Title: The Way From Here

Author: ZombieJazz

Fandom: Chicago PD

Disclaimer: I don't own them. Chicago PD and its characters belong to Dick Wolf. The character of Ethan has been created and developed for the sake of this AU series.

Summary: Erin must deal with the consequences of her decision to take a position in FBI counter-intelligence at the expense of her relationship with Jay and her relationship with her family. But an emergency with her younger brother provides her with the opportunity to re-examine her choices and to try to rectify any damages to her relationships. This story takes place in the AU established in Interesting Dynamics.

SPOILER ALERT: There are MAJOR spoilers in this collection from Interesting Dynamics, So This is Christmas, Scenes, Aftermath and So It Goes (including chapters/scenes in So It Goes that have not yet been written or posted). This series also contains SPOILERS related to the finale of Season 4 of Chicago PD.

Erin nudged into Ethan's hospital room. She almost expected Hank to have sensed her coming down the hall and to be waiting to give her one of those silent stares as soon as she got into the doorway. But he wasn't. He didn't. He was slouched low in the chair on the far side of Eth's currently unoccupied hospital bed. Still in his blues that had turned white shirt years. That shirt was something he seemed to despise more than he took any pride in. Rather than an indication of all the years he'd put into the job and the city – and the rank he'd more than earned – he seemed to feel the color of his lapels instead labelled him as someone who was assumed to be out of touch with the reality of what it meant to be a cop in Chicago. How you needed to do the job – to do it effectively. A suggestion that he just ride the desk for the rest of his career. Supervise and run up case closure numbers for ComStat. Take credit for the work of others – the work of the team. And none of that was Hank's style. It wasn't his way of doing thing.

If anything that white shirt was likely a reminder of the last time he'd been sitting in a hospital like this. With Camille gone and Eth touch-and-go and Justin spinning so out of control that him even graduating high school seemed about as touch-and-go. It'd been glaringly apparent that Hank working the streets – and his C.I.'s - and running operations and stakeouts in Gangs that could have him out all-night and at all hours and sometimes for days at a time wasn't going to work anymore. Not as a single parent. Not with kids still at home. Detective running a Gang unit wasn't going to fly. After years of it being enough – and the kind of work that made him happy and stable enough to be both a cop and a dad and a husband – it wasn't anymore. He needed some of the stability that a supervisor gig gave. He needed the cash bump that came with the rank. And so when so much had already been stripped from him, and out of his life, in those weeks, he'd sacrificed another piece of himself. He'd given up being a detective. He'd given up running his game on the streets. He'd got his sergeant exam sorted – and he set into waiting for the slot … the potential desk job … that would let him take care of his family then. What was left of it.

Not that any of that had gone exactly as planned. Whatever Hank's real plan was. It wasn't like Erin had ever been exactly privy to the details. She never was. Though, she'd argued that even if things hadn't gone exactly as plan – that there'd been some pretty fucking significant hiccups that threatened the implosion of their family and their lives even more – that it'd pretty much worked out. It'd probably – at least on the job front – worked out better than Hank had hoped. Or maybe he got exactly what he wanted. Sometimes … more than sometimes … he had a way of doing that. Though, he was always so … fucking nonchalant about it. "Things worked out." One of his lines. Strange ones considering it often happened in succession with "Life's not fair". But usually also accompanied his notion that if you couldn't get into and out of something, you had no business being in his unit anyway. Sometimes Erin wondered how much of that notion applied to their family unit as well. Likely a lot.

Though, right now she was wondering how much he was going to be getting out of anything. How much she'd contributed to whatever he'd gotten himself into now. And just what implications that was going to have for not just Hank's job but for Intelligence. For everyone else in Intelligence. Their careers and futures. What that meant for the city as a whole.

Hank being in his blues, in the very least, clearly indicated that the Ivory Tower must've been jamming up his schedule that day. Dragging ass and keeping him in there. Maybe it'd been a longer conversation than he'd thought it would be. Maybe it involved a lot more than just a wrist slapping. Maybe you can't just go in for something like that and then in the next breath tell them you want personal leave. Maybe the negotiations around that – to bring someone else in to command … to supervise … didn't really mean you'd ever be going back to the unit you'd built. To all that hard work you'd done. To the sacrifices you'd made. And the ones your family had made. The choices you'd all gained from. And been hurt by. That maybe they were still being hurt by now.

But whatever had happened, Hank must've been in such a rush to get back for Eth's treatment that he hadn't bothered to find the time to change. And, Erin wasn't sure she'd believe that everything was all worked out when he left the Ivory Tower, because he was staring at his phone – reading and scrolling through something. She doubted it was anything good.

He must've sensed the movement in the door. He looked up. But it was like he expected it to be a nurse or doctor checking in on them. She wasn't that. And Erin braced herself for him to put forward a firm – whether silent or not – indication that she wasn't welcome to set foot inside. But he didn't. He just gazed at her.

And she took that. She took that opportunity to shift her eyes to the opposite side of the room where an unfamiliar sound was coming from. And she took her turn to gaze. At her little brother.

Eth was set up in the recliner and seemingly asleep. Somehow he looked bigger than the night before in that set up. Not as dwarfed by the hospital bed. But there were more wires and tubes attached to him. Her eyes scanned the additions. A feeding tube and its bag of nutritious sludge. Something was attached to his ear and there were little electrodes running down the same side of his body. But the largest tubes ran away from him to a large machine – whooshing and sloshing and clicking like a metronome – as his dark blood ran into it and was spun and cleansed and mixed with something else that near looked like urine only to be pumped back into him. The mechanical beeps and clicks and whirls that if you sat there long enough maybe you could pretend it was a white noise machine. Like the waves of the lake on a windy day on the waterfront. Only not really. Not what the beeping and tones of his heart rate and blood pressure was being monitored too. Not when there were more bits of technology attached to his fingers and wrapped around his arm. Not when she could see the tubes running under his gown and up his leg. Not when there were more bags on stands around him than the night before and she still couldn't identify what was what in what they were pumping and dripping into him. Because her practiced eye – her educated understanding of his treatment – was gone. Because this was a whole different playing field. And she didn't know what she was looking at anymore.

"It's the plasma," Hank said behind her and she turned to find his eyes splitting their focus between her and Ethan. He just nodded. "That's what's been separated from him. Other one's what they're mixing it with to put it back into him."

Her eyes shifted back to the odd colored fluids and bottles attached to the machine.

"Looks like it's going to be a while …, she allowed. It was hard to tell. She was staring at the flowing tubes, trying to determine the current of where what was moving where.

Hank just grunted. "A bit," he allowed. "Doing sixty percent of his plasma today. See how he tolerates it."

She nodded and stared at Eth. "Is he?" she asked. "Tolerating it?"

Hank just made another sound. She glanced at him again. His eyes were set on Eth. "Had an allergic reaction to whatever they've got in the mix for pumping the blood cells back into him. The artificial plasma. So gave him something for that." He shrugged. "Sleeping a bit with it. In and out."

She sighed and forced herself to stop staring at her baby brother. To stop herself from having flashbacks to those seven years ago when Eth was again hooked up to more machinery than could ever look natural on a human being. Let alone a little boy. To seven years ago when Hank was again sitting beside a hospital bed trying to look stoic. When he wasn't. That she knew he'd gone off the leash that time. But that wasn't something they never talked about. Details she didn't want to know. Though, she suspected she knew all too intimately now after last year. After she'd played her own role in what amounted to Chicago justice. How it could be funny how it worked in the city. Especially when cops – generational police – got involved.

No one was dead this time. Hank couldn't go as far off-leash anymore. It seemed to have been a reality he'd come to accept. That a misstep now and he'd lose all he had left. A misstep now and his little boy would be growing up – if he made it that far – without a father. That his grandson wouldn't get to know his grandfather. But that only reeled him in so much. It might not have reeled him in enough to save his career – or Intelligence. Not if the Ivory Tower was really gunning for them. And they always were. It seemed. So there still might be something dead as a result of all of this.

And that was another reason Erin had to pull herself away from the stare – from the self-reflection – because she was only going to start spinning again about what role she played in it all. How this would've – could've – played out differently if she'd been there. How she just wrecked all the good things that she came into contact with.

"How'd it go with you?" she asked instead. A distraction but maybe a way to try to gauge how much more guilt to layer onto herself. How much harder she should be on herself. But this time she thought she likely deserved it. Still.

Hank just shrugged, though. "Went," he provided. "They asked some stupid questions. Said some stupid things. Usual bullshit."

"Are they letting you keep Intelligence?" she pressed. He just made a noise. It wasn't even one of his grunts. It wasn't a yes. It wasn't a no. It was just a noise. An acknowledgement he'd heard the question. "Are they going to grant you leave?"

That did get a grunt. But he just shuffled his phone in his hand. "Thing's will work out," he put flatly, glancing at the screen.

She stared at him now. She tried to gauge more where he was at. And maybe is was scaring her a little that she couldn't. She really couldn't get any read on him. He didn't seem angry. He didn't seem like he was on a mission. She couldn't anticipate any of his plays. If he even had them. But he always did. And right now it didn't seem like he did. Not beyond sitting there and listening to that machine as Ethan slept. Watching the tubes and the swirling dials and the drip and flow of blood and liquid chemicals.

But he seemed at ease. He didn't seem even that tired. He just seemed at peace with the circumstances. More so than anyone should in that situation. Yet, it was a calm she wanted to know. To feel. To learn herself. For it to be a state that wasn't just another illusion. One that you only created by shoving your hands in your pockets to hide the shake. The shake that felt like it was going through her whole body for the past twenty-four hours. The one that she didn't feel like she'd done a very good job at hiding. And one she just wanted to end.

"Is it okay if I stay a bit?" she asked.

"Think you should," he smacked.

She stood again for a moment. She weighed the tone. She questioned if he was going to tell her off. If he was going to lecture her. If that hadn't been an invitation – a confirmation – but a rhetorical statement where the tone was the answer. And the answer was no. But she must've lost her ear for Hank's rasp too. Because he'd leaned behind him and pulled the extra chair closer. The sound doing nothing to stir Eth out of whatever drug-induced stupor they had him in in that moment. And then he looked at her expectantly. Gave her another smack.

And Erin allowed him a thin smile. She let her concrete shoes move over and she sat next to him. She sat next to him and she stared across at the broken little boy.

"You got something for me," Hank intoned next to her.

She glanced at him. Squinted. Oblivious until he nodded at her lap. She looked and shook her head out of the daze she'd been walking in. The daze that … she didn't know how long it'd been going on. But it'd been longer than twenty-four hours. That much was for her.

"Oh …," she muttered and handed the donut box to him.

"You cheer me up," he rasped at her, lifting the lid. A phrase she wasn't expecting to hear from him. Not that day. Maybe not ever again. But it hung there. To her. It rung in her ears. He'd said it flatly and naturally. Just like he always did. It was part of his repertoire. A phrase that he handed to her near exclusively. Though, she had trouble believing she was doing much of anything to cheer him up that afternoon. That she had in her power to di that at all. Or ever again.

"Don't get too excited," she warned mutedly. Because it was all she could manage. "It's that place. By RIC. He'd been bugging me about stopping there. For weeks. Months…" She'd never taken him. She should've. But she didn't. Just like a lot of things she should've but didn't do. "I don't know gluten-free, vegan can really be called donuts."

"Mmm …," Hank grunted. He'd selected the buttermilk old fashioned. The one she knew he'd pick – that or the Michigan Apple Fritter that was also in there. So she'd gotten it specifically for him. Even though she knew Hank never had much of an appetite. But apparently he did right now. And that seemed strange too. He held the lid open, back on offer to her. "They're decent. Wanted them for his birthday. Not cake."

Erin gave him a sad smile at that. The added reminder of things she should've been there for. Should've done. And wasn't. The added reminder that Hank … he was a good dad. That he tried. So hard. That he went outside of the lines — his lines — in doing that. In figuring out how to be Dad and Mr. Mom too. In how to take care of his kids —his family — as a father, friend, boss and cop. The disciplinarian tough guy who could be something completely different with his kids when he wanted to be. When he needed to be.

But she only shook her head at the proffered donuts and Hank just leaned forward to put the box on the hospital bed. For it to wait for Ethan. To see if she could do something … for him, for them. To at least entice him to eat. To entice him to interact with her? To buy his forgiveness? To get him to speak to her? In some small way …

She stared at Ethan. And she felt Hank staring at her. She glanced at him. He caught her eyes and nodded.

"It's going to work out, Kiddo," he told her.

She frowned and shock her head. "How?" she said and shifted her eyes back to her brother. Because she didn't know how all this — any of it — could be alright.

Hank made that silent hum of acknowledgement. There wasn't an answer. Because he didn't give those kinds of answers. You got into things. You had to get out of them. You needed to figure it out. But for the lack of words there was suddenly a hand sitting on her shoulder and then reaching to gently cup the back of her head. To gently tug just for a moment the hair there to give her head a little shake. A sign of affection that he'd bestowed on her for more than half her life now but one that he hadn't done in a while. Months. And she shifted her surprised eyes back to him. He looked at her just as gently as his hand held her head – like she still was a little girl, maybe littler than the girl he'd ever brought home.

"Erin, it's going to be alright," he told her more directly. And she knew then — for certain — he wasn't just talking about Ethan. About his health. That it was directed at her. At them. At the whole situation she'd gotten herself in. The one she'd dragged them all into. The hurt she'd caused. The hole — that she'd left in her family with her choices and the one she'd crawled into on her own. The one that was going to be pretty hard to get out of. The one she wasn't sure there was an easy way out of. And even more terrifying was she really didn't know what the world outside that dark pit was going to look like when she figured out how to get back to ground level either.

But Erin nodded. Because she wanted to believe him. That somehow — all of this — it was going to be alright. She really wanted to believe him. She needed to. She needed that.

And maybe believing him – trusting him again – that should've been something she'd let herself do months ago too. Maybe things would be different if she had. Maybe they could be different if she could now. And that's what she needed the most. For it to be alright. Here. Back. Now. Somehow.

AUTHOR NOTE: Thank you for your support and comments.

The next chapter will be a continuation of this scene with Erin/Ethan heavy dialogue and Hank inclusion. The next two chapters after that will be Erin/Jay.