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AvalonReeseFanFics

A/N: Well, this is it. The last of the marathon. I'm both happy and sad that it's over. So do you guys wanna know what I'm the most excited for? (other than this one shot for Christmas). For the new year. I'm super excited for the new year. Let me tell you. My goal, I'm not sure if I'm going to get there but I'm gonna try. My goal is to be more than half way through the Season 4 by the end of December or just 30 or more chapters a head of what I'm posting to that in the new year... I can post twice a week. What do you think? Sound good? Here's hoping I can actually do it! Side note, we're almost there. We're almost to 300 don't forget to review. Please remind me which one shot you guys want! See you guys on Friday :D

Chapter 42

Steve didn't know what to do with himself after he spoke to his mother. Freddy's funeral wasn't until the next day. He didn't want to go home. So he went to his mother's. He looked at crime scenes for a living. He figured he could handle this, but everything in him was already so raw that he found that he couldn't. He was a steaming pile of rage with nothing to take it out on at that moment.

He stood in his mother's house surveying the damage that was done. This didn't look like a regular burglary. It looked like a hit. They came in, they came out, they got what they wanted and they got a couple jabs in at his mother while they were at it. This meant several things. Either these were professional hits or Rowan was right and the CIA, who hired professionals like this all the time, was behind the break in after all.

The door opened and Catherine appeared.

Aw fuck. Come on. Couldn't he have a break? Just one little break? A couple of minutes to himself? That's all he wanted. Was that too much to ask?

"Hey," she said smiling at him.

"Catherine, what are you doing here?" he asked. Because it was a legitimate question. He hadn't told her what happened purposely.

"You didn't come home. I called Danny and he told me what happened," she said. Fucking Danny. Danny could never keep his fucking mouth shut.

"I thought you'd be getting ready for the funeral, or at least getting some rest," he said to her, turning away.

"The funeral isn't until tomorrow. Besides, I need to be here right now," she told him. Which wasn't true. He was fine without her. Danny would have been nice to have right about now. But he had sent Catherine. The bastard. "What happened?"

"Well, according to Doris, she, uh, interrupted a burglary," he told her.

It took all of one glance for Catherine to turn to him and say: "This doesn't look like a normal burglary."

"No, that's because it wasn't a normal burglary. This was a surgical strike. Whoever did this knew exactly what they were looking for and they knew Doris well enough to know where she would hide something," he told her. He then looked back to her to spell out the obvious truth. "She's lying to me again."

Catherine said nothing. She looked shocked. She looked afraid but he didn't know what she could be afraid of. "I don't know what to do Catherine," he whispered as he brushed past her and away from the wall where the safe had been hidden.

Catherine turned to follow him. "Steve?" she asked, her voice timid. She wasn't usually this fearful, it made him nervous.

"Yeah?" he answered not feeling too confident himself.

"I need to tell you something," she said.

Oh, well that didn't bode well, now did it? "What?" he asked hesitantly.

"Have you ever heard of, um, someone named Mangosta?" she asked as she crossed her arms over her chest. It was a defensive move, a move she made to guard herself when she thought an argument was going to break out. And it was about to.

"Actually. Yes. I just heard that name today," he said, his face becoming grim as she looked up to him surprised. "Rowan mentioned it today. Something to do with her fall down the stairs a few months back."

At the mention of Rowan's name Catherine frowned. "You saw Rowan today?"

"Not on purpose. My mother called her to come pick her up from the hospital before the hospital called me," Steve told her, waving it away. "Now don't change the topic. Who's Mangosta? What does that have to do with Rowan falling and what happened here?"

She stared at him a bit before she lowered her eyes and whispered: "He's an operative from Doris' past in covert ops…"

A strange feeling of new-found dread crept up on Steve. "Please tell me you got this information from Navy intel," he growled.

"No, no I didn't," she admitted. Realization dawned on him and Steve found himself groaning.

"No... Cath… No. Tell me you didn't," Steve groaned.

"There was, uh, an incident that happened around the time that Rowan, uh, fell. Mangosta came after Doris here on the island. She managed to turn the tables on him. I think this could be connected to that," Catherine told him.

She was purposely avoiding Steve's eyes now. Purposely avoiding how Rowan was involved in that incident, though he had a hunch he knew how she really hurt her head. But he had bigger issues then her not admitting she knew what happened to Rowan. She was a liar too. Just like Doris. Just like Rowan.

"Why would you not tell me that?" Steve asked her.

"I wanted to and I should have," she admitted.

"Yeah, you should have!" Steve nearly shouted. He couldn't help it. This was painful. Why was everyone doing this to him? Why was his mother so untrusting? Why was Rowan choosing not to be happy with him? Why was Catherine just as bad at them?

"I made a promise," she said and Steve froze. Everyone and their promises. Fuck them and their promises. Why couldn't anyone keep their promises to him, huh? "And Doris, she didn't want you to worry so I didn't…"

Steve stood there as Catherine trailed off. He couldn't believe it. He couldn't believe that this was all happening to him at once.

"So Mangosta is a real person. He has something to do with Rowan's fall down the stairs," he repeated and Catherine rolled her eyes. He pointedly ignored that. "That's just fucking great. Rowan was right."

"I don't see why it matters if Rowan was right or not," she huffed.

"Because if Rowan was right about that then she's right about this being done by the CIA. About Doris hiding government secrets and that, somehow, she got shot because of Doris," Steve shouted, "That's why!"

He stood there huffing as she glared up at him. He couldn't do this right now. "I don't think you should stay over tonight," he told her before he could talk himself out of it.

Catherine blinked her eyes. "Fine, but you know, your precious Rowan knew all about this too. So, she lied to you as well," she reminded him.

"No Catherine, it's different," Steve cried. "I told her not to tell me things. I purposely told her that I didn't want to know my future."

"It wasn't the future. She was there when Doris found out that Mangosta was back. She was there when he grabbed Doris. She covered up the cause of her injury so you wouldn't worry. She was just as in on it as I was," she cried.

"This isn't about Rowan!" Steve thundered. "This is about you being just as bad as my mother!"

Catherine recoiled. There. He had said it. The hard truth. She didn't say another word to him she merely stalked away, shutting the door quietly behind her. Steve stood there in the dim glow of a single lamp with the sinking feeling that he didn't choose the safest route. That he had chosen the wrong girl. Had let the right girl walk right out of his life.

H5O-H5O-H5O-H5O

Trevor had been getting the side-step from everyone these days. He stopped going on the boat with his father and his father barely noticed. No one had heard of a girl washing up on shore, alive or dead. No bodies had been found matching Rowan's description. So, either the experiment didn't work or her body had been washed out to sea.

With every passing day his father got more and more discouraged and Trevor felt more and more guilty. He didn't know how to tell his father he was looking for the wrong thing. He didn't know how to tell his father what he had done. He just didn't.

He liked that his dad talked to him. That he bounced his theories off of him like Trevor actually understood what was being said. He liked that his dad was paying attention to him again. He liked that his dad wanted him around.

But this couldn't keep going on.

So when his dad got back to the hotel Trevor was ready to tell him what he did.

"Dad," he said when he came through the door. "I need to tell you something."

"Look, I know it's discouraging, but it has to be there. We'll widen our net, maybe start looking at pawnshops in case someone's already dredged it up," his father said immediately.

Trevor shook his head. "No. Dad, that's not it… I don't know how to tell you this but… uh… I…"

"Look, if you want to quit and go home, by all means. I know you've been away from your trainees for a while and they probably want you back," he said with a shrug. "Would have thought you'd want to see this through but if you want to quit there's only marginal shame in that."

Wow. Really?

"I wasn't thinking about a trophy," Trevor said letting the anger take control. But when his dad turned back to him with that shocked and wounded look on his face the guilt came back.

"You mean to tell me we haven't been looking for a trophy this whole time?" he thundered. "Do you know what that means? All of our calculations are incorrect! We've been looking in all the wrong places!"

"I know," Trevor answered sullenly.

His father threw himself down onto the bed, pinched the bridge of his nose as he inhaled deeply before resting his elbows on his knees and staring down his son. Trevor took the seat by the desk and tried to avoid his father's eyes. He was only half finished with his confession after all.

"Alright. Then what are we looking for?" he asked. "We'll have to start from the beginning and recalculate it's movements."

Trevor took a deep breath looked his father right in the eye and said: "A body."

His father blinked his eyes, sufficiently shocked by this, as Trevor expected him to be. "A… what?"

"A body," Trevor repeated. "I wasn't thinking of an object, I was thinking of a person."

"A person?!" his father echoed. "Trevor!"

"Yes, yes I know, I get it, but I didn't know it would kill them now did I?" Trevor shouted. "I just thought if I could bring her here it would fix things."

"Her?!" his father thundered.

Trevor sighed. "I thought about Rowan," he whispered and his father jerked liked he had been slapped.

"You thought about your sister…" he sounded defeated. Trevor didn't dare look up.

"She broke our family, okay? You and mom haven't paid attention to a single thing I've done since she died. I felt like I was second best to her, my whole life, because I hadn't been enough to keep you guys together. So, when you showed me that void and told me I could pull something from an alternative dimension through I thought… I thought maybe if I pulled her through… if you and mom got that little girl you wanted so much that maybe we could be a family again."

It was a long rant. It was the first time he had admitted to either of his parents how bad their break up had affected him. To his horror he was crying but he couldn't help it, it was a lot of raw emotion that had brought him to this point.

He hadn't even realized his father had gotten up until his arms were around his shoulders.

"Oh, Trevor, I'm so sorry," he said as he hugged his son for the first time in a very long time. "We never meant to make you feel like that. That was never our intention. Our split up had nothing to do with you, and there wasn't anything you could have done to stop it."

"I know that now, but it didn't feel like it at the time," Trevor said. "I didn't know it would kill her. I didn't think about that. And then when the experiment failed I figured it wouldn't matter what I was thinking about until we came out here looking for it. I just didn't know how to tell you what I had done."

His father ran his hands up and down his shoulders as he cried and he found that he liked the contact so much that he was leaning into it, and practically sobbing over how good it felt to have some sort of comfort from the father who had been absent for so long.

"I've been all over Hawaii talking to morgues and hospitals trying to see if anyone found her body but I've got nothing so far," he admitted. "Just a lot of weird looks and a strange vibe off of one coroner."

"That's what you've been doing these last few days?" he asked.

"Try the last week and a half," Trevor told him trying not to sound bitter. His dad seemed to mull the situation over before turning back to Trevor.

"Alright. Well… I'll talk to my guy at the university, and some of the people in the community and we'll see what we can do about those particles they were following," he said. "Maybe we can find what we're looking for."

Trevor nodded and his father went to the mini bar to break out the whiskey for them. Their nightly tradition. "I wouldn't have pulled her through if I knew it was going to kill her," he whispered.

"Oh, well, it might not have," his father answered. Trevor looked up to him and his father smiled. "The particles were so bright they were trackable, I figured it was because your trophy absorbed them. But if it was a body, they wouldn't have absorbed them as readily. For them to glow like that means her particles must have been charged. Which makes perfect sense to me. That my daughter from a different dimension would be protected from the void in some way."

Trevor narrowed his eyes. Okay, so maybe that made sense. But did that mean that Rowan was still alive? "The problem is she wouldn't exist here. So if she were alive she'd have someone to help her. She'd have to set up an identity and she probably would use her own as she wouldn't know any better. We should go to the police and ask if there's anyone here registered as Rowan Peirce. She'd need fake papers, we could say it was identity theft," his father added. He then whispered: "I wonder why she hasn't tried to contact us?"

Trevor nodded, yes, he wondered that too. If she were alive wouldn't she have tried to find her family. Maybe she thought they wouldn't believe her, to be fair if a random girl showed up in Victoria and told him she was his sister last year he probably would have slammed the door in her face. Or maybe someone was keeping her from them? He did get weird vibes from the law enforcement he had spoken and that one Coroner.

When he went into HPD Headquarters to ask about bodies washing ashore he was handed off to a Sergeant Lukela who wrote down everything about the body he was looking for and said he'd get back to him. He was then told that there was no one matching that description in their files and then politely asked not to ask about it anymore. That was when he started to get the feeling that maybe, maybe people were telling him no for a reason. But what could that reason be?

"Okay. We can do that tomorrow," Trevor said.

His father handed him a glass of whiskey over ice and smiled fondly down at him. "You know, Trev, the reason I asked you to help me with that experiment was because I knew if I did it myself I'd think of her too," he admitted. "I'm sorry I put that on you. But we'll figure this out together. And even if we don't figure it out, things will be different. I'll be more present. I promise."

Trevor smiled. Really, that's all he had ever wanted to hear.

H5O-H5O-H5O-H5O

Steve walked through his house feeling like he had the weight of the world around his shoulders. To be fair, he had just come back from the funeral of his best friend, pre-Danny of course, and that didn't help but it wasn't the main reason he was feeling this way. He had a mother who was lying to him, a girlfriend who was lying to him, and the girl he really wanted to be with wanted him to stay away so that she could be happy and keep him on his right path. Everything in his world, at that moment, seemed to be turning against him and he couldn't figure out why.

Still he handed his mother her tea and then sat on the couch beside her as she sat in the arm chair slowly sipping on the mug of tea he had just handed her. He was in his standard position. Knees spread, elbows resting on knees. He purposely stared at the magazine in his mom's hands so he'd have enough courage to initiate the conversation.

"Hey, mom, we need to talk," he said. There we go, step one.

"Sure, honey," she answered absently. Like there was nothing in the world to be worried about. "What's up?"

"Who robbed your house?" he asked after taking a deep breath. He steeled himself for the answer, the one he knew would be a lie.

"I told you, I didn't see him," she answered. Yep, there it was, the lie.

"Okay," he answered. So that's how this was going to go. "Did it have anything to do with Mangosta?"

"You can't listen to everything Rowan says, honey. The girls on powerful pain meds and she's been pretty vicious since you picked Catherine over her," she said as she took a sip of her tea.

It shocked him to see how quickly his mother threw Rowan under the bus. If only his mother knew the truth. If only she knew that Steve hadn't picked Catherine and that Rowan's persuasion and the fact that she had already picked Alex over him was the reason he wasn't with Rowan right now.

"Catherine told me," he announced and then his mother's eyes were on him. Properly on him.

"That fucking bitch," she snapped, slamming her mug of tea down on the side table beside her.

"Oh mom, stop it," Steve cried. "Is it not enough that you can't open your mouth without lying to me? You got to use Catherine and Rowan against me too?"

"I wasn't using Catherine, I was trying to protect you," she cried, he picked up that she hadn't claimed to not use Rowan against him.

"Mom, could you just stop for a minute? Just stop alright?" he ordered. "Catherine and I had a good thing and now what, huh?"

His mother scoffed at that and Steve frowned. "You had a good thing? Steve. You're head over heels in love with another woman. You and Catherine don't have a good thing. You're both delusional. But that girl loves you, she wouldn't hurt you. Just like I wouldn't hurt you."

"That's not the point mom. You still don't get it."

"Steve, I'm sorry," she cried.

"Who robbed your house, mom," he nearly shouted.

"I don't know!" she shouted back.

Steve got up. He was so frustrated. Why was she lying to him? Why? Couldn't she see he was trying to help? He'd need to try a different tactic or he might get violent. And no one wanted that.

"Okay. What was in the safe?" he asked.

His mother was crying. That alone shook him. Made him feel even worse than he already did. But he couldn't back off now, she was finally breaking. "Fuck, she's already told you, I might as well explain," she said, but Steve didn't know if she meant Rowan or Catherine. "It was a microfiche. It had un-redacted action reports from my entire career in Covert Ops. It had… names."

Holy fuck. Rowan was right. His mother had been hiding government secrets. And the worst kind too.

"Mom, that is incredibly dangerous information, okay?" he snapped. "It could get you killed. It could get me killed."

He mentally added, it could have gotten Rowan killed, because she seemed to know exactly what it was. She probably knew where it was hidden too. Damn he should have just told her to tell him things, he could have found that microfiche and destroyed it before any of this nonsense happened.

His mother looked away from him. Okay, so his guilt trip hit home. Wonderful. "How long did you have it?"

She paused to think about it. Not about how long she had it, but whether or not she should tell him the truth. And she had better not lie to him again. "Since I left the CIA."

"And where'd you keep it all those years?" he asked.

"Here, under the floorboards in the office," she answered. Wow she was on a roll. She hadn't lied to him in at least two minutes. That had to be a whole new record for her. Too bad she was telling him things that were worse than lies.

"You brought it into this house? With dad and Mary and me?" he thundered.

"You don't understand," she cried launching to her feet. "It was to keep you safe."

Oh, who was delusional now? "No, Mom."

"Yes. My leverage. It was my insurance policy. In case anyone ever came after me. It was what kept us safe," she argued.

"So long as nobody knew where it was," Steve reminded her.

"It's all I had," she said. Clearly defeated. All she could do was shrug and stare at him with watery brown eyes.

Steve was primed to walk away but there was one more thing he had to ask. "What does Rowan have to do with any of this?" he asked, his voice dangerously low so she knew how serious he was about it.

"Nothing, Steve, I swear. If she knows anything about this microfiche it's from her visions," she said with a sigh. As if she had expected the conversation to turn back to Rowan.

"And her head?" Steve asked. "And her shoulder?"

"Well… her head wasn't a simple slip and fall. Mangosta knocked her over the head with a lamp when he came to get me. She was fine. It only knocked her out for a few seconds. But I couldn't tell you the real reason she was injured so we came up with a lie. Rowan was so out of it she just went with it and by the time she was clear headed enough to argue the damage was already done," she explained.

"And her shoulder? Why does she think she got shot because of you?" Steve asked.

Doris looked at him but he could tell, he could absolutely tell that she wasn't going to tell him what that was about. Well, then he had nothing else to talk about. He pushed past his mother and walked away. Right out of his own house. He didn't know where he was going. Just that he needed to get as far away from her as possible.

H5O-H5O-H5O-H5O

Catherine stood looking out at the water. Usually the water made her feel better, but today, nothing could make her feel better. She had managed to drive Steve away and for the first time she couldn't put the blame on Rowan. Rowan didn't make her cover for Doris. Rowan didn't even tell Steve that Catherine had been involved. It shocked her that she hadn't thrown Catherine right under that bus with Doris. Catherine wasn't sure she would have paid Rowan the same courtesy, and she hadn't when the time arose.

She caught someone coming towards her out of the corner of her eyes. She knew that stride anywhere. Steve. She couldn't help but marvel at how handsome he was today. He was out of his dress blues, but still wearing the pants and the crisp white shirt, no tie, half unbuttoned. She also couldn't help but wonder if this was where he'd break up with her. She surely deserved it.

She wanted to tell him that Rowan was involved. She wanted to ask him if he was going to go yell at Rowan too? If he was going to get as mad at her like he got mad at Catherine. But Catherine didn't want him to see Rowan. She didn't want to make things worse by bringing her up when she was certain he hadn't forgiven her for being part of the reason Rowan moved in with Alex in the first place. So Instead, when he got close enough, she whispered the only thing she could say to him in this situation.

"I am so sorry."

He just stared at her. His blue eyes just searching her face. She couldn't read his expression. She couldn't figure out what he was feeling or what he was going to say next. When he didn't talk she added: "I should have told you."

And then he silenced her by kissing her. His kisses used to send a hoard of butterflies up her stomach but since finding out he had feelings for Rowan his kisses hadn't felt right. Not that that stopped her from greedily kissing him back. Her fingers traveling to his jawline to feel his steady beating pulse under her finger tips.

That and his scruff. God she loved his five o'clock shadow. He pulled away from her to look at her. He looked like he might say something, like he was longing for something in particular. Whatever it was it must have passed because he chose to wrap her up in a hug and hold her tightly. Catherine held him back. Glad that he was still hers, glad that this had worked out.

But something still felt off. Steve still felt miles away from her. Physically he was present but emotionally he was gone. Still she clung to Steve, hoping that maybe if she held on long enough, he'd returned to her.