another alias besides their hero and secret identity, so they had to rely on a ‘civilian’. Plus, it’s not open knowledge, but B pays a large amount of the JL’s bills, so they already had contacts with me in the past.

“They created the Neal Caffrey alias for that first mission, sent me off to learn a few conning and forging skills with Moz – who had appeared on their radar some time ago but had been dismissed as a low threat and possible asset – and I stole the music box and replaced it with a fake. We kept the alias active for other missions with similar problems until we decided to freeze it by letting it get caught and sent to jail, where I barely spent a week. When someone discovered that the FBI was teeming with moles and the like, Caffrey was revived and we made up a plan for me to be hired by the FBI using an ongoing case. And that’s it, that’s Neal Caffery’s story.”

It all sounded so very simple when explained like that, but Peter struggled to compute it.

Neal – Dick – sipped at his remaining soda, waiting for Peter to ask his next question.

A question that never came, but was instead upstaged by an explosion not far from them, followed soon after by maniacal laughter.

Peter was on his feet in a second, gun at the ready. He was the only one. Most people around him sported an expression of utter annoyance and didn’t bother moving.

“Ugh, don’t bother, Peter,” Dick drawled between one sip and the next. “I had hoped to show you a worthwhile villain during your stay – from afar, mind you – as part of the true Gotham experience, but I guess you’ll have to deal with the garden-variety pests instead. They don’t even bother closing the mall security gates for the Fairy Godmother.”

Peter tried to process it all to the best of his ability and failed. “The Fairy Godmother?” He eventually stuttered, because his poor brain could only focus on one absurdity at the time.

He found his answer in the figure that skidded into the plaza. A woman in her mid-fifties in a light blue dress with an odd pointy hat over her head. On her shoulders hung a sort of back-pack made of four tanks full of lilac glowing, bubbling liquid in the vague shape of wings. It was all linked to a metal stick-like object she held in hand, like a wand.

Oh. Like a mad-house version of Cinderella’s Fairy Godmother. A Gothamite version.

Dick’s hatred of Disney suddenly made a lot more sense.

“Bibbidi bobbidi BOOM!” She yelled, pointing her wand at a couple of lovers on a date. A jet of glowing goo came out and the bench they hastily vacated exploded on contact.

The FBI agent watched it happen, transfixed by the sheer madness before him. The rest of the crowd merely gave the madwoman a wide berth, shot her long-suffering glares and only dodged if she aimed anywhere near them. Apart from that, they seemed to move on with their life as if today was just a regular Thursday.

And given the negative amount of fucks distributed here, perhaps it was.

Ten minutes into the Fairy Godmother’s rampage, an individual dressed in an obnoxious yellow suit arrived, tackled the woman to the ground without effort, knocked her out, tied her up, waved at the now smiling crowd – Dick waved right back – and vanished, leaving the rogue there for the police to collect.

Peter officially hated Gotham.

“That was Signal, the daytime Bat,” gushed Dick with a fond grin. “Given most of the real baddies prefer to work at night, one Bat is usually enough during the day and Signal does an amazing job.”

The agent had nothing to reply. Peter just sat there and reconsidered his life choices. Dick ordered another Hood-sundae (a regular sundae topped with red sauce and a big cherry) for himself.

“Can I borrow your napkin?” He asked after placing his order. “It seems mine was misplaced.”

For some reason, Peter’s mind narrowed in on that. Perhaps it was easier to focus on such an innocuous statement than on literally anything else around him, but could have sworn Dick’s napkin had been securely weighted down by their tray and unlikely to fly away even during the Fairy Godmother’s explosive attack.

Yet it was gone, and Peter’s suspicions immediately – and nonsensically – turned to the little kid that had skipped by their table a couple minutes ago. But that was absurd. Why would a little girl steal a napkin? And why Dick’s, despite Diana’s, Jones’s and Dami’s napkins still waiting there, unattended and to be thrown away? They would have made a much easier theft?

“Don’t worry about it.” Dick’s mirthful, knowing grin as he nabbed Peter’s discarded napkin didn’t explain anything, but Peter took his word for it. He had better things to do than worry about potentially stolen trash.

Things like the van speeding towards them in the car-free area, barely avoiding the mildly-panicked passerby. It skidded to a stop in a shriek of tyres (the way all Gothamites seemed to park) and the backdoors opening up to four people in ski masks stalking out, guns blazing.

It all happened so fast and out of nowhere that Peter didn’t have the thought of drawing his own weapon. One of the men clutched Dick by the arm. “You’re coming with me!’ He barked as he dragged his victim into the van.

Peter did the only thing that came to mind, he grabbed onto his friend before the doors closed and found himself in the van. Under gunpoint from four irate kidnappers. The closest one immediately removed his gun and his survival kit before Peter could gather his wits and push past the sickness induced by the van’s jolting motions.

“Fuck, we have a tagalong!” Cursed one of them.

“Throw him out,” ordered another voice, this one coming from the front of the van.

“Don’t be so mean, Dimitri, you can’t throw Peter out!” It took the FBI agent an embarrassingly long moment to realize the voice came from Dick. And another to see that the kidnappers, against all common sense, seemed to be reconsidering their first idea.

“You sure Richie?” One of the abductors asked. “We could throw him in the water or at a slower speed if you’re worried about him.”

“Nah, Peter’s fine.” Replied Richie, because it was Richie, the ditzy public persona and not Dick or Neal. The man leaned forward with a wide, carefree grin, like he was imparting them with a secret. “He’s supposed to stay near me. He’s my minder.”

“Your minder?” The abductors’ hostility seemed to melt away with each of Richie’s sentences. Two muzzles had already dropped from Peter’s head.

“Yep!” Richie popped the ‘p’ like a kid. “He looked after me when I was Outside and was nice enough to bring me home, so I took him and his friends on a tour of Gotham!”

“We’re here.”

And as the man driving said it, the entire van lurched forward; the brakes barely managed to stop the vehicle’s hellish momentum. Peter’s head almost collided with the wall but one of the kidnappers mercifully grabbed him before the deadly impact. All the Gothamites had clutched onto security rails in time and seemed none the worse for wear. Not even surprised, really.

The armed men escorted Peter and Richie inside a nondescript warehouse, although Richie seemed to follow willingly with a cheerful strut. The FBI agent expected to be bound or locked up, but the criminals only led them to a dark room and turned on the light.

A banner of ‘Welcome home Richie’ hung over the farthest wall, over a table filled with food and drinks and gaudy decorations.

Peter blinked.

It was all still there.

“Oh, you threw a party for me!” Richie skipped ahead of him to examine the display, a wide, silly smile stretching his lips to the limit. “Thanks so much guys!”

“Eh, it’s the least we could do.” One by one, the kidnappers removed their ski masks, revealing their embarrassed but proud expressions. “We all missed you, buddy.”

Peter had had enough. Of course, this was all a joke, another crazy Gothamite thing. A prank gone too far with him caught straight in the middle of it. “Wait a minute. This was all fake?” He turned towards Richie. “You know these people?”

“Of course! They’re my bestest kidnappers!”

“Outsider, right. You’re mistaken, this is a real abduction,” offered one of the two women among the five criminals, probably sensing that Peter was confused beyond words and would not get a satisfactory answer from Richie. “We’re professional kidnappers, specialized in taking Richie here. We already sent a ransom demand and we’ll keep Richie inside – and you too since you tagged along – here until the money is delivered. Now, just to be clear, Richie said you were his minder?”

Richie answered for him. “Like I just told you,” he whined, sounding remarkably like a petulant child, “he looked after me when I was Outside.”

“So you kept the boy alive when he was out there. If so, you have our thanks then,” the woman replied with a startlingly genuine smile. “The poor thing tends to get into trouble a lot. He isn’t quite what you would call the sharpest tool in the shed.”

“Alfred doesn’t let me touch the tools in the shed,” offered Richie apropos of nothing. “He says I could get hurt.”

“Thank Gotham for the butler,” muttered a kidnapper, barely audible for Peter and out of ear’s reach of Richie. Supposedly. Peter had noticed several occasions where Neal heard things he should have been too far to catch.

“Anyway,” the first woman – the one who Peter assumed was in charge of this mess “if you’re a friend of Richie’s then I guess you’re alright, even for an Outsider. You can stay and celebrate with us.”

“Didn’t you just kidnap me? Us?” Peter couldn’t help asking, a strange kind of detached anger suffusing him.

“Yeah, it’s our job,” snarked the second woman.

The first one took charge again of the conversation with nonchalant ease. “I suppose it’s not commonplace Outside, but it’s how it’s done here. All the Waynes have their dedicated team of kidnappers, so when someone wants to abduct them, they call us. We already know our charge’s – Richie, in our case – patterns and we’re friends. Sort of. Besides, believe me when I say that keeping any member of that family alive and occupied and managing their quirks long enough for the ransom to arrive requires quite a lot of experience and familiarity.”

“Oh,” Peter heard himself say faintly, lost in his recollection of all the times Neal almost killed himself under his watch. “I can believe that.”

“Right! You looked after him Outside, so you understand why we need specialized teams. Those Waynes don’t have the survival instincts God granted to a teaspoon. Anyway,” she turned with a smile towards Richie, who has been sneaking towards the table of food an inch at a time as they spoke and doing a poor job of it, “it’s so good to have you back in Gotham, Richie! Penguin commissioned a kidnapping the moment he heard – don’t worry, the ransom should arrive long before tonight’s gala. You’ll be back in time; Penguin insisted on it.”

Another kidnapper walked towards Richie and threw an arm over his shoulders. “And in the meantime, we celebrate! We got you all your favorites! There’s enough Freeze Tea to drown Bane, home-cooked cookies from Susan,” the second woman waved at them, “plenty of candy, beer for us adults and a selection of the best cakes from Grandmama Carmilla’s shop.”

“She made the chocolate-pecan brownies just for you,” added another criminal, all completely ignorant of Peter’s silent meltdown. “Had to pay a whole pint of blood to get it, but it’s absolutely worth it after two months of no contact!”

Peter’s brain almost tore itself in two trying to figure out the two months part (Neal has been his CI for well over a year – just how often did Dick slip away from his ankle bracelet to go back home and get kidnapped?!) and the payment with blood part.

Meanwhile, Richie got reacquainted with his abductors, as if that was normal behavior. Peter absently noted all their names and useful detail, just in case he had to track them down one day. Carolyn – the leader – had bought a sixth aquarium and now had over a hundred fish she all called by name. Harry’s third child was born last month, and as he’d hoped, it was a beautiful girl they’d called Maria, in honor of her grandmother. Richie was invited to her baptism next week in the Church of Divine Hellfire’s cathedral. Dimitri – the driver – had taken up vaping as an alternative to cigarettes, but the sickly sweet smell of cotton candy e-liquid irritated his colleague’s nose so badly that he got relegated to driving duty only. Susan not only made cookies, but also macrame decorations, many of which she offered to Richie and they both marveled over the – frankly horrendous – color schemes. Rodrigo still lived in a crummy apartment full to the brim with anime figurines…

Peter decided that he’d had enough. Just… enough. No longer would he question or worry about anything until he was out of Gotham and back into the sane world. Or at least until he was back on track to the mission that had originally sent him here.

His abductors offered him food and drinks. He reluctantly accepted a piece of brownie apparently paid in blood to be left alone (and didn’t regret it. The creepy price was almost worth it) but categorically refused to touch whatever a Freeze Tea was.

The Gothamite chugged it down like water, but the noxious stench of chemicals wafting from the can turned Peter’s stomach.

“It’s made by Mr Freeze,” explained Richie as he downed his third can. “I think he funds part of his experiments with the profit – Freeze Tea is the best drink in Gotham, but you can’t find anything like it outside. All the other drinks get warm and icky when you forget them in the heat, but not Freeze Tea.”

Next to him, Harry laughed. “Honestly, I think half the reason it’s so popular is because all your family is always seen drinking the stuff.”

“Hey, better to have Mr Freeze pay for his science with delicious drinks than with crime, right? Or at least that’s what Timmy says!” Richie laughed right back, not realizing that he was the one made fun of. Or pretending not to realize it; Peter had to remember that Dick the Justice League mole and Neal the international conman lurked somewhere beneath the shallow surface of Richie Wayne.

But the act was so flawless that even knowing better, Peter caught himself falling for it several times. No wonder the superheroes had thought of Dick to pull off a months-long mission undercover.

An hour into the party, Carolyn’s phone chimed. “It’s Penguin,” she said after reading the message. “He’s got the money; we have to get pretty boy home so he has time to put on his make up for the big party!”

Richie grinned dumbly at the ‘pretty boy’ nickname, not catching the fond sarcasm behind it. Peter said nothing, and only had to psych himself for less than a minute before entering the van driven by a Gothamite. Either he was conquering his fear, or his survival instincts were dwindling.

When the car skidded to an abrupt stop, he had to be caught by Rodrigo again, but he at least managed to absorb part of the momentum. Progress, right?

As soon as the two of them were out in front of Wayne manor’s gate (and Peter’s survival kit was tossed back at him with his service gun inside), the van lurched to a start again and vanished in the darkness. Richie kept waving in its direction with a silly grin long after Peter lost sight of it, but he’d come to realize Gothamite had much better night vision (or rather Gotham vision, considering it wasn’t even 7pm yet) than regular humans. Maybe his companion still saw the van after all.

Peter could tell the exact moment Dick dropped the Richie mask, though, because his gormless gaze regained all of its familiar sharpness and he turned to look at Peter with a soft smile. It might have almost looked apologetic without that glint in his eyes.

But the agent was tired, too tired for questions. They still had a whole gala to face tonight, hopefully followed by an arrest so he could go home. Yet he couldn’t resist one tiny comment. “Your life is insane.”

Dick’s smile turned into an unhinged grin. “Oh, Peter,” he cackled, “you have no idea.”

Chapter Text

When the shape of the manor finally split from the darkness (about five steps before impact), the butler opened the door before they even reached it. Either that, or it opened on its own and the man just happened to be behind it. Both options seem equally and horrifically likely.

Pennyworth didn’t deign to bat an eye as Peter and Nea- Dick walked back into the manor. Yet the family, Peter thought, must have been told of the kidnapping, if only to pay the ransom. Besides, the news did get around since both Diana and Jones rushed at them the moment they caught sight of the former abductees, panic and relief clear as day on their faces.

Or rather, clear as any day away from Gotham’s.

“Boss! Dick!” Diana drew them both in a one-armed hug, which wasn’t very professional of her, but Peter was willing to overlook it this time. He wasn’t feeling very professional right now either. “We heard you got abducted! Are you two alright? Did they do anything to you? Dami brought us back to the manor and when we arrived, Alfred was in the middle of sending your ransom!”

Considering the vast and disturbing array of unpleasant things that could befall you in Gotham, Diana was asking very valid questions; nevermind that Dick and Peter walked back by themselves after stuffing their stomach with cake and without so much as a scratch on them. Physically, they were unharmed. Mentally… Peter thought his sense of reality might never fully recover from the whole ordeal. “We’re… fine, thank you. A little shocked, in my case, but they didn’t lay a hand on us.”

“Of course they did not,” a child-like yet eerily mature voice piped up. Peter hadn't noticed Dami Wayne sitting prim and proper next to them. Someone really ought to affix bells to that family or something. Maybe ankle bracelets with trackers like Neal’s – but still with bells, just in case. “They are consummate professionals. Each of them knows Cobblepot wouldn't appreciate his favored bargaining chip to suffer damage.”

“Cobblepot?”

“Oswald Cobblepot, aka the Penguin,” Dick answered Jones's question. “You'll meet him tonight at the gala.”

Jones swiveled on his feet to stare at their CI. “You invite crime bosses to galas?!”

A bout of half-manic chortles briefly drew their attention to yet another occupant of the room that Peter had missed. Since when had Jay been in that seat?

“Well, yeah.” Dick shrugged, not at all bothered with sharing space, air and a buffet with notable killers. “But Ozzie also has to attend as Gotham's mayor, not just as a crime boss. He says it's how he keeps tabs on potential competition for the next elections, but I think he just likes to schmooze.”

Before any of the agents had a chance to pick up on the many, many disturbing points of that statement, the butler coughed to draw their attention. “Sirs, far be it from me to cut short an edifying conversation on Gotham's high society, but should you wish to attend the gala, you might want to start preparing right now.”

With muttered curses – followed suit by apologies to the butler – a whole host of Waynes flocked from every dark corner towards the door. Just… How many were there exactly? And how the fuck had Peter missed them all? He was a trained agent, for Christ's sake!

“Come on, guys, we need to get ready too.” Neal urged them. He'd rushed out with all his siblings until he noticed the agents hadn't followed and backtracked.

“I took the liberty of preparing outfits for you in your respective rooms,” added the butler without missing a beat. “Allow me to escort you there.”

At least they wouldn't be left alone to wander in the endless, seemingly shifting and probably haunted corridors of the manor. Peter tried to cheer himself up.

It didn't really work. Nothing about Gotham was bright enough to ease the knot of dread that had kept tangling his guts more and more since they arrived.

But Peter and his colleagues were FBI agents, trained for – almost – any dangerous situation. So he took a deep breath and – almost – sounded convincingly confident when he replied, “Please lead the way, sir.”

If the shadows felt like they were closing in on them, then Peter had only to be lacking in sleep. Or so he tried to convince himself.

As promised, they made it to their respective rooms without being devoured by the hungry ghosts they could hear giggling in the distance or by the very mansion itself. Peter locked his door with no small amount of trepidation; after all, this still was part of Wayne manor. Nowhere was safe here, though he felt marginally less exposed in the guest room than anywhere else so far. Less blood-curling laughter echoing through endless corridors and the shadows mostly stayed where they were supposed to.

The outfit Alfred had left for him looked like it could buy his house three times over, yet fit him like a glove. A ludicrously expensive bespoke glove, but by this point, Peter had decided to go with the flow. Like it or not, Neal – Dick – and his family knew better than him how to survive Gotham’s hostile environment. He hadn’t brought any clothes suitable for a fancy gala anyway, and he figured the Waynes could afford the expense.

Next to the suit, socks and shoes, a box waited for him on the bed. A glance inside revealed not a bomb or another unsavory surprise (like he half expected) but a charcoal necktie, a luxurious but surprisingly not gaudy wristwatch and cufflinks, along with a much more extravagant yet compact version of his survival kit. All color-coordinated, though not in the exact same shade, creating a tasteful camaieu of gray and silver.

All in all, an outfit that cost more than he would make in a decade. For any other case, he would have insisted on covering the expenses (the FBI had an account for these occasions) even if this was only a loan. This time, though, he figured he’d suffered enough trauma not to add a no doubt astronomic bill to the pile.

As long as he returned everything in pristine condition at the end of the evening, he could probably pretend this was just like any other item borrowed by the FBI for a mission. More than once had they used a priceless piece of art or jewelry to lure a criminal in a trap. This was no different.

(Now if he could only convince himself of that while wearing an absurd fortune on his back…)

With weary resignation doubled with extreme care, he put on his outfit. Then he braced himself and opened the door. Slowly. With more caution that Peter used to lead an armed raid in a mob-ridden warehouse. Who knew what the manor had in store for him now?

Tonight, though, the door opened on the same corridor he had come from (which he swore wasn’t the case yesterday or this morning) and he found his team waiting for him next to the ever-present butler. Jones wore a garb similar to his own, Diana a gorgeous brown gown with matching necklace, earrings and shockingly practical glitzy high-heels, while his CI donned a pitch black vest and slacks over an azure shirt and an almost neon blue bowtie that altogether somehow managed to look both cheap and even more expensive than Peter’s suit. Unlike the FBI agents, whose outfits were a testament to the butler’s good taste, Neal’s cufflinks and watch glinted a flashy gold with actual sapphires.

Catching Peter’s dubious looks, the CI shrugged, not at all bothered by the tawdriness of his accessories. “It needs to be showy to go along with Richie’s personality. Just gaudy enough to sell it without being too ostentatious, you know? It’s all about finding the right balance.”

Right, Neal was playing a well-established character tonight. A persona that was also not really one and part of his real identity as Richie Grayson-Wayne, or Dick. Who was also an operative for the freaking Justice League and wasn’t Neal Caffrey at all.

No, Peter had not finished processing this yet.

No, he didn’t think it would ever feel real either, despite the plentiful proof he was provided with.

“In any case, we should get going. Everyone else is already waiting for us in the limo outside.” Funny how the manor behaved itself when they were around Nea- Dick. They arrived in the entrance hall after a scant few steps, no horrifying shrieking or gargoyles that moved when you stoped looking to speak of. Although Peter would have sworn they couldn’t materially have been so close to the front door. The architecture just didn’t add up.

He very consciously decided not to think about it as he climbed into the limo with his team and the rest of the Waynes.

A glance around the car revealed it was bigger on the inside, vast enough to welcome the whole family and three agents with room to spare. Peter chose not to ask why. Or how. Instead, he focused on their missing members. “Aren’t Mozzie and Miss Selina tagging along?”

“No,” answered Nea- Di- Richie. Peter should think of him as Richie tonight. “They both decided they had better things to do and skipped the gala altogether. Don’t worry about Moz, though. Selina will make sure he makes it back to New York in one piece.”

Peter hardly liked the idea of Mozzie, paranoiac extraordinaire and all around crook, wandering the streets of Gotham, but what could he do? The odd little man wasn’t one of his agents; he had no sway over him.

“You know, it’s kinda funny,” said Jones out of left field, “if I didn’t know you’d never let Catwoman anywhere near all that art you’ve got inside, I could have sworn that Selina was her. I mean, I checked on the Bat-watch, and they even have the same first name. Crazy, no?”

The Waynes exchanged not-so-covert amused glances. “Not so crazy when you know that actually was Catwoman,” replied Duke with a shrug that tried to look nonchalant but failed.

Then his words registered in Peter’s head and he bluescreened. Again. He’d have to get a health check once back home to see if all these shocks left some brain damage. “What?!”

“Cat-wo-man.” Jay replied, carefully enunciating each syllab like he was talking to someone hard of hearing. Or just dumb. “She’s the woman you met, and her real name is Selina Kyle. It’s all in the Bat-watch.”

“You mean to tell me that we were in the presence of one of the most wanted thiefs in the world, unmasked, and you didn’t warn us.”

None of the Wayne kids looked impressed. Timothy crossed his arms as he answered. “We’re telling you now, aren’t we? Besides, if you’d bothered to check on the app beforehand, you would have known. Don’t blame us for not doing your research.”

Lost, Peter looked at the patriarch in the hopes of finding an explanation, or at least a reason why they let an international thief roam unmonitored inside their museum of a mansion. Said hopes were dashed when Brucie turned to them with a gormless smile and offered them mini-bottles from the limo’s liquor cabinet.

All three FBI agents declined while mentally wondering for the umpteenth time how they ended here. They were on the job and would need their wits intact later, so no alcohol, no matter how much they craved a stiff drink or ten.

“Don’t think too much about it,” Neal patted him on the arm in sympathy – though belied by his gleeful expression. He was enjoying this, wasn’t he? “She and Brucie have been in an on-off relationship for years. We stopped asking a long time ago if they were together or not at any given point, or how the whole arrangement about vanishing art pieces in the mansion went. Better for your sanity, trust me.”

So Peter did as advised and tried not to dwell on it. Or on the lost opportunity to arrest one of their most wanted targets. Or even on the idea of Catwoman and Mozzie committing crimes together somewhere in Gotham. As long as they stayed within the borders of this hellish city, it wasn’t his purview anyway.

Actually, that last thought brought him a measure of comfort…

Like everything else in Gotham, the gala was at the same time a familiar routine to White Collar agents and entirely different from all they were used to.

Neal had imparted a few ground rules for their survival in the limo. Stay close to a Wayne – any Wayne – at all times. No arresting anyone but their target tonight, no matter what they hear. Only talk when directly addressed. Don’t mind the crazy stuff the family gets up to. Let Neal introduce them if necessary. If a supervillain attacks, don’t try to do the brave thing…

And of course, all the other guidelines that applied to Gotham in general.

Peter felt like one of those pre-school kids going on a class trip – not only because of all the repeated rules, but because he felt just as out of his depth.

All eyes were on them the moment they entered the ballroom. Everyone. watched the Waynes, and as their tagalongs, the FBI agents fell under a level of scrutiny that felt beyond uncomfortable. Even during armed interventions, the prickle of imminent danger had never been so intense.

Thankfully, Neal introduced them as “new friends he made in a dingy hotel on his road trip” to the first person he talked to and the weight of threatening attention immediately lifted like it never existed. Peter had never been so pathetically glad to be dismissed and ignored. They were not players on the board of Gotham’s high-society, nor pawns of any value and the association with the Wayne name made harassing them not worth the hassle. Just outsiders who would soon hightail it back to their average-income homes.

Oh God, if only…

Nobody even commented on their outfits clashing with their supposed – and actual – backgrounds. The Waynes had a reputation of generosity with their friends, although some malicious whispers called it ‘charity’ or worse instead while looking at Stephanie (who grinned at them knowingly before launching a massive attack on the expensive buffet). Them splitting up to shadow a specific Wayne each didn’t correct that impression in the slightest.

With the first near heart attack averted, the evening continued. As far as galas went, this was pretty upscale, and Peter has attended more than his share for work.

People talked, schmoozed, danced, drank. Live musicians played unobtrusively on a stage. Waiters made their rounds with plates full of petits-fours and flutes of champagne… The usual. Yet the more he looked from the near safety of Timothy’s side (Neal was busy playing Richie and couldn’t qualify as ‘safe’ if he tried), the more he noticed that yes, this was still very much Gotham.

Disregarding the Wayne antics he had been instructed to ignore (Brucie had his fifth glass in hand and a lingerie model on each arm, Jay and Dami were aggressively throwing peanuts at people wearing fur – nevermind that this was not the kind of party that offered peanuts – Richie and Stephanie had cleared a wide space on the dancefloor with their experimental acrobatic dancing) the rest of the people in attendance also had their own quirks.

From his place next to Timothy, Peter saw at least three guests trip or try to trip other people in less than half an hour. Only Neal’s reassurance that dangerous poisons were seen as too inelegant for galas stopped him from intercepting a number of cocktails and hors d'oeuvres and Peter flinched in second-hand embarrassment at some of the nasty comments fluttering throughout the ballroom. Gothamites were vicious and pulled no punches.

This bloodless warfare somehow never drifted anywhere close to the Waynes, no matter their outrageous behavior. Peter understood why he was told to stick close to Timothy, although he had to carefully pay no attention to the illegal edge the boy’s discussion with his fellow businessmen was skirting (or crossing like a Starbucks’ door at rush hour). He wouldn’t know; Peter wasn’t listening.

They came here incognito. Arresting half of Gotham’s elite, including his CI’s little brother, was not laying low. Or so he repeated to himself after the umpteenth induced but benign medical emergency saw someone rushing to a bathroom.

“Peter!” Neal called out to him in Richie’s voice. The man skipped towards him and Timothy with a silly smile on his face. Peter knew that look – he saw the shit-eating grin of his CI under the gormless airs. “I see you’ve met Ozzie! Carolyn and the others told you about him, didn’t they?”

The FBI agent followed Richie’s motions to Timothy’s latest conversation partner. A short, stocky man with a monocle, a cane and a striking hooked nose. One more eccentric in a crowd of them.

But ‘Ozzie’... Wasn’t that what Neal had called Penguin, the supervillain who ordered his abduction?

“I’m here in my capacity as mayor,” the possible rogue corrected mildly. His eyes stayed riveted on Peter in a pointed way that read more as threat than interest. “I prefer not to mix my various occupations, but if you want to talk about my other job and your experience with it, I can set an appointment. How about midnight, on the docks?”

Definitely a threat. And absolutely a supervillain. Peter thanked all his stars for his natural poker face. “That won’t be necessary, sir.”

“Good.” The smirk he received was nothing short of nasty. Then Penguin – Cobblepot – turned back to Timothy and resumed his talk about Wayne Enterprise’s upcoming and very illegal private funding of a new wing for the local prison.

Forget being on duty. Peter needed a drink so badly he didn’t even realize he said so out loud.

“Me too!” Richie mirthfully replied, schadenfreude barely concealed beneath his dumb mask. “I’m coming with you!”

At least that was his escort figured out. Peter spared his two colleagues a glance as they walked to the bar: Diana stood in a secure corner, with Cassie Wayne pushing some amuse-bouches in her hands while Jones and Duke had found refuge near the buffet. Both agents looked pale – maybe the Waynes were trying to cheer them up with food? Neal was using a similar tactic.

“Having fun?” The CI asked once they were seated in a corner of the bar, glasses in hand, tray of petits fours on the table and far enough away from the crowd that nobody could hear them. A potted plant even shielded them from most onlookers. Convenient, the FBI agent noted absently.

At this point, Peter couldn’t even muster any indignation, just a weary need to know that bordered on masochism. “That was the Penguin, wasn’t it?”

“Yep!” Neal popped the ‘p’ in the most obnoxious way known – and heretofore unknown – to man. “Ozzy has held a place on the top ten list of local supervillains for decades now. He's something of a local celebrity; you should be glad to have met him tonight. Put it on your Bat-watch card.”

“And he's your mayor.”

Neal giggled. Giggled. “I can see why you'd think it weird, but there are some definitive advantages to having a rogue in office.”

Peter's bulging eyes must have asked the question his mouth couldn't form.

“Think about it for a second.” His madman of a CI leaned forward, like he was imparting precious truths instead of spouting nonsense. “Unlike our previous mayors, Ozzie was elected with barely any rigging or blackmail because he cannot be intimidated by other rogues to do their bidding. He knows the ins and outs of business and of Gotham's black market better than anyone alive and he truly, genuinely cares about the city. Plus, he's very active against organized crime.”

“He is organized crime!”

“Well, yeah, but so is his competition, and Ozzie doesn't like to share. Believe it or not, but criminality has never been so low since he became mayor and started bearing down on rival organizations.”

“... You do realize that makes no sense, right?”

Neal shrugged, not the least bit concerned. “It does in Gotham. Everything is in shades of illegal if you look at it from an Outsider's point of view, but that's how the city has always worked and how it'll keep working for years to come. Ozzie loves Gotham, does what he can to improve the place and can be reasonable when he needs to. Plus, he's responsible enough to keep working from Arkham when the Bats throw him back there. That's all we ask, really. If he also uses his position as mayor to boost his own business and have his competitors arrested, then good for him, I guess. Everyone needs a hobby.”

Peter looked down in despair at his half-drunk glass – he was still on the clock, but Christ – only to find the plant hiding them from view had somehow shifted to dunk a flower in.

He jumped from his chair.

“What the fuck?!”

“Ah, that.” Neal finished his own drink, not looking remotely worried at the moving greenery. “People tend to empty their drinks in the potted plants when they have even the slightest suspicion of tampering – you saw how it goes here, I imagine. The alcohol and all the other dubious substances kept killing the poor things, though, so B took pity on them and eventually asked Ivy if she could work her magic on them. Give them better chances of survival, you know?”

He placed his finished glass on the countertop; Peter watched in horror as another flowered vine reached out almost immediately.

“It worked! None of the plants have died since she improved them, but they've developed something of an addiction in the process. They won’t attack you, I swear, although I wouldn't drink from that glass again if I were you. The flowers shouldn't do anything funny, but you never know. Better safe than sorry, I say – at least when it comes to Ivy's infamous pollen…”

Peter had read about Poison Ivy on the Bat-watch. He understood how she could transform innocent greenery into alcoholic monstrosities. What he couldn't fathom for the life of him was why Brucie Wayne – Neal’s goddamn father – would have thought it a good idea to reach out to her in order to change the fate of a few potted plants.

Absently – and stupidly – he looked for the man in the crowd. Brucie was easy to find, given he was on stage, cheerfully trying his hand at the trumpet without an ounce of sense or of talent next to a suspiciously instrument-less and confused musician.

Oh. That was why, of course. The man had a terminal case of idiocy.

“Hey, isn't that Pullman over there?”

Neal's question had him shift his gaze away from the debacle in the orchestra (Dami had also borrowed a violin to show his father how it was done – although he seemed to know from which end to hold his instrument at least). And indeed, tucked in a corner of the ballroom, looking more gaunt and haunted than a mere week ago, was their target.

The instant sense of kinship and empathy had to be quashed – this was a suspect – but Peter understood.

Oh, how he understood.

“How do you want to go about this?” Neal asked while stuffing himself with their remaining amuse-bouches.

Peter thought about it. Truthfully, they had enough evidence that they could arrest the man right now. But did he want to cause a scene and reveal himself as a fed to everyone in attendance?

So far, he had identified no less than four mobsters, at least one of which must have been highly-ranked, two black widows, one forger and eight, eight killers-for-hire in the room. Just by overhearing conversations he tried his best to ignore. Not to mention the Penguin.

So did he want to put a giant target on his back tonight? The answer was pathetically obvious.

“Let's try to be discreet. Maybe lure him to an exit and use the chance to put him in cuffs?”

“That won't work like you think. Many of the bigwigs here have people watching the exits: to prevent ambushes the moment they step out or to have a team ready to extract them if a rogue attacks. Skulking about will only get you noticed.”

Right, because this was Gotham. A charming little slice of hell where people acted like they lived on an active battlefield. Because they did.

“... What do you suggest then?”

“Honestly? Be open about your intentions – but only to Pullman. The guy looks like he's just one bad macaron away from a meltdown. Push him over the edge by showing him he has people on his tail and he'll do something stupid. Then I can arrest him myself and no one will be the wiser about you.”

“You can't arrest people, Neal!”

Neal looked at him with pity and perhaps a touch of annoyance. “I'm actually a cop, remember? That whole Caffrey thing was an undercover mission,” he reminded him after making sure nobody was close enough to hear them. “In fact, I'm the only one here who can arrest our man; Gotham doesn't recognize federal authority. You'd have a riot on your hands and I can't protect you from that.”

Christ, Peter had managed to forget. For his defense, this Justice League business was way beyond his pay grade and a bit much to deal with, even on a good day.

Not that a day spent in Gotham could ever qualify as ‘good’.

“Fine, we'll do it your way. As long as you're sure no civilian will get hurt the moment we push Pullman over the edge.”

“Peter, everyone here could make you eat dirt with one hand behind their back and their eyes closed. Pullman ain't no fighter; whatever he does, I guarantee you we've all seen so much worse.”

Ah, yes. The reminder that Gotham was a warzone in disguise did wonders for his tension.

With his Richie mask back in place and Peter in tow, Neal resumed his rounds around the ballroom. He stopped by Duke and Cassie long enough for the agent to inform his colleagues of the plan. A plan which basically boiled down to ‘keep a low profile, let me rile the suspect up and watch Neal put the cuffs on him’.

In the end, pushing Pullman to the breaking point was pathetically easy. Gotham had already frayed his nerves to almost nothing and all it took was for Peter to walk by, maintain eye contact, mention he was her from New York on legal business and the man drew a gun from a hidden holster.

Then Neal, still smiling like Richie, tackled him to the ground and held him in a clumsy grip that Peter knew was just for show. “Hey now, that's very rude, you know? Alfie taught me you aren't supposed to show you have a gun at a party!”

Pullman opened his mouth to shout something, but Neal squeezed his cheeks in with two fingers, garbling the words beyond comprehension while he gently tilted the suspect's head from side to side. Like a kid bullying another, not like a respectable and actually rather smart adult. “No, no. People with bad manners aren't allowed to speak. You'll just be rude again anyway.”

All around him, people nodded and muttered in agreement, not looking the last bit scared or surprised at Richie's behavior. Just scornful that an Outsider was so gauche as to break local etiquette, if Peter had to guess.

… How many of them also had guns concealed behind silk and velvet? How many had worse? Neal had been able to hide so much on his person that Peter didn't dare trust the form-fitting dresses or the bespoke suits.

“Just look at B!” Richie kept shaking Pullman's head, now sounding childishly angry. Indeed, while the rest of the room looked unfazed, Brucie was cowering beneath a table – a completely exposed and useless hiding place – clutching Dami and Stephanie as if to protect them with his trembling bulk. “You've scared him so bad with your stupid gun! Everyone knows he hates them!”

Of course. Even Peter knew of how Brucie Wayne became an orphan. No wonder the man was terrified of guns. That he still immediately reacted to protect his closest kids (or almost kids) spoke in his favor, really. Hopelessly moronic or not, Peter could respect that.

The rest of the family was already reaching out to coax Brucie from under the table and outside the venue, looking just as angry as Richie. Even Timothy's inexpressive robot face managed to convey subdued rage.

“You know what? I'm arresting you for that. You shouldn't have scared B.” Richie nodded decisively – or a puerile approximation thereof – and turned to… Cobblepot. A very cross, very dangerous-looking Cobblepot.

“Hey, Ozzie, you don't mind if I take one of the guests away, right? I mean, he wasn't a very good guest.”

“No he wasn't.” And from the way Cobblepot eyed the man on the floor, Pullman was lucky Neal had gotten to him first. The Penguin would not have been anywhere as gentle in stopping him… “You can take him where you want, as long as I never have to see his face again.”

“Great!” Richie finally released Pullman's mouth, but Penguin’s glare kept him from yelling again. Instead the man on the floor searched the room with panicked eyes, finally landing on Peter.

The silent and terrified “Get me out” he mouthed would stay with Peter for a long time.

Over him, Neal placed a finger on his own mouth in a cartoonesque gesture of thoughtfulness. “Now, what was I supposed to do next… I know the commish kept repeating it to me all the time… Aha! Handcuffs!” He patted himself, as if surprised not to find a pair on his person, before looking around. “Erm, I'm pretty sure I need handcuffs to continue. Does anyone have any they could lend me? I'll give them back, but I think I lost mine somewhere.”

Seven people pulled handcuffs from skin-tight outfits and offered them to Neal. With a grin, the man picked a gold and purple furry pair that was absolutely not designed with police work in mind. Pullman didn't protest when they closed around his wrists.

“Alright! Now I have to take you to the police house!” With shocking ease, Neal straightened his suspect and led him towards the exit. Pullman actually looked more like he was dragging Neal out faster than the other way around and didn't seem to pay a iota of attention to the man's rambling, which was… probably for the best. “Uhm, you can keep quiet, if you want, or you can talk. I like to talk a lot, if you want to talk with me. And you can call someone too. Well, you can when we reach the police house, obviously, not right now. Erm, what else. Commish always says I forget something… Oh, if you've no friend to talk to, we can find one for you! But if you choose that, then I gotta warn you, the free friends we have are all pretty gloomy. I told the commish we should find some more fun friends for the people we bring in, but he says they're here to do their work, not to make friends and that's just weird, right? I mean, they're here to be friends, but not to make them? I just don't get it. English is weird, don’t you think?”

… Unless he was gravely mistaken, that was the most botched version of the Miranda rights Peter had ever heard. He made a mental note to repeat the correct lines once they were out of Gotham, for obvious legal reasons.

Richie talked Pullman's ear off all the way out the venue and to the van Alfred had promised would wait for them near the gala. Peter had not asked how it would make its way there, but here it was. Parked in a side alley not to draw attention, right under one of the few streetlights and ready to whisk them far, far away from this living nightmare of a city.

Pullman was secured at the back without a word, except for a quiet but heartfelt “Thank you”. Not every day did Peter get thanked by the criminals he arrested, but given the circumstances…

Penguin had looked ready to skin the man alive right there, right now, in front of the crowd. Peter wasn't even sure anyone would have protested.

“Alright, one more criminal bagged and tagged!” Neal declared in his normal voice the moment the van doors closed on Pullman. He leaned on a wall, which made Peter cringe; who knew how many layers of gunk were ruining his horrendously expensive suit. “I suppose I couldn't have hoped for a better way to end my work with the FBI.”

All thoughts of stains left Peter. “What do you mean? You're still under contact with us.”

“Not anymore.” Neal shook his head.

“Neal, you're not allowed to just walk away from the FBI! You're still a CI under our jurisdiction!”

The more he talked, the more worked up Peter felt and the sadder Neal looked. “It's Dick, remember? Or Richie. And I am walking away. My mission has ended – I found all the moles and spies and dangerous outside elements in your agency and submitted my final report to the JL two nights ago. It's time I go home, Peter. And as for your responsibilities-”

He unearthed a folder from yet another invisible pocket and proffered it to the agent. “This should take care of everything on your side.”

Peter didn't want to take it; it felt like an acceptance he wasn't ready to reach. But what else could he do?

The folder was thick with many documents, but the agent stopped at the very first. An official looking paper with all kinds of information about Neal that he now knew were fabricated, and a title in an elaborate gothic font that stated “Death Certificate”.

Reading over his shoulder, both Jones and Diana's breath hitched. His own lungs just seemed to have stopped working.

“Neal Caffrey died of a rogue attack in Gotham a day ago,” supplied Neal – Dick – as if that explained everything. “That way, you can go back to New York without me and with your integrity intact. No one will be surprised; this is Gotham. People get murdered here all the time.” He shrugged, a sheepish little smile on his lips. “Of course, Hughes and a few others might believe I used the trip home to fake my death, but they won't place the blame on you. You three just return home in one piece and everyone will be happy. It's the best option.”

“The best option?” Jones repeated. He sounded hurt. “Everyone will be happy? Was it really that bad, working for us?”

Neal's eyes widened before he wiggled his hands in denial. “Oh no, don't think that! I actually had a lot of fun working with you! You're a great team! But…” He looked up, towards what Peter assumed were the rooftops, given he could barely see a few paces in front of him. “I've been away from my family for a long time now. Sure, there were a few short trips back, to keep up appearances, but they've never lasted longer than a gala or a party. I've missed them, Jones.

“Besides,” his nostalgic smile turned wry. Almost resentful. “Now that they know I'm Gothamite, there's no way the higher-ups will let me work with the FBI anymore. They never hire people from here, be that as agents, CIs, or even just for the cleaning staff. If I go back to New York with you, the only thing I will find is a notice that my contract ended and a van ready to ship me straight back to a top security prison for violent criminals from where I'll have to escape or fake my death again. If it's all the same, I'd rather skip that step.”

Peter opened his mouth to argue, but then he remembered the coaching they had before the mission. Gilden had let it slip that government agencies refused Gothamites on principle.

But this was Neal. He'd already been working with them for some time. Surely they could make an exception, right?

Then again, many people would be glad to be rid of the man. And if Neal – Dick – wanted to move on… He wasn't even an actual criminal, was he? Peter had no right to pressure him back into the life of a CI.

Diana had obviously come to a similar conclusion. She drew the man into a hug, mindless of the dirt coating the back of his suit. “We'll miss you, Dick. Don't be a stranger; remember to pay us a visit every now and then.”

Dick laughed, even as Diana let him go for Jones to have his turn. “It will have to wait until people forget about Neal, but sure! I will.” He aimed a teasing grin at all three of them. “Or you can come to Gotham to see me. Maybe you'll witness a real supervillain attack next time; just to live the true Gotham experience.”

Peter refused to grace that with an answer. His pained grimace was probably reply enough anyway.

Jones stepped back, shared a look with Diana, and then both made up excuses to give Dick and Peter a moment of privacy. They didn't go far – one checking on Pullman, the other in the van’s cabin – but he appreciated the attention all the same.

Peter had never been good with goodbyes.

“Uhm, I suppose we're driving out of Gotham right away,” he hedges, unwilling to get into the meat of the matter just yet. Unable to, really. “Do we send the dress suits and jewelry back to Wayne manor?”

“Nah, you can keep them. Think of it as a parting gift. There's also a dress for El and one for Diana's significant other. Alfred packed everything for you.”

“... We cannot accept bribes.”

“It’s not a bribe if we get nothing out of it, Peter. Just a gift, courtesy of the JL and of my family for looking after me while I was Outside. I promise we can afford it. But you can change back to your regular FBI suits in a rest stop once you’re away from Gotham.”

“Our luggage-”

“Is waiting for you inside the van. Like I said, Alfred packed everything.” Dick watched him fumble, an impish glint in his eyes that said he knew what Peter was doing.

Still, the agent could not help but delay the inevitable. “And what about your ankle bracelet? I should retrieve it.”

“It's also in the van. I took it off yesterday, soon after Neal's official death. The monitoring app has also been updated, so you don't have to worry about that.”

“I see…” He would not ask how Dick got in a highly secure government database. Probably more Justice League business that he was better off ignoring. “That's good, I guess. And… How will Mozzie get home?”

“Selina will take care of him. I'm sure he'll be glad to be spared the trip back in a van with feds driving on Gotham roads.”

Peter winced, very real panic flooding his veins. He'd forgotten about Gothamite road rules, or lack thereof. “If you won't be driving us back-”

“It's almost sunrise,” Neal cut him off with a grin. He looked up, as if he could discern the time of day from the pure blackness of the sky. “Almost nobody should be out at this time. Traffic at the border is always sparse and the road out of Gotham is much less frequented than the road in.” Yes, probably because so few visitors survived the trip. “Just turn all the headlights on, let Jones drive – he’s the best out of you three at car chases – and remind him not to use the brakes so much before you’re through the gates.”

Right. Peter had complete faith in his colleague’s abilities, but he’d throw a half dozen prayers in as well. For luck.

He looked around, seeking another matter to keep the conversation going – and not just because he dreaded the drive to Gotham’s gates, although that was also a valid concern. “And what about Pullman? We can’t just take him away without due process, can we? We should pay the police station a visit.”

“Nah, you can just take him.” Dick waved him off, grin as bright as ever. The little bastard was having fun. “The commish won’t mind, since Pullman’s an Outsider. I’m not even sure we have extraction paperwork to transfer a prisoner from Gotham to the Outside; it probably doesn’t happen all that often, to be honest. Besides, if he stays here, we’ll have to throw him in Blackgate sooner or later. It’s better than Arkham, true, but just look at the poor guy! He’ll be eaten alive in a matter of hours. Maybe even literally.”

… Nope. Not asking about that either. Ignorance was bliss.

But that was the last concern Peter could think to raise without opening cans of radioactive, rabid worms he preferred to stay safely sealed and buried under tons of concrete.

As if it heard his inner thoughts, a distant chain of explosions broke the silence. Resigned, Peter turned to look in that direction, old professional conscience warring with blaring survival instincts over the decision to investigate. Dick, meanwhile, merely checked his phone.

“No need to go,” he informed Peter, calm as ever. “There’s no screaming for help or alarm on the Bat-watch, so it’s probably nothing.” He tilted his head, bird-like, and pressed on his phone’s screen. “Oh, we are at that time of the year. Time sure flies. Yeah, don’t bother, Peter. This is likely just a school experiment.”

He shouldn’t have asked. He really shouldn’t, but Peter had discovered in himself a so far unknown masochistic streak since he stepped foot in Gotham. He couldn’t help it. “You mean that was a school experiment gone wrong? So early in the morning?!”

“No, just a chemistry school experiment. Middle school kids study explosives around this time every year. You know how it is: the same old group projects on nitroglycerin, black powder or dynamite… The homework is annoying for the neighbours, sure, but pretty harmless overall. Most of the time. Besides, it’s early for Gotham, who chooses to live mostly when the sun is down, but not exactly for the rest of the world.”

Feeling worryingly numb, Peter checked the hour.

7 am.

He’d been awake all night.

Between the adrenalin that never stopped pumping through his veins, the lack of daylight and the bone-deep weariness he felt every time some new piece of Gothamite madness cropped up, he hadn’t noticed the time.

“So…” Dick started, hesitant and puzzled. “I’m guessing from your reaction that Outsider kids don’t study explosives in middle school?”

God, the man looked sincerely confused. “Dick, they don’t study explosives at all. Why would anyone, let alone kids, ever need to know explosives?!”

“Well, in case they ever need to defuse a bomb, of course. Or make one – it’s a bit messy, but sometimes you can’t be picky with your escape plans.” He looked at Peter, finally noticing the emptiness in his eyes from lack of understanding. “... Which, I guess, are not problems you’re likely to encounter outside of Gotham…”

Honestly, it was like they were speaking different languages at times. Related closely enough that they somehow got their meaning across, but not without a lot of misunderstandings.

Still, no one was screaming, the explosions had petered out, and no police agent seemed on their way to investigate, so perhaps Neal was right.

Gotham was a madhouse. Peter should have gotten used to nothing making sense and just rolled with the punches by now.

“... Doesn’t teaching kids to make explosives encourage them to become supervillains?” He eventually asked, when the awkward silence became too much for his overworked nerves. In the corner of his eye, he saw Diana and Jones busying themselves in the driving cabin. Time was almost up.

“No really.” Neal shrugged, still looking bewildered that the normal school system didn’t put terrorist weapons in the hands of preteens. “They will be exposed to this sort of thing anyway, and it’s just like math, really: better for them to know it and never use it, than not know it and need it one day. Besides, finding instructions on how to build a bomb isn’t hard. Just search online for a bit or visit the local library. I think we can all agree it’s better to learn in a controlled environment than try wild experiments with possibly tampered blackmarket goods.”

Like many things in Gotham, it sounded so absurd that it almost went all the way back to sane again. Almost, but not quite.

“You can tell El about this,” Dick said, apropos of nothing. When the agent looked at him blankly, he elaborated. “About me working for the JL and not actually being a criminal. I know how you hate lying to your wife, Peter, so you don’t have to; you have official permission and all. You can also tell June some of it – she already knows I’m from Gotham – although I’d rather you keep mum with the rest of the bureau. It’s for the best if they think Neal died, or faked his death.”

He hadn’t thought about that yet, about what he’d tell people back home. It all went so fast… Being allowed to explain everything to El was a relief he hadn’t known he needed until now. El always knew how to untangle the mess of his feelings.

“Thank you,” he breathed, the weight on his shoulders easing ever so slightly. Just enough that he could finally face the situation he’d been avoiding all along. “So this is it, then? It’s time to say goodbye.”

“Hm-mm. I won’t be able to visit for a year or two, but I promise to come to New York as soon as the Neal Cafrrey thing dies down.”

Peter looked at him suspiciously. “Was that a pun?”

“Maybe?” Dick actually looked sheepish. “An unintentional one? I always ask Jason to stop with the death puns, so if you could not tell him of this, I’d be eternally grateful. The little shit would rub it in my face for ages if he knew. He can never let things die.” Peter squinted his way. Dick laughed. “OK, OK, that was the last one, I swear. Cross my heart and hope to die.”

… How had this man ever made him believe he was a responsible adult – criminal activities notwithstanding?

Instead of giving an answer that would only be an excuse for more puns on Dick’s part, Peter went for the hug he’d been delaying so long.

He was… not very practiced in hugging. Even he could tell it was stiff and awkward, although heartfelt. Dick, on the other hand, seemed very used to it and wasted no time folding his arms over the agent’s back in a much more natural manner. “I’m gonna miss you, Peter.”

“Yeah, me too, Dick.” Having expanded the required amount of physical contact, Peter stepped back. Dick was smiling, so the hug must not have been so bad. “Feel free to come to New York when you want. El will want to see you.”

“I will. Now go before traffic picks up and I can convince you to take another trip around Gotham.”

“There’s absolutely no chance of that ever happening.” Peter forced a laugh, but he obediently took the van’s passenger seat. Jones was driving, as Dick had advised. The man looked a little green.

Peter’s own stomach twisted uncomfortably at the reminder, but he forced himself to breathe. He was almost home. They were all almost home, even Dick, even though his home had turned out to be a cesspit of crime and madness.

“Seatbelt, boss.” Jones reminded him, as if that thin little stripe would save them if they crashed with a Gothamite car. Still, Peter put his seatbelt on, before holding on to the grab handle for dear life.

The motor rumbled, like it was gearing up to the unreasonable speed it would have to deliver to the van. Peter gulped and looked outside.

Barely visible through Gotham’s ambient gloom, Dick stood on the wayside, grinning and waving a hand. The van lurched forward, not the violent start of his former CI’s driving, but still much faster than in any sane city.

Dick immediately vanished from view, as if swallowed by the darkness he called home.

Returning from Gotham was an ordeal in itself.

Jones had ‘safely’ driven them to the gates, only almost crashing with another vehicle twice. The rest of the road was a cakewalk in comparison, and Pullman easily, eagerly agreed to all charges against him as long as they never brought him back to Gotham.

Not that Peter saw that part. It took a whole month for him to be allowed back to active service, what with the enforced sabbatical and the many health and psych evals (Neal would have thrown a tantrum of epic proportions) that always followed a visit to the City of Crime. He couldn’t even say he minded. The whole protocol was more than justified and it allowed him plenty of time with his darling wife.

She took the news of Neal actually being Richie Grayson-Wayne better than him, but not by much. Let him just say that a whole bottle of expensive wine vanished during that conversation, and a few more disappeared without a trace over the days as he recalled all that happened on his trip.

Jones and Diana also visited a few times during that month, when they were not busy celebrating their survival with their own loved ones. That, and pretending to mourn Neal.

The bureau had taken Neal’s ‘death’ with mixed feelings. Some grieved, a few rejoiced. Those that knew he was Gothamite met the news with unabashed suspicion, but never once accused Peter or his team of anything. Clearly, they were aware normal people had absolutely no grip on what happened inside the city’s borders.

It somehow helped that several agents, among which quite a few high-ranked people, suddenly resigned or were charged with all manners of crimes. Dick’s work, no doubt. The result of his Justice League mission to weed out dangerous elements from the FBI. As a result, the bureau had better things to do than ponder over the sketchy disappearance of a mere non-violent CI. All the more so since nobody would ever go back to Gotham to investigate.

Peter had also informed June that her former tenant still lived, only under a different name. When he offered to reveal Neal’s true identity – with his approval – the landlady just shook her head.

“He’s alive and well, and that’s all I need to know. He told me he came from Gotham during that operation at the casino I helped with and I never asked him details since. I’m not going to now that he’s not here to answer in person. Trust me, the less you’re involved in Gothamite matters, the better for your health – although I suppose you know that by now.” She patted his arm with a smile, all compassion and motherly pity. “Anyway, if Neal wants to visit, I’ll welcome him with open arms, but until then, I wish him the best of luck in his other life.”

And despite everything, despite the deception, the constant troubles, the danger being around the CI always brought, Peter realized he felt the same. Neal or Dick, the man was his friend, something he’d come to understand after hours of sorting out his feelings with El. Of course he wished him all the best, whatever life he decided to lead.

Naturally, that feeling took a hit when he returned to work at last, went to fetch a rag in the janitor’s cupboard (as per Gotham protocol, his office had been locked tight and needed some dusting after a month), only for a mountain of origami gargoyles to collapse over his head.

His roar of “NEAL!” was said to have shaken the foundation of the FBI building.