scripted reality (jay halstead / upstead / one chicago (cast))

chapter 23

"What's so important? It's Saturday night." Paddy rushed into the bullpen just minutes after Tracy and I arrived. My partner spun around in her chair to face him and shrugged. I nodded over my shoulder at Voight's office from where I was sitting on her desk and Paddy followed my gaze to see Jason talking to the police commander behind closed doors. I turned back to him. "They've been in there this whole time. We know as much as you know."

Paddy went to sit in the chair behind Tracy's and sighed, taking a sip from his starbucks coffee. Then his face lit up and his lips formed into a smirk. "So, how'd the dinner go?" he questioned. Remind me to never tell Paddy about my personal life again. "Good," I replied, glancing over at Tracy, "I guess." She had been pretty quiet on the ride to the district, but she seemed fine, so I assumed it was just the overwhelming load of memories and information that came with meeting her family and which she now had to process. Tracy chuckled. "Yeah, I mean nobody ripped each other's heads off," she joked. "Honestly though, it was pretty nice. We made a good couple, I would say." Paddy laughed as well. "I definitely believe that."

By the time the commander had left and Jason stepped out of his office, the rest of Intelligence was around as well. "What's so important?" Paddy repeated his question from earlier. Jason pinned a picture to the investigation board instead of answering directly. "This is Aahil Bashara, he was beaten to death earlier this week. Homicide is drowning in cases and all they got is a social media post linking his death to some new white supremacist group here in Chicago."

He pointed at the photo while he continued speaking. "But this didn't go unnoticed, and people are demanding answers." I nodded. I remembered vaguely that I had seen the guy's picture in the paper. "So from tomorrow," Jason looked at us all in turn, "this is our only case, until we can deliver the answers this city is waiting for." Everyone agreed quietly, soon getting up to leave again since we knew we should come in early the next morning to solve this murder. Or, as Paddy hissed next to me, put some cuffs on these white assholes.

I wanted to question whether it was really smart to give a case like this to us if it was so important, but I stopped myself. We had done well so far, I had to admit that. There was no real reason we shouldn't give it a shot. After all, the fact that we were working overtime in intelligence, paired with the fact that we couldn't really think of new approaches to the issue, was the reason we didn't get any further with figuring out why we were trapped in this fucked up reality in the past weeks.

I silently made a note to myself to try harder on that end again while Tracy and I made our way down the stairs after saying goodbye to the rest of the unit. I was ready to start debating how to spend the rest of our evening – it wasn't as late yet, seeing that Jason's call had ended our dinner early – but I never got the chance since a voice pulled me out of my thoughts as soon as we reached the bottom of the stairs.

"Halstead!" Tracy and I both stopped in our tracks and turned towards Trudy, who was holding the handset of her telephone to her chest so whoever was on the line wouldn't hear our conversation. The expression on her face was troubled, like she was already regretting what she was about to say, something that wasn't exactly usual for Platt. Immediately sensing that something was wrong, we stepped closer. "What?"

The desk sergeant quickly glanced over at Tracy and her hand that was fondly resting on her now more visible baby bump. Then she looked back at me. "I'm on the phone with someone from Med. They have a patient there that's insisting on seeing you." Why me, I wanted to ask, but I knew the better question was who. I tried to go through possibilities in my head. However, I couldn't come up with any. "Who is it?" Platt once again glanced between Tracy and me before she replied. "Camila Vega."

"Camila Vega?" I repeated, as if I hadn't heard right, although I knew I had. Surprisingly, the first thing I felt at hearing her name was hurt. Hurt, followed by guilt and anger. An almost uncontrollable anger at myself. I clenched my fists, trying to stay calm. I hadn't heard that name in years, not since we shot those episodes, not since they aired. Not since it all went to hell. Memories flashed over me like a tidal wave. I betrayed Camila. I let Luis die, and I betrayed Camila. I never had the guts to tell her who I really was because back then. Being with her felt so good, so... real. I put my job at risk for her, my whole unit, everything. Hailey. For what? To fuck it all up, and end up hurting everyone who was important to me?

"Listen, you don't have to go if you don't want to," Trudy said. Stop. I didn't do all those things. Jay did. What if Camila Vega wasn't actually Camila Vega? What if the same thing that happened to us happened to her, too? "No," I answered without really thinking about it. "It's fine. I'm going." Trudy eyed me sceptically, then looked over at Tracy. I knew that look. It basically screamed 'Jay is emotionally unstable and doesn't know what the fuck he's doing'. It also screamed 'get your boyfriend in line'. I hated that look.

"Jay," Tracy hissed, making me stop staring at Trudy and turn towards her instead. She pulled me over to the stairs. I quickly glanced at the desk sergeant, who made no move to pick up the phone again and continue talking to the person on the other end, but simply watched us instead. "Hurry up," she shouted after us, "I don't have all night." Tracy huffed. I looked back at her. "Why would you want to see Camila?" she asked. Her face showed a mixture of confusion and worry as she raised an eyebrow at me.

I sighed. "What if she's not actually Camila? What if that girl woke up as Camila Vega one day the same way we woke up as Hailey and Jay?" Tracy's eyes widened slightly as she understood what I was saying. "But what if she didn't? Let's assume it's actually Camila Vega, and she asked to see you. We don't know what she wants, and we don't know what will happen." She ran a hand through her hair in frustration. "And no matter if it's her or if it's the actress who played her, she quite probably will feel what Camila would feel when seeing you. And that's not gonna be pretty." Tracy glanced over at Platt – who was still observing our observation with a slightly annoyed expression because we were taking her precious time – and then back at me. "We don't know how you'll react; we don't know what you'll do."

Quite probably, I'll freak out. I was pretty good at predicting my typical Jay reactions by now, so I knew Tracy had every right to be concerned. "I get why you don't like the idea," I started, trailing off because I wasn't sure how to continue. I didn't like arguing. "And I know it's risky." I searched for the right words. "But I also think we shouldn't jump to conclusions before we know for sure what's going on. And if that girl isn't actually Camila, then she's fucked, and in that case... Don't I owe it to her to at least show up there?"

Tracy sighed. She didn't seem convinced, but she also didn't argue. She just stood there, seeming kind of lost, and stared at me as if I had already made my decision, with or without her consent. But I didn't want that. I didn't want to make decisions without her, do things she wasn't comfortable with. There had to be another way. I took a deep breath. "Come with me?"

A moment passed in which we just looked into each other's eyes, while I hoped that she would understand why this was important to me. I wondered if Tracy felt anything at hearing Camila's name, if there were any Hailey emotions inside of her – jealousy, anger, hurt – that sparked when Platt spoke those words. After a while, Tracy nodded.

"We're going," she assured Trudy when we walked over to the front desk again, her voice firm. Platt glanced between us one last time, then shrugged. Still sceptically, she picked up the handset of her phone. "Okay."

As we drove over to Med, I started to get nervous. I wasn't sure if I had taken the right decision. Maybe I should have listened to Tracy. Maybe Camila was Camila, or she wasn't Camila but still experiencing her emotions – which might be worse because I could tell from experience that trying to deal with your character's emotions wasn't easy. Maybe going to see this woman at the hospital was destined to become a disaster, and maybe there wasn't anything I could do, no matter what she wanted from me. Maybe going there wasn't the right step, not now, not anytime, and definitely not with my pregnant partner, girlfriend, or however you might call it, next to me. But it was too late. We were already on the way, and I would quite probably blame myself if I turned back now. We would just have to go through with it and hope for the best.

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sooooooo, nobody saw that coming 👀 i actually didn't plan for this to become a cliffhanger, but it would have gotten too long to add the whole med situation to this chapter, so be excited for saturday... as usual, feel free to let me know what you think in the comments! thank you so, so much for reading, and leave a vote if you like! ❤️