Rewrite

AvalonReeseFanFics

A/N: Happy Monday my wonderful readers! So we're going to find out what happened to cause Steve's little episode, and in the next couple of chapter's we're going to be very void heavy, a lot of void stuff is going to happen, and we're eventually going to meet all of Rowan's family. Are you guys excited?! I know I am! We're half way guys, we're almost through this year, only a few more incidents to go through and then Steve and Rowan get back together. I'll keep you posted on how long it should take, but I'm not thinking much longer. Again I'm trying to get them back together by the 300th chapter. Don't forget to leave me a review and I will do my best to see you guys on Wednesday, but I have to write the whole chapter before then so no promises!

Chapter 250

"Okay, explain it to me again."

The girl, whom had introduced herself to him as simply as Wick, was sitting calmly in one of stools as he bustled around his lab turning everything on and pulling out all the experiments he thought might be able to help them. She seemed at home in his lab, as if she were used to being around this kind of equipment or his kind of intense energy. Which partly might have been because of the two men she had with her.

She had introduced her two goons as her brothers. Older brothers. Both of whom looked nothing like her. The eldest, the ones with the burns covering half his face and in the fanciest of suits, she called Oz. The Latino biker with the perfectly coifed head of black hair and the severe glare was Con. Both men, while they stood behind her, had the pretending of being aloof and uncaring, but Trenton saw the way their eyes stayed on the girl. They were prepared to move if he proved himself to be a threat, so he had to tread carefully around her.

But despite their disapproval of the topic he wanted to more information about this girl. Because he had a theory and he need more evidence to support it before he went forward with his claim.

"Okay. About four years ago I dropped out of the sky and into this universe," she said. Four years ago. His experiment to pull an object through the void had been four years ago. "And… at first… I didn't really have any side effects, you know? But then maybe a few months after I got here, something started trying to pull me into the void… like it was trying to take me somewhere…"

That had also been him. It took a while to create the chain, the harpoon like hook that was designed to pulse towards energized Bosons. It must have been grabbing her. But was stopping it from pulling her through.

"Then… I unno, whatever it was… that connection just sort of snapped…" she was lying, she knew exactly what had happened. He didn't, he just knew that one day the thing had snapped and he didn't have the grant money to recreate the harpoon again. "After that I tried opening the void to go home but I couldn't find my way. Then I unno one day I couldn't open the door to the void anymore."

Void, she must have meant the space between the strings. He was calling them white spaces.

"And the uh… the trick with the doorknob?"

"Oh… uhm… I started… I started the manipulation stuff after I…"

She paused at that point and turned to the two men hovering behind her. The one with the scars, obviously the eldest of the trio and the leader, nodded and she turned back.

"I started manipulating strings after Oz kidnapped my boyfriend."

Well that was… interesting.

"Wait, that's how you got into the room?" Oz suddenly asked and Wick turned back to him and nodded. He seemed to think it over for a little longer but it was Con who asked: "Is that the ropes trick?"

Rope's trick?

All eyes turned to him and he elaborate: "Mami was slipping every rope that Diego put around her wrists."

"You slipped the CIA's cuffs too," Oz murmured turning new eyes of understanding to the girl. CIA, some guy was tying her up? Who the hell were these people?

"Yep that's how I got out of the cuffs and the ropes, all I have to do is focus on the strings, find the one that loosens the ropes and bam I'm out of them," she explained and then turned back to Trenton. "But uh… what happened a few days ago… that was something that's never happened before."

"And what happened?" he asked.

"I uh… I opened the void like a million times in a row but I wasn't like… in control, you know?" she asked, "I barely remember doing it and… I unno, I can't have that happening."

Trenton was firing up his machines, his readers, he knew what he was going to ask her to do first.

"I thought you couldn't open the void anymore? That's what you said, that you couldn't do it anymore."

Wick huffed, but it was true, she had said that. "Yeah, I know, that's thing. I didn't think I could then I just got so angry that I uh… I guess I forced myself to open it but once I was there, once I was in it I wasn't in control…"

Trenton nodded. Alright. Maybe this experiment wouldn't work. Still he pushed the Wig machine into the middle of the room and right in front of him.

"WHOA! It's the Wig, he's got the Wig!" she cried pointing it at him. Trenton looked up to her surprised. Not only did she know what it was she knew his nickname for it. When both her boys stared at her with eyes of ununderstanding she said: "It's the Worm Hole Generator! Which we acronymed to WGH which is pronounced Wig. And look now it's working. Don't you get it? He was having such a hard time figuring out the theory behind it and making it work and before I fell…."

And then she stopped dead, her words died on her mouth and Trenton knew immediately what she was going to say.

She was going to say when she was home, it wasn't working. Which meant she came from a reality where someone she knew was making one of these.

It was all Trenton needed to prove that this girl really was his daughter. He was about 75% certain that this was Rowan Pierce. She had changed her hair, the red and blonde was gone, but she had died her hair to what he figured was the natural hair color. Which was the same color as Rosie's.

He'd need more evidence before he confronted her about. And he figured need her away from the two guard dogs she had with her as well, whom he assumed were criminals now and probably the reason she lied about who she was, she could obviously be traced back to them. It sort of worried him, what this version of his daughter might be involved in.

"You've seen one of these before?"

Wick blinked her eyes before muttering solidly. "My dad worked in a lab like this one."

"Ah, and did you come into contact with any of the machines before you…"

"No, I wasn't at the lab before I fell in, I was at home," she snapped. "My brother shot me with a particle energizer gun though."

"At home?"

"Yeah sometimes we play around with our dad's stuff… when we really shouldn't…" she whispered

Alright that explained a few things. Firstly the person in her life with the most likely Cosmology degree was her father. It also explained how she survived the trip. It also explained how Trevor's initial launch had reached her, out of all the other universes with Rowan's in them. She must have been a beacon with all those particles lit up.

"Okay, what does a Worm Hole Generator do, and why is it out?" Oz asked him, obviously wanting off this topic.

Trenton pet the machine. "This generates enough energy to rip open the fabric of space and let us see between," he said. "And I want her to activate it."

Wick blinked her eyes. "I uh… I don't know if I can," she whispered. "I don't really have control over it anymore… and I don't really… need to do it… cause last time it was kind of an emergency."

Trenton nodded as if he understood. "Well, you're here because you want to either learn how to control it, or find a way to go home right?"

The second half of that question had both men straightening. Con's fearful eyes went between Rowan and Oz, signifying that Oz really was the one making all the calls here, while Oz clapped a darkened concerned glare onto Wick. Wick turned back to him, looked to both her men one more time before turning back to him again and carefully getting off the stool she had been sitting on.

"Alright, I'm down to try, but uh… I think we should start for control and work on getting home later."

He glanced to the two men behind her once more. Oz had seemingly relaxed, both he and Con were leaning against the same counter, both had their arms crossed across their chests, a foot crossed over the other. Oz seemed both interested and disinterested at the same time. Con was just glaring.

"Alright… so uh… the WIG has all the capabilities of opening a portal when currently powered. I figure it'll be easier for you to manipulate than to do it from scratch. So… do whatever it is you have to do to focus and then we'll uh… we'll see if we can get something."

Wick nodded her head and then narrowed her eyes. Though nothing happened, the boson particle reader he had in his hand registered the tiniest of blips.

"Alright, well we had some action there, but not enough to open a portal," he said. "Try again."

Wick nodded and once again her eyes narrowed. That time there was a crackle, he both heard and saw it. A single bolt of orange electric static that left her. And for a second the energy detector attached to the WIG flickered. But Wick let out her breath dejectedly and seemingly huffed as if she were out of breath.

"Okay, that was a bit better," he said. "If I may ask, what exactly triggered the last event?"

"I was angry," she answered. "I was angry and I was afraid… and desperate."

It was something bad then, judging by the guilty looks on the boys faces.

"Okay… well uh… I why don't you try to pull on that again?" Trenton offered. "If it's your emotions it's attached to right now, we can start by mimicking it, and once you can mimic it you'll be able to get a better grip on it without."

Wick seemed distraught by this request. "But what if… what if I loose control again?"

"I've got lots of things in here that should, theoretically, knock you out of it," Trenton said trying to sound much more confident than he felt.

"Yeah, and if it doesn't work one of us will grab you," Con said.

That seemed to make her feel better because when she finally looked up she had a serious look on her face. She was clearly about to try again. But this time, instead of narrowing her eyes she closed them entirely.

Whatever she was doing worked this time, the boson reader in his hand began to spike, the energy reader on the WIG began to flicker again, and then suddenly out of nowhere all the readers in the room began to go haywire.

Trenton looked up to Wick to find that bolts of orange electric were budding out of her skin like tendrils of crazed lightning.

And then her eyes opened. A bright glowing white he wasn't sure he was comfortable with.

Beside him the WIG came alive on its own. A portal open in the middle of the giant hoop and Trenton almost whooped in joy. It was true, she really was a creature of the void. But the problem was, that portal was only open for a few seconds, before a swarm of red strings erupted from it and tangled her up.

The two boys yelped, immediately rushed forward. Oz wrapped his arms around Wick's torso while Con slid to her side as if he was going to take on the strings on his own. And then actually did. He took big grasping handfuls of them even though they seemed be freezing cold. He never once dropped his hold on them, instead he struggled to tug them away from her.

Trenton couldn't only watch it happen just shocked that it was actually all happening in his lab.

"TURN IT OFF!" Oz shouted at him.

Con left him to run to the machine, even Trenton managed to make himself move. But even when he pressed all the buttons in the right combination, even when he actually unplugged the damn thing the portal wouldn't close.

Oz was starting to turn to strings, tendrils of pink were snaking around the red trying to push them away from Wick, managing to repel them, but there were more red than pink and it was making very little progress. Wick who stood still practically being suffocated by the strings around her, seemingly unaffected by it all her eyes that opaque white, smoke radiating out of her skull.

None of his theories had a way to stop the attack of the strings. They weren't supposed to be alive.

He was just about ready to take an axe to his own machine when there came this terrible roaring scream of NO, one that didn't belong to any of them, and with it came this shockwave of pure power. It fried the energy core of the WIG, it destroyed the red strings around Wick and it knocked both Wick and Oz off they're feet.

As soon as they hit the ground Con yelped and rushed away. Wick was unconscious, though Oz was not. She was bleeding from the places the electric bolts had escaped her and the boys frantically struggled to plug all the leaks.

"She's really a traveller," he found himself whispering as he came to stand above them. But a single glare from Oz sent him skittering back. Doing any further experiments would be impossible under that man's watchful gaze, not unless he had a way to make the experiments as safe for her as he could.

H5O-H5O-H5O-H5O

Steve had been rushed to the hospital.

It had been a terrible thing, to witness the strong Commander McGarrett crumble to chest pain. Odell was immediately sure it was a heart attack but his friends, they had seemed skeptical though they didn't voice their concerns. He could tell that they didn't think that this was just a straight heart attack case.

There was a short recess to deal with it. To try and help Steven who had gone unconscious, to allow the paramedics to get to him, put him on the stretcher and then get him to the ambulance. His friends had gone with him, even Sang Min had gone with them to see him off.

None of the team could leave, of course, they were witnesses in the trial, but all of them had agreed to one thing, which was calling Danny. Danny who had been in Jersey with his mother and Matty. Unbeknownst to them, Matty had a stash of cash, separate from the cash he had stolen from Reyes. It had been put in Clara's name, and recently they had tried to access it, not realizing that the FBI had been watching it.

They had grabbed Danny's mother and his brother and interrogated them until one of them called Danny. Since then there had been some developments, like realizing that this wasn't about Danny and the money his brother had, but about Five-0 and its involvement with Rowan and her app.

Danny, had been dealing with this situation as well as Danny could, but they didn't know if he'd come back, so instead they told him what happened, asked if he was available to come back early, and were now waiting to hear back from him.

With that bit of excitement cleared up, everyone returned to the courtroom to finish off this trial. And Odell immediately called Sang Min to the stand to get his version of the events.

Then after immediately giving them, after Odell summed up how his story explained bits and pieces of the evidence that otherwise looked incriminating, the man had the nerve to say to him: "That's the fact, Jack."

Odell nearly jumped over the stand to strangle the man, but he managed to keep his composure. He showed a few more pictures and then he came to the best part. The guy who actually did it. He showed the jury the picture of the real person who should have been on trial.

"This is Graham Clark who is a suspected human trafficker," he said. And then he turned the picture to Sang Min. "Is this the man you fought with?"

And then he did it again. He paused and made that squinty face thing. He did it whenever he was looking at something far away.

After way too long of a pause he said: "Yeah, that's him."

A lightbulb went off in Odell's head. All those texts. All those blind as a bat, texts. What if they weren't an Ad? What if they were a clue?

But during that pause the defender spoke up. "Your Honour, I object. Mr. Clark's not on trial here, Sang Min Su is."

Odell didn't even care when the judge agreed with him. He had a new course of action to pursue.

"I… withdraw the question," he said quickly. "Do you wear prescription glasses?"

Sang Min paused, clearly confused by the question. "Huh?"

"Do you wear prescription glasses?"

"Glasses?"

"Yeah. Eyeglasses, do you wear them?"

"I'm the perfect package, brother," Sang Min told him with a scoff. "No imperfections here, huh?"

"Yeah, well, maybe you're not so perfect. Do me a favour. Read the Hawaiian State seal right over there."

The seal in question was a massive plaque above the door. It was easily readable, only about 10 feet away. He should have been able to read it no problem, but instead of reading it he just stared at Odell, apparently livid. "Don't look at me. Read the seal!" Sang Min continued to glare at him. "Go ahead. Read it."

More glaring. "You can't read it, can you?"

"No, I can't!" exploded out of Sang Min. And Odell smiled widely. He had just proved his point. "Huh? Now, why don't we, you know, get back to da regular scheduled program, huh, judge?"

But Odell had all he needed now. He knew how to prove the man innocent.

"Have you suffered from a head trauma?"

"Does this head look trauma to you?" Sang Min shot back. Well with that kind of haircut, yeah, yeah it kind of did.

"Sang Min, isn't it true that Lieutenant Chin Ho Kelly of the Five-0 task force hit you across the face with an ash tray the first time he met you?"

Sang Min avoided his eyes. "I don't remember."

Yes he did remember. He bragged about the story in the hotel room. That's how Odell knew about it in the first place.

"Judge, please instruct my client to answer the question."

Judge Purnell leant over. "The witness will answer the question."

Though he really didn't want to he finally said: "Yes. Lieutenant Kelly hit me." The then turned to address the jury. "But to be fair, ehh, I probably deserved it."

After that it was easy. All he need to do was the get the hospital medical records, and while he was waiting for that to come through he pulled back all the witnesses that had destroyed his credibility the first time, and had them answer new questions. First he had Max tell them that it was possible for a person to gain shortsightedness from a blow to the head, and that it might not appear right away but over time. He had Kono come back and say that there was no way that he could not have shot the guy from that far away in the dark with that kind of gun with his eyesight, not even an expert marksman ship could. And then Chin showed up with the Halawa records that stated that Sang Min had 20/100 vision, and was offered glasses only to turn them down.

This all proving that there was no way Sang Min, who was blind as a bat, could have managed to shoot that guy, that far, with that kind of gun and his terrible eyesight. At the end of trial the Jury had agreed with him.

He had won his very first course case. Sang Min Su was a free man.

H5O-H5O-H5O-H5O

Rowan came to gasping loudly.

She was frozen, she was in pain, and it felt like she was coming out from under water. She lurched out, her hands reaching out for anything, and got two people. Her right hitting Wo Fat in the chest, her left catching Conejo's shoulder.

Her eyes frantically whipped between the two of them as they both tried their best to soothe her.

"It's alright," Wo said to her. "It's alright. It's alright. I've got you, you're safe…"

"I don't know what question to ask you so I know I'm in the right universe," she said to him and he laughed at her.

He took a hold of her hand and showed her the wrist where his bracelet was sitting. "I gave you that for Christmas, despite you telling me I wasn't your brother anymore."

Conejo nodded, she noted that his hands were wrapped up and she didn't know why. "Last Christmas, I got sassy and you took me down with a cookie cutter… then I didn't talk to you for four days."

Rowan smiled. That was it. These were her boys.

"Oh good. I'm still here," she sighed.

Behind them her father came into view, pacing about his lab as he mumbled to himself. "Amazing, absolutely amazing, whatever it was, it definitely originated from the WIG and everything in it's path has been fried. Amazing, truly amazing…"

Wo Fat followed her eyes and scowled at him. "I don't think this is wise, Ro," he whispered. "I think… I think we should stop this."

Rowan opened her mouth to tell him that she didn't want to stop now, not now that she knew she could still open the void if she was angry enough. But it was her father who shouted: "No!" at them.

"Stop now? After such a momentous experiment?" he cried and Wo Fat stood getting right into her father's face. Usually her father was not so easily intimidated but Wo Fat wasn't your regular high school principal telling him that his daughter was a delinquent that was failing almost all her classes.

"My sister is not an experiment. And I'm not going to sit here and let you put her through things that are going to render her unconscious or split her skin open. The point is to learn to control it so she's not coming apart or losing herself if it happens again! So you can either teach us how to fix it or I'm going to take her away and destroy all evidence of her ever being here."

He could do that?

Her father quickly regained his composure. "Well… the strings don't usually attack you when you open the void, or at least it didn't when I performed the experiment on its own. And if you remember, before the actually event there was another voice… almost like something was calling for her from the other side of the void."

"Yeah. Steven's."

Wo Fat turned to her a shocked and accusing glare on her face. "What?"

"Should I have mentioned that he can kind of… manipulate the void too?" she asked him with a wince and a dangerous glare hit her brother's face.

"Yes… yes… that was something you should have told me."

"Steven? Who's Steven?"

"My ex," Rowan said with a sigh. "The red strings go back to him. He… uh… we've been able to kind of link up to one another using them… I think… and uh… he was my grounder."

"Grounder?" her father asked suddenly very interested. He pushed between Conejo and Wo Fat so he could squat in front of her, notebook in hand.

"Uhm… yeah… when I was being pulled in the first time he was uh… he was what kept me here… from moving."

A sort of understanding hit him and he nodded.

"Interesting, interesting," he said as he began to scribble in his book.

"Okay, but what does that mean?" Conejo asked.

"It means we're not doing it again," Wo Fat snapped. "Not if those red strings are going to try to pull her to him."

Her father ignored Wo Fat and stood up. "It's only a theory, but uh… connected you say?" he asked, directing the question to her. "How did you know?"

"Uhm… well… he feels it when I open the void, or pull too heavily from it. Feels like a heart attack. And he could always tell when I'm in trouble, so he knew to go looking for me. He used to call it his compass, he said he could always find me with it. Uhm…. And once he was about to get beheaded by the Taliban and he wanted me so much and I just wanted to save him so badly that I kinda sent a bit of a void presence to save him…"

"Afghanistan…" Wo Fat echoed.

"Wait you went all the way to Afghanistan, nearly got yourself killed by terrorists and inducted into the Navy by force simply to help Steve put up a force field?" Conejo snapped. "Couldn't you have stayed at home to do that!"

"That's not what I went there for, and I unno, I unno how far a range this stuff has. I didn't even know I could do it before you know… I did it."

"Fascinating," her father suddenly said and all eyes turned up to him. "Not the Afghanistan thing, the other stuff."

"Why is that fascinating?" Wo Fat asked drily.

"Simply because he's the other half of the puzzle," he said. "This other man, linked to her by these red strings in the other half of the machine. The power source, if you will."

"What?"

"The red strings, there were so many of them, they're most likely what's giving you the power to resonate with the void. And since they're connected to him, he feels it when you're trying to access the void. But more over he has the power to shut you off. He is your on and off switch."

Rowan blinked her eyes and let that sink in. knowing it was true. Her dreams never came when Steve had his arms around her. He had been the only one who could keep her from travelling through the void, the simple act of him touching her could shut down all her powers, but he was also the reason all of her powers evolved.

"Okay, wait… so… if he can feel it when you use the void… did he feel that?" Conejo asked pointing to the smoking WIG machine.

Rowan nodded. "I mean… probably. Gosh I hope he wasn't on a case or out in the field when that happened," she whispered to herself but everyone heard it anyway.

Wo Fat put his fingers to his temples and then groaned, clearly past frustrated. "Okay… okay… so… how does this work? Can he like pull you? Can he home in on you?"

"He doesn't know how to work it, just like I don't," she snapped back to him. "Besides, he hated my powers. Hated that I kept using them. Even if he had the power, even if he knew how to use it, I doubt he would."

"Man's an idiot, I would use this power every fucking day. I swear to god this man has some goddamn issues," Conejo growled. His hands had not left Rowan's body once, his grip was tight, dangerously so, but she figured he was too afraid she'd vanish if he let her go. So she let him have it.

"Wait a second," Wo Fat said suddenly. "Your visions, they're tied to the void right? Cause back where you're from he's a TV show?"

Rowan hadn't told her dad that so she was a little surprised that Wo Fat had just blurted that out to him. "Okay, yeah, so what?"

"Well… you moved in with Steven and immediately had issues with your dreams," he said. "I remember, you told me they weren't coming right anymore, they came in waves, sometimes you got them sometimes you didn't right away. Is that maybe… why? He's your off switch, he doesn't want you using your powers so your dreams didn't come in right?"

Rowan blinked her eyes. Huh. That would explain why, since leaving Hawaii and Steven her dreams had become crystal clear and ten times easier to control. Maybe that was also why the void opened for her when it hadn't done so in pure ages. Steve wasn't there to shut her off when she tried.

"Except clearly he can shut her off from across the void," her father interrupted. "That blast, the one that shut down the WIG and her, that most likely came from him."

"So… he can manipulate the void?"

Trenton seemingly thought over how to word it. "I highly doubt it. As Wick said, this Steven character, doesn't seem well versed in how to work the power he has. He probably responded to whatever pain he was feeling at the hands of her latest attempt to use the void and tried to stop her."

Wo Fat groaned and turned back to Rowan. "I don't like this," he said again. "I don't like this and I don't want you to do it again."

"You sound just like Steven," Rowan growled and his glare darkened on her.

"No, I sound like a concerned brother," he argued. "He opened that portal and those red strings tried to pull you in, and look at all the cuts you have now. This isn't safe, and if you end up stuck in that void I don't know how I'm going to get you out."

Ah so that was his concern, she almost melted on him right then and there. "Okay, you're right," she whispered. "I guess… I guess…"

"You said a particle energizer hit you before correct?" her father interrupted. "I trust your Steven didn't feel any twinges before you fell?"

"Uh… well no, I unno he never mentioned…"

"And you did have any immediate side effects after being hit?" he asked.

"Uhm… no… I had trouble sleeping that night, that was about it," Rowan whispered.

"Alright, well I have what I think is a particle energizer at home," he said. "If you're up to it and your brothers are agreeable, maybe we can…"

"What? Shoot my sister with something when you're not even certain what it'll do to her?"

"If my theory is correct, it will simply charge the bosons that make her up and allow her to resonate with the bosons in the void. It should help her to connect to it more easily and should keep her from having to generate energy elsewhere and therefore hurting Steven in the process."

Rowan blinked her eyes and then turned them up to Wo who looked torn about this. His hands were on his hips silently digesting the theory before turning back to her. He offered her a hand to help her stand and once she was he asked: "What do you want to do?"

Rowan held his gazed, as she said as confidently as she could: "I want to try again."

H5O-H5O-H5O-H5O

Danny rushed into the Tripler Medal hospital looking for Steve's room. The poor man was being held for observation and though he was certain that his mom and his brother needed him, after his day, after what happened with Sandy, he figured his family would be okay and Steve really needed him more than them at the moment.

A massive void twinge. One bigger than anything any of them had ever witnessed before. So big, so strong it had knocked Steve unconscious.

God, he just knew that couldn't be good. Especially since that meant that this was tied to Rowan.

When Danny found Steve in his room, he was shocked to see the state his friend was in. Poor Steve was just sitting there on the bed, his head in his hands, he hadn't even noticed Danny standing there.

"Hey! You… you okay?"

Danny watched Steve's head whip up, watched as he pulled up the walls, the pretense of him being okay. "Yeah… I'm fine, what… what… what are you doing here?"

"I'm here trick-or-treating. Obviously I'm here for you, you shmuck," Danny snapped and then he softened. "So… what do the doctors say?"

"Apparently my blood pressure is through the roof, but there's nothing that would indicate the massive heart trauma that I seemingly felt. They want to do more tests."

Danny sighed. He knew his friends hadn't wanted to call an ambulance, but a twinge had never taken him down before, had never knocked him unconscious. They had all, understandably, had been very worried.

"Okay… well… what happened?"

"I unno man, it was a twinge… except…" "—It was more like an attack?" Danny summed up for him and Steve nodded.

"You don't understand, it was like she was trying to rip my heart out of my chest. I have never felt it that strong before. Never… and then I unno, I tried to stop it and that's kinda where I black out. And now I find out she's right, my blood pressure is shot, they're thinking from the stress of my job and they want to put me through more tests and… and… they're not going to find anything, you know? They're not gonna… and how do I tell them what happened? How do I explain it you know?" He cried. Danny nodded because he was totally right, there was no way to explain what happened without people thinking he was crazy. "It's just so fucked up…"

Danny sighed. "I'm sorry…"

"I should have let her go," Steven whispered and Danny paused.

"Excuse me? Let her go? Steven you've already done that!"

"NO!" he suddenly shouted. "When that pain started, I knew what she was doing. She was trying to leave, to go home and I stopped her."

Danny stared at him, not sure how to take that in. "Steven…"

"She was gong to leave, she was going to go back to her own world and I couldn't bear the thought of that so I tried to hold onto her," Steve explained. "And now I'm here and I…"

Danny calmly sat down at the edge of Steven's bed. "This is not your fault. It's hers. She knows what using the void does to you…"

"I should have let her go home."

Yes he should have. But Danny knew how Steve felt about Rowan. Knew he was having a hard time just letting her go romantically, letting her leave the universe was something completely different.

"I just… I guess… It was killing me Danny. It was like if she left this world… if she left she was going to take my heart with her. And I couldn't…. I could bear that Danny."

That was fair. Danny sort of understood that.

"But… this is killing you Steve…"

"I know it is! I guess I'm thinking that if she's still here in my world… one day… one day I know she'll end up back here, maybe not with me… but I'll see her again," Steve whispered. Good God was that what he was holding onto? "But if she leaves the universe I'll never… see her again and… and… I… I couldn't…"

He couldn't let her go.

"This is ridiculous," Danny sad. "You… I know how you feel Steven, I know it's hard to let someone go, but this… this is killing you. You gotta stop letting it kill you."

Steve nodded and Danny nodded too. This wasn't a long term plan, this wasn't something that Danny could see working, because Steven was too stubborn to let Rowan go.