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

-Bear Grylls

Season: 5th Season

Sickness

He had started a stick. His time keeping stick. Initially, he hadn't wanted to start one because then that would cement the fact that he was stranded on an island. He had been one part hopeful that help would arrive soon, and one part pessimistic that this place was going to be his new home until he kicked the bucket.

Danny placed one forefoot against the stick to keep it pinned while he cut a mark in it with his claw.

Sunlight streamed through the trees into the entrance of their shelter. It was more than the earthen cubby hole they had stumbled across in the beginning. It was a safe spot. Now rainproof. And it was slowly becoming more and more comfortable with each thing or renovation added to it.

He picked up the stick and counted the slash marks in it.

Day 1 had been the day they washed ashore in the pouring rain and howling wind.

Day 2 had been the day they discovered they were on an island. That was when Steve went into survival mode.

Day 3 had been the day they had set up the fishing net in the cove and caught three fish.

Day 4 had been the day they caught two small fish and the ugliest crab Danny had ever laid eyes on, and it had tasted like heaven. They had also spruced up, figuratively and literally, their shelter with a raised bed of tree boughs cushioned with dry moss and brush, so they were at least off the ground an inch or two. It still wasn't Danny's king mattress piled with blankets and comforters, but it was better.

Day 5 had been the day Danny had finally killed the squirrel.

He frowned. Despite his constant ragging on the stupid pests, he hadn't actually thought he'd kill it. The stone he had lugged at it had been a David and Goliath moment, only this Goliath threw the stone and nailed the little guy in the head. Knocked it right out of the tree.

Steve had been just as stunned as he had.

Now he knew squirrels didn't have much meat on them.

Day 6 had been a bad day. Another storm had come in and whipped the waves high. A telephone pole sized tree had rammed straight through their fishing net like a finger going through wet tissue paper. There had been no fish that day. They had spent the day instead salvaging the net and trying to patch the leaks in the roof of their shelter.

And today was Day 7. Danny had woken up in a bad mood and was ready to get the remaining half of the net back in the water because he was starving and shaky and had a headache, but right now he couldn't worry about that.

Because Day 7 was the day that Steve got sick.

Danny had been rudely awoken by Steve vaulting out of their shelter in the middle of the night. Every muscle had strung taut and his heart had pounded at the abrupt and quick exit of his partner. There had been little light other than their small glowing fire, but once he had launched himself to his feet and bolted from the shelter with his ridge of scales standing on end, he hadn't needed much light to understand what was happening.

Steve had been vomiting.

It was early afternoon now if the sun's position was to be trusted, and according to Danny's count, Steve had vomited four more times since the first incident in the dark hours of the night.

He looked up from his stick and over at his partner. Steve was sprawled in the sunlight on his side, looking gaunt and quite frankly, like a dead cat.

Danny could feel himself getting lighter. Sure, he always had a small handful of pounds he could shed. He liked malasadas and hearty sandwiches and cheesy pizza and cold beer, after all. But those spare pounds had vanished in the first couple days of eating as much as a fruit fly ate. That was also why they had stayed in dragon form. Shifting took too many calories and too much energy.

Birds flitted around in the branches above as he got up, the high flutes of their songs peaceful and cheery. Much more pleasant than the angry chittering of the squirrels. They must have known their buddy had been whacked. No more had come close to camp.

"You going to be okay if I go get more water and check the shoreline?" Danny asked, pausing by Steve's head.

His eye opened into a slit and rolled in its socket to glance at him. He started to pick himself up. "I'll go."

Danny waved his claws at him. "Uh, no. You will not. You will sit here and drink the water left in the pan like a good little patient, because I'm not hauling your bony butt back up the trail if and when you finally collapse into a useless heap."

"I'm fine."

Danny raised a brow ridge. Steve had barely got himself up on his elbows and didn't seem very close to standing, never mind walking. "Uh huh. So you're feeling good enough to walk all the way to the shore, then all the way to the stream, then all the way back to camp?"

Steve glared.

"Yeah, that's what I thought. Just do me a favor, please? Stay here and don't die while I'm gone, okay? I'll go get the water and maybe another squirrel will piss me off and we'll roast it."

"Whoever thought Danny Williams would get hungry enough to eat squirrels?" Steve said. He settled back down, though grudgingly.

"Well they're certainly not roasted pigs, but they're better than grubs," Danny said.

"Dunno. Doesn't take as much to clean grubs," Steve said.

"You can eat all the grubs you want, but I'm going to learn to fly before I've hit that point, got it? I will fly out of here straight to the mainland and straight to an all-you-can-eat buffet before I stoop to eating bugs."

"Whatever, Danno."

Danny lingered for a moment. Steve hadn't vomited since early that morning, and besides their general poor condition, didn't seem worse for wear. No fever, no seizures, no drooling, just weak and probably dehydrated.

"You sure you're going to be fine?"

Steve smirked at him. Even in sickness, the McGarrett smirk was cocky and smug and reassuring. "Yeah."

"You better be, because I can't administer IV fluids with a twig and make jello out of grass," Danny said.

Steve snorted softly.

"Hey, don't go anywhere, okay? If you go wandering off and collapse somewhere, I'm not going to be able to find you, understand? It'll be a miracle if I make it back to camp without falling in a hole or something," Danny said.

"Just stay on the trails. You won't get lost on the trails."

"Yeah, yeah, don't go off the beaten path. Do I look like the adventurous type?"

Steve grinned. "Not even a little."

"Seriously, stay here, okay?"

"Yes, Danno."

"Good."

Danny nodded to himself. Going out on his own on an unfamiliar island, small though it may be, wasn't something he was looking forward to, even if it was just a routine water and food run. It was like going down to the gas station to get some beer and a chocolate bar.

His mouth watered.

Chocolate.

Chocolate sounded so good right now.

He'd had a dream about chocolate pudding the other night. Left him feeling even hungrier than usual when he woke up.

Shaking off the impossible to satisfy chocolate craving, he grabbed the water jug and looped the battered rope attached to it over his head. Then he slung the second jug over his head as well. The blue one was for water, the white one with the hole in the bottom was for food. If any was to be found, that was.

He set off down their trail towards the beach. He cast Steve one last look, his stomach a pit of anxiety. It was bad enough they were stranded. Did the man who knew what he was doing have to get sick, too?

The trail was a bit slippery from yesterday's rain. They had worn it down to the point that it was easy enough to follow, so as long as he could find the trail, he would be fine. An offshoot jinked off to the left of the main trail. Danny stopped briefly, considering his options. The left trail went up to the stream where they collected their freshwater. The main trail went down to the shore. If he went up first, he'd have to slog the water around with him while he was beachcombing.

Beachcombing first, then water.

The storm had departed sometime yesterday evening and had left a mess in its wake. All kinds of seaweed, wood, and foam had been coughed up from the ocean and carelessly tossed on the pebbly shore.

Danny sighed.

The other night had consisted of dreams of chocolate while last night he was sure he had dreamt that he and Steve had come down here and found an entire shipping container full of hot dogs with all the fixings.

He had never dreamed this much about food in his life.

"Going to wake up one morning chewing on Steve's tail or something," he mumbled. "Or eating a pile of dirt. I'd never live that down."

The sun sparkled on the now calm waters as he combed the shoreline. A couple of black and white birds floated on the small waves. He stared longingly at them. He could eat a whole turkey, but he'd settle for those two birds out there. However, they were well beyond his reach, and he doubted he'd take them out with a rock at this distance. And then even if he did manage it, he'd have to swim out there to retrieve them.

Back to scavenging it was.

Steve had told him not to get the kelp that was washed up on the shore. It could have been dead for a while and starting to rot. Apparently. Danny couldn't tell the difference between the stuff that was freshly plucked and the stuff on the shore. But he dutifully waded out into the water up to his chest and pulled a few handfuls of the tough rubbery shrubbery from the bottom and stuffed it into the white jug.

He cracked a grin at his rhyming. Too bad Steve wasn't there to roll his eyes. Danny sobered. If Steve wasn't stranded with him, he may have already gone insane. Or eaten rotten kelp.

He paced the beach of the cove three times before concluding nothing of value had washed up. He didn't even find that many periwinkle snails.

Seaweed stew again tonight. Yay.

With a heavy heart and a headache poking that back of his left eye, he trudged up the trail and followed the offshoot. At least there were a few dandelions growing in the shade along this trail. He didn't bother putting most of them in the bucket, he just ate the leaves. Some of them were horrifyingly bitter, but his taste buds in dragon form were altered to enjoy a different set of flavors. Not many could say they enjoyed the taste of molten bismuth.

Shafts of sunlight filtered through the trees. Particles glittered like gold in the light and a gentle breeze rustled the undergrowth. Had his car been at the end of the trail, it would have been a lovely hike, even if he wasn't used to spending this long in dragon form. It wasn't uncomfortable, just unusual to him. He couldn't recall spending more than a few hours at a time in dragon form, the longest having been when he was trapped on the ship.

A shiver ghosted down his spine.

The fresh breeze caressed his wings and filled his lungs. His feet were planted firmly into the cool dirt. The sun danced through the canopy in patches, spotlighting various flowers, birds, and general beauty.

He released a controlled exhale and continued walking.

Out of everything that had happened in his life, that was the one thing that kept coming back to haunt him. A dark space, a pressure on his ankle, a dank scent, even a fleeting memory would send him right back there. Sleeping in the cubby hole was barely tolerable and the only reason he didn't sleep outside when it wasn't pouring rain was because Steve didn't have a built in furnace like he did.

Apparently, boiling chambers didn't work the same way stoking chambers did. Danny wasn't sure. Steve was the only person he'd met that actually had a boiling chamber, and a seldom used one at that. He didn't burn off his nervous energy with it like Danny did, no, he was all about running and swimming ten miles before work every morning.

Sometimes he couldn't understand how the pair of them became closer than brothers. Their interests and hobbies and lifestyles were vastly different as were their upbringings. They liked different food. They could never agree on a radio station. Danny was loud. Steve was the strong silent type, though he had become more vocal over the years. Danny guessed it was to compete with him. Everything was a competition with Steve.

They were very different people.

Maybe whoever said opposites attract was onto something.

He had decided years ago he wouldn't want to be friends with himself, anyway. He'd get angry and punch himself in the face. Then again, he had punched Steve in the face during the first case they'd worked together.

And Steve had stuck around. Hadn't attempted to string him up by his thumbs or pulled some other ridiculous ninja move on him. It was like Danny had won some kind of respect from him with his right hook.

What an animal.

The gurgling of the stream started to babble over the sound of the breeze and the birds. Water sprang up from the spongy, mossy ground as he stepped on it. He paused with a frown.

They normally gathered water from a small pool that was fed by a tiny waterfall.

He glanced behind him. The trail meandered back through the forest to the main trail that went from the shore to their camp.

"Huh."

The heavy rains yesterday must have washed out this part of the stream. The pool was gone, replaced with a narrow rut that rushed away down the hill towards the ocean. The little waterfall was also gone, smushed by a tree that had fallen. It gushed from underneath the branches, brown with mud.

He inclined his head further up the hill. Off the beaten path.

"Stay on the trail. You can't get lost on the trail," he muttered. He looked at the muddy water and at the empty jug strung over his neck. "You also can't get clean water on the trail."

He looked upstream again.

"Stay on the trail, stay on the trail, stay on the trail."

He started to climb up the hill alongside the trail.

"On my tombstone it's gonna read, 'Did not stay on the trail'. I'm sorry, Grace, your dad and uncle are trouble magnets, and your old man is a knucklehead that won't drink muddy water. I'm just glad you're not here. I might have had a heart attack trying to take care of you."

He continued talking to himself as he navigated around slippery rocks, fallen trees, and patches of sucking mud that may have trapped a human but couldn't quite get a firm enough grip on a dragon of his size.

The ground leveled off somewhat to a gentler slope at last. The trees were a bit sparser here and meadow grass stood almost chest high.

If he squinted, he could see the original trail winding away through the forest down below. At least, he hoped it was the original trail. He had hiked uphill a decent distance, or so his pounding heart and light head told him.

He swayed in the grass.

"Nope, nope. Do not faint. Williams don't faint," he said through gritted teeth and blinked rapidly.

The stream beckoned him. He slowly approached the wide pool that shimmered in the late afternoon sunlight. It was much wider than the one they had been collecting water from. Up from the pool was a collection of rocks erupting from the earth, dark and jagged like the ones on the beach, but these ones were covered in furry green mosses. Water cascaded over them with a tranquil trickling sound.

He made his way to the cascade and held the blue jug underneath one of the fountains. He was extremely tempted to take a sip from the crystal clear stream, but was more afraid of parasites than he was of dehydration.

He sat on his rump with an oomph.

His head swam for a few moments.

Was it hunger? Was it thirst? Was it exhaustion? Who knew. His hunger had become more of an annoyance than an actual pain. His muscles ached off and on, either from starvation or lack of water or minerals or whatever else was plaguing him. All he had to do was make it back to camp and then he could sleep for a while. Maybe even the rest of the night.

But the sun felt so good on his back.

"Just a few minutes. Then I better get back before Steve does something stupid and comes looking for me, then we'll both be in trouble," he murmured and yawned.

He picked at the grass around him. If he was a cow, he'd be a fat, happy cow with all of this green grass. Unfortunately, he didn't have four stomachs to process grass enough to make it worth eating, though he would consider it a viable food source worth trying before he ate bugs.

He tilted his head to the side. That wasn't grass growing next to the stream. They were stems with fuzzy leaves growing from the base to the top where purplish flowers blossomed. They looked vaguely familiar.

He tugged a bunch of leaves off one plant and sniffed.

His eyes widened.

Mint.

And it was growing everywhere up here.

With a newfound jolt of energy, he collected as much as he could. He liked English tea, but he would definitely go for mint. Anything had to be better than earthy tasting warm water.

Since he was up and moving, he forced himself to keep upright and start heading back. He didn't want to be walking back in the dark. He wasn't like Steve who could tell just from the sun's position how long it was until night fell, but he guessed he had a few hours still. Better safe than sorry, though.

He had to pause at the edge of the steep slope he had climbed up earlier. It was always easier to get up something than it was to get down it. He'd learned that one as a kid climbing trees near his old middle school.

Keeping the stream in his peripheral, he walked perpendicular to it to an easier spot. There were more footholds here and less of a chance that he'd wind up on his face. Not that it was extremely easy to get down with shaking limbs and a still wobbly head.

His claws caught on a root poking up from the ground.

"Woah, woah! Ouch! Watch it, dragon coming through!"

By the time he came to a stop from his hopping, skipping, tripping journey through the undergrowth, he hadn't fallen. He may have won AFV with his idiotic but effective footwork, but he hadn't fallen. He had stumbled.

Stumbled right into a tangled mess of thorns and vines.

"Thank god for scales," he grumbled. The thorns were rather vicious looking. "What the heck is this stuff? The rose bush from hell?"

Then he froze.

A splash of color told him exactly what this was.

And he was never going to let Steve live it down.

Danny had five minutes to show up, and then Steve was going to go looking for him.

"I told you to stay on the trail, Danno," he said.

He grunted as he sat down next to the fire. He was feeling better than he had last night and that morning. Ten minutes after Danny had left, he had started collecting firewood. It was a slow process, but it was something to keep him busy and make him feel useful.

Since he had been sitting idle all morning, he'd had time to think. He and Danny had been eating the same things and drinking the same water. The only thing they had done differently from each other was how much they had eaten. Danny had been picky and wasn't eating as much kelp as Steve was. Admittedly, there was a chance he had eaten too much kelp.

Iodine poisoning was a possible cause of his illness. And since he hadn't eaten any kelp today and had vomited out most of yesterday's kelp, his levels may have started to regulate already.

Maybe he should have listened to Danny when he gave him crap about eating kelp like it was spaghetti.

He cast a look down the empty trail before returning his attention back to the fire. He hated sending his untrained partner out into the woods to collect water. He doubted there was something big enough on the island to hurt a dragon, but Danny had a way of finding himself in unusual situations.

Danny would probably say the same about him.

Five years ago he would've never pictured himself best friends with the Jersey loudmouth. He didn't really have 'best friends'. He had brothers in arms, sure, but that was different in some way he couldn't explain. Freddie had probably been the closest thing to a best friend he'd had in the military.

He heard Danny before he ever saw him. Stealth was not one of Danny's natural talents.

He glanced up at the sun's low position and then at his partner. "Cutting it a little close there, bud."

Danny huffed and dropped next to the fire, sprawling out like an old hound dog on a front porch. Steve accepted the water jug and poured some into the pan sitting on the edge of the firepit.

"The rain washed out the stream," Danny said. "It's all muddy and just a rut now."

"So where'd you get the water?" Steve asked. It looked clear like it had been.

"I had to leave the trail."

Steve nodded. His lateness made sense now.

"And you made it back," he said.

Danny gave him the stink eye and tugged the other jug off his neck. He stuck two claws into it and tossed some leaves into the water pot.

Steve grabbed one and held it up for examination. "Mint?"

"I had to hike up the stream and found it growing all over," Danny said. He shook the jug a little onto a big flat rock they had found. "I also found these."

Steve tried to maintain a neutral face, but his excitement peeked through.

"Blackberries?"

Danny's toothy smile and proud nod made it even better.

"Apparently, leaving the trail has its advantages."

To be continued….

Next week on "Dragons", the rest of the team starts to uncover the shocking truth behind the boys' stranding.

Now if that's not a clickbait title, I don't know what is, lol.

I hope you enjoyed this chapter! I know I actually enjoyed writing it, slow as it may be. This little arc is going to start wrapping up here. Thanks for reading and reviewing!