Disclaimer:I do not own any of the Batman Begins/Dark Knight characters. All other characters are mine.

It began as early as she could remember, or perhaps earlier; the nightmares.

Most of them involved her brother's unfortunate 'accident', or if you had any sense, his suicide.

There was no point, Cat often thought, no point in dressing him up in euphemisms and kind lies. Ashton didn't fall on his bullet, it wasn't a misfire right through his frontal lobe, it was seven long years of depression and distant parents.

Cat was thirteen when her brother never came home from his work as a cab driver.

Thirteen when they found pieces of his brain flecked along the empty alleyway.

Her parents home-schooled her for the next five years, bringing her up in the fields of art and psychology. She was, to them, a blank canvas just waiting to be brought to life and designed. They brought her up smart and ambitious, but the only comfort or compassion she was shown were rewards for good behaviour.

Trained carefully, like a greyhound.

"And when did you meet him exactly?"

Huntley tore her from the story, the rain was heavier now and thunder rolled above them.

"Not yet," Cat was slightly annoyed at her interruption, she had moved herself to the floor and was sitting with her legs crossed. "First there was Mark, and then Bruce. If you want to know everything then I suggest you let me recount everything with no interruption."

Yvonne twinged her lip before gesturing her to go on, Cat jerked her knees childlike, as the tale continued.

She met Mark at the airport on her way to Gotham. Ash had owned an apartment there, and Cat decided to move out from her parents' house at 18 and find her own way in a new city.

A half-Korean man had asked for her help finding his lost luggage, and with his chequered shirts and curly hair, she was pretty much already his.

Mark was incredibly sweet, gushing the entire trip to Gotham (surprisingly he was headed the same way) about his beautiful mothers who paid for his ticket, to chase his dream as a reporter. The two talked for hours, then the plane landed and somehow, they both arrived at Ashton's place together.

Cat was, at this time, fairly naive in terms of love, so she thought she had found it with him.

Days went by, weeks, months.

All the while she gave everything she had to the man of her dreams, he took it gladly.

Winter rolled onto Spring, and as these things do, the relationship faded. Cat was growing tired, tired of giving, tired of trying, somehow, he just wasn't worth the effort anymore.

It was almost a relief when she came home early one night, a stranger's clothes trailing up the stairs, a stranger's purse on the coffee table, a stranger in their bed.

Almost a relief, it still shattered her.

But this sob story is still crucial to the reason, the big question behind it all; why? Why did she let him in? Why did she kill all those people? Why does she no longer care?

Cat found it difficult to realign her life, after all, she had never been alone in Gotham until she had dropped Mark's things from a two-story window and he disappeared from her life forever.

Now her heart was like Mark's laptop, smashed and scattered on the curb below.

Eventually time did heal her, or made it easier to pretend that it did.

Cat paused, looking up at Huntley who was engrossed in her notes.

"Well?"

Huntley was surprised to see that her face had fallen and her recount stopped.

"Well," she parroted her quietly, "now we begin the real story…another time."

Cat felt mentally and physically exhausted, going through her brother's death and Mark's heartbreak was more than she was able to stand.

"I see," Huntley hesitantly began to organise her notes, dragging her chair back to its original position behind the desk.

Eventually she voiced her implied concerns; "I don't quite understand yet, apart from your brother's death, there hasn't been a significant cause for cognitive irregularities, no mention of symptoms, nothing."

Cat gave a humourless laugh, her eyes cold.

"It wasn't an ongoing illness, he obliterated my mind in a few short months with nothing but an empty room and torture equipment."

This silenced Yvonne completely, what she thought was a simple case of Stockholm syndrome or schizophrenia, was rapidly unravelling to something darker, something far more dangerous.

It was this fear that brought her back to the room one week later, for the second consultation.

Cat was patiently, even excitedly, swinging around in her chair as Yvonne prepared her notes.

'Bipolar', she made her first diagnosis.