A/N Hey guys. Sorry for the wait! Life's crazy. I picked up two freelance jobs on top of my two regular jobs and some personal commitments.
And this chapter was a frakking bitch. Which, you know, makes sense!
Next chapter is about half written and will be much easier, so hopefully that won't take so long this time!
I've spent the last six months trying to rebuild the wall that Danny destroyed, to make myself into the Navy SEAL that was so good at his job before he learned what family and home was. It's a lot harder than I thought it would be. I'm starting to realize that maybe I just never had to build one before. Like maybe my parents were constructing it for me before I could even walk.
Doesn't really help that I'm pretty sure Danny stole some of the bricks while he was at it, 'cause I'm all out and there's some pretty big holes here.
And yeah, I'm being metaphorical and poetic. I blame that on Danny, too. I forgot how much playing the guitar calms me and lets me think too much.
This is the first time I've really picked the guitar up since Danny gave it to me. And yeah, I feel a bit guilty about that. I've been too busy since I left Hawaii, volunteering my Team for any mission I could; volunteering myself for missions when I let my guys take some R&R. Before that, I was too afraid. Afraid of the thing that had been so important to me all those years ago. Afraid Danny would walk in while I stumbled through playing again, my guts spilling out onto the floor even as I tried to shove them back inside before he could see.
But Danny always saw.
I may have told him about that damn talent show, though I have no idea why, but I still couldn't trust myself to do more than strum my fingers across the strings like I did when he gave it to me. I can already feel its affect on me – bringing up all those memories and emotions I'd tried to repress, that I hadn't been strong enough to keep from him. They'd started to fade until they were like nothing more than scenes from a good movie. I remember that living it had been hard and heart-breaking and amazing.
But this, being alone, is so much easier. There's a certain kind of peace to it. All I need to do is focus on the missions, focus on leading my Team and keeping them safe. I'm starting to feel like the best thing I ever did was turn that movie off. The weight of all those emotions crushing my chest have finally lifted. Now I'm free, like I was the first time I joined the Navy. It had been scary at first, but it was so easy. No one to please but my CO. No one who expected, or even wanted, me to open up. My life ruled only by the missions.
For the first time since leaving Hawaii this second time, I'm back there. Back to being just a tool for a mission. No longer a friend to anyone, no longer the fake uncle to a little girl who reminded me what it was like to live and love, who handed her father the sledgehammer to break down my walls. The little girl who made me want to be more than just a tool, a weapon. Who made me want to be happy.
As the thought comes to me, her face, her smile begins to materialize in my mind. Before it fully does and she can, as I'd said in that letter in that movie so long ago, make me smile and remember that I was loved, and loved in return, I strum my unpracticed fingers across the strings of the guitar enough to hurt. It chases away her image and brings me back to the present and the four walls around me, in an apartment smaller than the one I'd first found my future partner in all those years ago. The partner who had given me this guitar.
If I'm being honest with myself, it's kinda a shift to my world view that, even when given every opportunity – when I practically begged and pleaded – for someone to give up on me, to leave me alone to my ghosts and my vendettas, Danny and Grace would not. But then, even as I did that, I clung to them like a lifeline to something I never even realized I wanted. Maybe the little boy in my childhood memories had people like that, but I can't remember – those memories are like a story that's been passed down through too many retellings, tainted by wishful thinking – but I don't think so. I don't remember feeling like this the first time I left for the Navy.
Like I made a mistake.
But how could this be a mistake? When it was everything that had ever been perfect for me in the past? No this couldn't be a mistake. I refused to allow it to be a mistake. I want to smash the guitar and everything it represents. Destroy everything in this room that I was stupid enough to bring that reminds me of that little girl and her father. But I can't do it.
I can't disappoint her, even if there's no way she would ever find out about it.
I've started playing again during this little trip down memory lane, but I freeze at the sound of a knock on my door. Quietly, I set the instrument down on the bed and pick up the gun from my bedside table. There shouldn't be anyone at my door. I parted ways from the rest of my Team when we headed home from the bar, so it couldn't be them. Hankinson would have called me if he had an assignment for us. Even though it's pretty unlikely that I need to worry about anyone who actually knocks first, I check my weapon, pad quietly across the small space to the door, and peek through the peep hole.
What I see on the other side doesn't make me feel much better, but I open the door anyway and my visitor pushes by me into the room.
"'One Tin Soldier'? Really, Steven?" I shrug. Didn't even realize that was what I was playing. It was what I was going to play at that damn talent show.
"What do you want?" I ask, closing the door. There's really no point asking 'how did you find me?' or 'why are you here?'. The answers to both those questions are pretty obvious, and neither would give me the answer I want.
"Steven." I get a smile – that smile. I've come to hate that fucking smile. First time I saw it, a couple years ago, I thought it was the best day of my life. Now, I wish I'd never seen it. "Can't a mother just come by to visit her son?"
"Sure. You know, if you actually acted like a mother."
It looks like I hit her where it hurts. Good. She levels me with a look that probably had me spilling all my secrets when I was a kid. All it does now is make the corner of my mouth twitch with a smile. Danny was always upset that I never shared my feelings enough. Suddenly, that's really all I want to do.
"What? I hit a nerve or something, huh? You made me into this person. If you don't like it, you only have yourself to blame. You and dad. He never let us know he was proud of us; was never there for us; shipped us off when we needed him the most. I had to find all that out from Joe White a year after dad died, for fuck's sake."
"Steven!" I just glare at her and continue my rant, built up over the last five years, hell maybe even more than that. Full on Danny rant, I think.
"I mean, when we were kids, you tried, I'll give you that. At least I think you did. But then you left. You chose to leave us. And then we had no one. And it was to protect us? Well, guess what? It didn't fucking work. And maybe, maybe with time, I could have forgiven you. But then you lied to me. You let Wo Fat go. You chose him over me. Again. He tortured me and killed my friend and you let him go so he could torture me again." My finger's in her face but the time I stop.
"You survived. You're a survivor, sweetie."
I laugh, walk away from her before turning back. "That's simply pure luck. You know he shot me in the head right? Grazed my temple." I brush two fingers across the faint scar. "Well, he won't get the chance again. I shot your precious Wo Fat."
She flinches and I can't remember the last time I felt so much satisfaction. No flinch about me almost getting shot in the head, of course. No. She was more upset that Wo Fat was dead. She clearly knew that already, but it still hurt her to hear. So I keep going.
"But you wanna know what's worse than that? Worse than when we thought you were dead? Worse than all this shit you're putting us through now? It's that all this is making me question the few good, innocent memories of you, of all of us, that I actually had." She's getting a little blurry and that pisses me off. Fucking emotions. Fucking Danny.
"You've left me with nothing, Doris."
"Don't call me that, Steven. I'm your mother!"
"Really? That's your take away? But sure, okay, I'll play. Maybe try acting like it." Clearly I spent too much time around Danny. Thinking about Danny makes me think about Grace. I close my eyes for a moment, letting their images come this time, take a deep breath. Calm myself down.
"Everything I do, I do for you and Mary." That's exactly what I told Grace in the letter I left for her. I'd used a lot of my dad's words in that letter, too. I guess maybe I'm no better than them. Guess I got no reason to be angry at her. But I am anyway. "I never stopped. I saved you from that Colombian prison, and I helped you get Danny out."
Like that was the perfect example of what a mother should do. Like that made up for everything else. It didn't. Maybe... maybe if I'd never met Danny and Grace, if I'd never seen what a parent really was, that would have been enough for me. Maybe I could accept her back into my life, followed her anywhere. But that wasn't the case and I'm not sure if that's a bad thing or not.
After all this time, I finally come to a realization. I hate her; even hate my father to a lesser extent. Or, at least, I hate what I've become because of them; hate them for what they made me into. I may be all mixed up and confused about the rest of my life, my feelings, but what I feel for her in this moment? Yeah, I've got no second thoughts about that one. I'll never forgive Doris, can never be her son again. 'Cause even after everything that's happened to me, even in the last couple of years, she still refuses to be my mother. I stand straighter, give her what I think Danny would call my Killer SEAL Face.
"If you loved me at all, Danny would never have been there. Danny should have been the one you pulled strings for. I should have gone and he should have stayed."
"Please," she scoffs, with an almost laugh. "Is that what all this is about? You're off on walk-about because you feel guilty? And anyway, you're not a father, Steven. Ask Danny if he wouldn't have chosen Grace. I helped you when I could."
"Don't you dare compare yourself to Danny, Doris. You are not even a fraction of the parent he is. Of course he would choose Grace; he's got nothing to prove to her. You want to prove you're my mother? You choose Danny. You always choose Danny."
Of course, the problem was that Danny had chosen me over Grace. More than once. I'll never forgive myself for putting him in that position. It wasn't acceptable. I'm not worth it, for one. So yeah, I guess that is 'what this is all about'. If Danny couldn't do the right thing, then it was up to me. That was why, when anyone else would have thought I had every reason to stay in Hawaii, and no reason to go, I'd left so easy.
"Why should I? You didn't. You ran away too, Steven. Just like you accuse me of doing. You left them 'for their own good'."
"Yeah, well, I blame you for that, too. I learned from the best, after all. I've had some pretty shitty role models. Aren't you proud?"
"I've always been proud of you." She pauses for a moment and I wonder why. Something tells me that this little meeting isn't going like she planned. She's probably changing mission parameters on the fly. "They miss you, you know. You should go back home. They don't feel better off without you any more than you feel that way about me."
"You lost the right to give me advice a long time ago, Doris."
"I love you, Steve."
"Really? 'Cause I've seen how you were with Mary, when we were kids, and after you came back. Why aren't you ever like that with me, huh? Why is everything an op with you?"
"Because I want you by my side. Because you can take care of yourself; I know you can handle it. Why would I want anyone else watching my back if I could have my son?"
"Why? Cause I'm a SEAL? Cause I'm my parents' son? 'Cause I'm pretty sure all evidence points to no, I can't fucking handle it."