a/n: The response I received to the previous chapter was phenomenal. I have been continuously blown away by the support I've gotten for this fic. There was one guest review I received that I screen shot and sent around to my family because I have never been so proud of my writing as I was after reading that review. Thank you!

Necessary Sins – Chapter 31

He woke with a face full of blonde hair and a small fist clenched around the sleeve of his t-shirt. Adalind's leg was tangled between his own and at some point he'd lost his pillow in a badly one-sided fight. He didn't open his eyes right away, this moment was one to be savoured. He lay on his back, eyes closed just breathing in the fact that this was his life. Tucked up in bed with his pregnant wife and the little girl he already considered his daughter squished between them. He hadn't known it the night before but it really had been the perfect wedding night.

He and Adalind both valued family more than they needed another opportunity to have sex. His mother had managed to gift Adalind with something much more important than another chance to have increasingly less wild sex with her new husband. It made their wedding day all the more special and would be something else joyous to mark the day.

Diana moved in her sleep and her hair tickled his face as it slid away from him. He wrinkled his nose against the sensation and opened his eyes. Diana wriggled around a bit more and he looked down to see that she had rolled right around to face him and was studying him with an intensity he should have found unnerving. Behind her, he could see that Adalind was still asleep. She'd exhausted herself crying happy tears and any time she managed to get a full night's sleep wasn't to be interrupted.

'Hey,' he whispered to Diana. 'Sleep okay?'

'The baby kicks a lot,' she informed him in an exaggerated whisper.

Amused, Nick grinned. 'He does. Did he kick you?'

Diana nodded. 'Do you think he likes me?' The thought seemed to be of great concern to Diana and Nick was struck by the thought that Diana, like any kid when a younger sibling came along, was probably worried about the loss of attention. With Diana, though, it was likely a hundred times worse because Adalind had spent the last eight plus months growing their son and getting to know him (in a way) whereas Diana had been hiding with his mom.

'I think he's going to love you,' Nick told her honestly.

Diana nodded again, face the picture of seriousness. 'I'm going to love him too.'

His smile was soft this time, a content kind of smile. He had a lot of questions for his mother about what to expect from Diana. In the short time he'd known her as a baby she'd displayed some incredible powers but he hadn't seen any sign of them last night and he hadn't seen that shade of violet in her eyes. Lying beside him in the half light of day talking about how much she would love her baby brother, she seemed like a perfectly normal little girl. He didn't want that to change, he wanted her to have the chance to be normal but she'd already grown so much in the time she'd been gone. How fast was she growing? How long would she be this little girl for?

On the nightstand his cell phone chirped with a new text and Adalind jerked awake. The sudden movement had Diana giggling and Nick ignored the phone for the moment in favour of watching Adalind. There was a moment, before she was properly awake, where she squeezed her eyes shut and simply listened to the sound of Diana's laugh. Nick had no doubt that for that brief moment between sleep and wakefulness, she'd feared it had all been a dream. Then her eyes opened and she saw Diana and Nick looking at her and her smile was bright enough to light the entire room.

'Morning,' he greeted. He nudged Diana playfully toward her mother. 'I'm going to go let the contractors in.'

Nick slipped from bed, leaving Adalind and Diana talking in soft quiet voices. He glanced back at them from the door and Adalind's gaze met his own. She was smiling and radiating such happiness it really was a wonder she hadn't found a way to light the whole room with bright sunshine. He slid the door of their bedroom open wider and slipped out into the living room. His mother was already up and dressed, mug of coffee in hand as she studied the security monitors.

'Hey,' he greeted as he passed by her to reach the new control panel that had been installed by the elevator. He pushed the appropriate buttons and on the monitors the garage doors opened to admit todays work crew.

'It's impressive,' his mother said, eyes leaving the monitor to meet his. 'You did good, Nicky.'

The praise felt weird. He'd gone so long without his mother's approval that now it seemed wrong to be hearing it. He was old enough now that he didn't need her approval but as a son he still wanted it. To know that she approved of what she was seeing warmed him but the fact that it did annoyed him. He supposed that was something all grown sons felt but he didn't exactly have any experience with that kind of thing. All of his interactions with his mother since she'd come back from the dead had been all too brief when in person and short and often coded via email.

'They should be starting on the loft extension today,' he told her, moving into the kitchen to get his own coffee. 'It'll still be a week at the earliest before Diana will have a room.' He filled up his mug and then looked at her over the rim as he sipped. 'There'll be an apartment downstairs,' he told her. 'Josh was planning to move in but you're welcome to it. Or there'll be a spare room up here. Adalind wants to turn it into an office but we could turn it into a room for you. How long are you planning on staying?'

She didn't answer him right away. Last night she'd said she'd be staying for a while but how long was a while? Did that just mean she was staying for a few days or a week? Was she planning on staying or did she have somewhere else she had to be? It was a startling realisation but he didn't know much about his mother. The first time she'd come back into his life she'd claimed to have been hiding from the people who had killed his father. She'd told him she'd spent years tracking down his killers and then she'd disappeared on a mission to destroy the coins.

The next time he'd seen her she'd been working with the Resistance and tasked with getting Adalind safely out of Austria. He had no idea how she'd come to work for the Resistance but he did know they didn't exist anymore and she'd spent the last year on the run, hiding Diana from people who wanted to use her. Nick had no idea what his mother might to do now. He had no idea what she would want to do now, no idea what her plans were.

'I don't know,' she told him honestly. 'There have been rumours about this Black Claw you asked me about. They might be worth looking into.'

He nodded. 'We have something planned today to try and get hold of someone from Black Claw. Now that you're here we can send you with Trubel instead of Rosalee.'

'Trubel?' His mother raised an eyebrow. 'Is that a name?'

Nick laughed softly. 'Theresa Rubel – but trust me, Trubel fits her better. She's a Grimm.'

'And Josh as well?'

'Josh is complicated. When we met he had no idea about wesen or Grimms. His father was the Grimm, he just wanted to pass something along to me before he died. HW got hold of Josh and they tortured the Grimm out in him.'

'They what?' his mother asked, voice sharp.

Nick smiled grimly. 'I told you – complicated. We have a lot to catch up on. What about Diana? Is she okay? You sent some weird emails for a bit there.'

His mother frowned at the change in subject but didn't try to force it back. 'We need to talk about Diana,' she admitted. 'Adalind should be here for it.'

'Adalind should be here for what?' Adalind asked, stepping out of the bedroom, Diana in her arms. She might have smiled a greeting at his mother any other time but now she was showing nothing but worry. 'What's going on?'

She moved into the kitchen to stand beside Nick, forming a barrier of sorts between Diana and his mother. Nick didn't comment on the move, simply said, 'I asked if Diana was okay.'

'She's different,' Adalind told him and there was a slight edge of worry she'd probably been ignoring because she finally had her daughter back.

Nick didn't know if this was a conversation they should be having in front of Diana but it wasn't like they could send her off somewhere to play. She didn't have a room of her own and she didn't have any toys to play with. His mother had arrived with a single bag filled with clothes and basic supplies for Diana that had a change of clothes for her and some money stuffed inside. They would need to take Diana shopping as soon as they got the chance, she needed more than what was in that little bag. His mother needed some more things as well but she could sort her own things out.

'She's okay,' his mother assured them. 'There were some problems a few months ago, her powers were getting hard for her to control and she was aging too quickly. For a week she was in a lot of pain – growing pains, you could call them.'

Adalind hugged Diana tighter eliciting a squeak of protest from Diana who had, until that moment, been content to snuggle in her mother's arms an ignore the conversation around her. 'Pain?' Adalind's voice was strained. 'She was in pain?'

His mother nodded. 'The ritual you did to regain your powers did something to Diana, something unnatural. Her powers were strong but her body was having to grow too quickly to accommodate it. She was growing so fast we couldn't stay in any one place more than a week and her powers were getting out of control.'

'I did that to her?' Adalind had moved beyond strained to horrified. The idea that something she'd done had caused physical harm to her daughter was almost too much to bare.

Nick, though, was paying enough attention to notice his mother's continual use of the past tense. 'What do you mean "were"?'

'I took her to Europe,' his mother explained. 'Tracked down some people who knew about the ritual Adalind did. Eventually I found someone who thought there might be a way to reverse the effects on Diana but she couldn't tell me the cost.'

'Reverse the effects?' Adalind repeated, voice hollow. 'What cost?'

'Undoing the effects of the spell stripped her of her powers,' his mother explained. 'She may never get them back.'

Nick got the distinct impression that had his mother been having this conversation with Renard the reactions would have been completely different. As it were, he and Adalind only had one question for his mother and Adalind beat him to asking it by half a second. 'But she's okay now? She's not in any pain?'

His mother nodded. 'She perfectly fine. Physically, she's a little older than she should be, you lost about a year and a half, but she is fine. The woman who helped me assured me she will grow like any other little girl now.'

Adalind reacted to that news with a relieved sob that she managed to choke back for Diana's sake. 'She'll be able to go to school and grow up like a normal little girl?'

His mother nodded. 'There's still a chance when she hits puberty she'll regain her powers but it's only a small one.'

Adalind shook her head. 'I don't care, we'll deal with that when we have to.' She gave Diana another tight squeeze which had Diana protesting again and then she set Diana down on the bench and smiled brightly through eyes shiny with tears. 'How about I make us some pancakes? You like pancakes, right?' The question was asked of Diana but Adalind cast a quick look over at his mother.

Nick felt a terrible pang of guilt when he realised there were so many things Adalind had missed out on, so many things she didn't know about her own daughter because he had taken her away and sent her running off with his mother. It didn't matter, though, they had Diana back now and they would learn all the things about Diana they had missed out on.

His cell phone rang and he left the three of them in the kitchen making a start on breakfast and went to answer it. As he was crossing the living room, a head popped up through the open doorway he'd been using while the elevator was out.

'We good to come up and get started?' the head of the second crew, Patrick, asked.

Nick nodded, without pausing. 'We're going to need the extension done faster than originally planned. Is that going to cause problems?'

Patrick's eyes strayed over to the two new voices coming from the kitchen and nodded his understanding. 'We can hold off on finishing off downstairs until we're done up here.'

'Thank you.'

The phone call was from Rosalee, telling him she and Monroe were heading to the warehouse to help Trubel and Josh set up for the auction. He told her both he and his mother would meet them there shortly but she told him he had to make a stop first.

'You need to go see Juliette,' Rosalee informed him. 'After you left last night I talked with her a little. You owe her an explanation and I think it needs to be sooner rather than later.'

'You think this will cause problems?' That didn't make sense to Nick but he had taken his little family home the moment Juliette had fled for the bathroom. He'd only held off leaving long enough to tell Rosalee what had happened and send her after Juliette.

'No,' she told him honestly. 'But I think we all owe her an explanation and some peace of mind. It was unfair of us to not think about how this would hurt her.'

'Today isn't exactly a good time.'

'There'll never be a good time,' Rosalee pointed out. 'Get it over and done with so she can move on and we have one less thing to deal with.' There was a pause in which Rosalee seemed to reflect on how harsh that had sounded. 'I didn't mean it like that.'

'I know what you meant,' Nick assured her. 'I know, you're right.' He considered his options for a moment and then said, 'Adalind can drop my mom off while I go speak with Juliette. She's going to have to take Diana shopping, we have nothing for her.'

He could hear the smile in Rosalee's words. 'I'm sure Adalind will love the excuse to spend the day with Diana.'

'You should join her. My mom can go to the auction in your place.'

'Actually,' Rosalee disagreed. 'I'll send Monroe. It's probably a better idea to have a big and intimidating blutbad acting as bodyguard.'

The idea that a bodyguard to help keep Diana safe might be needed reminded Nick that he was going to have to broach the topic of Diana's return with Renard. He had no idea how that would work or how the news would be received but the sooner Renard heard the news from Nick, the less likely he was to get angry and try to take her, as he would if he heard the news from someone else. That way, Nick could leave the issue of telling the King his granddaughter was back to Renard.

After he got off the phone with Rosalee, it rang again before he even had the chance to put it down. This time it was Trubel, with the news that she was at the warehouse with the fence and the antiquities expert ready to start setting up but she'd gotten a call from HW demanding she make an appearance. There was no way she could get away with not showing up, her call was more a warning that their smooth plan was already suffering setbacks.

He actually made it back to the kitchen to help with breakfast before his phone rang again. This time it was Wu announcing he and Hank were moving the last of the treasure into the warehouse, letting him know they'd had no trouble with it overnight. Moving the treasure to the warehouse the day before had been risky but it had proved easier to do that while he and Adalind had been around in the morning to oversee it. It meant they'd had to have someone watching over the treasure all night in the warehouse but Bud and Josh had shared the duty with Hank and Wu so it wasn't too bad.

Finally, Nick was able to sit down for a nice breakfast with his family before they had to step outside of the fome and deal with the world.

Adalind was more than happy to ferry his mother to the warehouse to trade her with Monroe for some much-needed shopping. 'Someone will need to do the heavy lifting,' she pointed out. 'We might need to take your car too.'

Nick nodded. 'Call Bud if you run out of room, I'm sure he wouldn't mind bringing his truck for you to load up.' Bud would probably be thrilled to help out. 'Have you got a list?'

Adalind held up a yellow legal pad that had been by her elbow unnoticed until now. He was so used to seeing them floating around the loft he didn't notice them anymore. 'I'm working on it. I had a list going for the baby but I'm going to have to wait on some things for him. Diana needs clothes and toys – a bed.'

'I want a bed,' Diana agreed. 'Can I pick?'

'Yes, baby, you can choose a bed but you won't be able to sleep in it for a little while. We still need to build you a bedroom.'

The idea of having to wait before she could sleep in her brand-new bed was eclipsed by her excitement over the news she would get to have her own room. 'And I won't have to share?'

'Nope,' Nick assured her. 'It will be all yours.' To Adalind he said, 'You don't have to get it all now. I'm sure Diana would love to pick out things for her room when it's ready too, right Diana?'

Diana nodded enthusiastically, mouth full of pancake that Nick had found himself automatically cutting up into bitesize pieces for her. 'One piece at a time,' his mother admonished, before reminding Adalind, 'You need a car seat first.'

Nick left them making a list to have a shower, thinking about how all the stuff they needed to buy was going to eat into their treasure earnings. He wasn't sure how much the renovation was going to cost all up, he expected there to be additional unforeseen costs and buying toys and supplies for two kids when they'd budgeted for one would definitely stretch things but Nick wasn't worried. Once they had everything they needed, once the treasure had been sold off and the renovations were done, then he and Adalind could sit down and work out how much money they could afford to spend on certain things each week.

He was still thinking about the practicalities of a future with Adalind when he knocked on the door of the apartment Juliette shared with Alicia. He had no idea how his sudden appearance would be received – by either woman – but Rosalee was right to tell him not to put this off. Juliette deserved a clean break and it would be better to hit her with explanations while she was still raw from having her heart freshly stomped on than to once more reopen the wound a week or so from now.

He hoped he didn't look too happy from his cosy morning with family but it was Alicia who answered his knock and she smiled at him, though a little tightly. 'Come to explain yourself?' she asked but there was little accusation in her tone, giving Nick the impression that she had expected him to move on. He wondered if Juliette had told her everything about their break-up and what had happened last night.

Did Alicia think he'd cheated on Juliette with Adalind? Did she think he'd been cheating on Juliette for months before they broke up? Maybe if he wasn't so content with the way his life turned out he'd be more worried about what Alicia thought – because whatever Alicia thought came from things Juliette had told her – but he couldn't work up the energy to care. Yes, he owed Juliette an explanation but he also knew he was only giving her the explanation because she'd walked in on a scene and a lot of drama had followed.

If Juliette hadn't walked in when she did, he doubted he'd ever have bothered with explanations. He wouldn't have felt like he owed her one if she'd bumped into them a few years down the track when his son was a little older and the timing a little less clear.

'I've come to talk,' Nick offered instead. 'Can I talk to her?'

'She doesn't want to see you,' Alicia told him but she stepped away from the door and motioned him inside. 'That was a hard thing for her to see,' she told him quietly. 'I think she thought you'd get back together eventually.'

'That was never going to happen,' Nick explained.

'I know,' Alicia told him. 'She told she about the break-up. I'm obligated to take her side no matter what but…' she trailed off but Nick understood what she was saying and it answered his earlier question. 'I'll leave you to it.' She nodded through to the living room and then slipped down the hallway to disappear into what he assumed was her bedroom.

Steeling himself against the coming confrontation, Nick stepped into the living room. Juliette was sitting on the couch beneath the old blanket her grandmother had given her years ago, staring blankly at a news program on the television. She looked awful, like she hadn't slept much at all and he felt the tiniest twinge of guilt that he immediately quashed because he'd made it perfectly clear numerous times after they broke up that they were over and he was done. He wouldn't feel guilty for her foolishly hoping for something that he'd told her would never happen.

'Juliette,' he greeted conversationally.

'Why are you here?' she asked in a hollow voice.

'To explain.'

'What's there to explain?' she demanded. She hadn't taken her eyes off the television.

'I slept with Adalind the day of Monroe and Rosalee's wedding,' he told her, knowing that the blunt statement would gain her attention. And it did, she turned to look at him, switching the television off as she did and tossing the remote onto the couch beside her.

'You cheated on me.'

He didn't see the point in clarifying how exactly that cheating had occurred, it wasn't any of Juliette's business and it wouldn't make any difference to how things went between them now. 'Yes,' he told her. 'You were out getting your hair done or something and she came over to talk. We had sex. Twice. It was a mistake and we both recognised that but we stayed in touch. When she was attacked a couple of weeks later she called me and I went to get her and took her to the hospital. We became friends.'

Juliette snorted. 'You hated her!' she snarled at him. 'She hated you! How do you just fall in to bed with someone who has tried to kill you, who tried to kill your friends?'

Nick considered how he could best phrase his next words but decided sugar coating things would get him nowhere. 'Adalind and I have always flirted with the idea of sex,' he said simply. 'This time, we were both worked up enough that her throwing the drawer from my dresser at me was more of a turn on than a threat.' Juliette looked disgusted and Nick just shrugged. 'I didn't just hop into bed with her after we broke up. We were friends for a long time before that happened but we both wanted more.'

'And the baby?' she asked coldly.

'I don't owe you an explanation, Juliette,' he said firmly, clarifying he was doing this because he wanted to. 'Adalind got pregnant that first time. We were stupid and didn't use protection and it happened. We weren't going to hold it against him, it wasn't his fault we were careless. But we are happy. We love each other. We can give each other the future we both want. You could never give me that, Juliette. I could never give you that. If you're honest with yourself, you never wanted it with me. Not once you knew what it meant that I was a Grimm.

'It was a slap in the face, seeing me with Adalind and that hurt, for that I'm sorry, but you and I were never going to work. You aren't comfortable with my lifestyle and I wasn't going to change who I am just to please you. What Adalind and I have is real, it's good and its strong. What we have is so much more than anything you and I ever had and I know you don't want to hear it but I need to say it. We would have kept trying and it would have hurt both of us in the long run.

'I love my wife. I love my son and the daughter I gained when I fell for Adalind. That's my family now, that's the future I want and I'm sorry if that hurts you but I'm not sorry for being happy.'

He'd said all he had to say and now it was up to Juliette. He didn't need anything from her like she had wanted words from him but he did need to know that she'd heard his words, that she'd understood what he was saying so that he didn't have to worry about her doing something stupid later like turning up at Rosalee's or the Spice Shop looking for him. He didn't need her interfering with his life as a Grimm through some misguided attempt to show him she could handle it too.

Juliette had never been the spiteful type before but he also knew she'd never been hurt like this before. He'd been clear on the issue of their break-up, clearer than he had to be and she'd still held out some hope that they could fix things. Despite seeing more evidence to prove otherwise somehow Juliette had held on to what they had and that tiny non-existent hope of getting it back even stronger than before.

In a way, it would have been almost easier if he thought Juliette did still love him, then he would understand why she was so angry at him but what Juliette was in love with was the idea of him. Juliette looked at him and she still saw the young police officer she'd first met, the one she'd talked about building a future with. It had been a really long time since he'd looked at her and seen that woman. Longer than he had ever been comfortable admitting before.

He could look back now and pinpoint the moment when he should have let go. Taking advantage of her memory loss would have been so easy but even before then he should have heeded his aunt's words. He should have made a clean break before the lies had started, before she'd ever been at risk of getting hurt.

He honestly believed he'd have ended up right where he was now, married to Adalind with a baby on the way but there would likely have been a lot less pain and trauma (not just for Juliette) along the way.

'I wanted to marry you,' Juliette told him and her tone was flat, as though she was repeating words she'd said to herself a dozen or more times until they'd lost any recognisable shape and meaning. He thought she probably had said them so many times. 'That first day when we met, I looked at you and I could see a future with you.'

'You didn't see this future,' Nick pointed out. 'You didn't see what I would become.'

'It didn't matter at first,' Juliette told him, glancing away to stare at the blank television screen. 'At first, everything about you started to make so much more sense. I had answers and I was seeing this whole other world that was so important to you that I wanted it to be important to me too. The difference was I still had that future in mind, the one I imagined when we first met but you didn't.'

'No,' he countered. 'I still wanted that future with you but my idea of the future changed to fit the shape of the people we'd become. You were holding on to a man that doesn't exist anymore.'

'I wasn't ready to let him go.'

'You don't get to be ready,' he told her. 'We broke up, Juliette, and I've moved on. You don't even want this life with me. I could tell you all of the dangerous things that have happened to Adalind in the last couple of months and you would be horrified. You'd have cut and run and taken my kid and I would never see you again because you would be terrified of the life you were bringing our children into.

'Deep down, I think you know that. You're not cut out for this life, Juliette, you weren't meant to be. One day, you're going to find a nice normal guy and you're going to have that future of kids and a white picket fence with a yard for your dog to play in. You need that. Me? I'm building a freaking fome where my kids will be able to sleep and play behind the best security system money can buy but that doesn't mean they won't have the dog or the chance to play at the park.

'My life scares the hell out of you Juliette but Adalind embraces that and I love her for it.'

The silence that hung over them after he said his piece was so thick, the tension heavy enough to cut with a knife. Nick waited to hear if she had something else to say but when she didn't he turned to go.

'I'm glad you found someone,' she said suddenly and he turned back around to face her but she wasn't looking at him. 'You're right, I could never be happy with that future.'

When she didn't seem to have anything more to say he turned to leave once again. 'Good bye, Juliette.'

This time he actually made it into the hallway before she called after him. 'Nick?'

'Yeah?'

'What the hell is a "fome"?'