I do NOT own anything, but the plot.
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As always, thank you!
Nalo a loaʻa
-loosely translate to "lost and found"-
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
"Hey guys," Danny greeted Chin and Kono. "Just waiting on Lou, but I'm so happy you dropped everything to get here."
"Sure, Brah, you sounded a little desperate," Chin stated, worried to say the least.
"What's going on, Danny?" Kono asked, looking around the house after being sure she heard Grace scolding Charlie. "Shouldn't the kids be at school?"
"Something came up, so I called Rachel and we decided they needed the day."
"What happened?" Chin pushed, leaning in a little.
"Steve happened," Danny deadpanned. "Was literally a drunken sailor."
The forlorn look they all got as a result was something Danny had prepared for. He also knew that he wouldn't stop until they all realised that something was amiss with their boss and they had ignored the warning signs.
A knock at the door, broke the moment and Danny was pleased he didn't need to wait longer than necessary for Lou to arrive.
"Hey, man," he greeted letting the larger man in. "I've got the kids cleaning up with the radio on," Danny mused, sinking onto the coffee table. While he knew they were in earshot, he wanted the kids to form their own judgement where Steve was concerned. "I found our resident Super SEAL on my driveway last night, stinking up more than a brewery."
"He came here?" Lou asked, sounding surprised.
"Yeah, and you think our shock is real, you should've seen his when he came to and decided he needed to leave."
That memory of Steve, struggling to find purchase in the world he lived, working through the alcohol in his veins to figure out where he should go was one Danny couldn't forget. He'd drag that one to the grave.
"Guessing you didn't let him," Kono assumed, her tone delicate.
"Of course not!" Danny argued, a little defensively. "He was wasted, guys. Honestly, even at his worst I've never seen him that bad."
"Did anything happen?"
"Yeah, we did. Aquaman just wanted to come home," Danny softly chided the notion. "Said a bunch of stuff like he got it and he wasn't my partner, but ultimately when he gave in, he said he just wanted to come home ... never thought my humble abode held such a place in his heart..."
"Don't think it's the place he was talking about, but the people in it," Lou corrected, giving a pointed look in Danny's direction. "You're basically his brother, Danny, and your kids are like his niece and nephew for all intent and purposes. He'd lay his life on the line for both of them and you."
"I know," Danny admitted, rubbing his hand across the back of his neck. "I know he would, but Grace," he paused, lowering his voice. "Grace, she's not dealing at all. She wasn't dealing with his death and now he's alive? It's messing with her head. I did everything I could to get him to stay, to eat, to lay low, but I ignored the fact that Grace wasn't coping."
"She lost a great man that day," Chin mused, rubbing his jaw.
"But she got him back." Danny's statement was simple and concise. "Everything should be okay, now."
Danny knew the naivety to his own words.
In black and white everything should be okay now. They should be a family once more, happy for the reunion they were blessed with.
In technicolour, Steve's reincarnation had brought with it a new way of fresh grief, one wrapped suffocatingly in betrayal and deceit that it felt like quicksand to even start to make sense of it.
"It was never going to be just that easy," Kono stated dryly. "I find myself lying awake at night wondering if it's really happening."
"It's been almost three weeks, you'd think we'd have adjusted better," Chin commented wryly.
Kono snorted before adding, "Safe to say this adjustment period hasn't been easy on us."
"And what about on McGarrett?" Lou asked. "We've neglected the one person who's been caught up in this as well," Lou stated wryly and folded his arms over his chest. "And no one stopped to think about him."
"You did," Danny admonished, his tone harsh.
Lou immediately threw his hands up in the air. He was not about to have an argument over it. He had presented Steve with a helping hand, but the former SEAL had made it abundantly clear he wouldn't take it for multiple reasons.
"Look, I'm out of this enough to see a different perspective. He may have handpicked me to be on this team, but I hated our boy when I first met him. Wanted him out of a job and off the island if I had anything to say about it, but that wasn't the case for you three." Lou passed a look between them. "He drew you in and formed the task force with you guys at the very beginning. He made a family out of you." He used their silence well, forcing them all to take note. "And you've sat on the information of what's happened and still not made progress."
Lou was amazed at how little progress the team made. For a bunch of bright sparks, this entire situation had really messed with their dynamics.
"Guess we should just be happy that it wasn't listed as classified," he added with an eye roll.
"Amen," Danny groused. "I'm going to check how the kids are doing."
Danny could hear the kids cleaning the table, but he just needed a moment to gather his thoughts. He hated how right Lou was and he hated the fact that he had been a selfish bastard and not looked at everything clearly. He was detective, prided himself on being a damn good one, too, but he had neglected to see what was right under his nose - his partner barely treading water.
Lou followed Danny's footsteps to the kitchen, he felt uneasy, but he needed to speak to Danny alone. He'd been concerned about Steve since he saw him in Denning's office - every day since didn't help matters.
"Hey Danny, how did he seem when he left?"
Danny didn't need to say anything for Lou to deduce how Steve was when he left.
"Stupid question, I know." He let out a small mirthless laugh, a nervous twinge to it. "Only he said some stuff the other day, when you were out getting lunch with Chin and Kono."
"If you know something, Lou, now would be a good time to say it," Danny coerced, his gut throbbing that there was more he had missed. "He was a mess… inebriated and hungover. So, he didn't seem all that great, and what's worse, my kids noticed it before I did."
"He's had a rough ride of it," Lou considered, his voice soft. "He's not been sleeping, don't think he's been eating much either," Lou observed, his eyes softening as he thought of the mess McGarrett was in. "I know you've been around him, but I think you've been blind to what's really gone down. Like your judgement's been clouded toward him."
"I was, Lou … until last night." Danny sighed, resting against the countertop. "When he broke down last night, it opened my eyes. I feel like an absolute ass to the fact that he has been struggling and I just didn't care to look. I'm meant to be his partner. Christ, I'm meant to be his best friend."
Danny threw two hands up onto his head, fingers lacing through hair, his body winding tighter by the second. Nothing in his life had made sense in five months, and all of the work he thought he'd made to move forward in life was for nothing. Danny had barely moved an inch away from the grief he was handed five months prior.
"What a mockery I've made of my entire eulogy to him."
Lou gulped convulsively. He knew not one of them forgot a moment of the aftermath of that day in the warehouse – the explosion, the dust settling, the wait for help, the wait in the hospital, the doctor's solemn expression, the days after, the funeral, the weeks that rolled on. Not one moment lost clarity for him and he was sure that even without speaking about it, it hadn't for the others.
"You've got a chance to make it right." Lou knew it wasn't that easy, but it was a step forward. "You had him here, you made progress with him, Danny, and Grace, she'll come around. She needs time to work through this, we all do, but right now, Steve is heading down a dangerous path and he needs us, too."
"What if I'm too late?" Danny worried, allowing his hands to drop, dangling down by his side. "I've said some unforgiveable thing."
"All you can do is make it right," Lou echoed his prior comment. "And for what it's worth, your eulogy was perfect … don't doubt that."
"Lou," Danny started.
"Regardless of what happened, he only wanted to talk to you, Danny. I tried to offer him some support, an open channel to decompress to, but he refused. I'm not you."
Lou watched the sadness grow in Danny's eyes as he admitted that truth. He knew old wounds were torn open, new ones cutting in those, but this was necessary.
"I know that you thought you were dealing with your grief, but the tidal wave about to hit us is nothing we could've prepared for, Danny. The way I see it, we've got a chance not a lot of people get given and our friend needs us. Now more than ever."
Danny's mind raced back to the half-read report, the medical jargon he had read through, the navy dismissing Steve of his duty, and the pages left unread and he couldn't stop the fear from getting him. Steve was always the positive one, Danny wasn't.
"He's lost so much, though. I don't know how we bring him back from this."
"We do it by being there for him, but we can't be there for him if we don't force him to see how sorry we all are."
Rubbing his brow, Danny found himself unable to shift the memories of Steve drunk in the front yard, body slumped beside the Camaro, liquor numbing him the best it could. Then came the memories of Steve's wall breaking down, each brick a heavy hit to the floor, cracking and crumbling.
"He cried, Lou," Danny admitted, gulping harshly. "Do you know the last time I saw him cry?"
"Wo Fat," Lou confirmed, his voice filled with hatred.
"Yeah, Wo Fat, and we know how out of his mind he was when we found him in that basement. Those drugs messed with his head and that bastard added to that. Last night was all Steve … given whatever he had drunk hadn't helped, but I knew it was just Steve breaking down."
"It'll be okay," Lou reassured.
"I sure hope so, Lou."
As the doorbell rang out, Danny excused himself, warranting Lou to go back to Chin and Kono. He gave them a reassuring smile as Danny opened the door.
"Sorry! I came as quickly as I could," Rachel said the moment she entered the house.
"No, you're fine, Rach. Thank you for dropping everything. The kids are just cleaning up."
"Are they okay?" she asked, and Danny gave her a fixed look. "What's really going on, Daniel?"
"Mommy!" Charlie yelled, running to his mother's side. "Uncle Steve's home! He's really home! He was here!"
"He is?" Rachel played dumbed, rubbing her hands over her son's dishevelled hair. She glanced at her ex-husband. "That's what happened, is it?"
"Yeah," Danny remarked, rubbing the back of his neck. "He turned up last night, I tried to get him to eat with us, but it didn't end well."
"And where is the commander and Grace now?"
"Steve left and Grace is in the kitchen," Danny remarked nervously, feeling unnerved for the first time in months in front of his ex-wife.
"Uncle Steve left his pancakes. Can we take them to him?" Charlie asked, innocently looking between parents. "He never leaves pancakes, mommy… like ever! He usually helps me eat mine when Danno isn't looking."
"Oh, he does, does he?" Danny asked shocked while the team laughed. "I'll be having a word with him about that later."
"Oops," Charlie sounded. "That was meant to be mine and Uncle Steve's little secret." He smiled angelically at his father. "He always wants double of your pancakes, Danno! He says they're the best on the island. Oops! Wasn't meant to tell you that either."
Danny laughed picking up Charlie.
"You won't tell him I told you will you, Danno?" he asked, glancing down at his dad. "He told me not to tell you because he didn't want your head to grow. I mean, it doesn't look like it's gonna blow up."
"You're good, Charlie. Uncle Steve will never know."
"Good! But what about his pancakes?"
"He'll have to forfeit them for now, Buddy," Danny told his son, giving him a tight smile as he thought of how this day was going to pain out. "Right, you're going to go spend the day with your mom and sister."
"But Danno!"
"Bud, I've got to go and find Uncle Steve and see if he's feeling better." Danny knew he was cutting his son off, but he had to be done. "He needs telling off for leaving his breakfast."
"Mmm," Charlie started to muse and then grinned. "Okay, Danno!"
"I'll go get him ready," Rachel offered, giving a weak smile. "You've got business to attend to."
The team hung around while Rachel sorted Charlie ready to leave and Danny disappeared somewhere into the house to find Grace. There were hushed voices, Grace's heightened tone and Danny's fatherly tendency reacting before Grace appeared and promptly left the house looking distressed.
Danny took a deep breath as he watched Rachel drive away and he prayed that he could restore his family back to a happier place because right now, he was struggling.
"Before we go any further, I felt you guys needed to see something. I found this in his office," Chin mentioned, reaching into his back pocket as Danny re-joined them. "Lou mentioned he had left us information about Bennett and when I went in, he'd left a pad out."
Handing the pastel yellow lined paper to Danny, Chin crossed his arms and watched with intent as Danny unfolded it.
"Five-0 or Five-Go," Danny read aloud and shot a look to Chin or merely nodded. "The only thing he's listed on either side is the team."
Self-sacrificing bastard, Danny's mind roused, and the pit in his stomach continued to open up as he imagined Steve giving up what weak tendrils he had left to hold onto. Steve hadn't thought about leaving in a spur of the moment, he had time to think. For almost three weeks, Steve had been given every reason to question his position in work and in his Ohana.
"So, he decided to actually sit and think things through, and he still managed to pick the wrong thing."
"Picked the wrong thing with a lot of help," Lou commented and saw the look Danny tossed his way. "Look, Man, I'm not taking a dig, but if it's not been easy for you, then what's it been like for McGarrett? Can't say it'd have been a walk in the park."
"No but I told him it was," Danny admonished and began pacing, a hand clamped on his forehead in frustration. "I told him he had it easy playing hero and all this time... Fuck, I told him he was just making a mess of everything just by being here. I told him to go back to the damn navy, for Christ's sake."
"Brah, you can't beat yourself up," Kono chimed in, her tone soft, her eyes welling. "We've all said and done questionable things in the last several weeks."
"It's what we do now that's going to count," Chin finalised.
"I'll tell you what I'm going to do now," Danny started, his face reddening from both anger and shame. "I'm going to go over to his house and I'm going to slap some sense into him."
"Danny," Kono started, not knowing if Danny should lead with all guns blazing. "Brah…"
"We're going to form an intervention." He looked at his team, a renewed purpose within. "We're going to finally get back on track, and first that means confronting Super SEAL."
"I don't know about you, but sitting here won't help the situation," Chin started, his tone remaining even, but his agreement with Danny fierce. "What do you say we visit the boss and finally get some proper closure?"
"I can drive if we don't want to take all of our cars," Kono offered, an eagerness in her voice. "I can drive us back here when we're done."
"I think I should go first," Danny interjected, his throat tightening. "I told him not to leave, he did. Grace said it was her fault. I want to clear the air a little. I think if we all arrive together it'll make him edgier than usual."
"We can go and buy stuff for a cookout," Kono offered, trying hard to not sound desperate. "Make it like old times."
"I think the last thing Super SEAL will feel like doing is firing up the grill."
"What about pizza and beer?" Chin asked, sitting forward. "That gives you chance to head over and talk to him and gives us chance to meet you there."
"No pineapples," Danny warned.
"No pineapples for the Jersey implant," Chin joked, laughing at Danny. "You go to Steve's; we'll go get beers and see you there in about an hour's time."