A/N: Alright, this is in fact the last chapter. There's still reference of Danny's recovery from his kidnapping. So tread with caution if it could make you uncomfortable.

I hope you enjoy it...

A month later, Danny was sitting on a chair at the back of Steve's house, his bare feet burrowed in the sand.

Considering the peaceful landscape, one would expect Danny to be there enjoying the beautiful view. Instead, his restlessness and agitated movements showed a less than peaceful picture.

It had been two weeks since he had been released from the hospital, and he had found himself having to jump from one of his friend's home to another.

The first couple of days he had accepted Rachel's invitation to stay at her and Stan's place. He hadn't been given much of a choice, since everyone had agreed that sleeping under the same roof as Grace would help him to recover. None of them counted on him waking terrified every morning, not knowing where he was and not being able to calm down unless either Rachel or Stan intervened, which made it awkward, to say the least. The worst part was that he was starting to scare Grace, so after only three days he decided to leave.

Of course his Ohana wouldn't just let him go back to his suite at the Hilton, especially since the traitors had taken his stuff from the room and moved it all to McGarrett's place one week after he had been found. He had also shared with some of them that since Ally's place was next to the beach, he was a bit scared to sleep with the sound of the ocean in the background, so they had all agreed that crashing at Chin and Malia's place would be the best choice.

Three days later, he was leaving the Kelly's home, after waking up straddling Chin, just short of crushing his friend's head against the ground.

It took a lot of effort, but Kono finally convinced him to crash at her place. It involved a promise from Kono to stay at a safe distance from Danny if he was in the middle of a nightmare. He would not be able to live with himself if anyone else was hurt because of this. Unfortunately it also meant that Danny was avoiding sleep like the plague, convinced that he would hurt his friend if she found him having a nightmare.

Steve had remained silent through the whole process, supporting all of Danny's decisions, but when he visited him at Kono's place and found him jumpy, exhausted and in a generally awful mood, he decided enough was enough. Packing all of Danny's things, he thanked Kono and hauling Danny to his truck, he drove him to his place. By that time, Danny was far too tired to argue, so he just went along with it.

Of course that the change didn't instantly make everything better. Danny was still lucky to get more than 2 uninterrupted hours of sleep every time he managed to drift off; he refused to take any pills to help him with that, since he would wake up groggy and frightened. His therapist had said that it would take time for things to go back to normal, that he needed to give himself time to recover, and that he shouldn't punish himself for the things that he couldn't or wouldn't feel comfortable doing for now. The problem was that those small things that he didn't feel comfortable doing right now included sleeping, going out the door, watching and hearing the ocean, and holding his service weapon.

At least Danny knew that Steve was better at avoiding getting hit by a flailing arm or leg, or if he did get hit, the most injured would undoubtedly end up being Danny. But if he was being honest with himself, even with the general unpleasantness that was his life, it was a little bit less unbearable at Casa McGarrett.

That's how Steve found him sitting on a chair, staring at the ocean, his feet burrowed in the sand. By now the only evidence of his kidnapping was the sling over his shoulder, since both his broken arm and leg had healed enough to allow him to remove the casts.

Steve had done him the courtesy of allowing Danny some time for himself, knowing that lately it was a scarce commodity for his friend, either because of Danny's own sense of helplessness or because of his friends' over protectiveness.

He made sure to alert Danny of his presence, making some noise and approaching slowly. "Hey Danno, you alright?"

Danny glared at him sideways. "I'm peachy! Never been better!" He snapped, not taking his eyes off the shoreline.

Steve sat down on the chair next to the one his partner was occupying. "Do you wanna talk about it?"

Danny gave a mirthless laugh. "Talk about it? That's all my psycho-doctor says! Talk about it, Danny! How does that take you feel, Danny!" He yelled, standing up. "I'm tired of talking about it! I'm tired of feeling scared all the time! I'm tired of falling asleep, only to see her face, only to find myself back in that God forsaken room!" He continued to yell, turning around to face Steve. "I'm tired of feeling tired… I'm tired, Steven…" He finished in a defeated whisper.

Steve opened his mouth to say something, but before he could, Danny interrupted him. "I swear to God, Steven, if you tell me to give it more time, I'll take the gun you keep under your pillow and I'll shoot you with it!"

Steve sighed. "Well, you do have to… do what you said… Besides, your shrink did tell you to try to start doing stuff, to take a walk around the block, a dip in the ocean? You've been here for a week, and this is the first time I see you coming outside…"

Danny was standing with his back to the water, looking down at his hands. "It may have escaped your attention, but… The idea of going out the door is not very appealing to me right now… And the sound of this damn ocean behind me makes my skin crawl, so… I… I'm taking my time to do all that stuff my psycho-doc wants me to do, ok?"

Steve studied his partner for a few minutes and then took a deep breath and started talking. "So, what do you want to do? Maybe going back to Jersey would be a good idea?"

Danny looked up at him, an angry expression on his face. "Are you nuts? I'll be dead before I leave my baby girl alone in this piece of rock in the middle of the ocean!"

Steve raised his eyebrows. "Really? You're going with that? That's interesting, because I'm really curious about how you plan on protecting Grace from my living room!"

Danny opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, a pissed off look coming over his face. "You know what? You have no fucking clue what's it like…"

Steve stood up, giving a sarcastic chuckle. "I don't have a clue? Are you serious? Let me tell you, Danno. I've been in traumatic situations, where I've been injured and I've had to go through stuff like you are going through right now. It's true that it was nothing as personal as you and that I was trained for it… I'm aware of that, but what I do know and what you're pretending to ignore is that there's nothing worse than staying locked up, hiding from it all! And that's exactly what you're doing!"

Danny circled his partner, feeling his hackles rising. "You've no idea what you're talking about! I bet you Super SEAL would be already back at work, throwing grenades and shooting people left and right if it had happened to you! Well, excuse me if I need a little bit more time!"

Steve shook his head, growing angry himself. "I never said you should be back at work already! I'm just saying that you should be making more efforts to get better! That maybe you shouldn't be such a coward…"

Steve knew he had gone too far trying to snap his partner out of it when said partner's face started to turn a furious shade of red and the next thing he knew he was being tackled and unceremoniously thrown into the water nearby.

What followed was a succession of mutual tackles, dunks, rolls in the sand, and general attempts to drown each other, which ended up with the two partners sitting down in the shallow water, soaking wet, covered in sand, coughing up part of said water and laughing their asses off between the coughs.

Steve recovered first and looked at his disheveled partner with a smile. "Well, at least you took that 'dip in the ocean' that your doc suggested."

Danny glared at him half heartedly. "He never said I should do it in my clothes…" He said, looking down at himself. He shifted a bit, taking his cell phone from his pocket and groaned at the sight of the dripping device. "He never said anything about ruining my phone either."

Steve winced, raising his hands in a placating gesture. "I was just the innocent bystander that got thrown into the ocean…" He noticed his friend's forlorn expression and reached out to pat his shoulder. "Well, what do you say if we go inside, you take a nap and after that we go get you a new one?"

Danno looked at the waves lapping at his feet, surprised to realize that he had being too busy wrestling with his friend to remember the fear that usually the sound and sight of the ocean brought on. He took a deep breath and looked at his partner uncertainly. "Would… would you go with me?"

Steve squeezed his friend's shoulder comfortingly. "Wherever you want to go, I'll be there, Danno."

Danny moved to stand up and with Steve's help they started moving back into the house. "We may have to get a new sling while we are at it…" He said, eyeing the torn straps of his old sling.

Steve chuckled. "I'm sure we could stop on the way…"

Two months later, they were in the getting ready to raid a warehouse where a group of weapon dealers and human traffickers were hiding. Steve was pointing at a blueprint of the building, assigning positions both to his team and to the SWAT team that had been invited to participate in the operation. "Alright Chin, you, Kali and Jones are going through the back. Watch out for the offices around there, some of them could seek shelter in there. Kono, Lori and Pao, you are coming in through the emergency door in the second floor. See if you can cover us from there. Danny, you take Smith, Lani and Kapu and come in through the side door. Me and Poku are going through the front."

Danny lifted his eyebrows but didn't comment. It was only a month since he had been allowed to go back to desk duty, and just two weeks since his shrink authorized him to full active duty. He also knew that his team had been affected by what happened too, so he expected some over protectiveness from them for a while.

Everyone took their positions and on Steve's word moved into the warehouse. Fortunately, it all went smoothly. The surprise factor meant that the perps didn't oppose much resistance, and in a few minutes most of them were being cuffed.

Of course one of them would try to make a run for it, and in this case it was a young, blonde woman that somehow managed to slip by three SWAT officers and slip out the back door.

Looking around, Danny noticed that he was the only one not currently trying to restrain a suspect, so with a loud "I'm on it!" he sprinted after the woman. He didn't hear his team's calls to stop, to wait, and by the time they were free to follow, Danny was out of sight.

Five minutes later, they found them. The blonde woman was handcuffed to a dumpster, screaming her throat out and squirming to release her hands from the cuffs. Most concerning was the sight of Danny, doubled over and panting for breath.

Steve and Kono rushed to their friend, while Chin and Lori moved cautiously to the flailing woman. "Hey Danno, you ok?"

Danny didn't speak up, just managing to shake his head.

Steve shared a concerned look with Kono. He reached out, putting a comforting hand on Danny's shoulder. "Hey, Danno… It's alright… You're alright…"

Danny lifted his head to glare at his partner. "Alright? I'm not alright, you Neanderthal! She kicked me!" He said, in a pained groan.

Kono looked from Steve to Danny and with a chuckle moved to help the others control the angry blonde.

Steve lifted his eyebrows, not really sure of what was going on. "She kicked you?" He said, looking at his friend's legs and not seeing anything wrong with them.

Danny rolled his eyes. "Yes, Steven… She kicked me…" He said, moving his eyes downward.

Steve finally understood his friend's problem and winced in sympathy. "Oh! Owww… That's too bad, Danno… You just… Need any ice or something?" He said, patting Danny's back.

Danny straightened out, wincing a bit himself, but shook his head. "Nah… I'm good…" He took a good look at his friend's face. "You were scared, weren't you?" He said with a chuckle.

Steve blushed and wouldn't look at his friend. "I was not… Well… Maybe I was just a little bit concerned…" He said sheepishly.

Danny slung an arm around Steve's shoulder. "It's nice to know you care, you goof…"

Steve smiled, patting his friend's back. "Come on, Danno… the SWAT guys are waiting for you with the suspects… "

Danny lifted his eyebrows. "What for?" He asked, confused.

"So you can Book'em, Danno…" Steve said with a smirk.

THE END

A/N: Yay! I'm done!

First of all, in case that Steve's approach at helping Danny is exactly the wrong thing to do to someone in that situation, I apologize, since I've zero knowledge on the subject and I just needed Danny to snap out of it, in order to move on woth the story... I hope it won't offend anyone.

Second, I want to thank everyone that read, reviewed, alerted and/or favorited this story. I hope the end is not dissapointing.

Can I say that I can't wait for tomorrow's episode? And I hope to see plenty of fic about it afterwards?

Anyways... I hope to see you around!