I do not own Hawaii Five-0 or any characters. No copyright infringement intended.
Notes: Might be best to read the first story in this series so this story makes sense. This was supposed to be a one chapter Epilogue to a certain story (Synesthesia / Mirror-Touch Synesthesia which is part of the "A Word of the Day Bromance" story - see chapters 15 - 17 as it failed to be a one shot over there, too).
YES - LET'S ALL LAUGH! Now this is a multi-chapter sequel. What can I say? Not much.
Anyway - a HUGE shout out to ECT for keeping me going and going and going - all your encouragement has paid off. As well as to Jlopie for threatening the breakfast bunny in just the right way!
Mirror-touch synesthesia. A condition which causes individuals to experience the same sensation (such as touch) that another person feels. For example, if someone with this condition were to observe someone touching their cheek, they would feel the same sensation on their own cheek. Mirror touch synesthetes have a higher ability to feel empathy than non-synesthetes, and can therefore feel the same emotions that someone else may be observed to feel.
H5O* H5O* H5O* H5O* H5O
Danny stood over Steve fingers clenching and unclenching spasmodically. He was breathing hard and covered in a glistening sheen of sweat as if he'd just run a marathon. He repeatedly faltered by Steve's bedside not knowing what he wanted to do.
Talk to Steve. He needed to talk to Steve. Danny raised one hand, his fingers poised above Steve's forearm only to change his mind again. No. NO ... he could do this. Steve was sick ...and he was being wholly selfish.
Danny swayed, feeling a mounting sense of desperation inside himself but he still refused to disturb his injured friend. And when Steve shifted in his bed as if sensing Danny's presence, his brow rippling in distress, exhausted murmurs incoherent under the oxygen mask, Danny stumbled back a few steps. He rubbed at his chest, heart pounding. Steve's momentary disquiet had fueled his torment in spades
Talk to Steve... wake him up. Danny shook his head defiantly at that scared inner voice. It wasn't okay. It wasn't right even if Steve said that they'd be together to work things out while the drug left Danny's system. Angry with himself, Danny knew that Steve would want him to wake him up now, but he just couldn't bring himself to do it.
It was late, well past three o'clock in the morning. The only light coming into their hospital room was from the corridor and the few lights from the various machines in the room and all of those machines were meant for Steve. Danny had no business skulking so awkwardly by his sleeping friend half hoping he'd wake on his own.
But Danny had woken like a man drowning, mouth gaped wide, soundlessly gulping and staring upwards as he'd tried to take a breath that wouldn't come.
He'd felt them die. He could still feel their thrall of death and with that feeling, Danny knew then with a sinking heart that he wasn't going to get better. Jacob Grinnell's damned drug had done something irreversible to him deep inside and there would be no going back anymore. Danny was sure that the doctors would eventually be pleased and announce him clean of the confusing mix of chemicals but he already knew better.
He could feel it. So stunned and frightened by that realization, his first inhale had been strong, loud and painfully real. He was still fighting himself to breathe normally.
Danny closed his eyes as he stood near Steve, his hands suddenly balled into white-knuckled fists while his insides churned warningly, smoldering and melting at the same time. He felt wrong and sick and quite frankly, he didn't know what to do. With Grinnell dead, what could anyone hope to do for him anyway? Dizzy, he rocked in place only able to feel death.
"Jesus. It's not over," Danny choked out as he backed further away from Steve's bedside. It was never going to be over for him.
The nightmarish memories of his dream were a fluid thread of nonsensical colors inside his mind. Reds, whites, yellows were blurred together. There were no faces though. No sounds he could recall at all. Just a flurry of color which was already fading. What remained was terrifying though and it didn't matter that it might have been a bit dimmer. It was disturbing. Unhealthy. Unnatural. Visceral sensations smoldered inside that all-consuming heat still stuck inside his body. They fluctuated like an ebb and flow of a tide, slightly abating but refusing to cease their timeless movement.
Now by the doorway to the hospital room, his back to the corridor, Danny stared at his hands expecting to see them covered in blood. They were spotless though. Why? They should be covered in blood and yet, there was nothing there. Muted sounds of life softly echoed into to him from the hallway. Nothing had changed and yet everything had changed and Danny shivered where he stood. His hands should have been shaking as wildly as his heartbeat. Yet they were calm. Quiet.
The hands of a killer.
It didn't matter how or why. Danny had fed off Steve's rage and channeled his own anger and fear. The drug had done the rest. He'd looked into Jacob Grinnell's eyes before he'd broken the lunatic's arm. His fingertips held the memory of that thick snap of bone and sinew. He felt the agony of the break as if his own arm had been broken in two. Worse though, he'd looked into the man's face and he knew the exact moment in which he'd died. Danny felt that too; a painless snap ... a flare of something he couldn't define ... then, nothing at all. They'd literally died by his hands - in his hands - and he'd died with them.
But then he hadn't because he'd lived on afterwards. He'd taken that last breath with them and then he'd taken a new one of his own. He'd lived on after he'd died.
It made no sense in a mind shattered by far too many feelings.
Those embers were smoldering in that place which held the rest of all the things he'd been forced to absorb. He'd killed two people without thought or remorse. That had really happened and Danny heaved in a strangled breath of air which ended on a ragged cough as his throat closed. What had he done? He'd killed without thought. He'd murdered two people and felt their life leave their bodies. He'd felt ... them. Why was he remembering all of that now though?
What had he done?
"It's gotta stop," Danny said as he threaded his fingers roughly through his hair. He'd meant to kill - he'd killed - and he'd done it not once, but twice. His fingertips held the memory of the wicked snap of bone and sinew as he'd snapped Grinnell's arm. Inside, he held the man's arrogance, flux of pride ... and then mirrored his astonishment as he'd died from a broken neck. For all he'd killed the second man in the same manner, Danny keenly felt those differences too and he mewled in distress as guilt and shame tightened his stomach for the unadulterated sense of pure fear which stared back at him from that internal hell.
What had he done?
"Detective Williams?" He cringed at the sound of the unexpected voice from behind. "Are you all right?"
"No," Danny replied. His own voice sounded hoarse and strained, stuck deep inside his chest along with the heated burn of death.
"Maybe, get back in bed?" The night nurse suggested kindly. "Try to sleep?" She was calm, gentle. Well-schooled in governing the tone of her voice and staying benignly indifferent, yet she was persistent, too. With her guidance, Danny found himself prodded forward back to where he'd started and he shirked out from under her hand.
"No," he repeated. He knew that she would balk now. He was acting strangely and no doubt looked ... off. He sure as hell felt as if he were going crazy. Maybe this had done it; maybe this one event was finally it for him and he was done. Washed up for good.
"Why not?" She asked. "You've barely slept ... it's late ..."
"I can't," Danny interrupted as he shook his head and backed up again towards the doorway. He wasn't injured. He technically wasn't even tethered to anything anymore. He didn't need oxygen or medication ... other than prescribed rest, liquids and blood tests, he didn't even really need to be hospitalized. Though he wouldn't exercise the option, Danny knew he could choose to check himself out that very minute. He could choose to refuse additional medical care. He could defy them all. But he wouldn't.
Danny glanced towards Steve's bed when he heard the low murmur of sound. Steve fidgeted, his hand rubbing blindly at the oxygen mask, wanting it off in his sleep. Danny couldn't stop himself from unconsciously skirting his fingers over his own cheek and nose. For just a moment, he chased a mirror image of Steve's clumsy sleep-induced touch. Stunned, Danny blinked wildly and backed up more when Steve's legs moved weakly under the blankets before he appeared to fully relax. His face smoothed and Danny felt a subtle flare of peace. He briefly closed his eyes, relishing the sensation.
No. He couldn't just leave. His partner was the only reason keeping him there because Danny knew that if he dared to leave, Steve would follow. And for Steve's sake, Danny wouldn't do it. Nonetheless, he couldn't blithely just go back to bed. The heat inside his core was bringing a hot itch with it and he couldn't simply crawl back into a hospital bed.
"I ... I, uh ... just need to walk," Danny said. He tried to whisper but his voice still sounded raspy to his ear. He didn't wait for her to offer an opinion then. He simply turned on his heel and left the room with no where in particular in mind. He made a right to avoid the people he registered nearest the nurse's main station. Their low hum of life disturbed him on a base level and he didn't dare test those waters. He wanted to be as alone as humanly possible without leaving hospital grounds. At the end of the corridor, he made another right and kept his head down not looking in any direction until he ran out of room, hitting a dead-end.
"Shit," Danny muttered under his breath. The corridor had become bland and nondescript. It ended at an over-sized door requiring a code or a card-key to open. A few steps back the way he'd come was a bank of elevators which he sensed were not for normal use. Beyond that, he could still hear the shuffle of life and the occasional voice or two. Danny hung his head as he leaned up against the wall. For the moment, this limited solitude would have to do. Eyes closed, willing his mind to stop the incessant whirring as his chest ached with a burn that had no viable source, Danny tried to focus on nothing at all. He couldn't master meditation on a good day though and the rumble which thrummed through his ears distracted him immediately. It was coming from directly overhead and even reverberating through the wall he was leaning up against. Danny frowned until he realized the purpose of the door, the corridor and the meaning of the elevators' placement.
The hospital had a helipad. The hospital was older and the helipad built much later with the structure having been coerced to fit the need. The over-sized door led up to the roof or even directly out to the top deck. The corridor and the elevator were un-obstructed, priority access to emergency care. Not knowing if a patient might be coming or going, Danny stayed where he was, wedged in a corner. The steady whump-whump-whump got louder as someone opened the door above to the outside and then muted again as the door above closed. Danny then heard a pair of footsteps approaching the door he was nearest to. Unhurried, calm and therefore likely not an incoming patient but something else.
There was a click and soft buzz of sound as the door unlocked from the opposite side. The two men who came through in a rush of cool, fresh air were pilot and co-pilot, geared up and calm. The taller was chattering into a blue-tooth. The two were calm and yet they apparently had a specific goal in mind because they didn't look Danny's way.
Without thinking, Danny reacted on gut instinct, grabbing for the door's smooth handle to slip through the way they'd just entered the hospital. He moved quickly, his eye on the glimmer of soft light leaking through the next door to the helipad itself. He hummed in appreciation when he saw that this door lacked the same level of security of the first. In fact, it hadn't closed completely and Danny was outside before he knew it, breathing in crisp night air.
Except for the helicopter which rumbled gently on, the night was quiet. But the whump-whump of the helicopter's blades was dying down too and was near to stopping. The big bird had been shut off, possibly even docked for the night and Danny sighed in relief as he looked around to gain perspective.
The rooftop itself was expansive. The landing pad taking up only a small portion of it as it shared spaced with the hospital's big generators and cell phone towers. Danny seemed to have his choice of private nooks and crannies, nearly all affording him quiet views of downtown. The solitude was an immediate balm to his system and Danny started walking away from the helipad which was far too well lit for his liking. He walked in the opposite direction over a barely illuminated service walkway which transitioned at one point from concrete to metal until he was stopped by a low protective railing. On one side, the railing allowed for an over-look of a lower rooftop, but on its main front, Danny's view of the city-scape was uninhibited.
Dead-ended again, Danny slid down the rough exterior wall facing outwards to stare at distant lights. He wound up sitting there in dark shadows, his legs swinging into open space no less than fourteen stories down to the tree-lined street. Hugging his arms around his middle, he closed his eyes and tried to quell the heat tearing up his soul.
~ to be continued ~