RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!
A/N: (17 November 2017) I love you all. So, this morning, the lab woke me up calling to ask me if I wanted to schedule this NEW test, and my first thought was to hang up on them, but the guy had a really nice voice. So, I didn't hang up, but didn't schedule the NEW test yet either. I want to run and hide and get away from all this. And THAT thought gave me this evil one-shot idea…..which I hope you enjoy!
CBS owns Hawaii Five-0, I'm just playing with it.
RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!
(Setting: Hawaii, specifically the island of Oahu. Time: pre-formation of the Five-0 Task Force. Danny and Steve have only met once.)
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Danny swore silently when he heard the stealthy footsteps below him. He'd found what he thought was a good hiding place -temporary, he knew, but he was so tired, and just need to catch his breath, maybe close his eyes for even five minutes. He swore in his mind that it had been only five minutes. He had been running for hours, was five minutes rest too much to ask for?
Luckily, he was well-hidden in the boxes of the messiest warehouse he'd ever seen in his life. It was a huge building, and he'd run in, and knew this was where he had to stop, for just a few minutes. So he climbed carefully up as high as he could, and found a box he could just fit into, if he scrunched. Really scrunched. Claustrophobia be damned. His life depended on running and hiding from his deadly, relentless pursuer.
But then he had a better idea. He'd be expected to climb. Hunted things climbed. He'd been a cop long enough to know that.
But the hunter wasn't a cop. But he was a hunter. Hunted things climbed. Danny had to not climb.
He came back down, found a box on an end of a nondescript pile, overturned it and crammed himself inside, so the bottom was up, and he was sitting on the open part, legs folded to his chest, head down. A place to hide. To stop running, for just a few minutes.
So tired, feeling more safe than he had in a while, he'd closed his eyes and instantly fallen asleep, until the footsteps awakened him.
Danny forced himself to keep relaxed, quiet, listening hard. He shoved down his fear. Would he spray the warehouse with gunfire? Danny mentally shook his head. Too much noise, way too much noise. This place was remote and abandoned, but there was still too much risk in a burst of gunfire. No, the hunter was being quiet, too.
Oh God. Danny even closed his eyes again. The hunter had stopped near his box. Danny scrunched more, ducking his head, willing himself to make no sound. He had this instinct, true or misleading, that if he couldn't see the hunter, the hunter wouldn't see him. Probably asinine stupid, but he usually knew if someone was looking at him, so he figured it was true for others.
But oh how he listened. The hunter was pacing, frustrated. There were so many places to hide in this warehouse.
Danny cringed when the hunter shouted, "You know I'll find you! You can't hide from me or outrun me. You know it will go easier on you if you just give up! Because I will never give up! And when I find you, you know what happens. You know! So give it up, Detective! If you're in here, just give up. I'm gonna count to five and then start searching, and if you make me search for you in here, it will not be good. I can be merciful. But if you prolong this, I won't be. One."
Danny felt so trapped. And there was a psychological thing that happened to trapped things: they want to give up. Hope for mercy. Get the end over with.
"Two!"
It was almost a pull, to surrender. Danny felt it. He couldn't run now. Not now. He was hiding in a box! The hunter would find him. Why had he picked this stupid box right out in front? Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!
"Three!"
Danny forced himself to ignore the psychological pull. He wasn't giving up. No. No. NO!
"Four! Don't make me count higher!"
Danny held his breath. For dear life.
"Five! Now I'm mad."
He felt a weight briefly on his box, which was sturdy enough that it didn't crush. The hunter had used his box to climb up on! His box, and he didn't even know it! Danny felt elated and twilight-zoned all at once.
The hunter was climbing up, where he began pushing boxes over, aside, any way he could move them. This went on for a minute, the sounds moving from place to place on the upper level. Danny could feel the anger building in the hunter.
Suddenly, something toppled across the aisle of boxes, and there was a patter of footsteps and the sound of creaky hinges as a door opened and closed far in the back of the warehouse.
Immediately the hunter was after that prey. Danny felt sorry for whoever it was, but as soon as the door shut, he burst out of his box and ran out the front door, back the way he'd come. He ran as fast as he could, skipping the drying puddles of the earlier afternoon rain.
There had been a dirt road leading to the warehouse, so he ran like the devil was on his heels for that, because beyond that road were some scattered shacks. He needed help. He needed … he needed help. A phone, a car, a cave, an airplane off this pineapple infested hell hole, with no decent Italian restaurant, no ties, and those damn Hawaiian shirts….
Wait. He'd made the road, which wasn't dry enough to kick up the dust of his footfalls. He'd run a mile, maybe more. And then he saw the house with the clothesline.
A disguise. Omigod, a disguise! That would help so much! Why hadn't he thought of that before? Instantly he reached up and messed up his hair, parting it on the side, and grabbing up some mud to smear over it in an attempt to tone down the color. The hunter was not looking for a brown-haired guy in a Hawaiian shirt.
The clothes were damp. He didn't care. He found a medium-garish shirt on the clothesline, green and tan and brown and blue. Hawaiian camo! Danny felt a bubble of near-hysterical laughter bubble up, but he quelled it before it burst. Tan board shorts with a drawstring waist. They'd do! He was in them in no time, his old clothes crammed in a thicket of something thorny, his feet in flip flops. He'd take those off when he was running.
And then he saw what he needed more than anything: a weapon! It wasn't a gun, but it would do. He had no belt, so he used the tie Grace had given him as a belt that he looped the holder of the Japanese wedding knife to. It wasn't shiny. It wouldn't betray him by glinting in the sun. It was quiet. And half of it was hidden by the untucked shirt.
He surveyed the cabin, and through the back door didn't see anything useful to him. The door was locked, and he didn't have time to pick the lock. He could have kicked the door in in a second, but that would betray that he had been here.
And that would be a stupid thing to do.
Danny was feeling increasingly nervous, in the way instinct told him meant the hunter was again searching for him. Time to again start running for his life. He took off across the field, heading for a distant building across the field. Don't think about hunger. Don't think about thirst. Don't look back. Never look back unless you have to. Stay low. Careful where you step—
That was when it happened. He stepped on a rock, and his left ankle twisted to the side. He heard a pop as he began to fall.
The grass in the field was high, hiding him even when he sat up and took stock of his ankle. An egg-sized swelling was rising fast, not hurting yet, but it would. Broken, or sprained. It didn't matter. Mobility was now a problem. In twenty minutes, he would be in serious pain.
NOOO! Nonononono! Danny gritted his teeth. He had to make some distance before the pain kicked in. He made it to his feet, and ran, flip flops stuffed inside the waist of his board shorts, now stained with mud. The pain was going to be epic, judging from what it was before the damaged nerves fully realized just what had happened. But he had to make that house, he had to make it there. He had to.
OH GOD the pain kicked in and Danny almost went down again. Ignore it. Just ignore it. A broken ankle is better than what I face if the hunter finds me. Keep going keep going keep going, just another hundred yards….
He made it, and the door was unlocked, until Danny locked it behind him. He searched the place frantically. There was a banana on the counter, and a bottle of water. He ate the banana and drank the water while rummaging through cabinets. No bandages. He finally tore up the sheet on the bed, wrapping it around his ankle to form a compression bandage. He found a pair of crutches in a closet, and thought his luck was improving…..
Until the door was kicked in, and the hunter stood in the doorway, looking at him.
"So there you are," said the man who had made his last few hours hell. "I told you I'd find you."
Danny didn't move. There was no point in that now. His race was over, his life forfeit. This was the end.
The hunter efficiently made him a sandwich and handed it to him. "Ham and swiss, mayo, mustard. Eat it. Let me fill up the water bottle for you. What'd you do to your ankle? I like your hair like that."
Danny took the sandwich and looked at it. "Last meal," he commented, and took a bite, and then another.
Steve McGarrett handed him the filled bottle of water, and smiled that diabolical pleasant smile of his. "Kindof. And now it's official. You're my partner." He smiled.
Danny didn't.
The End
:D