Less travelled
S04E19 and S04E20.
Two paths diverge in a yellow wood
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Adalind chewed her nails in Sean's office. Gnawed was really a better word, she gnawed the ends of her fingers, focusing her powers for the coming battle.
And Sean, half-bastard that he was, sensed it. Every time she moved, he fled, maneuvering the desk and his conference table between himself and the witch who was humming with power to anyone who could sense it.
Luckily, Nick was completely oblivious to her magic, the same magic Sean Renard danced away from.
First, she dropped the baby bombshell. "I need you, Nick. I need you to protect me from Juliette, because nobody else will."
As planned, that threw Nick off balance, but he wasn't going that easy. He was going to make her work for it, but nothing worth having was ever easy, was it.
She pushed onward, "I was hoping you would do it for your child, but if not for that, maybe you'll do it for Juliette."
Nick blanched, "I don't believe anything you are saying."
She dangled the bait, "Do you think I would risk coming here if I didn't have anything?"
She sensed the hook pierce into him. She tugged and it held fast.
His mind squarely off killing her, it was back to the baby. Now, she reeled him in, "It's a boy. I had to know."
He stopped running, and let her come to him. Inch by inch, she crept closer and closer, sensing his emotions as the baby kicked.
She stood in front of him, looked into his eyes, and said, "He's strong, just like you."
She could feel everything within him yearn towards the child in her belly. He earnestly wanted to feel his son's kick, a promise of one single sliver of hope in an ocean of pain.
She caught his hand and placed it on her belly. Baby Grimm kicked, and she poured every ounce of witching she possessed into Nick. She wasn't really sure how much a Grimm would take, so she pushed everything she could muster, a witching that would have brought Merlin himself to his knees, and Nick's eyes glazed completely over, bloodshot and red rimmed.
The Grimm went gooey and would have fallen right there, if not for her hand on his, willing him upright.
She felt his mind go completely blank, so she drove the bus. "I'm going to have our baby, Nick, and there's only person who can stop me."
She willed him into Save The Damsel Mode, and The Grimm was on the quest. But first, he had to face The Dragon that Prince Kenneth had bailed out, not even half-an-hour ago.
She marched him out of Sean's office into the hallway and straight into Juliette.
As planned, Juliette was furious, "So it's true, you're really having a baby..."
And Nick stood there dumbstruck, trying to plant his feet in the middle of the hurricane.
She poured gas on the flames, grinding Juliette's nose in the spectacle of Nick protecting her.
She laid her hands on Nick, focused, and witched him, like a puppet on a string,
Juliette's fury turned into a seething volcano full of hate, jealousy, and rage, and she pointed the entire eruption straight at Nick.
And so she drenched the flames with more gas.
Adalind felt him break, there in the precinct, after orchestrating the single most egregious breakup of her life. His entire world crumbled the instant Juliette stomped away. Guilt wracked him as he watched his lover leave, knowing full well that he was the one who rejected her. Knowing that he chose his own worst enemy over the woman he proposed to marry, in the crowded precinct. He chose the Hexenbiest he hated most over the one who sacrificed herself to take his curse upon herself, right there in front of two dozen people she knew.
Nick drove her to the spice shop in silence. He wouldn't even look at her, but she read his mind, focused singularly on Fix Juliette.
She touched his hand and said, "What if Juliette doesn't want to be fixed?"
Pain flooded him. He barely murmured, "She said she likes... This."
She paused, waiting.
"She said she doesn't want to be fixed."
Of course she doesn't want to be fixed, you dummy. Remember how badly you wanted your Grimm powers back when I took them, just like I couldn't bear the loss of who I was when you took my powers.
She sighed, and said, "It's just going to make her mad. She's going to hate you for suggesting it."
"I... I have to. It's all my fault. If I would have listened to my Aunt Marie, none of this would ever have happened to her."
She kept the worried frown on her face, but beamed inside. This is easier than I ever thought. He's completely blind right now. He's going to drive her into Kenneth's arms and I'll have my daughter back by lunch.
She couldn't resist the urge to twist the knife, one more time, and said, "What was all that about back in the precinct. You should have invited her to come along. I mean, it's not like we're a thing."
And she felt his breath leave him. Words failed him as guilt pulverized the remaining residue of his soul.
The baby kicked, and the Biest within her hissed, Remember the prize, unless you intend on spending the rest of your life eating rats in Victor's dungeon.
Prize? She snarled back, My daughter is the prize! The only reason I'm here is my daughter.
So how will you keep her, child, and what of the Grimm you are carrying? I've never been a fan of rat myself, but you developed an appetite for them rather quickly.
She shuddered as the tinny, greasy, hairy, ammonia flavor, like chewing cotton balls mixed with blood and urine washed over her palate. She burped and fanned her nose, looking for a place to spit. Finding none, she grudgingly gulped.
Nick turned, and said, "Adalind?"
"I'm ok, just a bit of nausea. You know, baby stuff."
"Just tell me before you throw up, so I can pull over."
"I'll be fine."
Nick's silver Land Cruiser lumbered into a wooded curve and her vision flashed out the passenger seat. She stood at a sharp bend in a long path. This was the path their kind travelled since the beginning. This was their ancient way, littered with magic, poison, bones, and blood.
She turned back up the road and saw her mother laying dead with a shard of mirror glass buried in her throat. She looked a bit further back and found Nick's Aunt Marie, head flopped back in his arms at the hospital nurse station. She gazed down the road and spied Juliette laying on the floor of a hallway with a swarm of glass shards pierced into her abdomen. Further, she found Nick, slumped on his kitchen floor, riddled with bullet holes. Finally, she found herself, sprawled in a heap of tatters that used to be clothing, emaciated and stiff, chained to a cobblestone dungeon floor. Rats swarmed in, squeaking and wiggling, clawing and gnawing at their feast, herself.
She shuddered and her focus returned to the bend, where she spied Nick's mother's head laying in a cardboard box. The flicker of a shadow caught the edge of her vision. She squinted and stepped off, into the grass, towards the wall of thorns.
There was a brown ripple in the brambles at the beginning of the bend. This wasn't a path, it was the merest sliver of a gap that only appeared once you searched that exact spot. It was barely wide enough to fit a few fingers in. She would have to break her way through.
She looked back, and wondered, Has anyone ever seen this before? She peered at the Grimms, Zauberbiests, and Hexenbiests, marching along, murdering each other completely unaware, then she looked into the gap, and saw the ashy shadow of dried blood and broken thorns.
She peered into the thicket, and thought, The ground is hard, like there's something here. She kicked the brown leaf litter aside, scrubbed a mat of roots with the toe of her shoe, and found the corner of a paver. She knelt, searching it with her fingertips, and discovered fitted stones under the crease. She looked back and realized the road actually lead this way, but it had veered away eons before.
From her knees, she spied a hollowed shadow, the merest inkling that once, perhaps twice within the last ten millennia, this path had been found.
She squinted into the darkness and spied the outline of a child.
"Diana?" She called out. It turned, revealing fiery purple eyes, and whispered, "Mom?"
She reached in and pushed the thorns. They crackled and twined, curling around her arms, and slicing into her hand.
She yelped, and her vision flashed back into the worn interior of the 1980's Toyota Land Cruiser, lumbering through one of Portland's residential neighborhoods.
She dragged her hand up from beside the bench seat. There, snagged into her fingertips, was a dried bramble cane. She disgorged the thorns and pushed her fingers into her mouth.
Nick mumbled an apology, "I thought I found all those. I had to hack them off Monroe and Rosalee."
"You had to what?"
"There was a Kinoshimobe and a J'boko tree murdering people. It kept twining those vines all over Monroe and Rosalee. I had to hack my way through a wall of that stuff to get them free."
"Like with a saw?"
"My Grimm axe."
She snorted, and said, "Your Grimm axe. Of course, I should have known."
"It was the only way to get through."
She pondered Nick's words as she twirled the black vine between her fingertips. It crumbled into powder and drifted away.
She asked, "Nick, How did my mother die?"
He sighed, and said, "My mom killed her."
"I mean, how did she actually die."
"She had a huge chunk of mirror glass stabbed into her neck."
Adalind sighed, and said, "I suppose, at least she went quickly. What happened to your aunt?"
He sighed, then finally said, "She died in my arms at the hospital after a failed assassination attempt."
She stared out the window, and thought, Nah, that's just some crazy coincidence.
The scent of rat wafted through her nostrils. She groaned, fanning her face. She quirked her eyebrow towards Nick, and thought, Seriously?
She felt the taste of rat welling up into her mouth again. She closed her eyes, pushed the back of her hand against her nose, and cringed, OK, fine, just stop with the stupid rats.
She focused her powers, touched his arm, and said, "I will do everything I can, for you, Nick."
And she felt the spark, one single flicker of pregnant, blonde haired, hope took root within the hollow depths of his soul. She was no longer his enemy, she was his one shot at salvation.
They got to the Spice Shop and Nick marched straight in. She followed, and stood there as Nick's baby bomb cratered Rosalee's shop.
She was surprised, that once the initial round of insults were over, and Nick left, Rosalee actually helped her.
She sensed something underlying Rosalee's frustrated surface, relief. A pleading. She could feel it exuding out of every pore Rosalee's body as they mixed herbs in silence. Rosalee wasn't trying to fix Juliette - sure, she was Juliette's friend, and she wanted her fixed, if she could, but deep down in her soul, she accepted that Juliette was what she was now.
Rosalee was trying to fix Nick. She was trying to stem the roaring tide of darkness and death that flooded ahead of him every time he materialized in her doorway, but she could not.
Adalind felt it herself in the precinct. The wave of darkness sloshing in, filling Sean's office when Nick walked in the door. She had sensed Sean was instantly on edge, not because of her, but because of Nick.
The new Hexenbiest inside her had no fear of this, or The Grimm. The opposite, in fact, she carved a path straight ahead, into the flooding darkness, in search of it's headwaters. Unlike her biest before, or the one in Juliette now, it craved his touch, reaching out to receive it when he touched her round belly. "The Prize," it called him.
The Fuchsbau knew she had witched Nick crosseyed, but instead of fury, disgust, and hate, she sensed Rosalee's relief.
That single fact surprised her the most, Rosalee's deep relief at seeing Nick witched into calm. The moment of stillness when The Grimm's darkness ebbed. The moment he embraced the possibility of being a father and having the family he always dreamed of.
She sensed Rosalee's relief when Nick's tidal wave of darkness flowed back out of every single crevice of her spice shop...
Rosalee's desperation presented Adalind an opportunity she had never considered...
Rosalee's silent pleading tendered her offer, bright as the noonday sun: Witch the Grimm. Cool the inferno of pain and murder raging inside him. Shore up the flowing darkness. Be the Hexenbiest he will kill for. Still the Grimm's limitless blood rage, and in exchange, be his queen.
Adalind paused, considering the offer laid before her as they ground herbs and minerals in silence, and she thought, I've always wanted to be a queen.
Nick walked in the door and asked about the potion. She glanced at Rosalee, smiled, and thought, It's time to make a deal.
She wobbled from nausea and let herself fall into his embrace. She focused her powers and touched his arm. Nick melted, gently tending to her as if Juliette never existed, and Rosalee heaved a sigh of relief that welled out of the very depths of her soul.
Now, it was time to tender her own offer. It was time to prostrate herself at the feet of the man who destroyed her and then betrayed her, the man who had stolen every single thing in the world that she cherished, her powers and then her daughter. She would give The Grimm the very thing his lover refused: Lay her powers, the child within her, and her very lifeblood into his hands.
She held the glass jar of clear liquid, peering through it, and queried, Are you sure this is a good idea? Will he actually understand what I'm doing?
Drink, child.
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2.5k 3/2/21 r1