A/N: To Cubit2 who asked if life was throwing me good distractions: yes and no. Had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to join a very special open water swimmer who was passing through the area. I took advantage of it- how could I say no?- and it was a blast.

But less pleasantly, I had some family issues that came up. I'm sure it'll make great fodder for a story one day, but the ongoing situation is not good. Looking forward to it being over quickly.

To that end: Stress, meet Whump. He's your new best friend.

…

Steve shifted restlessly against the iron pillar biting into his back as his hands were untied and fastened with cuffs behind the I-beam. The men holding him were not too gentle and he already knew a couple of spots near his shoulder were sure to be bruised tomorrow. As the cuffs were cinched tightly around his wrists, he flexed, trying to keep the blood moving.

The place around him smelled dank, musty, and felt large, but Steve couldn't make out more than vague areas of light and dark under the cloth wrapped around his head. There were no traffic noises, no industrial sounds or even the hum of an air conditioner; just the harsh muttering and breathing of his captors. The ground was dusty and dirty beneath his hands, and the smell hinted of old wood and fresh mold.

Steve waited until the men had left before he ventured to speak. "Danny?" he tried in a low voice once the footsteps had faded. Any echo of his question was lost in the depths of the building. "You here?"

"Hey Steve." Danny's nervous laugh drifted across the space from somewhere to Steve's right. "Nice of you to join the party."

The detective's tone was pitched higher than normal and decidedly anxious, which did nothing to lessen Steve's own anxiety. "Danny, are you hurt?"

"Hurt? No. Can't see a damn thing, though. They've got me blindfolded."

"Me, too, D." Steve sensed that there was more Danny wasn't telling him. "Any idea where we are?"

"Basement in a warehouse on the outskirts of Chinatown," came the surprisingly detailed answer. "There's a row of windows above you, but they're almost all boarded up."

Steve frowned. "Okay. I thought you were blindfolded?"

"I am. Or I was." Danny paused to clear his throat with a nervous cough. "They took the blindfold off and replaced it with this other thing. It's thicker."

"Oh." Steve didn't have time to puzzle over this development as Danny continued.

"They want information."

Steve didn't miss the slight waver to his voice. He listened carefully as Danny took a deep breath that sounded disturbingly close to a sob.

"They're going to torture me to get it."

"Torture you?" Nonplussed, Steve tried to make sense of what Danny was telling him. "How can you know all of this? Did they say something to you?"

"No." The usually vocal detective was quiet and contemplative for several long seconds. "It's just a deduction." A slight snort, which might have been a failed laugh, accompanied Danny's next statement: "I'm a detective, so that's what I do, right? I deduce things."

Then a new sound reached Steve's ears, a very slight sound that he strained to hear. It sounded like leather, he decided, stretching or pulling against something. "Danny?" he ventured. "What have they done to you?"

"Nothing. At least, not yet. But… uh…" Another shaky inhale paused the trembling voice as Danny collected himself. "I think they're going to waterboard me."

"What?" Steve stopped trying to scrape his handcuffs against the rusting metal beam and focused on his partner. "How do you-"

"I'm strapped down to some kind of table. It's tilted down a bit and my head's on the downhill side. I can't move anything- arms, legs, head- it's all strapped down." The odd stretching sound resumed and Steve imagined Danny pulling at the restraints, searching for a weakness. "How, uh…" Danny cleared his throat again in a failed attempt to hide the shaking in his voice. "How long do people usually last before they, um, break?"

Steve's heart pulled painfully at his partner's distress. "It differs from person to person, Danny," he hedged.

"Okay. Like…?"

"I don't think that's really helpful information."

"Dammit, Steve, quit stalling and tell me how long."

Danny was desperate for information, but the answer he wanted was not one Steve could give. Steve sighed. "Fourteen seconds."

"Oh." Another cough and a hrmph followed his brief acknowledgement. "That short, huh?"

The number was clearly unexpectedly smaller than what Danny had anticipated. Steve listened to Danny squirm against the restraints, his claustrophobia likely competing with traumatic memories of near-drowning as a child, both feelings vying for first place in the detective's panicked mind. Fear, more than discomfort, was the driving factor here.

"When you were… I mean…" Danny tried to be delicate with his question, considering the circumstances of his partner's last session with that method of torture. "How long did you last?"

"I've been waterboarded three times," Steve said slowly as he debated how much information to give. "Once during training. I lasted five minutes. The second time was during a classified op that went FUBAR. That session was interrupted around three and a half minutes when troops stormed the compound and we were rescued. And the third time was Wo Fat. But I honestly don't remember much of that."

"So your best is five minutes, huh?"

"I think so, yeah."

"I thought you could hold your breath longer than that."

"I can- barely. But the water doesn't last the full five minutes. It's an on-off thing. They pour it on for a bit, and then they stop, and then they start again. But torture," Steve frowned, trying to decide how to best explain it, "this torture in particular, is designed to overcome training and trigger involuntary muscular, neurological, or chemical responses. In this case, the gag reflex is triggered."

"And you can't out-train that? There's no secret SEAL trick for getting around it?"

"I've had some training that helps," Steve admitted, "but nothing is perfect because the reflexes are automatic. The biggest thing is to not panic."

"How do I do that?"

Now it was Steve's turn to laugh, short and humorless. "Sorry, buddy. I got no advice for you there."

"So… what does it feel like?"

Steve grimaced as images of Wo Fat approaching him with a damp rag and a cattle prod jumped to the front of his thoughts. "It feels like you're drowning. Like someone is holding you under." He twisted uncomfortably as he tested his own restraints. "It burns because it runs up your nose and down your throat. You can try to hold your breath, but the angle of your head usually makes it difficult to keep the water out. The feeling of water in the nose and throat triggers the gag reflex and panic, your heart rate spikes, and that causes your body to consume more oxygen than normal. Instead of being able to hold your breath for a minute, for example, you suddenly can only hold it for 30 seconds."

"Great," Danny muttered sarcastically. "Just great. Why drown me when they can just make me feel like I'm drowning over and over again? This is gonna be so much fun." He cleared his throat and lay quietly for a minute, apparently thinking. "Steve?"

"Yeah?"

"Listen, if anything happens… if I inhale too much…"

"Nothing's going to happen," Steve interjected quickly. Nothing that a doctor can't fix, I hope, he added to himself. He wanted desperately to have something comforting to say, some words of reassurance based on previous experiences, but none of his past experiences had given him anything comforting to say. Instead, he had been left with an uneasy loss of control and vague fear of drowning and suffocation. It was a new, unfamiliar feeling, one that was wholly unexpected when he first experienced it months after that fateful mission, and he struggled to keep it hidden from his therapist and his CO. "It should be me on the bench, Danny. I'll tell them that you don't know anything."

"No, no, you will not. I need you out there, wherever you are, figuring a way out of this mess. If you end up on this bench, we're both screwed."

Steve didn't tell Danny that he currently couldn't think of a way out of the situation. In fact, he was fairly certain that if they switched places, he could endure more and buy more time while Danny thought up a decent plan for escape. He was about to say as much when the slamming of a door and stiff footsteps announced the arrival of their adversary.

"Detective Williams. Commander McGarrett. Welcome."

Steve turned his head at the voice. "Zhang Jian."

"Very good, Commander." The tone was polite. Patient. And decidedly evil.

"I thought we ran you off a few years ago," Danny put in sourly.

"A temporary leave of absence," the Chinese-American mobster said blandly.

Steve tracked the man as he walked across the room and stood presumably next to the table where Danny lay. "Well, Detective, I apologize in advance. This may be rather unpleasant for you."

"Really?" Danny retorted. "Can't be any worse than what my partner is planning for you."

Mr. Jian chuckled unpleasantly. "I think I'm going to enjoy this," and he patted Danny's face not very gently. Danny winced. "Shall I explain the rules?" Mr. Jian didn't wait for an answer. "The rules of this game are quite simple: I ask a question. Commander McGarrett answers. If he fails to answer then you, detective, suffer the consequences."

Danny didn't need to be told what the consequences would be.

"Shall we begin?"

A/N: My options were: short post now or long post later. That's probably the way it will be for the next few weeks. So: what's your preference? Shorter chapters sooner, or longer chapters later?