A/N: Thank you all for reading and reviewing! Sometimes I get overwhelmed by the scope of this story, so knowing people want to read it is very motivating. This chapter has everything—flirting—plotting—Wu… Wu's the best. Here we go!


"That's your idea of diplomacy?" Nick asks, incredulous. "Help us or we'll chop your head off?"

"It worked didn't it?" Her grin is infectious—delighted—and he has to fight a smile of his own. It would only encourage her, after all.

"I can't believe this," he says instead. "You're unbelievable."

"Well, I try," she says. "You should call Hank now. Give him a heads up that I have to go to the precinct. I promised him seeing me again would be his choice, so we need to give him one."

Nick had forgotten that part of her agreement with Hank. To be perfectly honest, he'd nearly forgotten about Hank entirely. Running around town with Adalind has made it all too easy to forget the usual rhythm and routine of his life—his partner, his girlfriend, his sanity. It's all fallen by the wayside because when he looks at Adalind—her bright eyes, her shining hair, her luminous, no-good grin—everything else in his life looks a bit duller by comparison.

He calls Hank while Adalind marches into the back room to tell her client that his alibi is solid, but his life is still in danger, so he'd better stay put. Hank picks up after one ring.

"Where the hell have you been?" Hank says, "I'm swimming in paperwork down here."

"Sorry," Nick says. "I found our suspect, but he's got an alibi and someone's trying to kill him, and the Captain wants me and Adalind to come in for a little territorial negotiation. How are you feeling about seeing her around the precinct?"

Hank takes a deep breath, letting it out slowly.

"She's still human, right? No magic?"

"No magic," Nick says. "Well, none of her magic. Apparently we could be dealing with bigger magic between us, but that's not something she can control or hurt you with."

"I really hate this," Hank says. "I really wish I didn't know what was going on."

"I know that feeling. And I'm sorry. How can I help?"

Hank is quiet for a moment, and in the pause, Nick can hear Adalind talking to Rosalee about getting a new passport for Ian, which he really hopes he never has to think about again.

"I want to sit in on the meeting," Hank says. "If I'm going to be your partner—if I'm going to know all these things I know and help you face them—then I want to know about this, too. I want to be there."

"Done," Nick says. "I wasn't thrilled about the idea of being alone in a room with the two of them anyway, although I really do think she's on our side now."

"I'd ask why, but I'm pretty sure I don't want to know. Are you two a thing now? Is that really happening?"

Adalind reappears in the doorway to the back, looking a little rumpled but mostly lethal in her sleek shift dress and killer heels, and Nick sighs.

"Yeah," he says. "It's happening. Even if she kills me, it'll probably be worth it."

"Such enthusiasm," she says, "how could a girl resist?"

"You can start resisting anytime," he tells her.

"Well, I tried, but it's not nearly as much fun. Is that Hank? Is he okay with me coming to the precinct?"

"Yeah," Hank says, "I'm okay. You are fucked though, Nick."

"Oh, I know," Nick says. "Wish me luck."

"You don't need luck. You need back up. Tell me what's going on with Renard."

So Nick puts Hank on speaker phone so Adalind can tell him the plan, and then Monroe and Rosalee and Ian wander out into the front of the shop, and soon Nick's got a whole room full of people telling him everything he needs to know about the Royals and the Resistance and the Verrat, and he finds himself thinking that yesterday morning he felt all alone in the wesen world with no one but Monroe to turn to and today he has a team with a plan. He looks to Adalind and she catches his eye with a grin—something much warmer—happy even—and he thinks she feels it, too. This sense of community—of people they can trust—growing up around them—because of them and their vision for the future, nebulous as it may be.

"Okay," he says finally, "I think we've got a plan. Adalind leads the negotiation, Hank and I are her muscle, Rosalee is going to find a passport I don't want to know anything about, Monroe and Ian are going to hide, and if all goes according to plan, Ian gets out of town tonight."

"And if it doesn't go according to plan?" Monroe asks.

"Then we go to contingency plans," Adalind says. "I've got seven so far."

"Ask a silly question…" Monroe says, and Nick grins.

Seven, he thinks. The woman really is magic.


The car ride to the precinct is blessedly uneventful. Adalind is quiet, preparing her arguments for Renard, and Nick is quiet because the rest of his day has been full of conversation and kissing and just general activity, and it's nice to have a chance to reset and think about something besides Adalind and the baby and the future of Portland for a second.

Like Juliette. He should really think about Juliette.

Only he doesn't really know what to think about Juliette. He wanted to marry her yesterday, and today he can't keep his hands or his lips off Adalind. So marriage is probably out. And then there's the baby and Switzerland—two things that mean even if he could keep his extremities off of Adalind, he'd still be working with her closely for the foreseeable future—likely the next eighteen years at least—and somehow he can't imagine being that close to Adalind for that long and not wanting to kiss her. He wants to kiss her now, and she's so concentrated on the negotiation ahead of her that he's not even sure she's aware that he's in the car with her.

And that would be one thing. Of course he and Juliette aren't in the can't-keep-their-hands-off-each-other stage anymore. They've been together for three years—that phase goes, he knows it does. It's just he can't remember that phase for them being anything like this. He can't remember an argument with Juliette that felt like foreplay. He can't remember ever wanting her so much he just had to have her in his car in broad daylight. And he certainly can't remember a time they were trying to kill each other and ended up fucking in the woods instead.

And it's not just the sex.

Juliette would never be able to kill him, anyway, and he knows that should probably be a point in her favor, but somehow, it's not. He likes the danger of Adalind. He likes that she can defend herself—slay her own monsters—slay him. He's only just beginning to realize that being a Grimm makes him a born killer, and in that respect, Adalind is his perfect match.

Their shared killer instincts scare him sometimes—they give him pause—but they also speak to something deep inside of him. His killer instinct is the source of his strength—of his resolve. He was made to kill wesen—it's literally what he's here for—and since he has that power, he gets to decide how to use it to reshape the world. He's always believed in justice—in balance and the spirit of the law—and being a cop has shown him just how short of those ideals the current system falls. Being a Grimm might just give him a chance to do something about it on a local level, and in that regard again, Adalind has the potential to be his greatest ally. She knows all the ways the system is broken—she's been taking advantage of its flaws for years—and she knows how to fix them.

He's under no illusion that she's invested in the idea of Switzerland for the sake of peace in Portland. She's invested in protecting herself and their kid as much as anything else, but the more they talk about it, the more Nick is convinced that she's also driven by the impulse to prove that she can make a better system, even if it's not her dream the way it is his. She's called to create something new and nearly magical, just for creation's sake and maybe bragging rights, and he kind of loves that about her.

And it's not Juliette's fault that she can't help him create a new Portland, but it's not helping. Not when everything in front of him is telling him that Adalind is the one for him. The woman who drives him wild and drives him forward. The woman who's already changed his life twice and won't be stopping there. And in this new life that he's getting glimpses of in the flash of Adalind's grin and sparkling eyes, Juliette just doesn't fit.

It pains him to realize that Aunt Marie was right. That being a Grimm might make being with Juliette impossible. It's not fair, he thinks. It's not fair to her, and it's not fair to them and the perfectly lovely life they were building together before he ever saw Adalind. It's not fair, but it is true, and as he pulls up at the precinct and turns to Adalind—turning to him with a killer smile and sharp eyes that promise Sean Renard a world of pain—Nick has no regrets.


"So, if Sean asks, we are definitely having a baby and staying together," Adalind tells Nick on the way into the precinct elevator. "I know we're still figuring out what we're doing next, but from a negotiation point-of-view, we want to present a unified front with no room for doubt."

"Okay," Nick says, and it is okay. He's feeling pretty sure about the baby and Adalind at the moment, and heading into a room with her most recent exes is also making him feel pretty sure that he doesn't have any interest in letting her acquire more exes anytime soon. "Anything else I should know?"

"Yeah," Adalind says, "Sean's a dick."

"I knew that," Nick says. "I told your mother that this morning."

Adalind grins at him—not the lethal one that he's coming to love, but more joyful than that. It's absolutely show stopping. It pulls him into her again.

"You did," she says. "I really loved that, by the way. Very hot."

"Don't." Nick does his best to lean into the back wall of the elevator rather than her.

"Don't what?"

"Don't look at me like that and tell me I'm hot when I can't do anything about it right now."

Adalind's grin turns feral again—deadly—and that doesn't help.

"You are so easy," she says, breezing out of the elevator as it lands on the right floor, swaying her hips just a little more than usual, and Nick bites back a curse.

"Only you," he mutters darkly, following her anyway in a way that's beginning to feel like usual.

Adalind struts through the precinct like she owns it, breezing by Wu with a dazzling hello that leaves his sergeant looking a little dazed.

"Is she here for Hank?" Wu asks Nick, still watching Adalind walk away. "How did Hank get that lucky?"

Nick coughs, a little awkwardly it must be said.

"She's not here for Hank," Nick says. His neck is getting hot, and at the same time Adalind hits the Captain's office and turns to look for him.

"Nick, I need you," she calls out across the entire precinct—voice carrying clear as a bell—and Nick could almost die as the whole room turns to look at him with varying levels of fascination and envy.

"Lucky you," Wu says with a raised eyebrow, and Nick sighs.

"It's not like that," he says, before remembering that actually, it's exactly like that, and when he looks at Wu again, he knows Wu can tell.

"Un huh," Wu says. "Good luck with that. And oh, look, here's Hank."

Hank arrives on Nick's other side, looking worn out but determined.

"You sure you want to do this?" Nick asks, and Hank nods.

"Can't be worse than dating her, right?"

Nick considers that. Dating her has its compensations. Watching her tear Renard a new one might, too.

"You never know," Nick says. "Could be fun."

"You two deserve each other," Hank says, and Nick can't really argue with that.

Inside the Captain's office, the temperature is frosty. Adalind is sitting in front of the desk with her killer legs crossed, meeting Renard's eyes like she's daring him to blink. Renard is not blinking, and Nick doesn't even blame him. Nick skips the other chair in front of the desk and goes to lean against the wall behind Adalind, feeling the need to make it clear he's going to back her up. Hank closes the door behind him and takes the other chair—an act that finally makes the Captain blink.

"Hank?" Renard gives him a curious look. "Did we have a meeting?"

"Oh no," Hank says. "I'm with them. Well, I'm with Nick, since, you know, he's the only person in this room that hasn't tried to kill me in the last twenty-four hours."

"I didn't try to kill you," Renard says.

"No, you told Adalind to kill me, and I don't know about you, but I feel like HR wouldn't be too picky about those particular semantics."

Renard sighs and looks to Adalind.

"So now Hank knows," he says. "Anyone else in this little ragtag delegation I should know about?"

"That you should know about? Absolutely not," Adalind says. "But please rest assured that we are not acting alone, and you are not the only power in Portland anymore."

"Wonderful. So what can I do for you, Ms. Schade?"

"You called us in," Adalind reminds him. "What are you looking for?"

There's another short staring contest, but Renard doesn't seem to have it in him to resist. He looks tired. Nick's only just realizing how many lives Renard has been juggling all year.

"A member of the Verrat paid me a visit to remind me of my obligation to help the Royals track down any Resistance members in my territory. I didn't appreciate that, and I would like him out of my town."

"What a coincidence," Adalind says. "We'd like that, too."

"I'd also like to solve the murder my detectives were investigating before they seem to have been distracted by you."

"I didn't distract them," Adalind says, "I found them an alibi for their prime suspect. We're now pretty sure the bartender was murdered by Edgar Waltz."

"Edgar Waltz?" Nick looks at Hank. "That was the witness at the bar."

"That was the Verrat," Renard says. "He's a Hundjäger."

"What's a Hundjäger?" Hank asks.

"A hound-like wesen," Adalind tells him, speaking much more softly to Hank than she had been to Renard. "They're the Royals' attack dogs—vicious enforcers."

"Great," Hank says. "Loving that."

"Where is Waltz now?" Nick asks Renard, who shrugs.

"I don't know, but I can call him. Maybe set up a meet?"

"And then we arrest him?"

"No," Adalind says, "and then we kill him."

She says it like it's the most obvious thing in the world, and Nick pinches his nose, trying to stave off a headache.

"He's a murderer, Adalind."

"Yeah," she says, turning in her chair to look up at him, "so what's the problem?"

"Oh, I don't know," he says, "the rule of law, the justice system, police brutality. Take your pick, it's a fucking problem."

"He's a murderer, Nick. This is an execution."

"That's not how justice works. You're a lawyer for God's sake."

"He's a threat," she says. "If we arrest him and try him, the Royals will buy the jury and come at us with an army of lawyers and a battalion of Hundjägers. Right now, Waltz is operating alone. He doesn't even know who you are yet. If we let him stew in a jail cell near your recent arrests, he will find out, and that will be the end of our anonymity. We want to delay that as long as possible."

"We're going to need a better system. A better way of trying wesen who can't be tried in regular court. It can't just be us playing judge, jury, and executioner. That's not sustainable. We can't be responsible for community level decisions like that. It's not okay."

"I can't believe this," she says, ramping up and clearly forgetting all about Renard and Hank and the negotiation that wasn't. "You wanted to be Switzerland. That implies that we are running Switzerland. If we're running it, who else is going to make these kinds of decisions but us?"

"The people of Switzerland," he says. "The wesen of Portland. The people affected by what we do and how we do it. I don't want the Royals running this town, and the Resistance is stretched too thin to try, so that leaves us and the citizens of Portland to figure out an alternative that works for all of us."

"So now you want to found a democracy, too? Do you have any idea the amount of admin it takes to run a government, nevermind the kind of tribunal you're talking about? And to do it in secret—without the kehrseite world finding out?"

"Are you saying you can't do it?"

Adalind snorts. "Of course I can do it. It's just going to be an administrative clusterfuck for a while, and we need to kill Waltz tonight."

"So, we'll compromise," Nick says, feeling a bizarre sense of deja vu. Usually in a relationship he's compromising over doing the dishes or where to put the hamper. With Adalind, he's compromising on murder. "We kill Waltz tonight, and we figure out a tribunal system of checks and balances for the future."

"Okay," she says, blinking up at him.

"All right," he says.

"You are both ridiculous," Renard says. "This little thought experiment of yours isn't going to last a week."

"Bite me," Adalind says, not even turning to look at him, and Nick can't help but look at her very biteable—already bitten—lower lip and hope.