Nick and Adalind were playing with Kelly on their bed, when they heard Trubel come in. She sits in front of Adalind and without even a hello asks. "Is it a thing that hexenbiests just don't get married."
Adalind blinks several times in confusion, so Trubel explains,
"Seems like all the hexenbiest I've encountered are single, so I was wondering if it was part of your nature not to get married.
Adalind nods in understanding"Marriage has long been looked at as a form of ownership. Traditionally, a woman was never her own person, she belonged to her father and when she got married she belonged to her husband. Hexenbiests do not like being owned, they prefer to do what they want when they want without someone trying to control them. Of course marriage is different now, but a lot of hexenbiest feel love is a prison, it leaves you vulnerable and weak. So most hexenbiests avoid it if they can."
"You were in love with Renard" Nick pointed out
"And look how that turned out" Adalind retorted back "Not only did he not love me, but he used me like a pawn, caste me out when I was no longer of use to him and decided to give our daughter away because he felt it was for the best. He never once considered how it would affect me. And because so much was kept from me, like the fact your mother had Diana and not the royals, I did some horrible things just because I thought it would get me my daughter back".
"My love for Sean Renard was what caused me to blindly follow his orders, never questioning, just doing. It made me vulnerable and it made me stupid. If I had not been so devoted I would have questioned why a woman who was already in the hospital and obviously dying needed to be poisoned. And I would have told him to talk to you instead of trying to manipulate you. We could have all been saved a lot of grief if Sean Renard would have used some sense and actually sat down with you and explain everything to you from the very start. You had been working under him for several years, You would think he would know you well enough to see the type of man you are. A certainly more trustworthy man than any of his family members"
Nick shook his head "The man has some serious trust issues. I still feel I can't trust him fully even now. Renard only opened up to me about a lot of things because I had already found out about some of it. He figured it was better to make peace with me than to risk me hunting him down and cutting off his head. Which was pretty tempting after I found out everything he had done."
"But you didn't, you proved to be a better man than that.' Adalind smiled at him, then looked back at Trubel, "I used to think Sean Renard would be the man I would spend the rest of my life with, I thought that since we had a daughter together and neither one of us were good for anyone else we were perfect for eachother. I was wrong. And I stopped loving him a long time ago."
"So does that mean you never think about getting married" Trubel asks.
Her eyes had flashed to Nick automatically before she quickly returned them to Adalind. As quick as it was it still escapes no one's attention.
"I am not against getting married" Adalind explains carefully "I think that two people should make that decision based on their love for each other and their want to spend the rest of their lives together. Those should be the only deciding factors."
Nick got the feeling Adalind was trying to make it clear to him that she did not want him to propose just because he thought Kelly's parents should be married.
That reason had never crossed his mind.
As a cop he had seen domestic issues arise between couples who had only gotten married, not because they loved each other but because their families made them, on account they had a child together.
Children should never be held responsible for the actions of adults. Marriage should be about love and commitment, not about responsibility, Nick had always believed that and would never want it to be about anything else.
Trubel was a grimm and just as perceptive as Nick. She could hear what Adalind was not saying and see some wheels turning in Nick's head. So she decided to shake things up a even more, and make something clear.
"Well when you two decide to get married, I won't wear a dress, so don't even try to make me. I can stand on Nick's side and wear a nice black suit but if you try to put me in a poofy dress I'll work on my bike while wearing it and get grease, dirt and oil all over it. Especially if it's pink. I love you both and all but if you try to make me wear pink I'm teaching Kelly to curse."
Nick threw his head back and laughed. Kelly joined in from seeing his daddy. Adalind's jaw was hanging open and she could not have gotten her eyes bigger if she tried. She was shocked speechless at what Trubel had just said.
Nick, deciding to save Adalind from having to come up with a response, replied to Trubel,
"Don't worry, no one will ever attempt to put you in a pink dress. We all value our lives far too much to do anything that crazy."
Adalind wondered why Nick did not deny that they would one day get married. Was it something he thought about. She didn't want him to do it for Kelly's sake. She wanted him to love her. She wanted him to want to spend his life with her because she made him happy and not because he was an upstanding and honorable man who fulfilled his obligations no matter the consequence to his own happiness. She would not be the one to make him miserable any longer. She was done ruining his life.
Nick Burkhardt was the easiest man in the world to love. He was good, kind, compassionate, thoughtful and courages. Adalind could admit to herself that she was far from immune.
O.K. so he was also incredibly handsome, with silver blue eyes that a girl could drown in and a devilish smirk that made it impossible to stay mad at the man for long.
When they were on opposite sides of things it had been easy to ignore all his qualities that had nothing to do with him being a badass grimm.
But now, it was impossible not to fall.
Adalind often craved having those strong arms wrapped around her and his soothing voice whisper sweet nothings in her ear, but it was wishful thinking. There was no way someone like Nick Burkhardt, would want someone like her, not after everything she has done. She could not delude herself into hoping for her knight to sweep her off her feet and promise her happily ever after. That sort of thing was never in the cards for hexenbiests.
Nick however liked the woman Adalind now was. The woman he now got to see. A great mother. Incredibly intelligent and knowledgeable about so many things it was like have a smaller and prettier Monroe around.
Nick also wanted the type of love Adalind gave, passionate, devoted, fiercely loyal and open. When she loved, she did not hold back and Nick wanted that.
It wasn't the right time for them to even have a serious talk about marriage. They still needed to get to know eachother better and have at least some semblance of control over their lives. There was still too much chaos around them. They needed to be able to focus on themselves and their family in order to decide where they were going in their lives, what they wanted.
But Nick felt in his heart that Adalind was who he was meant to be with. They had never really been able to stay away from each other. Always colliding in one way or another. So maybe, it was faits way of matchmaking.
Juliet had turned him down on numerous occasions, never able to say yes to a committed life with him. She had blamed him and made him feel guilty about events he had no control over. He had loved her with all his heart but it had never been enough.
Nick knew Adalind could relate.
Turned out he and Adalind had a lot of things in common.
That was why he had no interest in telling Trubel he and Adalind would never get married, that there would never be a wedding and she was way off in her assumptions, because for Nick, being married to the woman he loved was a dream he deeply needed to one day be a reality.
He would just have to wait a little longer.