A/N: Thank you for reading and reviewing! It's very exciting to me that folks are excited about where this story is going. This is one of the first times I've gone this AU, and I have to tell you, it's been a wild ride so far. Thank you for coming with!


"Hank, look at me."

Hank does not look at Nick. Hank is very, very angry, and he only has eyes for Adalind.

"What the hell did you do to me?"

"A love spell," Adalind says. "I'm sorry Hank."

"Sorry doesn't cut it," Hank says. "I feel used and violated, and I don't even know what's real anymore. I still don't know if I believe in magic! What am I going to do with all of this—this—in my head?"

"I don't know." She holds her ground and meets his eyes, letting the discomfort settle—acknowledging it—holding it for him so that he doesn't have to carry it all himself. "Henrietta said a memory spell is out of the question, so you're going to have a lot to process for a while. I can answer any questions you have while you do that, but otherwise, I'll steer clear, okay? After tonight, you don't have to see me again unless you feel comfortable."

She's so calm that Nick is starting to wonder where the woman who taunted him for months has disappeared to. She must still be in there—he knows that—but now he's meeting another side of Adalind—the lawyer, the mediator, the survivor. There's no way that the woman he's seeing now only slept her way to the top. Her body may be a weapon for her—just like her magic and her sarcasm—but underneath it all, she might just be the most natural negotiator he's ever met.

"I know it's also going to be a little weird for you and Nick going forward," she adds, and Nick nods. Weird is just the tip of this iceberg.

"Weird doesn't even begin to cover it," Hank says, finally turning to look at Nick. "You had sex with her, man—while I was dying because she tried to kill me. What kind of a partner does that?"

"I don't know, Hank," Nick says. "I could say it was magic, but who knows. I'm sorry, too."

"We're partners Nick—we're supposed to protect each other. We're supposed to trust each other. How can I trust you when you've not only been hiding this whole secret life, but now that life almost got me killed!"

"Not having a partner in the know also could have gotten you killed," Monroe says. He and Rosalee are drinking red wine on the couch, watching the drama unfold in front of them.

"And you—" Hank says, "what even are you?"

"Blutbat," Monroe says. "Werewolves give us a bad name. Rosalee's a fuchsbau—a total fox. And you're lucky that we're friends with Nick and that he turned out to be a Grimm, because the number of times you two have almost been killed by a rogue wesen since I met you tells me that you were on track to get yourselves murdered in this town without the proper resources."

"You are sort of a bad wesen magnet," Rosalee says to Nick. "Although that's probably just the Grimm thing. There's a reason most Grimms move around a lot. Staying in one place tends to invite confrontation."

"Great," Nick says.

"Fucking fantastic," Hank says. "My partner's a magnet for death, and he doesn't even have the complementary superpowers anymore thanks to little miss love spell over here."

"Yeah, that is going to be a problem, Nick," Monroe says. "I mean even if you and Adalind do go the baby route, it's still going to be nine months before you're back in action, and that's going to create a power vacuum."

"Fun," Adalind says. "Love a power vacuum. So many opportunities."

"Not if your baby daddy ends up dead, it's not."

"Right." Adalind looks thoughtful for a moment, then she starts plotting. "We're going to need some hefty alliances, Nick. Sean's our best bet. It's icky, but he is a prince, and that does mean something. We definitely need a hexenbiest to keep us off the map. Maybe my mother, maybe Henrietta. If we could get another Grimm on side, that could be huge. Maybe the Resistance could hook us up? They know all the best rogue agents, and they might go for you in a big way now that they know you're not inclined to work for the Royals. Add in Monroe and Rosalee, and we should be safe enough. It's only nine months. I've survived coups longer than that."

Everyone stares at Adalind in silence for a moment. Nick's mind is buzzing—absorbing the plan, assessing the plan, admiring the plan and how quickly she developed it, but also freaking out about the plan because it's starting to sound like they really might be having a baby in nine months, and he's not at all sure if he's ready for that to be real yet.

"Wait," Hank says, pinching the bridge of his nose like he has a headache coming on. "What's this about a baby? Are you two having a baby? When did this happen? Does Juliette know?"

"No," Nick says. "It just happened. Or maybe just the start of it happened. Apparently us having sex tonight was the opening act for us making a baby in the next two weeks. We make the baby, we get our powers back when it's born. We don't make the baby, we go back to being ordinary citizens."

"Speak for yourself," Adalind says. "I don't do ordinary."

Nick rolls his eyes. "You also don't do magic anymore, Adalind. That's the whole point."

"Why?" Hank asks, and everyone looks at him. It's a great question, Nick thinks. Why is any of this happening right now? Why him? Why her? Why them?

"I don't know," Nick says. "Something out there thought we were the right parents for the job, I guess."

"What job?"

"Making a kid who's going to change the world," Nick says. "For the better hopefully, although how is anyone's guess."

"Well, fuck," Hank says.

"That's what I said."


It's not that everything is fine with Hank now. Hank's survived a lot of upsetting experiences tonight—they all have—and he's not going to be fine any time soon. But he has reached a new plateau of understanding about what happened, and he's no longer blaming Nick for the act of nature—or magic or fate—that brought him and Adalind together tonight.

"I'm not even going to pretend to understand this," Hank says to both of them on his way up to Monroe's guest bed. "Good luck, I guess, and please don't hex me again."

"I'll try not to," Adalind says—being more truthful than strictly necessary—and Nick glares at her. For a lawyer, you'd think she'd be better at telling little white lies.

"I know you meant that to be reassuring," Hank says, "but your bedside manner sucks."

"I'm not trying to be reassuring," Adalind says. "I'm trying to be truthful. I will never lie to you again, Hank, and that is a promise. I don't give it lightly."

There's something that passes between them then—some shared understanding that Nick may never be a part of. He's amazed when Hank nods, more at peace now than even a minute ago, and turns to head up the stairs.

"All right then," he says, and then he's gone, and Nick is left alone with Adalind.

"You were good with him," Nick says. "Really good, actually. How did you know how to do that?"

Adalind's smile is more of a grimace. "Experience," she says. "Magic like that—it can break you. Make you question everything. It's my mom's specialty. That's why Sean came to me for it—I learned from the best. But Henrietta's right, it's not my kind of magic. Trickery and confusion, yes—that's part of the fun, and it serves a purpose—but total mind control and manipulation? That can get dark pretty damn fast. I'd so much rather just fight and get it over with."

"Me, too," Nick says. "Point me at a head to cut off, and I'm happy."

She laughs, and he grins, pleased to see the tension sink back out of her shoulders. It always seems to creep in whenever they talk about her mom.

"I don't know about you, but it feels like this night started weeks ago," he says. "I'm going to bed. I'll take the floor, you can have the couch."

"Good," Adalind says, passing him with a yawn. "I was going to take it anyway."


He dreams of the forest by the ruins. There's snow on the ground—a soft, white blanket that covers the earth where they met and fought and fucked only hours before. There are icicles in the evergreens that glow and melt in the sun filtering down through the trees.

There's a little girl in the snow—bundled up in a hat and surprisingly sweet little mittens in a way that makes something inside him clench with fondness. She's all long blonde hair and sharp blue eyes and deep, deep dimples while she grins up at the sun, glowing herself in its soft, persistent beam.

The longer he looks, the less sure he is that the light comes from above. The girl looks like she's glowing from the inside—shining bright enough to melt the snow and reawaken the earth. His little girl is jumpstarting spring.

The light dims slowly. The snow is gone and the air is wet and warm—ready for new life—and she turns to him with wide blue eyes and that broad dimpled grin.

"Where's mommy?" she asks, and he looks for her. For Adalind. He knows that's who mommy is.

"I don't know, kiddo," he says. He's trying to find her, but the edges of this little clearing are vague and dim, and many eyes stir in the dark. "I don't know how to find her."

"You have to," the girl says. "I need you both."

She's not smiling now—not pleased—and where once her glowing light was the warmth of the sun, now it's the flame of a wildfire, threatening to consume the forest in all its new found rage. Her eyes are violet—bright, burning purple flames licking at her eyelids, consuming her dimpled face, her long blonde hair, her little mittened hands.

"I want my mommy," she says—a terrible echo of her sweet little voice—and Nick has never been more afraid.


The next morning is subdued at the breakfast table. Everyone is nursing a cup of Monroe's meticulously brewed coffee and trying not to meet each other's eyes. Rosalee is missing, having finally left for her own bed last night, and that leaves the rest of them groping for topics of polite conversation that don't involve magic or fate or difficult decisions looming in the very near future.

Finally, Nick gives up with a sigh.

"I have to go home," he says. "God knows what I'm going to tell Juliette."

"The truth?" Hank offers.

"I can woge for her if it helps," Monroe says.

"Thanks," Nick says. "Maybe we should wait though, until I know what the plan is. If my powers aren't coming back, maybe she never needs to know."

Adalind snorts and mutters into her coffee. "Making life changing decisions for her without her consent, huh? Kinky."

It's becoming clear to Nick that Adalind is not a morning person. After a restless night, he woke up this morning to his phone whacking him in the face. He'd left it on the table next to her last night, and Adalind hadn't appreciated his early alarm.

"What do you want me to do?" he asks. "Tell her I cheated on her but it's okay, the forest made me do it? Also I might need to do it again, and oh, by the way, how do you feel about co-parenting a magic baby in about nine months? I know it's not the engagement ring you were expecting, honey, but surprise, I'm going to be a dad."

"Yeah," Monroe says, "don't use any of that."

"I won't. It's just not easy to know what to tell her today—not when we still have two weeks left to figure this out."

"I don't know that there is anything to figure out," Adalind says. "Either we make this baby, or we don't. Everything else is ancillary."

"Oh, I don't know," Nick says. "We should probably figure out if we can stand not killing each other for the next eighteen years. That seems pretty crucial to me."

Adalind laughs at that—bright and shining in the clear light of day—all too familiar dimples flashing in the sunlight—and Nick thinks that those eighteen years might seem a little bit more doable, all of a sudden.

"How do you propose we do that?" Adalind asks. "Are we going to co-parent date for two weeks? Get a fake baby to practice on? What metrics would you like to employ, Nick? On what rubrics should we be judged?"

She's being facetious—he knows that—but she's not wrong. They really do need to spend time together to know if this is going to work.

"I guess, yes," he says. "Maybe we should date. Not romantically, or anything, but how else are we going to get to know each other in two weeks?"

Adalind blinks at him and he grins. It turns out that taking her seriously is the fastest way to get past her sarcastic defenses, and it's fun, to be able to surprise her like that.

"I like expensive dinners and couture shopping," she says.

"How about I buy you a cup of coffee instead?"