Rewrite
AvalonReeseFanFics
A/N: Hello my wonderful readers. How is everyone's long weekend going? In this chapter, Rowan's gonna be a bit of the sociopath that we're used to and her and Steve are going to have another chat. Isn't that nice? Look at them talking everything out. The next chapter, however, is going to be GREAT, just you guys wait until you see what I got in store for your next chapter. As always, don't forget to review, I'd love to see what you guys are thinking, and I'll see you guys again on Wednesday.
Chapter 314
Steve hadn't wanted to get Rowan involved in this bullshit. But they had lost Frontera, Agent Raine was dead, and all they had was the 12 million dollars. They had gotten a ransom call for Frontera from the Cartel hit team that had taken him. They wanted the 12 million, which was the only thing that Five-0 had at this point, and in return they'd give up Frontera.
Luckily, he already asked Rowan for her help, because she had been there for the call. She had listened to that call and she made him tell the Cartel guys that that he'd think about it and call back. Once she had gotten him to hang up, she gave him an address. The address to where they were holding Frontera. Their little base of operations.
Then she told him that she had a plan and he was to just trust her.
DEA had the place surrounded, at a distance so Rowan could go in and get all that they needed. Rowan had a wire, they had thermals set up so they knew that how many people were in that warehouse. So far the body count was six. Steve wasn't sure he liked sending Rowan in alone, but she kept saying she had a plan. Now if only she'd tell him what that plan was.
She was almost good to go in, Steve, minus all his gear was walking with her towards a break in the fence that surrounded the warehouse where these guys were waiting, no doubt for Steve to call them back.
"Can you tell me the plan please?"
He didn't even care if the plan included the void, he just wanted to be let in on it.
"Nope, if I tell you the plan, you're gonna panic," she said and then she began to jog on the spot. Yeah like that little confession didn't make the anxiety worse. But he was working on trusting her more so he was just going to have to let her go. She clocked his concerned stare and wrongly assumed it was because she was jogging in place in front of him. "Gotta make this believable."
She then took off. Sprinting across the field all the way to the warehouse. Steve watched her until she was in the door then he jogged back to their command post in the surveillance truck across the street.
They only had audio through the wire and he was greeted to Rowan's breathless voice and the sound of guns cocking no doubt all in her direction. Thank god Danny had a grip of him or he might have been out of that truck and running to her rescue.
"Hi, yeah, guns, not a smart move. I'm Rowan Pierce."
With her announcing her name came the chirrups of a bunch of phones getting the alert. Sanctuary confirming that she was who she said she was. That was both on the phones and computers that were in front of them and on the phones of those in the warehouse.
"She has the app running again?" one of the DEA agents asked in a low voice. Steve ignored him so it was up to Danny to say: "It's part of the deal. Big bro doesn't trust Steve with her safety, so he gets her back but the app had to go back up."
Steve continued to ignore them to listen to Rowan.
"Okay, well, now that we know who I am… it's very nice to meet all of you. I have a situation. I'm activating the Captain America Contingency plan and I need you guys to hide me out until I can be extracted."
Beside him Danny let out a few wry chuckles and shot him a sympathetic glance. "And that would be why she didn't tell you the plan before she went in."
Steve shook his head, for god sake he was gonna kill that girl. She should have definitely warn him that she was going to activate this plan and she better not actually plan to use it.
"Why would your brother send you here? I'm in direct competition with him. He's told us several times to back off or die."
"Oh you are? He's said that? That's strange, why would he send me here… I swear there was a reason…" Steve watched as the thermal reading that was Rowan actually moved away from the group of six men pointing their guns at her.
She moved to one guy who was sitting down. "And who's this?" she asked.
"That's our hostage."
"Frontera right?" Rowan asked. God why was she giving herself away like that? "Yeah, you guys have some Five-0 trade going on right? Let me guess, Steve hasn't called you back?"
The guns all raised again in her direction but she didn't seem the least bit phased.
"How do you know that?"
"I'm dating… well I guess was dating Five-0, remember? Come on now everyone knows that," Rowan said and then she moved, this sudden jerky movement and everyone gasped. He heard skin hit skin and then the men were all converging around her.
"What the fuck did you do that for?"
"I need him unconscious," Rowan said sounding way too calm.
"Okay, you know what… I don't want trouble, but I clearly can't help you so you're gonna need to go."
The leader had her by the shoulders and was trying to move her away from Frontera but Rowan wouldn't move.
"That's fair. But would it be okay if I stayed here until my ride came?" she asked. Even without seeing this man's face it was clear that he didn't want Rowan to stay there, he wanted her gone. "Oh, look at all those guns… got yourself a little arsenal here, don't'cha…"
Steve didn't like the way she said that, why did that matter now? "Would be a real shame," she continued. "A real shame if someone were to… take them from you…"
Shame? Take the guns? What? What was she talking about?
The leader, the same voice as the person who had talked to Steve on that ransom call, continued to try and pull her away. "I don't know who you think you're are but you're outnumbered…"
"Yeah about that…"
Whatever she said next was lost as there was a high-pitched whine and a hiss as they lost the audio on her wire. But that wasn't all.
They lost all the cameras on the street, they lost their coms, they lost their cells and he could see clearly on the thermal reader that everything had gone a hot white. The same hot white as her eyes when Rowan was messing with the void. The same hot white they had seen before when they went to rescue Sara.
From the warehouse they heard the tell-tale sound of gunshots ringing out and, in his bones, he swore he felt the strings vibrating, like she was using the void to call him. Jesus Christ, she had opened the void and she was now in trouble.
Steve shouted: "Go, Go, Go," as he launched himself out of the truck and went sprinting to that warehouse. He needed to find Rowan, he needed to know she was still on the Island with him.
H5O-H5O-H5O-H5O
Rowan had sat herself down on the table and waited for Steve to make it into the warehouse. There was nothing but puddles of blood and she didn't want to get her shoes all bloody, she was hoping he'd carry her out of the warehouse, or if he didn't want to do that, at the very least away from the pools of blood at her feet. Not three minutes after she opened a portal to her brother did Steve burst in, calling her name and sprinting towards her.
"Steve!" she called happily and opened his arms up to him.
In a flash he was by her side, wrapping his own arms around her. "Could you lift me up, I don't want to get my shoes bloody."
Steve pulled his head out of her neck and blinked his eyes. Rowan actually watched the worry and relief leave his face and as immediately replaced with anger. He looked around at everything. There were the six dead bodies all around them, Frontera was still tied to his chair, he was knocked unconscious, but other than that there was nothing else for him to freak out about.
"What the hell did you do?" he hissed at her and she paused.
"I got your guys for you, and this guy, you wanted this guy, right?"
Steve glared at her. "Rowan, something happened. We lost your wire and the thermal went white."
"White? What do you mean?"
"I don't know how else to explain it to you. One minute we had you talking, the next minute you're wire went dead and there was this flash on the thermals and everything went white. I don't know what else to say to you. Did you use the void? I mean you must have…"
"Well I mean… I did but I had no idea that it would mess with thermal readings. Honest, I had no idea. That is so cool."
"No, no it's not, Rowan!
"No? Aww, my bad. I'm sorry," yes she was because he had said he'd be a little more supportive of her power changes but so far he was anything but.
"Rowan, you activated the Contingency Plan and then vanished. Why didn't you think that would panic me?"
"Okay, for starters, I didn't vanish I am right here," she reminded him petting his chest so he could see that she was, very much, still there. "And secondly, I didn't actually activate the contingency plan. And even if I did, the revised plan doesn't include me going to anyone else to lay low."
Steve shook his head and moved away from her leaving her stranded on that table. He looked around again, watching the DEA agents and his own team comb the warehouse looking for anyone else that might have been laying around. He seemed to realize something for he suddenly straightened and turned towards her.
"Where's all the guns?"
Oh… uh-oh. "The what?" she shot back hoping to feign innocence.
"The guns, you said they had an arsenal, I heard you on the wire."
Rowan's eyes flickered to where the guns had all been before she opened up that portal to Japan and then forced herself to focus on Steven.
"Did I? Would I know what an arsenal of guns really looked like?"
Yes, yes she would because she was constantly with him, and Five-0 had plenty of guns, and because she had spent a year with Wo Fat who's literal business was to run arsenals of guns. But she just had to hope that if she played dumb he'd forget all about that.
"You realize I know Wo Fat is a gun-runner, right?" he asked her dryly, he then looked around again and then turned back to her a realization dawning in his eyes. "He was here, wasn't he?"
His voice was low and a glare was on his face. He went to where the portal had opened, turned back to the men who had all fallen where they had stood when she had opened it and then turned back to her, mimicking the exactly move Wo Fat had used when he walked through with that SMG and opened fire.
"Don't know what you're talking about, honest."
Steve stalked back to her and lowered his voice. "I swear to god if you gave an arsenal of guns to Wo Fat…"
"I didn't give him anything. I may have opened a portal to him and… you know… he might have done all the shooting when he came through. And I figured if he… you know… since he had helped me, that it would be okay if he took all that he wanted…"
"Are you fucking kidding me right now?"
Rowan merely shrugged, pairing it with a wince. She hadn't really thought it through. She just figured Wo Fat would like the extra merch, especially since these guys were constantly muscling in on his runs and pipelines. He got to knock of the head of his competitors and get most of their merch. She wondered what he'd do if he found out what else Wo Fat had taken.
"You realize I'm going to have to find a way to cover for you now, right? How do I explain this?"
"Just say Wo intervened."
"The DEA knows that he's in Japan!" Steve hissed.
"Fine, then say Sin Nombre did. He threw a flash bang and bam there's the thermal problem and my wire going."
Steve scowled at her. "The fact that you had that excuse ready to throw at me, upsets me greatly."
"Everything I do upsets you greatly," she shot back with her own scowl and he actually stopped. Like those words hurt him. She then opened her arms again. "Can we please get me off of this table and away from the blood? My stomach's getting queasy…"
Steve moved immediately, swooping her up in his arms and getting her as far away from the blood as he can, but the DEA wouldn't let them out of the building yet. So he put her down on her feet and then stood right beside her, glaring at everyone that tried to get close, you know except for the Five-0's who all joined him in forming a protective ring around Rowan.
It looked like they might have let them go, at least back to the Palace, but then one of the DEA agents came crashing in and ruined it.
"The cash is gone, it's not in the truck anymore," she announced to everyone and Steve turned angry eyes onto her.
Rowan pointedly avoided his eyes. And that would be the other thing she let Wo Fat take. Maybe she shouldn't have done that, but really it would have been wasted in evidence. She hazarded a glance to Steve and saw an anger she hadn't seen in a full year on his face. Dear god, he might kill her.
H5O-H5O-H5O-H5O
It took hours to talk the DEA down. Rowan had to sell her pack of lies to them and he could tell that they didn't want to believe her, but they had no proof and they never would because Rowan had essentially used magic to pull this off. So he took her home, simply so he could get as much space between the DEA and them before he went off, because he knew a lot more about what had just happened then they did. He couldn't even begin to describe how much he couldn't have them figuring out that his girl had magical fucking powers and that was how she stole millions of dollars and weapons out from under their noses.
When the got home, Steve slammed the door and then followed Rowan through the house.
"Rowan you have to see how bad that was… and you just… you just…"
Rowan didn't even bother to look at him, she was heading straight to the kitchen to start dinner. "You know I have sociopathic tendencies. You know that."
But that wasn't the problem. Because her tendencies tended to be part of her protective instincts, this was not something she did to protect someone. The only person she was protecting now was Wo Fat.
"That was a little more than a tendency. You literally destroyed all of our surveillance equipment and then handed Wo Fat 12 million dollars and an arsenal of weapons! Why would you do that Rowan? How did you even know how to do that?"
"Well to be fair I didn't know about the thermal readings," she reminded him and he scowled.
"No but you knew it would knock down your wire and all of their equipment," he shot back and she nodded because that was true. It finally looked like she was finally going to relent.
"Okay, alright, I guess… I guess it's time I told you then," she said to him leaving the kitchen. As she walked past him, she took a hold of his hand and then lead him to the couch. As he sat down, Rowan went to get her laptop.
Rowan sat down on the couch, she pulled her laptop forward, opened it up. Steve watched her carefully as she opened the photos she had on her hard drive and pulled up the Canada folder.
"So, for starters, do you know what I did in Canada? What I really did?"
"You went to your dad for help with your powers…"
"Then Wo, Con and I did a cross Canada tour. We took the train, got off at every province, went horseback riding and did fun things," she told him and he nodded. "Then… then I went to Victoria."
"Yes, I know all that. Victoria is where things start getting fuzzy."
"When I was there, I stopped in on my old house. It's… it's really different. And this is a completely different story but it ended in Con knocking my mom out. Then I went to skate at the arena I grew up skating in, and we met Trevor and, again, another really long story but it ended in Wo Fat knocking him out."
That a was a whole lot of violence for someone who was just visiting her home town. But he figured the two must have recognized her, or threatened them in some way. Wo Fat may have been a sociopath but he wasn't a savage.
"When we were dealing with the Trevor, I realized… well I figured out that he was gambling again and that he no doubt owed a lot of money…"
"Oh… oh no…"
"So, I infiltrated the Stepanov's little heist crew and… well… I crashed that car again."
"What?!" Rowan turned to him and he saw it, this look of apprehension so he moved to explain his outburst. "Okay before you freak out, I'm upset about the accident repeat. I never wanted you to go through anything like that again, let alone the same situation twice. Did… did you break your leg? That would explain all the missing months."
"No, I jumped out before we went into the spin. But… I always thought… if I could go back and redo it, I would pick a better way to get out of it. But I got there and… it was like no matter what I did I had to do it, you know? I literally got painted in another corner, so I crashed that car, saved myself and let everyone else die."
Steve nodded taking that in. Well, it was much better than her doing it because she thought she wasn't important enough to live.
"And you're right. After that, after that for a couple of months no one really knew where we were," she whispered. She then pressed a single button and five folders appeared. Steve felt his heart stop, she had hidden folders.
This was it, he was going to find out why he had a problem with the trail once Rowan left Victoria. She had been spotted in many different places around the globe but no one could prove it was really them seeing as they were jumping continents within hours, or even days of each sighting. Which he now knew was because she could jump through the void and that was how Wo Fat had been moving her after Canada, which made it safer for her to travel under the radar.
"Okay, yeah," he said. "But you were jumping, right? That's what you said."
"I was. And I'm guessing you heard that they suspected us of a bunch of heists, right?" she asked. Steven sighed. He had been assuming that she was involved in those, he was going to get the proof now.
"It was you guys, wasn't it?"
Rowan turned a devious smile up to him. "Greatest Alibi ever was having one of our alias renting a room in Victoria, and having witnesses seeing us inside the room, and then showing up around the world minutes later. It's impossible, and what are they really going to say, you jumped into the void and travelled across the world?"
The fact that that was something she thought about terrified him. It was much worse than he thought.
"The first jump. To Paris. Hadn't been for a heist," Rowan admitted and the showed him the picture. Her on the ice. "I wanted to skate under the Eiffel tower," she said Steve brushed her aside going through the pictures of her on the ice and finding the video that one of the boys must have taken. He always loved her on the ice. "I can now say I've skated under the Eiffel tower in two universes."
Steve turned his eyes back up to her. "How did that turn into breaking into the Louvre?"
"Wo Fat got offered a job and I had been asking to be introduced to the business…"
Fear struck his system. "Why would you want that Rowan?"
"I had just found out that you married Catherine. And I… everything hurt so much that I just… I just wanted that pain to go away. And Con and Wo they're all so impervious and I wanted to be like that."
But he hadn't married Catherine. Though he had a feeling if Wo Fat had told him that Rowan had settled down with someone other than him he might have lost it too. Maybe not the turn to a life of crime kind of lost it but it wouldn't have gone well for anyone.
"Okay so when you said that you asked him to make you more like him… you meant in like every way possible then?"
"Yeah, kinda. I think my exact request was to be introduced to the family business. Anyways they got offered the job and I had these powers I had just learned to control and they… they're actually really well suited for heists," Rowan said with a sigh. She clocked Steve's stare and pointed him to the computer so he could continue to look through the pictures. "I've known for a while that my powers knock out electronics. Just the act of jumping, or just making a portal of any kind really, send out this electric pulse, and it takes out everything. The alarms, the cameras, the weight triggers for the pieces. All of it."
Wow she was right that was good for heists.
"Plus we don't really have to break in, you know? Just open a portal jump through, grab what we need and go. That first break in, Wo Fat went for the paintings and I wandered off, as you know, I tend to do. I got a selfie with the Mona Lisa. Stole some things from the gift shop, got lectured for not wearing gloves and then we popped back to Canada."
Steve sighed and bowed his head watching the pictures flash across the screen. All of them selfie style tourist photos of the three of them on heists. Oh, he was starting to understand what happened. "And then… you know… we were so successful we started hitting other places. The next night we did the British Museum. Stole a bunch of artefacts… which eventually put MI6 on us but whatever. We hit Harry Winston, I uh… that necklace you like of mine, the one I wore for Nahele's adoption party, yeah that's from that heist. Cape Town is where I got the diamond for the matching bracelet… and then… well… Spain was our last Heist."
Steve sighed. "You're still sitting on some of the loot from those heists?"
"Yep and I wear them out," she said. "It's uh… not my best idea. But they're so pretty."
Steve just glared at her and Rowan sighed again. "Okay, I know it's bad so why don't we change the topic hmm? Why don't you ask me why Spain was our last heist?"
"Well Spain is the heist with the first body count, I'm assuming that Wo Fat realized bringing you on heists when people could see you and he was trying to hide you from me…."
He paused. Rowan was just staring at him and he knew then that it was something else entirely. "Oh god it was you, wasn't it? You shot the guard."
Rowan nodded and Steve blinked his eyes trying ever so hard to remain calm. "Why did you… why…"
"I missed a camera, and they saw us on the feeds. Con was taking a picture of me sitting on the throne wearing the crown and holding the sceptre when he came in. Con and Wo… they never wanted to get into a shoot out with me around, in case I got hit… so they didn't draw and he said… he said he'd let us go if he got… if he got to have a go… with me…" she lowered her eyes and Steve reached out and pulled her to him. Okay he got it. But why it had to be her that shot the guard was surprising to him, he would have thought that Wo Fat or Conejo would have just shot him then and there.
"I slipped Wo Fat's gun and shot him. Between the eyes. My first and only head shot," she said. She was absently scrolling through the pictures where he could see her sitting on that throne with the crown and scepter looking regal as all hell. "They had been teaching me self defence and shooting so they weren't surprised… but when the incident just made me laugh instead of vomit both Con and Wo Fat knew that having me in this line of business was starting to warp me. They combined it with this song I wrote and they decided to take me off of heists. Favourite things, you don't like it either. I was singing it in Grey's house… and I opened the concert with that song."
She was right, he hated that song.
"Yeah, anyway, I wrote that song, laughed when I killed someone and they decided that they had to keep me out of that… line of work. So… the decision was made, I was going to stay out of the business…"
"And then you guys went to Russia and fucked up Stepanov and his daughter."
"Okay, that was after England where MI6 arrested me. The Stepanov's put them on me. And we went to teach them some respect. They had it coming."
"Okay… and I know that this is out of order, and you said we'd get to it when we get to it, but can you tell me how the Russia incident ended with Con on my beach?"
"Uh… I was trying to move us, to get us out, I can only jump to places I know and I was trying to think of somewhere safe to send us but Irina had hit my head and I don't have full control when I'm panicking or concussed. I got everything jumbled. I ended up in Japan, Wo Fat ended up in Colombia, Con ended up here. I sent us to our well… our homes, I just didn't send the right people to the right place."
Steve paused briefly. "You though of home and thought of here?" he asked a smile dawning on his face. "I mean, you dropped him in my backyard… you wanted to go home and you thought to come to me?"
Rowan lowered her eyes. "Well yeah… I mean… would you have turned me away?" she asked. "If I showed up at the back door all wet and scared, would you have told me to leave?"
Steve shook his head. "God Rowan, if you had showed up at my back door I would have handcuffed you to bed and never would have let you leave."
"We probably would have figured out the lies a lot quicker."
"Well no shit Rowan," he snapped. "Catherine and Nahele were both gone by the time Conejo showed up on my beach. And it was a major tip off that you were getting fed misinformation when he was absolutely convinced I had a wife."
Rowan nodded sagely before whispering: "Well it's too bad I didn't get it right, eh?" Steve shook his head, trying to swallow back his disappointment, his anger and bitterness about the situation. Rowan put a hand to his chest and he almost grabbed her to anchor her to him. "Hey, baby, it's okay. I know we both wish we could fix it the past but maybe… maybe it needed to be that way…"
"Needed to be that way?" Steve thundered. "Rowan, why do you keep saying that?"
Rowan opened her mouth to answer but Steve cut her off. "In no way did it need to go down the way things did. I wanted you to come home, Rowan. I wanted you to come home, I wanted you back. I needed you, and he took you from me."
Rowan's fingers traveled to his lips and he slowly went quiet under her touch. "Remember? Remember how I told you about the therapist?"
"Yes, what about it?"
"Well, she was helping me, helping me let go."
"Of what?!"
"I've been holding on and internalizing all the bad things that happened, which meant that they lived on in me. They became a part of me, right there under my skin coming out to terrorize me in nightmares and triggering psychotic breaks," she explained. She stared at him, like she was willing him to understand the meaning behind her words. "I'm not saying that what happened should have happened or that I wanted it to happen. But it did Steven, and there's no way to change that. And holding on to it, letting it continue to hurt me, it isn't going to help."
Steve stared at her. He got what she was saying, but he didn't see how she could let go of what happened, just brush it off like it was okay and think of it as a necessary event.
After a moment of silence, she put the laptop to the coffee table and then turned to him. "Are you… are you mad at me?"
"Well… I mean… you did cause a bit of a situation today, Rowan. You should have told me that the plan was to open the void and have Wo Fat shoot the guys."
"I figured since my brother was involved you wouldn't be happy," she whispered.
Steve nodded. "And that's fair, I wouldn't have been. I would have told you to open the portal to me, and I would have shot them."
"I wasn't sure how you'd have explained that to the DEA," she told him and he sighed. Okay, so she had a point, but it would have been easier to say that he made his way into the building while the guys were distracted instead of having to think of a way to not implicated her brother across the ocean from them.
"When did you even manage to call him?"
"Oh I didn't. Sent him an app alert. All it said was be ready, and he was."
Wow. That was… impressive. The two were very coordinated now, clearly if they had unspoken plans. That was uh… kind of scary. Kay time to change the topic before she noticed that he was freaking out.
"So, like… if we ever need money… you could… you could totally just open a door to a bank vault…"
"Well I would have had to had been there before or know generally what it looks like, but yes, we will never have a problem with money and solid alibis if anyone ever thinks it's us," she said and he smiled.
"Alright, solid. And here I was worrying about my retirement plan," he said as he slung an arm over Rowan's shoulder.
"Thank you for not thinking I'm a monster," she whispered lightly after a moment's silence and his heart almost broke. His poor girl still thought that he'd think she was a monster. Was that why she was still hiding things from him? Damn he was going to have to work harder on his poker face when she was telling these stories.
"You're not a monster, but uh… before you do anymore heist like things, Rowan, please talk to me first. Just so I know it's coming and can plan accordingly."
Rowan half smiled up at him and then kissed him solidly. Only then, did he let her get up to make dinner and for a while he just sat there watching her. She was worth every little bit of hassle he went through that day and she would be worth every speck of trouble she'd put him through from now on. He was just glad that she hadn't activated that Contingency plan.