I do NOT own anything, but the plot.

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As always, thank you and I hope you continue to enjoy what's to come!

Nalo a loaʻa

-loosely translate to "lost and found"-

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Steve was laying there, eyes fixed to the ceiling. What concerned Danny most was not the morose feeling ebbing from Steve, but the look in his eyes - the one so lacking in any emotion.

"Hey Steve? Babe?" Danny started, reaching out to touch Steve's wrist. "Want to talk to me, Buddy?"

"Nothing to talk about," Steve whispered, but was unable to stop the crack in his voice.

The reality was there was everything to talk about because in Steve's mind all he kept seeing was the life that walked out of the room no more than an hour earlier. So many things kept coming to his mind, but the worst thing that hit him was also the one that finished him - he started imagining another man loving Cath and loving his son, and his anger started to build.

Steve knew, without a doubt, this fresh hell would end him. There was no way he could live sanely knowing that Cath was out there in the world with their son. If he ever caught word of a man coming onto the scene, creating a family with her and his son, he knew there was no coming back.

"Right, if you don't want to talk that's fine, but I do," Danny started, sitting upright in the plastic seat, it creaking under the shift in his weight. "You do remember the times she cut out on you, too?"

"Danny, don't," Steve tried. "I'm not in the mood."

"No, you can sit here and wallow, but I'm allowed to be angry over this, Steve. I get it, you're sad and rightly so, but I, as your best friend, can be furious with her decision to cut you out and your decision to let her."

"You weren't so bothered when you cut me out and I let you do it," Steve admonished bitterly.

Danny opened his mouth to argue, and snapped it shut almost immediately. Damnit, Steve was right on that one.

"You're right, I was an ass and I deserved that, but I am here, and I am trying, and you can throw any number of insult or accusation at me, and I'll still be here." He rubbed his hands together, leaving it a moment to see if Steve would react. When he didn't, he continued. "But you are both as bad as each other."

Steve went to argue, but Danny put his hand up, silently cutting the SEAL off.

"The last time she was home, you were talking about having an entire life with her and thinking up the least romantic proposal I had ever heard of, and she left you before you could even ask. You said it yourself, that ring can't live in that drawer forever, but you have to remember that she has chosen her job over you copious times before as well."

"Part and parcel of the job," Steve argued nonchalantly.

"Exactly! This is exactly what I'm saying." Danny rubbed his hands together as he prepared to fight Steve on this. "Look, I lost out on years with Charlie because of Rachel's decision to lie. I didn't even know he was mine after she went back to Stan, and if Charlie had never gotten sick, I never would have known. I can't even begin to understand how knowing you have a kid out there and not know anything about them feels, Steve. I was in the dark, but you're not. You can't just let her take your son away from you. You helped me fight for Grace, do you really think I'm going to sit idly by and let this go?"

"I don't want to fight for custody over the baby, Danny. I don't want this to get messy."

In all honesty, Steve didn't even know where to begin with this fight. Usually he was all about manpower, gun fire and strategies, but fatherhood was an entirely different game, and he didn't know how to form a plan and he hated himself for it.

"So just cutting a loss is the way to handle it?"

"I'm not saying that, but there's not much I can do from a hospital bed, is there?" Steve asked, his tone sharp and venomous. "I can barely see straight, let alone think straight. And that tells me Cath was right. Like I said, you always call me a danger magnet and I get why now."

"So, you have a penchant for bullets and lying about your general health, but I know your priorities would shift… no, they will shift now." Danny dragged his seat closer, preparing for war if necessary. "Regardless of how this pans out, I know this will change you."

Danny just hoped he wasn't wrong. He hoped the idea of Steve having a future would change his ways, remove some of his recklessness, and teach him that he really had people who depended on him. Having Grace and Charlie taught him to look after those around him more than ever, he did everything to see Danny made it home every night, but having his own child? This was a whole new level of life.

Whatever Danny said had silenced the bedridden man and he watched as thought after thought washed over Steve's face.

"What am I going to do, Danny?" Steve asked, flaring his nostrils. "All I keep thinking about is that baby and some other man bringing him up and loving Cath. It's barely been an hour and it's like torture." Steve looked at Danny as if he held every answer possible. "How do I survive this?"

The phantom pain Steve had gotten when he came home flared across his chest and his arm came up slowly to rub it away, his fingers palpating the area above his heart.

"It felt like I was struggling to breathe before, but this…" Steve stopped, frowning hard as he tried to make sense of the world he was living. "I think this could finish me."

"No," Danny immediately argued, shooting forward in his seat. "I know, right now, it seems like your life is imploding around you, Steve, but she will come around."

"Not this time," Steve doubted.

"Maybe not today, but she will," Danny argued, unwavering from that one thought. "And if not, we fight."

"I think it's too late to fight … my track record will get me thrown out of any custody battle, so it's pointless. Like I said I don't want to do that."

Danny now realised that in the hour they had sat here processing everything, Steve had thought a million and one thoughts and all of them made sense. What he hated most though was a man so arrogant and sure of every move he made was now lost and drowning.

"Look, you seem to have this really screwed up view of yourself, Steve, but that's not how everyone else see's you."

"She called me cruel, Danny. When I first called her, she told me this was the cruellest thing I had done … the implication of that is that I have a track record beforehand which meant she knew she can't trust me."

"Because her track record is stellar?" Danny rebuked, almost in a guffaw. "She lived half of the time on a boat in the middle of the ocean, Steve! I hardly think the Enterprise has a revolving door on a freaking day care! And when she finally came ashore, she worked with Billy and we know how that ended, and then to add to it, she let you get blown up and the Taliban took you."

"She didn't let them," Steve argued, feeling agitated. "She had no choice but to save those kids."

"Steve," Danny sighed, running hands through his hair in despair remembering that time in his life. "You nearly got beheaded! And she didn't drop the mission … a mission that wasn't even sanctioned! You got banned from the Middle-East for Christ Sake. You nearly got thrown in the Brig!" he argued, remembering all too well the fall out. "And when she came home, you were going to propose and what happens? She decides to choose undercover CIA work rather than watch you put up a white picket fence so you can play happy families. She's made life choices that didn't involve you, too. That's who you both are."

"Danny," Steve breathed, closing his eyes as his head messed with him.

"Okay, I'm quietening down. I'm sorry, Babe," Danny quickly simmered down. "I just don't think it's fair she targets you like you're the only bad guy."

"Aren't I?" Steve asked, giving Danny a sad smile. "Feel like I am given my career accolades."

"You are not the bad guy, Steve," Danny reprimanded and breathed heavily through his nose. "Everything that happened was so completely out of your control… even Tommy dying wasn't your fault. You have had to deal with extreme situations… extreme life or death situations all of your life, Steve, and I have seen you in them. I have seen how you deal with them, and there is no way you would have willingly gotten anyone killed without trying everything in your power to save them."

"But I have killed people," Steve admonished sadly.

"And Catherine Rollins hasn't?" Danny asserted. "I haven't either?" His question came with him sitting up right. "So, if your logic is correct, I don't deserve to be the father of Grace or Charlie… and we may as well call social services now to take that kid off Catherine the moment he's born."

"That's not the same," Steve rebuked.

"A bullet is still a bullet regardless of the country you shoot it in, Steve. Hate to break it to you, but in our line of work, we're required to kill, and let me let you in on a big ole secret … if I have killed people who posed a threat to any innocent person, then I'll sleep well at night knowing I did the job I chose to take."

"It's a different life when you're at war though, Danny."

"And I'm sorry to tell you that collateral damage happens." Danny was like a dog with a bone, he was not about to let Steve win this. "I don't want to play the devil's advocate, but I will. Yes, you probably have a kill count longer than my entire list of cousins back in Jersey, but I can guarantee that whatever, you would never have taken a life willingly and enjoyed it and got your kicks out of it."

Steve rolled his eyes. "I'm not programmed to think of that. I don't have time to put emotions into it."

"Bullshit. You're the biggest fucking powder keg worth of emotions I know."

"I'm not going to win this, am I?"

"No, and I'm lucky because I have a concussion and drugs on my side… you're at a loss, Pal."

Steve wanted to argue, he wanted to rip everything off him and get out of this bed, hunt through all of O'ahu to find Cath, but deep rooted in him was this growing darkness that had taken a hold of him when he woke up to his life falling down around him back in April.

"Fine," Steve grunted, crossing his arms over his chest. "We aren't going to get anywhere with this so you can tell me what's happening in regard to Franklin." Steve mentioned, the words almost burning with ire as he tried to change the subject. "Who's working with him?"

"Do you really want to do this?" Danny asked tentatively.

He had an arsenal of arguments left in him, but he knew Steve was at his limit of the day.

"He's ruined my life, the least I can be told is that he'll rot in hell."

Danny wasn't about to argue with that.

"Duke is still working on it with the team's help. We're not meant to be worrying about it, but this affected us all, so we all want a hand." Shifting uncomfortably, Danny laughed before he added, "And Franklin's still trying for an assault charge."

"I'm sure he is," Steve groaned, loving the irony.

"Your Silverado and my beloved Camaro both have matching dents in almost identical places," Danny mused with a slight mirth in his tone. "Y'know, usually I hate you ruining my stuff, but for once I'm glad I could help when I couldn't."

"I'm sure it'll pull out," Steve said, forcing a small grin. "It has to be someone on the force. Someone who's close enough to know our movements."

Shaking his head as his headache skyrocketed, Steve tried to suppress the growing nausea he was feeling and push back both his physical and emotional pain.

"Steve, this is too much too soon," Danny tried, reaching for Steve.

"It's not soon enough," Steve barked back. "If I'd dealt with this six months ago, this would be over and I'd still have my shot with Cath, but the fact she's going to be somewhere obviously on this island with my kid without me tells me this job wasn't handled how I would've."

As his body flared with pain, Steve realised that nothing eclipsed the emotional pain he was in, and he couldn't cope anymore. Talking about Franklin didn't help, because it was a direct link to Cath cutting him from her life.

"Hey Danny?"

"Yes, Steven?"

"Do you think you can get a nurse?" Steve asked, his voice rough and quiet. "I think I need some pain meds."

In all honesty, Steve didn't want to be awake anymore. He wanted to close his eyes and forget about the tremendous ache inside of him.

"Steve," Danny started, cocking a brow. Steve was never one to ask for drugs willingly and his worry stirred. "You okay, Babe?"

"Please, just get the nurse, Danny, I just don't want to feel anything, right now."

Danny hesitated, worryingly watching his best friend. The idea of Steve trying to numb himself with narcotics was enough to throw a cold chill through Danny's body, but the idea that Steve was running from the pain was enough to break his heart.

"Please, Danny," Steve begged. "I just… I just need a few hours peace. That's all I want… I just don't want to feel any of this, right now."