Title: Aftermath
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: Voight and what's left with his family deal with the aftermath of Justin's death while continuing to try to cope with their own struggles, dynamics and work demands.
This is not a linear narrative with a beginning-middle-end. It's just scenes.
A notification is provided at the beginning of each chapter about where it happens in relation to the other chapters.
SPOILER ALERT: There are MAJOR spoilers from the finale of S3. Early chapters will also contain spoilers from early episodes of S4. And, the story as a whole will contain spoilers from the rest of the stories in this AU, which are Interesting Dynamics, So This is Christmas and Scenes.
Erin sighed at her call rang through to voicemail – yet again. It wasn't like she wasn't expecting that to happen. She just kept hoping that Olive would pick up the phone. Or return her text. Or respond to an email. Anything. But she hadn't. She hadn't heard anything from her since she'd gone over to her aunt's cluttered house and tried to talk her out of leaving. Tried to talk her out of this.
This being cut out of her life. Henry's life. Like their ties could now somehow entirely be severed. That they could just stop talking. That they could ignore they were ever a part of each other's lives. That they were family whether they liked it or not. That there was blood between them. All of them. Not genetics. Blood. They'd earned in the fucking hard way. And you couldn't just do away with people like that. Not when you'd earned each other that way.
Or maybe it was more that Erin was a little jealous that Olive seemed to be able to cut them out so effectively. With a single swipe. A seemingly instantaneous decision. One single decision. To change the course of all their lives. All their relationships.
That Olive could just up and leave. Leave it all behind. It was something Erin couldn't bring herself to do. Something that she didn't know if she was capable of. If she'd ever be capable of.
To leave Chicago? To leave behind Ethan? Hank? The job? The life she'd established there – good and bad.
But Olive had done it. Did it. Was doing it. She'd walked away. From the city. Her family. Their relationships. Their ties. The memories.
Though, Erin didn't buy for a second that the memories had been left in Chicago. Life didn't work like that. You didn't just forget. It wasn't that easy.
She wished it was. She'd spent a lot of her life wishing it was. She wished now for Ethan and for Hank - and even for Olive and Henry – that it was that simple. But it wasn't. To act like it was was just creating a further delusion for yourself.
None of them needed that either.
"Hey," she muttered into the phone after the message – that was pretty much a none message, just a flat statement telling callers to leave a message and that she'd called back, which Erin had also decided was pretty much another lie. "It's Erin. Again."
Again. And again. And again.
She suspected Olive wasn't even listening to the messages. Not at this point. It wasn't like Erin was stalking her. She wasn't calling insistently. But she was.
"I've been trying to get a hold of you," she clarified. Or justified. Tried to get her to understand in as non-judgmental way as possible.
But she had judged. She'd tried to understand. She was trying to understand. And maybe even in her own way she could understand. Because she did want to run away from it all too. All of this. The family. The memories. Fucking Chicago. But she didn't know that would get her any farther ahead. She thought it'd likely just make her feel more alone than she already did.
She didn't think it'd feel like she was starting a new life. She didn't even know if she felt like she agreed it was to protect Henry. That it was best for Henry.
What was she protecting him from? From Chicago? From Hank? From a past and a history she didn't want him to grow up knowing about?
But he'd sense it. He'd go looking for it. It'd find out.
You couldn't erase who people were. You couldn't change them.
Henry would come looking for them. And answers. Eventually. Not this year. Not next year. But by the time he was Ethan's age, they'd be hearing from him. More and more. He'd want to know about his father. He'd want to know who he was and were he came from. He'd want to know his family. His grandfather. His city.
You couldn't just erase that from a person.
Erin knew that herself.
And she knew that she'd gone back and forth feeling like she needed to steal Ethan way from Hank. To run away with him. To protect him.
But it would've just done more damage. It'd make him hate them – all of them – more. And it'd just confuse the whole situation. It'd make him more alone too.
She couldn't do that. Not to him. Not to her brother. And she wasn't sure she could accept that Olive had done it to her child? That Olive really felt that was best?
And was it?
Does a mother really know what's best?
Bunny sure was fuck hadn't.
And even though Olive wasn't a bunny, she sure as fuck wasn't a Camille either.
Erin didn't buy this was about Henry. Henry was being used as an excuse. A crutch. This was about Olive.
And that hurt too. It was what was best for her. It was because she – the grown-up – couldn't cope. So she'd made a choice that caused more hurt in a family that was already reeling.
Erin rubbed at her forehead as she leaned against her kitchen counter. The only support she had that night – in making this likely rather ill-advised call.
"Look …," she sighed again, even though she didn't want to come across as begging to Olive, in a way she knew she was. If Olive even listened to this before hitting delete. Wiping the message away just as easily – even more quickly – than she'd wiped all of them. "Ethan's mentioned that you …".
She took a long pause. She was going to say "bought" and then she was going to say "have" – and then she just couldn't fucking decide which would be the best way of putting it. There likely really wasn't a good way to put it. At all.
She gazed at the counter. "He seems to think you have Green Day tickets," she tried. It didn't sound right. It didn't sound sincere. She didn't like the way it sounded at all but she couldn't come up with a better way to put it. "He seems really interested in going," she sighed, squeezing at the bridge of her nose and squishing shut her eyes. "I've tried to get tickets for their show here and the ones near by but …"
She made another little sound and shook her head again. This just felt so strained. Maybe Olive was right to leave. The awkwardness was too much.
"I really didn't want to do this in a message," she put more directly and straighten, staring at the wall of her kitchen. Her kitchen that was only going to be her kitchen for so much longer. "Anyway … basically … I'd be willing to buy them off you, if maybe you don't want to … use them."
It was so stupid. She knew Olive likely wouldn't be using them. She supposed the real question was if she wanted to sell them. If she hadn't already. But if she hadn't already – at this point – Erin knew it was likely because she didn't want to sell them. That she couldn't bring herself to. That she was going to hold onto them. As some sort of added layer of torture or reminder. That, again, she wasn't sure did anyone any good. But, she also knew that was what people did when they lost someone. She only had to look at Hank and Camille's house to know that.
She'd already lived through it. And she'd seen what it'd done to Hank. Holding onto things that maybe shouldn't have been held on.
Not being able to let go.
But would any of them ever really be able to let go?
Were you ever really supposed to be able to let go?
Did people really move on after things like this?
Their experience as a family after Camille's death already gave her the answer. And it was that they didn't.
Not really.
They kept living. But they weren't whole. They were never the same. And it was always going to feel different.
Strained. Awkward.
Dead.
They were all a little dead in their own separate ways.
Now and forever. That's what she was learning.
And she was learning it over and over again from a different perspective as Jay let down little walls – allowed cracks to form and dropped little bread crumbs – about his life too. About his mom. About losing a loved one. Both at home and overseas. The family you're born into and the family you choose.
And it doesn't matter if they're shot in the head, if they bleed out in your arms, if they are taken off life support and their body just stops functioning before your very eyes, or if cancer takes them away from you ever so slowly bit by bit making you experience that death piece by piece as they disappear from your life.
Whatever the way – it doesn't leave you. It doesn't get easier. You don't forget. You don't move on. You're never whole again. Not in the same way.
No matter what collection of artifacts you keep around you. No matter what memories you runway from. Or the ones you cling to.
"Or … maybe you want to come up and take Ethan …," Erin suggested. Even though she knew the answer to that would be no. That it wasn't something that Olive would want. Not this soon. Maybe never would be too soon. And even if she did muster up the courage – the strength, the fortitude – to come back, Erin wasn't sure that Ethan would agree to go with her. "Or, I'm sure Hank would be willing to buy them off you too, if you want. If he hasn't offered already. Have you talked to him lately?"
She sighed. She thought she knew the answer to that. A sense of it.
And that sense was that Hank had some fleeting correspondence with her. Not that he'd said that. But she got the sense from Ethan.
But fleeting was likely being generous. Olive was doing her best to keep him at more than arm's length. She'd put half a fucking country between them. Eighteen-hundred miles. And Erin suspected that she likely still felt that was probably too close for comfort.
The made Erin slump back against the counter again. She elbows feeling the cold of the granite. The whole condo was starting to look so bare.
Boxes. It was all boxes. It was strange to see it that way. It was strange to see how much stuff she'd accumulated as an adult – in her own space. But to also see just how few boxes it took up too. This juxtaposition of fullness against the emptiness of the condo. The emptiness she felt while also having things in her life that made her feel full.
And that was something Olive didn't have right now.
But she could. She should.
She had Henry. Hopefully that helped. But she could have more than that. She could have them. Her and Ethan and Hank. Jay. Her crazy aunt who seemed to really love and care about her and Henry, even if she wasn't exactly all there and clearly had her own mental issues that were to be avoided.
"I wanted to let you know too, that Jay and I have bought a townhouse. So I know … that maybe it's still a little soon for you to feel like you want to come back … for a visit, but when you're ready, we've got space for you and Henry. You don't have to stay at Hank's. It's … in Little Italy," she sighed and thread her hand through her hair. "So I know that … might be … too close for comfort." She shook her head. "It's not great for me … us … either. Wasn't really where we were looking … before. But … Ethan's really struggling, Olive, and we decided we needed to … be near him."
She beat her hand against the counter top at that. She wanted to say more. To pass judgment. To ask how she could just up-and-leave when Ethan was already struggling and confused. To beg for her to be aware of his feelings in all this too – because Henry wasn't the only little boy trying to cope with all of it. But maybe Henry would be the one to come out of this the most unscathed. Because he was too young to understand. Yet.
But Ethan? That was a different story. And some days Erin wondered what her baby brother was going to look like if they ever got to the end of this slog. How unscathed he'd be.
Hoping that Ethan was going to come out of his childhood unscathed at this point was just another delusion. He was beyond fucked. He'd been through too much. Seen too much. Experienced too much. Lost too much.
He wasn't going to be 'normal' by any means. It was now a question of how functional he'd be. It was a question of if they were saving for college or they were saving for bail. And some days Erin didn't know what the answer to that question wasn't going to be anymore.
He wasn't entirely acting out yet. But he was at that edge where it could go either way. He could explode. He could fall over the edge. Though, she suspected if he fell over the edge it was more that he was going to fall into a hole. A deep one. One that scared her with some of the things he said anymore. That look of sadness he had in his eyes. This cloud that just hung over him.
Her baby brother was hurting. They all were. But Ethan's pain stung her in a way that she wasn't sure how to cope with.
Or maybe in a way that terrified her. Because she'd seen what falling over that edge at 17 had done to Justin. The spiral it'd caused and just how far down rock bottom was. And how long it had taken to pull him back out of that hole.
And then that had been all for naught.
She didn't want that for Ethan. That couldn't be how it played out for Ethan.
"We haven't put my condo on the market yet," she almost whispered into the phone. "I don't know how things are going down there. How you're settling in or how you're feeling. And I know it's … only been a month or so … but … I'm just going to hold off listing it for a bit. We could work something out. Make it work for you and Henry."
She ran her fingers through her hair again. "We were just … we were all really looking forward to having you and Henry around. Before all this. We miss you guys. Hank's really feeling it. Not that he's said that. But—"
The phone beeped and told her she'd reached the end of her time to record her message. She swore under her breath at the phone and hung up only to dial back and wait again as it rang through, again listening ot the recording as her call was again ignored, this time hitting the mailbox far quicker, hinting that her call had been declined that time. But she stayed on the line anyway.
"Sorry," she huffed. "I wouldn't normally leave a message this long, if you'd … just … get in touch." She sighed and crossed her arms. "Olive, I'd really like to keep in touch. I want to be a part of Henry's life. We all do. And I just … need you to understand that we're still here for you and for Henry. I know Hank can be hard to be around and … awkward. And I know if you told him you needed space, he's likely more than giving that to you, maybe more than you want – but that's just how he is. He wants to talk to you and he wants to see Henry. And you. He's just trying to … respect your wishes. We all are. But we're … struggling."
She turned and gazed out her picture windows – the darkened view of Chicago.
"I know you don't likely want to come back here yet. Not in October – but if you aren't talking to Hank, could you please, talk to me. Let me in on what you're thinking about Thanksgiving and Christmas. I know it's … too soon in so many ways to start thinking about that. That we don't want to think about it either. But … if you don't want to come this way, maybe Hank or Hank and Ethan or me and Ethan or … whatever you're comfortable with … could come down? I just … I need to start wrapping my head around how to make this work here … for us … for Ethan. Because I'm having a lot of trouble being in that house and talking to Hank right now too. And I just … I need to try to get things to normalize a bit for Ethan. Help him wrap his mind around some things and prepare for them. And just … he's struggling, Olive. Really. Mentally and emotionally but all this …," she shook her head again and stared out the window. "The stress of it all is really … not doing good things for his M.S."
She leaned her shoulder against the window and stared straight ahead, only to turn and rest her forehead against the cool glass.
"Just call me. When you get a chance. Let me know about the concert tickets or how things are going. How Henry is. The condo …" she faded out and felt her eyes glass. "Send Hank some pictures of his grandson … please. It will help."
She pressed her forehead into the glass more firmly. "OK … so … call me. I hope you're … doing OK."
She felt so stupid saying it. She felt so stupid making the call.
But she also didn't know what else to do anymore. She felt like she kept on grasping at straws. So she pulled at this one. Maybe this one wouldn't be the short straw. Maybe this one would be the winner.
Maybe this one would get a call back.