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When nine in the morning came, it felt earlier than usual. Jim Gordon sat across from Dr. Madeline Scott in her rented office space. The interior of the room used light blues and cream colors. Clean, simple, classic. On the wall in front of him, two black and white photos hung showing an aerial view of Gotham City Stadium in one and a nighttime cityscape of Gotham in the other. When he breathed in, he took in the lingering scent of lemon and tea leaves and just a hint of clean, freshly pressed clothes, all which told him that the doctor had picked up the shirt and skirt she wore from the dry cleaner's that morning and made herself a cup of Lipton right after.

Jim figured it would have been a pleasant room to be in if he hadn't been there under duress and ordered to talk about his deepest feelings with a complete stranger.

He cleared his throat. "So, how does this work? Do I just start talking or…"

Madeline shifted in her seat, making herself more comfortable. "Well, before we get started, do you have any questions about therapy?"

Jim said, "I do have a question about how many sessions the GCPD is requiring me to attend."

"Captain Barnes told me he'd like to see you go to six. But of course, it's a little early to make that call. We'll have to wait and see how treatment goes."

He read between the lines. How many sessions he attended relied entirely upon her professional opinion. He tried to joke. "I doubt there's any way I can just get through them all at once."

A smile quirked onto her face. "That might get a little counterproductive. The whole idea isn't so much what we say here, but what changes occur when you leave." She seemed to consider something. "But we could do two sessions a week to start, if that would speed things up for you."

In weighing that decision, he found himself in favor anything that would make this obligation a distant memory. "That'd be fine."

"Well, this session is yours … " Madeline shrugged her small shoulders just slightly. "So what's on your mind?"

Jim took stock of his thoughts. "I'm thinking about this case I've got to get back to. Wondering who else is going to be targeted if we don't get solid evidence and stop who's responsible."

Madeline said, "Are you often concerned about the outcomes of cases?"

"Absolutely," he answered. "I probably wouldn't be much of a police officer, if I wasn't."

She nodded, as she seemed to understand what he meant. "No, no, of course, you would be invested in the outcome. But I asked if you're concerned, if you worry. Do you have difficulty relaxing due to thoughts of cases running through your mind? Find yourself staying late into the night at the office, sometimes 'til morning?"

Jim easily said, "It's not unusual to pull an all-nighter. With complex cases, we don't make much headway without burning the midnight oil."

She kept her voice friendly and even. "That shows a lot of dedication."

He thought and then gave his own interpretation. "I do my best to consider all angles, run down every lead, until we close the case."

"And when you don't have an open case, how do you spend your time?"

"I spend as much time as possible with my fiance." He found himself proud to add, "We're expecting a child in another six months."

Madeline's face broke into a smile. "Congratulations, detective. Is this your first?"

"Yes." A hint of a smile reached his face, too. "Our first."

She said, "What do you imagine parenthood will be like?"

He tilted his head as he thought. "Exciting. Challenging." He added. "A lot of firsts."

Madeline drew out each word. "First step. First word. …"

Jim went further. "First car payment."

"First college degree." She said, "Better look alive. I hear it goes quick."

He nodded to her and asked, "How about you? Do you have kids?"

The doctor flattened her hand and made a cutting motion in the air. "Gonna stop you there."

Jim paused, confused by her response. "...You can't answer questions about your life when your patients ask?"

She sat up straighter and crossed her legs when she said, "No, I could, and I do. But right now, I want to learn about you."

Though he found the answer strange, he allowed it. "That's… fair enough."

She smoothly changed the subject. "Tell me a little bit about your folks."

"My parents." Jim couldn't say he was surprised to find her asking about his childhood. "My mom was a nurse. My father worked as a D.A. in the city. He died in a car accident when I was twelve. Drunk driver T-boned the car."

She frowned. "I'm so sorry to hear that. It's hard enough to lose a parent. But when you're young and their life ends so suddenly…"

"Yeah." An awkward pause stemmed in between them. Jim found himself quick to banish it. "Well, it happened a long time ago."

"Did your father's death influence your decision to become a police officer?"

"I think it's safe to say that. I never want to see someone else or their family suffer needlessly, just because no one's doing anything to stop it."

Dr. Scott made a thoughtful sound. Jim waited for her to share her thought and instead she asked, "How long have you worked in Gotham?"

"I've been on the job over a year now. I was in the army before."

She leaned forward. "Did you see combat?"

"Yes."

Madeline looked at him and asked, "How many nights a week do you have nightmares?"

Jim eyed her, taken aback by the question. "Why would you think I'd have nightmares?"

There was an edge of certainty to her voice. "They are very common for both police officers and anyone who's served in the military."

Jim attempted to breath out any frustration he felt. He reminded himself that this woman, who could have only been a few years older than he was, meant him no harm. He answered, "I had one. A little over a week ago."

Madeline sat back in her chair. "Could you tell me about it?"

Jim took a moment and then said, "I'm looking down. I'm standing half-way out of a shattered stained glass window. I'm holding onto my… my ex-fiance's hand, and I'm the only thing stopping her from falling straight out the window. If I let her go, she's going to drop three stories down. So I'm hanging on as tight as I can, and I tell her to hold on. She tells me that she loves me. Then she wrestles her hand from mine. She lets go, and she falls backward. Right as she falls, everything gets really still-"

"Like everyone freezes?"

Jim blinked, as he was momentarily brought back to the present. "No, like it's all happening in slow motion. Then, in the middle of everything, a butterfly inches out of her mouth and flies upward." Jim shrugged. "Then, that's it. I woke up."

Madeline nodded. "Detective … did you see what happened there?"

"In the dream?"

"No, when you were talking about it. Your voice became softer. You sunk back into your chair, and it was almost like you were right back there watching it happen." After a short pause, she said, "Was there any part of the dream that did actually happen?"

It took him a moment, but then Jim answered, "Yes. Everything, except the part with the butterfly."

"Your ex-fiance. Did she pass away?"

"No," he said, his voice becoming clipped. "She's alive. But she is under intense medical care." Jim couldn't say for sure why he omitted that she happened to be at Arkham, but he made the decision instantaneously.

She mused on that and then asked, "What's your relationship like with your ex-fiance-"

"Barbara," he provided.

"What's your relationship like with Barbara?"

Jim opened his mouth, but didn't say anything. He looked down at his watch. "That's a long, very long, involved, long story."

Madeline shrugged her shoulders quickly. "We've got some time left."

He paused and said, "I don't know. It's... long."

"So you said. Detective, let me say this real quick. Whatever you say to me today is strictly confidential. Unless of course you tell me that you're planning to kill yourself or someone else, which it doesn't sound like you are. But, that oath we make for confidentiality. It's so serious that even after someone passes away, I still can't share what they told me, unless I was given written permission beforehand."

Jim said, "Dr. Scott, I know you're a professional and I'm sure you take your job seriously. And I wouldn't imagine that you'd share any details of these sessions..."

She waited, and when he said nothing further, she asked, "...But?"

He nodded, obliging her. "But as helpful as I understand therapy to be, I believe my time would be better spent outside this office, running down whatever leads we can find while there's a killer on the loose."

Madeline pursed her lips and then said, "I can understand that logic. Though in a way you've already expressed that."

His eyebrows drew together when he frowned. "In what way?"

She answered calmly but firmly. "You said at the very beginning of our session together that you have open cases with lives on the line. You implied that wanted criminals could be killing victims while we spend time meeting here."

Jim began to protest, and Madeline gently put up her hand. He breathed out some frustration. He could stop even the most persistent of criminals with body blows, and this doctor silenced him with but a wave. She said, "Here's the thing. You're right."

Her agreeing with him felt like a trap. "About which part?"

She spoke in a serious tone. "Innocent people could die while you're here. You believe that if you were at work you'd be better able to stop any further deaths in this case." She stared at him when she asked, "Do I have that right?"

Jim looked at her in puzzlement. There was a line being left out somewhere in her narrative. It was as if he was listening to a salesman, a good salesman, and they hadn't yet dropped the pitch that would make you buy the full set of encyclopedias. Finally he said, "While all that sounds accurate, I'm not getting the feeling that you're going to send me out of here with a clean bill of health."

Dr. Scott opened her hands, as if to say 'you got me'. "That thought about you being able to stop killers. Sometimes you'll be able to. Others times you won't."

Jim spoke in a strong yet soft voice. "As a detective, I'd like to think I understand that truth better than most people."

She searched his face for something. Then she asked, "Do you blame yourself?"

"For what? For when we don't stop them?"

"Yes," she said.

Something akin to guilt rose up inside him, poking a finger in his ribs. In the back of his mind, he saw Officer Parks young, smiling face, as clear as day. He pulled to mind Captain Essen, Sal Martinez, and so many others. Jim blinked the images away and stuffed them back in the deep closet of his subconscious, a mental activity he'd become adept at performing. "I'm not afraid to take responsibility for my decisions, if that's what you're asking."

She pressed, "Yes, but do you take too much responsibility?"

If Harvey had been there, he would have popped off an easy 'cut the crap'. Though Jim wished to convey the same message, he did so more politely. "I think you're asking the same question, just in a different way."

The doctor replied, "Sometimes people who experience trauma blame themselves for things that are no more their fault than bad weather or traffic jams would be."

"Trauma?" he asked, becoming stuck on that word. "You think I need to resolve trauma?"

She took a deep breath and said, "If you watched Barbara choose to fall to what she must have assumed was her death instead of letting you save her. Then, you're waking up from a nightmare where the memory of that is replaying? Then, yes. That would be trauma."

He paused, appraising her, before he said, "Doctor, before we label this 'trauma', let me ask a few questions first. Have you ever met a police officer who's never had a nightmare? Who's never been affected once or twice by the choices they've made in real time on the job?"

"I haven't," she said, agreeing with him. "But it sounds like you put all of yourself into the job." For a moment, though it was clear she meant to talk about him, it sounded like she was talking about someone else. "When that happens, sometimes there's nowhere for troubling thoughts or feelings to go. So they come out in other ways. Like in your nightmare."

Jim noticed that his breathing wasn't as steady as it had been at the beginning of the session. He closed his eyes for a brief moment and and kept himself calm at all costs. "I always thought dreams were our way of working out our problems while we're asleep."

Madeline paused, considering something. She seemed to abandon what she'd been planning to say and instead asked, "While that's sometimes the case, this particular nightmare seems like it might have happened for a reason."

Jim asked, "That reason being?"

She tucked a couple flyaway hairs behind her ear. "That's a good question. It really comes down to whether you believe nightmares are there just to be scary. Or if they're there to tell us something important."

Madeline looked at him, waiting for a response. Jim glanced down at his watch. "Doctor, I believe we're at time."

Madeline arched her neck to the side to look at the clock on the wall behind him. "You're right. We are. But just, give me a minute to ask one more question." She seemed aware that she needed to use every second of that minute. "Help me understand something. On one hand you're anticipating watching your child grow up and go to college, and yet on the other hand, you want to ignore nightmares that may impact whether or not you're able to function at your highest level on the job, a job where officers die if they're not extremely focused. How will ignoring that trauma help you live to see your child grow up?"

Eventually when he began to answer, he wasn't talking about his trauma at all. "In my experience, dwelling on past events doesn't yield the most positive results."

She leveled with him, "You might be surprised by how many people feel that way about therapy in general. But we're not digging up your past. Your past is right here in your present." She added in a soft voice, "It's just like you said, Jim. I don't want see people suffer needlessly, either, not when there's something that can be done to stop it."

Jim breathed out a sigh of frustration, trying out different responses in his head and rejecting each one.

Madeline said, "Okay, that was a minute." She stood up. "I'll see you Monday?"