Synopsis: The road to recovery isn't as easy as Danny Williams thought it would be. Steve McGarrett is hiding inside his mile-high emotional wall and, without meaning to; he has started blocking Danny out. But when gun smugglers come searching for payback, will Steve be there for Danny? Or will his Jersey partner be forever silenced. DANNY!WHUMP and STEVE!ANGST. NO SLASH. Friendship only.

Disclaimer: I don't own Hawaii Five-0 and am not getting any monetary gain for this story, just playing in CBS's sandbox for a while. These characters and storylines remain the property of CBS. No disrespect intended, just great characters that inspire their own stories.

Rated: T for violence and injuries. Not a Death-Fic.

Notes: Angst and Hurt/Comfort are kinda my thing and I opened a can of worms in the first story, 'Words can Kill'. Here's the sequel.

Chapter Seven:

Flashes of Life

They say that before you die, your entire life flashes before your eyes in a matter of fractured seconds. Danny had always thought that was some new age crap. He was going to have to redefine what he thought about that after this. As the water continued to rise and he finds himself spitting to keep it from overtaking him, his minded reflected back. Unfortunately it didn't pick those amazing moments that were scattered throughout his life, but the ones that had 'defined' his life.

Flashback

The day that Rachel had told him she was leaving him had been one of the most devastating of Danny Williams's entire life. He'd loved everything about being married. Coming from a rather large family, he had fallen into the routines of that life and then they'd had Grace and it had felt like a surreal, yet amazing, dream. And then the fights had started. It had been about small things at first. Like Danny's feet on the coffee table or the lack of a coaster under his sweating beer. His choice in movies, her choice in food had then made the top ten reasons why they fought…and the list went on and on.

In all fairness the fights really started after Danny and his partner had been called to a warehouse to check out a lead and it had turned out to be a trap. A local drug dealer had been looking to up his 'street credit' and the cost had been two cops. Danny and his partner Ben had been the ones to respond to the call. The jackass drug dealer had been delighted when he got two detectives instead of beat cops.

It had been bad. Danny had spent the next five days in ICU with everything from swelling of his brain and bullet lodged in his left leg to a collapsed lung and a shattered collarbone. Surgery had repaired the worst of the damage, but it had proven to Rachel that she could lose Danny at any time. She wanted him to quit. She never came right out and said it, but it was evident in everything she said and did from that day forward.

How could he tell her that being a cop isn't just what he did for a living, it was 'who' he was at his core. Danny was a pretty black and white guy and there weren't a lot of places where someone like him could fit in society. And when he'd decided against following in his father's footsteps as a Fire fighter, being a cop was the only other option he had.

When he'd gotten home from a particularly grueling day seven months, to the day, later. Danny had found the 'letter' on the table. He despised getting letters of explanation from people. Have the guts to say you're leaving him to his face. Don't take the chicken-shit way out and do it in a god-damned letter!

The letter had laid out all his perceived faults in lovely scrawling blue handwriting.

Daniel-

I have tried, I really have. But I can't do this anymore. It isn't fair to Grace and it isn't fair to me. When we met, I thought I'd met my prince charming. It turned out I was wrong. We have nothing in common. You like old gangster movies and I like the ballet. You're happy hanging out in your underwear watching football on the weekends and I want to go to the museum or a poetry reading. We're just too different and I thought you would change, I was wrong and that was my mistake. For that I'm sorry.

I knew who you were when I married you, but I didn't understand what that meant until much much later. I love you, I always will. But I can't be with you in this fight anymore. I would never ask you to choose between being a cop and your family. So I'm making the choice for you. Grace and I are staying with my parents in London for a few weeks and then, I don't know what we're doing, but we won't be coming back home if you're there. Please give me some time to figure out what I want, Grace can call you or you can call her anytime you want, but don't ask to speak with me. I need time.

Grace loves you Danno, so please be careful and don't take any unnecessary risks.

-Rachel

'Grave loves you Danno…' She'd said it right there in that letter. 'She' wasn't in love with him anymore. Yeah sure, she loved him in that 'you're the father of my child' sort of way, but that was it. It had been like someone had reached inside him and exposed his greatest weakness and then joyfully bludgeoned it to death.

Danny had slumped down into the small kitchen chair. His chest was tight with suppressed emotion and it felt as though he had had his heart torn out through his sternum. 'She'd left him?' Danny hadn't realized things were that bad for her. He reached up and scrubbed his hand over his stubbled face. The air inside the house was oppressive as he sat there trying to understand what he'd done wrong. It was completely belied by the unusually sunny day outside, soft golden light filtering through the slatted blinds and playing in graceful lines across his black leather loafers.

It was at that exact moment when he noticed just how quiet the house was. It was torture. There were no squeals from his happy little monkey upstairs in her pink room as she played with her toys. There was no laughter from his wife as she puttered around in the kitchen trying to figure out how to make some authentic American meal. It was just…silence. And it was killing him as surely as a bullet.

His hand dropped to the side and the letter that had just obliterated his entire existence slipped from his fingers and floated gently to the floor. Danny had packed his meager belongings and moved to a crappy motel up the block that same night. He couldn't stay one more minute in the house he'd bought for Rachel and Grace. It was too painful.

H50 H50

"Daniel, we need to talk." Rachel's voicemail had him cringing as he listened to it outside the house. Those were never good words and the fact that his ex-wife was calling him about something other than Grace's schedule couldn't be a good thing. Danny had inhaled sharply and dialed her number.

He hoped he got her voicemail, so that he could put the ball back in her court, and that he wouldn't have to actually hear what the woman had to say. Danny had never had good luck, and it wasn't about to change that day.

"Daniel." Her accented voice pulled on his heartstrings in ways that still made him angry. He was a 'once in a lifetime love' kind of guy. She may have fallen out of love with him, but he was still totally and one hundred percent in love with her. And he hated the power that gave her.

"Hey Rach." He managed after a moment. His blue gaze drifted to the small window and the blizzard that raged outside it.

It had been two years since the divorce and while he wasn't in a great place, he was better than he'd been in a long time.

"I'm getting married, Daniel." She blurted it out like an order at a fast food restaurant. And the air froze inside Danny's chest. She'd met someone? When had that happened? And why hadn't he known about it?

"Am I supposed to congratulate you or warn him?" He couldn't stop the caustic remark.

"That was mean, Daniel. Can we just dispense with the sarcasm for the moment? His name is Stan, he's a businessman."

'Great a businessman. Just about as far from a Jersey cop as you can get, Rachel'. He thought silently. He sank onto the chair in the tiny excuse for a living room and leaned forward, his detective's badge pressing into his stomach uncomfortably. He ignored it. "Stan? Fantastic. Why're you telling me this? We aren't married anymore and you don't owe me an explanation of what you're doing in your life."

There was a long pause on the other end of the line. "Rachel? You still there?"

"Yes, I'm still here." She took a deep breath. "He lives in Honolulu. Grace and I are moving there."

The room seemed to compress in and Danny surged up out of the seat, his hands clenching and unclenching in anger. "You can't do that. You can't take Grace away from me."

"Danny—"

"—No Rachel, that isn't how this is supposed to work. I've done everything you asked. I moved out. I leave you alone. We only talk when it's about Grace. I pay my child support every month. You can't just up and arbitrarily move five thousand miles. I'll never see Grace!" His heart nearly shattered in his chest at the thought of never seeing, or rarely seeing, his little monkey. He couldn't afford to fly out to Hawaii regularly and they would never fly Grace back to Jersey to see him. "I know you have primary custody, but come on Rachel. This is insanely unfair."

"It isn't arbitrary. We're getting married and that's where Stan lives. What do you want me to say here, Daniel?"

'Daniel, always with the 'Daniel'. Whenever she wanted him to act like her perceived notion of an adult, she would 'Daniel' him to death. "Don't 'Daniel' me, Rachel. There's no way the courts will allow you to take her away from me. Think about what you're asking me to go along with here." In his heart he was screaming that he was a good father. But the next words were a whispered plea. "Please don't do this."

Her breathing hitched slightly on the other end of the call. "I'm sorry, Danny. But it's already set. I talked to the lawyer and he said that I can do this." And she'd hung up.

Just like that, his entire life was shredded.

H50 H50

Danny simply stared at his partner in shock when Steve told him he was going to North Korea. Because really? Who in their right mind 'wants' to go to North Korea on some sort of secret op? And then it hit him, Steve would. The man would jump at the chance to use his skills in the pursuit of justice and the American way. Okay, so that might not be entirely fair, but it was accurate. It was this loyal and generous side of the SEAL that had actually drawn Danny to him in the first place.

To say that he had 'disliked' the military man when he'd first met him would be an understatement. Danny had seriously disliked the man that literally 'hijacked' his life. But as he'd worked with McGarrett on that first case, he'd come to respect the man and even kinda like him. Except when he was supposed to buy the beers and Steve would always, always, 'conveniently' forget his wallet. If Danny could pay his rent in the IOU's he had from Steve? He'd own a house in Diamond Head.

But the moment Danny had learned that his friend was headed off on some clandestine mission with Jenna Kaye, he'd been worried. He could feel it in his gut, this wasn't right. Something about the way she'd approached it with Steve had made Danny distinctly nervous. It wasn't that he didn't trust Jenna…at the time he had. Hell, she'd saved his life. But the way she'd come to Steve had just felt 'off'. And Danny hadn't been able to shake that feeling and then they'd learned that she'd been lying to them for the past three months.

The CIA agent hadn't been in Washington searching for her fiancé. She'd been staying in a beach house in Maui and then she'd talked the leader of Five-0 into coming with her to North Korea to save her lost boyfriend. And then there had been the moment that Danny had tried to call Steve and all he'd gotten was a whole lot of silence. That had ratcheted up his concern for his friend to full blown worry.

H50 H50

The scene inside Danny's head shifted again and he found himself thrust back to the day that Rick Peterson had kidnapped Grace and held her while trying to make the Jersey cop murder Stan Edwards in cold blood. The fear from that day and the adrenaline he'd felt flowed through him as it replayed in perfect Technicolor inside his muzzy brain. The feeling of trying to explain to Stan that he had no choice. And then there was the instant thread of pain that had lanced through him when the businessman had asked if 'it was for Grace'. After a slight nod Danny had known that he couldn't actually kill this man.

As much as it pained him that Stan got to hold Rachel at night and that he tucked Grace in more often than her own father, he couldn't kill him…because Stan loved Grace too. And then there was Charlie. The son that had 'almost' been Danny's. The pain from that little revelation was still too fresh for him to process properly. He'd made the mistake of letting Rachel back in and she'd needled her way inside his still broken heart and then blown it apart…again. Danny loved being a father and the idea that he was going to have another child with the love of his life, had been…well; it had been terrifying, but amazing. But having her tell him that the child wasn't his? He couldn't have devised a better torture if he'd sat down and thought about ways to injure himself.

The sound of Steve's voice calling frantically from behind him had been the nail in the coffin of Danny's choices. With the arrival of his team, he could afford to act on his instincts and aim for Stan's shoulder and not his chest.

The instantaneous rage he felt when he saw Rick standing with Chin and Kono had only been tempered by the fact that he still needed the location of his precious monkey. But that hadn't been enough to stop him from shooting the man in the kneecap. Again, Steve had been there for the detective. He'd gone with Danny to retrieve Grace and then he'd stayed with Danny after he talked to Rachel that night.

The events of the day had been so galvanizing that Steve couldn't sleep. He'd been sitting on the back lanai when Danny showed up with an unopened bottle of fifteen-year-old Scotch and a need to drink. The SEAL hadn't hesitated and he had walked into the house and grabbed two glasses, setting one in front of his haggard blonde partner. He didn't say a word. He just waited for the other man to start talking.

"I really would've killed him, Steve." Danny finally muttered after two glasses of the sixty proof alcohol. His hands were just starting to relax; the shaking that had been there before was slowly giving way to steadier fingers. But the rapid beating of his heart still had yet to slow and the cold dead feeling in the pit of his stomach wasn't letting up.

Steve downed his own glass and reached out to refill it. "No, you wouldn't." He turned to look at Danny. The usually bright blue eyes were distant and haunted. "You're not a killer, Danny."

Something shifted in his partner's body language; there was a slight hitch to his breathing and Danny shook his head in sadness. "That's just it, Steve. I am." Danny leaned forward resting his elbows on his knees, the glass hanging limping in his hands. "I've killed men. Granted most of them deserved it, but…I don't know…I think I am…a killer. The only difference between me and the men I hunt, is the badge."

"Danno—" Steve didn't get to finish when his Jersey partner interrupted him in a soft, but steady voice.

Danny held up his hand to stop the denial on his partner's lips. "—Just think about it Steve. The first day we met I shot and killed a man and from there the bodies just keep piling up. I don't think I'm that 'good cop' that I started out as twelve years ago…I'm something else." He took another unsteady swig of the amber colored liquid and looked out at the darkness of the ocean.

Something about the coolness and the lapping of the ocean stuck inside his head, but he ignored it as he rolled the events of the night over and over inside his head.

H50 H50

A sudden splashing pulled his wandering mind back to the present and Steve's head popped up above the water. He looked at Danny and frowned. He was actually holding his head back and struggling to keep his mouth and nose above the cold water. Danny turned so he side-eye Steve.

"You get the knife?"

Steve furrowed his eyebrows in confusion. He'd been reaching into Danny's sock. The shorter man should have felt his fingers. "You didn't feel any of that?"

Danny shook his head. "No."

He cataloged that information. "I think I may have found a way out." Steve said as he sliced the plastic zip tie off his wrists. There was a slicing moment of pain as the blood rushed back into his cold fingers. Steve opened and closed his hands several times trying to warm them up. He reached out and laid his palm against Danny's forehead. The shorter man dipped below the surface and the SEAL was immediately reaching for him.

Danny came back to the surface spluttering water from his mouth. "Don't do that. How long were you down there anyways?" He groused.

"Long enough to get a look around. Sorry." He muttered.

"It's pitch black under the water. How did…you think you found a way out? That's peachy, because I'm not sure how much more of this I can take, Steve." There was fear working its way into his voice and the SEAL turned to look at Danny and that's when he noticed that the storm had let up again. He looked up and the clouds were starting to part, a single thread of silvery moonlight shone down into their dark watery prison. "I think the storm is about done. Rain was still falling lightly, but it was more of the normal type for Hawaii than the torrential downpour of a tropical storm.

Steve frowned when he saw, clearly, what Danny looked like. The gash on his cheek was bloated and swollen and there was discoloration scattered over his pale face. A tiny trickle of blood had drained down between his eyes and there was a pink hue to his light blonde hair. Oh, Danny…

Danny hadn't even realized that. Too much of his concentration was being used just to stay alive. "Great. Can you tell me about this plan you've got? Cuz, I don't have anymore baseball line-ups to recite." He wasn't going to tell his partner that he'd been going over the moments in his life that had made him into the man he was today. Why his asinine brain had chosen this moment to show him all his failures was beyond him.

"There's an underwater passage to the left. I'm pretty sure it leads out into the ocean. Most of these lave tubes were formed from underwater volcanoes and they open up into the ocean floor." Steve stopped explaining when he caught the frightened and incredulous look on the detective's face. Danny had tilted his head toward Steve, so he could see him. "What?"

A shiver racked his body and he clenched his eyes as he rode out the pain it caused. "You're going to dive down and hope that this 'underwater passage' leads out into the ocean? What if it doesn't? What if it doesn't lead anywhere and you drown down there? I've seen the discovery channel too, Steven. Not all of these thins go anywhere."

"What do you want me to do here, Danny?" Steve said in frustration. He couldn't climb out and Danny wasn't going to last much longer. Chin and Kono didn't know where they were, so he couldn't count on them for rescue and he wasn't going to stand around and watch his partner die.

Danny thought about that for a moment and the rational part of his brain was screaming at him that this was their only shot. He could feel his body starting to shut down.

Steve saw the shift in his friend's face and he reached out and laid a gentle hand on Danny's shoulder. "It's the only way we get out of here, partner."

"Just don't die." Danny finally managed past the lump in his throat. He was beyond tired and terrified at this point and he was starting to feel numb everywhere…even his brain.

"I'll do my best."

"No, Steven. That's not good enough. You promise me that you won't die down there. If you can't find a way out, you swim your Navy SEAL ass back up here and wait with me. Promise me that Gracie isn't going to lose both of us down here."

"Danny what are you talking about?" Steve was genuinely confused. "She's not going to lose us."

Danny didn't answer. He didn't have the heart to tell Steve that he was already fading and that there was a very good chance he wouldn't be above the water when his partner made it back up. "Nothing…just don't die." Danny whispered softly.

H50 H50

Chin was pouring a mug of coffee when Kono limped into the small break area. He turned and took in the ragged appearance of his cousin and sighed. "You feeling okay?"

She shrugged. "I'd rather be at home watching a game on television."

He couldn't stop the smile that pulled at the corners of his lips. "Yeah." He breathed out as he took a sip of the hot black liquid. "You talk to Adam?"

"I called him an hour ago. He's in Tokyo on business, but he said he'd catch the first flight out and help with the search." She limped over and poured herself a cup.

Chin watched her for a moment before finally calling her out. "What's on your mind, cuz?"

"What?" She said as she turned to look at him. "Nothing."

He raised an eyebrow and pointed to the small table. "Sit down before you fall down. And yes, there is most definitely something on your mind."

She huffed and gently lowered herself into one of the chairs. "I guess I'm just wondering if this is over."

"Why?"

"Well, the first message said that the guy wanted to make Danny and Steve pay for the deaths of those two scumbags. But there's no way he could have foreseen the storm. The national weather didn't even know it was coming, it was so fast. But, if he wanted to know that Danny was dead along with Steve. Why take the chance?" She took a sip and then set the cup down. "Why not just put a bullet between their eyes and be done with it? I don't know, something about this just doesn't feel right."

Chin pressed his lips together in appreciation of his cousin's growing detective skills. Before he got a chance to answer, the captain burst into the room. "The storm has died down enough that we can fly."

They were both on their feet in a flash. Chin's brown eyes connected with Kono's for a moment before he answered the man. "Okay. Let's get back out there."

TBC…

Author's Note: I really wanted to try to delve into some of Danny's past in this chapter and Danny's condition is deteriorating. This is how I chose to represent that. The next chapter will deal with the rescue itself and then the aftermath. So those of you that are worried about the boys, don't worry. It's almost over. Rescue is now underway. Both Chin and Kono are header out to look. Steve thinks he has a way out of the cave and Danny is trying to keep his head above water. But is this really over if they find our intrepid missing Five-0 members? We'll see.

Thanks to everyone that has reviewed. I so appreciate the kind encouragement and comments.

PLEASE REVIEW: It only takes a moment and is my single shameless request.