The doctor smiled at her, his bright blue eyes boring into hers. "My name is Doctor Jonathan Crane." He flipped open a notebook and took the cap off his pen. "Let's begin."

-x-

Casey fidgeted on the leather couch. "So where do we start?" She asked.

"This appointment was made by Lieutenant James Gordon," Dr. Crane replied. "He told me for reasons of trauma. So why don't we start with the incident?"

"The incident?"

"He told me you were in Blackgate Prison on Christmas Eve when the inmates revolted," he said. "Tell me what happened."

She took a deep breath, her eyes focused on Dr. Crane's notepad with his pen poised and ready to write. "Okay." She looked upwards to the ceiling as she let out her breath. "But it didn't start at Blackgate."

"Go on."

"I was assigned to find a terrorist by the name of Anarky several weeks ago," she started. "And I found him on Christmas Eve. I was tricked into going out into the field where I got caught by the terrorist. Nothing… bad happened then. The Batman showed up and then I was back at the police department." God she sounded so stupid when she said this aloud.

"But later that night I was walking home and someone began shooting at me. He nicked my leg so I fell down and then he took me to the bank." Her eyes dropped back to the notepad where Dr. Crane was writing down notes. "I had a gun held to me as a hostage for Batman." She laughed humorlessly. "God this sounds ridiculous."

"Keep going," Dr. Crane said. "Leave nothing out."

"Well my life was only in danger for a short time because Batman showed up again and I was free to go. But when the building by the Royal blew up, I had to go back to work. I was in the bridge when that guy tried to blow it up. And then the riot happened."

Here. Here where it all happened. Casey glanced back up at the ceiling, trying to collect her thoughts. "I went into Blackgate Prison with Gordon. I had orders to get the prison systems back up and running so we could restore order. A prison guard, Adam Jenkins, was with me as protection. I almost had power running through part of the prison when he showed up."

"Who?"

Casey swallowed. "The Joker," she whispered. "He came into the room and he—he shot Adam right in front of me. I watched him die. And then he took me to the prison chapel. And he—he." Her fingers curled around the edge of the couch. With her other hand, she gestured to her neck. "He choked me. He choked me and he laughed while he did it. He laughed. I almost died and he was laughing."

Tears blurred her vision and she gritted her teeth. She wouldn't cry. Not now.

"I see," Dr. Crane said. He set his pen down and took off his black-framed glasses. "Tell me how you felt during your attack at Blackgate. Walk me through your emotions."

"I was terrified," Casey admitted. "I knew I was going to die and I didn't want to. I didn't want his face to be the last thing I saw before I died." She shuddered.

Dr. Crane nodded understandingly. "Are you familiar with PTSD otherwise known as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder?"

Casey shrugged a shoulder. "Isn't that something veterans get?"

"It is most commonly seen in war veterans, yes. But that doesn't mean civilians can't get it. PTSD occurs after an event one would consider traumatizing. It can range from warfare to a car accident, even to major surgery. It all depends on your reaction during the events. Strong reactions combined with feelings of loss of control can weigh in on your trauma. And PTSD brings back that trauma and forces you to relive it, in a sense."

He picked up his pen. "I'm going to go over the four symptoms of PTSD and we'll see if you've been experiencing them. The first one is Re-experiencing. Have you had bad memories or nightmares of the event? Or on some occasions, you feel like you're going through the event again?"

Casey nodded. "Yes," she said hoarsely. "I have nightmares about it almost every night."

He nodded and made a note. "The second symptom is avoidance. Do you avoid situations of the event? Or even people who might trigger your memories? Have you talked about that night with anyone?"

"Only when Gordon pressed me," she said. "I, um, can't wear scarves anymore. Anything that confines my neck and I'm suddenly back there with him above me..."

"We call that a flashback," he said gently. "How about intense feelings of negativity? Any strong feelings of fear, guilt, or shame? Or are you uninterested in activities you used to enjoy?"

She thought back to when she saw Mara Jenkins in the precinct. "I saw Adam's widow last week," she said. "I found out she was pregnant and ended up crying in the woman's bathroom. That was when Gordon sat me down for a talk and I admitted it should have been me."

"Survivor's guilt certainly does play a part in trauma," Dr. Crane told her. "And finally, hyperarousal symptoms. Have you been feeling jittery or always on the lookout for danger?"

"No."

"Or have you had trouble concentrating or sleeping?"

She nodded. "Sleeping, yeah. The nightmares usually have me waking up in the middle of the night. And I can't get back to sleep. Um, I've had a couple nights where the nightmares got so bad I ended up crying on my couch."

"I see," he said and then sighed. "Usually PTSD is diagnosed when the symptoms last longer than four weeks. I cannot go that route since it's been barely three. However, if your symptoms have caused you great distress to the point of being unable to function or interfered with your work or home life, I can diagnose you."

He stared at her with his piercing blue eyes. "Um," Casey started. "I was actually suspended from work for about a week but I've pretty much been able to resume my life with exception of the stuff I already told you about."

"Alright," he said. "As of right now, I won't diagnose you but I will make another appointment for you in a week or so and we will see how you're doing then. But I do want to make a start on the healing process. PTSD or not, you have been through a serious trauma."

She nodded. "That sounds fair."

"I want to start you off with learning some breathing exercises for when you feel overwhelmed. Have you ever done such exercises?"

She shook her head. "No."

"Alright. There is the simple breathing and counting to ten. When you feel the memories coming back, hold in a deep breath and count to ten and then exhale. As you repeat the process, I want you to remind yourself that these are only memories. They can't hurt you. The Joker can't hurt you." Casey nodded again; she could do that. Dr. Crane leaned forward. "I want you to remember this, Casey. Every time you have a flashback or a nightmare you must remind yourself they are memories, you are not in danger, and you are not in danger."

He held eye contact with her for several long moments until she said, "yes, I understand."

He smiled. "Good."

They spent the rest of the session laying out their groundwork. Dr. Crane said the next session they would start creating goals and starting their real work. But he told her she did a good thing by coming to him for help as he shook her hand and bid her goodbye.

And for the first time since Christmas, Casey felt hopeful.

-x-

Everything the department needed on Ferris Boyle was everything Casey found on him when she went through his personal computer on New Years. In fact, she just downloaded her findings from her cloud server and, for safety measures, deleted the server, and handed over the info to Bullock. "Everything you need to put him away for a long time," Casey said as Bullock leafed through the file.

"Anything on the Freeze guy?"

"What's in there is what I found. Boyle was obviously holding his wife hostage to make Fries create cyroweapons for him," Casey explained. "Should be a good defense case for Fries, right?"

Bullock laughed. "In case you'd forgotten, Wilson, Freeze attacked a whole bunch of innocent people. He's an accomplice. Guy's going away."

Casey's heart sunk. "Away?" She asked, aghast. "But he was a victim!"

Bullock snorted. "An iced wife isn't much of a witness. Even if he doesn't go down with Boyle, he sure as hell is going down with Penguin." He gave her a sarcastic good-bye wave and left with the file.

"Damn," Casey said and sank back into her chair. She wanted to help Fries and didn't fault him for the events of New Years' Eve. The man only wanted to save his wife even if he resorted to extreme measures. She frowned at the picture of Boyle on her computer. What would Batman do if he heard they were going to put Fries in jail? And what would happen to Nora?

She made a mental note to speak to Gordon later about it as she pulled up her file on Edward. She put flags on his bank accounts just in case he tried to get more money but no luck so far. But it didn't surprise her; Edward was smarter than that. So she had to find him a different way. Problem was, she didn't know how. She already swept the precinct's server to check if he had a backdoor installed but it was clean. But she knew he had to have eyes somewhere.

"I'll find it eventually," she said as she did another scan of the server. And like the previous five attempts, it came back clean.

Her phone rang and she picked it up. It was Gordon. "Hey Gordon," she greeted.

"Casey, I need you do a favor for me," Gordon said at the other end. "Can you look up any money activity for Judge Fremont Harkness?"

"Judge Harkness?" Casey asked, surprised. But she put Gordon on speaker and started typing on her keyboard. "He died three weeks ago, Christmas Day. Didn't Julian Day kill him?"

"Strangled him with Christmas lights and hung him outside his house," Gordon said. "Though we haven't officially stated it was Day. A lot of people had motive for going after Harkness."

Very true, Casey thought. People nicknamed Harkness "The Hanging Judge" for treating all criminals the same with his extreme bias. He never took into consideration for people who were mentally ill or even underage. Everyone was treated the same and it made Harkness a lot of enemies. But Harkness sentenced Julian Day, The Calendar Man, to die on Christmas Eve and Harkness's body was discovered on Christmas. Even without evidence, only Day had a modus operandi like that.

"So why am I looking up Harkness's bank statements?" She asked.

"Crime Scene finally got their report in," he replied. "Some of his credit cards are missing."

"So you think Day stole them?"

"It's possible."

"Well unfortunately for us, Judge Harkness seems to have multiple bank accounts. Even one in Switzerland, jerk face. For the most part all of his spending was before Christmas for presents and whatnot but… wait. Hang on. I've got something."

"What is it?"

"His savings account," she said. "About twice a week since Christmas someone's been withdrawing about a thousand dollars. You'd think the banks would freeze the accounts considering he died—oh that's right, his wife is on the account too. But these withdrawals were on ATMs so let me see if I can get some kind of security footage..."

She typed in a few commands to get into the bank's network and gave herself an admin privilege in the security section. She entered in the dates of the withdrawals and found several similar images staring back at her.

"Okay, Gordon," she said. "In all of videos, I've got a large man in a coat using the ATM. I can't see he his face but if you give me time to run some body-recognition software, I can give you a match or not."

"Do it," Gordon ordered. "We haven't seen any activity from Day since Christmas but the man has compulsion to kill on a holiday."

"Right," she replied and hung up. She saved the images and exited out of the bank site. January was almost over and Day would strike soon unless there was a body out there they hadn't discovered yet. But she didn't want to think about that as she booted up her other software. She had a job to do and she was going to do it before someone else died.

-x-

When Gordon came into her workspace a few hours later, she finished her analysis on the bank footage. "It came up with a ninety-eight percent match," she said and showed him her screen. "It has to be Day."

Gordon stared at the image for a few minutes. "Alright," he said. "I want you to flag this account. Any activity and you alert me ASAP."

"We're not going to freeze it?" She asked, alarmed.

Gordon shook his head. "No. This is our only way to track Day. If we cut him off, we lose him."

"Alright. I'll track the account," Casey said. "Hopefully he'll find himself due for some money soon."

Gordon put a hand on her shoulder. "Thank you. I'll let Judge Harkness's family what's going on. They'll want to stay in the loop."

"Sure," Casey replied. Gordon left her in the room, staring at the image of Day's blank face. She remembered when he was at large, before Batman caught him. No one wanted to celebrate holidays in fear their loved one would turn up dead. A classmate of Rodney's lost their father on Father's Day and an entire family died on the Fourth of July. And there was a huge wave of relief in Gotham when Day got dropped off to the cops. The nightmare was over. But now he was back out and it was only a matter of time until he killed another person or someone brought him in.

And she hoped the Batman would find him first.

-x-

That's the end of chapter eighteen. We start walking into new territory and things are going to start taking some turns. Many things are in store for Casey.

Reviews, favorites, and follows are love! See ya in chapter nineteen!