What I Need- a Hank Voight Chicago PD fanfiction

Drained

Voight tipped the delivery driver and let the door close behind him. Crossed to the kitchen and dropped the bag into the garbage bin. He wasn't hungry.

A minute later he pulled it back out and shoved it into the fridge. No point wasting the blasted thing just because he wasn't in the mood to eat it.

He popped the top of a beer and just stood there staring at it. 

He had killed a man today.

It hadn't been a choice so much as a consequence. Action, reaction. It was the simplest process in the world. A weapon drawn and a shot fired. He was just doing his job but he knew himself well enough to know it was more than that.

There had been a solid satisfaction in it. Maybe even enough to take something right and blur it until it was wrong. He wasn't sure justice could still be justice if it was personal. And he didn't care.

You didn't threaten the people he cared about without paying for it. And that man in that park had paid.

He didn't enjoy it, didn't hope for days like today, didn't look back on the shots he had to take with any type of pleasure. But he accepted it. And he would do it again in a heartbeat. Some people disagreed with it, the lengths he would go to to keep his people safe. They thought he should feel guilty for not feeling guilty. But he couldn't regret it, stopping a man that needed to be stopped.

He did what needed to be done. Action and reaction. A threat removed. It's how Voight operated, and he did it well.

Sometimes a little too well.

Voight was trying to shut it off, the part of him that knew it wouldn't take much. A few pulled strings and Eric wouldn't be a problem he had to worry about anymore.

He had connections, on either side of the law. One phone call would wreck Eric. His career. His life. Would stop him from taking Lana back to Miami.

They were connections he had used before, when his people were threatened by something the law couldn't fix. Erin. Justin. He hadn't been above scraping the bottom of the moral barrel just to get them out of whatever they were in.

But this was different. Because Eric wasn't a threat to his team. He wasn't here to hurt anything Voight had sworn to protect. Lana didn't need defending against him. Eric didn't want to hurt her, he just wanted her back.

If Voight pulled strings now it would be purely selfish, and that was a low even he couldn't respect.

His phone rang and he pulled it out, tossing it aside without looking at it. The captain had no doubt heard about the shooting by now and he wasn't in the mood to get an earful.

He downed his beer, as Milani's name flashed twice more on the screen before going blank.

*********

Voight had settled onto the couch, dozed off to an old western. It was after eleven when he stirred, convinced himself to get up and go to bed. He grabbed his phone to plug it in and paused, the missed call notification still on the screen.

Lana had called? He hesitated, his eye going to the clock. It was late. She had only called once so it wasn't urgent, he should just wait until tomorrow.

But his finger was already dialing her back, and he listened to the tone as the line rung.

It took a minute before she answered, her voice coming slightly rough through the phone.

"Hello?"

"Hey, did I wake you?"

Lana looked down at the scattering of chips she had dropped onto her lap as she had fallen asleep on the couch.