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Even after two years of working in close quarters with Neal Caffrey, not many could say they really knew the man. That wasn’t to say that he wasn’t consistent in his mannerisms and his habits. The man embodied Neal Caffrey perfectly, from his impeccably pressed suits to his flirtatious smirks to his rapid-fire brain.
Whoever Neal Caffrey was, he was good at it.
But Peter knew, not with any real tangible evidence but with a feeling in his gut, that the Neal Caffrey he knew was placed aside on a shelf and swapped out for a stranger when necessary.
That wasn’t to say that Neal wasn’t their friend. Despite his unconventional role in the office, Neal was a valued member of the team and they had gone from hesitant colleagues to genuine friends during his time with them so far.
Not many could say they knew Neal Caffrey, but Peter thought he might be the exception.
He was incorrect.
.
Neal was running 30 seconds late that morning. When he finally stepped outside and into Peter’s waiting car he flashed a grin that was completely, utterly perfect and something in Peter’s stomach ached.
“Sleep well?" Peter asked, aiming for casual as he turned onto the road towards the office.
“Hmm? Oh, yes. And you, Peter?” Neal replied absently.
“Fine as well.”
Neal was distracted, gaze lingering outside the window, shoulders hunched and left foot twitching. And then they passed under a towering building and the shadows swept over Neal’s form and by the time they left, he was back.
Gone was that tension, gone was that wandering mind. Neal was laid-back in the passenger seat, watching Peter with a keen gaze. It would have been easier, more logical, to assume Peter’s tired eyes were playing tricks on him, seeing distraction where it wasn’t.
Neal Caffrey left no room for anyone else.
“Did we get any update on yesterday’s case?” Neal asked, stretching an arm up to scratch at the back of his ear. “The museum switch?”
Peter let it go, let Neal guide him into a discussion about their current case. By the time they stepped off the elevator into the office, Peter’s stomach ache had almost faded.
Neal bounded forward on light feet, always moving in a way that seemed incompatible with the well-fitted suits he wore. He nodded to Jones and detoured to the office coffee pot to pour himself a mug that Peter knew he would take the chance to complain about immediately. He’d give in and let Neal out for a proper coffee run before it hit 10am, if only because he also preferred the stuff from the café down the street and El had told him to indulge Neal every now and then lest his resident CI get restless and sticky-fingered.
Mediocre coffee secured, Neal grinned and leaned against the edge of Diana’s desk.
She looked up and rolled her eyes. “Go away, Caffrey. Some of us are actually here to work.”
“Nope,” Neal said, grin turning into a smirk as he grabbed a nearby chair – not his chair, which was only an extra metre away – and sat down on it beside her. “I need feedback.”
Jones had also wandered over, sitting at his own desk but clearly listening in on the conversation. He caught Peter’s eye and shrugged, as lost as the older agent was.
“Feedback?” Diana and Neal turned to Peter at his question.
Diana blushed and shot Neal a look of disdain but there was affection laced into the scowl, like an annoyed older sister calling her younger sibling out for saying something they shouldn’t have in front of a parent.
Peter wasn’t sure if he should be offended or flattered.
“I had a date last night. Neal recommended a place,” she revealed. And then, to Neal, “It was good. You were right about the vegetarian options.”
Neal’s smile shifted from mocking to genuine and back to mocking. “You doubted me? Oh, Diana. How dare you. I’ll have you know, I have impeccable taste.”
“You aren’t a vegetarian,” Jones pointed out, sipping from his own office-coffee.
Neal shrugged. “Doesn’t mean I don’t respect other people’s dietary habits. I aim to impress.”
“Right.” Peter sighed and gestured for Neal to make his way to his actual desk. “Work now, gossip later. I’m sure Diana can tell you about her date over lunch.”
Neal pointed a finger her way as if holding her to it and moved the stolen chair back to where he found it.
Peter held himself back from rolling his eyes at Neal’s antics and took a step towards the coffee pot, planning to grab his own cup before the pot was empty. “Let’s meet in the conference room in 5 to discuss the museum ca–”
Hughes stepped out of his office, visibly flustered, and glanced at Neal before shifting to catch Peter’s eye. He pulled himself together slightly before he spoke. “Burke and Co, my office, now.”
Abandoning his dreams of being caffeinated enough to handle Neal’s usual antics, Peter immediately followed after their superior. Behind him, Diana and Jones were quick to follow but Neal, surprisingly, was the first through the door.
“Close the door,” Hughes instructed, standing behind his desk, holding a smooth lime green envelope. Once the door was shut, he turned to the four of them and his expression settled into something unreadable as he once again looked first to Neal and then Peter.
Beside him, Neal had stiffened in a way that was virtually undetectable if not for the way it set Peter’s stomach off. His gaze was locked on the green envelope.
“This morning, we received news of a kidnapping–”
“El?” Peter cut in, all thoughts of Neal gone at the idea of El being involved, of being somewhere scared and alone or scared and not alone.
“No. No, not El. Not any of yours,” Hughes was quick to reassure. “Nothing, that I can see, to link it to this department at all.”
“Why tell us? Surely one of the other departments are handling it already.”
They all eyed the envelope at Peter’s question. Neal had still yet to look away from it. It was so obviously out of place that it had to be connected, but there was no reason for it to be in the White Collar office unless the case was theirs.
“This was in my office when I arrived. It is addressed, specifically, to a member of your team, Agent Burke.” Again, those eyes shifted to Neal as he pulled an equally green piece of card stock out of the envelope and placed it onto the table for them to read.
Two Baby Birds
Found Out Of Their Nest
One Of Them Burned
One Of Them Next
The words were written in dark red ink, slanted across the page over and over again until no blank space was left aside from a crudely drawn picture of four birds in a row.
The second bird had been scribbled out so harshly that the paper had worn down almost to breaking point.
The fourth bird was carefully circled.
“And,” Hughes said, almost gently, reaching out to Neal who held out his hand mechanically, still looking at the letter, “this was included.”
He dropped a ring into Neal’s palm. It was silver, delicate but gaudy, with a large stylised W in the centre.
Neal closed his fingers around it tight enough that the blood left his knuckles.
Like watching a snake shed its skin, Neal shifted. That cunning glint in his eyes sharpened into something cold and dark and predatory. He straightened up even further. Neal had never slouched, but now he stood not only tall and confident but also capable.
When he looked up and met Hughes’ eyes, he was no longer Neal Caffrey.
“I’m taking over,” the stranger stated, voice hard in a way that Neal’s never could be.
“Yes, Sir.” Hughes nodded his head and handed the envelope over.
“What the fuck.”
Not-Neal ignored Jones’s words, ignored Diana’s shock, ignored Peter’s confused eyes. “Who else knows about this?” Not-Neal asked.
“The people in this room.”
“Lock it down. This does not spread unless I’m the one spreading it.” Not-Neal waited for Hughes nod of agreement before continuing. “Conference room three is mine. Agents, you’re with me.”
Not-Neal turned, opened the door and stalked across the office towards the conference room.
A few of the younger agents in the room flinched, looking around as their body subconsciously reacted to the predator that had stepped amongst them. The more experienced agents stiffened and purposefully remained focused on their tasks.
Peter exchanged a look with his team, shock, confusion, and Hughes, dismissal, fear, before following along as requested.
He hadn’t realised how much tension was held in Neal’s body until it was gone. Neal was this body holding back, he now understood, as he watched the muscles move fluidly, comfortably, confidently. He had seen glimpses of this person, living beneath Neal’s skin, had thought he’d seen the full picture in those fleeting moments of weakness. That he’d gotten a good look, been able to surmise enough to plan ahead.
He'd been wrong.
Not-Neal moved like something wild and dangerous. Something that was at the top of every food chain and knew it.
By the time Peter and his team entered the conference room, Not-Neal had already closed the internal blinds, blocking out the rest of the office, and, bewilderingly, opened the external window.
On the table sat the note and its envelope, but not the ring. Beside that sat a blinking metal contraption that took an embarrassingly long moment for Peter to place as Neal’s ankle monitor.
Not-Neal had been out of their sight for less than thirty seconds and had spent some of that time setting up the windows. There was only one key for the anklet and Peter still had it in his pocket when he checked.
“Who are you?” Peter asked, more an expression of shock than a question he thought he would get a genuine answer to.
Not-Neal glanced at him from where he was setting up the computer system. “You knew Neal was an alias, Peter.”
“The, the name, sure. But I thought…”
“I apologise for the subterfuge. None of you were the intended target.” Not-Neal turned to look at them properly, apparently finished with the computer, although the screen remained blank. Softer, more Neal, he said, “I didn’t plan for you to find out like this.”
“Was any of it real?” Diana asked, leaning against the table, fingers lingering on the scribbled-out bird on the note.
Not-Neal stepped closer to the three of them, expression gentle, open, genuine. He wore Neal again with an ease that was terrifying, not just his face but his posture, his body once again coiled tight with tension that was impossible to place unless you’d seen its absence.
Peter had known liars before. Chameleons capable of changing their colours but always with their tells. He had watched Neal change colours for undercover ops, marvelled in how fluidly he wore other personalities but always able to see Neal there beneath the extra layers.
Neal-Not-Neal-Neal smiled fondly, like that morning hadn’t ripped him away from them and left a stranger in his place. “I’ve been Neal Caffrey for two years. Of course, it wasn’t all a lie,” he lied.
Two years, he’d said, not four or six or ten. Peter had spent years of his life looking for a ghost. No wonder he had been haunted by the thought of Neal, always just out of reach.
“Hughes deferred to you,” Jones pointed out. “He called you Sir.”
The stranger was back, shrugging off Neal easily. “I outrank him.”
Was it foolish to grieve a man you’d just discovered never existed in the first place?
“He was afraid of you,” Peter tacked on.
Not-Neal grinned, smooth but wild. “I outrank a lot of people.”
Peter’s stomach ache, that feeling in the pit of his gut, was back and oh, it wasn’t anxiety or worry like he’d always thought. It was fear. Fear that had always been misplaced when dealing with Neal Caffrey, non-violent conman. But this was not Neal Caffrey.
Peter did his best to push the fear down, hid it behind his own mask that had allowed him to survive long enough in the FBI to work his way to his cosy White Collar job. Discoveries about Neal aside, that had been a child-sized ring in the envelope. “How can we help?”
Not-Neal waved him off. “No. Your team isn’t involved. I’ve got this.”
“You, what? Something is obviously happening, utilise us.”
Neal had always been a bit of a rouge element, working alone more than with accomplices but he’d never turned down Peter or the team’s help, never seemed to let his ego overpower the logic of having someone at his back.
“You are not involved,” he repeated, sterner, like a parent, like a leader.
“What are we even doing here if you won’t let us help?” Jones asked, exasperated.
Not-Neal glanced at the letter, now held delicately in Diana’s hands. “That was addressed to Neal. But Neal has no connection to any of this, to me, to the kid they took. The kid,” here, Not-Neal hesitated for a split-second, “Robin, has no connection to Neal but he does have a connection to me. For that to be addressed to Neal, it means my cover is blown. It means all of my covers are blown.”
Robin, it explained the note but also opened up a dozen more questions. Whoever this kid was, he was important to Not-Neal. Beside him, Jones seemed still as lost as Peter, but Diana mouthed Robin silently, glancing from the note to Not-Neal, something horror-struck in her eyes.
“I’m not going into this blind. But I need to focus on getting Robin back and to do that I need to know that they aren’t going to target you. I need you to stay in here and, I know it’s hard, I know it’s not something I can ask right now, but I need you to trust me.”
Not-Neal looked genuine, an edge of desperation in his tone, but so had Neal when he lied to Peter every day for the past two years.
“I trusted Neal,” Peter said. “I don’t even know your name.”
The flash of hurt across Not-Neal’s face was quickly smoothed out. “You can call me N. Or Neal, if you’re more comfortable with it.”
“That’s not even a name,” Jones complained, voicing Peter’s own thoughts.
Diana was looking at Not-Neal, at N, like it was, though.
N caught her gaze, the note in her hands, and nodded as if he’d come to a conclusion. “Diana, you’re from Gotham. I wasn’t sure if you still kept an eye on things after you got out, I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t, but obviously you did. I know you’re smart enough to figure most of this out on your own but I don’t have the time for that right now. You know who is missing and you know what that colour means.”
Diana’s hands were shaking as she held the note to her chest, cradling it like it was something precious as she looked at N in a way she’d never looked at Neal. “It could be a riddle.”
“It’s not.” N’s expression was hard as he watched her react to that, watched the devastation it caused. “I don’t have time to make them understand, but you do. Keep your team out of this.”
She nodded and turned to face the two team members still in the dark from whatever had just happened. “We are not leaving this room.”
Peter had never seen her so serious. N had flipped a switch inside of her, but she was still Diana. He could still see her true form under this new colour.
“There is a child out there. We could help,” he insisted.
“If we go out there and attract the attention of the person who took Robin, we all die.”
He knew her tells. He believed her.
“Okay. But we can still help from in here, at least.”
Across from them, the computer N had been messing with earlier flashed to life, accompanied by a computerised voice. “N, I got your message. I already dispatched the Reds to your location but what’s going on? You aren’t scheduled to burn Neal for another six months.”
At the very least, N seemed to have given them something real if his team, his real team, were using the same codename, but Peter was stuck on six months. His time with Neal had always had an end date.
“I need a status report on Robin, immediately.”
“I checked on him an hour ago. He’s got that field trip to New York today with school, he said you were meeting him for lunch later. I’d be notified if he’d been marked as absent. I redirected the messages they send to you and B while you’re both unavailable.” The person on the other side of the screen was typing frantically as they spoke, until, suddenly, they paused. “Oh. Oh shit, N, his tracker went dead twenty-five minutes ago. It should have pinged my system. I have no idea why it didn’t, not many people can hack me, you and RR, sure, but outside of us? Virtually no one. Someone jammed the signal in a way that it bounced back without alerting me. I’ll find them, I promise. Just give me a minute and–”
“No,” N said, cutting them off with that no-nonsense voice that didn’t belong to the body that Peter knew. “I already know who took him. I don’t care about the how. Just get me Robin’s location and tell the others to hurry up.”
The other end of the screen was quiet for a moment aside from the sound of typing. Even with the voice modulator, it was clear that whoever it was cared. “What happened, N? Who has him?”
N opened his mouth a few times, gaping in a way that was so out of place from the solid way he was commanding the room. Like he couldn’t say the words out loud. Instead, he gently took the note from Diana’s hands and pulled out a phone– not the one that Neal had been trusted with, the only one he should have had access to– and snapped a picture of it.
“Oh God,” the voice on the screen whispered, like someone had punched them in the gut. And then, determined and strong, “I’ll find him. We’ll bring him home.”
N’s shoulders were shaking slightly, like he was holding in his sobs. “I can’t, I can’t. Not any of them but not him. O, I can’t do it again.”
One Of Them Burned
Who had N lost already that was able to draw such a reaction out of him?
“You won’t. Reds are two minutes out.”
Whoever Neal-Not-Neal-N had shifted into during the conversation with O, they were gone by the time the Reds arrived. N was back, posture confident and ready to move, like he hadn’t been a man on the verge of tears two minutes prior. Whoever O was, they weren’t someone N needed to be strong for. Peter was glad he had that.
Until the Reds arrived and Peter was anything but glad.
Red Robin was a familiar enough sight, even if Peter wasn’t anywhere near as interested in superheroes as Jones was (Jones let out a startled, awestruck gasp at seeing the young hero climbing in through the open window). Red Robin operated out of New York alongside some of the younger Titans sometimes so Peter was able to place him easily enough.
The man who slipped into the room to stand beside him was even easier to place, for very different reasons.
Red Hood had been taken down from the Most Wanted list, but placed in first place on the Do Not Engage list instead. While he’d technically been pardoned by the Justice League under hastily explained circumstances, every single employee in the FBI was taught to recognise him during orientation. It didn’t matter that none of the heads had been agents, the FBI knew a threat when one was hand delivered in a duffle bag.
If Neal had been working with Red Hood on the side, Peter had made a grave error in trusting him.
Red Hood only spared a half glance towards the agents in the room before he focused on N. His voice came out through a similar modulator to O’s, but his was clearly male. “O looped us in. We’re ready as soon as we have a location.”
Red Robin nodded in agreement. Something strange happened then: with the two vigilantes facing N, the power dynamic should have shifted to favour them. Clearly, they were there to save the kid, could do so in a way that fell outside the FBI in both jurisdiction and ability, and yet N still commanded the room.
The Reds had shifted to mirror the way N stood and were waiting on his next words like soldiers addressing their superior officer.
A leader, Peter had noted earlier. Who was N?
“Two minutes,” O stated. “Narrowing down the search now.”
N nodded and held out a hand towards Red Robin, who handed over his bo staff without hesitation, deferring to N in the same way that Hughes had. N twisted the staff in his hands and then speared it up into one of the ceiling tiles. The tile moved out the way easily and dislodged a small, black duffle bag that fell at his feet.
Peter reached for his gun on instinct, as did Jones beside him, but Diana, interestingly, did not. A duffle bag in the middle of an FBI office, with the Red Hood only steps away, could not contain anything good.
N threw the staff back towards Red Robin and unzipped the bag but all Peter could make out was black and a flash of blue before N was stepping off to the side and out of view into the utility’s closet.
“Hood, swap your bullets,” N called out from inside the closet.
Red Hood immediately pulled out a gun, ignoring the way Peter and Jones pulled out their weapons in response, and began swapping out rubber bullets for the real deal.
Red Robin looked on with concern obvious even with the mask covering his eyes. “You’re breaking the rules, B–”
“Isn’t here,” N said, stepping out of the closet.
He’d gotten changed, gone was Neal’s freshly pressed suit and tie and in its place was a suit similar to Red Hood’s. Black material moulded to his body, broken up by a vibrant blue symbol that stretched across his chest, down his arms and right up to the tips of his fingers. Neal had always been a decently fit man, but Peter never would have expected the sleek muscles before him to be hidden beneath Neal’s suits. He wore the same mask that Red Robin wore but in blue, lenses obscuring his eyes and making him impossible to read.
Beside him, Jones stumbled backwards with a gasp, somehow more awestruck than he’d been when Red Robin had climbed in through the window. “Nightwing.”
Even Peter had heard of Nightwing. A vigilante that had popped up a decade earlier in Bludhaven and quickly made a name for himself as someone not to be underestimated. He’d founded the Titans in New York and split his time between the two cities. The FBI respected him in the way people respected panthers, at a distance and with the awareness that they were not the apex predator in the room.
Nightwing turned to face the three agents and suddenly Peter understood how it felt to be prey. Every line of his body projected lethal ability. Peter wondered how Nightwing had possibly tucked himself inside of the shell of Neal Caffrey for two years.
“The rules,” Red Robin insisted drawing Nightwing’s focus, but it sounded less like he was insisting on following them and more like he was afraid of the consequences of not.
“Last time, B played by the rules. Last time, we lost.” There was that pain, hidden under carefully constructed layers of authority.
Red Hood set the last of his bullets in place, the sound ringing loud in the room. “This isn’t going to be like last time.”
“No. It is not,” Nightwing promised, quiet and deadly. “Because this time I’m here.”
Red Robin glanced at the note on the table, then at Red Hood and finally settled on Nightwing. “No more dead Robins.”
Both Red Hood and Nightwing nodded in response, echoing, “No more dead Robins.”
Peter was embarrassed that it took that long for it to finally click that Robin was as much a codename as Nightwing or Red Robin or Red Hood. The ring had been child-sized, but then again, Nightwing had been young when he stepped onto the scene and had already moved with years of experience, entirely sure of his actions in a way that an up-and-coming hero shouldn’t have been.
“I have a location,” O said, voice cutting through the air in a way that set the three vigilantes on edge, visibly ready to get moving. “I’ll direct you via comms. Wing?”
Nightwing appraised the room with a steady gaze. “Flanking positions. Red, your priority is retrieval. Do not engage unless necessary. Hood, non-lethal for hired help where possible. O, keep an eye out for potential distractions and call in Spoiler as a stand-by. If you pull her, make sure her charge is redirected here first. Diana,” Diana startled, unprepared to be included in his address, “keep our team safe. No one in or out of this room until this is over.”
Diana nodded, determination clear in her posture. Peter wondered how far she would go to follow Nightwing’s orders if he or Jones tried to resist. He didn’t think he wanted to find out.
“One last thing,” Nightwing held up the ring Hughes had given him. “Robin was taken outside the mask and this was sent to Neal alongside the note. We have to assume that all of us are exposed. Do not let him rattle you.”
There was a clear dismissal in his tone and Red Robin was quick to slip out of the window, unbothered by the fact that they were a dozen storeys up.
Red Hood hovered even before Nightwing let out a soft exhale of his name.
Nightwing reached out and put a hand to Red Hood’s shoulder, like he was reminding both of them that he was there.
It was impossible to get a read on Red Hood under the helmet, especially with the voice modulator but when he spoke, there was a clear question in his tone. “No more dead Robins?”
Nightwing looked at him for a heavy moment before answering. “No more dead Robins.”
The exchange was different than the one the three vigilantes had had a moment earlier. This time, there was something more in the words. A promise that Peter didn’t have enough context to interpret.
Then, in a move that Peter would have never believed if he hadn’t seen it for himself, Red Hood ducked his head down and pressed their foreheads together like a cat seeking out affection.
He was ducking out of the window before Peter could finish processing the action. With one last glance their way, Nightwing followed.
Alone with his team, aside from O’s silent, digital presence, Peter allowed himself a brief moment to comprehend the last 10 minutes of his life.
Nope, still insane.
Jones let out a startled laugh and ran his palms over his face. “Holy shit.”
“Agreed,” Diana said, far too calm aside from the way her fingers twitched towards the note on the table again. “Oracle, is there a way to patch us into the comms or something? You can mute us, I just, I hate not knowing what’s happening.”
O, Oracle, remained quiet for a moment and Peter wondered if she had left already, but then she spoke. “You’re from Gotham.”
“Yeah,” Diana replied softly. “I moved away 7 years ago, after… After.”
He and Jones both stared at Diana, absorbing the fact. Nightwing had mentioned it earlier but amongst all of the other drama there hadn’t been time to linger on it. Gotham was a place that even the FBI avoided at all costs. The thought of growing up there, even if Diana had managed to get out and was seemingly fairly well adjusted, wasn’t a comfortable one. She’d never mentioned why she’d moved to New York.
The screen shifted and suddenly they were flying across the city. It was an incredible view, like they’d jumped into the body of a bird. A few meters ahead, they could see Red Robin pulling himself forward with a grappling hook, running across rooftops, quickly followed by the bulky form of Red Hood.
It wasn’t until a blue streaked arm entered the field of vision to shoot out a new grapple line that Peter realised Oracle had patched them into Nightwing’s mask.
The team of agents were quiet in the conference room for a few minutes as they watched the vigilantes cross the New York skyline, interrupted only by Oracle redirecting them when necessary.
“I can’t believe we met Nightwing,” Jones breathed out, eyes glued to the screen.
“I was a bit more focused on Red Hood,” Peter said, drily and not entirely truthful, eyeing up the crime-lord. Someone with his muscle mass should have struggled to move that fast but it seemed to come as naturally to him as it did the other two.
Jones waved him off. “Sure, Red Hood is creepy but Nightwing is Nightwing, you know?”
There was something else in the way he said Not-Neal’s alias. Awe but also the sort of fear that he’s never expected to hear from Jones when talking about a superhero.
Peter turned to focus on him, keeping the screen in his periphery. “I don’t think I do. What’s the big deal with Nightwing?”
Jones shared a look with Diana like Peter was the one being unreasonable. “You really don’t know?”
Peter shrugged. “I know he’s been around a while, mostly works out of Bludhaven. Formed the Titans and splits his time between being a team player and a solo act. I’m not saying he’s not dangerous, I’m not blind, but more dangerous than Red Hood? I haven’t even heard of Nightwing having any confirmed kills.”
Jones looked at Diana again, considering. “You’d know more than me, Gothamite and all.”
She paused as if waiting for someone to interject, Oracle maybe, before she waved him on. “Go ahead. I’ll fill in the gaps.”
“Right. You know Batman?”
“Batman,” Peter deadpanned. Batman was a ghost, an urban legend that half the country believed in. A boogieman designed to make the supervillains of Gotham feel a little bit more manageable. Peter flicked his eyes towards Diana, ready for her to correct Jones.
“Real,” she said, no hesitation, no tell.
Huh. Still, he glanced at the screen, not the wildest thing he’d discovered that morning. He’d have time to process that later.
Jones looked like he was ready to have that mental breakdown now even though he’d already had an idea that Batman was real but he pushed forward. “It’s difficult to know, since he’s based in Gotham and Gotham likes to keep its secrets to itself, but the unofficial danger ranking for Batman is shockingly high for someone powerless. I mean, it’s insane that any of the supervillains in Gotham are still alive at this point.”
“Nightwing?” Peter prompted, nudging Jones back on track.
“They say Nightwing is the only one, villain or vigilante or hero, who could go up against Batman and win.”
Peter’s first instinct was to dismiss the notion, but something tinged in his gut. He’d been around dangerous people before, it came with the job, but something about Nightwing was different. In a room with both Nightwing and Red Hood, his eyes had been stuck on the former, instincts screaming that he was the bigger threat.
“Surely Superman or Wonder Woman could beat Batman.”
Jones shook his head, glancing around like he was ready for Batman himself to come out of the shadows for spilling his secrets but Oracle didn’t interrupt him so he continued. “It’s said that he has contingency plans for everyone.”
It all sounded a bit too much like senseless rumours. “Why Nightwing, though, what makes him so special?”
“Because Batman trained him himself,” Diana answered.
Had Jones said it, there would have been doubts, but Diana was from Gotham. Gothamites knew things that the rest of the world didn’t.
The two male agents turned to her, curiosity written across their faces. Jones was practically bouncing with the desire to learn more about the most elusive of the world’s heroes. Peter had spent too long chasing the ghost of Neal Caffrey to not feel the need to learn what he could about the man beneath the lies.
“I, Oracle?” Diana asked, hesitant.
“You can tell them,” Oracle replied. “Wing trusts you three.”
“Oh,” Diana said, like the news was as much a surprise to her as it was to Peter. “When I was seventeen, Batman started bringing a kid along with him on patrol. He was so small, definitely no older than ten. He called himself Robin.”
The thought of a child that young existing in a place like Gotham, much less fighting crime, was almost too much. But what Peter was stuck on was, “That was almost twenty years ago. Robin would be closer to thirty now.”
“He is,” she insisted, like that meant something, like Peter was missing something.
On the screen, the vigilantes were approaching a warehouse on the edge of the city. Nightwing crouched down and the Reds turned to face him effortlessly. The three communicated silently, the Reds using hand signals that Nightwing must have been echoing out of their line of sight. Then they were moving, each breaking off to approach from a different side of the building.
“That was Robin One,” Diana continued. “He kept the name for nine years before Robin Two took over. He was a little bit older than Robin One had been when he started. Twelve, maybe, or thirteen. It was obvious that Robin One didn’t know Gotham that well when he first started, he was too soft. But Robin Two, he was one of ours.”
Diana spoke about Robin Two differently to Robin One, like he was special. Peter glanced at the note on the table, remembering the heavy-handed scribbles covering the second bird.
One Of Them Burned
“What happened?” Jones asked, pausing in his excitement.
“He died. There was no official statement, but we knew. The Joker had been boasting about something big and then Batman was alone. We only had Robin Two for three years.”
The room went quiet, even the mostly silent sound of Oracle’s keyboard cutting off.
The screen was a flurry of movement as Nightwing moved into position, silent even though his mic wasn’t muted. Peter wondered if he could hear them and his concentration was that good or if Oracle had muted them on purpose to avoid distractions.
“We lost Batman for a bit after Robin Two died. Not in the same way, but he wasn’t the same. Stopped pulling his punches.” Diana winced at the memories. “We all thought he’d kill the Joker for what he’d done – there were rumours that Nightwing had tried – but he seemed determined to kill himself instead. Until Robin Three showed up six months later. I still remember… we all hoped, just for a moment that it was our Robin, but he was too young. The age Robin Two was when he first started, not the age he should have been by then. But Robin Three was good for Batman, gave him purpose again.”
On the screen, Nightwing had crept around the building and strolled in through the front door. He wasn’t even trying for stealth as he stepped inside.
“Three years ago, there were whispers from back home that it had happened again, that we’d lost another Robin, but it became obvious pretty quickly that Robin Three had just outgrown the title in a way that Robin Two never got the chance to.”
Nightwing moved through the building with a predator’s grace. The building should have been filled with criminals, ready to defend whoever had hired them, but instead they were scattered around the space, bleeding from wounds to their shoulders and legs. Bullet-holes.
Red Hood dropped down from the rafters, swapping out his sniper rifle for something sturdier as he nodded to Nightwing and fell seamlessly into step with him. The team couldn’t see Red Robin on the screen but Nightwing and Red Hood moved like they were confident he would be in position.
They moved further into the warehouse, which was decorated in mockery of a circus. When they arrived in the main room, the screen focused on the boy tired to a chair. He couldn’t have been older than fifteen, still dressed in a prep-school uniform but with barbed wire wrapped tightly enough around him that parts of it had punctured his skin and stained his white button-down red. His skin was a few shades darker than Nightwing’s but he had the same messy black hair hanging across his forehead. He glanced towards the camera, towards Nightwing, and despite his eyes being green instead of blue, his expression was all Nightwing.
He was so small.
“And now we have Robin Four,” Diana finished.
The Joker grinned at them, draping himself across the back of the seat and ruffling Robin’s hair before stepping forward to greet his guests. “If it isn’t the original Boy Wonder himself. Tell me, Richie, do ya like the place? Remind ya of home?”
Before Peter had time to process the pieces coming together in a way that should have been obvious – that Nightwing had once been Robin One, that the Joker knew his real name, that Bruce Wayne had an eldest son called Richard who had grown up in a circus – Red Hood shot the Joker in the leg.
The Joker bucked to the floor with a shocked laugh, gaping up at the two of them like he couldn’t understand what was happening. “You aren’t allowed to shoot me, that’s cheating!”
Red Hood shot him again, this time in the shoulder. Still nowhere near fatal, but painful enough that the Joker let out a real sound of pain. With visible effort, he dragged himself back up into a standing position, leaning heavily on Robin, still tied to the chair.
“Now, what would dear old Dad think of this, huh?”
Nightwing shrugged, stalking forward. “Batman is off planet,” he said, and then punched the Joker in the face hard enough that the sound of his nose breaking was clear in the conference room over comms.
There was genuine fear in the Joker’s eyes now, which went against all reports Peter had read about the madman. He was back on the floor, Nightwing pinning him down with a knee to his chest. When he tried to raise his good arm to protect his face, Red Hood stepped on it.
The Joker looked between the two of them frantically. “But, but Batman–”
Nightwing leaned closer, until the Joker’s terrified eyes filled the screen. “You didn’t take Batman’s Robin this time, Joker. You took mine.”
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I won’t do it again. We’re good, you’re fine, right kid?” The Joker’s eyes looked over Nightwing’s shoulder desperately.
“I’m not as forgiving as he is. I thought I’d already taught you this lesson,” Nightwing said, casual, almost friendly but not. He covered the Joker’s mouth with a gloved palm then turned his head so the screen refocused on the Robins. Robin had been carefully extracted from the barbed wire, which was in a pile on the floor. Red Robin was tucking a pair of wire cutters back into his belt. “You’re okay, Dami?”
Robin, Dami – Damian Wayne, Peter’s mind supplied, recalling hours of high society talks with El, who needed to know these things for her job – nodded, that intense gaze softening as he looked at Nightwing. “I’ll survive. I knew you would retrieve me.”
“Of course, Baby Bird.” Nightwing’s voice was soft in a way that it hadn’t been all day. “Red, take him back to the office. Full eval. I’ll follow along soon.”
Red Robin glanced off screen, towards where the Joker lay underneath Nightwing, making muffled sounds of panic. “What are you going to do?”
Nightwing turned back to the Joker. “Make sure it sticks this time.”
Tears leaked out of the Joker’s eyes at the statement, muffled cries going quiet.
“Hood?” Nightwing asked, not shifting from his stare down with the Joker.
“I’m staying,” Red Hood replied.
“O, I think Hood and I are having some technical problems. Understood?”
Oracle’s voice was steady when they replied. “Understood.”
The screen turned black, the only sound coming through from Oracle as they quietly checked in with Red Robin, letting him know the fastest route back to the FBI building.
“Did he just?” Jones asked, voice hoarse.
Diana met Peter’s eyes as she crumbled up both the note and envelope. “I have no idea what you mean.”
El had shown him a picture of Bruce Wayne’s second son, once. He’d been 15 years old when he died. A scrawny little thing with a smile that hadn’t lost the magic of childhood innocence yet. He would have been 22.
Peter dug a lighter out of his pocket and offered it to her.
The note and envelope had both turned to ash in the waste paper bin by the time Red Robin slipped into the conference room, followed closely by Robin. They both glanced at it with recognition that told the agents that Oracle hadn’t been ignoring them for the minutes they stood vigil over the burning paper.
Robin had changed out of his battered school uniform and into a suit that complimented Red Robin’s nicely. He’d even taken the time to put a mask in place, although Peter was sure oracle had told them about the video feed that had been shared with the agents. He glanced at them briefly before allowing Red Robin to pull him into the corner to fuss over the minor cuts on his bare arms.
Red Hood slipped into the room 15 minutes later, walking immediately over to the Robins. He stripped off his helmet and Peter wanted to tell him to keep it on, stuck in that paralysing trained response of looking at the man and seeing a duffle bag. Their chances of walking away from the situation were much higher if he remained anonymous. He, too, shared that mess of black hair, although his was dyed white at the front. Without the helmet he looked years younger than expected, even with a familiar mask covering his eyes. He ignored the panicking agents in the room and pressed his face into Robin’s hair, arms wrapping securely around him in a hug. The younger boy tensed for a moment, as if unfamiliar with the contact, before he relaxed and leaned into the embrace.
“It is done?” Robin asked, muffled, into Red Hood’s chest.
Red Hood nuzzled into Robin’s hair for a second, reminding Peter suddenly of the way he’d affectionately nudged Nightwing before they’d left, before pulling away and wrapping an arm around Red Robin instead. “Mmhmm,” he murmured in confirmation, squeezing Red Robin closer. “So, you can stop worrying so much, Red.”
Red Robin melted into Red Hood’s side, tucking his face into the crook of his shoulder. That tension he’d carried from the moment he’d slipped into the conference room an hour earlier finally dissipated. “Can’t help it,” he whispered. “He, you–”
“I know. It’s over now, promise.”
Peter turned to his team, eager to get their input on the enigma that Red Hood was turning out to be but he was caught off guard by Diana’s response. She stood, gaping, with tears in her eyes. She brought a hand up to her mouth, muffling a quiet sob but everything was loud in that small room, as evidenced by how easy it had been to overhear the vigilantes’ conversation.
Red Hood snapped his head around to look at them, tense, assessing, and then his gaze softened, locked on Diana. “Crime Alley?”
“The Narrows,” she replied, blinking in disbelief, like she was looking at a ghost.
Red Hood grinned and Peter realised that she was.
“Neighbours, then,” Jason Todd-Wayne said.
Diana’s smile was shaky but real, like she too had finally had the tension drained out of her body.
Nightwing hadn’t made a single noise as he’d re-entered the conference room and made his way to Peter’s side. Even with 2 decades of training, Peter hadn’t noticed his presence until the vigilante made himself known, leaning into his peripheral view.
“You have blood on your chin,” Peter murmured.
Nightwing wiped it away with the back of his gloved hand, staining part of his blue fingers red. He flicked his eyes – now free of the white coverings but still surrounded by the same mask as his brothers – up to meet Peter’s searchingly.
He seemed satisfied with the answer he found.
He glanced at his brothers, lingering for a moment longer on Robin, before stepping away from Peter and slipping into the utility’s closet behind him.
He left the door cracked open enough that Peter heard the shaky breath he took before muffled ringing from the other end of a phone call filled the space. When the call connected, the person on the other side of the line remained silent.
“Slade,” Nightwing said, whisper-quiet. “It’s me.”
“Little Bird,” the person acknowledged, just barely loud enough for Peter to make out.
Even if Nightwing hadn’t used his real name, one of the training seminars Peter had taken was on the importance of being able to recognise the top 3 Do Not Engage by voice, in case they were disguised.
Deathstroke was number 2. Realistically, they all knew he should have been number 1, but the FBI took Red Hood’s duffle bag as a personal attack and weren’t ready to let it go yet.
“I need a favour.”
“Anything,” Deathstroke said, easily.
Who was Nightwing that he had Deathstroke in the palm of his hand? Surpassing Batman, his mentor, his father, was one thing, but this?
“There was a contract out on the Joker,” Nightwing took a breath, less shaky than the first, but still too much emotion to reveal to a coldblooded mercenary. “You took it.”
Deathstroke was quiet for a long moment. Peter expected him to demand payment or information, but instead he simply asked, “Do you need a clean-up crew?”
“No. I remember.”
“Good boy.”
The phone call disconnected.
Renegade, known associate of Deathstroke, was number 3 in the FBI’s Do Not Engage list.
Nightwing stepped out of the closet and met Peter’s eyes.
Peter had a feeling that Dick Grayson-Wayne’s voice would be very similar to Renegade’s.
But he’d never met either of them, so who was he to add to the rumour mill?