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AvalonReeseFanFics

A/N: Hey there my wonderful readers. Here is that Friday post I promised you. We got to see a bit of Conejo's back story, including his real name. We're just this chapter away from the Drama and the official half point of this season! I'm so excited for what's about to happen and I hope you guys are too. Don't forget to leave a review and I'll see you guys on Monday.

Chapter 246

Steve looked at the contact on his phone. Rowan's contact and the picture that went with it. That beautiful silken stare she had, pinned right on him. He had been pressing the delete contact button over and over, but every time he got to the confirm part, he'd change his mind. He felt so uneasy about this simple step, but still he couldn't bring himself to erase her from his life.

He was sitting out on the beach in his chair, watching the water come in. After that afternoon, the video of Rowan, Steve was… well… mad.

Fuck Steve. Really? That was her Valentine's Day? Chugging alcohol in a bar and kissing strange men who caught her when she felt like trust falling off of a bar? That wasn't nice, now was it? If that was how she was behaving, she obviously didn't love him anymore, if she loved him at all.

He was done with this. He was done with her.

So, without a second more of hesitation, he pressed confirm.

As soon as it was done regret hit his system but he used the anger about the situation to tamp it down. When Lynn appeared, having decided to accept his off to come over and make up for giving him a black eye, he wasn't as distraught to see her wearing that grey sweater over her tank top. He let her take the seat that had once belonged to Rowan as she handed him a beer.

He took one sip before putting it to his sore eye.

She smiled at him and he found himself smiling back, his phone discarded, no longer thinking about Rowan… well… that much anyway, when suddenly…

"Who's Ro?"

Steve jolted. He hadn't been expecting that and it surprised him to hear her say that name.

"What are you… why are you?"

"Danny talked to me today," she said. God damn it he was going to kill Danny. "The way he asked… if you had told me about Ro yet… I mean, I know you said she was Catherine… a nick name for her, but it sounds like… like maybe it's not… and then he mentioned Rowan…"

Danny had done what?!

God, he didn't know how to explain Rowan to Lynn. She had taken the ring badly, if he explained who Rowan was… well… she definitely wouldn't talk it well. And he didn't want things to end just yet, not when he was certain this was all he needed to get past his obsession with her.

"Rowan… Rowan was a co-worker… they're not… it's just… she's not… you know, it's not important…"

"I just don't want you to hide things from me anymore Steven."

He sighed. Okay, okay, maybe… maybe he could come clean about Rowan and things would be alright. Maybe she wouldn't take it as a bad thing, maybe she wouldn't think she was just a rebound. He sighed deeply and put down his beer.

"Alright, alright, come with me," he said and then together they went back to the house. He took her up the stairs and into the room he told her not to go into. She looked around at the cluttered dusty place as if surprised it was there. And of course she would be, he had mentioned Nahele in passing but he had never mentioned that Nahele was a past foster kid… that Nahele had lived with him.

He went to the desk, and picked up the closest picture frame. Then he showed it to her. This picture frame housed his favourite picture of him, Nahele and Rowan and tried not to wince at the happy faces staring back at him. He had asked for the photo from Nahele when it appeared again, he meant to scan it in so he could have it on his phone, but Nahele had given him the whole frame. And, because he couldn't bear to look at it, he kept it in Nahele's room.

She took it from him carefully. Holding onto it as if it were precious to her. She looked at the faces carefully before asking: "Who are these people?"

"My family," he whispered. "They're… they're gone now and I'm never going to get them back."

She narrowed her eyes at the picture, sure enough she noticed it, the edges of grey framing Rowan's shoulders. "Oh… this sweater was hers…"

That realization made her uncomfortable, he could see it on her face. She wanted it off and to be fair, he wanted it off of her too. Even if it no longer smelled like Rowan. "Well… it was mine… but she always wore it," he said.

"So… what happened to the kid when Catherine left?" she asked and Steve blanked for a moment… Lynn thought this was she was Catherine? It was right there, the opportunity to come clean. He should have corrected her, but then he would have had to explain why he had a ring for Catherine but a kid with Rowan and well… he couldn't bring himself to do it.

"CPS took him… I applied for custody but uh… my job is too volatile, work hours aren't flexible, bullshit like that."

"Oh a double rejection… first Catherine then the kid… I get it," she said softly. "I'm sorry…"

"I didn't mean to yell at you… it's just that… the sweater smelled of her… it was all I had left…"

"You talk about her like she died…"

Steve glanced down at the picture. In a way she had died. "She's dead to me," he said knowing it was a lie. Rowan wasn't dead to him, she was lost to him. But if he could, if that option were there to have her back in his life, if she were to show up on his door step tomorrow, tears in her eyes asking to come back, he would take her. No questions asked. No matter how mad at her he was.

H5O-H5O-H5O-H5O

When they got back from the cemetery Rowan had let Conejo return to his room and didn't bother him. She even had lunch and dinner sent up, without him asking. It was like she had realized that he couldn't be around people and that he just needed to be on his own for the time being.

By night time he found that he couldn't stay still. He took a bottle of tequila and made his way up to the roof so he could look at the stars and feel smaller in the grand scheme of things. Feeling small made him feel better, reminded him that in the grand scheme of things he was just a tiny little speck that didn't matter. That this was all just some piece of dust in some giant celestial god's eye.

It was kind of like an existential crisis, except he used it to feel less sad that his family was gone and more depressed about how meaningless all of this was.

It was stark reminder that he had never really grieved his family. He had gotten angry, he had raged at his circumstances, he had gotten that revenge he wanted. But when it was all over, when the pain and that emptiness came back, he just… he smothered it with greed, alcohol and death. Sometimes he wondered if he was even human or if the death of his family had turned him into some kind of demon straight from hell.

He must have been up there for an hour, or however long it took him to get through half a bottle when Rowan appeared. Her head just popping up over the edge of the roof like a little gopher.

"Oh! Here you are!" she cried as she pulled herself up. Conejo replied by simply taking another swig out of the bottle. "What are you doing up here?"

"Looking at the stars."

"Cool, I like star gazing," she said as she carefully moved towards him. It wasn't an invitation but he knew better than to argue with her. He put a hand out so she could hold onto him, more because he wanted a grip on her in case she fell and less because she actually needed the help. "Back home, my dad turned the attic of our house into an observatory. All the walls, even the roof, all of it was glass, and you could just lie there under the stars. It was my favourite place in the whole house. Especially on rainy days."

Conejo turned to her, letting her take the tequila from him, watching as she took a sip and made that disgusted face she always made. He kept telling her to stop drinking it if she didn't like the taste but she never listened.

"Okay, seriously. What's going on with you? You gotta tell me why I can't find a lick of evidence of you existing before 2012 but you got this rich history that you can conveniently pull out of no where. Spill. Now."

But Rowan didn't spill. Instead she just sighed. "I don't like talking about my past," she whispered. "My therapist says I try to cope with the pain by ignoring it. That if I pretend like it's not there, that it doesn't exist, then neither does my pain. It's a very unhealthy way to deal with stuff like that."

Okay, well he understood that, the not wanting to talk about the past so he was willing to drop it for now. But she was crazy if she thought he wasn't going to make her open up about something tonight, not after she got him to open up.

"Okay, yeah. I can see that. Is that what you're doing with Steven?" Conejo asked. "Cause if you are… it's not working. Valentine's Day proved that."

Rowan frowned. "Yeah. I unno. It's harder to pretend that none of that happened. For starters I'm still having nightmares about… Japan… and Paris… and now… you know… the Diego thing. And it was all… I guess… much worse than my previous traumas… and I'm getting older now so maybe I'm growing out of it?"

Conejo nodded. "That's true. It also doesn't help that the pain of loosing someone like that doesn't really go away, you know?" he said. "I mean, it's been at least six years since… you know…. and I swear, sometimes it feels like it happened yesterday, you know?"

Rowan carefully looked at him. "It… it doesn't?" she asked in a soft voice and his eyes narrowed.

"Well… I mean…"

"I was hoping… was hoping that someday it would stop hurting so much… cause it… right now… I feel like it's drowning me, you know?"

He opened his mouth to tell her that he was just different, that he was certain if she put her mind to it she could get over what he couldn't. Instead he said: "Come on now, it's not that bad."

"But… it is. And when it's not hurting… sometimes I just feel empty, like I'm nothing but this walking black abyss," she cried. She turned to him took in his look of what he thought was pity and seemed to take it for something else. "Okay, yeah, you know what, that sounds really stupid," she suddenly told him and he for a second it's confused. "I mean, compared what to what you went through… what you lost… you've suffered a real loss and know real pain. But I sometimes… sometimes I really wish I had lost him, that it might have been easier if one of us had died. But Steve isn't dead, he isn't gone, he's just gone to me. And sometimes that just hurts worse… you know. Because he wasn't stolen from me, he wasn't taken, he simply chose… someone else. I just don't know why I wasn't good enough? Why wouldn't he love me?"

Conejo watched her fold in on herself, tears in his own eyes. He hadn't shown this much emotion since he had lost his family, he had forced himself to be numb to it. But sitting there on that roof with that girl, sobbing about her own heart ache he felt a little more human than he had before climbing up there.

He put an arm around her shoulder and pulled her tight. "You are good enough, okay?" he said. "I know I haven't known you long, but in the time I have known you… you've been… you've just been an all-around amazing person, you know? And in my line of work… I don't meet a lot of people like you. You just have this way of looking at the world in this different light. You don't look for the darkness, it's like you're constantly finding the light… the good in people. And if this McGarrett asshole… if he couldn't do that for you, then fuck him, you know?"

Rowan pulled her head out of his chest to stare up at him. She swiped at her eyes but just stared, as if she didn't know what to say. As if letting go of Steven McGarrett was a foreign concept to her.

"You are the nicest, kindest, smartest, bravest person I know. You are worth, ten Steven McGarretts, in fact, if I had to go on an op tomorrow I'd want to take you with me, because I know when the chips are down you'll have my back. Just you know, not really, cause I don't wanna trust you with a gun and I'd rather you be safe, but you know what I'm saying right?" he asked which won him half a nod and a bit of a chuckle. "You are worthy of so much more than the Steven McGarrett and his bullshit, okay? You are better than Catherine, you are better than him, and we will find you someone else, someone who will see that okay?"

Rowan nodded and then straightened. He straightened too, letting her sniffles run dry and tears stop falling, petting her back in a soft and reassuring way, like he used to when Emilano had to be burped. When she was a bit calmer she said: "You're worthy too you know."

Conejo paused and turned to her. "Excuse me?"

"You heard me Sebastian Falcon-Gonzales. You are worthy of love too," she repeated. Goddamn he never should have told her his full name. "Look… something bad happened, you know, something really, really terrible. Something happened to you that never should have happened, but… if it hadn't… you wouldn't be who you are today. You wouldn't be strong, or smart, or calculated. You wouldn't have this amazing assassin pedigree behind you. And you… well… you wouldn't be here with me."

The same could be said about her, but she didn't see that and he didn't know how to make her see it either. It was one thing to preach the words, it was another thing to believe and apply them to yourself.

She turned to him at that point and the night sky lit up those blue eyes of hers. Fuck she was pretty. She was so stunningly pretty and she was filled with so much love, had so much of it to give. How the hell had McGarrett turned this girl away? Just how? If Conejo had someone even a fraction like her he never would have let her go. Though he kind of did have her for a minute there… sort of… McGarrett had a strong hold of her heart then… he had a feeling he always will.

"I know you're scared of caring for someone again," she announced and his mouth ran dry because he had no idea how she could have known that. "I know that you're afraid if you open up again, you'll open yourself up to that kind of heart ache. But I promise, I promise that if you try, it will be worth it. Okay?"

Conejo let out a shaky laugh and looked away from her. "Don't make promises you can't keep."

Rowan just smiled at him. "Oh I know I can keep this promise," she said clapping a hand to his arm. "You just said it yourself, I see only the light in people and that's all I can see in you. You don't have to love me, you don't even have to like me, but I like you, Sebastian. I like you a lot. You're a great body guard, you're a great shot and you're an even better friend. I know I annoy you and you're doing so well at putting up with me, so I want you to know that it doesn't matter how broken you are, how deep your scars go or how dark your past is. I'm going to like you for who and what you are no matter what, just like I do for Wo. And when you're ready to accept that, I'll be here, with my arms open. And until then I'm just going to annoy you with constant affection. Okay?"

Conejo just stared at her. He sensed that she meant it he just didn't understand why she would.

"Why… why are you doing this?" he asked softly.

She leant in close and rested her chin on his shoulder. "Cause we're family now, silly," she said. "Family doesn't give up. And we don't let go."

Family. It had been such a long time since he had had one of those.

"Kay well I'm all cried out, I'm gonna head back down and go to bed, you gonna stay up here?" she asked. He nodded, a hand out to help her as she stood up, but letting her walk down the incline by herself. It was only a five-foot drop to the balcony she wouldn't be that hurt if she fell though if she did he'd feel bad.

He could trust her to get down, right?

"Alright, stay up there like Mexican Batman," she said to him shooting him a playful grin. "Goodnight, Con."

As she dropped out of view he let out the breath he had been holding in. He may not have liked Wo Fat but Rowan, yeah, he could see Rowan being his family. And Conejo had always said, if he ever got another family, he'd never let anything happen to them. Ever again.

H5O-H5O-H5O-H5O

Wo Fat was so tired it had reached every crevice of his body. Working tirelessly to ensure the safety of all Armando's assets while negotiating the truce with Diego. It had worn him to the bone.

So, he was happy, when after two weeks he was finally able to return to the safe house where Rowan was.

It was the middle of the night, she was going to be asleep, and he should have let her sleep, but he wanted to see her. He just wanted to make sure that she was alright.

He snuck softly into her room, to cross around her bed to see her face. She looked peaceful, she looked happy, which meant no nightmares for her tonight. Hopefully. He knelt down beside the bed just to watch her, to feel her pulse under his fingertips, to remind himself that she was alive and well. He had had his own nightmares while he was away, irrational fears and worries had plagued him both at night and while he was awake.

Yes, he was ensuring that Armando's assets were safe, but he had left Rowan, his own pressure point alone essentially to do so. If Diego was using this truce as a distraction while all the while he was searching for a way to hurt either him or Armando, going for Rowan would have been the way to go. But he wasn't that stupid. Wo Fat's response to the last kidnapping, Rowan proving she's crazy enough to crash a car into a building she knew held her brother and Armando, her friend, should have been enough to dissuade Diego to never try going for her again.

But desperate men did desperate things. And if Wo Fat had been in Diego's shoes, he would have gone for a pressure point like Rowan as soon as he could.

The second his fingertips brushed against her neck her eyes opened. He smiled at her sleepily blinking blue eyes, sometimes he forgot how blue her eyes were, and then there were times, just like at that moment, where he would be knocked sideways by the reminder.

"Hi," she whispered softly and he whispered it right back.

"Go back to sleep," he said to her. "I just wanted to check on you."

But Rowan wasn't going to go back to sleep, already she was moving. Her hands reached out to him. Immediately he reached back.

With in seconds, and he wasn't sure how she had even managed it, he was in her bed, under the blankets, their hands intertwined between them.

"You've been gone for so long," she whispered once they had settled. "Where have you been?'

"Taking care of stuff, I trust you've been alright."

He hadn't gotten any texts from Conejo saying otherwise. And all requests for updates had pointed to life at the safe house being calm and somewhat dull.

"No."

Now that contradicted all of Conejo's updates. Concern furrowed his brow. "No? Did something happen?"

"I had a bad Valentine's Day."

Ah. Yes. He figured she would. A Valentine's Day without Steven would have made it quite… hard for her. But he assumed, with Conejo on her, that she wouldn't have gotten into too much trouble.

He reached out to brush a tendril of hair away from her face and she reached out to brush the tips of his hair out of his eyes. A reminder that he was in desperate need of a trim.

"Not too bad, though. You had Conejo with you it couldn't have been that bad…" "—I chugged an entire bottle of Absinthe." "Oh my god, how are you alive?"

She let out a soft chuckle and he found that he couldn't help but smile as well. At least she was somewhat amused by her terrible decisions.

"What did you do for Valentine's Day?"

He had executed the leader of a team he had put in charge of taking care of Armando's largest drug producing warehouse. Figured him to be a spy. When the man couldn't convince him otherwise, he shot him between the eyes.

"Nothing as eventful as that," he said instead.

"What about your girlfriend?"

"Jian?"

"Yeah her."

For a second Wo Fat was surprised. He hadn't thought about Jian in a long time, Valentine's Day had briefly brought her back to his mind, but it only served to remind him that thinking about her made him sad… and filled him with such an intense longing. Combined with his worry about Rowan, his own desire to just go home to her and knowing that he couldn't, had turned him slightly more… violent then he usually was.

"She's in Japan, Ro, I don't know what she's doing."

"Didn't you call her?"

Wo Fat's eyes crinkled in surprise. "No. Why would I?"

"Because it's Valentine's Day, and you're dating her and… did you really not send her anything or talk to her? Ooohhh you're in so much trouble!"

She thought he was still dating Jian? Alright, to be fair he never really did tell her that he had broken things off with her temporarily to be go on this whirlwind adventure with his favourite little sister.

"No… uh… no, no, Jian an I… we're no longer together…"

"What? But why?"

"Well I'm here with you, aren't I?"

Rowan frowned. "You broke up with her because of me?"

"No, I mean… it's not like you told me to break up with her," he started but Rowan's frown deepened.

"You broke up with her to be here with me, that makes it might fault…"

"No, it is not your fault. Rowan I was going on the run with you, Jian has a stable life and a practice to run, I couldn't bring her with me," he told her. His had gripping hers a little tighter. "So, I ended things temporarily until I better knew the situation and whether or not things would… uh… become easier for… you know… us to reconnect."

"Which you haven't," she whispered.

"Well we've been busy, I've… been extra busy as of late…"

"Were you alone for Valentine's Day? Please say no."

"I was… uh… well Armando went home to his family for the night so I was sort of…"

"Oh Wo," she suddenly cried lurching forward to hug him. "I'm sorry you were alone for Valentine's Day."

This wasn't his first Valentine's Day alone, in fact he spent most of his Valentine's Days alone. Wo Fat let her hug him, draping an arm around her. He wanted to tell her that it was okay but she cut him off. "You should call her. Invite her out here. I know you're busy but I bet she'd love to see you."

But Wo Fat knew he couldn't do that. He had never told Jian who Rowan really was and instinctively he knew he couldn't introduce Rowan, who looked nothing like him, who had only adopted him three years ago, and whom he had chosen to run away with, to his girlfriend. It wouldn't look good, he knew it didn't look good. She'd take one look at Rowan and pick a fight and he knew that if they were to fight in front of Rowan, about Rowan, she'd take all the blame and all the guilt. And his sister was so prone to doing noble things like telling Wo Fat that it was fine to choose Jian over her.

She had enough emotional damage going on with her, he didn't want the blame for his breakup with Jian on her conscience. Cause there was no way he'd choose to abandon Rowan now.

"No, I can't do that," he whispered. "Cops are watching her. If I reach out now they'll grab her, and I'm not in a position to save her if that does happen."

Rowan smiled sadly. "Maybe we can sneak her out," she whispered. "I'm sure she'd love to see you and vice versa. We'll send Con!"

"But that doesn't matter, Ro," he said to her. "You're my priority right now. And as soon as I end this with Diego, you're going to be the focal point of my attention once more."

Rowan smiled up to him, almost sleepily, her eyes slowly starting to close. "You're the best. You should pick where we go next… once you're done with everything here." She yawned and slowly began to shift out of his grip, rolling onto her back first. "You're such a good brother to me," she repeated. "You really do deserve to be surrounded by love."

Then she rolled away from him, her back facing him now. The guilt hit his system so hard he thought, for a moment, it might have paralyzed his lungs. A sudden realization crashing over him. If she were to ever find out what he had done, if she were to ever learn the truth, she'd never forgive him.

Wo Fat carefully reached out, his hand gripping the back of her shirt lightly. He should have gone to his own bed, he should have left her there to rest, but he found he couldn't move. He needed the reminder that she was there, that she was still with him.

He had a feeling he was going to have nightmares after this and he'd want to wake up to her an arm's length away. Knowing that, as soon as it hit morning, he was going to find something else to give her, something else to do with her to bury that guilt back down where it belonged.