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AvalonReeseFanFics
A/N: Happy Friday! Here's your third update! Guys we hit 200 reviews! This is the first story of mine to break 200, I actually cried when I realized this. Thank you for loving this story as much as I do! Anyway, this is closer to a normal chapter length, only 10 pages this time. For all of those who thought Wo Fat was going to pop up again, congrats... YOU WERE RIGHT! I know, this is one helluva plot twist but I promise it's gonna make sense when things start getting explained. Anyone wanna guess what's gonna happen next? I love hearing your theories. A lot of you are usually spot on. I'm gonna try to be a little less obvious from now on though, maybe I'll surprise you. Anyway... see you next Tuesday!
Chapter 28
Rowan never returned.
Steve waited. They had police in the forest searching, helicopters in the air, and a perimeter set. If she had gotten away she could have got to any of them, but none had found her. And no one had spotted Wo Fat either.
Steve twitched all through arresting Bradley Powell, who had been working with Wo Fat. The abandoned warehouse they found Wo Fat had used to hold the Politician and found a phone that proved he had been calling Powell. It was enough, he cracked under pressure. But he couldn't tell anyone if he knew where Rowan was or where Wo Fat would be going with a hostage and on the run.
Still no Rowan though.
He sat on edge on his beach drinking staring out at the water with Danny by his side. Danny tried to comfort him, tell him that he had no other choice but to leave Rowan behind with a murderer. They had an injured congressman to deal with, there was nowhere to land, and Wo Fat was already herding her towards the jungle. They'd find her. They'd find Wo Fat. Everything would be okay.
He drank more when the Governor arrived, as he brought him beer to thank him for his help. He promised to be more honest with Steve and Five-0. Promised to help him with Rowan. Said he'd owe Steve for this favour he had done.
He drank more when Danny announced that the judge sided with him and he and Grace were not going to leave Hawaii. He drank pretending he was celebrating but more than anything it was just calming his nerves. But the searchers found nothing and no one, there was no twinge in his chest and no contact from Rowan.
Then he drank even more when everyone was gone and his house was empty.
The twinge never came. Rowan never appeared. His heart felt like it was about to give out.
He stayed up and paced the floorboards.
The house didn't feel right without Rowan in it. He already knew that. But this was worse than when she had left before. This was because she was in trouble and he didn't know where she was or how to save her. He only knew that something terrible had happened to her at the hands of Wo Fat. He'd find her body in the morning, he was sure.
It wasn't fair. He had just gotten her back. Why had he listened to her when she had asked to come? Why didn't he listen to his gut and make her stay? This was his fault for listening to her. And it was Rowan's for not listening to him.
He had wanted to show to her that he believed her. He had wanted to show her that he trusted her to give him the right information. He wanted to show her that he would use her help, even when he didn't want it. And now she was god knows where, either running from Wo Fat or being cut up by him.
His phone vibrated and Steve dove for it.
Unknown number.
Was Rowan using someone else's phone? It was a text. That was her style. But once he opened it he knew it couldn't possibly be from her.
The text consisted of a single picture. And the second he saw it dread hit him like a truck doing 100 on the freeway and slamming into a barrier.
It was of Rowan. Head slumped, tied to a chair. He couldn't see her face but he knew she was still alive. He could feel it in his bones. He may not have been able to see her breathing, but he knew if she was truly dead he would have felt it. He also figured that Wo Fat would have realized she's worth more to him alive.
A single piece of paper was propped up on her lap.
What are you willing to pay?
It was a loaded question. What was Steve willing to pay to get Rowan back? Alive of course. He probably should have thought about it. Should have found a way to make it seem like it wasn't that big a deal, that there were lines he would be sure not to cross. But his heart had a hold of his fingers and it wasn't about to play with Rowan's life. Before he knew what he was doing he had typed up his answer and sent it off. It was only a single word.
Anything.
H5O-H5O-H5O-H5O
Anything.
Wo Fat stared at the text and then back at the girl who was asleep on a thin cot.
Steven McGarrett was willing to trade him anything to get this girl back? Really? Now he was concerned. Who was she if the great McGarret was this desperate to get her back? How much did this man care about her? Was she of use? Was she just a valued member of the team? Or was she closer to his heart? Wo Fat had been keeping tabs on Steve for months but none of his contacts or shadows had even mentioned a new girl in his life. Had he kept her secret?
The girl stirred, and even though her hands were tied and she was his prisoner, he found himself retreating from her. What if this whole caring business was contagious? Would she infect him the way she had infected Steve?
Wo Fat already felt infected.
When his bodyguard had called and said the girl had escaped he had been angry. Angry because she was a weak and sick young lady and that disappearing act on the roof had been nothing short of magic. She needed help. He was going to get a mob doctor to look at her injuries. He was going to force her to eat. Get her a change of clothes. Throw out that ridiculously stupid shark sweater. And then make her tell him the real story of how she got burns like that on her arms, chest and legs.
But then he had to deal with the Congressman so he sent one of his guys to find the missing girl. She was a redhead in a shark sweater who was probably homeless, she would stick out no doubt. And he went back to trying to get the man to admit he had killed a prostitute when he hadn't.
Seeing her in that helicopter. With Steven McGarrett. Wearing a bulletproof vest had been jarring. He, who trusted no one, who doubted everyone, had not guessed even once that she might have been Five-0. But taking a second look at her fucking bedazzled vest, he was thinking she might not be. No law enforcement agent did that to a bulletproof vest.
But that didn't change the look on Steve's face when she fell. The absolute horror that had dawned on his features. The way he had screamed her name. Her real name. Rowan. Where the hell had she gotten Wicky from that name? Not the point. The way he had watched her as she tried to make him leave without her.
Those faces he made. The fear. The terror. The way his eyes never left her. Steven McGarrett loved this woman. He must have. He had been damn near close to landing that helicopter to get her. And it was lucky for Wo Fat that he didn't. On top of everything he was willing to trade anything to get her back. Wo Fat wondered if he seriously meant it.
The girl stirred again and he found himself pulling his seat away from her. He'd have to be careful with her. She elicited strong and unknown feelings in him. He was worried she might have already infected him with her kindness, with her big blue eyes that begged him to protect her. He shook his head and forced himself to hold onto the anger. She had tricked him once. He wouldn't let her do it again.
H5O-H5O-H5O-H5O
Rowan's head was splitting. Like literally. Her head hurt so much she felt it must have been split open, like a watermelon. She brought a hand up to inspect her injury, to see if her brain was out in the open and she noticed three things.
1. Both hands came up at the same time. So her hands were bound.
2. It hurt to touch her head. Like the tiniest whispers of a touch hurt like someone had hit her with a hammer. Not a good sign.
3. Her fingers came away sticky. Her brain may still be inside her skull but she was definitely bleeding.
Well. Fuck. Judging by the pain, blood and location she was pretty sure she was going to have a Harry fucking Potter type scar above her left eye. This was what? Her fourth head injury? What the hell did this universe have against her head? At this rate she was going to lose all her brain cells.
She groaned and rolled over. Wo Fat sat in a char beside her bed. His arms were crossed over his blue shirt which looked an awful lot like he had been rolling around in the dirt in it, his dark eyes glaring at her. Rowan blinked her eyes at him, sized up her situation and then promptly decided this wasn't worth it.
"I'm in too much pain for this," she muttered and rolled back over.
Wo Fat sat nothing to her. If he was upset by her comment she didn't know. She wasn't looking at him. But Rowan was serious. She wasn't going to deal or acknowledge this situation until her head stopped hurting. Instead she was going to pretend she was back in her bed, waiting for Steve to slip in and wrap his arms around her.
"Look at me," Wo Fat ordered after an unknown length in their stretch of silence. Rowan wasn't certain if she fell asleep or not. If he had wanted her to be social he shouldn't have hit her with a gun. She didn't want to roll over but when she didn't answer he put a hand to her shoulder and forced her to roll over and look at him.
Rowan groaned at the movement and his hand quickly retreated. "Just let me die in peace," she snapped at him. She kept her eyes firmly shut to avoid the glare of the of the one light swinging about Wo Fat's head.
"You're not going to die, Rowan," he growled and only then did she open her eyes.
He knew her name. Of course. Danny and Steve had practically screamed it a million times. Rowan turned her body the whole way around, settling herself so she was more comfortable and then stared at him carefully. He had put distance between them and not just physically. Not they were all that close to begin with but he definitely wasn't about to treat her with the same curtesy as before.
"You hit me over the head with a rifle," she muttered dryly. "That was highly uncalled for."
"You're a spy for McGarrett. It was entirely called for," he shot back.
"I am not a spy. Look at me. Really. Do I look like a spy? Or a cop? Or anyone useful?" she cried. She tried to sit up but got dizzy, immediately she flopped back down to the hard cot. "Oh, I think I have a concussion."
She closed her eyes against the pain and missed the briefest flash of concern that swept over his pointed features. She brought her hands back up to her head trying to block out the light, trying to use the heel of her palms to absorb some of the pounding.
"You work for him though," Wo Fat said after a moment. "You have a Five-0 vest, you were in their helicopter and Commander McGarrett seems quite frantic to get you back."
Rowan turned to look at him. He was? Oh the poor boy. He was probably so worried. Wait… how did Wo Fat know that? Had he already tried to ransom her to McGarrett? What the hell would McGarrett do to get her back? Hopefully nothing too illegal.
"I'm not Five-0," she whispered. "Look at me. Really look at me. I am not Five-0."
He seemed to really look at her for a moment but he didn't agree. "I don't believe you."
Rowan glared at him. "Excuse me?" she snapped.
"You're a liar. I can't believe a thing you say," he said with a flippant shrug of his shoulders.
"I'm a liar?" she echoed. "Yeah. Like everything you told me was the truth, right? Don't be such a hypocrite, Oz."
"Really? Rowan? Because Wicky is so similar to that," he shot back.
Rowan forced herself to sit up. She ignored the dizziness, the spots that formed in her vision and the flip flopping of her stomach. When her vision cleared she saw that Wo Fat was on the edge of his seat, a hand out hovering by her side like he was ready to catch her if she were to fall.
… strange.
"It comes from an old English name for the Rowan tree," she answered primly. "They used to call it the Wicky Tree. So my… friends… called me Wicky as a pet name. Where did Oz come from?"
Wo Fat tilted his chin up in an almost defiance. "I'm always the man working behind the curtain."
"Well you weren't behind the curtains for this little escapade, were you?" she said with a scowl.
"I've had no choice but to come forward, your boss has left me with little to no resources and no other options," he snapped leaning back in his chair.
Rowan groaned again. "I don't work for Five-0, okay? How many times do I have to say it?"
"I'm sorry. I find it strange that you would show up on my doorstep and not a full ten hours later, Five-0 has gotten wind of my plans and location," he reminded her.
"You didn't even tell me anything about what you were doing, how would I have found out?" she shot back and for a moment that smug smile faded from his lips.
"Oh…"
He was starting to believe her and Rowan should have left it at that. But she either couldn't shut up or wouldn't.
"Yeah! They found out about you from a squad car dash cam. Simple as that. As for your location, they traced the call you put on your sniper. He's dead by the way, my condolences," she said.
Wo Fat's eyes narrowed. "How do you know that?" he asked and Rowan froze. Oh fucking shit. He sat a little straighter and then leant forward a dangerous frown on his face. "You wouldn't know that unless you were there when it happened."
"Okay. So I don't work for Five-0, but I spend a lot of time in their company and at their headquarters," she admitted.
As quick as a viper he had stood up, a gun pulled from somewhere behind him and put into her face. "Stop lying to me!" he thundered.
Rowan cringed, she brought her hand up, brought her knees up and leant away. "I'm not lying," she cried, tears were brimming in her eyes. "I'm not. It's just hard to explain!"
"Try me," came from the silence and Rowan pulled her head out from behind her hands and looked up to him. The pistol was still in her face but she could tell from his face that she was on her last chance.
"Can you put the gun away?" she asked. He merely glared at her and she took a shaky breath. "My name is Rowan Pierce. I don't exist."
The gun lowered a fraction and when she hazarded another glance up she saw him staring at her with a perplexed sort of glare. "What do you mean?"
"About six months ago, I dropped out of the sky and into the ocean. Steve and Danny were fishing and spotted me. I had no recollection of who I was or where I came from. The doctors say the trauma of my incident hit me with some sort of amnesia. I could only remember my name." she whispered. She was lying of course. It was a story she and Steve had rehearsed for hours to protect her. It was the only way to explain her lack of a life before appearing on Hawaii. It wasn't like they could admit that she had dropped out of a different reality. They'd think they were both crazy.
"Steve helped me get an identity. But that's all I have. A health card and US Citizen ship. I have no birth certificate, no bank account, and no recorded life before this. He did a search for my name and used my DNA but I didn't come up anywhere. So… we just decided to wait until I remembered. And he… uhm… well he let me stay with him," she continued.
"He's Jamie, isn't he?" Wo Fat asked. The gun had been lowered but he was still standing above her. Rowan took a deep breath, swallowed her fear and then nodded. "You said he didn't feel the same way."
Rowan lifted her eyes again. "But he doesn't," she told him. "I'm serious, he really doesn't."
"He doesn't act like it," Wo Fat said.
"Well he's never confirmed it with me, so I don't know what you want me to say," she grumbled.
"So, you lived with McGarrett, and he what, just takes you to work with him? Why would he willingly put you in danger like that?" he asked. "Why didn't he just leave you at the Iolani Palace to come after me? Why were you in the helicopter?"
"This is the part that you're not going to believe," she warned him. He gestured for her to continue and she decided to just get straight to the point. "I'm psychic."
Wo Fat laughed, his gun hand went down, resting by his side. "Psychic? You expect me to believe that? You expect me to believe that McGarrett believes that? You're out of your mind."
"No, it's true. I can prove it," she said. "I can tell you something about yourself that only you know."
He had turned away from her, tucking the gun back into the waist band of his pants. He turned back to her now and smiled mockingly at her. "Oh can you?"
"Doris raised you. That's why she didn't shoot you and that's why you're scared of her," she whispered and that smile faded right off his lips. He looked horrified. So she quickly added: "I haven't told Steve. He doesn't know that yet."
"Yet?" he asked, a treacherous tone in his voice.
"I mean, he's a very determined man. He'll find it out on his own eventually," she told him and Wo Fat swore.
"Doris could have told you," he said after a moment.
Rowan just stared at him. He got the implication in the glare. Came to the same conclusion. Doris wouldn't have told her shit.
"Okay, so Steve believes your psychic. He lets you work with him, takes you with him on dangerous missions, it doesn't explain how I found you water logged and tortured," he told her.
Oh, now this one she didn't quite have a lie for. She was going to have to make it up as she went. "Oh. Uhm. Well. Part of the problem is that Steve doesn't quite believe me. So I give him info and tips and he ignores them. Which leads to me running off to try and prevent bad things from happening and then Steve would have to come rescue me from whatever trouble I had gotten myself into. The last one was the Halawa prison riot."
Wo Fat's eyes whipped up to her. "You were the girl who took down Kaleo?" he asked.
"You know about that?" she asked instead.
"I helped Delano get Kelly into the prison," Wo Fat said.
Rowan took both her hands and smacked his leg. "What a terrible thing to do!"
"The pay made it worth it," he snapped back, moving away so she couldn't hit him again. The fact that he didn't just flat out shoot her or hit her back was a shock to her. "So you got into the riot, McGarrett had to save you. Then what?"
"We had a really big argument and he told me to leave," she told him. Wo Fat scoffed. "Obviously I had nowhere to go. And a girl in my position can't get a legitimate job. So I picked up a job running drugs. I'm really good at it, people just let me walk in and out of places, never really giving me a second glance and most cops don't look at me and think, yeah, she's got drugs. But then one of the guys I was delivering too recognized me as the girl who was following Steve around and he just sort of took me. Wanted to use me to get info on HPD movements but I don't know that sort of stuff."
Wo Fat reached down and pulled out her arms looking at her burns. "Cigarette burns," he murmured.
"Nope," she said with a shake of her head. "Heated up metal pole, like a brand."
"Names," he growled and she furrowed her eyebrows at him.
"Why? Why do you care?" she asked. He dropped her hands like they were hot coals and took a step back. "Besides, I don't know their names. I didn't think to get them, I only wanted to get away."
"How did you get away?"
"Slipped my ropes. Snuck out of the room they had me in. And then jumped off the side of the boat," she replied.
"You swam all the way back to shore?" he asked incredulously. Rowan merely shrugged. "No wonder you were so tired."
"So… are we good now? Can I go?" she asked him.
Wo Fat laughed, the sound hollow and spine tingling. "Oh no, my dear. You're not going anywhere," he told her. He smiled down at her that grin glittering and sharp. "You're too precious to let go."
Rowan just stared at him. Oh. Holy. Shit. This did not bode well.
H5O-H5O-H5O-H5O
Trevor Pierce was an only child. That was what he had thought. Until he was ten years old and his parents split up. His parents had been his whole world, yes mum had been quiet and withdrawn, yes, she cried over tiny things and yelled at his dad over stupid little things. Yes, his dad threw himself into his research, yes he was rarely home, yes he kind of devolved from being a cool scientist like the ones you saw in movies, to a bit of a mad scientist. But they were his parents and he loved them.
So to find out that they were getting a divorce because neither of them could get over the loss of his baby sister was a bit of a fucking shock to a ten year old who had thought that he was an only child.
Trevor had been two when his mother fell pregnant with the fated child that would eventually end their family, so it wasn't surprising that he didn't remember the whole affair. He didn't remember being excited when mummy went to the hospital with daddy and he had to stay with grandma. He didn't remember asking where his new sister was when they came home and being told not to ask anymore. They told him to stop asking so he did and he forgot about her entirely.
At ten, finding out that you have a sister, a dead sister, and your parents couldn't get over losing her was pretty shitty. It left him wondering why he hadn't been enough to keep them together. What had been so special about his little sister, who hadn't even technically lived, that made it impossible for them to forget her and move on with their lives?
By the time the divorce was over Trevor was livid with this little sister. How dare she not live and derail all their lives? How dare she have a hold on his parents so tight that it dictated their happiness and therefore Trevor's as well? He spent the rest of his adolescent and teen years trying to be enough. Trying to make his mother smile, trying to keep his father from descending even further into his mad obsession.
But nothing he ever did was good enough. By the time he hit those angry teen years he had had enough. If his parents wanted to wallow in self-pity over a baby that had never lived then he was going to let them. He focused on his own goals, male Olympic figure skater. Then best figure skating choreographer when it became clear that he wouldn't be able to skate his own way into the Olympics and he couldn't find a partner he liked or trusted enough to get into the Olympics in the pairs division.
And while he achieved the second goal, his parents were still blind to his achievements. Oh they said they were proud, they always smiled at him and told him how wonderful he was, and he was grateful for that. But his parents never recovered. His mother drank and wallowed in misery half of the time, dedicating her free time to charities and organizations for women who went through what she did. His father spiralled farther down the rabbit whole until he became almost a recluse with his research.
It was his father's approval he wanted the most. His father's attention. But Trenton Pierce was a distracted man. He rarely spent time out of his lab, let alone with his son. Trevor tried not to let that get to him. He tried not to let it bother him, but it did.
So when his father reached out to him, asked him to come to his lab in Toronto to help him with an experiment, Trevor jumped on the opportunity. He acted like he had better things to do, of course, but inside he was freaking out.
All Trevor had to do was point a gun, a giant thing with a silver hook on it. He had to invasion the thing he wanted to pull through all the different dimensions and press the trigger.
Trenton Pierce had been trying to move an object through the space between the realities for years. All of his experiments had been failures. Trevor expected nothing less.
But that night, when his father opened a swirling black portal in front of him, when he felt that blast of cool air hit his face, saw the twinkling lights winking at him from the other side, Trevor Pierce believed.
He shot the hook out into the dark just as his father had asked. But his heart and mind didn't turn to an object.
Looking into that swirling void he saw all the opportunities, all the possibilities. A limitless universe. Where he could be anything. Where anything was possible.
He thought of his family and how happy they used to be. Of his mother who carried the burden of grief and refused to let go. Of his father who dedicated his life to searching for other realities better than the one he was in.
So Trevor Pierce closed his eyes and focused. With all his heart. With all his soul. He willed that hook to travel through the void and get the one thing his family needed.
His sister.
He had felt the hook connect. He had felt the stinging jerk vibrate up his fingers. He had tried to reel it in but it snapped half way. The hook gone, the chain severed, nothing for them to show. He thought his father would be disappointed but he wasn't. He got readings, he said, readings from the hook. And more readings to come from his friends tracking the particles in different areas of the world.
Trenton had gone on a mile a minute about it but Trevor hadn't listened. Instead he had sat numbly disappointed that he had let this opportunity slip him by.
The weeks after that Trevor dreamed of the void. He couldn't seem to stop himself. He dreamed of a hook pulling a girl through the darkness. Her red and blonde hair floating around her like she was immersed in water. She looked trapped. Her eyes closed. Stuck forever in a sleep state.
He dreamed he was search for that girl. But she kept moving. Flickering in and out of place. But when he touched her. When his finger graced the hollow of her back, right between her shoulder blades her eyes snapped open. And then he was downing in pools of electric blue.
The Piercing Pierce Eyes.
He'd awake from his dreams with an ache in his heart that would follow him all day. He found himself yearning for her. Wanting to hear her voice. Wanting to reach out and touch her. Sometimes out of the corner of his eyes he'd see her standing beside him but he'd turn and she'd be gone as quickly as she came. It felt like she was haunting him.
After that, the dreams turned more violent. He dreamed of red vines wrapping around him and squeezing the life out of him. The thorns would press into his skin cutting him deeply. They would lash out at his limbs as he tried to pull her back to him. Every night they would attack him until finally, one night he lost his grip.
And the dreams stopped.
Losing the dreams was like losing his family all over again. It crushed him. Defeated him. He had already returned to his home in Victoria BC and tried to lose himself in his work. But he couldn't get those blue eyes out of his head. That girl, a head or two shorter then him, with his eyes, his dad's nose and his mother's smile. He wanted to know her. He wanted to imagine that she'd be the best little sister ever. Sure she'd drive him crazy and he'd sometimes think he hated her, but in the end she'd always have his back and he'd always have hers.
He was mourning a relationship he'd never have, never got to chance to have. He suddenly understood why his parents hadn't been able to get over losing her. She had so much potential. She could have been anything. Instead she was just dead.
Trevor told himself to stop thinking about the sister he couldn't have. He told himself to move on with his life. His father had other ideas.
Six months after the incident Trenton called his son in the middle of the night. He had been collecting data, conferring with other scientists and he had concluded that their experiment had been a success. They had just lost the object before it reached its intended destination. If his data was correct, if the readings were right, their object was somewhere in the water a good 20 clicks off of Oahu.
Fear punctured Trevor's heart. He hadn't told his father what he was really trying to pull through. If he had actually succeeded in pulling something through from another dimension, then it was his sister. But if she had landed in the middle of the ocean had she survived?
It was with that fear pressing heavily on his heart that Trevor packed up an overnight bag and flew to Hawaii with his father. Knowing sooner or later he'd have to tell his father what it was he did that night he shot the hook into the void.
He might have just made things worse.