H5-0 Fic: Never Know (Just What I Found)
(2x15) During Grace's abduction, Steve prepares for the worst.
Disclaimer: Hawaii Five-0 is all CBS'; no claim or commerce here.
Special thanks: To zelda_zee, for beta reading.
Warning: Imagined character death.
Preparing appropriately for a worst-case scenario is the task and obligation of the team leader.
The baseline scenario is that Rick Peterson’s plan is to kill Grace. There’s very little room for reasonable doubt on that one. He’s drawing the end game out, of course. He’s having fun with it.
The worst-case scenario is that he’s already done it.
Steve doesn’t want to think about it.
He has to think about it.
He can’t think of Grace - of Grace in the worst-case scenario. Not if he wants to function, and he has no chance of averting that scenario if he isn’t functional.
No man left behind. Failure is not an option.
Worst-case scenario: failure is an established fact.
Steve doesn’t mean to, he just... sees it: white coffin; Danny, kneeling, Sweetie, look both ways before you cross...
He’ll be doing a death notification.
Peterson won’t let Danny... he won’t let Danny see it for himself first. He’ll want to spread the pain, make another cop break it to him, and that cop has to be Steve. Maybe Peterson’s meant for it to be Steve all along.
(There are some groups, in some places, not always the ones you expect, that recruit kids. Innocent-looking; backpack IEDs. You learn to spot them.)
If it’s the worst...
Steve has no training that allows him to prepare appropriately. It’s your task and obligation to inform...
He’ll need intel. Confirmation. His eyes, or maybe Chin Ho’s. Steve trusts Chin with his life, and now, it turns out, in a worst-case scenario, he trusts Chin...
Steve can’t do this.
There’s no can’t.
He trusts Chin with Grace’s death.
And Steve will have to prove the trust that Danny’s put in him. He’ll have to be the one...
It has to be him, if Danny’s told.
If Danny’s told that because he did the right thing, because he stood up for justice, because he was brave, his nine-year-old, his little girl (flesh and blood; Monkey) is a corpse.
Steve never really expected to live long.
He would give anything to be dead.
If he were, Danny would still have to know.
In the worst-case scenario, Grace is dead already and the world, obscenely, has refused to end, or even to pinhole itself on that fact. (“You know, parents always say,” Danny told him, early on, “that they couldn’t survive if their kid died. One of the worst things in the entire world is that that isn’t true.”)
The worst thing in the entire world world would be that Grace dies. Worse than the worst: Grace dies, and Danny keeps living.
Telling Danny, if he has to, will be worse than imagining it.
Just imagining it is the first thing in Steve’s honestly felt that he can’t stand.
But that’s what Steve has to plan for, the intolerable outcome. Never mind that he can’t plan, because if it’s not just a scenario, if Grace is already dead and her father’s still alive... Steve will tell him and time won’t stop and there is nothing, nothing Steve can do.
If Steve’s sure it’s real, if he knows for certain that Grace is dead... God, he’ll have to tell Danny.
Start small. First step.
Danny has to know. That’s the fundamental fact. Danny has to know.
Steve closes his eyes, tries not to vomit.
Because he is who he is, Danny’s who he is, and there’s something in Steve’s head -
There’s an alternative.
Danny doesn’t have to know.
For Steve to take that alternative...
He has to have a plan.
He won’t tell Danny that Grace is okay, he knows that immediately. False hope is cruel, and Steve’s not that good an actor. Heading into surgery, prognosis uncertain: that’s... well, it’s not a happy medium. But it’s what Steve will say. Comms will have to go silent afterwards. That can happen. Siren and lights will probably have to be on, to sell it. They’ll draw eyes, but they’ll probably scatter the panhandlers who hang around the hospital parking lot, too.
Parking, right. Oahu Mercy Hospital’s got a long-term lot, out of the way, not many bystanders. Quicker than navigating the main lot’s crowding, if Danny asks. Tree-lined pathway to the visitor’s entrance; poorly maintained, always a few junkies hanging out. Fine. Decent site. Best he’ll do.
Once they get there...
Danny will get ahead of him right off, rushing. Not far ahead, that wouldn’t work, so Steve, if it comes to this, will have very little time to maneuver, probably no more than it takes Danny to get ten paces. He’ll have no chance to get any of the precision gear in hand, but he doesn’t need it, not really. All he needs is Danny’s back to him.
He could do it, probably, looking Danny in the eye. It might be easier, if he has to do it, to see Danny’s blessing written on his face.
But then Danny would know.
Steve trusts his sidearm, cares for it, knows its quirks like a friend: Quiet decocking lever, drop guard, medium-low variation in trigger pressure between a round’s first and second shots.
He knows where the brain stem lies in relation to skull. Knows, as he puts the pieces together in his mind, which gel-smothered whorls of Danny’s hair correspond to that point. And what he’ll see if the first shot is true.
If it is, Danny won’t feel it. Not really. One split second for the nerve signals to travel, one more with the capacity to register them, so yes, he’ll feel something: sound impression, pressure, burn. But there won’t be time for pain.
If it’s not, and, fuck, the Sig’s a handgun, and Steve won’t be aiming for center mass...
If the first shot isn’t true, there will be two more. One: down; two: out.
It will hurt.
If it hurts enough, the physical pain might forestall Danny’s realizing the truth for a few seconds. That’s all it needs to.
If the pain’s not enough, at least it will distract him.
Steve checks his holster and prays that none of this is real.
Image credits: Tumblr; bananners.