I do not own Hawaii Five-0 or any characters. No copyright infringement intended.

Note: Ok, I don't really like Doris all that much. But the darn Breakfast Bunny spewed forth. Doris in this epi freaked me out. But her face was so very conflicted too. I guess the dear Breakfast Bunny had to have something to say about the teenie amount of sadness for her.

Based on Episode Wahine'inoloa; Tag

H5O* H5O* H5O* H5O* H5O*

In Too Deep

She could feel the young woman's eyes boring into her back as she walked up the path. There was quite possibly a trace of fear in them. Most definitely a new unease after witnessing first hand what Doris was clearly still capable of. She didn't doubt that Cath might even feel personally threatened. And Doris assumed that her secret would not stay quiet for long. The young woman was incredibly loyal to her son and unfortunately, much too savvy. It would be interesting to see if Lieutenant Catherine Rollins would actually keep her reluctant promise to stay quiet.

After a few minutes, no more than the time it took for her to open and then close herself off from the outside world, Doris heard the car leave and she went directly to the bathroom. She needed to shower and cover the bruises on her face. Do something to clean up before Steve came home.

Even at her age; after being on the run and hidden for so long, she knew how to take an enemy down. It was ingrained .. an unfortunate part of her soul. She knew where to take him. And then how to skillfully administer just the right amount of tortuous pain. There had been a feeling of perverse satisfaction as she applied the initial electrical currents to his dampened chest. She still rarely made mistakes and this never should have been one.

But then Cath had unexpectedly found them in the abandoned garage. Doris' face was unreadable as she gathered up clean clothes and got a towel while she rehashed what had just happened. Inside though, she seethed with an odd combination of sadness that was slowly being overwhelmed by a pure unadulterated indifferent chill.

Deep down inside herself, someone had been screaming in horror for her to stop. Stop for Mary. Stop for Steve and even for herself. Horrified at what she was doing with such a cold and much too practiced malevolent ease. Ignoring it, she had continued steadfast. Hands steady. Voice almost, but not quite, wholly calm as she electrocuted the man .. her foe.. with what she thought was just the right amount of current. Questioning him with a purpose until Cath had arrived and had forced her to stop.

"..you're going to kill him .."

She hadn't really seen that until then. That in fact, he would have died. She would have killed him and almost did as he sagged nearly unconscious in the chair she had bound him too. Furious that he had been refusing to talk in the middle of the shallow puddle of water .. water used to increase the damaging flow of the electricity.

Doris had hesitated briefly. Wondering if she had been blinded by anger, fear, or hatred? No, more likely disgust that she had failed the first time. And by the sheer gall that someone was still after her when she only wanted to be left alone on her terms. If he had died, she would have simply reacted to cleanly dispose of the body and of the handmade tools cobbled together for her purposes.

But Cath had interrupted them.

With a resolute hand, Doris turned the shower on as hot as she could stand it. She faintly recognized that person or thing screaming in such a sad horror had only recently made itself known again. The one that used to exist in a long lost reality where Doris McGarrett much too briefly lived as a loving mother.

But that very day, Doris had once more pushed it away. Trampled it down. She was in too deep. And that other person or thing had been buried for much too long. It had no place in her reality anymore and once again, she had proven it.

Steve could never know about the monster she had become .. or still was. Nothing had ever truly been much different. The sharply barked laugh came out before she could stifle it. The water from the shower couldn't even muffle the sound as it became a true sob.

~ fin ~