Notes: It's a cozy little weekend for the girls, it's remote, there's snow, a fireplace, and wine.
Why does it have to go oh so dark?
"Can you meet me at Molly's tonight?"
"Could be very late they're working me to death."
"I'll wait."
Kim checks the clock, it's still early, she isn't finished with her report yet, and Hailey was out on loan for a quick takedown with her old robbery-homicide unit who needed seasoned cops for a case.
The detailing needed to document her undercover assignment was very demanding, it will surely help pass time, but her mind kept on wandering back to her conversation with Trudy earlier that day.
XXXXXXXXX
"Trouble in paradise?" Platt says while Kim is walking by the main desk.
Kim looks around her to see if she was talking to somebody else, then asks "What?"
The sergeant motions her to move closer and bends her head towards Kim saying, "You know how I'm not one to gossip-" she quickly raises a hand to stop Kim's already thought rebuttal, "But it looks like you're going to be an empty nester soon."
"What?! Trudy, please it's too early for this!" She stares at her older friend with annoyance, she has a hectic day ahead of her.
"Every day I wonder why we give you people a badge and a gun and call you Detective." she says rolling her eyes; "I heard your little protegee has been asking around for sublets or rentals, I figured you were done with your little Powerpuff gang days now."
"Vanessa's moving out?" But she doesn't need an actual affirmation, she knows it must be true, it would explain so many things.
The crafted distance and the silent treatment Vanessa was putting on recently... It all makes sense now. For some reason she was done with "this", whatever that was, and they obviously didn't realize it sooner.
Playing back the last couple of weeks back in her head she climbs up in the office and sends Hailey a text.
XXXXXXXXXXXX
"I'm so sorry it's just crazy what they're having me do, do they think because we're in Intelligence we're made out other stuff than the others?! And I thought Voight was already working us to death!" says Hailey as soon as she joins her at the bar.
It's not as late as she thought it would be but she really had to wrap up a long day without any break.
"It's okay I've been busy too."
They share some hellos with Stella who was tending the bar that night and after Hailey gets her drink she turns to Kim and asks "So what is this about? Vanessa?"
Arguably, it was an easy guess, it was just 3 days since they brought an extremely disorderly drunk and angry Vanessa back home, put her to bed and fed her Advils and toasts to help expunge her alcohol, and took turns checking on her during the night to make sure she wasn't gonna drown in her own vomit, to wake up to a person who was vehemently affirming she couldn't remember anything from the night before, and oddly since then, had been on her best behavior, a lot more agreeable than the last couple of weeks, almost like being non-confrontational will help not bring up her outburst again.
"She is looking to move out, did she tell you anything about that?" spills Kim, hoping that maybe she had confided in Hailey.
"Oh...No I had no idea... How do you...?"
"Platt told me, apparently she's been asking around for different accommodations... and now that I think about it, she's been very jumpy around phone calls lately, so it must have been a little while already..."
They both sip their drinks in silence for a minute,
"I mean, she's her own person, she can move out if she feels like it..." but the end of Kim's sentence hangs in suspension.
They both know that she is in no shape for caring for herself right now.
Indeed, their arrangement hadn't been discussed anymore since the beginning and for sure there's some room to improve or change things, but they really thought Vanessa was getting the better end of that stick.
They tried to unload as much as possible the financial burden from the younger woman, making sure she doesn't have to chip in for the rent, that there's always food at home, that she was at least sleeping some, and not abusing any kind of substances, they even had asked Platt not to dispatch her to the wolves of the streets of Chicago.
Of course, all of this wouldn't make up for everything she was going through, but knowing they were living together helped them keep an eye on her.
"If she had told me a couple a days ago I wouldn't even have found the arguments against it, but after that last time?" Hailey blurts as if she was finishing her inner thoughts out loud.
"We have to talk to her, she needs to talk to us, or to a professional but this cannot go on forever..."
"You know she won't go to a shrink! See how she's been acting since that day? Literally pretending it never happened, she's been in total denial for months... and all of a sudden she lashes out after that one night where she's had too much to drink?"
"I know... I know...we can't go on like this, we have to talk to her, I'm worried, very worried." Concludes Kim swirling the bottom of her drink.
"What's with the long face officers?" interrupts Stella after a while, she had seen the two policewomen whispering with grave looks and left them some space to discuss whatever they needed to discuss, but it was stronger than her, she needed to check on them and see if she could help in any capacity.
"Oh girl I don't even know where to start" answers Kim in a lighter tone, she wasn't gonna spill anything but she wasn't in a lying mood either.
"It's just... Piles of shit piling on more piles of shits." she lazily extends her arm for her to refill her drink.
"Hum... I don't know what you're dealing with, but I know what can help."
"More booze?" offers Hailey, downing her own drink as well.
"A weekend out of town! This is exactly what you guys need. It's become something of a tradition at 51. But don't let the boys in on it... just make it a girl getaway, I can give you a nice recommendation by Lake Geneva, it's a frozen wonderland, you'll love it, nothing else to do but build a fire and drink tequila."
"Oh please do tell..."
XXXXXXXXXX
And this is how a few days later the three women are all packed up in a car driving up to a cabin by the lake.
The way things were just a few days ago it was nothing short of a miracle, but they had pulled through anyway.
They all had racked up an impossible amount of vacation days and after a bit of back and forth, they had succeeded in having a full weekend plus the Monday off to get away per Stella's advice.
"Did you guys ever been out here?" Asks Vanessa after an hour of pretending to sleep in the back seat.
"I have, not here exactly but we used to camp out around Lake Michigan quite a lot when I was a kid, it was a thing we did a lot with my mom and my sister." Kim answers first, then turning to Hailey, "Wow you couldn't pay my dad enough to leave Greektown once we moved there. I have barely left the city until I went off to college. But I did have my fair share of getaway weekends with some friends then, what about you?"
"I never really left the city... this is maybe the furthest I have ever been to," Vanessa answers looking out the window.
It was the end of winter, which still meant heavy snowfalls in the country, the view was just breathtaking, not like the snow in the city, this was different, everything was so still and beautiful.
It made her forget about everything else, maybe this was real life? Maybe she could find a house in the country and stay there and be happy.
"Okay, I think we're there..." Kim announces starting to park the car in the alley by the small cabin they were renting out.
"It's so cuuuute! I love it !" screams Vanessa, emoting a lot more than any of the last few days.
They get out of the car and collect the key locked in a lockbox, and they bring in their bags.
"This is purrr-fect!"
"True but it's freezing! Who knows how to start a fire?"
Kim just raises her hand but adds "But you gotta help me get some wood in!"
Following Stella's sound advice they had brought a ton of food and even more alcohol.
The first hours of getting around and setting up the place had kept them all busy, but now they were all sitting in the living room, with the fire roaring and some wine it all starts to feel a lot more homely.
None of them could remember when was the last time they had some downtime and this was extremely welcomed.
"I hope nothing crazy happens to us while out here, cause the stories the girls over at Fire told me happened to them when out in the wild... I do not have that in me today!"
Even though they had vowed they wouldn't talk about work, but thanks to a single anecdote they end up talking shop and exchange the latest news from their departments.
Kim who had worked in the district the longest had the best stories and all the good gossips on their friends and colleagues.
Vanessa was earnestly laughing for the first time in a long long time and feeling connected to the people around her.
Lately, she would find herself participating in conversation like it was through a looking glass, or like she was wrapped in a plastic bubble around rooms and people.
The only time she ever feels connected is on the Beat, when she's working she's sharper than ever, but as soon as the action dies down, she'd feel herself revert back in the bubble... just a little bit.
So it was refreshing for her to be with the girls tonight, all sharply aware of the elephant in the room, but somewhat too gracious to pop that bubble just now.
XXXXXXXX
The next day they eat a quick breakfast and pack some food for a long walk in the forest, "I never thought I'd ever do something like that, voluntarily going out to walk in the fucking snow in March somewhere in Illinois." Vanessa pretends she is complaining but in truth, she hasn't felt this good in forever.
The nature was breathtaking, and it looked so pure and infinite and peaceful and uncorrupted.
They walk for hours before the falling night catches up with them.
XXXXXXXX
"Let's fucking dance!" that evening, too exhausted to cook, they have what some would call a liquid dinner.
"I got the booze, put on some music, and let's dance!" shouts Vanessa back from her shower with a towel wrapped around her hair while dancing to yet non-existing music.
"Ok, I got you!" Answers Hailey joining her and moving her body in sync, grabbing the first phone she sees to put it on the receiver, blasting some party playlist from one of their Spotify accounts.
"I am officially too old for this shit"! declares Vanessa while dramatically letting herself fall onto the floor, her limbs spread like a star.
"Oh my Goood you're such a troll! If YOU are old then we must be corpses by now."
The girls all slump down on the floor one after the other on top of her, after an hour of dancing and shouting lyrics all over the little living room they are completely dead.
"And I'm not even mentioning the hangover expecting us tomorrow." They all one-up each other with the expected scale of the hangover for the next day when Vanessa tries to wiggle out of their bodies.
"Move over, and one of you is vibrating on me," she says with ragged breathing.
Hailey rolls on herself and grabs her phone from her joggings pocket, "I honestly doubted we would get decent network here" she says trying to compose herself and to dissimulate a smile.
Kim and Vanessa look furtively at one another.
"What?" Hailey asks feeling the suspiciously silent atmosphere around her.
"No, nothing." Answers Kim not even trying to be believable.
"No, don't give me that, I saw the look !"
"Well if you insist... That was Jay right?"
"So what if it was?"
"As I said, nothing... just we're not the ones blushing when we receive texts from our partners… OUCH! That was totally uncalled for!" screams Kim trying to escape Hailey's kicks.
"That's excessive use of force Detective!" Adds Vanessa laughing still laying on her back on the floor.
"You're one to talk Mrs nearly Ruzek!"
"That's soooo off-limits Hailey!" shouts Kim throwing her a cushion, which misses her target, and goes to strike a bottle of wine on the floor.
"Don't kill the wine !" finally, Vanessa finds the strength to move, "I'm saving the wine, you people can fight over the boys but don't waste perfectly good cheap wine!"
After a couple more rounds of hysterical laughs, the girls, panting, finally start to get their breathing back to normal.
"No, but for real, Hails, you and Jay? Is it happening?"
"How many times do I have to tell you? There is nothing there. Nothing is happening."
she can feel her face burning red, but she can't control it, she thinks she isn't lying but then why was she feeling so wrong?
"Hailey... you can talk to us, you know that right?"
"It just... I don't know, he just sent me a text to check on us, saying he gets worried if I don't give him news every few hours... is that normal behavior?" it was a rhetorical question, she wasn't expecting an answer, and the girls wouldn't risk to cut her off since she is willing to talk about it for once.
"Sometimes... I don't know... it feels like you know...like having a boyfriend, but without actually having one, I don't know it fucks me up a bit."
"How so?"
"I don't know, you know how he can be, like super soldier Jay and always up in my business, but it changes all the time, sometimes it's like that but whenever I try to show some... I don't know reciprocity? He pulls all the way back and so I mimic him and give him some space, everytime I think this is it, I was a pushover and he wants to put some distance, so I give him that, but then he pulls another 180 and... I don't know anymore." Her voice breaks down a little, she feels so..." Oh my God! I feel so pathetic it's ridiculous."
"No no no don't say that, we've all been there. All of us." says Kim reassuringly, "But have you ever told him ?"
"Told him what? Sometimes when you look at me I feel like fainting? GROSS !" She grimaces saying it, realizing, saying it out loud, that it actually how he makes her feel.
" Gosh! You got it hard! Try telling him "When I look at you I feel like eating your face!"
"Oooor, hear me out, send him nudes!"
"Vanessaa! You're unbelievable! Remind me never to let you alone with my phone you sneaky-"
"No but for real, just tell him you're wondering if there could be more between you guys? And go from there."
"And risk it all?"
"All what?"
"All we have?... I don't know, I don't wanna lose it, even if it's just an illusion."
"I think you deserve a lot more than hot and cold Halstead whenever he feels like it, you shouldn't let him treat you like that."
"He is not treating me like anything… I don't know, maybe it's already too late, we've been on a pretty bad way lately..." her sentence ends up lost in the ether, and against her will, her eyes float from Vanessa to Kim, and then she says nothing.
"Hum I'm fucking starving so I'm gonna fix us some grilled cheese Ok? To soak up all of that booze, so you guys can act like adults again!" Vanessa jumps on her feet like a bedspring and walks quickly to the kitchen without daring to look back. She knew too well why Jay and Hailey's relationship had been rocky this past couple of months, so better stops this now before it goes to a place she can't control.
But this wasn't her lucky day.
How could it have been? She'd been holed-up with the girls for the last 36 hours in this cabin in the middle of nowhere, after months of dodging their looks, and questions and even the most basic interaction as much as possible, initially, she'd wanted to say no to this trip, but they had already made sure she couldn't bail on them, she was having a bad feeling about it all, like they were trying to soften the blow before telling her they were tired of her, of her moods and everything else.
So her strategy was simple, make sure everyone stays at the very least inebriated enough for them not to get to the serious stuff until they're back in the city. Then she could double back on her effort, and very soon tell them she has already thought it all through and that she is ready to move out.
Pulling another bottle of wine from the cooler, she walks into the living room with a plate of sandwiches in one hand and the bottle in the other, ready to keep this little party going, it was still early, but when she sees both Kim and Hailey hunkered down by the fire, their backs to her, her heart misses a bit. She can hear them talking about her.
"Let me know if I'm bothering you, I can maybe go for a walk or..." she can feel her blood boiling a bit, nothing feels as shitty as walking-in into people talking about you behind your back.
"Vanessa!" both of them turn around quickly and Kim stands up and walks to her, "It's not what you think" she tries to take the food from her hands and lead her into the room to sit on the couch.
But she resists.
"No, I think it's exactly what I think. Every time I turn my back I can hear you whispering or feel you exchanging looks. I AM SO TIRED OF THIS! I NEVER ASKED FOR THIS!"
Kim turns to Hailey then back to Vanessa.
"SEE! Exactly what I was saying! You're doing it right now! Like I'm the one all messed up, but I'm fine, you're the ones with issues!"
"Wow! Calm down, this is not gonna go down like this, not this time." Hailey stands up too and walks towards Vanessa, "Come sit down, and let's talk this through." she is trying her best to sound calm but firm.
"There is nothing to talk about! I'm gonna go back to town! I'm tired of living like this!"
"Well let's talk about that! You were planning to... what? Just disappear on us one morning? All your stuff gone?"
"What are you talking about? How do you even know about it? Have you been through my stuff?" Vanessa was very hyper now, pacing on the floor, looking like she was looking for something, maybe her keys, maybe her phone?
"No, we didn't have to! Apparently, the whole district knows you are looking for a new flat. Why Vanessa? What happened? Did we do something to you?" Kim was getting impatient, more than she wanted to sound, but the situation was too volatile now, there was no putting this genie back in the bottle.
"It's just... the looks, the whispers... I thought you were, I don't know turning against me?" she was starting to sound unsure of herself, after being so sure of her read on the situation.
"What? Turning against you? Why? Why would we ever...?"
Vanessa was now looking from Kim to Hailey, then back to Kim. She expects any of them to blow off on her now, but they don't, they just look at her with something looking too much like pity in their eyes.
She wants to hide now. This isn't going at all where she thought it would.
Seeing she is calming down, Kim tries for the second time to have her sit down in the armchair closest to her.
"Don't tell me this is some sort of intervention," she tries jokingly, trying to redirect the tone of the conversation to a lighter mood feeling ashamed of her unprovoked burst; but she can see on her friends' eyes that they are not going to let her off the hook so easily this time.
"Vanessa, you know you can talk to us... about anything." The time for pretending was over.
"And if not us, maybe we can find someone more... qualified to help."
Vanessa refuses now to look at either of the women. She clenches her teeth and says "There's nothing to talk about... I'm fine...It just got a bit claustrophobic is all, and I'm sorry if I was a bit clumsy about it, I just really thought you wanted to go back to your normal life like the unit is back to what it was before I joined and I figured it was time for your lives to go back to normal too." Her voice breaks at that point.
And for a long minute, nobody says anything. Hailey moves silently and sits on the couch close to Kim, and looks to catch Vanessa's eyes.
"We can see you're hurting, it's gonna haunt you forever if you don't find a way to talk about it, you're a smart girl, you know that right?"
"You don't understand..." she starts but Hailey cuts her right there and then, not wanting to give her a way to wiggle herself out of it.
"Actually the problem is, we do, we do understand, a little too well honey. Not all of our stories are the same but we understand."
Vanessa shots an alarmed look at Hailey, tears filling up her eyes, what was she saying?
"I'm sorry I don't want to... please don't look so..." then she couldn't find the right word, so she continues, "It didn't happen to me, not like you... but something did, and I never told anyone, never the whole story anyway... and every time I wanted to tell it I could see in people eyes how their looks can go from alarm to relief every time I said "He didn't rape me", then I would leave it at that, I had no idea how aggravated sexual assault could sound so relieving to people, but here we are" she chuckles a bit "It happened with my partner at the time, and my supervisor, and my brother and even with Jay, it's like it gives people the permission not to see you as broken, and maybe I'm grateful for that, but... it did fuck me up."
Kim and Vanessa were like transfixed by Hailey recounting, not even wanting to breathe too loudly, scared to ruin the moment.
"What are you talking about?" Kim ends up asking, gently rubbing her arm, seeing how Hailey was getting caught up in her memories.
"You remember Booth right? How I went back under because I had a pre-existing relationship with him from a former assignment ?" Kim nods, but Vanessa shakes her head.
"It was just a stupid little UC work I didn't really need to do, but silly me needed to prove something to someone, a lot of someones. It happened at a time where I had doubts about my staying in the force, even though it had been a girlhood dream... I mean since I was a kid I was always a boy's girl, doesn't sound as cool now, but for the longest time, I thought I was so cool and so tough, my dad was hard, my brothers were toughs, and when I joined the force I thought I'd just fit right in, I was used to this energy, day in day out since forever, but god the academy was tough, it was the little things, the jokes on top of being asked for dates all the time, on top of being looked over while trying to make a mark and be the best I could, it was pretty shitty at first, but after a while, I found my people, and I that was it, I thought all that bs was behind me.
And it was for a long time until I dated one of my coworkers, and eventually, it ended then I understood how fragile this whole balance was.
I became the butt of all jokes again while all I wanted was to work and get over him in peace, so when I heard about a classic stupid UC work to dismantle the growing operation of an elusive drug dealer I volunteered, they were putting a couple of us under, some we would know about, some we wouldn't, I got partnered with a cop from Narcotics named Garrett, and what should have been maybe a few weeks or work became a few months, I wasn't unhappy about it, it was a pretty deep cover so I had the whole UC life and it helped me snap out of my misery, I was good at the job and that didn't hurt." She takes a breath and after a second of hesitation chugs some wine to give her the strength to continue with this.
"I was working the whole chain you know? Not just the number 2 or 3 but from the bottom up, until I became completely blended into their world.
Now Booth... people were calling him all kinds of super smart and all the crap we always call gangsters we cannot catch, but to me, he was just another bully, and I knew my way around them. So I didn't treat him like a brilliant mob boss or anything, but just like another guy selling drugs, and after some time he started to notice me, then talk to me, and before long kinda trust me?
So when one day he comes back gloating after a massive buy from another dealer, he decides to throw a "company" wide New Year's Eve party, but that triggered a ton of chatter and our supervisor told us to try to get something that can finally be used for a sting, and so at some point during that party, I see an opening and I go for it." she stops for a moment, licks her lips and massages her neck, her eyes now mesmerized by the flames roaring, she continues, "He invites me into a room and gives me something to drink, himself was already pretty fucking drunk so I thought that's easy enough, been dealing with drunken men since I was a child, so maybe I had my guards a bit down? I don't know, maybe I'm just blaming myself... all I know all of a sudden he is all over me, trying to kiss me and his hands everywhere over my body, I wrestle him off a first time and you know, just try to brush it off, thinking I can still get something from him, but he was dead-set on having me, he slapped me and tried to rip my dress off, I stroke back and tried to leave the room, but he punched me and pushed me around like I was weighing nothing, I tried not to lose consciousness but he was..." her voice breaks," His hands were everywhere, I couldn't fight him off, I was losing and he was choking me, I thought I was going to die and it seemed so trivial, I didn't plan to go out like that and thank fuck I didn't, Garrett ended up finding me just in time and fought him off of me and got me to the hospital."
she starts regaining a bit more composure.
"You know, the first thing I was asked was if I needed a rape kit, I said I didn't know, because I really didn't know, when do you know it? How much touching is rapey enough? So they waited a bit, and then my boss arrived, and he asked me too, " Did he rape you?" I said no, and he said then there was no need to go through that then, that it wouldn't help the case because those things are hard to prove, that if maybe I was shot then... maybe.
So that's what I did, half of my body was broken and that was enough to keep me busy for a few weeks, I was told I should lay low in any case not to blow my cover, so I couldn't stay in town, the operation wasn't all done just yet, so I went to stay at one my brothers out of the city for a couple of weeks, then Garrett disappeared... then they arrested Booth, and I thought I'd never see him again, until around 2 years ago when he flew right into our radar."
She continues the rest of the tale, now mainly for Vanessa, Kim was missing the context, but she was more or less aware of how the operation went.
"It's the first time I tell anyone the whole... thing, I think I was always a little ashamed of how cocky I was, of how I put myself into this situation for what? A couple of kilos off the streets? Losing a good cop over that... and the rest... I had no idea what the job could take from us, and I wasn't gonna sacrifice even more telling anyone who would listen I was almost raped while under, I didn't think my career could have survived it at the time, but looking back I still wonder why we got so much loyalty to a job that doesn't know what to do with us in the first place."
The silence that follows is only interrupted by Hailey swallowing back some tears.
"I don't want this for you Vanessa, I want you to be able to heal from this. You have to talk to us, we're here to help."
And for a hot second, it looks like she's about to say something, she can feel their gaze on her and she refuses to meet their eyes.
Then she just stands up and says "I wish I could, but I can't." and disappears in her bedroom."