Thanks for all the lovely feedback. I'm so excited to finish up this story!

(x)

Gotham City

5 Years Ago

"So, how are things going?" Dr. Scott asked once they'd both taken a seat.

Martha said, "Better. As far as the nightmares go."

Dr. Scott nodded and asked, "And how are you feeling today?"

"I don't know where to begin." She corrected herself. "Yes, I do. I'm furious."

She frowned. "Did something happen?"

Martha fiddled with the string of pearls around her neck and stared down into the carpet of the office. Her body was here, but her mind was somewhere else. "One of the children that I met. He was smart, not book smart, but clever. He took a video on his phone of his father beating his younger brother with a baseball bat. When we asked him if anyone was hurting him, he showed it to us."

Her eyes widened. "You watched it?"

Martha's voice took on a frustrated tone. "Well, what else was I supposed to do? He held it up right in front of me."

The doctor paused and sent her a thoughtful look. "I apologize if what I said sounded like an accusation."

She sighed and threw up her hand. "No, no, I… I know you didn't mean for it to come across that way. I'm just … I'm-"

"You're furious," she provided.

Martha shook her head. "He wouldn't stop. This little boy with little arms and little hands was tied up. He couldn't move. He tried to escape. He fought and he fought, and he cried…" She pressed her lips together and clenched her eyes shut. She continued to speak, but in a breaking, childish voice. "He cried and he cried and he cried. He begged for him to stop."

The doctor frowned and held out a tissue box. At first, Martha looked like she might refuse, but then, she accepted them.

Martha dabbed her eyes and said, "When his father finally did stop, he… his brother was unconscious. He was slumped to the side like a rag doll. Bleeding and bruised and … broken."

Madeline watched her carefully before she said, "It broke your heart."

She wasn't able to look the doctor in the eye, but she nodded emphatically.

The doctor asked softly, "...Was he your son's age?"

The nodding continued, almost becoming rocking.

"So you weren't just watching a stranger get horribly abused. You were watching your son get abused, too."

She sniffed back and looked down at the wet tissues in her hand. "Before I had children, I understood somewhere that parents have a soft spot for other kids who remind them of theirs. Now that I have a child of my own, I know that it's so much more than that." She placed her hand on her heart. "Having a child is like having your heart walking around outside your body. They're you, but … they're not you. Anything can happen to them at any time, and there's nothing you can do to stop it."

Madeline reacted quickly. "That thought about your son. 'Anything can happen at any time and there's nothing you can do to stop it.' Is that thought true?"

"It is, it's …" Martha re-evaluated her wording. "Part of it is true."

"Which part isn't true?"

She softened her voice. "There are things I can do to keep my son safe."

Dr. Scott nodded. "There's probably a list of a hundred or more things you already are doing to keep him safe."

She smiled through her sadness. Then all at once the sadness flooded through, consuming her once more.

The doctor waited patiently, giving her time to grieve.

Martha took in a deep breath and released it, before saying, "I just can't help thinking… What about the rest of the children? What about this boy, his brother?" She added, "Whatever I'm doing, it's not enough."

Madeline said, "I think you've already made immense changes in the lives of these children. I don't understand why you're not giving yourself credit."

She huffed a guilty, tired sound. "That's because you don't know what I was -really- thinking about while I watched that video."

The room became so quiet that they could have heard a pin drop. Madeline said, "When I was first starting out, I might have tried to remind you of all the good you've done for these children. Listed it out, made a case for all your effort and hard work. But I think … you're saying that there's another part of you, a darker part, that frightens you."

Martha looked up. She bit her bottom lip before she said, "There's one part of me that feels devastated for the parents who harm their children, knowing they must have somehow survived living through decades of abuse themselves. Then there's another part of me." She whispered, "That darker part of me, that wants to take that parent from the video in a room somewhere and kill him."

The doctor blinked. "Did you do that? Did you take him into a room somewhere and kill him?"

"Of course, not," she quickly said. "I would never-"

"You would never do that to someone. Thinking and doing are two very different things."

"They don't feel very different."

Madeline shifted in her seat and said, "So I'm gonna do that thing where I talk about another client I've seen without using his name or giving any defining characteristics..."

Martha half-smiled back at her. "It's okay." She added, "Maybe you'll be secretly talking to one of your clients about me one day."

That caused a real smile to break out on her face, the image of that. Dr. Scott said, "I was seeing this soldier who'd just returned from Afghanistan. He confessed to me that there was a part of him that hated the violence and the injustice and the chaos of war. But there was another, darker part of him that loved killing people. He enjoyed torturing people to get information. And he was fascinated with how people looked when they died."

Martha's eyes widened and she froze upon hearing what the doctor told her.

Madeline pointed directly at her. "And I tried very hard not to look like you do just now when he told me about that."

She blinked and asked, "How did he change that part of himself?"

"He didn't," Madeline said bluntly. "He acknowledged and accepted that those dark thoughts were a -part-of him." She said, "Just like you fantasizing about killing that father who brutally abused his sons … It's not all of you. It's just one little part."

Martha shivered when she said, "I know, but … whenever I feel that part taking over, it scares the hell out of me."

(x)

Gotham City

Present Day

Jim and Harvey checked in with Barnes, and they did only what two detectives who lost their mark could do. They took their licks and went back to work with a vengeance. Harvey pulled up the license number and address registered to the van from the DMV database while Jim sat down at his desk, running through his paperwork on the case. He knew it was a long shot, but he hoped that if he just looked long enough that it might all come together, like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

Jim looked up as his partner left to go sign out the squad car. At the same moment, he saw Lee standing only a foot from his desk. He sent a smile her way.

Lee reached out and touched his chin tenderly. "Rough day, detective?"

Jim winced a little and said, "Had a little misunderstanding with a cameraman who loosely resembled Sasquatch."

"Just another day at the GCPD?"

Jim smiled dryly. "If we get that saying chiseled in stone and mounted up on the wall, it could be our new motto."

Lee looked at him sympathetically. "I heard you almost had him."

"Yeah," Jim breathed out. "Well you know what they say about almost."

"You'd know better than me. I don't think I've ever held a horseshoe or a hand grenade." When Jim huffed a short laugh, Lee said, "I also heard that you tried to talk this last guy down."

"It was working, until you know, it wasn't." He spoke with determination. "I just have focus on finding this blue van. We've got a license plate. That's a start."

"You can't catch 'em all. But if anyone can get this one, it's you." She leaned down and kissed him gently.

Jim stared deeply into her eyes. Lee had what he sometimes heard the old timers refer to as Spanish eyes. He found himself getting lost there once more. "You sound pretty sure about that."

"Who's taking bets? I'll put money on it."

Jim looked around. "I'll talk to Alvarez, have him put you down for twenty."

Lee narrowed her eyes at him. "Wait, you're serious?"

"No." He arched his neck and kissed her again. "Though it's really just a matter of time before someone sets up a system for that."

She looked around the station. "Something's telling me I probably shouldn't plan to wait up for you tonight."

Jim nodded. She was getting good at sensing a stake out before it happened. "We got Dr. Frederick Moon's address off the license plate. I doubt he'll be home in the recliner, watching his soaps, but ..."

"But stranger things have happened," Lee said.

She didn't know the half of it. Jim turned back to his desk. "I'm just gonna sort through some paperwork here. Try to clear my head before we take off."

"Smart plan." Lee walked away, looking at him over her shoulder. "I'll see you in the morning."

Jim called after her. "Looking forward to it."

When she left, Jim took stock of his desk. If his mother had been there to see it, she would have said, 'It looks like a tornado touched down.' He started looking for the fax Madeline had given them from Veteran's Services, unsure if he'd left it on his desk or not. If he didn't find it, that was alright, too. Sorting out the top of his desk was soothing. He threw out some very elderly post-it notes, organized his call log, and began going through papers set off to the side that morning.

Jim went into soft neutral, still aggravated about how they'd lost their mark, thinking about how Paul Henderson had slipped out of his state of rage, and wondering how much coffee he'd need to stay awake for all-nighter outside Dr. Moon's one-story home. He barely even registered that he'd opened up the envelope until he stared down at …

A bonus check. For Jim Gordon. Courtesy of Gotham City Police Department.

He sucked in a shuddering breath and dropped the check as if it had been poker hot. He felt a tingling sensation stemming through the tips of his fingers and down through his hands. Sweat beaded on his forehead. Jim shot up from his desk, knocking over his chair, as he ran blindly towards the back of the station. He collided right into another officer, who cried out "hey!", and nearly knocked him over. Jim's breathing intensified, and he could feel his heart threatening to beat right out of his chest.

Dread sunk down deep in his stomach as he realized what would quickly happen next. He looked up, and the walls of the police station began to blur and flicker, like a poorly running computer program. He saw Barbara appear in the distance, disappear, and appear only inches before his face. He cried out and backed away. He could smell the sweet vanilla scent of her perfume. She looked resplendent in her ivory wedding gown, which had a satiny expensive look. She would have been a beautiful blushing bride, if it weren't for the wide, unblinking look of murder in her eyes.

Barbara giggled and beckoned to him, putting up her pointer finger and pulling it toward her playfully. "What's the matter, Jim? Don't you want to play?" She threw back her head and laughed. "It's so rude to leave a game, before it's finished."

The hallway swayed and looped, like the walls of the building had turned into funhouse mirrors. Jim ran as fast as his legs could carry him, through each apparition of Barbara, back towards the interrogation rooms.

Yes, that was it. An empty interrogation room. He could lock himself inside.

If he could get there. His legs felt heavy, and it became almost impossible to walk. It felt like moving through tar. "No," he breathed out, sweating profusely, losing steam. "No!"

He felt his head loll back, and he very nearly lost his footing. He realized quickly that he may only have seconds. He grabbed and discarded the gun at his side, his pepper spray, his side arm and …

"Jim."

Lee stood at the opposite end of the hallway. She looked at him with equal parts alarm and concern. "Jim, what's wrong?" She hurried toward him. "Are you okay?"

Jim tried to cry out, No! NO! Lee, whatever you do, stay back!

But his mouth wouldn't move. He suddenly realized just how much anger he'd been holding back over the day, weeks, and months at the GCPD. It rushed to his head now, overwhelming nearly every part of him.

He felt his arms moving of their own accord. It was like Lucy Grimwald said. He watched himself from outside himself. Now, he watched as he reached down the side of his right leg.

He still had his .22 strapped down at his ankle. In cool, robotic movements, he snapped open the holster, removed his weapon, and leveled the gun forward.

In his mind, Jim kicked, screamed, cursed, beat against the proverbial walls of his mind, commanding himself to stop. But then, the movie screen appeared. The trauma began to replay.

Barbara returned, blocking his field of vision. He knew she wasn't there, understood it so completely. But she looked so lifelike, so human, so threatening, peering down at him.

He felt Barbara's hot breath on his cheek. "Do you want to shoot me, Jim?"