Chapter Text
H5O* H5O* H5O* H5O* H5O
Word of the Day: Catatonic. of or in an immobile or unresponsive stupor.
"Danny? What happened?" Steve asked breathlessly as he knelt by his partner's side and hastily stripped off his black gloves. "Hey. Look at me ... look at me ... tell me what happened."
Danny didn't reply though and Steve cursed under his breath as he tried to tug Danny's chin towards his face. It was fruitless. Danny's neck was rigid and Steve failed at the attempt which was even more alarming. Sitting ramrod straight and as if rigor had set in, the blue of Danny's eyes were glazed over and he was fixated on some far away spot beyond Steve's right shoulder. Losses growing by the second as sweat began to bead across Danny's forehead and a subtle tremor rippled through the taut muscles, Steve raised his voice, unable to hide his unease.
"Me... look at me. Come on, hey. Danny? What the hell happened?" Steve was just about pleading and refusing to listen to the faint illogical murmurings which began to tease his mind in an ancient, raspy lilting tone.
Them. They sent it ...
"Danny?" Steve ignored the mental warning with a growl. The gibberish had devolved into shadows so dark, they were pitch black in daylight. Banshees ... the lot of them.
It hadn't made sense the prior day and certainly didn't make sense now. The old man who'd once been catatonic upon arrival to the hospital had woken sounding like a B-movie gone worse. There had been no diagnosis defining the man's catatonic-state and then no reason for why he'd roused. He'd only gotten attention because he'd been a child-hood friend of the Governor's visiting Oahu from Dublin.
So now? Danny had obviously walked into some kind of ambush; someone had surprised his partner and Danny was hiding some kind of injury. No more, no less. That was the one and only rational explanation.
"Come on, look at me, buddy ... who did this? Huh?" Steve persisted. "Where are you hurt?"
The thin elderly voice smiled in his head and Steve made a face. Bánánach. He'd had to look it up to understand after gently interrogated the Governor's friend. He'd done it on the sly, learning that bánánach were spectres which haunted old battlefields. Steve hadn't been too impressed, though he understood then because there was a very similar Hawaiian legend of the same ilk. He'd filed it away and respectfully said nothing, agreeing with the Governor that Five-0 would investigate his friend's apparent abduction ... he'd been robbed and badly addled in the process.
The same had just happened to Danny and so ...
Them a new voice whispered and Steve blinked, stiffening in surprise because that time, he'd heard the word as if on the wind. But so near to him and far too close.
"Hey! Hey ... who's there!?" He shouted as he stayed low, crouched, covering his partner. "Son of a bitch," Steve muttered to himself, feeling foolish and jumpy as hell when he saw and heard nothing more. He was falling for rumors and lies and he'd never been one to be impressionable. Still, he and Danny were far too exposed and he needed to get them out of there. Now.
"Danny ... look at me. We gotta go." Steve tried giving Danny a firm shake. "Come on! Just blink dammit! Don't just sit there!" Even ducking his head this way and that, he couldn't capture Danny's attention though. "What the hell are you looking at?!" He cursed in frustration as the doctors' initial recitation on the old man came to mind.
Catatonic upon arrival. No outward signs of attack ... still ...
"Danny ...," Steve urged him as he pushed the doctors' words to the wayside even though Danny looked every bit the definition of catatonic.
When Danny's brief transmission had cut-off mid-sentence, he'd double-timed it to his partner's side from the opposite end of the bunker. He'd found Danny as he was now: sitting up against a concrete wall with his legs straight out in front of him, his back rigid. The wall was cold and damp, crumbling from age as it sucked water into its old surface only to spew it out in a thin sheen at its base. Danny was literally sitting in that dank, shallow puddle which had coagulated there. He apparently didn't care. In fact, from what Steve could see, Danny might not even know where he was right then.
Growing more than just a little nervous, Steve looked around the old bunker for the hundredth time. He had an eerie feeling of being watched and he couldn't shake it. Again ridiculous because the place wasn't even all that remote. And with the sun shining brilliantly through a smattering of pretty green leaves, Steve could still hear the distant sounds of cars and trucks on the highway. The normal predictable sounds of life and civilization. This was a popular spot for the local kids to throw down the occasional party, proven by the volume of liquor bottles, cheap beer cans and blackened circular hunk of metal serving as a make-shift fire pit.
Eyes narrowed suspiciously, Steve looked deeply into the maw of the bunker's doorway. There was a faint, dim flicker of light at the other side. Likely a point of egress or at minimum, a fissure in crumbling concrete. The thing had been falling to the elements for some time now. Regardless, Steve knew that Danny hadn't actually gone into the thing; that was the reason for his partner's exasperated transmission in the first place. At least partly the reason. Steve had missed the rest.
"Danny?" Steve tried one last time while tapping his comm link and switching gears completely. No matter what he might try, he knew that he wasn't going to get anything out of his partner. Something had happened ... maybe ... Steve both knew and didn't know at the same time. The rumors had been running rampant since before he was a kid and that damned old man? Spitting gibberish so badly about god knew what. All of it was the stuff of nightmares and dark magic.
Make-believe. Even senility ... nonetheless, Steve shook his head as the hair on the back of his neck began to itch.
They sent it ... ancient taboo ... labu... the black ghost ...
Impossible. Even if some tiny part of him had doubts from years of growing up surrounded by native culture, his adult brain said it was sheer bunk. He needed to take care of his partner and whatever the doctors found out, therein would like the most honest and very credible truth.
"Lou? Lou! Where're you at? I've got a problem ... a big one."
Grim-faced, Steve started to pat Danny down looking for hidden injuries. He quickly ran his fingers through Danny's hair, down his neck and then flipped the velcro off Danny's vest so that Danny might breathe easier. Still feeling nervous, Steve left the vest in place though as he continued his fast but efficient triage.
"Nothing ... nothing," Steve muttered to himself as he ended his search down each of Danny's legs. Good and yet ... maybe not so much as Steve's imagination began to run wild. Drugs? Toxic inhalants? Some kind of ... what? Poison? He scowled to himself, scrubbing his hand roughly through his hair as the old man's incessant babble helplessly ran through his mind.
Them.
It.
The sick old man in the hospital had just about been screaming nonsense ... and how they'd infected his mind ... tried to take his soul ... but he was too old. No. Steve shook his head as his heart lurched inside his chest, feeling desperate enough to check Danny out even more closely. This was impossible. The old man had made no sense at all. Irish folklore and Hawaiian legend muddled and merged. His team were only here at the bunker checking out one tiny aspect of the incredible story even though Steve, like Danny, had thought the entire escapade a massive waste of time.
"Lou? Report," Steve demanded more forcibly. "Lou?" He frowned listening hard, a hand tightening on his weapon as he made sure he was directly shielding Danny from whatever - no, that was wrong. He could feel whoever it was nearby. He could feel ... them, or ...
It's here.
He heard the whisper on the wind at the same moment he saw it. A black silhouette from just within the lip of the bunker itself. Reacting quickly, Steve clenched his fists before whirling around with his gun aimed towards the entrance.
Give him.
A louder whisper. A demand for Danny and Steve crouched over his partner as he tried to track what wasn't supposed to be there.
Labu - a black ghost.
Steve startled though because another image came to mind. Another name. Kino wailua. Spirit of the dead. His eyes flickered in vain, his gun-hand seeking purchase and needing to hold his fire when none was found. At once thinking a shape might be there but then losing its shadows against the greenery of leaves, Steve hesitated; if such a thing had been there at all.
"Lou? Answer me ... report," Steve ground out on high alert. His heart was thudding now as he crouched partially near Danny's side, lightly balanced on the balls of his feet. "Lou? Where the hell are you?"
"St've ... w'h're ..." Lou's voice might have been clear on the other side of the island so Steve wasn't sure if he felt much better even when the deep tone finally crackled over the comm link. It was so badly distorted that each word was unrecognizable and that, too? That made zero sense at all.
"Forget it!" Steve practically shouted as he hit the link in his ear so hard, he rocked his own head on his neck. "Lou, if you can hear me ... meet me at the rally point! I need help ... Danny needs help."
Covered in a sheen of sweat, Danny was flat out shaking now, his hands fisted almost painfully tight in his lap. That's when Steve realized that Danny's weapon was missing. Eyes wide as another movement caught his eye only to disappear as quickly as he turned, Steve made a decision. His next search was half-hearted and nearest where Danny was sitting, knowing the weapon wouldn't be there. The bunker beckoned him again and that distant light at its other end seemed like a beacon. But then it shifted and then winked out entirely and Steve cursed softly.
Give him. Give. Him.
"Fuck off," Steve challenged back, sneering bravely against an odd frigid breeze which wafted warningly across his face. It held a thick stench of rot and mildew, then something else that made Steve gag and he lurched into action.
"We're leaving," Steve said out loud, anger and fear for Danny warring together as the tremors visibly increased through his partner's torso. "Easy buddy ... there's only one place you're going and that's with me." Opting to draw on his anger, he set his jaw in determination as he blatantly ignored an incomprehensible blast of putrid air that nearly froze his lungs. He gagged again and then spat up bile, refusing to back down even when he failed at sucking in a breath of clean, fresh air.
Give. Himmmmmm.
Eyes tearing from the toxic odor, Steve forced himself to breathe. He didn't have time to worry about anything else as he grabbed Danny's arms and hefted him over a shoulder. With an audible grunt, Steve staggered to his feet, eyes slitted in anger, his gun at the ready despite the awkward weight of Danny's body.
GIVE HIM!
Unable to speak as he gagged and retched against the stench, Steve tightened the hold he had on Danny's back, wending his fingers firmly through the webbing of his partner's tac-vest. With a snarl on his lips, Steve barely paused as a black shadow flit warningly across the sun-drenched path he intended to take. Maybe he should have stopped. Instead, he forced his feet to move.
~ to be continued ~