A/N: I've tried a bunch of shows lately, but I keep getting drawn to older shows because the writing is better. Currently on an Adam-12 kick, with some SG1 thrown in for good measure. Anybody else?

...

13 years ago

"Tell me, Commander: are you afraid to die?"

Steve twitched in his sleep as Kurtis Foster leered at him, his face distorted in a nightmarish hallucination. Metal pliers clicked in the dark, but everywhere Steve turned his head, he found only blackness. He wanted to run, but his feet were tied, and he found himself unable to run away. Trapped, closed in with every turn, Steve began to panic.

Foster's manic voice echoed from the shadows around him: "Let me ask you a different question, Commander- are you afraid of pain?"

Steve turned again and found Foster nearly on top of him, holding up a pair of rusting pliers, dripping with blood. Foster grinned and clicked the pliers in his face.

"I asked you a question, Commander: are you afraid of pain?"

Steve finally awoke with a start, covered in sweat, his feet twisted in the sheets. Breathing hard, he reached for the cup of water beside his bed and chugged it, sloshing the cup and spilling some across the sheets. One of the monitors attached to him beeped erratically, apparently the sound that his exhausted brain had mistaken for the sound the pliers had made. Fumbling at his side, he finally found the remote for the hospital bed and raised the head until he was sitting up.

Nightmares sucked.

A glance at the door showed that no one had come in, which meant at least he hadn't shouted out. Small miracles. Steve tipped his head back and closed his eyes, too exhausted to stop the next scene from playing out in his head:

"Your name's Colin Foster?"

"Actually, sir, it's Colin Bradly Foster, but please call me Brad. Only my parents call me Colin."

"Okay Brad, how can I help you? You have some questions for me?"

"I want to enlist…"

It had been a one-off thing, a special recruitment push targeting island high schools. "Got a lot of local youth looking for a way off the islands," Joe White had told Steve, "and the military could be their ticket to the mainland."

Steve hadn't particularly wanted to do it, but he was laid up with an injury from a special operation in Sudan, and doing paperwork for weeks on end was getting old.

"They're teens, not Taliban. Just talk to them," Joe told him. "They usually get recruiters for this event, not a bona-fide SEAL. Get ten names on the list, and I'll call it a success."

Steve hadn't gotten ten names- just eight- but Brad Foster had been one of them.

"My father doesn't want me to join," the teen confessed as he and Steve emailed back and forth. Steve hadn't pressured him, hadn't pushed at all, really. Brad was eager to leave home, and Steve got the sense he was especially eager to be out from under the thumb of his overbearing, watchful father. In the end, Brad escaped successfully and shipped out not long after graduation.

Brad continued to write Steve during and after enlistment, keeping him up-to-date with his progress and occasionally asking for advice as he navigated the unfamiliar waters of military life. Steve didn't mind. They'd struck up a sort of friendship, exchanging notes a few times a year, until the emails suddenly stopped.

Steve hadn't noticed at first. He'd been on a long-term assignment in an area where communication with the outside world was a rare commodity. He told himself he would look into Brad's silence later but, to his shame, he forgot. It was only later, after he'd been kidnapped by the boy's father, that he learned what had happened:

Bradley Foster had died at the hands of the Taliban.

Feeling somewhat better now that his heart rate had calmed, Steve used the remote to lower the bed back down; then he rolled over onto his side, suppressing a pained gasp as numerous scars on his back threatened to crack open and start bleeding again. The effort left him winded as though he'd run a marathon. Blinking, he sought out the clock Danny had left on the nightstand; it glowed 12:36 am. Steve was due for another round of 'the good stuff', as Danny called it, but despite the pain, Steve wasn't sure if he wanted more drugs. At least if he were off the meds, he could wake himself up from the nightmares before the nurses got to him.

Heaving a sigh, he propped a spare pillow under his bandaged hand and tried to get comfortable. Kurtis Foster had been haunting his dreams since Steve woke up in the hospital two days ago, fresh off a ventilator and fighting a nasty infection. Foster blamed Steve for his son's death, and Foster's chosen coping mechanism had apparently been to kidnap Steve and inflict on him the same torture the Taliban had inflicted on his son.

Thankfully, Danny and Chin had come to the rescue before Foster could kill Steve, but the whole thing left behind many scars, not all of which were physical. Faced with an uphill road to recovery and the possibility that he could lose his job due to his injuries, Steve was not looking forward to what the coming days and weeks had to offer.

His mind full of unpleasant thoughts, Steve stared at the glowing clock and debated whether it was worth trying to fall asleep again, or if he would rather stay awake until his body forcibly shut itself down. It didn't seem to matter- the nightmares would come either way.

For a long time, he lay there and stared at the device, watching the minutes tick by. His hand throbbed, but Steve refused the pain medicine when the nurse came by. By 4 a.m., he was miserable enough to close his eyes. Just for a few seconds, he told himself.

His breathing levelled out. His body relaxed.

When the nurse came in ten minutes later, Steve was asleep.

Alcohol made some men loud and rowdy; Danny, it made quiet and introspective. Sitting alone in the dark living room of his tiny apartment, he swirled a glass of liquor and contemplated the events of the past week. It was hard not to second-guess his decisions, but when he replayed everything, he didn't see any other options. If Grace hadn't been there with him, or if he'd seen a path down the cliff, or if he'd somehow been able to locate the bunker quicker… or perhaps if he'd pushed Grace into the arms of strangers and run after Steve instead of trying to stay with his daughter…

Too many ifs.

No way to know.

He took a sip and stared at the dark liquid in the glass, colored black in the grey moonlight. He didn't usually go for the hard stuff; he was a beer man, usually something bright, crisp, and cheap. But tonight, worry and stress drove him to the lonely bottle at the back of the cabinet.

"Danno?" a young voice questioned softly.

"Over here, Monkey."

Small feet pattered cautiously across the floor toward him. "Why are you sitting in the dark?"

He reached out to her with one hand, guiding her towards him. "It helps me think. Why aren't you in bed?"

"Couldn't sleep." She crawled onto his lap. Danny heard her sniff suddenly. "You smell funny."

"Yeah. Sorry about that." He set the glass down and slid it behind the chair.

She climbed into his lap and curled up against his chest, a heavy, little ball of surprising warmth and comfort. Danny wrapped his arms over her and gently pulled some of her dark hair back from her face.

For several minutes, the apartment was quiet. Through the open window, a humid breeze tugged at the curtains. Danny closed his eyes and felt the gentle breathing of his daughter against his chest. He tried not to think about the injured man lying alone in a hospital room on the other side of town, but the images sprang to mind unbidden – blood and dirt, dark concret walls, rusting chains…

"Are you worried about Uncle Steve?" Grace asked softly.

Danny started slightly, unaware she was still awake. "You mean Superman?" he joked, looking down at her, but suddenly it didn't seem funny. He sobered. "Yeah. I am."

"Me too." She shifted for a better view of Danny's face. "Is he going to be okay?"

"Well…" Danny's breath hitched suddenly and he covered with a cough. Inexplicably, his vision blurred. Under the guise of hugging her, he lifted a hand and tried to discreetly wipe his eyes. "I don't know. I hope so."

"Mommy said he might die."

Danny's arms tightened subtly at this remark, and a wave of anger swept over him. He grimaced, struggling to tape it down. "Oh she did, did she? Well, your mother doesn't know everything."

"I know," Grace responded softly. She did not speak again for a while.

Danny mentally chided himself. He knew Grace didn't like it when he and Rachel fought, and he tried to keep his comments about his ex-wife civil when Grace was around. Sometimes, though, it was difficult. "Did, uh… did mommy say anything else?" he eventually asked in what he hoped was a pleasantly-curious tone, not because he cared to know what Rachel thought, but because he wanted Grace to know that she could tell him anything, even if it came from the Queen of the Underworld herself.

Grace shifted around, her head eventually coming to rest on his shoulder. "She said she hopes Uncle Steve gets better, but that she wanted to try to prepare me in case he doesn't."

Rachel probably did want Steve to get better, Danny thought. He suspected Rachel had had a slight crush on his partner ever since they had used her house to do surveillance for a case a while back. But that wasn't the problem. The problem was Steve, lying in the hospital in a medically-induced coma for days, hooked up to life support, surrounded by so many machines that Danny couldn't even begin to think about taking Grace to see him. Even now that Steve was awake, Danny had reservations. The man looked like he'd gone several rounds with a blender and lost, and Danny wasn't sure Grace needed to see that.

His arms tightened around her. "He's not going to die, Monkey. He's too annoying to go away and leave me in peace. If he goes, who else is going to get me riled up every day? Who's going to drive my car, or complain about my clothes, or conveniently forget his wallet every time we go out to lunch so I always have to pay for everything?"

Grace giggled. She always seemed to know when he was teasing, even when he had a straight face, and she enjoyed the occasional bickering between the two men, even though Danny knew most of it went over her head.

With a small smile of his own, Danny lifted her up and set her down on the floor and took her hand, not quite trusting himself to carry her in the dark. "Come on- let's get you back to bed."

Later, the more he thought about it, the more Danny hated Kurtis Foster, not just for what he'd done to Steve, but because now his daughter was a little less innocent, a little more aware of the harsh realities of life and death, and Danny, despite all he had done through the years to protect Grace, hadn't been able to protect her from that.

2 weeks later (13 years ago)

Kurtis Foster shook his head groggily as two guards roused him from the cell.

"You've got a visitor," one of the guards told him.

Kurtis stared at him, disbelieving. "At this hour?"

He didn't get a response as the guards shoved him out of the room and down the hall. The prisoner moved stiffly – the nightly 'interrogations' were slowly taking a toll. He knew better than to say anything, though- this was payback for what he did to McGarrett. The whole island turned out in a huge show of support for the 5-0 commander, packing the courtroom to overflowing and spilling out into the lobby and street. Kurtis had to wear a bulletproof vest every time he left the jail, just in case someone tried to deliver justice before he could go to trial.

Not that there was any doubt- he knew the verdict. It was just a matter of time.

He snorted humorlessly to himself. If he were religious, then this penance of extrajudicial punishment might be meaningful: the nightly beatings, the too-tight restraints, the frequent 'accidents' that happened in the hallways, always out of view of security cameras… but Kurtis knew he wouldn't be believed, so he kept his mouth shut. Still, he also knew he was lucky. It could have been much worse.

As miserable as he was, he considered the experience worth it. His only regret was not finishing McGarrett off when he had the chance. Torturing the cop within an inch of his life should have been satisfying, but it wasn't. Revenge should have filled the empty hole left by his son's death, but if anything, it only deepened it. Deeply unhappy and unappeased, he felt sharply the gnawing pain of loss, a hunger that nothing seemed to satisfy.

Kurtis jerked his head up. He hadn't meant to fall sleep, and the cold, metal chair was far from comfortable. Blinking tiredly, he eased himself up from his slouch and looked around.

The door to the interrogation room was open, he noticed, and a man stood framed in the bright light from the hallway. For a moment, this man looked uncertain about entering. Stooped, head bowed, he might have been in prayer except for the slight glint of watchful eyes. Seeing the prisoner awake, the man straightened, said a few words to the guard in the hall behind him, and stepped inside.

The door shut.

Kurtis stared.

The man standing before him leaned heavily on a cane. One arm hung in a sling, the other trembled on the handle of the cane; the fingers on his right hand were heavily bandaged, and his left was entirely wrapped in gauze. Beneath a loose-fitting, button-up shirt, more layers of tight bandages snugged the man's torso. He was breathing heavily, as though the mere act of standing were strenuous, and his face sagged with pain and weariness.

"So you're not dead," Kurtis observed candidly.

McGarrett didn't respond.

"When did you get out of the hospital? Yesterday? Today?" It had to be recently, Kurtis figured, since McGarrett hadn't made an appearance in court yet.

McGarrett walked slowly to the opposite wall and leaned gingerly against it. He looked almost ready to fall over. Even this stance seemed painful to him, though, and he shifted restlessly, unable to find a comfortable position.

The prisoner followed his movements closely. "How are the fingers?" His tone was clipped, devoid of empathy. "I'm curious: do you think you'll ever hold a gun again?"

But McGarrett remained silent. He surveyed Kurtis from a distance, his eyes sharp and capturing every detail, from the man's rumpled uniform to the faded prison slippers on his feet. Kurtis stared back defiantly.

A soft, tired breath escaped the Five-0 commander as he finished his initial scan. Briefly, he closed his eyes.

Annoyed, Kurtis heaved a very audible, dramatic sigh. He waited a moment, unsure how much of what he was seeing was an act, but when nearly a minute had passed, he finally spoke. "Hey. You going to say anything? Because if not, I'd like to get back to bed."

McGarrett's eyes slid open wearily, and Kurtis decided that the man probably was not pretending in regards to the extent of his injuries, nor the pain that they apparently caused. He smirked, feeling some satisfaction, although the overall feeling was hollow, a victory only in name.

"Feeling sore?" Foster asked. "They tell me you almost died. Bummer. Maybe second time's the charm?"

Finding some strength, McGarrett heaved himself away from the wall and shuffled slowly across the floor toward the prisoner's chair. His eyes lingered on the bruises protruding from the orange uniform, and he reached out with his cane, pulling the collar of the uniform shirt aside.

Kurtis flinched as the cane touched a sore spot. "Your friendly guards did that. Apparently, I'm not their favorite person."

McGarrett made a soft sound that might have been a snort. Circling back to his place at the wall, he leaned to rest again. Another several minutes of silence passed. Then, clearing his throat, he winced and brushed his good hand tenderly over a thin, red line across his neck. "Tell me something," he rasped, "what you said, in the hospital: did you mean it?"

The prisoner's eyes flickered warily. "What do you mean?"

"You said you were sorry." McGarrett paused, watching closely. "Are you?"

"Are we being recorded?"

"Does it matter?"

The prisoner glared. His hands clenched and unclenched, his breath shuddered, and his face twisted angrily. "I gave my statement. Confessed to everything. Isn't that enough for you?"

"I'm trying to help you," McGarrett said softly.

Kurtis straightened as much as he could in the chair. The absolute gall of the man, he fumed, claiming he wanted to help. "Help me?" he retorted. "Help me? The way you helped my son?" Ignoring McGarrett's wince, he spat, "I've had enough of your help. Say whatever you want, and leave."

McGarrett sighed. Moving away from the wall again, he limped back toward Kurtis. The other man ignored him, staring deliberately at the opposite wall. McGarrett studied Kurtis intensely, searching for something. Finally, he nodded once and turned away. The cane clumped on the floor as McGarrett slowly made his way back to the door. He knocked once and it swung open.

McGarrett stepped out into the bright fluorescents of the hallway. He spoke to the guard and then stopped and turned around.

"I'm sorry about your son," he said quietly. And with that, he was gone.

Kurtis gave no indication he had heard.

...

12 months later (12 years ago)

A sharp whistle snapped Danny's head up from the open case report. Steve had just walked into the office wearing his Navy dress blues, and his entrance had not gone unnoticed.

"Lookin' good, boss!" Kono called with a broad wink.

Steve rolled his eyes and stalked into his office.

Danny followed him. "What's the occasion, babe?" He watched Steve sit stiffly behind the desk and rummage through the drawer for something. With a sudden surge of dread, Danny asked, "You aren't getting recalled to active duty, are you?"

"What? No." Distracted, Steve pulled out a small pad of paper and began to make notes. Danny waited. "You need something, Danny?" Steve asked after a moment. His look told Danny plainly to get lost, but the detective didn't budge.

"Maybe. Why the fancy get-up?"

Steve hesitated a fraction too long before answering. "I have court this morning."

Danny had a schedule for their court cases mounted on the wall, but he could have sworn today was empty for the team. Besides, court might be normal, but the uniform was not. "Dressed like that?"

"You got a problem with this?" Fierce, dark eyes met his own, challenging him to disagree.

His anger caught Danny by surprise, and the detective raised his hands. "No, no. But clearly you've got a problem with something. What's going on?"

"Nothing. Just a little busy," Steve said tersely.

Bull. Danny looked around the room for clues, but as usual, his partner's office was pristinely clean and spartan in decorations. He turned and found Steve staring pointedly at him, clearly waiting for him to leave. "You're not going to make this easy, are you?"

Steve glared.

"Fine. But this isn't over." There's more than one way to skin a cat, Danny thought as he left the office.

A few short phone calls later, Danny had the information he was looking for. Part of him was surprised Steve hadn't mentioned it, but part of him also understood. Every day that the case dragged on was a day without closure, and every day in court was a day spent reliving the torture all over again. Over a year had passed and the local media had long since lost interest in the case. Life at 5-0 had mostly returned to normal and- Danny was ashamed to admit it- the team had moved on. While he'd known in the back of his mind that a verdict had not yet been delivered, Danny realized, with a jolt of guilt, that he had almost forgotten about the whole thing.

For a while, he debated whether to confront Steve or simply leave him to it. Eventually, however, he decided to do neither. Grabbing his suit jacket- which he kept conveniently hanging on the back of his office door- he quietly slipped out around noon, ostensibly to get lunch, and walked instead across the street to the courthouse.

Flashing his badge granted him access to the courtroom, and he slipped into a pew at the back and waited.

21 years.

The harsh clap of the gavel still echoed in Kurtis Foster's ears as he was escorted outside into a waiting transport truck.

It might be a nuisance to the younger kids, but for a man in his 60s, it was a life sentence.

He'd never been arrested before. Never broken the law. Scarcely a speeding ticket. Employed, with a modest house, a wife, a son- or, rather, he used to have a son, he thought bitterly- but still: he was nothing like those punks on the streets, those ridiculous hotheads who had shared the local jail with him for the past many months while the court case dragged on and on.

After more than 12 months wallowing through the beleaguered court system with no opportunity for bail, Kurtis had come to regret ever returning to McGarrett's hospital room; the words he'd felt the urge to speak had only led to more hardship and heartache. Reflecting on that moment, he wasn't sure himself whether his intentions that day had been genuine; one thing he did know, however, was that in the weeks that followed, sleeping on a hard cot and standing before an unmerciful bench bench had ruined any good impressions he might have once held of the courts.

Shaking with a mix of shock and fury, he sat in the truck and watched the courthouse recede behind them while he cursed the man who had caused all of this. McGarrett still walked the earth, alive and well, while Kurtis's own son lay under it. The sentence was he'd received was a harsh perversion of justice.

But what did justice really matter to those in power? Kurtis had come to realize he was simply a number to these people, a feather in some attorney's cap, a statistic on crime that could be cited in a news report. If he received counseling, it was because a quota or law somewhere demanded it, not because someone actually cared about him or the tragedy that had befallen him.

Frustration mounted into anger; anger into bitterness. Every day that he had stood before a detective or lawyer or judge, he put on a mask of contriteness; inwardly, he seethed. Any good intentions crumbled; resentment took hold.

"A model citizen" his defense lawyer had argued during the proceedings, not knowing the malice Kurtis now harbored. The lawyer had attempted to make an insanity plea- something with a reduced sentence at a psychological facility. "Grief-stricken," the useless man told the judge. "He has no idea what he's done." It hadn't worked.

21 years.

Kurtis Foster knew very well what he had done.

He'd almost killed Steve McGarrett.

And given the chance, he wanted to finish what he started.

21 years.

Steve left the courthouse with the clap of the gavel still ringing in his ears.

He took the rest of the afternoon off. At Kailua, he found the beach relatively empty with no lifeguard on duty. Dark clouds scoured the horizon and spotty sunlight whitened the damp sand. Steve watched the waves as he stretched out his stiffened arms and legs; courtroom benches were not his choice of comfort. Dropping his towel under a nearby tree, he splashed into the shallows and allowed the heavy weight of the water to pull him under. It was quiet beneath the waves, calming and secure. Steve stayed under for a long time before he finally broke the surface and stroked away from shore.

The beach was long, and Steve made several ocean laps up and down the length of it. The choppy water demanded his attention, focusing his thoughts away from the courtroom. When he finally emerged from the ocean over an hour later, his body was tired and his mind blissfully empty.

Danny was waiting on the shore. Steve didn't ask how he knew, and Danny didn't say. Wordlessly, the detective thrust a dry towel at Steve and pulled his collar up against the rain that had begun to spit overhead.

In the car, Steve found a 6-pack of Longboards waiting. He opened one in the parking lot, finishing it before they hit the highway. To his surprise, Danny made no comment. When Steve reached for another bottle, Danny let him.

By the time they got home, Steve was half-way through his third drink. He followed Danny into the house- mostly because Danny was holding the rest of the beer- and out onto the lanai, where he found two chairs pulled up under the eaves. Danny settled into one, setting the case on the deck between them, while Steve began to make short work of his current drink.

When he was down to the dredges, he held it up.

"Something wrong?" the detective asked.

"Cat piss," Steve remarked, swirling the amber liquid in the bottom.

Danny stood silently and disappeared inside, reappearing moments later with a pair of shot glasses and a small, dark bottle. He poured and offered one glass to Steve.

The SEAL tossed the liquid back and held the shot glass out for a second.

"Beer before liquor, babe?"

"Never been sicker." The words came out clearly, not slurred. When Steve felt the liquid fill the cup, he downed that, too.

"You're going to have one hell of a headache tomorrow," the detective remarked, refilling the glass again.

"Probably."

Together, they watched the sun set behind the waves. Danny poured; Steve drank. A few stars, undaunted by the lights of the city, emerged overhead.

"Well?" Danny eventually asked. "Is it over?"

In response, Steve held out the shot glass again. He heard Danny shake the last few drops from the bottle. Holding it up, he saw the glass was half-full. Throwing back his head, he downed the last of it and let the glass drop onto the wood deck. Steve leaned back and tilted his head up, staring at the stars.

"Yeah," he said slowly. "It's over.

...

12 months later (11 years ago)

"Prisoner 516289- Foster."

"Here."

"Gather your things and come with me."

Kurtis moved automatically to collect his belongings- a few books, some pictures, an extra set of socks, some loose paper. "Why?" he asked warily as he hastily stuffed everything into the sack the guard tossed to him.

"New room, new roommate. Let's go."

"Scott," the new man said, sticking out a hand. To Foster's surprise, he was older, especially compared to most of the other guys in the wing. Tall and wiry, he had a mat of thin, dark hair with streaks of grey, and the scruffy beginnings of a beard. Pale, brown eyes studied Kurtis appraisingly. "I heard tell you have a grudge against Hawaii's favorite cop."

Foster narrowed his eyes. "Yeah. So?"

"You've found a sympathetic ear, friend."