Alvin saw the headlights of the car that pulled up out front through a slat in the Venetian blind. He heard the car door open, saw somebody step out of the car, and he replaced the slat and wandered out of the living room to the front door. It was early in the morning, soon people all over the city would be going to work, but right now it was still near pitch dark out, perfect time for a visit that wouldn't be witnessed.

The door opened and Trudy Platt cautiously stepped in. "What's going on, Olinsky?"

"He's in here," Al nonchalantly nodded to the living room.

Trudy followed him and saw Voight passed out on the couch, sprawled on his stomach with the side of his face buried in a pillow, with a blanket draped over the lower half of his body. He looked like he'd crashed hard coming off of something.

"What happened?" Trudy asked as she went over to Voight.

Al stayed behind and answered, still in his unreadable monotone voice, "He was having trouble sleeping so I helped him out."

Trudy knelt down beside the couch and took Voight's pulse, then smelled his breath but couldn't find any trace of liquor.

"What did you do to him?" she asked.

"Drugged him," Al answered matter-of-factly.

"With what?"

"Sleeping pills he kept in the medicine cabinet since Camille's funeral," he answered.

"How many did you give him?" Trudy asked.

"Hopefully enough," he answered. "He's been out for four hours."

Trudy stood back up and asked again, "What's going on?"

"Trudy, I'm worried about this guy," Al told her honestly.

"What?" she asked in disbelief. "Why?"

"Denny Woods was killed tonight in a drive-by."

"Yeah, I heard," Trudy said. "Score one for our team, eh?"

"I think the news has rattled his brain," Al told her, and looked down at his unconscious friend sprawled on the couch. "He had a total breakdown tonight, Trudy, over a dream he had. That's not Voight and you know it."

Trudy gave him one of her looks she used on patrolmen who annoyed her with stupid questions, "What kind of dream? Like some guy with metal fingers chasing him or something?"

"It's a long story. I think everything that's been going on lately has gotten to be too much for him."

"Oh God," Trudy said as she sat down in a chair next to the couch. She intertwined the fingers of her hands and brought them up to her mouth, which did nothing to hide the panicked look in her eyes. "I was worried this might happen after what happened to Justin, but that was two years ago."

Al paused for a moment before responding, "You never get over your child being murdered."

Trudy looked up at him with a look of horror, "I'm sorry, Al."

He gave a small shrug and said, "At least my wife can still bitch at me about everything I'm doing wrong. I guess that's something."

"So what now?" Trudy asked, looking to Voight, who still hadn't moved.

"I don't know," Al said. "I was hoping we could put our heads together and come up with something."

"I can hear you," Voight surprised them as his voice joined the conversation, a second later he opened his eyes and looked at them.

Trudy stood up. "Hank. How're you doing?"

"Oh terrific," Voight dryly answered as he rubbed his eyes. "My two best friends of 20 years are saying I'm nuts."

"No, Hank," Trudy said as she sat down beside him, "nobody's saying that, we're just trying to figure out what happened."

Voight sat up, still entangled in the blanket, his eyes still not quite focused, and looked at Trudy and said, "You cut your hair, I like it."

"Hank," Trudy looked at him. "What's going on?"

"I had a bad night," he answered simply, then added a bit self consciously, "And it's gotten me thinking about stuff I never thought I'd have to."

"Okay, look," Trudy looked from one man to the other and told them, "I know nobody wants to hear about any of my husband's latest endeavors but...a while back, Randy took some kind of dream analysis course..." she cocked her head to glare at Olinsky through the corner of her eye and added, "Don't ask. Anyway..." she turned to Voight, "what those freaky deaky hipsters told him was that the power of a dream is limited to the people you tell. Something about, the more you tell it, the more people hear it, the less power it holds over you, the less real it becomes." Trudy took Hank's hand in both of hers and looked at him with the fullest sincerity anybody would ever see from her and said, "So I know it sounds stupid, Hank, believe me, but since Olinsky didn't bother bringing me up to speed on what this is all about, I want you to start from the beginning and tell me everything you remember."

Voight looked at Trudy, and looked up at Al, and decided he had nothing to lose. Here with him were the two people in the whole world that he knew he could trust, nothing he said to them would ever leave this house. Al already thought he was going nuts, but he knew even if Trudy came to the same conclusion, she'd never admit it.

"It started when Ruzek's sister was arrested for DUI," he began. "So she wouldn't lose her kids, Ruzek tried to make it go away, Woods found out, and threatened to send both of them to prison unless Ruzek ratted me out. He had Ruzek bug my office, planted thousands of dollars in a drug house to catch me not entering it into evidence." Voight pointed at Al, then himself. "We took him out to the middle of nowhere and confronted him on it. Told him to keep working for Woods to find his weakness so we could finally bring him down. Then...they dug up Kevin Bingham's body."

"What?" Trudy asked. Then she recovered herself, "I'm sorry, go on."

"They discovered his body while breaking up the ground for a new store, traced the bullet back to a gun that I confiscated from a robbery suspect, which later disappeared from evidence. Got an eyewitness that put Al and Erin at the scene where the body was moved."

Trudy and Al looked at each other, but Voight didn't notice.

"Then they found DNA evidence that tied Al to the body," Hank continued.

"The look on Denny's face when he realized he'd been set up was the only good thing about it, that was priceless," Voight said with a slight expression of amusement on his face as he wound up the story for his two friends. He didn't have any concept of time, how long he'd been talking. Sometime during his recall, Al had gone to the kitchen and brought back coffee, even though Voight was wide awake, his friend suggested it might help clear the fog from his mind. As he recounted his dream, he started to relive the whole thing, it became real to him again and he was having trouble keeping the memories separated from reality. Even having Al standing right before him in the living room wasn't enough to stave off everything that had been running through his mind in the dream.

"Then it was all over," he said, "and I was on the roof of the district...and..."

He closed his eyes and lowered his head.

"Sorry, Al."

The bottle fell and shattered into a thousand pieces in the parking lot. He beat the door with his fists, finally breaking down and sliding to the floor. Screaming.

"And then I woke up," Voight opened his eyes and looked at his friends.

Trudy's eyes were sympathetic, she'd listened to the whole thing and was slowly taking it in. Al had gotten most of the details last night, but he looked just as puzzled about it now as he did then.

"That would be enough to upset anybody, Hank, that's understandable," Trudy said. "But look at the facts. One, Denny Woods is dead, any threat that he might have been to you and Intelligence, he's not anymore."

"Two," Alvin added, "I called in a favor and checked on Ruzek's sister, she hasn't been arrested for anything for years."

"Three," Trudy said, "Kevin Bingham disappeared two years ago and nobody knows what happened to him. He's not going to be dug up under some pavement." Trudy saw Voight's eyes shifting and held up a finger to get his attention, "Four, can you really see yourself putting all your funds into a trust for your grandson?"

"It would be a nice gesture," Voight replied sadly, then shook his head, "but no. Olive hasn't spoken to me since the day she left, my grandson has no idea I'm even alive, he'll never know me, by the time he's 21 he won't accept money from someone he never knew. Besides, as long as I'm alive, there are people in this city who need my financial help, that safe has to be full to make sure they get it. I hate to say it but right now the people of Chicago who depend on me are more important than my grandson, who as far as I know is getting along just fine without any help from me."

"Five," Trudy continued, "even if Bingham didn't disappear and was moved from the silos to a vacant lot...no eyewitness would ever place Erin there, because she wouldn't be involved."

Voight looked at her with a less than certain expression on his face.

"Six, even if they would've found Bingham's body," Trudy said, "they wouldn't get Al's DNA off of it, they wouldn't get anybody's DNA off of it. Because if you ever would've buried his body, you would've made sure anything that could've contained DNA would've been burnt beyond recognition long before the burial. Seven, even if you did shoot Bingham, you wouldn't have used a gun they could trace back to the evidence locker, traced back to a suspect you personally confiscated the gun from."

"Of course he wouldn't," Al agreed. "You don't take a gun out of evidence to kill someone, you take one off a dead dealer in the street, shoot someone with it, then dispose of it. Then if it's ever found, the guilty party is already dead."

"See?" Trudy asked.

"Of course that's becoming obsolete, today you can just make a gun on a printer and then dismantle it when you're done," Al added.

"Thank you, Olinsky," Trudy dryly remarked, then looked to Voight, "does this help any, Hank?"

"It does sound stupid in the cold light of day, I know that," Hank responded. "It just felt so real." He stood up, a bit wobbly on his feet but he quickly found his balance. "I've already lost everything once...then I saw everything else I had slipping away too, and I couldn't stop it."

Voight turned and looked at his friends and told them, "The two of you are the only family that I have left...if anything would happen to either of you..."

Whatever Voight was about to say next, he couldn't, he felt, rather than heard, his voice starting to break again, he shook his head and closed his eyes.

"Hank," Trudy jumped up from the couch and went to him and hugged him.

Al joined her and grabbed Voight by one side and told Trudy to help him get Hank back on the couch, they did, and while Al disappeared into the kitchen, Trudy stayed on the couch with Voight and told him, "Hank, you don't have to worry about anything happening to either of us, we're fine. Hey," she smoothed her hand over his forehead to get his attention, "The three of us have been friends for 20 years, we're an unstoppable force."

Voight hugged Trudy in return and told her, "I love you both so much."

"We love you too, Hank," she told him, "it's alright."

Al came back with another coffee mug in his hand and told Trudy, "Get him to drink some of this."

Trudy took the mug, it was warm but not hot, and got Hank to swallow some of the coffee. After that he started to calm down.

"Hank," Trudy said, "take a sick day, the guys can handle the Woods shooting."

"I don't need a sick day," Voight replied as he regained his voice.

"Hank, you've never taken a sick day," she pointed out. "Call in, tell them you have food poisoning, tell them you have a hernia...hell, tell them you have hemorrhoids, just take the day off and take it easy."

Voight looked her in the eyes as if searching for something, and said, "You do think I'm crazy."

"No I don't," she replied, "but we all need a mental health day at some point in this line of work. Remember last year when I was in the hospital? You wouldn't let me come back to work for two weeks."

"You were beaten within an inch of your life, Trudy."

"And you got shot and came back to work the next day, what's the difference?"

Voight smiled tiredly at her and told her, "You're a great gal, Trudy."

Then Voight's head lulled to the side and he was out.

"Hank?" Trudy sat up with a start.

"He's alright," Alvin told her. "I spiked his coffee. By the time he wakes up, it'll be too late for him to go in to work."

Trudy eased Voight down on the couch and covered him back up. As a parting gesture she leaned over and kissed him on the forehead, even though he was already too dead to the world to notice. As she stood up she told Olinsky, "I think you were right about his brain getting rattled. I think we're going to have to keep an eye on him the next couple days."

"I don't see that being a problem," Alvin told her, "because I don't think he's going to let me out of his sight once he regains consciousness. If you had ever been as physically close to him as I was last night..."

"Olinsky!" Trudy spoke up in a loud and firm tone, "Whatever the next words out of your mouth are going to be, I don't want to hear it!"

Alvin did something that was out of character for him, he laughed. Trudy sounded one step away from putting her fingers in her ears and screaming 'la la la la' just to block out whatever she thought he was about to say.

"I think Woods' murder is too much for him to process right now," Trudy said.

"Gotta say if there was any chance of his nightmare coming true, that'd be one hell of a preemptive strike," Al replied.

"But we know there's no way in hell it could ever happen," Trudy said as she put on her jacket, "because Bingham was never buried at the silos, or moved to an empty lot." She looked Alvin square in the eyes and said matter of factly, "That's what the docks are for."

Al smiled, "I appreciate you helping us that night, Trudy, I know Hank does too."

"I know he does," she replied. "That's why I hate seeing him get bent out of shape over this. What happens at the Chicago docks...stays with the fish."

"Amen," Al leaned over and kissed Trudy on the cheek, "Love you, Trudy."

"Yeah well, don't let Randy hear you say that," she said. "I'll come up with something to tell everyone why Voight's not coming in, you just keep an eye on him."

"You got it," Olinsky replied as he shut the door behind her.

A/N: This was originally going to be a 2-chapter story, but there will be a 3rd and final chapter.