Chapter 8: Oh Happy Dagger

Going for an early morning run, Nick rounded a bend at an intensely fast pace. He wasn't even paying attention to the two high school girls running -at the moment before he passed them- a couple feet in front of him.

But they sure as hell noticed him.

The sun was barely up, they'd gone out jogging to work off all the sugar they'd consumed the night before at a slumber party, and they were in a secluded area. True, they were barely three miles from the house they'd had the slumber party at, but they were not particularly bright girls, nor were they the best at judging situations at face value.

So when they saw some tough-looking guy in a hooded sweatshirt, running up behind them, not even panting -like he'd come out of nowhere, maybe even been hiding in wait for them- they panicked.

One of them squealed so perfectly it would have made a Bauerschwein green with envy and, ducking, covered her turned head pathetically with her crossed arms, palms facing up.

Her friend was too busy shrieking, "Kill me last! Kill me last!" at the top of her lungs to do any ducking or squealing of her own.

Nick stopped and blinked at them. He had assumed -by their reaction- that they had to be Wesen, but as soon as he'd come to a grinding halt to reassure them he wasn't about to cut their heads off, it became apparent that neither of them where woging. Not even the involuntarily woge that only a Grimm can see. These were just regular girls. Kehrseite. As in definitely not Wesen.

Gretel came around the same bend Nick had just cleared a moment ago. The ironic thing, she couldn't help thinking, looking at the pitiful girls with involuntarily disdain, was that if they hadn't started screaming their effing heads off like that, Nick wouldn't have even stopped to beginning with. He'd have just kept running, minding his own business. It sickened her sometimes how stupid young women who didn't know any better -but should, obviously- could be.

Unlike Nick, Gretel was a little out of breath. She couldn't run for miles without draining some energy (though, everything considered, she was doing a fantastic job keeping up with her fellow Grimm overall).

"Stop screaming," she panted down at the girls, snagging the wrist of the squealer and pulling her to her feet. "And, just so you know, when a real mugger comes after you, this-" Here Gretel stopped and crossed her wrists loosely in front of her face in a bad parody of what the ducking girl had done "-isn't going to save you."

Nick sucked in his lips to hold back a laugh. As a detective, he knew how scary this situation must be to these clueless girls, and he'd investigated enough real cases of people killed while out for a harmless jog that Gretel's no nonsense advice shouldn't have been funny to him. If he'd been an actual attacker, these girls would've been dead five seconds ago.

Still, his body shook from the repressed laughter, giving his amusement away.

"Try to stay out of trouble," Nick told them when he was finally able to speak without cracking up. "Come on, Gretel, I'll race you back."

When they arrived back at the house, Juliette was waiting for them with freshly brewed coffee, which she poured into two mugs.

Nick sat down at the table and took a swig of his coffee like he'd just gone out to get the mail.

Gretel gulped hers down like it was water. Despite the fact that she'd kept reasonably hydrated the entire time she'd been out running, keeping up with Nick had left her thirsty. Not to mention sweaty. She swallowed the last sip and wiped her forehead with the back of her wrist.

Juliette noticed. "Geez, Gretel. You okay?"

Gretel nodded and forced the same easy-going smile she'd have made herself use even if she hadn't been okay. "Yeah. Never better."

"Can I get you some more coffee?" she offered, glancing down at Gretel's empty mug. Nick still had more than half of his.

Gretel stretched and shook her head. "No, thanks. If it's all right with you, I could use a shower." She looked at Nick. "Some of us actually still perspire around here."

Nick chuckled at that, and Gretel felt an unexpected sense of warmth rising up from her stomach at his friendly reaction. She wasn't sure why she felt this way. Nick had always been nice to her, more or less, so it was nothing new. But the developing easiness between them had this almost comforting inward glow that was only growing and spreading as she got to known her fellow Grimm better.

It wasn't exactly what she felt for Ben, or even Hansel, though it wasn't unlike that in some ways. There was a kinship to it, a wanting to protect and fight alongside -even when fighting with- Nick, but there was something more to it.

Something Gretel couldn't put her finger on.

She knew by this point (even if she'd never have admitted it) that the more time she spent with Nicholas Burkhardt -fighting or talking or otherwise- the more time she wanted to spend with him. As for why, in the end, Gretel always left herself with no choice but to chalk it up to it simply being that -aside from her brother- she'd never had another Grimm for a friend. She made herself believe that it had to be normal; that all Grimms who weren't directly related felt these kinds of growing attachments to one another that differed slightly -in feeling if not in intensity- from what they felt for, say, their brothers or sisters or even close cousins. Perhaps it was some kind of survival gene in their blood, urging them to aid one another.

To let herself think, even just to speculate, it could be something else was too painful.

If -they weren't, but if- the new feelings Gretel had were because she liked her fellow Grimm as more than just a friend, the idea of waking up on his couch every day until she could get back on her own two feet -either find Hansel or else find it in herself to do the unthinkable and give up believing he was still alive somewhere- to Nick and his beautiful, utterly perfect girlfriend kissing their hellos and goodbyes every morning in their idyllic house in their lovely little Portland neighborhood, the anguish would be too much for any woman to deal with.

Gretel could rip out a Hexenbiest's heart and feed it to a pack of howling Coyomen without batting an eye, but the kind of hurt she'd be headed for if she was stupid enough to fall for Nick Burkhardt was in a class all by itself.

Even right then, as she headed for the stairs so she could take a shower and wash the stink of their run off herself, looking back over her shoulder and glimpsing Juliette putting her arms around Nick's neck and lifting her face to his for a kiss, would have been a stab of pain worse than any injury any Wesen was capable of leaving her with.

Which was why it was lucky, she occasionally had to remind herself, that wasn't the case.

Rosalee was just closing up the shop, locking up for the evening, when she heard someone coming up behind her. She spun around quickly, just to make sure that -if it was someone who wanted trouble- they didn't sneak up on her.

It was Carl Fieri, the Daemonfeuer Nick had had her talk to down at the precinct. "Hey, Rosalee."

"Hey." She smiled weakly. "I told you we don't sell Jay here, Carl." Her brother Freddie had once, but those days were over.

He shook his head. That wasn't why he'd come. He wouldn't have expected a former addict to be trading in the stuff anyway; the urge to get back into it yourself would be too much temptation for even the strongest Wesen. He was here for Rosalee herself. Ariel was gone, he still didn't trust the Grimm as far as he could spit, and a Fuchsbau wasn't so different from a Daemonfeuer in some ways -they were both known for their cunning, as well as their many vices.

Besides, the Grimm had been right about one thing. Rosalee's former addiction to Jay made her someone Carl could truly relate to, someone who just might understand everything he was going through.

From the withdrawal pains to the self-hating, Rosalee had likely experienced it all to a degree.

There was something weighing on his mind now, and Carl doubted anyone -least of all that psycho Grimm- would believe him if he spoke up and voiced his fears. But Rosalee Calvert just might. She was friends with the Grimm, and that alone should have made her untrustworthy, but -then again- Ariel wasn't (in her mind, though Nick himself might beg to differ) the Grimm's mortal enemy either... She'd even helped another Grimm -a female- fight a Reaper...

Carl took a deep breath. "Can we talk?"

"I'm just closing up the shop," Rosalee tried.

"Please?"

"Look, I-" He hadn't been exactly chatty, even after she broke through the ice (thanks to their common ground), in the interrogation room, so she wasn't expecting a miraculous breakthrough now.

Carl understood. "If you think I secretly think you're hoarding Jay in that shop and I'm only trying to get in, attack you, and steal some..." He took his hands out of his pockets. "I'm not. Look, I'm not even shaking that bad no more."

Rosalee fought the urge to let her expression soften, giving him a cynical look instead. "You get a fix from somewhere?"

He shook his head rapidly, like there was a bee caught in his ears. "No."

She stared into his eyes for a moment. For a Daemonfeuer, he wasn't the toughest kid on the block; she'd break him, if he was lying.

"I swear," he insisted.

Rosalee sighed, deciding to believe he was telling the truth. She turned the key back in the shop door's lock. "Okay."

"Why are you doing this?"

"What do you mean?" Ariel straightened her spine in the back booth of the diner they were eating in and stared across the table at the so-called 'John Doe' Grimm she'd checked out of a mental institution in Nevada only a few days ago and driven all this way back to Portland with.

"You're one of them," he said, swallowing at the wad of fries he'd just shoved into his mouth and tried -somewhat unsuccessfully- to wash down with the large Diet Pepsi the waitress had already refilled twice for him. "Your face changed too."

Ariel snorted. "So you assume where there's a woge there's a monster? At least I can eat like a normal person, John."

"I'm starving," he retorted, taking a large bite out of a burger the size of his head. "And you're not normal."

"Fine. See if I ever save your ass again."

"And who the eff's John?"

"You're John," Ariel told him. "John Doe."

"God, I hate that," he said flatly. "That's not my name."

"Do you remember your real name?"

He shook his head. "But I think you know it and aren't telling me."

"Better that you hear it from her."

"Her...?"

"You'll see."

"Is she a monster, too?"

"I'm not a monster, John," she insisted, making her tone heavy on the name he hated out of annoyance.

"I'm sorry," he amended. "You did save me. And you're not like that other one."

"You mean the Löwen?"

It was right on the tip of his tongue to ask what the eff a Löwen was, when something in his mind dimly clicked, telling him Ariel meant that lion-faced jerk who'd run the institution.

"Maybe I am crazy..." He shook his head again. "But, no, I meant this...cellmate...they gave me at one point... He was like a beast from hell when his face changed... I felt like I should be killing him, to protect...to stop... I don't know."

"Let me guess. Rotting skin, threatening eyes?"

"Yeah, how'd you know?"

"Zauberbiest." Ariel shrugged one shoulder and stirred a raspberry milkshake with her straw. That must have given the Löwen a laugh, tormenting a Grimm whose specialty was Hexenbiest head-chopping by giving him some quality time with a Zauberbiest...

"Zauberbiest..." he echoed.

"John, you okay?"

"I killed Zauberbiests..." He stared over Ariel's shoulder for a moment, his mind grasping at something that was so close yet so far. "Hexenbiests, most often..."

"What else?"

"We're Grimms."

"We?"

"What?"

"You said we..."

"I said I."

"No, you said we."

"It doesn't matter."

Ariel disagreed. "What else can you remember?"

"I remember that I have diabetes and I don't trust Daemonfeuers." He raised an eyebrow at her. "No offense."

"I'll try not to take that too personal." She smirked tightly. "Anything else?"

He tried, strained himself mentally, grasping at the fuzzy edges of his mind, but nothing was coming. Not even his real name. "There's nothing else."

"What about the name you scream in your sleep?"

He blinked in blank confusion. This was the first he'd heard of it. No one had thought to tell him that he cried out for someone every night until his voice went hoarse, never remembering in the morning. "What name?"

Snuggled up with Nick on the couch, watching Jeopardy, Juliette tried to tune out the grating, nails-on-a-chalkboard sound of Gretel sharpening a dagger down at the other end.

She was relieved when the doorbell finally rang, because hard as she tried to ignore it, the noise -not unlike the woman who was making it- was chafing more than ever on her nerves. It hadn't seemed to matter how loud she'd turned up the volume; the Jeopardy theme was still barely audible above the scratchy sharpening sound that was getting deeper under her skin with each smooth scrape.

Somehow, Nick wasn't fazed. He didn't look up, even once, from the screen, over at Gretel. With his enhanced hearing, Juliette wondered how that was even possible. His senses were far more heightened than hers, and yet it was as if the sound didn't have any effect on him whatsoever.

So at the first dong of the bell, Juliette lightly kicked off the knitted blanket she had over her legs, untangled herself from Nick's arms, and went for the door.

With a faint grunt, Nick switched off the TV and followed, Gretel not far behind, slipping her now perfectly sharpened dagger into a sheath she had fastened around the waist of her leather pants.

"You expecting anyone?" Juliette asked.

She was addressing Nick, but it was Gretel that shook her head no. And yet there was a strange look on her face; she was going pale and she chewed on her lower lip.

"Gretel?" Nick glanced back at her, concerned.

She shook her head again. "It's nothing. I just..." She rubbed her forehead with her thumb. "This is going to sound crazy, but I thought I heard my brother's voice."

"Gretel, even if he was standing right behind that door, which is pretty doubtful, there's no way you could have heard him in here," Juliette pointed out, trying to be gentle. "I'm sorry."

"Are you planning on finding out who is at the door?" Gretel replied, a little tersely.

Wordlessly, Juliette unlocked the door and swung it open.

Standing impatiently under the porch light, bathed in an orange glow like the devil herself, was Ariel Eberhart.

"Oh, shit!" Nick muttered under his breath.

Juliette's eyes widened. "You."

"Yeah, me..." Ariel glanced past her at Nick and Gretel. "Hello again. Glad to see my two favorite Grimms have made friends."

"You're dead..." Juliette said hollowly, staring at Ariel like she was a ghost come back to haunt them (she almost was).

"Yeah, I've really got to do something about that rumor," Ariel sighed. "It's starting to be a real inconvenience." She looked briefly at Juliette, then back at Nick. "I was hoping you'd have helped me out and spread the word. I'm a little disappointed in you, Nick."

"Wait..." Juliette whirled on Nick. "You knew she was alive?"

"Kind of." Nick winced.

"You knew and you didn't tell me?" She gaped at him in disbelief. "When did you find out about this?"

"When he met Gretel," Ariel said offhandedly, like it didn't matter. "Now can we please get back on track here? I'm a busy woman."

"Gretel's been here a while." Juliette fumed, her expression hardening. "You deliberately left out the part about the bitch who kidnapped me still being alive. How could you, Nick?"

"Look, Juliette, it's not what you think..." Nick tried. "I wanted to protect you."

Juliette swallowed, almost shaking with anger. "I thought we were through with that crap, Nick. You promised no more secrets..."

"I-" he started weakly.

"Um, the bitch is still standing here..." Ariel reminded them, doing air quotes on 'bitch'.

"Go away," Juliette told her. "You're not welcome here. If you don't get off my porch right now, Nick's going to arrest you."

Ariel cocked her head. "Please tell me you're not still mad about the whole taking you to my dad's lair thing. I did what I had to do so my father could die with dignity. Get over it already."

"You have five seconds to get out of here," Juliette growled.

"Take it easy," Ariel all but purred, still cool as a cucumber. "As it happens, this isn't about me. I have someone in my van who I think Gretel might want to see."

"We don't care," Juliette snapped. "Get off my property."

"You're really going to be like that?" Ariel fake-pouted. "After he came all this way?"

Gretel found she was holding her breath. Almost involuntarily, she slipped past Juliette and Nick and heard herself say, "I want to see him." It was like something inside her -a gut instinct that was throbbing like a heartbeat- knew who was in Ariel's van without being told.

Ariel smiled accommodatingly. "As you wish." She stepped off the porch and opened the passenger door of her van (parked impertinently in Nick's driveway, too close for comfort to Juliette's fender).

"Come on, John, it's okay." A moment later, Ariel was moving aside and letting a tall young man step into the light in her place.

Gretel felt her chest tighten and her windpipe all but close. "Hansel..."

He smiled, but there was no warmth in the smile, no recognition. "Hello."

Gretel choked on her own sobs, holding out her now trembling hands to him. "Oh, God, Hansel, you're all right..."

The name rang a bell, and he liked it much better than 'John' at any rate, but the woman who spoke it -who told him what Ariel wouldn't- was a stranger to him. "Yeah..." He was standoffish, backing away, not even letting her hands make the slightest contact with his.

Even overjoyed beyond reason, Gretel wasn't an idiot. She knew her own twin well enough to figure out he had absolutely no clue who she was. "Hansel, you know who I am, don't you?"

"Yeah...of course..."

She also knew him well enough to spot a lie. "No, you don't." Her eyes darted over to Ariel. "Why is he pretending?"

"Oh, he's probably just being polite," Ariel suggested. "It's extremely rude to just blurt out 'who are you?' when you don't recognize someone."

Nick didn't mean to, but his eyes shifted -almost automatically- to Juliette.

She was still furious with him. "Oh, don't even..."

"What did you do to him?" Gretel demanded, turning on Ariel.

"Do to him?" Ariel gasped, putting her hand to her heart, somehow looking both wounded and cocky all at once. "I did nothing! I rescued him and brought him back to you. Is it just me or does ingratitude run in your family?"

"I'm sorry." Gretel believed Ariel. The Daemonfeuer had no reason to take away Hansel's memory, or inflict the bruises and other injures she could both see and sense on his body. "Hansel...it's me...it's Gretel..."

It was then that disaster struck. Gretel got so emotional that every care she'd ever put into practice to keep her Hexenbiest heritage a secret even from other Grimms faded like a foggy mist when the sun comes out.

Nick and Juliette were standing behind her, so they didn't see her woge. Ariel didn't either, since she was looking at Nick. Only Hansel saw. And, in a flash, he was back in a padded cell being tormented by a Zauberbiest. That Gretel's woge was so minimal didn't matter. He only saw an enemy. Maybe he didn't fully trust the Daemonfeuer who'd rescued him, but he didn't see any immediate need to kill her. She'd done him a good turn and so could be considered 'on probation' so to speak. But this was a Hexenbiest. An evil, deadly creature, pretending to be all friendly and concerned for him. And why else would Ariel have really brought him here, if not to do a job? This must be her real motive... Little sense though it actually made.

It must be quick, that much Hansel knew. Without knowing where the knowledge came from, Hansel was aware that this Hexenbiest was fast.

He had a knife he'd taken from the diner. Of course he'd need a better weapon eventually, but stealing the steak knife at least made him feel protected for the time being. Now it seemed he'd have to use it.

Feigning sentiment, Hansel edged closer to Gretel, letting his lower lip tremble ever so slightly. "Gretel..."

Gretel came forward for an embrace. But she was not as taken in as she seemed. Sensing the knife coming for her belly as he pulled himself close to her, her hand shot out like a viper, snagging his wrist, holding it back. She knew him too well. Even like this, tortured and mentally unstable, she knew her twin.

Unfortunately, even if his mind didn't remember his twin sister, his beloved Gretel, Hansel's muscles had forgotten nothing of her cleverness and speed. Which was probably why, from one brief moment of assessing the situation, he'd known that the knife supposedly intended for her abdomen would never make contact.

Instead, with his other hand, while she focused wide-eyed and distressed on his face and the hand she held back, slipped so easily into her sheath and pulled out her own freshly sharpened dagger, thrusting it into her side.

Gretel had never been more shocked or horrified in her life. She hadn't seen it coming, and as much as the stab itself hurt, Hansel's rejection of her -because of the trace of rotting Hexenbiest flesh he'd seen in her face- was the deeper hurt. She understood it, in her mind, but her heart didn't. Faces changed, but souls didn't. If Hansel had suddenly gotten the ability to woge in front of her, all she'd ever need was to look into his eyes and know it was still him. And then she couldn't hurt him. Nothing in the world could make her hurt her brother.

He'd looked straight into her eyes as she held back his first blow, keeping that knife away, and he'd still tried to kill her.

Maybe, for all she knew, feeling herself grow weaker by the second, he'd even succeeded.

However, Hansel's own conscience didn't let him off as cleanly as he thought. No sooner had the blade found itself embedded in Gretel's flesh, causing blood to spew out freely, leaving a dark red stain forming on the side of her clothes all around the entry point, than he felt as if he'd committed a monstrous taboo. He felt a phantom ache in his own side, numb and not fatal, but bad enough to let him know he'd as good as stabbed himself in the bargain.

Gretel sank to the ground, with barely a croak dying on her lips as she bled and shivered.

"Gretel!" Juliette bent down next to her and took her hand.

Even Ariel's eyes filled with tears. She hadn't brought Hansel here for this...

Nick, horrified at the sight of his friend -his fellow Grimm, who he'd fought with and cared about- crumbling to the floor with a dagger sticking out just above her hip, lunged forward and punched Hansel, as hard as he could, in the face.