"Dude, are you sure you don't want to see a doctor?"
Nick tossed back a glass of water to wash the pills down. He could dry swallow, of course, but there was no point in leaving the aftertaste in his mouth if he didn't have to.
"I don't know what they could tell me." he brushed off Wu's concerned question with a shrug. "I get migraines. There isn't a dietary or environmental trigger, and I refuse to quit my job just on the off chance they'll stop happening if I'm less stressed. If I go see a doctor, all they'll do is charge me money to tell me what I already know." he paused, then- "And no, I'm not going to get prescription pain medication."
"Sorry, sorry." Wu sighed, shaking his head. "I just keep thinking- Just because aspirin isn't over the counter doesn't mean that it's any better for you long-term, you know?"
"Yeah, I know." Nick offered Wu a faint smile. It was hard to find the Sergeant's inner mother hen, but it was there, buried beneath layers of snark and sarcasm. Apparently, the thought of Nick pill popping was enough to bring it out.
Wu was frowning at the tiny bottle in his hand as he slipped it back into his coat pocket. He opened his mouth, prepared to say something else-
Nick's phone went off.
He shot the Waschbar an apologetic shrug, digging back into his pocket past the aspirin for it. When he looked down at the text he'd just received, a wince flashed across his face.
"That bad?" Wu asked, faintly.
Nick pushed the phone back into his pocket. Finished off the last of his coffee and dumped the cup into the trash.
"There's a body."
x
What had really surprised him was how rarely his job consisted of investigating homicides.
So much more often, it demanded he deal with minor shoplifting and domestic disputes and violated paroles and broken restraining orders. So much more often, there was the opportunity to mend things, to repair the damage done. Return stolen merchandise and scare the kids out of any further mischief, offer protective custody until everything could be sorted out- both times he'd been called out to find a parolee, it turned out they hadn't even run. He'd found them at their house and apartment, and respectively, one of them hadn't met with his officer because his wife had been in labor and the other one had been drunk out of his mind and literally forgotten about it.
Basically no harm, no foul.
But as he stood over what little remained of a body, Nick's heart sank. It was rare enough that the only case he'd worked when he was a cop that had a death toll had been an old woman who'd walked into the road. Nobody had ever been able to definitively give an answer whether it had been a moment of senility, or if her eyes had given out on her, or if she'd just decided that she'd lived for long enough and didn't want to die bedridden.
Not in this case. Nowhere near so lucky.
Flesh and blood and bone with a single running shoe whose size and color indicated that the scraps left behind had been a young woman recently. A young woman who had been all but torn apart, scraps of her clothes strewn everywhere. The blood barely visible against the vibrant red of the cloth.
The longer he stared at it, the more he couldn't stop thinking about the person it had been. Had she been tall or short? Shy, or outgoing? Cautious, or willing to stop on the street to give a stranger directions?
Did she have time to scream?
If she was as athletic as the running shoe indicated, then she must have struggled. Maybe not if she'd been taken by surprise, but if she'd seen any chance at all, then wouldn't she have fought back?
She'd been torn to ribbons. What little of her still remained wasn't even in one piece. The insects and birds must have gotten to her before they had, the animals foraging for food coming across her body and dragging away scraps.
And still, he wondered. Had she screamed?
What race had she been before she died? Predator or prey? Hunter or hunted?
Whatever had hunted her, it had borne witness to the last moments of her life. Watched as that life had been snuffed out, as the light had left her eyes, as the planet kept spinning- but a single person's whole world had ground to a halt.
And had she screamed?
Had it been long, and loud, until her lungs ached and burned? Had it been cut off before it could even begin- a drawn breath, and then nothing?
Or had she been alive?
Alive, as she whimpered and begged, pleading for mercy, pleading for it to end-
"Nick!" someone called, and he shook himself free of the daze which had overcome him. For just a moment, revulsion churned within him, disgust with himself, but he shoved it down.
He had just been considering those things because he was trying to get into the head of the victim to better determine who or what her killer had been. That was all. It was an important part of the investigation.
Nick turned, looking back to where Hank was waving him over.
His headache was back in full force, as if he'd never taken a single pill for it. Not for the first time, Nick cursed his promise to Wu that he would be careful not to risk overdosing.
He could already tell that this was going to be a long day.
x
It wasn't the first attack of it's kind.
Two in as many months. The first one had been up at Munson Creek Falls, attributed to a bobcat that had never been found. The park they'd found their girl in, though, had been surrounded by a populated area on all sides. No bobcats or mountain lions down there. He'd been careful, when looking over the crime scene photos again, not to get too caught up in them.
It was only once they'd gotten a hit on a missing persons report at the university that Nick had begun to get an inkling suspicion of what had happened.
Standing there, holding Sylvie Oster's picture in his hand, the very first thing that caught his eye was also the one that made his heart clench.
"These hoodies you're both wearing," he began, casually. "Sorority jackets?"
"Uh, yeah." the girl had stared up at him with wide, confused eyes. "Omega Beta Theta pride."
Nick handed back the phone. Stuffed his hands into his pockets.
From the quizzical look that Hank was shooting him, he hadn't fully managed to wipe the grimace off his face.
"Thank you for your help." he nodded to the roommate, pulling out his card and offering it to her. "If you can think of anything- anything at all- or if you need anything, give us a call."
"T... thanks." the young woman looked it over, then looked up at Nick again, quizzically. "What's so important about our hoodies?"
Nick hesitated. He wanted to say it, to blurt it out, to scream it from the hills. But instead, he shook his head.
"It's an ongoing investigation." he managed to force out. "We'll let you know when we have definitive information."
Hank, though, was not so easily swayed. When he slipped into the driver's side of the car, it was with a searching look directed at Nick.
"Okay." he finally spoke up, "I'll bite. What's the deal with the coat?"
Nick winced. This was it. The number one single most frustrating thing about being a Grimm.
He knew so many things about every race out there. Their quirks, their habits, their rituals. And more than anything, their triggers. If he had his way, he would share that information freely any time it became needed.
But it wasn't common knowledge that Blutbaden literally saw red when they saw the color red. That wasn't something that he could just blurt out and expect people to overlook the fact that he knew it. He'd gotten away with professing to know the obscure Wendigo symbol because he had implied he was one- by neither confirming nor denying it, he might as well have outright stamped the label across his forehead. And so, nobody had pushed, because they all presumed they knew the answer.
If he now professed to knowing secretive racial tidbits about Blutbad, as well, it wouldn't go over with as little of a fuss.
He would have to direct the investigation towards the idea of potential predators in the area. Until then, though...
"I nearly missed it, too." Nick stated, quietly. "This morning, when we were looking at the scene. It was easy to overlook, with all that blood. But there were scraps of red cloth strewn everywhere. That exact same shade of bright red."
Hank's expression fell.
The drive back to the station was in silence.
x
It had been such a long day.
He was reasonably assured, at least, that when the DNA test on the wounds came back, it would show a Blutbad's saliva. Or the teeth marks would match. Or something to set them on the right track.
As they packed up to head home, Wu was teasing Hank about the young Wildermann he'd been seeing for a few weeks now. All Nick could think was that he'd met Rachel, and he could condone Hank keeping her company a lot more than the previous option. She got him out of the house more, too- always insisting on taking hikes and picnics. And that was something Nick would never see as a bad thing, after remembering how long Hank had spent barely going anywhere other than his house and the station.
Nick rubbed his forehead, trying to alleviate the burning there. That felt like it had been so long ago, when he'd first met Hank. It was hard to imagine that this was the same person- this partner of his who was so outgoing, so uplifting- was the same one who'd nearly fallen apart after his last marriage had broken up.
He managed a small smile through the pain. Hank wasn't the only one who'd changed a lot in a short time. Since coming to Portland, Nick had found a job worth doing in a place worth protecting with people worth standing up for. Everything he'd ever worried about when it came to relating to outsiders he'd seen proved wrong, all one after another as his misconceptions had toppled like dominoes.
That was the thought he kept in mind as he drove to his apartment. As he stopped the car, he looked up at the balcony window that stared over the street.
It wasn't going to be long, now. He'd had that apartment for so long, but he'd finally found a little house for himself. With a yard and trees and everything. He'd put down the deposit- all he had to do now was to move his stuff out and pay his final month's rent on the apartment.
He would miss the Garretts. The couple had taken good care of him, their doors always open any time of day or night if he needed to talk, or even just if he was in the mood for hot chocolate. His eyes trailed down to the bakery, lingering on the warm lights that still lit up the street.
The Garretts and Calyssa were all sitting together at the big table, mugs in their hands and a plate of cookies between them. All smiling and laughing.
He might as well go in and sit with them one last time. Make his peace with Calyssa, remind himself one last time that these people had been as good as family to him for all the years since he'd come to Portland.
When he pushed through the door with a smile, all three of them looked up. Mrs. Garrett lit up, beaming at him.
"Nick!" she exclaimed, delightedly. "You're back! Oh, just in time, there's a surprise for you!"
"A surprise?" he blinked. They couldn't possibly have known he would be down tonight, so what sort of surprise could it be?
Calyssa, grinning from ear to ear, moved her chair aside so Nick could see the woman sitting beside her.
Their visitor was fit and lean, a shawl draped over her head until it looked like a veil. Everything she wore looked like hand-sewn patterns, colorful once but now dulled by age and wear, draped across her body in complex designs and tied in tiny, intricate knots like a fallen royal's robes.
For a second, Nick couldn't breathe. His heart had torn in half, squeezing itself into his throat and dropping out the pit of his stomach at the same time. A chill went down his spine.
She sat there on the other side of the table, with a cup of tea in her hands and a gleam in her eye. She hadn't aged a day from how he remembered her.
"Hello, Nicky." his aunt Marie smiled at him. "It's good to see you again. Your friends were just telling me all about you."