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AvalonReeseFanFics

A/N: Happy Sunday my wonderful readers! So here we are the last official update of this 7 day marathon. And it's ending on yet another heart to heart, so I hope you guys enjoy this too. We're still getting Monday's regular update and then from there it will be our regular schedule. Don't forget to review, I'd love to hear what you guys think of this last little update and whether or not you think Steve and Rowan are on the road to figuring their shit out, and I'll see you tomorrow.

Chapter 310

It seemed like only minutes after Rowan's void trick got them out of the water that Kono and Chin showed up. They had been looking for him ever since he called a meeting and then failed to show up, they had said. They had tracked him first to Dr. Grey's house, made possible because Sanctuary connected with their smart table with a red alert and tracking information, which was empty, though they found the chess board and knew that she was their killer. Then they managed to track down the Witten's van.

Then, while Steve was distracted and before Steve could stop him, Sin Nombre had taken Rowan and managed to fucking disappear. He didn't know if they took the void, which he doubted because Rowan was still out of it, or if he had procured transport somehow, but the two of them were just gone. And while Steve was worried, he figured her safer with Sin Nombre at that moment.

Alicia eventually woke up and she had a lot of questions about where Rowan had gone and the man who had jumped down in the water with them. And that was when he had to tell Alicia everything about Rowan's brother and the men he had working for him specifically the one who had been tailing her. The one tracking Rowan was probably some major criminal that had followed them out there for Rowan. He had told her that normally they wouldn't have cared about him, but Rowan must have ordered him to help, but they were very squirrely around people and that was probably why she got punched.

Steve found out that his truck had been torched so he wasn't too happy about that, but worse, Dr. Madison Grey had gotten away.

Both Steve and Alicia were taken to King's Medical to get their stab wounds treated. Steve first called Rowan and got no answer. He called Wo Fat but Wo just said she was accounted for and he was dealing with something, so it was essentially up to Steve to find his own girlfriend, though it was nice to know that it had been logged in Sanctuary that she was safe. Then he called Nahele to see how he was doing, and he was doing fine up on a camping trip with all his friends but he hadn't heard from Rowan in a while.

Steve knew how Rowan was when it came to head injuries but he didn't want Nahele to worry. So he simply told him that Rowan was busy but when he got home he'd get her to call him.

And then he actually went home.

He was surprised to find that the door was unlocked and the man he knew as Sin Nombre was sitting on his couch, wearing his clothes again, drinking his beer and watching a soccer match.

The man didn't even look at him, though Steve had his hand on his gun just in case he had to draw it.

"Before you ask, she's upstairs, in your bed, sleeping," Sin Nombre said to him. "I got her head checked out too. She's got a nasty bonk and a pretty deep contusion, they stitched it up and then plastered it. You'll need to take her in tomorrow for a follow up."

Done and done. Steve found himself relaxing. He knew for a fact that if this man wanted to kill him, he would have by now.

"Are you the guy Wo Fat put on Rowan?" he asked and Sin Nombre nodded. He got up and went to the kitchen, he took an apple from the counter and stared at him.

"How did she get to that serial killer's house without you following her?"

"She jumped," he said like that made sense as he took a bite of the apple. Steve had a feeling that there was a double meaning to that, and he had a feeling it had something to do with the void. He just wasn't certain what. "Managed to track her phone to that house, but by the time I got there she wasn't there anymore. Was going to wait for your Dr. Grey chick to figure out where she went but uh… turns out I didn't have to."

"How did you get to the beach in time, then?" Steve snapped as Conejo continued to chow down on that apple like he was part horse.

"Got pulled obviously," he said. "Though probably not by her."

Yeah that had a double meaning too. It seemed that this guy had a completely different vocabulary and Steve didn't know the code.

"What does that mean?"

"Uh… look, it's void shit. She said you don't do well with void shit," he said to him and Steve scowled.

"Humor me."

"Alright, well uh… okay, before I showed up, was she singing?" he asked. Steve nodded. "Do you know which song?"

"One I didn't recognize."

Do not try me devil, devil. Cannot buy me devil, devil.

"Yeah that's it."

"Yeah, that's my song," he said. "If she's out of it and she sings that the void pulls me to her."

"The void… just… does things? By itself?"

"Well I got a theory about that, but until it comes back for a chat, I can't really prove it."

What the hell was he talking about? None of that sounded good at all. "It?"

"See there's no point in telling you cause I can see from here that you're panicking," he said. "Though uh… was she singing the song before that too? Cause I swear I flickered at some point…"

"No, she wasn't singing but she did scream for you."

"Mm, when she gets frazzled like that, she stops being able to control her powers," he said as if this were all completely normal.

"You said… before when we were interrogating you… you said you guys took her home. Rowan… Rowan said it was to help her get a hold of her powers. What was the point of taking her home if she still doesn't have control?"

"Normally she does have control. Just you know… when she panics that control sometimes slips. And if she's concussed, she has no control what so ever."

"You're talking like you know…"

"Let's just say Wo Fat and I got some uh… practice under our belt. None of it on purpose either, we kinda learned as she did," he said, he finished the apple and chucked the core in the bin. "Did she talk to you about this stuff?"

"She doesn't like… she hasn't thought…"

"Mmm… she still doesn't think that you can take it," he said. "That's the only reason I see her not talking you through her new powers."

"But… I can take it. I don't know how to prove it to her."

"Well… you said that you don't like her the way she is. So she's obviously going to hide the things about herself she thinks you won't like."

"How do you know that?"

"Because she told Wo that and he told me. And the way she is, the void powers, and cool detached distance. I don't know why you've got anything to complain about. There are people out there who would kill to have a girl like Rowan. Hell you've killed to keep her, McGarrett. You just spent a year going crazy at the mention of her name, and now she's not good enough for you?"

"I never said that!" Steve cried. "She is more than enough for me and I do like her but she's just so… much like... him."

"So? Do you know what she went through? Do you know how fucked up this had her? For the first three months I had her she'd wake up screaming, Steven. She got better when she started emulating him, why? Because it's putting distance between her and her trauma. Is that a good plan in the long run, hell no, but it's keeping her together right now, you have no right to tell her that you don't like her the way she is when it's the only thing keeping her from falling apart."

Steve actually hung his head. That was… that was fair. Sin Nombre stared at him and with a sniff added: "And besides, from what she told me about your previous relationship you've been trying to mold her into some perfect version of god knows what since you met her."

And that was true. He had been trying to change her and silence her and all it had done was push them apart. Just look at today, if he had waited for back up he wouldn't have been stabbed, they might have caught Dr. Grey. Now they were down a serial killer and he had gotten a lot of people hurt in the process.

"I do like her the way she is. I know that she's… I just want to protect her, you know? I want her to be safe, and she's always getting in trouble…"

"That's just the way she is. She gets herself into situations she can't handle because she's trying to help the people she cares about."

"I know that, I do, and I love that about her, but… come on, your job was to protect her, didn't you ever feel like you could do it better if she were just… normal?"

One of Sin Nombre's eyebrows cocked sarcastically at him and he suddenly took a step towards him. "That girl is not normal. Nothing about her is normal. If you want normal, end things with her, go find that Catherine bitch and date her instead."

"You didn't answer my question," Steve growled.

"Yes, things would have been easier if she were a meek little girl who cowered and hid when I wanted her to. But if she was that person, she'd be dead. We all would be. I am grateful every day for her powers, for who she is and that she loves me enough to take on killers and drug dealers to keep me safe. And you should be too."

Steve felt that way too. He was grateful that Rowan's powers brought Sin Nombre to them so that she didn't end up in the water with them. He was grateful that she managed to pull him, Alicia and Sin Nombre from out of that hole. And he could definitely work on being a lot more understanding.

"Now," Sin Nombre said stiffly. "What are we doing here? Cause if I have to take her from you, I will."

Take her? What? No.

He must have made some kind of face because Sin Nombre suddenly laughed. "Alright, I'll take the sudden onset of panic that you want to keep her. You gonna treat her right… right?"

"Yes, I will… I mean… I do…" he stuttered but Sin Nombre put a hand up.

"Just treat her right, okay? She acts all strong and aloof but she cares. She cares a lot. And your opinion matters the most to her, okay? So maybe try not to shatter her the way her mother did, huh?"

He picked up his jacket and moved towards the door. "When she wakes up, and this is very important, tell her to call me. I know she's going to want to talk about what happened, I'll want to know if she's okay. Oh, and she can trade my clothes for yours. Oh! And make sure she calls her brother, he's freaked out. Wants to hear it from her that she's okay. Now, I'm leaving… I've got a serial killer to track down."

He then opened the door and shut it leaving Steve alone in his own house feeling guilty. Her really had slid back into the way things had been before Rowan had left and that was how he lost her the first time. He couldn't lose her again.

H5O-H5O-H5O-H5O

Rowan woke up some time in the night her head pounding, her whole body was sore but she was wrapped up in a safe, secure warmth and knew that it was Steven who had his arms around her.

She turned in his grasp finding his nose had been nestled into her hair as he had held her to his chest. But as she turned to face him his eyes opened and his hands began to move.

"Are you okay?" his voice came to her scratchy and thick with sleep. A hand brushed over what had to be a piece of gauze taped to her forehead, the site of her injury.

"Yeah," she whispered back, a hand reaching to his back where she felt a piece of gauze beneath his shirt. "What about you?"

"I'm okay, baby," he whispered, his nose brushing against hers softly. She tipped her head back without thinking and his mouth slanted across hers in response. For a moment he just kissed her and she clung to him as if he were her anchor to reality.

"I know it's late but… I'm hungry," she said to him and he smiled against her lips.

"Nothing like a midnight feast huh?" he said to her before pushing himself up. "I'll go get it started. What would you like? Pancakes? Toast? Scrambled eggs? Bacon?"

"All of the above," she said. Steve nodded, swooped in to kiss her again before leaving their bed. She went to check herself in the mirror. God she looked awful. And she was still in her clothes from that morning. So she did her best to look better. Ran a brush through her hair, brushed her teeth a bit, put some foundation on to the purple bags under her eyes and then she changed. It felt like a Steve's soft grey sweater and shorts sort of day… or night.

When she was done changing, she headed down the stairs to find that Steve was already partially finished their midnight feast. So, she just sat down at the kitchen island and waited for him to finish. Once he did, he handed her, her own plate and then sat down across from her to eat his.

They ate in silence, his eyes searching hers over and over despite her avoidance of them. And after he had let her eat a bit, he finally put down his own fork and said: "I think it's time we had that talk, Rowan. Time to have our… uh… argument as you called it."

Rowan turned to him a frown on her face. "Argument? What are you talking about Steven?"

"Well a lot of really weird things happened and I think you need to tell me about them," he told her. When she just stared at him he continued. "Uhm… so… you… you got to the house without a car. You… uh… either run really fast and somehow knew the layout of that house better then the owner did. An assassin says you pulled him to where we were. I don't even know how you got us out of that cave… and you know. I'm kind of afraid to ask…"

Rowan stared at him with wide eyes she knew exactly what it was that he was talking about. But she also knew that the best way to explain was to show him. So she got up slowly walked away and towards the front door. She pulled on the void and for a second it fizzled out.

"What… what are you doing?"

Rowan focused on the doorknob in her hand, noting that Steve had gotten up and was heading towards her. Head injuries always threw her for a loop but it seemed, once again, that he was messing with her strings.

"Wait. Don't come any closer," she warned him and he came to an abrupt halt. His eyes immediately shining with hurt. "Just give me a second."

He stood there patiently and she concentrated once more. That time when she pulsed the void into the door, it worked. She felt the strings aligning to where she wanted to go and then she opened the door. Steve was immediately moving again.

"Wait! Where are you going? Don't walk away from me!" he cried but Rowan walked through it, shutting the door behind her.

Steve whipped that door open but Rowan wasn't there. She wasn't anywhere. Behind him, Rowan opened the portal into the back door. When it opened and Steve turned around to find that she was in the kitchen.

He glanced to the front door he had open and then back to where she was. "How did you do that? How did you…"

She walked back to him. Took a hold of his hand. Shut the door, pulsed her power through that doorway then opened it up again. She ushered him through the door. He was expecting a lot of things but wasn't expecting to be in Danny's front foyer.

"I'm at Danny's. Why are we at Danny's?"

"I learned how to connect strings."

It was the first thing she said since he had started asking questions. He looked around at the empty place, knowing one hundred percent that it was Danny's with nothing to say. "So uh… essentially what I've done is tied a string from your door to this one and hopped through the white space. Eliminating the need to go through the void which slows me down. I uh… I can only do this with places I know."

Steve stared at her. "You hopped…"

"Well when it's in a door we call it a hop cause you don't have to go through the void. If I'm just opening a portal… that's called jumping, we call it jumping anyway. I can also pull… and throw… and drop, they hate dropping…" she said.

A sort of understanding dawned on him. "So… that was what he meant," she heard him whisper and she figured that one of her boys had talked to Steven about her powers.

But that understanding was brief. Steve was at a loss and she seemed to be able to tell that he was taking this badly because she put a hand to him. "Do you want me to hop us back home to talk about it?"

He nodded to her and she opened up the door again. Already he could see his own kitchen waiting for him. He glanced at her before offering her a hand to hold. She took it and let him lead her through her portal and back into his house.

He looked around at his place and then turned back to her. "So today, when you kept getting to the kitchen…" "I was hopping through portals, yes." "And when Dr. Grey got lost in her own house?" "I was popping portals into doorways to mess her up, yes."

Steve nodded again and seemingly thought it over. He was struggling with himself to stay calm, he wanted to show her that she could tell him these things and he wouldn't freak out. But with her cool calm eyes just staring at him as if that freak out was inevitable his cool façade was starting to slip through his fingers.

"Okay. Okay. That portal I fell through… when I was chasing Shaw… after I jumped off the building, where I ended up in the ocean…" he said and Rowan nodded. "Okay, so that was you then. And uh… was that a jump or a… a…"

"That would be a drop," Rowan said. "And I did it because you were going to hurt yourself." She put a hand to his chest, the tip of his healing incision under her fingertips. "You were going to rip yourself open so I caught you as you fell and dropped you into the ocean to soften your fall."

Steve nodded. "Alright… okay…" he said trying to stay calm. He had promised himself that he wouldn't give her a reason to hide things from him, which meant being supportive and understanding of the things she did that weren't… normal.

"Were you there… or at home?"

"I was there," she said. "Street level. I need to be able to see what I'm doing. I mean… I can from a distance, in theory, but it helps if I can see it in front of me."

Right, so when he asked if she was there, and she had said no, she had been lying. Wonderful. Her lying was on point, past on point, he couldn't tell anymore. Maybe he would learn to in time.

"And Shaw…"

"Well If I was taking you off course I wanted to be sure that you didn't lose the guy you were after, so I had him dropped to the Palace. I'm very sorry that he got away. I should have dropped him off a cliff, somewhere where he would have broken his legs and you guys would have found him. Maybe you would have found Grey faster."

The fact that that was an option was terrifying. But he had a scarier prospect to face at that moment.

"Why can't I feel you doing it, Rowan? Why doesn't it…"

"Probably because I'm charged," she said with a shrug. Like vague ass answer wasn't fucking terrifying.

What the hell did that mean? He started hyperventilating and Rowan put a hand out to him.

"Calm down," she said immediately. "You're panicking and that's worrying me…"

"I'm panicking because you're doing all this and I have no warning, you could leave… you could go home…"

"No, I can't."

How did she know that? How did she…?

She took the look on his face in and then with a soft sigh said: "Come on, come with me."

She took his hand again, this time before she opened the portal. Once she had his hand in hers she opened it in front of them and together they walked in. There was a difference between all the other times he had gone into the void and this time. It didn't feel heavy, it didn't feel heavy, he wasn't suffocated and it didn't feel like he was moving in slow motion.

"Are you…"

"I've learned how to keep the heaviness away. It's like I've put up a little bubble to surround us," she said already he could see that it was repelling stray red strings that were searching them out. "It's mostly so I can keep our red strings away. They like to grab me when I come in here. They're a little more well behaved recently, I'm not 100 percent sure but I think it's because you're not searching for me anymore."

Steve nodded struggling to reign in the panic that had a hold of him. It was a good thing she wasn't looking at him, she was looking at something else. In fact, she was looking at something in front of them. This giant writhing wall of red strings that spanned as far as the eye could see.

"Home is that way," she said pointing to the wall. "And I can't get past the strings. So no. I will not be going home any time soon."

She opened another portal, one beneath their feet and the dropped only a few inches back to his living room. Steve turned to her horrified as she continued to talk. "Those red strings, the ones that connect us, they were what were powering my void abilities before. Now that I have a source of energy, I don't have to take those strings and turn them into power. I'm guessing that the conversion was what was causing the pain."

Steve nodded. "And those red strings… they're keeping you here? Aren't they? My feelings are keeping you from going home."

"Yes, but it's not just you, it's my own feelings too," she said.

"You've tried then… to go home…"

"Yes Wo Fat did suggest…"

"WO FAT?! He actually tried to send you home? Why would he do that? I thought he loved you like I did, why would he send his sister home?"

"Because he wanted me to be happy. He knows that I miss them, that I wish I could go back just to tell them I'm okay. And he does love me, I am his sister, but he still wanted me to be happy, and if that meant sending me back to my own reality then so be it."

"But he wouldn't give you back to me…"

"Okay, stop flogging that horse Steven, it's past dead. We've talked about this, he did it cause he didn't trust you with me, that's all. Let it go."

Steve did need to let it go. Wo Fat had saved her life, he made his choice, not to hurt either him or Rowan but because he wanted to keep her safe. If the roles were reverse he would have done the same. But still… he couldn't bring himself to let it go yet.

He took a hold of her hand and pulled her back to him before she could walk away. "Uh… how is your brother, by the way?" Rowan turned to him with wide eyes. "Uh… Con might have mentioned that…" "Only I get to call him that he's Sin Nombre to you." "… alright, fine when he was here, he mentioned that Wo Fat was looking for you."

"He probably is, I did send him a text saying I was being chased by a serial killer. But uh… when was he here?"

"You don't remember him coming to get you? He killed the Wittens…"

"Who?" she asked. Damn that concussion really messed with her. "Wait! Oh no… Oh, I did end up pulling him? Poor boy, I better call him make sure he's okay."

"And uh… maybe call Wo first, just to assure him that you're alright."

Rowan looked up to him as if she didn't quite believe what he was saying. "You… you'd be okay with that?"

"Well part of the agreement Wo Fat and I came to… you know in the restaurant? Yeah well I said I'd be okay with him continuing to contact you so long as you know… you don't bring him in the house and it doesn't mess with one of my cases."

Rowan's smile widened and in returned his own smile grew on his face. "I figured it's time I let go of that grudge. He and I will never be okay, but I'm willing to put it aside so long as he's keeping you happy and safe and he's going to do the same in regards to me."

"Really? Aw… that's so sweet. Too bad I can't actually call him."

"What? Why?"

"Well that's why he was there. He came to say good-bye."

"Good-bye?"

"Yeah, Jian pulled a you. Said me or him. I told him since I'm mad at him it would be okay to pick her and he did."

"Wow, I didn't think he'd actually do it. You never did."

Rowan shrugged. "It's alright. I want him to be happy and he way always okay with sneaking around with me to keep you from finding out so I figured I wouldn't mind being his dirty little secret for the time being." Steve winced at the phrasing and Rowan nodded. "Yeah I heard it too, I won't… uh… I won't put it that way ever again."

Steve nodded. "And uh… it might take me a while to get used to but I'm uh… I'm gonna work on this whole power thing. Just uh… maybe go easy on me for the time being."

"Sure," she said jumping up on her tippy toes to kiss him. "Can I go back to my midnight breakfast?"

He nodded happily and finally let her go. He really did feel like he had taken it well. Especially since it would have taken an idiot not to figure out that the Captain America Contingency plan no doubt involved Rowan's new void powers.

He knew from what his friends said that Wo Fat and Sin Nombre had gadgets and tech to deal with her. She had mentioned that she was charged which meant that she was getting energy from something other than the red strings, but she left out what had charged her. But he wouldn't need tech, he never did. His touch alone could shut down her void incidents. And that was what was the only thing keeping him afloat through the fall out of her confessions.

H5O-H5O-H5O-H5O

Madison Grey had gotten off of Hawaii with ease. She went all the way to Beverley Hills, dyed her hair black and started over with a new name and new everything. It was easy, maybe too easy, considering she now knew who she had in her house with her that day.

Rowan Pierce had not only survived, but it was clear that she had someone very powerful in her corner. All her boasts about what her friends could do weren't hollow brags or lies, nor was it false bravado in the face of death. Except they weren't friends, they were her family. And it didn't take much digging to find to what lengths Wo Fat would go to avenge her. He had gotten her back alive and decimated a family. What would he have done if she had died?

But she was hidden now, she kept waiting to see if there would be some kind of retribution but it never came and she grew complacent. She was the smarter one after all. That night, however, it was time to move on with her plan. She had gotten dressed up and was out for dinner with this puny little man who would soon be her next pawn. A necessary sacrifice meant to help her gain the means to go further in her plan.

They were midway dinner she was being all out charming and well on the way to getting her way when she spotted something out of the corner of her eye. Something that didn't belong.

She was standing there in her short shorts and an off-shoulder shirt. There was a reddening bruised welt above her eye, those ice blue eyes boring into her from across the room. Rowan Pierce.

She couldn't possibly have been there. She couldn't possibly have found her. Madison went rigid in her seat wondering where the Commander was because there was no way that she was there without him. Which meant that she was moments from getting arrested.

But Rowan wasn't with the Commander. A server walked by momentarily obstructing her view of the girl and when he passed, she was standing there with a man in a leather jacket and white plastic rabbit mask on his face.

What the hell was this… Halloween?

Together the two of them raised an arm, pointed a finger gun at her and then mimed shooting her.

A group of people walked past obscuring her view of them again and when they were finally out of the way, Rowan and her little friend were gone.

The haunting had begun.