Rewrite
AvalonReeseFanfics
A/N: Oh my god guys! We've ALREADY hit 175 reviews! Wow, you guys are just too good to me and I'm totally loving your feedback. So I have a bit of a request, does anyone think we can get to 185 by next Tuesday? I think we can do it! Keep hitting that review button! So, the next couple of chapters are going to be a bit longer, I believe this chapter is about 10 pages long and I usually keep it around 7-8. We're going to have a lot of drama coming up and instead of breaking it up into a million smaller chapters I just elongated them. Hopefully that's okay, not too much reading. There's an exceedingly cute moment in this chapter too (or at least I think so). Tell me if you agree! I've got a lot of people wondering about Wo Fat, and I'll admit I'm going to be changing up his plot line a bit in this story, but that's going to be a surprise as we go on. And yes, Steve's being a real jerk right now but it's going to be explained. Hopefully you guys put up with me until then! Don't forget to tell me what you think about the ultra cute moment and as always, see you next week!
Chapter 25
Rowan awoke to crisp clean sheets and an unfamiliar warmth. She bolted up expecting a foreign body but found herself surrounded by pillows and covered in blankets. She was in a hotel room, she was missing her sweater and her shoes and she had met Steve's nemesis—Wo Fat. Not only was she alive, but she was now in a posh looking hotel room. His doing no doubt but what did he want from her? Did he know about her and Steve?
Her heart chose that moment to remember its grief. It cracked under the strain of the pain. There was no she and Steve. There never was and there never would be.
"You were cold," a deep voice said breaking her out of her thoughts so much so that she found herself yelping and throwing herself out of the bed. She landed on the floor, her body jolting painfully and she had to force herself to bite back her cry of pain.
"Skittish thing, aren't you?"
Rowan peeked over the edge of the bed. Wo Fat stood in front of the door blocking her only exit. He was fiddling with his cufflinks, wearing a nice suit as if he didn't have a political candidate to harass and torture. He was smaller than she thought he'd be, he was skinny as a twig, no defining muscles that she could see, and he was at least a few heads shorter than Steve. But taller than her. Why was everyone taller than her?
"My name is Oz," he said. Lying to her outright. Not that he knew she already knew who he was. Well she could lie to him too.
"I'm Wicky," she said softly, ignoring the way her heart bled to hear that precious pet name for the first time since she was torn from her home.
"Wicky?" he echoed. "Are you lying to me?"
"My name is as real as Oz is to you," she shot back. This earned her a chuckle.
"Alright. Fair," he said. "You can stop hiding, I won't hurt you."
Well it wasn't like she had any other options. Reluctantly she got up and rubbed her bare arms where her goose flesh was bubbling up. Where was her sweater? He better not have thrown it out, that had sentimental value. It had been a gift after all.
"It's drying in the washroom," he said answering her unasked question. "You must be hungry, would you like to order something?"
Rowan's stomach grumbled just at the mention of food, but she knew that he wouldn't offer her anything for free.
"And what do you want in return?" she asked her eyes narrowed in distrust.
"A story," he answered taking another step close to her. "Your story."
"My story isn't all that interesting," she said with a shake of her head.
"I found you half drowned, half starved, burn marks and bruises littering half of your body," he listed off. "I do believe that's all the hallmarks of an interesting story."
He wasn't going to let this go. And if she was being honest she was really too tired to argue. And she was really, really, hungry. He was international criminal he could afford to pay for one meal for her.
"Fine, one cheeseburger, fries and a chocolate milkshake and that story's yours," she said trying to make her grin seem like a normal one.
The smile that answered her was a completely acidic one. She wasn't sure he had any other default but it sent shivers up her spine none-the-less.
H5O-H5O-H5O- H5O
It was her eyes that got him. Sky blue, sapphires twinkling in the night sky. Defiant, untrusting, and filled with the kind of fire he only saw in himself. She wouldn't be trustful, her loyalty was the fierce kind and he could tell that she had given it to someone else. He'd have to earn even small amounts of her trust, he'd be working for months just to get her to let him in. And he didn't have months to spend on her.
She devoured the burger he had brought up to his room. Too quickly. It would come back up. Not that it would affect him he'd be gone by then. He did have business with that politician after all.
She was on the fries when the story came. He was sitting in a chair across from her, she was wrapped up in the blankets on the bed, picking each fry up with care and setting it to a rigorous selection process that he was unfamiliar with.
"I'm a long way from home. I… I got lost," she told him. "I've been staying with this guy, a friend. He took me in, his name is… James, Jamie. He had a girlfriend and I knew that, but he was over protective, and always with me and I guess I fell harder than I thought I did. And I had thought he had started to feel the same way."
Ah, that's who she thought he was in the car.
"But he didn't want me," her voice cracked. His back straightened an inch. It seemed inconceivable that an attractive girl like her was not wanted? He may not have been a normal person with normal people emotions, but he assumed nice pretty girls got all the guys. "I'm a lot of trouble, I'm annoying, and I made his life harder so he told me to leave. Since then I've been trying to get home, but I can't get a job and I can't find my way. I'm stuck here."
She was trying not to cry and he was trying not to question her. Her story made no sense. He sensed that she was holding a lot of her story back. Omitting facts, hiding things, stretching the truth thin to cover the story she didn't want to share with him.
"That explains none of your injuries," he growled. She was slowing down on the food. She was starting to feel ill, he could tell. He watched her look down to her arms, where the bruises stood out against the pale of her skin and some of her burn marks had begun to peel and bubble.
"I fell off a boat," she answered. "Multiple times."
She was lying. He could tell. Was he to pressure her? Make her talk? He was used to taking whatever he wanted, making people talk was his specialty but he couldn't and wouldn't use those tactics on her.
"Remind me to keep you off all boats," he said with a wry smirk. He glanced to his watch, he was running behind. He didn't have time for this anymore but this was far from over. "Maybe when I get back you could tell me the whole story, not just the highlights and lies. Over dinner hmm?"
Her eyes widened. "Oh, that's a nice offer, but I was going to go… try to get home again."
He felt his devious smile play across his lips, liked the way it struck a chord of fear in her. "Maybe. But for now you're staying here. I'll be back in a few hours."
He walked to the door before she could say anything else and shut it deftly behind him. He turned to the man he had posted here when they came in.
"Don't let her leave," he said to him in perfect Japanese.
The man nodded and as Wo Fat left he heard the first of Wicky's retching from the other side of the door.
H5O-H5O-H5O- H5O
Rowan was screwed.
She needed to get out of this hotel room before Wo Fat came back.
But she was tired and sore. She wasn't that much hungry anymore even though she had thrown up most of what she had eaten. She didn't have enough energy in her to muster up any of the emotions she needed to get into the void.
She could call Steve. He would come. Maybe. Probably just for Wo Fat alone, since Steve didn't want her. But she couldn't bring herself to pick up the phone. She selfishly wanted Steve to find her, to rescue her, to want her back. But at the same time she didn't want to be his pet damsel.
She could get herself out of this. She just had to be smart about it. She knew there was a man by her door, he kept pacing up and down the hall. How no one called him in for suspicious behaviour was beyond her.
She had put her sweater back on, irregardless of the fact that it was still damp. She could get out of this. She didn't need Steve. What she needed was a plan.
She took a deep breath and opened the door. He was in front of her immediately. He too was in a nice suit and had round Asian features.
"Can you help me? I've… I've kinda thrown up… everywhere" she said lowering her eyes to feign embarrassment. "I'm too embarrassed to get housekeeping… can you call them for me?"
She put on her quivering lips and batted her blue eyes at him. He sighed, pushing her back into the room. Once the door shut he crossed to the phone. He took his eyes off of her to dial and that was all she needed to rip the door open and fall out into the hallway.
She took off in a dead sprint but she didn't run for the elevator. She ran for the stairs. But she didn't go down she went up. And not for the reasons that the girls in horror movies picked. This was all part of her plan. She took the stairs two at a time, her guard right behind her, just a few landings below. She ran even though her legs protested and her lungs burned. Her fear spurred her forward until she reached the roof. She slammed the door behind her and looked for a good place to hide. The best place was behind the small building that covered the stairs. She stepped behind it and heard the door open and the first of her guard's inquiries as to where she was.
She needed to travel. Now. She needed to go home. She didn't call on her rage or her grief, she called on her fear. Her desperate need to be anywhere but there at this point.
She felt the shift. The familiar pain between her shoulder blades, the burn of electricity through her veins, bursting through her skin reopening the wounds on her arms and legs. The sense of utter calm overwhelmed her again and with one step she walked straight into the voice.
For the first time since she left the feeling of home sang through her bones. It was easier to move, she felt guided and sure. She had finally found the way home.
H5O-H5O-H5O- H5O
He dreamed of the void.
He dreamed of red string, white lights and that silver chain he thought he had destroyed.
He dreamed of Rowan, floating up and away from him, leaving the binds of the red string behind. He didn't think about the consequences. Without a second thought he gripped those red strings with both hands and used them to rip her out of the sky.
And then he dreamed of the way she fell through the void as if she had been dropped into water. Her eyes a hot white dying and fading to a dull blue. Her arms outstretch beckoning him. That red strings cascading outwards from her heart.
Twisting around him. Twisting around her. Binding them together.
That silver chain hovered, calling, wanting, blinking in the darkness. But it couldn't get through the web of red. Couldn't reach her. It strained. It struggled. It cut through the red strings and he felt it as if it had cut his own skin.
Then he was falling for real and it was time to get up.
Steve bolted up in his bed, a film of sweat coating his body. He was breathless and a lingering pain ebbed out of his chest even though he was still rubbing his sternum in an almost absent fashion. He couldn't explain it. He wasn't even going to try.
But he knew, with an earth-shattering clarity that Rowan was in trouble. And he knew exactly where she was too.
He threw himself out of bed, gathering up his clothes in one hand while he tried to text with his other. Please god let Chin be awake.
Catherine pushed herself up slowly turning to him and sleepily asking: "What's the matter? Did you catch a case?"
"No," Steve said. "I know where Rowan is. She's in trouble."
Catherine was wide awake now. Her brown eyes peering at him hard. "So send HPD to go and get her."
Steve paused. He couldn't do that. He should do that. But he didn't want to. He didn't know what kind of trouble Rowan was in, he'd never forgive himself if something happened to Duke or one of the other cops because he sent them into a battlefield.
"There's no time," he said instead. "I have to go get her."
Catherine shifted in the bed, now sitting with her legs over the side, covering herself up with the blankets. "You're doing it again, Steve,' she said sounding utterly disappointed. He tried to brush off the sting but he was starting to get frustrated again. He didn't know how to make his position any clearer with her.
"You can't or won't tell me how you know she's in danger, you won't send someone else to get her, you're certain it has to be you to go get her. You're doing it again. You're letting her control and delude you again," she complained.
That was it. The final straw. Rowan had not been manipulating him. She had been running from him. He had sent her away for Catherine. He had shattered whatever relationship that he had cultivated with her, that small smidgen of trust he had earned probably all gone. He had destroyed himself in the process. All for Catherine. And she couldn't even be grateful.
"Catherine!" he shouted and then stopped himself. He took a deep breath to try and calm himself before continuing. He turned to her so she could see his face. "I can't tell you, you won't believe me. You didn't before and you won't now."
"Oh not this again," Catherine groaned. "Steve she is not some time traveller with other worldly knowledge."
Steve shook his head. "Then don't ask me for what you don't want to believe in," he ordered.
"Do you really believe all that Steve? Truly? You think she knows the future. Your future specifically? And you and her are intertwined by fate and you know where she is and that she's in trouble," she asked him.
He knew it was crazy. But he didn't know what else to say. It was true. There was no other explanation for what was happening to him.
"No, Cath, I don't believe in that stuff. And I wouldn't except it's happening to me. It's happening to me right now. I have felt each and every attempt she's made to try and go back home and maybe it's because I spent so long trying to ground her here, who knows. But it feels like a heart attack, like I can't breathe, like the life is slowly being squeezed out of me. And now she's out there somewhere and she needs me, so I'd greatly appreciate it if you stopped hitting me with guilt trips and let me go get her!"
Catherine watched him get changed. Watched him get impatient with Chin and call him with his request. It wasn't until he made it to the door that she spoke again.
"You love her, don't you?" she asked.
"No. I… I don't know," Steve cried. "All I know is that everyone I care about leaves me. My mom left me, Lori got sent away and even you leave. And don't get me wrong, I'm proud of you, Cath, and I would never want you to stop doing what you're doing. I'd never ask you to stop doing your job. But I had one person who stayed, who saw everything I had to offer and didn't run, who worked to take care of me even if I didn't want it. And that was Rowan."
She stared at him for a moment. She took in the look on his face before slowly looking down to her hands. "If you leave, Steve, I won't be here when you get back," she warned, her voice low and her eyes clear when she raised them up to stare him in the eye. Every bit as serious as he was. "Then I'll really be another person who leaves."
Steve shook his head. He didn't know why she had to do this, but he didn't have time to argue with her anymore. "Fine Cath. Do what you have to do."
And then he walked away.
H5O-H5O-H5O- H5O
She fell. Down. Down. Down. Splash.
And then she sunk.
She had almost been home. She was almost there and then those stupid red strings got tangled up in her legs and ripped her right back down to where she began.
She had to fight her way back up to the surface. Breaking free of the water and gasping for air. The night loomed around her, she saw no stars or moonlight in the sky above her. Winds whipped around her causing the waves to throw her around. She saw no land. No lights to guide her. She was lost at sea. In the middle of the night.
She had never been dropped this far from shore before. She had never been this tired before either. This was it. She was going to die. She was going to either get eaten by sharks or just drown. She couldn't get home. She couldn't help Steve and his friends. And she couldn't save herself.
She lay herself back in the water staring up at the empty black sky letting the water toss her around like a limp doll. Sometimes she'd go under and she'd have to claw her way back to the surface but she was attempting to minimize the amount of movement she was creating.
She was ready to give up. Ready to stop trying when a light passed over the horizon. Rowan straightened. A boat? A boat was out here in these rough waters? She'd have to get them to see her.
"ROWAN?"
A boat that was looking for her? It may have been her imagination but that voice had sounded familiar. But… Steve wouldn't come looking for her? Would he?
"Rowan!"
That time it sounded like Chin. No, that couldn't be right, it couldn't be, she was losing her mind, clearly.
"ROWAN! ANSWER ME!"
Steve.
It was Steve. Steve had found her. He was out here. In the middle of the night. On a boat. In rough waters. Simply to find her?
"Here!" she answered and immediately the spot light was on her. Rowan began to swim towards the boat, the waves not helping her, her legs and arms tired and failing to move her anywhere.
She heard a cry of her name again and then a splash. Steve was in the water. He surfaced in front of her, swimming quickly to her side.
"I'm okay," she tried to tell him, but a wave swept over her head and forced her down. Before she could even try to get herself back up to him, his arms wrapped around her chest and he practically ripped her back to the surface.
He dragged her back to the boat. Despite her protests and telling him she could swim. Chin helped her get up wrapping her up in a blanket. Rowan had never been so happy to see familiar faces before in her life.
Steve was on her in a second he was out of the water. Shoving Chin aside so he could put his hands on her shoulders. "Fuck Rowan," he said. "Fuck."
It was so ridiculous. This whole situation. The fact that he found her. The fact that she was so god damn happy to see him, to feel his touch. Tears welled up in her eyes. Tears of relief. Tears of fear. Streaming down her face before she could stop them.
"I couldn't get home," she said to him. "I tried to do as you said but I couldn't get home."
Steve pulled her into a hug, holding her tightly to his chest. She could feel his heart racing, could feel a tremor in his fingers as they clung to her through the blanket, could feel the raggedness of his breathing.
"You are home," he said to her.
And for that moment, as she closed her eyes against his shoulder, she believed him.
H5O-H5O-H5O- H5O
Catherine hadn't left when Steve did. She calmly got dressed and waited. She was going to fight for him. Fight him until he saw sense. But when Steve finally came back home, with Rowan in tow, of course, he was so absorbed in Rowan that he didn't notice her. So Catherine stayed quiet. Determined to witness some of his infamous clingy behaviour with Rowan.
It started almost right away, their hands intertwined until they got to the stairs. Rowan took one step and collapsed. Steve immediately stooped down to pick her up. Catherine could see, by the state of Rowan, that something very traumatic had happened. She was covered in bruises, in red bubbling burns the size of quarters, she was soaking wet and reeked of salt. She was three sizes thinner than she was before she left. She was positively skeletal.
This wasn't a fake collapse for attention. Rowan was too weak to walk.
"Come on," Steve had whispered to her. He too was soaking wet. "We'll have a hot bath and then you'll lie down…"
"I want to go home," was Rowan's response. "I was almost there. I was almost home."
"It's killing you, Ro," Steve argued. "It's killing me too. You need to stop. We need more information before we start jumping realities."
"I don't want to stay here," Rowan was repeating. "I want to go home."
Whatever Steve said next was lost as he walked up the stairs. She only heard the deep timber of his voice rumbling through the walls.
Was she wrong about Rowan? Was she really not manipulating him? She heard the sound of the water cascading into the tub after that. Steve was still in the bathroom with her. She didn't know what was going on but Steve never left the washroom.
Catherine waited until they came out. Steve had taken his shirt off, a towel around his shoulders. Rowan seemingly had no clothes and was wrapped in a towel. He took her into his room, where he tossed her one of his huge sweaters for her to wear, which dwarfed her and he changed out of his damp clothes as well, choosing to put his shorts back on and his navy tank top he liked so much. They didn't stay in Steve's room once they were dressed, he took her into to her room where Rowan found a pair of shorts to put on. By the time Catherine had managed to silently move out of the shadows and into a position where she could see through the door they were already lying in the bed. Rowan was facing him but they weren't talking.
Rowan was asleep. Steve was wide eyed and staring at her. His eyes caressing her features, drinking her in like he was amazed she was lying in front of him. Then his fingertips traced the outline of her. Over each bruise on her arm, each burn, each scab, and each scar. His fingertips lightly traced the features of her face, over her lips, her nose, her eyes. Catherine turned away when Steve sunk his fingers into Rowan's hair with a barely stifled moan and then pulled her forehead to his.
She had every right to be angry. She had every right to hate Rowan for coming back. But then again... Rowan had been gone for six days. And those six days had clearly shattered her. It hadn't been good for Steve either who was a twitching, grumpy mess that complained of frequent chest pains. Still she couldn't get that image out of her head. Rowan's slim fingers gripping his shirt right above his heart. His hand sunk into her hair. Their foreheads pressed together.
It was the kind of motion she had wanted Steve to show her. The kind of motions she rarely got. Though to be fair, Steve had just gone to rescue Rowan from God knows what. He never had to rescue Catherine.
She didn't think she'd be able to sleep but she managed. She stayed in Steve's bed alone, thinking about what she wanted to do. She wanted to talk to Steve. She wanted to get him to send Rowan to a psych ward. Maybe if she phrased it in a way where she seemed to only care about Rowan's mental health maybe he'd agree. Once Rowan was committed she could work on unloosening the hold Rowan had on Steve.
But when she woke up in the morning it was Rowan who was up early and not Steve. He lay asleep in her bed, his arm outstretched over the empty space that been Rowan as if she were still there. Rowan was already in the kitchen making coffee. Catherine went down the stairs, ready to talk some sense into Rowan. To ask her what had happened last night, ask her where she had been, gauge how crazy she was so she could get her committed.
"Rowan," she said softly and Rowan yelped whirling around with her hand pressed to her chest.
"Oh god. You scared me," she said. "I didn't know you were here."
"Are you okay? Steve said you were in some sort of danger last night," Catherine said eyeing the girl a little bit more carefully in the sunlight.
Her eyes had sunken in, big giant bags under her eyes told Catherine she hadn't been sleeping. Covered in burn marks, up her arms, down her legs, across her chest and even some on her neck. Bones jutted from skin, she could see the sinews of her collar bones. Bruises highlighted her joints. Rowan looked a wreck.
"Oh. I fell off a boat," she said. She turned back to the counter to continue to make coffee. "Not sure how he knew that, but he fished me out. That's all."
She had been adrift at sea and Steve had found her? How? Had his internal compass actually pointed him in the right direction? That was some next level version of intuition.
"You didn't fall out of a different reality?" Catherine asked and finally Rowan turned back to her.
"Steve told you," she murmured. It wasn't a question but a statement. "And you don't believe him."
"It's pretty fucking farfetched," Catherine said folding her arms over her chest. "It's more likely that you're sick. You need help. He should be helping you to get that help not coddling you and perpetuating your insanity."
Rowan's glare darkened. It was the first time that the girl truly looked terrifying. There was a moment of intensely charged silence in which Catherine sized Rowan up already deciding what maneuver she'd use if the girl attacked her. But it didn't have to come to that. Rowan carefully put the mug she was clinging to down and set a stare on Catherine so withering it actually raised the hairs on the back of her neck.
"What if I could prove it to you," she asked. "Would you believe him then?"
Catherine picked up on that. That she was asking if she would believe Steve. Not her. She wanted Catherine to believe Steve. She was already walking towards Catherine coming to stand on the other side of the kitchen island.
"You can't prove something like that, Rowan," Catherine said. She didn't like the way Rowan was staring at her. Her gaunt features seemed to have transformed her into something a little less cuddly and a little more dangerous. Her blue eyes weren't a twinkling sea blue, but a glinting dangerous pale blue like liquid steel.
"But if I could. If I proved to you that I'm not from here. Would you listen then?" she asked.
Catherine nodded, if it was proven to her without a doubt, yes she would believe. But Rowan couldn't do that. Or at least, Catherine didn't think she could.
Rowan's eyes closed. Her face began to twist, she curled up into her chest as if she were folding into herself. Rowan groaned like she was in agony, like she was struggling to hold back screams. But it was the crackling that scared Catherine, the glow of something reaching out from Rowan's back. She straightened, vertebra by vertebra, her hair was flowing around her like she was underwater, and bolts of orange electric lighting flew from her, striking out at appliances and metal objects cracking open her skin to escape her. Her eyes found Catherine's and they were white. Pure white and glowing in a misty orb sort of way. Her face clear of pain, clear of any sort of emotion at all.
Catherine tried to scream, she tried to move away, but Rowan's hand grabbed her arm and then they weren't in Steve's kitchen anymore.
The first thing she noticed was the light. She was surrounded by it. From all sides. Twinkling lights like stars and one large one floating ominously in the distance behind Rowan like a spectre closed off by a wall of red webbing. The light behind it pulsed letting off a misty sort of miasma that coated the red webbing with ice. The twinkling light around them also had strings, each a different color, that flowed and ebbed around them like tendrils of smoke.
Catherine couldn't breathe. It was like the air had been sucked out of her, but Rowan either couldn't or wouldn't let go. She was bound in spot by the same red strings that were weaving a wall between her and that pulsing ghost light. The strings were like vines, crawled up and down her body, encircling her, she didn't look like she would be able to move. Rowan jerked, like something was pulling her back. The red strings were gathering up behind her, churning and twisting. It was from behind her that Steve appeared. The strings bound him up to her, which wasn't hard as he was reaching out for Rowan. He had a frantic look on his face, fear and concern was driving him forward.
He made contact with Rowan. His arms gripping her around her torso and then they tumbled out of the void immediately. Rowan's grip on Catherine faltered and Catherine took that opportunity to rip herself out of her grasp. She fell back against the stove gasping for air desperately trying to remember how to breathe.
Steve stood across from her holding a limp Rowan in his arms. Blood leaked from the burns on her arms, blood was slowly beginning to seep out of her nose. Steve was holding her, shaking her, trying to determine if she was okay, if she was alive.
Catherine finally believed.