Disclaimer: I do not own the characters of this work of fiction, and no profit, monetary or otherwise, is being made through the writing of this.
A/N:Spoilers for information that's been divulged in the current season (4), and an alternative/missing scene from the opening of season 2, "Bad Teeth." Written for treewishes for Yuletide 2014 over at Archive of Our Own.
"That strong mother doesn't tell her cub, Son, stay weak so the wolves can get you. She says, Toughen up, this is reality we are living in." - Lauryn Hill
Anger is a powerful, driving force, but so is love.
Both are capable of igniting fiery passion, and both are equally capable of destruction.
Anger, when it's mixed with love, is a force to be reckoned with, like striking a match near a barrel of oil, it's likely to explode, the resulting fire lasting for days that bleed into years.
Often, for Kelly Burkhardt, it's that particular combination of passions which gives her the strength to do what she does.
Love for her son, the son she'd given up to protect, is often what keeps her going. It was, will always be, her greatest sacrifice. Though she doubts Nick understands that, or will ever see it that way.
Anger, however, is what motivates her to do what she does on a daily basis. It's what gets her up in the morning. It's that fiery spark burning in her belly that urges her to combat the evil forces at work in the world, and attempt to bring them down, for good.
What she's doing now, tailing the Blutbad who's been helping Nick.
Spying on him.
This is being done in an oily mixture of anger and love.
Righteous anger.
Blutbaden and Grimm were never meant to be friends. It's unnatural for a Blutbad to help a Grimm, and shameful for a Grimm to go to one for help. It's unheard of, and Kelly doesn't like it one bit.
She doesn't like the idea of her son befriending the very things that he is, by birthright, destined to kill. Monsters. Aberrations of nature. Abominations. It isn't right.
Her son doesn't know the trouble that he's getting himself into by befriending a Blutbad. The Blutbad does, though, Kelly's willing to bet on that. It knows that there are heretics within the ranks of the Wesen. Heretics who will target her son, not only because he's a Grimm, but also because of his unnatural friendship with a Blutbad.
Wesen typically avoid contact with a Grimm, but now that her son is openly cavorting with them, becoming friends with his natural enemies, he's inadvertently drawing unnecessary attention to himself. A situation that Kelly blames on the Blutbad.
A group of vigilante Wesen, known as the Secundum Naturae Ordinem had made the work of her ancestors easier, once upon a time. They'd culled those in their own ranks who were deemed impure.
Those involved in relationships that crossed certain codes of conduct were eliminated, or ritually cleansed.
Intermarriage was considered a criminal act worthy of death.
What the Blutbad and her son are doing - working together to stop evil from gaining a foothold in Portland - is not only a crime within the Wesen community, because of the difference in their natures, but it's also a crime within the Grimm community. And it's something that Kelly has to put a stop to, one way or another. If that means taking the Blutbad out of the equation, permanently, she'll do it.
It's that very determination - to protect her son, and eliminate any and all threats to him - that finds her outside of the Blutbad's home late at night. Watching, biding her time until the Blutbad screws up enough to give her an excuse that will allow her to do what she, what Nick, was born to do. Kill to protect.
She's seen enough evil over the years to know that Wesen are not something to toy, or pal around with. They need to be dealt with in a decisive fashion. Something that Nick will learn, given enough time, provided that he survives. That he feels he owes his survival to the Blutbad is of little concern to Kelly.
Nick will learn how to walk on his own, he's not a toddler moving from one piece of furniture to the next, tottering. He doesn't need the Blutbad to teach him how to be what he is, or catch him when he falls. He'll learn as she, and all of their kind, did, through time and experience.
These thoughts, the rightness of them, is what pushes her to go from watching the Blutbad's house to knocking on his door, just as a full moon is rising. She's dressed from head to toe in red, lips quirking upward in a knowing smirk when the Blutbad's eyes turn crimson, and he starts to woge.
"You need to stop seeing Nick." Kelly pushes her way past the creature into its home. Bold, because she's in the right, and what the Blutbad is doing with her son is wrong.
She shudders to think of how it has managed to twist Nick's mind into believing that it's helping him. There's no doubt in her mind that the creature her son is on a first name basis with has ulterior motives. Motives that will get her son killed if she doesn't do something to stop it.
That it has somehow snowed Nick into trusting it just makes Kelly that much angrier. The anger boils in her blood, and spills over, causes her to finally act in a way that love alone hadn't let her.
She shoves the Blutbad up against the living room wall with a force that makes the insane number of clocks hanging there go off in a cacophony of disharmonious sound. She pins it there with an arm across its throat, feet dangling inches off the floor, and ignores the way that it scrambles to free itself, desperately clawing at her arm, gasping for air past a windpipe that, if she were to add just a little more pressure, would be crushed.
"Leave my son alone," she hisses, anger lending her strength as she leans in close to it, nostrils flaring, lips almost close enough to brush against the Blutbad's. "Stop pretending to help him."
The Blutbad's eyes go wide, and its struggles increase. It attempts to give voice to words, but there's not enough air, and Kelly eases up enough to enable it to speak, but not enough to completely free it. She is there to make a point.
The Blutbad swallows mouthfuls of air, body shaking as it takes in precious air that had, moments before, been denied it. About the only thing these creatures have in common with humans is their need for air. That, and their mortality.
"I'm not pretending to help Nick," the Blutbad has the audacity to say. "And I'm not going to stop. Nick needs me, and I -"
Kelly sees red. She's no longer pinning the Blutbad to the wall with her arm, but she's got both of her hands wrapped around its throat, intent upon strangling it. She doesn't even realize what she's doing until a shout, her son's voice, breaks through the red haze of hate and anger, love for the very son who's pulling her away from the deceptive monster he knows by name.
Her fingers, stiff and curled into claws, strangle the empty air where the Blutbad's neck used to be, and she's seeing her own anger reflected back to her in dark eyes. Nick's eyes. The anger is directed at her, and it's sobering.
The red fades from her vision, though the fiery rage continues to lick a path from her belly to her throat as she growls her outrage at being shoved to the side by the son she's spent the past several years trying to protect through her absence.
The son she'd come here to save from the monsters he seems to have developed a soft spot for, has rejected her to go to the aid of a monster, and it smarts. The rumors about Nick being different than the others of their kind - than her - are very much true. The fight leaves her, and she sinks to her knees.
"Monroe?" Nick's voice comes to her as though through a tunnel, and Kelly shivers at the concern she hears in her son's voice. It's not directed at her, but at the Blutbad. Concern that sounds an awful lot like the very thing that's making her heart beat painfully in her chest.
The Blutbad waves off Nick's help, pushes himself up and leans against the wall. "I'm fine, Nick."
Kelly can see that the Blutbad's not fine. There's an ugly, red mark on his neck, and she's mildly satisfied that she put it there, that it will turn into a bruise that will last for days. A bruise, bearing the shape of her fingers that will serve as a reminder of her visit to him. Make him think twice about messing with her son's kind heart.
Nick ignores the Blutbad's attempts at brushing him off, sits down beside it and pulls it toward him. Kelly's stomach clenches almost as tightly as her fists, but she bites her tongue, swallows down her anger, because things are far worse than she'd thought they were when she'd heard the rumors that had brought her back to Portland. Back to the son she'd abandoned in an effort to protect him from the very thing that's got its head resting against Nick's chest as though they are lovers rather than friends.
"No, you're not," Nick says in a voice that's pitched low, almost too quiet for Kelly to hear.
She feels shut out, like some kind of eavesdropper, seeking out the latest gossip. Except what she's hearing makes her feel sick to her stomach. Makes her want to kill. It's wrong. All of it. And she realizes that she's only got herself to blame. Leaving Nick had clearly been a mistake.
"Nick, I'm okay," the Blutbad insists, and Kelly can see it roll its eyes.
Nick searches the Blutbad's face with his eyes, the tips of his fingers. It's a gesture that's too intimate for a simple friendship, which makes Kelly's stomach lurch, causes the anger in her to flicker and die out, because she realizes that nothing she says, or does, will make a difference. If she kills the Blutbad now, her son will never forgive her, and it will only make the gap between them grown into an insurmountable chasm.
She holds her tongue when Nick's fingers linger over the bruising on the Blutbad's neck, as though cataloguing it, mapping out the indistinguishable shapes that her fingers had made on the Blutbad's neck. She closes her eyes and then opens them when the Blutbad makes a choking sound at the back of his throat and Nick leans in and presses his lips to the red patch of skin.
"How long?" she asks, voice dull with the realization that it's not friendship that her son shares with a Blutbad, but love. A crime in the eyes of the Secundum Naturae Ordinem, and in the eyes of the Grimm. She knows that, once they catch wind of this, neither Nick nor the Blutbad will be safe.
She's always known that her son was destined to be different. It's why she's chosen to work for the resistance. She just hadn't realized that the difference would be this pronounced. That, not only would her son align himself with Wesen, but he'd, very literally, bed down with one of them.
She slouches against the wall, beside her son and the Blutbad. Knows the answer to her question even before Nick turns his dark eyes on her and opens his mouth. She waves off his answer and runs a hand through her hair. Suddenly tired, the realization that anything she tells her son now will go in one ear and out the other dawns on her.
"I should never have left you," she admits. "I wanted you to have a better life. I never wanted any of this for you."
"So you thought coming to Monroe's house and threatening him was going to fix things between us?" Nick asks, letting out a bitter laugh.
Kelly shakes her head, offers Nick and the Blutbad an apologetic smile, though she doesn't feel sorry for what she did, what she would have done if Nick hadn't pulled her away when he had. "No, I thought killing the Blutbad would fix things. But I see that it would only have made things worse."
"It wasn't love at first sight," the Blutbad interrupts, voice a low, scratchy rumble thanks to her.
The small sense of satisfaction that she feels over having inflicted pain upon the beast who has her son's heart fades almost as quickly as it comes when Nick places his fingers on the damage that her own fingers have caused and winces in sympathy. She laughs, it's sharp and bitter sounding, and she doesn't care. Her son, a Grimm, is in love with the very thing he's supposed to hate.
Life isn't supposed to reflect fairytales, she thinks. And Nick is no naive Belle.
"No," Nick says, voice filled with so much love that it makes Kelly want to vomit, makes her head spin.
"It was more like mutual hatred at first sight." He chuckles fondly at the memory, and shares a look with the Blutbad that makes Kelly feel like an outsider looking in.
His dark eyes are glittering when he turns them toward her, and Kelly bites back an angry retort, her heart sinking even as it fills with something that she's not sure she wants to admit to. She loves her son. Would never have left him in Marie's care if she hadn't. It's hard to remember that, now, though, with his eyes trained on her.
The Blutbad reaches for Nick's hand and Nick twines their fingers together, presses his lips to the Blutbad's knuckles. They share a history, however brief, that Kelly knows nothing about. It makes her feel left out, which is ridiculous, because she also feels a little lost and lonely. She misses the moments she'd given up with her son. Moments she never had, and, thanks to the onward marching of time, will never be able to regain.
"It didn't help that you were arresting me for kidnapping and murder," the Blutbad says in a voice that is filled with affection that belies the severity of the situation that he's talking about. A moment that, if Kelly had been in her son's life, she would no doubt have heard about over dinner, or over the phone as he told her, his mother, about his day.
Nick's lips curl upward at the memory. "No, I suppose that it didn't."
Kelly's heart jumps to her throat, but she tamps down on the maternal urge she has to wrap her arms around her son and shelter him from everything that could possibly harm him in this world, including what he loves.
He lowers his lips to the Blutbad's as though they're the only two people in the room, in the world. Kelly clears her throat, and, after a few more seconds, no doubt her son's attempt at proving a point - like a rebellious teenager, years she's missed from his life - he relinquishes the Blutbad's mouth and turns to face her, hugging the Blutbad tighter.
"Hardly surprising, given the nature of your kind, Blutbad," Kelly says, ignoring the besotted look on the creature's face, the look of love that's passed between the two of them.
"His name's, Monroe." Nick gives her a steely look, and raises an eyebrow in challenge.
Kelly inclines her head, knowing that she's lost this particular battle. She reaches out to her son, pulling back at the last second, the tips of her fingers millimeters from his cheek. She can feel the heat rising from his face, a heat not unlike that which is burning inside of her.
Righteous anger couples with love as she remembers rocking her baby boy to sleep as a child, his chubby little fingers clinging to the fabric of her nightgown, ruddy cheek resting against her chest, warm breath tickling her collarbone. All had been right in the world. She'd been happy. Nick had been happy.
She'd had hopes and dreams for the son she'd held in her arms. None of them had included having her son fulfill the duties of a Grimm, and though she'd dreamt of love for her son, it hadn't looked anything like this.
"Nick, it's okay," the Blutbad, Monroe, says. He rubs at his neck, and grimaces.
Kelly gestures at the now livid bruises that are gracing Monroe's neck. "Sorry about that."
Monroe snorts. "No, you're not." He holds a hand up when Kelly opens her mouth to protest, and shrugs out of Nick's embrace, though their fingers remain entwined.
"Believe me, I get it," Monroe says, a self-deprecating grin fixed in place. "Nick's a Grimm, and I'm a Blutbad. It's unconventional."
"Unconventional?" Kelly almost laughs.
Monroe rubs the back of his neck and lobs a sheepish grin in her direction. "Okay, fine, so it's a little more complicated than that."
"You do realize that if the Secundum Naturae Ordinem find out about you and Nick -"
"There's going to be hell to pay," Monroe finishes her sentence, eyes dropping to his and Nick's hands.
"What's the Secundum Naturae Ordinem?" Nick asks, and Kelly's heart aches for her son who knows so little about what it means to be a Grimm. Who has so much yet to learn, and none of it easy.
"A pompous group of self-proclaimed purists who believe that Wesen should not intermix. If they knew about us, Nick..." Monroe shudders, and Nick squeezes his hand, pulls Monroe closer.
"What will they do?" Nick turns to Kelly for answers.
"They'll torture and then kill the both of you," Kelly says, knowing that candy coating the truth won't do either of them any favors, and doubting that knowing the truth will deter either of them from the path that they've chosen to take together.
Nick frowns, and his eyes darken with determination. Kelly smiles in spite of the images of her son being beaten and tortured that run through her mind as she thinks about what will happen to him if, or rather when, the Secundum Naturae Ordinem discovers that a Grimm is with a Blutbad. She smiles because, along with the gruesome images, she remembers Nick when he was just two years old. He'd get that same stubborn look on his face when he wanted a cookie, or to play instead of taking a nap. It was a look that, over the years, she'd come to loathe almost as much as she admired.
Her son didn't seem to know the word quit when he'd been a toddler, and she doubts that he understands it any better as a man. With determination like that, maybe her son will be okay. Maybe he and Monroe will somehow manage to beat the odds, though, from where she's sitting, the odds seem more than just a little daunting.
Nick takes a deep breath and nods, and Kelly knows that he's made his decision. The fact that Monroe returns her son's look of determination with one of his own causes something to shift in Kelly's heart. The righteous anger that she'd felt toward the Blutbad is gone, and in its place is not love, but a grudging respect for the creature that apparently holds a key place in her son's heart. She knows that no matter what happens, the Blutbad will stick with her son, and for now, that's enough.