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The kid is normal looking, when Stan first sees him. They don’t get a lot of lost kids turning up at the FBI office, but they don’t get no lost kids turning up either. Having been a security guard for twelve years now, Stan has shepherded his fair share of kids back to their panicking parents. Something seems different about this one, though, as normal as he initially looks. For one thing, he walks straight up to the reception desk- no hesitation, no looking around to try and spot whichever adult he’s presumably lost. And, Stan notes as the kid starts to chat up the receptionist with a mixture of charisma and just enough wobbly lip to draw sympathy, it’s not just his walk that’s purposeful. He’s barely at the desk a minute before the receptionist is standing up and ushering the kid towards Stan.
“Hey, Stan, this is Christopher, he’s looking for his uncle.” the receptionist says when they get close enough. They have their best customer-service-to-children smile on, voice full of friendly positivity, and Stan tries to emulate half the stifling Good Vibes that they’re radiating.
“Yeah? I’m sure we’ll find him in no time then, Christopher.” he says. Does his smile look too tired? He tries smiling wider, but that just feels unnatural, so he reverts to the original positivity level and hopes for the best. “Do you know which department he works in?”
Christopher, who appears by all accounts to be a neat and tidy child despite a slightly-too-long haircut and slightly-too-short pants, smiles the most intimidatingly demure smile Stan has ever seen on a kid who can’t be over ten and nods.
“Yes, he’s with the White Collar Crime division.” he says. “Can you take me to him, please?”
Stan, already tired of the customer service persona he doesn’t usually have to put on, grunts an affirmation. “Yeah,” he self-corrects, “follow me to the elevator.”
Diana is settled in for a perfectly normal morning at work, free from the crazy cases that she’ll complain about but secretly lives for, when the elevator stops on their floor. This in itself is not an unusual event: plenty of agents, visitors, and other staff use the elevator for whatever business they have in the FBI offices. Plenty of those people’s business is with White Collar Crimes. Similarly, it isn’t unusual when the latest visitor is Stan, the security guard from the front entrance- sure, he usually stays at his post downstairs, but he’s sent around on various jobs frequently enough that he’s a familiar face building-wide. What is unusual, however, is the kid that Stan escorts in, who takes two steps into the bullpen, opens his mouth, and yells at the top of his lungs:
“MILTON FINCH!”
This is unusual for several reasons. First, and most obvious, is the fact that no child has ever been escorted to the White Collar unit for the express purpose of yelling “Milton Finch” before. Children rarely yell anything in the White Collar unit, if only because there are rarely children there to yell. Second is the fact that Diana has been working in this office for years now and is absolutely sure that there is nobody employed there named Milton Finch. And the third reason why this is unusual isn’t to do with the yelling as much as it is to the violent, very physical, reaction that Neal Caffrey has to the yelling.
The unknown child shouts “Milton Finch!” at the top of his lungs, and Neal Caffrey startles so hard he audibly bangs his knee on his desk, spills his cup of coffee over the documents he’s half-heartedly pretending to work on, and just barely stops himself from falling off his chair, instead whipping round to see where the shout came from. He locks eyes with the kid and shoves his coffee down onto his desk, spilling even more across the papers there as he launches out of his seat towards the kid.
“Oh my God oh my God ohmyGod-” he’s muttering, and then he reaches the child and, in the most un-Neal move yet, immediately drops to his knees and pulls him into a tight hug. He stays like that for several seconds while the rest of the office stares silently and Peter emerges from his office to investigate the commotion. Neal notices none of this, releasing the hug only to grip the child by the shoulders. “Christopher?” he says, sounding confused and perhaps even broken in a way Diana has never heard him sound.
“Uh, hey.” the kid- Christopher- says. “Sorry for… surprising you at work like this. To be honest I didn’t really think it through, and I was worried they weren’t going to let me see you at all, but then they brought me up here, and I had to know for sure if it was you-” he cuts off suddenly, and Diana is close enough to see that he’s fighting back tears.
Neal sinks down from his knees to sit on the floor, pulling the kid with him onto his lap. “Hey, hey, it’s okay.” he says, “You found me, I’m here, you’re not alone.”
The kid starts to shake a little in Neal’s arms, probably crying into Neal’s fancy suit, but Neal just holds him tighter and buries his face in the kid’s hair, quietly shushing him and rocking ever so slightly back and forth. Diana isn’t sure how long the scene would last, all the agents still frozen in surprise and shock, when Peter suddenly appears next to her.
“What the hell is going on?” he asks, his tone laced with annoyance and confusion and that unique element of what-has-Neal-done-this-time.
Diana opens her mouth to try and answer, but before she can formulate a reply Neal looks up at them from the ground, Peter’s words having rung out in the otherwise near-silent office.
“This is Christopher, my nephew.” Neal says, and then he sighs heavily with defeat or maybe resignation. “I suppose I have to tell you about him, about me- properly, for once- if I want to keep him.”
Peter chokes. “Keep him? Why would you keep him? You’re a criminal consultant. You barely have free will. Surely you can just send him back where he came from, now that he’s seen you?”
Neal looks down at Christopher, who has stopped crying and is shyly watching the debate from where he’s still tucked into Neal’s chest. He looks back up at Peter and gives him a shaky smile. “I’m his last living relative. I’m all he has. I have to help him, Peter.”
Peter sighs. “We can’t do this here, regardless.” he says, snapping back into business mode. “Bring him up to my office, we can talk more there. Without the audience.”
He gives a pointed look to the agents still watching, and they rush away, chastised. Neal scoops Christopher up in a motion that is surprisingly competent and easily situates him against his side as they set off towards Peter’s office. Diana hesitates, making eye contact with Peter to silently ask whether she should come too. Peter shakes his head with a tight smile. “You go back to work, Diana,” he says, “we’ll sort this out.”
Peter ushers Neal into the seat opposite his desk, where Neal settles Christopher back onto his lap as Peter rounds the desk to take his own seat. Once they’re all sat down, Peter looks across his desk to Neal, leaning forward to rest his arms on the desk.
“So.” he starts. Neal sighs.
“So.”
They both fall silent again, neither of them knowing how to start the conversation that’s been building for at least the past three years, if not longer. The tension is thick and builds around them until suddenly Christopher seems to snap.
“Hi, Mr. Peter Agent, I’m Christopher Finch.” he says, all politeness and charm despite the way he’s curled up against Neal like he wants to disappear from the world for a while. He makes an effort to sit up a little straighter in Neal’s arms. “Sorry for messing up your work if I distracted everyone I didn’t realise they would all stare like that for so long,” he takes a breath before continuing, “and I didn’t know I was going to cry until I was already and uncle Mil- Neal gives really good hugs and it’s the first time anyone hugged me like that so I just wanted to say sorry and please don’t give Neal a punishment he didn’t do anything!”
Christopher’s tangent cuts off as his voice rises and Neal reflexively pulls him back in.
“Hey, Christopher, hey, it’s okay,” he calms, “you didn’t get me in trouble, you don’t need to be sorry.” Once Christopher is quiet again, he looks back to Peter with a slight grimace. “I suppose I should explain everything.”
“I suppose you should.” Peter responds, and so Neal begins.
“I don’t really know where to begin. I’ve never told anyone the whole story, really. I could start with the family curse, or my dad, or the house, I don’t know. I guess for me the best place to start is when my dad died.
“We lived in India when I was a kid. My dad was Indian and Mom wanted to be as far away from Edie as possible, so it worked out well for both of them to stay there. We had a good life- me, Mom, Dad, my older brother Lewis, and baby Edith. But Dad died when I was nine, and Mom couldn’t afford to be a single parent, so we moved in with Grandma Edie.
“My great grandma Edie lived in Washington, right out in the far northwest, on Orcas Island. Middle of nowhere, just trees and cliffs and the sea. The house is crazy, just keeps going up and up, way past what should be safe. It’s like a dream, kind of, but not really a good dream. It freaked us all out, in different ways. Lewis said there were secret passages in the walls, and Edith never believed him, but I found them. Edie kept everyone’s rooms just how they were when they died, and you could get between them all through the passages, like a weird cross between a museum and a playground.
“She gave me a castle for my tenth birthday, you know. Right up at the top of the house, so I could be higher up than anyone and see all around the island and paint as much as I liked- I was already painting back then, of course, although nothing like I do now. I miss my castle, sometimes. But escaping was worth losing it.
“I guess I should tell you about the curse now. You’ve probably been wondering. Everyone always said the Finches were cursed, our family was cursed. Finches don’t live long, and if they do they don’t live happily. My Grandpa Sam had three siblings, but he was the only one who lived long enough to have kids. I think, anyway; his brother Walter just sort of disappeared. Maybe he ran away like me.
“See, I never believed in the curse. Sure, I loved fairytales as a kid, I always wanted to be king of my own kingdom, my own world, but I didn’t believe we were cursed. Edie was so obsessed with the stories, how everyone died, how poetic it all was; Mom was the complete opposite, totally closed off to it. But I could see through the middle. I saw what was really wrong with our family. We were wrong. We built our house higher and higher to escape the ghosts we refused to let leave. I knew nothing would get better if I stayed, so I made a plan, and when I was- eleven? eleven and a half, I think- I left. Packed a bag, took my bike early in the morning when nobody was awake, and just ran. I made it all the way to Eugene, Portland that first day. Bounced around for a while, never really settled anywhere. Learned forgery to keep myself out of trouble, ended up getting into more trouble because of it. You know that part.
“What you don’t know is… Edith. The rest of my family. They all stayed, like I knew they would. And it killed Lewis. And then Mom broke, took Edith and ran. I had people tracking them, most of the time, but I never worked up the courage to see them. I was too scared that they would suck me back in, doom me again when I worked so hard to make my own life. Edie had died by then. I travelled the world. Edith, my baby sister, she got pregnant, although I didn’t hear about that for a while. Mom got sick, really sick, that was when I heard. Mom died. Edith was alone, and I still didn’t go to her, and that eats me up inside but I had to stay away. And then we get to Christopher.”
Christopher had been silently listening to Neal’s story, just as Peter had been- completely enraptured, despite the disjointed telling. But here, at the mention of his name, he joins in.
“My mom- Edith- she went back to the house before she had me. Wrote down all the stories for me. She wanted to tell me them, but somehow she knew she wouldn’t get to, I suppose. She died having me.”
Peter has never seen a kid look so unaffected by discussion of their own parent’s death, but he supposes this is a unique circumstance. “What about your dad?” he asks, but he has an idea of the answer even as he says it.
Sure enough, Christopher shrugs. “He didn’t want me, most likely, or he shouldn’t have had me. My mom was only seventeen, you know. I don’t think there are many good dads when your mom has you at seventeen.”
Neal hugs him close again for a moment, letting him go to speak again. “I didn’t know about that. At first nobody mentioned Christopher to me, just said Edith had died in childbirth. I assumed he must be with his father, or else… Or else he didn’t make it either. Either way, I assumed I was alone, properly alone. And I think that’s part of the reason I got caught.”
Peter does the math- it must’ve only been a year or two before Neal was put in prison that his sister died. He was already chasing him down, getting closer every day. And he had no idea. “Shit, Neal, I had no clue. I’m so sorry, I really am.”
“It’s okay, Peter, really. I never told you.” And doesn’t that just sum everything up neatly? He never told Peter. He didn’t tell anyone, by the sound of it. Peter is aware that this can’t go on forever, he can’t sympathise too hard or he’ll be too biased to do his job and deal with the situation officially, but he allows himself this moment to grieve everything he didn’t know until now that Neal had lost.
Everything he’d lost, even- “So what’s your name?”
Neal smiles, softly, the most real smile Peter thinks he’s ever seen on that face.
“Milton Finch.”