A/N: Because I personally deserved to see Danny and Yoko making up at the end of A Thousand Pardons - You're Dead, and so did you.

Disclaimer: Hawaii Five-O doesn't belong to me, I'm just an innocent bystander. It's all that Williams' fault.

Black and Blue

Yoko kept running.

She didn't know where she was, or where she was heading. She had started running, adrenaline had completely taken over, and she now found that she couldn't stop. So many things raced through her mind, much faster than she ran along the road. It had been such a long night. Such a long two nights. It had been a rollercoaster of emotions and at last the ride had stopped and let her go.

Go where?

The beach. She realised that she was heading in the vague direction of the beach. At night the beach was a completely different beast to the warm, peaceful, playful place she spent so much time. It was cool and stark and silent as the grave. The ocean glowered at her from a distance, inky black and foreboding, rather than bright blue and happy as it was in the daytime. Bright blue and happy, she thought. Just like Danny's eyes.

Yoko's momentary wistful smile at the memory of Danny gave way to a glare as dark and cold as the night-time ocean. If Danny was even his real name, anyway. Probably not. She had seen him during the shootout, she had heard him call out to Sergeant Simms. Between her fear and the imminent need for her to flee for her life - not to mention the fact she couldn't bear to see his face again, knowing she would never be able to press her lips onto his and feel his strong, warm arms stealing around her as he pulled her into an embrace - she ran. She ran from him. She ran from McGarrett. She ran from Betsy's bar and her job and from everything that had been going on, until she was out of strength, out of breath, and nothing seemed to matter, nothing seemed to feel real. Then she kept running until her body made her stop.

Exhausted, unable to stand for even a second longer, she fell into an ungainly heap on the sand. Even the sand felt cold and hard. Yoko panted hard as she lay on the sand, the air stinging her throat and lungs with each breath she took, punishing her for running too hard for too long. Her legs felt like jelly and ached unbearably, even as she lay down to take the weight off them. For all of the reasons in the world, and for none of them, despite her exhaustion and because of it, she wept bitterly. She wept loudly and freely, knowing nobody would hear her, nobody would comfort her, nobody would tell her to stop. She wept long after the tears had stopped - loud, angry sobs from the pit of her stomach that didn't even sound like her. She wept until the adrenaline ran out and finally she lay back on the sand, completely drained in every single muscle and brain cell. Her makeup was streaked all over her face, her hair was a tangled mess, her eyelashes had come off and she gently pulled one of them off her right cheekbone as she dried her eyes with the back of her hand.

She would have fallen asleep on the beach and stayed there until daylight, were it not for the sound of her name.

"Yoko?"

She opened her eyes and, without moving her head, tried to look in the direction of the voice. She knew the voice before she saw the owner. The warm, gentle voice, the soft growl as it said the last syllable of her name.

"What do you want, Flatfoot?" she asked, with as much bitterness as she could physically muster. Even now, she was still fighting. She was running on empty, but she couldn't let him win.

"I came to see if you were all right," the voice said. It was still warm and soft, and the way he lisped slightly over the letter S made the tiniest imprint of a smile prickle the lower right corner of her mouth. Yoko didn't move.

"What do you care?"

"Please," the voice said, a little closer now. Yoko had closed her eyes again, but now opened them and tilted her head vaguely in the direction of the voice. She saw him, standing about five feet away from her, his jacket slung over his left shoulder, his tie loosened and the top three buttons of his shirt undone. Her big, sad black eyes locked with his. Even in the dark they still seemed to be the most brilliant blue she had ever seen, but now they were more. Now they were kind, they were worried, they were pleading with her for something that he didn't even know he wanted. "I'm sorry."

"Skip it, cop, I'm not in the mood," she said, rolling onto her side and turning her back on him. Her voice was weak but the spark of anger was inextinguishable.

There was a pause for a few moments and Yoko thought he had left. When she opened her eyes she saw that he had walked around her and was standing over her. He briefly ran the tip of his tongue across the fullest part of his bottom lip, then slowly grazed his front teeth over his now-moistened lip as he gazed down at her. The entire move took less than a half-second but she could have watched him do the same thing over and over until her eyes wore out. When the fuzz send a man to seduce a girl, she thought, I guess she stays a little seduced. Even if he is nothing but a dirty lying cop.

"I'm sorry," he repeated. She didn't reply this time, and Danny didn't wait for either an invitation to stay or an instruction to leave. He dropped his jacket to the floor and sat on the sand beside her.

"What should you be sorry for? You got what you wanted," she said at last, turning her back on him again and gazing out at the cold, black ocean again. Somehow the blackness and vastness of the ocean helped her keep perspective. "You got your guy. Everything's back in its box." The blackness seemed to grow wider and more foreboding as she looked at it, as though it was swallowing all of her pain and anger.

"Not everything," he said. She was suddenly aware of his hand on her shoulder, and her entire body tensed, goosebumps instantly forming all over her skin. His hand was warm against her cold skin, and his fingertips dug gently into the soft, fleshy part between her collarbone and shoulder as he tried to encourage her to turn to face him. She resisted him at first, but as he ran his hand over her shoulder and down her arm, she couldn't help but falter. Within a matter of moments, she rolled onto her back and looked up at him.

"Danny, please, don't make this worse," she begged, her black eyes brimming with tears as she looked into his own, blue and filled with regret. "Or whatever your name is," she said, looking away from him.

"My name is Danny. Danny Williams."

"I'm still Yoko," she said, looking back up at him. He closed his eyes briefly and hung his head. "You know the funny thing? I had never been as honest in my life as I was with you. I meant everything I said, and you just... all the time you were laughing at me. I just didn't realise."

"No, no I wasn't laughing. Not for a second," Danny said, earnestly, squeezing the top of her arm. She shrugged him off. "I... I had a job to do, Yoko, and I can't apologise for that."

"Congratulations, you sure were committed to your performance," she said. Her jaw set and she took a deep breath, then another, to stop herself from yelling at him. She didn't have the strength, and he wasn't worth it. Danny bit his lower lip again for a moment or two as he tried to gather his thoughts.

"At first, sure, it was fun pretending to be someone else, and getting you to talk to me and drink with me and..." he trailed off, not needing to remind her of the items he'd missed from that list. "Listen, you said something to me yesterday, and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it."

"I said a lot of things, Danny, and you deserved all of them."

"You said I got you feeling like you were sixteen again," he said. She didn't reply, and was grateful for the cool sea breeze taking the heat from her blushes. "It wasn't until you said it that I realised, but... You made me feel like I was sixteen again, too."

Yoko looked up at him, genuinely surprised by his words. She searched his face for any possible hint of a deception and didn't see one, although she hadn't seen one when she had thought that he was just an army guy on shore leave, either. There was no way for her to know if he was on the level. She clamped her lips together and shook her head.

"I'm not sixteen any more."

"Me either," he said. There was a pause for a few moments and he swallowed hard before continuing. "But thank you for reminding me what it was like."

"What?"

"Falling in love for the first time."

Yoko's jaw dropped. Out of all the things she had expected to hear from Danny, that was not even on her list of least plausible things. She was so surprised that she finally sat up, propping herself up first on her elbows and then on her hands.

"You are something else, you know that, cop?" she demanded, feeling somewhere between euphoric and enraged, and not sure which was a more accurate description. "Haven't I done enough? Haven't you and your McGarrett made me suffer enough? You have to come here after everything is finished and pour salt into the wound? Don't they ever teach you to leave well alone?"

"I'm sorry, Yoko," he said again. She shook her head vigorously, wishing she could summon the energy to slap him across his annoyingly handsome face before storming off into the night again. He shifted his position on the sand and grabbed her face firmly between his hands, forcing her to look at him. "I know you don't want to hear this right now, and I understand that, but you need to hear me. I'm sorry. I'm sorry I lied to you. I'm sorry we all pushed you too hard. I'm sorry I hurt you. I'm sorry we put you in danger to catch Simms. I'm sorry for all of it. But most of all, I'm sorry that when you and I were together - none of it was make-believe. Not for me. I should be able to walk away and forget you and this whole case, but I can't. I can't," he said, his shoulders dropping as he released his grasp on her. He let his fingertips trace softly down her cheek and along her jaw before gently holding her chin between his thumb and forefinger, holding her gaze wordlessly for as long as he possibly could.

"Why are you telling me this, Danny?" she asked, finally. Her voice was tired and her expression was weary. "What do you want from me? I haven't got anything left."

"I know you don't. I just... wanted to... hold you," he said, almost bashfully. She closed her eyes and shook her head in disbelief, not sure whether to fall into his arms or give him a black eye.

"What?" she asked. She didn't know if she was daring him to repeat himself, or if she was making sure she hadn't made a mistake.

"It's been a long day. A really, really long day. I'm so tired. Aren't you tired?" he asked. She didn't respond either way, not sure enough of herself to give him the satisfaction of an answer. "Sometimes... sometimes you just get so bone tired you just... you just need to hold onto someone. Just until your head's quiet again," he said. He rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. "I'm sorry, Yoko. You're right. I should've left well alone."

He stood up with a small groan of exertion and dusted the sand from where it had settled on his trousers around his thighs before trudging away from Yoko, back towards where he had left his car.

"Danny?" Yoko called after him. He stopped and turned slowly to face her.

"Yeah?"

With considerable effort, Yoko stood up and walked towards him. Her legs were shaking with a mixture of fear, excitement and sheer weariness, so she held her hand out to him for support. He took hold of it and pulled her close to him, allowing her to rest most of her body weight on his arm. She tried to smooth her hair with her free hand, with extremely limited success, and she let out an embarrassed breath of laughter when she saw the right side of Danny's mouth crease into an indulgent smile.

Not really caring, or being able to do anything about the way she looked at that moment, Yoko looked Danny up and down twice, changing her mind about her next move a hundred times before she gave him her answer. Eventually she let out a long sigh and released her grasp on his hand, just long enough for her to wrap her arms around his waist and rest her head against his chest. She could hear his heartbeat quickening under her touch, and felt her entire body thaw right down to the soul as he folded her into a tight embrace. Danny kissed the top of her head softly, and she closed her eyes, settling deeply into his arms before she finally spoke.

"I'm bone tired, too."

THE END