2.
Holly was in the shower after pilates class and a run through the park when Nick called Monroe. Monroe ran down to his living room to grab his phone which he'd left in its charging station on his end table. He'd made Holly wait while he took the first shower so his wet hair clung annoyingly as he mashed the phone against his face in his haste.
"Hey Nick, any news?"
Monroe chided himself for sounding so eager. Still, the sooner they could put this business with Mrs. Clark to rest, the better it would be for Holly. She'd been really quiet on the way to and from class, more like her guarded old self than the playful girl who'd been beginning to come out of her shell. Monroe knew she had plenty to think about after overhearing his conversation with Nick, but despite his attempts to draw her into a discussion about it, she'd clammed up. Hopefully she was just processing and wasn't holding anything back about Mrs. Clark.
Monroe realized that Nick had started his report.
"I confirmed that the only source of information about Holly's date of adoption and the story about her birth mother were from Mrs. Clark. It seems like there were a lot of leads that were never followed up on in that case," Nick coughed weakly, and his voice sounded very tight and strained on the phone. He didn't sound too good.
"You okay, buddy?" Monroe asked, a little concerned. Nick had seemed fine when he was over earlier. He hadn't smelled any sickness on him, but Monroe had been a little preoccupied with the situation regarding Holly. He felt a little bad for neglecting to ask Nick how he was doing.
"Just a headache. It came up as I was going over the files about Holly's abduction. I'm sure it's nothing. Now, I called up St. Margaret's again right after I left you and tried to put the pressure on the sister working in the records office. She seemed to be weakening and said she'd look some things up, but when I called a few minutes ago there was a new woman in the office who said Sister Magda had come down with something suddenly and had to rest."
"Frustrating," said Monroe, "and convenient."
"Inconvenient, I think you mean," quipped Nick, and then immediately started coughing again.
"Dude, that is definitely not just a headache you've got there. Maybe you should go home and get some rest."
"Can't. If I don't find something to take to my boss soon, Holly will definitely have to go back to Mrs. Clark. She's already called me twice to ask when Holly would be back. The first time she sounded okay, but the second time it seemed like she was losing her patience. She is going to need to see Holly soon or else we'll have even more problems. Mrs. Clark really did sound concerned about Holly though. It's hard to imagine she's involved in anything sinister."
"You didn't mention anything to her about investigating Holly's adoption, did you?"
"No, it seemed better not to. If she's innocent, I don't want to trouble her, and if she's not, well, no reason to tip our hand."
"Good thinking. Did Hank have anything to tell you about why they never investigated Holly's biological parents?"
"I was just asking him about that a couple of hours ago when he started throwing up. The chief sent him home to get some rest."
"Maybe you caught what he had?"
"Maybe, but it seemed like food poisoning, and we haven't eaten together in the past day...I hope I don't have what he has. Ugh," Nick shuddered at the memory of his friend embarrassingly heaving up his stomach contents all over the precinct floor. "Anyway, I don't know of anyone else who's sick so hopefully it's nothing big and will pass quickly."
"Well, take care of yourself. If I don't hear from you, I'll get Holly to go home around 6."
"Okay, just let me know if you need me."
Nick ended the call and Monroe stared at his phone for a few moments, pondering the news or rather non-news that Nick had given him. This illness going around was sure picking an inconvenient time.
Monroe put his phone down on the end table and rubbed his head. He definitely needed to talk to Holly. Looking up, he noticed her head peeping around the corner in the front hallway where she was sitting on the first stair in the hallway. This eavesdropping habit was getting annoying, but today hardly seemed the best time to get on her case about it. Not just now, when they were finally doing something about her situation.
"Are you alright with going over around six Holly?" he asked. "I know you said you didn't want to go home, but putting in an appearance would buy us time."
"Why?" she cocked her head to the side and stared at him, like she was trying to get the most possible out of his response, looking at his expression and his posture and gestures so that she could most effectively solve this puzzle.
"Well, Nick wouldn't tell her where you are, so if she doesn't see you with her own eyes she will have a right to contact other people at the police department and ask them to look for you, and they'll probably ask Nick first off where you might be."
"Nick would tell?" Holly looked disturbed by this. She had mostly accepted Nick as trustworthy, but there were occasions from time to time where she was forced to question his loyalty. For Holly, who had a very clear pack/not pack way of understanding social relationships, the potential loss of one of the two people she considered pack was very upsetting.
Monroe wanted to reassure her, but he also didn't want to tell her anything untrue.
"He would have to decide whether it would help or hurt more to tell them. If he didn't tell where you are, they might send people all over the city to look for you, and if they found you here I could get in trouble. So he might decide to tell because that would show the police that we have nothing to hide."
Holly looked thoughtful. "Trouble because of. . .minor status?"
They had researched her situation together when Monroe had wondered about getting her emancipated, so she had learned many of the terms pertaining to that situation.
"Yes, Mrs. Clark is your legal guardian, so the police are obligated to bring you back to her if they find you."
"Could hide," said Holly, and Monroe knew this was true. If Holly decided to run or hide, there was little any of them could do to stop her or find her until she was ready to be found.
"You could," he conceded. "But then Nick and I would be suspects in your disappearance and the police would get serious about investigating us."
"Could come with me," Holly said somewhat stubbornly.
"Hols, you know that wouldn't be a long-term solution to our problem." He looked at her carefully. She'd moved to crouch in the doorway to the living room, her arms hugging her knees as she looked across at him.
"Anyway, the real reason why we should go over there is so that we don't tip Mrs. Clark off that we are on to her. You said she makes you scared, but that you don't think she knows that. If you run, she'll know you're afraid, and if she's as bad as you say she is, that could be a problem for us."
Holly just stared down at the floor. Then, quick as blinking, she was sitting at his feet pressed up against his knees, giving a little whine of discontent.
"True," she admitted, and the worry and dejection in her voice made Monroe reach down to run his fingers through her wet hair without thinking about it. Holly seemed so forlorn at the idea of returning home that Monroe half wanted to tell her to forget about it-that they'd find another way. Still, nothing had happened so far in the months she had been living with Mrs. Clark, so it seemed unlikely that there would be any sort of change today. Mrs. Clark had found Holly missing before, but they had always smoothed that over with an excuse that she was taking a walk. Mrs. Clark hadn't called the police until today, so something was a bit different. Most likely it was because Holly had neglected to toss her covers around to keep up the facade that she was sleeping there.
"Are you really worried Holly?" Monroe was concerned because Holly was concerned. She just pressed her face further into his leg.
"I'll come with you. Or, well, follow you. I can't go in with you, it would raise too many questions, but I'll be right outside. You can go in, have dinner with Mrs. Clark, and then as soon as she goes to her room you can come outside and I'll drive you home. Okay?"
Holly didn't really respond. Monroe just sat there with her for a while, spacing out a little with his hand still buried in soft brown hair. Was it really alright for him to be getting so close to Holly? A big part of his life post-intervention was to carefully avoid situations that would force an instinctual response. If they did find Holly's birth family, they would undoubtedly want her back, and it was going to be incredibly hard to let her go. Of course, it was to be expected that at some point Holly would have to go out to learn more about blutbaden society and probably a lot of other stuff about being a female that he had never had to think about before. Still, a growing part of him was stubbornly resistant to the idea of letting her go. This part was fed by her easy acceptance of his touch, and the unquestioning way she looked to him to help her navigate the human and wesen world. Monroe was getting a little depressed at the turn of his thoughts when Holly's stomach rumbled. She squirmed and looked up at him sheepishly.
"I guess that's my cue, huh?" Monroe rose and went to the kitchen to prepare lunch. Holly stretched her arms out in front of her on the floor and gave a little whine as she straightened. Then she sprang up and trotted after him to help.
Lunch was made and eaten in almost complete silence. This was nothing new for Holly, but Monroe usually kept up the conversation reasonably well on his own. Today he was feeling Holly's unease rolling off of her in waves and wasn't quite sure what to do about it. When there was still no sound from her while doing the washing up, Monroe decided she'd had enough time to stew.
"Holly, what's up? You're being ridiculously quiet, even for you."
Holly was listlessly pushing an apple around on the counter top.
"Are you worried about tonight? About going back to Mrs. Clark's?"
Holly's only answer was a shift of her eyes, but it was as good as an affirmative to one who could smell the agitation coming off of her in waves.
"I'll be right outside the whole time, Hols. Here, look," Monroe got up and went to the junk drawer and after rummaging around for a moment or two pulled out a silver whistle. He blew it and Holly winced and gave him a dirty look at the high-pitched sound in such close quarters.
"I know," he said, handing it to her. "but I'll be able to hear it from outside, and humans won't because they can't hear anything at this frequency. Let's make a code. You keep the whistle and every ten or fifteen minutes blow one long tone to let me know you're there. Two long ones and I'll be ready to go. If something really goes wrong, give three short blasts and I'll come in and get you."
Holly accepted the little object and looked at it carefully.
"If no whistle?"
"I'll wait five minutes to give you another chance, then come in and find you if I don't hear anything. I'll be sneaky, in case there's a mistake."
Holly looked between the whistle and the watch on her wrist as if wondering if she could trust herself to these trinkets. The watch was a thin Tissot with a pale pink face and a band of fine metal links, which Monroe had given her for Christmas. She had grumbled about the importance that the human world placed on time and all its trappings, but Monroe had never seen her without the watch since he'd given it to her. He'd had to convince her to take it off during showers and at night though she still kept it close.
"Okay," she said. Though she didn't follow this with anything further, Monroe was heartened to see that she seemed to be feeling better about her return to Mrs. Clark with this plan in place. Holly crunched into her apple with something like her usual gusto for all things food-related.
-o-o-o-
6:02 saw Monroe parked across the street and one house over from the Clarks, watching the door close on Holly and her adoptive mother. Seeing the relieved slump of Mrs. Clark's shoulders as she'd seen Holly come walking up shook Monroe's conviction that there was something wrong. The two had entered the house, and other than Holly's periodic whistle blasts, Monroe had not heard or seen a thing since.
It was time to take his evening pills, but Monroe couldn't do anything about that at the moment. In fact, he was thankful for the extra edge to his senses given by the vague fading of the numbing haze he usually spent his days in. Whether or not something was up with Mrs. Clark, tonight he had a feeling that he needed to stay alert more than he needed to block out the stimuli of the human world.
Their plan had been working well so far, and Holly had been blowing the whistle regularly every fifteen minutes for a little over two hours when Monroe got a call from Nick.
"Hey Nick, what's up?"
"Just checking in to make sure Holly got back home with no trouble."
"Yeah, so far so good," he returned. "Holly was so worried about it that I decided to hang around outside until Mrs. Clark goes to bed and she can come back out."
"You decided, eh?" Nick's voice was teasing and Monroe again regretted ever implying that Holly had a crush on him.
"Uh, yeah." That was enough of that direction of conversation. "How are you feeling, man?"
"Much better. Once I got home I felt well enough to have dinner with Juliette, and I've been fine ever since. Must have been something about the station."
"Huh," said Monroe. That sounded a little off. "Were other people sick there besides you and Hank?"
"Well, not really, but after I asked Wu to bring up a box of evidence from Holly's case he said he started to feel queasy."
This was ringing some sort of bell in Monroe's head, but he couldn't quite remember where he'd heard of something like this before. It involved a bunch of people getting violently ill, with no apparent connection, but it had been some sort of-
"Hexerei," Monroe muttered, like a curse, which actually it usually was.
"What's that?" Nick asked.
"Witchcraft. A spell to discourage interlopers. But it shouldn't work on you. Grimms are supposed to be immune to witchcraft. Though they're supposed to be a lot of things that you aren't. . ."
"Hey thanks," replied Nick sarcastically.
"Maybe you'll grow into your powers or something. But tell me, do you know if any of the original officers assigned to Holly's disappearance got sick then?"
"Um, I don't know. I wouldn't have thought to ask."
"No, I mean, why would you? But if there really was a curse placed on the case or something in that evidence box, that might mean-"
Just then Monroe's ears were assaulted by three short whistle blasts, then again and again, and then horrifyingly they stopped sharply, as if the whistle had been pulled from her lips.
"Holly's in trouble. I'm going in, get here as quick as you can," Monroe had already left the car and vaulted over the fence and was halfway up the side yard when he hung up on Nick and stuffed his phone in his pocket.
-o-o-o-
Inside the Clark's house, Holly paced around in her bedroom, waiting for Mrs. Clark to go to her room for the night. She didn't usually go to bed until nine-thirty or so, but Holly didn't have anything better to do with herself at the moment. She was too tightly wound to read, and didn't want the sound of the TV to distract her from listening to the movements of the woman downstairs. Mrs. Clark had been in the kitchen since they'd finished dinner, baking something that smelled good but strong.
"Holly sweetie, could you please come down here for a minute?" Mrs. Clark called from the dining room. "I made some pie and I'd like to have a little chat."
Holly didn't respond verbally, but she blew her little whistle before descending the stairs. Mrs. Clark seemed to be out of the room, so Holly took a seat in a high-backed dining chair behind a piece of apple pie that had been placed on the table. It steamed tantalizingly, but Holly had no desire to touch it. She sniffed through the fog of cinnamon and nutmeg, trying to discern where Mrs. Clark was lurking. Oddly, she couldn't sense her at all. Not one to doubt her instincts, Holly took the whistle from her pocket and was about to raise it to her lips to blow the warning signal, when a whoosh of cold air came over her along with a horrible burning as thick silver chains descended over her arms, pinning them to her sides. The whistle fell to the floor beside her chair.
Mrs. Clark stepped into Holly's field of vision, and beyond the tears stinging in her eyes, Holly could see something was very wrong. Where she expected to see her carefully preserved but definitely middle-aged adoptive mother, Holly saw a beautiful young woman with an olive complexion and lustrous black hair that trailed all the way to the floor. She wore a black lace dress that fell to mid-calf. In spite of the horror she felt, Holly also could not help thinking that she had never seen a more glamorous person.
"I wouldn't struggle so much," said the woman who used to be Mrs. Clark. "Silver burns your kind."
Her voice was almost the same, just a little younger and more musical-sounding.
"Silver not really supposed to hurt!" Holly protested even as she felt the chains biting into her wrists. Monroe loved to go on about what parts of blutbad lore were and were not accurate. Though she wasn't familiar with most of the theories he discussed, Holly was always eager to learn more about blutbaden.
The woman raised her perfect brows amusedly. "Not unless it's used in conjunction with the proper spell by a witch powerful enough to back it up. Then, my dear, it's quite effective."
She casually brushed the dining table with her hand and it flew aside. The witch, for that was clearly what she was, stepped in front of Holly's chair. "I thought it would be fitting for you to catch a glimpse of what you've done for me before we part ways."
One graceful hand drew a gleaming wavy keris dagger from behind her back. "Permanently this time."
"Not alone!" cried Holly, hoping to buy some time. If she could keep the woman talking long enough, Monroe would come to see what the matter was. Sadly for Holly, while she knew that humans (and pretty much everyone she'd ever met besides herself) loved nattering on, she had no idea what to say to encourage it.
"Ah yes, your 'specialist'. It took me a little while to find it all out. That police detective is particularly difficult to influence, but his partner is particularly easy, so I got it eventually."
She twirled the knife carelessly in her dainty fingers and recited, "341 Parkside Ave, owned for the past six years by a watchmaker named Edward Monroe. He is known as a loner, a sort of outcast from the Bardengau-Lüneburg clan, though it seems you've been spending a lot of time with this Mr. Monroe, Holly. Too bad you couldn't have just stayed in the woods, little girl. I can't afford to have any more wolves sniffing around here. So I'm afraid you'll have to die."
She seemed to consider for a moment. "Though, perhaps you could still be of some use to me. For one thing, you could tell me how old this blutbad calling himself Edward Monroe is, though being ignorant as you are you probably have no idea."
The witch sighed gustily. "I suppose I'll just have to wait for him to come looking for you. And just in case he's what I'm looking for, it would probably be best to keep you alive until then."
The radiantly beautiful features twisted in malice. "However, I think it would make much more of an impression on him to find a few new features on your pretty little face."
She raised the tip of the wicked-looking dagger toward Holly's cheek. Holly frantically reached for the whistle that lay on the floor though the silver chains burned her mercilessly. This had happened so fast. She realized she had just blown the whistle before Mrs. Clark had called her down from her room. Monroe might not expect it again for another ten or twelve minutes.
Knowing she might not have another chance, Holly transformed as fully as she could while bound and lunged for the whistle on the floor, toppling the chair. The pain was almost unbearable, but she closed her fingers around the whistle and brought it to her lips, blowing three blasts over and over until Mrs. Clark slapped it out of her hand.
"So he's within earshot," she mumbled. She patted back her long hair and turned toward the door, leaving Holly in a crumpled heap of broken chair and silver chains. The witch gripped her knife expectantly.
-o-o-o-
Monroe gathered himself for a soundless leap up to the sill of an unlit window on the second floor. This should be the guest room if he was thinking correctly. About halfway to the house he'd been close enough to tell that both Clarks were downstairs. A quick look through the open kitchen window convinced him that Mrs. Clark knew he was coming and seemed to be waiting for him, though where she got all that hair he did not know. It would be best to get in there as fast as possible, but the goal was to retrieve Holly, not to tangle with whatever Mrs. Clark had turned out to be. Monroe had seen that Holly was on the floor, bound somehow, and that she was between Mrs. Clark and the staircase. Hopefully he could grab her and leave the way he came in without nothing too serious going down.
He was able to force the window open and creep inside with no problem. He made his way to the top of the stairs, trying to see how Holly was restrained. She lay crumpled under a broken dining chair, but her arms were weighted down by glinting chains.
"Silver?" he thought, "That stuff really works?" He knew though that dealing with a hexe strong and clever enough to kidnap a blutbad child and get away with it meant he should take nothing for granted. Anything could be cursed or bespelled and he might never know. "Probably not a hand towel though," he thought. Soundlessly he reached through the open bathroom door and grabbed a towel.
He probably wouldn't be able to pull the chains off of Holly and get her back up the stairs before Mrs. Clark retaliated in some way. Still, he had to do what he could. Maybe the kitchen window would be a better option. He drew a calming breath. The time for planning was over. He'd just have to wing it.
Monroe transformed enough to maximize his speed, wrapped the towel around his hand, and lunged down the stairs in a single bound. He made it around the corner into the dining room and pulled the chains off of Holly before the witch turned around. The welts looked horrible from where she'd been burned, but they would heal fast enough once they got out of here.
He stepped between Holly and her adoptive mother and for the first time got a good look at her. The impractically long hair was not the only difference, but it was the most striking. She was still the same basic woman that he had known as Mrs. Clark, just young and stunningly beautiful. Her scent was still offputtingly antiseptic. Her laughter was the tinkling of wind chimes as she beheld him.
Behind him Holly had scrambled out from under the dining chair and was backing toward the stair. Monroe spared a glance to make sure she could walk, but cursed as he realized he could no longer sense the witch's presence.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you Holly dear," came her voice from right at his side. A look confirmed that she was there, pressing the tip of her keris to his throat. It tingled unpleasantly, and Monroe strongly suspected that it was not a mere piece of steel.
"What do you want?" he asked.
"I approve of your curiosity in this matter, blutbad. I can see why people say you're a thinker. I want what I've always wanted, to be young and beautiful forever. You people caused me no end of trouble turning up here again with Holly after all these years. I had to bespell the whole neighborhood to forget my real appearance and remember only the guise of Michelle Clark. Changing back and forth on the way to and from the office has also gotten exhausting.
So right now, what I want most is for all of you to disappear and never come back. Lucky for me, that's what's going to happen."
"Yet you still haven't killed us," Monroe ventured.
"Hmm, well, that is one thing that once done can't be undone and there might be a small matter that you could help me with before you go."
With that vague assurance, Monroe eased himself away from the knife slightly.
"What would that be?" he asked. "I think you'll find I can be very cooperative."
She smiled silkily, "I'm sure."
Without warning, she slashed the blade across his collarbone, causing a wave of red to escape from his right shoulder to over his heart. Though the cut was shallow he gasped at the stinging pain.
She lifted the blade to her lips and licked.
"Mmm." She closed her eyes and opened them again. "Inconclusive."
A fierce growl behind him instructed Monroe to flatten himself to the ground as the chair Holly had been trapped beneath hurtled into the witch at blinding speed.
"The door, Holly!" he cried.
Holly threw the front door open and they both rushed outside into the suburban night.
Nick had been furiously redialing Monroe's number for the ten minutes it had taken him to get to the Clark's neighborhood. He slowed down as he reached their development, not wanting to draw any suspicion unnecessarily. His activity here was, after all unrelated to any current cases. Nick cursed as he registered two figures passing the car at a blur, running in the opposite direction. He pulled the car around just as his ringer went off. He didn't bother to answer, but just took a u-turn and caught them up.
"Get in!" shouted Nick while opening the passenger door. He didn't see any signs of pursuit, but the faces of his friends and the nasty state of Monroe's shirt told him this was no time to take chances.
"Don't worry," said Monroe somewhat deliriously, "It's my blood."
-o-o-o-
Monroe gasped in pain and both of his companions hovered helplessly over him. They'd pulled into a random motel off the highway on Monroe's instructions. They couldn't return to his house or Nick's now that the witch knew about them. They'd gotten a funny little two room suite and Monroe had been half-dragged to the small room in the back before collapsing onto one of the beds crammed in the space.
"Why not closing?" Holly whined as she pulled back his shirt collar to get a better look at the cut. It was shallow enough, though he was still losing a little blood. But the disturbing thing about the wound was the angry purple-black color that the skin around it was turning.
"The knife was dipped in co-err-poison," Monroe managed.
"What can we do?" Nick asked urgently.
"Call Rosalee-go to the shop. Extract of vervain. She'll know how much. Ask for some Angelica in case the dagger had a spell on it. Don't tell her that though. No explanations at all. Vervain and Angelica. Don't let her get any more involved than that. Hexerei works in weird ways, sometimes just tied to a name. Don't say my name or hers," Monroe nodded to Holly.
Nick dashed off on his errand, and Monroe finally relaxed.
"Cocaine on the knife?" asked Holly. She hadn't missed his slip-up, but he consoled himself that she'd been primed to hear it from the frequent lectures he gave her on the danger it posed. When dealing with an increasingly common substance that you could unknowingly ingest it was wise to take all available precautions.
"Yeah. Good thing too, if she'd just had us inhale it someone would be dead right now. Holly, I'm gonna pass out, but don't worry. Nick will be back soon. Just wait for him. You're safe," and with that, his eyelids fell shut and he knew no more until Nick came in and forced a drink down his throat.
The detective and the young blutbad hovered in the larger room of the two room suite after dosing Monroe with vervain and applying some directly to his wound.
"Don't worry Holly, Monroe isn't hurt badly," Nick said. "Once the poison is counteracted he said he'll be fine."
"Shouldn't be hurt at all."
"Mrs. Clark was apparently pretty good with that knife, Holly."
"May be witch, but still human. Why didn't he kill her?"
Nick shrugged. "He's just not like that. He isn't a fighter. This one time some lowen caught him for their blood sports, and he was on the ground when I offered to go in his place. Some people are just not cut out for physical confrontations."
Holly shook her head. She felt herself getting angry. She tried to deepen her breaths and blink away the red bleeding into her eyes as Monroe had taught her to do. Still she spoke up,
"That's not right. You shouldn't say. He does so much for you."
"I'm not trying to insult Monroe, Holly. I know he does a lot for me. In fact, I'm happy to be able to do something in return. Don't worry so much about it. Let's just focus on staying safe and letting Monroe recover."
"You really think so little of him?" she asked.
Without waiting for an answer Holly went back inside the small room where Monroe was resting, propped up on a stack of pillows and blankets from the other bed. She listened carefully and realized he was no longer asleep.
"Hey Holly," Monroe said softly, trying not to disturb his healing collar bone. "You okay?"
Holly huffed. "Not the one stabbed by poisoned blade."
"Just sliced thankfully. But you still seem upset. You wanna talk about it?"
Though it was unlikely that she'd take him up on it, Monroe had to ask. Holly looked so worried hovering over him like she was afraid he'd fade away if she touched him. He reached out his left hand to her and gently tugged until she sat on the bed next to him. Monroe didn't let go of her hand, even though he knew Nick would get the wrong idea if he saw it. Holly needed the comfort of touch, even if that was all he could do for her at the moment.
Suddenly, she started talking, and Monroe could instantly tell this was something she felt was important.
"You live in the city, but have a family in the north. Why leave their woods?"
To Holly, all good, happy, and peaceful things were in "the woods" and all scary and upsetting things were in "the city." Monroe decided he would really have to take her to some small towns some day to try to force a little perspective. For now, he wasn't quite sure how to answer her. She had asked him about his family before, but only in terms of how many of them were there, how big was their territory, and how did they hunt together. She had never asked why he was here and they were elsewhere, and Monroe wondered how long she'd been keeping this in.
"Well, we've talked a little bit about how I'm not exactly normal for a blutbad, right? Like how being friends with Nick is very strange, since he is a Grimm and hunts wessen who break human laws. Most blutbaden, and everybody else who's not human too for that matter, don't want to be hunted down for living the way they want to, according to their instincts, or traditions, or whatever. The problem is that we have a lot of advantages over humans, and it is much easier for us to hurt them than for them to hurt us, at least in a one-on-one immediate way-I don't want to get into the environmental ramifications of the human consumer culture which is totally spiraling out of control. . ."
Holly was looking a little lost, as the cute little furrow in her forehead had deepened.
"Er, anyway. When I was younger I thought that because I was born stronger and faster than humans, and bauerschwein, and a bunch of other types, I had a right to hurt them. Like they weren't real people if I could easily rip them to shreds. So I did a lot of things that I feel terrible about now. My family didn't exactly like that I did all those things, but they didn't think I was necessarily wrong to do them. They. . .enabled a lot of my bad behavior, whether by doing bad things with me like some of my brothers, or just saying 'boys will be boys' like my mom and aunts. My dad was the one who finally told me I needed to get control of myself. He sent me to live in the city for a month with my great-aunt and made me vow not to get in any fights or do anything else I could get in trouble for the whole time I was there. I started watching humans, and realized that they could be bad or good just like us. It really opened my eyes, and before long I found out about a lot of others who were trying to live in human society without hurting anybody. I figured, if they could do it, I could too. Somebody recommended this program for wessen who wanted to change their relationship with humans, and I signed up. I met some people who were making huge sacrifices just to avoid hurting others. At the end of the program, they asked us to make a vow. It wasn't mandatory, but it kinda took me by surprise, and I did it. I promised never to take another life using my abilities as a blutbad and to evaluate all my decisions with a mind to how they affect both the individuals involved and the greater good."
Holly continued to look at him intensely. "But when Nick said to never harm, you said, 'defend yourself first'." Her expression grew troubled as she plaintively asked, "why for me, but not for you?"
"Hols, it's complicated. You are still so new to everything, and haven't had to get out there and make your own mistakes in the human world yet. Some of the things I've done. . .are truly unforgivable. I can't change the past, but I don't want to be the kind of person who does those things anymore. I don't even want to let them happen. That's why it was so interesting meeting Nick. A Grimm is supposed to patrol the borders of our worlds, and keep the nightmare creatures at bay. I thought if I could I would rather help him than return to being one of the threats he guards against."
Holly nodded, although she looked troubled and he could tell she didn't fully understand what he was talking about.
Monroe shifted on the bed and winced a little.
"For now though, could you get me a little more vervain? After that I think we all need to get some sleep."
Holly moved to do as he requested and then came back and carefully curled up next to him on the bed, her head near his side.
"Night Hols," he said, and Holly gave her sleepy goodnight growl in return.
A/N –
Well at long last, here it is! I had the idea for the story but very little motivation to actually write it, so the fact that this is out there is due to those wonderful people who reviewed. Thank you so very much.
I'm not entirely happy with the pacing in this chapter, since there's a lot of sitting around reflecting or discussing and then bang! Some action. What did you think? Was there anything that didn't make sense? Let me know what you think!