Disclaimer: See initial chapter.
Chin's mind was sluggish, uncooperative, and he felt different somehow. Like he was floating. It was a strange feeling, and he didn't like it one bit. He was in so much pain that it almost didn't matter. He wanted to sleep, wanted to let go of everything and just rest, but Malia's parting words, the way that she'd looked at him, kept him awake in spite of the pain.
It wasn't until he saw Danny that he realized just how different things were. How different he truly was. Danny seemed to tower over him, and Chin was hyper aware of just how blue the man's eyes were, and how strong Danny's arms were when the man held him. How strongly Danny smelled of everything Chin has come to equate with happiness and home – coffee, doughnuts, and spicy aftershave.
He tried to tell Danny, and Grace and Kono that he was right there with them when they tried to call him. Tried to warn them about Mahaku, but they didn't seem to hear him.
It was as he made one last ditch effort to be heard by Danny that he realized the awful truth – that he was dead, and trapped in some sort of middle place. Some place between the physical earth and the spiritual world. A kind of netherworld.
It was disconcerting, and Chin was afraid for his friends, for his family. He was afraid for himself.
"It's going to be alright," Grace was saying, and Chin shook his head, trying to clear it, wondering how long it would take for the afterworld to right itself. How long it would take until he no longer heard the voices of those he loved, no longer saw their concerned looks.
"Danno will find Uncle Chin, and we'll take you to the vet, and…" Grace's voice cracked, and she sniffled, her words trailing off.
Chin wondered if Grace was talking about the feral cat that he'd seen just before Mahaku had attacked him. It had been sleek, almost, but not quite, skin and bones. It had been in the process of stalking a bird at the time, growling low and casting a hateful look in Chin and Mahaku's direction when their loud, erratic movements had startled the bird into flight.
The black and grey striped cat had sat back on its haunches and regarded the men almost coolly. Its tail twitched angrily as it watched them, and it idly licked its paws as it bathed itself. It was clearly both angry at, and bored with, the men.
Chin had forgotten all about the cat when Mahaku's knife bit into his flesh. He'd lost track of everything then – time and space, himself.
He almost laughed as he thought about the showdown that Danny and Grace must've had over the cat. Danny was not a fan of cats, but Chin knew that Grace would be able to talk her father into, not only making sure that the cat was seen to by a vet, but keeping it afterwards.
He'd have liked to have been there, would have liked to have witnessed the stubborn Williams' battling it out over the welfare of a mean, scraggly-looking cat. A sense of déjà-vu as he thought about it made Chin feel a little woozy – Grace plaintively arguing with her father about helping the injured cat, and Danny steadfastly arguing that they needed to take it to the Humane Society; the cat being carefully handed off from one Williams to the other…
Disconcerted, Chin concentrated on trying to figure out how to navigate in the netherworld. He heard Grace's voice again, soft as she spoke to the cat. "Danno doesn't like cats, but he will take real good care of you. He's very good at taking care of everyone."
Chin nodded. Danny was good at taking care of everyone but himself. He sensed that Grace understood that about her father as she peered closely into the cat's eyes –her brown eyes, so like her father's in every way but color, the sharp way with which they regarded everything, how they saw more than what the average person did – and sighed.
"He's just really stubborn sometimes," Grace said.
Chin chuckled in agreement, and his world tilted slightly. Pain flared in his abdomen, and Chin was worried about what the afterlife had waiting for him when he finally got to it.
Grace drew in a sharp breath that ended in a half sob, and Chin felt the hot sting of tears rolling down his back. He smelled the little girl –an odd combination of cocoa butter and strawberries – and was not wholly prepared to hear her cry as though he was right there with her. It was all very strange, and dizzying.
"I'm so sorry, kitty," Grace sobbed. "Please be okay."
It was then that it hit him – he was, for whatever reason, tied to Grace in some way. Maybe Chin was meant to be her guardian angel, to keep her safe while Danny and Kono went after his killer. Maybe, after they found Mahaku, Chin would be allowed to fully enter the afterlife, to be reincarnated, or enter into Nirvana. It was a rallying thought, and Chin struggled to find some way to communicate to Grace, to keep her safe from harm.
"I wish Danno was here," Grace whispered, burying her face into the fur of the cat.
Chin felt warmth settle over him, and some of his pain subsided. He felt at peace, honored to be able to take care of Danny's little girl for him one last time.
Danny had come to mean a lot to Chin over the years, though he'd never admitted as much to the man. There'd been no occasion; really, no words for him to explain what Danny had come to represent in his life.
Danny was vibrant. He lived life out loud and Chin admired that about the often abrasive man, had come to see Danny's prickly nature was much more complicated than what most people saw.
Most people brushed Danny off as brusque and arrogant, never seeing past his loud, often obnoxious exterior, but Chin knew better than that. Understood that Danny hid insecurities and vulnerabilities underneath bluster and verbal gibes. The man used words the way that Steve used weapons – and often times Danny's words cut deeper than a knife ever could.
Chin didn't know when his respect and admiration for Danny had turned into love for the man. It hadn't happened all at once. There'd been no loud trumpet announcement to accompany the soft, gradual fall. It wasn't something that tugged at Chin's gut, or made his stomach fill with butterflies. He wasn't head over heels, or so twisted around that he couldn't think straight.
No, it was a matter-of-fact kind of love. A love that just happened over the course of time, and which most people didn't realize until it was too late.
Every now and then he'd caught a glimpse of Danny lost in some thought, face no longer a mask of the confident, self-assurance that he presented to the world, and Chin's heart would skip a beat, his mouth would go dry, and he'd have to turn away. At the time, Chin hadn't been able to put a name to it, but now, now that he was dead, or dying, he could, and the unfairness of it wasn't lost on him.
It was bitter, and reminiscent of what he'd lost with Malia, because of his stubborn pride. Years that he could have spent with her, if only he'd let her in earlier, not been so bullheaded. Years that had been cut much too short when he'd finally decided to stop shutting her out.
That it was happening all over again, that he was losing out on love when he'd only just begun to realize that he was in love made Chin's gut ache. He didn't want to leave the world like this.
"Danno's going to fix you, and keep you safe," Grace promised the cat, and Chin selfishly claimed that promise for himself as he felt something, not unlike sleep, pull him away from the world, away from Grace.