Duty or Loyalty - Prologue Part 3
Title: Duty or Loyalty - Prologue Part 3
Author: silmanumenel
Disclaimer: Still not mine.
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: None here, will eventually be Danny/Steve
Warnings: None, as far as I can tell.
Word Count: 1.459
Summary: Danny's life is not what you would call normal, and growing up is not exactly easy when half of your family belongs to the mafia. Or: The AU in which Danny is still Danny, but most of his family is on the other side of the law.
In this part: Life goes on.
Notes: I'm sorry it took me so long to update. The muse was very stubborn.
Prologue Part 1 / Prologue Part 2
Danny thought the background check would be the worst because while he himself has never committed any of the offences that would disqualify him, he couldn’t very well hide who his relatives were and what they were rumored to be connected to. But he’s only twenty-two, so he might be forgiven for his naivety. Sure, there were quite a few more interviews for him than for the other applicants, but it was nothing compared to this because as soon as he walks into the precinct on his first day it’s clear that everyone knows.
They’re all looking at him as he’s making his way through the station to the captain’s office to be assigned a partner, and Danny, who normally doesn’t care a fig about what others think of him, feels decidedly uncomfortable, as if the stares are a physical weight, making his skin prickle.
His new partner’s name is Paul Mitchell, a veteran cop with almost twenty years on the force under his belt, and the first thing he says to Danny is, “So, you’re Salvatore Macaluso’s nephew.”
And this is basically how it continues for the next few months. Every last one of his steps is watched suspiciously, conversations stop when he comes near, and Paul double and triple checks his reports, making him rewrite the whole thing when there’s even a minuscule mistake or something just slightly vague. It takes him a while to realize that his partner actually does that to help him, to make sure that Danny is above reproach at all times because as Paul once tells him, “You’ve got good instincts, kid, and you’ll make a damn fine detective one day, but you’ve gotta see to it there’s nothing that’ll trip you up. You’ve got it harder than most here.”
Which Danny thinks is the understatement of the century. The people in the organized crime unit are - not surprisingly - the worst. He’s in their offices at least once a week, being questioned about one thing or another they think might be connected to one of his relatives, and it actually feels like being cross-examined on a regular basis. It’s not as if he could tell them anything concerning the specific dealings they’re asking him about because Uncle Salvo kept his promise, and he hasn’t heard anything regarding the business in the last four years. And while he does feel a bit sorry for them, it’s not really his fault that they never find anything they can pin on his uncle or come up with an accusation that sticks.
So while it’s not easy, Danny still loves doing what he dreamed about since he was a kid, and it does in fact get better after half a year or so. It seems that by then he’s finally proven that he’s not a spy for the mafia, that he’s not selling them all out to be gunned down in their beds, and that he’s a good cop who takes his job seriously and would do anything to catch the bad guys. Perhaps it helped that he got shot in the arm when he pushed Paul out of the way in a simple store robbery gone south.
Of course, he still gets taken off of every case that even carries a hint of any kind of connection to the mob, but that’s alright with Danny because he’s admittedly not very keen on having to investigate any of his family members. Sometimes, especially at night when he can’t sleep and his thoughts are running around his head in circles, he feels guilty about that because as a cop, shouldn’t he want to stop them, to bring them to account for their crimes?
He talks to his mom about it once, one Sunday night after dinner, and she looks at him for a long time, with this expression on her face that still manages to make him feel like a child, holding his hand between both of her hers. Then she asks him, very seriously, if he thinks of his uncle as a criminal. And Danny is surprised by his own immediate and visceral reaction of ‘No’. Despite everything, despite the tiny voice telling him he’s more than biased and completely unable to view this objectively, he could never equate his uncle to the felons he has to deal with on the job, and if he’s certain about one thing it’s that Uncle Salvo loves him and would never hurt him.
“Then that’s your answer,” his mom says with a bittersweet smile, and Danny drops his gaze to the table, once again coming to terms with the fact that his life is never going to be easy, that he’ll always have to struggle with these thoughts. But it’s okay, he tells himself, because he can still work in the profession he loves, and he has a whole lot of people - his family - around him who support him and who are there when he needs them. So on the whole Danny has to concede that in spite of his occasional doubts he’s pretty content with what he’s got at the moment.
---
Her name is Grace, and she’s the most perfect girl Danny has ever seen in his whole life. He didn’t plan on being a dad so soon, at twenty-six he sometimes still feels quite young to take on this kind of responsibility, but it just felt right with Rachel and when she told him she was pregnant, he couldn’t have been happier. And now she’s here, in his arms, his beautiful little daughter, and Danny barely knows what to do with all this joy and love.
Rachel looks exhausted, but happy, and Danny sits down on the bed next to her, carefully handing Grace back and then putting his arms around both of them, kissing Rachel’s forehead and laying a hand on the baby’s tiny little stomach. He can still hardly believe that he helped create something so amazing, and he thinks there can be no better name for her.
Amazing Grace. Their grace, his grace. Danny is glad that he could convince Rachel of the name, she wasn’t too sure about it in the beginning, as it is very important to him, not only because it expresses what she is to him, but also because it’s in memory of his great-grandmother, his Nonna Grazia. He barely remembers her, she died when he was three, but he knows that she was a very fine lady, and he has this one memory where he is sitting in her lap, listening to her telling him the story of Bensurdatu and the three princesses in her strong Italian accent.
Somehow he feels that naming his daughter after her is his way of connecting Grace to this side of his family because she will likely never learn who they truly are and what they do. Even Rachel doesn’t know it. She has met his uncle and his aunt a few times, but only when they were visiting his parents, he has never taken her to the house, and she also knows none of his cousins apart from Aletta.
Danny had gotten into a big row with Debbie over this just after his wedding, his sister screaming at him that he couldn’t keep such a large part of himself, of who he was, from his wife, that it was an inexcusable breach of trust and that Rachel had a right to know because she was family now as well. But Danny had remained stubborn, telling her it was none of her business and that it was his decision alone to make. Debbie hadn’t spoken to him for nearly a month after that, and Danny had known, deep inside, that she was right, that he was taking away Rachel’s own right to decide, but he couldn’t help it, not then and not now.
He doesn’t want to endanger her or Grace, doesn’t want to risk his own little family, and sitting here, holding what is most important to him in his arms, Danny vows to do everything that is necessary to protect them and keep them safe. Not telling her about the family business, keeping her as far away from it as possible, will accomplish that, and then there’s also still his oath never to speak about the family to an outsider. Who knows how Rachel would react, and as harming his uncle in any way is still not an option Danny can stomach, it’s surely better this way.
Maybe it’s cowardly, but he has convinced himself that Rachel doesn’t need to know about this part of himself and the family he belongs to, never even realizing that somewhere in a dark corner of his mind he obviously considers her an outsider.
TBC
Prologue Part 4
Author: silmanumenel
Disclaimer: Still not mine.
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: None here, will eventually be Danny/Steve
Warnings: None, as far as I can tell.
Word Count: 1.459
Summary: Danny's life is not what you would call normal, and growing up is not exactly easy when half of your family belongs to the mafia. Or: The AU in which Danny is still Danny, but most of his family is on the other side of the law.
In this part: Life goes on.
Notes: I'm sorry it took me so long to update. The muse was very stubborn.
Prologue Part 1 / Prologue Part 2
Danny thought the background check would be the worst because while he himself has never committed any of the offences that would disqualify him, he couldn’t very well hide who his relatives were and what they were rumored to be connected to. But he’s only twenty-two, so he might be forgiven for his naivety. Sure, there were quite a few more interviews for him than for the other applicants, but it was nothing compared to this because as soon as he walks into the precinct on his first day it’s clear that everyone knows.
They’re all looking at him as he’s making his way through the station to the captain’s office to be assigned a partner, and Danny, who normally doesn’t care a fig about what others think of him, feels decidedly uncomfortable, as if the stares are a physical weight, making his skin prickle.
His new partner’s name is Paul Mitchell, a veteran cop with almost twenty years on the force under his belt, and the first thing he says to Danny is, “So, you’re Salvatore Macaluso’s nephew.”
And this is basically how it continues for the next few months. Every last one of his steps is watched suspiciously, conversations stop when he comes near, and Paul double and triple checks his reports, making him rewrite the whole thing when there’s even a minuscule mistake or something just slightly vague. It takes him a while to realize that his partner actually does that to help him, to make sure that Danny is above reproach at all times because as Paul once tells him, “You’ve got good instincts, kid, and you’ll make a damn fine detective one day, but you’ve gotta see to it there’s nothing that’ll trip you up. You’ve got it harder than most here.”
Which Danny thinks is the understatement of the century. The people in the organized crime unit are - not surprisingly - the worst. He’s in their offices at least once a week, being questioned about one thing or another they think might be connected to one of his relatives, and it actually feels like being cross-examined on a regular basis. It’s not as if he could tell them anything concerning the specific dealings they’re asking him about because Uncle Salvo kept his promise, and he hasn’t heard anything regarding the business in the last four years. And while he does feel a bit sorry for them, it’s not really his fault that they never find anything they can pin on his uncle or come up with an accusation that sticks.
So while it’s not easy, Danny still loves doing what he dreamed about since he was a kid, and it does in fact get better after half a year or so. It seems that by then he’s finally proven that he’s not a spy for the mafia, that he’s not selling them all out to be gunned down in their beds, and that he’s a good cop who takes his job seriously and would do anything to catch the bad guys. Perhaps it helped that he got shot in the arm when he pushed Paul out of the way in a simple store robbery gone south.
Of course, he still gets taken off of every case that even carries a hint of any kind of connection to the mob, but that’s alright with Danny because he’s admittedly not very keen on having to investigate any of his family members. Sometimes, especially at night when he can’t sleep and his thoughts are running around his head in circles, he feels guilty about that because as a cop, shouldn’t he want to stop them, to bring them to account for their crimes?
He talks to his mom about it once, one Sunday night after dinner, and she looks at him for a long time, with this expression on her face that still manages to make him feel like a child, holding his hand between both of her hers. Then she asks him, very seriously, if he thinks of his uncle as a criminal. And Danny is surprised by his own immediate and visceral reaction of ‘No’. Despite everything, despite the tiny voice telling him he’s more than biased and completely unable to view this objectively, he could never equate his uncle to the felons he has to deal with on the job, and if he’s certain about one thing it’s that Uncle Salvo loves him and would never hurt him.
“Then that’s your answer,” his mom says with a bittersweet smile, and Danny drops his gaze to the table, once again coming to terms with the fact that his life is never going to be easy, that he’ll always have to struggle with these thoughts. But it’s okay, he tells himself, because he can still work in the profession he loves, and he has a whole lot of people - his family - around him who support him and who are there when he needs them. So on the whole Danny has to concede that in spite of his occasional doubts he’s pretty content with what he’s got at the moment.
---
Her name is Grace, and she’s the most perfect girl Danny has ever seen in his whole life. He didn’t plan on being a dad so soon, at twenty-six he sometimes still feels quite young to take on this kind of responsibility, but it just felt right with Rachel and when she told him she was pregnant, he couldn’t have been happier. And now she’s here, in his arms, his beautiful little daughter, and Danny barely knows what to do with all this joy and love.
Rachel looks exhausted, but happy, and Danny sits down on the bed next to her, carefully handing Grace back and then putting his arms around both of them, kissing Rachel’s forehead and laying a hand on the baby’s tiny little stomach. He can still hardly believe that he helped create something so amazing, and he thinks there can be no better name for her.
Amazing Grace. Their grace, his grace. Danny is glad that he could convince Rachel of the name, she wasn’t too sure about it in the beginning, as it is very important to him, not only because it expresses what she is to him, but also because it’s in memory of his great-grandmother, his Nonna Grazia. He barely remembers her, she died when he was three, but he knows that she was a very fine lady, and he has this one memory where he is sitting in her lap, listening to her telling him the story of Bensurdatu and the three princesses in her strong Italian accent.
Somehow he feels that naming his daughter after her is his way of connecting Grace to this side of his family because she will likely never learn who they truly are and what they do. Even Rachel doesn’t know it. She has met his uncle and his aunt a few times, but only when they were visiting his parents, he has never taken her to the house, and she also knows none of his cousins apart from Aletta.
Danny had gotten into a big row with Debbie over this just after his wedding, his sister screaming at him that he couldn’t keep such a large part of himself, of who he was, from his wife, that it was an inexcusable breach of trust and that Rachel had a right to know because she was family now as well. But Danny had remained stubborn, telling her it was none of her business and that it was his decision alone to make. Debbie hadn’t spoken to him for nearly a month after that, and Danny had known, deep inside, that she was right, that he was taking away Rachel’s own right to decide, but he couldn’t help it, not then and not now.
He doesn’t want to endanger her or Grace, doesn’t want to risk his own little family, and sitting here, holding what is most important to him in his arms, Danny vows to do everything that is necessary to protect them and keep them safe. Not telling her about the family business, keeping her as far away from it as possible, will accomplish that, and then there’s also still his oath never to speak about the family to an outsider. Who knows how Rachel would react, and as harming his uncle in any way is still not an option Danny can stomach, it’s surely better this way.
Maybe it’s cowardly, but he has convinced himself that Rachel doesn’t need to know about this part of himself and the family he belongs to, never even realizing that somewhere in a dark corner of his mind he obviously considers her an outsider.
TBC
Prologue Part 4