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[haole_cop]

 "Now it's my crime scene."

Those could have been, should have been, the last words he heard from McGarrett, and in a kinder world, they might have been, but the world hates Danny Williams, and he's not exactly feeling all that generous towards it, himself, so he's honestly not even a little surprised when the authoritative rap on his door comes attached to a too-tall, too-broad, too-aggressive Navy SEAL with revenge on the mind and Daddy issues from here back to the boardwalks of Wildwood.

He hates him. 

Because of this joker, he's home in the middle of the day, instead of at work, work, he might point out, where he's attempting to catch the guy who did this to McGarrett, Sr., which is normally what the child of a murder victim wants, right? They want the cops to do their damn job and haul the dirtbag in for justice.

They don't storm in and take over like it's their goddamn platoon out in fucking Afghanistan.

Except McGarrett, okay, he doesn't seem to have gotten the memo. There's a reason officers don't get involved if the deceased was a family member, and this is exactly why: it makes people angry, irrational.

(He hopes to hell this is McGarrett being irrational.)

It's too close, too personal -- and it's also not his case anymore, so he's got no idea why McGarrett, shirt sticking to his skin from the soaking rain that just hit, because it rains every goddamn day here, what a fucking miracle, Hallelujah, is standing on his doorstep, because it isn't that.

(And it's not that either, he refuses, it's not happening, and there's no possible way this whackjob noticed. It could be he doesn't even have a timer, or got his blown off while single-handedly stopping an insurrection with a couple of grenades and a can-do attidtude.)

So he just stands and waits, with one hand still on the doorknob, ready to slam it shut just as soon as possible.

 

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[haole_cop]

He's happy to drive in silence.

Not always, mind. He doesn't always like the quiet and hates being left alone with his thoughts, but the alternative is to let Steve McGarrett see more of him than he particularly wants to let show. He doesn't give a damn about his timer, and how he knows what he should be doing, how he should be trying to get to know the guy, open him up, see what it is about him that made Danny's numbers slip away to nothing when they pulled their guns on each other, but he doesn't.

Can't. Won't.

Not right now. Rachel wasn't that long ago, and he hasn't dated since, and he's a wreck, okay, and, and, he's not interested. All he wants to do is finish this job, find Doran, find Hesse, solve the case, dispense justice. That's it.

The road unspools in front of the Mustang, leading them further from the city, along a beach, where houses and apartments slowly turn into shacks, tents. Beach bums and homeless, surf camps, makeshift hostels: they're all out here, where no one seems to give a damn about living anywhere more complicated than a parked double-wide or an aluminum shed.

No sooner does he roll up and park than McGarrett, all wiry energy and focus, is up, seatbelt off, door opening, while Danny leans towards him, frowning hard. "Hey, hey. Hey!"

The last one at least gets the guy's attention; he leans back in. "This guy Doran's a shooter," Danny reminds him. "We shouldn't be doing this without backup."

[thebesteverseen]

It looks like he remembers. Or more, he knows, it looks like some faded whisp of what he remembers tossed together in a blender with dozens of other things just like it he's seen in dozens of other places he'll never talk about and never forget. Poverty and squalor, and people choosing the life they lead and the places they end. Not always true in third world countries, where these houses could be palaces in comparison to what they had, but it was here. It was with people like Doran.

He's so ready to go, before the mustang is even drawing to a slow. The temptation running like an electric pulse under his skin, high pitched and faster the closer they get. When he's sliding the file between the center console and his chair. Pushing everything else out. Everything. Danno, and HPD, and the funeral. Clear view of the target. Of the man he needs and what he needs to get from him. It's all he's really thinking when that niggling voice invades again.

And there's that rising tone again, even for short, sharp words asking for attention. Making Steve lean back in. In case Danny has more he wants to share on Doran. Something he had mentioned earlier when he was busy being made of hurt feelings over his case and his employment location. And even though Steve can note that he's choosing soft, calmer points in that explanation, the holding him up is only making Steve want to get there even faster.

Especially for something that pointless. Making Steve haul off easy words, "You are the backup."

Which is as honest, as it is entirely trivial a point. It's been a good while since he's needed or considered back-up in a open and shut situation that is this low key, and it's almost hilarious that Danny thinks he's needs anyone to back him up at all for this kind of thing. He ate this kind of thing for breakfast on the way to real danger. At the most, what? The guy has a small posse of armed thugs? Still something Steve barely needed more than one or two other SEALs for.

But those options weren't available here. Only Danny was. So Steve would manage to carry it all. Because he had to. Because the mission needed it, and he didn't blink or balk at parameters. They just told him what to expect and what to factor in. He didn't wait. Slamming the car door, to enunciate his point, and the one where Danny needed to get out already. Then, headed through the rough made houses, checking door numbers, headed toward the right one. Straight and fast.

[haole_cop]

"I'm the backup."

Said to himself, in the brief quiet of the car. It's not disbelief. On the contrary, it's the only goddamn thing that could possibly happen, right, because the world hates Danny, and this is exactly why he hates the world right back.

And. "I hate him. I hate him so much."

It's honestly perfect, it really is, this culmination of everything that has ever gone wrong in his life, with Rachel, with the divorce, with Hawaii. Of course he's been handed this, on a platter, just to make sure his face really gets rubbed in it, this mud pit he can't seem to crawl out of, that he keeps getting kicked back into.

There's nothing for it; he's got to go after him, this idiot who's just headed straight to Doran's address without looking back or around or calling HPD to let them know they got there, so Danny does, gets out of the car and makes a quick call to dispatch, shoving his phone in his pocket by the time they get there.

(He's never going to depend on a lucky, unrelated and unrequested siren again.)

"Hey," he says, steps quick, catching up to Steve's longer, ground-eating ones. "Hey, slow down, huh?"

[thebesteverseen]

Steve does look back over his shoulder, but slow isn't in his vocabulary. Not now that they're on the ground and he's even factored out which house it is, and the house happens to be less than forty feet away. All he has is the go, go, go, go in his head. Readiness. Focus. The answers he wants are inside those walls, behind that door, and he's going to do whatever it takes, under whoever's heading he has to use today, to get them.

For Hesse. But even more, now, for his Dad.

He isn't expecting exactly the several conjunctive crashes that sound as he's taking the first few steps. Flattening against the wall, with a hand waving back to Danny, downward to wait, stand down, pause back, as a woman yells, "You ruined my life!" Followed by a thick, argumentative male voice, which Steve was banking on being Doran. Doran or a flunkie of Doran's he could use to get to Doran.

Steve pulled out his gun, slipping the safety off, as the yelling continued, and gave a small wave to send Danny across.

[haole_cop]

He pauses, waits. Slips his piece from the holster at his hip, and jogs up the stairs, crouched, on point.

The one good thing about this is he has no time to think, only to react. There's his opinion, and then there's his training, and experience, and no matter what Navy SEAL Steve McGarrett might think, he's no slob when it comes to taking out bad guys.

The ruckus from inside is reaching a fever pitch as he's getting to the far side of the door, listening to the woman yell about someone being full of crap, right before the door swings open, and she comes striding out, a skinny dishwater blonde in a bronze bikini top and red hot pants. He's already moving, because she looks to the stairs to storm down them and her gasp of surprise at seeing Steve there is smothered into a shocked noise against his hand. He's got his palm over her mouth to shush her, wraps an arm around her waist to drag her backwards, but it's too late.

Footsteps head towards the door, the man inside yelling for her to get your ass back in here! and then pausing in a way Danny really doesn't like, right before the girl bites down, hard and sharp, on his hand. He lets her go, swearing, and she makes for the door --

And then there's a sudden explosion of sound and something ripping through his arm, leaving a firey trail of pain as the window in front of him explodes outward and he goes flying off the porch, to land with a crash on top of a parked car, out of breath and stunned.

[thebesteverseen]

Whether it's actually JC or JZ never will really matter, when he's getting the full face of her shock and that indrawn gasp is like a riot of sound in the suddenly pin drop quiet of the area. And the inside. The inside that is quiet too long right after Danny jerks her back. Long enough it creeps up Steve's spine the wrong way, because whoever the guy was who had been running after her, yelling after not accepting her running away.

He goes dead silent, as does the house. It's only two extra seconds at most. But it's two seconds too many. One long enough for the girl to do something that has Danny grunting in pain, and a second for her to jerk free at hit the door yelling, "Cops!" before the whole front is exploding in a shower of glass and a rain of bullets. Sending the girl to the side and down, and blowing Danny out the window of the porch.

The way he can't even move once he's watching Danny's body vanish beneath the floor of the porch and hearing the solid slam of it hit something, even while the wall is still exploding above him. Glass, wood and bullets flying over him in a shower still. When he's calling out through the maelstrom of noise, the need to move now, when no one else would and that's why he should, warring with the very good possibility of a gunned down HPD officer in his first half hour of requisitioning. "DANNY?"

[haole_cop]

"Go, go, go, go!"

His arm is burning and his back hurts like hell; he's going to be bruised to here and beyond, but Doran is getting away, the asshole, and right now, Danny wouldn't mind a bit if Steve decided to shoot him, just to even things up.

He hears Steve run up the stairs and make his way into the house, knows he needs to get up, join the chase. He's the backup. There isn't any more, no one who'll be here soon enough to make a difference, and he needs to get up, but he can't catch his breath and his head is spinning.

Fine. He'll give himself three second, count of three, and then he'll get back in the game, go back up his psychopath of a partner, because no matter how much he hates the guy, he doesn't want him shot, unless Danny's the one doing the shooting.

It's a second, and then a deep breath in, a hup exhaled sharply out as he rolls off the car, hits the ground awkwardly, and pauses to listen for the sounds of the fight.

[thebesteverseen]

Thank God for small miracles. Literally.

He doesn't need more than the first word, before he's is going. On his feet and up at the screen door, gun at his eye level, taking in the fleeing shape of a person and the room empty aside from that. Maybe more than one today, too. Because that made his odds 100% more likely, as he was flinging the door open and slipping quickly through the house, keeping an eye on every open door and room, for moving shadows and other people.

The sound of more rapid-fire and breaking glass had him wanting to break into a run already, but it was foolish to go running into any large, shadowed space. It was like asking someone to kill you, just in the favor of your own idiocy. But the last room is as empty as the first, and then means he can sprint for the window, and get a good eyeful of outside, and too bright after dark, while he's launching himself out of the window without a pause.

Taking off running after the guy who is definitely Doran, dreadlocks and rastafarian clothes almost. Flatout following, even when the sound of traffic breaks in, with slamming metal and Makes Steve dig deeper, push himself faster, jumped up to slide across the back of a stopped car, just in time not to get slammed between another running into the first. But he can't stop to think about it. Can't stop to even look at the driver and see if they are alright.

That's what cops are for. Steve's gun is still trained on Doran, who somehow got his hands on a small woman and her car, using one to shield him from behind and the other to shield him from in front. Casualties, public casualties, were not something Steve was here for. Doran was jerking her around, and holding her close, yelling at him. "Put your gun down!"

"We don't have to do this, man!" No one had to die. Steve didn't even care about bringing Doran in, as much as getting information from him. "I said put the gun down!"

The words were thrown, vehemently at him, but there was no single release for the tension in his hands. His gun wasn't going anywhere. Not while he had the hostage, not while he had the answers, and Steve had a single memory of all of his training. "You sold a gun to a man named Victor Hesse. I'm not after you, I want him!"

"I'm not talking to you," Doran threw back at him, hiding behind the woman with the bright pink shirt.

"Where is he?" Steve yelled toward him, across the space. No less fierce, no less a demand over being a request. "I said I'm not talking to you! Now put the gun down or I'll kill her!" He seemed to shrink and grow all at once, the high of the chase and fear of capture, making his voice sharper and faster. More erratic. "You don't think I'll do it? I'll do it! I'll kill her right now!"

Steve's eyes didn't leave Doran to look at her. Even if it was less than an inch of movement in vision. He could see her at the edge of his face, even when he didn't look. Public casualties, were very public, and she hadn't done anything to get between them, and maybe he gave up something, he could find a way in. A chink in his erratic behavior, a different tact. A different way to pull the information out of him.

He let go with one hand, and raised his hands, slowly, incredibly so. Ready to toss them back, and fire, at any second.

[haole_cop]

He's up and going. Everything blurs as soon as he's past it, but it's all headache inducingly sharp before it rolls past, each thought and glance and decision. He hears a crash from around the house, and shouts heading towards the street -- Doran must have made a run for it, and it sounds like Steve's in pursuit.

He runs.

His arm is a dull ache somewhere far behind the adrenaline pushing out the pain, all of it thudding into his temples the way his feet are thudding on the ground, heading for the middle of the little ramshackle village, towards the shriek of breaks and the crash of breaking glass.

There's a few little canopies he's just getting to, when a commotion flurries in front of him: Doran, dragging a woman out of a car and putting her into a headlock, Doran panicking, Doran threatening.

Steve. Who has a gun on him, but is trying to talk him down, even when it's not going to work. Everyone's still, the air strung tight with tension, and then Steve lowers his gun.

It happens in less than a heartbeat. Steve's gun isn't even all the way down before Danny catches the motion: Doran, lifting his, not to the woman he's got hostage, but towards Steve. He doesn't think,: aims, breathes out, squeezes the trigger. Another window shatters. Another woman screams, and Doran goes down like a sack of wet flour, heavy, and when he hits the ground, he doesn't get up again.

[thebesteverseen]

Steve's gun goes up, fast, the next second -- but not at Doran, at the window that just blew.

At Danny framed in the glass, breathless and gun-high, and for a second, Steve's only reaction clenching in his gut, and exploding outward like a mortar round with no patience, is the want to squeeze his trigger finger. Sharp, heavy, too bleak to even be anger, it's a dangerously still kind of black and red edged rage, because he doesn't need to look back to know Doran just went down for the count.

His one lead to Victor. And he's in a puddle of his own blood on a dirt road. Because of that haole detective.

Because of that man his father is another step closer to just being another name on Victor's bloody fucking endless list.

It's a good long pause of looking away, jaw and fingers on the gun, clenched before he looks back up. When it might look to anyone around him like shock, or relief, but all it is flooding through him is useless livid realization he is now back to square fucking one on Victor Hesse's location and plan. Without a lead. Unless he can pull one out of the shrapnel of that house, and it's all because he picked that guy who got trigger happy if a gun so much as moved.

It's to Danny's benefit that a wave sirens and then squad cars come speeding into the place just then, and a wave of cops with them, that Steve sure as hell doesn't want to be looking at or dealing with anymore than he wants to have to step a few feet toward his partner now. So he doesn't, go back toward Danny, he goes forward toward the cars. To find the highest ranking person involved there, so he can hand off whatever the hell he needs, and get back to Doran's place without them having anyone touch it first.

Once he's done that, he'll find a way to shove it all back down, in. Do the job, every avenue, no feelings involved.

[haole_cop]

He lets out a breath as everything slows down, the sirens in his head replaced by the sirens on the road: black and whites with revolving lights on the hoods screeching in, kicking up a dust cloud that floats around the heads of the astonished passersby.

He lifts a hand to the sergeant who gets out of the lead car, but doesn't go over to speak to them; not yet. Steve's stalking that way, looking like he could spit bullets, and Danny can hear the low hum of voices start while he goes the other way.

Towards the car. Towards Doran's body, and the woman still cowering near it, eyes wide with shock, face white. He lifts a hand to keep her from moving, gives her a look that's not unkind, and takes a second to crouch by the body. Doran's gone, dead as a doornail, bleeding out into a puddle in the sand and ruined glass, and Danny takes just long enough to kick the gun away from his dead hand before he's reaching for the woman, murmuring comfort and quiet words. The hand she puts in his is trembling and cold, but she lets him lead her away from the car, though she glances back to look at her spilled groceries, the open door and ruined window.

"We'll pay for that," Danny tells her, smiling, and she gives a shaky laugh, while he looks over her shoulder, snaps for the EMTs in the ambulance that's just pulling up now. "Hey, just relax, okay? You're safe, we're gonna take care of you."

[thebesteverseen]

It's easy to give a lowdown on what happened, given that it did all happen in the last barely five minutes. If they were pressing it. Telling them to keep the men from the place, aside from an evidence guy or two. Follow that up with a description the accessory, the girl with a bad blonde shade and a even bigger mouth, tight pants and a bikini, that should be somewhere on these premises still, too.

It doesn't hurt that Danny, when Steve forces himself to get eyes on erstwhile partner, is actually doing his job.

He's got the victim over with the EMTs. Some whom are helping her, and another who looks like he's getting Danny's attention. Which is good. Its fine. He doesn't need Williams to canvas a house. It's not like he'd know one of Victor's calling cards if it was staring him in the face, and Steve wasn't feeling all that charitable toward even pretending he needed help anymore. Not after he needed him for the lead Danny then erased from the board. He can go on doing that while Steve walks back to Doran's place.

A world of shot out broken glass and wood. No holes in anything, because nothing was solid enough to really keep its one piece once it'd been shot through. Another of those why anyone chose to live there by choice things, that came and just went, as he was coming up the stairs. He pulled a small flashlight out of one of his many pockets and started a room by room search of the place from the entryway. Looking for anything that pinged as familiar.

Anything like all the flats he'd seen in the last five years chasing the Hesse brothers. It wasn't theirs, but he'd best the eyes, the only eyes, on this island, that could recognize something of theirs if there was anything to be found. And something needed to be found. He had to find something. Between this place and the mockery of his Dad's place, covered in blood and prints, he had to find something. There was no prayer or wishing it. He had to, so he would. Somewhere. Somehow. He'd find it.

[haole_cop]

He's gotten shepherded up onto the kick of the ambulance himself, and he's okay with it, honestly. The uniforms are taping off the area, and Steve's checking out the house, so he's fine with taking a breather, unbuttoning his shirt so the EMT can slide it down his shoulder and clean out the bullet wound there.

A scuffle erupts in front of him: the girl, JC or whatever her name was, getting hauled off to a cruiser, dragged right by him by an HPD officer who doesn't actually bother to check in with him, but hey. Who's surprised by that?

She snaps a glare as she stumbles by, spits: "I hope it hurts!" right before she gets walked on by, while Danny watches with mild interest.

"Careful," he calls after them. "She bites."

A couple officers glance over, and go back to their conversation, sliding looks like he might possibly not see them every now and again, and he rolls his eyes, tries to focus on anything but the sting of stitches and antiseptic in his bicep, the dull burning throb aching in his muscle.

He doesn't have anything against this part. It's nice to have a second to think -- or it would be, if his thumb weren't rubbing back and forth across the plastic screen sunk into his inner wrist, if he'd realized he was doing it before the EMT slapped on a bandage and pronounced him done.

If he had something more pleasant to think about than this case. Or the guy currently picking through the shack in front of him. But he doesn't, because this is his life, this is, poetically enough, the hand he's been dealt.

Getting shot today was just the icing on the goddamn cake.

[thebesteverseen]

The room front room has nothing, and the side room has a lot more nothing. The flash of his light, and he's skimming desks, and shelves, ratty piles on the floor and the few things on tables. Some of it legal, some of it entirely not, but no unexpected. None of screaming international terrorist. It's all two bit thug. Everywhere. Lowlife. Desperate. Bottom feeder in a small goldfish pond even.

But somehow this place is linked. He just needs how.

Even if each rooms turns up more nothing than the room before it.

Steve made it to the back room, again, shining a light on the bed pile on the floor. Wanting, but not expecting anything spectacularly new in the last room. Eyes open, assumptions back. Also. Not expecting the sudden clang of movement that had him turning to his side and shining a light on a door. Banged in. Taped to hell. Locked with a screwdriver of all crude things. Definitely not expecting the terrified little girl, under a waterfall of black, stringy hair when the door opened.

On a mission, sure. Not in Doran's bedroom. He was barely to the breath of surprise in before she was shaking and shuddering away, trying to crawl into the wall she was tied to, like there was any possible way to make herself smaller, tiny whimpering noises of fear rising up helplessly as Steve raised his hands. Trying to keep them open, to show her he wasn't here to hurt her. "It's okay."

"It's okay." He was reaching up to get the scissors kept so much higher than the low vantage point she been tied at. Like freedom was always within reach, but nothing she she could actually reach to. Or even see in the dark of that tiny locked closet. He was kneeling down, moving slow and steady toward her ties. "What's your name?"

Which was when he noticed she was still staring at him, eyes blow like saucers still made all of fear and absolutely with nothing like understanding that she'd been found, saved, rescued, was anything like safe. That she was going to be taken from this place, even if he and anyone after him couldn't take from her whatever had been done to her.

He tries a different tactic. Quiet, focused, "Ni zhao shenme mingzi?"

Watches her stir with a kind of recognition that is both fear and almost even more terrifying, hope, before she's saying her name quietly back. With the kind of face Steve could recognize world over, and hates seeing on kids. It's the first moment he's actually glad Doran is on the dirt, dead and bleeding. Because no one who does anything like this to kids should be breathing.

"Chen Chi," he repeats quiet and firm still. No sudden movements for himself or her. Saying her name again, and adding, "Gen wo lai." Only to see it flash, again. That sudden terrifying horror at her eyes. Like those words might mean something entirely else, and for another, second second, dead in the dust, bleeding out, really isn't good enough. Not for the possible things this little girl has been through right here. Possibly in this little room, or on that bed.

And as much as he hates that Danny killed him, he's glad with fierce briefness, too. It doesn't help him, but it might help her.

Which is better than nothing when he's repeating it once more, and reaching in to help her stand, keeping his hands on her arms and shoulders only. Treating her with the clear and plain, open movements. Careful to not do more than end up with a hand at her shoulders once she's standing, shivering as shes looking around but only too glad to start making for the broken front of the house and its door.

When he's gotten her halfway down the stairs, before he's calling out, "I need a medic over here."

[haole_cop]

He's finishing up buttoning his shirt and rolling his sleeve back up when the door to the bungalow opens and Steve comes out, walking a step behind a fragile looking girl who has her arms wrapped around her torso and is glancing around the scene with huge, terrified eyes, and Danny gives himself time for a half a second of what the hell before heading towards them.

A crooked finger brings two of the EMTs over; they jog up, slowing as the girl startles, recoils, looks back at Steve, who, to his credit, is actually pulling off reassuring slightly more than homicidal. "Cheng de," he's saying, "ta men pengyou, ta men bang bang," which Danny doesn't understand, because of course Steve speaks whatever the hell this is, but it relaxes the girl enough to allow the medics to take her away to the ambulance, even if she's shaking like a leaf the whole time.

She'll be taken care of; Danny reaches to grab Steve's elbow, tip his head towards the side of the house that isn't crawling with HPD cops. "Who's that?"

[thebesteverseen]

He waits until she's going. Nodding a time or two more, as she glances back, like she's hooked being safe on him. Which it can't stay on, but he can do his best at that for the few seconds he's left standing there. She'll go to better hands, before she can figure out his aren't good for any of the things she might think they are. He's good at pulling them out, at asking the right questions to get the answer he needs, and keeping going, down the rabbit hole into every level of hell.

It helps there's the sudden unexpected assault of a set of fingers on his arm, making him lift it fast and confused, snap reflexes and a look of surprise over at Danny who is suddenly, incredibly, close to his side. But he's shaking off the hand on himself, and holding up his to stop Danny another second, while pulling out his phone and focusing on her face while the medics are talking to her. "Wait."

Because finding her might not be for nothing on his end, as well. It's something at least. It's another avenue. Once it clicks, and he's sure it's clear enough, he can follow over toward the direction Danny went in. Starting with the points he's at now, the lines he's connecting, the possible new directions they might be able to follow this vein to the source and not have lost everything in the few minutes they were here. All facts, all clear and defined definitions of where they can and will be going from here.

The timetable even lines up well. It's too good to overlook, or set aside. They need to get more information on this racket and soon. Because it might be the way Hesse could leave the island, too. "Okay, so she was smuggled in four days ago on a cargo ship, from China, with her parents, a couple hundred refugees. She gets here and she's traded to Doran-"

[haole_cop]

That's not an answer.

And when they move away from the others, that's not an answer, either. It's Steve, striding ahead, working on his own thought processes without pausing to consider whether anyone else may need to be brought up to speed, and, you know what? Danny's getting pretty damn sick of it.

He's sick of it all. He's sick of Steve's total disregard for anyone but himself, or for his own safety. He's sick of Steve's obsession with Victor Hesse, that must have started years ago, well before a gunshot echoed in the McGarrett family home and wiped John out of existence. He's sick of this pain in his arm, and how it matches the pain in his neck that is Steve McGarrett, Navy SEAL extraordinaire and all around cold-blooded jackass. He's sick of the HPD officers, and the way none of them have bothered to come check up on a wounded colleague, but he almost expects it from them.

From Steve, though? Steve, who went in without backup and got himself into a situation where he could've gotten himself and a bunch of innocent bystanders killed, who is why Danny's here without a tac vest. He's goddamn lucky nothing worse than a bullet to the bicep happened. It would've been all too easy for a bullet to fly just wrong, and for Grace to be getting a very different kind of phone call later today.

He's not asking for much. One question, that's all it would take. How's the arm? would be just ducky. Sorry about the arm, even better.

Or some acknowledgement that Danny kept a crazed gun-wielding maniac from blowing off his head, that would be good, too.

No backup. Fuck that.

But, no. Steve doesn't do any of those things. Steve leaps straight into theorizing, and Danny's had just about enough of his talking for one day. "Okay, excuse me, I'm sorry. This is typically where you would say 'thank you' for saving your life."

[thebesteverseen]

Seriously? Did he actually just say those words?

Did he actually look like Steve was going to thank him for anything?

The irrational idioticness of it all smacks straight through Steve's entire aim to keep this professional, to keep doing the job ad maybe give the man a begrudging pass because there might be another lead, right now, in the manner of a very battered, smuggled little girl, but no. Danny wants his gratitude. For Doran being in a pile of muscles, bones, and meat on the ground, that can't answer a single question about Victor Hesse. Who never even admitted he'd seen the man.

"You just shot my only lead," are the only words that come flying out of Steve's mouth, hard and high. Before he turns to walk steps away. Because arguing about the dead body, and whose fault that dead body is won't save anyone. Won't bring back his dad, and will take up minutes he could be getting closer to Hesse, who needed so little time to get in and out of places.

He didn't have time for this crap. He needed to put together. He needed to have a name, a face, a place. He started talking the details out loud to drown out the crap still spouting behind his back. "These are the same guys who are getting people out of Asia. They could have smuggled Hesse into Hawaii." It had to be. The timeframe was too good. But where were they now. How to find them, when the main link to that was dead on the ground or in the form of a very battered little girl, too.

[haole_cop]

Jesus Christ.

There is nothing, nothing he hates more than this, than getting a back turned on him, than someone talking over him. It makes him feel like less than an ant, like maybe he's not even speaking English anymore, like maybe he's a ghost, shouting into the void, because he's saying are you kidding me? are you kidding me? and McGarrett, that son of a bitch, doesn't even notice.

He is fucking sick and tired of not being noticed. Of being stepped on. He was right. They needed backup. There were guns and there was shooting and he took a bullet in his arm that could easily been to the throat or chest instead, and it is all this asshole's fault, because he didn't listen, because no one ever listens to Danny, no matter how loudly he yells, no matter how big he tries to make himself. They just roll right over him like he's not even there, and McGarrett, okay, McGarrett is the worst of the bunch. He's the divorce court and HPD's bigoted silence, he's every check Danny sends to Rachel that's an insignificant drop in the barrel of Stan's millions but that he sends anyway because he's damned if he's not going to help pay for his daughter's upbringing.

He's Peterson and he's Billy saying a knight without armor and he's the helplessness of being tied to a chair, unable to stop a bullet.

And he's not listening.

"You just took a stupid risk!" His hands are up, and so is his volume, but he doesn't give a damn, all he sees is red. "Okay? Understand that. I am not getting myself killed for your vendetta. I have a daughter."

The only thing to live for, the thing he has to live for, and this jackass almost cost him everything, because he thinks he's too good for backup, too good for policework, too good for Danny, who wants to rip the timer out of his wrist and snap it in two, because there's no way, okay. It's not happening. It'll never happen.

[thebesteverseen]

He is obnoxiously in Steve's face.

Demanding Steve's attention, making his jaw clench as well as all the muscles down his back tighten. Because he's being every single word his Captain used and more. In the way. Insubordinate. Ranting. Like he's the only person lost something or almost lost something. Like his concern doesn't apply to anyone else in the world but himself.

When Steve feels like he's having to parent a grown man on how to give a damn about anyone else in the world, leaning down toward that screaming face, and pointing off toward the ambulance, disgust touching his tone when he has to educate him about the fact -- "Yeah, that girl is someone's daughter, too."

Someone who didn't know where she was, didn't know what the hell she was sold in to, made to do, might not even be alive to find out what had happened to her, or might be in the same situations somewhere else, breaking all of them, all at once, for the desperate dream of being alive and free in America.

[haole_cop]

"You don't get it."

That's quieter, but no less soaked in disbelief, because he's just had an epiphany, and this is it. "You don't get it."

Steve McGarrett, Navy SEAL and Commander of god knows how many black ops missions, at home with chasing terrorists and taking the kind of orders that result in people being killed in violent, terrible ways, just doesn't get it. He doesn't see it. That it's all the same. That Danny's point has nothing to do with the girl Steve just found in the cellar or in a closet or wherever she was, that this argument is beyond superfluous, because he doesn't get it. None of it. "You know, for a guy who just lost his father, you're pretty dense."

He's not doing this to Grace. Steve should know that, because Steve is living it right now, but Steve doesn't, so Danny will explain, by way of thumbscrews, if he has to. He'd take that bullet all over again to make sure it didn't happen to that girl's father, either, but that's not the point, and McGarrett is missing it completely, because he is still. Not. Listening.

[thebesteverseen]

The color drains from Steve's vision at the edges. It's not even red. It's hazing grey. And the words are fast, and dangerous, like he can't believe Danny would even dare dream of touching his father. That he's just boiling for trying to make this laughable joke of him as a cop, as anything worth noticing, a fight. "What did you say to me?"

Because it's like he blew the thermometer. Stepped up with the need to smack Steve in the face, with the one thing that explodes out in glass fragments and rage, layered with guilt, ownership, and every damn need of his to see this done right. Like the five years he gave up to this bastard wasn't enough, wasn't even the beginning. All those bodies and case files. Because no his father is on the top of the heap. And he's still doing it.

Because it's his damn job. Because no matter how fucked up their family is that's his dad.

With the blood all over the damn walls, that still hasn't left his nose. Saying he loved Steve, and he never said it enough.

Which is not for anyone to put their hands on. Especially not this fucking screw up of a cop, with less going for him that shack that would blow down by a sneeze and not a single coworker at his back, who even blinked an eye at the idea of him being taken off their hands. "What Did you Just Say To Me??"

Because he's being a sick, selfish bastard. His daughter, above every other person's little girl in the world. They can all rot, so long as his monkey and her Mr. Hoppy are in one piece. And it's so sick. This is why he hates natives, and their closed minds, and self serving everything.

"What if she was yours?" He yelled. Locked up, cringing from even the light and terrified of a man telling her to come with him. "Huh? Is there anything you would not do to track down the son of a bitch who did that to her and kill him?"

[haole_cop]

"Do not."

He went too far. He doesn't give a shit.

This is the first time it's even seemed like McGarrett was connected to this plane of existence, and Danny is fresh out of fucks to give, for hurting his feelings, for rubbing salt in those raw and bleeding wounds that the guy keeps pretending aren't there.

He's sorry about his dad. He is. Too soon, too little, too quick, too messy. But that doesn't give Steve the right to come in here and start pushing him around like everyone fucking does, to not listen, to live out his stupid goddamn deathwish and drag Danny into it behind him.

And he doesn't get to say a single damn word about Grace. Not ever. "Question my resolve --"

He's up in Steve's space now, and he doesn't care that the guy's got a solid seven inches and probably another fifty pounds on him, that he's gone quiet and dangerous, like a snake about to strike, Danny doesn't care. He's in his face, finger pointing, stabbing, and he'd be just fine with taking out an eye if he had to.

[thebesteverseen]

It's winnowing down. All of it. The location. The space. The air.
Steve isn't even looking at him as the tight shake to his head happens.

Because that reign on his hold. The one that's been holding since the phone rang.
In Korea, before the whole damn landslide, happened, is thrumming wire tight.

"I'm warning you." It's remote and blank laugh. "Take your finger out of my face."

[haole_cop]

No.

There's nothing at all, just the fire in his head and the red haze in his vision, finger poking solid at Steve's chest, and Steve, stupid smirking McGarrett, laughing, like he thinks this is funny, like he thinks Danny is funny, and he hates it, hates him, hates being laughed at.

He is not nothing.

"Listen to me, you son of a bitch --"