Title: You're Part Of My Ohana
Fandom: Hawaii 5-0 (2010)
Rating: T
Length: 2072
Content notes: AU, mutant!Lori Weston, strongly implied Steve/Danny & implied Max/Lori
Author notes: I'm still sick, but I wanted to get this one up and posted so its likely a little rough in parts.
Summary: Wherein Grace informs Lori that her family can't have her back, because Lori is now part of Grace's family.



A pleasant buzz flows through her veins as Lori sits at a table in Steve’s backyard with a beer in hand while she watches the rest of the group mingling in little groups with a small half smile on her face. Parties of any sort still weren’t the sort of scene Lori was ever comfortable in and her ankle still bothered her a little bit a few days after her ill advised attempt to outrun Steve up a mountain. So she had done the cursory greeting of everyone when she had arrived with a smile on her face –Max had smiled at her and kissed the top of her hand uncaring of who might see–, before she had limped off in her little mission of going to find a table.

About a few minutes later, a raised voice raised reaches her ears, Lori raises her eyes away from the beer in her hands to watch as Danny arrives with Grace in hand. She raises one hand up in a slight greeting when Danny nods at her with a small smile on his face before he turns to Steve and gently kisses the taller man’s cheek as Grace manages to slip away from them.

Lori drops her eyes back down to her beer and actually finds herself wondering how useful she might be to the team by the next case. If her ankle is still bothering her by that point, Lori thinks that she might willingly volunteer herself to stay behind in the 5-0 office to coordinate case details with the team while they are in the field. At first, she doesn’t even realize that Grace has joined her and is quietly eating until the young girl actually speaks up.

“Hey, Aunt Lori?”

“What is it you need, Grace?” Lori answers, turning her head to the right to look at Grace and finds the girl looking at her in turn. She’s still not sure what she really thinks of Grace calling her an aunt yet like she does with the others. Its.. admittedly nice to hear even when they aren’t related by blood.

“Why don’t you ever talk about your family?” Grace asks in a loud and very blunt tone. Lori feels her eyes widen slightly in surprise and she thinks that she might hear Danny making surprised choking noises from where he stands nearby with Steve, Chin, and Kono. There’s definitely no mistaking whose daughter, Grace is.

Or Grace might be learning to sharpen her brand of bluntness from her close proximity to Steve. Or perhaps from her mother and the stepfather. Lori has no idea really. Either way that’s definitely not the kind of question that she would have expected from the young girl.

“Why do you ask, kiddo?” Lori asks instead of immediately answering the question like Grace might be hoping that Lori would do. Bemused, she watches Grace’s face scrunches with all of the little tells that give her away saying she’s frustrated that Lori isn’t giving her the answer that she was hoping to hear.

“Because you don’t have pictures of them on your desk at the office. Aunt Kono and Uncle Chin talk about theirs when I ask them. Uncle Steve sometimes talks about his family if I ask. And I’ve met my Danno’s family.” Grace answers immediately and Lori holds back a smile.

“Do your mother and stepfather talk about theirs if you ask?” Lori asks softly.

“Yeah.” Grace’s answer is immediate before she asks the same question again. “So, why won’t you talk about yours? Are they dead?”

“No, kiddo. Last I checked or heard, they weren’t dead.” Lori answers softly as the pleasant buzz in her veins turns sour.

“Then why don’t you talk about them? Are you angry at them for something?” Grace loudly demands.

Movement over Grace’s shoulder and Lori looks up to see Danny moving slowly towards them with concern in his eyes as she finally notices that everyone has fallen silent at Grace’s raised voice.

“Monkey…”

“No, sweetie. I’m not angry at them per say.” Lori answers as she shakes her head at him slightly and turns her attention to Grace.

“Then why? Why won’t you tell me about them?” Grace demands insistently.

There are no easy answers that Lori knows she can give that Grace would find acceptable. Lori knows well that she certainly isn’t comfortable revealing to the little girl and the others a long held secret of her mutant status. And she doesn’t want to put them in danger by sharing her secret with them. Especially when it would likely mean her being removed from the task force altogether.

That’s definitely not something Lori wants to happen, not when it looks like she’s found a place where she fits in.

For a brief moment, she falls into a distant memory of angry voices.

“Get out, freak!”

“Dad! Mom! Please don’t make me go. I’m so sorry, I’ll marry him. I–”

“I didn’t father a freak just so that this marriage could fall through, because two people got cold feet.”

“We can’t have anyone finding out about what one of our children is, Robert, dear. Think of the tales people will start trying to spin; how the family so strongly dislikes mutants and wants them gone yet one member of our beloved family is one of them. That we willingly accept them for the disease they care.”

“Agreed…”

“Aunt Lori?”

Blinking back tears, Lori takes a deep breath and tries to swallow around the stone in her throat and glances down at the dark little hand on her arm before she forces herself to look at Grace. She can see a precipice before her about how much she might be comfortable with herself over it later. She forcefully takes a deep breath again as Grace opens her mouth and takes the plunge.

“Simply put, Grace. They don’t have nice things to say about me.”

“Why is that, Aunt Lori?” Grace asks as she tilts her head slightly as one of Danny’s hands comes to rest lightly on her shoulder.

“Something happened during an important time of my life. And they left me because of that.” Lori answers softly and Grace’s eyes widen in shock. Lori wonders if she might be imagining that she’s sensing waves of anger starting to roll off of Danny and possibly the others.

“Something bad?” Grace asks in a near whisper as her eyes tear up and Lori immediately finds her wishing that this conversation hadn’t happened at all. She doesn’t want to be the one, who completely darkens this little girl’s views of what families do for each other.

“Not necessarily bad, sweetie. But it was enough for them to make that decision.” Lori states as she watches Grace and very carefully doesn’t look at everyone else beyond her. She’s surprised when Grace takes her right hand between both of her smaller ones.

“Family shouldn’t leave anyone behind, Aunt Lori,” Grace says in a quiet tone and looking at their hands as her thumbs make little circles in the top of her hands. “Ohana means family. So family stick together and help each other if someone needs it. Not leave anyone alone by themselves.”

“Did your father and mother teach you that one, Grace?” Lori asks while the corners of her mouth quirk upwards slightly as she raises her eyes to briefly meet Danny’s soft gaze as Grace nods.

“Them. Aunt Kono, Uncle Steve, and Uncle Chin too.” Grace answers with a grin and glances up at her father before leaning towards her conspiratorially. “But Lilo and Stitch have also said that too.”

“They definitely have, haven’t they.” Lori answers as she grins at Grace, moving her hand around a little so that she’s squeezing both of Grace’s hands with her one and she hears Danny chuckle above them. “You have some very good role models in your life, kiddo. I hear that Lilo & Stitch also make for pretty good ones too.”

Grace grins at her widely before she looks towards the ocean. After a few moments, Lori looks up at Danny with a question in her eyes. Danny shrugs before he looks down at his daughter, gently squeezing her shoulder.

“Hey, Monkey. Care to share what you are thinking about?”

They watch as Grace shrugs before she looks away from the ocean and pins with Lori a stare that strongly reminds her of the team sometimes looks at her.

“Well, they can’t have you now.”

“Why is that, Grace?” Lori asks as she lightly bites the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing out loud at this little situation she’s found herself in. Or possibly crying. Those might be the two things she would likely end up doing and she doesn’t want to do either one in front of the people, who have now become her new friends.

“They can’t have you now, because you’re part of my ohana now, Aunt Lori.” Grace states in an firmly earnest tone and looking very seriously determined. Like she’s daring anyone challenge her and from what Lori’s heard as according to Danny, Lord help anyone who tries to disagree with her.

Over Grace’s shoulder, Lori can definitely see Danny, Max, and the others nodding in clear agreement of the little girl’s statement when she glances towards them. It warms the coldest parts of Lori’s soul to see that. To know that she’s been accepted as part of this little girl’s family and that the team seems to agree.

“Thank you, Grace. That’s very sweet of you.” Lori says with a smile and squeezes Grace’s hand before letting go and slowly standing up.

“You leavin’, Lori?” Danny asks with a squinty frown on his face and Lori shakes her head.

“No, not yet. Just going to dip my feet in the water for a bit and watch the sunset before I head home.” Lori answers softly as she points the tip of her beer bottle toward the private beach that Steve has.

He lets her go off to the water and Lori knows that their eyes are all on her back as she tries not obviously limp her way over to the water. Lori sits down on the sand, digs a little hole for her beer bottle to sit in, and sighs softly as the water flows over her toes as she watches the sunset slowly disappear under the waves. A few moments later, Danny joins her and they sit in silence for a bit before he speaks.

“Gracie isn’t wrong, you know. She just put words to something that’s already there. You have definitely become part of our crazy little family, Lori.”

Surprised, Lori glances at him and finds that Danny is completely serious as he meets her gaze. Lori shakes her head slightly.

“Governor’s little watcher becoming a part of the already tight family. I’m sure that was a surprise for everyone. Even Mc– Steve.”

Lori looks at Danny again, when the man snorts in amusement and shrugs one shoulder.

“That’s just Steve being Steve. If there had been immediate trust from day one, you better believe that I’d have been questioning his sanity very loudly. Hell, it took a while for even he and I trust each other after the unit was first formed.”

Lori chuckles softly.

“Not surprising given what I had been reading about from the scattered reports I could get my hands on from those days.”

Danny snorts softly.

“Find anything interesting in them?”

“Little things here and there. Nothing to really write home about.” Lori says as she shrugs at the question.

They fall silent and watch the darkening waves in front of them as the perimeter lights around the property start slowly light up the area behind them.

“I have to admit that I’m definitely curious however. Did the implosion of your would-be marriage have anything to do with the fallout with your family?”

Lori glances at Danny before nodding slowly.

“It was a small part of the reason for it and I’ve gotten past the hurt that I felt over it. But it still isn’t really something that I’m comfortable talking about even now.”

“I hear you. But know that we’re here and we will listen if the moment comes when you decide that you’re ready to talk about it. Got it?” Danny says as he points one finger at her.

“Got it, Danny.” Lori nods.