She wakes with her heart pounding in her chest, a sheen of sweat covering her skin and her body shaking. She takes deep breaths and tries with everything she has to regulate her breathing and bring herself back to reality, telling herself it was just another nightmare. That she's safe in her bed. That she's okay.
It's been three and a half years and despite the work she put in during therapy from back then the memories still invade her mind and make her toss and turn when she least expects it. She blinks her eyes against the slight darkness of her bedroom and glances over at the half open curtains hanging over her bedroom windows. The sun is just beginning to rise.
She reaches out a hand for her phone charging on the nightstand next to the bed and squints at the brightness of the screen when she checks the time. She groans out and drops the phone back down in its place.
It's almost seven. Her alarm isn't set to go off for another thirty minutes, but she kicks the covers off anyway and swings her legs over the side of the bed. It's not like she would be able to go back to sleep even if she tried. She stretches her arms out and rolls her shoulders, bones cracking as she does, and then she stands from the bed and heads for the bathroom connected to the bedroom.
She takes a shower as hot as her skin will allow, trying to scrub away the remnants of memories that suffocated her in her sleep. By the time she steps out of the shower stall the bathroom is filled with a thick cloud of steam and her skin is red and tingling. She dries herself off and pats her hair dry with a towel before she pulls a brush through her messy blonde waves, and then dresses for the day.
It's only when she grabs her badge and gun from the locked drawer of her nightstand that she notices how quiet it is throughout the house. Almost too quiet. She clips her star to a loop of her jeans and then makes sure the safety of her gun is switched on before she holsters it to the left side of her waist. She grabs her phone and stuffs it in her back pocket before leaving the room and heading downstairs.
When she enters the kitchen she can't help smiling gratefully at the sight of a post-it sitting on top of the coffee machine.
All ready for ya. Just hit brew. See ya tonight. xx
She presses the brew button and grabs a mug from the cabinet above the machine. As the smell of caffeine hits her nostrils and the sound of dripping coffee begins to fill the silence around her, she steps to the refrigerator and glances at the calendar sheet for that month held in place with a magnet.
She surmises the quiet house and the post-it note to the fact that it's Thursday, and remembers how Tuesdays and Thursdays are early days for the time being. She runs a hand through her still slightly damp hair and then pulls the door of the fridge open to grab the half and half. The machine beeps a moment later signaling to her that the coffee is ready and she quickly makes up a mug before returning the creamer to the fridge, and then taking a seat at the island. She sips on her coffee for few moments until the silence envelops her again, a little too tightly, and she can't help thinking back to what shook her awake.
The light is blinding when she cracks her right eye open. She attempts to open the left, but groans out at the pain that shoots down the side of her face when she tries. The recognition of the fluorescent lights above her makes her realizes she's in a hospital and before she can stop them, the memories of how she got there begin to fill her head.
The case and being undercover. Booth on top of her, hitting her over and over. Garrett.
"Hailey?"
She hears his voice from beside her and forces her good eye to open completely to see him sitting next to her.
"Garrett?" She mumbles.
"I'm here babe. I'm here.," he assures her.
She feels his fingers cover her hand and she hates the way she jerks back, flinching at the contact of his warm skin on hers. She watches as he pulls his hand away and leans back in the chair he's sat in to try and give her some space, and then his eyes meet her good one.
"It's okay. You're okay. You're safe," he tells her.
She has to remind herself that it's him. That he wouldn't hurt her. She reaches her right arm out towards him and opens her hand palm facing up at him. He gives her a small smile before placing his hand in hers slowly, carefully, not wanting to scare her again.
"Do you remember what happened?" He asks her a second later.
"Mostly, but some of it's fuzzy. The party and we were in the office and Booth - he was hitting me, there was yelling," she says.
And then the details of what transpired in that same office hit her and she's having trouble breathing. Her body begins to shake and tears form in her right eye.
"He was - he - did he?"
She can't say the words, but he can gather what she's thinking and he shakes his head at her quickly and gives her fingers a gentle squeeze.
"No, no he didn't."
She blows out a deep breath and tries to calm herself down, and feels him squeeze her hand again as if he's pulling her back to him and anchoring her in place.
She remembers the fleeting moment back in the office when she thought she saw his scruffy bearded face above her and it's her who squeezes his hand then.
"You were there. You stopped him from - I thought I was dreaming. You got him?"
He nods slowly, confirming her thoughts.
"Tell me what happened."
"I went to find Ty. He was passed out in a bedroom upstairs. I was barely gone five minutes. I came back downstairs and the office door was locked. Had a bad feeling."
"He must have locked it. He kept hitting me and I just wanted to sleep," she says.
Garrett nods at her, confirming her suspicions again and she notices the way his jaw clenches and the apple of his throat bobs as he swallows.
"I kicked the door down. Saw him trying to pull your jeans off and you were bleeding and completely out of it. All I saw was red. I lunged for him. Scotty came in a few moments later, pulled me off of him and took him out of the room."
"Does he know who we are? Where is he?" Hailey asks in a panic.
He shushes her immediately, trying to calm her down and leans in closer to her. "He's in jail. We got him and most of his crew on the meth distribution. He can't get to you."
It sounds so simple the way he says it and she wishes it would be enough to make her feel better, but it doesn't. All there is, is disgust and anger and pain. So much pain.
Her body is aching. She can't open her left eye or lift her left arm. Her throat feels like it's on fire and she feels as though someone is beating the inside of her skull with a baseball bat.
"How bad is it?" She asks, needing to know, and she hears him sigh in some sort of pain of his own.
"Fractured left wrist. Your left eye is swollen shut; the doctor called it a blowout fracture. Piece of shit hit you really hard. Bruising on your forehead, under your other eye, your chin, handprints around your neck, and a split bottom lip. You got a pretty nasty concussion too - the doctor was worried about a brain bleed earlier, but all your tests came back okay."
She sticks the tip of her tongue out to her lip and winces at the residual taste of copper and the onslaught of discomfort. She can feel the stitches with her tongue and pulls it back into her mouth.
"How long have I been here?" She wonders.
"Four days. Serge already called it. You're on leave for at least eight weeks until the doc clears you and you pass a psych eval with flying colors."
If she could roll her eyes she would, but all she can muster is blowing out a breath of annoyance.
"What about the case?" She asks because despite her current location and situation, she's still a cop and she has a job to do.
"Given the circumstances, Rafferty made the call and decided to leave your name out of things. He convinced the DA too, so that your cover isn't blown with any of the other unknown players. It's been passed off to narcotics and organized crime. You won't testify Hailey, you can't. As far as any of those bastards know, Kelly went back home to Iowa after everything went down."
"So what? We just pretend the last four months didn't happen? Pretend that party didn't happen?"
"Hailey."
She can hear it in his voice the way he breathes out her name in a near whisper. The worry. The fear. And she knows.
"You made that call. Not Rafferty."
It's not a question or even an accusation. Just a simple statement of realization, but it only fuels her annoyance and then it quickly turns to bubbling anger. She pulls her hand out of his and gives the tiniest shake of her head in disbelief. She watches him out of her good eye as his eyes leave her for a moment to look at the floor. He leans back in the chair and uses his now free hand to run it over the back of his head.
He takes another deep breath and then his eyes are back on her. "Do you really want Booth or any of his contacts knowing you're a cop? You're safe this way, Hailey. You stay alive this way."
"That wasn't your decision to make Garrett!" Her throat screams at her in protest as she raises her voice, her words cracking with her exclamation.
He shakes his head at her as he stands from the chair and starts to pace back and forth from the end of her bed to the window at the other side of the room. They're both stubborn to say the least and the gravity of the situation and stress of the last few months mixed with the events of the last week are ready to boil over.
He stops mid-step in the middle of the room and turns to face her again. She's only seen him cry once in the last few years they've known each other, but here he is looking back at her with his shoulders sagging and his eyes glazed over in some resemblance of defeat and anguish and frustration.
"You're damn right I made the call Hailey! Because I knew you wouldn't. Because you're my partner and the woman who I'd kinda like to spend my life with. So yeah, I made a call that would keep you with me and keep you safe. And if that makes me selfish or possessive or it pisses you off, I gotta tell you I don't really care as long as it means you don't end up with a bullet between your eyes."
She knows he's protective over her and on some level knows he's right too, but she can't help the way her body jolts at the volume of his voice and makes her recoil just a bit further into the pillows behind her.
"I would have - "
"No, you wouldn't," he tells her with another shake of his head. "You wouldn't have. You would've seen this thing through until the end, until you ended up dead. I know what he did to you, what he was going to do to you, and I hate the guy too, but I couldn't let you fall down that rabbit hole. He doesn't deserve anymore of your time or energy."
"I can't just forget about it."
"And I'd never ask you to Hailey. All I'm asking you to do is let the department push the paper on this prick and you just focus on you. Focus on your recovery, on healing."
He makes his way back over to the side of her bed and takes a hesitant seat on the edge of it. He reaches an arm out, extending his hand to her, but she doesn't take it and instead keeps her hands firmly placed in her lap. She shakes her head slowly, not wanting to further aggravate her pounding head, and looks up at him.
"Can you go?"
"Hailey, - "
"Please, Garrett. I just need to be alone right now."
He sighs and drops his head, and stands from the bed begrudgingly. He leans down over her and kisses the top of her head, whispering "I love you" into her hair.
She gives a short nod of her head in recognition of his words as he takes a step back and walks to the door. She feels his eyes on her, but she can't bring herself to look at him, and then he's gone.
The vibrations of the phone in her pocket brings her out of her thoughts and she reaches back for it, seeing her partner's name on the screen. She quickly swipes to answer.
"Upton..."
XXX
Of all the cases for Intelligence to get pulled into that day it had to be one where initiation day for gang bangers meant the gang rape and murder of a teenage girl.
By the time the team tracks down the offenders they find them dead and castrated, leaving each member of the team in a simultaneous state of relief and shock. The rapists were gone, but now they had to find their murderer. It was a grotesque turn of events that turned their offenders into victims. The world could cruel be cruel sometimes.
The team chases it down though. They find another girl who had almost been brutalized in the same way and with the help of one of Antonio's CI's they're led to a neighboring sisterhood gang. They have the CI set up a drug deal with the gang and wait it out, and can only hope their lead pays off so that they're able to close the case and put it behind them.
Hailey and her partner have been sitting in the truck for nearly an hour waiting for the deal to go down, but nothing had popped off yet. Jay sits in the driver's seat as he usually does and Hailey takes up the passenger seat, both looking out over the dash through the windshield and surveying the scene around them.
She can feel her partner's eyes on her, has been feeling them on her on and off since they started their stakeout, but he doesn't say a word to her and she's grateful. The early morning events that had her struggling to breathe and remembering her own traumatic past, and then finding the bloody body of a teenage girl a few hours after had her mind reeling throughout the day. She couldn't say she wasn't relieved when her and her team had found the bangers dead though. It was a sweet return of karma that would have had her smiling if they weren't now trying to run down the person or persons responsible for their deaths.
She's so lost in her own thoughts that she doesn't hear Jay calling her name. Only when he places a hand on her shoulder does she respond and it's a reaction of flinching so hard she bumps her elbow against the window of the door. He pulls back fast, holding both of his hands up at her in a surrendering gesture.
"You good?" He asks with worry dripping from his voice.
She's not sure when her breathing picked up or when her heart started beating relentlessly in her chest, and she has to remind herself where she is and who she's with. She gives a quick nod in reply, but doesn't say anything.
"You sure? You zoned out on me. Look like you saw a ghost."
"I'm good," she says finding her voice and offering a small smile to assure him.
He looks at her curiously as if he doesn't believe her and rests his hands in his lap. "I'm sorry for freaking you out."
"It's fine. Guess I just got distracted," she tells him.
"You wanna talk about it?"
Hailey shakes her head and smiles again. "I'm good. Just these cases ya know? Hard to handle sometimes."
He nods because he does know. Between his years serving in the army and serving on the police force, he has seen his fair share of evil and wrong doings. Maybe too much.
"Antonio's CI said three o'clock right?" She asks him then.
He knows she already knows the answer to her own question, it not being lost on him the way she attempts to divert the conversation, but he doesn't call her out on it. Instead he takes a quick sip from the cardboard cup of lukewarm coffee he's got sitting in the console between them before he turns to look back at her.
"Yeah, which means five, maybe six if we're lucky."
"Well if you're looking for punctuality don't date a CI. Or an Italian for that matter," she tells him with a smirk and getting a response of raised eyebrows from him in the process.
"I dated a guy from Rome once," she supplies.
Jay shakes his head as he looks at her, a smile of his own peeking out from the corner of his mouth. "Ya know, we've been partners for almost six months now and the more I learn about you, the more I realize I have no clue who you actually are."
"Good, my plan is working," she smirks again. Her blue eyes are shining again and smiling feels a little easier now that she's not caught up in her own thoughts and memories. Her conversation with Jay being a good distraction and she's grateful.
"Antonio's plan though, I'm not too sure. Girls are tough to flip," Hailey tells him a moment later.
"Tougher than boys?" Jay asks.
"Way tougher," she says.
"So women are more loyal than men?" He presses.
Hailey turns her head and stares back at him with a sure look in her eyes. "Absolutely."
Jay gives a short nod, taking in her words as a comfortable silence fills the cab of the truck. She thinks over his previous words of how long they've been partners for and she's suddenly taken aback in disbelief. It's only been six months of them working together, but some days she could swear it feels more like six years.
Jay Halstead had quickly proven to be a great partner to her, had become an unexpected friend, and he was damn good police to boot. She hadn't been too sure of how things would work out when he got mixed up in dating a drug dealer just a few weeks into their new partnership. She had given him a not so subtle ultimatum of having to find a new partner if he wasn't going to go to therapy and take it seriously after everything went down. It was the sort of tough love he needed at the time, but he heeded her word and put in the work of facing his own demons and working on himself and opening up to her in the process. It made them a strong pair of partners. It made them better.
There's a sudden churning in her stomach as she remembers the things he doesn't know about her and what she carries with her each and every day. The sacrifices she's had to make and the things she keeps so close to the vest, the secrets she's been holding back. She realizes she might not have been as good of a friend to him as he's been to her over their short time working together as she recognizes the knot that's taking form inside of her is feeling a lot like guilt. There's a fleeting moment where she wonders if she's the one who needs to try therapy again.
She doesn't have time to fester over it long though because Antonio's CI finally arrives and the drug deal goes down. She clears her mind as best she can and forces herself to focus on the task at hand. They have a house to raid and a murderer to find.
XXX
By the time the case is finally closed and she makes her way home, it's a little after eight at night and Hailey is exhausted. Her bones are aching, desperately in need of another hot shower and the comfort of her bed. She turns the key in the front door, pushes it open, and is immediately greeted by the smell of food. She sighs in grateful relief as she closes the door behind her and locks the deadbolt. She pulls off her jacket and hangs it on a hook on the wall, and then kicks off her boots in the entryway.
When she enters the kitchen she spots another post-it on the door of the microwave.
Dinner :)
She smiles at the note and catches a glimpse of light coming from the living room. She makes her way through the kitchen to the living room and leans against a wall, crossing her arms over her chest. Her eyes land on the couch where someone sits cross legged with a thick textbook in their lap and several notebooks scattered open around them.
"You and your post-it notes," Hailey teases from the wall with her arms crossed over her chest.
"You love 'em," the other says without missing a beat and not looking up from their lap.
Hailey pushes herself off the wall and steps further into the living room, dropping down to a chair and folding a leg up underneath her.
"How was your day?"
Hailey shrugs. "Pretty bad case, but it's over now."
"I'm sorry babe."
Hailey shakes her head. "Tell me about your day. More studying I see."
"Damn bio midterm. My professor has it in for me I swear."
"Vanessa, you're one of the smartest people I know. You're gonna do great just like you always do," Hailey tells the young woman.
The brunette looks over at Hailey and grins back at her, her brown eyes shining. "You're the best hype-woman, ya know that?"
Hailey returns the smile, but shakes her head again. "I only speak the truth."
Vanessa waves her off, blushing at the compliment, and nods her head towards the kitchen. "You should eat. I bet you haven't done that yet today."
"I swear sometimes you're more like my mother than my friend-slash-roommate-slash - "
"Just go eat, will you? I hate dealing with a hangry Hailey."
Hailey scoffs as she stands from the chair. "I do not get hangry."
Vanessa just hums knowingly in response, returning her attention to the book in her lap. She looks up again a moment later when Hailey calls out to her and points above them.
"I'm assuming she's asleep," Hailey says.
Vanessa nods her head. "You know how the early days go. They wipe her out."
"Yeah," Hailey says quietly with a nod of her own. "Thank you for dinner."
"You're welcome," Vanessa tells her and then she goes to leave the room.
A beat passes before she hears, "Hey Hailey?"
The blonde turns back around to face her friend, a curious look on her face.
"You can't do this forever ya know?"
"What's that?" Hailey asks even though she's sure she knows what's coming next.
"Hide her from the world," Vanessa says simply and a look of something mirroring regret washes over Hailey's face instantly.
"I know," Hailey tells her. She takes a step back and lifts a hand up in a short wave. "Goodnight."
"Night," Vanessa calls back before burying her face down into her schoolwork again.
Hailey retreats back into the kitchen and heads for the microwave, but the idea of food no longer excites her. She just wants to sleep and ignore the feeling of guilt that starts churning over again in her stomach. She blows out a deep sigh and opens the door of the microwave. She pulls out the Tupperware container waiting for her and moves it to the fridge, grabs a bottle of water for herself, and then heads up the stairs.
She stops in the hallway outside of a closed door just two doors down from her own bedroom. She opens the door carefully, being as quiet as she can be, and steps inside. There's a nightlight on one wall casting a soft yellow glow throughout the room and a twin sized bed against the opposite wall.
She makes her way to the side of the bed and immediately feels the stress from the day begin to roll off her shoulders as she looks down at the little girl burrowed under blankets and sleeping soundly. She can't help smiling at the sight of messy blonde curls splayed out on a pillow and the stuffed teddy clutched under a little arm.
Her mind goes back to Vanessa's words and her earlier thoughts of her partner, how she hasn't been as forthcoming with him as he's been with her, and she lets out a quiet sigh. It's been six months of keeping certain parts of herself closed off, of keeping secrets from her partner and fellow team members, and she wonders if maybe she can actually trust him – them, with the most important thing in her life, with the biggest part of her.
Hailey pushes the thoughts from her mind for the time being as she brushes a finger over the little girl's cheek, and then leans down to press a gentle kiss to the child's forehead.
"Mama loves you," she whispers.