AN: My offering to get us through the week since there's no eppy tonight.

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"So you married the Hexenbiest. Didn't see that one coming."

Nick turned and looked behind him. His mother was sitting on a trunk, hands on her knees watching him. He blinked and looked again.

"Mom?"

"What the hell were you thinking there?" His mother asked, raising her eyebrow, waiting on an answer. He stared at her, dumbfounded.

"You're dead," he said.

She shrugged. "Doesn't look like it, and anyway, does that excuse you for making the decision you did?"

"I saw your head…in a box…there's no way," he said again staring. "This is some kind of trick."

"Maybe it is and maybe it isn't. Doesn't matter. And this still doesn't answer my question. You and the Hexenbiest. What's going on there?"

"Am I dreaming?" Nick asked.

"Maybe," his mom shrugged again. "I've missed you, Nicky," she said with a sigh.

He was definitely dreaming. Had to be. Hallucinating. Did he get hit in the head? What had happened to him? There was no way this was really his mother. She was dead. You couldn't just reattach someone's head and suddenly they were reanimated again, though Diana had done something similar with Kelly's giraffe. But that was a toy, Nick reminded himself, and she had basically telekinetically resewn it back on. This was a real person. But, not really. She had been dead for years now.

"You're not here," Nick said. "I don't know what this is, but it's not really you, and I'm not going to participate in this…this farce or illusion or whatever it is."

"You want me to pinch you?" His mom asked with a smile and Nick glared. And then wondered why. She wasn't there, so why was he interacting or even acknowledging her? He looked around and suddenly the room he was in was gone and all that was left was endless white space. There was nothing else but his mother sitting on a large trunk and him and he looked back at her accusingly.

"Looks like we might be here a while," she observed. She pulled an apple out from somewhere, and a knife, and began to cut it into slices. "Want one?" she asked offering him a piece. He glared at her again. She popped it in her mouth when he didn't respond, and cut another slice.

"This isn't real," he said again.

"Sure. So if it's not real, then, what…you're talking to yourself?"

"No, I'm…I'm…I'm dreaming…I hit my head…" He said, although he wished with more confidence. He couldn't remember what had happened. He had been chasing someone? Yes?

"You'd have a bruise, right? Probably the size of a grapefruit if you're imagining your dead, beheaded, mother, right?"

"Yes, I—" he moved his hands around his scalp, feeling the back of his skull, the sides, front, all carefully. Nothing.

"It doesn't make sense," he said. "I'm not awake. I'm not."

"No, you're not," his mom agreed, and Nick thought ha! I knew it! Then frowned.

"Then…what am I?"

"You're unconscious," she said, after a moment, looking at him, her face turning serious, and the apple and knife disappeared from her hands. She looked worried, an expression he didn't have much experiencing witnessing on his mother. She had always been in control, angry, maybe, or cool detachment, though never with him. The concern on her face concerned him, and he looked at her expectantly, waiting for her to elaborate.

"What happened?" he prompted.

She leaned forward, sliding her hands along the tops of her thighs, before clasping them together, forearms on her knees.

"You tell me," she replied, looking at him.

"If I could tell you, I wouldn't have to ask you," he bit out and then shook his head and stalked away from her. "This is nuts. You're not here!" he shouted. "I'm—I'm seeing things. Somebody drugged me, and this is not real. This is not real, so there's no point in talking to a hallucination. I'm just making it worse," he said to himself. "She's not real," he said.

He moved about the space, no doors or walls, yet somehow he knew where the parameters of the room lay, and he strolled about it, rubbing his hand over his chin, beard scratching against his fingers. "Not real," he said, again, trying hard to think what might have happened to him that he would be having conversations with his dead mother. He kept pacing, his mind blank, unable to summon any thoughts but of the woman in front of him.

"What's happening to me?" he asked her. She flattened her lips and stared back at him. His mouth twisted in annoyance when she made no reply. "Mom!"

"Oh, are you talking to me? Suddenly I'm here now?" She asked and Nick rolled his eyes.

"You're like my subconscious speaking," he said, trying to work it out. "That's why you're here."

"If I'm your subconscious, you clearly haven't been listening to a word I've said most of your adult life. Certainly in the last decade."

"You weren't in my adult life," Nick snapped. "If you wanted your words to have more weight, maybe you should have stuck around to watch me reach adulthood," he finished, then rocked back on his heels. He understood why his mother had done what she had done. Knew she had sacrificed and maybe because of it he had lived long enough to see his present age, but that didn't mean he liked it, but he felt suddenly that he came off as an ungrateful and petulant child.

"I was always watching you. I had eyes on you," she said, and Nick cocked his head in confusion, before realizing she was most likely referring to his Aunt Marie.

"But maybe if I'd been so involved you wouldn't be in this mess," she agreed after a moment. "You wouldn't be friends with a Blutbad and a Fuchsbau and apparently half the Wesen community, and sleeping with a Hexenbiest, that's for sure."

Nick flushed a little. "She's a former Hexenbiest," he corrected, and his mother gave him a look. "She gave up her powers. For good."

"Yeah, I heard. That must have made it a little easier," she remarked knowingly and Nick looked away from her. There was no denying that. He was so in love with her now, though, that he wondered if it would even matter if she still was one. Maybe. Maybe they wouldn't even be at this point in their relationship if that was the case, but he didn't know. She had changed a lot in the last few years. The children she had borne, the things she had been through since then, because of them. She had given those powers up permanently for him, for what they had together, not wanting to risk it. He supposed it was a moot point now.

"She's different now," Nick said.

"What the hell possessed you to go that route?" his mom asked and Nick rolled his eyes and shoved his hands in his jeans pockets.

"It's a long story." He said dismissively not really wanting to get into it right at that moment.

"You going somewhere?" she asked, and waved about the space, still absent of any defined walls, or doors, or anything really. He sighed.

"So what made you marry the Hexenbiest? The one you insisted I take out of your house immediately when I brought her to you needing your help, and now you're just shacking up with her? I mean this is the same one who tried to kill Juliette, so what on earth brought that turnaround? You lose a bet?"

"No, a verfluchte zwillingsschwester," he said with another sigh, taking a seat across from his mother. He looked down underneath him and saw he was sitting on another old trunk like his mother. It hadn't been there two seconds ago. He looked up in confusion at his mother and she shrugged.

"An entwining twin curse?" his mother said, getting back to the topic at hand.

"Yeah," Nick said. His mother's eyebrows shot up impatiently.

"Going to need a little more detail, Nicky."

"Wait a second," Nick said. "Why are you even asking? I mean, you knew I married her? How'd you even know that? You've been dead for nearly three years!"

"Yeah," his mother said, eyes wide. "Grimm marries Hexenbiest. Big news here, surprisingly very little detail as to why or how it came about."

"Where's here?"

His mom waved her hand around, indicating their present location. He frowned and gave her a look. "That narrows it down, thanks."

"I'm just a figment of your imagination, according to you, remember."

"I don't know what you are," Nick replied tiredly. Whatever she was, she looked and sounded and acted exactly like his mother. If she was a memory or a hallucination, it was a good one, down to the last detail.

"Anyway, verfluchte zwillingsschwester. That's how you wound up married?" she asked, totally confused.

"It's the condensed version."

"How does an entwining twin curse equal a trip down the aisle? That doesn't make sense."

"Well," Nick shrugged. His mother frowned and narrowed her eyes.

"How about a little more expanded version?"

"Adalind cast the curse to take away my Grimm powers."

"What?" his mother demanded angrily. "Why?"

"Because we took away her daughter and let her think the royals had her, so she made a deal with them and took away my powers, thinking they would give Diana to her."

"And you were so grateful you married her for it?" his mother looked at him like he had two heads.

"No, not exactly," Nick said. His mother raised her eyebrow, watching him.

"To take away a Grimm's powers…and that kind of spell…would have required quite act to administer it. We're not talking a bolt from a crossbow type thing. She would have had to sleep with you."

"She did." Nick said. Great, nothing like discussing your sex life with your mom. "She uh, she made herself look like Juliette and let me think I was with her. By the time I had discovered what she had done my powers were already gone."

"That bitch," his mother said. "I'd say I hoped you killed her, but…"

"No, I didn't. Anyway, Renard's mother was able to recreate the spell and figured out the way to reverse it, basically doing everything Adalind did, except with Juliette looking like Adalind."

"Juliette? She was agreeable to this?"

"Not at first, but then, yeah, and it worked. I got my powers back and Juliette…Juliette found out there was a side effect to what we had done."

His mother watched him carefully. "There usually is," she said.

"She…turned into a Hexenbiest," Nick said, glancing up at her.

"What?!" His mother turned her head, eyes wide in surprise. She looked around them, eyes unseeing. She was quiet for a long moment before refocusing on Nick. "So if Juliette is a Hexenbiest, why isn't she the Hexenbiest you're married to? What happened?"

"Because…when Adalind slept with me…" he began, patting his hands in an alternate rhythm over his knees before continuing with a deep breath, "she got pregnant." His mother's eyebrows shot up, and she looked faintly like she might have swallowed something that tasted awful.

"Congratulations! You're a grandmother," Nick said brightly.

"Excuse me? Run that by me one more time."

"Adalind got pregnant with my son."

"You have a son," his mother said in a distant voice, staring at him.

"Yes," he said, still watching her carefully. "Juliette was, uh, not happy to find out what the spell had done to her, and even less so to find out what had resulted from what Adalind and I…had…done," he stuttered, though he hadn't exactly been a knowledgeable participant in it then. "She tried to kill Adalind while she was pregnant."

"I can imagine. The woman who ruined her life, tried to ruin yours. Gotta say, I can kind of see her side in this."

"Yeah, well, Adalind needed my protection from Juliette, and she knew of a way to try to fix Juliette, a suppression spell."

"Of course she did. Least she could offer having started all of it. Of course, the blood of Grimm wouldn't work."

"No, because of what I did to Adalind when I took her powers away, and then what she did to me, and then what we all did to undo it. Juliette wasn't going to stop until Adalind was dead."

"And you were okay with a woman you previously hated, who tried to kill your girlfriend, took away your powers and inadvertently turned that girlfriend into a Hexenbiest herself being pregnant with your child?"

"Well, it's not like I had much choice in the matter," Nick said. "I mean, she showed up at the station—pregnant—I mean, like seven months pregnant. No, okay? I wasn't okay. I was…speechless," he said, remembering. "And I didn't want anything to do with her, and I didn't want to help her. As far as I was concerned then she deserved everything she got because of what she did. But, the child was innocent in all this."

"Yes, that's true. I'm sure she knew that's how you would ultimately feel in all of this, and that's how she would convince you to help her."

"Maybe. I felt it," Nick said after a long pause. "I didn't want to, but she grabbed my hand, and I felt him kick," Nick said, smiling in memory. "He was just kicking up a storm, like, maybe he knew I was near." He remembered the pressure against his hand, how his son had responded to Nick's touch on his mother's abdomen. There had been nothing like it, that feeling. The knowledge that the life growing inside was his child. He had been overwhelmed by the realization. And then numb when he further realized whose child he shared it with.

"So Juliette took the suppression spell? It worked? For how long?" his mother asked, breaking his reverie.

"No. Juliette wasn't the least bit interested in being suppressed. Adalind tested the spell, and yeah, it worked. It suppressed her powers. We offered it to Juliette, but she destroyed it, and then she, uh, tried to turn my gun on Monroe. I just missed killing him. She went on a bit of a rampage after that. She tried to kill me, and she was responsible for you being killed," Nick said, emotion lodging in his throat. He looked at his mother, and she sat back, straightening and moved her mouth.

"She lured you to the house, sent you that email, and the royals—"

"I know," she said, and of course she did. They had killed her after all. The Verrat working for them. She would have realized who they were and who they worked for, and for what they were there.

"She was working for them to get back at me for everything that had happened to her." Nick said, twisting his wedding ring.

His mother nodded. She looked at his hands.

"And that had happened?" she asked.

"No, not yet." He said quietly. "Juliette handed Diana off to the royals, then came back to try to explain, or apologize, or just to kill me, I don't know, but Trubel shot her and, well, a whole bunch of other shit I guess really isn't important in the grand scheme of things. Adalind went into labor not too long after that, and we've been living together, raising Kelly ever since." He smiled tightly, waiting for his mother's response.

She was silent for long moment, digesting the information.

"Kelly?"

"Yeah, Kelly," Nick confirmed with a smile.

"You named your son after me."

"Adalind suggested the name," Nick said, and his mother nodded, looking away but not before he saw her eyes water. "You meant a lot to her, too," Nick said, and his mother glanced back at him in surprise.

"Really? Are you sure that's just what she wanted you to think?"

"You helped her escape with Diana, and died trying to save her."

His mother nodded, and sniffed, and he wondered if he reached out to try to comfort her, touch her, would her image fade away from him? He found he didn't want it to, so he kept his hands to himself, but he shifted uncomfortably as he restrained himself from the motion.

"And Diana, the royals got her?"

"Yeah, and then the resistance got her, and then we got her," Nick said, and his mother glanced up sharply.

"We?"

"Adalind and I," Nick said. "We finally found her. We got her back. She's been living with us now for about six months."

"The royals?"

"Mm, still a threat, but we're dealing with it as best we can."

"Diana…how is she, Nick?"

"She's…extraordinary," Nick said, searching for the right word. "She is. Her powers…they're amazing."

"Nick, you remember what I said about her," his mother began worriedly.

"I remember. Raised as normally as possible, we're doing our best." His mother looked at him, and he shifted uncomfortably again, wondering what the expression on her face meant. He didn't think it was approval.

"You told her about me," Nick said, perhaps to delay the judgment he felt was brewing. His mother got her emotions more under control and smiled briefly.

"I did. She told you?"

"She knew me," Nick said. "She sought me out at the compound where I found her. I kept wondering how and why she was so comfortable with me."

"She loved the picture of you," his mother said.

"The locket?" Nick asked.

"Yes. She showed you?"

"Yeah," Nick replied.

"I used to tell her stories about you growing up, and then you…later in life, as I knew you. She loved to hear about you."

Nick smiled. "She's my girl," Nick said, and he looked down at his hands again, and the platinum band he wore.

"And your son? Adalind had her powers, didn't she, when she got pregnant. Your son, you understand what he could be."

"I understand he's my son, and nothing's going to change that, and how I feel about him. We're aware of what he might become."

"Or be already."

"Yes. You didn't love Diana any less for what she was," Nick pointed out.

"She's not my daughter, and anyway, I didn't want that for you," she said. "Your relationship with the Hexenbiest—"

"Adalind," Nick said. "My wife," and his mother looked at him.

"—Your relationship with her…Nick, I know why you did what you did, you wanted to do the right thing for your son but I can't condone you having that kind of a relationship with her."

He sat back, feeling stunned. Sucker-punched. No, he supposed he hadn't expected her to jump for joy, given her reaction to Monroe and Rosalee, but then again, she seemed to come to accept them as his friends, and he supposed if nothing else, he had expected her to accept his decision to have a relationship with the mother of his child. Her grandchild.

"Why the hell not?" he said.

"How long were her powers suppressed?" his mother asked.

"Adalind's? Permanently. I told you, she's no longer a Hexenbiest."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, I'm positive. She didn't want go back to the way she was before, how we were. She and Rosalee found a way to remove them permanently. We needed to do what was best for Kelly."

"Yeah, I guess that makes the excuse of sleeping with her easier to swallow," and he felt his face flush.

"We're married. It's perfectly natural for a husband and wife to have relations," Nick retorted stiffly. His mother gave him a look, perhaps realizing there was a rather large part of their relationship where they were unmarried and having relations.

"You're a Grimm!" his mother snapped. "She's a Hexenbiest! What you're doing is unnatural. You don't marry! It goes against everything your ancestors stood for."

"Well, you should know by now I don't follow the establishment," Nick said, and for the first time contemplated that despite being a cop, maybe he was more anti-establishment.

"Yeah," she said dryly, "I know. I guess it was only a natural leap from friends with a Fuchsbau and a Blutbad to sleeping with the enemy. I'm worried about you, Nicky."

"I'm thirty-six years old! I am more than capable of making my own decisions and I don't need your approval. Hell, you're dead," he snapped, "so whether or not you're okay with it is really sort of a non-issue. Adalind is my wife. She is the mother of my children, and the woman I am going to spend the rest of my life with."

"However long that might be."

Nick frowned, brought up short by his mother's comment.

"What does that mean?"

"Nick, have you thought about what you'll do if your son takes after his mother? How are you going to feel if your own son becomes something drastically different than you are? That you may have to hunt? Are you going to be able to protect him from other Grimms who might not be so open as you are to different kinds of Wesen?"

"He might be like you and me," Nick countered, and thought back to Eve's strange declaration a couple of years ago when she had first seen Kelly. He's like you, she had said and had looked at Nick. He still wondered what she had meant.

"Then I would ask the same question: Are you going to be able to protect him? He's in a dangerous world, Nicky, doubly so because of what either of you might have passed down to him. I'm worried. I'm worried you might be forced to make a difficult choice, and it might just ruin you."

Nick swallowed, aware his mother was echoing thoughts he had considered ever since Kelly was born. He's as much a part of you as he is me. I don't know if that's a good thing on either side. He remembered he and Adalind saying. He wondered if he would ever be faced with the decision of having to give up his son, like his own mother had done. Or would he be able to raise his son like Rolek had done with Josh, well into adulthood, and his son never knowing of the Wesen world and Nick's part in it? Both seemed like impossibilities.

"Could you give him up?" his mother asked, and Nick looked down, unable to stand the concern in her eyes. "Could you give them both up?"

"I'm not giving them up," Nick said firmly. "You told me once don't leave the people you love, and I'm not going to."

"I don't want you to have to experience what I did…to have to make that choice, and you being involved with a Hexenbiest, even a former one as you say she is…Nick, she has ties to the royals with Diana. It's a huge risk for you. For your son. It's a huge risk to be a Grimm and have a family anyway, and this is…this is incredibly stupid."

He looked away, hurt by his mother's words. A part of him knew where she was coming from. The fear and worry, a mother concerned for her child. Someone who had been in the fight, and lost, a unique perspective he couldn't afford to ignore.

"I love her," Nick whispered, and he glanced up at his mother for understanding. "I know, maybe by the established rules, or even going by our history, I shouldn't, but I do. We've been through a lot together, and yeah, some of it because she set it in motion, and some of it because I did, but we just get one another. She gets it; she gets the world I'm living in. She's not a Kerhseiter; she understands the Wesen side, what my life is like, what her life is like because of it. It works for us. She's not a Hexenbiest anymore, and I know there's the possibility that Kelly could turn out like that, but…I don't care. He's still my son. What does it matter if he's Wesen? You clearly loved Diana," he pointed out.

"Yeah," she agreed softly. "I did. She was a good little girl, but she had tremendous power and she needed someone that understood how important it was that she had the right influence. Nick, you understand that you might have to make a difficult decision there with Diana if she is not under the right influences or starts abusing her powers. How do you think that would sit with Adalind? It's not going to be any easier for your relationship with her. You'll force a mother to choose her child, and she's going to choose her child, Nick. Not you. I just don't want to see you get hurt, Nicky."

"Good thing you're dead, then," Nick replied sarcastically. She gave him a look, not caring for the flippant retort. He looked away from her, still annoyed that he didn't have her support with his marriage to Adalind, and annoyed with himself that it mattered so much. She really hadn't been a part of his life in decades, certainly not a part of any decision making over the last twenty some years. Aunt Marie would have had more influence in that regard, not that he always listened to her. His friends had supported him, whatever the progression he had chosen to make with Adalind, though he knew they had various degrees of understanding as to why he chose to pursue a romantic relationship with her, particularly after all she had done.

He twisted the ring on his finger and caught his mother staring at it and stopped. What was done, was done. He didn't regret the decision to become romantically involved with Adalind, nor did he regret marrying her. His mother was dead. He was talking to a ghost, or an illusion, or if this really was his subconscious—well, obviously he had had some things churning in the background, needing some attention.

"Nick," she said, faltering, perhaps realizing her opinion on his love life had wedged something between them. "Tell me about your son," she said, and Nick met her eyes and looked away. He chewed on his lip for a few seconds. "Tell me about Kelly. What's my grandson like?"

His mother, he wanted to say. Whom I love, and you, apparently, hate. Though that really wasn't a surprise for anyone who had known Adalind as she was as a Hexenbiest, he guessed.

He sighed and looked around the room again, noting with surprise that he thought he could make out the outline of a wall. It hadn't been there a moment ago. He moved away from his mother, hurriedly approaching what appeared to be a white (of course) wall, but it was definitely a defined barrier, not the seemingly endless space he had been in moments before. He ran his hand over it. It was solid, and he knocked against it experimentally.

He looked back at his mother, still seated on the trunk, that worried expression on her face again.

"That wasn't there just a minute ago," Nick said. She looked at what he was pointing to and shrugged. Nick turned back to the wall and ran his eyes over it again, the detective in him needing to solve the mystery. "You're not concerned about where we are?"

"Why would I be concerned? What does it matter? According to you I'm not really here, anyway, remember?"

Nick sighed.

"Kelly," she prompted.

Nick waved his hand in annoyance, glanced at the wall and took a seat again near the window.

His head shot up, and he stood suddenly as he looked at it. He peered out the panes and but nothing was visible beyond it. He looked to his left, where the wall met with the window at a right angle and realized he now had two defined parameters of their space. He looked around at what should have been the other two segments of the room, or building, or wherever they were at, or what he was imagining but the endless white still met his gaze.

He sat back down, face scrunched in confusion. What the hell was happening? He needed to find out what had happened to him. His subconscious might be trying to tell him something. He glanced at his mother, who raised her eyebrows impatiently.

Or wanting him to tell her something.

"He just turned two a few months ago," Nick said slowly, distractedly recounting factoids about his son as he pondered this new conundrum. "He's living up to the terrible twos moniker like it's a personal motto of his. I guess he's like any normal toddler. He loves his mommy and daddy and sissy, though they seem to have a sort of love/hate relationship most of the time," not unlike their parents did, he thought, "he loves going to the park and playing on the slide—he can spend hours going up and down it. He loves to come see me down at the station. He's really smart, too. Dr. Ansheimler says he's very advanced for his age. Adalind says he looks like me—everybody says he looks like me, so I guess he must—but I don't know, I think he looks more like you. He's constantly in motion, always bouncing off the walls of the house and the center of attention, unless he's asleep. Basically a hellion. Actually, he's a really good kid," Nick said.

"Sounds a lot like you," his mom said. Nick smiled briefly.

"Actually, I think he takes after Adalind quite a bit in personality."

"Hm."

"You know, you can act all disappointed, but I think you liked Adalind a little." Nick said.

"She's got some chutzpah," his mother acknowledged. "Let me be clear: I don't condone what she did to you or Juliette," she warned. "I'm not sure I condone what you're both doing now, but yeah…I saw a little bit of myself in her when I was a young mother."

Nick sighed. "Look I realize I'm probably never going to have your blessing, especially since you're dead, but let's just agree to disagree and get over the fact that I'm in a relationship with her."

"You'd be better off giving her up."

"You sound like Aunt Marie," Nick said, and his mother smiled. "She told me I needed to give up Juliette."

"And you didn't," his mother stated. Yeah, and look how that turned out, he thought. Perhaps if he had, his mother might still be alive. It was a sobering thought, that all that had happened might have been prevented had he listened to his aunt all those years ago.

But if he had, would he have had Kelly?

Doubtful, since Adalind fell into his orbit and stayed there largely because of what she did to Juliette to get at him. And she wouldn't have been so determined to hurt Juliette if he hadn't taken her powers away. And he had taken her powers away when it finally became apparent that trying to kill various people he was close to needed to be stopped, once and for all. Though it hadn't stopped her; it had only intensified it, made it personal, where before it was merely a job, a favor to Renard. There had been nothing more personal than his relationship with Juliette.

It was dumbfounding to think how much of the pain and suffering he had endured in the last seven and half years could have been avoided if he had taken his aunt's advice.

How he might not be married to the unlikeliest of wives with two beautiful children, and happy, for the first time in a long time.

"Would you change anything about your life?" he asked suddenly. "If you could go back, do it again, and change one thing, would you?"

"You mean like ignoring an email from your former girlfriend?"

"Yeah," Nick said, not amused. "You said you had a lot of regrets," he reminded her, and she looked at him for a long moment and nodded.

"You mean, would I make the choice not to give you up?"

"Not that, necessarily," Nick said, though yes that, he admitted, curious.

"No, maybe with the benefit of hindsight, I would still make that choice. It was the right one," she added when she saw his expression before he carefully schooled it into something more neutral. "You're thirty-six years old, remember, and a father to your own son. I don't know if I had made a different decision if you would have lived long enough to see that."

"Would you have listened to your Aunt Marie, if by leaving Juliette it would have meant I lived, but you never would have had your son. Can you imagine your life without him?"

He shook his head. He was dimly aware of his life before Kelly. How Kelly had anchored him, how unmoored he had been without that child, how unfulfilled his life was. He had had work, and being a Grimm, and Juliette, but not much else, and even that relationship he could not honestly classify as fulfilling.

He looked around staring at the wall behind his mother and did another double take when he realized there was, indeed, a wall behind his mother. Another white-washed wall, but a wall nonetheless.

"What is going on?" he muttered. His mother glanced behind her at what he was staring at. She looked back at him, that neutral expression tinged with faint worry. He stared at her, eyes searching.

"Do you know what's going on? Why we're here? Where we're at?"

"Not real," she replied dispassionately and he frowned in annoyance and stood from his spot by the window.

"Are you?" he asked, mostly to himself but she narrowed her eyes at him and watched him approach warily. Of course, she wasn't real, he told himself. No matter how good the likeness his memory had brought forth of his mother, it didn't change the fact she had been dead for three years, and that no amount of witchcraft or magic could reattach her head and reanimate her, and even if it could nothing good could become of it.

Still it didn't stop him from drifting closer, his hand out before him and she shook her head to discourage him.

"Nick," she said warningly. "Don't."

Don't. Didn't that seem a strange command from his mother? Wouldn't she want a moment to hold her son? Hug him. Why wouldn't he want that moment with her? Why discourage him? Would she fade away?

His hand shot out to touch her shoulder and she stood, neatly avoiding him. He furrowed his brow at her incredulously.

"You know what's going on. You do!" he exclaimed. "Would you care to share it with me?" he demanded.

"Nick," she said again, eyes pained. She moved away from him and he followed her movement with his head and reeled back when he discovered a doorway behind her, the last side of the room filled in. He moved forward towards it and she moved away from it, and him, over by where the first wall had appeared. He stood near the doorway, but nothing was visible beyond, though instead of endless white space, there was endless black and he twisted his lips in consternation. He turned to look back at his mother and jerked, startled.

There were about half a dozen people surrounding what appeared to be a hospital bed. His mother stared down at it, and he saw her swallow with difficulty, before she realized he was watching her. He stepped haltingly towards her, and she shook her head, his eyes widening again, and he moved quicker, the people, nurses and doctors he could make out now, avoided him as they worked on their patient.

"Adalind," he whispered, fear seizing him, terrified of what he might see when he got to the foot of the bed. It's a dream, it's not real. It's a dream, it's not real.

Except it wasn't Adalind, they were working to save. It was him.

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"Is—that's—what happened?" Nick stuttered. He looked up at his mother, who was standing by the head of the bed gazing down at him, the other him, the one lying there, with such an expression of grief on her face that he felt his heart seize and then he gasped when that made him aware his heart had seized. He placed a hand over his chest and noted with horror that he didn't feel it beating inside his chest. He looked back at the—at him—lying on the gurney, and then his mother, who raised her head and met his eyes.

"Am I—I'm—I'm?" he said, and Christ! Was he having an out of body experience? Was he dead?

He had been dead, sort of, before. He remembered it being nothing like this.

"I'm dead?" he managed to say quietly and she stared back wordlessly.

Or course he was. Why else would she be here, then? It all made sense.

Except it didn't.

He drifted around the bed, activity still fluttering all around him, but the medical staff worked around him as he moved into their way. His eyes ran over the body on the bed, his, he reminded himself, and he began cataloguing what he saw there with his detective's mind, as though he were studying a crime scene.

He was deathly pale, and then huffed a silent hysterical laugh at the irony.

He had what appeared to be four wounds to his torso, and he was almost sick when something flashed across his eyes—a memory—and his mind darted away from it so quickly he had no time to process it. He moved his observations north, to his face, where a breathing tube was stuffed down his throat and a bruise adorned his chin, along with a cut above his eye. If not for how bloodless he looked, and the injuries to his torso he would have thought everything was fine. A normal day at the office.

Except he was clearly at the hospital.

Dead.

They were going to tell his wife, his wife of six months, he was dead.

She would kill him for dying on her so early in the marriage.

If he wasn't already dead, he meant.

He sobered. Adalind. She would be heartbroken. His children. He felt his lifeless heart break.

His eyes darted back to his mother, her gaze on the body in the bed, looking over her son, and he couldn't imagine her thoughts.

Didn't have to, as he was consumed with his own. He would never see Kelly again. His beautiful son whom he would never hold again. He would grow up without his father. Nick had lost his father at twelve. Could hardly picture him now after nearly twenty-five years. Kelly would most likely have no memory of Nick, being so young when he lost him. Just stories that Hank and Monroe and Rosalee would tell.

And Adalind.

Diana—yet another person taken away from her, and he wondered how she would handle the loss. She technically still had her father, perhaps she would bear it better than he thought, though he didn't think so. She was very much attached to him. He, her.

He bit his lip to keep it from trembling.

Adalind.

He realized his mother was watching him, the him standing over the bed, not the one in it and he looked at her and felt his eyes burn. She was looking at him with such sympathy. He looked away, down at the bed, and then away from the sight that met him there.

"I never wanted this for you," His mother whispered and he nodded.

"I'm dead," he said.

"Almost."

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