Well, I'm finally back.

:::READ THIS:::

So let me explain something about this story. Imagine Dragons is one of my favorite bands and as I've listened to their first album over the years, there would be lyrics that would jump out at me and practically begged to be written into stories about Steve and Danny. After basically covering my desk with sticky notes over the past few years, I finally decided that I would just write a series of oneshots and put them all together in one place. Hence, Night Visions was born.

Basically, each chapter will be a completely new and unrelated oneshot to the one before it. They are all standalone pieces that are inspired by certain lyrics from the songs. There will be about twenty chapters in total, one for each song on the album. Each story will start with the specific lyrics, but don't worry they're not songfics and there aren't any lyrics interwoven into the story (sorry if you're into that or write that, but to be honest, it's just not my thing).

Anyway, leave me a comment and let me know what you think. There are some of these I'm not 100% in love with, so any feedback would be awesome. And you know, I also just love to hear what you all have to say.

A lot of these were written over the summer, so they might be a tiny bit dated to where the show is now, but nothing bad. I figured instead of trying to go back through and edit every little thing, y'all could live. ;)

And now, onwards!

"I'm waking up to ash and dust

I wipe my brow and I sweat my rust

I'm breathing in the chemicals

I'm breaking in, shaping up, then checking out on the prison bus

This is it, the apocalypse."

Awareness came not slowly and gently like stories said, but suddenly and terribly without any gentleness or preparation. He blinked his eyes a few times, trying to clear the water from them, but no matter how many times he did, it didn't change the murky, hazy, dusty view that met him.

He struggled to move, tried to get to his feet, but something was holding him down. His ears were ringing from the blast and his skin was stinging from the rubble still raining down on him. He coughed, and could taste the explosion on his tongue. It was all cement, blood, and dust, and it was a taste he was all too familiar with. The cough also gave him a painful reminder that something inside of him was broken, and with that pain came a sharp, stinging sensation in his midsection that made him think internal bleeding.

Without being able to see, the only thing he could do was feel around to see what was obstructing his movement, and quickly he discovered a large wooden beam on his chest, and another across his legs. He tried to move it, to shift it, to do something to change his predicament, but the beam held firm.

As his eyes finally adjusted to the low light, he realized that the blast had boxed him into a space barely bigger than he was. A sardonic laugh escaped his mouth, blood spraying lightly into the air with it, as he realized that he just might suffocate before bleeding out. It was so wrong for a SEAL to die from lack of air on land, rather than in the water that he knew and loved.

He laid his head back down against the ground and spared a moment's thought to be grateful that the rest of his team had been investigating on the other side of town. They were safe—that was all that mattered—so he let the darkness wash over him without a fight.

"Steve's not picking up his phone."

"What?" Danny's question had caught Chin off guard, the latter more focused on mapping the route to their next destination than on what the blonde man was saying.

"Steve. He's not answering his phone. At all."

"Well, he might be talking to his CI and can't answer right now. You know, doesn't want to spook him."

Danny shook his head, wishing for the umpteenth time that his best friend hadn't decided that talking to his confidential informant alone would be the best course of action. Before that morning, Danny hadn't even been aware that his partner had a CI, but he supposed that considering the military was tangentially involved in their investigation, it made some sort of sense. But Steve's insistence that he visit the man alone didn't seem logical to the Jersey man, who was suspicious of Steve's claims that the man was skittish and would talk only to him. The SEAL left no room for argument though, and had practically ordered Danny to accompany Chin while Kono followed up with Charlie in the lab.

But now it was almost an hour past the time Steve swore he would check in, and Danny's gut was churning with worry. He said as much to Chin, but the other man took a calmer stance on the problem. "Look, I'm sure there's a logical explanation, Danny. Things with CIs are always variable—either you have to coax the information out of them, or they actually have way more to tell you than you originally thought. He's probably just caught up in the conversation, and isn't aware that he missed calling you."

"It's McGarrett, though. When does logic ever work with him?"

"You do know that he managed to stay alive in the Navy for over a decade before coming to Hawaii and meeting you, right?" Chin's tone was light, but Danny still narrowed his eyes at the joke.

"Have you seen the plethora of scars and scar tissue on his body?" Danny retorted. "I'm pretty sure that the fact he actually made it out alive is more a testament of his sheer stubbornness than his ability to avoid dangerous situations. It may be classified, but I've seen his medical file. Or should I say three—it's so big they've had to split it all up. That is not the file of someone who obeys logic and stays safe."

"You're like a mother hen, man. Have some faith—" Chin stopped speaking as his phone rang, showing Duke's picture on the screen. Quickly he swiped to answer. "Hey, Duke. How's it?"

The background noise of the call filtered in as Duke sighed, filled with sirens and jumbled yelling. "Not too good, Chin. We just had an explosion a few miles from the Navy base, and things are pretty hectic."

"Shit," Chin responded quickly. "Anything we can do to help?"

"Well, that's why I'm calling actually. Commander McGarrett's truck is here and I just assumed he'd already gotten the call and had come to help out, but…"

"But?" Danny prompted, pulse already starting to race.

"Well, I haven't seen him on the scene at all, and you know how he is—normally he's running the show. I tried calling but didn't get an answer, so I thought I'd check in with you guys to see if he'd said anything to you about coming over."

Chin and Danny shared a quick look before Chin immediately switched the siren on, and flipped the car around. "We haven't been able to reach Steve for a while, Duke. If his truck is there but he's not, the best bet is that he was inside the building when it blew. We'll be right there."

The sight that greeted Danny was eerily too similar to that of the bombing he had Steve had survived a few months earlier. But this time, in all likelihood, Steve was trapped in there all by himself.

The building that had once been corporate offices was now mostly a pile of rubble and jagged rebar. Emergency vehicles were everywhere, haphazardly parked as close to the scene as they could get. Chin found a spot amongst the chaos and both men quickly piled out of the car, making their way to Duke as quickly as they could.

The sergeant nodded at them as they approached, and immediately launched into an update, for which Danny was immensely grateful. "The explosion was centralized to this front, right quadrant as you can see, but it did a good chunk of damage to everything else, but thankfully because it's Friday afternoon, there weren't that many people in the office. According to the secretary in the front office, only six employees were still in the office, and we've pulled out five of them alive. Unfortunately, she also confirmed tha Commander McGarrett entered the building approximately a half an hour before the explosion, and never came out. She also said that the one employee unaccounted for was who McGarrett was going to visit. His office was also located at the front right of the building."

Danny ran a hand over his face, trying to take it all in, but nothing seemed to compute. "H-have, uh, there been any noises, any indications of, uh, life?"

Duke shook his head mournfully. "There hasn't been anything, but we haven't been here very long. They're still treating this as a rescue, not a recovery, though. If he's in there, we're going to find him, I promise."

"Yeah, but who the hell knows if he's going to be alive by that point?" Danny shook his head and took a few steps back, unwilling to accept that fate would be so cruel to put his partner in not one, but two explosions in almost the same number of months.

He heard Chin approach him, the rhythm of his footsteps familiar after so long, and felt the comforting hand on his shoulder. "He's going to be okay, Danny. Steve didn't let the last explosion get him—he's not going to let this one get him either. It's not his time."

The shorter man turned around quickly, despair written all over his face. "You know the first thing he did after making sure that I was okay? When we were trapped in that building? The first thing he did was grab a piece of debris and start banging loudly on everything he could. Gave me even more of a headache, but he wouldn't stop. Said that that was the way to let people know that we were still alive down there, that he knew it because it had worked for him before. So tell me, if there's no sounds coming this time—when he knows exactly what to do—what does that mean? He's either dead, or too incapacitated to do the one thing he knows is going to save him. Either way, there's not much hope."

As the logic in Danny's words set in, Danny could see the hopelessness he felt reflected back in Chine's eyes. But the older man just squared his shoulders and shook his head. "No, this isn't what takes Steve McGarrett out. Yes, he may be trapped in there, or maybe he's unconscious, but we're going to find him and he's going to be okay. Okay?"

He could feel the vibrations coming up through the floor, but it was the small pieces of rubble raining down on him that really brought awareness back. Awareness brought pain with it, though, and he couldn't help the moan that escaped his mouth. Even with no one else around, he fought against any sort of recognition of the shape he was in, because to recognize it meant to give the pain control.

But it was hard. The beams pressing down on him were still firmly in place, and he didn't have the strength or the fortitude to try to move either of them. He was so weak and so tired, and from the rigidness in his abdomen, he knew that his earlier theory of internal bleeding was more than likely a fact. Aside from all of that, though, he could tell that his oxygen was getting dangerously low because that dizzy, drowning feeling only came from lack of air.

There was a voice in his head telling him that he needed to try to do something, demanding that he find anything to make noise and give the rescue crew something to find him by. Because it had to be a recovery team making the vibrations he was feeling, but whether from lack of air or will, for once in his life, he ignored the voice. He simply lay there, closed his eyes, and drifted off again.

Two hours had passed, and both Danny and Chin had been relegated to the back of the perimeter with other non-essential personnel. They had done their best to help, both because they had wanted to be of use, but also because they wanted to be there in case Steve was located—and to make sure the crew didn't stop looking for him with the same fervor they had started with. But soon the rescue teams had politely suggested that they let those trained to work on unstable structures like this take over, and so they had moved to leaning against the hood of Chin's car. They were as close to the action as they were allowed, but still far enough away that Danny paced at regular intervals.

Kono had elected to stay at the lab to help the techs organize and analyze any and all evidence that was coming in from the scene, but only after extracting a promise from both men that they would update her every half hour. So far the word seemed to be that the explosion had been an accident; a worker had come across a burst gas pipe, and as of yet no evidence of foul play had been found.

Danny had laughed grimly at that when Duke informed them, and at Chin's sideways glance he quickly explained. "It's just that, no matter where he goes, no matter what he does, Steve just finds trouble. Give him a simple hike: he's going to fall down a cliff after finding dead body, concussing himself and breaking his arm in the process. Give him prison: he's going to get shanked by an arch enemy, not looking to kill him but to finance an escape attempt. Give him North Korea or Afghanistan: he can't just get in and out like promised, but has to get himself captured, beaten, and almost killed. He's managed to be in two demolished buildings in only a few months, which is more than most people find themselves in a lifetime. And all of that is without knowing everything that happened to him in the military! He can't just go into a meeting with a CI and have everything be fine—no, it has to be the one day that the gas lines break and the building explodes." He shook his head, morbidly fascinated with his partner's ill luck. "It's a wonder that he questions why I want to handcuff him to something safe. Like his couch."

"Kinky."

"Oh shut up. At least he'd be safe." All the humor left him though as he looked back at what was left of the building. "I can't lose him, Chin. He's my best friend."

Chin clapped a hand to Danny's shoulder, and smiled reassuringly at him. He was just opening his mouth to speak when they both spotted Duke hurrying purposefully over to him. "Duke? Tell me you have good news."

"Yes. Well, both good and bad. We think we've found where he's located. They've been using thermal imaging to see if they could pick anything up, in case he was near the surface, and they found something. Whoever it is, they're alive—the heat signature is registering, so unless they're newly deceased, it's a good sign. A body that's been in there this whole time wouldn't be showing so brightly."

"What's the bad news?" Danny asked quickly, ignoring Duke's 'newly deceased' comment. He refused to believe that Steve could have died whilst waiting to be saved, only moments from being found.

"The bad news is that the space that Commander McGarrett is in, assuming it's him and not the other missing individual, is small. It's a pocket that's been created from large slabs of concrete and support beams. Not only is it going to make it hard to get through, just because it's all so structurally unsound, but there's probably not much air left by this point. If any."

"Shit," Danny cursed quietly, turning around for a second to try to compose himself. After a few seconds he ran his hand through his hair and turned back. "So what's the plan?"

"Well, the crew is shifting all their effort to this space for the moment. The chief is looking at how to best approach the area, and they're thinking about bring in a small crane to try to lift one of the slabs off the other, while simultaneously trying to support the other so as to stop it from falling forward onto whoever is in there."

"That sounds like it's going to take a while," Chin remarked. "You said that he didn't have a lot of air left."

Duke frowned. "It's do it this way or risk crushing Commander McGarrett under ten tons of concrete. The boys are moving quickly—it should only be another hour and they think they'll have him out."

Danny wanted to complain, wanted to yell at everyone to move faster, but instead he just sat back down against the hood of the truck. "Keep us posted, okay?"

The vibrations started coming more strongly, and he coughed weakly as the tremors awoke new aches and pains in his body. He could barely draw in enough air though, and he gasped as his lungs rebelled against the intake of dust and carbon dioxide. He shakily reached up and wiped his forehead, his hand coming away both sweaty and bloody.

He dropped his hand back down; for that little bit of exertion had completely drained whatever reserves he had left. The chemicals in the air were too much, too overpowering. He felt like he was drowning, but this time, there was no sea to escape, no familiar water to battle. If he'd had the strength he would have laughed at the shear idea of a SEAL not drowning in the sea, but the darkness was creeping back in again. But he knew—knew from his inability to breathe and the ever-tightening feeling in his abdomen—that this time, the darkness would keep him. With one last thought to the family he was leaving behind, he took in one more shallow breath and then closed his eyes.

There was a horrific crunching noise, followed by an inhuman groan, and then silence reigned over the worksite for a few seconds before the voices started again, this time at an even higher crescendo. Both Chin's and Danny's gazes were locked on the sight as the team finally lifted the concrete slabs off of each other, playing a delicate balancing act right on top of where their boss was supposed to be.

Internally Danny was debating with himself. One part of him wanted to stay back here, make sure that he wasn't in the way so that the team could work and find his best friend without any interference. The other part of him, though, wanted to be there as soon as they uncovered him so that he could see with his own eyes that Steve was okay, so that he could be there with his partner every step of the way—because he refused to believe that the person trapped in that small space could be anyone other than McGarrett. He knew it was callous, but he was hoping and praying that that other missing man was trapped somewhere else in the building, because if this wasn't Steve, it meant that his best friend was most likely dead and buried under dozens of feet of rubble somewhere else. And because that couldn't be the case—he wouldn't let it be the case—it had to be Steve in that bubble, and there was a very large part of him that wanted to be there to make sure when they got the last of the beams cleared away.

Finally he gave up trying to pretend that there was any part of him willing to stay back, and so he stood up quickly, pushing himself off the hood of the car that his butt had been warming for way too long. "I'm going over there. They're close enough now, and I have to…I need to make sure he's okay."

Chin looked like he was about to say something, probably going to note that the dozens of emergency workers and EMTs were probably better equipped to help their friend, but then something in his eyes hardened and he nodded. "You're right. Let's go."

Just as they were making their way over, Duke's head popped up out of the crowd and he waved a hand over to them. "We found him!" He started to say something else, but that was all it took for Danny to break into a run. He bounded over the rubble on the ground and quickly climbed up to the summit of where they had been working.

The sight that met him was one that he would have been more than willing to un-see. It definitely was his partner that had been trapped in the small space, and he was still trapped by the large wooden beam that was pinning him to the ground. He was bloody and covered in dust, but that didn't stop Danny's eyes from being able to pick out the fact that his lips were blue, didn't stop him from seeing that his partner was more than a little pale under all the grime. "Duke, is he breathing?"

"We're not sure—they're not sure if it's structurally sound yet so they haven't sent anyone down—hey!"

Danny had started scrambling down the pile of debris as soon as Duke had failed to answer in the affirmative, and by the sounds behind it, it seemed like Chin had done the same. He ignored the shouts behind them, and instead focused on not tumbling down to where his partner lay. He was there within seconds, though, and dropped to his knees besides his partner's body instantly. He laid two fingers against his partner's neck, stomach plummeting as his fingers failed to find a pulse. "Chin!" He whirled around just as Chin came to a stop next to him. "I can't feel a pulse. He's not breathing! He's not—" He stopped as he felt a sluggish beat pulse weakly once against his fingers. "Wait! It's there, but he's not breathing!"

He didn't have to say anything else, as Chin dropped to his knees beside him to start chest compressions, while Danny moved to his partner's head to push air into his lungs. At any other point there would have been snarky comments about mouth-to-mouth, but Danny couldn't find it in himself right now. He needed his partner to live, to be okay, and if it meant rescue breathing for him, he'd do it without complaint.

Finally, after three rounds of CPR, Steve took a hitched breath all on his own. Danny sat back and looked at Chin with wide eyes, a little light-headed after breathing for two, and only then noticed that a crowd had gathered around them. He jumped slightly as he felt a hand on his shoulder, but when he looked up, it was only Duke standing there. "You did good, Danny. Wouldn't take no for an answer—just like McGarrett." The older man squeezed his shoulder gently, and Danny closed his eyes for a second, accepting the comfort without any comment. "They're going to get this beam off of him now, and then they're taking him to the hospital, okay?" By Duke's calm tone, Danny could tell that the older man thought he was in shock. And to be honest, he probably was. It was all sorts of stupid to go running into a still-unsound building without a second thought, but he already knew what lengths he would go to in order to save his best friend.

But instead of protesting anything that Duke said, Danny merely nodded and watched as the emergency teams worked quickly to free Steve from the prison he was still trapped in. But the going was slow enough to agitate the Jersey man further: Steve may have started breathing again, but who knows what other injuries he was suffering from? Not to mention the fact that his returned heartbeat had not brought a corresponding return of consciousness. It had just about become all Danny could take, had just about become all he could do not to stand up and yell at someone for going when they finally pushed the remaining debris off of his partner.

Within seconds of this happening, the EMTs had loaded his partner onto a portable stretcher and were racing back up to the road to the waiting ambulance. Danny immediately met Chin's eyes, and the Hawaiian man nodded towards the ambulance. "Go. I'll be right behind you in the car." So without another word, Danny was up and following the paramedics, not surprising any of them when he climbed into the back of the bus with them. Most of the EMTs on the island had gotten used to his by now—where one member of Five-0 went, another generally followed.

"They intubated him in the ambulance, just to make sure he kept breathing," Danny said calmly as he updated the cousins in the waiting room, trying to his stress levels at a bearable level. "They were pretty sure that he had some internal bleeding—definitely some broken ribs, and they thought one of his legs might be broken, but they couldn't be sure without an x-ray." The overhead lights in the back of the truck had done nothing for Danny's stress, as they had revealed in sharp contrast just how pale his partner had been. His lips had still been tinged with blue, a fact made even more prominent in the brightness, and Danny had been able to see every scratch, scrape and bruise on his skin. The paramedic in the back with him had cut away Steve's shirt to work, and the bruising along his torso had been magnificent. And awful. "Anyway, they rushed him into surgery immediately as soon as we got here." Chin had shown up only moments later, Kono a few after that, but the one person that he wanted to see—Steve's doctor—had yet to grace them with his presence.

As if he had read Danny's mind, Chin once more placed a hand on the blonde's shoulder. "The doctor will be out soon, Danny. He's going to be okay."

Danny just shook his head, though. "It's just ridiculous, you know? Two buildings blown to bits with him inside them in the same year—and in Hawaii, no less? He's been fighting wars for most of his life, has been stuck in the most godforsaken areas in the world, but made it home in one piece, only to have this happen here? How many times does he have to face down death here at home, where he's supposed to be safe?"

"It's part of the job," Chin replied quietly. "He knew that going in."

"No, the fear of getting shot was part of the job. Retaliation hits, whatever else. Those are normal fears in a cop's life. But getting blown up? Being trapped inside a collapsed building? Those are things he should have been able to leave over there. It's just…he's not a soldier anymore, you know? He shouldn't be worrying about this short of stuff over here. The apocalyptic hell that he faced over there shouldn't be haunting him here too." He sighed again. "I'm rambling, aren't I?"

Kono looked up from her styrofoam coffee cup with a smile. "A bit. But we know how you feel. But the boss—he'll make it. He's a fighter. He'll push through this no matter what, and he'll be begging the doctors to check him out as soon as he can. You know I'm right."

Danny couldn't help but smile at the truth in her words, and those thoughts carried him through to when Steve's surgeon finally came out ("There was quite a bit of internal bleeding, but we got it under control, and are replenishing what he lost… Four broken ribs, a concussion, but thankfully no broken leg. It's just severely bruised… Almost lost him to carbon dioxide poisoning, but we've got him on high levels of oxygen. It's good you got there when you did… Expect him to be in a lot of pain, but he'll be okay…), through seeing Steve pale and listless in a bed, and through the enduring wait until his partner decided to rejoin the land of the living.

Awareness came gently this time, with details and sensations slowly filtering in through a hazy fog rather than the sharp pain he remembered from before. Everything was hazy though, and though he blinked his eyes a few times, nothing seemed to get much clearer. He wearily brought a hand up to rub his eyes, but even that simple motion exhausted him beyond all belief, and he dropped the appendage down quickly.

At that same moment, a voice came filtering through the fog. One that brought comfort and friendship with it, and his mind sluggishly gave him a name. "Danny?"

"I'm here. You're fine, don't worry. Well, relatively fine. A bit broken in some spots and more than a bit bruised, but you're fine. You'll be fighting to get out of here in no time."

Steve nodded slowly, keeping his eyes closed for the minute as he tried to process everything around him. "Bomb?"

Though he couldn't see it, Steve could sense Danny shaking his head. "You, my friend, have the worst luck. A gas pipe exploded, if you can believe it. No bad guy to chase, no case to solve—so just relax, focus on getting better."

"Okay," he rasped out quietly, already feeling sleep trying to lay its claim on him once more.

"Okay. I'll be here when you wake up."

"Good," and so safe with that knowledge, he let the darkness wash over him without a fight.

Please let me know what you think, and I'll have the next chapter up soon!

Charlotte