Author's Note: I don't know about everyone else, but I've felt like S3 has been...bumpy. Fantastic episodes are followed by not so great ones that seem to lose focus on the characters. So I thought I'd try to smooth the transitions from episode to episode with a series of oneshots set before, during, or after each episode. First up: a follow-up to 3x01 exploring Hank's transition to acceptance of Halstead and Lindsay in 3x02.

My past has tasted bitter for years now, so I wield an iron fist.

Grace is just weakness, or so I've been told.

I've been cold; I've been merciless.

But the blood on my hands scares me to death.

Maybe I'm waking up today.

– "I'll Be Good" by Jaymes Young

The creaking of the floorboards causes his eyes to flutter open, and his hand instinctively reaches for the top drawer of his nightstand. His unfocused gaze sweeps across the expanse of his bedroom over the blinking red lights of his alarm clock to the photographs placed on the dresser – the captured expressions invisible in the darkness – and, finally, to the partially opened door of his bedroom.

The nightlight he installed all those years ago back when Camille was toilet training Justin so the kid could find his way to the bathroom in the middle of the night flickers casting a long, skinny shadow onto the wall of the hallway. He squints at it as he pulls the gun from his nightstand drawer. Curls his hand around the cool metal and places his finger on the safety as the floorboards creak again. The sound becomes a long groan as he slides off the bed and onto his own feet, as he straightens his posture and takes one step towards the bedroom door.

And then the sound morphs into the pattering of feet against the floorboards and the slam of the bathroom door followed by a retching heave that reverberates through the paper thin walls of this old house. The sound sobers of him, and he slips the gun back into the drawer. Careful not to bump the safety; careful not to look at the family portrait – the smiling wife, the carefree little boy clutching his mother's hand because it was still cool to be a mama's boy, and the sullen teenager with her arms crossed across her chest whose eyes hold a hint of sparkle because no one would let her sit in the periphery.

That picture was taken two weeks before Erin's sixteenth birthday, five months before Bunny would show up, and ten months before he'd bring her home and she'd detox on the floor of the hallway bathroom. Camille pressing cold compresses to her forehead and holding back her hair as she retched; him on the phone with O trying to figure out where Charlie was and then clutching Erin's clammy, limp hand as she mumbled a desperate apology.

Her apology earlier today – or, yesterday judging by the clock on the nightstand – had been different than the one she gave him fourteen years ago. Still wrapped up in another relationship he wasn't all the keen on, still said with tears in her eyes, and still met with those same conditions – she lives with him, she takes drug tests, and she cuts off all ties with the cancerous people in her life.

Yet she wasn't apologizing for him, wasn't backing down on what this guy in her life means to her. Just acknowledged that she was sorry it got to this point before she realized what she had given up, that she was willing to follow all of his rules if it meant she could come back. Come back to the unit. Come back home.

Not that this house had even been closed to her. Never will be. A fact he hopes she knows as he pushes open the door to his bedroom further and steps out into the hallway. The floorboards creak again under his weight; the nightlight flickers as he crosses in front of it moving steadily towards the linen closet at the end of the hallway. He can hear the window of her bedroom rattling in the wind, and he glances over his shoulder to look at her room as he wrenches open the door of the linen closet.

The soft glow of the lamp on the nightstand illuminates the jumble of covers on the twin bed, the contents of the duffle bags overflowing onto the floor, and the faded posters tacked onto the wall that she never took down when she moved out. He'll grip at her later about the mess. Remind her that she's been here less than an hour and already managed to destroy her room. But the dry heaves and the choking sounds from the bathroom remind him that an unmade bed and dirty clothes on the floor aren't the priority right now, and he focuses on locating a couple of clean washcloths amongst the stacks of towels, extra sheets, and blankets for when the weather turns cold.

He gathers three or four of them in his hand ignoring the lingering smell of the fabric softener Camille used as he shuts the closet door, as he pads his way back down the hallway to the shut bathroom door. He skips jiggling the handle of the bathroom door because he figures it'll be locked. It's the one door in this house that she's allowed to lock. A line in the sand when it comes to him trusting her that Camille put into place when Erin came back at sixteen hooked on dope telling Hank that Erin's rap sheet meant she needed to know her body was hers and her alone. That for all her mistakes, she still deserves a modicum of privacy.

As she got older, as she gained their trust and pulled her life around, that rule expanded to include her bedroom followed by her apartment when she eventually moved out. It's why he waits out in the hallway and talks to her out there when she chooses not to invite him in. And while all that had been reset, while he can't trust her alone in her bedroom let alone her apartment, Hank sure as hell isn't gonna renege on the bathroom rule now that she's thirty, now that she slipped up and fell down the rabbit hole with Bunny again.

So he bangs on the door, calls out her name over the sound of the running water, and waits for the click of the lock being undone to let him know he can come in. And, even then, he's slow to open the door and pokes his head around the door rather than charging in like he normally does when he and his unit are storming the house of a known drug abuser.

"Headaches?" Hank asks in his gruff voice, and Erin slowly nods in response as she takes a seat on the bathroom floor. Her eyes are bloodshot from the strain of vomiting, and her skin is pale from the strain of detoxing. A sickly gray color that stands in stark contrast to the whiteness of her tub that she's pressed herself up against for support.

He's been through this with her enough times to know the drill: the nausea-inducing headaches followed by the chills that will cause her to drench her sheets with sweat and the shakes that will make her yearn for a hit. Thought maybe they'd skip those reactions this time around given how even and steady she was yesterday, given that determined glint in her eyes when they went toe-to-toe with one another. Thought maybe he wouldn't have to do this without Camille to hold Erin when she cries, to come down to the basement when Erin finally passes out and silently hug him because she knows what watching Erin detox is doing to him.

Yet here they are. Hank and his girl, as Camille would call her. And so he drops the handful of washcloths into the basin of the sink, flips on the faucet, and watches the colors darken as the fabric becomes damp. Squeezes out the excess water and then moves across the tiny bathroom to crouch beside her.

"Here, kiddo," he says placing the damp washcloth against the heated skin of her forehead. He wants to shake her and scream at her for putting them both back into this position, but tough love didn't work this time and she's leaning into his touch as tears spring back to her eyes over the term of endearment he's still using. "It's gonna be okay, Erin."

If she believes his promise, she doesn't have time to say so as she pushes him aside and lunges for the toilet. As she heaves up the last bits of the BARF diet – bread, applesauce, rice, fluids – that he managed to get her to eat last night before the adrenaline wore off and she crashed. He steps over her bended legs, moves behind her to fetch other damp washcloth out of the basin, and then hands it to her when she sits back on bended knees to wipe off her face. Hank reaches out to squeeze her shoulder as she runs the damp cloth over her lips, and frowns when he feels her body shaking and shivering with a chill under her black sweatshirt with the touch of his hand.

"It was just pills," Erin tells him as though she can read his mind, and Hank grunts in reply because he hates the flippant way she says the word 'just'. Like the singularity of what she was taking makes it okay. As though he didn't see the abandoned razor blades on her coffee table last night when they swung by her place to pick up her clothes.

"And alcohol," she confesses after a moment filling in the silent question that trailed his grunt. He had figured that one out after he arrived at her apartment terrified those Jackson Park pricks had gotten to her and spied the nearly empty bottle of vodka spilling across her couch. "I swear, Hank, I didn't—"

The buzz of her cellphone against the tiled floor sends her scrambling; the words pouring forth from her mouth swallowed up and forgotten as she clicks a button and silences the ringing. And the suspicion etched into his face deepens as she slips the phone into the front pocket of her sweatshirt, as he wonders if the caller was Bunny or that Landon guy the team found at her apartment or whoever Bunny's got dealing to her these days.

"You gonna answer that?" He asks because her phone has started buzzing again, because the sound is still audible despite the muffling provided by her sweatshirt.

Erin's eyes sweep unfocused around the room refusing to meet his, refusing to look at him as she mulls over her answer. Just like they did when she was sixteen and didn't want him to know that she was sneaking out to meet Charlie and Annie. Just like they did when she was nineteen and aimlessly passing her days as she decided what she wanted to do with her life. Just like they did three weeks ago before she wrenched off her badge and slide it across the counter towards him.

"It's Bunny," she softly confesses, and he can feel his features hardening at the name as Erin finally looks at him. He holds her gaze for a moment, slides his tongue against his teeth as he decides what to say because she knows his rules, knows she needs to ruthlessly carve that cancerous growth out of her life if she ever wants to move forward. Move forward with her badge and her career; move forward into the kind of life he and Camille always wanted for her where she was happy and healthy, where she had a life beyond the badge with people she loved and selflessly loved in return.

And he thought she was finally getting to that point when she didn't fall asunder back when Charlie showed up, when she asked for help and then helped Nadia in turn because she knew who loved her and who deserved her forgiveness. But then Nadia died and—

The blaring of his alarm startles them both; Erin jumping under the hand still curled around her shoulder and his grip tightening to help steady them both. He's never been one for the radio as a wake-up call, and the monotonous beep cuts through the thin walls at a much louder decibel than her vomiting did earlier this morning.

"Get dressed," he tells her releasing his grip on her shoulder and taking the damp washcloth from her hand. "You're coming with me to the district."

"Hank," she starts gesticulating with her eyes towards the toilet, towards the lingering effects of her three-week sabbatical. But her furlough ended yesterday – her vacation bank well past depletion – and he can't justify a medical leave without raising suspicions up in the Ivory Tower. Can only cover for her so much with Fisher before questions start getting asked by IAB and outsiders start poking around the unit.

"We got trash cans and toilets down at the district," Hank reminds her as he unceremoniously dumps the washcloth into the sink. "You can sit in the breakroom and sleep all day. I don't care. But you're not staying here alone."

She acquiesces with a nod of her head; too worn out from a sleepless night filled with a couple rounds of vomiting to sass back about how she doesn't need a babysitter. And she slowly moves to stand on her feet preparing to head into her bedroom to collect her clothes and grumbling under her breath when he tells her to clean up that mess in her bedroom before they go as she slips past him.

Hank takes a moment to tidy up the bathroom, to squeeze the water out of the used and unused washcloths and toss them into the laundry hamper next to the tub. To run the comb through his hair and splash some water on his face before Erin comes back and hogs the bathroom for the next half hour.

The blaring alarm finally shuts itself off as he steps out into the hallway, and Hank can hear Erin ransacking her suitcases over the sound of the floorboards creaking under the weight of his steps back into his bedroom.

He was supposed to fix those steps, get someone in to check the structural soundness a couple of years after they bought this house, but things got busy and then Justin and Erin had become teenagers and this old house had become like another parent. If the floorboards creaked at night, it's because Justin was trying to sneak out. If Erin's window wasn't rattling on a windy night, it's because she had popped it out of its frame and snuck out to meet Charlie or Bunny.

And, now, the floorboards creak when Erin heads into the bathroom and the pipes rattle when she turns on the shower. The normally silent house filling with noise while he gets dress changing out of his sweatpants and t-shirt and into a pair of jeans and a button-up. Hank retrieves his gun and his badge from his nightstand clipping them both to his side as Erin shuts off the water, and he pauses waiting to hear her retching again. Concentrates on making the bed when silence fills the house; frowns when that silence is interrupted by the persistent ringing of her cell phone.

The fourth to last step on the staircase creaks twice: once when he heads downstairs barking at her that she's got ten minutes to be ready and then again fifteen minutes later when she comes downstairs and then heads outside to where he's waiting in the Escalade. She's still wearing that sweatshirt despite the summer heat, but her badge is clipped to her waist and the shower has returned some color to her face.

A good sign, Hank thinks to himself as he watches her lock the front door behind her and step off the front porch. But his lips dip into a frown when he sees her pull out her cell phone as she walks up the sidewalk towards the car. When she frowns at the phone before slipping it back into the pocket of her sweatshirt; when she slips aviator sunglasses onto her face before climbing into the passenger seat diminishing his ability to read her.

The buzz of her cell phone in her pocket punctuates most of the drive to the district. Hank's gaze following Erin's every time she pulls the phone out of her pocket to check the caller ID; Hank's gaze hardening as the reach the fourth stoplight on this short drive and the phone buzzes again.

"Turn it off," he tells her gruffly as he waits for the light to change back to green, as an unfamiliar name – no doubt someone Erin spent the last three weeks partying with – flashes across the screen as Erin pulls the phone from her pocket again.

"I can't," she replies in her own gravelly voice as she slips the phone back into her pocket and goes back to staring out the window. He figures the constant start-stop of the drive has left her nauseous just as it did back when she was sixteen and he had raced her to Med – Olinsky in the driver's seat and him in the back trying to keep her awake – to get her stomach pumped and guesses from the way she keeps pressing her fingers to her forehead that the brightness of the morning sun has amplified her migraine.

"Erin, I told you that you have to cut Bun–"

"I haven't heard how Jay is," Erin interrupts, and he can feel the heat of her gaze through her sunglasses as she turns to look at him. As she adopts that same tone she used with him yesterday when she said it didn't matter if Halstead was her boyfriend, that they both know it should be her that goes in to get him. "I left messages on his cell and at Chicago Med for his brother, and I'm waiting for one of them to call me back, okay?"

Hank holds her gaze through a single iteration of the stoplight changing, through the car behind them honking in agitation that he hasn't driven through the intersection yet. An unreadable expression on his face that causes Erin to shift in her seat, to look back out the window as she mumbles something about Halstead being her partner. And he frowns when the guy behind them honks again, when he turns his attention back to the road and pulls out into the intersection. It takes him less than a second to hang a U-turn, to take a left towards Chicago Med rather than a right towards Firehouse 51 and the district.

"Whaa—" Erin starts as she clutches the handle of the door, and her bewilderment is interrupted as she presses her arm to her stomach and tries not to vomit over the quick maneuver Hank just made with the car. It doesn't take her long to catch on, to reorient herself because she knows these streets almost as well as he does. And her voice dips low as they turn into the parking lot of Chicago Med reaching an almost pleading tone as she says his name.

The emotion in her eyes may be obscured by her sunglasses, but the emotion behind those four letters remind him exactly why he didn't want her and Halstead gettin' mixed up in the first place. He's seen partners struggle to adapt after one of them gets hurt in the line of duty and struggle to deal with the guilt that comes when your partner gets hurt and you escape unscathed. Introduce sex? Introduce feelings? Throws the whole symbiosis of the unit off. Destroys partnerships and careers.

And yet had come back for him. Not for herself. Not for Hank. For Halstead. And maybe she had decided to stick around because of Hank and because of her own feelings about this job, but that's not what got her to walk up those steps and refuse to leave. To demand that Hank let her do this for Jay, let her be Halstead's backup. And that, to him, means she's also gotta be the one to do this, even if it means opening the door to something he wanted to firmly stay closed.

"Your partner gets hurt in the line of duty, you pick him from the hospital," Hank calmly reminds her watching the suspicious that they were here for her to get drug tested or detox be replaced by surprise as he pulls into one of the empty parking spaces near the front of the building. "You want me to go in, or–"

There's a flicker of hesitation across her face that he picks up on despite the sunglasses, despite the way she looks from the entrance to the hospital to the badge clipped to her waist as she avoids his gaze. And then she reaches for her seat belt unbuckling it and pushing open the passenger door in one fell swoop as she reminds him that Halstead is her partner and she's got this in a firm, resolute tone.

And Hank watches her cross the parking lot – a barely perceivable shake to every step courtesy of the 'just pills' leaving her system – and disappear through the sliding front doors as a sigh falls from his lips. He runs a hand down his face and tries not to think about the decision he's gonna have to make – to pardon them or not, to pretend there isn't gonna be ramifications for this no matter which way it goes – as he reaches for the cell phone unceremoniously dropped into the cup holder when he got into the Escalade this morning to call Olinsky and tell him that he's got Halstead's ride home covered.

The tap against the glass of the driver's side window interrupts his movements, and Hank glances over his shoulder to see Olinsky standing next to car. He slides one finger against the power button of the window rolling it down so Olinsky can lean through the open window of the car and ask him what's going on.

"Saw Lindsay going in," Al says without emotion or judgement in his voice as his gaze flicks from the entrance to Chicago Med to Voight. "She here to pick up Halstead?"

"He's her partner," Hank replies gruffly as he drops the cell phone back into the empty cup holder and glances up to look at Olinsky. The man doesn't say anything, doesn't shrug his shoulders or comment on how he was supposed to pick up Jay this morning cause Antonio stayed with him last night and Halstead's brother was scheduled to work today. But Hank's known him long enough to read the silence, to know that Olinsky wants to know what he's gonna do about Halstead and Lindsay. About the fact that he gave Burgess and Ruzek a pardon after Burgess was hurt in the line of duty.

"She's got enough going on right now," Hank grunts, and Al hums noncommittally in response allowing a long, steady silence to fill the space before adding that Antonio told him this morning that Halstead would be on medical leave for at least a week. And then he gestures with a nod of his head towards the front entrance, towards where Halstead is very stiffly lifting himself from the wheelchair with Erin and the nurse's assistance. Leaning against Erin as the nurse pulls the wheelchair away, as he takes a slow step towards the parking lot.

He's too far away to hear what's being said, but his eyes are still sharp and Hank doesn't fail to see the way the purple and yellow bruises on Halstead's face are folded into a grin. To see how Erin's hand presses against her partner's back to steady him as she bites her lip and fails to suppress her smile; to see her try to stand up a little straighter and be the support Halstead needs right now.

"Your unit, your rules," Olinsky concedes tapping against the car as he steps away from the door so Hank can either step out himself or pull the car up closer to the entrance. And Hank waits with a hard glare on his face for Al to continue with a 'but' yet none comes because it's Al and they both already know what Olinsky would say if he was more loquacious. What Camille would say. That Erin came back for Halstead, that Erin getting healthy again means her having people who love her without an agenda, and that, whether he likes it or not, the window in her bedroom is gonna be rattling with the ping of pebbles being lobbed against it at three a.m.

Hank sighs as he shifts the Escalade into drive, as he tells Olinsky that he's still driving Halstead home before pulling out of the parking spot and navigating over to where Erin and Halstead stand together. He needs the week, at least, to decide. To get Erin back to place where she's healthy and he can trust her; to let Halstead get back to one hundred percent before Erin puts him through the ringer like all the guys before him. To make sure this gamble with the unity of his unit is worth it.

And, yet, he also knows that this decision was made for him yesterday when Jay was kidnapped and Erin showed up, when she stepped out of that room with blood on her hands from trying to protect him, when she showed up in his office and told him that Halstead – not him, not a case – reminded her of why she loves this job. Knows he conceded already by bringing her over here, and knows that Camille, if she was here helping him get Erin through the detox process, would tell him that the job is never gonna make her smile like she does around Halstead.