She was humming again.

The faintest smile grazed his lips as he pictured the scene on the other side of his hooded lids. Adalind was sweetly ministering to his hungry son and inadvertently lulling Nick deeper into restful sleep...but he was awake and suddenly Kelly's wispy cries, like smoke, vanished with the cold light of day slipping unchecked through the steel shuttered windows of their bedroom. When he finally caved and opened his eyes, Adalind was nowhere in sight and neither was his son.

Instead of relief, a stabbing pain swiftly gulped down the anticipation to hold his son in his arms as always, before heading down to the Precinct for yet another day of murder and mayhem in the city of Portland. Instead of warmth, the cold harsh reality of a new dawn greeted him. Adalind and Kelly were gone and no longer residing in the upper loft of the paint factory that he had bought to keep them safe.

He had to get ready for work.

He steeled himself against the onslaught of images. For almost a year, this barren loft was a home. There wasn't any hard edge, nook or cranny that Adalind's hand didn't soften, much to his surprise, as he looked around, the one bedroom "studio" the now matched his situation. At first, he was crazy to move in with the woman who'd wrecked his life years earlier but he'd do anything for hid little boy and against the strangest of odds, they had made work, down to their "sleeping arrangements".

It was a confusing time, the ease with which Adalind and he crossed that particular threshold when his Grimm instinct told him to keep her at arm's length. For an outspoken Blutbad, Monroe had never openly encouraged nor discouraged the sudden change of relation between Nick and Adalind. However, Hank was not so subtle in his disapproval and Nick fully understood dis reservations with the entire arrangement. In truth, Nick of all people should have known better than to entangle himself once more with that particular Hexenbiest, powers-suppression be damned.

Far easier said than done….

The surreal experiment that was their unconventional family unit, if one could even call it that had finally expired. Perhaps it was for the best. Nick was a Grimm and Adalind Schade's Biest abilities had made an unwelcome return, one neither of them could afford to pretend didn't exist.

She'd cornered him one night barely a second after entering the loft and confessed everything. To say he was shocked was an understatement. Hearing the words, seeing it, he felt more as if he'd taken a swift Siegbarste kick to the gut. There was something about her whole demeanour, so detached and without feeling as the words rolled of her tongue, confirmed by her magicking her cell phone from across the bedroom into her open hand.

"We always knew this was temporary," she had said with cold finality. He wasn't sure whether she referred to her abilities or their strange yet not situation. Nick couldn't ask her meaning, wary of his own thoughts betraying him; it was an open secret Grimm and Hexenbiest were enemies, the mortal kind and he and Adalind already shared a history reflecting that reality. Before that night, foolishly, he had set it all aside when the suppression potion did its job; and they both had a son to look after and things snowballed from there. The joke was now squarely on him. Adalind was back to her old self and he lost his son as a result.

With her abilities returned, she wasn't vulnerable anymore and needed his protection even less. Her old firm had come knocking dangling more added benefits to cater for Kelly and Adalind expressed her need for independence made it impossible for her to turn them down. As a contract lawyer, she drew up an agreement that was as agreeable to him as possible with his schedule, shared custody but with his time split between being a cop and a Grimm, it meant even less time spent with his son now with them living on the opposite end of town from the loft. As accommodating as Adalind tried to be, it simply wasn't the same as when they were all together.

He missed Kelly terribly.

In the space of a few short months, the loft had ceased to be a fortress to hide from their enemies and rather became a haven, their own little slice of the world without judgement or expectations. On good days, Nick would often come home, finding them rolling about on the carpet cheerfully before she gave Kelly's his bath and putting him down for the night. Admitting Adalind was a great mother was easy now that he saw it first-hand.

Nick pulled back the covers and before he could stop himself, his hand lingered on the empty side of the bed where she had slept every night for over eight months. If Nick dared admit it to himself, he missed her too. He missed having someone to talk to at the end of his day, or even at the start of it, before Hank or Wu dragged him out of bed too soon because they'd found a body. It amazed him how easy it was talking to Adalind, not just about his day at the Precinct, but about everything else going on in his life. When he started his life as a Grimm, he relied heavily on the books, then Monroe came along with his brand of wisdom and suddenly Adalind was another surprising fountain of knowledge from which he'd find himself drinking.

It was freeing. Sometimes, when things got more relaxed between them, she'd offer up her own tale of experience in commiseration, laughing at some of her past misfortunes as she grew into her abilities. It should have gotten his hackles up, the old Adalind causing trouble but it had eased some of the tension in him from working some tough cases.

That was old, past Adalind, not the one nursing his son to sleep every night, he'd reasoned within himself.

That night, she'd informed him of her intention to leave, "I cannot stay." What she'd meant was they couldn't stay; a familiar dividing wall had magically formed between them and he couldn't demand she stay, let alone as her to when she' long made up her mind and taking Kelly away from her wasn't an option. He had learnt the hard way never to repeat that mistake again. For all of their sakes, his son's especially, he had to make the best of a horribly unfair situation.

It was strange that shy of one full year ago, he went from happily wanting to see the backside of Adalind Schade forever, not caring what rock she crawled under as long as it was far away from his presence, to suddenly caring, feverishly so…for Kelly, so he claimed to anyone that bothered to ask. The days immediately after she packed up the last of her meagre belongings and some of Kelly's, Nick had nearly ground himself to nothing with worry. It took everything within him not to drive past her house every night like some crazy obsessed stalker. The night of Kelly's birth, he'd made a promise to protect them and still he let them drive away all because of that damned suppressant!

He should have read the fine print when Adalind came to him at the precinct with the ludicrous idea of ridding Juliette of the cursed Hexenbiest. When she tried it on herself first, something lurched inside of him, what if she'd hurt the baby, but Adalind was so determined to prove her sincerity to him. It had worked but Juliette felt differently, destroying the suppressant and throwing the remnant of their crumbling relationship away at the same time. While Juliette's rage barrelled on like a runaway train, Adalind had made herself "human", vulnerable, Nick had no other choice but to take her in.

The potion worked but it was also temporary, its actual shelf life unknown. Unfortunately, it wore off too soon and his make shift family was in tatters, Nick lamented. He saw his son as often as he was able but resented how thing turned, and then there was Adalind…he didn't know what to think. The night before Germany, she'd confessed her love. She was beautiful…so soft in his arms. Two confessions between the space of a week and still the two couldn't be further removed from one another than if they had involved two separate women.

Nick's phone buzzed furiously, propelling him into the present.

Hank. "Quit stalling…."

With his focus returned, Nick made his way into the bathroom and turned the tap for his shower. Cold. It would purge his mind of the cycle of thoughts taunting his days. A case is just what he needed to snapped him out of his funk, the right sort of distraction he needed to start his morning.

*/*/*

"Have you seen him since?" Rosalee spoke as Kelly tugged on a loose strand of her hair. She rarely had it in a ponytail except on her scheduled spring-cleaning day but Adalind surprised her, showing up with Kelly for a visit at the shop.

"Yeah, just a few days ago, when I picked Kelly up before work."

"You know that's not what I meant."

Adalind knew exactly what she meant but it was safer to pretend otherwise than admit the truth anyone. She'd had enough of humiliating herself to last a lifetime.

In the short time she lived with Nick, Adalind's life was in an upheaval. Most of her adult life, she'd wrestled with the worst kinds of people. It cost her Diana, nearly losing her sanity, freedom and her life…so much pain, most of which was self-inflicted. Adalind had made up her mind to turn a new leaf and do right for a change but she ended up shooting herself in the foot where Nick was concerned, possibly worse off than she had started. Helplessly in love with a man who could never love her back, not as she was.

She desperately wanted to talk to someone but she had no real friends of which to speak. While Rosalee had shown her more kindness than she'd ever known (apart from Nick), she was still Nick's closest friend above everything else, Adalind knew where her loyalties laid, a Grimm before the Hexenbiest.

Shame washed over Adalind at the thought as she watched Rosalee giggling with her son on the seat beside her. It made her uncomfortable. She knew Rosalee meant well, she'd helped her and been there for her, more than Adalind had any right to expect. Moreover, Rosalee had revealed her own desire to make up for her part against Adalind regarding Diana's kidnapping. The truth was, they had all been villains and been victims at one time or another, the past was past and making the best of now was what mattered. Rosalee had become her one friend, which made looking at the gift horse in the mouth a no-go area.

So much had changed with the birth of her daughter, Diana, she'd begun feeling deeply emotions she hadn't experienced since before her abilities first awoke within her, love, joy and now shame among a whole list of others, so unlike lust, greed, paranoia, anger and some, many tools of her "trade". Now everything has changed, thanks largely to her children…and to Nick.

Suddenly her mother's reproving words rang in her head but Adalind pushed them down. She wasn't the old Adalind, desperate for affection and hanging on to the impossible. She had learnt from her mistakes. She no longer lived with Nick and was adamant to steer clear of him except when she absolutely could not, where Kelly was concerned.

In the past months since vacating the loft, her time with Rosalee was akin to her ten-year-old self, sneaking downstairs to steal a spoonful of B&J's chocolate fudge while Catherine was in the bath and still smearing it all over her pristine dress much to her mother's raging fit at the discovery. As they sat in the back room of the shop, Adalind kept looking at the door, expecting Monroe to walk through any minute, apprehensive he'd mention her visit to Nick. She almost wished he would just so someone else would say his name and relieve some of the pressure building inside her. Unbeknown to Adalind, Rosalee perfectly understood her position, keenly attuned to Adalind's tumultuous emotions radiating like a raging forest fire during the dry season.

"…Well?" Rosalee continued without missing a beat.

"Well…nothing. Things have settled at work. I've been busy and Kelly seems to like my office better than I do at the moment like the view, but then again, things could always be worse…so all in all, I'm grateful," Adalind continued with her sidestep.

"Alright, I won't push you." Rosalee cooed at the swaddling bundle of joy on her lap.

"Thank you," she breathed, with more feeling than she intended.

The subject around Nick had become a dangerous slippery slope for Adalind, one she'd diligently avoided in an attempt to work him right out of her system. She'd gotten burnt one too many times when she allowed herself one moment to dream, the night before he left for Germany. She couldn't even blame alcohol, she'd not touched a drink since learning of her pregnancy with Kelly and certainly couldn't blames it a spell gone wrong when the suppressant was still in full effect.

In the past, she had often played with fire and mostly at her mother's behest and later, the Royals and every time Adalind suffered the consequences, badly so. Misplaced confidence had turned to carelessness in the Bremen Ruins, turned to desperation for Diana with the Verfluchte Zwillingsschwester and finally, stupidity in confessing her love for the Grimm of all people. Worse, nearly eight weeks since that night, she couldn't stop feeling.

Putting some much needed distance between them hadn't fix things and the guilt of essentially taking his son away wrecked her constantly. He must hate her; she thought suddenly and twisted uncomfortably in her seat. No generous custody agreement could ever alleviate the pain of losing a child. She, better than anyone knew that but she had to strike out on her own, or risk things growing glacial between the two of them due to old grievances that could never truly be buried in the past. It was their innate nature built in from birth to hate one another and Kelly deserved better than having two parents being resentful and ultimately destructive to one another because nature.

So why could she not stop the longing for something as forbidden to wesen nature as the Grimm? These feelings roiling within her should have died the instant her powers returned. It was only fair.

Adalind had searched her mother's books desperate for a solution, a spell — anything to suppress her feelings. Nothing. Catherine sure would be proud, she thought with derision but she didn't care. She had something far more precious that she would never trade for a second's worth of her mother's empty praises. Perhaps there was more than one thing to be grateful for, Adalind was finally free of her mother's influence and it felt like stepping out into the sun after three decades of the constant yearning of her mother's approval shackled her in the proverbial basement.

It was glorious and all because of Nicholas Burkhardt!

Nick, she thought fondly.

No matter what she did, things always circled back to him. He being her first Grimm probably had something to do with it. He should have been nothing more than a detour to a better life, a means to an end, like getting in with the Royals or a buffer between a raging Juliette and her son's life. Once, she'd heard Monroe talk, in passing, about fate but Adalind had never believe in any of that nonsense. Fate is what you make of it. Her mother taught her that. Her mother was dead.

The thought of her losing her daughter because some cosmic puppeteer was pulling the strings behind the curtain infuriated her to distraction and still she fell hard for the man that played a part in the worst pain she'd ever known. Hating him should be easy, like opening one's eyes in the morning or breathing but her heart, of its own accord, pulled her in the opposite direction, the one way she wished not to go.

She had bared her soul to him, taking a leap into the void and he said nothing in return. She couldn't even be disappointed because of the way he looked deep into her eyes, the way he touched her was more than enough. Hardly a week later, she told him about the suppressant and the look in his eyes flickered for a fraction of a moment with fire but not of the passion before but of something else she hadn't seen in a long time. He had said nothing but that look had spoken a thousand words and Adalind knew what she had to do.

"How are things at the office, now that you're back?"

"Great," she said half-heartedly.

"That bad huh?"

"Honestly, I don't know what I was expecting when my old boss called me up. I know he only did it because he heard I am a fully functional Biest again and he can never have enough of those but…."

"It's not the same. You are not the same."

The two women looked at one another with an unspoken understanding.

Returning to work was something she'd hungered for during the slow steady stream of solitude at the loft. There wasn't much to do once she'd fed Kelly, bathed him and laid him to sleep with Nick remained tied up with work most of the days. Rosalee was sometimes the only adult company she had, and Adalind was grateful, now more than ever when she needed a sympathetic ear. Rosalee was incredibly easy to talk to and they talked about everything, everything except for Nick.

Adalind checked the time and realised she'd stayed longer than she'd planned. She packed up their belongings and headed for the front of the store, Rosalee following suit with a sleeping Kelly in her arms.

"Ugh, I miss this little guy already." She said as she settled him in his car seat.

"I'm sure he had a grand time with Aunt Rosa. He's out like a light. Thanks again for today."

"It was all my pleasure and please don't be a stranger. I know you think me being Nick's friend somehow means I cannot be yours as well but that is not the case. I enjoy our time together."

"Me too…and I appreciate that."

They hugged and bid one another farewell.

As Adalind turned at the traffic light, her phone rang. The screen beside her steering wheel revealed it was Nick. Her heart lurched violently against her chest. After several more beats to calm herself, she answered.

"Hello Nick."

"Hey."

Something was wrong. Nick was never much of a talker but after months of living with him, she'd learnt to read a lot from just the sound of his voice.

"I need to see him." He said.

This latest case must have hit a dead end.

"Okay," she said gently and after another beat, "Give us an hour."

*/*/*

Notes:

All commentary appreciated.