After Endings
Summary: Jay and Will go to their father's apartment after he dies and Jay finds something unexpected. An expansion on the scene at the end of episode 6.02.
Jay stood beside Will in front of his father's apartment door while the superintendent unlocked the door to let them in. He gave them a warning that the fire department was only letting people in to get essentials and they needed to be out in ten minutes.
As Will went to the desk in the corner to look for some address book his father apparently kept, Jay made his way to the bedroom. He knew His father kept pictures of their mom in his dresser and it didn't feel right leaving them there until they were allowed to really clear things out at some point.
A Blackhawks jersey sat on top of the dresser. Jay had tickets to go to the upcoming game with Ruz and Kevin, but he didn't know if his father had planned to go too. There was a lot he didn't know about what his father got up to and they had both preferred it that way. Tugging open the left side drawer, he found a signed baseball sitting there.
When he was about ten, his dad took him and Will to a Cubs game and Jay caught a home run ball. His dad brought him back to the clubhouse later that week to wait for the players to leave so that he could get it signed. It was the last time Jay could remember Pat taking off work for anything until he retired. Jay left the ball in his room when he enlisted and, when he came back two years later to take care of his mom when she got sick, he found his room empty. He always figured the ball was tossed in the trash along with everything else he'd left behind.
Setting it on the dresser so he remembered to take it with him, he opened the next drawer and found the stack of photographs he was looking for.
And there was his mom in the first picture. He had gotten her dark hair and nose, but everything else -especially the light eyes and fair, freckled skin- was all Halstead. Aside from the red hair, Will really favored her more. Sometimes he forgot how good she looked before she got sick. Most of his memories of her were overshadowed by ones of him sitting beside her bed, warding off his own nightmares from what he'd seen in Afghanistan to stay awake through nights to help her when Pat insisted he needed sleep to go to work the next day because hospital bills weren't going to pay themselves and Will was God knows where saving everybody else.
He resented both of them for it at the time. As much as he'd forgiven Will, he still remembered how abandoned he felt on those nights where he would sit by his mother's beside, alone and exhausted, watching her waste away before his eyes. His father…he never forgave his father. Pat made it clear that, even though Jay came back, he still thought his son made all the wrong choices and even joining the Army wasn't a good enough reason to leave Chicago. Never mind that Pat had been on a transport to the Middle East himself when he was eighteen. 'Hypocrite' was the nicest name he called his father during the fights they had in the kitchen when Jay would emerge from his mom's sick room (his old room) in the early morning hours to make food for himself and his mom just as his father was getting a ready to go to work.
The hate they spat at each other then, God, Jay thought they might both kill each other before he was set to return to Fort Benning. The last fight, three days before his mom passed, that one was the reason he'd left Chicago and almost never came back.
"You just going to run away again after she's gone?" His father asked, the vitriol dripping from every word.
Jay raised an eyebrow and slammed down the glass he had been drinking from. "Didn't know joining the Army and becoming a Ranger was running away from anything."
"Sure high-tailed it out of here fast enough after you graduated. Couldn't stick around even for a minute to work the job I had lined up for you at the factory. Don't know why I even bothered setting it up," Pat Halstead said as he threw bread and sandwich meat on the counter to make his lunch.
"I don't want to work a dead-end job doing the exact same thing everyday for the next thirty years. I'd end up being a miserable old asshole like you if I did," Jay snapped back. He knew he needed to be quiet or he would wake his mom, but he couldn't seem to stop his voice from rising.
"You know, one day, you are going to be begging for a life like this. One that can provide for a family. That dead-end job put food in your belly all these years. I know Will thinks he's too good for this family, but you don't have the brains he does." His father turned on Jay and sneered at him. "You think just because you're a big, bad Ranger now, the Army ain't going to spit you out when it's done chewing you up? I know exactly what it does to poor guys like us. I've been there. And when that happens, you better not come running to me. Cause I ain't helping you."
"Have you ever?" Jay asked, eyebrows raised in shock that his dad had deluded himself enough to think he was ever helpful to either of his sons. "You'd just tell me how I should have done things your way instead. Anything I've ever done has been because I did it myself or because Mom supported me. Not because of you."
"And how did you show her thanks for that support? You abandoned your family to go play soldier. Do you know how many nights your momma stayed up thinking about what could happen to you over there?" His father was just as red in the face now as Jay was sure he was.
"You were in the Army, too, you asshole!" He shouted, clenching his fists. There was a line they had never crossed and Jay wasn't going to cross it then, but he'd be lying if it said he had never thought about taking a swing at his father.
His father yelled back, "And why do you think I warned you not to do it? You think my job is a dead end? Where is the Army going to get you? I think you enlisted just to spite me."
"You know what, I did," Jay told him harshly. "I did it to get away from you, and this house, and this neighborhood, and that judgmental thumb you always kept me under. I was tired of it. I'm still tired of it. I've been home two months and you won't stop telling me I abandoned you and Mom. But I'm here. I stepped up. I'm the one taking care of her and you won't stop bitching at me for two seconds long enough to see that!"
His father took a step toward him and growled, "You think you are too good for this house I raised you in? Too good for Canaryville? Fine. You stay until she's gone and then get out. Go back to Afghanistan. I don't need you here. I don't need a son who doesn't want to be part of this family."
His father stormed out of the kitchen leaving Jay standing in the middle of it, heart beating fast. He picked up the lidded mug his mom drank out of now because the straw made it easier for her and filled it with lukewarm water from the tap. Through the window over the sink, he could see down the street he'd grown up on and he pursed his lips. He'd just gotten the permission he'd always wanted to leave his house and his neighborhood and the taste of it was bitter.
His mom, of course, heard the whole fight. She'd had tears running down her gaunt face when he returned to her room.
Sitting down beside her on the bed, he offered her the straw from the mug in his hand. She took a few sips, then rested back against the pillows.
"If you weren't both Halsteads, you might be able to actually talk to each other," she rasped. "But all that stubbornness gets in the way."
"Pretty sure Dad is just an asshole," Jay said, setting the mug down on the side table.
His mother hummed and gave a small shrug. "Maybe. But he's scared for you too."
"What does he have to be scared about?" He settled down onto the pillows beside her. Being curled up beside her brought up decade old memories of when he was the one sick and she would keep him home from school to read him books in bed all day and press cold rags to his head to cool down his fever.
"He thinks he knows what's best for you and he is afraid for you because you won't listen. I don't think either of you have listened to each other in years," she said. "You know, as parents we raise you with all of our worst faults and then get surprised when they get turned back on us."
"You don't have any faults." Jay told her with a sweet-as-honey grin.
"Well, I certainly never lied to my mother. So you didn't get that from me," she replied, reaching over to give him a weak thump on the tip of his nose. "That sass though."
He smirked at her, then let out a frustrated sigh. "I just don't want to stay here and work the same factory job the last three generations of Halsteads did. I want to do something else."
"And we both want that for you. Your father just doesn't know anything else. He expects you to see the worth in what he does. He worked so hard for this house and to provide for this family. You not doing what he did, not listening to him, his pride takes a hit because he thinks that means you don't care that he did it. But I've told him a thousand times that you boys inherited my sense of adventure too much to settle for something that doesn't keep you on your toes."
"Mom, I'm not coming back to Chicago. There won't be a reason for me to," he admitted quietly, not looking at her for fear she would be disappointed that he was abandoning his home and what would be left of his family.
"That's okay," she reassured him. "I want you to go back to Fort Benning and stay in the Army as long as you want. Then, when you get out, have fun. Do something you want to do. You have such a big heart. Find something that lets you use it. That doesn't have to be in Chicago. You can do good in New York or San Francisco or any little town in between. I know you can because you work hard and care about people and want to make things better. You'll succeed at anything you want to do."
"I don't know what that is. After the Army, I don't know what to do," Jay told her. Over the last few days, it finally began to sink in that she wouldn't be there when he got out. He wouldn't be able to tell her what he wanted to do next and have her encourage him to follow through. Telling his dad anything besides what he thought Jay should do was a joke. He already knew how that fight ended.
"You'll figure it out. It's okay not to be sure of things, Jay," she told him and he could hear in her voice that she was beginning to tire. "Life is going to be very different after you leave the military. You will be different. But you will also still be my Jay. The same one who cares so much and works so hard. Okay? No matter what you do or where you are, you are going to do great and we will always be so proud of you."
"You may be, but Dad isn't. He's never been." Jay mumbled and buried his face in his mother's thin shoulder. He missed her hair getting in his face when he hugged her. He already missed everything about her. "Momma, I don't want you to go."
Over the last two month since finding out about her diagnosis and coming home, he had held it together pretty well, Jay thought, but that fight with his dad broke the dam holding back the flood waters, reminding him he was about to lose the one person always in his corner.
"Oh, baby," his mother whispered before looping her arm around his heaving shoulders and carding her shaking fingers through his short hair. He felt her press a soft kiss to his forehead as she said, "I love you so, so much."
He'd fallen asleep between one sob and the next curled against her side, too exhausted from the weeks caring for her and the months spent on deployment before that to stay awake. It had been her last lucid day. That afternoon, he woke up to her sleeping, which wasn't unusual by that point in her illness, and went about his usual routine of cleaning and watching TV. The next day, she didn't wake up except to drink a few sips of water. The day after, she didn't wake at all. Then, the next day, she was gone.
A week later, he left Chicago and didn't come back for three years.
Jay flipped through the next few pictures. They were school pictures of him and Will that had been framed and hung on the walls in the old house before Jay had moved his dad to the apartment.
Under them was a newspaper article with his picture on it. It was from his early days as a beat cop when he'd been commended for saving a little boy and Jay stared down at it in confusion, trying to figure out why his father would have that clipping.
Pat had made it clear that he thought going to the Police Academy was just as dumb of an idea as joining the Army.
"You can't just settle down for a job that's not going to get you killed, can you?" He'd spat at Jay when he saw him at church after Jay's return to Chicago. Jay hadn't bothered to tell him he was back until then despite having been in Chicago for nearly a year by then. "Well, you know I don't care what you do. I already told you I'm done trying to help you."
Despite that, he invited his dad to the Academy graduation. He didn't know why. Maybe because there had been moments like the one when he and Jay sat outside the Cubs clubhouse, drinking lemonades and trying to guess which players would stop and sign the ball for him.
"How would I do that? I have work," his father said before leaving Jay standing on the steps of the cathedral with his hands shoved in his pockets and an ache in his throat as he thought of what his mom would have said instead.
A few weeks later, he graduated from the Academy. Then, for the next four years, he and his dad sat five pews away from each other every Sunday, not exchanging so much as a glance between them. He didn't say anything to him until he let his dad know he'd been promoted to detective. Even then, he hadn't stuck around to hear what his dad had to say about it.
He looked at the next picture in the stack and suddenly his whole body felt like it was made of lead and it wasn't just the bruise on his chest making it hard to breath.
Clearly taken from somewhere in the audience, the picture was of him at the Academy graduation walking across the stage to receive the Top Recruit award for his class. His military background had prepared him well for police training and he had excelled, but nobody except people there that day and maybe Voight knew he'd received the award. He definitely never told his dad about it.
His dad never said anything either, but he had this picture in the stack with all of the other ones he said were too special to lose when Jay moved him out of his house. Jay really thought they were all of his mom and maybe a few family pictures.
Not his graduation.
"We will always be so proud of you."
Twelve years later and his mom's words broke him again. Despite all evidence in the past to the contrary, she had been right.
Aware Will was still in the next room, he tried to stop the burn in his eyes and the ache in his throat as it hit him. His dad was gone.
And the last thing he'd said to him was so horrible.
And vengeance had been nothing but a vile taste in his mouth the moment he'd fired his gun.
He failed to suppress the sob that heaved its way out and the pictures in his hands blurred as he sat them down and pressed a hand to his mouth, determined to muffle any noise that may alert his brother that he was breaking.
He may have never said anything, but his father had been there on one of the most important days of Jay's life. It didn't make him a perfect father. It didn't even make him a good father. But it did change who he was for Jay just a little bit. Just enough to soothe the wretchedness he had always felt for continuing to love someone who clearly hated every choice he ever made. Maybe enough to justify the pain he was in now that he missed a man he had reluctantly maintained a relationship with solely because he knew his mom would want Pat taken care of, because his mom had raised him to care for people.
He looked up and saw himself in the mirror. He saw his dad's eyes and his mom's hair and wanted both of them right then. He'd never stopped missing his mom, but he hadn't realized how much he might miss his father, too.
He could hear Daniel's final plea as he started to succumb to the wounds inflicted by Jay's gun.
"I want to see my father."
At the time, it had cleared something in Jay's mind that he hadn't quite been able to process.
That was what he wanted, too.
In that snap of a second, Jay understood something about the other man that he usually didn't feel for a suspect. A type of empathy that ran deep in his core.
He wanted to see his father, too.
"Jay?" Will called from the other room. "You about ready to go?"
Shoving the heels of his hands against his eyes, he tried to force the tears to quit coming. Being vulnerable enough to admit he missed his father was one thing, but letting Will see what was happening was something completely different.
After a moment, he sucked in a sharp breath through his nose and then grabbed the stack of pictures, baseball, his jacket, and, at the last second, the Blackhawks jersey. Ducking his head, he made a beeline for the door past Will.
"I'll meet you downstairs," he said. "See if you want anything from in there."
Stomping down the twenty-six flights of stairs faster than he should with his injuries, Jay exited the lobby and sucked in a deep lungful of the crisp, cool air outside.
A few minutes later, Will walked up behind him and slapped a hand on his shoulder, making Jay flinch at the surprise contact. "Ready to go? I need to stop by the funeral home to make some arrangements. You don't have to come if you don't want to."
"Yeah, sure. Let's go." He started toward the garage Will had parked in, staying one step ahead of his brother and blaming the continued burning in his eyes on the wind.
We never really got enough backstory about Jay and his dad (and definitely not enough about his mom!) and I always thought there was so much more there. Please feel free to leave a review! I would love to hear feedback.