Four Years Ago

He was so fucked up.

He tried not to be, he really did, he used to think he was a good person, that he knew the difference between right and wrong and would always make the choice that was right but now… It seemed like whatever he did he always ended up hurting someone. And not just some random person which was bad enough but the very people he was trying to help. And the people who were trying to help him. And all those mistakes, all those choices… He should have known better.

He did.

But Jay was so fucked up he'd done it all anyway.

He knocked back the rest of his beer and as he looked at the empty bottle his first urge was to get another, that was his habit after all, was a large part of what had gotten him in this latest mess, which made his second urge to hurl it all the wall. He wanted to break something, wanted to get the rage inside him out but more than anything he wanted a mess that he could clean up. It had made him feel better to have Voight yell at him, Hailey too and while he didn't think he deserved it he appreciated them saving his badge, but it still made him feel like shit to know that they'd had to. That he had been such a pathetic excuse for a man that he had not just slept with a woman undercover, he had dated her. He had taken Camilla on dates, always in her part of town, had held her hand and kissed her, had fucking held her every time she'd cried over losing her brother, a brother he, however inadvertently, had helped to kill.

Months later and he could still clearly see the bullet embedded in his brain, the eye it had torn through. It wasn't something he would ever let himself forget. The same with his look of determination when Jay convinced him to help rescue the kid he'd helped to kidnap in the first place, using the code they'd both sworn to follow to remind him of the morals he'd believed he still held. And Luis had. But they hadn't done him any good. Neither had the military.

Or him.

Undercover had taken him a bit of time to get used to but he'd quickly been drawn in by the intensity of Organized Crime, the challenge, a violence he was used to with an approach he was not. That had made it easier to look past the sleaziness he felt pretending to be someone else, but with Luis… Jay had been glad to trick the other man at first, disgusted that someone who had sworn the same oaths he had could turn his back on them so easily. But the more he got to know him the faster he realized he wasn't much different than he'd been when he'd come home. He might not have made all the same choices but clearly he'd made some fucking bad ones. Maybe that was why he'd tried so hard to get him to make the right one, hoping that it would make up for his own mistakes. It hadn't though. Instead he'd gotten him killed and as if that wasn't bad enough he'd doubled down on his fuckups.

He could have walked away then, he should have, it would've saved everyone so much heartache, but he hadn't. Instead he'd stood beside Camilla at Luis' funeral, shook the hands of his friends, his former teammates, his sister, and continued that lie. For weeks. He had fucked her for Christ's sake, always in her bed, or in the backroom at that club, an action that had very nearly ended his career. And the worst part was that he hadn't once batted an eye when the name she'd called out wasn't his. He'd felt bad about it, was fucking disgusted with himself, but apparently not enough to stop.

He'd told Hailey he had it under control, had outright lied to Voight, putting their whole team in jeopardy, and worst of all had betrayed Camilla in the vilest way, at her most vulnerable. She hadn't even looked at him once she found out the truth, not that his apologies would've done much for her except in trying to make himself feel better. He still didn't understand why she hadn't thrown him under the bus. Logically he knew, he'd looked at the security footage and seen that Hailey had gone to speak with her and offered her a deal, knew that she'd just been protecting herself but still…

The hell if I don't know him.

The person you know, that's the lie.

He didn't know what was the truth anymore. He knew who he was, much as he didn't always like himself but what she'd said… she hadn't been wrong. Who'd he'd been with her had been a version of himself, the one he pretended didn't exist anymore, the one he never let his team see. And he didn't like that, but the thing that was eating him up the most wasn't just how he'd treated her, it was the name he'd done all of this under.

Ryan.

Lydia's name.

Tess's name.

No matter how hard he tried he couldn't forget about her, which only deepened his shame that he was trying to in the first place. Jay would never forgive himself for sullying that name, for not following her, for not demanding answers. For moving on.

He had loved Camilla, a trauma bond if he ever saw one, but he hadn't been in love with her. He had been with Erin, had loved her and been happy with her, in a way he'd never been able to with Tess because she'd never been home long enough for him to. Or for her to love him the way he had always craved but never known how to ask for. Couldn't bring himself to ask because he'd known how torn he would be if someone asked him. But for all that Erin meant to him he'd never once felt for her what he did for Tess and when Abby had shown up, another woman he'd failed, another woman he'd wrongly tried to save with marriage, he'd known he had to leave. Erin deserved someone good, someone steady, someone honest. And that wasn't him. He wasn't what any woman he had loved had needed.

That was why she'd left. Why they both had. But while Erin's departure had hurt, immensely, it hadn't broken him the same way. Except that she was now the fourth person who had left him and it was getting really hard to think it wasn't his fault. That he was the reason they left. That there was just…

Something about him that wasn't worth sticking around for.