Disclaimer: See initial chapter.

A/N-Warning: 80's style bad guys mentioned again, along with their brand of suspect crime; someone else is taken, but we won't hear about him again...he will be successfully vanished. If the timeline doesn't add up, I apologize, time is not my strong suit, please forgive me for any inconsistencies regarding that particular issue; this does fluctuate with regard to time and place as Steve remembers some events prior to this moment. Hopefully you will enjoy this. Thanks for everyone who has supported this.


Steve doesn't believe his eyes at first. Rubs them with the heels of his hands to clear out the grit, remove the exhaustion from them, because he's certain that he's seeing a mirage, though the beaches of Waikiki are no desert landscape and he's not dying of thirst.

He's dying of something else, though. Heartache. Guilt. A pain unlike any other that he's ever experienced. Hearing the retort of the gunshot that had killed his father over the phone hadn't caused him as much pain as losing Danny had.

He's always known that he loved Danny, he just hadn't realized how much he'd loved him, and in what capacity, until Danny had disappeared. Vanished off the face of O'ahu, almost all traces of him gone as though he'd never even set foot on the island in the first place. As though no one by the name of Daniel Williams had even been born, which, in Steve's opinion, would have been a travesty.

A world without Daniel Williams is a world that Steve doesn't want to live in. It's a world without color. A world without vibrancy. A world without air.

Danny's house, car, all of his belongings had disappeared along with him, as though whoever had taken him intended to erase every last memory of Danny. Everything that could tie him to this island, to this world.

Whoever had done it, though - and Steve is going to find them, make them pay for doing this to Danny, and to that poor soul they'd hacked up - was good at what they did. It was well planned, and orchestrated, and Steve thinks he remembers hearing something about the existence of this elusive group that erases people, back when he'd been fresh out of BUD/S training.

He'd thought they were groundless rumors back then, fairy tales told to scare those impressionable and naive enough to believe them. He hadn't seen any evidence of the group's handiwork at the time. Didn't believe a word of it.

He knows better now. Understands that there won't ever be any real evidence of what this group does, or the people that they take and torture valuable secrets out of, because they cover their tracks too well, eliminating all memories and evidence that these people ever existed in the first place. Just like they'd done to whoever that torso belonged to. Max was nowhere even close to identifying the man. Could only confirm that it wasn't Danny.

The people who had taken Danny, and that other poor soul, make people vanish. Plain and simple. He and his friends had laughingly called them, The Vanishers. Joking about them over too many beers, and shots; joining the rumor mill.

Steve knows that what they'd found on Molokai will give them nothing, though he'd collected every last piece of 'evidence' that had been left by Danny's kidnappers.

The 'Vanishers' have already covered their tracks, and had even gone so far as to erase every electronic trace of the man that was killed, records of everything from DNA to birth certificate, have been erased from all databases.

Danny's life was well on its way to being erased, too, when Steve had finally made the connections, and gotten Chin out of bed at two in the morning to see if what his gut was screaming at him was correct. Unfortunately it was, but Chin and Toast were able to stop the group from erasing all traces of Danny, and just in time.

They'd backed up every last trace of Danny on several thumb drives and an external hard drive as well, and then had done so for each member of Five-0, because it was unclear why Danny had been targeted, and what information the 'Vanishers' were looking for. As Steve, and the others know, it doesn't hurt to be prepared for the worst.

All that was missing now was the man himself, and Steve had known that finding Danny alive was a long-shot, but he wasn't willing to give up on Danny, because he knew that Danny wouldn't give up on him, which is why, at ten in the morning on Friday, four weeks, three days, and three and a half hours after they'd noticed that Danny was missing, Steve is walking along the beaches of Waikiki, following up on a call to HPD about a strange man that passersby had seen cowering beneath a palm tree.

According to one witness, the man had been there going on two days straight, coinciding to the time when Five-0 had flown out to Molokai to find the base of operations abandoned, after Chin and Toast had worked their magic.

Apparently, if Steve's bloodshot eyes are to be trusted, they'd literally just missed Danny's evacuation from the site, and his eventual dump back on O'ahu.

Steve doesn't know why Danny's been left alive, but he's not about to question it now, because it's enough that Danny is alive. That he's not some anonymous, headless, limbless, sack of decaying meat lying on one of Max's cold, hard tables, waiting to be examined by the M.E.

Steve's feet carry him the twenty or thirty steps it takes to reach the figure curled in on itself beneath the tree, uncertain, yet certain in a way that he can't explain that it is Danny, that he's finally found him.

Steve doesn't remember falling to his knees beside the quaking man, or wrapping his arms around him, and there's a suspicious wetness on the cheek that he rests against Danny's bowed head, but none of that matters because it's Danny, and he's alive.

He's shaking almost as badly as Danny is by the time that his senses return to him, and he's aware of, not only Danny, alive in his arms, but of the gentle rustle of the palm fronds overhead, the obnoxious calling of the seagulls soaring over the ocean, and the rising and falling murmur of voices surrounding them.

Danny's thin, and sickly looking. There are burn marks on his arms and back that, though Steve expected to see them, are still hard to take in. There are ligature marks around his neck, hands and ankles as well. Danny's decidedly worse for the wear, but he's living and breathing, and in desperate need of a long, hot shower, as well as a visit, possibly prolonged, to the hospital, followed by months of therapy, and Steve is never going to let the man out of his sight ever again.

"Danny," Steve breathes the name out against his partner's ear, grateful and near tears again. "Danny, it's Steve."

"C-c-curry powder, and, and lem...lemon juice," Danny stutters, lips and fingers twitching, head bobbing up from where it had been cocooned within his arms. His eyes search Steve's face, and his brow furrows as though he's trying to remember something.

"Curry powder and lemon juice," Danny repeats a little more strongly, voice whisper soft, yet insistent; fingers reaching out to clutch at Steve's arm. Eyes growing wide.

"Okay, buddy, curry powder and lemon juice," Steve says, nodding, hoping that the words will help calm Danny, though he has no idea what they mean, and there's a big part of him that's afraid that the nonsensical phrase is an indicator of some kind of brain damage.

He can only guess at what has been done to Danny. Starvation; torture with water, choking, torches, the use of sound to drive him mad; and he might possibly have been drugged and beaten as well. It's all conjecture on Steve's part. Though there is evidence to back it up, Steve doubts if he will ever know the full extent of what's been done to Danny, because, even with months of intense therapy, even after he's cleaned up, bathed, fed, and his injuries are tended to, Danny will probably never remember all of it. That might just be a blessing.

Danny gives Steve a shaky smile, clumsily pats him on the cheek - his hands are cold, and there's blood beneath his fingernails. He repeats the strange combination of words, and then adds, "Steve." Danny jabs a finger into Steve's chest.

"Danny." He points to himself, taps a finger against his temple, and then taps it against Steve's. "Rem-me-member. S-steve... h-h-elp... D-danny rem-me-mem-ber." The words come out broken, and slow, and Danny's voice is hoarse, and childlike in the simplicity of the phrasing, as though he's forgotten how to formulate complete sentences, or forgotten how to shape the words at all. Maybe even forgotten the words themselves.

It's alarming, and heartbreaking. Even though Steve had known that Danny wouldn't have come through everything without suffering some kind of physical and mental damage, he hadn't expected it to be this bad. Breath catching in his throat, and tears threatening to fall for a second time that day, Steve can only tighten his hold on Danny and nod in response.

"Yeah, buddy, I'll help you remember," Steve says, nearly choking on too much emotion, and crushing Danny to himself, fearful of letting go.

He's not used to this - dealing with too many emotions. This is usually Danny's forte, except, right now Danny's not quite up to the task, and Steve, as his partner, and friend, and maybe-hopefully something more, has to take up the slack.

Suddenly the words, I've got your back, have taken on a whole new meaning for Steve. One that he's fearful he'll screw up, because he's not nearly as good at this comforting and fixing broken people as Danny is.

"I've got you, Danno," Steve says, in spite of the fear that sits like a coiled snake in the pit of his stomach. Kissing Danny's temple, he concentrates on holding the shaking man, on transferring some of his own warmth to Danny. "It's going to be alright. Everything is going to be alright."

"Curry powder and lemon juice," Danny says with a sigh, going slack in Steve's arms.

Paramedics buzz around them like bees, busy in their work to get Danny stabilized enough for transport. They're methodical and stoic in their work, not once commenting or drawing in sharp breaths at the lacerations and burn marks that cover Danny's body. They're efficient as well, bundling Danny off into an ambulance, and off to the hospital fifteen minutes after they've arrived.

Steve hands the scene off to Duke, and, after shooting off a quick text to his team, he heads to the hospital, needing to be near Danny, to make sure that he doesn't vanish again. He doesn't know why Danny's back, but doesn't trust that the clandestine group will leave well enough alone. He wouldn't.

As Danny's injuries are being tended to, on the other side of the island, in Kaneohe, a living hell descends on Daniel T. Williamson, much like the one that Danny's just survived, except it's just the start of the horrors that Daniel T. Williamson will face in the upcoming weeks, as answers are sought, and his memories are stripped away, as every last trace of his existence is completely erased on another remote island somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.