But No Man Could Ever Best Me

Disclaimer: I don't own Grimm and I make no profit from this work of fiction.

Marie Kessler first learned in elementary school that forests cover over sixty percents of the state or Virginia. The teacher spoke enchantingly of the great oak forests, yellow pine in the lowland and bald cypress wetland forests full of deer and bears and beavers and she told her class of the Shenandoah National Park with entsusiams that was frankly a bit disturbing. She had never seen a person elevated to a state of exstacy over georaphy and forestry and she kept squinting her eyes, trying to see what she had no way of seeing until she was older - if it indeed was to be found here.

It had been at her father's knee that Marie learned the national park made the state favoured by many wesen who preferred to be more in touch with their baser nature.

"Oh Shenandoah, I long to see you," Mrs. North led her class into a song. "Away you rolling river. Oh Shenandoah, I long to see you, away, I'm bound away, 'cross the wide Missouri." The irony of the geographical failure seemed to wholly escape their teacher, Marie thought, and she considered her father's words.

"Kelly, Marie, keep this in mind when you walk in the woods. Carry your gun openly and hide your knife and always keep your eyes open. And never mind how cute he is or how deep and soulful his eyes, if a boy ever asks you to follow him to the forest, kick him to the nuts first and ask questions later." This was what the Old Man Kessler had told his girls. Forest was a frightful place where bad things happened. Great wolves prowled about, stalking the steps of little girls, and the bears did nothing as benign as cooking porridge.

Open carry of a handgun without a permit is legal in Virginia at age eighteen, withstanding other applicable laws.

Now Marie stood under the dark of the maple tree and narrowed her eyes. The hulking form of a jägerbar, clearly visibly under the clear sky over the trail, pressed a sobbing girl tightly against barrel-like chest. It was a full moon night, but the pale corona of the city's lights gave more light; she had caught up with the pair quickly enough. Marie forced back the smallest noise of uncertainty and remained waiting for the monster's next action.

"You don't want to make me any angrier than I already am," she warned Jack Hirch. "I'm not going to lie to you, I will kill you. But there's a difference between being stabbed to the gut and stabbed to the heart." Her voice didn't waver even as the bear-man made a rumbling sound deep in his chest that might have been challenge or derision or maybe even fear.

She had warned Jocelyn, of course she had warned the girl, but whenever did a teenager listen when someone told them "that guy's no good for you?" She had taken her futile anger and translated it into words that wouldn't get her locked in an insane asylum, but in the end, he had a leather jacket, a tattoo and a motor cycle and Jocelyn was a seventeen-year-old with brightly-dyed hair, a men's coat and a father who didn't understand her at all. Now they had a stand-off in a dark park, it was well past midnight and no one knew where they were. Jocelyn sobbed so hard Marie feared she might soon be in convulsions; part of her pitied Jocelyn. Another part of her almost yelped for battle, but the good soldier her father had raised knew better. The Good Soldier Marie knew that the best way to deal with a hostage taker was to convince them to let their hostage go. She thought: God, no wonder I'm clumsy tonight, trying to pay attention to so many thoughts at once.

"You won't kill me, not while I still have the hostage, Grimm, it's your head that's going to end up on a pike tonight. Might spare this stupid tart for tomorrow, though, but I'm definitely cutting her tongue. She wouldn't stop going on and on about that bleeding art of hers…" The jägerbar's voice remained as deep-chested and rumbling as ever, but there was a note to it that made him sound almost whining to Marie. It took her a second to realize that Jocelyn had ceased to cry.

Marie was a well-read girl and while practically all could tell how hell hath no fury, Marie not only knew whose hand had first penned this truth, but could also quote it right in its entirety: "Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned." She couldn't see Jocelyn's face, shadowed as it was by the looming jägerbar, but the girl straightened in his hold, spreading her legs a bit in a way Marie knew offered better balance.

"Don't… don't mind me. Just kill him!" Jocelyn's voice wasn't that loud as she was still gulping air desperately, but it climbed higher and higher towards the end

"Oh, Joy, honey. The nice Grimm won't do that…she is the good guy here, isn't she?" The jägerbar stepped to one side. Marie turned in place, not taking her eyes off of the bear's face. He glared at her, eyes narrowed…

"Now, I'm going to walk away, Grimm, and there's nothing you can do to stop me. If you try to shoot me, I'll kill the girl," he said and took s step back. Marie took one step forward, no more than one, just keeping the same distance between them. The wind carried the wet smell of decaying leaves with it, the cold slipping under her coat and biting her skin.

"Forget about me, Marie," Jocelyn replied in a voice that eerily approached calm now, "just end him."

No. That simply wasn't acceptable.

"Let Jocelyn go, Hirch. Take me instead; a Grimm makes a better hunting story anyway. I won't fight back," Marie promised, making a show of gritting her teeth, as well as clenching and unclenching the fist that wasn't holding her gun. She was willing him to take the bait.

"Oh, please. Do you really think I'm going to fall for that lie, Grimm? Your kind always fights." The jägerbar's words were mocking, but there had been half a second when he considered it. "I have the upper hand here, bitch. Don't forget it!" Bold words and sadly true, for now, but something about the man bothered Marie. It was something she should see, should know…

A strong gust of wind struck through the maple tree above Marie and a small branch fell to the ground next to her with a terribly loud crash. They all jumped and Marie could taste iron in her mouth.

"I could drop my gun," she offered. She had a dark brown jacket, good for looking inconspicuous and blending in with the trees and shifting shadows, it reached down to half thigh and it was buttoned to keep it from catching the branches – but it wasn't tight by any means.

Hirch was inching towards the trees and Marie chewed on her lower lip. She could tell he didn't want to turn tail and outright run from her, not from someone who just barely reached his nose and weighted maybe half as much as he did, and Marie didn't want to run after him through the dark forest, not when he could choose to kill Jocelyn at any moment to get away quicker. The noise of the cars from the road at Marie's back filled the night behind, the wind running through the treetops before. Soon the string would snap and the balance would swing back, Marie could feel the moment approaching in her bones like her grandfather could feel the ache of bad weather. However this would end, the end would come any second now.

"I trusted him and I had sex with him and he is some kind of monster, just kill him!" Jocelyn's calm façade dropped and broke into a hundred pieces like cheap glass with bubbles and thin walls, almost broken before it even hit the ground. She snarled and tried to bite the hand holding her back to bare chest.

"She won't do anything, she can't save you…"

There; that was it, the balance. Marie's eyes widened as she realized what had bothered her so much.

"…she's just doesn't have what it takes."

Marie inhaled, moved her hand to the side with a clear, wide arc and dropped her gun. Hirch startled, his posture slacking, and then Marie sprung up from the ground. She pushed her body up, springing off the balls of her feet and exhaling. She swung her hand up to the sky for extra momentum and just like father had taught her right hand swooped from under the hem of her utilitarian jacket, grabbing the handle of her knife. It was dark, but Marie's eyes were sharp and her body was a faithful tool to her will; her left hand wound up behind the jägerbar's neck, her chest hit against Jocelyn's face and she struck down with the knife.

No cutesy little letter openers for Old Man Kessler's daughters, no; it was a bowie knife. It was small for a bowie, granted, but that still meant the blade was eight inches long. The jägerbar had razor sharp claws, but it didn't have time to claw Jocelyn before Marie tore through its throat. Blood sprayed from the jugular, hitting Marie's neck and wetting Jocelyn's red hair even redder. One more inhale and Marie dropped down, grabbing Jocelyn's limp body to the side as the jägerbar swayed on his feet one last time and fell like a mighty oak.

To carry a hidden knife is illegal in Virginia. Of course, knifing people is also illegal.

The nice Grimm won't do that, she won't do anything… Hirch hadn't been mocking them, he had been reassuring himself. He kept saying it over and over again because he was afraid Marie was going to do something. The guy with the loudest mouth, father had said many times, is the one with the most issues deep down. So Marie had caught him off guard and done what she had to. Her hands were trembling just a little and her heart was fluttering up in her throat like a baby bird trying to escape, but she didn't have to let Jocelyn know.

Jocelyn was crying again, but now it was silent, tired sobs. Marie lowered her to her knees on the ground. They would have to find a brook or a pond to wash themselves at least a little for now they weren't fit to walk down the worst street in Richmond. The night smelled like blood.

"Why? Why me?" Jocelyn asked and Marie knew she didn't really expect an answer.

"I'm so sorry, that was a steep learning curve," she said and patted Jocelyn's back awkwardly. Oh dear, she thought, this girl's a year older than I am. Marie had a gun she carried openly, fake papers that proclaimed her eighteen years old and a bowie knife she kept well hidden. She knew Jocelyn owned a fake lisence, but she used it to buy liquor. The girl seemed so much younger than Marie.

This was Marie Kessler's first real solo hunt. She had gone out on her own before, but it had always been when father and Kelly were in the same city or town or village with her; she had always known that back-up was close by if she ever needed it. But not this time.

Marie had moved her whole way from one place to another, rarely staying anywhere longer than two years, sometimes less. Kelly didn't really mind the nomadic lifestyle, but Marie had aspirations of going to college and to get in she needed good enough grades when she graduated from High School that she could get a stipend. To get good grades, it became increasingly clear, she needed to stay in one school and study under the same teachers, the same study plan, for longer than one or two winters. Her father was more understanding than she had feared; when he left Richmond with Kelly, he had first seen Marie settled well.

She was the subtenant of Mrs. Eliza Winters, and old widow who had clucked her tongue disapprovingly and given Marie's father razor-edged glares when they moved her things in. Marie knew she paid considerably less rent than the market demanded and Mrs. Winters fed her so often the situation was starting to resemble full board rather than one room and the use of utilities. It was in her house that Marie learned the age-old teenager art of sneaking out and in without waking the responsible adult. It was mostly a matter of preparation; she used vegetable oil weekly on the hinges and lock of the door to the staiway and it opened without a squeak or a creak.

Marie took her shoes off before she even started rising the steps. The bare stairway echoed and in combination of the thin walls and doors the careless steps of a hundred and fifteen pound girl could sound like a stampeding horse. Well, that was a small exaggeration, but that truth was that like many older people, Mrs. Winters didn't sleep very soundly. Marie had made reconnaissance trips to kitchen and bathroom during her first week in the woman's house to test the noise limits, under the guise of being thirsty and having the bladder of a ten pounds pekingese, and now she slipped in like a ghost, like a shadow. The house smelled like the chicken they's had for dinner and cleaning fluids. It was a calming, safe place where the wild Marie within was soothed, gentled. She hadn't even realized how frantic her heartbeat had still been before it begun to slow down.

She only put on the lights once she had pressed the door of the bathroom closed. The face that looked back from the mirror was pale, but not bloody and her hair looked sad, the wet locks plastered against her temples and neck. She wanted to have shower, badly, but Mrs. Winters would have heard the water so that had to wait. There were stains at the breast of her jacket she needed to get off this night or they would stay for good.

She put the jacket into the sink, keeping most of it hanging off, and opened the cold water. She had hidden a bottle of vinegar and a packet of baking soda under the sink, behind the laundry detergent and the many bottles of different cleaning solutions. She applied the cold water and first the vinegar, then the soda with a damp sponge. The water turned first red and the paled to dainty pink before running clean again.

The jacket became pristine again, but Marie's sleep was restless that night. She dreamed of the day she was ten when her father had taken her to watch the killing of a geier. It was a Thing for the Kesslers, the short, harsh good bye to the innocent security of childhood. The life a of a Grimm was short and grimm, father had said, but the Kesslers lived long. They learned early on what was what and they never forgot, never let down their guard. Maybe that was so, maybe it had been a good idea and Marie would one day do it to her children - though the thought of even having children felt alien, impractical, scary - but that night still haunted her. The geier had been the last of its group, no match to a Grimm alone – a safe first hunt, as much as hunt ever could be safe. But the lair…

In her memories there were no colours but black and gray. It was like those old black and white movies where the blood was a shade of gray that looked like red tunred to gray. (Even though Marie knew that Alfred Hitchcock used Bosco Chocolate Syrup as fake blood because brown looked more red in black and white than real red did...)

Always when Marie was stressed or discomfited she would dream of blood on the walls, the cloying, sickly sweet, metallic scent that made her breathed through her mouth. The corners of the old, emptied factory hall were dark and she didn't want to look too closely there. When Marie was sad or scared she would dream of the body parts.

The unimaginatively named Monroe Ward High School, one of the two high schools in the Monroe Ward neighborhood, was a small, old building. There was talk about the school moving to a new building or the school being closed entirely – there wasn't precisely need for two schools in Monroe Ward after all. But Marie liked the old, beautiful building with old-world brick walls and arched windows.

That Friday they had Health class and the girls and boys were separated each to their own classrooms. Their gym teacher had spoken to them, a harried-looking woman named Mrs. Ellis. Marie had never heard her first name and half the school was convinced she didn't have any, while other half thought it had to be terribly embarassing for the woman to work so hard to keep it a secret. That day the graying woman told them that they would speak of "delicate intimate matters" today. After this mandatory bashfulness she proceeded to brashly tell them that syphilis was caused by premarital sex and that marriage provided some sort of protection from contracting it, though she didn't elucidate on how that worked. The she opened the door and threw a tennis ball into the hallway.

"Using condoms to protect yourself from a disease is a bit like this; it can get through," she told them. Marie watched after the bouncing ball hesitantly. She didn't think this was quite how these things went, but since her father had just told her to not do it before she turned eighteen unless she wanted him to kill the boy, she concluded that at least the lesson wasn't any less useful than that bit of advice.

This was the last class of the day and Marie was glad to escape. She knew what to expect and she wasn't surprised to see Jocelyn West standing by the doors, clearly waiting for a chance to speak with her. She had half hoped that Jocelyn had managed to convince herself that she had imagined Hirch turning into a bear monster in her fright, but obviously that was not to be.

"How are you, Jocelyn?" Marie asked as she paused next to the older girl. People pushed around them and Marie took her from hand, leading her a little to the side.

"I'm fine. Uhm, how was your day, Marie? Your name was Marie, right?" Jocelyn scuffed the ground with her foot. They had spoken a few times in school, last when Marie had tried to warn her off Hirch, but they didn't really move in the same social circles. Not only was Jocelyn a year older, she was also easily the richest kid in the school. Marie was certain she only slummed in the public school because a fine Catholic private school would have required her to wear a school uniform with a skirt and maybe forbidden such unseemly things like dying her hair as well.

"We were told about delicate and intimate matters today, a direct quote. It wasn't really helpful," she answered. "I'm Marie Kessler, yes."

"It couldn't possibly be as bad as the talk I received in my old school. It had biblical statistics about masturbation, only they called it the immense evils of self-pollution. I don't remember it very well, but it was something like "three out of every four shepherds agree that self-pollution turned one of their eighteen wives into a whore". So much for informative," Jocelyn snorted and even Marie let out a small, surprised laugh.

She had touched herself a few times under the cover of her blanket. It wasn't something she would admit to doing, but it was nothing she could see doing any harm either.

"They had eighteen wives and they complained?" she asked. Now it was Jocelyn's turn to laugh, but after this silence followed. Marie was slowly walking towards the library where she worked and the road led them by a small park. It was just a group of trees, one straight path and two flower beds between two streets, but it offered some small privacy. There were no flowers in bloom and the edges of the leaves were beginning to tint into red. There was just the smallest hint of frost in the air even in afternoon. Marie steered Jocelyn under the shadow of a maple tree.

"Now that the mandatory small talk is over, what did you want to ask?" she started the inquiry.

"What was Jack? How did you know? And are there more people like him, is his father one and is he going to kill me now? Are you going to be in trouble?" Jocelyn fired the questions rapidly like bullets from a gun. She had clearly given this some thought.

"Jack was a jägerbar, that is a type of wesen…" Marie had never before had to explain herself and she was only now realizing how long and complicated this talk would have to be if she wanted it to make any sort of sense. "Jägerbars are kind of human bears. The wesen, it literally means "creature" and that's what they are: intelligent nonhumans. They are liminal, that is, they display two states of existence simultaneous within one physical body… Jack's parents are jägerbars too and they might try to kill me, but I can take care of myself. The police may stumble upon the body first, though. Tell them you didn't go with him that night, I'll give you an alibi. But look, this is going to be a really long conversation and I have a part-time job. Can we speak tomorrow?" The library would be closed then and she would have had some time to compose a coherent lesson.

Jocelyn followed her to the library, but turned away from the door, unhappy. She wasn't crude enough to demand that Marie play hooky, but Marie thought she wouldn't be surprised to find Jocelyn waiting for her when the library closed.

Not that her superior would have minded if she was late or absent entirely. Poor Helen Moore lived in pathological fear of giving Marie orders and so she spent her time in library mostly reading the books behind the counter. Helen Moore was a mauzhertz, very timid and nearly in palpitations whenever Marie was in the same room with her.

When she first got a library card in some small town in Maine it was a paying library; she had to pay to borrow books. In the first public library she could remember the silence was so vigorously enforced that she had been shushed for walking too loudly and couching. No one was allowed to reserve novels there either, only non-fiction books. Those libraries had both been dimly lit and smelled like dust and old paper and compared to them the Cabell County Public Library was truly something else. It was a big building, Greekish in style and very bright. Marie nodded and smiled to her superior, who barely managed to not curtsey to her, at Marie's insistence. That kind of thing had always made her uncomfortable when the wesen in question were like, well, that. It was also bad because it made Marie look suspicious to outsiders and that was why she forbade such gestures. That was her story and she was sticking to it.

"Good afternoon, Ms. Moore," Marie said her piece and Ms. Moore looked down, her brown hair dropping over her eyes. This was a familiar play for both of them, an act they played for the walls and the silent shelves.

"Good afternoon, Ms. Kessler." Helen's face shifted under Marie's gaze, the cute button nose giving way to the small, round muzzle of a mouse covered by short, silky fur. Marie knew that her father really wouldn't approve of any feelings of pity or sympathy towards wesen, but Helen was devastatingly cute and about as dangerous as a teddy bear. Why should she treat poorly a woman just trying to earn a living by cataloguing books?

(gray-red blood on the walls and dark corners with cut-off arms and legs like the broken limbs of dolls)

It was a quiet afternoon with nary a person coming in. This turned out to be a good thing when Herman Hirch stalked through the door with murder in his eyes.

Helen Moore let out a strangled squeal, more an animal than a human sound, but Marie took a deep breath and stood up so quickly it sent the chair scraping backwards on the floor. Hirch gave her an odd open-mouthed snarl that was half angry, half grimace. He marched, but Marie made a snap judgement and leaped over the counter, pulling a kanzashi, a Japanese hair pin, from the tight bundle of hair she had tied at the nape of her neck.

She couldn't take her gun or knife tho the school; everyone there knew how old she was after all. And while the teachers weren't in the habit of opening the students' bags, she didn't want to risk being caught armed. This was why she had taken to wearing the kanzashi; it might have clashed terribly with her practical attire, but no-one thought it strange that a girl should wear a hair ornament. And, when you got right down to it, the thing was a seven inches long, sharp steel needle that had been painted black with a pink bead attached to the dull end. It was no knife, but it was better than nothing.

"You killed my..." Hirch's voice rumbled like a wounded bear, like distant thunder, and his visage was ugly, savage, too much an animal to be a person, yet too human to be an animal; a monster! But then Marie had an arm pressed against the man-beast's windpipe and the sharp end of the pin pressed between his eyes.

"Let's take this somewhere we won't immediately be seen by anyone who comes to borrow a little romance," she hissed and let go of his throat in favour of dragging him between the shelves. Somewhere on the background a little mouse whimpered.

Jägerbars were a lot stronger than Grimms where sheer raw, physical strength was considered and Marie could never have dragged the man away like this had he truly been resisting. His eyes, though, were startled, his whole presence out of balance - and somewhere under the grief and fury, Marie was beginning to see as she pushed the man between a wall and a shelf full of map books, there was a middle-aged man with a small pot belly. The son of Herman Hirch had been a lot more dangerous than he. Quickly as a striking snake Marie pressed the hairpin between the man-beast's eyes again.

"Killing you here would be a terrible mess," she whispered. "But if you force my hand, I will strike first and deal with the consequences later." It was half a bluff and while she would have followed through had her life depended on it, she really, really didn't want to think how she could hush up a dead body in the library. She had read that looking a wild beast into the eye was taken a a threat and so she kept her eyes riveted to Hirch's, refusing to allow her fear to show. Her heart was hammering in her chest, but no wesen that that good hearing (as far as she knew.) Hirch's muscles were like steel cables pressed against her body.

But instead of using those muscles against her Hirch pressed his back against the wall and his pupils dilated a little. Sometimes Marie wondered what it was that the wesen saw when they looked at her. She didn't have a second form, but ever since her awakening the wesen could see what she was with but a glance. Sometimes she fancied the thought that they could see shadow of death trailing after her, but there had never been one she had felt comfortable asking such questions from.

Webster was much possessed by death and saw the skull beneath the skin...

"I killed your son, yes. He had taken a girl to the forest and I know what those tattoos of his mean. It wouldn't have been his first kill and probably not his first rape either." Maries was guessing here because being a murderer didn't automatically make a man a rapist, but she wasn't surprised to see Hirch flinch at her words. Jack Hirch had been scum.

"I don't know what went wrong with him. I taught him better than that. His mother taught him better than that," Hirch said and hung his head, looking suddenly at least ten years older than the dangerous beast that had stalked into the library.

"You may have tried, but clearly you didn't actually teach him anything. Take my word for it, if I ever tried to go off the rails I would have remembered my father's lesson even after I became too senile to remember my name," Marie spoke coldly. Her father didn't abuse her and Kelly, never had, not like that social services busybody had implied back in Virginia Beach, but he hadn't hesitated to spank them if they did something stupid enough to deserve it. Stupid people didn't live old and he loved his daughters enough to see that they would.

Sometimes Marie wondered about the brother she had never got to meet, the son of her father's first wife. He hadn't believed his father, he had gone with a stranger who had offered to show him cute puppies. Puppies there had been, yes, of the bipedal variety. Sometimes Marie wondered what her life would have been like if Henry had lived, or would she live at all if she'd had to learn from her own mistakes instead of his. She felt a little sick, thinking like that.

Watching the tunshed tears brimming in Herman Hirch's eyes and his nose running made her feel a little sick too. She felt no remorse whatsoever for Jack Hirch's untimely demise - untimely as in much too late - but she thought that only a stone cold bitch wouldn't have felt anything for a crying man whose child she had just killed, even if the spawn had been a rapist and a murderer. She knew that she should follow the man home and kill him, that killing the son and letting the father live was just begging for trouble, that this might well be the mistake she wouldn't live to learn from, that her father would spank her ass skinless if he ever found out, nevermind how old she was... But there was something that was still soft and yielding inside her and it gave way.

"I am the daughter of Old Man Kessler himself - that is, Silas Kessler. Tell me, how badly you want to piss him off?" She whispered with hard, sharp voice like a broken shard of flint. It was difficult to say for sure, what with the fur that covered Hirch, but she was almost certain he turned greenish shade of pale at her words. "Leave me alone and maybe I decide a father shouldn't pay for his son's sins. Leave me alone and my father won't send you to your wife in ten gram pieces." She gave the man a push and he stumbled hastily out of the library. Behind the counter Helen Moore cowered in the farthest spot from Marie's seat and she felt inexplicably tired as she avoided her eyes. All in a day's job for a Grimm; just as anticipated.

She rather had anticipated Jocelyn peeking in from the door from time to time and frowning in a displaeased manner when she saw Moore sitting by Marie. She rather had anticipated the girl she had rescued making a quick pounce for the counter the second Moore escaped to return books to the shelves, but it still surprised her somewhat.

"That was Jack's dad, wasn't it?" Jocelyn whispered and looked around like she expected the older Hirch to suddenly jump from behind the nearest shelf.

"Yes," Marie answered simply and wondered at the gamut of expressions flickering across Jocelyn's face, fear and revulsion, vindication and realization, a wince and sympathy. It was the last that surprised Marie.

"I'm really, really sorry about that," Jocelyn said and touched her hand gently; Marie could only stare with her mouth open. Never before had anyone told her they felt sorry for her.

And before Marie knew it she had a friend. First there were answers to be given, of course.

Marie had never had many friends, other than Kelly who didn't really count because they were sisters and therefore stuck with each other since birth. They had always moved around and just when the girls started to invite her to their birthday parties she had to say goodbye to them. The older she became, the more disinclined she was to invite the heartache of getting to like someone. Now Jocelyn, Joy, stood by her and she was one day surprised when Mrs. Winters asked when her friend would come by again. She had a friend. How marvellous.

Joy admired Marie like many admired the founder fathers and in many ways she seemed very young and naive. She spoke of changing the world and modern art and garage rock while Marie thought that changing the world took a lot of people, it would probably be a pretty painful process and a lot of people were the type who preferred the good old days anyway and would only complain about the results. But there was one area where Joy was more knowledgeable than Marie and that evened things up some. Not only was Marie a virgin, but she had never even had a boyfriend, much for the same reason she didn't have friends. Joy had had four boyfriends and she had slept with two of them, Jack Hirch counting.

Marie didn't know what to think of that at all. On one hand, it seemed kind of... really much. Joy was only seventeen and while Marie would have hurt anyone who called her friend wanton... On the other hand, at least that jägerbar scum hadn't taken her virginity.

"I can give you the useful version of that talk if you want. Sex is for babies and bonding, to put it bluntly. It's fun when it's done right and it should be fun, but you have to be careful or you can get pregnant or sick. Men and women have interlocking parts that are called penis and vagina respectively..." Joy cheerfully babbled on, heedless of the way Marie's face turned redder and redder the longer the lesson went on.

Joy didn't have any other friends either, Marie learned soon. She had what she called friendly acquaintances, she was rich after all and though all and sundry said money couldn't buy you love, iddle company and smiles were on sale. But Joy was a bit much for the girls of the Monroe Ward High and it was plain as the day to see.

"The day I met you was the best day of my life!" she declared and she had no idea how happy she made Marie then, despite the fact Marie was fairly certain Joy couldn't recall the day they first met. It was the thought that counted.

Marie had a friend and school was going well, she received periodically letters and money from her father and sister and the wesen of Richmond were quiet enough she had even some free time left after the school and the work. Of course it was too good to last. One week before Christmas the disappearances began.

AN: Marie Kessler may seem strangely ignorant of sexual matters here for a sixteen-year-old and the sex ed made of Large Ham, but please keep in mind that this story takes place in the past. If we assume that the story of Grimm starts the same year the series was aired, 2011, then Marie Kessler, who was fifty-two when she died, would have been born 1959 and become sixteen 1975. They had sex ed in schools, but I have understood that the factuality of it greatly varied depending on the attitudes of the person charged with teaching it. Also, the concept of the Internet as we know it was first introduced 1982 when the Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP) was standardized. That means no free porn, no Wikipedia articles of ovum and semen and choromosomes and human procreation, no IKEA Erotica fanfiction where Tab A is inserted into Slot B and two paragraphs of pistoning in and out follows - and good luck trying to buy or borrow that kind of books if you were underage. Information came harder back then.