Writers edit 1/13: like an idiot I took down the authors note, so people just walking into this have no idea that there was giant hiatus. This chapter was an effort to catch up with the show and to also explain a lot about Jay's past.

So time has passed.

Sayyy...over a year. Maybe. Ish. A large amount of time.

(sorry not sorry)

Human by Rag'n'Bone Man

GUESS WHOS BACK

BACK AGAIN

SHADYS BACK

TELL A FRIEND

Jay's P.O.V.

Their names were Rachel, Jessica and Jordan Hayes, Richard Grayson, and Alexander Adams, with Rachel's last name being whatever she felt like it being at the time you asked.

Rachel had started first. The First Lieutenant at the time had been impressed with her, at 16, trying so hard to get into the forces (or maybe he just saw what few could, and knew the fire in her soul would create a better warrior than he was). A few conversations were had, and she was rounded into a generic round of basic training for The Marines. After somehow not dying there, she was accepted as a sort of...intern for the armed forces. She didn't train like they did, nor did she go on missions, but she studied hard, and did at least five hours a day in gym learning everything from gymnastics to hand to hand combat.

When she was 18, she went through basic again. She passed at the top of her class, and was moved straight into a selection program that the Rangers (the secret ones, not the public ones the army put into place in 1943).

The program was basically what the Navy SEALs went through- only girls were allowed into this one, and it was not uncommon for girls to beat said guys in their class. There were no double standards, no 'girls must pass this, while guys must pass this' for PT exams. And again like the SEALs, there were levels - tiers - that you could place into. Normally it took a while before a Candidate (because you weren't a Ranger until you placed on a team) was accepted as a rook into a group, as the newbies would be passed around until a team decided they liked a certain person or found the chemistry was right.

She was initiated into Tier One, and received her tags before completing training. The youngest person to ever become a Ranger. Selected by the top team - the best of the best of the best - by the first lieutenant at the time. Trained to be his protege.

She stood proud at 5' 6", blond hair that had darkened to be brown with highlights and lowlights she never had to die to get. She kept it long, pulled into a high pony tail whenever she was doing anything but undercover work.

The only time she cut it short was on the same mission that was her mentors last. He didn't make a mistake, despite what he believes, but moral of the story was that she got a nice head injury, which required an impromptu hair cut which then lead to two hours of complaining before the second lieutenant at the time decided to walk in with a pair of scissors and 'even it out'.

She complained every day until it touched her shoulders again, and according to the old seven, it was the only thing they ever heard her complain about.

When the first lieutenant made it known that he was going to retire, and that the four years spent not subtly teaching her everything he knows meant pretty clearly that she was going to be the next leader of the most feared underground special forces organization in the world.

It also meant, that more of the old seven would be retiring as well. So she had to start looking for her team.

It's not everyday the top team of the rangers (who, by authority, basically command and lead the rest of the entire organization) is switched out. Unlike changing presidents however, because of the principle of The Rangers, changing the top seven would not mean a sudden and rapid transition of ideas.

It also only happens about once every twenty to thirty years. And when a Ranger 'retires' it normally mean they went down to the Marines or the SEALs or the Pentagon, and became either active operatives or intelligence specialists. It didn't happen often, because, again, it was a Rangers decision when they would step down.

The top seven would be changing, and she, like everything else in her life, would be leading that charge.

I was eighteen, just graduated highschool, and was in the process of sprinting my mile (back when I could do a sub five) for my PT test at the Navel Station in North Chicago, when suddenly all the yelling (because its a training base, there's always yelling) stops. Or at the very least, quieted to a mild din for about three seconds, enough for it be noticeable as I finished.

My company captain told me my time with a smirk, because he knew damn well I was going to max out the PT. Little sneak also knew damn well why she was there (partly because she asked him to keep an eye on me, and partly because he called her two weeks into basic and told her in simple terms that if she was going to be holding a recruitment session that year, then he would be submitting the paperwork before the venue was even picked).

I was bent over, panting with a smile of satisfaction, when a snarky "You're getting old already, Halstead?" slipped past my ears. I looked up, and there she stood, wearing the very same outfit I first saw her in.

After rubbing my eyes and making sure I wasn't pushing too hard and was hallucinating, there was a very short conversation had, and the next day I was in the middle of New Mexico, along with the class of handpicked candidates from every branch of the armed forces and US agencies. Of them, only twelve were left at the end, and they all went on to be scattered across the country and the world, doing work with various teams until one leader choose them.

I was never placed. Instead, I was kicked backup to Chicago, where I was quietly enrolled into the University of Chicago.

When I wasn't studying or in class, I was in the gym, doing what Rachel had been doing when she first started. Turns out hand to hand happened to be both our specialties, but while she leaned towards blades for a weapon, I fell in love with a Bō (an extremely simplistic definition of what one is would be that it's basically a long circular stick about the length of a broom handle). Problem was the ones I used were wooden and would break after about thirty seconds of me using it, and it took a little while before I had the smarts to start designing my own.

Novack (because that's the last name we use for her) naturally picked up a weirdly designed short sword thingy, went 'yup, this'll work', and proceeded to make it the second deadliest weapon in her arsonal. I have to say second, and while the rest may argue with me on this, her hands, her body is the deadliest thing I've ever encountered. She could (and still can) beat everyone of the final seven that became our team. Everyone except me, but the only time we've ever actually really tried to go at it, we tied.

Like, neither of us can move, kind of tie. And I trained every day for ten years. The rest of the team I believe ended up with anywhere from four to six years, although I'm sure they're all better than me by now.

The Tier One teams are trained even harder than the rest, with the top seven having to be basically superhuman by the time they're done with their training. Needless to say, it is very hard to beat a Ranger in close combat.

I guess that's why I ended up back at the gym more often since Erin's left, like maybe a part of me will be fixed if I can get back what I've lost physically (it's amazing how you can't sustain a certain muscle mass when you don't have six hours to spend in a gym every day). And honestly, the pain felt good the first few times. I know its unhealthy - have known since my first bout with my PTSD - but I didn't stop. I just...changed it.

It isn't healthy to be happy when in pain, not when your reason for happiness is because the physical pain is hiding what's going on in your head. Not when you have to beat a punching bag until you're drop dead exhausted just so you can fall asleep and stay asleep.

It is healthy, to look forward to a workout, if your happiness comes from pride, comes from satisfaction, comes from 'damn right I can land a tornado kick again' and 'hahaha i can't move my arms but yeah buddy did I just lift five hundred pounds'.

That was the first thing I've done right in a while. In fact, it's probably the only thing I've managed to do right for a while. So the guilt does not come out in the gym. It comes out when I run. Every foot fall, every mile under my shoes, is filled with everything I don't want to see, everything I don't want to think about (Erin Vega Terri I didn't mean to shoot her I didn't someonehelpme-)

…

I have bad luck when it comes to love. Or at least, that's what everyone tells me (the ones who know me, anyway). The problem is that, I think I just have bad luck with people in general.

When things happen, bad things, when people die or they leave, and it's not just one or two, it's five or six, and every time it hurts more and more, in your grief you wonder why it's happened.

Why it's still happening. You do the math, you find the common variable. You start to think that maybe it's not the way the world works, maybe its you.

I met Tayler my second day at UC. Her family was from Venezuela, and I was screwed the minute she sat next to me in a lecture hall meant for third years. She stole my pencil, I stole her gum, and two weeks later we were dating. Two month later, and I was ninety percent sure I loved her.

It was about the same time I met the rest of them. Really, it was ironic.

Richard Grayson (and isn't that a cool name) had heard the dick jokes about ten thousand times.

I punched the guy who made it a ten thousand and one.

I may have been slightly inebriated, but that's besides the point.

Richard Grayson who's classmate was Jessica Hayes, whose sister was Jordan Hayes, who's roomates boyfriend at the time was Alexander Adams, who was also in my third year lecture (the one we were both taking as a first year).

Jessica got the short end of the gene pool, being only five foot two, while her sister was the same height as Rachel. Both had dark hair, and sorta looked like each other, but the resemblance stopped there. Sisters at heart, yes, but Jordan was definition insane, hair always down, and was that one really annoying person who never had to wear makeup, never got braces, and who would look good wearing a trash bag.

Jess wore her hair in two braids, had glasses, and was probably the stereotypical 'brace face pimple covered nerdy weird girl' in high school. College saw the disappearance of that, but she kept her glasses and her smarts, and unlike her sister who struggled to maintain a B average, she double majored in electrical engineering and chemistry (in Jordans defense, she was on med track, so she was pretty happy with that B).

Grayson majored in Physics and Math, because math was 'fun' to him, the little sociopath. He's also six foot four, a genius when it comes to cars, and for some reason likes to craft.

Nothing like the tallest, most intimidating guy in our friend group, who never actually bought anyone anything for christmas, but made shit instead. When all the guys moved into an on campus apartment for second year, every damn holiday, there was decorations out the ass.

Christmas was great (and setting the stove on fire was completely his fault, regardless of what he says).

Adams ("Why not be called Alec if you hate Alexander so much?" "Because fuck you, that's why.") literally had no idea what he wanted to do going into college, and he majored in Criminal Justice because there was some spark of interest into being a cop.

He ended up minoring in creative writing as well as psychology, mostly because he hated that he had to do actual studies and shit as a sociologist, so he wasn't going to major in that. Plus the whole, by deciding to go into the army when he graduated, meant that Rachel could manipulate that to count as his internship credit requirement.

That was the conversation of the century. See we grew pretty close in those two years, and when Rachel (who was splitting her time between college with us and making sure no international wars were started while she was studying arabic) asked me at the end of sophomore spring finals, who, if anyone, I would recommend to be initiated into the program, I got froze. Got cold feet. Said "I'm not sure if I want to do this".

She smiled, said that was fine, then calmly suggested that we meet everyone at our favorite little burger place.

Two hours later, she very loudly asked me if I gave any thought to when I was going to leave for active duty.

The table got very quiet, very fast.

See, they didn't...know that I was planning on leaving. They didn't even know why me and her were friends in the first place, but they knew she was basically already in the armed forces.

Jordan actually got up from the table and left.

Two days later, they finally answered me (because naturally I panicked and was texting everyone trying to get them to talk to me, which of course they wouldn't).

We were close - closer than most friends ever get. It was like having six best friends, six new family members that you'd trust with your life. And I guess I was important enough - and Rachel was too, because later Jess told me they'd all been thinking about it - for them to enlist with me.

By the end of winter break of our Junior year, Rachel had the six of them (yes, six, because damn if Tayler was going to let me or anyone else tell her she had to stay behind) ready to go through basic in the summer, ready to move onto harder things. We were, as rumor was among the existing Ranger community at the time, going to be the next seven.

May fourteenth. 2002. We were both twenty one.

She was driving, because I had just messed up my ankle trying to land a back handspring (because yes, we needed to know how to do these things. I spent just as much time up on a balance beam as I did in front of a punching bag).

The hot red Mazda Six Two Six was ugly as all hell, and while it was considered the car everyone in our group used and loved, it was no match for the pick up truck that was under the control of a drunk and going about sixty miles an hour.

She had the green arrow. We were turning right to go back to campus. The sun was setting, a bright orange ball of fire casting pink across the sky and letting light filter through the blooming trees.

We were laughing. Or - or she was at least. I don't remember it that well, and yes, I've hated myself for that every day after. Because I don't remember her face, or what her hair looked like (but I can bet it was half in a messy bun, blown all over her face because she wanted her window down).

I remember feeling good. I remember being happy, and I remember thinking the sunset was beautiful, and I can still hear her laughing, in perfect clarity.

I remember seeing the light change. I remember seeing that green arrow.

I woke up in the ambulance long enough to see Jordan sobbing while she held my hand, before my scream of agony was too much for my body to handle and I went under again.

The second time I woke up, I found out she never did.

I never thought of a future with her. Really, I didn't. I just took it day by day, and was happy to keep doing so. I didn't think of future, because I was stressed out enough with what was going on in the present. I guess, somewhere in my mind, the part that wanted to be a dreamer and stare at the sky all night and just think - that part envisioned us staying together. For a long, long time. Marriage, kids, the whole shebang. I think I refused to listen to that part, but I kept it alive.

I was happy. And I think my general goal at the time had been to make sure everyone survived long enough to be able to retire. It wasn't uncommon for Rangers to retire, but it also wasn't uncommon for them to die some pretty tragic deaths.

I'd like to be over dramatic and say I cried myself to sleep, and technically I did, but it took about ninety seconds, and it wasn't sleep so much as unconsciousness. Sobbing with a second degree concussion, broken ribs and a freshly operated torso made for a one way train ticket to 'ohmygodthishurtstimetopassout' ville.

I'd like to think I learned to live without her. I learned how go through my days with a hole in my chest, and between the rest of our group, by my second year as a Ranger (as a second lieutenant, because without her I had nothing to give myself to accept the job, and I earned the title on many a mission) I was human again.

I know that a part of me died that day. A part I'm never going to be able to bring back, just like the part that Erin Lindsay ripped from me when she packed up and left.

The difference was - and still is - that when I fell in love with her, when she told me she loved me, I didn't feel the way I did with Tayler. When she laughed, I smiled, but I didn't smile like I did with Tay, when she opened up to it felt like it was my fault certain things happened to her, it was my fault she was angry, it was my fault people were bad. It was love yes, but even when I told her about my past it felt...wrong.

I told myself it was because I was comparing her to Tayler, and that of course it was going to be different. I was, but now I also think that it shouldn't have been different. I have, at the very least, realized that what I mean when I say 'I love you' is very different than what she means.

Regardless.

We were seven. A split second made us six. And that wouldn't do.

So one JTF2 sniper was pulled in on various missions, and while he was older than all of us, he wasn't anymore skilled. He did teach me how to shoot though, so at least I can thank Sam for that.

Now, it isn't that Rachel didn't mourn. It isn't that she doesn't feel. No, I was the one who held her when she sobbed after losing Tay. I was the one she went to when things got to be too much, when keeping up the pretense got to be too much. It went both ways. Everyone was there for me after her. They had everything I needed and everything I didn't, but they didn't have the swift kick in the ass I got from Rachel after she decided I'd been grieving for too long.

In her defense, it had been eight months since it happened, and I was still walking about like it had happened the day before.

It helped. A lot.

It could work out well for me, them being back in Chicago. Or maybe it doesn't. I want to see them, but I don't want them to see me. To see me...not me.

And that's really the issue isn't it? Everything I'm doing, hanging around with Vega's sister, letting her think I'm someone I'm not, (someone I don't want to be, but someone I'm becoming). The deadbeat veteran with PTSD, the start of a drinking problem, and no job.

It's not that PTSD really just goes away. I had nightmares even when I was doing good. But I made a mistake, and I put everything into Erin, I let myself slip because I made her my base.

And now she's gone. She's gone, and so is my base, and I shot a kid, and I had to enable a veteran who was mirror image of myself when I came home, except that I at least, never started kidnapping kids for money. No, I was a drunk because it gave the confusion in my head an actual reason, and I married a girl I didn't love because I was lonely. Just like now, without them, without her, I'm with a girl I could've loved, but can't because I see someone else when I look at her.

The team - I have to say the team, not my team because I have found my place in Intelligence, but I don't command them - is trying to help me, and I appreciate it, really I do. Voight and I are at a spot that I never thought we'd be in, and Upton is doing her best to make sure I keep my badge.

I want to say I am to, but to be honest, I don't even know anymore. I'm tired. I'm so, so tired. It's bad, because I've stopped fighting. I've stopped trying, and I know it, but I don't know why I was in the first place.

I wasn't lying when I responded Camila. When she asked how did you get out, I told her I had no idea. I don't. Mouse was there, yes, and The Rangers certainly kicked my ass into gear a few times. But I didn't have a reason, I don't really know how or why I strove to get better.

Which means now, I don't have one. Which means not only do I not know what to do, but I don't have a reason to try to find out.

Which means I'm alone, and in pain, and not only does no one know-

-But I don't know how to ask for help.

*bows to empty auditorium* yes, yes thank you, thank you.

So by an overwhelming amount of reviews that somehow just kept coming long after the abandon all hope ye who enter here note was posted, I had a rad moment inspiration that lead to me rereading this that led to me realizing that it wasn't as bad as I thought it was which lead to THIS LITTLE THINGY.

long story short...I have enough ideas for a few chapters of this thing. okay but-

PLEASE REVIEW PLEASE I NEEDDDDDD FEEDBACK BECAUSE ITS BEEN SO LONG SO MY WRITING HAS CHANGED AND IF YOU DON'T LIKE THIS I NEED TO KNOW

*update as of 12/29*

hey to the guest who actually went and reviewed twice just to tell me off about the structure of the armed forces fun fact 'idiot'- THESE ARE NOT THE ACTUAL RANGERS?LIKE IVE STATED THIS?ABOUT TWELVE THOUSAND TIMES? TAKE YOU MISGUIDED HATE AND GO THANKS SWEETIE!