Chapter Text
"Oh no, my doppelganger was here." Neal slumped and slowly slunk out of the room.
"What are you talking about?" He heard Peter through the earpiece. Neal ignored it until he was able to slip back into the van under the perplexed eyes of the team.
"What do you mean?" Wincing at the echo, he pulled out the earpiece.
With a sigh, Neal sunk into the bench. "There is a guy who looks a lot like me. I've never met him, but sometimes people who I've never met 'recognize me,' like just now. Whoever he is, besides his devilish good looks, he also 'throws hands,'" he quoted, "a lot. So if someone recognizes him, it's always bad news." Neal rubbed his face in frustration. More than one con had fallen through because of that dick.
Peter frowned at him. "Another alias of yours?" Neal groaned.
"No. I'm not being coy." Neal waved his hand carelessly. "Just a whole different guy with creepy acquaintance. You haven't experienced stress until you've been flirt-threatened by Deathstroke the Terminator." He gestured wildly, a second away from pulling at his hair at the memory.
"What?" Peter exclaimed.
"Exactly!!" Neal whisper-yelled back. "It was creepy and uncomfortable, and I never skipped countries that fast. So I want to stay as far away from whatever crazy person that was."
—
That was the first time, but not the last incident while with the FBI. Neal loved New York, but it was also very close to New Jersey, where he was statistically the most often mistaken, though it had also notably once happened in Paris and Santa Prisca.
It was a rather cramped antiquities shop, noticeably a staple of the area and with the likeness of a cave. It wasn't quite as sophisticated as Neal preferred nowadays, but from experience could be a goldmine of genuinely interesting niche pieces.
The owner was an old man with a receding hairline and the gruff bearing of a grunt, not the kind of person easily charmed by a man in a suit. Nor intimidated, for that matter.
"I've got nothing for ya," he was telling Peter with an expression that was barely more polite than an open sneer. Then he caught sight of Neal, and the situation turned from unfortunate to worse.
"You," the man barked, with a frown that said the man thought he recognized him but wasn't a hundred percent sure yet. "Show me your face." Neal would rather not, because he certainly couldn't remember ever coming across this man, which could mean only one thing.
"You," the man growled after a longer squint at Neal. Shit.
"Me?" he asked resignedly. The man's fingers twitched, and he shot a look at Peter like the only thing stopping him from pulling a gun on Neal was the presence of the FBI agent. Well, at least Peter was useful for something.
"You know what you did. You and your punk friends." The man pointed one accusing finger from his balled fist at him.
"The FBI employs thieves now?" Now Peter was giving Neal a look. The "I'm disappointed" look, that in this case Neal had done nothing to warrant.
"This might've been the other guy," Neal murmured at Peter, whose look turned even more unimpressed.
Neal lifted his hands in surrender. "Look," he directed at both of them, "I can't remember ever stealing from you. I think you're confusing me with someone else."
Peter sighed. "Get back to the car."
"No, look." Neal turned to the angry man in a ditch attempt to save him from Peter's disappointment. "When was this?"
The man glared suspiciously. "Three years ago. Stole a gem statuette from right under my nose." Neal sagged in relief.
"See," he said to Peter. "It couldn't have been me." Peter's mouth pulled into a chagrined line.
"Three years ago I was in prison, so it definitely wasn't me."
Peter sighs and pinches his nose, but turns back to the angry man. "I can corroborate that. My criminal informant indeed sat a sentence the entirety of that year."
"Well, he looks like tha guy that stole that statuette before I could even have the gemstone tested, and that looked like highest-grade garnet if I've even seen some."
From there it devolves into the man lamenting about the statuette, and Neal is beyond relieved when they could leave.
"Are you one hundred percent sure you don't have an evil twin?" Peter asked far too seriously once in the safety of the car.
Neal is about ninety-nine percent sure there is not a separated-at-birth twin of him running around. "Yes. No evil twins from me, though I haven't been able to rule out a clone," he joked. But was it really a joke?
—
Neal had almost been able to put the incident out of his mind, if not for a month later when he was innocently sitting at a café when a teenager startled him.
"Dick, what are you doing here?" His head snapped up to look at the late teen with the massive eye bags holding a to-go cup. The boy squinted at him, then looked his suit up and down. "And what are you wearing?"
"I don't think we've met?" Neal asked, and the boy's face cleared of confusion in favor of mild embarrassment.
"Sorry, you look like someone I know." The boy shook his head like a dog shaking off water and then proceeded to stare at Neal some more. "A lot." The stare narrowed into a squint. "Like a lot a lot."
Neal was taken aback at first, but the context fell into place quickly. "His name wouldn't happen to be Robin."
The boy stiffened tellingly, eyes growing big for a moment. Bullseye.
"This isn't the first time I've been confused with him. Or the second." Or even the third. "Please, if you see him, do tell him to stop making enemies of international assassins, or at least stop showing them his face." The boy's face paled, and he sucked in some air. "Right, I'll tell him. Shit." The boy fumbled a phone from his pocket. He did some fast typing before, without warning, bringing the phone up to snap a photo of Neal.
"Hey," Neal protested. "Don't sic him on me." The last thing he needed was a murderous doppelganger.
"Sorry, just needed proof. This is crazy. Anyways, sorry about the mix-ups," the boy spoke without looking up from his screen.
The boy gave him another look askance before promptly hurrying off without another word. Neal watched him melt into the crowd, feeling for once entirely wrong-footed.
—
The cumulative things Neal knew about his double are as follows:
1. He knew Deathstroke the Terminator on a pretty close basis.
2. His name might be Robin or Robert or Grayson or Dick (which may also just be an insulting nickname), or N? Or neither.
3. He's probably American and almost certainly from New Jersey, but might also be from San Francisco.
4. He can fight. And to a degree, he seems to have something similar to respect from Deathstroke the Terminator. (Really, Neal had no idea what that relationship was and no desire to find out.)
5. He knows a lot of people, a lot of well-connected people know him.
6. He knows French.
7. He uses a lot of aliases.
He might or might not be a mercenary, but definitely has acquaintances in those circles.
From what he's extrapolated, his double has committed a bandwidth of crimes from theft to espionage to straight-up assault. None of which—Peter had checked—had ever been attached to Neal for lack of evidence.
Neal suspects he's at least peripherally involved with the capes, but had neglected to bring that up to Peter.