Hey all, here is another chapter and I hope you all enjoy it and I will do my best to bring you the next one sooner rather than later. I want to say the next one will be the end of Season 2 but it might be two more chapters either way just keep in mind that some things will be glossed over.

Disclaimer-Nothing here is mine.

Please Read and Review and let me know what you think.

And as alwyas TRIGGER WARNINGS FOR GREG YATES.


Born Under A Bad Sign

Chapter 14-Every Second Counts

Greg Yates Part 2-Jay in hospital, Will is beyond furious, Erin is on the warpath and Hank...there are no words for what Greg Yates will suffer when Hank Voight catches up with him.


31st December 1999


You never think that today is the day that your life is going to end. You never wake up with the certainty that this is it. At least that was not his experience with death. His experience with death was quite different and his experience had come at a cost.

His mother had never woken up knowing that this was her last day—or so he had thought—read cling to and believed—she had stayed fighting until the end.

He had been different.

He had known that he could not go on. Drunk or sober he had known that he could not go on.

It was the start of a new day, the new dawn, the new century, hell the new millennium and when you looked back at how the world looked on the 1st January 1900 he thought you'd have hardly recognised it.

And now…now he was going to go out on the turn of the century. Because he couldn't…he just couldn't keep fighting onwards. He was just…too tired. So tired. Bone achingly tired.

So he climbed on that ledge.

And then he was saved by an guardian angel, by a friend, by a cop, by a Dad.

He just didn't know it then.

He could hear someone in his ear, feel someone stroking his hair back and even though it was just the wind Jay thought it was his mother, his mother who was urging him to fight because he had never given up on a fight yet and now here he was at the biggest fight of his life, the fight to stay alive and kicking and breathing and living and here he was running away from it. Undecided all around about what he was going to do and yet he was listening to that voice as it got to a screaming roar in his ear.

"You stay with us Jay. Do you hear me. We do not give up on each other. It's you and me and you stay with me because that's what partners are for and JAY OPEN YOUR EYES PLEASE!"

But Jay was too far gone.

So he did the only thing he could do.

He took a leap of faith. And he jumped.


12th December 2015


Somewhere along the way they were joined by every member of the Intelligence team plus Roman and Kim and Trudy. Trudy took one look at Jay and went white around the mouth. She sent Kim whose eyes were filling with tears and a shell shocked looking Roman back to the district to "GET THAT FUCKING AMBULENCE BACK HERE NOW!" and Adam had barely had chance to watch as Kim had jumped a foot in the air.

The New York Detectives had also been there. Erin had screamed one about Nadia and Amaro was on the phone his eyes wide and Adam knew he was talking to his boss. Maybe…maybe there was a chance that they could save Nadia?

But he didn't think about that.

He didn't want to think about that.

He was still pressing his finger down on Jay's neck. It was hard to tell what was colder now his finger or Jay's neck. Erin was screaming at Jay and Voight was still doing CPR even though Adam suspected that it simply wouldn't do any good at this point.

Antonio was watching his jaw slightly open and Kevin had simply looked away unable to watch. Al was watching his friend and with every thudding noise of hands on Jay's chest it was as if they were all dying a little inside as well.

Oh God please, please, please.

Now Adam was not religious AT ALL but he figured considering what was happening to Nadia right now (not that he wanted to imagine it) he figured that the Big Guy could owe them a solid and give them Jay back.

And then he felt it.

For a second he thought he was going mad but he could feel something pushing against his finger. It was hard to describe it unless you had ever felt such a thing before but Adam thought he knew what it was, he was sure he knew what it was.

God help him if he was wrong.

He pushed Voight's arm a little.

"Voight I think I got a pulse"

It was said with wonder and Erin who had been crying into Antonio's shoulder (the older man having come over and took her into his arms somewhere around the third time she had begged Jay to wake up) suddenly stopped her tears and looked at him.

"What?" Voight said in that terribly flat voice.

"I think…I think I got…I think I got…" he was shivering with cold and then suddenly Al's hands were on his shoulders as Roman came skidding into view.

"It's alright Adam" Al said oddly gently as if he was speaking to Lexie. "It's alright let me feel it"

Adam with what felt like a monstrous effort let go and Al but his own fingers down on the spot.

For a second they all looked at him even Voight who was watching with eyes filled with something that Adam had never seen before and wished never to see again.

"Yeah" Al said and it was nothing short of pure wonder in his voice.

"Yeah we got a pulse"

Erin burst into tears again, the paramedics came around the corner and Adam leaned back against the car turned and promptly emptied his stomach into the snow. Al sighed.

"Well, at least you missed my shoes" he said quietly. "We need to go to the hospital now Adam can you…"

"I'm good—"

At that point he retched again.

"Alright Kevin he's all yours. Trudy we need to co-ordinate with New York—"

"Roman, Burgess time for you two to earn your spot in Intelligence, I want you changed out in five minutes or you're not coming along"

Roman and Kim turned around and all but melted into the night. Trudy gripped Voight's shoulder once and Adam let Kevin drag him away from the paramedics and from Jay on the floor and he allowed his friend to take him to the car where he sat wrapped in Kevin's coat shivering violently as they headed to the hospital.

Adam was not entirely sure, would not be entirely sure unless he saw Nadia happy and alive again but he was sure that the Big Guy had just given them a reprieve.

"Bro?"

"Yeah?"

"I love you and all that but you throw up in my car you're buying it"

It took Adam back from the brink of sobbing at any rate.


Will had been waiting for them. Connor had stood next to him, actually Connor had been there with him since the phone call. When Will had dropped the phone it had been Connor who had picked it up and Connor who had spoken to whomever it was on the other end and Connor who had barked out the orders so that the team knew what was coming. Connor who had taken him in his arms in full view of everyone large, talented hands on his face and had told him that it was alright, that Jay was going to be alright. He had stopped short of promising (the cardinal sin for a doctor) but something about his smile and his jawline and the confident way he was had let Will take air into his lungs and so he was waiting for them when they arrived.

Connor went straight into Doctor mode which was great because one look at Jay was enough to turn his stomach. Will knew enough about knife wounds both as a Doctor in New York and as a Doctor in the Sudan to know that this was bad.

This was very, very bad.

"Con…Con…give me the numbers Nat please?"

Natalie her dark hair swinging over her pregnant belly took pity on him.

"I'd say stabbed five times in the right lower quadrant, it's nicked the spleen for sure and I'm pretty sure it's just nicked the liver but we can close that bleed up for sure. It's his head I don't like, looks like he was bashed with something, right eye is swollen so shut I can barely open it and his jaw is cracked and he's gone down hard, also there's evidence of bruising around the neck. I'd say someone has choked him or tried to do that"

"Any evidence of sexual assault?"

That was one of the cops that Jay worked with. Will didn't know all of them but he knew this one as the one who had annoyed him the most when he had been brought into Intelligence.

"It's a real cool unit Will. You'd like it, You'd really like it, I like the guys that I am working with as well. Apart from this one guy. Antonio was his name. God knows what Erin is going to make of him when he comes through the front door"

"Nothing" Nat said and then with a nod at Will she moved away.

"Greg Yates?" he asked once into the quietness of the hallway.

"Yes" Erin said softly. "And he has Nadia too"

Will shut his eyes turned and then came face to face with Hank Voight and suddenly he couldn't stop himself.

"Where were you?" he asked suddenly and Hank Voight gave a long flinch as though Will had been the one going around stabbing people.

"Where were you? Where THE FUCK WERE YOU!"

"I was doing my job"

"Fuck that" Will said because he had heard bullshit in his time but this was beyond what was usually warranted.

"Fuck that Hank you were busy hunting me down with whatever the fuck that New York cop was and you what? Left him? You let this bastard get away with this? You let…WHERE THE FUCK…WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED? HOW THE FUCK DID YOU PEOPLE LET GREG YATES GET AWAY WITH THIS? YOUR SUPPOSED TO HAVE HIS BACK FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!"

Hank Voight just watched him scream himself horse. Will wanted to hit him but he figured at this point that was more than likely going to get him locked in a cell and that wasn't going to happen while Jay was in danger. He was not going to leave his brother now.

"You want to hate me you can hate me" Hank Voight said levelly and Will wanted to grab the man and just…shake him until he understood that when he had gone to see Jay, when he had seen the home he was in he had let Hank have him. Let Hank have Jay as bizarre as that sounded to anyone who wasn't there at the time. Will could have tried to make it work but it had been clear that Jay was happy, so…so…happy and safe and relaxed and who was Will to take that away from him?

"I trusted you with the only family I have left" Will said watching them work on Jay and feeling like this was a complete out of body experience. "I trusted you with him and the second…the second he said…you think I don't know what he was saying in that room? You left him there and this happened and…"

And suddenly the anger had left him and he was struggling not to cry.

Pressing his hands into his eyes he turned and walked away pretending like he didn't hear that Erin was shouting after him that they were going to do all in their power to find Yates.

He just couldn't hear it.

Not then anyway.


They were on their way to New York. They had a lead from Trudy, she had parked Kim and Sean at the hospital with strict instructions to give an hour by hour update or their lives were never going to be the same ever again and so the team dispersed. Kevin, Antonio and Al he kept in Chicago. Antonio mainly because he needed someone to deal with the brass, Kevin to deal with the fallout from their end and Al to keep an eye on Will. All of this Erin knew.

He took Erin and Adam with them.

Erin had been in many a car with Hank before and more than once she'd been at breakneck speed. This was not that. This was beyond that. More than once she thought she saw Adam close his eyes in fright but that might have just been in exhaustion. They had been running on fumes since this case had begun and now they had two people down.

For Nadia and Jay were down, they were getting up and they were surviving. Of that Erin was clinging to with everything she had.

And so when she staggered into the SVU office Adam trailing behind her looking like a kid on a field trip she thought when he saw the set up. Manhattan was nice she had to give it that and she saw him look around taking in the burnished wood and the shiny new gadgets with wide eyes.

Hank went straight to Olivia and Erin watched them for a second before she shook her head. She ran a hand through her hair pulling it out of it's tie and then she tied it back again. She didn't want to know…she didn't care…but she didn't want to know. Adam watched her for a second and then sat down and Erin mirrored him.

"He'll be alright" Adam said suddenly. "Jay I mean…and Nadia too. You don't get through what they've been through for it to end like that"

Erin nodded but she wondered weather or not Adam heard the ring of an utterly empty promise echo through his voice the way she had. Either way she didn't comment on it.

"Can I ask you something Adam?"

"Yeah sure"

"When we get this guy…can you not leave me alone with him."

Adam nodded.

"I don't think we will be the problem" he said quietly. "Voight likes Nadia, he considers her a part of his team and Jay is like his son. To say nothing of the all the woman from here to New York. So I don't think holding you back is going to be the problem. I think the main one is going to be holding Voight back."

Erin said nothing.

She could see it written in every line of Hank's body. He was primed for war.

Problem was she wanted to help him.

Jay was family. Jay was…Jay was more to her than family. He had been more than a brother. He had been (if she was being really, really honest with herself) the closest thing to the love of a life that Erin thought she was going to get. They didn't have that relationship that Hank and Camille had, that they had both been in awe of during their youth but they had something that made them come back to each other time and time again and when she was wrapped in his arms Erin felt safe. She ran away from it nine times out of ten but it didn't stop the fact that she felt safe whenever she was with her. He was the only man that had ever watched her back other than Hank and the only one who had known to the full extent what she had been through growing up. He had been with her with Charlie…

And then there was Nadia, Nadia who she had dragged off the streets thinking she could be Hank and save the kid snorting coke, the kid on the ledge, save the kids that had more to give and instead she had simply dragged Nadia, her friend, her best female friend, the best one she had, had in a long time, since Annie, into this mess and now they were both going to die.

She didn't have the blind optimism that Adam did. Her experience was different. She had a different outlook on the world. And her outlook was bleak. Her outlook was very, very bleak.

And so she knew one way or the other Greg Yates was going to pay.


Will was sat slouched in the chair when there was a soft knock on the door. He looked up to see Alvin Olinsky looking at him and he scrubbed a hand over his face trying to drag himself back to the land of the wakefulness.

"What?"

"Nadia's dead"

"Shit"

"They got Yates, their taking him to trial on Nadia, Hank says it will be a couple more days but he's confident."

"She suffer?"

Al shot him a look and Will groaned. He looked at his brother on the hospital bed and—

"He's never going to forgive himself"

Jay had gone into surgery and gone through it with flying colours according to Connor. He had lost his spleen but other than that knife had not nicked anything it shouldn't have. But then again Greg Yates was a professional. He had known what he was doing when he had stabbed Jay. He had wanted to leave his brother dying in the snow like trash, bleeding long and slow and that had been exactly what had happened. Had it not been so cold out…had Jay's body not slowed down in order to protect itself from what was happening…well…Will was not sure his brother would have found a way to survive.

The head wound was more worrying but the truth was until Jay woke up there was nothing that they could do about that.

"He does love Jay you know" Al said quietly. "And you can't hate him more for what happened to Jay…to Nadia, more than he hates himself. He'll be carrying this one around for a long time"

"I don't hate him" Will said because that was true. "I just…"

"He's your brother" Al said. "I get it. I do. At least he's alive"

And with that he left the room and Will knew (as he had seen with so many parents and spouses and loved ones before him) that he had been thinking about Nadia, only two years younger than his own daughter and that he had wanted to hide his face.


16th December 2015

It felt like he was underwater again. A trial, a flight, Erin who went straight home to bed looking as if she was never going to get up again and Will who had filled him in on what was happening with a nod and a pat on the arm. Hank wanted to pitch forwards and take the kid into his arms and promise him that this was never going to happen again but he couldn't. The guilt, the grief, the love…it was all churning around him and he couldn't deal with it tonight. Already it was taking all his considerable willpower not to cry.

Nadia was dead.

Erin was a mess.

Jay was in a hospital bed.

He sat down and took Jay's hand in his.

"I am right here" he said to the silent figure of his son. "I am right here son, I am right here do you understand me? I am not going anywhere Jay"

He didn't know if Jay understood. He didn't know what to make of all of this really, he liked to have thought that when Camille was sick she had known that he was there with her at the end and all those moments leading up to it.

God if his wife had gotten a hold of Greg Yates…

Well…it made his heart heave with longing for her.

Camille would have known what to do. She'd have stopped this from happening. She'd have seen through all this murkiness to the actual monster within.

Hank leaned back in the chair, Jay's hand still in his and stared at the ceiling.

Nadia was dead.

Erin was on the brink of falling apart, he could see it in her eyes.

Will was furious with him and quite rightly so.

Jay was in the hospital.

He had failed.

He must have fallen asleep out of sheer exhaustion. He remembered what it had been like in those early days of illness where he had grabbed sleep where he could and Camille had pretended not to notice. Then she had actually not noticed and that had been even worse. Every second back then had counted, had meant something, and he remembered how he had been with Jay back then as well. He had never really apologised for that. Looking at his son on the bed broken and bleeding and bruised he wanted to, needed to…He couldn't have the last conversation between him and his son be a row. He just…couldn't…

But the point was he fell asleep.

And he missed when the fingers encased in his hand twitched. The first sign of life in days.

He had been asleep.

It didn't mean it didn't happen.

Because Adam had been right, Jay was a fighter and when he fought he fought.

And he was fighting now.

And that was all that Hank would ever care about.


And there you go, I hope you enjoy.

Next Chapter-Greg Yates Part 3 and an ending (depending) Jay wakes up in hospital, Erin is drowning in guilt, Will doesn't trust Hank and Hank is just trying to keep everything from imploding while not actually taking care of himself.