Notes: Apologies for the long wait. As always your reviews are much appreciated, don't be shy to speak you mind.

Blood Magic

Going home was Nick's favourite part of the day. It meant relaxing, putting his feet up, tuning out the cares of all of Portland for at least 8 hours straight, if he was lucky but most of all, it meant he came home to his family, Adalind, Kelly and Diana.

"Diana, please set up the table," he heard Adalind command her daughter before he could see them.

"Okay Mommy."

Nick lifted the elevator door leading into the loft and the most delicious smell ever assaulted his senses, so much that his stomach literally grumbled. The loft was exceptionally warm for a cold and harsh setting but over the past several months, Adalind worked hard to make it into a home for their little family. Nick watched as the mini version of the woman he loved jump to her feet from the blanket she shared with Kelly and skipped across the floor to pull a handful of grass mats from the bottom kitchen drawer, made her way to the table as Adalind asked.

"Oh hi Nick," Diana happily called out to him, her eyes gleaming.

"Hello Diana." He smiled in return

Diana proceeded to lay the table, focused on the task before her to pay him any more attention. Nick walked up to Kelly.

"Hey buddy," he scooped his son into his arms and hugged him close their cheeks touched.

"Hey, you're home early," Adalind greeted him in warm surprise.

"Hi," he said, walking to where she stood by the stove and gave her a hearty kiss on the lips.

"Oh, this is a nice surprise," she said.

"I missed you."

Adalind smiled at him, her cheeks glowing warmly and not from standing over the stove. Something tugged at his heart as he simply held her in his arms, gazing into her gleaming eyes, her smile so bright it nearly blinded him. Nick felt terrible for allowing his job(s) to take so much of his time, time away from his family; time away from her. He wasn't neglecting them by any means but he could count the number of times he came home before the children were already in bed. Kelly began to fidget uncomfortably, trapped between his parents so Nick quickly set him back down in front of his toys.

Adalind put on some mitts before removing the piping hot pot from the stove. She walked round the kitchen island and stole another kiss from him, "For the next half hour, no more shop talk." She instructed him.

"You two like to kiss a lot," mused Diana flatly.

"Sweetheart, I kiss you and Kelly all the time." Adalind said, as a rosy bloom filled her cheeks, the warmth spreading all the way to his pants.

"Yes but never on the lips," was Diana's frank response.

"That's because…" Adalind started as she eyed Nick helplessly. "It's because I love him but I also love you two but it's a different kind of love. Do you understand?"

"I know Mommy." Diana said as she carted Kelly's high chair to its usual spot at the table.

They all sat down for dinner as a family. Although the conversation was a little too much on the light side, Diana did her best to fill the empty silence. She proceeded to fill him in, however disparagingly, on her mother's attempts to instruct her on the use of her powers.

"I'm sure your mother is only doing what is best for you," he said automatically to the little sitting next to him while enjoying his rather delicious minestrone soup.

"Diana, it's not about how to use your abilities. I already know you are more than capable. Sweetheart, it's about when it is appropriate to use your extraordinary powers and for what purpose. You have to remember that we are all different and our…gifts…they are for a purpose."

Diana looked at her mother unconvinced.

"It's not about doing whatever you want because you can but about doing whatever you can…"

"…To help, just like Nick?" Diana cut her mother short and turned to face Nick who was enjoying this little slice of the mundane, a peace that had washed over him now that he was home.

"Not quite like Nick but in your own special way. You read the symbols on that very old cloth, remember? Nobody else could have done that. You helped Nick and his friends to know what was on the cloth and do you remember how that felt."

Diana smiled.

He couldn't help his own smile. With just a few words, Adalind worked her own magic over a wilful Diana. It reminded him of a time gone by when he and she were on opposite sides with jail bars literally separating them. "You don't have to be a witch to work this kind of magic," she had said and it was true. Adalind never needed the Hexenbiest to get what she wanted. It was a relief to know that these days they were on the same side and ultimately wanted the same things, even with the Hexenbiest back in full swing.

After dinner and the children already fast asleep, Nick and Adalind managed to find some much needed quality time together, an incredible feat with Diana only a few feet away behind the closed door. They had mastered the art of silence during their coupling and swallowing the more impassioned moans of pleasure in their kisses. Yes, going home was Nick's favourite part of the day. No matter what happened during the day, coming home was a salve to his soul he'd begun to cherish more than anything else in his world.

Nick had seen all sorts of things since becoming a cop and even worse things since becoming a Grimm but this new case had left him unusually shaken. Murder was far too common for the Grimm but there was nothing typical about the murder of a certain young woman. It wasn't every day that Nick discovered that a sick old man had in fact killed someone whose life had barely begun; granted he didn't know what he was doing at the time.

For the first time when confronted with a killer, Nick didn't act as a cop, not even as Grimm. He acted as a man. Ever since he turned eighteen, Nick had always had a clear view of his life and he took control of it at the very first opportunity. Unlike his Aunt Marie, he settled down in one place and choosing a path to follow, helping to protect the innocent that unbeknownst to him was a shadow of his true calling. He became a cop. He moved in with Juliette before they truly knew one another. But one afternoon upended all of his careful planning. He became a Grimm but more than that, Adalind came into his life, turning it upside down, and chased away any measure of control he had. At first, it infuriated him to no end but now, it scared the living daylights of him.

Going home was Nick's favourite part of the day but on this particular night, instead of finding peace, he found unrest. He didn't like bringing his work home. He learnt that the hard way with Juliette but Nick didn't exactly have much in choices when it came to being a Grimm and often found himself repeating certain behavioural patterns with Adalind that had ushered the destruction of his relationship with Juliette. However, there were slight differences, Nick noted. The chief among them being Adalind's support alleviating some of the pressure he felt for doing what he did.

That night, Norm Stanton's tragic ending broke his heart but it also opened Nick's eyes to a reality he was never prepared to face. He thought of Adalind. Sometimes it was easy to forget the differences between wesen, Grimm and Kehrseite. How even a simple disease for a regular human could have the most devastating effect on a wesen. One more thing to worry about in his ever-increasing list where Adalind was concerned, he thought. Every day, he faced criminals, cold-blooded killers but never something that left him feeling quite as helpless as watching Mrs Stanton before the Gevatter Tod took care of her husband. Rosalee had tried to explain to him why a wesen like Dr. Landeaux were necessary and Stanton's case was just one of the few cases he'd worked where being a cop or a Grimm was insufficient. Unfortunately, it hit too close to home, leaving Nick completely bereft.

Nick drove into the paint factory and watched as the garage door closed shut behind him. He sat in his Cruiser for longer than intended, thinking about Mrs Stanton but mostly about Adalind, whether or not he had the strength to do what Mrs Stanton did for her husband. Nick gruffly shook his head in an attempt to banish the fresh influx of morbid thoughts that seemed to revolve strongly around Adalind. He had to get his head on straight before joining his family and not bring his "work" home, however futile the attempt.

Since Bonaparte, Nick had unwittingly obsessed with thoughts of Adalind leaving him in some form or another, be it through death or Renard who already had a foot in through the form of Diana, the product of a shared past with Adalind, he was powerless to change. Adalind already left him once for her, his thoughts veered down the now familiar but unpleasant rabbit hole. Since Black Claw, things between Nick and Renard had deteriorated in the extreme, to say the least and right in the middle of their war was Adalind and Diana, much to Nick's trepidation.

Nick cursed. The last thing he wanted to think about was Sean Renard. His knuckles turned white as he crushed the steering wheel between his fists, his control was quickly ebbing away lest he got his act together. He took a deep breath, calmed his racing heart. What the heck was going on with him? He wondered. Nick was never this exposed…or vulnerable, at least not since he lost his parents at twelve years. It wasn't like him at all to be swayed so much by his emotions over what was beyond his control.

"Screw this!" he hissed and stepped out into the darkened garage. His family waited for him one floor above and it was more than time he enjoyed them. It was time to stop letting his paranoia get the better of him and actually live his life, which against all odds, was in fact a good life. He had the love of a gorgeous, smart woman and two beautiful children, more than he thought he deserved. Even though Adalind wore another man's ring, she chose Nick. She loved him and that's all that mattered but then there was Diana….

Although she had Renard's blood coursing through her veins, she was every bit her mother's daughter. Nick had tried to remain at a careful distance where she was concerned but all he had to do was look at her and his resolve chipped away until there was nothing left. She wasn't the easiest child to love and according to Monroe, she wasn't the easiest child to be around either but if someone had told Nick years ago that Adalind would become the very air he breathed, he would have laughed in their face and told them to stop smoking whatever was messing with their head.

Adalind had warmed her way into his heart before he even knew what had hit him. Feebly, he tried to stop himself from falling, coming up with every reason under the sun to force himself to stay away from her. Nick grimaced at the memory of his sometimes-cold behaviour after returning from Germany. If Adalind's returning powers couldn't keep him away from her or make him indifferent towards her, nothing ever would and Diana was nothing if not her mother's daughter, striking resemblance aside. It was something he quickly realised the more time they spent around one another. Being with Adalind had never been easy, at least not in the beginning; it was no surprise to Nick Diana proved to be no different from her mother.

Diana wasn't some fearsome enigma living under his roof. She was a child and he was seeing for himself what his mother tried to tell him only a couple of years before. Diana was special, in her own unique way. Nick knew that it wasn't her fault that in her young life, the adults around her, present company included played a major role in making her the way she was and suspending much of her emotional development, to put it lightly. He couldn't even blame Diana for looking at him with suspicion when she first moved into the loft with her mother every time he kissed Adalind, let alone dared to touch the woman he loved because he was so desperate to feel Adalind close to him. It was a trait Nick was quite familiar with himself.

Initially, Nick had been wary of the little girl, the raw power she possessed that he sensed made her extremely dangerous but he also wasn't blind to the innocence forcefully buried by circumstances beyond her control that only surfaced when she was around her mother. When had Diana stopped giving him the lethal side-eye and the stiffness between them dissipated, he wasn't even sure but he was certainly grateful it did for Adalind's, no, for all of their sakes. They were a family, however unconventional and Nick would be damned if he didn't do anything to keep them all together.

The first time Adalind asked him to help her find Diana, Nick had been hesitant, uncomfortable because for the first time, he was confronted by his own culpability for taking her daughter away. Before that moment, he'd always justified his actions, which hinged on preventing a future catastrophe of epic proportions by painting Adalind as an unfit mother. It was a shock to his system just how wonderful a mother Adalind in fact was.

Adalind candidly made no secret of her past mistakes particularly with Diana, confessing as much to him when they finally stopped seeing one another as enemies. Her humility shamed him. No amount of reasoning could justify separating mother and daughter any longer when losing his own mother at a tender age scarred and shaped him into the man he was today. When he became a Grimm, his Aunt Marie had told him to protect the innocent and who was more innocent than a child was? He should have done more to find Diana sooner and spared her from so much of the chaos that has dogged her steps since his mother came to him asking him to protect Adalind and her baby girl.

Nick entered the dark and quiet loft, careful not to make too much noise. It was nearly midnight, according to the clock above the kitchen sink to his right. He peered to his left at a sleeping Diana before entering his bedroom. Adalind flicked the light switch to the lamp beside her.

"Sorry didn't mean to wake you."

"I wasn't sleeping very well anyway." She exhaled, clearly as tired as he felt.

He walked over to his son's crib, "Hey, you." He smiled down at a wide-awake Kelly.

"Is everything okay?" Adalind asked. Her tone was light but he sensed her worry.

"Yeah, it's been a long day. We managed to solve that girl's case tonight," he told her sombrely.

"You don't sound too happy about it," she pointed out.

"No, I'm not. I love my job. I love being a Grimm. I get to help people but sometimes I hate it especially when I'm simply powerless to stop bad things from happening to good people."

"…That bad huh?"

"Yeah, an old man did it but he was just another victim. He was suffering from severe dementia and couldn't control himself the night he killed Maddie Simms. I can't feel good about that."

"I'm sorry."

"Me too."

"Would it help if I said I'm glad for your job? Or that I'm glad that you are a Grimm or else we would have never met?" She said.

"…Some," he said, his lips turning a fraction upwards. It helped a lot, if he was truly honest.

She hesitated before continuing, "Did Renard talk to you?"

"Yeah." He winced.

Renard wasn't his favourite topic of conversation; something he suspected wasn't lost to Adalind. Unfortunately, circumstances were forcing them all together whether they liked it or not. He removed his gun and badge, placed them on the bureau by the window as he counted his words before he said anymore or else risk letting out a few choice words about Renard not meant for hearing. It was no surprise that Renard was still under the misguided impression that he somehow controlled Nick, that he had any power over him. In recent weeks, Nick had swiftly set him straight but Renard was a Royal after all, thus prone to delusions of grandeur and superiority. Nick stood his ground when Renard demanded to see the tunnels, as if Nick was an idiot to welcome the man back into his home after their last altercation at the loft.

"Apparently, someone he knows thinks Diana might be in danger." That got her attention real quick.

"Who?" Adalind asked him nervously.

"He wouldn't tell me, but it's someone who apparently has the ability to understand these symbols. Do you know who that might be?" he sat on the bed, resting his hand over her leg.

"No, but Renard has a lot of friends in wry places."

The hairs in the back of his head pricked upwards. She called him Renard, not Sean. Nick turned away from her. He wondered if it was a conscious decision on her part to spare his feelings, knowing how cold things were between the two men since Bonaparte came into their lives. He sneered at the invasive thought, berating himself for sounding like a jealous boyfriend.

"Have you decided if you're gonna tell him about the tunnel?" She asked.

"Not yet." And he never will, he thought.

"Nick, there's something I need to tell you about the night that Renard killed Bonaparte."

He scoffed at the memory, "That was a fun night. What?" he quipped belying his true feelings about where this conversation was headed.

"After it happened, Renard…"

There it was again. Adalind put as much distance between herself and the man who fathered her daughter for his sake. If she was trying to spare him, it wasn't working.

"…Didn't know what he'd done until he saw the bloody sword in his hand." She finished.

"Yeah, he looked confused." He admitted blandly. "Are you trying to make an excuse for him?" Now he sounded every bit like the jealous boyfriend that he was. He couldn't put that genie back in the bottle.

"No." she back paddled, but not for the reasons he imagined. Adalind looked over his shoulder to their bedroom door and then turned towards him, whispered conspiratorially "I'm trying to tell you that Diana made him do it, because she knew that Bonaparte had choked me."

Okay, this was unexpected. When Bonaparte died, there were only two men standing in the middle of his loft. What Adalind was saying sounded impossible. He'd seen what Hexenbiests could do. This was clearly something else.

"She can do that?" Nick sounded sceptical.

"Mm-hmm. She also caused the death of Rachel Wood. I watched her."

"…But how?" He asked, ignoring the alarm ringing in his head, or the fact that Adalind only thought of telling him now.

"She sort of brought me there telepathically. At first, I thought it was a dream. It made no sense finding myself in the middle of Rachel Wood's bedroom and then I heard she was truly dead and realised what Diana had done."

That explained a lot, why Renard had initially approached Adalind as his alibi when Hank and Wu arrested him while Nick was still on the run, or why Adalind never went back to the firm after leaving the Black Claw mansion, choosing to stay home with Diana instead. Adalind and Renard were both protecting their daughter but that didn't bother him as much as realising Adalind still didn't trust him, the thought raged fiercely in his mind. He had thought they were over their trust issues but apparently, he was mistaken.

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you before. I just didn't know how you'd react and I was afraid telling you would put you in danger. I have spent almost every day with Diana trying to be a mother to her and undo some of the damage I have caused her in my ignorance. I am the reason Diana is the way she is and I would never forgive myself if anything ever happened to you because her. Some days, I think it's working, that I am getting through to her and then other days she goes over to Sean's and I worry. I worry that he's influencing her against us…me…you. Diana killed Bonaparte for choking me. She went after Rachel because she perceived her as a threat and I couldn't let that happen to you. I was wrong not to tell you. I know that having Diana with us hasn't been easy and it's selfish of me to want to be with the people I love the most in this world. I don't want to lose either of you." She said, her eyes downcast.

"I don't want to lose you either." He finally said, after a moment of contemplative silence and taking her hand in his.

"I think we need to tell Renard about the tunnel. If Diana is connected to this in some way and he knows someone who can help us…"

"I don't trust him."

"I don't either, but this is his daughter. He wouldn't do anything to hurt her, and I think we need all the help we can get in figuring out what those symbols mean and how they connect to Diana."

He begrudgingly conceded the point. He may hate Renard but he couldn't deny that he loved Diana.

A/N: The last part of this chapter happens at the beginning of 6x11 but I put this conversation between Nick and Adalind in this chapter since it followed immediately after the events of 6x10. While writing this chapter, it dawned on me just how the end of the show wasn't structured well at all. Don't get me wrong, I love the show, and I love these characters but some of the writing just didn't make any sense. I am going to put my spin on the ending and attempt to tie some loose ends so the ending or rather the whole six seasons full of the show makes some sense at least. That means we're not far from the end of my little experiment in filling the gaps of what we saw on screen. I hope you have enjoyed reading it as much as I have writing it.