Synopsis: When Danny Williams is arrested for the murder of Marco Reyes and extradited to South America, an old enemy sees an opportunity to deliver a debilitating blow to Five-0. With two of his friends detained and time running out, Steve does the only thing he can…he has himself thrown into the prison with Danny. But will he be in time to save his partner. DANNY!WHUMP and STEVE!ANGST. NO SLASH. Friendship only.

Disclaimer: I don't own Hawaii Five-O and am not getting any monetary gain for this story, just playing in CBS's sandbox for a while. These characters and storylines remain the property of CBS. No disrespect intended, just great characters that inspire their own stories.

Rated: T for violence and injuries.

Notes: Angst and Hurt/Comfort are kinda my thing, so if you've read anything else I've written you know this going to bad before it gets good. I'm taking some liberties with the episode "Pono Kaulike" to fit my vision of the story. Don't kill me for it, it was one of my favorite episodes in Season 5.

A/N: Please take a second and let me know if you're interested in this being continued.

Previous Chapter:

"No!" Steve grunted through the pain. "He'll die…"

"That is the plan, commander."

A large door sealed off the view of his suspended partner, thus ripping the one comfort that he'd found since arriving in this hellhole violently from him. For the first time in a very long time, Steve didn't see a way out. Not only had he failed to get Danny out, he'd managed to leave his friend…his partner…his brother…to die alone in some stinking hole in the ground.

A tremor rattled through him and he realized that there would be no one to take care of Grace and Charlie. They would grow up not knowing what happened to their father. A loss unlike anything he'd ever felt knotted inside him and in this one moment of weakness, Steve couldn't find the will to fight.

He was hauled into the cell he'd shared with the Danny the first night and thrown down to the floor in a heap of spastic muscles and sorrow. His breath caught painfully in his chest and it had nothing to do with his injuries. A hate like nothing he'd ever felt before roiled inside him like a trapped pit viper.

"Just think, by this time tomorrow…you'll be in the market for a new partner." The guy just walked away after that.

Steve wondered if that was because he'd gotten what he wanted. Danny had been left to die for the role he'd played in Reyes's murder and Steve would be left to live with that knowledge. At least until the gargantuan man decided to come back and explain what the hell was really going on and who he was. Because try as he might, the commander still wasn't able to place the guy.

A stinging pain bounced around his back then up along his arms and he knew that he needed to get the flexi-cuffs off his wrists before he lost all feeling.

H50 H50

Pain is an interesting thing. It can drain a person of all will to survive or it can create a resolve that is unbreakable. The walls were telling him nothing as he struggled back into the pain…into awareness. Danny had tried to gather his drifting thoughts and tape them together with resolve. To some extent, he'd been successful. While in other ways he'd failed miserably. Once, after having been in a devastating car accident that had required multiple days in the hospital, the detective had felt something similar. Of course he'd also been on heavy doses of morphine at the time.

The pain that continued to plague him was receding to a manageable level, but his mind wouldn't cooperate with him. A pair of soft brown eyes skittered across his mind and he tried to grasp onto those kind eyes. They were young and supportive and he wanted so badly to see them, just for one more second.

A muscle spasm in his shoulders pulled him from those eyes and he crashed back into his reality. His toes were barely touching the ground and his arms were suspended above his head, supporting his not insubstantial weight. It was pitch black and it took him a moment to realize that he wasn't hearing anything else…which meant he wasn't hearing Steve.

He gasped as another wave of pain jenga'd its way up his body. "Steve?" He managed through the hissing cough.

Something moved in the corner, but there was no way it was big enough to be his partner. It was small and there was a distinctive 'clicking' sound as it moved. That was worse than knowing he was alone. Knowing that he was not alone.

"Steve?!" He called a little louder. The clicking thing hissed and then moved again and Danny wanted nothing more than to hear his obnoxious partner's voice in the darkness.

End of previous chapter…

Chapter 11:

Divided we Fall

Kono stared out the window at the lush green of the land as it flashed past the train. Her heart was fluttering inside her chest like a new butterfly and she was praying that they would not get detained along the way. They were too close now…the whole team was so close to saving Danny and Steve. And the thought of failure was devastating and not something she could even contemplate.

It had taken longer than planned to get their transport arranged. Joe's contact had only been able to secure their passage at the last moment and without the necessary backup that they'd originally thought they'd have. So they were it. No one was coming to their aide. No one was going to be able to get them out if this whole plan blew up in their faces. Her thoughts shifted to Adam for a moment and Kono had to fight to keep control of her emotions. He was still in jail and there was a good chance that if the team wasn't successful in their rescue attempt, he would never know what happened to her. She swallowed the fear and the doubt simply focused on breathing.

An orange light flared outside her window and Kono found her attention drawn back to the scene outside. A field burned in the distance, the enormous fire was casting off a glow that lit up the night as the train passed unnoticed in the darkness.

"It's a tragic landscape." Chin's voice pulled her out of her musings. He looked as tired as she felt. Dark bruising circles were now a constant fixture beneath his eyes and there was a permanent crease between his eyebrows. He dropped onto the chair across from her and sighed.

Kono managed to nod. "It's actually quite pretty." He raised an eyebrow in response. "Minus the fire, of course. And the fact that our friends are being held here of course."

"Of course." He parroted back as his gaze drifted back to the window.

She followed his eyes and then bit her lip as she searched for the courage to ask the next question. It took a moment to muster her words. "Do you think they're still alive?" she asked slowly.

Her cousin's gaze shifted back to her and he inhaled slowly, interlacing his fingers before he answered. Kono had always been able to trust Chin's gut. Ever since they were younger and he'd asked her not to surf on a particular day. She'd had her heart set on surfing North Shore that day and then her cousin had made his partner drive to her house and he'd begged her not to go out on the water that day.

In the end, she'd agreed and then a squall had blown in unexpectedly. It had decimated the shoreline and broken several fishing vessels. Had she been out on the waves when that rolled in, she would have surely died.

"I don't know." He replied softly. Something in his face darkened and Kono saw something that she hadn't seen since Malia had been murdered. "They better be."

Lou picked that moment to return from the diner car with several to go boxes. "They didn't have much, so I got you guys some sandwiches." He took in the tension inside the cabin car and then set down the boxes. "Everything okay?"

"Just worried. We're so close now and yet we have no idea if this is a rescue or a…recovery." Chin's words hung in the air like a dense fog.

Lou shook his head and set the food down before sinking into the seat across from the cousins. "You can't think like that man." He sighed and leaned forward allowing his elbows to rest on his knees. "Steve and Danny…they're like cats. Those two have at least nine lives a piece."

"And they've probably blown through eight of them." Chin retorted in frustration. The not knowing what they would find on the other end of that tunnel was weighing heavily on the lieutenant.

Kono swallowed the lump that developed in her throat and let her eyes drop closed before finally adding to the conversation. "Cousin, we have to believe they're okay. We can't go into this thinking that it has failed before we even get there…if we do…we've already failed."

H50 H50

The mind is a strange thing. It can be ones best friend or the worst enemy imaginable, replaying memories or dreams that can inspire or destroy. Then there's the body. What magnificent machine of electricity and water. Because that's really all the human body is. Synapses in the brain fire along nerve lines, sending impulses to muscles. But without the water in the system the entire delicate balance that is a human body will fail.

Danny had heard somewhere that the human body can go without food for close to a month, but water? That was a lot more important. 3 days…that's all the time that a person can ignore the needs of those delicate processes before the body starts fighting back. And the detective was pretty sure his body was fighting back. He was starting to hear things and that was sending his already fractured mind down roads he wouldn't normally travel.

When he'd been trapped in that freezer last year, he'd heard Steve's voice. The experience had been almost like the SEAL had been there with him. So did that mean that Danny was crazy now? A slight twitch of his lower lip answered that question. No, detective Danny Williams wasn't looney-tunes. But the moment he heard his best friend's voice again, he knew he was in trouble.

"Danny?"

His lips twitched again. Danny had always been a people person although he didn't particularly like people. He supposed that he was one of those people that had a lot of acquaintances, but not as many people that he would consider friends. Take now for instance; he believed that he had exactly four friends. They were his teammates and his friends…but then there was Steve. The irritating man had wiggled his way past the detective's defenses and now Danny couldn't see the big picture of his life without McGarrett in it.

A scratch along the edges of his consciousness pulled him from his wandering thoughts and he groaned as the intensified. He tried to lift his head, muscles strained as the impulses flew along the nerves and his teeth ground together in frustration when the pain was too much. So now he was only able to simply hang there, his toes occasionally drifting across the floor. There was a constant aching pulse in his shoulders and the heat emanating from his leg told him that he was now dealing with possible infection.

The clatter of nails on whatever flooring was beneath him sent a tangle of fear washing though him. It was bad enough that he was hanging in the middle of a prison after having been beaten, stabbed and starved, but now there was something inside the inky blackness of his cell. The claustrophobia that had plagued him since childhood reared up in protest and Danny's insides tightened painfully.

"You're okay, Danno. Just hold on a little bit longer buddy. Can you do that?" The deep rumbling voice that was Steve came from nowhere…and everywhere.

The words were difficult to form around his saliva-starved tongue and Danny finally lifted his head, turning toward the sound skittering closer to him. "I'm trying…" he murmured.

Something touched him. It was tentative at first, like someone poking at something they are loathe to eat. But slowly it gained in confidence and eventually Danny felt the first stinging pain of a bite. A squeak gave Danny's overactive brain the answers it was trying to find through the haze of infection and weakness. Rats….

H50 H50

Steve sat secured to a chair in the office of the man that had been torturing Danny since he'd arrived in Colombia. His head had dropped forward onto his chest and the pain of failure was sapping his ability to think straight. Danny was alone. Danny was alone in a small cell in complete darkness. Danny had been starved and beaten. Danny was barely alive…

"So you want to know who I am?" The words were sneered and caused Steve to lift his gaze. The huge figure swam before him and he quickly shut them again to keep from vomiting on the floorboards.

"I want to see my partner." Steve answered honestly. At this point he didn't care who this man was. He needed to be with Danny.

"That isn't going to happen." A slight rustle of fabric told Steve's well-tuned sense that the man was moving. "I should tell you that the rats have found your friend."

It took every ounce of control the navy SEAL had to control the shutter that started in his toes and permeated every part of his body at the mention of rats. Steven J. McGarrett wasn't afraid of many things, but the rodents that had brought Europe to its knees during the black plague were one of those things.

"They've started tasting the meal we've left for them."

He said it like they'd taken a 5-star meal and laid it out for the dirty little creatures. But it wasn't some fancy French pastry that they'd left, it was Danny.

Steve ignored the pain and pulled his gaze up to meet that of the man that trying to kill them. He looked. Really looked at the man and a case popped into his head. Roughly a year ago they'd been trying to take down a drug den. Like many of their cases it had gone wrong and there had been bodies. In an effort to save Danny, Steve had shot a man that had been walking in the high perms of the warehouse. He'd fallen and completed Steve's fatal actions.

"The warehouse…" Steve said softly. His hand were clenching and unclenching at his side. How did I miss this one? The case had been open and shut, but the man he'd shot that day had had a brother that was notified of his passing. That wasn't something that Five-0 did, it was always left to the police.

A ghost of pain flickered through the large man's eyes before he set his jaw and leaned against the edge of his desk. "My younger brother." He folded his arms across his massive chest and watched as the commander of the elite Hawaiian team put everything together. "Here in Colombia we believe that to repay a life debt it takes another life of equal value."

Steve's blue eyes snapped up in realization, this man was going to kill Danny. His insides recoiled at the thought of losing detective. "Then take mine. I'm the one that shot your brother, not Danny." He forced through chapped lips and strained vocal cords.

He was pulling against the cuffs that held him securely to the metal chair. Steve couldn't even knock it over in the hopes of breaking something lose because the damn thing was bolted to the floor.

A rumble of laughter in the man's chest told Steve the answer to his offer. "No, I don't think that would not hurt as much as losing your brother." His eyes darkened and he leaned toward Steve. "And I would see that you hurt, commander…a lot."

With that comment he rose and exited the room leaving Steve with nothing but his active imagination and the certainty that Danny was in real trouble. A massive part of him prayed that Chin, Lou and Kono would be able to pull off the rescue mission before either he or Danny died.

If this man wanted Steve to hurt, then he had definitely found the right pressure point. Because he and Danny fought like cats and dogs, there was no doubt in Steve's mind that Danny would not anything for him…hell, he'd probably give me part of his liver if I needed it. The thought was more painful than the beatings he'd been receiving since arriving in this God forsaken prison.

Snap out of it, Steve. His eyes popped open and he looked around the office. His keen eyes landed on a forgotten paperclip on the desk. He flexed his fingers in want.

"Senior Steve?" The voice of the man that tried to help them, floating from the vicinity of the open door. Petros slowly stepped through the door, his dark eyes widened when they landed on the commander of Five-0. "They will be back any moment."

"Paperclip. On the desk there's a paperclip, if you can just hand it to me?"

Petros eyes shifted nervously to the door again before he nodded quickly. Within seconds Steve was holding his own salvation. He was a alone again, Petros had raced from the office as soon as he'd handed the small piece of metal to Steve. Carefully he bent the paperclip open and set about getting the cuffs off his right hand. His muscles weren't as responsive as they normally were, so it took longer than it should have. Not to mention that he almost dropped the damn thing…twice. But after several tense moments and prayers shot out into the Universe, Steve heard the tiny 'click' that meant he was free.

After quickly removing the other cuff, he nearly groaned in frustration when his legs almost collapsed beneath him. His bare feet were sending angry fire up along his legs and he bit down on his lower lip as he sucked in much needed air through the haze of pain. One thing being in the special operations units in the military had taught him? He knew how to deal with actual pain…emotions were another thing entirely.

He was turning toward the door when a voice stopped him. Outside the office was one of the goons that had beaten Danny. Rage coiled inside his gut. Steve shoved it down; he couldn't afford to get distracted now. He had to save Danny and that meant getting out of this office alive. He hurried to sit back on the chair, loosely setting the cuffs about his chaffed wrists. He heard the voice stop outside the office before finally moving past it without entering.

Beads of sweat rolled down his face as Steve surged to his feet again. He hadn't been conscious when they brought him in, but he had seen the plans to the prison often enough that he had a pretty good idea where he was going. He was going to find Danny.

TBC…

Author's note: I owe a huge apology to the readers of this story. My real life has dominated all my time, I will however, finish this story by the end of the weekend. There's only one more chapter and the epilogue left. Thank you so much for reading and again, apologies for my very long absence.

Please Review: If you feel so inclined…and it would be greatly appreciated.