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"There is nothing in the dark that isn't there when the lights are on."
- Rod Serling
It was an adage he had heard many times before, or at least, versions of it; he could draw it from his early childhood memories, even hear the words spoken in the kindly, reassuring tones of his Aunt Clara, as she tried to set his mind to rest after a nightmare, or persuade him to come outside to look at the stars with her, the night sky that was so different from what he knew at home... He had used it himself, as a bravado-filled teenager, the words providing him with the false courage necessary to linger on the rocky shorelines with his school friends long past sunset. Even his adult self tried to abide by it, his still slightly naive common sense battling with his honed skills as a trained investigator, each and every time the sun went down and the city's night dwellers came to life.
To a certain extent, the saying was true. Whether in Darkness or Light, things existed: the land, the ocean, the swaths of buildings and roads that were cities and towns and villages, even people themselves. The presence (or absence) of Light did not significantly alter that fact. There was, however, in the general aura produced by the Darkness, the acknowledgement on a subconscious level that in the shadows, in the Dark corners, there was something more; malevolence was lurking, unseen, unfelt except in the gloom, waiting to strike out at the next unsuspecting victim who ventured off the path of Light.
Darkness was a familiar companion to police officers of all stripes. Beat cops, the vice squad, and the detectives who dealt with small-scale robberies could all count on seeing a fair amount of their duty time spent in the night hours, when their type of criminal element was in action. For the members of Five-O, though, the majority of investigative responsibilities came in the daytime; much of the legwork for their assignments was accomplished during so-called normal business hours. There did come times, however, when particular cases demanded research and inquiry that could only be done at night. And when that happened, the Darkness could prove relentless.
Setting its gaze upon the elite unit's second-in-command, Detective Dan Williams, Dark's long reaching tendrils ensnared the young man for hours at a time, so much so that there were twenty-four hour periods where he wondered if the sun had actually risen, lit the day, and set again, because he had not seen it happen. While the city carried on its usual business under the warmth and brightness of the Hawaiian sunshine, Danny slept, and in his working hours saw only the moon and stars in his sky; his view of downtown was narrowed to individual circles of Light pooled around the streetlights, and the deep, dark spaces between them. In those corners he skulked, a creature of the night himself at times, having to become one with the very individuals he was there to apprehend.
Danny persevered through the Darkness, knowing that the successful resolution of the case would bring not only the removal of a certain criminal element from the streets of his city, but a return to his own existence in the Light. But at length, with arrests made and evidence seized, he was able to leave the Darkness and all its gloom behind him. As he walked away, those corners that had so long been Dark slowly filled with Light; the pale but rapidly strengthening beams from the newly-rising sun spread throughout the city, so that when he turned back to look, there was barely a shadow left to be seen, only smooth walls and empty sidewalks, gleaming benignly in the flush of the dawn. And in that moment, Danny raised his weary eyes in acknowledgement and welcoming of the morning, and smiled.
Pau