A/N: Not super happy with this chapter. We see Steve's willingness to give second chances repeatedly in the show, from carjackers to Nahele; even with WoFat, it takes a while before Steve finally kills the guy. But writing up how Steve's mind works... I'm just not happy with it.

Also, I meet a lot of people like Mrs. Foster- "Oh, I can't do anything because I'm just a poor little old housewife." They're annoying.

...

8 years ago

Steve flung the football across the field and Danny ran for it, Grace chasing after him across the bright, green grass. It was a gorgeous afternoon: a cool front had blown through, bringing 'bearable' temperatures (according to Danny) to the island, clear skies, and a light breeze. The pair had taken the afternoon off to spend time with Grace, who was on her spring break, and Danny was actually enjoying it, crossing the touchdown line with a loud whoop before being tackled by Grace… and then he turned around.

At the opposite end of the field, Steve knelt doubled-over, one hand clutching his side. He'd missed the catch and the celebratory dance following the touchdown, and Danny could see him now gasping in pain as his fingers dug into his shirt.

Dropping the ball, Danny sprinted to his partner's side, calling out as he ran, "Steve? Hey! Hey, Steven!"

Steve's eyes shot open.

"Talk to me, buddy. What's wrong?"

" 'm okay," Steve gritted out. He threaded a hand through his sweaty hair and gave Danny a completely-unconvincing look of innocence. "Really."

Danny rolled his eyes. "Sure you are." He crouched down and laid a hand tentatively on his partner's shoulder as Grace came up behind him. "You're a terrible liar, you know that?" Steve responded with a grunt. His eyes closed suddenly and pain pinched his forehead. Danny shook his head. "Want to try that answer again?"

"Feels like… hot lava," Steve managed to gasp. "Just… gimme a minute."

Kneeling beside him, Danny hiked up the T-shirt. Aside from the usual scars, everything looked normal. "I don't see anything."

"Because there's… there's nothing there to see." Breathing came a little easier now, and Steve pulled the shirt back down with a scowl. "I'm all good," he insisted, pushing away Danny's inquisitive hands, but he allowed Danny to hook him under his good arm and help haul him to his feet.

"Funny, you didn't have any problems earlier," Danny commented as they began walking slowly back toward the car. Seeing Steve look at him quizzically, he explained, "You know what I'm talking about: earlier today, when you took down that suspect in the supermarket parking lot with a shopping cart and a well-aimed papaya?"

"That was different."

Danny snorted. He glanced Grace, who hovered nearby, watching anxiously. "Gracie, can you run ahead and grab a water bottle from the car for Uncle Steve?"

She frowned, knowing she was being sent away, but nodded anyway. "Okay Danno," she agreed and ran off.

The moment she was gone, Danny turned to his partner. "What was it this time? Afghanistan? WoFat?" It was easier to group the injuries by incident rather than try to run down the list of every possible culprit in Steve's War and Peace-sized medical history file.

"Foster," Steve grunted. It had been nearly a year since he'd felt anything like it. "Just old nerve damage. Something about misfiring signals." It was unpredictable and painful, but the doctor had told him it would be less frequent with time.

Danny still scowled. "Just nerve damage, huh? What's amputation- just a scratch?"

"It's fine. I'm fine."

Danny shook his head. Despite Steve's poor attempt at a nonchalant attitude, he could see that his partner was still hurting and knew there would be no more football for the afternoon. The fun had been ruined, and not for the first time. "C'mon, GI Joe-" he ignored Steve's immediate retort about soldiers versus sailors, "-we'll head back to my place and I'll show you the miracle of this amazing thing they call 'air conditioning'."

They moved slowly toward the car, and Danny, seeing his partner's gaze a little distant, did his best to entertain with small talk, but he could see he was unsuccessful. Whatever methods Steve usually used to compartmentalize past trauma weren't working today, and for what felt like the umpteenth time, Danny cursed Kurtis Foster.

It wasn't always Foster, Danny knew, since there were a litany of culprits in Steve's file, but the triggers were always unpredictable. Sometimes, it was the smallest things. A sound, a smell… Danny would see Steve stiffen, his body shift into fight-or-flight mode, but then Steve would blink and the moment pass. How he kept it all together was a mystery to Danny, but somehow Steve made it work.

"Are we not playing anymore?" Grace called out, jogging back to them with three water bottles in her hands.

"Afraid not. Uncle Steve needs to go home to rest."

"Were you injured again, Uncle Steve?" the girl immediately asked in confusion.

"Not recently, but some things take a while to heal," Danny filled in to save his partner from having to concoct some excuse. He hated cutting their time short, especially when he'd set aside the whole afternoon, but his daughter made no complaints. She just nodded in understanding, gathered the rest of their things, and packed them into the back of the car while Danny helped settle Steve in the passenger seat of the Camaro.

Danny dropped Grace at home first; then he headed for Steve's house. Preoccupied with thoughts of what he wanted to do to Foster, Danny initially missed the concerned look Steve gave him. Only when his partner waved a hand suddenly in his face did Danny finally notice. The swerve he made made as he swatted his partner's hand away was purely out of annoyance.

"Steven!" Danny snapped defensively, tearing his eyes off the road to glare at the man in the passenger seat. "Don't stick your hand in my face unless you want to lose it. That's like Rule Number One in the How to keep your partner from crashing the car handbook."

"You were scowling."

"In case you hadn't noticed, I scowl a lot."

"You can drop the look, Danno. I told you: I'm fine. It's just a little nerve pain, I didn't lose a limb."

Danny huffed for a moment and finally waved a hand. "Okay, fine. But people suck."

Steve tried not to smirk as he asked, "Are you just now realizing that?"

"No, but… sometimes you forget how crappy people can be, you know? You end up living life in a kind of bubble where everything is great- not perfect, mind you, but not bad." Danny cupped his hands as though holding a ball. "My bubble was nice. Good kids, good school, good job, and there's actually some money left over at the end of the paycheck… And then, at some point, something shatters that delicate little bubble, and you realize that your whole, happy reality is a lie and that people just suck."

Steve had a hard time reading Danny. For a man who talked a lot, sometimes he said very little. Then it was up to Steve to read between the lines, interpolate, and figure out the problem. His partner needed to come with a personal translator. He waited a while to see if Danny had anything else to say before finally asking, "Is that it? I haven't developed any mind reading powers in the past week, if that's what you're waiting for."

Danny glared at him and slapped the steering wheel angrily. "Foster, Steven! I'm talking about Kurtis Foster!"

"I got that part. So?"

"If it weren't for idiots like him and his wife, World War Two wouldn't have happened."

"World War Two?" Steve thought that was a bit of a stretch. "Care to elaborate?"

"People are stupid. They don't think, they just react. Foster's son died- it sucks, I'm sympathetic, I feel for the guy, ya know?- but instead of dealing with it like any normal, sane person, he went off the deep end."

Steve stared at him quizzically. "Not seeing the World War Two connection here, Danny."

"People don't want to take responsibility for their problems. Just pass the buck, yeah? Blame it on somebody else. Foster blamed you. And then you get somebody like Hitler who takes that idea to a national level, and suddenly the whole country has lost their freaking minds."

"So Kurtis Foster is Adolf Hitler?" Steve's frowned deepened.

"And then think about his wife," Danny continued, waving one hand animatedly as though he hadn't heard Steve at all. "There's no way Martha Foster didn't know what her husband was thinking, but did she ever get him counselling? No! She just sat around, wringing her hands and worrying while he went and jumped off the cliff!"

"Martha Foster is Adolf Hitler?" Steve was still stuck.

"You know, if she had just done something- anything- back when it was obvious that Mr. Nutcase wasn't coping well, then we might not be here right now. We'd still be back on the football field, having fun."

This time, when Danny paused for a breath, Steve opted not to say anything.

"You know, if no one had followed Hitler, or if someone had just done something early on, then who would Hitler be? Just some crazy guy spouting off crazy ideas in the streets somewhere. He wouldn't have made it into the history books. Hundreds of cities wouldn't have been bombed. Millions of people wouldn't have died. But no! People didn't stop him when they had the chance- they listened to him. Followed him. And voila! World War II."

"So you think everyone in Germany was like Martha Foster? Following along just because someone found a scapegoat for the country's problems?" Steve thought this sounded like a gross over-simplification, but he wasn't sure where Danny was headed.

"Obviously there were a few resistance fighters and stuff," Danny conceded, "but yeah. About 99% of those people must've been just like her or her husband. Otherwise…" he trailed off with a shrug.

"Okay. I'm going to disagree with you. Is that okay?" Steve asked. Sometimes it wasn't. On occasions when Danny was in a 'mood,' he seemed to enjoy the misery of others more than a logical argument. At those times, Steve's surly agreement seemed to pacify the detective better than sound reasoning, and Steve was currently in no mood for a heated argument if that's what Danny wanted. "You mind if I offer a different point of view?"

Danny gave a one-shoulder shrug and focused deliberately on staring out the windshield.

Taking this as consent, Steve continued, "I had a buddy in the Navy before I became a SEAL. He was a 2ndgeneration American. Used to tell me stories about growing up in a small German community in rural Ohio. His grandmother had been a little girl when the war started in Europe, and she was a young adult by the time it ended."

Since there was still no response from the driver's seat, Steve assumed Danny was listening.

"The grandmother had lived in a small farming community in eastern Germany. In the years leading up to the war, a combination of bad weather and the stock market crash left her family economically devastated and on the verge of starvation. Then Hitler came on the scene."

"And saved the day or something?" Danny broke in with heavy sarcasm.

"From her perspective, yeah. Think about how it looked to her, Danny: terrible poverty, frigid winters, slow starvation, impending death- everyone she knew in her little village was sick, dead, or dying. Then- bam! There's this guy offering jobs, food, and clothing, and she gets a nice uniform to wear, she can feed her siblings, buy medicine for her mother… She never bothered to look past that. Is she the same as Mrs. Foster?"

Danny frowned, drumming his fingers on the seat several times before he responded. "She should've taken a closer look at what was going on around her."

"She was a kid living in a bubble, Danny- they didn't have the internet and social media back then. How much did you know about life when you were ten or twelve?"

Danny pulled the car into the drive and parked but didn't get out. He continued to stare out the windshield.

"If Grace was on the verge of starving to death and someone offered you food and money, what would you do?"

Danny sighed.

"Now multiply that dilemma by several million people."

"So you're saying the Fosters are sympathetic villains?" Danny asked, giving Steve his full attention. He was curious about the answer. Steve had a capacity for forgiveness that seemed at odds with his rigid military discipline. In Danny's experience, people who suffered as much as Steve had rarely forgave as generously, and Danny wasn't sure how Steve rationalized it. "I still say your little story about your Navy buddy is the exception for people, not the rule. If, God forbid, something happened to Grace, like a drunk driver for example, I wouldn't go beat the guy to a pulp." He paused. "Actually, no, he would die. Painfully." Danny sighed. "But whatever the motive, that doesn't justify wrong actions. The means don't justify the end, and the end doesn't justify the means. Or something like that."

"Even if someone didn't know what was happening?"

"Like Mrs. Foster, you mean? Or your friend's grandmother?"

"Both. What about them? Do you always see the worst in people?"

Danny huffed. "So your point is… sometimes good people do bad things- unknowingly- for not-so-bad reasons?"

"Something like that."

"But with your Navy buddy's grandma, millions of people-"

"-died. Yeah. My buddy said his grandmother found out much later about the 'factory' a few towns over. Said she never got over the guilt. Even though she never worked there and didn't know what was happening at the time, she still carried that guilt with her for the rest of her life."

"I'm not sure that makes me feel better," Danny grumbled as they finally exited the car. Danny grabbed their uneaten lunch from the back seat and followed Steve through the bright sunshine to the damp shade by the house. "So what happened to her? Your friend's grandmother?" he asked as they walked.

"Met an American soldier after the war. Fell in love, got married, and moved over here while she was still young. Took her a while to realize the truth about her childhood, but she eventually came around."

"Happy ending, huh?"

"There's a lot more happy endings out there than you'd like to realize, buddy. Especially if you give people a second chance."

Danny frowned. "So you're saying you would give Kurtis Foster a second chance?"

Steve shrugged. "I'm not saying it would work. Some people refuse to change. And in Foster's case, that 'second chance' needs to occur in a place where he can't hurt others. But I think most people can change, so it's always worth a try."

"He tried to kill you, in case you've forgotten."

"Haven't forgotten."

"But you're willing to just forgive and forget?"

Steve grimaced. He made a show of pulling out his keys and unlocking the door, even though Danny knew very well that he never locked it in the first place.

Danny followed him inside. "Well? Babe?"

With an exasperated huff, Steve finally turned around. "What do you want me to say, Danny? That I've forgiven him, it's a clean slate, and we're best buds now? Believe me- if it were just me, I'd kill him. It's been several years now, and it sucks. I wake up in pain in the middle of the night, I still have nightmares, and sometimes my fingers throb for no reason. But... Foster deserves the same as everybody else. He'll pay his debt to society, and then he'll be released. And I've got to accept that."

But Danny wasn't sure that Steve had to accept that. He wasn't sure that Steve should accept that at all.

...

4 years ago

Kurtis sat in the plastic chair and watched the man across the table shuffle papers into a folder. Even though Scott and others had walked him through the process, Kurtis had found that playing ignorant often had its perks. Under Scott's guidance, Kurtis had abandoned some of his anger and rage in favor of a different persona. He'd crafted an image of himself as a kindly, grandfatherly figure overcome by grief, one who rushed into a rash decision in the midst of searing personal loss. It was an easy story to sell because it was mostly true.

"You don't have to actually believe it," Scott had said. "Remember: it's all a big act. You, me, the warden, the parole board… we're just playing the game."

Except it wasn't a game to Kurtis, but he would never dare tell Scott that. Kurtis wanted the story he told the counselor to be true, especially on those days when his conscience assailed him for what he'd done. On those days, he needed a kindly, innocent lie to cover and protect him from the overwhelming guilt that clawed at his mind and threatened to drag him back down into the depths.

"Do you regret it?" someone had once asked him. At the time, Kurtis had not. He still didn't, but things had changed. Sometimes, when he lay on his cot in the quiet of the early morning, before the other prisoners awoke, he would picture his life as it might have been, all the memories he might have had, the events he would have been a part of. His granddaughter was in elementary school now. The last time Kurtis saw her, she was just a baby. How many birthdays he had missed? How many opportunities to spoil and indulge and enjoy? In those quiet moments, Kurtis found, to his great surprise, that he did feel a measure of regret for what he had done, or at least the fallout of his decisions.

But regrets would not change the past.

"You've made great progress in processing your grief," the court-appointed therapist told him during a recent session. She'd shown him the chart and where he was placed on the rainbow-colored bar. Each color marked a different step in the grieving process. It looked ridiculously childish, but Kurtis didn't dare tell her that. He also wasn't about to tell her that she was vastly over-estimating his progress.

Let her think what she wants, Scott had advised. Scott had been in and out of the system for decades; he knew how things worked, and was more than happy to pass that information along. But whereas the therapist wanted to help Kurtis process his grief and gradually make the pain a little less, Scott wanted to harness it.

Forgiveness or revenge.

Kurtis didn't appreciate the tug-of-war between the two. His son was dead. Did he still blame McGarrett for his son's death? Absolutely. But did he hate the man? Kurtis wasn't sure.

Things that had seemed black-and-white before were slowly turning grey.

"Mr. Foster?"

Kurtis blinked and returned to the small room. "Yes?"

"Do you have any questions for me?"

And although he already knew some of what the man would say, Kurtis still replied, "How exactly does this work? I've only served part of my term."

The man flashed him a hint of a smile. "I realize that, Mr. Foster." Placing the file to one side, he pulled out another, this one with Kurtis's name on it. Opening it, he scanned the first page while he continued, "The truth is, the prisons are overcrowded, especially on Hawaii. Rather than build new ones, the 'Powers That Be'," he used air quotes, "have decided prisoners who model good behavior are eligible for early release on parole after serving 30% or more of their term."

"I already served more than 30% a year or more ago."

"Violent crimes are not eligible until later."

"But I'm eligible now?" Kurtis asked, in a vaguely-hopeful voice. Scott would be proud- Sell the lie; make it look real, he'd said- but to Kurtis, the line between lie and truth was starting to blur. "I can make parole?"

The man nodded. "Correct. But I must warn you, Mr. Foster- considering the notoriety of your crime, I'm not expecting you to make parole this first time."

"Of course," Kurtis murmured as good-naturedly as he could muster. "I understand."

...

A/N: I knew a lady whose grandmother was the grandmother in Steve's story. The lady told me a story about going to elementary school in the States and learning to speak English (she spoke only German at her house), and she told me about the day she learned about Hitler. Apparently she came home and, when asked what she learned that day, told her grandmother that she learned about a very bad man named Hitler. Her grandmother promptly slapped her and said, "You will not insult him! He was a wonderful man! He saved our lives!" Of course, the lady eventually realized her grandmother was wrong and that Hitler was insanely evil... but the grandmother was convinced that Hitler had saved her village from starvation. I've been to the village (love traveling; went out of curiosity after hearing the story) and it's a tiny place. My guess is that the depression hit it pretty hard, and it sounds like (from speaking to other residents) that some of the winters were pretty bad, too. So, from the grandmother's perspective, when Hitler came into power, things improved. It warped her view of the world in a really bizarre way, obviously.