A/N: Hello! I know I have quite a few stories that are in progress, but this one came to me after the season premiere this year with the divorce papers and lack of Jay/Hailey conversations of what happened. With everything (for obvious reasons) being so one-sided towards Hailey (and I don't mean that in a bad way), I wanted to write a story about the other side of the equation, so this is it. I will do the best I can to update everything else at some point. I'm having some health issues right now.

Disclaimer: I don't own Chicago PD, Chicago Med (for when Will inevitably gets mentioned), NBC, or any other known entity. The story and chapter titles are all from the song "It's Only Love" by Rob Thomas, which I also don't own.

I hope you enjoy, and please review :)

Chapter One: Call Off the Dawn

December 2022

"If you love me, then you know you have to let me go."

She had, of course, let him go. But it didn't come without a lot of pain and tears on both of their parts. For him, though, Chicago had become too messy, too complicated, and he couldn't stay there when he had lost sight of who he was and had killed a man.

A bad man, sure, but that part didn't matter anymore, now, did it?

And sure, the man was gonna kill him, but he shouldn't have been in there in the first place. And then there had been the cover up attempt… Jay was doing everything Voight would've done, exactly how Voight would've done it, and that had never been Jay. Ever. But after everything with Walton… Jay had wanted in, and wanted to be a part of everything…

It messed with his head, and changed who he was. And after all of that, and everything else, Jay had needed something that was just… clear lines. Something that was clean. That was black and white, good and bad… something where he felt he had more control and could be somewhat in charge of what was going on. Sure, things didn't always go according to plan, but at least there was a clear plan going into it.

He had hoped that she would understand, but as the weeks went by… he realized that she just couldn't.

Or wouldn't, maybe.

She was annoyed at how little he was able to keep in touch with her, but he was trying to lead a squad of soldiers in multiple missions against different cartel factions, and he couldn't always be reaching out to her as often as she wanted. But he tried to talk with her at least once every other week or so, unless they were deep in the trenches (so to speak) and couldn't.

But it wasn't enough.

He didn't know what she wanted from him anymore. If he went home… there was still so much that he didn't understand, hadn't worked through… didn't know what he would do if, and when, he did come home. Being a cop again was out of the question, and he didn't exactly have another career choice in mind or available to him…

He shifted his weight on his cot, looking at the pictures on his phone. Ones of the two of them in happier times, before everything fell apart and devolved into… whatever they were now. He couldn't even be sure what exactly they were anymore, because it didn't feel like husband and wife right now.

It wasn't that he didn't love her. And it wasn't that he didn't want to still be with her. But there were things going on that he couldn't deal with, and he couldn't just stop everything to talk on the phone with her, or go home on leave whenever she felt like seeing him. Or whenever he felt like seeing her, for that matter.

But he did miss her, though. Missed seeing her, holding her. The way she smiled and laughed. The smell of her shampoo. The way her face crinkled when she was mad at him for something stupid. Her wit, her sarcasm… her intelligence, above all else. The way she could read him like a book, even though that annoyed him to no end…

He sighed heavily as he flicked through the photos. Ones of him and her… ones of him and his friends back home… all reminding him of better times.

"You alright over there?" Nolan asked from his cot on the other side of the room.

Jay glanced over at him. "Yeah," he replied, shuffling though his phone again.

"You and your wife fighting again?"

Jay snorted softly. "Don't know that we ever stopped from the last time."

Nolan shrugged. "She'll get over it, man."

Jay shook his head. "I don't know about that. I kinda screwed all of this up."

Nolan walked over to sit at the foot of Jay's cot. "Trust me. If she really loves you, she'll get over it."

Jay shrugged. "It's not that I think that she doesn't love me," he said. "It's just that… I don't think we're gonna be able to get through this."

Nolan scoffed. "Then maybe she's not the kind of wife you thought she was."

Jay made a face. "Come on, man. That's not fair."

"Jay, man, you've been down here for six months, and every time you talk to her, you end up apologizing for the fact that you're busy doing what we all came down here to do. What does she expect from you?"

"I don't know," Jay said softly, fiddling with his phone.

"What does she think we're doing down here, working 9-5 like they are?" Nolan asked.

Jay chuckled. "We never worked 9-5 in Intelligence."

"Maybe not, but is that what she's expecting from you? That you're just gonna be able to talk to her whenever she calls?"

"I don't know," Jay repeated.

"I get that this isn't like combat, but if we were out on the front lines, she wouldn't be able to reach you like this," Nolan noted. "What would she do then?"

Jay shrugged again, not really having a good answer to that question.

"She should be lucky you do answer as much as you do, because there's plenty of guys here who don't."

"Yeah, I noticed," Jay acknowledged, rubbing his hand over his face.

"Stop feeling guilty for doing what you're getting paid to do," Nolan said.

"I don't feel guilty for working. I just… love my wife. I feel guilty for what I've done to her."

Nolan sighed. "Yeah, but if she really loved you, would she be guilt-tripping you like this? Or would she be more understanding that you got a job to do, and you can't always be there?"

Jay shook his head, more to dismiss the thought than to answer the question.

"You've said all along that she didn't really support you going," Nolan reminded him.

"I didn't say that," Jay said. "I said that I didn't think she understood why I needed to do this."

"Same thing, man."

"No, not really."

"But she was okay with you extending your time down here?"

Jay looked at Nolan.

"You didn't talk to her about that before you did it, did you?" Nolan said.

"No," Jay said softly.

"Okay, that one you need to apologize for."

Jay sighed. "I can't go home, man. Not yet."

"Because of your wife?"

"Because of a lot of things, but she really isn't one of them."

Nolan looked at Jay. "Look, I know that when you first got down here, your head wasn't on straight. I could see that. But you seem like you're doing better, so what am I missing?"

Jay bit his lip slightly. "The mess I left behind."

Nolan scoffed lightly. "We've all left messes behind, man. We all got shit waiting for us at home."

Jay sucked in a corner of his lip sadly. "Not like mine. I don't have much left to go home to. The job I left… I can never go back. My wife… we spend most of our time fighting these days. My friends… there's not much left with them at all. I haven't heard really anything from them since I left. Can't say I blame them, when I never said goodbye, but… there wouldn't be anything for me to go back to. So, I might as well stay here, you know? Keep doing what I'm doing."

"Might as well keep running," Nolan said.

Jay gave him a look. "I'm not running," he replied.

"Sounds a lot like running to me, bro."

"I'm not running," Jay repeated, albeit more forcefully. "I'll go home when this is over."

"Jay, come on," Nolan retorted. "You were a cop for how long? You know that this will never be over. Someone else will always come in behind the others and start all over. We've cut off how many groups since you've been here? Just to have a new one in place within a week. It's never gonna end."

Jay made a face, but said nothing.

"You're running, man. And until you're ready to face it, you're gonna keep running."

Jay scrubbed his hand over his face again.

"But you're gonna have to at some point," Nolan told him. "Face all of this, I mean. And you and your wife are gonna have to figure out whatever the hell you are. Though, I have to ask, is she actually trying to be supportive of whatever it is you're going through that made you run down here, or is she just upset that you're here and not there?"

"More upset than anything else," Jay said.

Nolan nodded.

"She says it's because I didn't give her a chance to help, I just pushed her away and now with being here and out of touch, I keep pushing her away," Jay continued. "But, it was more complicated than that."

"Look, I'm not a marriage counselor or anything," Nolan said. "But if it wasn't working before, then it's not gonna work now."

"It was working before. We were happy." Jay sighed. "And then things just got… complicated. And… now we're here."

Nolan nodded again. "Well, you'll figure it out. Or, you'll do what a lot of soldiers end up doing, and you'll get divorced while deployed. Either way, it'll get worked out."

Jay nodded, sighing softly.

"In the meantime, we have a mission tomorrow," Nolan reminded him.

"I know," Jay said. "We'll be ready."

"You better." Nolan stood up. "Anything goes wrong…"

"It'll be your fault, I know," Jay taunted, causing Nolan to smile.

"Bullshit, asshole."

Jay laughed.