Rewrite
AvalonReeseFanFics
A/N: It's a new update! I'm as surprised as you guys are, but here it is. Please enjoy and let me know what you think!
Chapter 445
He wasn't sure when he noticed it but all at once Grover was acutely aware that he had not seen or heard from either of Rowan's brothers for a suspicious amount of time. He figured, considering what was happening they'd be bugging him more, but they were too quiet.
Once he realized they were too quiet he started asking if anyone had seen them, because he hadn't in a while.
No one else had seen them in a while either.
Great, now he was going to have to find them. Because, guaranteed, them being AWOL for that long meant that they were looking for a way to deal with the situation themselves. And it didn't matter what plan they came up with it, it wasn't going to end well for any of the sane people involved.
He moved down the hallway where he had seen them last while pulling his phone out. He went to dial Wo Fat first but paused before pressing dial. Something could be heard echoing the hallways. At first it was soft, but as he walked further down the hall it got louder. Clearly because he was heading towards it.
It was this strange sound. A sort of heavy rhythmic chunk in two different cadences at two separate times, but still close together. One after another, in quick succession. He knew what it sounded like to him, but dear God, it better not be what he thought it was.
He followed that sound down the hallway, before turning a corner and finding exactly what he thought it was.
"What are you doing?" Grover cried. Both Wo and Con came to a standstill. Wo with his axe and Con with his sledgehammer, both stopped, chests heaving and stared at him for a moment.
After a second Con turned to Wo Fat, as always the designated lead of the duo even if Con came up with the idea. And this was very much a Con idea, Wo Fat always had more finesse.
Wo Fat looked at the hole the two of them had put into the wall and then back to Grover.
"We uh… you know this is a shared wall with uh… with the quarantine ward and we figured… if we can't go through the door we'd go through the wall…" When Grover just stared at them he added: "It was uh… it was all we could think to do…"
"Y'all are absolute savages," Grover growled and the two men exchanged glances. "I'mma see if they have another axe. Be right back."
Grover hated leaving them when they were basically fully entrenched in what he would call a Ro-plan, only because those plans were chaotic, much like they were. But, outside of a better idea, this was all they had and it looked like it was going to work.
So Grover quickly made his was down to the lobby where he quickly convinced a fireman to give him one of the extra axes off their rig.
By the time he got back up there though, he no longer needed the axe. The two men had seemingly made a large enough hole in the wall but they were stalled. Both men were huddled looking at it and Grover immediately wondered what could have possibly gotten them to stop.
"What is it? Plumbing?" Grover asked. He expected see something in the wall, electrical wiring, pipes in the way, but both Wo Fat and Con moved away from one another revealing a wall of brick just behind the drywall they had taken apart.
And while, yes, that was shocking to see that wasn't what had his attention.
"What the fuck is that?" He was referring to, of course, the bomb looking device that had been plastered to the wall. "Why does that look like a bomb?"
Wo Fat and Con turned to it and then back to Grover.
"Because it is."
Grover bit back the sigh, because Wo Fat's response had been entirely apathetic. Like he didn't understand what the problem was, but he knew that there was, in fact, a problem.
"Where did you even get that?" Grover asked.
"We commandeered it from the Bomb squad."
"You stole explosives from us?" the leader cried but Grover waved him off.
That was disconcerting, because Grover had no idea where they even had the time to lift an explosive like that, let alone rig it up. And which brother did the rigging? He'd guess Wo Fat. You didn't rise to the power he did without having more then a few tricks up your sleeve, and Rowan had called him to help diffuse the first bomb.
They just didn't have time to question him right now. They were on a time crunch and, despite this being a horrible idea, this was still the only idea that seemed to have any chance of getting them in that room faster.
"What is the plan here? Blow your way through the rest of the walls?" Grover asked. Neither brother said a thing, the look on their faces told him all he needed to know. "Right, whatever. Someone warn them in there."
That time when the Bomb Squad leader was waved away it was to go back to the room.
There he told Steve and the others to get away from the wall they were going to blast through.
"Do you think she'll know to…" Con asked, trailing off before glancing around to the faces of the people who didn't know what Rowan could do.
Wo Fat took a moment to think it over before saying: "She's already doing it."
That seemed to calm Con down and it was probably the only reason that Wo Fat set that bomb off. Which he did.
Without warning a single other person that he was going to do it.
H5O-H5O-H5O-H5O
Was this a shit idea?
Yes.
Was it the quickest way to get Danny to the surgeon waiting for him on the other side of that door?
Also yes.
Was Steve's cholesterol going up?
Fuck yes.
Was it spot on for Wo's character that wanted to blast his way through a wall to get to his sister?
Yes, but was that really all they could come up with in all this time?
Really?
A fucking bomb?
He really shouldn't have been surprised.
"We don't have much time," Rowan said to him softly. She could feel Wo Fat's impatience, he bet. "Everyone get as far back as possible."
"What about you?" Tani asked.
They had wheeled Danny as far away as they could, Steve and Junior, even Tani were all huddled over him ready to shield him from debris. Rowan, however, was standing between them and that wall that was going to blow.
She had also been asking a lot of questions since he and Rowan had pulled a different string for Danny. Mostly "What the hell was that?" in different tones and cadences. As if that would change the answer that Steve gave her which was: "I have no idea."
It was probably because she could tell he was lying. But it wasn't like he could tell her the truth either.
"Worry about yourself," Rowan snapped. "Heads down."
Steve reached out for her, his hand gripping hers tightly. This was both to pull her back at least two steps back, because he knew that her shields could cover larger fields, and to push more energy into her so she wasn't using too much.
Grabbing her hand sent a spiral of static up his arm that eventually settled and spread out. Like his arm had fallen asleep and was starting to wake up again. Once again, he wondered if this was what she felt all the time, and if it was, why the hell was she doing this so often. This had to bother her.
The blast went off not moments later. Debris and dust ricocheted off the room and the shield. The shield itself pulsed, or—at least—a pulse ran up his arm the same time the blast went off and the shockwave hit it.
By the time everyone was looking up again that shield was down letting the dust drift past where the barrier had stood just at Danny's feet.
They also heard the sound of arguing. Namely the hospital staff arguing with what had to be Rowan's brothers about why they weren't allowed into that room.
Steve couldn't care less about them and what they got exposed too, all that mattered was getting Danny the help that he needed.
He stood up and brushed past his wife to meet the two staff coming forward with the gurney. He started clearing the path for them so they could get through, Junior had also got up and help him. He already knew that they weren't going to let him go with Danny, seeing as they weren't officially done with their quarantines but that wasn't going to stop him from trying.
Tani, on the other hand, had stayed back staring at the pattern in the debris that had landed. No doubt seeing that it had landed in a clear semi-circle.
Tani was smart, she'd figure out that it looked like something had been between them and the blast. Something that Steve wouldn't be able to explain.
And he might have addressed that if two other people in hazmat suis swept in and went straight to Rowan.
"How did you even get in here," one of them asked her.
"Oh I went through the vent," she said pointing up to the ceiling vent she had fallen through.
They looked up, looked back to her and then tentatively asked" "Did… were you wearing a suit?"
"Well I was gonna, I did steal one, but it was too clunky and I couldn't slide right with it on, so I took it off…"
They both collectively took a step back and then they were rushing forward, shouting codes into the walkie talkies on their shoulders. None of those codes sounded like good though.
They started dragging her away and towards the opening, demanding that everyone get back and away from them.
Yeah, Steve wasn't going to listen to them.
"Wait!" Steve cried as he followed after them. "Wait, where are you taking her?"
"She went through the ducts to get to you, while the system does destroy the germs, she no doubt went through the part where it's not disinfected thoroughly yet. We need to get on top of this before they germinate and combine into an even worse hybrid then what you had."
Steve's mouth dropped. She had shielded herself, he knew that, but he couldn't tell any of those people that. He could only watch in a complete panic as they dragged his wife away from him.
He might have freaked out more if he hadn't heard Wo Fat call: "Tell McGarrett I'm following Ro."
As the panic of the whole situation subsided, as the worry about Danny, and the bomb and everything slowly started to fade, Steve found himself getting angry.
He was angry that Danny was going into surgery, and he was still stuck in that room. HE was angry that someone had gotten into his quarantine unit in the first place, with a fucking gun, and had shot Danny. Absolutely livid that he had no idea who that person even was, that not even Danny knew why this man wanted to shoot him.
But he was the most angry that his wife had been taken from him and no doubt was going to be stuck in her own quarantine.
He wanted his wife there with him. He wanted her arms around him, comforting him, because she hadn't had a chance to do that during this whole situation because he had been too busy keeping Danny alive.
He also had absolutely no desire to go back to his house without his wife. He hadn't slept right in a week, he couldn't go another week without her. His team was already complaining about his grumpy nature all through the quarantine, it'll be worse if he was out in the public attempting to work while practically sleep deprived.
Already he was thinking about what he was going to do the second he got cleared… and he doubted anyone was going to be happy with he was deciding to do.
H5O-H5O-H5O-H5O
Rowan lay back in bed, she wasn't showing a single sign or symptom, they had done extensive tests on her blood and found nothing. The problem was, she had an elevated blood pressure, so they were keeping her for observation for at least a week to make sure that nothing was going to develop.
She couldn't tell them that she wasn't going to get anything, that she had protected herself on the way down that shoot with one of her void shields, so she was stuck there until further notice.
Wo Fat had followed her through all of this, standing dutifully out of doors and by windows so she wasn't panicking by herself. She knew that Steve would have been there if he hadn't been in his own quarantine, so she wasn't holding that against him. Though she would have rather had her husband there with her instead.
Wo Fat had Con following both Steve and Danny, making sure that any updates on Danny's surgery and condition were both forwarded to Steve and Wo Fat.
So she knew that Danny had gone into surgery and she knew when Steve had gotten out of quarantine. She was a little upset that he hadn't come to see her when he got out, but Rowan was mid test at that point, and Steve wanted to wait in the waiting room to get the updates on Danny real time.
Con had come to see her, but Wo Fat had shooed him off, telling him to stay with McGarrett, only because he didn't trust him to not get into another situation.
Eventually Wo Fat had to go too. Jian was landing in Hawaii soon and he had was to pick her up at that airport. Rowan was actually really excited to have her soon-to-be sister-in-law living with her, especially since she knew that Wo Fat was very angry with her for this stunt.
He had told her on several occasions while she was getting tested and squared away in her own quarantine room that he was going to throttle her as soon as she was cleared.
At that moment both Steve and Con were waiting together in the waiting room for more updates on Danny. Wo had promised that he'd have Con get Steve to come see her once Danny was out of surgery. Wo Fat was still gone, but he was planning to come back once Jian was settled. And she was lying in her hospital bed, bored of her mind.
She had nothing like Steve and the team had. No big room, no tables, or cots, or separate spaces. She had one room, one had a small hospital bed surrounded by a bunch of medical equipment and then a basically a whole wall of windows. She had her phone but that was about it, because no one had had a chance to get her anything.
Wo Fat had promised to get her guitar and her song book so she could write while she was there, but he wasn't back yet.
She was by herself for maybe an hour, pushing around the horrible hospital food around on the plate in front of her, before the door to her little room opened. She glanced up to find someone in a yellow banana suit coming in. She figured to pick up the dinner she hadn't wanted to eat.
She was hoping she could get Wo Fat to bring her something better. Like mall pretzels. She was really carving mall pretzels and slushies. She had texted him a while ago but he hadn't answered, so she figured he was still busy with Jian
"I'm not done with dinner but I'm also probably not going to finish it so you can take it," she told the guy, too big and stocky to be a girl. "Did you bring me anything to do? I'm dying of boredom."
What a pun considering that they thought she was dying of something else. Slowly the man began to take his suit and respirator off and Rowan recognized him immediately.
Rowan groaned of course it was Steve. Only he would be this stupid.
"Wait, what are you doing? Steve, they think I'm contagious…"
"Yeah, I know," Steve said as he peeled off the rest of the suit. "They're talking about having to create a special vaccine just for you."
Steve was fully desuited and coming towards her. Lucky bastard was in plain civilian clothes. White cargo pants and her favourite blue t-shirt. Despite being mad at him the second he got close enough to her, her hands reached out and tugged him down and onto the bed. She wanted him on top of her, but since she started showing Steve refused. Instead he landed beside her.
"How's the baby?" he asked instead his hand pressing to her finally growing baby bump.
"They did an ultrasound and a bunch of tests. They say he's doing fine."
"Mmmm," Steve murmured, his lips trailing down her jaw in that sensual way that distracted her. "You're gonna get it when we get home, by the way."
"Get out of here before they lock you in too," she said.
Steve shook his head. "No. I'm staying. I don't want you in here alone."
"You were fine with it last time," Rowan snapped. Which also wasn't fair because that incident with the contagious bees had been years ago. Almost a whole lifetime.
"No, I left you with Joe," he said and she nodded, that was true too. He had done that.
"That's not why you're here though," she said softly as he snuggled in closer beside her, pulling the blanket over part of him while also trying to keep her tucked in. "You're here cause you can't sleep without me."
Steve turned those blue eyes up to her, the mischievous twinkle mirrored in that devilish smirk of his. "Fine, you caught me. I know for a fact that I can't do another week without you, so here I am."
"Aw Steve," Rowan groaned. "What about Nahele? He can't be alone!"
But then he pressed the first of what would most likely be many kisses to her lips and she forgot to be mad at him.
"He'll be fine," he whispered against her lips.
"You are such an idiot," she sighed and he responded by slanting his lips properly onto her. It had been so long since she had been in his arms. Seven days had been too much, she had missed him, had missed this too much.
She pressed into his kiss, opened up to him. Her hand went to his head, for his hair and found nothing to run her fingers through, just stubble under her palm and her eyes whipped open right away.
The kissing stopped as Steve knew exactly what was coming now.
For a moment she just stared at him as he kept his eyes pinned on the pillow she was lying on, unable to meet her eyes.
"You see… you see what I mean."
"Yep," he said. "I'll… I mean it's hair, it'll grow back."
She pinned him with a bit of a glare but eventually sighed. "Let's hope it grows back fast."
She didn't want to reward him though so she gave him only the shortest of kisses before pushing back and getting him to stop.
She lay herself back to stare at her husband, the way his eyes were foggy with passion told her exactly where his mind was going, and she would totally be down if there was a big ass window that opened up to the hallway across from her bed.
"Seriously, what are we going to do about Nahele? I know he's old enough to be on his own but a week is too long for him to be in that house by himself."
"He won't be, Wo and Con will keep him company, besides Jian staying at ours until their house is ready."
"Did you ask them before coming in here?"
"Course not, they would have stopped me," Steve said, leaning forward to press the softest of kisses to her nose.
She couldn't help but chuckle at him. "Wo's going to kill you."
It was true, he most definitely would, but she could tell which smile was on her husband's face, she knew the look in his eyes. He didn't give a rat's ass.
"Don't you worry about Wo, he can't get to us in here," he whispered her and then he silenced the rest of her concerns with a kiss to end all kisses.
The only thing that interrupted them was a sudden insistent knocking on the window. By the time they both managed to turn, they could see Wo Fat already moving towards the intercom button.
"Uh-oh," Rowan groaned while Steve just sighed.
"What the actual fuck McGarrett!" Wo shouted. "Didn't you just get tested and cleared?"
"I mean yeah… but I wanted to see Ro. You told me to come see her…"
"Yes. Through the window you absolutely nutcase! Not in the actual room!" Wo cried and Steve just shrugged. "You realize you're going to be stuck int here… right?"
"Yeah… well… it's just gonna be a few more days. It'll be fine," he said with another casual shrug. "Oh, by the way, can you babysit Nahele until we're out?"
Wo Fat threw his hands up in the air, the intercom cutting off and though they couldn't hear him, he was definitely groaning at them. Possibly even swearing in Chinese. He tended to do that when he was super frustrated with either her or Steve.
He put his hand to the intercom again to say: "When you get out of there, both of you are going to owe me, you understand?"
"That's fine," Rowan said. "Did you bring me the guitar and my book… oh and pretzels?"
Wo Fat just glared at her but before he could answer someone called his name. When he turned, though, his hand came away from the intercom and she could hear what was going on anyway, which meant he had it set to continuous broadcasting.
After a moment Con came into view, but he was focusing entirely on Wo Fat.
"You're looking haggard old man," Con said to him. "This can't be good for you, all this stress. Your blood pressure has to be through the roof and you're going grey… through the hair dye."
Wo Fat huffed at him as Con reached across the space between them and into Wo Fat's suit jacket and pulled out the flask he always seemed to have on him. Wo had watched him do it, had let him open up the suit jacket and reach in and then just stood there glaring at him as Con uncapped that flask and took a long swig of it.
But he didn't stop him.
"What's that face for?" Con asked as Wo continued to glare at him. "It could be worse. Your baby sister will be out in a week or so, she's popped a shield so she won't get sick. Danny's out of surgery and alive so we won't have to listen to anyone bitch until the man wakes up. Your bride-to-be is safely in the McGarrett house resting up. All we just have to sit on McGarrett and make sure that he doesn't…"
Wo Fat gestured to the window and Con's eyes followed the motion only briefly before turning back to Wo Fat. It took a moment for him to realize what he saw but when he did, he did a literal double take.
He was pressed against the glass the second he realized who was in that room with her.
"WHAT THE FUCK?!" he cried.
"I had nothing to do with this," Rowan said ignoring the scowl Steve shot at her.
"Now before you freak out…"
"Are you fucking KIDDING ME?!" Con screamed. "For fuck sake McGarrett, you were literally just in the waiting room, you said you were going to the washroom! This is not the fucking washroom!"
Wo Fat just shook his head at him. "I told you to watch him…"
"Oh my god this is not my fault. What did you expect me to do? Follow him into the washroom?"
As the two brothers argued Rowan lay back, one hand gripping Steve's shirt the other running up the arm he had draped around her.
"I missed you," she whispered to him. He took his eyes off of the argument on the other side of their window and then turned back to her with a smile. "But I fucking hate your hair."
Steve sighed. Yeah. He had a feeling she was going to be reminding him of that a lot. He might have cared a little more about being locked in there for a week listening to her bitch about his hair, but lying there beside her, inhaling her scent, her soft body pressed to his, he found he couldn't muster up the energy to care. He was already falling asleep.