Hi folks – Happy New Year! Hope everyone had a nice one.
This chapter is a fair bit longer than usual, but I had a lot to get through. I hope it's ok – it's broken down into three scenes. Usual service resumed soon – I don't plan to write a tome with each update, lol.
Thanks so much to all who have followed, favourited and thanks a million if you've left a review. It means a huge amount (and I really do pay attention to the suggestions in them!) Anyway – I hope you enjoy this chapter.
X x X
Sean got to his feet and walked towards the two men in the kitchen, trying to recover a little of his savoir faire in the face of the stark hostility on the giants' faces. The post-woge lightning bolt cracking through the top of his head made him regret his better-out-than-in policy, but not as much as the glare he was getting from Miller. He suddenly realised how rash he'd been: he'd lived too long with the privileges of a Prince and had ridiculously almost forgotten that there was no one behind him keeping watch. Miller slapped the tray of bottle parts back down on the kitchen counter and looked him up and down as if deciding which bit of him to hit first. Sean took a couple of subconscious steps backwards only to bump into Jan, who was suddenly and inexplicably behind him. How the fuck…? He was on the floor just in front … fifteen seconds ago!
"Right…I presume," Miller began steadily, "that you're here to talk, not to fight. Or you'd have brought more people with you."
"Here to talk," Sean agreed. "I want to build an alliance."
"Really? Well you're off to a bit of a shaky start then, aren't you? Look, I don't really know the significance of you being the 'Prince in Portland' or whatever, but from Jan's expression ― don't turn round when I'm talking to you! ― it looks like you've got reputational problems."
"It is a bad reputation – earned." Sean took a deep breath and steered a more constructive path towards the truth, trying not to feel like the sophomore in front of the principal. It was the first time he could actually 'see' Miller as a teacher and had to admit he'd probably been a very good one. "I've done a lot of wrong things for the right reasons―"
Miller was calm, but incredibly stern. "There's never a right reason to induce a stress-woge."
"I wasn't trying to induce a stress-woge!" Sean flushed at being caught doing exactly that and tried to recover just a few ounces of his Royal sangfroid. It had gone AWOL. "There's a lot to explain. I just thought it would be efficient to demonstrate my wesen heritage rather than waste time talking about it. We both have backgrounds to conceal from the Ver―"
"So you were appealing to me as one gemischtwesen to another, were you?"
"That was the plan."
"Well then, you should know that woges hurt like fuck, especially the involuntary ones. They shove your pulse up through the roof and make you feel like someone's just put a crossbow bolt through your head. It gets us half-humans the worst – we're not designed to woge. We've all got a critical physical flaw. What's yours?"
Having started the openness policy with such a bang, it seemed pointless being coy now, particularly as he was having to lean on the post between kitchen and front door to keep his balance as his brain continued to clench and unclench. There was no doubting Miller's point: his last woge had almost made him drive his car off the road in shock, nearly taking a pedestrian out. It had taken many hours to get back to any kind of physical or neural normality.
"Well?"
"Endochrinal," Sean admitted eventually. "I can't control adrenaline flow."
Miller laughed mirthlessly. "That's a bit of an unfortunate hiccup in your line of work, isn't it? How'd you keep from shifting in front of Nick?"
Sean stared him down, pride in his woge-control ushering a little hauteur back in. He'd withheld his woge for a whole year and might have restrained it for a second had Nick not started his Grimm evolution so ridiculously early. "I handled it. And your flaw is…?"
"Cardiac. I got medically retired from the army when I was thirty-two." Miller shrugged ruefully. "Yeah. A bit young, right? I was ten feet away from an IED in Helmand when it blew up. Quite a few of us took shrapnel, some worse than others…"
While Miller explained, Sean saw Jan step out from behind him and approach his friend slowly, but glance towards the kitchen, his face hugely troubled. Sean followed his gaze and saw a bizarre 'no stalking' sign on the fridge, featuring an upright lion. It seemed that he'd not been the only one scaring the living daylights out of the Siegbarste. He was pretty sure he heard Jan mutter 'shit' under his breath.
"…so two guys nearly died right next to me. It was my responsibility to get them out of there. I could see them bleeding, screaming and reaching and there was bugger all I could do to help them because I was too busy having a heart attack. I DON'T like being startled, alright? So next time you want to appeal to our brotherhood status of undesirable half-and-halfs, have the decency to start the conversation like an adult and USE SOME FUCKING COMMON SENSE!"
The brief, stunned silence following Miller's bellow was broken by the sound of indignant wailing from upstairs. Miller flung his hands up in frustration. "Great! Now you've woken the baby!"
Sean had enough self-preservation not to contradict this blatant untruth and kept his mouth shut as Miller stomped towards the stairs, caught by Jan, who'd moved to take his arm. They muttered among themselves briefly at the first landing, Jan being a better mutterer than Miller, whose undertone reached quite clearly down the stairs, delivering a few choice unpleasantries: 'alarmist git' and 'smug tosser' being among them. Miller bristled away upstairs: Jan trotted down, and Sean got himself ready with his plan A starting point now that he had a calmer audience to work with.
"Look Vergeer, I―"
White hot stars splashed across his face, crashing left to right from his cheekbone, and there seemed to be no sequential gap whatsoever between Jan hitting him and him eating carpet while struggling against a calm but completely impregnable grip on his wrists. He hadn't even seen Jan move. It hadn't been a particularly hard punch – more a casual flick of knuckles powered out from the elbow - but he was still having difficulty in focussing. He blinked water out of his eyes. This was all the wrong way round. It should be hitting from the Siegbarste….
"That's for the unpleasant surprise," Jan explained.
"I'm sure you're channelling a little guilt here, Lieutenant."
"Undoubtedly," Jan conceded, completing his grasp. "But while you're down there, I have questions."
Shock over, Sean's Hexenbiest reared up. "Get off."
"No, there's a couple of pressing matters to address first. Were you responsible for the poisoning of Juliette Silverton?"
"No I wasn't." He felt his adrenaline rising and his skin heating as he tried to pull free of Jan's grip.
"That's at least partial bullshit."
"Only partial." Sean took a deep breath and tried to suppress the incoming woge. "I… mismanaged an earlier situation which led Adalind Schade to use Juliette as a tool. To punish Nick. I tried to put things right by waking her up. It's all very… involved. This is the one thing I need to explain to Nick - personally."
There was a mild pause. Sean knew that Jan could sense the truth off people – how, he didn't know. Perhaps it was a Patriarch…thing. He couldn't physically lie to Jan, whatever.
"How long have you known about him being a Grimm?"
"Since his aunt passed away." Jan's grip abruptly tightened until he thought his wrists might actually snap and the adrenaline rocketed off around his body, producing the defensive toxin his skin always generated under rage and stress. He could not be making any more premature announcements. Not ones without context – not ones forced out of him like this. "Vergeer, I'm warning you―"
"Marie Kessler did not 'pass away'. She was murdered. Was that you?"
"Not… directly."
"Was… that…you?"
"Yes!" The toxin raged to the surface of his skin and he heard Jan hiss but did not feel his grip relax one tiny bit. "I spoke to her ― twice ― about her manner of dealing with the Verrat. She was killing indiscriminately and stirring them up every time I got them battered down. She was rogue, I was still in the Royal camp, I had to deal with her to keep my cover."
"You were in the Royal camp? So you're now disclaiming? Abdicating?"
How could he still be holding on? "Yes!"
"What's changed?"
"Theo."
Jan's voice dropped close to his ear, even but threatening. "What the fuck has my son to do with all this?"
"I'm his cha—"Sean cut himself off, disguising the syllable with a fairly genuine grunt of pain. He'd promised Remus no talk of Patriarchs or champions, and as badly as all this was going, he couldn't break that promise or he'd be in no-man's land: no Remus, no Royals, no allies – just more enemies, Jan among them. He came as close to the truth as he could. "Theo changed me. He took me into his pride, not knowing what I am. I'm now trying to earn my place in it."
Jan's grip eased, then released. Sean felt him step off and rolled woozily onto his back, circling his shoulders and rubbing his wrists. Jan reached a hand down to him, which he took – resentfully.
"If anything ever happens to my son because of your… mismanagements, the gloves are off. Do you understand? I will take you to pieces and bury the parts myself." Jan hadn't even raised his voice, but there was no doubting his sincerity.
Sean brushed himself down and met his flat stare. "I made those mistakes because I was doing things on my own. Things are getting… too big for me to operate alone now. I can't keep making those mistakes."
"That must hurt to admit."
"You'll never know."
"Yes I will, because you're going to explain." Jan jerked his head at the kitchen table. "Sit."
Sean folded his arms. "You don't talk to me like that."
"My den, my rules. Sit."
Jan flexed his fingers, still managing not to wince openly at from the toxic burns on his palms. He'd repair quickly enough, King Prides always did, but Sean was still too angry to tell him what the short-cut palliative for the pain was. Still, it was time to get things back on a more civilised footing. He sat, at least.
"Got that out of your system?"
Jan still looked stony, wringing his hands to air them. "I believe so."
"That's at least partial bullshit."
"Touché. Curious method of self-defence, Sir."
Sean snorted. "You slam me face-down on the carpet and still call me 'Sir'?"
"Force of habit. Did you drive here?"
"Yes."
"Fine, I'll make coffee. Then we can at least attempt to have the 'adult' conversation that Denny was talking about."
"I hope your adult conversation's going better than mine," Denny muttered, emerging from beneath a blanket as he joined them in the kitchen, bobbing the baby up and down on his shoulder. "She's not taking 'sorry' for an answer right now. Oh – you making coffee?"
"Yep. One for you too, of course."
Sean noticed Denny's sideways glance at Jan's conspicuous finger-tip grip on kettle and cup as he bustled around. A good champion – nothing passed him by where his Patriarch was concerned.
"What's up with your hands? You're holding those mugs like they're about to blow up."
"Nothing."
"Bollocks."
"Ok, we had a bit of a fracas."
Denny looked round as if seeking out fight damage. "Really? Must've been a bloody quiet one."
"I didn't think a noisy one would help you to settle Carianne."
"Oh… JAN! You're all pragmatism and no… punching!"
"I do enough punching at work, thank you!"
"Wouldn't kill you to lose your cool just once like the rest of us, would it?"
Sean almost smirked at the expression of total exasperation on Denny's face, but kept his crack round the face to himself, sitting as meekly as his pride would allow while coffee was made and Denny settled at the kitchen table with the baby, trying to settle her down from underneath the blanket. The problem was - he wasn't physically designed for meekness. His emotions were as divided as his heritage: his Hexenbiest raged against his Lieutenant getting the better of him physically; his human knew that he needed to play the long game and develop a sense of humility if he was going to break into the Vergeer-Miller-Burkhardt circle.
Jan eventually slid two big black cups onto the table. Sean took one with a grunt of thanks – the other was immediately snatched up by Denny. Jan brought a huge bowl of milk over, placing it directly in front of him.
Big, irritated King cat. Huge bowl of milk. Sean just couldn't help himself. "Feeling thirsty?"
Jan leant forward dangerously. "Would you like another smack in the face?"
"What?" Denny looked infuriated. "There was punching?"
"A punch." Sean offered. "Barely felt it."
"You choose the ten seconds I'm upstairs to lose your rag? For fuck's sake!"
"I didn't notice him losing his 'rag'… as such," Sean observed.
"Denny, stop being such a bloody Viking! It was one punch! You missed nothing!"
"Still!"
Jan rolled his eyes and stuck his hands in the milk, cooling them and cleaning off the toxin. Then he lapsed straight back into interrogation mode. "There are trust issues to overcome, here. I think you'd better start by explaining why you had Kessler killed."
X x X
Hank pulled the door wide open for them and Nick shot him a grin of thanks as he carried Warwick through to the couch in the other room. It was good to be on familiar, comfortable territory. Livvy followed him, slowly as Hank ushered her in and closed up.
"Guys – it's good to see human faces. You both doing ok? Jan told me things went south at the ― Whoa man! Someone needs an ice pack!"
"I'm a woman," Livvy mumbled indistinctly, making Hank chuckle. Nick got the impression that they'd gotten to know each other a little while he'd been off on sick leave.
" 'Woman, you need an icepack' sounds harsh, however nice I try to say it." Hank emerged from the freezer with a bag of frozen pole beans for her face and wrapped a tea-towel around it. "Please tell me you kicked Doc Marten's ass?"
"I've got 'Doc Marten' on my face?"
"Imprinted," Hank confirmed.
"I didn't kick his ass hard enough," she muttered, but gave him a watery smile for the improvised ice pack. "Thanks. I'm going to go sit down."
Having made her firm declaration, she then didn't move. Nick touched her lightly on the arm.
"Livvy?"
"Hmmm?"
Oh crap. She looked concussed. In the darkness of the car, he hadn't seen how livid the bruise on her cheek was. "You were going to go sit down?"
"Oh yeah. Away from the windows – God, that was my own instruction even, wasn't it?"
"Stay still a sec." Nick tilted her face up lightly and followed her focus left and right across the room. Her eyes were reacting ok and she was steady on her feet, albeit very tired and stunned. He took her shoulders, walked her into the front room, and pushed her gently down into the deeper of Hank's two mis-matched armchairs. "Stay!"
He heard Warwick's weak throwaway question: "Is he always that bossy?" her muttered answer, "better not be," and grinned, heading into the kitchen to confer with Hank about calling an out-of-hours doctor to check her over. Hank was nowhere to be seen. Nick heard a 'pssst' and followed the sound into the utility room adjoining the kitchen, where Hank was standing with his back flush to the wall.
"You ok, man?" Hank asked bizarrely, for someone hiding in his own laundry.
"I was going to ask you! What's going on? Two weeks without a word and now you look like you did when you thought you were hallucinating the wesen! Exams not going ok?"
Hank cringed. "You don't know the half of it. Mortal fear, man. Exam panic attacks, dread, sweats, the whole deal. Do me one favour for a little while, ok? Talk about anything other than the Lieutenancy exams."
Nick looked askance at Hank feeling like he'd be a selfish ass if he didn't talk about the thing that was scaring the skin off his friend. "I think you need to talk about them."
"That's not how I deal with stuff, ok? I barricade myself in the smallest room in the house and I hide, then I'm fine. I don't want to think about them right now. Later – really." Hank wiped sweat off his face with his sleeve and gave him a tired smile. "Make me smile. How's it going with Andersen?"
Nick dropped his voice to a whisper. "I think she's onto me, Grimm-wise."
"Already? Is she wesen?"
Nick was still bewildered on this point. "If she is, she hasn't woged yet. But she's definitely picking up on wesen presence – she's called them at least three times now." Nick covered her alleycat-Lowen, frog-skalengek and three-blind-mice/reinigen spots.
"Wow. Is she an early Grimm?"
"No. I don't know. Maybe..."
Hank grinned. "Don't take this the wrong way, but it's quite fun to see you on the confused end of the stick."
"Thanks." Nick tried to put his apprehension into words. "It doesn't upset me that she might understand all that stuff. Part of me would be relieved if she did - it's made my life a hell of a lot easier since I've not had to lie to you. It's just that…"
"…she knows what you're thinking?"
"Don't you start!"
Chuckling, Hank fished a Chinese takeout leaflet out of a basket sitting on the washing tub. "Day before I went off on study leave, Jan sent us both over to West Side to give them extra cover, so I gave her a lift. Oh man – painful! You cannot have a quiet thought around that woman. The whole day it was like she was having both halves of our conversation for us — her out-loud part and my slightly less bouncy privacy-of-the-head part. Or so I thought. Are there psychic, hyperactive, non-woging wesen?"
Nick shook his head. His memory was good – they'd flicked through the entire section of the supernaturally-inclined beings when trying to find information on the Llorona. "Warwick made the same suggestion earlier, but he also mentioned her being a mentalist – which is probably closer to the truth. I don't think she reads minds. I think it's more that…she misses nothing. She leaps straight to the right conclusion from about seven clues taken altogether, and—"
"Stop talking about me!"
Nick and Hank froze and Nick edged out to peer into the kitchen, but her voice came all the way from the front room – well out of eavesdropping range. He called back. "We're not talking about you! We're… we're… ordering Chinese food!"
"No one is that conspiratorial or doubtful about Chinese food!"
"See what I mean?" hissed Nick.
Hank got busy with the phone and the takeout menu. "First aid kit's by the fridge now," he said. "See if you can get something for Livvy's cheek. The precinct doesn't need to see boot on her face. Boots on your face we're kind of used to."
Nick creaked back into the kitchen and heard her having a probing conversation with Warwick in the front room that he clearly wasn't coping with very well. He left the kid to it, fast approaching a que-sera-sera mentality where Livvy and wesen-knowledge were concerned. The truth would be out post-reprieve anyway, and he was growing eager to find out how she was 'seeing' the same stuff as him, albeit maybe in a different form. He felt a little disoriented by his own laissez-faire attitude. After so long being secretive, having lost so much being secretive, it now felt like he was quitting something by being prepared to walk straight out into the light.
Was his Grimm going on strike? Nick wasn't sure if he knew, or cared. He was so tired. He didn't know whether his recent need for solid blocks of sleep was a new and interesting phase in the Grimm puberty… thing… or whether he needed to get some bloodtests done, but not-sleeping made him crash out worse than any other punishment that could be thrown at him. He just wanted food, beer, undemanding chat, bed – in that order. He reached over for Hank's first aid kit, knowing he had a few sore spots of his own to deal with, and felt his shoulder lock. He couldn't get his elbow within three inches of the height of his collar bone and gritted his teeth at the pain of trying to lift it higher. Ok – maybe painkillers first, and easy on the beer. He took a plaster to Livvy, who took it with a small smile. Then frowned at him.
"You alright?"
"Yeah, fine. Just getting tidied up."
He returned to the kitchen and downed a couple of the naproxen from the blister pack in the kit, swallowing them with a mouthful of water straight from the tap. Then he sat on the kitchen table, pulled out the antiseptic wipes and tucked the front of his sweatshirt under his chin so he could hold it out of the way while he cleaned up. He was just dabbing at a scrape halfway up his front as Hank came back in from the laundry room, flipping the menucard idly against his wrist and whistling. Then promptly cut out the whistling. "Nick! Goddamn it!"
"What?"
"Jan said you guys were ok!"
"We are." Nick tried reaching across his left side, but his arm wouldn't let him do it. "My shoulder's bugging me, but the rest is pretty superficial."
"Superficial?"
"Yep, nothing says 'superficial' quite like a bloody smattering of claw marks," Livvy observed from behind, and crossed in front to stand next to Hank. "You just said you were fine. Bullshitter."
Hank folded his arms. "You're in fractionally better shape than when Stark handed your ass to you, and it doesn't even seem to upset you. That's a little worrying, man."
Nick felt severely ganged up on. "I am fine!" Then thought about this. She'd been behind him when speaking. "How did you know about the marks? You couldn't have seen―"
"Your top rides up at the back when you lift your arms. Arm – rather. Your right shoulder's a little out of socket."
"And you know that because…?"
"This morning you drove with your hands at ten and two on the wheel – this evening you were struggling with eight and four on the underside. I think you have an air-pocket. It's really easy to reduce if you just ask, but I'm more concerned about the wild animal scratches."
He felt deflated, all of a sudden, watching his bed-time being pushed away into the smaller hours of the morning. "What happened to my reprieve?"
"It got cancelled when my 'partner' tried to hide lion claw marks from me." She folded her arms crossly.
Nick struggled to know where to start with an explanation of Lowen, why he hadn't just let them run, and why he sincerely didn't know he'd been scraped that much. Hank was glowering at him too, which seemed a little much. The frat-lowen had attacked him. It wasn't as if he'd dived into the lion enclosure at the zoo for a quick evening brawl. He decided to start with the issue of 'species'. "Livvy, they really weren't actually lions―"
"Stop it, Nick!" Livvy stared straight at him and just for a second he thought he saw a glitter in her eyes like they were overfull. Past the moisture in her eyes, he realised she'd taken on a very soft rosy glow – like a corona, which spread slowly. Not in her face, though that was suddenly flushed with anger, but around her. He wondered if Hank was seeing it but there was no curiosity or confusion in his face.
She seemed to collect herself and cleared her throat. "Look, any truthful story that is going to explain the appearance of lions in frat jackets is going to be complicated. I realise that. But at the moment, I only care about one thing."
"What's that?" Nick asked hurriedly, seeing her corona flicker red through the rose. What the hell was she?
"Those were not just frat-boys. They became something. I need to know I wasn't 'seeing things' Tell me I wasn't imagining it."
Nick looked from Livvy to Hank, whose expression simply said 'you know where I stand on this'. Nick met her gaze directly. "You weren't imagining it."
Hank nodded. "I've seen stuff too. It's a total freak-out moment, but you're not going nuts."
Her face relaxed a little, then a lot, her corona filtered to nothing, and then she seemed just grateful. "Thank you. Both."
Nick waited for her to press the point, but she seemed more concerned with getting herself together. He made the offer, at least. "It'll take me a while to explain what you saw."
"It can wait for a moment. I've got enough to process for a few minutes. Ok, let's look at your arm."
So near, yet so far? Frustrated, he wanted to get back to the point. "My arm's fine— did you know that you go pink when you're upset?"
"Most people do! Am I supposed to stay pale and interesting?"
"No – I mean, pink round the outside, like you've got a …halo. Or something. I wasn't imagining it." He watched Hank and Livvy exchanged incredulous looks then turn their incredulity back to him. "So it's ok for her to demand confirmation of lions in frat jackets, but not for me to….Ok, I'm shutting up."
"Weirdo. We're sorting your arm out now. Ok, look at Hank."
"Huh?"
Livvy looked up at Nick sternly as she pressed gently against his chest with one hand and curled her fingers under his tricep with the other. "You're not looking at Hank."
"Does he have to? It may be a Mars/Venus thing, but guys find enforced staring kind of weird."
"Fine! Both of you, look at the ceiling."
They did, mutually confused.
"Ok Nick, now look at Hank."
"Why am I—AGGGHHH!" The little gap in his Nick's socket snapped shut with a sharp, wet snick and he leapt off the table like a scalded cat, lunging helplessly round the kitchen in a paindance until the shock of the relocation faded abruptly stopped and he realised that he could move the arm fully again. He leant back on the kitchen counter to overcome the brief moment of lightheadedness, puffing his way through it, then turned back to her with a shaky smile. "T-Thanks. What was with the… Hank-staring?"
"Anaesthetic."
Hank folded his arms smugly. "Staring at me has anaesthetic properties? Who knew? Maybe I should quit this cop-game and patent myself."
"Half of pain is anticipation. Confusion is the best neural block to anticipation. You've no room in your head for 'oh my God, this is really going to hurt' if you're busy with 'why the hell am I staring at Hank?' Some emotions just can't co-exist in the same moment, like terror and boredom."
"I disagree with that," Hank muttered. "I'm scared shitless of the first quiz on Monday but also bored shitless by the personnel stuff I have to read to pass it."
Livvy patted him on the arm. "Take a copy of a Thomas Hardy novel with you and read it right before you go in, while everyone else is terrifying themselves with last-minute cramming. I recommend Tess of the D'Urbervilles, chapter 4. It's distressingly boring. It'll calm you right down."
"Right…." The doorbell rang and Hank checked through about four windows before satisfying himself that it was actually the take-out guy.
Nick tried to get his sweatshirt over his head and got unexpected help from Livvy, who yanked it off then brandished the wipes at him. "I can clean myself up!"
"I'd like dinner before 2014. You are so slow. I've never seen such hesitant dabbing. Hands on your head."
Nick obeyed, not entirely sure why, and gritted his teeth through all the stingy parts. She was quick – he had to give her that – and focussed. Lost in her own world. Actually, looking a little sad. "You alright? It sounds like you've had a rough time lately – all that stuff about… not knowing whether you've been imagining things or not."
"I misread someone very badly and I've questioned myself every day since. It shook my confidence."
"Want to share?"
"No." She cleared her throat and that little corona was back for a moment. "No thanks. I'll be fine – I just wasn't ready to…. I wasn't ready to be wrong again so soon. You know what we really need to talk about, though?"
"Warwick?"
"Yeah. For whatever reason, he's decided that you're the only person who understands the situation he's going through. Which is kind of sweet in a clingy-teenager kind of way, but he can't follow you around for the rest of your life. If we're lucky with interrogations tomorrow, it won't be an issue and we can get Jan to help us ship him off to this other college he likes, but if the other frat boys don't squeak about the hazing, we'll need to sort out appropriate protective custody. That doesn't involve your constant presence."
"True," Nick murmured. He slipped off the table and grabbed a clean teeshirt from his nightbag, slipping it on as Hank returned from the door with the Chinese, mulling over all the complications of concealing a sick Geier without him around to run interference on the stress-wogeing. "That's not going to be straightforward, though."
She laughed. "That's a bit of an understatement. His custodians would need to be pretty tolerant about him turning into a bird when he gets stressed, particularly since he sheds everywhere and gets sick afterwards. That side of things could come as a shocker."
Nick blinked and steeled himself for a long night. "Hank… how much caffeine do you have in the place?"
X x X
Sean withstood a good twenty minutes of soft-spoken but aggressively incisive interrogation from Jan until finally, with a large glass of Merlot in front of him and healed hands, he appeared a little more inclined to listen to him with his normal, patient expression rather than one that suggested that a swipe was imminent. As Sean worked backwards to his one-time working relationship with Kessler, his Lieutenant nodded and considered in all the right places, even though what he was hearing must have been anathema to his rigid moral code. Even Jan's little one looked disapproving, eyeing him sternly with tiny, dark green eyes. Definitely her father's daughter, Sean thought with a degree of amusement, and found his narrative trailing off as he realised that he was being challenged by a baby.
"Uh oh," Denny muttered. "I think we have a stare-off taking place!"
Carianne sat at Jan's hip, her forearms dangling over his forefinger and legs poking out onto his lap from under his pinkie. As Sean held her unwinking gaze, she pulled her legs up and pressed her toes together as if sensing genuine, serious competition and gearing herself up for it. She blinked first, of course, but it was a close-run thing and his eyes were watering.
"She's excellent," he conceded. "You must be very proud. How old is she?"
"Two months."
"A prodigy then, like her brother." The mood loosened slightly as Jan ruffled her hair lightly, Denny re-folded his legs on the corner of the table, and for the first time, Sean felt nervous of plunging on, not wanting to wreck the progress he'd made. "Kessler was working from a list, but she started making her own decisions about who was dangerous and who not, and saw reapers everywhere. She wouldn't be told. I spoke to her twice. I used subterfuge. I blackmailed her. She was picking off valuable Laufer informants in their own back yards while they put the bins out. Eventually I threatened Nick's life. She responded by killing two high-ranking Laufer members who I'd spent years grooming, positioning and supporting into critical intelligence positions."
"It would be wise, right now, for you to confirm that the threat on Nick's life was a bluff."
"Of course it was a bluff! Nick was a good cop. I thought it would make her listen. It was just emotional blackmail. But she'd been diagnosed terminally ill, by then." Sean took a deep breath. "I told myself that I was just… ending things a little early for her."
Denny scoffed. "So to prove that there weren't really reapers everywhere, you sent a reaper after her?"
"Hulda was sent by my brother, Eric. He'd run out of patience. I sent Adalind when she was already in hospital, in pain and with only days left until―"
"Don't try to turn this into a humanitarian exercise," Jan warned. "You killed her so that she couldn't tell Nick about you."
"Of course." What did they expect him to do? "I couldn't afford to have a new Grimm learn about the Verrat and wesen in general from her completely warped perspective. Could you imagine the carnage of having a new Grimm fuelled by new powers and a blood feud learning his 'God-given' duty from someone like Kessler? Couldn't let it happen. Nick has a conscience. I thought that before I tried any rash manoeuvres like telling him about me, I'd see whether he'd make his own decisions about who was dangerous and who not. And I was right. He has."
"Before you start congratulating yourself on your hindsight – explain something. When you realised that he was still acting as a cop, was still a good man and was still making good decisions, why not disclose yourself?"
"Because so long as he didn't know that I knew, I could manage him as a cop, not a Grimm. It kept him in line, and it enabled me to persuade my family that I could keep him under control." Sean worried about this aspect of coming clean. Managing him as a Grimm was going to be impossible. "It was the only way of keeping a foot in each camp and deflecting attacks on him."
Jan moved his little girl from his lap to his shoulder, where she yawned cavernously. "He spent nearly a year being continuously attacked for being a Grimm with one friend as back-up. He's been lucky to survive."
Sean looked at them in disbelief. Pair of mother hens. Had they actually forgotten that he was a Grimm? He tried to keep his voice even. "He is more than capable of looking after himself―"
"That's not the point," Jan cut in. "Nick's a selfless guy who's lost the critical part of his life – Juliette - that kept his sense of self-preservation in check and because his pain threshold levels have made him dangerously oblivious to harm, it's made him more dangerous for attackers to fight than ever. But a lot of it is about luck. As tough as he is, luck's not going to be on his side every time."
"I've tried to protect him. I've warned off assassins―"
Denny cut in. "But it's not just about assassins trying to lamp him, is it? It's about the everyday stuff he deals with as soon as suspects realise he's not just a cop. If you want to protect someone, you equip them to protect themselves. First bloody rule of combat survival. Take that Siegbarste Nick took on. If he'd had any kind of proper support or teaching from you, he'd have had a gift-loaded shotgun at the ready and the break-in would've ended after about ten seconds. It was a bit harsh for him to find out how to defend himself after taking a complete pasting, wasn't it?"
Sean felt his frustration flare. "Do you really think I'm unaware of all the downsides of keeping him in the dark? I was busy being a Royal, using what influence I had. He was busy learning his trade from her trove of psychopathic volumes, banding Siegbarstes and Hexenbiests with the Devil. At what point would it ever have been safe for me to self-disclose?"
"So why now?" Jan asked mildly, giving him a chance to draw breath.
"Because the world is changing, I need to change with it… and Nick needs to know what he's up against."
Denny got to his feet. "That's the first thing you've said that I've had an iota of sympathy for. Right, I'll take Carianne up while you talk practicalities." He peeled the droopy tot out of her Dad's arms, gave Jan a chance to kiss her goodnight, and waved her forearm at them. "Say goodnight, Small. C'mon, now…"
Sean settled down, eyeing Jan's wine with jealousy as he finished the glass off and wishing he hadn't driven. He needed to stop feeling so defensive. He hated feeling defensive – it was just completely against the grain of his independence. He could understand – and respect – Jan's protective stance over Nick. It just grated at him that they didn't really grasp that it wasn't simply fear of Nick's response that had deferred the moment of him coming clean for so long. He wondered how long it would take Jan to realise that his position as Nick's intermediary boss would become untenable because of their mutual knowledge of each other's species. Putting Nick on 'light duties'? It would've made him laugh if it hadn't been so ridiculous. However hard Nick had tried to keep things normal, he was now a Grimm first and cop second, and they had to find a way of dealing with him on that basis. If Jan thought he could blunder through and treat him like a normal cop, he had a shock coming.
"You mentioned the murder of Laufer members and informants," Jan said eventually. "You worked with them?"
"No, I didn't. I did things my own way. But I was very silently supportive of what they were fighting against."
"Even as a Royal?"
Weird thing to say. Sean drummed his fingers on the table. "Especially as a Royal. Look – I've made cold decisions and done brutal things and slept well at night afterwards. But that doesn't mean that I want any part of a monarchy that rules on fear, purism and genocide. Because that's what the Verrat are after - total wesen control over humans with no grey areas. No me, no Denny."
"And your tactics now?"
Crunch time. "I'm crossing the floor. My involvement with the Laufer's about to become a little more concrete."
"How do you expect them to trust you?"
"I don't, initially. I just expect them to obey me."
Jan blinked. "What do you mean?"
"As of this afternoon, I've taken over the Western Seaboard operations. You'll find yourself deputising for me a lot more at work, if nothing else."
"And Dr Walter Maier's just accepted this, has he?"
Sean laughed mirthlessly. "The fact that you know exactly who their head is just shows me what a fantastically discreet operation they've managed. No, Dr Maier has been packed off to the world of pharmacology where he can stop acting like a wannabe Godfather and actually be of some use. If he wants to argue about it, he can whine to Remus."
Jan's hand paused, bottle neck on glass rim. "My Remus? Commandant van Maarten? Theo's Godfather?"
Sean smirked. It was childish, but it was the first time he'd ever managed to surprise his Lieutenant. Without choking him, that was. "Close, are you?"
"Remus is the head of…"
"Western and European operations."
Jan put the wine bottle down. "I think I might find something a bit stronger."
Sean watched Jan pour the equivalent of a good four fingers of Speyside Glen Ewan into a tumbler and down it in one go, and boggled. That much whiskey in one go would render him pretty much instantly unconscious. Jan refilled with only a slightly more moderate measure and limped back to the table, sitting heavily.
"Head of the Laufer?" he murmured wonderingly. "Good God, no wonder he delegated so much shit to me at Interpol. Talk about busy!" He took another long swig. "I'm curious… as to how you two got working together."
Sean tried to ease into the half-fib. "We clicked when Remus came to the states to extradite and escort Annalise back to the Netherlands."
Jan snorted. "Bullshit."
"Excuse me?"
"With respects, Sir, Remus has a certain style of recreational rudeness, whereas you have a certain style of carrying yourself like you have a stick up your arse. Don't tell me you 'clicked'."
Sean blinked at the directness. "Fine, we 'grated' into a position of mutual respect. We have common aims. And no, I'm not going to tell you about them."
"Last question. Presuming things go well with Nick – he doesn't murder you, the dust settles, you're able to work together, and so on – what do we get out of an alliance with you?"
"Better intelligence on dangerous cases, less exhausting secrecy." Sean played his trump card. "And a Grimm with better back-up."
"Well I approve of that," Denny said, rejoining them in the kitchen. "But how are you going to tell him? I don't recommend 'By the way, I slayed your aunt'."
Sean rolled his fists into balls under the table. "Of course I'm not going to do that."
"Wouldn't bloody put it past you given your earlier performance. I suggest sending him an email telling him that you need to tell him things about his aunt's death ― no more, no less ― and arrange to meet him in a well-lit public place, wearing lots of Kevlar. Take shades, too, because with your conscience in its current state, if he looks at you too hard, you'll be toast."
He wasn't sure whether Denny was actually joking or not.
"Email's your best option for the opening gambit, just to set the topic for discussion and commit yourself to it," Jan agreed. "You can't do that in person, not safely, but as far as I know, Nick has not yet mastered the art of Grimming someone down the broadband." He hiccupped. "God, I hope he doesn't learn how to do that."
"It'd be toast by post," Denny muttered, making Jan giggle into his whiskey glass.
Sean rolled his eyes. "I need to do it while he's still a juvenile Grimm."
"A what?"
"A pre-evolution Grimm."
"That'll be the second-puberty thing that you guys were explaining, yeah?" Denny chuckled. "Got to admit, 'evolution' has a little more dignity to it than second-puberty. What does he become at the end of it?"
"A Zauberen," Sean began to explain, "They're incredibly powerful…." but got drowned out by the giants banding stupid post-evolution titles back and forth.
"Grown-up Grimm?" Jan suggested. Denny chuckled and face-palmed, but also tacitly removed the glass of whiskey out of reach.
"Look! I came here to form a council of war, not get tag-teamed by Dastardly and Muttley!"
"Well off you sod, then! You can have your po-faced one-man council and email us the joyless minutes, and we can think about how to tell Nick what you've just explained to us. Still fancy going off in a huff? No, thought not."
"You have a week," Jan said, suddenly and apparently completely sober.
Sean gaped. "What?"
"There's never going to be a good moment, so you'll have to bite the bullet. I'll temporarily distract Andersen so that you get him alone for a while. You'll need to keep in touch – give me your phone." Jan took it and programmed his personal number into it, while Sean considered the difficult matter of Nick working with Andersen.
"That wasn't a wise pairing, Jan. She's got incredibly acute instincts for a non-Grimm. It won't take long for her to query his working methods, find out about wesen, find out what he really is―"
"Good." Jan handed his phone back. "He needs balance – she needs emotional rescue. Besides, she picks up on the same things as him anyway, albeit in a completely different form. He sees the secret beings lying beneath people, she sees the invisible connections lying between people. I'm sure they'll initially drive each other screaming up the walls, as their forefathers did, but they're sharing a precinct so they'll find out about each other eventually anyway."
Sean pocketed his phone. "If you're going to stick them together, I expect you to keep them in line."
"Don't get terse with me, Sir. You hired the Allwissendin. I'm just trying to make the best of a difficult situation."
"The… what?"
Jan blinked at him. "Andersen - the Allwissendin. I thought that's why you recruited her? Because she's another breed of Intuitiv?"
Sean was irritated to see even Denny stare in sudden understanding and wished that someone would just explain.
"So Livvy Andersen is literally an… Oh my God! She is so rare!"
"Yep. I had my suspicions, but she pretty much confirmed it when I was talking to her about splitting her partnership with Hanna. She was very sweet-natured about him, given the way he's treated her. She said, and I quote 'there's still a bit of Prince in there, hidden under all that frog'."
"She is so joining the federation."
"Don't start setting up the UFRS email accounts yet, Den. Let's see how she and Nick cope. They'll either be ripping each other's clothes off or each other's heads off by the time the week's up."
Sean was still trying to remember what an Allwissendin was, and had got as far as translating it as all-knowing, when Jan took pity and went to take a couple of books from a shelf in Theo's play area. He returned with two thin dog-eared Penguin hardbacks, his fingers hintingly close to the author names. Sean didn't need any help with 'Little Red Riding Hood' – it was pure sanitised Grimm. The second book was the little Mermaid, by Hans Christian Andersen.
He groaned inwardly, cursing himself for his stupidity. So now he had a Grimm… working with an Andersen. Fantastic. It was a very common name, he told himself. And he'd been distracted with other priorities. Jan's casualness about it infuriated him. "I think I have a headache coming on. If you knew what she was, why the hell did you―"
"―Don't bark at me in my own home―"
"A headache, eh?" Denny cut in hurriedly, funnelling him towards the door. "What a shame. Go and have it somewhere else. Next time you want to pop by for a love-in, don't piss off the Lion King, bring a decent beer and no gurning, alright? Good. We'll be in touch to see how Operation speak-to-Nick is going. Bye!"
Sean found himself herded out, but managed to get one foot in the door before Denny closed it. he spoke in an undertone. "Genuine question. Have you ever seen Jan woge involuntarily?"
"Once. It wasn't pretty."
"What was he doing?"
"Telephone banking. Goodnight, Renard."
Well, that was useful information. Not. Sean rolled his eyes and trotted back down to his car just as his cell phone rang and swore as he looked at his home screen. While putting his number in, Jan had kindly changed the universal language settings to Dutch. Bastard. He took Remus' call fairly cheerfully and described how the conversation went as a whole, pleased with himself for leaving things on a relatively cordial footing with them – the Siegbarste especially – and for managing not to go off-script.
There was a long silence at the other end of the line. "Sean, that's just too irritating. I'm going to have to call you back."
He waited. Remus called back. "Shooting bins, or something?"
"I wish I had some bins to shoot, I tell you. Alas, they were taken for cleaning this morning. You know….we have free courses on crisis management here at Interpol – including some specialist ones for socially inept senior officers. Shall I book you something?"
"I thought it went well, under the circumstances."
"You got punched by Jan and he set you deadline to talk to your Grimm. Yes, it went swimmingly, I think. Do me a favour? I'm coming over. I'll come give you the crisis course in person. I am going to hang up and book the seats myself, right now. Do NOT speak to your Grimm until I get there. Promise?"
"Sure." Sean grinned. A good result. Only severe irritation would've brought Remus back over the pond. He was actually looking forward to seeing him again – recreational rudeness and all.
