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Chapter Text

Peter jerked awake, turning over as he felt his wife gently shake his shoulder. “You okay? Bad dream? You were moving around like crazy.”

“Nah,” he answered, gazing across at El’s beautiful face. “Good dream. I was catching a bad guy with Neal.”

“You still miss him,” she answered, cupping Peter’s cheek with her hand. “I do, too.”

He nodded in agreement. “Sometimes I still feel like I’ll get to the office and he’ll be there.”

“What do you think he’s doing now?” Elizabeth asked, cuddling closer to her husband’s side.

“Knowing Neal, probably stealing something,” Peter said with a rueful smile.

“I’m going with helping someone who needs it,” Elizabeth retorted, laying her head on his shoulder and closing her eyes.

Peter continued to smile to himself, cuddling her back to sleep but thinking of the man who had been closer to him than a friend. A friend, he might have given up on along the way. Caffrey had become a brother, and that was something that couldn’t change. Choosing not to go after him the last time had been one of the hardest decisions of Peter Burke’s life. It had caused him to realize something that he’d never realized before: Neal had taught him as much as he’d ever taught Neal.

The Agent Burke who had caught Neal Caffrey would never have let go of the clues pointing to Neal being alive. He would have put the chase before anything else, brittle in his drive. It was Neal himself who had taught Peter to be more than a good man in the textbook, black-and-white sense. He had taught Peter to stop, to feel, to love and forgive even when it was hard. He knew, now, that he’d become a better husband and father because of Neal, and as a result, he’d had the strength to let go. He’d prioritized El and baby Neal ahead of the most intriguing chase of his life.

Of course, a man like Peter had never wallowed in self-pity or regret. He’d thrown himself wholeheartedly into loving his wife and teaching his son and leading the white collar crime division with as much conscientious ethicality as he ever had. Only El knew the truth of the monumental sacrifice he’d made, but she loved him for it, and that was more than enough.

Still, nights like this, he couldn’t help missing his partner. The truth was, nobody else he’d worked with before or since had ever been the same. Wherever he was, Peter thought to himself as he drifted back to sleep, Neal was family.

—

Little did Peter and Elizabeth Burke know that both of them were right at the same time. Across the world, Neal Caffrey was stealing something—to help someone who needed it.

Neal had decided to do the job himself. It required a certain amount of finesse, and though he trusted his associates, he felt the most comfortable relying on his own skillset. He also, it had to be admitted, didn’t mind donning black tie formalwear and driving his convertible to the Parisian suburbs. This wasn’t so much white collar crime as it was golden spoon crime.

Normally, the suburbs didn’t interest Neal that much, but today was different. As he approached the mansion, which was obscenely large compared to what most of France’s population could afford, he felt the familiar thrill of the case, the adrenaline that filled him whenever a heist was underway.

Staring at the imposing house, one might have been tempted to think of old money, especially since it had been built in neoclassical style. The truth, however, was very different. The house belonged to the Danziger family, who were Americans.

Charles Danziger had made his money through oil. Neal had first heard of him in New York, where the deals had been done and the millions had been acquired. Once truly wealthy, Danziger had moved himself, his wife, and his young daughter to Paris, the place he’d always considered to represent the height of culture and success.

Danziger had built the house for a paltry twenty million, and it now stood like something old before its time, because Charles Danziger had died—an untimely biking accident at fifty-three, and his wife and daughter had been left alone with a respectably large fortune.

That fortune did not remain merely respectably large. The whispers—and more than whispers—said that Lucy Danziger, the unfortunate widow, liked to collect art and sell it for a profit, that she had grown her fortune by more than a hundred million. The deepest whispers questioned the legality of her methods.

Neal had investigated. With his ties, it wasn’t particularly difficult to find a trail. Mrs. Danziger traded in both legitimate and stolen pieces, with most of her profits coming from the second. She was no common criminal, and these were no commonly-known thefts. She was too intelligent for that. No, her speciality was pieces of dubious origin—paintings lost in wartime, sculptures left behind by refugees, priceless heirlooms misplaced. Questionable, but difficult for the average buyer to trace.

This gray area had made Lucy Danziger one of the wealthiest women in France. Her unscrupulous buyers were usually aware that they were purchasing pieces with questionable histories, so they asked nothing. Lucy provided supposedly-legal ownership paperwork that somehow avoided pesky legal fees, which the buyers loved.

It worked. It worked because the rightful owners of these stolen masterpieces, people who had histories and and families who had escaped unspeakable tragedies, either didn’t know or had no idea how to verify family legends about lost heirlooms.

Until the day Stella found Robin Hood. The man they called Robin Hood—or, rather, the legend, or myth, depending on who you asked—had shown up in Paris gossip in early 2015. He was a rumor, the idea of a man who helped people get back at those the law was too big to touch, who stole from the rich to help the poor they’d wronged. The media had dubbed him “Robin Hood,” and the name stuck.

Neal figured it would have amused Peter Burke to no end to know that he’d successfully corrupted him, that the conman who had once prided himself on looking out for #1 could no longer shake the need to help other people. Peter had not succeeded in transferring the ethos of the badge, but what he had passed to Neal was far more important—he’d given Neal his heart. As a result, Neal had become a private investigator of sorts, and more than that. He couldn’t help it; Peter had taught a young criminal to see beyond people’s needs as something to exploit and instead to empathize and solve.

Neal still cared little for laws, but he’d come to care deeply about right things and wrong things. Empathize and solve—Neal was under no illusion, now, that the deal he’d once offered to Peter Burke across a prison table had somehow been too attractive to resist. The thing he hadn’t admitted to himself for years, that maturity now permitted him to admit, was that Peter hadn’t taken an offer he couldn’t refuse; he’d taken on a person. For years, Neal had pretended to himself that his skill or the Blacklist-like promise of his knowledge about other criminals had somehow lured his partner into the deal. However, the truth was, Peter had been an extremely capable agent without him, and his upward trajectory had already been assured when Neal came along.

And so, Neal Caffrey became Robin Hood—a man who operated outside the law for the sake of the disadvantaged. Not because Peter Burke had once heard an offer he couldn’t refuse, but because he’d once empathized with a scared kid doing his best not to look scared and decided to change his life, without anything whatsoever to gain from it.

The people who whispered about a mystery called Robin Hood didn’t know that it all came down to compassion—the compassion a man with a badge had shown a kid in handcuffs, compassion he would keep showing for years, even when that kid violated every principle he held dear. Robin Hood existed as much for Peter as himself, and Neal liked to think he might even be proud.

—

Neal parked outside the Danziger gate. The red light on the gate security camera wasn’t flashing, which meant that his associate, Rene, had managed to hack into and disable the system right on time. He checked his watch. 4:00 a.m., nearly on the dot. As he climbed the gate and dropped onto the ground inside the property, he was gratified to find that, as expected, there was no sign of family or staff about. Even the caretaker had the week off, he had previously discovered.

Neal walked confidently down the paved road to the mansion, glad for the lights that illuminated the property even when the family was away. With no neighbors for miles and security disabled, there was no particular reason for him to be covert about his entrance. He went straight for the front doors.

—

The whole thing had started with Stella. Short, slight, and white-haired, she had looked nothing like June but reminded Neal of her anyway, eighty-five if she was a day.

“O’Halloran sent me,” she’d said, taking a seat on the sofa in the Paris apartment Neal used for meetings. “He said you don’t like to do business face-to-face, but I don’t like to do it remotely. You shouldn’t blame him for sending me here. He trusts me. You can, too.” Neal had looked her over and thought she was probably right. He was used to sizing people up in an instant. “My goodness, you’re handsome,” Stella had added after a while. “They told me you were smart, not that you were beautiful,”

Neal wouldn’t have admitted it, but by the end of the conversation, he belonged entirely to to the old lady. She could have asked him for anything, but she just wanted a painting.

—

Neal easily picked the lock on the double front doors and entered the Danziger family’s domain. He was immediately greeted by the sculpture of Hephaestus, a huge, marble monstrosity that Lucy kept in her permanent collection. Neal shut the door behind him and activated his flashlight, heading for the light controls he knew were on the right side wall of the entry room and activating them.

His objective was one painting, Dante’s Paradise, a painting Stella’s family had owned until the Nazi occupation of Poland. She had been a little girl, saved by the kindness of neighbors who had taken her in and passed her off as their own child. Her parents, and their beloved painting, she had never seen again. “I want to see paradise once more before I die,” she’d said to Neal, “but Lucy Danziger plans to sell it to the highest bidder.”

Neal had often thought it was absurd how much the rich relied on their security systems. Disable those, as he had done, and entire fortunes could be laid bare for the taking. He had no qualms about helping himself to any of the Danzigers’ ill-gotten luxuries, but he kept his focus on the mission: Get Stella’s painting and get out. Even the smoothest plan could go south in an instant, and he could not afford extracurricular distractions.

Intel from a former member of staff indicated that new acquisitions were kept in the front reception room, where Lucy displayed them for guests who would come to see the wares before auction. Neal moved through the long entryway, relieved to see more signs of disabled security cameras. To the right of the huge foyer, he found the reception room as promised. The room was eerily white—furniture, walls, and velvet drapes—the more to show off the focal point in the center of the back wall.

Dante’s Paradise was as beautiful as the photos Neal had seen. He indulged in a moment of appreciation of the masterpiece, which depicted the poet Virgil giving Dante to Beatrice, who would guide him through paradise in the final cantos of the Divine Comedy. Neal knew that Stella’s attachment to the painting went far beyond its subject, but it was a formidable work, and, as an artist, he appreciated its loveliness.

“What are you doing?” If Neal had been tempted to imagine that things were going more than perfectly, he was ripped out of that delusion by the sight of a woman in pajamas in the doorway of the receiving room with a gun in her hand.

To be continued...

Chapter Text

Neal put his hands up. He did not have a gun; he still hated them. “You’re—Jade Danziger,” he said, incredulous.

“Uh huh,” she said, looking more scared than Neal felt. “Why are you so surprised? I live here.”

“I know,” Neal answered. “I just—thought you’d be away with your mother. You don’t even have staff here.”

“My mother and I are not joined at the hip,” she retorted, “and I don’t need staff to survive. It’s not 1800.”

Neal nodded. “Fair enough. Will you put the gun down?”

Jade looked at him for a long moment. “I will if you tell me why you’re here and I believe you.”

Neal thought of several lies, but he didn’t go with any of them. “I’m here to take this painting back to the woman who rightfully owns it, whose family it was stolen from by the Nazis.”

“You’re Robin Hood, aren’t you?” Neal watched as Jade set the pistol down on a low table beside her and ran a hand through her tousled brown hair.

“He’s just a story,” Neal answered.

“A story with the face of one of the subjects in these classical paintings,” she shot back, staring openly at him. “There’s a rumor that you’re old.” She laughed.

Neal forced himself to stay silent, feeling just how much he was at the girl’s mercy and inwardly cursing his failure to verify the daughter’s whereabouts.

“All right,” she finally said, as if coming to a decision, “I’ll help you steal it.”

Out of all the ways Neal’s racing mind had imagined this going, this wasn’t even on the list. “But—why?”

Jade kept serious blue eyes on him. “Because my mother is a criminal, and I haven’t been able to do anything about it.”

Neal nodded his understanding. “I can’t disagree.” That was how he found himself loading a priceless painting into his car with a woman in plaid pajamas by his side.

“I’m not going to tell anyone,” Jade said. “Tomorrow I’m leaving to go back to my apartment in Paris. My mother won’t discover that the painting is missing for another week. When she does, I’ll play dumb like it happened while I wasn’t here.”

“Thank you,” said Neal, meaning it. He closed the car trunk and turned to his companion.

“I’d like to help you catch her,” Jade said quickly. “Take her down.”

“Really?” Neal asked. “There’s a big difference between one painting and trying to put your mom away.”

“I know,” she answered. “I also know you have no reason to trust me right now. But I’ve seen my mother, over and over, take things, when she has plenty of money and connections to find out who the real owners are. I want to help you make sure it never happens again. Just—think about it, and when tonight stays a secret, you’ll know you can trust me. When you decide, contact me.”

Neal didn’t give a response, but she continued. “And thank you.”

“For what?” he asked, baffled.

“For taking this painting home and making one of my family’s wrongs right.” She stood on tiptoe and gave Neal a very quick hug. “That’s for if I never see you again,” she whispered. "Thank you, Robin Hood.” With that, she went back toward the house and disappeared inside.

Neal blinked. There was something attractive about the idea of trying to take down Lucy Danziger and her repugnant business, but it was not his fight, and he was one man with a few associates. Then again, Jade. If she was for real, he had an in. It was certainly tantalizing, and it had been a long time since he had worked a case with a friend by his side.
—

When Peter Burke got out of bed in the morning, he was still thinking of Neal. He’d only been awake a few minutes when his excited offspring burst into the living room. “Daddy! Daddy!” Peter opened his arms for the cyclone of arms and legs and playfully wrestled his son onto his lap.

“What has you so excited today?” he asked.

“No school!” his son answered. “Not even on the computer.”

Normally, El had the more flexible job of the two of them. The FBI worked through blizzards and pandemics, but Peter’s dream still had him feeling sentimental. “El, I think I’ll take Neal today. The aquarium is back open. I’ll take the morning off, and you can have the afternoon.” Peter was rewarded with a hug from his overexcited son and a kiss from his wife.

An hour and a half later, Peter and Neal were masked and handing over the ticketing fee. “Daddy, can we see the whales?” Neal was practically bobbing up and down in anticipation.

“Of course,” Peter answered, grinning, “but keep hold of my hand.” Ordinarily, Peter would have let the seven-year-old have more freedom, but the bureau had intercepted an unusual amount of security threats during the pandemic, and he wasn’t taking any chances.

Father and son made their way through rooms with tanks of brightly-colored tropical fish, then into the large dolphin habitat. As usual, little Neal was quiet and observant. His father let him lead the way to each tank, where he stopped and watched quietly before moving on.

Partway through the seal habitat, Peter’s phone vibrated. He kept hold of his son’s hand, but took the call because it was from the FBI. He listened to the case update from one of this agents, routine but important. He gave his approval for a budget increase and then ended the call.

“Okay, buddy, let’s go.” Peter started talking, then looked down. His son was nowhere to be found, and he realized with sudden dread that he had no idea at what point in the call Neal had let go.

Chapter Text

Peter pushed past a few people, but with distancing in place, the aquarium was far from full. He headed around a corner toward the whales, knowing that had been Neal’s most anticipated attraction and expecting to find his offspring there and ready to hear a piece of his mind.

Except, Neal wasn’t there. He wasn’t anywhere. Peter forced down his panic and did a systematic search. He hadn’t spent decades in the FBI for nothing. The most logical explanation was Neal hiding somewhere, maybe a place only a child could fit. Not really something Neal was likely to do, but children could be unpredictable, and Peter had learned to roll with the punches.

The bathroom, the touch tanks, even the souvenir shop yielded no sign of the little boy. At some point, an instinctive point, Peter’s brain shifted. This was no childish prank, and Neal did not like to be alone in unfamiliar places. He would have come out of hiding by now.

“Ma’am, I need you to lock down this facility.” Peter’s FBI ID was enough to get the ball rolling, but the sinking pit in his stomach suggested the action had come too late. There was no sign of Neal Burke in the building. Feeling almost like he was watching himself from faraway, Peter called in his own child as missing. He tried, and failed, to keep himself from jumping to worst-case scenarios.

He tried to call El. No answer. He left a message to call him back; this wasn’t something to text. Then, he left the aquarium and sped to the FBI. Waiting and doing nothing were out of the question.

—

The day after the Danziger job, Neal contemplated the painting in the front room of the Paris apartment. Stella was coming to fetch it, and he planned to unveil it from under a sheet, thinking she would appreciate a dramatic moment.

After that, he would go see his children. Neal felt a pang of guilt over missing the previous night, though he’d left extra money with Gabriel to cover it. Neal’s kids were a group of ragtag children who were on their own on the streets of Paris. Their leader, Gabriel, kept them under a surprising amount of organized control, and sometimes they helped Neal get information from the streets or corners of the city that he couldn’t get by more conventional means. Neal had always paid them, but since lockdowns and the implementation of curfews, he’d forked over a small fortune for food and indoor shelter. Neal had always liked children, but this was more than that. He didn’t care that it cut into his bottom line. They were his kids, and he knew every one of them—their names, ages, and stories. He couldn’t fix all of their situations, but he could help keep them alive.

Stella arrived right on time, her steps absolutely sure as she came into the apartment. Neal offered his arm and walked her over to stand in front of the sheet-covered painting. “I’ve done a professional cleaning,” he explained, walking over to the piece. Stella didn’t answer until Neal had thrown off the covering to reveal Dante’s Paradise in all of its brightened glory. Even then, the old woman said nothing. Her only answer was to hug Neal fiercely for a long time, and he could feel her shaking with tears in his arms.

—

Peter listened to El sob on the phone. He blamed himself for his son’s disappearance, and he was terrified that she would blame him, too. For the moment, he just listened to her crying out her shock and ached for the chance to hold his son.

“I wish Caffrey was here,” he overheard somebody say as they passed through the office, “he was good at this kind of thing.’ As he finally finished his call, with El upset but calming, he agreed. He had no way to contact Neal and no idea where he was, but he needed his former CI and best friend’s lateral brain more than ever before.

Director Lewis came by to offer sympathy and the help of the bureau, which Peter was already mobilizing. It was surreal. Suddenly, Peter could understand the irrational ways parents acted when their children were abducted. Logically, he knew everything was being done that could be. The museum was being scoured for clues, and alerts were being sent out everywhere for a child matching Neal’s description. Emotionally, he couldn’t help thinking through everything in his brain so many times he felt like he was going insane. Peter knew the stats; that was the problem. Six hours, ten, twelve. The longer time ticked by, the less likely it became that anyone would ever find Neal alive.

—

As soon as Neal approached the nondescript Paris alley he’d chosen for his nightly errand, he heard a low whistle, and the usual kids gathered out of doorways and shadows, seemingly materializing out of thin air. “Sorry I didn’t make it last night. I got held up,” he said in French to the oldest, Gabriel, who always went first. “I hope the extra was enough, and here’s a little more than usual for giving it out for me.” Neal handed him a wad of cash. “Now get inside; it’s almost curfew.” The kid nodded and disappeared into the night without a word. After that, they came one by one. As usual, Neal was amazed by their organization. They were quiet and didn’t push; a couple of them said thanks in soft voices. Gabriel and his assistants had a rough but effective order established among their peers on the street.

Luke was one of the last, since he’d only started coming a couple of months before. Neal had a soft spot for him, so when it was his turn, he pulled out a Snickers bar along with cash. “Thought you might be missing American candy,” he said in English. Luke was American, a foreign exchange student who had flown the coop and ended up on the street. Finally, when the last in line, little Frances, had gotten her money—only a couple of dollars because he’d already given enough money to cover both of them to her older sister Lina—Neal turned to go. Frances tugged on his trouser leg, like she always did. Like always, he pretended to have forgotten, then turned back and swept her up into his arms with a laugh. “Be good for your sister,” he said, hugging her before handing her back to Lina.

Neal hurried back to his actual apartment, a secret location far from the one he used for meetings. He felt lighter after seeing the kids. He wished he could take care of them all, but he settled for being relieved that they looked well and weren’t hungry. And his nightly hug from Frances put a smile on his face that stayed there until he got home.

—

The search for Neal Burke, son of the FBI’s white collar division head, was done methodically. It was conducted as perfectly as any missing child investigation had ever been, because the whole bureau sympathized with one of its best-liked agents. But it revealed nothing.

As the wait got longer, Peter simply held El while she cried and was unspeakably relieved that she held him when he cried, staunchly refusing to blame him for something she said had obviously been orchestrated by someone with a plan that went beyond him being distracted for a couple of minutes.

“There’s no body,” Peter told himself every night. “He’s not gone until evidence proves otherwise.” And he prayed.

Chapter Text

Agents monitored lines of communication day and night. Law enforcement agencies were alerted. No ransom request or demand arrived, not to the Burkes, the bureau, or anyone. This was one of the worst parts. No trace of Neal could be seen as a hopeful sign, but those hopes were offset by no clear indication of what the motive might have been for taking the little boy, which suggested the likelihood of a sick mind preying on a vulnerable child, rather than a methodical operation.

What Peter did not know, let alone anyone else involved in the search, was that there had been a plan, one that had been meticulously set into motion from months earlier. However, the best-laid plans had been thwarted—by a little boy who shared the name of one of the greatest living escape artists of the modern era.

—
Neal spent a quiet week thinking about the offer he’d received from the girl in plaid pajamas. He helped a wrongfully-accused man find an attorney who would defend him for free and tracked down a woman’s deadbeat husband. Usual things. Good, helpful things. But routine things. They did not excite him.

At times like this, Neal missed the FBI. Working with his freedom on the line had been, in some ways, terrible, but working with Peter had been wonderful. Neal still recalled how Peter had taken the tedious tasks himself, how he had maintained his stern outward facade while quietly shifting the most exciting tasks to Neal, the ones most likely to keep his interest and help him not to stray. Neal had always been thankful for this unspoken kindness, but now he appreciated it more than ever, now that he was the boss and the boring tasks fell to him.

He called Jade Danziger almost exactly one week after the successful theft of her mother’s painting, a theft that had not been reported to the official police or to any underground enforcement agencies. She had kept her word, and it seemed her mother had not yet even noticed the theft, her big house still standing empty, now with its security back on as if nothing had happened.

He had no trouble finding her information, even though it wasn’t listed publicly. Of course, she had intended that as a puzzle for him by not giving him any way to contact her. She’d asked for a call, and he complied with her wishes to prove that he had easily met her challenge.
“Robin Hood?” She answered the call from his encrypted phone, and he was relieved.
“You can call me Neal.”
“Is that your actual name?”
“Maybe. I’m ready to meet and discuss next steps.”
“It’s about time.” She sounded delighted. Neal gave her the address of his meeting apartment.
“6:00 p.m. tomorrow. Will you come?”
“Wouldn’t miss it.”
He would have preferred to meet her at a restaurant. A small Paris cafe would have had the perfect ambiance, but in the world of masks and sanitizer, the best he could do was a meeting on his own turf.
Neal had an extra spring in his step that night as he headed to the alley. He was finally giving in to the urge to do something new, something risky, something that would take his ingenuity to pull off. His excitement crackled.

—

“Can I add something?” Peter was not the lead agent on his son’s case, and he recognized the prudence of that decision. Still, he insisted on sitting in on all status meetings, and he offered input.

“Go ahead,” said Fortnum, who had been put in charge because she had experience in locating missing children.

“I know we’re all thinking that the lack of demands means an opportunistic predator, somebody who saw Neal at the aquarium and grabbed him. But I don’t buy it.” He leaned forward in his chair, glad to have the attention of the task force. “I was distracted for a minute or two at most. It just wasn’t long enough for somebody to decide on the spot, take my son, and get away, if there was no plan. Why didn’t he scream, how did they get out of there so fast, and how would they have exactly avoided security surveillance if it was a momentary crime of opportunity? It was too quick, too perfect. There had to be a plan, a getaway car, more people involved. And—I get it. I know it doesn’t make sense because they haven’t communicated. But I still don’t believe a small-time criminal could be that efficient.”
Fortnum nodded. “Point taken, Agent Burke. I hope we’re all aware that just because something doesn’t fit what we expect, that doesn’t mean we rule out any possibilities. We’re going to keep going until we get an answer.”

Peter appreciated her straightforward seriousness and her efficiency. He left the meeting with all of his questions still swirling in his head. He had years of experience of catching both organized criminals and opportunistic creeps. Every intuition he had was telling him Neal had been abducted by the first type. It didn’t exactly comfort him, but it did suggest that maybe—just maybe—there was hope that his son was still alive, still an intended pawn in somebody’s master plan.

—

When Neal got to the alley, Gabriel stepped forward as usual, but he was holding the hand of a small child Neal had never seen before. The kid was dirty and pale, wearing a red hoodie and jeans that had dirt and stains all over them. He thought he detected what looked like a bruise that was healing on the little boy’s right cheek.

“New kid,” Gabriel said. “Showed up this morning. Won’t tell us who he is. He doesn’t speak French. Luke has been talking to him in English, but he won’t tell us his name or anything about where he came from or why he’s here. We can’t keep him; he’s too young to be out here without siblings, and we don’t want to get mixed up in Americans looking for a missing kid. We don’t want any police around.”

Neal nodded. Gabriel’s group was primarily made up of older kids nobody wanted or who had been mistreated by their guardians. Any under ten had an older sibling or cousin. They had no capacity to care for a child who looked somewhere, Neal thought, between five and eight, especially one who was traumatized and wouldn’t tell them anything. “Here, give this out, and I’ll take him,” Neal said, handing Gabriel the evening’s money.

When the older boy had turned away to pass out the allowance, Neal knelt down to the level of the wide-eyed little boy. “Hi,” he said in English, “I’m Mr. Smith,” which was the alias he always used with the children. He had every intention of taking the child with him, but he didn’t want to do it against his will and traumatize him even further. “It’s nice to meet you. What’s your name?”

The small boy watched him for a long moment without saying anything. “You look just like my Uncle Neal,” were the first words out of his mouth.

Chapter Text

About a thousand things flooded Neal's mind at once. He had been focusing on the evident markers of bad treatment the boy appeared to have suffered judging by the condition of his clothes and face. He now realized just how much the eyes staring quietly into his looked like Elizabeth Burke’s and how much the set of the narrow shoulders reminded him of Peter.

Neal was glad Gabriel was occupied with the other children and that none of them seemed to be paying any attention. “What are your mom's and dad’s names?” he asked as gently as he could manage, but the boy shook his head.

“How about,” Neal tried again, “if I say your mom’s name and get it right, you tell me your dad’s?”

The serious-eyed boy slowly nodded. “Okay,” Neal said, trying to speak slowly and not make any alarming movements. “Your mom’s name is Elizabeth Burke.”

“My dad is FBI Special Agent Peter Burke,” the little boy said very softly.

For a split second, Neal entertained the wild idea of some kind of scam involving training a fake child to pretend to be the Burkes’ to somehow trap him, but that didn’t make any kind of sense, and even the smartest kid this young couldn’t be trained to do that. As bizarre as it was, he was looking into the face of the child he had never known.

“Your name is Neal Burke,” Neal answered, “and you were named after me.”

Neal saw his own confusion reflected on the face of his namesake. He held out his hand. “I’m your uncle. You can trust me, okay?” He needed to move quickly, but he didn’t want to startle the little boy. This was now complicated, confusing in so many ways that he needed time to sort out, not in a Paris alley surrounded by children who thought he was named Jim Smith.

He didn’t know how far the trust went, but at least little Neal grasped his hand. He stood up and yelled back to Gabriel. “Gabe, I have to go. Taking the new kid with me. Give Frances a hug from me and tell her I’ll be back tomorrow.” With that, Neal Caffrey turned toward home, lightly pulling Neal Burke alongside him.

Neal didn’t say anything until they were out of earshot, into the darkening Paris evening. “Hey, kid,” he said. “I’m glad to finally meet you.”

Little Neal looked up at him. “You’re not going to take me back to the bad men, right?”

“No,” Neal said, a pit of dread starting in his stomach at the thought of what the boy might be remembering. “You’re safe now, and nothing bad is going to happen to you.”

“Okay,” said the boy, as if that sealed the deal, and Neal felt the small hand in his squeeze a little tighter.

“Hey, you’ve probably been walking a lot,” Neal said. “Do you want me to pick you up?”

The kid shook his head no. “I can walk.” Too much too soon, Neal figured, inwardly kicking himself.

“When we get home, we can eat. Are you hungry?”

“Uh huh.”

The words “Uncle Neal” had caught him off guard at first, but, looking down at the Burkes’ child, Neal felt like it was already taking hold. This kid, a curious combination of two people he loved so dearly, might as well have been his flesh and blood. He was ready to do anything to protect him—and he felt his blood rise at the thought of whoever had caused him to be alone and in his current condition.

“So—what did your parents tell you about me?” Neal asked, hoping to get the boy to keep talking and maybe open up.

“My mom said you’re a hero, and my dad showed me pictures of you and him from a long time ago, before I was born. They said they named me after you so I would grow up to be like you.” Neal suddenly looked very hard at a building on the side of the street, not wanting his namesake to see the sudden wetness in his eyes.

“Neal,” said the older to the younger, “do you think you can talk to me about what happened—how you got here?” Hard shake of the head no, and the little boy clung to his hand even tighter.

“That’s okay,” Neal sighed. “You’re okay now. You can tell me later, if you feel like it.”

“I’m sorry,” said the kid, very softly.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Neal said. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

He went silent after that, not wanting to upset the little boy any further, his mind going a mile a minute. He needed to let Peter and Elizabeth Burke know their son was safe. He didn’t for one moment think Neal would be in this predicament if they had any idea where he was. The implication was abduction, but without any information from the little boy, he had nothing to go on. He was even scared to try to contact the Burkes. What if whoever had taken Neal was targeting them? They might even be in danger now. He was immensely glad that Mozzie was expected back in Paris this night. He needed his friend to help untangle the web and figure out what to do next, especially while the boy was too scared to tell him anything.

—

“Hon,” asked El, after another sad, lackluster lunch, “do you have any way to get in touch with Neal, to see if he can help?”

“I’ve tried,” Peter answered, “but he has a seven-year head start this time.”

El leaned over and put her head on his shoulder. “I know he’d want to help if he knew.”

“I’ll try Mozzie’s last known contact information,” Peter answered, “but you know Mozzie. He’ll be long gone.”

The frustrating thing was, they had intentionally kept the case out of the news. Abduction experts had told them that too much media attention might make whoever had taken Neal decide to get rid of him, to eliminate the complication of hiding him. If they thought nobody knew what had happened, they might feel safer, be more likely to hang onto him. Peter had agreed, and he’d convinced Elizabeth. The flip side was, they got no leads from the public, and if Neal or Mozzie might be keeping tabs on news from the United States, they wouldn’t have seen anything.

Usually, Peter believed that deciding not to chase Neal had been the right decision. Now, he wasn’t so sure.

—

Neal kept hold of his namesake’s hand and unlocked the door one-handed. The boy was still holding onto him with a vice grip. “We’re home,” Neal said, “and it’s safe.” He led the child inside, and he was pleased to smell something cooking.

“Moz, you here?” he called. “We have company.”

Mozzie emerged into the front living room, wearing an apron. “Got in an hour ago. What the—“ He looked at little Neal for a few moments. “That’s the Burke kid. I haven’t seen him since he was three, but I would recognize those eyes anywhere.” He gave Neal a “What in the world is going on?” look, but read the room enough not to ask difficult questions out loud. “Good to see you again, Neal. I’m Mozzie, but you probably don't remember me.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t know who you are,” the kid said very quietly.

“That’s okay,” Mozzie answered. “I’m like a cool uncle.”

For the first time, Neal saw a faint second of amusement cross the little boy’s face and a near-smile. Neal grinned down at him. “I think he knows which one of us is the cool uncle. What’s for dinner?”

Mozzie led the way to the kitchen, and Neal figured getting food into the kid was more important than anything else to start with.

—

One of the bedtime stories Neal Burke’s parents had told him ever since he could remember was about his name and Uncle Neal, the uncle who had helped his daddy catch bad guys at the FBI and then given his life to save them. Except, just like a real superhero, his uncle hadn’t really died. He had come back to life. His mother always told him Uncle Neal was away somewhere, very far, doing things a hero does.

When he’d turned seven, Neal had asked his father if his uncle was actually real, or if he was just a story like Santa Claus, whom he’d just stopped believing in. His father had pulled him into his lap and shown him a special picture album that he’d never seen before, pictures of his parents with another man. That man, his daddy told him, was Uncle Neal, and they missed him very much.

Four months later, Neal was tucked into bed by the man in those photos. He was tired and confused, sore from the bruises he’d gotten. Somehow, meeting Uncle Neal made sense. Superheroes came when you needed help, didn’t they?

“Neal, I’m going to be right out there in the living room. If you need me, you call, okay?” His uncle was standing over him, smoothing his hair across his forehead. It felt good, comforting, like nothing he’d felt since the aquarium.

“Okay,” he answered. His uncle turned out the light, and Neal turned over and leaned into the quilt and stuffed llama his uncle had given him to hold. He was finally somewhere comfortable, and he wasn’t hungry. He drifted off to sleep almost instantly.

The next thing he knew, he was back in the plane, feeling the wheels lift off, screaming because he knew they were taking him away from his parents, and a big man in a mask was holding his arms so hard it hurt. He yelled as loud as he could.

“Hey, hey, Neal, it’s okay.” The little boy felt himself being lightly shaken and jolted awake, realizing he was in bed in his uncle’s house in Paris, wrapped in a blanket, and nobody was hurting him. For the first time all week, Neal Burke started crying.

Big arms picked him up. Big arms pulled him close, and he closed his eyes against his uncle’s shoulder. “It’s okay, you’re safe. Nothing bad is going to happen,” he heard his uncle say as he carried him out to the living room and sat with him on the sofa. Neal felt like he would never be able to stop crying. His uncle just held him in his lap, with his arms wrapped tightly around him, for ages and ages, until he finally started to calm down.
—

“You were pretty good with the kid just now,” Mozzie said, once little Neal was back to sleep, and the two could strategize alone.

Neal shrugged. “I just did exactly what I wished somebody would have done for me when I was a kid.”

Mozzie patted his shoulder. “What exactly are we going to do about this, my friend?

Neal ran a frustrated hand through his hair. “I have no idea, Moz. I checked the newswires, and nobody is reporting the abduction of the son of the head of the FBI’s white collar division. Don’t you think that would make the news?”

It was Mozzie’s turn to shrug. “Maybe they kept it out on purpose, but this is making me think I should have kept that surveillance on the Burkes. I let it go two years ago.”

“It’s okay,” Neal answered. “We’ll get to the answer; we just need the kid to feel safe enough to tell us what happened, and we can go from there.”

“Judging by tonight, it won’t be long,” Mozzie commented with uncharacteristic optimism. “He idolizes you.”

Neal couldn’t help smiling. “Who would have thought—Peter Burke raised his kid to think of me as a hero.”

“The Suit’s not a total idiot,” Mozzie answered.

Chapter Text

Neal went out early, to buy food from the his favorite market, something a kid would hopefully eat. He would have asked what little Neal liked, but he was still sleeping, and after the difficulties of the night, it was a relief. Neal left Mozzie to babysit.

The area around the market wasn’t crowded, since people were mostly abiding by lockdowns unless they had critical reasons to be out. Neal was dressed casually, and though he was used to his face attracting attention, from behind a mask it wasn’t quite as striking.

“Hey—Neal?”

That brought him up short on his way into the store. He didn’t use the name “Neal” in Paris, even though he still preferred it to his aliases. He whirled around, ready to defend himself, wondering which of the misdeeds of his prior life had caught up to him.

Instantly, his adrenaline ebbed. Jade Danziger was next to the fresh produce. This time, her hair was pulled back, and she was dressed for the day in slacks and a sweater, but even in a mask, he recognized her. The one person in Paris he’d told to call him “Neal.”

Her eyes looked frantic as he approached. “What’s wrong?” He kept his voice low. “How did you even find me?” She had enough sense to go outside to talk, and Neal followed.

“I’ve been walking around this area for an hour,” she explained in a breathless voice, once they were out front of the market. “It’s close to the address you gave me, and I hoped you might be around here.”

“You were lucky,” he said, not elaborating because he did not want to explain that he lived in a different part of the city. “What do you need that couldn’t wait for tonight?”

“Can we meet now—somewhere private?” she asked. Neal could tell that she was genuinely upset, so he nodded and led the way toward his meeting apartment, which was a ten-minute walk. Along the way, he texted Mozzie to tell him he was going to be a while, to order in something for the kid to eat, whatever he wanted.

“I’m—sorry,” Jade said when they were about halfway. “I didn’t know what else to do.”

Neal had no idea, as of yet, what she was even talking about, but he lightly touched her shoulder. “If this relates to what we talked about the other night, then you did the right thing coming to me.”

She nodded. “It—does.”

They spent the rest of the walk in silence, and Neal wondered what could have rattled the self-possessed woman to this extent. Even finding a stranger ransacking her house hadn’t shaken her up half as much.

—

Peter couldn’t sleep. He left El with a peaceful expression she never wore during the day any more and went out to the living room. He had checked and re-checked everything related to his son’s disappearance, so, not knowing what else to do, he picked up a file he had brought home from the case he was supposed to have started looking into just as his world had exploded.

Preliminary report: Art theft. That made him think of Neal, the original one. Except, this had a nasty edge to it that Caffrey never would have pursued. Somebody was profiting off other people’s tragedies. Peter’s superiors had handed the file over so that he could form a team to figure out what federal US laws were being violated and how to go about proving it.

The name caught his eye, because he remembered years before when he’d looked into the business practices of an oil millionaire, who actually, it turned out, had been completely clean. Danziger, an American expat living in Paris on her deceased husband’s money, and, it seemed, doing a lot more than that.

For a few minutes, Peter’s mind was distracted by reading about the compiled details, but the problem was immediately apparent. They just didn’t have that much yet. He could smell shady dealings a mile away, but the case wasn’t anywhere near proof.

—

When Neal Burke woke up, there was light streaming through the windows, and he immediately remembered that he was at his Uncle Neal’s, not with the bad men or on the street with the kids he hadn’t been able to talk to. He got out of bed and walked out to the living room, dressed in the slightly too-big pajamas his uncle had given him. At least his uncle had kid clothes at all; Neal was happy to be out of the hoodie and jeans he now hated.

“Morning,” said Mozzie, who was sitting on the sofa reading a newspaper. Neal thought he liked the small man who apparently knew his parents.

“Good morning, Mr. Mozzie. Where’s Uncle Neal?”

“He went out for a while, but if you tell me what you want for breakfast, I’ll order it for you.” Neal’s anxiety came back full force. What if his uncle wasn’t coming back for him? What if he was going to end up back with the bad men after all? He had thought he could trust his uncle, but he did not know about Mozzie. Now he wasn’t sure about either of them.

“Hey, kid, he just ran an errand,” Mozzie said, getting up and coming toward him. “He’ll be back.”

“I want my mom and dad,” Neal said.

“I get it,” Mozzie answered, “and that’s going to happen, just as soon as Uncle Neal and I can make sure it’s safe.”

Neal went back to the bedroom, which was normally his uncle’s, and got back in bed. He pulled the blanket over his head and held the stuffed llama. He didn’t want to be scared any more, but it seemed like everywhere he went just ended up being another place to be afraid.

—

Neal unlocked his secondary apartment and led Jade inside. “Welcome,” he said shortly. “I’d planned to at least have dinner ordered for our meeting tonight.”

“No need,” she answered. “Can I sit?”

“Sure.”

This was not the meeting Neal had envisioned, where the suave and charming Robin Hood would outline an airtight plan with the help of an intelligent woman. Instead, he felt off his game, and at the same time he empathized with Jade’s obvious distress.

She took off her mask, and he did the same, sitting in the chair across from the sofa, while she perched on the edge of the larger piece of furniture, looking small and vulnerable in comparison with it.

“Something is really, really wrong,” she said. “You must know my mother hasn’t discovered the painting is gone yet; I’m sure you’ve been paying attention. Normally, when she’s gone, she calls the staff back to the house a couple of days ahead of time, but the caretaker called me three days ago and said he hadn’t even heard from her. She’s—she was supposed to be back at the house this morning.”

“Missing?” Neal wondered aloud.

Jade shook her head no. “It’s not that. I called her yesterday. We’re not as close as we used to be, but she trusts me. She knows I know what she does, and even though I’ve never supported it, I’m nearly thirty, and I’ve never done anything about it, either. I called her and asked if she was coming back from her vacation soon, said I wanted to see her. I played dumb, like I didn’t know anything was weird.”

“Neal, she—I’ve never heard her like that. She said—‘Jade, something’s happened, and I don’t know if I’ll be back for a while. The house is yours, and you know how to access the family accounts.’”

“Do you think she got onto the fact that you’d decided to work against her?” Neal asked the obvious question.

Jade shook her head vehemently. “No, even I didn’t know it until I met you the other night, and I’ve never discussed it with anyone else. I’m—not finished. I tried to keep her on the phone. I said, ‘Are you okay, mom?’ I was trying to play the concerned daughter card, and, I mean, it wasn’t that far off reality.”

“She sounded so weird. My mother is never anxious, and she sounded like she was on the verge of panic. She said, ‘Don’t worry about it, Jade. You’re better off not know anything. Somebody I hired made a big mistake, and I don’t know if I can clean it up.’”

“Neal, I’m—I think she might be responsible for somebody getting killed, or something. Maybe I sound insane, but I know my mom. I’ve never heard her like this in my life.”

Neal thought quickly. “Do you think she would talk to you again? Right now, you’re our only link to finding out the truth.”

“I—I guess. She didn’t say she wouldn’t.”

Neal nodded. “We need to find out what happened. If your mother is mixed up in something, you could be in danger, too.”

“I know,” Jade answered readily. “That’s one of the reasons I looked for you. Probably pretty cowardly, right? If I’m going to be a big, bad informant, I need to get used to it.”

Neal shook his head. “You’re trying to do a good thing, and you’ve gotten mixed up in whatever escalated your mom’s situation. One thing I know, big crimes don’t go unreported. But it would be easier if you could find out faster. Do you know where she is?”

Jade shook her head. “She had reservations at a Caribbean resort, but those expired three days ago.”

“We’ll work on finding out. You can stay here,” Neal said. “It has good security, and nobody your mother has ever worked with should have any reason to think you would be here.”

“Okay,” Jade answered. “That’s extremely nice of you.”

Neal looked at her for a long moment. “This is because I’m concerned for you, but also because I don’t fully trust you.”

“Understood,” she answered. “But still, thanks."

—

Neal finally reached home more than two hours after he’d left. When he unlocked the apartment, he found Mozzie reading in the living room, but his namesake was nowhere in sight.

“The kid won’t come out,” Mozzie said shortly. “I tried to get breakfast, but he just went back in there, and I was afraid to push. Apparently, I don’t have Uncle Neal’s kid whisperer abilities.”

Neal shook his head. “This is my fault. I planned to be back before he woke up. He’s traumatized, Moz. He woke up, and the person he thought was finally going to keep him safe wasn’t here. I get it.”
He did get it. He’d felt it, on more than one occasion, throughout a childhood in witness protection that had been chaotic at best and terrifying at worst. That he’d felt the same sense of terror and abandonment once again the day his father had threatened him as an adult? He’d never told anyone that, but it certainly filled his mind as he knocked lightly on his bedroom door and came inside.

“Hey, buddy,” he sat on the end of the bed, not touching little Neal or trying to remove the blanket that completely covered him. “Did you fall back asleep? I thought we could eat something. I’m really hungry.”

“Go away,” the kid said. “I want my dad.”

“I do, too,” Neal said, and he’d never said anything truer in his life. “He always knows what to do and how to keep people safe, doesn’t he.”

Neal the younger peeked out from under his blanket. “You left.”

“Yep, I went to get food for breakfast, and then I got stuck and couldn’t get back right away. That must have been scary. I’m sorry I left you with Moz without telling you I was going to.”

“That’s—okay,” the little boy finally said, sitting up and scooting closer to Neal, who dared to reach an arm around him and was relieved when he didn’t pull away.

“You know, I’m going to take care of you until you get your parents back. I promise,” Neal said.

“I’m sorry I told you to go away,” the kid whispered, wrapping his thin arms around Neal’s middle.

“I’ve heard a lot worse,” Neal said, suddenly swinging him up into the air and making him laugh in surprise. “Come out and eat something, or your mother will accuse me of starving you.”

--

Peter was finally settling back in for the night when his phone beeped. He picked up, and the call was Director Lewis himself. "Hey, Burke, sorry for the late hour, but we thought you'd want to know. Anonymous tip came in about an overheard conversation--botched kidnapping. Something didn't go as planned. We haven't connected it yet. I'll let you know when I know more."

Chapter Text

Neal had arranged to see Jade again in the evening. They both agreed that calling her mother too incessantly might backfire and cause her to cut contact. Still, Neal’s impatience was at full force. If this was a dead end, he wanted to know so he could course correct and not waste precious time while he had Peter Burke’s only child and an apparent abduction to solve at the same time.

In the meantime, Neal poured his small namesake a bowl of cereal, hoping the little boy might soon be willing to open up with something—anything—to help him know where to begin. He had no idea how long an intelligent seven-year-old could hold out. If they made him feel as safe as possible, Neal hoped it wouldn’t be long.

“Mr. Mozzie?” said the kid, looking up from the kitchen table at Neal’s bespectacled associate’s toast making endeavors.

“At your service, Miniature Neal,” Mozzie answered.

“I’m sorry I was impolite.”

“That’s—okay,” said Mozzie, stepping over and awkwardly ruffling the little boy’s brown hair before looking over at Neal, who wore a look of deep amusement. “Definitely raised by the Burkes,” Mozzie added. “You can practically smell the lawfulness on him. Maybe this is how you would’ve turned out if Mr. And Mrs. Suit had gotten to you sooner.”

“Never,” said Neal, sitting down next to the little boy with his slice of buttered toast. “He’s way too good for me.”

“I’m not that good.” The statement out of little Neal’s mouth, intoned between bites of sugar cereal, was so emphatic and matter-of-fact that both Mozzie and Neal just stared at him for a second.

“Why do you say that?” Neal asked, following a hunch that this might turn important and wanting the kid to keep talking.

“I got taken by the bad men because I didn’t do what my dad said.” Neal had definitely not expected this to be his opening to glean the information he was sorely lacking, but he was willing to take it.

“Where was that, Neal?” He spoke calmly and evenly, not wanting the kid to feel pressured.

“At that aquarium. I wanted to see the whales, but my dad got a phone call, and I let go, so they took me away.” Aquarium. Neal immediately knew which one, the only one of any size that was anywhere near where the Burkes lived.

“Do you remember what day that was?” Neal asked, hoping beyond hope for a time frame.

The little boy just shook his head. “I can’t remember.”

“That’s okay,” Neal murmured absently, the wheels of his mind turning. This was a straightforward abduction, then. Father and son out together, Peter momentarily distracted by his call, and his impatient son wandering away where he made a prime target. But what was the motive for taking Neal Burke specifically? It seemed overly coincidental that anyone would have kidnapped the son of the head of white collar on accident.

“Uncle Neal?” The little boy’s quiet voice pulled Neal out of his reverie, and he was reminded that he had a very real and still-traumatized child on his hands. “Do—do you think my dad is mad at me for letting go of his hand?”

Letting go of his hand. Neal’s mind did a quick-fire montage of all the times he’d metaphorically let go of Peter’s hand over the years to go do something far worse than chasing whales. He smiled and put his hand on his namesake’s head, subconsciously mimicking what Peter had once done to him at one of his most vulnerable moments. “No, Neal, he’s not mad. He loves you too much to be mad, and he just wants you to be safe.”

“How do you know?” the little boy asked, turning wide blue eyes onto Neal, all the force of seven-year-old guilt on the line.

“Well,” Neal thought quickly, “what does your dad hate more than anything in the world?”

“Stealing,” the little boy answered immediately.

“He definitely knows his father,” Mozzie said drily from across the table.

“Back when I used to catch bad guys with your dad, I was a bad guy sometimes. Sometimes I even stole things.”

“You did?” The kid looked incredulous at this shifting portrait of his hero uncle, and Neal thought that trying to explain gray areas of adult ethics to a child was not something he’d really signed up for.

“I did,” he nodded, “and—even though your dad wasn’t happy about it, he still loved me and did everything he could to protect me. That’s how I know.”

Neal the younger was obviously satisfied by this. “Okay,” he said. “Did you get grounded a lot?” Mozzie’s snicker threatened to become a full-blown laughing fit.

“Yeah,” Neal answered, visions of a tracking anklet dancing in his head, “a lot.”

“But my dad said you’re a hero?” The little boy was perplexed, and Neal didn’t blame him.

“Your dad and your mom—taught me how to be one,” Neal finally said. “And they helped me believe I could be.”

“Oh,” said the kid, lapsing into silence.

—

“You’re acting weird,” El said as she set the breakfast dishes on the table. “I mean, weirder than usual for right now.” Peter finished tying his tie, but instead of sitting down at the table, he reached for her and pulled her close in the middle of the kitchen.

“Oh no,” she said, suddenly tensing. “Did you—is there bad news? Just tell me.”

“No, hon,” Peter said, hugging her against him, “I just didn’t want to get your hopes up in case it turns out to be nothing. Lewis has a lead, our first one.”

El put her arms around his waist and pressed herself more tightly against him. “He’s alive, Peter. I would know if he wasn’t.” Peter knew all the stats and all the probabilities. Even so, he let himself borrow El’s hope for his own.

—

Neal and Mozzie employed the oldest babysitting trick in the book and put the kid in front of cartoons in the living room. That allowed them to work at the larger dining room table and still keep an eye on him.

For the first order of business, Neal explained the Jade Danziger situation. His friend gave him exactly the look he expected. “You have got to be kidding me, Neal. You’re supposed to be a conman, not the one who gets conned.”

“I think we can trust her, Moz,” he answered. “I believe she actually wants to help.”

“Well, we’re stuck with her anyway,” said his friend, none too graciously. “But right now, in order of severity, I’d say having a kidnapped child in the living room is probably our worst problem.”

“But nobody seems to even know there was an abduction. Why hasn’t it flagged on any of your surveillance? Somebody should be taking credit for it.”

Mozzie shrugged. “Well, somehow he got away. That might be a big enough problem that nobody wants to mention it. Unless you think they let him go on purpose, and this is some kind of long con.”

Neal shook his head. “I went down that road when I first found him. There’s no way. He’s not old enough to be trained, and there’s nothing like a tracker on him.”

“Escaped, then,” said Mozzie. “Respect to the kid.”

“His father is a genius,” Neal said.

“True,” Mozzie agreed, “but such wasted application of all that talent. There’s still time for the young one to choose the free life.”

Neal laughed. “Nah, he’s Peter and El’s kid, and that’s enough.”

—

Later that night, Neal left his namesake (who was fine since Neal's return was promised) with Mozzie and took a different route than usual to get to his second apartment. He wasn’t being followed, but he took precautions. Despite his insistence to the contrary, he’d taken Mozzie’s concerns to heart and decided to be careful.

When he arrived, he mentally prepared himself for Jade to be gone without a word. Instead, he found her sitting on the sofa in silence, without the TV or any other device on. She turned to him, and he saw that she looked even more worried than before.

“Neal!”

“Are you okay?”

“My—mother called me. I did just what you said. I acted like nothing was up. I just got her talking and started asking questions.”

“Good,” Neal said, sitting down opposite the girl to take in her breathless barrage of words. “She—she was evasive for a while, but then she started talking again about how things weren’t looking good and she didn’t know when she would be back. So I told her I was worried, and I asked why.” Neal leaned forward, engrossed.

“Neal, she—said she had hired a man to make a problem go away, and he kidnapped a kid, but by the time he told her the plan, the kid had escaped. A little kid, like seven. He’s out on the street. They’re going to try to pin it on my mother if anything gets found out, but I don’t care. I just can’t stop thinking about that poor kid on his own out there.”

Neal’s mind raced. “Do you know who the kid is, or why kidnapping him would make anyone’s problems disappear?”

Jade shook her head no. “She was still panicky. I couldn’t get more than that.”

“Good work,” Neal said. “I brought you some groceries.”

“Thanks,” Jade answered, but she made no effort to move from the couch.

“You must be hungry,” Neal said.

“Not really,” she answered. “This is all—really weird. I mean, I know my mom has done some bad things, but not like this. My—whole life is changing. I’m scared.”

“I get it,” Neal answered, “but you still need to eat.” When she still didn’t move, Neal went to the kitchen and started water for pasta.

“You cook?” The girl finally joined him after several silent minutes.

“When needed,” Neal answered.

“Why are you being this nice to me?” Jade asked. “Don’t you have hundreds of other people in Paris with easier problems to solve? When I told you I wanted to help take her down, I had no idea it would turn into this. I’m—sorry.”

“Apology unnecessary,” Neal answered, chopping pancetta. “I’ve always appreciated a challenge.”

Chapter Text

Neal quickly finished the one-dish pasta and put it on the table with plates. Not exactly glamorous, but not bad for improvisation. He pulled out one of the chairs from around the small table, the only table he kept in an apartment not meant for living in, and motioned to Jade. “Dinner is served.”

The girl gave him a wry look but sat down. “Thanks for this.”

“Don’t thank me too soon,” Neal answered. “Full disclosure; I connected to your phone this morning. My associate now has a recording of the call with your mother from this afternoon, and he’s analyzing it to get any information he can. I needed to know if we could actually trust you. Not—looking at anything else on your phone, honestly.”

Jade didn’t answer for a while, but she finally looked at him and nodded. “I can’t say I like it, but I understand. I’m the one who came to you. You could have just asked me, though. I would have recorded my calls and given them to you.”

“You would have still been in control,” Neal explained straightforwardly. “We needed to know, fast, without you being able to manipulate what we got.”

“Okay,” she said, picking up her fork. “I’m hungry now.”

Neal smiled, surprised by how well she’d taken it, then turned serious again. “What you need to know is, these recordings will be enough. She already admitted to you that she hired the person who did this. If you talk to her and get her to say any more, it will strengthen the case. She'll face charges bigger than art theft, and they may be from more than one country.”

“More than one country?” Jade echoed. “What do you know?”

“I’m not sure about the connection yet,” said Neal, “but I may know something about the abduction from other sources.” He did not mention that his main source was a seven-year-old who was currently eating pizza in his apartment on the other side of the city.

“Do it,” Jade said simply. “Help me take her all the way down.”

“Why?” Neal asked, finally starting on his own dinner. “I don’t buy the idea that you just want to do a good deed. You’re grown. You have a nice life. Lucy has been doing this, at least in some capacity, for years. Why now?”

Jade tensed. “First of all, I’m not living off her money. I have a trust from my father. Yeah, I’m a trust fund baby, but at least it’s money my dad earned honestly. Proven honest by the US government.” Her tone dripped with sarcasm. “The FBI investigated him when I was a kid and didn’t find anything, said he was 100% above board.”

“That had to be fun,” Neal said, matching her tone. “I have some experience with them.”

“I bet you do,” she answered. “It probably could have been worse. We got a nice agent. This was back when we still lived in the States. He didn’t try to invent anything to pin on Dad, and he was always nice. The whole thing sucked, but he did his job. It was one of his first cases as a lead.”

“Peter Burke,” said Neal, and he was rewarded by Jade dropping her fork and nearly knocking over her wine glass.

“How the heck do you know that? Are you working with them?”

Neal immediately raised his arms in surrender. “No—no way. They don’t want me, believe me. I just—made some deductions. I’m familiar with Agent Burke’s work.”

“Well, he’s a good guy; at least, he used to be. Let me watch cartoons on his laptop while he interviewed my parents, and when he closed the case, he came by personally to apologize for taking up dad’s time on something that turned out to be a false lead. None of the others were like that.”

“Sounds like Peter,” Neal mused.

“You know him,” Jade said, leaning forward.

“Yeah,” Neal agreed, deciding in the moment that he wanted to be honest with her. “A few years ago, we worked together. I wasn’t—in the FBI. I had an agreement.”

“What kind of agreement?” she pressed.

“The kind where you either help the FBI or stay in jail.”

“So that’s where you came from,” she said. “This mythical Robin Hood who rose out of the Paris sewers to fight for justice, or whatever it is they say.”

“I’m just a guy,” Neal said.

“But a guy who made a deal with Peter Burke. From what I remember, that can’t have been easy. He always seemed like he played by the rules.”

“Strictly,” said Neal, smiling, “Exactly like the guy you met; I was just a few years later.”

“I wish,” Jade said after a few moments of silence, “that Agent Burke could be the one who gets my mom’s case if it extends to the States. I would trust him.”

“I’d say that’s doable,” Neal said, thinking about all the tangled fibers of the multiple cases that now appeared to be spun off parts of the same thing. “I’d say it’s pretty unavoidable that he’ll be involved.” He didn’t say more, unwilling to disclose until he was sure of what he’d begun to suspect.

They both ate in silence for a few moments, then Neal started again. “You still haven’t answered my question: Why?”

Jade got a dark look in her eyes. “I was close to my father. Before he died, he took me everywhere, all over the world. He said I could be anything I wanted to be. I don’t know how far you’ve looked into me, but that’s why I majored in history. I’m an expert in artifacts of pre-literate cultures. I write books. Of course, you can’t make great money doing that, but I have the trust. My father never judged me for being a nerd or staying home reading while other kids went out. He made it so I could study what I loved. I was fifteen when he died, and my best friend was gone.”

“My mom was different. I don’t know how else to say it. They only had one kid, and she wanted me to be perfect. I didn’t do all the things regular kids did. When we moved to France, I couldn’t adjust, and it made her endlessly angry. She would lock me in my room so nobody saw me when they had parties. I didn’t care that much, but after Dad died, it got worse. I realize I’m not exactly runway model material now, but I was a heavy kid who liked to read. She wanted me to be a pretty girl she could dress up. She tried to get plastic surgery for me, but the doctor wouldn’t do it on a kid that young. She—started doing physical things to me then, things she told the doctor were “accidents.” When I was eighteen, I was legally able to access the trust and get out for school.”

“People see me now, and they think I had the debutante past. At some point, I grew into myself and learned how to present myself, no thanks to my mother. I didn’t have any contact with her while I was in university, but when I was in my early twenties, she came to me. She apologized for 'being so hard on you to help you excel,' and said I should use the house since I was technically half owner of it, per my father’s will.”

“I’m not exactly proud of it, but I accepted her lame apology. I’d just gotten out of a relationship, and, God help me, I wanted family. I let her back into my life. And then I saw what she was doing. I’m not proud of the fact that I’ve stuck with her all this time, but I’ve never let her treat me the way she did before. That much—I kept for myself. But Neal, somebody’s got to finally stop her.

No way around it, Neal wanted to hug her. But he didn’t invade her space in any way. “Reason understood,” he said, trying to convey compassion with his eyes. “As long as you stay committed to this, it will work. She’ll be stopped.”

“Good,” answered Jade. “I’ve never told anyone all of that before, not even my therapist.”

Neal caught and held eye contact. “It never goes out of this room.”

After a moment, he collected the half-eaten bowls that neither of them seemed inclined to finish and took them to the sink. “One more thing. I know you don’t need my approval, but you’re a beautiful woman. Heck of a lot better than a pretty girl.”

Jade stood next to the counter and looked over at him while he ran water into the used dishes. “I really want to give you a hug.”

“I’ll let you,” he said, “but only if you promise to let me read your books. I love antiquities.”

Jade laughed. “No, really, I mean that!” Neal protested while his arms were filled up with her. He liked the feeling, more than he had liked anything for a long time.

Chapter Text

As soon as Peter got to the office the morning after Lewis’s call, he was called into a meeting with the director and Fortnum. “Burke, sit down.” He felt like he’d rather stand because of his nervous energy, but he did as asked.

“Italian police have a guy. He says he was hired by somebody—doesn’t know who; he does dirty jobs for a local criminal outfit, and they didn’t plan it. Says they picked up a kid in Milan and took him to Paris to do a handoff. Didn’t work. Kid got away.”

“This guy was brought in on a drug charge, but the cops there said he was scared to death, like he expected charges for something else, so they played along and acted like they knew more than they did. He cracked and gave them this, said the crew were all terrified of being caught once the kid got away.”

“But is it my kid?” Peter leaned toward the desk, breathing hard.

“He didn’t see the kid’s face because they had a mask on him,” said Lewis, “but we sent over a full body shot, and he said it could be—definitely a boy, height seemed right. Not sure about the voice; he said he didn’t hear the kid say much, and our recording of Neal didn’t spark anything.”

Fortnum turned to Peter. “We’ve let Paris police know to look for a boy of Neal’s description.”

“It’s a start,” Peter said, closing his eyes tightly.

He went to the empty corner office and called El. They both cried on the phone.

—

When Neal got home from seeing Jade and then his kids, he found his namesake overexcited from pizza and soda (Moz was a soft touch when it came to sugar). Neal beckoned the little boy over and set him on his lap.

“Talk to me. How did you get away from those guys?”

He had rightly judged that the little boy was comfortable enough to answer without distress. “They put me into a car after the boat, but then they switched cars. I don’t know why. The big one put me in the trunk, but he didn’t close it right away, so I got out and ran away. It was dark, and they didn’t realize I was gone. I just ran until I had to stop. I don’t know where I was. One of the girls found me in the night and said I had to come see Gabriel.”

“That was a very brave thing to do, Neal.”

The little boy nodded seriously. “My dad said if anybody ever took me, to listen, watch, and take every chance. We used to practice it sometimes.”

“He’s going to be so proud of you,” Neal said, lifting the now somewhat calmer child and carrying him to bed.

—

Once the little boy was asleep, Neal rejoined Mozzie and let himself kick into high gear. “The pieces are coming together, my friend,” said Mozzie.

“Yes,” Neal agreed, “and we have to contact Peter. They’ve got to be going through torture.”

“Don’t underestimate me,” Mozzie said. “While you’ve been gone, I haven’t been idle. I have a pipeline. As soon as you give the word, an FBI admin assistant will give Peter a coffee cup with a message tucked into the sleeve. That message will tell him to come outside and call a number. That number, of course, is not your number, but it will nonetheless route to your phone.”

Neal gaped. “Wow, Moz, impressive, even for you.”

“With everyone running scared, including, as you say, the woman at the top of whatever this is, I figured we were reaching the point of contacting the Burkes without fear for their immediate safety. Not that anything about this won’t be charmingly discreet.”

“I didn’t know you had someone at the FBI.”

“Entry level,” Mozzie answered, “but I knew she would come in handy some day.”

“Do it,” Neal said, ready to enter the next phase of the operation. “We need Peter, and Neal needs his parents.”

Mozzie punched something into his computer. “If this works, your untraceable phone will next receive a call from one Agent Peter Burke.”

—

Peter tried to calm himself by working on his other case, the Danziger art scheme. He’d actually managed to make some headway into compiling a list of who he might need to look into when one of the admin assistants he didn’t know very well brought him a coffee.

People had really been extraordinarily nice since Neal’s disappearance, and Peter looked up to thank the girl, only to notice her finger on a tiny slip of paper stuck between the cup sleeve and the cup, like she was pointing to it. He reached for it, and the girl disappeared back to her desk.

“Go outside, and call this number.” The message was succinct, and Peter did not recognize the phone number. Under other circumstances, he might not have obeyed so readily, but at the moment he was ready to jump at anything. He grabbed a secure departmental cell phone and went outside.

“Hey, Peter. It’s Neal.” For the second time that day, Special Agent Peter Burke blinked back tears.

Chapter Text

“Neal, I—“

“Before you say anything,” Neal stopped him, “listen. Your son is fine, and I didn’t kidnap him.”

“—, Neal,” Peter swore. “At least do me the credit of knowing I wouldn’t accuse you of that. We named him after you for a reason.”

“I love you, too, Peter,” Neal said, “but listen. Your son is here, in Paris. The reason I’m talking to you, instead of giving this information to the bureau, is that if you give this to the FBI now, it will all get pinned on the guys who were hired to do it. Even if they try to prove that someone else is the mastermind, it almost definitely won’t stick. I’m running an operation to get the person who paid for it.”

“Neal,” Peter cut in, “put my son on the call. Now.”

Neal turned on speakerphone. “He’s right here, Peter.”His namesake was beside him on the sofa, squirming in excitement.

“Dad!”

“Hey, Buddy.” Neal could hear tears in Peter’s voice. “Are—are you okay?”

“Yeah, Uncle Neal is really nice, and Mozzie.”

“I’m—gonna see you soon, okay, me and mom.”

“Dad, I want to go home.” The little boy held onto Neal’s side while he talked, and Neal put a comforting arm around him.

“Soon, buddy,” said Peter. “Really, really soon.”

“Peter, I thought you might want to do a video call with Elizabeth. You can use the same number,” Neal put in.

“All right,” Peter answered. “Son, Dad and Mom love you so much. Be good for Uncle Neal, and we’ll be together really soon.”

“Okay, Dad,” the little boy answered. “I love you.”

“I love you, too, buddy, so much.”

Neal surreptitiously wiped tears from his own eyes as Peter said, “Okay, Caffrey, take me off speaker and finish what you were saying.”

Neal did as told. “I have the person at the top of this whole thing. I just need a little more time to finish getting proof. Do you remember investigating a guy named Charles Danziger?”

“I can do you one better,” Peter answered. “I just got his wife’s file. Some kind of art theft ring.”

There it was, the missing motive, or, at least, an opening for one. Neal practically shouted. “It’s her, Peter. I have an informant who can get recorded proof that she hired the goons who took Neal, but it’s not finished. If you give this to the bureau right now, she’ll almost certainly get away because there’s not enough evidence linking her to it. She’s too intelligent to leave a trail. We need her own admission to seal the deal.”

“I trust your assessment,” Peter answered, which was music to Neal’s ears. “The bureau has testimony of one of the kidnappers, but he doesn’t know enough. We weren’t even sure it was Neal he was talking about. But Paris—that’s the connection.”

“We’ll tell you all about it soon,” Neal said, “but what you need to know is that your son escaped.” He put the phone back on speaker. “Neal, tell your dad how you got away, like you told me and Moz.”

The little boy shook his head. “Dad?”

“Yeah, buddy? I’m really, really proud. I bet you did just like we practiced.”

“But Dad, I—was bad when we were at the aquarium. I’m really sorry.” Oh no. Neal could hear his one-time partner, seasoned and sharp-edged Special Agent Peter Burke, sobbing on the other end of the phone.

“It’s—it’s okay, buddy,” Peter finally managed. “I’m just glad you’re okay. I missed you so much.”

Neal took the phone back again. “Hey, Peter, probably some conversations would be better in person. If you want to call with El, I’ll keep Neal up.”

“Yeah, thanks,” Peter said, sounding like he was catching his breath and calming himself down. “I’ll—get Lewis to send me to Paris. We can travel there to meet you and get Neal without letting the bureau know that we already know where he is. It will buy you a few days, at least. After that, we have to call it in. I don’t want to become an accessory to my own son’s kidnapping."

“Exactly what I would have suggested,” Neal agreed, experiencing the long-missed satisfaction of being on the same page as his quick-thinking friend.”

“All right,” said Peter, “I’m going home, and I’ll video call you with El in an hour. And Caffrey?”

“Yeah?”

“Missed you, too, buddy, more than I can say. I’d kill you for faking your death, but that would defeat the purpose of seeing you safe and sound.” Neal suddenly felt like he had a lot more to apologize for than his namesake had. After all, Mozzie had told him how much they’d grieved for him.

“Peter, I—”

“You’re about to apologize. Don’t. You kept my kid safe, Neal. That’s immunity for life.”

—

Neal the younger was so excited after talking to his father that Neal and Mozzie wouldn’t have gotten him to bed even if they’d tried. He clambered onto Neal’s lap, which seemed to be his favorite place to sit in the apartment, to wait for his mother’s call.

“Uncle Neal, you were right. He wasn’t mad or anything.”

“Told you,” Neal answered, running a hand through the boy’s fine brown hair. “I know your dad really well.”

“Are my parents going to take me home?”

“Of course, as soon as they can.”

“Are you coming home, too?”

Neal didn’t answer for a few seconds. “I don’t know, buddy.” He was honest with the little boy, the way he wished adults would have been honest with him.

His namesake turned around on his knee and gave him the most appealing Elizabeth Burke-like wide-eyed look he had ever seen. “Please, Uncle Neal.”

“Whew,” said Mozzie, who had just come out from the second bedroom, “that’s—enhanced interrogation, right there.”

Neal just hugged his honorary nephew and said nothing at all.
—

Within the hour, Neal’s phone alerted to a video call, and he handed it to the little boy, who answered it. Instantly, the screen was filled with the faces of two people Neal loved more than he’d used to think it was possible to love anybody . He could see the tears in El’s eyes, and he felt his own filling again, but he let them.

“Hi, baby,” El said, wiping her eyes with her sleeve. “And hi, Uncle Neal.” The warmth was overwhelming, the ocean of comfort that washed over him. He had missed this, even more than he’d realized. His nephew’s request was starting to seem less and less like something he would never consider and more like something he would do anything to fulfill.

Chapter Text

After half an hour of smiles and tears, Peter could see through the screen that his son was growing drowsy. “It’s late your time,” he said to his former partner. “Son, time for bed. The quicker you sleep, the sooner you’ll see Mom and me, okay?”

“Yes, Dad,” said the little boy obediently. That was definitely one way the two Neals didn’t resemble each other.

El blew a kiss into the phone. “I’ll see you soon, sweetheart, I promise.” Then she pointed at the screen. “You, too, Neal Caffrey. You have explaining to do.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” said Neal meekly, but with a telltale smile at the corner of his mouth.

“Neal, I’ll call you with the flight details once I have it worked out.” Peter said, willing himself to believe he could make it work.

“Understood,” Neal answered.

“Bye,” waved the little boy, and Peter once again swallowed back tears, knowing the separation wouldn’t be much longer and that his son was safe.

Once Peter had hung up the phone, El dove into his arms. “Peter, he’s fine. I can’t believe he’s actually fine. For days, they’ve been trying to prepare us for the worst. And he’s even with Neal. What happens now?”

Peter held her close. “We go get him.”

“Just like that?” El asked.

“No,” Peter answered, realizing he needed to bring her into the plan. “Neal is running an operation to get the person behind taking our son. If we take what we know to the bureau now, they’ll get the muscle but not the brains. Neal needs more time.”

“So what are you going to do?” El asked, pulling her head off his chest long enough to wonder.

“I’m going to go get my boss to send us to Paris to help with the search there. I’ll just—leave out some of the relevant into, and what Lewis doesn’t know—yet—won’t kill him.”

“What about Neal, honey?” El asked. “Adult Neal, I mean. What happens to him when this all shakes down? He’s part of the case now, but he’s supposed to be dead.”

“You know I’ve always tried to protect him,” Peter answered, “and I’ll try to keep him out of it if I can.”

“I know you will,” El answered, between kissing him. “I just keep thinking, it’s a huge sacrifice for him to come out of hiding for this.”

“It is,” Peter agreed. “It’s incredibly decent of him.”

“We did a good job picking our son’s name,” El added softly.

—

“You heard your dad,” said Neal gently, hoisting his namesake into his arms, “it’s time for bed.”

“Will you tell me a story?” the little boy asked. “My mom tells me fairy tales.”

“Sure,” said Neal, thinking very quickly. He sat down on the bed, leaning on the headboard with the child curled up against him. “How about the one with the knight, the peasant, and the beautiful princess?”

“Okay,” said the little boy.

“Once upon a time, there was a very famous knight. He slew many dragons, and he was very brave. Even the king was impressed by him. Well, the king had a problem, because there was a peasant boy who was stealing his royal sheep and even robbing the palace of its gold. So, he sent the very famous knight to catch the wicked peasant. What do you think happened?”

The little boy looked up at him with wide eyes. “Did the knight kill the peasant with his sword?”

Neal shook his head. “The peasant escaped many times because he was very clever, and even the knight couldn’t find him. But, finally, the knight figured out what the peasant wanted most in the world.”

“What?” asked the engrossed bundle on Neal’s lap.

“He loved a beautiful princess he couldn’t marry because he was a peasant, but the knight captured him by finding her and luring him there. And then the knight did something the wicked peasant did not expect at all.”

“Did he take the peasant to the king as a prisoner?”

Neal shook his head again. “No, the peasant boy desperately begged the knight to teach him to be a knight, and to his surprise, the famous knight said he would. The knight taught him many things, and they even became best friends.”

Little Neal shook his head. “But what about all the bad things the peasant did?”

“The knight taught him how to help the people of the kingdom instead of doing those things any more.”

“Oh,” the child answered. “Did he marry the princess after he became a knight?”

“The beautiful princess went away to a faraway land, and the peasant never saw her again. But, the famous knight married the king’s daughter and lived happily ever after.”

The little boy smiled. “I don’t think the peasant was very bad. He just wanted a best friend.”

Neal got up, placing his nephew carefully on the bed and tucking the quilt around him. “I think you’re pretty smart.”

“Thanks for the story,” the little boy said sleepily. “It was a good one.”

“You have no idea,” Neal answered very softly, smiling to himself as he left the room.

Mozzie met him in the living room. “Your life isn’t half bad as a Medieval AU, but you didn’t end it right.”

“What do you mean?’ Neal asked, amused.

“You didn’t tell the part where the peasant-turned-knight went on a quest and fell in love with a dragon’s daughter.” The look Mozzie gave him was very pointed.

“That’s for the sequel,” Neal replied with a smirk.

Chapter Text

“Sir, I’d like permission to go to Paris with my wife to help with our son’s case.” Peter’s request for an end-of-day meeting with Director Lewis had been granted immediately, and he was fully willing to take advantage of the sympathy his situation elicited. He stood across the desk from his superior and took the direct approach, which was totally normal; in fact, he was known for it.

“That’s a bit complicated,” Lewis said, raising an eyebrow. “I’ll have to clear it with the State Department because of travel restrictions.”

“The leads point there,” Peter said, which was truer than his boss had any way of knowing. “I assume you’d feel the same way if it was your child.”

Lewis nodded. “You I can send in as an official FBI liaison. I don’t know if I can get authorization for your wife.”

Peter, who had anticipated this, nodded. “Sir, I haven’t asked for a personal favor at any point since you were named director. I’d like to ask for one now. Whether it’s good news or bad news, she deserves to be there.” He chose his words carefully, avoiding saying anything outright deceptive.

Lewis gave him a long look, his chin resting on his hand. “I suppose I can give her an official role, but she’ll have to generate a report and actually do the job."

“She’ll be perfectly fine with that,” Peter answered.

Lewis put his hand out, and Peter shook it. “Burke, I hope for the best for both of you and your son. Keep that hope alive.”

“Thank you, sir,” Peter answered, immensely relieved. He might not be able to call in another favor for the next ten years, but this one was worth it. Best of all, he’d managed to do it without actually lying. The logistics beyond that they could work out as they went.

Peter left the office and straightened his tie, proud of himself. He might not go undercover much any more, but he still had the touch when needed.

—

Neal awoke in the middle of the night to his shoulder being aggressively shaken by Mozzie, who pushed him to sit up and sat next to him on the living room sofa with a laptop, handing him an earbud. “Jade Danziger’s phone just alerted.” Neal rubbed his eyes and put in the earphone, trying to wake up quickly enough to be useful.

“Mom?”

“Sweetie, I’m sorry to call so late your time. I wanted to tell you, I’m going fully off the grid for a while.”

“What? You can’t do that, mom. I’ll—miss you so much.” Neal was impressed by the convincing voice acting performance she was putting on. “Whatever is going on, we can fix it. We have our family lawyer.”

“It’s not like that,” Lucy answered. “This is international now, and they’re probably going to find a body.”

“Whose body?” Jade asked. “I don’t understand.”

“They still haven’t found the little boy, and it's been way too long for good news,” her mother answered, human enough to sound actually distressed.

“Who is he?” Jade asked, and Neal clenched his fist on his knee in nervous anticipation, hoping she’d played her cards well enough.

“He’s the son of an FBI agent, the one who investigated Dad years ago. You remember, right? I got a tip that he was going to start investigating us, so I—hired somebody to take care of the problem. You have to believe me, Jade. I thought he was going to scare Burke off the case, dig up some personal dirt on him and use it as blackmail or something. But instead, he arranged the kidnapping of Burke’s kid. He said they planned to hold him for ransom and only give him back if Burke agreed to back off, but the kid escaped in Paris.”

“That’s the dumbest plan I’ve ever heard,” Jade said, and though this might not have been the most diplomatic response at the time, Neal completely agreed with her.

“I know,” Lucy answered. “I wouldn’t have agreed to it.”

“But you did. I mean, you caused it,” Jade pressed, and Neal willed her to get what she was after.

“Yes,” Lucy admitted, “I paid for it, and I’m responsible for it. I only wanted to protect what we have going with the art—your inheritance. I never thought it would go out of control like this.”

Mozzie looked over at Neal and mouthed, “That’s it.” Neal nodded. They had what they needed most, the connection to Neal Burke and the admission of guilt.

“Where are you, mom? I’m worried.” Jade wasn’t finished, and Neal admired her projection of calm, knowing she must be as excited as he was.

“I’m at the house in Scotland, but don’t try to come here. Stay there, and if the police trace this back to us, just say you don’t know anything. They won’t be able to pin it on you.”

“All right,” said Jade. “I love you, no matter what.” Neal wondered, as he heard this, if it was true. He wasn’t sure if Jade herself even knew.

As soon as the call was terminated, Neal’s phone rang. “Hey, how did I do?” Jade sounded almost breathless.

“For somebody who recently started lying, you’re pretty good at it, Miss Danziger,” he answered, trying to lighten the mood and help her calm down.

“I know where my mom is, Neal. I can give you the address, provided she’s not lying to me.”

“We’ll have to give over the evidence we have first; otherwise, they have no reason to arrest her. You can proffer what you know to the FBI—probably tomorrow, in fact. Peter Burke is coming to Paris.”

“Agent Burke is coming here. Why?”

Neal took a deep breath. “Because his son is here, and he’s coming to get him.”

“What do you know?” she asked suspiciously. “Don’t hold out on me, Neal. I’ve done my best.”

“I have the kid,” Neal answered. “He’s here, and he’s fine. You should know that whatever your mom eventually goes down for, it at least won’t be accessory to murder.”

“Whew,” Jade said. “How did you work that out?”

“As much as I would love to tell you it was a victory of wit and skill, he practically fell into my lap.”

“Sounds like destiny,” Jade answered.

“I don’t believe in destiny,” Neal retorted.

“Then love,” she replied. “I could tell the minute you started talking about Burke that you love him like family, and there’s nothing more powerful in the universe than that.”

Neal wanted to argue, but he didn’t have the heart. “Try to get some sleep. Things are going to be very interesting from here on out.”

“Sir, yes, sir,” Jade answered facetiously. “Good night, Neal.”

“Good night, Jade.”

Neal tried to calm himself back down, lying on the sofa and contemplating the blue-eyed, sharp-minded woman who had suffered loss and abuse but still somehow believed in the power of love to change the world.

Chapter Text

Peter helped Elizabeth pack in the middle of the night. Lewis had come through, and they were set to fly out on the red eye, with El officially designated as Peter’s investigative assistant.

“Not exactly the way I imagined taking you to the City of Light,” Peter said, rolling his slacks to make them as small as possible for the suitcase.

El looked over from packing her cosmetics and smiled. “Getting our son back will be the best gift ever. And seeing Neal—the original—is the icing on the cake.”

Peter shook his head. “I hope he’s happy to see us.”

“Oh, hon,” she answered, “I know he likes his anonymity, but he loves you like a brother. Of course he’s missed you like you missed him.”

Peter walked over and wrapped his arms around her from behind, holding her close for comfort. “But I didn’t go after him, El. He ran, and I didn’t chase him.”

“He understands,” Elizabeth said firmly. “Peter, he has our baby. He knows why. I’m sure he gets it.”

“I hope so,” said Peter, less sure.

El turned around and wrapped her arms around his neck, kissing him. “I don’t doubt for one second that Neal gets it, but I love that you care so much.” Peter kissed her back, and there was no talking for a few minutes.

Finally, El added, “He faked his death. He has more to be sorry for than you do.”

Peter noted genuine affront in her voice. “I’m not upset about that any more, but you seem to be.”

El resumed packing, but she was sharp in her movements, and she breathed like she was in a huff. “I didn’t even realize I felt this way until you told me we were really going. I was just happy about getting our son, and then I realized I’d never actually processed my feelings about finding out the pain I felt when Neal died was fake.”

“Well,” said Peter, “I hope you give him a piece of your mind. He certainly deserves it.” He knew very well that his wife wouldn’t be able to stay angry for long once she laid eyes on Neal, whom she had always adored.

“I also want to hug him for about a week,” El said. “Very consistent, right? I have no clue which thing is going to come out first when I see him.”

Peter nodded. “It’s like that with family, sometimes.”

—

Neal left his namesake breakfasting with Mozzie. He did not tell the little boy that his parents were set to arrive in the early evening, in case it didn’t work out at the last minute. He watched for Peter’s text letting him know that they’d boarded their nonstop flight.

Now that Jade had gotten such damning evidence from her mother, he no longer needed time. He was eager for things to get moving so that Lucy and her associates would have as little time as possible to find out how close they were to being caught and complicate things further.

He had one more task before everything spun into out-of-control motion. He had to give the girl a chance.

“Good morning,” he said, as Jade opened the door to his second apartment. She hugged him briefly and tightly as a greeting.

“Come in. I made an omelette.”

Neal couldn’t think of a good reason to say no to having breakfast. He had time to kill, and he enjoyed her company.

“So what now?” Jade asked, once they had coffee, toast, and eggs in front of them at the tiny table.

“Peter Burke flies in tonight. If you choose to go through with this, you’ll come with me now, and we’ll do the proffer tonight. I’ll give Peter the recordings, and you’ll validate them.”

As he’d expected, she registered his choice of words. “‘If?’ I already told you I was in, from the first night I met you”

“I just want you to think about it again,” he said. “Your mother heavily implied on those calls that you knew something about her business—not the kidnapping, but the art. If we give those to the FBI, we don’t control what they do with them. You could be charged.”

Jade nodded. “I already thought about that. I never helped her, but I should have done more, sooner, and this whole thing could have been prevented.”

Neal put out his hand and brushed her hair off her downturned face. “Don’t blame yourself for other people’s bad choices.”

She caught his hand and held it. “Besides, you have the recordings anyway. Even without me, you could turn us in.”

Neal nodded. “It would be tougher to validate, but I could probably do it. I wouldn’t, though. This is your chance to back out. You say the word, and I destroy those recordings and forget the things you’ve told me. I give Peter his son, and I help him prove what happened some other way.”

Jade shook her head. “That’s a big if. You know very well it would give too much time for escapes and too many loopholes.”

“It’s not what I want,” agreed Neal, “but the offer stands, and I wouldn’t violate it.”

“Why?” Jade asked, not letting go of his hand.

“Don’t you know?” Neal responded.

“You hopeless romantic,” Jade said, and she leaned across the table and kissed him.

“I’m still in,” she said, finally pulling back. Neal took her face in his hands and answered without speaking.

—

“We’re taking off.” Peter texted Neal, an overwhelming sense of nostalgia filling him at the thought of working one more case with his long-lost best friend.

Chapter Text

This story reached 50 kudos today, and I just wanted to drop in and say thank you to everyone who is reading, commenting, and taking time to click the Kudos button. It really does mean a huge amount, especially in the middle of a longer story.

Never fear, this story will not be abandoned. We’ll fully finish and flesh out character reunions and reconciliations, the case, and the future. I’m enjoying the ride & hope you are, too.

I genuinely had no idea when I started this story (while rewatching the series) that White Collar still had such a vibrant base of readers and writers. I’m sure we’d all love to see a revival of the series in some form, but until then, let’s keep creating.

Cheers,
Pickwick

Chapter Text

Neal had warned Mozzie that he was bringing Jade to their real apartment, so he only got half a glare when they arrived. He’d promised to move again when it was all over, which was his normal habit anyway. No more than six months in one location.

Mozzie and the little boy had finished breakfast, and Neal was delighted to see that Moz had succumbed to his fondness for the child enough to be reading him Alice in Wonderland from his tablet.

“Uncle Neal!” Neal was still not used to having someone who was excited to see him even when he’d only been gone a couple of hours, but he returned his nephew’s hug with interest and picked him up.

“Wow, he seriously looks like Agent Burke,” said Jade.

The little boy looked over at her from Neal’s arms. “You know my dad?”

“Neal, this is Jade. Jade, Neal Burke.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Neal. I knew your dad a long time ago because he’s very good at his job.”

“Did you do something bad?” The little boy’s question made sense in context, so Neal didn’t reprimand him, awkwardness notwithstanding.

Jade grinned. “He was checking on somebody close to me. I wasn’t much older than you when I met him.” The little boy kept round eyes on her, as if he was trying to imagine her as a child and failing.

Neal set his namesake down. “Jade is here because your parents are coming to pick you up today.”

This bombshell took a few seconds to register, and then, for only the second time since the whole ordeal had started, Neal Burke was crying.

“Oh no,” Neal heard Mozzie intone from the couch, and he looked over to Jade and mouthed He’s been through a lot.

Neal hadn’t expected this, or he would never have put the little boy down. He knelt down in front of his namesake and pulled out his pocket square to wipe the tears. “It’s all going to be over soon, and you can go home. You’ve been really brave, Neal. It’s okay not to be sometimes.” Never mind the pocket square. It was like a raft against an ocean. Instead, Neal just pulled his nephew against him and held him tightly, with no thought for his designer jacket now getting drenched.

Neal knew nothing about parenting, so he continued to operate by thinking about the little boy Neal Caffrey and trying to be the person that scared kid with his checked-out mom and damaged Aunt Ellen had desperately wanted. He felt the irony of the fact that he was now comforting the son of the two people who had actually managed to put that kid back together and help him learn to be a man.

—

Peter felt his anticipation rising for the entire flight, and El’s fidgeting betrayed that she felt the same way. For perhaps the first time in his career, solving a case meant next to nothing compared to the real objectives. He just wanted his son safe and sound.

Beyond that, Neal. Peter wondered if Caffrey realized that to him it felt like getting a son and a brother back all at the same time. Probably not. Neal had never rested that easy in his care. Some of that had been Peter’s fault, some not. He was glad for one more chance, and he hoped those wide eyes wouldn’t shut him out.

“Hon, we’re here.” El smiled at him, her excitement tangible. He’d fallen asleep, and he woke up to see the lights of the runway at evening. Now they would have to extricate themselves from their unavoidable Paris police liaison as quickly as possible to run to their son. Immediately wasn’t soon enough.

Chapter Text

As expected, the Burkes were met by a Parisian police escort. They were set to meet with the Paris FBI attaché office and Interpol in the morning. Peter was relieved to arrive in the evening, which meant those meetings could reasonably be pushed to the next day without him lying or seeming crazy.

The officers were polite and somber, clearly aware that they were dealing with the parents of the missing child. Peter breathed deeply, keeping his excitement in check as they were driven to their hotel. Finally, blessed release, they were left in the ornate lobby with reassurances of cooperation and the promise of a car to pick them up in the early morning.

As soon as they were alone, the Burkes dashed for the nearest elevator, dragging suitcases over the stone tiled floor and waving away the offer of assistance. Once the elevator door closed, Peter smiled over at El, noting how beautiful she looked with her hair tousled and her cheeks rosy from the exertion. “We made it, Hon,” he said, grinning.

El reached for his hand and squeezed it. “Nobody I’d rather be with than you.”

They dropped their bags off in the surprisingly decent-looking suite (considering FBI money), and Peter called for a taxi.

“Nothing’s going to go wrong now, right?” El asked, as they changed clothes and prepared for a long evening reunion.

“Look out at the lights,” Peter said, pointing out the window. “Across those lights, our son is waiting with Neal right now.”

—

Waiting was the hard part. Neal felt as antsy as his namesake was acting. He’d gone out to take care of the kids, and now he was on the sofa, while Neal the younger fidgeted between the PlayStation, Neal’s lap, and staring out the window.

Mozzie had quietly slipped away earlier in the day. He would, he said, see the Burkes any time, but he did not want to be attached to this particular case. Neal didn’t ask where he was going; his friend was more than able to take care of himself.

Jade had watched the little boy during Neal’s errand—the kids were wary of strangers, and he’d decided not to try to introduce her, yet, anyway. Now she was next to him on the sofa, and Neal could feel that she was as tense as he was. The difference was, his anticipation, while not completely without ambivalence, was mostly excitement. Hers felt like dread.

“Hey,” said Neal softly, while the little boy was temporarily distracted fighting in-game aliens. “It’s okay. You can trust Peter. He’s not going to throw you under the bus.”

“It’s all going to change,” Jade answered. “No matter what he does. I’m scared, Neal. I—liked being a nerd academic who didn’t matter.”

Neal put his arm around her and pulled her close. “The girl who pointed a gun at me not very long ago wasn’t anything like a wallflower, and she definitely mattered. This is your chance to make your dad proud and stop your mom. You can do this.”

Jade nodded against his shoulder. “You’re right, but I’m not a very good femme fatale, am I? You must have dated amazing women, exciting women. I have no idea why you’re remotely interested in me.”

Neal kissed her forehead. “Don’t sell yourself short. Art is about liking a painting the way it is, not for what it isn’t.”

Just then, a light tap on the door let Neal know that it was time. No lights or taxi sounds had signaled the approach because he’d told Peter to be let off several streets over and do the rest on foot.

“Neal,” he said. “Come here.” The little boy dropped his game controller and bounded over, taking his uncle’s hand. Jade hung slightly behind as Neal opened the door.

“Peter.”

“Neal.”

The two men locked eyes, and then pandemonium ensued. Neal closed the door to prying eyes on the street, as Peter picked up his son, and both parents held onto him for dear life. Crying, laughing, hugging. It was everything Neal had hoped it would be. He had never seen the Burkes with their son before; he felt tears in his own eyes. This. This was the love little Neal Caffrey had ached for, the protective embrace of a father and the warm comfort of a present mother.

“I missed you. I love you.” The words, over and over, said by all three of them, and finally, “You’re safe,” said by both parents. Neal wiped his eyes.

“Hey,” After a long time Peter looked over at Neal and relinquished his son fully into El’s grasp.

“Hey,” Neal answered, standing still as Peter approached.

This time was different. This time wasn’t like the island. This time, Neal reached for Peter at the same time that Peter reached for him, and he melted into Peter’s embrace without shame.

“Hey, buddy,” said Peter, not letting go. “You owe me a lot more than a handshake.”

“No arguments here,” Neal answered, in no hurry whatsoever to get away.

Chapter Text

After a long hug, Peter finally let go with a characteristic pat of Neal’s shoulders. He took his son from El, who turned to Neal.

Neal could see the conflict on her face, but after a moment, she came forward and hugged him fiercely around the waist. “You’re angry,” he said, returning her hug. “I don’t blame you.”

“I’m angry, and I missed you, and I’m glad you’re safe,” she answered.

“How can I make it up to you?” Neal asked, still holding her.

“You know how,” she answered. “Come home.”

“I promise I’ll—think about it,” he said softly, and El pulled back but took his face in her hands. “Losing you felt horrible. Don’t make me do it again.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Neal answered, smiling down at her fondly. “I missed you, too, Elizabeth.”

—

“Neal, who’s—wait, you’re Tweety Bird.” Peter, who was holding his son and appreciating his wife’s reunion with Neal, finally focused on the woman hanging back in the room.

The woman stepped forward. “Hi, Agent Burke.” He hadn’t seen her in many years, but he recognized the spark in her eyes and the shy half smile.

“Tweety Bird?” Neal finally let go of Elizabeth and gave Peter a weird look.

Peter smiled. “We’ve had long conversations about classic cartoons. I called her Tweety because that was her favorite.”

“Still is,” said Jade, smiling back.

Realization dawned on Peter immediately. “SHE’s the informant?”

“I am,” Jade answered instead of Neal. “I’m not the scared kid you knew before. I can do this.”

Peter gave her a long look. “I remember how it was,” he said. “I understand the motive; at least, I think I do.” The girl nodded but didn’t answer.

Peter sat down on the sofa with his son on his knee and proceeded to ask for the story of everything that had happened. El sat next to him so she could half hold the little boy, and Neal and Jade took the other two chairs. Everything else on his mind notwithstanding, Peter still had his powers of observation, and he saw that Neal liked the girl. Her feelings were less apparent to him, and he hoped this wasn’t another doomed romance of the sort Neal seemed perpetually and fatally attracted to.

Little Neal spun a story as confusing as it was horrifying, of blindfolds, car trunks, boats, and planes. Peter was gratified that his son had a strong memory. He brought out his phone and flipped through a set of photos. He showed the boy an album with eight different men in it. “Neal, do you recognize any of these people?”

Instantly, the child pointed to the man Italian police had questioned, exactly as Peter had hoped. “Very good,” he said, beaming with pride at his son’s escape and subsequently lucid narrative. He cuddled the little boy against him, finally feeling his body truly relax for the first time since the horrible day when his son had disappeared.

El looked over at Neal the elder. “Why were you out there that night when you found him?”

Neal smiled. “The group he was with are my kids, Elizabeth. I hired a couple of the older ones to run some errands for me a long time ago, and now—we’re all friends. They’re in complicated situations. I can’t fix everything, but I help.”

“Are you Fagin or Sherlock Holmes in this scenario?” Peter asked.

Neal rolled his eyes. “I probably deserved that. Strictly above-board. Lately it’s just been about getting them off the streets during quarantines and curfews.”

Peter looked at El and could see that she was touched. “I told you he was helping somebody who needed it,” she said.

He smiled. “Believe it or not, Neal, my wife was the one defending you not that long ago.”

“Thank you, Elizabeth,” said Neal. “I think—what I’ve done here might actually make you proud.”

“I don’t doubt it,” said El, who appeared to have nearly forgotten that she’d wanted to metaphorically rip Neal’s head off at one point.

“Uncle Neal buys the best cereals,” said the little Burke suddenly. “And Mozzie cooks good pizzas.”

“Where is Mozzie?” Peter asked. He had already noticed evidence in the apartment that the little man had recently been there.

“His secret,” Neal shrugged, and Peter laughed wryly. Just like old times.

Chapter Text

Even with all the excitement, Peter could tell his son was getting sleepy after a while. He kissed the little boy’s forehead and handed him into El’s waiting arms. “I’ll be here when you wake up, Champ. Hon, put him to bed, and then you can talk things out with Neal while I take Miss Danziger’s statements.”

Neal and El did as asked, taking the child into the bedroom, which left Peter alone with Jade, the woman who had been a child the last time he’d seen her. He faced her, sitting on the couch with her in a winged chair opposite, looking ill at ease.

“How does this work?” she asked, fidgeting nervously.

“First of all,” he answered, “I’m going to ask you again: Are you sure? You haven’t told me anything yet. What you tell me can’t be taken back, and depending on what kinds of things you tell me generally, there’s a possibility of implicating yourself in a lesser way. I don’t need to explain what this will mean for others.”

“I want to do it,” Jade replied. “If I deserve something for not coming forward before, so be it. You said you understood why—about my mother. I don’t have any guilt at all about bringing her down.”

“No, I wouldn’t think so,” said Peter softly, remembering the past, when he’d issued a complaint to the department of children and families that had never been followed up on over things he’d seen during his investigation.

Peter took out his small digital recorder: “This is Special Agent Peter Burke, taking the statement of Jade Danziger.” He was happy for that wide-eyed, sad little girl to finally get a chance to stand up to her abuser, even if it had taken years.

He smiled encouragingly. “Let’s get started.”

—

Neal and El didn’t have too hard a time getting the little boy to sleep, since he knew his parents weren’t going anywhere. They left him tucked in and then quietly went to the kitchen.

Neal started heating water for tea, while El sat down at the small kitchen table. “Half of me thought Peter might be the angry one,” Neal said, “but I finally settled on you. Peter gets over things more quickly. It’s how he’s managed not to kill me over the years.”

El looked over and drilled him with her eyes. “Do you have any idea how much it hurt to think we’d lost you?”

Neal considered. “It hurt me to leave, too, Elizabeth.”

“But you always had the choice,” she countered. “We just had the loss.” That was how it had always been, really. He had to admit it.

Neal handed her a mug with a brewing teabag. “I’m giving that up,” he said. “I’ll go on record and let the world know I’m alive to make sure you get justice. That’s all I know to do.”

“Oh, Neal,” El said, “I’m sorry. I know—your freedom here must have meant the world to you.”

Neal sat down at the table and put his hand over hers gently. “It doesn’t mean more to me than you or Peter or Neal. Nothing ever has.”

That did it. El’s eyes filled with tears, and he could tell the last of her anger had ebbed away. “You know Peter will help as much as he can. Just, please, don’t leave again. Neal needs his uncle.”

“The minute I found out he was named after me, I knew I couldn’t stay away forever,” Neal answered honestly. “Thank you, Elizabeth.”

Chapter Text

By the time Peter finished taking the girl’s statement, it was after 11:00 p.m., which meant just after 5:00 at home. He called Lewis directly.

“Sir, a witness has come forward in Paris, a result of some of the leads I was pursuing at home. She’s offered testimony about who planned the operation, and she says she knows where my son is—that he’s been located safely.”

None of this was a lie, though Peter felt like he was doing a delicate dance around reality. “Send me anything you get,” Lewis said, “and I’ll pass it to our Paris contacts.”

“Permission to get my son?” Peter asked.

“It’s unusual,” Lewis answered, “but I’ll give you permission. Be careful, and don’t escalate anything. You don’t have authority to arrest anyone, and I don’t want a situation on my hands. If you can extract him safely, do it. Otherwise, wait for backup. And Burke? I’m rooting for you and for him.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Peter, feeling like a bit of a heel for keeping Lewis in the dark. “I’ll report back.”

“It’s done,” Peter said to Jade as he ended the call. “I’ll send the recordings of your statements and the phone calls now. The FBI will relay the information, and it shouldn’t be long before our associates here have a warrant to arrest your mother.”

“And me?” Jade asked warily.

“You’re the most important witness,” Peter answered. “I’ll do everything I can to present you that way, but you should get in touch with your lawyer tomorrow.”

“I will,” she answered.

“Any regrets?” he asked curiously.

“None,” she said.

—

They waited two hours for Peter to call in and say that his son had been found, a reasonable length of time for him to theoretically follow a lead and pick him up. The FBI knew the child had escaped, so Peter could tell the truth with certain omissions and make it work.

Neal was out of it for now, but he had little doubt he wouldn’t be able to stay that way. At some point, Peter would have to explain how Jade had been found, and Neal would be a corroborating witness against her mother, since he’d listened in to the call.

That wasn’t the only reason. He left Peter and Elizabeth in the living room for a few minutes, so Peter could explain the evidence to El, and he led Jade into the kitchen.

Neal opened his arms, and he was relieved when Jade came into them. “You did it,” he said.

“I started it,” she corrected. “We’re nowhere near the end, and you know it.”

“You’ll make it,” Neal answered. “You’re incredibly brave.”

“What about you?” she asked, pulling away gently. “Agent Burke said it’s a problem for you to be a witness, that you’re supposed to be dead.”

Neal put his hands on her shoulders. “Even if there was a way for me to stay out of this completely, I really like you, and I want to be with you while you take the journey—if you want me to. I don’t want you to face it alone.”

Jade looked him in the eyes and nodded. “I don’t know where you and I are going to end up,” she said, “but I want to find out.”

“Me, too,” he said, “for better or worse.” Neal Caffrey had always been a romantic, and some things were worth risking everything for—even without knowing what lay ahead.

Chapter Text

After a while, Elizabeth joined the two in the kitchen. “Neal, if you want to talk to my husband, now is a good time. He’s not planning to call in for another hour.” Neal nodded. This was coming; it always had been. He needed to face Peter and say more than a few sentences of greeting, so he went to the living room to take his medicine.

“Peter.”

“Neal.”

Neal sat down in one of the chairs, across from Peter, who still occupied the sofa. Somehow, Peter didn’t look tired at all, and it reminded Neal of how his friend had somehow always seemed to be perfectly at ease in himself and confident, no matter the case or scenario. It was something Neal deeply admired and wished he possessed, but the closest he had ever come was faking it capably.

Peter held out a Manila file folder.

“What’s this?” Neal asked.

“This is me saying I’m sorry I didn’t come after you,” Peter answered.

Neal opened the file and read the first page. Immediately, tears filled his eyes.

“It’s the one investigation you wouldn’t do,” Peter said. “The information is there, to use or not use, your choice.”

“I’m proud of you, Peter,” Neal said, wiping his eyes, too overwhelmed to comment on the file right away.

“What for?” Peter asked, clearly confused.

“You gave up the chase, Sherlock. You put your family in front of following me. That’s what they call character development.”

“I always thought I was more of a Doctor Watson,” Peter answered, leaning forward and putting a hand on Neal’s knee. His way of comforting had always been like that—direct, but a little offhand, never invasive.

“Besides,” Peter answered, “if Moriarty had ever decided to turn himself in for the sake of saving someone, that would have been the greatest character development of all.”

Neal gave Peter the exact same amused, quizzical look he had once given him in a hallway when Peter had stolen a surveillance tape to keep him out of prison. “Peter, are you comparing me to Professor Moriarty? That’s so flattering. I don’t know what to say.” He laughed, which of course had been Peter’s goal all along.

Neal stared down at the closed file on his lap. “I can’t deny that I’ve thought about her lately, especially with Jade—I’m not sure what’s going to happen, but I really like her, Peter.”

Peter smiled. “Knowing when somebody is the one isn’t trying to be grown up the way you always were after Kate—women in the loft, trying to prove you were a man. It’s somebody who can connect with the real you, even when you don’t have anybody else. She’s smart, and she’s interesting. You’ve done much worse.”

Neal nodded. “It’s early, but this is different.”

“I like this version of you,” Peter said, sitting back and giving Neal a long look.

“What?” Neal asked, “Boring? Almost respectable? Ready to settle down?”

“Nah,” Peter said, shaking his head. “No longer in denial of the fact that you’re an inherently good man.”

“Thank you, Peter,” Neal said, and he meant it.

Peter pointed to the file whose edges Neal was now fidgeting with his fingers. “I bet she’d like to know that, too.”

Neal closed his eyes for a long moment. “I’ll think about it.” He rested his hand over the top right corner of the folder, right above where he knew his mother’s picture was stapled underneath.

—

“Sorry about that,” El said, as soon as Neal had left the kitchen. “You were probably having a nice moment, but I knew those two wouldn’t even start getting back to normal until they had a real conversation.”

“What is normal?” Jade asked, and El found that she liked the girl’s directness.

El poured some of the water simmering in the kettle into a mug and dropped a teabag in, handing the brewing concoction to Jade. “Do you want the long version or the short version?”

Jade smiled, and her normally-serious face turned beautiful. It wasn’t the ostentatious attractiveness Neal had sometimes gone for. It was subtle and unusual. El was intrigued. “I really like Neal,” Jade answered. “The longer the better.”

Chapter Text

The story of Neal Caffrey and Peter Burke—that wasn’t something El had ever had a reason to tell a soul, but she trusted her intuition, and that intuition said Jade Danziger was worth it.

“I’ll tell you about it,” El said, sitting down. “And consider this me saying thank you—for helping with my son’s case.”

Jade sat down opposite but didn’t answer for a moment. “I’m—so ashamed of my mother. I’m sorry.”

Elizabeth leaned toward her over the table. “Hey, Peter filled me in. You didn’t know she was willing to go this far. You did the right thing. Besides, you survived her. You should be proud of that.”

Jade shyly met her eyes. “Thank you.”

“Now,” said El, “what’s normal when it comes to Neal? Well, Peter and I hadn’t been married that long when he first got Neal’s case. Neal was just a kid then, but he was already a big deal. There was a rumor for a while that he must be older than his records said, but Peter knew he wasn’t; he was just that smart. He could make anybody believe anything, and half the time, the people he conned weren’t even that mad afterward. He was like a never-ending migraine to the Bureau.”

El enjoyed seeing how engrossed Jade already was, her tea almost forgotten as she listened.

“It took Peter a long time to catch him, a lot longer than you would expect for Peter’s experience and Neal’s age. This would have been a few years after you met Peter; he knew the ropes by then.”

“How did he do it?” Jade asked.

“He figured Neal out,” El replied. “He figured out that for Neal, it was always about people before it was about money. It’s more complicated than that, but that’s the bottom line. I think you know what I mean, since you care about him. Anyway, the other agents thought it was about power, proving his intelligence and superiority, but it wasn’t that. Peter stuck with his theory, and he figured out the one person Neal would do absolutely anything for.”

“Someone he loved,” Jade said. “Girlfriend? Wife?”

El nodded, somewhat impressed. “His girlfriend Kate, the first love of his life. They were kids, but he wanted to spend his life with her. Peter caught him by finding her first and using her, without her knowing, to lure Neal out into the open.”

“Neal was a kid,” El continued, “but it would have worked even if he hadn’t been. He’s a hopeless romantic.”

“I know,” Jade said, her eyes shining.

“Anyway, he was still too good for them to pin much on him; he only got a few years, and he served less—except, right before he was free, Peter got the call that he’d escaped—from one of the most secure prisons in the country.”

“Didn’t take Peter long to find him. Kate was the reason again, Kate visiting him and leaving him. We didn’t know then that there was more to it, and Neal didn’t know it either, right away.”

“He wouldn’t have cared about taking the risk to escape if he loved somebody,” Jade commented, and El nodded agreement.

“Exactly. He didn’t catch up to her, so when Peter caught him, it was like Neal barely cared. Peter said it was like seeing a hurting child or a kicked puppy.”

“He asked Peter to come and see him in prison, and Peter did. I know you met my husband a long time ago, even before I did. You know how he is, that he’s nice, and he’s decent, no matter who you are. Plus, all that time of chasing Neal and going through the case had caused him to delve into who Neal really was, and he’d started to care. That might seem weird to some people, but you know both of them, so I think you get it.”

“Yes,” said Jade, “I do.”

“Neal gave Peter an audacious deal—to work for the FBI as an informant in exchange for his freedom. At first, Peter said no, but he eventually went to his bosses and pitched it for Neal’s sake, just because he couldn’t resist caring.”

“I believe it,” Jade said, smiling. “You probably don’t even know this, but Agent Burke tried to get DCF to investigate our family, to help me. It didn’t work, but it means a lot that he tried.”

“Thank you for telling me that,” El answered.

“Go on,” Jade said. “This is getting good.”

El couldn’t help smiling back. “Peter really sold what Neal had to offer, and he wasn’t lying. Neal did a lot of good for the FBI with his brain and his connections. I met him right after the Bureau agreed to the arrangement.”

“The thing that surprised me more than Peter caring about Neal—since I knew my husband well—is how much Neal trusted Peter. From that first day, the way he talked about Peter was like an older brother you tease but you secretly idolize, maybe even a father figure. He never resented Peter for catching him. I think—I think some part of him always wanted to find somebody as clever as he was who could put up boundaries and see through his personas.”

“So what’s normal? Well, Neal never turned into a choir boy; that’s for sure. He wouldn’t be here now if he had allowed himself to be remade into the image of Peter Burke. But the influence didn’t just go in one direction. He changed my husband. He helped Peter become more open, more patient, to learn to keep caring even when somebody doesn’t do what you expect or want. In that sense, I guess he really was like a son—after a while, we couldn’t have stopped caring about him even if we’d wanted to.”

“So what happened? How did he end up in my mother’s house outside Paris, instead of chasing bad guys with Agent Burke?” Jade refilled her teacup with hot water while El continued.

“A lot of time went by, a lot of things you should ask Neal about yourself. His deal was almost up when he—when he died a hero.”

“To be reborn in Paris,” Jade supplied.

“Yeah,” said El. “We thought he was dead for a year. It was like losing a family member, all the grief. When Peter finally figured it out, he made a decision to let him go, for the sake of our family, to just do his job. It was tough for him as the chaser. For me, it was more about knowing Neal was somewhere alive and choosing not to contact us. It hurt.”

“I’m sure it must have, but you should know what Neal’s life has been like in Paris, Elizabeth. Can I tell you?”

“Okay,” said El, glad for a chance to collect her emotions.

“It starts,” said Jade in a conspiratorial tone, “with the name ‘Robin Hood’.”

Chapter Text

Elizabeth hadn’t seen Jade so animated before. She started her story eagerly. “If I remember right, I first read about it in 2015. Internet blogs, citizen journalists, that kind of thing. It started when this millionaire got arrested—one of those Madoff scheme type of things, stole a bunch of regular people’s money. But it was surprising, because he was the brother-in-law of somebody in the government. Nobody had been able to touch him for a couple of years, then, suddenly, there’s public proof all over the Internet, and the police had no choice but to act and arrest him.”

“The blogs hypothesized that one person was responsible for it, and they named the person ‘Robin Hood’ because of the context of the case, taking the poor’s money back from the rich, but nobody knew who it was, because they didn’t turn up for court or anything like that. Of course, other people thought it was some kind of concerned citizens group working together.”

“That was the last of it, at least, the last thing big enough to hit the news, for a few months. I was starting my new teaching semester in early 2016 when the next story broke. This time, the police received anonymous evidence that solved a murder—a cold case. Once again, the perpetrator was powerful and connected. The police made the arrest, and they admitted that the anonymous tipster said if they didn’t use the evidence, they would go public with it the way they had before.”

“At that point, everybody thought it was the same person or group. I don’t think it hit international news, at least, not that much. It was our own Parisian mystery, our own modern superhero. Some people started calling him Daredevil because of the Marvel character, but Robin Hood is the name that stuck.”

“After that, the bloggers started looking into other recently-solved cases, smaller ones. It became evident that somebody had been doing this for a while—sending information and tips to solve cold cases and cases involving people too connected for the police to openly investigate.”

“That’s when it started to matter to me, Elizabeth. I don’t matter to this story at all. I was a university professor boring my students and writing books about antiquities, but, what I mean is, I started to wish Robin Hood would set his sites on my mother’s art operation. I don’t know how much you know about the whole story, but my mother started doing things she shouldn’t have a very long time ago.”

“New stories were breaking every day, people claiming Robin Hood had done this or that, recovered stolen property for them, helped their relatives. I couldn’t help wishing he would see that my mother was exactly the sort of international criminal the police couldn’t pin down.”

“What sort of criminal is that?” El asked. “I’d really like to know, if it’s not too painful for you to tell me.”

“You know Agent Burke investigated my father a long time ago, and he cleared him. The reason my mother started the whole mess that resulted in your son being taken is that he was being asked to investigate her again—for global art theft, fraud, and various adjacent illegal activities. I don’t even know all the ins and outs of it, but when I got old enough to pay attention, I realized she was dealing in art in ways that weren’t exactly legal. At first, her business was partly normal art trading, with a few questionable pieces here and there. She trusted me, so I saw that she got increasingly comfortable with illegality. Never forgeries—she thought those were tacky and stupid. No, for years now she’s been acquiring heirlooms and masterpieces stolen, seized in war, or otherwise lost in tragedies, and selling them for ridiculous profits with fake or at least very corrupt legal paperwork and provenance.”

“I can’t say she was wrong to trust me. I wasn’t brave enough to turn her in, even though I chose to live off my inheritance from my father instead of her.” Jade looked down, and El reached over and put a hand over hers.

“You’re doing the right thing now, and that’s not easy when family is involved. I don’t know how this feels if it’s a mother, but I’ve seen through Peter’s eyes how hard it is to suspect and turn in someone you really care about.”

Jade looked up at Elizabeth, and she shook her head. “This is the least I could do, considering what happened to your son. If they indict me, I really would deserve it for not trying harder. I was too comfortable living in history.”

“I don’t think so,” said El. “I think you were waiting for Robin Hood.”

Jade smiled. “Well, to get back to the story, it kept going. Obviously, Robin Hood was gaining enemies, but nobody could figure out who it was, and the people who must have known weren’t talking, ostensibly out of loyalty for what he had done for them. The police were overall favorable. The honest ones realized he was doing what they weren’t able to do. Only a few stuffed shirts went on TV calling him a menace, but nobody cared. He was Paris’s own hero. I tried to figure out a way to contact him; I’m sure there must have been one, but I couldn’t find it; I’m not exactly Mata Hari. I had no idea what I was doing. I even went to places people claimed to have seen him, but nothing came of it. There was a rumor he must be old, to have all the skills he obviously possessed—probably ex-military, maybe law enforcement, even a spy background. He literally rivaled James Bond in people’s minds. Some of what people imagined was obviously ridiculous, but I ate it up. The crazy thing was that he managed anonymity for so long.”

“I can believe it,” El put in. “Even when he was a lot younger, Neal evaded capture for an incredibly long time. Peter might never have caught him if he hadn’t had Kate as his Achilles heel.”

“Well, I can’t fill in everything Neal was doing,” Jade said, “except that I know now that at some point he started taking care of the kids on the street, and he worked with somebody called Mozzie, who helped record my calls with my mom.”

El smiled. “I’m glad he had Mozzie, since he didn’t have us.”

“Oh, you know him?” Jade asked.

“As much as anybody does,” Elizabeth answered. “He’s an enigma, but he’s a friend.”

“I don’t really know him yet,” Jade added, “but if Neal trusts him, that’s enough for me.”

“Anyway,” Jade continued, “it hasn’t been that long since everything went insane. I was at my mom’s house a couple of weeks ago. I went there to stay during a school break, to get out of the city center and out of a mask for a few days. My mom wasn’t home, and the entire staff was gone. I love it that way.”

“Well, I was sleeping one night when I heard a noise. It was weird, because my mother has crazy security. I wasn’t that scared at first because I couldn’t believe anyone could actually get in without it alerting. But I went downstairs, and Neal was down there stealing a painting.”

“I figured on one guess as to who could have disabled that level of security. I called him out on being Robin Hood, and he told me he was taking the painting back to its rightful owner. I didn’t doubt that he was telling the truth; I knew there was no way my mom had acquired the thing legitimately. I helped him put it in his car, and I told him I wanted to help him take my mom down.”

El, who was imagining this scenario, smiled to herself. “You have some guts,” she said.

“I’m a history professor,” Jade said, shrugging. “I figured it was past time for me to have my Indiana Jones moment. About a week after we met, Neal called me. I think he was waiting to make sure I had kept my promise not to tell anybody about his theft of the painting. We arranged to meet, and I called my mother to touch base. The thing is, even I thought it was weird that she hadn’t been back to the house or noticed that the painting was gone by then. I could tell from the call that she was in trouble, so I found Neal, and I told him.”

“You found Neal?”

“Yeah, he gave me the address of a different place he uses in Paris, not this one, so I went to the area and walked around until I saw him going into a food market.”

“My husband would compliment your reconnaissance,” Elizabeth added.

“It was out of desperation,” Jade said. “I was scared to death Neal would stop trusting me, but he believed what I told him. I started staying at his other place, and we created the plan to get my mother to admit what she’d done. I don’t know everything that happened with Neal and your son in the meantime, but I got her to say that she started it.”

“I see,” said El. “You’re a lot braver than you realize, Jade.”

“I don’t think so,” Jade answered. “If I were, I would have done it sooner.”

“I won’t argue, even if I disagree,” El said gently, “but I have a question: You say you like Neal. Do you really like him, or do you like the idea of Robin Hood that you’ve had in your head for six years?”

“Both,” Jade replied instantly. “I like the Neal I know and the parts I don’t know yet, because he’s all the things Robin Hood is. They’re the same thing.”

“That’s a good answer,” Elizabeth said honestly. “When I met Peter, I fell for the man and the FBI agent, and I’ve never looked back.

“I feel like I don’t have any right to say this, but I’m glad your son is okay, Mrs. Burke.”

Elizabeth gave her a long look. “You’ve been through a lot, and you’ve wrecked your life in a way you didn’t have to in order to help us get justice for what happened. I’m going to respect you, whether you think you deserve it or not. And I’m going to say I wish you the best with Neal. He’s complicated, but he’s worth it.”

“Thank you,” said Jade. “That’s—all I know to say.”

“That’s all it takes,” said Elizabeth.

Chapter Text

Neal listened to Peter make the call, impressed at his friend’s ability to stay truthful while skirting the details. “I hope nobody was expecting any sleep,” Peter said, finally hanging up. “Lewis is contacting our attaché office, which will alert Interpol and the Paris police. Jade and I will have to give evidence immediately, so they can start arrests, probably with her mother. They may want to examine Neal, but Lewis plans to assert authority since the kidnapping happened in the States, and we’ll be able to bring him home for that. You know they’re going to want me to bring Jade back to the States for the investigation. I can’t force her, but she’s a US citizen, and they’ll send her back anyway if she doesn’t come willingly.”

“She knows,” Neal answered. “She agreed to the risks.”

Peter nodded. “I can tell. What I’m more concerned about is you hating me, Neal. Kate nearly made it impossible for us to work together—you needing to save her and then solve her. I’ll do what I can, but this isn’t going to be completely in my hands after this. I really don’t want to lose you again after we just got you back.”

Neal gave Peter a long, searching look. “The one thing you’ve never remotely understood about me is how much I trust you, Peter. I’m not going to blame you for this. Jade was ready to take her mother down. She practically begged me to help her do it. I’m not going to blame you for seeing things through, especially given what your son has been through.”

Peter put out his hand, and Neal shook it, a reversal of the long-ago day when a young con had been arrested by the best man he’d ever known.

—

Almost time, Hon.” Half an hour later, Peter carried a sleepy Neal Burke in his arms and held his wife’s hand as they prepared to take a taxi to the FBI’s Paris office, where things were officially about to explode. Jade followed, with only Neal staying behind. He wasn’t part of it officially, not yet.

Peter watched as his one-time partner gave the girl a long hug. “I’d help if I could,” he heard Neal say softly. “Just let Peter steer things.”

“It’s okay,” Jade answered. “I’ll be fine.” His mind flashed back to when she’d been a little girl, terrified of her own mother. He saw a shade of that fear now, and he was determined to try to protect her the way he hadn’t been able to before.

Little Neal finally woke up enough to lift his head up. “Are we going somewhere?”

“We’re going to tell the people who work with Dad that you’re okay,” said Elizabeth.

“Why isn’t Uncle Neal coming?” he asked, noticing that Neal was heading into the kitchen.

The elder Neal turned back around and took the little boy from Peter. “It’s just for a little bit, buddy. I’ll see you again soon. I promise.”

“Okay,” said the little boy, snuggling back into his father’s arms as he was handed over. Peter couldn’t help smiling at the sight of the two Neals together, something he had thought he might never see.

Peter’s phone alerted, telling him the taxi was nearly to the location they’d picked a few streets over. “Let’s go,” he said, and he heard an anxious intake of breath from Jade. In an instant, Elizabeth had dropped his hand, and she walked out of the apartment next to the girl instead. “It’s okay,” he heard El say softly. “You’re not doing this alone.”

“I know,” Jade answered. “I just don’t have much practice doing brave things.”

That was when Neal lifted his head off his father’s shoulder, looked at her with wide eyes, and said, “You don’t practice being brave. You just do it.”

“You’re absolutely right,” she answered.

Chapter Text

The Paris FBI office was in shambles. Agents stumbled in bleary-eyed after being awakened from deep sleep, and they mixed with Interpol and Paris police officers in a cacophony of confusion.

In the middle of the maelstrom, Peter held his son in his arms, and he kept tight hold of El’s hand. He searched the crowd for Johnstone, the woman Lewis had told him would make some sense of the chaos.

“Isn’t that the missing kid?” A young agent rubbed his eyes and pointed, a bit like Neal was a tourist attraction.

“Yeah, idiot, that’s why we’re all here in the middle of the night,” said his less-than-patient coworker, who was mainlining coffee from a paper cup.

Finally, after a quarter of an hour, a tall, no-nonsense woman parted the crowd of agents like the Red Sea and came toward Peter. “Agent Burke? I’m Johnstone.”

He shook hands. There was a certain confidence in knowing he outranked everyone else in the room, but this was not his territory, so he waited for instructions. Immediately, Johnstone started calling out orders, and organization began to emerge from the chaos.

Neal was now awake and restless, so Peter put him down but kept tight hold of his hand. “Agent Burke, we’d like to take a statement,” Johnstone said, which he’d expected.

“We understand your wife is here as your official assistant, and your son will be evaluated in the States. We’ll question the girl while you speak to the Parisian case officer.”

“I’m sorry, but no,” said Peter, politely but firmly. “If you question her, I’ll be present. I’m the one who will be taking her back to the States. She’s a voluntary witness.”

Johnstone looked like she might balk for a few moments, but she finally nodded. “Fine. The heavy lifting will be on your end anyway. We’ll close the main part of the case here and help with the apprehension of the kidnappers, but I’m not going to tell the head of the white collar crime division how to work a case that originates in the States.”

Peter disliked her tone, but he nodded. “Exactly.”

The whole group was shown into a windowless, drab room and left alone for several minutes. Jade, who was sitting on one of the rusty metal chairs, turned to Peter. “Thank you—for standing up for me.”

“Hang in there,” he said kindly. This is just step 1.”

For a while, their only company was a steady stream of officers and agents who peeked in to say hello—an obvious pretext for getting a glimpse of the little hero boy who had escaped captivity—and was now perched sleepily on Elizabeth’s knee.

Finally, Agent Johnstone came to the door with a French policeman. “Come with us, Miss Danziger,” Johnstone said, and Peter got up with the girl, not touching her, but staying close to make sure she knew he had her back. He was prepared to assert his position again if needed, but he really didn’t want to.

—

Across town, Neal couldn’t sleep, even as night turned to morning. He dressed at first light and took a long walk—to an old part of town where an old lady lived in an old, fancy apartment building that was still trading on its faded glory of generations past.

He knocked lightly at the door of a fifth-floor suite. Stella opened it herself, and as soon as she saw him, she hugged him with her frail arms. “You sweet boy,” she said, “you’re just in time for breakfast.”

Neal followed her inside, his thoughts racing. Would it work? She could certainly afford it. He had rarely felt more invested in anything in his life. And he had one chance to convince her.

Chapter Text

Stella led Neal into a small, light-colored dining room, and in French she instructed a younger woman who emerged from the kitchen to add a place setting to the table. “It wasn’t my intention to put you to any trouble,” Neal said.

“Don’t worry,” Stella answered. “We rarely have company any more, and the girls enjoy seeing somebody other than little old me for a change. I can see that you’re here for a reason, though. Go ahead, while we wait for coffee.”

This was more abrupt than Neal had hoped to be, but he took her lead. “You told me, when I brought your Paradise back to you, that you would owe me one. At the time, I didn’t realize how soon I was going to need to call in that favor. There’s—something I need to make sure of before I leave Paris, and you’re the only one I trust to take care of it.”

“My goodness,” she said. “You know how to make a flattering offer. But leaving? You’re going to abdicate your role as defender of the people?”

Just then, coffee was served, along with bread and butter. “I hate those modern carbohydrate diets,” Stella put in. “I’ve started my days with bread for over seventy years, and I’m healthy as an ox, if a little slower and creakier than I once was.”

Neal smiled. “I am giving up my life here; I don’t really have a choice, though I’d like to say I’ll keep trying to help people—I think I’m addicted, to be honest. That’s why I need you.”

Stella was so engrossed in listening to him that she set her knife down and only half buttered her toast. “Go on.”

Neal thought, and then he answered. “There’s Gabriel; he’s the leader, but he’ll be university age soon. There’s Frances. She’s the youngest. Celeste is a math genius, probably a prodigy. Lucas can pickpocket anyone; he even almost got my wallet once. Emma wants to be a dancer. Clara doesn’t like to talk, but she draws beautiful pictures. Lucie used to fight everyone, but she calmed down since she became best friends with Leo. Violette just wants to read everything she can.”

“They’re my kids, Stella. It’s been more than five years since I met some of them; others I only met last month. There’s over twenty of them, kids the system has failed who stick with each other. I haven’t fixed everything for them, but I’ve kept them from going hungry or having nowhere to stay during lockdown. I can’t—I can’t leave without knowing that somebody’s watching out for them.”

Neal finally stopped speaking and realized he had tears in his eyes. Stella didn’t answer for a long time. “This is a large responsibility,” she said.

“I know,” he answered, “and I’ll—understand if you say no.”

“That’s not what I meant,” she replied. “I meant that I respect you for it, far more than I did before. You wouldn’t know this, but my late husband loved children. We used to take them in—when they were too old for other people to want to adopt them. I miss those days.”

Neal didn’t want to lie to her. “I do know. I searched your background when you asked me to breach the Danziger house for you. This is me, taking a chance that you still have something in you that cares.”

“They’ll be hurt that you’re leaving, either way,” she said. “I’ll never be like you are to them.”

Neal nodded. “I know that, and it’s going to hurt me, too, but I can live with it if I know they have someone with money and strength on their side.”

It was Stella’s turn to smile. “I should have known that when Robin Hood didn’t charge someone as wealthy as I am, that wasn’t the last I would hear of it.”

“Please at least think about it,” Neal said, letting his real desperation show.

“I want to meet them, and then I’ll give you an answer.”

Neal breathed a sigh of relief.

—

Across town, Peter and Jade sat in an office, away from the room where Elizabeth and little Neal were waiting. Peter heard a conversation outside the closed door, at first barely audible, then rising in decibel level until every shouted syllable was burned on his eardrums.

“What’s going on?” he asked Jade, only able to decipher a few French words. “Are they mad that I’m in here?”

Jade shook her head. “Turf war. You’re not the problem; Johnstone is. She wants to be in the room for my statement, and the guy doesn’t want her to. He’s somebody I’ve seen on the news; major position in the police force here. He’s furious that she’s assuming any authority. He says they’re only working with her as a courtesy and that this should all be taking place at the downtown station. She’s yelling something about a Lewis, says the US side is also only sharing their information as a courtesy and that he’ll get the US state department involved if necessary.”

Peter rubbed his hand over his face. “I had a feeling about this. Lewis is the director of the FBI. He’s personally affronted that the son of a division head was taken in broad daylight on US soil. Neal ending up here is one thing, but Lewis is not going to give up his eyes and ears if he thinks Johnstone can get any information here that will help back home.”

“Not very cooperative cooperation,” Jade said.

Peter laughed. “Well, we can’t arrest anyone here, but the actual perps are long gone from this country anyway, including your mother, if she was truthful with you. I gave my info to Lewis knowing it would be given to everyone involved, but even if I had given it to the police instead, he would have come around to the same position. Your mother and her conspirators awakened the official ire of the FBI, and he’s not going to give it up. Needless to say, this isn’t how it’s supposed to work, but most multinational crimes don’t concern the family of an agent. The gloves are off, and Lewis wants to be the one to bring it to justice.”

“I’m glad you’re here, Agent Burke,” said Jade, and he could see that her anxiety was leading her to clench her hands so tightly that her fingernails left marks.

“Wouldn’t miss it,” Peter answered. “I never left the day Neal was arrested and questioned, and I won’t leave you.”

Jade gave him a long glance. “Neal and I were both lucky. Out of all the agents in the bureau, we got the one who cares.”

Chapter Text

The argument died down, and, after a short time, Johnstone and the policeman entered the drab room where Peter and Jade were waiting, both questioners red-faced and not looking at each other. “I’ve tried to explain,” said Johnstone tersely, “that time is of the essence because any time wasted makes it more likely that Mrs. Danziger will run.”

The policeman glared and said in French. “We could go faster if Agent Johnstone would follow proper procedures,” which Jade translated for Peter. He was less anxious than he might have been. With his son safe, he certainly wanted justice to be served—with enough severity to deter future attempts at anything similar—but relief outweighed righteous anger, at least for the time being. Now, he was concerned about the futures of his long-lost partner and the nervous woman next to him, who had just wanted to have a quiet life studying history but instead had been saddled with Lucy Danziger for a mother.

As the two uncooperative cooperators finally sat down and took out notebooks and a digital recorder, Peter thought about what Jade had said. She wasn’t wrong. Plenty of other agents would have treated Neal like trash and wouldn’t have given little Jade the time of day. He had cared, and he did care. It had complicated his career in innumerable ways, but it also meant he could look back on it with satisfaction, unashamed of the way he’d conducted himself.

Peter put his hand lightly on Jade’s shoulder as the questioning began.

—

Gabriel’s thoughtful, appraising gaze took Neal in as he showed the boy into his secondary apartment. Seeing signs of Jade’s recent presence inside threatened to distract Neal and pull him into pointless worry, so he wrenched his thoughts back to the present.

“Have a seat,” he said to the kid, sitting down himself. “We have to talk.” Gabriel did as instructed, and Neal couldn’t help remembering the day they’d met.

Six years earlier. Broad daylight. Neal Caffrey was visiting the Louvre. Lines were long at the height of tourist season, and he was waiting to buy a ticket.

A feeling. Sound of scuffling feet. Instinct. Neal took off running out of the line, after the kid he was sure was the culprit. His mind raced, assessing his surroundings—the best path for someone who wanted to disappear.

Unfortunately for the pickpocket, Neal had been in Paris long enough to know the area well. He accurately predicted the best getaway alley—the one he would have used if roles were reversed—and took a shortcut to the opposite end of it.

When the boy raced in, Neal had already entered it from the other end. He tried desperately to escape the way he’d come, but he was no match for Neal’s head start and longer legs.

Within a few seconds, Neal had him pinned against a wall on the side of the alley in a hold that wasn’t painful but was very effective—a Peter Burke special.

The kid didn’t look older than a preteen, and Neal could see fear behind his eyes. “You almost made it,” Neal said. “I wouldn’t have noticed if you’d run to the right instead of to the left. You didn’t use the noise cover in the area as well as you could have, but it was above average. I bet you don’t get caught much.”

“Are you gonna call the police?” Definitely no more than twelve or thirteen, already cracking. “I—I’ll give you your wallet back.”

“Take it out,” Neal instructed, letting go of one of the kid’s arms. He was readily obeyed by the now openly-frightened child, who pulled the wallet out of his pocket.

“Now, take out 20 Euros out of it.” The kid seemed confused, but he did as he was told.

Neal held out his hand. “Now give me the wallet.” He re-pocketed it, relieved.

The kid just stood there with a 20 Euro note in one hand and the other still under Neal’s control. “What’s this for?”

“You,” said Neal, finally letting him go fully.

The boy didn’t even move. He just stared at Neal, uncomprehending. “Go,” said Neal, “You’re free to go.” He turned to leave the alley.

But Gabriel didn’t go. He followed Neal. Asked him questions. Acted like a shadow Neal couldn’t shake. Neal bought him lunch. By late afternoon, he knew the kid’s entire story, and by evening they were fast friends.

Back in the present, Neal took out the well-worn wallet that he hadn’t used for years. He handed it to Gabriel. “First of all, this is yours now; you’ve earned it.”

Gabriel, in his usual quiet, deliberate way, pulled his own zipper pouch out of his pocket and took out a 20 Euro note. “Time to pay you back, then.”

Neal took it, and he fought off tears.

Chapter Text

“The others won’t understand,” Gabriel said, once Neal had explained Stella and his own plans.

“I know,” Neal answered. “But you do?”

“I knew you weren’t going to stay here forever,” the kid answered. Neal studied his inscrutable expression and couldn’t tell how he was reacting.

“Do you want to study?” Neal asked. “I know you’re brilliant. It’s why you’re in charge. But you have to know you could do more—make money—be anything you want.”

Gabriel laughed tunelessly. “It’s never as easy now as you adults think it is. But yes, I want to study. I want to be an architect.”

Neal handed Gabriel an envelope. “This is what I can do for you. Inside is information about a bank account in your name. It has enough money for four years of school, room and board, if you use it wisely. You can also choose to blow it. Your choice.”

Gabriel opened the envelope and verified it’s contents. “Why would you do this?” Finally, his face showed a reaction, confusion.

“You and the others have been like my kids,” Neal answered, “but you more than any of them. You’ve always reminded me of myself. I just hope you do better than I have.”

Gabriel smiled. “It was a lucky day when I stole your wallet.”

“You were lucky I was fast enough to catch up,” Neal answered, grinning. “If you’d gotten away, you would just have had a few Euros and some cancelled cards.”

Neal stood up, and, to his surprise, Gabriel hugged him, for the first time ever. Neither of them said anything; their relationship had never been a sentimental one. Neal simply held onto the almost-grown kid and felt like a real father for the first time.

—

“Mom, is Uncle Neal a bad person?”

Elizabeth had practically nodded off, waiting for Peter and Jade to finish their seemingly-interminable police interviews. At this, she blinked and sat up straight. Her son, who had finally grown bored of her lap, was standing in front of her with a concerned expression.

“Why would you ask that, baby?” she asked. “You know Uncle Neal took care of you, and he’s going to help us with the case when we get home.”

Neal the younger brushed his hair out of his eyes. “It’s just—when he first found me, I told him how I walked away at the aquarium, and he said Dad wouldn’t be mad because he did really bad stuff, too, and Dad was still nice to him.”

Elizabeth figured she should have expected something like this. Her son was perceptive for his age, and he had a terrifyingly good memory.

“Come here.” Elizabeth took Neal back into her arms, and he settled back against her. “Neal, when you were little, we told you all about how amazing Uncle Neal is. We wanted you to be proud that we named you after him. I would have liked to wait a little longer to tell you this, but there’s more to it than that. Your dad and I met Uncle Neal because Dad had to try to find him and arrest him for the FBI.”

Neal gave his mother a wide-eyed stare. “He was a bad guy?”

Elizabeth shook her head no. “More like, he didn’t have a mom or a dad to help him do the right things, so he was all by himself, and he made bad choices.”

Neal closed his eyes, head against his mother’s shoulder. “That’s why he needed you and Dad to be his mom and dad. Elizabeth smiled to herself, hundreds of treasured memories flashing through her mind. Neither Neal nor Peter would ever be likely to say it that way, but he wasn’t wrong.

“He just needed us to help him realize he was already a hero on the inside,” she confirmed, but her son had already fallen back to sleep.

Chapter Text

Neal had been asleep for nearly half an hour when the door finally opened. Elizabeth hoped it was her husband, but instead it was a young woman with paper bags in hand, which she set on the room’s one simple table. “Breakfast and coffee,” she said in English, with an American accent. “This is the least I can do, since they won’t let most of us do much.”

Neal clambered down and took a chair for himself, starting to go through the bags. “Do you have any idea how much longer it’s going to be?” El asked.

The girl shook her head. “All I know is it’s turned into a power struggle, and they’ve got a video call with Director Lewis in the States.”

Elizabeth wasn’t overly surprised. She trusted Peter’s judgment, so she nodded matter-of-factly. “Thanks for the food.” The agent left, and Elizabeth took out a coffee for herself and an orange juice for her son. Before her were several varieties of wrapped sandwiches. Not exactly luxurious, but it could have been worse.

—

Neal gathered his belongings. He would retain the apartment leases for a while under Mozzie’s watchful care, but he had doubts he would ever spend much time in them in the future.

It was time to consider the truth. He, Neal Caffrey, might very well be returning to the United States only to find himself in prison again. There had been no counting the cost. As soon as he’d known who Neal Burke was, that had been all the reason he’d needed.

Neal had always hated feeling out of control. He’d spent a lifetime trying to prevent it, only to relinquish control voluntarily the moment the Burkes needed him. There was probably some kind of fate in that. The same fate that had made Peter Burke take him on without counting that cost.

It was time for Neal to repay what he’d always believed he never could. As he packed his suitcase, he realized, the feeling he felt wasn’t apprehension. It was pride.

—

Peter listened to the heated multilingual video conversation. Everything was being translated for both sides, so he didn’t miss anything. Suddenly he and Jade were just side characters in a bigger drama, while Lewis and a man Peter recognized from the US State Department but did not know argued with the French policemen and others on the call.

The one thing Peter was grateful for was the time this bought without him or Jade having to mention anything about Neal. He wanted to get to the States before he made the inevitable disclosure that Caffrey was very much alive, but that would have been far more difficult with fewer distractions to make Johnstone and the police unable to fully concentrate on scrutinizing the timeline. Normally, the delay would have been frustrating, but with Neal the younger safe, he was now concerned about Neal the elder.

In Peter’s mind was a fantasy—a world where he and Neal worked together again. He doubted it was possible, and he didn’t know if Neal would even want it. But that didn’t stop him wishing.

Chapter Text

Finally, they were “free” to go—finished with the first step of what Peter fully expected to be an arduous journey.

Peter did not know, did not even wish to know, all the diplomatic machinations going on behind the scenes. Director Lewis was not just made of empty bluster. He had the power and connections he claimed, though he did not choose to use them often. This was one of those times.

Jade was to be released, as long as she remained under the watchful eye of the FBI and accessible to international police, as they began to tighten the net around her mother. For the time being, she was a voluntary witness.

Peter gave his wife a quick hug as they met back in the center of the small office, and he picked his son up, just happy to feel his little boy’s weight in his arms.

“We ate. Did you?” El handed Jade, who was quiet and wary beside them, a bag that smelled like greasy breakfast fast food sandwiches.

“Thanks,” said the girl, not making any effort to ingest anything.

Peter couldn’t help feeling like he was bringing in a suspect, and he sensed that Jade felt the same way, now that the official walls were starting to close in. He wished he could reassure her as he had once tried to help her years before.

“Are you okay, Hon?” Elizabeth asked softly.

Peter smiled at her. “I’m okay as long as you and our son are. Let’s go.”

—

Neal, who normally prided himself on keeping a cool head, was genuinely worried by the time the Burkes and Jade returned. He’d been half afraid Paris police would try to arrest Jade and hold her, so he was filled with immense relief when she walked through the door.

“You okay?” he asked, hugging her tightly. “Not fun, but we made it,” she answered, leaning against him. “Agent Burke’s boss had to step in.”

“Jurisdictional problems,” Peter supplied. “The bottom line is, Jade is cleared to go to the US, and your name is still out of it, but we need to go fast. I’m going to call the FBI and find out our next move.” He went into the bedroom to make his call.

“I’m going to freshen up,” said El, following.

“I—need coffee,” said Jade, detaching herself and going into the kitchen to make it.

The two Neals were left together in the living room of the apartment. “You okay, buddy?” The elder Neal asked, sitting down on the sofa and holding out his arms to his nephew.

The younger readily climbed into the waiting lap. “It was boring, but one lady gave us some food.”

“You get to go home soon,” the elder said softly.

“You’re coming, too,” the little boy said decidedly.

“Yeah, I’m coming with you,” Neal answered, knowing his namesake had no idea of the weight of what that meant.

“Uncle Neal?”

“Yeah?”

“My mom told me you met my dad because he arrested you.”

“And what did you think about that?” Neal shifted his namesake on his lap so they faced each other.

The little boy thought for a moment. “She said you did that stuff because you didn’t have a mom and dad. That’s sad, but I’m glad you got mine.”

Neal hugged the little boy. “Thanks for sharing, buddy. We both lucked out when we met your parents.”

—

Jade Danziger had never in her life considered herself a romantic. Never done anything crazy for love. Never had her world changed. But, as she came back with two mugs in hand and saw the man she loved holding his nephew, a crazy thought occurred to her: Maybe it was all worth it—the uncertainty, the risk—maybe she could even be thankful in the middle of the worst things because those things had brought Neal Caffrey into her life.

Chapter Text

Neal’s evening errand was one he did not look forward to completing. The most rewarding part of his life in Paris, by far, had been the children.

Seven years before, the conman who had just pulled off his cleverest job yet had planned for Paris to be his ultimate target.
Instead, it had changed him, or, perhaps, what it had done was show him just how much knowing Peter had already changed him. He had loved it there, not because of the heists he could pull, but because of the people he’d helped and the children he’d met.

As he walked the streets, a solitary masked figure, Neal thought about motivation. Peter had always said he believed Neal was complex, motivated by more than money or adrenaline. Neal had long resisted thinking too hard about it, because he’d sensed that for him, motivation was too close to vulnerability.

His mind cast back again, as it often had, to the long-ago day, early in their agreement, when his substance-lowered inhibitions had enabled him to tell Peter he really trusted him. But he’d said something else, something very true that he thought of now: He’d said it was about people.

People, he now knew and could admit, meant more to him than anything else—Moz, Kate, Peter, El, Alex, Sara, Jade, Gabe, Little Neal—his life had been punctuated and colored in by relationships, like a line drawing brought to life through pigment.

Once upon a time, Neal had committed crimes to get the attention of someone, anyone, smart enough and wise enough to stop him. He’d found that rock in Peter Burke, and he’d become that rock for Gabriel.

Maybe that’s what it had been about all along—receiving from someone and then giving to someone else. It felt far better and more meaningful than anything else Neal Caffrey had ever accomplished.

—

Neal could clearly see as soon as he approached the meeting point that Gabe had told the children. Several looked dejected, and little Frances was crying. They were quieter than usual, just standing there watching him.

He had tried to plan out what to say, but in the moment, it simply came out, “I love you all, and I’m sorry I have to go.”

Frances broke ranks first, running to him to hug his leg until he picked her up. The rest followed. Most of them had never touched him; some had barely even spoken to him. Almost every single one hugged him, expressing their thanks through their rare affection. They cried on his jacket and dirtied his designer shirt; he would gladly have sacrificed his entire wardrobe.

He didn’t realize he was crying until Stella arrived, right on time, as he finally hugged Gabriel for the last time. She did exactly as he’d told her, walking by herself, no car or driver, with cash in hand.

Gabe whistled the children back into an orderly line, and they fell back obediently. “This is Stella,” said Neal. “She will take care of you even better than me.”

Gabriel came forward and took his portion of the money from her, then nodded to the next oldest. To Neal’s relief, though they appeared nervous, the children followed their usual plan and took their allowances without commotion. He slipped further into the alleyway shadows, wiping his eyes on his sleeve.

Just then, he felt a small hand on his arm. He looked back to find Lina, Frances’s serious older sister. “Before you go,” she said softly, “you should know something. After our parents died, Frances never spoke—nothing for two years—until she met you. I thought—I thought she would never come back to us, but you made her laugh again.” Lina was one of the few who had not hugged Neal before, but she did now, fiercely and tightly. He held himself together until she’d slipped quietly away.

Neal Caffrey walked back into the inky blackness of the Paris night and cried his eyes out.

—

“Neal! Are you okay?” Jade was at the door when Neal arrived back at the apartment. “The Burkes are in the bedroom trying to get Neal to sleep. You—look like you’ve been crying.” She said it as if she was afraid to say it, not sure how he would react to having it pointed out.

“Hold me?” he asked, inclining his head toward the sofa.

Jade did exactly that, situating them both on the sofa, wrapping her arms around him and stroking a gentle hand through his hair like he was his namesake’s age instead of his own. Neal soaked it up for a long time, saying nothing, just leaning on her shoulder.

Finally, he wiped his eyes again but didn’t raise his head. “Had to say goodbye to my kids tonight. I should explain—”

“I know about the children of Robin Hood,” Jade said softly. “The kids he gives his money to instead of keeping it for himself. It’s part of your urban legend; I just didn’t realize it was all true.”

Neal turned his head and lifted it far enough off her shoulder to kiss her cheek. “Hurts to say goodbye, more than I expected.”

Jade rested her head against Neal’s and didn’t answer for a while, offering silent comfort. “It was worth it, wasn’t it?” she finally asked.

“Yes,” he answered, “they were all worth it.”

Chapter Text

Peter hadn’t realized how tense he was until relief filled him once he was on the airplane bound for the United States, with his family safe by his side and Neal and Jade across the aisle. Of course, as he felt his nightmare lifting, he could see from the set of Neal’s shoulders that his long-time partner was having the opposite experience.

“Dad, can I have ice cream when we get home?” His son, seated between him and El, pulled him from his thoughts.

“Sure, Buddy,” he said, grinning.

Neal hadn’t been as clingy before, but since his ordeal, he’d been attached to one parent or the other most of the time, which Peter and El welcomed. They both knew Neal’s future would include counseling and unpacking what he’d been through; for now, they were content to hold him.

This time, Elizabeth was dozing, so Peter suddenly got a lapful of his little boy in the narrow airplane seat. “Go to sleep,” he said softly, settling Neal against him. “We’ll be jetlagged when we get home.”

Neal, who had been looking around curiously, obediently closed his eyes and leaned on Peter’s chest, his father’s warm, calloused hand on his back lulling him into a nap. It was cramped and uncomfortable, but Peter didn’t mind. He relished the feeling of holding the son he’d been terrified he might never see again.

Peter knew that the rubber would meet the proverbial road as soon as the wheels touched down. He owed Lewis an explanation—a full one—and then there was the question of what would happen to Neal and Jade. He’d already arranged for both of them to meet with lawyers. There was a limit to what he could do, but he didn’t intend to leave them on their own. Caffrey had resources, but it had been a long time since he’d had to deal with Federal Law Enforcement. Jade could afford the best money could buy, but her position was complicated. Peter’s protective side was concerned.

—

Across the aisle, Jade ordered something alcoholic from the flight attendant, which wasn’t like her. “You okay?” Neal asked softly, glad they had the row to themselves.

Jade clinked her glass against his water. “Cheers to trying to be.”

“I know the feeling,” Neal said. “I imagine it’s kind of like the first time Peter arrested me, how it felt in that car on the way to the federal building.”

Jade put her head on Neal’s shoulder, and he took the hint and put his arm around her, pulling her as close as the seats would allow. “Tell me about it,” she said. “I need distractions.”

Neal smiled. “I used to send Peter birthday cards. I thought I was invincible, like some kind of master criminal taunting the feds. I had to find out about the guy they had on my case.”

“The problem is, when you get to know who Peter is, it’s pretty tough not to like him. Or maybe it’s because I was a kid with a lot of dad issues. I—started to care about impressing the agent who was trying to catch me, not just about staying under the radar.”

“He does give off pretty unmissable dad vibes,” Jade said. “I like that you cared.”

Neal grinned. “Well, he’s definitely enough of an agent that he had no qualms using my girlfriend to find me and slapping cuffs on me the first chance he got. I was—scared. I didn’t want him to know, but he did. He stuck around through the whole arrest and intake process, even though he didn’t have to.”

“I wasn’t ever scared of him at all. You always know where you stand with Peter, and he follows the rules, so he’s predictable in a good way. What scared me was the people he handed me over to.”

“Makes sense,” said Jade.

“By the time he arrested me, Moz said I had some kind of weird reverse Stockholm Syndrome; I really liked the guy who was chasing me.” Neal shrugged. “It was by chance. The FBI is smart, but they’re not that smart. They didn’t know how much I needed him. I didn’t, either, until he started closing in and I found myself wishing we were on the same team.”

“You wanted to impress him,” said Jade, “or at least get his approval. I get it. My dad always said Agent Burke was one of the most decent men he’d ever known, even though they met because of him investigating us. I can see how that would be confusing for a kid with dad issues—not that I know much about yours. I would love it if you tell me, since you know my story.”

Neal brushed a wisp of hair off her forehead. “I promise I’ll explain it, but for purposes of this story, my father was a criminal. He left when I was a kid, and he hurt me again when I grew up.”

“D—” Jade swore. “I’m sorry. I know how it feels because of my mom.”

“I really hated authority,” Neal said. “Especially the male kind. But Peter made me feel safe and like he respected me—as a person, didn’t just see me as a case.”

Jade lifted her head to nod. “He’s like that. Tell me more.”

Neal realized he was enjoying this, that his own stress level had reduced as he was able to speak freely, to finally explain how it had all happened to somebody who really cared.

Chapter Text

Neal continued, “Peter was one of the primary witnesses against me. He’s one reason I knew I had to take a plea deal. The max for my charges was 15-20 years, so I took the 5 they offered and served 4.”

“That had to be terrifying,” Jade said.

“I always knew it was a possibility because of what I was doing, but I thought I was smart enough to never get caught,” Neal said. “Yeah, I was scared when I finally realized I wasn’t getting out of it.”

“But you weren’t mad at Peter for being the one to put you in that position?”

“I didn’t really blame him,” said Neal, “part of the job. But then I found out something nobody expected. My lawyer was friends with somebody in the prosecutor’s office. They told him I got that plea offer because Peter went to bat for me. On his own, he asked for a meeting and laid out the reasons he thought I deserved some leniency. They took it into consideration, and that’s why it was such a decent offer.”

“Wow,” said Jade. “That’s—crazy.”

“That’s Peter,” Neal answered. “He’ll put you in jail, but he’s also the guy who will bend over backward to give you a chance.”

—

Jade had a thought, listening to Neal. At first, she dismissed it, but it wouldn’t leave her mind. She didn’t tell a soul because she didn’t think any of them would agree with her. It was a gamble, and if it went wrong, it could make things a lot worse for the man she was beginning to love, but she didn’t know what else to do.

As soon as the plane landed, before she went straight to the attorneys’ office, she made two calls—to the number the French police had given her and to a reporter who had once done a socialite profile on her.

—

Peter sat at the table in an airport cafe, with Neal Caffrey across from him. How many lunches, how many meetings? Seven years, but it still felt familiar.

“I should have gone with her,” said Neal.

“She went in a cab, straight to the office,” Peter reassured. “They’ll take at least two hours to talk with her. There’s nothing you can do until it’s your turn.”

Just then, little Neal and El arrived at the table with plates of food and disposable cutlery. “Neal, I’m so glad you’re actually here,” said El, handing him his hamburger.

“Me, too,” he answered with a smile.

Peter couldn’t help feeling like this was how things were meant to be, but he doubted Neal felt the same way now that they were back on “enemy” soil. Neal was impassive, his face unreadable. He’d pulled the mask back over as he prepared for what was coming.

—

“I need to ask you something different, Mr. Caffrey.” An hour into the discussion with the lawyers, Neal wanted a nap. They weren’t antagonistic, definitely on his (hired) side, but he was tired of explaining and re-explaining how he had found Neal Burke and how Jade had asked him for help (omitting that he’d broken into her family home).

“Mr. Caffrey, just before you got here, one of our assistants saw something break online. Are you the actual identity of a person known as Robin Hood?”

Neal didn’t answer. He felt himself flushing. Then he felt anger. Peter never would have done it, or El. The little Burke didn’t even know about it. He breathed deeply to stay in control.

“The thing is,” said the attorney, “this could potentially work for you.”

—

Jade stayed outside the conference room in a wood-paneled waiting room. She couldn’t hear anything; the office had good sound proofing.

She could run. She could go straight to the Burkes’ house, which they’d offered. She wasn’t under arrest. Or she could go anywhere. Not like she didn’t have resources. But she stayed, because she thought Neal deserved it. He deserved to have her there to face his reaction to what she’d done.

Finally, the double doors opened, and Neal emerged with the two lawyers. “We’ll talk soon,” said the female, shaking his hand.

Jade got up and stood awkwardly in the lobby of the old-fashioned, opulent building, with chandeliers blaring light down on her. She felt like she was under a spotlight in an interrogation from a film noir movie.

“Why are you still here?” Neal wasn’t yelling; he wasn’t even speaking loudly, but the ice in his tone froze her as he stood right in front of her.

“I was waiting for you,” Jade answered.

“What? To claim victory? If you testify about my secret they’ll give you a better deal? Is that the idea?”

Jade shook her head vehemently, eyes filling with tears. “I made a choice I thought could help you; it wasn’t about me,” she answered softly. She had never done well with conflict, and it reminded her of the ugly, terrifying days with her mother. But she had made this choice, and she tried to own it.

“It wasn’t your secret to tell,” Neal said shortly. “You could have talked it over with me.”

“You would have said no,” Jade answered.

“Was this your plan all along?” he shot back. “You’re better at this whole thing than I thought you were.”

Jade shook her head again. “Please just let me explain why.”

“No,” said Neal, and he pushed past her and left the building.

Jade left behind him, wishing she had a car. It was a lot less awkward to cry in your own car than in the back of a taxi. Thankfully, the driver pretended not to notice that she bawled the whole long way to the Burkes’ address, crying out stress, fear, and finally the feeling that she might have lost Neal forever.

Chapter Text

“Oh, honey, you look terrible. What happened? Did you have a rough time with the lawyers?” Peter might not have been as direct as El or as parental, but she wasn’t wrong. Jade looked exhausted and wrung out as she came through the door.

Little Neal came over and hugged the visitor before Peter or El could intervene, but it seemed like maybe that had been the right thing. Jade bent down to hug him back, and when she straightened up, she looked slightly less destroyed.

“Neal, come and help me get dinner onto the table,” said El, taking her son’s hand.

“Come in and sit down,” said Peter, beckoning Jade into the living room. “My wife obviously left us alone so you can talk to me if you want to, but it’s up to you.” Peter really had no idea what to expect from the girl.

“You haven’t been online,” Jade said.

Peter shook his head. “I’ve been on phone calls, but mostly we’re resting and unpacking.”

“I—did something, Agent Burke. I told the police and a reporter that Neal is Robin Hood.”

“I can’t imagine Neal took that well,” Peter said matter-of-factly. “He rates trust above everything.”

Jade nodded. “I knew he’d be upset; I didn’t realize how bad it would be. But I still don’t regret it. I thought—I thought it might give him a chance, given what he’s facing legally. Robin Hood is a hero; a lot of people see it that way.”

“And a lot of others don’t, I imagine,” Peter answered. “The FBI was almost asked for our help on a case that involved him, but somebody in the French government shut it down.”

Jade sat forward, eyes flashing. “Exactly! He has friends, and he’s a hero. Look, if I hadn’t told them, what would have happened? Honestly?”

Peter thought for a moment. “What’s likely to happen is that the FBI reopens Neal’s case. He becomes liable for not finishing his agreement seven years ago and for faking his death. If he gets any goodwill for my son’s case, it might be a little time off a hypothetical future sentence. He might even end up charged for it, since he was the one who found Neal. He’ll—go back to prison without a miracle.” Peter hadn’t even let himself think through the full reality until that moment, and he hated it.

Jade nodded. “I know I could have made it worse, but I threw in a wild card. I thought it might give him something to bargain with, at least, information he has if nothing else.”

Peter gave her a long look. “I understand. I don’t know if I agree with the choice, but I respect it.”

“Please,” Jade said, “at least believe that I didn’t do this because I thought it would help me. That’s—what Neal thinks.”

Jade put her head in her hands, and Peter reached over and put his hand on her shoulder. “I believe you, and eventually Neal will, too. He can read liars even better than I can. However, I can’t guarantee forgiveness, especially if this ends up backfiring and causing him international problems.”

Jade looked up with tears in her eyes. “I know. I’ve never been in this kind of situation before in my life. I don’t know how people live like this.”

“You’re brave,” said Peter. “It took courage to make a choice like that; even if I wouldn’t have made it, I can appreciate that.”

Just then, Peter got a text message. Neal had decided to go to June’s instead of coming over, which made perfect sense under the circumstances.

—

Neal paced in his loft, alone in the house. June was gone. She’d passed five years after Neal’s disappearance, but she’d left secret instructions with her granddaughter to hide a key in case he ever returned.

June’s granddaughters had thought their grandmother was a sentimental fool paying tribute to a man who had been like a son to her, but they’d followed her wishes. They hadn’t known she was one of the few who knew that Neal was alive. They would never know that she’d spoken to him and that he’d told her he loved her before she went to the hospice for the last time.

He heard banging on the door and went down, relieved to see Peter instead of anyone else.

“Hey,” he said, letting his friend in, “you didn’t have to come over.”

Peter handed him a foil-covered plate. “El wanted to send you some meatloaf, and I was concerned, so I brought it myself.”

“Don’t try to argue me into forgiveness, Peter,” said Neal in a tone Peter found familiar from the past—equal parts distraught and threatening.

“I won’t,” Peter said, “but if you’ve cared about her at all, you should let her explain herself before you make a decision.”

“I don’t want to,” Neal said.

“Understandable,” Peter answered. “You’ve liked a lot of women who treated you a lot of ways, Neal. I’m not telling you how to feel. I’m telling you to make sure you see things clearly, not just for the sake of your heart, but for the sake of your defense. You need to be fully on your game.”

Neal breathed heavily for a few moments, then blinked. “You’re right, Peter. I need to be rational.” He was surprised to be answered with a brief hug, but he didn’t mind.

“I have to go, or my son will be missing me too much,” said Peter. “I’ll see you at the FBI tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” Neal echoed with a wry gallows smile.

Chapter Text

Neal’s phone buzzed at 3:12 a.m.

You awake?

The text was from Peter. Neal immediately called him. “What’s going on?” He rubbed his eyes, trying to wake up.

“It’s Neal. He’s having nightmares, and he’s scared to go back to sleep. He wants to see you. I’m really sorry, but can I bring him over?”

“Sure,” Neal answered readily. Even groggy, he could never say no to that kid.

—

Peter left a note for the sleeping El and carried his agitated son out to the car. “Are you sure Uncle Neal isn’t mad at me?” the little boy asked as his father fastened his seatbelt around him.

“I’m sure,” Peter answered. “He didn’t come over tonight because of adult stuff, not you stuff.”

“Sorry for being a baby,” Neal said, arms around himself.

“You stop that,” Peter answered with gentle firmness. “This isn’t your fault.”

“Should’ve held your hand at the aquarium,” Neal mumbled.

Peter steered one handed and held out his other hand. “Hold it now.” Neal obeyed, looking at him quizzically.

“There,” Peter said, wrapping his big fingers around his son’s tiny ones. “This time makes up for that time. No more sorries, okay?”

“Okay.” Neal answered very softly, but he kept tight hold of Peter’s hand in both of his.

Soon, they made it to June’s. “You can let go now, son,” Peter said, stopping the car.

Neal did, looking at him with his wide, serious eyes. Peter hoped they could help him get to the bottom of the hurts that he now saw in those eyes, but for now, the little boy needed rest.

“Come on,” Peter picked his son up for the short walk into the house, still relieved by the weight of Neal in his arms and the pressure of arms around his neck and a head on his shoulder. He had been terrified he might never feel that precious burden again.

Peter tapped lightly at the door, and a robe-clad Caffrey answered it, motioning them inside. As soon as they were in the bottom floor living room, Neal clambered away from Peter and headed straight for his honorary uncle.

The boy had been attached to either Peter or Elizabeth almost the entire time since their arrival, so Peter hadn’t actually seen much of the CI and his namesake interacting.

He watched as Caffrey hugged Neal and then settled him expertly on his lap. “Hey, buddy, your dad said you were having some trouble sleeping.”

“Yeah,” the little boy admitted. “I keep seeing those guys in my dream.”

Caffrey was a natural. Peter thought he probably shouldn’t have been so surprised, but in the past he’d never thought of Neal as the settling down kind, let alone the kind who could get into this convincing of a parental role.

“Well,” the older Neal continued, “you’re here now, with me and your mom and dad. You can tell those guys to go away, like when you had a bad dream at my house in Paris.”

The little boy nodded from against Neal’s chest. “Okay, but l tried to do it at home, and they wouldn’t go away because you weren’t there.”

Peter couldn’t help smiling. Neal brushed his hand over the child’s hair. “You can do it anywhere because you’re safe now, and nothing bad is going to happen.”

It didn’t take long for the little Burke to grow drowsy and fall asleep. “Give it a few minutes,” Peter said very softly. “Once he’s really out, I’ll take him home.” Neal nodded, arm around the little boy in his lap.

Peter finally allowed his frustration to show. “I tried to calm him down, but—he was taken under my nose. He knows I can’t always protect him.”

“Hey there, dad,” Neal said, hand on Peter’s arm, “it’s not your fault any more than it’s your son’s. He hasn’t lost faith in you. He’s just scared, and I’m the first safe person who found him after it all went down.

Peter nodded. “Thanks, Neal.”

After half an hour, Peter gathered up his deeply sleeping son. “Sorry about this,” he said, squeezing Neal’s shoulder.

Caffrey smiled. “Honestly, I couldn’t sleep either, but now I’m ready to fall into bed. Your son is better than Ambien.”

—

Jade tossed and turned in the Burkes’ guest room. She had never before known the feeling of total aloneness. The kindness of the agent and his wife wasn’t enough to assuage the ache of losing a mother and the man she had begun to love.

In hindsight, she could see that she’d clung to Neal like a lifeboat in a stormy sea, but he had turned out to be more than a temporary comfort. The fact that she didn’t regret her actions was unhelpful; the hurt still burned inside her.

It wouldn’t have made sense for Neal to understand, just as it didn’t make sense for her to miss a mother who had treated her so poorly. But feelings and logic do not always mix, and having no one, she now felt, was even worse than having a mother like Lucy.

She refused to check the Internet, knowing the news sites and social media buzzed with news of her mother’s arrest overseas and of the mysterious Robin Hood’s identity. Instead, she let herself cry, but the tears weren’t healing.

—

Lewis was tired of being wakened up by phone calls in the middle of the night, but it was part of the job. What was not a normal part of his job was being awakened to be screamed at in irate French.

As he left his sleeping wife and warm bed, he picked out a few words, but then the call went silent for a few seconds.

The next voice that came on spoke in perfect English. “Good morning; I am your translator. The Minister wishes to tell you that France demands the release of Neal Caffrey.”

“What? Neal Caffrey is dead.”

Some translation and more shouting ensued. “The Minister says you and I both know he isn’t, and if the FBI chooses to harass him, those above you will hear about it.”

Lewis yawned, in no way intimidated. “Tell your Minister I’ll be in my office at 8:00 a.m. Eastern, and he can reach me there.” He hung up. Personal annoyance aside, this was not insignificant. It was a courtesy, in fact—one shouted down a phone—but a courtesy nonetheless, letting him know that the situation was complicated, going beyond even his paygrade, likely meaning he would hear from his own government in the morning.

A headache was starting in Lewis’s right temple. Definitely the signal that Neal Caffrey was back in the mix.

Chapter Text

“We have a shared goal in common,” said the voice of the translator through the computer screen, “both of our nations have an interest in seeing this art authenticated and returned to its rightful owners.” The room was full of people, masked and distancing, not that any of them wanted to be close to each other anyway.

Peter listened quietly. This was far above his pay grade, even as a division chief, but he’d been allowed in as a courtesy. “Danziger’s records can’t be trusted. Someone is actually going to have to establish the provenance of these pieces from scratch and then trace ownership. It could take years to finish,” said the nervous state department rep who was seated to Lewis’s right.

“Exactly so,” answered the French official on the video call. “It makes perfect sense to employ Neal Caffrey for the job. He has both the skills and the connections.

As the full meaning of the translation settled in Peter’s mind, he was dumbfounded. Somewhere this had gone from a discussion of the kidnapping to a discussion of the Danziger case in general, and he was thunderstruck at the proposal.

“Caffrey is still our fugitive, technically,” Lewis said.

“If you consider him a risk, this solves both our problems,” said the translator. “If he accepts, he would be employed for years, subject to reporting back to multiple agencies. He wouldn’t be in custody, but it would prevent him going underground.”

Unexpectedly, Lewis turned to Peter. “Burke, do you think Caffrey would agree to it?”

Peter thought for a moment. “He does love art.”

—

Jade wondered if she would leave the morning meeting a free woman or in custody. She’d dressed professionally, but she still felt small, a bit like a little girl in the principal’s office, and she was cold. Still, she was slightly reassured to have the female attorney with her. She fought the feeling that nothing mattered, that she should give up because nothing made any sense without Neal.

An agent who identified himself as Johnson came into the room. “Good morning,” he said, sitting across from Jade at the small table and taking out a stack of papers. “I’m here to present your situation and a deal. This would not have happened this quickly if you hadn’t proffered information and evidence to Agent Burke, so thank you for that.”

Jade nodded. At least he wasn’t being overtly unpleasant. “I’m tasked,” he continued, “with distilling down a bunch of information for you from legal. Your attorneys will receive everything later today. We appreciate their promptness in communicating with us thus far.” Jade vaguely wondered what he meant by this, but Agent Burke had assured her the lawyers knew what they were doing. If they’d been in touch, there was a reason.

“To put it bluntly, Miss Danziger,” said the agent, “if you do not cooperate with us, you will be charged along with your mother. We will prove that you knew of her criminal activities for several years and that you did not come forward. You will hear from the French side in the coming days, but their perspective is the same.” Jade was not remotely surprised. She had expected this and, in fact, blamed herself.

“You can,” Johnson said, “save yourself. I am authorized to offer you immunity, and we have a commitment from overseas that they will also abide the same deal, though you will have to finalize it with them, should you care to take it.”

“Stop trying to scare my client by being over-dramatic,” the lawyer put in. “She’ll make a reasonable decision without your theatrics. What are you offering?”

“You’ve got to testify against someone,” Johnson said, “and it’s not going to be easy for you.”

—

Elizabeth called Peter at lunchtime. “Hon, how’s it going?” she asked. “I’ve been worried all morning. What are they saying about Neal?”

Peter laughed into his phone. “You literally won’t believe it, El. I’ve never seen anybody land on their feat like a cat more than Neal Caffrey. He doesn’t even know this yet because it hasn’t been finalized, but the French government is pressuring us to pardon him as a favor to them, in exchange for him being employed to authenticate the Danziger collection and return the pieces to their rightful owners.”

“Pardon?” Elizabeth asked, incredulous. “But why?”

“I have stories to tell you,” Peter answered, “about the things Neal did in France. About the people he saved. I never thought I would say this, but—if anybody deserves a clean slate, he does. I’m proud of him.”

“Maybe I should ask him to tell me,” El answers.

“Yeah,” Peter says, a smile in his voice, “we should do that.”

“And you should tell him,” El adds. “He needs to hear that you’re proud.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Peter answers.

—

For a moment, Jade thought the agent was going to tell her that she had to testify against Neal, a horrible Sophie’s choice that would have led her to seal her own fate. The world wasn’t that cruel, not this day, anyway. The FBI, along with, supposedly, French law enforcement, was offering her immunity if she testified against her mother.

The lawyers had told Jade to expect something like this, but it still felt cold and final as she signed her name to the paperwork. She had told herself, as well as Neal and Peter, that she would testify, but it was still difficult. She hadn’t anticipated how hard it would be when it came down to the end or how much she would feel like a criminal for signing her name to it. There would be no going back now.

It was a good offer, the lawyer told her, one that was only possible because of the fear that if she refused to testify, her mother’s defense might be able to get the phone recordings thrown out and other conversations declared hearsay. They needed her. It was her salvation, but it also served to underscore the fact that she, personally and individually, would likely be responsible for sending Lucy Danziger to prison.

Why did it feel like terrible betrayal to agree to testify against a woman who deserved it? She hadn’t asked for Lucy’s trust, and she had plenty of reasons to wish her mother the worst of outcomes. But, somehow, she was still conflicted. Even as she went through with it, she wished for Neal’s arms around her and his sure, safe presence to make her feel like she was all right.

“Very good,” said Johnson. “We will continue to communicate through your lawyers. You will hear from the international side soon, with, we believe, very similar conditions.”

“Thank you,” said Jade, feeling dizzy. She just wanted Neal, and that wasn’t going to happen—probably ever again.

Chapter Text

When Peter finished his afternoon debriefing and walked out of the conference room, brain overfilled with information, he found Neal waiting for him.

“I’ll have this until there’s a final determination about my case. Figured you might want to do the honors.”

Neal propped his leg up on a low window ledge and handed Peter a circular piece of plastic. A tracking anklet.

Peter couldn’t answer. He didn’t trust himself, with the sudden thickness in his throat. He bent down and concentrated very hard on placing the thing on his friend’s ankle.

Neal Caffrey would never have had to be tracked again. This was his choice, a choice to accept the thing he hated most, coming back in the grid in order to make sure he could testify.

Peter felt a hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay, Peter. It’s temporary.”

Peter stood back up and looked Neal in the eyes. “I want you to know, I’m proud of you. I’m proud of who you became in Paris, and I’m proud of the man you are now. You gave up so much to be here, and I know El and I can never repay that. I just hope our son grows up to be a lot like you.”

Neal nodded, and Peter thought he caught a hint of tears in his friend’s eyes. “After all these years, are we even?”

“Even.” They both smiled.

Neal’s hug practically knocked the wind out of Peter. He returned it with equal force.

They walked back down the hall together, CI and handler once again, if only for a brief time. Peter wondered what he would have said if someone had told him years ago that Caffrey would one day come in on his own. He probably would have said Kate was the only one Neal would ever love enough to do that for. He had once underestimated how much love Neal had to give; he didn’t any more. They were too much like family.

—

Neal did not mind wearing a tracking anklet. Once, it had symbolized what a prisoner he was, that his “freedom” was an illusion at best. Now, it symbolized the opposite; it symbolized freedom—to choose to take the risk and come back because Peter and his family needed him. This time, Neal was proud of the choice he’d made.

He walked with Peter, and it felt incredibly familiar. Neal wouldn’t have admitted it, but he felt intense nostalgia for his time at the FBI. If all the pieces fell into place for him to become the director of the collection project, he wanted an office, and he wanted it right next to Peter Burke’s.

Chapter Text

That night, when Jade arrived back at the Burkes’ house, she nearly turned around and left immediately. Neal’s silhouette was visible in the window, tossing his namesake in the air and laughing. She did not want to face him.

“Oh, you’re here! I’m just about to start dinner.” Busted. Elizabeth Burke arrived right as Jade was considering telling her Uber driver to take her far away.

Reluctantly, Jade took a grocery bag and helped El bring everything inside. She could have sworn Elizabeth was doing it on purpose, not giving her an out.

As soon as they came inside, Jade locked eyes with Neal, though she instantly looked away. He looked hurt and confused, not filled with rage any more. Maybe that was some kind of improvement.

—

Neal was surprised to see Jade, but as soon as she arrived, he realized the Burkes had done it on purpose. That was like them, to try to force the two to talk it out when he would much rather have avoided his feelings and pretended Jade didn’t exist.

At least Elizabeth did not ask him to help with dinner, which would have been difficult in the small kitchen since Jade was assisting. He stayed in the living room with Satch and little Neal, entertaining them until Peter could get home.

They sat down to a meal of roast lamb as soon as Peter stepped through the door, with the Burkes across from each other and Neal across from Jade, which was awkward but, he thought, probably less so than being next to her would have been.

“Neal,” said Elizabeth, passing him the basket of dinner rolls, “I want to hear more about your time in France. Peter tells me he’s heard a lot of interesting things about you helping people.”

Neal smiled. “I couldn’t stop myself. You and Peter made me want to do more than just look out for myself.” This was true; Elizabeth deserved to know it.

“You know about the alley children,” he said. “I also helped the police put some bad guys away, some they had a lot of trouble catching.” He intentionally kept his descriptions child-friendly since his namesake was at the table. “Neal wasn’t the only kidnapping. I helped find and bring back the son of a treasury official.”

Neal went on. He might have found it uncomfortable to talk about himself as a hero, but he was with the Burkes, who were family, and Jade, who was familiar with his exploits.

As the meal drew to a close with sorbet, Elizabeth reached over and patted Neal’s hand. “I’m proud of you; we both are.”

Neal felt warmth course through him, as El and Peter both smiled at him. It mattered. Their approval mattered to him even more than he’d realized. To finally have it fully, after all the years, felt incredible.

The positivity lasted until a few minutes past the late dinner, when Peter gave El a look, and she said, “Time for bed, Neal. Come with Dad and me.”

It wasn’t exactly subtle. The result was Jade, Neal and Satch left alone in the living room, exactly as their hosts had intended.

“Hey,” said Neal, feeling nowhere near his usual smoothness.

“Hey,” said Jade.

“What did they offer you?”

“Full immunity from prosecution if I testify against my mom.”

“Good for you,” Neal answered, trying to mean it.

Jade was clenching and unclenching her hands. “What—about you?”

“Possibility of a pardon. I may be out in charge of establishing the histories of your mother’s art pieces and getting them back to the right people.”

“Neal, that’s incredible.” She was obviously sincerely happy for him.

“It’s because—,” he continued non-fluently, “but you couldn’t have known this would happen.”

Jade shook her head. “I didn’t know.”

Neal sat forward, his frustration breaking through his self-control. “You—why? I don’t understand. Tell me why.”

Jade started crying. Not loud sobs, but quiet, heartfelt tears. Neal had seen plenty of women cry fake tears, and they no longer moved him. But this was real.

“Come here.” He stood up and opened his arms. Against his own desire for justice and retribution, he felt comforted when she buried herself in his arms and let him comfort her.

“I’m so angry,” he said, holding her very tenderly.

“And I’m not sorry,” she answered, clinging to him tightly.

Chapter Text

Neal’s protective instinct overrode his indignation. He held Jade close, annoyed at how much it soothed and calmed him to be close to her again.

“I’m not sorry I did it, but I’m sorry I did it to you,” Jade clarified, head on his chest.

“That—doesn’t help,” Neal said drily, nevertheless cradling her and using his thumb to wipe her tears.

“I know it doesn’t, but can I please explain this time?” Jade asked, standing up and reluctantly pulling away.

Neal was not vindictive enough to say no. He nodded. “You can try.”

“It was when we were on the plane,” said Jade. “I realized you thought you were going down. It was almost like you were saying goodbye to me.”

“Before that, I thought you could get a deal like I got. But I realized neither you nor Peter thought that was going to happen.”

“Neal, I got scared—that I was going to end up free, and you were going to end up in prison. I—couldn’t face that, so I thought about what I knew, and how people feel about Robin Hood and the things you did back home.”

“Did it ever occurred to you that I could have used my own secret as my own bargaining chip?” Neal cut in.

“Would you have?” Jade shot back, looking him in the eyes. “I chose to tell, based on my belief that neither you nor Agent Burke would, and that it was probably your only chance.”

Neal broke eye contact. “I—don’t know.”

Jade continued. “I’d rather you be a free man, even if you never have anything else to do with me.”

“How altruistic.” Neal tried to sound sarcastic, but it just came out confused.

“I’m sorry I broke your trust, even if I’m not sorry about why.”

“I don’t need a mother deciding for me how to play my cards. I need you to understand that.

“Understood,” Jade answered. “If it’s anything less than your ultimate personal freedom, I’ll talk it out with you first.”

—

The future—Neal was starting to talk like they had one. Jade let her comatose hopes start to revive.

He was looking at her. “I underestimated you,” he said. “I should have known, after you pulled a gun on me that night.”

“I may not be from your world, but I’m not a pushover,” Jade retorted. “I’d have thought that was something you liked.”

“I did—do,” Neal admitted, “but not when you violate my trust.”

“So we’re at an impasse,” Jade said. “I still think I did the right thing, and you still think I overstepped. At least we’re talking.”

Neal walked across the room to where Jade was seated and, to her surprise, he kissed her. Long, intentional, irresistible and crazy-making.

“What was that?” she asked, when he finally let her go to breathe.

“Call it a bridge over an impasse,” he said, smiling. “I may not agree with you, but what I’ve learned is that I’m a lot less happy when we’re not together.”

Jade nodded. “I know it may take a long time for you to trust me again, but I’m on your side, and I want to be by your side.”

Neal studied her for a moment. “I can see you’re not lying,” he said. “It’s complicated, but—I’m still in.” He hugged her, and this time it was true reconciliation.

—

“The coast is clear,” Peter whispered to El, when he peeked out and saw Neal and Jade smiling and talking. He hadn’t actually thought forcing them together would work, but El had insisted, and he trusted her.

“You two—want some coffee and dessert?” Elizabeth had the worst poker face in history. She was grinning from ear to ear.

“I’ll help you serve,” said Jade, getting up to follow.

Peter sat down on the sofa next to Neal. “Well, is the course of true love back on the straight and narrow?”

“That’s a horrendous mixed metaphor,” Neal answered. “Against my own better judgment, we’re back together. We’ll either end each other or be very happy; I’m not sure which.”

Peter smiled. “Sometimes you need to listen to something other than your better judgment. Besides, it’s good for you to be with someone who can hold her own and not get railroaded by the Caffrey charm.”

“Yeah, she’s certainly not in any danger of that,” Neal said.

Peter nodded. “I understand why you’re upset. I also sympathize with her position. If El was determined not to do something that could save her, I’d do the same thing.”

“I know,” Neal answered. “She’s morally confident, like you.”

“What a compliment,” Peter said, grinning to himself as he bent down to pet Satch.

Chapter Text

The next morning, Peter sat around a conference table and received the news that Lucy Danziger would be extradited immediately to the United States to face charges. She had given up the names of the people she’d hired during overseas questioning, but she’d done something else that made Peter as angry as he’d been years before when he’d first met her mistreated daughter: She’d claimed Jade was actively involved.

Neal was also in the meeting because Lewis and the FBI now expected his pardon and deal to go through, so it was considered only a matter of time before he would lead the artistic side of the investigation. Peter looked over at him as the report was read and saw anger flash across his face.

Lewis rolled his eyes, obviously not finding it any more credible than Peter or Neal did. “Nothing about this changes anything. The daughter took the deal to testify and has immunity. No doubt the mother’s lawyers will try to use this to cast doubts on her credibility, but that’s the legal side’s problem, not ours. Once Danziger is here, Fortnum, you’ll do the questioning on the kidnapping; Burke and Caffrey, you’re on the art scheme. I want it to stay strictly that way.” He drilled Peter with his eyes. “I know there are personal connections to this case, and I want things to stay professional.” Peter nodded his understanding.

As the meeting ended, Fortnum turned to him. “Don’t worry, Burke. This one feels personal to all of us. She’s going down.”

—

“What I would like to do to that woman,” Neal said, his voice quietly steely, keeping pace with Peter as they walked back to Peter’s office.

“I know what I’d like to do,” Peter said, “eye for an eye—put her through what she put Jade through, then what she put Neal through, with the theft of everything she loves thrown in for the people she robbed.”

“That’s about right,” Neal answered, “but it would never be enough because she’d be going through it as a grown woman, and they were both children.”

He felt Peter’s hand on his shoulder. “She’ll get what’s coming to her under the law, and Jade and my son will go on to lead good lives. That’s the best revenge.”

“You’re probably right,” Neal said, “but it doesn’t feel like enough.”

“You know, I like this protective side of you,” Peter said. “Sounds like—maturity.”

“Learned from the best,” Neal said, meaning it.

—

Later the same day, Jade sat in Agent Fortnum’s office. She didn’t like being inside the FBI building, not when neither Neal nor Peter was with her. She sat straight up, clenching and unclenching her hands.

“Thank you for meeting me,” said Fortnum, starched and stiff in her tailored suit. “I need your help.”

Jade nodded. “How?”

Fortnum gave her a long, searching look. “I need you to help us question your mother. It’s not a condition of your deal, but it would be incredibly helpful.”

“What can I possibly do?” Jade asked. “You already have everything she told me.”

Fortnum sat forward, and Jade saw excitement behind her eyes. “How good are you at acting?”

—

Neal did not know Jade was at the FBI until he was ready to leave for the day. He put on his suit jacket and walked out of Peter’s office, which he was sharing, only to find a white-faced Jade in a corner of the hallway, almost like she was hiding.

“What—why are you here?” he asked, taking her hand and pulling her into an empty room.

“They—the agent on Neal’s kidnapping case—wants me to pretend like I’m in custody and do a sting on my mom.”

“That’s—actually a really good idea,” Neal said. “Do you want to do it?” He had a hunch what the answer would be, given how pale and worried she looked.

Jade clenched her fists at her sides. “Yes, I want to do it.” Score one for surprising Neal. “I want to be the one who puts her away, but I—feel bad for wanting to deceive my mother face to face like that. She’s still my mom, and somewhere in there, she still cares.”

Neal closed his eyes for a moment, considering. “Agent Fortnum didn’t tell you what they reported about her this morning. That makes sense; she’s very conscientious about secrecy.”

“What are you talking about?” Jade asked.

“She tried to implicate you in the plan for Neal’s kidnapping.” He said it, hating himself but feeling like he had to be blunt.

Jade staggered forward and fell into him. Neal wrapped her up in his arms, feeling tears fill his eyes.

“I—all this time, I thought she at least loved me, in her toxic way,” Jade cried.

Neal held her tightly. “Not that it helps, but my father threatened to kill me, so I know how it feels.”

Jade looked up after a while, eyes red. “What did we do wrong to end up with parents like this?”

“To be honest, I can’t answer that,” Neal said, “but Peter is the one who told me it’s not my fault. I’m trying to believe that, and you should, too.”

Jade sobbed into his chest. “Neal, I love you so much.”

“I love you, too,” he said, trying to calm her. If there was one thing he fully understood, it was how complicated feelings about parents could be.

“I’m going to do this,” Jade said. “I’m angry enough to give an Oscar-worthy performance.”

“That’s my girl,” Neal answered, kissing her forehead.

Chapter Text

Neal and Peter stood, watching through special glass into an interview room. Lucy Danziger sat at a table, still dressed in one of her designer suits, with an attorney beside her and a brusque Agent Fortnum across the table.

“Of course she lawyered up,” Peter groused.

“Not before she gave Jade most of what we need,” Neal reminded him. “And the lawyer won’t matter if Jade can manipulate her.”

“Can she?” Peter wondered out loud. Truth be told, Neal had no idea. He only knew that the two women had a relationship so complicated it rivaled his with his father.

Fortnum had been doing preliminary questioning, but, according to plan, in a moment, Jade was led into the room, clad in an orange jumpsuit, with handcuffs on her wrists.

She looked good in orange, Neal thought, but her face was extremely pale, and she had on no makeup on purpose. She looked the part, but she wasn’t overdoing it. Neal approved.

“Darling!” Lucy said effusively, “You should have let me have Mr. O’Neill here help with your case.”

Fortnum stood in the corner of the room as Jade gave her mother a poisonous look that Neal didn’t think she had to dig very deep to find. “It’s because of you that I’m in this situation, mom.” She slightly lifted the handcuffs. “You did this to me.”

Lucy cleared her throat. “Let’s talk, dear. There’s no need for us to be antagonists. We’re on the same side.”

“You only have one side,” Jade said. “Your own.” She was almost too angry now. Neal began to be afraid that if she didn’t rein it in, Lucy would close up completely.

“I’ll be back in a moment,” said Fortnum, excusing herself, as was the plan.

The lawyer had said little up to now, but he turned to Lucy. “I would advise not talking to your daughter or anyone else at the FBI, Mrs. Danziger. You can stay silent here and plead the Fifth on any further legal questioning."

Jade sat across from her mother, where Fortnum had been, breathing heavily. “Yeah, don’t talk to me, mom. Just enjoy what you’ve done. Let another man tell you what you can and can’t do.”

This was a button only Jade would have known to push, and it succeeded brilliantly. “John, wait outside,” Lucy said suddenly. “I want to talk to my daughter. You can come back in when the agent returns.”

The two women stared across the table at each other. “You started this, Jade,” Lucy finally said. “You’re the one who chose to take our conversations where they didn’t need to be.”

“Silly me,” Jade answered acerbically. “I thought you actually felt bad about the kidnapping.”

“I did—do,” Lucy took the bait. “You know I’m not that kind of person, dear.”

“And you know I’m not,” Jade said.

“Of course not,” Lucy answered, reaching out and touching her daughter’s cuffed hand. “You know I said that as a strategy. If you’d have let me take care of things, it never would have landed you in actual jail.”

“I’m scared, mom,” Jade said, letting vulnerability creep into her voice. Neal was genuinely impressed by the performance.

“Why don’t you rescind your testimony, sweetheart?” said Lucy, “and I’ll remember to tell them you didn’t have anything to do with it. That’s all you have to do.”

“So if I lie for you, you’ll tell the truth about me?”

“Of course, Jade. I always keep my word.”

With that, Fortnum came back in. “Thank you, Miss Danziger,” she said. “That’s clear enough for my purposes.” Right in front of Lucy, she unlocked Jade’s handcuffs. “Very nicely done.”

Lucy was sputtering about rights and informal interviews and lawyers as her daughter left the room with a spring in her step.

—

Peter smiled at the spectacle of a jumpsuit-clad Jade kissing Neal in the observation room. “Very well done,” he said.

“Thank you,” Jade said, once she came up for air. “My mother’s not very good at self-preservation, considering how wrong she’s been for so long. She’s used to just using money to get her way all the time. She’s never really been in trouble.” True irony, Peter though. The FBI had once investigated her husband when the real burgeoning felon had been the woman on his arm.

Neal hugged Jade, exhibiting the protective side Peter thought was unusually endearing. It had emerged before Neal’s disappearance to Paris, but now it was full-fledged, and he now had the ability to care about someone more than he cared about himself—far more.

“You look surprisingly good in orange, Miss Danziger,” Neal said.

Jade blushed and rolled her eyes. “I’m just glad I’m not in it permanently, considering.” She turned to Peter. “I’m sorry you had to see the woman responsible for what happened to your son.”

“I didn’t have to,” Peter said, “but I wanted to be here. Thank you for helping.”

Jade walked across the small space. “Agent Burke, can I give you a hug?”

Peter nodded, and he found the embrace surprisingly comforting. “You did well,” he said, immediately slotting back into his usual role and patting her back. “This should be it for you until the trial.”

It for you until the trial. He realized as he said the words that they were true for him, too. He wouldn’t be part of the team working his son’s case any longer, and any access would be limited. Beyond seeing to little Neal’s recovery, his family was back to normal, and Agent Peter Burke was free to work his case with Neal Caffrey.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Neal said, as soon as Jade had left to turn in her jumpsuit and make her report.

“What’s that?” Peter asked, smiling.

“You’re thinking it’s time for us to get to work,” Neal said.

“You know, buddy, that’s pretty darn close,” Peter replied, clapping a hand onto his shoulder.

Chapter Text

On a sunny day, six months after Neal Caffrey had arrived back in the United States, he drove country roads to upstate New York. He was alone, his only companion the file on the passenger’s seat next to him.

The foot that pressed the gas pedal of his SUV was bare of tracking anklet. The FBI had kept their word, for once, and helped to recommend him for a pardon, on the condition that he help them conduct the arduous task, in cooperation with the FBI’s white collar division and the French authorities, of finding out the rightful owners of Lucy Danziger’s now-seized art collection, as well as stolen pieces she had previously sold. He’d jumped at the chance; it was a job he actively wanted.

The pardon took months, but in the end, he was notified by a terse form letter. He was a free man. In the end, the thing he had wanted for so long was just the weight of a piece of paper his attorney handed him, with the signature of the leader of the free world.

The day after the pardon came through and Neal’s anklet had been removed, he’d decided that it was time to take the journey he was now taking—two hours by car that felt a little bit like a lifetime.

Neal took his last left turn and drove down a lane toward a row of small, neatly-kept houses. He checked the number on the file and pulled into the driveway of a white, single-story house. On the front porch was a swing, and a kid who looked no more than eight or nine was swinging on it.

“Hi,” said Neal, keeping distance so he didn’t scare the kid.

“Hi,” said the little boy, smiling. “My mom is inside.”

“Yeah? I’m Neal.”

“I’m Nate. I’m adopted.”

“That’s cool,” said Neal evenly, still not getting much closer. “Do you like it here?”

“Yeah,” said the boy, “my mom was my foster mom, and then she adopted me. I’m real lucky.”

“Nate, who are you talking to?” The front door of the house finally opened, and a small, white-haired woman peered out. Neal stayed where he was, right in the middle of the walkway up to the small house.

The woman looked over and saw him, and she dropped the plate in her hand, which clattered loudly onto the porch floor. “Hi, Mama,” Neal said softly.

He wouldn’t have known a woman her age could run so fast. In seconds, she was in his arms. Catching and holding onto her was instinctive. He had wondered how he would feel when he saw her, if his anger might resurface. All he felt as he wrapped his arms around her and hers wrapped around him was relief, like a crushing weight he hadn’t known he was carrying had been lifted from his shoulders.

She was crying, and he realized in a moment that he was, too. “What are you doing to my mom?”

An indignant Nate ran over from the porch, and Neal reached out a hand. “Hey, buddy, sorry about the drama.”

“It’s okay,” his mother said, turning in his hold to look at her other child. “This is your brother, honey. This is our Neal.”

Nate gave Neal a look of wonder. “She talks about you every day.” If Neal hadn’t already been crying, he would have started at this.

The little boy finally joined the embrace, and Neal pulled him close. “I’m happy to meet you, Nate,” he said through tears.

After a while, Neal’s mother pulled away and took his face in her hands. “I can’t believe you’re here, baby.”

“I’m sorry it took me so long.”

“Come inside,” she said, smiling and taking both of her sons by the hand. “There’s cake.”

—

Peter was immensely relieved when Neal’s SUV pulled into his driveway at 6:00 p.m. His friend had texted him earlier: “Using that file you found for me,” and he had been a mass of concern since then, knowing the complicated feelings that lay between Neal and the woman behind the address.

“Hey, Buddy.” He opened the front door, glad that he was alone for the moment because Jade, Elizabeth, and Neal's namesake were at the store getting last-minute supplies for dinner.

Neal walked up the drive, and he looked—relaxed, Peter thought. That was a good sign.

“Hey, Peter.” The smile on Neal’s face reached all the way through his eyes, and before Peter could speak again, he was on the receiving end of a crushing embrace.

“You okay?” Peter asked, returning the hug and leaving a hand on Neal’s back. “I was worried.”

Neal nodded, and Peter was almost stunned by the force of the eye contact. He had never seen Neal so open, so willing to let him see inside. Sure, characters Neal had played had been open and confident. The real Neal, though—he never had been.

Peter smiled. “That’s good.” If Neal wanted to talk about it, he would, but there was no need to pry. They had time.

Peter turned. “Come on in. I’m supposed to check the chicken and make sure it doesn’t burn before El gets back. I need your expert eye.”

Neal followed, and Peter could hardly believe the waves of calm radiating off him. If there was such a thing as an aura or energy that followed a person, Peter had never even imagined that Neal’s could be so peaceful—so resolved.

“Hey, Peter, I’m going to propose tonight."

Chapter Text

Jade was relieved to see Neal’s car in the Burkes’ driveway. She hadn’t heard from him all day, which was unusual. Most of the time, he checked in at least once—nothing long or controlling, just a quick text to say hi or that he loved her—even if he was going to see her later.

She helped Elizabeth and little Neal with grocery bags from the trunk of El’s car, then followed them into the house. As soon as she walked in, she saw Neal on the sofa. He was smiling, and he looked relaxed. She set her sacks down on the counter and joined the two men in the living room.

As soon as she entered, Peter got up. “I think my son and I should help El finish dinner,” he said, pointedly leaving Neal and Jade alone. It was practically a custom by now for the Burkes to be awkwardly considerate. Jade smiled, and so did her companion. He patted the sofa next to him. “Come here. Missed you today.”

“I missed you, too?” Jade said, phrasing it like the question in her mind.

“I’m sorry I went AWOL,” Neal said, “but there was something I had to do.”

“What?” Jade asked, moving a pillow and sitting down, then snuggling into his side.

Neal curled his arm around her comfortingly. “I went to see my mom.”

Jade sat up abruptly. “No way! Are you serious?”

Neal pulled her close again. “Dead serious. I drove upstate to the address Peter found for her.”

“How was it?” Jade asked, filled with concern.

“She has a kid,” Neal said, “adopted. Young enough to be her grandson.”

“Did that make you mad?” Jade asked.

“Nope,” Neal answered, shaking his head. “It just felt right, like she got a second chance the same way I did. I mean, I got more than one—I can’t hold one against her.”

“Maybe,” said Jade, “but feelings are not always logical.”

Neal smiled. “I know what you mean. I thought I might be angry or sad or scared when it came down to it, but I wasn’t. I just felt compassion for everything she went through.”

Jade smiled up at him from against his shoulder. “That sounds a lot like maturity.”

Neal held her tighter. “The thing is, I was waiting to get my anklet off and go make things right before I—”

“Before what?” Jade played with his long fingers.

“I didn’t want to have that baggage hanging around when I asked you to marry me.”

Jade took in a sharp breath. “Do you really mean that?”

“I mean it,” Neal answered. “I was going to stage some big, romantic event, but I realized Peter and El’s living room was probably the most appropriate place to pick, so I dialed it back.”

Jade sat up and kissed him, long and slow. “Good choice,” she finally said.

Neal took her face in his hands. “Jade, will you marry me?”

She nodded once. “I will.”

He put the ring on her finger, a simple pattern he’d designed that looked like a rose with gold petals and a diamond in the center. It was small, not ostentatious, but extremely beautiful.

Peter, El, and Neal’s namesake came in while Jade was admiring the diamond in the light. “Oh my goodness, that’s gorgeous!” El said, coming over to look.

“I guess it’s done, then,” said Peter, grinning from ear to ear.

“What’s done?” little Neal asked, completely confused. His uncle opened his arms, and Jade scooted over to make room.

“Come here, buddy,” said Neal, and the little boy quickly clambered onto his lap. “What do you think about me and Aunt Jade getting married?”

Neal gave a long, pondering look. “I thought you guys were already married, because you’re my uncle, and she’s my aunt.”

Jade couldn’t help giggling. “That was a very good deduction, Neal,” she said, “but it’s not official quite yet. Uncle Neal and I are going to get married, and we’d like you to be the ring bearer in the wedding. What do you think?” She winked at her now-fiancé, knowing he would agree.

The little boy nodded seriously. “I would like that.”

“Oh, you would, would you?” His uncle tickled him.

Jade thought she had never been so happy in her life, surrounded by the people she loved in a place that was safe.

—

Once upon a time, engagement might have scared Neal because of the commitment it represented. Now it felt like the exact right thing at the exact right time. It had been a long time coming, but seeing his mother had been the final piece of the puzzle.

It wasn’t that the journey of forgiveness and understanding had ended. No, it was realizing that he could forgive, and love, and see his mother for the imperfect human being she was, without exaggeration or denial. His own self-acceptance had finally enabled him to accept the most complicated relationship he had ever had and the woman who had given him life—not because she was any better than he’d ever assumed, but simply because she was human.

“Thanks, Peter.” Neal’s handshake at the end of the evening was for more than dinner, but Peter knew that. Of course he did.

Chapter Text

One week after the engagement dinner, Peter pulled onto the highway and stole a look over at the passenger in his SUV, Jade Danziger. “Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked, noting how tense and anxious she seemed, from the set of her shoulders to her tightly-clasped fingers.

“I need to,” she answered. “Neal seeing his mom—challenged me. He said he didn’t want to go into our engagement with baggage. The least I can do is try to work on mine, too.”

Peter nodded, eyes on the road. “Are you sure you don’t want to be doing this with him—or El?”

He heard Jade laugh very softly, a sound that he was glad to hear amidst the atmosphere of nervous tension. “No, Agent Burke, I asked you because I wanted it to be you.”

Peter was flattered, though confused. “I don’t get it,” he answered, but I’m glad to help.

Jade looked over at him, her gaze intense. “I love Neal, and El is incredible, but you’re—you made me feel safe, from the first time I met you as a little girl. It’s the feeling I missed after my dad passed away. You’re—the one I need for this today.

Peter nodded but said nothing. Perhaps it made sense that she had become a little like a daughter, since Neal had always been a little bit like a son.

—-

Jade had not dressed up for the occasion. She did not intend to give Lucy the satisfaction of trying to impress her. She was in a plain Burgundy sweater and jeans. Neal liked her in Burgundy, and she liked herself in it.

She went through the metal detector and quick patdown by an apologetic corrections officer, who seemed to know who Peter was and feel impressed by his credentials. The whole thing didn’t take as long as Jade found herself hoping it would. All too soon, she and Peter were led down a stark hallway and into a visiting room. Normally only one of them would have been allowed in, but Peter Burke was the FBI’s white collar division chief, and no one batted an eye at him following.

Jade sat down in front of plexiglass, and Lucy was brought in and sat on the other side, clad in orange jumpsuit. Without makeup and her formidable designer wardrobe, added to the months of separation, Lucy looked like an ordinary aging woman, tired and unremarkable. Jade felt surprise at how average this woman suddenly seemed to her—the woman she had built up for years as her own private monster.

“Hi, Mom.”

“Hi, Dear.”

Jade could tell from the tone of voice that manipulation was about to follow, and it surely did. Barely time for small talk, and Lucy was bringing it around to Jade recanting her testimony, Jade helping with her appeal, Jade loaning her money for better counsel now that she no longer possessed her own fortune.

“Mom,” Jade stopped it all with a hand in front of plexiglass and an authoritative tone into the receiver of the communication device. “I’m not here to talk about the case. I’m here to tell you, I’ve—decided to forgive you. I’m not finished yet, but that’s where I’m headed.”

Lucy’s face flushed. “Forgive? You have nothing to forgive, darling. I’m the one who should be extending the olive branch to you.”

Jade could feel her frustration and rage rising. She got up and hung up the receiver device, then turned without a word and walked back to Peter, who had watched the whole thing from his vantage point of standing in the back of the room.

“Let’s go,” she said tersely.

Nothing else was uttered until Jade and Peter were fully clear of the prison building, back at Burke’s SUV in the parking lot. Peter came around to unlock and open Jade’s door, and she found that she couldn’t hold on any longer.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” she said, as tears ran down her face. Peter simply stopped and pulled her away from leaning against the car and into his arms. “I promise I didn’t ask you to drive me so I could do this to you,” Jade sobbed, nevertheless soaking up the comfort he offered.

“You did great in there,” Peter said firmly. “It’s fine to break down now. You didn’t break down in there, in front of her. You stood your ground. I’m proud of you.”

Jade closed her eyes and leaned against his shoulder, letting her tension ebb away. “Thank you,” she said. Peter just held on tight.

—-

“How was it?” Neal served the love of his life her favorite filled pasta for dinner in June’s loft.

“Bad, Neal. So bad. None of that catharsis you were talking about.”

“But you’re proud of yourself,” Neal answered, sitting across from her and slicing a crisp baguette.

“I’m proud of myself,” she echoed in agreement. “I really am.”

“Sometimes that’s better than catharsis,” Neal continued.

“I guess it depends on whether you’re the Cowardly Lion or the Tin Woodman,” Jade replied. “You needed to find and heal your heart; I needed to find my courage.”

“At least we both already have a brain.” Neal grinned and clinked his wine glass against hers. “To us and to the future,” he said.

“Us and the future.” Jade’s eyes were shining.

Chapter Text

One ordinary day, Neal Caffrey got ready for work. He could hear his wife humming in the kitchen as he buttoned his dress shirt and thought about the Rubens he was researching to prove authenticity and find its rightful owner. He needed Peter Burke’s expertise at running down clues and connecting them, and he would get it, as soon as he got to the office.

“Morning, sleepyhead.” Neal greeted his namesake, Neal Burke, and they fell in step as they walked the hallway to the kitchen, the sleepy little boy naturally coming close and Neal naturally putting an arm around him. Now that all of June’s house was legally theirs, little Neal had plenty of room to run around, and they had designated a room for him of his own so that he could stay over whenever he wanted. Since Paris, he’d been as attached to his uncle—and to his aunt by extension—as ever. The child spent a lot of weekdays and most weekends with them, and Neal had been somewhat amazed to find that he even had it in him to be a little bit parental when the situation called for it. He was still an uncle—but he was learning that even the coolest uncles have to enforce bedtimes and say no on occasion.

Jade, who didn’t like to cook most things, was nevertheless amazing at making breakfast, and she produced omelettes, toast, and bacon for the two Neals, sitting between them at the table. Neal smiled at her, and she smiled back. Not every day was perfect, but this one was starting off pretty close to it.

—

Not too far away, Peter Burke woke up and was delighted to find that his wife was still in bed next to him. “Hey, Hon.”

“Hey, Hon. Nice to have extra time this morning.” She snuggled into him, and they both savored the extra minutes that their son’s visit to Neal’s house afforded them.

“What’s on your to-do list today, Agent Burke?” El asked, her head resting easily on his chest.

“Neal’s getting close on the Rubens. I need to help him tie it up.”

“I’m sure with both of you on the case, it won’t take long,” Elizabeth said.

“Yeah,” Peter agreed, grinning. “It’s fun—finally working together as equals.”

“Like you always wanted,” El said.

Peter nodded. “You’re right, I guess this is what I was always waiting for—Neal to do this because he really wants to. I know they held the pardon over his head, but you and I both know he could have disappeared in Paris if he hadn’t wanted to come back, and nobody would have ever known.”

“But he wouldn’t have done that, because he’s Neal,” El said, resting contentedly. “He always had good in him, and knowing you helped it come out.”

Peter held his wife and thought for a moment. “In the past, he was just afraid to trust anybody enough to show who he really is. He’s always been a good man; he just needed a little guidance and somebody he could trust.”

“Glad he’s back,” El murmured, sounding near to sleep again, so Peter rubbed her back and let himself drift back into sleep alongside her.

—
An hour later, Neal dropped his namesake off at school with a hug and then drove toward the FBI building, once the last place in the world he would have ever wanted to be. Funny, he thought, how destinations can change. The conman had become the CI and the hero and finally the partner.

Once upon a time, actual happiness had seemed like an unattainable mirage, a prize only meant for other people, people like Peter and El Burke. Now that happiness was in Neal’s grasp, he could hardly believe it. Nobody was chasing him, and when he was finished with his day, a woman who actually understood him would be waiting to welcome him home. Even his current career afforded him the challenges and need for creativity he’d always craved and never thought were possible in a job on the right side of the law.

He now knew that happiness wasn’t a one-time destination. He continued to work on repairing his relationship with his mother, and there were plenty of nights when he held Jade while she cried over the things inside her that still hurt. But they were getting there, and getting there was beautiful in itself.

Neal turned into the parking garage, ready to start another day at the FBI. He straightened his tie and couldn’t help smiling to himself at the thought of seeing his best friend—the father, brother, and mentor rolled into one. Peter was proud of him. He felt it daily, and he knew it, and it was like sunshine after a long time in the rain.

—

“Morning, Neal.”

“Morning, Peter.”

Neal Caffrey did not wear a tracking anklet. Somebody who was a little bit poetic might have said he wore peace in its place.

The End