Disclaimer: I don't own anything, and most obviously not Grimm or its characters. Some story concepts may have been borrowed and adapted unintentionally or intentionally from other fictions, books, tv shows, movies, religions, geography, history, theology, etc. This is what happened when I ran out of Nadalind stories to read.
WARNING! THIS IS MY FIRST FANFICTION (no beta)
Author's Note:
Please tell me if its crap or too slow or boring etc. Definitely need opinions on my pacing. Not that it'll really help too much, but recognition is the first step to recovery!
PLEASE REVIEW! It helps with MOTIVATION!
- - This is a single chapter posting - -
I was so mad when Renard went bad again at the end of the show. I've convinced myself he was mourning Juliette's death, because Eve was clearly not Juliette. As far as kicking him? I did kind of half take away his kid…
Also, I used the actresses used for Diana in the show to determine her ages in my story.
Measured from conception:
Diana's apparent aging according to the show (T) [in months]
Diana's linear age in the show's timeline (t) [in months]
T=0.1106((t)^2)-0.8367(t)
I'm a nerd…
I need to edit / write the rest
General Notes:
Hexenbiest and Zauberbiest are used as both singular and plural nouns. (I don't speak German)
Italics – thoughts or memories
Bold – quotes from TV series
"separated dialogue" – telephone conversations
Chapter 14
May 3rd – Around 9:30 PM
As Sean looked out the window beside Nick, he found it extremely difficult to identify the figure approaching. They were dressed all in black, and had a hood shrouding their face.
And they were alone.
Something struck him about the figure though, as they walked. Familiarity. A deep familiarity. He knew that walk. And as they got even closer, he knew that magic.
He ran to the front door and threw it open before the person on the other side even had a chance to knock.
"Mother?"
"Sean!" Elizabeth seemed equally surprised to see her son. Well… perhaps she was also surprised at having the door of an acquaintance's home opened so forcefully before she could knock. She slowly lowered her hand, and her son had the grace to look abashed. He stepped back to allow her in.
"Elizabeth?" she heard Henrietta's voice; another surprise.
"Uh, yeah. Wu. Adalind. This is my mother Elizabeth Lascelles." Renard remembered himself enough to make the necessary introductions. "Mother, this is Sergeant Wu, he works for me. And Adalind Schade… Diana's mother." That peaked the Hexenbiest's interest.
Elizabeth looked over Adalind curiously, noting her late stage pregnancy. She glanced at Nick, before nodding to herself. "As I thought…" She muttered under her breath.
Henrietta walked over and gave her old friend a warm embrace.
"I'm afraid my dear, that you weren't the one we were expecting."
Elizabeth's reply shocked them all.
"I know who you were expecting." She stated with a mischievous grin.
"And they ARE here. Kelly will drive around for a bit, until I call for her." Elizabeth held a hand up to forestall everyone's bursting questions. She looked pointedly at Juliette. "I needed to ascertain whether or not they would be safe here first."
She turned to Nick, where he now stood near his seated bond-mate. The eternal sentinel. She smiled at the couple.
"I'm afraid I need to have a rather important conversation with my son first." Elizabeth gave them a significant look. "Privately, if you don't mind."
"Of course, you can talk in my room. Uh, upstairs… first door on the right." Nick was always quick on the uptake.
They all watched as Elizabeth led her bewildered son up the stairs. They waited, until they heard the door shut, before speaking.
Henrietta laughed. "You are VERY lucky Nicholas Burkhardt."
"Had to happen sometime." He quipped.
"Mind sharing with the rest of the audience?" Wu questioned, bringing to Nick's attention the confused faces of every other person in the room, including Adalind's.
"Oh, yeah…" Nick grinned widely. "Well… I'm hoping this means," He gained confidence at Henrietta's nod of assurance. "—that Elizabeth will be the one to tell the captain that he shares Diana's paternity, literally, with me."
Adalind responded immediately.
"Oh my god! Thank god!"
Elizabeth quickly cast a ward of silence to ensure their privacy, before taking a seat in one of the armchairs by the window and waiting for her son to do the same.
"Sean, I wasn't expecting to find you here."
"Nor I you, mother," he replied curiously. "I guess this means you found them."
Sean was genuinely surprised. The Families and the Resistance, both, had expended untold resources trying to track down Kelly Burkhardt. He honestly never expected his mother to succeed.
"I told you I would…" Elizabeth teased. Sean shook his head with a small grin. He never should have doubted her. "However, I don't think it was all my own doing to tell you the truth." Interest and concern fell over his features.
Elizabeth told her son how she had used a lost child spell to track her own blood, and found them in Spokane, Washington.
"It seemed so easy. I did the spell here in Portland. I saw the city and took an hour flight over. I got a room and did the spell again. It was so strange. In the time between my first casting and my confrontation with Kelly Burkhardt at their motel, they hadn't moved. They didn't leave the room even once in over 24 hours."
When Elizabeth had arrived at the motel in the middle of the day, she had been surprised to see Kelly's vehicle in the lot. She'd originally intended to do surveillance of the property before moving in, but when she pulled into the lot she'd felt an odd tugging sensation on her magic.
"I don't even know what came over me at that point. I recklessly got out of my car and ran in the direction of the pull. Sean… the door wasn't even locked."
Of course, Kelly Burkhardt had been equally surprised to find a stranger suddenly burst through the unlocked door. She had been attempting to coax the toddler into her jacket when Elizabeth arrived. Immediately, she turned to attack the intruder only to find both herself and the stranger unable to move. The door behind Elizabeth slammed shut and locked.
"Diana let me go!" Kelly implored the violet eyed child. Elizabeth was awestruck. She'd been expecting a nine-month-old baby only to find herself faced with, what looked to be, a three-year-old toddler.
"No!" Came the tiny yet firm voice. "Nana Kelly cannot fight grandma!" The child unilaterally announced.
"She's a Hexenbiest!"
"No fighting!" Diana crossed her little arms, decision final.
"Diana didn't know who I was exactly…" Elizabeth explained. "But apparently, she felt the spell I used to track her. And because of the blood I used in the spell, she was able to sense our relation. Kelly later told me that Diana had been refusing to leave the motel room since noon of the day before. The exact time that I'd cast the first spell in Portland."
"So, let me get this straight. My daughter sensed your magic and her relationship to you from nearly three hundred miles away, and decided to LET you find her?" Sean was astounded by his daughter's advanced abilities.
"I guess you and Kelly must've worked things out."
"Oh yes. Diana wouldn't allow for anything less." Elizabeth laughed.
"Now, what was it you really wanted to tell me?" His mother sighed deeply. Sean knew that with the door already closed, a silencing ward would only be needed if there was shouting going on. That quiet conversation wasn't it.
"For what I need to tell you now, I need you to understand that it's in Diana's best interests that everyone come to an amicable agreement."
He thought that over.
"You're talking about Adalind and Nick… I guess you sensed the bond downstairs." Sean clearly expressed his displeasure for said bond in his intonation and grim demeanor.
"I did, and that will also factor into what I have to tell you."
Now Sean was confused. What else could there be?
"When I was with Kelly I didn't understand how Diana could have formed such a close bond with the Grimm when she clearly knew who I was. I actually asked Diana why she refused to be separated from Kelly."
"And?"
Elizabeth took another solidifying breath.
"She told me that she wanted to be with both of her grandmothers. I tried to explain to her the difference between an honorary relative and a true relative by blood.
"She told me she knew the difference. That her 'Nana Kelly' was the same as me. That she recognized her as the same, magically."
"That's impossible."
"Improbable, but not impossible. I asked her if I could check her blood with a spell. She wasn't too keen on the pain of course. Kelly helped a lot with that. We both wanted to know. After a great deal of bribery and coaxing we were able to perform paternity tests utilizing our own blood as comparison.
"Sean… Kelly Burkhardt is Diana's paternal grandmother by the exact same percentage that I am."
"That's ridiculous! You must've done something wrong! It's not possible!"
Elizabeth held up a hand to interject.
"Sean, do you remember when Eric's mother first began trying to kill us?"
"Yeah…" He replied confused by the non sequitur. "I was six when you started warning me not to accept anything from her. To never be alone with her. Why do you bring it up?" He didn't see any connection.
"When you were a toddler, the queen decided to have another child of her own. Over the years, she had three miscarriages. When you were six, the queen finally had a pregnancy that took. Due to the prior lack of success, as well as difficulties in their marriage, the King had the baby's blood tested. The baby was more than halfway to term. Your younger sister shared your father…
"But when they saw that she was part Hexenbiest, the queen had her terminated."
"You never told me this." Any newfound anger or resentment was lost on the dead queen.
"You didn't need to know that your younger sister had been murdered before her birth. There was enough suffering in your childhood. The queen told me when she thought she'd successfully poisoned me.
"The magic that I used to conceive you had unintended side effects. I shared blood with your father to ensure I would carry a perfectly healthy hybrid child. We made a blood pact, a claiming. As a result, ANY other children sired by your father would always have a genetic contribution coming from myself as well."
"When Nick stole Adalind's powers…"
"Exactly. This is why we were so cautious in returning. We knew Juliette might have become a Hexenbiest if the second Verfluchte Zwillingsschwester had failed to counter the first. The Hexenbiest magic came from Nick." He was stunned silent.
His mind quickly raced through all the ramifications of this newfound knowledge. They can take my daughter! He was building up to release his indignant fury, when his mother interrupted.
"What?!" He growled.
After a cold look from his mother, he took a breath and repeated in a calmer voice. "… what?"
"IF you cooperate with them, I don't believe you have anything to worry about. Don't fight them. They're bonded now, and you WILL lose. Not that Diana would allow otherwise. She's aware of both you and Nick. Diana knows she has two fathers and she EXPECTS you to get along." Elizabeth sternly informed.
His ire deflated.
He didn't stand a chance.
"Fine! I'll share! Will you call them now?"
May 3rd – Around 9:50 PM
Nick was perched on the arm of Adalind's armchair. He was attempting to calm her frazzled nerves at being so incredibly close to seeing Diana again. Honestly, Nick was more concerned about his mother and what she thought about the things she'd apparently found out before he did. And how she would react to his unborn son. But most of all how she would react to his bond with Adalind.
Hank and Wu were now up to speed on Diana's paternity. The took occupation of the green sofa against the wall while they peppered Henrietta with more questions where she was seated in the armchair next to Adalind's.
Juliette tried to remain inconspicuous, seated at the dining room table at the farthest seat from the front door. Monroe and Rosalee kept her company. And she was immensely grateful for Rosalee's renewed friendship. Monroe was still cautious of her, but at least he was kind enough to keep her company. From what she knew of Kelly Burkhardt, Juliette felt justified in fearing for her life.
It wasn't too long before Elizabeth returned to the main room with a moody Renard trailing behind her. A hush fell across the room at their approach. Adalind nearly jumped from her seat to accost the blond witch. Luckily, she couldn't. Sean didn't look very happy.
Elizabeth perched delicately on the cream sofa directly across from Adalind. Her son followed his mother's lead and sat down beside her. She smiled kindly at her granddaughter's other two parents.
"Well… before I call them, I just have to inform you all of one more… little surprise." Everyone listened attentively now.
"Is Diana okay?" came Adalind's alarmed response.
"She's perfectly healthy and happy." The tentative way Elizabeth said this invoked zero comfort whatsoever in the child's parents.
"W—Well then what's wrong?"
"Diana is aging faster than normal." Elizabeth didn't want to mince words. She was a mother too. "Sean mentioned that she was born three months early…?"
"Yeah, when I did the ritual, she started growing faster. She was supposed to be due in May, but she was born in early March—Is she gonna be okay?"
"We think she'll be fine, that her body is simply growing faster to accommodate her power."
"How fast is she growing?" Nick asked.
"Well according to Kelly, Diana cut her first tooth at a month and a half. Which is normally a five-month milestone, give or take a month or two. By the time I found them in December she was a toddler with all of her baby teeth, a three-year milestone. Over the course of the last month, with the help of a little memory alteration and forged documentation, we've been bringing her in to see Kehrseite pediatric specialists.
"As of last month, Diana appeared to be 43 months old, with perfectly concurrent physical, mental, and emotional developmental progress. There are no ill effects whatsoever to her accelerated development."
"How big is she now?" Sean asked.
"It's… getting faster as time passes. But we believe the growth will level off once she reaches an age when a child would normally manifest, around puberty.
"At the moment, at 14 months, Diana has the physical appearance and mental acuity of a five-year-old child." Elizabeth finished regretfully. Adalind was crying now. Even her son gave a stoically moist sniff and covertly wiped his eyes with a swipe down his face. She comfortingly rubbed his back, as a bewildered Nick held onto his bond-mate.
"I've missed s-so much…" Adalind blubbered.
"The important thing is, you won't have to miss any more." Elizabeth consoled.
With that, she pulled out a prepaid cell phone and finally made the call.