Author's Note: Way 71 contains spoilers for Season 1 Episode 24 "Oia'i'o" and all Season 2 episodes.

Way 71

When things go wrong, instead of assessing blame, focus on how to do better.

Kono tended to look at things differently than most people.

Part of it was because of having grown up in the shadow of her older cousin, about whom her family…related by blood to the Kellys…had never had a decent word to say after Chin and HPD parted ways.

You tended to not take for granted the little things anymore after a shitstorm like that. Little things like being allowed to call your cousin up to explain your most recent boyfriend woes, as only a girl of twelve can blow it out of proportion.

Little things like being able to jump onto the back of your cousin's motorcycle for a day-long tour of Oahu's most beautiful locales with the wind whipping through your hair and the powerful thrum of a purring engine beneath you.

Little things like being able to see your cousin whenever you wanted, however you wanted, wherever you wanted.

She'd been denied these things because of her family. She loved them, yes, and after Auntie's passing they had begrudgingly come around to not being so harsh on her beloved older cousin. But in between the horrible days of having to listen to them put Chin Ho down and say terrible things about his character, to the days where they were no longer doing so, something had happened.

Two men had shown up in Chin's life. One of them had asked a simple question. And Chin's response had been all he'd needed to take him into his new Five-0 fold. The other had never once looked at Chin sideways or questioned his loyalties or his honesty any more than the first. Maybe because as a cop, and an outsider, he'd somehow understood.

And then all three men had come to the beach that fateful day, to ask Kono to go undercover for them. She had never been more thrilled at not only being able to act like a cop before she even graduated, but to work with Chin Ho Kelly, to boot.

She loved him so very much. He was everything to her: a second father, a confidante, her best friend.

Now she had two more men she loved equally fiercely. One, a short blond haole who was as amusing as he was a damn fine detective. She learned a lot from him, and he never ever hesitated to explain something to her, show her something new, share his different perspective from having lived on the other side of the continent his whole life. Tease her. Yeah, he was fun.

The other, a dark-haired man who'd grown up in Hawaii, who loved Hawaii as much as those native to its soil generationally. He, in his own way, was just as amusing as his partner, what with the amount of explosions and gunfire and other things she'd never heard Chin mention happening so regularly in all his years as a cop. But that man was good at his job, too. She learned from him, and he never ever hesitated to explain something to her, show her something new, share his different perspective from having been in Naval Intelligence and a Navy SEAL for such a large portion of his life.

And when things skidded sideways on a case, like they very often did, she would quietly watch and learn as the haole explained to the SEAL just how fucked up his way of doing things was, and why. It taught her a lot, actually, because she could practically spout the entire procedural manual now, nearly a year after being brought into Five-0, just because Danny had pretty much done so into Steve's ear – loudly – at every opportunity.

But, she now reasoned as she sat in Five-0's headquarters after the five of them had gone "home" at Steve's suggestion, there was one incident that had taught her so much more than the previous year's combined. It hadn't been her own IA investigation. It hadn't even been the aftermath of it, which included appearing to have lost her badge so that she could go undercover to get some bad cops and keep her teammates from the proverbial axe.

No.

It had been what had happened in the aftermath of the week where Governor Jameson had died, where Steve had been arrested by Kono's very own cousin, and where Danny had made plans to leave them all, and then been rudely snapped back to the reality that he and Rachel as an item, wasn't going to happen.

She and Chin had both fully expected Danny to go off every which way he could about how Steve had really and truly fucked things up by choosing to confront Jameson on his own even after being told by Danny not to.

She and Chin had both fully expected Danny to continue degrading the beauty of their state, Steve's mental acuity and his ability to fucking listen to his partner to keep himself out of trouble.

And while Chin did later tell Kono that Danny yelled at Steve rather loudly in Max's apartment, he admitted that even he could tell it was simply Danny's way of handling the emotional roller coaster he was on, which probably included fears that his partner wouldn't survive being on the run from jail.

So now, sitting here in the bullpen with Chin seated so close she could feel his body heat…with Lori standing off to the side, now unsure of her place with Kono having returned to the fold…with Danny reaching out to skim his fingertips over the bruise on Steve's cheekbone from his charity MMA event, muttering about crazy SEALs and their insistence that backing down from a fight is a sign of weakness…Kono realized that maybe all of them had learned something since coming together. Though, of course, she couldn't speak for Lori since she didn't know her at all.

Chin, Kono thought, had learned that not everyone believes rumors, and that some people do still have the ability to trust and love based solely on their belief in another man's character, rather than what other people tell him. Danny, Steve and Kono had put Chin back together after the terrible thing he had endured. He needed them.

She herself had learned that yes, sacrificing yourself for the sake of your family…or ohana…was indeed a family trait. And that she'd never been more scared in her life than when she was facing IA and the undercover operation alone. Not because it was dangerous. But because Steve, Danny and Chin weren't there. She'd come to rely on them. She needed them.

Having seen Danny loosening up a bit, from no longer wearing a tie, to actually leaving his shirt unbuttoned two or three down (hey, even she appreciated the chest hairs it showed, come on). From being more open and friendly and less standoffish to everyone around him, to not really caring how easily other people could tell his true feelings about Steve, Chin and Kono. And of course, not busting Steve loudly and at great length about his tactics like he used do, made Kono think Danny had learned to try and figure out how to make things better, easier, how to handle situations with more grace, than he used to…rather than just complaining about how wrong everything was and blaming Steve for everything from the temperature in Hawaii to the fact that a suspect was dead. But the biggest thing was that because of Kono, Steve and Chin…when he didn't have Grace…Danny was no longer alone in Hawaii. He needed them.

And then there was Steve. She figured most of all what he'd learned is that while it sometimes seemed like everyone in his life was out to screw him over any way they could, like everything he'd ever known and loved had been tainted with lie after lie, the fact was that there were people in his life who would never try to hurt him in any way. He didn't have to go things alone anymore, and his fuck-up with Jameson had been the exclamation point to that concept. Danny, Kono and Chin would always support him, love him, and have his back. He needed them.

She still wasn't sure how or where Lori was going to fit into their foursome to make it a fivesome, but regardless of what did or didn't happen with their newest member, the fact still remained that the four core members of the team were still just that: a team.

They would live together, sometimes in cramped quarters, surveillance vans, seedy motel rooms, long hours at HQ or traipsing around Hawaii. They would laugh together over Danny's continued silliness and tendency to revert to a severe Jersey accent when he was tired or exasperated, Steve's unintentional goofiness and single-minded focus, their ability to embarrass Chin pretty easily when push came to shove and Kono's insistence that Hell Week was nothing compared to a year in the life of Five-0.

And they would continue to love one another as only those who'd been through what they'd been through together could.

She grinned as her eyes came to rest on the glaring eyes of a SEAL and the defiant eyes of his partner. Their gazes were locked, their bodies were postured just-so, and Danny was taking a deep breath. She suspected a pretty decent Danny-and-Steve Show was about to start, and God, how much she'd missed it.

She saw the frustration and concern in the haole's eyes. Saw how he ran a hand over his forehead, how he balled his hands, then, into fists at his side. How it looked like he was trying to keep from touching McGarrett everywhere just to make sure nothing was busted that his partner was trying to hide. He cared, and everyone knew it. Maybe this time his overabundance of words would be more about being happy Steve was alive and in one piece rather than how stupid he was for doing what he'd done.

Maybe Danny had learned to stop blaming Steve for every little thing that went wrong in their daily lives.

As his mouth opened, though, and Danny started to give Steve holy hell for having fought simply because he'd ripped the shoulder of the guy who should've been fighting and then had guilt-tripped himself into saying he'd fight in the guy's place, she thought…maybe not so much.

And from the gleam in her boss's eye, she knew that he…that none of them…would want it any other way.

Way 72

As a kindness, don't say, "I told you so."

Chin has found Danny Williams highly entertaining from Day One.

The guy really has no shame.

He'd never before met a man who wore his heart on his sleeve like Danny did.

Who made sure everyone within hearing distance knew exactly what those feelings were at any given moment.

Who loved so fiercely, so completely, that you couldn't help but smile with fondness in the face of all that he was, whereas normally you might prefer to drown yourself in one of Hawaii's many waterfalls or even the ocean.

And who, at every opportune moment, loved to say "I told you so."

He'd say it to Kono sometimes. Often to Chin. And always in reference to something their boss had done.

"Did I or did I not tell you that he'd get himself blown up running into warehouses without waiting for back-up? Huh?"

Yeah. He had told them that many times. But that man hadn't moved from the side of Steve's hospital bed once in the seven days it took for Steve to wake up from that one.

"I saw this coming. I warned him, I told him, 'Do not keep driving at the speed of light on dirt pathways because you will run us over the cliff into the ocean.' I told him that, you know?"

Yeah. He had told Steve that many times. But Danny, the one who wasn't a trained swimmer, diver or SEAL, had been the one to extricate Steve from the seat belt, and the Camaro's driver's seat. He'd been the one to haul Steve's unconscious form to the rocky beach. He'd been the one to breathe life back into the lungs of Steve McGarrett.

And the one to make his partner buy him a new car.

"Steven, I swear to God if you do not wait for back-up this time you are going to get me killed, do you get what I am saying here? You don't wait for back-up you won't have anymore back-up, dammit! I've told you this a thousand times!"

Yeah. He had.

Chin looked down at the hospital bed where, in a state of utter exhaustion, Steve had slumped forward across Danny's thighs and passed out.

Danny had spent ten hours in surgery after Steve had spent three carrying his partner, unconscious from a nasty head injury, out of the Ewa Forest Reserve. Before that, each and every one of them had been awake for over thirty hours trying to find a suspected murderer who'd fled the latest crime scene on foot. And now, it had been sixteen days since Danny had slipped into a coma on the operating table. Not once had Steve slept. Not soundly, at least.

Chin laid a hand on Steve's back. Steve stirred, cracked open an eye, and looked at Chin. "He'll come out of this, Chin," he whispered before closing his eye again and sinking back into sleep.

When Chin saw Danny's eyelids flutter two days later…when Danny looked at him, then at Kono, and then at Steve asleep over his abdomen…when Danny smiled at them and asked them to bring Grace to him…Chin was very, very glad that this time it would be Steve saying "I told you so."

And from the look on Steve's face, so was he.