Chapter 10: Dreams & Nightmares

Nick had the dream again. The one about the copper-and-candy house burning to the ground, melting down into the center of the earth.

This time, though, he was inside the house as the flames spread like wildfire. There was only one path clear to get out the front door before he was trapped for good, drowned in molten hot sugar and burned to a crisp. He was about to turn and run when his enhanced hearing picked up a muffled cry for help. Someone else was in the house, too!

Trapped, just like he soon might be.

Unable to leave them like that, Nick had stuck his arm out in front of his face, pushing through the heat and the smoke.

That was when he'd seen it was two someones. Juliette and Gretel. A candy cane pillar had fallen, trapping them in an alcove framed by intertwining pink sugar filigree.

Juliette called his name over and over again. He tried to move the pillar and, after several failed attempts, managed to scoot it a few inches. Enough so he could crawl into the alcove and pull them out.

The filigree turned into teeth-rottenly sweet sugar lava and a couple of drops landed on his neck. Nick had to bite back a curse and a cry of pain and concentrate on getting to his fellow Grimm and his girlfriend.

Finally they were all out and running to the door. They'd seemed only to have a few measly seconds before their path -and last hope- was gone for good.

That was when the unthinkable happened. Ariel appeared, dressed in the same skimpy fire dancer outfit she'd been wearing when Nick had first seen her, and latched onto Juliette's wrist, pulling her back.

Gretel was still by his side. Nick urged her to run, turning his head to look at her for just a second to be sure she made it out.

A flame spud shot up out of a copper stove, erupting right in her face, but she still got to the door.

When he whirled around to rescue Juliette, though, he could barely see her through the smoke. Two women fought, in between the flames, but all he could really see were their silhouettes and swirling red hair. He had to use his best judgment and, reaching into the fire itself, shove away the figure he took for Ariel and pull the one he believed to be Juliette out with him.

He heard a scream, and felt a little bad for Ariel -being a Daemonfeuer and dying so brutally by fire seemed a harsh end- but what could he do? She'd grabbed Juliette, so he'd had to save her.

There was nothing he could do for Ariel.

He found himself lying outside on the ground, not panting or laboring for breath, not sweaty even though the heat had been so intense it caused blisters. He rolled over and saw Gretel holding her face, covering most of it with her hands. Although he wanted to ask if she was okay, he decided to check on Juliette first. Gretel was at least sitting up as she clutched at her face like that; Juliette hadn't moved, lying face-down on the grass ever since he'd pulled her out of the burning candy house.

Rolling her over, Nick got the most horrible shock of his life. It wasn't Juliette. This was Ariel's face he was staring down into, Ariel's breath that was shallow but still consistent.

It was Juliette he'd shoved away and left to die.

Gretel removed her hands from her face.

But there was no face. Just Gretel's eyes surrounded by charred, rotting skin and flesh.

That was when he woke up, panicked without knowing why, relieved beyond all measure and reason when he saw Juliette still asleep beside him, as the details of the dream slowly came back to him.

"Here." Juliette set a steaming mug of coffee down in front of Nick. She'd walked in and seen him sitting at the table, elbows propped up and his forehead in his hand. "You look like you need it."

Nick looked up, letting go of his forehead and crossing his arms. "Hey."

She forced a weak smile. "Hey."

"Are we still in a fight?"

Juliette sighed. "I don't know." She pulled out a chair. "I don't want to be, and I understand you're going through an incredible amount of stress right now, but I still just don't see where you come off -trying to protect me by keeping things from me."

"I just feel like I've put you through so much... It didn't seem right to make things worse when..."

She sat down and, reaching over, squeezed his hand. "No. I want you to feel like you can talk to me. About anything now." She flicked a lock of hair over one shoulder and leaned in closer. "And what was right would have been warning me about Ariel before she showed up on our front porch."

"I know," Nick admitted. "I messed up. I shouldn't have kept that from you."

"It's just...hard..." Juliette swallowed "Really, really hard... Dealing with the fact that, sometimes, you seem to forget that I know about your world now, that you don't have to keep secrets from me. I just wonder what else you're protecting me from..."

He blinked at her. "Why did you say protecting like that?"

"Like what?"

"Like it should have air quotes."

"I didn't do air quotes," she pointed out.

"But you said it like it..." His voice trailed off. "Never mind."

"Anyway," Juliette pushed on, squeezing his hand again. "I think that we need to get everything out right now and be back on equal footing. You know, a completely blank slate."

Nick nodded.

"Now, is there anything," she wanted to know, "else you haven't told me?"

He wondered if he should tell her about the nightmares. Especially since the last nightly terror episode had involved her. Aside from that, there really wasn't anything else he'd been keeping a secret.

"I..."

Juliette waited.

"I've been having these really weird nightmares," he admitted. "About a house burning down."

"Our house?" Juliette asked gently.

He chuckled offhandedly and shook his head. "No. This one was made of candy."

"Nick, that house probably isn't real." She smiled at him reassuringly. "You have nothing to be afraid of."

"I know," he said, "it's stupid. It's just..." He felt his hands growing tense as he gestured with them, trying to make her understand. "It gets worse, more vivid, every time I dream it. Last time, we were in it. Trapped."

Juliette blinked. "We?"

"You, me..." he explained, pausing. "And Gretel." Was it lying to leave Ariel out of this? Better safe than sorry. "Ariel, too, I guess."

She exhaled heavily. "You're under a lot of stress, and I know sometimes I maybe don't make it as easy as I should..."

"No." He stopped her. "Don't say that. You being here, understanding about Wesen and what I am, it's done more to help me than you can possibly know."

"I'm glad." She looked down at his still tense hands. "I wish I could help you get over your nightmares too, though."

Nick didn't reply. He didn't know what to say. On the one hand, he wanted to tell her that maybe she was right, and now that he'd talked it out with her, it would pass, he'd get over it. Get through it... But, and here was the problem, deep down, he didn't believe that. He believed the dream would still come back to haunt him, as often as it wanted.

And how it would all end, in his mind and in that thin line that divided fake fears from real ones, he had no clue.

"Maybe," Juliette offered, filling the silence, "getting through this for you is going to be like learning about Grimms and Wesen for me."

"Juliette..."

"No, hear me out," she insisted. "Before I fully understood what was going on, I thought I was losing my mind. Until I finally decided it didn't matter what was real and what wasn't. If it was real to me, then that's all that mattered. I had to face things and not let them scare the hell out of me anymore. Then I finally was in the right mind frame to see the truth, to believe in you like I should have from the very beginning. Your candy-house dream is real to you, so..." She cocked her head, locking eyes with her boyfriend. "So maybe it's all about accepting that, even with all you've gone through, something as seemingly simple as a nightmare can still make you nervous on occasion. Then you don't have to feel that, by being scared, you're letting everyone down."

Nick swallowed at a lump in his throat. "The only person I'm truly scared of letting down is you."

"Well, don't be."

Nick pushed in his desk chair and grabbed his jacket, turning to leave the precinct for the evening.

A few desks sported blank screens and switched-off overhead lights, but there were plenty of flickering florescent bulbs left on for those that were still in the process of leaving or had the later shift.

Hank had just turned off his own computer and was following Nick out the door and into the hallway. "So, you don't believe Carl Fieri's theory that one of Bianca's uncles is trying to bump her off?" he asked, walking briskly to keep up with his partner.

"No, Hank, I told you; I believe him." He turned a corner. "A lot of stuff he told me last night, about how possessive Bianca's uncles get, about how she had been secretly seeking an emancipation behind their backs... Well, it fits with what Bianca was saying."

Hank's eyes widened. "Bianca did say she was fighting with Asher and things were getting pretty bad."

"Exactly." Nick stopped at the doors leading outside. "And what would make one of them madder than her trying to leave them? Possibly for Carl -a guy they all hate- if this all started before she found out about him and August."

"They'd be furious," Hank realized. "You run the check on the emancipation case?"

"She tried to file it," Nick told him. "It's on record. It's pretty much stagnant, though, nothing's been done with it for a while."

"So the courts never granted her an emancipation," Hank noted slowly, "but they never flat out denied her one, either."

"Meaning, if she's feeling stifled she could be trying to re-open it." Nick made a rolling gesture with his outstretched hand. "Not to be with Carl, but to literally be on her own."

"That could make whichever one of them tried to poison her the first time even madder."

"Right. But we have no proof."

"So who's making sure she's safe until we get some?"

"Captain Renard agreed to leave some police officers outside her room at the hospital, and she's not being released for a couple of days for her own safety."

"That doesn't give us much time," Hank said grimly. "In two days, if we don't have any proof, she's going back into the danger zone."

"Then we'd better get to work on finding some proof," Nick replied.

"Where are you going right now?"

"I have to pick up Gretel from the hospital," he said, pushing the door open and walking out onto the steps.

"Yeah, how she doing?" Hank asked.

"Pretty good for someone who got stabbed. She's just really mad they made her stay overnight."

"You planning on checking on Bianca while you're there?"

"Yeah, I didn't see why not."

"Mind if I come with?"

"Sure," Nick agreed. "You want to take my car or yours?"

"I'll follow," Hank said, shrugging. "I think I want to stay a little longer, maybe try talking to some of the uncles again. Maybe I can get one of them to slip up and say something useful, since they don't know they're our newest suspects."

"Okay."

They reached the bottom of the stairs and Nick made it to his car.

"Hey, if you don't mind me asking," Hank said, reaching in his coat pocket for his keys, "what are you going to do about Hansel? I mean, is he going to stay with you even though he tried to kill Gretel?"

"I can't exactly just let them go off on their merry way after that," Nick sighed. "Juliette and I decided to clear some junk out of the guest room. That way, either Gretel can take it and Hansel can get the couch, or she can stay where she is and Hansel can take the room."

"Wow, your place is turning into a Grimm hostel." Hank smirked teasingly.

Nick rolled his eyes, got in his car, and started it up. "Shut up."

"Aye, aye, Concierge Burkhardt," Hank laughed, leaning on his open car door.

This is it, Gretel told herself. This is the last time I'm going to woge.

Being in the hospital, weakened from blood loss and suffering from a double rejection, she'd let herself go into as full a woge as she could (minuscule though that was) more frequently than was normal. She was vulnerable, more prone to it here. That was why she'd tried her best not to look at any of the doctors or nurses for too long, scared she'd lose control and they'd see something she didn't want them to.

And why she was glad Nick hadn't had time to come by and see her before work.

She'd spent the day regaining her strength, mentally and emotionally as well as physically.

Now, at last, Gretel felt she was strong enough to go back to hiding it as well as she always had. Nick still had no clue, so long as Hansel didn't tell him. Luckily, she didn't think Nick wanted to listen to anything that came out of her brother's mouth right now, not after he'd stabbed her, and -if he felt more keen on listening later- she could always try and get to Hansel first. True, he'd said he didn't want to see her again, but she could always threaten to pester his every waking hour if he shared her secret -their secret, even if he wouldn't admit it- with anybody.

If he really wanted to be away from her that badly, he'd cooperate.

Or she could just do what she'd done when they were little kids. Threaten to pin him down and sit on his stomach while force-feeding jelly beans and M&Ms to his nostrils.

That, of course, had been before their father left them; before they were on their own. Gretel wouldn't have threatened anything like that after they'd faced their first Hexenbiest and Hansel became a diabetic. She'd never tried to get Hansel to put anything he didn't want into his body after that incident. With the exception of his insulin, when they were eleven and he'd broken his arm and two ribs in a fight with a particularly vicious, extremely hormonal preteen Blutbad and he'd leaned back against the wall of the abandoned crack house they were hiding out in, shaking his head, telling Gretel he wasn't going to take it (even though his beeping wristwatch said it was time) because he didn't want to live like this anymore.

She had immediately pinned her brother in place and shoved that needle in his arm so fast she almost missed the vein, pressing her knee against his stomach, keeping his back pressed to the wall so hard it left an impression in the chalky dust when she finally let him go.

And Hansel had never threatened to leave her like that again.

Until last night, when he wouldn't even acknowledge she was his sister.

So what did it matter now what she threatened him with to keep things in order? What was the worst he could do?

Try to kill her?

Been there, done that. He couldn't do it.

Hate her?

Well, he already did, now didn't he?

It was terrible, him being here in Portland, alive and safe (in most ways) and her missing him even more than when she'd had no idea where the hell he was.

So here she was, staring into the bathroom mirror, ready to face her hideous Hexenbiest side one more time before she put it away. Hopefully forever. Or at least long enough to figure out what the eff she was going to do with her life now.

Gretel took a deep breath and let the change come over her. The mirror was dark. For some reason the light had burnt out sometime in the night and was never replaced, which was why she'd left the door open just a crack. She could, via that darkened mirror image, see her little packed bag on the hospital bed the nurses had made up so pristinely it was practically a work of origami.

Looking at herself, she realized that she didn't even really remember what her mother's full woge looked like. She must have seen it, at least a few times, during her early childhood, but she didn't remember. And now, knowing what she knew, about why their parents left them, it made her feel incredibly sad. She thought she'd have rather had that one memory back than her mother's wand. The wand meant almost nothing; that memory would have been something real to her. Something to treasure and maybe even save her from such full and untamed self-loathing. She could have said that to Hansel, about there being good Hexenbiests in the world, so much more strongly and passionately, like she actually meant it, if only she remembered what their mother's Hexenbiest side looked like.

However, the only memory she had of Adrianna was the pretty, human-looking face, framed by long brown hair not so different from her own, that haunted those dreams Hansel never let her talk about.

Suddenly, Gretel saw a shadow flicker across the glass and the image of the bag on the bed was gone.

Replaced by Nick's stunned-faced reflection, gaping at the Hexenbiest in the mirror.

Gretel spun around, changing as she turned. "Nick, I-"

He just stared at her for a long, utterly shocked moment. "Oh my God."