Chapter Text
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“What’d she say to you?”
Tani watches as the words settle into Danny’s skin, the existence of them making the emotion floating in his bloodstream rise to the surface. She sees the way he struggles with their pursuit to soak through his pores, taking his heart with them, but she isn’t sorry for saying them because they both know this needs to happen. They both knew this day would come the first time that nightmare stepped into that basement from Hell and ravaged their lives one broken piece at a time. It doesn’t make the process any easier, though, watching him hang onto his dignity and the broken pieces of his soul by his fingertips.
He fidgets, his forehead resting in the heels of his hands. It’s a battle, him versus the memories. And she wants to fight it for him, take up the mantle and do justice for the souls in that dark room where they lived for a small eternity; because he did it for them, many times over, and he deserves a lifetime of reprieve, instead of a wasteland ravaged by guilt and self-incrimination and longing.
Tani glances over her shoulder and sees the man in question watching them like his life depends on it. And she knows it certainly may feel like that’s the case when his heart is currently curled up in a broken ball of limbs in a hospital bed, separated by a glass wall, and is fighting the inner turmoil of the last four months that’s tumbling in his veins.
She makes eye contact with Steve for a moment, so many emotions on display even from a distance of twenty feet, before his attention is diverted back to Chin and their tumultuous conversation. They’ve been having a lot of those recently, and sometimes she wants to punch something because of it. Yet it’s the process, and nobody said it was easy.
But maybe going slower might help.
She looks back at Danny before her eyes settle on his hands, and says the words without an ounce of doubt. “He’ll still love you the way he does now. Nothing’ll change.”
A softer version of a scoff escapes Danny, and she waits him out. Eventually, his eyes meet hers and he wilts a little, the bravado he was attempting to fake crumbling and revealing the agony she knew was really the heart of the matter.
“Talk to me,” she says, gently but firmly.
Danny’s eyes close, the wrinkles around his eyes making him look slightly wrecked, but she forges on because it needs to be aired, his words and emotions; but that doesn’t mean she can’t help him a little.
“Is it the doubt?” she poses, stretching out her legs and crossing them at the ankle. She figures giving him an easy question – because they both know it’s not that he doubts Steve’s love for him that’s the problem here, as evident by his rebuff – and giving off an air of patience might help him be able to voice the monster roaring inside his head.
A minute shake of the head is all she thinks she’s going to get when he stares down at the stitching in his bed sheet, his finger absentmindedly tracing over it, before he speaks in a whisper low enough that she has to time her breaths not to miss the whole thing.
“How can I be…worthy…of him?” It’s broken and small and in stark contrast to the man she had gotten to know in a room full of thorns and ugliness. She isn’t sure whether she wants to laugh or smack him at the absurdity, and he seems to sense it because he holds his hand up in a gesture that indicates he’s not done.
“He’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever known. And I’m... I’m. I’m me –” He breaks off, emotion choking off his whisper, but she knows already. She was there, she saw.
She gives him a moment to gather his wits, a façade if there ever was one because she’s seen him at his worst, doing impossible things for them all, and had to help put him back together when he was just broken pieces of something that once that used to exist; but she knows it gives him some comfort, pretending that he’s whole and durable and unaffected, so she plays along for his sake.
Standing up, she carefully maneuvers her way over to the side of his bed and plops down in front of him. Her grip is soothing when she wraps her hand around one of his trembling ones -- something she knows to do because it didn’t take long for that knowledge to become known throughout their time together, how touch is a catalyst to soothe Danny’s inner demons. Her eyes hold a gentleness when his meet hers, something she knows they’ll forever need after months of unrelenting hardness and callous bristliness.
“I know it’s pointless to tell you what you already know – you did what you had to in order to survive. And I’m not gonna be one of those people who does anyway, because we both know that’s not what really happened.”
His eyes find their way back down to their interlocked hands, and she begins a thumb war with him just to take the pressure off of the conversation. The familiarity of it all reminding her of endless days and nights spent on a filthy concrete floor with nothing but their hands and words to pass the time.
“You look at your reflection in the mirror and think you see something that is shameful and dirty and unworthy of anything good.”
There’s a slight hitch in his breath, and as per usual, she already knows what he’s thinking.
“I know you, Danny. I know what you’re thinking and how it’s making you want to claw your own damn skin off. I was there,” and here’s where her own emotion will threaten to get the better of her. Because he saved them, time and time again, and she’ll never be able to express what that meant, what that means to them all.
“I know what you did.” Her voice wavers and she puts it on display because he needs to know, he deserves to see what he did it all for, who he sold his innocence for. “Danny, when I look at you, I don’t see that. I see bravery and courage and light and love. When I look at you, I see a soul willing to endure it all so that we didn’t have to. Daniel Williams, you are not unworthy. You were willing to sell your soul to the devil himself if it meant that it spared the rest of us just a little bit less pain.”
His eyes are on her, and there are tears streaming down both of their cheeks.
“You deserve the world a hundred times over and more. You are the reason we are here. Danny, I look at you and I see the reason I’m still here, the reason we’re still here, alive.”
He breaks down after that, his sobs wracking his body in hard and merciless waves, and scraping every last nerve ending into its wake. She breathes a sigh of relief, amongst her own salty droplets, because she’s seen this kind of crying in him before. Rare and mostly hidden from the others – because they’re softer than the two of them are, their souls more delicate to the evils of this world. He’d weep in such a way that it took every ounce of strength from the tips of his toes to the tops of his ears, ridding himself of all the emotion building up in strength and size inside of him, unyielding and remorseless and calculating for just the right moment to pounce and decimate everything in its path. It became a sort of rejuvenation and rebuilding for him, something that his soul had become to need periodically in a reality that was unfortunately vile and malicious and joyless. It's like the moon crawling back to it’s home in the near-dawn: you’ll miss its comfort, its ability to protect you from the openness of the light, but you know it’s gonna be okay because the light always brings a new day filled with promises and hopes and dreams and endless potential.
What feels like half a century later, he pulls back, and she wipes at his tender cheeks, the actions having become second nature to her after having spent so long within each other’s emotional mayhem.
When he’s wiping his nose with a wad of tissues, his tears having made his face pink and swollen, and he’s mostly calmed and in the clear from the tsunami of their reality, she speaks again, her words imploring him to believe their sincerity.
“Don’t let what she did to you make you think any less than what you deserve. She isn’t worth it. You are so much more than dirty, you are everything. Don’t let her evil take that away from you.”
Danny’s eyes find hers again but this time they’re clear, his lips even turning up just slightly at the edges in a soft smile.
“Besides, you think he’s never felt dirty and unworthy of happiness from being a SEAL? He’s had to make choices, hard, unforgiving choices, just like you. If there’s anyone else in the world that would understand that,” she nods in Steve’s direction, “it’s him.”
Danny’s eyes follow her line of thinking and land on Steve, who’s watching them with enough emotion in his eyes to fill a landfill. And when his eyes find Danny’s, he smiles tentatively, only becoming more confident when Danny returns the gesture with one of his own.
She waits, giving them a moment before bringing the gloomier parts of reality back in. She wishes she didn’t have to in the first place, no two people more deserving of endless joy than these two men, but the sooner they get through the ugly bits, the sooner they can all live a realistic happily ever after.
“Danny,” she says softly.
His eyes don’t leave Steve’s, but some of the tension has returned to his shoulders so she knows he’s on the same wavelength as her. Sometimes it amazes her how in-tune they’ve become in such short of time, but she supposes the environment they were in, it’s inevitable really.
She grasps his hand in hers, rubbing comforting circles into the spaces between his knuckles and tendons. “Tell me what happened that night.”
Danny sighs.
--
Three days before
“Three months out of practice and you’re still better than me,” cheeks Kono, as she draws another card from the stack on Danny’s bedsheet.
Danny smirks at her.
Thirty seconds later, Danny slaps his cards down and pumps his fist in victory. Kono throws her cards up in the air in defeat, a dramatic sigh and the sound of flying of cards stifled by Danny’s muted giggling.
Kono’s phone buzzes which she answers with a fond glare at Danny. “Perfect timing, Chin. Why couldn’t you have called five seconds ago before I got my butt whipped, hmm?”
Danny struggles to get his laughter under control, tears prickling his eyes from the effort, but the tinny chuckle from Chin over the phone is loud enough for him to hear.
Kono rolls her eyes. “Yeah, uh-huh, whatever. Next game is mine, brah.” She says, eyeing Danny with a soft, pointed look before stepping out of the room to listen to Chin.
Danny’s just finishing gathering the cards and shuffling them into one stack when the door clicks open.
“You ready for another gam--?” Danny’s whisper cuts off when he realizes it wasn’t Kono that he was talking to.
“Hello, Danny.”
Danny’s eyes dart towards the door reflexively, straining to hear Kono or any of the nurses outside the door, and he angles his body to hide the hand he’s slowly itching towards the nurse’s call button.
“Melissa.” He eyes the gun in her hand, stomach coiling at the possibility that she might have used it to get into his room. “What are you doing here?”
“Thought I’d come see you.” She walks to the window, glancing down at the street too calmly for anyone sane enough to know the place was about to be swarmed with every law enforcement agent within twenty miles. “I missed you.”
Danny swallows down the bile attempting to leave his throat, and swiftly presses the nurse’s call button before she turns back around to watch him.
“Didn’t you miss me?” she asks, and the hopefulness in her voice only makes his blood boil just a little bit more.
He’s torn between being honest and playing along, but she saves him from having to answer by striding across the room to stick her head into the bathroom to look around. “You don’t have to answer. I know things have gotten…complicated…recently. And feelings are such fickle things when things get complicated.”
She’s back to standing in front of him again, but a movement outside the window leading to the hallway catches his eye: it’s Kono. She’s armed and seconds away from making her entry into the room, and he’s reminded once again of the devotion of his team.
“What do you want?” asks Danny, stalling for time.
Melissa gives him a look. “Don’t be silly, you know exactly why I came here.”
At that, Danny’s blood runs cold and his vision begins to tilt just a little, which is why he’s mostly out of it for the next few moments, caught in a mind-numbing haze. When he comes back to the present, the three Five-O members have infiltrated his room, and Melissa’s got her gun pressed firmly into his temple. An angry-eyed Chin, black-eyed Kono – Danny winces at the sight of an ugly bruise forming around her eye –, and out-of-breath Lou all have their guns pointed in their direction, and Danny has to blink several times to come back to the present, despite the storm brewing inside of his veins.
“Let him go,” commands Chin.
“Tsk tsk,” she says in disapproval, her arm tightening around Danny’s chest where she’s holding him up close to her chest. He’d shiver in disgust if he knew it wouldn’t provoke her in any way. “Danny, why don’t you tell them what they need to do?”
Danny closes his eyes briefly, swallowing against the self-hatred he feels curling inside of his chest. Opening his eyes again, he pins his eyes on the three of them. “Put your guns down.”
Chin doesn’t flinch, but Kono’s expression falters a little and Lou scoffs at the mere mention of the idea.
“And why would we do that?” asks Lou, his disbelief ringing loud and clear, but Danny knows it’s not really directed at him, he’s just the unfortunate messenger right now.
She squeezes his arm and he forces himself not to squirm away from her touch, knowing it would only worsen the situation. “Go on, Danny,” she says, her tone filled with such ice-cold patronization he’s surprised there’s any warmth left in the room.
Danny watches his teammates, his friends, his o’hana with eyes so full of emotion, his heart wrecking itself from the inside because he knows from this moment forward, there’s no going back. There’s no longer pretending there’s this curtain separating these past few months from now. That hollowness he’s grown so used to feeling, like pieces of his soul have been carved out and gaping holes have been left in their wake, settles underneath his skin when Steve’s warm eyes flash across his own. A sob wants to tear from his throat at the mere notion that Steve might think less of him for this, for any of this; but he stamps it down, crushes it with his foot, stomps on it as hard as he can mentally will himself to, and shoves it back down his throat because she does not deserve that. He’ll duct tape himself together until she’s gone if he has to, but she won’t see him lose it, she doesn’t deserve another drop of emotion for the rest of her days.
Eyes open, he forces his mouth to cooperate even if it feels like a malfunctioning puppeteer and his puppet. He doesn’t think he’ll ever forget the looks on Chin, Lou, and Kono’s faces for as long as he lives, though; his next words burrowing sinkholes through their exterior.
“Because…she’s pregnant, and the baby, it-it’s mine.”
--
Present
“The reason we’ve been unable to find out anything about Danny’s captors is because we’ve had it all wrong. We’ve been looking in all the wrong places and assuming all the wrong things. The first one being that it’s not a man we’re looking for, it’s a woman, a pregnant woman. And the baby, it’s Danny’s.”
The words echo loudly as Steve watches the way his fingers tremble, images and feelings and so many grief-filled questions coating the surface of his skin like a crushing blanket. He doesn’t have enough energy these days to fight their pursuit to overthrow the very being of his existence, his heart and mind so worn down and depleted. He waits as the oppression clouds his throat and fills his veins, memories of the worst months of his life playing like a motion picture behind his eyelids. The ache sets into his bones, and he succumbs to the pull with a barely restrained grunt, hardly any strength left inside of him.
--
Danny’s giggle fills Steve’s ears and seems to saturate the office, the floor, the building with life – and up until now, Steve didn’t even know that life had a sound. He can feel the smile on his lips reaching the limits of his facial muscles as he watches the way Danny’s giggle seems to light him up from the inside and spill out onto those around him like sunbeams.
He watches how Danny’s infectious giggles seem to spread around the room, Kono practically in stitches on the floor and Chin’s quiet chuckle gaining volume the longer it goes on, as Lou reenacts a story in dramatic effect. The office seems to shine brighter for Steve with every inch that Danny’s grin stretches, and Steve feels its pull stronger than the Earth’s gravity.
--
“Steve.”
Steve starts from his daze, reality rushing back in with the force of a groundswell. The cramping of his hands, having been balled up in fists, is making itself known as his startled eyes land on the empathetic ones in Tani.
“You okay?” she asks, watching him with an expression that he knows means she knows exactly what’s going on inside of his thoughts.
He consciously uncurls his straining fingers, clearing his throat of as much emotion as he possibly can, and struggles with what to say.
She sighs, coming to sit down in the cushioned chair beside him – which he’s just now noticed is vacant, as is the rest of them where his team had just been sitting and upending his world with earth-shattering words. “You don’t have to answer that, we both know what your answer would be anyway.”
He nods, relieved, and changes to a safer topic. “Where’d everybody go? Or…when did everybody...leave exactly?”
She nods her head towards Danny’s room, and he catches sight of his team surrounding Danny’s bed like a gentle flock. “A few minutes ago, I asked them to give us a moment to talk.”
It’s quiet for a moment, Steve’s thoughts and heart in a jumbled mess from everything that he’s just been told and Tani watches the way Kono, Chin, and Lou interact with Danny through the window.
“There’s something you need to know, about what happened.” Tani’s voice is quiet but firm when she finally speaks up, and Steve feels the goosebumps rise on his skin almost immediately at her choice of words.
“He’d rather you not know at all. I think he actually would have taken it to the grave had I not found out when I did,” Tani’s eyes drop to the floor, and Steve can see the way the memories roll around in her head as she absently watches her fingers twist and turn. “But I think it’s important for you to know, just you, because it kind of…changed…everything. And you deserve to know.”
Steve’s eyebrows furrow slightly, his need to know warring with his self-preservation arising after so much heaviness being thrown at him. He swallows his impulse to run away, run far far away, and he leans forward on his knees, bracing his heart for whatever he’s about to hear.
“Tell me.”
Tani takes a few deep breaths, obviously readying herself to say the words just as much as Steve was readying himself to hear them. Her hands toy with each other, before she looks up at him, eyes filled to the brim with tears, the emotion in them sparkling so profoundly that it leaves Steve breathless.
“There’s a reason...Danny…was the only one who she…raped.” Her voice wobbles and the emotion scraping her voice leaves it hoarse and rough.
Steve hangs his head, the words she’s saying already taking form in his mind and weighing his heart down like an anchor travelling down to the bottom of the ocean.
“I didn’t see it at first, he’d hide it well. But then one day, after helping him get cleaned up, I saw the b-blood –” her voice cracks, and a few tears slip down her cheeks. “It was…lower than usual. He’d tried to play it off, but I could see the agony in his eyes…”
She swipes at her cheek, her voice taking an even quieter tone than before. “He’d overheard her talking to one of her people about – who she wanted to…do it…with, and the next time she came for him, he’d made a d-deal with her: he’d do it any time…she…wanted, without a fight, if-if-if she’d leave the rest of us a-alone –”
She breaks off unable to finish due to the sobs wracking through her, and Steve gathers her in his arms, his own sobs tearing through his throat like a vicious monster.
“He s-sacrificed himself, for us. He s-s-saved us.”
And that’s the moment Steve’s perception of Daniel Williams changed entirely.
--