Rewrite
AvalonReeseFanFics
A/N: Happy Wednesday my wonderful readers. So here we have another update, this one will be a bit shorter but it's going to be super cute I promise. And to answer your question, AJ, no she can't tell that Rowan is the same girl from before. It's been almost a year since she saw her in person, and it was during a high stress situation and only for a little while, and it's been even longer since she saw pictures of her on Steven's phone, but don't worry, Jian is going to figure it out when she meets Rowan properly later on in the story. As always, don't forget to review and I'll see you guys on Friday.
Chapter 318
Steve had tried calling Rowan back intermittently during the day and she had never once answered him. That made him nervous, so on his way to their next suspect, Steve stopped off at his house, just to make sure that she hadn't been angry enough to leave him. He assumed she wasn't, but he always worried when she wouldn't pick up the phone. Despite worrying, he was operating under the theory that she was just screening his calls. He even brought her malasadas to sweeten her up. He knew how much she loved Malasadas.
But when he got into the house with that box for her, he found that she was dressed up. Like a PTA mom. She was wearing a navy-blue pencil skirt with a matching blue blazer, she was wearing really high heels with that familiar red-bottom, a light pearl blouse and she had that air of Wo Fat around her.
Steve might have worried about that, except she was wearing the golden locket. She must have a meeting go to, a surprise one because last he heard she had the day off.
"Aww Malasadas, thank you," she said taking the box from him and putting them on the counter. She didn't even give him a chance to say hello.
"Uh… where are you going?" he asked her. Not that he didn't like it when she dressed up like that, he definitely did but she had promised she'd only do it when the occasion called for it and not regularly so they looked a little more better suited to one another.
"I have a little situation I have to take care of," Rowan whispered heading back towards him. She stopped to kiss him with a soft: "Will you be here when I get back?"
"Uh… no, I have a case."
"Right, of course, sorry, silly question. Well I'll see you when you're done with the case then, we'll have dinner with Malasadas for dessert, what do you think?"
"Yeah, okay that's great."
"Kay, bye baby," she said as she opened up the door.
"Right, bye Ro, bye Wo," he said his eyes glancing over Wo Fat who had appeared at the door and was seemingly waiting on Rowan. Steve took two steps fully planning on taking one of the malasadas on the road with him to the next suspect and then did a full 180. "Whoa? Wait a second!"
Steve raced back out of the house, calling for them to stop. Both Rowan and Wo Fat turned back to him. Wo seemingly wanted to keep going but Rowan had stopped entirely.
"Ro I don't have time for this," he said to her, but Steve couldn't care less.
Steve barrelled towards them pointing at the two of them. "Nope, no, what is happening? What happened to he's not allowed in the house?"
"We have an emergency Steven, the fight is off right now and he wasn't in the house for long. He's mainly been on the porch," she said.
Wo Fat nodded. "Someone kidnapped my girlfriend."
Steve scoffed. "No one would dare."
"We both thought no one would kidnap Ro, and they did," Wo Fat snapped back. "Most people don't think very far past let's go for the weakness."
"Okay… well… why are you here? Why don't you just storm the fort like you did when they took Ro… or anytime someone took Ro, for that matter?"
"I can't. This isn't a Yakuza play. It's her brother and I'm assuming she wouldn't want me to hurt him."
"Are you fucking kidding me right now?"
"No he's not. So we kind of have to go, okay?"
"Rowan!" Steve cried lurching out to grab her wrist and stopping her from leaving. "Not until you tell me what's going on. What's really going on. What does he need you for?"
"It really is a kidnapping. And I need money, alright? She uh… she has more than me…"
"Well maybe if you'd stop spending it…" Rowan growled to him and the two of them shot daggers at one another.
"You came to my girlfriend… for money?"
"My funds are tied up at the moment, and our emergency vault has more than enough for what I need. Problem is, we need both of us to make a direct withdrawal…"
"Which is a stipulation you should have taken off, when you gave me back to Steven," Rowan growled again and Wo Fat turned a glare on her.
"I hadn't gotten around to it yet, Rowan!"
"Okay, okay, so that's it? He just needs money and then you're coming home?"
"Yes, yes I am."
"And this isn't some ploy? Like… this isn't how the new and improved Contingency plan?"
Wo Fat turned to Rowan immediately and said: "Are you two arguing again?"
"We had a minor spat today but nothing I'd call relationship-ending." Wo Fat turned unimpressed eyes onto Steven who actually felt a little bit of shame. Yes they had argued but she had just said that it wasn't a big argument. Couples were allowed to have spats. "It's fine, he brought malasadas all is forgiven."
Yeah was it though? "So like, I'm not going to go in there and find out Nahele's gone?"
Rowan narrowed her eyes at him "Well Nahele's not home, he's at Kai's house right now playing videogames, you could call him…"
Red flags. Red flags everywhere.
Steve was already shaking his head. "No, no I don't like this. We had an argument about your brother and now Nahele's not home…"
"It was another argument about me?" Wo Fat cried. "For god sake Steven! I thought we agreed to let that go?"
"No, Con. He's upset cause I told him about Con," she filled in and Steve turned to Wo who nodded.
"Ah yes… well… it's new, new-ish," Wo Fat said. "I'm still getting used to it but that shouldn't surprise you. Not sure Con's used to it yet either…"
"That doesn't make me feel better," Steven growled.
Wo Fat turned to Rowan. "We need to go, okay? I can't keep waiting. So let's go." He then turned onto Steven. "I promise, if you give me your coordinates, I will personally drop her off to you. Okay? Can we do that?"
Steve nodded that was a fair deal. "How are you going to get them? Did you want me to text you?"
"Naw, I'll get them off the app," Wo said. "We good, we can leave?"
Steve nodded and then changed his mind stopping them again. "Wait, you guys are going to the Vault, right? Like… the underground banking ring? Can I come?"
"No." Both Rowan and Wo Fat snapped together.
"What… but… why?"
"Because they don't like cops. You trying to get us killed?" Wo Fat cried. He then turned back to Rowan and whined his nickname for her. "What if he's hurting her?"
"He wasn't hurting her before," she said but when he groaned Rowan rolled her eyes and said: "I'll check okay?"
Steve felt the electric current jolt through the air hitting him right in the chest. It wasn't anything like one of her jolts but instead he felt… empowered. Almost immediately the world around him became strings. None of them meant anything to him, but he instinctively knew that this was what Rowan was seeing. Rowan was looking at the different out comes.
He watched her take a red string that was drifting off of Wo Fat and then looked at it, as if she were reading words off of it.
"Okay, it's still just Jian and her brother. Still in a basement… oh wait. No. Two more people… they're upstairs… they're… oh wow… wow… uh…"
"Rowan what? What is happening?!" Wo Fat cried, but she didn't answer right away and Wo was clearly frantic about this because he suddenly grabbed her and shook her. "Fuck the money just throw me, throw me now!"
Rowan swatted his hands off of her and scowled at him. "Why? You in a hurry to meet your future mother-in-law."
Wo Fat visibly relaxed but had a narrowed look of suspicion about him. "He has her at home?"
"I know what you're thinking, but I can literally see her parents going along with what this guy is doing… and I mean… wow… and I thought my family was fucked up."
Wo Fat groaned heavily and then turned to Steve. "Can we go now, please?"
Rowan shut down her sense, taking the strings away and turned back to Steve. "You do have a case Steven, so even if you wanted to come you can't. So can we go now, please? Now that you know everything's on the up and up? He's getting squirrelly."
Steve nodded, pulling Rowan to him one more time for one last kiss before he finally let her go. "Good luck!" he called to both of them, but he wasn't sure if Wo Fat was really listening or cared if Steven was wishing him luck or not.
He waved their car off before heading back to the Camaro where Danny was waiting for them. "So uh… that was… that was Wo Fat she left with… unless she knows another half burned Asian man."
"Yeah he has an emergency she's getting him cash," Steve answered absently as he left his own house.
Danny nodded. "And you trust that?"
Steve shook his head. "No, but he says he'll drop her off at my coordinates when they're done and I did say I'd be a little more understanding…"
"Yeah but we all thought that you were just saying that and you didn't mean it. You know, like all the other times you said that," Danny said to him and Steve shot him a scowl. That wasn't fair. He was most definitely trying to be better for her, just like he said he would.
"Well anyway, Grover called while you were busy with those two. They called all our gun aficionados and warned them about our guy, offered them protection," he said.
"Yeah and what did they say?"
"They turned us down. They feel like their guns will be good enough against this guy," Danny said and Steve nodded, that was probably true. They got back onto the main road and Danny half laughed. "This is the height of hypocrisy."
Steve shook his head, he knew where this was going. "What is the height of hypocrisy, Danny?" he asked humouring in his friend.
Danny smiled like Steve had walked right into a trap and essentially he had. "Well, this guy is using a gun to go on an anti-gun crusade. I mean how else is he going to make his point, I guess?" Steve gave him a soft mhmm and Danny continued. "I think what we should do is get a big magnet." He waited for Steven to give him another mhmm. "Glue it at the bottom of a helicopter, fly all around the country, and suck up all the guns, huh? It's good, right?"
Danny was purposely baiting him now, and Steve knew it but he wasn't going to let him taunt him like that, he wasn't going to fall into one of their arguments again. He just wasn't.
"Yeah, it's good," Steve said laughing along with Danny. "Sucks them all up."
"Right, what are you laughing at?"
"I can see what you're doing that's what I'm laughing at."
"What am I doing?"
"You're trying to bait me. It's not gonna work," Steve snapped, because it wasn't. He had bigger things to worry about, like how his girlfriend was off with a criminal trying to get access to illegal funds. "Because you know that I believe, if they're handled correctly, it's perfectly okay to have guns."
"Yeah, I don't… see, I don't think you think that they're perfectly okay." Oh here it comes. "Guns, they're not just okay to you. You like guns. You love a good gun. You're a gun guy, you know?" Steve hit him with another mhmm just cause he didn't trust himself to speak. "I think you probably sleep with your gun at night. You'd probably marry your gun."
"Okay, now, that's stupid. I'm not going to marry my gun, I'm going to marry Rowan. You're just being an idiot and I'm gonna ignore you, okay?"
"Whoa, hold on, hold on," Danny cried.
"What? What now?"
"You're gonna marry Rowan? What… did you propose?"
"No, I haven't proposed, I'm just… I'm…" "—You thinking about it?" "…Yeah, yeah I'm thinking about it. I mean… I wanted her back for a reason, right? It wasn't just to date her for the rest of my life."
Danny took that in, nodding solemnly. "You buy a ring?"
"Not yet, I haven't found the right one, haven't found one I think she'd like," he said. "Traded in Cath's ring though, got store credit only which uh… sucks… but I'll make it work find her something nice."
"How you uh… how you thinking of doing it?"
And that would be the other problem. Along with not being able to find a ring good enough for his girl, he hadn't thought of a single way to propose to her that was amazing or worthy of her. And if he said that to Danny it would open a completely different can of worms, one he didn't want to get back to Rowan because Danny couldn't keep a secret to save his life.
"Okay, you know what? You know what you're saying. You're saying that you don't believe in the Second Amendment," Steve suddenly cried bringing back the original argument. "That the people should have the right to keep and bear arms."
"I'm not talking about the Second Amendment, okay. It mentions a militia, okay. Also uses words like well-regulated. Good job changing the subject."
Yeah Steve wasn't going to rise to that bait either. "Okay. So you're saying people shouldn't be able to carry guns despite the fact you carry a gun."
Now Danny was laughing. "I carry a gun… I'm a cop. It's my job to carry a gun. What are you talking about? I gotta… I gotta protect the good guys from the bad guys."
"Right, exactly. So what if normal people, what if citizens wanna protect themselves and their families from the bad guys? Shouldn't they have the right to do that?"
"How about if just don't let the bad guys have any guns, then the good guys won't need any guns and nobody needs any guns? How about that?"
"And you know what else, while we're at it, we can eliminate discrimination, war, hatred, violence, all that kind of stuff, we'll all live happily ever after and we can, uh, you know, ride our unicorns to work every day."
Danny was silent for a second before whispering: "And you'd probably commandeer my unicorn, drive it to work."
"Yeah, and guess what? If you had a gun, you could stop me."
Which wasn't true cause Danny would never shoot Steve on purpose. Though there were some moments were Steve was certain Danny thought about it. They were quiet for a little while longer before Steve felt the need to say just one more thing.
"And don't you open your big mouth to her either, or anyone else until I'm ready. I swear. This time you say nothing," Steve warned him. He knew Danny knew what he was talking about.
"Hey, not trying to talk you out of this one," Danny said but it wasn't until Steve hit him with a dark glare that he added: "I won't say a word I promise."
H5O-H5O-H5O-H5O
Their bad guy, a man named Marvin, had gone into the Hawaii courts and taken a whole room hostage. He had nine people, two of which were judges, a big gun and a big demand.
He wanted a camera crew in there. But Steve didn't want to put civilians in harm's way, he didn't want to give this man two more hostages. He had said that he could get the guy one camera man and one reported but he wanted something in return, and he got the guy to agree to give him two of the hostages so that was something. But he still needed a plan.
He was trying to think this whole thing through when…
"As promised, one girlfriend, perfectly fine and still in Hawaii," Wo Fat said appearing beside him and Danny with Rowan in tow. Steve started, mainly because he had no idea how they got there.
"Uh… how did you guys get past the HPD barricade?" Chin asked. Yeah that was a good question.
"She walked me past it," Wo Fat said. "It's an amazing power. Surprises me every time she does it. I take it we're good now?"
Rowan smiled up at Steve but already the wheels were turning in his head. Rowan would be perfect for this job. "Hey could I ask you for a favour?"
"Nope, throw me first then go back to him," Wo Fat said before Rowan could reply. "Also remember there's a million dollars in the trunk of your car. So, we better do this fast."
But before Wo Fat could pull her away. "Just let me explain real quick. We have a hostage situation and we needed someone to go inside… if you're okay with it, if not I'd rather you go home where it's safer…"
And just like that Wo Fat was back at her side. "I'm sorry, you want to send her where?" Steve opened his mouth but Wo Fat was already talking again, pointing at the building they were outside of. "You want to send her in there… by herself? Are you nuts?!"
"Well she has a shield right. Its bullet proof isn't it?"
"It is," Rowan confirmed.
At that Wo Fat turned. "When did you confirm that? I don't remember agreeing to that test run."
"Con and I did it when we rescued Sara from her kidnappers."
"When the hell was this?! Who the hell is Sara?"
"Chin's niece," Rowan said pointing at Chin who merely waved. Wo Fat took a deep breath.
"Ugh, I knew I should have asked more about your trips to Hawaii!" he groaned.
Rowan then turned back to Steve. "I mean, I'm down to help, but are you sure I'm the best for this? It wouldn't be good to do void trick in front of a room full of people, you know?"
"No, I know that. But uh, this guy wants a news crew and I'd be right outside the door. You just need to be a distraction. I'm hoping to not let you get shot at. Besides, you're already dressed for the part."
Wo Fat, who had stepped away while they talked came back and offered him the phone. "It's for you."
Steve took it, not sure why Wo Fat would have called anyone who wanted to talk to him. But when he put the phone to his ear and said: "McGarrett," all he got was yelling, most of it in Spanish. And what he did recognize was swearing.
Steve just hung up on the person and handed the phone back to Wo Fat. "Most of that wasn't in English. Look I still need to formulate a plan but I know what I'm doing."
Wo Fat did not look impressed. Rowan put a hand out to him as Wo Fat's phone began to ring again before she turned back to Steven.
"Okay… uh… go over the plan and I'll be right back. Wo needs to go get Jian and I'm going to send him off. I'll be right back okay?"
Steve nodded to her, let her leave with Wo Fat already feeling a bit better.
He turned back to flag down the closest HPD officer. "Hey, Bane," he said reading the name tag. "See that Channel 18 news crew over there? Send them over here."
Officer Bane did as instructed, and by the time Steve had talked them through his request, Rowan had returned. No longer with Wo Fat, but with Sin Nombre. The two of them took in Steve's surprised stare and Rowan winced.
Probably because, as soon as he got close enough to him, Sin Nombre punched Steve in the shoulder. And hard. "That's for hanging up on me."
Right so he had been the call in Spanish. Steve put a hand to his shoulder and then glanced from Rowan who was still wincing and Sin Nombre who had now cracked a roguish grin at him.
"I heard you needed a camera man?" Sin Nombre asked.
"I thought uh… I thought you were in California?"
"I was."
"Yeah? What for?" Danny asked.
"You know I felt like I needed a vacation," Sin Nombre said with a grin that quickly faded. "I was obviously working and I'd like to get back to it. So, can we get on with this?"
Steve turned to Rowan. "Sorry, Wo wasn't comfortable with your plan. I told him that you'd be sending me in with a Five-0 but uh… he trusts Con more."
Actually, this would probably work out better. Sin Nombre was ruthless, he'd protect Rowan no matter what.
"You know what an even better plan is? Just send me in. Alright? I can get in and whack that guy without any fuss or muss. Probably only take me 15 minutes."
Steve shook his head. "No. No, I just need him neutralized," Steve said and though Sin Nombre rolled his eyes he didn't argue. Steve handed Sin Nombre the vest with the badges that the camera guy usually wore. He put the vest on and then stared at Steve as Steve explained.
"This guy, this guy has been very, very careful from the beginning. Okay, he's planned for everything."
"Yeah, well he hasn't planned for me," Sin Nombre snarled. He threw his leather jacket onto the table beside Chin and then accepted the Camera he was going to have to carry and the vest they wanted him to put on. Everyone clocked the under arm holders he had hanging off of him, both of them had a gun.
"Okay, just listen. I guarantee you, he's going to check you both for weapons, okay?" he was looking at Rowan when he said it, who was standing there fiddling with her own props. The com device Steve had made her put in her ear, and the microphone she was supposed to carry. "Alright well now the minute it looks like anything is going sideways, I want you to give me the signal, and I'll come and get you. But… uh… you're going to have to go in there unarmed… the both of you."
"I don't have any weapons on me," Rowan said, but Sin Nombre sighed, put the camera into Steve's arms and went about unloading a whole arsenal from his person. Steve was expecting the two guns from the holsters but it didn't stop there. He watched weapon after weapon hit the table. Brass knuckles, knives, more than two revolvers, ammo. Where the hell had he been stashing all that shit?
"Jesus," Danny cried. "What did you think that guy had? An army?" Sin Nombre said nothing but appraised Danny with cold hard eyes. Danny got so uncomfortable he turned to Steve and said: "You sure you don't want to let him keep one gun. Seeing as he might need it?"
"I don't need a gun to kill that guy," Sin Nombre snarled to him. Steve struggled to keep himself from smiling as he reminded Sin Nombre again that he wasn't going to need to kill anyone. Yeah, he was definitely going to feel better now that Rowan was going in with him. If only he could keep Sin Nombre from killing anyone.