Hi everyone! This story originated from a couple of tweets from Derek Haas: when asked what was next for Erin, he said "rock bottom," and when asked what was next for Linstead, he said "he's not going to give up on her." This is how I interpreted those tweets!

Just a warning: this story is very, very dark. There is also a brief, and not super graphic but possibly somewhat disturbing, sexual assault scene.

And when we are drowning in the noise, I'm gonna stop to find your voice…

Jay picks up an extra caramel latte on his way into work, a peace offering. He hadn't even talked to her last night, after they'd escorted the two crooked cops out of her apartment. He'd left her there, alone, in her crime scene of an apartment, after promising her that he was looking out for her. He'd let the blow to his ego-why was she willing to talk to some loser but not to him?-cloud his judgment, and he'd walked out the door without so much as a backwards glance.

He feels bad about that now. He knows she didn't do it to hurt him. He also knows, deep down, that that guy isn't anyone. He knows Erin is lost, and in pain, and if he really loves her-and he does-he needs to step up.

So he brings her her favorite coffee, promises himself that today they're going to talk, really talk, and he's not going to let her put him off with vague excuses or false reassurances. He's going to fix this. Fix her. Because, truth be told-he's starting to get a little bit scared.

And when the morning passes and Erin doesn't show up, he starts to get just a little bit more scared. Anxiety churns in his stomach, and his own coffee tastes bitter. Every time he hears a noise from the stairs, he startles-and every time, it isn't her. Her caramel latte grows cold on his desk.

Around 11:00, Antonio catches him staring at her desk. "I think Voight went to talk to her," he says, and Jay nods mutely. "Probably just a little shaken up after last night." Jay nods again, although he knows-knows-that last night isn't the problem. If anything, it was just the final straw.

He thinks of the agony in Erin's eyes, of the emptiness on her face as he tried to reason with her in the garage, before those guys even went after her.

At noon, he tries her cell. It goes straight to voicemail, so he waits a few minutes-maybe she's in an elevator, or a tunnel-and tries again, with the same result. He bounces his leg up and down as he types out a text: I'm sorry I left last night. Are you okay?

When she doesn't respond in half an hour, he tries again: Erin, please call me. I'm worried.

At 1:00, boots clomp up the stairs, and Jay nearly jumps out of his chair. Voight stalks across the bullpen, looking more upset than Halstead has ever seen him, and his heart starts pounding. "Halstead!" Voight barks, as he strides to his office.

Jay follows him, legs shaking, and closes the door. "What happened?" he manages, already knowing that it's bad.

Voight collapses into his desk chair, suddenly looking very, very old. Jay swallows hard, and leans against the wall for support. Voight holds up a badge, and Jay is fairly certain his heart stops. "I guess she's-she's in a worse place than I realized," his boss says, and he sounds so tired and sad.

"Did you suspend her?" Jay says, although he already knows the answer.

"She quit," Voight says, his voice even more gravelly than normal. "She's with her mother, and she…" he sighs, rubbing his forehead. "Has she been talking to you?" he asks desperately. "At all?"

Jay shakes his head, horror twisting in his gut. Erin quit. She quit. He digs his nails into his palm, relishing the pain, because he deserves it. He'd failed to have her back.

"She went to her mother," Voight says, and he sounds destroyed. "She chose her mother and I couldn't stop her." He shakes his head, then looks up at Jay, his eyes red-rimmed. "I yelled at her," he says incredulously, and he sounds so disappointed in himself. "I should have given her a hug."

"I should have too," Jay says, almost to himself. "I just walked out last night. She was all alone, and she wasn't trying to hurt me, and I just…"

They sit in silence for a few minutes, both wallowing in guilt. Finally, Jay speaks again. "What happened this morning?"

Voight nods, slowly. "She was at Bunny's bar," he says. "Drinking. And she looked-I haven't seen her like that since she was a kid. I tried to get her to come with me, but...something was wrong, and I ignored it. I just thought...I didn't pay attention. Told her every cop goes through a bad patch."

"What did she say?" Jay says, and he realizes he's almost holding his breath.

"She said she was bad news, and she couldn't get away from it," Voight says. "She said that she hurts everyone she loves." Jay squeezes his eyes shut, suppressing a moan. He thinks of the look on her face last night-she'd known she'd hurt him, and that had hurt her. And he'd walked out the door. "She'd been hanging out with Bunny, and Bunny…"

Jay has the sudden, heartstopping thought that something horrible is going to happen. "Where is she now?"

"I left her at the bar," Voight says. "I wasn't going to be able to get through to her, not with Bunny there." He sighs, rubbing his forehead. "I think she needs to hit rock bottom before-"

"No," Jay says. "No, she's going to hurt herself. Sarge, we can't just leave her there."

"No," Voight says firmly. "No, she wouldn't do that. I learned with Justin, I have to let her make her own mistakes."

"No, Sarge," Jay says urgently. "She's going to hurt herself. She's trying to get herself killed. Now she doesn't have anything at all. She was holding it together for work, now she's just gonna-"

"Erin wouldn't do that!" Voight says.

"She's not herself," Jay says, and suddenly he can't sit in this office anymore. He flings the door open, practically running towards his desk for his coat. "I'm going to find her."

He takes off for the stairs without waiting for another word.

When Voight walks out the door and out of her life, Erin swallows the rest of her beer in one gulp and tries not to cry. The oxy she took this morning-or last night, maybe? She didn't sleep at all, so it's hard to tell-is wearing off, as is the blissful numbness it provided, and she has to fight to shove down the emotions that threaten to engulf her. This is the right thing to do. This is what she deserves.

Hank will be upset, but he'll see that it's for the best. She hopes he tells Jay, because she can't face doing it herself.

Her mother brings her another beer and a shot of whiskey, kisses her on the head. "Sweetheart, you look exhausted," she says cheerfully. "Why don't you go get some rest?"

Erin doesn't reply. She just downs the shot, drinks her beer quietly, then stands up and walks out the door without saying good-bye.

It's a long walk home, but when she imagines the expression on Hank's face as she'd handed him her badge-she'd been too weak to even look at him-she knows it's exactly what she deserves.

Her apartment is still a crime scene, she realizes when she gets there. There's blood all over the floor, and shattered glass, and a bullet in the wall, and she can't stand to stay there for one more second.

She pulls on a coat and heads out the door. Her hands are shaking so badly she can barely manage to lock it. She jams them in her pockets, fingers caressing the prescription bottle she finds in there. It's still almost full. Good.

She wanders until she can't move anymore, until her legs give out, and she's surprised-but not-to find herself in Millennium Park, in the same seat where she'd waited to meet Greg Yates on a bitter cold Chicago winter night.

It seems like a lifetime ago, and she struggles to connect the person she was then to the shell she is now. Images assault her mind, of Nadia, happy and healthy and smiling as she showed Erin her test scores, of Jay, a mischievous grin making his eyes sparkle as his hands slid under her top, of Voight telling her how proud he was as she discussed the task force offer with him.

She fights for breath as the images morph, as Nadia's delighted face becomes lifeless eyes staring unseeing at a slate grey New York sky, as Jay's smile slides into the hurt in his eyes as he takes in the scene in her apartment, as Voight's pride transforms into disappointment and anger.

She sees Landon, wounded on her floor, begging for his life while she stood by and did nothing. She hears Voight: I've got this situation with the Commander, and I've gotta be worried about you? Voight tried so hard for her, but he was wrong, and she doesn't deserve what he did for her. She doesn't deserve the life she has, doesn't deserve the chances she was given. She's poison, and everything she touches is destroyed.

And she needs to get out, she needs to get away before she hurts anyone else she loves. She needs to disappear before she ruins Jay's life, before Voight risks his career trying to cover for her yet again. They'll be better off. It's what needs to happen.

She closes her eyes, and sees Jay's face in the garage the previous night. I'm looking out for you, he'd said, and for the first time all day, tears flood her vision. She thinks back to the last night she'd spent with him, in her bed, wrapped in his arms. Nadia had been just down the hall, studying, and Jay had held her tightly and kissed her hair and set her nerve endings on fire with his fingers. She thinks maybe that's the last time she felt safe and happy.

It's better, she reassures herself. It's better for him to not have to look out for her. He'll realize eventually, she knows-realize that she would have taken him down with her, and he'll be grateful that she walked away.

She couldn't live with herself if she hurt Jay.

But now she can't stop thinking about him. Memories assault her, random snippets of conversation ringing in her ears. And yeah, I meant you and me, she hears his voice say, and she can feel his fingers wrapped around her own, grounding her. I don't want to talk at all, her memory says, as his phantom lips touch hers, warm and loving and so unlike Landon's.

She whimpers, digging in her pocket for the bottle of oxy. She pops it open, hands trembling violently, and swallows a few pills dry. Maybe more than she should.

She slides off the seat and curls up in a ball on the ground, wrapping her coat tightly around herself and waiting for the pills to take effect, for the pain to ease. She hasn't slept on the street since Voight took her in-the memories of doing so as a child and a teenager are so traumatic that she's never even been able to bring herself to go camping.

But now, this is exactly what she deserves.

It's almost 2:00 in the morning when Jay finally gives up for the night. Defeated, he finds himself heading for Voight's place instead of his own.

His boss is still awake, as he expected. "Nothing?" Voight says, opening the door wider to let him in. Hank's face is a mixture of guilt and pain and worry.

Jay shakes his head, his whole body still jittering with anxiety. "I checked her mother's bar-Bunny hasn't seen her and suggested I give Erin some space." Jay clenches his fists at the memory. "I checked three other bars I know she likes. I looked at Molly's, but Hermann said she hadn't been there. She's not at home-I stopped there three times, including just now. I tried a couple of her friends, and none of them had seen her in months. I checked the river walk, I checked Navy Pier, I checked her gym...I don't know what else to do."

Voight sighs, rubbing his forehead. "I came home right after you left in case she came here, but…" he shakes his head. "And Platt was at the district till midnight. Said she never showed."

"Her phone is on," Jay says. "It's not going straight to voicemail. I'm going to have Mouse trace it in the morning."

Voight nods, lowering himself onto the couch. He suddenly looks very, very old. "Thanks, Jay," he says distractedly.

"Sarge," Jay says suddenly. "I love her. I just wanted you to know that."

Voight nods again, a ghost of a smile gracing his face.

"I know you don't want that," Jay barrels on. "And we didn't mean for it to happen-Erin certainly didn't mean for it to happen, and we weren't trying to disrespect you or break your rules. I mean, you mean everything to Erin, and she broke up with me for you. But I love her. I'm in love with her and I'd do anything for her, and if that means I'm out of intelligence, then that's fine."

"Jay!" Voight cuts him off. "It's okay. I just-I just want her to be happy," he says sadly.

Jay deflates somewhat, thinking of how decidedly unhappy Erin is right now. "Yeah," he whispers.

"She's gonna need you," Voight says. "Whatever she's doing now, what she's going through-she's going to need you. And it's not going to be easy."

"I mean it," Jay says, his voice unwavering. "I'd do anything for her."

"Okay," Voight says softly. "Have a seat," he adds, gesturing towards the armchair adjacent to the couch.

It's the middle of the night, but Jay does. Worry is running rampant through his veins, but sitting here, with his boss, with Erin's father, somehow makes him feel just a little bit less alone.

The sky is hazy when Erin finally wakes up-or regains consciousness, more like. Her head is aching, an intense pressure behind her temples. The faint light from the pre-dawn sky is so painful it makes her press her arm across her face, desperate to black-out even the slightest hint of color. She's cold and her skin is clammy, and she pulls her jacket a little tighter around herself.

Groaning, she digs her hand into her pocket to find her phone. It's 5:30 in the morning, but she should probably get out of here if she doesn't want to be arrested for vagrancy or loitering. She has 27 missed calls from Jay, six from Voight, two from Olinsky, and one from Antonio. There's even one from Justin. There are too many text messages to read, and she flicks through them briefly. They're all from Jay, and she feels a little stab of pain in her chest.

She pulls herself up onto a seat and hunches over, fighting not to throw up-although, really, what difference would it make? Her mouth is dry and cottony, and her hands are shaking so violently it's hard to hold onto the phone. She thinks of when Nadia called her for help, of the morning they sat across from each other in a shitty diner and Nadia poured half a jar of sugar into her coffee and then struggled to hold it between her palms. She turns the phone off, shoves her hands in her pockets, clenches her body as shivers rock through her.

She's not quite sure what to do now. She has no place to be, no one to see, nothing she needs to do. She considers going back to her apartment, then decides she can't, not yet. She tries to remember what her mother had said yesterday-very little had penetrated the drug and alcohol induced haze of her mind, but she vaguely remembers something about figuring things out. Deciding what she really wanted.

What Erin really wants is to rewind time. Given that that's not an option, she settles for finding a slightly cleaner place to get some sleep.

No one is home when she arrives at her mother's house, and she's thankful for that. She digs the extra key out from under the flowerpot and lets herself in. She showers, puts on some of Bunny's clothes, and then finds the little boys' room she slept in last week. She closes the blinds, locks the door, dry swallows two oxy and then a third, and curls into a ball on the bottom bunk, waiting for blissful oblivion.

Jay jolts awake to the sounds of coffee beans being ground. For a heartstopping second, he can't remember where he is or how he got there. He surveys his surroundings.

Voight's living room. He crashed on the couch. After he failed miserably at finding Erin. Right.

"Morning," his boss says, as Jay tries to rub the weariness out of his eyes.

"Thanks," Jay grunts in reply, as Voight hands him a cup of coffee. "Time's it?"

"Seven," Voight says. He's already dressed and ready to go. "I tried calling her. Looks like she turned the phone off."

"Or it died," Jay says. He sets his mug on the nearby coffee table, feeling suddenly nauseous with anxiety.

"We'll find her," Voight says, in a tone that leaves no choice but to trust him. "She's going to be okay."

"How do you know?" Jay asks wearily, feeling like a little boy.

"Come on," Voight says. "Let's head over to Erin's place, see if she's come back."

Jay downs the remainder of his coffee and heads to the bathroom. He needs a minute to pull himself together, to analyze his feelings.

It's been less than 24 hours since Voight has seen her, and he knows she probably doesn't realize that they're looking for her. That she isn't hiding intentionally. Still, he's panicked. He'd been worried for weeks, ever since Nadia died, but he thinks the attempt on her life may have been the final straw. She'd barely been holding it together before that.

Erin's told him very little about her past, about the details of what she'd been through and what she'd done and how she'd survived. But a few facts have slipped out, and from those, he can extrapolate and imagine. And so he knows that when Erin falls, she falls hard and far and fast. He knows that Erin's rabbit hole is deep and painful and dangerous.

And all he can do is pray that they find her in time.

Erin wakes up alone. The house is silent and empty, and her head pounds in a familiar way. She feels jittery and anxious, but the numbness has worn off, and the pain is overpowering.

Tears well up in her eyes, unbidden. She hasn't cried-really, seriously cried-since they found Nadia's naked, battered body, and the sudden wave of emotion takes her by surprise. She'd done a good job of drowning it, in work and sex and alcohol and narcotics. But now she's alone. There's no work and no one to fuck her and the substances she's taken have worn off. And there's nothing to dull the sharp edges of the pain in her chest, and it rips through her like a bullet.

"No!" she wails, pressing her face into the pinstriped pillow case, as if cutting off oxygen will somehow make the agony go away. "No!" the sound is primal, inhuman, and her ears don't recognize it as coming from her. She curls up into the tightest ball she can, digging her nails into her palms and letting the pain wash over her in great, insurmountable waves. She lets herself drown in it.

She gasps for air, writhing on the bed. She stumbles into the bathroom to vomit, her whole body convulsing as she empties the meager contents of her stomach into the toilet. The tears don't stop, and she lies on the bathroom floor convulsing as the pain continues to stab through her.

Her heart is literally breaking, she thinks.

After minutes or hours or maybe days, she decides she can't handle this anymore. She crawls back into the bedroom, retrieves the bottle of oxy from her coat pocket. She takes three, and debates taking more. She debates ending this all, right now, once and for all, but some primitive survival instinct takes over and she puts the bottle back in her pocket.

It doesn't work as quickly this time-her body is already becoming accustomed to the narcotics-and she can't wait. She drags herself to the kitchen, searching for alcohol. If she does a few shots of whiskey, it should knock her out, should stop this horror for at least a few minutes.

She can't find any-is there no alcohol in this house?-and instead her eyes stumble on a block of knives. And suddenly everything stops.

She's still taking great gasping lungfuls of air, but her entire body has stopped trembling. In a trance, her feet move towards the kitchen counter. Her hands reach for a knife of their own volition, and before she can even think about it, she's pressing the blade to the inside of her wrist. Not hard, just enough to break the skin. Blood bubbles up along the line of the blade, and suddenly the tightness in her chest releases, just slightly.

She lifts the blade up, then slices it across the tender skin, harder this time, deeper. She watches, detached and fascinated, as the blood slides down her arm, soaking into the gray shirt she's wearing.

Her breathing calms and slows, and she digs the blade in one more time, longer and deeper.

She takes a deep, cleansing breath. Okay. She can do this. She washes the knife and replaces it in the wooden block, then wipes the blood off the counter and the floor. She walks into the bathroom, rummages through the cabinets for some gauze, and carefully wraps her wrist. Her hands feel steadier now, and the stabbing pain in her chest has receded to a dull ache. She can handle this.

She changes her shirt-another one of Bunny's-then pulls her coat on, and heads out into the encroaching night.

Voight doesn't even suggest going into the district. He calls Olinsky, asks him to hold down the fort, and they head for Erin's apartment.

Voight knocks several times before digging a spare key out of his pocket and unlocking the door. The apartment looks exactly as it did when Jay left it two nights ago-blood and broken glass and scattered groceries. Jay cringes at the sight.

"Erin?" Voight calls. He heads for her bedroom, while Jay stands motionless in the living room. He left her here to deal with this alone. He promised to have her back always, and the second she really needed him, he bailed.

His eyes catch on the photos of her and Nadia on the refrigerator. Erin is smiling in all of them, a grin that he hasn't seen on her in months. She looks so happy. He wonders if he'll ever see that look on her face again.

Voight has been quiet for a while, so Jay heads for Erin's bedroom. She isn't there, as he expected. The bed is unmade and messy, and there's an ashtray filled with cigarettes on one bedside table. It's not Erin's side of the bed, and Jay's heart clenches at the thought of another man being in it. A man who, apparently, smokes.

Voight is standing, unmoving, staring at Erin's own nightstand. Jay follows his gaze-there's an empty bottle of vodka and an empty orange prescription bottle. "I shouldn't have left her," Voight says hoarsely. "I knew she was using, and I knew...I shouldn't have walked out yesterday."

"Using?" Jay says, his voice small and thin.

Voight turns to Jay somewhat incredulously. "Has Erin told you anything?" he asks.

Jay shakes his head and shrugs. "Just-a little about her mom, I guess. And about high school. St. Ignatius."

Jay expects Voight to be angry, but instead he just looks sad. "I thought she would have told you," he says, almost to himself, then he sighs. "Erin did not have it easy growing up," he says. Jay nods-that part he knows. "And she had no one. No way to let it out, so she wasn't used to talking about her feelings. Dealing with pain. When she was fifteen, she got involved with Charlie. He got her hooked on heroin."

"Heroin," Jay repeats weakly.

"She told me the other night that she couldn't take the post-shooting drug test, because she'd fail," Voight says. "And she lied-she made up a story about someone slipping something in her drink, and I accused her of sounding like her mother." He shakes his head, furious at himself. "She needed help, she was asking for help, and I-"

"Sarge," Jay tries gently. "We're gonna find her. And she's going to be okay." He doesn't feel that confident in what he's saying, but he's never seen his boss like this, and he feels the need to offer some sort of comfort.

"Kid's been abandoned her whole life," Voight says bitterly. "I was the one person who was supposed to be there for her." That hurts a little, because Jay wants to be there for her too, but he lets it go.

"You still are," Jay says. "So let's find her.

Erin doesn't go back to her mother's bar. Despite the gauze on her arm, her shirt is all bloody, and she thinks that even Bunny would likely notice that. She's not totally sure-Bunny once failed to notice when, as a thirteen-year-old, she came home with two black eyes and a broken rib-but she isn't in the mood to find out.

Instead, she walks for a while and finds a dark, quiet bar. One where she can be alone, where she doesn't know anybody. If she can get drunk enough, she might be able to go back to her apartment tonight.

Or, she might be able to find someone to take her back to his.

She downs her first drink in one gulp, then forces herself to sip the second a little slower. Not that it matters. There's nowhere she needs to be tomorrow, no one who will be hurt by her hangover or her lack of focus. Still. She has just enough self-preservation left to know that she should probably take it just a little bit easy tonight.

It's easy enough to pick up a guy. It always is. Midway through her third drink, the bartender sets another in front of her. "From the gentleman in the corner," he says, gesturing towards a man at the far end of the bar. He's hot, his muscular arms bulging through his t-shirt, and his smoldering eyes are undressing her. He catches her gaze, and lets a slow, dangerous smile spread across his face.

She studies him for a moment, then finishes her drink. She slams it on the bar, then swallows the shot he bought her in one gulp before sliding off her barstool and walking towards him.

He doesn't say anything as she approaches, just holds her gaze. She stops in front of him, studying him for a long moment. His eyes slide down her body, stopping at her chest, her legs, before moving back up to her face. "Let's get out of here," she rasps.

He follows her out of the bar without a word.

Evening is falling, and there's still no sign of Erin. Jay feels sick with worry. The whole team is on it, as if they're working a case. Her phone is still off, but Mouse is monitoring it, in case she turns it back on. Atwater is keeping an eye on her credit cards, and the rest of the team has been canvassing, searching for anywhere she might go. He doesn't think she's deliberately hiding from them, isn't sure why she would-but he wishes she'd give him sort of sign that she's okay. That she's alive.

Voight has grown increasingly quiet throughout the day. As they pull up in front of yet another bar, Jay steals an anxious glance at his boss. Losing Nadia had been hard on Voight. He's not sure his Sergeant could handle it if anything happened to Erin.

The bar is mostly empty, and Jay sighs in disappointment and approaches the bartender. "What can I get you?" the potbellied man asks, wiping his hands on a dirty towel.

Jay flashes his badge, then pulls out his phone. "We're looking for a woman. Brown hair, thirty, about 5'5"." He pulls up a photo and shows it to the bartender. "Has she been in here in the last few days?"

The bartender snorts. "Yeah. You just missed her. She in some kind of trouble?"

Relief and worry flood Jay's veins almost simultaneously. "No, not at all, we just need to find her. When did she leave?"

"Maybe 45 minutes ago," the guy says with a shrug. "She left with some guy."

Jay flinches, but forces himself to remain calm. "Okay. Is there anything else you can tell me? Did you see which direction they went?"

"Nope, but she was pretty drunk. And he was a pretty shady looking character, if you ask me."

Jay swallows hard. "Had you seen him here before?" The bartender shakes his head. "Can you describe him for me?"

Voight is still waiting outside the bar when he emerges, and Jay chooses his words carefully.

When Erin was 13, her mother disappeared. This wasn't altogether unusual-from the time Erin could remember, her mother had checked out of her life for days or even weeks on end. But this time, months passed, and Bunny never returned. Summer faded into fall, and the days turned colder. Teddy went to live with his dad-or so Erin thought, but Erin had nowhere to go. It never occurred to her to tell a teacher or a neighbor. Looking back, she isn't even sure why.

And so she worked the streets. It was pretty easy to find creepy scumbags who'd pay her a hundred bucks for a blow job or an hour in a hotel room. The fact that she had to close her eyes and force her mind far away didn't matter-if she wanted to eat, it was what she needed to do.

But it isn't something she's been able to forget. And so there are things that Erin has avoided, ever since she was 15 and came to live with Voight. Specifically, rough sex. It's not something she's ever spoken about with anyone, certainly not with any of her bedmates. If Kelly or Jay had noticed, they'd never said anything.

But her current partner, whose name she never bothered to get-he seems to like rough sex. When they reach his apartment, he shoves her on the bed, face down. Before she can react, he's on top of her, biting hard on her neck and manhandling her breasts over her top. She panics and tries to shove him off, but he digs a knee into her back. "Mmm, your ass," he murmurs in her ear, sliding his hand between her body and the mattress and unbuttoning her jeans. He works the zipper down, then shoves his fingers into her underwear and roughly inside of her. "You ready?" he grunts. His other hand is pushing down his own jeans.

"Stop," Erin begs. She can barely breathe, can barely move. She tries to push herself up on her elbows, tries to roll over, but his weight is pressing her into the mattress. "Get off me!" she yelps, but her voice lacks volume and strength, and he doesn't even seem to hear her.

"Oh, yeah," he breathes in her ear. His grimy fingers shove her underwear aside, and suddenly, he's inside her. Pain ripples through her abdomen and she moans, pressing her face into the mattress and closing her eyes tightly. He thrusts into her, hard, and she chokes back a moan.

She falls back on a coping mechanism she hasn't used in 15 years. She pictures the Caribbean, a beautiful island with an empty white sand beach. She's never been to the Caribbean, barely even ever been to a real beach, but she'd seen a billboard for an island-Anguilla, she believes-when she was a little girl, and it had always stuck with her as a place of peace. Calm. Safety.

So she squeezes her eyes shut and clutches the comforter between her fists to have something to hold onto and focuses on that image of a sandy beach, crystal clear water, and the breeze in her hair.

Jay bounces his leg up and down as Voight pulls into his driveway. They've spent hours searching the neighborhood around the bar, driving up and down streets and searching parks and alleyways. There's been no sign of her, and Jay is nauseous with worry.

Voight kills the engine, but neither of them makes an effort to get out of the car.

"We're going to find her," Voight says finally, as if he needs to convince himself. "Erin's a fighter. She can take care of herself."

"What if someone hurts her?" Jay says, his throat as tight as a pinhole. "She's drunk, she's grieving, what if she went home with the wrong person?"

Voight nods, and Jay knows he's thinking the same thing. "She's gonna be okay," he says again.

"What if she hurts herself?" Jay whispers.

"Erin wouldn't do that," Voight says firmly, but Jay thinks he might be trying to convince himself of that. "She made it through her childhood. Through more than you can imagine. She can make it through this."

Jay isn't so sure. But he nods, and digs his own car keys out of his pocket. "I'm going to head over to her apartment," he says. "She's gotta come home eventually, right?"

"Good idea," Voight says. "I'll stay here in case she comes here. Call me if anything happens."

Jay gets out of the car and heads for his own. His hands are shaking as he jams the key into the ignition.

They have to find her.

When the guy finally climaxes, slides off her, and heads into the bathroom, Erin pulls up her pants and flees the apartment. She's shaking so badly she can't manage to close the button on her jeans. She decides not to worry about it.

The night is cold and moonless, and she clutches her coat tighter around herself. She feels sick, and she stops to vomit into the gutter, her stomach heaving as it expels the alcohol she's ingested today-she can't remember if she had any food. She's on her hands and knees on the curb, retching and gasping for air. A well-dressed couple stares at her disgustedly, then continues on their way past her. She's in a nice neighborhood, she realizes.

She's in her neighborhood.

She manages to climb back to her feet, wobbling unsteadily. She stumbles down the street, holding onto the wall for balance, her whole body shaking violently. There are tears streaming down her cheeks, and she can't seem to stop them. No one pays her any attention, and she's grateful.

She makes it to the door of her building, digs her keys out of her pocket. It takes her several tries to get the key in the lock, but she manages to get the door open, and herself into the elevator. She hadn't wanted to come back to this apartment, hadn't thought she could, but for a brief, horrible second, she's so relieved that Nadia isn't there. That she doesn't have to see her like this.

Erin collapses to the ground as soon as she's inside the apartment. She feels her knee split open as it connects with some of the broken glass still on the floor from the break-in the other night. She fumbles for the pills in her pocket, but they aren't there. "No," she cries. "No, no, no!"

She curls into a ball on the wooden floor and cries, banging her fists against the floor and taking gasping, wheezing breaths as she wails. She can't. She can't.

She wants Voight to take her hand and promise her that it's all going to be okay. She wants Jay to hold her in his arms and kiss her hair. But she's pushed them both so far away that they'll never come back.

She crawls into the kitchen, pulls open a drawer and reaches up, her small hand fumbling inside. It closes around a knife and she yanks it out, collapsing back against the refrigerator. She holds the knife tightly, hands shaking violently.

She manages to shrug her coat off, to push up her sleeve. Her arm is badly wrapped in a bloodied strip of gauze, and she shoves it out of the way.

She presses the blade against her forearm, gasping as the skin reddens and splits open. Her stomach heaves, and she grips the knife and slashes her arm again and again and again.

She drops the knife, turns, and throws up on the floor, her whole body convulsing for minutes on end.

She's a mess of blood and vomit and tears, and she presses her forehead to the floor. This is the lowest she's ever been, and she knows there is no way up from here.

She picks up the knife again, and before she can reconsider, she presses the tip to the end of her wrist and drags it downwards, along the blue vein. Blood flows immediately, and she sighs in relief.

She lets the knife slide out of her hand and curls into a ball. She's cold, so she pulls her coat over her like a blanket, hugs her knees to her chest, closes her eyes, and waits for it to all be over.

Jay knocks on Erin's door, not really expecting an answer. When there is none, he sighs and digs the key Voight gave him out of his pocket. He inserts it into the tumbler, then realizes the door is unlocked.

His heart rate kicks up, and he slowly pushes open the door. "Erin?" he calls warily. His limbs fill with dread, and he can barely manage to get himself inside the apartment.

The room is dark, and it takes his eyes a minute to adjust after the fluorescent brightness of the hallway. He fumbles for the light switch, flicking it on.

And then he spots her.

He thinks he screams, but he isn't sure. He's somehow kneeling at her side, but he doesn't know how he gets there. "Erin!" he shouts, ripping the coat off of her. She's lying in a pool of blood and vomit. Her jeans are ripped and the buttons on her shirt are missing. "Erin! Erin!"

He rolls her onto her back, grabbing her face between his palms. "Erin, what did you take?" he shouts. He presses his fingers to her neck-her pulse is weak, but there. "Erin!" he yells again, tapping his hand against her cheek, trying desperately to wake her.

There's blood everywhere, he realizes. He can't figure out where it's coming from. He frantically runs his hands down her body, searching for the wound.

His heart stops when he finds it. "Oh, God, Erin. Oh, no." He fumbles in his pocket for his phone. His fingers are shaking and slick with blood, but he manages to unlock it and dial 911.

He isn't sure what he says. He thinks he manages to identify himself, identify Erin. He's assured that an ambulance is on its way.

Erin moans, and he realizes that she's still conscious. He drops the phone. "Erin!" he cries. "Erin, open your eyes, okay? Erin!" He searches for something to stop the bleeding, spots a towel on the kitchen counter. He grabs it and presses it, hard, to Erin's shredded arm.

"Jay," she groans, her voice so weak he can barely hear her over the pounding of his heart in his ears.

"Erin, hang on, okay," he begs. "Just stay with me, please. You're going to be okay. It's going to be okay."

"I'm sorry," she whispers. She opens her eyes, but they're bleary and unfocused. "I love you."

Tears drip from Jay's eyes onto Erin's blood-smeared cheek. "Erin, please," he begs. "Please, hang on."

She gives him a weak smile, eyes drifting shut. "Love you," she whispers again.

"Erin!" he shouts, leaning over to make sure she's still breathing. "Erin!"

Sirens echo in the distance. Jay presses the towel to Erin's arm and prays to a God he doesn't even believe in that this isn't the end.