One Thing

AvalonReeseFanFics

A/N: Happy Friday and Happy New Year my wonderful readers! And here we are the official Chapter 1. Now this chapter is gonna be a long boi (like 11 pages). Some of them are gonna be crazy long like this one, but most of the chapters will be 5-8 pages. But we have a lot to cover in this chapter, and a lot of action so here's hoping that you like this one too! As always don't forget to review, and I'll see you next week!

Chapter 1

The convoy made of 3 cars with a hummer in the font, a prisoner hummer in the middle and another hummer in the back, left precisely ten minutes late.

This was a travesty, but the girl they had arrested with Anton Hesse a few days back was very skilled at three things.

1. Being annoying.

2. Getting out of locked things. Like handcuffs and cells

3. Derailing plans.

They had been delayed in this departure particularly because Steven McGarrett had made the mistake of telling her why she was being brought along to a secondary location for holding and eventually processing.

You see, originally, they thought her to be a tourist. A girl Anton had brought with him for a spot of fun. A girl who had thought she was in Indonesia, just a day's travel away from Bali and the spa Anton promised to take her to.

When they first arrested her, she had gone at Anton with claws out when she realized he had taken her to North Korea instead. Steve had to pry her off of him as she spit out vile insults, he hadn't thought her capable of and then went off in French.

Then she had subsequently got out of every restraint they put her in and every room they locked her in. She also cried, a lot, saying that she just wanted to go home to her brothers who no doubt had to be looking for her by now.

That morning had been no different.

Steve told her that he knew her name wasn't Rachel and was instead Rory Wickerby, and that the reason she was there was because her name was apparently synonymous with an infamous smuggler known as the Master. Anton was clear that she knew exactly where she was and that she had been a part of the sale as the Master had sent her there to facilitate it.

She had just stared at him, those beautiful blue eyes blinking a million miles an hour, and then she turned to Anton, dropped her handcuffs, again, and tackled him to the ground.

By the time Steve had gotten her off of him, she had pulled out a chuck of Anton's hair and split his lip. For god sake this girl was violent.

But at least he knew that Anton was telling the truth. It shocked him how he had just taken everything that girl had said to him at face value. He just believed her, he hadn't sensed a single one of the lies and that was not like him. The problem was she was altogether too pretty.

She had this red to blonde fade to her hair, and she was dressed like she was going to go to some hippy festival. This navy-blue short dress with a v-neck lined with pastel flowers. She had a flower crown hair band keeping her hair back and a pair of sandals that laced up her calf. She was pale, though tanned at the moment, and he already knew that her skin was soft.

She had a tattoo around her wrist. A black and red Chinese dragon with lines of golden weaving into it. It's tail and body wove around her wrist, but the face of the dragon, who's mouth was open in a roar, was on her palm just below her thumb. He had asked what that was about but she just shrugged and said it was pretty.

But it was her eyes that got him. She had this pair of way-too-blue eyes that he kept getting lost in.

The amount of time he had daydreamed about staring into those eyes and kissing her was criminal. Because well… he was a good guy and she was a criminal and he was to bring her to justice. So why was he still day dreaming about taking her to bed?

So, their departure time was set back to do first aid on Anton, again, and to truss up Rory, again, and then they got into the hummer.

They had just driven out of the compound when Rory started complaining. Whining actually, because she knew it got on his nerves.

"I can't sit backwards I'll get motion sick!"

That wasn't her problem at all. The issues was that she was handcuffed, hands in her lap, beside Anton and she was mad at him. Steve ignored her, pointedly looking out the window.

Which was why she had kicked him.

He turned an outraged, wide-eyed glare to her, officially done with her bullshit when she frowned at him.

"You gotta let me move," she said but he shook his head.

"That's where you're sitting so get used to it."

"But if I don't move, I'm going to throw up!"

"Go ahead see if I care."

"If I throw up, I'm going to aim it at you," she said with a completely blank and serious face.

Yeah, he knew enough about this girl to know that she was exactly that kind of spiteful too. He reached out, grabbed her bound hands and then tugged her to the seat beside him.

"There you throw up, you throw up on Anton, happy?"

"Immensely, thank you," she said with a proud tilt of her chin. God why did he acquiesce to this girl as much as he did? What was she doing to him?

"That's weird," the soldier on the other side of him said, he was looking as his phone. They weren't supposed to be on their civilian phones but he had a pregnant wife who said she'd call if she went into labor. They had been giving him special consideration this whole trip. "It's says Sandy."

"Sandy?" Rory echoed leaning away from Steve to look at the screen of his phone. Sure, enough there at the top where it usually said the carrier name, it read Sandy.

"I've never heard of that carrier before," he said.

"Oh no? They're great, you'll never loose reception, Sandy can always find you," Rory said smiling in that weird way of hers.

"I do have more bars," he murmured and that was that line of conversation dropped.

The problem was, if Rory got bored, she'd sing. Some times she'd sing these weird little insults that made no sense, sometimes it was haunting songs he had never heard of before. But her voice was beautiful and he hated hearing it. Because it made his stupid heart skip a beat and according to the rest of the team, he got this wistful lovelorn look about himself when he was listening to her.

She hummed a few bars of a song he didn't recognize and then her hair fell into her face. For a while Steve just watched her try and tie her hair up, except that her hair elastic was on her arm and her hands were bound. The hairband she had was useless, hair kept escaping it, just like she had been escaping rooms and cuffs. Then she tried blowing the hair out of her face.

Steve was just annoyed.

He made her turn to him and then purposely went about putting her hair behind her ear so it wouldn't be in her face anymore, sweeping all up to one side in this way the thought was pretty. And her hair was pretty dirty, imagine what she'd look like all showered and dolled up.

But then he focused on her face which was in a hard squint as if she were expecting him to hit her.

"Why are you doing that?"

She popped one eye open to look at him. "Doing what?"

"Closing your eyes like that, I'm not going to hurt you."

"Habit," she said. "My brother always ends up poking my eye."

"That uh… might be because your brother doesn't like you very much. Should have taken the sign darlin'."

Rory turned a dark glare onto him. "It's a good thing you're not allergic to nuts because, the way things are going, I'm going to kick yours up into your throat."

Steve couldn't help him a snort erupted out of him, but some of the other soldiers couldn't hide their laughter at all.

This just made Anton angry, which in turn made him nasty. And all of that angry nastiness was turned onto poor Rory.

"You keep talking like that sweet heart, cause he ain't here to rescue you. And I reckon he ain't ever coming," Anton snapped. "They're going to send you somewhere dark and disgusting and you'll never see the sun again. And your brother isn't even gonna care. He'll probably be glad you're gone."

Rory's eyes narrowed, a quivering lip was added to the pout she had on her face. She didn't like thinking about being locked away, Steve already knew that she had issues with being in small rooms. He wanted to tell her that it wasn't going to happen, but it probably was.

"At least I'm not following my brother around like a shadow. You know you're useless, right? Vickie has all the power, you're just the baby brother he let tag along."

"I'm useless?" he echoed. "All you had to do was show your pretty face and get us a good price, that's it. And you couldn't even get that right. No wonder they don't want you back. You weren't even smart enough to realize that there was never going to be goinig to Bali…."

And then she kicked him. Straight in the nuts cutting off anything else Anton might have said.

The poor man cried out and doubled over, and every single soldier in that small cab with them winced. Feeling that pain by-proxy.

Steve grabbed her legs and pulled them onto his lap, forcibly making her turn. Had this been a date, or a girl on his couch they'd be considered cuddling, and it took a lot of willpower to remind himself that she was a criminal with ties to a gun runner. A gun runner with so much clout that just having his name attached to her gave her the power to broker unsavoury deals.

And now that Anton's story had changed… again… Steve wasn't sure what to believe. Was she with him, or had he tricked her? Because now it sounded a lot like he had tricked her.

She had a troubled look about her.

This wasn't the first time Anton had said that her brothers wouldn't want to come and get her and, while she put up a stiff upper lip, he could tell it was starting to nag at her. She clearly assumed her brothers should have shown up by now.

But would they really take on the Navy? Didn't exactly sound smart. But he didn't like that it was making her sad.

She sighed wistfully again and then brought something up to her face.

"Steven J. McGarrett," she read out. Steve turned and found her reading his driver's licence. Holy fuck had she gotten into his pockets again? She turned those impossibly blue eyes to him again and sweetly asked: "What does the J stand for?"

He didn't know why he asked her but he still asked: "Did you take my wallet again?"

That was another thing she was shockingly good at. The girl could pick pockets… like really well. Like she had been doing this for days now. She got his dog tags off of him a night ago, he still wasn't sure how.

Rory handed him the wallet and he immediately opened it to see what else she took out of it while he wasn't paying attention.

He turned a dry glare to her again. "Where's my cash?"

"In my bra," she answered and then turned that sexy as all hell smirk up to him. The kind of smirk that was begging to be kissed off her lips. "You can get it back if you'd like. God knows I'd love to be frisked again."

She needed to stop flirting with him. She needed to stop, because he liked it way too much. God, what was this girl doing to him?

He had to force himself to continue to glare at her and eventually she turned her attention back onto the card in her hands.

"Kay, so Steven J. McGarrett, born March 10th, I won't embarrass you by reading the year out, but you should know that I'm five years younger than you," she paired that last little tidbit with a wink and Steve had to hide his smile. Five years younger wasn't that bad, clearly she acted very immature but she just needed some growing up. "And you're from… O-ah-hu? O-aua? What?"

"Oahu," he said. "Hawaii."

"Oh! Steven McGarrett of Hawaii…" and then her face went blank. The smile dropped from her lips, her crystalline blue eyes dulled and a toneless: "Oh…" came from her already open mouth.

"Rory?"

And then the jolt came. This electric jolt that ran through the hands he had gripping her legs. He had yelped, because it was a pretty strong jolt, like she had gotten electrocuted and he had been electrocuted with her. He let her go and turned back to her in time to watch her eyes roll back into her skull. She collapsed onto the soldier behind her, convulsions already taking a hold of her small form.

"Shit!"

He moved immediately, ordering the men around.

Get her on the floor. Hold her head. Make sure she's still breathing.

They got her onto the floor, one man was holding onto her head to keep her from smashing it on the floor of the truck, Steve was kneeling beside her waiting for the convulsions to let her go. Behind him Anton cleared his throat, as if he had something more important to say, as if this wasn't a priority right now.

"You know… it's funny."

Really? Anton's ex-girlfriend having a spasming fit was funny? What the hell was wrong with this guy?

"You don't look Hawaiian."

Yeah, he got that a lot. And that was fine. And none of Anton's business.

"You were born there, though. Weren't yah?"

Okay, see, now that was weird because Rory hadn't just read that off the card. How had Anton known that?

His hands were still on Rory though so he felt it when another jolt went through her because it also went through him. This one was accompanied with a wheezing moan from her and an arch in her back. Fucking hell, why hadn't any of them told him that she had seizures? Why hadn't that come up?

She clearly needed medication and she had probably been without her meds for days. He could have helped her if someone had just told him.

"Look, I'm obviously going to get you to tell me everything. Every terrorist cell you and your brother helped arm. But right now, your girlfriend here, she's seizing pretty bad. Is there a medication she's supposed to be on?"

Anton looked down to Rory. "I'm not dating that bitch anymore."

Right fair, she was pretty clear that they were broken up when she found out about the whole North Korea thing. But still, didn't he care that this could kill her?

"And she doesn't have seizures either. She's probably just faking it."

Yeah, Steve would be able to tell if this was fake or not. This was not fake.

Then Rory gasped. The stiffness left her and she suddenly bolted up blue eyes wide whipping all around her unable to focus on a single thing in front of her.

"It's the pilot."

Great now she was talking nonsense.

Despite knowing better Steve put a hand out to her cheek. "Hey, hey, Rory, you okay?"

Those blue eyes focused on him. "Are we in Pohang?"

Steve narrowed his eyes. "I thought you failed geography."

It was what she had said. When Steve asked how it was possible that she had no idea where Bali was. That she had failed a lot of subjects in high school. Geography one of them.

"I never took geography," she answered absently. Okay, so she just lied about everything and quite convincingly. "It's today. The pilot. It's starting."

"What?"

Rory turned those eyes back to him. It was like she was seeing him in a completely different light. "How did I forget who you were? You're the main fucking character!"

Right.

So, Rory had gone crazy.

The phone in Steve's pocket began to ring since Rory seemed to be fine other than the sudden streak of craziness, he pulled it out of his pocket to see who it was. And it was his dad.

"You don't speak to your father nearly enough."

That came from Anton. How did he know his dad was calling? Ah shit this wasn't good.

Steve answered immediately. "Dad." He tried to keep his voice level but he was starting to freak out.

"Hey Champ."

Champ? His dad never called him Champ. What the fuck was happening over there?

"You alright?"

"Who are these people, Steve?"

Well, that answered that.

The next person on the phone Steve recognized right away. It was Victor, Anton's bigger brother, the one who had gotten away.

"Now I know where you get it from. You got a tough old man, here."

From the floor Rory asked: "Where's my brother?" but she wasn't asking any of them. Her face was pointed up wards, he fingers in the air, plucking at nothing as if she were playing some weird harp only she could see.

God this was like sensory overload here.

"Steve we both have something to lose," Victor said. Steve was trying not to keep his eye on Rory who was acting crazier by the second, and instead was writing a note for his buddies to act on.

Send HPD to my dad's house ASAP.

"So, listen very carefully."

"He's in Hawaii… why did he… is he in the house?"

God he needed either Victor or Rory to shut up, he didn't care which one it was at that point but one of them had to stop talking.

"I'll offer you a trade. Your father for my brother."

Steve noted right away that there was no mention of the girl. There was a beat of silence before Victor remembered Rory because he added: "Right and his girlfriend too. All things considered I think that's pretty generous, don't you?"

No. because his dad was a civilian and Anton was a criminal. And for some reason Steve didn't want to let poor Rory out of his sight. He sure as hell didn't want to hand her over to the people who may or may not have tricked her into coming all the way out here in the first place.

"You're smart enough to know that's never going to happen," he said.

"Sandy's on the phones so he knows where I am," Rory whispered, again to herself. "So why do the call? Unless he's mad, but it's not… well he's always been mad at Steve for his own reasons and it is the pilot, he did do the call in the pilot too. What's the plan?"

She had said that Sandy was the carrier, was Sandy not a cellphone carrier? Okay, he didn't have time for this right now.

"I'm not going to negotiate like this."

"He doesn't need to triangulate, there's no need for the call… so… oh… oh… uh oh… uh oh…" Rory suddenly stopped plucking at the air and she frantically began to look around as if searching for something, Steve just didn't know what.

"No more games, I'm taking my brother now!" Victor shouted into the phone, just as Rory screamed: "BOMB!"

And then he heard the helicopter. And not long after he heard that helicopter did the Humvee at the front of their motorcade blow up. His car came to a complete standstill. The soldiers inside moved to attack the helicopter back. The door opened closest to Rory and she tumbled right out and out of view. Though Steve did hear her cries of terror, he had his own gun out, and Anton Hesse to worry about.

The plan was to drag Anton out of the hummer, get him to safe location, and then go back for Rory who was somewhere in the grass.

When he got out, he couldn't spot her.

"Rory!"

There was no answer. For fucksake he did not want to leave her behind but he also couldn't find her.

Right. He'd come back for her. He'd have to.

All around him were men in black Kevlar suits, faces covered like ninjas. They had all rappelled down from the helicopters circling them. There weren't that many of course. But they were soundly beating his team right now.

Steve shot when he could, while pushing Anton forward, noting that there were a lot of shouts for Nǚtóng which was Mandarin for girl. They weren't here for Anton, they were here for the girl! All of this… was it about Rory?

But then Anton shoved himself away from Steve while Steve was dealing with one of these assailants. When he hit the ground, he landed by a body, a fallen soldier with a gun.

He went to pull it on Steve, even though Steve was shouting at him to stop. But it wasn't Steve who stopped him.

It was the man who had snuck up behind him that had put a gun to Anton's neck.

In fact, all around him it went quiet, the shooting stopped and Steve was stuck staring at the man across from him. The man in the white plastic rabbit mask looked to be about his height. He was dressed in the same black Kevlar as the rest of the men that had swarmed in on their unit. And he had two guns. One on Hesse and one pointed at Steve.

He just didn't know who's side this person was on. Clearly not his but then why was he pointing a gun at Hesse?

Then Steve's phone rang again.

"Pick up the phone," the rabbit man said as if all of this was some normal social call.

He looked back down, it was his dad again, which meant it was Victor. Steve answered, didn't even get a hello out and then Victor was talking to him again.

"What happened?" Victor asked. "Put Anton on the phone."

Steve looked at the man in the white rabbit mask who wasn't letting either of them move. "I… uh… I can't."

"My brother's dead, isn't he?"

"No… I swear… it's just…"

"Go ahead. Tell him I'm here. He'll know who you mean," the man in the rabbit mask taunted.

"If my brother's dead…"

"He's not. It's this guy… he's got a gun on me… and on Anton… he's wearing… god this is going to sound crazy, but he's wearing a white rabbit mask."

There was a very heavy pause and then Victor asked: "Sin Nombre?"

Great so Victor knew who he was and the guy had a weird ass name.

"You said he was unavailable. But you sent him…"

Okay, so that… that wasn't directed at him. Was there someone else was there with Victor and his dad? Someone that Victor was supposed to be working with, which clearly wasn't going well cause this person had sent the crazy man in the rabbit mask down to harass him.

Steve watched the rabbit man perk up, the gun he had pointed at McGarrett dropped immediately. He had clearly spotted something, and he hadn't wanted to shoot it. With the phone still to his ear he turned and found Rory standing across from him, rivers of red leaking down her face. Her chest heaving as she glared at Steven.

"Hey, there you are mami!" The rabbit man cried and she turned that glare onto him.

"Don't you mami me, MR!" she cried. "I've vomited three times cause'a'you!"

"Aw, mami you hit your head!" he said completely unphased by her angry outburst. "You come here, it's time to go home."

But Rory's eyes were on Steve again, Steve and the phone in his hand. She lurched for it immediately, and he held it out of reach. He wanted to wipe the blood from her face, he wanted to see how badly injured she was but she wanted that phone.

So, she punched him, right in the groin. Steve went down, dropped the phone and Rory happily picked it up.

"Victor and Anton Hesse tricked me into coming here to help them sell some nuke because you wouldn't come. Then Anton said that you wouldn't come get me cause you didn't love me and Con blew up everything and I watched people get shot and I threw up three times and my head hurts and I wanna go hooooooommmmmeeeeee."

She managed to sob that last word and beside Anton that Rabbit mask wearing werido turned to him and said: "Haha, aw you two are fucked now, ese. You should'a left her stateside."

Rowan continued to listen to the phone as Steve forced himself to get up. "Hello?" she said into it. It probably wasn't good that she couldn't hear anyone anymore.

She glanced up to where Steve was standing, and he couldn't help himself, just put his hands to her face trying to find where the bleeding was coming from. But before he could she tucked herself into Steve's chest. Just collapsing against him, her head bowed to his chest. She was silent for all of two seconds before her head whipped up.

"Gunshots? Why did I hear… Whoa! Who got shot?"

Someone got shot?!

He wanted to get more answers but the man in the mask was still focused on her and he had a feeling that if he wanted to stay alive, keeping Rory by him was imperative. So he let her rest her head against his chest again and against his better judgement a single arm came around her, just to keep her upright.

"Oh hello. Who got shot?" she asked again in the same way someone would ask if one had dropped a pen. "Oh okay, cool, I'm fine with that. I'm okay, kind of, my head hurts. Yes, I did hit it again… no I fell out of the truck and hit my head on the door when I got back up… yes I know that was my own fault I didn't say it was someone else's did I? Look that's not why I called."

She hadn't called at all. And Steve was starting to get more and more interested in who else was in his dad's house because he had a feeling she wasn't talking to Hesse anymore.

"Kay, that's not important," she snapped. "Remember, remember when I said… you know that uh… that there was going to come a day that starts everything? And you end up getting blown up in your personal helicopter, and you got that two-faced thing going on… what do you mean you don't get that reference it's a batman villain… Fine… what would you like me to call you then? Phantom at the Opera then, better? … Yes, I know that isn't ideal. And it ends with you getting shot in the head in the basement of a laundromat, remember? Yes that… do you remember? Good. Cause it's today. It's starting right now."

What the fuck did that mean? What the fuck was she talking about?

"No, it is not nonsense. I'm looking at Steven McGarrett right now and you have a gun pointed to John McGarrett's face…" she paused again and rolled her eyes. "Do you have the gun pointed in his general direction? Well then there you go. Just don't shoot him. If you shoot him, he's going to start Five-0 and he will literally become the biggest thorn in your side. Like even more annoying than me. He will literally ruin everything. EVERYTHING. So, don't do it. Promise me you won't do it. Promise me. Promise me. No, fine doesn't count, you have to say you promise."

The man in the Rabbit mask stalked forward, clearly done with everything. He kept the gun trained on Anton as he ripped the phone out of Rory's hands.

"She's fine…. Yes, she hit her head. Yes, I've got Anton. I mean… I unno what McGarrett looks like, eh… but if she says he's McGarrett… yeah… she's with him… he seems oddly fixated on her, but Anton says he's been like that since he first clapped eyes on her. Look you want me to deal with it or not? Fine. You know you got cops on the way, right? Well then head out of there and we'll rendezvous as planned."

He handed the phone to him which he might have taken if Rory didn't grab his face and make him look down at her.

"Thank you so much for being so nice to me when you didn't have to," she said. "And for making me feel safe even though you were going to arrest me."

"Uh… you're welcome?"

She got up on her very tippy toes, this languid sort of smile on your face and then pressed this soft kiss to him that was awkward as shit seeing as he had a gun in his face and she had her own blood on her lips.

"Kay I love you, bye Steven." She then whirled right around and collapsed into the man with the white Rabbit mask. "Hi Con I wanna go home."

"I know, mami,"

"Anton said that you guys don't love me anymore. Is that true?"

Crazy Rabbit mask was one of her brothers. Holy shit. They really had taken on the Navy to get her back.

Who the hell was this girl?

"Mami I just took on the Navy for you. You think I'd do that if I didn't love you? What have I told you about listening to Anton? Anton lies."

Steve put the phone to his ear. There were muted sirens in the background and a calm voice that didn't belong to Victor that said: "I'm gonna take the girl. You get to keep your dad and the nuke. Fair?"

It was fair but all Steve could ask was: "Who are you people?"

But he didn't get an answer because he had hung up the phone.

The man in the rabbit mask, had picked Rory up and thrown her over his shoulder. As he walked past Anton, who was still on the ground, he pointed his gun right at him and shot him, the bullet hitting him straight between the eyes. Then he carried on back to the helicopter, leaving Steve with a mostly obliterated platoon, and a dead terrorist.

He looked around at the fire, the bodies and chaos around him. What In the actually hell just happened?