A/N - thank you all for the reviews and support! The next chapter may take a little while longer as I'm re-jiggering things to move this into a longer, season one AU story. xoxo - tmtcltb

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Chapter 7

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Danny took a slow, deep breath, surveying the scene before him. The forest was so thick that you couldn't see the ocean until you were almost at the edge of the cliff, where the trees cleared enough to reveal clear blue water stretching as far as the eye could see. The view was incredible but, even better, after days of being surrounded by people, Kara was the only person in sight. Danny could actually feel himself relaxing as he took in the silence.

"It's beautiful." Kara's voice was soft, reverent. "You would never know a wilderness park existed so close to the resort."

"I guess I owe Charles an apology," Danny replied, chuckling as he recalled his skepticism when the man who drove them here insisted that this was one of the few parks large and wild enough for a tourist to actually get lost. Although the hour hike through barely marked trails did explain the lack of company. Between the humidity and the rough terrain, he and Kara were both soaked with sweat. Definitely not the kind of thing that an out of shape guy of forty or a family with a couple little kids would want to try. Danny's lips twisted as he tried to imagine his own family making this hike.

"What are you thinking?" Kara asked, drawing his attention. At his puzzled frown, she elaborated. "You're smiling about something."

"Just imagining my family trying to make this hike," he explained ruefully. Again reflecting on how lucky he was to run into someone like Kara, who hadn't complained once on the trek here. "My mother would have insisted that she was fine but then tonight she'd be limping because her hips and knees ached. My dad would have been out of breath by the half-mile mark but refuse to stop because he doesn't believe in quitting. My brother would have complained the entire time despite doing this sort of thing regularly for soccer practice. And Caroline would have accused me of picking the hardest path in the Bahamas on purpose."

Kara arched an eyebrow. "You mean you didn't pick this park because it was supposed to have the most isolated, highest rated hiking trail on the island?"

She had him there. "Okay, there might be some truth to that. You want to eat here?"

Looking around, Kara picked a spot as far back from the cliff as they could get without losing the view. Danny filed away the observation. Although Kara had been firm in her refusal to go paragliding, that didn't necessarily mean she was afraid, only that she wasn't interested. But today was the second time he noticed her avoiding a high spot.

Kara waited until they were unwrapping their sandwiches to speak again. "You seem really close with your family."

"I am. As much as I can be, with the job," he immediately amended. "My sister is moving to Norfolk this summer so I'll probably see more of her and my parents."

Kara giggled at the face he made. "I take it that she and Javier are moving in together?"

"Yes." Danny grimaced. "Don't get me wrong. I like Cruz. But there are things that I don't want to hear that about my sister."

"Is it really that bad?" Kara asked. "Carlton - Burk, head of the Nathan James's TAC team, Cruz must have mentioned him - claims that locker room talk is mostly a myth and guys don't really kiss and tell."

Although Kara didn't seem to have a hidden agenda, Danny knew to tread lightly. After all, there was locker room talk and then there was locker room talk. Kara couldn't possibly have been in the Navy for years without hearing some of the former. The bantering about sex and boobs, often followed by a crude gestures, as well as the ratings of the tag chasers who flocked to the bases. But Carlton was right that the talk usually stopped there. Usually being the key word.

"Some do and some don't. But that's not what I mean. It's more the day-to-day stuff that feels weird." He could tell that Kara didn't understand, so he tried again. "Caroline would never tell me that she got her period the day they arrived in Hawaii and then didn't want to do half the activities that they planned. But Frankie had that out of Javier in about three minutes. And then I had to listen to a conversation about different birth control options to eliminate that problem for my sister and her boyfriend."

"Ah, I understand. If there is one thing worse than sex, it's periods." Kara managed to keep a straight face until Danny threw his balled up napkin at her, when she dissolved into laughter. "Sorry, I mean, it's funny, but I also get it. Sort of. Growing up, I spent a lot of time with my cousins. Jimmy is my age. All through high school I had to listen to my friends giggle about what Jimmy could do with his jimmy. Even without details it was mortifying."

"What Jimmy could do with his jimmy?" Danny parroted, then snorted. "Sorry but that's...totally something Benz would say."

Kara shrugged. "High school. It was a long time ago. And he goes by James now. Probably because of past trauma."

"Doesn't sound like your friends were complaining," Danny noted, pulling a mango out of his bag.

"Past trauma for Jimmy's wife," Kara retorted without missing a beat. It was one of Danny's favorite things about her, how she gave as good as she got. "He eventually married my childhood BFF, Jennifer. Kind of funny as they barely got along in high school. And I don't want to know details about their sex life either."

"Did you have a big family?" Danny asked, realizing after the fact that the question didn't quite make sense. "I know that you said that it was just you and your mom. But do you have more cousins? What about your dad?"

Kara glanced out to the ocean, silence falling for so long that Danny almost withdrew the question. Feeling an awkward tension between them growing, yet still wanting to know. No, that wasn't quite right. More than wanting to know, he wanted Kara to tell him.

"I grew up in a small town," Kara began finally. "About two thousand people, mostly farmers."

Danny nodded. That he already knew and, in fact, it was something that they had in common. Danny himself having grown up in a town that was only slightly larger for most of the year, until the summer when the New Yorkers arrived for their beach vacations and the population tripled.

"My father was older than my mom," Kara explained. "A Vietnam veteran with a lot of issues. He probably has PTSD but that was back before people received official diagnoses. He lives in a cabin that he built himself on the family farm and originally hired Mom as his housekeeper."

Under other circumstances, Danny would have laughed. Housekeeper, right. But he didn't need to be told that this wasn't funny to Kara so, instead, he just nodded again.

Her eyes flickered to him. "I know, it's ridiculous. But thank you for not making a joke. You wouldn't believe some of the things I heard growing up." She sighed. "Anyway, I don't know all the details but Mom got pregnant pretty quick. Apparently Greg, that's my sperm donor's name, was furious. Mom never said but I always assumed that he wanted her to have an abortion. Of course, there was no way that was going to happen. Not in Kansas in the 80s. Anyway, Greg never acknowledged me and refused to sign my birth certificate. I would run into him sometimes when I was at the farm to see my grandparents or to play with my cousins and he never said a single word. The last time I saw him was at my grandmother's funeral a couple years back. He walked past me as though I weren't there. My uncle Jeff, Jimmy's dad, actually stopped talking to his brother over the whole thing. Said that Greg needed to get his head out of his ass."

God. Danny had known from her comments about Berchem and Emma that Kara had issues with her own father but, for some reason, he imagined that the guy was dead or had taken off years ago. Somehow hearing that Kara's father lived in the same town as her but refused to acknowledge that he had a daughter at all, was even worse.

"Your uncle was right," Danny replied shortly, unable to understand how a guy could walk away from his own child. Still, Danny was pretty sure that Kara wouldn't welcome his thoughts on her absentee father any more than Berchem welcomed Danny's thoughts about Missy's behavior. For whatever reason the man insisting on defending his ex-wife even thought she was completely responsible for the situation with Emma.

"I was lucky, though," Kara continued, her tone changing. "The Andersons accepted me from day one. I always spent a lot of time with my grandparents. Mom is an only child but Greg was one of five boys so I have lots of aunts and uncles and tons of cousins to play with as a kid. Most of them are married now, with kids of their own. I try to get out to visit at least once a year to meet the new additions."

Recognizing the comment for what it was, an effort to change the topic, Danny chuckled. "Cousins aren't that different from having siblings. Sounds like Jimmy was a handful. I bet you were the good girl keeping him out of trouble."

Kara laughed, her shoulders easing slightly. "I was, until I hit high school and Jimmy made the varsity soccer team with Ethan Waters. I had the biggest crush on Ethan. We made a deal. He would set me up on a date with Ethan and I wouldn't tell his parents that the Saturday night 'bonding events' for the soccer team were actually booze fests."

"How did the date go?" Danny asked, polishing off the mango and breaking into another sandwich.

"He was clearly bored the entire time and at the end of the night he told me that he liked someone else and only took me out so I wouldn't tell their parents about the parties," Kara replied, popping a grape into her mouth. "My heart was broken but I kept my word. I never told anyone what Jimmy or the rest of the team was up to. In fact, I even attended a few of the events myself."

"Kara Foster a rebel?" Danny looked her up and down, fake frowning. "No. I won't believe it."

"Well, believe it," Kara replied, laughing. "That's where I met my next crush. Zachary Lundgren. Currently a resident of Hutchinson Correctional Facility. Alisha claims that my attraction to assholes began early."

"His loss, my gain," Danny replied smoothly.

Kara took a bite of her mango. "How about your dad? You haven't mentioned him much. What's he like?"

Danny shrugged. "My dad's great. He's a high school principal so worked a lot less than my mom. Growing up he was super involved, coaching sports teams and attending events."

"What about now?" Kara asked. "What do you do when you're together?"

Danny paused, trying to recall the last thing he did with his father, just the two of them. "Nothing really. We mostly watch games. We don't have much in common. Don't get me wrong, he shows up at all my promotion ceremonies and tells everyone that I'm a Marine, to the point that it's a bit embarrassing, but I can't talk to him about what I do. And I wouldn't want to. He's a teacher, a pacifist. Someone who believes that people are fundamentally good. I don't want to destroy those illusions."

Kara's head tilted and she studied him. "Are you worried about destroying his illusions about the world? Or that he'll look at you differently if he understood what you, what we, really do?"

"I don't know," Danny admitted, realizing only as the words crossed his lips, that they were true. For years he had blamed the disconnect he felt with his father on the secrecy necessarily involved in his job. Telling himself that the distance would disappear once he was out of the Marines and raising his own family. That once Danny had kids, he and Mark would go back to the way they were before, just focused on his own kids' activities. But even as he thought the words, Danny knew that it was a pipe dream. He wasn't the same person he first enlisted or even when he left for his first deployment.

Who was it that said you can't go home again?

"It's hard, doing things that nobody wants to do. Things that people want to pretend don't happen," Kara said, her voice soft. She reached out, hand brushing against his. "But for what it's worth, your dad sounds like a good guy who really loves you. I don't think you could tell him anything that would change that."

Danny fell silent, staring out at the water, knowing that he would never take that chance. "Maybe."

After a few minutes of silence, Kara began folding up her trash and putting it inside her pack. "You ready to head back to the resort? After hours of trudging through mangroves, I'm going to need a couple hours on the beach to unwind."

Danny glanced at the water, oddly reluctant to leave. Shaking off the feeling, he stood. "Sounds good. I made a reservation at the steakhouse for 2030 so we should have enough time."

Kara chuckled. "Are you ever not think about food?"

After considering the question, Danny grinned. Looping his arm around Kara's waist and toppling her into his chest. "Sure. Sometimes I'm thinking about sex instead."