It takes longer than expected to reach thirty, and she's grateful for the time she's been given to grow up and come to terms with her powers in the intervening years. It helps to be far away from Portland, where no one knows her parents or her step-father, the Grimm.

There are days, weeks even, when she pretends she's just a normal girl, making a living at an office downtown, going for drinks with girl friends, paying her bills and saying hello to the neighbors every week as they put out the trash. It's so...normal.

It feels like freedom.

But some days, it's boring. So when a friend of a friend suggests a blind date with another friend of a friend, she accepts. It's not like she needs to worry about being murdered by a stranger.

And she really doesn't, because Dan is lovely and handsome, and his laugh is deep and rich, and it makes her tingle and want to send little sparks out of her finger tips.

But she doesn't. She learned that lesson years ago.

But still, they go on dates, and he calls her afterward, and they talk about everything that they can talk about, and it's so nice, she almost forgets she's not normal.

But then at dinner on the fourth date, a waiter drops a tray, and she flinches while glass shatters behind her. She looks up, and Dan's eyes are pitch black and glossy. He looks like death, and she gasps for breath before it hits her, and she starts to laugh. Deep, rolling belly laughs that made her shoulders shake and send her gasping for more air.

"Diana? What the hell?"

But she can't stop laughing. It's just too perfect, too utterly perfect, and she can't stop laughing.

"It's not funny! I had no idea you were a hexenbiest. Did you know I was a Grimm? Did you plan this? Are you trying to kill me?"

Diana sobers slightly, the laugh becoming a giggle that pops out again and again. "Of course not. Do you really think it would take me three dates to kill you? I could have had you at hello."

"Christ… Is this a love spell? Did you curse me?"

"Are you in love with me?"

Dan groans and puts his face in his hands. "I can't believe I'm on a date with a hexenbiest."

"Well, it's not like I went out searching for a Grimm, either."

He stares at her for a bit, before taking a sip of wine and holding onto the glass for comfort.

"Doesn't this bother you? We're supposed to be enemies."

Diana shrugs, then takes up her own glass. "Some of my favorite people are Grimms. That side of the family's always a good time."

"Family?"

"Step-dad, aunt, grandmother. Probably my brother or sister, it's too soon to tell for sure."

"Christ."

"No, Burkhardt. They're very sweet. When you're not trying to kill anyone, anyway."

"You're Nick Burkhardt's kid?"

"Kind of? Yes. He's my dad, too."

"Too?"

"You really don't want to know. Have you met Nick, then?"

"Met? No. But everyone knows about him. He runs the northwest."

"Protects is probably a better word. He tends to leave the admin to my mom and Rosalee."

Dan blinks and puts his wine down, attempting finality in his tone. "Diana, this is nuts."

"No, I'm pretty sure it makes perfect sense," she says, feeling more sure about this than she has about anything in a long time. "I was never going to be happy with a normal guy anyway. What on earth would we talk about?"

"Literally anything else."

"And is that working for you?"

Dan looks away and then back to her. "I thought it was."

"Are you lonely?"

"Sometimes. Are you?"

Diana sits back then. It's a question she's been dodging for years. A question that lurks behind every phone conversation with her mother and every check in text from Nick. She's built a life here, but she's built it on a lie, and no one on this coast knows the first thing about who she really is. That used to feel like freedom. Now it feels lonely.

"I think I'm homesick. I came here to have a normal, boring, human life, but I miss my crazy, messy, wesen/Grimm family."

"I wish I had a family to miss," says Dan, and he looks sad and subdued. Like he's never had a ice cream cone with someone who loves him on the way home from a really bad day.

"Do you want to meet mine?"

It's a big ask for a fourth date, but she's not normal, and maybe it's okay to embrace that. There's only one way to find.

"I would like to meet your folks. A Grimm and a hexenbiest, that's gotta be a first."

"It probably is," she says, matching his smile with a small one of her own. "Maybe it won't be the last."

After dinner, he walks her to her apartment, and they share stories from their lives—the real stories this time, full of blood and struggle and good moments, too. Moments of love and loss in the least human of faces.

At her door, he leans in for a kiss. It's sweet and full of promise for tomorrow, and she thinks she could get used to this, if she's lucky enough.

"I'll see you soon then?"

"Definitely."

Upstairs, she calls her parents.

"Hey, kid. Everything okay over there?" It's Nick, just home from a late night at work and sounding rough but dear on the other side of the country.

"Everything's fine, Nick. I just missed you guys like crazy."

"Don't tell your mother," he says with a smile she can hear, "she'll want to move next door and then you'll be sick of us."

"That would be nice. I was thinking about coming to visit. I might bring a friend."

"Oh?" Nick isn't a detective for nothing.

"He's a Grimm."

There's utter silence on the other end, then a sudden burst of laughter. "Of course he is."

"I want you to meet him."

"Diana, you can bring anyone or anything you like. Just come home soon. I wasn't kidding about your mother moving over there."

When she gets off the phone, she's alone in her apartment, and she feels more alive and awake than she has in years. Maybe she's ready now. Maybe it's time to take the long way home.