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Neal had arrived at the US Department of Corrections building at 4:45pm and as they’d all hoped, the tribunal had ruled in favour of his sentence being commuted. Peter had pulled Neal into a congratulatory hug, just in time for Marshalls to arrest him on trumped up charges of public endangerment.
Peter had been visibly distraught, especially after his strong testimonial in favour of commuting Neal’s remaining sentence. He’d known that Kramer was gunning for Neal, but he’d hoped against hope that everything he’d told Neal about the justice system would be vindicated. Instead, Kramer’s seniority had outweighed all of Neal’s hard work, and not because Neal had done anything wrong (recently), but because Kramer wanted him as a tool in his arsenal to increase his own closure rates.
It hurt to think of his once-trusted mentor in such a way, but not as much as it hurt seeing Neal in handcuffs for the second time that day.
“Kramer has powerful friends, Neal. I’m trying but I don’t know if I can get you out of this one. I’m so sorry.”
Neal shook his head and flashed a quick smile at Peter - the kind of smile which had once made Peter so angry, because it suggested that Neal knew something he didn’t. He’d become accustomed to seeing that smile directed at other people, to having his own little in-jokes with Neal. Seeing it directed at him was a sign that Peter was once again on the outside looking in - that Neal was once again going to pit his wits against the law, and that he had a fair chance of succeeding. And Peter couldn’t even begrudge him for it. He’d done everything he was supposed to. They’d played by the rules, and they’d still lost. Where was the lesson in that?
“Trust me, Peter. My friends are more powerful than his.”
Peter had taken it as false bravado, because as far as he knew, Neal’s friends were all cons and criminals. The most powerful person who might have been on Neal’s side was Hughes, but even he couldn’t do much against Kramer. It stung to think how badly he’d misunderstood Kramer.
But the chatter from DC about Neal’s imminent transfer only lasted around two days. Kramer’s smug strolls through the Bureau’s office stopped abruptly on the third day, and on the fourth day after Neal’s arrest, orders came down from the very top to strike all reference to Caffrey and his aliases from the records. Kramer made just one more appearance in the New York office before flying back to DC on a red-eye, and even Hughes wasn’t sure what had caused the sudden shift in attitude.
The following Monday, Hughes called Peter and Diana into his office, and told them to prepare for a meeting with the Justice League.
That had been the first and only thing since Neal’s arrest to actually get Peter’s attention. His weekend had passed in a blur of visits to Mozzie and June and Sara, to update them on what had happened to Neal, and what was likely to happen next. He’d carefully pretended not to see Mozzie’s quiet preparations to leave New York, the same way he’d pretended not to see the tears brimming in June and Sara’s eyes. Against all odds, they’d built a family around Neal, and now it was gone in one fell swoop.
He couldn’t imagine what the Justice League wanted with him or with the White Collar division at large - he didn’t imagine their work was particularly relevant to the types of matters they dealt with; alien invasions and supervillain attacks and the such. Peter personally wasn’t one for taking the law into his own hands - and he didn’t think highly of people who did so - but he also didn’t think there was any law enforcement agency which would have been capable of dealing with guys like Bane or Darkseid, or even Lex Luthor, who was famous for his crazy nonsense even in New York.
He’d agreed to it, of course, because one didn’t turn down an invitation from the Justice League without a very good reason. But he’d had no preconceived notions; no idea of what the meeting was really about, and neither did Diana.
The League agrees to meet them in New York, which is nice but also expected, since no one knows exactly where their base of operations is. The last rumour Peter had heard was that the JL base was on the moon, which sounded like total nonsense, but was also unfairly plausible considering their roster. Jones had posited that the moon was a politically neutral territory, which was important for an organisation responsible for global protection. Diana thought it was to do with protection; it wouldn’t be easy to attack the moon. And if someone did manage to attack the League base, being on the moon would minimise collateral damage to the Earth.
Either way, the meeting was scheduled for Friday morning, and Peter spent almost every single day until then wondering if Neal was doing alright in prison; if he thought Peter had given up on him. He hadn’t. He wouldn’t. He just wished there was a way for him to find out what was going on. Unfortunately, after Kramer had arrested him, it was like Neal had disappeared off the face of the Earth.
And of course, Neal proved him wrong by walking into the FBI office on Friday morning, dressed in the most casual attire Peter had ever seen him in. He hadn’t even known that Neal owned jeans…
Peter had immediately pulled him into a hug, followed by a warm handshake from Diana and Jones, and even Hughes patted him on the shoulder. Neal had been popular in the office, even among people he didn’t work with - he was just that type of person, and everyone wanted to be the first one to welcome him back. No one knew the details of why he was back, but they assumed it would be made clear soon enough. They completely missed that Neal was accompanied by a tall, statuesque woman, who stood quietly three paces away until the chaos died down.
“It’s so good to see you, Neal. I’ve been asking around, talking to my friends from the academy, but no one knew where you’d been taken. I was worried Kramer had disappeared you…”
Neal shook his head and shrugged one shoulder lazily - a gesture that looked unfamiliar on him. “I told you my friends are more powerful than his.”
“You’re going to have to tell me the whole story soon, Neal, but Diana and I have a meeting with the Justice League in a few minutes. They’re not here yet but I bet it’s going to be an interesting case, if you’re planning on sticking around.” Peter hoped he was; June would be thrilled, and so would El.
There’s a strange intensity in Neal’s eyes which makes Peter pause, but it’s gone in a split second when Neal shakes his head and smiles again. “Actually, we’re your 10-o-clock. Diana and I.”
Diana - Berrigan, that is, Peter’s Diana - blinks and shoots a confused glance at Peter and shakes her head.
Neal gestures over his shoulder at the tall woman, who stands a couple of inches above Neal’s five-foot-ten. “No, this is Diana - Diana Prince.” There’s a moment of silence as Peter processes this, because he doesn’t live under a rock; he knows who Diana Prince is. “We should go to a meeting room. This isn’t a conversation for all ears.”
The team troops into a large conference room; the same room they’d sat in when strategising how to take down Matthew Keller.
Neal remains standing even as Diana sits down on a chair beside him. There’s something different about his body language - something stronger and more confident. Where Neal used to portray a slouchy sort of ease, like someone used to blending into the background and remaining unnoticed, now he stood up tall, with his shoulders straight and broad and his feet at shoulder-length. He looked authoritative, somehow. “Hi, everyone. We should start with introductions. My name is Richard Grayson. I’m an operative of the Justice League. This is my colleague, Ambassador Diana Prince, also known as Wonder Woman. This is not a con.”
There’s a beat of silence, and then uproar. Hughes is on his feet, his face pale and drawn with anger. Jones looks furious, and Diana’s face is blank, a sure sign of inner tumult. Peter doesn’t know what he looks like, because he doesn’t know how he feels. This has to be a con. Neal Caffrey is a conman at heart, and this has to be a con. But it doesn’t feel like one. There’s no sense of mischief, no element of joy. Neal Caffrey enjoyed what he did, but this isn’t Neal Caffrey. He’s not sure if Richard Grayson is an alias of Neal, but it would be foolish - too foolish, even for Neal, to try and pull this type of con on the FBI.
“Richard Grayson…” Peter says, and his voice breaks through the furor into silence.
“My friends call me Dick,” Neal—Richard says, an indolent smile on his face.
“And I’m assuming you’ll be able to prove this, somehow. That you’re Richard Grayson and not Neal Caffrey, or Nick Halden, or Steve Tabernacle…”
Richard nods at him, looking surprisingly serious. “You won’t accept my ID, but Ambassador Prince can verify it, and if you reach out to the JL hotline they’ll confirm it, too.”
“For what it’s worth,” Ambassador Prince says, her voice low and melodious with just a hint of an accent Peter can’t identify, “my face can be found in many places online, including the JL website. You can easily verify that I am who I claim to be.”
It’s true. Peter himself has seen Ambassador Prince charismatically giving speeches as one of the three founders of the Justice League - her fellow founders being Superman and Batman, whose true identities were closely guarded secrets. El is a big fan, and he hadn’t doubted her identity for a second. Though he had doubted Neal’s — though apparently that wasn’t even his name…
“I’m sure you have a lot of questions, and I’m here to provide the answers. I’ll go first, and if there’s anything I haven’t covered, I’ll take questions after I’m done.” It doesn’t sound like a suggestion. Peter’s never heard Neal assert himself like this. “Three years ago, we learned that several original artworks were being infused with a certain chemical which causes harm to most humans in large amounts, and to Superman in miniscule amounts. This chemical, known as Chemical K, can be dissolved in organic solvents and painted onto oil-paintings in a thin, transparent and colourless layer which can’t be detected by most modern spectroscopy. The artworks are then distributed across the planet to buyers who have a vested interest in causing harm to Superman. I was assigned to infiltrate the FBI’s White Collar department to investigate and identify the buyers and the source of these modified artworks. We decided on the New York office because of its reputation for following the rules, and impeccable evidence custody habits. Two weeks ago, I was successful in my mission. I was just figuring out a way to break my cover, and Kramer’s behaviour gave me an opportunity to reach out to my League contact on Roosevelt Island. I was going to tell you, once everything was over.”
Peter is slow to anger, and he’s waiting for the familiar burn in his chest now, but it doesn’t come. Long moments pass but instead of thinking about how the person he’s been calling his friend for literal years now doesn’t even exist, he thinks about how a lot of things about Neal make sense now. How numerous puzzle pieces fall into place, slowly first and then all at once. His uncanny ability to blend in with people must have been one of the best reasons to send him undercover in the first place. His fluency in different languages. His rarely-demonstrated physical abilities. The way he inexplicably knows how to use a gun…
“Neal, I have so many questions,” Diana says, and then freezes at the slip of tongue. It’s going to be so difficult to remember that Neal doesn’t exist. She apologises, but Neal Richard shakes it off.
“Who else knows?” Hughes asks after a beat. He sounds unusually sober, and maybe even he’s in shock. “That you’re here undercover?”
Richard shakes his head. “No one. Mozzie - he knows someone from my family who vouched for me, but he doesn’t know who they are. He only knows me as Neal Caffrey, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he has his suspicions.”
“No backup?” Peter asks, because that’s the first thing that occurs to him. It’s just bad protocol to send people undercover on their own, though it’s usually difficult to place more than one person in a long-term undercover role.
Richard shakes his head again. “It’s bad practice, I know, but I had no physical backup. I had connections back to my team in the Watchtower, but no one on the ground. But Peter, don’t worry. This is what I was trained for.”
Peter feels like he’s dreaming, like none of this can possibly be real. Maybe it is a fever dream; to think that Richard - Neal - works closely with Wonder Woman. That he’s some sort of undercover superhero, and none of them had even noticed. Neal must have been laughing at them for ages, for buying into his cover and not even suspecting that something was off.
Richard shakes his head and Peter realises he’d said his last statement out loud. “Of course not, Peter. My cover was the work of an entire team of people whose only job is to make it believable. I even spent two weeks in prison to make it look real.”
Diana is, as always, the one to ask the hardest questions while Peter is still floundering. “So, what’s next? I mean, I’m assuming your cover’s been blown, but you said you were trying to read Peter in - does that mean your mission is over?”
Richard glances at Diana and he looks so incredibly serious, it’s hard to register it on Neal’s face. It’s so unfamiliar - even upset and stressed and desperate, Neal had never looked like this, like the weight of the world rests on his shoulders. “My mission is over, yes. It turns out that Kramer wasn’t directly involved in the distribution of Kryptonite laced paintings, but he’d been contracted by a third party to recover the paintings from around the world. That’s why he wanted me in DC so badly, but he didn’t know that Neal Caffrey just wouldn’t work in DC. There’s too many people there who know me.”
Well, that just leads to more questions - Chemical K was Kryptonite? He hadn’t even realised that was a real thing. And why would they know Richard in DC? Who is he that he’d veer clear of the entire capital? There’s so many VIPs there that it’s basically a form of anonymity in itself. But Peter almost recognises this look on Richard’s face - like he’s setting Peter up for the questions to be asked. It's a classic Neal-tactic, and he’s not going to fall for it.
“Where will you be going next, then? Back to the Justice League HQ?”
At this, Richard smiles, and a tension in the air lifts because finally, he looks like their Neal.
“Nah. I’m heading home. It’s been a while since I’ve seen my family.”
And the shock is back again - it hadn’t occurred to any of them that Neal had a family. It hadn’t occurred to them that Richard might have one. It was silly, really, but Peter thought it was understandable - they were all in shock.
“Would you,” and here Peter hesitates because - well. Richard is a Justice League operative. He knows they deal with literal world-ending problems on a weekly basis. “Do you have a couple of days to stick around? I’m sure El and June and Mozzie would want to see you before you leave. And Sara. Everyone was pretty worried, and I don’t think they’d take my word for it.” And it’s true - god knows what Mozzie would do if he thought Neal had been disappeared by the bureaucracy.
But for some reason, it’s Richard’s turn to look shocked. “I mean,” he starts, and then shoots a glance at Wonder Woman. “I’d love to meet them, if you’re okay with that? I can totally understand if you want me to leave, I know I’ve been lying to you for almost three years now…”
And that - that’s pure Neal. Recognition that lying is bad, that lying upsets people. Awareness that the people around him might be - and are entitled to be - upset. And all of it living in coexistence with a complete lack of guilt or remorse, because at least in this case, lying was his job. His entire purpose had been to con the FBI. He must have come into the mission prepared for three years of no backup, of suspicious glances and bullying, and he’d still done it. He’d been so convincing that Peter hadn’t doubted him - not even for a second.
He couldn’t have known that he’d be welcomed to the team after some initial hiccups. That he’d become so close to Mozzie or June. That Peter would have him over to his own house, with his own wife, no less than twice or thrice a week. He couldn’t have expected any of it, the hugs and the head pats and the easy camaraderie in the bullpen.
“Yes,” Peter sighs, “but I think we can all agree that in this case, it was for a good cause.” He flashes a tiny smile at Neal, at Richard, because he’s not mad. Not really. He’s shocked and a little upset - mostly at himself, remembering how he’d treated Neal in the beginning - but he’d been doing his job. Both of them had been doing their jobs to the best of their abilities. And all said and done, Peter believed that the Justice League was a force for good, and while the FBI definitely needed to take this as a wakeup call regarding how easy it is to infiltrate them, it could’ve been worse. “Besides,” he adds, “I bet three years of wearing an anklet was penance enough.”
Richard snorts. “That thing is uncomfortable as hell, Peter, I swear. Second only to spending time in that van. I’d never been more likely to break cover than when I wanted to get out of the van.”
At this, Wonder Woman speaks for the first time. “I’ll admit, I’ve heard so much about this van from Dick that I’m a little curious.”
Richard groans dramatically and covers his face with both hands, and Peter can’t tell if he’s playing up the flamboyance or if this is really him, and says, “don’t even joke about that. Imagine the Watchtower locker rooms after Hal and B are done with one of their pissing matches. All manly sweat and testosterone - it stinks so bad!”
“Can’t relate,” Wonder Woman replies blithely. “The women’s locker rooms smell wonderful.”
Dick blinks and then turns to stare at her. “Women’s locker rooms? I - there aren’t any? I thought all the locker rooms are unisex after the whole thing with you-know-who?” Briefly Peter wonders if the Justice League had to deal with a real-life Lord Voldemort, or whether this is just another reference to an inside joke Peter isn't privy to.
“Well,” Wonder Woman teases, “I can’t help it if you were mistaken now, can I?”
Diana laughs for the first time in a while - possibly the first time since Neal was “arrested”. “She’s got your number, clearly, Richard.”
Richard grins at her, quicksilver and still a little shocked at the easy acceptance. “Well, she’s known me since I was twelve years old. Is that right, Aunt Di? I think it was twelve or thirteen.”
“How did you get tangled up in all of this when you were twelve?” Jones asks, and he sounds equally concerned and sceptical. Peter doesn’t comment on the casual reference to Wonder Woman as Richard’s aunt. It’s one thing if they’re colleagues, but…
Richard shakes his head. “I didn’t get involved when I was twelve. I got involved when I was eight. It’s just that the Justice League only got together when I was twelve and my, uh. My mentor introduced me to Aunt Di.”
“Wait,” Diana says, “the Justice League was founded like, fifteen years ago. I remember my Dad wanted invites to that anniversary party. That would mean you’re twenty-seven?” That makes him a little over half Peter’s age.
Richard snickers. “Yeah, my birthday was in March.” His file said his birthday was in November, and also said that he was thirty six years old.
Peter sighs and lets go of the frustration, the confusion, and all the other feelings of doubt and upset. “We could celebrate it properly,” he suggests, “now that we know. It would be a nice way to get everyone together, and El and I could host.”
Richard studies him carefully and finally - finally - his shoulders slump into true relaxation. “I’ve got another idea. My family will probably be doing something to make up for the last three years of missed birthdays. Why don’t you all come too?”
“Won’t your parents mind?” Jones asks.
“My parents died when I was seven, and I was adopted by a - uh, philanthropist. Yeah, let’s go with that. At last count I had like, three adopted sisters and five? or maybe six adopted brothers? Though god knows what B’s done since I left. As far as they’re concerned, the more the merrier. And they’ll probably be curious about whom I've been hanging out with for the past three years.”
“Is that a trick question?” Hughes sounds a little confused, and more than a little out of his depth. Peter doesn’t blame him. None of them could have possibly anticipated this particular turn of events, and it's totally bizarre to suggest sharing details of an undercover operation with a group of civilian children.
Richard turns to Wonder Woman and after a beat, he shrugs. “Well, they already know the bare bones, and they’ve got clearance to know almost everything. They’re definitely going to be curious about you guys - they’ve heard a lot.”
Something occurs to Peter. “Do you mean to say that they’re all involved ?” Involved in the same business as Richard - with the Justice League and all that - the idea of an entire family, and entire colony of Richard’s sounds impossible.
Richard grins at him and then stands up. “Why don’t you come to Gotham and find out for yourself?”
“Gotham?” Diana demands, “why are we going to Gotham? Wasn’t there some sort of health advisory against tourism in Gotham?”
Richard’s grin turns sly but it’s just another version of Neal’s inside-joke smile, the one that Peter had been missing not even a few moments before. It makes him feel like he’s in on the joke again, even though he’s not sure what the joke is. “Didn’t I mention? I’m from Gotham.”
Well, that makes a lot of sense then. Peter stands up and follows Richard, even as Hughes and Jones are spluttering in shock. Even if he doesn’t know anything else about Richard, he can tell he’s having fun, and that’s good enough for him. Besides, he can’t wait to tell El about all of this.