Broken
She could sense the resentment, the feeling of "not belonging" the second that she followed McGarrett into the team room on her first day. Lori Weston was nothing if not observant. After the new Governor assigned her to "monitor" the 5-0 team , she started thinking about how she was going to get out of this assignment. She was used to being part of a team, sure, but not in such a minority position, where she was the outsider with no hope of acceptance. The 5-0 team was something of a myth and a curse all rolled into one. They achieved great things, but sometimes at great cost-"high collateral damage", the Governor had told her.
She had no idea how she was supposed to change it or help, but here she was, and she was going to try her best to do what she was assigned to do and then move on. She never counted on becoming one of them, of having to make a choice to leave or stay. She never counted on developing feelings for a certain Commander, not that she would ever tell him, under pain of death.
Before McGarrett had been kidnapped and tortured by Wo Fat, she didn't know how deep those feelings ran. When they dragged him out of the bunker, bleeding, and so…broken, she thought that she couldn't bear it if he died. That thought caused her to break out into a cold sweat. How so many people had worked together to rescue him and how McGarrett- Steve- was human after all and could actually die. She watched him as the helicopter brought him to the relative safety of South Korea and wondered why it took her so long to realize that- God, she was in love with him. The bottom of her stomach fell out and she blamed it on the turbulence in the helicopter, not that she was slightly out of control.
Of course, McGarrett played it all cool and that yes, he was fine. Danny hovered over him like a mother hen and Chin and Kono were extra attentive to the normally stoic leader for weeks following the rescue. They all knew that he had lost more than Jenna in that jungle, he had lost his confidence. The idea that he could be fooled, betrayed, by someone so close to him, blew him away. It took some time before he could even hear Jenna's name without getting that faraway look in his eyes. Danny did his best to cover for his friend by talking even more until McGarrett could find his bearings. Any outsider wouldn't have noticed, but she did.
Lori desperately wished that she could share her feelings with him, that there was some small chance that they could be together. She knew in her heart that was never in the cards. She wasn't meant to be a permanent part of this team, but she was damned grateful that she got to experience what it was like to be part of this team- a family. The Governor would never understand.