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AvalonReeseFanFics
A/N: So I totally forgot to post this before I left! Yeah that means you'll get two updates today to make up for me forgetting to post before I left yesterday. Yeah, surprise little factoid, I'm posting this from VENICE! Yeah, I know, was it smart of me to choose to do a marathon of posts while on Vacation? Probably not, I'm hoping all my updates are on time but if they're not… I'm in Venice guys, cut me a bit of slack. But back to the marathon… How's everyone liking it so far? We're getting close to the part where Rowan's gonna finally start fighting back. Exciting right? Anyway, we have 4 updates left before we get that big change and I'll see you guys in a few hours.
Chapter 69
They got to the scene and there was a fleet of police cars and a single ambulance. But no one was inside the house.
"What's going on?" Steve cried. "Why aren't you processing the house?"
"I thought you said he was dead," Steve murmured to her as he helped her out of the car. Catherine loved that he was being this chivalrous with her but some faith in her would be nice too. Catherine glared at him. She shouldn't have let him talk her into going home and changing. They should have gone as they were, they would have gotten there quicker, maybe prevented whatever this was.
"You better see for yourself," Duke said and Steve and Catherine pushed past him and into the house.
Nothing was there. No sign of a body, no sign of a struggle. No sign of a shooting. Nothing. It looked like nothing had happened there at all. And that couldn't have been right.
"Steve, there was blood here," she said to him, willing him to believe her. "This doesn't make any sense."
Steve had his hand on his hips. She loved it when he took that power pose, but not when he was directing it at her. "Look, you've been through a lot, okay? Is there any chance you got the address wrong?"
Catherine glared at him. "I was unconscious for hours. Somebody must have come in here during that time and scrubbed this place."
Steve didn't seem to believe her. "You know what, let's go check the ambulance. Clearly, they didn't find a body here, he must still be alive," Steve said turning his back on her. But that didn't make sense, because if he was alive there'd still be blood and signs of a struggle.
Catherine wanted to hit him. Why wouldn't he believe her? She bet he would have believed Rowan. Actually, he had. He believed all of Rowan's visions and had no proof what so ever, why couldn't he believe Catherine?
Steve got outside the door and swore. Catherine was only a few steps behind him but she knew what it was that got him so riled up. She could see the difference in his posture, in the way he had suddenly gone ramrod straight. She knew who was in the ambulance before she even got out of the building.
Steve was stalking forward and Rowan was staring at him with a pained look on her face. But Catherine had a feeling it had nothing to do with the sling her arm was in. Catherine immediately felt defensive, Rowan looked lovely, despite being in baby doll pink shorts, a matching pink tank top and a jacket that clearly belonged to one of the cops combing the area. Her red-blonde hair was up in a messy bun. Her legs were covered in mud, blood and minor scrapes, there was bruising along one side of her face. And yet, she still looked adorable while Catherine was sure she looked like hell warmed up
"Rowan, what happened?" Steve snapped glaring down at her with his hands on his hips.
Rowan glared right back. "I came out here to sit on the house and make sure that they wouldn't clean the crime scene up and steal the body," she explained. Catherine frowned, great, so Rowan knew about that too? Hadn't been able to stop that one from coming true though. "I was trying really hard not to vomit and out of nowhere I get whacked! Over the head. AGAIN! What does this universe have against my head, Steven? WHAT?!"
"Well, why didn't you tell anybody…" Steve started but that only had Rowan gasping with outrage.
"I did! I did tell people!" she cried. "I told so many people this was going to happen, I told Catherine. I told you, I told Chin, I told Duke… how many more people am I supposed to tell before someone LISTENS TO ME?!"
"It's true… she uh… she did tell me that someone was going to come and tamper with the crime scene, but… she also told us that the situation hadn't happened yet… and well… I didn't have the resources to send out on a vision," Duke admitted.
"Okay… so where did Chin go?" he asked.
"I'm here," Chin said popping out from behind the other EMT in the truck. "I was trying to call HPD, service is spotty out here and I uh… I got hit over the back of the head. Rowan woke me up when it was all done. I uh… never got inside though. So not sure if there was a body."
Well wasn't that just fucking peachy, huh? The only person he'd count as a credible witness had been out cold throughout the whole situation. He looked back to Rowan who was poking the arm in the sling and wincing every time she did so.
Steve looked down to her arm, it was the other arm in a sling this time. "What happened to your arm?" she asked.
"Well after they whacked me, they put me in the back of a van. Didn't tie me up though, guess they thought I was out for the count. But with the amount of times I've hit my head, I must be hella resilient, cause I so wasn't. Anyway, I jumped out the back," she said. And then just left it there. Like that answered the question instead of raising so many more.
"I'm sorry, you just jumped out of a moving vehicle?" he asked. "What? You think you're me now? Rowan, you have no training do that!"
"Sure, I do. Not like proper training, but I've got some. Wo Fat taught me the basics of a tuck and roll," she answered as if that was a good thing to say to Steve. Catherine turned and saw it, the anger clearly etched on Steve's face and the struggle he was having to keep it under wraps. "I tucked and rolled out of the back of a van. Tucked and rolled right out and into a fucking tree. And I really need this arm not to be broken. Like. I REALLY need it. For like… my job and stuff…"
"You work at hotel, I feel like they'll let you clean with one arm, Rowan," Steve chided.
"Uh. No. I don't work at the hotel. You got me fired, dipshit," she growled. Okay… whoa… how had he done that? When had he done that? "I'm waitressing now and this is my writing hand. Kinda need it for taking orders and carrying trays."
Steve clearly was uncomfortable with the fact that he got Rowan fired, so he cleared his throat and glanced back to the cabin.
"Are you sure someone cleaned this place up?" Steve asked. "You sure you guys didn't get the wrong address?"
"She got the goddamn address from a vision she got off of you. The ambulance picked us up from here!" Catherine snapped. She was angry that he didn't believe them but mostly she was angry that he was asking Rowan and not her. "Why don't you believe your girlfriend?"
"They painted over the blood spatter," Rowan said pressing her good hand to her forehead as if Steve's question hurt her brain. "Go check. It's still wet."
He moved to walk away, got to the front of the house when Rowan suddenly called out: "Or… you know… you could have just believed your girlfriend!"
Catherine found herself half chuckling. Never since Rowan had come back the second time did Catherine think that the two of them would agree on anything.
"If he arrests me for withholding information again I'm gonna kick him in the nuts and run," she heard Rowan mumble to herself as she lay herself back down on the gurney.
Catherine was surprised by two things in that sentence. One: that Rowan thought she could out run and escape Steve. And two: Steve had apparently arrested her recently.
Secretly she hoped that Steve would try to arrest her, just so she could watch Steve tackle Rowan to the ground when she ran away. She'd love to have video proof of that to rewatch whenever she needed a pick me up.
H5O-H5O-H5O-H5O
Alex was livid. She knew it the second he appeared in her hospital room.
"Uh… I can explain…" she started but Alex put a hand up to silence her.
"So you leave in the middle of the night. Find a dead body, and jump out of a moving van?" he asked. "And somehow managed to save a life?"
"Okay, kinda. It started with a dream…" she tried to start again but Alex had begun to pace and was no longer listening.
"It always does, doesn't it?" he snapped. There was so much venom behind his words that Rowan was taken aback. "Have you ever thought what this is doing to me?"
Rowan blinked her eyes at him. "I… I… I'm sorry."
"Are you?" he asked. "Rowan look at you. You're in here just as much as Steve is. You go off, get into danger and then I have to come get you from the hospital. Do you think I like getting calls telling me you're here again?"
"Uh… no?" she offered.
"No, Rowan, I don't," he answered his own question. "I don't like getting called in to work because my girlfriend got hurt again. I don't like rushing here wondering if it's worse than the last time, or why you didn't call me yourself."
"I thought you were sleeping, I wanted you to rest," Rowan answered in a small voice.
"Or did you not call me because, unlike Steve, I'm useless to you?"
Rowan stared at him in shocked horror. Is that what he thought of her? Is that what he thought she thought?
"No!" she cried. "That's not true… I… I didn't think you wanted to come… and it's dangerous…"
"Too dangerous for me but not for you?" he asked.
"I wasn't supposed to be in danger. I got there after the shooting, I didn't think anyone else would come," she said. "I got ambushed. It wasn't on purpose."
Alex nodded, he finally stopped pacing. He crossed his arms over his chest and glared at her. "You can't keep doing this, Rowan," he said. "You're not Five-0, you're not trained. From now on, if you get a vision you call someone and leave it at that."
She had tried to do that. She had. But Catherine hadn't listened. That was why she had gone. That was why she did what she did, but she could see that Alex didn't want to argue.
He sighed. "Look, you want to help people. I get it," he said. "I do… but Rowan… have they ever thanked you?"
Rowan just stared at him. No… they hadn't really, but she knew they were grateful. But Alex continued. "Do you know how they thank you? By not believing you and by arresting you. Steve… he doesn't want your help. Steve doesn't care about you, if he did he'd be here, but he's not because he has a girlfriend, you have me and a great record deal coming down the pipe. I'd like you to be alive to see some profit from your songs."
Steve did just arrest her a few weeks ago. He had been very mad to find her at his crime scene that morning. He never seemed happy to see her, or to have her involved with anything, even before she ripped that big gapping rift between them.
"I know it's selfish, Ro," Alex said coming to stand right in front of her. "But you really scare me. I don't want something bad to happen to you. I just want you to be safe and unhurt, just for a little while okay?"
That was fair. And he was right. Five-0 didn't need her. She could leave them alone and they'd be fine. Steve would probably appreciate it, her body, her stress levels and her mental health would probably appreciate it to. Maybe Catherine would stop being so intimidating.
She opened her arms and he came to her. Wrapping her up in his arms as she did the same to him.
"I'm sorry," she whispered again and she felt him press a kiss into her hair.
"I'm just glad you're okay," he said. "And I'm really glad that your arm is dislocated and not broken."
Rowan nodded yeah, she'd have a hard time writing songs for him if her writing arm was broken. The doctor chose that moment to come in.
"Are you ready to get that elbow back in place?" he asked.
Rowan nodded and he came to her, pulling her arm out of the sling it was in and braced it carefully. "Now, I'm not going to lie, this is going to hurt a bit," he said. Rowan merely nodded because she was already in pain, how much worse could it be?
The doctor counted to three slowly and then jolted her arm. In that one moment the world disappeared in a burst of white.
H5O-H5O-H5O-H5O
Danny had come back as a favour to Steve. He had his Navy buddy in the hospital, Catherine had been shot, not badly but it was enough, and Rowan hadn't kept her goddamn nose out.
He had told her not to do anything. That was what he said. "Keep your visions to yourself until I get back." Did she fucking listen? Course not. The girl was exactly like McGarrett. To a tee.
But his official reason for coming back was for Steve. Steve who was coming apart at the seams. Steve who was being pulled in two very different directions. Despite being mad at Rowan, his bleeding heart was conflicted. Danny was going to have to talk to him about that. Once things died down and they had time alone.
But that was not today, because Steve had sent Danny off with Joe White, who was essentially just like Steve but older and more obnoxious, with the lack of suspension in his van. Like he didn't feel a single bump, each and every single jolt of the car.
He was just saying no because Danny was complaining. He even brought up the whole married thing, just like everyone else did.
Is this what you a Steve do? Bicker in the car like an old married couple?
God he hated those comments. They were not married. He saw why people thought that, he didn't get why people kept bringing it up. Luckily Joe opted to change the topic and Danny was fine with that.
"Steve asked me to get in touch with Doris," he announced, just like that. Wow, what a subject change.
Danny nodded. "Okay, well, I mean, that makes sense. You know, he's got questions and she may have the answers," he told him.
"Yeah, well what I didn't tell him was I've been trying to find her for over a month."
Okay. Whoa. That's… that was not good.
"I haven't talked to her since she put Adam and Kono on that freighter. And the chatter is once she left the country old enemies came out of the woodwork," Joe continued.
Danny did not like how that sounded. "What's, she's on the run?"
"Or worse," Joe said and Danny's frown solidified.
"Or worse? Well, what are you gonna tell Steve"?
Already he was playing with his phone. Rowan knew things. Rowan knew things that she hadn't told Steve because he asked her not to. Things that kept "slipping out." He had a feeling she'd know. One quick text and Danny would know too. Then he could tell Steve and say he got the info from Joe or something.
"I can't tell him anything. I don't have any confirmation," Joe said. Okay fair, didn't want to give Steve rumors, have him worry over nothing. Made sense. "What I'm hoping is that you will tell him to stand down on this and let this go, because if we start turning over rocks God knows what might crawl out."
Danny took that in. "Yeah, okay, so I'll just talk to Steve. What makes you think he's gonna listen to me?" Danny asked. Because that too was fair point. Steve listened to no one.
"Because he trusts you," Joe explained. Laughable. And not… okay maybe that was true, but that didn't mean he wanted to betray his trust now. Well anymore then he already was. "He looks at me, he sees ulterior motives. He looks at you and he just sees a friend."
Yes and he wanted to keep it that way. "I could tell Steve whatever you want me to tell him, he'll say: 'okay sounds good' and he's gonna up and do whatever he wants to do," he reminded him. "And my advice to you is to please get confirmation on these rumors and get the truth, and share that truth with Steve because you know and I know he's not gonna stop until he get the answers. It was confirmed by Rowan and now that she's said it, it's going to happen. And Rowan is never wrong."
"Rowan… Wo Fat's girl? What the hell does she know about Doris?" Joe asked.
"Well, before she was Wo Fat's girl, she was our psychic. She knew things, still does. Rowan is never wrong. Said Doris was just gonna hide out because she didn't want to answer Steve's questions which was stupid because Steve finds out on his own anyway," Danny said.
"You believe in psychics?"
"And you should too. She's the reason that Billy's alive," Danny told him, he couldn't keep the hint of pride out of voice. Yeah he told her to avoid the situation but he loved, absolutely loved that she had actually saved a life with one of her visions. That she didn't just leave it up to fate when Catherine hung up on her.
"How did she do that?" he asked.
"She called the ambulance before the situation went down, it's why they got there so fast," Danny said.
"She could be in on it then, if she knew in advance," Joe argued.
"True, but this isn't the first time she's just known. But uh… you should go see her, see for yourself. I bet she knows things about you that no one else would know too," he said and then sat back in his seat.
The car jolted again and he bit back his curse. And the desire to complain once more. His back was going to be shot after this ride.
H5O-H5O-H5O-H5O
The guy was dead. She could see them standing over them. Heard Steve's anger in his voice when Catherine just stared at the man bleeding out on the bathroom floor. The blood around him felt metallic against her tongue, already she thought she might vomit.
Then papers went flying and she was in a living room watching them comb for clues. Like blue's clues she saw red hand prints everywhere but Steve and Chin and Catherine were all ignoring them.
"Anyone got anything?" Steve asked.
Catherine's computer was so damn bloody red it was practically dripping with it but she still said: "No."
What? How! All the clues, they were right there at her fingertips. "We could ask…" Steve said. His mouth was still moving an argument was still going on but she couldn't hear it. His phone was in his hand and suddenly the world around her was shaking. It was like she was stuck in an earth quake but no one around her was reacting to it, she seemed to be the only one who could feel it.
What the fuck….
The shaking stopped and Steve pocketed his phone. "She didn't answer."
"Here, try my phone," Chin said handing it to Steve. "Maybe she'll answer to me."
"We don't need her," Catherine said. Steve and Catherine half started to argue but this time the shaking of the world came back with such a violent start that she was jolted awake.
The world was fuzzy and bright. Her mouth was fuzzy and heavy. Her words swam around her eyes in brightly colored spots. Her head hurt. Her arm hurt.
She was vibrating.
No. It was her phone. Her phone which was under her head. It must have slipped when she fell asleep.
Clumsy groping helped find her phone, she answered the call by accidently dropping the phone on her face. She picked it back up again, realized that she had answered the call and put the phone to her ear.
"Hi Steve," she murmured and was met by silence.
"How… how did you know it was me?"
"I know your voice," she said. "Hey. Hey. I was just in the living room with you guys playing blue's clues but with blood. There's one behind the TV."
The silence from the phone was so heavy she swore she could see it, covering her like a blanket. A cold blanket of uncomfortableness.
"… are you on morphine again?"
"It didn't pop right," Rowan answered. It wasn't the right question but it was one of the questions he was going to ask.
"What?" came back at her and Rowan frowned. Why was she on the phone right now?
"What do you want?" Rowan asked.
"I need to know what you know about the shooter…"
Rowan was silent for a moment before saying: "I think he's dead."
"Yes Rowan, yes, I know he's dead," he sighed.
"Then why did you call me?" she shot back
"I need to know who hired him," Steve finished. Ah that made sense.
"But… I don't… how am I supposed to…?" she stuttered.
"You had a vision about the shooting… you didn't get one about who hired him?" he asked.
"No?" Rowan asked.
"Are you asking me or telling me?" he asked and Rowan devolved into mumbling. She had promised not to intervene anymore. Was this intervening though? Was it considered intervening when someone was asking her to help?
Continuing to mutter to herself she put the phone down and forced herself to get up. The room swaying, the light played tricks with her, but she still managed to swing her legs over the bed and stand up. But she took three steps away from the bed and suddenly her arm was burning. She yelped out in pain, heard Steve's voice coming out of her phone practically screaming her name. She turned back to the bed and squinted at it. What was that thing that was hanging there? Swinging back and forth.
"Is that an IV?" Rowan asked herself. She looked down to her bleeding arm, a slow leak painting rivers down the inside of her arm from elbow to wrist. "Did I have an IV in me?"
Steve's voice continued to float up to her from her hand and she put the phone to her ear again. There were so many questions coming at her that she didn't know how to answer. It sort of sounded like he was speaking a different language.
"Yo no hablo español," she said to him and then there was nothing but silence. Maybe he couldn't hear her. "If you can hear me I'mma go find another vision. Give me a second."
Rowan didn't quite know where she was going, but she followed her feet which were following her heart. There were strings everywhere, white ones, red ones black ones floating all around her. They were curling around her, but none of them called to her the right way, not the way that yellow did. She grabbed it, used it to guide her until she found her way to a special room.
She squinted at the person in the bed, the one intertwined with a severed black thread and solid yellow. She had messed with the time line, she was watching the strings reconnect to him. This was Billy.
"Hi," she said realizing she was just standing at the foot of his bed as he blearily stared at her. "I'm Rowan."
She heard beeping but it wasn't the same kind she heard when criminals were around and the app was activating. She was met with an "Uh…" from Billy and Steve saying her name from her phone. Rowan put the phone back to ear and said: "King's Medical Centre Morgue, you stab 'em, we slab em. Eight Ball speaking."
"That's not funny," Steve intoned as Rowan began to giggle. It was hilarious to her. As she struggled to get herself under composure she took a good look at where she was and the amount of electrical objects around her.
"Uh… I have some doubts," she said to Steve. "What if I short fuse his EKG machine? What if I electrocute him and kill him or something?"
"What the hell are you talking about?" Steve thundered. "Where are you? What are you doing?"
Rowan handed the phone to Billy. "It's for you."
Billy put the phone to his ear and blearily talked into it. Rowan stopped listening. She was standing beside him, staring that the threads that were reattaching. She suddenly could name each and every one of them. Red for love, yellow for friendship, pink for family, black for death, that one was slowly getting longer and longer. Yes. He was gonna live. She had done it, she had done something amazing and saved a life.
She could help them catch his shooter. She should help. All she had to do was take his hand and then focus with all her power on making sure that static hit her and not him.
So she took his hand.
She felt that shock rebound into her, she felt her body pitch. She felt herself drop to the ground but she didn't get a name or a face like she usually did. Maybe it was because she was concentrating so hard on making sure Billy didn't get electrocuted all she got was a step by step directions on how to find the name. She just didn't know if she could verbalize them in that state.
"Yeah, she's uh… she's on the floor," came from above her. Rowan groaned and put her hand up so Billy could put the phone in her hand.
"The email's on the tour network," she said.
"Tour network?" Steve echoed. "What the hell is that Rowan?"
"I don't know!" Rowan suddenly sobbed. "You woke me up and you made me go places and my arm's bleeding and I made myself have a vision for you and now you're mad at me!"
"Rowan I'm not mad," Steve tried to say.
"Why couldn't you just say thank you? Huh? Would that be so hard?" Rowan asked him. "You're all so ungrateful!"
She threw her phone. She heard it clatter away from her. She hadn't hung up she could still hear Steve asking for her, his voice insistently calling her over and over. She put her hands over her ears to shut it out to make it go away. She squeezed her eyes tightly and hoped to god it would all just go away.
"Are you okay? Do you need me to call a nurse?" Billy asked from his bed, his voice muffled like he was speaking to her through his pillow. Rowan moved her hands. Oh maybe that was why.
"No. Yes. No? I don't know. I like the floor. I feel better when I feel floory," she told him.
"Are you, by any chance, the same Rowan that called Catherine?" he asked after a beat of silence.
Okay, well clearly he wasn't going to just let her lie there. He wanted to have a conversation. At that point Rowan forced herself to stand. She quickly got into Billy's bed settling in beside him. "Yes, I am she," she said as she snuggled into him. If Billy was protesting she either didn't hear him, didn't notice, or didn't care.
"You told her what was going to happen," Billy said. "We didn't believe you."
"No one believes me," Rowan said into his shoulder. "I called the ambulance anyway."
"I'm alive because of you," Billy summed up. Rowan answered with a sleepy mhmm. "She said you see the future. Do you… do you know what's going to happen to me now."
Rowan opened her eyes to look at him. "No. We're off script. But I think it's a chance," she whispered. "A second chance to do whatever it is you dream of. I hope you take it."
She wasn't sure what Billy said after that. The clouds came back pillowing her in a heavy sleep. This time she didn't dream of bloody hand prints and murderous emails. She dreamed of billowing snowy winters and a pastel purple car drifting in a storm of bright pink strings.