The staff very politely kicked them out around ten p.m. Sam wasn't certain he entirely believed their explanation, that it was better for the health of the visitors as well as the patients to have a few hours of downtime each day, but he wasn't going to argue.

Maybe once they were alone, G would tell him what all of this was about.

Barbara offered them a ride, but G shook his head. "Alfred's having a car brought around. See you in the morning?"

Barbara studied G intently. Like Hetty, she didn't appear intimidated by anyone taller than she was. Finally, she nodded. "See you in the morning. And … thanks for coming."

G only nodded before turning for the exit and the receptionist station beyond where, presumably, he'd find out whether Alfred had, in fact, sent a car. That left Sam alone with Barbara for a moment, and he gave her his best grin.

"Sorry if he's a little … abrupt."

To his surprise, Barbara laughed. "If you think that's abrupt…." She shook her head and smiled up at him. "Thanks. There hasn't been a lot of laughing since he got shot."

"Understandable," Sam agreed. "May I escort you to your car?"

"No, thanks," Barbara replied. "I'll be fine."

Sam was considering how to object - the neighborhood might or might not be generally safe, but there were low-life scum of every class who'd consider a woman in a wheelchair a prime target.

"Hey." Barbara's gentle nudge brought him out of his thoughts. "Look."

She gestured to the chair beside her, and only now did he realize that there were what looked like escrima sticks built into the supports of her chair.

"Yes, I know how to use them," she added. "But thank you. It's rare to find a gentleman anymore."

"At least let me get the door for you." Sam took a couple of steps forward and opened the door to the reception and waiting room.

"Thanks."

Sam followed her through the door, and saw G waiting, keys in hand. He looked uncertain for a moment, before Barbara held out a hand.

G took it and bent to kiss her cheek. "G'night, Babs."

That's when Sam found out that just because Barbara didn't want an escort to her car didn't mean G - and by extension he - wasn't going to watch her until she'd gotten into her van, stowed the wheelchair, and had the engine started.

"You worry too much," she called over the rumble of the engine.

"Habit," G called back with a wave, and then turned to the Mercedes sedan that Alfred must have arranged.

Sam got into the passenger seat and waited until G had started the engine before he spoke. "G -"

"When we get there."

Sam nodded an acknowledgment, then studiously avoided looking at G when he asked, "So - you and Barbara were a thing?"

"I had a mad crush on her when I was a kid," G admitted. "But it never went anywhere."

"Never got up the guts to ask her out?"

"More that she couldn't see me as anything other than the kid she used to babysit."

Sam considered that for a moment. "She looks good for her age."

G snorted.

"G -"

"Please, Sam. Wait until we get there."

Sam watched G navigate onto the freeway. His partner looked better than he had since Hetty had shown up with the courier envelope - not happy, exactly, but accepting of the situation. So Sam sat back and watched the Gotham skyline.

There turned out to be an honest-to-God mansion, sprawling over the equivalent of half a city block in Los Angeles and rising three stories at its towers. A sign on the gate read Wayne Manor, and everything clicked into place.

Sam had heard of Bruce Wayne, of course - he might not make the papers as often as Mark Zuckerberg or Warren Buffett, but he wasn't a recluse, either - but had never expected that G Callen would have any connection to a billionaire.

"The hell, G?" Sam said. "You grew up here, and now you can barely be bothered to stay in one place?"

"I grew up here," G said as he pulled the Mercedes up to a garage, but parked it outside. "But it's not where I'm from. I'm just a Romani brat who got in way over his head."

"Romani." Sam repeated the word, testing it. "You mean gypsy?"

"I mean Romani," G said. He climbed out of the car and waited for Sam to do the same before locking it and heading for the house. "Gypsy is actually considered an insult."

"No offense meant."

"None taken."

The door opened as they approached, and Sam wondered idly if Alfred were somehow related to Hetty Lange.

"You should be in bed, Alfred," G admonished the older man.

"I shall retire directly, Master G," Alfred said. "But there are snacks in the refrigerator and Scotch in the drawing room."

"I wouldn't expect anything else," G said. Then he looked down, and Sam wondered what had made his confident partner so uncertain. With a silent breath in, G raised his eyes once more. "Anything different downstairs?"

Alfred's eyes widened. "Are you certain that's wise?"

G's mouth twisted into a grim expression that wasn't quite a smile. "I'm certain that when I got shot the first time, you visited me. Babs visited. Hell, even Pop Haly came to visit. But he never did."

Alfred looked like he wanted to protest, but he simply nodded, his lips compressed in a thin line. Sam had to wonder what the story was behind that shot, but G was speaking again.

"I'm equally certain that when I got shot the last time, Sam didn't just visit. His wife and kids practically set up camp in my hospital room. I don't know if it's wise or not, but if anyone deserves the truth about me, it's Sam."

"Very well," Alfred said, and Sam heard a little more warmth in his tone. "No changes, save the combination is the day you left us."

"Thanks, Alfred," G said before turning to Sam. "Scotch or snack?"

"Scotch," Sam said fervently. "Definitely Scotch. Probably a double."

G chuckled. "Scotch it is. Night, Alfred."

"Good night, Master G, Master Hanna."

"Just Sam," Sam began, but G shook his head.

"He's genetically incapable of calling anyone just by their first name."

"Not entirely correct," Alfred said. "I am incapable of being rude without intending to be so."

"A true gentleman." G grinned, and Alfred nodded once before turning and vanishing into the depths of the house.

Sam followed G into what had to be the drawing room, trying not to gawk like a tourist. Of course G noticed anyway.

"Go ahead, look around. I spent the first month I was here just exploring, and I don't know that I've seen all of it yet."

Sam could take a hint, and wandered slowly around the room, taking in the portraits on the wall - one of the man in the hospital bed with a very young G beside him and another of an older couple who might have been the man's parents, as well as the books on the shelves - a healthy mix of nonfiction subjects as well as the classics and a handful of popular novels, and the antique furniture and objets d'art scattered tastefully about.

Sam shook his head and turned back to G, who stood with two tumblers of amber liquid in his hands. "All of this as a kid, and now you barely have a chair and a bed."

"What else do I need?" G extended one of the tumblers to Sam, who took it and inhaled the spicy-sweet aroma.

"What is it, some kind of teenage rebellion?" Sam took a slow sip, savored the burn of the whisky down his throat, and almost moaned.

"Glenlivet," G said. "Founder's Reserve. I'm thinking I'll get Hetty a bottle for Christmas."

"As long as you get me one, too." Sam followed G to a cluster of chairs in a conversational grouping, though he couldn't bring himself to sprawl in one the way G did. "You gonna tell me the story?"

G swirled the whisky in his glass and took a sip before he met Sam's gaze squarely. "I was born Richard John Grayson, part of the Flying Graysons circus act."

"Circus, G?" Sam didn't doubt his partner, but that sounded like something out of a child's fantasy. "Really?"

Thankfully, G took his skepticism in stride. "Really. By the time I was six, I was doing quadruple somersaults without a net. That was my family's trademark - we never used a net."

Sadness lurked behind G's carefully neutral expression. Sam said only, "And?"

"And - one night we were performing here, in Gotham. I didn't know it at the time, but there were some mobsters shaking down Pop Haly - he owned the circus. He didn't pay, and they sabotaged the trapezes. My parents fell to their deaths."

"I'm sorry, G." Sam had to say it, though G didn't look like he wanted or needed sympathy.

"Bruce Wayne was in the audience that night," G continued, his gaze more on the liquid in his glass than anywhere else. "His parents were murdered when he was young, too, and when the CPS people thought that a circus wasn't a good environment for an orphaned child, he took me in. That's the easy part."

Sam stared at his partner. "Not sure I want to know what the hard part is."

"It's your choice." G sounded serious, and Sam found himself straightening in his chair. "I'll tell you everything if you want to know. But if you don't … no harm, no foul."

The words seemed sincere enough, but Sam knew his partner well enough to know that if he refused this offering of G's whole self, he might as well go looking for another partner. He wouldn't do that, not least because over the years, G had become more than a partner. He'd become family.

"Tell me," Sam said.

"Easier if I show you." G rose to his feet and crossed to an unobtrusive door in a far corner.

Sam followed, watching closely, but G shielded his movements with his body. Still, the quiet clicks Sam heard suggested G was tapping a code into a keypad.

When G pushed the door open and stepped through it, Sam couldn't see any sign of a keypad in the wall.

"Nice work," he said.

G just shrugged. "C'mon."

Sam followed him through the door, nodding in approval as G closed and secured it behind them, and then down a staircase into a … cavern?

Sam frowned and looked more closely. Yes, it was a cavern, but a cavern unlike any he'd ever seen - filled with enough computers and screens to make Eric and Nell jealous, plus a gym set-up, and a couple of cars and a motorcycle. To one side, Sam could just see a couple of free-standing cabinets, but they were in deep enough shadow that he couldn't make out any more details.

G dropped into one of the chairs at the computer station. "Welcome to the Batcave."

"Batcave?" Sam looked up into darkness. "There are bats here?"

G laughed. "Not unless something's gone badly wrong. No, Batcave as in Batman."

"Batman." Sam turned the name over in his mind. It sounded familiar, but … he got it. "Gotham's urban legend."

And had the satisfaction of seeing G's visible surprise. "You've heard of him."

"Aiden went through a phase of urban legends a while back. Batman was his favorite."

G chuckled without humor. "Bruce'll love that."

"Bruce … Wayne? Bruce Wayne is Batman … Batman's real?"

"Sit down before you fall down, Sam." G kicked another office chair toward him, and Sam sank into it.

"He told me not long after I'd moved in," G said. "Brought me down here, asked if I wanted to help him get justice for my parents… or revenge. After a pretty good argument that sometimes they're the same -"

"They're not," Sam said.

"No, they're not, but I was too young to know that, hence the argument." G took another sip of whisky. "Long story short, I became his sidekick, and I took the photo that sent my parents' killer to the electric chair."

"Good," Sam said. Then he frowned. "So all that stuff about being in thirty-seven foster homes between the ages of five and eighteen is a lie?"

"Not a lie, not entirely," G said. "I was in and out of foster homes, but I was investigating them."

"Investigating them? For what?"

"Compliance with the rules, abuse, neglect …" G trailed off with a shrug. "It was a change of pace from going out with Bruce every night, and it mattered to me. I'd avoided the foster system by sheer luck, and I wanted to make sure anyone who wasn't so lucky at least wasn't abused in the process."

"But you were a kid," Sam objected, trying to picture Aiden or Kamran doing that kind of work at five. No, he corrected himself, G said he was at least eight or nine. Still, the image wouldn't come.

"I didn't feel like one," G said. "Not since my parents died. And Bruce … Bruce is a good man, at heart, but a crusader more than a parent."

"Why'd he kick you out?"

"Because I got shot."

"What?"

"Chill, okay? It was a long time ago, and it was a long time coming. My getting shot was just the final straw."

"Damn, G -" Sam broke off. "Or is it Richard?"

"G. I left Richard Grayson behind when I walked out of here." G blew out a breath. "It wasn't easy, but there were too many associations with that name. It was better to be G Callen, a blank slate, so I could do what I wanted to do."

"Which was?" Sam asked.

"Do what he does -" G waved a hand to indicate the cave where they sat. "Only do it right, within the law, not outside it."

Sam had a hundred questions, but before he could ask even one, the rumble of an engine - motorcycle, he thought, but it was difficult to be certain given the odd echoes within the cave - sounded.

G shot to his feet, setting his Scotch aside as he did. Sam followed suit, reaching for the weapon at his back. G held out a hand.

"Probably won't need that. Only friends know how to get in here from the outside."

"That you know of," Sam corrected. G didn't object, so Sam unholstered his pistol, held it by his side but out of view of the tunnel where the engine noise came from.

A few seconds later, the motorcycle came into view. Sam squinted against the sudden brightness thrown by its headlight and could just make out the silhouette of the rider.

The rider - male, maybe a teenager based on his size, Sam decided - brought the motorcycle to a stop beside the biggest of the cars arrayed in the cave and turned to face them as he lifted the faceplate on his helmet. Once his eyes adjusted to the normal light of the cavern, Sam saw that the rider wore a suit of body armor in muted reds and greens … and a cape lined in yellow?

It was only the rider's serious expression when he removed his helmet that kept Sam from laughing aloud - that, and G's tension beside him.

"Who are you?" the rider demanded. "How did you get in?"

"From the drawing room," G answered easily. "And as to who I am … you're wearing my costume - Robin, right?"

The rider's lips thinned, and Sam would bet his eyes narrowed behind the mask he wore. "You're the one who walked away."

"I'm the one he kicked out," G said evenly, and the exchange only made Sam want all the details of that event. "Good idea to mute the colors on the suit, but why keep the cape?"

"What do you mean?" The rider - Robin - hadn't come any closer, but he also hadn't made any threatening moves. Sam told himself to relax, but G's tension kept him from following through.

"The body armor is because I got shot." G's voice was way too casual, but Sam let him handle the conversation his own way. "But considering it was his cape that meant I couldn't see the shooter, you'd think he'd have gotten rid of that, too. Not to mention the craptastic air resistance."

"What are you doing here?" Robin came down the stairs from the platform where he'd parked the motorcycle toward them. As he came closer, Sam's hunch that he was barely in his teens was confirmed. Sam's gut clenched at the thought of someone his son's age going out into the streets to … what? Fight crime?

"Alfred sent for me. You can call me G."

The young man frowned, and G shrugged. "You don't have to give me your name if you don't want to. I won't go looking for it."

"You couldn't find it." Robin sounded confident, borderline cocky.

"Careful," Sam said, returning his pistol to its holster. "He'll take that as a challenge."

Robin's eyes followed the movement, but he said nothing.

"What were you working on?" G asked, and the question made Robin's shoulders sag just a little.

"Trying to find out who shot him."

G's eyebrows shot up. "Nobody's bragging about it?"

"Not that I've heard, and I've been out there every night since it happened."

"No offense," Sam said, "but would anyone actually talk to you about it? In costume or otherwise?"

Robin scowled at him. "What do you mean?"

"You're what - thirteen?" Sam guessed. Robin didn't say anything, but he stiffened slightly, and Sam suspected he was right. "Nobody's gonna brag to a kid."

Now Robin bristled. "You think they'd brag to you?"

"Yeah," Sam said easily. "I do."

"This is what we do, Robin," G said and showed his badge. "We're federal agents, undercover specialists."

"So let us try," Sam said, in the bargaining but still conversational tone he'd perfected with Aiden and Kamran. "Got nothing to lose, right?"

"Just give us a place to start," G added. "Whatever you have so far."

Robin looked between them, still dubious, but then blew out a breath. "The trail gets colder every night. Okay."

"Okay," G said. "Sleep tonight, and tomorrow, you show us what you have, and we'll get started. Deal?"

G offered his hand, and Robin shook it before turning to Sam with his hand outstretched.

"Good grip," Sam said, impressed in spite of himself.

"C'mon, Sam." G picked up his glass and drained it. "Time for good little agents to be in bed."

Sam followed G back up the stairs and into the house proper. After a detour to the kitchen - and damn but Michelle would kill for a kitchen like that one, all granite and stainless steel - they made their way upstairs aided by night lights plugged in along the stairwell and the hallway. G paused outside a door.

"My room when I lived here," he said, and his tone was somber.

"Bad memories?" Sam asked.

"Not bad - just a lot of them." G pointed to the door Sam stood beside. "Yours. Pretty sure it has an en suite bathroom. If not - what?"

Sam let out his grin. "Surprised you even know what an en suite is."

"Funny guy." G scowled, but there was no real anger in it. "Alfred usually doesn't have breakfast ready until ten at the earliest, so come get me when you wake up and I'll scrounge something from the kitchen."

"Those snacks he said he made?" Sam guessed.

"Probably." G turned away but paused before he opened the door to his room. Sam waited, and it was only a few heartbeats before G turned back. "Thanks for coming."

"It's what partners do, partner." Sam clapped G on the shoulder, hoping his tone conveyed his sincerity, and then turned to go into the room he'd been assigned.

It was as luxurious as he'd expected, and he snapped a couple of pictures on his cell phone to show Michelle when he got home - never mind that they might spark a round of redecorating.

G let the door of his room close behind him and sagged against it, letting the tension of the day drain out of him. Bad enough learning that Bruce had been shot, but that he'd taken on another Robin? He'd never expected that.

But G had treated the newcomer the way Bruce had always treated him, with respect and understanding, and so far that seemed to ease the new Robin's distrust. He'd have to play that situation by ear, carefully, and prod Alfred for whatever information he might provide.

And he'd have to thank Sam properly - not just for coming, but for listening and for accepting. Or at least, G corrected, withholding any judgment.

He kicked off his boots and took them to the closet, then removed his weapon and emptied his pockets, lining everything up neatly on the nightstand, before letting himself collapse on the bed.

Too soft, his brain supplied, but he was too tired to care and was asleep within seconds.