Chapter 17

A/N: Well…I realized a bridge was needed to set up the whole everyone talks to everyone chapter, and here is the bridge. Danny hadn't really had a chance to think about things, and he needed to do that. So this chapter is a lot of thinking. I apologize if a lack of action, dialogue, interaction.

I must thank all reviewers and readers for your attention to this story. I am so grateful! I welcome constructive criticism, so don't hesitate. If you don't want to put anything negative in a review, put it in a PM to me, and I promise I don't bite. I reply to reviews as time permits, and try to welcome all new readers to the story. It's gotten far longer than I ever thought it would! Thanks for sticking with me! Thank you so much!

The next chapter really Scouts Honor will have the elements in it this one was supposed to have. Stories have a life of their own, and it sounds strange to say, but sometimes writers are at the mercy of the story. We learn a lot about Danny's thinking in this chapter, so Danny fans, this one is for you!

CBS owns Hawaii Five-0, I make no profit from this story. It is just for fun.

Chapter 17

Soon after, the moment of relaxation was ended when Steve was called down for his much-delayed physical therapy appointment, and Danny was ordered to get some rest. With lighter hearts than any of them had felt since Steve had been shot in the plane, the cousins made a dinner reservation and went to their homes to shower and change. Steve was wheeled to his PT, and Danny was left alone in the room. His ribs ached, but not as fiercely as they had. Breathing was not comfortable, but compared to how it had been, he could almost throw a party. The throbbing pain in his eye, the deep hand-print-shaped ache in his arm, were easy to ignore.

Danny was used to pain. He could deal with this. The pneumonia was being chased and beaten down by antibiotics, and without that need to cough, he was doing much better. All in all, he was finally healing, not just physically, but emotionally and psychologically as well. Even with his new bruises and the alarming black eye, he felt better than he had since he realized in the plane how seriously Steve's gunshot wounds were. He felt as if a weight had been lifted off his shoulders, with the promise of more weights being lifted off in the future.

He realized this was the first time since the fall that he had gotten a chance to process his thoughts and feelings about so much that had happened. There had been that short time on the patio, after the shock of learning there were major problems in the ohana, and they orbited around Danny, but that had not been a time of this kind of reflection. He had not known then what the problem was, only that it seemed to directly involve him. It had been more the worry before one receives devastating bad news, after already having received devastating news, after physical and psychological pain had already been at work and taken their toll for a long, long awhile. It was kicking a man who was not just down, but who had been knocked down again and again and again, physically, emotionally, psychologically, who had finally reached the point where he could not figure out a way to get back up one more time.

Knowing that Kono, Chin and Lou were avoiding him while he recovered from the liver transplant had been the blow that had flattened Danny.

Now that he had received the bad news, and a lot of it had been addressed one way or the other, Danny needed to work through it in his mind and heart. Why had this, of all the things he had gone through, broken him? He needed to figure it out.

H50 H50 H50 H50

When Steve had been shot, Danny had thought there was the real possibility that Steve would die. It had scared him beyond panic, but he had seen those close to him die before. So why had his feelings this time been like tsunami-warning sirens going off in his heart? He had felt that when his Newark police partner, Grace, had died. But she was dead before he could even help her. Her death had been overshadowed to his friends and colleagues by the national and personal grief of the events of 9/11. At the time he had been quietly working through Grace's loss, he too had been grieving with a nation attacked by terrorists, with a death toll people were still reeling at. His whole world -everyone's whole world- was changed forever, but for Danny, he would never be able to think of 9/11 without also feeling the sharp, tearing pain of his partner's murder, and the personal guilt he felt that she had died, and that there had not been a thing he could do to stop it or to help her in her last moments.

Grace's funeral had been one of many funerals attended in the aftermath of 9/11. Danny's pain was not ignored, but it was overshadowed to many of his fellow officers by that even bigger national pain. So, in a way that only his wife and colleagues knew honored his murdered partner, and said forever how deeply he had felt her death, he had named his newborn baby daughter Grace, so his partner Grace would be daily in his thoughts as he watched his little daughter grow into as fine a woman. His daughter was on her way.

Then there was his brother, Matty. His little brother, whom he had loved since the day he was born. His little brother had grown into a crook, the way Danny had become a cop. Only, Danny did not know what Matty had gotten into. He had not known until that awful day when he found out, and realized the extent of the betrayal of one brother to another. Matty had challenged him both brother to brother, and criminal to cop, to either shoot him or let him walk away, still every millimeter of his body the crook, the thief, the manipulator, the betrayer he was. The little boy who had worshiped his big brother had stooped to taunting him by telling him the only way to stop his criminal activities was to shoot him, which Matty knew rightly that the brother in Danny could not do.

Danny could not shoot his brother, not even just to wound him. He had not been able to do it. Matty had boarded a private plane and flown out of his life. Nothing in his life had hurt Danny worse than to be betrayed out of the blue by someone he had loved and trusted since Matty's birth. If there was a worst case scenario for Danny, this was it. For Danny, Matty's sudden death would have been easier to deal with. A car accident, an aneurysm, anything sudden, which could have let him keep the untarnished memories of a brother he had loved and respected, who had loved and respected him in return. But in the end, Matty had neither loved nor respected him. He had betrayed him in every way. Away Matty flew, with Danny wondering where the love had gone, wondering if he still respected himself, knowing somehow that the weakness he had shown in not at least wounding Matty would come to haunt him.

It had haunted him. It had not ended with a plane flying off into the night sky. It had ended with the troubles caused by what Matty had done. When Matty could not repay Marco Reyes, to whom he owed millions, Reyes had come to Danny's doorstep and demanded the money from him, in exchange for Matty's life.

Purposefully, Danny kept his thoughts away from everything that had happened which had brought him, with Steve, to stand before the man who had taken the money in exchange for Matty, and had repaid Danny with the sight of his dead brother, chopped up and stuffed into an oil drum. Not Matty alive, which would have been hard in many ways to deal with, but with Matty's mutilated body stuffed carelessly, unfeelingly into a barrel. Danny had lost control. He had exacted revenge. And he had been far more merciful than Reyes had been to his baby brother.

Danny hated to think about that time, and the events that followed. The important thing was that he had killed Matty's killer. He had demanded the petrified Reyes look into his hell-to-pay, merciless eyes, then shot him right between them, in cold blood. And he had to live with that. The good cop had to live with becoming a cold blooded murderer. He did not regret killing Reyes. He did regret that he had had to break his own moral code. How would he look himself in the eyes? How would he look his daughter in the eyes, knowing he was a murderer?

Living with what he had done had cost him dearly. He did not think in detail about what happened after that, except to cover it over with that word, "after". Even Chin, Kono, and Lou did not know that Danny had killed Reyes in cold blood. Only Steve knew. He had been there. He had seen the change, the still-faced silence that came over Danny afterwards. Everyone but Steve thought Danny had shot in self-defense and was grieving his brother's death, because that is what he and Steve had told everyone. To himself, Danny became a liar and cold blooded murderer. And he had vowed, in the months to follow, that he would not be those things ever again.

Nobody but Danny knew that -after a few months of carrying the burden alone, for he would not even let Steve help him with this- he had sought help from a priest. He literally could not get past what he had done, and would not put the burden of it on anyone else (although Steve knew some of what he was going through), and it was either slide into an even unhealthier depression than he was already in, or seek someone's help. Danny had been raised Catholic, rather strictly, and Grace went to a Catholic private school, but it was more for safety and good education than because Danny was deeply into the faith. But this one time, he had felt so overburdened that he had gone to a priest and confessed what he had done. He and the priest had talked awhile, and it had helped Danny gain some much-needed perspective. He had received his penance and been given absolution. His soul was clean again.

But, while according to Catholic doctrine, God had forgiven and forgotten his sins, Danny never could. Try as he might, the whole thing still kept him awake at night, still gave him nightmares, and he still refused to talk to anyone but the priest about the depths of his pain. What he told Steve was only a small fraction of what there was to tell. This was Danny's burden to carry.

When Steve had been shot, the situation was different than it had been with either his partner, Grace, or his brother Matty. This time, maybe he could save Steve. He would do all he could to save him. And if that meant crash-landing a plane on Waikiki beach, so be it. If that meant giving Steve half his liver, so be it. Steve had become closer to him than a brother. Steve was his best friend. Steve had somehow clawed and scraped and kicked and scratched his way into Danny's heart and become the person he was closest to in his life. He loved his kids beyond words, beyond anything even approaching words. But they were his kids, and there were things in his life he would protect them from as long as he could. He could not tell them what he went through on a daily basis on his job. Sooner or later, their innocence would be taken from them, but for as long as he could, he would shelter them from the part of the world that would be only too happy to hurt them, to destroy their hope and capacity to see what was good and kind in the world. Danny could not talk about his job with Gracie, let alone little Charlie.

But Steve knew those things they saw every day, experienced too often, that Danny shielded his children from. Steve shared those things. Steve was a good man -crazy super-SEAL and all- and he drove Danny nuts with the way he just expected Danny to have his back when the odds of anyone coming out alive were so highly stacked against them that he didn't know how Steve even did what he did. But Steve did it, and Danny backed him up, and was not pushing up daisies. Steve was doing everything crazy he could think of, but he was also doing something that worked.

It had not been on anything crazy that had almost cost Steve everything. Steve was just piloting a plane, albeit a drug smuggler plane, while undercover, with Danny sitting in the co-pilot's seat, playing his mechanic. Dangerous, sure, but so was everything remotely normal that they did. This, though, had been the time Steve and death came entirely too close together.

But Danny's half a liver had saved Steve's life. Finally, Danny had one in the Win Column. He had done something totally right. He had finally in a small way felt that he could let go of the burden of killing Marco Reyes, and watching his partner Grace die before his eyes. Finally, because he had not just saved Steve, but had NOT killed in cold blood the man who had almost killed Steve -even before he, Kono, Chin, and Lou knew just how grave Steve's condition was- he had redeemed himself. He had been faced with the two things from his past that haunted his sleeping and waking hours, and had made them right. Steve had been saved. And Danny had not murdered someone in cold blood when he had the will and the way to do it. One shot. Just one simple shot. So easy. But he had stepped away, turned off the hate. And now he could start to let the past begin to heal. He could really think about moving forward. Life was going to be much better now. Finally. The worst day of his life had freed him from the other two worst days. The sun was rising. After so much inner darkness, the sun was rising.

Then Danny realized his co-workers were going to almost absurd lengths to avoid him. Not that Steve was, for after three days in a separate bay in ICU, Danny was transferred to a regular room in Tripler, while Steve was still in ICU. Just when Danny finally felt he could be more at ease with his colleagues, because he had let go the burden of the secrets he was carrying, they were avoiding him.

H50 H50 H50 H50

When Danny had learned what it was that had kept Kono and Lou away from visiting him, he had felt again that deep sense of betrayal. It was at such a bad time, too. He had been looking forward to the company of his ohana. He could look them all in the eyes again without feeling deep in the depths a sense that they would see him for the liar and murderer he was. He had shown his character, his integrity, and they were rejecting him because they felt he was without integrity or good character because he had not shot the man who had nearly killed Steve. He got hurt too often, complained too much, and he might say something he had yet to say, except to himself.

At least Chin didn't feel that way. He and Chin were on good terms, possibly even better terms than before. Chin had been a stalwart friend to everyone all through this.

Then came Kono. Kono had said she wanted to apologize to him, and had shown concern. While Lou was attacking him, she had done more than just come to his aid. She had acted like a friend. Her actions had spoken louder to him than her words. He owed it to her to hear her out, to give her a chance to explain herself. Danny admitted he would have to steel himself because he did not know what she would say. But he owed it to the entire Five-0 Task Force to at least listen to her. He knew if the task force was reduced to co-workers, without the closeness they had had in the past, it would hurt their effectiveness. Their effectiveness in part stemmed largely from their chemistry, their friendship in office and out.

Danny and Kono had been friends for years. The last two had been less close, but so much had happened in that time, not the least of which was Kono's marriage to Adam Noshimura. Danny didn't know Adam well at all, but in his heart he was skeptical of a former Yakuza Boss's entry into the world of law abiding, above-board citizen. The reason he gave Adam the benefit of the doubt was because he trusted Kono's judgment.

So what had happened in the last two years?

Immediately, quietly, into Danny's mind came Lou Grover's interactions and then addition to the Task Force.

And Danny knew, with a cop's intuition and a personal sense of hitting the bull's eye, that this was it.

He looked at his bruised arm, and was aware of the throbbing in his blackened eye. The things that Lou had said to him that afternoon, even if under the influence of a combination of massive caffeine intake and stimulant-rich allergy medication, were almost certainly things he had at least thought to some degree. That's what came out most of the time when drugs loosened someone's tongue. Who had Lou bee-lined toward to be his closest friend on the Task Force? Steve. He wanted to be Steve's partner. Who was in his way? Danny. Chin was unshakeable, but Kono was more vulnerable, because she did have problems at home, especially now that Adam had been in prison over a year. She and Lou spent a lot of time together on the job. And sometime in the past couple of years, Kono had developed an aversion to Danny.

Coincidence?

No cop believed in coincidence.

If Lou had gotten to Kono, and set about poisoning her mind against him, he would surely be more willing to forgive her. It would depend on if she realized that is what had happened. If that wasn't what had made her change her feelings toward him, he would have to simply listen and then react with as calm a head as he could. He was hurt by what she had said about him. She had hit bone. If they got past this, things would take time to rebuild. Trust destroyed was hard to gain back, if it was even possible to gain it back. Only time would tell on that question. But Danny was willing to try, while being fully aware of what it would take.

Could he forgive Kono? For all their sakes, he would try.

Two things Danny now knew: things in the Task Force had changed, if only in personal dynamics, with the addition of Lou, and Lou had quit when Steve made it clear that he was not switching partners. And he would give Kono a chance. If her mind had been poisoned over time, he owed it to their past friendship, and to the Task Force. But it would not be easy. He did not kid himself on that. It would take time to return to anything like the friendship they had built before.

When Lou had attacked him, and said things Danny remembered far more clearly than he did the events of the actual attack, he had felt such a sense of relief when Lou was removed from the room. It wasn't something he had realized at the time, but afterwards, knowing Lou had not only turned in his badge but had physically attacked him in his hospital bed –in front of the whole of the Task Force, no less- and been arrested, Danny had felt an overwhelming sense of relief behind the other emotions at the time. Danny, on at least a subconscious level, had been uncomfortable around Lou, and he only knew that he had been, not when it had started. When he had known he was returning from ER to a room with no Lou in it, he had been far more relaxed than could be explained by the knowledge that his vision was not damaged.

Danny's thoughts were interrupted by Steve returning to the room from his physical therapy session. He looked spent, a little embarrassed. "Hard workout, Steve?"

Steve was helped by an orderly back into his bed. "Thanks, Jace," he said to the orderly, who nodded and left. "Omigod, Danny, you have no idea! I am as weak as a kitten. It's humiliating how little it takes to tire me right now! I barely did anything!"

Danny had trouble getting his mind around that, until he realized he too would be in physical therapy soon, and he was not in marathon shape. "We can have hall races, when I catch up to you on the PT schedule. Two old geezers impersonating Steve McGarrett and Danny Williams can shuffle like mad up the hall and back, first one to the water fountain buys the other a cold one."

"We can't have beers yet."

"Oh yeah. How quickly the mind forgets what it wants to. Uh, lemonade?"

Steve, leaning back, grinned. "Lemonades. I could drink one now."

As if on cue, the nurse came in with their dinners and meds. Steve grabbed his pitcher of ice water and drank straight from it, bypassing his cup entirely.

"Animal," Danny said, shaking his head tolerantly.