Personality Switch

The people who knew them growing up, wouldn't recognize them. After all, they had switched personalities… or had they?

Danny was the serious one. It was his life goal to be a cop someday, to carry on the family name by being the hero his father once was. In order to achieve that, he worked very hard. Ellen was a great source of information and she trained him as much as she could. For the rest, Danny studied and practiced heavily with a determination that belied his age. When graduation was looming on the horizon, he had a four point oh grade average, an impressive collection of volunteer work, and a solid reputation that made others believe he would be a great cop.

Bryce, he didn't have a care in the world. Life was about doing well in school so that he could play his video games in peace, or simply read his comic books without anyone telling him he needed to get his homework done. His time was spent learning Klingon, running, and studying programing so that he could learn how to make his own games someday.

Then things changed.

At eighteen, Ellen requested for the boys to come to her place for an evening, she had something to discuss with them. No one expected what was to come of it.

Danny took off out the door like his life depended on it, the responsible boy ran away.

Bryce stayed quietly in shock as he thought through the implications, the gamer thought about the future.

Standing in the middle of the White Collar office, the twins stood face to face for the first time since that night.

If you closed your eyes you could see them silently circling each other as they looked for the clues of how the last decade had treated them and what kind of men they had become. With your eyes open, you watched two men stand awkwardly in front of each other with no idea how to react to each other.

Neal was guilty, he knew he shouldn't have simply run away without saying anything to Bryce. It was wrong and he had hurt his brother in a way he had once promised not to do. He wasn't surprised that Bryce wasn't speaking to him.

Bryce was trapped in a kaleidoscope of feelings. He was so relieved that his brother was okay that he simply wanted to hug him, yet he was so angry that there were no words to express his emotions. His brother had left him without saying goodbye, left him wondering if he was even alive. There was too much to say, so he didn't say anything at all.

It was Peter who relieved the awkwardness, or at least tried. He pulled the twins up to his office and directed them to talk.

He quickly regretted it.

Raising his voice above the yelling, Peter directed the boys to take turns, starting with Neal.

"I left that night, and found myself running away as fast as I could go.

For fifteen years I had worked to become a hero like dad with everything that I had… only to discover that he wasn't a hero at all. It was devastating, and I didn't know what to do, so I simply put distance between myself and my problem.

Time past, and being a young run away on the streets, I needed to find a way to get by.

It was surprisingly easy to take the skills that I had been learning and redirect my uses of them. Turn skills for chasing a criminal into skills for evading the police, painting into forging, having a light touch for pickpocketing, and so on. Eventually, it became addicting and I was hooked on the adrenaline high that came with pulling off a successful crime.

I may have left home that night, but nothing was truly left behind, no matter how much I may wish otherwise. What I mean is… I wanted to leave behind the past of being the son of James Bennett, but no matter where I went, I found myself still feeling like I was tainted.

Then I decided to begin working my way up in the criminal world. As Neal Caffrey, I can recreate myself to suit any situation and pretend that I am anyone that I want to be. For a few hours, I can leave those tainted feelings behind because I am someone else.

In New York I found myself picking up a mentor who taught me to take my skills to a whole new level. Unfortunately, funding those lessons also put me on the FBI's radar and led to Agent Peter Burke here being assigned to my case.

For three years, we played cat and mouse on an International scale in a battle of wits. To finish the game, Peter was intelligent, he used Kate's location to lure me into his trap.

Then I gave up. I wanted to see Kate again and I was tired of running, always looking over my shoulder to see if my past had caught up to me.

He ensured that I faced the justice system to receive the consequences for my actions. The jury gave me a four year sentence in maximum security and I served my time… mostly. With four months left, Kate broke up with me as she was being threatened, so I escaped.

Peter caught me again and I got another four year sentence as punishment. We had a meeting a week later where I presented my request for a deal. He took a while, but eventually he agreed to take me on as his CI.

This is where I have been for the last few years. Working as a consultant for the FBI, residing in the apartment provided by the lovely June Ellington, and simply living as a citizen with a sordid past that can be used for good.

As Neal finished telling his story, he could see that Bryce wasn't entirely going along with it. There was a stony look on his face and it was obvious that he was still angry.

"You were always the one who told me that there was a way to handle problems by solving them. That I shouldn't always be trying to run away or hiding from them in a comic book. Then you become a hypocrite and run away to hide behind a con man's mask. Which, by the way, is also hypocritical of the way you were always standing for justice and 'doing the right thing' growing up." There was a seething fury held in behind his words but it escaped in the context and clenched jaws of his expression.

Neal sighed. He couldn't tell the truth to either of them. There was just too much at stake at the moment. Perhaps he would be able to, before the lies drove the people that he cared about away.

Peter was curious of the whole story, but the contradictions that Bryce pointed out bothered him too.

It was obvious that Neal couldn't entirely explain the situation, so Peter nodded for Bryce to share his story.

That night changed my life.

For the first time in my life my older brother left me and I was the man of the house. It was my responsibility to make sure that mom was taken care of when she was more focused inwards than outwards, I had school to finish, and I had Ellen to console when she feared that she had driven you away.

When graduation came, I went to college at Stanford and earned a degree in Engineering. After graduation I went to work in the world and have been taking care of myself just fine.

Neal simply rolled his eyes. "That's why you leave out the whole 'getting your best friend kicked out for cheating' and supposedly getting 'shot to death' in a bank while working a late night as an accountant. You aren't an accountant or dead, and your friend didn't cheat. So you can criticize me all you want about my life choices not adding up to my childhood perspective because you aren't being entirely honest about yourself either."

Bryce was mystified. "H-how do you know about that?"

"Despite appearances, I didn't entirely leave you behind. Things happened and I couldn't go home again, so I watched from a distance." Neal tried to play off his protectiveness as not being a big deal, but Bryce felt like maybe the brother he knew, was still standing in front of him.

It was like Peter wasn't in the room anymore. He simply stood off to the side and quietly watched the brothers talk while taking in as many details for his own personal knowledge as possible.

The conversation was a start, but the brothers were still hiding so much that nothing was fully resolved.

Until another case another day revealed the truth.

No one in the White Collar team expected the case to be anything more than a simple forgery ring. Then they got word that the CIA was sending over a representative that they thought might be able to work well with them in order to prevent the spreading of top secret information via the forger's art.

You could hear a pin drop when the conference room full of agents and Neal turned around at the entrance of their CIA contact only to discover Bryce standing in a G-man suit with a gun and badge visible. Surprisingly, Neal just seemed to be mentally filling in some gaps and acted like his brother being a secret agent wasn't something unexpected. It was just the rest of the office that didn't know what to do with a Neal-look-a-like sporting a gun.

The case progressed smoother than expected while the team worked as normal with the addition of Bryce to Peter and Neal's usual partnership.

Peter kept trying to get the brothers to reconnect when he wasn't trying to solve the case. Neal took everything in stride, but was watchful of both their backs with a protectiveness that Peter had never experienced before. Finally, Bryce kept throwing confused sideways glances at his brother.

Neal was always the protective big brother who watched out for his family. He never complained about Bryce's easy going dream to be a game designer, it was something he perceived as being safe. That was what had Bryce concerned. Based on what he had revealed, Neal should be worried, asking questions, demanding answers he couldn't give, trying to persuade him to get another career… but he wasn't, and that was out of character. Perhaps it was a result of the other changes? After all, Neal was often smiling and acting like life was just a big game, which was Bryce's norm, not Neal's.

Meanwhile, Neal was reflecting on how Bryce wasn't entirely acting in his character. He gave up his dream to be a game designer with his best friend, he was determined to be an agent in an especially dangerous division, and he was not afraid to face the consequences of his actions… This wasn't what he expected from the kid who once lived for the idea of designing games with a good friend and who wasn't above running away from his problems.

Then the case took a dangerous twist.

It was just Peter, Neal, and Bryce looking into a location to see if it was worth the effort to get a warrant. What they didn't expect was for the whole building to go into a lock down leaving the three of them trapped and in danger.

Suddenly they were rushed by a gang of men who thought they were going to win a fight against three men. Needless to say, they were all surprised.

Barking out orders like a practiced drill sergeant, Neal organized the three of them into a defensive triangle. Covering each other's backs, the three of them pulled out their fighting skill and defeated their foes with ease.

When the case was closed, Neal shrugged at their inquiries saying there was more to the story. In response, Peter and Bryce hauled Neal off to do some explaining.

"I left home that night and went for a walk.

What I didn't expect was for a black van to pull up and men jump out to grab me a few blocks later."

There was a gasp from the two listeners as they hadn't imagined a scenario like this before. He ignored them and continued with the story.

"For weeks I was locked up in a basement room with no way out. The walls were solid cement with no windows, vents welded shut, and the door wasn't anything more than heavy wood with a crack around its edges. There was no way out and nothing inside but a bed and basic bathroom.

When they took me out of the room, they bound my hands with shackles so that I couldn't pick the cuffs, I did the first time they interrogated me. Once we entered the room, they attached the chains to the wall and…"

He paused again and shivered not wanting to continue to go into details. Still, he needed to get this out because his brother and friend needed to know.

"Anyway, they tried to make me talk about dad. Fortunately I didn't know anything to tell so it was easy to keep my mouth shut. Then they tried to get me to share information about the rest of the family, including Ellen. They were surprised that I was so determined to not say anything that they couldn't make me.

Eventually, their other activities caught up to them and an NSA agent infiltrated their group. After he figured out what they were doing to me, who I was, and the efforts I had made to either resist their interrogation or escape… he rescued me and recruited me to the NSA.

From there I continued to train, learned how to watch over the family from a distance, and I became a field agent. My main alias is Neal Caffrey. For the FBI I am working to catch crooked cops, mostly in connection to our father's cohorts. With the NSA, Caffrey is a cover for International missions. People spend so much time looking at the shiny conman that they miss the agent hidden behind, and that's the point."

Bryce was quiet as he contemplated what his brother was actually going through while he sat at home hating him for running away. He didn't know what to say, so again, he said nothing. Wrapping his arms around his brother, he let his actions speak for him. The hug said 'I'm sorry you had to go through that, I'm sorry I doubted you, thank you for all you have done…' Then he chuckled a little bit. "So you turned out to be quite the hero after all, just not in the way that we originally imagined. Also, no wonder you weren't giving me a hard time for being a secret agent… that would be hypocritical of you." He was relieved and impressed. His brother was a secret agent too.

Peter was upset to hear about what Neal had gone through. It wasn't a past that you wanted your best friend to go through, yet alone go through alone at such a young age. Then he was somewhat suspicious. How could he be an agent and play a conman?

Seeing Peter wonder about the agent part, Neal pulled out his badge and passed it to Peter to verify.

He called in Agent Danny Larkin and was surprised that it came through as being a legitimate task force agent ID.

Once the initial shock wore off, Peter and Bryce were both relieved and amused. Peter may have been a little bit annoyed too, but he tried not to let it show. After all, it wasn't bad news to learn his friend was in deep cover, it was just annoying to learn that he had missed all of the signs for nearly a decade.

The evening was carried back to the Burke's home where they enjoyed some of El's cooking and general friendly banter. Bryce became an extended member of their odd little family while Neal became a closer member with the truth in the open.

It turned out that the twins hadn't changed so much as they had thought.

Neal was still serious about being a cop, only now he was a secret agent. No one was going to hurt his little brother without risking his wrath and his friends could finally let go and trust him without worry.

Bryce still didn't have a direction, he was simply working one mission after the other and life was still just a big game, only now it was full of cloak and dagger deception. Eventually, he would pick back up his friendship with Chuck again. His only goals were to work with his brother and best friend.

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I'm noting here: I don't plan on taking prompts and don't guarantee to write any that may be shared. However, if there is something that you would like to see, keep it clean, and I will take it into consideration as a storyline or plot filler for this or other stories.