Hi, so here is another Chicago PD story and I am so excited to bring you thins one, this one takes me to a world post Erin, to Season 5 and this is a new thing for me so I hope that you enjoy. Also this delves a little into the Al/Adam relationship that I have enjoyed so much and like the Jay/Hank relationship is often ignored.
This story takes place around the break that happened in Season 5 when Adam's duel role was discovered, I can confirm that Hank and Al are not the enemies in this story. I think we all know who the enemy in Season 5 was.
This story does deal with upsetting themes including murder, rape and child abuse and PTSD flashbacks. If this TRIGGERS YOU THEN PLEASE STOP NOW!.
Pairings are as follows, Kim/Adam, Hailey/Jay, Will/Conner (briefly) and Al/Meredith.
Just to confirm that Lexie is dead in this story as well.
Disclaimer-Nothing here but Vicky is mine.
This story is AU as well but does stretch over Season 5 and Season 5 alone.
Please Read and Review and I will update as soon as I can.
And on a side note, I like so many other Fanfiction Authors no longer receive notifications via email about reviews/PMs etc. So if you do send any it might be a while, if ever before I get back to you. Please keep that in mind for it is not intentional-If anyone has a fix please let me know.
I have also stopped taking any kind of personal messages, any questions please leave them in a review and I will get back to them in the next chapter note. This chapter should be about twenty-twenty five chapters.
AND TRIGGER WARNINGS FOR THIS CHAPTER AND DISCUSSION OF RAPE. PLEASE KEEP THAT IN MIND.
Also I don't hate Bob Ruzek I am just indifferent to him. And there is so much uncovered layers to the Voight/Al/Bob Ruzek thing that the writers prodded and poked at and then killed of Al so never really got too. But in this story he just doesn't know what to do or how to support his son, which is good because Al wants to support him.
The Spirit That I Have Seen
Chapter 13-What To Do While Your Waiting.
Adam spends his first night at Al's and starts getting strange flashbacks, Vicky has nightmares too, Intelligence try and follow the money.
"I don't believe it" Kevin said shaking his head as he dumped more sauce on Adam's plate. "Your telling me that the first time you and Voight met your future wives was when you arrested them?"
"It sounds worse than it is" said Meredith who was in the process of cutting up Vicky's pasta so it was more manageable for the six year old.
"What were you doing?" Kim asked her eyes wide.
"There was a guy in the bar and Cami thought he was spiking drinks so she confronted him. Kinda spiralled from there"
"Yes Ma'am" Hayley said clinking drinks with Antonio. Adam aware that both Al and Voight were shooting looks at him (nothing compared to Platt) put another forkful of meatball in his mouth and tried his best to swallow.
What had started out as an impromptu dinner with Kevin as support had turned into the entire team coming and cramming around Meredith and Al's table which meant that they were eating on a square elbows bunched together and he chewed his bottom lip as Jay went around with the wine bottle. Voight was right he thought to himself. Present the team with free food and they would fall over for it.
Once he might have been the same. Now it was taking all that he had not to flinch whenever someone got close to him and he was trying to eat food that he knew was delicious and that to him tasted like cardboard.
He felt like his brain was going to explode all over himself and he didn't know weather or not he was going to be able to sit through another dinner. Right now it was hard enough just to sit. His brain felt like it was overworked and exhausted and beaten and he didn't want to think when all he was doing was think. He was exhausted to the point where all he wanted to do was go to bed and yet he was so scared of what was going to happen when he went to sleep. When he went back into the darkness and didn't come out. What was he going to see? What was he going to feel? What was he going to remember?
"Adam you want your painkillers yet?" Meredith asked and Adam put his fork down realising that they were all staring at him apart from Vicky who was busy scooping a meatball onto garlic bread in a way that was only going to end badly.
Adam knew that from experience.
"No" he said forcing a smile that he knew was as fake as a drug dealer's exclamation that the drugs were not his.
"No I'm fine I'm just…tired I think"
"You want to go to bed?"
"No" he said shortly and Jay nodded. Out of everyone Jay seemed to understand his aversion to sleeping more than anyone else. Thank God Jay didn't elaborate further.
The moment was broken up further when Vicky dropped her meatball and then said clear as a bell in her little voice.
"Oh fuck"
Jay inhaled half his pasta.
Even Adam had to crack a smile at that.
Al showed Adam and by association Vicky, Lexie's old room. It was very nice. Clean sheets and everything. But it was Lexie's old room right down to the perfume and the make up that was scattered about the place. It was like the girl that Al had raised had just stepped out and was coming back even though everyone knew that she was never coming back again. It was like pouring salt and then vodka on a bleeding, open wound. He wanted to vomit just looking at it and yet Vicky dithered on the doorstep before allowing Adam to lead her to the bed and tuck her in just like he used to do with Lexie when she'd had a nightmare about giant spiders crawling all over her.
Oh that Vicky's nightmares were all about giant spiders. Al suspected that there was some kind of monster in Vicky's dreams the likes of which were bigger, badder and scarier than any kind of giant spiders crawling all over you.
"You like Vic?"
The kid gave a shrug.
"Listen" Adam said quietly. "I am gonna be down the stairs in the living room, you need anything, please come and get me okay, you don't have to hide anymore. We are safe here"
Al wondered just how much the kid (both of the because Adam still was just a kid wasn't he?) actually believed in what he was saying. He wondered if Vicky believed him.
"You know if you want you can keep the light on for a bit?" he said stepping into the room and both of them looked at him. He held his hands up in a form of surrender and pointed at one of Lexie's old scarves that had seen better days even before the fire and Adam threw it over the lamp so that the room was dimmed but not dark.
"Better?" Adam asked and Vicky nodded her little head up and down.
"You know Jay got me this bear?" she said waving the little bear around. It was a build a bear contraption that was a cameo colour. "He says that it protects people, like he was protected in the Army"
Al made a mental note to send Jay some cookies for Christmas…well…actually no he wouldn't do that he had a reputation to uphold but he supposed he might skim the top of the files that were piling up on Jay's desk so that the man might actually get out once in a while and not stare at Erin's desk as if the woman might magically appear.
Then he would become fascinated with the back of Hayley's head like he was trapped in High School and Al would once again lament to the Gods. He was a cop after all, if he had wanted to work with kids he would have become a teacher.
And people thought cops were underpaid and undervalued.
Anyway Adam sat there bear in hands and then smiled tucking it into Vicky's side and gently brushing back the hair that was clean. Meredith had thrown the kid into a bath and none to gently given her a good scrubbing and a good delousing. She had gotten Kim to get pyjama's with unicorns on them and so Vicky was looking more and more like a child and less and less like she had been used as someone's punching bag.
(But the eye was still swollen shut, the hands and feet rubbed raw by chains and Al was going to rip this monster into pieces bit by bit when he got a hold of him and that was for Vicky alone)
Eventually Adam pulled back and left the room wincing on his bad knee.
"Adam?"
"Good just…I fucking hate stairs. When all of this is over I want a house with no stairs"
"This is Chicago" Al pointed out. "Good look with that if you want a house."
Adam shot him a look and then grinned and this was the first one that met his eyes in God knows how long. He swallowed and watched as Adam helped himself down the stairs. He didn't help even though every part of him was yearning for him to do that. That he wanted to help his son and Adam's daughter (because it was painful obvious to everyone that, that was the role that Adam had been born to play).
Adam eventually made it downstairs.
"You know where the bathroom is?" Al said as the sofa bed was turned down.
"Yeah"
"You will call me if you need anything?"
"Yes Al"
"You will call me if you have any kind of nightmare and flashback?"
"Yes Al?"
"And if you need me for anything at all."
Adam stared at him in mild disbelief.
"I'm good Al, hand to God."
"Yeah well…this sofa bed was bought with more…harder people in mind than you"
"Al I don't care that I am sleeping somewhere where Voight once used to pass out drunk, this is the best kind of bed I have slept in, in six months"
There was a long pause as Al took that in and then he swallowed.
"Okay"
"Adam—"
"Al I am fine"
"You didn't eat much"
"Wasn't…I don't know what I have been eating for the last six months, I can't remember but I'm guessing from the look on Will's face that it wasn't very good or very nice. I got to eat something real for the first time in six months, one meatball and I felt full. Didn't help that you had Kevin try to re-feed me like I was a child out of the commercials for whatever part of the world is burning down"
"Aha"
"Al seriously…I am fine"
Al couldn't believe that the kid was that stupid to believe that he believed that but he allowed Adam this moment and resisted the urge to tuck him in the same way he had done with Vicky.
"Goodnight" he said quietly.
Adam mumbled the same and then he was gone.
And Al had to drag himself away.
Adam was actually surprised that he was asleep. He had thought that he was not going to be able to but he had and then he had woken up. He had woken up aware suddenly that there was someone in the room. It took his eyes to adjust for a second and then he flipped the light on. His hand scrambled with it until he got the light on and he fell back against the pillows in fright as he saw someone by the sink before he realised that the odd shape was someone stood on a chair.
And realistically that could only be one person.
Vicky was stood there running something under the sink. She had dumped half of Meredith's kitchen cleaner in the sink and was scrubbing with an old pan brush little hands working furiously.
"Vicky?" he asked swinging his legs over the bed.
"I'm fine" Vicky said not stopping scrubbing. Adam came closer and then he stopped as he got close enough to see her under the kitchen lights.
She had wet the bed.
And now she was cleaning the sheets.
Oh.
"Oh"
"Sorry" Vicky said quietly. "I didn't…I didn't even realise that I had done it, I just knew I had to clean it up"
"Oh"
"Cause that's what I did before?"
"Before?"
"I…" Vicky started scrubbing again and Adam noticed her hands were turning red. He took the scrubbing brush off her and pulled her hands to the side turning off the tap. Vicky looked up at him and then she looked away little eyelashes coated with tears.
Big fat ones just waiting to fall.
"Come on kid" Adam said softly. "We don't have secrets you and me okay?"
Vicky stared at him.
"I don't know" she wailed. "I just know that I woke up and I knew what to do, I remembered the man with the funny accent telling me I had to clean the sheets and then he smacked me when I didn't! Please Adam, please don't make me go back!"
And then she started crying. Loud and ugly sobs that racked her whole little body on the chair and picked her up and she wrapped her little body around his sobbing into his shoulder. He rubbed her back gently. "Come on kid" he said finally. "Come on stop this, hush…"
"Adam?"
"It's okay Al" he said as Al came down the stairs. Meredith was following. She took one look to Vicky, to the sheets and she knew in that instantaneous way that good mothers knew, what had happened. Adam rubbed Vicky's back again and said.
"Vicky's had a bit of accident but were not mad are we?"
"Course were not" Meredith said catching on in a way that was truly admired if one was going undercover. "Al go get some spare pyjama's and some clean sheets okay and we can do the bed up again"
But Al was looking at Adam.
"Whose the person with the accent Vicky? Do you know what accent it was?"
"Alvin" Meredith ground out through gritted teeth but Vicky stopped hiccupping and turned around and blinked through red rimmed eyes.
"I just know it was an accent" she said. "Kinda funny. Like the Royal guy who was on TV"
"British?"
She shrugged.
"Calling Voight" Al muttered. "You did good Vicky, real good"
Adam nodded and Vicky paused looking between the two of them and "There were two of them" she said finally and Al stopped dead and so did Adam.
"Two?" he asked.
She nodded.
"One accent, one not. One looking like you, one looking like Kevin, the one who looked like Kevin was the one who hated you the most, I only saw his face once. I didn't remember it until now. I'm sorry Adam I didn't remember it until now"
There was a pause as Adam caught Al's eye. Al shrugged. He had heard with kids that there was a chance that memories were delayed time after time after time and they came back when you least expected it. Maybe that was happening now. He didn't know if he wished that it would happen with him or not though.
He really didn't know if he wished that or not.
Was ignorance truly bliss in situations such as these?
Christ where was Doctor Charles when you needed him?
Actually scratch that thought.
"That's fine hon" he said as Vicky cried again in his shoulder. "That's fine, it's all fine, I know that you must have been scared, you've done real good to tell us this so far. Come on let's go sit down and we can…" he shot a look at Meredith who mouthed hot chocolate.
"Hot chocolate?"
Vicky sniffed.
"What's that?"
Somewhere on the other side of Chicago Kevin Atwater was thrashing in his bed Adam was sure of it. Kevin with his imported cocoa powder and fancy almond milk. Kim who had drank white hot chocolate in ways that made the dentist sing was probably not much better either.
Suddenly he wanted Kim by his side. She would know what to do.
"Something to make you happy" Adam said in answer to Vicky's question and he moved over to the sofa bed and sat down as Al muttered about calling Voight and Meredith cleaned up and he wondered to himself as Vicky sniffed into his chest if this was what normal families were like.
But it didn't matter because he knew without Al telling him that if Vicky had seen the face of the man who had done this to them then she was going to be a target for him.
Vicky was a threat to this monster.
Well. Adam though grimly.
He was getting to her over his dead body.
And he reckoned he had a family all of his own who would back him on this.
And everything else.
Forever.
And there you go, will see you for the next chapter.
Next Chapter-Intelligence follows the money leading to a lead. Adam returns to the prescient for the first time.