Sorry for the delay! I have good days and bad days, the bad days I can hardly write a sentence. But, I do hope you enjoy this chapter!

Shout out to Phoebe Miller for beta reading and to all you lovely people who keep reviewing and giving encouragement even when I'm late posting!

Fact #162: Survival can be summed up in three words – never give up.

-Bear Grylls

Season: 5th Season

Landfall

Frigid water slapped him in the face.

He jerked and snorted. His nose burned from the salt. More water washed over him. It was cold, much colder than the water that lapped at the beach behind his house. It flooded his nose and ears, seeping into every nook and cranny with icy fingers.

Steve forced his eyes open and his body upright at the same time, coughing and shaking his head. Adrenaline shot through his veins at the brutal awakening. Being face down in the water with no recollection as to how he got there wasn't good. His mind didn't bother struggling to make sense of it. Survival instincts took hold instead.

Assess the situation. Get out of danger. Find answers later.

The walls around him looked like the cabin of a small boat. The floor beneath him was pitched at an angle that was growing steeper by the minute. Water had already swamped the cabin up to three inches. It was only getting deeper and colder.

Sinking. He was on a sinking boat.

How or why he was on a sinking boat didn't matter nor did the lapse in memory. All that mattered was getting feeling back into his arms and legs, and escaping the cabin before it sank completely.

Curling his hands into fists, he shifted out a patch of mottled scales on his forearms. The rush of shifting woke up his fingers enough to grasp the seat he was sprawled beside and provide an anchor as he pulled himself up on still partially asleep feet.

He leaned to the side with the boat. His hands grabbed whatever they could to brace himself. A quick glance around told him no one else was there. Satisfied he wasn't leaving anyone behind, he sloshed through the now shin deep water to the door. The boat was listing starboard hard, making the small set of stairs a challenge. With one foot on the wall and the other able to find purchase on the tilted stairs, he climbed his way free of the cabin into the open air.

Gray skies greeted him. Waves crashed up against the hull of the boat, sucking greedily at it, pulling it further beneath the surface. The wind tore across the surrounding ocean and pellets of rain pelted him, stinging like bees.

So entranced by the raging storm, he almost completely missed the other man.

He barely spotted him out of the corner of his eye and dodged away. His boot slipped on the tilted deck. The man's hand swung down toward him. He blocked the hit with his arm, trying to get back up and force the man away. The man grappled with him, finally fisting his hand in Steve's shirt.

He yelped as the man yanked him over the safety railing with him into the turbulent ocean.

Dark and frothy water filled his vision. Beneath the waves all sound was muted, even his struggle with the man who had pulled him overboard. Limbs flew out in all angles. A steel toe caught him in the gut, dangerously close to being below the belt. It didn't take him but a few seconds to change the tide.

When their heads broke the surface again, the man yelled and paddled away.

Steve didn't bother going after the man. The boat was going under and if the man wasn't careful, he'd get sucked under with it when it finally went. Right now, he didn't care. Right now, all that was in his pounding head was the sound of the sea.

A second shot of adrenaline made his stomach turn and his webbed feet go colder than they already were.

Danny.

He hadn't seen Danny.

He didn't remember much before waking up in the cabin, but he remembered Danny had been with him. Danny was his backup. Danny was always with him.

"Danny?" he yelled.

His voice was hoarse. Disused.

He cleared his throat as he sank down in the trough of a swell.

"Danny!"

Despite his training as a Navy SEAL, panic started to get a grip on him. Danny hated the water. He hated the gentle waves and moderate temperatures in Hawaii on a good day. This ocean was a completely different animal. Storm induced waves rose and fell higher and deeper, colder and darker, meaner than what he'd ever seen Danny contend with.

He coasted up the next swell to its crest.

"Danny!"

From his height on the crest, he spotted flotsam from the almost sunken boat. Someone was clinging to a life preserver.

Ducking down into the water with a full breath of air, he swam against the swells. Even with the nictitating membrane over his eyes, it was difficult to see very far in any direction. The ocean below was a black abyss. To either side was a black abyss. A black abyss surrounded him.

He zoned it out and instead focused on the legs floating lifelessly below the surface.

Water streamed off his crown of horns as he lifted his head up. He breathed out heavily, only vaguely disappointed that his limbs were trembling. Maybe from relief, maybe from the cold, maybe from the adrenaline. Maybe from all three. He didn't know or care.

"Danny," he said and pulled himself up close to his partner.

Danny had managed to flip a life preserver over his head and was draped over it with his cheek resting on it and his eyes screwed shut. He held onto the life preserver with a white knuckle grip.

"Danny, come on, bud, open your eyes," Steve said. He prodded Danny's shoulder. Danny curled around the life preserver tighter. "Danno, it's me. Come on, look at me."

Danny coughed. "No."

Steve grinned. He was mostly alive and that was good enough for him. "Come on. Eyes open, Daniel."

"No," Danny said again.

"Why?"

"Because then I'll see the ocean and the clouds and the rain and the sinking boat and your stupid mug and then I'll have a panic attack," he said.

Steve held onto the life preserver as another low trough started to rise up into a tall crest. The rain was beginning to lighten, making smaller pebbles on the water.

Suppressing a shiver, he scanned the horizon. The low hanging clouds obscured most of it. A nearly invisible outline was just a little darker than the rest of the clouds to their east if his internal compass was right.

He glanced back at Danny. It was probably a good thing he hadn't shifted. It looked like he was going to have to tow him to shore. Hopefully, that dark outline was indeed a shore, and not his imagination.

He grabbed the long rope trailing from the life preserver. "Don't let go of that thing."

Securing the rope in his mouth and trusting that it would take a tsunami for Danny to let go of the life preserver, he dove under the surface and glided forward, carefully riding the swells close to the surface so he didn't accidentally dunk Danny even though it made it harder for him.

The cold followed him the whole way, biding its time and gnashing its razor sharp teeth.

Danny cursed as his feet bashed against the rocks.

Steve was walking instead of swimming now, still dragging him in the life preserver like he was a little kid being pulled around in an innertube on the snow. The animal had actually managed to get them to a shoreline. A dark, unwelcoming shoreline. Unlike the sandy, sloping Hawaiian beaches Danny had grown used to, dark rocks jutted up from the water in menacing shapes. Beyond the rocky sentinels stood towering evergreens that formed a barricade all along the shore.

Danny stuck his feet down with intent to stand this time. His legs shook as they propelled him up. He pulled the life preserver over his head, but held onto it just in case he slipped or one of the violent waves tried to pull him back out to sea. The water tugged at his thighs, icy fingers no longer as cold as they had initially been.

The wet wind plastered his soaked shirt and hair against his skin. He pushed his hair out of his eyes and blinked away the saltwater. His lips were chapped and his nose dripped, his eyes stung from the salt, and he felt flushed from the heat radiating from his stoking chamber. It was an almost automatic thing for chambered fire breathers to switch on the heat when they got too cold, and dang it, he was freezing. Or had been freezing. His hands and feet were numb while his torso was uncomfortably warm, making it an overall miserable situation as he stumbled after his partner.

Steve made his way through the black rocks slowly but purposefully, Danny careful to follow in his steps. The rocks were steep along this side, forming more of a shelf that extended out into the water than a suitable landing place. They looked sharp and dangerous, pitted after years of being pummeled by the harsh ocean, with bits of kelp and other debris wedged into the cracks.

A powerful wave gave him a shove into the rocks. He winced and cursed incoherently at the pain in his hands. Of course he could feel that. They had been numb for the last hour, but were apparently still functioning enough to send signals to his brain that, as he had suspected, the rocks were nasty.

The water gradually lost its hold on him with each determined step. It settled for sending frothy spray up his back.

He thought he heard Steve talking, but if he was, his words had been snatched by the howling wind and crashing waves. The slender face craned around to look at him with a brief flash of panic quickly replaced with the stoic facade of Super SEAL.

"Almost there, bud," Steve yelled at him.

Danny waved a hand, too tired to verbally acknowledge him.

Soon the rocks gave way to a protected alcove. The uneven and rugged ground turned into springy pebbles beneath his feet. The water was left behind to slam angry white capped fists on the beach behind them.

Danny collapsed to his knees.

Ground. Sweet, solid ground.

A webbed forefoot tugged at his arm. He lifted his head with no small effort to glare at his partner.

"Can't I have five minutes to kiss the ground? The ground that I thought I'd never see again? Is that too much to ask?" he questioned.

"We have to get into the trees," Steve said.

Danny opened his mouth to protest. It was cut off by an abrupt turn of the wind and a sheet of rain that felt like needles piercing his skin. He scrambled to his feet.

The massive swaying evergreens allowed them passage into the protection of their boughs, but only barely. The underbrush was so thick and tangled in some spots that even Steve in his dragon form couldn't cut through it. They were forced to backtrack and go around several times.

At some point, the densest of the underbrush veered off into a different part of the forest while the trail Steve had chosen began to look friendlier with big bushy ferns and mossy stumps. Every green leaf bounced and shimmered with the rain that penetrated the evergreen canopy. Danny kept his head down and his arms crossed across his chest with his hands tucked into his armpits. Water streamed down his back. If he wasn't a fire breather, he would've been hypothermic a long time ago. At the moment he was just soggy and chilled.

Steve stopped suddenly and Danny about ran into his hindquarters.

"This will work."

Danny edged around Steve to see what he was looking at. He flung a hand out at the fallen trees. "This will work for what?"

"Shelter from the storm," Steve said.

"Why can't we keep walking and find a road that leads to a nice cozy house or, I don't know, a Starbucks or something where we can use a phone and get dry?" he asked, eyeing the earthen cubby hole with disdain.

"Because, if we stay out in this rain much longer, you're going to get hypothermia or pneumonia," Steve said. He started to pull branches and clumps of moss out from under the toppled trees and pile it on top of them.

Danny just stared.

He wasn't warm, no, but once he had gotten out of the water and started walking, he had started to warm up with help from his stoking chamber. A few twigs nibbled along the way had kept it from turning acidic from dry stoking. He was wet, and hungry, and thirsty, but he was only cold like he had stepped outside without a jacket on a chilly late fall day in New Jersey. Not fun, but not debilitating.

Steve, on the other hand, was not a fire breather.

Danny narrowed his eyes. Shivers traveled through Steve's body, from nose to tail. They were hard to see with the rain making his scales glint and glimmer, and with his constant movements, but they were noticeable now that he was looking for them.

Steve may have said he was worried about Danny getting hypothermic, but it wasn't Danny he should have been worried about.

"Well, unless you're going to magically produce me a heater and a wool sweater, I vote we build a fire," Danny said, not mentioning that he was the one with the built-in furnace. If Steve got colder or started going delirious on him, then he was definitely going to mention it.

Steve glanced over his shoulder at him. He craned his head around the wet forest. "We might be able to find some dry wood for you to light."

"For me to light?" Danny asked.

"If you haven't noticed, Daniel, I don't have my lighter or anything else on me," Steve snapped.

"Hey, don't get angry with me! I don't know why we wound up on a sinking boat in the middle of the ocean during a storm, but I'm sure you did something to piss someone off," Danny said with a wild flapping of his hands.

Steve grunted and steam rose from his nostrils. "You sure it wasn't you?"

"Oh haha, I haven't heard that one before," Danny said. He pointed. "Why are you shivering if you're using your boiling chamber, huh?"

"Because unlike you, I'm not a hothead," Steve said and started scraping at the undersides of the fallen trees. Bits of bark and shreds of wood fell to the ground.

Danny frowned as a shiver shook Steve's hindlegs. "Clearly. You know what? Just move over."

If he had been asked ten years ago when he had still been in Jersey if he thought he would ever get to a point in his life where stripping his sopping wet shirt and pants off in the middle of a forest during a torrential downpour to shift would barely register as a blip on his weirdest-stuff-I've-done meter, he would've laughed and then locked up whoever asked him a cockamamie question like that, because clearly they were mentally unstable.

Instead, he merely laid his shirt, pants, and leather loafers that were totally and utterly beyond saving on a rock under the shelter of the fallen trees and then wedged himself under them. Steve just stood staring. A little too slow and sluggish for Super SEAL according to Danny.

"I don't see any dry wood around here to build a campfire, do you?" Danny asked. Steve jerkily shook his head in the negative. "I don't know where you thought you were going to procure dry wood from."

"You're the one who wanted to build a fire," Steve muttered.

"Would I prefer a nice cozy campfire with a waterproof tent and an air mattress loaded with down comforters? Yes. Does it look like I'm going to get that? No. So you get your shivering hide in here before you decide to do something more stupid than usual."

Danny held Steve's gaze for a long few moments. The space under the trees wasn't super dry, but it was certainly dryer than where Steve was standing in the rain. Mossy trunks and a dirt wall pressed in on his wings. He suppressed his own shiver, though his was from a currently not present element. With the wide opening to the vast forest right in front of him, though, he was sure he could handle bunking down in the small space until the rain stopped.

Steve finally relented and tucked himself under the trees with him.

With a couple muffled curses, some struggling, and an awkward glance at each other, they finally got situated into a semi-comfortable position. Steve settled himself like a cat, with his front feet curled under his chest and his neck arched like a swan. Danny was less comfortable resting in his dragon form. He felt like the Sphinx, but with his bad knee stretched to the side and propped up on one of Steve's hind legs.

He turned his eyes to the ground. Normally, he was picky about what he put into his stoking chamber, preferring pebbles and chunks of aromatic wood. Over the years he had burned some less savory things, like stair railings and leaf litter and random branches with varying results.

The trees they were under looked like some kind cedar, which was an okay tree in his experience. It didn't matter either way. It could have been a pile of unidentified twigs and he still would've had to eat it. There was no way he was going to keep them both warm dry stoking.

It didn't take very long for Steve to gravitate closer to him once his stoking chamber was fully operational and smoke rolled from his nose with a pleasantly strong aroma.

Many things flew through his mind as small glowing embers drifted up and away only to be brutally murdered by the rain. What had they been doing on a boat? Had they been working a case? Where were they? How far away was help? Were there bears here?

Danny wanted to voice his concerns, but kept them to himself once he realized Steve was snoring, to his surprise. Steve was usually so alert and on guard in a new and possibly dangerous situation. But the Arboreal had his head bent down and partially braced on Danny's shoulder, with Danny's wing draped over him like a blanket. Had hypothermia gotten the better of him?

Then again, he had swam who knew how many miles to get them to shore before wandering around the forest for an hour.

He was probably tired.

Anyone would be tired after doing that.

Danny was, and he hadn't even been doing the work.

He stared out at the darkening forest and thought of his warm, queen sized bed back at home with his leak proof roof. They would get out of here in the morning once it stopped raining, and he'd never go near another boat again, especially if Steve was accompanying him.

The trees rustled in the wind and thunder rumbled overhead.

Just one night in Hell, Danny, and it'll all be over. You can survive. If Grace can go on a four night camping trip with the Aloha Girls, you can handle this.

He repeated that to himself over and over as the light failed completely and a deep darkness settled over the forest.

Just one night. One night.

Steve twisted his head and cracked his neck. Last night hadn't been the most comfortable of nights, but he had been exhausted from swimming and shivering for hours on end that he apparently had fallen asleep rather quickly, and not in the most ergonomic of positions.

At one point he had awoken in the middle of the night to pitch black. The rain had still been gently sprinkling down, but the forest was relatively quiet. The only light was from a few embers that danced around on the damp ground from Danny's nose, which had been planted on his forelegs in a way that ensured he would have a crick in his neck in the morning.

As soon as the sky had gone gray and the rain had dissipated with the waning dark, Steve had roused himself from the cubby hole and stretched. Warm, somewhat rested, and more clear headed than he had been the evening before, he had hatched a plan.

And now he was hiking up to the tallest point of land he could see rising through the canopy. The rocks were slick, the toppled trees and roots he kept scaling might as well have been made of ice, and the mud was cold, but with his hooked claws and sheer determination, he was approaching the summit of the mountainous hill.

Danny was right behind him, grumbling the whole way.

"You know what I could use right now?" Danny asked.

If Steve had to take a guess, he would say a hot shower, a hot cup of coffee, or a hot stone massage. Something hot.

"Pancakes. A ginormous stack of blueberry pancakes with butter and syrup and whipped cream, with bacon and hashbrowns on the side, a tall glass of orange juice, and the finest Italian roast coffee I can afford," Danny said, huffing and puffing.

Steve glanced back at him, watching closely to make sure he scrambled over the slippery log without too many issues. Danny's claws were better for digging and wedging into cracks in rock walls, not so much for climbing wet terrain where everything was on the cusp of becoming a slipping hazard.

But he made it over the log and impatiently waited for Steve to start climbing again.

"If you cook the pancakes, I'll do the bacon and the coffee," Steve said, edging over a patch of spongy moss.

"As long as you do the bacon right."

"Swimming in its own grease."

"Exactly."

"You're going to have a heart attack one day, you know that?" Steve said.

"If I do, it won't be because of what I eat. If you haven't noticed, I only eat those kinds of things once in a while. A splurge, if you will. Between you and Grace, I've been hounded into eating salad and vegetables and fruit and more salad and protein."

"And coffee."

"And coffee."

"And beer."

"The Germans say drinking beer reduces the risk of a heart attack."

"Whatever you say, Danno."

Steve pulled himself over one last rotting tree and then the ground leveled off. He approached the edge of one side of the hill where it dropped away steeply to the canopy below. This side faced where they had just come from. He could see the alcove where they'd come ashore yesterday.

"Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink, huh?" Danny commented.

Steve followed his gaze to the ocean that stretched to the horizon beyond the alcove.

"We'll see if we can boil some water before we head out," Steve said.

Dragons were sturdy and fairly tolerant of parasites, but after their run-in with Black Dragon Eels, Steve didn't want to take the chance of getting giardia or something else horrible from unboiled water. The only water they'd had that morning was rainwater that had collected on the ferns and other leaves.

Well, Steve had taken a few mouthfuls of stream water and boiled it in his boiling chamber, but it was barely worth the effort. His boiling chamber didn't hold much, and then he had to take the time to actually boil it without getting it too hot and just turning it into steam.

Danny complained that his stoking chamber wasn't built to even do that.

"Okay. That's where we came in," Steve said and pointed to the alcove. He pivoted clockwise.

The land ran alongside the ocean for a while that direction, but he could see it taper off and leave just the ocean. Behind them directly opposite of the alcove, east if the pale dot in the sky obscured by clouds was the sun, the hill they were on sloped back down into the forest. The tops of trees rose and fell with the geography of the land. At some point they thinned out into a grassy area that may have been a marsh with a pond. Steve wondered if it was a saltwater marsh.

He squinted.

The trees picked up again on the other side of the marsh. There was only a quarter mile stretch between the marsh and another shoreline. More ocean.

Steve frowned. Refused to speak his suspicions until he was sure. No need to get Danny panicked.

If directly opposite of the alcove was east, then the direction he turned to next was south. The hill and the trees ran along that way for some distance with a winding break in the treetops that gave him the impression there was a stream or river down there.

The trees ran into a fine mist that lingered at the edge of the forest. A vast flat area rolled away to the south.

"Uh, Steve?"

Steve held his breath.

"I don't know about you, but I don't see any civilization close by," Danny said.

Steve nodded stiffly.

"And, even more disturbingly, I think I see the ocean on every side of us."

Steve nodded again.

"Steve?"

Steve exhaled heavily, sensing the note of panic rising in his partner's voice.

"Please tell me we're not…."

Steve looked at him grimly.

"We're on an island."

To be continued…

Next week on "Dragons", Steve goes into survival mode. First things first: water.

Hehehehehe. I know a lot of you said you'd prefer longer chapters with longer waits, but as I've worked on this arc, I think I came up with a neat way of telling this story. So, if my mental health doesn't take a dive again, I plan on posting one chapter a week. They'll be smaller chapters, but once a week again.

Lots of love to all the reviewers, favers, and followers. :)