What We Bury
By: Ridley James
Beta: Tidia
A/N: I don't know if anyone else out there is as concerned as I am about the turn of our favorite show, but I for one cannot understand why the writers and powers that be have decided to change a formula that in my opinion was working brilliantly. This isn't so much about the new character, but characters and the skewed dynamic that they bring-the forced relationships that ensue. From the two minute preview of the Steve and Joe show for this week, things are not going to get any better. The only thing I can do is fill out a comment on CBS's website and write fiction to try and remedy what has apparently gone the way of the ghost this season. I strongly suggest anyone else who has a feeling on the subject do the same at CBS's site. I know Lenkov is listening because he tweeted today promising more Danno and McGarrett, but he didn't actually say they would be together only that they would be awesome. I'm guessing that means five minutes of screen time. So, if anyone else out there is concerned, let your woes be known. Feedback is the only way for a writer, or in this case show runner, to know how his work is being received. For the first time since the show started I am not watching the show in real time tonight. My heart just can't take another episode like last week.
RCJ
"We need in love to practice only this: letting each other go. For holding on comes easily-we do not need to learn it."-Rilke
Steve McGarrett had never once dreamed of his mother. The nights right after her death he'd found hard to sleep, afraid she would come to him in his dreams, not as the beautiful smiling woman he'd known all his life, but as the mangled body his highly imaginative mind conjured when he thought of the wreck that stole her from him. It never happened. Months later when her face began to grow foggy, when he could no longer recall the rich sound of her laughter in his memories, he grew brave and prayed to meet her in his sleep, to see her no matter if it was in the throes of a nightmare. She never came.
Neither had his father after his death-a man Steve used to dream of all the time after being sent away from his home. Steve wasn't sure if he wielded that much unconscious control over his mind-like one of the superpowers Danny often accused him of having, or if he did actually dream about them, but protected himself by not remembering it afterward. Either way the fact the dead were either unable to get through to him, or he simply refused to see them gave him hope his partner leaning over him now was not some phantom conjuring but the real thing.
"Danny. It's really you?" Steve reached out a hand to his friend, hoping his theory proved true.
Danny's hand grasped his, wet and sandy, but more importantly, warm and tangible. "It's me, you big goof."
"How? I don't understand." Steve let Danny pull him to sitting, not letting go of his partner even after he was vertical and steady.
Danny gave their grasped hands a raised brow, but didn't pull away. "I was really hoping when you dropped in on my little private getaway that you might have some of the answers."
Steve didn't have any explanation, but at the moment he had something much more important, something he was afraid he'd never get back. Steve had his best friend. How many times had he wished for this same scenario with his mother and father, a second chance to be with someone believed lost to you forever? He grabbed Danny in a hard hug, no hesitation, no need for joking beforehand and not one bit of self consciousness when his partner's arms returned the embrace.
"Damn," Danny muttered against his shoulder. "It must be worse than I thought."
"You have no idea, Danno." Steve held on a moment longer, soaking in not only the sea water from Danny's wet clothes, but the feeling that had been missing from his life the last three weeks-an energy purely Danny and one that had been painfully vacant from the hospital room that held his friend's body.
"Not that I'm against this new sensitive side of Super SEAL, what with the hand-holding and gregarious display of affection and all, but I'd really like to know what's going on."
Steve pulled back, releasing Danny from the fierce embrace. He refused to lose all contact, moving one hand to his friend's shoulder. "What do you remember?"
Danny frowned. "Hanging out in our office after the Freeman case, making lunch plans with you-Thai food, right?"
"Right." Steve nodded, thinking that afternoon seemed eons ago. "Anything else?"
"Not really." Danny ran a hand over his wet hair, somehow miraculously in place. "Next thing I know I'm sitting on the beach…waiting."
"Waiting for what?" Steve studied their surroundings for the first time-beach and ocean as far as he could see. The island was like none he had seen before, no trees, no vegetation, only a dot of sand in a vastness of blue.
"The hell if I know?" Danny flapped his hands in the air. "I don't even know how long I've been here, or where the hell 'here' is. We're talking Castaway, Steven, minus the weird soccer ball character Wilson. I'd just begun to accept my fate as Gilligan without Skipper, thatched huts and the hot girls when I spotted something in the water, something splashing around like it was wrestling a shark, or maybe being eaten by one."
"And you went in after it?" Steve cast a doubtful glance at his partner, who if goaded or conned into going into the water hightailed it right back to land at the first brush of sea weed against his leg, convinced it was a bump from man-eating aquatic life.
"It was you, Steven, and yes, I came to get your ass." Danny surprised Steve by hauling off and thwacking him in the side. "You owe me a shirt by the way-not just any shirt, my 'cerulean blue' shirt."
"That's why you're wet?" Steve rubbed his ribs, studying his partner's clothes, the furrows of his face. He didn't have the heart to tell Danny his favorite shirt was already ruined. Steve had watched the paramedics cut the blood-soaked material from his best friend's torso in the ambulance ride to the hospital. "You jumped into save me?"
"What was I supposed to do? You're my partner. I'm honor bound to cover you, even if that means jumping onto a moving boat or into mysterious shark infested waters. Just another reason I hate you so much."
Steve snorted. "How did you even know it was me?"
"Did you miss the part where I'm on a deserted island in the middle of the fucking ocean and what looks like a possible scene from Jaws meets Rambo starts to unfold. Who the hell else would it be?" Danny rolled his eyes, hands gesturing. "The Lochness monster?"
"Damn, I've missed you, partner." Despite the situation, Steve couldn't fight back the grin or the need to hug Danny again.
"How long have I been gone?" Danny broke the contact this time, pinning Steve's arms to his side and favoring his partner with a worried look. "Did you hit your head when the shark went after you?"
"There was no shark. I'm fine." Steve sobered. "But you…you've been gone three weeks."
"When you say gone…" Danny let go of Steve's arms and took a slight step back.
"I mean you were shot." Steve sighed, holding his partner's gaze. "You were shot three weeks ago, Danny."
"Shot?" Danny brought a hand to his chest and Steve wondered if the detective realized he ghosted his fingers over the very spot where Murray's bullet had struck him. Maybe his partner had super memory altering abilities, too. "I was shot?"
"A sniper, outside The Palace."
"Am I dead?" Danny looked up at him, first with shock, puzzlement that quickly shifted to dread. "Shit, Steven. Are you dead, too?"
"We're not dead!" Steve wasn't entirely certain, but he refused to believe the afterlife held nothing but a sandbar in the middle of the sea. Being with Danny seemed right, but there should at least be some longboards and a flat screen TV. "You're in the hospital, in a coma."
"Wow, that's so much better." Danny ran his hands along the sides of his hair, a telltale sign he was trying to put a logical spin on what was happening. Steve imagined this particular feat too big for even Danny to throw words at. In the end, he went a different route entirely. "Who the hell shot me? Please tell me it wasn't Wo Fat because that's all you need is one more reason to go completely dark side in your vendetta against that bastard."
Steve marveled at his best friend's ability to plunder the steel vault that was Steve's fucked up psyche and pluck one of his darkest fears as if it were as easy as picking the one black marble in a jar of white golf balls. "It wasn't Wo Fat. It was Rich Murray."
"Rich Murray?" Danny frowned. "When did I piss off, or should I say when did you piss off a lounge singer?"
"He's Hillary Freeman's father."
"Damn." Danny rubbed a hand over his mouth, glancing at Steve. "Not to sound like a whiny little bitch, but why me? Why not Keanu or…"
"Me?" Steve couldn't hide the rush of emotion he knew filled his eyes, guilt as bright as the sunshine beating down on them. "He wanted me to suffer, to hurt me. You were the easiest way to make that happen."
"He wanted revenge for losing his daughter." Danny sighed. "I can't blame him for that. If someone hurt Grace…I'm not sure I wouldn't be capable of something similar."
"Grace." The name brought a wave of anxiety crashing over Steve, the exact details of how he had more than likely managed these brief moments with Danny rushing over him like the surf on the shore. He didn't realize he'd physically reeled under the barrage until Danny's hands were on him, guiding him down to sit once more in the warm sand.
"Steve? Are you alright?"
Steve tried to answer his friend's panicked query; a blinding pain behind his eyes causing the words to come out more groan than decipherable language. He buried his head in his hands, attempting to escape the onslaught of images that played behind tightly squeezed eyelids. Murray entering Danny's hospital room, gun pointed at a sleeping Grace and lifeless Danny. Steve's last ditch attempt to take him out, the subsequent explosion of gunfire and Grace's screams for help.
"Steven!" Danny was kneeling in front of him now, gripping his shoulders. "Talk to me."
"Gracie…" Steve finally managed, lifting his head from his hands to meet Danny's worried eyes. "She's in trouble."
"What do you mean she's in trouble?" Danny moved one of his hands from Steve's shoulder, touching the spot above Steve's eye. "And why the hell are you suddenly bleeding all over the fucking place?"
Steve reached up to where Danny's hand rested along his hairline, his fingers coming away covered in blood. He remembered the blazing pain that accompanied the one shot Murray managed to get off when they were wrestling for the gun. His vision swam in and out of focus, the solid ground beneath him shifting as nausea had him swallowing convulsively. "Damn it."
"Hold still." Danny didn't hesitate in tearing the bottom from his treasured cerulean blue shirt, wadding the fabric up before pressing it to the deep score in Steve's head.
Steve hissed, trying to pull back from his partner's ministrations. "Ow! That fucking hurts, Danny."
"Suck it up, Soldier," Danny growled, but Steve didn't miss the empathetic wince that twisted Danny's face, or the fact that his partner's free hand fisted over one of his. "Now tell me about Grace."
"Freeman came in your hospital room-when Grace and I were there. He wanted to finish the job."
"He came to kill me."
"No." Steve shook his head, regretting the action immediately as it felt like his skull might implode from the small movement. "He wanted to take me out. Had planned on doing it at your funeral, but…"
"But didn't count on how much of a stubborn bastard I can be." Danny met Steve's gaze. "You have to go back."
"What?" Steve frowned.
"Back in the water-the way you came. I'm not sure what all this is, but if this were a sappy novel or some kind of crazy sci-fi movie, then that's what you would do."
"No." Steve glanced at the ocean, for once the siren call of the sea having no hold on him. "I'm not leaving you here."
"You just said Grace was in trouble. Her Danno is obviously useless to her. That leaves Super SEAL to save the day. Both of us cannot be hanging out on this fucking beach while my baby girl is in danger, besides from what you've told me, if you stay here you're good as dead. That's not acceptable."
"Do you even realize what you're saying?" Steve had no idea how to get back, and even if he did he wasn't sure he wanted to go. The gunshots and Grace's screams weren't the only sounds Steve vividly remembered. "You don't know what else was going on...what was happening."
"Maybe I do. I feel different since you dropped in, like my time here is almost up." Danny's eyes softened, even as his grip on Steve tightened. "Steven, I know what I'm asking."
"Do you, man?" Steve was pretty sure his partner didn't have a clue.
"I never lost anyone really close to me, not until Mattie. I know you've had just the opposite experience-losing everyone. It sucks. I get that…"
"You don't get it, Danny. If you did you wouldn't ask me to just swim on my merry way. You know Matthew is alive!'" Steve snapped. "I know you have a contact that feeds you information about him. It isn't the same. You can hop a plane and see him if you really wanted to."
"You know that's not true."
Steve knew what he was proposing wasn't so simple, there would be consequences, but he wasn't exactly in a place to be pragmatic. "You sure as hell don't have to take a bullet to the head to get some face time with you brother."
"You took a bullet to the head? That's why you're bleeding all over my ruined shirt?" Danny lifted the makeshift bandage, shaking his head. "Jesus, what is wrong with you, you maniac."
"Really? You're blaming this on me?"
"No, it's obviously my fault for not being there." Danny dropped the torn piece of his shirt, making it to his feet to pace in front of Steve. "Fuck. That crazy sonofabitch is in the same room as my daughter, he had the fucking nerve to shoot my partner! I'd do anything to get my hands on him, to fix this, but I don't know how."
"Come with me." Steve staggered to standing, grabbing his partner's wrist before he could manage another turn away from him. He pulled them towards the water as desperation overrode any echoes of pain he was feeling. "We'll go back together."
"You don't think I've tried to get back?" Danny shook his head, his eyes brightening. "Since waking up here, I've heard Grace calling out to me…I've heard you. It sounds crazy, I know, but it's like your voices are on the breeze, in the sound of the surf. I even thought I heard my old man asking me to come back and I'm pretty sure Jersey is a long swim from here. The thing is, Steven I'm afraid, damn it, and not just of the shark-infested water."
"You're one of the bravest men I know." Steve tightened his grip. "You can do this-we can do this together. You're always the one telling me that I'm not alone, that I have backup when I need it most. Well I'm here now to prove that I've learned that lesson. Let me help you, Danno."
"If you really want to help me, let me go and take care of Grace."
Steve looked down at his hand, the one wrapped tightly around Danny's wrist. He thought of his mother and father, the way they'd been unfairly torn away from him and what that separation had done to his life. He'd vowed never to be placed in that situation again, whether it meant safeguarding his heart from all entry, or doggedly holding onto those who already breached his defenses, Steve would not lose anyone else.
"You promised me."
Danny's soft words had him looking up, searching out his best friend's gaze. He knew Danny was talking about the oath he'd invoked from Steve as he bled out on the sidewalk, the pledge to watch over Grace, to be there for her no matter what. All Steve could think about was the similar vow Danny had made to him time and time again over the last two years, if not spoken in so many words. "I could say the same to you, partner."
"Please," Danny begged.
Steve did the only thing he could do-the only thing Danny would accept from him. He let his partner go.
"What Gracie really needs is her Danno." Steve took a step towards the ocean, the cool water lapped up and over his shoes, the insistent current tugging hungrily at him upon contact as sand quickly slipped from beneath where he stood. Steve looked down, surprised that the water was at his knees, quickly rising to his chest without him having so much as moved another step. He raised his gaze to Danny once more before the sea took him completely. "That makes two of us."
To be continued...