A/N:
Sorry for the late update! This fic is getting a lot plottier and twistier than I originally planned, and then Spring Break happened…but I'm back!
Thank you again for all your reviews/follows, I read every one and they really do motivate me to keep this going! And a special thanks to Gabi2305, who keeps reassuring me that I'm staying in character (so glad!) and for leaving wonderful reviews in general. I know you're a fan of hurt!Nick like I am, and there's plenty of that to come…so the next chapter's for you! (And for the rest of you h/c junkies).
Anyways, enjoy! Happy Easter y'all!
~TheFictionalMe
Pain pain painpainpainpainpain.
Everything hurt. It hurt to move. It hurt to think. It hurt to breathe.
The first thing that Nick became aware of was the overwhelming feeling of his chest being crushed, while someone simultaneously carved out his heart with a dull wooden spoon. Breathing felt like he was underwater, uselessly sucking in air through a broken straw.
As he fought his way back through the haze of red and pain, Nick became vaguely aware of voices. Bits and pieces of conversation were floating past him, but he couldn't quite grasp everything they were saying.
And who exactly were they?
Someone was telling him to open his eyes (was that Juliette?), and he fought desperately to look at her, but his eyes just. wouldn't. work. It felt as though there were lead weights at the bottom of his eyelids, holding them in place, and no amount of effort or concentration would move them.
The voices continued, becoming slightly clearer now, calling out his name and demanding he look at them.
Mustering every ounce of strength, he was finally able to pry his eyes open. He could just barely make out the blurry faces hovering above him, bleeding together into indefinable shapes and swirling around until they slowly came into focus. It was as if he was looking at them through a fogged window pane, and blinking did nothing to clear his vision. There was Juliette…and that one sounded like Monroe? And Rosalee?
Where are we? What's going on? And why do they all look so…scared…?
Nick's thoughts were fleeting and disorganized, unable to form coherently around the agonizing waves of pain crashing over him, as he struggled to remember what had happened. He panicked for a fleeting moment, recalling a distant feeling of danger and that Monroe was in trouble, but Monroe was here with him now and he didn't look like he was hurt so…
Everything's fine, right?
He blinked, trying vainly to focus on Hank's face now hovering in the distance, and he tried to listen to what they were saying. But his eyes were so so heavy, and he just couldn't keep them open anymore. Their voices rose in panic now, and they were all yelling frantically at him, begging him to listen, but he just couldn't concentrate on what they wanted through all the pain…
Funny, it doesn't hurt as much anymore.
Nick could hear someone ordering him keep his eyes open, and someone else yelling at him to hang on, and a gentle hand squeezing his as he lay bleeding out on the floor. He was trying, trying so desperately to answer them, to keep fighting, but it was as if a powerful force kept pulling him back. All the lights and colors above him danced and swirled together dizzyingly, blending together until they all dulled away into nothing but black.
He was slipping away slowly, and he became gradually aware of it as the background of everything faded away. As their voices and the pain moved further and further into the distance, he started to realize what was happening.
Am I dying?
The darkness slowly overtook him, and Nick strangely wondered why he wasn't afraid. He felt lighter and disconnected from reality, and yet an overwhelming sense of relief.
At least they're all safe.
The voices were fading now, calling out to him from the distance, as if they were at the other end of a long tunnel. They were telling him something urgent, and he felt like there was something important he should be remembering…but he couldn't focus on it anymore. He was leaving them; he just couldn't stay any longer.
I'm sorry.
He drifted away through the darkness, bracing himself for what was coming, feeling both an overwhelming feeling of regret and a sense of readiness for whatever happened next.
Suddenly, there was a new voice, louder and clearer than the others, and it quickly jolted him back to awareness.
"Nick. You shouldn't be here."
He instantly recognized that voice, while simultaneously being unable to comprehend it. Everything was still so dark and disjointed and illusionary, but he knew without a doubt who that voice belonged to. He'd know it anywhere.
Aunt Marie?
"Let's try this again," Renard said coolly, kneeling down in front of the first gunman, a cowardly Schakal, who they currently had tied to a tree in the middle of Portland's forest. No one could hear him scream out here.
The Schakal spit out a glob of blood at Renard, looking at him defiantly even those his eyes were filled with fear. "I'm not telling you anything."
"Tell me where she is before I rip your heart out and feed it to you!" Monroe snapped, lunging forward and wrapping his hands around the Schakal's neck before Renard or Hank could stop him. His claws were elongated, digging sharply into the side of the Schakal's neck, and the Schakal's eyes bugged out of his head as his oxygen supply was cut off.
"Monroe!" he could hear Hank calling to him, trying to pull him back, but all he could hear and see was red. They had been out in the deep woods for nearly an hour, trying to get information from him. The Schakal was stubbornly refusing to give up his partner's and Rosalee's whereabouts or who had hired them to kill Monroe, although they had been making a very convincing argument.
Hank and Renard finally managed to pull Monroe away from the gunman, who sat desperately gasping for breath and greedily sucking air back into his lungs.
"Monroe, listen to me," Hank's hands were on his face, trying to pull him back to reality. "You have to cool it, or you'll kill him before we get what we need."
Monroe slowly shifted back to human, but his eyes remained blood red. He growled at Hank, throwing his hands off of him.
"This is taking too long!" he threw his hands up in frustration. "God knows where his sick friend has taken Rosalee by now!"
Renard raised his eyebrows at him, not looking amused. "You got a handle on it?"
Monroe bared his teeth, but slowly nodded. "For now."
"Good." Renard turned back to the Schakal, slowly pulling a small vial out of his pocket. "If we haven't convinced you that we're serious, maybe this will."
The Schakal's eyes widened, looking more terrified then he had during the whole interrogation.
"Oh, so you know what this is?" Renard said casually, popping the top off of the vial and waving it close to the Schakal's face.
"You wouldn't dare," the Schakal snapped back, but he trembled slightly in fear as he eyed the vial.
"Just like you wouldn't dare shoot my Grimm in my canton?" Renard's voice didn't rise in volume, but it was so icy cold that it made Monroe shudder.
So this was the Royal at work. Monroe briefly wondered if Nick knew that Renard referred to him as his Grimm, but stored that information away for a future conversation.
"I-I told you," the Schakal stuttered, looking briefly at Monroe and Hank as if they would be of any help, "the job was the Blutbad! The Grimm wasn't supposed to get in the way!"
"Doesn't really matter now, does it?" Renard shrugged nonchalantly, voice as sharp as a razor blade. "Either way, you will tell me what I want to know. Who do you work for? And where did Johnson take Rosalee?"
The Schakal shook his head, leaning back as far as he could against the tree to get away from the vial in Renard's hands. He clamped his mouth shut tightly, refusing to answer.
"Very well," Renard sighed, looking to Monroe and Hank as if he was bored. "Hold his head for me."
"Captain," Hank asked hesitantly, looking slightly unsure. "I'm all for taking him down for what he did to Nick…but is that…?"
"Not poison," Renard replied simply.
Hank paused as Monroe looked back at him in confusion. "Then what…?"
"Truth serum," he said patiently, still waiting for Monroe and Hank to help him.
"Oh." Monroe felt dumbfounded. That works too, he supposed to himself, even though he would have preferred forcing poison down the Schakal's throat at this point. He quickly recovered, moving forwards to hold the Schakal's mouth open while Renard dumped the entire contents of the vial down his throat. The Schakal choked and gagged, but was unable to break out of Monroe's strong grip.
After it was gone, Renard threw the empty vial to the ground with a slightly disgusted look on his face, looking the Schakal directly in the eyes.
"Now," Renard said calmly, "tell me…where is Rosalee?"
"Do you think this is the place?" Monroe asked anxiously as he and Hank crept along the wall of the abandoned warehouse (why did it always have to be a place like this?) that the Schakal had immediately broken and told them about after he had ingested the serum. Monroe shook his head, still amazed at Renard's methods.
Hank grunted. "You heard the Captain. The guy couldn't lie about anything after he took that serum. That's why he was so afraid when he realized what it was. With the secrets he probably knows..." he shook his head, gesturing at the warehouse. "This is it."
They stuck to the shadows along the edge of the warehouse on the far outskirts of Portland, at what was apparently their base of operations. As it turned out, Johnson was the brains of the two, and had carefully planted himself in the church once there was word of Monroe and Rosalee's upcoming nuptials. The Schakal had spilled that he and Johnson had been hired by a member of one of Royal families, but since he was just the hired gun, only Johnson knew their true identity. All the Schakal really knew is that the Royal who had ordered the hit had been made aware by another interested party that Monroe was both marrying out of species and friends with a Grimm. Johnson, being a fanatical purist against any changes to the natural order of Wesen life, had gladly accepted the job and schemed his way into the church, selecting the Schakal as his accomplice.
The plan hadn't actually been to take out Nick, since that had already failed so miserably before with the Cracher-Mortel. However, thanks to the zombie fiasco, the Royals in Europe were now well aware of Nick's uneasy alliance with Renard. It seemed that this particular Royal's agenda was to remind both the Portland Grimm and Bastard Prince of their presence, while simultaneously sending a message to any Wesen who were thinking of breaking the old ways by making an example out of Monroe.
Monroe sighed. This had already happened once before because he was friends with Nick, and Angelina had subsequently been killed because of that ignorance and abuse of power. Now he might lose both Nick and Rosalee because of that same prejudice. His eyes flashed red again, and he took a deep breath, trying to calm himself before he gave away their vantage point of surprise.
Someone would pay for this.
Monroe continued to creep along the wall behind Hank, who had his gun pointed out ahead of him in his outstretched hands. Monroe had decided to go the old-fashioned way with just his Wesen strength, but had readily agreed to the bullet-proof vest that Hank had insisted they both wear. Renard had stayed behind to deal with Schakal, but promised he would join them as soon as he could. It was too risky to send any officers to their location since they were dealing with a trigger-happy Wesen who had Rosalee at gunpoint.
Monroe paused, his enhanced hearing catching faint voices through the thick stone walls.
"Wait," he hissed under his breath, causing Hank to stop in his tracks and look back at him over his shoulder.
"What is it?" Hank whispered urgently back, waiting to see what Monroe had heard.
"I think I hear her," Monroe's eyes flashed as he turned back to Hank. "He has her in this middle room I bet."
"Ok, well there's no door on this side," Hank gestured at the formidable brick wall between them. "And it's completely dark in there. He's probably walking us into a trap. How do you suggest we do this?"
Monroe looked around, desperately thinking of a way to sneak in and save Rosalee. He leaned back against the wall, racking his brain for an idea. He paused suddenly, turning to Hank with a small smile.
"I have a plan."
"Uh oh," Hank looked at him skeptically. "For some reason I don't think I'm going to like this."
Monroe snorted. "Probably not. But it's the best option we have right now." He looked seriously at him. "Let me go in first and I distract him while you get the element of surprise."
"I can't just send you in there alone," Hank protested, every bit of his cop training going against it. "I might not get to you in time."
"Yes you will," Monroe feigned confidence, but he wasn't even sure he believed it himself. "I can see better in the dark, and if there's a trap waiting, I'll be ready. You can never trust a cat."
"So what, I just wait out here and hope that you guys fight it out like cats and dogs?" Hank scoffed, briefly lowering his gun and checking the safety.
"Hey, I resent that," Monroe shot back, before sighing and looking earnestly over at him.
"He wants me, Hank," he countered, his gaze deadly serious as they argued the merits of his plan, "so that's what he's gonna get."
Hank vehemently shook his head. "If Nick was here, there's no way he'd let you do this."
Monroe's heart clenched at the mention of his name, and he noticed the same pained-look on Hank's face. "If Nick was here, he'd argue with me, pretty much like you are now, and then he'd agree and go along with it because his plan wasn't any better." He raised his eyebrows knowingly at Hank.
"Damn." Hank sighed, shaking his head. "Ok. But don't try to be a hero. We don't know who's in there, or if he's working alone."
"It's a chance we have to take, man," Monroe replied. "Nothing will stop me from getting to Rosalee."
"I know." Hank looked up seriously at him. "Ok, let's do this. But I swear to God, if you do something stupid like get yourself killed…"
"I won't I won't," Monroe quickly reassured him, but he vaguely wondered if he would end up the same way as Nick. Or worse.
After he and Hank worked out a signal, Hank crouched down near the front of the dilapidated building as Monroe snuck around to the front entrance, carefully peering into the darkened room. It was empty and deadly silent, with no sign of anyone around. Monroe paused, carefully sniffing the air, but the only fresh scents he caught among the smell of metal and damp soil were Rosalee's and Johnson's.
He carefully crept through the large open room in the darkness, his eyes quickly adjusting to the dim lighting. He paused, zoning in all his senses for any potential dangers in the darkness, but surprisingly nothing was there. He slowly headed towards another door in the crumbling wall at the back of the first room. Cautiously, he reached for the broken metal handle and pried it open as silently as possible.
There was a faint light glowing from an open door further down a long rusted-out hallway, and Monroe supposed that was where Johnson was holding Rosalee. He paused as their voices drifted towards him as he crept down the hallway towards the open door. It felt like miles instead of just feet.
"You know, that Blutbad boyfriend of yours has been a lot more trouble than he's worth," Johnson said caustically, and Monroe couldn't help but smile when he heard Rosalee's reply.
"He's going to be even more trouble when he finds you," Rosalee snapped back. "You're going to regret ever doing this to us."
"My, my, so feisty," Johnson purred back, and Monroe started walking even faster down the darkened corridor. "No wonder he broke all the rules to be with you."
"Why is it so awful that we want to be together?" Rosalee questioned, and Monroe could hear the anger and defense in her voice. "It isn't hurting anyone else."
"It's hurting everything we stand for!" Johnson yelled, and Monroe could hear his fist pound heavily into something sharp and metal in anger. He hurried his pace, only ten feet, five feet from the door now. Almost there…
"We can't allow him to give ideas to everyone else! It would be absolute chaos if Wesen ran rampant ignoring the ways of our kind! Not only is he with you, a Fuchsbau," Johnson said with a tone of disgust, "but he's friends with a Grimm. A Grimm. The one thing devoted to chopping off our heads and putting it on a stick. Unacceptable! He needs to be made an example of. And I will gladly finish the job I was paid to do, one way or another. In fact, I'd do this job for free."
Monroe barely contained a growl as he stopped just outside the door. This guy was definitely going down.
"Monroe and I love each other," Rosalee shot back, "and Nick isn't like the Grimms that we grew up hearing about. He's different, and he's our friend. The one who should be eliminated is you."
"Maybe I should just ease my troubles and eliminate you right now," Johnson snarled. "You're extra baggage I don't need, anyways."
"Please, wait," Rosalee protested, and Monroe could hear the fear laced in her voice underneath the anger, "you don't need to kill me. The more of us you hurt, the harder it will be for you to get away with this."
"I don't need advice from you," Johnson shot back, then paused, chuckling evilly. "Too bad I have to kill you now, but this really has been fun. Good riddance, Fuchsbau, compliments of Prince Renard."
"Prince Renard?" Rosalee asked in confusion, "What do you…" she was suddenly cut off as Johnson struck her, causing her to let out a yelp of surprise and pain.
Monroe saw red. He was supposed to wait for Hank, to signal for him first, but that was all immediately forgotten when he heard Rosalee cry out. Already in full woge, he rushed into the room, tackling Johnson who was standing with his hand raised, ready to strike Rosalee again with the butt of his gun as she was tied helplessly to a chair in the middle of the small room.
He caught Johnson completely by surprise, and they landed with a hard thud on the dirt floor, wrestling wildly as Johnson tried to turn his gun around and aim. It was no use this time.
All Monroe's primal instincts took over as he tore into Johnson, all teeth and claws and fury. He wasn't even aware when Hank entered the room or when Rosalee continued to call out his name.
When it was over, Johnson lie still in a bloody heap on the floor, and Hank was untying Rosalee. Monroe stood, slowly shifting back to human, before opening his arms and pulling a now freed Rosalee tightly against him, his whole body shaking with anger and fear and relief.
"Did that monster hurt you?" Monroe whispered into her ear as she clung to him for dear life.
"No, no, not too badly," she replied softly, and he quickly pulled back to check her over carefully himself. Her once beautiful wedding dress was torn and dirty, streaks of blood and mud in various places on the silken fabric. She was bleeding slightly from a wound along her hairline where Johnson had struck her, and there were some claw marks and bruises along her arms. Otherwise, she was miraculously unharmed from her harrowing ordeal.
"I'm sorry, I'm so so sorry," Monroe said sadly. It was supposed to be the happiest day of their lives, not one tragedy after another. "This wasn't supposed to happen."
"Doesn't matter. We'll plan an even better wedding. Right now the only thing I care about is that we're both alive. You saved me," she looked up at him, and he kissed her then, long and deep.
"How am I going to deal with this?" Hank wondered to himself as he surveyed the crime scene, but they really weren't paying any attention to him as they clung to each other in the dark shadows of the warehouse, just grateful that they were back together, safe and sound.
Hank turned back to Monroe and Rosalee, who were still wrapped around each other desperately. "You guys ok?"
Monroe angled his head to look at him, as Rosalee nodded against his chest. "Yea, we're ok. Just glad this is over."
"You know, I can't say I'm mad about what you did," Hank said quietly as he looked at Johnson's still form, "but now we'll never know who hired him to kill you."
Monroe sighed. In the back of his mind, he had known that, but found that at the moment he didn't care. "No, but he won't be the only one. As long as I keep being friends with Nick, someone will always be after us."
"Unfortunately, that's probably true," Hank smiled grimly in agreement. He paused then, frowning as he knelt down next to Johnson, closely examining a small object strewn on the ground. "Wait a second," he muttered as he picked it up, holding the object up and showing it to them.
It was Johnson's cell phone.
"Well, I might be able to get something off of this," Hank told them hopefully as he put the phone carefully in his pocket. "I'll take it back to the precinct and see what the lab can get off it. Otherwise, we've got nothing."
"Wait, he said something," Rosalee furrowed her brows in confusion, looking at Monroe and Hank. "He said that this was 'compliments of Prince Renard'. What does that mean?"
Monroe shrugged, distantly recalling hearing Johnson say that before he had rushed headfirst into the room in full woge. Everything was pretty much a blur after that. "How many Renards are there?"
"Well, there's only one 'Prince Renard' left, as far as I know," Rosalee's eyes widened as she looked at them.
"He couldn't have meant the Captain…could he?" Hank asked them hesitantly, looking completely perplexed.
Monroe frowned, furrowing his brow. "I mean, I might not really trust him, but Nick has been working with him for a while now, and he obviously has an interest in protecting Nick and keeping him on his side. And having me killed would be a surefire way to turn Nick against him, so I don't think he'd be behind something like this, especially with how it went down. Look at what happened."
"Yea, it wouldn't make any sense. He wants Nick on his side, for whatever that reason may be. Then why would Johnson say that?" Rosalee asked, looking up at Monroe.
"What about the Captain's brother?" Hank asked, putting a hand thoughtfully to his chin.
"You mean the Captain's dead brother?" Monroe looked skeptically over at Hank.
"Well, supposed to be anyways," Rosalee raised an eyebrow at him. "Look at Nick's mom. Sometimes people aren't really as dead as we think they are."
"So," Monroe wondered out loud, "could Eric be alive?" That possibility had never crossed their minds before, but maybe he had somehow survived the car bomb, or maybe it wasn't even him in the car.
"Or maybe someone wants us to think he is?" Hank added with a sigh. "This just keeps getting deeper and deeper. I'm afraid we might not like what we find once we figure this out."
"Then maybe Captain Renard wants us to think his brother is alive, so that we wouldn't suspect him?" Monroe shook his head. "I don't know, I'm really reaching here."
"So what, have you very publicly executed at your wedding, only to have Nick find out the truth and then kill him in return?" Rosalee questioned, looking up at Monroe from where she was still locked in his tight embrace. "For what good reason he would want you dead, especially when it would only make Nick turn on him?"
"I mean, we don't really know the extent of the Captain's involvment with this Royals business," Hank gestured widely with his hands, "so maybe there's something bigger in the works here with the Captain that we just don't know about. We don't really know why Nick is so important to him, besides a reluctant ally. Hell, I don't even think Nick really knows. Still," he placed his hands on his hips, "I don't see why he'd do this either. Besides, look how much he helped us tonight. We never would have found Rosalee if it wasn't for his help."
"But," Rosalee shook her head, "then why would Johnson tell me that? He was about to kill me, so he didn't think I'd be able to tell anyone else. So why even say it?"
Hank paused, running a hand haggardly over his face. "I don't know. Something isn't adding up here."
Monroe sighed deeply, pulling Rosalee even tighter against him."Well, whatever it is, we better figure it out, and fast, before somebody else gets hurt."
Just then, the shrill ringing of Hank's cell phone in the quiet warehouse startled them all. Monroe half expected it to be Renard, and the three friends looked at each other, wondering what they should say to him after what they had just learned from Johnson.
"Maybe we should wait until we figure out what's going on," Monroe told Hank, glancing at the ringing phone as he pulled it out of his pocket, "before we let Captain Renard know what Johnson said. Just in case."
"Agreed," Hank nodded vaguely in agreement as he moved to answer his phone. He paused when he saw who was calling, and Monroe frowned when he noticed the expression on Hank's face rapidly change.
"Hey, tell me something good," Hank hurriedly answered, and Monroe and Rosalee froze, trying to hear the other side of the conversation. It wasn't Renard.
"Hey, hey, slow down," Hank told whoever was on the other end. "Wait, what? Now?...Juliette, slow down, I can't hear you…hey, it's gonna be ok, just sit tight…we've got Rosalee, she's ok…yea…we're coming."
Monroe and Rosalee both watched him with anxious expressions on their faces, waiting with baited breath to hear the news on Nick. Hank quickly hung up and looked worriedly over at them.
"We need to get to the hospital. Now."
TBC