Chapter Text
It felt like she had only been back in Washington for a few moments when she got a call.. It was really early in the morning and she had been sound asleep, yet the phone ringing broke her out of that sleep. Squinting a little when she opened her eyes, her eyes trying to adjust to the light, she noticed the time on her alarm clock, four am..
No good call ever came at four am, unless it was a call from Steve when he was on active duty. Her stomach twisted in knots the moment she heard his voice as she answered. It was Steve but it wasn’t like in the old days when he called to say he was home safe or back from whatever classified mission he had been on.
His voice sounded stressed and tired, he had been through so much in the last month or so, and hear he was, dealing with the news that their niece, yes, their.. She still considered Grace her niece even though she wasn’t living in Hawaii anymore. Hearing that Gracie had been involved in a serious traffic accident and was critical and was still being worked on in the emergency room was hard. She had watched that girl grow up so it was hard to think of her fighting for her life.
She wanted to throw up, In fact.. As soon as she hung up from talking to Steve, she had rushed straight to the bathroom and thrown up the entire contents of her stomach from the previous days meals. Thinking about what Danny and Rachel were going through, she knew how much that little girl that wasn’t such a little girl meant to Danny, and to Steve as well.
“I know it’s a lot to ask Cath, I’ve probably asked too much of you lately”, was the words he had used, and in usual Catherine fashion, she had brushed off that comment and told him that he could always ask anything of her and it would never be too much. “It’s never too much Steve, you guys need me, so I’ll get there as soon as I can”.
Though they weren’t together anymore, they shared a connection and a bond that no one else would ever understand. It always made her smile when she found out that Greer was simply jealous of the fact that he choose to be with Catherine and not with Greer. She had long suspected that when Greer had made it clear they had been together that she was trying to make Catherine jealous, but Catherine just wasn’t the jealous type.
Even when she met Lynn, she was never jealous of her, she was happy if Steve was happy. His happiness had always meant the world to her and that is why she could never be jealous of any other woman that had come before or even after her. The time spent together when it was just the two of them on Joe’s ranch, it made them both realise that they would never stop loving each other.
They had been making more regular phone calls since then and she had been making plans to come to Hawaii when she had some vacation time to spend with him and the rest of her five-o family. She never envisioned this though, her coming back to Hawaii for something as painful and stressful as this. Steve needed her, and so did Danny.. Even Rachel could use a familiar female face as well that could sit with her as well.
“Tell Danny and Rachel I’m thinking of them and I’ll see you soon Sailor, I love you”. She waited till he responded and with a soft smile on her face and a tear in her eye as he said those words back, she hung up the phone and made arrangements to be on the first flight to O’ahu. Her family needed her and once again, she wasn’t prepared to let them down at all.
Back in Hawaii, Steve was a mess, but as he walked through the hospital corridors to find Danny and Rachel and get an update, he couldn’t help but smile a tiny bit at the song that was playing through the speakers, a song that reminded him of his relationship with Catherine, they had a few ‘their’ songs, but this one had always been top of the list. Richard Marx; Right here waiting. It was true, as much as he said he couldn’t, he knew he would always be right here waiting for her to come home to him.