Chapter Text
[ moodboards for characters mentioned in this chapter; how I'd style them if I was creative directing this comic run (which I am lol): DICK GRAYSON "NIGHTWING" ; JASON TODD "RED HOOD" ; TIM DRAKE "RED ROBIN" ; DAMIAN WAYNE-AL GHUL "ROBIN" ; BARBARA GORDON "ORACLE" ; STEPHANIE BROWN "SPOILER" ; CASSANDRA CAIN "BATGIRL" ; DUKE THOMAS "SIGNAL" ; JONATHAN CRANE "SCARECROW" ]
[[DICK's POV]]
/ September 12th, 2025. 01:43 hours /
"Look alive, dick head."
Jason's voice, muffled from the honestly impressive feat of smoking a cigarette underneath his helmet without hotboxing himself into mentholated unconsciousness, startled Dick from his thoughts. Not that they were actual thoughts; just 'bed, bed, I just did laundry this morning and my sheets probably feel like heaven, bed.'
He'd been running himself ragged even before Tim drafted everyone to help with what, according to him, was some big conspiracy run by Scarecrow of all people. Dick wasn't exactly complaining; he loved helping his family, his teammates, he loved making a difference in the world, being someone others could depend upon. But he also wasn't not complaining. He didn't really need a break once in a while, but G-d, he deserved one. The last two weeks back in Blüdhaven had been never-ending, and the combination of catching an average of four hours of sleep a night for those two weeks, the darkened rooftops of these lightless buildings by the harbor, the warm air and soft breeze coming in from the bay, and the silence of watch duty had lulled Dick into a bit of a haze -- at least, as much of a haze as a bat would allow themselves to fall into.
Turning to look back at the roof two blocks down, Dick squinted to try to catch a glimpse of red. He stood up from his crouch and waved in the direction of what he thought was the glint of a street light bouncing off Red Hood's helmet, and he heard Tim and Steph's voices laugh softly in his ear as Jason presumably flipped him off in return from across the distance.
'It's a middle finger of endearment,' Dick thought hopefully.
Keeping his feet flat to avoid making any noise, Dick lunged to his right and then his left to stretch his calves and hamstrings before squatting down low until he felt his knees pop.
"Yeah, yeah. Are we doing this or what?" He groaned.
"Alright, get with it, Nightwing's getting impatient."
Dick's com lit up as the team erupted into noise.
Nightwing, Red Hood, Red Robin, Batgirl, Spoiler, and Robin had been watching this warehouse for the past three hours, with Oracle and Signal on coms, and they'd seen no activity for the past hour and a half.
"We know Crane is in there already, we have to assume the shipments from last night and the drop-off at 23:00 were the bulk of what he's waiting for," Tim said as the bats closed rank to join Dick on the central rooftop. "At least, that's what the chatter I've picked up suggests."
"Yeah, well. There are enough heat signatures huddled together to think they've been working on something in there. It does seem like now is as good a time as ever, but I don't know... something feels off," Barbara's voice reasoned in Dick's ear as the Bats and Birds kneeled down together, inching towards the edge of the building.
"Who cares? We located him, watched him, he's isolated away from civilians, and now we take him out," Jason reasoned, cracking his knuckles. He lifted his helmet up an inch and spit the butt of his cigarette out into his hand, crushing it and depositing it into an aluminum-lined baggie zipped into his motorcycle pants. "It's not like he's some sophisticated mastermind or anything. Not lately, at least."
"I just never know what to expect with Crane. We know that they're cooking something in there; we know they have lab supplies, the calibration equipment to measure out immense quantities of toxin, we know he's gotten chemical shipments that far exceed the amount he's handled at any one time in the recent past. But it feels like something's off. I just- we don't know how far along whatever experiments Red Robin suspects have come, or if you're barreling into a new gas that could take you out."
"I say we go in. We always approach Crane with the necessary precautions, we all have gas masks. Waiting won't change any of that, but we want to make sure this is contained so he can't stage whatever big thing it is he has planned. This is also the biggest grouping of people working for Scarecrow that I've observed so far, so this seems like a good time to apprehend a chunk of his workforce."
Dick stood up as he listened to Tim, rubbing his hands together. They all were impatient.
"Okay, Oracle, we're gonna head in. We'll be careful, stay in the shadows before doing anything. Do you have eyes inside beyond just heat?"
"We do to an extent. There are 40-something people in the central area that Signal and I have thought of as the lab, 48 to be exact, but there's some sort of sub-basement we can't get a read on. I tried hacking into the geo-location and audio-visual services on some of the phones we could grab onto from techs working for Crane inside, but even with that we can't really gauge what's going on down there. Something's blocking any signal going in or out of that underground space."
Cass nudged Dick's arm, making a 'wrap it up' signal with her hand.
"Alright, proceed with caution, rebreathers on, let's go," Dick announced, sliding on his own rebreather and stepping to the edge of the building without waiting for a reply.
He lithely stepped off the edge, spinning as he fell to watch the other bats follow his lead off the roof before shooting out his wire and flying up onto the roof of the warehouse across the way, rotating to land facing forward once again.
Dick silently removed the pane of one of the upper-level windows and climbed through, closing the window behind him; he could do stealth in his sleep.
The alcove at the top of the warehouse -- what seemed to be the third floor, though the building appeared to have a pretty open layout devoid of walls or an intricate floor plan -- was dark enough to conceal any movement, but all the same, Dick stayed crouched as he walked, feeling along the back wall as he moved in deeper.
Below were the groups of people Babs had briefed them on, and he could see from his vantage point that there was a heavy-duty door reminiscent of a vault or safe that the goons seemed to be giving a pretty wide berth. He clocked a bubbling set-up of lab equipment spread across the array of tables, but no Scarecrow.
Across the way, Dick could see Damian slip into the alcove and adopt the same crouched position as Dick. He pulled out his sword as he moved along the walkway, but Dick could see the construction lights set up below glinting off the sharpened silver -- Dick caught Damian's attention and lifted his hand to signal him to sheath the sword for now. Damian obediently followed the suggestion, sheathing his sword and trading it for a pair of birdarangs.
Cass and Steph moved in, flanking towards the corner Jason had seemed to claim. Cass reached up and pressed her com to relay out a Morse code message: 8 per bat.
Dick nodded at her as Steph gave her a half-hearted fist bump. Dick watched as Cass lowered herself down to the second story, her acrobatics taut and controlled. Damian and Tim followed suit as Steph watched, rolling out her ankles and wrists in preparation.
"Watch the pair by the door -- once they walk left, the whole group will be as spread out as they've ever been. That's the time to strike," Barbara strategized, and Dick readied to drop down.
The pair of scientists below stalled out as they discussed some parking ticket dispute (goons, they're just like us!), but finally after about two minutes they followed the track Barbara had predicted.
Tim held up his hand, counting down.
4, 3, 2, 1:
As a unit, the bats dropped down. Dick scattered some flashbangs below as he rode his wire, and as the sparks flew and erupted he reached to grab his Escrima sticks from his back.
Landing on the closest guy's shoulders, Dick unclipped from his wire and wrapped his legs to then flip forward and throw the man down onto his face, knocking him out almost immediately. Dick rose up as the warehouse descended into chaos. Throwing one Escrima stick ahead to take down the woman running at him and throwing a punch at the person running in from his right. Ducking, blocking strikes with counter strikes, flipping his remaining Escrima stick around his wrist, he took on four others as the team all focused in on their allotted bad guys.
Dick may feel tired, but nothing woke him up quite like an easy fight; a boost of over-cocky confidence was as motivating as a boost of adrenaline.
"Dude, this guy just tried to grab my gun!" Jason bellowed from across the room, and a shot rang out as a rubber bullet rebounded off the offending goon's inner thigh. As he fell to his knees, Jason stepped forward and pistol-whipped him hard.
"Poor guy," Tim called out from across the room.
Steph barked out a laugh as she stomped on one of her guy's wrists, a crack resounding around the warehouse. Tim stumbled back as he fought a woman trying to get a shot off with her huge (and very un-scientist-like) automatic gun, using the momentum to get the woman to falter forward so that he could reach around and grab her ankle, knocking her to the ground. He somersaulted forward to pull close and punch her out before standing up and, unfolding his bo staff, hitting in a coordinated twirl at the others near him. Damian stayed silent, focused, as he clashed with a scientist wielding a metal pipe like his own sword.
Dick couldn't help but smile as his body went into autopilot. Something about watching everyone work so well together seemed to always warm him inside, a whacked-out, bat-appropriate sense of pride and love that came from watching each faux sibling enact widespread and practiced violence. Dick pressed his com as he ducked under his last combatant's arm, rising up to punch him out before speaking to the team:
"My group's all out, heading for the vault door!"
"Be careful," Barbara cautioned, Duke's voice in the background echoing her warning with a low "dude, watch your back."
Dick made his way across the room, walking along one of the lab tables and taking note of the various liquids that demonstrated assorted stages of Fear Toxin concoctions, pre-gas form.
They actually kind of looked pretty, the liquids all varying vibrant shades of green and red. 'Like an animal,' he thought, 'the colors acting as a predatory warning: don't touch.'
He neared the door and noticed that it was visibly thicker than expected. He held up his arm to take a picture scan of the door with the tech on his forearm.
"Got that?"
"Shit, that looks like the door has some sort of thermal protection. That's not just for keeping people out, that's got some heavy-duty chemical protocols," Barbara responded in his ear. He could hear her fingers flying across her keyboards as she analyzed the image, finding info on the make, model, and any other pertinent details she would want to catalogue for their notes.
Dick stepped up close, feeling up and around the door's skin to see if there were any faults in the design; of course, there were none. The hinges were protected and unable to be pried apart, the re-lockers tightly wound -- Dick would have to try to crack the door like a safe.
Behind him Dick heard a war cry as Damian charged a pair of men twice his height; Cass flipped off of the person closest to her's shoulders to gain some balance as she fought them off.
The others were all busy; this was all Dick.
Pulling out a stethoscope-like device that Lucius had created a few months ago in discussion with Selina, he turned the wheel of the door, listening to the soft ticks and catches.
It took about two minutes to crack -- not too shabby for the first safe Dick had had to crack in who knows how long -- and he wrenched the door open quickly, securing a line through the door handle to anchor it to the wall with a clove hitch knot.
He started down the stairs as he spoke "I'm in" into his coms.
Dick flipped on his night vision as he descended into the basement, preparing for anything. He slowed as he neared the bottom of the staircase, crouching down to ready for action and putting his back up against the wall, rounding quickly, ready to lash out as his back stayed protected.
No one was there.
Rising, Dick took a gas mask and fixed it over the rebreather he'd already been using to be ready for anything, tightening the strap around his chin.
There was a distant light down the hallway across the way, glowing an alarming foggy green through the night vision, and Dick walked forward towards it.
As he made his way through the dark room, Dick noticed that basement was mostly empty, which had him worried. 'Where are all the shipments we've tracked?' Dick must be walking towards the epicenter of storage for whatever shitshow Crane had come up with this time.
The hallway was much shorter than he expected when he neared it, but he was alarmed to note that the hall echoed just like the warehouse walls above.
'Fuck it' Dick thought, stealth no longer the best move, and he upped his pace forward.
The hall opened into a rounded atrium that Dick could tell led into a tunnel beyond, and Dick immediately spotted a much more elaborate, albeit smaller, lab set up on one wall of the tiny room -- with one lone figure working at the table. No other supplies though; maybe they were being stored deeper within whatever the tunnel was?
"Crane!" Dick, tired as he was, couldn't think of any actual sentence or quip to alert the deranged doctor. Usually just saying their name sufficed, but Dick still felt like he lost some of his cred by saying something so boring. He hoped his voice didn't sound too muffled or lame under the double-layered gas protectants. "Drop the lab equipment!"
In front of him, Scarecrow startled. He quickly recovered, though, and began to laugh -- the villains always laughed -- as he turned around.
Dick cursed under his breath. Crane was dressed in a full-on hazmat suit, his burlap mask visible through the clear facial covering. As silly as it looked to see the man wearing his costume underneath his bulky suit of protection, it worried Dick; Crane never opted for personal protection.
"Ah, little blue birdie ... flown down here all alone?" Scarecrow asked, his voice gravelly and mechanic, his tone unnerving with its flat affect. "How very fearless of you, to brave the dark and unknown without the others."
"What do you want me to say, Scarecrow? You're not very terrifying in a white baggy suit."
Dick twirled his Escrima stick in his hand -- once, twice.
"But as always, you misunderstand from where fear is born. I am the instrument, not the figure. I am the conveyer, not the conveyed. You cannot fear me, because fear traverses, transcends me, fills in the empty space between me and you. I am not fear, I am become fear. I could care less about your reaction to me -- I want to see your reaction to what is beyond me!"
Dick sighed. How many times would he have to hear these overdone sermons?
He threw up his Escrima stick and caught it like one would a baseball before he aimed and threw it at Crane's head.
It hit Jonathan square in the forehead, but the Scarecrow took the full brunt with laughter, his eyes wide and unseeing as he relished and embraced the pain fully. Thankfully the laughter was choked and responsive, a reaction to the stinging hit, not nearly unhinged or untethered enough to measure up to the Clown's ringing cackles, but still; Gotham villains knew their way around creepy.
Not waiting for Crane to recover, Dick charged right at him, grabbing a stray high-necked flask and smashing it against Crane's neck. Sustaining the element of surprise, Dick pulled the villain into a headlock, choking him out as he backed against the wall.
Jonathan Crane was not a formidable fighting partner, per se, especially when without his scythe or any other weapons he'd sometimes fashion -- but Dick realized he made a mistake as it dawned on him how unnaturally adept Crane was at going limp and using it as a fighting tactic. The guy was just too tall, too lanky. His martial arts training didn't help his gangly lack of strength, but it did make him slippery.
'This... sucks' Dick thought as he affixed one arm around Crane's neck and pressed the other against the side and back of his head, applying more pressure to essentially hold Crane up while waiting for him to pass out. In his head, some vague joke connecting scarecrows and ragdolls tried to form, something about limp limbs (not his best), but he pushed it aside.
Seconds turned to minutes as Scarecrow neared unconsciousness; that is, until his flailing arms finally found and grabbed a shard of broken glass from the flask Dick had smashed. He held a large jagged piece tightly, making his own hand bleed, and stabbed the pane into Dick's torso. A stab wound not unlike ones Dick had endured time and time again in the past, but still, the pain made Dick momentarily loosen his grip.
Crane bolted up with a hurried elbow thrown back at Dick's eye, scrambling over to lean onto the table. He reached his hands into the steaming cauldron-like container centered within the lab set-up. His rubber suit immediately started to smoke as the liquid, something oily, met the material.
Crane coated his gloved hands and forearms before reaching up to paint his fingers across the exposed skin of Dick's neck. The burning substance felt icy hot, it coated Crane's hands like candle wax, and Dick felt it seem to drip through layers of skin and tissue along the contours of his neck as he stumbled back in shock.
"Fuck!" Dick growled, stumbling forward and reacting on instinct to punch Crane out before stumbling away.
Almost immediately, his vision was beginning to blur and an acutely painful sensation he couldn't quite name spread down each limb. The hallway seemed to zoom in and out, the shadows to lengthen and grow weighted and heavy.
Dick reached up to his com, croaking out a quick "help," but got no reply.
This was bad.
Fear gas had a way of affecting the body through the bloodstream once it was breathed in, oxygenating the blood cells with infected gases; injecting the antidote into the bloodstream then counteracted the poison. Not only did a dermal delivery change how the toxin was going to spread, but Dick wasn't sure if giving himself the current antidote would do anything, especially when more things might differ in the makeup of the toxin itself.
Dick reached down to grab the current antidote from his suit anyway, fumbling, but his fingers weren't working; he was losing dexterity; he couldn't move his fingers from inside of his gloves beyond a clumsy twitch.
He tore off the gloves to try to alleviate the weighted force it felt like he was under, but no: he already could feel his movements lock up, his muscles seizing. It was only in his fingers and toes (and he could feel his cheek twitching), but it was only a matter of time before the tremors spread. His limbs were his own, for now, but already they'd begun to feel leaden, as if an icy substance was being pumped throughout his body in tandem with his blood. It burned cold.
His neck was burning, and his mind started racing, overcome by the sudden and spreading pain blooming under his skin, spreading like water, ebbing and flowing through the typography of his anatomy. He removed his gas mask, discarding it on the floor behind him as he started to walk.
Dick shuffled down the hall back towards the warehouse's main level. As he walked through the basement, whispers pounded in his ears, overwhelmingly loud, too loud to discern what they were saying -- he couldn't tell if he could recognize the voices, and he couldn't tell if recognition would be comforting or horrifying anyway.
This was the worst part of fear toxin: his mind was racing, his mental capacities functioning just as always, taking in sensation, his senses alive, but he was reacting to the wrong things, he was analyzing things that weren't there. He hated feeling so aware and even still so unsure of his own awareness. It was all wrong; he couldn't trust his mind for too much longer.
Laughter echoed in the back of his mind, morphing from Scarecrow's mechanized laugh to the Joker's erupting cackle to his mother's light tinkling giggle. Not in the back of his mind; the laughter was outside of himself, flitting around the room in the negative space just beyond his sight.
He arrived at the stairs, stumbling from right to left in zombie-like incoordination. There was no railing, so Dick switched to lean his back against the wall of the staircase for balance as he shakily lifted his legs one at a time to climb the stairs.
Everything was trembling; everything hurt.
The staircase seemed to grow, sprout up, each step becoming taller than the last, an ocean of movement shifting up and down instead of side to side. The staircase wasn't more than 20 stairs, he'd flown down them on entrance -- now the way up looked 100, 300, 5,000 stairs strong.
A hand reached out from the darkness to help prop him up, and Dick turned to thank the owner of the hand, the black-gloved hand of the Dark Knight, Bruce was always so helpful, but when he turned Bruce's cowl exploded into a cloud of bats that flew right at him and threw Dick off his balance, causing him to fall back down the stairs. He fell for what seemed like minutes, and when he landed, though his mind shifted into focus and understood suddenly and starkly that he'd only fallen a few feet, his body seemed to adopt new pains all over. His leg hurt like hell. He yelled out as he struggled to regain his footing despite the spreading incapacitation.
Rising shakily to his feet, he closed his eyes tight -- that didn't usually help, he still heard and felt things that weren't there, and once the toxin spread enough he'd see things even with his eyes closed, hear feel know think fear things -- but for now he needed to will himself not to accept help from non-entities.
He climbed up slowly, making painful work of the increasingly steep staircase. His shin felt like it would snap under the weight of his body, Dick guessed he really had hurt it in the fall, it was a tiny twig being pressed from both sides. Hypochondria gripped his heart; would he ever be able to walk again after this? He would, of course he would, it was the toxin blowing everything out of proportion. But what if it wasn't?
Halfway up he began to scream, unintentionally. He was hearing things, sure, the distinct crunch of bones breaking and ropes snapping and coughs full of blood, but he couldn't figure out why he was yelling. It was as if his jaw was locked, open instead of closed, as if this throat was contracting of its own accord. He cringed at the whining keens that pierced his ears, sounding foreign and externally borne.
His skin tingled, burning almost. He felt nauseous, and full of a weird energy that both set him on edge and overwhelmed him with an uncomfortable numbness, and he could feel small bone-like insects burrowing under the skin of his hand, and he felt hands grabbing at his exposed-not-exposed-he's-dressed-in-his-suit skin, and he could hear the breaths of people standing just behind him, puffs of sour air hitting the back of his neck and his uncovered ears. Everything was starting to add up, to build from panic to fear.
Dick was aware of all of these things as endemic to the toxin, but his mind was starting to race and he felt himself start to hyperventilate. Everything was starting to feel too real to protect his mind against, he couldn't connect the thought of 'fear toxin' with the plain, overwhelming thought of "oh shit oh no oh please" and the overwhelming feeling of pain, he couldn't connect the situation to the fear itself.
Everything hurt.
Up ahead, he heard muffled grunts and yells of his name through the haze of his own wailing voice -- were they real?
He tried to think: how long since exposure? He couldn't open his eyes to look at his watch, but estimated 10 minutes. Maybe an hour. Split the difference, he reasoned 30 minutes. The sounds he was hearing, the yelling of his name, sounded somehow grounded. Were these visual hallucinations, he'd describe it as if everything was coated in a shiny sheen, and the new voices had no shine. He willed his mouth to close so he could try to listen to the voices, the real ones, they had to be real, right?
"Nightwing? Nightwing! Open the door!"
Shit. He recognized that voice -- who was that?
"Dick, they're going to kill you, baby. You can't let them through," a soft whisper, close to his ear; someone taller than him was speaking to him, comforting him, protecting him from --
No. He knew that voice, the first one, the low edge. The voice wanted to help, more than the helpful non-voice next to him could.
"Hoood," a small, low, deadpan word barely escaping from his lips. His throat felt tight, it ached. Was that really his voice?
Dick crawled towards the door, trying to open it. When had it closed? The mechanics had reset, and none of the others had grabbed Selina's tech contribution, deeming it unnecessary, not even Tim had brought one.
Drawing up next to the door, ignoring the snake wrapping around his ankle -- no, not a snake, it was an elephant's trunk, wrapping too tight, and with it the sound of a distant announcement, Haley's voice off somewhere in the distance -- he heaved one of the levers and tried to open the door from within. But of course, he wasn't even anywhere near the door. What's real, where am I?
'Don't let them touch you': a voice from inside of Dick's head, his head which was pounding, the pressure piercing, growing, felt like it was going to explode.
What if the toxin could still transfer by touch? He paused, a stab of fear piercing his chest, an aching rotting fearful pain. That felt... like a really smart and prudent thought.
What if they (he knew a they was coming to get him, a group, some friends, who were they?) got infected too, and then everyone was incapacitated, and nobody could call for help because help was all here, help was all dying, help was wailing, and then Dick would die as around him his -- that's right, family! -- his family all died as well, their hearts quickening, their bodies paralyzed, as horrors displayed behind their eyelids. 'Can't let them in.'
Dick scrambled back, "Stay away!" wrenching from his mouth. He repeated it like a chant: "Stay away stay away stay away."
Suddenly, a change in the air as the door was wrenched open. "You can't touch me, you'll be infected, it's not a gas!" Dick warned hysterically, shuffling back so quickly, too quickly, before:
He was falling. Back, down, down, tumbling down the stairs. He felt as if layers of his body were stripping off as he fell, as if the stairs he was falling on top of were made of sandpaper, rubbing him raw, catching on every ache and making it worse. Pain, everywhere pain: was it real? Falling, like always -- his fear was forever tied with falling, so maybe this wasn't real.
He landed at the bottom of the stairs, his head violently smacking against the ground, and his vision blurred as pain exploded. And the pain began to spread, the acute feeling of his head cracking against the floor somehow blooming in his feet, his stomach, his back, his mouth, the pain was everywhere, the pain was fear.
He felt himself start to scream again, his eyes leaking tears, and he couldn't move as his body tensed into tremors and his senses were overwhelmed with sounds and sights cloying and aggressive. He tried to move, to retreat, to get away from his family, to save them; he couldn't move.
There were people around him, but he was wrong. They weren't his family. It was- it was everyone. Everyone Dick had ever fought, all the monsters of his childhood who'd grown with him to be the monsters of his adulthood.
He saw them all, but more than that, more than the usual fear toxin experience, he could feel them all.
Waylon Jones took a swipe at his shoulder; the Joker laughed as he poked at his side, prodding at a widening gory chunk of flesh missing from his torso, the skin and muscle torn and sinewy strands of tissue stretching out littered with holes; Bane's hands wrapped around his calf and snapped the bone in half, his hands like vices; Nygma was drawing on him, Victor Zsasz, they were tearing away his suit and drawing on his skin with knives so that bloodied numbers and symbols were left carved deep and gaping into his flesh. Slade was flaying away a layer of skin and muscle from his bicep, skilled and exact.
Dick couldn't move, and in front of him a figure walked into view. Bruce was there, looking on at Dick's abuse. Bruce was there. Bruce was shaking hands with Cobb, with Hush, with Harvey Dent, he was making deals with all his devils. He felt the weight of betrayal, not as an emotion but as a tug in the pit of his stomach, a stinging ache.
The fear was fear but it was also pain, overwhelming and close. Everything hurt everything hurt everything hurt everything hurt.
Dick couldn't move as Gotham overwhelmed him.
]]][[[