Hi, so here is another chapter, I hope you enjoy this one and I will endeavour to give you the next one soon as I have written it.

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And TRIGGER WARNINGS...


Stand And Unfold Yourself

Chapter 7-Surface Warfare

The team arrive in New York, Olivia tries to get information out of Hank, Jay contemplates some things.


18th November 2014


Introductions were made at speed and at random. Most of them already knew each other, other than Amaro who had always thought on his feet. Plus Barba but Olivia was saving the full force of Rafael until she actually had to use him. As of right now this was not that.

It was not an easy case to go through. The easiest thing to do was to get DNA and run it against Jane Doe's. Hank had pulled a face when she had suggested that though he had agreed to give a sample. She didn't know if it was the DNA that he had a problem with or the idea that his daughter was dead. She was finding him harder and harder to read as time went on and she thought that, that wasn't a good thing. She remembered what Fin had said about him being Elliot and so she watched him. It wasn't without warranty, if she was being honest if he'd asked there was no way in hell she'd say no to that being between her legs but if she was being honest it wasn't the focus of her investigation. And Olivia was if nothing a stickler for the investigation.

The first stop was a visit to the room she had dubbed in her head as the room of eternal darkness. Simply because that was the only place that she could call it and still keep herself sane. Taking Hank Voight into the place with a picture of his daughter, the defiant, dark haired, dark eyed fifteen-year-old was something that she didn't want to remember in a heartbeat. She had gotten a look at the photo that he had carried and she had seen the dark haired, dark eyed girl staring back at the camera and her heart her broken a little because there was a very good chance that there was no way that this girl was going to look like she had then, now.

"So" Jay Halstead said looking at the latest boy Henry…that had been promoted by this group—the Chess and Chequers Club—and his face was a little green.

"We can't stop this?"

"Feds can't" her friend and respected colleague said grimly.

"Well then…we can…" she said and she was about to turn and leave when…

"Bridget Voight"

"Huh?"

She turned wincing. "Hank"

"No" he said shaking his head. "No I need to…I need to know…look…you have the photo of my daughter can you just…can you tell me if she's on any of these video's?"

There was a long sigh and Olivia felt her stomach clench a little in response. She had no idea what the answer was going to be and she wasn't sure she wanted to know. Just the thought of Noah in Bridget's place was enough to have her gritting her teeth to keep her lunch down. Come to think of it now she was a parent there was a lot that she could understand about Elliot and how he was.

But she tried not to think of Elliot these days. She was succeeding.

Almost.

"No" her colleague said shaking his head. "She was one of the first people I'd searched when Detective Amaro and I found this. She's not come up in any videos. If she was a part of this group she's not been advertised"

"Advertised" Jay Halstead said with a shake of his head. "Jesus Christ"

Olivia ignored him though she didn't have to look to know that Erin had rubbed her hand on his arm. God knows the two of them weren't hiding it. At least Nick and Amanda at least tried though God knows they weren't doing it very well.

"So she's not here?" Al asked quietly.

"If she's a part of this group she's not being sold online, if she was…could be she was being kept of the grid, we've heard of cases like that. Kids who are kept hidden, only brought out for the big guns like fine China and all that. Could be she's one of them in which case she's not gonna crop up. I can keep looking" he said with a shrug and Olivia nodded because anything at this point was better than what they had right now.

Which was nothing.

"So the Feds know this exists and they can't shut it down?" Jay asked.

"We try. Problem is when one site is took down they crop up again bacteria. It breeds. With stuff like this if you want to take it off the air then you have to cut off the head of the snake and while we try…were like everyone else in law enforcement, massively underfunded. We can't do much"

"Well" Olivia said patting him on the arm. "We can. And we will"


Jay was chewing a gummy worm thoughtfully. Amanda had offered them one and Jay had never turned down sweets. It was practically engrained in him. Granted he wasn't Erin who would work through food in a way that was frankly indecent but he found that with this case he couldn't sit still and besides…the coffee here was terrible.

He was watching silently like the sniper he had once been everyone else running around, the problem was they had nothing to go on. Trying to run Bridget through databases to see if she had ever been arrested wouldn't work simply because Jay wanted to assume that Hank would know. He didn't think anyone would look at that fifteen year old girl and see missing stomped all over the file and not call her cop father to let her know that she was alive.

Then there was the running of Hank's DNA against the Jane Doe's but again he wasn't sure if that would work, evidence pointed out that she had been alive when they had left Chicago. So they were stuck trying to crack into a site that they were not sure that Bridget Voight had ever been involved in.

And that was just the case. He had been chewing on gummy worms for the better part of twenty minutes just watching his boss try and keep it together. He had never seen Hank look like this, never seen him so raw and so on the edge. Jay didn't have kids, didn't even know if he wanted them so he couldn't even begin to comprehend the hell his boss was going through but he also couldn't help but think that some of this had to lie at Hank's door. Ever since he had heard the story he couldn't stop thinking about it and it rankled him in ways he couldn't put into words—at least not here.

All he could think of was that in another time and another place this girl could have been him. He too had, had a father who had hit the bottle pretty hard when their mother had died of cancer, he too had, had a father who had never wanted to celebrate anything or anyone ever again. He too had ran away from home more than once and there was a reason he had enlisted straight out of high school. He'd seen a way out and he'd took it. And as he looked at Hank he knew he seeing the difference, his father wouldn't have bothered to look.

It got under his skin like the memories did. Like the sand that he imagined he could feel under his nails despite the fact that he had scrubbed it all away years ago.

"You okay kid?"

"Jesus Al lurk much"

"Jay—"

"I'm fine" Jay said though in truth he wasn't. But he was the only cop in the room from Chicago who didn't have a relationship with this girl so that had to be something…had to mean something…something.

"You okay?" he asked finally turning to Al. Al shrugged.

"Not really. She's my goddaughter you know?"

Jay didn't know.

"Oh"

"Yeah. And I know what your thinking"

"No you don't"

"Jay…you can't hate him—"

"I don't hate him" Jay said shaking his head and then under the contradiction of Al's gentle but hard gaze the words kept on just tumbling out of him. "Jesus Al I don't…I don't hate him I just…I just…I don't understand how the hell you or Erin or someone didn't step in and say hey here's this kid, your kid and she's struggling and…I just…I've been where this kid has been Al, my Dad, after my Mom and…I just…It's lonely and you don't ask for help but someone should see that you need it. I don't hate Hank cause believe me I know he's paying the price but…but this is a hard one for me"

Al nodded.

"You know I justified it by saying I was too busy keeping Hank from imploding but the truth was I knew the girl was struggling. I tried to get her round the house more, with Meredith and Lexie you know and that seemed to help but…she was too much like her mother, needed to help Hank and Justin and Erin and your right there's no excuse. None"

Jay nodded.

"You know even if we do find her alive she's not gonna be the same girl he remembers? I don't have to tell you that"

"No" Al said heavily. "And you don't have to tell him that. He knows."

"She might not want him back" Jay stressed because that was important too. "I never really wanted my Dad back after he threw a beer bottle at my head and called me a thankless little brat who should have died instead of my Mom"

The second he said it he wished he hadn't. He didn't want to talk to anyone about his home life, about Pat and how bad it had gotten for him. Al knowing was like Hank knowing and he didn't want that either. It was personal not something that the two of them could use in the future.

Al said nothing however. Instead his hand came down and patted him once on the shoulder as if he understood that, that was all Jay would allow.

"I think as long as she is alive he can work with the rest" was all Al said quietly. "God knows it all I would want if I was in his situation and I thank the good Lord everyday that I'm not."

Jay was silent for a long time and then in an effort to get rid of the memories floating around his head he grasped onto an idea.

"Where do the kids go once their pimped out?"

"What?"

"Half of them have to be underage right? This group it stops around fifteen that's when they turf the kids out? So when you get to fifteen where do they go?"

"Onto the streets Jay you know that"

"No I mean…yeah sure onto the streets but in Chicago if we pick up an underage prostitute we don't just dump them back out. We find them a shelter. Now granted they don't bother to stay there most of them but some do. So if we can find a member of this group that was turfed out…maybe they remember Bridget"

Al watched him for a second and then he grinned.

"Good job" was all he said. Jay hated the fact that it warmed him from the insides out like a praise from a father to his son.

He couldn't afford to think back on bad memories. He had a job to do.


Olivia Benson put down the phone.

"Good news, the one Jane Doe we found in the river last night isn't your daughter"

"I expected it wouldn't be" Hank said though he couldn't help but feel something unclench in his stomach. Five years and copious amounts of dead girls and he was still feeling sick whenever he had to give DNA.

Olivia Benson ran a hand over her mouth watching him.

"You can ask all the questions you want" Hank said quietly. "If it helps and it probably won't but…you can ask anyway"

She watched him for a second.

"Denny Woods"

"Oh him"

"Yes. You know he hints in the file—"

"He doesn't hint, he bloody implies I spent time hitting my girl whenever I flew into a drunken rage"

It was true. Hank had nearly killed him when he had heard of it. It had only been Fisher who'd had the sense to handcuff him to the table before he read out the report that had stopped him. Erin had been sixteen at the time and she had slipped out the backdoor that night and come back at three in the morning with a manic look in his eyes. Hank had been told the next morning that Denny Wood's car had been put in, his windows in his house and every electronic that could be found.

Carefully he had alibied Erin out. For all he knew she could have gone to see Bunny.

That had been the turning point. Denny had already been under suspicion for faking cases and IDs and it hadn't taken long for the cover to be blown. Trudy and Fisher had, had fun with that one. Hank didn't remember what happened he was sure he'd been face down in a scotch bottle when the shit had hit the fan somewhere on a roof with Al watching him in case he tried to jump.

Olivia tilted her head to the side and then…

"Did you?"

"No"

"Cause I know what a drunk parent can sometimes—"

"No" he said leaning forwards so she could see his face. "Never. I never hit any of my children, I never hit Bridget, I never even wanted to. That night…that night was a bad night and it caught me on the raw and I said things that I would give my life over to take back but I have never raised a hand to either one of my children in my life"

Olivia Benson nodded.

"Alright then. Now moving on, I think we should start looking—" but there was a knock at the door.

Jay popped his head round.

"We got an idea" he said looking between the two of them as if he was watching a tennis match. "We think we've got an idea anyway. There's this youth shelter that three kids were sent too who we've identified as being in the same group of photo's that Bridget was. Two were funnelled back onto the street but one's never had a record since she was fourteen. We called, woman who run's the place has been running it for fourteen years, same with the security guard. She's expecting us. If someone there knows Bridget it's a start"

Hank ran through the plan in his head and then nodded. Honest to God he could have hugged the kid.

"Sounds like a plan" Olivia said nodding. She shot him a look that he could feel even though he wasn't looking at her.

"You good for this?"

"Yes"

He could feel something thrumming under his skin, she was here, he could feel it, she was close. He'd never felt like this in four years, like he could see the light at the end of the tunnel, like she was here and all he had to do was just find her.

He didn't know what state she'd be in, he'd spent ages staring at that photo trying to determine what state she'd be in. Clearly she was injured, clearly she was emancipated, small, beaten, raped, branded—and oh how he had thought that he was going to be sick when she had told him that! It had taken everything that he had in him to not show that his reaction was to vomit when that had come to light.

But it didn't matter. It didn't matter what state she was in because Hank would take her in any state possible, anyway he could get his daughter back and he'd take it gladly with open arms.

"Hank?" Olivia Benson asked softly. "You ready to go?"

"Yeah" he said coming back to himself abruptly. Jay was looking at him in that way he'd been looking at him recently though there was less hostility in his stare this time—he didn't know if that was better or worse.

"Yeah, yeah, I am. Let's go"


And that takes care of Denny. Somehow he did crop up in here and I wanted to get him out the way like a piece of fish that needs eating before it's due date.

Also Jay and the headcannon with Pat is completely my own. More on Pat being abusive can be found in my other story Born Under A Bad Sign. Feel free to check that out if that's something your interested in.

Next Chapter-Hank and co head to the Youth Centre to meet the lady that runs the place...and the security guard and they get a name, Jocelyn. Someone turns up at SVU headquarters determined to help.