Hank and Trudy got out of his car and marched up to the front door of the bar, finding it was ajar and the lights were on inside, even though the bar had been closed for the night.

"Erin!" Voight called out as soon as he put one foot in the door, and looked around the place.

Trudy came in behind him and headed over to the bar and looked down behind it, "Hank, over here!"

Voight came running and slid across the bar counter and saw what they were looking for. Bunny's body lay sprawled out on the bar floor, her face a mess of bruises, as were her hands when they were turned over, and her knuckles were bloodied. And slumped against the bar in a daze was Erin, eyes wide but not focused, her lip split, a cut over one eye, blood trailing down one cheek, her hair wild, her clothes a mess, all reactions delayed as she seemed to be in a state of shock. Her phone rested on the floor a couple feet away from her, where it must've remained since she called Voight.

"Erin," Voight got down on his knee and put his hands on her to turn her towards the light and get a better look at her to assess the damage.

"Hank," she said in a voice so quiet he almost didn't hear it. She blinked, and then her whole body started shaking.

Voight put his arms around the woman he'd come to regard as his daughter, and held her close and also felt that her skin was freezing, she must've been on the floor for a while.

Trudy knelt down by Bunny's body and grabbed her wrist, with a look of almost disgust she told Voight, "She's still alive."

Voight felt Erin's body trembling against him as a bunch of small broken sounds started emerging from her throat.

"What happened?" he asked her, worried about what they might find.

"I…I did it," Erin told him, "I hit her."

"Impressive work," Trudy commented half under her breath.

Erin slowly found her voice again and pulled away from Voight and tried to explain what had happened to the two sergeants, "She…she was closing up the place for the night…and we were talking…"

"What happened, Erin?" Voight asked her, all the anger and frustration he'd been nursing all day suddenly gone, his voice now filled only with concern for the young woman.

Erin turned to him and told him shakily, "She…told me…'get…my…cigarettes'," and she pointed over to where a half open pack lay on the counter, "And…something just…snapped." Erin swallowed hard as she recalled, "I…started hitting her, and then…I couldn't stop."

"Did she hit you back?" Trudy asked Erin.

Erin turned to the desk sergeant and slowly nodded in confirmation. "A f, a few times." She turned to Voight and told him, "I used to buy her drugs for her, she puked on me and I let everyone think I was the junkie, I saved her life and she just told me 'get my cigarettes'…but I never hit her before…I don't know what happened."

"Little streak of common sense would be my guess," Trudy commented.

A soft moan escaped Bunny and she started to move.

"Damn," Trudy grumbled.

Voight helped Erin get to her feet, and they watched as Bunny started to come around and saw them standing over her, and she got to her feet.

"You…what the hell are you doing here?" she wanted to know.

Voight stared down the thing that called herself a woman and a mother and answered plainly, "I'm taking Erin home."

"The hell you are," Bunny told him, as if she had any authority over him, and she pointed to the bruises on her face, "Do you see what this ungrateful bitch did to me? I want her arrested!"

"I don't see anything wrong here," Trudy told Bunny, "Not on Erin's part anyway."

Bunny tried staring Trudy down and said to her, "Who the hell are you?"

Trudy returned the death stare and told Bunny as she suddenly grabbed her by the neck, "The woman who has half a mind to choke you unconscious," then let go of Bunny's neck and bitch slapped her and knocked her down again. "Now get up, you're under arrest."

Bunny's eyes widened, "I'm under arrest?"

"Yep," Trudy grabbed her by the arm and jerked her up and took out her handcuffs, "Assaulting a police officer, disturbing the peace…"

"Get your hands off of me!" Bunny screamed as she flailed around.

"Assaulting two officers," Trudy amended her statement as she tightened the cuffs behind Bunny's back, "Resisting arrest."

"You can't do this to me!" Bunny screamed at them as she still tried to resist, "I'm the victim here."

"You're the problem," Voight told her flatly.

"You did this, Hank!" Bunny yelled at him as she tried to charge him but Trudy restrained her, "You turned my own daughter against me! We didn't have any problems until you came along!"

"Tell yourself that," Voight replied, "Maybe someday you'll actually believe it."

"And you!" Bunny turned to Erin, who couldn't bring herself to make eye contact with her mother, "You ungrateful little bitch! I did everything for you, I brought you back into my home, I've taken care of you! And this is how you repay me?"

Erin shook her head slowly. Then she finally forced herself to stare her mother down, and she told Bunny, "You never took care of me. I took care of you, I revived you when you OD'd, I got your drugs for you, I took the blame when you puked your booze and drugs all over me and everyone thought I was on them. You were never there for me."

The look on Bunny's face couldn't have looked anymore shocked had Erin walked over to her mother and slapped her.

"Game's over, Bunny," Voight told her, nodding towards Erin, "You lost your pawn."

Erin glared at her mother and said accusingly, "You never cared if I was alright, you didn't want me to be alright, you used Nadia's death against me because you wanted me hooked on that junk so I'd stay here with you, and why? Just so you could show up Hank and pretend you're some great mother, pretend that you ever cared about me."

"I was a great mother!" Bunny screamed at her as Trudy marched her out of the bar, "You were the spawn of hell! I regret the day I ever gave birth to you!"

Erin was unfazed, she looked at her mother and said simply, "You're not my mother, you never were."

And still this proved an even more earth shattering revelation to Bunny than anything before it. Despite being cuffed and walked out of the bar, she tried charging at Erin and screamed at her at the top of her lungs, "You think going back to him changes anything? You're always going to be what you are, Erin, you are always going to be my flesh and blood, I'm you're family! Not him!" Trudy shoved Bunny out the door but her screams carried through the night air, "You'll never get away from me!"

Erin held it together just long enough for Trudy to haul her mother out, then she slumped forward and started shaking and started to cry. Voight came up to her and put his arms around her and held her tight against him and he told her, "Take it easy."

Instead, Erin just became hysterical and any words she tried to say came out in short, choked sobs, she had to force breaths into her body just to make the syllables stick together. It didn't matter, she didn't have to say anything, Voight could tell what was racing through her mind right now. He held her tighter and lightly kissed her on her forehead. It was hard to watch something happen to someone you love and know there wasn't anything you could do about it, he'd already had a lot of experience in that regard. It was also hard watching somebody that you knew needed to be protected from the worst possible influence in their lives, and having to acknowledge they were an adult and had to make their own choices for better or worse. Now that that was exactly what had unfolded, now it was his job to step back in and do damage control, another job he had plenty of experience in over the years.

"Hank, I am so sorry," Erin tearfully confessed, "For everything."

He rested his chin on the top of her head and rubbed her back and told her, "It's alright, Erin, calm down."

"I shouldn't have called you but when she stopped moving, I didn't know what to do," she told him, "I'd never hurt her before, I never thought I could."

Hank resisted saying what he most wanted to right now; that he was glad she could, that he was proud of her that she did. It wasn't the PC answer but anybody whose own mother put them through a hell like Bunny did, that person deserved every right to beat the shit out of that so called 'mother', and he thought this might open the doorway to a true recovery for Lindsay to work through her grief.

"I was hoping you'd call," he told her, and she looked up at him in surprise at that, he added, "I just didn't know it'd be for this."

"I still don't know what happened," Erin admitted, "We were getting along pretty well…or, at least we weren't fighting…and when she said that to me…it was like…"

"Nothing changed," Voight said.

Erin nodded hesitantly, "It was like I was a teenager again trying to save her life and she didn't give a damn. I just lost it."

Voight met her gaze and assured her, "It's going to be alright, Erin. Come on, let's get out of here."

"Where?" she asked him suspiciously.

He looked at her and answered without missing a beat, "Home."

It was obvious by looking at Erin that this was a puzzle to her.

"I think," Voight told her as he put one arm around her and forced her to start walking towards the door, "Now that you don't have that thing trying to influence you, that things are going to be just fine."

"I still turned in my badge," she reminded him.

"And it's still waiting for you," Hank said to her, "Nobody knows about what happened this morning, nobody needs to, come Monday you'll be back at work and nobody will be the wiser. That ought to be long enough to get you sobered up again, and I expect you to stay that way this time."

Erin nodded and leaned against him, "I'm sorry, Hank, I know I let you down." She thought back to that morning and the things she'd said to him and the way she acted, and all she wanted to do was crawl under a rock.

"Everybody slips," Voight responded simply, he looked at her and told her, "It happens, but it better not happen again, got it?"

She nodded, "Got it."

"Good," he told her, then added, "I love you, Erin."

"I know," she murmured, then she responded, "I love you too, Hank, thanks for coming."

"Erin," he said to her, "There are damn few things I would not do to help you, you know that."

She hung her head and answered, "I do," and in a quieter, ashamed voice she added, "Kind of got easy to forget for a while."

"It's easy when you've got someone clouding your judgment for you," he told her.

Just as they left the bar, Trudy came up to them and told Voight, "I called in a couple of the patrolmen to pick Bunny up, we're not all going back in one car."

"Where is she?" Voight asked.

"Don't worry, Hank, I took care of that for the time being," Trudy said, and pointed down the block.

Voight and Lindsay peered down to the corner and saw that Trudy had handcuffed Bunny to a parking meter, and the drunk woman was gradually wearing down after screaming her head off the whole time they'd been out there.

"Trudy, you never cease to amuse me," Voight confided in his desk sergeant.

Erin folded her arms tight against herself out in the cold and she asked them, "What's going to happen to her now?"

"Well," Trudy said, "Assault and battery, assaulting a police officer, resisting arrest, disturbing the peace and public nuisance, I'm sure it'll all warrant a few days in jail for her."

Erin looked at the woman she couldn't even recognize anymore and nodded and responded, "Good, I think right now a set of bars between us is a good thing."

Voight put an arm around her and told her, "Come on, Erin, we're going home." On their way to the car, he stopped and looked at Bunny and told her, "Checkmate, you lose." He figured that would give her a nice burn to bitch and moan about all the way to the station.

When they returned to Voight's home, Erin had a cup of strong black coffee, then threw up a couple of times, then got in the shower and stayed there for the better part of half an hour. While she was, Trudy came back and filled Voight in on the details of Bunny's arrest, and put the teakettle on.

"Hey Hank," Trudy said as she dug through the cupboard and pulled out a box of tea bags, "You up for a little intervention?"

He looked at his desk sergeant questioningly and asked her, "What'd you have in mind?"

"Well," Trudy said, "A lot of stuff's already come out in the open…maybe it's time we push things a little further. Maybe if we tag team on Erin she'll finally move forward to a breakthrough."

Voight thought about the woman he saw in the bar that morning clinging to her beer bottle, and symbolically clinging to her 'mother' because she thought she couldn't do any better given her track record. He never wanted to see that again in Lindsay.

"After everything that's gone on around here, I'm up for about anything," he told her, then saw what she was doing and added, "I don't think Erin's going to want any tea when she gets out, she already had some coffee and couldn't keep that down."

"Tea is therapeutic, especially this kind," Trudy said as she ducked down and opened the liquor cabinet. She popped back up with a bottle of brandy and raised a finger to her lips and told Voight, "My grandfather used to say that a drop was as therapeutic for the soul as it is for the heart, the trick was always never to use more than a drop."

"I think I would've liked to meet your grandfather," Voight said to Trudy.

"You still might," she answered as she poured a dab in each of the cups, "He's 102 years old and still kicking like a mule."

Voight chuckled.

"So," he said as Trudy poured the boiling water into the cups and let the tea bags seep, "How do you think we should do this?"

"Didn't you say when you had to work with the SVU cops from New York, you and that…Sergeant Benson, played a couple of concerned parents to get information out of a girl about Erin's brother Teddy?"

"Yeah," Voight answered.

Trudy raised her eyebrows in a hinting manner, "Well…"

Lindsay, changed out of her clothes and into a spare pair of Voight's sweats and an old T-shirt, fell back against the couch and drained the last drop out of her tea. Voight and Trudy sat across from her in two of the chairs in the living room.

"We need to talk, Erin," Voight told her.

She looked like she was expecting this, and she hesitantly asked, "What about?"

"What Bunny did was detestable," Trudy said, "No person should ever use another person's grief against them to manipulate them." She paused and added in a slightly softer tone, "But you shouldn't use it against yourself either."

Lindsay did a double take and looked back and forth at both of them, "What do you mean?"

"I understand how the grieving process works, I know it can drive some people back to habits they left for dead 20 years ago, I know how tempting it is to give in so maybe the pain can go away," Voight told Erin, "And I know you haven't fully come to terms with Nadia's death yet."

"I couldn't come more to terms with her murder if I tried," Erin deflected.

"Erin," Trudy tried a softer approach and told her, "I think some of the behavior you've been exhibiting lately is an extension of survivor's guilt."

Now Lindsay looked completely lost. "What do you mean survivor's guilt?"

"Before Yates kidnapped Nadia, we didn't know who he might target, but for a while we all suspected it was you he was after," Voight explained.

Trudy took that cue to mention, "I think even you suspected he was targeting you for his next victim. He called you, he demanded to see you alone, everybody went to cover you incase he tried anything, it was all very convenient, it all tied back to you. Do you think somewhere in the back of your mind, you wonder why it wasn't you? Why Nadia and not you?"

Erin tried to deny everything but it was obvious getting into this territory was already having an effect on her and it became harder for her to talk about it.

"You somehow think it was your fault what happened to her," Trudy said, by now she wasn't even asking, "Even though I told you nobody blamed you for what he did…I think you still blame yourself."

Erin didn't answer, and shifted her gaze towards the floor and started to draw into herself.

"Erin, do you know what the statistics are on serial killers?" Voight asked, and when she didn't respond, he told her, "The experts who spend their lives categorizing all this stuff estimate that at any given time there are 200 serial killers roaming the streets. Some of them can get away with it for over 10 years before anybody even knows it's a serial killer and know to look for them. Are they all walking around free because somebody else is at fault? Somebody else screwed up? Somebody wasn't doing their job right?"

"I don't know," Erin said quietly.

"Erin," Trudy got the young woman's attention and said to her, "You know there was a whole station full of people who didn't think anything was going to happen to Nadia." She pointed to Voight, "Is it Hank's fault what happened to her?"

"No!" Erin looked to them and answered without missing a beat, "Oh God, no."

"Alright, is it Halstead's fault?" Trudy asked.

"No," Erin shook her head.

"Is it Atwater's?" Trudy tried again.

"No."

"What about Roman or Burgess? Is it Antonio's fault that Yates got Nadia?"

"No."

"Alright," Trudy said, "So why is it your fault?"

For a moment Erin didn't know what to say in answer. Then finally she told them, "Because I'm the one who got her killed."

Voight opened his mouth to say something but Trudy gave a small gesture to let her take it, and she said to Erin, "If you could have known what Yates was planning to do that night, what would you have done?"

Erin looked at Trudy and answered, "I would've stopped Nadia from going out, I never would've let her out of my sight."

"If you had known, but you didn't, you couldn't," Trudy said, "You didn't get her killed, it just unfortunately happened because that's how people like Yates work and how they strike. Now, I want to ask you a question. If it hadn't been your birthday, and Nadia hadn't been going out to get things ready for your surprise party, if she'd just gone home that night and Yates followed her there and attacked her, would that have been your fault?"

Erin pursed her lips together and didn't answer.

"I think that's why you blame yourself for what happened," Trudy told her, "Because she left the house to get things ready to surprise you, because she was trying to do something nice for you. But that doesn't make it your fault. Yates could've stalked her and followed her anywhere, back to her apartment, to a gas station, to the grocery store, it's not your fault what happened anymore than it is the rest of us for not holding Nadia hostage in the station because one lunatic in a city full of violent thugs and bastards might have their sights set on her. If we could predict who would be a next target, there would be a lot less murders in this city, but unfortunately we can't, and that means a lot of people die who don't need to. But there's nothing we can do about it or we would."

There was a crack in the barrier now, a tear rolled down from one eye, then it was joined by another, and another, and then the other eye, and then Erin doubled over sobbing. Voight was out of his chair and went down on one knee so he was close to her current height and could look her in the eyes. He put an arm around her and pulled her to him as she continued to cry for the woman she'd tried to be friend and mentor to, and felt that she'd failed in both horribly. A body wracking breath forced its way into Erin's body and she sounded like somebody drowning, she clung to Voight like a lifeline and buried one side of her face in his shoulder. It should've made her jump out of her skin to feel a second set of hands on her, Trudy had moved over towards them without making a sound, but Erin was so lost in her grief that she paid little attention to anything going on around her.

"It's alright, Erin," Trudy tried to assure the young detective as she simultaneously rubbed Erin's back and stroked the back of her head. She could understand only too well the loss Lindsay was feeling, Nadia was one thing they both had in common, that they all had in common, and they all shared the weight of losing her. Trudy looked at Hank and could tell he was thinking the same thing. The only sound between them were the muffled sobs of Erin's pressed against Voight's shirt. Trudy continued to rub her back consolingly and told her again, "It's alright, Erin, it's all over now."

A/N: One chapter left!