O Fortuna
Chapter 9
Fair Play

Season 5 Episode 6. Wesen Nacht

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The bright morning sun streamed in through the converted shipping dock's high windows as Adalind wandered out with two cups of tea and her baby monitor. Sunbeams rippled through the still air, highlighting their collection of gray, from Juliette's silver Subaru, to the concrete floor, to the massive, painted wooden timbers which supported the other half of their loft. Its expanse spread out like a giant, empty room, swallowing up the remains of both Nick's and her storage units among half a dozen paint compounding and mixing machines, left over from the place's prior life.

Trubel's empty boxes and new motorcycle parts were scattered in a circle around her. Her sparkling eyes and a glowing smile made her look like a kid on Christmas morning.

Adalind let out a soft chuckle as she approached the pile of ratchets, sockets, Allen wrenches, and pliers. Early this morning, Nick and Trubel hauled the pallet of parts the UPS man had dropped at The Spice Shop. He wasn't exactly a fixer. Apart from the stuff he used for cleaning his Grimm toys, he barely owned tools besides the stubby engineer hammer he bought to bang on the door below and the screwdriver he used to pry caps off beer bottles. While she didn't share Trubel's aspirations of rebuilding a motorcycle engine in the bathtub, she was the family-picture-hanger and microwave-fuse-fixer.

There was one thing she was curious about, though. Trubel showed up out of nowhere, working for some secret squirrel government organization. Why was she here? Of course, there was the social call aspect. The obvious answer was her recuperation after the hospital fiasco, but Meisner showed up on short notice, so they certainly had resources in the area.

Stranger, her presence here was not exactly a secret. Monroe, Rosalee, Hank, Wu, and even Bud already knew she was in town, and that meant Portland's entire Wesen community did too. She wasn't some nameless ghost, like she would have been if they hauled her to the VA hospital in Los Angeles under the guise of an injured reservist.

It's not like she wanted the younger Grimm gone, she was just curious. Why wasn't The Government sending her for treatment? What was the angle?

They talked while Trubel replaced the cracked drive belt guard on her Ducati. Ostensibly, she was curious about Nick's kid and things here, at home, but there was a lingering question going unsaid, and if Adalind had been someone else, Trubel's poker face may have concealed her motives. It was clear that the female Grimm was a lot more perceptive toward relationship politics than her short-cropped hair, black leather jacket, square toe motorcycle boots, and gruff manner let on. She was an orphan who honed the art of reading people in foster homes and homeless camps. Like Rosalee, Theresa Rubel had learned that The Street neither cares nor forgives. It's smarten up or die.

The grimm's lip perked, and her eyes glittered. Adalind already knew it was coming before Trubel lobbed the softball. "What do you think about Nick?"

"What do you mean?"

"Are you, like, in love with him?"

The question was obvious. She had a clear and logical answer carefully laid out in her mind, but her stomach knotted, her mouth opened, and a full minute of tongue-tied mumbling blathered out.

What the hell was that?

Trubel's face lit like a giddy school girl as she prodded further. "I mean, you sleep in the same bed..."

Why were her cheeks hot as she clobbered together an explanation that sounded ridiculous, even to herself. I mean, why would anybody seriously believe that a woman who slept in her own bed since she was born and lived all but alone for almost half of her thirty years, just suddenly become afraid of the dark. Trubel's expression called bullshit, but thankfully, Kelly was calling for Momma.

She rolled it around in her head, chewing on the thoughts as she nursed Kelly. Reality dawned on her as she fixed lunch. A competent Government organization would rehab their wounded in an expensive, state-of-the-art facility. Why, now, did she show up? If Trubel was like Nick, it was not the first time she had been wounded. And.. Why did they care about the nature of her relationship with Nick, specifically her feelings toward him?

She's here to find out what I'll do if they recruit Nick.

His words from last night echoed... Sure, she was no assassin, and she was no brawler. Now, she finished the line of thinking that Nick wouldn't say out loud.

Just because she wasn't an assassin didn't mean she was the sort who backed down from a fight. She was the sort who cast an enemy into the pit of eternal torment. The place where the pain and horror grind you to dust, but death never finds you. Vengeance wasn't a dead opponent, but rather her enemies struggling to free themselves from a burning tar baby whose flames raged into eternity.

Her mind drifted. The Mellifer Queen was just one of many she cast into hell, like Nick, Juliette, and Sean Renard. Adalind had forever chained Melissa Wincroft to the rotting carcass of her family's paper mills, and with it, thirty more years of environmental and occupational safety litigation. The woman would be unable to jettison the property at any price. Her life, forevermore, would be cursed, buried alive within that eternal morass of leeches and hangers on sucking the blood out of her. On top of that, the Zaubertrank left her husband despising her and children with no memory of their own mother. The ill conceived murder plot would never have released that woman's soul from its torment. No, the truth was that she knew that suicide by Grimm was her single hope.

A spark flared within her. This is the father of my children, and I'll be damned if they steal him away and ship him off to some faraway land to die. I will burn them to the ground. She froze. What the hell did you just say? Husband? Children?

OK, maybe this secret government organization serves some important purpose. But that doesn't mean I'll let them ruin my family. A smile bloomed as her plan crystallized.

Ja, Herr Meisner, wie du mir, so ich dir.*

An hour later, Trubel was scrubbing black grease off her chapped hands. The scent of hot dogs with chili, mustard, and onions, and french fries had lured her out of the corner of the garage turned motorcycle workshop. Adalind took one hot dog and a few fries, then piled the rest on Trubel's plate. The daytime guest was a welcome change. It gave her the excuse to make one of her guilty pleasures lunches.

Truble wolfed hers down before she even finished and moved on to asking questions about Nick as a dad. Adalind steered the conversation clear of the relationship quicksand. "Your Duc is sweet. What was your first bike?"

Trubel's eyebrow quirked. "You ride?"

"I haven't in a while, but I used to."

An ear-to-ear smile bloomed across Trubel's face. "I started off with a beater Motoguzzi. I rode it to high school every day. You?"

"My opa started me off with a Honda monkey bike, at the farm. You should have seen me screaming all over the yard. Oma got mad because I kept riding through her garden and tearing up all her tomatoes, and Opa made me wear a helmet after I crashed it into the camellia bushes at the corner of the house."

Trubel's face lit as she laughed. "Like with real animals? I can't picture you on a farm."

"Oh, yeah. Opa rode the three wheeler and I rode a dirt bike when we went herding cows."

"What kind?"

Adalind giggled and winked. "They were mostly beef cows."

Trubel's eyebrow quirked a second before a snort rolled out. The Grimm stuck her tongue out with a laugh. "You know, because I always wanted a pet cow."

"After the monkey bike, Opa got me a 60cc Yamaha and then a 125 Kawasaki."

"You ever race?"

Adalind laughed. "Yep, I was pretty competitive in the local hare scrambles. I ran a little motocross, but the closest track was an hour and a half away. I couldn't practice enough to be competitive, and wrecks in motocross end with broken bones. I was going to college, anyway. What about you?"

"I still can't picture you chasing cows on a dirt bike. I traded the Motoguzzi for a beater 1982 Vespa 125, and that's when I started wrenching on bikes."

"So what was your first motorcycle?"

Trubel brushed her hair away from her eyes. "A 1985 CB125"

"Those Hondas were solid."

"I traded that one on a CB350. I rode it for a while. It got stolen when they threw me in the insane asylum. That's how I ended up hiking through Portland when Nick found me."

"I used to borrow motorcycles from a couple guys in college, but once I hit law school, I had no time.. And you can't exactly roll up to district court in an Armani pantsuit, hauling two file boxes of material, on a bike.

Trubel huffed. "And it rains a lot here. You want to take her for a ride once I get her back together?"

"Could you take me for a spin, if you're OK with that. She got a name?"

"Lucrezia."

Adalind grinned. "That's exactly what I would have picked."

After dinner, Nick and Kelly were meeting them at Dairy Queen. Adalind chuckled at Trubel's surprise when she dug her helmet out of a moving company box buried under a stack swords, a pile of old knives, and dozens of hollow arrows. Thought I was lying, didn't you? It still fit but her pink and white riding suit was a size zero, and, Yikes. Nope, not a chance. Nick's eyes following her as she ambled around the loft in blue jeans made up for the insults her old clothing hurled. She donned a jacket and made Trubel promise to be good.

The crisp night breeze turned icy at sixty. Even wrapped around Trubel, it bit right through two layers of beige fleece. Streets and traffic lights peeled by as the foggy scent of the city filled her lungs. There was something pure and free about flying inches off the asphalt as Portland's neon lights and strip mall signs rolled past.

Fifteen minutes later, the huge spruces and Pacific Madrone trees gave way to concrete strip malls and chain stores. They bumped into the parking lot and took the spot next to Nick's silver Land Cruiser. Kelly was reaching and pulling towards her the instant she got off the bike.

She split a banana split with Nick and Kelly, while Trubel went for a large chocolate-dipped strawberry blizzard. Trubel got a kick out of Kelly licking ice cream off her fingers. The Grimm kept quirking her eyebrow and starting at Nick bouncing Kelly in his lap, as if unable to believe it was possible.

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* Yes, Mr. Meisner, turnabout is fair play.