"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye" - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Nick turned towards the man lying on the floor of his loft. The man broke in with twenty others with orders to kill. That was why Nick was so ready to take the ax he wielded and plunge it through the guy's skull.
Nick didn't hesitate, but it didn't matter. The man on the ground picked up a gun from one of the fallen soldiers and shot Nick in the chest. Four times was enough to stop Nick's heart, and the magic stick couldn't bring people back the dead. It was over. Nick fell to the ground.
He was dead.
Adalind was terrified that something was going to happen to Nick. And if something did happen to him, it would be her fault.
She was panicked, but she already had Diana warn Nick, and there wasn't anything else she could do.
She could have asked Diana to kill the Black Claw agents, but what kind of mother would that make her?
She went to bed with Diana and stayed with her the whole night to settle her own nerves and to also keep Diana from playing with her dolls.
Trubel was down in the tunnel with Eve or Juliette or something. No one had any idea idea what or who she was anymore.
"Why haven't they come down here yet?" Trubel said anxiously.
"Nick held them off well. It probably won't be long. They'll come," Eve said, trying to pull herself together. "I should have helped Nick."
Was she feeling guilt? That was weird...
Trubel didn't care anymore. She was a strange combination of heartbroken and pissed off. "He's not dead!" she shouted in Eve's face.
"You know better than to lie to yourself, Trubel. Denying the truth could hurt our friends. I'm sorry about Nick," Eve responded in a sincere and languished way.
"When have you ever felt sorry for anything you've done?!" Trubel yelled, getting to her feet. "I can't do this!" Trubel started climbing the ladder.
"Trubel, don't!" Eve begged. "Please." Eve slowly and unsteadily rose to her feet, too.
Trubel could tell that Eve truly wanted her to stay.
"I don't know who you are, but I'm not going to let you stop me," Trubel began. "I'm not going to let Nick die alone. We are his friends, and he deserves more than that. I'm going." Trubel looked down at the worried face of someone who looked very familiar. "I wish I had said this before when I took Josh home..." Trubel's voice cracked, "Goodbye, Juliette."
Trubel hurried her way up the ladder. The adrenaline was making her shake from head to toe. She was terrified that she would be too late, and as she ran, she felt like she was running out of time.
She climbed the second ladder after a sprint through the small hallway, and slowed her breathing before stealthily and quietly opening the door to the loft.
She saw a man, his back towards her, laughing while looking at something that Trubel didn't want to believe. Something she couldn't believe. Nick was on the ground in a pool of blood. Trubel could hear and see from the distance that he wasn't breathing. Trubel slammed the loft door shut behind her while simultaneously snarling, "You son of a bitch!"
The man turned towards her, but she was on him so he hardly the chance to woge. She ripped the gun out of his hand, threw it across the room, and pulled his face really close to hers so he could see the murderous expression in her black, Grimm eyes. She pulled a knife out of her boot and stabbed him in the heart without hesitating. "I'll see you in hell," she growled. She threw him away from her and sent him flying with a kick to the chest. She wanted it to hurt. His death would have taken so much longer if Trubel didn't think that there was a way to help Nick. She wasn't giving up. She wouldn't.
She ran over to Nick's side. He didn't have a pulse.
"Nick," she said hysterically and started CPR. "Nick, I cannot lose you, too."
She was begging as she forced his heart to beat, "Nick, you are not going to do this to me." She gave Nick two breaths and kept pumping his heart. "Dammit, Nick!" she screamed. "It wasn't supposed to be you. You weren't suppose to die!"
She was sobbing, but she didn't stop the chest compressions. "Please. Nick, I need you. Everyone needs you. Everyone has always needed you." She gave him more breaths. "Nick, you are my only family. Wake the hell up!"
Trubel heard the elevator coming up, but she made no effort to move. She didn't care who it was. She could die with Nick, and she wouldn't mind. The elevator door opened, but Trubel didn't even turn to look at who it was. She gave Nick a few more breaths and continued the chest compressions.
"This is heartbreaking," she heard someone say in a french accent. It had to be Bonaparte.
"Nick, come on!" she whispered to the body, still sobbing.
"Why don't you give it up, Theresa? It's over." That was Renard's voice. That pissed her off.
"Why don't you kill yourself, Zauber-bastard?!" Trubel yelled.
"Hmmmm," Bonaparte mused. "You wouldn't happen to know where Nick's book of Grimm ancestry is, would you, dear?"
Trubel ignored him and continued CPR.
"I wouldn't be surprised if she knew everything Nick used to. She's a Grimm. There isn't anything he wouldn't tell her," Renard said.
"That's right, she is a Grimm," Bonaparte said, remembering. He had almost forgotten. He had been so focused on Burkhardt... "Fantastic! I hope we don't have to kill this one. She's young and more than capable from what I've seen. She could be quite useful to us." Trubel shuddered at Bonaparte's words.
Another elevator full of people arrived.
Trubel gave Nick more breaths of oxygen, and thought about the kind of information Bonaparte could want. Information about the books, Monroe, Hank, and the others... the stick...
The stick! Trubel didn't know the extent to which it healed people, but maybe it could save Nick! But what if Bonaparte got a hold of it? It didn't matter to Trubel. She and Nick could get it back together. She had to find a way to get to the tunnel and grab it from where Nick had showed her it was hidden. She didn't know that Nick had it in his pocket.
"Ah, welcome to Burkhardt's home," Bonaparte cheerfully greeted the full elevator. "I should have killed Burkhardt when I first had the chance - but, I am still missing some valuable information." Bonaparte nodded his head in Trubel's direction, but Trubel didn't see because she wouldn't look away from her task of attempting to revive Nick.
"I want her alive," he said.
The five men rushed over towards the young Grimm, who still hadn't looked over to see them.
One of them wrapped their arms around Trubel's torso and ripped her from the dead Grimm on the ground.
"No! No, get off!" Trubel tried to struggle, but two other men grabbed each one of her arms. The remaining two stood in front of the Grimm who wanted nothing more but to save the person that she loved most.
The two men in front watched the Grimm with amused expressions. One even started laughing while the three dragged the despairing Grimm closer to the elevator despite her efforts to fight it.
"Stop!" she shouted as she squirmed under the grips of three adult, Wesen men who were still having a difficult time restraining her.
"If this weren't so damn funny, I might actually feel bad for it," one of the men whispered.
"I hope Bonaparte kills it," said another.
"It'll die painfully and end up in hell with it's pathetic Grimm friend," laughed one of the guys standing in front of her.
Throughout their comments, Trubel had been in hysterics, begging them to stop - stop talking, stop dragging her away- and everyone else in the room thought it was hilarious.
Trubel pulled herself together and kicked the guy in front of her right where it would hurt the most. She brought her chin to her chest and slammed her head back as hard as she could. She heard the sickening snap of the man's nose as it broke - he let go of her torso. The other man from in front of her, the one not doubled over in pain, swung at her. Trubel yanked her arm and ducked in a way that put the guy holding her right arm in the way of the other man's fist. It connected on the guy's face, and he let go of her arm. Trubel punched the guy holding her left arm and jumped on his back. She grabbed his head and twisted until she heard a snap and he fell limp on the ground. She jumped off of the dead man's back before he fell and kicked the guy who tried to punch her. She kicked him in the stomach and then grabbed his shaggy Hundjager fur to slam his face into the counter top. He was definitely unconscious or dead.
The guy who she had kicked first was starting to recover. So were the guys that were head butted and punched. Trubel ran over to the man on the ground who was punched by the unconscious guy and delivered a good, solid kick to the face. He was out too, if not dead. Trubel pulled her machete and cut off the guy's head, but was then tackled by the man who had grabbed her torso. She fell on her back, the machete went flying, but she was able to maneuver so the man who tackled her was on the bottom. She didn't need her machete. She wrapped her hands around his throat and smiled right in his face as she watched him gasp for air. It took too long. She grabbed his head and started slamming it on the ground until the man stopped resisting. She was about to get up and run back to Nick, but as soon as she partially stood she felt a searing, stabbing pain that hurt more than anything she had felt in her entire life. At first, it felt like she was on fire, but she was able to stumble a few feet towards Nick before falling hard to her knees and letting out a scream of pain that she had tried to hold back. Suddenly, she couldn't breathe anymore, either. She glanced at a woged Bonaparte who looked like he was choking an invisible person. He was smiling as he watched her grab her throat, trying to remove the invisible hands.
"You are not going to avoid what I have planned for you. I want you." He let Trubel suffocate for a while longer. Trubel was losing focus, but even still noticed Renard talking on the phone and then putting the phone in his pocket. Trubel figured he must have been calling for backup because the elevator came back up with four more people.
Blood started dripping out of Trubel's eyes, so Bonaparte let her go. She fell backwards on the floor, gasping for air; she didn't have the strength to do anything else.
The four men grabbed her off the floor and placed her in a kneeling position. They started zip tying her hands together behind her back.
Trubel couldn't focus. Her vision was still distorted from the lack of oxygen. She was hardly able to hold her head up. With all her strength, she looked at Bonaparte and choked out, "Please." She gasped for more air. "I will do anything you want. Just let me save him."
Bonaparte walked over to the begging Grimm and got low so he could see her. He used his hand to tilt Trubel's chin up so he could look at her right in the eyes. "Let Burkhardt's death be a reminder to do what I say."
Tears streamed down Trubel's face quietly. One of the men holding her up put a rag in front of her face. It was chloroform.
Trubel couldn't fight it if she wanted to, and she didn't want to.
Trubel's vision went blurry, again. She heard Bonaparte's voice somewhere in the distance.
"Get her out of here."
If anyone had been near him, they would have heard a strange sound. An unidentifiable sound of very slight movement and internal repairs. Surprisingly, it worked quickly. Maybe because he was a Grimm.
Nick gasped for air on the ground and opened his eyes. He felt weak, like he had just been shot four times - because he had. He got to his knees, slowly and painfully, and despite the pain, he was aware, aware of everything. He heard voices outside. Voices he recognized, voices he hated. He, by some miracle, stumbled to the window (over blood, bullets, and bodies) and opened the steel shutter in time to see the unconscious Trubel get thrown into Bonaparte's trunk.
His voice came out in a whisper of complete despair and disbelief.
"No."
It shouldn't have worked. The stick didn't bring people back from the dead, and Nick had died. But Trubel had been there for him, like they had always been there for each other. She gave him artificial heartbeats, artificial breaths, and artificial life long enough for the stick to repair him. Initially, his breaths were slow and shallow as were this heartbeats, but they were enough to keep him on the path to recovery while Trubel wasn't able to continue CPR.
Nick knew that he was alive because of the girl that was just kidnapped by Black Claw. Trubel didn't know that she was the reason that Nick was alive, or that he was alive at all. She also had no idea that Nick would stop at nothing to find her.
There were two cars parked outside of Nick's house. One was an expensive black sedan, the other was a large, black van with paneled windows.
One of the four guys had the unconscious, young Grimm slung over his shoulder. He basically threw her in the trunk of the sedan.
"We're taking her to the compound," Bonaparte announced. "Drive behind us just in case the rebel decides to wake up and kick out the tail lights," he commanded.
"Yes, sir," all four men said at once.
One of them spoke up, "She should be out for a while. But, I tied her feet together just in case."
"Perfect. Let's go," Bonaparte said.
However, they weren't in the hurry that they should have been. Nick watched as they drove away, unfortunately too far away to read the license plates.
"I promise I'm going to find you."
Eve was struggling to keep from crying. Every emotion she had ignored while she was the old Eve seemed to be catching up with her. She gasped in darkness hoping that the others would come back in time to help Trubel. She disorientedly stumbled, trying to decide which direction to go in order to find the closest group.
"Eve?" a confused voice came from the darkness. It was Hank's. He ran over to Eve. "Wu and I found a way out. Where's Trubel?" Hank started looking around. So did Wu when he got to Hank's side.
"Guy's? You back there?" Monroe and Rosalee emerged from the darkness. Monroe's face was slightly red like he had just been crying. Rosalee, however, was the image of the perfect poker face.
"We're over here!" Wu yelled.
Monroe and Rosalee walked over to the group, holding each other's hands. Wu looked at Monroe's face. "Are you guys okay?"
"We're great," Monroe answered too quickly. "We found a way out."
Suddenly, the tunnels erupted with yelling. Hank had been glaring at Eve. He finally grabbed her shoulders and shook her. "Where is Trubel?!" he yelled. Monroe and Rosalee exchanged a concerned look. "Where is she?"
"I don't know. She went back up there," Eve responded.
Hank asked, "Didn't you try to stop her?" while everyone said, "What?" incredulously and simultaneously.
"I couldn't. She wouldn't." Eve said emotionally which unsettled everyone.
Hank started climbing the ladder.
"Hank!" Wu shouted.
Without stopping, Hank said, "I have to know!" Like Trubel, he couldn't accept that Nick could be dead. He had to know.
"I'm going with him," Wu said to the remaining group before rushing up the ladder after Hank.
Monroe looked at Rosalee with a worried expression.
She smiled at Monroe. "Let's go."
Monroe made a nervous face. He didn't want his pregnant wife to have anything to do with Black Claw.
"I'm coming," she said insistently.
"Okay," Monroe said, knowing she wouldn't give in.
Eve looked at the people around her, fighting tears. "I'm coming, too," she said. "I'm sorry for everything that I did when I was Juliette. I wish I could take it back."
"It wasn't you. You weren't Juliette when you did that. We all understand that." Rosalee comforted.
"I'm still not Juliette," Eve said.
Rosalee looked at her. "We'll see."
Hank had made it to the top and was waiting at the door. Wu ran up behind him and Hank motioned for him to be quiet. He had his gun out, ready to shoot, but he knew he didn't have many shots left. He would have to conserve ammo. Wu pulled his gun out, too. Monroe finally made it up, woged, and nodded to signal for Hank to open the door. The others came quickly and quietly behind them.
Hank pushed on the door, but it was stuck. He didn't know it, but it was Trubel's fault. She had slammed it pretty hard. Hank looked down at the group, wide-eyed. He mouthed, "It's stuck."
Suddenly, the door was yanked open and Hank poised his gun to shoot.
"Hey! Hey! Hank, it's me! Don't shoot!" Nick yelled as he backed up and lifted his hands in surrender.
"Don't listen to him," Wu whispered. "It's a trap!"
Hank carefully stepped off of the ladder and into the loft, still pointing his gun at Nick. "How?" he demanded.
Nick kept one arm still lifted up to show that he wasn't going to attack. With his other arm, he showed the inside of his jacket and pulled out the stick that was buried deep in his pocket.
Hank stared in awe at the piece of wood. "The stick?"
"And Trubel," Nick said. "I think she gave me CPR."
"How do you know?" Wu asked, climbing into the loft. Monroe, Rosalee, and Eve followed.
"I didn't stay conscious. The stick would have kept me awake, so I'm pretty sure I was dead." Nick thought for a moment and added, "Some of my ribs were broken when I woke up. It wasn't broken when I was shot." Nick rolled up his sleeve and smeared his bare arm across his face. He looked down at it, noticing it was a very subtle shade of pink. "Trubel's lipstick," he said quietly to himself.
"Nick..." Monroe hesitated. "Where is she?"
Nick looked up from his arm. His eyes started to fill with water, but he blinked fast and looked up at the ceiling to keep the water from turning into tears. He took a deep breath and looked at the group. "She's gone..." He said, clearly despondent.
"She's dead?" Hank asked in disbelief.
"No," Rosalee said.
Wu walked back behind Nick. He picked up an object. "Isn't this Trubel's?"
Nick turned around and looked at the black knight chess piece. He walked over to Wu and took it from him. He stared at it for a while before answering Hank. "Bonaparte took her. She might be dead... I don't know." He grabbed his face in the way he always did when he was stressed out. He turned away from them and started walking aimlessly around the loft.
"Did you see her?" Monroe asked.
"She was unconscious. I saw Bonaparte's men throw her in a trunk."
"Oh my god..." Monroe said looking sadly at the ground.
Nick put the Black Knight in his pocket and turned to face everyone again. "I have to get her back."
"No, Nick," Hank said. "We have to get her back."
Hank walked over to the corner and picked up Trubel's machete. "Let's do this."
Nick nodded. "Let's do this."
Soon after, Bonaparte and Renard realized that Burkhardt wasn't dead. They couldn't let anyone find out. They were the only two people in the compound that knew, and anyone who left the compound was ordered to never say anything - especially to the Grimm.
Both Renard and Bonaparte sent men of their own to go find Burkhardt. They were told to bring the Grimm in if he was cooperative and to kill him if he wasn't. The crews sent to find him came up empty for the most part, or didn't come back at all.