Gunfights didn't usually bother the ex-Army Ranger anymore, sure, he didn't love the idea of shooting people, but they didn't make his entire body convulse and shut down like they used to. So, what was so different about this one? It was the basic, run-of-the-mill raid on a drug den, he'd done hundreds of them since joining intelligence. He had no reason to be reacting this way, he needed to have his teams back.
Jay tried to shake the thoughts from his brain and pull his concentration back to the task at hand: apprehending the targets and shutting down the suppliers of the cocaine that had led to 15 fatal overdoses in the past two weeks; but he couldn't. The images of his fallen comrades, his fallen friends torn apart by bullets that had branded themselves in his mind while he was deployed clouded his vision. He squeezed his eyes just, gulping in the musty, hot air of the warehouse. He was in Chicago, not the Middle East. He was home. Home. Home. He repeated the word over in his mind until his body realised, he was telling the truth. He could feel his t-shirt sticking to his body underneath his gear because of the humidity, the humidity that Chicago summers were known for. Not the bone-dry warzone he had spent years in.
"Halstead! What are you doing?!"
His eyes shot open and his attention pulled straight to the sounds of fully automatic gunfire that was surrounding him from seemingly every angle.
"Halstead!" the voice shouted again, "Jay! Are you with me?"
He turned towards the sound of the voice to see his partner, Hailey Upton staring back at him from across the room, an assault rifle in her hands.
"You okay?" she asked him, still having to raise her voice to be heard over the sounds of gunfire from both the intelligence team and the dealers trying to protect their profit.
He filled his lungs with the stale air before nodding his head in answer. "On my count!" he yelled back at her – raising his fingers until he got to three.
"Chicago PD! Drop your weapons!" the detectives yelled simultaneously, coming in from a different angle than the rest of the unit to corner the suspects in.
The suspect closest to him spun at the sound, pointing the barrel of his gun towards them and pulling the trigger, releasing a spray of bullets in their general direction.
They had been trained for this though, they knew when they identify themselves to a suspect, especially suspects with access to fully automatic assault rifles, that they would react and think with their gun, not their heads, so they had already taken cover behind two of the concrete pillars that were spread out haphazardly around the warehouse.
He fought against his mind from taking him away from the present as the sound of bullets screaming through the air hammered into his ears. He couldn't leave his partner alone in the middle of a firefight. He would stay with her.
Taking a deep breath, he creeped around the side of the pillar, taking no time at all to get the muzzle of his gun lined up with the suspects chest. Both detectives squeezed the triggers of their weapons, releasing a spray of bullets towards the man, all of them hitting their target.
Jay spun away, gulping down air as the man fell. He could hear the gunfire slow and come to an eventual end; all the suspects were either on the ground with a mag of bullets in them or apprehended by a member of intelligence and placed in cuffs. It was over. Every cop that went in had made it out. It should have comforted him. It should have made him calm down. Why didn't it?
He gripped his gun harder to stop his hands from shaking as he started towards the suspects and their supply, barely making it three steps before he felt a hand on his shoulder, stopping him.
"Jay, stop." His partner's voice said from behind him.
He knew what she wanted to speak to him about. She had seen him shaking and sweating before they had breached.
"I'm fine, Hailey." His words were short and sharp. He wasn't going to have this conversation. Especially not here, in front of everyone. They had a job to do, and he'd be damned if she wasn't going to let him do it.
Hailey took a step around him so she could look him in the eye as he spoke. "I saw you, Jay. I saw you go somewhere, somewhere that you thought you had left. You're not okay, and that's okay, but you need to speak to me, tell me what's happening, please."
The words weakened the structure in the wall he had built around himself all those years ago, but still, he fought against it. "Upton, it's not the time. Let me do my job." He replied, trying to step around her.
"Sarge, if you're all good here, we'll go write the report up back at the district." Hailey asked Voight, raising her voice so the man who was pulling the few still living suspects to their feet could hear her.
He gave her a nod before going back to the man in cuffs at his feet. He must have seen the look in her eye, because he didn't argue with her question to leave the crime scene before all the work had been done.
The drive back to the 21st was silent, neither detective saying a word to the other the entire time. In fact, it was still silent as they scanned themselves up to intelligence.
Hailey's comforting voice was the thing that broke the silence; "What's going on, man?"
He dropped himself into his chair, releasing the air that had been stuck in his lungs as he went.
"I'm fine, Hailey. Really. Just had a little moment, but it wasn't anything I couldn't handle." He was lying through his teeth, and she knew it.
There was no way she was giving up that easily though, she wasn't going to let him feel this way alone. She pulled her chair over next to his, "talk to me Jay, you don't have to be alone in this, I'm here."
He felt the warmth of her hand on his as she continued, "is it the army?" she asked, even though she knew it was; but she wasn't going to speak for him, he could tell her what was happening in his own words. "Jay, that's all in the past, you're home now, safe."
He sucked in a wobbly breath, tears stinging the back of his eyes. "It isn't in the past, Hailey. It's in every damn day I wake up, every time I close my eyes; it's everywhere." His voice was barely more than a whisper. "I can see them, just lying on the ground like trash, their bodies ruined by bullets."
The shakiness in his voice broke her heart. He was in so much pain and she didn't know what to do to help protect him from it. So, she did the one thing she knew would help him, the thing that would show him that he wasn't alone, she hugged him. Wrapping her arms around his torso and holding him tight, showing him that this was real, he was okay, and he wasn't alone in this.
She could feel his chest heaving against her as he tried to supress his sobs, "It's okay, I'm here. Everything is going to be okay." She whispered against his ear.
That was all he needed to completely fall, sobs wracking his body as they held each other in the newfound honesty they'd created between them.