Halstead Imagines

To Family, Blood or Otherwise

A/N: Thank you for reading and please remember to vote and comment! Also, happy early Thanksgiving to my American readers! To my Will Halstead lovers, I'm sorry that there's really no Will in this one.

Trigger warning: mentions/slight depictions of child abuse.

"You sure you're good to stay the night?" you asked Hailey. "You know I can handle it all by myself."

"Y/N, I know you can," Hailey said through the phone. "Hell, you built this place basically! But, me and Jay just want to keep you safe. And since you don't want guys there overnight, I volunteered because I think Kim and Adam had some sort of date night planned. Me and Jay will bring her by in two hours."

"Right on time for dinner," you said. "I'll be sure to make extra in case you need a midnight snack, too."

"Nah, don't worry about it. Me and Jay are going out to Bartoli's. You want me to bring you two slices? One for when I get there around 11 and one for at like four in the morning?"

"That'd be amazing. I'll Venmo you for coffee if you want to grab that, too?"

"Pizza and coffee, you got it."

"Awesome, see you tonight, Hailey."

"See you later, Y/N. And, she's not too feisty, only a little bit. She's just...broken."

"They all are," you said and then reiterated that her room and dinner would be ready when she got there.

You started this work three years ago when you were 25. You had gotten your master's degree in social work, but you knew the system was flawed a few months into your new job as a social worker. So, you did what you always did when you had a problem, which was to enlist the help of one of your big brothers. This time, it just so happened to be Jay.

You had the idea of setting up a girls' home. And not just a girls' home for kids or teens, no, this place would be a sanctuary for girls 18-22, those who had just aged out of foster care. And, it wouldn't be only for kids who aged out of foster care. You had the idea of having it be for girls that Intelligence picked up for solicitation or dealing drugs because you knew those were typically trades of survival that girls were in out of necessity because the foster system had previously failed them.

You had brought this idea up to Jay and at first, he didn't like it because he knew you could get hurt. But, then you pointed out that a girl could try and knock you out while you were transferring her to a placement right now as a social worker and that you also knew the proper restraints. It would be just as dangerous as the job you currently had.

He still wasn't set on it until Hailey mentioned that if things had gone differently with the police academy, she could've been one of those girls because of the home life she had. She didn't make bad decisions, but she had the precursors to make them. One call to the police by a neighbor or the school and she could've been out in the foster system and could've ended up like one of those girls.

After that conversation, Jay had finally warmed up to the idea. You and he had made up a proposal to give to Voight which included the stipulations of the girls staying there and how the program would work. The catch was that these girls wouldn't have charges pressed against them for the crime that they had been brought in for. They had a choice: be sent to central booking or come to your home and complete a treatment program and those charges would be dropped.

After months of calls and paperwork and fundraising, you had finally done it. You only needed two more things. The first was getting one of your graduate school professors, who was a trained psychologist, to see each of these girls twice a week. You couldn't offer her much pay until everything got sorted out and you got the non-profit off the ground, but she agreed because she saw the potential in you and your project.