Wow, it is so hard to write an AU episode.
Keeping in mind that Marie is not in danger of being kiled by Adalind, and Monroe is a kid and that Hank and Juliette already know... well, let's just say it was difficult. I really didn't want to rehash every scene from the episode, because a lot of it stayed exactly the same.
But I managed it, and as promised, it's a long chapter to keep you all entertained for the weekend as I may not be able to update for a few days (I will try, but life is life).

Chapter 10

Nick eyed his phone like he expected it to ring at any moment, he was waiting for a call involving screaming and crying and murder, and he couldn't believe he had told Juliette to take Monroe to visit his Aunt without him being there. There was no way to tell how a meeting like that could go, and it was nerve wracking waiting for a call.

He'd told Hank what was going on, enough at least to get a smirk every time he looked at him. "She's hardly going to leap out of her sick bed and kill the kid in front of witnesses." Hank had told him, joking in that way people only ever could when they didn't realise how serious a situation was. But Nick didn't call him on it, couldn't find the right words to explain why he felt so anxious about this meeting.

He was startled out of his nervous phone watching by a patrolman approaching the desk. "Had a DUI out on Highway 2 a couple of hours ago," he said, thumbing over his shoulder towards his desk. "Drivers got some crazy story about her boyfriend being attacked. Names Gilda Darner." He turned, and Nick shared a look with Hank and they both wheeled out enough to see the woman without obstruction.

"What do you think?" Hank asked, as the Patrolman returned to the desk.

Nick looked at the woman, and let himself be taken in by what passed as their normal routine. "Grown up way to fast, single parent, if she has any. Takes way too many chances and looks for excitement in all the wrong places." He rattled off. He could remember playing this game with his mother, and later his Aunt Marie, learning about people just by looking at them. He could see now this game had been about teaching him how to look past what was immediately presented to him.

He'd been in training for this Grimm thing long before he'd ever known about it.

"Sounds like me!" Hank said, a smile in his voice, drawing Nick back to the present.

Nick smiled. "Yeah, look how you turned out." He said, getting to his feet.

He wanted to be able to focus all of his attention on Monroe's case, but that just wasn't how police work panned out. There were never any all-consuming single cases, unless it was maybe a serial killer. He and Hank had four case files to go through, and were now adding a fifth.

The joy of being a Detective.

"Gilda Darner?" Nick asked when they reached her. She looked up at them, startled, but nodded. "Tell us what happened."

xoxox

When the call finally came it left Nick feeling confused, elated and disjointed all at once. They were just finishing up speaking with Gilda after their trip out to the Rabe household and were in the middle of discussing their next move when the phone rang. Nick fumbled with the screen to accept the call.

"Juliette? Everything ok? Do I need to come over?" he asked, worried.

"It's… its going well." Juliette told him.

"Your still there?" he asked in surprise.

"Yeah," she told him, and he could hear the sounds of Monroe's voice in the background, rising and falling through what he had termed his 'teacher' voice. "Monroe has a lot of questions for your Aunt."

"And she's answering them?"

He heard Juliette's smile, it was clear in her voice, surprised herself. "She hasn't exactly had the chance yet, he asked her something about End-ze-chen-"

"Endezeichen Grimm's," Monroe said promptly and loudly.

"Yeah, those. And then decided to tell us all about what his brother had told him about them." Juliette said, and lowered her voice. "Which is sort of disturbing, and I really don't know what to make if it."

Nick groped hopelessly for something to say, but came up with nothing.

"Don't worry. We'll see you later, ok?"

"Yeah… later." Nick said, and hung up the phone.

Hank was watching him. "So, all quiet on the western front huh?"

Nick looked at him, his confusion must have been clear on his face, because Hank smirked at him, smug in the knowledge that he was right. "Oh shut up!" he snapped without heat. "What did you find out about the Rabe's?"

Hank collected his files to hide his smile and said. "Yeah, while you were having your little family domestic." Nick glanced about on his desk for something to throw at his smug partner. "Their house backs up onto the national forest, 500 square miles of trees behind them, lots of places for Rocky to get lost."

Nick nodded. "Ok, so we should pay the Rabe's another visit, see what we can find out."

xoxox

The visit went as well as could be expected. With the added bonus of finding out that the family were Wesen. Nick knew he hadn't hidden his reaction to the son changing very well, and the father, Frank Rabe, at the very least knew what he was. Given how Monroe had reacted to him, and what he had heard and read so far in the books, he could be grateful the man didn't immediately go on the defensive.

Though his ultimatum to contact him only through his law firm was a step in that direction.

"Ok, so you saw something." Hank said when they were back in the car.

Nick nodded. "Yeah, something."

"Blutbad?" Hank questioned.

Nick shook his head. "I don't think so."

Hank didn't say anything else, just started the car and pulled away from the house.

"Look, Hank." Nick started. "I know this is-"

Hank shook his head abruptly. "Nick, you have no idea how weird this is for me. I'm doing my best to believe you here. But it ain't easy. Whatever you're seeing, I'm not, and it's hard for me to just accept it. If that kid hadn't of said what he did, and if Juliette hadn't called me out for coffee yesterday to talk about this…" Hank sighed.

Nick sighed as well. "Yeah."

"I believe you Nick." Hank said after another heavy silence. "I do. It's just… it's a lot to take in."

"I know. Believe me, I know." Nick tugged his notebook out of his pocket and started scribbling a quick drawing of what he had seen. "Can you drop me home?" he asked, concentrating on the drawing.

"Seeing as it's your car, shouldn't I be asking you that?" Hank asked, tone teasing, but Nick was concentrating too hard to offer a rejoinder. "Hey, you gonna need some help looking up whatever these things are?"

"You offering?" Nick asked him. "Because you don't have to Hank. I get that this is hard. And maybe I shouldn't have told you about any of this…"

Hank snorted in disbelief. "Yeah, like you could have kept something like this secret. Come on, you can show me your aunts trailer." Hank said, and turned the car in direction of Nick's.

Juliette and Monroe were on the couch when Nick opened the door, ushering Hank inside, pages spread out around them. The coffee table was strewn over with Chinese cartons and Voodoo Donuts.

"Hey where's mine?" Nick asked.

"In the fridge." Juliette told him. "Hi Hank. We have some extra rice if you want to share Nick's chow mein?"

Hank made his way to the table and snagged one of the donuts. "Nah, I'm good with these." He told her.

"Hey!" Nick protested. "Those are mine!"

Juliette smiled. "You know, it's obvious you two are cops." She told them both.

Nick glared at her, but went to the kitchen to get his Chinese, heating it up in the microwave. He listened as Hank outlined the case to Juliette, no specific details, like names or places, because things like that could get them into trouble. But it was enough for her to get the gist of the case.

"And you saw another Wesen?" Juliette called out to Nick.

"Yeah." Nick said, returning to the living room, plate in hand. He juggled with his fork so he could get his notebook out and tossed it to her. "Did a sketch, was thinking I could maybe show Aunt Marie tomorrow."

"I can help."

Monroe had been sitting so quietly through the whole conversation Nick had sort of forgotten he was there.

"Huh… I suppose you could." Nick motioned for Juliette to show Monroe the picture. Monroe took the notebook and studied the image carefully.

"Jägerbar." Monroe said at last.

"Jägerbar?" Hank asked.

Monroe nodded, and then seemed to take in the confusion of the adults around him and sighed. "You really aren't very good at this at all." He told them, then with an air of longsuffering, he reached into the pile of papers around him, flicking through them until he found the sheet he wanted and handed it across to Hank.

Hank took the sheet and read it warily. "Goldilocks and the Three Bears?" he asked.

Monroe nodded. "Jägerbar means bear, mostly… I think." He explained. "The stories in my books are better than that one, and have all the right names."

Nick took the printout from Hank and glanced over it. "You know, the whole case seems a little like this." He said.

"Sure." Hank said. "Like things could get any weirder around here." He reached across to take another doughnut. "So now we know what they are, where do we start looking?"

"Aunt Marie's trailer." Nick told him.

"Can I see it too?" Monroe asked instantly.

"No!" Juliette said, and Nick thought it was a little unfair that he got glared at. It wasn't like he had been going to say 'Yes', the last thing he wanted was for one of those clubs or maces to fall on Monroe's head. "Not until Nick gets it cleaned up and locks put on certain doors and drawers."

Nick waved his fork at her in supplication.

Monroe looked a little mutinous, but didn't argue.

xoxox

Nick felt a little like a child again when he let Hank into the trailer, vibrating with excitement, because despite how strange and unreal this whole situation was, there were things in the trailer that were just too cool for words. Once you got past the initial horror that most, if not all, had been used to kill something at one time or another.

Hank was suitably impressed, and spent a few minutes completely geeking out with him over certain things.

"I can see why Juliette doesn't want to let you bring the kid in here." Hank said, eyeing the array of weapons on display.

"Yeah. A bit much for a kid I guess." Nick agreed.

Hank laughed. "Oh hell no, the kid would have a field day with these. That's the problem." Hank shook his head at him. "You have no idea what you're getting into with this kid do you? Hell, even if he was normal you would have no clue."

Nick flushed. "Yeah well, it's not like I had any cousins or anything, so I don't exactly have too much experience. Normal kid or otherwise." He thumped Hank's arm hard as he passed, and lifted some books off the shelf. "Here, start looking."

Hank took the book and they settled in to search for any information that might be relevant.

An hour and a half later Hank shut the book he'd been reading and reached for the next. "Some sort of 'contents' page would be handy, or an 'index'."

Nick couldn't help but agree. "Yeah, that would definitely help. Everything's so jumbled up." He leaned back. "I think it's a case of people just writing about what they saw when they saw it. No real planning behind it." In fact the only book with any real consistency was the book on the Blutbaden, and he knew why that was.

"The problem," Hank continued on, "is that there's a lot of interesting things in here, some really freaky stuff yeah, but sort of interesting when you can understand the language they're using. It's way too easy to get distracted."

Nick couldn't argue with that either, because he'd had to force himself to keep looking for the Jägerbars when he found himself reading about something else entirely.

"And your ancestors man," Hank kept on. "They did some pretty nasty stuff. I mean… whew, there are some things I did not need to know."

"Yeah. There's a lot of stuff in here no one would be proud of." Nick agreed. "Aunt Marie was looking past the whole "Kill First" ethos. At least, that's what I think she meant." He sighed. "Well, as long as the Wesen isn't a Blutbad."

Hank didn't reply to that, not that Nick expected him to. Nick went back to the book he was reading, flipping through a few pages.

"Jägerbars are bear-like creatures that date back to 900 AD. Jägerbars can live safely in society as long as they stay away from alcohol. Most Jägerbars are politicians and mortgage lenders." It took Nick a minute to realise Hank was reading from the book, and another long second to realise he'd found something. "They use a rare Germanic weapon with a carved bear head and a claw-like scoop to disembowel their victims. This weapon is used during Roh-hatz, a coming-of-age celebration of a young Jägerbar from boy to man."

"Well that doesn't sound good." Nick said, looking over Hank's shoulder.

"Not if they do have Rocky." Hank agreed. "But what do we do with the information now we have it?"

Nick shrugged. "It's not like we can just go to the Captain with this. He'd never believe us."

"I don't believe us." Hank agreed.

"I'll talk to Marie in the morning. Maybe she'll be able to give me some more information on this Roh-hatz thing." Nick suggested.

Hank nodded. "Sure, but if we wait… what's that going to mean for Rocky? If these Jägerbars even have him. We can't just go assuming they do just because they're Wesen."

Nick offered Hank a thin smile. "I don't know."

Hank shook his head. "What would we do if we didn't know what they were?" he asked.

Nick shrugged; he could barely remember what they would have done. "Checked alibi's, phone records, established whether any of the Rabe's were anywhere near the house when Rocky went missing."

"Ok, so we do that." Hank said. "Once we know for sure if one of them was in the house we'll have probable cause to search the grounds. I'll put in the request when I get back to the station."

"You're going back to work?" Nick asked him in surprise.

Hank shook his head again, but smiled. "Still need to pick up my car." He reminded him. "And no, before you ask, I do not want a lift. I can take the bus like everybody else for once. Go back inside to your girlfriend and your kid."

"He's not my kid, Hank." Nick said.

Hank snorted. "Sure he's not. I'll see you tomorrow."

Nick watched his partner go, before tidying away the books and locking up the trailer. Then he went back into the house to find out exactly how things had gone in the hospital.

"She's making an effort." Juliette told him quietly, after Monroe had been sent upstairs and settled into bed. "She told me… She said there was a reason she doesn't trust the Blutbaden. But she needs you to trust your instincts; she needs you to be able to make the distinction between the good ones and the bad ones."

"But it's so hypocritical." Nick found himself saying.

Juliette pulled him into a hug. "I know." She told him. "I know this is hard. But she was careful with him today. I'm not going to say she's changed her opinion on the whole thing, but she was willing to see him for herself, to trust in what you saw in him. That's a good thing right?"

Nick sighed. "I… Yeah, I guess so."

Juliette stroked a hand through his hair. "Maybe after you clear this case you can ask for a few days off to spend with her. You don't want your last time with her to be fighting over this. You'll regret it forever Nick and I don't want you to."

Nick nodded. He wanted nothing more than to spend his aunts last days with him taking about the things they'd done together and the life they'd had. He wanted remember her as who she was. Just as his Aunt Marie. Not as the Grimm.

xoxox

His talk with Aunt Marie the following morning offered no new information on the Roh-hatz, save that it was performed at sunset, which lent them time at least. News from Hank was better. They could place Barry Rabe, the son, at the house when Gilda and Rocky had been there.

They presented their findings to Captain Renard, who gave them the OK to get a warrant to search the house and grounds for the missing boy. Getting a warrant was not like it was shown on TV, they had to wait for an attorney to present the details of the case to a Judge, who would then either agree, or disagree, to there being enough evidence and probable cause to issue a warrant.

It took time, and they filled their time by looking over their other cases, most notably the one on the Lasseur family fire, because Nick needed to solve that case as soon as he could, because Monroe deserved that.

They got a call through before the warrant had been agreed to inform them that Gilda had made bail and was on her way to the Rabe house with a gun. He and Hank we in the car and away before Officer Wu had even finished talking.

What happened next was a mess of running and fighting and fast talking. Which ended, thankfully with nobody dead, Rocky and Gilda recovered and arrested for breaking and entering, Diana Rabe in hospital with terrible wounds from the trap her son and his friends had set up for their Roh-hatz chase, her son and his friends arrest for kidnapping and attempted murder. And Frank Rabe was left in the aftermath, a position Nick did not envy him in.

"She wanted them to know their heritage." The man said, sounding more than a little lost. "She never understood the danger of it. It isn't easy, to give up your history. You haven't had to give up yours."

Nick couldn't help but think about the trailer in his driveway, and the history in there that he wished he didn't have. But Nick didn't let himself said something insensitive, because he wondered, just for a moment, what it would be like for Monroe, in a future where he stayed with him and Juliette. Could they take away his history? Refuse to let him acknowledge who he was?

"There have to be better ways." Was what he did say, and he could see by the expression on Frank Rabe's face that the man wished he had been able to find out what those better ways had been.

Nick nodded in sympathy, and hoped he would be able to find some of those long before they were ever needed. He made his way back to the car, more than ready to just go home, but knowing he had hours of paperwork to do before he could.

xoxox

"Hey, you're late." Juliette greeted him when he finally got in.

"Yeah. Broke the case. Paperwork." He said, he dropped a kiss to her head before moving round to take the chair, sinking into it with a groan. "You seem to have a lot of your own." He said, waving a hand at the stacks of printed pages she had arranged around her, along with lined paper with her own noes on them.

She nodded. "I've been doing to research of my own on this Wesen thing. Monroe's been helping me pick through the Grimm Brother's fairy tales. There's a lot of things in there that are true apparently."

Nick nodded for her to go on, interested.

"But there's one thing I think you should look at." She picked up the closest pile of papers and handed it across.

Nick read the title on the printed page. "The Three Little Pigs?" he asked.

Juliette nodded. "Remember how Monroe said it was a Wesen he smelt the night of the fire? Well, I thought about it, and I figured something big enough to be recorded in one of the Wesen related fairy tales might be something worth looking into right? Well, Monroe told me that apparently Bauerschwein, which is the proper name for the Pigs in the story by the way, have a longstanding feud with the Blutbad. He said that they were normally the first Wesen to point the Grimm in the direction of the Blutbad in the past, for revenge for any Bauerschwein deaths in the area."

She shrugged. "I know it's not a lot, but it's something right?"

Nick looked through the additional notes Juliette had made, obviously while Monroe had been telling her the story as he had heard it. "I don't know how I could even start to look for a Bauerschwein," he sounded the word out carefully. "But I'll look into it. Maybe if we can find Hap and Angelina Lasseur they might be able to shed a little more light on the whole thing."

"Do you think whoever it is will come back for Monroe if they find out about him?" Juliette asked.

"I don't know." Nick said honestly. "I hope not. But I'm not going to let anything happen to him."

Juliette offered him a smile. "Good." She said, but he could see she was still worried. "Did you manage to get a few days off?" she asked.

Nick nodded. "Yeah, two days, on top of my regular two days off, so… We'll see how it goes."

"Ok. Come on to bed, that way you can be up early to visit Marie in the morning." Juliette said, getting to her feet and quickly tidying the papers into a neat stack on the table.

"You mean so I can get up early to fix breakfast for our early bird." Nick teased.

She laughed, but didn't deny it, neither of them liked to get up early, but at the same time, neither of them could sleep through someone else moving round the house. "Maybe he'll grow out of it." Juliette said, and Nick didn't correct her, because it was nice to know he wasn't the only one who had started thinking of Monroe being here long term.

xoxox

Nick dreamed that night of a pig setting fire to their house, and Monroe screaming from inside.