Notes: This one is based off a comment K made on Unexpected Past over on AO3. I had an idea while reading it which I really wanted to try. So, here's another White Collar/Chuck/Batman crossover. This time, Neal Caffrey isn't Dick Grayson. This time, Neal is Damian Wayne.

The time this story takes place is in the future of Batman (Damain's grown up), after the series end of Chuck and after Season 3 for Chuck. I've placed the prompt at the end.

Chapter 1

The dark haired woman slipped into her apartment. It had almost been a year since she moved to Burbank, LA. She had thought that she would never live anywhere but Gotham as an adult. Even though circumstances saw it that she settled her, her father was all for her living in a different city; any city that wasn't Gotham really, and LA was good for her job as a model.

Mar'i had to admit, she had a good arrangement going. She worked Buy More shifts when work was light and could take time off from the Buy More whenever her modelling work took up most of her time.

She looked at the door and frowned. The line she attached across the doorway had been snapped by someone who wasn't her. The playing card she usually slot into the top had fallen into the garden. Her door had been opened.

"Okay, whoever broke in, I hope you know who you're dealing with." She lit up her hand with a purple starbolt, her eyes glowing in anticipation of a fight and stepped into her house.

"You'd zap a thief with a starbolt? Isn't that overkill?" A familiar voice said. It has a slight British undertone and gave away the speaker's upper-class breeding.

"Damian?" Mar'i questioned, extinguishing the starbolt and switching on the light.

Damian was sitting at the dinning area table with a computer and numerous IDs in front of him. His dark hair was in disarray and his blue-green eyes didn't divert from his work before him.

"What happened?" Last she knew, he had been in New York and tied to a 2 mile radius. "Did you manage to get your sentence commuted?"

Damian's face grew stormy. "No."

Mar'i waited a moment to see if he would explain more. Then, when he didn't elaborate, she put her hands on her hips and huffed. "Then what are you doing here? Don't tell me you went on the run again?"

"Come on, Mar'i. The only reason I even ended up working for the FBI was because you got contacted by that corrupt FBI agent." After a pause, he added, "and then you got blown up."

Mar'i rolled her eyes. If he was pretending that the FBI job had meant nothing to him, then he really must not have wanted to talk about why he was here and not there. "That was part of Sarah's plan."

"Which Sara?" Damian countered with a sparkle in his eye. He knew how much that annoyed her. Mostly because he had pursued a relationship with both, one before her and one after. Sure, they had agreed to take a break since her father had been furious at him for using her as bait and almost getting her blown up but still, did she have to hear about Sara Ellis, the insurance investigator?

"You know which Sarah. You better not play this game with Chuck. I do not think he will like it."

"You don't seem to like it either," Damian mused. "And I won't be seeing Chuck."

Mar'i paused. Now that didn't seem like Damian at all. Even when Chuck flew into New York for just a couple of days to extract her, Damian had made the time to talk with his old friend.

"Why not?"

"I'm just hanging around while Mozzie acquires an island for us to hang out at for a while. I'll get a tan, maybe do some drug busts and then come back here as 'Damian Wayne'."

Wait a sec- "You're burning Neal Caffrey?"

"I have to."

There was no way Mar'i was letting him do that. Neal was the nicest of Damian's aliases.

Chuck frowned when his phone beeped with an alert. It came from one of the systems he had hacked into as a late teen.

The FBI. He thought they were doing better lately, since the incident with Fowler and Alder had managed to expose a number of corrupted agents. Even so, what he had begun to think of as his 'Neal Alert' had gone off.

Should he tell Mar'i? Neal was someone close to her heart after all. Although, Neal should probably contact her himself. But what if he didn't?

"You seem to thinking quite hard there," Sarah commented. He had been so lost in thought that he hadn't noticed her coming up to him.

"Yeah," he agreed. He winced as he heard the heavy tone to his voice.

"What happened?"

"Neal's on the run. The FBI is after him. Do you think I should tell Mar'i? Her shift starts in half and hour and I haven't decided yet."

Sarah thought about it. She got along with Mar'i alright however, the two were years apart and there was a gap there.

"I think the real question is if you're going to tell Beckman."

"Why?" The CIA's official stance was that Bryce Larkin was dead, not that he was running around as the accomplished criminal known as Neal Caffrey. The unofficial stance was that he was undercover indefinitely and was not to be approached.

"This will affect his cover. Same as the events just a year ago did."

"Yeah, well, how were we supposed to know that there was another person behind Fowler?"

It was only thanks to Mar'i's forethought that she had been able to escape the plane. An added escape hatch which activated when the explosions went off, regardless of who set them off. Plus, her higher heat resistance than a normal human and helped her survive the heat of the flames.

No one had expected Fowler to active the explosives. However, Fowler hadn't been the one in control. Control had been handed to 'the man behind the curtain', Vincent Adler. He was currently serving his sentence after Neal and Peter caught him.

"Come on Chuck, I know you're smarter than that. Not only is it a waste of taxpayer money to have the FBI chasing down an ex-CIA agent they're never going to catch, I'm also getting my face plastered almost everywhere."

Sarah breathed sharply in as Damian seemed to appear from almost nowhere. He was dressed in nice pants and a black turtleneck, similar to how he had looked when he had last visited.

"Actually," Mar'i stated from right behind them. Sarah breathed in again, heart racing. How did they manage to sneak up on her like this? "It seems Peter Burke is taking a step back on this one. It's keeping information from spreading quickly as other agents fight for the right course of action."

"I guess that give us some time to figure out what we're going to do," Chuck mused.

Damian sat with his legs crossed on the couch and a controller in his lap. He mashed away at buttons, the ninja-like character on the screen jumping and letting a number of kicks land on the opposing pirate-like character.

Next to him, leaning forward as he mashed away, was Chuck. Behind them, Sarah and Mar'i sat at the dining room table, both a little annoyed at how the boys were putting their gaming time above planning time.

"His flight leaves this evening and he's sitting there playing games," Sarah sighed, wondering what she saw in Damian back when he had been Bryce. It had probably been his confidence and how he kept this side of himself hidden.

Mar'i seemed just as grumpy. "We really should be figuring out what to do about Kramer. What if his goal was just to get Neal out of the White Collar office?"

"There's nothing we can do about that," Damian responded, wincing as Chuck landed a strike on his character and knocked him to the ground. "Kramer has us in checkmate."

"Or he has us in check and is bluffing a checkmate. Either way, we should analyse the board."

Chuck paused the game. "You know, your girlfriend is right."

Damian muttered, "she's not my girlfriend," under his breath.

Although Mar'i didn't hear that, she responded to Chuck's comment. "I'd be his girlfriend if he took me out on a proper date for once!"

Damian swirled around, almost leaning over the top of the couch. "Seriously?"

"Of course." Mar'i smiled, face slightly flush with embarrassment. What if he was just going to tease her about her crush on him?

Damian thought about it before saying that he would arrange something.

"Weren't you going to a tropical island this evening though?" Chuck mused.

"What to come to a tropical island with me?" Damian asked Mar'i.

Mar'i laughed.

Comment from K on AO3 on Unexpected Past:

Anyway, I really do like that idea of Neal taking Kate to Chuck for protection, and pretty much inserting himself into everything that came after season 3 while dodging Peter, Deathstroke and the League Of Assassins and his family - all which further complicates Chuck's life. But I don't think I could write it. I've lost track of who Damian is, so I can't catch his voice; I'm years out of date. But I would still love to see this as an actual story so - if you're interested in writing it, or know someone who might be, I'd be glad to read it.