Hi!😁
In honor of those who voted in my last poll, here is the sequel to "A Sergeant's Heart: Father Figure". Part 2 is called....
https://archiveofourown.org/works/77851381/chapters/203966791
A Sergeant's Heart: Family, Forged
Chapter 1: The Morning After
Hank Voight
The hospital chair had molded to my spine— hard plastic, cold metal, and the kind of ache that settles deep. I had slept in worse places. Abandoned cars, stakeout vans, the floor of my office. But this was different. This was not sleep. It was a vigil.
Sofia lay still in the bed, her face a bruised map of what they had done to her. One eye was swollen shut, stitches like seams across her temple. Her leg was suspended in a cage of metal and bandages. But she was breathing. The machine was not doing it for her anymore. She was doing it herself.
Small victories.
The sun was starting to bleed through the blinds, striping the floor in pale gold. Night shift had melted into day shift. Nurses moved in soft-soled silence, checking monitors, adjusting drips. One of them— Linda, her badge said— gave me a nod. No smile. Just understanding. She had brought me coffee at three in the morning without asking. I had drunk it without tasting it.
Now, in the weak morning light, I could see the details I had missed in the dark. The way her right hand was bandaged around the wrist, but her fingers were loose. The way her left thumb kept drifting toward her mouth, even in sleep, like it was seeking an old friend. A habit she had fought in the bullpen, a secret she had tried to keep. Now, in this sterile room, it was just… her. No masks. No armor.
My girl.
The door pushed open quietly. Kim stood there, holding two paper cups. She looked tired, but her eyes were clear. She had been here most of the night, too. We all had.
“She wake up at all?” she whispered, handing me one of the cups.
I shook my head. “Mumbled in her sleep. Called for her dad once. Then for me.”
Kim’s face softened. She moved to the other side of the bed, brushing a strand of hair from Sofia’s forehead. “Hey, sweetie,” she murmured, like Sofia could hear. “It is morning. You made it through the night.”
We stood there for a minute, two sentinels in a too-quiet room. The machines beeped. The city outside began to stir.
“They are bringing in a specialist today,” Kim said after a while. “For the leg. And a therapist. The kind who deals with… this.”
I nodded. I knew what “this” meant. The bruises would fade. The bones would knit. But the other wounds— the ones you could not see on an X-ray— those were the ones that scared me.
“She is strong,” I said, more to myself than to Kim.
“She is,” Kim agreed. “But she should not have to be this strong.”
The door opened again, and Jay slipped in. He looked like he had come straight from the district— same clothes as yesterday, shadow of stubble, eyes sharp. He glanced at Sofia, then at me.
“Cullen’s sister talked,” he said, voice low. “Gave us a name. Driver who moved her from the farmhouse. We are closing in.”
A cold, clean focus cut through the fog in my head. “Where?”
“South Side. Abandoned auto shop. Torres and Ruzek are setting up surveillance. We move when you say.”
I looked back at Sofia. Her chest rose and fell. Her thumb rested against her lip. She looked small. Breakable. She was neither of those things, but right now, she needed to be protected. And I knew, with a certainty that felt like stone in my gut, that the best way to protect her was to remove the threat. Permanently.
“Tell them to hold,” I said. “I want eyes on every exit. I want to know who is inside. I do not want this guy slipping away because we got impatient.”
Jay nodded. “We will be ready.”
He lingered for a moment, his gaze on Sofia. Something shifted in his expression— something protective, brotherly. He reached out and lightly touched her blanket-covered foot. “Hang in there, Sof ” he whispered, then left as quietly as he had come.
Kim watched him go, then looked at me. “You are going after them.”
“Yes.”
“And when you find them?”
I did not answer. She knew. We all knew. Some lines, once crossed, did not allow for U-turns.
She sighed, but it was not judgment. It was resignation. “Just… come back. She is going to need you. More than ever.”
I knew that, too. It was the only thing holding the rage on a leash.
Sofia stirred then— a soft sigh, a slight turn of her head. Her one good eye fluttered open. It took a second for her to focus, to find me in the hazy morning light.
“Hank...?” Her voice was a rasp, thin as paper.
“Right here, kid.” I moved closer, my chair scraping softly.
She blinked slowly, confusion clouding her gaze. Then memory seeped in. I saw it— the flicker of fear, the shadow of pain. Her breath hitched.
“You are safe,” I said, my voice low and steady. “You are at Med. Kim is here. Everyone is outside.”
Her eye moved to Kim, who gave her a gentle smile. “Hey, Sofia. You are doing great.”
Sofia’s thumb found its way to her mouth. She did not try to hide it. She just closed her eyes for a second, breathing around it. When she opened them again, there were tears.
“It… hurts,” she whispered.
“I know,” I said. “The nurse is coming soon. She will give you something to help with the pain.”
She nodded faintly, then her gaze drifted to the window, to the slice of morning sky. “They left me,” she said, so quiet I almost missed it.
My jaw tightened. “They will not get the chance to do it again.”
She looked back at me, her eye searching mine. She saw the promise there— the dark, unwavering vow. For a second, she looked like that little girl on the bench outside the district, scared and trying to be brave.
“Do not go far,” she whispered.
I reached out, covering her bandaged hand with mine. “I am not going anywhere, Sofia. Not really.”
And I meant it. Even when I walked out of that room, even when I hunted, even when I did what needed to be done— part of me would stay right here. In this chair. Holding her hand.
Because she was not just my rookie. She was not just Jacob’s daughter.
She was mine.
And I would burn down the whole city to keep her safe.
___
A whimper escaped her lips, quickly choked to a sob. A baby.
Her whole body trembled under the thin hospital blanket. Not from cold— from memory. Her thumb pressed harder against her mouth, the knuckle white.
Kim moved first, instinctual, maternal. She leaned over the rail, her voice dropping into a soothing, gentle register Sofia had not heard from her in years— not since she was ten and scared of her foster parents at the time.
“Shhh, sweet girl. It is okay. You are safe. No one is gonna hurt you here. We got you.”
The words were a soft blanket of sound. Sofia’s one visible eye, wide and wet, darted to Kim’s face, then back to mine, searching for confirmation.
I gave it to her with a slow, firm nod. “She is right. You are surrounded by steel and badges. Nothing gets through.” My thumb stroked the back of her hand, a rough, steady rhythm. “Breathe, Sofia. Just breathe with me.”
Her chest hitched, trying to match the slow, deliberate pace I set. In… hold… out. Her gaze clung to mine, a lifeline in a stormy sea of flashbacks. The smell of damp earth and diesel. The cold metal of a van floor. The laugh— Cullen’s laugh— too close to her ear.
Another sob, this one deeper, torn from a place of sheer, unvarnished terror. The kind a child feels in the dark.
“I w-want…” she started, then shook her head, ashamed.
“What do you want, baby?” Kim asked, her hand now gently carding through Sofia’s hair, avoiding the stitched wounds. “Anything. You just say it.”
Sofia’s voice was a tiny, broken thing, muffled by her thumb. “Bear…”
Kim’s eyes flicked to mine. The old teddy bear. The one from my desk, Justin’s bear. The one Sofia had reached for on her first day, her eyes lighting up like a kid at Christmas.
“It is at the district,” I said, but I was already reaching for my phone with my free hand. My other remained anchored to hers. I typed a one-handed text to Trudy, blunt and to the point.
Voight: Need the bear from my desk. Med. Now.
The reply was almost instantaneous.
Platt: Already in my bag. On my way up.
Of course she was. Trudy saw everything, anticipated the rest.
Sofia’s crying had quieted to shaky, wet breaths. The panic was receding, leaving exhaustion in its wake. But the childlike fear in her eye remained. The regression was not a choice now; it was a refuge. A place to hide from the pain that was too adult, too violent to process.
“She is coming, sweetheart,” Kim murmured. “Trudy is bringing your bear. You just hold on.”
The door whispered open, and Trudy entered, her usual stern expression softened into something grave and tender. She did not speak. Just walked to the bedside, pulled the worn, slightly frayed brown teddy bear from her oversized purse, and carefully tucked it into the crook of Sofia’s arm, against the IV lines.
Sofia’s fingers, clumsy with bandages, immediately curled into the familiar fur. She pulled it close, burying her nose against its head. A long, shuddering sigh escaped her, and her body went limp, the last of the tension bleeding away. Her thumb stayed in her mouth, but now it was a comfort, not a shield.
She looked, for all the world, like a little girl who would had a nightmare and been given her most prized possession.
Trudy’s gaze met mine over the bed. Her eyes were hard, but not at me. At the world. At the men who did this. She gave a single, sharp nod.
The hunt is on, that nod said. Finish it.
I nodded back.
Sofia’s eye drifted closed, the bear held fast. Her breathing evened out, syncing with the gentle beep of the heart monitor. Asleep. Truly asleep, not just sedated.
Safe.
For now.
Kim straightened up, brushing a tear from her own cheek with a quick, annoyed swipe. “I will stay,” she said. “You go do what you need to do.”
I stood, my bones protesting. I looked down at Sofia— at the bruise spreading across her cheekbone, at the bear clutched in her arms, at the profound vulnerability she no longer had the strength to hide.
The cold fire in my chest burned hotter, cleaner.
I leaned down, my lips near her ear, my voice a low, private vow only she could hear in her dreams.
“Sleep, little angel. Daddy is going to make the bad men go away.”
I kissed her forehead, gentle as I had ever been, and turned toward the door.
The hospital room was a sanctuary.
The city outside was not.
It was time to go to work.
___
Enjoy the next installment of the "A Sergeant's Heart" series!😁
