Moe 'ino
by Sammie
DISCLAIMER: Characters aren't mine. Premise isn't even mine. As you can tell, I, like Minnie, am a moocher. (I'm just not the rest of that stuff in the song. .:shudders:. What would I do with diamond-studded wheels?)
SUMMARY: She haunts him, more than he ever thought she would. (Warning: character death)
AUTHOR'S NOTES: This story can be read as either a character death or a character "death". Please don't kill me.
Pretty please.
- character death: blame "NCIS", who couldn't write off Sasha Alexander with a normal exit. At least nobody now ever forgets that she was on the show.
- character "death": this FF in particular was inspired by the second chapter of Amelia Strange's story "Nightmare", in which Steve believes Kono is dead (she isn't), and first chapter of the "Airwolf" story "Sleeping Beauties" by bookworm1478, in which the male lead believes his female coworker is dead (she isn't).
My title is a tribute to "Nightmare"; "moe 'ino" is to have a nightmare. The first scene is my version of the first chapter of "Sleeping Beauties", using the idea bookworm presents; the very first line is all hers.
I have permission from both of them to post this. This just goes to show that there are people in this world who are too nice and that whining like a bratty two-year-old is an effective tool of persuasion. Thank you to you both.
- an after-the-fact thank you to Merl Laurence and her story on "Mana'o" (right now, my favorite of her stories) who first listed chocolate haupia as Kono's favorite food. It was really SO in-character for Kono (Hawaiian dessert! PLUS CHOCOLATE!) I'd already mentally taken her observations as fanon, right along with the canon we get on Mondays. My apologies to Merl for not crediting her earlier, even though she's been very sweet and gracious about it all.
"Where did you see her this time?"
The tone is neutral, but Steve can hear the sadness in Danny's voice - mixed with just the teeniest bit of exasperation. The exasperation, the former SEAL knows, isn't because he had to come pick him up again, but because Steve won't talk.
He doesn't see the purpose in talking. What's the point? They all know why he's like this. Talking won't make it any different. It will not bring her back. It won't catch her killer. It will not solve his problems. So Steve McGarrett simply swallows it all back and presses on.
"Outside Ted's." He'd been so sure. Ted's has the best chocolate haupia pie in Hawaii, and chocolate haupia was her great weakness. So where else would he see Kono Kalakaua?
Except they already had her memorial service. And Chin had managed to finagle a spot for him as one of her pallbearers. And he'd laid a flower on her coffin, as had everybody else. And he'd watched them use the crank to lower her coffin into the hole in the ground. And he'd helped to put the dirt over that wooden box. He would add that he'd given a small eulogy at the service, but he can't, because he didn't: he'd been unable to do it. He used his position as the boss to delegate that to Danny, who'd done marvelously.
He knows it's silly to think that he doesn't need to grieve. He lost both of his parents, after all. He was struck by one of the things one of Kono's relatives (he can't remember which one) had said: that grief was expected, but it was done with hope - that one day there would be no more death or mourning as the old things passed away, but that day's not right now, so one is free to weep. He's tried grieving, but he was dry-eyed throughout the whole service, and in all these weeks afterward.
He still sees her everywhere. Sometimes he's down at the beach, and he sees a surfer out on the water who looks exactly like she did the first time he laid eyes on her. One time he saw a woman in the same color bikini she'd once worn - the rainbow-colored one. He sees her at the store. He sees her at restaurants. He sees her in front of their old headquarters. But it's never her.
The first time, he crossed the floor at Liliha's Bakery in two steps and grabbed the slim woman by the shoulder, pulling her back to face him. From the back, the slim build was hers; the hair was hers; the face was not. He'd stared at her unfamiliar features, stunned for a full moment, his eyes desperately searching for something which could be Kono's, but there wasn't anything.
This stranger had been understanding. The second one - at the gas station - had not, and that's how Steve ended up in jail on a very exaggerated charge of harassment. The governor had to intervene.
He saw her at Safeway the third time, leaving the store, and he'd left all his groceries on the conveyor belt and gone sprinting after her. It wasn't her.
Two weeks ago he thought he saw her in a bar. He nearly fell over patrons trying to get to her. It wasn't her, and despite his apology, the woman's boyfriend still punched him. They ended up in a barroom brawl, and it was Sgt. Lukela who released him from prison and then called Danny.
He functions just fine during the day. He still runs cases, he still does all his regular work. Yet he knows Danny and Chin worry.
He knows it's not fair to Chin Ho. The older cop doesn't say it, but he's suffering. Kono was his cousin, his protege - not Steve's; Chin's been helping to care for her since she was little, and he was her mentor on the taskforce. He knows the older man feels the loss of his cousin keenly, and he desperately wants to help him. He just doesn't know how; he doesn't even know how to help himself.
Danny is the one trying to hold them together, despite his own grief. He knows that Danny has already convinced Chin Ho to take over Grace's surfing lessons. Kono might've been the professional, but Chin Ho's always been good enough to teach a beginner; in fact, he was the first one to buy Kono a surfboard. For the two of them, it's a way to remember her. Chin also continues to introduce Danny to new restaurants and different activities about Hawaii, as he has before.
They always try to drag him along, and sometimes he allows it, but many times he simply doesn't want to be there, even with them. The second time they ordered in, the three of them, Danny and Chin Ho reminisced about Kono - and he couldn't take it. He had to leave.
He knows instinctively that his reaction shouldn't be any more intense than Danny's; she and Steve were teammates, just as she and Danny were. Yet, for some reason, he can't seem to let her go.
He's been hoarding.
Some of the papers are copies of the files he's got on her murder. He's learned his lesson: of everything the HPD and the 5-0 have on record, he's got a personal copy, too - digital and paper. He won't let a file disappear without him having a back-up; he will not let Kono's murder file go missing the way his mother's had. He looks through the box at least twice a week, trying to piece everything together.
In a box there's also a small, opaque plastic sleeve with things that are unrelated to the case.
Sometimes he can identify the person taking the photo. There's one of her in a royal blue, knee-high sundress, and they're leaning back to back as they look at Danny. (Danny is a remarkable photographer, oddly; he knows good lighting and good background when he sees it and evokes mood with his photos.) In another, they were out having drinks after an event the governor made them go to, some stuffed-shirt shindig that forced them into tuxes and such. He's watching and listening to her tell a story; a kid snapped a Polaroid and then demanded five bucks for it. There's one of him on a bike, with her sitting behind him; from the camera work, it looks like a shot her cousin took. (Chin Ho, in contrast to Danny, takes purely utilitarian photos - clear, crisp, but not artistic.) There's another photo of them, seated around a table, playing cards and having drinks, Danny with a guitar; she's smiling, and he's watching her. That one Mary took when she visited; she emailed it to him after she heard about Kono's death.
There's a DVD from Christmas, when they spent a couple hours with Danny and Grace. In fact, he himself shot for Danny a brief video of Grace opening presents. He normally is not sentimental about these things, and he'd only made one copy for Danny and then one for Grace. When he came home from his late teammate's memorial service, however, he found the video still on his camera, and burned his own private copy.
There's so little in that short video. Grace opens presents pretty quickly, and so it isn't long anyhow. But there's a shot of Kono, crouched behind Grace's chair so she is on level with the young girl; their faces are cheek to cheek. Kono points over the girl's shoulder towards him. "Smile for Uncle Steve," she says, getting the youngster to turn her face towards the camera. He remembers grinning as he checks the view in the camera, then giving them a thumbs up. Both smile and wave, and Kono hugs Gracie tight. "Mele Kalikimaka."
It's the only thing he has of her voice.
He and Catherine have been drifting apart - or rather, he's been drifting, and she's been doing her best to be an anchor for him. He's very touched by her loyalty to him - he's been an arse and he knows it - and he wishes that he knew how to let her comfort him. She has been very supportive, giving him the time he needs to grieve, and he knows he's pushing her away. The problem is they were never especially close anyhow - not emotionally - and so he doesn't know how to share with her, or feel comfortable doing so. He knows that's partly his fault.
He seems trapped in this daze in ways he wasn't when his parents died, and he feels guilty, because they were his parents. When his mother died, he felt a different type of grief. It was prolonged, but for Pete's sake, this was his mother. Of course it would be. When his father died, he felt guilt and grief, and, despite the fact that it's been a year, it still grabs him sometimes with a intensity which knocks the breath out of him. Yet he never had a problem accepting their deaths as real.
He's heard before that the loss of a spouse impacts somebody so differently from the loss of parents or the loss of children. He can see that even in Danny: that carjacking, which involved Grace, was bad enough, but he knows that the presence of Rachel - ex-wife or not - just made it that much worse for the New Jersey transplant, on so many different levels.
Kono wasn't parent or child - or, he reminds himself, spouse. He shouldn't be reacting like this.
Yet he can't seem to come out of this...this fog. He's almost afraid of what his reaction to her absence means; if he confronts it, what truths will he face about himself? About his relationship with Catherine?
He needs to come out of it. He makes a conscious effort to force himself out.
Catherine insists he needs to take a break and suggests they go out on Friday night. He agrees - anything to take his mind off of things. He leaves work early, and they have an early supper together, and he's (relatively) happy, and they go to the local theatre to catch a play - "Much Ado About Nothing", which he read while at Kukui. A comedy, he remembers. Nobody dies in it. That should help him get over all of this, to help him forget for awhile.
"'Lady Beatrice,'" Benedick asks gently, "'have you wept all this while?'"
"'Yea,'" she replies, "'and I will weep a while longer.'"
He leaves the theatre.
He wakes up in the mornings, and often, for just a second, he forgets that it ever happened. And then he remembers, and it's like a bucket of ice water.
The worst of it, he's come to conclude, is that he can't seem to accept that she's gone. It's like a nightmare from which he expects to awake at any moment. Yet every morning he wakes, and for a second he thinks it's true - that the nightmare has ended, and he'll see her at work that morning. Reality then comes crashing in, and then he ends up in a daze the rest of that day; reality is reliving that same nightmare from which he hopes to wake up.
He's at Mamo's when it finally hits.
It's a stranger's daughter, a little four-year-old. Hawaiian. Little pigtails bobbing up and down. She's playing in the water, wearing a blue and yellow swimsuit with a green innertube around her waist. She turns around and beams at somebody on the beach. When she smiles, it's so big that her eyes kind of close and big dimples appear. She doesn't resemble his teammate completely - Steve knows Kono's face too well to pretend that - but she looks like what he'd always thought Kono's daughter might look like.
It's not long before he realizes that tears are streaming down his face.
The girl plays happily in the water for awhile, then runs from the water's edge to her family's beach blanket, where her parents are, to play with what has to be the fattest German shepherd puppy he's ever seen - a puppy which clearly has no understanding of "sit" or "stay", especially when the little girl comes, and seems morosely resigned to its fate on a leash, when she doesn't.
Finally, her father and her mother go out to play with her in the water. She's sandwiched between them, her left hand held by her father, her right hand by her mother. Every once in awhile, they lift her in tandem so she flies over a patch of sand, and she giggles delightedly.
He can't look away from the child, and he can't seem to stop the tears. He's grateful for the shade of the tree over his head, hiding his face in shadows, and he's grateful for the aviators which cover so much of his eyes. He'd long given up any attempt to clean up his face.
It's the break he's been waiting for. He supposes now that he was never actually in mourning for Kono all these weeks, but rather in denial. When it all hits, he's grateful that the sudden torrent is witnessed by nobody else. It's intensely private for him.
He mourns for his beautiful teammate first - for the loss of her life, first and foremost; for the loss of all the things she wanted to do, for the little girl she would have had if she had lived. He mourns for Chin Ho - the loss of family, a woman close enough to be his sister. He mourns for Danny - the loss of a close friend. He mourns for himself - the loss of a friend, the loss of a coworker, the loss of - he isn't even sure what. He feels as though there's a wealth of opportunities he should have had with her which he will never get.
It's the catharsis that has been weeks in the making. He's just grateful that Providence sent him here today, when he had no real plans to come. He doesn't bother to dwell on why he didn't have this when he was in familiar company. He doesn't bother to dwell on why he's finally been given the gift of release now, on a beach with strangers, watching a little girl who is unrelated to Kono Kalakaua.
Although, laughs a little voice which sounds remarkably like her warm tones, given how well-connected Chin Ho and Kono are on these islands, there's the possibility this little girl IS related to Kono. And for the first time he's able to smile at that joke, rather than wanting to punch something.
The puppy somehow manages to break away from the little girl's father and goes bounding up the beach from the water, its multicolored leash bouncing behind it. He can hear the small child calling its name in distress, and the father starts out of the water, sprinting after the runaway pet.
As the animal passes him, he stomps hard down on the leash. Even with the soft sand, there's enough solidity underneath his boot that his weight from above, plus the ground below, is enough to catch the leash tight, and he can hear the surprised yelp as the dog comes to an abrupt halt.
"Thank you," the father intones as he comes to a skidding halt in front of him, and his dimpled smile and expressive blue-grey eyes demonstrate his gratitude. Steve doesn't say a word, just giving a smile of acknowledgment as he hands the leash to the dark-haired man. The little girl appears now with her mother, running at full tilt before dropping to her knees and hugging her dog, who licks her face happily, having entirely forgotten about the ignominious end to its run. "Thank you," the father says again. "It'd kill her if she lost her dog." Steve knows that it's just an expression, but the word choice hits him harder than he expects.
The mother leans down slightly, her straight, black hair brushing past her shoulders as she does so. She nudges the little girl to remember her manners. The little girl turns to her puppy's rescuer with a beaming smile.
He looks down at her as she thanks him. He then crouches down slowly, not trusting himself not to fall. He doesn't take off his sunglasses; with the bright sunlight, he can see her face even with them on, and he doesn't want her to see what a mess his face is. Perhaps it's just his own mind, but seeing her close-up, he's overwhelmed. That smile, those dimples. Her mother doesn't resemble Kono completely - for one, this little girl inherited her father's dimples. Still, the combination - she could really have passed for his teammate's child.
"I'm Steve," he murmurs, his voice raw. "What's your name?"
"Keona," the little girl replies proudly.
God's gracious gift.
"That's a beautiful name," he replies, his voice still strained, and he can feel fresh tears that he can't quite stop.
She looks at him with her young eyes, full of compassion, and suddenly reaches out with her sandy hands, brushing at the tears she can see on his cheeks, uncovered by his sunglasses. Her parents are horrified at her boldness, and the sand from her hands just ends up on his face rather than cleaning it, but the gesture of kindness makes him smile. "No, it's all right," he cuts off her parents' admonition to her and apology to him. "It's fine."
He smiles painfully at her. "You remind me of somebody I lost recently," he admits hoarsely, and he's even more shocked with what comes out next: "Somebody I loved."
Her parents fall silent. The little girl doesn't seem to understand completely, but she impulsively wraps her small arms around his neck.
He's surprised by the gesture, and temporarily stunned into inaction before he finally puts his own arms around her, hugging the small child - so warm and full of life.
He releases her and steps back to let her and her family go. The little girl's mother only smiles her thanks, her dark, dark brown eyes watery and filled with sympathy for him; the father silently shakes his hand. As they depart back towards the water, the little girl looks back, waving at him. He can't hear her any more, but he can see her lips moving: "Thank you for catching my doggie," she repeats.
He can only raise a hand in reply, and she's long out of earshot when he manages, in a cracked whisper, "No, thank you."
In his mind, he can hear Kono's warm laughter.
end