Author's note: I'm going out of the country for one and a half months, so I am not able to update during that period… sorry for the long delay. Hope I get more reviews for this chapter than the previous one. Rafe and Danny are taken from the movie. To learn more about what happened between Danny and his father, read "Choices to make". Haha, advertising for my previous story. Keep the reviews coming, people!
Chapter 3
In his hurry, Danny didn't recognize the Hawaiian theme of the pub until he was through the entrance. He halted, staring at the scene in front of him, and could almost believe that he was back in Pearl Harbor. The soft orange lights, wooden furniture, crowded atmosphere…it was so similar. Looking at the layout of the pub, flashes of a more familiar pub emerged in his mind: the small mourning session he and the rest of the pilots had held in memory of Rafe when they thought he had died, Rafe's celebration for his returning from the "dead", the fight that broke out afterwards… no, that was in the past. He thought decidedly, forcing down memories of his past life for the umpteenth time. I have to get rid of my habit of dwelling on the past. Someday. Better to come back to the present and live my own life. Talking about that, where are Delt and the rest?
It was the first time Danny had come to the Haluna Pub. Kyle Delt, a fellow pilot, had asked him to come drinking with them a couple of times, but he always declined. Drinking always reminded him of his father, the drunken wreck his father had become after fighting in World War I. Every time he went home from school, the smell of alcohol greeted him, and he would see his father slumped over the kitchen table, still obsessed with his drinking. Sometimes he wondered whether he was more important to his father, or the alcohol that never seemed to leave his father's hand. He made it a policy only to drink when it was necessary, only to avoid becoming what his father had become. Only recently, he had learnt of his father's true feelings towards him, but it had been too late to make up for a lost childhood. It had been alcohol that had broken up his family. No way was he going to let it destroy his life again.
Coming out of his thoughts, Danny felt oddly out of place standing stupidly at the entrance, with everyone else engaged in some kind of activity and apparently feeling at home with the environment. For a moment, he felt lost, not knowing where his friends were. Scanning the crowd, Danny caught sight of an auburn-haired waitress leaning against the bar facing the entrance. She seemed to be staring at…him. Slightly uncomfortable, Danny looked down at his clothes, thinking that maybe he had gotten an odd-looking stain somewhere, but his clothes looked normal.
Brows creasing, Danny looked more closely at the waitress just to be sure, and was assured by the fact that even though she was looking in his direction, there wasn't any eye contact, so she wasn't staring at him. Judging from her expression, she was probably thinking about something. Embarrassed, Danny turned back to the crowd. It was rude to stare, much less at a complete stranger.
Just then, a shout from across the pub saved him from further embarrassment. "Hey Walker! Over here!" That was Kyle's voice. Relieved, Danny smiled and made his way over. "Hi guys…" he was overwhelmed by a series of back-thumping and mock accuses before he could complete his sentence. Oh, right. He had been so caught up by the seeming familiarity of the pub that he had almost forgotten the purpose of his trip here. It was his birthday celebration, and he was late. His friends weren't going to let him forget this any time soon.
"Fancy being late for your own birthday, Walker." Ryan Taylor grinned at Danny. "And someone said he would remember to come on time."
"Yeah." Kyle chipped in. "You're going to pay for this, dearly."
Danny tried to defend himself. "Come on guys, I wasn't that late…" His excuse sounded weak even to his own ears. Giving up, he surrendered. "Oh alright, then."
Just then, a waitress came over. "Drinks, sir?" It was the same auburn-haired waitress whom he had seen just now. Danny was struck slightly by her accent. It was not the local accent, that he was sure of. It sounded…Hawaiian. It was Hawaiian. Brushing aside the thought, Danny was annoyed with himself. He was being over-sensitive. Even a small detail like the accent of someone whom he had never met before until today was enough to trigger off memories of Pearl Harbor.
Before Danny could reply, Ryan placed his order for him. "The strongest champagne you have, miss." An evil grin still on his face, he said in a mock-threatening voice, "The price for being late, so you'd better pay it." A chorus of agreement rose from his friends.
Exasperated, Danny flashed her a small guilty smile as compensation for his friends' nonsense. He ignored them and said, "Plain water, thanks."
The waitress nodded and moved away. The moment she left, Ryan protested. "Hey, no one drinks plain water here."
"Yeah, this is your birthday, you know. You ought to be celebrating with every means possible. Drink yourself silly if you like. You don't get a chance like this everyday, how could you drink just plain water?" Kyle asked, uncomprehending. "If it were me, I would drink myself silly the moment I get the chance to."
"You know I don't drink, Kyle. It's not the first day you know me. Plain water suits me just fine."
Danny was spared from further complaints as the waitress returned with his drink, and he smiled at her gratefully for giving him a break from his friends' questions. Kyle could be quite persistent once he got his mind onto something, and Danny did not want him to start promoting the benefits of drinking. Kyle could come up with all sorts of arguments to support his stand that drinking is good for people, though it was obvious that the truth was the exact opposite.
The waitress smiled politely back at him, and then she hurried off to another table to take the orders of some people who had just entered the pub. Danny could not help but stare at her retreating figure. Why was it that he found her smile familiar?
Troubled, he turned back to his friends, and tried to listen to their conversation, forcing the image of the waitress out of his head.
Air planes zoomed by overhead, engines screaming. Ships in the harbor exploded into flames. Screams, shrill and desperate, rang out everywhere. Bullets, mercilessly cutting down people who didn't get under cover quickly enough. Blood everywhere. All around, friends were cut down, and a sense of helplessness rose up, burning the heart, scalding the lungs. Tears flowed freely. The place that had come to be home was now something entirely unrecognizable. Oh please, let it stop! Oh no, not him, not them…
Danny bolted upright in his bed, sweating profusely. He looked wildly around his room, half expecting bombs to blow up all around him, and for a moment he barely remembered where he was. Then his mind registered his surroundings, and Danny remembered that it had been more than a year since the attack on Pearl Harbor. The memories of the attack were still fresh on his mind, memories of the day that brought the war to him. In the dream, he had seen Rafe get shot by the planes, and his friends trapped underneath burning buildings, screaming for help, and he had been unable to do anything to help them…no, that had not happened. It was just a dream.
Thank goodness he had a room to himself. If any of his new friends knew that he was so shaken by a dream, he would never hear the end of it. Or perhaps they would want to know why he had such nightmares, and he would have to reveal more of his past life that he was currently trying very hard to stay away from.
Danny breathed deeply to calm himself down. The nightmares had started again. It had been so long, so long since the last time he was woken up in the middle of the night like this, with the attack on Pearl Harbor replaying in his mind. Though he had seen many more actions of war since then, the memories of the attack still had an effect on him. He had thought he was over that stage. Why had the nightmares started again?
Maybe it was the pub. It looked so much like the one back in Pearl Harbor, it must have triggered off something in his brain. And the waitress…she had seemed so familiar, and her Hawaiian accent…
Burying his head in his hands, Danny groaned softly. Oh, why wouldn't the past leave him alone?
In a block a few streets away, Jeslyn Hills woke up from her nightmare with tears streaming down her face. The past had come back to haunt her. She had seen her parents waving to her cheerily from the doorway, and suddenly, bomb explosions sounded all around her, and her parents disappeared. In their place were the charred ruins that her house had become, and there was no trace of her parents.
She sat up, and another tear rolled down her cheek. Reaching for the photo of her parents on her bedside table, Jeslyn hugged it close to her chest. How she missed her parents. How she missed her home. It had been a long time since she had nightmares about the events that day, but now it had come back.
Jeslyn had calmed down considerably by now, and was feeling slightly embarrassed about her violent reaction to her dream. It was just a dream after all. She had promised herself on the day she left Pearl Harbor that she was going to put the past behind her, and that was a promise she meant to keep. It was the best way she could think of to prevent herself from getting hurt again.
Weird, didn't she wake Dania up? Dania lived in the same room as her, and she was quite a light sleeper. Judging from her sweat and tears, she probably had very violent reactions to her nightmare...looking across the room, Jeslyn saw an empty bed. Frowning, she switched on the bedside lamp to check the time. Ah, 3.30am. Dania was working the midnight shift today, and she wouldn't be back until 4am. It was jsut as wel that Dania wasn't here. She was sure to ask about the dream, and Jeslyn didn't like to talk about her past.
Maybe it was because Danny Walker's appearance reminded her of the life she used to have. After all, he came from Pearl Harbor as well. She couldn't seem to forget him, especially the expression that flashed across his face when he took in the Hawaiian theme of Haluna Pub. It told of pain and loss, similar feelings that she had where Pearl Harbor was concerned.
If only she hadn't recognized him as someone she had seen on Pearl Harbor…Jeslyn sighed and flopped back on her bed, still clutching her parents' photo. She lay that way for a long time, unable to fall asleep.
P.S. Hope you enjoyed this chapter. Please review! It doesn't take very long to submit a review, really.
