So clearly I did not get this story up within the few months that I had originally promised in June. My only justification is that I spent most of my summer away from home and then I spent a semester abroad in London, where I spent my free time exploring one of the best cities on Earth, rather than writing. But now I'm back to my dull old life at my home university, and have found time to wrap things up just a bit. I'm just about done writing the epilogue, so I should be posting the chapters once-ish per week regularly.

Anywho, this is the full story for Everything That Kills Me Makes Me Want To Fly, but you don't have to read that one to understand this (but you should, because I think it's pretty good). Please let me you know what you think, because a) reviews make happy and b) reviews make me happy.

And because I have no other musings to put in here, on with the story. All standard disclaimers apply: I don't own them, because obviously if I did I would definitely add more whumpage to the show.

"Danny, just stop. I'm not going to—"

"You're not going to what? Admit that your mother irreversibly screwed you up? That you're all scary-SEAL right now because you're angry and defensive, simply because you can't say out loud that you blame her for most of your problems? You pretend that everything's okay all the time, keep it all bottled up, but I can see how upset you get when something comes up with her or she lies to you. And it's not healthy."

Steve's hands were tight on the steering wheel, and Danny could sense that he hit a nerve. On the one hand he was sorry to make his partner angry, but on the other hand he'd been dying to say this to Steve since he brought his mom back from the dead. "Like you're the king of open and honest communication, Danny. I really don't think you have the right to be giving relationship advice."

All the regret that Danny had opening this can of worms vanished immediately as his anger rose. "Really, Steven? Really? You're going to bring my relationship with my ex-wife into this? That is so completely different that you can't put them in the same conversation. They're not even in the same zip code!"

"Oh really? Because I'm pretty sure your line about 'blaming her for most of your problems' could apply the same to you, bud."

"You're just avoiding the real issue here by being an asshole and dragging my ex-wife into this. You know I'm right, and you know it, but are being too stubborn and pigheaded to even listen to a word of reason. And that means you're never going to fix your problems, you're never going to stop being this dark and twisted super-SEAL-killer, you're never going to have a real relationship with—"

"Thanks for your diagnosis, Dr. Phil," Steve spat out. "I'm so glad you know everything about everything."

"You're such an ass, Steven. Why can't you just listen to what I'm saying?"

"Why can't you just leave it alone?"

"Because for some, unknown reason, I care about your sorry ass and try to help fix your issues. Clearly I'll just stop because everything I say falls on deaf ears!"

"That's the first smart thing you've said all afternoon," Steve snapped back, flexing his fingers on the steering wheel to get some blood back into them. Waves of anger rolled off of the SEAL, meeting in the middle with Danny's own.

The rest of the ride to the scene was quiet, terse and tense. Danny knew he had pushed his partner's buttons, had called him out on something he wasn't quite ready to deal with yet, but he was still pissed at Steve's stubborn refusal to acknowledge the problem. And now he was furious that he had brought Rachel in, so no amount of remorse at upsetting his friend was going to calm him down.

Thankfully, they arrived not too much longer. Car doors were slammed on both sides as the partners got out and made their way over to the crime scene, echoing loudly against the warehouse and carrying out towards the water and docks. Steve, manners ingrained into him, held the police tape up for his partner, but Danny couldn't bring himself to be polite back and thank him for the gesture. Instead he strode forward into the alley between warehouses, leaving Steve to catch up.

Chin and Kono were already there, getting the details from Max and the techs, though they thanked to whom they were speaking and made their way over to the other members of their team as they came forward. They obviously noticed the tension between the pair, but Danny saw Chin shake his head almost imperceptibly at Kono, and the Jersey man could admit to himself that he was glad he wasn't going to have to explain it right now, and more grateful when Chin broke the awkward silence and started speaking.

"So we have Katherine James, 32, dead from multiple stab wounds. No murder weapon yet. ID on her body says that she's the head of security for a pharmaceutical company located downtown. No indication of why she would be hanging around the port."

"She doesn't have a car in the area that we can find, and no car keys, though there is a membership card to an auto club in her wallet, so it's possible the killer took the car with him," Kono added.

"Okay, you should get on the car's GPS," Steve said, eyes scanning the ground in front of him. "I think I see a blood trail…" He walked past Chin and Kono a few paces, squatting down to get a better look at whatever caught his attention. Even in his irritation, Danny could appreciate his partner's sharp eye. "Directionality suggests whoever it was that was bleeding was moving towards the warehouse on the right. Might be the perp got injured, fled that way."

"I think HPD already swept that area, boss," Kono responded. "Want me to have CSU see if they can find anything else?"

"Nah, I'll check it out first."

As Steve stood up, Kono made a move to stop him. "Shouldn't you take someone with you? Just in case?"

The SEAL glanced at Danny quickly, eyes hard, before smiling and shaking his head at Kono, the mask and walls put in place perfectly to conceal how he was really feeling. "I'm fine. Finish processing the scene, canvass the area, and then look into the car. And get information on her next of kin, all right? We need to know who to notify."

Waiting only for a nod from one of them, he strode away quickly at Chin's approval. The three of them watched for a few moments as he moved haltingly from apparently one blood drop to the next, but as soon as he entered the warehouse, Kono rounded on Danny. "Okay, what the hell is going on?"

Danny sighed, running a hand through his hair. "Nothing. We had a fight, that's all."

"About?"

"His mother." Both cousins groaned in unison. "What? Something needed to be said!"

"Not yet, brah," Chin said calmly. "I haven't gone anywhere near that because it's too soon. He's got a lot to work through with that, and he doesn't need us bugging him about it right now. He's still in his compartmentalization phase and he's pushing all the anger down. When he needs to talk, you'll know."

"He does need us bugging him right now! It's eating away at him. I can tell he's blaming himself for everything when he should be blaming her."

"Yeah, but he has to come to that on his own or he'll just keep defending her. Just leave it for a bit, okay?"

Danny shrugged, still feeling he was right. But he wasn't going to get anywhere with apparently anyone today, so he dropped it. "Fine. Can we just get back to work, please?"

The cousins moved away, giving him the space he so desired. For half an hour, they each went about their business, finalizing everything at the scene before deciding to go to the victim's house and, hopefully, make the necessary notifications. The time alone had helped Danny cool down a bit, get lost in his work, and allow him time to see Steve's comments for what they really were—a defensive and angry response from a child not ready to face the truth about a parent. Now he just needed to straighten things out with the stubborn oaf so they could move on and grab dinner like they had originally planned. But as he looked up from the trunk of the Camaro and searched around the crime scene, he realized he didn't see his partner at all.

Turning around, he spied Chin near the water, Kono talking to tech nearby. He made his way over to them, sure that Steve had checked in with those two instead of him out of anger. "Hey, either of you seen Steve? We should head out, and I should talk to him…" He trailed off with a shrug. "Did he check in with you?"

Kono shook her head quickly. "No, I haven't seen him."

Danny immediately looked to Chin. "Not since he went off to track the blood."

Danny looked at his watch. "That was almost forty-five minutes ago." With a sinking feeling, he realized that they had lost contact with their boss at an active crime scene. Usually Steve and he were together, so it didn't matter, but even when he had investigated something on his own, Danny had checked in regularly. Even though he knew Steve could take care of himself, his partner's safety was still his responsibility and he never shirked it. But with their fight, he had been deliberately not thinking about the man, leaving him alone to do the same processing, literally and metaphorically, that Danny had.

Kono gave a small smile. "You know the boss—he tracks things like no one else. He probably just got caught up." Her calm tone, though, was belied by the worry in her eyes. "I'll call him right now. It'll be fine, you'll see." She pulled out her mobile and punched in Steve's number, leaving it on speaker to let them all hear it ring its way into voicemail. Immediately she hit redial, only to get the same result.

"Okay, let's not panic," Chin said quietly, directly a look at Danny. "We're all prone to when it comes to Steve—"

"With good reason!" Danny interjected.

"Nonetheless, let's approach this rationally. Let's just follow the blood trail and see if we can find him."

"Together, the three of them made their way to the first blood drop Steve had seen, and from there followed it into the fishing company's warehouse, though it took the three of them longer to see the small drops than it had Steve, surely. The drops continued to lead them through the building—still empty and cordoned off by police—until they curved through a doorway and into the alley behind the building. It was there that Steve's gun, badge, cell phone, and blood were waiting for them, stacked up like a terrible present.

Danny immediately rushed forward, making to grab them, but a hand from Chin stayed him. He wanted to snap at the older man, tell him to let go and let him touch the last tangible thing showing that Steve had even been here, showing that something had happened to him, but then he realized that the Hawaiian man was doing it right; whatever evidence was on the items could be their only chance of finding his partner. He refused to go where his brain wanted to, refused to tack on the word alive to the end of that thought, refused to even go down that road. So instead he watched with bated breath as Chin solemnly gloved his hands and knelt down next to the pile.

He pressed a button on the screen and waited for it to light up. "It's definitely Steve's."

"No shit it's his," Danny snapped, uncontrolled concern already taking over. "Sorry," he mumbled after realizing what he'd said. "I just…"

"We know," Kono replied, giving his shoulder a squeeze.

Chin nodded and then looked back down. The badge and gun—still in its holster—were laying flat on the ground beside each other, and as Chin picked up the badge, a stack of Polaroid's were revealed underneath.

Danny's first thought was one of incredulity—who, after all, still owned a Polaroid camera?—but that disappeared quickly as the deliberateness of the act set in. He was obviously already painfully aware that something had happened to his partner, as he would never disappear like that, would especially never leave his gun unsecured. He had known that in all likelihood, someone had acted against his partner and done this, but seeing proof that someone had planned this enough in advance to bring a camera with them made his blood run cold, with fear and with anger.

Silently Chin picked up the stack, turning them over to show the pictures. The first as of Steve as he was holding up the crime scene tape for Danny, their victim just visible in the background. The next showed Steve in the warehouse, clearly tracing the blood drops. Wordlessly Chin flipped to the third, which showed Steve bent over something in the middle of the alley, almost directly where the three of them were standing now. The penultimate picture showed the SEAL on the ground, clearly unconscious with blood on this face and a bloody wound high on his chest. Finally, Chin flipped to the last one, and Danny could taste bile in his mouth as he saw it. A man, in all black with a faceless white mask, held a sign as he stood with one foot on Steve's chest. The sign, written in deliberate strokes, simply read Expect our call. This should be fun.

The urge to vomit didn't go away quickly, nor did the image of Steve unconscious and bleeding in that photo. He stepped back quickly, needing some air, some space to process all the emotions hitting him at once. Anger, fear, anxiety, and guilt each struck him like punches to the gut. He should have never let his partner walk into an unsecured area of a crime scene by himself, no matter how well trained, but he had because he'd been angry, and now the kidnappers had at least a half hour head start on them, with no real clues in sight. The panic was overwhelming, laced with the sharp sting of guilt, and he was drowning in it, so far gone to these feelings he couldn't see daylight anymore.

It took Kono to bring him back. "Danny! You with me?"

"Huh?"

"I called your name three times. Please don't make me freak out about you too." The underlying confession that she couldn't take anymore lay between them unsaid but acknowledged.

So he nodded and pulled himself together as best he could. "We need to have techs come over and process...this."

"Chin's already on it," she replied with a quick jerk of her head toward her cousin.

"Good. We…we should probably get back to headquarters in case they, uh, call."

"You and I will head back, and Chin will follow as soon as he hands off the case to HPD so Steve can be our only priority."

"Good." The daze was coming back, the feeling of not even knowing where to begin. Steve was gone, taken from right under their noses, and Danny knew they should be springing into action, but all he could seem to do was wallow. "That's good."

Apparently Kono could tell, for she laid a hand on his shoulder and squeezed gently again. "We'll find him, Danny. Whoever took him, wherever he is, we'll get them. Don't worry."

He gave a hollow laugh. "Don't worry? Steve attracts trouble like no other, even on the best of days, and whoever took him was professional enough to sneak up on a SEAL. How can I not?"

She looked like she wanted to respond, but there was really nothing to say, no soothing balm for their nerves. Someone had taken Steve, had planned out how to do it, and Danny just hoped to hell they could find him before the rest of the plan could be put into place.

Let me know what you think, and the next chapter will be up soon!

Charlotte