I will add Will's P.O.V. as a second chapter of people like it.

Major trigger warnings. This is rough.

Jay.

It started forever ago. Maybe there was a time where I could have pinpointed exactly when I started to loose my mind. But now, I can't even remember when 'i need help' turned to 'just pull the trigger.'

It doesn't take much. Six pounds of pressure. Less than six actually. Some guns have five, others even lighter with three and a half. It really depends on the weapon, the caliber, and if it's custom or not. You put more effort into opening a beer bottle than you would to kill somebody.

Six pounds of pressure. Six pounds, and I get peace. Quiet. Calm.

But would I really? Would I even be here to experience the silence I've been begging for? I don't think I've ever given a ton of thought to what I believe in, which I suppose is weird, but...I always hoped you went somewhere after you died. A selfish hope really, because if we don't go anywhere when we die, if we just disappear, then not only will I too, but I'll never get to see them again. All the ones I've lost, if they aren't out there…

How can you live, knowing you're dying, but not thinking about why or where you go afterwards?

How can you live, knowing you're never going to see the ones you love again?

Death never scared me. The first time I almost died, I never felt fear. I was happy that I saved the little girl from drowning, happy that she would be okay. I never thought about where I would go when I closed my eyes, but I knew, floating there in the lake, trapped with water in my lungs, that I sure as hell wasn't going to wake up. And I was okay with that. I accepted it. We all gotta go sometime.

I suppose that's what we really work for, why we're able to love and to care about people. We're all dying, yes, but when you get used to someone being around, you learn to care for them, to enjoy their company. To care about someone, is to want to prolong them leaving. To take that moment where they accept death as inevitable and give in to the call, and push it away, make it disappear. To make them stay, is to deny death.

Until one day, you can't do it anymore. And then death wins, as it always does, and you're left with a hole in your life that you can never fill, but only work around.

The problem becomes, when you have too many holes, to many things gone away, and you don't even have a life left to work with. You're just sitting alone with your jagged self and broken memories. And isn't it a shame, that we can't take that back which we gave up so willingly? How many times have you wished death and pain on yourself if only that one other person's family be spared?

I've seen death and darkness and the lowest points of this world. I am already corrupted, already lost. Let me take your hardship, if only that you remain innocent, just a second longer.

…

The voices need to stop.

Not just the ones in my head, the ones that are screaming so loud I can't think, screaming horrible truths about me, adding to the pit of misery and pain that's consumed my soul.

I mean it'd be nice if they could stop. Then I could put this gun down, put the safety back on and unload it. Leave it here on the rooftop, and never see it again. Maybe I could see Will, ask him if he has a minute and tell him I love him. Maybe I could make things right with him.

But was there ever something wrong? One of the voices, the one that sounds just like my Dad, keeps telling how horrible a person I am for hurting Will, how disgusting I am, and how dare I do that to my brother? How dare I destroy him like that?

And just when I think that 'I didn't do anything to him!' that voice will reply, then be drowned out by the sound of Mouse screaming in pain as he dies because it my fault, I let him go back, I was his best friend and I sent him into that death pit, I did, he'll die because of me, he thought he could do it because I managed to hide my PTSD so well everyone thought I got better.

My mom is disowning me as she slowly (but not so slowly that she could pretend to enjoy life, no the cancer didn't give her that) wanes away into nothing because I wasn't there to keep her company.

There's others too. Erin there, leaving me, blaming me, calling me all the things I am, coward, hypocrite, worthless, Voight telling me I'm an insult to cops everywhere, Al telling me how weak I am in his eyes, the rest of the team screaming in agony and begging me to save them, asking me why I didn't, why I won't, why I haven't just pulled the trigger already-

My head hurts. Not as bad as the rest of me, although I'm not physically injured. It's a type of hurt that you can't explain, the kind that no one will understand until they've felt it. Until they wake up, and there's that ache, that dagger stabbing something inside of you, something so deep its like its not physical. Its real though, its there. Some people say it's your soul, others blame the brain for its lack of chemical balance.

I'd agree with both. But knowing what it is, doesn't make it go away. It still hurts, it still makes you want to bawl your eyes out, and then when you've done that, and crying didn't release the hurt, when you're sitting breathing heavy in the bathroom looking at yourself in the mirror, you have to choose.

Listen to the voice that says 'you can't go on like this, it hurts too much, there's too much gone, just stop, please stop the pain, DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT-"

Or.

Or you find somebody to fight the pain for you, someone who's been through it, or someone who hasn't but doesn't care, because they want you to be okay, they want you to feel better.

I've always been in awe of those people. The ones who somehow have grown up sheltered. Happy family, happy life. Not that they haven't felt pain, no, life will spare no one, but it hasn't been course altering. Their parents didn't die, they don't have mental health problems, they're doing good in school or have a well paying job. Maybe they've lost relatives, maybe they've been betrayed by a friend. They've cried, they've had bad days. But they haven't shattered yet, haven't been broken down.

And yet.

Yet when you find them, and you, a tainted soul, a person with all kinds of issues and missing pieces, barely alive and half a person, show up, and feel like you're not worth saving, or maybe not worth a 'sheltered persons' time, they don't care. They don't care what you did, who you were, what your past holds or why you don't trust people. They don't care that they can't understand it, or maybe they do, and they try their fucking hardest to put themselves in your shoes, so that way they can do more to help you.

It always amazed me, because these people, and the people who've been then and done that, are so totally different, they're almost the same. If they're your friend, then they don't care that they aren't the same, that they haven't felt that pain. They still want to take your agony, because they want you to feel like they do.

They'd be sad, so you could be okay. They'd move mountains, so that you can have one day of happiness. And they don't care what happens to them, because they think they've felt enough happy, and you haven't, so it's their turn now to take the pain and your turn to let it go..

Take for example, the Erin that isn't in my head, the one who isn't telling me to hurry up and fucking do it already, you dirty disgusting little slu-

"Jay please-" That Erin, the one who's crying but doesn't seem to notice, the one who can't seem to catch her breath because she'd panicking. "- just put it down, please Jay-"

That Erin has been through hell to get where she is now. Take that girl, that girl I hurt so much, (Do I? I can't tell what's real and what's in my head anymore) and put her next to Burgess, who was a flight attendant, or Ruzek who still has both his parents and I'm sure both of them would say that she'd gone through more.

But Kim was shot, and had her partner shot in front of her, then had to go to court and testify with her head not her heart. Ruzek had skipped the beat to become detective, and maybe that was good in his book, but I bet the first time he saw a six year old lying in an alley, bullets riddling the child's body because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, he didn't feel so lucky.

Intelligence is made of Chicago cops. We've seen things. We aren't innocent or clean. But they aren't dirty either. Not like me.

Forever is a long time, especially when you're in pain. And I feel like I've been here, kneeling on the edge of the roof of my apartment building, tears streaming down my face because god, please just make it stop, please stop screaming, please stop hurting, please please please-

I want to go now. I want to leave, to stop. I don't care if I disappear, I don't care if there is no place where my lost ones are hiding, I don't care if I just cease existing, I don't care.

They care.

It's a big problem. A big, nasty problem. They're here, Erin, Voight, Al, Dawson and Adam. Well, they were. Ruzek kinda just slipped away some time ago, while I was squeezing my eyes shut and gritting my teeth to keep from screaming, because screaming made the voices louder in my head.

They're here and they're still whole, still good. Maybe not pure white, maybe a little bit tarnished; a little bit bloody and a little bit grey, but they aren't black like me. They are salvageable. They still have a life, enough of one left even with the holes in it, that they can keep living. But if I do this, if I do this in front of them, they won't. I've seen people shot in front of me, people I care about, and it doesn't just go away. It creates a pretty big hole.

If they didn't care, I could do it. I've told myself that a thousand times now, and not just here, not just on this roof top. After Terri, after Mouse, after Mom and the five soldiers I was supposed to bring home with me. If they just didn't care, then they could get over this.

But they do. And to have someone you care about, someone you love, someone you want to push that 'we all gotta go sometime' back just a little bit longer, have just a little bit more time with; to have that someone willingly jump into the dark unknown, is probably one of the worst things you have happen to you.

Especially when it happens in front of you.

Especially if you know it wasn't really them that did it, like Dawson and Al have been saying, telling me "This isn't you Jay, you were drugged, you can fight this okay, just put it down, we can get you help, we'll help you, just please put the gun down, turn the safety on, please Jay, don't do this!"

And maybe if it was just them, if it was just those voices that I heard, if those kind, selfless, stupidly caring voices were all I knew, then I might be able to do it. Click the safety on, point the gun away from my temple where there surely is a bruise by now.

But they aren't and I can't, so we find ourselves here, in this stalemate, them keeping me alive while I try my hardest to die.

Its pouring in Chicago right now. Two in the morning, barely thirty two degrees, keeping the large droplets sleet like and ice to the skin. We've been out here for so long, maybe eventually they'll go inside and I can find silence.

I can't breath. I can't see. I can't feel anything but bone deep torment and the feeling of pure agony. It's like I'm splitting myself apart. I want to leave, so, so bad, but these stupid people are here, and I promised myself I'd never hurt them, never let them know the pain that I've known, that I know.

Somebody's screaming again, and it's weird, it doesn't sound like me, but the voice is sobbing and pleading and maybe it is, maybe they know that I can't do this in front of them and that's why they're still here, because while they care, they were never stupid. Somebody figured it out. Its why only Ruzek left, no one else, because they don't know if it's all of them, or just one, and they'll be damned if they let me die because one of them gets cold.

I'm shaking. The rain makes noise as it pounds the gravel, which is good because I know it's still raining. I can't feel it, and I can't see it, but I can hear it. I wish I couldn't.

If I couldn't hear it, maybe I couldn't hear the giant roar in my head, and maybe then it'd be easier to think and I could figure out how to do this. But then I couldn't hear them either. I peel my eyes open, flicking across the ground to see the shoes a whole lot closer than they were last time I looked up. They've been edging closer, slowly while I watch them and probably a lot faster when I close my eyes and press the muzzle even harder against my skin and sob.

If I killed myself now, they would get covered in a nice mix of blood, brain, and skull that you can get out of clothes with cold water and soap but that you can never take off your skin.

And I can't do it.

I've been up here since the beginning of time, since my dad first smacked me into the bed frame, since I first realized that other people parents got along. I've been up here, with a gun to my head, and only now do I finally have enough to pull the trigger.

And I can't.

I can't take that piece from them, from the only people who have some semblance of a relationship towards me. I can't take it from Will, who it feels like I only just found again, who I know has these deep, paralyzing fear that one day he's going to walk into the ED to see me on a stretcher, dying, or that he won't even get the chance to save me, that he'll get a call from some random PR person in the department and "We're very sorry sir but you're brother was killed in the line of duty this morning."

I can't do it, even though almost every part of me is begging to. Almost. There's still that part that whispers, underneath all the vulgar insults and morbid truths, maybe they can help, maybe they can make it stop. Maybe them caring about you isn't such a bad thing.

Maybe you can figure out how to live again, if they help you.

It goes quiet. The voices outside my head do anyway, and I can hear my breathing suddenly steady. Somebody screams my name, (sound like erin) while another yells a harsh NO! (Voight, because he has to order things to stay in control) and a third cries out "Don't!" (Alvin, because he cares about me more than he'll ever admit, and I know it scares him how fast that it happened.) Antonio just inhales sharply, because he knows no words will stop someone once they're committed to it. But it'd be the last full breath he takes for a while if I pull the trigger.

I realize the reason for all this is my sudden quiet. I stopped crying, stopped sobbing and screaming, stopped it all. I just took a deep breath, and stopped.

I can't feel anything, only now realizing how utterly cold I am (so cold that it hurts, a real physical hurt that helps pull me back to real life, even if only for a few seconds) but somehow, someway, I move my thumb up and flick on the safety.

There's this giant rush, because I can't physically push the gun away from my head and everyone expected me to die. Before I can rethink my decision, before I can push that little button back and pull the trigger because the voices are still there, still screaming at me, it still hurts just as bad, Alvin is there, gripping the cold metal in a way that even if I did try all that, the hammer would only flick against his skin, and the firing pin would never get the kick needed to fire the bullet.

There's a pinch in my neck, barely there through the numbness, but suddenly, impossibly, the voices quiet, just a little at first, just a tad, and then they slowly go to a yell, then a loud tone, then a quiet one, then a whisper and somebody is holding me, my head pressed into someone's collarbone, the same person whose arms are around my shoulders and stomach, keeping me close, keeping me here.

I sob, so horribly tired and in pain, and I just...I just need to… need to…

The person keeps talking, I can feel it in his chest, but my ears don't register it. The rain patters softly on our shoulders and I close my eyes and listen to the person's heartbeat. It's all I can hear.

And I've never been more okay with that.

Erin.

"It worked." Will nods.

"Yeah."

Silence reigns. We're standing next to each other, peering into the brightly lit hospital room, both to afraid to go in it.

"He's going to remember this." Will just blinks, having as much color as the white walls around us.

"We all will." He whispers. I close my eyes for a second, pinching the bridge of my nose. The scene flashes behind my eyelids, forever burned in my memory.

Jay kneeling on the roof, his tears mixing with the icy rain, gun pressed to his temple as he sobs and screams and pleads, begging something to stop, to be quiet, to just let him end it.

That's when we realized we were the only thing keeping him alive. Our presence there, on that dark surface, was the only reason he's still here. Ruzek had quietly, slowly snuck away to get the needle from Atwater who had gotten it from Burgess who had been waiting outside the lab in the hospital to get the cure.

A lot of speed limits were broken to get that to Jay's old apartment building. But we didn't stop the bullet.

"How'd you do it?" I don't look at him. Can't look. Will is Jay's brother, I am his partner. I would have had to call him, would have had to tell him. Couldn't save him, sucks, so sorry.

"We didn't." I say, voice flat. "Right when we thought he was going to do it, he….I don't know, he just flicked on the safety and then Alvin took the gun and gave it to Antonio while I stuck the needle in his neck. He passed out about a minute later."

I leave out the part where I buried my face into Hank's shoulder while Olinksi held Jay until he succumbed to the sedative and then even after that. We were up there for a good ten minutes, Al whisper to Jay, Antonio kneeling next to them with one hand on Jay's shoulder the other on Onlinksi while he gazed between him, Halstead and Ruzek, the last of which had no idea what to do.

I held onto Voight and cried.

There was more than once where I was convinced he was going to do it, more than once where I though 'This is it, it's over, he's gone and you didn't save him'. Everytime he would pull back, step that tiny space away from the edge, relax his grip on the trigger just that miniscule amount. Then we'd be back to square one, begging and pleading and reasoning in an attempt to get somewhere.

He would just keep sobbing.

I never thought it was possible to feel like this about a person, to be so terrified, so utterly scared that you can't think, can only panic and cry because you can't help the person you love.

I love him. I love him so much it hurts. I never thought I could or would find someone that I would feel like this about. I never thought that person would love me back.

I never thought that love would be the sole reason he stays alive.

Alvin carried him to the elevator, not even blinking when he stood up with a hundred and eighty five pounds of pure muscle in his hands. I stood, shaking like a leaf, while they got him in the Escalade. Voight pushed me into the passenger seat and told me to breath, then got in car himself and drove to Med. The entire way, I couldn't process it. I just sat there, gasping for breath while tears dripped down my face and Al talked to Jay like he could hear his words.

I know how bad this scared him. He just lost his daughter, and while he won't say it unless in a very serious situation, I know he cares for Jay. Loves him even, not quite as son, but more of younger brother. One he's responsible for. One he wants to keep safe from what he's seen.

Jay has always seen himself as less. Less than us, less than Will, less than the people we protect. We've always seen him as more. I've always seen him as more. He's always been stronger than me, stronger than Al and Hank, stronger than Platt or Will or Mouse.

The only proof you need is lying in the hospital bed. This drug, it's supposed to kill. It alters your body's chemistry, makes you feel so low you want to die. And then it alters your person. Some see things, others have living nightmares, and then some have something else entirely. There's not a lot on it, seeing as only two people have lived, and that's because their suicide attempt was discovered while in progress.

No shit. A girl and a guy, both teens looking for a trip bought from the wrong dealer, and the only reason they are alive to testify is that someone found them before they bleed out from the jagged cuts in their arms. They passed out, and woke up sedated in a psych ward. Eventually the drug wears off, but only after the time when you'd have ended it. Ask the twenty seven perfectly healthy and the other thirty six junkies that now have a legitimate cause of death.

Forty of those people had families that got to hear that no, they didn't commit suicide, no, you didn't miss anything, they were drugged, they didn't want this, is wasn't anybody's fault but the guy who gave it to them.

That guy's dead by the way. Got hit by a car running across the street, trying to avoid us. Just not before he stuck Jay with a syringe full of the stuff.

Not that any of it matters. What matters, is that he's here, he's alive, he pulled himself out of the dark chasm the drug threw him in.

We just gave him the rope.

Will takes a deep breath and enters the room. I watch him walk over to Jay's bedside, sit in a chair next the sleeping form, and run his hands through his brothers dark curls while he silently cries. Turning my head away from the scene, I look down the hall, see the team in various states of shock and worry milling around the waiting room.

We almost lost him. But he trusted us enough to save him.

And maybe that's enough to start healing.

"We all find ourselves broken. At one point or another, you'll be hurt and you won't see a way out. But it's the people around you, the ones who make you smile again, the ones who are there for you even when it's hard for them — those are the people that you keep. Those are the ones who'll become your family. And there's nothing more important, more special, than having a family."

-Unknown

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