Disclaimer: Not mine. I borrowed them and I broke them. I don't intend to return them fixed.
Summary: Steve takes Danny and Grace on a trip to Kilauea and because Hawaii really doesn't like Danny, the volcano erupts almost literally under their feet.
A/N: The story was written for H50-exchange held on LiveJournal.
It wouldn't happen without a few awesome people, so . . . Big THANK YOU goes to Zolac-No-Miko for being a bottomless well of wisdom about volcanoes, to BigJ52 for correcting my bad grammar and punctuation and to Tailoredshirt and Delicatale for organizing this awesome feast. Especially to Delicatale for handholding and encouragement.
I also bow down in gratitude before Madame Pele, for granting me inspiration to write this story.
WIWO'OLE
(fearless)
Chapter One
"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."
~Frank Herbert, Dune
All Danny could do was curl into a ball, Grace between his legs, and hold her close to him, cover her head with his arms, shield her body with his. She was screaming. He wanted to scream too but he decided that he would be brave for her.
People were running around them but Danny only turned his back to the stone-hurling, lava-spitting caldera, determined to take the first burn if Madame Pele decided to strike in their direction. He feared that his body was a poor shield for Grace against the wrath of the Fiery Goddess so he tried a prayer too. Nothing like a religious awakening in the face of imminent doom.
"Do not panic!" A feminine voice carried over the cacophony of whines, cries, explosions and sounds of boulders smashing against the rim of the depression that was less than a hundred feet from them. It did little good. "Stay low and cover your heads!" A ranger with Hawaii Volcanoes National Park - a girl really, not more than twenty years old, dark-haired and petite - appeared out of nowhere as soon as the explosions started. She now took it upon herself to save everyone who happened to be unfortunate enough to find themselves at the site, including Danny, Grace and . . . yeah, Steve, whose idea it was in the first place. "Try to move toward the bus!" she screamed.
Danny dared a glance up. The bus. It was a large van really, belonging to some organized group of tourists. It stood less than fifty paces away on the asphalt of the parking lot, beside their rented car and why, oh why did Steve drag Grace and him all the way to the precipice, promising a 'view they'd never forget'?
Yes, the view was unforgettable, astounding. The depression in the ground could fit in a small town. The bottom of the caldera was at least three hundred feet below, down the steep cliff. However the most unforgettable thing about it was the moment when the ground had shaken beneath their feet and something had moved beneath the floor of the caldera as if a giant worm was digging through the ground just under the surface. A split second later it burst open with a deafening groan and threw the stones up almost as high as they were standing.
Danny couldn't remember how he found himself half-way toward the parking lot, unsure if his legs or the earth were shaking, scrambling for terrified Grace. "Monkey, Monkey," he was repeating frantically, thinking that those stones would not reach them, it was not possible that they would soar that high!
"Move toward the bus!" the ranger girl was still trying to herd the panicked people away from danger.
"Go, Monkey, go," Danny whispered into his daughter's hair, crouched, nearly wrapped around her. "Just move." She wouldn't even budge.
"Sir," he heard the ranger girl's voice right next to him so he angled his head but she was talking to someone else. "Sir, please, we need to get away from here!" Danny looked all the way up.
Steve damn McGarrett was standing straight as a pole, staring into the caldera, transfixed.
"Steve!" Danny screamed but his friend didn't even blink. He froze, just like Grace.
And the sight, as Danny now noticed, was indeed something to admire. The boulders weren't flying up anymore and the dirty cloud-like mass was dissolving, giving way to the red-hot fountain of melted rocks. The lava spray was growing higher and higher, reaching nearly half-way to the top of the cliff. Danny didn't see the bottom of the fire, the crack in the earth, because it was obscured by the edge, but he could well imagine . . .
He could well understand Steve's fascination.
"We need to get to shelter." The ranger's plea reached Danny again. She was pulling at McGarrett's hand, to no avail.
"Commander!" Danny yelled as loud as he could. Calling a military man's rank was a guaranteed way to get their attention and indeed, Steve turned his death-like glare on his partner. "Move! Now!" Steve's eyes skimmed over Danny, Grace, the bus in the distance and the frightened face of ranger girl and before Danny managed to suck in a breath, the ex-SEAL was in action. In one step he closed the distance between them, scooped Grace in his arms - for a blink of an eye she looked like a little kitten curled in the tree branches, before Steve turned away and hid her from Danny's view - and he took off toward the bus.
"Shit!" Danny followed him right away, ranger girl in tow.
Almost everyone else was crowding at the bus already, pushing and pulling and screaming. When they reached it and Steve put Grace on the ground, directing her to board the bus, he turned back and grabbed ranger girl's arm.
"You got radio?" he half-asked, half-stated and without waiting for her response, ordered, "We need to report our position and request evac."
"It's already reported!" the ranger exclaimed. "We're instructed to get away from here, so board the bus or take your own car and drive down the Rim Drive toward the Highway and then south-"
Steve's brows knit closer and closer together as she was yelling and finally he snapped.
"You're to relay orders, not give them!" his eyes were searching for something on her arm. "What's your rank?" he seethed.
Danny was already guiding Grace inside the van but he turned back to intervene. He was certain that the poor woman would freak out; she'd already had too much on her plate without McGarrett losing his marbles all over her, but surprisingly, she held her own.
"I am a ranger with the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, sir. Name's Ellie," she said in a very even tone, her gaze trained on Steve's eyes in which Danny saw a glimpse of realization and something he'd call terror if he didn't know that 'SuperSEAL' was afraid of nothing. "We're not under attack. That out there," she pointed at lava now spouting above the rim, "is an erupting volcano."
Steve's Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed. "I know," he replied in a strange voice.
t.b.c.
The story is complete. I'll try to post one chapter (there will be about six of them, I think) every day.
As always, comments are greatly appreciated. :)