'Ike aku, 'ike mai, kokua aku kokua mai
Pairing: Steve McGarrett/Danny Williams
Rating: R
Summary: Steve was always his backup, too, is the thing that nobody understands.
Author warning: Major character death.
--
Author's note:
Right, so, okay:
1) This has been sitting on my computer for - months, actually, months, and I've been terrified of it.
2) Mostly because sometimes I looked at it and I hated it (that's a lie, most times a looked at it and hated it), and sometimes I looked at it and said, "Hey, you never know..." and finally I got up and got the nerve to have my lovely beta look over it and she told me no, I wasn't insane, and yes, I should post it, along with a few other things I'll thank her insanely for at the end of this fic.
3) The translation - and the whole quote to the title is as followed: 'Ike aku, 'ike mai, kokua aku kokua mai; pela iho la ka nohana 'ohana. - Recognize others, be recognized, help others, be helped; such is a family relationship.
P.S. I'm sorry for this fic. So sorry.
--
“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.”
--C.S. Lewis
Sometimes it hits Danny like a bullet to the lung, what he doesn’t have anymore. All the things he’s fought for and lost, the things he didn’t fight for and still lost. Most days, he has to stop and catch his breath, leaning against a wall or the side of the car; collapse onto the couch with a beer and stare pointlessly at the blank television screen - he hasn’t paid his cable bill in two months now, he only has three channels to choose from, so most of the time he chooses to stare at the walls. He’ll stand or sit, breathing in and out, short breaths that sound desperate while things that he doesn’t want to think about flash through his mind and he’ll reach his fingers out to grasp for someone he knows isn’t there.
He’d rather take a bullet to the lung.
He might even be able to breathe better, he thinks, with a bullet in his chest, instead of all these thoughts, memories, swarming through his brain. He’d close his eyes to sleep but he knows exactly what’s waiting for him; bloody monsters clawing their way towards him, desperate to get to him, to overcome him. To sink their teeth in his flesh, dig their nails into his legs and climb upwards, make their way to his eyes, aiming for his heart in the process - to rip it out. Nightmares are a grotesque image of his emotions painted out behind his eyelids for him to see that leave him sitting straight up in bed, gasping with tears dripping all over sweat-soaked sheets that will suddenly need changed, a name he hasn’t been able to say for a while half-formed on his lips, ready to call out into the empty night for help.
Steve was always his backup, too, is the thing that nobody understands.
--
Danny’s knuckles are all scraped up most mornings when he walks into HQ, where he has not been cleared to work again, but everyone lets him attend anyways, because they know he needs somewhere to wander around besides his own home, locked inside his own head. Chin will look at his hands and shake his head, mumble something in Pidgin that Danny refuses to acknowledge as sympathetic and more along the lines of crazy haole has lost it. Lori will look like she’s got a lecture forming in her head to start, what with her psychology background, with her profiling expertise. Kono, though. Kono is the one Danny can count on the most, really. She will study him with her deep brown eyes for a moment, then she will steer him by the shoulder into her office, pull out her first aid kit, and clean his hands up for him.
Danny always forgets.
He’s always too busy staring at the mess he’s left in the wake of his fits of rage the nights before, broken mirrors or picture frames, holes in the walls, chairs turned over, and cushions strewn across the floors. There’s always a mess, but somehow before he gets back home, one of the team members mysteriously disappears for a longer lunch than the others and straightens it back up. He wishes they wouldn’t. He wishes they’d leave it alone, wishes they’d leave it there so he can see it when he goes back home, so he can see the mess he’s made and remind himself of what he’s become.
It would be one less thing he’d have to owe them.
--
Danny has started a running tally of all the things he’ll owe them, in the end, when and if he ever gets better. His team mates and Rachel and Grace and even Stan of all the people in the world; he’ll owe them all something in the end. The list is growing more and more extensive by the day and it makes Danny a little sick to think about it, makes him look weak and pathetic, not half the man he used to be. Not half the man -
Not half the man Steve used to be.
He’ll owe Chin for all the times he’s picked Danny up at the bar, for all the times he’s cleaned Danny’s puke up out of his backseat and Danny’s bathroom. For all the times he’s bought Advil and water and listened to Danny’s drunken ramblings at three in the morning, and never once said a word about it. He’ll owe Kono for all the times she’s cleaned his bruised and scraped knuckles, for the one time she had to drive him to the hospital for the wrist they thought he broke. For the one time, where she had to fish him out of the ocean that he’s still not ready to think about, that Kono still never brings up even though Danny knows it’s something that should probably be addressed, really. He’ll owe Lori for the endless cups of coffee she gets and doctors for him just right, for the way she always trails off and leaves the conversation open just in case Danny might want to talk. For that one time when she dropped by with Danny’s groceries for the week and found him staring at the blank television screen, off in space, and she just sat down next to him without saying a word, took his hand, laid her head on his shoulder, and neither of them spoke for the next three hours.
He’ll owe Rachel for all the extra weekends she’s let him have with Grace, without him asking, without him needing to say anything; just her offering. He’ll owe her for bringing all that food by because for whatever he can say about Rachel, she’s always been an excellent cook and she expresses the need to comfort people through casseroles, really. He’ll owe her for sitting there and taking it when he paced back and forth and screamed at her, blaming her for everything that happened, because it was all her fault they divorced and it was all her fault they moved here and it - It was all her fault he met Steve. And then she’d just opened her arms and held him while he cried. He’ll owe Grace for all her wonderful drawings and her brilliant smiles and whispered words of comfort and her innocence and the fact that she’s still here, thank God; his little girl is still here.
He’ll owe Stan for that really excellent lawyer after he beat the shit out of the loser in the bar that had the nerve to call him the ‘f’ word after the bartender maybe decided to shut him off when he tried to finish the bottle of Johnny Walker but fell off his stool. The really excellent lawyer and Stan both paid the man off before he decided to press charges, something that’s both not really legal, Danny thinks, and not talked about, because Danny still has his job, technically, and custody of his child and he’s not in jail or paying fines off.
He’ll owe them all for the times they’ve grocery shopped, cooked for him, cleaned for him, showed up and made sure he’s not passed out on the weekends he doesn’t have Grace, or dead.
He’ll owe them all for that time they had to pick him up off the ground before he tried to crawl in it just to be with him, for that time they listened to his gut wrenching sobs for an hour and a half, clawing at the grass and the freshly dug dirt, begging them not to put him down there because it’s too dark, it’s too dark, he can’t see. How will he be able to get his way out?
He owes them all, but he’s not ready to start paying it back yet.
--
He says, “Are you joking?” when they tell him in the hospital. That’s the first thing he says, because he doesn’t believe it. He blinks at the doctor in her blue scrubs and he tries to place what those rust-colored stains mixed in with the deep red-colored stains might be.
She cocks her head to the side, frowns even deeper, and clasps her hands tightly in front of him. Behind him, Lori is choking on a sob. Kono has collapsed in a chair. Chin is muttering a prayer in Pidgin.
Danny says, “He doesn’t die. ”
The doctor shakes her head and takes a step towards Danny, slowly and carefully like she’s not sure what he’s going to do to her. “I’m sorry,” she murmurs, then hesitates, before she adds, “There was just nothing we could do.”
She observes Danny, watches while this sinks in, and then walks away. Danny starts trembling. He’s in a complete state of disbelief; wants to see him now. Because this doesn’t happen. It does not happen, because he’s - it doesn’t happen, Danny tells himself, whirls around to face the rest of his team, but his mouth shuts when he sees them. And when he sees them, the trembling turns into shaking and it hits Danny with a cry that rips painfully out of his throat.
Steve’s finally run out of lives.
Game over.
--
Every now and then Danny thinks he could possibly get better. After a good, busy-filled weekend with Grace; after a day filled with paperwork at HQ. Then he’ll come to the house he’s come to know as his, too, the house he shared with Steve, the house he and Steve made their own finally, after a few months of dancing around the inevitable, then a few more months of arguing over paint samples and carpet swatches and windows and cabinet models, finally made it their own, and it’ll hit Danny all over again, a fresh wave of pain so deep and messy he doesn’t know what to do with it.
So he’ll dig the fullest bottle of Johnny Walker out of the liquor cabinet - he always tries to keep it stalked up (Rachel always tries to keep it emptied out), and drink straight from the bottle, staring at the walls that he and Steve painted themselves. Sometimes he’ll get tired of it before he’s even really gotten into it and put it back away and go to sleep. Other times, he’ll get a little drunk and a lot angry and throw the bottle, half-full, at the stupid painted walls. Then there are the times he drinks himself to sleep.
The walls have white spots where they’re all spackled up.
Danny hasn’t slept in a bed in three months.
--
Danny has to wear his own dress blues. He knows that’s what they put Steve in, too, because he was there when the director was talking about it. Danny was just too foggy from all the Ativan the doctor prescribed him to really process what was happening during that sit-down meeting. He knows there was someone from the Navy there. Knows Kono was there, beside him, sniffling occasionally, but straight-backed and strong, just like she’s always been. Knows Chin was carrying on most of the conversation because he knew Danny couldn’t. He knows Lori was out in the sit-down room of the parlor because the office was already overcrowded with people, waiting for them with a tissue crumpled up in her hand, eyes red, and no makeup on, hair thrown up messily. But the conversation itself is one big slur because that’s what Danny on Ativan is. One big slur.
The doctors keep him on it the whole way through the funeral process anyways, but it doesn’t help.
He feels like he’s suffocating in his uniform, long sleeves too warm and collar too scratchy. The coffin is glaring bright and ugly at him and Mary is gripping his arm tightly. She isn’t crying, not like everybody else. He and Mary, they’re the only ones not crying. She’d walked up to him before the funeral and said she didn’t know what she had left in her and Danny told her he honestly didn’t know how much he had left in him, either. Mary had given him the saddest smile he’d ever seen on a pretty girl and then hugged him tight.
Guns go off, three sharp shots that have both of them jumping; Mary gets a flag that she immediately turns and hands to Danny, and the coffin starts going down.
Danny can’t breathe.
His knees are week and he falls to the ground and a sob cuts loose from his throat, ragged and rough-edged as it sinks lower and lower into the ground. Behind him, his team is rushing forward to catch him, but Danny is already threading his fingers into the grass, crawling towards the coffin, towards Steve. “No, no, no,” he breathes out, trying to escape from Chin’s grasp, “He can’t - no,” he shouts, digging his fingers into the ground and trying to get closer, “It’s too dark! It’s too dark! He can’t see! How will he be able to get out when he wakes up, guys? We can’t leave him like this; it’s too dark!”
Someone steps in his line of vision, and he can’t see who it is; his eyes are blurry with tears. They reach out, touch their palm to his cheek and he flinches away for just a moment until he hears Grace’s voice, strong despite her own tears, “Danno,” she whispers, “Give me your keychain, Danno.” Danny blinks until the tears drip down and he can see Grace a little clearer. She’s standing in front of him, her own tears dripping freely down onto her black dress, just bought yesterday and to be thrown out tomorrow, Danny knows, because Rachel would never keep an outfit that has a bad memory for their little girl in her closet. She has snot dripping down her nose and her hand his still stroking Danny’s cheek, like Danny’s one focus on reality. He tries to catch his breath while Kono reaches into his pocket for him and pulls out his keychain. Maybe it’s the drugs, but he has no clue what Grace plans to do. He watches while she finds his LED flashlight on his keyring, unscrews it and hands the keychain back to Kono. She walks over to the edge of the grave and peers down in for one long moment before she kisses the flashlight lightly and then tosses it in.
She walks back over to Danny and throws her arms around him, murmuring in his ear, “Now Uncle Steve will be able to see, Daddy. Its okay, Daddy. It’s okay.
“Gracie loves you.”
--
What nobody understands is that Steve was always Danny’s backup, too. It worked both ways, on and off the field. Neither of them thought anything of it. It was a give and take relationship, worked smoothly enough. If Danny bitched, Steve smoothed things over. If Steve needed quiet, Danny disappeared for a while. If Steve needed to go in guns a blazing, Danny would follow, loudmouthed and angry all the while, but nevertheless, he would follow. He would make sure Steve was safe. In return, Steve would do the same.
That’s why Steve never had any second thoughts about pushing Danny out of the way and taking the shot.
That’s what backup does.
On and off the field, they’re supposed to have your back, take your shots for you, and get the bad guy when you can’t. Steve never had any second thoughts because he wanted Danny to live.
Danny’s not sure if Steve would be impressed with him now, with how he’s living his life. He’s not sure if Steve would regret his choice, but he thinks maybe he might. Danny’s not exactly living right now, rather than moving through the days aimlessly, trying to get from one to the next. Chin likes to think of it as a funk. Kono likes to think of it as his grieving period. Lori likes to use clinical terms and say depression, stages of grief, denial, and some big words that Danny doesn’t know or want to learn.
Danny likes to call it what it is: anger, pain, sadness, grief, longing, nightmares, fear, and weariness. He is so goddamn tired all the goddamn time. He wants to curl up and fall asleep for the rest of forever. He wants to fall asleep without the sound of waves for the first time in forever, because before now, he’d grown to like them. Now, they remind them of Steve. He wants to live in a house where he doesn’t see pictures of Steve with his daughter, Steve with his friends, Steve with his mother, Steve with Mary - Steve with him. He wants to live in a house where he didn’t paint every room a color they picked out themselves.
They call it backup.
Danny calls it leaving him stranded, by himself with all these emotions and no one to hold him.
--
Kono finds him curled up in a ball in the middle of the kitchen floor, and she looks down at him for a long time before she sits down Indian-style and pulls his head into her lap, starting to run her fingers through his hair. He’s staring at the baseboard of the kitchen cabinets, nothing and everything running through his head. He tries to think of what day it is, but he can’t even remember that. He does know he got sidetracked when he came in to get some milk in the middle of the night. He tripped over the air and landed on one knee and his hands and he was hot and flustered and the tiles felt cool, so he laid his cheek against them. Then he slowly lowered his whole body against them, and ended up there.
He thinks it might be a Monday. Monday sounds appropriate to his mood and the weather, which is rainy and somewhat chilly by Hawaii’s standards. He knows this because once he stopped being flustered he got cold, but he didn’t have the energy to move. Kono grips his hair tighter than necessary and he realizes she’s saying something, “When did you eat last?”
Danny can’t remember.
It might be days, it might be weeks.
It’s probably just been a night or so.
He shivers but doesn’t respond and he thinks he hears Kono’s sigh. It would be right of her to get tired of him finally; he would deserve it, for her to finally leave him alone, for all of them to finally leave him in the dust, to leave him here to cry and empty out, for the bloody monsters in his nightmares to claw their way through to his heart finally, just like they’ve wanted for so long now. Tears slip out past his lashes without him noticing and he snuffles against her pants leg.
“Danny,” she whispers softly, and Danny chokes on another sob. “Danny, Danny, Danny.”
It’s unfair, he thinks, that he’s still the one here with all this backup and family and Steve is the one in the ground, without anyone. It’s unfair that Danny is the one alone inside, the one left to deal with an empty house and all this time and anger and sadness without Steve to lean on, like he normally would. Because Steve is - “He was my backup, too,” Danny chokes out against her leg and Kono tightens her grip on him, running a hand up and down his back. “I need him here, too. It’s not - I can’t - I don’t want to be here, without him.”
Kono doesn’t really have anything to say to that, doesn’t know what to do besides shush him and run her hand against his back, so she keeps doing the same thing. Danny keeps repeating things about backup until he falls into a nightmarish sleep and when he wakes up, he’s still on the floor but Kono’s gotten him a pillow and the blanket from the couch. He’s bone-deep cold and tired, exhausted, the kind of tired the hangs over your head like a black cloud and he doesn’t know what to do with it, so he lays on the kitchen floor, staring up at the ceiling until he falls asleep again.
--
Days turn into weeks turn into months and Danny is still tired. He sleeps and he sleeps and he loses a lot of weight. It’s worrisome to the point that even Grace - who Danny makes a point of putting on a show for - notices and begs him to eat pizza with her one rainy weekend night when they’re sitting in the kitchen. Danny’s main meal consists of a sandwich when he knows he can’t hold it off anymore and Kono, Chin, and Lori are watching him like hawks, coffee, and Johnny Walker or beer. ‘Not an alcoholic,’ he tells a voice that sounds disturbingly like Steve’s in his head while he pushes a slice of pizza around on a paper plate.
He’s barely even doing paperwork at HQ anymore. He goes into his office and falls asleep on his couch because he doesn’t want to be in the house.
He lets out a sigh and pushes the plate away, blinking. “I’m really not hungry, Monkey,” he says quietly, avoiding eye contact. There’s silence for a long moment.
Then there’s a hand on his cheek and he’s staring into Grace’s brown eyes, worried and innocent as they are. “Danno,” she says, thumb stroking his cheek lightly, “I miss him too. But I miss you, too, you know. I don’t want to lose you anymore than I already have, okay? I don’t want to lose you for good.”
Danny eats his pizza that night and throws the Johnny Walker out the next day.
--
Danny sees ghosts everywhere. In the office in the dying sunlight, right before it’s time to turn on his lamp but he’s reluctant to, because he wants to see that glimpse of pink sun that only Hawaii seems to be able to cast spread across his desk, in the field, when he’s about to take down a perp that’s armed, in the car when he’s driving a little faster than he should or when the radio is on a song he doesn’t like, but he knows Steve would, he sees it. A light, shimmery shadow, the best kind of shadow, the reminder of Steve’s presence.
Warmth will spread through him, all around him and he’ll smile for just that moment. Steve’s name will cross his lips and he’ll blink and open his eyes and it’ll be gone, but for that moment, for that instant, he’s reminded.
Steve’s still with him.
Steve’s still his backup.
Even now.
He carries it with him wherever he goes.
Some days the sky’s so blue, I feel like I can talk to you.
--
End Author's Note:
Like so many other fics I write, there are a ton of things that I couldn't have written this one without, but these things deserve special shout outs.
1) Music. As always, always, always, music. In particular, this wonderful song, Who You'd Be Today, by Kenny Chesney, because sometimes he just gets it, y'know?
2)The people I've lost, because writing this fic sort of helped me move forward from that, I won't lie. It makes me think about how we have so much to lose everyday, yet at the same time, so many of us have so many people we love willing to help us surrounding us. I hope everyone knows exactly what I mean. ♥
3) My beautiful, wonderful beta, simplyn2deep, who not only reassured me several times that this wasn't cheesy or too much, or that I was stupid or crazy, but also was incredibly too kind and complimented me on my disastrous writing, and then came up with this gorgeous title.
Thank you so much, everything/body. ♥
P.S. I'm sorry again for this fic.
Rating: R
Summary: Steve was always his backup, too, is the thing that nobody understands.
Author warning: Major character death.
--
Author's note:
Right, so, okay:
1) This has been sitting on my computer for - months, actually, months, and I've been terrified of it.
2) Mostly because sometimes I looked at it and I hated it (that's a lie, most times a looked at it and hated it), and sometimes I looked at it and said, "Hey, you never know..." and finally I got up and got the nerve to have my lovely beta look over it and she told me no, I wasn't insane, and yes, I should post it, along with a few other things I'll thank her insanely for at the end of this fic.
3) The translation - and the whole quote to the title is as followed: 'Ike aku, 'ike mai, kokua aku kokua mai; pela iho la ka nohana 'ohana. - Recognize others, be recognized, help others, be helped; such is a family relationship.
P.S. I'm sorry for this fic. So sorry.
--
“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.”
--C.S. Lewis
Sometimes it hits Danny like a bullet to the lung, what he doesn’t have anymore. All the things he’s fought for and lost, the things he didn’t fight for and still lost. Most days, he has to stop and catch his breath, leaning against a wall or the side of the car; collapse onto the couch with a beer and stare pointlessly at the blank television screen - he hasn’t paid his cable bill in two months now, he only has three channels to choose from, so most of the time he chooses to stare at the walls. He’ll stand or sit, breathing in and out, short breaths that sound desperate while things that he doesn’t want to think about flash through his mind and he’ll reach his fingers out to grasp for someone he knows isn’t there.
He’d rather take a bullet to the lung.
He might even be able to breathe better, he thinks, with a bullet in his chest, instead of all these thoughts, memories, swarming through his brain. He’d close his eyes to sleep but he knows exactly what’s waiting for him; bloody monsters clawing their way towards him, desperate to get to him, to overcome him. To sink their teeth in his flesh, dig their nails into his legs and climb upwards, make their way to his eyes, aiming for his heart in the process - to rip it out. Nightmares are a grotesque image of his emotions painted out behind his eyelids for him to see that leave him sitting straight up in bed, gasping with tears dripping all over sweat-soaked sheets that will suddenly need changed, a name he hasn’t been able to say for a while half-formed on his lips, ready to call out into the empty night for help.
Steve was always his backup, too, is the thing that nobody understands.
--
Danny’s knuckles are all scraped up most mornings when he walks into HQ, where he has not been cleared to work again, but everyone lets him attend anyways, because they know he needs somewhere to wander around besides his own home, locked inside his own head. Chin will look at his hands and shake his head, mumble something in Pidgin that Danny refuses to acknowledge as sympathetic and more along the lines of crazy haole has lost it. Lori will look like she’s got a lecture forming in her head to start, what with her psychology background, with her profiling expertise. Kono, though. Kono is the one Danny can count on the most, really. She will study him with her deep brown eyes for a moment, then she will steer him by the shoulder into her office, pull out her first aid kit, and clean his hands up for him.
Danny always forgets.
He’s always too busy staring at the mess he’s left in the wake of his fits of rage the nights before, broken mirrors or picture frames, holes in the walls, chairs turned over, and cushions strewn across the floors. There’s always a mess, but somehow before he gets back home, one of the team members mysteriously disappears for a longer lunch than the others and straightens it back up. He wishes they wouldn’t. He wishes they’d leave it alone, wishes they’d leave it there so he can see it when he goes back home, so he can see the mess he’s made and remind himself of what he’s become.
It would be one less thing he’d have to owe them.
--
Danny has started a running tally of all the things he’ll owe them, in the end, when and if he ever gets better. His team mates and Rachel and Grace and even Stan of all the people in the world; he’ll owe them all something in the end. The list is growing more and more extensive by the day and it makes Danny a little sick to think about it, makes him look weak and pathetic, not half the man he used to be. Not half the man -
Not half the man Steve used to be.
He’ll owe Chin for all the times he’s picked Danny up at the bar, for all the times he’s cleaned Danny’s puke up out of his backseat and Danny’s bathroom. For all the times he’s bought Advil and water and listened to Danny’s drunken ramblings at three in the morning, and never once said a word about it. He’ll owe Kono for all the times she’s cleaned his bruised and scraped knuckles, for the one time she had to drive him to the hospital for the wrist they thought he broke. For the one time, where she had to fish him out of the ocean that he’s still not ready to think about, that Kono still never brings up even though Danny knows it’s something that should probably be addressed, really. He’ll owe Lori for the endless cups of coffee she gets and doctors for him just right, for the way she always trails off and leaves the conversation open just in case Danny might want to talk. For that one time when she dropped by with Danny’s groceries for the week and found him staring at the blank television screen, off in space, and she just sat down next to him without saying a word, took his hand, laid her head on his shoulder, and neither of them spoke for the next three hours.
He’ll owe Rachel for all the extra weekends she’s let him have with Grace, without him asking, without him needing to say anything; just her offering. He’ll owe her for bringing all that food by because for whatever he can say about Rachel, she’s always been an excellent cook and she expresses the need to comfort people through casseroles, really. He’ll owe her for sitting there and taking it when he paced back and forth and screamed at her, blaming her for everything that happened, because it was all her fault they divorced and it was all her fault they moved here and it - It was all her fault he met Steve. And then she’d just opened her arms and held him while he cried. He’ll owe Grace for all her wonderful drawings and her brilliant smiles and whispered words of comfort and her innocence and the fact that she’s still here, thank God; his little girl is still here.
He’ll owe Stan for that really excellent lawyer after he beat the shit out of the loser in the bar that had the nerve to call him the ‘f’ word after the bartender maybe decided to shut him off when he tried to finish the bottle of Johnny Walker but fell off his stool. The really excellent lawyer and Stan both paid the man off before he decided to press charges, something that’s both not really legal, Danny thinks, and not talked about, because Danny still has his job, technically, and custody of his child and he’s not in jail or paying fines off.
He’ll owe them all for the times they’ve grocery shopped, cooked for him, cleaned for him, showed up and made sure he’s not passed out on the weekends he doesn’t have Grace, or dead.
He’ll owe them all for that time they had to pick him up off the ground before he tried to crawl in it just to be with him, for that time they listened to his gut wrenching sobs for an hour and a half, clawing at the grass and the freshly dug dirt, begging them not to put him down there because it’s too dark, it’s too dark, he can’t see. How will he be able to get his way out?
He owes them all, but he’s not ready to start paying it back yet.
--
He says, “Are you joking?” when they tell him in the hospital. That’s the first thing he says, because he doesn’t believe it. He blinks at the doctor in her blue scrubs and he tries to place what those rust-colored stains mixed in with the deep red-colored stains might be.
She cocks her head to the side, frowns even deeper, and clasps her hands tightly in front of him. Behind him, Lori is choking on a sob. Kono has collapsed in a chair. Chin is muttering a prayer in Pidgin.
Danny says, “He doesn’t die. ”
The doctor shakes her head and takes a step towards Danny, slowly and carefully like she’s not sure what he’s going to do to her. “I’m sorry,” she murmurs, then hesitates, before she adds, “There was just nothing we could do.”
She observes Danny, watches while this sinks in, and then walks away. Danny starts trembling. He’s in a complete state of disbelief; wants to see him now. Because this doesn’t happen. It does not happen, because he’s - it doesn’t happen, Danny tells himself, whirls around to face the rest of his team, but his mouth shuts when he sees them. And when he sees them, the trembling turns into shaking and it hits Danny with a cry that rips painfully out of his throat.
Steve’s finally run out of lives.
Game over.
--
Every now and then Danny thinks he could possibly get better. After a good, busy-filled weekend with Grace; after a day filled with paperwork at HQ. Then he’ll come to the house he’s come to know as his, too, the house he shared with Steve, the house he and Steve made their own finally, after a few months of dancing around the inevitable, then a few more months of arguing over paint samples and carpet swatches and windows and cabinet models, finally made it their own, and it’ll hit Danny all over again, a fresh wave of pain so deep and messy he doesn’t know what to do with it.
So he’ll dig the fullest bottle of Johnny Walker out of the liquor cabinet - he always tries to keep it stalked up (Rachel always tries to keep it emptied out), and drink straight from the bottle, staring at the walls that he and Steve painted themselves. Sometimes he’ll get tired of it before he’s even really gotten into it and put it back away and go to sleep. Other times, he’ll get a little drunk and a lot angry and throw the bottle, half-full, at the stupid painted walls. Then there are the times he drinks himself to sleep.
The walls have white spots where they’re all spackled up.
Danny hasn’t slept in a bed in three months.
--
Danny has to wear his own dress blues. He knows that’s what they put Steve in, too, because he was there when the director was talking about it. Danny was just too foggy from all the Ativan the doctor prescribed him to really process what was happening during that sit-down meeting. He knows there was someone from the Navy there. Knows Kono was there, beside him, sniffling occasionally, but straight-backed and strong, just like she’s always been. Knows Chin was carrying on most of the conversation because he knew Danny couldn’t. He knows Lori was out in the sit-down room of the parlor because the office was already overcrowded with people, waiting for them with a tissue crumpled up in her hand, eyes red, and no makeup on, hair thrown up messily. But the conversation itself is one big slur because that’s what Danny on Ativan is. One big slur.
The doctors keep him on it the whole way through the funeral process anyways, but it doesn’t help.
He feels like he’s suffocating in his uniform, long sleeves too warm and collar too scratchy. The coffin is glaring bright and ugly at him and Mary is gripping his arm tightly. She isn’t crying, not like everybody else. He and Mary, they’re the only ones not crying. She’d walked up to him before the funeral and said she didn’t know what she had left in her and Danny told her he honestly didn’t know how much he had left in him, either. Mary had given him the saddest smile he’d ever seen on a pretty girl and then hugged him tight.
Guns go off, three sharp shots that have both of them jumping; Mary gets a flag that she immediately turns and hands to Danny, and the coffin starts going down.
Danny can’t breathe.
His knees are week and he falls to the ground and a sob cuts loose from his throat, ragged and rough-edged as it sinks lower and lower into the ground. Behind him, his team is rushing forward to catch him, but Danny is already threading his fingers into the grass, crawling towards the coffin, towards Steve. “No, no, no,” he breathes out, trying to escape from Chin’s grasp, “He can’t - no,” he shouts, digging his fingers into the ground and trying to get closer, “It’s too dark! It’s too dark! He can’t see! How will he be able to get out when he wakes up, guys? We can’t leave him like this; it’s too dark!”
Someone steps in his line of vision, and he can’t see who it is; his eyes are blurry with tears. They reach out, touch their palm to his cheek and he flinches away for just a moment until he hears Grace’s voice, strong despite her own tears, “Danno,” she whispers, “Give me your keychain, Danno.” Danny blinks until the tears drip down and he can see Grace a little clearer. She’s standing in front of him, her own tears dripping freely down onto her black dress, just bought yesterday and to be thrown out tomorrow, Danny knows, because Rachel would never keep an outfit that has a bad memory for their little girl in her closet. She has snot dripping down her nose and her hand his still stroking Danny’s cheek, like Danny’s one focus on reality. He tries to catch his breath while Kono reaches into his pocket for him and pulls out his keychain. Maybe it’s the drugs, but he has no clue what Grace plans to do. He watches while she finds his LED flashlight on his keyring, unscrews it and hands the keychain back to Kono. She walks over to the edge of the grave and peers down in for one long moment before she kisses the flashlight lightly and then tosses it in.
She walks back over to Danny and throws her arms around him, murmuring in his ear, “Now Uncle Steve will be able to see, Daddy. Its okay, Daddy. It’s okay.
“Gracie loves you.”
--
What nobody understands is that Steve was always Danny’s backup, too. It worked both ways, on and off the field. Neither of them thought anything of it. It was a give and take relationship, worked smoothly enough. If Danny bitched, Steve smoothed things over. If Steve needed quiet, Danny disappeared for a while. If Steve needed to go in guns a blazing, Danny would follow, loudmouthed and angry all the while, but nevertheless, he would follow. He would make sure Steve was safe. In return, Steve would do the same.
That’s why Steve never had any second thoughts about pushing Danny out of the way and taking the shot.
That’s what backup does.
On and off the field, they’re supposed to have your back, take your shots for you, and get the bad guy when you can’t. Steve never had any second thoughts because he wanted Danny to live.
Danny’s not sure if Steve would be impressed with him now, with how he’s living his life. He’s not sure if Steve would regret his choice, but he thinks maybe he might. Danny’s not exactly living right now, rather than moving through the days aimlessly, trying to get from one to the next. Chin likes to think of it as a funk. Kono likes to think of it as his grieving period. Lori likes to use clinical terms and say depression, stages of grief, denial, and some big words that Danny doesn’t know or want to learn.
Danny likes to call it what it is: anger, pain, sadness, grief, longing, nightmares, fear, and weariness. He is so goddamn tired all the goddamn time. He wants to curl up and fall asleep for the rest of forever. He wants to fall asleep without the sound of waves for the first time in forever, because before now, he’d grown to like them. Now, they remind them of Steve. He wants to live in a house where he doesn’t see pictures of Steve with his daughter, Steve with his friends, Steve with his mother, Steve with Mary - Steve with him. He wants to live in a house where he didn’t paint every room a color they picked out themselves.
They call it backup.
Danny calls it leaving him stranded, by himself with all these emotions and no one to hold him.
--
Kono finds him curled up in a ball in the middle of the kitchen floor, and she looks down at him for a long time before she sits down Indian-style and pulls his head into her lap, starting to run her fingers through his hair. He’s staring at the baseboard of the kitchen cabinets, nothing and everything running through his head. He tries to think of what day it is, but he can’t even remember that. He does know he got sidetracked when he came in to get some milk in the middle of the night. He tripped over the air and landed on one knee and his hands and he was hot and flustered and the tiles felt cool, so he laid his cheek against them. Then he slowly lowered his whole body against them, and ended up there.
He thinks it might be a Monday. Monday sounds appropriate to his mood and the weather, which is rainy and somewhat chilly by Hawaii’s standards. He knows this because once he stopped being flustered he got cold, but he didn’t have the energy to move. Kono grips his hair tighter than necessary and he realizes she’s saying something, “When did you eat last?”
Danny can’t remember.
It might be days, it might be weeks.
It’s probably just been a night or so.
He shivers but doesn’t respond and he thinks he hears Kono’s sigh. It would be right of her to get tired of him finally; he would deserve it, for her to finally leave him alone, for all of them to finally leave him in the dust, to leave him here to cry and empty out, for the bloody monsters in his nightmares to claw their way through to his heart finally, just like they’ve wanted for so long now. Tears slip out past his lashes without him noticing and he snuffles against her pants leg.
“Danny,” she whispers softly, and Danny chokes on another sob. “Danny, Danny, Danny.”
It’s unfair, he thinks, that he’s still the one here with all this backup and family and Steve is the one in the ground, without anyone. It’s unfair that Danny is the one alone inside, the one left to deal with an empty house and all this time and anger and sadness without Steve to lean on, like he normally would. Because Steve is - “He was my backup, too,” Danny chokes out against her leg and Kono tightens her grip on him, running a hand up and down his back. “I need him here, too. It’s not - I can’t - I don’t want to be here, without him.”
Kono doesn’t really have anything to say to that, doesn’t know what to do besides shush him and run her hand against his back, so she keeps doing the same thing. Danny keeps repeating things about backup until he falls into a nightmarish sleep and when he wakes up, he’s still on the floor but Kono’s gotten him a pillow and the blanket from the couch. He’s bone-deep cold and tired, exhausted, the kind of tired the hangs over your head like a black cloud and he doesn’t know what to do with it, so he lays on the kitchen floor, staring up at the ceiling until he falls asleep again.
--
Days turn into weeks turn into months and Danny is still tired. He sleeps and he sleeps and he loses a lot of weight. It’s worrisome to the point that even Grace - who Danny makes a point of putting on a show for - notices and begs him to eat pizza with her one rainy weekend night when they’re sitting in the kitchen. Danny’s main meal consists of a sandwich when he knows he can’t hold it off anymore and Kono, Chin, and Lori are watching him like hawks, coffee, and Johnny Walker or beer. ‘Not an alcoholic,’ he tells a voice that sounds disturbingly like Steve’s in his head while he pushes a slice of pizza around on a paper plate.
He’s barely even doing paperwork at HQ anymore. He goes into his office and falls asleep on his couch because he doesn’t want to be in the house.
He lets out a sigh and pushes the plate away, blinking. “I’m really not hungry, Monkey,” he says quietly, avoiding eye contact. There’s silence for a long moment.
Then there’s a hand on his cheek and he’s staring into Grace’s brown eyes, worried and innocent as they are. “Danno,” she says, thumb stroking his cheek lightly, “I miss him too. But I miss you, too, you know. I don’t want to lose you anymore than I already have, okay? I don’t want to lose you for good.”
Danny eats his pizza that night and throws the Johnny Walker out the next day.
--
Danny sees ghosts everywhere. In the office in the dying sunlight, right before it’s time to turn on his lamp but he’s reluctant to, because he wants to see that glimpse of pink sun that only Hawaii seems to be able to cast spread across his desk, in the field, when he’s about to take down a perp that’s armed, in the car when he’s driving a little faster than he should or when the radio is on a song he doesn’t like, but he knows Steve would, he sees it. A light, shimmery shadow, the best kind of shadow, the reminder of Steve’s presence.
Warmth will spread through him, all around him and he’ll smile for just that moment. Steve’s name will cross his lips and he’ll blink and open his eyes and it’ll be gone, but for that moment, for that instant, he’s reminded.
Steve’s still with him.
Steve’s still his backup.
Even now.
He carries it with him wherever he goes.
Some days the sky’s so blue, I feel like I can talk to you.
--
End Author's Note:
Like so many other fics I write, there are a ton of things that I couldn't have written this one without, but these things deserve special shout outs.
1) Music. As always, always, always, music. In particular, this wonderful song, Who You'd Be Today, by Kenny Chesney, because sometimes he just gets it, y'know?
2)The people I've lost, because writing this fic sort of helped me move forward from that, I won't lie. It makes me think about how we have so much to lose everyday, yet at the same time, so many of us have so many people we love willing to help us surrounding us. I hope everyone knows exactly what I mean. ♥
3) My beautiful, wonderful beta, simplyn2deep, who not only reassured me several times that this wasn't cheesy or too much, or that I was stupid or crazy, but also was incredibly too kind and complimented me on my disastrous writing, and then came up with this gorgeous title.
Thank you so much, everything/body. ♥
P.S. I'm sorry again for this fic.