Danny is pretty sure everyone in the car has stopped breathing. It's not like it hasn't been on his mind, so he's not surprised about the possibility. He is surprised that Rachel actually told him. Finally he manages to swallow over the sudden dryness of his throat and say, "Charlie was too big when he was born to be mine, Rach."
Her lower lip is trembling. "I want him to be yours."
Danny bites his lip, looks up at the Camaro's low ceiling, eyelids blinking rapidly, trying to hold it together. "I wanted him to be mine, too," comes out broken and there are Steve's fingertips on his arm again.
"He may simply have been large for how far along he was," Rachel says next, and sounds desperate to either convince Danny or believe it herself. "Stan…"
Danny's eyes snap back to hers.
"There's more." She shakes her head. "When Grace and I returned from New Jersey, I…Danny, I never told Stan of our affair. I didn't even tell him Grace and I were leaving Hawaii that night."
"What?" Danny breathes, because, "Are you serious?"
She nods. "When I returned home after meeting with you, he wasn't there as he was supposed to be. I waited as long as I could and attempted to ring him several times. Finally we had to leave or be late for our flight, so I simply collected Grace and our things and left. I decided I'd ring him the next day from New Jersey. But Danny, that's not the worst of it."
Now Danny just wishes he could crawl into a hole because there's only so much of this crap a guy can take in one sitting, you know?
Steve's fingertips stay put.
"The next day Stan rang me. I told him Grace and I were homesick and needed to visit with family. He asked when we were coming back and I told him I wasn't certain. The truth is I hadn't heard from you yet. I didn't know what had happened until I saw on the national news that Steve had been arrested for murdering Governor Jameson." Danny feels Steve's fingertips dig into his arm a little bit. It serves to focus his attention on something other than his own racing heart. "Stan asked me if I was leaving him, and then…Danny, he knew we'd been having an affair. He said he had photographic evidence of our being together when Grace was in school or with the nanny, meaning she couldn't be used as an excuse for what was in the photographs."
"He had us followed?" Danny asks. Jesus Christ, to know there's blackmail material somewhere out there, holy shit.
"It would seem that way. I told him I was pregnant, and he asked if it was your baby. I said I didn't know." Rachel looks down at her hands folded in her lap. "After you shot him, when Rick had kidnapped Grace…later on in hospital, Stan told me he wouldn't press charges against you because he understood, and that he'd do the same thing if it was his child's life in danger. He also said he didn't care whether or not the baby was his, but that I was to never breathe a word of the possibility to you."
Danny feels rage boil up inside him and can't wait to get his hands on Stan. "That son. Of. A. Bitch," he seethes.
"When he first told me he wanted us to move to Las Vegas for the project, I fought it, Danny. I fought it so hard!" Rachel begins crying again and Danny can't help himself. He leans forward, away from Steve's touch, and gathers Rachel into his arms, rocking her gently. From his shoulder her muffled voice continues, "I didn't want to take Grace away from her school and her friends and all her activities here." She sniffles. "I didn't want to take her away from you, Danny."
"Hey, okay," Danny murmurs into her hair, closing his eyes and thinking that Christ, it's a good thing Stan's not here right now because he would shoot him in the face. "What else? What was it that made you agree to go when you didn't want to? Made you file that petition?"
Rachel backs away, takes a tissue that Steve produces from God-knows-where and offers her, smiles a small smile of thanks and wipes her nose and face. Danny feels like a fucking bomb is about to be dropped inside the Camaro and wishes to God he could somehow stop it.
"While he was still in hospital for his shoulder, Stan told me he'd had a paternity test done on himself and Charlie three weeks after he was born, but refused to tell me the results."
Danny blanches, because he'd been considering asking for that exact thing based on his conversation with his own attorney.
"He said he had to get me away from you in order to keep me faithful, and when I told him that moving only meant you'd move right along with us to stay near Grace, that's when I discovered the kind of man I'd married, Danny. The kind of man who was helping raise Grace, who was now helping raise Charlie."
"What did he do, Rachel?" Steve asks, and it's the first time Steve's spoken in so long that it startles Danny a little and makes him look at him. He sees nothing but compassion on his partner's face, and how Steve can be so concerned with any of this shitstorm that's Danny's life right now, Danny doesn't know, but fuck if he isn't every shade of grateful that there is. "He threaten you?" Steve continues. "Danny? The kids?"
Rachel nods, says "All of the above, Commander," and Danny's stomach plummets. Jesus Christ. All along he's been thinking Rachel's being a Class A Bitch trying to take Grace away. All along it's her he's cursing, and all along…if she's telling the truth…it wasn't her that wanted it any step of the way.
"I threatened to remain here in Hawaii with the children, told himthat he could move without us. When I did, Stan gave me two choices. I could agree to move to Las Vegas with him and both children, remain faithful to him and allow him to raise Charlie as his own son without question. If I did so, he wouldn't do anything about you continuing to follow us, and you would maintain your visitation rights until Grace graduates high school."
Steve's face is set into a mask of stone when he asks, "And what was the other choice?"
Rachel looks at him, then at Danny. "He said if I chose not to move with him, and attempted to remain here with Grace and Charlie, he would sue for full custody of Charlie, citing not only my infidelity with you, but also the times our lives have been placed in danger because of you, including the time you shot him. He would drag out all our dirty laundry, Danny, with the photos of us together as icing on the cake. He would sue for you to no longer be allowed the same visitation you have with Grace, that the visits would have to be supervised. I was fully under the impression that there were connections in the Hawaiian courts that somehow or other he could utilize to ensure he won. He would be able to take Charlie away from me for good, quite possibly taking away the time you have with Grace as well."
To Danny's surprise, before he can even react to it…because he really really really wants to shoot Stan now, in a place that hurts like a motherfucker like his balls, maybe even gut him and then kick the living shit out of him for good measure…Steve reaches back between the bucket seats, places his hand over Rachel's that are one atop the other in her lap, and says, "Nobody should be forced to make a decision like that." Danny turns and looks at Steve, but his eyes are firmly trained on Rachel. "My father had to make a painful decision once and I'm convinced it was under the same types of threats. Either send me and my sister away, or we'd be used to hurt him, hurt my mother, if he knew she wasn't dead. He had to give us up to try and keep us safe."
Steve pulls his hand away, turns around and gets out of the car, closing the door behind him. Danny reaches out, puts a hand on Rachel's shoulder. "That sonofabitch is gonna pay, Rach. If I don't see to it, my guard dog out there, will."
Rachel barks out a short laugh at his description of Steve, but shakes her head, tears flowing anew. "I'm so sorry, Danny, I've kept so much from you. I truly thought we could have a new start, but then…I was doing everything I could to keep you in Grace's life. Even if it meant tearing you away from Five-0, from everything you've built here. Everything you've become here."
Danny can't bring himself to offer her physical comfort again, not right now, because he's too raw, too angry, and he doesn't know who to get mad at. He could get mad at himself for putting them in this position by having an affair with his married ex-wife. He could get mad at Rachel for not just telling him the truth, because he and Steve and Chin and Kono, they could've helped, they could've stopped Stan going any further than he already had a year ago, stopped the ensuing year of hell for Danny, for Rachel. Stopped the whole moving to Vegas thing. And to think, Danny had sent Rachel straight into Stan's plan to get them all out of Hawaii by insisting they leave for Vegas last night, thinking he was just keeping his little girl and his ex-wife safe. Doing exactly what John McGarrett had done, sending his children away…whether or not Charlie was his own was irrelevant; he was still a child and still Rachel's. And Rachel knew, dammit, even as Danny ripped his heart out of his own chest by forcing himself to say good-bye to Grace, she knew all of this and said nothing.
Danny doesn't know whether to hate himself or feel sorry for himself. He doesn't know whether to hate Rachel or pity her. He doesn't know whether to stick to the law and throw Stan in jail or just strangle him to death with his bare hands, consequences be damned. He figures, though, that Steve might have a notion to beat him to doing the latter, so he's probably well-advised to keep Steve out of the same room as Stan at this point.
Stan, who right now is cooling his heels at Five-0 HQ along with Steve's mother and Joe White.
Danny looks up to find Steve standing in front of the Camaro watching him intently. So he gets out of the car, pushes the front seat back into place and just stands there looking right back at his partner.
"Okay, my problems tackled. Yours next," Danny says, trying for levity with an epic fail.
"I'm sorry," Steve says quietly.
"Why? For once, you didn't do anything." Default to humor, because this hurts too goddamn much.
"Yes, I did. It was Wo Fat who got Rachel to think of some way to get you out of Hawaii, and he did it because he planned on setting me up to take the fall for Jameson's murder. If it wasn't for me, none of that would've happened to you, Danny. Thinking you were having another baby, something you wanted…" His voice trails off, he flaps one hand in the air like he just can't, and looks away.
Danny closes the door and moves around to the front of the car, keeping his back to the windshield because he knows Rachel can read lips pretty well. "I'm the one who couldn't keep my dick in my pants, Steven, and we aren't going to try to pretend we don't both know it. That would've happened with or without you or Wo Fat in my realm of existence, and we both know that, too."
Steve makes a face like seriously that was TMI, but Danny steamrolls ahead because right now he could give a shit about decorum.
"Yes, Wo Fat used Rachel to try and get rid of me so I wouldn't talk sense into you and stop you from confronting the governor, and Rachel chose to use her pregnancy to accomplish that goal. But nothing worked out anyway, because I didn't leave Hawaii and I didn't stop you from confronting the governor."
Steve pulls a tamer version of Aneurism Face because Danny's knocking down his guilt-built walls and he hates it when Danny tells him he's not to blame for the world's woes. Especially when Danny's right.
"Steve, I couldn't face this without you, Chin and Kono. I need backup sometimes too, you know. So it's better you're all in my life than not right now, is what I'm saying."
Steve cocks an eyebrow, looks down his nose at him and uh-oh, there goes that stupid half-grin again. "Gettin' all mushy on me again, Danno?"
"Shut the hell up and get us to HQ before I show you how short people take down tall people." Danny makes an abortive move with his knee up toward Steve's groin and in spite of himself, Steve laughs out loud.
In spite of himself, Danny can't help but chuckle in return.
Maybe he's just getting used to everything in his world being fucked six ways from Sunday.
Or maybe what he told Steve really is true: maybe he does need six feet of insanity in his sphere because right now, he thinks maybe that Steve the SEAL brand of insanity's all that's keeping him from going just as nuts.
Danny's not sure what to say to Rachel when they get in the car and start heading for the palace again. So he just stays quiet, looking out the window as the sun rises above the horizon. Wondering about Charlie. Wondering about Rachel, and whether she's really telling him the truth here. Wanting to so desperately believe she is, but too burned by their history to just go on faith anymore.
Wondering about Gabby- "Oh, shit!" he exclaims, pulling out his phone.
Steve throws him a 'what?' look.
"Gabby!" Danny responds to the silent question. "I never got her when I was trying earlier!"
Steve makes 'Fuck a Duck' Face as Danny dials Gabby's cell phone number.
He's sure she must be all right. After all, the two have only been dating for a little while. They aren't living together, haven't really made their relationship public beyond Five-0 and anyone who might've been around any time she came up in conversation.
Anybody like Lori, who isn't there anymore, so it doesn't matter.
Anybody like Kamekona, who just likes to tease Danny in general but is no threat to anyone.
Anybody like Mary Ann, who caught him talking on the phone with her and asked him point-blank if they were...her words...doing the horizontal tango. (He hates to this day how red that friggin' question made him.)
Anybody like…Danny feels himself freeze as Gabby's cell phone goes to voice mail.
Anybody like Joe White.
Joe White was around quite a bit for a while. He'd heard lots of talk about Gabby, Grace, anything and everything Danny had ever spoken of.
Come on, come on, pick up! Danny begs within the silence of his own mind. Gabby's cell phone goes to voice mail once again. He looks across the front seat at Steve. "She has a condo at Inn on the Park."
"Isn't that where Snorkel Hawaii is, where we took Grace that one time? On Ala Moana Boulevard?" Steve asks. Danny nods. Steve flips on the lights and sirens, whips out his phone and speeds up.
Danny keeps trying Gabby's office number, cell number, home number.
And Gabby keeps not answering.