Author's Note:-OK I blame the fanfic community for this. If so many of you hadn't written excellent tags for episode 2.10 I wouldn't have been forced to go and watch it out of sequence, and I wouldn't have had to write this scene because my brain wouldn't let me continue my other stories until I did. I hope you enjoy. As ever any feedback is greatly appreciated.
Disclaimer:- I am just playing with someone else's character's and backstory in the hope that they will take it in the spirit with which it is meant as an homage to talented writers cast and crew, with whom I sadly have no affiliation.
Missing scene for Ki'ilua Spoilers for Ki'ilua and episodes to this point. OK so Steve's first words to Danny when he's rescued are "Where's Wo Fat" Here is my take on why."Where's Wo Fat"
Steve was resigned to his fate. He hadn't given up, Seals didn't do that; Steve didn't do that.
He wouldn't.
He couldn't.
He could however see how heavily the odds were stacked against him, how little chance he realistically had of getting out of this. Pragmatism was something he'd learnt from an early age, reinforced by his upbringing, his career choices, his whole damn life. Then again, Steve's version of pragmatism wasn't quite like everyone else's; it was more a MacGyver with a hint of the A-team version of pragmatism. So no, despite the odds he would never give in or give up, but right now he just couldn't. . .
The truck jostled up and down on the rough road and Steve couldn't quite hold in the involuntary groan as pain flared all over his bruised and battered body.
He was drifting in and out. He had enough awareness to know just how badly he'd been hurt, or at least he did for some of the time, when his mind cleared enough to let him think, when he wasn't fighting the dizziness and the nausea, the blurry vision, the headache, when he wasn't doing his best to just avoid completely losing consciousness. In those moments he knew just how bad things were .
He'd tried to convince himself that he'd had worse but that was the problem with trying to lie to yourself, you almost always got caught out. Well ok, always unless you were truly delusional. In the past two days Steve had been betrayed imprisoned, beaten, tortured, forced to watch the calous murder of the woman he'd come to help, and no it didn't make it any easier that she'd been the one who'd betrayed him, he'd had to take all of this from the man who'd been responsible for the murder of both of his parents, a man for whom hate wasn't a strong enough word, a man who took pleasure in the suffering of others.
Wo Fat was beyond cruel. He used and manipulated in ways that were designed to make the suffering worse. Leading Jenna here to the corpse of her fiance, chaining her in the room with Steve so that she had to confront the results of her betrayal, making her watch him suffer, scream, and only then when her self loathing and remorse were complete, only then did he kill her, making sure now that Steve watched, using her against him in a whole new way, because her betrayal of him wasn't enough. Steve had to see that he had been betrayed for nothing, for less than nothing, had to writhe, chained, hurting, helpless, while Wo Fat demonstrated the depth of his failure again . He failed to stop this man killing Jenna, Mokoto, Govenor Jameson, his father, his mother, Steve was too angry, too pained, too irrational to argue against anything but his own culpability in all of this. He should have known should have stopped, needed to kill . . .
The young Steve McGarrett had no way of knowing, of controlling, of influencing the actions of his father, the events that had got his mother killed, and yet, somehow, his failures now made him feel responsible for everything that had come before, because the things that were happening now they were on his watch , all of them orchestrated around, despite, because of him and Wo Fat was at the centre of it all, like some giant pupeteer making Steve dance to his tune, destroying his family, his life, his trust in others, in himself, and now he would make him quite literally dance at the end of a chain as he struggled to stop . . .to save . . .
Wo Fat turned and looked at him, the bastard was enjoying it, savoring Steve's reaction, the reaction that was way beyond Steve's control as he lost another person, and with her another little piece of his soul to the nightmare that would not end, could not end until Wo Fat was gone. He screamed his threat, his promise of vengeance as Wo Fat approached, because Steve had to stop him, had to end this. Screw the law this had become beyond personal for both of them.
Wo Fat's final act of sadism had been to leave Steve alone, to let him get free. Steve was in no doubt now that that had been just as deliberate as all the other torture, giving him the brief hope of escape only to have it snatched away, because crushed hope was so much worse than no hope at all.
No even in his worst nightmares Steve could never have come up with an adversary as twisted and psychotic as Wo Fat. The man was evil personified, the worst combination of ambition and greed with no conscience and no morals to prevent him from doing whatever he wanted, whatever pleased him, and the suffering of others seemed to be high on his list of indulged pleasures. He played games with peoples' lives and enjoyed it. Steve had not had worse because there could not be worse, not for him, because Wo Fat had hurt him in ways that no one else ever could.
Steve had to stop him. He had destroyed so many lives, twisted and corrupted, murdered when he couldn't manipulate, and left so much collateral damage in his wake. Collateral damage like Steve and his sister, forced to grow up without a mother, for all intents and purposes without a father either. Steve could hate Wo Fat for just that, but he hated him for so much more, had so many more reasons to need to stop him.
Lying in the back of the truck beaten, bloody, hurting and barely conscious Steve hadn't given up. He just knew that he was probably going to die and that his last act needed to be to take Wo Fat with him. Back in Hawaii Lt commander Steven McGarrett could afford the luxury of obeying the law, well mostly. He would like nothing more than for Wo Fat to face a trial, to rot in a prison cell forever, but the beaten and bloody version of McGarrett tied in the back of a truck on the way to who the hell knew where, the man who was lost and alone with no hope of help because there was no one who could help him, no one who knew where he was and even if they did there was nothing any of his friends could do, no one would sanction any sort of rescue mission into North Korea. That man would do whatever was necessary to stop Wo Fat; that man had nothing to lose, and every reason to hate.
He had been trying to assess his position, his injuries , the feasibility of getting lose from the ropes that bound him .Deciding how best to bide his time, look unthreatening until the opportunity to take Wo Fat out presented itself. His mission parameters had changed, his prime objective was no longer escape, his prospects at best would be to be left to rot in a dark hole somewhere, that was if Wo Fat didn't torture him to death for information that he didn't have, or just get bored with playing with him as he had with Jenna . . .Dammit! He bit his lip to stem the tide of tears that wanted to fall, tears for her loss, first to betrayal and then to death, he had lost a friend and an ally twice in the space of a day.
He bit down again almost drawing blood . He didn't have time for this. He needed to think, needed to . .
On some level his mind had registered the sound of the chopper but had dismissed it as unimportant until the familiar sound of the RPG hitting the bridge made him take notice, even then he would probably have dismissed it as not concerning him but the sudden braking and change of direction alerted him to the fact that the convoy he was part of was under attack. A fact that he just had time to register before he was slammed into the front of the truck by the violent movement and nothing registered apart from pain for a while.
When the world drifted back into focus he was leaning heavily against the front wall of the truck, the vehicle had stopped and there was sporadic gunfire from automatic weapons. His mind was still a confused fog as training kicked in and he tried to assess the size and strength of the attacking force. He had decided that it was a small group of well trained fighters, mercenaries? certainly special forces trained, and that meant . . .?
It was like crawling through mud trying to pull his thoughts together enough to make sense of things beyond the almost automatic assessment that his training demanded of him.
He'd managed to get himself up into a sitting position at some point and the guard who'd been with him had disappeared into the firefight.
Vaguely he realised that he should be doing something because it was unlikely that the convoy's attackers were any better disposed toward him than Wo Fat. As ex Special Forces, he was a valuable commodity in the communist state. If they took the time to find out who he was then they would probably take over where Wo Fat had left off, more torture, this time for information about the Seals, information that he could not give and they would. . .
If they didn't take the time, then, if he was lucky, they would think he was worth a bullet.
So one some level Steve knew that he should worry about himself, should be thinking of ways to get away, moving, doing something, but all his focus was elsewhere, analysing what the situation meant for his adversary Wo Fat. Who would be attacking him? Would they kill him? Could Steve somehow use the diversion to. . . Wo Fat could not be allowed to get away. He had to be stopped had to. . . Wo fat was. . .
There was a noise from the end of the truck, sudden daylight streaming in. Steve turned, expecting Wo Fat here to finish the job, expecting rival yakuza, expecting North Korean troops, expecting. . . What he did not expect to see was Danny standing there. . . Danny? His eyes widened in shock what the Hell. . . ?
He registered Danny's voice, shouting out "Hey, it's Steve, I got Steve he's alive." He registered the relief in his friend's tone in his eyes as he shouldered his weapon and hopped into the back of the truck.
"Danny," Steve said softly as if just saying his name would confirm his friend's presence, maybe an end to this nightmare, but Steve's brain wasn't ready for it to be over. ~It wasn't over it couldn't be over because Wo Fat was somewhere and as long as he was Steve could not get away from. . . Could not be safe, could not deal with what had happened because he. . ."Where's Wo Fat?" There were so many other things should have wanted, should have needed to say to his friend, his rescuer, the cop who was in a hostile frickin' country to rescue him. So many things that he needed. . . but 'where's Wo Fat? Was the only question that his tortured brain would allow.
There were an equal number of ways that Danny could have expected to be greeted and he knew he should have been more surprised by Steve's question, but he wasn't, because he knew that his friend had been beaten and tortured, knew what Wo Fat had done to Steve in the past and on that day. So he wasn't surprised, just exasperated that he couldn't give his friend an answer, do something more to remove the deep pain in his friend's eyes. "Shut up Steven," was the best he could manage, because Steve was here and he was alive and they could rescue him and get him out of here and treat his injuries and make everything the hell Ok again. They could . . .He followed Steve's gaze to where he met Joe's. Hell they should be allowed to treat this as a win because they had Steve back. They could get him out of here, nothing else should matter nothing else should. . .
He concentrated on getting the ropes that held Steve's abraded wrists together.
"Shut up Steven," told all Steve he needed to know. He was still out there- somewhere, and Steve knew that 'Where's Wo Fat was a question that was going to haunt him for some time to come.