Title: Consequences
Author: thewhiterose3
Pairing: none at present, but I may not be able to help myself.
Disclaimer: Not mine, never will be. Blah blah woof woof.
Rating: T for language
A/N: Chapter dos...
As soon as Danny walks into HPD, the sight instantly makes him stupidly furiously angry. He could deal with the empty streets, the populous sleeping soundly in their beds, the coffee shops that didn't yet know that their order would be irrevocably changed for the foreseeable future. He could just barely deal with laid back baristas making small talk, not knowing that they had all been suddenly thrown into another dimension. A dimension where he was in Hawaii and his baby girl was on a plane to New Jersey and Steve, Steve was not by his side badgering the hell out of him. And Kono, a morning where Kono wouldn't be starting her day on a board was just wrong, so fucking wrong. He could deal with that, with the populous not yet catching on, but this, this calm, collected skeleton crew of the HPD was more than he could take. He wanted to lash out, scream at them that this was not okay, this was nothing to be stoic about, this was wrong, all of it wrong. His whole fucking world was wrong and why could no one else see it.
Thankfully, Chin's superhuman powers came to the rescue a-fucking-gain because just as he was about to sacrifice his coffee to the good of humanity by flinging across the room and demanding they all see the writing on the god damn wall, Chin walked in. Chin-Ho walked right up to him, looked him in the eye, said I know, Danny, I know, led them to his office where the weight of the goddamn world was visible on his shoulders.
And that slumped Chin, that confirmation that at least someone knew, appreciated just how fucked up, wrong the world had become in the last few hours, took the explosive edge off his anger. Gave him the funnel to focus and channel that anger, the purpose to hand Chin his coffee, thank him for giving them a chance. Give him a little of the freaking mountain of appreciation he deserved for thinking quickly, giving them this platform for making their ohana whole again.
"Jesus. I don't tell you this enough, but you're fucking awesome. How in the hell did you get all this, you in charge of Steve's case, neither of us kicked off the damn case or hell the force for being too involved, your own damn office space, so fucking quickly?"
And Chin can't seem to help the edges of his mouth turning up a little as he replies, "Guilt, it's a powerful motivator, brah."
…
Getting Steve off the hook for killing the Governor Jameson turned out to be the easy part. Once you started looking, the physical evidence just didn't add up. Between the taser burns on Steve's neck and the lack of gunpowder residue on his gloves and clothes, there was just no way that Steve had fired that weapon. But then there was the B&E at the governor's mansion, assaulting the police officers when he fled the first time, again when he broke into the mansion, the murder of Laura Hills. And they could probably get him off that, too, but then there was Kono.
It turns out that Steve had one piece of good luck that night. They had the governor's fingerprints on Steve's cell, calling up the options screen on the recording app but never fully pressing delete in her haste. Which means they heard her admitting to having Laura Hills killed off, heard her "I'm loyal to those who are loyal to me" – the neither accepting nor denying Steve's charge that she was in league with Wo Fat, heard her obviously talking to someone else in the room after the sound of the taser and Steve's body falling to the floor. But they also had Steve, the all-encompassing idiot, trying to put all of the fucking pieces together in one go, mentioning the missing money in the evidence locker by name, the governor saying that yes, she had replaced the money to protect Steve. Combine that with the first hand witness to Kono at the scene, and Steve and Kono were going away for grand larceny. There were dozens of witnesses to Chin and Danny's whereabouts at that particular moment, as well. It wouldn't take a rocket scientist to put it all together with the burned bills HPD now had in custody and the sudden release of Chin from the bomb-collar.
So they were left with the impossible choice of exonerating Steve from the murder charges, all of the murder charges, only to throw both Kono and Steve under the bus for the missing money from the evidence locker. And fuck if they were going to let them take the brunt of it, go down for it alone. They'd shown Steve once, they'd show him again. It was all or nothing. Their ohana was in this fucking mess together. So it was up to Chin and Danny and Jenna, fuck if Danny hadn't forgotten about Jenna for a little while there, to work every other option possible before bringing that recording to the attention of their superiors.
Looking over the crime scene notes from the governor's mansion for the fifty-seven billionth time, Danny idly thinks that if they could just find unshakeable proof that the Governor was guilty, then they could at least take the assaults off the list. Hell, he knows most of those cops, knows that if he could just listen to that fucking recording, then they would drop any and all charges against him. It was his parents for fuck's sake. Who wouldn't be all fucked up in the head over someone you trusted murdering your fucking parents? Because really, really he just wanted one, a single thing crossed off the damn list of everything that was wrong with his world, just one. Why was that too fucking much to ask for?
Hell, right now he just wanted to see him. He wanted to see the fucking giant and make sure that he knew, knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he had people in his corner. Danny knew the shithole that was Steve's subconscious, had been fighting it, inserting his happiness into Steve's life whether he was invited or not. Longboards on the lanai, running commentary over tivoed baseball games, weekends with Grace spent on Steve's stretch of sand. And he had seen Steve smile, laugh more on his off time instead of spending it cleaning and swimming and running within an inch of his life. He was teaching Steve how to enjoy his time not working and he really didn't want to see that light leave his partner's eyes when he had tried so fucking hard to put it there.
But they were playing it close to chest, trying to not jeopardize his spot on Chin's team by not showing how fucking obviously he was in Steve's corner. How irrevocably he was committed to getting Steve out of jail no matter what he had done. He was trying, fucking trying to show his face as a cop whose sole interest was the truth and nothing but the truth so fucking help him God. Which meant Chin was the one to question Steve, to see him through three inches of glass. Chin was the one got to see if he was eating or if the light had fled from his eyes completely or if he was just burying it, holding it close via closing himself off from all emotion. But Danny, Danny had to know, had to know that Steve knew he had him in his corner.
And so Danny did the only thing he knew how. He shared the things that gave him hope. He sent Steve a letter. Well, letter was pushing it. He sent Steve an envelope with two photos and two sentences. One was a photo of the team that the waitress had taken the last time they had gone out to celebrate the closing of another case. They were all smiling, pressed together, arms surrounding, whole. The second was a picture he had taken himself, of Steve and Grace at the water's edge. Grace was beaming up at Steve like he was the coolest person she had ever met and Steve, the huge freaking goof, was looking down at his daughter like her happiness was the most important thing in the world to him. These were the things holding Danny's life together, if he could just make Steve remember, give him something to hold close. And two sentences. Remember Meka, I do not let this shit stand. I've got you, babe.
