Present Day
I'm a good monster.
I ripped a guy's throat out with my teeth.
The agency sent him to kill me.
I'm a good monster.
Ripped a guy's throat out.
Sent him to kill me.
I'm a good monster.
With my teeth.
Sent him.
I'm a good monster.
Everything Tess had told him ran on repeat through his mind but it always came back to those three statements and no matter how many times he went over them Jay couldn't make sense of them. He couldn't accept them. And try as he did to calm himself down, to try and soothe himself in her, easy, easier when she was out so deep she couldn't feel his hands running through her hair or trailing down her face, or caressing her waist, nothing worked. In fact it made him more angry, bringing back the rage he'd felt when Clark had come to the district. And the helplessness when Tess had given Arlo her number.
Forty-two.
Was the agencies assassin part of that number?
Did it matter?
In some ways it didn't but in others… it really fucking did. Unable to continue lying next to her he headed to the living room and shot another text off to Vivienne, grateful when this time she was free to talk. Until she started filling him in. It turned out the agency had tried to kill Tess twice, first by an unsuccessful poisoning she hadn't been able to pin on them and then with their top assassin and when he'd failed she'd gone to D.C and had the men responsible brought up on charges. All eight of them. Mercy. And irrefutable proof she was even stronger than they'd feared. And he fucking loved that. Because what they had done was unforgiveable. The agency was meant to be her shield and yes she'd broken their rules but they'd wanted her dead not because she was a danger to peace but because she was a danger to them.
But a threat was a threat so it was no wonder she'd started to think of herself that way.
To believe she was a monster.
That rage inside him grew until he knew if he stayed he wouldn't be able to contain it anymore and even though the sky was barely light enough for work to be an acceptable excuse for his absence he left anyway. He thought about going there but right now all he could see it as was just another broken, no destructive institution so instead Jay went to the next closest thing. What might be the only thing that could help him make sense of this. He could count on one hand how many times he'd been to the little house, and never once on his own but after a few minutes of knocking the front door swung open and the mess inside him both calmed and got louder when he saw the shotgun in the occupants hand.
"Jay?" With a confused look his Sergeant waved him in, shutting, and locking, the door behind him before he set the gun down.
"Why do you have that?"
"What're you doing here?"
"Why?"
"Because I've been on the force forty years and I've got a lot of enemies." Voight answered easily and he didn't know what face he made but understanding dawned quickly on his. "What happened?"
But he didn't answer him, couldn't when he was choking back another shout so instead he surveyed the man's living room; it looked the same as it had the last time he'd been here, half a decade ago and just like then it threw him off, a domesticity he wasn't used to associating with his boss. He didn't think about it much, and he felt ashamed of that right now but after Tess who did he know who had lost so much? His wife, his son, the woman he'd loved like a daughter. His best friend.
Voight knew loss just as well as he did the fight.
They were intertwined and that part he understood but the rest…
"Jay-"
"They tried to kill her. The agency. Not- not now. Before." He explained, badly but his Sergeant just nodded and motioned for him to take a seat.
"And you can't make sense of it." Voight confirmed as he sat across from him and it threw him again when he realized the older man was wearing a t-shirt and pajama pants. Had he ever seen him so… domestic?
No.
And that shamed him too.
"Jay, you know the agency doesn't operate the same way-"
"The force did the same to you. And to Kevin. That's what it does it people who fight back, who rightly try to make it better and I… that's not what I signed up for. That's not what I believe in, it's not who I want to fight for."
Again he just nodded, quiet as he looked him over; this was what he loved about his boss. Aside from occasionally on the job he never tried to tell him what he should do. Hank let him make his own decisions.
Right or wrong.
"So what do you want to do?" He asked after a minute, as relaxed as if they were deciding what to have for breakfast and Jay let that ease sink into him and release the answer he'd been afraid to speak aloud.
"I want to tell her to burn it all down."
"I think one day she's going to." Hank said wryly, leaning back as he looked him over again. "But I also think fire is the last thing either of you need right now."
That was true.
But what did she need?
"She thinks she's a monster."
Another small nod, the same sadness he felt with the same resolve. "Tess knows everything, or near enough which means she's always the one in charge. The one responsible. So find a way to show her that she's not."
It sounded simple but he'd spent months trying to figure out a way to do just that and had come up empty handed every time. But the way his sergeant said it… Tess did know everything. But she wasn't the only one who knew everything.
A dangerous idea forming he stood, belatedly taking Hank's soft gaze. "You should call her."
"She doesn't need me-"
"Erin." Jay said quietly, holding his stare as his eyes went wide. "You should call her. Life's too short to let the people you love go."
Leaving him there to think it over, with a silent promise to thank him later for the help he headed back to his truck, eyeing the numbers on the dash. Six twenty-eight.
"What's she doing?"
"Making a lot of cinnamon rolls."
So that was what baked good said sorry for grabbing you like a startled animal.
"Do I have full access to you?"
"You are the only other person in the world who does."
He let that hit and ripple through him before nodding. "I need you to find something out for me."
For a man that had such a thing about numbers Jay was getting really sick of all the ones he had floating around inside his head, mostly because they were stuck in there along with the speech he'd spent the morning rehearsing. After leaving Voight's he'd gone to the River Walk until Cas told him Tess was on her way to 51 and even though he wished he could go with her, be the pillar he knew she needed right now he didn't. He was still nervous about how that was going to go, mostly worried Severide would cause unintentional but devastating damage- he understood protective instincts, and he also understood being with a strong woman but the man had to have gotten a good enough read on Tess in the last year to know she would never hurt anyone intentionally.
No one good and he had enough of a sense of the lieutenant to know he was the kind of man who understood that.
He'd thought it would've taken longer for Cas to gather the information he'd requested, some would be readily available but he honestly didn't know how others could be gathered but he trusted the AI to be the most accurate and a few one way or another wouldn't change anything. A few.
"She's on her way up."
He looked up where he sat on the couch waiting for her to come back, grateful for the heads up but then wondering how often she got it. At least it was starting to feel like Cas was as much on his side, what felt, and sounded like in homage to her predecessors.
The elevator opened, silently but she found immediately and her already low shoulders slumped but more with acceptance than despair and her eyes, though exhausted, were apologetic. "I've been a bitch."
"To no one more than yourself."
With a deep breath in she nodded then walked over, the way she curled into the couch telling him she was both being vulnerable and feeling comfortable. So contradictory. "Jay-"
"It's my turn to talk."
Tess blinked and by the time her eyes settled back on his she knew the kind of conversation this was going to be. Well, she knew it was the serious, something will be changing kind.
Truthfully neither of them knew how much.
"Three hundred and eighteen. That's my number. I had Cas figure it out."
Four emotions in one blink but he saw every fucking one, shock, understanding, love and dread. "Jay-"
"It's still my turn." Her mouth snapped shut, she was taking it which meant she knew she needed it but now there was definitely despair creeping in, even as the love for him grew, confused though it became. "It's what I thought it would be, a little higher but I'm… okay with that. I'm proud of that. When Arlo first asked for yours… I thought he meant the full one and when I thought about it more I figured it would be around a thousand. And that seemed reasonable to me. It seemed small."
That definitely confused her.
And that's what he was hoping for. To interrupt the script she had running through her head telling her everything was her fault, her responsibility, and that she was bad at it, that she didn't deserve to have better. That she wasn't good.
"But I was wrong. Your number-"
"Jay-" Now there was panic, and that soul-deep dread but he tore right past it.
"Is five hundred and seventy-eight."
Her eyes popped open as fast as they'd scrunched shut but otherwise she was frozen, like a fawn in the headlights, fully comprehending what he was saying but unable to accept what it meant.
"Fifteen years as an operative, over a hundred and fifty operations, more than anyone in the agencies history and you have one of the lowest kill counts. And comparatively you do have the lowest." He said roughly, having to take a breath to gather his own emotions; none of these numbers meant anything to him except in what they could mean to her and the hope that they would heal what he knew was broken could not be contained.
Not even for her.
Tess was trying to fight it, that was the instinct now but the newest. The easiest to break and he was going to break something.
"But your saved count." Jay continued slowly and once again in the blink it took for her eyes to lock back on his he saw everything, the disbelief and desperation, not for what he would say but because he already knew.
And he loved her still.
"You have saved three thousand, nine hundred and fourteen people."
She started sobbing before he finished speaking and it was a good thing she'd been leaning against the couch because she stayed upright when she collapsed into herself. He just scooted forward and loosely wrapped his arms around her, not to comfort but just to be with her as she rode it.
And she did, all the way through, but this was a lesson he was going to hammer home. "You are killing yourself and you have to stop. You have to let it go. I don't care what you are. Animal, monster, thing, it doesn't matter because you are good. You are a hero and a warrior and you need to give yourself some of the fucking grace you give to everyone else."
It was the quietest sob that cut the sharpest, and the deepest but he waited and after she let his words settle Tess closed her eyes and pushed them away but now he stayed quiet, knowing it was her own she had to listen to. Had to ask herself the question she was so fucking terrified of.
The answer he already knew.
That he'd always known.
"I'm Tess Danvers." She mumbled after a minute of intense silence, so softly he might've missed it were it not for the unmistakable pride.
Damn right she was.
And she was his.
