He wants to sleep. But his brain won't stop. Eyes won't close.

The bald man is slumped against his chains on the opposite wall. He feels compelled to help, but he doesn't know how.

His cell mate has been with him for a week. He wants to enjoy not being tortured, but every punch, kick, flame to the bald man's body echoes in his own. It is its own form of torture. He doesn't know why. He wants to know. Can't know. Won't know.

A chuckle echoes through the room. "Well, McGarrett, I've sure mucked things up."

He doesn't respond. The man isn't talking to him, after all. But he keeps listening.

"I don't think I'm going to make it out of here, kid. I'm surprised that you're still around, but," he stops to cough. Something red dribbles from his lips. "But I guess I shouldn't be. I just hope you make it back."

Before anything else can be said, four men with guns arrive, unchain his cell mate. Suddenly, he wants to tear free from his own manacles. He wants to fight tooth and nail to reach that bald man.

But he can't. So he watches as the bald man is taken from the room.

There are some shouts moments later.

Bang.

And he feels that, too.

And it hurts differently than the others. More inside.

His cheeks feel wet.

He wakes up.

Danny sighs when he shuts his door without any of the reporters and photographers getting inside. Grace tears Kono's sweatshirt off her head and throws it on the floor by the couch before sinking into the davenport, staring straight ahead.

"So, Monkey, do you want something to drink?"

"Danno?"

"I'm sorry? Last I checked, Danno's Toenail Juice wasn't on the menu." She didn't react to his bad joke. He couldn't blame her. "Okay, what's up?"

"Why did Auntie Kono yell at you earlier?"

He'd hoped to put off this conversation. "Kono and I had a disagreement, nothing major."

"Don't lie to me, Danno." Grace looked him in the eyes for the first time since screaming at him earlier in the morning, and she looked so like her mother in that moment that he was ready to call his lawyer. "I'm tired of being left out."

"Who's-"

"You, and Auntie Kono and Uncle Chin and who knows who else. I'm not stupid, you know," she said calmly. Her tone frightened him more than her screaming had. "You know something about Sang Min, don't you?"

"Sang Min?" Danny shook his head. "No, I really don't. I don't have the slightest clue about Sang Min."

"But Auntie Kono wanted you to tell me the truth. I'm assuming it's to distract me from Uncle Steve, and that's the angle she tried to use earlier, so what else would it be?"

She really had no idea. Her trust in her father was so complete that she couldn't imagine the sheer extent of his failings as a dad.

He was about to break her heart. And that trust. And her fragile spirit.

He hated himself even more.

"No, Monkey, listen," he started, sliding onto the couch next to her, "Auntie Kono told me about your feelings about Uncle Steve. I just want you to know that you really had nothing to do with his disappearance."

She was silent for a moment, watching him through narrowed eyes. "At my birthday party, the one you were almost late to because of a case…" Grace stopped to take a breath and brace herself. "I made a really mean wish when I blew out the candles."

"What was it?" he asked quietly.

A tear slid down her cheek. "I wished that Uncle Steve would go away for a while, because you were spending more time with him than with me and I hated that."

"Wh-what?" But Grace had started her confession, and she wasn't going to stop to answer her father's startled question.

"I didn't mean it, Danno, I didn't! But a month later, you came to see me and told me that he had to go on a mission and that he didn't get to say goodbye to me and that he would miss me a whole lot, and then you lost your job and you moved back home and neither me nor Uncle Steve got to spend any time with you and it's all my fault!"

She burst into tears and tried to run, but Danny grabbed her arm and pulled her into his chest, hugging her as she sobbed. He hadn't seen or heard his daughter so upset in years. Rachel would have told him if she'd expressed these feelings to her, so it could only be assumed that Grace had been holding them in for the past two years.

And she was wrong, and Kono was right: it was all his fault.

"You're right, Grace. Auntie Kono and Uncle Chin and I, we've been keeping a secret from you." She stopped crying to look up at him in shock. "It doesn't have a whole lot to do with Sang Min, but it might make you mad. You have to promise not to tell anyone this, ever. I could get into a lot of trouble."

She nodded and continued to stare at him, her eyes less shocked and more curious. He took a moment to commit his daughter's face to memory, because he had a feeling that it would be the last time she looked at him with anything but hatred for a long time.

"Do you remember when I told you about the woman who was helping at work, Jenna?" Grace shook her head. "That's fine, she wasn't around a lot. Well, she asked Uncle Steve to go on a…on a mission. She needed help, so he went with her."

"And they're still on the same mission?" Grace asked quietly.

"Not exactly." Danny paused again. It was difficult to find the appropriate words to tell Grace that her hero had been kidnapped and presumably tortured by a madman. "I got a call from Jenna that something went wrong, and so I went after them to try and help. Auntie Kono and Uncle Chin and Lori and a few other people went, too. We found Jenna, but Uncle Steve wasn't there when we got there, and we tried to track him down but…" Lori missed the one shot that would have saved him from years of torture "we didn't make it in time."

"What do you mean?" Grace's eyes filled with tears again. "He's dead!"

"No!" Danny gripped her shoulders slightly. "No, Monkey, he's not dead. We have to believe that. We just aren't sure where he is, that's all."

Grace looked down. "Didn't Jenna tell you when you found her?"

"She wasn't able to." Grace let out a quiet sob, and he knew that she knew exactly what he was saying. Eventually she looked back at him with a furious expression behind her tears, and he headed off her tirade. "I know you're angry and upset as well as sad, Monkey, but you were still very young when this happened and I didn't think you were ready to hear everything."

"So you lied? Why couldn't you have just told me he was missing?" she said venomously. "You've never lied to me before."

"I wanted to, but there was another reason. Our boss ordered us to tell anyone who asked that Uncle Steve was on a top-secret mission. We weren't allowed to tell the truth, or we could get into a lot of trouble."

Grace's fury seemed far from quelled, but before she could snap at him again someone rapped on the door. Danny tried to smile at his daughter as he moved to answer the knock, but it came out a grimace. She glared back before he turned to open the door. Catherine stood with a smile and a bag of food in either hand. "Dinner is served."

"Thanks for this, Catherine." Danny took the food from her and turned to call Grace, but his daughter was already by his side, her expression still lethal. "Grace, uh-"

"Did you know?" she asked loudly. Catherine quickly shut the door behind her and turned back around, her expression falling. "Did Danno tell you?"

"Not until this morning," Catherine said, aptly guessing what Grace was referring to. "I knew part of it from before, but I didn't quite have the whole story until today."

"Why aren't you mad?! They lied!"

Danny squeezed his eyes shut and sighed as Grace flailed her good arm. Catherine sighed, too, but hers was more sad than resigned. "Yes, they did. I didn't hear a single thing about any of it until I cornered Kono and asked her why Steve hadn't contacted me for months. But," she said over another of Grace's exclamations, "they had a good reason for it. They weren't allowed to."

"So? Who cares?!"

"I think you would care if your dad got sent to prison, wouldn't you?" Danny opened his eyes to see that Grace had gone white as the inside of a coconut. "The fact that Kono and your dad have told us about it at all means they're breaking an order, and they could get in a lot of trouble for that. We're two of only about twelve people who know the truth, and we're not supposed to know at all. The fact that we do means your dad and Kono and Chin think we're important enough to Steve and them to know the truth, and we can't be angry at them about that."

Grace stared at her for a moment before the tears returned. "Is that true, Danno?"

"Every word," he said quietly. She threw her arm around him, and he handed Catherine back the food to hug her back. "I know you're mad, but-"

"Do you promise it's not my fault?"

"I promise." She hugged him for a moment longer before stepping back to look up at him. She hardly had to raise her chin anymore.

"Can you make another promise?"

"I'll try."

"Promise me that you'll find him. Bring Uncle Steve home, Danno. Promise?"

Danny looked to Catherine, who had tears of her own. She tried to smile, but she succeeded merely in grimacing.

How could he promise something like that when he knew that one of the most well-connected criminals in the world had Steve in his grasp? How could he make that promise to Grace without breaking her trust yet again?

But he wanted to fulfill the promise. He wanted to do everything in his power to bring Steve home. He hadn't done nearly enough two years ago, and he wanted to fix that now. But how could he?

"I…I promise to do my best, Monkey."

She smiled at him then, and his heart was lighter in that moment than it had been in years.

A/N: Aloha! Firstly, I'm so sorry that this is late. I had it about half done when my muses went on strike, and while I could have forced out a few more words and given you a half-baked chapter I didn't think that was fair. I'm still not entirely happy with the chapter, but it's better than it would have been on Saturday.

Also, my posting schedule may take a bit to get back to normal. I'll probably have Chapter 14 by Wednesday, and either Thursday or Friday should see Chapter 15. Hopefully (hopefully!) we'll get to Chapter 16 by Saturday. We'll have to see.

What do you think of Grace's characterization? Am I making her emotional rollercoaster seem realistic or does she seem even flatter than the show's version? I'd really appreciate a bit of feedback on this, especially.

Mahalo for reading, my friends, and I'll see you the next update!