A/N: A little shorter this time, more of a short pause than anything but there were a few things I wanted to expand upon before starting to give some real answers. :) Thank you all for your continued support! I love to see your feedback.
Disclaimer: Still own nothing.
Nine
Waiting rooms were becoming a little too familiar to Danny—though he had to admit, he wasn't unpleasantly surprised to find that Briella's connections had landed them with a private waiting room nearer to the recovery room where Steve would—if all went well—be moved to after he came out of surgery. Briella herself had seemed to disappear as soon as she saw Steve's teammates settled in. Unfortunate, because Danny had a number of questions he would like to ask the woman. He guessed—from the way she had started speaking to the surgeon upon their arrival at the hospital—that she was trying to find out how Steve was.
Danny leaned his elbows against his knees and rested his forehead in the palm of his hand. Kono hadn't been transported in the ambulance—as soon as they'd ascertained that she wasn't concussed and warned her to take it easy, to put an ice pack on the lump on her head, and to alert someone if her headache persisted or was joined by nausea or increased confusion. She sat by Danny now, nursing her sore spot with the ice pack they'd given her. He glanced sidelong at her as she leaned back and closed her eyes with a quiet sigh.
"You okay, kid?" Danny queried.
"Just a headache. Nothing a good night's sleep and some serious ibuprofen won't take care of later," she said, smiling at him.
Chin joined them, presenting each of his teammates with a steaming cup of coffee. Danny took his with a smile of thanks, and nodded toward the movement outside their room. "Any word from beyond?"
"Not yet." Chin sat down across from them, and scooted his chair closer. "HPD found three of the mercenaries still alive in the caves. So far, none of them are saying anything. And Max is still working out how to identify the others. HPD's also trying to run a trace on the cell phone they found on the old man, hoping to find a location or a name for whoever did this."
"So we don't know who anyone is, and we don't really know what happened except that they took on a SEAL and ended up blowing small pieces of the island to the ground," Danny summarized.
Chin gave him a grim look. "We should consider the possibility that whoever put the hit on Steve is still a major threat."
"Yeah, I was thinking about that," Danny admitted, leaning back and crossing his arms over his chest. "We'll probably have to have a detail with him for awhile. And what do we do with him while we get his place patched up?"
"No need to worry about any of that." Danny and Chin looked up in surprise as Briella suddenly stood over them. Danny gave her an irritated look, and she returned it calmly. "Sorry, didn't mean to startle you, Detectives."
"Have you heard anything about Steve?" Kono asked her.
Briella glanced away and tilted her head to the side in a noncommittal gesture. "Touch and go, they're telling me. There was a lot of internal damage, broken ribs, barely-missed arteries, and of course the head wound." As confident as she'd seemed the first time he'd seen her with Steve, Danny didn't like this new uncertainty in the woman. She pulled a seat to join them in a circle.
"So no one knows if he's going to be okay?" Danny surmised, frowning at her.
"He'll live," Briella assured him. "There's just no telling what long-term damage has been done…"
"In other words?" Danny prompted pointedly.
"In other words, there's no telling whether or not he'll be able to function as the commander of your team, or even as a SEAL. Not until he can be further assessed, both somatically and psychiatrically."
The words were dealt like a blow to each individual before her, and Briella watched their reactions with a trained, compassionate eye. Kono, shocked and heartbroken, stared at the psychiatrist and blinked hard to hold back the tears that glistened in her eyes. Danny looked away and scrubbed a hand over his face to hide his struggle to hold it together. Chin was torn, feeling both the loss of a comrade and leader and the loss of his newly-regained position in crime fighting. Briella categorized each response, and decided she would speak with them individually later on. Right now, her primary focus was on Steve.
"My associate Michael has already begun the process of seeing to Steve's home," she said, alleviating that obvious stressor at once. "Currently, the governor is closing Five-0 to any other cases and has directed associative police forces to your beck and call to find out what happened here. Governor Jameson's security liaison, Miss Wells, will also be available to you for the investigation. And I have it on good faith that several rather formidable individuals with the Navy have offered up any assistance they can." She registered the shocked looks on their faces, and smiled. "A security team will be made available to you at once, though I'm sure that Steve won't appreciate it."
"Who the hell are you?" Danny asked, staring agape at her.
Briella's smile warmed and she lowered her gaze humbly. "I'm simply an old friend of Steve's. An old, well-connected friend I might add."
"Clearly."
Briella recognized the sarcasm as a defense mechanism, Danny's confusion and uncertainty bringing about the pattern of speech he was most comfortable with. "You can rest assured," she said then, giving first Danny then Chin and finally Kono a meaningful look, "I will do all I can to help all of you—that includes your commander."
Before any of them could provide a response, Briella rose and turned. "And speaking of which…"
A doctor had joined the waiting room, aged and gray and grim as Death. Danny beat Briella to him, Chin and Kono right behind him. "How is he, Doc?" Danny demanded.
"He came through the surgery well," Dr. Reyes responded, confirming Briella's statement from earlier. "We managed to stop the bleeding before it damaged his internal organs, and we've treated the external wounds—it was a bit dicey at first, but we gave him a few units of blood and his blood pressure and pulse are stabilizing."
The three members of Five-0 shared a collective sigh of relief. Briella gave the surgeon a look. "There were complications?" she surmised.
The surgeon nodded gravely. "The sheer amount of damage the commander's organs sustained, as well as the swelling of the tissues, caused some trouble. Also, he seemed to be resistant to the anesthesia." Dr. Reyes looked generally exhausted, and removed his wire glasses to scrub at his eyes. "He's resting now."
"Resting?" Briella prompted.
"Yes, he's asleep. Thank you for your advice, Dr. Engel. We probably would have had a bit more trouble without your help," Dr. Reyes responded. "I'd like to see his blood pressure and pulse completely stable before I can allow any of you to visit with him. Someone will be in to update you again in maybe an hour."
"Thank you, Dr. Reyes." Briella waited until the elder doctor left, then turned to the team. "From this point, I'll be on the treatment team for Steve and Mary. The first goal will be, of course, to recover what I can from them both of whatever transpired."
"And then what?" Danny inquired.
Briella smiled at him sweetly. "And then your team investigates and you, Detective Williams, get to pummel and book whoever did this to Steve."
When he was allowed to see Steve, Danny hesitated at the door. He hesitated because, when it came right down to it, he wasn't sure he could handle accepting that Steve McGarrett was down and quite possibly out, even if the jury was still out on that one. And honestly, he was a little concerned about whatever might be going on with Steve that required the presence of Briella Engel—with whom Danny was growing increasingly impressed. (She'd complained about Hawaii and its lack of decent coffee three times in the last hour, earning her a formidable amount of respect in the Jersey boy's eyes.) Briella seemed like she was intimately familiar with the McGarrett way of life, right down to the way she spoke about Steve's teammates and seemed to recognize their banter of one another. Such familiarity sent Danny's deductive mind into overdrive, wondering about the mysterious connection between Steve and Briella. Wondering how Briella had known to come in the first place, and how she'd known that Steve wouldn't recognize Danny.
Wondering how bad the head injury was that Steve had stared at him and Chin like they were complete strangers.
He shook it off and entered Steve's room.
The machines hooked up to his partner were beeping softly, a ventilator helping Steve breathe and an IV hooked to his wrist. Steve lay against the stark white sheets, his skin tone pale and his eyes closed tightly.
Danny approached his partner's side cautiously, brows knit and jaw tight. Hesitantly, he lifted a hand and laid it atop Steve's head, very gently mussing his dark hair. "You had us worried there, partner," he said with a tired half-smile. "Next time you decide to go Rambo, could you at least give a guy a heads-up?"
He stood soaking up the general quiet of the room, listening to the gentle beeping of the machines hooked up to Steve. When he could no longer stand the stillness, he quickly said, "We're going to be trying to find out what happened. But it'd be a lot easier if you just woke up and told us, so as your partner, I demand that you hurry it up. That way you can tell me what's up with you and Briella."
He stared at Steve as though simply speaking his demands aloud would wake the SEAL. When Steve gave no signs of alertness, Danny glanced around him, and leaned down, his arms crossed against the rails lining the bed. "Hey, another thing. Thank you for, y'know…keeping your promise. You did good, McGarrett. You did us proud." He slowly returned his hand to the crown of Steve's head, and offered the unconscious man a small smile. "You have to get through this, okay, Steve? You promised. Okay?"
He didn't need to listen for an answer this time. Steve had already made the promise. Now, he just needed to make sure no one else came along to threaten Steve's ability to keep the promise.
He had work to do.
Steve stares at his hands, rubbing at them to get the stains off. The red stains. The blood. He rubs his hands together in the water, scrubs until his skin is raw. The blood won't come off. It won't come off his hands.
Something splashes in the water near him. He lifts his head, and stares into the cold, lifeless eyes of a familiar woman. He swallows the lump in his throat, thrashing his way through the water toward her. "No," he chokes, lifting her body from the water and trying to pull her up.
She won't come. He can't lift her.
"No! No, no! Please," he begs, but still the water holds her, refusing to let her go.
"Steve! Stevie!" He turns at the sound of the call, and sees a familiar man standing shoulder-deep in the water, blood pouring from a deep gash above his eyebrow. The water around his shoulders is red, tendrils of blood swirling slowly through the crystal blue. The man reaches toward him, but he can't let go of the woman—and he can't reach the man. He struggles, pulling his burden in order to try and get to the other victim—and then the lights in the man's eyes blink out, and Steve knows he's failed again.
"No. This wasn't you. This isn't your fault."
He hears but cannot believe her. The woman is slipping from his grasp, her eyes devoid of life but somehow still full of blame. He can't hold her, can't keep her above the surface. She slips from his hands, his slippery, blood-slicked hands, and he watches her descend slowly to the darkness of the water. Her hair is dark as the night. She is surrounded by a pool of red.
"No…"
"Steve. Steve, please listen."
He backs out of the water, collapsing onto the sand—it feels different, coarse beneath his fingers when he touches it instead of the soft fine sand he is used to. He looks around, finds the scene familiar, can't quite place it.
"Steve…Steve, it's all right. You're all right."
Three headstones, three names. None of them he can remember, though he can recognize them.
Daniel Williams
Chin Ho Kelly
Kono Kalakaua
Names he should know. Yet he doesn't. Why doesn't he know them? He folds, pressing his forehead against the cold stone of the headstone before him. He doesn't remember. He can't remember. He's responsible for this, and yet he can't remember who these people are.
He fights. Something holds him down. He struggles against it, but he cannot see what binds him and the struggle drains the strength from him, replacing it with pain in every part of his body.
"Steve. I will help you. I will show you who they are. Stop fighting me, Steve."
Warmth at his brow, a whisper in his ear. Something soft brushes his fingers, holds them. A gentle blanket of radiance covers him, soothing the aches as he tilts his head toward the voice, toward the warmth that brushes across his face.
"I'm here now, Steve. Just rest. You don't want to break your promise. Rest and be still. I'll watch over you. I'm here."
He forces his body to relax, forces himself calm. He decides, for the time being, to trust the voice. He knows Gabby would do him no harm. She never has.
