"I had a thought I wanted to run by you," Kelly told Casey that night, "try and keep an open mind."

"Okay?" Casey answered cluelessly.

"Remember when we were in the academy, and we had to learn to take our SCBAs apart and put them back together blindfolded?" Kelly asked.

Casey looked at him. "You're not blindfolding me."

"I'll just turn the lights off. This is your home, Casey, you've been here for years, you know where everything is, I know you can make your way through here in the dark."

Casey's eyes were looking around the room, his chest notably rising and falling deeper now than a minute ago.

"We've been over this before," Kelly told him. "The door's locked, it's just the two of us here, you know that...you'll be alright."

"Kelly-"

"We'll just start with one room, I know you can do it."

Casey turned his head and looked to the next room, then back at Kelly and asked, "What if I can't?"

"I'll be right here, you'll be fine."

"What if I'm not?" Casey asked. He opened his mouth to say something else but then quickly decided against that.

"I told you to talk to me, what is it?" Kelly asked.

"What if I can't do it? Is that going to change...what you think of me?" Casey shifted his eyes to the floor for the last part of his sentence, not able to face what the answer might be.

"Can I hug you? Is that alright?" Severide asked him.

Not really waiting for an answer, he closed the gap between them and put his arms around Casey supportively.

"If you can't...and I don't think that's likely, but if you really can't, then we'll try again, that's all there is to it," Kelly told him. "Just like everything we had to learn at the academy, anything you can't do, just keep at it until you can."

Casey slowly raised his head and looked at Kelly, and nodded hesitantly. "Okay...okay..."

Casey heard the switch thrown and the apartment was plunged into darkness. He was standing in the middle of the living room, and his eyes automatically started looking every which way, but everywhere there was only blackness. Cautiously glancing around, he took a step forward, then another, slowly, quietly creeping along one space at a time, after a few feet he raised his arms and held them out at his sides, as if testing to make sure there was nothing around him. He was practically holding his breath as he listened for any sounds in the apartment. He couldn't hear Severide, he couldn't even hear him breathing.

"Kelly?"

"I'm here," a voice called out in the darkness, not moving. "Keep going, you're doing fine."

Casey flexed his fingers, feeling the air, making sure there wasn't anything or anyone close by he was going to bump into. Acting on instincts he made his way from the living room to the kitchen. He felt the wall and kept one hand pressed against the surface as he moved step by step, he felt the light switch, and the wallpaper, then he felt the microwave, and two feet from that the stove. He felt the cold metal top, the four burner knobs, and moving alongside that, he soon felt the countertop, then the sink.

"Kelly?"

"Still here," a voice called from the other room. "You're doing great."

Casey wasn't so sure. He felt like his heart was climbing in his chest as he felt his way past the table, and over to the refrigerator, then turned around and made his way back. He moved slowly, only a step or two at a time, and he'd pause, and listen, then move again, and listen for any sounds.

"Kelly..."

"You're almost there, just keep going," Severide told him.

Casey moved through the doorway, then suddenly something inside of his head felt like it had been stabbed with pins and needles. That feeling of being watched, that sensation of knowing somebody was there who shouldn't be.

"He's here...he's here!" Casey just knew it, somewhere in the dark his attacker was lurking, just waiting to move in for the kill, he could feel the icy breath on the back of his neck.

There was a click and the lights came on again. Kelly crossed over to Casey who stood in the entryway to the living room, his legs were stiff as boards but his upper body was shaking like a leaf. Kelly pulled Casey into a tight embrace and tried to comfort his friend.

"It's okay, it's okay, it's over, you did great, Casey you did it."

Casey looked around the room, "He was here...I know it..."

Kelly rubbed Casey's shoulder. "He's not here, Casey, there's nobody here...you want to check the locks on the door to see for yourself?"

Casey started to calm down and shook his head as he pulled away, "No...no...I'm-I'm sorry, I'm...so embarrassed."

"You don't have anything to be embarrassed about, you're working through your fears, it's going to take some time but I know you can do it," Kelly said.

"Yeah, but not quick enough to go back on shift...what am I going to do, Kelly?" Casey asked hopelessly.

"Have you considered telling Boden the truth?"

"NO!"

"Doesn't have to be the whole truth," Kelly said. "Hey, remember a few years back when that guy was trying to kill Brett? He banned her from going out on any other calls until the guy was caught...we could tell him you got mugged and the guy's got your ID, he'd understand."

"No, I don't want anybody else to know, I don't want anyone feeling sorry...or being disgusted with me."

"Casey, that's not going to happen."

"No, I'm not telling Boden, end of discussion," Casey insisted.

Kelly just nodded and replied, "Okay, okay, we'll figure it out. Hey, you did great."

Casey shook his head, "I don't want to talk about it...can we...can we just forget about it for now and watch TV?"

"Sure, buddy," Kelly patted him on the back, "come on."

"I know why he did it," Casey said suddenly and quietly.

They'd been watching TV for three hours and it was the first thing Casey had said since they'd started. Kelly turned to him and asked, "What?"

"I know why he did it," Casey repeated, sounding like he was miles away, his eyes not even focusing on anything as he talked. "The things that he did to me...they weren't about sex...it was so no matter what happened, I'd never be able to get away from it. Like he was embedding himself in my memory...every little thing reminds me of what happened, I remember him...I remember what he did to me...and I'm never going to be able to put any of it out of my mind. It's like...he's making himself immortal...I'll never be able to get away from him...he wants me to be haunted by it for the rest of my life."

Kelly looked at Casey and had no idea what to say. He just stared at Casey for a minute, who was oblivious to it, and finally he reached over and pulled Casey against him and held onto him.

The next night the lights and the TV were off, which should've been a tremendous improvement, but the room wasn't dark. Outside there was a thunderstorm, and every so often the lightning would flash in the windows and light up the whole room. It had started earlier in the evening as little more than rain, but as time passed, the rain got heavier and the wind started blowing, then the thunder and lightning. Once in a while there was a particularly loud rumble but for the most part it was a low continuous rolling thunder.

Kelly turned over and looked at Casey. With the illumination from the lightning he was able to make out a somewhat amusing sight, Casey was in his sleeping bag with an extra sheet drawn up to his chest, and once again he had the teddy bear in the crook of his arm, and the bear was half concealed by the sheet, only its face from the nose up was sticking out beside Casey. As a brighter flash of lightning lit up the whole room, Kelly saw Casey's eyes were wide open and staring towards the ceiling.

"You awake?" he quietly called over.

Casey made a small sound in answer.

"You okay?" Kelly asked.

Casey just grunted again.

Kelly listened to the weather outside, and thought to ask, "You scared of thunderstorms?"

After 20 years on the job and countless shifts spent in storms that had all the smart people barricading themselves in their homes, he figured he knew the answer, but Kelly figured right now it wouldn't hurt to ask.

"No," Casey quietly responded, he turned his head and asked, "you?"

Kelly almost laughed. "No, definitely not."

A particularly loud crash of thunder coinciding with a blinding flash of light immediately following his answer definitely left him feeling slightly rattled though, and he was sure Casey had to feel the same way.

"All the same, why don't you come on over here?"

Casey didn't need to be told twice, somehow in one fluid movement he got out of his sleeping bag and moved across the floor until he bumped right into Kelly. As he moved so Casey could get straightened out, he felt something furry sticking in his side and realized Casey still had the teddy bear in his grip. He said nothing and let Casey get comfortable beside him, now he noticed Casey clutching the bear in both arms tightly against his chest as he curled on his side, only a couple inches between he and Severide.

"Okay now?" Kelly asked.

"Yeah, I think so," Casey answered.

A deafening BOOM exploded somewhere overhead, shook the whole room, actually sounded like a bomb going off, had both firemen yelping in shock and pulling the covers up over their heads. A couple seconds later after the noise and the vibrations died down they both resurfaced, and looked at each other, and started laughing.

An hour later Kelly was still awake, still listening to the storm rage outside. There had been nothing like that one explosive crack of thunder since, but still he hadn't been able to fall asleep. And he suspected the same was true for the man laying next to him, despite Casey not having moved or made a sound.

"Casey, you asleep?" he asked.

He was mildly surprised by how coherent Casey was as he responded, "Uh uh."

"What's the matter?" Kelly asked.

Casey scooted on his hip to adjust his position, still, Kelly noted, cradling the teddy bear against his chest, as he answered, his voice shaking, "My heart's still racing."

By which Severide knew he was referring to that earth shattering boom. He'd been in his fair share of thunderstorms and tornadoes, but he couldn't off hand recall ever hearing anything that loud in the sky.

"Yeah, mine too," he confessed.

He could see that sleep was futile for the immediate time being, so he pushed back the covers to get up and told Casey, "Come on, let's get something to eat."

Casey sat at the kitchen table with his head propped on his hand, his eyes slowly adjusting to the bright light. His heart was still pounding against his chest and he didn't know when it was going to stop. Across from him, he watched through one eye as Kelly took a couple Oreos out of their package and crushed them in his fist to coat over the top of the two bowls of ice cream with.

"I think they make it like that now," Casey cynically commented with an exhausted smirk on his face.

"Shut up and eat," Kelly remarked as he slid one bowl across the table to him.

"Thanks."

Outside the thunder rumbled again, nowhere near as loud as before, but still enough to wake up any light sleeper in the vicinity.

"I hate storms," Casey admitted.

"I never exactly hated them, but when one'd come out of nowhere in the middle of the night and scare the hell out of me as a kid, it sounded like the whole house was going to come crashing down," Kelly told him. "One summer we had bad storms every Thursday night like clockwork, the nights Benny was home I ran into their room and got into bed with him and Mom, finally it reached a point he just went and slept in my bed and left me with Mom. He complained I never stopped kicking him in my sleep."

Casey bowed his head laughing and about choked on a spoonful of ice cream.

They ate in silence for a couple minutes before Casey looked over at Kelly and asked him, "What happens if I can't go back on shift? What happens if nothing works?"

"Can't think like that," Kelly shook his head, "you've still got plenty of time. We'll try it again tomorrow."

"I couldn't get through two rooms in the dark without panicking...the whole apartment? A structure fire?" Casey shook his head. "I don't think I'll be able to do it."

"Remember I said to trust me? And I said nothing that happened here would leave the apartment? Next time we try it, I want you to talk me through it."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean when you start to panic, you tell me why you are, if you can do that, you can look at it logically, and if you can do that you should be able to get past it."

Casey shook his head, "I don't know, Kelly, it sounds stupid."

"Of course it does, because it's embarrassing to have to admit why you're scared of something. But it's also the only way you can figure out how to beat it," Kelly told him. "Anything you tell me, I'm not going to judge you. I know this is hard as hell for you to deal with, and I'm trying everything I can to help you."

"I don't want..." Casey couldn't finish that sentence, he tried again, "I'm worried that our friendship can't survive all of this."

"Why would you think that?" Severide wanted to know.

"Because so much has already changed, it's not the same at all."

Kelly was silent for a moment as he thought about this. It hadn't occurred to him that things had changed between them at all, but looking over the events of the past couple weeks he guessed there was some truth to that.

"Okay, so things are different...that's not necessarily a bad thing, is it?"

"How long do you honestly think you can put up with all of this, with..." Casey didn't, or couldn't, finish the question.

Kelly reached across the table and gripped Casey's hand in his and squeezed it tight to get his attention. "You're my best friend and nothing's going to change that."

He saw the tears starting to build in Casey's eyes as Matt told him, "This feels pretty broken to me."

"It's gonna get better," Kelly promised him.

By the time they returned to the living room, the storm had largely died down though the rain was still beating against the window, and some faint thunder and lightning could be heard and seen off in the distance. Casey returned to his side of the bed and crawled into his sleeping bag, then he felt something thrown on him, a heavy sheet, that Kelly straightened out across his chest and more or less tucked him in with. Just as Casey moved around to get settled back in for the night, he felt Kelly poking him in the shoulder and heard him say, "Hey."

Casey turned his head and even in the dark he could make out Kelly sitting on his haunches beside him, and saw him holding Hallie's teddy bear out to him.

"Here you go," he said quietly as he gave it to Casey.

Casey felt beyond words, all he could manage was a low, "Thanks," as he absently cradled it in the crook of his arm again.

There was a sudden breeze and the sound of the air whooshing and the next thing Casey was aware of was Kelly laying on the floor beside him, one hand placed over on Casey's shoulder.

"Kelly?"

Even in the dark he could see Severide smiling assuredly.

"I got you, you're safe...think you can go to sleep now?"

Casey opened his mouth to ask Kelly what he meant, then he realized he couldn't feel his heart pounding against his chest anymore. Somewhere between here and in the kitchen it had finally slowed back to normal. Casey closed his mouth and merely nodded.

Outside the thunder started rolling and Casey could feel vibrations from the floor under him. Kelly reached over, grabbed another blanket from the pile and draped it over both of them.

"Goodnight, Casey."

"Goodnight."