Chapter 13

A/N: Okay, here it is. The story isn't over yet, but here's The Meeting, and I hope it satisfies most readers.

Your reviews and reads and favorites and follows mean so much to me—really, truly, I love hearing from you. I tried to get this out as quickly as I could, but I took an unexpectedly long nap and delayed this by 5 hours. Sorry! You writers know how exhausting it is to write. It's exhilarating too, but oh it is tiring, in the best way. I can promise more stories, after this one wraps, which may take a few more chapters.

To the reader who gave up on the story because I took 1 chapter too long to get to the Meeting, I'm sorry. Maybe you'll read this anyway. I hope so. To all who have stuck with this to this point, thank you. There will be more.

I own nothing to do with the show, and am not infringing on any copyright. I'm just playing with your toys.

Chapter 13

"Steve?" It was Kono's voice. She sounded very sad.

Steve looked at her with eyes full of exhausted anguish. He could feel Chin's hand on his left shoulder. Lou was sitting down again, near the foot of Steve's bed. His expression seemed far away. Steve moved his eyes back to Kono. "Yeah?"

She was obviously under a lot of strain, but there was a hesitant determination in her eyes. "Steve, if we have lost Danny, maybe we can get him back. Maybe it isn't too late. You said yourself that he is looking for a way to forgive us."

Before Danny's coughing fit, he would probably have kept his voice cold. But now Steve was too tired, too weary, too aware of his own role in setting a poor example of acceptance of his partner's different way of relating to people. He was ready to grasp at ideas. "I won't have him manipulated. If your idea doesn't come from an honest place, I don't want to hear it."

Kono's voice was tired, and full of regret. "But it does come from an honest place. I have done a lot of thinking since yesterday. And what you just said hit home and moved me deeply." She was looking at the blanket near Steve's feet, until she raised her eyes. They were reddened from her earlier cry, and still threatening to spill more tears. "I was so wrong about Danny."

Kono's own landslide was on the verge of happening, so Steve didn't interrupt.

"I said such terrible things yesterday, Boss -things I am so ashamed of, that I wish I could take back." She sniffled and Chin handed her a kleenex. "I would give anything for Danny to not know any of it, for all of us to know none of it."

"Do you blame me for telling him?" asked Steve, his voice regaining the faintest sharpness, although there was little energy or anger in it.

"No." Kono's answer was quiet. "It's not your fault. I meant what I said when I said it. That's one of the tragedies in this. But I had allowed myself to look at things all mixed up. I ended up literally making a lot of mountains out of a lot of mole-hills, and now it's the mountains we have to fix."

"Explain, Cousin," asked Chin. His voice held no judgment, no accusation. "What do you mean by mixed up?"

Kono sat down in the chair next to Lou, by the wall beyond the foot of Steve's bed. Her eyes stayed on Steve's, with an occasional glance at her cousin or Lou. "I guess it's partly the way I was raised," she began.

Steve's green touched blue eyes watched Kono's deep brown gaze grow inward. "I was raised to think that keeping my emotions on the inside was a show of inner strength. When I was surfing professionally, especially as I started to win titles, it did make me strong, because it can be a cut-throat sport. Someone always wants to steal your wave, knock you off your board, mess with your confidence. You let anyone see a weakness, they exploit that.

"So I never let on if my ankle was sore, my knee, my back, or if I was having a down day. The only people who ever knew were those I could really trust. It wasn't very many people. So I would talk to the water. And the strange thing is that the water answered back. Water is very honest, and once you start to listen to it, it's very emotional. All surfers, swimmers, boaters, fishermen and women learn to listen to the water, to hear, to feel what it is saying. But I kept my other emotions to myself, and learned to be tough. People learned not to mess with me."

Steve kept listening, wondering what this had to do with Danny.

"It was lonely, except that the water, the waves, never lied to me," continued Kono. "When I was on the water, I was home. I could be myself. I learned to read it, and in return it never lied to me. So it was fitting that I met you and Danny at the beach, with Chin to introduce us. I was very relaxed, very open. And I liked both of you right away."

Kono smiled at the memory. "If Chin hadn't been there, I think Danny would have asked me out."

Steve and Chin both grinned. "Probably," agreed Steve.

"Would you have gone out with him?" asked Chin.

Kono laughed. "No way, Cuz! He was wearing a tie! Haole all the way! But I did like him."

The laugh left her voice, but the memories were still the focus of her gaze as she continued. "You were both Ohana in no time. Then, I guess I picked up some wrong ideas. It took a couple years, maybe more. -I did take cues from you, Steve, from how you handled Danny. You and I were a lot alike. You and then Lou. Danny just has this very emotional, very vocal personality, and I wasn't used to that. It did kindof put me off, but he was nice, and exasperatingly funny. Material to tease him with was so easy to find, it was like shooting fish in a barrel!"

Steve just kept listening as Kono began to count 'fish' on her fingers. "He didn't like Hawaii, didn't like the water, the whole 'pineapple does not belong on a pizza' thing, and thought macadamia nuts looked like garbanzo beans-what even is a garbanzo bean? He didn't like so much that I've loved all my life. He wore a tie to work for a whole year!"

And then Steve watched her grin fade. "I thought it was funny at first. But then it started slowly to annoy me. And since it seemed to annoy everyone else, too, I didn't think about whether I was reading Danny right. I stopped reading him, and let the petty little annoyances grow into big ones, until I started to push him away, to dislike him. Once it reached that stage, every little irritation just made me dislike him more, and none of his good qualities made it past the shadows of the mountains I'd built up in my mind."

Steve frowned slightly. It seemed to take a lot of energy. "So far I'm not hearing anything that is going to get Danny back."

"Patience," said Chin.

"I'm getting there," assured Kono. "You see, yesterday I called, um, Rachel."

H50 H50 H50 H50

There was this loud chorus from three male voices. "You did WHAT?" Steve sat forward too fast, and his stitches ached, his own healing midsection told him to take it easy. Chin, equally incredulous, eased him back onto the pillow, and pushed the bed controls so he was sitting up a little higher. Even Lou had stopped looking so pensive and was sharply focused on Kono now.

Steve asked Kono why she had called Danny's ex-wife, of all people. He could not fathom why she had done that, or how this would have any bearing on getting Danny back.

Kono blushed, and hid behind her long brown hair. "It was because of one thing I said yesterday."

Steve just looked at her as if she had lost her mind. "I don't remember you bringing up Rachel."

Kono flipped her hair back from her face. "That's a mercy. But seriously. Just listen, okay? I said Danny's ex-wife was a bitch, but I still understood why she had divorced him. Which was a cruel thing to say. And then I said a whole lot of stuff I wish I could take back, because you rightfully chewed me out, and told me to think about what I had said. I wanted to be alone to think, so I went to the one place I knew for sure I could be alone, Boss. I went to your house, into the back yard, and down to the water, and did a lot of thinking. -I hope you don't mind, Boss."

Steve was surprised, but not upset about it. He had inherited the beach house from his father, and the place had become a bit of an unofficial meeting place, a relax-and-unwind haven outside of work. Danny, Chin, Lou and Kono all had keys. "No, I don't mind."

"I was there a long time, and I kept thinking about what I'd said about understanding why Rachel divorced Danny. Except, by then I'd come to see Danny for more of what he actually is, not the annoying mountains. I realized each was a grain of sand I'd been looking at under the magnifying glass. I'd gone back to the early days, when I'd admired how he took care of Grace, and his loyalty to Steve, to us, his ohana, and remembered his struggles to survive Hawaii no matter what it threw at him, because he would do anything, endure anything to be in his daughter's life. Would I do as well in New Jersey as he has done in Hawaii?" She shook her head. "I don't think so. I'd just be angry. I'd be a misplaced girl from Hawaii, angry because I'd been forced out of my element."

Kono paused, and shook her head, as if she didn't understand something. "The way I was seeing Danny, I really didn't understand why Rachel divorced him. He always told us it was because she couldn't stand the stress of his job. I get that, in theory anyway, because we see it happen time and again. It doesn't usually take long if it's going to happen."

Lou chimed in, his voice quiet. "Maybe the relationship lasts a couple years, but then, another heartbroken police officer."

Kono nodded. "Exactly. But Danny and Rachel lasted longer. They had Grace, and seemed according to both of them to be happy, until Rachel files for divorce and the rest is more or less known. -Or, is it?"

Steve felt uncomfortable, because this seemed like prying into Danny's very personal business. Not that he wouldn't have pried, had he reason to. It was one of the things he now realized he would need to work on, learning when to give Danny space, and when to barge in because that is what his partner really wanted him to do.

But he kept his mind on Kono when she spoke again. "Anyway, I thought the best way to get a read on why they parted, and what Rachel was really like, and Danny, was to talk with her. In all these years, I had never really had a 'girl talk' with her. I was pretty sure she wouldn't want to talk to me, but to my surprise, after she got over her instant worry about Danny, we had a long talk."

"Maybe we shouldn't let Danny know this part," suggested Lou.

"Where were Gracie and Charlie, or Stan?" asked Steve.

"That's the odd part," answered Kono. "She and Stan had been supposed to go to some dinner, with Charlie having a baby sitter. But then Stan got called to a business meeting at the last minute, and Grace was here, visiting Danny. So Rachel and I went to get burgers and then girl-talked for nearly three hours."

Steve -and, he suspected, Chin and Lou- would have loved to be a fly on the wall during their conversation, especially seeing the effect it had had on Kono. But he also wanted Danny's privacy respected. Mistakes he had made in the past were not going to be made again.

Kono showed that she was on a wavelength with Steve. "Obviously, there were areas I could not go into, and some of what Rachel volunteered is private, confidential, so I won't talk about that. But I did learn a lot I can share. She told me she didn't divorce Danny because he was a bad husband or that she stopped loving him. In fact, she still loves him. She has even come to deeply regret the divorce, because finally she is understanding why it's so important that Danny is a cop. And she is angry he has been so ignored while Hawaii is still on this 'McGarrett' thing. -It isn't that she doesn't like you, Steve, or doesn't appreciate what you have done. But she knows you weren't working alone when you did the stuff people are talking about. You had a partner, and a Task Force. -And before you ask why she didn't send a card or flowers, she wanted to, but Stan wouldn't let her. He won't let her visit. But what she can do, and what she has done, is allow Grace and Charlie to visit."

Steve was not a fan of Rachel's second husband. "It doesn't sound like they are doing well. Does he know you and Rachel talked?"

Kono shrugged. "I don't know. Probably not. I doubt she would tell him."

Steve cleared his throat, and took a couple more sips of water. "So how do you feel about Danny now?"

Kono hung her head, and her shoulders slumped for a few seconds, before she looked at Steve. "I know I wronged him. -He's my brother, and I need to talk with him, to ask him to forgive me, if he can forgive me. I need to show him from now on that I've got his back, and always will, even if he can't forgive me."

Now Steve was finally daring to hope. "I think they want me to start on physical therapy in a couple days, so you'd have a chance to talk with Danny alone."

Kono smiled. "I'd like that. If he would let me. It should be his decision."

"I will ask him, Kono. He and I have to talk, too. I hi-jacked him to be my partner six years ago. I think it's high time I asked him if he would take that job, instead of telling him he had it, whether he liked it or not." He felt the approval in Chin's squeeze on his shoulder.

"Boss?" Kono was fingering her badge.

"Keep it, Kono," said Steve.

But as relieved as she looked, she stared down at it. "That means a lot to me. But would you mind if I let Danny decide whether or not I get to keep it?"

Steve broke out into a bright smile, and opened his arms to Kono, inviting her in for a hug. "Yeah, yeah, that would be fine." Kono hugged Steve back, and gave him a kiss on the cheek.

H50 H50 H50 H50

Lou Grover cleared his throat, and stood up. "I guess it's my turn, now." He was fingering his own badge, weighing it and turning it over again and again in his palm. He finally reached over and set it beside Steve on the bed.

Steve stared at it, with Kono and Chin looking on in surprise, all levity having left the room. "Lou?"

"It's not because of Danny," he said. "Well, it is, but not the way you think. And it goes deeper."

"I ... I don't understand." Steve said it out loud, still refusing to take Lou's badge, while he could feel Chin and Kono thinking it.

"I too did a lot of thinking yesterday. Had a long talk with my wife. Renee has always been my sounding board, my life's partner." He stared at his badge, but shoved his hands deep in his pockets. "You see, this has been a tough year. I lost it when my daughter was kidnapped, and didn't trust my colleagues to help me, and that showed me that my judgment was fraying. Danny helped me deal with the emotions a lot, once you guys barged in and helped me whether I liked it or not. He was a true friend, as were all of you. And then, when my family had to go on the run, I again didn't trust you to help us. You had to figure everything out on your own, and helped me anyway. I had yet another lapse in judgment."

He paused, and paced, before standing still. "And then, with this whole thing about the plane getting shot up. When Kono told us the ATC had called, and you were bad hurt, Steve, all I could think of was that Danny would get you killed, because he was gonna have to land that plane, and he was gonna crash it. I had no confidence in him. When I asked who was flying the plane, I felt like we were gonna have to bury you, and it would be Danny's fault. Forget the circumstances. Hell, I didn't even think about them. I just felt like it was over. Five-0 would not be able to fix this one. We listened to ATC after that, on the emergency channel, while Danny was told to prepare for a water landing. And I thought, he's gonna go for that, so he'll live. And when he said, nope, he was landing on the beach, clear the beach, have the EMTs standing by, because you'd drown if he landed it in the water..."

Lou paced again. His face, though, was peaceful. "Well, then I knew it was over, because he'd crash, and everyone would die, and how many people would he take out when he did that, because he can't land a plane on a beach, he just doesn't want to land in the water because he hates the water. My head was so screwed up. I had no confidence in Danny at all. I had no confidence in anyone. I wasn't thinking straight."

"Lou -" began Steve.

But Lou Grover cut him off by holding up his hand, peacefully. "Yeah, I was wrong. Again. Danny landed the plane just right, and nobody got hurt, and he helped get you out, which I ignored. And I was jealous because he, as your partner, got to ride with you in the bus. He would see your last breath. It should be me with you, because I was totally unappreciative of the close bond between you and Danny. And then, when he gave you his liver, didn't bat a lash, just you needed it, he gave it, I was jealous. But I could not ignore that he cared that much. It rattled me. It bugged me, that you would be a little bit Danny if you survived. -And you did survive. You wouldn't be just Steve anymore. You'd always have this piece of Danny, and he'd saved your life. He'd done something none of us could do. We were all willing, but the only one who could save you was Danny."

Lou sighed, and kept his hands in his pockets. "I thought about that for three days before I started to realized I had lost my judgment. I had to see Danny as the good man he was, good detective, good friend, good caring human being, good partner, good father. I did not like having to admit this. I wanted to be your partner, Steve, but even that showed poor judgment on my part."

He locked eyes on Steve's, and stated matter-of-fact. "You picked the best man for that job, McGarrett. It was your call, and you picked the best man. Once my brain got on that track, I realized just how good Danny is. And how screwed up my head was. And I finally had to realize, maybe it was time for me to hang it up."

"Lou -!" Three voices protested.

"Let me finish, please." He sounded peaceful, content. "I been at this job a long time, a long long time, and we all seen it happen before. When the judgment goes, it's time to hand in the badge and hang up the uniform. I talked it over with Renee, and we both decided it was time."

Steve stared down at the badge, then back up at Lou. "What will you do?"

Lou Grover smiled. "I'm starting a consulting firm! And I sure hope I can find office space close to Five-0 offices, because maybe I could still help my friends out. This isn't the end of a friendship, or ohana, but a growing. I feel good about my decision, and think it's the best one for Five-0 too. We'll all still see each other a lot. And as soon as I can, I'm ordering a real New Jersey pizza pie flown in for Danny, if it costs me my vacation money to do it. He's earned it."

Steve nodded, a little sad, but happy too. The happiness of his family was what mattered to him the most. "You're sure?" he asked, and when Lou smiled and nodded, he picked up the badge, and handed it to Chin. "Okay. But Five-0 will be your biggest customer."

"That won't break my heart," laughed Lou, and as bittersweet as the moment was, it was still a good one, and Steve felt his ohana knitting back together, with Danny still the heart, even if Danny didn't know it yet.