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AvalonReeseFanFics

A/N: Hello My wonderful readers. How are you guys on this wonderful 4th day of the 12 days of Christmas Marathon? You'll be happy to know that I made it Bahamas and even happier to know that we have two chapters in a row that are from Hawaii and Steve's perspective. Oh, and the Grover's, y'all are going to see the Grover's. We also have Lynn's first appearance, I did mention she was going to be around, but she won't be sticking around so nobody panic yet. Don't forget to leave me a review and I'll see you guys tomorrow.

Chapter 222

Steve was regretting telling his team his plans for the day. He had noticed the stares of surprise when he had announced his plan and expected that it would Danny who showed up on his door step to try and talk him out of what they all thought was a bad idea. What he got instead was Grover and his wife, ready to talk him out of it.

Great, even Danny was done with his shit.

Though, try as they might, Steve had decided and there was no changing his mind. No matter how much he didn't want to, deep down in his heart, or how much logic the Grover's were throwing out at him. And to keep them from noticing how unsold he was about his own plan for the day he kept himself busy with loading up his truck with all he'd need for the day while he waited for the other person he was going with.

"So, you're sure about this?" Renee asked while she and Grover followed after him down the walkway to the truck.

"You know who you two sound like, right?" he shot back instead of answering the question. He didn't know how many times he could lie about being sure about this, because he wasn't and he was certain that Renee had seen through his lies.

"Don't answer that Renee," Grover warned just as Renee asked: "Who?"

"Danny Williams."

"I told you not to ask," Grover said with a sigh and got a curt look from his wife.

"Listen to me," she said as Steve threw his flippers into the back of the truck. "We understand. We get it. Now you've had a little heart break and you wanna get back on the horse, you wanna move on from Rowan…"

Steve froze the second they said her name, but he was getting better at shrugging off those frozen moments. That pieces of time that stilled whenever he heard her name and all the memories, the good and the bad came back to him.

With his backpack on his back and his white tank top with the burgundy trim getting a little moist in the Hawaiian heat, he turned to Renee to smile at her. To try and ensure her that he was okay, and he was ready for this, no matter how worried for them they were.

"Stop already," he said softly to her. "Listen to me. Ellie introduced me to Lynn. She seemed very nice. This is a get-to-know-you thing. I asked her out on a date to get to know her. Okay? That's all it is."

Except it wasn't cause he had picked a girl who was the exact opposite of Rowan cause he figured it would be easier that way.

He was tired of pretended that he wasn't waiting for those random long distant calls. So he could sit there and pretend like maybe this time she'll talk to him, ask if she could come home, instead of hanging up the phone the second he asked if it were her.

It was to the point where he would just sit their listening to silence, knowing it was her on the other line, just wanting to hear her voice, to hear something. He needed to get away from that. He needed to stop using it as a crutch. She was moving on, evident by the fact that she had Wo Fat in her bed, god he didn't even want to think about it. It was time for him to move on too.

"And I got no argument with any of that," Renee said. "I just think it's going way too fast! I don't think you're ready to do that. I think you need to give yourself more time to heal, right Lou?"

"Let's look at it this way," Grover said. "You're a Navy SEAL right? What is the first rule of any op? Always have an exit strategy."

"Exit strategy, Lou what the hell are you talking about?"

"Just hear me out. He's gonna go to some deserted island with this woman and they're gonna do their snorkeling or whatever, when he's done, whether he likes her or not, he's stuck with her for the whole day. I mean, whatever happened to just going out for coffee?"

"That's what you're upset about?" Renee snapped. "That if the date goes bad he won't be able to get away from her? Lou, that is not what we came here for."

"No, that's what you didn't come here for. I know we ain't talking him out of it, I'm just trying to keep him on the goddamn island!"

"Lou we both know that he's not doing well since Rowan left. You tell me about it every night, remember? How he never seems to get better then out of nowhere—bam—he has a date. Didn't he do the same thing with Catherine? Deluding himself into thinking proposing to some other girl was going to make him feel better?"

WOW! He did not think that he was that bad but clearly he was so very wrong. He couldn't listen to that conversation anymore, luckily the lucky lady of the day had arrived, driving up in her grey jeep. Not as cool of a car as Rowan's but still pretty bad ass. A girl who was into off-roading by the looks of it, this really was his kind of girl.

She honked to him as she pulled up, and he waved to her, happy to have some sort of distraction from the argument that was about him and his deteriorating state behind him.

"Yeah but this isn't a proposal, right, you're not gonna propose right?" Grover asked and that was Steve forced back into the conversation.

"Course not," he answered absently as he watched Lynn get out of her truck. She was wearing a tan fedora with a black trim on top of her bleached blonde beach waved hair. She was in a light blue tank top that bared her midriff and a pair of skin tight light blue ripped jean shorts. And she looked damn fine climbing out of that jeep. For a moment he forgot everything, he just appreciated the view.

"Is that her?" Grover asked and got a yeah from Steve. "Forget what I just said. I don't know what the hell I'm talking about. You should go to that island. You and her, the two of you, have a good time. Maybe not come back. You should stay forever. I would stay forever. I mean like forever-ever"

But Renee slapped his chest. "You might have to go with them and live on that damn deserted island you keep talking like that," she snapped to her husband.

"How's it going?" Steve asked as he approached her.

"Pretty good," she answered grinning at him as she looked him up and down in an appreciative sort of way. Yes she liked what she saw, that was a good sign.

"Let me take that," he offered taking her little straw backpack and the cooler she had brought with her.

He let her climb into his truck before Renee grabbed him, holding onto him tightly by his forearms, her face turned up to his imploringly. "Listen to me, McGarrett, a pretty face isn't going to fix this. She's just gonna distract you for a little bit. When everything's done and you're all alone, that feeling you think you're gonna chase away by being with this new girl is going to come back and when it does it's gonna hurt even more," she warned.

"There's nothing wrong with a little distraction," Grover chided and she turned on him.

"That boy is properly hurting, Lou, and a pretty face is just a band-aid and you know it! He needs to grieve, properly and fully before he can let go and move on to greener pastures."

"The man's been grieving for five months. What's he supposed to do? Grieve forever? Rowan left him. She's not ever coming back."

Why did it still hurt to hear that? Why did it still hurt when people reminded him that Rowan had left him? Why wasn't he over it yet? It had been so long. Why did it still feel like it had happened yesterday?

"Well I don't believe that and I don't think Steve wants Rowan to come back and find him taken," Renee snapped with her arms cross over her chest.

"Then she shouldn't have left him for his nemesis," Grover argued, another good point.

"Look, you guys, thanks for coming. Thanks for caring, but uh… I'm gonna go," Steve said to them before they could harsh his mood even more. "You uh… you tell me how this ends huh? I'd love to know who wins."

As he hopped up into the truck he did his best to close his ears to the argument that continued even as he was revving up his engine. Maybe whoever won would have the answer to helping him heal his shattered heart.

H5O-H5O-H5O-H5O

Lynn had taken him snorkelling at a spot she used to frequent as a child. It was a little reef just outside this uninhabited island that she used to hike with her brothers and grandfather. The plan was to snorkel and then go for a bit of a hike. Two things he could have never done with Rowan.

They actually had fun. He and Lynn saw a lot of pretty fish, a sting ray, a few dolphins, and she had no problem keeping up with him. He never could have brought Rowan here, as the ocean kept trying to kill her and he would have had to worry about the whole time.

But swimming beside Lynn reminded him that he would have loved to have Rowan out there with him, in her little bikini because she would have loved every second of it. She would have asked him a million different questions about each and every fish they saw, and she would listen to his long winded answers with rapt interest because she was actually interested in it. And they could have made out in the waves, they would have been making out by now, the wave rocking them back and forth with Steve holding them both up probably effortlessly.

Then came the hike and he loved that too because the view was great and his company wasn't bitching. He could have never brought Rowan on this hike, she would have fallen by now, she would have been complaining more than Danny, she probably would have hit her head by now. But he would have loved to have her there because Rowan would have loved this view. Because if she were here with him they would have already been down on the grass making love.

Fuck maybe Renee was right, maybe Lynn was just a band-aid.

"Steve," "Huh?" he said turning around after being jerked out of his thoughts. Lynn had her phone out and was smiling at him as she said: "Smile!"

The camera clicked and she looked at the picture on her phone. "We're gonna have to take another one."

"Why are you gonna have to take another one?" he asked though he knew why. He hadn't been ready. The picture was probably terrible.

"It kinda looks like you photobombed a Peter Lik."

"Okay alright, I'm ready this time," he said.

"Okay, say cheese," she ordered and he did what she said, arms outstretched wide like he was celebrating and humoring her with the exclamation of a solid dairy product so he had no choice but to smile.

After taking that picture she smiled at the photo and he leant over the phone to take a look at the picture. "How's that?" he asked.

"I'd say that's a keeper," she said with a cheesy grin.

"Let me see," he said taking the phone. "That's a good photo. Here, I'll take one of you." The exchanged spots but he gave her more time to set herself up than she gave him. "Now, I'm a gentleman. I'm gonna give you time to get ready, do what you need to do." To humor his teasing she tousled her hair a few more times. Steve tried to ignore how similar that motion was to when Rowan would get herself photo worthy for their pictures. "Beautiful. You ready?"

She posed, he set up the photograph and then took the picture. Please with his little prank he handed her back her phone while trying to hide his smile.

"Here what do you think of that?" He asked as she looked it over. Rowan would have been scowling at him by now, playfully scowling and laughing at him. While Lynn giggled at it, it wasn't the same. "What are you laughing at?"

The photo that Steve had taken was of the view, and the top of her head. It was a joke, it was supposed to be funny. By now Rowan would have smacked him and then that would have devolved into playful rough housing and they'd end up back on that fucking grass again. Instead he got a: "Very funny," from Lynn, which meant that she really didn't find it all that funny but she was prepared to humour him.

"Fine, I'll take another one."

"You are done taking photos for the day," she teased.

"You gotta be in one photograph," he urged, if only so he could send it to Danny to make him drool.

"I will. That's why God invented the selfie." Immediately she tucked into his side, her arm coming around his waist, her head tucking in under his chin like Rowan used to do. Steve couldn't escape the echo. He must have been making a face because she asked: "Unless you object."

"I do not," he said quickly fixing his face accordingly. He leant into the girl beside him and tried his very best to smile. As soon as she took the picture he was reaching for the phone to see how it turned it out.

"Let me see that," he said taking the phone and everything in him froze. Because it looked exactly like all the other selfie photos that he and Rowan had ever taken, except it wasn't that red-to-blonde faded head that was tucked under his chin, it wasn't Rowan's sea blue eyes staring back at him.

"I can erase it if you don't like it."

"Why would you erase it? It's a great photo, it's perfect. Send it to me actually, I've got a few friends to make jealous," he said handing her back her phone. "Okay, you know what? We should head back."

"Wait, I know a short cut to the beach."

"You do?" he asked in a humouring kind of way but he was prepared to follow her anywhere. Anything to get rid of the echoes following him around.

H5O-H5O-H5O-H5O

They walked in what Steve thought was amicable silence for a while, while Lynn kept glancing back at him. He sort of wanted to know what she had on her mind, but Steve was too lost in his own ghosts to try and detect what could be wrong with the girl on his date.

"I heard your friends you know," she said after they had been walking for a while. "Who is that girl they were talking about?"

Steve came to a complete stand still. Son of a bitch. He didn't want to talk about Rowan right now, he didn't want her haunting him further, and he really didn't want this girl knowing how bad it was.

"Oh, that's a face I haven't seen before. Can tell it's not a good one though," Lynn said with a playful wince having realized that she had hit dangerous territory. "You don't have to tell me, they just seemed pretty concerned and uh… I guess I'd like to know what I'm getting into."

He had options here. He could tell the truth, but telling the truth… well that wouldn't help. It would only remind him that he missed Rowan. That he wanted Rowan back and that Lynn was not the girl he wanted to be with. And that would not lead to a second date that Steve so desperately needed to prove to everyone and himself that he was finally getting over Rowan.

"No… it's not that… you have a right to know it's just… I'm not sure it's first date appropriate…" Steve muttered, but when he got a dark glare from her he relented. "Fine. Cliffnotes. My ex uh… my ex, Catherine, came back from Afghanistan, and uh… instead of staying like I wanted her too, she left me to run helo drops over in Nepal or something. There's obviously more to it, but yeah, that's basically it."

It was also a complete and utter lie and he was a little worried that she didn't believe him, because she was making a very strange face as she looked around.

"But uh… I don't see why that story would have you making that face," he said. "What's up?"

Lynn looked around at her surroundings. "We should've been there by now," she admitted. Great she had gotten them lost while he was spilling his heart… okay kind of.

Steve tried very hard not to panic. "You don't recognize this?"

"No."

Right, total honesty. Love it. All Rowan ever did was lie. The honesty was completely refreshing. "Alright, well maybe you got turned around or something."

"I'm sorry," she said with a wince.

"It doesn't matter. You know what? We just need to turn around and come back the way we came."

"Like I said, it's been a long time," she said with a sigh. Yes that was true. The last time she had been here was with her grandfather. But he honestly wasn't mad, he could get them out of this, no problem.

Problem was, he noticed something strange in the underbrush and the detective in him was immediately curious.

"What? What are you looking at?" Lynn asked.

"That," Steve said pointing to the white in the underbrush. "Do you see that?"

"Yeah what is that?" Lynn asked but Steve didn't answer which left her to follow him over to it. It took some looking, but once he established he was looking at a tarp covered and held up by branches he was busy trying to peak under it. He recognized that metal body anywhere.

"It's a plane," he told her. He threw a few upended trees away and then tugged on the tarp until it fell, revealing the plane underneath. Steve took it in carefully.

"This thing's intact. I mean, it's pristine," he said as if that would make sense to her. Rowan wouldn't have gotten it anyway, he'd have to explain and he was so used to that he did it before giving Lynn a chance to prove herself. "There's no way it crash-landed here."

"So, what's it doing here?" she asked. Ooohh, good question. Steve had the same question himself. But he couldn't answer her because as soon as she got that question out of her mouth they were being shot at. Steve grabbed her, forced her low and then forced her to run, and to keep running.

Together they crashed through the underbrush with some strange man following them firing off shots at them and luckily missing them both. They took a moment to hide from him in the bushes, they waited for him to move on, Steve had to press a hand to Lynn's mouth to keep her whimpering under control.

Once the guy had moved on and Steve had gotten Lynn calm, he hit her with the plan. Find their boat. Get home. Have him get back up, his team, suit up with his gun and he'd come back and storm the place.

Once they were certain he wasn't around them, Steve got her running again and with him at the lead not only did they find the shore, they found their boat. The problem was, when they got there, their boat was clearly visible, because it was on fire.

Their boat was on fire.

Steve and Lynn stared at the scene breathlessly for a moment before Lynn whispered: "That boat was our only way off the island."

Yeah, yeah, now they were screwed.

H5O-H5O-H5O-H5O

Once he established that the boat was not a viable way off the island and Lynn was spiralling further into her panic, Steve had to come up with a plan of action and fast. His plan was to head back inland to the plane, firstly to try and figure out who was attacking them, secondly to try and find supplies that could help them, and thirdly because he figured the guy chasing them wouldn't expect them to return to the plane.

It didn't take much to convince Lynn, as she was too panicked to come up with a viable plan of attack herself. When they got to the plane, he got them up and into it and he took in the scene to figure out what was going on.

It was a prisoner transport plane, as there was a set of cuffs, but they weren't forced. Someone had let their prisoner go. He went to the cock pit, there was no way to fly the plane, but he found the information he needed to put the rest together. The transponder was turned off, according to the flight manifest the plane was from Manila, heading for Long beach California, it flew out in 2011. It took some time but he remembered a Boston Mob Boss who was picked up in the Philippines, and was to be transported to Long Beach for the prison there and to stand trial. Steve was pretty sure his name was Dennis Logan.

The plane had been reported as downed somewhere in the Hawaii region. There had been a search but nothing had come up, and why would it? He and Lynn had been right beside it and they barely saw it. So what had happened? The guy had been loaded, so clearly he had paid everyone to let him go and he had been hiding out here on this island.

Too bad the plane hadn't given him anything useful, other than the backstory he needed, just a flare and a flashlight. But when they dismounted from the plane Logan was on them again and they had to run again, but Steve wasn't going to just run, he was going to fight.

They got back to the falls they had to climb to get to the plane, he hid Lynn behind the tree and then climbed up into the branches. He waited until Logan came into view before jumped out of the tree and onto him. He was lucky, Logan was heard before he was seen, he had a walkie-talkie where a female voice kept coming out of asking him if he had found them. That had been how Steve knew that it was Logan coming out from h underbrush and not an animal.

The two grappled for a bit and in the fight he lost his knife but Logan lost his gun. Logan managed to elbow Steve in the face, splitting his temple open as Lynn went to get Steve's knife back. She got a little too close to the fight and Logan shoved her, sending her flying into the rocks. Okay, no more Mr. Nice Steve.

He threw Logan away from him, and the guy came back at him with a machete. Well fucking hell that wasn't fair. Steve had to tuck and roll to evade him, and then his back was to the cliff's drop off. He could use that to his advantage.

"What are you doing here?" Logan snarled, he was breathless, clearly not prepared for a hand to hand combat with someone like Steve. There were prison tattoos on the man's neck, so he was more and more certain that this was Dennis Logan the supposed dead Boston Mob Boss.

"Stand down and I'll tell you," Steve sassed back, a sass level that Danny would have been proud of. Logan raised that machete of his and charged him, but Steve was ready. He deflected the machete that was aimed for his shoulder and then tripped the guy and shoved him right over the cliff side and into the water below.

He looked over, waited to see if the guy was going to resurface and behind him Lynn groaned. Damn, Lynn, she must have been hurt. He quickly returned to her side, pulling her up and towards him while looking her all over.

She was bleeding. From her head.

"You're bleeding," he said to Lynn. He tried to take a better look at it but she was ducking his hands and trying to look around as if Logan was going to climb up over that cliff so soon after being thrown over it.

"Come on, let me see Ro," he ordered as he looked it up and down. It looked deep, it looked like she'd need stitches, but he was relieved, because he had a lot of practice with head wounds. He quickly ripped a stripped of the multi colored flannel shirt Rowan had bought him for Christmas last year to make a strip of gauze for Lynn's head. He was loathed to do it but she needed some kind of bandage.

She winced as he tied it to her head and he winced too. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry but we gotta keep pressure on it."

As he continued to fuss with her bandage she asked: "Who's Ro?" Steve paused. What? Where… where did that come from? She read the confusion on his face and then elaborated: "You called me Ro."

Had he? Fuck. "Oh Ro… Catherine Rollins… I called her Cath, or Ro… she was always hitting her head and that uh… that must have brought it back. Sorry. But hey, at least I've got the practice, right?"

She half laughed at his joke to humour him and he sighed, yeah, he deserved that.

"Did you hear that walkie-talkie on his belt?" he asked. "I think he has a partner."

"Great, so even if that tumble over the cliffs killed him, we have a partner to worry about?"

Yeah that was exactly what that meant. But that didn't matter at that moment, because in the distance they heard the rumble of an engine. A boat engine. A very large boat engine. They exchanged a glance and Steve didn't have to say anything, both of them took off to follow the noise, they might be saved.