Always Here: A Jay Halstead fanfic

Chapter Thirty Seven

The trial was finished. Jason, Troy and Eric were all going to jail. It had been hell for Harper listening to the doctor list Lily's injuries: rape, sodomy, internal bleeding, blunt force trauma to the head. It could go on and on, Harper just couldn't handle it. Voight had made her take a week off after the jury had found the three men guilty.

As Harper walked out of the courthouse, she realized she couldn't do it. She had missed all those years with her sister and nothing would bring them back, nothing would bring Lily back. The pain of losing her had been overwhelming when she thought about all she tried to do to protect Lily when they were just kids. 

She couldn't handle it, she couldn't handle the pain of losing her little sister, she needed an escape. So she drove to Savannah's house to inform her that Lily was dead. Not that Savannah would care, Harper just needed an escape. She needed drugs.

When she knocked on the door to her childhood home, Savannah's door, a wave of sadness came rushing in, there were reminders of Lily everywhere. Lily, who had done everything to turn her life around but still ended up dead. She needed the drugs Savannah was offering her to numb the pain of losing her sister.

Once she took that first shot, that first rail, and she felt herself slipping, she wanted, needed, more. She wanted to slip down a whole so far she didn't even know who she was or what she had done. So she took more drugs and alcohol partied all night with Savannah and her junkie friends.

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Jay was worried about Harper. She said she had gone to tell Savannah that Lily was dead but Jay said that they should go together. She didn't listen and went by herself. Harper was running away from the people that actually cared about her, her family.

Jay was hurt, angry even that Harper didn't think their promise was worth staying true to. He thought they had figured everything out. He thought they were making progress. He was in love with her and he was so close to making the next move. Now it was all going to shit.

He called Hank, "Sarge, Harper said she was going to go notify Savannah a couple of hours ago, she hasn't come home yet" Jay said, he knew he would probably get in trouble with Hank for not going with her, but that was a small price to pay for Harper's safety. "Did you track her phone?" Hank asked. "Yeah, it's turned off," Jay said, pacing the room.

"Well this is her week off so I'm going to trust her on this one and wait until when she's supposed to come back to work, stand down on this one, don't go looking for her, she's grieving, give her time to heal" Voight said. Voight was worried about Harper but he wanted to show her that he trusted her and give her the benefit of the doubt on this one.

Jay was slightly angry that Voight was telling him to stand down, how did he expect him to not go look for his best friend who wasn't even showing up at the apartment they shared? But he knew Voight was basically Harper's father so he decided to respect his wishes.

As work started Monday, still hadn't shown up at the apartment, and she wasn't at work either. Jay's worry dulled the anger he was feeling. Harper was slipping down a hole, a hole bigger than Erin slipped down with Nadia. After Nadia was murdered, Erin went to her mother's bar and drank, but she showed up at work the next day.

But Harper wasn't the same as Erin, she was worth more than Erin. Harper was one in a million to Jay. He had never met someone who could look into him and read his every thought the way she could. Harper was worth fighting for more than anyone in his life.