fic : It's Not Okay (But It Will Be Alright)
tkeylasunset asked for some McDanno hurt/comfort to cheer her up, so I tried for emotional h/c with a bit of navel gazing on the differences between cops and military. Then someone at work mentioned Les Miserables so the doctrine of salvation through grace shoved its way in.
Title : It's Not Okay (But It Will Be Alright)
Author : Kahuna Burger
Rating/Warnings : PG13, some swearing, discussion of accidental death.
Pairing : Mostly canon level (pre)McDanno implications.
Standard disclaimers apply. Also, I am not military, police, Catholic, Jewish or Evangelical, nor do I even play any of the above on TV.
Steve stared out at the water, wondering if his new life was already over. Six months on the new task force, six months of learning to have a partner instead of subordinants. Six months of seeing his actions have a direct effect, not just knowing he was making America safer in some abstract way, but being part of the same community that he made safer every time his team closed a case. Being right there among the people he was serving.
But that was the same reason it might all be over.
He heard the Camero purr into the driveway and the front door open and close. Danny didn't bother calling out to him, just crossed through the living room to the kitchen. The refrigerator door opened and closed before the detective joined him on the beach.
Clink and hiss of a Longboard opening, but the bottle placed in his hand was plastic and he looked down to see water. Steve's glare across to his partner only garnered a slight smirk as Danny sipped his own beer. "This isn't a conversation you get to cushion, babe."
He slugged back half the bottle, trying to pretend it was something more fortifying. "Any word?"
"Anders came out of surgery an hour ago, I got the news just as I was wrapping up with HPD." Danny had handled the debate over who would investigate once they had the teen at the hospital, after taking Steve's gun and summarily declaring him off duty until further notice. "He's still considered critical and they aren't willing to give any long term prognosis until they see if he makes it through the night."
"So what happens now?"
"The investigation will be handled by the Kona PD's IA, since we've got too much history with the guys here. I made a statement already and they'll review the comms tapes and forensics before they interview you. If he recovers, they'll take a statement from Anders and we're aiming for a finding within a week."
"That seems fast."
"A little, but this is high profile and the status of 5-0 as a whole is in flux." Danny leaned over and grabbed his arm, pinned him silent with sharp blue eyes when he would have tried for another tangent. "Enough distractions, babe, I could have emailed you all this from the office. How are you holding up?"
Steve looked away again. "I don't know, I really don't. I've had to talk to people after missions with civilian casualties, but this is different, and I don't know if I can be okay with it..."
"You can't." His partner's voice, usually so expressive, was flat and emotionless. "It isn't okay, Steven, and it isn't going to be. We shot, maybe fatally, one of the people we're here to protect. There's no way in which this is okay."
Saving 'you suck at comforting' for another time, he focused on the pronoun use. "What do you mean 'we'? You didn't-"
"I drew my gun too."
"But you didn't shoot."
"I hadn't shot yet." Danny held a hand up sharply to prevent any objections. "Yes, I took a fraction of a second longer in threat assessment than you, but when you pulled the trigger I was still leaning towards firing. I wasn't certain what he was holding was a gun, but he was raising it more towards us and I didn't know it was a phone either until he hit the ground and dropped it." The relief and gratitude Steve felt surprised him, and he only realized then that he had been unconsciously waiting for his partner's condemnation.
"Have you ever...?"
"Yeah." It came out as a pained sigh. "It was a drug bust that went totally wrong, we thought we were hitting the lab, but the intel was screwed up and it was more a communal squat that the guys were dealing out of. We went in hot and there were people yelling and running and I thought this one punk was coming at me with a knife when he was just panicked and trying to get the hell out. Looking back, I doubt he even saw me or heard me yelling to stop and put his weapon down... the weapon that turned out to be a fucking spoon he was eating cereal with when we burst in."
"What happened afterwards?"
"I was suspended for a few months during the investigation, mandatory counseling, retraining and a black mark on my record, but it came down to me being found negligent rather than malicious. I think the worst part was people trying to make me feel better about it - Rachael, my folks, some of the other cops... I didn't want to be told that I'd done the only thing I could, or it wasn't my fault or it didn't reflect on me as a police officer." Danny looked up to meet his eyes again, and Steve knew what he was trying to get across was important to him. "It was my fault. I'd let myself believe that it was a building full of 'Bad Guys' and everyone was a threat and thus an acceptable target. I shot before I'd fully assessed the situation and as far as I was concerned, it did reflect on how good a cop I was."
Okay, that had been saved long enough. "You kinda suck at comforting, Danno."
His partner gave a barking laugh, and before he knew it, he'd been pulled and shoved around on the chair until they were sitting sideways with Danny's arm around his shoulders. "I wish I could comfort you, babe, part of me wants so bad to make you feel better, but the truth is, if you can feel better about this today, find a way to justify it; make it okay in your mind, and go jump into a firefight tomorrow... Then I've been wrong when I get to thinking that as long as I ride you on procedure you've got the right instincts and motivations to be a cop."
Steve smiled a little at the implied compliment buried in there, but frowned again as he leaned on the other man's (surprisingly comfy) shoulder. "Fine, I get that you don't want me to bounce right back, but you said it wouldn't ever be okay, and you're back out there using your weapon when you have to. How do you move past it if you don't want to forgive yourself?"
His partner made a soft 'hmmm'ing sound as he rubbed a warm hand over Steve's arm. "I was raised Roman Catholic, with a good chunk of Jewish tradition from Grams Blechstein, but I knew people from all sorts of faiths. One of my friends, his folks were hard core Evangelicals, and while a lot of it just didn't work for me, the way he explained salvation through grace really stuck."
"Should have figured it would all come back to Grace for you..." He took the swat to the head as his due and tried to dredge up old Sunday School lessons. "That's the faith versus works thing?"
"Sort of. The way Billy explained it to me, grace is about knowing that you've done evil, knowing that there's no way to do enough good to make that evil not count, but accepting that God is capable of forgiving you anyway. Taking a second chance that you don't deserve, acknowledging that you didn't earn it, but doing your best with it anyway even if it's inevitable that at some point you'll fall short and need that grace again."
Steve tried to wrap his head around it, and around it coming from the hard headed skeptic. "I thought you weren't religious?"
"I'm not, particularly, the way this all applies here isn't about God forgiving me, it's about accepting that even if I'm not ever okay with that incident, I'm still a cop. So I take it as a form of grace that whether or not I deserve it, I'm trusted with the responsibility of a gun and a badge and I need to be out there doing my best even if I may someday fail again."
He thought about things he'd done, ways he'd been taught to rationalize, justify, add it all up to the greater good and how none of it had worked this time. "So it's not okay, but eventually I can be alright to move on?"
"That's what worked for me. You'll need to talk to the department shrink, chat with Chin, Duke, maybe some of your Dad's old partners, ya know? You don't have to do it exactly like me, but you need to find a place between thinking what happened is acceptable and never drawing your weapon again."
Nodding quietly, he looked out at the water again and realized true night had fallen as they spoke. "You wanna order something, I've got cash? I think I'm allowed some beer now, and if you want to crash here we can go to the hospital together in the morning."
Danny gave him a last squeeze on the shoulder before getting up. "Sounds good babe. Any games on the DVR?"
"Think so." Steve knew they'd talk again either late at night or in the car on the way to the hospital, and probably many more times over the course of the investigation and any suspension he faced, but the willingness to let him have this interlude of normality first, not expecting him to angst and grieve 24/7 until he found his balance was a kind of grace in itself. "You know, maybe while I'm thinking about grace it would help to have some Grace too."
Funny how a fist to the bicep could be just as caring as the earlier stroking of the same spot. "Funny man, very cute. But I think we can make some plans this week."
As he ordered some pizza (extra pineapple) he considered not ever being okay with what had happened that morning. But settled on the couch as Danny began his pre-game warm up of insults and anticipated ref failures, he knew that as long as his partner was sticking with him, he could be alright in the end.