Summary: There's only so much a man can take before the walls he builds will crack. All it needs is a final, unexpected blow.
Chapter 2
Four days ago.
"Tell me again, exactly, what are we doing here?"
Steve sighed. This conversation had already gone around several times, in several different ways, but heat and boredom was wearing him down and he couldn't face a confrontation. "Jeez Danny...Fifteen thousand dollars in counterfeit currency..."
"...that has already been recovered..."
"...that was seized in a joint operation..."
"...which did not include us...to which we were not invited...which was kept strictly on the low down..."
"...by customs officials, officers of the United States Treasury Department, and the Secret Service..."
"Basically the world and his wife..."
"...I think they expected a bigger haul, had some bad intel..."
"...but not us ...Oh no, not the task force especially set up with the explicit purpose to tackle serious crime in the State of Hawaii..."
"...was discovered to have been produced, at least in part, here." Steve pointed to the dilapidated motel across the road. "In fact, in there."
"And now they call us in! Now that their secret-squirrel, hush-hush, don't-tell-the-locals-what's-going-on, investigation is over. After they've arrested the planners, the printers and the distributors, now they want us to get involved and pick up the dregs." Danny's voice was rising higher and getting faster. "Unbelievable!" He shifted in his seat to look over at Steve who calmly kept his eyes trained on the building.
"They just wanted a jolly here in the sun, is what they wanted." Danny halted briefly to irritatedly wipe his brow.
The sun's heat was building and on stake-out the engine running would be a give away, so there was no air conditioning. They were all wilting but Danny's indignation remained just as powerful. Steve could understand it too. He knew most of his friend's current agitation actually came from the fact he was missing time with his daughter, time that was all the more precious to him recently.
"All that manpower and did you actually see any of that currency, Steve? Did you? 'Cause I did. I went and took a look at it in HQ and it literally isn't worth the paper it's printed on. I mean it, I've seen some fake bills in my time but these were the worst. Ever! Believe me, even a blind freakin' beggar from deepest Uzbekistan, who'd never even seen an American dollar in his life and needed the money to save his dying wife, would have known they weren't real and given them back."
Steve smirked at the image and at the dramatic re-enactment Danny was performing with his hands.
"Oh, you may find that funny, my friend, but let me ask you this, Steven...do you know how much counterfeit money there actually is in circulation in this country at this very moment?
"Around sixty four million dollars at last count," Chin's voice spoke into their earpieces.
"Oh, don't interrupt him, Cuz," Kono's voice followed and they could hear her amusement and imagine her grin. "Danny's on a roll."
Steve glanced along the street to their second vehicle, where the rest of his team were also keeping watch.
Danny hardly broke stride. "My point is, when we're talking in the region of sixty four million dollars, does a measly fifteen thousand dollars worth of the world's crappiest fake money since Monopoly was invented, which wouldn't convince anyone, does that really justify us sitting here for the best part of four hours, hoping, on the off-chance, to pick up the absolute lowliest members of the penny ante crew that produced it." He slammed a hand against the dashboard. "I mean, where's the Secret Service now, huh?"
After his lengthy rant, his final demand hung in the dead air until Steve finally cracked with a huff of laughter too long suppressed. He pulled his eyes away from the building and grinned broadly over his shoulder at his partner.
"Aww, Danno, you know you love to spend time with me!"
"Don't you start up with that Danno cra..."
"Hey, guys...we've got movement." Chin's sharp alert cut into the exchange and immediately the whole team's attention was concentrated on the building's dreary facade.
A man in his late twenties had just rounded the corner of the car park out front and was heading towards the last room on the ground floor. Dressed in jeans, a red floral Hawaiian shirt and sneakers, he glanced around anxiously, fidgeting nervously with his buttons and his hair, before rapping on the door.
"Tweaker," Danny noted quietly. Even from their distance, the tell-tale twitches and tics were a give-away.
The door quickly opened to admit him and as soon as he stepped inside, Steve gave his order. Finally!... The last two members of a gang that his unit had not investigated, responsible for a mildly pathetic crime they had not been notified of, were together...Time to wrap this up!
"Chin, Kono, take the fire door, just as we planned. Danny and I are in the front."
The four left their cars in the same instant and sprinted towards the building, weapons in hand. Chin and Kono quickly positioned themselves at the fire exit at one end, as Steve and Danny settled themselves either side of the peeling door. Their eyes met in a practiced and easy silent communication, as Steve raised a fist. His thunderous hammering was the background to his bellowed instruction.
"This is Five-0! Open the door!"
There was a shout, a loud thump and the sound of frantic movement from within. Steve glanced across to Danny, who gave a resigned "oh-go-on-then" nod, then kicked in the door, just in time to see their two suspects disappearing through a hole in the side of the room. Not a door, a hole. The wall had been inexpertly knocked through to the adjoining room which, even at a brief glance, clearly held a battery of home computers.
Steve and Danny leapt across the twin beds in their path in time to see their targets fleeing through yet another jagged opening. The whole of the ground floor of the decrepit building was now revealed to be a honeycomb of exits ... No wonder we couldn't trace the manager, Danny realized. It meant the two targets would not be taking the escape route that Five-0 had anticipated.
"They're heading out the front – Three rooms down," Steve shouted to update Chin and Kono who were waiting in completely the wrong place.
Danny turned and headed back the way they'd come, flying out the door just as Steve popped out further down the building.
"Shit!"
The flowery shirt of the man they'd seen entering was now flapping wildly as he raced away towards the waterfront. He was followed closely by a second man, broadly built and moving fast on slightly bowed legs.
Danny and Steve took off in pursuit, dodging two oncoming vehicles which braked and hooted as they held up warning hands without slowing down. Shoulder to shoulder, they swung into an alleyway and raced down its length, bursting out the other end in time to see their targets dashing through gates into a private harbor-side business park, stacked high with row upon row of containers.
Steve barely hesitated in his rapid assessment. Turning back to where Chin and Kono were now approaching, he waved them to the left and, as they adjusted their course to move down a parallel opening, he and Danny ran on, hoping their quarry would be caught in a classic military-style pincer manoeuvre. The team knew the men would soon come to the dead-end of the water that lay ahead of them.
The business park was built on a wharf at the end of a series of jetties sticking out into the sea like fingers grasping at the blueness. The one that lay ahead of them would be the pinky finger, the last one, stuck onto the end of a long tourist strip. With its light industrial units, this was an area of commerce and therefore fairly quiet on a Saturday. The next jetty alongside however was positively heaving with people.
From across the narrow stretch of water, Steve and Danny could hear the strains of local music and registered the movement of hundreds of visitors and locals, mixing happily together at the annual Pukana la Festival. Chasing their suspects, however, they had no time to appreciate the dancers or displays. Instead they pressed on at a jog, instinctively covering each other, halting and checking, as they came to each new stack of containers.
Both men were breathing heavily and felt trickles of sweat under their vests as they eventually came to the last of a row of stacked crates and found themselves stepping out into a wide, open area. It was deserted.
"Where the hell did they go?" Steve growled.
He and Danny circled slowly, back to back with their guns raised, poised and alert to any threat. They turned to see Kono and Chin jogging to meet them with the same puzzled looks.
"The didn't pass us," Chin assured them. "They have to still be here."
The team walked slowly towards the waters edge, checking that the men hadn't managed to escape by boat, but the quayside was clear and they all stood back, getting their breath back and gazing around them, scouring the area. Gradually their eyes were drawn now to the busy jollity of the festival going on just fifty meters away.
"Hey, Danny!" Kono called out suddenly, her hand raised against the reflection of the sun's bright glare and the sparkling waves. "Isn't that Gracie over there?"
In the quiet tension it was an incongruously welcome note of normality and everyone turned immediately to where she pointed.
Danny felt his world slam to a halt.
It was a beautiful scene, a beautiful setting, a beautiful family.
Against the bright colors of a perfect Hawaiian backdrop, the young girl was running, laughing, up the opposite boardwalk. A dazzling, dancing sunbeam, in a bright yellow dress. Her dark hair was loose and flying behind her, her arms outstretched. Taking a last leap, she was scooped up into a man's waiting arms and swung around and around, up and down, giggling and shrieking, before being placed down next to a blue buggy. Peeking inside, the delight on the girl's bright face shone out as she gazed up at her laughing mother. Two sets of arms wrapped around her and two mouths kissed each of her flushed cheeks. Then the three of them set off again with the beautiful girl at their center, skipping and chattering along and pushing the buggy with a pride that glowed as brightly as the smiles reflected in the adoring looks of the adults who walked a little behind her, relaxed, arm in arm and so, so happy.
The Hawaiian Tourist Board would have killed for such a shot... "The Perfect Family". Danny couldn't breath.
Kono gasped and turned to him, wishing she hadn't witnessed the scene, that she hadn't said anything, that she wasn't now close enough to see the look of frozen anguish that held Danny rigid.
She looked up at Steve and saw him wince. He lifted a hand, first up to his own mouth then out towards his partner, registering his pain and knowing immediately the impact that this scene would have upon him, wanting to help. He pulled back though without touching him, for once, unsure.
The team were immobilized by their shared horror of being present at such an intimately devastating moment for their friend.
Danny stared across the water, unseen by his daughter, unnoticed by his former wife and her husband, utterly unknown to their newborn baby.
With no moment to prepare himself, to raise his defenses, it hit him like a physical blow. A boxer who'd let his guard down. His chest hurt with the vision. His head felt like it might explode with the image and he had to clench his jaw hard against a flood of saliva that threatened either nausea or a howl of grief.
His daughter; his love; his hopes. But it wasn't his family.
Steve, Chin and Kono all turned towards him, their eyes flicking rapidly between themselves and back to their friend, mentally groping for an appropriate response, something to help him to cope, when a slight sound behind them sent them spinning instead to identify its source.
First there came footsteps, then a thud and a soft curse and suddenly the red flowery shirt appeared right behind them. He seemed as surprised as they were and stopped abruptly. His partner, running hard while looking backwards at the way they'd come, plowed right into the back of him. In other circumstances, his rebounding fall might have been comical, something worthy of Chaplin in the days of silent movies, but Red Shirt wasn't waiting to help him and sprinted away. Five-0 had to move.
Chin and Kono leapt to secure the man on the ground as Steve set off after the runner.
"Danny!" he shouted at his partner, slapping him on the back as he flew past.
It broke the spell that held him, and Danny whirled around too, drawing what felt like his first ever breath. Moving on muscle memory alone, his cop instincts and training took over where the natural functions of his body seemed to have ceased and he found himself sprinting forwards. Each step though drilled what he'd witnessed into his brain.
Not yours.
Not yours.
Gone.
Seeing Steve dive down between two towering piles of crates Danny ducked right, then left, zig-zagging between a parked van and a storage shed, then a garbage skip and a pile of packaging. It was all just a blur to him. Splinters of that damned image spiked with every blink of his eyes and his blood pounded in time with the torture of it. As he careered around the side of the building, he had no real idea of what he was doing or where he was going.
"Stop!"
The voice surprised him enough to do just that.
"Stop right there, or I'll kill him."
The brightness of the floral shirt was hidden behind the bulk of a delivery driver, held in place by a tight arm around his flabby neck and the threat of a gun resting against the side of his wobbling cheek. The man looked utterly terrified and already near to tears. His captor on the other hand looked manic and dangerous now that he was cornered, pressing against the side of a van with its rear doors still open and boxes strewn about where the driver had been forced to drop them.
Danny brought his gun up as he labored to take it all in.
Not yours...Gone...Gun? Hostage?...
His thoughts seemed on a spin cycle. It seemed to be happening in another dimension as though there'd been some kind of time slip and he'd fallen through the cracks. His own breath sounded loud in his ears, his chest was heaving, but he felt numb.
"Let him go." Instinct took over but even his voice didn't sound like his own. He stepped forward, his Sig leveled straight at the gunman.
Two pairs of eyes widened in fear as Danny took another step.
"Please...no...please...please..." The captive was begging and whimpering, a tiny sound from such a large man but his captor sounded just as desperate when he shouted at the blonde detective, still approaching them so relentlessly and with a strangely hard and detached look on his face.
"S-Stop! I-I said, stop..." Pulling his hostage backwards with him, he hit a crate and nearly stumbled. Glancing desperately around he glimpsed Steve, now also moving towards him from the side but still some distance away. But it was the blond who drew his drugs-glazed eyes back again as he kept on coming, a dead look of absolute determination on his face.
Terrified, he suddenly pushed the hostage away from him and directed his gun at Danny instead. The driver fell to his knees with a squeak of fear and scurried away sideways, trying desperately to make his hefty bulk look small, like an obese mouse in overalls.
With barely four feet between them Danny finally halted his progress.
Between nearby crates, Steve braced with feet apart, aim perfect but unable to take a shot now that Danny and the gunman were so close. He wouldn't miss but, even if he was dead, neither would the tweaker.
"So, what? What? You want to kill a cop now?"
Steve barely recognized his friend's voice. He teased him about his 'tone' but this was something he couldn't categorize. Low and dangerous, there was something terrible in Danny's dull inflection. "Well, why not? You're clearly dumb enough."
Danny was moving forward again relentlessly. Three feet. Two feet. Steve hissed his disbelief at what was unfolding in front of him.
"Wouldn't that just be the perfect addition to your criminal resume."
Danny Williams, normally the voice of reason when it came to police procedure, the brakes on Steve's own juggernaut tendencies, was now niggling and pushing when he should be calming and controlling...What the hell, Danny? Stop!...
Steve inched forwards as Danny pressed on, antagonizing and patronizing.
"Sounds better than 'useless money forger,' I s'pose...I mean, you people never heard of watermarks? Or color shifting ink? How 'bout offset printing?"
"W-what?...S-stop..." The gunman stammered, his brain struggling to make sense of this cop with his weird far-away look. "Hold it right there, or y-you're dead." His gun hand was shaking, the other held up in a vain effort to stop Danny's progress as his eyes darted around, looking for a way out of a situation that was going so badly wrong.
"We've got you on the counterfeiting...Huh, all fifteen grand's worth," Danny spat out dismissively. "So what? Now you think you'll look tougher in jail if you have 'cop killer' next to your name... is that it?"
Danny's eyes bored into the pin prick pupils of the face ahead of him but it was like looking at a TV drama from outside a window – he felt oddly separated and distant even though his vision remained so focused. Not yours...not yours...gone...All the anger and self loathing he felt building inside him was directed on the idiot before him, an idiot who could end it.
To the gunman, the effect of the intensity of those blue eyes reflecting some awful lack of emotion, was more frightening than the gun that the cop held.
"I'll k-kill you..."
Suddenly, Danny's gun dropped. He took his last step and jerked his hands out to hold his arms to the side, Sig pointing at the ground, chest out, chin jutting, as a quick gust of wind hit them from the side.
"Well, go on then...Do it!"
Danny heard himself say it. He knew it was crazy. Dangerous. The swirling in his head and his gut had melded and folded and come out with defiant words spat out as a coping mechanism, something that would stop the pain.
Steve's trigger finger twitched ...Danny! What the hell?...he couldn't believe what he was seeing, but he still couldn't risk a move...Too close...Too damned close...
"Do it!"
The gunman flinched at the repeated order, at the look on the detective's face. A moment of clarity in his drug addled senses sent a screaming message to the survival neurons in his brain and his arms flew up skywards.
"Okay! Okay! I'm done …O-okay!"
Steve was on him in an instant, plucking the gun from his fingers and pushing him down hard onto his knees to cuff him. From behind his prisoner, he looked up incredulously at Danny who was yet to move.
Chin stepped up as well, his normally impassive expression reflecting disbelief and concern and Steve knew he'd been a witness to the drama too. As he walked the guy away, Red Shirt shouted back.
"You're out your head, man...guy's crazy...crazy!"
It was now Steve and Danny who were left facing each other.
"What the hell was that?" Steve's voice was harsh, his vocal cords strangled by the fear of what might have happened. "What did you think you were doing?"
Danny holstered his Sig but said nothing.
"Danny!"
Danny's mouth formed a tight lipless line but he remained silent.
"What were you thinking? The guy is clearly baked, Danny. He could barely see straight and you dare him to kill you ..."
"Got the job done, didn't it?" Danny barked back.
"It was stupid! Christ! You could have been killed."
Steve stepped towards his friend but Danny shied away. Steve saw the twitch of muscle in his jaw line as he fought to school his features, battling the mixture of emotions that still showed through the blue of his eyes. He knew only too well what this was about and it wasn't the job.
"Look... Danny..." he began again, pulling in his own anger in an effort to connect but Danny was holding his hands up now, palms out, a barrier to the conversation and to the pain that still sang in the tightness of his muscles, and in his brain. The tsunami of adrenaline that had carried and dumped him here was receding, leaving behind a horrible clarity. He scrabbled to make sense of it, to put a spin on it that didn't have him looking like he was totally out of control.
"No, Steve, you look..." he took a breath, deliberately forcing his lungs to accept it, needing the oxygen for the strength to go on, to make excuses for what he was only now really realizing he had done.
"Okay, I took a chance. A stupid chance. But he wasn't a killer...I knew he wouldn't do it...I just had to get his attention to make him realize it." He forced a grin that hurt with the effort. "Besides I knew you would take him down..."
Steve shook his head and stepped further into Danny's space. He wanted to smack him.
"I couldn't risk taking the shot. You were too close, you were too..." Crazy?Blinded? Intent on getting yourself killed? Steve stopped himself before he voiced his fears.
"Well, I guess your ridiculous SEAL ways are finally rubbing off on me, huh?" Danny desperately tried for humor, tried to turn it around, but it was unconvincing to both of them and fell flat. He looked into Steve's face, saw the haunted look of fear beneath the anger, and for a second allowed his facade to drop.
"It's okay, man... I'm still alive...I'm still here."
Steve watched his partner turn and walk away and ached with the certain knowledge that, in that instant, his friend spoke not with defiance but regret.
5-0 5-0 5-0 5-0 5-0
Steve stood with his feet planted apart and his hands shoved deeply into the pockets of his cargos. The slowly dipping sun was still warm on his face as he squinted against its orange glow and focused on a distant figure at the waters edge.
Running hard, Danny was pushing himself as though he had a race tape in target. His pounding progress had brought him along the length of the beach and, as he drew closer, Steve could make out the sheen of sweat and the darkly saturated material of his vest clinging to muscles pumped by exertion. Finally, he slowed but there was no gradual warm down as, instead, Danny hauled himself to a stop in just a few paces.
Steve could tell his partner hadn't seen him yet, that his vision was fixed a million miles away, and he prepared to make his move but, still blowing hard, Danny turned next to the waves. Quickly loosening his shoes he was kicking them off even as he reached back and pulled at his shirt with a desperation that looked like he would prefer to be ripping off his own skin, like he was trying to shed himself. The action caused Steve to hesitate. He watched as Danny launched himself into the sea and instantly began plowing through the waves.
Despite all his protestations when they'd first met, and his grumpiness over the sea since, Steve knew Danny could swim and swim well. He'd seen him in the water with Grace many times, even been welcomed into the pair's shared delight when messing about in the bay at the back of Steve's own home and he'd loved that inclusion. Amidst the dunkings and the splashings and the underwater wrestling he'd seen Danny's love and devotion to his daughter and shared in the fun of their family, had been allowed to become a part of it. He also knew his partner was taking surfing lessons with Kono, and despite apparently having been sworn to secrecy, she had told him he was actually getting to be pretty good. But this... this was not recreational.
As Danny's strong strokes took him beyond the low breakers, ducking again and again beneath their white foam to pop up further and further out, he showed no sign of easing up, his progress leaving its own silvery wake. Steve recognized this and sighed at what it meant. He knew it from his own life-long coping methods, and watched until, at last, some two hundred meters out, his friend's pace lessened.
Steve chewed on his lip while the dark blond head bobbed like a marker buoy, distant and silhouetted. Danny appeared to hang in the water for many long minutes, still and apparently staring out at the horizon beyond. Steve cupped his hands around his eyes to shield against the glow and only relaxed a little when Danny finally turned at last and began a slower, labored, swim back, helped along now by the waves.
Steve walked down the sand and was holding out a towel when Danny eventually waded out of the surf. The water streamed off him and in the dimming light his contoured outline stood out in sharp relief when he raised his hands to push back his hair. Steve was sure he hadn't been noticed before but Danny looked up at him now without showing much surprise at all, then gratefully accepted the towel to wipe off his face and chest.
"How d'you know where to find me?" he asked, as though it was a given that he should.
"Well, to be honest, I had expected to be trawling around the bars," Steve admitted. "Thought I'd have to be picking you up off the floor." Danny nodded. "But when I called at your place, one of your neighbors said she'd seen you heading off on a run, so..." Steve shrugged.
"It always seems to work for you." Danny said pointedly.
"Yeah," Steve accepted the truth of that.
Steve had always used exercise to concentrate his mind and clung to his own tough regimen to order his thoughts or, at times, to push them aside. While he certainly enjoyed it, he also needed it – punishing his body to prevent himself from punishing his mind.
Always an athlete, after his mother's death, his workouts had taken on a new urgency. Training as a SEAL was tough and relentless, a supreme fitness expected and necessary, but these days - after his father's murder, after Hesse, Wo-Fat, the whole Jameson mess, in prison, in trouble and in grief - the physical challenges he set himself were more than just that. They were elements of his life that were constant and controllable. Blood thumping around your body could deaden the voices, blot out the images. Oh yes, Steve understood what Danny was talking about, alright.
He nodded at the sea and went on with a forced light tone. "I did wonder at one point if I'd have to come out there and fetch you back – you looked as if you were heading for the mainland, man."
Steve's teasing came with a smile but when Danny turned to him, towel draped over his shoulders, he recognized the genuine concern on his friend's handsome face. Danny had felt it directed his way a lot over the past few weeks and he appreciated it, he really did, and he knew it deserved an honest response.
"I considered it ..." What the hell are you doing here? Give it up! Not yours. Idiot! Give up! The debate had indeed raged, fueled by self loathing and despair and sadness, with each step and swim stroke. He didn't voice it to Steve though ...No need to worry the guy any more than he already is...
"Thought about that drink too," he admitted with a thin, wry smile. "But if I'd started with that...Well, let's just say, I would have found it hard to stop."
Their eyes met in understanding before they both looked away again, staring out at the golden sun just tucking itself behind the pink clouds. All around them, people halted in their beach strolls to gaze at the nightly masterpiece of nature.
"I'm sorry about what I did at the quayside..."
"I'm sorry about what you're going through..."
They spoke together and stopped together, then turned to face one another with an embarrassed laugh that faded into an accepting silence.
"So...about that drink...I guess it's a good job I only brought a six-pack then, huh?" Steve held up the pack in his hand with a smile and handed Danny a bottle. He accepted it with a nod and, collecting his shoes and shirt on the way, they headed up the sloping beach together towards Steve's parked truck, not saying another word until they leaned back against its warm hood.
Danny tipped back his beer and wiped his lips slowly with the back of a salty hand before suddenly picking up a conversation that had not yet even been spoken.
"It was just a shock, man, y'know? Seeing...seeing them...like that. I mean, it shouldn't have been, I guess. Of course, they'll all be together... Gracie's so excited to have a little brother...It's not like I didn't know that...that I've never thought that...that they would all be a ..." His voice tailed off. It was disconcerting to Steve to hear his partner so lost for words.
Since Rachel gave birth to Stan's baby, Steve had known Danny was struggling. He'd been quieter than normal, in Danny that was always worrying. Steve knew how hard it had been to have her walk away from him for a second time, turning her back on his love and ripping apart his hopes of renewing their family.
Only finding out after the damage had been done, Steve had felt so guilty for it, for not being able to prevent it, for not being there to help or to listen. His own imprisonment and Danny's dogged tenacity in his efforts to get him out, to solve the former governor's murder, to hold their disintegrated team together, had all delayed his awareness of the pain his friend was in, of how his world had crashed. Subsequently, Steve and the team had done their best to support him. They'd been amazed at how he had managed to plaster over the cracks in his mask of normality.
Steve had been left in awe of Danny's strength when he'd actually helped deliver the baby that he'd so desperately hoped would be his. He knew the sadness that he'd seen in his friend's face as he looked into that nursery, still haunted him.
He'd tried to create some distance in the past month. Having bought gifts for the newborn, Danny had listened as Grace talked about him non-stop, accepted the times she'd wanted to stay home to help her mother bathe him instead of meeting up with her dad for a planned outing. Each thing hurt and his friends knew it.
That afternoon, in the middle of a chase, seeing that new family together, so happy, so complete, so utterly and exactly what Danny had always wanted, must have been gut-wrenching. No time to prepare and no time to recover – the deadly standoff on the quayside had been the result.
Steve's own gut flipped at the memory of what might have happened, of what he'd seen in Danny at that moment.
When they'd got back to Headquarters, their two prisoners had been handed over to the HPD to be processed along with the rest of the counterfeiting gang, captured the day before. They were simply the suppliers of the stolen computers that had been used but Steve tore into the Secret Service Agent for failing to warn them they were likely to be armed. His anger was deferred from the moment of helplessness earlier, but the agent didn't know that, and his roar of fury at the inept running of the whole operation could be heard over most of the building.
Danny should have been pleased with that, at other times he would have been, but instead he'd taken a low profile and shut himself away to complete the necessary paper work, his body rigid with concentration at the keyboard even though his mind was clearly far away.
"God, I just wish I hadn't said anything...Chin, that was so awful...how could I not have seen what it would do?" Kono had whispered, as she watched her friend through the glass. She felt terrible at having been the one to point out Danny's daughter, to have drawn his attention. She'd wanted to go to him, to apologize, but Chin had held her back.
"It wasn't your fault. It was just...unfortunate."
"But he nearly..." Chin had stopped her again with a look. They all knew just how badly the events on the quayside could have turned out. Steve had been left furious and shaken and the return trip had been made in a tense silence that nobody dared break. While Danny had not been killed, he was clearly still hurting.
When Danny had left later with hardly a word to any of them, Steve had forced himself to wait an hour, to give him some space for composure, then headed out to find his friend. This was not a time for him to be alone.
Now though there was really nothing to say. When Steve looked across at Danny, his brow dented with frustration and worry.
"Don't give me that look," Danny muttered without even returning the glance.
"What look now?"
"The 'Share-'cause-I-Care,' McGarrett Agony-Aunt look #3." He held up a hand to prevent Steve's denial. "Oh, I've seen them all, Babe, believe me. This is the one that says 'I'm stowing the SEAL and sinking in sympathy here'..."
Steve shifted slightly and their shoulders bumped, then remained companionably close. "Well, I am...I just don't know what to do to help you, man...I wish I did."
Danny huffed a sour little laugh. His partner still surprised him, often actually, over the warmth and openness of his friendship. For such a tough guy, Steve had proved his generosity and care over and over again. It was one of the few certainties Danny could count on and he valued it beyond almost anything else on this Island, but they both knew, sometimes, it just wasn't enough.
"Nothing you can do, man...It's all me...Nothing new, there!" He took a deep breath and turned to clink his bottle against Steve's, before looking up at him with a sincerity that made his partner's heart clench a little. "But thanks..."
He shrugged slightly and, although he smiled briefly, Steve recognized a sad weariness in the wetness of his eyes, glittering in the now graying dusk.
"So here's to just...getting on with it."
TBC...