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AvalonReeseFanFics

A/N: Happy Friday my wonderful Readers! So here's the next update! After this we'll be focusing mostly on Steve attempting to find Rowan. I've already written up to the 6th episode, and I'm already 40 chapters deep into season 7 so I think this might be my longest season yet! Which is crazy! But I have a lot of really cute things happening this season to make up for last season so hopefully you guys will be okay with a longer season. Don't forget to leave a review, I'd love to hear what you guys think of what's going on, and I'll see you guys on Monday.

Chapter 291

After an undercover sting op where Danny got to drive a really expensive car, Kono got to wear a pretty dress and tango with a criminal, and Steve got to dangle a man over the side of a building, they got the location of the courier from Lucky Morad. The Moroccan, Amir Rabbab, had hopped on a plane heading to Europe that morning with they Greystone, which meant they had to go after him. Chin had got them a location. The man was in Prague. Though he couldn't tell him why, they were guessing for the sale.

Harry had been kind enough to ask Steve and Danny to fly with him to Prague, and together they had boarded Harry's private jet but try as he might, Steve couldn't get himself behind the pilot's yoke and now he was sulking, according to Danny.

"You alright?" Danny asked. Steve shot him a withering glare over his shoulder and the man nodded. "Ah, I see. He's very upset that you have your own jet and he doesn't get to fly it."

Dear god, it was only a matter of time before this came up. For god sake he had just been shot in a plane, he was allowed to be nervous. He would have felt better in the driver's seat having things to keep his mind off of it.

Now his mind was on his shooting, on Rowan and her powers, her new name and that 15-minute-long video of her torture.

"Shut up for a moment, will you?" Steve snapped almost absently.

Why was that video 15 minutes long? What could be on it? What had Wo Fat cut out? God he needed to get out of his own head.

He turned to Harry. "Listen, you realize you drop 5,000 feet, we'd probably knock off 15 minutes of flight time."

He nodded and shot him a warm but patronizing smile, he really did take criticism like a champ. If he said the same thing to Danny they'd be arguing by now. Instead Harry said: "We could do the same by lightening the load. You look to be about 14 stone. Care to volunteer?"

14 stone, what was that in American? Behind him Danny chuckled, well at least he liked it.

"You gotta, uh, excuse him. See, he's got, uh, control issues."

God this again. Seriously, the next time they were in therapy he was gonna tell her all about this moment. So much for positive criticism. "I don't have control issues, okay? I like to drive. Unlike you who likes to be chauffeured everywhere."

"No, I don't… no, I don't like to be chauffeured. I kind of don't have a choice. And besides, why would you ever wanna fly an airplane again after what happened last time?"

Steve could see Harry turned back and forth to watch them argue. They were going to get the how long have you been married? comment again. "Not my fault," Steve muttered with a shake of his head, not that it would end this conversation.

"What happened?" Harry asked.

"What happened?" Danny echoed. "Well let's just say that I am half the man that I used to be in the liver department. Cause of him."

"Again, it's not my fault. It wasn't my fault."

"You know what else he is, besides a putz? He is a, uhm, a bullet magnet."

Harry nodded. "Hmm. Wish you'd have mentioned that before I asked you two boys to come with."

Yeah Steve couldn't take this in anymore. "Tell me about Rowan… Rory," he suddenly ordered. "She saved your life. How? How did you even meet her?"

"Are you sure this is something you wanna hear?" Harry asked. "You seem awfully attached, you may not like what I have to say."

"Romantically attached," Danny added and Steve shot a scowl over his shoulder. He wanted this man to talk, not clam up.

"I want to know. I need to know if she's happy," Steve said through clenched teeth. Harry stared at him for a long time before shifting in his seat.

"Alright. But remember, you wanted to know. So no attacking me while I'm driving." Steve nodded and Harry began the story.

"Our meeting wasn't arranged. I was simply told what Hotel she was at and was told to find a way to approach her. I found her when she was singing in the hotel lounge. Not for people, just for herself, it was practically empty, just her and her bodyguard and few tourists. I let myself in, watched her for a while and then approached her while she was eating. We flirted. We went for breakfast the next day, did some fun touristing things. We went back to her hotel room. Following morning, god ol'Con slapped my clothes in my hands and kicked me out into the hallway in only my knickers," he told them. He caught Steve's grimace and wondered if that was too much to tell him, even though he said he wanted to know. "I got absolutely no information from her. Wo Fat wasn't there, Conrad had no say over what she was doing, so I had to keep finding ways to bump into her. It took a few more dates, that she didn't seem all that interested in, to get her in that car with me."

"What do you mean not interested?" Danny asked for Steve who had gone this ashen color.

"I was something to fill her time. She wasn't interested in me, not really. I was something to do," he said. "She had told me at that point that her travel companion was busy. That she didn't go with him to his meetings and she was bored."

"And then you kidnapped her," Steve finished for him.

"More like a surprise arrest," Harry admitted. "I told her I was taking her to see a castle she wanted to see, instead I drove her to a compound just outside of London where we detained her and asked her questions. Oh she was mad, cursing and spitting and calling me all sorts of names. She was uncooperative and stubborn, and she's got deadly aim. Got me with her shoe."

Steve was smiling. Like he could picture it in his mind and Harry guessed that Rowan was always like that. "How did Wo Fat get her out?" he asked.

"Uh, he didn't, she escaped on her own," he said with a sigh. "We still don't know how she did it. She went under the view of the camera and just vanished. She didn't go through the door, or the roof so we're stumped. But she got her phone out of our holding offices, stole the car I had driven her up there in and then took off. She managed to drive the car all the way back to London in record time and we still don't know how. All the electronics in the car were fried though, we thought it was weird, like it had been hit with an electromagnetic pulse."

Danny and Steve exchanged covert glances like they knew something that he didn't. But he didn't think to press them over it. If it was important he could sniff it out or get it out of them.

"But how did she save your life though?" Danny asked. "If she got away why did she have to save your life?"

"I wasn't a part of this team, but the MI6 team that was put on her got orders to go after her and bring her back by any means necessary. I went with them… because well I wanted to make sure that she came back alive, not by any means necessary. We burst into the hotel room, but Rowan wasn't in hers. She was in Wo Fat's. Wo Fat and Conejo were in hers, they were packing up her things for her, because they figured we'd go for her first. They weren't even that surprised when we burst in, they just turned around, guns blazing and started shooting. Somehow, someone got a hold of some grenades and tossed them at us. I got blown out of the room. When I woke up, I was on a boat on the Channel. They were going to torture me for info, but she got them to stop and she made me tell her everything. She uh… she's very scary when she puts her mind to it, almost if not even more scary then her brother. Even though she was thoroughly disappointed in me she told them to let me live. MI6 sent a team to recover me, they went down into the underbelly of the boat and vanished," Harry said. "Didn't resurface for another month, by then she was back in California and we had all sort of decided it was best to leave her alone."

Steve fell silent for a moment. "How did I come up?"

"While we were talking about who I was, Wo Fat asked if she had told me or my team her real name," Harry said. "Up until that point we had no reason to believe Rory Wickerby was a fake name, the identity came with a very convincing background. When she confirmed she hadn't, she ask why that mattered. That's when Wo Fat mentioned that he didn't want this little incident to get back to Steve."

Steve seemed to digest that information. It seemed to trouble him. He thought a moment before asking: "Did she seem happy?" in a small voice. The question that started this whole conversation.

Harry thought that question over. "To be honest, no, not really," he admitted. "I mean, she smiles a lot, and she has fun seeing the sights and singing. She even looks to be having fun with Wo Fat. But she needs to constantly be distracted. At all times. She can't stand being idle, and I couldn't figure out why. I tried to ask her but she's very good at avoiding questions."

"A-fucking-men," Danny said from behind them. "Someone else has the problem not just us!"

"I will tell you this. Wo Fat spends a lot of time and money on keeping her distracted. She wants for absolutely nothing. She asks, he gives, simple," he said. Emotions played across Steve's face. One that Harry could guess. Steve probably couldn't afford to treat Rowan the way Wo Fat did, not on his meager government salary. He almost told him that Rowan didn't care about those things, that what had impressed her most in the brief time that she and Harry had been together, was that he had bought her an ice cream cone. Lemon gelato, her favourite. She beamed more for that ice cream cone than she did for the Tory Burch boots Wo Fat had presented her with that morning.

"Do you have any intel on where they're going to go next?" Steve asked.

Harry shook his head. "Nope, unfortunately, he lets Rowan pick where they're going to go next. And she's unpredictable so we haven't been able to figure out where she was going to take them next," he said before flashing a smirk in McGarrett's direction. "Until we found her bucket list that is."

Something flashed on the McGarrett's face, something dark and unsettling but he said nothing else and the two Hawaiian's finally let Harry pilot in peace.

H5O-H5O-H5O-H5O

Amir Rabbab had refused to talk.

By the time they found him he had already delivered the Greystone and was working on getting fake IDs and passports to get out of the country. Add in that El Hamadi was claiming to be orchestrating an attack on Europe leaps and bounds bigger than the one in Madrid it did not bode well for them.

Chin had called while they were trying to interrogate him. The attack was already in motion. They had used the Greystone to hack into the UK's nuclear reactors, basically turning them all into bombs. They had about fifteen minutes to figure out where these people were and stop them.

That's when the interrogation stopped being friends.

Steve went in with a bucket of water and jumper cables. Wo Fat had said once that behavioural engineering works. He had said it while using similar devices to torture him. Unfortunately, he had been right, tactics like these worked and even though internally he was cringing, he knew he'd go through with it if this guy talked.

"I'm sorry, Commander," Langford said, he had hung back, had chosen to make a phone call. Now that he was in the room, he was pausing the talks. "Let me try something."

He cut the zipties from one hand and handed him the phone. "It's for you."

Steve watched him, what the hell was happening. Even Amir looked confused but eventually he put the phone to his ear.

"Hello?"

What ever voice he heard scared him. After a moment he whispered: "Yes… I know who you are. I… I don't know… really…I…"

He broke off. He looked up at both Steve and Harry and then lowered his eyes. "No, I don't think you're stupid but I truly don't… no… you can't… you wouldn't… they're children!"

Steve turned hot accusing eyes to Langford. "Who did you call?" he hissed but Harry refused to look at him. He simply kept his eyes on Amir.

"No wait I…" but whoever was on the phone had hung up. He stared at it before shakingly turned his eyes up to them. "He said he'd kill my family. My sisters, they're not yet ten years old."

"Well then you better do as the old man says, hmm?"

"How is it that you are working with a man such as that. I thought you were Interpol."

Seriously who had he called? But Harry just stared at him. "Tell us what we want to know or I'll call him back and tell him I didn't get what I wanted from you."

Amir held his gaze and then told them exactly which warehouse they were in.

Once they had what they wanted and they had left the room, Steve turned onto Harry.

"Who did you call? Who was that?"

Langford lowered his eyes. "Ever since they let me go, there has been a patch on my phone," he admitted. "It's never been needed before but I have long since assumed that it would put either him in contact with or me in contact with him. Turns out I was right."

"You're telling me you just called Wo Fat?" Steve thundered, but Harry held up a hand to silence him.

"We have bigger fishes to fry, Commander."

And he was right, but if he thought Steve was going to drop it, he was out of his mind.

H5O-H5O-H5O-H5O

They had stopped the terrorist attack, but Langford had gotten away with the Greystone. And with him went his ability to get a hold of Wo Fat. But Steve would not be letting him get away with everything. No, he was going to get the Greystone back, he was going to arrest El Hamadi and then he was going to make Langford call Wo Fat so he could talk to him.

He hadn't told Danny this but he was… well… he was going to beg. Beg to have Rowan back, and if Wo Fat couldn't do that… to just let him talk to her. He wasn't sure how it was going to go, and he was sure it was going to bruise his pride, but he just wanted to hear her voice, and if he could tell her that he wasn't married, and he wanted her back, just to hear what she had to say, at the end of it he'd feel better. Even if it turned out that Rowan didn't want him anymore.

With the help of Jerry's foresight and a tracker he had put in Langford's watch, Steve and Danny had tracked Langford down to the Pakistan, in the Khyber Pakhtunkahwa province. In a little town of Peshawar. They set up an ambush, got him and the driver out of the car, got them both unarmed, felt Langford up to make sure there wasn't any secondary weapons and then revealed who they were to him.

The man didn't even look surprised.

"I supposed I should be surprised to see you, Commander," he said. "But they did say you were insane when it came to Rowan Peirce."

"That's not the only reason I'm here," Steve growled, even though, well, it was most of the reason. Honestly once he knew Langford could potentially put him in contact with Rowan, he kind of stopped caring about the Greystone.

"How'd you do it?"

"Jerry Ortega, he put a little something-something in your watch."

"Yeah, it's a very small GPS tracker. You wouldn't've even noticed it," Danny said.

"Clever lad."

Well the sass was undercut with a lot of anger right now, but he got it. "We know what you're doing and we know why you're doing it."

"Really?"

He didn't sound like he believed him, so Steve continued. "Madrid bombings, 2012. You failed to mention an important detail. One of the victims was your wife, wasn't it, Joanna Wallace?"

"Revenge. This thing is all about revenge? You're gonna… you're gonna walk in there, risk certain death, potentially give up the Greystone just so you could settle a score with El Hamadi?"

Danny had asked that, but Steve understood. Yes he hadn't lost Rowan in the same way that Langford lost his wife Joanna, but for those few days where he thought he had, he definitely would have been capable of worse if he could have gotten his hands on Gabriel.

"Sorry, Harry, I can't let you do that. We have a kill or capture order on El Hamadi. He's a high value target to our government, too. Which is why we're coming with you. And then when we're done, you're gonna give me the patch and I'm going to sort things out with him."

Langford nodded. "Then I should tell you now that I can no longer connect with him."

Steve shot a glance at Danny who was looking at his shoes. "What happened?"

"Well, when I originally called to talk to him about Rebbab, he already knew I was with you. When I confirmed, he asked how much you knew."

"And you told him."

"I did," Langford said. "From there he agreed to help us break Rebbab, but I had to scrub MI6 of everything involving Rowan Pierce and then I was to destroy my phone. Our contract would be considered complete."

So that was it. Everything was gone. That was it. The link to Rowan was gone.

"I'm very sorry, Commander." That was a nice sentiment but it didn't change the fact that Steve was highly disappointed.

"What I would like to know is how you still don't owe him. Why did he help us break Rebbab if he wasn't going to get anything out of it?" Danny asked.

"Well, if I had to guess, I'd say because he was most likely in range of the nuclear fall out. And if he was in range…"

So was Rowan. He had helped them break Rebab because they were somewhere in the UK. But that wouldn't matter because Wo Fat was probably going to move her now. He was going to recreate her again and he'd lose her. He just knew it. All that work, finally getting the connection, and it was lost again.

"Well, its not all a loss. I didn't tell him that you have her DNA on file now, nor did I mention that you have access to the drop box," Langford said. "I daresay with that you'll be able to snag her."

Steve smiled. "Why did you do that? If he figures it out…"

"I may not have spent a lot of time with Rowan, but I spent enough time with her to know that the girl was heartbroken. It took no time at all for her to tell me all about her ex who had left her and dashed all her hopes and dreams for a family and a romance movie quality love, and how even if she liked me, I'd never quite be up to snuff compared to him."

Steve couldn't help but swell with pride. Really? Rowan was measuring her new guys against him? And they weren't coming up good enough? That shouldn't have made him as happy as it did.

"She deserves a spot of happiness, that girl. And from what I've seen I don't think she has the full story."

"Oh no?"

"Well for starters you're not married." Goddamn it she really did think he was married. Why in the Sam Hill did he tell her that? "But I also didn't quite like the message he gave me to relay to you."

"And what was that?"

"Give it up, McGarrett." Yeah that wasn't going to happen. "It made me feel like maybe you had been looking for her and he had been thwarting your attempts. And as I mentioned, I would so like to see that girl happy."

Steve should have asked why Langford cared about Rowan's happiness so much. He wasn't sure why he didn't, maybe because he was afraid of the answer. Instead, together with Langford, they stormed on El Hamadi's fortress and they let Langford get revenge for his wife. It was the least he could do after all.

H5O-H5O-H5O-H5O

Danny was home from the UK for two seconds before Steve called him, in an absolute sobbing wreck of a mess. They had just gotten back from England, they had just gotten their George Crosses pinned on by the Queen herself. And yet Steve was having a full on melt down and Danny had no doubt he knew why.

Danny had rushed over to find Steve crumpled over onto his couch, sobbing, his hands over his ears, having apparently not thought to just turn the fucking video off.

Danny winced just at the sound of it because it was only Rowan screaming.

He crossed to the laptop and slammed it shut and just like that Rowan's screams were gone and all he was left with was Steve's sobs.

"Why?" Danny asked him. "Why would you watch it? Why would you do that to yourself?"

"She was so afraid, they did such terrible things to her…"

"And you knew that. You knew already, why would you watch 15 minutes of it?"

Steve was starting to calm down but his eyes, fuck he looked haunted.

"I needed to see… the video that started this…" Steve whispered. "I get it now. I get why he did it. I let that happen to her."

"Steve… that was not your fault… you thought she was with him, Steven… none of this is your fault…"

"I knew something was wrong, Danny, I could feel it," Steve admitted and Danny stared at him. Was that why Steve was doing this to himself? "I knew she was in Japan. I knew something was wrong, I could feel her pulling at the void for me, but I was so mad at her I ignored it."

Fucking Steve and Rowan and their void shit. Causing more problems than good.

"She… screamed my name, Danny. She screamed for me and I wasn't there…"

Danny lowered his eyes. That… yeah he could see how that would break him. He looked at his friend, who was furiously fisting at his eyes as if the pressure would take the pain away but Danny had been in his shoes once he knew how he felt. Granted, he had been working on Grace's imagined screams, he couldn't imagine actually hearing them.

"I told you not to watch that video," Danny whispered again but Steve shook his head.

"I never should have let her leave," Steve whispered back and Danny sighed. He knew that. They all knew that, but telling Steve that wouldn't fix it. Wouldn't fix his friend.

"So what? You're just going to punish yourself?" he asked. Steve avoided his eyes and he shook his head. "Steve… you love that girl… we all know you do. And if you knew, if you knew right away that Rowan was in trouble we all know you would have gone. Whether or not you sensed it doesn't matter, babe, you were certain she was with Wo Fat, Wo Fat thought she was with you, and well… it happened."

Steve nodded at him but still said nothing.

"Okay, you want me to lay it down for you? You want me to tell you what we all really think?" Danny asked him and Steve blinked his eyes. "We all think you're an idiot. You love her Steve. We know you do, we know you never got over her. And we think you should have gone after her, you should have looked her in the eye and heard those words from her yourself."

Steve shook his head again and Danny forged forward. "I think you took everything Wo Fat said at face value when you know that man lies…"

"But Rowan called me…"

"I mean… that phone call. It was every trigger word she could have possibly thrown at you to make you leave. And she… come on, how high was she at the time? You saw the damage," Danny said pointing at the computer. "You really think she was up to making a call like that so soon after Wo Fat got her back. You think she would have sounded that coherent? Now seeing that, don't you think that maybe, just maybe it was possibly that Wo Fat either engineered or made her make that phone call?"

"I don't know…"

"A lot of this doesn't make sense, babe. A lot of things don't add up. Cause Ro, she never would have left Nahele. She loved that kid. And her car. And us. And… you. But she just gave it up… and that… that never sat right with the rest of us. And then she called you on your birthday and she thought you hadn't come looking for her… Steve… I think… I think you're both being lied to."

Yeah, he was starting to think that too. Honestly, he had been thinking it for a while

"I think a professional liar and psychopath has got you two twisted up in some game and I don't think… I think he has his reasons. I mean… he said it right? She never should have ended up in that basement. He was always saying you were the most dangerous thing to her. I think… I think he had to pull Rowan out of that basement and then decided he wasn't ever going to go through something like that again."

"Why are you on his side? Why are you defending him?"

"I'm not though. You forget I have a daughter… and I would do anything for her. Rowan's the only family he has. The only person he actively cares about. He doesn't have regular people feelings and I mean… you took the whole situation really badly. Imagine how he felt. Especially in relation to how he reacted to all the minor incidents. I want you to remember how you felt watching that video and then remember that Wo Fat saw that video first. We always wondered what made him snap the way he did, and I'm guessing it had to be this video."

"I guess… I didn't think of it that way."

"Maybe you did give up too quickly… maybe he had good intentions but none of that matters because you gave up on her," Danny accused and Steve hung his head. "Look, we don't know for sure, but I'd bet my Camaro that he's lied to her just like he lied to you. So we're going to find her, we're going to put the two you face to face and you're going to iron this out. If Rowan decides to leave again, then so be it, but I don't think that's going to be the case."

Steve nodded. "What if she doesn't forgive me?" he asked in a small voice.

Danny sat down beside him and put a hand to his back. "Then you and I will get over this together. You got all of Five-0 behind you and we will get you through this, and over her if we have to."

But Steve shook his head. "We both know I'll never get over her," he said and Danny sighed.

Fucking hell. As true as that was, it didn't mean he was going to let his friend suffer through that alone. He'd do everything he had to to get Steve over Rowan if she chose to leave again, or he'd fucking force Rowan to stay.