Okay everybody, two more to go after this one. As always, thanks for reading along and taking this long, strange trip with me. I'm working on a Pre-Gotham story for Harvey and Madeline. Hope everyone's having an excellent Sunday!

(x)

Madeline stepped outside onto the stoop and immediately hugged her arms around herself as the winter breeze rushed her. The last leaves of fall crinkled and scraped against the sidewalk as the wind pushed them into a lazy tornado underneath the streetlamps. Bruce hunched down inside his coat and climbed inside the back of the town car as Alfred Pennyworth opened wide the door.

She heard the sharp slam of the car door, and she walked down the stairs at her leisure. When Alfred looked toward her, she pieced together whatever semblance of an earnest stare she could manage at this hour.

He stopped and greeted her. "Good evening, doctor."

She held up her hand in a simple wave. "Thank you for your patience. I know we ran a little over."

They met each other at the bottom of the stairs. "Well, so long as it's for Master Bruce's benefit, I can't see a point at issue."

Madeline kept her arms crossed tightly against the chill of the wind.

Alfred said, "We had quite the uneventful week. I'm relieved to say."

She nodded, knowing to what he referred. "I'm glad to hear it."

He spared a quick glance behind him. Then, he hesitated before he asked her, "...How's the boy doing?"

From where she stood, Madeline looked into the backseat window of the car, and when she did, she met Bruce's stare. She smiled slightly at him before looking back at his guardian. "He… is where he is?" she said. "And I'm trying my best to meet him there."

Alfred seemed to accept her response.

She said, "I want to thank you for bringing him. I know you said before, back at the manor, that you had made promises…"

He said, "I don't want you to misunderstand Thomas Wayne, doctor. He had a deep appreciation for people such as yourself, for the service your profession provides. Thomas Wayne only ever wanted the very best for his family." He drew in a breath and said, "However, he feared that having his wife and child share their deepest secrets with anyone in Gotham could potentially put them in harm's way. As well as pose a risk to the safety of the person sitting across from them listening to those secrets."

Madeline didn't mean to thinly press out a sigh. But she remembered something Bruce said from their first session. About how the people around him protected him at all costs, even putting their own lives in danger, because he was all that was left of Thomas and Martha Wayne.

She clicked her lips to herself and looked up at Alfred, saying, "So. I'll see Bruce next week?"

Alfred studied her for a moment. Madeline had no way of knowing if he found what he was looking for. "We shall both return at the same day, same hour."

She started to step back up the stairs, but then she suddenly looked back. "Mr. Pennyworth?"

He turned back.

She asked him. "Do you know what separates those who make it through grief and trauma and those who don't?"

His mouth curled into a dry, rakish smile as he said, "If this is yet another sales pitch touting the curative benefits of your craft, I believe it's safe to inform you that no further selling point is necessary."

Madeline wore her own half-smile. "Those who go on to not just survive but thrive get there by being understood and loved by an attuned, self-possessed someone."

Alfred dropped his gaze and blinked several times after she spoke. When he looked back up, he said, "I steadfastly believe that someone," he said, of course, meaning himself, "will all but move heaven and earth to be there for that child for whatever he should need."

"Maybe, if you're lucky, you won't have to do it alone."

He bid her good-night. "'Til next time, doctor."

Madeline waited on the sidewalk, watching as Alfred started up the car and drove himself and Bruce back out into the streets. Then she walked back up the steps and inside her office. When she closed the door behind her, she breathed out long and hard and smiled.

Right up until she began to cry. She felt and then heard herself let go with a soft but breaking sound. The tears started slow. Then they built until sobs wracked her body. She let the door catch her and she slid down onto the floor.

The thoughts broke upon her with everything except the rock-crushing roar of a wave hitting the shore. In her mind's eye, she saw Jim Gordon who had stepped in something, lord only knew how deep with all the quicksand underfoot in that corrupt excuse for a station. He needed redemption, but to get there, he'd first need to face the dark corners of himself. But there was no way for him to dig down deep enough to that place, not with a baby on the way and a dead father to whom he still had everything to prove. So he continued to suppress whatever secrets he had, and as long as he did, he would be fundamentally at war with himself. The hell of it was, if he'd had any real practice with lying at all, he might have been able to sidestep, to correct. But Gordon was too honest a man. The face he showed the world held a mixture of unease and guilt, the face of a man trying very hard to forget the mistakes he'd made. And if she observed all those things so simply and plainly, how many others were noticing, too?

And she saw Bruce Wayne, a child, not a kid/adult, but a child with his 'you'll mistake me for a sociopath' stare caught in the riptide of all the emotions that he feared would drag him under if he ever so much as acknowledged their presence. Trying like hell to remove himself from every emotional event and at the same time feeling everything all the time all at once. And ironically, all of that said more about Bruce's level of courage than anything else. How he'd managed to step into her office twice now she had no idea. But he'd done it. Even though he was scared she wouldn't be able to help him, scared she would be able help him, scared that all the help in the world still wouldn't change the fact that a murderer took away his parents and undid his life. She knew that so clearly, because she was scared of it, too.

And Martha. That was where the breakdown really reached its crescendo. The woman she grew to love, and therapists weren't supposed to grow to love their clients, but it was just a little too late for that. Not in a romantic or lover's way, but in a vulnerable human 'you resemble me' way that almost made it worse. The woman who she made say out loud, who she made believe, 'There are things I can do to keep my son safe.' Martha, who she watched make such progress and as she did, it so granted Madeline the strength to heal herself. All for what? So Martha could watch herself bleed out in a gutter while her son looked on, helpless and heartbroken and made never the same. All grief was the death of 'could have beens', and Madeline had plenty of her own packed away. Her fantasy of seeing Martha again joyful and well and seeing it as an extension of her own healing. Martha would never read her book. Martha would never save another child from a life of abuse. Martha would never see her son grow up. Martha would never grow old, like she should have, like she so deeply deserved. And if Madeline felt the grief consume her this fully, this completely, how did Bruce feel it? To what hell did she return him after forcing and shoving him further down to gaze into the abyss of his total, abject sorrow?

Some one-plus-one-equals-two side of her own brain cautioned her to get ahold of herself, to wrap up this pity party already, to 'be strong'. But another part of her spoke more softly, saying, Practice what you preach. And really, at the end of the day, it was the least she could do.

Finally, the seas calmed, as they always eventually did. The thoughts relented. Exhaustion took its place, saying ...What just happened? Well, she was the one who made the brilliant decision to come back to Gotham. What did she expect?

But as her breathing and her tears slowed, Madeline realized something. She'd dug through the first, superficial layers, and that effort granted her access to part of what was underneath.

What was this, all of it really about anyway?

She closed her eyes and rested the back of her head against her closed office door. It was about a room inside the Waldorf Hotel and the stage of an abandoned theater. It was about a city that stole her sanity, or maybe that she let steal her sanity.

It was about a phone call a few years overdue.

Madeline waited until she felt calm, drained, but calm. She lifted her cell phone from her pocket and dialed a number that had been stored in her phone for some time.

The phone rang once, twice, until it was answered.

A 'who the hell wants what now?' voice. "Bullock."

"Hey."

Followed by rhapsodic sarcasm. "Well, well. Look who learned how to dial a phone."

"Turns out it was easier than I thought. … You callin' it a day?"

"Yeah, I'm about to knock off."

Madeline threw down just a pin drop of the exhaustion she felt. "You got a minute?"

And to her surprise, he picked it up. "Maybe. What's goin' on?"

"Oh, just another rousing day in Gotham."

Harvey did that thing, where he expressed just that hint of concern. "...Somethin' happen?"

"No, no, it's … nothing like that. It's just, you know, the repeats," she said, knowing he would understand just exactly what she meant. "You know the deal. I see them coming and I try like hell to stop them. Then I watch them happen anyway."

"You're still lettin' that get to you, huh?"

"You know how that line goes. Old habits…"

Harvey replied with lazy certainty. "Yeah, well, here's another pearl of wisdom. Quit thinkin' that the only way to stop a freight train is to stand in front of it."

Madeline raised her eyebrows. "So what? I just step aside, say 'not my problem?'"

"Yeah, you don't know how to do that," he spelled out for her. "So you know, do your whole Madeline Scott, Texas Ranger thing. Throw some sand in the gears, uncouple some cars, show that emergency brake who's boss. But when you hear that quittin' bell ring? Do yourself a favor." He all but hissed out. "Call time."

She simplified it. "You're saying I need to chill out."

"There is molten lava smoldering deep within the center of the Earth that doesn't need to chill out like you do."

She shook her head. "It's not that simple-"

"It's just that simple," he laughed out in a dry, humorless way. "Is there somebody payin' you overtime right now? No? Then that means you're off the clock."

"So that's your advice. Be like you."

"Hey, I already did my job today. Time to kick back and tie one on." He added, "You oughtta try it out sometime, doc. You might remember how much you like it."

Madeline went quiet over the line. She smirked to herself, but she also felt something in her shoulders relax.

She could all but hear Harvey's wolfish grin. "...That was pretty good, right?"

"Not as good as the time I asked you 'why do they call it a pineapple?' And you said, ''Cause it ain't a pine and it ain't an apple.'"

"Doesn't take a rocket scientist."

"Boom. Another case closed." Madeline stretched out her arms as she asked, "So, how much do I owe you for the session?"

"I'm a public servant. Comes right out of your taxes."

She sang back, "Well, thank you for your time, officer." Then she ran her hand through her hair and pressed out a sigh. "It's gettin' late. I better go."

"You comin' through here tomorrow?"

"Oh, but I am."

"Check you later."

"Yeah. You too."

When she ended the call, she used the heel of her hand to brush away any traces of her earlier tears and smiled.