Bryce was dead.
Very dead. As absolutely dead as can be.
Danny, or rather Neal as he now went by, had seen the cover story in the newspaper and had been sent not one but two very official CIA "this agent was killed in action" letters to confirm it. Which, while he thought his brother joining the CIA was an incredibly stupid idea (not that he could really do anything about it now though) he knew couldn't be faked.
Not the documents themselves, no those would be incredibly easy to forge it was honestly rather pathetic coming from a major government organisation, but rather the fact that no one from his life knew Bryce existed before he got the first letter. After that he had told Mozzie but that was only because he was there with him when he got the letter, otherwise he wouldn't have told him.
It wasn't about trust. It was never about trust. It was about the huge desire Neal had to keep his life before New York separate from Neal. To make sure there were no loose threads, no paper trails, not even hearsay of where he had come from before he became the man he was today.
Even white collar, non-violent criminals like him could make dangerous enemies, or allies, (read: Matthew Keller) which could pose a risk to his family. The fact he had come from a WITSEC background meant he was even more keen to keep them all away from that and it made it much easier to do. It was already second nature to him to be secretive about his personal life to a strong degree, honestly at this point it would have been harder if he had decided he wanted to be open about it. Even if he had basically been told by those letters that Bryce could a) take care of himself and b) that it no longer mattered he couldn't do that to his mom no matter how strained their relationship and he definitely couldn't do it to Ellen.
The last time he saw their mother hadn't actually been the last time he'd seen Bryce. That had been a few weeks later. He had scraped enough together to travel all the way over to Stanford to visit his brother after Ellen had told him about their dad while Bryce was away. Despite how much his entire being had screamed at him run after that conversation he knew he couldn't just up and leave without at least saying goodbye to someone.
It had hurt too much to think about talking to Ellen again and mom? Well she barely noticed they existed most days so a goodbye was rather... pointless. To her it would just be a goodbye from a stranger. She hadn't been the same since they'd been placed into WITSEC, at least that was what Ellen had told them. They had only been three at the time so they didn't really have anything else to go on. They liked to think she had been better and that she could still get better but as the years passed they gave up the hope that had been rather lacking in the first place.
So he had decided to say his farewells to Bryce and pass them along for Ellen, and their mother should she ever be lucid enough to receive them. The journey had been long and tiring and while he wouldn't exactly have called the trip great he definitely accomplished what he had went to do. Eventually anyway. He found a sad sort of irony in the fact he had quite literally travelled all the way across the country to say his farewells instead of saying them to the ones that were only a state over from his intended destination.
When he was there he met Chuck. He seemed nice. He was as nerdy as his brother though he could find no fault in that particular hobby he just would never claim to fully understand it, the same way his brother would never appreciate wine or art as much as he did he supposed, he was honest and wore his heart on his sleeve which made it easier to tell that it was definitely in the right place with everything he did.
He didn't seem to mind the shouting match that he and Bryce got into, in fact he even apologised for overhearing some of it and having to stop it when he really needed to come back into the dorm room as it was getting late and he needed sleep. He'd even brokered the agreement between the two that Bryce would pass along the messages as long as Neal made sure there was always a way for Bryce to contact him if he needed to. They had, somewhat begrudgingly, agreed to it so while Neal wrote up his notes for Ellen and their mom Bryce had set up two untraceable email accounts for them to use.
There had been two messages send from Bryce using those emails, Neal however had never sent any back. The first of the messages was when their mother passed away. It was sad but not entirely surprising. If it hadn't been for Ellen and her sons then she would have wasted away years ago considering how often she forgot to eat or drink or even was just too listless to do either of those things. The second message came when Ellen had been moved by the marshals after insisting that their mother be buried under her birth name and that she be at the funeral, for herself and lieu of the twins.
The following years led him to today and to the surprise of his life. Currently he was unsure whether that surprise was a good one or not but he was hoping for the former.
The reason for that surprise was his brother. His dead brother. And how despite the very, very dead nature of his brother there he was. Stood at the entrance to the White Collar floor in his nasty "federal agent suit", as Neal had dubbed it, with the haircut that hadn't changed much since his college days, in Neal's opinion. An awkward, almost apologetic, smile was pulled across his face as he looked at his identical twin brother.
So Neal got up and did what any rational human would do after being faced with their supposedly deceased brother. The brother whose death had been confirmed by the fucking CIA of all places.
He punched him.