So proud of myself now, I ACTUALLY FINISHED SOMETHING LONGER THAN A CHAPTER! So this has been something I've been working on for longer than a year now, and I'M FINALLY FINISHED! It all starts up in an alternative universe (it's a fanfic DUH!) where Papa Caffrey doesn't show up, and Sam is never a thing. So somewhere out in 4th season, after Ellen's death.

Disclaimer. I don't own White Collar, its characters or anything else associated with the show 'n all that.

Oh, and English is my second language, sorry for mistakes in advance (if there are things that repeat themselves, you can tell me and I can probably change it up for the next part)

Chapter 1 - Jade

It had been roughly fifteen years since Daniel left. Less roughly, it had been fourteen years, eleven months, a week and three days. Jade knew, because she had his birth certificate in her hand, and he had disappeared on his eighteenth birthday. Jade knew because she was good with numbers. Jade knew because she had made it her mission to know everything about Daniel Brooks, from the fake paper trail of the first three years of his life, to the mysterious and sophisticated way he disappeared when he turned eighteen.

Jade was one year and two months by then, and had recently managed to add the "Da" in Daniel, something that, strangely, was the cause of sadness to their mother, rather than celebration. Jade didn't understand, but she didn't really understand much by then either. 'Nell, as she called him, could sit down on a room with her, list up several swears, and she would be none the wiser, as she repeated them in front of him, and then in front of Ma and 'Llen. But the little toddler would give them a smooth grin with her tiny milk tooth and believe she was a source of entertainment.

At least 'Llen had the decency to correct Jade before it had grown too much on her. Imagine going to parent support groups and the only thing their kid could say was inappropriate words. Not that Ma would ever take Jade, she was too busy staring out the window, telling the same story whenever Jade would tug in the jeans Ma was wearing, the story about the queen and her prince, who had to flee away from the dragon, but still waited for the king to come, and restore the peace.

Or at least that was what she was told she would do. 'Llen, who had become Ellen over the years, had told Jade about her first years. She was the main source to Jade's childhood, as asking her mother wouldn't get anything else than a teary cheek and more intense staring out the window. Ellen was better at remembering, especially when it came to Jade's brother.

Jade had been very curious when she asked Ellen about the boy in the police hat in the framed picture on her fireplace. Ellen had sat down, with the four year old girl on the lap, and talked about Daniel. She told the whole story, the story including Daniel's father, the arrest, WitSec (which Jade didn't fully understand by then), and why there were people in ties and suits visiting all three of them from time to time. In the end she talked about Jade's father, one of several one night stands Jade's mother had in an attempt to start over.

Ellen also told her to not tell anyone, and Jade swore, "cross my heart and hope to die", "zip it, lock it, throw it away", not to tell anybody, anybody, about what Ellen had told her. Not even her mother. But that cross was easy forgotten, and another four years later, Jade had managed to link her mother's only bedtime story with the real story. Absentmindedly, she had one night sat down on the chair on the opposite of her mother's, and asked her mother if she was the queen.

She hadn't seen Ellen since. They moved up to a suburban area outside of Portland, but Ellen wasn't stationed in the house two blocks away when Jade checked. Her mother didn't even bother to try to remember bringing Jade to school, neither did she explain what happened to Jade, when everybody started calling her Karen. It was like living in a nightmare. Karen made friends, Karen became very good in school, while Jade hid inside three cardboard boxes in the attic that she had secretly brought with her, bribing the moving people. Karen often went to the attic, because up there, she was Jade, and Ellen was there too, tucking her into bed, kissing her goodnight.

Karen had to, at all times, remember that she was Karen, not Jade. She learned to use her face, so everybody would believe her when she told them the name, and some friends she made learned her how to slip her fingers into a pocket and pull something out, without the other noticing. When she got caught, Karen would just do the same thing she did with her face when she told them her name. She pretended to be Jade for the seconds she committed a crime, so when they asked her about it, she could be Karen and technically not lie to them. Her mother got frustrated from picking her up at school after phone calls from the principal, and their already unstable relationship was hanging in a thin thread by the start of Karen's teens.

She didn't tell her mother about keeping Jade alive in the attic, creating a driver's license (that didn't start working before Jade was sixteen), a bank account and more for her secret alias. She didn't tell her mother about the tattoo on her shoulder. She didn't tell her mother that she started gymnastics and climbing, and that was why she was so much gone. She didn't talk about the crew of hustlers that taught her to break in to and drive a car, nor did she bother to mention the gun she learned to use, the safes she learned to crack.

But out there, Jade was alive. She was Jade Brooks in the streets, and Karen Oakes in school. Jade plastered a big painting done by Daniel Brooks, her long lost brother, in her attic and imagined her life with him, the boy who was born to be a criminal. He was a role model, and Jade imagined Danny stealing and forging paintings for a living. Karen was oblivious of an older brother, because she didn't have one. Karen was the good girl in school, the girl who probably would end up with a gymnastic scholarship in a whole other edge of the continent, the girl who gave away her lunch money to that kid who had been robbed for his (although she might have an idea where the stolen lunch money was), the perfect little picture of a girl.

Winter in ninth grade for Karen went as smooth as it could, until a single day with ice on the roads, where Jade had been out on shenanigans, and Karen's mother was called to school to pick her up. They brought Karen to the hospital, and let her see her mother. The first day, she was alive, with casts and bandages all over, the next they wouldn't let Karen see her. It didn't take Karen long time to figure it out.

The queen had died waiting for the king.

They sat down with her the day after, and told Karen that she couldn't live alone, that someone was going to take care of her. Karen shook her head, and cried, and hit her mother's doctor, who showed up at the small funeral and didn't understand that he wasn't welcome there. The social worker smiled friendly to Karen, and drove her up to her house, making her get into the depressive place and get whatever she wanted to spare.

After two minutes standing in the doorway of her room, staring at the furniture and mess that was inside, Jade had decided. She managed to get the social worker help her pack up her room, locked her inside, and went up to the attic. Quick and silent like a cat, Jade managed to get every box out of there. She broke into and hotwired the little Toyota the social worker had, and left in the dust, leaving Karen in the locked room with the social worker.

Jade Brooks was alive again, and she felt very alive too. She lay low on a safe house for some weeks, soaring through every file on the remains of her family, Ellen and Daniel. Her mother's papers were burned in the darkest night, after she memorized them, word for word.

But there was one vital thing Jade had forgot about. The car she stole and had placed outside of the safe house was spotted by a cop, and he called in reinforcements. Jade had to secure all the boxes and run away, which she barely managed. She took a plane eastbound, and ran through Detroit, DC and Philadelphia, before ending up in an empty warehouse in Queens, New York. It was a long heat run, but it was worth it. Jade used her Karen alias in Detroit, but changed to Jade in DC, in an attempt to disappear.

It worked. The police that had bothered to follow her all the way from Oregon, lost track of Jade, and was stranded in Detroit. When Jade finally managed to get herself on solid ground in New York, she settled down, and got some contacts, made some new aliases. Karen was replaced with Jenny, Fredrice, Andrea and Winter, all with some ground paperwork, passport, driver's license (for those old enough), forged birth certificate (smuggled into the register), one or two bank accounts and a credit card for the ones over 18. She plastered the red and angry painting Danny had made right before he left in her "bedroom" (a bed pulled into a corner of the warehouse), and went back to her search of the remains of the family she had lost.

If she just could find Ellen, Jade was okay. She could go back to being Jade full-time, and live with Ellen. This was also the reason she picked New York City. Jade remembered vaguely a hushed conversation between the Marshalls behind a door, where they mentioned the Big Apple in the same breath as Ellen. It was the best and only lead she had, so she went with that.

It wasn't easy, aside from the hushed conversation that might had implied that Ellen was here somewhere, Jade had no leads. She was running against US Marshalls, and they were the absolute professionals in hiding people and keeping them hidden. Ellen Parker had no records anywhere, not even the register in the state had for residents, there was no registered driver's license for the name, not even a job application in any government paid jobs had her name. She was one hundred percent disappeared from the earth. Jade's last attempt on finding her had been to soar through the boxes on Daniel again, hoping that if she found him, maybe she could find Ellen through him.

Jade tore her eyes from the birth certificate and glanced through the threads she had hanged up and out the window. This attempt hadn't led to anything either. Daniel had appeared out of nowhere as a three year old boy, and disappeared just as sudden, as an eighteen-year-old. The file fell back to the stack she had been soaring through, and Jade drew her hand over her face in an attempt to keep herself awake and focused. Slowly she rubbed first one eye, so the other while thinking. This stupid hunch had gotten her out of her bed at noon, when she was supposed to be resting up from another all-nighter, staking out her next target. After tossing around in her bed for half an hour, Jade had given up on sleep, and gone back to her boxes, this time pulling out files on her long lost, not really remembered brother she had.

So far, nothing. Daniel had a clean record, nothing out of the usual that could tell her anything about who he was, or where he might be. Jade had hit a dead end again. Stupid hunch for getting her here, getting her hopes up. And now, she probably would have problems with getting back to sleep too, because of him. That hunch didn't get her anything, and it would continue nagging her for weeks, until another would take over.

But what if it was right?

Jade wanted to scream out in frustration, hit her head, anything to stop that small annoying voice in her head. What if the hunch was right, and she had just missed it? What if there was something in these files she was missing?

Or something not in these files? Jade picked up the one she had practically thrown away some seconds ago again. Danny had been Danny for fifteen years, but he had been someone else for three years before that. Bennett something. But Danny wouldn't want to be called his real name again, after understanding what his father had done. Danny would want to take another name. Danny would've want a name that cut ties with him and his family completely, but Jade knew that getting a new alias was really hard, unless you wanted to take some dead baby's name (Jade highly doubted that Daniel had taken a dead baby's name, imagining him to have the same set of standards as she had).

The name, she though for herself. It wouldn't be his father's, Daniel wouldn't want that. But it could be his mothers. If Danny took his mother's last name, and used the name he was given by birth, he would have a perfect alias that cut ties with his own. But what was that? With a little humor, Jade realized that her mother's maiden name would have been Jade's too. She didn't even know her own last name, something that hadn't bothered her before now. Like when Ellen had talked about her father, this information had just slipped through her mind as unnecessary.

Jade moved down to the bed, still with the file in her hand. She had made no progress today, but she felt like no profit was going to come out if she kept thinking on spare batteries. The hunch had fell down in an acceptable state, and in a couple of hours, she had to case the museum (before stealing from it in about twelve hours) this time in broad daylight. The file was left on the floor next to the bed, and Jade shut the lights. The clock on the floor by the foot of her bed ticked, the only remaining sound in the half-lit room. Jade's dozing brain absently counted the ticks. One… Two…

We'll get some Neal next time, and SOMETHING ACTUALLY HAPPENING so stay tuned :D (This was more of an introduction than it was plot) I am not sure about my uploading schedule yet, I'm thinking once or twice a week, if I'm able to. The story is finished (ONLY I KNOW HOW IT ENDS MWHAAHAH), but I feel like it's a bit overwhelming if I put up all parts at once.

Thanks for reading :D