Disclaimer: I do not own the characters of this work of fiction, and am not making a profit through writing this.

A/N: This was a failed attempt at writing horror. I do have another couple of stories that will hopefully be the start of a 'horror' series; but, we'll see...still working it all out. Thanks for the read-through, Swifters, and for catching the extraneous word. I think I've got to stop dithering and post.

"Inside each of us, there is the seed of both good and evil. It's a constant struggle as to which one will win. And one cannot exist without the other." - Eric Burdon

"Good and evil, Daniel," Lee (that's what the man had told Danny to call him shortly after they'd first met) said. He patted Danny on the cheek, making him flinch. "That's what it all of life boils down to, isn't it?"

From anyone else, it would be a rhetorical question. From Lee, though, well, Danny had learned that everything required an answer, so he nodded, and then licked his dry lips. "Y...yes."

To not answer would bring swift punishment. A hit, or kick. A blade to his skin. A whip to his back. A hot poker to the inside of his thigh...

"Yes, what, Daniel?" Lee asked, quirking an eyebrow and grasping Danny's chin tightly. He was not happy, but was holding back, giving Danny time to fix his error.

"Y...yes, Lee," Danny corrected, making sure to complete the sentence the way that his captor wanted. "Life b...boils down to g...good a...and evil."

Lee smiled, and then stroked Danny's cheek before pulling back and giving Danny room to breathe. Danny knew better than to let his guard down, though. Lee was volatile, and had proven that time and time again in the three endless days that Danny had spent with him.

"I'm glad that you agree with me," Lee said.

Danny resisted the urge to laugh at that, because he didn't agree, at all. He believed in choices. Good and bad. Not that anyone was inherently good, or inherently evil.

Instead, he kept his head down, and his gaze locked on a spot on the wall opposite him. The natural darkening of knotted wood, the way that it swirled, looked to Danny like a swatted fly that had been smashed into the paneled wall. It helped keep him sane.

Doing nothing, other than feigning obedience, was the safest course of action for the time being, so Danny didn't share his true feelings with Lee. He kept his eyes locked on that mark in the paneled wall, and concentrated on what he needed to do to survive.

Disagreeing with Lee would have earned Danny a 'punishment'. A more accurate description would be an unprovoked violent attack. Danny didn't think he could withstand another one so soon after the last one, and he wondered just how long it would take Steve and the others to find him, and if they'd find him before Lee lost complete control of himself and killed him in a fit of rage, or after.

"Would you like something to drink?" Lee asked, and Danny bit his lip.

This game had been played before, and Danny'd come out of it much worse for the wear, but his lips were dry and cracking, and his tongue was almost too thick for his mouth. He hadn't had a proper drink of water in nearly two full days, and, unless Lee wanted Danny to die of thirst, he had to give Danny a drink of water at some point in time. It was a reasonable assumption. One that Danny didn't know if he could make right now. Lee was not a reasonable man.

Heart in his throat, and fingers digging into the wood of the chair that he'd been secured to, Danny nodded, and winced when he felt Lee's hand on his shoulder. A warning.

"Yes," Danny said around a swallow. "I'd like a drink...of...of w...water, please?" Danny blinked away black spots that danced in his vision when Lee's grip on his shoulder tightened, promising pain. "Lee. Please."

"Here." A bottle was pressed to Danny's lips, Lee's fingers dug into his shoulder, deepening bruises that were already there. "Drink."

Danny obediently tilted his head back, keeping his eyes locked on the spot he'd chosen on the wall. The spot that never wavered, even when his vision did. It was the one constant in all of this, and Danny struggled to keep it in his sight at all times. It was something tangible that he could hold onto. Something that gave him hope that Steve and the others would eventually find him. Alive.

It wasn't water. But it wasn't piss or vinegar either, as it had been the last two times Lee had played this game with him, and Danny drank the slightly tart liquid greedily, until it was pulled away from him. Through it all, the spot across from him didn't waver, and didn't blur, and Danny kept it in his mind's eye even when Lee moved to stand in front of him, blocking Danny's line of sight.

"Sorry that it isn't the water you requested, Daniel. I thought you needed something a little more substantial. Wouldn't want you to suffer from rickets," Lee said, and then he laughed at his own joke, such as it was.

Danny hadn't needed the reminder that they were out to sea on a yacht. Lee kept him below decks. The captain of the yacht had no idea, or at least that's what Lee had told Danny, that Danny was on board. No one, other than Lee, knew about Danny's presence aboard the vessel.

"What do you say, Daniel?" Lee asked, dark eyes hard and glinting in the overly bright light of the room Danny was being kept in.

Whether piss or vinegar, or juice that was too tart, Danny had to express his gratitude. It was a gift, after all. Never mind that Danny hadn't asked for any of this. That his only 'crime' had been to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It was almost funny. He hadn't been targeted by Lee because of his position with Five-0. Instead, he'd been standing in Lee's line at the supermarket, and the man had followed Danny out to his car, sans groceries (he'd left them behind), and the rest was all a prolonged nightmare of pain alternated with loss of consciousness for Danny; some kind of insane pleasure for Lee.

"Thank you," Danny whispered. "Lee."

It went against every fiber of his being to give into what this psycho wanted of him, but Danny had plenty of reasons to live, so he played Lee's games, and prayed that Steve would find him soon.

"For what?" Lee asked, sighing, fingers twitching in a way that Danny knew meant that punishment was imminent. Danny wondered, warily, if Lee would employ the thin bamboo stick that he kept eyeing, or if he'd cut him again. Bleed the sin out of him.

"Thank you for the orange juice, Lee," Danny completed the sentence, offering his off-balance captor a smile that he hoped would not look suspect. He'd been taken to task for that before. Twice. His jaw ached in memory of the punishment that had been meted out for his earlier insincerity.

Lee's smile was easy, and was nothing like the ones that promised Danny pain. "You're welcome, Daniel. I think that you'll find this orange juice to be rather...relaxing."

'Drugged, then,' Danny thought, and he caught himself before he could laugh at the thought that he'd almost trusted Lee to do something decent. The man had promised him nothing of the sort when he'd taken him. He'd promised quite the opposite, and had delivered on it many times over.

Pain to remove the dross, and then, once I've cleansed you, death. Danny shivered at the memory of the way that Lee had smiled at him when he'd said this, as though he really thought he was doing Danny a favor. That he was going to lift Danny to a higher plane of existence before removing him from this one, like he'd done for others before Danny.

Danny blinked as his vision began to go fuzzy around the edges, and Lee's shape started to twist and turn, and Danny found it impossible to hold his head up straight as the drugs started to kick in. He should have known not to trust Lee, though, really, he'd had no choice in the matter. When Lee said, drink, Danny drank. It had been that way for three days now, if the date on the cellphone that Lee had shoved in his face earlier could be trusted.

"That's better, now isn't it, Daniel?" Lee asked.

He threaded his fingers through Danny's hair and lifted his head. The man looked like an image in one of those misshapen mirrors at a fun-house. Indistinct. Bulbous. Changeable.

Danny couldn't keep a giggle from escaping, but it didn't matter, because he couldn't feel the pain from the bruising backhand that Lee delivered to his face, or the pain from the corresponding punch to his gut, or the burning bite of the razor as it was drawn across his chest, a twin to another cut that had been placed there before, when Danny had been more cognizant and the action had actually hurt.

It had been, according to Lee, the first of many cuts that would bleed the poisons from Danny's bloodstream, and make him pure. Ready for the afterlife. Heaven.

More giggles escaped him, even when a part of Danny's brain registered the danger that he was in, and he tried desperately to keep the giggles from surfacing. His eye caught a glimpse of the spot on the wall, and he silently implored it to stay there, to help him stop the madness of his mind, to keep the giggles from bubbling forth. It did nothing, though it did stay put, even when Lee wrapped his fingers around Danny's neck and started squeezing, cutting the giggles off at the source.

Unable to breathe, Danny's fingers clenched and clawed at the wooden arm of his chair, and his toes curled into the wood beneath his bare feet, the heels digging into the legs of the chair that he'd been tied to. The bindings, and Lee's fingers, would not budge, and Danny's giggles turned into wheezes that whistled in and out past his cracked lips as he fought to breathe.

He was cracking in more ways than one. His mind couldn't hold onto anything. Each thought kept flying off before he could capture and examine it, and Lee loomed large and imposing in his mind.

This punishment was new. It didn't hurt, because of the drugged orange juice, but it was terrifying, and completely out of Danny's control.

Danny had a moment to register panic before black spots took over his vision, marring his view of the stalwart spot on the wall, and then gave way to a darkness that seemed to swallow him and then spit him out seconds, minutes, maybe hours later. His mouth was open and greedily dragging in air to lungs that felt oxygen deprived.

He'd almost drowned once. It was something, and yet nothing like this. Breathing. Breathing and getting nowhere. Head spinning. Lungs working and working and failing to give him what he needed.

Danny's throat was on fire, and it felt as though Lee's hands were still wrapped around it, squeezing the dross and life from him, making Danny pure, but the man was standing in front of him, in front of Danny's spot on the wall, blocking it from his view, hands in his pockets, a smile on his face as he watched Danny, dark eyes sparkling with malevolent mirth.

'Good and evil,' Danny thought as he struggled to breathe, to see through Lee to the spot on the wall. He had no idea which force would win this particular battle, or even if he now believed that evil did exist. Certainly if it did, Lee would be its poster-child.

As Lee winked in and out of existence in front of Danny's eyes, like a demon, Danny felt that he had to concede this round of the battle, such as it was, to evil, because Danny was all tapped out. He couldn't even breathe, and evil was standing there, watching him through black, glittering eyes, waiting for the moment that good gave up so that it could swoop in and proclaim victory.

"What's that, Daniel?" Lee asked, smirk swimming in and out of Danny's waning vision, the spot on the wall hovering just over the man's shoulder, beckoning to Danny, telling him to 'hang in there just a little longer'.

"Did you have something that you wanted to say?" Lee's mouth was a graveyard of teeth. Straight, white as tombstones set in a river of ruby red blood.

"Good." Danny barely gave voice to the word, throat locking, breath whistling in and out through his nose and mouth. "Evil," he whispered. "Me. You." He mouthed the words, and the graveyard of pearly white tombstones loomed in front of him, taking over his vision, shoving Danny's spot aside.

Lee laughed. Loud. Echoing. It was the devil that stood in front of Danny. Hornless. Gloating.

His fingers danced along Danny's collarbone in a way that set it on fire, and there was a blade there.

Cool.

Cutting.

It, too, danced, and sang, dripped Danny's blood onto the wooden floor. Danny's blood seeped into the slats and sank down into the ocean below where it mingled with the murky water. Tainted it with the rust of Danny's blood, like Lee's evil was starting to taint Danny, seep in past his defenses, sully his brain and soul. It was slick, like oil. Dark and suffocating, and he couldn't breathe, think, move under the onslaught of Lee's evil as it started to take over.

The spot on the wall jumped and swayed. Lee's footing slipped, and he staggered. The bloody blade fell from his hand as he was jolted off his feet by a swell in the ocean that made Danny's stomach lurch.

The wooden door to Danny's prison-hell splintered beneath an onslaught of booming claps of thunder like gunshots, and Danny twisted in his chair, bindings digging into his numb wrists and ankles, but not giving. He couldn't move, and his spot on the wall seemed to wink at him.

Lee scrambled on the floor, fingers groping for the dropped blade, knees and torso knocking into the legs of Danny's chair, making it rock in place. Making Danny dizzy and sick with the motion of it. The ocean swelled again, lifting them, and carefully dropping them back into place.

The door imploded inward, as if a grenade had been taken to it; wooden slivers flew everywhere, embedded themselves into Danny's left calf, but he didn't feel the pain of it. Danny's spot on the wall slipped from his eyesight, and he blinked in confusion as a shadow took up residence in the room. It was tall, and dark, and two other shadows joined it. Shouting. Pointing. Rolling with the mighty swells of the ocean.

Lee staggered to his feet, and the biggest shadow broke off from its brothers and crashed into him, sending him sprawling. Lee's wrists were bound by the shadow, and the rest crowded in, swallowing him with their darkness. Good triumphing over evil. Or maybe evil had come for its own, and would soon turn its macabre grin on Danny now that Lee could no longer bleed the toxins from him one swipe of the blade at a time.

Everything was blurry, and the dark shapes swarmed around him, busy like bees as they closed in on him. Danny opened his mouth to protest, to explain that he was one of the good guys, that Lee's evil hadn't had enough time to corrupt him, but no sound came out. His breath had been stolen from him. Words failed him.

The largest shadow fell to its knees beside Danny, and the bindings were loosed. Danny felt nothing through the numbness of his limbs; the absence of Lee's touch, of his branding blade, was enough to make Danny sag in relief, and yet catch himself in his evil thoughts.

"Danny?" The shadow cupped his face, and eyes the color of a winter sky bore into his. Danny gasped at the piercing familiarity of them, and the storm brewing just beneath the surface.

"Danno, it's Steve. We're here. We've got you."

Danny blinked up at his savior, and willed his heavy limbs to move. They were afire as numbness from being locked down, and kept in place for days, fled them, and when Danny opened his mouth to speak, to reassure his rescuers that he understood, and was with them, a moan slipped out instead.

"It's okay, save your breath, Danno," Steve said. "We'll get you out of here."

"Serial killer." Danny managed to work the words out past lips that felt like silly putty. That's what Lee was, even if Danny couldn't recall reading about any other killings, and only had the madman's crazed ramblings to go on.

"We know, Danny." Chin patted Danny's knee.

"He's killed three other people," Kono added.

"Worked his way from Maui to Kauai..." Lou's voice, a fourth shadow entering the small room, trailed off as Danny let the world slip away, his team's voices washing over him.

Danny hadn't slept since he'd been taken, had merely lost consciousness for minutes, perhaps hours (at the most) at a time. He wasn't quite asleep now either, but was being carried along on a wave of comfort and security that made him feel safe and warm, and like maybe it was okay to rest, that good had, indeed, triumphed over evil this time.

"It's okay, Danny. You can rest now," Lou said, squeezing his shoulder in a way that did not hurt, or threaten a punishment meant to cleanse him.

Steve reached for Danny's hand and held it as he was lifted, and carried out of hell. Danny lost track of where Lee was, who had him. Chin or Lou. Kono. Didn't matter, because it was over, and his team - his family - was there, and they'd stopped Lee before he could finish what he'd started.

Danny answered the paramedics' questions in a half doze, mind a million miles away, Steve filling in some of the blanks when Danny couldn't. He felt like he was floating. Probably from whatever drugs had been in the tainted orange juice he'd been forced to drink.

It wasn't until he'd been settled into a room - wounds tended to; antibiotics, drugs, and fluids flowing into him through an IV - hours after he'd been found and rescued, that Danny was able to finally think about sleeping. He held onto consciousness tenaciously, though. Only surrendering after he'd spoken with Grace and Charlie, and with the presence of his team - the knowledge that Lee was locked up - all sprawled out in hospital chairs that had been commandeered from other rooms and strewn throughout Danny's.

"Sleep, Danno," Steve said, reaching up and grasping Danny's hand in one of his. "None of us is going anywhere. We've got your back."

And with that promise echoed by the rest of his team, Danny did just that. He slept.