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Nick opened his front door and stepped inside.
He'd been shocked when his mother had been standing across from him. He barely recognised her she'd been thinner the last time he saw her, she'd been wearing a something soft and flowery but he'd lost the exact memory years ago. He'd remembered his name, said exactly like that; no one had called him Nicky in all the years since the accident.
There was a dead body between them and suddenly his mother was standing before him with scars she hadn't had before and short hair but she was his mum. He didn't know what to do at first just stared at her dumbly for a few minutes. She watched him wearily but offered no explanation, no reasons, just watched him silently. Nick shook himself and reached for his mobile; put a call into dispatch – dead suspect. There was the police car outside which he needed to check and the crime scene guys would need to look at the place and they would have called the paramedics to check him out but they couldn't find his mother here. She must have been the one to fight off Wu at the hotel; she must have been the one to give his partner a concussion and bruised ribs.
Nick dropped his phone and stared at his mother. "I killed him, you were never here."
She nodded. "I have been chasing him for a while, looking for the Coins of Zakynthos."
"Okay."
"You know about the coins?"
Nick looked at the dead body in his living room, the mess surrounding him and was glad that he'd never got around to going furniture shopping when Juliette left him; there was much less to clean up than there could have been. He needed to call Hank, tell him that they were safe for now. He needed to call Elly and tell her the threat was gone. He needed to call Elly and ask her what he was supposed to feel when your mother came back from the dead because Nick couldn't work it out. He needed to call the captain and let him know the guy was no longer an issue and he had to work out a way to get his mother off the list of people they needed to hunt down. Something he didn't need to do was worry about the coins, he knew they were safe and if something happened to him he knew Elly would find them and bury them somewhere no one would go looking.
"The police will be here soon," Nick said wondering if he needed to do anything to hide the fact the fight had involved three people instead of two. It shouldn't be a problem because he'd give his statement and he'd say that it was just him and Akira Kimura and surely there would be nothing to disagree with him.
"Do you know about the coins?" His mother asked again.
Nick frowned at her, now really wasn't the time to be worried about a set of old, powerful, evil coins but his mother seemed determined. "There is an APB out for you since you attacked Wu and Williams, I will lie in my report, you were never here… were you hurt? Are you bleeding?" Nick knew if she'd bled they would pick up at the very least that she was a woman in the middle of a fight between two men. He could say it must have been from Juliette but she'd been gone almost three months now and the blood would be fresh. They would run DNA; they would discover a family connection that couldn't be explained because everyone knew Nick had no family.
"I will be back in the morning," his mother said finally sounding annoyed and looking put out as she disappeared out the back door.
Nick followed her and locked the door and then went out the front to check on the two officers who had been supposed to be watching his house, he knew he should have checked on them before but Kimura didn't have issues with murder and he had needed to get the man before he went after anyone else. They were both unconscious but not dead, Nick didn't understand he'd expected to find them dead but regardless he called dispatch back and asked for two ambulances – officers down. He pulled them carefully out of the bushes neither of them were covered in claw marks which probably meant that they had been taken out by someone else. His mother? But it made no sense that she would take them out before Kimura got there and then wait for him to attack Nick. Above his head red and blue flashing lights illuminated the bushes and he turned to greet the other officers, sending some inside to guard the body leaving some here to watch over the two officers. He pulled his phone out again and called the captain.
"I've already been notified I am on my way to your house," Renard said instead of a greeting. He must have been driving and unwilling to waste time. "Have you been hurt?"
"Bruises and scrapes, nothing too bad."
"Good, see you in ten."
Nick hung up the phone and called Hank.
"He been to yours?" Hank asked as soon as the phone connected.
"Yeah, he's dead."
"Okay, I'll be there in ten. Nick," Hank paused for a second and seemed to be debating something. "Is he a Wesen?"
"Yeah, a Schakal like a jackal."
"Fuck," Hank breathed out before he told Nick he'd see him soon.
Hank seemed to be taking the new information fairly well. He hadn't had a mental break, he hadn't come around to kill Elly or Nick so Nick was cautiously holding his breath and hoping for the best. For now he was not offering information but not holding it back either just waiting Hank out. Nick knew Hank had gone to visit Rosalee the night he'd been shown the truth but she refused to say anything more than that he seemed to be handling things well. Nick had wanted to laugh because well was relative and he was terrified his partner was going to ask to be transferred because Nick was insane.
Nick tapped his phone one last time and called Elly who answered on the second ring. "Nick?"
"Elly," Nick suddenly felt weary as though the last week, the last month was finally hitting him but he couldn't slow down just yet. "Kimura is dead, he was a Schakal. I will call you tomorrow okay?"
"Nick, are you okay?"
"Some cuts and bruises, nothing much."
"One of these days you are going to get that I don't just mean physically when I ask that question."
"I have to go the Captain's here. I'll talk to you tomorrow?"
"Call when things are done if you need to."
"And ruin your schedule. I don't think so."
Elly laughed and said goodbye and Nick took a deep breath before forging into the fray.
It was close to midnight when everything was done and Nick could go back inside, he thanked everyone for their hard work and the next thing he knew he was standing in front of Elly's door. He shook himself and turned around to get back into his car. He drove slowly and carefully going home checking his usual route not remembering driving it just a few minutes before. There were no accidents, no injuries so when he got home he went upstairs and took a long, hot shower. He stood under the spray wishing he had have knocked at Elly's and gone in, wishing he knew what she thought about his mother and everything that Nick was feeling. Honestly, he wished she would be able to help him work out what he was feeling, or at least what he should be feeling because he didn't know. He turned the water off and crawled into bed not bothering with clothes and was asleep moments later.
TBC...
