Disclaimer: See initial chapter.
A/N: I'd like to thank everyone for their support of this, especially those who read it through for me, and pointed out errors, etc (Swifters and Irene Claire). Please forgive any errors that remain.
"Danny." Steve keeps his voice as steady as he can, and he focuses, not on the gun that's being pointed at him, but on the little boy who's aiming it at him.
Danny's holding the gun in both hands, and they're shaking. If he does pull the trigger, chances are that the bullet won't hit Steve, even as close as they are. There's a real danger that the recoil from the gun will cause Danny to shoot himself by accident, though. It probably wouldn't be a lethal wound, but that's not a chance that Steve is willing to take.
It's been six days, seven hours, and eight and a half minutes since Steve last saw Danny. Every second of which - from the moment that Danny's hand had slipped away from his hold, to the second before Steve set foot in the dimly lit warehouse, where the Hesse brothers arranged for the meet, and saw Danny - had been a hellish nightmare.
He'd been shot by one of the clowns. The bullet just grazed his shoulder, though it did take a good chunk out of his flesh, it didn't cause much damage. It was bloody, and it had hurt, but Steve had pushed the pain aside immediately in favor of looking for Danny, and finding him in the midst of the panicking crowd.
Now he knows that it was Victor who'd shot him, and that the entire shooting incident at the fair had been carefully orchestrated by the brothers, and all of it had been aimed at him. Their ridiculous quest for revenge had cost the lives of dozens of people - an elderly man had a heart attack; a two year old child had been trampled to death by the panicking crowd; a group of teens had fallen to their deaths when the controllers of the Equinox had been shot out, causing the safety harnesses to fail when they'd been fifty feet in the air; a pregnant woman had gone into labor prematurely, the mother bled out, and the infant didn't make it; a police officer, and two security guards were shot to death. It was the largest, grand scale massacre (that's what the press was calling it) of its kind that Hawaii had ever experienced.
None of that had mattered to Steve, though. When the dust had settled, and he was being tended to by a rather insistent paramedic, all Steve had cared about had been Danny.
It hadn't become clear to him that Danny had been taken until too many precious hours had passed. He blames the paramedic for keeping him in the back of the ambulance in spite of his protests; the police for not doing their jobs; Chin and Kono for not being able to find Danny on the fairgrounds; Kento and his mother for inviting Danny and him to the fair in the first place. Most of all, though, Steve blames himself.
The Hesse brothers hadn't sent the first video of Danny until they'd had him for thirty-six hours. There'd been no demands. No ransom request. Nothing but a crude forty second video of Danny, lying on a soiled mattress in the middle of a dirt floor. He was pale, his hair was a mess, and there were dirt-encrusted tear tracks on his cheeks. His eyes were filled with terror, and he bore heavy bruising around his neck.
Not even Toast had been able to find coordinates, or get anything of value off of the video that would help him find Danny. None of the subsequent videos had anything of use either. Each of them was just a painful reminder of Steve's failure to keep Danny safe from other monsters like him.
Steve had put his fist through the wall of his den when the last video had come in. Danny'd looked shell-shocked, and broken, a ragdoll with most of its stuffing removed. He had been sitting in Anton's lap, the barrel of a gun caressing his face, and another being pressed into his hand. He had taken it absentmindedly, forehead crinkling in confusion and then smoothing out at whatever it was that Anton whispered in his ear.
Steve watched the video dozens of times to make sure that he hadn't imagined the slight tremor in Danny's body when Anton had leaned in close to whisper to him. The look in Anton's eyes, when he'd raised them to look from Danny's face to the camera, made Steve's stomach drop. Anton's smile was predatory. His eyes were filled with lust and wild obsession, and a smug satisfaction - the cat who'd eaten the canary.
Danny's feet shuffle, and the sound of it tears Steve away from the horrible images of Danny in the videos that he'd been taunted with. He's brought back to the present. The barrel of the gun points toward the ground, and then Danny rights it, aims it shakily at Steve.
"Hey, buddy, why don't you put the gun down, and-"
"No!" Danny's voice is hoarse, and there are tears in his eyes, and the barrel of the gun dips dangerously when Danny shakes his head.
"Danny." Steve takes a step toward the little boy.
"Stop!" A single tear rolls down Danny's cheek, and he draws in a shuddering breath."Please stop." The little boy's voice cracks, and he blinks back tears, his fingers clench and unclench around the gun, and Steve holds his breath.
"Stop," he's begging, voice small and shaky.
Steve's run a multitude of scenarios through his head of what would happen when he finally found Danny. This wasn't one of them. Danny, dead, body bloated and grey in a state of decomposition had been one of them, and while this is infinitely better than the worst-case scenario that Steve's mind had conjured, it does nothing to ease his mind.
"Danny, it's okay," Steve says.
It's not okay, and won't be okay until Steve can get the gun away from Danny without either of them getting hurt. Steve knows that Chin and Kono are somewhere nearby, positioned to keep an eye on Steve and Danny, as well as keep a look out for the men responsible for this - Victor and Anton Hesse - but it's no comfort, because for him and Danny, it's just the two of them.
"You're dead," Danny says, swallowing. "He said...he said they killed you. I saw...you're, you're a ghost."
Tears run, unchecked, down Danny's cheeks, and Steve's worried about the erratic way that the gun keeps dipping, and the way that Danny's swaying, as though it's hard for him to remain upright. Steve curses himself, the Hesse brothers, and the man who'd started this all by hiring Steve and his crew to kidnap Danny in the first place. If the asshole who'd hired them to kidnap Danny would have kept his firebug son in check, none of this would be happening now, and Danny would be tucked away in bed, safe from Steve and the sordid world that he lives in. Safe from men like the Hesses, men like Steve. Men who will do anything to anyone, even a little kid, if it pays well enough, or if it suits them.
Steve has more money than he knows what to do with, and when this is over, he's going to start a Trust Fund for Danny, and set up a college fund as well. Danny will want for nothing. If he never wants to work a day in his life, he won't have to.
"Easy, Danny," Steve says. "I know you're confused right now, but it's me. I'm alive. They lied to you, Danny."
Danny's chest heaves with every breath that he takes, and his breathing's got a rattling quality to it that Steve doesn't like. The little boy is much too pale, and there are bruises in the shape of fingers and hands on Danny's arms and legs. There's one particularly dark bruise on his shoulder that ghosts across half of his neck, and for a moment, Steve sees nothing but red.
Danny's still wearing the same clothing that he'd worn when Steve had taken him to the fair a week ago, minus the shoes, and baseball cap. The clothes are dirty and torn, and Steve can smell the stench of sweat, piss and shit from where he's standing. He can smell blood, too.
"Don't come any closer, or I'll shoot," Danny says, and though he's still crying, there's a hint of resolve in his voice that Steve admires. He knows that Danny will shoot. It's heartbreaking, and reassuring at the same time. It means that Danny's not as broken as Steve had feared he was when he'd seen that last video.
Steve wants to know what Danny had been told, and why, even when he's standing right in front of the little boy, Danny still thinks Steve's dead. Whatever it is, it's bad enough to make the little boy tremble in fear, and believe that he is a ghost.
"Where'd you get the gun, Danny?" Steve asks, hoping that keeping Danny talking will break through to him, and prove to him that Steve is alive. He knows, he's seen the video where Anton's given him the gun, but he wants Danny to tell him, needs to do something to jar Danny out of this denial.
"Stop talking, you're not real, you're dead," Danny says.
He brings the gun up to his head to rub at it, and Steve doesn't think, he acts on autopilot, moving forward to take the gun from Danny's shaky hand. Years of working in the military, and as a mercenary, have taught him that second guesses, and hesitation, lead to death, and Danny's life is far too precious for Steve to risk on second guesses.
There is no struggle, but there's little consolation in that, because Danny simply goes limp when Steve touches him, and the gun slips safely from Danny's loose fingers into Steve's hand. It's loaded, and Steve can smell that it's been fired recently, can see powder burns on Danny's hands, and he pulls the boy to himself, holds him close, hopes that Kono and Chin have found Victor and Anton.
"Uh, boss," Kono's voice comes through the earpiece that Steve almost forgot about. Her voice has a strained quality to it.
"Kono?"
Steve disarms the weapon, there's only a single bullet left in it, and sticks it into one of the pockets of his cargo pants. He wraps his arms around Danny, and, ignoring the way that the boy flinches violently, and then stiffens in his arms, as though fearful, yet resigned, he picks him up and holds him to his chest, cupping the back of his head with his hand.
Danny's trembling now and the tears are coming faster. Steve can feel the boy's heart beating wildly in his chest, and he wants nothing more than to hit the rewind button, and erase everything that's led up to this moment.
"Steve, Anton Hesse is dead," Kono says.
Steve's stomach drops, and he knows what happened. Knows with a certainty that he wishes he didn't have, that it was Danny who killed the man.
"Looks like someone emptied an entire clip into him," Kono says.
The words sound tinny, and Steve feels lightheaded, and for some reason he feels like crying. He holds Danny tighter, and kisses the top of the boy's head. Danny wraps his legs and arms around Steve, his earlier reluctance suddenly gone, clinging to him like an octopus trying to bury itself in the sand at the bottom of the ocean.
Steve wants nothing more than to walk away from everything, and hide Danny from the entire world for the rest of his life, but Kono's still talking to him, telling him what type of weapon was used, though Steve doesn't need to hear it, because he's got the murder weapon tucked safely away in his pocket, the murderer safe in his arms.
"Anyone have eyes on Victor?" Steve asks, though he already knows that no one has eyes on Victor, but Victor has eyes on him and Danny. He can feel it in his gut, in the way that the tiny hairs on the back of his neck suddenly stand at attention, the carefully concealed crunch of a boot in the gravel that surrounds them, the press of cold steel on the back of his head, the way that Danny goes rigid in his arms, and starts to shake uncontrollably.
Danny pisses himself, the hot urine stains the front of Steve's shirt, and trickles down between them, getting trapped in the fabric, and wetting their skin. Steve's experienced this kind of reaction before. He knows what it takes to make someone piss themselves at the mere sight of their kidnapper. Sometimes the victim doesn't even need to see their captor, the telltale sound of their footsteps, the sound of their voice, the smell of their sweat or cologne, are enough to trigger a reaction like this. One of pure terror and hopelessness.
Steve could've broken Danny in the same way when he'd first kidnapped him, minus a few of the uglier touches, things that Steve hopes haven't happened to Danny, but knows, by the boy's reaction, the way that Anton had whispered to the boy in the video, the look that had been in the now dead man's eyes. Steve could have made the boy afraid of his own shadow for years, if not the rest of his life. He could have reduced the little boy to a nothing more than an empty shell without going as far as Anton and Victor have. He's done it before, and, given the right job, he might do it again. He used to take pride in reducing a child to Danny's current state. Now, Steve feels nothing but disgust for himself and the Hesse brothers.
He'd come close to doing that to Danny, and, holding the frightened boy now, with Victor breathing down his neck, he's not sure why he didn't do to Danny what Victor and Anton have accomplished in the week that they've had him. Why he didn't make the boy afraid of him, afraid of what goes bump in the night.
What was it that had stayed his hand? Was it Danny? Did the little boy hold some kind of key to Steve's psyche? What was it about Danny that had stopped Steve from doing what he normally did to those that he'd been hired to kidnap?
Whatever it was, it hadn't stopped the Hesses. Danny's not magical, or special. If he was, the Hesses would have been just as incapable of harming Danny as Steve had been. Clearly, that hadn't been the case.
Maybe everyone's right, and Steve is getting too soft. Maybe he is losing his edge. Maybe it's time that he stopped pretending to play at being a parent and get back to being what he really is: a cold-blooded mercenary whose first, and only, concern is himself, and the state of his bank accounts. Life was much simpler before Danny, much simpler when he didn't have a conscience to complicate things.
Danny twitches, and whimpers, burrows into Steve, hiding his face from Victor, and Steve mentally shakes himself. He didn't break Danny, and he's willing to bet that, once he gets Danny home, where he belongs, he'll find that Danny's a little less broken than he seems to be right now.
"You sure do know how to pick them, McGarrett," Victor says, sarcasm and something like a begrudging pride coloring his tone. The steel of the gun digging into Steve's temple is a reminder of what's at stake. A reminder of his own actions years ago when he'd first met the Hesse brothers.
"This one's feisty. Kid's got a damn good right hook, and a hell of a bite, and he's a damn good shot." That's definitely pride in the man's voice. It makes Steve's stomach twist.
"I think, after I've concluded our unfinished business here, I'll take the kid, raise him in the family business, like his dear, dead dad, Steve, would have done had he not screwed over the wrong people. Teach the kid right from wrong, such as it's not right to kill family, no matter how fucked up they are, and that it's okay to kill those who get in the way. He'll make a damn fine baby brother, and if I get bored with him, I'll just ship him off to Wo Fat and his merry little band of fuckers," Hesse says, and he digs the gun deeper into Steve's temple. "But first I've got to teach the little bastard a lesson. You reap what you sow, Danny boy. You killed my brother, I'm going to kill your Uncle Steve, for real this time, and then I'm going to punish you."
Danny shakes his head, and whimpers against Steve's neck. He clings tighter to Steve, blunt nails digging painfully into Steve's biceps, drawing blood.
"No, no, no, no, no," Danny protests, voice growing as his level of distress increases. "No, please, please, Uncle Steve, noooooo..."
"Sh, Danny," Steve says, ignoring Victor in favor of attempting to soothe Danny. "I'm here now, I've got you, and I'm never going to let you go. Okay?"
Hesse laughs, and Danny cringes, and starts moaning. It's a sound that Steve's heard before, from some of his own victims, from some of Wo Fat's that he'd been asked to finish off. It's a sound that he never wants to hear again. It makes him sick, and he rubs Danny's back, and runs fingers through the boy's sweaty hair.
"That's quite the promise for a dead man to make," Hesse whispers the words into Steve's ear and ruffles Danny's hair. "I'm going to enjoy teaching Danny the ropes of the business, breaking him down, and making him into a cold-blooded killer, like you used to be before you turned soft."
There's a click, the sound of Hesse's gun being readied, and Steve knows that he's got seconds, at best, to act, to protect Danny. Seconds during which Danny stops breathing, and Steve knows, hopes, that it's a panic attack, and nothing worse.
"That's not going to happen, boss." Kono's voice sounds in his ear a split second before the retort of a gunshot echoes in the predawn.
