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AvalonReeseFanFics

A/N: Happy Monday my wonderful readers. So yeah, Steve made a terrible choice, but he figured out his mistake and is going to fix it. I know you guys are wondering about Rowan and you're going to find out what happened with her really soon. As you can see episodes 1 and 2 kinda got absorbed by the drama, we're going to go way off script for the next couple of chapters. I'm not sure what's going on with episodes 3 and 4 at the current moment. I might mention them in passing but there's a good chance I'm probably just gonna leave them out. I'll let you know when we get there. This chapter is gonna end BADLY just letting you know that now, so be prepared for it. As always don't forget to leave me a review, I'd love to hear your theories about what's going on or what's going ot happen next and I'll see you guys on Wednesday.

Chapter 207

Steve drove the pastel purple GTO into the garage and parked it beside his father's Marquis. He figured, if he was going to grovel to get Rowan back getting her car out of the impound lot would be a good place to start. He wasn't in the garage for more than thirty seconds when Nahele came flying in a big grin on his face. That grin faltered when he realized that it was Steve climbing out and not Rowan.

"Sorry buddy, just me," he said.

Nahele shrugged it off like it was no big deal. "Actually, I'm glad it's back, I think I left my jacket in the back."

Steve tossed Nahele the keys. "I didn't see anything in the back, but go ham kid."

He left Nahele to look through the car while he went back into the kitchen. For the millionth time that day he checked his phone. Rowan had still not called. Granted it had only been ten hours and there was a time difference, but he had sort of hoped that she had gotten the message, and would have called him by now. He dialled her number again and it was straight to voicemail. Damn had she blocked his number? Maybe he needed to try calling off someone else's phone, like Nahele's… oh or Kono's… the two of them were besties now, she wouldn't have blocked them right?

He went into his kitchen and looked into his fridge. How the hell did he ever function before Rowan came into his life and made his dinners for him? He just didn't know what to do with himself anymore, though, to be fair, he probably should have gone grocery shopping if he wanted fresh ingredients to make food.

He heard Nahele come back into the house and Steve called: "Hey, how do you feel about ordering again? Cause I don't think you want KD for the third time this week. What do you think? Pizza?"

But Nahele didn't answer, instead he put Rowan's phone down at the counter and Steve froze. What the hell?

"I found this under the driver's seat," he said. "It's dead."

Steve picked it up, not sure it was real until he had it in his hand. Rowan's phone model, Rowan's case. It was her phone. If she had left it behind, that meant all those times they had been trying to get a hold of her had been pointless because she didn't have her phone.

"If her phone got left behind… how are we going to get a hold of her?" Nahele asked.

Steve blinked his eyes. That was a very, very good question.

H5O-H5O-H5O-H5O

Upon establishing that Rowan's phone had been left behind the first thing Steve did was call his friends and ask if any of them had heard from her. He assumed that the leaving of her phone was to stop him from tracking her with the app. But they hadn't heard from her either and all of them thought it was weird that she hadn't reached out to one of them, and that she hadn't gotten a hold of Nahele by now.

So Steve called Wo Fat through the app. He got the same message as before, messages not checked, for an emergency activate Sanctuary, but Steve wasn't sure it was an emergency yet. Instead he left another message. Hey it's McGarrett. I think something's wrong call me back. Figured he'd get nothing, but he remembered Wo Fat's call from the night before. The panic in the man's voice. He had been about to tell him that there was an emergency. The waves of nausea were getting worse.

Something was wrong. Something had to be wrong.

He called Kong next. Asked if he heard anything. He said no. Nothing on the app. Nothing to report. Wo Fat was in Colombia and had gone dark less than a week ago. Rowan had been unusually quiet. He sounded weird, but Steve couldn't get him to tell him what was going on.

He went to the app, asked for a location. Got the same one as before. A twenty mile radius that she could be in. Still in Japan. The bay of Tokyo. The app couldn't pin her though. According to the app she had been dark for the last five days. Coincidentally since the night she left. How was it tracking her if she didn't have her phone, was that why it was having issues pinning her?

Now he was worried, because if Wo Fat was in Colombia what was Rowan doing in Tokyo? Was it a safe house? Wouldn't the app know if she was in a safe house?

He had gone to the Palace because he wanted more info about the area. His friends, sensing that something was wrong had joined him there without him asking them to. He had looked up the coordinates of where she was staying, heavy Yakuza area, the buildings in the area were all owned by shell corporations, if they did enough digging one of them would probably lead all the way back to Riku Sato, but finding out who owned the buildings wouldn't tell him if Rowan was in one of them, unless it was owned by Wo Fat or one of his aliases. But Steve knew Wo Fat wouldn't be that stupid. If he were going to put Rowan in a safe house that he didn't want Steve to find, it wouldn't be in his name, or any of his aliases' names either.

They had been throwing around theories, all of them thought that something was wrong too, but no one wanted to rub that in Steve's face. Instead they tried to hit him with the best case scenarios while they all tried to figure out the best plan of attack, which everyone figured was going to Japan and combing that area the App said it last saw her.

And then his phone rang. A strange area code, a number he didn't recognize. Wo Fat? That nausea was peak at this point, he was surprised he hadn't vomited.

"McGarrett," he answered.

"Steve?" her voice came at him, hitched in the same kind of tone that she used when she was scared. Already he was on edge but he also couldn't help but think that this was all a ploy. "Steve… thank god…"

"What's going on Ro, what's happening right now?" he asked sounded more stern then he should have. "You left the phone behind, you went to Japan…"

Rowan paused. "I'm in Japan?" she asked softly and he knew right then and there that his hunch was right. Something was wrong. That this… this probably wasn't a social call.

"Ro… are you… how do you not know…?"

"Cause I wasn't conscious when they transported me, STEVEN!" Rowan cried. "I don't know where I am and they won't stop… hurting me… just please… please come get me… please…"

Her sobs broke him, panic sunk its icy hooks into his chest, clawing at him. He gestured to Chin who immediately pulled up the tracking software typing frantically to coordinate with this call.

"Rowan, I need you to tell me everything, I need you to…"

"I don't know, Steven!" she shouted back at him. "I was locked in that room for… for… I don't even know how many days and they just wouldn't stop... I just want to go home, I thought you'd… I thought you'd come…"

He didn't know she was in trouble. But even that wasn't true because he had been ignoring the nausea rolling around in his stomach, assuming it was just lingering sickness from breaking up with the woman he loved and planning to propose to a woman he didn't even like just to spite her.

"Describe where you are Rowan," he said. "I'm coming, but I need to know where you are."

There was a soft pause, and in the background he heard a door open, unfamiliar voices were heard, the phone was dropped. Rowan's voice was garbled with apologies and covered over by shouts, and the sounds of a struggle, and then it stopped being words because Rowan was crying out in pain.

"No! STOP IT!" Steve shouted so bloody terrified for her he was certain that he was going to have an actual heart attack.

The hits continued to land. Her cries felt like blows to him as he shouted for them to stop and then the phone was picked up.

"And who is this?"

"Commander McGarrett of Five-0. I don't what you're doing but…"

"You want her back, Commander," the voice interrupted. Obviously he wanted her back. "Then get me Noshimuri's money."

The call ended and Steve turned his eyes to Chin. He didn't have a location, but he had an area.

A warehouse by the Tokyo bay.

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Steven had no idea how to get Adam's money. He had called him, but Adam had no idea where Rowan had transferred the money to, the only person who could tell him, other than Rowan, was Wo Fat.

And then he started calling Wo Fat, who still wasn't picking up. Steven had already begun panicking by then, had already started looking at other options to get to Rowan. It took eighteen calls before he got a hold of Wo Fat, but the man, much like when he had called Steve the day before, had merely told him to fuck off and like that the call went dead. With no other options, he had called Joe White immediately. He wasn't near-by to physically help him but he had set Steve up with a plane, a Navy plane to take him and his team down to the Bay of Tokyo.

Once transportation was set, Steve had called the Police in Japan with the information, had called every contact he had to get them to converge on the location. They had a search radius, all Steve had to give them, and they were searching. When Steve landed he and the rest of the Five-0s would join in the search.

Steve was frantic, he had shook, tried calling Wo, but somewhere between the last call and securing transport, the number he had went out of service and he couldn't connect to the app. Chin, Grover, Kono and Danny had all come with him, he didn't even need to ask they all just suited up as soon as he knew what was wrong.

Nahele had been picked up by Duke and sent to the Grover's again, he had not been informed of the situation, or at least Renee was told not to tell him what was going on until they knew for certain that Rowan was okay.

And then the video came in.

This terrible, three minute video, of Rowan. Rowan, in some dark dingy basement. Rowan, pitching and screaming as a cattle prod was jammed into her wet side and electrocuted her. Rowan struggling as a towel was slammed over her face and a bucket of water was poured over it.

She had dreamed this. She had dreamed that this would happen and he thought it just his nightmares reaching across the bed and finding their way into her head.

Now they were real.

The video cut into him. It brought him alive with an electric seething anger. His panic had become a creature attempting to claw its way out of his chest. He had screamed at the video as if her captors could hear him, as if it would get them to stop. His eyes scanned the wounds he could see, but he didn't know how long they had been doing this to her and he was more than 100% certain that when he got her it was going to be much, much worse.

His friends spent the rest of the flight trying to calm him. Each trying to watch the video, cracks of worry appearing on the skin of their faces. But Steve couldn't be calmed, not until he had Rowan back, not until he had killed the men who had done this to her.

The video had come from Wo Fat. He knew it. Because the video came with a message.

She was supposed to be with you.

He didn't know how it had happened. But the miscommunication was clear. Steve had thought she was with Wo Fat. Wo Fat thought her to be with Steve. Rowan was actually in a basement in Japan. Getting tortured apparently. And now he was torturing himself with the guilt, cause he had a feeling that something was off, that she wouldn't have left Nahele. And because he had a feeling that each rolling wave of nausea that had gripped him over the last five days had been her screaming his name to help her, to try and reach him through the void. And he had ignored it. Now he couldn't close his eyes because the images were there, replaying over and over, paired with her terrible agonizing screams.

When they landed, Steve was rabid. Like a caged animal breaking free, he disembarked off that plane with a ferocious need to just find her. And luckily the police could report that they had found the space in which they were certain she had been held.

They said it was easy. It was the only warehouse in that area that had been shot up. The problem was, there were no survivors. The place was on fire. And no one could tell them what they saw or if Rowan was in there when this all went down.

Steve and his little band of men arrived at the scene to smoke rising into the night air. The fires put out, the bodies being lined up to be bagged and tagged. He was hoping that she hadn't been in there. She was in a different warehouse, one that was intact, with witnesses inside that would lead Steve to her. But he knew the hallmarks of a crazy sociopath who would rain hell to get Rowan back. He knew the M.O of what was before him, recognized that particular brand of chaos. There was only one man that would do something like this in the wake of what had happened. And his suspicions were confirmed the second the lead fire-fighter put something into his hands.

It was his dog tags. They found his dog tags amongst the ashes in a small basement room. She really had been there. The question was, where was she now?

The phone rang. That same blank number that had sent him the video. Steve answered it immediately regardless of whether or not Chin was ready to trace the call...

"Where is she Wo?" he asked as soon as the call connected. His voice cracked and he was ashamed to show to his arch nemesis just how badly this was affecting him. But Steve was coming apart at the seams and so dangerously close to losing it that he couldn't keep it under control. "I know you have her, where is she?"

"I can't stop hearing her screams," came Wo's response. And Steve fell silent. So Wo had really forwarded him the video and he could safely say that he would never forget the sounds or the images from that clip either.

"When I left her with you it was with the understanding that you would keep her safe. How could you not have noticed her missing? Four days they had her in that room. Where were you?" Wo shouted, why was he breaking, he was stoic and unfeeling, but this didn't sound stoic and unfeeling. Wo Fat was raw and angry, Steve could hear emotion in his voice and he knew that this didn't bode well at all.

Steve had nothing to say because it was true. Where had he been? At his place sulking because he thought she had run off with Wo Fat. Fucking Catherine and planning to propose to her because he was mad at Rowan. He was never going to forgive himself if something had happened to her.

"Please," he whispered. "Please don't do this. Please don't take her from me again. Give her back. Please. Wo… brother… please… please don't do this…"

"I'm sorry Commander, but neither of us are ever going to see her again."

And then line went dead.

Steve stared down at his phone his heart still in his chest, his breathing shallow and caught in his throat. He barely heard Chin when he said that Wo Fat had stayed on the line just long enough for them to get a location that he knew where he was. The only thing he knew was that he needed to get there. Now.

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Wo Fat had called from somewhere on the Takada Castle grounds, a three hour drive away from the warehouse. He had the place surrounded seconds after the trace. Steve had arrived the three hours later to cops combing the area for any sign of where they had gone. They had found only one thing, and they were waiting for his orders. Which left Steve and Danny to walk through a temple garden that was covered in cherry blossom trees in full bloom and budding flowers. It was peaceful and serene but Steve McGarrett was none of those things. Danny stood beside his best friend ready to move in if it looked like he was going to melt down for the man was running on fumes at this point. Steve's face was gaunt and pale, he hadn't bounced back from the video of Rowan's torture, Danny wasn't certain any of them had, but it had hit Steve harder than the others.

The man looked like he had had the shit kicked out of him but the beating had left no bruises. The worry pulsed in his jaw, the fear on his face hadn't eased at any point in the last six hours. He looked like he may pass out or vomit at any point in time.

The people in charge of the castle had not been happy when a fleet of law enforcement agents appeared on the property. They were upset when they let themselves in to start searching and even less happy that they were now combing the grounds. But the search needed to be extensive, Wo Fat was an expert at hiding, escaping and manipulating people to get what he wanted.

"They were just here," Danny told him as they walked towards where they had traced the phone call to. "She's gotta be incapacitated, so he can't have gotten far from here."

They rounded the corner, heading towards the water. The water in the large moat lapped silently in the distance and in front of them were rows of cherry tries. White and pink petals drifted lazily down from the tree and whispered across the grass. To walk Rowan down here, even for an escape, made no sense. It would have been hard for Wo Fat to drag an unconscious girl through all this just to get a boat to the other side, especially since there was nothing else in the area but gardens.

Danny followed after Steve as he walked through the rows of trees towards the water. It was the last tree, right by the water's edge, the only one that was covered in twinkling fairy lights with the police man with a light up baton that had caught Steve's attention. "What do you think they climbed it?" Danny asked hoping that if he joked around with Steve he might lighten up.

But what they found at the base knocked the joking mood right out of Danny. Recently disturbed soil. Rectangle shaped.

They had found a grave.

Steve stared down at the dirt as Danny order it to be dug up. He stayed abnormally quiet as the uniformed officers all gathered around to start digging. Danny tried telling him that it couldn't be anything. Wo Fat wouldn't have let Rowan die, she was his sister, she was the only person that man could be considered close to. Steve was silent all while they dug, he was silent but tense when they came across a box. A wooden coffin made of nothing but nailed together two by fours.

The whole of the Five-0 team stood around the box once it was unearthed. They held their breaths as the lid was pried up. And gasps of horror left them when they saw what was inside.

The body was missing its face. A gunshot to the back of the head with what must have been a large calibre gun had decimated it. The hair was that familiar red to blonde fade. The body was wearing a white summer dress and its hands were folded neatly over its chest clutching a stalk of lilacs and roses. It was clear that someone had taken great time to pretty up the body, the clothes were pristine and brand new, what was left of the hair had been combed, the skin looked clean and smooth. What was worse was that they could see the peaks of the cursive that decorated the side of her body through the lace windows on the side of the dress.

Kono turned away, pressing into Chin unable to look at her as Chin dropped his head to her shoulder, he too unable to take in the sight in that coffin. Danny put a hand to his mouth, while Grover put a hand to his eyes.

Danny turned to Steve and saw that the man was holding it remarkably well. He just stared down at the body taking in all of its features. "I'm so sorry, babe" Danny whispered to him, putting a hand to Steve's arm but Steve merely shook his head and pulled his arm out of Danny's grasp.

"That's not Rowan," he said. He turned to face Danny and he saw that Steve needed to believe this. That anything else could break him. That even with the visual evidence Steve wouldn't, or couldn't take the thought of this body being Rowan. "Take that back to the lab and do a DNA analysis on it. That's not her. It can't be."

Danny let Steve walk away. He wanted to argue. But at that moment he knew Steve wouldn't listen. Danny would just have to be there when Steve was ready to accept the truth.

H5O-H5O-H5O-H5O

Steve got the call to come to the M.E.'s office later in the evening. The job had been rushed due to the urgency of the matter. Rowan and Wo Fat had been put on the no-fly list and there were A. and BOLOs out for them all over Japan. Steve knew that this had to be a trick. There was no way that Wo Fat would let Steve have Rowan back after such a monumental failure to protect her. He'd want to sweep her away and keep her safe from Steve. What Wo Fat didn't know was that Steve would spend the rest of his life hunting her down if he had to.

A lot of things that came to light in the hours he waited to hear from the M.E.

Like Wo Fat had a girlfriend. Osaka police had already questioned her and she hadn't heard from him in a few weeks, nor had he ever mentioned someone named Rowan to her. Which was odd, but if she didn't know anything there wasn't much that Steve could get out of her.

Like Wo Fat had been flown in on a private plane with tags that hailed from Colombia not an hour before the assault on the warehouse which meant he flew into Japan ready to take them on and get Rowan out. The pilot had been questioned but he was set to fly back to Colombia with three business men, which he did a few hours later.

Like someone had gone to Riku Sato's house while Steve had been at the docks getting confirmation that Rowan had been there. That same someone had taken down Sato's personal guards, raped his wife, murdered her and his children in front of him and then put a bullet in his head.

But there was no sign of either Wo Fat or Rowan anywhere and with how injured she most likely was he needed to take her to some sort of medical facility. But she hadn't shown up at any hospitals or clinics. So where were they?

So when he was called, when he was told to come to the coroner's office, he had woken Danny up who had fallen asleep in Steve's hotel room. Together they had been dialling Wo Fat's line through the app over and over to see if he'd come back online. So far he hadn't. But Danny was trying to be optimistic for Steve's sake, so when Steve told him the M.E. had news he hadn't' questioned why Steve didn't ask what the news was on the phone, he just got his shoes on and went with Steve. As they made their way down the stairs to the morgue, Steve comforted that Danny was still with him and more than grateful for his friend's presence.

They got to the bottom floor, opened the door and Steve froze. The Japanese translator was there, the M.E. a little wiry Japanese man named Dr. Oshida Phan was bowing to them out of respect. What froze Steve was the picture up on the screen. A smiling image of Rowan from her licence.

"No," Steve said.

Dr. Phan started talking and like a gap in audio the translator started to talk too.

"He's really sorry to inform you but after extensive tests he can confirm…"

"No," Steve said again but this time louder. "No. It can't be."

"… that these are the remains of Rowan Pierce."

Steve shook his head. He belatedly heard the whispers of consolation. He barely felt Danny's strong grip on his arm. He focused clearly on Rowan's body lying under the white blanket on the autopsy table. Fresh red welts bright against the skin of her wrists. Her face missing. Her body not moving.

He couldn't comprehend this. It didn't compute in his head. At no point in his life did he think that he was going to live without her. She had been a constant. There were no other options. He loved her and he should have told her that, but instead he let her walk away and now she was a cadaver on a table.

The world swayed around him. His breathing erratic and hitched as the reality came crashing down around him. His focus went in and out until suddenly he had collapsed landing painfully on his knees. He wasn't aware of any sound he was making until the wailing bounced back at him. His chest felt as if someone had cleaved it open, his heart ached and his sobs were wracking his body.

He felt Danny put his arms around him to try and reel him back in but he couldn't hold it in anymore. He had done this. His selfishness. His stupidity. Rowan was dead and it was his fault.