The waterfall was pounding so loudly behind his ears, he could barely hear himself think. It didn't stop him from trying. Danny tested his bonds again, amazed Steve had found vines of all things strong enough to hold his hands behind his back in this godforsaken forest. In paradise! Yeah, he'd really switch to calling it that now!

That wasn't the worst part of how his day had been going though. No, that honor had gone to Commander McGarrett binding his wound. Danny bit back another wave of nausea and outright fear. He'd never, in any capacity, bothered to refer to Steve by his title because he'd never really known that man. He'd always known Steve, the leader of their task force, his partner, his best friend. Danny was very dismayed indeed to have finally met his true other half in such a way as his once partner now lost in his own head, the cold way he'd used a strip of cloth from Danny didn't want to know where to carelessly tie off his bleeding leg and then gaze down at him with a complete lack of, anything!

Danny had tried, several times, to say something, but after his second attempt and ignoring Commander McGarrett's warning, another piece of cloth had been stuffed in his mouth. Now the man was pacing in their very close, cramped area, running his hand wearily through his hair, drawing more blood from the still weeping wound across his forehead.

It had finally been revealed when they'd gone into their current hiding spot, after Danny's leg had nearly fallen off from Steve making several round trips all the time muttering about not being followed. The majority of the mud had been washed aside, which must have been caking over the laceration that was now bleeding freely.

He was pale enough it was a wonder he was on his feet at all, his hands had been like ice to Danny's heated skin as he'd briefly touched him. It certainly explained his partners frenzied attitude, but none of the clinical explanations stopped Danny's heart crumbling up inside. Years, long and filled to the brim between them, all stripped away by a crack to his noggin. Danny had no clue where Steve thought he was or what was really going on, but he was well aware he was not a friend in this situation, and that made him an enemy. He swallowed painfully around the cloth and tried, once again, to get out anything to stop this train of thought before Steve did something he couldn't take back.

So he tried, again. A muffled protest he was determined to have Steve hear, shouting at the top of his lungs anything he thought would make it through the pounding water and this stupid gag!

Something about this time seemed to have worked. Steve did an about, and Danny was marginally impressed and slightly infuriated how steady on his feet Steve continued being despite the river of red running down his face. He stomped forward, that look still prevalent in his eyes that had made countless suspects take a running start before they could get one question out. Even if Danny weren't trussed up like a pig, he still knew his face alone spoke volumes. He stood his ground and matched his partners expression.

The moment the gag was removed, Danny was off again. "What the hell is the matter with you! I get it, you have amnesia or something in that pig-headed brain of yours, but who the hell treats anyone like this! I swear, this is actually worse than the shark cage! To be fair, I'll call it a tie with dangling someone off the roof, but for the love of-"

"Tie?" Steve interrupted in such a soft voice, Danny barely heard it. He'd been watching Steve's face the whole time though, and quickly latched onto the indecision that had blossomed. "Yeah, that's right, of course I know about your feelings for ties. I put money down you'd shoot the captain of a Little League Game because he wanted to give out participation trophies." Then Danny realized where Steve was looking, at his neck. Something clicked in his mind, and he pushed in even further to a detail even he hadn't thought of in years. "Or did you mean my tie? You're right, for once. Of all the times I'm not wearing a tie, you could have used that to strangle me like you swore to do so many times."

Steve was sweating now, the salty perspiration mixing with the sticky vital fluid on his face. He swiped a hand across his upper lip and began pacing again, hands shaking worse than ever. "Steve, listen to me, please!" Danny refused to admit even under the torture he may soon endure his voice cracked with worry. "You need help man, and I can give it to you! What do you want to hear, huh? To earn your trust? You know me! You have a sister named Mary, she's got a little girl she adopted named Joan. You like to fix up your dad's crappy old 1974 Marquis on the side, you were sent to live in California after your mom faked her death and joined the Navy at eighteen, you were in the Navy for six years with a list of accommodations I could name, but even some of those are probably classified. You stopped playing guitar because you got stage fright once, we share the same blood type, hell we share a liver!"

Panting, now turned away from him, Steve had his face pressed against the jagged wet rocks leading to the waterfalls entrance. He was probably only seconds away before he dumped his face into the stream, probably a miracle if he'd heard half of that. Steve hadn't contradicted him once though, nor turned around and gagged him again.

Danny stopped, then swallowed and took a careful breath before he continued. "I bet your head is a live-wire mess, more so than usual, but you got to trust me here Steve. I really do just want to help."

All 6'1 of him whirled on the spot, and began advancing on Danny with such a torn expression Danny didn't know what to expect. He didn't flinch though, just kept meeting his gaze and uttering, "please, Steve." Finally, when he reached out with a knife in hand, Danny played his trump card. "Think about the kids huh? Grace and Charlie! You're going to snap out of this, and I know no part of you wants to explain this to them."

Hesitation, small but there, then Steve continued his path and circled around Danny, knife still drawn. Practically hyperventilating, it took a few seconds for him to realize that his hands, bruised and strained from still trying to fly around in their confines, were free. Numb, tingling from blood rush and spasming under his skin, but free to finally be pulled back in front of him. He sat up quickly, ignoring the way his head spun dizzily from his own blood loss, rotating his shoulders for the new position, but looking up gratefully to still see the constipated look on his partners face.

He kept the knife held comfortably in his less dominant hand, using the other to put a finger in Danny's face. "I know when people are lying to me. Somehow, someway, you aren't." He switched the knife to his other hand. "So, keep being honest, and those stay off. That stays, for now." He gestured to his legs still being bound. "Probably best anyways, that bullet may have been a through and through, but you shouldn't be moving anymore anyways. I get the feeling that's a challenge for you on a good day," he finished on half a mutter.

Danny's face split into such a smile it almost hurt. "Thank god I finally got through that thick head of yours-" but stopped abruptly when the knife was leveled to his eyes.

"I still want answers. Who are you?" The question burned out of him with far more feeling than Steve likely intended, the answer so vital to him the simplistic common phrase didn't feel right.

"Detective Danny Williams," Danny prattled off at once. He wanted nothing more than to reach for Steve's hands, lower that knife and cup Steve's face, use more than words to express the real answer just like always. Yet he liked having all fingers attached thank you, and still didn't yet trust this tactic Steve was going for. "I moved to Hawaii because my ex-wife brought my daughter Grace here. Then I had an elicit son while she was still married and didn't learn Charlie was mine until he was four and I had to give him bone marrow. Jeez, adding all this up, I feel like a Frankenstein, just constantly handing out parts of myself to others, huh?" Like my heart to you, he desperately wanted to finish.

Steve was not impressed, and Danny could have kept going on an epics book worth of citations of things he'd only shared with Steve in his life, his former partner Grace, Billy Selway, how he'd gained the nickname Danno- but Steve was clearly not in the mood. He ground his teeth in his jaw and launched another question before Danny had his breath back.

"What are you doing out here? Who's that man I found you with?"

"I was looking for you!" Danny burst in frustration, he really thought that part at least was obvious. "We're partners you dumbass! I've gone to foreign countries and back for your ass!" He swallowed convulsively when Steve's hand shook, the point of the blade still dangerously close to his face. So he very forcibly switched to a more calming, soothing tone as he kept going. "That man that was with me was a park ranger, poor bastard was stuck in the jungle with me for six hours, helping me search through the hundredth grid pattern for this area all in the name of looking for you. That trap he stumbled over got him killed."

Steve's grip had gone white-knuckled over the handle of the blade, but had somehow remained steady. Danny didn't buy it, watching blood still sluggishly make its way out of the cut across his forehead. Had it been bleeding for two days straight? Surely not! Likely it had been happening on and off, but even still, that was a significant amount of blood-loss just from the time they'd been in here. There were dried puddles near the back and fresh ones at the front, meaning Steve must have been using this place as a base for at least some prolonged time.

His mind flashed to Kono and Chin. He couldn't make out much light past the waterfall, and he had no clue how long he'd been gone. Long enough for them to have started to head back? To check in? When Danny didn't on schedule, the rest of their team would know that the sector he'd been in would be a hot-spot for some activity Steve related.

What about Hollard? Steve was on the defense out here for some reason.

Taking a deep breath and still banking on the fact that Steve had yet done him permanent damage, he leaped all in by finally returning a question. "Your turn pal, what's been going on with you? How's this jungle been treating that noggin of yours? Managed to stumble across the reason for all this mess, Hollards?"

Wrong question. Danny recognized it a second before Steve brought the knife down, having flipped it to the hilt only one second before he pressed it into the base of his throat. Danny's hand flashed up instantly, grabbing hold of Steve's wrists, spluttering and attempting to squirm away. He'd been pinned to the wall countless times by Steve, the man crowding into every inch of his space remorselessly. This was the most memorable, and Danny hated it!

Neither dared move for a dozen erratic heartbeats, poised and locked into each other waiting to see who would crack first. Maybe it was the position, the repeat tension, but Danny had a flash back to their first kiss. The circumstances weren't even that different...maybe that's what had Steve hesitating as well. Or was that just wishful thinking?

He didn't get an answer, as an explosion outside sent a spray of water over both of them.