Archive of Our Own

This fanfiction is hosted on Archive of Our Own, where you can read it for free. If you’re reading this on a different website, it was posted there without the author’s consent.

When the pieces clicked, it was already too late. Neal was already in his house. All he could do was hope that Peter could follow his trail and find him before Neal ended up missing – or worse, dead.

When Neal woke up, he found himself strapped to a chair. It was… surprisingly comfortable. The upholstery was leather, smooth and worn beneath him, and the handles were wooden and hand carved. Neal had been kidnapped plenty of times, and he’d normally be relieved that at least he’d been kidnapped by someone with taste.

Though Valter Franco was certainly not the type of taste Neal appreciated. Glancing down, he almost groaned at the sight of himself in the same clothing as the victim – white dress shirt, with a collar that Neal could feel against his neck, fastened by a silk tie; suspenders tugged at his trousers, and from shifting in his seat, he could feel they were Y shaped; a velvet vest, though at least it was a decent shade of burgundy, and black trousers. From wriggling his toes in his shoes, they seemed to be the same pair that he’d left the house with just a few hours ago – he hoped, at least.

“Wonderful,” Neal muttered. “Least I’ll die looking like aristocracy.”

“Ah, you approve,” a voice said from behind him. Years of practise kept Neal from reacting.

“Mr Franco,” he said, raising his voice. “When you said you wanted to appreciate my classic looks, I didn’t think you meant like this.” And to think, just this morning – he hoped it was still the same day, at least – he and Peter had been commenting just how unlucky the poor fellow was, with two of his assistants turning up dead and his tailoring business so uncertain.

Franco was a stick of a man, with a gaunt face and salt and pepper hair combed neatly. And he was always in a frock and vest, which Neal appreciated in a man, regardless of how odd he found it on occasion. Especially when the man would pull out an eyeglass.

Franco stepped into Neal’s line of vision now, and smiled just slightly. It wasn’t a creepy smile, just a small one, like Neal was a customer who’d just speared at his shop asking about tailored clothing. “Mr Caffrey,” he said. “Now that you’re awake, I must say that it’s a pleasure to have you here.”

“I’d like to say the same, but…” Neal raised the palms of his hands in a rough approximation of a shrug. “Why’d you do it, Valter?”

Franco shook his head and paced away; Neal watched him cautiously, even as he took in the rest of the room. It was the apartment that Franco owned, just above his store – there would be stairs leading downstairs from here. Neal had been placed in front of the window, though curtains had been drawn over it.

There was a matching armchair opposite Neal, on the other side of the round table in front of him. It was carved with an intricate border, the same pattern that the armchairs bore. The room had dressmaker dolls scattered throughout it, some with clothes and some bare. There was a working station on the other side of the room, with a few piles of cloth over the table, and a sewing machine that looked like it would go for a fair amount at an antique store.

The wallpaper was another tipoff. Neal didn’t know if Franco had wanted authenticity for clients or if he just enjoyed Victorian era wallpaper, but the clothes coupled with the aesthetics of the room were giving Neal serious creeps. He and Peter hadn’t been up here yet, and Franco hadn’t invited them in from his shop.

“It was not my doing,” he said now, voice as stiff as his back as he stood in front of a painting just adjacent enough from Neal that he couldn’t see it. “Victor made a mistake – he took too much, he spilled it, or he—he… it doesn’t matter now.”

“He took too much?” Neal repeated. “You mean to say Victor was deliberately taking belladonna?”

Victor had been Franco’s assistant, having finished an apprenticeship under the man just some months ago. His mother had connections in the FBI, and Hughes had asked Peter to look into it when her son had vanished with what had apparently been a few of Franco’s ‘gifts’ from his customers.

Victor’s body had turned up the previous day, and the coroner’s report had come in just this morning. Neal had known that he’d died of belladonna poisoning, but to hear Franco admitting to it so quickly was another matter altogether. It made him just a little more conscious of how helpless he was, strapped to this chair with his hands bound individually.

Franco waved a hand dismissively, as though admitting to murder was just another Tuesday. “It’s for the authenticity,” he said. He was over at his work bench now, fiddling with something. Neal kept an eye on him even as he tried to move his wrists and loosen the bindings. Maybe if he pushed himself onto his back, the force might loosen? There was enough cushioning around his back that Neal felt like he could safely do that… “To dilate the pupils.”

At those words, all of Neal’s focus was instantly drawn back to Franco. “To dilate the pupils?” he said, voice tinged with disgust. “You mean to tell me that Victor was putting belladonna into his eyes? There are better ways to do that, y’know. Contact lenses, for one.”

It’d been a common practice in Victorian times – a few drops of belladonna would enlarge the pupils in a way that gave them that big, attractive look. The downsides, however, were the fact that belladonna was a poison. Neal felt his skin crawl at the thought of Franco forcing droplets into Victor’s eyes for clients, for the authenticity.

“He looked just like a doll,” Franco was saying, his voice fond, like Neal hadn’t said anything. If Neal didn’t know better, he would’ve thought that it was the fondness of an old man for his apprentice, who he’d professed to see like a son. But things between older men and people they saw as their progenies, their successors, were never that straight cut; Neal would know. “He had eyes just like yours, you see, all big and blue. They looked ever so lovely; the women loved him. He had a quiet voice, the manners of the Victorian gentleman of their dreams. Men nowadays have forgotten how to woo.”

This talk was getting nowhere, but that was probably the safest place for Neal to be right now. He didn’t want to think about what Franco was doing; he gave up on trying to get his right hand free and worked just on his left, which was slightly looser. The rope wasn’t thin enough to cut into his skin, but he was going to have some pretty spectacular rope burns at the end of this.

“Here we are.” Neal could hear the smile in Franco’s voice. “Just to complete it.”

“Valter,” Neal said carefully, “I don’t know what you think is going to happen, but Peter’s going to be here any minute now, with FBI backup. He knows everything; you aren’t going to get away with it. But if you cooperate, he can cut you a deal, get you reduced time. He’s good at that.”

Franco had a tray in his hands, yet another object that looked like it was far too expensive to belong to a tailor who worked in such a small shop, with only one other assistant to help him. Neal wondered yet again just how Franco’s fortune had led him here, but more importantly, why. From the files they had on the man, he’d been born in a fairly well-off household, and his fortunes had then skyrocketed when a distant uncle had taken him under his wing, leaving Franco with his estate after he’d died.

None of that indicated that Franco would be insane.

“It’s simple,” Franco said. “You have a very good eye for fabrics, and you wear them well. With pride. You’d do well in this business, my lad.”

“You saw the tracker on my leg when you were tying me up; I’m not exactly looking for a job at the moment.”

Franco shrugged. “That’s no matter,” he said. “My Victor wasn’t always a… morally good man either, if you understand me. He did things for no reason other than his own pleasure. Like when he ran off. But he was a young boy; I thought he’d grow out of it.”

Neal’s attention was caught on the little bottle on the tray, filled with clear liquid. As he watched in distant horror, Franco unscrewed the lid and picked up a little dropper.

His breathing was starting to come in fast, no more logic dictating how he struggled to get free now. “Wait, stop,” he said as Franco approached him. Getting enough leverage, Neal kicked himself backwards, intending on the fall buying him enough time to do something, anything. Anything would be better than having belladonna placed in his eyes.

There wasn’t enough leverage – Franco’s free hand clamped down on the handle of the chair and Neal was back on solid ground with a loud thump. He cursed the furniture in here for being so solid, cursed Franco’s obsession with authenticity that had led him to use rope and not something like handcuffs. But he cursed his own inability to have stayed conscious while he’d been tied up, because he might’ve been free right now if he had been.

“Stay still, Mr Caffrey,” Franco said, peering at Neal with his steely grey eyes. “It doesn’t hurt, not like how you think.”

“You could go blind with that stuff,” Neal said. “Is that worth it?”

Franco paused, as though he hadn’t considered this. “You must be careful,” he said, almost chidingly. “You can’t just use as much as you’d like, or as frequently as you’d like. There must be moderation, yes? Optometrists use belladonna regularly and their patients are perfectly fine.”

His grip on Neal’s chin was harder than Neal would’ve given him credit for, his hand cold and leathery. He held Neal’s head still, and even as Neal did his best to squeeze his eyes shut. His heart was pounding in his chest, the fear of losing his eyesight and never being able to see again, to never be able to do his work, the things he was best at, all because of some madman with an obsession.

“This will go far easier if you would cooperate.”

The hand on his chin disappeared, only to reappear around his eye socket, forcing his eyelid open. No matter how much Neal shifted or moved his head, the iron clad grip that Franco had on his meant it made no difference.

A cold drop of the liquid landed on his eye, and Neal immediately flinched, blinking rapidly more out of instinct. He’d always hated eye drops, though he’d had to deal with it for the sake of wearing contacts.

It felt like a film was spreading over his eyes, like no matter how much he blinked, it wouldn’t disappear. Neal’s hands clenched onto the armchair handles as fear gripped at him like nothing he’d felt before.

“Stop,” he got out, voice rough from the panic in his chest. “Stop. I’ll—you want an assistant? I’ll work for you, okay, just don’t do this—”

“This is the test run, Mr Caffrey,” Franco said, holding open Neal’s other eye. “The interview, if you will.”

Neal flinched back as the drops landed on his eye, but there was nowhere for him to move – Franco watched to make sure the eyedrops were working, and the back of the chair meant that Neal could really only move his head to the sides if he wasn’t being held in place.

And then he released Neal and stepped backwards, leaving Neal to try breathing calmly and slow his heartrate down. It wouldn’t help him at all if he started panicking; what he needed was a clear head, to figure a way out of this mess. Franco had been right – belladonna was used in a whole range of medication nowadays, including the stuff optometrists used during check-ups. One dose, surely, couldn’t be that bad – not enough for Neal to go blind, in any case. It wouldn’t take much to dilate pupils.

This was everything he told himself to try calming down, but the fact remained that his eyesight was blurry, like he was looking through Nick Halden’s glasses when they were all fogged up and dusty, but worse, because these were his eyes. He wanted to rub at them, wash them out, anything to get rid of this panic in his chest.

“Screw you, man,” he got out. “How am I even supposed to work like this?”

Franco was a dark blur, only really discernible against the other dark blurs in the room because he was moving. “You will soon get used to it,” he said. “I don’t give you very much – and all you need to do is charm our guests. If they like you enough, they can even hire you.”

“Hire me?” He hadn’t been aware of this side hustle.

Franco hummed. “It’s only for our most exclusive clients, you understand. Not everyone gets the same privileges, and I don’t trust everyone with my boys.”

Boys, plural. “Who else worked for you?” Neal asked, trying to get Franco talking again. He seemed like the kind of man who didn’t suspect, not usually – so far he’d seemed to be fine with holding a conversation with Neal, hadn’t stopped him from asking questions. “Did they die too?”

But it seemed that this struck a nerve. “How they ended was their own doing,” he snapped, walking from his bench back to Neal. And then, halfway there, he sighed. “I always hope, you know, that they’ll grow out of their mischief. You’re a little older; perhaps I won’t have the same problems as you.”

“Problems?” His left hand was almost free, but he couldn’t seem to get his heart rate down. It was pounding away in his chest and making his feel queasy and lightheaded, which, coupled with his blurry vision, wasn’t doing wonders for Neal.

“You know how young men are. Staying out late, partying, gambling, drinking. A proper Victorian gentleman doesn’t engage in activities of the sort – when Henry told me he’d gotten a woman pregnant, I told him he must marry her. Of course, he wouldn’t listen, said that the need for marriage had vanished with the turn of the century. He said she might not even keep the child. You tell me, Mr Caffrey—”

There was a crash as the door flung open. “FBI!” a voice yelled out. “Hands where I can see them!”

Neal slumped into the chair, hand finally free to undo the rest of the bindings. His hand was shaking where it tried to free his right hand, and he cursed himself all over again for how slow he was. He could normally do this blindfolded, and now he couldn’t get out of a chair he’d been stuck in by some old lunatic?

“Hey there, Caffrey,” someone was saying. “Can’t believe you haven’t gotten out of those yet.”

“Diana,” Neal said. “Nice of you guys to finally drop in.” His hand was still shaking, but he did his best to smooth his voice over and loosen his posture, more like he was reclining in this ornate armchair as opposed to being stuck in it. “So, good news, I think he’ll confess just fine. Bad news, he’s a little kooky.”

“Yeah, we got that part,” Diana said, and Neal could imagine her with her eyebrow raised even if he couldn’t see it. “Have you seen yourself? You’re a hat away from Lincoln.”

He freed his hand just as she undid the bindings around his torso, and he got to work on his legs. “Hey, Lincoln had taste,” he said lightly. “Though I wish he’d chosen the Wild West to fixate on; could’ve at least tied me up with handcuffs then.”

He didn’t get up, knowing he wasn’t going to be steady on his feet. He gingerly rubbed at his wrists, poking his fingers lightly at the aggravated skin and biting back a hiss when it stung.

“Neal, you alright over here?” Neal couldn’t make out the details of Peter’s face, which scared him, because his ability to read people, to see their faces and their gestures and figure out how to respond and skew things in his favour, all of that vanished the moment his perfect sight was taken.

“Just peachy,” Neal said, and then realised that it was going to look far more suspicious if he stayed seated. “He did it. Basically confessed the whole thing to me, though the way he sees it, it’s Victor’s fault. And… there might’ve been more.”

He stood up on shaky legs, grateful when they held beneath him. His clothes moved strangely with him, stiff and not the right size. It figured that Franco hadn’t had time to tailor them to Neal’s measurements, though it did make Neal slightly miffed.

That was when he realised that Peter was by the table with the belladonna on it. “Don’t touch that.”

Peter looked to him, though Neal had no idea what expression he was wearing. “I’m not,” he said, and then stepped closer. “Victor was blind, when he died. The coroner’s office called an hour ago; that’s how we put the pieces together. Same deal happened to Franco’s other assistant, the one that came before Victor – he was going blind, he’d talk to people who weren’t there, he was having seizures…”

“Franco makes his assistants use belladonna.” Neal nodded towards the bottle. “Apparently he wanted to vet me to see if I have what it takes to be his assistant—Peter, space?”

Peter was peering at Neal. “We need to get you to a hospital,” he said, ignoring Neal. “Where’d the bus go? Neal,” he turned back, mild commotion near the doorway as more FBI agents entered, as well as people Neal assumed were paramedics, “what happened?”

“If you’d let me finish,” Neal said, going to cross his arms and then getting distracted by the cufflinks on his shirt. He was trying not to blink too much to give away the fact that he was having trouble seeing, though he didn’t know why he was even doing that. Self preservation instinct, he supposed. Don’t let anyone see you affected, even when you’re a moment away from collapsing. “He got me with the belladonna in my eyes, but apart from that, I’m fine. It wasn’t much, I just can’t see very well.”

Peter gaped at him for a moment. “Why the hell didn’t you tell Diana that?” he said, just as someone approached them.

“Slipped my mind,” Neal said dryly. To the paramedic, he added, “It was just a few drops in each eye. I’m not even having hallucinations or anything yet.” Reaching out, he slapped Peter on the shoulder. “We definitely got him, right?”

“After all this? We definitely got him on something. Whatever this stuff is, it isn’t legal, and if he’s growing his own belladonna, that’s definitely not legal.”

“Good to know,” Neal said, before subjecting himself to the examination. He didn’t ask Peter to stay with him, but Peter didn’t leave, and Neal was glad for that.