I do not own Hawaii Five-0 or any characters. No copyright infringement intended.

Notes: sorry for the long delay! The original version didn't sit right on second (third, fourth, fifth) readings, so the muse demanded that it needed a rehash (ad nauseum) ... to top things off, work/RL has been quite busy for me this past week.

Chapter Ten

H5O* H5O* H5O* H5O* H5O*

Steve heard his name being called and frowned uncomfortably at the prospect of fully waking. The distant voice definitely belonged to Danny, but he was loathe to move from the peace of sleep. Prompted at first by pain medication, his body had won the battle with its stubborn owner. Now, Steve easily found himself too content to move and possibly a bit resentful at being disturbed. He shifted under the light sheets in an attempt to avoid the inevitable. His waking thoughts were admittedly plain and more than a bit foggy, nonetheless he could recognize that he was decidedly ill and he wondered how he could be both content and not feel well at the same time. Maybe now that he'd admitted to being more than slightly tired and quite possibly badly under the weather than he'd been letting on, it was time to mumble a disagreeable sound about being disturbed under his breath. But maintaining an uncomplicated plane was difficult as Danny called him again and he simultaneously shivered from a sickly place deep inside his core.

"D'nno," he exhaled a portion of his friend's name while rolling his shoulders into the pillows to settle back to the place where he didn't have to think too hard nor realize that he didn't quite feel well. But he felt something else then ... there was a certain way the bed vibrated ever so slightly, the odd sensation suddenly compounded by a much too tight grip on his wrist. Rousing more as the aura around him sparked with a forboding, Steve's frown increased ten-fold.

Even barely half awake, he could tell that something was very wrong.

What Steve now truly felt wasn't actually a grip, it was more of a cold band of trembling fingers tightly wrapped around his heated skin as if it might leave a branded mark of its own. Eyes still closed as he fought to chase away the drug-induced vestiges of sleep, Steve grimaced in confusion when the various sounds around him gained more clarity. He was certain that his name hadn't been called again, yet Danny was certainly there. He could hear the rapid inhale and exhale of near-hyperventilation. He could literally envision the frenetic swallowing as a low gagging sound failed at being stifled inside his friend's constricted throat.

"Danny?" Steve audibly gasped as a realization dawned more urgently and his brain began to decipher the entirety of what it was sensing.

"Danny!" His eyes sprung open the moment he understood, a stunned flurry of various questions beginning and then dying on his lips as he stared up into Danny's traumatized expression. Struggling at first to sit up, Steve abandoned his attempts by thumbing the bed more upright, wincing as his body reminded him of its many bruised woes. "What? What's ... wrong?" He asked at the same time he grappled for Danny's hand, stunned anew by the cold, clammy texture.

"God, Danny ... you look awful," Steve breathed out softly as he came more fully aware.

"I ... uh ... just ...they said," Danny stammered so unexpectedly badly that Steve instantly hit the nurse's call button for help. If Danny noticed, he didn't say a word about it. Instead, a myriad of mixed emotions marched across his face as he looked dumbly at the intravenous line snaking from his partner's arm and on upwards towards the bagged antibiotics. Yet his eyes eventually skittered back to Steve's face with an look of undisguised panicked terror.

"Who?" Steve prompted while struggling to make his body move through its resentful aches and pains. "Who? Those three?" Scarcely were the words hanging in the air between them, when Steve smacked himself mentally for spouting the obvious without the capacity to think when Danny's face crumbled even more.

At first, Danny could only futilely shake his head. His mouth opened and then closed with a snap as another violent wave of nausea rolled through his stomach. Eyes closed as he fought the urge to dry-heave, what he did manage to say left Steve continually confused. "I don't ... I don't know ... what to do."

"Alright, I'm sorry. What did they say, Danny? Tell me what they said to you," Steve didn't need to guess what had happened as Danny clung to his arm. Another nightmare, based in very real aspects of a terrible trauma, had clearly wracked Danny's already poor ability to gain a peaceful sleep. But Steve was stunned to find his partner leaning heavily against the bed with a panicked strangle-hold latched onto his arm. Steve cleared his throat from a drug-induced thickness, struggling to get a handle on his own muddled thoughts as he tried to gently push for more information. "Can you tell me what they said, Danny? Do you remember so I can try to help?"

Still ashen at the traumatic nightmare's intensity, Danny was briefly mute as he shook his head. He'd instinctively rolled out of bed upon waking, breathing in shuddered gasps of air. He'd seen where he was and he'd recognized the hospital room, yet that knowledge scarcely had driven a dent into his ongoing stress. With his sights set on reaching Steve, his legs had managed to hold him up the short five feet it took to awkwardly lurch to the second bed where he now braced himself, shaking and unable to quiet the erratic pounding of his heart.

"Grace," Danny's eyes glittered darkly in the dim light when he managed to voice one telling word. Near black and shining in fear, his eyes directly countered his lackluster complexion as he began to stammer through an almost nonsensical explanation which proved the true extent of his ongoing shock. What he saw in his mind's eye as poorly remembered fragments of both dream and reality, merged into a dangerous whole as he tightened his hold on Steve's arm. "They ... they want her ... they said ... her school ...they know so much ... they promised that if I didn't talk ... she'd be next. Steve? What now ... what do I ... do? Where do I go?"

"Whoa, hey! That's not going to happen and it never did happen!" Steve blurted his surprise when Danny reversed course to pull away from him. He flailed awkwardly to get off the bed, failing completely with his legs tangled in the sheets. Steve hissed in pain when he pulled uncomfortably on his bruised ribs and took the intravenous line to its tethered limits. His compromise was to drag Danny down towards him, forcing his distraught friend to huddle awkwardly next to his side. "No, they lied Danny ... you have to know that. Gracie's safe ... she's so completely safe. What are you doing? Hey, where do you think you're trying to go?"

"I need to go ... to make sure," Danny insisted as he struggled against the hold he'd originally initiated. In a complete role reversal, Steve now clung to his forearm only winning the battle since he was too weak despite Steve's own awkward position. Danny found himself pulled back relentlessly to sit, trapped in place. He didn't want to sit though; he wanted to leave and he needed so much more to know that his daughter was truly safe.

"Please," Danny whispered as he twisted in Steve's tenacious grip, his eyes continually brightly lit by uncertainty and the strong memories. "Please ... I need to make sure. I ... need ... to keep her safe. They know ... too much."

Steve's eyes glistened in sympathy as his friend tried to wrench away. But the stricken expression combined with what Danny had just said, made him realize something else. Something so obvious, it was nearly embarrassing.

"Danny, do you know what day it is? Do you remember getting out of there?" Steve's brain swirled through options to calm his friend as Danny tried to regain his feet once more. He knew the answers to both were a resounding no. But the two pointed questions had only ramped up the struggle instead of helping. So regardless of the severity of the continuing tug on his ribs, Steve flung his legs off the bed in order to use both of his hands to keep Danny in place. His move was necessary, yet ill-thought out as the needle in his arm tore painfully at his skin.

"Damn it," Steve ground out as he took a quick second to disengage the intravenous line, disgusted by its ongoing annoyance to what he needed to do. To where he needed to be.

"Commander! What ... again?" The nurse's unexpected stunned exclamation, trilled smartly through Danny and he lurched upwards with an impulsive gasp. Steve not only heard the fright, he felt it all as he reacted swiftly to grab his unsteady friend by the shoulders. In that split second of distraction, Danny had nearly made it to his feet.

"We're good," Steve breathlessly replied as he physically brought Danny back down to the mattress. He hid his pained wince and then studiously ignored her silent reprimand, which was easy enough when her worried gaze flew to Danny's stricken face. She walked forward, intent on now on him until Steve shook his head and whispered a partial apology. "Give me five minutes with him. Just five ... please ... I need the time with him."

The nurse waited a hairsbreadth before hesitantly nodding. She'd not be going far though and in many regards, Steve was quite glad of that fact as she reluctantly backed away. Alone once more, Steve re-focused on Danny and the rattled tension which was leaking from his body. His friend was at least staring at him though and Steve instantly took advantage of the limited attention even when Danny opened his mouth to object being continually restrained.

"I'm telling you that Grace is completely safe," Steve swore adamantly under his breath, flustered by his own stupidity as he firmly clung to his friend. With one hand anchored just above the bruises on his wrist and the other virtually melded to a sweat-soaked shoulder, he forced Danny to stay down. Nearly nose-to-nose while perched on the edge of the bed, Steve was desperate to make Danny listen; to make him understand that the threat had been eliminated.

Permanently.

"Now listen to me. They had us for four days before ... before we got out of there ...," Steve said, pausing to see if what was left unspoken had begun to sink in. It was too much to ask for though as Danny lost his short window of hazy-eyed contact and a new wave of tension shook his body. "... once we got out, I managed to contact Chin. Danny? Are you paying attention?"

"How ... how ... does that matter?" Danny whispered brokenly, frustrated by talk and his feral urge to move and act. His eyes flew around the room, lingering on the window before eventually settling on the doorway. He tried to regain his feet only to be prevented by Steve's diligent refusal to let him go. The heat from Steve's hands on his shoulder and forearm drilled heavily though his cold skin, weakening him further and ruining portions of his resolve to escape until remembered voices threatened just below the surface.

"No, no." Danny shook his head at the war between emotion and words. Supported by depths of exhaustion, the former was winning and he couldn't concentrate; couldn't think of anything except Grace. "I can't ... be here. Please. It's Grace." He also didn't quite care to understand what Steve might be trying to say because knowing that days had elapsed only made things worse. "Steve, I need ... to go."

"No, you need to listen to me, Danny. You have to listen to me," Steve begged softly. "Grace is safely at home. I promise." However, Danny only looked towards him when he fidgeted uncomfortably. A soft whisper of a pained moan had snuck out from his lips and oddly, Danny seemed to have heard it.

There was a period of silence where Danny frowned at Steve with yet another layer of confusion marring his strained features. His gaze dropped to the now dis-engaged intravenous line and he tilted his head just slightly when he found the taped port near the crook of Steve's elbow. There was a spot of blood there. Just on the edge of the white tape and he found himself momentarily riveted to the wet gleam. Dimly, he eventually saw the pain etched across his friend's face, too. A pain that wasn't merely emotional, but also decidedly physical. Danny found himself blinking rapidly to frame better questions, but the attempt was useless. He was much too distracted - much too upset. Instead of being able to cope with what Steve was saying or the reason behind Steve's apparent injuries, Danny found himself stuck in a terrible type of rewind as dangerous threats concerning Grace echoed in his head.

"She ... can't be safe. They said ... they know her school ... the pictures ... they know her name," Danny shook his head in frustration because he'd written his love on the back of each photograph. They'd seen the proof of it and had threatened to act in order to destroy his very reason for living. It was his fault that they knew so much about Grace. His fault that they had access to his daughter and so, tears were flooding his eyes in continued disbelief.

"How ... how does anything ... matter?" Danny wheezed repeatedly as he once more lost his ability to breathe. "How?" Their promises had been dire and he simply couldn't let any of them go forgotten. The buzz in his ears increased and he closed his eyes against a blackish mind-numbing dizzy spell prompted by stress. "How?"

"Stop," Steve growled out angrily. Combined with the sudden surge of unexpected anger, the painful pressure that Steve put on his shoulder drew his attention back to the man's thunderous face. Nonetheless, Danny continually shook his head in denial, moaning when his trembling hand was stayed from its upwards motion towards the side of his head and the lank hair near his ear.

"Danny, stop it and listen to me," Steve demanded, the strength of his fingers turning Danny's a mottled white while his eyes hardened in warning.

"It matters because they're dead," Steve firmly noted as he moved his rigid hold from Danny's shoulder to now gently embrace his neck. The touch was a direct antithesis to the humorless look on his face and the way in which his fingers nearly crushed Danny's inside his fist. The contrast of tactile feelings made Danny pause long enough for their eyes to genuinely meet. Brusquely, Steve enunciated every single word again with a sharp clarity and unfaltering resolve. "They are dead. And the Coasties picked up their miserable pieces. Completely under Chin's direction."

The skin on Danny's neck, left free of the hospital gown's thin material, was over-heated and yet oddly drenched in a cold sweat. Reluctant to free Danny's fingers with his left, Steve splayed the fingers of his right hand soothingly across the space hoping the direct physical sensation would drive what he'd just explained clearly home.

"Come on, Danny. Do you get what I'm saying?" Steve's voice softened slightly as he waited for any kind of response, tentatively offering an approving smile when another shudder ran through Danny's body from top to bottom. Danny's eyes blinked wildly just before a heavily creased squint transformed his face. Now, his expression was one solely of abject confusion as he tried to cobble together what he was being told; all of which, was certainly good enough of a start for Steve.

"Are you with me now on this? They're dead and the Coasties took care of the mess. Chin handled everything for us. It's over and done with, Danno." Repositioning his fingers and allowing his thumb to run repeatedly over the sharp ridge of Dannys clavicle, Steve nodded, mollified when there was a noticeable stunned quivering intake of air. "You're okay; Grace is fine. No one can touch her."

"Dead?" Danny mumbled as the import finally sunk into his brain. "Are ... you sure? They're ... all dead?" He closed his eyes to deeply palm the space between his eyes with his free hand. His head ached from a multitude of terrible stresses. Of course what Steve was telling him was true. How else could they be where they were at that very minute? While he now understood what Steve had done, the strong thrum of exhaustion had pushed his emotions over an inordinately high edge. Each not only rivaled the other for his action, they cruelly played together in a disjointed harmony of sorts and it was a fight for Danny to overcome his most fundamental instincts.

"Very," Steve smirked in reply to the barely mouthed questions. Though he could read the remnants of doubt, much of Danny's struggle had finally wilted away to nothing, allowing Steve the opportunity to release the restrictive hold he'd maintained on Danny's fingers. A soothing smile was further punctuated by an almost snide dangerous look which refused to lurk complacently in Steve's eyes. The point he needed to make was critically important as he regained his partner's attention. Steve would never regret his actions as Danny heaved in a strangled breath which he exhaled on something which sounded like a relieved, mangled sob.

"You're good," Steve whispered softly. He ran his left hand calmly up and down Danny's arm to comfortably land in a spot which mirrored his right. He used both hands to gently but firmly rock home what he said next. His eyes were full of a shared emotion as Danny became completely pliable under his fingertips, swaying tiredly to the motion of his steady push and pull.

"Every last one of them is gone." He might have softened in other ways, but Steve's tone of voice remained laced with an icy cold venom. "Trust me, Danno. They'll be damned lucky if anyone cares enough to bury them."

~ to be continued ~