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AvalonReeseFanFics

A/N: Happy Wednesday my wonderful readers! I'm so glad you guys enjoyed the last chapter. I told you it would be an interesting one. As you guys guessed, Rowan's not going to be able to lie to him about who and what she is anymore, so it's all going to come out at once. Will he believe her? What's his response going to be? Let's find out! Don't forget to leave me review and I'll see you guys on Friday!

Chapter 248

Rowan came to with a sickening start. She bolted up expecting dirt and blood but found herself in her bed back the bed she had been calling her own. Wo Fat stood at the foot of her bed. Arms crossed over his chest and a scowl on his face.

Rowan groaned, everything hurt. She had a brief recollection of what she had done, flashes of a lot different places, and things, of water washing away the evil. And he had witnessed everything. He'd have a lot of questions. Questions she didn't know the answers to. God, she didn't want to deal with this. "Uh… hi… how long have I been out?" she asked.

"About 32 hours," he answered, his tone clipped. Oh my god, she had lost a whole day? He narrowed his eyes as her. "You need to tell me how you did what you did, yesterday, and you need to tell me now."

Rowan blinked her eyes. Oh God. This uh… this wasn't going to be a fun conversation. "Well… to be honest… I'm not sure how I did it," she admitted. "I've never done that before."

That would have worked on Steven, had worked many times on Steven, Wo Fat wasn't having it though. "Rowan," he growled through clenched teeth and she couldn't help but to flinch.

"I don't know how to explain it, Oz," she said hoping that calling him her pet name for him would calm him down. But judging by the scowl on his face it had not helped. "I don't know how to make you believe me."

"Try starting from the beginning," he offered, sitting down on the foot of her bed. He crossed his arms over his just and just stared at her. His eyes boring into her. Well… she couldn't quite lie could she?

"Oh god, uh, okay. You know when I told you I'm not from here, well I meant like really. I'm really not from here."

Wo Fat seemed to take this in. "So… like… a martian? An alien? From like… space?"

Rowan laughed a little but he was serious so she forced herself to stop. "No I'm not from outer space," she told him. She winced again and then lowered her eyes. "You have to promise to believe me. If I tell you, you have to believe me."

Because if he didn't believe her it would crush her.

"Rowan after what I just witnessed, I'll believe anything," he told her. "But you have to tell me, I need to understand what the hell happened."

"I'm from an alternate reality," she blurted out. Ripped that confession just like a band aid. Wo Fat just stared at her as if he had expected a lot of things but not that. Rowan just sighed.

"I don't know how I got here, it wasn't like I was actively trying to travel dimensions or anything like that. It just sort of happened," she said, trying to explain once more.

Wo Fat shook his head, so he didn't get that either. God she wasn't doing a good job of this. "What?" he cried.

"Okay. Four years ago, I went to sleep and woke up in the middle of the air. I dropped out of the sky and landed in the surf off of Oahu. Steve and Danny were fishing and found me. You could say they fished me out," she said, chuckling a bit at her own joke. But Wo was just staring at her like he was horrified. Rowan lowered her eyes. "I'm not psychic either. I come from a place where your world is a TV show. My favourite actually. I'm off script now so I have no idea what's going to happen. But it's why I keep dreaming about Hawaii. Why I still dream about Steve's cases. That's why I grabbed him today, I knew he was going to get seriously injured if I didn't intervene."

"So… you come from an Alternate reality, where this is all a TV show… and now you can open portals?" he asked.

"Uh… honestly… I have no idea. I mean I knew I could open up a door to the void and travel between but it takes a lot of out of me. It hurts a lot, and it affects Steve too. Today… well... I was just so mad that I guess I forced it to open for me. It showed me all the strings I needed to pull to cause the most amount of damage. It's never done that before, but I've also never asked it to do that before," she told him.

Wo Fat nodded. "Yes, I noticed the strings. There were red ones all over you and McGarrett. What are those?"

"I don't know," she whispered. There was a lot of things that she didn't know and that had never been more apparent than right now. "I once thought they were our feelings… that because there were so many of them, that how he and I felt for each other was uh… was keeping me here. But… he's with Catherine… right? I mean… he left me for Catherine, he chose her and said that he didn't… doesn't that… Wouldn't that meant they would have gone away? Or that they would be less of them?"

But she was asking the wrong person and Wo Fat seemed stricken by that question. Instead she quietly sat back on the bed and let him contemplate her words. "Okay. So you can open doors into this void and you've tried to go home before, but it didn't work?" he asked completely ignoring the Steve and the red strings issue. Fair, she wanted to ignore it too because she didn't want to think that the reason the two of them were tangled up in red strings was because she still loved him and she was keeping them still connected and her stuck in this universe.

Rowan nodded. "Yes. Actually around the first time I met you. I had been opening the void up multiple times a day to try and get home but I couldn't find my way," she told him. "It kept dropping me random places all over Hawaii, which includes in the ocean outside of that port where you first found me."

"That's why you had burns all over you. That's why you looked skeletal," he breathed out. Rowan looked down to her arms which had been bandaged. Looked like she had a few more scars to add to her catalogue.

Rowan nodded. "That would be when the burns started appearing. Before that, when something was just pulling me in, I didn't get them."

Now that got his attention. "Wait a second. What do you mean, pulling you?" he echoed.

"Well… uh, before I started purposely trying to open the void I was getting pulled in, it wasn't a voluntary thing. It was like something had a hold of me and it was trying to take me somewhere," she said.

Wo Fat straightened. "Not Voluntary?!" he thundered. Launching off the bed and glaring down at her. "You're telling me that at any point in time, against your will, something could open up a portal and pull you in?"

"Well… I mean… it hasn't happened in years," she answered.

"But there's still a chance, right? That's unacceptable. There's gotta be a way to learn about this," he said pacing the length of the foot of her king sized bed.

"Well…" she whispered. "I sort of know of someone who could help, but he's in Canada…"

Wo Fat turned to her, his eyes narrowed again. "Isn't that where you're from? Well I mean… alternate reality… you call yourself Canadian…"

He was spiraling. She had to help him. "Uh… yeah," she admitted cutting him off. She then sighed and ran a hand over her face. "It's really complicated though."

Wo Fat seemed to take this in before turning away saying: "You can explain it to me on the plane. We need to get you out of here."

Oh, now that was new. "We do?" she asked surprised. "I didn't fix things?"

He must have heard the uncertainty in her voice. The last time she had done something like this Steve was far from appreciative, and seeing how the whole going into the void for long periods of time had almost killed her it wasn't surprising that she hadn't tried to do something like it since. She was worried that, like Steve, he didn't appreciate her helping him in such a fashion.

He turned to her. "Oh yeah!" he said with a big grin. "You obliterated Diego's operation once and for all. He survived, which is unfortunate but he's been dethroned. Armando is in charge now, but we have a literal witch hunt brewing and I want you out of the country before it gets out of hand. Not to mention you flooded the first floor of the house and I think Armando's a little pissed off about it."

Oh… really? Wow, he sounded so happy about it. "Uhm… okay… so you're not… mad?"

"Mad? Rowan, you saved our lives. We'd be dead and you'd be a sex slave, why the hell would I be mad at you?" he asked and then realization dawned on his face. "Oh my god, three years ago, when I met you… you said you and Steve had an argument and he told you to leave. There were reported incidences at Halawa, I remember, something about electricity and some guard going nuts, talking about teleporting. That was you, wasn't it. You teleported with the guard… That was right before I met you… a couple of days… Steve kicked you out of his life because he couldn't handle the magic trick, didn't he?"

Rowan scowled, it wasn't like that. Steve wasn't that bad of a guy. "That wasn't all of it. He worried, I got myself into trouble. He had spent a month keeping me grounded to this reality because something was trying to pull me away. And then I just up and started doing it by myself. Plus he was with Catherine at the time and she told him to choose…"

Wo Fat rolled his eyes and scoffed. "He's an idiot," he snapped, not even bothering to let her finish defending Steven. He then took a good long look at her. "We gotta get going. I've already packed everything up and you're in your pjs, but we're getting out on using Armando's private plane so no one is going to care."

Rowan slipped out of bed, he was in her booty shorts and a tank top. She didn't remember changing, so that meant one of the boys did it. It better have been Conejo, he was the only one she was comfortable with changing her. But she wasn't going to ask that. She had a different concern. Yeah Colombia was hot but it probably wasn't good for her to be dressed like that. She looked at him and he looked back as if he couldn't see what was wrong.

"Geeze, if it bugs you that much I'll give you my jacket, okay?" he offered and Rowan nodded.

He handed her the burgundy converse, and she noted that they were finally getting too worn to actually wear. She'd have to get rid of them at their next stop. Then she actually thought about her next stop. Canada. Home. She was going to go see her father.

She had thought about going to visit them every day since she had gotten here. But she was dead to them. Literally. She had died as an infant. But that didn't mean that she didn't want to meet her family. That she didn't want them to recognize her on some level. Which meant… she had to look like them.

"How much time do we have?" she asked.

Wo Fat's eyes narrowed at her. "Why?"

"I need a bit of a makeover," she said. "I'd like to change my hair."

She thought he'd say that was silly. She thought he'd say that they didn't have the time. But Wo Fat merely nodded.

"Oh, that's great, cause I was going to propose a few changes too," he told her. That was worrying. But still Rowan got her shoes on, she demanded his suit blazer which he gave to her immediately. "You and I, we'll talk about it on the way over."

Rowan smiled to him. "Okay. Sounds like a plan."

H5O-H5O-H5O-H5O

Rowan had taken the news well. Most people who were told that they were going to be assuming a new identity usually asked a few questions. But Wo Fat told her that she needed a new name to get out of Colombia and she just nodded like she just understood and left it as that.

She had gone into the salon over two hours ago. He had sent Conejo with her, for protection. But neither had come back yet and that made him nervous. What kind of makeover did she need that lasted this long?

The plane was idling, the forger was waiting on a picture for her for her passport. This was taking way too long. Maybe something had happened? Maybe they had been captured. Maybe they were dead. God, why hadn't he gone with them? Fuck, if someone had taken her how would he get her back? He'd have to call McGarrett. Have him brought to Colombia, let him sniff her out like the bloodhound he was where Rowan was concerned. Ha… he'd probably find Rowan in less than two hours.

He was being paranoid of course, but he couldn't help it. His plan it had gone so terribly wrong so fast. He hadn't had a plan go up in flames like that in years, not since McGarrett became a constant thorn to his side. He couldn't even blame Rowan's interference, she had done as he asked and stayed inside. He had thought he was ready, he thought he had instilled enough fear in the people working for him, but maybe it was a touch too much fear, because Diego had swayed them and that was how he got control of Armando's compound. He had hoped that Diego wouldn't know that Rowan was in the house, but he knew, and then he went to get her and both he and Conejo had been powerless to stop him. Rowan had scared him before, and he had been able to put the blame on everyone else, but this time, with that man telling him he was going to take his Rowan and sell her off to the highest bidder after he offed Wo Fat had been a terrifying prospect.

It was just as Wo Fat thought, Diego knew that Rowan was his pressure point so he made sure to make it known that Wo Fat had failed to protect her. The truth of the matter was, if Rowan hadn't intervened they'd all be dead and he didn't even want to think of what would have happened to Rowan.

Though he did know he was going to have Kong program a "Contact McGarrett" protocol if something like that happened again, so that Sandy would activate and send him to rescue her if Wo Fat was otherwise incapable. It was a blow to his pride to need that sort of protocol but he needed to put Rowan before his pride as she was more important.

"What do you think?"

Wo Fat nearly jumped out of his skin. He was so lost in thought he hadn't even noticed Rowan appear. Probably because she hadn't come in a car. Where the hell was the car he had sent them in?

"Wo?" Rowan probed and his eyes fell back down to her. "I asked you what you thought."

She had sheered her hair off. It was chin length, layered longer towards the back. Her hair was now a dark chestnut brown.

"I asked her to cut the blonde out of my hair. I didn't realize that I had so much of it," she said. "You don't think it's too short, do you?"

Wo Fat put a hand out to touch it. It was pin straight and silky. It was more serious than her other hair color, it suited the Rowan she as slowly becoming. The dark chestnut really made her blue eyes pop. "No. It looks good. It suits you," he said. "We have to take a picture for the passport, you can do that with that man over there."

He moved her over to where she was supposed to go and then turned to Conejo.

"She was fine as is," Conejo mumbled and Wo Fat rolled his eyes. Since the incident he had reverted back to that tight-lipped, no nonsense, speaking bare minimum words man he used to be. And with it came back the cold-detached ruthlessness. This incident had scared him too, but his intensity where it came to protecting her had not eased off, instead he had gotten worse.

"Where's the car?"

"We had to ditch it," he said. "People were following us."

Wow. Wo Fat really had bad luck with Audis. Well fuck it, it was rental that wasn't even under his own name. "Well, get on the plane, as soon as her passport's ready we're wheels up and out of this hell hole."

Conejo merely nodded but he didn't move. He kept his eyes on Rowan, somehow Wo Fat just knew that Conejo wasn't going to move until Rowan was on the plane with him.

"Armando sends his thanks," Conejo said. Well he damn well should. The only reason he had come down here was to help him. They almost died over his crusade to control more of Colombia. But it worked out. He was going to be able to rule Colombia's underworld with an iron fist now that they knew he was connected to the witch that took down Diego.

Rowan skipped back to him, her new passport in hand and ready to go. That was fast. She smiled up to him in the fashion he was used to and he smiled right back. One glance at Conejo confirmed that he too was smiling at her in the same way.

"I have a new name too!" she told them showing him the passport. "Rory Wickerby."

"Yes, I thought you'd like that one," Wo Fat told her. "Now get on the plane we gotta go."

Rowan obeyed, hopping up the steps like an excited kid. Beside him Conejo whispered: "They have a new name for her too."

"Yeah and what's that?" Wo Fat asked.

Conejo turned to him and said two words: La Bruja. And Wo Fat felt his blood run cold. Because it fit. Perfectly.

Well after what he witnessed, yeah, Rowan really was a witch.

H5O-H5O-H5O-H5O

She thought having to explain what she was to Wo Fat was going to be hard. It was worse explaining it to Conejo. Only because he had so many questions. He took the alternate reality thing with stride, she told him that was what was going on with her and he just nodded like that was a perfectly normal confession. Like it explained everything about her.

They were midway through the flight. Conejo was across from her, Wo Fat was sitting beside her, drinking wine as if there wasn't a care in the word, while Conejo was peppering her with more questions that she strugglinh to answer.

"So if you're from an alternate reality… why isn't there two versions of you? Like how did that work? Did you assume your old body?"

"Oh no. I know I didn't assume the identity of the Rowan that lived here," she answered, because at least she knew the answer to that question. "No, uh, I just dropped out of the sky. Though my dad did have a theory that if a person were to travel, since the universe can't handle having two of the same person in the same place, that a traveler would just take the place of that version of them in that reality and the version the traveler kicked out would be displaced to the corresponding reality."

Both Conejo and Wo Fat took that in, because it didn't explain why they she had no history.

"Okay… but… but you… you didn't displace someone… did you, because you don't exist before you dropped in," Wo Fat said.

"Yeah," Conejo seconded quickly cause that would mean… if you did… you'd have some kind of history before 2012 when you dropped in. So… then where are you? Why aren't you in this world?"

"Cause I died."

Beside her Wo Fat chocked on his sip of wine. She snatched the glass out of his hand before he could drop it and then watched as he coughed and struggled to breathe. Well that meant this was a bombshell for him.

"Excuse me? You're a zombie too?"

Rowan scowled at him. "Hardly," she said with a roll of her eye. "I told you I didn't assume the corresponding body. No. I was still born, I died before I could even live. That's why I don't exist her, that's why… that's why I never went back to Canada."

"Oh, cause your family wouldn't know you," Conejo finished. "Well… how do you even know they're even there?"

"Cause I looked. My mom and Trevor are living in Victoria, where we all lived as a family you know… back in my reality. But my dad's in Toronto. They got divorced a few years after my death. I'm guessing they couldn't take losing a child which is weird cause I was never my mom's favourite child. Trevor was. I was a daddy's girl though…"

Which was why she was so afraid to see him. Especially since he wasn't going to recognize her. She knew it was going to hurt, because she wanted nothing more than to throw herself at him shouting daddy at the top of her lungs and have him tell her that it was okay and he was going to fix it.

"Trevor is… her…"

"Her brother," Wo Fat finished and Rowan nodded.

"Oh so she has a real brother. You must hate that" he said to Wo Fat who just glared drily at Conejo's sudden grin. They held each other's gaze for a moment before he turned back to Rowan. "Or… I unno, how does that work. If they're an alternate reality version are they still your family?"

"I mean… they're all Pierces. But I don't share their DNA."

"How do you know that?" Wo Fat asked a narrowed look on his face.

"Well, Steve has my DNA on file at the palace," she said. "I used his log in credentials to run my DNA against the DNA of my family on file. I have enough genetic markers to be considered like… a distant cousin, but I don't 100% match them."

The two boys took this in but it was Conejo who asked: "So how do we know this guy is going to help us… if he even can…"

"Well my dad has the same job. He's still a professor with a degree in Cosmology, according to his university webpage, he's still the leading scientist in the field and he's still working on traveling through the white spaces to new realities. So… I'm guessing if anyone could help me put one and two together…. It would… well… be him…"

"Okay… so… white spaces?"

Geezus it was like she was back with Steven. Never ending questions. "We call it the void," Rowan said before she could stop herself. "Well… Steve and I did. I guess I just call it the void now. My dad called it the white spaces… you know… like between lines? In my world… and bear with me here cause I know the bare minimum of this, in my world my dad was under the impression that all the universes operated under the string theory… so traveling from one reality to another would mean going through the white space between each line…"

"I'm already lost," Conejo said with a huff. "Let's let the expert explain hmm?"

Rowan nodded and Wo Fat carefully put a hand to hers. He had been doing that a lot since she had told him the truth. She had a feeling it was because of the revelation she had dropped on him, that she might be pulled away. Like Steve, he decided to keep close contact with her to ensure that she didn't actually vanish again.

"We'll have to think of a cover story," he said.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, you can't just walk up to the man and tell him you're his dead daughter from another reality, he'd think you're crazy," he told her and Rowan nodded because that was true. "And we don't really want him to know who you really are anyway…"

"What? Why not?"

"Rowan, your powers, they're weaponizable," he told her and Rowan paused and turned to him surprised. "I have a feeling you haven't thought of it that way, and I get that, but you did just take out Diego's whole operation in a single afternoon. That is something that is highly coveted by all governments. If he gets your name, if someone learns what you can do and decides they want to use you to their gain, they will hunt you for the rest of time."

Rowan blinked her eyes at him. She hadn't really thought about it like that.

"And we both know you'd like to settle down at some point, right?"

That was right. She wanted to settle somewhere and bring Nahele to her. Even if that meant kidnapping him from Steven and Catherine. He was her foster kid first and she was going to take him back. Well she planned to send Conejo to bring him back but that was the same thing essentially.

"Okay, so… I mean, I could draft something up for you," Wo Fat said. "I'd like to not tell him your new identity, maybe give you a new name? Takara? Maybe?"

"What does that mean?"

"Treasure, he called you a treasure," Conejo said, he was mostly interested in the bag of pretzels he was eating she was surprised he was still paying attention.

Rowan turned to Wo Fat completely shocked he came up with something that sentimental. Maybe. "I'll think of something appropriate."

"And you can't tell him you're from Hawaii," he said. "Or that you dropped in from Hawaii. Say something else, say Japan or something."

"Why not Hawaii? It's not like he'll know that's where I dropped in…"

"Because if he looks for someone who looks like you in Hawaii it will alert Steven. I told you he's looking for you to find me, which means he's got alerts on all searches for anyone who might be looking for someone like you… okay?"

"Really? That seems like a lot of effort just to get you, Wo."

"You're more distinguishable than me, Rowan," he snapped.

"Half your face is burnt, how do I stick out more?"

Wo Fat turned a dark glare to her but she had a point and he knew it. "You just do," he argued. "That's not the point. The man hates me and he's mad that you're off having fun with me instead of somewhere he can stalk, the man's a control freak and you know this. So the more we keep you out of his line of search the better."

Rowan sunk down in her seat. It seemed odd that Steve would go to all that trouble to find her simply because he wanted to arrest Wo Fat. Didn't he have better things to do with his time? But she didn't want to press Wo Fat for more answers, she didn't want to upset him after everything that happened. She didn't want to lose the only family she had left, because she knew, even though she was going to meet her dad, she wasn't getting her family back.

And he was right, in a way, she would have to have a cover story to meet her father so he didn't figure out who she was. Normally Rowan wouldn't be concerned about pulling a lie out of now where, but she had never been good at lying to her father, he had always been able to tell. This time, she was going to have to be really prepared, she may even write it down so she could keep Conejo and Wo Fat in the loop too.

Her confusion about what was going on with Steven was going to have to wait. She had to figure out what was going on with her first.