A/N: Time to bring back some old characters during this postapalooza!

His progress is halted by a woman.

She is utterly unaware of his presence, wrapped up in some newscast that she's watching with horrified fascination, but for a moment she is his entire world.

Her hair is a dark waterfall, her skin especially pale against it. Whatever event has her attention has caused tears to form in her dark eyes, bringing his attention directly to them.

They're beautiful.

Like the blond man, this woman stirs something in the recesses of his mind, but the feelings are somehow even stronger.

Favor of course you do dinner breakfast bed

Hey... ... ... ...I need a favor

A gasp startles him from his reverie, and he shakes himself of the sensation and moves.

He just hopes nobody around his target rooftop is suspicious of briefcases.

Danny Williams was the type of man who preferred to have at least eight hours of sleep a night. He could get by on seven and mostly function on six, but when it came to less time than that he became…testy.

And Danny had not gotten a single wink of sleep the previous night.

"I swear, if this is that Summer Thompson woman again I'm buying a gun for the sole purpose of putting a bullet through her forehead," he grumbled as he made his way to his room's door. "What?"

"Ken Suichi from Action Five, Mr. Williams," called a man from the other side of the door. "We'd love an interview with you and your dau-"

"We're not interested!" he shouted. "If you come back here, I'm calling the police and having you arrested for harassment."

A loud huff preceded three sets of feet padding away from the door, and he sighed in mixed anger and relief. He couldn't grant them an interview with Grace even if he wanted to. She wasn't with him in the hotel room.

His daughter had been reluctant to go back to the hotel upon her discharge. Her doctor suggested that she wanted somewhere with more stability, more permanency after the previous day's trauma, and this revelation coupled with Grace's incessant questioning of Kono's wellbeing after her meeting with the stun gun prompted Danny to send his daughter home with his old teammate. He had stayed with her for a while, but eventually she had screamed at him to "stop hovering and leave her alone!".

So he had.

The vultures that masqueraded as newscasters had somehow discovered where he was staying, unfortunately, and he was regaled with a flurry of questions upon his arrival at the hotel. They must have assumed that his daughter was holed away within the room, because the first reporter had broken through security and approached his room a mere five minutes after he had arrived. The onslaught had been relentlessly steady since then.

Danny hadn't even made it back to the couch when the next knock came at the door. He turned on his heel, stormed to the door, shouting "I thought I said that we didn't want to talk!" He flung the door open, only to be met with someone who was very much not a reporter.

Catherine Rollins raised an eyebrow at his flustered expression. "Hello to you too, Danny."

"Catherine? What are you doing…"

"I saw the coverage yesterday," she said, sliding past him into the room without waiting for an invitation. She was so much like Steve. "How's your daughter?"

"She's okay," he said slowly. Something was wrong. He thought that Catherine was acting too casual, but he couldn't say why he thought that. "Shouldn't you be, like, in the middle of the Persian Gulf right now or something?"

"Just got back on Saturday, actually. I've had the last few days off, but I get back to work at Pearl tomorrow morning." Danny nodded, unsure of exactly why she was visiting his hotel room on her last day off.

He figured it out pretty quickly when her fist slammed into the side of his face.

"What was that for?!" he wheezed, holding his cheek and trying to regain control of his suddenly spotty vision. When he could see again, he was met with the sight of a handgun pointed at his forehead. "Whoa whoa whoa, easy there!"

"Easy?!" she snarled. "It would have been easy for you to tell me when my boyfriend was taken captive by one of the most notorious criminals of the century!"

"Listen, Catherine," he started, but she continued to rant right over him.

"I'm Naval Intelligence, you dimwit!" she shouted. "I have connections that you and your stupid little government taskforce friends can't even dream of! I could have done something! But instead, you and your buddies decide you don't need any Naval support and go gallivanting off to North Korea by yourselves and get him taken for good! And you STILL didn't tell me!"

"Just put the gun down and we'll talk about this," he said slowly. Catherine didn't have the crazed look that meant she had lost most of her mental facilities, meaning she knew exactly what she was doing.

That was more terrifying to him than anything else in that moment.

"Why should I put it down, Danny? You got Steve killed, didn't you? Why shouldn't I kill you, too, huh? Give me a reason!"

"Because Steve wouldn't want you too." He knew he had made a bad decision as soon as the words left his mouth. Catherine narrowed her eyes and cocked the gun. "Please, there's a lot you don't understand. You can kill me later."

"Too late, Danny," she whispered. He closed his eyes. Every sound, every smell seemed so real to him. It was all in slow motion. He could smell the ocean breeze drifting into the room through the badly sealed balcony door. Could hear his murderer's heavy breathing. Could hear the click of the trigger.

He waited for the bullet to pierce his brain.

And waited.

Eventually he opened one eye. Catherine was holding the gun as if she had just shot it, his head still squarely in her sights, but though her finger was on the trigger nothing had happened. "Seriously? You threatened me with an unloaded gun?"

"I guess I wanted to scare you a bit," she whispered. Her voice was full of pain instead of anger; she had apparently exhausted her rage. "You're right, anyhow. Steve wouldn't want me to hurt you, even if you did get him killed." Her eyes were suddenly full of tears. "You were his best friend," she mumbled as she began to cry in earnest. "He loved you."

Danny stood up, took the gun from her hands, and led her to the couch to sit, feeling rather weird for treating the Naval Lieutenant like a child. They sat in silence for a few minutes, with only the occasional sniffle from her interrupting the quiet. It should have felt awkward, holding his best friend's girlfriend in an otherwise empty hotel room, but something told him that she needed the physical touch of someone else close to Steve to feel even close to okay again.

"Why do you think he's dead?" he asked when she managed to sit up and wipe her eyes. "Did you hear something through the grapevine?"

"He's been taken captive by Wo Fat, Danny," she said. "It's impossible that he's still alive, don't you think?"

"No." Catherine glared at him. "I'm serious, Catherine. We think he was captured so Wo Fat could get information on someone called Shelburne. Steve has no clue who that is, but Wo Fat seemed convinced that he did, and that means that Steve has leverage keeping him alive. As long as Wo Fat believes that he's holding something secret…"

"Steve stays alive." She smiled slightly, but her gaze was still fractured with pain. "Who knows what hell he's been through, though. Two years is a long time in the hands of a madman."

They were silent for another space of time, but the air was less tense. Danny finally coughed to break it up and turned to Catherine. "We tried."

"I beg your pardon?"

"We tried to tell you. Governor Denning deleted our work emails before we could get to them, and none of us had your address anywhere else. We tried radioing the Enterprise, but they said you were unavailable. Joe told us he couldn't get through to you. I even wrote you letters, but something tells me you never received them." Catherine blinked. "Denning wanted to bury this whole thing, and he did a pretty grand job of it."

"I saw Wo Fat." It was Danny's turn to be shocked at this sudden revelation. "He was in Kabul. I was following up on a lead with a couple other NI, and he was just there. We tried to follow him, but the market was crowded and he's slippery. I emailed Steve as soon as we were back on board, but he never answered. And he's never answered me since." She stopped to wipe her eyes. "According to Kono, that was only three days after the botched rescue. Steve was probably right there."

"Kono?"

Catherine's not available right now, and even if she wasn't…well, let's just say she probably wouldn't be too helpful.

"Yeah. I tracked her down shortly after I got back to the island, like maybe a year ago or so? She just told me upfront that Steve was gone, and I kind of lost it for a while." Catherine shook her head. "I had to be back at work in two hours after I found out, and I just had to bury everything and pretend the man I loved wasn't in mortal peril. I guess that explains what happened earlier."

She stood and crossed to the balcony door. Danny's heart broke for her as she hugged herself and stared out to sea, as if hoping to see Steve walking towards her.

He had been able to run. He hadn't moved on, but he'd had friends who had helped him through the worst of it, even from a distance.

Catherine had been entirely and utterly alone in her pain. She had had no one to turn to, no one to talk to, no one to cry on.

She obviously loved Steve. And that kind of a loss isn't easy to manage.

It was on him to make her load a little more manageable.

"He loves you." She turned, her eyes unreadable. "He never admitted it, I'm not even sure if he knows it himself, but he loves you. I knew it the first time I saw him call you."

"You think so?" she whispered.

Danny nodded, and she grinned through the tears that were running down her face. "He'll come back. He has to."

"Yeah."

They exchanged a long look. And Danny saw in her eyes the thoughts that rolled through his own mind.

Steve might never come back. Steve would probably never come back.

They would be waiting for never.