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Adler was pissed off.
Neal and his FBI agents were getting too close to the Music Box for his liking. He chuckled to himself. He had a few contacts that might help him slow them down enough to ensure that he found the treasure first.
It had taken a few days and burned a few favors, but he had finally gotten his hands on some genuine Fear Toxin. His source had made sure to specify that only half a dose was necessary if he was injecting someone with it, and if he was deploying it as an aerosol, he’d need a top-of-the-line gas mask. Adler was not a man who liked to leave anything to chance, so he filled two syringes with half of the toxin each.
Dick woke up with a pounding headache. He was tied to a chair, bound at the wrists, ankles, and torso. He blinked slowly against the migraine brewing in his skull and assessed his surroundings. He was in a low-lit warehouse, and there was a camera in his face, just your average kidnapping.
‘Yeah, it must be Tuesday.’
First order of business- figuring out ‘who’ had been kidnapped. Between Neal Caffrey, Dick Grayson, and Nightwing, he had accumulated a ridiculous amount of enemies and potential kidnappers; and each had their own sets of Rules of Engagement. He didn’t want to go all Nightwing on somebody if this was a Dick Grayson Issue, and even though he was in civilian clothes, there was an equal chance this was a Dick issue or a Neal issue.
There was also a slim chance that someone had found out his Secret Identity and this was a Nightwing issue but thought he’d be an easier target if they got him as a civilian.
‘Damn, there are just too many options.’
When Adler walked in, he felt an odd combination of relief and apprehension. At least this wasn’t a Nightwing thing. But then again Adler was an odd man to work against, very twisted for not being a supervillain, yet.
Adler adjusted the camera to make sure that it was pointing at Neal and fiddled with some settings and set it to start streaming.
“I bet you wonder why you’re here, Neal,” He started to pontify.
‘Oh great, he's going to be one of those villains,’ Dick thought.
“You’re saying I’m not here because you missed me? I’ve got to say, your office seems to have declined in luxury since I was last in it,” Dick taunted.
“You truly are fearless, aren’t you? I don’t frighten you at all.” Adler seemed oddly pleased with his unbothered response.
“I guess today we will find out what you truly fear.” Adler laughed at his own joke, as he took the first syringe and injected it slowly into Dick’s neck. He depressed the plunger, pushing the horrible liquid into Dick’s veins.
“You should soon start to feel the effects of the toxin I have given you- a recipe courtesy of Gotham’s very own Scarecrow. This dose should keep you on the edge of terror for hours. I want to see what you are really afraid of.”
“Oh no. Fear Toxin you said. Whatever shall I do.” Dick said this with no emotion whatsoever. He could tell it was an old strand of toxin from the minty taste on his tongue after the shot. He had been hit with the “Fear-mints” enough when he was younger, so he was mostly immune from that whole strain. It had been far enough back that Bruce had still let him name the file system- a decision that ‘B’ regretted greatly.
Dick knew he had a bit of a habit of getting himself into trouble. Really, it wasn’t his fault. He hadn’t known a quiet day in his life. Between Haly’s circus, living with Bruce, being Robin and Nightwing- comparatively, Neal Caffrey was downright boring.
‘Surely, Bruce couldn’t blame him for having a tiny bit of fun?’
He was pretty sure that Alder had no idea what it looked like when someone was on the Fear Tox. There was just no point in videoing a person screaming at the top of their lungs for hours at a time or staring blankly at the wall shaking- the two most common reactions to Scarecrow’s little poisons.
No, someone on fear toxin would get trapped in their own head, not babble out their fears out loud like Adler seemed to think. For Batman’s sake, this wasn’t a movie or a comic where things just happened like that so the audience could be a part of it.
‘Oh well, let’s give him a show.’
Dick let out a small moan, followed by a whimper.
“OH no, why…” He started.
‘Damn, I’m going to have to think up something to be afraid of aren’t I. I’d better pick something that can’t be weaponized against me.’
Dick put an overly dramatic look on his face and stared at the floor before letting out another whimper. He squirmed in his chair making it look like he was trying to get away from something, while in reality he was simply untying the bindings.
“Oh, why are we so high up?” Dick moaned again, before going back to looking around the room at random with a terrified look on his face.
‘Ok, we have two goons in the south corner, but no one on the north wall. These guys look like amateurs. They shouldn’t be clustering up like that, it just makes them easier to knock out all at once.’ Dick started to analyze the scene before realizing he’d been silent for just a bit too long…
‘Oops, got to keep Adler entertained or else he might try something else.’
“God please, let me get down from here.” Dick begged. “Whatever I did to upset you… I promise I won’t do it ever again. Just. Just let me down from this open drop. Please. I don’t like heights, please.”
Dick threw in some extra heart-wrenching sobs and a few voice cracks for good measure. How long had it been since he was kidnapped? How long had it been since he was given the toxin? He was quickly getting bored with the whole thing. Maybe he should wrap this up.
He had finished looking around and had figured out at least three ways out of here without revealing that he was in fact Nightwing.
Just as he was contemplating slipping out of his bonds and knocking Adler out, the door slammed open.
“FBI, freeze, put your hands in the air,” echoed across the room in Peter’s stern voice. His gun was pointed at Adler the whole time.
“Oh, thank God, you’re here Peter,” Dick called out.
Dick cried, chest heaving, barely managing to turn the laugh that bubbled up his throat into a huge sob.
“Let me down! Please!”
As soon as the agents around him untied him, he slipped from the chair, boneless, until he was hugging the floor. He made a huge show of being convinced he was falling, until he heard the car door slam to take Adler off to jail.
He immediately stopped crying.
“That was fun. I haven’t gotten to do anything like that in a while.” He said as he sat up wiping tears of mirth from his eyes. “Oh man, did you see his face? He really thought it’d work.”
He cut himself off when he looked at Diana’s face.
“Is something wrong?” he asked hesitantly.
“Do you mean to tell me,” the woman’s growl was more intimidating than Batman’s. “That you were just playing around. You weren’t frightened out of you mind and being tortured, like you let us think you were.”
“Why would you guys think I was being tortured?” Dick asked.
“You see that camera over there?” Diana jabbed a shaking finger at the still-blinking camera.
“Yeah,” he said slowly. Dick didn’t like where this was going.
“It has been streaming your kidnapping to the office the entire time.” There were actual tears in Diana’s eyes. “We had to watch you be tortured for hours. Unable to help and you are just sitting here laughing.” By this time Dick had realized he was in trouble and that there was nothing he could do to help the situation. He held his arms out for a hug, only flinching slightly as she beat at his chest while also stepping into his arms for a hug.
“I’m sorry I upset you, Diana. I didn’t know you guys were watching or I would have tried to let you in on it.” Dick patted her back, reassuring his friend he was ok.
He glanced over at a couple of agents that had started to bag up the scene.
“Freeze,” He barked out in a commanding tone never heard by Neal Caffrey. The agents instantly obeyed.
“Do you to have no concept of needle safety?!” Dick stalked over to the agents. “You do not want to stick yourselves with those needles! Hell, this one is still completely full. Fucking morons, you don’t know the first thing about safely handling toxins and poisons. Who the fuck taught you evidence collections? First off, needles are dangerous, used needles are doubly so. You can’t just pick them up all willly-nilly. Neither of you are wearing gloves! Do you even have puncture-proof gloves in your kits? Why the fuck not? You don’t know what you're going to encounter when you go into a crime scene or a rescue op, you need to be prepared for any-” he was cut off by a hand on his shoulder.
“Neal, don’t you think you’re being a little harsh right now?” Peter asked. “You should cool it.”
“Cool it? Oh, sure, I’ll cool it-But when half the agents in here wind up dead ‘cause Agent Greene over here sticks himself with the Fear Toxin and he tries to shoot up the place, don’t blame me. I warned you guys.”
“Wait, I thought you said the toxin wasn’t working?”
“No, the Fear-mint toxins don’t work on me because of my high exposure rate, not because it isn’t potent. You drop that vial and every single one of you will be in living hell for a minimum of eight hours unless you have connections to antidotes. Even Gotham General doesn’t stock Fear-mint antidotes in the quantity you’re going to need to treat the whole department. The antidotes take hours to synthesize doses. That’s not even taking into account the fact your agents may pull their guns out and start shooting up the place. Which, given the backgrounds and amount of ex-military in the force, the likelihood of that happening is huge. You drop that vial, half of you are dead. End of story.” Dick stared Peter straight in the eye. “So yeah, if you want the entire Department to die let the newbies handle the open needles and vials of Fear-mints.”
Dick pulled his arm out of Peter’s slack hand, stalked to the table and put on a pair of latex gloves. He swiftly capped the needle that had been used on him, swaddled both of the vials in some cloth and packed into an old pencil case that was laying around the desk, making sure that they couldn’t move at all in their little cocoon, before setting it down on the table.
“Fuck,” Dick let out a heartfelt curse.
Dick took a deep breath, running his hand over his eyes.
He lifted his head again, looking around the room in suspicion.
His hands started to shake.
He clenched his fingers in the hem on his pants.
Continually scanning the room as his body started to tremble.
He closed his eyes, breathing slowly and rhythmically, attempting to bring himself back under control.
“Neal, are you ok?” Peter asked hesitantly.
“Well, Peter I was dosed with Fear Toxin, and those two agents got my blood pressure up, which means it triggered the fear response that I had locked down tight. Now I’m standing here hoping to God I’m hallucinating, because if what I’m seeing is actually happening, we’re all as good as dead. If you’re smart, you’ll clear everyone out of the room- and please don’t touch me.”
Some of the agents didn’t even wait for permission; they just scattered out of the warehouse. There was something deeply unnerving about watching the normally mild-mannered CI chew out the Probies for improper procedures, then tell your boss they would have all died if he hadn’t stepped in. They had never seen anyone with that tight a control on themselves under such pressure. That was probably the most frightening thing of all
A few of the smarter Agents wondered where in the hell he had learned all this, but most just fled before him. Neal Caffery, the carefree con-man, had suddenly become someone to be reckoned with, someone best left alone.
Neal came into the office the next day with a whistle on his lips, a jaunty tilt to his hat, and a smile on his face. But the agents still remembered the look on his face as his hand trembled, telling them in a matter-of-fact voice that the terrors that stalked him were dark enough to kill them all.