A/N: The story may take a much more serious tone at this point, but it's all leading up to the revelation of why Ollie is estranged from his family.

Chapter 26: Shrink

5 months passed after the Arcadian was torn down. I attended the demolition ceremony personally, but Juno didn't. She just felt a bit better being hidden from view. Arthur thanked us for our help in a strange way after that, giving each of us cheques in front of most of the GNB employees, excluding Barney. I don't even remember the amount my cheque was anymore, only that it barely made a dent in my career as one of the best bartenders at Maclaren's. Yeah, Arthur was that cheap even with genuine gratitude.

Robin got in a little bit of trouble as October started. She beat the crap out of a crazy blonde that was following Barney, so that he could get back together with Nora. Nora I had heard a bit about, but never really met in person.

Robin met this guy, Kevin, her court mandated therapist, who she was soon dating after a few sessions. Now that was creepy.

"It's not creepy, Ollie!" She said that night.

"Robin, it's The Joker's level of creepy. Are you planning on killing Batman later by gassing him?!" I started gazing at Robin's face for a creepy grin.

Robin looked at me bewildered. "Nerd." She muttered, shaking her head.

"I prefer to be called 'geek'!" I called after her as she walked back to the booth. "There's a difference from what I see." I muttered.

Kevin soon was at the bar.

"I'll take what you recommend, Oliver." He said.

I jumped. I was hoping that even someone I was only acquainted with knew that I only liked being addressed to as to Ollie. I only allowed people to call me that if they only just met me.

"Don't call me that!" I said angrily.

Kevin backed away. "Um, sorry. What do I call you then? Ollie?"

I nodded.

"That's an odd sort of thing." He observed. "Some kind of attachment to a long lost friend who called you that and you never got over them?"

"Don't go there, Kevin. I'm only a bartender to you. I think you won't find any good in examining my head."

Kevin nodded. "Fine. But I think from what I see right here, that you should try therapy. Come see me if you're interested."

I laughed. "Hah! No thanks! You only just met me, and now you think I need therapy with you? Hell no!"

It wasn't that I was selfish over this whole thing. No one, not even Juno or Cindy knew what happened that left me the way I am 8 years ago. I just never wanted to talk about it.

*slap!* I clutched my face hard.

"Goddamn it!" I screamed. "It's not supposed to be that hard!"

"No, but I just just a Slap-plication card to apply more allowed power to my slap." Grinned Juno.

"She's right, Ollie. You just got slapped across the face. Deal with it." Said Cindy.

I couldn't help but laugh. Cindy, Casey, Juno and I were having a board game night. Marshall recommended me Slap Bet because he provided the inspiration for it a few years back. I was now regretting picking it up at the store.

"So how's the wedding plans going, girls?" I asked.

"Ugh! Exhausting." Said Casey. "I just wish it was much more simple than this. Why does marriage have to have so much damn planning?"

"You got me, Case." I said. I spun the spinner.

"Ooh!" I clapped. "'Slap Happy'!" I grabbed a card from the 'Slap Happy' deck.

"Three Stooges." I read. "Slap three people in a row...with your left hand."

"Hah!" Laughed Cindy. "There's always a catch."

"Hold on." Said Juno. "I saw Ollie write a letter with his left hand." She looked at me in horror.

"Incoming!" I called. I slapped each of them, hard. I wasn't a lefty or a righty. I could work on either side no problem.

"God!" Said Juno. "I think I had that coming. What kind of crazy bastard makes a game like this?" She moaned.

"Funny you should ask. The father of one of my friends from the bar."

"How are they doing?" Asked Cindy. "I know Ted's among them."

"He is indeed. He's currently working with the building crews for GNB's new headquarters. He's doing good. In other news one of his friends is dating her former therapist."

All three of the girls looked at me in the way I expected: confusion with awkwardness.

"That's creepy." Said Casey.

"Hah!" I laughed. "I know! That's what I said."

"A therapist?" Asked Juno. "How good is he?"

I shrugged. "I don't know, J. I never asked him. I think Robin mentioned that he went to Harvard and Princeton. He suggested I take therapy after I simply suggested to him that he call me Ollie." This, I know, was a lie: I had snapped at him for not calling me Ollie.

Juno gave me a look. "I have an idea, Ollie." She looked over at Cindy. She gave back a look of understanding.

"Yeah! He should!" She said.

"What?" I asked.

"You should go to him for therapy, Ollie." Said Juno. She then slapped me again; it was her turn.

"Ow! Why won't you slap someone else?!" I shook off the pain. "Why should I take therapy?"

"There's a lot of crap you're not telling us, Ollie." Said Cindy. "For example, you disappear for a week every year in June."

"That's a vacation." I said. Another lie.

"No it's not. It's always the same week: 21st through to the 28th. Always those days. Why is it always that week."

I gave Cindy a dark look. "Stop this, Cindy."

"What about the mood you were in when we first met?" Said Juno. "You seemed so eager to smash that guy's lights out when he was bothering me that night in the bar."

This was one of the most painful things I was being forced into. I knew they meant well, but now that white-hot burning sensation was coming back to my side. Something that I only remember feeling more than 8 years ago.

"Lay off, honey." Casey said to Cindy. "It's something too heavy for him to handle. Just leave him alone."

But Cindy ignored her. "What happened after we met, Ollie? You've refused to be called Oliver ever since June of 2003."

That did it. I stood up with a slam, hitting the table, and scattering the board's pieces.

"You girls..." I swallowed. "You girls are treading on some wicked thin ice here. I'd suggest stop asking questions before I do something I don't want to. I may even slap you for real."

Juno looked at me with shock. I had never spoken to them like that. But I think with good reason: she didn't just hit a nerve. She smacked it with a sledgehammer.

"I don't give a shit that you wonder what happened to me. That week caused me the most pain I ever felt in my life. I leave New York every year on that week to do something to forget what happened. You don't understand what it feels like to not only remember what was the worst thing to happen to you, but to have it come back to haunt you every single year to come."

I wish that they had forgotten what I said that night. I wish that they had dropped it instead of doing what happened in the weeks to come. I was too afraid to talk to Kevin afterwards. All it did was remind me of the idea to drag me into therapy.

One day a week later, Juno called me up with news that I thought was the biggest I had ever gotten in the longest time.

"Ollie! You're not gonna believe this!" She screamed. I had to hold my phone a few feet away from my face to hear Juno at normal volume.

"What is it, J?" I asked. I was still pissed off at her for what happened on game night, but this sounded important

"I found a guy that has access to get Arkham City early!"

"Are you shitting me?" I asked.

"No, I'm not! I'm in a cab outside! Get up here!" She sounded almost like she was running from zombies instead of freaking out over one of the games we were both excited for.

I ran up the stairs from the bar after clocking out, and jumped into the cab. Juno sat beside me, but she didn't look excited. She looked upset about something.

"I'm sorry, Ollie." She said. She grabbed me by the back of my head, and shoved a cloth into my face. After taking a good breath of it, I fell down, asleep.

"You know we have only an hour?" Said a voice.

I looked up to a bright light in my face. I strained my eyes to adjust to it.

"Oh, good! You're awake!" Said the voice. "Now we can start."

I looked around, seeing bookshelves and framed certificates. Then I looked down to see something that made me think of what the hell I was doing in that position.

I was tied to the chair I was sitting in, and whoever did the knots clearly knew what they were doing. There was no way, by my first glance, that I would be able to squirm out of the bindings.

"I don't like to use deceitful tactics, Oliver. But your friends are worried about you."

I looked up to see the one person who I should have thought of, in that split second: Kevin.

"It's Ollie, Kevin." I replied.

"Yeah, we'll get to that nickname later. Right now I'd like to talk about your family."

"No. How about we talk about why in God's name am I tied to this chair?!" I snapped.

Kevin set down his clipboard. "Alright. I met your friends, Cindy and Juno. They're worried about you, Ollie."

"They had no right to talk about my past to you like it was regular gossip."

"No. But what they do have a right to, as your best friends, is to be worried about you."

"Look, buddy, they got the wrong idea. They've got the wrong idea right now. You've got the wrong idea."

"Ollie, they told me about your 'trips' away from New York in June every year."

"So? They're one week like normal."

"I think that as a professional, it's my responsibility to notice when someone has an abnormal habit. To go away for the exact same week every year for 8 years, it means something happened a while ago. So Juno and Cindy signed you up for regular sessions with me for the next few months."

"Fuck no." I said. "I'm completely normal. I don't need therapy."

"Funny. My psychology professor told me that no one is normal, and everyone will need therapeutic help sometime in their lives." He smiled. "So why don't we start?"

"Can you untie me?" I asked.

"Sorry. I can't have you running off in this. It was Juno's idea. Also, I had this rope provided by the court. You have no idea how many court mandated lunatics will have the stones to try and attack me."

"Of course it was provided." I groaned. "If we're doing this, I need to know that it'll remain confidential between you and me."

"It's your choice, Ollie. I won't let anything you say come out of these walls, but you have full control over whether or not you want the others to know about what happened so long ago. Are you ready to begin?"

I sighed. "I guess so."

Kevin grinned, picking up his notepad. "So tell me where this all started."

I straightened up in my chair to begin my story. "Well for you to understand it, I guess I should start at a Christmas 16 years ago. It feels like a lifetime ago though."

Kevin started taking notes as I continued.

"I come from a family of hunters in Port Angeles in Washington. It was a good family business..."

"And so that Christmas where you shot your first deer is where you want to start your story?" Asked Kevin as the hour was finishing up. I had just spent most of my time telling him the first moment of the events.

"I want to talk about your cousin, Lucy." He said.

"Fuck." I muttered. I didn't want it to come to this, and yet, I expected it to happen.

"What was she like when you two were at those ages? You were 13, and she was 6" He asked.

I shrugged. "She annoyed the hell out of me with that nickname back then. She could never pronounce Oliver correctly when she was a baby. All she could say was Ollie, so even when she grew up to the point where she could say Oliver, she still called me Ollie."

"See, my notes tell me of a hunter in his adolescence, who hated nicknames, but I have right here a bartender who will only answer to that name. You really confuse me."

"I'm getting there." I said. I looked at the clock. "But it looks like our time is up."

Kevin glanced at his watch. "So it is. Good first session, Ollie. I expect you here in two weeks, where we'll continue." He started working on the bindings that kept me to the chair with a penknife he got from his desk. I was soon free.

"Ollie." He said as I got up.

"Yeah?" I asked.

"Don't miss the next one." He said. "Juno said you'll be paying for the sessions yourself if you miss even one of them."

I shrugged. "Well then I'll just say that I have a therapist who permits snatching bartenders off the streets and tying them up." And with that, I walked out.

A/N: Ollie told Kevin the events of the first "Origins" chapter, just so you understand.