Warning: This final Way references multiple major (and a minor) character deaths (that occur out-of-story). Have a box of tissues handy.
Way 100
Thank him for just being himself.
You were born together, and together you shall be forever more.
You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days.
Ay, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.
Every time a McGarrett/Williams birthday party rolled around, the entirety of Five-0 knew they'd have at least four days off no matter how many criminals were committing crimes in and around their islands.
The rarity that was the head of the task force and his partner, born on complete opposite ends of the United States, having birthdays literally seven hours apart – technically on two different days thanks to time zones – was something none of them could admit to being anything more than coincidence, but couldn't be anything less than preordained coincidence.
There would be two rowdy days of 'playing' in the ocean, on the beach. On ATVs, out at the state's parks, maybe fishing, maybe boating. Whatever the team felt like doing for Danny's birthday and then Steve's, was always always followed by way too many beers, various shots of some truly strange liquors and hangovers that took at least a full day to get over for all involved.
And in spite of the ups and downs of ten years of partnership, it didn't look to be ending any time soon. So with each birthday set that passed, the partying grew more merry, the playing grew more adventurous and the laughter grew louder. This may have been a Hawaiian ohana, but it went way, way deeper than that for all of them.
They would die for each other, and they somehow knew that at least Steve and Danny would go together. It was never spoken of. It was never even hinted at. But it was known by all four, as though they shared a consciousness that, even after all of them were long gone from the planet, would live on, whispering their names and their secrets, their loves and their tragedies, their woes and their successes.
Long would live the names of the four original members of Hawaii Five-0. Though they had started their lives separately, apart…they had come together because it was meant to be that way.
And the partners? The silly, sometimes comically mismatched duo that led everything with guns blazing, mouths shooting off at each other, and silent communication that bordered on telepathy? Echoed whispers about the lives they had lived would be loudest of all on the Hawaiian winds for generations to come.
It just was.
They just were.
But let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.
It was never meant to be anything more than it was. Closer than friends. Closer than brothers. Yet still two complete people in their own rights. Never more, never less. Gravitating toward each other at every turn, yet still maintaining their separateness. Taking the space when they needed it, staying close when the opposite was so.
Only becoming closer the more they danced apart. Only needing to sway back when they danced too close. Something few understood and even fewer noticed. The cousins knew. They'd always known. They felt it to their very marrow for the partners, for each other, for them all as a unit.
There really was very little to be done when, after a grueling week-long case, the only craving you had was to remind yourselves that you were all still okay, that you'd lived through it to see another day. That instead of running to opposite ends of the island, they wound up huddled together on Steve's beach, or at a small table in the local watering hole. Maybe hunched around the coffee table in Chin's living room or sitting on top of Kono's bed cross-legged just breathing each other in.
Other times they were off on their own, but in their minds, always knowing where the others were. Steve may be in the garage still fine-tuning an old car that never quite wanted to work right, but he knows where Danny is.
Danny may be exploring campuses with his daughter as she narrows down her choices for college, but he knows where Chin is.
Chin may be on a romantic weekend getaway with Malia, thus ensuring their marriage stays strong and intact, but he knows where Kono is.
Kono may be riding every wave she can catch on whichever beach has the best ones that day, Ben Bass by her side, but she knows where Steve is.
And when Danny calls Steve to tell him about the latest campus he's seen, or Steve phones Danny only hours after waking to complain about the latest part he's bought for the Marquis, nobody's surprised.
Because only the winds of the heavens separate them all anyway.
Love one another, but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
They aren't bound together by anything more than their daily lives; by a task force and a mission. By a sense of duty, honor, obligation to the state, to its people. To each other.
They never speak the words, but it's never necessary. When Grace tells her Danno she loves him, and he says it in return, it speaks for all of them.
The first time Grace whispers, "I love you, Uncle Steve," into his ear is when he saves Danny's life in the midst of a fierce knife-and-fistfight that was three on one, and not in Danny's favor. It makes Steve's throat hurt, makes him try to remember how to say those words so he can murmur them in Grace's ear, because he knows she needs to hear it. And when he does, it's directed beyond the child in his arms, and he thinks even the unconscious man in the hospital bed is aware.
When Kono nearly perishes while chasing a perp, teetering precariously on the edge of a volcano where Chin barely makes it in time to keep her from plummeting into its deep cone where she would have been instantly incinerated. When he grabs her, yanks her away from the precipice, pulls her tightly to himself and doesn't let go…when he whispers the words into her ear as she clings to him fighting the terrified sobs her body wants to let loose, Steve hears. Danny hears. And Chin's words are spoken for them all.
When Malia is killed by Wo Fat in retribution for Chin Ho taking out three of Wo Fat's top assassins singlehandedly, and Chin spends weeks grieving and full of guilt, it's not even words that get him…get them all…through the nightmare. It's finding Chin kneeling at the fresh mound of dirt where Malia permanently rests. It's Kono kneeling before him, resting her forehead on his, tears streaming down both their faces as her arms encompass him.
It's Danny kneeling to one side, wrapping one arm around Chin and one around Kono and bowing his head to meet theirs. It's Steve remembering his mother's grave, his father's grave. Remembering the graves of all the Navy brothers he's had to bury over the years, as he kneels on the other side of their four-point compass, wrapping his arms around them all and pulling them as close as he can.
It's four pairs of eyes, not a single one of them dry, crying with Chin and for Chin. For the innocent love that was his for a time, that's now gone because of what they all do for a living. It's telling each other that they may not be bound by vows of marriage, or civil unions; they may not be bound by legalities or blood ties beyond the two distant cousins…but they are bound together by something maybe only their souls understand.
Fill each other's cup, but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread, but eat not from the same loaf.
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.
They share everything together. Kono's triumphs on the waves for charity events. The haul of fish that Steve and Chin catch that keeps the team at Steve's for barbecues for a week. Small things. The beauty of the solo that Grace sings at her school's Christmas pageant, that brings Danny to unabashed tears and makes them all beam with pride as though she belongs to them all.
The day they bring an end to Wo Fat once and for all.
They are always there for each other, but there are still invisible lines that are never crossed. They will give the shirts off their backs, the money out of their pockets, their homes and beds and couches. They will share their food and drink, they will lend an ear and a hand. They will drift apart and ease closer together, imitating the pull of the tide that ebbs and flows.
Like the water they're surrounded by, they are individual molecules but they form something that can be as beautiful as it can destructive. And so they know not to take it too far, even as they know they can never be apart for too long.
They understand it, and they don't. Steve looks at Danny sometimes like he wishes he could never let him go. He sees Chin looking at Kono the same way. Danny at him. Kono at them all, sometimes Chin more than others. How they can be so close, so very close, how they can be so in synch, so in tune, and yet manage to maintain their individuality is a mystery they will never solve. It is what it is.
They are what they are.
Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
They've given it so much of themselves over the years. These many years that have passed now. Chin was the first to retire, and Steve didn't want to so Danny stayed until he couldn't anymore. Kono's in charge these days, and Steve bothers her at HQ more often than not, but they've each had their lives and loves, their losses and joys.
When they were together as a team, they gave it everything they had. Everything they were.
Chin never finds another after Malia is killed. Danny and Gabby drift apart. Catherine falls in love with another sailor and marries him. Kono dedicates her life to her work after Ben leaves the islands for a job in Alaska, only occasionally seeking another when she needs to be held and loved.
They had tried to give their hearts, each of them, some more than once. But in the end it had always come back to the Four and so now, as Kono sits and looks out over the newer team that's nothing like the one she was recruited into, she has to smile when she sees three men come strolling through the door like they own the place.
White-haired in Chin's and Steve's cases; sort of a mousy gray-blond in Danny's. More lines and wrinkles, but all three still fit for their years. It is Kono's time to retire. Today is her last day with Five-0. She welcomes just being able to be with her men again. The only three men, she thinks, she's ever trusted enough with her heart not to break it.
They hug together in the middle of the bullpen as their final good-bye to it and everything it will always represent, ignoring the strange looks from the younger generation. Nothing matters but this: that Life has kept them, and their hearts, cradled together even after Time forced their team asunder.
And stand together yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.
She looks at the special place that was set apart specifically for these four people. She wipes a tear that escapes her eye, clutching the arm of the man who stands solidly next to her in his full dress blues. Influenced even now by the uncle, the former SEAL, who was always more than an uncle; by the wise shaman-like uncle who was as gentle as he was loving; by the beautiful, lively, brave aunt who'd shown her what a woman could truly do with herself if she tried very hard. By the man whose heart she'd owned even before she was born: her Danno.
Grace looks down at her own dress blues and smiles. Danno had been so pissed when she'd decided to go to Annapolis instead of some "nice, normal" college, and thrown his hands up in the air when she'd declared five years into her service that she was marrying a SEAL, of all things. And yet the twinkle in his eyes when he'd walked her down the aisle, and the tears of pride and joy when she'd become the very first active duty female SEAL in the Navy, had been at odds with his prickly words.
The pride on Steve's face had been almost more than she could bear, as the child she was for him that they both knew he would never have of his own.
She makes sure to come back here once a year, on the same date – the anniversary of the date the four former Five-0 members met their fate together.
There is a man she and her husband now chase around the world as a two-person SEAL team, the man who brought disaster on the aged friends. Wo Fat's son, who had gotten revenge for his father's murder by blowing up the yacht her ohana had been celebrating Chin's one hundredth birthday on.
It had only been the four of them, together, and they had died as they had lived. As much as it had hurt, and as many tears as she'd cried, Grace knew they would never have wanted it to happen any other way. Quickly. Painlessly. As one.
The grave markers stand in contrast to the rich, lush, green grass, arranged in a square with each marker a corner. Like pillars, continuing to hold up all that they were, all that they had accomplished, all that they had meant to each other. For eternity they would stand together like this, never quite touching, but never ever apart.
And Grace and her husband wiill spend the rest of their days seeking justice for those who had made such a difference in Hawaii that to this day, their stories are the stuff of legends.
Lieutenant Commander Grace Williams – too proud of the name to give it up for her husband's – snaps to attention, a smart straight-fingered salute in honor of the fallen even as a tear trickles out of one big, brown eye. Her man, the only man she's ever trusted with her heart besides her Danno and the members of her ohana, snaps-to in mirror of his wife. They stand at attention for thirty seconds, then smartly return their arms to their sides.
Next year on this date they will be back. And one day, these deaths will be avenged. She and her husband will see to that, with the full blessing and support of the United States Navy.
As they walk away, the sunlight casts itself through the branches of the trees overhead. Shadows play along and among the four white/gray stones that mark the final resting places of Hawaii's heroes. And in the interlocking, intertwining shadows of the trees, their stones…as their souls perhaps had always been…are linked together.
She stops and turns to look back at this place so sacred to her, where American flags fly proudly and bright tropical flowers provide a natural protective border. "Thank you for being who you were," she says, looking at her father's name etched into the stone as her husband lays his hands on her shoulders. "And for making me who I am."
And Grace thinks in the warm and salt-soaked Hawaiian wind, she can hear their voices echo words of love, of encouragement. Of pride in the woman she's become. She knows it as surely as she knows her place in this world. Knows she'd been molded into who she is by all of them and still clings to their love, to the example they set, even so many years later.
Her tears turn into a smile as she imagines her father chasing his partner through eternity lecturing him on how grenades don't work in Heaven, how Heaven has rules and procedures and "Oh, my God, you're going to get us sent to Hell!" How Chin has undoubtedly hacked his way into God's secret files and Kono is surfing clouds like they're waves. How her Danno probably tells her Uncle Steve, "You see? This Heaven, here? This is exactly what New Jersey was like!" How Steve scowls and rolls his eyes and stares at Danno like he can strangle him with a look.
Grace laughs out loud even as their voices seem to fade away. Off on another adventure together, maybe. As they were in life, so, too, they are in death.
"Always together," she whispers as her husband squeezes her hand and places a kiss on her forehead. "Even now."
Author's Note: Well, that was the final of these 100 Ways, everyone! Wow. Fifty chapters, 100 short stories. I remember when I posted the first two Ways, thinking to myself, there is NO WAY I'm going to get through 100 of these! Well, I did. WE did. Together. All of those of you who've returned day after day, faithfully, to see what I'd put up next. How I'd handle sticking to heavy bromance because I won't go explicitly into slash territory…especially with Ways as 'leading' as some of these were! (How a reader wishes or chooses to interpret my writing is their decision, however! *grin*)
Well, we accomplished a lot together with this, dear readers. We proved that a) it can be done, and b) you do like it! So thank you for that from the bottom of my heart.
The poem that I used in Way 100 is below in its entirety, if you'd like to actually see it all put together. It's a poem from a section of the author Khalil Gibran's larger work entitled "The Prophet." I felt that it very accurately conveyed how I see Steve and Danny and their bromance, friendship and partnership…as well as all of the ohana. I hope you enjoyed this final Way.
Only time will tell if we'll do this together again…
"Love One Another"
By Khalil Gibran
You were born together, and together you shall be forever more.
You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days.
Ay, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.
But let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.
Love one another, but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other's cup, but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread, but eat not from the same loaf.
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.
Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.