Joe sat down as Steve chose to pace, like a lion stalking its prey with full, uninterrupted eye contact. "I don't know the specifics, but your mother and Catherine got into contact whilst Cath was in Afghanistan."
"Who contacted who?" Steve growled.
"Like I said, I don't know the specifics." Joe answered innocently.
"Joe. So help me god." He snarled
"Okay, okay." Joe answered with his hands up in defeat, he sighed. "The village Catherine was staying in had a CIA asset living there. A private military team was sent in to protect the area, when they found out that Catherine was imbedded already, and that she was ex military, they contacted their superiors and had her instated. I guess that list passed through Doris' hands at some point."
"So my mother contacted her?" Steve snarled.
"Doris asked Catherine if she would consider running some black ops, disguised as a civilian, for the CIA. Catherine declined at first, because she couldn't guarantee the safety of the people in the village if she left. But Doris assured her that the team would be in place for as long as the threat in the area was current. She told her that the operations she would be involved in would contribute to neutralizing the known threats in the area. Therefore she would have a greater impact on providing stability than just waiting for them to push into the village."
Steve looked at Danny, his face filled with a range of emotions. None of them good. "Well, I don't know about you but I really thought there was nothing else this woman could do that would surprise me. Yet here we are." Danny answered, his voice dripping with disgust.
"Catherine was reinstated to her role back in the Navy and drafted by the CIA in an official capacity. She completed the operations, was involved in some fairly large takedowns. Much more than Doris had anticipated. With the threat alleviated somewhat, and the understanding that the team would remain in place until the conflict was over, Catherine asked to return back to O'ahu."
Steve glared at him.
"As far as I knew, she was taking a couple of weeks leave and in that time she was going to decide if she wanted to go back to the Navy or stand down again." Joe added. "Either way, she wanted to be here with you." He paused. "She had every intentions of staying, Steve."
"So what changed?" Steve asked.
Joe glanced at Danny before looking back at Steve. "Your mother called her, said she had missions which she knew Catherine would be ideal for."
"Did she know that Catherine was back here, that she was back with me?" Steve asked.
Joe hesitated. "Yes."
"And she still called her back." Steve hissed with disgust.
"You have to understand, Doris' job demands results and she would do anything and use the best people she has to get those results. Lives depend on it." Joe answered.
"Yeah, at the expense of the happiness of people she is supposed to love." Danny replied.
"Steve, if Catherine hadn't have been caught we wouldn't be having this conversation. You would be none the wiser of what was happening, where she was, what she'd been doing. She would have come back eventually and you would have made your decision on what was to happen with your future accordingly."
"Oh so that makes it okay?" Steve snapped. "That Cath would have come back here telling me lies and looking over her shoulder, just like Doris did? That I wouldn't have known the truth that she chose the CIA over me without a second thought?"
"That's not true." Joe shook his head. "I know for a fact that the decision to leave again was heartbreaking for Catherine."
"She still did it though." He answered.
"Let's just say it wasn't that black and white. Your mother had some fairly compelling reasons for Catherine to go back."
"What does that even mean, Joe?" Steve shouted angrily before pausing, watching Joe lower his head as if he didn't even want to go near answering that. He didn't have to. Steve could finally think the way she did. "She blackmailed her, didn't she?" he growled softly. "What did she say, Joe? Did she threaten to retract the security from the village?" he asked.
Joe offered him nothing.
Steve's eyes widened. "I'm going to kill her. If anything happens to Catherine, I promise you, I will hunt her down and I will kill her." He said menacingly before turning and removing a picture from the wall, revealing a safe.
"Steve, I know you're upset." Joe answered. "But…"
"Wait." Danny said. "What are you doing Steve?"
He reached into the cavity and pulled out his passport and other documents. "I'm going over there myself."
"Have you lost your mind?" Danny snapped. "Aside from the fact that these people are crazies with machetes, you don't have a plan, you don't have a location, you go asking around in a place like that you draw all the wrong attention. How do you think it's going to work out for you?"
"I can't just sit here." Steve argued.
"Danny's right. And like we said, even if you could get a direct flight from here into the country, which you can't, you would still be 40,000 feet in the air at the scheduled time of execution."
"Which is exactly why you didn't tell me this was going down sooner, right Joe? It had nothing to do with intel, nothing to do with it going public. You just didn't want me to get in the way." Steve replied.
"I knew that this would be your knee jerk reaction, and if I was wrong to have kept this from you I am sorry. You going in to this hostile territory, a place where you haven't been before and are not familiar with the operations, you could never have gotten Catherine back by yourself, but would have gotten you killed." Joe paused. "You know that, but you would have still done it anyway. So yes, my decision to keep this quiet was simply to protect you from yourself, nothing more than that."
"You know what? Enough. I've heard enough." Steve whispered as he headed for the front door.
"Steve…" Danny called.
"I'm good." Steve answered dismissively as he disappeared.
Joe slumped back into the chair and looked at Danny. "Go on. Go ahead. Tell me I did the wrong thing?"
Danny straightened and shook his head. "No, I'm not going to tell you that. You and I agree on one thing and that is that Steve going into that place would only end badly for him. For us." He sighed. "Catherine didn't go into this blindly. She knew the risks. But you need to start working out what you are going to do when he goes looking for Doris."
Joe raised his eyebrows. "Well he won't have to look very hard."
Danny glared at him. "She's here? In Hawaii?"
"Got in this morning. She figured that Steve would want to see her."
"Joe, he doesn't want to just see her, he wants to finish her." Danny snapped. "Between the story about Wo Fat, and this… he's got nothing left to say to her."
"There's more to her coming here, and I'm confident that when Steve sees her, sees why she is really back, he will be okay."
Danny laughed. "Joe, nothing can make this right." He snapped. "You hear me? Nothing."
"Well, we'll just have to see." Joe shrugged. "Because I can't stop Doris, and we sure as hell can't stop Steve."
H50 H50 H50 H50 H50 H50 H50 H50 H50 H50 H50 H50 H50
Steve sat on an old wooden chair in the front yard, away from the celebrations as he held his head in his hands. So many emotions, his heart tearing apart and the mixed feelings tormenting his mind. When Catherine left that day, she had hurt him so badly that he decided he would keep going with his life and never ever look back. What he and Lyn had was incredible and real. It even had aspects that he never experienced with Cath, but she was always there in his thoughts and in his heart. There was nothing he could ever do about that, and if truth be told he didn't really want to do anything about it.
She lived silently in his head, there were so many things on this island that would prompt his memories of her. The house, the ocean, songs, places they used to frequently visit together. She was always there. He was in love with Lyn, but his love for Catherine was still as strong as ever and the only way he could overcome that was knowing she had chosen her path without him. But now, knowing that there was so much more to her departing and her reasons for going, it was not as easy to accept. And now knowing that she was in such grave danger, it only heightened his feelings for her.
Tears escaped from his eyes and down his cheeks, no matter what he was forced to understand that his relationship with Lyn had to be seriously assessed regardless of Catherine's fate. If he wasn't giving her all he had then was he being fair?
"Steve?" Mary said, clutching Joan, as she stepped towards him. She was oblivious to what had happened.
Steve wiped away his tears quickly but it was far too late to hide from someone like Mary, who knew him so well.
"What's going on?" She asked as she perched herself down on the seat next to him.
Steve sighed, his expression filled with bitterness as he glared into nothingness. He paused for what seemed like an eternity, and Mary knew better than to push him. "I am so sorry, Mary." He whispered with sadness.
She frowned. "For what?"
"For bringing mom back in to our lives." He whispered. "I never thought that there could be anything worse than losing your mom as a kid. Growing up like we did. The amount of times I wished everything would go back to how it was, how much I would give to have that happen." He paused. "What we remembered about her when we were kids, a mild mannered school teacher, a loving mother who would do anything for her kids. It might have all been based off lies but it was nice. And those traits, they are what I loved remembering after she went. But now, knowing what she is, what she's done and what she continues to do. I hate her Mare, I hate her so much."
"Where is this coming from? What has she done now?" Mary asked with trepidation.
Steve shrugged. "She's taken one more thing from me that I can't forgive her for." He paused. "And there really is no coming back from it."
Mary studied his expression, she could see he was hurting. "You gave her far more than I did." She whispered. "You gave her so many chances to come back into your life and she screwed you over every single time. That's not your fault. That's all on her. She didn't deserve you."
Steve inhaled the warm summer air. "She recruited Catherine to the CIA." He looked at his sister. "Can you believe that?" he whispered, a bitter smile crossed his lips. "It's come full circle. She fakes her own death, she shatters our childhood, we lose everything."
Mary's eyes drifted down.
"I join the Navy, I meet someone who I knew from day one I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. Then mom comes back and changes the course of everything again." He paused. "She is doing the same thing she did to Dad." He pushed back the urge to breakdown. "I just want to know what I did wrong. I want to know why she hates me so much that she could even consider doing what she's done. What did I do to deserve this?"
"Nothing. You did nothing." Mary responded as she wrapped her arm around him. "Steve, stop, this is not you. You get knocked down and you get back up again, that's what you've always done. That woman doesn't have the right to make you feel like this. She's nothing except toxic."
"What you say makes sense." He replied. "But it's not that easy to do." he paused and sighed. "She may not have the right to make me feel like this but she has. The worst part is that she just doesn't care. She's supposed to care." he squeezed the bridge of his nose. "I'm getting tired of picking myself up again, Mare."
"You still love Catherine?" she asked softly.
Steve hesitated for a moment before he nodded. "More than I should." He whispered.
"And Lyn?"
He sighed. "I mean, I love her too. But…"
"I get it." Mary nodded. "You know. I always admired you and Catherine's relationship. With what we thought had happened to mom, and seeing Dad so lonely, it made me push boyfriends away. I was scared to get too close to them because I just always believed they would go. I just didn't want to go through what he went through. The ironic thing is that now I'm a single parent. Just like he was." She continued. "But you, you went the other way."
Steve looked to her.
"You and Catherine, had a relationship so deep and special. That's a once in a lifetime thing, some people don't even get half of what you guys had."
"And I didn't realize that until it was too late."
"Doesn't have to be too late, Steve. If she feels the same way, she'll come back."
Steve looked at her, he couldn't face telling her the whole story. "Yeah, maybe." He whispered. "You know what, Mare? I'm so proud of you. With what you have with Joan, I never thought you'd still have her. But you totally proved me wrong, and this is one of the rare times where I'm over the moon to be wrong."
Mary smiled and nudged him with her shoulder affectionately. "It's not easy, and there has been so many times where I could have given up. But she needed me, and to tell you the truth, I needed her."
Steve smiled lovingly.
"Listen. We stick together, no matter what." Mary continued.
He nodded. "No matter what." He whispered.
"I love you so much." She whispered, hugging him tightly. "Don't ever forget that."
