Title: Broken Angel
Author: an-alternate-world
Rating: T
Characters/Pairing: Jay Halstead/Erin Lindsay.
Word Count: 3,167
Summary: When Voight storms into the precinct and Erin's no where to be seen, Jay knows something isn't right. Post-S2 Finale.
Warnings/Spoilers: None in particular, although a lot of angst.
Disclaimer: I am in no way associated with Chicago PD, NBC, or anything else related to the universe.
This had been swirling in my mind since I saw the S2 finale. I don't feel like Jay trying to fight for Erin immediately after the finale's conclusion was adequately addressed in the Season 3 premiere, so this happened.
They're all milling around in the pen, throwing out ideas for taking down their latest target and debriefing after the latest case and sipping coffees that Atwater bought, when they hear the heavy scuffed footsteps on the stairs which announces the imminent arrival of their boss. Ruzek scoots off the edge of Atwater's desk and Antonio straightens his shoulders, an attempt to look more professional and ready for the day.
It doesn't take long for Voight to ascend the stairs and one glimpse of his face would be thunderous enough for the international space station to see it. He doesn't spare a glance at any of them, an occurrence that might be slightly relieving, as he storms through the pen and into his office. The door slams so loudly that Jay's sure the glass nearly shatters. The blind trembles as it's left to fall, concealing any view of their enraged sergeant.
The quiet hubbub of conversation in the pen has been extinguished, replaced by an uneasy and awkward silence and concern and confusion over Voight's temper. It's by no means the first time any of them have seen him angry – Voight probably runs hotter than any of them – but his fury hangs in the room like a visible toxic presence that keeps them all silent and stealing looks at each other.
Out of habit, out of reflex, Jay glances at Erin's empty desk across the pen. There's an uncomfortable twisting in his gut as his gaze finds Antonio's. The look they share says everything: both of them suspect Voight's rage has something to do with Erin.
They're all detectives, smart enough to work in Intelligence. They've all seen Erin's empty desk this morning but been too polite to say anything, to ask him what he knows. They've all noticed that Erin hasn't been the same, but Jay thinks he might be the only one who's really seen Erin visibly slipping away and beyond reach.
Jay tilts his head towards Voight's door as Antonio continues to look at him. The other man shakes his head before looking across the room.
"Al!" he calls and Olinsky looks up from the case files he's been studying all morning, a frown indicating his searching wasn't being fruitful. Antonio motions towards the door with a, 'Go on, we're waiting on you' expression and Olinsky huffs and removes his cap.
"Why do I have to get involved in this?"
"You've known him the longest," Ruzek says like it's the most obvious thing in the world and Olinsky fixes his partner with a glare. Ruzek averts his eyes, rubbing a hand against the back of his neck and sipping from his coffee.
"So?"
"That means you're the most qualified in approaching him and keeping your head," Atwater explains. Ruzek points at Atwater and nods like it's the best thing he's heard all week. Jay already suspects Olinsky is scheming ways to make Ruzek pay for his chronic foot-in-mouth condition, but despite the lacklustre reasoning, the senior detective discards the case file to his desk and rises to his feet.
"Dancing with wolves is not how I enjoy spending my mornings, gentlemen," he says as he approaches Voight's door with wary footsteps. The pen is silent, baited breath keeping them all on edge, as Olinsky knocks and lets himself into Voight's office.
Ruzek returns to his conversation with Atwater and Antonio resumes typing something onto the computer but Jay tunes his ears towards the door. Sitting so close to Voight's office affords him the ability to hear snatches of the conversation when Voight's volume crescendos enough to comprehend. It's definitely about a female and if Jay were a betting man, he'd put money on Erin. He catches fragments of sentences about the female "not coming back" and "drinking". His blood runs cold at the implication that Erin's drinking again, that she's quit the team because losing herself in the bottom of a bottle is more important than processing her feelings in a healthy manner. Surely Erin wouldn't give up her sobriety…
As much as he wants to deny it, he's not sure that he can. He's seen her spiralling with his own eyes these past weeks and it's scared him. She's looked so flat, so empty, so disinterested in everything around her. He's been able to see that she's been going through the motions when they have a case but her heart hasn't been in it. Anyone else might have thought she was trying to box up her feelings to cope at work but Jay knows it's more than that. She's been distant but she hasn't been grieving. He should have intervened earlier.
He stands and peels his jacket from the back of his chair. Antonio calls out a question about where he's going but he yells back that he's going to see a CI. It's a convenient excuse and one that the whole team will know is bullshit but he doesn't care. He heads down to tech to see Mouse because maybe Voight's not talking to Olinsky about Erin but for his own peace of mind, Jay needs to be sure. It's possible Erin's just taking some time to process being held in her apartment by thugs. It's possible Erin's just come down sick with the flu. It's possible Erin's taking some mental health time as she starts to grieve for Nadia.
"Mouse," he greets as he approaches the other male hunched over a deconstructed phone, "Can you ping Erin's phone and text me the location?"
Mouse looks up at him with huge, trusting eyes. "Why? Is she in trouble?"
He ruffles some of the gelled strands of Mouse's hair just to be a dick. Mouse swats his hand away with a scowl and spins on his chair towards the computer. Nimble fingers fly across the keyboard for a minute as he logs into some sort of database or system to find Erin's location. Another minute later and Jay's phone beeps. He squeezes Mouse's shoulder in thanks before he leaves.
He instantly knows that the address in his inbox isn't Erin's apartment but a bar. He keeps trying to deny what he'd heard Voight telling Olinsky, trying to tell himself that Erin wouldn't have fallen off the wagon and he'd allowed it to happen. However, the more he drives the less certain he feels. It's not a long drive every minute he spends in the car starts to feel more like an hour, every mile closer to his destination feels like the distance increases beyond measure. Maybe this is a fool's errand. Maybe he should have thought this through better. He has no idea what he's driving towards, what he's getting himself into. He has no idea how he's meant to convince Erin that she should come back to a work, a job that cost Erin a close friend in an incredibly brutal manner just after her birthday.
He parks the black SUV outside the bar and glares at the neon 'OPEN' sign. There's something wrong with the world when most people should be enjoying breakfast, not a beer. He kills the engine and sits in the car for a moment, trying to mentally prepare himself for what he might see or hear. It's probably pointless. If Erin is drinking again, then she would be volatile and unpredictable. He's walked into enough hostile situations to know you can't prepare yourself for that.
With a sigh, he clambers out of the car, locks it and steps inside the bar. It's a rundown sort of place, with paint splotches on the walls covering up old holes. The place reeks of cigarette smoke, perhaps soaked into the walls. Rows of various bottles of alcohol line the space behind the counter and catch the morning sun, casting a faint rainbow across the bar. A couple of men, who are probably up to their ears in a bar tab, nurse beer bottles at the counter. They don't spare him a glance so he ventures further inside.
Past the main bar is a smaller room and he sees her easily. She's half-slumped over a table, wearing a patchy blue shirt, and looking so…so defeated. Her shoulders are low. Her chin is on her arms. Her eyes linger on an empty bottle. The curve of her spine looks like she's going to break under the weight of the world. She's not even trying to hold herself up, hold herself together, anymore and it makes him feel like he's re-entering a warzone with a series of mines around him.
Bunny hovers nearby and he straightens his shoulders, prepared for a fight.
"Erin?"
Bunny reacts first, flitting in front of Erin as if she can shield him from seeing what he's already seen. He's fully prepared to pick her up, toss her over his shoulder and carry her out of the bar. He'll put her hands in a zip-tie if he needs. "Erin doesn't want to-"
"How about we let Erin talk about what she wants, Bunny?" he interrupts as politely as possible even though there's a thinly veiled sneer on his mouth. Bunny glares at him, affronted and defensive, but he's stared down hardened criminals before. He's gone undercover and watched CIs get shot in front of him and hasn't flinched. He's been deployed to warzones and taken out enemy combatants without a second thought. Bunny's ire doesn't faze him and the fact she thinks she could is almost comedic.
"Mom," Erin murmurs with a small tilt of her head. Bunny's scowl doesn't fade but she does huff a sigh before returning to the bar.
Once she's gone, Jay sits on a stool opposite Erin. He wants to meet her eyes but she won't stop looking at the bottle. She's clearly lost herself in the effects of the alcohol already. She's probably been drinking all night.
"Why are you here?" she asks, her words slow and flat, and he blinks in disbelief.
"Why am I here?" he repeats, struggling to keep his irritation, his confusion, his fear, at bay. How could she do this? How was he meant to get through to her? "I could ask you the same thing, or does sobriety not mean anything to you anymore?"
Erin's mouth twists in a humourless smile. "Didn't Voight tell you? I gave him my badge. I quit. Staying sober doesn't matter."
He stares at her like she's a stranger. He's had CIs flip on him before and he's gone into sting operations only to have them turn on their head, but he's had solutions for those problems, had reactions to those threats. What he's seeing right now… He's too close to this. He cares about Erin too much. He wants to grab her shoulders and shake her until all the darkness is rattled from her bones.
"You quit? Who's meant to watch my six now?"
She shrugs and he realises, in one devastating gesture, just how far she's fallen. Surely she cares. Surely he matters. Her disinterest is almost cruel but he blames himself. He should have seen this coming after Nadia died. He should have recognised the signs of her slipping into old habits, watched her more carefully in the field, offered her more support to grieve, encouraged the other guys to help her.
"Erin…"
"Don't 'Erin' me, Jay," she snaps, a momentary fire in her expression that dies as soon as he sees the spark. "I'm done. I can't do it anymore. I can't see more people I love- I can't."
He's never seen Erin as a suicide risk, someone he actually fears will do something stupid. He's always thought she had the demons in cages, even if they weren't always tamed. But now… Now he's not so sure. He could see her going off the rails, drinking and doing lines at parties until she overdosed. He could see her hooked up to machines in a hospital as her body tried to cope with all the chemicals in it.
It makes him feel sick.
"You think Nadia would want this? Throwing away your sobriety?"
Erin meets his eyes for the briefest of seconds and a chill runs down the back of his neck. Her gaze shimmers with tears he knows she won't allow herself to shed. He knows that expression, the one of pure pain that she's trying to hide. He's seen that expression during ops, when she's putting on a brave face, a strong front, and trying to hide that she's in agony. Yet there are no bullet wounds this time, no gaping cuts. Instead, she's broken inside and he doesn't know how that will ever heal when she tries to numb it with alcohol and drugs.
"She's gone, Jay," she says, clear and firm and like she doesn't care at all. Only Jay knows she cares far more than she'll ever admit. "What she wants doesn't matter anymore."
He shakes his head, trying to reconcile this part of Erin who has simply given up fighting. Voight had warned him a few times to keep his distance from Erin over the years, but he'd put it down to the man being an overprotective, overbearing father figure. He'd never considered that Voight had seen Erin as a teenager, at her worst and her lowest and cleaned her up. Erin had tried to warn him too, telling him she destroyed everything she touched and trying to convince him she wasn't worth it. He'd thought it was just her trying to push him away to protect his or her hearts. He'd thought it was lies because he saw something good in Erin, something beautiful. He'd thought there was no part of Erin he couldn't love and wouldn't be willing to handle.
He wonders now if he'd been naïve. He wonders now if he'd allowed a blindness to creep over his vision, his feelings consuming his rationality about her state of mind. Maybe Erin had meant far more to him than he'd ever meant to her. He doesn't know what to think when he looks at this fragmented young woman in front of him.
He has to remind himself that she's not Erin. Not the Erin he knows. Not the Erin he loves.
But she has to be in there somewhere.
"I'm not giving up on you," he says, reaching for her hand and trying not to feel disappointed when she pulls away. He's a soldier and he knows it's a battle, a war, and it will involve strategy and determination. It will require give and take, learning when he's said enough and when his words aren't being heard.
He can imagine Voight storming around his office right now about this, raging at Olinsky about Bunny for allowing Erin the opportunity to drink when surely she knew about the damage it had done to her daughter. He can imagine Voight fuming that he'd invested years into Erin's welfare and she'd thrown it all away to sink into old habits. He can imagine Voight throwing things around his office and maybe, just maybe, he can imagine Voight blaming himself for ever letting Erin get this bad.
Jay wasn't Voight.
Working with Erin, being partnered with Erin, loving Erin, had shown Jay she was complicated and flawed but still beautiful. He'd watched her be a woman who could be protective and strong, shielding victims from the horrors of a take-down gone bad. He'd witnessed a shrewd negotiator stare down bigger and tougher male targets in ops until her demands were met. On the rare occasion that she allowed herself to feel it or someone close enough to witness it, he'd caught glimpses of a fractured girl at her most terrified and vulnerable, who pleaded the lives of people she loved before her own.
He could only imagine how Nadia had woven herself along the intricacies of Erin's soul and how her loss had left Erin floating in an abyss. He could only imagine how shattering it was when someone that had pierced your heart was tortured, raped, murdered.
He can't blame Erin for going to pieces. He just wishes he knew what to do with the tatters in front of him.
"I'm not giving up on you, Erin," he repeats, gazing at her in the hopes he'll see something come to life within her. He just needs some flicker of emotion, some expression of a feeling, to know that she's still in there and willing to fight back. He'll settle for defiance, for refusal, for scoffing, for anything other than crushed.
Instead, like she knows that's what he's after, she stays silent and avoids his eyes.
He knows he needs to get back to the precinct soon. Voight will either haul his ass over the coals or give him a medal for trying to talk sense into Erin when he returns. He knows he can't stay but it's not easy to walk away.
"I'll call you soon," he promises and forces himself off the stool. It's a struggle to not reach out to her, to wrap her into his arms and protect her from her feelings. He's not stupid enough to believe her despair – a result of depression, or drug abuse, or alcoholism, or PTSD, or whatever it is that lies at the centre of Erin's broken core – could be cured with only hug, but he'd shelter her from the onslaught of negativity and self-hatred if it would help. He'd take it on himself if it meant she would start to heal.
The pair of guys are still at the bar although they're probably onto a new beer. Bunny eyes him as he stalks past, disdain and disapproval in the set of her lips and the shine of her eyes, but if he's going to blame anyone it would be her. The look he casts her is little more than a sneer. He doesn't bother using his words. He knows that it would just give the woman ammunition to poison Erin's already toxic mind. He knows Bunny would have convinced Erin to turn her back on Voight. If his end-goal is freeing Erin from the cage she's trapped herself within, he needs to avoid being made into an enemy by Bunny.
He kicks the SUV's tire and slams his hands against the wheel a few times to let out his frustration and hurt. He feels like he failed and Erin's too important to fail. He needs to step back from this, to think with his head not his heart. It's like a hostage retrieval op, where the perps are Bunny and Erin's thoughts. He needs advice on how to navigate such a treacherous path without getting blown up by unexpected emotional traps.
As he turns the ignition, he makes his decision. After he faces Voight at the precinct, he'll call Will. Maybe his brother will have some insight or advice that would prove useful. Maybe his brother will be able to help him save his best friend, his partner, his lover.
Because Erin's worth it.
~FIN~