An outsider's perspective on Portland and its Grimm.

Set after Cat and Mouse (with spoilers for Cat and Mouse)… just a one-shot so thanks in advance to everyone who reads and reviews.

Ian took his ticket with a nod and a 'thank you,' deliberately masking his accent as he did so, and then took a seat on one of the mostly-empty benches to wait for the bus to Vancouver. His eyes were focused on the mostly-deserted parking lot, scanning for potential trouble automatically, but most of his mind was still trying to process the events of the day.

There were some things that Ian had come to expect as the leader of the Lauffer. Being hunted, for one. Being shot at, for another. They were just hazards of the job. Actually being shot was rare, fortunately, since hitting a fast-moving target with a handgun wasn't nearly as easy as the movies would have one think, but in the end the odds were against him so he couldn't say that he was surprised that he'd finally received more than a graze. Everything else that had happened today, though…unexpected was a good description.

He snorted and ignored the uncertain look the woman sitting a few feet down the bench from him shot in his direction. 'Unexpected' might be a good description, 'a series of bloody shocks' was a better one.

Learning of Freddy's death had been the start of it, and not just because he'd been counting on Freddy for papers to get him out of the country. Losing friends was as much of an occupational hazard as being hunted was, but he'd met Freddy two days into his first visit to Portland as a low ranking member of the Lauffer reaching out to his American counterparts, and despite the difference in their ages, the two of them had become surprisingly close in a short amount of time. Hell, Freddy had been the one to drag Ian home to introduce to his little sister once upon a time. Their paths had only crossed a few times in the years since Ian had left, but there had been a message here, a bit of unexpected assistance there…. That he'd been killed in a robbery by a couple of clueless addicts was just such a waste.

And Freddy's death had drawn Rosalee back to Portland. Ian shook his head. They'd been close, once, but he hadn't seen her since he'd left town the first time, and unlike with Freddy, he'd never attempted to keep in touch with her. He'd wanted to—his departure had been hard on both of them—but at the time they'd each been doing what they'd thought was right, and neither had been willing to compromise. At some point along the line he'd heard that she'd left Portland for Seattle, probably from one of Freddy's messages, and not that Ian was surprised that she'd helped him, not with him injured and in need in front of her, anyway, but she was about the last person that he'd expected to see.

Then there was the company that she was keeping. Good Lord, the company that she was keeping. At first, when he'd seen the Blutbad, he hadn't thought much about it. Blutbaden might be far better known for their violent outbursts than their long-term planning skills, but Rosalee was an intelligent woman, and Ian could appreciate her desire to have some muscle on hand after Ian had showed up on her doorstep with a bullet in his side. He would have preferred that she hadn't called Monroe since the fewer people who knew about Ian's presence the better his chances of escaping the city, but he did understand.

It was equally understandable that Monroe would be willing to give up a couple hours to stand guard at the shop. Blutbaden might not be planners, but they weren't idiots either, and Wesen apothecaries were few and far between in this day and age. It had become pretty obvious pretty quickly that Monroe wasn't like any of the Blutbaden that Ian had met in the Lauffer, though, and that there was more going on between him and Rosalee than just casual friendship. How much more Ian wasn't sure, but again, it wasn't something that he would have expected. Ever.

Ian shook his head slightly. As much as he was glad as he was that it hadn't come to it, he was a little bit curious about what would have happened if Monroe had gone head-to-head with Waltz in a real fight. Blutbaden were one of the few species both fast enough and tough enough to give even a Hundjäger pause, and even if he hadn't acted much like a typical Blutbad for most of their short association, Monroe had been angry enough to start to woge when Waltz had threatened Rosalee. It would have been ugly, but Ian had a sneaking suspicion that Waltz wouldn't have come out the victor.

Of course, the reason that it hadn't gone that far was because of yet another friend of Rosalee's, and even now, thinking about Nick made him shake his head. Dead friends and old girlfriends and reformed Blutbaden aside, Nick alone would have made Ian's stopover in Portland feel unreal.

Unlike some Wesen who could go their whole lives without ever hearing the word 'Grimm' outside of a story, Ian traveled enough that he'd ended up in the same city an actual Grimm more than once. It hadn't happened a lot, of course—he could count the number of times on one hand and still have a couple fingers to spare—but it had happened. However, being a reasonably intelligent man, he'd always left town on the heels of that information rather than staying around to go sightseeing. For good reason: Grimms had long aligned themselves with the Verrat, acting as their mercenaries if not necessarily their friends. Plus there was the fact that Ian had no interest in meeting a guy the size of Siegbarste who wandered around bloody to the elbows and carrying a giant axe.

Ian shook his head again and kept his half-grin to himself. Never mind that he knew perfectly well that such a man would more than stand out in the twenty-first century—and, practically speaking, there were as many female as male Grimms, not that that was saying much—he'd never quite managed to shake the mental picture of a Grimm that he'd formed the first time that he'd heard whispers about them as a small child. He'd never have admitted it to anyone, but that image was the first thing that had come to mind when Rosalee had said 'Grimm.' He'd let her and Monroe convince him mostly because his situation was already so bad that even a Grimm couldn't make things that much worse, but he still hadn't been looking forward to meeting a creature that belonged in a nightmare.

And then, twenty minutes later, a skinny guy a few inches shorter and a few years younger than he was had followed Monroe into Rosalee's shop. No bloodstains, no axe…he had drawn a gun on Ian, preserving at least that much of Ian's worldview, but even as he stared down the barrel Ian couldn't help but think that if he'd met the man on the street, he wouldn't have looked at him twice.

Then there was the fact that Nick had lowered that gun on the say-so of Rosalee and Monroe as though taking the word of two Wesen was the most normal thing in the world. And if he hadn't been happy about the fake papers, it hadn't stopped him from telling Rosalee to get them. Hell, he hadn't even tried to get any information about the Wesen selling the documents.

He'd been willing to go after Waltz, too, despite the history that Grimms had with the Seven Houses, and to top it all off, he'd accepted a clap on the back from Monroe—from a Blutbad—with an absolute lack of reaction that told Ian that 'friend' was as true on his side as it was on Monroe's. It was…Ian didn't know what it was. What kind of self-respecting Grimm did that?

Oh, he'd meant it when he'd left Ian standing by the road with a flat order not to come back, Ian didn't doubt that. And if there had been a way to arrest him without involving Monroe or Rosalee, Ian wasn't so sure that he'd be sitting here waiting for a bus. After all, he had shot Waltz in cold blood. But there hadn't been, and Nick had meant it when he'd said that he was protecting his friends, too.

Ian shifted. The world was changing. Despite the best efforts of him and the rest of the Lauffer, the influence of the Verrat was spreading. But a Grimm who wasn't under their control—or, rather, on their payroll, however obliquely—was new. A variable that had to have been as much of a shock for the Verrat as it had been for him.

He straightened abruptly as a thought occurred to him and then sucked in his breath as his side protested, slumping back down a little to take the pressure off of his stitches. He was assuming that the Verrat knew of Nick's existence. It seemed almost impossible that they didn't given their reach, but almost impossible wasn't the same as totally impossible, and it would explain why Nick hadn't been told to stay out of Waltz's way if not strongly encouraged to help him track Ian down. Of course, they might have approached Nick and been told to get lost—Nick certainly hadn't been pleased with Waltz's tactics, and they weren't at all unusual for Verrat agents—but Ian had seen firsthand how well the Verrat as a whole handled rejection. The Grimm would be six feet under or headed there fast if that was the case.

Ian shook his head and pushed himself to his feet as his bus finally pulled up, waiting for debarking passengers to file past before carefully slipping his pack onto his shoulder and approaching the door. A Grimm that not only wasn't under the Verrat's control but that might also be an unknown to them. That was more than new. That was interesting.

Oh, for now, Ian would follow Nick's directive to stay out of Portland. Among other things, at this point in time the United States wasn't a good place for him to be anyway, and it wasn't as though there wasn't plenty of work to be done elsewhere. He'd only stopped in Portland at all because he'd needed Freddy's assistance to get out of the country. Besides, even if Nick wasn't following the orders of the Verrat, he was fond of law and order, and this wasn't anything like the first time that Ian had come down on the wrong side of that line.

Ian had a feeling that he'd be back, though. Some day. And that for the first time in the history of the resistance, there might be a Grimm that was willing to stand with them against the Verrat. Nick might just be one man—or one Grimm—but…there might come a time when that would make a difference.