Resistance To Assistance

Everyone's Gone But Trudy And Hank

Eventually, after I'd cried myself out and wiped my face of any evidence despite the fact that anyone in the house had definitely heard my pitiful cries, I unlocked and opened the door.

Immediately, arms were wrapped around me. They were warm and strong and swept me off the floor as though I weighed nothing, which, according to my reflection, was not far from the truth.

"Voight, I'm sorry." I mumbled as he carried me away from the bathroom. He carried me to Herrmann's home office, where Trudy was set up at the computer. Clearly, she had opted to have someone else at the desk in the district, but she was still dealing with the computer work from here.

"You don't have to apologise. You are having a run of bad luck, kid." He shook his head slowly and looked down at me where my head lay against his shoulder. "I imagine it all got a lot more real for you after you looked in the mirror?"

"I - " my breath caught in my throat and I took a second to calm down as my mind was thrown back to the image of the man I was now, the man I'd never wanted to be. "I don't know how you recognised me, how Burgess recognised me, I didn't."

"What do you mean?" Platt's voice piped up, and I lazily flopped my head to see her from where Hank was holding me. I realised, belatedly, as I looked at Platt that he had been swaying gently side-to-side as though he was holding a small child. It didn't upset me as much now that I'd seen what I looked like. I'd treat someone who looked like that like a kid, too. I wouldn't know how else to deal with them.

"I look different. Scared. Younger." I gripped Hank's plaid shirt in my left hand to ground myself. "My leg scared me. It looks worse than it feels sure, but it looks really bad."

"Yes, it does." Voight agreed, he sounded defeated as if he felt responsible for my injuries, I looked to Platt hoping she could make him feel better if she had noticed but she looked equally as guilty as Hank sounded and I realised that I would have to do what I did best. Put my feelings aside and help them feel better.

"Hey," I rolled out of Hank's arms and pulled him with me so that we could be near Trudy. Hank's arms encircled my upper body as Platt reached her closest around my hips. "I'm gonna be okay, mostly. I was trained for this kind of thing, and I've been through worse before. The only difference this time is that I have people rallying around me. If I was a normal, well-adjusted person, then that would make this easier for me, but as it is, I'm a bit freakish, and it makes me uncomfortable." I joked, my tone jovial even as I spouted the miserable facts of my life. "If it had been anyone else on the team, they would have died. We all know that, and the others do too. So, at the end of it all, when I'm back at work and kicking the ass of criminal scum like I always have," I faked and exaggerated karate move which pulled a laugh from both of the Sergeants. "Then we can look back on this happy that no one was killed that didn't fucking deserve it."

"What happened to all that worry about your leg?" Hank asked, he pulled me to lean back against him as I tried to turn and face him forcing me to tilt my head up instead.

"If I can run up the stairs, I can kick someone's ass," I snarked, an eyebrow raised defiantly.

"Speaking of kicking ass, did you know you killed that man at the airport?" Platt asked, I turned to face her questioningly. The airport seemed so long ago, and I couldn't think of what she was referring to. She seemed confused, her head tilted ever so slightly to the right, and she leaned towards me a little. "You can't honestly have forgotten?" She asked. I could only shrug in response. "You punched one of Keyes' men, clipped his jaw so hard that you broke his neck and killed him with one punch. Remember now?"

And I did.

I grunted in pain as a fist collided with my side, I barely had time to think before I was jabbed again from behind, I threw my own fist catching one of the men on the underside of his jaw, watching with sick pleasure as his neck broke and he fell to the floor. Just like that.